According to a survey conducted by Black Book, 91 percent of patients under the age of 50 favored practices emphasizing digital advancements such as connectivity and patient portals.
The 2018 survey included responses from 19,000 total electronic health record (EHR) users to gauge users feedback on mobile and telehealth in healthcare systems of varying size.
Key survey findings included:
- Highly functional, customizable integrated EHRs, practice management, revenue cycle management and ICD10 coding products are most requested in practices with 12 or more practitioners.
- Cloud-based mobile solutions with access to financial performance, compliance tracking and quality goals were the top interest (93 percent) in groups keeping replacement in mind, followed by telehealth support (87 percent) and speech recognition for data entry (82 percent).
- 88 percent of small practices reported not optimizing advanced EHR tools like patient engagement, secure messaging, decision support and electronic data sharing.
- Advanced features like electronic messaging, clinical decision support, interoperability, data sharing and patient engagement were missing in most small to mid-sized clinics and practices.
"Traditionally, it has been the smaller and solo practices with the highest dissatisfaction ratings for electronic health record applications, but we confirmed also that the smaller the practice, the less likely they are to use advanced IT tools and that is where EHR frustration among small practices is generally focused," said Doug Brown, managing partner of Black Book. "So when we look at apples-to-apples client satisfaction among small practices, it's about basic functionality experience. While in large practices, the rating of customer satisfaction is based on that plus a much wider breadth of vendor offerings and client execution from claims management to population health bundled in."
Cara joined TriMed Media in 2016 and is currently a Senior Writer for Clinical Innovation & Technology. Originating from Detroit, Michigan, she holds a Bachelors in Health Communications from Grand Valley State University.