Fridsma: Use of EHRs among docs doubled in two years

The percentage of doctors using electronic records has doubled in the last two years, said Doug Fridsma, MD, director of the Office of Standards and Interoperability of the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), at the ICD-10 Summit sponsored by the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA).

“We are making real progress on EHR adoption and we are developing a workforce that is beginning to be trained to support this progress,” Fridsma said.

Fridsma cited Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) statistics that in the last two years, the percentage of primary care physicians using EHRs has doubled from 20 percent to 40 percent. Since 2009, the percentage of hospitals adopting the technology has more than doubled from 16 percent to 35 percent. More than 50 percent of doctors indicate they intend to take advantage of EHRs to get meaningful use incentives.

At the same time, ONC is working with a community of stakeholders to create a portfolio of standards and specifications to address different needs and challenges through the Standards & Interoperability Framework, Fridsma said.

However, developing the foundation of interoperable health information exchange (HIE) is an evolving  journey, Fridsma concluded. “We have to take an incremental approach and ask ourselves as each piece is developed, ‘Is this solution the best we have so far? Is it the logical next step in an incremental approach?’ and not let the perfect be the enemy of the good. When it comes to interoperability, one size will not fit all.”