HHS: Hospital EHR use, data exchange continue to climb

An estimated 84% of non-federal acute care hospitals had at least a basic electronic health record in 2015, up from 76% in 2014 and 28% in 2011, according to a report released today by the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Eight in 10 small, rural and critical access hospitals had at least a basic EHR, up from seven in 10 in 2014 and two in 10 in 2011. Psychiatric and children’s hospitals continued to lag other hospitals at 15% and 55%, respectively. Psychiatric hospitals are ineligible for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, while children’s hospitals are only eligible for the Medicaid program. With respect to interoperability, 26% of hospitals could electronically find patient health information and send, receive and use patient summary of care records from sources outside their health system in 2015, up from 23% in 2014. Interoperability increased in all areas except the ability to integrate data without manual entry. Among other barriers to electric health information exchange, nearly half of hospitals continue to report greater challenges exchanging data across different vendor platforms and one-third report difficulty matching or identifying patients. The findings are from the Information Technology Supplement to the AHA Annual Survey.