The use of electronic medical records has now officially become the norm. That is one way to look at the news we read at WRAL TechWire, “Electronic Healthcare Records Hit ‘Tipping Point’ in Demand.” The article discusses the growing percentage of organizations who use EMRs, as reflected in the numbers of those who have received incentive payments for demonstrating their meaningful use. We learn:
“According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention survey in 2012, the percent of physicians using an advanced EHR system was just 17 percent in 2008. Today, more than 50 percent of eligible professionals (mostly physicians) have demonstrated meaningful use and received an incentive payment. For hospitals, just nine percent had adopted EHRs in 2008, but today, more than 80 percent have demonstrated meaningful use of EHRs.
“More than 291,000 eligible professionals and 3,800 eligible hospitals have received incentive payments from the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, as of April.
“‘We have reached a tipping point in adoption of electronic health records,’ said U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.”
The article notes one key consideration: the importance of broadband access grows as these systems overtake the healthcare field. Let us hope it is not long before our rural areas gain adequate access.
We suggest that any practice that joining the snowballing EMR adventure invest in an automated indexing platform like Access Integrity’s ICDtagger. This tool helps minimize coding errors, brings efficiency to the workflow, and boosts the value of analytics and eDiscovery investments.
