As healthcare transitions to a patient-centric, value-based model, the role of information technology (IT) has become critical for data collection and reporting, for supporting patient engagement and education, for providing point-of-care information for providers, and more.
By 2016, more than 95 percent of hospitals eligible for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Program had achieved meaningful use of certified health IT, and over 60 percent of all U.S. office-based physicians (MD/DO) had demonstrated meaningful use of certified health IT in the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) Electronic Health Record (EHR) Incentive Programs.1 Yet ACCC's 2017 Trending Now in Cancer Care survey found that although half of respondents (51%) report that their EHR platforms have interoperability capabilities (i.e., the capability to transmit a summary of a patient’s care to other systems), nearly 1 in 3 (31%) say their EHRs do NOT have that capability. At this stage in the EHR journey, the vast majority of survey respondents (80%) say that their EHR system(s) have increased the workload of their physicians and staff.
Realizing the potential of health IT requires solving real-world challenges across all settings of care.
1.The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. Health IT Dashboard. Available at https://dashboard.healthit.gov/quickstats/quickstats.php