T he adoption of health information technology varies significantly among physicians who are in different specialties, according to a study from the Center for Studying Health System Change.
Although only 12% of physicians overall have adopted comprehensive electronic medical records, physician uptake of specific health IT functions, such as obtaining guidelines or writing prescriptions, varies depending on specialty. For example, 74% of emergency physicians have health IT systems that can access patient notes, compared with just 36% of psychiatrists.
The findings are based on the Health System Change (HSC) 2004–2005 Community Tracking Study Physician Survey, a national telephone poll that included responses from 6,628 physicians. As part of the survey, the physicians were asked about practice-based availability of information technology across five clinical areas: obtaining information about treatment alternatives or recommended guidelines; retrieving patient notes or problem lists; writing prescriptions; exchanging clinical data and images with other physicians; and exchanging clinical data and images with hospitals.
Because the physicians were asked about the availability of these health IT functions and not whether they actually used the technology, they were considered to have an electronic medical record if they answered that they had access to all five of the above functions.
Primary care physicians were less likely than were specialists to access patient notes and exchange data with other physicians.
There were also variations across specialties and subspecialties. For example, within primary care, internists were more likely than family physicians or pediatricians to have access to patient notes.
Oncologists were more likely than other specialists to obtain guidelines, exchange information with other physicians, and exchange information with hospitals.
One factor in the variation could be that certain clinical activities are more relevant for certain specialties. “Surgeons may have less need for IT to write prescriptions because they typically prescribe a narrow range of on-formulary medications on a short-term basis, in contrast to medical specialists and primary care physicians, who treat chronically ill patients who are taking multiple medications,” said Catherine Corey, who is an HSC health research analyst and one of the study authors.
Findings from previous surveys have noted that most pediatricians who do not have EMRs report as their reason that they were not able to find one with functionality that was specific to pediatrics.
ELSEVIER GLOBAL MEDICAL NEWS