Few physicians use EHRs to exchange data

What stands out about the survey results in the Annals of Internal Medicine is the gap between how many physicians are getting payments from the federal government for the "meaningful use" of EHRs and how few seem to meet the criteria for meaningful use in the current study.

Dr. Neil Skolnik

While the current study puts the percentage of physicians achieving meaningful use at about 10%, the federal government recently put that figure at more than 50%. But the discrepancy is likely explained by when the data was collected. The Annals survey was conducted from October 2011 to March 2012, whereas the government’s data is current as of April 2013.

A lot of the physicians who answered this survey were replying based on the EHR that they had at the time, which didn’t really have all of the software that was later developed to meet the meaningful use criteria. We are simply living in a new world every 6 months.

What isn’t changing is how unhappy physicians are with their EHR systems. Many really don’t feel that their system is helping them a lot, and in fact, many feel that it is hindering their ability to take care of patients.

Dr. Neil Skolnik is associate director of the family medicine residency program at Abington (Pa.) Memorial Hospital and professor of family and community medicine at Temple University, Philadelphia. He is editor-in-chief of Redi-Reference, a software company that creates medical handheld references. Dr. Skolnik also writes the "EHR Report" for Family Practice News.