Study: Most Health Organizations Are Implementing HIEs

A study by revenue cycle management vendor Emdeon has concluded that most hospitals and medical practices are getting involved with HIEs, and that a majority of providers were implementing automated medication reconciliation, e-prescribing and EMRs.

To conduct the study, researchers spoke with 147 people from hospitals, large practices and small practices about their HIT practices, according to Becker’s Hospital Review.

Eighty-eight percent of hospitals surveyed had fully implemented or were in the process of implementing health information exchange, Emdeon found.  Large practices were even more involved, with 94 percent of those surveyed having fully implemented or begun the process of implementing HIEs.  Even smaller practices were largely on board, despite their resource constraints, with 72 percent having fully or partially implemented HIE connectivity.

As for the other health IT initiatives studied, here’s a quick overview of what Emdeon found (stats courtesy of Becker’s):

Hospitals

* 77 percent have implemented or are on the way to implementing automated medication reconciliation
* 85 percent have partially or completely implemented EMRs
* 61 percent have partially or completely rolled out e-prescribing

Large Medical Practices

* 57 percent are implementing or have completed rollout of automated medication reconciliation
* 74 percent have partly or completely implemented EMRs
* 82 percent have partly or fully implemented e-prescribing

Small Medical Practices

* 55 percent have partly or fully implemented automated medication reconciliation
* 62 percent have partly or completely rolled out EMRs
* 62 percent have partly or fully rolled out e-prescribing

About the author

Anne Zieger

Anne Zieger is a healthcare journalist who has written about the industry for 30 years. Her work has appeared in all of the leading healthcare industry publications, and she's served as editor in chief of several healthcare B2B sites.

2 Comments

  • This study seems pretty preposterous on its face. We talk to hospitals all the time and with just my own anecdotal information it’s not even close to those numbers. And to think physician practices are “implementing” HIE when they are so far behind in EHR adoption and are struggling as segment with those costs … completely unrealistic. What do you think about the validity of these numbers – are the vendors filling out the responses for them?

  • @Dan Davie, We appreciate you voicing the surprise we think many people will have at actual HIE adoption. Our anecdotal experience has also been that there are numerous competing priorities for healthcare stakeholders. Because data integrity is of the utmost importance to both our company and to our customers, we engaged an independent third-party to perform and validate our survey and its results. Would be glad to discuss in greater detail the findings or you can view the original infograhpic here: http://emdeon.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=155.

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