Nearly all (93 percent) of acute care hospitals have upgraded to or plan to adopt the most recent EHR standards, according to an ONC analysis.
The report, which examines 2017 data from the American Hospital Association's Information Technology Supplement Survey, also found hospitals are sending more patient data electronically than ever recorded. Specifically, 88 percent of hospitals are able to send patient summary of care records electronically, while 74 percent can receive such records.
However, the percentage of hospitals with the ability to integrate this data still lags. The number of hospitals able to integrate data increased from 41 percent in 2016 to more than half (53 percent) in 2017.
In the same year, 83 percent of hospitals that could send, retrieve, find and integrate outside data simultaneously reported the ability to provide electronic information at the point of care. That's at least 20 percent higher than hospitals who only engage in three of those areas, and nearly seven times higher than hospitals not engaging in any of the aforementioned areas.
"Hospitals engaged in all four interoperability domains — electronically sending, receiving, finding, and integrating — increased 41 percent since 2016. While this growth is impressive, important work remains, as only four-in-ten hospitals reported they can find patient health information as well as send, receive, and integrate patient summary of care records from sources outside their health system," according to the ONC.
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