Critical access hospitals face unique challenges in attesting to meaningful use, including limited financial resources and limited broadband availability. Despite these obstacles, many CAHs are making progress in meaningful use attestation, according to data recently released by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
Less than 2 percent of CAHs have no plans to attest to meaningful use. As of July, 61 percent had attested to stage 1 (for comparison, 68 percent of all hospitals had met stage 1 criteria in July). An additional 28 percent of CAHs have plans to attest to stage 1 by the end of the year, and 10 percent plan to attest in 2014 or beyond.
This level of attestation is facilitated by the rate of electronic health record adoption among CAHs. About 27 percent of CAHs are fully electronic, with 62 percent using both an EHR and paper records. Of the 11 percent without an EHR, 85 percent plan to install one in the next year.
The most-reported challenge to EHR implementation was the cost, followed by workflow changes. One in 10 CAHs cited limited or unavailable broadband as a significant challenge to EHR implementation.
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