EHR adoption seems to have caught on more quickly for rural physician practices than for urban ones, according to research set to be published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.
According to a survey of more than 270,000 office-based physician sites, rural EHR adoption is 7 percent higher than urban adoption, at 56 percent and 49 percent respectively.
Analysis from rural news outlet Daily Yonder, suggests these figures represent a significant shift from the mid 2000s before HITECH, when rural physician offices lagged significantly behind their urban counterparts in EHR adoption.
"This suggests that outreach efforts, namely regional extension centers created by the Office of the National Coordinator, have been particularly effective for increasing EMR adoption in rural areas," wrote the study authors.
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