Electronic health record adoption among office-based physicians nears 80 percent. However, outside assistance is helpful to help primary care practices make the most of data contained in EHRs, according to a study in Generating Evidence & Methods to improve patient outcomes.
Researchers analyzed EHR adoption and use among 51 primary care practices enrolled in the Colorado Beacon Consortium. From interviews and discussions with participants, researchers found the practices to value the support in using EHRs to improve quality offered by outside advisers from the Beacon project, including helping to translate regulations to individual practice settings, bringing peers together for best practice discussions, providing quality improvement tools and processes, offering technical expertise and helping to maintain accountability and momentum after the initial EHR implementation.
Based on the study's findings, the researchers believe outside assistance to be useful in helping primary care practices use EHRs to improve care.
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