Glasses Half Full and Empty: EHR Use Has Doubled, But...

With $3.1 billion awarded to doctors who are buying and learning how to use electronic health records (EHRs), Secretary of Health and Human Services Kathleeen Sebelius told a Kansas City community college that 41,000 doctors and 2,000 hospitals were on the road to meaningfully using the technology — double the number of EHR users in 2 years.

That’s how “stimulating” the ARRA HITECH stimulus funds have been — a glass half-full interpretation of the data. A survey of health providers conducted by the American Hospital Association learned that the proportion of EHR-using providers grew from 16% to 35% between 2009 and 2011...

Health Populi’s Hot Points: Clearly, stimulus funds are stimulating sales and implementations of EHRs. But of course, there’s more to the story...