Survey Finds Docs Struggling To Meet MU

As of early 2012, only about 10 percent of U.S. physicians were meeting meaningful use standards with their digital health record systems, according to a survey in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Of the 1,820 office-based primary care and specialist doctors polled, 43 percent reported having a basic EHR, although more recent data gathered by the research firm Accenture found about 90 percent of doctors currently using digital record systems.

Still, the survey and an accompanying editorial adds some fuel to the debate over the current, varying state of EHR usability and functionality.

As of early 2012, only 9.8 percent of the physicians surveyed were meeting meaningful use standards, and for those that were, “using computerized systems for the panel management tasks were difficult,” the researchers, including Mathematica Policy Research’s Catherine DesRoches and the Commonwealth Fund’s Anne-Marie Audet, MD, wrote in their conclusion. “Using EHRs as simple replacements for the paper record will not result in the gains in quality and efficiency or the reductions in cost that EHRs have the potential to achieve.”