Study: Northeast U.S. hospitals have high IT adoption rates

A new study by Arizona State University research has concluded that hospitals on the East Coast of the U.S. have the highest rate of adoption for critical health IT systems and applications. The report concluded that New England, Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic regions were the leaders in health IT adoption, while West and Mountain states were less advanced. Among the states profiled, Rhode Island had the highest health IT adoption rate, six times higher than the state with the lowest rate, South Dakota.

Researchers attributed the East Coast's higher health IT adoption rate to both state patient safety efforts and the presence of academic medical centers with histories in medical informatics, such as Johns Hopkins and Harvard.

Not surprisingly, given how costly it is, hospital size appeared to be the strongest predictor of the extent of health IT implementation. Specifically, hospitals with 200 or more beds had 79 percent higher health IT adoption rates, and mid-sized hospitals with 50 to 199 beds had 48 percent higher adoption rates than smaller hospitals with less than 50 beds.

The report was based on 2006 data from the HIMSS Analytics database and 2004 data from the American Hospital Association.

To learn more about this study:
- read this iHealthBeat piece [1]

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