Survey: Half of providers think stimulus won't help health IT adoption

You can lead doctors and hospitals to health IT, but you can't make them adopt it. That, in essence, is what providers said in a new survey looking at their interest in and use of health IT. To conduct the research, researchers reached out to 508 healthcare providers across the United States this past April.

The study, which was sponsored by electronic communications services provider IVANS Inc., found that more than 50 percent of providers believe that the billions of dollars set aside to promote health IT adoption will have little impact on that process. The biggest obstacle to adoption was "lack of budget," cited by 82 percent.

Despite their pessimism about overall IT adoption, 66 percent said that they believed EMRs could have a positive effect on their bottom line. Meanwhile, 75 percent said that EMRs could have a positive impact on the healthcare industry as a whole.

Not only that, 59 percent of providers had already implemented or planned to implement EMRs in the next 12 months, though only 17 percent were participating or planning to participate in a health information exchange. (That's not too surprising, given that EMRs, while still emerging, are far more standardized than HIE technology--and definitely more in vogue.)

To learn more about this survey:
- read this Healthcare IT News piece [1]

Related Articles:
National EMR adoption could cost $150B [2]
Louisiana may subsidize health IT adoption [3]
Study: Northeast U.S. hospitals have high IT adoption rates [4]