HIMSS: Small number of hospitals have advanced EMRs

According to the model developed by HIMSS, there are eight stages organizations go through in adopting EMRs. To date, however, no hospitals or health systems have achieved the final stage, and only 15 have met Stage 7, a paperless EMR environment for patient care.

A total of 42 hospitals and systems have achieved Stage 6, which calls for a full physician documentation using structured templates and a full PACS system for film and digital images. That's a tiny fraction of the more than 5,000 hospitals in the U.S., but the number can be misleading, HIMSS execs say. Actually, many hospitals are entering Stage 3, which represents strong progress overall, they said.

To get to Stage 6, HIMSS standards require an extensive range of functionality and systems integration, including computerized labs, radiology and pharmacy systems in place; a clinical data repository fed by major ancillary clinical systems and a rudimentary rules engine to perform conflict checking; clinical documentation systems integrated with the repository and clinical decision support with error checking for drug reactions.

To learn more about the study:
- read this Modern Healthcare piece (reg. req.)

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