U.S. continues to trail other countries in physician IT adoption

The Commonwealth Fund's annual survey of international health policy is out, and, to nobody's surprise, primary-care physicians in the U.S. and Canada continue to trail their counterparts in Europe and the South Pacific in terms of health IT adoption. The survey, published as a Health Affairs web exclusive, finds that 46 percent of U.S. primary-care physicians have some form of electronic medical records, less than half the rate of general practitioners in the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, the United Kingdom, Australia, Italy and Sweden. (To be fair, those countries started health IT with physician offices, while EMR implementation in the U.S. mostly has grown out of hospitals.)

"We spend far more than any of the other countries in the survey, yet a majority of U.S. primary-care doctors say their patients often can't afford care, and a wide majority of primary-care physicians don't have advanced computer systems to access patient test results, anticipate and avoid medication errors or support care for chronically ill patients," Commonwealth Fund Senior Vice President and lead study author Cathy Schoen says, Healthcare IT News reports.

The Commonwealth Fund recommends that the U.S. employ financial incentives to improve quality and efficiency and expand access to care, while also looking toward IT to prevent errors. The patient-centered medical home, which originated in the U.S., has shown promise in these areas, though other countries have been quicker to embrace this model.

For more information:
- take a look at this Healthcare IT News story
- read the "Commonwealth Fund International Health Policy Survey" in Health Affairs

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