In a story in Modern Healthcare magazine this week are some numbers from the CMS on electronic health-record systems that hospitals, physicians and other "eligible professionals" are using to meet their meaningful-use obligations under the Medicare EHR incentive payment program.
There were more than 77,600 records in the CMS database, with basic product information on "complete" EHR systems used by 1,027 hospitals and 71,183 EPs.
The CMS data shows that hospitals have used complete EHRs from 27 developers and EPs have used EHRs from 327 different vendors to qualify for federal payments.
Facing "a plethora of options" has long been the rule for office-based primary-care physicians shopping for EHRs, with variables including cost, functionality, service and vendor size, according to Dr. Steve Waldren director of the Center for Health Information Technology at the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Since 2007, the Leawood, Kan.-based medical specialty society has run a website with not only an EHR guide but also a library where members can post peer reviews of their EHRs.
"We've tried to educate our members on the key things they need to look at," Waldren said, adding that one of those is "creating a peer network of people" to help them in their decision-making.
Another is advising physicians to investigate in advance how they'll be able get their patients' records out of their EHR system when their developer goes belly-up.
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