Many hospital executives unhappy with EHR systems

Thirty percent of hospital executives are dissatisfied with their current electronic health-record systems, according to a new survey being released by Premier this week. Officials at small and rural hospitals were the most critical, with 69% of small-hospital executives reporting dissatisfaction. Another 11% of the 127 executives from 112 hospitals who were surveyed said they were indifferent to the systems their hospital or health system had in place.

It's not surprising that executives feel this way, said Keith Figlioli, senior vice president of healthcare informatics of Premier, a Charlotte, N.C.-based publicly traded company that provides supply-chain services and data and analytics tools to healthcare providers. “We're becoming more and more dependent on these systems,” he said. User experience remains a primary challenge for many systems and is the No. 1 cause for dissatisfaction, Figlioli said.

Spending on clinical healthcare information technology is expected to rise over the next year, accounting for at least a quarter of a hospital's capital budget. Top investments are likely to include EHRs, advanced data-analytics systems and telecommunications, the survey found. As hospital spending on health IT increases, that also raises more questions about optimization.

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