Dive Brief:
- The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT's study finds practices that employ nurse practitioners and physician assistants are 75% more likely to adopt EHRs.
- The study, using data from a large-scale national survey of office-based providers in 2013, also found EHRs are adopted by 76% of practices that employ PAs, by 74% that employ NPs and by 58% that don't employ advanced practice providers.
- In addition, the study found for hospitals with EHRs in 2013, 80% had a system that managed patient notes, 77% had a system that managed electronic prescriptions, and 76% had a system that allowed the user to view patient lab results and X-rays.
Dive Insight:
Large practices and rural practices were more likely to hire NPs and PAs than smaller and urban ones and primary care physicians were twice as likely to advanced practice providers as multi-specialty practices.
The study authors concluded, "Knowing that practices that employ [advanced practice providers] are prepared to implement team-based approaches to care, which could be further enhanced through the use of health IT, it is important to more fully examine the association between health IT adoption and the presence of [advanced practice providers] in a practice."