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The Health Information Technology Adoption Initiative

Welcome to hitadoption.org

The dissemination and adoption of health information technology (HIT), particularly Electronic Health Records (EHR), is widely regarded as critical to enhancing the performance of the nation’s health care system. President Bush and Secretary Leavitt have recognized the essential role of HIT in improving health care quality and efficiency.

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) has partnered with the George Washington University, Partners / Massachusetts General Hospital Institute for Health Policy and Brigham and Women’s Hospital through a contract on the Health IT (HIT) Adoption Initiative.

The new initiative is aimed at better characterizing and measuring the state of EHR adoption and determining the effectiveness of policies aimed at accelerating adoption of EHRs and interoperability.

What's New:

  • Electronic Health Records Still Not Routine Part of Medical Practice, Says New Study
  • General -- Oct 10, 2006

  • In the most comprehensive study to date that reliably measures the state of electronic health record (EHR) use by doctors and hospitals, researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and George Washington University (GWU) estimate that one in four doctors (24.9 percent) use EHRs to improve how they deliver care to patients.

    The study reflects one year of examination of dozens of studies and surveys by some of the nation’s leading experts on health IT and illustrates the EHR adoption environment among physicians and hospitals, what predicts whether or not a provider will adopt an EHR, where the gaps in adoption are, how much adoption depends on location, practice size, specialty, or kinds of patients treated; and how the U.S. can collect more precise and timely data on adoption to better enlighten policymakers. In addition, the report points to four key things that drive adoption: financial incentives and barriers, laws and regulations, the state of the technology and organizational influences such as the size of a practice or hospital or payer mix; and how integrated a health care system is.

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