Health IT

Electronic health record systems vary among functions and the extent to which physicians use the available functions, a study in the Archives of Internal Medicine found.

The authors found that 28.8% of physicians reported that their practice uses an EHR system. However, many of those physicians did not have access to the same functions, such as the ability to view lab and doctor visit reports, order lab tests and electronically prescribe drugs. Furthermore, researchers found that fewer than half of physicians who had systems with clinical decision support, electronic prescribing and radiology order entry used the functions.

The researchers concluded that physicians should focus on specific functions of EHR systems, rather than general EHR adoption (Simon et al., Archives of Internal Medicine, 3/12).