Reconsidering hospital EHR adoption at the dawn of HITECH: implications of the reported 9% adoption of a “basic” EHR

OBJECTIVE: In 2009, a prominent national report stated that 9% of US hospitals had adopted a “basic” electronic health record (EHR) system. This statistic was widely cited and became a memetic anchor point for EHR adoption at the dawn of HITECH. However, its calculation relies on specific treatment of the data; alternative approaches may have led to a different sense of US hospitals’ EHR adoption and different subsequent public policy. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We reanalyzed the 2008 American Heart Association Information Technology supplement and complementary sources to produce a range of estimates of EHR adoption. Estimates included the mean and median number of EHR functionalities adopted, figures derived from an item response theory-based approach, and alternative estimates from the published literature. We then plotted an alternative definition of national progress toward hospital EHR adoption from 2008 to 2018. RESULTS: By 2008, 73% of hospitals had begun the transition to an EHR, and the majority of hospitals had adopted at least 6 of the 10 functionalities of a basic system. In the aggregate, national progress toward basic EHR adoption was 58% complete, and, when accounting for measurement error, we estimate that 30% of hospitals may have adopted a basic EHR. DISCUSSION: The approach used to develop the 9% figure resulted in an estimate at the extreme lower bound of what could be derived from the available data and likely did not reflect hospitals’ overall progress in EHR adoption. CONCLUSION: The memetic 9% figure shaped nationwide thinking and policy making about EHR adoption; alternative representations of the data may have led to different policy.