As health care providers make preparations to implement electronic health record (EHR) solutions and qualify for federal incentives outlined in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, SK&A, A Cegedim Company, released its updated "Physician Office Usage of Electronic Healthcare Records Software" report, which shows a 36.1 percent EHR adoption rate in U.S. medical offices -- a 3.2 percent increase since the February 2009 version of the study.

Like its predecessor study, the latest report identifies physician adoption rates by office size, practice size, practice specialties, patient volume, ownership, geography and other variables. This updated study also measures the level of software functionality available to and being utilized by physicians in medical offices to support the government's newly defined "meaningful use" criteria.

Trends from the study show:

• Physicians primarily use EHR systems for electronic notes (28.3 percent), as opposed to electronic labs/x-rays and electronic prescribing.
• EHR adoption rates increase as the number of physicians, number of exam rooms and daily patient volume rise.
• EHR adoption is more prevalent in hospital- or health system-owned sites. Hospital-owned and health-system-owned sites have adoption rates of 44.1 percent and 50.2 percent, respectively. On the contrary, non-hospital-owned and non-health-system-owned sites have adoption rates of 34.4 percent and 34.2 percent, respectively.
• The specialty areas with the highest adoption rates include dialysis, critical care medicine and radiology. Those specialties with the lowest adoption rates include allergy/immunology, general surgery and general practice.

SK&A's research supports the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's National Center for Health Statistics' recent findings, which estimate that 43.9 percent of doctors are using full or partial EHR systems. The statistics are based on a 2009 survey of 5,200 U.S. office-based physician sites. Both studies conclude that significantly more than half of physicians still do not have EHR systems in place.