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Researchers surveyed clinicians at 350 primary care practices and community clinics that had attained patient-centered medical home recognition and were participating in the MU program to find out:
how frequently they use electronic systems to address the proposed MU3 care coordination objectives,how important they think IT is in supporting care coordination, andwhat organizational and contextual factors facilitate using health IT for care coordinationThe results showed that while 78% of respondents said that getting timely notification of patient hospital admissions or discharges or patient deaths was very important, fewer than half48.7%were actually using health IT systems to get the information. Conversely, 77% of practices use health IT to support providing clinical summaries to patients, but only 47.7% of respondents ranked that activity as very important.
The study also found that practices are less likely to use healthcare public relations jobs health IT to perform any of the 10 care coordination activities included in the original MU3 objectives than they are to use some other method. For example, while 90% said they routinely respond to requests for information from a clinician receiving a referral, only 54% routinely do so using health IT. Similarly, 69.4% say they provide comprehensive medical summaries for each site transition or referral, but only 45.4% routinely use health IT for that purpose.
Download: Focus on Technology: The Ultimate ICD-10 Checklist
Even among practices having a strong commitment to the medical home model, the use of health IT to support care coordination objectives is not consistent, the authors note.
Related: Satisifaction with EHR systems grows among physicians
Another significant finding was a positive association between greater use of health IT, the assigning of care coordination responsibilities to a nonclinician, and the practices capacity for systematic change. Dedicating staff to care coordination will require additional resources for many practices, the authors note. Consequently, they say, reimbursement approaches that extend beyond face-to-face care, such as Medicares new chronic care management billing codes, are critical to improving care coordination.
The study, Health IT-Enabled Care Coordination: A National Survey of Patient-Centered Medical Home Clinicians, appears in the May/June issue of the Annals of Family Medicine.
