While rural hospitals have gotten the lion’s share of the attention in problems involving exchanging patient information via both electronic and non-electronic means, small urban hospitals are also still fighting to catch up, says the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT.
In 2015, about 90 percent of medium-size and large hospitals could send care records through electronic and non-electronic means, and 71 percent could receive records those ways.
But only 80 percent of small urban hospitals could send information electronically and non-electronically, and just 58 percent could receive data through both mediums. For critical-access hospitals, those numbers were worse — 78 percent and 56 percent, respectively.
Vindell Washington, M.D., ONC’s principal deputy national coordinator, said in a blog post that the hospital sector should conduct more analysis to understand those gaps and says that ONC is “committed to ensuring that all hospitals have secure access to health information when and where it is needed.”
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