Lack of Capital Biggest Barrier to EHR Adoption, Survey Finds

It all comes back to money....with looming compensation cuts in the air, where is the incentive for physicians to adapt to electronic records? With the current economic crunch facing many small practices and the potential of many dropping from accepting Medicare, where does this leave us...we all know electronic records are a much better and efficient method for health records, but someone needs to help the physicians...some hospitals are making strides in this area but that may only be a small handful....and the records all need to "talk" to one another as well...BD

Lack of capital is the biggest barrier to electronic health record adoption, and financial support would be the biggest incentive to adopt an EHR system, according to preliminary survey results, Modern Healthcare reports.
The physician EHR adoption survey, which began in July 2007 with the goal of reaching 5,000 physicians randomly drawn from the American Medical Association's Physician Masterfile, so far has received more than 1,500 responses. Initial findings from the survey were presented Tuesday to the American Health Information Community.
Eighty percent of respondents said financial incentives would impact their decision to adopt EHRs, while 82% said additional payments would help.