ONC adds EHR/HIE adoption information to Web tool

Want to know whether you and the other healthcare professionals and pharmacies in your area are at the forefront or lagging when it comes to adoption of electronic health records and e-prescribing? Now you can, thanks to a new tool from the federal government’s Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC).

The office, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, has released a new Health IT Dashboard that adds national-, state-, and local-level health information exchange (HIE) and EHR adoption data into its existing Web site.

The new content includes initial results from the ONC’s research and monitoring into patterns of healthcare provider adoption and use of EHRs to treat patients and exchange health data with other providers.

Among the key data you’ll find on the ONC Health IT Dashboard:

What percent of office-based healthcare providers have adopted EHRs in your state.

How many health information technology (HIT) implementation-support professionals have been trained by community colleges (ONC grantees) in your state.

The percentage of pharmacies that are enabled and actively using electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) technologies in your county or state.

How many providers (all or primary care only) are in your county or state.

The Health IT Dashboard includes six unique views that draw on more than 250 state, ONC program, and grantees dashboards.

“Our ONC stakeholders and the interested public now have a more comprehensive picture of the ways in which ONC programs and research are contributing to the widespread adoption and meaningful use of HIT,” said Victor Lazzaro, ONC’s director for the Health IT Dashboards projects.

These capabilities join existing ones that let you (among other things):

generate maps of ONC’s planned obligations by state and program;

learn how ONC's Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act programs work together to create momentum in EHR adoption and HIE activity; and

download a full list of ONC HITECH program grantees.

You can access the Health IT Dashboard at http://dashboard.healthit.gov.