Healthcare IT use has nearly grown significantly since 2012, including use of EMRs, but fewer physicians believe in the tool's ability to improve treatment decisions, reduce medical errors or improve health outcomes, according to a recent Accenture survey.
Accenture's survey includes responses from more than 2,600 physicians across six countries*, including 600 physicians from the U.S. A similar survey was conducted by Accenture in 2012.
More physicians may be using EMRs — overall adoption has increased considerably since 2012 — but the faith physicians have in the EMRs is dwindling in the following capacities:
- Ability to improved treatment decisions — 46 percent in 2015 vs. 62 percent in 2012
- Ability to reduced medical errors — 64 percent vs. 72 percent
- Ability to improved health outcomes for patients — 46 percent vs. 58 percent
Additional findings from the survey are highlighted below.
- In the past two years, proficiency using an EMR has grown considerably in the vast majority (79 percent) of U.S. physicians.
- The percentage of U.S. physicians who routinely use digital tools (e.g. using secure e-mail to communicate with patients) has more than doubled to 30 percent from 13 percent in 2012.
- More than two-thirds (70 percent) of U.S. physicians believe that healthcare IT has decreased the amount of time they spend with patients.
- Seventy-six of those surveyed believe that the interoperability of currently available tools limit their ability to improve the quality of patient care through healthcare IT.
- Nearly all U.S. physicians (90 percent) report better functionality and easy-to-use data-entry systems are important for improving the quality of patient care through healthcare IT, but more than half (58 percent) said that the EMR system in their organization is hard to use.
*Physicians from Australia, Brazil, England, Norway, Singapore and the U.S. were surveyed.
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