Hospital SUD Programs, Psychiatric Hospitals Lag in Electronic Health Record Use

Hospital-based substance use disorder (SUD) programs and psychiatric hospitals are less likely than acute care hospitals to use basic electronic health record (EHR) and electronic health information exchange (HIE) technology, astudy inPsychiatric Services in Advance has found.Morgan C. Shields, Ph.D., of the University of Pennsylvania and colleagues reviewed data from the 2017 National Survey on Substance Abuse Treatment Services to determine the extent to which basic EHR functionality has been adopted by hospital-based programs. Basic EHR functionality was defined as assessment, progress monitoring, discharge, labs, and prescription dispensing. They also analyzed the use of electronic HIE across hospital-based programs.In 2017, 68% of hospital-based SUD programs reported basic EHR functionality compared with 84% of acute care hospitals, and 71% reported sending electronic HIE to outside health care professionals, compared with 88% of acute care hospitals. Hospital-based programs that provided medications for alcohol or opioid use disorders were nearly twice as likely to use basic EHR than those that did not provide such medications. Psychiatric hospitals were roughly half as likely as acute care hospitals to have adopted EHRs. Hospitals that used HIE to send information to outside health care professionals were nearly five times as likely to use basic EHR functionality.The researchers noted several potential reasons for lower EHR adoption among hospital-based SUD programs an...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: 42 CFR Part 2 electronic health records health information exchange Psychiatric Services substance use disorder Source Type: research