Electronic Health Record Adoption Uneven Across U.S.

A new study in Health Services Research finds wide geographic variation in the adoption of  electronic health records (EHRs) by ambulatory health care sites, ranging from a high of 88 percent to a low of just 8 percent.

At the state level, the EHR adoption rate for ambulatory care sites ranged from a low of 27 percent in New Jersey to a high of 65 percent in Minnesota. Within states, the variance in EHR adoption rates was at least 20 percentage points in nearly all states (46) and was at least 50 percentage points in a third of states (17).California, Illinois, and Missouri had the largest variations in adoption rates, while Delaware, the District of Columbia, and Wyoming had the smallest.