EHR Adoption in Rural Physician Practices

A major challenge confronting health care delivery in the United States is the adoption of information technology by health care professionals in rural areas that goes beyond basic financial and billing systems. This paper looks at the difficulties in adopting EHR's in rural physician practices as it relates to costs, technical expertise and utilization of the software in patient care. In summary, for an EHR system to be of maximum efficiency in patient care and thus justify its cost, the system must be capable of incorporating information from many differing information systems. These systems may be from local hospitals, diagnostic centers and pharmacies or from hundreds of miles away in major cities when dealing with specialists and major hospitals. This paper focuses on the major obstacles needed to be overcome and some of the means and methods that can be used to overcome them. The paper focuses on rural physician's practices in Ohio and West Virginia.

In conclusion, although it is not easy to overcome the obstacles to implementing EHRs in rural physicians practice, that with proper planning and resources it can be done to the benefit of the patients.