Most Wired Trends Report Sheds Light on Participants’ Use of Healthcare Technology
11.14.19
Michelle Patterson, VP, Operations
CHIME has released a national trends report based on an analysis of data from the 2019 Most Wired surveys. The report is free and available for download through the CHIME website.
This year CHIME offered an ambulatory survey in addition to domestic and international surveys. The 2019 report includes a section devoted to the ambulatory findings; other sections focus on value-based care, population health management, patient engagement, security, EHR data access and integration, and other findings.
Overall, acute-care organizations and ambulatory facilities are following similar trajectories in their adoption of healthcare technologies, and in both settings organizations that used advanced technologies the most also reported the most benefit. According to the analysis:
- Fee-for-service remains the dominant payment model, with alternative payments accounting for 25% of Most Wired participants’ revenue. There was a modest increase in the adoption of most financial tools between 2018 and 2019.
- Healthcare organizations are making headway with their population health management efforts. On average 81% of respondents have adopted basic tools for care management although the adoption of advanced technologies is much lower. More than 80% use their EHR for various population health activities, and 63% include third-party tools.
- Almost all respondents offer patient portals that include clinical information like test results and visit summaries, and about half include functionality like self-management tools for chronic conditions. The more patients used the portals, the greater was the impact on outcomes.
- Telehealth remains a challenge. Two-thirds of organizations with telehealth services reported less than 10% of patients have used them.
- Most organizations employ some components of a comprehensive security program but only about one third have adopted all 11 components.
- Almost all participants have made the EHR and imaging data remotely accessible to clinicians yet less than half allow remote access to alerts and notifications for patients with chronic conditions.
- Most organizations have integrated at least one measured type of patient-monitoring data source, and those that integrate at least seven reported a 10% higher impact on outcomes.
- More organizations reported the ability to consume CCD data into their EHR as discrete data in 2019 compared with 2018. The ability to consume data from skilled nursing facilities and home health agencies also improved, yet about one-third still lack that ability.
The ambulatory results mostly mirrored trends seen with acute-care organizations but there were a few differences, too. Compared with acute-care organizations, ambulatory facilities were slightly more likely to have adopted a mix of population health technologies and had higher adoption of portal functionalities overall. They also were more likely to offer telehealth services, but patient use was low in this setting as well. More ambulatory facilities reported that their patient engagement tools had a high impact on outcomes.
Results from the trends report were presented Nov. 5 at the 2019 CHIME Fall CIO Forum. A digital version of the report is available on the CHIME website and can be downloaded here.