The Center for Data Information recently ranked each state for adoption of health information technology, including adoption of electronic health records (EHR) and e-prescribing. They looked at office-based physicians and non-federal acute care hospitals. The top five for EHR adoption include: Top Five States Hospital percentage Physician’s office percentage 1. Massachusetts 93 90 2. Wyoming 94 88 3. Washington 94 86 4. Minnesota 88 89 5. Indiana 88 89 For the complete list of rankings, click here. Rankings are interesting, especially when there are some unexpected market leaders and some states that would seem to be technology-advanced and yet lag behind in adoption. It’s also interesting to note that the five largest states in terms of population mostly rank in the lower half of the list in terms of health-information technology adoption. Largest States (ranked by population) Population (in millions) Health Information Adoption Ranking 1. California 39.8 29 2. Texas 28.4 31 3. Florida 21.0 18 4. New York 19.8 39 5. Pennsylvania 12.8 43 Note: Population stats were compiled from the World Population Review. Another way of looking at this is the 37 percent of the people in the United States, who comprise the population of the five largest states, are in states that are lagging in terms of health information technology adoption. The study also ranked the states in order of adopting e-prescribing, where the doctor electronically sends the prescription to a pharmacy. The top five in this list include: State Percentage 1. New York 37.7 2. Nebraska 20.2 3. Delaware 11.8 4. California 9.6 5. Texas 9.4 More than half of the states reported they have less than 2.5 percent of prescriptions for controlled substances issued electronically at this time. Our team is encouraged by the many initiatives that are moving the quality of care for patients in a positive direction. For example, a recent survey published in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, reports that around 99 percent of U.S. hospitals had partially or completely implemented EHRs in 2016, up from 33.6 percent in 2003. (43.3 percent of hospitals had completely implemented EHRs and 55.7 percent had partially implemented the systems.) Harmony Healthcare IT is positioned with technology solutions to provide healthcare experts with clinical health data at the point of care to improve patient safety and outcomes. Wherever your organization falls on the continuum of healthcare IT adoption, we can help.