A new study released on August 26, 2010, by Health Affairs finds that while the share of U.S. hospitals that had adopted either basic or comprehensive electronic health records rose modestly between 2008 and 2009, from 8.7 percent to 11.9 percent, only 2 percent of this country's hospitals reported having records that would meet the federal government's "meaningful use" criteria. 

To compile their data, the authors used responses to a 2009 survey by the American Hospital Association of all acute care, nonfederal hospitals about their health information technology (IT) activities as of March 1, 2009.

Support for the study was provided by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. 

It was authored by Maulik Joshi, President of the Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) and Senior Vice President of Research for the American Hospital Association (AHA); Peter Kralovec, senior director of the Health Forum, in Chicago; Ashish K Jha, who is serving as a senior adviser to the under secretary for health of the Veterans Health Administration, is affiliated with the Harvard School of Public Health, Harvard Medical School, Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, and Brigham and Women's Hospital, all in Boston; and Catherine M DesRoches, who is a survey scientist and an assistant professor of medicine with Partners Healthcare in Boston. 

The Health Affairs article can be found at http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/hlthaff.2010.0502.

For more information on the AHA IT Survey and database please click here.

For more information on HRET please visit www.hret.org.