Muntz spoke about the federal progress of the EHR incentive program, as well as areas of progress that needed to be made in the national health IT landscape during his keynote address at HCI Executive Summit, an intimate gathering of industry-leading CIOs, CMIOs, and federal policy and health IT leaders. Muntz, who was formerly the senior vice president and CIO of the Dallas-based Baylor Health Care System, was appointed to the second-highest position at ONC in January.Muntz gave a progress report on the state of EHR adoption, stating that adoption of basic EHRs has doubled since 2008, growing from 17 percent to 34 percent in 2011, and the share of hospitals using EHRs has more than doubled from 16 percent to 35 percent. He added that there was $22.5 billion available to healthcare providers in the form of incentives. More than 225,000 providers are registered to achieve meaningful use through the Medicare or Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs, which he said was a strong indicator of future attestations. These figures he quoted are from data briefs from the National Center for Health Statistics.
David MuntzFederally-funded regional extension centers (RECs) have been popular, Muntz noted, with more than 132,000 primary care physicians (PCPs) (comprising more than 40 percent of PCPs in the nation) working with RECs to achieve meaningful use. “The RECs have been particularly successful in the rural areas,” said Muntz. RECs are working with 963 Critical Access Hospitals (CAHs) and 85 rural hospitals, all of whom have 25 beds or less.EHR adoption of office-based physicians of all ages has been growing at an overall upward slope, Muntz showed. Even though that physicians over the age of 65 were not as anxious to adopt EHR technology as their younger counterparts, they were still adopting at a similar pace. Muntz said that ONC was looking at the age gaps to help determine a communication strategy to close the gaps.