Office-based Physician EHR Adoption and Use in Southern US States

The paper chronicles exploratory research in the domain of physician electronic health records (EHR) adoption with a view to establishing a foundation for additional research. After reviewing the literature on technology adoption in general and EHR adoption, the paper reviews the adoption and use of EHR by physicians in southern US states to determine if anomalies exist by state or by year. The first major finding is that no differences existed between states. Next, it was discovered that there were statistically significant differences in hospital ERH adoption between two consecutive year pairs (2011/12 and 2012/13). This finding was mirrored physician’s ability to send lab results; however, the finding was slightly different in physician’s ability to view lab results where the difference was only significant in 2011/12. These findings should be the catalyst for future research to explore the cause of these differences.