Why dental practices have been so slow in adopting electronic health records (EHRs)?

Is the transition to EHRs federally mandatory for dental practices?

As per the American Dental Association (ADA), at present there is no due date by the government for dental providers to shift to EHRs. Nonetheless, dentists who are eligible for Medicare, but haven’t implement electronic health records (EHRs) and proven meaningful use will face a drop in imbursements starting from 1%, which will then grow yearly. This adjustment can increase up to 5% if meaningful use is not demonstrated by these professionals. Dentists can find out details about applicable laws from the State Medicaid Agency.

The initiative of including orthodontists, dentists and oral surgeons, to their EHR requirement was taken by the state of Minnesota in 2015. Legally there are no fines or penalties in place so the effects of the mandate are still to be seen. In the near future, however, other states are also believed to follow in Minnesota’s footsteps as the health care industry is progressively going forward in the direction of electronic health record (EHRs) adoption.

What are the reasons of EHR adoption rates been so low?

At implemented EHRs. These are promising stats, however, when we talk about the dental providers in the healthcare system compared to other sectors there is large gap. The general belief is that this is due to the fact that meaningful use incentives to increase EHR adoption rates, weren’t that favorable for dentists, from the very beginning.

Even though dental practices the start of year 2014, approximately 97% of practices and 83% of office-based physicians had already have the opportunity to qualify for meaningful use benefits, the number of participants is very low because of the hurdles they face to qualify for this program. According to the figures provided by CMS in the beginning of October 2013, there were 286,771 participants in total for the meaningful use incentive program; out of these 346 were dentists and only 194 of them got the incentive payments.

What are the challenges and barriers of EHR adoption?

So far EHR has only been implemented by dental practices operating on a large scale, however, the good news is a great number of dental practices are usually independent and small providers. Numerous obstacles and challenges are present in the adoption of EHRs software including:

• Availability of limited options for specialized dental EHRs software that provide application-specific modules for example, diagnostic, therapeutic and decision support apps that can capture, analyze, display and save electronic images.
• High costs related to EHR adoption- the purchasing and installation of EHR software can cost approximately $15,000 to $70,000 per provider.
• Absence of proof of interoperability between medical and dental EHRs.
• Inadequate monetary benefits for investment in EHR. Previously, Meaningful use incentives did not favor dentists.
• In pre-doctoral and residency courses there is not enough training given on oral health IT.

Dental industry is an important sector of the health care system and considering the number of operational as well as financial benefits of the EHRs, the transition is inevitable. Whether this shift is eventually directed by the government or it is done by dental practices themselves, experts opine that the question is no longer about if the shift will occur, it is about when it will.