Small, Rural Practices Can Adopt Health IT Effectively

Preliminary findings from the American Academy of Family Physicians' National Demonstration Project found that health IT such as electronic health records, Web portals and chronic disease registries can be implemented by a variety of practices, including small and rural offices. The evaluators said small and rural practices "may be better positioned to adopt technology because they are usually very nimble and self-sufficient." They added that these practices also might view health IT spending as a "personal investment" because the decision to implement EHRs was not imposed on them by a larger health system.