​​This month marks the 4^th birthday of the Regional Extension Center (REC) Program, and what a four years it’s been. In a HealthIT Buzz blog post, ONC’s Mat Kendall, Director, Office of Provider Adoption Support, and Kimberly Lynch, Director of the REC Program, highlight some of the many accomplishments that REC’s achieved in the past few years, and how their partnership with providers continues in leveraging health IT to improve care.

According to the blog posting, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics found that the percent of physicians using an advanced EHR system was just 28 percent in 2010. In 2009, about one in five physicians used a basic EHR, and EHR adoption rates lagged even further among physicians in small practices with fewer than ten physicians, physicians in rural areas, and other providers who disproportionately care for the underserved. Now, more than 50 percent of eligible professionals have demonstrated meaningful use and received an incentive payment as part of the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Payment Program which is administered by the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS).

For hospitals, just nine percent had adopted EHRs in 2008, but today, more than 80 percent have demonstrated meaningful use of EHRs.

RECs have played a critical role in this transformation, working with over 136,000 (nearly half) of the nation’s primary care providers (PCPs), helping 90 percent (over 123,000) of those providers adopt an EHR system and 62 percent (over 85,000) demonstrate stage 1 meaningful use.

Click here to read the full blog post.