We Are Still Waiting for Fully Supportive Electronic Health Records in Pediatrics

* Abbreviations: AAP — : American Academy of Pediatrics EHR — : electronic health record MU — : Meaningful Use In this month’s issue of Pediatrics , we read a report on the state of clinical information technology adoption by pediatricians, based on an American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) survey from 2009.1 The lessons from this report are that pediatricians were not adopting technology as fast as their nonpediatrician counterparts and, just as concerning, they were using technology that is not supportive of basic child health functions. Much has changed since 2009. The irresistible force in the electronic health record (EHR) market is the federal Meaningful Use (MU) program,2 a system of financial incentives funded through the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act intended to accelerate the adoption of EHRs. Those who work in EHR implementation know that the primary focus of EHR vendors and their customers during the past 2 years has been to modify their systems to meet the MU requirements. The work is not insignificant. A workgroup convened by the National Association of Children’s Hospitals estimated that it took hospitals 500 to 1000 person-hours each to create the functionality and reporting for … Address correspondence to S. Andrew Spooner, MD, MS, FAAP, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center and Department of Pediatrics, University of Cincinnati College of Medicine, 3333 Burnet Ave, MLC-9009, Cincinnati, OH 45229. E-mail: andrew.spooner{at}cchmc.org