A recent Johns Hopkins study has found that physicians can see more patients and reduce their workload if they started using Health Information Technology (HIT) based solutions.

This study, which was conducted in collaboration with the Commonwealth Fund, underscores the impact of electronic health applications on physician services, and suggests that physician shortage might not be a big problem in the future.

The study finds that if EHRs and other electronic health solutions were implemented in just 30 percent of community-based physician offices, doctors will be able to serve 4 to 9 percent more patients than they can today, mainly due to improved efficiency. In addition, when delivery of care is shifted from physicians to nurses and physician assistants, the expected future shortage for physicians can be reduced by 7%. Click on the hyperlink to find out more about an “All-in-One” Cloud solution by CureMD.

This study should be enough to convince physicians who are not already using HIT to get onboard. Through electronic health based solutions, they can see patients virtually and save both their time, and the patients’ time. Patient portals can also be put to use to deliver care to patients in remote locations, something which could reduce regional physician requirements by as much as 12 percent.

This number is likely to go up if more physicians and patients adopted eHealth as their preferred mode of healthcare delivery.

“The results of our study are important because they provide a forward looking snapshot of how health IT will profoundly impact the American health care workforce over the next decade or two,” explained Jonathan Weiner, the study’s lead author and professor of health policy and management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School and director of the Center for Population Health Information Technology, in a press statement. “When all of these likely effects are added together, it is clear that health IT will help resolve future physician shortages that many believe are around the corner.”

Although the cost of implementing EHR remains high and small practices might see their balance sheets in red, the benefits of using them outweigh the costs. As per CMS, as of September 2013, nearly $16.6 million has been paid to eligible providers and hospitals who have met Meaningful Use requirements.