Nationally, an estimated 18.7% of assisted living and similar residential care communities were using electronic health records in 2014, according to data released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics. The data are from the National Study of Long-Term Care Providers.

The five states where EHRs were used the most by assisted living providers were Utah (47.6%), North Dakota (47.1%), Minnesota (45.7%), Idaho (43.9%) and Nebraska (40%).

The five states where EHRs were used the least by assisted living providers were Arkansas (8.8%), Louisiana (10.4%), Alaska and Arizona (both 10.9%) and Nevada (13.5%).

Percentages were not provided for 21 states, however, because the estimate did not meet the NCHS standard of reliability or precision (the sample size was less than 30) or it did not meet NCHS confidentiality standards.

The NCHS also noted that of 30,200 residential care communities, 5.3% were excluded from the analysis because of missing data. The percent missing ranged from 1.3% in Utah to 13.4% in Nevada.

The center found that, overall, assisted living communities more often reported having computerized support for electronic health information exchange with pharmacies than having it for HIE with physicians or hospitals, and this held true for those that used EHRs and those that did not.

Of all assisted living communities, 17.1% reported having computerized support for HIE with pharmacies, 11% had it for HIE with physicians, and 7.9% had it for HIE with hospitals. Of those that used EHRs, 43.4% had computerized support for HIE with pharmacies, 22.3% had it for HIE with physicians and 13.5% had it for HIE with hospitals. For assisted living communities that did not use EHRs, 10.9% said they had computerized support for HIE with pharmacies, 8.4% had it for HIE with physicians and 6.6% had it for HIE with hospitals.

More than 7% of communities were excluded from the HIE-related analyses because of missing data.