Meaningful Use incentives and cloud computing are two factors that are helping EHR become more widespread across the country. According to a new IDC MarketScape report, EHR will be adopted in more than 80 percent of health care organizations by 2016. In 2009, only 25% of health organizations had implemented EHR into their practices.
Because smart phones and tablets are becoming more and more prevalent in the health care scene, this is thought to be a driving force in the increase in EHR throughout the country.
The IDC report examined 11 EMR/EHR products in the United States. Athenahealth and eClinical works were recognized for their pricing modles, while Optum was found to have excellent collaboration with a health insurer.
However, even though this growth is predicted, adoption in small practices isn’t growing very fast. Of the companies examined, the companies that was most popular among small practices were AllScripts and eClinicalWorks, though Cerner, GE Healthcare and NextGen Healthcare Information Systems also appeal to these small practices. Although the incentive program is supposed to aid in adoption EHR, Judy Hanover, the research director at IDC Health Insights, believes that small practices will not benefit long term if only the meaningful use guidelines are being met.
This seems like a relatively small EHR market study with plenty of EHR vendor bias. However, it’s one more data point to consider when you look at the future of the EHR market. I personally don’t believe we’ll be anywhere near 80% EHR adoption by 2016, but I’d love to be proved wrong.
thats because small practicies usually don’t have the resources or funds for emr.