Kalorama Report: There's Still A Healthy Market For EMR

By Megan Williams, contributing writer

Kalorama has released its 8th annual report on the EMR market. The report is designed to be used for opportunity analysis, business planning, and general benchmarking and includes a complete global analysis of the EMR/EHR (electronic medical records/electronic health records) market.

According to PR Newswire, Kalorama reports that between 2012 and 2014, sales grew 10 percent, largely due to physicians and hospitals acquiring new systems and hospitals and physician groups moving to upgrade their existing systems. The report also notes that the revenue is coming from services, hardware, and software.

Kalorama information publisher Bruce Carlson believes that “there’s still a healthy and competitive market for EMR.”

The report includes revenue information for:

• EMR/EHR systems
• CPOE (computerized provider order entry) systems
• Related services including installation, training, servicing, and consulting

PACS (picture archiving and communications systems) and hardware are not included in the report.

Market Growth

Kalorama predicts that the market will rise to $35.2 billion by the year 2019 under the assumption that the adoption trend continues to move forward as it has, with some expected slowing. It expects to see hospital EMR adoption to outweigh doctor and that the current EMR Stage 3 will move forward in stages.

They also predict owners of current systems will upgrade and train on their systems and at the same time will upgrade under the threat of penalties. Carlson adds, “Expect growth this year and next at 7 to 8 percent and stable growth until 2019. Eventually, there will be market saturation but this is a bit of a way off, especially in emerging markets.”

Physician adoption is listed as a major driver of the market, with it showing major gains since the last report in early 2014. While growth has been rapid, adoption has also been uneven.

A recent Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) survey shows that more than 80 percent of U.S. physicians have used EMR. Kalorama notes the drastic improvement since 2006 and attributes it to the American Recover and Reinvestment Act of 2009 in which almost $20 billion was set aside as incentives for hospitals and physician practices to adopt EMR. The first incentives were based on 2010 performance and paid in 2011.

Since then, more than $28 billion in MU incentive payments have been made to 426,000 eligible hospitals and healthcare professionals (as of January 1 of this year).

Major Players

Key players in the EHR market include:

• Allmeds
• Allscripts Healthcare Solutions
• athenahealth
• eClinicalWorks
• Epic
• GE Healthcare
• HealthFusion
• McKesson
• MEDITECH
• NextGen
• Praxis
• Quest Diagnostics

Additional vendors and information can be found in the original report.