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According to Millennium Research Group (MRG) there will be two significant drivers helping to propel growth in the Electronic Medical Record Software market over the coming five years. The first of these drivers is the continued “meaningful use” incentive payments, which incentive the purchase of new, certified EMR technology. The second driver will be the Medicare penalties for care delivery organizations that have not installed EMRs beginning in 2015. Based primarily on those two factors MRG believes the EMR market will grow to over $8.3 billion by 2016.
The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act was enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to promote the use of EMRs to create a modernized and improved healthcare system. This act has allocated approximately $19 billion for EMR adoption incentives. Hospitals and physicians who meet meaningful use requirements will receive incentive payments. These payments will start to decrease in 2013 and 2014.
Hospitals and eligible providers who do not meet meaningful use requirements by 2015 will face a penalty in the form of a one percent reduction in Medicare reimbursement per year to a maximum of five percent. The decreasing incentive and the increasing penalty will be strong drivers for earlier adoption of EMRs. In addition, many hospitals are choosing to replace existing systems rather than upgrade to meet meaningful use certification requirements. As a result, the overall market will grow at an average rate of over 12 percent per year through 2016.
“These drivers have led a large number of new EMR vendors to enter the market,” said MRG Analyst Mickel Phung. “More than 750 companies offering some kind of EMR solution have entered in the span of two years. The long-term viability of these newer entrants is questionable. Customers want to make sure their systems meet complex and changing requirements. The best way to do that is to go with a larger company with long experience in the market. Most new purchasers rely on advice from a colleague who has extensive experience with a system in making a purchase decision, which will also favor companies with an established presence.”
Allscripts has the largest share of the ambulatory care EMR market, while Meditech has the largest installed base in the acute care EMR market. Other EMR competitors include Epic Systems, Cerner, McKesson, Siemens Healthcare, GE Healthcare, eClinicalWorks, NextGen Healthcare and Sage.
Millennium Research Group’s US Markets for Electronic Medical Records 2012 report includes average selling price and revenue information, along with market drivers and limiters and competitive landscape for acute care and ambulatory care EMRs in the United States.
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