Health IT Is Driving Healthcare Consolidation
By
John Pulley
The cost and time involved in adopting electronic health records is playing a key role in physicians deciding to sell their medical practices to hospital systems, says the editor of Healthcare Technology Online.
The shift away from physician-owned practices to hospital-owned practices eventually will force changes in the EHR market, Ken Congdon writes in a column published Tuesday. With most EHR vendors and software geared toward independent practices or specialties, he says, “it becomes clear that most of these platforms won’t survive.”
Two-thirds of all medical practices were physician-owned in 2005; less than 50 percent were physician-owned in 2009; and less than one-third will be physician-owned by 2015, Congdon writes.
“The push toward EHR adoption in this short time window has placed significant financial and administrative strain on several private practices,” he writes. “Most physicians would rather focus on treating patients than implementing IT systems --an area in which many doctors lack expertise.”
Instead, physician practices are affiliating with hospitals or health systems that already have much of the EHR infrastructure in place, Congdon says. The hospital then generally takes over the “burden” of implementing the EHR, he adds.
Even practices that remain independent report that their choice of EHR system is influenced by hospitals in their area, since the data need to be interoperable, he writes.
“The more discussions I have with hospitals and physician practices, the clearer it becomes that hospitals are either driving or heavily influencing IT implementations at the practice level,” Congdon writes. “Obviously, practices affiliated with hospitals are either implementing EHRs handed down by the hospital, or the hospital is working to integrate the practice’s existing ambulatory EHR with inpatient systems.”
Congdon predicts “significant consolidation” in the EHR market as a result of the changing practice ownership. Surviving EHR vendors will possess “a keen eye toward care coordination and an understanding of all influencers of a practice EHR implementation,” he concludes.