67% of Physician Offices Do Not Use Electronic Medical Records (EMR) Software

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
(Free-Press-Release.com) April 8, 2009 -- IRVINE, Calif. — April 8, 2009 — With the recently passed “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009” offering big incentives to physicians to adopt EMR systems in their offices, a new research survey released today by SK&A Information Services, Inc. reveals 67% of medical offices with four or more physicians do not currently use EMR software. The survey results point to substantial sales and marketing opportunities for healthcare information technology vendors and service providers.

“The EMR legislation found in the Act will drive improvements in patient care by incentivizing physician offices to implement EMR solutions,” said Dave Escalante, President and CEO of SK&A. “The impact of this adoption will create opportunities in many industries—EMR/electronic health record solution providers, healthcare IT consultants, computer hardware and software companies, and telephone and cable service providers. SK&A has assumed the crucial role of identifying the physician offices that will most likely be implementing new EMR solutions over the next few years.”

SK&A’s new “Physician Office Usage of Electronic Medical Records Software Report,” which is summarized and segmented by office size, practice size, 20 site specialties and patient volume, reveals valuable trends on future EMR adoption. For example:

• In smaller practices with four to five physicians, 31.6% have EMR software. On the contrary, in larger practices with 26-plus physicians, 39.24% have EMR systems.

• In practices with three exam rooms, 33.77% have EMR software, whereas in practices with more than 11 exam rooms, nearly half have EMR solutions.
• In physician offices with volumes of one to 50 patients per day, 30.2% have EMR software. On the opposing side, of large practices with daily patient volumes of over 100 patients, 39.2% have EMR systems.

The report also highlights SK&A’s top 20 physician specialty areas by acceptance percentages for EMR software adoption. The specialty areas with the highest adoption rates include anesthesiology, emergency medicine and internal medicine. Those areas with the lowest adoption rates include urology, psychiatry and plastic surgery.

SK&A’s report is an ongoing study of all U.S. physician offices. When complete in May 2009, the report will feature data and summarized market research from 225,000-plus physician offices representing more than 638,000 physicians. In addition, SK&A is able to identify the IT-purchasing decision makers at the practice- and group-headquarter level who would most likely be responsible for making the EMR-solution decisions.

Editor’s Note: For a copy of the summary findings for publication, please contact Jack Schember, SK&A Director of Marketing, at 800-752-5478, ext. 1259.