Hospitals boost IT spending plans

The federal incentive program for Meaningful Use of electronic health records seems to be having its desired early effect by spurring healthcare organizations to adopt more than just basic EHRs, according to a new study. And many hospitals are making plans to spend more on other forms of IT in the next few years, suggesting that EHRs are becoming integral to the overall organizational strategy. "In hindsight, 2010 proved to be the year organizations ramped up their approach to meet the first stage of the [Meaningful Use] criteria," reads the report, Essentials of the U.S. Hospital IT Market, 6th Edition, a publication of HIMSS Analytics. In its survey of hospitals and integrated delivery networks nationwide, the research arm of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society found that spending on revenue cycle management (RCM), enterprise data warehousing, and associated areas such as business intelligence will continue growing for at least the next five years.