It's not ARRA incentives that are encouraging doctors buy EHRs: rather, they're making the purchase because they want more efficiency in their practices, according to a new study.

Healthcare technology research and advisory firm CapSite released its 2010 U.S. Ambulatory EHR and Practice Management Study, a strategic analysis of the U.S. Electronic Health Record market in response to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment (ARRA) Act.

Company officials say the study represents unique Voice of Customer (VOC) insight from more than 2,000 groups across the U.S., which includes trending analysis based on CapSite's original Ambulatory EHR Study published in February of 2010, as well as new insight into vendor mind share and the practice management market.

"As a follow up to our original study of 1,000 groups which we conducted at the end of 2009, this new and expanded study represents an even larger sampling," says CapSite's Director of Research Brendan FitzGerald. "We see an Ambulatory EHR market that continues to accelerate, and is on pace to more than double the purchasing activity from 2009. Based on the findings from the study, we project a market opportunity in excess of $3 billion for Ambulatory EHR and Practice Management solutions over the next 24 months."

"Interestingly, we found that the most important reason driving Ambulatory EHR purchases was the goal of physicians making their practice more efficient and not the ARRA / HITECH Act Stimulus funding," FitzGerald adds.

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