More than 40 percent of U.S. hospitals plan to invest in new health information management systems, according to a new study from healthcare technology research firm CapSite.

CapSite released Oct. 29 its 2010 U.S. Health Information Management (HIM) Study, an analysis of the U.S. HIM market in response to the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) component of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA).

CapSite executives say the study represents unique insight from more than 500 U.S. hospitals across a series of HIM areas including:

• recovery audit contractor (RAC),
• document management,
• coding,
• record management,
• compliance, and
• computer-assisted coding.

"The objective of our HIM study was to provide a strategic assessment of the HIM market to better understand the business challenges and competitive landscape in terms of vendor market penetration, as well as which HIM vendors are currently top of mind with prospective buyers," said CapSite Director of Research Michael Lee. "Additionally, we wanted to assess the historical and projected purchasing activity within the HIM market.

"Our findings indicate that regulatory requirements and compliance represent the greatest HIM business challenges that U.S. hospitals are dealing with today," Lee added. "As evidence of this focus and business challenge, we found that 50 percent of U.S. hospitals have recently invested in RAC solutions to assist in their preparation for RAC audits."

The vendors covered in the report are: 3M, Advisory Board Co., Cerner, CPSI, Cobius, Compliance 360°, Dolbey, Epic, Healthland, HealthPort, HMS, Hyland, Ingenix (A-Life Medical and Lynx Medical Systems), McKesson, MedAssets, MediRegs, Meditech, MIDAS+, Nuance, QuadraMed, Siemens, Streamline Health and TruCode.