Health IT is Driving Healthcare Consolidation

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 wrote. 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 wrote.