Obama’s EMR/EHR Stimulus of 2009 – Creating Buyers or Tire Kickers?

October 30th marked the close of the first reporting period for grants, loans and contracts awarded under the Recovery Act. If you don’t already know, healthcare is one of the industries eligible to receive funds (Read, The Stimulus Bill and Meaningful Use of Qualified EHRs / EMRs).

At Software Advice, we have noticed a big jump in the number of medical practices researching electronic health records (EHR). But are these practices ready to purchase, or has the Stimulus only reinvigorated research?

Are more doctors buying electronic medical records than before? Or, has the Stimulus bill only brought out the tire kickers?

Last week we posted a survey to find out what the industry consensus is. We sent a message to our favorite medical bloggers and posted a few tweets to help spread the word. Thanks to all who participated!

We tallied up the results this morning and a clear winner has emerged. Roughly half of our participants believe the Stimulus Bill has only reinvigorated research among doctors and health IT staff, creating a growing pool of “tire kickers.” 20% of voters think more doctors are buying EHRs, while 19% think the bill has had no affect on purchase decisions. Finally, another 12% of voters answered “other” and left us with a comment. Here are their remarks:

Medical practices have until 2014 to take advantage of the HITECH Act incentives. We’ll be keeping track of EHR buying trends until then, so be sure to check our blog for new reports. In the meantime, if you have a firsthand account of how the Stimulus has affected EHR adoption rates – or if you just want to speculate – feel free to leave us a comment below.