Study: Health IT budgets to increase

New estimates from IT research giant Gartner suggests that healthcare IT spending is set to expand dramatically in the coming years. According to Gartner, facilities will spend as much as 23 percent of their budgets on IT by 2011, largely to improve communications, patient flow and data management. 

The increase in spending comes as part of a major cultural shift in provider attitudes toward IT. While lagging in the past, 33 percent of healthcare facilities were rated early by adopters of technology last year, a giant increase from the 8 percent rated that way in 2005.

While healthcare facilities are making IT a bigger priority, not all of the growth is going to capital investment. An unrelated study by Modern Healthcare found that as healthcare IT investment grows, providers are doing more outsourcing, a trend which has measurably fattened the coffers of vendors like Siemens Medical Solutions and Perot Systems Corp.

To get more data from the study:
- read this Modern Healthcare article

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