Report: Hospital IT spending to hit $6.8B by 2014

With federal stimulus payments encouraging spending, U.S. hospitals' investment in IT should see healthy growth over the next five years, according to new research released by HIMSS Analytics. Spending should climb from $4.7 billion this year to $6.8 billion in 2014, growing at a compound annual growth rate of 7.5 percent, researchers predict.

Investments will focus on clinical automation, along with changes related to the ICD-10-CM codes for claims and the new 5010 standards for electronic claims. The report predicts that hospitals will invest 43 to 48 percent of their total capital budgets on IT this year, a substantial amount, but less than they spent in 2007, HIMSS notes.

Still, the numbers suggest that spending on IT is recovering from a dramatic slump seen in 2008, when investments were $3 billion to $6 billion lower than HIMSS Analytics had predicted. It's not surprising that spending was low last year, researchers note, given that hospital bond serving expenses were high and endowment funds were sapped by stock market turmoil.

To learn more about this trend:
- read this Health Data Management piece

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