A new report based on feedback from thousands of physicians groups in the United States found that nearly half plan to buy an ambulatory electronic health record system in the coming years, although their interest is driven more by getting their practices running smoother and less by stimulus money.

The report, released last week by health care market research firm CapSite, suggested that the market opportunity for ambulatory EHR and practice management solutions will be in excess of $3 billion over the next two years.

"Interestingly, we found that the most important reason driving Ambulatory EHR purchases was the goal of physicians making their practice more efficient and not the [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act] / HITECH Act Stimulus funding," CapSite's director of research Brendan FitzGerald said in a statement.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services will start to pay out money next year to doctors who adopt EHRs. But in 2015, it will also implement penalties for doctors who don't adopt the electronic systems.

The 2010 U.S. Ambulatory EHR and Practice Management Study is based on data from a poll of 2,000 doctors groups and uses trending analysis from an earlier 2010 Ambulatory EHR study, released in February.

According to a study published late last week, many doctors are not aware of the penalties for not making the move to EHR systems. Of those who were not aware, most said the penalties wouldn't spur them to implement the system.

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