The PACS software market, which is focusing now on smaller community hospitals, is a crowded and competitive space, says a new report from research firm KLAS.
KLAS released the report Monday at the Radiological Society of North America's annual meeting in Chicago.
Lacking the resources of larger providers, many community hospitals face a myriad of vendor choices and increasingly tighter software budgets as they implement picture archiving and communication system (PACS) technology, say KLAS researchers.
KLAS researchers say the market a developing into a convergence of large vendors who are targeting community hospitals and outpatient facilities because most large hospitals have already deployed a PACS system.
"PACS implementations at large independent hospitals and IDNs have reached a saturation point, leaving little opportunity for significant vendor deployments in that market segment," said report author and KLAS research director Ben Brown. "Large and small vendors are now looking to smaller community hospitals to grow their PACS market share. Based on that shift, it is no surprise that over the last two years, 64 percent of new community hospital purchases have occurred in hospitals with under 100 beds."
PACS adoption at outpatient facilities is poised for growth, KLAS found. For instance, only 20 percent of orthopedic organizations are estimated to have adopted PACS.
Others have been slow to adopt the technology because of declining economic conditions and the impact of legislation like the Deficit Reduction Act, which reduced spending for Medicare and Medicaid.
PACS software vendors, however, have begun to aggressively target the ambulatory market as a key arena for growth.
"The entry of so many vendors into this space - one of the most crowded of any market KLAS tracks - illustrates the opportunity vendors see targeting outpatient facilities," Brown said.
In evaluating 17 community PACS vendors, KLAS gave the Avreo interWORKS interVIEW product the highest performance score (93.7 out of 100) based on feedback from customers. Other top products included Sectra PACS (90.6), Infinitt PACS (88.7) and GE Centricity IW (87.8).
In evaluating 17 ambulatory PACS vendors, KLAS gave the Intelerad IntelePACS product the highest performance score (91.9 out of 100) based on feedback from customers. Other top products included RamSoft PowerServer PACS (88.7), DR Systems Unity (87.5) and GE Centricity IW (87.2).
The report noted that almost all of the vendors in the study received a higher performance score than the KLAS healthcare software average of 79.7 out of 100, following the trend of historically high performance for most vendors in the PACS market segment.