OBJECTIVES Budget impact analyses (BIAs), along with cost-effectiveness analyses, are an essential part of a comprehensive economic assessment of a new health technology and increasingly required by national regulatory agencies and managed care organizations. This study describes the characteristics and growth of BIAs published in the literature over the past 5-6 years. METHODS An initial search was conducted using PubMed, a service of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Approximately 800 citations were retrieved using key words of “budget impact” and “budget analysis” and limits of “English Language” and “published within the last 6 years”. Additional articles were obtained through ancestral and related article searches. All relevant BIA articles were identified through an initial title review and secondary abstract review and included in this study. RESULTS We identified 32 BIAs published between 2003 and 2008. The number of studies published each year were 1 (2003), 3 (2004), 5 (2005), 6 (2006), 7 (2007) and 10 (2008), showing a steady upward trend. The publishing journals had impact factors ranging from 1.985 to 5.888. Just over half of published studies (18/32) assessed budget impact of a health technology in the United States, while the remaining studies were performed in European countries, Canada and Brazil. Although the majority of published BIAs (22/32) examined budget impact of a specific drug, several studies assessed budget impact of various procedures e.g. surgical, endoscopic. Fourteen (44%) of the published BIAs were performed in conjunction with a cost-effectiveness analysis. CONCLUSIONS Despite increased demand for and recent growth in number of published BIAs, the absolute number of BIA studies published in peer-reviewed journals remains limited. Future studies should examine whether the quality of published BIAs has improved over time and examine changes in practices following the recently published recommendations of the ISPOR Task Force on good research practices for BIAs.