Will Your EHR Vendor Be Around in 5 Years?

The following is a guest post by Angela Carter, marketing manager at ChartLogic.

A major concern physicians have dealt with over the past 10–15 years has been choosing the right EHR solution for their practice. With the rise and fall of numerous electronic health record companies, that concern has evolved to whether a chosen EHR will still be in business five years from now.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), there are over 900 EHR vendors currently on the market, many of whom offer more than one product. In some ways, the huge number of EHR choices has been a good thing for healthcare; it has forced vendors to be more innovative and to cater to the needs of their users. However, the market can’t possibly sustain this many similar projects for long. Eventually, small vendors will be swallowed up by larger vendors and many others will simply go out of business.

So how do you know if your EHR vendor will survive the EHR purge that has already started? Of course there is no way of knowing for sure, but below are a few questions you can ask yourself that will give you a good idea of your EHR’s future.

1. How long has the vendor been in business?

Past performance is usually a good measuring stick for the future. Hundreds of vendors were born after the HITECH Act was passed in 2009, which means that most EHR vendors are still relatively new. Newer EHR companies aren’t necessarily a bad thing—some of them are actually better than some of the legacy systems that have been around for decades—but be wary of any company that doesn’t have the years in business to back it up. A vendor that has already proven it has weathered the EHR storms for 10–15 years will be much more likely to survive current and future challenges than the new, promising EHRs.

Don’t just look at how long the vendor has been in business, though. Research the vendor’s track record as well. If your vendor has a high retention rate—90 percent or higher—then you’re in good company.

2. How usable is the EHR?

For years, doctors put up with EHRs that didn’t meld with their workflow, but that tolerance is coming to an end. Black Book Rankings called 2013 “The Year of the Great EHR Switch” because most EHR implementations happened in practices that were on their second or third EHR. The reason for this shift? Usability. Eighty-seven percent of doctors cited usability as their primary complaint about EHRs. (Source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/2013/7/prweb10926499.htm)

For some reason it took many years for usability of EHR systems to catch on, but now that it has, the difficult-to-use systems will have a difficult time holding on to customers. Point-and-click EHRs have never been popular among physicians, especially those who see 50+ patients a day. EHRs that utilize voice technology, though, are growing in popularity. It is highly unlikely that any EHR system will cater 100 percent to a physician’s needs and preferences, but …read more