Sam’s Club Listing for eCW and Dell EMR Package

Many of you may remember my rather detailed coverage of the impact of Walmart offering an EMR through Sam’s Club and in partnership with eClinicalWorks and Dell. For those that missed my comments, I wrote about the details of the Walmart EMR offering, and then A Doctor’s Perspective on Walmart EMR and eCW and Dell’s perspective on Walmart EMR.

I saw the Walmart EMR listing on the Sam’s Club website a while back, but didn’t have a chance to post it. It’s really interesting to see an EMR listed at Sam’s Club. I also find it interesting to see that they chose to market it as an EMR and not an EHR. I think this actually is a pretty smart move since I think most doctors still call it an electronic medical record or EMR. Those of us in the industry sometimes get caught up in the difference between EMR and EHR, but I think doctors don’t really care about the difference.

I still don’t think that this is much more than the opportunity for eCW and Dell to market their products. However, it is really interesting to see an attempt to commoditize the price of an EMR. As I look through the prices, I think that anyone that tries to buy this package through Sam’s Club is going to be hit by a bunch of hidden costs. Everything from the cost of travel for the eCW trainers to the upgraded hardware support from Dell. At the end of the day, I don’t think it will save doctors anything.

Turns out that the website states: “Availability of this offering is currently limited to Virginia, Illinois, and Georgia with anticipated nationwide coverage by the end of the year” I’d love to hear from someone who has taken the bait and purchased the Walmart EMR from Sam’s Club.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

2 Comments

  • It will be interesting to hear the reports on some of the first practices to buy/implement this package.

    I got a kick out of:
    * Sam’s Club does not accept checks for more $20,000

  • I found that hilarious too. I guess you’ll have to use a credit card to buy your EMR at Sam’s Club.

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