Which Health IT and EHR Vendors Should Critical Access Hospitals Consider?

The number of health IT and EHR enterprise options available to critical access hospitals is increasing as competition for new hospital contracts moves downstream to smaller facilities. The following is a brief (not all-inclusive) list of health IT and EHR vendors that could be ideal fits for critical access and small, rural hospitals:

  • CPSI: Has done a good job of proving clinical adoption and leads with the most critical access hospital clients doing CPOE.
  • Healthland: Solid system with proven operational capability. Clients give the EMR high marks for usability.
  • HMS: Reinvesting heavily in improving clinical functionality and UI, including a partnership with MEDHOST for strong ED capability.
  • McKesson: Paragon is being considered more often in the critical access space. Has significant sales momentum in larger community hospitals, with some IDN wins.
  • Meditech: Already has a huge client base in larger community hospitals. Small organizations with resources are considering v.6.
  • NextGen: Gets little notice despite having an inpatient offering that is completely integrated with their successful outpatient EMR. Already have a number of clients. Has solid functionality.
  • Prognosis: Exciting new entrant. Applies remote-hosting technology to a single-database inpatient solution for small, rural facilities and critical access hospitals. Already has several clients.

These health IT and EMR vendors represent a mix of those who have caught the attention of smaller facilities, those who represent a new and intriguing competitive advantage, and those who have proven able to deliver products in a small hospital environment.

See also our list of hospital EMR and EHR vendors.

Chris O’Neal is Managing Partner at KATALUS Advisors. KATALUS Advisors is a strategic consulting firm focused on the healthcare vertical. We serve healthcare technology vendors, hospitals, and private equity groups in North America, Europe, and the Middle East. Our services span growth strategies in new and existing markets, M&A due diligence, market analysis, and advisory services. www.KATALUSadvisors.com

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.

6 Comments

  • One player I would add to this list is ONE EMR by RazorInsights. The Razor product is cloud only and was built from the ground up to support the small hospital market and they are seeing very strong traction. For a small hospital, they carry a number of very competitive advantages including: contract to live in 90 days, non-modular so the small hospital doesn’t have to keep paying for add ons, provisioned cloud in 5 days, and from a price standpoint is very competitive with the products listed in the blog.

  • Dan – thanks for commenting. You’re right, RazorInsights is one that wasn’t on this list, and perhaps it should have been. Recently I’ve heard positive comments about Razor from providers and analysts who’ve seen demos and looked at the technology. From what I understand, the solution has already gained traction with a handful of live clients with many more in current negotiations or in the implementation phase. As I am a firm believer in choice and competition, I certainly hope Razor continues to succeed.

  • Chris, I’d add Keane to the list. they have a large small hospital client base and a huge capital pool to use for improving clinicals. they are right behind siemens in world size of parent company and planning an agressive attack.

  • Dave – thanks for bringing them up. Keane has a rich history in health IT. I’ve talked with a lot of their customers in the past, and they seem to be making headway with the Optimum roll out. I’m very interested in seeing the “aggressive attack” to which you’re referring (sounds like you’ve got an inside perspective), and I’m sure the hospital community would be interested as well.

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