So, here’s a neat little report from KLAS which, as far as we can tell, hasn’t gotten a lot of attention. I think you’ll find it to be quite interesting, though sort of depressing as well.
A couple of weeks ago, the research firm surveyed 38 clients to see what they thought of the latest version of MEDITECH’s hospital EMR platform (v.6). Would you be surprised to learn that customers don’t like the release much, but in essence, are grateful it isn’t worse?
According to KLAS, the release is something of a dog. Customers think v.6 is fairly buggy, and have found that its modules aren’t completely integrated, researchers report. (For a more positive view on MEDITECH — from a former KLAS exec — read “The Argument for Meditech.”)
Some hospital IT folks are steamed that bringing V.6 on board is a “complex, time intensive build that requires a lot of resources,” writes KLAS report author Colin Buckley.
Still, in a twist that speaks volumes about the state of EMR technology, other buyers weren’t surprised in the least, “and they seem to ride the waves quite well,” Buckley notes.
The kicker — which actually made me laugh out loud when I read it — is as follows. Though providers see V.6 as “half baked” and are paying more for it than other MEDITECH options, going with it is still cheaper than using competing vendor products, so in most cases it’s “worth the pain to make it work for them,” Buckley reports.
Stop. Please. (wiping my eyes) You’re killing me, guys. You’re saying V.6 stinks, but if you wanted to buy something that worked you have to pay retail and that won’t fly? This isn’t some practical joke?
You know, when I first checked out the fictional Extormity EMR (“at the confluence of extortion and conformity”) I thought the creators might have gone a bit overboard. But sometimes, the truth is more painful than fiction.
P.S. If you prefer more entertaining EMR news, you may enjoy Extormity’s latest standards update, in which it announces that it supports CCD, CCR and “other acronyms beginning with CC.”
Priceless… I’ve been an Extormity fan for awhile. Nice to hear, one of the major players is giving it a run for the money.
MEDITECH is an embarrassment. Mine has a little binoculars icon that does nothing. I asked Meditech about it at ACEP–they don’t even know what it does. So I click it several times a day, hoping there is some analyst somewhere going “he’s hitting the binoculars again! What does he know that we don’t?!”
It has a great uptime rating, though. So I can have lousy software 99.9999% of the time!
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