A little while back I was having an email exchange with Eric Fishman of EMR Consultant about the number of EHR companies out there. I’ve been interested in this number ever since I created my list of EMR & EHR Companies many years ago.
Eric recalled the the exhaustive EMR Consultant list of EMR Companies topped out well below 400 and even fell below 300 companies prior to the HITECH Act. That’s an interesting number when you consider that their list now contains well over 600 EHR vendors listed. Plus, they don’t necessarily include all of the modular EHR products out there.
I think these lists help give us a good understanding of why it’s so hard for doctors, practice managers and others in the EMR industry to differentiate the various EMR companies. Eric has created a website called EHR Scope which allows you filter through the 600+ EHR companies using 14 parameters including things like ONC-ATCB certified. Plus, there original product, EMR Consultant, matches on over 50,000 data points. Plus, this doesn’t count the EHR companies that are no longer around. What a great resource that Eric’s built up over time. I can’t imagine the work it took to get all that info.
All I can say is that that’s a lot of EHR software. Plus, I’m sure that Eric like me is finding out about a new EHR company every week. Many of which don’t want to have any press since they’re still working through their beta period and product development period.
This all reminds me of a post I did last year about an EHR company “cutting through all the noise.” If over the past couple years we’ve gone from 300 EHR companies to now 600 EHR companies. That’s a lot of noise.
What other methods do you use to “cut through the noise” as you evaluate EHR companies?
I think I’m ready to adjust my number of EHR companies to 600.
Full Disclosure: EMR Consultant has been an advertiser on this site since something like 2007 before EMR became EHR.
600, wow.
All driven by an unnatural force: government incentives.
This bubble is going to burst big, which is one of the reasons a doc needs to really study which EHR to choose.
In the not too distant future I’m sure we’ll see the standard companies going out of business and industry consolidation.
As consolidation occurs you’ll see end users forced to other products, remember Medinotes?
Good time.