Want to buy HIE technology? It’ll cost you. But more importantly, you’ll still be dealing with a bewildering array of choices, if a new report from KLAS has it right.
According to KLAS, which asked 95 providers about their HIE buying plans, there were a few clear leaders in the field. Providers surveyed by KLAS reviewed 38 HIE vendor offerings. Of those, five HIE vendors were considered in more than 10 percent of the providers’ buying plans, researchers found.
If there was a clear leader, it was Medicity, which was considered in 23 percent of HIE buying decisions, according to a report from Healthcare IT News. Next was Axolotl, with 22 percent; RelayHealth, with 16 percent; ICA, with 11 percent, and Epic, also with 11 percent. (Note: Epic was only being considered seriously when providers want to tie together multiple Epic installations.)
Looked at another way — by vendors mentioned most frequently by providers — the leaders were Axolotl, Cerner, dbMotion (part owned by the University of Pittburgh Medical Center), Epic, GE, ICA, InterSystems, Medicity, Orion and RelayHealth.
If you want to really fit the HIE to your situation, consider the following criteria, the HIN story suggests:
- Public HIEs – A public exchange may belong to official state agencies or may be semi-independent with direct and typically temporary government backing. Public HIEs demand solutions with strong potential scalability and need standards-based technology.
- Cooperative HIEs – In this model, otherwise-competitive hospitals work together to form independent HIE organizations, generally with an open invitation to other hospitals, clinics and physician practices. These HIEs often struggle to establish long-term funding and look for vendor solutions that offer flexible and affordable cost alternatives while best adapting diverse EMR technologies.
- Private HIEs – In some respects, private HIEs are designed to enhance relationships as well as exchange data. Often, a single hospital or IDN creates an HIE hoping to draw in community physicians while protecting or increasing revenues. Funding is less complicated and these HIEs are more likely to be satisfied with solutions that best work with their existing technology.
The truth is, though, that whatever model best fits your HIE purchase, narrowing things down to your short-list isn’t as easy as just picking from KLAS’s top contenders. Even these leaders have a moderate to tenuous grip on the market, and may or may not have the solution that fits your model. (Note: I’m familiar with Axolotl and Orion, both of which have what may be some of the longest-deployed tech out there, but I can’t vouch that they’re exactly better than anyone else.)
If it were me, I’d look at lesser-known, strongly-backed folks focused directly on the problem. Then, I’d do a co-development program with them so both win. Got other ideas to share readers?
Good column, like everything else. We have quite a bit of experience with the majority of the “major” HIE systems.
In our experience the most important thing a hospital or IDN can do when deciding to create a Private HIE is to NOT buy the technology first. There are significant operational, clinical, governance and sustainability questions (among others) that if answered ahead of time focus the system selection effort, speed implementation, limit unforseen roadblocks and make it more likely the customer will see the operational cost savings (and revenue creation) that can come from an HIE.