March Madness and the EHR Vendor Shakeout

I’m not sure how many of my readers love March Madness as much as I do. I just love the emotion and the all day experience of March Madness. Unfortunately there haven’t been quite as many last minute buzzer beaters for the win as there have been in years past, but I still love the emotions of the games. These young kids have worked almost their entire life for this moment. I love to see the raw emotions from both teams.

As I think about March Madness, I couldn’t help but think about the EHR Madness we’re experiencing right now. We don’t have 68 teams in the EHR tournament. Instead, there are more like 300+ EHR vendors. In fact, in just the last week or two I’ve had two EHR vendors I’d never heard of contact me. Yes, we’ve seen some EHR software put out to pasture, but we still have a long ways to go before the EHR market really shakes itself out.

The nice thing for EHR vendors is that unlike the NCAA tournament which only has one winner, the EHR world is likely going to have many many successful companies. First, because many EHR vendors will likely get acquired by larger EHR vendors. Second, because it’s fair to say that the EHR world is going to be a heterogeneous environment. There won’t be one EHR to rule them all (although some EHR vendors still think they might get there).

Which type of vendors am I putting my money on in the EHR battle?

While many EHR vendors might win some short term battles, I think the big EHR winners are going to be those who end up battling through the mess of regulation while still having a laser focus on the impact to doctors. The most expensive employee in every healthcare institution is the doctors. EHR software that takes these high paid doctors away from seeing patients is going to have a real challenge long term.

I’ve written about the EHR Backlash a number of times before. I think productivity is going to be at the core of the EHR backlash. I’m hopeful that EHR vendors are taking this idea to heart, but I also still see a very long road in front of us to reach EHR nirvana.

I’ve been digging into the idea of a Smart EMR lately. At the core of the idea is how to make a doctor more efficient at what they do while increasing the quality of care provided. That certainly stands in stark contrast to many of the other EHR initiatives we see out there today.

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

  • In some ways it’s like a March Madness bracket, it’s hard to predict. I think meaningful use and the EHR incentive will continue to drive the market for the next 3+ years.

Click here to post a comment
   

Categories