Conceding that its competitors have the upper hand, GE is phasing out its Centricity Enterprise product, informing the world in a #HIMSS15 announcement which has gotten little play from our tech media colleagues. As we’ve argued before, HIMSS is not only a great time to announce big plays, it’s also a great time to bury unpleasant news, and GE seems to have succeeded.
Not surprisingly, employees saw things coming long ago. More than a year ago, for example, a 10-year-plus employee of GE Healthcare called the vendor out on what they saw as low-wattage efforts on company rating site Glassdoor.com. The ex-employee cited a “lack of resources to deliver a good EHR product, [causing] a strong customer base to choose other EHR vendors.”
It’s little wonder that GE is backing out of Centricity Enterprise, which according to a report in MedCity News generated only 5 percent of its EMR revenue, according to Jon Zimmerman, general manager of clinical business solutions. “Is it in the best interest of our customers, shareholders and employees to (be) in a market where competitors are clearly ahead, or should we recognize the situation and go to where the market is going?” Zimmerman told MedCity.
But the fact is, Zimmerman’s comments are somewhat disingenuous. At HIMSS, the company admitted that it had begun the process of dumping Centricity Enterprise three years ago, though it’s not clear how long ago it began to let customers know about its plans. For example, I doubt that Continuum Health Partners CIO Mark Moroses, who as of summer 2013 was moving his organization to the Centricity enterprise EMR, expected to have it phased out less than two years later.
It’s worth wondering why a player with GE’s resources seemingly couldn’t hack the enterprise market. But the problem isn’t new. As far back as 2011, GE was forced to admit that some of its ambulatory and enterprise customers wouldn’t be able to achieve Meaningful Use with their products. That was probably the beginning of the end for the Enterprise product, which ranked either fifth or sixth in the market recently depending on who you asked. But with Epic alone controlling 15% to 20% of the enterprise EMR market of late, and Cerner hot on its heels, giving up probably was a reasonable response.
The real question is what comes next. If Glassdoor.com posters are any indication, GE Healthcare is prone to frequent strategic changes as management shifts, so who knows what the future holds for its ambulatory Centricity EMR?
At the moment, it seems that GE is firmly behind its ambulatory product. And that makes sense. After all, physicians are decommissioning their existing EMRs at a frantic rate, and are eager to find substitutes, and that gives GE plenty of sales opportunities. With 70% of physicians unhappy with their EMR, according to a study announced in February of last year, it should be easy pickins.
But given the way GE may have fumbled the ball on the enterprise side, I’d want some proof that leaders there had a long-term commitment to ambulatory care. Practices have a hard enough time finding EMRs that work for them; having to switch for reasons that have nothing to do with them makes no sense.
