EMR Grumbles
I heard some interesting grumbles at HIMSS from doctors about the evolving pressures of EMR adoption. Acute care vendors see small medical group practices as a major market opportunity. Spurred on by Stark law reform, the vendor big boys are forcing acute care systems onto small practices. They are tapping their hospital CIOs to distribute their EMR solutions to the associated medical practices. Docs often have to choose to adopt hospital-recommended systems or deploy and pay more for their own. If they go with the hospital choice, their data may be owned or co-opted by hospital.
Some docs feel their EMR choices are being narrowed by third parties, be they payors, RHIOs, CCHIT or hospitals each of whom have their own preferences. Certain states are funding initiatives to deploy EMRs to small practices, using a self selected list tied to CCHITT. All these pressures and continued market consolidation may put the more economic or specialty EMR developers out of business. Then again, new services like the free Google EMR and V.A.'s Vista will continue to make the EMR market interesting to watch.
Tags: EHR, EHR+PR, Electronic+Health+Records, Electronic+Medical+Records, EMR, EMR+PR, Healthcare+PR, Online+PR
Posted by Shawn Whalen on March 19, 2007 at 2:58 PM
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