KLAS: EMR Vendor Dissatisfaction Looms Large in Community Hospitals

A new report from the Orem, Utah-based research company, KLAS, found that a growing number of community hospitals are questioning their electronic medical record (EMR) selection due to economic and performance challenges. Authors of the report, Community Hospital Market Share 2012: Small Hospitals, Big Change, found that approximately 200 hospitals with under 200 beds said they were changing or replacing their hospital health information system.

“One in three community providers who have gone live with their EMR in the past 12 months feels they made the wrong decision,” Paul Pitcher, KLAS research director, said in a statement. “With many more-established vendors struggling to consistently deliver well for these hospitals, the door has been opened for lesser-known entrants—such as NextGen, Prognosis, QuadraMed, and RazorInsights—to gain market traction.”

Overall, report notes that because of economic pressures, smaller hospitals are being pushed into integrated delivery network (IDN) relationships in order to survive. This, they say, result in greater displacement of smaller-hospital clinical information system (CIS) solutions with larger hospitals’ systems, such as Epic and Cerner. There is also vendor dissatisfaction in the market in terms of performance, according to the report’s authors.

The report found Epic has the most overall community CIS wins for 2011 followed by Healthland, Cerner, and CPSI. In terms of market share, KLAS has Meditech at the top with 20 percent of the share. EPIC and Cerner are tied for second at 12 percent each.