Survey: Usual Suspects Dominating EHR Vendor Market for Larger Practices

A select few companies are dominating the large practice electronic health record (EHR) vendor market, according to a recent survey of clinicians.

The survey, from the San Francisco-based health IT resource and research firm, AmericanEHR Partners, included responses from 1,366 clinicians on which EHR products they are using. The authors from AmericanEHR Partners, which was created by the American College of Physicians (ACP) and Cientis Technologies, found in larger practices there was a more narrow selection of products. In smaller practices, there was more variety.

Specifically, 60 percent of responses from practices with 26 or more clinicians were from users of only 10 different EHR products. Meanwhile, only 51 percent of responses from practices with one to three clinicians were from users of 10 EHR products.

In this sense, the usual suspects dominated the landscape. Epic (Verona, Wisc.) had 14 percent of the market, while Allscripts had 9 percent. Along with Epic, eClinicalWorks, Practice Fusion, NextGen, and Cerner had the most used specific products. Epic’s EpicCare Ambulatory EMR product was used most in four to 10 clinician practices (14 pecent); 11 to 25 clinician practices (25 percent); and practices with 26 or more clinicians (16 percent).

Practice Fusion had the largest share for the smaller practices. For solo practices, it had 15 percent market share and for one-to-three clinician practices, it has 12 percent market share.

“The report found that responses from practices with 26 or more clinicians rated 96 different EHR products, meaning that the 40 percent of practices that used an EHR product other than the top 10 were spread out among 86 different vendors,” Shari M. Erickson, senior vice president of ACP’s Division of Governmental Affairs and Medical Practice, said in a statement. “The key finding is that data shows that larger practices tend to be more focused on the same systems.”