The Top EHR Vendors by Hospital Market Share: KLAS

Over seven in 10 U.S. hospitals (72 percent) deploy electronic health record (EHR) systems from one of three leading developers in the space: Epic, Cerner, and Meditech.

The new data comes from the Utah-based KLAS Research, which recently released "complete reports" on these three EHR vendors as well as Allscripts. KLAS said that “These complete looks give a fast, but comprehensive summary of current KLAS data on these vendors and then an easy link out to more details. While these reports are new, the data has been previously reported in market segment reporting.”

Each year, KLAS interviews thousands of healthcare professionals about the IT products and services their organizations use. These interviews are conducted using a standard quantitative evaluation, and the scores and commentary collected are shared in reports like this one and online in real time so that other healthcare professionals can benefit from their peers’ experiences. The questions from the standard evaluation are organized into six customer experience pillars—culture, loyalty, operations, product, relationship, and value, KLAS explained.

Here are some key statistics and findings compiled from the individualized KLAS reports:

Epic continues to set the pace, maintaining 31 percent of the hospital EHR market share and 42 percent of hospital beds. Epic’s strengths, according to the KLAS report, include having a fully integrated suite, interoperability, and consistent customer experience. The vendor’s weaknesses, KLAS reported, are high up-front costs, no direct option for community hospitals, and that customers are more on their own to develop internal expertise for non-core solutions such as cardiology or behavioral health, for example.

Epic’s combined overall product suite grade is a B+, while it receives an A for its combined overall loyalty grade. Ninety-four percent of customers are either satisfied or highly satisfied, and 63 percent of customers report deep different-vendor interoperability.

Cerner comes in a close second, controlling 25 percent of the hospital EHR market share and 27 percent of hospital beds. One core company strength reported by customers is having broad technology across the integrated Millennium suite, with integration reducing third-party solutions and providing consistency across clinician workflows.

Another strength is that Cerner’s platform is frequently chosen by smaller organizations who value Cerner’s robust clinical system and ability to scale to the needs of smaller hospitals, according to KLAS. On the other side, the company’s patient accounting module proves challenging for large organizations, and customers say that Cerner has taken a less prescriptive approach to sales and implementations, leading to variation in customer success.

Cerner’s combined overall product suite grade is a C, with a combined overall loyalty grade of a C+, the report revealed. Sixty-two percent of customers are either satisfied or highly satisfied, and 28 percent of customers report deep different-vendor interoperability.

Meditech has 16 percent of the hospital EHR market share and 15 percent of hospital beds. Customers report that a consistent development of the company’s Expanse platform is a core strength of Meditech, as is its integrated platform across revenue cycle, ambulatory care, and acute care. It’s also often seen as a more affordable option compared to its competitors.

Customers do note that the Expanse platform comes at a higher cost than legacy Meditech solutions, however, and larger organizations can be hesitant to choose the company, citing lack of proof points for non-core functionality.

Meditech’s combined overall product suite grade is a B+, with a combined overall loyalty grade of an A-. Ninety percent of customers are either satisfied or highly satisfied, and 10 percent of customers report deep different-vendor interoperability.

Allscripts checks in with 5 percent of the hospital EHR market share and 5 percent of hospital beds. Customers say that its Sunrise platform offers fully integrated clinical solutions for acute and ambulatory care and that it is highly customizable. On the weaknesses side, Sunrise Ambulatory Care is not widely adopted and often requires significant build. Also, customers report significant interface maintenance with almost all of the "transformational technologies" offered by Allscripts.

Allscripts' combined overall product suite grade is a C-, with a combined overall loyalty grade of a C-. Fifty-three percent of customers are either satisfied or highly satisfied, and 18 percent of customers report deep different-vendor interoperability.