Energy in the healthcare industry has increased significantly in the two years since the 2008 KLAS Labor and Delivery (L&D) report was published. ARRA and its accompanying incentives have brought more focus on clinician adoption and made integration more of a necessity than a preference in technology purchasing decisions.
The KLAS (Orem, Utah) Labor & Delivery 2010: Who's Evolving, Supporting, and Integrating? report found that a vendor's ability to integrate L&D to the EMR, to tailor the system to the needs of the facility and to provide quality support are what set a solution apart from the rest of the pack.
Additionally, most hospitals would like to be able to customize their solution to their hospital's specific L&D needs. Each L&D system offers a different level of customizability, but system flexibility can be both a blessing and a curse. Designing and supporting a highly customizable system requires significant time, ongoing IT support and often additional costs. Out-of-the-box solutions offer a simpler approach that can be implemented and maintained more easily with fewer IT resources, but they also offer less flexibility in adapting the system to the department's needs once users become more familiar with the system.
