KLAS' latest report revealed many interesting things about the EMR market, specifically in the area of acute-care EMRs for large hospitals with 200-plus beds. It's a snapshot of a market in transition, thanks to the ARRA funding.
The big news that hospital EMR sales nearly doubled from 2008 to 2009 isn't so impressive, given that 2008 sales hit a seven-year low. When ARRA was enacted in February 2009, there was still a lot of confusion and wariness that kept many hospitals on the sidelines, waiting for more federal direction. Clarity in the form of proposed meaningful use criteria didn't come until late in 2009, and as we all know, the meaningful use criteria was finalized mid-year and certification bodies are slowly being announced.
It’s still interesting that the numbers went up significantly, given the timeline of many components and announcements of the ARRA funding. Even though there was general confusion in the market, did enough hospitals decide it was time to make the big decision to implement an EMR and wait for clarification of the rules and announcement of such resources as the regional extension centers?
Also interesting is the impact to the EMR vendors. A handful of big-name vendors apparently didn't anticipate the impact of ARRA to the market. In light of ARRA's requirements, providers began to look at functionality of clinical information systems in terms of integration, clinical adoption and reliability. Integration seemed to be the big concept - and rightly so. If you're going to spend millions of dollars on an EMR system, it had better be seamlessly integrated to your other IT systems. No more islands or silos of information. Everybody wants the complete picture of the patient, and everybody wants to be able to share that information with other providers to be able to deliver comprehensive patient care.
The EMR systems that are winning market share are the ones that also adapt to the clinician workflow to drive widespread adoption. Whereas before, clinical adoption may not be as important as winning the sale, and integrating workflow into the system may not have been a priority, the two are critical to championing physician adoption.
Lastly, reliability should have always been important, but before ARRA maybe it wasn't that critical. We've all heard of stories of implementations that did not go well, and consultants stepping in to make the deployment work. Those scenarios are long gone because providers are voting with their wallets. Some vendors are offering guarantees, and soon providers will expect reliability. Who would have thought to expect reliability? We demand it in so many other industries and products.
Ultimately, what the KLAS report shows is that EMR vendors are evolving to meet the requirements of ARRA, and if that's one of the legacies of ARRA, it's a pretty good one.
Patty Enrado blogs daily at EHRWatch.com.
