Emma Schwartz wrote a very compelling article in the Huffington Post Investigative Fund about physician groups whose purchases of EMRs from unstable companies resulted in faulty products that never delivered. The EMR companies she profiled went bankrupt, leaving their physician-group clients high and dry.
Not all EMR failures are a result of bankrupt companies, but stories like these - full of buyer's remorse and buyer beware themes - raise a few questions. For one, should the healthcare industry collectively do something about this?
The chairman of one large EMR company called on the government to consider reviewing company financials as part of the oversight process for the distribution of the federal stimulus funds. Besides being too complex, this shouldn't be the business of government. Furthermore, I agree with the chair of the federal committee who said that such a rule would smother innovation and give a huge advantage to established vendors.
That said, I strongly believe the industry can and should take steps to ensure good products are in the marketplace and bad ones are taken out of circulation. And it's mostly in the hands of the private sector, namely the vendors themselves:
1. Build a superior product.
2. Back it up with strong training and customer service.
3. Price your products fairly and offer performance-based contracts.
4. Reinvest profit in R&D to feed innovation.
5. Know why you're in this business.
It sound simple, but it's not. Following the rules above requires a real passion about what you and your company are trying to accomplish. It requires believing in transforming the industry. And if you want to go that far, it requires a deep belief in or moral obligation to the bottom line - not the financial bottom line but the end goal of creating an efficient healthcare system that strives for improved quality care and patient safety.
If you can't do the above, then get out of the healthcare market. Period. Make software for another industry in which you won't negatively impact the transformation the healthcare industry and we Americans so desperately need. The federal and state governments and many organizations see healthcare IT as a critical component to creating a more efficient, higher quality healthcare delivery system. But in order for that to happen, providers need to adopt and fully use IT systems. There are enough barriers out there as it is; we don't need ill-intentioned or weak vendors with bad products out in the market.
The bottom line: Be in the healthcare IT business for the right reasons.
