In a story in Modern Healthcare magazine this week are some numbers from the CMS on electronic health-record systems that hospitals, physicians and other "eligible professionals" are using to meet their meaningful-use obligations under the Medicare EHR incentive payment program.
There were more than 77,600 records in the CMS database, with basic product information on "complete" EHR systems used by 1,027 hospitals and 71,183 EPs.
The CMS data shows that hospitals have used complete EHRs from 27 developers and EPs have used EHRs from 327 different vendors to qualify for federal payments.
Facing "a plethora of options" has long been the rule for office-based primary-care physicians shopping for EHRs, with variables including cost, functionality, service and vendor size, according to Dr. Steve Waldren director of the Center for Health Information Technology at the American Academy of Family Physicians.
Since 2007, the Leawood, Kan.-based medical specialty society has run a website with not only an EHR guide but also a library where members can post peer reviews of their EHRs.
"We've tried to educate our members on the key things they need to look at," Waldren said, adding that one of those is "creating a peer network of people" to help them in their decision-making.
Another is advising physicians to investigate in advance how they'll be able get their patients' records out of their EHR system when their developer goes belly-up.
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I had no idea.
There is simply a horde, a herd, a whole Wild West stampede of electronic health-record systems out there.
Anyone who's wandered the showroom floor at a Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society convention knows there are tons of health information technology companies. There were upwards of 1,100 exhibitors this year.
But earlier this month, Jodi Daniel, director of the Office of Policy and Research within the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, presented a slide at an Health Information Technology Policy Committee meeting with some health IT market numbers that I found nothing short of astonishing.
Believe it or not, according to Daniel, there are 613 "complete" electronic health record systems and 399 "modular" systems that have been tested and certified for use in the federal EHR incentive payment program in the ambulatory-care market alone.
There are another 87 complete and 378 modular EHR systems for inpatient venues.
All totaled, as of July 5, there were 816 different EHR vendors offering 1,477 "unique" certified products on the ONC's official Certified Health IT Product List, from which Daniel drew her incredible numbers.
Chase Titensor is a researcher and data analyst for KLAS Enterprises who worked on his company's latest report on the ambulatory EHR market released earlier this week. We talked Thursday and when I asked what surprised him most from the research for the report this year, it was just how large and increasingly diverse, the ambulatory EHR market is.
Titensor and his fellow KLAS researchers interviewed 318 shoppers for ambulatory-care EHRs—either first-time buyers or those looking to replace existing systems. Of those buyers, 64% are considering EHRs other than the top 11 brands, up from 49% in a similar research a year earlier.
Consideration of products from these "other" vendors spiked to 88% for those docs in the solo or small-group market (up to 10 physicians).
Simply put, it is a market that is still expanding and not yet consolidating.
"It is amazing to see the rise of solutions being considered outside of the top 11," Titensor said. "You can see that in the ONC numbers and the number of private venture capital groups getting into the business. It's just a market in total upheaval."
So, I asked Titensor, do you think it's possible there's an EHR out there in that herd of 602 “other” EHRs not in your top 11 that's the "killer app" in the making, one that may one day challenge today's market leaders?
He said he's had conversations with several CEOs of name brand companies and "they're very cognizant of the fact there is somebody out there who could replace them."
"I'm sure there is somebody in the weeds," Titensor said. "I just can't say who it is. I just don't know."
Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter @MHJConn.
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I wrote Wednesday about the new ambulatory electronic health-record system survey report from the National Center for Health Statistics, and I want to elaborate today on what I think was a key finding from it.
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We heard from our healthcare information technology cheerleader-in-chief Dr. Farzad Mostashari on Tuesday that many office-based physicians are, if not deliriously happy with their electronic health-record systems, at least not storming EHR vendor headquarters with flaming torches and pitchforks.
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I was in our archives last week, doing research on the nationwide conversion to ASC X12 Version 5010 administrative claims standards, when I pulled up a story I had written late last summer about the status of 5010.
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Veteran informaticist Dr. Scott Weingarten took to the podium right after breakfast to announce that the healthcare reform had been upheld.
The Supreme Court decision had hit the media maybe an hour earlier that morning, so it was not breaking news, even in California, where the Zynx Health co-founder and CEO and former director of health services research at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, was the day's first speaker at the 21st annual Physician-Computer Connection Symposium, hosted by the Association of Medical Directors of Information Systems in Ojai, Calif.
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