"Provider consideration for vendors outside the 11 most-considered solutions has increased in the past year from 49% to 64%," according to the 13-page KLAS report, Ambulatory EMR Perception 2012: Market Splitting Under Adoption Pressure. The report draws on interviews with 318 office-based practice providers in the market for an EHR system.
Those lesser-known vendors are being considered 64% of the time and closing 31% of sales.
"Rather than solidifying, the ambulatory EMR market is expanding more than ever," the KLAS researchers concluded. "Larger practices are seeing heavy replacement activity, with many first-time buyers in the smaller practices. With the exception of very small practices, physician usability, vendor support and integration are trumping the cost card in most decisions."
There are 613 unique EHR products for the ambulatory market on the official certified health IT product list kept by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, according to Jodi Daniel, director of the ONC's Office of Policy and Research, speaking at the July 10 Health IT Policy Committee meeting.
These systems have been tested and approved for use by providers seeking to qualify as meaningful users under the EHR incentive payment programs of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act..
In the latest national survey by the National Center for Health Statistics, 55% of all office-based physicians said they have some form of an EHR, and half of those who had not yet adopted a system said they would purchase an EHR in the next 12 months.
