Skip to main content
Subscribe
  • Sign Up Free
  • Login
  • Subscribe
  • News
    • Current News
    • Providers
    • Insurance
    • Government
    • Finance
    • Technology
    • Safety & Quality
    • Digital Health
    • Transformation
    • ESG
    • People
    • Regional News
    • Digital Edition (Web Version)
    • Patients
    • Operations
    • Care Delivery
    • Payment
    • Midwest
    • Northeast
    • South
    • West
  • Opinion
    • Bold Moves
    • Breaking Bias
    • Commentaries
    • Letters
    • Vital Signs Blog
    • From the Editor
  • Events & Awards
    • Awards
    • Conferences
    • Galas
    • Virtual Briefings
    • Webinars
    • Nominate/Eligibility
    • 100 Most Influential People
    • 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives
    • Best Places to Work in Healthcare
    • Excellence in Governance
    • Health Care Hall of Fame
    • Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards
    • Top 25 Emerging Leaders
    • Top Innovators
    • Diversity in Healthcare
      • - Luminaries
      • - Top 25 Diversity Leaders
      • - Leaders to Watch
    • Women in Healthcare
      • - Luminaries
      • - Top 25 Women Leaders
      • - Women to Watch
    • Digital Health Transformation Summit
    • ESG: The Implementation Imperative Summit
    • Leadership Symposium
    • Social Determinants of Health Symposium
    • Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference
    • Best Places to Work Awards Gala
    • Health Care Hall of Fame Gala
    • Top 25 Diversity Leaders Gala
    • Top 25 Women Leaders Gala
    • - Hospital of the Future
    • - Value Based Care
    • - Hospital at Home
    • - Workplace of the Future
    • - Digital Health
    • - Future of Staffing
    • - Hospital of the Future (Fall)
  • Multimedia
    • Podcast - Beyond the Byline
    • Sponsored Podcast - Healthcare Insider
    • Video Series - The Check Up
    • Sponsored Video Series - One on One
  • Data Center
    • Data Center Home
    • Hospital Financials
    • Staffing & Compensation
    • Quality & Safety
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Data Archive
    • Resource Guide: By the Numbers
    • Surveys
    • Data Points
  • Newsletters
  • MORE+
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise
    • Media Kit
    • Jobs
    • People on the Move
    • Reprints & Licensing
MENU
Breadcrumb
  1. Home
  2. Providers
October 24, 2012 01:00 AM

More than 300 vendors share ambulatory-care EHR market

Joseph Conn
  • Tweet
  • Share
  • Share
  • Email
  • More
    Reprints Print

    Remember those old sword-and-sandal historical epics, with their "cast of thousands" hacking and clubbing at each other in hand-to-hand combat?

    To the hordes of vendors of electronic health-record systems designed for office-based physicians, those struggles may seem like halcyon days.

    Three-hundred-and-thirty-three vendors of complete EHRs for ambulatory care have battled for market share and had at least one customer attest to having met the meaningful-use criteria under the Medicare EHR incentive payment program, according to a federal database.

    Such a wide variety of choices makes the task of finding and selecting the right system a struggle for the practitioners, too.

    "Really, what I need is just somebody to tell me what I need to get," said Dr. Terri Strassburger, who is retired from her own practice but manages a two-physician pulmonary and critical-care office-based practice in Alexandria, Va., for her husband and his partner. Her duties include helping them pick an EHR system.

    By waiting a bit to enter the fray, Strassburger and her husband can avail themselves to data on what has worked for others. Some of that is data about their peers who have used various EHR systems to meet the meaningful-use goals established through the Medicare EHR incentive payment program. The information can be gleaned from a database that is a mix of CMS statistics on attested meaningful users and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information official list of certified EHR systems.

    According to the federal data, from April 2011 through August of this year, 90,295 physicians and other eligible professionals working in ambulatory care have used complete EHRs to attest to having met the Medicare meaningful-use criteria. (Data from the Medicaid EHR incentive programs is not yet available from the states.)

    The top 10 vendors in the CMS/ONC database account for 68% of attestations in the physician and EP/ambulatory/compete EHR market niche, but that leaves the remaining 323 vendors sharing nearly one-third of the attesting providers.

    Picking an EHR system has "always been on the back burner since the government talked about conversion," Strassburger said. The CMS began receiving attestations under the Medicare EHR incentive payment program in April 2011.

    Now, Strassburger said, with some fellow physicians in the region talking about their systems and incentives, EHR adoption seems to have "taken on a movement of its own. We feel like we kind of need to catch up."

    But finding an EHR that's the right fit, can integrate with the practice's management system, is not controlled by the hospital and won't require a lot of hardware and network expertise, and fit within the practice's budget is a challenge.

    "We've only just started looking into everything, and we're trying to talk to as many people as possible," Strassburger said. So far, word of mouth hasn't been very helpful.

    "People have been pretty unhappy," she said, adding, "the amount of money that people are asking for is more than we can manage."

    According to a Modern Healthcare analysis of the CMS/ONC database, Epic Systems, based in Verona, Wis., leads the pack among vendors of complete EHR systems designed for physicians/EPs in ambulatory care, with 22% of that market niche. Others in the top five in that niche, along with their market percentage, are Allscripts, 12%; eClinicalWorks, 9%; NextGen Healthcare, 7%; and GE Healthcare, 6%.

    Remaining vendors in the top 10 are Greenway Medical Technologies, 3%; athenahealth, 3%; Practice Fusion, 3%; e-MDs, 2%; and Community Computer Service, 2%.

    More than a few physicians and eligible professionals in ambulatory care—6,682 to be precise—have pieced together an EHR and achieved meaningful use. Cerner Corp. is the dominant player with 36% market share. It is followed by Allscripts, 19%; Jardogs, 8%; MedCPU, 6%; and Dr. First, 5%.

    Also, 1,325 physicians and other eligible professionals have met meaningful-use targets using complete or modular systems in the inpatient environment. Within that specific market for complete or modular inpatient EHRs used by individual doctors and EPs, Cerner has a 31% share and is followed by Epic, 25%; Allscripts, 20%; Meditech, 13%; and McKesson, 3%.

    Letter
    to the
    Editor

    Send us a letter

    Have an opinion about this story? Click here to submit a Letter to the Editor, and we may publish it in print.

    Recommended for You
    finance graphs hospital
    Primary care physicians' pay growth picked up in 2022: MGMA
    Home cancer treatment faces challenges post-pandemic
    Home cancer treatment faces challenges post-pandemic
    Most Popular
    1
    More healthcare organizations at risk of credit default, Moody's says
    2
    Centene fills out senior executive team with new president, COO
    3
    SCAN, CareOregon plan to merge into the HealthRight Group
    4
    Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan unveils big push that lets physicians take on risk, reap rewards
    5
    Bright Health weighs reverse stock split as delisting looms
    Sponsored Content
    Modern Healthcare A.M. Newsletter: Sign up to receive a comprehensive weekday morning newsletter designed for busy healthcare executives who need the latest and most important healthcare news and analysis.
    Get Newsletters

    Sign up for enewsletters and alerts to receive breaking news and in-depth coverage of healthcare events and trends, as they happen, right to your inbox.

    Subscribe Today
    MH Magazine Cover

    MH magazine offers content that sheds light on healthcare leaders’ complex choices and touch points—from strategy, governance, leadership development and finance to operations, clinical care, and marketing.

    Subscribe
    Connect with Us
    • LinkedIn
    • Twitter
    • Facebook
    • RSS

    Our Mission

    Modern Healthcare empowers industry leaders to succeed by providing unbiased reporting of the news, insights, analysis and data.

    Contact Us

    (877) 812-1581

    Email us

     

    Resources
    • Contact Us
    • Advertise with Us
    • Ad Choices Ad Choices
    • Sitemap
    Editorial Dept
    • Submission Guidelines
    • Code of Ethics
    • Awards
    • About Us
    Legal
    • Terms and Conditions
    • Privacy Policy
    • Privacy Request
    Modern Healthcare
    Copyright © 1996-2023. Crain Communications, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
    • News
      • Current News
      • Providers
      • Insurance
      • Government
      • Finance
      • Technology
      • Safety & Quality
      • Digital Health
      • Transformation
        • Patients
        • Operations
        • Care Delivery
        • Payment
      • ESG
      • People
      • Regional News
        • Midwest
        • Northeast
        • South
        • West
      • Digital Edition (Web Version)
    • Opinion
      • Bold Moves
      • Breaking Bias
      • Commentaries
      • Letters
      • Vital Signs Blog
      • From the Editor
    • Events & Awards
      • Awards
        • Nominate/Eligibility
        • 100 Most Influential People
        • 50 Most Influential Clinical Executives
        • Best Places to Work in Healthcare
        • Excellence in Governance
        • Health Care Hall of Fame
        • Healthcare Marketing Impact Awards
        • Top 25 Emerging Leaders
        • Top Innovators
        • Diversity in Healthcare
          • - Luminaries
          • - Top 25 Diversity Leaders
          • - Leaders to Watch
        • Women in Healthcare
          • - Luminaries
          • - Top 25 Women Leaders
          • - Women to Watch
      • Conferences
        • Digital Health Transformation Summit
        • ESG: The Implementation Imperative Summit
        • Leadership Symposium
        • Social Determinants of Health Symposium
        • Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference
      • Galas
        • Best Places to Work Awards Gala
        • Health Care Hall of Fame Gala
        • Top 25 Diversity Leaders Gala
        • Top 25 Women Leaders Gala
      • Virtual Briefings
        • - Hospital of the Future
        • - Value Based Care
        • - Hospital at Home
        • - Workplace of the Future
        • - Digital Health
        • - Future of Staffing
        • - Hospital of the Future (Fall)
      • Webinars
    • Multimedia
      • Podcast - Beyond the Byline
      • Sponsored Podcast - Healthcare Insider
      • Video Series - The Check Up
      • Sponsored Video Series - One on One
    • Data Center
      • Data Center Home
      • Hospital Financials
      • Staffing & Compensation
      • Quality & Safety
      • Mergers & Acquisitions
      • Data Archive
      • Resource Guide: By the Numbers
      • Surveys
      • Data Points
    • Newsletters
    • MORE+
      • Contact Us
      • Advertise
      • Media Kit
      • Jobs
      • People on the Move
      • Reprints & Licensing