Epic Systems Corp. sits atop a heap of more than 400 developers of complete electronic health-record systems for ambulatory-care physicians and other eligible professionals who have received federal EHR incentive payments, federal data shows.
The privately held company, based in Verona, Wis., claims 54,481 eligible professionals (EPs), for a 22.1% market share in this key EHR niche. This covers providers that either have met meaningful-use goals under the Medicare version of the program.
Running second in the EP ambulatory-complete EHR category is Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, with 27,261 customers receiving federal incentive payments, for an 11.1% share. Others in the top five are eClinicalWorks with 18,375 customers (7.5%); NexGen HealthCare, with 16,838 (6.8%); and GE Healthcare, with 14,148 (5.7%). The top five developers combined account for 53.2% of the 246,534 providers in this segment. The top 10 vendors claim (66.1% of customers paid in the EP ambulatory-complete EHR market). A whopping 449 developers have at least one user of their EHRs receive federal payments under this segment of the program.
More than half ($14.6 billion) of the estimated $22.5 billion available for federal EHR incentive payments has been spent, according to the latest figures through April from the CMS. Interoperability between the myriad available EHR systems remains a work in progress, however, and the subject of recent criticism of the federal IT program from several Republican members of Congress.
The EHR market data comes from a mashup of two federal databases kept by the CMS and HHS' Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology that pairs paid providers to the systems they used to qualify for EHR incentive payments under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. The database has records of 297,752 payments made since January 2011 through February this year, including 291,079 to EPs and 6,673 to hospitals.
Epic also leads with the most customers using hospital-complete EHRs in inpatient care, federal records show; Meditech leads for hospitals using modular EHRs for inpatients.
The category of Medicare and Medicare Advantage EPs includes physicians, optometrists, podiatrists, chiropractors and dentists. Medicaid EPs are physicians, dentists, physician assistants, nurse practitioners and certified nurse-midwifes. EPs can qualify for payments under either one of the programs, but not both.
Cerner Corp., based in Kansas City, Mo., is the runaway leader in the smaller category of EPs in ambulatory care that are using modular EHR systems. There are 11,679 Cerner customers, or 31.1%, of a total of 37,573 EPs in ambulatory care who use modular EHRs to receive federal incentive payments. Second in the category is Intermountain Healthcare, with 6,083 providers, or 16.2% market share, followed by Allscripts, with 5,057 (13.5%); Jardogs, acquired by Allscripts in March, with 2,686 (7.1%); and GE Healthcare, with 1,451 (3.9%). The top five developers account for 71.7% of the paid EPs in this category, but 91 developers have at least one provider receiving federal payments in this market niche.
For EPs in the inpatient environment using complete EHRs, Epic Systems grabs the lion's share with 2,062 paid users, or 45.3% of this niche of 4,550 paid providers. GE Healthcare follows with 1,053 EPs, or 23.1%, and Cerner, with 933, o r20.5%, with the top three developers claiming 89% of this market segment. A total of 24 developers have at least one EP using their system and receive payment.
Among EPs in inpatient care using modular EHRs, Cerner is far and away the leader with 1,664 providers receiving payment, or 71.4% of 2,332 providers in total. Allscripts is a distant second at 345 paid providers, or 14.8%, and Meditech third, with 168 providers and 7.2%. And while the top three developers have 93.4% of this segment, 17 developers in this niche had at least one paid customer.
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