Epic Systems Corp. leads the pack of developers of complete electronic health-record systems in the number of hospital customers that have met the federal criteria for meaningful use of the technology.
Meanwhile, Cerner Corp. is the leading developer of modular EHRs for hospitals using the systems to meet Medicare meaningful-use targets.
Hospitals can receive payments under both Medicare and Medicaid EHR incentive payment programs established by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.
Modern Healthcare analyzed the more than 552,000 records in a mashup of databases kept by the CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS.
The data, which covers 2011 through the first months of 2014, shows 1,208 Medicare EHR incentive payments to hospital customers of Verona, Wis.-based Epic, or 18.7% of all of the payments in that category. The database does not name the hospitals or make it possible to identify how many customers of each vendor received payments.
Meditech (Medical Information Technology) placed No. 2 with 1,005 Medicare payments to its hospital customers, or 15.5% of the total. CPSI (Computer Programs and Systems) ranked No. 3 with 848 (13.1%), followed by Cerner with 694 (10.7%) and Medhost with 524 (8.1%). A total of 49 companies had hospital customers who received Medicare payments in this category.
Among the developers of modular EHRs for inpatient use, Cerner's hospital customers received 2,369 Medicare incentive payments, or 25.8% of all payments in this category. Cerner is followed by Meditech with 2,166 (23.6%), HCA Information & Technology Services with 819 (8.9%), McKesson Corp. with 708 (7.7%) and Iatric Systems with 381 (4.1%). A total of 117 vendors had hospital customers who received Medicare payments in this category.
More than 90% of the 5,011 eligible hospitals have received at least one payment under the federal program, according to the latest CMS data.
So far, the program has paid out $22.9 billion, with $14.3 billion of that going to hospitals and nearly $8.6 billion to physicians and other professionals.
Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn
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