Electronic Health Records Vendors

Electronic Health Records Vendors

Part A: SWOT Analysis

Vendor	A Allscripts Healthcare Solutions	B Epic Systems Corporation	C Miditech
Strengths	ü  The products are innovative and data is easily accessible. ü  It has a larger customer base access ü  It offers a multitude of products for both small and large hospitals	ü  The company has currently the highest number of customers, 19.1% of the total market. ü  It has the highest market share of 33% ü  It has the highest used patient used portal on the market, MyChart.	ü  The company has a larger market share, 17.2% of the total market. ü  The organization’s systems are highly interoperable.
Weaknesses	ü  The company has a weak recognition than its competitors ü  The technical, financial and marketing resources are low as compared to its competitors.	ü  The company is one of the most expensive vendors in the market. ü  The total cost of ownership and the number of shares can be a burden to the organization	ü  The platform has multiple services that need to be supported. ü  Reports indicate that the founders are about to retire leaving a gap.
Opportunities	ü  The industry has less financial and marketing resources, the market share can be increased. ü  MyWay product is likely to be profitable due to the ease of usability by customers.	ü  Being the largest company in the market, it can buy other vendors and control the market. ü  The company can try to offer a lower cost solution to the members.	ü  The company’s web based products have potential of acceleration into the future. ü  It has a competitive advantage that can be utilized through hiring physicians.
Threats	ü  The products of the company may appear to be complicated ü  Competitive market with increasing number of companies and improved technology	ü  The multiple facility hospitals may pose a threat in future in terms of service expectations. ü  The technology has not been updated for a long period of time posing a threat in later improvements.	ü  It has large service revenue which might drive down the business in future. ü  Loss of HCA will lead to a massive loss.

 

Part B

The introduction of the electronic health records in the healthcare system has improved the quality of services offered in the hospitals. The EHRs are used in by both public and private sectors to keep the records of patients. The independent physicians have recently adopted the use of EHRs as a measure of improving the ambulatory care services in their facilities. Various vendors are offering the services using different technologies. A survey conducted in the United States indicates that 11% of the acute care facilities are switching EHR vendors because of various reasons (Bates, 2015). After a deep analysis of the different vendors available, I found two systems that can be used to provide the HER services to our company. The Epic Systems and the Allscripts ambulatory care EHR technology offer quality services that can be used to keep records and communicate effectively within the hospital.

The Epic Systems offers comprehensive electronic record delivery software that is designed to improve the safety of the patients while reducing costs. The company has a good reputation in the past, and it has been named the best ambulatory care provider for the past 11 years due to its services. The organization offers comprehensive physician needs while providing care and keeping records in the hospital. Personalized workflows and applications that benefit the physician are offered by the company. Another benefit of the service is that the mobile applications provided ensure that the patient information and the support tools are easily accessible everywhere the physician goes. The competitive ability of Epic Corporation is high and it is receiving a lot of pressure from other organizations such as MIDITECH leading to an effort of maintaining position. Every organization is looking forth for the update of Epic software which has been in place for a long period of time leaving questions on if the technology will be manageable.

I recommend the Epic systems corporation because of its reputation. The company has managed to emerge as the leading EHR service provider in the United States for the past 11 years. The company does not only provide clinical services to the doctors but also the lab technicians and the insurers making the scope of service delivery wide. The management team of the company has been on the market for a long period giving reassurance of quality service. The interoperability of Epic Systems is splendid with more than sixty million data exchanges in a month. It means the information from one organization to the other is exchanged effectively. Epic Systems attracts 61% of the acute care facilities in the United States irrespective of its high cost making it the organization of choice in EHR service provider (Wright et al., 2013).

Allscripts Healthcare Solutions provides services to various users in the United States and the outside countries such as Canada (Bates, 2015). The company is well known for the wide range of services provided to include EHRs, private clouding hosting, and population health management systems. The system is not recognized as other major organizations like Epic, but the faster growth rate makes it the best opportunity for private hospitals to use. The company recently acquired the A4 health systems technology which provides solutions to mid-sized physician groups (Penoyer et al., 2014). The company has got developed technology lines and has built a 76% customer confidence irrespective of the challenges facing the organization. It has a group of young leaders who are ready to work with the developing technology to trends in the world to provide quality services. The organization has less contractual agreements and offers cheap EHR services that can be affordable by growing independent physicians.

 

 

References

Bates, D. W. (2015). Physicians and ambulatory electronic health records. Health Affairs, 24(5), 1180-1189.

Gellert, G. A., Ramirez, R., & Webster, S. L. (2015). The rise of the medical scribe industry: implications for the advancement of electronic health records. Jama, 313(13), 1315-1316.

Penoyer, D. A., Cortelyou-Ward, K. H., Noblin, A. M., Bullard, T., Talbert, S., Wilson, J., … & Briscoe, J. G. (2014). Use of electronic health record documentation by healthcare workers in an acute care hospital system. Journal of healthcare management, 59(2), 130-144.

Wright, A., Henkin, S., Feblowitz, J., McCoy, A. B., Bates, D. W., & Sittig, D. F. (2013). Early results of the meaningful use program for electronic health records. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(8), 779-780.