Continuing shake up and evolution of the EMR marketplace

Pamela Lewis Dolan | American Medical News | August 6, 2012

The number of practices looking for replacement EHRs has grown, although most small practices are adopting systems for the first time, according to a new survey.

As competition heats up in the electronic health record market, practices fed up with poor customer service or systems that only meet a fraction of the practices’ needs are recognizing an opportunity to jump ship and find a new vendor. Others are leaving their old systems to join forces with other health care organizations and form information-sharing networks built on matching EHR systems.

A report published in July by EHR market research firm KLAS found that about half of the 300 surveyed practices in the market for an ambulatory EHR system were not first-time buyers. The number of practices shopping for a replacement EHR jumped from 30% in 2011 to 50% in 2012.

Open Health News' Take: 

Over the coming years, the marketplace will continue to weed out hundreds of the smaller vendors of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) electronic medical record (EMR) systems. Competing for market share, especially amongst organizations and nations that can't afford costly commercial systems, are a number of open source EMR solutions, e.g. OpenEMR, OpenMRS, OSCAR, VistA-  Peter Groen, Senior Editor, Open Health News (OHN)