The EHR Market Isn’t Like Other Markets

Today at a healthcare IT meetup I attended in Dallas I ran into a former contact at an EHR vendor. He no longer works at that EHR company and has moved on to two other companies. In our discussion we had an interesting discussion about the market. Having moved on, he’d lost touch with the EHR market. He asked me, “Are there still 700 EHR vendors?” I told him there were probably 300, but I’ve contended that their have been 300 EHR vendors for a while. I’m not counting the hundreds of ancillary companies that are “certified EHR” but only perform 1-2 EHR related functions. Over and over again I hear people talking about consolidation of EHR vendors. They say it’s going to happen and we’re going to get down to a really small number of EHR vendors. Some go as far as saying that there will be 2-3 EHR vendors after EHR consolidation happens. I think this idea is ridiculous. At HIMSS, I figured out why I don’t think it’s going to happen. Someone told me, “Ambulatory healthcare is fragmented. It’s second only to florists when it comes to market fragmentation.” This to me illustrates exactly why there can and will be so many EHR vendors. The ambulatory market is completely fragmented with thousands of really small businesses (ie. solo doc) doing just fine. Think about it. There are very few businesses that could survive at the size of a solo doctor practice. In every other industry, the b...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - Category: Technology Consultants Authors: Tags: Certified EHR Electronic Health Record Electronic Medical Record EMR HealthCare IT Ambulatory EHR Market EHR Market Consolidation EMR Market Hospital EHR Market Source Type: blogs