EHR ranking

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....Amazing Charts wins again.  While primary care focused, could/would work well with an EB chiropractic practice.

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Top EHRs of 2011 Report Has New Leaders

Lowes

December 15, 2011 — A respected annual ranking of electronic health record (EHR) vendors reveals a changing of the guard among those that cater to smaller practices.

Topping the list for practices with 1 to 10 physicians in 2011 is a company called Amazing Charts, according to a report issued today by the research firm KLAS. The number-one vendor among practices with 11 to 75 physicians is Athenahealth, while Epic leads the pack for practices with more than 75 physicians.

The report, titled " 2011 Best in KLAS Awards, " features 1 less practice-size category than reports from previous years. In the 2010 report, e-MDs was the top EHR vendor for practices with 2 to 5 physicians, Greenway Medical Technologies for the 6-to-25 category, eClinicalWorks for the 26-to-100 category, and Epic Systems for groups with more than 100 physicians. Greenway and Epic each had led their respective categories for 5 straight years, and eClinicalWorks had topped the 26-to-100 category for 2 straight years.

KLAS, based in Orem, Utah, polls EHR customers on not only how well their software performs but also how well vendors execute in terms of implementation, training, and support, which can make or break physician adoption of the technology. Rankings for EHR vendors are categorized by practice size because some companies design and price their products that way.

Ease of Implementation, Thorough Training Are Pluses

The ascendancy of the Amazing Charts EHR to the top of the small-practice heap does not surprise Rosemarie , a healthcare IT consultant in town, New York, who is affiliated with the Medical Group Management Association.

" It has a silly name, but it's an amazing product, " told Medscape Medical News. " It's fairly simple to implement. "

Amazing Charts also boasts a low price — $1995 per provider (physician, nurse practitioner, or physician assistant) for the first year, and $995 per year thereafter. " You're not risking the bank if you buy it, " said .

She attributes the rise of Athenahealth's EHR, called AthenaClinicals, to the growing popularity of cloud computing, which means accessing software on the Internet as opposed to an expensive office-based server that requires expert upkeep. Athenahealth sells its software only on a cloud-computing basis.

The company also has made a name for itself, said, in offering extra services that amount to virtual office staffing. Athenahealth phone operators, for example, can take over after a practice shuts down for the evening and answer patient questions about scheduling and bill payment.

Among large practices, Epic has been a perennial market leader partly because it insists on thorough training for physician-users, said . " The more training they receive, the more satisfied they are with the product. "

The KLAS report identified top vendors in other medical-software categories, some of whom retained their number-one ranking from last year. Examples include:

Cardiovascular image management and reporting: DigiView from DigiSonics;

Speech recognition: eScription from Nuance;

Acute care electronic medical records: EpicCare Inpatient Clinical System from Epic; and

Radiology: Epic Radiant from Epic.

The KLAS report can be purchased on the company's Web site. The price is $500 for physicians, but survey data on individual vendors are free if physicians complete an online questionnaire about the medical software, equipment, or computer services that they use.

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