When it comes to application hosting, healthcare providers are finding greater success working with vendors, but are able to host a wider selection of applications by partnering with services firms, according to a new KLAS report.
The report — “Application Hosting: Offloading Risk and Cost?” — notes that services firms are able to host a variety of applications, but often deliver lower customer satisfaction than software vendors, while the software vendors deliver better performance, but typically host only their own solutions.
According to the report, software vendors’ focus and experience in healthcare has given them an obvious advantage: Ninety percent or more of respondents using Cerner, McKesson and Siemens hosting services would recommend their vendor to other providers, while fewer than half of ACS and Velocity respondents would do the same.
KLAS also found that CIS customers are not necessarily happier with a hosted solution, despite being relieved of the work associated with product upgrades and hardware maintenance. In fact, only Cerner clients felt increased satisfaction with the software itself once it was hosted, while the majority of CIS clients were less satisfied.
The top-rated vendor in “Application Hosting: Offloading Risk and Cost?” was Cerner, with a score of 84.7 out of 100. It was followed by NaviSite (82.8) and McKesson (80.8). Other vendors highlighted in this report are ACS, CSC, Eclipsys, GE, Perot Systems, PHNS, Siemens and Velocity.
The report notes that if a provider wants all major solutions — including CIS, HIS and ERP — hosted by the same company, ACS, CSC, Perot and PHNS are the primary options. However, in most cases, the hosting clients of services firms experienced greater downtime issues than clients of software vendors, and some firms were criticized for a lack of healthcare experience.
The report is available to healthcare providers online for a significant discount off the standard retail price. To purchase the full report, healthcare providers and vendors can visit www.KLASresearch.com/reports.
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