KLAS Finds Desire For Integrated Suites Driving CIS Purchases

While Meaningful Use dollars are driving adoption of clinical information systems, the desire for integrated software suites, across which data can easily flow, is driving the selection of particular vendors, according to a new report from KLAS which looks at hospitals over 200 beds — Clinical Market Share 2011: Is Stimulus Money Still Stimulating?

“As healthcare facilities consolidate to expand service offerings and increase market share, they often find themselves with a patchwork of CIS vendors and systems. To improve the availability of the data from these diverse systems, many are opting to standardize their CIS platform across all facilities,” stated KLAS.

Ranked first in new hospital contracts, “Epic offers integrated clinical, patient financial, and ambulatory solutions with above-average usability and an unmatched track record of successful implementations in hospitals with more than 200 beds. Even though they lag behind in technology and are not the cheapest solution available, their ability to integrate systems and show strengths that cater perfectly to the current market trends helped them lure many clients away from competitors last year,” according to the organization.

“Cerner, another vendor capitalizing on their strengths that fit current trends, is continuing to grow; Cerner signed more new hospitals in 2010 than any other vendor besides Epic. Many of these were existing customers who implemented Cerner in their other facilities,” the report said.

Other rated CIS vendors noted in the report are Allscripts (Eclipsys), GE Healthcare, McKesson, MEDITECH, QuadraMed, and Siemens.

Stated Jason Hess, author of the report, “It is the vendors who best help reduce the complexity of managing clinical data across an enterprise that win the lion’s share of new business.”