Integrated Vendors ACO Favorites

While there are no one-stop shops for providers’ ACO IT needs, Cerner and Epic currently lead the way in provider confidence as being most “ACO-ready,” according to a new report from KLAS, Accountable Care: Providers Forge the ACO Trail.

“Providers describe a variety of planned HIT purchases for their ACO projects, including data warehousing and analytics, HIE, and patient portals,” said Jason Hess, author of the report. “Vendors whose offerings integrate best with providers’ in-house systems will top the selection lists going forward.”

Despite a few integration and offering gaps, Cerner has already integrated many of the IT pieces needed to complete an ACO puzzle and is taking a proactive approach to working with individual needs of interested providers, KLAS stated.

Epic is also perceived as being close to ACO-ready — with gaps found primarily in its analytic capabilities and ability to share data with non-Epic systems, the organization found.

The report also examines provider perceptions of ACO readiness for Allscripts (Eclipsys), CPSI, GE Healthcare, McKesson, Meditech, QuadraMed, and Siemens.

Interesting, KLAS founds that only a third of surveyed providers plan to pursue a formal Medicare ACO designation, though the majority agree that accountable care is the way of the future.