Compare EHR software options and look at the features they offer
healthcare organizations for mobile access, certifications, reporting, workflow
automation and document management.
Buying an electronic
health record system can be a challenge given the number of vendors and the
range of features that the products have to offer. On the surface, most EHR tools seem
to offer the same broad set of features and capabilities across the spectrum,
but there are still key differences among these products, making some better
suited for some organizations than others depending on the size of the target
healthcare organization. For example, hospitals generally require more modules
from the EHR platform that can support radiology, labs and ER and while only
practice management modules are necessary for outpatient settings. To
successfully compare EHR systems, buyers must perform in-depth features
analysis to determine the most practical, effective (and affordable) system.
Customization
Most physicians prefer EHR software thatallows them to customize some of the clinical forms that they use during
the care episode. With
this flexibility, the health organization can experience less friction as the
clinical team interacts with the EHR system and collects the most relevant
information for themselves and their patients. Applications like GE Centricity
offer tools like Visual Designer that allows IT, physicians and consultants to
build and enhance clinical forms.
Other platforms offer similar capabilities to customize the screens and forms
that the clinical staff members interact with. AthenaHealth and Centricity
perform customization directly through the web browser, meaning that no
additional software is required.
Certification
When buyers compare EHR systems, they must
know what certification they require. If the buyer is looking to participate in
any of the federal healthcare initiatives like MACRA, MIPS and
other CMS-based programs, they will need to determine if prospective software
meets the certification criteria set by the ONC for Health
Information Technology. Greenway Health, AthenaHealth, Allscripts, blueEHR, eClinicalWorks, NextGen and GE Centricity are among the vendors that meet the
current certification requirements. According to the Centers for Medicare and
Medicaid Services, vendors receive Certified EHR Technology once they meet the
requirements but should note that they may have to get recertified if the
requirements change over time.
User Interface and User Experience
Suitable EHR tools should be easy to use and
accessible for users. Physicians, nurses and other clinical support staff spend
a significant amount of time in the EHR where they capture and review patient
information. If the user interface requires them to switch between too many
screens and windows, users can become frustrated. End users are finding that
products that utilize new modern controls and take advantage of web-based
functionality offer a much better experience and are more efficient. Users give
particularly notable reviews for AthenaHealth, Greenway Health, eClinicalWorks, blueEHR and NextGen for their user experience.
Support of mobile apps
Doctors often review clinical data while they
are on the go, so it has become imperative for buyers to ensure that vendors
offer mobile access to medical records when they compare EHR systems. Buyers
should note that some vendors do not offer full EHR desktop functionality in their
mobile apps, but this is mainly due to limitations that include lack of support
for third-party hardware (scanners, medical devices, etc.) and limitations of
the operating system such as lack of support for multiple tabs or screens. For
some more well-established EHR products, many of them have added the mobile functionality as
an add-on to compete in the market, but for others vendors that were born in
the cloud like AthenaHealth, DrChrono and blueEHR the mobile experience
was always part of their products, and in most cases, released along with the
full desktop or browser.
Document management
Despite the shift from paper-based charts to
digital health records, many medical organizations still use paper documents.
Patients even still file their medical and social history on paper documents
and bring their paper medical records with them to the practice so buyers must
ensure that the selected software is able to scan and manage these records
efficiently when they compare EHR systems. blueEHR is particularly strong
in its document management capabilities with the most comprehensive document
scanning and indexing features. For primary care physicians, the volume of
paper-based documents may be higher than in an orthopedics or other acute
settings, so EHR tools with strong document management capabilities would be
most valuable in these settings.
Population health
In recent years, there has been a big push by
payers, federal and state entities for physicians to shift from fee-based
services to an outcome-based care payment model in order to address the rising
costs of healthcare and help improve the population health.
A successful population health initiative requires
the software application to aggregate and analyze the patient health data that
the EHR platform stores. As a result, many EHR vendors have been introducing
new modules within their systems to help clinical professionals' access the
population analysis directly from within the EHR and then connect some of the
data elements that they are already tracking within their system. When buyers
compare EHR systems, they should know that, for years, NextGen, AthenaHealth, blueEHR, Allscripts, Epic and Cerner have been making the push to include and enhance
population health capabilities within their EHR system such as population health
management dashboards, quality care reporting and patient portals to
help with patient engagement.
Workflow engine and automation
Automation has become an important feature to
make healthcare organizations more efficient and proactive in patient care.
Some EHR products offer automation and workflow engines that can help
automatically alert the clinical team to prospective issues like when a patient
misses a follow-up visit or abnormal lab results that providers should review
and discuss. Automation features may include capabilities like routing
encounters to coders when the CPT codes that
physicians select may cause denials or underpayment. Having automation and a
workflow engine that admins can customize to fit the needs of an organization
can be very valuable when it helps automate task creation. AthenaHealth,
NextGen and Greenway Health offer such features.
Hosted or cloud-based EHR
Many healthcare organizations are looking to
reduce their infrastructure footprint and rely solely on off-site hosting
services or the EHR vendor to manage and maintain the EHR software. Vendors
that are pure cloud platforms or born in the cloud like DrChrono, AthenaHealth
and Practice Fusion are running applications on their own data centers with no
option for medical organizations to download or install it locally in their
servers. Their licensing model is also a subscription only. Although their EHR
software is based on a client-server model where the software is hosted on
premises, blueEHR, Allscripts, NextGen and eClinicalWorks are also available under a
subscription model where the vendor or a third party hosts the services.
Reporting and data analytics
In the past, most EHR software focused
primarily on delivering accurate
reports relating to basic things like number of patients with
certain conditions, meaningful use reporting, scheduling trends, revenue cycle
reports, patient reminders and billing reports around the services they
provide. Today, more and more vendors recognize the importance of data analytics where
the patient data that EHR tools store can provide more meaningful insights into
patients. Healthcare providers need to identify high-risk patients and
evaluate any opportunities for interventions and treatments and perform a thorough
EHR systems comparison to vet this new data analytics features. There are even
newer forms of analytics that focus on the prescriptive side. EHR software
analyzes data in order to provide feedback around recommendations for treatment
plans and patient actions and has the ability to predict the outcomes for each
of these actions the software presents. Vendors like blueEHR, NextGen, AthenaHealth and
Allscripts provide advanced analytics capabilities focused around delivering
more insights into population health.
Given the short list of certified
EHR platforms to pick from in the marketplace, it can be a daunting task to
compare EHR systems. Each product and company behind the EHR platform
highlights its own differentiator in the marketplace. Nevertheless, many find
it hard to differentiate from all the products they consider since most are
trying to meet the feature and functionality demands of the same target
audiences. But as buyers look closely at each of the prospective platforms,
subtle differences can make a significant difference.
