The definitive EHR Buying Guide

EHR Buying Guide—Vendor darts

So, here’s the thing with what a lot of EHR vendors seem to view as the lower end of the food chain, chum worthy customers—Hospitals, IPAs, group and individual practices.

Vendor darts. I can’t tell you the number of providers with whom I’ve spoke who’ve had to navigate the chum-filled water of vendors trolling for dollars. Unfortunately, when they come to your door, most of you are ill equipped and ill prepared to know whether you need what they’re selling.

It’s like playing EHR vendor darts—by the way—you’re practice is the dartboard. Vendors fling their offering at you and hope they stick—the other way to play is to use the vendors as the darts, but you have to sharpen them or they’ll simply bounce off.

Just between you and me, or among us—if you’re a stickler about English—I’ve played vendor darts for years, and it’s always difficult for the dartboard to win. (I am speaking parenthetically so they can’t hear us.) We both know this is meant to be somewhat tongue-in-cheek. The EHR vendors are professionals, and they have the utmost belief in their product, just as they will if they change firms and have to sell another product—this is the unspoken dirty linen of software.

There are a few hundred purported EHR solutions. Each is a little different. Which one is best for you? Do they know which one? If we are honest, the answer is, no, they don’t. They do not know, they cannot know what features their competitors offer.

For those of you with any background in selecting software, any kind of software,I want you to do something for me. Go to Google Search and enter “EHR RFP” and see what you find. You won’t find anything helpful, anything that will help you select an application. Big hint–if you cannot find something on Google, it does not exist. That begs the question, what have providers been using to select an EHR vendor–rock, paper, scissors?

Vendors want you to stay focused on features. Guess what? Almost all of the leading products have just about the same features. I want you to stay focused on business problems. What business problems of your do their features solve? It’s a fair question. They should be able to answer it, and you should be able to answer it.

Rule number 1: Any time a vendor tells you, “This is how we get our system to do that”, means their system doesn’t do it. Those words signal a workaround, not a workflow. It means they want your business to adapt to their way of manipulating how your business runs. Have they ever run your practice; don’t think so.

Rule number 2: Vendors hope you don’t know about Rule 1.

What can you do?