EHR Vendor Competition Leaves Providers Undecided

By Katie Wike, contributing writer

KLAS reports competition between key EHR vendors is heating up.

A report from research firm KLAS finds the competition between key EHR vendors is getting more heated, and some say this is leaving providers undecided about which products to choose. The report, Acute Care EMR Purchasing Plans 2015, also found vendors Epic and Cerner are racing for the position of most popular EHR.

Health Data Management reports last year Epic secured 36 percent of the market share while Cerner was second with 14 percent. In the 2015 report, Epic has fallen to 25 percent of the market share and Cerner remained steady at 14 percent. Other competing vendors are Meditech (13 percent), McKesson Paragon (5 percent), and Allscripts (1 percent). That leaves 41 percent of the market available - up from just 22 percent last year.

“The competition between Epic and Cerner is closer than it has been in years past as customers determine their future purchasing plans. This has left twice as many facilities ‘up for grabs’ as there were last year,” said report author Coray Tate in a press release. “The lion's share of the remaining customer mindshare is split between MEDITECH and McKesson, pretty consistently along partisan lines.”

Providers are being impacted by this competition as well, according to KLAS, which wrote “researchers found that even though providers have fewer choices due to market contraction, they are less likely to have made up their minds about which system to buy when evaluating future purchases.” They also explain that most EHR purchases in 2015 will be to replace legacy systems.