MEDITECH Joins the Competition for Implementation Services

Plenty of healthcare IT vendors offer their own EMR, but not as many offer the services to implement that EMR. Since services are a completely different animal from software solutions, they are usually left to consulting firms. 

So when MEDITECH recently started offering their own implementation services, we wanted to know about the early client experience. For this reason, we published the MEDITECH Implementation Services 2021 report. In the report, we look at the overall performance of MEDITECH and other firms certified by MEDITECH (i.e., READY-certified) and examine how well they drive implementations.

Fewer Firms in the Market Due to Acquisitions

Though MEDITECH has begun offering their own services, there are actually fewer READY-certified players in the market now than there used to be. This is likely because the volume of work has decreased; organizations, especially small organizations, don’t have the money to fund implementation projects thanks to the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, firms are expanding their reach via acquisitions.

Some of the most established firms in this report—Engage and Navin Haffty—have recently been acquired by Tegria. And medSR now comprises MedMatica and Santa Rosa Staffing. In this market, it seems that firms will either get snatched up by others or choose to expand. With fewer implementation projects overall and fewer firms to execute projects, how will MEDITECH fare with their implementation services? That remains to be seen, but MEDITECH is currently seeing some successes.

An Overview of MEDITECH Implementation Firms

Early data in the report shows that MEDITECH’s performance is above average for MEDITECH implementations and that the firm is performing well. Clients are satisfied with MEDITECH’s collaborative resources and appreciate that they kept projects on track.

MEDITECH is pretty new to offering services, though. They are still building out their services team, and it’s too early to tell whether the quality of their services will remain consistent over time, especially compared to the quality of other firms’ services. But clients are interested to see what MEDITECH does next.

In the report, we wanted to see what respondents’ overall satisfaction rating was compared to their engagement execution rating (see chart). In addition to MEDITECH (limited data), Engage and ettain health (limited data) were rated as above average for both metrics. Clients of Engage and ettain health report positive things about their relationship with their resources; check out the report to read more details. 

Examining the Different Phases of an Implementation

One thing we did a little differently in this report is we asked respondents to rate the quality of their firm’s pre-implementation planning, their firm’s effectiveness in driving the project, and the quality of the building and testing period. Essentially, we wanted to know how respondents felt about their firm’s performance before, during, and after their project.

Our early findings show that of the three phases, a firm’s pre-implementation planning most influences their overall performance. All the firms in the report have at least one client who struggled with the planning phase, but one thing that surprised us was there wasn’t a consistent pattern in terms of what the challenges were. 

Each client base cited different struggles, like resources having to work remotely due to the pandemic or a lack of up-front pushback from their firm. Obviously, every client has their own individual needs and expectations that they want their firm to meet. Just because one organization wants to be updated a certain amount doesn’t mean a different organization wants to be updated the same exact amount. It is critical for firms to understand who they are working with and what a good implementation looks like to each specific client.

KLAS’ Next Steps

In the future, KLAS will continue to ask respondents the above questions, and we hope to dive deeper into the results to extrapolate more findings. It would be really exciting to eventually have enough commentary to create a playbook of the top five things firms need to do to facilitate a successful implementation. Contributors to success may change as firms adjust their implementation approach, and we want to monitor how clients’ expectations change as time goes on.

In the meantime, we’re excited to offer up this MEDITECH Implementation Services report; check out all our findings here. We’re also working on our go-live support report, which is projected to publish in Q1 of 2022—be on the lookout for that.

If you are a provider and are interested in sharing your experience regarding your support/services firm, we’d love to hear from you. Reach out to Kaleb Harris (kaleb.harris@klasresearch.com) to set up an interview. Your feedback is invaluable!

Photo credit: VectorMine, Adobe Stock