An Initial View of Ophthalmology EMRs
KLAS’ recent Ophthalmology 2019 report is our first-ever report on EMR solutions for ophthalmology, and I've been very excited about getting it out into the market. The report really helps us paint some broad strokes around the vendor landscape.
As our focus, we sought to answer who the major players are and how are they performing. That sounds really basic, but experience has taught us that this is a great place to start. The insights we gathered for this report allowed us to identify how these players are performing across several key metrics that KLAS watches. Some of those metrics include whether product functionality meets the providers’ needs, overall product quality, the product's ability to integrate with other technology, and how well the vendors deliver new technology and updates. And of course, a big one for EMRs—ease of use.
Along with those foundational elements of the product, the report digs into the vendor/provider relationship in the space by looking at vendors’ service and support and executive involvement. In the future, I hope to do a follow-up report that dives a little deeper into ophthalmology's specific functionality needs in EMRs, but for now, this report is a great beginning for looking at the market. If you’re an ophthalmologist looking to understand what your peers are experiencing with each of these products, this report is an excellent place to start!
A Variety of Vendors
For the most part, the report covers specialty-focused EMR vendors. That being said, we did bring in two exceptions, Epic and Cerner, to represent the enterprise-level view. Putting their performance in this report adds an important perspective on what enterprise players specifically provide for ophthalmology. NextGen Healthcare is also another exception. NextGen Healthcare holds a place in the report because, frankly, they have committed a lot of resources and investment in developing and building out specific content for ophthalmology, and they have captured recognizable and substantial market share. For this reason, they are listed as a significant player in the space, but they are the only player from the broad multi-specialty vendors.
For the rest of the market, we focus on specialty-specific players because ophthalmology is a highly specialized practice with very specialized workflows and needs.
Diversified Performance Results
In order to get a better view of how the vendors compare, we combined overall performance scores with what percentage of customers would buy the product again. The results, shown here, created a diverse and segmented playing field. There are clear leaders, a solid middle of the pack, and distinct laggers. To dig deeper and get the story on each vendor, I recommend reading the full report.
Performance Surprises
What is always fascinating about this process is collecting the customer-experience data and then comparing it to what we think we know about the vendors, or even to what the vendor portrays to the market. Some vendors lean heavily on their perceived market strengths (“the most comprehensive platform”), only to have the data show that they are actually liabilities from the provider perspective. And on the flip side, some vendors that are quieter and perhaps not as deeply engaged with KLAS are nailing it. For example, EyeMD EMR Healthcare Systems is a vendor that KLAS has not engaged with before and that did not offer much engagement on this report. But we knew that they were a market presence, so we measured them anyway. It is great to see that they ended up scoring at the top of the list along with Modernizing Medicine. It is also intriguing to see NextGen Healthcare score well overall in the report, better than some of the ophthalmology-specific vendors in the space. I am looking forward to another ophthalmology report in the next couple of years as this space evolves.
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