Ambulatory Surgery Center EMR 2021
High Clinical Adoption Driving Value

HST Pathways and Surgical Information Systems (SIS) See Broadest Adoption, Very High Usability

The EMRs from HST Pathways and Surgical Information Systems (SIS) are used for a significantly higher number of surgical specialties than other measured vendors, and across this breadth, both vendors have a very high percentage of satisfied or very satisfied respondents (86% for HST, 89% for SIS). Organizations using HST report the EMR’s flexibility and customizability allow them to create specialty-specific workflows, leading to strong ease of use. SIS customers say the EMR is straightforward, and building templates is (as one customer put it) a “self-explanatory experience.” Both vendors’ customer bases say that new users quickly acclimate to the EMR and that the code/build quality is very high—resulting in few system frustrations. For ease of use, respondents give HST and SIS near-perfect scores, and customers are quick to attribute their success with the EMRs to their usability.

HST, SIS & Provation Customers Achieve Clear Clinical Outcomes with the EMR

Misses in Anesthesia Documentation Are the Biggest Opportunity for Improvement

HST and SIS customers mention issues with built-in anesthesia documentation as their biggest gap, and one respondent apiece for Modernizing Medicine and Provation also cite this miss. While SIS has released an anesthesia module, many customers have not yet adopted it and are still completing anesthesia documentation on paper. Several HST respondents also report challenges with the anesthesia integration when the equipment is not HL7 compliant. Two of the seven interviewed Provation clients lack the integration needed for EKG data to flow directly from the machines to the EMR; these respondents have to scan EKG printouts into the EMR and attach them to patient charts. Provation has recently acquired iProcedures with the intent to better address anesthesia gaps. Despite these functionality misses, nearly all interviewed organizations, regardless of vendor, feel their EMR provides almost all capabilities they need to effectively document.

Provation Excels in GI; Satisfaction with Modernizing Medicine EMR Hampered by Pricing Structure

Functionality the Leading Factor in ASC Solution Purchases

Half of interviewed organizations cite ASC-specific workflows and functionality as the main reason they chose their vendor. As detailed above, HST and SIS receive praise for flexible, easy-to-use EMR functionality. Customers on the latest Provation version are highly satisfied with the functionality; users on older versions report significantly more frustration. Customers of Modernizing Medicine or NextGen Healthcare feel their EMRs mostly meet functionality needs and expectations; both sets of clients express some frustration with the amount of manual IT work required to customize their EMR.

A Note on NextGen Healthcare in Ophthalmology: More IT Resources Needed to Optimize ASC Functionality

Across Vendors, Clinical Documentation Is Robust and Well Adopted

About This Report

The data in this report comes from two sources: (1) KLAS’ standard quantitative evaluation for healthcare software, and (2) a supplemental evaluation tailored specifically for ambulatory surgery centers. Interviews were conducted over the last 12 months.

KLAS’ standard quantitative evaluation is composed of 16 numeric ratings questions and 4 yes/no questions, all weighted equally. Combined, the ratings for these questions make up the overall performance score, which is measured on a 100-point scale. The questions are organized into six customer experience pillars—culture, loyalty, operations, product, relationship, and value.

To supplement the customer satisfaction data gathered with the standard evaluation, KLAS also created a supplemental evaluation to delve deeper into several questions specific to ambulatory surgery centers. This evaluation asked respondents (1) what percentage of their clinical documentation is completed in the EMR, (2) why they chose their current vendor, (3) how well the EMR helps drive positive clinical outcomes, and (4) what percentage of physicians have adopted the EMR for clinical documentation.

Sample Sizes

Sample sizes displayed throughout this report (e.g., n=16) represent the total number of unique customer organizations interviewed for a given vendor or solution. However, it should be noted that to allow for the representation of differing perspectives within any one customer organization, samples may include surveys from different individuals at the same organization. Ratings from these individuals are aggregated in order to prevent any one organization’s feedback from disproportionately impacting a solution’s score. The table to the right shows the total number of unique organizations interviewed for each vendor or solution as well as the total number of individual respondents.

It should be noted that some respondents choose not to answer particular questions, meaning the sample size for any given vendor or solution can change from question to question. When the number of unique organization responses for a particular question is less than 15, the score for that question is marked with an asterisk (*) or otherwise designated as “limited data.” If the sample size is less than 6, no score is shown. Note that when a vendor has a low number of reporting sites, the possibility exists for KLAS scores to change significantly as new surveys are collected.