Community HIS 2016
Market Energy Is Shifting

1. EPIC AND CERNER HERE TO STAY; MEDHOST AND MCKESSON STRUGGLE

Epic and Cerner are fully entrenched in the community hospital space, and providers have embraced both vendors’ solutions for this market. Cerner is highly adept at hosting, and there is customer optimism around Cerner’s vision for population health. Epic added three times more community hospitals in 2014 than their nearest competitor. Epic demonstrates strong clinician usability, and interoperability (with other Epic organizations) is unparalleled elsewhere in the industry.

Stability and reliability lead MEDITECH clients to high confidence regarding their vendor’s future viability. However, customers expect development to accelerate, and many see MEDITECH as being behind the curve to Epic and Cerner.

MEDHOST and McKesson clients express the most pessimism for their vendor’s future in the community HIS market. Paragon clients say functionality and development problems persist and that McKesson has not kept promises. Many MEDHOST customers question the value of the vendor’s newest development efforts and dislike associated cloud licensing fees.

The future of Evident’s client base seems unclear. Research for this KLAS study preceded the Healthland acquisition announcement, but early customer observations suggest that Centriq customers will ultimately be folded into the Evident product suite. This news baffles many customers, as some feel Centriq holds more potential and has better architecture than the legacy CPSI technology.

2. WHO IS BEST FOR MY SIZE?

MEDITECH has some of the highest scores among organizations with over 100 beds. While losing market share, MEDITECH is seen by customers as becoming more forward thinking. Several express optimism in 6.1.

Although Evident is tailored to critical access hospitals (where the vendor has the highest mindshare), they also score well in larger organizations. Some optimism exists for Evident’s efforts to modernize outdated technology.

While not well indicated in this study sample, Epic Community Connect and Cerner CommunityWorks are being implemented in community hospitals of all sizes. McKesson Paragon and MEDHOST seem to fit best in mid-tier facilities. Healthland, athenahealth, and Prognosis exist mainly in the smallest hospitals and don’t scale well to mid-tier facilities.