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This study (1) introduces the healthcare operations command center ecosystem—a framework for the many capabilities and services that can be deployed under the command center umbrella, including how vendors’ stated offerings match up to that framework and providers’ needs, and (2) shares critical insights and best practices from providers and vendors regarding what it takes to successfully implement and optimize a command center. For some areas detailed in this report, KLAS already measures vendor performance, and links to that content are provided where applicable. However, note that information about vendors in this report is based mainly on vendor-reported information. Future research will further validate capabilities and dive deeper into vendor performance.

With budget and resource constraints that necessitate strategic investment, it is imperative that small community hospitals (1–200 beds) understand how to drive success with the technologies already in their tool belt, especially their EMR. While EMR vendors are accountable for the quality of their technology and support, satisfaction with the EMR is also strongly influenced by factors within each organization’s control, including setting proper expectations, proactively addressing potential challenges, and empowering internal resources to overcome relationship and product gaps. What are the top EMR challenges faced by small hospitals, and what best practices can help them achieve satisfaction?

Note: This report includes only primary, go-forward solutions. Excluded are supported yet not primary solutions such as athenahealth athenaClinicals for Hospitals and Health Systems, Allscripts Paragon, CPSI Centriq Clinicals (Healthland), and legacy MEDITECH solutions.

Insights from CHIME’s 2019 “HealthCare’s Most Wired” data, KLAS Population Health Management Cornerstone Summit, and KLAS Decision Insights

Representing the feedback of 255 healthcare professionals from 210 different provider organizations, this report indexes the healthcare IT (HCIT) vendors and market segments that are top of mind for healthcare organizations today. As would be expected, the worldwide pandemic has generated significant interest in telehealth, patient engagement, and other remote care solutions. In total, this report includes more than 100 emerging vendors in these and other high-interest markets.

Annually, KLAS conducts thousands of interviews with provider organizations to better understand their experience with their HCIT vendors. However, not all vendors are measured by KLAS today—some emerging vendors have very small customer bases, and others work in market segments outside KLAS’ current focus. To gain insights into vendors we might not currently measure, KLAS asks interviewed organizations to share the most innovative or potentially disruptive HIT vendor they have seen or heard about recently. The companies and market segments that have surfaced during these interviews are shared in this report; in the future, KLAS will monitor the companies that continue to pique market interest and gain mindshare among healthcare organizations.

Note: The data in this report was collected January 2020–June 2020.

• Project Size & Complexity: Which vendors have completed projects similar to yours in terms of the number of hospitals/clinics involved, the number/type of applications being archived, etc.?
• Extraction & Implementation: Late projects extend the amount of time legacy systems must be maintained and paid for. Which vendors set proper expectations and consistently hit timelines?
• Customer Satisfaction: What does customer satisfaction with system functionality and ongoing support look like post-implementation?

1. Are current customers satisfied (and does the vendor deliver consistently regardless of client volume)?
2. Can the vendor scale to meet the complex needs of large-volume organizations?
3. What is the vendor’s EI strategy and how well can they provide EI guidance?

As healthcare organizations have battled on the frontlines to keep the COVID-19 pandemic in check, they have turned to their HIT services and technology vendors for help, seeking expertise and resources, innovative solutions, and flexibility in contracting, deployment, and payment. Many HIT vendors have answered the call and are doing their best to meet customer needs. Based on interviews with 102 HIT technology vendors and services firms, this report seeks to share learnings and insights that vendors have gleaned thus far as well as common challenges they have encountered.

Our hope is that highlighting these insights will help vendors continue their work of helping healthcare organizations achieve both short-term and long-term success.

Note: All vendors who participated in the research will receive a deeper dive into these insights.

To support the healthcare community in this time of crisis, KLAS recently published a solutions guide highlighting various technologies and services healthcare organizations can use in the fight against COVID-19. Approximately 200 HIT companies and services firms are represented in the guide. While vendors have taken a positive step in making these solutions available, an organization’s success with any given offering will be determined in no small part by the vendor’s ability to deliver. KLAS feels our broad perspective on customer experience can help both healthcare organizations and vendors be successful in tackling COVID-19.

To that end, this white paper examines three areas in which vendor delivery, if not done correctly, can potentially damage customer relationships and prevent customers from achieving long-term success. These red flags are based on customer feedback about how vendors are responding to the current crisis and on general best practices KLAS has identified in over 20 years of customer experience research.

Our hope is that highlighting potential pitfalls and best practices will help vendors, who have already moved mountains to help the industry, continue their work of helping healthcare organizations achieve short-term and long-term success.

Note: All current KLAS members will receive a deeper dive into these insights during their yearly executive session.

To our provider friends:

You need solutions and you need them fast. We have asked the vendor community to share what they are doing/can do to help your organizations in this crisis. Given the short time frame, KLAS has not validated any of these claims.

We will not waste time with a long introduction—we just hope this helps you. Good luck in the weeks ahead. Reach out to your KLAS representative if we can help you. Thank you for bearing the weight of this crisis. We deeply appreciate your sacrifices.

—The KLAS Team

A Look at Strategies Employed by the Nation’s Most Advanced Ambulatory Healthcare Organizations

Each year, acute and ambulatory care organizations from around the world take part in CHIME’s “Healthcare’s Most Wired” program, whose goal is to improve healthcare by encouraging the optimal use of information technology. These organizations are surveyed regarding their current adoption levels and strategies across many HIT areas. Based on the responses of 137 advanced ambulatory organizations in the US, this report delves into how organizations are using technology to battle opioid use disorder (OUD).

KLAS conducts thousands of annual interviews with provider organizations to better understand their experience with their healthcare IT vendors. However, not all vendors are measured by KLAS today—some emerging vendors have very small customer bases, and others work in market segments outside KLAS’ current focus. This report also includes some established companies newly disrupting the healthcare market (e.g., Amazon, Google, Salesforce). To gain insights on emerging companies in healthcare IT, KLAS asks interviewed organizations to share the most innovative or potentially disruptive HIT vendor they have seen or heard about recently. During the latter half of 2019, 341 healthcare professionals from 299 different provider organizations responded to this question.

This report shares the top-of-mind companies and market segments that surfaced from these interviews; in the future, KLAS will monitor those companies that continue to pique market interest and gain mindshare among healthcare organizations.

Note: The data in this report was collected in the latter half of 2019 (from July 2019–Dec 2019).

Working toward these answers, KLAS gathered together several dozen provider, payer, healthcare technology and other industry experts and asked them these difficult questions, searched for instances of great partnership and identified possible opportunities to catalyze greater trust and alignment.

Artificial intelligence (AI) has been a buzzword in healthcare for several years, but how real is it? Are healthcare organizations adopting AI? How are they using it, and what outcomes are they seeing? Based on interviews with 57 trailblazing healthcare organizations, this AI primer provides insights on organizations’ needed AI capabilities, common challenges, and best-practice advice. Across the technology and healthcare industries, definitions of AI vary widely; KLAS’ working definition of AI was created for use in research regarding customer satisfaction with AI technology and was formed based on advice from many leading health systems and solution partners (called “vendors” throughout).

For insights on vendor performance and customer outcomes, see the full KLAS report: “Healthcare AI 2019: Actualizing the Potential of AI.”

Given the intense nature of an EMR implementation, it is natural that most projects will experience at least a few unexpected hurdles. In fact, about 30% of healthcare organizations outside the US report going over budget and 40% report vendor-missed timelines. However, feedback from recent implementations^† shows that some vendors are much more likely to help their clients stay on budget, on time, and within scope. Which vendors make the list?

† Data for this report was collected from organizations outside the US who contracted for an EMR between January 2016 and August 2018 and who are either currently implementing their solution or have already done so. Feedback was also collected from some organizations who have an ongoing implementation that started prior to January 2016.

While utilization management and care management solutions have been around for decades, today health plans are looking for modern technology solutions to help them manage multiple business lines and adapt to changing requirements for value-based care. While innovation overall in payer HIT is not abundant, KLAS has seen an increase in decision energy mostly from relatively or completely new vendors receiving stronger consideration than existing or established vendors.

KLAS defines payer care management solutions as systems comprising functionality in areas like utilization management, case management, disease management, and care coordination. 40 unique payer organizations shared insights with KLAS about their purchasing decision process, including which vendors they considered, selected, and decided to replace. As validated in this research, future-state goals (noted below) are becoming increasingly important in these decisions.

A seamless patient record across the healthcare organization has become a universal expectation. Having integrated acute care and ambulatory records is the most-often-cited reason for a hospital of any size to look at a new EMR system. EMR systems without proven integration are rarely considered and even more rarely selected. Buyers know what is possible from an EMR, and most are now unwilling to settle for less.

Cerner, Epic, and MEDITECH are most likely to be considered for large hospitals (500+ beds) and midsize hospitals (201–500 beds). The competition for hospitals with fewer than 200 beds is much more crowded, with MEDITECH Expanse, athenahealth, Allscripts (both Sunrise™ and Paragon), CPSI, eClinicalWorks, and MEDHOST battling alongside Cerner CommunityWorks and Epic Community Connect.

In most ways, US and non-US health systems have similar experiences with their EHRs. For both groups, system reliability and internal integration are the two aspects of the EHR generating most satisfaction. The areas where more significant differences appear are efficiency (non-US health systems are more satisfied by 12 percentage points) and external integration (US health systems are more satisfied by 9 percentage points).

In March of 2019, 56 leaders from provider organizations with advanced, established precision medicine programs and 20 vendor leaders met in Chicago to learn from each other and discuss how other healthcare organizations could begin to set up and create their own precision medicine programs.

The goal of the summit was to advance healthcare and improve outcomes by encouraging the increased adoption of precision medicine technologies and disseminating the knowledge and learnings held and experienced by the organizations in attendance.

• What is a command center, and what technology/departments are typically involved?

• What specific outcomes are being achieved?

• How do the vendors differ in their approach to command centers and in their contributions to customer success?

• What best practices would organizations with live command centers recommend to their peers?

To answer these questions, KLAS asked command center vendors to point us toward their most innovative and forward-thinking customers. We then randomly interviewed three or four customers for each (24 organizations in total) to gather insights into this underutilized operational approach.