KLAS: HIE consulting firms pleasing providers

Providers are happy with the third-party health information exchange (HIE) consulting firms they do business with. Nearly all provider respondents to a recently published KLAS survey said they were highly satisfied with their HIE consulting firm and two-thirds said their firm met or exceeded expectations.

“In an emerging market where expertise is scarce, providers saw value in using consultants,” Erik Westerlind wrote in the June report. “Ninety-six percent of providers reported benefits from engaging third-party firms.”

Two HIE consulting firms stood out among the rest: Impact Advisors for being the only full rated vendor providing HIE advisory and technical services and CSC for being the only option providing HIE hosting and managed services.

In certain specialty areas, other HIE consulting firms that stood out included:

• Accenture, Norwalk, Xerox and Harris as system integrators;
• Deloitte, Impact, Peer and PwC for strategy and assessment services;
• Vitalize, maxIT and CTG for staff augmentation; and 
• Orchestrate and J2 for technical services. 

Most providers chose HIE consulting firms based on their existing relationships with those firms, according to the survey results, but the report advises against that, suggesting instead that providers consider their needs to match them with a consulting firm’s capabilities.