Large Hospitals praise upgraded EHR system analytics and intelligent interoperability, but lose favor in vendor cost run-ups and disruptions, Black Book reports

Black Book Market Research, well known globally for accurate, impartial customer satisfaction surveys in the managed services and software industries, conducted a sweeping five month user poll to determine the highest ranked inpatient electronic health and medical record vendors for 2014. As part of a major research focus on the current replacement market, Black Book announced those vendors with the highest scores in recent client experience in the areas of certification-required EHR functionalities, administrative & documentation functionalities, clinical workflow functionalities, add-on modules, accountable care data requirements, and connectivity capabilities.

Over 1,900 EHR users in hospitals over 300 beds were surveyed by Black Book. The 2014 top ranked EHR inpatient vendor for academic teaching hospitals and major medical centers 300 and more beds is Allscripts. Allscripts displaces Epic Systems, which had maintained the top client bestowed honors for the past three consecutive years in the 300+ bed hospital category.

Allscripts edged slightly ahead, scoring best in seven of the eighteen key performance indicators over all other competitors including Cerner, McKesson, Quadramed, Meditech, NextGen, Optum, GE Healthcare and eleven other nominated EHRs.

163 hospitals over 300 beds submitted ballots, in the survey conducted from September 2013 to January 2014, which also included teaching facilities with faculty practices.

“Top scoring EHR vendors that are attracting the available market share are looking for patient engagement tools, clinical decision support, quality measurement solutions, mobile capabilities, intelligent interoperability, and financial analytics as part of their EHR compendium," said Doug Brown, managing partner of Black Book. "There are growth opportunities for vendors actually delivering those robust product strategies to the market."

Key findings include 32% of large hospitals with implemented EHRs are reevaluating their vendor's service and products, including the progress of systems not yet fully installed. 19% indicate the reevaluation will likely lead to a replacement system.

"This large hospital market segment has progressed beyond meaningful use driving purchasing decisions but is aggravated with the extraordinary delays, cost run-ups, extended implementations and glitches interrupting operations from first-choice EHRs," said Brown.

92% of large hospital IT respondents indicated that vendors that demonstrate population health competencies and data connectivity with other providers will be on their EHR selection short lists in the coming twelve months.

Black Book polled the 2014 vendor satisfaction of over 22,000 current EHR users, ambulatory and inpatient, healthcare records professionals, physician practice administrators, and hospital information technology managers Additionally, 11,000 crowdsourced study participants that have not yet fully implemented or use electronic health records provided insight on budgeting, adoption plans, factors driving EHR decisions and vendor awareness.

Black Book provides EHR users, media, investors, analysts, quality minded vendors, and prospective software system buyers, pharmaceutical manufacturers, and other interested sectors of the clinical technology industry with comprehensive comparison data of the industry's top respected and competitively performing technology vendors. Black Book Rankings employs in depth key performance indicators targeted at ensuring high product and service performance through comparing vendors, entirely from the customer experience.

For methodology, auditing, resources, comprehensive research and ranking data, as well as a report summary, visit http://www.blackbookrankings.com