A discussion among healthcare folks often includes the topic of EHR vendors. Opinions aside, a new study shows that a hospital’s vendor choice may make a difference in more areas than one.
Published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, the study aimed to uncover the relationship between EHR vendor and Meaningful Use performance.
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Researchers developed a national sample based on 2015 data from ONC’s EHR Products Used for Meaningful Use Attestation public use file, 2016 data from the CMS EHR Incentive Program Eligible Hospitals public use file and the 2014 American Hospital Association Annual Survey.
They then examined each hospital’s implementation of a 2014 certified EHR system, as well as their performance based on six Stage 2 Meaningful Use criteria. These six factors were:
- Whether 60 percent of medication orders were entered using computerized provider order entry
- Whether 50 percent of patients had the ability to view, download and transmit their data
- Whether 5 percent of patients did view, download or transmit their data
- Whether medication reconciliation was performed for 50 percent of patients received from another provider
- Whether a summary of care was provided for 50 percent of patient transitions to another provider
- Whether a summary of care was electronically sent for 10 percent of patient transitions to another provider
Of the hospitals included in the survey, 27.4 percent utilized an Epic system. Cerner had 25.1 percent of the market share, followed by Meditech with 19.6 percent. McKesson made up 9.8 percent of the market share, Medhost had 7.6 percent, Healthland had 4.9 percent and Allscripts had 4.2 percent.
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The results?
The researchers concluded that Epic was associated with better hospital performance on five of the six criteria. The three hospitals that were in the top performance sector for all Meaningful Use criteria all used Epic.
Additionally, of the 17 hospitals that were in the top performance quartile for five factors, 15 used Epic. One used Meditech and one used a smaller EHR vendor.
Overall, EHR vendor choice accounted for between 7 and 34 percent of Meaningful Use performance variation.
According to the researchers, “choice of vendor explains a nontrivial proportion of hospital performance variation.” Simply put: EHR vendor choice does make a difference.
They suggested that hospitals shouldn’t only rely on the EHR certification process to ensure the capabilities of their systems. They also pointed out that policymakers should potentially find ways to bolster the certification program so as to minimize differences between vendors.
However, the study also noted that EHR vendor choice did not account for a huge variation in hospital performance, as there were a variety of other variables at play. “Therefore, our results also reveal that there is much more to achieving high levels of technology-enabled care than simply choosing the best EHR,” it notes.
Photo: sturti, Getty Images
