Replacement EHR Trend


I’m a huge numbers guy even if numbers can lie if you’re not careful. However, what I love most is the change in numbers which often can tell an important story of trends. One trend we knew was coming is the replacement EHR trend, so I was quite interested when I saw the tweet above that said that 31% of EHR buyers are purchasing a replacement EHR. That’s a huge number and up from the previous 10% replacement EHRs in 2010.

The report linked above also has a number of other interesting EHR numbers. 30% of respondents reported that their practice would replace their current practice management or EHR solution if their current vendor was purchased by another vendor. Considering we’re about to enter an unprecedented stage of EHR consolidation, this should be quite unsettling to any company looking to acquire an EHR vendor.

I was also fascinated to see that 60 percent of hospital-owned groups reported purchasing their current practice management solution before 2006. Is the age of some of these systems going to lead to many of them being replaced? You’d think that 7 years isn’t that long for a system, but in the tech world it’s not young either. With that said, I wonder what EHR or PM systems have been created in the past 3-5 years. I can’t think of many. If we use meaningful use as a point of demarcation, I can’t think of any EHR or PMs that came after meaningful use. I wonder if we’ll see this change.

One thing I’m certain of is that we’re going to get really good at replacing EHR software. Hopefully EHR vendors will embrace the liquidity of data for those who choose to switch EHR, but I’m not too hopeful on this.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

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