Beyond the CIS: Why are hospitals buying aggregation solutions?
Providers have yearned for comprehensive yet simple access to relevant patient and business information since the late 1960s.The EMR, EHR, and CDR all anticipate the aggregation of relevant information, but today’s disparate systems have yet to achieve the ultimate solution. Virtually all providers suffer some gap in delivering information in an effective, timely manner. The most pressing need is to have all relevant information at the doctors’ fingertips. Not far behind is the need for aggregated data to meet ever-changing critical reporting requirements. Providers report that none of their core clinical, financial, or BI solution vendors are built to deliver a comprehensive solution to satisfy today’s aggregation needs, thus the emergence of Microsoft Amalga, Carefx, dbMotion, Medicity, and PatientKeeper. Several others, such as MEDSEEK, have surfaced as well.
Providers are investing in aggregation solutions to solve any of five key problems: Frustrated physicians, downtime, accessing information across care venues, core measures and changing reporting requirements and getting information where and when it is needed. No solution has yet been shown to aggregate data in such a way that a physician or clinician can take immediate action from the information presented and enter an order, chart care, or enter a progress note into the aggregation solution. While it is important to note that the majority of the adopting organizations are still in the early stages of rolling out the solution to their users, most feel that their aggregation vendor has lived up to expectations thus far.
It is worth noting that most CIS vendors offer some form of physician view of aggregated clinical data, commonly termed a physician portal. For this study, KLAS specifically avoided core clinical information systems (CIS) vendors that provide some aggregation, such as Cerner, Eclipsys, Epic, GE, Meditech, McKesson, QuadraMed, and Siemens, because each vendor starts with their core CIS as the sponsor for the aggregation, and more importantly because many IDNs need to aggregate data from several of these vendors installed at some or all of their hospitals. Even McKesson’s broadly used Horizon Physician Portal typically starts by linking information from McKesson’s own products.
Top Five Discoveries:
1) Microsoft Amalga is chosen as a comprehensive data repository or warehouse that is expected to solve a lot of problems with easy concurrent access to all clinical data for clinicians, an effective way to manage and meet reporting requirements, and tools to analyze virtually any data in a business intelligence role. The Amalga solution is considered equally valuable regardless of the CIS solution in place.
2) Meditech clients chose an aggregation solution (Carefx, Medicity, MEDSEEK, and PatientKeeper) to satisfy physician demands for a better view of Meditech’s own data first, and then to extend the view to other data sources. Meditech has announced a consolidated new version that is expected to improve the physician user interface.
3) For Cerner, Eclipsys, Epic, GE, McKesson, and Siemens clients, the Carefx, Medicity, MEDSEEK, and PatientKeeper solutions simplified the physician access to third-party solutions without having to dump the data into the CIS solution. Unlike Meditech, the general physician user interface was considered reasonable to good on most of these CIS products, with the exception of Siemens MedSeries4.
4) Medicity is one of the longstanding suppliers that previously delivered a well-received aggregation solution but is moving to a new product, ProAccess. The ProAccess delivery has been delayed, and the interim delivery has been painful. Clients are optimistic that the problems will be solved in the current new release.
5) Other vendors are entering this space, the newest being dbMotion. With two U.S. clients, this Israeli firm appears to be the only one that offers two options: an Amalga-type option with a comprehensive repository, and a Carefx or MEDSEEK approach with a federated solution that brings the clinical data together when needed.
About KLAS
KLAS is a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors. KLAS’ mission is to improve delivery, by independently measuring vendor performance for the benefit of our healthcare provider partners, consultants, investors, and vendors. Working together with executives from over 4500 hospitals and over 2500 clinics, KLAS delivers timely reports, trends, and statistics, which provide a solid overview of vendor performance in the industry. KLAS measures performance of software, professional services, and medical equipment vendors. For more information, go to www.KLASresearch.com, email marketing@KLASresearch.com, or call 1-800-920-4109 to speak with a KLAS representative.
All KLAS data and reports are © 2009 KLAS Enterprises, LLC. All rights reserved.
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