Rating the Ratings

Part 7 – Physician Office EHRs

By Vince Ciotti & Elise AmesHIS Professionals, LLC

Need for Ratings and Comparisons• Our previous episodes reviewed KLAS, Black Book and Peer360, all of which review

primarily hospital systems. However there are dozens of other agencies that rate physician practice EHRs and practice management (PM) systems. This week we’ll review the leading physician EHR & PM rating services in depth.

• Sorting through the hundreds of physician practice system vendors can be time intensive and choosing the wrong product can have dire consequences – lost productivity, patient dissatisfaction, financial losses, etc., so these sites should provide a valuable resource to the busy provider or practice administrator.

• We test-drove five of the most popular sites: AmericanEHR, Capterra, EHR Compare, Software Advice, and Software Insider to see how helpful they would be to practices looking to sift through the myriad of offerings to select an EHR & PM.

Typical Physician Rater Characteristics• A very large number of products are covered – 785 systems

have been certified by the ONC for physician EHRs!• Most offer pay-for-leads to vendors (“follow the money”)• Many offer filtering tools to tailor choices to specific practice

needs, e.g. size, specialty, deployment, etc.• Plus comparison tools to evaluate various systems’ features,

price, etc., in side by side tables.• Additional selection and implementation resources for

providers (e.g. checklists, reports, and phone support).

Number of Systems ReviewedThe ambulatory EHR software marketplace is large and ONC’s “easy” Certification rules don’t seem to have helped consolidate it. The raters we reviewed all listed a very large number of products:

~ 350* 309 357 413 507

* Only ONC-ATCB certified products are listed

Number of Reviews• Sites varied widely in the number of reviews and ratings for each product listed – and all of the sites had some products listed with no (0) reviews:

*A minimum of 10 ratings is required to be listed in the “top 10” for each practice size and specialty

• As an example, searching each site for reviews of “EpicCare Ambulatory EHR” yielded the following numbers of reviews for the product on each site:

808 14 1 0 8

Products had between 0 and 808

reviews*

Products had between 0 and 48

9 reviews

Products had between 0 and 258

reviews

0Products had between 0 and 25

reviews

Products had between 0 and 42

reviews

Rating Criteria

Rated 1-5 for each category. A minimum of 10 ratings is required to be listed in the “top 10” for each practice size and specialty

Rated 1-10 for each category

None

Rated 1-10 for each category

Overall satisfaction Usability Prescribing Workflow Order Management Population

Management Support Experience Implementation

Experience Training Interfaces Purchase Experience

Search Result Filtering and Sorting

Available Filters

• Practice Size – - OR -

• Medical specialtyBut not both!?

• Specialty• Practice Size • Rating• Deployment Model• Platform (Windows,

Mac or Linux)

• Number of users (not practice size)

• Deployment model• Features

• Specialty• Setting (MD office,

hospital, LTC)• Deployment• keyword • User rating(Size not included)

• Setting • Specialty• # of MU

attestations • Features• Solutions available• Deployment

Available Sorts

None • # of reviews• Average rating• Price Range• Alphabetical by

product name

None • Featured products • Most recent• Last updated• User rating (both

overall and by specific criteria)

• # attesting customers

• # EPs attesting• # Hospitals

attesting• Average rating• Popularity• # Reviews

Comparison PointsCan compare 2 products side by side showing:• Company profile• MU attestation

data• ONC certification

transparency• Product profile• Features• Implementation• Training • Interoperability… and more

No ability to select products for side by side comparison

Can compare up to 4 products side by side showing:• Target market• Pricing• Product details

(features)• Training and

support

Can compare up to 15 products showing:• User ratings• Software

information• Technical

information• Features

Can compare up to 6 products showing:• Features• Customers• Technical

specifications• Company

information

“Shortlist” of EHR Products

Top 5 search results for an Neurology practice sorted by overall satisfaction

rating (no sort available)

1. PracticeFusion2. EpicCare3. PrimeSuite4. eClinicalWorks5. Allscripts

Professional

Top 5 search results for Neurology office setting, cloud based

deployment, sorted by top rated

1. Picasso by Doc-tor.com

2. RxNT3. Azalea Health4. Total MD5. Medworx

Evolution

Top 5 for search results for cloud-

based EHR with 10-49 users (no sort

available)

1. athenaClinicals2. iSalus EHR3. dr Chrono4. NueMD5. Advanced MD

Top 5 search results for Neurology, office setting, cloud based deployment, sorted

by top rated

1. PracticeFusion2. GE Centricity3. AdvancedMD4. ALTA Point5. eClinicalWorks

Top 5 search results for Neurology office setting, cloud –based deployment and > 500 attesting users, sorted by top rated.

1. Meditouch2. Practice Fusion3. Aprima4. McKesson

Practice Partner5. Allscripts

Professional

To derive something of an apples-to-apples comparison of these sites, we inquired as a five provider private neurology practice seeking a cloud-based EHR – a fairly typical user of physician system rating sites. Below are the top 5 search results for EHRs for our hypothetical practice:

HIS Pros’ Report Card

American EHR Software Advice

Capterra EHR Compare Software Insider

Number of reviews

Reviews verified by rater --- --- ---Individual reviews published ---Usefulness of comparison tools ---Usefulness of search filters and sorting

Helpfulness of additional resources ---

BOTTOM LINE – our totally subjective ranking

• How we rate each of these MD raters based on our criteria:

The Bottom Line• After our in-depth review of these 5 leading physician system rating

sites, the one message that comes through loud and clear is: - Don’t base your search solely on any of these reviews!

• Our hypothetical 5-provider Neurology practice would have picked four different vendors based on which one of these raters they believed… • Their most useful content is contained the user reviews with narrative

comment. Such free text narratives contain advice from actual system users to buyers, e.g. “Don’t make the same mistake I made and…” • There are so many other things a practice should do as part of a search,

each of which could take a full episode to cover in depth:- Scored demos, client reference calls, reviewing user manuals, site visits, TCO

price comparisons, contract terms, interviewing implementation teams, etc.

Next Week• We’ll suggest ways that a hospital or practice can conduct their own

survey, simply and cheaply, and by the most important people:- The end users who will be stuck with the system after go-live!

• We’ll show an easy way to customize the survey to include:- Your size facilities, your location, your product, your apps…

- Based on over 160 system selections we’ve performed over the years:- For hospitals, non-acute care facilities, & physician practices.

• For compliments on this episode, please contact Elise Ames at:• eames@hispros.com, 413.329.6925

• For complaints about anything, please contact Vince Ciotti at:• vciotti@hispros.com, 505.466.4958