Indicators are that sales of ambulatory electronic health records are sizzling, driven mostly by the prospect of federal incentives for the adoption and meaningful use of the technology.
Along with that has come more involvement by physicians in the technology piece of their practice, says Jon Karl, director of sales for CDW Healthcare.
“The practices are buying into the idea and understanding that they need a full-functioning solution or a complete IT solution for their practice,” Karl said.
Docs are realizing also that thy need to have support pre-deployment, post-deployment and then ongoing from an IT provider or VAR – a value added reseller like CDW. They are moving from outsourced IT support or the reactive IT support to managing their IT solution collectively as opposed to piecemeal, he said.
“They’re understanding that they need to be more involved and more specific with their solution – that it’s not enough to do just the minimum specification – dump in an EMR and PM,” Karl said. The docs are becoming more involved because when they see it working well, they know when they get involved it will have a positive impact on everyday workflow.”
Not only are physicians becoming more involved, but they know what they want. The solutions they’re seeking needs to be specific to their environment, Karl said.
“It’s not a one size fits all. Just like in a hospital environment where the IT solution is built specifically for that hospital. It might have similarities. It’s still unique. In a physician practice, even if it’s a small environment, you still need a unique solution for the way you provide care and for the way your practice is built – be it new, be it 30 years old.” He said.
“The term ‘doc in a box’ was used by some people,” said Karl. “That’s not really what the market needs or wants. What they want is the one-on-one attention. They want an in-depth level of support from someone who understands their environment from a health perspective, from a workflow perspective and from an IT perspective. And that’s tough to piece together.”
