OREM, UT – Hospitals are looking to document management and imaging (DMI) solutions to help them transition from paper records to electronic ones, according to a new report from KLAS.

In a market dominated by best-of-breed vendors, MedPlus and Hyland are the clear leaders in DMI, the report concludes.

"Both Hyland and MedPlus provide successful solutions for almost any size organization," said Steve Van Wagenen, a KLAS research director and author of the DMI study. "And their customer satisfaction scores remain strong regardless of the organization's EMR."

The KLAS report, "Enterprise DMI: Finding the Right Stepping Stone to Full EMR," evaluates the DMI solutions of 14 vendors, based on feedback from customers. While the study acknowledges that DMI – which provides scanning, indexing and archiving of paper records – is becoming less critical in advanced organizations, many hospitals are still using it to make the jump from paper to a full EMR.

Unlike many clinical software markets, DMI is a segment that is dominated by best-of-breed vendors and not the traditional large EMR companies. Among the large clinical vendors, only McKesson's DMI solution was rated above average by providers, although Siemens' solution was praised for strong functionality and workflow features. Other enterprise vendors, such as Cerner, Eclipsys and MEDITECH, have been criticized for offering DMI solutions that have functional deficiencies and inconsistent support.

Among the DMI vendor solutions highlighted in the KLAS report, MedPlus' ChartMaxx earned the highest KLAS performance score (88.2 out of 100), followed by Hyland Software's OnBase (86.8) and Perceptive Software's ImageNow (83.3).

The DMI market segment features some of the highest satisfaction scores of any of the categories KLAS tracks. In the company's "2008 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Professional Services" report, DMI was the second highest-rated market segment for customer satisfaction, behind only enterprise scheduling software.

Vendors highlighted in the KLAS report include 3M, Alpha Systems, BlueWare, Cerner, CGI, DB Technology, McKesson, MEDITECH, QuadraMed, Siemens and Streamline Health.