Top EHR Software Vendors of 2024 Comparison
CareCloud, Allscripts, Epic, eClinicalWorks, Cerner, NextGen, athenahealth, GE Centricity
TOP EHR Vendors List & Comparison
CARECLOUD
CareCloud provides award-winning Electronic Health Record (EHR), Practice Management, Revenue Cycle Management (RCM), and Patient Experience Management software. KLAS has rated CareCloud as a leading provider of cloud-based revenue cycle management services for ambulatory care practices.
CERNER
Cerner is currently the leading supplier of Health IT solutions and are the largest provider of systems for inpatient care. They support 55+ specialties along with the clinical, financial and operational needs of medium and large organizations.
EPIC
Epic focuses on large medical groups and inpatient settings. KLAS has ranked Epic’s EHR as the best in KLAS for 5 years in the largest segment. They are employee-owned and developer-led with a software that’s easy to use and implement into your organization. Epic’s software is mainly used in large health systems, community hospitals and academic medical centers.
ATHENAHEALTH
Athenahealth offers a cloud-based revenue cycle solution geared towards large, multi-physician groups and hospitals. They offer a practice management and EHR solution under the RCM offering. As a more recent entrant, athenahealth offers a more modern user interface and some cloud-based capabilities like access from any browser.
GE Centricity
GE Centricity is one of the many brands underneath GE Healthcare, which was sold to the private equity group Veritas Capital in April 2018. Historically, GE Centricity used to focus on hospitals and large medical groups, but they phased out GE Enterprise in favor of supporting smaller practices.
eClinicalWorks
eClinicalWorks is a a privately held company which offers EHR solutions. They have more than 130,000 doctors and nurse practitioners, and 850,000 medical professionals. They have 5,000 employees and in 2016, a revenue of $440 million. eClinicalWorks specializes in electronic health records (EHR), practice management software, patient engagement, ACOs & PCMH tools, care coordination, and population health management.
NextGen
NextGen powers over 155,000 physicians through their EHR software. They are a wholly owned subsidiary of Quality Systems, Inc. NextGen tailors their software to the needs of ambulatory practices and holds a stronger position with small to medium practices. Their offering is primarily client-server with a wealth of clinical content for some specialties.
Allscripts
Allscripts is a publicly traded American company that primarily focuses on medium to small physician practices. They are the original open, connected health platform with 7,000+ employees. Their layout is designed to glance once and receive as much information as possible. They provide EHR software to physician practices, hospitals, and other healthcare provider.
How to Compare EHR Vendors
According to a study conducted by Grand View Research, “the global Electronic Health Records (EHR) market size was estimated at $20.55 billion in 2016.” This number is only increasing as more medical practices move towards EHR systems. This shift has been due largely in part to Meaningful Use measures but also for greater healthcare accountability, reporting, and interoperability. Selecting an electronic health record provider can be a daunting task. We’ve included an outline as well as questions to ask prospective vendors to help streamline the vendor selection process.
Electronic Health Record (EHR) Vendor Assessment
A vendor assessment is a critical step when vetting potential EHR vendors. This process consists of collecting information on your top vendors and narrowing the field based on those that best match your selection criteria.
Conducting an EHR Vendor Assessment
- Outline your organization’s SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic, and Time Bound)
- Document your current processes and workflows. Involve all critical stakeholders in this process
- Identify your needs that the EHR software needs to solve
- List all mandatory integrations the EHR software must provide
- Provide the vendor questions below to all prospective vendors that you’ve identified in addition to any additional questions you may have
- Narrow the field of vendors based on their ability to meet your needs
- (Optional) Issue a Request for Proposal (RFP) to all of the vendors on your “short-list”
- Complete an in-depth vendor comparison based on the demos, documentation, and collateral that you’ve received
- Request references from the final vendors in the selection process. Speak with these vendors and schedule site visits
- Make your final decision
Questions to Ask EHR Vendors
- What are the strengths and weakness of your EHR?
- How do you compare to vendor x?
- What privacy/security measures does your EHR take to protect my practice/patients?
- Is your EHR Meaningful Use certified?
- Is your EHR cloud or server based?
- How often are new features released?
- Do we have to pay for the new feature or are they included?
- Is your EHR HIPAA compliant?
- What integrations do you have available?
- Does your EHR assist with MIPS reporting?
- How much does the software cost?
- What are the typical contract lengths?
- Are there implementation fees?
- Do you charge for upgrades?
- In there any functionality that is not covered by the general pricing?
- How long will the transition take?
- What is the transition process?
- Should we choose to move on from your software, do we own data?
- What are you able to migrate from my existing EHR software?
- What aren’t you able to migrate from my existing EHR software?
- Are there fees associated with data migration? If so, what are they?
- What training will you provide the office staff?
- Do you train on-site or remotely?
- Would we have a dedicated support representative?
- How are support requests handled?
- Do you provide unlimited support?
- Are there any fees associated with support?
