Understanding the EHR Marketplace - Your Software Acquisition Options

Tuesday, December 7, 2010

Noon to 12:45 p.m. CDT

Health care organizations have many options for how electronic health record (EHR) software can be delivered to their EHR users.  These options can be confusing and  software vendors may use unfamiliar acronyms, such as ASP and SaaS. You need to have some understanding of the marketplace and the various acquisition models available as your EHR selection process is beginning. They impact the price of the software and the total cost of ownership. An option you’ve seen promoted may look particularly appealing, but if you look beyond purchase cost the EHR product could be a more expensive option.  

Not only do the options have varying price tags, license and data ownership implications need to be understood.  The option you choose for your EHR software delivery could impact how available, redundant, and fault tolerant your system is. In addition to vendor software solutions, many large health systems are offering their EHR software to clinics and hospitals they do not own.  This “community offering” is an option worth understanding.

Learning Objectives

• Understand the cost, licensing, data ownership differences between running the EHR software yourself or going with an ASP or SaaS option
• Understand the community offering of EHR software from larger health systems
• Discuss the pros and cons of each option

Speaker

Greg Linden is currently the Chief Information Officer for Stratis Health.  He has been active in Minnesota’s eHealth Initiative, and is currently involved in helping communities move forward with electronic health information exchange.

Prior to coming to Stratis Health, Greg was in executive roles with United Health Group, Medtronic and Health Systems Integration.  He also worked at IBM for 13 years.

He holds a BSEE and an MBA from the University of Minnesota, and is a Certified Professional in both EHR and HIT (CPEHR and CPHIT).  He has spoken nationally on Health Information Exchange (HIE) and has been a regular guest lecturer on e-health at the Wharton School of Business.  He has also been a guest lecturer on IT Strategy and e-Health at the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota.