"The vision for meaningful use is, I think, fantastic," said Adam Gale, president of research firm KLAS Enterprises. "But beyond the vision for meaningful use is some reality," added Gale, who spoke Sunday in Atlanta at a physician IT symposium before the start of the annual HIMSS conference.
The apparent reality is that so many physicians are unprepared to meet the proposed standards when the federal IT incentive program starts in January 2011. But there is plenty of interest in clinical IT for physician offices. Visitors to the KLAS website are looking for information on ambulatory EMRs almost three-to-one compared to all other subjects combined, according to KLAS Director of Ambulatory Research Mark Wagner. And they are looking for data on the largest ambulatory EMR vendors: Allscripts, eClinicalWorks, NextGen Healthcare Information Systems and Greenway Medical Systems, though the fifth-most-popular search is for "other," a prospect Wagner calls "scary" because it suggests a cluttered marketplace.
Wagner also cautioned would-be buyers about vendors that promise fast implementation. "Implementation in two weeks is not realistic," he said. It likely takes a minimum of six weeks to get an ambulatory EMR up and running, even for those who choose the software-as-a-service model. Plus, Wagner said, there is no proven ambulatory SaaS product from a name-brand company on the market yet, though vendors are "scrambling" to develop one.