I get quite a few emails from people that are interested in having me write something about their company or website. I always welcome those emails as long as they are not spam to hundreds of websites. I must get 100s of emails asking me to buy lists of doctors. Do they really think if they keep sending me spam emails that I’ll finally change my mind and buy one of their lists. Never. I already have thousands of doctors reading my blog. I don’t need some snail mail method of communicating with doctors. I digress, but my point is that if someone wants to contact me, then they better use something that doesn’t look like spam and looks like they took time to look at my website.
Once such email did just that. I could tell it was more than the average spam. How many other people include EMR and HIPAA in an email subject line and body. No spammers I know. They asked me to review a new website that is suppose to help with software selection. I’m not sure if people realize this or not, but asking me to blog about your website doesn’t mean I’m going to say nice things. In fact, you can properly assume that I’m going to be as critical as possible. Sure, I’ll point out great things too, but my readers expect to get it straight from me. So I’m going to comment on whatever I see. Let me guarantee you that EVERY website has good and bad points.
It turns out that the afore linked to website called Software Advice has a really simple 3 question form you fill out and then it gives you a list of EMR software vendors. Wouldn’t it be nice if it was all that simple? Turns out that EMR selection takes a little more than 3 questions and a click of the submit button. This medical software advice website is nothing more than a nice way for them to gather referral fees from EMR software vendors. I’ll give them credit for that. It’s quite lucrative to refer people to EMR vendors. However, I think that it would take a pretty uninformed person to use this well presented website to start demoing EMR software. Here’s just a few of the problems I see.
First, Medical Software Advice is missing a TON of EMR software vendors. In fact, they’re missing some of the very best EMR software companies out there. Let me help them. Here’s a list of EMR software companies. Once you have all of these companies in your database, then you might get close to something. Until then, stop showing us a short list of EMR software companies that really just seem like they are the ones that are going to pay you to refer people to them. I did say seem, because I don’t know. I guess it’s also possible that you just hope to one day have relationships with these vendors, but even more reason why you shouldn’t have such a limited list.
Second, increase the number of criteria that you are using to determine a proper EMR software company. Three criteria can barely even be called a filter. However, even if you add more criteria, there are a ton of subjective elements that will make it hard to filter down to a small set. I think it’s possible to do a pretty good job, but you’re not even close. I have about 0 confidence looking at your initial offering that you’ll be able to create a quality filter using serious criteria. For the industries sake, I hope I’m wrong.
Third, I love how each of your EMR software products has a couple big buttons that say Free Demo and Pricing. First, I can guarantee that any commercial EMR software product is going to have a Free Demo and Pricing available to you. In fact, many will bend over backwards to get your business. They’ll do multiple demos, site visits (if you’re large enough), and entire RFPs to get your business. Just contact them directly and you’ll get all the attention you want. So, if Software Advice wanted to offer a good service, they’d stop linking us to forms that we could fill out at the EMR vendors website and start giving us actual information on EMR pricing (already partially done) and links to actual online demos of EMR systems (like this one).
I’m sure I could go on about a lot of other things, but I think that’s enough for now. I appreciate people who want to help increase the number and success of EMR selection and implementation, but as their website stands now, it seems much more like a referral engine to me.
For those of you who can’t afford a skilled EMR consultant to help you wade through all the litany of EMR companies, I’d suggest using the EMR selection tools at EMR Consultant. They are certainly far from perfect, but they have a hundred times better product offering than the website I list above. They actually include EMR’s that don’t pay them for referrals. What a novel concept.
Sorry if this post is a little harsh, but it gets under my skin when people try to act like something they’re not.
Software Advice does not demo EMR software. They simply refer people to the listed vendors. It is up to the vendors to demo their own software.
You’re missing my point. My point is why not offer a great service to those interested in selecting an EMR by linking to EMR software companies demos as opposed to just referring them to the vendor. The answer of course is that then you don’t get the referral fee from the vendor for sending a customer their way.
Hi from New York And thanks for the web site. It was just the thing I had been looking for. It has helped me no end. Thanks again
My English not so good but thank for lovely site with information I looking for and need also.