I must admit that one person that I was very excited to meet at HIMSS was Evan Steele, the CEO of SRSsoft. Evan and I had interacted a number of times online. Plus, I love an EMR vendor CEO that has a blog. Not just any blog, but one that broadens the discussion about EMR software and provides an alternate view to EMR adoption.
Turns out that many people at HIMSS don’t like the hybrid EMR style of software that Evan Steele and SRSsoft are trying to create. There is certainly an argument to be made against it, but personally I like to see people approaching the challenge of clinical documentation in different ways. I also love how SRSsoft focuses so much effort and energy on the physician. If more EMR vendors had this focused, we’d have much better EMR software.
Now this kind of sounds like a sales pitch for SRSsoft. It’s not. SRSsoft has its flaws and weakness like every other EMR software out there. I do think that they’ve done a good job broadening the discussion so I knew for sure that I had to talk with Evan Steele on video. In this video, he makes a really interesting point about CCHIT certification, now HHS certification, the new ICD 10, etc all working to make many EMR vendor’s software clunky (my word, not his).
Enough talk, check out my interview with Evan Steele, CEO of SRSsoft.
I should also mention that Evan and I were on a Meet the Bloggers panel together. That was a good time too.
We had a chance to talk to Evan for a while after the Meet the Bloggers session @ HIMSS10 in Atlanta. We have plenty of mutual customers (almost all of them Ortho Physician Practices) and had a great time sharing our thoughts about his product. While SRS is definitely a hybrid EMR when compared to the “mainstream”, we have quite a few large Ortho practices currently using SRS or planning their migrations to it that are not looking at any other products. 2 of our largest customers actually implemented “traditional EMRs” (I don’t like that term) and ending up going with SRS within 12 months due to the drop in productivity.
While it appears to be out there on its own in some regards, all I can say from personal knowledge, is that physicians seem to love the ease of use. And as he points out in the video, the productivity savings an Ortho doc can retain can make is more rewarding than any of the current stimulus offers.
Also, we love interfacing with SRS because it is far easier than with other EMRs. Their implementation teams are great and their support team as well. I cannot say this for all vendors we interact with on our customers’ behalf, unfortunately.
Thanks for sharing this interview.