HIMSS Healthcare IT Buyer’s Guide

Many people have been coming to my site to figure out how they should select an EMR for their clinic. That’s such an important part of the process and hopefully something I write helps people to be more successful in that process. My favorite searches are those that say something like “top 10 EMR companies” As if Google will somehow send them the very best list of EMR companies out there. I’ve considered posting a list like that myself, but I just think there are more than 10 that are worth considering and they each have their pros and cons. How can I rank 2 EMR where one has better document management, but the other has better appointment integration. Plus, I think each clinical practice is so unique that what might be the top EMR for one practice might not even make the top 10 for another practice.

HIMSS has taken a different approach in creating their Healthcare IT Buyer’s guide. This guide they’re basically just a listing service for various healthcare IT companies including EMR and EHR companies. While I certainly think a listing of this nature is valuable (that’s why I started the EMR and EHR matrix of companies on the wiki) the problem I have with the list created by HIMSS is that you have to pay $395 a year in order to appear on the list. No wonder they only have 47 of the 300+ EMR/EHR companies. Plus, they even manipulate the placement on the list. Check out the pricing for better placement:
1st Place $1,500
2nd Place $1,250
3rd Place $1,100
4th Place $850
5th Place $500

Sounds like a good way for HIMSS to make money, but not a very good tool for those selecting an EMR. Instead, there are a bunch of free EMR selection tools out there that don’t have this bias in their listings. Try out those and you’ll be much happier with the results.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

1 Comment

  • You do have a gutsy EHR and business model, and I auappld your innovation.Help me understand your thinking. Is it: We’re not CCHIT certified and don’t intend to become certified. We’re not CCHIT certified but would like to be HITECH certified if the certification criteria were more reasonable We’re not CCHIT certified but intend to be HITECH certified as some point in the future something else? what I’m getting at is understanding how you present to physicians groups the probability that they will get ANY $$ from the Feds when they purchase you EHR: The probability certainly isn’t 100% since you’re not CCHIT certified today. but is it 0%? or somewhere in between 100% and 0% depending on how the certification process gets defined?

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