EMR Consulting Business Model

I’ve been thinking about the EMR consulting business model for a long time (check out my first post on EMR consulting back on October 27, 2006). My personal career path has taken me a different direction. I do some occasional consulting for people, but it’s not really my core business. Unfortunately, I don’t scale very well.

With that said, I think there’s definitely a business model for a company that does EMR consulting. In fact, today I learned that one of my advertisers and also an EMR consulting company, Enterprise Software Deployment, was ranked #561 out of the 5000 fastest growing companies in America (see press release).

That’s right. I guess EMR consulting is a good enough business that they can use an EMR consulting business to become one of the fast growing American companies. Plus, I agree with the press release that this next year we’re likely to see EMR consulting grow even more.

While I ABHOR EMR sales people who like to call themselves EMR consultants, I think there’s definitely a place in the EMR industry for qualified EMR consultants. In fact, check out this series of EMR consultant posts where I talk about the possible advantages of using an EMR consultant:
Benefits of Using an EMR/EHR Consultant – Selection Process
Benefits of Using an EMR/EHR Consultant – EMR Training
Benefits of Using an EMR/EHR Consultant – Clinical Process Mapping
Benefits of Using an EMR/EHR Consultant – Comprehensive Technology Support
Benefits of Using an EMR/EHR Consultant – Improved Clinical Buy-in
NOTE: I wrote all these in early 2008. I don’t think too much has changed since then. Although, there are likely more EMR consultant opportunities.

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.

7 Comments

  • Great post in regard EMR Consulting Business Model.

    Any suggestions for people that wants to become an EMR consultant? What kind of training should people do to become a more well rounded consultant?

  • John, we have an approach to emr implemtation that is different than anything else available. It is an object driven approach with the core of turning emr, as an administrative system into an adaptive system. Follow the link in our registration information to our Unicist Corprate Univeresity where much of this information is related.

    Your comments are most welcome and thanks for all your posts.

    Wes

  • Plin, you should go to medical school, complete a residency, practice for 10 years, run your hospital’s EMR implementation, become a CMIO for your hospital, then retire from clinical practice, and work long hours for a firm implementing a variety of EMRs in a variety of contexts, and then you might be hired as a consultant. I would not hire anyone who does not have this minimum experience.

  • John, thanks for your post on EMR consulting business. We run a successful EMR consulting company EMRx Inc. ( http://www.emrxsolutions.com) and have helped implement end-to-end EMR solutions for small to medium-sized practices.
    I think the basic ingredients for EMR consulting are good IT/project management skills & a sound medical background. The challenge we face is to convince the practice that an EMR consultant is required to provide a complete & cost effective transition to EMR in addition to the vendor support & costs.
    Would be interested to know similar thoughts from other EMR consulting companies.

  • So, what is a complete definition of an EMR consultant ? In my opinion it should be called more like a Health IT (HIT) consultant. Because, in the end, the consultant should be able to implement more than EMR. If it were to be called an HIT consultant, then that person should have an experience in IT technology and business process analysis (in this case with hospital/clinic operations). EMR is like the ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning – business automation using computers) for hospitals, not discounting that hospitals can have an ERP and an EMR at the same time.

  • plin,
    My first suggestion is to get experience. Beg, Borrow and Steal Experience if needed. Well, at least beg. The best training you can get is experience doing it. Plus, the biggest selling point you can use to get an EMR consultant job is telling about your experience. Not to mention if you do a great job for one person, the medical community is very close and they’ll refer you to other EMR consulting jobs with their friends.

    So, find somewhere that will take you (even for cheap or free if needed) and do a killer job for them.

  • Alefia,
    It certainly is a challenge for many. Especially in the smaller practices. At the end of the day I think that building relationships with clinics is the key. It’s definitely a challenge to get in the trusted clinical circle, but that relationship will be key to you being able to sell them on why using you will save them money over doing it themselves.

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