Narrowing down the Electronic Health Record System Choices

Categorizing and narrowing down the products/vendors…….. why is this an important step?

Anyone who has worked with me knows that I strive to help my customers narrow down their product and partner/vendor options before looking at product functionality. Why is this a good first step?

This important step will significantly reduce the time, and therefore cost, of your functionality and pricing analysis.

Why test drive and negotiate pricing on a Volkswagen and a Mercedes (so to speak), if what you really need is a Ford 2-door!
>>> I certainly don’t shop for other products that way.>>> Do you go to a new home Open House before you check out the neighborhood, the school district, and the pricing?

The features and functions of the product are ever changing, but the costs and partner/vendor will be with you for a long time. I recommend that you come up with a filtering process to narrow down the field to 3 “best of class” products, after you have determined what “class” you should be looking in.

I believe there at three clear product 'classes' or categories: Basic, Mid-Range, and High-end. Come up with whatever makes sense to you. How would you narrow down a car or home purchase? Use that approach, see if it works.
I recommend using the "3-P’s"……….. Partner, Price, and Product.
1. Partner: Develop some criteria for the type, size, and experience of the vendor/partner you want to do business with for the next 10+ years. Then create a template to evaluate the vendors you are considering against this criteria. You can gather the information in a number of ways. Interview them, solicit responses to a Request for Information (RFI), ask around, do some research.

Some examples of important factors are:

• Size: Revenue, # of employees
• Financial viability: revenue track record, funding sources
• Experience: # of customers, # of users, California and/or LA customers, EDI (transactions per month)

2. Price / Budget: Get some guidelines from your finance executive. Understand your agency's expense / project cost strategies and guidelines. See if there are grants available for technology enhancements. Some questions to ask are:

• Are you likely to finance the hardware and any other costs?
• Do you have Microsoft non-profit pricing status?
• Are you using a negotiated rate or cost reimbursement strategy in your contract negotiations? Is there an opportunity to cover some of the ongoing costs there?
• How much additional monthly cost might be successfully rolled into your contracts?
• Which fiscal year can you begin incurring these additional costs?
• How can you handle significant up front costs? Can you obtain a grant? 
• How will you handle incremental annual costs?
• What information does your grant writer / fund raiser need, to solicit funds for this project?
• What can be capitalized and what cannot? What can be financed and what cannot?

Develop a budget model and itemize all project up front and ongoing costs. Costs will include many items not pertinent to the EHR-S vendor. For example:

• EHR-S software costs, e.g. license fees and maintenance fees
  3rd party software costs, and user licenses
• IT infrastructure hardware costs
• IT infrastructure software and upgrade costs
• Services, e.g. EHR-S implementation, installation, custom reports, forms development, billing set-up, EDI set-up and testing
• Training
• Staffing, e.g. trainers, help desk, EHR-S administrator / manager, etc.

Now, develop a template to help you “estimate” the costs of products in several categories.

3. Product: Product can be categorized into a) architecture and b) features/functionality. Meet with your IT or technical staff, or a consultant to create some criteria for the product platform or architecture. Make a list of key features that you are interested in seeing.

Features/functionality - What are the key functions you “must have”. 

You do not need to see a demo to get this information, you can start with an interview or RFI. Set a goal for your team to select no more than 3 vendors/products that are very similar in functionality, cost, and size/experience. This goal will drive you to the right set of “best in class” products. Once you have your top 3, now is the time to invest in a cross-functional team to evaluate product functionality, cost, and  implementation practices.

Contact us to "Get You Through it" See more details at http://ehr-s.blogspot.com/