EMR Vendor Executives on HITECH – Part One of a Series

We asked several vendor executives a series of five questions related to the economic stimulus as it impacts electronic health records.

What changes will your company or area make, both for the short and long term, in preparation for HITECH legislation?

Allscripts – Glen Tullman, CEO

Within hours of President Obama’s signing of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, Allscripts began a process of educating the market on the HITECH elements of the Act. Our outreach included a series of webcasts (such as one this week with Glen Tullman and Newt Gingrich), a new website (www.allscripts.com/thetimeisNOW), a white paper, and a variety of other tools that help physicians better understand the implication of the new programs on their practice. Additionally, we will soon be introducing innovative new pricing oriented around the Stimulus. And you can expect to see major new Allscripts announcements related to the Stimulus very soon as we ramp up our national program to help physicians take advantage of the HITECH incentives to enter the Electronic Healthcare Highway.

Internally, Allscripts continues to hire new people as the need arises, with every expectation that the Stimulus will drive significant new hiring down the road. From a development standpoint, we expect to accelerate our efforts around interoperability and connectivity, ensuring our clients are ready to connect.

Overall, it’s important to keep in mind that there are already compelling reasons to start using an EHR today, with very significant financial incentives from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for electronic prescribing as well as the CMS Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) and other pay-for-quality programs from many local health plans. These existing financial incentives enable physician practices to start generating new revenue streams today, even before the HITECH incentives kick in – good news in these difficult economic times.

athenahealth – Jonathan Bush, CEO, President, and Chairman

We have already been in the process of developing an extensive clinical content team much like our payor rules team that will update, qualify, and build various clinical quality measures directly into our national EHR platform allowing all of our clients using athenaClinicals to more easily participate in whatever pay-for-reporting program is developed for the HITECH Act but also as more commercial insurers launch P4P programs. athenahealth’s analyst teams already today help practices capture and report for these programs unlike traditional software, whether it’s client server or hosted, the burden is on the end user to use various functionality in an attempt to participate. We believe this is why so many medical providers had frustration attempting to report out for PQRI using software-only systems. In contrast, 100% of athenahealth clients that participated in PQRI received their bonuses. The government’s incentive program will only further the need to innovate network-based services that medical groups will need to leverage moving forward.

eClinicalWorks – Girish Kumar Navani, President

 eClinicalWorks is holding regular meetings with the department heads to forecast the staffing needs of each department. New employees were starting even before the stimulus, but we are hiring more aggressively now. We are also looking for ways to streamline processes to ensure that we are running as efficiently as possible.

Eclipsys – Tom Cooke, VP and GM of Eclipsys Practice Solutions

Eclipsys, the Outcomes Company, is excited about new sources of funds coming into HCIT from the Federal Government, and believes that it will stimulate even greater market demand for Eclipsys solutions. Our mission to maximize client return on investment while delivering improved patient outcomes mirrors the goals expressed by the administration and will not fundamentally change our corporate strategies. As such, we continue to assist our clients with the following:

• Automate as many endpoints with Eclipsys solutions as practical, and as quickly as possible. From the ICU to the family practice, from the ED to the laboratory shop floor, Eclipsys provides world class automation, extraordinarily high adoption rates, and measurably superior outcomes for our clients.
• Design interoperability into every portion of our solution portfolio. While some of our competitors strong arm providers to automate every community endpoint with their solutions, we recognize that widespread IT adoption means supporting a realistic, heterogeneous environment. Each of our solutions has a multiplicity of ways to interoperate with other solutions and technologies, and we have introduced our Health Information Exchange technologies to provide this community interoperability at the lowest cost, and highest degree of effectiveness possible.
• Work seamlessly with the interoperating community of stakeholders to monitor performance, identify and eliminate waste and duplication, and improve financial and operational performance through revenue optimization and cost reduction.
• Transform practice at the point of care by integrating evidence-based medicine into daily clinical processes through knowledge-based and decision support solutions.
• Introduce and monitor performance of evidence-based medicine throughout the community through the instantiation of protocols and pathways published in peer reviewed literature.
• Amass, normalize, and research clinical, operational, and financial data in order to allow our clients to further contribute toward the evidence-based medicine available.

eMDs – Michael Stearns MD, President and CEO

e-MDs is preparing for very significant growth in all areas of the company, including training, support and ASP hosting services. We have committed significant resources towards educational efforts related to HITECH and the other HIT related provisions in ARRA. This company has accelerated efforts to strengthen alliances and partnerships with other organizations, academic centers and government agencies. We are also working directly with communities interested in developing HIT regional extension centers.

Greenway – Wyche “Tee” Green, President

In the short term, we are paying close attention to any developments that will impact both our customers and our company, such as the definition of “meaningful use” and the final certification process, which we hope will align with CCHIT as much progress has been made during the last three years. We recognize that Greenway will continue to experience rapid growth and that’s something our team is prepared for.

MED3OOO – Jay Anders, M.D., Chief Medical Information Officer

MED3OOO is well positioned to help our clients, both physicians and hospitals, to maximize their potential with the stimulus bill. In the short term, we are working with current clients to help them analyze their qualification status and to make sure they meet the meaningful adoption criteria to qualify them for the incentives. In the long term, we believe there will be a “gold rush” of prospects looking for systems to be quickly implemented and meaningfully adopted.

Remember that the greatest incentives are offered to physicians who implement EHRs in (or before) 2010. Typical in-house EHR implementations can take six-to-nine months, with additional time before and after spent in preparation, negotiations, training, and implementation. That doesn’t give physicians much time to get ready. MED3OOO’s Software as a Service (SaaS) implementation and InteGreat EHR’s browser-based deployment allow our customers to be “live” on their EHR in less than half the time required by traditional EHR product installations. Also, through the SaaS service model, monthly service fees can be paid entirely using the HITECH incentive payments.

Lastly, it’s important to note that the legislation wisely rewards, not the installation of EHR technology, but the effective use of that technology. MED3OOO has its roots in practice operations, and we’ve used this expertise to design and implement technology in ways that physicians can use to improve outcomes for their practices and their patients. Our InteGreat EHR, for example, gets high marks for its “intuitive” interface and the ease with which it can be effectively installed and utilized. We believe that a collaborative approach with physician practices, and a grounding in the operational requirements of those practices, will be essential factors in the successful implementation of EHR systems.

Medsphere – Mike Doyle, CEO

Like many health IT providers, Medsphere is preparing intently for the impact of federal healthcare IT legislation. We are anticipating some sort of certification requirement and developing accordingly, and we recently finalized a services partnership with maxIT and conducted the first session of Medsphere University to get them up to speed with OpenVista and the Clinical Transformation it enables.

We’re also preparing for the legislation by tailoring a solution that fits within the parameters (time and money) of the federal program. Medsphere is better prepared than many other health IT companies to enable full funding for hospitals when money becomes available. We’ve implemented OpenVista in anywhere from 5 to 18 months, depending on the specifics of the implementing hospital, and we’ve developed a process that incorporates a great deal of flexibility. Medsphere has demonstrated that we can implement an interoperable solution incorporating all necessary clinical functionality for roughly ½ the cost and in 1/3 the time of other solutions. We can implement a system for the amount of money available to hospitals. A lot of other healthcare IT provides can’t say the same.

NextGen – Patrick Cline, President

There are several ways to answer this question. First, with respect to the legislation, its interpretation and the surrounding process: Things are still evolving and, at this point, information is still incomplete. To help keep our customers current, we have developed a microsite, http://www.nextgen.com/stimulus/ that presents our current understanding of the legislation, regularly updated pertinent information and a set of Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). We have also started a series of educational webinars discussing the legislation, as well as services we are offering providers who are using or have decided to select NextGen solutions.

With respect to the long term, we think we’re well positioned product-wise, but we continue to work on our ability to scale the company and train the new customers that we hope will come at an increased rate. We intend to open additional training centers, enhance our computer-based training programs and make our software even easier to use.

QuadraMed – Keith Hagen, President and CEO

As a result of the ARRA, QuadraMed is now extremely focused on having our enterprise clinical product, QCPR, meet the to-be-determined NIST certification criteria. In lieu of these criteria being formally defined, we are using the CCHIT criteria as a target. We feel we meet the majority of these criteria today but are fast-tracking other development projects around advanced clinical decision support and CDA/CCD support. Additionally we are working on extending our integrated medication management functionality to support areas like e prescribing. Our plan is to be in a position to submit QCPR for certification by Spring 2010.

Sage – Lindy Benton, Chief Operating Officer

In the short term, we are investing in service infrastructure, employee education and reevaluating processes to become more efficient and proactively prepared to respond to the increased demand for solutions and service. Additionally, over the past two years, we’ve invested in technologies that reduce implementation efforts for both the customer and Sage – so we can quickly meet market demand without large increases in human capital.

We’re also optimizing our portfolio of intellectual property and services – ensuring we offer the right value to our customers. For example, we are launching a Center for Knowledge Excellence organization that will provide optimization and education services. These services will wrap around our products and help practices become more efficient and achieve specific clinical goals and outcomes. We want our customers to leverage the products to create maximum value and, specifically, to assist practices in achieving the “meaningful use” standard.

Even with these efforts, it is expected that we will most likely need to increase our human capital investment over the longer term.

SRSsoft – Evan Steele, CEO

Why should we change? We challenge ourselves with this question every day. Why would we abandon our focus on efficiency, usability, and 100% successful implementations? We have yet to be given a compelling case to do so, even with all the incentives being dangled before practices. In fact, why does the industry need incentives to implement technology at all? If traditional EMR offered such great benefits to patients, physicians, and the medical ecosystem in general, why has adoption been so slow and been marked by so many failures? Will incentives provided by the government for these same EMRs result in a different outcome?

The hybrid EMR has significant advantages over what we are calling the “government” EMR in terms of speed, ease of use, and adoptability. It successfully provides ePrescribing and PQRI capabilities, robust reporting, and data management functionality, and it also enhances practice workflow and physician productivity. SRS will continue to listen to exactly what our physicians want and to develop features that make them more efficient and enhance their ability to deliver high-quality patient care.

We refuse to pour resources into developing overly complex products when we know that physicians do not find these types of products usable. Sadly, this is the path that CCHIT has followed, as a reading of the CCHIT criteria reveals. At SRS, we have the voice of the physician built into our software, which has led to a level of user satisfaction that is the highest in the industry by a wide margin, as validated by KLAS.

News 3/17/09

From: Neil Finn.”Re: Specialists and EMR. The author kind of misses the point; these specialists have enough revenue and margin they can go EMR or not and being in Plano, their Medicare/Medicaid mix isn’t all that great.” Neil is referring to this article discussing how a group’s failed EHR experience is now causing them to be cautious about going down that road again – stimulus money or not. Neil claims the group struggled with the old A4 product years ago. How many other profitable specialists will snub their noses at stimulus money, either out of fear or because the money just isn’t enough?

Current and former physician employees of Medical Edge Healthcare Group (TX) file a suit against the company, charging them of improper billing and practices that violate state laws prohibiting corporate control over physicians. The doctors say Medical Edge used “deceptive accounting practicing” and charged them unfairly for taxes, benefits and other expenses.

A RAND Corporation study finds that California physicians given financial incentives to improve the quality of medical care are beginning to adopt new quality measures, including adding EMR and tracking physician performance. However, the financial incentives averaged between $1,500 and $2,000 annually per physician, which failed to stimulate significant change among most doctors. Those declining to participate suggested incentives needed to be two to five times higher in order to achieve quality improvements.

Fifty physicians are set to receive their first rewards for participating in New Jersey’s Bridges to Excellence Program, which is designed to recognize and reward providers that demonstrate safe, timely, effective, and patient-centered care.

Fair Lawn Diagnostic Imagining Center (NJ) selects IMAGINEris and IMAGINEradiology for practice management and RIS billing and collection.

Technology Partners, Inc. (dba IMAGINE Software), a leading provider of medical billing technology, announces that Fair Lawn Diagnostic Imaging Center (FLDIC) of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, has chosen IMAGINEris and the IMAGINEradiology™ practice management system for their RIS/billing and collection needs.

The LA Times publishes an article discussing how HIT has the potential to advance healthcare. The piece discusses some of the benefits realized by a 10-doctor family practice group, including the elimination of 6-1/2 FTE’s and tens of thousands of paper charts.

KLAS releases a report entitled “The Rise of eClinicalWorks: Separating Fact from Fiction.” KLAS examines why ECW is growing faster than any other EMR vendor and whether if it could sustain the grown and still provide effective support. While customers expressed strong satisfaction on functionality and cost, support was noted by many users as the worst aspect of their ECW relationship. Users also claim that integration with other clinical systems was a challenge.

If you read HIStalk you may have seen the notice that Mr. H is in the world of no Internet this week, so Inga is flying solo. I am awaiting encouragement.

USF Health, Allscripts Launch Paperfree Tampa Bay, an E-Health Pilot Program

USF Health and Allscripts initiate a pilot program called Paperfree Tampa Bay that aims to convert 100 percent of physicians in the Tampa Bay area to electronic prescribing. Program leaders view this as a first step toward the implementation of EHR in the region and is expected to create 100 jobs in the region.

We caught up with Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman and asked him for more details on the initiative.

So, what is in it for Allscripts?

First of all, let’s talk for one minute about the opportunity. What we see happening here is President Obama’s vision of an electronic, inter-connected health system is becoming a reality in Monday in Tampa Bay. This is really a pilot, if you will, for what can happen in the rest of the country. That’s important when you think about what could happen in the rest of the country. We have lined up wholes series of communities who are doing their own particular take on this. The take on this in Tampa is: “Let’s start with electronic prescribing, let’s get a coalition of organizations, including major hospitals, physician groups, the mayor. Let’s get Congressional support – and there is strong Congressional support: Congresswoman Castor, Congressman Young, and Senator Nelson are all strongly behind this – and let’s drive this forward.” What’s makes this unique is they are hiring 100 electronic “ambassadors” is what they are calling them, that are going to visit the 8,000 offices and train them on electronic prescribing, and then they are going to introduce them to the stimulus benefits for acquiring an electronic health record. And, hopefully they’ll see the market for the adoption of electronic health records. So, #1 it creates jobs for new-hires who, #2, are going to be trained by a curriculum designed at the University of South Florida, who was one of the original NEPSI members and who has already rolled out an electronic health record. They are designing a curriculum to train these people and presumably others. Then these people will start doing the office-by-office work. Dean (Stephen) Klasko calls its “changing the DNA of physicians, one office at a time.” Which I kind of think is a really brilliant analogy because physicians do require that. By the way, it’s a very interesting contrast to just yesterday, Wal-Mart comes out and says we are going to have this thing in the store, a physician will show up and spend 25K, take it back to their office and implement it. Those aren’t the physicians we know because we have been doing this 10 years. Physicians aren’t likely to do that. We say we know what model works and we are going to be out there doing it.

So what’s in it for Allscripts? When people ask as us about the NEPSI, our answer then and our answer now is getting physicians to adopt the tools is good for healthcare long-term, and good for patients and good for Allscripts. Why is it good for Allscripts? Well stage one is electronic prescribing and they will get that free. What we hope follows from that is the adoption of electronic health records. Once a physician is comfortable using electronic prescribing, we believe they will conclude they should quickly move to electronic health records. At that point, given we are the market leader, we should benefit. Will we get all those? Of course not. But we think we’ll get our fair share, maybe more than our fair share of that. The real goal, first and foremost, is to address this absolutely key patient safety issue that is saving lives and saving money by getting physicians to use electronic prescribing. And if that was all that happened I would be happy. Because imagine being a part of something where you can say, “This isn’t about making money. This is being able to say we helped make this happen in Tampa Bay.” If this works, we will absolutely save lives in Tampa Bay. Remember, every year 7,000 Americans are dying from preventative medication errors, and a million and half are injured every year. It cost billions of dollars, it has an enormous quality impact on people’s lives, and we can stop it, and we are going to do it now in Tampa Bay, beginning Monday. Very quickly thereafter In Hartford, Connecticut, Iowa, Pittsburgh, in HoagHospitals in Newport Beach. We have leaders coming up from all around the country who are saying, “We are going to do it and we are going to do it now under President Obama’s leadership, and the standards that CCHIT has set, and the substantial incentives that have been provided.” The CMS incentive of $3,000 to $5000 for electronic prescribing is available today as of January 1 of this year. The PQRI incentive of $3,000 to $5,000 is available right now, and of course, the $44,000 that’s from the stimulus package, $18,000 of which will come available next year if you are using a total electronic health record right now. Imagine if you are a physician in Tampa Bay and someone comes to the office and says, “Let me get you up and operating on this tool. If you use it you will qualify for between $3-5,-000 of funding from CMS and it is highly likely your own payer has additional incentives for you. What does it cost me? It doesn’t cost you anything. Pretty good deal. Now there’s someone standing there, an energetic, committed person who says, “I will help you do it.” That is how we will change healthcare, change the DNA of healthcare and the physician. One office at a time. As the rest of the communities see that there are going to say, “Wow, not only does it work, there is a good chance we might even get stimulus dollars to help us do these types of programs.” In Tampa Bay, Stage 1. In other communities they are saying, “We are going to push the development of the full electronic records and we are going to connect them.” Hartford is saying, “Connected Hartford,” instead of “Paperless Tampa. What does that mean? We have enough hospitals and major practices already using Allscripts that we are going to connect them all together connect very quickly and very cost effectively. We are committed to interoperability. We are happy to connect everybody. We are ready to start very quickly with demonstrations that will connect huge parts of the market. Why? Because it is safer for patients, more convenient for patients. That is the program. Not that I’m not excited about it…

What do you estimate Allscripts’ out of pocket costs will be for the Tampa Bay project?

From our perspective, #1, they are using NEPSI software, which is already based in all our numbers. And, #2, in terms of people commitment and the like, we will be deploying members of our teams, our e-prescribing teams, our connectivity teams, and, obviously used some of our promotional people, creative people. It is not about a dollar commitment per se. The big expenditure will come as USF and other members of this coalition hire people, and we are hopeful that this will in fact be one of the many programs that HHS and the Secretary decide to support through the HITECH provisions of the stimulus act. Remember that the government has basically said that we want to support programs that are furthering the aims of the HITECH act and the President’s objectives, but, we don’t them to be green-fields. We want them to be programs up and operating that we can see. All 100 people won’t begin Day 1. We are beginning to hire people; we are beginning to train people. Initially, some of our folks will fill some of those roles. Some of USF people will fill some of those roles. As we move forward, we have the commitment from the representatives in that area to take the Paperfree Tampa Bay program and present that as one of the many pilot programs that the Secretary may be interested in funding. If the Secretary chooses to fund the program, that will accelerate it. It will go forward under any set of circumstances. Whether it gets accelerated will in part be determined by the Secretary. But there is a commitment from the participating partners to move the program forward in any case.

So, there is hope that there may be some amount of funding that will filter down to fund some of the initiative?

To the initiative, yes. To Allscripts, no. From the initiative itself, there is no benefit from that. The benefit is longer term, to the extent that physicians decided to buy electronic medical records. Imagine the impact if every community says, “Hey, this works.” Take the top 100 communities, they each hire 100 people who are trained to talk to physicians about electronic prescribing, and also about the benefit of using a full electronic health records. Talk about the full benefits. Now you have 10,000 evangelists going out to convert these. Imagine the impact that would have, not just for us but also all our competitors. That’s what’s so exciting about this pilot program.

So the initial 100 people will be paid for by a combination of USF and Allscripts?

No, we will start with a smaller number of people that will be funded though a combination of USF, Allscripts, and the other constituents which will be announced on Monday. Those will include some state programs already focused on electronic prescribing. A variety of different participants will all be contributing people. The longer term goal is to have new-hires. We’re hopeful that our people will not have to be there longer term. But, we are committed with USF, with Baycare, and the other participants.

I hope you share with us the excitement of what this could mean. Do that math. Imagine if the top 50 communities in the county each hired 100 people, and you had all those people visiting physician offices. Imagine that kind of effort and what kind of change would occur. It would all be terrific for the industry. Hopefully this drives that kind of change, and we think it will.

News 3/12/09

Clearly the biggest news story of the day is Wal-Mart’s decision to market eClinicalWorks software and Dell hardware through its Sam’s Club stores. Mr. HIStalk had a short chat with Girish Kumar Wednesday and that interview is posted here and on HIStalk. The Sam’s Club package, which will be available later this spring, starts at under $25,000 for the first physician in a practice and $10,000 for each addition doctor. Ongoing costs will be $4,000 to $6,500 per year. The software will be provided in a SaaS set-up and the Sam’s package includes five days of on-site implementation. ECW representations will provide demonstrations (via Webinar) as well as configuration assistance. Props to ECW and Wal-Mart for an innovative strategy. Time will tell if this marketing approach will succeed, but we liked this comment posted on HIStalk by Steven Tremain: "History shows us that any idea the majority laughs at is one worth watching. Disruptive innovations are in fact the only leaps that have ever changed the world. It may very well fail, but we will all learn from this."

The medical director of O’Connor Family Health Center (CA) claims he doesn’t regret the decision to move to EMR, even though it cost $250,000, cost an army of people to install, and increased the patient backlog and decreased revenue. He is even okay with the fact that two years after implementing his vendor went out business and product support ends in two years.

A HIMSS survey finds that only about one-third of HIT professionals believe the HITECH stimulus plans will reduce healthcare costs.

A New Jersey oral surgeon is on the wrong end of a $10.2 million malpractice award after a 21-year-old patient dies during wisdom teeth extraction. The patient’s doctor had not cleared him for surgery and the lawsuit claimed a diagnosed immunity disorder caused his throat to swell after the surgery. The family’s dentist was also a defendant, but he was cleared.

We send out an e-mail link each time something new is posted on HIStalk Practice. If you aren’t getting them, just drop your e-mail address in the Get Instant Updates box to your upper right and click Subscribe. That ensures you won’t miss a thing.

Another study suggests that the HIT incentives will not be enough to convince many doctors to purchase an EMR system. As many as half the country’s doctors will take a pass on EMR because the average cost of a full EMR over five years is an estimated $124,000, and, government compensation is a maximum of $44,000. That’s a $14,000 a year deficit compared to a potential $8,500 Medicare reimbursement penalty for not automating. Someone will need to develop some quality ROI calculators to convince many physicians to take the plunge.

This American College of Physician Executives survey indicates more physicians are adopting technology, even though they may not like it. Most physician leaders find EMRs "clunky" and "unresponsive to their needs."  However, EMR use is up from 33% to 64% since 2004, 44% of the surveyed organizations use CPOE compared to 33% in 2004, and 38% use pharmaceutical bar coding, up from 20%.

Check out our latest HIStech Report interview with Cheryl Iseberg, COO of Renaissance Resource Associates (RRA).  RRA provides consulting services on GE Centricity Enterprise, Picis, Epic, and other systems.

Despite otherwise gloomy economic news, physician offices added 6,000 workers in February, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Hospitals added another 6,800 jobs.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of McKesson, a new Platinum sponsor of HIStalk Practice. The company offers pretty much everything a physician’s practice needs, from technology (EHRs and practice management, including the Practice Partner system), consulting services, medical supplies, revenue cycle management, and connectivity solutions. More information here and a page dedicated to the opportunities provided to practices by the economic stimulus legislation is here. We thank McKesson very much for supporting HIStalk Practice and its readers.

A Baystate Medical Center (MA) anesthesiologist who wrote 21 journal articles in the past 13 years has admitted that he made up most of the data he cited. Pfizer paid for his research, which found that two Pfizer drugs were effective in post-op pain. He was caught when the health system determined that he was not approved to conduct human research.

DataMotion introduces a $99 secure email solution designed for the small office market. Preferred9 includes the ability to send email securely and thus meeting HIPAA security guidelines.

A new P4P survey reports that P4P payments have grown to over 7% of physicians’ total compensation and 4% of hospitals, with some physician programs producing 30% of physicians’ compensation. Since 2006, the percentage of programs reporting quality improvements due to P4P has doubled and more than half of P4P programs cite measurable increases in their providers’ clinical quality.

Availity promotes (warning: PDF) Russ Thomas to the role of President and COO. Thomas joined Availity in in 2008 as an executive VP and COO and served as president of Gold Standard before that.

E-mail Inga.
E-mail Mr. HIStalk.

eClinicalWorks To Sell PM/EMR Package Through Sam’s Club – Girish Kumar Interview

eClinicalWorks will sell its PM/EMR package in a pre-configured hardware, software, and services package through Sam’s Club. The offering will offer a fixed price package of Dell hardware (desktop PC or tablet), implementation, training, and maintenance.

Sam’s Club owner Wal-Mart will begin selling the package this spring, with prices starting at $25,000 for the first physician and $10,000 for each additional doctor in the practice. Maintenance fees will be $4,000 to $6,500 per year.

Wal-Mart said it approached eClinicalWorks after using its software in its own in-store clinics.

We interviewed Girish Kumar Navani, president of eCW.

If a physician buys from Sam’s Club, will it be the same product, implementation services, and support that eCW offers directly?

Absolutely. We’re trying to make it simple. Everybody says EMRs are hard and implementing change is hard. We realize that. We’ve been doing SaaS since 2003 and have invested a ton on a data center. We wanted system that is ready out of the box, configured, with content, although it will still require on-site implementation and services. It’s the same in terms of product, services, training, but faster and easier to deploy.

Why would a customer buy from Sam’s? Do they save any money? Can they choose a no-services option?

Wal-Mart used its Sam’s Club division because it has a lot of small business customers as corporate members. They buy ongoing stuff every month, not just simple things like gloves and bandages, but have a corporate account and buy copiers, payroll software, etc. They don’t have to go into Sam’s. You call a corporate number, get an assigned representative, talk to them about what you need, and the item is shipped.

eCW salespeople will still show the product and talk to the customer. There are packages we want to give them that are pre-configured. The customer will not pick blindly – they will still consult with an eCW person.

Will Wal-Mart do its own advertising and marketing?

There will definitely be a significant campaign. They have 200,000 healthcare professionals today as members, mostly as doctors.

Any projections on volumes?

I have to keep that confidential, but there was a lot of planning on the eCW side. Investments have increased, made the company even more ready. This can have a significant impact on how physicians look at, evaluate, and purchase EMRs.

We would like to see taking it away from being a niche sales process, where sometimes we confuse the customer, to make it a very streamlined process so that a customer can make an educated decision. They know how many days to go live, how many days training, cost, etc. eCW does 30 Webinars every week that every customer has access to with a live attendant and all Sam’s members will be able to avail themselves of that.

We believe we are the largest SaaS EMR in the country with 4,000 physicians. If we include hospital customers hosting affiliated physicians and RHIOs, that’s another 4,000. That’s 8,000 today of our 25,000 physicians. We’re trying to leverage that scale to make it easier and cheaper to deploy.

Do you anticipate any product changes?

For primary care, we spent two years working with New York City. We put into the product all the content needed to run a primary care practice – templates, order sets, clinical decision support. That is years of content that we jointly developed. That is all pre-packaged with the product – it’s not just the software any more. On the specialty care, we have about 50 specialty databases.

All of that will be available pre-configured when they sign up. When the trainer shows up, all the content will be there and if we want to change it, we can change it together. We will go live with a comprehensive data repository with clinical decision support at no extra cost for the content.

A primary care doctor can go live with the system as it is, with rich content.

What does this to do the competitive landscape?

We’ve always taken tremendous pride on our leadership on price and functionality. 97% of eCW customers surveyed said their total costs met their expectations when they bought and implemented eCW. 93% of physicians said the EMR met or exceeded expectations. I still have to worry about the 7% and I lose sleep about it more than I take advantage of the 93%, but if a package with those numbers is readily available, people will ask the question: if I’m able to get a comprehensive product that people are happy with at this price point with content and support, why should I spend more?

Price visibility will be black and white. No longer will you see those quotes saying an EMR will cost $300,000. You will see more informed questions, pricing pressure, and frankly, higher expectations if content is provided. I don’t want to take six months to implement PM and another six months for an EMR.

This is a unified product we’re offering, by the way, both EMR and PM. We’re offering five days of implementation on site with the Sam’s Club package and they can buy more for $750 a day plus travel, but our track record is that we can do it in five days.

What are the benefits to eClinicalWorks?

There are many benefits. We want to be a company with 100,000 physicians using our product and 100 million patients whose lives are positively affected by it. There’s a lot more work to be done, but this platform gives us more opportunity.