MSP EHR SELECTOR  

Navigating The EHR Forest - Easy With MSP Resources!

As you browse the web and this site and others, you will notice that there are hundreds of EHR vendors with candidate product solutions seeking to entice you to purchase their system. The problem is, there's too much information and not enough detail. The solution is the new MSP EHR Selector, Dr. Caroline Samuels' tool ($), which you can subscribe to at www.ehrselector.com. Don't spend man-weeks sorting through available vendors, let this powerful MSP EHR Selector do it for you in seconds, based on independently-vetted (verified) data.

Why Pay For the MSP EHR Selector When There Are "Free" Alternatives?

There is no free lunch - only disclosed license costs or hidden commissions paid by EHR developers to selector tool providers. The MSP EHR Selector is not "free", you pay to use it up front. It has NO undisclosed, back-end, commissions paid by EHR developers who systems are recommended to you, after you purchase.

How Expensive Are "Free" EHR Selectors?

The average cost per MD for EHR systems (according to a Sept/Oct. survey published in Health Affairs) was $43,000. The typical software maintenance fee for EHR products after being installed is $1,200 per MONTH (according to the same Health Affairs survey). Some "free" EHR selector tools require a percentage of physician's yearly maintenance fee to be paid by the EHR developer for any EHR system based on recommendations from their EHR selector. While they may not charge a physician anything up front, physicians will pay a lot after the sale to have selected their system with a "free" EHR selector tool. These commissions, which must be paid by EHR developers to the EHR selector tool vendor, are simply passed right on to the physician as a component of their maintenance fees. In the end they can cost a physician thousands of dollars in hidden costs.

MSP EHR Selector - Vetted, Reliable And An Excellent Value

When you pay to subscribe to the MSP EHR Selector, your total cost of using this tool is known up front, there are no hidden commissions paid by EHR developers. Moreover, many of the critical selection criteria are vetted independently by Dr. Caroline Samuels, creator of the MSP EHR Selector tool (formerly known as the HIMSS EHR Selector). MSP believes that its well worth the modest user subscription fee to use a proven and impartial EHR selection tool based on independently-verified EHR features. With MSP that are no hidden commissions or other strings attached, not now or in the past.

Available EHR Information Resources

If you restrict your EHR systems search to only the largest and best-known vendors, you may end up with an expensive solution that may provide more capabilities than you really need. To prevent this, MSP has provided a variety of resources to help you find the EHR solution that fits you practice needs and budget.

• FIRST - the EHR Selector developed by Dr. Caroline Samuels, now hosted at www.ehrselector.com, is your first choice. This is a proven EHR Selector, promoted for the last 3 years by HIMSS.
• SECOND - MSP now offers the POMIS Report (Industry Study) and Knowledgebase of 403 POMIS vendors. See the new POMIS page on this website. POMIS is a product of Jewson Enterprises, the work of POMIS analyst Vinson Hudson.
• THIRD - MSP is the home of the Andrew & Associates EHR Benchmark, 225,000 EHR features of 104 EHR vendors. We are working on tools to allow REGISTERED EHR browsers to access subsets of this information. If you haven't reviewed it yet, the 2005 summary of the public subset of EHR features in the Andrew & Associates 11th Annual EHR Benchmark, you will find comprehensive results in a new MSP 2650 report, on this website now as a registered and logged-in browser in this EHR special interest group, in the Medical Vendor special interest group or on a link accessible to EHR developers who participated in the EHR Benchmark. You can purchase and download this 168-page 126 figure analysis of the full survey immediately.
• FOURTH - MSP is working on the Reality EHR Navigator, a new, simple tool that will allow physicians to explore a fuller set of A&A Survey data. It is scheduled to be available in November 2006. It will fill the 'little brother' slot below our current EHR Selector tool.
• FIFTH - In the longer term, MSP is working on the Reality EHR Expert, a very sophisticated EHR Selection tool for larger group practices, multi-specialty practices and EHR Consultants. It is schedule for Spring 2007, and when available will be the 'big brother' of our current EHR Selector.
• SIXTH - A list of independent EHR consultants, for those physicians and hospitals that need the assistance of a consultant in selecting an EHR solution.

MSP is pleased to bring our clients a RANGE of EHR information and selection resources, some of which are already available (the EHR Selector, The POMIS Report & Knowledgebase) and others that will become available in the next few months. It is our objective to make www.medsp.com a 'one stop shopping' site for EHR information and selection resources.

Independent Consultants

Consultants can be some help, particularly if they are truly independent and well versed in all of the products out there. If you are considering the use of a consultants, be sure to get an independent one. Avoid consultants that are being paid by both you and the EHR developers who systems you are considering, or who are simply fronting for a particular EHR developer. Some very qualified consultants are listed in the consultants reference list. If you are a consultant and NOT on our list, we would be happy to include you if you are willing to submit a list of references to past clients who are satisfied with and would recommend you services.

Feedback From 2005 Andrew & Associates EHR Benchmark Users

Recently CMS has hired organizations in each state to "help doctors evaluate and purchase EHR systems". While they are newcomers, they are surveying the EHR market intelligence landscape and liking what the find with Andrew & Associates. Here is feedback made from a CMS State Agency in NC.

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Medical Review of North Carolina is a non-profit organization that holds a contract with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to be the quality improvement organization (QIO) for the state of North Carolina.  In our current contract with CMS, we have been asked to work on the national DOQ-IT (Doctor's Office Quality-Information Technology) project. This project requires us to assist five percent of our primary care physicians in adopting an electronic health record for the purposes of improving the quality of healthcare they provide their patients. (Please see www.doqit.org for more information). 

We offer our physicians free consultation on every aspect of the EHR implementation process, including system selection.  Our mission is to educate our physicians so they can be informed consumers of healthcare technology.  As a government contractor, we strive to be completely non-biased in helping our physicians with system selection.  We provide information on vendors and EHR systems and allow our physicians to make the best choice to suit their needs.

We have found that your "Annual EHR Systems Review" offers the best non-biased EHR vendor information available.  The fact that your systems review is based on the IOM's attributes and sub-attributes gives us a way to ask our physicians what their needs and priorities are (based on the same IOM attributes and sub-attributes) and then provide the physicians with a listing of vendors that best meet their needs according to your review.  The physicians can then use the listing as a starting point in
their investigation of vendors.

Your "Annual EHR Systems Review" is making a difference for the physicians in North Carolina and I thank you for providing this information. If you have any questions or concerns regarding our project or our use of your review, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Sincerely,

Jennifer Anderson, MHSA
Electronic Health Record Consultant
Medical Review of North Carolina, Inc. 100 Regency Forest Drive

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Many state CMS consulting organizations (officially known as: State Quality Review Organizations) have formed arrangements with specific vendors, who for very modest commitments to CMS to "keep their systems up to date with current standards" and other rather non-specific "commitments", feel comfortable recommending these vendors to group practices. The value that such organizations bring to the table will depend on the quality of the information they use. We are pleased that some of the state organizations are recognizing the value of Bill Andrew's long-standing EHR survey. We are please for the recognition and honor to Bill Andrew and pleased to work with any of the State Quality Review Organizations to make the Reality EHR Expert™ (which is the only EHR Selector tool based on Bill Andrew's surveys) available to them as a resource in their consulting efforts. Individual State Quality Review Organizations are invited to contact MSP or our alliance partners, Bill Andrew and Bob Bruegel, to discuss licence fees and End User License Agreement terms. DOQIT is also informing group practices about the EHR Selector tool developed by Dr. Samuels, available through HIMSS.