Services pop up to help doctors pick EMR system

With an estimated 200 to 400 companies selling electronic medical records software, physicians interested in buying a system need help. So medical societies, industry groups, consultants and others are getting in the business of advising physicians on what EMR would suit them best.

"Doctors, particularly doctors in small to medium-size practices, don't have the resources on their own to make good decisions between the hundreds of vendors. So, the need for this activity is certainly out there," said Peter Basch, MD, an internist and co-chair of Physicians' Electronic Health Record Coalition.

PEHRC was formed in July by 14 medical societies -- including the AMA, American College of Physicians and American Academy of Family Physicians -- to help physicians choose and implement EMRs, which also are called EHRs, or electronic health records.

"I doubt that we as the PEHRC will recommend specific EHRs," Dr. Basch said.

Members of the coalition, which hopes to release its recommendations within 12 months, plan to discuss, among other things, whether to propose that individual specialty medical societies collect and make physician reviews of EMRs available to their members in a sort of Consumer Reports format, Dr. Basch said. That way, physicians can find out what products peers within their medical specialty have found useful, he said.

Three nonprofit industry groups -- the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, the American Health Information Management Assn. and the National Alliance for Health Information Technology -- also have an EMR program underway. The entities are sponsoring an effort to develop voluntary certification standards to make it easier for physicians to compare and evaluate different EMR systems.

HIMSS also offers an online tool called Ambulatory EHR Selector that doctors can use to screen out EMRs. To use the service, doctors select the features they want in an EMR, and the online tool immediately lets them know which products meet their criteria, said Mark Leavitt, MD, PhD, medical director and director of ambulatory care at HIMSS.

Physicians, who have more than 300 features to choose from, also can use the tool to compare products. They must pay a $149 annual fee for the service. Vendors pay $499 annually to be included in the database. An independent consultant hired by HIMSS verifies the product information vendors provide, Dr. Leavitt said. There are 29 vendors in the HIMSS database, and the fees they -- and doctors -- pay cover the organization's costs of providing the service, he said.

Physician has own start-up

An independent start-up offers a similar service, though unlike HIMSS, its goal is to make a profit. In June, Eric S. Fishman, MD, an orthopedic surgeon in West Palm Beach, Fla., launched EMRConsultant.com to help doctors select an EMR that is appropriate for their practices. EMRConsultant is a unit of 1450 Inc., which sells speech-recognition software and is owned by Dr. Fishman.

To use EMRConsultant.com, physicians must fill out an online questionnaire. Then, EMRConsultant.com will recommend three to five products within 24 hours, said Dr. Fishman, who practices about 20 hours a week.

EMRConsultant.com offers the service at no cost to physicians, but plans to make its money by getting referral fees -- a small percentage of the sale -- from vendors. The fee does not play any role in which vendors are recommended, he said.

"I'm going to fail or succeed in the long run based on my reputation. If my reputation is such that I give accurate, objective information irrespective of a referral fee, I'll succeed," Dr. Fishman said. Since the company was launched in June, "the majority of referrals I've made to physicians have been to manufacturers that I do not have an agreement with."

To date, a handful of the approximately 100 vendors he has in his database have agreed to pay the fee, Dr. Fishman said. He declined to identify them.