Industry analyst firm KLAS just made a number of health IT vendors either very happy or very disappointed with its annual announcement of Best in KLAS awards. We think this independent measure of customer satisfaction with healthcare IT investments, on which the Best in KLAS awards are based, should be a vital part of the due diligence any health provider should undertake before purchasing an electronic medical record (EMR) system or patient administration system (PAS).
And for those healthcare providers who participate in these rankings, the research is available free of charge.
The new “2017 Best in KLAS: Global Software (non-US)” report analyzes healthcare providers’ satisfaction with their vendors’ sales, contracting, implementation, and support, functionality and upgrades, and service and support.
While we also recommend site visits and researching other customer organizations with similar implementations before committing to a healthcare information system, the work that KLAS does is unique in the number of organizations surveyed. KLAS also conducts its research globally, and breaks down satisfaction ratings into regions.
This is of great value to healthcare providers outside the U.S., which still dominates the market for healthcare information systems. Prospective EMR and/or PAS customers are often offered site visits to leading institutions in the U.S., yet may struggle to find customers with similar requirements to themselves – or organizations closer to home.
PAS may seem like a bit of a commodity these days, but our most successful customers are often those with a unified EMR/PAS. Putting patients at the center of healthcare delivery is greatly simplified when both clinicals and administration are built on the same health informatics platform, with a single shared database.
Achieving a unified EMR/PAS can be a challenge outside major markets like the U.S. Whereas the EMR market is dominated by global vendors, PAS markets are more fragmented and regional. Many systems are built for a particular geography and lack the flexibility to meet local market needs – crucial functionality often gets “lost in translation” as a result.
So, although we’re not in the business of handing out awards, I’d like to take my hat off to KLAS for all of its good work, including its growing focus on international markets. It is very easy for research firms to focus disproportionately on the dominant U.S. market without recognizing that it’s not a one-size-fits-all world.
We are delighted that our TrakCare solution has once again achieved Best in KLAS in the Global (non-US) Acute Care EMR category. We have also been recognized as Best in KLAS in the Global (non-US) Patient Administration System category for the first time. But the most pleasing thing for us is the satisfaction ratings that our customers reported. EMR and EMR/PAS initiatives are always challenging, and a strong vendor-customer partnership is critical to success. In recognition of that, special thanks must go to our customers around the world who have worked in partnership with us to achieve such high satisfaction levels.
