Cerner, Epic EHR Users Report High Health IT Satisfaction

Comprehensive ambulatory EHR customers report the highest satisfaction from Epic, Cerner, and NextGen Healthcare due to a breadth of health IT functionality, according to a KLAS report.

KLAS asked vendors to share lists of customer organizations that have most broadly and deeply adopted their product portfolios. The report is based on interviews with five customer organizations from each vendor.

Epic, Cerner, and NextGen Healthcare customers reported that the vendors’ health IT portfolios are fairly robust and meet most, if not all, the needs of an ambulatory practice.

However, there are areas in which customers use a third party instead of their comprehensive vendors across all firms measured in the report.

KLAS found out that deep adopters are most likely to leverage a third-party solution for virtual care. In fact, even though all vendors in the research report offer a virtual care solution, at least one interviewed customer from each company is using a best-of-breed tool instead.

The report found that most organizations would prefer to use their EHR vendor’s virtual care functionality, however they continue with a third party for better affordability, functionality, and/or provider and patient usability.

Four out of five of the Cerner customers interviewed noted that they leverage a practice management (PM) product other than Cerner’s integrated PM tool. These customers cited persistent revenue cycle issues as one of the main things preventing them using Cerner’s solution.

Interviewed healthcare organizations highlight data integration as a deep-adoption benefit. However, the report found customers of different vendors highlight different kinds of integration.

Cerner and Epic customers were most likely to highlight the strength of their solutions’ ability to support data sharing with local exchange partners. Several customers described specific times in which primary care physicians were able to provide higher quality care because they could see what treatments and medications their patients had received at other healthcare organizations.

Customers of the other measured vendors mostly highlighted productivity improvements, which they attribute to strong internal integration and data flow between systems in their vendor’s portfolio.

Consolidating health IT vendors can also have benefits for revenue cycle efficiency. All interviewed NextGen Healthcare customers reported that their system’s billing transparency has allowed their organization to decrease denial rates and boost collections.

NextGen Healthcare customers also said that they have been able to increase patient volumes due to clinical and administrative workflow improvements enabled by their health IT investment. Epic and Kareo customers reported the same success.

While some respondents noted that the roadblocks they face are due more to internal issues such as budget constraints, clinician training gaps, and poor change management than to any fault of the vendor’s, they said that most roadblocks have been minor. Overall, respondents reported that the benefits of a comprehensive approach are worth the investment.