The World Series and CIS Market Share

The community hospital CIS market lacks a clear leader

Last week, on October 30, the Boston Red Sox played the St. Louis Cardinals in what turned out to be the final game of the World Series. In a 6-1 victory over the Cardinals, the Red Sox claimed their victory and won the series. With sporting events, like the World Series, the Super Bowl, and the Olympics, there are clear winners and obvious leaders within the various competitions. However, in healthcare technology, the leaders are less obvious. In fact, sometimes it can be hard to distinguish a leader at all.

Such is the case in the latest KLAS report, Community Hospital CIS Market Share 2013: Moving Forward without Leaders. Currently, the community hospital space lacks a player that demonstrates a combination of high customer satisfaction and strong sales momentum.

Although there is not a clear market leader, Epic has gained a lot of momentum due to their integration and functionality. Typically, if a standalone hospital wants to use Epic, it has to find a larger health system to host it. However, Epic recently announced that they will begin to host select standalone hospitals directly. Other solutions found by the report to be making an impact include MEDITECH MAGIC, which although a legacy product, currently rates higher than any go-forward CIS. McKesson and MEDITECH have both experienced challenges with service and code quality, while Siemens and Cerner have seen obstacles with the delivery of their financial products.

The bottom line is that overall satisfaction in the community hospital market continues to decrease. There are a lot of opportunities for vendors to deliver solutions that meet providers’ needs and to become leaders in the space.  With shifts in the market, such as Epic’s decision to host some hospitals directly, it will be interesting to see what happens and which solution will end up being the Red Sox of the community CIS market.