Minivans and Image Exchange

My wife and I have dreamed of the day we would no longer need a minivan. Don’t get me wrong;   minivans are great for young families, who are all about utility and ease. That’s why our family drove one around for over 10 years. But—and I don’t think that many will argue with this—they just aren’t cool. Not cool at all! It’s hard to not look like a dork when you’re cruising down the road in a minivan.

Imagine our excitement recently when we finally traded in the minivan for a new, hip Honda Pilot. See you later, minivan. Back to cool again!

It got me thinking about trading in current technology for a perceived better way. In today’s competitive healthcare environment, when it comes to acquiring healthcare IT, consolidation of vendors seems to be the name of the game. Enterprise imaging strategies seem to be taking healthcare organizations in a similar direction. Organizations covet an end-to-end solution for capturing, viewing, exchanging, and storing images and making them easily accessible across the enterprise.  

In KLAS’ upcoming report on image exchange, we asked providers how likely they would be to consider leaving their current image exchange vendor if their PACS or VNA vendor were to offer similar functionality. We discovered hints of vulnerability for some of the image exchange vendors as organizations responded that they would potentially look to consolidate vendors. But is consolidation always the best thing? 

Even though my wife and I were thrilled to finally ditch the minivan, there was a time and season when it was the right choice for our family, and in our case trading it in too soon would not have resulted in the greener pastures we dreamed of. My advice: before you go trading in your current best-of-breed technology for a perceived better way, consider the implications. Will you be better off in the long run? How do you know? What have others said about their experiences?