KLAS Report: Integration Edging Out Best-of-breed Enterprise Scheduling Solutions

OREM, UT, March 08, 2011 (Press-News.org) Paralleling a widespread healthcare trend, providers are choosing enterprise scheduling solutions that integrate with their EMRs rather than more functionally robust best-of-breed systems, according to a new report from KLAS.

For the report, Enterprise Scheduling: Best-of-breeds and Shifting Provider Strategies, KLAS asked vendors to submit a list of their top five central scheduling clients. By interviewing these clients, KLAS determined that best-of breed solutions average the highest customer satisfaction, but the integrated scheduling approach is more popular long-term.

"Best-of-breed vendors Unibased (USA) and SCI Solutions differentiate themselves from enterprise vendors in service, integrated patient-access processing, and functionality, such as procedure logic and web-based scheduling," said Paul Pitcher, KLAS research director and author of the report. "However, while USA has maintained the top spot for eight years running, it also has the highest percentage of respondents indicating that the solution isn't part of their long-term plans. SCI is not far behind, revealing that many providers plan to move away from the best-of-breed approach, despite their reported success with these vendors."

According to the report, this trend is driven primarily by pressure to not only meet stage-1 meaningful use criteria, but also to prepare for the undefined criteria for stages 2 and 3.

"Increasing numbers of providers are heading towards integrated EMR and patient account solutions, such as those offered by Siemens, Epic, and Cerner," Pitcher commented. "Even interfaced enterprise solutions QuadraMed and McKesson are vulnerable to replacement if they can't prove seamless integration between their lineup of solutions; as the EMR is replaced, so is the scheduling solution."

In Enterprise Scheduling: Best-of-breeds and Shifting Provider Strategies, Unibased took the top slot with a score of 90.8 out of 100, followed by Epic (89.8) and SCI Solutions (89.1). This report also highlights Cerner, McKesson, and QuadraMed scheduling solutions.

For more information about the enterprise scheduling market, as well as the strengths and weaknesses of participating vendors, Enterprise Scheduling: Best-of-breeds and Shifting Provider Strategies is available to healthcare providers online for a significant discount off the standard retail price. To purchase, healthcare providers and vendors can visit www.KLASresearch.com/reports.

KLAS is a research firm specializing in monitoring and reporting the performance of healthcare vendors. KLAS' mission is to improve delivery, by independently measuring vendor performance for the benefit of our healthcare provider partners, consultants, investors, and vendors. Working together with executives from over 4500 hospitals and over 2500 clinics, KLAS delivers timely reports, trends, and statistics, which provide a solid overview of vendor performance in the industry. KLAS measures performance of software, professional services, and medical equipment vendors. For more information, go to www.KLASresearch.com, email marketing@KLASresearch.com, or call 1-800-920-4109 to speak with a KLAS representative. Follow KLAS on Twitter at www.twitter.com/KLASresearch.