McKesson Paragon Strategy Shifts to Contend in Larger Hospitals, Win Horizon Customers

OREM, UT, March 01, 2012 (Press-News.org) McKesson's announcement of increased investment, research and development in Paragon through their Better Health 2020 strategy is aimed at attracting larger clients, according to the KLAS report, "Paragon: A Paradigm Shift." Paragon--McKesson's go-forward strategy for all hospital sizes--has a client base of community hospital customers satisfied with the system's integration, intuitive Window's architecture, and comparatively low cost of ownership. One CIO said, "We don't have very many back-end processes (with Paragon)... It has a much smaller footprint than the rest of our systems." The solution has won the Best in KLAS award in this space six years in a row.

However, a number of product gaps and weaknesses still exist and there are still questions in providers' minds about whether Paragon can scale to larger hospitals, particularly over-400 bed sites where it is still unproven. One CIO said, "The (Paragon) back office, support, and the implementation people all have the mindset of working with smaller hospitals and smaller groups. They can't relate to the issues that are facing the larger hospitals..." McKesson is especially hoping Paragon's success in community hospitals will appeal to their Horizon base, many of which are larger hospitals.

A number of factors, including a hospital's size, budget and functionality needs determine the degree to which Paragon is a fit for any given hospital. This report dives into these factors as well as the advantages and disadvantages of Paragon for various segments of their customer base, their overall performance and product development strategy, and what providers need to know as they consider Paragon against its competitors.

To learn more about McKesson Paragon, the report "Paragon: A Paradigm Shift" is available to healthcare providers online for a significant discount. It discusses an in-depth analysis of Paragon's customer feedback, a detailed analysis of the components of Paragon, and the products future outlook. To purchase the report, 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 HIT delivery, by independently measuring vendor performance for the benefit of our healthcare provider partners, consultants, investors, and vendors. Working together with executives from over 4,500 hospitals and over 2,500 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, medical equipment, and infrastructure 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.