For the first time in a long while I’ve seen a new model that might actually accelerate adoption of Electronic Health Records (EHRs). And it came from an unlikely suspect – WalMart. In an article published in the NYTimes WalMart’s plans to act as an EHR distributor, installer and SAAS retailer were detailed at a high level.
Normally, I ignore things that happen at WalMart, but for three main reasons this caught my eye – the sheer size, buying power and reach of WalMart. The first – it’s size. EHRs to date have been prohibitively expensive for small office physicians (which constitutes the vast number of docs in this country), but the scale of WalMart stands to change all that and provide a purchasing and service scale that just might make their approach a reality. That combined with their buying power and reach of WalMart makes this a unique opportunity for the spread of EHRs.
I am by no means endorsing the purchase of WalMart’s version of an EHR, nor am I saying this effort will succeed. It actually has a gargantuan hill to climb, dodging bodies of EHR-adoption past. However, their attempt illustrates the type of thinking that is required to help place EHRs in the reach of physicians, and their SAAS model automatically makes the data internet-ready so that it can be exchanged on whatever networks we have in the future. The feature set available here is the most complete I’ve seen and federal, state and local governments could stand to learn a lot from this effort.