If they are public you can check various sources for company stability, MBA's/practice administrators would have the answer on that - possibly Standard and Poor's or similar sources. If they are private you could request to look at their books/financial statement if they are willing to do that.
You will never know if a company is going to sell out, go out of business or simply stop responding to the needs of its clients. A safe approach might be to stay with the herd, there is strength in numbers. If a company is successful, is doing great business, clients are happy, etc. then that level of stability speaks well for their continued success.
However, there are several points that I would make relative to purchasing an EHR.
1. I would suggest that you go with a company that is certified by CCHIT. The data should be in a format that can be transferred out to another EHR if the company disappeared.
2. Since you can never be sure that your EHR vendor will be in business tomorrow, you need to understand where your data is and how to retrieve it. If you have an ASP, where is your data? If you have your own servers, can you export the data to a new EHR?
3. If you "own" your data, or can get it from the vendor, you can spend the time and expense migrating the 0's and 1's to the new system, or you can simply "print" all the records to CD's or a backup system and import them into the new EHR as "documents" rather than electronic data. In the latter circumstance, it would be as if they just moved to town with their record in tow - the good part being that the data is organized and likely already known to you. You would be starting over, re-populating problem lists, med lists, immunizations, etc. You can hire clerical staff to do data entry for a few months, or you can just populate the new chart yourself as patients come in for appointments.
Looking at it another way - in this economy, how do we know that we won't go bankrupt?
Answers
You don't.
If they are public you can check various sources for company stability, MBA's/practice administrators would have the answer on that - possibly Standard and Poor's or similar sources. If they are private you could request to look at their books/financial statement if they are willing to do that.
You will never know if a company is going to sell out, go out of business or simply stop responding to the needs of its clients. A safe approach might be to stay with the herd, there is strength in numbers. If a company is successful, is doing great business, clients are happy, etc. then that level of stability speaks well for their continued success.
However, there are several points that I would make relative to purchasing an EHR.
1. I would suggest that you go with a company that is certified by CCHIT. The data should be in a format that can be transferred out to another EHR if the company disappeared.
2. Since you can never be sure that your EHR vendor will be in business tomorrow, you need to understand where your data is and how to retrieve it. If you have an ASP, where is your data? If you have your own servers, can you export the data to a new EHR?
3. If you "own" your data, or can get it from the vendor, you can spend the time and expense migrating the 0's and 1's to the new system, or you can simply "print" all the records to CD's or a backup system and import them into the new EHR as "documents" rather than electronic data. In the latter circumstance, it would be as if they just moved to town with their record in tow - the good part being that the data is organized and likely already known to you. You would be starting over, re-populating problem lists, med lists, immunizations, etc. You can hire clerical staff to do data entry for a few months, or you can just populate the new chart yourself as patients come in for appointments.
Looking at it another way - in this economy, how do we know that we won't go bankrupt?
Using an EHR? Yes - eClinicalWorks
Disclosure: Owner/practicing partner of Aquidneck Medical Associates, Inc. Contracted as the Case Management Physician Advisor at Newport Hospital (a Lifespan affiliate) and as an advisor for BCBS of RI to help facilitate HIT integration in community practices