Hospital Mergers Make HIE Integration Even Tougher

...hospitals continue to merge and sell out to larger health systems, in some cases at an almost manic pace. I don’t have the space to list even a few of the mergers that are dominating business coverage, but I’m sure you know of one in almost every market where you work or have business.

These mergers will frequently bring together different EMRs, or even the same EMR configured differently. Not only that, within each hospital, in all likelihood the EMR will have been integrated with internal departments and systems differently. In other words, even two Epic systems aren’t going to marry up easily.

What’s more, when a well-funded hospital buys one in desperate financial straits, which is often the case, what’s the odds the smaller will have a costly Epic or Cerner or Meditech system in place? Not very high, I reckon. So the systems integration problem is even worse. Now, doubtless a large, well-funded system will ultimately put their system of choice in place eventually, but that won’t happen overnight.

So, as merger activity proceeds apace, it’s creating islands of discord and disconnected data. And my best guess is that those hospitals won’t be HIE-ing anytime soon, though I may be off base here...