Meaningful Use Provides Hospital EHR Vendor Lock In

One of the unintended consequences of meaningful use is that it provides a real hospital EHR vendor lock in. Certainly hospital EHR vendors have a pretty significant lock in even without meaningful use. Saying that switching hospital EHR software is a large project is a supreme understatement. However, if that wasn’t lock in enough, meaningful use makes it so that I can’t imagine a single hospital switching EHR software during the 5 year meaningful use cycle.

In a Meaningful Use Monday post on EMR and HIPAA, Lynn Scheps covered the details of Switching EHR software in the middle of meaningful use. So, yes it is technically possible and CMS has covered those that do end up switching EHR software. As the meaningful use stages progress I could even see this happening relatively frequently in the ambulatory EHR arena. I don’t see this happening at all in the hospital EHR arena.