Health IT Execs Have a New Favorite Dirty Word

athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush, eClinicalWorks Founder Girish Navani and Cerner President Zane Burke talk about expanding their technology platforms and, in so doing, shedding a certain three-letter acronym.

Cerner President Zane Burke, athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush and eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani. When eClinicalWorks rechristened its flagship electronic health record software as the cloud-based 10e, CEO Girish Navani said something curious: “I don’t want to call it an electronic health record anymore.”

Executives at other EHR makers are striking a similar tone recently as well, nominally disassociating their products from the three-letter acronym as if it were a dirty word.  Navani’s reasoning is simply that the core eClinicalWorks EHR is only about 5 percent of what the 10e iteration actually does.

Jonathan Bush, CEO of athenahealth, explained that his company is not an EHR vendor, either, because it offers more, including revenue cycle management, patient communications and care coordination services in the cloud. Bush also took aim at the federal government’s meaningful use EHR reimbursement incentive program. “They are driving organizations into [EHR] products.” And while Bush said the idea is “adorable and cute,” he also insisted that it is a mistake...