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Large organizations drove 2023 acute care EHR market energy

While acute care EHR purchasing remained high throughout 2023, Epic was the only health IT vendor to achieve a net increase in acute care EHR market share.

Hannah Nelson
By
Published: 17 May 2024

While small organizations drove acute care EHR market energy in 2022, purchasing decisions among large organizations dominated the acute care EHR market share in 2023, according to a KLAS report.

Of the 319 hospitals that made go-forward decisions, 79% were part of health systems, while the rest were standalone hospitals. Key decision factors included acquisition activity and the need to streamline IT departments and drive EHR usability.

Epic continues to outpace competition

Epic was the only vendor to achieve a net increase in EHR market share in 2023. The EHR company now covers over half of all acute care multispecialty beds nationwide.

Three large health systems chose Epic in 2023, resulting in 77 hospital wins. Current and prospective large-organization clients are drawn to Epic because they see the vendor as a high performer in providing strong health IT and quality relationships. Large specialty practices also deployed Epic to combine IT systems.

Among small standalone hospitals that selected Epic EHRs in 2023, the top choice was Community Connect. The cost-effective program allows hospitals to connect to a larger local hospital's Epic EHR instance.

Some large multispecialty organizations also deployed Epic to their specialty hospitals, and a few standalone specialty hospitals signed up for Community Connect.

Oracle Health records largest net hospital loss

In 2023, Oracle Health experienced its largest net hospital loss on record due to several large multispecialty organizations leaving the vendor.

Small standalone hospitals -- fewer than 200 beds -- have been the main source of Oracle Health's market share wins since 2016. However, decisions driven by these hospitals stalled in 2023 across all EHR companies. The KLAS report indicated that economic stresses have left these hospitals to mainly focus on optimizing existing health IT.

Some clients left Oracle Health due to persistent issues with the vendor's revenue cycle system. These issues also deterred some prospective small standalone hospitals from partnering with the vendor.

Meanwhile, purchasing energy among specialty hospitals has been growing since 2019, especially for Oracle Health. The vendor accumulated the most specialty hospital wins from 2017 to 2023.

Meditech's retention rate drops after all-time high

Meditech's legacy customer retention rate -- which has historically hovered around 40% to 50% -- jumped to 84% in 2022 when a large health system transitioned from Magic to Expanse. However, in 2023, the retention rate dipped to its lowest on record.

About one-quarter of legacy losses came from merger and acquisition activity, while the rest were more competitive. Several Meditech clients (primarily those on legacy systems but also some Expanse customers) moved to Epic to merge systems and improve interoperability with other Epic organizations.

Still, Meditech saw several sales across health systems and standalone hospitals. Usability and the desire to integrate acute and ambulatory care systems drove most of the decisions to implement Expanse.

Hannah Nelson has been covering news related to health information technology and health data interoperability since 2020.

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