Healthcare

Wal-Mart, eClinicalWorks Change the Game

Wal-Mart, Dell, and eClinicalWorks announced a plan today that would deliver EHR’s to physicians, with a cost savings estimated to be nearly 50%.

This is just coming across the wire, but some quick thoughts:

1. Coupled with an HIE solution, this could make eClinicalWorks the de facto EHR standard.  With all the debate around where to store data and how to decide upon standards, a proprietary solution now has a sales channel and a price point to dominate the marketplace.  Let’s not underestimate the need for HIE though – without the tools for participating physicians to collaborate and access patient data from other physicians (with all the kosher privacy and security barriers in place, of course), this just creates many, many smaller silos that then need to be connected later.
2. Wal-Mart could become the largest healthcare network in the country.  They are effectively creating the infrastructure to incorporate a great number of doctors into a virtual practice.  Combined with health kiosk models and retail-based health clinics like that of CVS/CareMark, Wal-Mart has the opportunity to explode into the healthcare market and compete for insurance dollars beyond the pharmacy – perhaps even create their own insurance offering.
3. Will the government react adversely? While this announcement is an exciting collaboration between big players in the private sector, the current administration has to feel that this has the opportunity to be monopolistic and counterproductive to their own agenda.  It will be certainly interesting to see if there is an angle longer-term for the Wal-Mart/Dell/ECW team in being the key player in standardization of HIE and EHR protocol.

Tags: dell, eclinicalworks, EMR, HIE, Innovation, walmart

Ryan Norris is the Director of Technology at Medullan. He has a background working with physicians and clients in the eHealth space in developing and delivering solutions that better interconnect providers and create more informed patients through extensible service architectures and highly-usable interfaces.