The Scoop on Medical Practice Software

How to shop for and implement Medical Practice Management (MPM) and Electronic Medical Records (EMR) systems — despite a fragmented, disjointed market.

By Howard Baldwin

Medical practices don't have much choice: You have to use technology to manage the patient records and scheduling, and more technology to handle the business side — it's just too complex (and in some cases legally risky) to do everything by hand.

But the market for medical practice systems, including both Medical Practice Management (MPM) software and Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software, is filled with challenges: fragmentation, consolidation, integration between applications as well as with external data systems, and conflict among selling channels. How are physicians — trained in diagnostics, not finances or technology — supposed to discern what's best for their practice?

We'll do what we can to help. With this Buyer's Guide, we'll look at the economics trends buffeting the MPM and EMR market segment, and also at the basic features you should expect from the systems. We'll show how physicians (or their designees) can prepare for the purchase decision, what demands they should make of vendors, and where the potential points of failure and pain lie along the way. We'll wrap up with sources of help in the decision, and speculation about what the future might bring.