From Medscape (you may have to log-in)
"WASHINGTON (Reuters) Mar 11 - Wal-Mart Inc, which has moved into low-cost healthcare with walk-in clinics and cheap prescriptions, said on Wednesday its Sam's Club unit would sell a package including software and Dell computers directly to doctors for electronic medical records."
Sounds good right. After all Wal-Mart has $4 prescriptions.
But check out the cost: "Medical software company eClinicalworks will offer the software program, Koehler said. She said the package would cost the first doctor in a practice about $25,000, with each additional user costing around $10,000."
No independent or small practice should pay that much for a medical record system. I think that EMR is one of the greatest scams around. Personally, I use Soapware which has worked reliably for the past 2 1/2 years without a single lost or problem record. True Soapware has gone up in price - from $400 to $1200 a year, but it's still nearly 20+ times cheaper. Even cheaper, if you don't mind your EMR being completely on the internet, Office Ally offers an EMR for $24.95 a month. A colleague of mine uses it and thinks it's great.
Now the cost of the Wal-Mart/Sam's Club EMR does include hardware, software, and installation, but unless the hardware is worth about $23,000, I am dubious about this system.
I wonder who is going to be the microsoft of medical records. This will be a big money maker.
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