Black Book ranks top population health vendors

Population health management is one of the fastest growing areas in healthcare IT, in the realm of about $8 billion in spending, according to Black Book's most recent survey, released January 30.

So it's no surprise that many electronic health record vendors and pure-play population health companies are making big moves in the space.

Black Book, in fact, ranked Allscripts, Cerner and Epic as the top three core EHR/PHM vendors. The research firm pointed out a measurably higher satisfaction with Allscripts and Cerner because they are vendor-agnostic to other EHRs in the PHM process. 

Black Book also rated the top six best-of-breed PHM vendors: IBM Watson Health, Evolent Valence, The Advisory Board, Optum, Wellcentive Philips and Caradigm.

Despite all the buzz around population health, 81 percent of providers are tackling such projects without a strategic technology purchase that meets all their needs, Black Book found.

[Also: Optum ranked top healthcare revenue cycle vendor in new Black Book ratings]

Nearly a third of providers are using value-added tools from their EHR vendor as a stop-gap solution, the survey showed.

Seventy-one percent of CIO respondents to the Black Book survey indicated that between Q2 2015 and Q4 2016, HIT vendors pushed so many products on their healthcare organizations, resulting in a hodge-podge of analytics, engagement, enterprise data warehouses, care coordination and disease management pieces with little to no integration and underutilization of capabilities.

"The new era of how providers get paid is going to impact the entire organization, and most hospitals aren't remotely prepared for it," Black Book managing partner Doug Brown said in a statement. "Next generation PHM will not be achieved via old-school directives to cut staff, slash expenses, and pushing PHM work with the lowest-cost tech vendor."

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN