While at HIMSS I talked to a number of EHR and Healthcare IT Consulting firms. I was interested to hear what they thought about the state of the Healthcare IT and EHR markets when it comes to consulting. Most of them were really frank with me that it’s a hard time in the EHR and Healthcare IT Consulting world. The golden age of EHR consulting is over and the consulting companies that haven’t switched over to more of a true consulting company and less of a staff augmentation company are finding it to be a real challenge.
Along with that shift, you’re also seeing many consulting companies rolling out products and services that will last well beyond the consulting gig like: analytics platforms, call center support services, and even some interoperability platforms. I’ll be interested to see how each of these go.
These consulting companies are also looking at some of these areas for growth as well:
- ICD-10
- Acquisition and Merger and Alignment advisory
- MU
- Analytics
- EHR Specific Support
This is a pretty interesting list of opportunities. I think we’ll see these consulting companies really evolve over the next couple years and some of them will basically die. It’s unfortunate, but it seems to be the state of the EHR and Healthcare IT market today.
What have you seen happening in the consulting market? Are there other opportunities we haven’t mentioned?
I’m surprised HIPAA Security isn’t listed. We dropped quality and MU consulting almost two years ago to focus solely on HIPAA, and the growth has threatened to drown us at times. The fastest path for us has been doing educational seminars with state medical associations and/or working with their practice management groups. You get access to a lot of potential clients, and you hardly have to spend anything on marketing.
Matt,
You make a great point. HIPAA really has exploded. It’s a very interesting point that most of the consulting companies haven’t chosen to do HIPAA as well, but I really haven’t seen it.