沃尔玛搞电子病历

张琨

Wal-Mart to Enter EHR Market
Wal-Mart to Enter EHR Market
03/16/2009, 21:51     [Penton Insight]     

BENTONVILLE, Ark. ??? This spring, Wal-Mart plans to begin offering low-cost electronic health records systems to physicians, company officials told the New York Times last week. The company's Sam's Club division will partner with Dell computers and software company EClinicalWorks to offer the service. Dell will furnish the docs with a desktop or tablet personal computer, while eClinicalWorks will provide the EHR and practice management software for patient billing.
According to the Times report, the nation's largest retailer will use its buying power to secure discounts on the software and hardware, resulting in an initial cost to set up the EHR system of less than $25,000 for the first physician and about $10,000 for each additional physician in a practice.
While President Bush called for electronic health records for all Americans by 2014, many physicians have been reluctant to make the switch (see The eHealth Connection, HomeCare, August 2005). But Wal-Mart officials said their new EHR initiative would make it more accessible and cost-efficient for physicians to adopt health care IT because they could charge as much as 50 percent less than other health IT providers, the Times report said. In addition, the Obama administration is encouraging doctors to switch to electronic records with $19 billion in incentives in the economic stimulus package.
[?? 2009 Penton Business Media. All rights reserved.   ]

张琨

沃尔玛与戴尔合攻电子病历 零售业巨头沃尔玛日前表示，其准备和戴尔公司协作进军电子病历市场，为小诊所的从业医师提供服务。新系统最快于今年秋季推出。

沃尔玛公司还表示，该公司旗下大卖场山姆俱乐部将推出的电子病历套装服务包含硬件、软件、安装、维修与操作训练，从而可使新系统的操作更容易、价位更合理，甚至可比其他同类产品便宜一半。


据了解，山姆俱乐部现在有4700万名会员，其中约有20万人提供健康护理信息，且多半是医生。首位使用新系统的执业医师缴交的费用将不足2.5万美元，其他医生若要添加新系统，每人要再加收1万美元。设备安装与操作训练完成后，后续的维修和技术支持年费约在4000-6500美元。

在沃尔玛跨足新领域之际，美国政府也正积极推动电子病历市场发展，在其经济振兴方案中纳入190亿美元的相关投资。

据《新英格兰医学杂志》去年的统计，当前美国约有17％的医生使用电子病历，且多数在大型医疗团体服务。不过，四分之三的医生却在10人以下的诊所从业。有关专家指出，传统的健康信息技术供应商常因成本方面的考虑避开小诊所，因为这些市场较分散。但是，如果将其集成在一起，规模不容小觑。