Wal-Mart To Crash The Electronic Medical Records Party: Report

The New York Times

The retail behemoth is targeting ambulatory settings like small physician practices, and has enlisted both Dell (through Wal-Mart's Sam's Club Division) to provide hardware (tablet and desktop PCs) and eClinical Works, a Westborough, Mass.-based EMR and practice management vendor, to provide the software.

"We're a high-volume, low-cost company. And I would argue that mentality is sorely lacking in the health-care industry," said Marcus Osborne, Wal-Mart's senior director for health-care business development, to the Times .

Representatives from Wal-Mart and Dell did not respond immediately to a request for comment by Channelweb.com.

EMR provisions account for $19 billion of the federal stimulus package, known as the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

Eligible physicians that can demonstrate "meaningful use" of EMR in their practices will be able to receive incentive payments of, on the low end, $40,000 per physician. (Financial incentives for EMR in certain hospitals are into the $1 million range, but those more sophisticated integrations aren't Wal-Mart or eClinical Works targets.)

The Times reported that Wal-Mart's EMR will be available through Sam's Club starting this spring and will cost $25,000 for the first physician in a practice and $10,000 for each additional physician. Wal-Mart estimated $4,000 to $6,500 a year in annual maintenance costs. Those numbers put Wal-Mart's offering in the same range as most basic EMR integrations provided by EMR vendors and VARs for physician practice settings.

The number of physician practices currently using computerized patient records is about 17 percent in the U.S., according to the New England Journal of Medicine. Many states were, through their own incentive programs, urging providers to make the switch to EMR even before EMR became a stimulus buzz word. VARs have been in the game, for physician practices especially, just as long.

"States haven't been sitting around waiting for the feds. They've been developing their own plans and trying to incentivize health-care providers to get on board," said Pam Markle, senior markets manager at Ingram Micro, in a recent Channelweb.com interview. "There's plenty of time for solution providers to get on board, understand the systems and get involved. Providers are going to get those bonuses, but then later they will turn into penalties. It's the perfect time for resellers."

But will VARs continue to get their EMR piece when the biggest retailing elephant in the room has also stepped into the ring, armed with the ability to undercut competitors, and discount hardware and software?

Let us know your thoughts on Wal-Mart's EMR salvo. Write to Chad at [email protected].