Provider - What Will They Outsourcing ?

The biggest of all the Healthcare IT markets is the most fragmented Hospitals (Providers) market. If you have sold to the provider market place you probably know this, but if you have not - here are a few things to expect

• Long with a big O sales cycles
• Limited budgets - product centric buying patterns
• Complexity varies by size of the hospitals
• You will find docs making IT decisions - if they want it they will get it
• The stronger the references, the easier the sale

A few salient points from a vendors standpoint

• A hand ful of product vendors own the space (EPIC, Cerner, Eclipsys, IDX, GE etc.)
• There are possibly two options on service providers - Perot Systems, First Consulting Group

Now here is what is rocking the industry

• First Consulting Group has been acquired by CSC
• Perot Systems has more bad deals than good ones
• The place is ripe for another vendor to get into the big league

Usually the outsourcing options for Hospitals are limited to a certain extent, There are scenarios where $1-2B (around 600-1000 bed) hospitals don't get any serious consideration from top two/three vendors. For that matter the ERP product vendors sometimes pass requests for proposals just because it is difficult to go through the entire procurement process with smaller Hosptials.

One trend to keep a watch on is the emergence of companies with India origin acquiring US companies and getting a foot in the door. Stay tuned ..