Vendor Lock In

By Dan

Featured image above provided by Nature Vectors by Vecteezy

Do you want freedom to make choices?

  • The best and cheapest software?

  • The best and cheapest and most reliable consultants?

  • The best for installation, configuration, testing, training, and maintenance?

    Or do you want to be forced to accept one vendor’s decision at whatever price they want to require you to pay?

Barn with Stars and Stripes

Do you want your company, your coworkers and yourself to be subject to their unquestionable rulership and subject to being retaliated against politically or being fired if you do not give them everything they want?

If you don’t like freedom and want to surrender your company to another business without question, then a Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) solutiono like Epic is great for you.

The V.A. and D.O.D.

The Veteran’s Administration said they spent $2.3 billion to build a top Electronic Health Record (EHR) system called VistA according to an article in Modern Healthcare.

This software was loved by many Doctors coming out of medical school. It has been functioning well from large hospital systems with 20 hospitals such as the New York State Office of Mental Health. See OpenHealthNews Article

Since this software is open source, many contracting companies support it. Multiple qualified companies and consultants would likely compete for your business giving you the added security of being able to hold each one accountable while having a backup in case one consultant fails to come through faithfully. And you would not be in a situation where you would have to pay one vendor whatever they ask because you are over a barrel dependent on them alone for service.

And while some people cite benefits that solutions from Cerner and Epic may offer, the cost of developing customizations to cover those advantages would likely be minimal compared to the cost of purchasing a COTS soluton and migrating to it and being forced to deal with them exclusively.

Summary

Vendor lock out is not your friend. It is the road to captivity–like the lion in the picture above.

It is better to have vendors competing for your business than to be forced to compete with other hospitals for your vendor’s attention.