Wal-Mart Offering EMR System

Just recently, Wal-Mart announced its launch of electronic medical records (EMR). Wal-Mart will in fact now be marketing EMR's targeted at small physician offices. Wal-Mart will partner with Dell and eClinicalWorks to offer the EMR system for less than $25,000 for the first physician in a practice and then an additional $10,000 for each additional physician.

Wal-Mart, as always, espouses its motto of "low costs," and with this new system, they are following this logic. Wal-Mart led the way in the $4 generic drug program, so it will be interesting to see what happens with Wal-Mart entering the health care IT sphere. By teaming up with Dell and eClinicalWorks, Wal-Mart demonstrates that it has the knowledge and support to offer a well-developed EMR system at a more affordable price than many other proprietary solutions.

The question still remains, though. Why should a health care provider adopt a $25,000 EMR system when there are open source health software systems for free? Perhaps, the initial reaction is that open source does not have the support staff to guarantee the security and efficiency of the system. However, it is clear that the open source health system providers are gaining momentum. For a small physicians office of 5 doctors, Wal-Mart's EMR system would be approximately a $65,000 investment, which negates training and re-structuring costs. Therefore, adopting an open source software system becomes a truly viable option for a small physician's office when considering costs.