Worse yet, with a volatile http://www.ehrbloggers.com/2010/02/notes-on-volatile-ehr-market.html market of bankruptcy, mergers, and acquisitions, industry experts say that as high as 70 percent of health IT vendors move in and out of the market, with companies such as Acermed, MedcomSoft, and others filing bankruptcy.

Purchasing a certified system http://www.cchit.org/ is no guarantee of a company’s financial strength, as vendors are not required to prove financial strength as part of the certification process. But stakeholders are urging more vendor oversight so that federal stimulus dollars are not wasted on EHRs from vendors who later might vanish. One industry observer calls the EHR marketplace “the wild, wild west.”