eClinicalWorks, Dell and Wal-Mart are all leaders on price and value, and this shared interest has led them to collaborate on a new bundled product offering that will make electronic medical records available to members of Wal-Mart's Sam's Club. The new partnership will bundle eClinicalWorks' unified application, which combines an electronic medical record (EMR) and practice management system, with Dell hardware to be marketed on Sam's Club's Web site. Sam's Club claims to have 200,000 practices among its members, amounting to access to almost 65% of the available market for ambulatory EMRs, based on an estimated 308,900 office-based practitioners in the U.S. in 2006, according to the CDC's April 2008 publication of the National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey (NAMCS).

It's not the first time that eClinicalWorks, Dell and Wal-Mart have worked together, as this also makes public the longtime relationship by which eClinicalWorks and Dell have provided Wal-Mart with EMR applications for its in-store retail clinics since 2006, with 30 clinics now using eClinicalWorks. This relationship was the basis for the new collaboration, and according to eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Kumar Navani, as well as the spokesperson for Sam's Club, Wal-Mart's experience with the application in the clinics is what led them to want to make it available to the providers who are members of Sam's Club. The goal is to bundle the EMR software with hardware, installation and training, in an affordable and clear pricing model.

The announcement comes just weeks after the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), which provides about $20 billion in funding for healthcare IT. eClinicalWorks is a CCHIT-certified product, and this will allow the member providers who purchase it at Sam's Club and demonstrate meaningful use to be eligible for incentives under ARRA. The Sam's Club offering is priced below the levels of the incentive payments that physicians who implement and use ambulatory electronic medical records under the conditions laid out in ARRA will receive.

Wal-Mart will market the EMR bundle on its Sam's Club Web site and the eClinicalWorks/Dell bundle will be delivered as software-as-a-service (SaaS), hosted in eClinicalWorks data centers. Service responsibilities are shared between Dell and eClinicalWorks, with Dell's services available for implementation and setup of the EMR hardware and infrastructure, and eClinicalWorks services provided for hosting, implementation project management, training and support for the EMRs. Providers must have broadband access to use the service, although the eClinicalWorks software can be installed on site and run on servers at the practice if this is not available. The software is pre-configured by eClinicalWorks and delivered via the SaaS model to fit the needs of the practice, with content including specialty-specific templates and databases, clinical decision support tools and order sets. The Sam's Club bundle includes eClinicalWorks standard implementation package, with five days of on-site training for small practices.

The collaboration between Wal-Mart, Dell and eClinicalWorks on this product is unprecedented, but based on a history of collaboration between the partners in Wal-Mart's retail clinics. The Sam's Club channel, with access to 200,000 U.S. practices, represents a significant opportunity for eClinicalWorks to grow its market share in the ambulatory EMR market, and for Dell to grow its hardware and service channels. It also represents an opportunity for U.S. practices to take advantage of a bundled product offering that removes some of the complexity from EMR implementation while allowing them to take advantage of the opportunities created by almost $20 billion in government incentives available for ambulatory EMRs under ARRA.

What do you think about Sam's Club facilitating EMR purchases for its members?