EHR Partnerships Aren't Your GTM Strategy

If you’re the founder or sales leader of a health tech company it’s probably a question that’s been on your mind. Are EHR partnerships critical to go to market? Do I need to be in Athena or Healthie’s marketplace to win customers?

In this article, we’re going to breakdown why you should or shouldn’t join an EHR’s marketplace program and who has them. First, let’s start with the programs that exist.

Examples of EHR Marketplaces/API Programs

1. Epic - Epic Showroom

   1. Epic helped pioneer the idea of an EHR marketplace with a program they used to call the App Orchard. Today, they’ve rebranded it to the Showroom. The Showroom is a mixture of add-on services Epic provides, their key partners which are basically vendors of Epic, and third parties who have built integrations with Epic. The “Connection Hub” is Epic’s large list of integrated partners. Health Tech Nerds conversations make it appear that it costs $500 per year to be listed on Connection Hub + a potential per API call fee.

2. Athena - Athena Marketplace

   1. With more than 150,000 providers and a solid set of APIs the Athena marketplace is one of the most in-demand marketplaces to join for third parties. Additionally, Athena boasts about two-thirds of customers use a Marketplace partner. Athena offers a number of special programs within their Marketplace, from Accelerate partners to Diversity and Inclusion partners.

3. Healthie - The Harbor

   1. One of the newer marketplaces our there is Healthie’s Harbor. (Disclaimer, I run this marketplace at the time of writing). Healthie’s extensive GraphQL API and large list of VC-backed care delivery customers has made the Harbor an increasingly popular option for health tech startups looking to form EHR partnerships.

4. Elation - Elation Integrations

   1. Similar to Healthie, Elation’s new and growing list of integrations has been of interest to join as it’s often a new customer base for third party health tech companies to go after. While many of the companies listed are Labs, there’s a growing number of patient engagement partners and more, including popular scheduling tool Zocdoc.

5. Greenway an NextGen

   1. These three EHRs all have new marketplace programs, NextGen separates their API program into a read only and read/write API. Contrary to some other programs, Greenway proudly states they have partners go through an extensive certification process to verify the integration.

6. eClinicalWorks

   1. eCW’s list of integrated partners is a bit harder to sift through.

7. Dr. Chrono

8. Charm Health

9. ModMed

This list isn’t exhaustive but has some common programs you’re likely to be interested in.

EHR Marketplace Business Models

The business models for EHR marketplaces was a bit of wild west before the Cures Act. It’s become much more standardized since the Act as information blocking regulations have limited what is possible. The first thing to consider is whether you want to integrate with FHIR/Certified APIs or a Proprietary API. I wrote more about this here, Information Blocking, but programs related to Certified APIs are more limited in how they can charge. You may come across programs that don’t charge anything for the APIs but charge additional marketing fees, programs that charge per API call, or programs with proprietary APIs that have different programs for their Certified APIs and non-Certified APIs.

How to join an EHR marketplace?

In the above examples, you’ll see most organizations have some sort of application to join the marketplace program. This is separate from just getting access to the APIs. For example, anyone can go see and work with Epic’s FHIR APIs at fhir.epic.com. Whereas to join Athena, you fill out this form. At Healthie, you can fill out this form to express interest. Before EHRs provide value added marketing services, they may look into whether there’s a mutual customer that exists today or if you’ve actually built an integration versus just saying I’d like to be in the marketing program.

Which marketplace should you join first?

Do research on who matches your ideal customer profile. For example, if your target market is a hospital, it doesn’t make sense to join Healthie or Greenway’s program before Epic. If you’re going after specialty practices like an OBGYN practice, EHRs like Athena, ModMed, or eCW could make sense. But the first thing I would do is join the program for the EHR which you have most customers using. Getting case studies, testimonials, and reviews on a live integration can really help improve your success in getting new customers on that EHR.

How to make the most of your EHR partnerships:

Not all EHR partnerships are made equal. As I’ve been building out a formal partner program, we’ve heard many times that when it comes to the go-to-market and co-marketing side of our marketplace, we are the most structured many have seen. It depends how EHRs think about their marketplace, to some it is simply a way to demonstrate integrations that exist or third parties that have built to the EHR before.

So, where should you spend your time?

Check with EHRs what they do marketing wise for their integration partners, if anything. Common examples of EHR co-marketing include:

1. Press releases announcing the partnership

2. Organic social media announcements

3. Customer newsletter announcements

4. Webinars or Blogs to inform/educate EHR customers about the integration

5. Enabling the EHR sales/success team by putting you (the partner) in front of those teams to demo the integration and share materials with them. This could be formal training to sharing a demo.

6. Collaborating on conferences and other live events

7. Premium (for purchase) marketing opportunities for higher presence or advertising in a marketplace website

8. Identifying shared mutual prospects

It’s very unlikely an EHR will do all of these, they may only offer two or three and they may take into account factors like shared mutual customers.

What EHR Partnerships are not…

EHR partnerships won’t solve your product market fit problem and they’re not a go-to-market strategy. EHRs are an extremely complicated sale and the reps are largely too focused on winning their own deal than they are about trying to help you win a deal. Similarly, an EHR’s marketing team doesn’t have getting you leads as their priority.

I get asked a lot about what kind of lead volume a partner should expect upon joining and my answer is always the same. It largely has nothing to do with your company. In my role, we have a standard set of ways we announce a new partner. What I see impacts lead volume more than anything is the category of partner. By category I mean things like “AI copilots” or “RCM platforms” or “patient self scheduling” - do you fall into the trending category that providers are looking to buy. At the end of the day, organizations are looking for solutions that solve their problems and that’s what will drive leads. Do you solve the customer bases problem? That’s the question to ask - “What’s the most commonly purchased or used category in your marketplace?”

There could be several reasons for this. It could be it’s a hot new category like AI copilots, OR it could be that EHR has a weakness that is being filled by partners so they’re often purchased together.

I will say in the marketplace that I run, we don’t really push one partner over another and I’d generally take that frame of my mind if I was a partner entering into a partnership. I don’t want my customers to be mad that I recommended a partner and it doesn’t work out. I have way

EHR partnerships are not strategic partnerships. They’re also not as I refer to - “built-in” partnerships. This is the dream scenario, when an EHR is actually selling you and even putting you in their contracts. Maybe we’ll talk about that another day.

So, when is the best time to partner with an EHR?

Partnering with an EHR should come when you have a number of prospects asking what your experience is like working with an EHR. That’ll typically be a bottleneck in your sales process. Because even though I’ve already shared why they’re not going to dramatically increase your lead volume, they WILL help improve your closing rates.

Put yourself in the shoes of the customer and you’ve been using an EHR for the past six years with no plans to change. You’re now evaluating two workflow automation companies that need to properly execute a bi-directional integration. One is listed in the EHRs marketplace with reviews from customers and there’s already been development work done for what you need. The other option says they’ve integrated with plenty of EHRs before but this would be the first time with that EHR or maybe even just their second time. Even if APIs in healthcare are getting easier to understand (LOL right) the settings of EHRs are another beast in itself. Long-standing partners of EHRs get that. It’s not just about integrating properly, it’s about understanding how the settings and permissions of EHRs can impact the integration.

So don’t go sign up for an EHR partnership to try and enter a new market. Sign up when you’re seeing that EHR in your sales prospects - or even better when you have a current customer switching to that EHR.

Here’s the golden nugget.

If you’ve read this far, you deserve to know what tips the scale. I’ve been on both sides of EHR marketplaces. I was at a virtual care platform that became an embedded vendor of one EHR, and in both the Athena marketplace and Epic App Orchard. Now, I’m on the other side building the EHR program. From experience, there’s one key thing that really moves the needle.

As lame as it sounds - build relationships with prospect and customer facing teams. If you’re a partner leader, ask to get something coordinated with the EHRs sales and success teams. If you’re the AE, build relationships with the EHR AEs on LinkedIn. Get to know each other at conferences. The more top of mind you are, the more that team is likely to remember “If I hear a company mention X point, then I should bring up this type of partner.” Follow up. Follow up. Follow up. And, be a good partner. Keep them informed about your sales process. At the end of the day a well-developed integration makes the customer stickier for both the EHR and partner.

Yes, EHR partnerships are worth it. Not just for the opportunity to work closely with the EHR’s team but for the credibility. Healthcare integrations have a history of being painful and joining an marketplace doesn’t guarantee it’s going to work perfectly, but it may gave you more help than not. And, while I say it’s not your go-to-market strategy or source of leads, if you are a good fit then the leads will come. We had a customer sign contracts with multiple enterprise customers in their first quarter. We have other partners working 10+ prospects at once. Maybe even more importantly, we’ve had customers come to us with issues they have partners that we’ve been able to work with the partner to resolve and keep a customer for both of us.