D&H Sees Healthy Outlook In EMR, Other Medical Solutions

D&H Distributing has been busy building a health-care focused business, adding new vendors, new resources and new solutions to help solution providers better serve that red-hot vertical market, according to executives.

"Initially, where a lot of companies were focusing was the enterprise version of health care: hospitals and big institutions. But those companies were probably already more mature from an EMR [electronic medical records] perspective, Schwab said. "Ninety-percent of doctors' offices have less than 25 employees. Those are already offices being supported by outsourced IT departments with VARs. [For EMR], we need to develop true integrated training, education and product deployment solutions to help our partners proactively and intelligently go after the EMR opportunity."

Among the moves, D&H has added EMR applications from gloStream, "scan-to-archive" solutions from Kofax, ruggedized mobile tablets from Gammatech and the Jitterbug phone from GreatCall, said Dan Schwab, co-president at D&H. The solutions are geared toward smaller health-care clients that typically need more help and are served by SMB VARs, Schwab said.

In addition, D&H plans a health-care virtual trade show for Feb. 17 where VARs and vendors can learn more about the health-care opportunity, Schwab said. Virtual booths from vendors including Intel, Buffalo Technology, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Crucial and Epson as well as the new vendors will be included, according to the distributor.

Finally, D&H has also constructed a solutions lab that solution providers can access virtually to develop and test health-care solutions, Schwab said. "We can't fly 10,000 small resellers to one location and at the end of the day those guys don't want to spend two or three days away out of their business schedule. But in our solutions lab, they can get hands-on training virtually," Schwab said.

Using IP-based cameras to see into the lab, D&H technicians can show VARs how to build a health-care solution. "They can come online for 30 minutes to an hour and take something back to apply to their business," Schwab said.

D&H held a training session for all sales and technical staff on health care and the distributor feels confident it can pass that knowledge on to VARs, Schwab said. "It all starts with education. We're investing a lot of time in reseller partners around health-care laws and the solutions that exist," he said. "Some solutions have a high up-front cost, some are built into monthly maintenance fees. Some are on a per-doctor basis, some are office-based. Some are cloud-based, some are on-premise. They all have strengths and challenges."

D&H's move into health care should give VARs the necessary support to break into the heatlh-care market, said Krystal Kiser, director of marketing and sales at Dayton Technologies Group, a Vandalia, Ohio-based solution provider.

"It's one thing to just be familiar with this [American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009] that's allowing funds to be streamed through the health-care industry for IT purposes. It's a complete other thing for [distributors] such as D&H to say, 'Let me help you best deliver to your customers and better break into a newer market by educating your company on how we can do that,'" she said.

Next: Less Than 1 Percent Have Full EMR System Now

Dayton Technologies Group has a strong background helping credit union customers meet security standards. The VAR feels it can do the same with health-care customers, Kiser said. "When you throw that [security] mentality toward health care, it's really no different. The data being housed within the health-care industry walls is equal to the sensitivity to credit union clients," she said.

D&H cited figures from HIMSS (the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society) that show less than 1 percent of hospitals have implemented a full EMR system, evidence that the opportunity to outfit smaller practices is likely still wide-open, Schwab said. Perhaps because of that, more than 500 VARs had registered for the virtual event, Schwab said.

"We needed to identify the right products and solutions, educate the sales force, then educate the customer base, then empower the customer base with the right solutions for small business," Schwab said.