[Merrill]

My GP's practice went to a SaaS provider for electronic health records. Never mind transmission costs -- there is no standard way to export their patient records in order to move to a different provider. It requires a custom consulting services contract with their existing provider to retrieve their patient records, at an exorbitant price tag.

[cabaalis]

This is quite typical. Even with MIPS PI measures and the push for interoperability. Getting patient data in bulk out of a hosted EHR can be a frustrating exercise. What they are doing is holding the providers' data hostage, in the name of HIPAA and security.