By Stephen Aleksza, PMP | Post-Acute EHR Advisory | In Partnership with HealthTECH
This article is part of our Expert Insights series, where experienced healthcare IT consultants share practical perspectives from real engagements.
Stephen Aleksza, PMP is a post-acute EHR advisor with nearly 30 years of vendor-side experience at Netsmart, Allscripts, and their predecessor platforms, where he led product management and professional services for home health and hospice. He partners with HealthTECH to help hospice, home health, and palliative care organizations navigate EHR selection, optimization, training, and migration.
You submitted a feature request to your EHR vendor a while back, and at the user conference someone from the vendor mentioned it was on the roadmap.
Since then, you may have wondered where it stands and what that phrase actually means. I’ve worked on the vendor side of that process for home health and hospice platforms, and it’s more orderly than it looks from the outside.
How EHR vendors review feature requests
Every request is reviewed. A product manager reads each request, whether it is via a support ticket or an account manager. Similar requests are grouped, because several agencies describing the same need make a stronger case than one. A request focused on a specific screen is usually folded into a broader category, so the underlying need matters more than the proposed design.
Describe the problem and what it costs you
Product managers want to hear about the problem and its impact more than the change you think should be made. Understanding the problem helps them build a solution that addresses the root cause, and that solution may look different from what you had in mind. “We need a field for X” is a starting point, while “our intake team spends six hours a week reconciling X by hand” shows them where the problem lives and gives them a number to bring to leadership.
Requests move with larger projects
Much of each release is organized around the vendor’s strategic plan and around regulatory deadlines, such as an OASIS update or new HOPE requirements. Related requests are often slotted in when one of those projects opens up an area of the product. Within those projects, priority goes first to the impact on users and the agency, then to how many clients would benefit and whether the request fits the business strategy.
Vendors make these trade-offs almost daily, and they work hard to keep the published roadmap on track because agencies plan around it. That’s also why a strong request that arrives mid-year often waits for the next planning cycle.
The stages behind “on the roadmap”
The phrase can mean several different things:
- Under consideration: The team recognizes the need and is still working out the approach.
- Planned: The request has a tentative slot, and the timing may shift as work is defined.
- Committed to a named release: The firmest commitment a roadmap makes.
- Limited release or early adopter: The feature is live with a small group of clients before it goes out to everyone.
When someone tells you a request is on the roadmap, ask which of these they mean.
AI works best as one tool among several
In my experience, the strongest AI work on a roadmap starts with a business problem the vendor aims to solve for its users. From there, the product team asks whether AI is the right fit for that problem or whether something simpler, like robotic process automation (RPA), would be better. AI built that way appears within the features that solve the problem, with an outcome your agency can measure. When you see AI on a roadmap slide, asking which problem it solves for agencies like yours tells you a lot about how the vendor is thinking about AI.
Say yes to early participation
Vendors look for agencies willing to join design sessions and early adopter programs, testing features while they’re still taking shape. These opportunities take time from busy staff, so the agencies that take them on stand out. They become design partners, and design partners help shape features before they ever reach the roadmap slide.
What’s the oldest request your agency is still waiting on, and which stage does your vendor say it’s in?
From the vendor side
I spent nearly three decades at Netsmart and Allscripts, including years running product management for home health and hospice, deciding which requests made the cut. If your agency has a backlog of requests that never seem to move, I can help you sort out which ones belong on the vendor’s list and which ones your current platform may already handle.
Connect on LinkedIn | Email Stephen | Contact HealthTECH
