What it is
The EHR Specialty Requirements Worksheet is a spreadsheet-based scoring template that pits two EHR vendors against your specialty's real workflow needs rather than a generic feature checklist. It is built around a weighted-scoring model: on each requirement tab you score Vendor A and Vendor B from 0 to 5 on fit, multiply that score by your own Priority rating from 1 to 5 so that high-priority gaps are penalized harder than nice-to-haves, and total the weighted result. A Summary Dashboard then rolls up all seven requirement areas, computes the percentage of requirements met, the weighted totals, and a recommendation.
The worksheet is organized as a multi-tab workbook. After an Instructions tab that explains the scoring mechanics, it provides seven requirement tabs — Charting and Templates, e-Prescribing and EPCS, Labs and Imaging, Billing and RCM, Portal and Telehealth, Interoperability, and Compliance and ONC — followed by a Summary Dashboard. Each tab is a worksheet where you list your specialty's specific requirements and score both vendors against them, so the evaluation reflects how your clinic actually practices rather than a vendor's marketing feature list.
What makes the priority-weighting central is that not every requirement matters equally. A cardiology practice may treat structured ECG integration and device feeds as critical while a behavioral health practice cares far more about portal-based telehealth and consent workflows. By multiplying fit by priority, the worksheet ensures that a vendor's weakness on something you rated a 5 hurts its score far more than a weakness on something you rated a 1 — producing a recommendation grounded in your weighted reality, not a flat count of checkboxes.
What it's used for
Buying teams use this worksheet to run a structured, defensible EHR comparison for their specialty. Because it is a scoring template rather than a checklist, its value is in producing a weighted, quantified recommendation that survives scrutiny from clinical, financial, and compliance stakeholders.
- ✓ Scoring two EHR vendors side by side on your specialty's actual requirements across charting, e-prescribing/EPCS, labs and imaging, billing/RCM, portal/telehealth, interoperability, and compliance.
- ✓ Applying priority weights (1-5) so high-priority gaps are penalized harder than nice-to-haves, keeping the evaluation honest about what truly matters.
- ✓ Rolling up all seven requirement areas on the Summary Dashboard to compute percentage of requirements met, weighted totals, and a recommendation.
- ✓ Capturing specialty-specific needs that generic feature lists miss — the workflows that distinguish cardiology, behavioral health, OB/GYN, or surgical practices.
- ✓ Comparing real products such as Epic, eClinicalWorks, SimplePractice, or Azalea Health on the same weighted rubric so the comparison is apples to apples.
- ✓ Documenting the evaluation for the buying committee so the final decision is traceable to scored requirements rather than vendor sentiment.
- ✓ Re-running the scoring as a shortlist narrows, swapping vendors into the A and B columns to compare finalists head to head.
Who uses it
An EHR purchase is a committee decision, and the worksheet is designed to gather and weight the input of every stakeholder whose workflow the system will touch.
Context & good to know
The reason a weighted scoring worksheet beats a feature checklist is that EHR vendors compete on long feature lists, and almost every modern system can technically check most boxes. What differentiates them for a given practice is depth and fit within a specific specialty's workflow — and how much each gap actually matters. By forcing you to assign a 0-5 fit score and a 1-5 priority, the worksheet converts a sea of comparable feature claims into a quantified, weighted result where the requirements you care about most carry the most influence over the recommendation.
The seven requirement areas map to the operational pillars of any specialty practice, but each plays out differently by specialty. e-Prescribing and EPCS is critical for a pain or psychiatry practice writing controlled substances and far less central for one that rarely prescribes; Labs and Imaging dominates for primary care and oncology; Portal and Telehealth is decisive for behavioral health, where SimplePractice has built much of its appeal; and Compliance and ONC, covering CEHRT and the FHIR API certification, matters everywhere a practice attests to programs like MIPS or Promoting Interoperability. The worksheet lets each practice tilt the weighting toward its own reality.
Because the worksheet compares exactly two vendors at a time, it fits naturally into the final stage of an EHR selection. After a longer market scan narrows the field, a practice can drop its two finalists — say, Epic versus eClinicalWorks for an ambulatory group, or SimplePractice versus Azalea Health for a smaller specialty clinic — into the A and B columns and let the weighted scores and Summary Dashboard produce a clear, documented recommendation. Swapping finalists in and out makes it a reusable head-to-head tool rather than a single-use form.