A second opinion: in today's economic environment, CIOs must tap all resources before signing on the dotted line.

Healthcare IT purchases are so huge that errors often have massive implications. With dollars harder than ever to come by, CIOs must use every tool at their disposal to avoid making mistakes. One main tool that has been leveraged for some time now is research from Orem, Utah-based KLAS.

The following two features are generally divided between clinical IT on the one hand, and financial/administrative IT on the other. To delve beyond the report, HCI editors interviewed researchers at KLAS and industry insiders to take you beyond the numbers. We hope you enjoy this fleshing out of the "2008 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Professional Services" report.