EHR vendors Allscripts and Athenahealth made acquisitions, partnerships and strategic changes in 2019 to lay the foundation for 2020.
Here are 10 things to know about each company as they approach the new decade.
Allscripts
1. Allscripts is based in Chicago and has locations in Australia, Singapore, Israel and the United Kingdom. Frost & Sullivan gave Allscripts the 2019 United States Company of the Year Award for its advanced revenue cycle management solutions.
2. Over the past three years, the company's RCM business unit has grown more than 200 percent and has more than 180,000 physician customers across all 50 states in the U.S.
3. To begin the year, Allscripts partnered with Microsoft to design a new clinical research model that would leverage EHR and other technologies clinicians use when providing treatment. The collaboration aims to speed up the development of new therapies with Microsoft's cloud and artificial intelligence capabilities.
4. Allscripts acquired ZappRx, a prescription medicine startup, in June for an undisclosed amount. ZappRx raised more than $40 million from investors, according to a CNBC report.
5. Allscripts agreed to settle Department of Justice investigations related to HIPAA and anti-kickback statute compliance with its subsidiary Practice Fusion. Allscripts acquired the company in February 2018 for $100 million, after the DOJ had begun investigations. The two reached a settlement of $145 million.
6. In August, Apple Health Records became available on Allscripts Sunrise, TouchWorks and Professional EHR. Patients can now access their medical histories on their iPhone due to the partnership.
7. Northwell Health in New Hyde Park, N.Y., announced its partnership with Allscripts in October to develop and deploy a cloud-based, voice-enabled EHR. Northwell clinicians, IT professionals and administrators will help design the new EHR, which will include artificial intelligence technology. The health system also extended its agreement to use Allscripts' Sunrise inpatient EHR through 2027.
8. During the third quarter, Allscripts reported a 3 percent revenue increase to $444 million as well as a $6 million net loss, which was down from a $36 million net loss in the third quarter of 2018. The company expects full year bookings around $1 billion, and bookings were up 19% in the third quarter.
9. On Dec. 3, Allscripts' healthcare decision analytics and budgeting business, Epsi, released a new analytics platform. The platform is designed to help hospital leaders analyze clinical, financial and operational performance; more than 1,015 hospitals use Epsi's healthcare decision analytics, budgeting and planning solutions.
10. Also in December, England-based Gloucestershire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust reported going live with Allscripts Sunrise electronic patient record five months after signing the contract in May. The trust planned to deploy its patient record system in the summer of 2020 but accelerated its deployment to support staff during the winter months. Due to the success of the initial rollout, it aims to move up the rollout of its EPR at Cheltenham General Hospital to February.
Athenahealth
1. Athenahealth has a network of more than 160,000 healthcare providers and locations across the globe, including India and Ireland.
2. Veritas Capital and Elliott Management-affiliated Evergreen Coast Capital completed their acquisition of Athenahealth in February for around $5.7 billion in cash. The company then went private. At that time, Veritas planned to combine Athenahealth with Virence Health, its value-based care business acquired from GE Healthcare.
3. In April, Athenahealth announced it would lay off around 4 percent of its global workforce, an estimated 200 of its around 5,000 employees. The layoffs occurred as part of the company's efforts to reorganize its resources after it went private under its new owners.
4. Luis Borgen became Athenahealth's CFO in September. Mr. Borgen previously served as CFO of Vistaprint, an e-commerce brand, and has previous experience as CFO of DaVita. He has more than 22 years of experience in finance.
5. The company also appointed former PatientKeeper CEO Paul Brient as chief product officer in September. In August, the company named Simon Mouyal as chief marketing officer and in May it named Bill Conway the chief sales officer. Mr. Conway previously served as general manager of provider solutions at American Well, and had spent 13 years before that as part of Athenahealth's leadership team.
6. On Sept. 30, The Boston Globe reported Athenahealth put its 29-acre campus in Watertown, Mass., up for sale with plans to sign a long-term lease with the building's owner. The report noted that Athenahealth could make millions of dollars by selling the 11-floor, 830,000 square-foot Arsenal on the Charles building.
7. Rhinogram, which has a cloud-based telehealth provider, partnered with Athenahealth to make its platform available on Athenahealth's EHR. It has become part of Athenahealth's marketplace to support remote healthcare visits through virtual encounters.
8. Athenahealth unveiled new strategy-related initiatives in October, at the Centricity Healthcare User Group conference. The new strategy includes launching customer success managers for its EHR products, which it hopes will improve provider workflows and enhance collaboration.
9. Athenahealth added BirdEye's customer experience platform to its EHR marketplace program in November.
10. In December, Athenahealth launched an interactive flu dashboard that could track the spread of the flu across the U.S. The company plans to compare how different state populations across the country are affected by the flu.