EHR Company Funding Risks – Large Company Backed EHR

This is the fifth and final post in my EHR Company Funding Risks series that was started in response to my original post about the The Current Health IT & EHR Bubble. In this series, we’re looking at the following EHR company categories: Seed Funded, Well Funded, Positive Cash Flow, Large EHR Company, and Large Company Backed EHR. Next up is Large Company Backed EHR.

Large Company Backed EHR
The companies in this category are quite interesting, because they can often exhibit the characteristics of EHR software in every other category of EHR company. It’s all about the story of the company. For example, I’ve come across some really large companies who have developed their own EHR and only have 1 practice using their EHR. This is very much like a seed company. There are some larger companies who have acquired essentially the EHR software of another company and now they’re trying to grow the user base similar to a well funded EHR company.

I can think of a few EHR acquisitions where the large EHR company acquired a cash flow positive EHR company and they’re continuing to grow that EHR company in a cash flow positive way. Then, of course there are a few large companies that have large EHR install bases as well. There’s also everything in between in this category, so it’s hard to generalize about this group.

With that said, since it has the backing of a large company (in healthcare or not in healthcare) the biggest risk is that they’ll shift their priorities from the EHR software and on to something else in their company. Most large companies trying to get into the EHR software business come quick out of the gate. If they do well, they’ll continue growing it like they did. If they don’t do well, they’ll often throw in the towel by cutting resources to that venture and then eventually a sale of the EHR assets to another company.

Read all the posts in the EHR Company Funding Risks series.

About the author

John Lynn

John Lynn is the Founder of HealthcareScene.com, a network of leading Healthcare IT resources. The flagship blog, Healthcare IT Today, contains over 13,000 articles with over half of the articles written by John. These EMR and Healthcare IT related articles have been viewed over 20 million times.

John manages Healthcare IT Central, the leading career Health IT job board. He also organizes the first of its kind conference and community focused on healthcare marketing, Healthcare and IT Marketing Conference, and a healthcare IT conference, EXPO.health, focused on practical healthcare IT innovation. John is an advisor to multiple healthcare IT companies. John is highly involved in social media, and in addition to his blogs can be found on Twitter: @techguy.

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