This post will likely be a little bit of inside baseball for many, but I think it’s a really important subject to cover since it’s going to impact so many practices and so many doctors. The news just came out that e-MDs was acquiring the suite of ambulatory EHR software owned by McKesson. For those keeping track at home, these are 6 of the assets acquired from McKesson: McKesson Practice Choice™, Medisoft®, Medisoft® Clinical, Lytec®, Lytec® MD, and Practice Partner®.
This shouldn’t be a surprise from a McKesson perspective. At HIMSS I heard multiple stories of people talking with McKesson staff who didn’t even know the names of their EHR software. Sad, but true. The only question for McKesson is will Paragon get sold off next?
For those that aren’t familiar with the history of e-MDs, it was purchased by Marlin Equity Partners back in March 2015 and merged with Marlin’s MDeverywhere company. Marlin then went on to acquire AdvancedMD from ADP in August of 2015 as they started to stock pile ambulatory EHR vendors. With the acquisition of the McKesson assets, Marlin now owns a large number of ambulatory EHR vendors.
This shouldn’t really be a surprise to anyone. We all knew that 300 EHR vendors wasn’t sustainable long term and we know that the EHR market has matured now that the false market meaningful use created is over. Some consolidation was bound to happen and it’s no surprise that a private equity firm is rolling up these companies as they seek to find the benefits of scale. The press release notes that the combined company’s products and services are being used by nearly 55,000 providers nationwide after this latest acquisition. That’s quite a presence in the ambulatory space.
The unfortunate downside of this type of EHR roll up is that not all of these EHR software can survive under one roof. Some of them have got to go. The only question is which one(s) will survive. Unlike EHR vendor founders, private equity companies are disconnected from the original product and so it doesn’t hurt as much for them to shut down a weaker product line as they consolidate users on to what they consider the best software. I’d be shocked if we didn’t see this happen with a number of EHR software that are now under e-MD’s (and Marlin’s) roof.
I also won’t be surprised if Marlin and e-MDs continue with more acquisitions. There are still a few hundred other ambulatory EHR vendors out there.
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