I found this about a week ago and found it really really interesting. Here’s the numbers for the EMR behemoth Allscripts per HIT News:

The company [Allscripts] made $15.8 million in net income for the quarter, turning around a $6 million loss for the same period last year. Non-GAAP net income increased 45 percent, from $16.6 million a year ago to $24 million this year.

The sad part is that Allscripts went through a nice round of layoffs last year. I can’t find the number right now, but I remember it was pretty significant. Too bad they had to fire so many people while turning such a large profit. Seems like an opportunistic cut to me. I wonder how well Allscripts support was with all the cuts.

Another quote from the same article:

“We believe that 2010 will be the ‘Year of the EHR’ in which we expect to see significant acceleration in the adoption and utilization of healthcare information technology to improve quality and reduce cost,” said Glen Tullman, Allscripts CEO. “This is a once-in-a-lifetime market opportunity, driven by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.”

There’s no doubt that Glen Tullman is salivating over the $18 billion of EMR stimulus money that’s on the table. He probably should be since Allscripts is likely to make a killing off of the stimulus money.

I think all of this is also a very good sign for smaller EMR vendors as well. I expect a number of EMR vendors to scale to 500 or so installs and sell off for a very nice return in the next few years. I guess we’ll see if Glen’s right about this being the “Year of the EHR.”

This is an interesting press release about connecting 7,000 physicians and 13 hospitals EHR systems together. Although, the most glaring part is the $400 million it will take to make it happen. Here’s the press release:

“The North Shore-LIJ Health System announced today it is subsidizing up to 85 percent of the cost of implementing and operating an Electronic Health Records (EHR) system in the offices of its more than 7,000 affiliated physicians in New York City and Long Island — part of a $400 million investment to strengthen the quality of care throughout the region by automating inpatient and outpatient records in all medical settings, including 13 hospitals. In implementing the largest EHR program in the New York metropolitan area and one of the largest in the nation, North Shore-LIJ will provide physicians with individual subsidies of up to $40,000 over five years.”

Michael J. Dowling, president and chief executive officer (CEO) of the North Shore-LIJ Health System said “We’re not going to measure our return-on-investment (ROI) in terms of dollars and cents; our ROI will be based on our ability to improve patient outcomes.”

“Glen Tullman, CEO of Allscripts, noted that providing physicians with real-time care guidelines via the EHR increases the probability of achieving fundamental improvements in the quality of patient care.”

John Bosco, North Shore-LIJ’s chief information officer said “the Allscripts’ EHR will connect to a separate inpatient clinical information system from Eclipsys Corporation that North Shore-LIJ is deploying at its hospitals and other facilities.”

I just ran into a Urologist who purchased an EMR. His group decided to get Allscripts because they knew Urologists who liked it. They also heard that Allscripts had very good support.

I have heard that Allscripts’ EMR is not very user-friendly. Their ePrescribing solution is well liked, but from my reading of the blogs, their EMR is not well liked.

Does anyone use Allscripts EMR? How do you like it?

The products and services offered in nearly every industry, at their outset, are so complicated and expensive that only people with a lot of money can afford them, and only people with a lot of expertise can provide or use them … At some point, however, these industries were transformed, making their products and services so much more affordable and accessible that a much larger population of could purchase them, and people with less training could competently provide them and use them … To illustrate how these enablers of disruptive innovation (technology enabler, business model innovation, value network) can combine to transform a high-cost, expertise-intensive product into one that is much more affordable and simple, let’s briefly review how it transformed digital computing … By coupling the technological and business model enablers , IBM transformed the computing industry and much of the world with it, while DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) was swept away. [Dr. Jeff’s Note: read up on computers to see how this will happen with healthcare IT. We don’t have to accept the complex, expensive, unusable systems currently available. They will be replaced by better systems we can all use happily].

(The information above was taken from Clayton M. Christensen’s new book, The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Health Care, Introduction pp. xix-xxi. )

I believe that this is happening with EMRs right now! We now have certain EMRs which are easy to use, simple to learn, affordable and effective. These EMRs will sweep away the complex, expensive clunkers put out by most EMR companies.

Your thoughts?