Matthew Holt of the healthcare blog always does a nice job with his interviews. This is a pretty interesting one with Glen Tullman, CEO of Allscripts. Like it or not, Allscripts is going to play a big part in the EMR/EHR space. So, it’s worth listening to Glen to hear what he has to say about the industry.

One part that I found especially interesting was when he calls out Epic for not working on EMR interoperability. What’s interesting is that Glen really did look sincere in his desire for Allscripts to be inter operable. The problem is that I haven’t seen enough action in implementing those solutions.

Lots of other goodies in the video as well. Nice work Matthew.

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.”