Breaking the Mold

Most hospital CIOs who were longtime Eclipsys customers applauded the merger when it was announced. In a recent interview, Rick Schooler, vice president and CIO of the seven-hospital Orlando Health network in Florida, called it “absolutely necessary” for the companies involved and for the industry. “From any standpoint you want to look at it-financial stability or technological innovation-[Allscripts and Eclipsys] are much better together than apart.”

For the industry's sake, he adds, it is important that there are many strong competitors and not just Epic and Cerner picking up the lion's share of new installations. “Siemens, McKesson, and Allscripts all have to do a better job so that customers will have an array of choices of products that work well,” Schooler adds.

Orlando Health has employed physicians using Allscripts Sunrise as well as Allscripts Enterprise for practice management and EHR. As it acquires physician practices, it will migrate them to these platforms so it will have fewer system types to support.

Now Schooler is eager to see the results of the merger in the software itself. “I think they need to get busy about product integration,” he says. “So far there has been more focus on marketing integration. They have the meaningful use-compliant code; now we need to get it in place by July 1.”

Tullman notes that the company actually delayed the integration work on product development so as not to distract both sides' meaningful use work. “Once they both got ARRA-certified, we began work on integration. We demonstrated that at HIMSS and the move to deploy that integration at live sites is under way now, he said.

One word observers use to describe what Allscripts is doing is “disruptive.” Tullman takes that as a compliment.

“I think we are driving a positive disruption that our customers will appreciate, though some of our competitors may not,” he says. “We are being aggressive with innovations such as partnering with Intuit on patient portals and developing iPad and mobility solutions.” He believes Allscripts will continue to be a force in reshaping the health IT industry. “We are seeing a restructuring where people realize they can't be stand-alone systems,” he adds. “They have to offer a full range of services.”

Healthcare Informatics 2011 June;28(6):50-51