Most Interesting Vendor: Allscripts—Moving Forward With Renewed Focus

While it may have not received the same kind of recognition as dbMotion, the Jardogs acquisition is a large part of this push, Black says. He calls the kind of patient information that is obtainable through the Jardogs platform, “the layer above the layer.” It allows patients to interact with their record. It’s something that customers like Murry are strongly endorsing because having that kind of portal is part of the larger population health management picture.

“When I look strategically, if I’m doing the right things for organization, I look at my EMR platform as a critical piece, my HIE [health information exchange] platform, I need a good patient portal, and a good analytics platform. When you look at Jardogs, DbMotion, and the Sunrise, I’m going to get 90 percent of that. So I feel we’re riding the right horse right now with the vision Paul that has, with the money they’re investing, and what they’re doing,” Murry says.

Jim Murry

Open Architecture

Not to be forgotten, Allscripts’ open-architecture EMR philosophy and a focus on interoperability has remained a priority throughout the year. The company has created an atmosphere whereby providers can get developers to create specific clinically focused applications that interface with its EMR through this open-architecture. Lennox Hoyte, M.D., CMIO of USF [University of Southern Florida] Health, a Tampa-based academic medical center, is one Allscripts customer to ardently use this philosophy.

Lennox Hoyte, M.D.

USF Health, Dr. Hoyte says, created an application that interfaces with the EMR and measures patients’ bladder function. In the past, he says, this kind of tool would have had to have been typed and interpreted in the EMR. With the open-architecture, he says, its translated and goes directly in and saves clinicians roughly 15 minutes per patient. “It’s huge because now our instruments can talk directly to the EMR,” he says.

At UC Irvine, Murry and his team are using the open architecture to think outside the box, he says. With it, they have developed a separate EMR system designed specifically for the organization’s ophthalmology team that can integrate data across the enterprise. “The users don’t even know they are leaving the EMR,” Murry says, adding they used open architecture for similar integrations with the operating room’s surgical information systems.

“The Way it Should Be”

The way Hoyte sees it, the open architecture promoted heavily by Allscripts is exactly the way technology should be. He likens it to an electric plug or the components of a car, they’re standardized interfaces that allow for people to go in and create specific things that work for them. He says EMRs should be made in the same vein.          

“Allscripts has figured out the action of entering and removing data from the EMR and storing the data are two separate entities. And they’ve figured out the end-user actually know more about patient care than the EMR company and the end-user ought to develop applications that operates on the data for better clinical care,” Hoyte says.

The organization’s participation in the CommonWell Health Alliance, which is comprised of four other major healthcare IT vendors—Cerner, McKesson, athenahealth, and Greenway (also participating is McKesson subsidiary Relay Health)—speaks to its efforts to promote interoperability and population health. The alliance, which was formerly announced at HIMSS, is an effort to create a national patient identifier, says Black.

While it’s still in the early stages of development, Hoyte says combing this alliance with dbMotion could be a big win for Allscripts. “If dbMotion can be the thing that unites all of them together, that will be huge,” Hoyte says.

Leaders at the company are curbing expectations in the immediate future. In a recent earnings call, Black said 2013 was a “rebuilding year” for Allscripts. However, it’s clear that Black and Allscripts’ customers are confident that eventually the company will be the standard bearer and the tumult from 2012 will be nothing but a distant memory.