Allscripts Healthcare Solutions, Inc. is a publicly traded American company that provides physician practices,
hospitals
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...
, and other healthcare providers with
practice management
Practice management is the term used in General practice for the person who manages the finance and administration of a doctor's office or an office of a medical professional in one of many types of specialties in medicine. This is distinct from ...
and
electronic health record
An electronic health record (EHR) is the systematized collection of patient and population electronically stored health information in a digital format. These records can be shared across different health care settings. Records are shared throu ...
technology. Allscripts also provides products for patient engagement and care coordination, as well as
financial
Finance is the study and discipline of money, currency and capital assets. It is related to, but not synonymous with economics, the study of production, distribution, and consumption of money, assets, goods and services (the discipline of fina ...
and
analytics
Analytics is the systematic computational analysis of data or statistics. It is used for the discovery, interpretation, and communication of meaningful patterns in data. It also entails applying data patterns toward effective decision-making. It ...
technology. The company has more than 180,000 physician users and has products in 2,700
hospitals
A hospital is a health care institution providing patient treatment with specialized health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically has an emerge ...
and 13,000 extended care organizations.
History
Allscripts was founded in 1981 and is headquartered in
Chicago, Illinois
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. An additional key operations' office is located in
Raleigh, North Carolina
Raleigh (; ) is the capital city of the state of North Carolina and the List of North Carolina county seats, seat of Wake County, North Carolina, Wake County in the United States. It is the List of municipalities in North Carolina, second-most ...
.
In 2008, Allscripts merged with the healthcare systems operations of its rival,
Misys
Finastra is a financial software company headquartered in London, England. In 2010, Allscripts-Misys merged with another healthcare information technology competitor,
Eclipsys
Eclipsys Corporation was a publicly traded American company that provided hospitals and other healthcare organizations with electronic medical record, computerized physician order entry, and other technology, as well as revenue cycle management so ...
, in a $1.3 billion deal, merging patient records, to create the industry’s largest network of clients.
In 2020 Allscripts executed two major divestment moves. In October, Allscripts sold its EPSi business, a provider of financial decision support and planning tools for hospitals and health systems, to Strata Decision Technology for $365 million. Later, in December 2020, Allscripts closed the sale of its care coordination business, CarePort Health, to Wellsky for $1.35 billion.
Acquisitions
In March 2013, Allscripts acquired dbMotion, Ltd., a developer of system interfaces and data analytics tools, and Jardogs LLC, a developer of a personal health record.
In 2018 Allscripts acquired
Practice Fusion
Practice Fusion is a web-based electronic health record (EHR) company based in San Francisco, CA. The company was founded in 2005 by Ryan Howard and acquired by Allscripts in 2018.
In 2013 the company was said to be valued at $700M and in 2014, ...
.
In 2019, Allscripts acquired ZappRx, a
Boston
Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...
-based prescription drug startup, which provides an online platform used by patients, physicians, and pharmacists for the management of specialty medications.
Legal issues
In December 2012, four physician practices brought a
class-action
A class action, also known as a class-action lawsuit, class suit, or representative action, is a type of lawsuit where one of the parties is a group of people who are represented collectively by a member or members of that group. The class action ...
suit against Allscripts due to selling the "buggy" MyWay EHR and later discontinuing it. It was believed to be a first-of-its-kind case. The parties reached a joint settlement agreement that received final approval from the trial court judge. With this first lawsuit of this nature it has become a reference for future cases in this industry.
In 2015 Allscripts was set to pay nearly $9.75 million to the proposed class to settle claims of securities fraud, after the company allegedly overstated its ability to integrate its Microsoft .NET and SQL Server with those of Eclipsys following their $1.3 billion merger.
In 2019, one year after Allscripts’ acquisition of
Practice Fusion
Practice Fusion is a web-based electronic health record (EHR) company based in San Francisco, CA. The company was founded in 2005 by Ryan Howard and acquired by Allscripts in 2018.
In 2013 the company was said to be valued at $700M and in 2014, ...
, a San Francisco-based electronic health records company intended to expand Allscripts' business with independent physicians, Allscripts agreed to settle with the Department of Justice over "potential issues with the EHR vendor’s health IT certification and Practice Fusion’s compliance with the Anti-Kickback Statute and HIPAA." As part of the settlement, Practice Fusion paid $145 million dollars.
In 2020, the Department of Justice detailed the $145 million settlement in a press release:
Allscripts chief administrative officer Brian Farley said that Practice Fusion's behavior was known to Allscripts prior to the purchase. Farley also noted that Allscripts was working to help combat the opioid epidemic.
Ransomware attack
On January 18, 2018, Allscripts was hit with a
ransomware
Ransomware is a type of malware from cryptovirology that threatens to publish the victim's personal data or permanently block access to it unless a ransom is paid off. While some simple ransomware may lock the system without damaging any files, ...
attack. This caused a massive outage which lasted nearly a week and affected clients all over the globe. The attack was a new strain of a known bug,
SamSam
''SamSam'' is an animated television series based on a character created by Serge Bloch and directed by Tanguy de Kermel in association with Bayard Presse. His son inspired him to base the program's eponymous character on him. The series has gen ...
. Since then, clients have filed a class action lawsuit alleging Allscripts should have taken better steps to protect their data.