But while the company reported higher Q2 revenue compared with the same period last year, it also saw a second-quarter loss, albeit a smaller one than for the second quarter last year.
Black omitted those more gritty financial details Wednesday, welcoming what he said would be about 3,500 customers, business partners and a few stock analysts expected to attend the 2½-day Allscripts' annual users' group meeting at Chicago's McCormick Place convention center.
Chicago-based Allscripts' 2013 acquisition of dbMotion, developer of an integration platform, will play a key role in the company's strategy to help providers draw on patient data, not only from their own EHRs, but also “community information” from other data sources, including the patient's personal monitoring devices.
“We are the leader in population health management,” Black said. “It's stuff up, running and in operation today.”
Nash said that only 3% of Americans do all of the following: exercise 20 minutes at least three times a week, not smoke, eat fruits and vegetables regularly, wear seat belts and weigh in at approximately the right body mass index.
“Do you want this population in your accountable care organization?” Nash said. “Our culture is this, 'I'm going to take my Lipitor on the way to McDonald's. You're going to pay for my Lipitor and I'm going to pay for the McDonald's.”
To address that, Nash said, “We're going to need tools. All kinds of new tools. We're going to need registries … no more one patient chart at a time,” he said. “We're going to need some analytics behind that.”
Getting there will require a change in healthcare culture.
Providers also much continuously measure and close the feedback loop and engage with patients across the continuum of care.
“I know my grandchildren are never going to sit still for the nonsense that I've had to sit through as a patient,” Nash said.
Trying to rev up excitement about company performance, Black said Allscripts has added 1,100 clients since January. He also said that 2 million people were now using the Allscripts patient portal. Allscripts ranks No. 2 among electronic health-record system vendors with 69,000 eligible providers and eligible hospitals having attested to Stage 1 meaningful-use criteria under the federal EHR incentive payment program, he said. Also, 68 clients so far have attested to Stage 2 meaningful use and another 768 expect to do so by the third quarter of this year.
Allscripts counts among its customers 45,000 physician office practices. “No one else has 45,000 physician practices up and running,” he said.
All the upbeat information on the company was important to share as customers decide “who you're going to be doing business with in the future,” said Black, the former Cerner Corp. chief operating officer who was attending only his second ACE since taking over as Allscripts' CEO in 2012.
Follow Joseph Conn on Twitter: @MHJConn
