Unlike the layoffs and restructurings that have plagued the e-commerce industry, a Libertyville-based maker of high-tech health-care services is expanding and adding workers.
After digesting a flurry of acquisitions and marketing agreements last year, Allscripts Inc. will become Allscripts Healthcare Solutions to better reflect its growing portfolio of wireless products and Web-based services that physicians use to better their practices.
“We have a lot of openings and are continuing to hire people,” said Allscripts Chief Executive Glen Tullman. “You don’t see us doing layoffs, and we have $130 million in the bank. This is a real play in e-health.”
Yet Allscripts has to persuade Wall Street its shares are undervalued while mired in an e-health sector that Tullman says has “been absolutely pummeled.”
Indeed, shares of Allscripts closed at $7 Monday, well off a 52-week high of $89 a share in March when the e-commerce firms and dot-coms were riding high on Wall Street.
Analysts are projecting Allscripts could double revenues to nearly $100 million this year if physicians buy into the company’s expanding portfolio of products.
Perhaps best known for its wireless computers doctors use to order prescriptions, Allscripts last year bought Bannockburn-based software developer MasterChart Inc. and ChannelHealth Inc. of Burlington, Vt. The two companies added products to Allscripts sales channels that will allow physicians to accomplish other tasks–such as ordering lab tests from exam rooms.
“We can now put a device in physicians’ pockets that gives them dictation, charge capture [capabilities], prescribing and patient education all in one,” Tullman said.
“The market told the e-health sector we want companies with a real business plan with revenues and a plan to turn to profitability. We have 15,000 real physician customers who pay us, and we don’t give things away for free.”
New AHA chair: Longtime Northwestern Memorial Hospital Chief Executive Gary Mecklenburg will be a critical voice for the nation’s nearly 5,000 hospitals as this year’s chairman of the American Hospital Association.
The Chicago-based trade group again will be on the front line of battles for federal Medicare and Medicaid funding, but Mecklenburg also wants to push an agenda emphasizing ways to reduce the number of uninsured and expanding access to medical services.
“Medicaid and Medicare funding will be the continuing issue,” said Mecklenburg, who begins his reign as AHA chairman this month. “We still have very large numbers of uninsured. There are also problems as to whether or not all people are getting access to services.”
Upon further review: The design plan of Northwestern Memorial’s new women’s hospital hasn’t escaped scrutiny by the state’s onerous health planning law despite reforms made by the Illinois legislature last year to ease regulation of health facility capital expenditures.
Gov. George Ryan last spring signed a measure that frees hospitals and other medical facilities from seeking regulatory approval before proceeding on non-clinical projects such as buying new computer systems or adding parking lots. The bill also raised the dollar threshold on clinical projects, such as adding an obstetrics unit, to $6 million from $2.7 million.
But Northwestern Memorial has to get a special permit merely for the “schematic design” of its proposed replacement for Prentice Women’s Hospital because plans alone carry a price tag of $19.1 million, which eclipses the state’s threshold for clinical capital expenditures.
So when the Illinois Health Facilities Planning Board tees off on executives of Northwestern Memorial Thursday about whether the new hospital is needed in a market that already has excess hospital beds, it won’t be the last time the women’s facility will face the board. Another approval will be needed once the project is ready for groundbreaking.
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E-mail Bjapsen@tribune.com
