In light of the proliferation of EHR vendors and services caused by the influx of billions of dollars in incentives made available through the EHR Incentive Programs, many have speculated that it was only a matter of time before the market regained equilibrium.
Recently, this has taken the form of acquisitions and mergers as some EHR companies attempt to strengthen their position in the industry and prepare for what lies ahead for the marriage of healthcare and health IT. Last week, one such move made headlines when Vitera Healthcare Solutions announced that it had acquired a competitor, SuccessEHS.
For providers, especially those using EHRs from companies being bought or sold, these mergers and acquisitions (and potential shutterings) of EHR vendors raise many questions, the most important of which is: What will happen to EHR systems and clinical workflows as a result? We caught up with Matthew Hawkins, CEO of Vitera, to discuss what the acquisition means to customers of both companies as well as the motivations for making the move.
What can customers, especially SuccessEHS customers, expect from the acquisition?
This is good for our now combined group of customers, for the SuccessEHS and Vitera customers. What providers can expect from us is, first and foremost, a company that is focused on the needs of office-based practitioners and the public health market. Certainly from a software solution and platform perspective, we will be very focused on understanding the needs of workflows, content, and interoperability in order to enable providers to connect appropriately with the healthcare ecosystem — everyone from health information exchanges and hospitals to other physician practices.
It’s going to be beneficial in bringing providers together. We already do that consistently at Vitera where we get people who are practicing in a similar specialty, for example, together on a regular basis to share templates, workflows, and content ideas. We expect to carry that forward now with the combined company and be able to benefit the broader group of customers we serve.
So they shouldn’t prepare for EHR systems and workflows to be impacted?
Everything we do is oriented toward excellent customer service, great customer engagement, and a suite of products that make sense for the provider. We’re going to give providers choice. They know that when providers choose us and our product suite that they check the box on all of the questions that are important to them — stability, product innovation, customer service, and great support.
What motivated Vitera’s acquisition of SuccessEHS?
We were initially motivated for a couple of reasons. For one, we really like SuccessEHS’s focus on the public health space and community health centers and rural health centers in particular. They have know-how and expertise. They help these CHCs qualify for federal funding. They help with reporting requirements and more than a 150 of these and rural health centers. That’s very complementary to our business. We have more than 125 CHCs and the largest CHC network in the country.
Secondly, about a year ago SuccessEHS acquired a dental health record solution called MediaDent. We look to round out not only our know-how, expertise, and focus on CHC but also give that really important area of the healthcare it needs. This is a really nice add, the dental product in particular. And as we look at our own install dates, we actually have a few of our customers who are currently using MediaDent, so there are complementary elements there as well. We will look to deepen our integration with MediaDent and go back to our install base of community health centers that our using our flagship Vitera Intergy product line and be able to deeply integrate MediaDent with it the same way it is with the SuccessEHS platform.
What becomes of SuccessEHS, the brand and its staff?
They’re doing very well and growing rapidly. In fact, they’ve doubled in size in the last couple years and have a brand that is well recognized. The plan is to have SuccessEHS become a division of Vitera Healthcare Solutions. We want to continue to enable and fuel that growth trajectory as well as to begin to share some best practices between the divisions. We like the management team in place and the group of employees in place. People are excited and asking good questions about what we can do together to take care of our customer base.
Will you be reaching out to allay any concerns customers may have?
We already are. We’ve sent each customer an introductory note to let both SuccessEHS customers as well as Vitera customers know how excited we are about this, that we’re committed to being very open in communication with them as we go forward in talking about what’s going to make the most sense and what will benefit our customers the most. During the last couple of days, we’ve had Vitera’s strategic advisory council here in Tampa and we’ve already begun to ask that group of people the questions about what we can do to help them, especially in light of this SuccessEHS acquisition — what can we do to help our customers — and we’ll be asking the same questions to the broader group of SuccessEHS customers. We’ve also been reaching out to some of the larger customers at SuccessEHS more personally and talking to them in addition to a welcome letter. It’s the start of a very consistent engagement with the combined customer base.
