Healthcare South Selects Allscripts Electronic Health Record and Practice Management for Primary Care Group

CHICAGO and PEMBROKE, Mass., June 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX) announced today that Healthcare South has selected the Allscripts Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management solution to enhance the quality of patient care, improve physician and patient communications, and better manage the cost of care delivery in its nine pediatric and family practice offices across the Boston area.

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Healthcare South joins the Harbor Medical Group, a nearby multispecialty practice with 71 physicians, in using the Allscripts solution. Both groups belong to the South Shore Physician Healthcare Organization (PHO), which is partly owned by South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass. The PHO provides subsidies to physicians who adopt Electronic Health Records and contribute quality information to the PHO.

"We have been impressed by Harbor Medical's success with Allscripts, and it was clear we should be on the same platform with them and the other South Shore PHO physicians who acquire EHRs in the future," said Francis J. Kilduff, MD, President of Healthcare South. "Our physicians felt that Allscripts was clearly the most intuitive solution."

With the help of the Allscripts READY Rapid Deployment program, which accelerates EHR implementation, Healthcare South expects to go live on the Electronic Health Record by the fall of 2010. A few months later, the practice will switch from its legacy practice management system to the Allscripts billing and scheduling system, including the Allscripts revenue cycle solution, which transmits more than 300 million claims per year with a first-pass claims acceptance rate of 98 percent.

Healthcare South will also implement Allscripts Analytics, which not only enables automatic tracking of performance on financial and quality measures – for example, the percentage of all diabetic patients whose blood glucose levels are not controlled – but also provides proactive patient and population management.

"We're confident that the EHR will help us to raise our scores on quality measures by giving us a dashboard view of key indicators and alerting us when they fall out of range," said Dr. Kilduff. "We're also confident that the connectivity with labs and the ability to track orders and referrals that Allscripts brings will help us improve quality and care coordination."

Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts, commented, "As physicians are increasingly rewarded for quality and outcomes rather than quantity of patients seen, forward-thinking practices like Healthcare South are positioned to succeed through improved management of chronic disease and better performance on other key quality measures. We're helping them get there faster with our READY rapid deployment  program, which standardizes our EHR implementation, accelerates the time to go-live by about 65 percent and, more importantly, makes the whole process easier and less time-consuming for our physicians, nurses, and other providers and administrators using the program."

Additional Information on ARRA and Meaningful Use

Allscripts has recently deployed a number of resources to help physician practices take advantage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which provides approximately $30 billion in Federal "Stimulus" funding for physicians to adopt and demonstrate "meaningful use" of an Electronic Health Record, beginning in 2011. The Allscripts Stimulus Program provides physicians with a guarantee that the Allscripts EHR they select will meet the EHR certification criteria provided by the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Physicians can also benefit from a new Allscripts financing program requiring no payments for software for six months, as well as new programs focused on faster implementation to ensure physicians can access the Federal Stimulus incentives.

Other ARRA resources from Allscripts include:

• The Allscripts Stimulus Center provides the latest information on ARRA, including frequently asked questions on Meaningful Use and Certification.
• The Allscripts Legislative & Regulatory Action Center is a place to learn about and take action on issues that are critical to the provider community, providing a simple, 'one touch' connection to elected officials.
• 'Go' is a website designed for physicians and other providers who are considering deploying Electronic Health Records and other healthcare information technologies. Available at www.allscripts.com/go, the site provides easy access to best practices and success stories from the Allscripts client community of more than 160,000 physicians, 800 hospitals, and 8,000 post-acute care facilities.

About Healthcare South

Healthcare South is an association of physicians practicing in private offices in the South Shore Hospital area. The practice has a central business office and shared goals for patient care. These include standardizing internal procedures to facilitate cross training and team work, becoming the premier primary care network in the South Shore area, and continuing the vision of providing high quality medical care reflective of the high standards of service and quality that have developed over time in our constituent practices. For more information, visit www.healthcaresouth.com.

About Allscripts

Allscripts uses innovation technology to bring health to healthcare. More than 160,000 physicians, 800 hospitals and more than 10,000 post-acute and homecare organizations utilize Allscripts to improve the health of their patients and their bottom line. The company's award-winning solutions include electronic health records, electronic prescribing, revenue cycle management, practice management, document management, care management, emergency department information systems and homecare automation. Allscripts is the brand name of Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. To learn more, visit www.allscripts.com.

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SOURCE Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc.