Citing “multiple sources,” Politico reported Wednesday morning that formerly high-flying ambulatory EHR Practice Fusion is for sale. One of Politico’s unnamed sources said athenahealth is “high on the list of desired suitors.”
San Francisco-based Practice Fusion declined to comment on the substance of the report. “It’s purely speculative at this point,” a company spokesperson said.
A call to athenahealth at midday has not been returned. The Politico story did make it sound like Practice Fusion, perhaps out of desperation, approached Watertown, Massachusetts-based athenahealth, not the other way around.
Why would athenahealth even want Practice Fusion? Probably for its user base, said to be in the range of 112,000 healthcare professionals nationwide.
The technology seems secondary. athenahealth’s roots is in revenue-cycle management, and Practice Fusion has never offered a practice management module to complement its cloud-based EHR. If the Politico report is accurate, it may come down to Practice Fusion being desperate to sell rather than athenahealth being genuinely interested in a purchase.
Practice Fusion, which has been bleeding cash for years while trying to figure out how to make its freemium and advertising-centric business model work, already cut 74 jobs, or a quarter of its workforce, earlier this month. The company also changed management last August after delaying a planned initial public offering and entered a partnership with wounded unicorn Theranos.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
