Quick. Name one company that does electronic health record software as a service. You might be forgiven for thinking first of those folks in Watertown, but this time I’m talking about Purkinje, that healthcare information technology company with dual citizenship (its based in St. Louis and Montréal). They sell their CareSeries practice management and electronic health record service for $399 a month. Given the current state of the economy, I think that compares pretty well to the huge per physician upfront costs common with most software packages in the field.
While they seem to be pretty quiet publicly as of late, I recently heard they’re up to nearly 7,000 providers. By comparison, athenahealth has about 17,000. Like athenahealth, though, Purkinje has been adding new providers at a pretty rapid clip.
Given its strong roots in Canada, Purkinje has been making quite a bit of headway in Ontario, especially. Despite its integrated healthcare system, Canada and its provinces have, so far, lacked a really strong, strategic plan for implementing interoperable electronic health systems. The one advantage to that fact, though, has been that growing vendors, like Purkinje, have been able to establish themselves as competitors to the big vendors like Cerner and the like. (Nevertheless, I have to say that have long been a little underwhelmed by Canada Health Infoway, the national organization charged with promoting national electronic health record adoption.)
Purkinje, athenahealth, and others are firmly establishing the benefits of software as a service. It’s hard to think of anything good to say about the current state of the economy, but maybe this downturn will help push healthcare towards smarter technologies and delivery systems. I recently talked with a physician, whose three-provider practice took out a $180,000 loan early this year to install their first electronic health record system. They had no idea there were companies out there like Purkinje or athenahealth which offer a much lower cost barrier. That three year contract works out to just a little shy of $1,700 a month per physician. Sure makes $399 like attractive, doesn’t it?
