Dive Brief:
- San Francisco-based Practice Fusion, which earlier this month cut 25% of its workforce, is putting up the “For Sale” sign, Politico reported.
- A source told the magazine that athenahealth is high on the list of “desired suitors."
- Once seen as a potential unicorn, the EHR startup’s user base — mostly small medical practices — has been stalled at around 112,000 for some time.
Dive Insight:
Practice Fusion has had trouble breaking into the larger EHR user markets like hospitals and health systems and seen slowed growth in the small and mid-sized practice markets. The layoff shrunk the EHR vendor’s staff from 300 to 226.
Last August, the company underwent a major shakeup last August when it replaced founder and CEO Ryan Howard with Tom Langan. Howard is now chairman of the 10-year-old firm.
Still, the beleaguered company has raised more than $150 million in venture capital funding and was reported to be considering a public offering this year. Putting itself up for sale would be another way of raising those funds, according to the Silicon Valley Business Journal.
Pairing up with fellow cloud-based EHR software company athenahealth would seem to make sense, as it would allow the firms to consolidate their ambulatory providers. And athenahealth has picked up startups before, most recently with the January 2015 purchase of RazorInsights, which provides cloud-based EHR to rural, community and critical access hospitals