Dive Brief:
- Allscripts late Thursday said its revenue grew 22% but its bookings were down in Q4.
- For the full year of 2017, non-GAAP revenue grew 17% year-over-year. Total bookings in 2017 totaled $1.3 billion, unchanged year-over-year in comparison to 2016, a year Allscripts hit an all-time record for annual bookings.
- The Chicago-based firm said its acquisition of Practice Fusion closed and it will sell off its One Content business to Hyland Software. The company's stock fell 8.9% at the open of business Friday.
Dive Insight:
Allscripts is facing similar bookings struggles as athenahealth, which underperformed in 2017 in the category.
Meanwhile, rival Cerner hit record bookings in 2017.
On an earnings call, Allscripts CEO Paul Black said bookings count as new relationships, not existing client renewals. He added it's harder to predict bookings because the company is working with "hundreds of client opportunities every quarter" and the timing of sales closures do not always align with a 90-day cycle.
Black said Allscripts has a "solid pipeline" in the payer, life sciences, consumer and managed services businesses..
In a post Meaningful Use-era, EHR vendors are looking to restructure their business portfolios to adapt to the market's new needs. Allscripts is no different; the company is targeting payers and life sciences — as well as international business — opportunities to build its capabilities.
"We have created what we believe to be the largest actionable outpatient clinical data set and the largest platform to efficiently bring payer and life science companies to the point of care," President Rick Poulton said on the earnings call. "We see tremendous opportunities to continue to bring efficiencies and access to these two important players in healthcare delivery."
One way to build out these capabilities is through acquiring a company to buy its software. Last year, Allscripts purchased McKesson's EIS portfolio as well as Practice Fusion.
Black said the Practice Fusion deal was a "doubling down" move in the payer and life sciences opportunities.
However, he added a growth-through-acquistion is not Allscripts' overall strategy.
Allscripts expects non-GAAP revenue of between $2.15 billion and $2.25 billion in 2018, up 17% to 22% versus 2017.