An HIT

Allscripts (Chicago), a provider of software, services, information, and connectivity solutions for physicians and hospitals, and Henry Schein (Melville, New York), a distributor of healthcare products and services to office-based practitioners, reported a strategic partnership to market the Allscripts Professional electronic health record (EHR).

Henry Schein's national medical sales force of more than 625 field and telesales representatives will market the solution to physicians nationwide, including Henry Schein's customer base of more than 100,000 physician practices. Henry Schein also will work with its medical device and productivity partners to drive full integration of their solutions into the Allscripts EHR, eventually providing a fully integrated patient experience that also helps to drive the bottom line performance of Henry Schein's physician clients.

According to Henry Schein, adding the Allscripts Professional EHR to its portfolio enables the company to serve as a one-stop provider for physician practice needs. At the same time, the agreement vastly enhances Allscripts ability to sell into physician practices across the country, where EHR adoption is expected to increase exponentially in response to new federal incentives for their use, the company said.

Henry Schein also will refer to Allscripts, on a non-exclusive basis, leads for other Allscripts software solutions.

"Our mission is to help our customers succeed by offering the technology needed to operate an efficient practice and deliver high-quality healthcare, and Allscripts is the ideal partner," said Stanley Bergman, CEO/chairman of Henry Schein. "Given that the federal government is providing significant financial incentives for physicians to adopt electronic health records, we expect that many of our physician customers will be looking for a quality solution and are proud to represent Allscripts."

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provides maximum incentives of between $44,000 and $64,000 over five years, beginning in 2011, to physicians who deploy and use a certified EHR to improve the quality and cost-effectiveness of patient care. Physicians who have not adopted a certified EHR by 2014 are expected to have their Medicare reimbursements reduced by up to 3% beginning in 2015.

A recent Allscripts survey of 1,888 healthcare professionals revealed that 98% of physician practices would take advantage of the incentives or would be closely evaluating the opportunity.

"As physicians move to take advantage of the stimulus incentives and quickly select an electronic health record, who better to trust with this critical decision than Henry Schein, a company they already rely on for all of their practice needs," said Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman. "We're proud to help Henry Schein's customers into the information-based healthcare system of the future with an electronic health record that has the depth and breadth they need to deliver high quality care cost effectively."

According to the company, the Allscripts Professional EHR is an easy-to-deploy, physician-centric solution that improves the delivery of safe, cost-effective, high-quality care.