Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Practice Fusion troubles

For those of us who lived through the last Tech Bust of 2000 in La-La Land, this will sound familiar.

The takeaway is that Practice Fusion can do some combination of:
<>Charge for what they provide
<>Reduce offering/functionality
<>FOLD/Sell

I would suggest that your acquaintances that use PF learn how to extract their charts via CCDA - just in case.

Excerpts from WSJ: http://www.wsj.com/articles/for-silicon-valley-the-hangover-begins-1455930769?

Not long ago, employees at Practice Fusion Inc. reveled in the technology boom, munching daily on free healthy food, enjoying ?Phenomenal Friday? gatherings and racing around the office on tricycles.

Today, the Silicon Valley extravaganza is waning. The San Francisco electronic medical-records company has booted its founding CEO, laid off a quarter of its staff and cut back on projects to save costs.

?A lot of the reason I was there was because I believed the vision and loved the people I was working with,? said Lauren Burris, the company?s director of programs and engagement until September, when she was laid off. ?That?s what shook me a little bit?I didn?t know what the vision was anymore.?

..............

Physicians took to the free software and Practice Fusion earned money by showing pharmaceutical ads and offering lab orders. Revenue rose 75% to $47 million in 2015, people familiar with the matter said.

Practice Fusion offered free food with no starches like pasta, unless it was ?cheat day? when they might get white rice. Photos posted under its Instagram account showed employees filling the CEO?s office with balloons to celebrate his birthday last May, engineers dressing up in animal onesies, and races around the office on hot pink tricycles for the company?s annual olympics.

By summer 2015, Practice Fusion was burning through $4 million of cash a month as it chased money-losing initiatives such as telemedicine, which intended to connect patients with doctors for appointments by phone, people familiar with the matter said. At the same time, revenue was about 10% short of targets.

Somber meeting
With cash running out, Kleiner Perkins partner Beth Seidenberg and other board members decided to remove Mr. Howard as CEO and replace him with an executive who would curb costs. Kleiner said the company needed a ?more commercially oriented leader for its next phase.?

On Aug. 14, the company announced Mr. Howard had stepped down. It was a Friday. Employees gathered for a somber all-hands meeting, instead of the Phenomenal Friday gathering that had been scheduled.

The situation was dire when Tom Langan, the chief commercial officer, took over as CEO. By October, the company was nearly out of cash, and the volatile market had scared many venture-capital investors away from high-price deals.

To keep the business afloat, investors that month gave Practice Fusion a $20 million bridge loan.

Since then Mr. Langan has laid off a quarter of the workforce. The firm cut free meals to three times a week. No photos have been posted to the Instagram account since August, when Mr. Howard was replaced and became chairman.

Practice Fusion tried to raise new cash, but those efforts have fallen short. Mr. Howard, meanwhile, has sought buyers for his shares, according to people familiar with the matter.

Rebecca Lynn, who led an early investment in Practice Fusion for Morgenthaler Ventures, says making cuts is hard but necessary, given the rough funding landscape.

Said Ms. Lynn: ?The companies that make these moves now are the ones that are going to make it out to the other side.?

-PostScript-

From my experiences, once investors provide a bridge loan, the company goes public (unlikely given the current climate), the company becomes profitable and viable, or the company is liquidated.

But if it is liquidated (or bought by another company) I am sure people will be able to easily get their records out. Right?

I haven't investigated the BizDev side of this, but I could see Athena or AllScripts swooping in to buy up the accounts and dump the rest.

Makes you wonder what kind of "convenience fee" you would have to pay to get away from them.





The Alternative is to be singing this once you move to AC:

My favorite Ray Troll.

Why do doctors think they are any more entitled to free lunch than anyone else?

I'm surprise PF has lasted so long.

It sounds like they just blew their $ partying. I thought PF was a great idea and seriously looked at it. At the time it just wasn't set up well for procedural based practices (actually neither is AC in terms of it's billing section)

It seems to me that doctors signed up for Practice Fusion because they wanted a free and easy easy to qualify for the MU incentives.

I know some docs who used it, and collected all of the MU monies without spending a dime. They never really trusted Practice Fusion though, they printed every completed note, and continued to keep paper records. So, using Practice Fusion was an income enhancer, but now that MU money is going, going, gone, so long Practice Fusion.

One of the stats we will NEVER hear from the Gov is how many folks have had to pay that money back after being audited. The Gov giveth, and the Gov taketh away.

The obvious choice is mentioned - Athena. I suspect AllScripts might pay a premium.

Either way - "Free" will go away.