NEWSLINE
B Y JOSEPH GOEDERT
New Allscripts CEO Says End
to Buyout Talk Will Help Sales
VENDOR NEWS
After management turmoil and declining revenue, the company’s new leader says
better days are ahead.
Allscripts Health Solutions Inc.’s new chief execu- tive officer said the provider of electronic health records should rebound now that it’s no longer up for sale. Paul Black, named CEO in December in a management shakeup, said he wanted to move quickly to improve operations at the Chicago-based software maker and make the company
more responsive to clients. He said he’d also maintain research and
development spending at current levels.
“We’re going to benefit from having clarity,”
Black, 54, told analysts on a conference call.
“There’s been a lot of disruption in the marketplace from people wanting to understand what
this company was going to look like by the end
of the year, a lot of people who were hesitant
about making a decision. I think that’s a very
big piece of the missteps during the course of
Allscripts on Dec. 19 fired former CEO Glen
Tullman, who had led the company since it
first sold shares to the public in July 1999. The
company also said in a regulatory filing that it
would end a process of considering “strategic
alternatives,” including a sale, that began earlier this year.
“I fully understand that this is an important time in the company’s history,” said Black, a current Allscripts
board member and former chief operating officer at Kansas City,
Mo.-based Cerner Corp. “What’s clear to me is that we have a good
strategy, a robust set of solutions to offer” to doctors and hospitals.
Still, he said, “Right now I don’t think all our clients are happy.
We’ve got a lot of work to do in that space.”
The shares will face “significant pressure” as investors who had
piled into the stock waiting for a deal “crowd out the door,” said
David Windley, a Jefferies & Co. analyst in Nashville, Tenn., in a
note to clients.
