Every leader of a competing electronics health records vendor probably jumped for joy once they heard the news that Glen Tullman was ousted by Allscripts, the company that he made what it is. Or, maybe I’m wrong. Perhaps leaders of competitive companies would have liked to have kept him around because of what he did to the organization following the acquisition of Eclipsys.
The man, for the most part, has been considered a genius. Peers in the industry gave his performance praise, patted him on the back and showered him in adulation through the maneuvered takeover of the hospital health IT giant. At the time, in 2010, the move made by Allscripts was hailed as a magnificent effort.
It was the kind of move that was supposed to have turned the industry on its head. Many thought it would, and many eyed the effort with envy for such a move was powerful and assertive.
It did rock the industry. Competitors shook in slight fear with the announcement of the news, and many feared for their longevity. In this fact I am serious. I know. I was at a competitor. The whispers went something like this: “Will this new monster kill us all?”
Though all of we worked to secure our shores, many of us were fearful of the coming tide.
But, from the beginning, there was always a sense that Allscripts, and Tullman specifically, was positioned as too big to fail. Perhaps we should have seen a previous merger, the failed move to integrate Mysis, as a harbinger of things to come.
There was even a point in which I had dubbed him the king of health IT. I referred to him as such during internal meetings in my effort to create the queen of health IT, who was a president of another firm in which I worked.
There was a level of pomp and circumstance about everything he seemed to do through his promoted PR moves and image building to his constant appearances and associations with Washington’s power elite, including the president.
I can’t imagine Tullman saw this coming during his rise to the top. Just 18 months ago he was on top of the health IT world, seemingly unafraid of the world in which he lived, or so it seemed from my outside position.
Hindsight is 20/20, though, and it’s easy to question failed policy after decisions have been made.
When the recent takeover bids failed to take the Allscripts private, the company had but one choice and he and other leaders of the company had to go. It’s a common scenario in the world of politics, another world which Tullman is known to frequent. As things grew worse for the once mighty giant, everyone associated with the debacle had to go.
And, even in lands where great kings have ruled, even their glory days come to an end.
But, does it surprise me that he and others at the disheveled vendor are gone? Gone from the vendor that positioned itself as too big to fail? Gone from the vendor that asserted itself upon the market; that worked to take over a market in which its ambitions were bigger than its capabilities?
No, I’m not surprised.
In many ways Tullman died at the hand of his own sword.
And, as we’ve seen countless times and will see again, no company nor its mascot is too big to fail. No kingdom too vast to conquer, no land immune from the trials of the nations it builds.
And so, the king of health IT is no longer king, but neither is he a pauper. And, like most who have achieved his heights, it’s safe to say we probably haven’t seen the last of him.
Too big to fail comes to mind when I think of Allscripts. That’s the way the company was painted when it made news on June 9, 2010, after announcing it had bought Eclipsys.
Needless to say, the last two years have not produced the expected milk and honey for the vendor, which currently occupies the largest footprint in the ambulatory EHR market. Poor quarterly reports, board member infighting and firings and a pile of implementation troubles stemming from far too many systems currently running have made for a mess of a time.
What’s ironic about everything that’s going on with the company now is that at the time it was announced, the Allscripts deal with Eclipsys was game changing for those of us in the vendor space. No one will admit it publicly (other than me, here), but when this merger was announced in 2010, there were many executives at competitive companies wondering just how long their respective business ventures would still be around because of the move.
At the time, I worked for what was then considered the third or fourth largest EHR/PM in the space and the Allscripts news sent wave of shock and perhaps a bit of panic through my office. We braced for the worst and hoped for the best, and started to develop strategies akin to what might have been implemented at the Alamo.
It was hard not to feel the pressure. A great EHR army was coming and we stood in its path to greatness.
“The combination of Allscripts and Eclipsys will create a clear leader in healthcare information technology, with the most comprehensive solution offering for healthcare organizations of every size and setting.
“By combining the leading physician-office and post-acute care solutions from Allscripts with Eclipsys’s leading enterprise solutions for hospitals and health systems, the combined company will offer a single platform of clinical, financial, connectivity and information solutions. The combined company’s client base will include over 180,000 U.S. physicians, 1,500 hospitals, and nearly 10,000 nursing homes, hospices, home care and other post-acute organizations. The combined company will be positioned to connect physicians, other care providers and patients wherever care is provided-in the hospital, in small or large physician practices, in extended care facilities, or in a patient’s home – resulting in the unique ability to deliver a single patient record and a seamless patient experience.”
Even at our best, this new entity was a behemoth far larger than even our marketing folks and their clever wit could help us position our way out of. So we held our breath, and, I bet like a lot of vendors, we waited …
It’s easy to cast stones when you know where they should be thrown based on the luxury of hindsight, but I said from the beginning of all this – to the president of our company and to her executive support team including the then SVP of marketing – that the one weakness of Allscripts was that it was being positioned as too big to fail.
But before long, the fear started to subside and we slowly began to realize we were receiving more than our fair share of scraps; in fact, we were actually at the banquet table along with the likes of others who, like us, previously must have wondered how much of a future we’d actually have left. In the end, we were still closing deals. All vendors kept signing deals. Finally, the fear abated and the “promise” of what was to come never came.
Certainly, Allscripts hasn’t failed in wanting to go private, it just needs to find a private place to go for awhile where it can sort out its problems, do away with some of its product overabundance and cut the proverbial fat without having to continually find ways to report positive balance sheets.
Even if it proves too big to fail, there’s nothing stopping it from stumbling backward from time to time.
