Practice Fusion, a company that provides free online electronic health records to physicians, announced last week it will partner with Physician Services, Inc. (PSI) of California and Azalea Health Innovations, Inc. of Georgia to expand the types of services available to its clients.

According to Ryan Howard, CEO of the San Francisco-based Practice Fusion, the company is on target to be one of the fastest growing electronic medical record (EMR) vendors in the country, with close to 100 physicians signed up since the launch of the service two months ago. Ryan attributes the growth to a special "Live in Five" process, which allows new clients to be provisioned, logged on and charting within five minutes.

"We have changed the experience of EMR selection and made the decision process and start-up much easier, and as a result we are becoming the de facto standard for small to medium sized physician practices," Howard said. Physicians benefit through low total cost of adoption, a simplified start up process and on-demand architecture that makes the whole process low-risk, he added.

PSI, one of the largest billing services in California, will provide preferred billing services for the Practice Fusion community, while Azalea Health Innovations, serving the independent practitioner community in Georgia and Florida will add the option of technical and billing consulting services to Practice Fusion's offerings, Ryan said.  Earlier this month, Practice Fusion added Zydoc Medical Transcription Services to its partnership, expanding services to include medical dictation.