The message that Allscripts Healthcare Solutions CEO and President Paul Black wants to share is simple. "We are back. We are doing well," Black said Wednesday in opening the annual Allscripts Client Experience – ACE – users' conference at the McCormick Place convention center.

Last week, Allscripts announced its financial results for the second quarter. While the company reported a net loss of nearly $17.8 million for the three months ended June 30, that is an improvement from $22.9 million in red ink in the same quarter of 2013.

Black, however, preferred to dwell on the positive, reiterating that the Chicago-based EHR vendor posted year-over-year gains in bookings, revenue and adjusted EBITDA for the first time in two years.

Black also said that Allscripts has added 1,100 new clients since January 2013, approximately coinciding with his tenure. He arrived in December 2012 when Allscripts ousted longtime CEO Glen Tullman and other top executives, following financial difficulties in the wake of the 2010 merger with Eclipsys.

[See also: Clients seek swift Allscripts turnaround.]

By Black's account, Allscripts has now successfully absorbed Eclipsys, which gave the company an entrée into inpatient EHRs. Wednesday, Black said 100 percent of Sunrise inpatient EHR clients have been upgraded to a version of the former Eclipsys system certified to 2014 meaningful use standards.
"We are the No. 2 supplier in the world of meaningful use Stage 2 attestations," Black said, adding that 768 Allscripts clients expect to attest to Stage 2 in the third quarter.

One reason why Stage 2 attestations have been scarce to date has been hospitals and physician practices struggling to meet even modest interoperability requirements. Black played up Allscripts' stated commitment to interoperability with systems from other vendors. "We will always adhere to standards," he said.
Black discussed three "degrees of interoperability" that Allscripts offers its clients through various products and standards.

At the "silver" level, providers should be able to manage patient identities and access data residing in other systems via the federally sanctioned Direct protocol and through the nascent CommonWell Health Alliance. CommonWell, announced in March 2013, is an interoperability collaboration among Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner, CPSI, Greenway Health, McKesson, Sunquest Information Systems, CVS Caremark, Medhost, Brightree and MacPractice, that is still mostly in a testing phase.

The "gold" level of interoperability relies on Allscripts' dbMotion EHR Agent to deliver a "delta view" of clinical information right into a clinician's workflow. Black explained that a delta view shows changes since the last login. "We want that workflow to come to you and provide all the value," Black said.

The "platinum" option, featuring dbMotion Fusion, gets into population health by "fusing" community health data into Allscripts EHRs at the point of care. This, according to Black, is "our vision of what a community-aware EMR is." Black added that the record should be "a single source of truth."

[See also: MSK makes push for interoperability.]