Oct. 22, 2009 (PR Newswire) --

CHICAGO and PHOENIX, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX) announced today that Integrated Medical Services (IMS) has selected the Allscripts Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management solution, with Allscripts Revenue Cycle Management, to enhance the quality of the care delivered by its 100 physicians, improve patient communications, and better manage the cost of care delivery.

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IMS is a not-for-profit physician services organization that helps its otherwise autonomous medical practices to better manage their clinical and business functions. Currently with 45 locations across Phoenix and Western Arizona, IMS has doubled its size in the last two years based on strong demand for its services and anticipates growing to 500 physicians by 2013. The agreement with Allscripts enables IMS to provide its expanding base of physician practices a single solution to automate and enhance back-office functions like billing and scheduling while delivering the real-time information its physicians need to provide coordinated patient care across the IMS network.

The deployment of the Web-hosted Allscripts solutions replaces six legacy EHR systems and a number of practice management systems that IMS has acquired as new physician groups joined its team.

"Our focus is on delivering high quality, truly coordinated care for our patients, and to do that we need to give all of our providers quick, easy access to the same patient information, not handcuff them with disconnected software silos within their own offices," said John Dover, M.D., President and Chief Executive Officer of IMS. "Now that federal incentives for EHR use are in place, we anticipate that a lot of Arizona physicians will go looking for a safe, interconnected electronic health record supported by a dependable network of like-minded professionals. With Allscripts, we now have the capability to meet their needs."

Beginning in 2011, US physicians can qualify for between $44,000 and $64,000 in payments from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) for adopting and demonstrating "meaningful use" of an Electronic Health Record. The incentives are expected to drive significant numbers of physicians to adopt the technology.

Hosted Delivery Model

IMS will provide Allscripts via the hosted Application Service Provider (ASP) delivery model. Hosting Allscripts remotely is a simple, affordable means of delivering the technology that spares IMS the need to purchase servers or hire new IT personnel. The ASP delivery model also speeds deployment and ensures that the Allscripts solutions provide disaster protection with redundant systems that are secure and accessible by authorized caregivers anywhere in the world.