Veradigm shakes up its leadership – and adds generative AI

Shih-Yin Ho, director of the Veradigm board, is stepping in as the company’s interim chief executive officer, following the departure this past Friday of CEO Richard Poulton.

Lee Westerfield, the chief financial officer at Clearsense, will serve as Veradigm’s interim chief financial officer – stepping in for CFO Leah Jones, who has also resigned at the board’s request.

The Veradigm board has appointed Greg Garrison as its new executive chairman and Carol Zierhoffer as lead independent director. 

WHY IT MATTERS

Veradigm announced Friday that its board of directors asked Poulton and Jones to resign over issues related to “financial reporting and internal controls over financial reporting and disclosure controls,” the company announced Friday.

Nasdaq had reportedly informed Veradigm earlier this year that the company was noncompliant with its listings rules due to its company’s failure to file an annual report for the year that ended December 31, 2022, as well as the quarterly report for the period that ended March 31.

Veradigm said in a statement that it is committed to regaining compliance with the Nasdaq Listing Rule.

“Veradigm’s core business remains strong but, after careful review and consideration, it is clear that we must develop a stronger financial control environment with enhanced financial reporting policies and disclosure policies and procedures,” said Garrison, a senior leader for more than 20 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers, in the statement.

He added that “the leadership changes announced [on Dec. 8] reflect the importance of accountability in achieving that goal.”

Ho, now serving as interim CEO, noted that the company’s operations, scale, data analytics and expertise are well-positioned to drive value for patients and shareholders.

Garrison said Veradigm’s new leaders, along with Langan, have the “deep experience” to guide the company through the shakeup.

The firm has initiated a search process for a permanent CEO and CFO and will retain an executive search firm to support the vetting of both internal and external candidates, according to the leadership transition announcement.

THE LARGER TREND

In separate news Monday, Veradigm unveiled its new conversational artificial intelligence agent for its Practice Fusion Billing Services product through an integration with Microsoft and the Azure-based software solution from Zammo.ai, a software-as-a-service accelerator.

The generative AI agent answers questions based on feedback from the Practice Fusion Electronic Health Records platform.

“Through our collaboration with Veradigm and the power of Microsoft Azure AI capabilities, we are helping accelerate innovation and transforming the way clinicians within the Veradigm Network get answers and solve billing challenges,” Tyler Bryson, corporate vice president of U.S. health and public sector industries for Microsoft, said in that announcement.

Veradigm – which was once Allscripts – had previously undergone more than five years of corporate streamlining and leadership shuffles. 

In 2018, Allscripts acquired cloud-based Practice Fusion for $100 million. The next year, it paid more than that to settle preexisting anti-kickback charges against the company.

In March 2022, the EHR vendor sold its hospital and large physician practice business segment, which included Allscripts’ Sunrise, Paragon, TouchWorks, Opal and dbMotion tools. It had previously offloaded 2bPrecise, a tech company specializing in aggregating genetic and genomic data from EHRs. 

That May, Paul Black, who served as Allscripts’ chief executive officer for 10 years, stepped down. 

Poulton, who was named the new CEO of the rebranded company, said that Veradigm represented approximately 95% of Allscripts consolidated revenue, which was reportedly $136 million, up $10 million from the same period in 2021.

ON THE RECORD

“Together, we will continue to execute this strategy and further invest in analytical capabilities critical to meeting our clients’ growing need for high-quality data to support their delivery of great care, value and research to patients,” said Ho on December 8 in the announcement of Veradigm’s leadership change. “The company has enormous potential to shape the future across providers, payors and life sciences clients.” 

Andrea Fox is senior editor of Healthcare IT News.
Email: afox@himss.org
Healthcare IT News is a HIMSS Media publication.