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Staying the Course, With a Twist
February 1, 2008
Over time, however, its customers and prospects wanted more functionality than the flagship Clinical Manager system could deliver. So the Montvale, N.J.-based vendor in September 2006 held a user’s meeting and asked, “What do you need?” recalls Evan Steele, CEO and co-founder. “It was open season on the CEO.”
What customers wanted was to continue charting patient care the way they always have—by scanning paper documents into a repository or by dictating their notes and having them transcribed. But they also wanted to have the data “brought to life” so it could be used in multiple ways, Steele says.
In October, SRSsoft, which last spring changed its name from SRS Software Inc., introduced version 6.0 of Clinical Manager, which Steele calls “a true hybrid EMR.”
For instance, greatly expanded search capability facilitates customized reporting functions and the flagging of certain diagnoses and patients to ease research. Other new functions include a clinical summary on one screen, a “favorites” list of specific charts for quick access, the ability to recall recently viewed charts with one click, keyboard charting of complex patient histories, and expanded messaging capabilities. A physician, for instance, can use the application to have a patient call reminder displayed six months later.
But the new functionality, with more to come, doesn’t mean SRSsoft is moving toward becoming a conventional electronic records vendor, or, for that matter, copying those vendors’ strategies, Steele insists.
“We don’t see EMR vendors as our core competition because when we sell the software, it’s because customers don’t want an EMR,” he adds. “We started with document management and worked our way up. EMRs started with complex data entry and then added document management. Our software does 90% of what an EMR does at 20% of the cost.”
Main Strategy
Since its start, SRSsoft has focused on large ambulatory care practices, and that strategy isn’t changing, Steele says.
Physicians, he notes, have widely varying motivations for using information technologies, whether it’s improving coding, lowering transcription costs or conducting data analysis for disease management.
But at least a third of physicians will never do their own data entry, he believes. And these clinicians represent SRSsoft’s target market.
“Our main strategy is to stay the course and keep penetrating the large practice market,” Steele says. “We don’t have any venture capital investment, so we aren’t in a ‘build it fast and sell it fast’ mode.”
Previously an investment banker, Steele in the mid-1990s joined his physician brother’s practice to manage it. As the practice grew, Steele found himself buried in paper. So the brothers built their own document imaging and management system, later bankrolling formation of a company to market it. The first product was tested in the practice in 1998, and the first sale to others was made in late 1999. The privately held company has had consistent 60% revenue growth for several years and has been profitable since 2003, he says.
Future Options
SRSsoft has not courted investment from private equity firms.
But in late 2005, it raised money from an individual investor for the first time to expand its sales and marketing efforts. The company had six sales representatives in 2006 and 16 a year later, with a total of 80 employees in late 2007.
Whether SRSsoft will ever go public is an open question, Steele says. Being a publicly owned company has become much more burdensome with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and other regulatory requirements, he notes. “I don’t know if I’d want to put myself or the company through it.”
If the company needs an infusion of capital, the private equity market would be more attractive. “Private equity vendors have a much longer-term view; it’s ‘patient money,’” Steele says. “Money from Wall Street is not patient money, and you start making decisions based on a short-term Wall Street view rather than making sound long-term decisions.”
While other vendors haven’t courted SRSsoft for acquisition, and the company has never sought a buyer, Steele would listen to a serious offer. “There’s a price for everything, but we’re not actively pursuing that.”
(c) 2008 Health Data Management and SourceMedia, Inc. All Rights Reserved. http://www.cardforum.com http://www.sourcemedia.com
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