Is It Time to Make A Career Move Within Healthcare IT?

It may or may not be a great time for you to make a move but don’t let it become the biggest mistake you’ve ever made. If you are considering a move, like never before, you need to do your homework.

Which company represents the greatest career opportunity for you?  Who do you go with?  The big Healthcare IT Company, the start up, the emerging one, the one where you know many in management or the one who pays the best?

There are the mainstream HIT firms.  Finding one that it truly sold and presents a secure career, requires a crystal ball.  As you can see in the following, there are a lot of mergers, acquisitions and consolidations going on.  It is predicted this will continue at the same or quicker pace.  I believe that if you are a top performer and a bit astute when it comes to company politics you should be able to survive and possibly thrive in an M&A situation.

Another concern is how, without the crystal ball, do you pick the winning company in a buy out or merger?  When The Advisory Group bought Clinnovations, if you were with the latter, you are not in the driver’s seat.  If you are not nervous, you should be, at least for the time being.  A shame, because from a company growth and success point you had picked a great company.

The Cerner-Siemens, EHR unit merger will be a big story to watch in 2015It will be interesting to see whom the winners and losers really are and if there will be large layoffs and an exodus to go with it or just the small voluntary separation package they’ve already offered.  With a purchase price of $1.3 billion, there is going to be some substantial disruption.  With a bit of luck and a huge amount of skill, this will never be compared to what happened in the past with mergers such as Allscripts and Eclipsys.

That purchase is a major one, but far from the only one happening.  Vista Equity Partners, Vitera’s parent company, bought Greenway Medical TechnologiesPractice Fusion bought Ringadoc .  NextGen’s parent company, QSI, acquired open-source tools vendor Mirth for $59M.  Xerox seems to have eaten ACS.  Roper Industries’ purchased Managed Health Care Associates for $1 billion,  Allscripts bought dbMotion;  Athenahealth purchased Epocrates; Harris Computer Corp.’s acquired EHR vendor QuadramedModernizing Medicine acquires Aesyntix Health, Inc., backed by Summit Partners.  Now they have expanded into Physician Practice-Management Services.

The biggest transaction in the year was Veritas Capital Partners’ $1.25 billion purchase of Thomson Reuters’ Healthcare Business. In the consulting, staff augmentation sector, Huron added Vonlay to its stable.  Liedos, the remains of maxIT, Vitalize  and SAIC is now under the direction of the former federal business group from the former SAIC.   Their new President stated that Federal business was his prime concern.  I’ve spoken to many folks at maxIT and Vitalize.  With no experience in the federal sector, that could mean a lessening of their value.  Allscripts has made a major commitment to getting the same gov’t contract as Liedos.  Is selling to the commercial market the same or even similar to selling into the federal arena, especially military?  What happens if they are not on the winning team.  If they are part of the winning team, with a commitment this large, will mainstream customers be willing to take a chance with them and their ability to implement?

How about the “consulting’ firm that is really a staff augmentation company.  Other than for money, are they worth a look.  Most analysts, profits, mystics and crystal ball readers are seeing EHR maturing very rapidly and the available new users shrinks’ daily.  They all feel that the staff augmentation business is headed for substantial decline.  Moving into this arena may be a short term career move.

Something else to make the road to success a bit more bumpy.  Corporate Management.  There are many owners/CEO’s, etc. that consider themselves Serial Entrepreneurs.  Imagine moving to a company where the top management is what attracted you.  The company is having great growth.  Then, the guy you wanted to work and learn with cashes out, starts an incubator in your industry and then funds companies to work in your market and that he intends to ultimately compete with you.  This will probably never happen, but you never can tell.

There are even some long term, established companies involved in merger mania.  Cognizant buys TriZetto for $2.7B.  And in April 2013 a bit of irony.  “TriZetto Corporation expects to create as many as 750 new jobs over five years, the healthcare technology company announced April 2 during the opening ceremony for its new worldwide company headquarters in Colorado.  When Cognizant announced the TriZetto purchase they did it from their new worldwide company headquarters.  

Lastly, do you consider the small start up or the giant who keeps eating many of those same start ups,  A company like Lexmark could be an example of the large, established company that is willing to buy its way into the industry.  Initially, they purchased Perceptive Software.  Not a bad start at all.  Actually a heck of a deal.  I won’t get into why or where was the fit for further purchases but they were to fill gaps in Perceptive’s offerings.  Over a very short period of time, they bought and placed under the Perception umbrella,  Australia-based ISYS Search Software and U.S.-based Nolij Corporation.  Then came READSOFT, AccessVia, Twistage, PACSGEAR, Acuo Technologies, LLC, Saperion and Claron.  With those, they also decided that they could and should investigate partnering or collaborating with other companies to move product.  They signed an agreement with Allscripts to make the Perception products available to Allscripts customers.  If there any issues here it is that many of the employees were interested in being with a small startup.

And then there is the end user side to consider.  Also on a buying, merger, acquisition bender, but that’s another story for another time.

So what is a sharp, healthcare IT pro to do?  A consulting gig could be the answer.  More money, but really one more step towards a compounding of these issues.  If a career jump is to happen, they have to do some significant research.  Public/Private, ownership, Management, Competition, buyer or seller, start up or established.  Of the participants out there if you are working with a company in trouble or in other instances, “betting the farm”, for your own security you might consider a move.

So I’ll stop beating around the bush.  If I was back running a recruiting desk, there are quite a few companies, quite a few, that I could convince their top people that it is time to make that move and why.  So, not being a hypocrite, if I was working with one of those companies or my career just wasn’t moving in the right direction or fast enough, then, yes, it is time to make that move.  Not for the faint of heart but in researching most of the players, don’t necessarily look for the safest move.  Find a company or two or a segment of the industry, determine which is right for you and then go for it.  And a tip from an old warhorse recruiter.  If you can find a company whose performance has given them a poor market perception.  Management has addressed and corrected all or most of its issues and now has gotten their act together, but no one in the industry knows it yet, you will have found a winner.

   

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