Practice Fusion, Inc., an Allscripts Company, will pay $145 million to resolve criminal and civil investigations relating to its electronic health records (EHR) software, the Department of Justice announced. The Allscripts Practice Fusion settlement includes two parts: A $26 million criminal resolution, where the company admits that it solicited and received kickbacks from a major opioid company in exchange for utilizing its EHR software to influence physician prescribing of opioid pain medications A separate civil settlement for $118.6 million for accepting kickbacks from the opioid company and other pharmaceutical companies, as well as causing users to submit false claims for federal incentive payments by misrepresenting its EHR software One of the major tenants of the civil settlement is based on Practice Fusion receiving kickbacks from pharmaceutical companies in exchange for implementing clinical decision support (CDS) alerts in its EHR software, designed to increase prescriptions for their drug products. The Opioid Epidemic Calls for EHRs to Help, Not Hurt With statistics still at epidemic levels in our nation’s battle to beat opioids, medical professionals and law enforcement are turning to technology for innovative ways to fight against the opioid crisis – specifically EHRS – with the expectation that these tools and the vendors behind them are in compliance with healthcare industry standards. Technology like electronic health records can provide an efficient and literally life-saving role by providing timely data at the click of a button. There is value in instant access to both current patient records along with archived legacy records, providing easy insights into the deep history that reveals patterns and making EHRs a major contributor to the healthcare industry’s efforts against opioid abuse. For the 30,000 medical practices across the U.S. that relied on Practice Fusion to deliver care to 5 million patients a month, the abuse of trust seeded by the Practice Fusion DOJ investigation may leave the ambulatory medical community wondering if Practice Fusion will be able to recover from this major settlement. And, if so, should the practice remain a customer. Archiving Supports Potential Need for eDiscovery and a Secure Solution for Legacy EHRs If your organization is affected by the Practice Fusion DOJ settlement or just looking for a secure storage solution for legacy data from an out-of-production EHR, HealthData Archiver® offers a secure repository for long-term storage of protected health information. Talk to us about a legacy data management solution that offers a simpler option than the complexity and cost of data conversion to a new EHR – one that reduces risk and meets HIPAA, state and agency medical record retention requirements. We’re ready to help. For more information, you can also download a free copy of our legal whitepaper on eDiscovery and Healthcare Record Retention today.