McKesson buys Per-Se

US health IT giant McKesson Corporation has announced an agreement to buy health administration transaction IT specialist Per-Se for £1bn ($1.8bn).

San Francisco-based McKesson says that the acquisition of Per Se announced last week forms part of its ongoing strategy to strengthen its position as an industry leader providing clinical, financial and administrative systems to the healthcare sector.

The acquisition of Per-Se, which specialises in financial and administrative healthcare solutions for hospitals, physicians and retail pharmacies, continues the consolidation of the US health IT market towards vendors able to offer end-to-end solutions covering clinical and business processes.

In January of this year GE Healthcare completed its purchase of clinical software supplier IDX Systems for (£681m) $1.2bn.

McKesson told E-Health Insider that the deal had little immediate impact to the UK, where it is a vendor of administrative and clinical systems, with particular strengths in the hospital PAS systems and child health segments and manages national projects such as the NHS Electronic Staff Record.

With the acquisition of Per-Se McKesson further builds on its position as the biggest electronic pharmacy network in the US connecting approximately 90 percent of US retail pharmacies to other business, the main area that it generates revenues from.

“Per-Se expands our customer base with products and services that augment and strengthen McKesson’s solutions portfolio,” said John Hammergren, chairman and chief executive officer of McKesson.

Hammergren added: “In addition to expanding our scale and enhancing our growth potential, it supports McKesson’s mission to bring technology, clinical best practices and process improvements to healthcare to reduce costs while improving quality, safety and efficiency."

“Both McKesson and Per-Se share a vision to reduce healthcare costs while improving quality through streamlining business and clinical processes, and improving patient care,” said Philip Pead, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Per-Se Technologies. Per-Se sold its clinical-IT division to Misys Healthcare Systems in 2003.

McKesson, which came 16th on the 2006 Fortune 500, has £44.7bn ($80.5) billion in annual revenues, stemming mainly from the distribution of pharmaceuticals.