Drchrono raises $12 million in Series A to take on older EHR platforms like athenahealth

A couple of early-stage venture capital outfits have infused medical practice management platform drchrono with $12 million in Series A financing to help the eight-year-old company compete with EHR incumbents in bigger health organizations like athenahealth and Allscripts.

Drchrono has largely taken over as the backend platform of choice for small medical practices, handling everything from electronic medical records to billing and scheduling. It has been listed as one of the fastest growing private companies in America and claims to have served more than 8 million patients, processing more than $3.5 billion in medical claims.

But now ambitions aim higher. Over the past few years, the startup began to integrate with larger companies such as ZocDoc and DemandForce. Apple is now a mobile enterprise partner, allowing the company to integrate patient information on iPads, smartphones and even the Apple Watch. Contrast that with some of the more archaic systems still faxing paper records from one place to another.

Drchrono has plans to take its software and mobile applications to larger hospitals and medical clinics. “There’s a general trend where we are seeing people leaving the legacy platforms and going to the cloud… So we want to make sure we capture those deals,” co-founder Daniel Kivatinos told TechCrunch.

But why raise when the company tells TechCrunch it is already seeing $12 million in annual recurring revenue. Why not just roll that revenue back into the company? Kivatinos and co-founder Michael Nusimow say the new funding will help them implement their big plans faster by helping them market and build out drchrono’s infrastructure.

The company is also working with former Vice President Joe Biden’s Argonaut Project, which launched during the Obama administration and works with privately held companies developing a Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resource (FHIR)-based API to help standardize the U.S. electronic medical records system.

Early-stage venture firm Runa Capital led the round, along with funding from Maxfield Capital, Quicken’s CEO Eric Dunn and FundersClub. Drchrono had previously raised $6.7 million, bringing the total now raised close to $19 million.