Tabula Rasa, up 543% since IPO, buys two more software firms

Shares of Tabula Rasa HealthCare Inc., the Moorestown-based drug-delivery software company, topped $90 this morning for the first time after the firm said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that it had agreed to pay $22 million in cash and stock for Eden Prairie, Minn.-based medical administration software maker Mediture LLC and its subsidiary, eClusive LLC.

Two years since Tabla Rasa went public at $14, its stock price has risen 543 percent.

Mediture makes health-records software. eClusive provides third-party administrator services for medical programs focusing on elderly people. Both firms help clients, including New York long-term care providers, manage Medicare and Medicaid patients through the federal government's "Program for All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly (PACE)." Managers including Mediture chief operations office Steve Wosje will stay with the company as it becomes part of Tabula Rasa, the company said.

The businesses will form part of  Tabula Rasa's new CareVention Health Care technology and service division, which will sell clients the company's flagship CareKinesis medication software, and also includes its Capstone Performance Systems and Peak Health Plan Management Services units.

With profits and its share price rising under chief executive Calvin Knowlton, a Temple-trained former pharmacist who headed ExcelleRx from 1995 until after its $269 million purchase by Omnicare in 2005, Tabula Rasa has acquired a string of companies, including SifoniaRX medication-therapy management, which it bought last year.

Tabula Rasa, backed by investors including Bruce Luehrs' Rittenhouse Ventures, went public in a $115 million stock sale in September 2016, and is now worth $1.8 billion on the Nasdaq stock market.

The buyer plans a "seamless" transition for Mediture and eClusive clients, said Joseph Filippoli, Tabula Rasa's chief information officer, who previously held that job at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and worked for Knowlton at ExcelleRx. Filippoli said the company's data and presentation software gives health-care organizations "insights that were not available to them before" so they can care for patients more efficiently.

The Philadelphia-based law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP advised Tabula Rasa.

In a separate SEC filing, Tabula Rasa told investors that it had completed the Mediture-eClusive acquisition on Aug. 31, and that it now faces deal risks, including client "disruption," the "diversion of our management's attention from other strategic activities," and "diversion of significant resources" away from current products and services. Tabula Rasa said it will include more information about the deal, including "cost savings," in its next quarterly 10Q report to the SEC.