News 3/17/21

Top News

Amazon plans to expand Amazon Care, its virtual and house call care service, to employees in all 50 states this summer. It will also begin marketing the service to other employers.

The online retailer launched the service as a pilot for its Seattle-based employees two years ago, initially offering urgent care and then progressing to primary care and management of chronic conditions.

The company announced last week that it would also expand its network of employee clinics operated by Crossover Health to five regions in Texas, Arizona, Kentucky, Michigan, and California. It hasn’t yet hinted at how it might bundle the two separate endeavors together.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Care and social services coordination software company Unite Us reaches unicorn status with a $150 million Series C funding round.

Harmonize Health raises $10 million in a Series A funding round. The two year-old, San Francisco-based company offers an integrated solution for remote patient monitoring, chronic care management, and outcomes tracking for elderly and high-risk patients.

Strive Health, which focuses on kidney care optimization using analytics and care navigators, raises $140 million in a Series B funding round led by CapitalG.

Announcements and Implementations

Greenway Health announces GA of GRS Select, a suite of customizable RCM services aimed at helping practices recover from COVID-induced losses.

Steinberg Diagnostic Medical Imaging in Las Vegas implements OpenDoctor’s online appointment scheduling software for its nine locations.

Other

Kaiser Permanente physician Linda Shiue, MD recounts her path from traditional physician to author of “Spicebox Kitchen,” a cookbook that aims to show “how a stash of spices can act as the cook’s equivalent to a doctor’s bag.” (Check out her KP profile page for tons of recipes.) She recounts: “I started writing recipes for my patients … on my prescription pad, which felt very radical. … Even with all the kind of highfalutin medical training I’ve had, those recipes were what earned me the most passionate letters of gratitude from patients.”

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a guide to choosing a vaccine administration management system.

Blog Posts

• 3 Actionable Tips for Reducing Claim Rejections (AdvancedMD)
• The brilliance of GROSS (Nordic)

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News 3/15/21

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DaGrosa Capital Partners invests in Hoy Health, a bilingual telemedicine, remote patient monitoring, and medication access company based in Morristown, NJ.

CEO Mario Anglada helped to launch Univision’s first consumer-focused telehealth program before founding Hoy Health in 2017.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Canadian Well Health Technologies makes a seed investment in startup fertility clinic Twig Fertility, which plans to open a clinic in Toronto with digital health offerings that include app-based virtual visits, online scheduling, prescription delivery, and notifications.

Blueberry Pediatrics launches in six states with a membership-based telemedicine service that offers, for $18 a month, unlimited care for every child in a member’s household.

People

Cynthia Miller (Deloitte) joins MiraMed Global Services as VP of coding and client services.

Well Health Technologies, which acquired EHR vendor Intrahealth last week for $15 million, promotes Ammar Shah to VP of M&A.

Announcements and Implementations

Tech-enabled primary care company Carbon Health develops a digital COVID-19 vaccine card that will help patients vaccinated at Carbon Health sites keep track of their doses and offer proof of shots.

Florida Cancer Specialists implements a Virtual Image Exchange using technology from Thinking Systems.

Government and Politics

Over the next six weeks, 700 additional health centers will join 250 already participating in the federal government’s Health Center COVID-19 Vaccine Program, which is helping to ensure that vaccines are given out equitably.

Other

Hatfield Medical Group installs a hitching post outside of its office in Apache Junction, AZ so that patients can ride their horses to appointments. (This story reminds me of the time I saw two people ride their horses through my local Wendy’s drive-thru!)

The LA Times covers the art healthcare workers have created during the pandemic. From doll house furniture to toast art, ball gowns, and painting, the creativity has served as a means of coping and escape for physicians like Jacqueline Pflaum-Carlson, MD: “When the pandemic hit, every aspect of my clinical practice was affected — there was no escape. I started painting so I could separate my work tragedy from home stressors. I needed to get the imagery and emotions out of my head before I could be present for my two young daughters and husband whose lives were also uprooted.”

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News 3/10/21

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As first alluded to last October, Outcome Health has merged with competitor PatientPoint to create PatientPoint Health Technologies. Earlier estimates have valued the combined company at $600 million. The new company will continue to offer digital pharma advertising and patient engagement messaging at the bedside and in waiting rooms.

PatientPoint leadership will head up the new company, while Outcome Health executives Glenn Keighley and Sean Barden will lead software and engineering efforts.

The deal, the terms of which weren’t disclosed, is perhaps the best possible route for Outcome Health, whose co-founders await trial in a $1 billion fraud case initiated by a 2017 Wall Street Journal expose.

Webinars

None scheduled in the coming weeks. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Babylon Health acquires the Fresno and Madera operations of FirstChoice Medical Group, a California-based practice management company that partners with local physicians to offer concierge care for Medicare patients. Babylon will roll out its app-based healthcare services and access to its care advisors to FirstChoice patients in the coming months.

People

AristaMD hires Neal Reizer (Homecare Homebase) as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Walgreens leverages Nuance’s intelligent, conversational voicebot to help customers who call its retail clinics schedule COVID-19 vaccine appointments in English or Spanish. The technology also sends automated appointment reminders via text.

Henry Schein Medical Systems will integrate Yosi Health’s cloud-based patient intake and engagement software with its EHR and practice management technologies.

Fox Rehabilitation (NJ) implements MTBC’s PrecisionBI analytics and business intelligence software.

Research and Innovation

Athenahealth’s new Telehealth Insights Dashboard shows that mental health, primary care, and pediatrics were the top type of virtual appointments between November 2020 and January 2021. Visits were more likely to occur after hours or on the weekends, and were twice as likely to be scheduled on the same day as in-person appointments.

Other

Heal co-founder Nick Desai shares why the time was right for him to step down as CEO, and what he expects the company to achieve under more strategic leadership in the coming months. A few highlights:

• The company began ramping up its telemedicine capabilities in December 2020 as news of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China began to break.
• Desai is looking forward to getting back to his entrepreneurial roots, and is already looking at how virtual care can be made truly accessible to those who need it: “If I do something else in health care, it’s going to be 10x the size, or 100x the size, and solve the chasm of equality of access, which is huge.”
• He sees tremendous market opportunity in house call-based senior care, which Heal has already delved into through its agreements with several payers.

Robert Purbeck is indicted for cyber crimes that included purchasing user names and passwords on the dark web; and then hacking into and stealing patient data from two medical clinics, one orthodontics practice, and the City of Newnan in Georgia. He also attempted to extort the owner of the orthodontics practice, threatening to sell the Social Security number of the owner’s child if he didn’t pay a Bitcoin ransom.

Pediatricians at The Children’s Hospital at Montefiore (NY) take to Zoom to hold virtual “read-alongs” with their patients, whose opportunities to focus on health literacy in the classroom may be hampered by the pandemic. Typically held during school breaks, the read-alongs supplement the books typically given to each Montefiore patient at the end of their in-person visit.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• 3 Actionable Tips for Reducing Claim Rejections (AdvancedMD)
• A Critical Moment in the COVID-19 Fight (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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News 3/8/21

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Investor Scott Vertrees joins Heal as CEO. Vertrees, who has advised the company over the last several months, replaces Nick Desai, who co-founded the app-based house call and telemedicine company with wife Renee Dua, MD in 2015. Desai remains a shareholder, and Dua the company’s CMO.

Heal has over the last year expanded into several more states and raised $100 million from Humana, bringing its total raised to $200 million.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Tallahassee, FL-based health data exchange vendor HIE Networks rebrands to Centralis Health.

App-based house call company DispatchHealth raises $200 million in a Series D round of funding that brings its total raised to $417 million.

Announcements and Implementations

Behavioral health organization George Junior Republic (PA) implements the SmartCare EHR from Streamline Healthcare Solutions.

Government and Politics

In Kansas, Governor Laura Kelly allocates $3 million in federal funding to Community Care Network of Kansas, is helping its network of clinics acquire remote patient monitoring devices so that patients with chronic conditions may be cared for virtually.

Other

Cochise Eye & Laser (AZ) notifies patients of a January ransomware attack that encrypted its patient scheduling and billing software, and deleted scheduled appointments. The clinic was forced to revert to paper-based processes for nearly a month while they rebuilt their systems and installed an offsite backup.

Behavioral health and addiction treatment EHR vendor Sigmund Software will award $500 scholarships to five winners who plan to or are already pursuing degrees related to healthcare and/or IT. Applications and essays are due June 1.

OrthoVirginia and Allergy Centers of Richmond are recovering from presumably separate cybersecurity incidents in late February that took down their phone systems and servers.

The University of Notre Dame’s student magazine finds the funny in the university’s COVID-19 testing protocols, recounting the escapades of “Two Spit Nick” and the black market he developed for COVID-free saliva.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic welcomes Saran Sonaisamy (Cognizant) as director of cloud transformation and cybersecurity.
• PerfectServe publishes a new case study featuring the University of Tennessee Medical Center, “EMR Embedded Communication Improves Efficiency.”

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 3/3/21

Top News

STAT reports that Care Medical has filed paperwork to operate in 17 additional states, bringing its total to at least 23. The company powers the Amazon Care virtual and house-call clinic offered to Amazon employees in Seattle. It seems to exist solely for the online retailer’s purposes, leading to the conjecture that Amazon may be expanding its Care services beyond Washington State.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

LLR Partners makes an undisclosed investment in Azalea Health, which had previously raised $13.5 million.

Optum will acquire Atrius Health, the largest independent physician network in Massachusetts.

SpineZone raises $12 million in a Series A round led by Polaris Partners and Providence Ventures. The digital health company offers virtual physical therapy regimens for sufferers of back and neck pain, plus in-person care at eight affiliated clinics in California.

People

Jeremy Jackson, MD (Boston Consulting Group) joins Apollo Medical Holdings in the new role of chief of staff.

Announcements and Implementations

Online prescription delivery and telemedicine company Ro will begin offering in-home COVID-19 vaccinations for homebound patients in New York. Ro has partnered with Uber to provide free rides for healthcare workers. The company will use software from WorkPath, which it acquired earlier this year, to manage appointment scheduling and reminders.

In Maine, Spectrum Healthcare Partners implements NextGen’s Orthopedic Suite across its orthopedic division.

Brooklyn-based Oula opens its first prenatal clinic, adding in-person care to virtual care offered through its app. Co-founders and moms-to-be Adrianne Nickerson and Elaine Purcell met while working at Deloitte, and have experience working at providers like Northwell Health and Mount Sinai Beth Israel, and vendors such as Privia Health. 

The Centers for Advanced Orthopaedics will implement Surgimate’s surgical scheduling software at its 60 office locations across Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC.

North American Partners in Anesthesia selects Athenahealth’s AthenaIDX RCM software and services.

Government and Politics

The House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis launches an investigation into One Medical’s COVID-19 vaccination practices after NPR uncovers that it provided vaccines to ineligible patients, including some with ties to company leadership. Several public health departments have since severed vaccination ties with the concierge primary care company. The investigation will also dig into whether or not One Medical has used its vaccine registration platform for data-mining and membership-conversion purposes.

Donna Monticone pleads guilty to tampering with a consumer product after a federal investigation finds she had been stealing vials of fentanyl from her employer, Yale Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility clinic, for several months. To hide her theft, Monticone replaced the fentanyl with saline, despite the fact that she knew the fluid would be used as anesthesia in upcoming procedures.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Data Security Best-practices for Remote Workers in 2021 (AdvancedMD)
• What’s FHIR and How Will it Drive Healthcare Interoperability? (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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