News 11/15/11

Vista Equity Partners wraps up its purchase of Sage Healthcare, which is has renamed Vitera Healthcare Solutions. Vitera also introduces a new Web site, which looks a lot like the old Web site except for this fun banner at the top of the landing page. Betty Otter-Nickerson, former president of Sage Healthcare division, will be stepping down at the end of the year and replaced by new CEO Matthew Hawkins. Hawkins is the former VP and GM of Henry Schein Practice Solutions. 

NextGen Healthcare kicks off its 2011 Users’ Group Meeting in Las Vegas with over 4,200 participants. Keynote speakers include the ONC’s Farzad Mostashari, MD and former Blue Angel John Foley, who was scheduled to discuss achieving high performance. I also looked at a few of #nextgenugm Tweets and saw a number of positive comments on Foley’s keynote speech, as well as a few expressing disappointment that some sessions were full. By the way, the official press release notes that “many” of the company’s ambulatory inpatient users have attested for Meaningful Use and over 100 have earned PCMH designation.

 

gloStream hires Mark Crall and Steve Luby as co-directors of the company’s partners program.

CalOptima REC adds SuiteMed to its preferred EHR vendor list.

The 175-provider  Vancouver Clinic (WA) implements Epic EMR. Well, I assume it’s Epic, given that the local newspaper says it’s the same EMR used by Kaiser and 24% of the country’s providers.

Practice Fusion hosted a free user meeting in San Francisco last week on the forth anniversary of the company’s founding. CEO Ryan Howard says the company now has 130,000 medical professionals using the system to document the health of 25 million patients. In addition, it refers $40 billion worth of business every year to pharmacies and labs that pay to advertise on the Practice Fusion site.

The local business journal profiles safety-net clinic Grace Medical Home (FL), which recently implemented e-MDs.

SRS appoints Jack Walsh as CFO. He spent 13 years at IMS Health in various financial and strategic roles, including SVP of payers, government, and business development.

Emdeon announces Healthpayers Protect, a new service that allows payers to analyze adjudicated claims before they are paid.

The Colorado RHIO’s (CORHIO) financial model may need some tweaking, given that many Boulder-area physicians are balking at the $85/month connection fee and the initial $2,500 to $5,000 per practice training cost. An estimated 50% of area physicians don’t have an EHR, which means they are unable to connect to the RHIO. Then there are the 70 physicians with Boulder Medical Center who don’t see the need for the RHIO since they are already connected to one another  via their NextGen system. CORHIO’s five-year business plan calls for taking in $26 million in federal grants and $19 million in subscriber fees.

The Supreme Court announces that it will review the healthcare reform law over a two-day period in March.

E-mail Inga.