News 1/29/13

From Tiffany: “Re: iPractice Group. You wrote a very nice blurb about our booth and presence at MGMA in San Antonio. Thought you might find it interesting that the company laid us all off on Friday and is filing bankruptcy.” Unconfirmed, but other readers have shared similar news. Mr H and I have e-mailed and called the Nashville headquarters but have received no response and all content has been removed from the company’s website. IPractice, which is (or was) a reseller for Greenway, moved to a new 30,000 square foot headquarters in October, made a big splash at MGMA, and in November was attempting to raise $10 million in additional equity.

Athenahealth files notice that it will lay off 36 employees in its Birmingham office, effective March 6. Birmingham is the location of Proxsys, the care coordination systems provider that athenahealth acquired in 2011. Margo Hendrickson, athenahealth’s VP of HR, sent us this note:

As a high growth company we are always looking to apply efficiencies to the way we work. While it is incredibly difficult to let people go from what otherwise is a growing employee base, our intent and commitment to shareholders is to align investment with business growth opportunities. This focused set of employee restructuring will allow us to achieve several critical business scaling and financial objectives that otherwise we would struggle to meet. At athenahealth, we are committed to ongoing team growth; in the past year alone the Company has grown its U.S. employee base 28 percent adding a total of 473 new employees to its U.S. total of 2,140.

Pioneer Medical Group (CA) signs an agreement with McKesson’s MED3OOO division to jointly own and operate an advancement management services joint venture that will offer physician group management, operations, administration, hosted technology, data warehousing, and other services for provider groups, physician networks, employers, and hospitals.

First Databank releases the FDB State and Federal Controlled Substances Module, which facilitates the e-prescribing, dispensing, tracking, reporting, and claims processing of controlled substances.

American Medical Group Association (AMGA) reports the addition of 51 new medical group members in 2012, representing 13,600 physicians. AMGA represents 430 group practices and 130,000 FTE physicians.

Billing service and collections provider Horizon Financial Management will use state and local tax incentives to establish a new 20,000 square foot headquarters in Merrillville, IN. The company plans to invest $1.9 million on the new facility and grow its staff from 60 to 276 by 2016.

Vitera Healthcare Solutions will give practices using its Vitera Stat PM/EHR product access to DiagnosisOne’s CDS content and patient education materials at the point of care.

As of the end of 2012, Medicare and Medicaid had paid over 175,000 EPs more than $3.3 billion in MU incentive since the program’s inception.

E-mail Inga.