News 9/24/13

Vista Equity Partners, which owns Vitera, will pay $644 million cash for the publicly held Greenway Medical Technologies. Shareholders will receive $20.35/share, which represents represents a 62 percent premium to Greenway’s 90-day volume weighted average stock price and a 20 percent premium to Greenway’s closing share price the day before the merger agreement was signed. Greenway’s IPO stock price February 2 2012: $10.10. The businesses will continue as Greenway Medical Technologies and market their products under the Greenway name. The combined entity will serve nearly 13,000 medical organizations and 100,000 providers.

Hello Health, which offers a “no-cost” EHR and patient portal, announces integration with CollaborateMD’s billing/PM system. Hello Health has a pretty unique business model that requires patients to pay a monthly subscription fee for access to the practice’s portal. Fees start at $4/month/patient and the revenue is split between Hello Health and the practice. In order words, practices get a free EMR, patients pay for access, and the practice generates a bit of extra revenue. I don’t understand why a patient would pay for portal access when they could visit another doctor down the street and likely get portal access for free; however, the model seems to be working. Practices running the CollaborateMD platform will be able to apply the revenue generated by Hello Health towards their monthly subscription fee.

The American College of Physicians releases ACP Smart Medicine, a web-based clinical decision support tool for internal medicine physicians that provides access to  hundreds of evidenced-based recommendations on diagnosis, therapy, prevention, and screening.

A British Columbian online newspaper offers some insights into the province’s EMR adoption program, which has extended $78 million in subsidies to private practices since 2006. I was aware that the various Canadian provinces offered incentive programs for EMR adoption, but never knew many specifics. The BC’s program is based on the assumption that 30 percent of the benefit of converting to an EMR accrues to the physician, so only 70 percent of the investment is subsidized. If a physician converts to one of four approved EMRs, the government reimburses the lesser of $7,000 or 70 percent of a one-time implementation fee, plus 70 percent of operating costs each year to a maximum of $2,850 the first year and $4,500 in later years. The government will also pay subsidies for non-certified EMRs if the physician can prove it improves health outcomes and meets certain privacy, security, and interoperability expectations. Since 2006, EMR adoption by general practitioners has increased from 15 percent to approximately 80 percent. Interestingly, adoption is higher in rural communities than urban centers, where adoption rates are only about 55 percent; however, fewer solo physician practices have adopted EMRs and solo practices are more prevalent in urban areas than rural locations.

Kyruus joins athenahealth’s More Disruption Please program to offer athenahealth providers access to the Kyruus ProviderMatch system for matching patients with specialists.

Sunshine Pediatric Clinic (PA) goes live on ABEL Medical Software EHR.

The FDA issues a final guidance for mobile medical apps, saying it will exercise “enforcement discretion” for most apps since they pose minimal risk to consumers. The FDA does not intend to exercise enforcement for the majority of health and wellness apps for self-managing a disease or condition, nor for apps to track one’s health information, exercise, or diet. FDA’s oversight focus will be on mobile medical apps that present a greater risk to patients if they do not work as intended, such as those intended for use as a medical device accessory (such as viewing a medical image on a smartphone) or those using a mobile platform as a medical device (like an app that allows a smartphone to be used as an ECG to detect abnormal heart rhythms.)

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