News 6/1/22

Top News

Hint Health, a tech company focused on better enabling direct primary care practices, has raised $45 million in a Series B funding round.

HIStalk Practice Musings

Summer is unofficially here, and with it comes the need to compile vacation-worthy reading lists. I’m indulging in a re-read of “Mr. Darcy Takes a Wife” by Linda Berdoll, a bodice-ripper that pays cheeky homage to Jane Austen’s original work. The more professionally-minded may want to check out the AMA’s “8 great books hand-picked by doctors for your reading list.”

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CloudMD, a Canadian software, services, and clinic operations company, reports a jump in Q1 revenue to $41.4 million CAD. The company attributes the increase to its 2021 acquisition of MindBeacon, a developer of white-label virtual cognitive behavioral therapy software.

Announcements and Implementations

CVS Health develops a virtual primary care service for payers that gives their members access to virtual primary care, on-demand care, chronic condition management, and mental healthcare from a dedicated care team via a single digital resource. Members will also have the option to seek in-person care at in-network providers, including CVS Health’s MinuteClinic.

Bellevue Pain and Wellness (WA) selects Kareo and PatientPop’s EHR, practice management and growth, and billing technologies.

Rite Aid will connect its Medicare pharmacy customers in Michigan with virtual, mobile, and in-person care from Homeward, a tech-enabled healthcare company focused on helping patients in rural areas access care.

Apricity Health, an oncology-focused care management and remote patient monitoring company, selects Health Gorilla’s Health Interoperability Platform and Patient360 health record software.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story featuring Provida Family Medicine, “How the EClinicalWorks EHR Integrates Data from Other EHRs.”
• Nordic will present at the EHealth 2022 Virtual Conference + Tradeshow June 1-2.
• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “Advocate Aurora Health: Helping a Regional Nonprofit with Population Health Solutions.”

Blog Posts

• How a digital, all-in-one software solution helps you grow your practice & refocus on patient care (AdvancedMD)
• The Best of Healthcare IT in the Heart of America (EClinicalWorks)
• Nurses of Note Awards 2022: The Dynamic Nurse IT Leader (PerfectServe)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 5/25/22

Top News

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD releases an advisory on addressing and combatting health worker burnout. The advisory offers fairly in-depth action items for stakeholders across the care continuum including provider organizations; federal, state, local, and tribal governments; payers; and healthcare technology vendors. Sadly, it seems that, according to Murthy, health IT companies are still struggling with:

• Designing technology to serve the needs of health workers, care teams, and patients across the continuum of care.
• Designing platforms with the goal of interoperability at the outset.
• Strengthening integration of data across different platforms and health sectors.
• Improving seamless storage of and access to health data.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Well Health Technologies combines its EMR Group, billing and RCM, and several digital application businesses into its new Provider Solutions Business Unit.

People

Elation Health names Amanda Melander (Athenahealth) SVP and head of marketing.

Scott Weingarten, MD (Cedars-Sinai) joins Vytalize Health as chief value officer.

Other

Drummond Group launches a pediatric health IT certification and pilot initiative that will help vendors comply with the ONC’s voluntary EHR certification requirements. Pilot participants include NextGen, Office Practicum, and PCC. The pilot will wrap up in July, after which Drummond Group will finalize test scripts based on recommendations from ONC, HL7, and ARHQ.

Marketplace looks at the increasing urgency with which healthcare practices are messaging patients to leave online reviews. “Tone-deaf timing,” as one patient put it, is a big turn off, as is the feeling that patients are being badgered to do a practice’s marketing for them. Zen Media CEO Shama Hyder advises practices to wait one to two days before sending review requests: “You don’t want to go so long that a patient has completely moved on with their life and forgotten about their experience. Or worse yet, had a rough experience and already decided to share that on a public forum.”

Brian Wedgeworth, aka the “Casanova Scammer,” pleads guilty to 25 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering after a five-year stint of swindling money from more than 30 women. Wedgeworth’s schemes involved posing as a doctor and convincing his victims he needed money to pay off his medical practice’s debts.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic posts another episode of its monthly “DocTalk” series titled “Soft Interoperability.
• Nordic publishes a video titled “Modernizing Healthcare Data Infrastructure with the Cloud.”
• Nordic transitions the Tasman brand, and its presence in Europe and the Middle East, to the Nordic global brand.

Blog Posts

• Nurses of Note Awards 2022: The Nurse Informatics Team at Mecklenburg County Public Health (PerfectServe)
• Two Ways to Increase Your Patient Engagement (Healthwise)
• Essential ephemera: The sad, over-too-quickly life of a wearable datum (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 5/18/22

Top News

Care coordination software vendor ThoroughCare secures a $3 million investment from Cypress Growth Capital.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

National Medical Billing Services, an RCM vendor focused on the surgical market, acquires Medi-Corp, which offers RCM services for anesthesia, ASCs, and pain management providers.

Healthcare continuing education company HealthStream acquires CE application vendor CloudCME for $4 million. HealthStream acquired a majority interest in CloudCME in 2019.

Greater Good Health raises $10 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to $13 million. The tech-enabled company is working to develop primary care networks anchored by nurse practitioners.

NextGen Healthcare reports Q4 results: revenue up 5%, EPS $0.19 vs. $0.21, missing analyst expectations for both.

People

Fred Divers, MD joins American Oncology Network as CMO. He will continue to practice as a medical oncologist at Genesis Cancer and Blood Institute (AR).

Announcements and Implementations

US Radiology will implement Volpara Health’s breast density assessment, mammography reporting, and patient communication software at its Charlotte Radiology practice in North Carolina.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• HEDIS: Completing the Picture of Patients’ Health (EClinicalWorks)
• Honoring the Role of Nurses in Empowering Patients (Healthwise)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 5/16/22

Top News

Skylight Health Group, a multi-state practice management company, attributes its 18% dip in revenue from the previous quarter to implementation of Athenahealth’s EHR across its practices, and a dip in COVID-19-related urgent care visits. The company noted in its earnings statement that is has recently developed a centralized dashboarding and reporting platform that pulls data from its Athena system and other platforms..

Webinars

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

People

Specialdocs Consultants promotes Andrew Bonner to VP of business development.

Announcements and Implementations

In Wisconsin, Wood County Human Services Behavioral Health and Long Term Support Division has implemented on the SmartCare EHR from Streamline Healthcare Solutions.

NextGen will offer FQHC customers access to clinical trials through Circuit Clinical, which handles patient recruitment, referral, and enrollment services.

Raleigh Neurology Associates (NC) selects AthenaOne EHR, billing, and patient engagement software from Athenahealth.

Connecticut Cardiology Center implements Cranberry Peak’s EZCDS clinical decision support service via its EHR from Advanced Data Systems.

Other

The local news profiles the success The Salvation Army has seen with offering telehealth services at its women’s and family shelters in Madison, WI. The organization originally partnered with Nurse Disrupted and Conduit Health Partners two years ago to screen its guests for COVID-19 before checking them into the shelter. The Salvation Army has since expanded the service to offer 24/7 care. Nurse Disrupted founder Bre Loughlin says the service has worked so well across the state that it has helped prevent 1,250 emergency room visits since the start of the pandemic.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 5/11/22

Top News

Hybrid pediatric mental healthcare startup Handspring Health raises $6.2 million in funding. The company plans to soon open more in-person clinics beyond its initial facilities in New Jersey. Co-founders Sahil Choudhry and Kwasi Kyei worked together at Cigna Ventures before launching Handspring last year.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Founded by orthopedic surgeons in 2017, virtual MSK care startup Upswing Health secures $5 million in seed funding. CEO Yenvy Truong founded and led remote patient monitoring company HealthSnap from 2015 to 2020.

Health IT vendor Office Ally acquires RCM and HIM vendor Bluemark for an undisclosed sum.

EvolvedMD raises $5.4 million in a Series A funding round. The company specializes in helping primary care practices integrate behavioral healthcare with staffing and technology.

Announcements and Implementations

The California Mental Health Services Authority has tapped Streamline Health Solutions to help it develop an EHR for county public behavioral health programs.

Health data and research company Omny Health expands its area of focus beyond dermatology to include ophthalmology, giving eye care professionals access to de-identified patient data and insights to help improve treatments and outcomes.

Government and Politics

HHS allocates $16.3 million to Title IX family planning clinics so that they can expand their telehealth infrastructure.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe honors over 130 exceptional nurses in its second annual Nurses of Note Awards program.

Blog Posts

• How EClinicalWorks RCM Service Boosts Efficiency (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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