News 10/4/21

Top News

Behavioral health EHR vendor Kipu acquires Avea, which offers RCM software for treatment centers.

The acquisition comes nearly five months after Kipu secured an investment from growth equity firm TCV and announced that Paul Joiner (Availity) and Rick Pharr (WebPT) would be joining the company as CEO and COO, respectively.

Webinars

October 6 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “Solving Patient Experience Challenges Through a Strong Digital Front Door.” Sponsor: Avtex. Presenters: Mike Pietig, VP of healthcare experience, Avtex; Jamey Shiels, MBA, VP of consumer experience, Advocate Aurora Health; Chad Thorpe, care ambassador, DispatchHealth. Patients expect healthcare providers to offer them the same digital experience they get when banking, shopping, and traveling. This webinar will describe how two leading healthcare providers created digital front doors that exceed patient expectations, improve patient outcomes, drive loyalty and acquisition, and future-proof their growth strategies in competitive markets.

October 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “A New, Streamlined Approach to Documentation and Problem List Management in Cerner Millennium.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; David Arco, product manager, IMO; Nicole Douglas, senior product marketing manager, IMO. The IMO Core CSmart app, which is available for Cerner Millennium in the Cerner code App Gallery, helps providers document with specificity, make problem lists more meaningful, and improve HCC coding. This webinar will review the challenges and bottlenecks of clinical documentation and problem list management and discuss how streamlined workflows within Cerner Millennium can help reduce clinician HIT burden.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

New NextGen Healthcare President and CEO David Sides urges shareholders to disregard founder Sheldon Razin’s disruptive efforts to take over the board by advising them to vote for company-approved candidates ahead of its October 13 meeting. In his letter to shareholders, Sides also emphasizes his belief that the company is poised for further success – particularly in the areas of connected health, population health analytics, patient engagement, and data-driven insights, despite the distraction of Razin’s proxy fight.

CVS Health CEO Karen Lynch tells Fortune in a paywalled interview that the company will transform hundreds of its retail pharmacies into spaces dedicated solely to primary care.

Instacart CEO Fidji Simo is in the process of launching The Metrodora Institute, a for-profit clinic that will open next summer in Salt Lake City. The institute – named – will focus on treating women with complex autoimmune disorders. Simo concedes that travel costs may make a trip to the clinic prohibitively costly for many women, and so telehealth will be a big component of its service line. She also plans on offering patients the ability to opt in to having their medical data analyzed for research purposes.

DoctorsManagement, a consulting firm based in Knoxville, TN, merges with Healthcare Coding Consultants of Hawaii.

TechCrunch snapshots AlleyCorp, an investment and development firm that has assembled a well-respected roster of physician entrepreneurs looking to invest in startups focused on the Triple Aim. (Primary care-focused Pearl Health, which just raised $18 million, was created by AlleyCorp investor Jeff De Flavio, MD.) The firm has allocated $100 million for its next round of healthcare-related investments.

People

Smita Wadhawan (GoDaddy) joins SimplePractice as the company’s first chief marketing officer.

Greenway Health promotes Susan Kohler to SVP of revenue services.

Announcements and Implementations

Rimidi announces GA of its new EHR-integrated patient-reported outcomes tool. Patients can access Survé on their mobile devices, after which their feedback is integrated with their EHR for future clinical decision support.

Research and Innovation

Carbon Health launches a clinical trial research program that will focus on medical devices, diagnostics, therapeutics and vaccines, including Merck’s new COVID-19 antiviral treatment pill. The Carbon for Research program will enable its research partners to reach patients at Carbon Health’s 90 clinics in 14 states, as well as through virtual visits.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems releases a new Tell Me Where it Hurts Podcast with Iram Fatima, MBBS, COO of CareCloud.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new customer success story, “How Healow Retooled the Front Office During COVID-19.”

Blog Posts

• 5 Ways to Support Patients and Their Caregivers During COVID-19 (Healthwise)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 9/29/21

Top News

HRSA awards $1 billion to 1,292 health centers across the country for capital improvements and equipment purchases including telemedicine technology.

HIStalk Practice Musings

There’s been some interesting chatter around the Walmart Health/Epic news over at HIStalk2.com. Reader Elizabeth H.H. Holmes observed: “I think Walmart is a lot more interesting as a market entrant than previous tech giants. Walmart has plenty of IT acumen, and they have a lot more experience with retail and logistics than the others. The optimist in me sees the unique potential for Walmart to help combat social determinants of health or provide better access to primary care. The skeptic in me sees the potential for Walmart to also go all-in on rent seeking behavior that drags down the medical industrial complex. Wherever they go I have a hunch that Walmart will stick around much longer than the others who have tried.”

That got me to thinking about my recent visit to my Walmart Health’s dental clinic for a $25 cleaning (without insurance). The hygienist and I got to talking about how much she likes her job. She mentioned that she enjoys having the latest technology to work with. (The dental clinic had ultra-modern X-ray machines my previous dentist did not.) She also told me that working there has made her realize that the profession has failed its patients in terms of making services too expensive. She’s found it very rewarding to take care of people who previously hadn’t been able to afford routine dental care.

I think Walmart’s foray into clinic-based and virtual care will definitely succeed in markets like my somewhat rural area where patients need affordable, easily accessible care. At the very least, Walmart and the “tech giants” are making the “medical industrial complex” wake up to the fact that there’s a different way to bring healthcare to consumers.

I’m not sure that companies like CrowdHealth would be able to raise the $6 million it just did had non-healthcare entities like Walmart disrupted the status quo. The tech-based insurance startup offers healthcare coverage for $175 a month that includes unlimited virtual care, annual wellness visits, discounted prescriptions, and physician quality scores.

Webinars

October 6 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “Solving Patient Experience Challenges Through a Strong Digital Front Door.” Sponsor: Avtex. Presenters: Mike Pietig, VP of healthcare experience, Avtex; Jamey Shiels, MBA, VP of consumer experience, Advocate Aurora Health; Chad Thorpe, care ambassador, DispatchHealth. Patients expect healthcare providers to offer them the same digital experience they get when banking, shopping, and traveling. This webinar will describe how two leading healthcare providers created digital front doors that exceed patient expectations, improve patient outcomes, drive loyalty and acquisition, and future-proof their growth strategies in competitive markets.

October 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “A New, Streamlined Approach to Documentation and Problem List Management in Cerner Millennium.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; David Arco, product manager, IMO; Nicole Douglas, senior product marketing manager, IMO. The IMO Core CSmart app, which is available for Cerner Millennium in the Cerner code App Gallery, helps providers document with specificity, make problem lists more meaningful, and improve HCC coding. This webinar will review the challenges and bottlenecks of clinical documentation and problem list management and discuss how streamlined workflows within Cerner Millennium can help reduce clinician HIT burden.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Austin, TX-based medical billing company EqualizeRCM acquires competitor Practice Resource Network for an undisclosed sum.

TelaCare Health Solutions acquires the assets of ViewMyID Health, a membership-based health data management service.

Collabrity Health launches as a member-based HIE services company.

Announcements and Implementations

Care communication company Updox announces GA of mobile patient payment capabilities using software from PaySimple.

Professional Medical Corp., and independent physician organization based in Michigan, implements Persivia’s CareSpace virtual care and population health technology across its risk-sharing programs with multiple payers.

Other

Coos County Family Health Services in New Hampshire resumes normal IT operations after a ransomware attack on September 20 forced it to take its systems offline for several days.

This Harvard Business Review article calls out the healthcare industry for placing too much importance on (and investment in) process-based, technology-enabled primary care to the detriment of the physician-patient relationship:

“Checklists and templates may bring value for specific services, such as ordering a mammogram or administering vaccines. But the emphasis on discrete services and processes should not come at the expense of timely access to comprehensive longitudinal care with a physician you know and trust; we must not lose sight of the long-term outcomes in the quality and cost of care that should be the priority. In fact, I often joke that consciousness is a good place to draw the line: By all means use a checklist during surgery or in the ICU, but if your patients are awake and talking, listen to them.”

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Texting & Emojis in Patient Communications (AdvancedMD)
• A Better Front Office Could Be Just Minutes Away (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 9/27/21

Top News

Walmart will implement Epic across all of its health and wellness business lines, beginning early next year with four new Health centers in Florida.

The Walmart Health clinic in my neck of the woods had been using Athenahealth and Orchard for labs when it first opened in 2019.

Webinars

October 6 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “Solving Patient Experience Challenges Through a Strong Digital Front Door.” Sponsor: Avtex. Presenters: Mike Pietig, VP of healthcare experience, Avtex; Jamey Shiels, MBA, VP of consumer experience, Advocate Aurora Health; Chad Thorpe, care ambassador, DispatchHealth. Patients expect healthcare providers to offer them the same digital experience they get when banking, shopping, and traveling. This webinar will describe how two leading healthcare providers created digital front doors that exceed patient expectations, improve patient outcomes, drive loyalty and acquisition, and future-proof their growth strategies in competitive markets.

October 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “A New, Streamlined Approach to Documentation and Problem List Management in Cerner Millennium.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; David Arco, product manager, IMO; Nicole Douglas, senior product marketing manager, IMO. The IMO Core CSmart app, which is available for Cerner Millennium in the Cerner code App Gallery, helps providers document with specificity, make problem lists more meaningful, and improve HCC coding. This webinar will review the challenges and bottlenecks of clinical documentation and problem list management and discuss how streamlined workflows within Cerner Millennium can help reduce clinician HIT burden.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Pearl Health raises $18 million in a Series A funding round. The company helps primary care physicians manage risk in Medicare programs with proprietary technology designed to help them access best-fit, risk-based arrangements, and clinical data and workflow support; ensure financial stability; and maintain independence. The Pearl Health team includes numerous veterans of Athenahealth and Oscar Health.

Announcements and Implementations

Washington, DC-based behavioral health provider Community Connections selects the SmartCare EHR from Streamline Healthcare Solutions.

Medical office co-space company MedCoShare prepares to open a 21-office facility in New Jersey. Its first, in Philadelphia, filled to near capacity within a year of opening.

GenieMD adds online prescription ordering and delivery capabilities from Vytal to its white-label telemedicine services.

Primary and urgent care company Carbon Health develops technology for employers that will enable them to securely collect, store, and report employee COVID-19 vaccination and testing information. Carbon Health has rolled out several COVID-19-related testing and vaccination programs over the last 18 months, including a mass vaccination program for the City of Los Angeles, and at-home and in-clinic testing for symptomatic patients and those preparing to travel.

Google adds new healthcare-related features to Search and Maps.

Government and Politics

ONC releases new research on patient portal use. A few highlights:

• About six in 10 patients were offered access to their patient portal and nearly 40 percent accessed their record at least once in 2020.
• Nearly four in 10 portal users accessed their portal through a smartphone health app in 2020.
• Nearly a third of portal users downloaded their medical record last year – this proportion has nearly doubled since 2017.
• Top patient reasons for not accessing their portals have remained consistent since 2017 – a perceived lack of need, a preference for gleaning information via a face-to-face conversation with a provider, and privacy and security concerns.

Other

No secure messaging needed: The local news covers the boisterous “You are pregnant!” announcement the staff of Coastal Fertility Medical Center (TX) make over the phone to patients whose pregnancy tests come back positive.

Coos County Family Health Services recovers from a ransomware last week that took its phone, computer, and e-mail systems offline.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthwise celebrates its staff in a new video, “Celebrating Healthwise Yesterday & Today.”

Blog Posts

• Everything old is new again (Nordic)
• Nordic Consulting ranked No. 37 of Best Places to Work in Healthcare in 2021 (Nordic)

Contact

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 9/22/21

Top News

Care coordination and social services referral company Unite Us acquires NowPow, which offers a similar community care and services referral platform.

The acquisition comes just over a month after Unite Us announced its acquisition of analytics-focused Carrot Health.

Webinars

October 6 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “Solving Patient Experience Challenges Through a Strong Digital Front Door.” Sponsor: Avtex. Presenters: Mike Pietig, VP of healthcare experience, Avtex; Jamey Shiels, MBA, VP of consumer experience, Advocate Aurora Health; Chad Thorpe, care ambassador, DispatchHealth. Patients expect healthcare providers to offer them the same digital experience they get when banking, shopping, and traveling. This webinar will describe how two leading healthcare providers created digital front doors that exceed patient expectations, improve patient outcomes, drive loyalty and acquisition, and future-proof their growth strategies in competitive markets.

October 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET.  “A New, Streamlined Approach to Documentation and Problem List Management in Cerner Millennium.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; David Arco, product manager, IMO; Nicole Douglas, senior product marketing manager, IMO. The IMO Core CSmart app, which is available for Cerner Millennium in the Cerner code App Gallery, helps providers document with specificity, make problem lists more meaningful, and improve HCC coding. This webinar will review the challenges and bottlenecks of clinical documentation and problem list management and discuss how streamlined workflows within Cerner Millennium can help reduce clinician HIT burden.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Alpha Medical, a chat-based telemedicine company focused on women’s health, raises $24 million in a Series B round. It has raised $35 million since launching four years ago. The consumer-focused startup plans to begin offering its services to payers and employers.

Government and Politics

HHS awards $73 million to 10 academic institutions as part of its Public Health Informatics & Technology Workforce Development Program. Overseen by ONC, the program aims to bolster public health IT efforts, improve COVID-19 data collection, and increase the presence of underrepresented communities within the public health IT workforce.

Other

Family Medical Center of Michigan pays Ukraine-based ransomware attackers $30,000 to regain control of encrypted financial files. FMC paid the ransom a week after the breach was detected, and then waited two weeks to receive the encryption key. The provider’s cybersecurity firm advised paying the ransom as part of a strategy to define the scope of the hack and what information may have been compromised.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Enterprise Imaging supports connected care in Moscow (AdvancedMD)

• The Power of Search in Healthcare and Beyond (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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Contact us online.
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News 9/20/21

Top News

NextGen Healthcare names David Sides (Teladoc Health) president and CEO. Sides spent 17 years as SVP of worldwide consulting at Cerner, and had a shorter, more recent stint as president and CEO of Streamline Health.

Webinars

October 6 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “Solving Patient Experience Challenges Through a Strong Digital Front Door.” Sponsor: Avtex. Presenters: Mike Pietig, VP of healthcare experience, Avtex; Jamey Shiels, MBA, VP of consumer experience, Advocate Aurora Health; Chad Thorpe, care ambassador, DispatchHealth. Patients expect healthcare providers to offer them the same digital experience they get when banking, shopping, and traveling. This webinar will describe how two leading healthcare providers created digital front doors that exceed patient expectations, improve patient outcomes, drive loyalty and acquisition, and future-proof their growth strategies in competitive markets.

October 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET.  “A New, Streamlined Approach to Documentation and Problem List Management in Cerner Millennium.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; David Arco, product manager, IMO; Nicole Douglas, senior product marketing manager, IMO. The IMO Core CSmart app, which is available for Cerner Millennium in the Cerner code App Gallery, helps providers document with specificity, make problem lists more meaningful, and improve HCC coding. This webinar will review the challenges and bottlenecks of clinical documentation and problem list management and discuss how streamlined workflows within Cerner Millennium can help reduce clinician HIT burden.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Digital physical therapy company Hinge Health acquires Wrnch, which has developed 3-D motion-tracking technology to capture full body movement. The San Francisco-based company, which raised $300 million in January, says it now has the largest computer vision team in digital health.

The Portland business paper profiles Shelley Bailey and her fertility-focused telemedicine startup Famlee, which she describes as a “step therapy before IVF kicks in.” The service offers at-home labs, clinical treatment, and medication delivery through its app.

People

Primavera Health names Nicholas Duran (Florida Association of Free and Charitable Clinics) president and CEO. Duran is also a member of the Florida House of Representatives.

Medical records retrieval company Medchart hires Kevin Callahan (Coinbase) as VP of product design.

98point6 co-founder and Chairman Jeff Greenstein becomes interim CEO after the unexpected departure of co-founder Robbie Cape.

Announcements and Implementations

MyTelemedicine adds primary care to its virtual care services.

Radiology Associates in Arkansas implements Rad AI’s technology for generating customized radiology report impressions and consensus guideline recommendations.

Other

The Alaska Department of Health and Social Services notifies the public of a cyberattack that occurred in May. Several DHHS systems were taken offline for several months as a result of the attack, including the state’s Electronic Vital Records System.

In the UK, Emma Richardson takes up wing walking to raise money for her local GP’s office and church. Richardson, who lives with several debilitating health conditions that have contributed to her near blindness, was inspired by Sir Captain Tom Moore’s fundraising walk around his garden last year as he approached his 100th birthday.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Caring is Sharing (Data) at Innova Primary Care.”

Blog Posts

• Connecting operational and clinical data for optimum performance (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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Become a sponsor.