News 8/8/18

Top News

CVS Health adds MinuteClinic-branded virtual consults from Teladoc to its CVS Pharmacy app. The retail pharmacy chain piloted several telemedicine vendors last year, including American Well and Doctor on Demand, before settling on Teladoc.

Webinars

August 15 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Raising the Digital Trajectory of Healthcare.” Sponsored by: Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, President of Technology, Health Catalyst. Healthcare ranks lowest in McKinsey’s Digital Quotient (data assets x data skills x data utilization) of all industries except mining and has largely ignored the digitization of patients’ state of health, but that’s changing. This webinar will describe the empathetic components of healthcare digitization strategy; the AI-enabled encounter; why today’s digital approach will never work and instead sucks the life out of clinicians; the role of bio-integrated sensors, genomics, and the “digitician;” and the technology and architecture of a modern digital platform. It’s going to happen, so let’s make it happen the right way.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Provider and patient communications startup Klara raises $11.5 million in a Series A funding round led by FirstMark Capital.

MTBC reports Q2 results: revenue up 12 percent, EPS $0.11 vs. –$0.09, beating analyst expectations for both. The health IT vendor closed on its acquisition of Orion Healthcorp last month.

Telemedicine

Physical and behavioral health telemedicine network TeleMed2U will move into expanded office space in its hometown of Roseville, CA as it prepares to add another 10 employees by year’s end. Competitor Kura MD acquired TeleMed2U in 2015.

Nurx expands its text message-based prescription service for birth control and HIV prevention to Georgia, Tennessee, and Wisconsin. The company now operates in 20 states.

Behavioral health management company Beacon Health Options will offer virtual consult services from MDLive to its customers, including employers, payers, Medicaid programs, and military personnel.

Announcements and Implementations

Vista Community Clinic (CA) selects patient referral management software from HealthViewX.

Clinical documentation improvement company Enjoin develops a pre-visit planning program to help practices better analyze patient populations, identify compliance opportunities, and monitor performance.

Research and Innovation

A National Business Group on Health survey of 170 employers reveals that 51 percent will make the implementation of more virtual care options a top priority in 2019.

Other

STAT profiles Hey,Charlie, an app that helps recovering addicts recognize environmental triggers and avoid risky places and people. Developed at an MIT hackathon several years ago, the app has evolved into a startup run by a team of three in their spare time with funding from RWJF and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The business model has proved tricky, says co-founder and IBM Watson Health Scientist Emily Lindemer, who wants to offer the app to patients for free as part of a treatment program. Hey,Charlie is being piloted by several clinics in Boston.

In an effort to provide primary care physicians with more immediate resources for patients suffering from addiction, the University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW Health have set up a hotline to help direct PCPs to available resources within the state. “If primary care providers have a patient in the office who feels ready to make behavior change now,” says hotline program lead Randall Brown, MD “we can help them make medical decisions and give advice about behavioral treatment to try and get a plan in motion. Because when someone is struggling and seeking help, a plan weeks out is not optimal.” The hotline can be accessed at (608) 263-3260 or (800) 472-0111.

Sponsor Updates

• Aprima announces that KLAS Arch Collaborative Ambassador Mike Davis will keynote its annual user conference, August 17-19 in Grapevine, TX.

Blog Posts

• Patients over Paperwork – Who will be the true winners? (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 8/6/18

Top News

Global Payments will acquire AdvancedMD from Marlin Equity Partners for $700 million. Marlin bought the EHR, practice management, and RCM company from ADP for an undisclosed amount in 2015. The acquisition marks the first foray into healthcare for Global Payments, which caters to 11 other industries including retail, dining, gaming, nonprofits, and hospitality.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Announcements and Implementations

PHR vendor HealthLynked upgrades its provider-facing software to help physicians within its network more easily find and communicate with each other for referrals and consultations.

Mental and behavioral healthcare provider ViaQuest (OH) will implement EHR technology from Streamline Healthcare Solutions across its facilities in Ohio, Indiana, and Pennsylvania.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

EDoc4U rebrands to Pathway Health Partners to highlight its focus on supplying physicians with preventative care plans and technology aimed at helping Medicare patients schedule annual wellness visits.

Chronic Care Management acquires Careexpand’s CCM assets for an undisclosed amount. Careexpand will retain its patient engagement and communication software.

From the Allscripts earnings call: Practice Fusion has had “tens of thousands” of paid signups since the June 1 termination of the free offering. Allscripts bought the EHR vendor for $100 million in January.

Government and Politics

CMS Administrator Seema Verma tells ONC Interoperability Forum attendees that the agency is considering making Blue Button 2.0 integration a condition of provider participation in Medicare. The technology would allow Medicare patients to share their health data with research projects and third-party apps. Over 700 developers have registered for Blue Button API development access. It’s unclear how many patients are taking advantage of its capabilities.

Telemedicine

Vision benefits company General Vision Services will offer telemedicine-based eye exams from 20/20Now to its members as part of a new mobile clinic catering to employees.

Sponsor Updates

• Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at the NextGen Midwest Regional Client User Group Meeting August 9-10 in Dearborn, MI.

Blog Posts

• Getting it right: 10-point checklist for mobile devices and testing in nursing (PerfectServe)
• Privacy Matters (NVoq)
• Need a reason to come and party with Nordic later this month? Here are 6. (Nordic)
• How to identify and address physician burnout (PerfectServe)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 8/1/18

Top News

Verana Health raises $30 million in a Series C funding round that brings its total raised to $37.8 million. Formerly known as DigiSight Technologies, the San Francisco-based company initially focused on creating registries derived from EHR data for eye care providers and trade associations like the American Academy of Ophthalmology. It has since expanded to clinical data sets and analytics for the life sciences industry.

Miki Kapoor (Tea Leaves Health) has joined the company as president and CEO.

Webinars

None in the coming weeks. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

EHR and practice management company DataLink secures a second round of funding from Revelstoke Capital Partners.

People

Patrick DeAngelo (McKesson) joins Modernizing Medicine as SVP and general manager of business services.

EHR and practice management vendor CentralReach names Chris Sullens (WorkWave) CEO. The Pompano Beach, FL-based company, which acquired Chartlytics in May, has also announced it will expand with an additional office in New Jersey.

Government and Politics

Health officials in Michigan are frustrated with the lack of integration between the state’s automated prescription system and provider EHRs. Less than half of the state’s 50,102 prescribers have gained access to MAPS, despite the fact that the state set aside $2.8 million for integration efforts. Physician practices point to slow integration efforts on the EHR vendor side, and a lack of interest due to the time it takes to check the database. Providers have just over a year to take advantage of the state funding, including the waiving of a $50-per-prescriber licensing fee.

Telemedicine

MDLive raises $50 million in a funding round led by Health Velocity Capital, bumping its total funding up to $123.6 million since it opened for business in 2006.

Research and Innovation

A working paper from the National Bureau of Economic Research shows that physician referrals are more powerful than pricing when it comes to shopping for healthcare services like lower-limb MRI scans. Privately insured healthcare consumers chose higher-priced services recommended by their physicians despite at least six lower-cost options being available in their area. Less than one percent of patients reported taking advantage of price comparison tools. Not surprisingly, referrals made within a hospital’s network led to more expensive scans.

Other

After he and his partners sold their internal medicine practice to Fauquier Health for $5.3 million several years ago, William Simpson, MD will open a house call practice that will eschew insurance and instead charge by the minute – $5 during regular hours, $7 on nights and weekends, plus $2 a minute for travel. Simpson tells me he’ll use Elation’s EHR, and will provide virtual consults through video conference company Zoom. Additional house call-friendly health IT, according to Simpson, includes “Grasshopper for phone, fax, text. [A] MacBookPro with a portable HP printer/scanner and a Verizon hot spot. I found an EKG by Nassir that captures EKGs via my iPhone to PDFs that can be downloaded to my medical record system.  Collecting on-site payments with QuickBooks credit card scanner – haven’t hooked that up yet.  Otherwise, it all seems to be working in test mode, and hopefully will when I get started in a few weeks!”

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 7/30/18

Top News

Walgreens launches an online marketplace to help customers find healthcare services at their local stores; and from provider partners that include brick-and-mortar health systems, and urgent care and lab-testing facilities. Tech-based providers include telemedicine vendors MDLive and DermatologistOnCall, and app-based house call company Heal. The marketplace will no doubt boost business for its partners, given that the Walgreens app sees 5 million visitors each month. Aside from Baptist Health (FL) and UnitedHealth’s MedExpress, it seems all of the marketplace’s providers are on Epic. Walgreens began transitioning its Healthcare Clinics to Epic in 2016.

Webinars

July 31 (Tuesday) 12:30 ET. “How to Proactively Troubleshoot End User Experience Issues in Healthcare IT.” Sponsor: Goliath Technologies. Presenter: Goliath Technologies engineering staff. An early warning system for EHR access problems helps prevent downtime and user access problems before they impacts patients and collects objective technical evidence of the issue’s root cause. This webinar will describe how hospitals protect their investment in Allscripts, Cerner, Epic, and Meditech EHRs by anticipating, troubleshooting, and preventing end user experience issues and collecting the technical data needed to collaborate with their vendors on a solution.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Announcements and Implementations

ACO management company MedLink Advantage will offer its customers access to The Garage’s population health management software and services.

Modernizing Medicine adds electronic prior authorization, real-time prescription benefit, and inventory management capabilities from Surescripts to its EMA EHR for dermatologists.

PatientPoint adds educational content from Migraine Again to its digital content for patient waiting rooms. The companies will soon offer similar content for exam room touchscreens.

Government and Politics

The Delaware Health Care Commission seeks provider applicants for 10 grants of between $25,000 and $250,000 each as part of its State Innovation Model initiative. Applicants must be willing to launch pilot projects aimed at increasing data integration, improving care coordination, and/or transitioning to an Alternative Payment Model. Applications are due August 30.

Research and Innovation

An AMGA survey of 270 medical groups finds that physician productivity and compensation lagged in 2017 – the first year in over a decade that compensation increased by less than 2 percent. Productivity across all specialties decreased by 1.63 percent, while compensation increased by just under 1 percent. Primary care providers saw similar percentages. The study’s authors point fingers at the typical culprits – burdensome EHRs, and administrative and compliance efforts.

Other

Blue Springs Family Care (MO) notifies patients of a May 12 ransomware attack and its efforts to prevent similar attacks in the future, including the installation of a new firewall and the transition to a new EHR with stronger encryption capabilities. Privacy Officer Melanie Peterson told me that the practice’s switch from EMDs to EClinicalWorks coincides with a transition to new ownership.

This act of generosity is bittersweet: Staff at Oasis Family Medicine (KS) join other area physicians in donating $10,000 to the Midwest Direct Primary Care Alliance, which then used it to cover $1.4 million in unpaid medical bills that had been sent to collections. Oasis RN Holly Cobb said the donation was made because she and her colleagues realize “health care, medication, and lab work are too costly. Healthcare costs passed on to patients are often big and bloated. As clinicians, we care about making healthcare costs reasonable.”

And then there’s this: Ritz-Carlton Residences decides to throw in a year of free concierge medical services from The Agatston Center for Private Medicine to buyers who close on one of their properties in Miami, which sell for between $2 million and $40 million. Project lead Ophir Sternberg believes the healthcare services will attract “even the most jaded of buyers.”

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 7/25/18

Top News

One Medical will expand to San Diego in early 2019 with the opening of three offices and a care coordination partnership with UC San Diego Health. The membership-based, tech-focused primary care company serves consumers in six states plus Washington, DC. Amir Rubin, who took over as CEO from founder Tom Lee, MD last August, is making good on his promise to open new clinics and drive company growth, having hired three high-level staffers, including Chief Marketing Officer Doug Sweeny (Nest), in the last three months.

Webinars

July 26 (Thursday) 1:00 ET. “The Patient’s Power in Improving Health and Care.” Sponsor: Health Catalyst. Presenter: Maureen Bisognano, president emerita and senior fellow, Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Patients, even those with chronic diseases, only spend a few hours each year with a doctor or a nurse, while they spend thousands of hours making personal choices around eating, exercise, and other activities that impact their health. How can we get patients to be more engaged in their care, and help physicians, nurses, and healthcare providers transition from a paradigm of “what’s the matter” to “what matters to you?” This webinar will present stories of patients and healthcare organizations that are partnering together with tools, processes, data, and systems of accountability to move from dis-ease to health-ease.

July 31 (Tuesday) 12:30 ET. “How to Proactively Troubleshoot End User Experience Issues in Healthcare IT.” Sponsor: Goliath Technologies. Presenter: Goliath Technologies engineering staff. An early warning system for EHR access problems helps prevent downtime and user access problems before they impacts patients and collects objective technical evidence of the issue’s root cause. This webinar will describe how hospitals protect their investment in Allscripts, Cerner, Epic, and Meditech EHRs by anticipating, troubleshooting, and preventing end user experience issues and collecting the technical data needed to collaborate with their vendors on a solution.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Announcements and Implementations

AdvancedMD updates its AdvancedInsight financial reporting solution to include enhanced data visualization and cross-browser capabilities.

MTBC adds voice-activated virtual assistant capabilities to its TalkEHR for easier documentation.

Edgewater Health (IN) selects TenEleven Group’s EHR based on its primary care, behavioral health, and medication dispensing capabilities.

Augusta Oncology (GA) goes live on Integra Connect’s EHR. Utah Cancer Specialists and and Hudson Valley Cancer Center (NY) have also selected the company’s software.

Healthfinch makes its Refills Lite e-prescribing solution available to AthenaClinicals end users.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Mental and behavioral health software vendor Therapy Brands raises an undisclosed amount of financing from a group of investors led by Lightyear Capital. The Birmingham, AL-based company changed its name from TheraNest earlier this year.

Internal Medicine of Griffin (GA) signs on for practice management services from VillageMD. The Chicago-based company launched DocOS, an analytics-focused operating system for VillageMD practices, in April.

Other

In California, the local paper looks at the ways in which the Sonoma Country Medical Association is working with its members to ensure that those affected by wildfires last fall have what they need to remain in the community. Over 250 physicians in the area lost their homes to the fire. Outreach efforts include quarterly fire-recovery events; developing and deploying an internal resiliency team to help members cope with losses, relocation, and rebuilding efforts; and working with Kaiser Permanente to offer free wellness activities.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD publishes a new eGuide, “Best Practices to Improve Patient Payments.”
• Nordic posts a podcast titled “Developing a strategy for your Epic Community Connect program.”

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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