News 12/19/18

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Vancouver, WA-based PeaceHealth acquires Portland, OR-based urgent care chain Zoom Care for an undisclosed sum. Zoom opened in 2006 and grew to 425 employees and 37 clinics in Oregon and Washington, with a heavy emphasis on digital health offerings. 

PeaceHealth EVP Mike Dwyer says Zoom’s technology was a big factor in its purchasing decision: “It’s reflecting where society is going. We’ve got to be able to deliver care in meaningful ways the way people want to receive it. Care over an application-based platform, a digital-based platform, home health care. All of these things are really going to be driven in ways that create greater access, lower cost, and get people the care that they need when they need it. For us, that segmentation is something that we’re trying to address. The 65-year-old wants to touch health care differently than the 19-year-old. We want to be prepared for that and allow for more people to participate and gain access than not.”

Zoom management may be breathing a sigh of relief now that the deal is done, given its last several rocky years: Zoom’s failed attempt at launching a health plan in 2014 brought pressure from state regulators, who launched several investigations into its financials last year. One of the healthcare company’s major investors, Endeavour Capital, also called the veracity of its financial statements into question in 2017, though that lawsuit was resolved and Endeavour ended up investing another $24 million.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

The local hospital’s festive tree display caught my eye, especially those decorated by the radiology staff and nursing. Urine and blood samples hanging from a tree wrapped in a paper-based (!) EKG just screams Christmas, no? Given that the holidays are almost upon us, I’ll wish you all well until HIStalk Practice resumes publishing on January 7.

Webinars

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

Announcements and Implementations

Patient referral, engagement, and CRM vendor ReferralMD announces GA of text and email patient communication software.

People

ClearData names Michael Donohue (Axial Exchange) chief marketing officer and Dean Fredenburgh (AWS) chief revenue officer.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Digital behavioral health assessment vendor Tridiuum secures $9.5 million in a Series B round led by Sopris Capital. The company expects to double its sales force by this time next year.

EHR and practice management company CentralReach acquires Bronco Billing, a managed billing services business. It will rebrand to CR BillMax Services to better integrate with CentralReach’s offerings for applied behavior analysis providers. CentralReach acquired behavioral health analytics vendor Chartlytics earlier this year.

Telemedicine

CVS Health’s MinuteClinic rolls out Teladoc-powered video visits in Wyoming. The service is now available in 18 states.

Birmingham, AL-based VirtualCare raises seed funding from the Alabama Futures Fund. The startup offers membership-based virtual and in-office primary care to consumers and employers.

Research and Innovation

More evidence of physician dissatisfaction with health IT: A report from Geneia finds that 86 percent of surveyed physicians believe data-reporting demands have reduced their job satisfaction, though those that use analytics for population health purposes are a bit more optimistic about the ability of those tools to improve (and be reimbursed for) care.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a podcast titled “How EClinicalWorks is Reducing the Risk of Physician Burnout.”

Blog Posts

• Tools to Help Your Practice Optimize the End-of-Year Rush and Help Your Patients Optimize Their High-Deductible Medical Plans (Aprima)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 12/17/18

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DaVita agrees to sell its medical group to UnitedHealth for $4.34 billion – $500 million less than initially settled on. The drop in price is the result of “underlying business performance,” according to an SEC filing, and a bid to win regulatory approval for a deal that was first announced in 2017. The acquisition, expected to close early next year, will put DaVita’s assets under UnitedHealth’s Optum division.

Webinars

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

Announcements and Implementations

NextGen Healthcare announces GA of cloud-based HIE capabilities.

The Eye Care Institute (KY) installs Clearwave patient check-in and insurance verification kiosks

Mental healthcare company Emergence Health Network (TX) will work with behavioral health IT vendor Valera Health to develop a virtual healthcare program that will include video sessions, group chats, and analytics.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

K Health raises $25 million a Series B funding round, which brings its total to over $44 million since getting off the ground in 2016. The New York City-based startup has developed an AI-powered diagnostic app for consumers that also connects them (and their data) with certain providers in the city.

People

Oncology practice management company OneOncology names Bill Frist, MD to its Board of Directors. The former Senate Majority Leader serves on several healthcare boards including Teladoc and Select Medical.

Geoffrey Clapp (Peak State Ventures) joins Cricket Health as chief product officer.

Patient relationship management company Navigating Cancer hires Bill Bunker (Kernel Labs) as CEO. Bunker replaces co-founder Gena Cook, who will remain with the company as president.

Research and Innovation

A cheeky new study finds that primary care docs would have more than enough time to spend with patients, in addition to the onerous demands of digital charting, if they’d simply re-prioritize: “ This study confirms a widely held suspicion that general practitioners waste valuable time on ‘personal care’ activities. Primary care overlords, once informed about the extent of this vast reservoir of personal time, can start testing methods to ‘persuade’ general practitioners to reallocate more personal time toward bulging clinical demands.” Researchers offer a few time management suggestions: Reduce bathroom break frequency to every other day and skip time with older children “who don’t like them much anyway.”

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic CEO Bruce Cerullo is recognized as one of the top 50 large-company CEOs in the US, as rated by employees.

Blog Posts

• Intelligent Medical Objects Congratulates Winners of the AMIA PitchIT! Competition (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Nordic gives back 2018: A roundup of causes to consider supporting (Nordic)
• Embrace Technology to Educate and Engage Patients (Healthwise)
• How Cloud Technology Rescued Big Sur Island (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 12/12/18

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Jonathan Bush appears on CNBC six months after stepping down as CEO of Athenahealth, calling his appearance (in typical Bush fashion) a “little bit like being invited to my ex-girlfriend’s family for Thanksgiving.” When asked to advise other CEOs on what to do when faced with an activist investor, Bush said the actions of firms like Elliott Management will likely make companies rethink their plans to go public. “My experience is that running a company with a gun to your head is no way to run a company,” he added. “Better to just say pull the trigger.”

Of Elliott Management’s rifling through his social media accounts to portray his actions as irresponsible, Bush pointed out that, “If you’re cynical and you can use the media well, you can take humanity and twist it into a dark thing.”

When asked if his personality may have been part of the company’s problems, he admitted, “We needed a little bit of reindeer games to get attention, to get on your show, to get doctors into our 10×10 booth at … HIMSS, to attract entrepreneurs. We made it sexy and fun to enter this space.”

On his next move, which may or may not include a run for public office: “I would like to make sure that whatever I do with the rest of my life is optimistic and has the notion of a unifying opportunity for everyone in it. Don’t we all?”

Webinars

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

Announcements and Implementations

In Hawaii, Doctors on Call Maui rolls out CareCloud’s EHR, practice management, and RCM software at its two locations.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kindbody expands in California with two pop-up clinics in Los Angeles. The women’s healthcare company, which also offers virtual consults, has offered similar services in Palo Alto, San Francisco, and New York. It plans to add brick-and-mortar facilities on both coasts in 2019.

Other

In Nebraska, Prairie Fields Family Medicine notifies over 6,000 patients of an early October data breach that occurred when an unencrypted spreadsheet containing patient details was sent to the wrong email address.

It’s not often earthquakes shake up my part of the world, and so I didn’t know what to make of the rumblings that shook my house early this morning. I awoke to reports of a 4.4-magnitude quake in Eastern Tennessee, and was relieved to learn there were no injuries or damage as a result. I did wonder if the earthquake had triggered the fall-detection feature on anyone’s Apple Watch ….

And speaking of Apple Watch features … This California Healthline article points out that the Watch’s health app, including fall detection, ECG readings, and irregular heart rhythm alerts, make it the perfect holiday gift for seniors. One Apple analyst thinks the marketing makes sense: “People who wore watches their whole lives, plus fall monitoring? Voilà! It creates another on-ramp for another consumer in the Apple ecosystem.” Another analyst is even more succinct, calling the health-monitoring apps a “play to sell more stuff to people.” As is the case with many articles of this ilk, the “worried well” are trotted out as a potentially unintended consequence of the Watch’s popularity among already fairly healthy users. Talking healthcare head Eric Topol, MD offers the cautionary provider’s perspective: “It’s mass use of a tool, and with that is going to come lots of unintended consequences. It’ll lead to a lot of anxiety and expense and additional testing, and even then some people will get blood thinners inappropriately. This is the opposite of individualized medicine, where you are using something on exactly, precisely the right person.”

Providers like sports cardiologist Jeffrey Lin, MD are already seeing patients walk in with questions related to their Apple Watch readings. Another cardiologist calls it a “daily occurrence,” while a venture capitalist points out that it’s really all about happy customers reassuring themselves that they’re fine.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 12/10/18

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Federal officials arrest Pavandeep Bakhshi, a former Constellation Healthcare Technologies board member, for his role in a scheme that attempted to trick investors out of hundreds of millions meant to help take the RCM and practice management company private. Bakshi and three co-conspirators spent nearly two years attempting to inflate the value of CHT so as to lure investors and their money. They created fictitious companies that CHT supposedly acquired; and created sham bank records, income streams, and customers to show CHT’s glowing financial health.

Bakshi and his fellow conspirators were fired or voluntarily left the company in 2017. CHT filed for bankruptcy in March, attributing its troubles in part to their misdeeds.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

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Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Maiysha Clairborne, MD launches a membership-based career resources website for female physicians looking for help getting their practices off the ground. Echoing the sentiment of many an independent MD, Clairborne says, “As physicians we are not taught business or entrepreneurship, we are only taught to be clinicians. I was once that new entrepreneur struggling to find my way in an area I knew nothing about and had to learn on my own. I created this institute so that I can help other physicians create their ideal careers and practices without the pain and struggles I had to endure due to lack of business knowledge, training, and support along the way.”

Optometry practice management company Williams Group develops the Total Freedom program, which gives practice owners a way to transition day-to-day management of their business over to the Williams Group while still retaining financial control.

Government and Politics

The FDA approves the ReSET-O app, a prescribable behavioral health tool from Pear Therapeutics that is intended for use alongside outpatient treatment to help patients maintain treatment protocols for opioid use.

Other

EHR-hosting vendor IT Lighthouse experiences a ransomware attack, prompting customer Redwood Eye Center (CA) (also an Allscripts customer) to notify over 16,000 patients of the breach and to switch vendors.

First lactating almonds, now cookie dough. This guy just has a knack for tweets.

I know this is hospital-related, but I just couldn’t resist: Family physician Erik Bostrom, MD develops the sweet habit of sewing and embroidering blankets for each baby he delivers at Riverwood Healthcare Center in Minnesota. He has found special delight in the fact that his sewing machine is the same brand as his chainsaw.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthwise discusses why its partnership with ZeOmega benefits clients.

Blog Posts

• Fix EMRs to Spark More Computer Love (Medicomp Systems)
• Upping the Game for Home Healthcare Workers: Improving Satisfaction and Patient Outcomes (NVoq)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 12/5/18

Top News

The New York State Dept. of Health files administrative charges against former CCS Oncology CEO and Chief Medical Director Won Sam Yi, MD over the deaths of six patients. The department contends that Wu’s role in the deaths stemmed from gross negligence and incompetence, and a failure to adequately maintain their medical records. The chain of oncology practices, a CureMD EHR customer since 2015, closed in April after filing for bankruptcy.

Webinars

December 6 (Thursday) 11 ET. “Make the Most of Azure DevOps in Healthcare.” Sponsor: CitiusTech. Presenter: Harshal Sawant, practice lead for DevOps and mobile, CitiusTech. Enterprise IT teams are moving from large-scale, project-based system implementations to a continuously evolving and collaborative process that includes both development and business teams. This webinar will review healthcare DevOps trends and customer stories, describe key factors in implementing a DevOps practice, describe how to assess Azure DevOps, and lay out the steps needed to create an Azure DevOps execution plan.

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

People

Lynn Westphal, MD (Stanford Medical School) joins tech-heavy women’s clinic Kindbody as CMO of reproductive endocrinology.

Privia Health names Mark Foulke (Cigna-HealthSpring) EVP of transformational, value-based care.

The Georgia Health Information Network hires Pam Matthews (SHIEC) as executive operating officer.

Patagonia Health promotes Don Sargent to VP of customer experience.

Announcements and Implementations

Aprima announces EHR integration capabilities with SE Healthcare’s data analytics.

KAMMCO develops an opioid/controlled substances dashboard to give its HIE participants deeper insight into patient prescriptions that have been written and filled. KAMMCO has partnered with state medical societies to develop HIEs in seven states.

Alaska Maritime Physicians implements DrChrono’s mobile EHR to bolster its telemedicine services between patients at sea and its clinic in Anchorage.

California-based IPA Nivano Physicians selects analytics and population health software from Qualmetrix.

Nextech Systems adds Red Spot Interactive’s patient acquisition and retention software to its EHR and practice management technology for specialty practices.

In California, the San Joaquin Community HIE selects Act.md’s care coordination technology as part of its Whole Person Care pilot program for Medicaid patients. The program will bring together primary and behavioral healthcare providers, social services, and other community partners to care for beneficiaries who use the most healthcare services but have the poorest outcomes.

Telemedicine

Enzyme Health raises $1.7 million in a seed funding round led by Silverton Partners. The Austin, TX-based startup has developed an online marketplace to match clinicians with job openings at telemedicine companies and brick-and-mortar facilities.

Research and Innovation

Of 2,300 surveyed patients, University of Michigan researchers find that only one third used a patient portal in 2017. Those who didn’t were typically not offered access to a portal, male, over 65, on Medicaid, and lacking a college education. Of those that did use a portal, 95 percent were offered access, proving the proverbial point that you can’t use what you don’t know exists. Of those that didn’t use a portal, most cited a desire to speak directly with their provider, or had no need to access one as opposed to technological barriers, leading researchers to conclude that portal use seems to be more about awareness and comfort levels than computer know-how.

Other

The local paper profiles Reach Out and Read, a nonprofit started 30 years ago by pediatricians to encourage their peers to get books into the hands of patients. Chad Rogers, MD, co-founder of the organization’s Arkansas branch, says that it’s an evidence-based model that helps improve brain development and better prepares kids for kindergarten. Board member Martha Hiett agrees: “There are all kinds of positives with this program, including the interaction between the pediatrician and the family. We’re sometimes more apt to follow doctor’s orders, and that interactivity encourages and promotes it even more.”

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD publishes a new guide, “In or Out-source Your Value-Based Care Revenue Cycle Management.”
• Aprima announces EHR integration with SE Healthcare’s Physician Empowerment Suite software.
• EClinicalWorks publishes a podcast titled “Strengthening Patient Engagement in Illinois.”

Blog Posts

• 5 ways your answering service is hurting your practice (PerfectServe)
• How a health information search engine can help overcome physician burnout (EClinicalWorks)
• Signature Ready (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.