News 4/5/23

Top News

Practice management and patient engagement vendor Engage Technologies Group acquires APX Platform, which specializes in practice management software for aesthetic practices.

APX founder and Co-CEO Terri Ross will join Engage as president of its aesthetics division, while co-CEO Izhak Musli will become SVP of Engage’s product development and data science.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Signify Health CEO Kyle Armbrester tells Axios that being acquired by CVS Health will enable the senior-focused, home healthcare company to build out products, pursue mergers and acquisitions, and prioritize pharmacy services and medication adherence programs for its patients. Remote patient monitoring is also an area of focus, according to Armbrester, who was formerly an SVP and chief product officer at Athenahealth.

An article in Health Affairs looks at the implications of the $50 billion “investment frenzy” of corporations like Amazon, CVS Health, and Walmart gobbling up and building out primary care practices. CMS-compelled reimbursement policies and value-based care contracts are, according to the authors, what will lead to increased costs, monopolization, and a stagnant market that does not favor the patient.

People

Amar Desai, MD returns to UnitedHealth as executive-in-residence, serving as a senior adviser to CEO Andrew Witty. Desai left the payer last October to join CVS Health as head of its new healthcare delivery division, overseeing clinical services delivered through the company’s retail health, chronic disease management, and behavioral health service lines.

Research and Innovation

An MGMA survey of 569 medical group leaders finds that 10% use AI tools in their practices. Top uses for those tools include patient communications, capturing clinical documentation, and improving predictive analytics and billing operations. The majority of those who don’t use AI-enabled solutions say they won’t until they see more evidence of their ROI.

Other

Just in time for HIMSS: Inviza Health debuts self-charging smart insoles that can track a wearer’s steps, heart rate, body temperature, and blood oxygen levels. Embedded GPS tracking and fall detection make them suitable for those with Alzheimer’s. The wearables pair with a companion app and clinical dashboard for remote patient monitoring.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD releases 31 updates with enhancements to telehealth, medication cards, claims status, and mobile prescription drug monitoring program features.
• Nordic releases another episode of its In Network podcast feature, Designing for Health: “Designing for Health: Interview with Dr. Archana Tedone.”

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 4/3/23

Top News

Primary care provider Cano Health sees its stock slump on the news that three directors have resigned. Former director Barry Sternlicht was, upon his departure, vocal in his criticism of the company’s management team and operating decisions, which have caused the company’s stock to drop 90% from its debut.

Cano operates 141 primary care centers across the country. Both CVS Health and Humana considered acquiring it last fall.

Webinars

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

People

Peter Licursi (Abacus Insights) joins Pager as chief growth officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Direct primary care-focused health IT vendor Hint Health announces GA of Hint All-in-One, a technology platform that includes EHR, billing, and patient/member relationship management capabilities. The new offering likely includes software developed by AeroDPC, which was acquired by Hint Health last November.

Pager will incorporate Google Cloud’s Healthcare API, Dialog flow, and BigQuery data platform into its patient engagement platform that includes care navigation and virtual care capabilities.

Research and Innovation

Researchers determine that family physicians working in federally-run practice settings are more likely to collaborate with behavioral health professionals than those that work in private practice settings. Strong correlations were also seen amongst female physicians, core/salaried faculty, working in Southern states, and working in states with higher concentrations of psychiatrists. Forty percent of the 25,222 family physicians surveyed reported working collaboratively with behavioral health professionals.

Sponsor Updates

• Surgical Care Specialists (PA) and Fairview Community Health Center (KY) transition to the EClinicalWorks Cloud.
• Nordic releases a new Making Rounds Podcast, “Modernizing business intelligence for stronger data analysis.”

Blog Posts

• Expanding women’s health: Addressing health disparities with innovations (Nordic)
• Unlocking the Potential of Your Answering Service: More Than a Cost Center (PerfectServe)
• Reducing No-shows Through Simple Patient Engagement Strategies (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 3/29/23

Top News

HHS announces nearly $124 million in grant opportunities focused on helping clinics establish and manage Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinics, as well as on enhancing and supporting existing CCBHCs.

Webinars

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

People

InterMed (ME) promotes Wai-Houng Leung to CIO.

Raintree Systems names Vu Nguyen (BARBRI Global) chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Healthcare Outcome Performance Company, a value-based orthopedic care organization, will leverage Luna’s in-home physical therapy technology and services as part of its new HOPco at Home program. HOPco will also integrate Luna’s technology into its recently acquired MSK.ai musculoskeletal platform.

Government and Politics

AHRQ adds physician practice files to its Physician and Physician Practice Research Database, offering insight into physician practice characteristics at the state level. The database is intended to “address supply-side policy questions and to support policy-relevant health services research.”

Other

The local paper digs into the factors influencing Maryland’s physician shortage and the resultant lack of timely, available appointments for patients. A few highlights:

• Maryland ranks highest in the nation for ER wait times, no doubt due to an increasing number of patients using the ER in place of primary and urgent care.
• Increased access to health coverage and health equity efforts have resulted in an increasing number of patients served by a decreasing number of clinicians.
• Primary care physicians are in shorter supply due to burnout, retirement, high patient loads, increasing practice costs, and a lack of up-and-coming PCPs.
• Nurses and nursing support staff are also part of the state’s healthcare labor shortage, a problem exacerbated by Maryland’s licensing bottleneck.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic publishes a new episode of its In Network podcast.

• Censinet and KLAS Research recognize Nordic for achieving and sustaining its KLAS Cybersecurity Transparent designation.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 3/27/23

Top News

CVS Health is set to wrap up its acquisition of Signify Health later this week. Rumors of the deal first began to circulate last August, quickly followed by reports that Amazon was also interested in Signify, which provides analytics-enabled home healthcare services. Several weeks later, CVS formally announced its intent to acquire the company in a deal valued at $8 billion.

CVS Health expects to close its $10.6 billion acquisition of primary care provider Oak Street Health later this year.

Webinars

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

People

TigerConnect names Saurin Shah (Medallia) chief product officer and Scott Parsons (Pluralsight) chief sales officer. 

Announcements and Implementations

In Kansas, the Saline County Health Department will transition from paper-based documentation to Patagonia Health’s EHR.

New Mexico-based Satori Healing selects EHR software and RCM services from EClinicalWorks.

Other

Walgreens pharmacies and VillageMD primary care practices launch a pilot program in Florida and Texas that will help coordinate medications for mutual patients after they’ve been discharged from the hospital. The medication reconciliation process will be initiated once VillageMD providers receive notification that their patients have been discharged, presumably through the provider’s proprietary DocOS platform.

Sponsor Updates

• Potomac Urology achieves growth with EClinicalWorks EHR and Healow patient engagement solutions.
• Nordic releases a new episode of In Network’s Designing for Health podcast.

Blog Posts

• Medical Answering Services: Urgent Versus Non-Urgent Calls (PerfectServe)
• The impending crisis in healthcare: Lessons from SVB’s collapse (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 3/22/23

Top News

Virtual women’s and family health provider Maven Clinic acquires London-based competitor Naytal for an undisclosed sum. Maven has raised $300 million since launching in, its most recent funding round a $90 million Series E last November. Founder and CEO Kate Ryder said at the time that, “We’re not putting this capital aside for a rainy day.”

Naytal founder and CEO Leila Thabet will join Maven as Regional Vice President, Global Growth and Partnerships.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

North Carolina-based Bionic Health will use $3 million in seed funding to further develop its membership-based “AI health clinic” for preventative care. Bionic offers lab and diagnostic testing, followed-up by AI-powered personalized insights based on those lab results and assessments. Co-founder Jared Pelo, MD developed “ambient documentation” company IScribes in 2016, which he then sold to Nuance in 2017. He became Nuance’s chief clinical product officer, overseeing its Dragon Ambient Experience app, and then jumped to a similar position at Microsoft when it acquired Nuance in early 2022. Nuance, meanwhile, will launch Dragon Ambient EXperience Express, which uses ChatGPT-4 to automatically generate clinical notes, this summer.

People

Rectangle Health names Sid Singh (Equifax) CEO.

Robin Peloquin (Omni Interactions) joins Carenet Health as VP for training and development.

Announcements and Implementations

First Step House selects Kipu Health’s EHR, RCM, and CRM software across its facilities in Utah and California.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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