News 2/1/23

Top News

White label telehealth company OpenLoop Health expands its headquarters in Des Moines, IA to accommodate growth from 25 to 175 employees in the last year. CEO Jon Lensing, MD says the company hopes to hire an additional 400 staffers and close another funding round by the end of 2023. It acquired Reliant.MD’s practice group last month.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Aluna raises $15 million in a Series B funding round. The company has developed a smart inhaler and companion app to help asthmatic patients and their providers track lung function, triggers, and response to medication. The company, which hopes to raise a Series C round of funding next year, plans to expand into COPD and cystic fibrosis.

People

Hinge Health names Deborah Conrad chief marketing officer.

Mark Goodwin (American Family Care) joins Greenway Health as SVP of revenue services.

Government and Politics

Prescription savings company GoodRx will pay $1.5 million to settle FTC allegations that it shared the sensitive, personal health information of its users with third-party sites like Google and Facebook, which then used that information to serve up targeted ads to those individuals. The FTC also alleges that GoodRx misrepresented its HIPAA compliance and failed to implement data-protection policies.

Research and Innovation

Physicians in Canada spend 18.5 million hours annually on unnecessary administrative tasks, according to a new report from the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. The report points out that reducing paperwork by 10% would equate to time that could be spent on 5.5 million patient visits. For context, physicians in the US spend nearly two hours each day on EHR documentation outside of regular working hours, according to research published last year in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Other

Chico Immediate Care Medical Center (CA) notifies 3,780 patients of a data breach last fall caused by an unauthorized employee accessing its EHR. The employee was purportedly gathering information for a nearby competing clinic.

Sponsor Updates

• Compass Medical, a 95-provider organization with six locations in Massachusetts, uses EClinicalWorks to excel at value-based care and combat physician burnout.

Blog Posts

• New Evaluation & Management (E/M) Code Updates for 2023 (AdvancedMD)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 1/30/23

Top News

Remote patient monitoring and virtual care company CoachCare acquires Nvolve, an RPM business that caters to pain management and orthopedic practices.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient engagement software vendor Engage Technologies Group acquires aesthetic-focused practice employee optimization company APX Platform.

People

Mark Gaines (Talkdesk) joins Viewgol as VP of sales, central.

Other

Job Alert: In Western Australia, the Shire of Quairading is prepared to offer $1 million in salary and benefits to a physician interested in taking over the town’s fully equipped clinic. Accommodation in a four bedroom, two bath house – just steps away from the clinic – will also be provided.

Retired Ob/Gyn Richard Chamberlain becomes a substitute bus driver, noting that he’s likely transporting kids he delivered to their respective schools.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• What is a Clinical Communication and Collaboration Platform? (PerfectServe)
• Data Privacy & Healthcare Cybersecurity: Addressing the Growing Challenge for Healthcare Organizations (TigerConnect)
• Stepping onto the health IT platform (Nordic)
• What Does Healthcare Disruption Look Like? (Healthwise)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 1/25/23

Top News

ReviveHealth, a membership-based virtual care company that caters to individuals and employer groups, acquires competitor SwiftMD for an undisclosed sum.

ReviveHealth acquired virtual urgent care company ISelectMD and digital pharmacy services vendor ManifexRx in August of last year.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

NextGen Healthcare reports Q3 results: revenue up 8%; EPS $0.26 vs. $0.24, beating analyst expectations on revenue but missing on earnings. Company shares have lost 8% since the beginning of the year.

People

Forge Health names Chad Burkholder (UnitedHealth Group) COO.

Zócalo Health names Sarah Lopez, MD (Harbor-UCLA Medical Center) CMO.

Announcements and Implementations

ACO Health Partners (FL) selects Spatially Health’s Equity Equalizer technology, which helps organizations identify and manage patient barriers related to social determinants of health. ACO Health Partners was recently sold by HealthLynked to Palm Beach ACO.

Research and Innovation

Researchers determine that primary care physicians who use community health exchange services to look up information about transitions of patient care admit fewer patients to the hospital and see fewer return to the ER.

Other

Dermatologist and TikTok “skinfluencer” Muneeb Shah, DO recounts his decision to partner with teledermatology company Cortina on branded content. He joined Cortina as its medical content advisor after making sure the company used board certified dermatologists as part of its prescribing process, noting he had turned down six or seven opportunities with other companies that did not: “I feel strongly that board-certified dermatologists should be involved in that process.”

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD publishes a new e-guide, “2023 MIPS Improvement Activities.”

Blog Posts

• Happiness, recruitment, and retention (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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Contact us online.
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News 1/23/23

Top News

Rx Redefined raises $8 million in a Series A funding round. It offers group practices the ability to directly manage the order of medical supplies and delivery of them to their patients.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

HealthLynked will sell its ACO Health Partners subsidiary to PBACO Holding for up to $3 million. The company offers a network of providers that its members can search for and make appointments with using its online tools, as well as virtual consults and medical record-sharing services. PBACO Holding, which does business as Palm Beach ACO, is considering an IPO in 2024.

People

CVS Health names Amy Bricker (Express Scripts) chief product officer, consumer.

Research and Innovation

An increase in virtual primary care visits during the pandemic did not correlate with an increase in trips to the emergency room, according to a Canadian study that looked to see if the lack of in-person care prompted some patients to seek a similar level of care in the ER.

Other

Dollar General officially enters the retail healthcare market by partnering with mobile medical clinic company DocGo to offer healthcare services just outside of three stores in Tennessee. Given the typically rural locations of most Dollar Generals, it’s no doubt an effort to help offer easier access to patients who live far from traditional healthcare facilities, and to encourage patients to pick up over the counter remedies from the retailer’s shelves.

Sponsor Updates

• TigerConnect remains a leader in the Clinical Communication and Collaboration category on G2 for Winter 2023.
• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “Brookhaven Heart & MD365: Streamlining Patient Engagement and Intervention with RPM.”

Blog Posts

• See a Mumpsimus? Stop a Mumpsimus! (Nordic)
• Clinical Communication in 2023: Trends and Predictions (PerfectServe)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 1/18/23

Top News

Male fertility-focused provider Posterity Health raises $7.5 million in a seed funding round, bringing its total raised to $17 million. It says it will use the investment to further develop its digital health platform. It offers virtual consults and operates clinics in Colorado and Texas.

Webinars

January 19 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Supercharge Your Clinical Data Searches.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenter: Paul Robbins, MSMBA, VP of product, Particle. Particle’s team will preview the exciting results of Specialty Search, a new condition-specific record locator service. This webinar will review how to collect patient records from top Centers of Excellence across the entire country; how healthcare organizations of all types are benefiting from Specialty Search capabilities, using Particle’s simple API; and why a focused search of chronic condition data — in oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, orthopedics, and more — has an outsized impact on care outcomes.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

This tweet thread offers an interesting glimpse into the trend of private equity firms buying up physician practices, with little mention of how these acquisitions impact patient care. A few nuggets:

• The practice is a “large and super active” ASC that does $18M in annual revenue, with seven physicians – two of of whom are the “superstars” that bring in the majority of revenue.
• Practice owners typically stay on for two to five years.
• Standard operating model for a practice, once acquired, typically centers around hiring, better reimbursement negotiations, improving inefficiencies, revenues, etc. This one in particular is probably part of a larger play to help recruit more physicians into a brand.
• Similar deals are being done in the physical therapy, dermatology, med spa, and dental spaces.
• There is interest in pharmacies, but Walgreens and CVS are dominating.
• The most active PE firms doing these deals are Shore Capital Partners, KKR, Sheridan Capital Partners, and Linden Capital Partners.

Independent primary care practice management and optimization company Aledade becomes a public benefit corporation.

Announcements and Implementations

Child & Family Services of Erie County (NY) selects Credible EHR software from Qualifacts.

Research and Innovation

Community health center network AllianceChicago reports an increase in well-child visits and immunizations after implementing QliqSoft’s Quincy chatbot as part of a CHEC-UP digital intervention study.

Other

Publix Pharmacy opens its fourth telemedicine site in partnership with Beaufort Memorial Hospital (SC). Virtual consults are $67.

STAT looks at the lengths telemedicine patients will go to in order to ensure that their prescriptions, particularly those for ADHD, carry over to in-person physicians when their online-only telemedicine physicians close up shop. As online providers like Cerebral face federal scrutiny for their prescribing practices, and pharmacies refuse to fill prescriptions from their doctors, patients face the challenge of shifting to in-person care with new providers, some of whom may not be as quick to prescribe the same medications: “You hear ‘telehealth’ and you’re automatically stuck wearing the ‘pill mill,’ ‘drug seeking’ stigma like a backpack, no matter where you go,” says one patient who shifted from online to in-person care.

Fast Company profiles Bicycle Health, an online provider specializing in opioid use disorder treatment that got its start six years ago in a brick-and-mortar clinic in California. The pandemic initiated a pivot to virtual-only consults, and the company now treats patients in 32 states. When it comes to prescription fulfillment, it seems the company hasn’t faced the same government scrutiny as companies like Cerebral and Done. Bicycle’s internally developed pharmacy finder has helped ensure patients can pick up prescriptions locally in a timely manner.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases another episode of its “In Network” podcast, “Designing for Health: Dr. Zafar Chaudry.”

Blog Posts

• Data Reconnaissance: Understanding your practice’s data landscape (AdvancedMD)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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Become a sponsor.