News 5/25/22

Top News

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD releases an advisory on addressing and combatting health worker burnout. The advisory offers fairly in-depth action items for stakeholders across the care continuum including provider organizations; federal, state, local, and tribal governments; payers; and healthcare technology vendors. Sadly, it seems that, according to Murthy, health IT companies are still struggling with:

• Designing technology to serve the needs of health workers, care teams, and patients across the continuum of care.
• Designing platforms with the goal of interoperability at the outset.
• Strengthening integration of data across different platforms and health sectors.
• Improving seamless storage of and access to health data.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Well Health Technologies combines its EMR Group, billing and RCM, and several digital application businesses into its new Provider Solutions Business Unit.

People

Elation Health names Amanda Melander (Athenahealth) SVP and head of marketing.

Scott Weingarten, MD (Cedars-Sinai) joins Vytalize Health as chief value officer.

Other

Drummond Group launches a pediatric health IT certification and pilot initiative that will help vendors comply with the ONC’s voluntary EHR certification requirements. Pilot participants include NextGen, Office Practicum, and PCC. The pilot will wrap up in July, after which Drummond Group will finalize test scripts based on recommendations from ONC, HL7, and ARHQ.

Marketplace looks at the increasing urgency with which healthcare practices are messaging patients to leave online reviews. “Tone-deaf timing,” as one patient put it, is a big turn off, as is the feeling that patients are being badgered to do a practice’s marketing for them. Zen Media CEO Shama Hyder advises practices to wait one to two days before sending review requests: “You don’t want to go so long that a patient has completely moved on with their life and forgotten about their experience. Or worse yet, had a rough experience and already decided to share that on a public forum.”

Brian Wedgeworth, aka the “Casanova Scammer,” pleads guilty to 25 counts of wire fraud, mail fraud, aggravated identity theft, and money laundering after a five-year stint of swindling money from more than 30 women. Wedgeworth’s schemes involved posing as a doctor and convincing his victims he needed money to pay off his medical practice’s debts.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic posts another episode of its monthly “DocTalk” series titled “Soft Interoperability.
• Nordic publishes a video titled “Modernizing Healthcare Data Infrastructure with the Cloud.”
• Nordic transitions the Tasman brand, and its presence in Europe and the Middle East, to the Nordic global brand.

Blog Posts

• Nurses of Note Awards 2022: The Nurse Informatics Team at Mecklenburg County Public Health (PerfectServe)
• Two Ways to Increase Your Patient Engagement (Healthwise)
• Essential ephemera: The sad, over-too-quickly life of a wearable datum (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 5/18/22

Top News

Care coordination software vendor ThoroughCare secures a $3 million investment from Cypress Growth Capital.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

National Medical Billing Services, an RCM vendor focused on the surgical market, acquires Medi-Corp, which offers RCM services for anesthesia, ASCs, and pain management providers.

Healthcare continuing education company HealthStream acquires CE application vendor CloudCME for $4 million. HealthStream acquired a majority interest in CloudCME in 2019.

Greater Good Health raises $10 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to $13 million. The tech-enabled company is working to develop primary care networks anchored by nurse practitioners.

NextGen Healthcare reports Q4 results: revenue up 5%, EPS $0.19 vs. $0.21, missing analyst expectations for both.

People

Fred Divers, MD joins American Oncology Network as CMO. He will continue to practice as a medical oncologist at Genesis Cancer and Blood Institute (AR).

Announcements and Implementations

US Radiology will implement Volpara Health’s breast density assessment, mammography reporting, and patient communication software at its Charlotte Radiology practice in North Carolina.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• HEDIS: Completing the Picture of Patients’ Health (EClinicalWorks)
• Honoring the Role of Nurses in Empowering Patients (Healthwise)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 5/16/22

Top News

Skylight Health Group, a multi-state practice management company, attributes its 18% dip in revenue from the previous quarter to implementation of Athenahealth’s EHR across its practices, and a dip in COVID-19-related urgent care visits. The company noted in its earnings statement that is has recently developed a centralized dashboarding and reporting platform that pulls data from its Athena system and other platforms..

Webinars

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

People

Specialdocs Consultants promotes Andrew Bonner to VP of business development.

Announcements and Implementations

In Wisconsin, Wood County Human Services Behavioral Health and Long Term Support Division has implemented on the SmartCare EHR from Streamline Healthcare Solutions.

NextGen will offer FQHC customers access to clinical trials through Circuit Clinical, which handles patient recruitment, referral, and enrollment services.

Raleigh Neurology Associates (NC) selects AthenaOne EHR, billing, and patient engagement software from Athenahealth.

Connecticut Cardiology Center implements Cranberry Peak’s EZCDS clinical decision support service via its EHR from Advanced Data Systems.

Other

The local news profiles the success The Salvation Army has seen with offering telehealth services at its women’s and family shelters in Madison, WI. The organization originally partnered with Nurse Disrupted and Conduit Health Partners two years ago to screen its guests for COVID-19 before checking them into the shelter. The Salvation Army has since expanded the service to offer 24/7 care. Nurse Disrupted founder Bre Loughlin says the service has worked so well across the state that it has helped prevent 1,250 emergency room visits since the start of the pandemic.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 5/11/22

Top News

Hybrid pediatric mental healthcare startup Handspring Health raises $6.2 million in funding. The company plans to soon open more in-person clinics beyond its initial facilities in New Jersey. Co-founders Sahil Choudhry and Kwasi Kyei worked together at Cigna Ventures before launching Handspring last year.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Founded by orthopedic surgeons in 2017, virtual MSK care startup Upswing Health secures $5 million in seed funding. CEO Yenvy Truong founded and led remote patient monitoring company HealthSnap from 2015 to 2020.

Health IT vendor Office Ally acquires RCM and HIM vendor Bluemark for an undisclosed sum.

EvolvedMD raises $5.4 million in a Series A funding round. The company specializes in helping primary care practices integrate behavioral healthcare with staffing and technology.

Announcements and Implementations

The California Mental Health Services Authority has tapped Streamline Health Solutions to help it develop an EHR for county public behavioral health programs.

Health data and research company Omny Health expands its area of focus beyond dermatology to include ophthalmology, giving eye care professionals access to de-identified patient data and insights to help improve treatments and outcomes.

Government and Politics

HHS allocates $16.3 million to Title IX family planning clinics so that they can expand their telehealth infrastructure.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe honors over 130 exceptional nurses in its second annual Nurses of Note Awards program.

Blog Posts

• How EClinicalWorks RCM Service Boosts Efficiency (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 5/9/22

Top News

CareCloud reports Q1 results: revenue up 19%; adjusted EPS of $0.23 vs. $0.19, beating revenue and earnings expectations.

HIStalk Practice Musings

Lovers of the English language and its history will enjoy “The Dictionary of Lost Words” by Pip Williams. It’s a bit of a slow burn that gives readers a glimpse into the creation of the Oxford English Dictionary. Begun in 1857, the first full 10-volume set was published in 1928. A second edition was published in 1989, and a third is underway. Told from the perspective of a fictional female character, it offers insight into the “lost” words of womanhood told against the backdrop of the British suffragist movement and World War 1.

Celebrating National Nurses Week? This list of historical fiction featuring nurses is sure to keep these indispensable healthcare professionals top of mind. I’m just over halfway through the 11 seasons of “Call the Midwife,” and have been dying to read the book from which it was birthed. “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” was, for some reason, absent from the list.

Webinars

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

People

Let’s Talk Interactive names Luiz Mota chief marketing officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Mental Health Resources implements Cantata Health’s Arize EHR at its facilities in New Mexico.

Ellichman Vein & Vascular Center (TN) has implemented Kareo’s clinical and billing software, and PatientPop’s practice growth technology. The two vendors merged last year.

Government and Politics

Physician Partners of America, a practice management company with offices in Florida, Texas, and California, pays $24.5 million to settle allegations that it defrauded Medicare by billing for medically unnecessary testing and offering its pain management physicians kickbacks for ordering and conducting the tests.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story featuring Innova Primary Care, “How Healow Payment Services Transforms Collections.”

Blog Posts

• “Clickbusters” can bust more than clicks (Nordic)
• How interoperability can support value-based care (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.