News 4/11/22

Top News

Senior-focused value-based care company Vytalize Health raises $50 million in a Series B funding round. The company has partnered with 280 primary care practices in 16 states to offer their patients virtual and in-home care enabled by its technology platform. Vytalize acquired patient communication company MedPilot last year.

Webinars

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

Here’s the video of last week’s webinar from Mend titled “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits,” along with the accompanying ebook.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Hybrid mental health and substance abuse treatment provider Eleanor Health raises $50 million in a Series C funding round. The startup, which has developed its own care delivery and analytics platform, plans to expand beyond its 28 clinics in six markets into Texas.

Tech-enabled mental health and substance use treatment provider Forge Health raises $11 million in a funding round led by HC9 Ventures.

Announcements and Implementations

Cary Skin Center (NC) will join the NC HealthConnex health information exchange through a partnership with the North Carolina Department of IT’s HIE Authority.

No Limits MD (NC) selects Kareo’s EHR, practice management, patient engagement, and telemedicine software.

Colorado-based HIE Quality Health Network will implement Safety Net Connect’s e-consult technology to power its Colorado Specialty CareConnect consult service for primary care physicians and specialists.

Child Focus (OH) will implement Cantata Health’s behavioral health-focused Arize EHR.

People

Liz Walker (Geisinger-Marwoth) joins Forge Health as VP of business development.

CloudMD Software & Services President Karen Adams will assume the role of interim CEO when founder and CEO Essam Hamza steps down on May 2.

Other

The Niagara Falls Public Library in New York will use a $29,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health to install two private booths patrons can use for telemedicine consults.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases a new podcast, “The value of data infrastructure modernization for the health system.”

Blog Posts

• PerfectServe’s Clinical Collaboration Solution Reduces Care Team Toil (PerfectServe)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 4/6/22

Top News

Eleos Health raises $20 million in a Series A funding round led by F-Prime Capital and Eight Roads Ventures. The company has developed AI-powered, clinical documentation software for behavioral health providers.

Webinars

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Information and technology-enabled health services business Optum will acquire Kelsey-Seybold Clinic, which employs 500 physicians across 30 clinics in Houston. The deal comes on the heels of Optum’s $5.4 billion acquisition of home care company LHC Group, and purchase of Refresh Mental Health. In related news Optum parent company UnitedHealth has extended its deadline to purchase Change Healthcare by nine months. Originally announced in January 2021, the deal has been hung up by a DoJ lawsuit. Optum will pay a $650 million fee to Change Healthcare should the DoJ’s lawsuit bring the deal to an end.

RCM technology vendor Med-Metrix Solutions acquires medical coding and release-of-information company Armco Partners.

Consumer-focused digital medical home company Recuro Health acquires telemedicine vendor WellVia.

StationMD, a telemedicine company specializing in treatment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, raises $3.2 million.

Women’s telemedicine and online prescription startup Evernow raises $28.5 million in a Series A funding round. The company’s initial focus is on treatment for perimenopause and menopause.

People

Kimberly O’Loughlin (Therapy Brands) joins Health Recovery Solutions as CEO.

CentralReach names Drew Hamilton (Kareo) as its first chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

California Mental Health Services Authority will implement the Smart Care EHR from Streamline Healthcare Solutions at its member organizations throughout the state.

The National Cancer Treatment Alliance selects House Rx to develop analytics software to track and compare physician dispensing quality metrics.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Top 5 Way Medical Practices Can Combat Inflation (AdvancedMD)
• Honoring All Our Doctors (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 4/4/22

Top News

Nurse-1-1-, a nurse chat software startup that works with other digital health companies, raises $2.3 million in seed funding. Co-founder and CEO Michael Sheeley met co-founder and Chief Nurse Practitioner Kimberly Line, NP during his daughter’s treatment for a congenital heart defect.

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual behavioral healthcare support company Brightline raises $105 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $209 million.

Announcements and Implementations

Perdido Bay Medical Group (AL) selects clinical, billing, and telehealth software from Kareo, and website optimization and patient relationship management services from PatientPop.

Billing company Coronis Health adopts Kareo Cloud, which provides on-demand access to secure, cloud-hosted data storage.

Behavioral health nonprofit Aspire Health Partners (FL) selects ContinuumCloud’s EHR and human capital management technologies.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Reflections on HIMSS22: The Importance of Reconnecting (Healthwise)
• Guidelines will rule the world (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 3/30/22

Top News

EHR vendor Practice Fusion will pay a $200,000 fine to resolve allegations that it failed to adhere to the terms of its deferred prosecution agreement. The DPA was made in 2019 as part of the vendor’s $145 million settlement of criminal charges related to its role in soliciting and receiving kickbacks in return for embedding electronic prompts in its EHR to influence the prescribing of opioid medications.

Allscripts acquired Practice Fusion in 2018 for $100 million.

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

People

Nikhil Abraham (Resident) joins SteadyMD as CFO.

Yuvo Health names Lora Council, MD (Cambridge Health Alliance) chief population health officer.

Announcements and Implementations

TeleSign announces GA of healthcare-specific solutions, including digital patient identity verification, appointment scheduling and reminders, and digital safeguards for medical records.

Medical billing company Nobility RCM selects patient billing, payments, and support software from Inbox Health.

The Village Network in Ohio implements Arize EHR software from Cantata Health Solutions.

The American Oncology Network of practices will implement Inovalon’s ScriptMed Cloud technology.

Government and Politics

Community Health Center in Middletown, CT will use just over $1 million from the FCC’s Connected Care Pilot Program fund to provide remote patient monitoring and video consults to its 15,000 patients.

Other

Oklahoma City Indian Clinic announces that it was the victim of a cyberattack earlier this month by the Suncrypt ransomware group, which claims to have stolen 350 gigabytes of data. The hack impacted some of the clinic’s computer systems and its auto-refill prescription software. Databreaches.net has reported in the past that the ransomware group had pledged to avoid future attacks on medical entities: “We don’t play with people’s lives. And no further attacks will be carried against medical organizations even in this soft way.”

The Tay River Health Centre in Ontario has filled its exam rooms with creations from students at local schools. Instructed to create their pieces with healthcare in mind, students from four schools in the area have begun submitting canvases, for a total of 24 paintings so far. “It’s allowed us to transition to more difficult conversations a lot easier,” says one of the center’s family physicians. “Frankly, the patients are glad to have these pieces in our rooms; it lightens the mood and makes them feel more at ease. I don’t think any of us anticipated such excellent work coming from our local students here in our community.”

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD awards Client Support Specialist Hannah Dixon an FIT Award.

Blog Posts

• HIMSS22 Outlines Opportunities in Healthcare (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

Get HIStalk Practice updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.

News 3/28/22

Top News

Healthcare analytics startup Quinsite raises $2.5 million in seed funding. Based in Chapel Hill, NC, the company plans to expand radiology practices to anesthesiology, pathology, orthopedics, and/or emergency medicine.

Husband-and-wife co-founders Jeff and Jenny Maze, RN launched the company in 2017. The couple has quite a track record in healthcare: Jeff has had previous roles at AGS Health, Zotec Partners, and Anthem. Jenny has worked in nursing at St. Vincent Health, Advanced Cardiac Specialists, and PeaceHealth.

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

UberDoc secures an undisclosed amount of funding from business process automation vendor Exela Technologies. The company’s technology enables patients to find, book, and pay for in-person and telemedicine appointments with participating providers. Founder and CEO Paula Muto, MD is a practicing surgeon at the Muto Vein Center (MA), which she opened more than 20 years ago.

Privia Health reports a 29% bump in fourth quarter revenue, with total revenue for the year increasing by 19%. The practice management company, which launched three new ACOs in 2021, went public last year.

Announcements and Implementations

ModMed launches marketing services for practices that include website design and management, digital marketing, reputation management, and online retail.

Compulink adds patient engagement capabilities from Promptly to its Advantage Smart Practice EHR and practice management system for specialty practices.

Rootines launches its flagship patient engagement and patient-reported outcomes software for pediatric behavioral healthcare providers.

Government and Politics

Social services nonprofit Centro will use $975,000 in federal funding to invest in a new EHR and expand telemedicine services.

Other

STAT publishes a great profile of ophthalmologist Will Flanary, MD who has achieved viral fame (admittedly, niche) for his portrayal of an internet celebrity known as Dr. Glaucomflecken. Flanary first flexed his comedic chops doing stand-up while at Texas Tech University, after which he began writing for the school’s satirical magazine and contributing to GomerBlog, a satirical medical blog. Now, along with his day job at a private practice outside of Portland, he creates content for his 2.5 million TikTok, Youtube, and Twitter subscribers. “ … I love building this Glaucomflecken General Hospital of characters,” Flanary told STAT. “I can be pretty specific with different areas of medicine and create this world of, honestly, pretty dysfunctional people. But it’s funny.”

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its Tell Me Where It Hurts Podcast featuring Janae Sharp of The Sharp Index.
• PerfectServe accelerates speed to care with faster delivery of critical lab results.

Blog Posts

• 3 Strategies for Sourcing Patient Health Education (Healthwise)

• Houston, we have a data problem (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

Get HIStalk Practice updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.