News 2/12/24

Top News

Hybrid mental health practice SokyaHealth rebrands to Headlight and announces $18 million in funding.

The company, which operates in seven states, has named former PillPack executive Geoff Swindle CEO.

Webinars

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

People

Agilon Health names Senior Medical Director and VP of Network Performance Karthik Rao, MD interim chief medical officer. Rao takes over from Benjamin Kornitzer, MD who will become a special advisor to the company.

Esteban López, MD (Hopscotch Health Children’s Urgent Care) joins Doxy.me as chief medical officer.

Other

Meadville Medical Center officials attempt to explain the need for facility fees after patients of Meadville Ob/Gyn Associates take to social media to complain about being billed separately for clinical care and facility fees. While the medical center says the facility fees – some in the $400 range – are a billing necessity based on insurance coverage and hospital ownership, patients continue to express frustration at the charges and lack of proactive communication from MMC about what they would be billed for once the practice became a part of the hospital in early 2023.

Sponsor Updates

• Kellum Medical Group (TX) leverages the Sunoh.ai AI medical scribe as part of its EClinicalWorks EHR implementation.
• Waystar will exhibit at Nymbl.Con 2024 February 14-16 in Scottsdale, AZ.
• The Blue Bonnet Family Medicine Health and Wellness Clinic in Texas attributes a 10% increase in patients seen to its use of EHR and AI assistant technology from EClinicalWorks.
• AdvancedMD announces QBSolutioneers as its newest integration partner.

HIStalk Practice Sponsors Named Best in KLAS

• PerfectServe – physician scheduling
• Waystar – patient financial engagement

Blog Posts

• Don’t Just Replace Cortext – Upgrade to Real-Time Care Team Collaboration with PerfectServe (PerfectServe)
• Priority One for 2024: Staying Focused on Patients (EClinicalWorks)
• What is TEFCA? Find out in Our TEFCA 101 Autocomplete Game Video! (HealthMark Group)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 2/7/24

Top News

Amazon will reportedly lay off several hundred workers within its One Medical primary care and Amazon Pharmacy businesses.

The news comes shortly after Amazon announced a pilot project in which One Medical providers would receive access to virtual consults with Amazon Pharmacy pharmacists in an effort to improve outcomes for high-risk patients.

The online retailer laid off 80 Amazon Pharmacy employees in July, and 159 staff in August after closing Amazon Care.

Webinars

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

People

Weave names former Tebra executive David McNeil (Envoy) chief revenue officer.

Michael Waite (Revco Solutions) joins Savista as VP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

Southeast Primary Care Partners implements the SmarTest screening and testing platform from Mental Health Technologies across its clinics in Georgia, Tennessee, and Alabama.

Other

Second-year medical resident Nikhil Illa, MD launches Pocket Scribe, an AI-powered clinical documentation assistant that also captures billing and coding details to predict visit reimbursement rates.

Elevate ENT Partners (FL) notifies 1,000 patients of coding and patient statement processing errors made by Waystar and RevSpring that led to patients being misdirected to other patient accounts via the practice’s PatientNotebook portal.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 2/5/24

Top News

SAMHSA and ONC launch the Behavioral Health Information Technology Initiative, which will invest $20 million over the next three years to promote the use of health IT within behavioral healthcare and practice settings.

The initiative will work with SAMHSA’s Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, and Recovery Services Block Grant and Community Mental Health Services Block Grant (MHBG) recipients to identify and pilot a set of behavioral health-specific data elements that will help to improve data exchange for behavioral health providers and care coordination with primary care and specialty physicians.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Thanks to Nordic for its continued support of HIStalk Practice. Click the logo for more information.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Aquiline Capital Partners acquires physician practice-focused RCM vendor Health Prime.

Primary care company Cano Health files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection as part of a restructuring program first announced in August 2023, the announcement of which coincided with the hiring of new CEO Mark Kent. At the time, the company announced plans to sell off assets and lay off employees as it questioned its ability to stay in business. Cano’s troubles came to light in early 2023, when several high-profile board members resigned, citing mismanagement. The company was valued at $4.4 billion when it went public on the NYSE via SPAC merger in June 2021, but shares have since nosedived. The company’s market cap was down to $32 million in November.

Announcements and Implementations

No Junk Food Zone, an online health and wellness club serving members in Washington, DC, selects Ensoftek’s DrCloud EHR.

Other

Moses Lake Community Health Center (WA) notifies 1,200 individuals of a 2023 data breach and payment scam in which hackers gained access to two employee email addresses, and then impersonated legitimate MLCHC vendors by sending phony invoices in an effort to extract payments. The health center was also a victim of the CaptureRx data breach in 2021. That incident forced the pharmacy administrative services business to consider bankruptcy in light of a class-action lawsuit that was ultimately settled for $4.75 million.

The local paper profiles Montana Pediatrics, a nonprofit virtual clinic that connects families with a network of after-hours pediatricians through Ahana software, and offers care coordination services to rural patients with medically complex needs. It will launch several pilot programs this year, including distributing at-home healthcare kits to 5,000 families and offering integrated behavioral healthcare services to 100 patients.

Sponsor Updates

• Waystar joins Meditech’s Alliance program.
• EClinicalWorks announces that its Sunoh.ai AI-powered ambient listening technology now integrates with EClinicalMobile and EClinicalTouch apps on iOS and Android smartphones, iPads, and Microsoft Windows and macOS devices.
• Hyndman Area Health Center expands its use of EClinicalWorks technology with the addition of AI solutions including the Sunoh.ai virtual scribe.

Blog Posts

• 5 questions to ask when you’re at a crossroads in your EHR strategy (Nordic)
• 5 strategies to overcome patient payment complexities (Waystar)
• Benefits of Medical AI Scribe Integrated within the EHR (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 1/31/24

Top News

Cardinal Health will acquire Specialty Networks and its PPS Analytics software for $1.2 billion. In addition to analytics, Specialty Networks offers urology, rheumatology, and gastroenterology practices clinical and business intelligence, population health management, research and registries, and group purchasing.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Valendo Health launches out of startup incubator Redesign Health with $4 million in seed funding. The company specializes in remote diabetes patient monitoring and related services, as well as assistance in moving practices into value-based contracts. It aims to work primarily with independent endocrinology practices, and counts virtual specialty clinic Cecelia Health and Advanced Metabolic Care and Research (CA) among its initial customers.

Pregnancy care platform startup Aster raises $2.4 million in seed funding. Aster’s patient management software offers EHR capabilities, a scheduling tool, remote patient monitoring, virtual consults, and transcription services for in-person appointments.

App-based house call company Dispatch Health lays off 88 corporate employees in its latest round of restructuring. The Denver-based company has raised over $400 million since launching in 2013.

Austin-based patient engagement and retention technology startup Vital Interaction raises $15 million in a Series A funding round.

Accompany Health launches with $56 million in Series A funding. The company offers primary and behavioral healthcare, as well as social care services to low-income patients in the home or virtually, initially serving those in the Detroit area. Founder and CEO Rahul Rajkumar, MD was a former deputy director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, and has served in executive roles at health insurance companies.

Announcements and Implementations

Innovaccer announces GA of InScribe, its AI-powered clinical documentation virtual assistant.

Rectangle Health unifies its patient engagement, payments, and office compliance technologies into the single Bridge platform.

The Centers for Advanced Orthopaedics will offer its patients in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC digital musculoskeletal care from Genie Health.

Government and Politics

Four healthcare clinics in Nova Scotia have launched a mobile medical records app to 4,000 patients as part of a pilot project that will run through March. Patients throughout the rest of the province will have access to their records via the app by the end of June. News of the pilot project coincides with publication of a report by The Public Policy Forum that calls for modernization of Canada’s healthcare data and digital infrastructure. Report recommendations include the elimination of medical faxes by the end of this year and a commitment to a paperless, interoperable healthcare system by 2028, as well as incentivizing wearables through consumer rebates or tax measures.

Other

The Verily-backed OneFifteen substance use disorder treatment center in Dayton, OH, will resume outpatient care in March after separating from Premier Health subsidiary Samaritan Behavioral Health last year. OneFifteen opened in 2019, partnering with Premier Health and Kettering Health to offer outpatient, inpatient, and crisis unit care on its campus.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 1/29/24

Top News

Bass Medical Group will use a $20 million investment from ApolloMed (soon to be known as Astrana Health), as well as the physician network optimization company’s value-based care and operational technology and services, to expand and enter into new value-based care arrangements and markets.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

In Canada, preventive care technology vendor Healwell AI acquires EHR company Intrahealth Systems from Well Health Technologies for $24 million. Well acquired Intrahealth, which was founded in New Zealand and now serves small  and medium-sized enterprise organizations, in 2021.

People

Cindy Braden (DigitalOptometrics) joins eye care billing company OneSpot as VP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

New Jersey-based GS Medical Associates will implement PainScript’s remote patient monitoring capabilities for pain management and behavioral health.

Research and Innovation

Nearly 100% of independent physicians say that specialty-specific EHRs optimize their value-based reimbursement, practice management, and patient satisfaction efforts, according to a Black Book survey of 33,000 clinicians. Eighty-five percent, however, feel that their current EHRs could be fine-tuned to better collect, analyze, and report data across a variety of metrics. Surveyed physicians are clamoring for AI and machine-learning EHR features, with 60% reporting these will top their health IT shopping lists in 2024. Top-ranked ambulatory EHR vendors, according to the survey, include Practice Fusion/Veradigm for general practice, Elation Health for family practice, Netsmart for behavioral and mental healthcare, Experity for urgent care, and NextGen Healthcare for multispecialty clinics.

Sponsor Updates

• Centerpoint Health leverages data from the EClinicalWorks EHR and its Healow no-show prediction AI model to improve its clinical workflows.
• Florida Digestive Health Specialists adds Sunoh.ai virtual scribing capabilities to its EClinicalWorks EHR.
• Pinnacle Family Care (NC) improves efficiency using the EClinicalWorks AI assistant for Prisma.

Blog Posts

• Streamlining Workflows and Improving Patient Outcomes with EHR Optimization (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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