News 5/6/24

Top News

Tech-enabled musculoskeletal care management company Livara Health raises $15 million in Series B funding. The company, formerly known as SpineZone, has raised $27 million since it was launched in 2014 by brothers and orthopedic surgeons Kian and Kamshad Raiszadeh.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Thanks to HealthMark Group for recently supporting HIStalk Practice. Click the logo to learn more.

Webinars

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

Announcements and Implementations

The Pacific Islands Primary Care Association and partner HealthEfficient announce that three community health centers involved in their federally-funded Pacific Islands Electronic Health Initiative have implemented EClinicalWorks software.

NJ Comprehensive Healthcare implements CareCloud’s TalkUltimate EHR, practice management, and RCM platform.

Family Centered Services of Alaska selects Cantata Health’s Arize care management software.

Government and Politics

A Massachusetts medical practice’s former office manager faces charges related to embezzling $650,000 from the practice over a seven-year period. Kathleen Libby transferred funds to a private PayPal account under the guise of medical supply payments, used practice credit cards for personal expenses, and put two of her relatives on the practice’s payroll. (They, presumably, did not perform any actual work.) Her subsequent spending sprees involved purchases from Louis Vuitton, Bloomingdales, and other retailers.

Research and Innovation

A recent survey of 1,000 consumers and 200 RCM professionals finds that patient access to providers is improving, largely due to increased staffing levels, greater utilization of telehealth and self-scheduling tools, and more accurate price estimates. The most cited patient access challenge is the inability to get in quickly to see a provider, also cited as the top challenge in 2022.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic will offer sales, consulting, and implementation of the diagnostic and treatment analytic platform of Clinical Healthcare Analytics.
• PerfectServe earns the top customer satisfaction ranking for secure communications platforms, physician practices in Black Book’s latest State of the Healthcare Cybersecurity Industry” report.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 5/1/24

Top News

Trovo Health, which offers AI-powered assistants for specialty practices, raises $15 million in a seed funding round.

Co-founders Niren Gandra, MD and Aditya Pandyaram both spent time as executives at patient billing and engagement software vendor Cedar before launching New York City-based Tovo earlier this year.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CVS Health shares drop after the company releases disappointing Q1 results. Its revenue of $88.4 billion represents a 3.7% increase over last year. Revenues of its health services segment, which includes in-home, in-clinic, and virtual care; pharmacy benefit management; and provider enablement solutions; decreased nearly 10%.

Value-based care and physician practice enablement company Aledade acquires Medical Advantage, a subsidiary of The Doctor’s Company that provides value-based healthcare consulting to practices in Michigan. Medical Advantage President Paul MacLellan will become president of Aledade’s Michigan market.

Health IT vendor Engage Technologies Group and aesthetics-focused APX Platform merge to form Clarity Technologies.

People

Robert Bessler, MD (Sound Physicians) joins Honest Medical Group as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Brownfield Regional Medical Center (TX) implements AI medical scribe capabilities from Sunoh.ai.

Well Health Technologies selects Azure cloud and Azure OpenAI software from Microsoft.

American Medical Administrators will implement EHR, RCM, and patient engagement software from EClinicalWorks across its network of affiliated practices in six states.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD welcomes new integration partners Jopari Solutions, TriumpHealth, DMEconnected, and EirSystems.

Blog Posts

• Scaling Your Practice for Success (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 4/29/24

Top News

RCM vendor Gebbs Healthcare Solutions acquires CCD Health, a contact center based in the Dominican Republic that specializes in appointment scheduling for outpatient radiology practices.

Webinars

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

Announcements and Implementations

Every Child Pediatrics (CO) implements Yosi Health’s patient intake and registration software.

Atlantic Radiology New Hampshire selects RCM and practice management software and services from Healthcare Administrative Partners.

Quest Medical Billing Services begins offering billing services for mental healthcare.

Research and Innovation

A small study featured in JAMA finds that primary care physicians who saw patients both virtually and in person during a single shift perform around 6% more EHR-based work than colleagues who saw patients via a single modality. Those PCPs who solely conducted telemedicine visits did not perform any additional work in their EHR.

Other

Airing tonight on Georgia Public Broadcasting, “The Only Doctor” documents the efforts of Karen Kinsell, MD to care for the residents of one of Georgia’s unhealthiest counties in a clinic that is barely scraping by. Filmmaker Matthew Hashiguchi says of Kinsell, “She is a doctor 24 hours a day, seven days a week. She gets calls on the weekends, at night, random times, from residents and patients asking for help. And I was just sort of in awe of her willingness to do whatever it took to do what was right in her eyes.”

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks will host its 2024 Health Center Summit May 8-10 in Boston.
• Waystar will exhibit at the OPIE Software: Driving Practice Success customer conference May 2-3 in Oklahoma City.

Blog Posts

• 9 insightful quotes on cloud and AI from Stanford Health Care and AWS leaders at Arab Health 2024 (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 4/24/24

Top News

Midi Health, which offers virtual care for peri- and menopausal women, raises $60 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to $100 million.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

98point6 conducts another round of layoffs, with some employees noting on LinkedIn that the company is now running with a skeleton crew. Several seem to have transitioned to Transcarent, which acquired 98point6’s virtual care technology and primary care business last year for $100 million. The company then pivoted to licensing its technology to other vendors, raising $30 million in April 2023 to fund and scale the new business.

Summer Health raises $12 million in Series A funding. The company offers subscription-based pediatric care via text messaging.

People

Linda Stotsky (Boston Software Systems) joins ClinicMind as chief marketing officer.

Greater Good Health names Tyler Jung, MD (One Medical) chief medical officer.

Vytalize Health names Sherry Slick (Indiana Hemophilia & Thrombosis Center) CIO and Hirsh Sandesara, MD, MBA (Blue Cross NC) SVP of clinical performance.

Announcements and Implementations

Texas-based FQHC Coastal Bend Wellness Foundation implements Sunoh.ai’s AI medical scribe capabilities.

Government and Politics

The Ontario government will expand a pilot program involving the use of AI medical scribe technology to 150 primary care physicians. The expansion is part of a larger, tech-focused effort to help free up 95,000 hours annually for physicians.

Sponsor Updates

• Canyonville Health and Urgent Care (OR) expands to chronic care management services using EHR technology from EClinicalWorks and AI medical scribe software from Sunoh.ai.

Blog Posts

• Support Value-based Care with Sunoh.ai (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 4/22/24

Top News

Clarity Pediatrics, a provider of online pediatric ADHD care, raises $10 million in a seed funding round. It plans to expand its services beyond its homebase of California, and to eventually offer treatment for allergies, obesity, and asthma.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Nibble Health rebrands to Standard Practice. The New York City-based company specializes in using AI to automate outbound physician practice calls to payers and pharmacies. It has raised $8.5 million in seed funding since launching in 2021.

Announcements and Implementations

Easterseals Midwest (MO) selects the Cx360 EHR from Core Solutions. The behavioral health EHR vendor recently announced GA of an EHR-agnostic, AI-based symptom-tracking tool.

PriMale Health in Texas implements EHR and patient engagement technology from EClinicalWorks, and AI medical scribe software from Sunoh.ai.

The St. Joseph Health Department (MO) implements CureMD’s EHR.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Josh Liu, MD.”
• Waystar will exhibit at the MGMA Financial Focus Conference April 24-27 in San Diego.

Blog Posts

• Strengthening healthcare IT infrastructure: A wake-up call for cybersecurity resilience (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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