News 3/9/22

Top News

Noula Health, a reproductive support services startup, has raised $1.4 million in pre-seed funding. The company will offer subscription-based virtual care, at-home diagnostics, and access to health coaches.

Founder Noelle Acosta previously led business development at tech-enabled women’s healthcare company Maven Clinic.

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.

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

People

Primary care managed services organization UpStream Healthcare names Cone Health executives Steve Neorr COO and David Grapey, MD CMO.

Announcements and Implementations

Hot on Meditech’s heels and just in time for HIMSS, Epic announces that it will offer a version of its system to independent medical groups of more than 40 providers, directly from the company, negating the need for a Community Connect agreement with a health system. Dubbed “Garden Plot,” Epic will offer the system in a software-as-a-service model that includes hosting, support, updates, and integrated third-party products.

Unison Behavioral Health (GA) has implemented Eleos Health’s AI-powered automated documentation software.

Other

San Antonio-based healthcare startup Betty’s Co. launches a mobile clinic offering young women gynecological and mental health services. The company also offers virtual care. Founder and CEO Jennifer Newell spent eight years at the Advisory Board Company before launching Betty’s Co. in 2020.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 3/7/22

Top News

Private equity firm GTCR acquires urgent care health IT vendor Experity for a rumored $1.2 billion. Experity was created in 2019 through the merger of Practice Velocity and DocuTap. It acquired patient survey and reputation management company Calibrater Health in 2020.

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.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CVS files an application with the US Patent Trade Office to trademark its logo, and provide healthcare services including non-emergency telemedicine in the metaverse. I suppose the family Oculus is the next patient access point for virtual care.

Former Livongo executives launch Homeward Health with a $20 million investment from General Catalyst. The startup aims to provide Medicare Advantage plan members in rural communities with primary and specialty care using local care teams that provide in-person and virtual services, and in-home remote patient monitoring. It is initially focusing its evidence-based, value-based care model on cardiology.

Government and Politics

A federal judge sentences Ameet Goyal, MD to 96 months in prison, five years of supervised release, and penalties of $7.2 million for a seven-year medical billing scheme in which he falsely upcoded $3.6 million in procedures. He has also been found guilty of fraudulently obtaining small business loans issued during the pandemic. In addition to bullying employees into going along with his scheme, Goyal even went so far as to send patients who couldn’t pay his falsely upcoded bills to collections agencies, negatively affecting their credit.

Other

ViVE 2022 gets underway in Miami, where daily temps are in the high 70s and the mojitos are apparently flowing in the exhibit hall, where 273 companies have committed to the inaugural event. National Coordinator Micky Tripathi’s session seems to have attracted a healthy crowd. Feel free to email me with any ambulatory-related observations.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe Values Awards winners include Sales Manager Joe Faso for collaboration, Enterprise Solutions Manager Alex Van Buren for integrity, Customer Solutions Director Cameron Shahnazi for innovation, Customer Success Advisor Courtney Allnutt for service, Deployment Manager Phil Towne for purpose, People Operations & Office Coordinator Kerry Mathews for inclusion, and VP of Customer Solutions Lois Hester for leadership.
• Nordic Consulting has received certification from HITRUST via the risk-based, two-year validation process.

Blog Posts

• Why healthcare leaders should embrace the cloud (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 3/2/22

Top News

Ro acquires at-home sperm collection, testing, and storage startup Dadi for $100 million. It’s the online pharmacy and virtual care company’s second foray into reproductive health services, having acquired home fertility testing company Modern Fertility last May for $225 million. Ro announced a $150 million funding round – and a concurrent $7 billion valuation – last month, bringing its total funding to $1 billion.

Webinars

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

Announcements and Implementations

Meditech makes Expanse Ambulatory, the company’s cloud-based mobile EHR and practice management software, available via subscription to independent and physician-owned practices.

In California, the Alameda County Health Care Services Agency Public Health Department will implement Innovaccer’s Health Cloud, including a centralized case management data platform, with help from consulting firm Intrepid Ascent.

Lemonaid Health will use SteadyMD’s white-label telemedicine software and staffing solution to power its new membership-based Primary Care Complete virtual care service.

Other

Residents on Bell Island, a tiny spit of land nestled off the coast of Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador province, create a grassroots marketing effort to lure family physician Firas Ayar back to the community. The island, which has 2,800 residents, has seen all three of its family physicians leave within the last year. Its remaining doctor works in its ER. The campaign has taken a turn reminiscent of the antics depicted in “The Grand Seduction,” a 2013 movie (now in my queue) about a small Newfoundland town that pulls together to recruit a reluctant a physician.

Sponsor Updates

• Amazon features AdvancedMD in an AWS case study, “AdvancedMD Reduces Time Spent Managing SQL Server Backups by 85% Using Amazon FSx.”

Blog Posts

• The Network EHR, Prisma, and Beyond (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 2/28/22

Top News

Pediatric-focused health IT vendor Office Practicum announces it has acquired RemedyConnect, which offers telemedicine, an after-hours answering service, and website and marketing services for pediatric practices; and behavioral pediatric health EHR and RCM vendor NextStep Solutions.

RemedyConnect CEO Dan Feiten, MD will become medical director and product leader of clinical innovation at Office Practicum.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Athenahealth will expand into the Phoenix market with the hiring this year of 120 employees, primarily in client support center analyst roles. Employees will work mostly remotely, with occasional days in the office. Several investment firms wrapped up their acquisition of the company earlier this month for $17 billion. The company was in layoff mode for several years, with facility closures and layoffs in 2017 as Elliott Management closed in, and then again in 2019, as it merged with Virence Health after being acquired by Elliott affiliate Veritas Capital.

People

Health Gorilla promotes Karla Mills to COO.

Government and Politics

A grand jury in Colorado has indicted Helen Benson for filing false tax returns and allegedly stealing over $850,000 from Gunnison Valley Family Physicians, where she worked as an office manager for nearly 15 years. She used the funds to pay off personal credit cards and cash checks made out to herself. She also used the practice’s business credit card for personal expenses and altered its financial records to cover up her failure to repay a $20,000 personal loan made to her by GVFP.

Other

The Houston Health Department notifies 3,500 patients of a technical error within its COVID-19 test results portal that exposed 10,000 test results and related personal data.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe publishes a new report, “The Rise of Emoji in Healthcare Communication.”

Blog Posts

• How to Improve Medical Response Times for Nurses (PerfectServe)
• Handling Hospital ADT Notifications with Direct Messaging (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 2/23/22

Top News

Medication-based mental health telemedicine startup Minded raises $25 million in a Series A funding round that the company will use to expand beyond the seven states it currently serves. It also plans on doubling its workforce, investing in additional technology to reduce administrative burdens, and expanding into additional areas of mental healthcare.

Entrepreneur David Ronick co-founded the company in 2020 with Landmark Health Chief Behavioral Health Officer Chris Dennis, MD and Gaspard de Dreuzy, co-founder of telemedicine company Pager.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Denver-based Pinnacle Healthcare Consulting has acquired Indianapolis-based Solutions Healthcare Management. The newly combined company will offer practice management, RCM services, financial valuation, and compliance services; plus cloud technology.

Patient engagement and text-based patient-to-provider messaging vendor OhMD secures financing in a funding round led by FCA Venture Partners.

People

David Horrocks (CRISP) joins the New York EHealth Collaborative as CEO.

Other

DirectTrust reports that more than 254 million Direct Secure Messages were sent and received within its network during the fourth quarter of 2021, with the total annual number of messages climbing to 945 million – a 31% increase over the year before. Patient and consumer use of the messaging service increased 16% to 653,000 messages.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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