News 5/12/21

Top News

Health IT company DrFirst announces a $50 million equity investment from Sixth Street Partners, bringing its total raised over the last 12 months to $135 million.

Webinars

June 3 (Thursday) 2 ET: “Diagnosing the Cures Act – Practical Prescriptions for Your Success.” Sponsor: Secure Exchange Solutions. Presenters: William E. Golden, MD, MACP, medical director, Arkansas Medicaid; Anne Santifer, executive director, Arkansas Department of Health – Office of Health Information Technology; Kyle Meadors, principal, Chart Lux Consulting. A panel of leading experts will provide practical guidance on how to prepare for the Cures Act. Will it upend your business model? What is information blocking? How can standardized technologies be applied to meet Cures Act requirements? What must I do now as well as in the next five years?

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kidney care coordination company Strive Health will hire 250 new employees when it expands its headquarters in Denver later this year. The analytics-enabled company announced a $140 million funding round in March.

Canadian Well Health Technologies attributes its record Q1 to the 345% year-over-year increase it saw in its software and services revenues. The company, which also operates 27 primary care clinics (including two in the US), has focused on expanding its EMR Group through recent acquisitions that have included OpenHealth, AdraCare, IntraHealth, and Doctors Services Group.

Teen entrepreneurs Sage Khanuja and Nikolas Ioannou sell their digital patient screening startup to Galileo Health, a membership-based telemedicine company launched by One Medical founder Tom Lee, MD. The Seattle-based partners met at the University of Washington, where they enrolled as as early entrance students after the 10th grade. They’ve taken a leave of absence from college and are now working for Galileo. Terms of the deal haven’t been disclosed, though Lee has admitted that “the only surprise for us was having to get parental permission on the final agreement.”

People

DataLink Software promotes Josh Hetler to EVP of business intelligence and Jesse Dion to VP of IT.

Dispatch Health names Daniel Graf (Mindstrong Health) chief product officer, Dean Dalili, MD (Envision Physician Services) president of market operations, and Erin Denholm, RN (Trinity Health at Home) president of clinical operations.

Announcements and Implementations

Prism Vision Group implements Nextech’s IntelleChartPro EHR at its 70 affiliate locations.

All Nations Health Center, an Urban Indian Health Program in Montana, has implemented Greenway Health’s Intergy EHR and practice management software.

Managed care organization Vaya Health (NC) selects VirtualHealth’s Helios care management software.

US Physiatry (TX) selects CareCloud’s RCM software and services.

Care coordination company Forcura develops Forcura Circle, a digital hub for document sharing, viewing, and signing between providers.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 5/10/21

Top News

Atlanta-based IT and managed services provider Medicus IT acquires California-based HITCare, a health IT services and consulting firm focused on nonprofit community health centers and human services organizations.

Medicus IT founder and CEO Chris Jann has a nearly 20-year background in health IT, having also worked at Aprima, Cerner, and VitalWorks. Brother (presumably) Mike Jann, Medicus IT’s client virtual CIO, has a similar track record at enterprise IT firms.

Medicus and HITCare will retain their respective leadership teams for the time being.

Reader Comments

From Down in the Dumps: “Re: Aprima hack. Word on the forums is that Aprima’s downtime over the last several weeks didn’t start with them, and that law enforcement has gotten involved.” I have yet to hear back from the EMDs and CompuGroup Medical reps I emailed last week for details.

Webinars

May 11 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Modern Healthcare Innovation Leaders: How Top Health Systems Plan and Execute Innovation.” Sponsors: RingCentral, Net Health. Presenters: Todd Dunn, MBA, VP of innovation, Atrium Health; Paul Nagy, PhD, co-founder, Technology Innovation Center at Johns Hopkins Medicine; Roy Rosin, MBA, chief innovation officer, Penn Medicine; Patrick Colletti, founder, Net Health (moderator). This panel discussion will provide insights from innovative healthcare leaders who have embarked on the journey of planning and implementing innovation projects in their organizations and the wisdom they learned through the process. Topics will include predictive analytics and AI, potential challenges and risks of implementing innovation projects, challenges of interoperability and emerging technologies, and when to build versus buy when working with emerging and established vendors.

June 3 (Thursday) 2 ET: “Diagnosing the Cures Act – Practical Prescriptions for Your Success.” Sponsor: Secure Exchange Solutions. Presenters: William E. Golden, MD, MACP, medical director, Arkansas Medicaid; Anne Santifer, executive director, Arkansas Department of Health – Office of Health Information Technology; Kyle Meadors, principal, Chart Lux Consulting. A panel of leading experts will provide practical guidance on how to prepare for the Cures Act. Will it upend your business model? What is information blocking? How can standardized technologies be applied to meet Cures Act requirements? What must I do now as well as in the next five years?

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare payments and analytics startup Sift Healthcare raises $2.5 million, bringing its total raised to $7 million.

CareCloud reports a 36% jump in Q1 revenue to nearly $30 million. CareCloud CFO Bill Korn pointed out during the earnings call that, “First quarter results always include an element of seasonality due to the early-year impact annual patient deductibles have on the 65% of our revenues tied to the money collected by the doctors who are our clients.”

Peloton-owned fitness business Precor selects Amazon Care as its employee healthcare provider. Precor is the virtual and in-person healthcare company’s first enterprise customer.

Heartbeat Health raises $20 million in a Series B funding round. The company has developed a cardiology-focused platform that includes telemedicine, remote monitoring and diagnostics, and digital heart health programs.

Announcements and Implementations

Well Health Technologies makes its Tia Health and OSCAR Pro EHR systems available via the IPhone’s Health Record app.

Research and Innovation

Researchers at West Virginia University determine that patients with chronic conditions benefit most from telemedicine visits for about a year, rather than ending at the six-month mark. A systematic review of real-time video calls, text messaging, and remote monitoring data found that patients experienced positive results with virtual visits that lasted nearly a year. Virtual care that lasted closer to 40 weeks produced mixed or neutral results. Lead researcher Jennifer Mallow says more studies need to be done to determine the ideal frequency of telehealth visits needed to improve care effectiveness, quality, safety and cost.

Other

Healing Hands of Nebraska begins accepting payment in cryptocurrency. Clinic owner Demetrio Aguila III, MD doesn’t hesitate to try out new payment programs. Last year he announced patients could pay off their bills by volunteering at one of the practice’s partner organizations.

DataBreaches.net reports that hackers known as “Lorenz” have put patient data from Wolfe Eye Clinic (IA) up for sale on its leak site. The hackers are also attempting to sell access to the clinic’s internal network.

In today’s edition of “COVID-19 Vaccine Incentives” … Bran Castle in Romania offers tourists vaccinations and free passes to its torture chamber. The castle is tenuously linked to vampire celebrities Vlad the Impaler and “Dracula” author Bram Stoker.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a video case story from Potomac Urology, which uses the company’s cloud product.
• PerfectServe recognizes 100 outstanding nurses in its inaugural “Nurses of Note” Awards program.

Blog Posts

• Patient identifiers: A solution whose time has come (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 5/5/21

Top News

Ambulatory surgery center software vendor HST Pathways merges with Simple Admit, which offers ASC-specific patient engagement and relationship management technology.

The merger comes just seven months after Bain Capital’s majority growth investment in HST Pathways, and its concurrent merger with competitor Casetabs.

Reader Comments

From Down in the Dumps: “Aprima hack. Have you heard anything about Aprima being completely down for practices?” I’ve heard from several readers that Aprima has been down for nearly two weeks. I’ve reached out to parent company E-MDs for comment.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Sheridan Capital makes an undisclosed investment in DAS Health, a Tampa, FL-based vendor of health IT including practice management, RCM, and cybersecurity.

Groups Recover Together, a network of opioid addiction treatment providers, will use a $60 million Series C funding round to expand its brick-and-mortar reach from 12 to 15 states by the end of the year, and to enhance its existing virtual care services.

Announcements and Implementations

Visiting Nurse Association Health Group adopts Muse Healthcare’s machine learning and predictive modeling software for risk stratification of its hospice patients.

DuPage Medical Group (IL) implements Upfront Healthcare’s Visit Adherence software to help it improve patient no-show rates.

Government and Politics

White House Vaccinations Coordinator and COVID Response Team member Bechara Choucair, MD says primary care physicians will be even more important to nationwide COVID-19 vaccination efforts as the federal government shifts its focus from mass vaccination sites to more strategic efforts aimed at helping 70% of adult Americans get one shot and 160 million get both by July 4. Vaccines for children between 12 and 15 are expected to be approved for use within the next week, while vaccines for those between 2 and 11 are likely to be approved in the fall.

Other

Entrepreneur profiles ZiphyCare, an app-based house call company operating in New York and New Jersey. The startup’s model features care coordinators that perform exams and help connect patients to physicians via telemedicine from the comfort of their homes. Founder Rada Sumareva, DDS plans to expand to Florida in the next few months.

Boost Mobile adds unlimited telemedicine visits through K Health to its Unlimited Plus plan. Amwell, meanwhile, plans to add its service to smart TVs later this year. Virtual care will soon be not only ubiquitous, but may soon become the average consumer’s next utility (or utility add-on at the very least).

G-Health Enterprises adds a chance to win a Tesla to the incentives it’s offering people to get the COVID-19 vaccine. G-Health manages a network of ACOs, IPAs, and practices in Buffalo, NY.

And then there’s beer.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems releases a new “Tell Me Where It Hurts” podcast, “Reimaging Healthcare Through NLP.”

Blog Posts

• How charge aggregation technology can help billing companies (AdvancedMD)
• Spanish Updates for Healow (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 5/3/21

Top News

Well Health Technologies will become a majority shareholder in Doctors Services Group, a billing and administration company that specializes in helping practices serve uninsured patients. Both companies are based in Canada. Well Health will fold DSG into the billing division it created last fall through its acquisition of DoctorCare.

Webinars

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

People

CareCloud promotes Steve Link to SVP of client operations and Loraine Goetsch to division president and SVP of integrations.

Announcements and Implementations

Family-focused behavioral health nonprofit Andrus selects Streamline Healthcare’s SmartCare EHR.

Covenant Physicians Partners, a physician services company based in Nashville, selects NextGen’s Enterprise Practice Management and integrated Optical Management software.

Primary care company VillageMD will leverage technology from Qure Healthcare to help its providers improve documentation, enhance patient service and care quality, standardize clinical workflows, and decrease low-value care or referrals.

Shields Health Care Group implements ERad’s radiology information system across its 30 imaging centers in New England.

Other

Jack Tarr, MD reflects on the toll COVID-19 took on his practice, FamilyCare Specialists, in Knoxville, TN. From the shift to virtual visits, to managing the “hour-to-hour tension” caring for patients during the community’s peak, Tarr says not one staff member left. “Everybody stepped up and took that responsibility to serve the community,” the 70 year-old said. “I really noticed that everybody was willing to, in a sense, put themselves at risk for the good of the community and do their job here.”

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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News 4/28/21

Top News

Digital therapeutics company Kaia Health raises $75 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $123 million. The company offers its apps to patients through their employers and health plan provider networks. The startup plans to soon offer one of its apps in Europe as a prescribed treatment.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Engage Technologies Group raises $15 million, bringing its total funding to $20 million. The company develops patient-facing, brandable digital content for aesthetics, ocular, orthopedic, and dental clinics.

Healthcare marketplace, telemedicine, and online prescription delivery company Sesame announces a $24 million funding round. The company has raised nearly $50 million since launching in 2019.

Breast cancer patient navigation app developer Outcomes4Me raises $12 million in a Series A funding round. The company plans to expand to other types of cancer, and to market its product to patients in Europe.

MD Ally raises $3.5 million in seed funding. The New York-based startup has developed software that helps 911 dispatchers triage and re-route non-emergency calls to telemedicine services. Founder and CEO Shanel Fields founded the company after a five-year stint at Athenahealth. 

Announcements and Implementations

OCHIN, a nonprofit health IT support company serving more than 500 community care facilities, offers its Epic users access to AristaMD’s e-consult technology.

MedCall Advisors expands its telemedicine services to include sleep disorders, partnering with device maker Ectosense to offer patients sleep apnea monitoring from the comfort of their homes. MedCall got its start in virtual care for workers’ comp claims, then pivoted to COVID-19 testing as many employees began working remotely. The company is looking to further expand into care for allergies and behavioral health.

AZComp Technologies begins offering cloud-based hosting for its Medisoft medical billing software and practice management system.

Other

Clearity Health calls on patients in Austin, TX to upload photos of their medical bills to its soon-to-launch healthcare pricing website, effectively helping to provide accurate pricing information for medical procedures in the area.

St. John’s University profiles physician assistant student Zachary Levy and his burgeoning career as a children’s author. Levy and co-authors Melody Young and Jacob Salner, both osteopathic medicine students, have self-published the Rory’s Adventure Book series. The books follow the adventures of a red blood cell named Rory through the cardiovascular system, respiratory system, and soon the musculoskeletal system. Levy, Young, and Salner perform live readings of their books to elementary students over Zoom, accompanying them with copies of the book and an anatomy puzzle. “We are more than happy to set up live Zoom sessions with any class around the country that wants to read the Rory’s Adventure series,” Levy says. “In addition to the live reads, we answer the students’ questions. This is my highlight because I get to see in real-time the effect this book has on kids.”

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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