News 3/4/20

Top News

GoodRx apologizes and says it will do better after Consumer Reports finds that the prescription savings app has been sharing easily re-identifiable user data with 20 companies, including Facebook and Google.

The company claims it has never and will never sell the personal health data of its users. Moving forward, it will ramp up scrutiny of the information it does share with third parties; implement State of California-mandated privacy protections for all users, including the ability for users to delete their data from the app; and appoint a new VP of data privacy.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

I’ll be posting daily updates from HIMSS next week, so head over to the main site for coverage of health IT’s biggest (yet decidedly smaller) event of the year. HIStalk Practice posts will resume the following week.

Webinars

March 26 (Thursday) 12:30 ET. “How to Use Automation to Reduce ‘My EHR is Slow’ Complaints.” Sponsor: Goliath Technologies. A common challenge is that a clinician is ready to work, but their technology is not. EHRs can be slow, logins not working, or printers and scanners are offline. Troubleshooting these end user tickets quickly is nearly impossible, especially in complex environments that might include Citrix or VMware Horizon. This webinar will present real-world examples of how leading health systems are using purpose-built technology with embedded automation and intelligence to proactively anticipate, troubleshoot, and prevent end user performance issue across their IT infrastructure and EHRs.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Mental health app developer Ginger acquires competitor LiveBetter’s technology. In an interesting twist, LiveBetter is converting to a nonprofit and, through an arrangement with Ginger, will offer its app for free to those in need.

Anagram raises $9 million in a Series A funding round led by ManchesterStory. The company, formerly known as Patch, has developed billing software that better enables specialty practices to accept out-of-network payments from patients.

Announcements and Implementations

MyMedLeads adds online appointment scheduling to its leads management software for aesthetic practices.

Behavioral healthcare provider Archways (FL) selects EHR software from Streamline Healthcare Solutions.

Medication management app vendor Illuminate Health announces GA of MedGuide, an app designed to help patients and their caregivers better understand how and when to take their prescriptions.

Proliance Surgeons implements Andor Health’s mobile care coordination software.

Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center (NY) will use CancerLinQ’s software, which pulls patient data from EHRs for real-time clinical decision support.

Telemedicine

In Canada, CloudMD announces GA of telemedicine kiosks for pharmacies.

Time and CNBC publish articles on the role telemedicine will play as COVID-19 continues to spread in the US. Both point out that virtual visits are an ideal way to keep the “worried well” and those with mild symptoms out of doctors’ offices and ERs. Barriers to more widespread use include licensing and reimbursement issues, though legislation is already being proposed that could loosen those impediments in the event of an infectious disease outbreak. COVID-19 might, as the Time article puts it, be the tipping point for telemedicine, in that utilization after the virus has waned will increase as more people become comfortable with it.

Other

The local paper profiles the Medical Urgency Alliance, a group of physicians in Sacramento who have banded together on Chinese messaging app WeChat to offer Chinese residents information on the COVID-19 outbreak. The group’s newsletter, published through the app, helped Sacramento County’s first official COVID-19 patient find diagnosis and care. The physicians have also made themselves available by phone to anyone with coronavirus-related questions, free of charge. 

Another local paper profiles HandsFree Health, a company founded by former Aetna executives that has developed a voice assistant dedicated solely to healthcare questions. WellBe offers users health and wellness information, medication reminders, appointment scheduling and reminding, and prescription refill ordering. It’s set to go on sale towards the end of April.

Sponsor Updates

• 3 prerequisites to health IT innovation (Nordic)
• How Eva, the eClinicalWorks Virtual Assistant, is transforming the office visit (EClinicalWorks)
• Managing a Successful General Practice Office (AdvancedMD)
• Targeting the Leading Threats to Health (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.

News 3/2/20

Top News

AxialHealthcare raises $15 million in a Series C funding round. The company offers analytics and new personalized medicine services focused on patients with substance use disorders.

Webinars

March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Tools for Success: How to Increase Clinician Satisfaction with HIT Solutions.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenter: Andrew Kanter, MD, MPH, FACMI, FAMIA, chief medical officer, IMO. Dr. Kanter will explore how striving to achieve the Quadruple Aim (by focusing on the provider experience) can improve clinician satisfaction and population health needs while also reducing per capita healthcare costs. Attendees will learn how to set providers up for success with new technology, the potential unforeseen consequences of purchasing without the clinician in mind, and the factors that are critically important to clinicians who are using new health information systems.

March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Healthcare Digital Marketing: Jump-Start Patient Discovery and Conversion.” Sponsor: Orbita. Presenters: Victoria Petrock, MBA, MLIS, principal analyst, EMarketer; Kristi Ebong, MBA, MPH, SVP of corporate strategy, Orbita. Does your digital front door capture consumers who search for health-related information one billion times each day? Do you have actionable steps to convert them into patients? Do you understand voice and chat virtual assistants? The presenters will explore the consumer challenges involved with finding, navigating, and receiving care, discuss why healthcare marketers need to embrace conversational voice and chatbot technologies, and describe how new technologies such as conversational micro-robots can improve engagement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Rectangle Health secures a patent for its Practice Management Bridge technology, which interfaces with practice management, EHR, and RCM systems to manage patient payments.

App-based house call and virtual visit company Remedy expands into the Dallas-Forth Worth area. The Austin, TX-based company raised $10 million last summer.

RxAdvantage President and former Apple CEO John Sculley believes Walmart Health will be the straw that finally breaks the camel’s back when it comes to disrupting healthcare’s byzantine pricing structure and shrinking access pipeline:

“We’re going to have a consumer revolution in retail for point of care. Why? Because if the Walmart tests are successful, and I suspect they will be, people will be able to go in and get these kinds of health services at a lower cost than if they had health insurance. Think about that. They’re still nearly 30 million people who don’t have health insurance. A lot of these people are going to go to a Walmart where you get these kinds of routine services. That’s going to be a dramatic change.”

People

Primary care management company Tandigm Health promotes Frank Ingari to CEO, replacing Tony Coletta, MD who becomes executive chairman.

Announcements and Implementations

VisitPay and Sphere announce GA of text-based payment capabilities for providers.

Catholic Medical Partners will implement Innovaccer’s population health analytics, physician engagement, and clinical integration software across its physician network in Buffalo, NY.

Telemedicine

Canadian primary care and software company Well Health Technologies launches VirtualClinic+, a nationwide telemedicine service that includes video and messaging-based visits. Well Health will integrate the capabilities with its OSCAR EHR.

Other

The Vermont HIE announces that it will switch to a patient opt-out model in order to ensure that providers have easy access to patient records. Public health officials believe only 50% of Vermont patients have been asked to join the HIE since its launch in 2014.

OpenBeds extends its reach to Indiana, offering access through its www.treatmentconnection.com portal to patients and caregivers looking for substance use disorder and mental health treatment facilities within the state. The company’s technology is powered by Appriss Health, which partners with states to integrate their prescription drug monitoring programs with provider EHRs.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthwise will exhibit at the HealthTrio User Group Summit March 2-4 in Tucson.

Blog Posts

• The Challenges of Growth: Where to Begin? (EClinicalWorks)
• Nordic teammates discuss diversity, inclusion, and equity in healthcare (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 2/26/20

Top News

EHR and practice management vendor CentralReach acquires Thread Learning, a developer of mobile data collection technology for clinics and schools. CentralReach, which targets providers who care for autistic children, will integrate Thread Learning’s software with its soon-to-be-released Electronic Visit Verification-compliant mobile data collection app.

Thread Learning CEO and co-founder Greg Brill will join the CentralReach product development team.

Webinars

March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Tools for Success: How to Increase Clinician Satisfaction with HIT Solutions.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenter: Andrew Kanter, MD, MPH, FACMI, FAMIA, chief medical officer, IMO. Dr. Kanter will explore how striving to achieve the Quadruple Aim (by focusing on the provider experience) can improve clinician satisfaction and population health needs while also reducing per capita healthcare costs. Attendees will learn how to set providers up for success with new technology, the potential unforeseen consequences of purchasing without the clinician in mind, and the factors that are critically important to clinicians who are using new health information systems.

March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Healthcare Digital Marketing: Jump-Start Patient Discovery and Conversion.” Sponsor: Orbita. Presenters: Victoria Petrock, MBA, MLIS, principal analyst, EMarketer; Kristi Ebong, MBA, MPH, SVP of corporate strategy, Orbita. Does your digital front door capture consumers who search for health-related information one billion times each day? Do you have actionable steps to convert them into patients? Do you understand voice and chat virtual assistants? The presenters will explore the consumer challenges involved with finding, navigating, and receiving care, discuss why healthcare marketers need to embrace conversational voice and chatbot technologies, and describe how new technologies such as conversational micro-robots can improve engagement.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Community Health of South Florida selects Orb Health’s Collaborative Virtual Care software to better enable its chronic care management program.

People

Bill Keyes (Connecture) joins I2I Population Health as chief growth officer.

Telemedicine

The local paper profiles Plessen Healthcare’s efforts to bring telemedicine to the US Virgin Island of St. Croix. Plessen, which comprises a clinic and the USVI’s only CMS-accredited ambulatory surgical center, used a USDA distance learning and telemedicine grant to purchase new equipment and bolster IT infrastructure and security. At the same time, Plessen developed its own HIE, giving it the ability to share patient data with the local hospital, CDC, and physician EHRs.

Fresenius Medical Care North America will launch virtual visit capabilities for its home dialysis patients through TheHub  its remote patient monitoring platform.

DaVita makes a similar announcement with the launch of telemedicine and patient engagement services for its home dialysis patients.

Other

Jezebel digs into the data-sharing details of mental health apps like Talk Space and Better Help, both of which send user data to dozens of third parties including Facebook, Pinterest, Google, and Snapchat. User details could alerts when a user opens the app; metadata that includes the time of day, a user’s location, and how long the app was used; the type of device being used; a user’s age; and some mental health details. The authors point out: “Unless the people who trust Better Help deftly analyze the fine print, they might not have much of an idea of how far their intimate information is traveling, in a way that’s designed to make companies bigger and richer while patients become more easily gamed.”

Consumer Reports points a similar type of finger at GoodRx, the prescription-savings app that is often recommended to patients by physicians and pharmacists. Many prescribers often aren’t aware that patient data is shared with 20 companies eager to get a hold of medication and pharmacy names, as well as de-identified patient data that could easily be re-identified.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• 4 ways to tell if your EHR is a teen or adult (AdvancedMD)
• Back to the Basics: Core EHR (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 2/24/20

Top News

Health IT vendor MTBC launches a telemedicine division. Leadership will include President Shruti Patel, COO Iram Fatima, MD and Chief Revenue Officer Seth Loonan. MTBC, which acquired EHR and practice management vendor CareCloud earlier this year, began offering telemedicine capabilities through its TalkEHR last December.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

As Mr. H mentioned in his latest post, Lorre wants to add to our webinar calendar with new entries, so contact her and you’ll get a pre-HIMSS deal.

Getting your exhibit hall game plan together for HIMSS? Check out HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS20. It’s a handy resource for those who’ll be strolling the show floors looking for particular products, networking opportunities, in-booth and off-site events, and fun giveaways.

Webinars

March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Tools for Success: How to Increase Clinician Satisfaction with HIT Solutions.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenter: Andrew Kanter, MD, MPH, FACMI, FAMIA, chief medical officer, IMO. Dr. Kanter will explore how striving to achieve the Quadruple Aim (by focusing on the provider experience) can improve clinician satisfaction and population health needs while also reducing per capita healthcare costs. Attendees will learn how to set providers up for success with new technology, the potential unforeseen consequences of purchasing without the clinician in mind, and the factors that are critically important to clinicians who are using new health information systems.

March 4 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “Healthcare Digital Marketing: Jump-Start Patient Discovery and Conversion.” Sponsor: Orbita. Presenters: Victoria Petrock, MBA, MLIS, principal analyst, EMarketer; Kristi Ebong, MBA, MPH, SVP of corporate strategy, Orbita. Does your digital front door capture consumers who search for health-related information one billion times each day? Do you have actionable steps to convert them into patients? Do you understand voice and chat virtual assistants? The presenters will explore the consumer challenges involved with finding, navigating, and receiving care, discuss why healthcare marketers need to embrace conversational voice and chatbot technologies, and describe how new technologies such as conversational micro-robots can improve engagement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

In Canada, Premier Health Group rebrands to CloudMD Software & Services to better reflect its focus on digital health and telemedicine. It’s been a busy year so far for the Vancouver-based company: It acquired telemedicine vendor LiveCare in January, and announced a new CEO and rolled out the CloudMD direct-to-consumer telemedicine app in early February.

People

Employer-focused primary care clinic operator CareATC names Scott Strickland (Optimis) president and COO, Lisa Ness chief revenue officer, and promotes Ann Stoeppelwerth to chief engagement solutions officer.

Announcements and Implementations

The MO HealthNet HIE will use $9.3 million in federal funding to develop a Provider Health Information Exchange Onboarding Program, which will subsidize connection and subscription fees for member providers. The Medicaid-focused HIE hopes to get its members, which include 1,000 physicians and 40 hospitals, fully connected to its data-sharing service before HITECH Act funding runs out in 2021.

Comprehensive Partners in Florida selects remote patient monitoring and chronic care management technology and services from Reliq Health Technologies.

Government and Politics

McKesson Canada’s decision to not renew its contract with health officials in Nova Scotia has left some physicians frustrated at the void that will be left once the Relay Health-powered MyHealthNS app is shut down at the end of March. First introduced in 2012, the app has given patients a number of self-service capabilities and enhanced their ability to communicate with their physicians outside of the clinic. Family physician and clinic director Ajantha Jayabarathan believes the government’s decision to abandon the program has more to do with physician complaints that they haven’t been reimbursed for care provided through the app than the fact that adoption hasn’t been as widespread as health officials would have liked. Patients have until March 31 to retrieve their data from the app.

An op-ed in Health Affairs outlines the need for CMS to integrate behavioral health into its Primary Care First program, which will initially reward physicians for reductions in acute hospital utilization rates when it finally launches in January 2021. They point out that:

• Smaller practices with fewer resources will need more support, which can be offered using evidence-based guidance on behavioral health integration from the Continuum-Based Framework.
• Direct incentives for behavioral health support and improved outcomes should be added.
• The program should offer bigger incentives for PCF practices that bill using new payment codes designed for behavioral health.

Other

CNBC profiles Recycle Health, a nonprofit working out of Tufts Medical School that collects abandoned wearables and donates them to organizations serving the homeless, veterans, and intellectually disabled; senior living facilities; and others living in underserved populations. Donations have come in from Fitbit, Fossil, Withings, and individuals. Recycle Health has even received donations from tourist sites like the Statue of Liberty and amusement parks.

Sponsor Updates

• The Challenges of Growth: Where to Begin? (EClinicalWorks)
• Celebrating American Heart Month (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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

News 2/19/20

Top News

Maven raises a $45 million Series C round of financing led by Icon Ventures, bringing the virtual clinic company’s total raised to nearly $90 million. Focused on women’s and family health, the company offers its services to employers and health plans.

The New York City-based company made sure to mention celebrity investors Reese Witherspoon, Natalie Portman, Mindy Kaling, and 23andMe co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki in its funding announcement.

Webinars

None scheduled in the coming weeks. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Research shows that the interest of private equity firms in acquiring physician practices has increased year-over-year since 2013. Of the 18,000 practices looked at between 2013 and 2016, PE firms bought 355, increasing from 59 to 136 within those three years. PE firms typically sough anesthesiology, multispecialty, emergency medicine, family medicine, and dermatology practices. Researchers point out that a PE firm’s ROI requirement may “conflict with the need for longer-term investments in practice stability, physician recruitment, quality, and safety. There may be additional pressures to increase revenue streams (eg, elective procedures and ancillary services), direct more referrals internally, and rely on lower-cost clinicians.”

Announcements and Implementations

MedEvolve announces GA of AI-powered workflow automation capabilities for patient pre-registration.

Georgia Health Information Network adds lab-results sharing to its HIE services.

NJ Spine and Wellness implements MTBC’s CareCloud EHR, practice management, and patient relationship management software at its four locations.

Telemedicine

Amazon’s virtual care clinic begins seeing the company’s Seattle-based employees and dependents. The Amazon Care app enables users to schedule virtual visits and home or office visits with NPs for further follow-up, and to order prescriptions for delivery. Amazon staffs the clinic with providers from subsidiary Oasis Medical, which it says prevents it from accessing patient data it’s not legally entitled to. Oasis Medical Director Martin Levine, MD previously headed up Iora Health’s Medicare clinics in Seattle.

Onsite health care company Premise Health launches a virtual care offering that includes primary, acute, episodic, and some behavioral healthcare services. In making the announcement, the company stressed that Premise Virtual providers are salaried, use the same EHR (presumably Epic, which it installed at its clinics a year ago), and share the same training and value-based incentives.

Research and Innovation

New Research from Western New York-based HealtheLink, the University of Connecticut, and Brookings Institution’s Center for Technology Innovation shows that practices that incorporate health information exchange into their workflows – particularly care notifications – can reduce their patients’ ED visits by 13% and their 30-day hospital readmissions by 10%. Adding such capabilities also helped practices save several hours a week in chart preparation and appointment planning, and reduced patient cycle times by up to 40 minutes.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Putting Primary Care First in Louisiana (EClinicalWorks)
• Podium Interaction Management (AdvancedMD)
• The story of Nordic, celebrating 10 years of meaningful partnerships (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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