Health IT Business News – May 14, 2018

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Posted By: Annmarie Budniak May 14, 2018

Health Catalyst to Acquire Aetna’s Medicity
News broke in early May that Health Catalyst is set to acquire Aetna’s Medicity (@medicity). Health Catalyst (@HealthCatalyst) is deferring all communication to Aetna. Aetna’s public response has been, “Based on the evolution of Aetna’s consumer health strategy, we have agreed to divest Medicity to Health Catalyst. The transaction is expected to close within 90 days. We are not disclosing further details at this time. “

Waystar™ Releases Second Annual Patient Payment Check-Up™ Survey
Waystar (@Waystar_RCT), the combination of Navicure (@Navicure) and ZirMed (@zirmed) revenue cycle technologies, announced findings from its second annual Patient Payment Check-Up™ Survey, conducted by HIMSS Analytics. This year’s survey, fielded in January 2018, polled over 1,000 patients that have visited a medical provider in the last 12 months, along with almost 900 financial executives from leading hospitals, health systems and other outpatient facilities. The survey gauged general patient and healthcare executive attitudes about patient costs and estimation, along with patient payment processes. The second annual report includes the survey results, compares results to last year, and suggests pragmatic steps that healthcare organizations can take to improve patient satisfaction and collections.

Ambra Health Named SIIA Business Technology CODiE Award Finalist in Best Healthcare Technology Solution Category
Ambra Health (@ambrahealth), makers of the leading cloud-based, medical image management suite, announced the company was named a 2018 SIIA CODiE Awards finalist in the Healthcare Technology Solution category. Finalists represent the best products, technologies, and services in software, information and business technology.

CareCloud Connects with SayIt Medical Speech Recognition Technology from NVOQ to Improve Speed and Accuracy of Clinical Documentation
As medical practices seek ways to reduce time spent on low-value administrative tasks, CareCloud (@carecloud) has added a new option for powerful speech recognition technology that reduces click-based tasks in EHRs and makes clinical documentation smarter and more personal. CareCloud, the platform for high-growth medical groups, is making this technology available from nVoq, the Boulder, CO-based provider of speech recognition and workflow automation solutions.

Spok and Bernoulli Health Partner to Elevate Clinical Alarm Management
Spok, Inc. (@spoktweets), a wholly owned subsidiary of Spok Holdings, Inc. and the leader in healthcare communications, announced an alliance with Bernoulli Health, the developer of the advanced Bernoulli On clinical surveillance, medical device integration, and real-time data analytics platform. This partnership, Spok Alarm Surveillance powered by Bernoulli, will elevate clinical alarm management by capturing and evaluating real-time patient data and alarms from multiple clinical systems and delivering actionable alerts to the right caregiver for swift response.

Linguamatics Introduces Breakthrough Scientific Search Solution
Linguamatics (@linguamatics), the leading NLP-based text analytics provider for biomedical applications, announced the launch of Linguamatics iScite, a breakthrough innovation in scientific search that puts the precision and power of Linguamatics artificial intelligence (AI) technology directly into the hands of scientists, researchers and other knowledge workers. iScite offers a modern, easy-to-use scientific search engine that provides intuitive access to AI-powered searches across key biomedical data sources and delivers insightful answers to search questions.

Allscripts to significantly expand FollowMyHealth® patient engagement platform portfolio with new, advanced capabilities through acquisition of HealthGrid
Allscripts (@Allscripts), a global leader in healthcare technology, announced that it signed a definitive agreement to acquire HealthGrid Holding Company, a mobile enterprise patient engagement platform business. The agreement represents a significant expansion of the Allscripts FollowMyHealth® platform portfolio, the company’s patient engagement solution focused on connecting patients with providers. Allscripts expects to close the acquisition in the second quarter of calendar 2018, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions, including the expiration or termination of the waiting period under U.S. antitrust laws.

First Stop Health Reports Triple-Digit Revenue Growth on High Member Utilization
First Stop Health (@firststophealth), a leader in the telemedicine sector of the virtual-care industry, announced details of its 2017 annual results today at the HLTH conference in Las Vegas. “In 2017 we realized triple-digit top-line revenue growth,” said Patrick Spain, CEO and Co-Founder. “As a leader in the telemedicine industry in utilization last year, we saw an average usage rate of 52% across our member base (52 calls per 100 enrolled employees). We believe our 2017 utilization was seven times the industry average for employer purchased programs,” Spain added.

DrChrono and Cliniconex Partner to Bring Modern-day Benefits to Urgent Care Practices
DrChrono Inc. (@drchrono), the company enabling the medical practice of the future, announced a partnership with Cliniconex (@cliniconex) to bring more modern and mobile benefits to urgent care practices. The Cliniconex and DrChrono integration provides an enhanced mobile EHR experience for urgent care practices.

Kyruus Raises $10 Million to Fuel Continued Growth
Kyruus (@kyruus), a leader in provider search and scheduling solutions for health systems, announced that it has raised $10 million in new financing in a strategic round. The new financing comes on the heels of a year of unprecedented growth in which the company doubled its revenue and increased the number of hospitals on its platform by 50%. Kyruus will primarily use the investment to grow its product development and delivery teams to support the expansion of its platform, integrations with additional leading players in the digital health ecosystem, and ongoing customer success.

A&G Realty Partners Launches Healthcare Property Division
A&G Realty Partners announced a new division focused on ramping up the productivity of U.S. healthcare providers’ diverse real estate holdings. Just as retail landlords can ill afford to keep vacant or under-performing stores on their balance sheets, today’s medical providers are under the gun to maximize the real estate dimension of their hospitals, medical offices, skilled nursing homes and other assets, noted Peter J. Lynch, a Los Angeles-based Principal at A&G and leader of the company’s new Healthcare Property Division. Those efforts could involve everything from disposing of excess medical office space, to renegotiating an urgent care center’s lease, to selling a city hospital to a mixed-use developer, he said.

BeBop Sensors, World Leader in Smart Fabric Sensors, Announces Close of $10M+ Series A Funding Led by Bullpen Capital
BeBop Sensors, Inc., the world leader in smart fabric sensors, announced the close of its $10 Million+ Series A funding led by San Francisco-based Bullpen Capital, a leader in post-seed funding. With millions of sensors in daily use, BeBop Sensors designs, manufactures, and delivers smart fabric sensors to Fortune 500 companies in the Health, Automotive, IoT, and AR/VR markets. The funding will help BeBop aggressively accelerate product development and market penetration.

DataFile Technologies & GroupSource Form Strategic Alliance
DataFile Technologies and GroupSource announced that the businesses have formed a partnership to help healthcare organizations reduce overhead costs, improve operations and remain independent. Physician independence is a growing issue as many larger healthcare organizations acquire smaller groups. While some doctors enjoy the benefits of membership in a health system, others remain fiercely committed to staying autonomous in their practice.

Improving Provider Interoperability Congruently Increasing Patient Record Error Rates, Black Book Survey
​Black Book™ surveyed 1,392 health technology managers to help stakeholders identify gaps, challenges and successes in patient identification processes from Q3 2017 to Q1 2018. As healthcare data creation has fast-tracked to an absolute landslide bringing with it many challenges in the identification and reconciliation of patient records because of the ways disparate systems classify, store, protect and share information.