Morning Headlines 8/4/21

Delivering the Right Care, at the Right Time and Place: Renown Health Opens “Care Traffic Control Center”

Renown Health opens a Transfer and Operations Center to better coordinate care, including remote monitoring for tele-ICU and home-based programs, across 27 counties in California and Nevada.

CPSI Announces Second Quarter 2021 Results

CPSI announces Q2 results: revenue up 15%, EPS $0.42 versus $0.12, with a share uptick leading to a company valuation of $464 million.

DoJ considering lawsuit to block UnitedHealth bid for Change Healthcare

The DoJ considers filing a lawsuit that would block UnitedHealth’s attempt to acquire Change Healthcare for nearly $8 billion.

CORHIO and Health Current Introduce New Regional Organization – Contexture

CORHIO and Health Current merge to form Contexture, an umbrella organization that will oversee the respective HIEs’ work in Colorado and Arizona.

Morning Headlines 8/3/21

ChrysCapital-backed GeBBS Healthcare Acquires Aviacode

RCM vendor Gebbs Healthcare Solutions acquires Aviacode, which offers medical coding and compliance services.

Juno Medical Raises $5.4M in Seed Financing to Reimagine Primary Care for the 99%

New York City-based Juno Medical will use $5.4 million in seed financing to expand its clinic footprint, virtual care services, and price transparency capabilities.

Vestrum Health Joins CorEvitas

Registry data and analytics company CorEvitas acquires Vestrum Health, which offers data culled from retina care-focused EHRs for research, analytics, and commercialization.

Morning Headlines 8/2/21

Cerner Reports Second Quarter 2021 Results

Cerner announces Q2 results: revenue up 10%, adjusted EPS $0.80 versus $0.63, exceeding analyst expectations for both.

Exo Raises $220M in Series C Funding

Handheld ultrasound and medical imaging vendor Exo raises $220 million in Series C funding.

Epic to require COVID-19 vaccinations for all US-based staff

Epic will require all of its US-based employees to be fully vaccinated by October 1, with nearly 97% of its Verona-based staff already meeting that requirement.

Morning Headlines 7/30/21

Hughes & Company Raises $116 Million For First Private Equity Fund

Private equity firm Hughes & Company closes its first fund at $116 million, which will make investments of $5 million to $20 million in lower middle market healthcare software and technology enabled companies.

Opportunity Trifecta: ISA, SVAP and Draft USCDI Version 3 Feedback Period Now Open

ONC opens the synchronized feedback period for the Interoperability Standards Advisory, the Standards Version Advancement Process, and the draft United States Core Data for Interoperability Version 3.

WellSky® to Acquire Healthify to Enhance Social Services Care Coordination Across the Continuum

WellSky, a healthcare software, analytics, and services company, will acquire social services referral software vendor Healthify.

Morning Headlines 7/29/21

Amwell Enhances Virtual Care Platform with Two Acquisitions: SilverCloud Health and Conversa Health

Amwell will acquire digital mental healthcare company SilverCloud Health and automated virtual care company Conversa Health for a combined $320 million.

Avera Health Announces Acquisition of Avera ECare by Aquiline Capital Partners

Aquiline Capital Partners acquires Avera Health’s telehealth services company, which serves 600 sites in 32 states.

Cerner Corp. plans to sell off major Kansas City area campus after move to hybrid work

Cerner will put its nearly empty Continuous Campus up for sale as it streamlines its real estate needs to accommodate remote workers.

AdaptX Receives $6 Million Series A Funding; Announces Name Change from MDmetrix to Reflect Transformative Impact for Clinical Management

Clinical performance improvement company MDmetrix changes its name to AdaptX and secures $6 million in a Series A funding round led by Vulcan Capital.

Morning Headlines 7/28/21

Nordic Capital in Talks to Buy Health Tech Firm Inovalon

Bloomberg reports that Europe-based private equity investor Nordic Capital is in talks to acquire health data analytics vendor Inovalon.

New tool for early identification of COVID-19 surges

Kaiser Permanente develops a COVID-19 HotSpotting Score to help providers predict COVID-19 surges up to six weeks ahead of time.

Teladoc stock drops after telemedicine company reports wider quarterly loss

Teladoc shares drop 7% in after-hours trading after the company reported a greater-than-expected Q2 loss of $133.8 million.

Morning Headlines 7/27/21

Penn Medicine Launching Center for Applied Health Informatics

Penn Medicine (PA) will launch the Center for Applied Health Informatics to develop best practices for data projects across its health system and foster informatics leadership.

Epic’s AI algorithms, shielded from scrutiny by a corporate firewall, are delivering inaccurate information on seriously ill patients

STAT sheds light on an Epic program that incentivizes customers to use its algorithms, one of which – sepsis prediction – has been found to not work as well as advertised.

Komodo Health Acquires Breakaway Partners to Improve Patient Access to Effective Therapies

De-identified patient data and analytics company Komodo Health acquires Breakaway Partners, which offers market access analytics.

Morning Headlines 7/26/21

Sema4 Closes Transaction with CM Life Sciences, Debuts as Publicly Traded AI-driven Genomic & Clinical Data Platform Company

Clinical data and genomic platform vendor Sema4, a Connecticut-based venture of Mount Sinai Health System, goes public via a SPAC merger at a valuation of around $3 billion.

System C buys medicines management specialist Wellsky

British health IT company System C acquires medication management vendor WellSky International.

Caregiver Support Company Cariloop raises $15 million in Series B funding to expand help for families and ease caregiving crisis

Digitally-enabled caregiving support company Cariloop raises $15 million in a funding round that brings its total raised to just over $24 million.

UPMC reaches $2.65 million settlement with employees over data breach

UPMC will pay $2.65 million to settle a class action lawsuit that charged it with failing to protect employee information that was stolen and used in a phony tax refund scam.

Morning Headlines 7/23/21

Moving Forward: Evaluating Next Steps for the Department of Veterans Affairs Electronic Health Record Modernization Program

The VA tells the House Veterans Affairs Committee that it won’t bring any more sites live on Cerner for at least six months.

Achieve Partners Backs Healthcare IT Provider to Launch Major Apprenticeship Program

Achieve Partners, which invests in skills development technologies and businesses that can create American jobs, acquires staff and consulting services vendor Optimum Healthcare IT.

Imprivata Adds Privileged Access Management (PAM) to Industry-leading Digital Identity Capabilities by Acquiring Xton Technologies

Imprivata acquires Xton Technologies and will incorporate its privileged access management solutions into its digital identity framework.

Qure4u Announces Close of $25M Growth Equity Investment to Accelerate Innovation in Digital Health Solutions

Qure4u, which offers automated patient intake, engagement, and virtual care services, raises $25 million in a funding round led by Volition Capital.

Morning Headlines 7/22/21

Carbon Health Secures $350 Million to Expand Omnichannel Primary Care Nationwide

Tech-enabled primary care company Carbon Health raises $350 million in a funding round led by Blackstone.

B.well Connected Health Secures $32 Million to Accelerate the Digital Transformation of Healthcare

B.well Connected Health, developer of health management apps for consumers, patients, and employees, raises $32 million in a Series B funding round.

CarePoint Health Opens Doors to Healthcare Innovation Center

CarePoint Health (NJ) opens a Healthcare Innovation Center within Bayonne Medical Center to bring clinicians, vendors, investors, and other collaborators together to develop new technologies.

Morning Headlines 7/21/21

WebMD Acquires The Wellness Network, Expanding Point-of-Care Services to Health Systems and Hospitals

WebMD acquires The Wellness Network, which offers advertising-supported patient education videos and broadcast channels for hospitals.

Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative Fulfills Mission; Completes Final Dissolution

The Massachusetts EHealth Collaborative dissolves and distributes its assets to six public charities, saying that it has completed its work and fulfilled its mission related to interoperability, standards development, and health IT policy.

Validation of an electronic trigger to measure missed diagnosis of stroke in emergency departments

An EHR trigger analysis of the VA’s corporate data warehouse finds that nearly one-third of patients who were admitted for stroke had been discharged from the ED with seemingly benign headache or dizziness in the previous 30 days.

Morning Headlines 7/20/21

Quit Genius Raises $64M to Expand Access To #1 Digital Clinic for Substance Addictions

Quit Genius, a virtual care company specializing in treatment for substance addiction, raises $64 million in a Series B funding round.

Verisys Acquires Credentials Verification Organization Services From Advantum Health

Verisys, which recently announced its merger with Aperture Health, acquires Advantum Health’s Med Advantage Credentials Verification Organization business.

DuPage Medical Group outage resolved, but ‘minimal delays’ may remain

DuPage Medical Group, the largest independent groups in Illinois, recovers from a nearly week-long network outage that impacted several systems.

Morning Headlines 7/19/21

What Ever Happened to IBM’s Watson?

The New York Times says that IBM Watson failed to achieve its goals to transform industries and make IBM successful, noting that Watson’s healthcare “moon shot” failed in multiple health systems.

Real-World Data & Technology Company OM1 Closes $85 Million Financing To Make Healthcare More Measured, Precise, And Pre-Emptive

OM1, which offers chronic disease registries and real-world data, raises $85 million in financing.

Intermountain Healthcare Provides Notice of Data Security Event

Intermountain Healthcare (UT) announces that PHI from four of its clinics may have been compromised during an April cyberattack on care management software vendor Elekta’s systems.

Morning Headlines 7/16/21

VA Electronic Health Records: Modernization and the Path Ahead

The VA pauses its Cerner rollout after an internal report finds significant problems, with VA Secretary Denis McDonough telling the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee that he will make changes in project oversight, training, implementation sequencing, and budgeting.

Waystar to Acquire Patientco to Bring True Consumerism to Healthcare, Simplifying Payment Processes for Patients and Providers

Waystar says the combined companies will offer a consumer-friendly patient payment experience.

Introducing AWS for Health – Accelerating innovation from benchtop to bedside

AWS will offer a set of services and partner solutions for healthcare, genomics, and biopharma.

OSF OnCall: A New Hospital Without Walls

OSF HealthCare opens its OSF OnCall Digital Health building in Peoria, IL, from which it offers remote patient monitoring, nurse triage, and ICU patient monitoring.

Morning Headlines 7/15/21

TEFCA Will be Live in 2022

ONC hopes to have a new nationwide network open for participation in Q1 2022.

Woman’s Hospital seeks to partner with large system to boost technology access

The 165-bed Louisiana hospital is considering affiliating with another hospital to be able to implement Epic for less cost than buying it directly, which it estimates would require $200 million over seven years.

Request for Public Feedback on Draft Developer-Reported Measures

The companies contracted by ONC to develop draft EHR Reporting Program developer measures seek feedback by September 14, 2021.

Kno2 raises $15 million to accelerate its disruption of healthcare’s interoperability status quo

The network aggregrator will use the proceeds of its Series A funding round to expand its connectivity and workflows while increasing its partner base that integrate via its APIs.

Morning Headlines 7/14/21

HHS Updates Interoperability Standards to Support the Electronic Exchange of Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity and Social Determinants of Health

ONC releases the United States Core Data for Interoperability version 2.

Truveta Grows to Represent More Than 15% of all U.S. Patient Care with Three New Health Provider Members, closing Series A with $95 Million in Funding

Truveta raises $95 million in a Series A funding round and adds members Baylor Scott & White Health, MedStar Health, and Texas Health Resources.

Harris acquires ADL Data Systems, a long-term and post-acute care software solutions provider

Harris acquires ADL, which has been providing software to nursing homes and other long-term care providers since 1977.

Michelle O’Connor Named MEDITECH President and CEO

The company announces the promotion of Michelle O’Connor, which took place several weeks ago.

‘The party is winding down’: States and insurers resurrect barriers to telehealth, putting strain on patients

Telehealth visits are dropping sharply as relaxed provider laws and improved payment return to the more restrictive normal and state-by-state physician licensure again becomes a significant barrier.

Morning Headlines 7/13/21

Mytonomy Raises $25 Million Series B Funding to Transform Patient Engagement

Video-based patient engagement vendor Mytonomy raises $25 million in a Series B funding round.

HCTec Acquires Talon Healthy IT Services

Health IT services firm HCTec acquires managed IT solutions company Talon Healthy IT Services, which offers healthcare help desk services.

Charlesbank To Make A Strategic Investment In Clearlake And SkyKnight-Backed symplr

Charlesbank will make an unspecified “significant strategic investment” in Symplr.