ICA hooks up with Silicon Valley player
Posted on August 20, 2009 at 1:13 pmLocal health care information technology venture Informatics Corp. of America has inked an OEM partnership with Silicon Valley tech firm Mark Logic.
This partnership will support the meaningful use of the ICA Electronic Health Record (EHR) solution and advance population health management techniques for hospitals and integrated delivery networks, which include Health Information Exchanges (HIEs), regional health information organizations (RHIOs), and other statewide initiatives.
Of the deal, ICA chief technology officer Jeff Cunningham said:
As a result of this partnership, ICA expands its ability to enrich, search, navigate, analyze, and dynamically deliver aggregated healthcare content across patient populations. This is a key differentiator for ICA, and of critical importance to our customers who will be able to take data from any source or format and make the information more usable in combination with the Mark Logic platform.
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Feelin’ fit for growth
Posted on July 14, 2009 at 10:18 amAfter a $10.2 million shot of capital from Council Ventures brought it out of chapter 11, New Day Pharmacy says it’s ready to grow.
On the heels of a $10.2 million investment from a syndicate of institutional investors led by Council Ventures, New Day Pharmacy expects to boost its revenue by 50 percent a year and increase staff by slightly less than that, says CEO Richard Wager.
Wager says the company expects to increase its 28 person staff significantly to slightly less than 50 percent more than it currently employs.
New Day’s “in-house pharmacy” features a virtual information data bank, a paperless admissions process, a time-sequenced packaging system, long-distance delivery of medications, and on-site medication dispensing units.
Note: The article linked here from TechJournal South mistakenly refers to Richard Wager as New Day’s CEO. Wager is in fact the company’s president. New Day’s new chairman and CEO is James Usdan.
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HealthStream makes the top 100
Posted on at 10:02 amLocal health care learning company HealthStream has come in at number 54 in the Healthcare Informatics 100, climbing seven spots in this year’s ranking.
The 16 th annual listing, published in Healthcare Informatics, ranks both public and private healthcare IT companies based on the previous year’s performance. HealthStream’s 2008 revenues grew 17 percent over the previous year to $51.6 million. Concurrently in 2008, approximately 190,000 new subscribers were implemented to use the Company’s learning platform, the HealthStream Learning Center®, bringing the network of contracted users to approximately 1.9 million—or approximately 38 percent of the acute-care hospital market.
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NHI gets a downgrade
Posted on at 9:56 amNational Health Investors has been downgraded from ‘Buy’ to ‘Hold’ by analysts from Stifel Nicolas.
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Passport’s new partner
Posted on July 13, 2009 at 11:42 amPassport Health Communications announced this morning that it has entered into a new strategic partnership with New Paltz, New York-based Bluemark, LLC.
FRANKLIN, Tenn. – The list of revenue cycle management companies partnering with Passport Health Communications, Inc. continues to grow with the addition of Bluemark LLC. The companies have entered a business partnership agreement to help health care providers increase revenue by decreasing bad debt and uncompensated care.
Technology and services from Bluemark and Passport drastically reduce or eliminate the costs associated with health care providers giving care to patients who cannot pay by determining which patients are eligible for state Medicaid programs or qualify for charity care or other assistance. Web-based charity care assessment technology from Bluemark alongside Passport’s eligibility verification and self-pay review provides a complete financial assessment for every patient. Passport’s address verification, credit scoring and credit card processing can also be utilized before the patient is treated to increase patient payments and eliminate potential bad debt.
According to Passport CEO Scott MacKenzie, approximately 10 percent of patients who are treated as self-pay are actually covered by or qualify for Medicaid. A hospital with an average daily volume of 1,000 patients and average claim value of $400 can conceivably capture an additional $14.6 million in annual revenue just by screening self-pay patients and identifying the 10 percent with Medicaid eligibility.
More about Bluemark
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Welcome to the 600
Posted on July 10, 2009 at 7:08 amStandard & Poor’s announced late yesterday that Healthcare Realty Trust has been added to its S&P SmallCap 600
Healthcare Realty Trust Inc. will replace Wabash National Corp. in the S&P SmallCap 600 after the close of trading on Thursday, July 16. As of today’s close of trading Wabash had a market capitalization below $19 million, ranking it 600th in the index.
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Way to be more ‘well’
Posted on July 9, 2009 at 1:36 pmApparently, according to the June well-being index released by Healthways and Gallup Inc., we’re doing better
After tracking significant setbacks in well-being through the financial crisis of 2008-2009, the June Well-Being Report shows America may be on the road to recovery. Overall well-being reached 66.8, its second highest level since the Gallup-Healthways Well-Being Index™ (WBI) began in January 2008. The Life Evaluation Index (LEI), one of the six sub-indices composing the WBI, stabilized after dramatic gains over the past few months, ending at 47.8, a new high for the LEI beating the previous high from May 2009 of 47.5.
Full index found here.
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AmSurg rated a ‘Buy’
Posted on July 6, 2009 at 11:39 amTheStreet.com Ratings announced early this morning that it has upgraded surgery center operator AmSurg to “Buy”
The numbers: Fiscal first-quarter revenue rose 12% to $163 million as net income climbed 7.8% to $13 million and earnings per share ascended 8.1% to 40 cents, extending a growth streak to nine quarters. The cash balance is ample with $31 million of reserves. The debt-to-equity ratio is low at 0.6. The net margin is wide at 7.7% but has shed 30 basis points since last year’s first quarter.
The stock: Amsurg is down 10% in 2009, trading at a price-to-earnings ratio of about 13. The company has a market capitalization of $670 million.
Psych Solutions gets upgrade
Posted on May 4, 2009 at 11:21 amOn the heels of today’s announcement of a bond offering, Cleveland’s Longbow Research has upgraded Psychiatric Solutions (Ticker: PSYS) from ‘neutral’ to ‘buy.’ Analysts have raised the price target to $35.
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Tools to manage your healthcare costs
Posted on January 7, 2009 at 2:44 pmCourtesy of a new webservice:
NASHVILLE, Tenn., Jan. 7 /PRNewswire/ — Americans can’t control the economy, but they can do a much better job of educating themselves about what they should pay for healthcare. Healthcarebluebook.com, the first national effort to provide free pricing data to consumers launches today, and is designed to give people the information they need to pay fair prices for healthcare.
Price variations for healthcare services, even within the same market and provider network, may be thousands of dollars. So knowing what the fair price is can help consumers better manage the cost of their healthcare.
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Be smart, don’t give us a nickel
Posted on December 17, 2008 at 12:37 pmRick Peters’ piece on The Health Care Blog begs Washington: “Don’t bail out the health care industry”
While the title includes the whole industry, the main focus of the piece is on proposed expansion of health care IT spending:
In a nutshell, do not pour more money into this industry without completely rethinking how we drive innovation. Currently available EHRs from the major, CCHIT certified vendors will not save us money. Any assumptions about improvements in quality or patient safety will be offset by an across the board loss of clinical efficiency, a loss of productivity and a counterintuitive increase in the number of personnel, and increased clinical and administrative errors due to system and user interface complexity.
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What Daschle at HHS could mean
Posted on December 11, 2008 at 2:06 pmFrom Bob Pisani:
Mr. Daschle has also indicated he might support:
1) universal coverage through Medicaid
2) direct government negotiation for drug pricesWhile cries of “Socialist Medicine” will certainly be heard, and this deserves to be considered, the fact that there are 50 million people without healthcare in this country, that many cannot afford it, is simply scandalous and there needs to be proposals put forth to address that issue.
The question of course, is how much the economic crises will push healthcare reform to the back burner. This could be a problem for hospital and HMOs, who might delay spending if they don’t know what the new landscape would entail or when reform might be forthcoming.
SEE ALSO: The Wall Street Journal
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Obvious intervention
Posted on December 3, 2008 at 9:26 pmChris Brown makes the case for a heath care system free of government intervention:
It is easy to criticize the US healthcare system, but we should be clear on one thing: it is not “free market” or “private” healthcare. A free market in healthcare would be more efficient and innovative, and offer better quality products and services, with lower prices than is currently the case.
In addition to the US government’s obvious socialist interventions with programs such as Medicare and Medicaid, there are a multitude of other measures that hinder innovation in healthcare — and we can expect only increased involvement under ObamaCare.
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Psych Solutions wins Treasure State deal
Posted on November 20, 2008 at 8:46 amPsychiatric Solutions (Ticker: PSYS) has signed a contract to open a mental-health wing at a Montana hospital next spring.
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