Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company Announces Acquisition of HealthBeacon PLC
Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company today announced that, through its Hamilton Beach Health subsidiary, it has acquired HealthBeacon PLC, a medical technology firm and strategic partner of the company. HealthBeacon develops connected devices that enable patients with chronic conditions to manage their injectable medication regimens at home and provides other health services. Gregory H. Trepp, President and Chief Executive Officer at Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company, said, “This acquisition is a key step in support of our strategic initiative to expand in the fast-growing home health and wellness market, and it...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 27, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Gregory H. Trepp Hamilton Beach Brands Holding Company Hamilton Beach Health Health IT Acquisitions HealthBeacon PLC Healthcare M&A Kieran Daly Rob George Source Type: blogs

Bonus Features – February 25, 2024 – 73% of digital health vendors use FHIR APIs, 83% of clinicians think telemedicine is good for chronic condition management, plus 28 more stories
This article will be a weekly roundup of interesting stories, product announcements, new hires, partnerships, research studies, awards, sales, and more. Because there’s so much happening out there in healthcare IT we aren’t able to cover in our full articles, we still want to make sure you’re informed of all the latest news, announcements, and stories happening to help you better do your job. News U.S. Reps Mike Kelly (R-PA) and Bill Foster (D-IL) introduced the Patient Matching and Transparency in Certified Health IT (MATCH IT) Act of 2024, which would standardize the way demographic information is entered into cer...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 25, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Brian Eastwood Tags: Healthcare IT Accenture Authenticx Availity AXYS Biofourmis Brightside Health Dandelion Health Digital Health Collaborative Edifecs EHR Association Experity FHIR API Healthcare IT Today Bonus Features Healthcare Legislation H Source Type: blogs

Bonfire Analytics Raises Oversubscribed $2M Venture Round to Accelerate Digital Health, Medical Device, & Biotech Adoption Across Healthcare Providers
Bonfire Analytics Closes its First Venture Round to Scale its AI-Driven Sales Intelligence Platform for Healthtech Companies along with Building a Powerful Foundational Dataset Consisting of 300M+ Lives Worth of Medical & Prescription Claims, 2M+ Providers, and 1,000+ Population Health Variables Bonfire Analytics announces the closing of its first venture round with key institutional investors including Impulsum Ventures, Wedbush Ventures, and Plug & Play Ventures, along with participation from the Alchemist Accelerator and Venture For America. The round will fuel product and growth initiatives to further Bon...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 22, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Alchemist Accelerator Bonfire Analytics Ed Wilson Health IT Funding Health IT Fundings Health IT Investment Impulsum Ventures Jaya Pokuri Plug & Play Ventures Venture For America Vinay Nagaraj Wedb Source Type: blogs

Leading Healthcare Payer Consulting Firm HealthScape Advisors Joins Chartis
This Acquisition Positions Chartis to Help Clients Achieve Transformational Healthcare Change Chartis, a leading healthcare advisory firm, today announced that it has acquired HealthScape Advisors, a leading healthcare payer consulting firm. Based in Chicago with 160 professionals, HealthScape helps payers across all segments, including commercial, Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, and federal, navigate the evolving healthcare landscape. The acquisition of HealthScape is Chartis’ next step to meaningfully expand its work in the healthcare payer segment, following its acquisition of crankfrog in 2022. HealthScape strengthens Chart...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 21, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Chartis crankfrog Greg Maddrey Health IT Acquisitions Healthcare M&A HealthScape HealthScape Advisors Kyle Stern Lincoln International LLC Ropes & Gray LLP Source Type: blogs

So what can we do about health care costs?
By MATTHEW HOLT Last week Jeff Goldsmith wrote a great article in part explaining why health care costs in the US went up so much between 1965 and 2010. He also pointed out that health care has been the same portion of GDP for more than a decade (although we haven’t had a major recession in that time other than the Covid 2020 blip when it went up to 19%). However, it’s worth remembering that we are spending 17.3% of GDP while the other main OECD countries are spending 11-12%. Now it’s true that the US has lots of social problems that show up in heath spending and also that those other countries probably spend ...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 20, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Matthew Holt Buzz Cooper Datmouth health spending Jeff Goldsmith John Wennberg Medicare Price controls Source Type: blogs

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New Medicare payment reforms will expand access to behavioral health services and elevate the importance of addressing beneficiaries’ social needs.        (Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog)
Source: The Commonwealth Fund: Blog - February 16, 2024 Category: International Medicine & Public Health Authors: Nathaniel Counts Source Type: blogs

Cohere Health Raises $50 Million in Equity to Meet Increased Demand for AI-Driven Transformation of Prior Authorization Process
New Funding Propels Cohere’s Expansion of Intelligent Prior Authorization Platform to Drive Better Payer-Provider Collaboration, Following CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization Final Rule Cohere Health, a recognized leader in clinical intelligence and prior authorization automation, announced it has closed $50 million in additional equity funding. The funding was led by Deerfield Management, with participation from Define Ventures, Flare Capital Partners, Longitude Capital, and Polaris Partners, and brings the total raised by Cohere to $106 million. The latest round of funding will fuel the company’s expa...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 16, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Healthcare IT News Tags: Health IT Company Healthcare IT Cohere Cohere Health Deerfield Management Define Ventures Flare Capital Partners Health IT Funding Health IT Fundings Health IT Investment Longitude Capital Michael Greeley Polaris Partners Siva Na Source Type: blogs

Medicare Drug Pricing Negotiations: Assessing Constitutional Structural Limits
James G. Hodge (Arizona State University), Joel Michaels (Arizona State University), Medicare Drug Pricing Negotiations: Assessing Constitutional Structural Limits (2023): A series of structural constitutional arguments lodged in multiple cases against Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services ’ (CMS) authorities to... (Source: HealthLawProf Blog)
Source: HealthLawProf Blog - February 16, 2024 Category: Medical Law Authors: Katharine Van Tassel Source Type: blogs

Concerning Health IT Trends: What Can We Do and What Happens if We Do Nothing?
There are so many exciting new ideas and technologies being implemented in the field of healthcare. For the most part, these changes can be the very necessary answer to a problem we’ve been facing for a long time. But sometimes, these changes can be concerning. While everyone seems to be excited about it, you might be left with questions and concerns about what its impact will be. These worries and concerns can be very isolating when the topic is trending with seemingly everyone else being excited for it. But you are not alone with your doubts – so let’s unburden ourselves and air out these concerns. What...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 15, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Grayson Miller Tags: AI/Machine Learning C-Suite Leadership Health IT Company Healthcare IT Hospital - Health System AVIA Health Brent Dover Calian IT & Cyber Solutions Carenet Health Carta Healthcare Caryn Hewitt CenTrak Christopher Rogers Dave Benn Source Type: blogs

A Few #HealthPolicyValentines
Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you!  May your lives be filled with love this day.  In the world of health IT and healthcare policy, this is the day we love to share our love (and some disdain) for healthcare in what we call #HealthPolicyValentines.  Be sure to check out our coverage of previous #HealthPolicyValentines as well as some that we found interesting this year below.  We hope you’ll enjoy a nice break this Valentine’s day. Roses are red, violets are blue CMS’s plan to abruptly migrate Medicare/Medicaid research to the expensive VRDC Will be bad for researchers and bad for health polic...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 14, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: John Lynn Tags: Healthcare IT #healthpolicyvalentines Fun Friday Health Policy Personal Musings Valentine's Day Source Type: blogs

Why Not, Indeed?
By KIM BELLARD Recently in The Washington Post, author Daniel Pink initiated a series of columns he and WaPo are calling “Why Not?” He believes “American imagination needs an imagination shot.” As he describes the plan for the columns: “In each installment, I’ll offer a single idea — bold, surprising, maybe a bit jarring — for improving our country, our organizations or our lives.” I love it. I’m all in. I’m a “why not?” guy from way back, particularly when it comes to health care. Mr. Pink describes three core values (in the interest of space, I’m excerpting his descriptions): Curi...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 14, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Adam Nagourney Daniel Pink Kim Bellard Why Not Source Type: blogs

Systematic review finds more clinical harm than benefits in Alzheimer ’s “treatments” lecanemab, aducanumab, and donanemab
CONCLUSIONS: Although monoclonal antibodies targeting amyloid provide small benefits on cognitive and functional scales in patients with Alzheimer dementia, these improvements are far below the MCID for each outcome and are accompanied by clinically meaningful harms. The Study in Context: Should doctors prescribe lecanemab (Leqembi) to women? The answer, given available evidence, is probably No First, do no harm? Six reasons to approach anti-amyloid drug Aduhelm cautiously, if at all Report: 35% of worldwide dementia cases could be prevented by modifying these 9 modifiable risk factors The post Systematic review fi...
Source: SharpBrains - February 9, 2024 Category: Neuroscience Authors: SharpBrains Tags: Brain/ Mental Health aducanumab Alzheimer's drug Alzheimers-treatment brain bleeds brain swelling cognition dementia donanemab FDA lecanemab Leqembi Medicare Mini-Mental State test minimal clinically important difference mono Source Type: blogs

Who to Blame for Health Costs: The Poisoned Chalice of “ Moral Hazard ”
By JEFF GOLDSMITH How the Search for Perfect Markets has Damaged Health Policy Sometimes ideas in healthcare are so powerful that they haunt us for generations even though their link to the real world we all live in is tenuous. The idea of “moral hazard” is one of these ideas.   In 1963, future Nobel Laureate economist Kenneth Arrow wrote an influential essay about the applicability of market principles to medicine entitled “Uncertainty and the Welfare Economics of Medical Care”.     One problem Arrow mentioned in this essay was “moral hazard”- the enhancement of demand for something people us...
Source: The Health Care Blog - February 8, 2024 Category: Consumer Health News Authors: matthew holt Tags: Health Policy Health Care Costs Jeff Goldsmith Kenneth Arrow Medicare Moral Hazard Source Type: blogs

Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances Set to Take Off
This article explains the complexities that makes it so hard to implement electronic prescribing for controlled substances (EPCS), summarizes the intended impacts of the bills, and introduces Imprivata digital identity technology, which has been used in health care for such purposes for many years. Calling the Cops Health care advocates and reformers can show off plenty of war stories and wounds just from dealing with regulations and bureaucracies in health care. When it comes to controlled substances, toss in the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) for extra suspense. State governments are also roped in thanks to thei...
Source: EMR and HIPAA - February 7, 2024 Category: Information Technology Authors: Andy Oram Tags: Clinical Health IT Company Healthcare IT Interoperability Regulations American Telemedicine Association ATA Colin Banas Controlled Substrances DEA DrFirst Electronic Prescribing Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances EPC Source Type: blogs