Business Briefs: Royal Philips Announces Acquistion of Wellcentive

Royal Philips Acquires Wellcentive

Royal Philips has announced its acquisition of the US-based provider of population health management software solutions, Wellcentive.

The acquisition will expand Philips’ population health management business. Once the deal is signed, Wellcentive and its employees will become part of the population health management business group within Philips, which will be led by CEO of Wellcentive, Tom Zajac.

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Philips’ portfolio currently offers enterprise telehealth, home monitoring, personal emergency response systems (PERS) and personal health services. Wellcentive will add cloud-based IT solutions to their portfolio.

“With this strategic acquisition, we will strengthen our population health management business and its leadership as health systems gradually shift from volume to value-based care, and provide more preventative and chronic care services outside of the hospital,” said Jeroen Tas, Philips’ CEO of Connected Care & Health Informatics. “Our sweet spot is at the point of care as we give consumers, patients, care teams and clinicians the tools, such as remote monitoring solutions and therapy devices, to optimize care. Wellcentive’s solutions will provide our customers with the ability to collect data from large populations, detect patterns, assess risks and then deploy care programs tailored to the needs of specific groups.”

The addition of cloud-based IT solutions will involve integrating Wellcentive’s applications into the Philips HealthSuite cloud, which is the company’s digital enabler for the next generation of connected health solutions. The HealthSuite cloud aims to improve patient outcomes, care team efficiency and prevent patients form entering the hospital, where costs are higher.

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Procura Announces EVV for ContinuLink Implemented 

Procura has completed the testing and launch of functionality and integration to fully support the Texas Medicaid’s Electronic Visit Verification (EVV) Mandate. The functionality has been implemented into the cloud-based ContinuLink product by Procura.

Procura’s support of the EVV Mandate permits current customers, as well as future customers, to deploy ContinuLink as their enterprise management software.

The ability to use a single end-to-end system to handle Medicaid cases rather than having to utilize another system to manage EVV mandate requirements is the primary benefit of this development for home health providers in Texas.

Providence St. Joseph Acquires Medicast

Washington-based health system Providence St. Joseph has acquired Medicast, a company that helped launch the mobile-enabled physician house call trend.

Providence St. Joseph has a $150 million venture fund focused on health care innovation and a digital innovation group. Just a few days after announcing the acquisition, one hospital in the network already launched a new telehealth service called Health eXpress, which offers video visits with nurse practitioners for $39 per video visit.

Medicast was founded in late 2012 and launched in 2013 in select cities,including Miami, Los Angeles and San Diego. In 2014, they participated in Sprint’s Mobile Health Accelerator in Kansas City and were also members of StartUp Health, which offers in-person house calls set up via a mobile app.

Medicast will continue to operate as it did before, but has promised “some exciting things in the pipeline” post-acquisition.

Homecare Homebase Will Integrate Surescripts’ Medication History

Homecare Homebase announced plans to integrate a medication history for reconciliation service in to their software solution. This will allow Homebase to interface with Surescripts to obtain the most recent medication history reconciliation.

The electronic medication history by Surescripts helps reduce expensive adverse drug events and associated readmissions by providing a more complete and up-to-date medication history.

The network is made to eliminate manual transcription errors and unreported drugs. The mediation history for reconciliation delivers a 13-month view of a patient’s medication history information to their HCHB medical record.

Phoebe Ministries and Comforting Home Care Announce Partnership 

Phoebe Ministries has partnered with Comforting Home Care, a home care agency based in the Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. The partnership will provide in-home services to independent Phoebe residents and people in the Lehigh Valley area.

“At-home care is now one more service we are able to offer to our residents and their families,” said Scott Stevenson, president and CEO of Phoebe Ministries. “It allows our independent living and personal care residents the resources to stay in their residences longer, and also streamlines care services and finances to ensure seamless care across the Phoebe continuum.”

This partnership is the first time Phoebe has ventured into the field of home care services. As of right now, Phoebe has four CCRCs, eight affordable housing facilities, home and community services and two pharmacies.

AgeOptions Announced Partnership with AmeriCorps

In a partnership between AgeOptions and AmeriCorps, veterans and active military families who care for older adults and adults with disabilities will be provided with in-home respite care for support.

To qualify for care, the recipient must be 60 or older, though there are a few exceptions for those under 60 who have cognitive related illnesses, and must be a veteran or family member of veterans or active military members.

AgeOptions Legacy Corps will support families in Todd County and Wadena County, Minnesota.

Written by Alana Stramowski

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