Document management and HIPAA-compliant communication company Forcura has merged with the predictive analytics firm Medalogix. The combined companies will create a post-acute care technology platform aimed at helping the home-based care industry provide intelligent patient care.
Under the agreement, Berkshire Partners will be the majority owner of the combined organization, and The Vistria Group will be the minority shareholder. The merger between Forcura and Medalogix has roots in a long-standing relationship between the two companies.
“We have partnered in a variety of marketing events, over the course of the last several years, because we both have a large presence in home health and hospice,” Elliott Wood, president and CEO of Medalogix, told Home Health Care News. “We had great experience doing those events together. We also have some key synergy opportunities with our products. For a while now, we’ve been discussing an opportunity for these platforms to actually be integrated to create additional efficiency and saving opportunities for our customers through additional automation.”
Annie Erstling, president at Forcura, noted that the two companies have similar cultures.
“We’re very mission driven in the way we approach work,” she told HHCN. “Our mission at Forcura has been to empower better patient care, and it’s very aligned with Elliott and the Medalogix team. We think about how to help the home-based care providers make faster, smarter and better decisions.”
The merger will also allow Medalogix and Forcura to share additional data with upstream providers that are referring patients.
Additionally, the merger will also help make the referral to admissions process less complicated for home-based care providers.
“Part of the vision … is also giving our customers one platform to really manage that entire process, from referral all the way through admission, through episode management and to discharge,” Wood said. “We believe that’s a huge value add for our customers to have just one platform to manage that, as opposed to having to work with three or four vendors just for that one process.”
Currently, Medalogix and Forcura are working through a long-term plan to integrate the two companies. In the short term, the companies will run the businesses independently.
Along these lines, the companies are still in the process of re-branding under one name, which is to be determined.
“The plan is definitely to have one organization, and you’ll see that happen at some point,” Erstling said. “Both companies have really a very strong reputation and brand equity. We’re going to do the work to figure out what the right long-term name for the company is. We don’t have any final decision on that.”
Ultimately, both companies are focused on helping home-based care providers increase connectivity across the care continuum.
“The ability just to share clinical care in real-time back upstream with those providers is going to be monumental,” Erstling said. “We are also adding the ability for those community-based physicians to be able to refer patients directly into the home health or hospice environment.”
