What You Should Know:
- Miami-based EHR company CareCloud has agreed to pay $3.8 million to the federal government to settle a “qui tam” lawsuit filed on behalf of a whistleblower by Phillips & Cohen LLP that alleged CareCloud paid kickbacks to healthcare providers to boost sales of its EHR products.
- The “relator” (whistleblower) in the qui tam lawsuit, Ada de la Vega, was a senior manager at CareCloud who has since left the company and was awarded de la Vega approximately 21% of the
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CVS Health Launches $100M Fund to Invest in Early-Stage Digital Health Startups
What You Should Know:
- CVS Health announced the formation of CVS Health Ventures, a $100M corporate venture capital fund that will focus on companies with the potential for technology-enabled innovation and disruption in digital health care that are anchored in CVS Health's core strategy.
- CVS Health Ventures will build relationships with early-stage digital health companies via investment as well as by offering expertise and insights from CVS Health's unique perspective.
- To date,
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Cigna Becomes First Plan to Reimburse for Behavioral Health Coaching Via Ginger
What You Should Know:
- Cigna just announced that they’re the first national plan to reimburse for behavioral health coaching, a new covered benefit available now to 14M members through Ginger. Essentially, Cigna customers with employer-sponsored or individual and family (IFP) insurance plans (14M of their 16M members) can access Ginger’s behavioral health coaching, therapy, and psychiatry services as an in-network benefit.
- During the pandemic, Cigna saw a significant
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Accolade Acquires Virtual Primary Care Platform PlushCare for $450M
What You Should Know:
- Accolade, Inc. today announced an agreement to acquire PlushCare, a leading provider of virtual primary care and mental health treatment.
- Under the terms of the agreement, the purchase price of up to $450 million will consist of $40 million in cash, $340 million in Accolade common stock, and up to an additional $70 million of value payable upon the achievement of defined revenue milestones following the closing.
- The
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Decentralized Clinical Trials: Surviving & Thriving in the Clinical Research World of COVID-19
As with so many aspects of our daily lives, the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on clinical trials was both widespread and monumental. Thousands of trials—an estimated 80% of non-COVID-19 trials—came to a halt or were interrupted by the pandemic, which challenged the ability to conduct trials safely and effectively and was complicated by the reality that trials often deal with the populations most at risk from COVID-19 exposure1.
In response, clinical researchers turned to a range of
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Olive Acquires Surgical Analytics Platform Empiric Health – M&A
What You Should Know:
- Olive AI, the company delivering innovation to healthcare through artificial intelligence (AI), today announced the acquisition of Empiric Health, an AI-powered clinical analytics company that focuses on identifying unwarranted clinical variation, improving patient outcomes and increasing the affordability of surgery.
- Empiric's technology was initially developed at Intermountain Healthcare. In 2017, Intermountain Ventures spun out the Empiric technology and
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PHINs: Addressing the Fundamental Flaws that Have Broken Healthcare
The fundamental problem with healthcare can be summed up in one sentence: We expect healthcare services that cater to our individual needs, yet the health care system operates under a one-size-fits-all, trial-and-error model. It is a model that results in missed diagnoses, protracted illnesses, and even premature death and wastes $935 billion annually.
The financial toll of this outmoded approach pales in comparison to the human toll. More than 128,000 people in the U.S. die each year
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Q1 2021 Health IT/Digital Health PC/VE, M&A, IPOs/ SPACs Activity
The first quarter of 2021 has been one of investor optimism as the vaccine rollout continues ahead of expectations and economic activity begins to accelerate in response. Within the Health IT industry, the already strong investment and M&A trends seen in 2020 have only accelerated. Over the course of the quarter, we observed $7 billion in private equity and venture capital investment across 158 companies.
By comparison, Q1 of 2020 saw $3.2 billion and 127 investments. Health IT
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M&A: Microsoft Acquires Nuance for $20B to Accelerate Healthcare Cloud Strategy
What You Should Know:
- Today, Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) and Nuance Communications, Inc. (Nasdaq: NUAN) announced they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Microsoft will acquire Nuance for $16B. Financial terms of the all-cash deal details Microsoft paying $56 per Nuance share, a 23% premium over Friday’s closing price with a total value including debt at $19.7 billion.
- Microsoft’s acquisition
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How a Virtual Care Mindset Leads to Greater Patient Acceptance and Sustainable Telehealth Growth
There's no question that the demand for telehealth and virtual care has grown exponentially over the last twelve months. With that growth has come a fundamental shift in the attitude toward virtual care. No longer do patients and providers take a "let's try it" approach—now, it's "we must do it." This is evidenced by the number of telehealth claims filed. In 2020, telehealth claims skyrocketed, increasing by 2,938% in November 2020 versus November 2019 as patients demanded virtual options and as
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