Since many of you weren’t able to travel yet, I thought it would be fun to share some of the companies I met with at the MGMA Medical Practice Excellence Leaders conference that happened this week in San Diego. I get it that many budgets are stretched and some were just afraid of the risks of coming. Plus, I’ve heard from many that the optics of traveling to a conference right now are tough for a healthcare organization that’s still dealing with many of the challenges that COVID has placed on your organization.
Since I could easily drive down to the event from Las Vegas and the event was a fully vaccinated event that was largely self contained at the San Diego conference center, I felt quite safe at the event. Plus, MGMA did a good job of creating a lot of space for people to social distance if they wanted to as well. Like every event I’ve attended, the event was slightly smaller than usual, but the desire to engage with attendees and the joy of being together with people again was palpable. There’s just something about being together in person that can’t be replicated on Zoom or other online platform.
Here’s a quick picture run down of a few companies I talked with at the event and what they were sharing. We also have a video montage coming from a number of people we talked to at the event that we’ll share once it’s ready.
First up is Intrado. As you can see in the picture below, they offer an automated patient engagement platform. Healthcare IT Today readers may remember they acquired Asparia and so you may remember the healthcare chatbots they were creating with deep integration into the EHR. Let’s be honest. I think we’d all like more patient engagement and every medical practice appreciates well done automation.
Next up is Deputy. I’d never heard of them before, but they’re an application that helps with scheduling and managing shift work. Along with scheduling they also offer timesheet functionality that competes with some of the other big vendors out there like Kronos. While their solution works across multiple industries, they were also seeing some success with medical practices and home health. Staffing was identified as one of the biggest challenges medical practices face at the MGMA conference, so it makes sense that a solution like Deputy was at MGMA. I’ll be interested to see how they do in healthcare.
I had a chance to chat briefly with Paymentus Healthcare. Every medical practice needs a payments solutions and there are a number of options out there. I asked their rep what was interesting or new about what they were offering. He shared how they’d created a really deep integration with Paypal that was better than most of their competitors. It wasn’t just a superficial integration with Paypal. As someone who’s used Paypal for payments, I know how that deep integration can be a real time saver. I do wonder how many patients pay with Paypal. Maybe more than I realize since Paypal acquired Venmo too. I asked about crypto payments and he said, not yet.
I enjoyed talking with The Coding Network (TCN). I asked them how are things with coding and they said never enough good coders. I loved the qualification of “good” when it comes to coding. They aptly pointed out that coding is a cognitive skill and not everyone has that skill. Some are better at it than others. He said that it’s kind of like solving a suduku puzzle. Some people can easily do it in 20 minutes and others can’t. Coding was similar. I loved the comparison.
I always enjoy running into the people at rater8. They were thankful to be back at events. Many may remember their founder Evan Steele who was also the founder of EHR Vendor SRS Soft.
Evan wasn’t at the event, but his team at rater8 was still helping medical practices improve their online reputation and improve their practices using patient feedback. It’s a cool solution for medical practices.
I’ll admit that I wasn’t sure I’d enjoy talking with a medical collections company, but I enjoyed my conversation with Clint D. Owen from PFC USA. We all know that collections is a reality and PFC has been doing it since 1904. Chew on that one. In our conversation, Owen pointed out that what seems to make them different is that they approach healthcare collections with respect for the patient. Instead of the aggressive tactics of others, they try to work with the patient to a quality resolution. What’s interesting about this is that by approaching with some level of kindness and options to pay off the bill, they are able to still collect in an effective manner. We also talked about the impact of COVID-19 and lack of visits on collections and he shared that they still hit and exceeded their business goals.
Along with this nice Kate Spade purse giveaway that I decided to model for all my friends on social media, Healthmark Group was sharing about their ROI (Release of Information) solutions.
When I asked how they compared to other ROI solution providers, they shared how they provided a more comprehensive solution that went beyond just the release of information and included patient engagement. For example, they offer a patient intake solution as well which definitely is a unique addition. I hadn’t thought about an ROI company moving this direction, but in some ways it makes a lot of sense. Why not engage the patient on the front end to make the records request easier on the back end. I’m sure patients would appreciate that connection.
It was great to catch up with Elena Nestor at the nThrive booth. They were certainly excited by the news that just had broken about nThrive acquiring TransUnion Healthcare.
As their booth says, they offer End-to-end revenue cycle management. I think this new acquisition will extend those ends even further. No doubt, this was an important topic at MGMA as many practices figure out what life after COVID looks like.
I had a great conversation with the people at Nuance. They’re still riding the DAX high and interest from medical practices in automating their clinical documentation was high as well. It was great to see the Saykara team seamlessly integrated with Nuance after their acquisition and they were excited by Microsoft’s agreement to acquire Nuance as well. As they pointed out to me, there weren’t as many solutions in health IT that reduce the burden on clinical staff. Many are focused on billing and revenue instead of clinical. So, Nuance’s DAX is pretty novel in that way. If you want to learn more about Nuance’s DAX solution, check out this CIO Podcast with Craig Richardville where we talk about it.
Of course, the picture in front of the Nuance booth is with my friend and colleague, Joy Rios who does the HIT Like A Girl Podcast. It was fun to hear her plans for a Mexico Health IT retreat location are coming together. I’m sure she’ll share more details as plans are finalized. Go like and subscribe to her podcast. She and the women she features are great. Everyone needs a little more Joy in their life.
Obviously, this wasn’t a comprehensive look at the conference and exhibitors. However, hopefully it gives you a flavor of who was there and some of what they were sharing.
