Mergers & Acquisitions

Execs hope deal will turn system developed for UPMC into one that could be adapted for other health systems and hospitals.

The move comes almost a year after Mayo first announced it would replace its existing electronic health record system with one from Epic.

Navigant Consulting has acquired revenue cycle-focused McKinnis Consulting Services for $49 million in cash and $3 million in common stock, the companies announced on Monday. The deal means more than 70 of McKinnis’ consultants will join Navigant, and all three McKinnis founders, James McHugh, Timothy Kinney, and John Morris, will join Navigant’s revenue cycle leadership team.  Chicago-based McKinnis Consulting Services offers revenue cycle assessment services to clients including academic medical centers, health systems and physicians groups. Navigant is a global firm with clients in the healthcare, energy and financial services industries offering professional services in areas including financial planning, risk management and business process management. “The McKinnis transaction is purpose-driven to expand our RCM capabilities at a time when health system margins are under greater scrutiny,” said David Zito, managing director and Navigant healthcare segment leader.  “The McKinnis professionals, which include the firm’s founders, further complement our ability to help clients navigate through the disruptions in the healthcare sector.” McKinnis has worked with major health systems including Indiana’s Parkview Health, which it helped manage through its Epic electronic health records integration, and John Muir Health in California, which it helped overhaul its revenue cycle systems. In fact, Mckinnis said it helped John Muir see a 98 percent increase in self-pay yield, 9 percent increase in third-party liability yield and a 20 percent increase in point-of-service cash collections. Twitter: @BethJSanborn

NantHealth on Tuesday announced plans to acquire Boston-based NaviNet, wrapping up what it called a 10-year plan for the tech firm, CEO Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, said. Under terms of the deal, NantWorks, a holding company, and its majority-owned subsidiary NantHealth, are buying NaviNet for an undisclosed sum. The deal gives NantHealth entry into the payer market and strengthens its personalized medicine goals. NaviNet is known for its payer-provider collaboration technology. NantVentures, the private equity arm of NantWorks participated in the financing. “The acquisition of NaviNet completes our 10-year vision at NantWorks and NantHealth to integrate and coordinate our complex healthcare ecosystem from the knowledge domain, to the care delivery domain and now to the payer domain, as a single sign-on, seamless, cloud-based, secure adaptive learning system for patients, payers, and providers,” Soon-Shiong, founder and CEO of NantHealth, said in statement. The billionaire entrepreneur is quoted in the Los Angeles Business Journal as saying a public offering for NantHealth, which had been planned for last year, had been delayed pending the acquisition and integration of NaviNet. The acquisition continues NantHealth’s vision of delivering on whole health systems integration and revolutionizing the patient-clinician experience by bringing real-time molecular and evidence-based insights to the point of care, he said. NaviNet has a customer base of more than 40 health plans and nationwide network of more than 450,000 users. Its All-Payer Access provider portal connects more than 450 commercial and government plans via NaviNet Open, its payer-provider collaboration platform. “This cloud-based system allows provider access to over 90 percent of covered lives in the United States and will serve as a transformative platform for the communication of cutting-edge knowledge to all,” said Soon-Shiong. “By combining NaviNet Open’s applications – eligibility and benefits from more than 450 commercial and government plans, referrals, authorizations, document exchange, claims management, and more – with NantHealth’s interoperability, decision support and connectivity platforms and with NantOmics supercomputer predictive modeling platforms, we are now poised to be the nation's leading healthcare collaboration network by transforming the payer-provider relationship to evolve from transactions to interactions and finally to collaboration,” he added NantHealth will be able to leverage NaviNet’s nationwide network across more than 170,000 active provider offices and 2,000 hospital settings to reach more doctors with genomics, decision support and connectivity solutions to enable better care coordination at lower costs for patients. “Our dream was to address the cognitive overload that faces clinicians today especially in the complexity of cancer, and support community oncologists as well as major academic centers,” he said. “Finally, we have the infrastructure in place to make this a reality.” Twitter: @HealthITNews

Iselin, New Jersey-based Indegene will buy SmartCare, a population health analytics platform, from Vantage Point.

It's that time of year when healthcare pundits take stock of the waning year and predict what's in store the year ahead. PwC's Health Research Institute is out with its 10 anticipated healthcare trends for 2016.

Kaiser Permanente will acquire Seattle-based Group Health. Executives from both health systems, each known for early adoption of healthcare IT, announced their plans today.

In a deal that will have implications for rural and community hospitals as well as the post-acute care market, Computer Programs and Systems announced Nov. 25 that it would acquire rival Healthland Holding and its affiliates for $250 million.

Global health IT, management and outsourcing company Accenture has finalized its agreement to acquire Sagacious Consultants, an electronic health record consulting practice.

Lots of hospitals are snapping up clinics and physician practices. One major consultancy recommends they also consider acquiring digital health startups and other vertically-integrated companies.