Dive Brief:
- Seattle-based SCI Solutions this week announced it will acquire tech company DatStat for an undisclosed sum.
- DatStat's portfolio of patient engagement tools, including pre-visit preparation and visit summaries and care plans, will be added to SCI's suite, including patient scheduling, referral management and revenue cycle software tools.
- Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Dive Insight:
The deal is the latest sign that health IT M&A is an area to watch in 2018.
With the shift to value-based care, patient engagement and engagement and revenue cycle management are becoming key to an organization’s bottom line. While 58% of healthcare leaders place a high priority on use of digital tools to increase consumer engagement, just 14% have the capabilities to actually advance in this area, according to a recent Kaufman Hall survey.
A conflux of factors is fueling these unions, including a saturated EHR market, new MACRA and MIPS performance metrics and a shift toward consumer-centric payment models. Companies are looking for ways to diversify or broaden their revenue streams and extend geographic and customer reach.
Mergers in health IT is a means to add tools or code to a portfolio quickly to become more competitive.
Last August, Allscripts purchased McKesson’s hospital IT portfolio. The EHR vendor followed that up with January’s purchase of its cloud-based competitor Practice Fusion for $100 million.
Roche purchased oncology EMR Flatiron Health for $1.9 billion last month.
More recently, R1 RCM acquired fellow revenue cycle management firm Intermedix for about $460 million. The merger expands R1’s footprint in the revenue cycle space and strengthens its capability to integrate revenue cycles across care settings.