The Advisory Board Company snagged physician referral and appointment scheduling startup, HealthPost, for around $25 million, executives disclosed in a conference call. It’s an interesting move because it overlooks higher profile scheduling platforms such as Vitals and ZocDoc. The Advisory Board Company’s motivations have a lot to do with the versatility of the cloud-based platform for both consumers and providers and helping healthcare systems retain and grow their patient base. It also complements the company’s previous acquisitions, such as CareTeam Connect.
HealthPost CEO Omar Alvi founded the business in 2011. It was designed to improve access and better coordinate care. The scheduling system Alvi developed not only helps members of a health system locate providers in their network, it also helps them schedule tests such as mammograms, bone density scans and X-rays as well as classes for new moms and patients considering elective surgery, which has the potential to be a huge driver for growth.
In a conference call with analysts, The Advisory Company CEO Robert Musslewhite and CFO Michael Kirschbaum commented on the HealthPost deal. In response to a question about the purchase price for the business, Kirschbaum said it was “right around … previous deals — $25 million.”
“We’re excited about it,” said Musslewhite. “I imagine we will have a program launch coming from it. It’s certainly very complementary to a lot of the work we do with Crimson Market Advantage ( a provider performance assessment tool developed as part of its acquisition of CareTeam Connect in November).
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Musslewhite said it chose HealthPost over higher profile scheduling tools not only for its ability to help consumers and hospitals but also what it can do for them. It can span across multiple electronic medical record environments, which most health systems are.
“We can show a health system which physicians refer all of their patients within the health network and which ones don’t,” Musslewhite said. “Essentially. if you think about broader network management and integration for health system, as many as half of referrals from entry points leak out for various reasons, either [patients] get referred outside of network, or they get referred and the patient doesn’t show up for their appointment. A lot of times doctors don’t refer patients to other doctors within the network…” It also provides a tool to help give providers visibility on best physicians to refer patients to, based on geography and other criteria.
He added: “You can take what HealthPost does and link it to everything we have been doing in the space. Network management integration is a huge problem for members. They can improve care coordination, reduce leakage across their care network, and drive growth to create new patient access.”