DrFirst, a pioneer in e-medication management software and services, today announced it has acquired certain assets of California-based The IN Group, a consulting services firm that helps hospitals using MEDITECH healthcare information systems optimize clinical and technical workflows in order to enhance patient safety, increase provider efficiency and meet regulatory requirements. Through the acquisition, The IN Group becomes a division of DrFirst, led by DrFirst’s Brad Block as president, and The IN Group founder Bruce Matthias as senior vice president.
“By combining the technical, clinical and data analytics resources of DrFirst with the consultative expertise of The In Group, we are achieving two distinct objectives,” said G. Cameron Deemer, president of DrFirst. “We can provide services targeted to the unique workflow and patient care challenges of individual sites, but we can also combine the experiences of those sites with information and analytics from our broad footprint of ambulatory and acute providers in order to amplify and make available those best practices across any or all of our client healthcare delivery organizations.”
Healthcare information systems (HIS) play an important role in patient lives by improving health outcomes and increasing safety. However, hospital workflows vary from facility to facility, impacted by such factors as medical specialties and services provided, payment models practiced and the needs of the surrounding patient population. As a result, an eco-system of consulting services frequently establishes around leading HIS systems such as MEDITECH, Epic, Cerner and others. These services help hospitals optimize and manage the HIS to best suit a hospital’s specific needs.
“By acquiring The IN Group,” said Block, “DrFirst can immediately provide a more comprehensive suite of end-to-end e-medication management best practices, supported by specialized clinical and HIS-specific subject matter expertise. In other words, we’re going to make sure our customers can make the most of their healthcare technology investments, with the goal of strengthening provider and patient satisfaction and, importantly, patient safety and healthcare outcomes.”
Founded in 2004, The IN Group provides a variety of consultative services for hospitals that use MEDITECH. This includes implementation, optimization and upgrade support, report writing, regulatory compliance improvement for Meaningful Use and ICD-10, as well as support for hospitals pursuing new payment models such as Patient-Centered Medical Home and Accountable Care.
“Joining the DrFirst family creates an exceptional opportunity to scale our expertise,” said Matthias. “We look forward to expanding the services we provide to MEDITECH HIS customers nationwide, and to extending our capabilities in order to support a wider array of provider organizations using other leading HIS systems.”
The acquisition of The IN Group is DrFirst’s second in 2016, following a year of very strong revenue growth as well as successful fund raising in 2015, including $25 million in equity financing from Goldman Sachs.
About DrFirst
DrFirst pioneers healthcare SaaS solutions that inform the doctor-patient point of encounter, optimize provider access to patient information, enhance the doctor’s clinical view of the patient, and improve care delivery and clinical outcomes. Our growth is driven by a commitment to innovation, security and reliability across a wide array of e-prescribing, e-medication management, secure texting and secure care collaboration services. We are proud of our track record of service to over 330 EMR/EHR/HIS partners and an extensive network of hospitals, post-acute care facilities, ambulatory practices and pharmacies nationwide.