All Posts By

Kevin Roche

The Healthy Skeptic is a website about the health care system, and is written by Kevin Roche, who has many years of experience working in the health industry through Roche Consulting, LLC. Mr. Roche is available to assist health care companies through consulting arrangements and may be reached at khroche@healthy-skeptic.com.

Aug 01 2014

Physical therapy is widely prescribed for patients with hip arthritis pain.  A study in JAMA suggests that this is probably a waste of money.  A sham therapy was actually more effective than real physical therapy, perhaps an extreme example of placebo effect.  I love these kinds of studies.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1872817
Aug 01 2014

According to ZS Associates, physicians continue to make themselves less accessible to drug company sales representatives, with 49% placing moderate to strong restrictions on access compared to only 23% in 2008.

http://www.physiciansbriefing.com/Article.asp?AID=690176
Jul 31 2014

PE firm Great Hills Partners has acquired a majority stake in Qualifacts, a provider of EHR and billing software for behavioral health.

http://www.pehub.com/2014/07/great-hill-invests-in-qualifacts/
Jul 31 2014

A ResearchandMarkets report says that the health care analytics market will see 25% annual growth over the next five years.

http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/3l24ql/healthcare
Jul 31 2014

Pharmacy benefit manager Envision has acquired a competitor, MedTrak Services.

http://www.pehub.com/2014/07/tpg-backed-envision-agrees-to-buy-medtrak/
Jul 30 2014

Privacy analytics has received an additional $3.5 million in financing to advance its business of helping providers anonymize data to comply with privacy regulations.

http://venturebeat.com/2014/07/22/privacy-analytics-raises-3-5m-for-health-data-anonymization/
Jul 30 2014

Azeala Health, which provides cloud-based software for health systems, has merged with simplifyMD, a vendor of EHRs.

http://www.azaleahealth.com/azalea-health-announces-merger-simplifymd/
Jul 30 2014

A Viewpoint in JAMA summarizes e-visit companies and explores issues associated with their use that might affect quality.

http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=1853167
Jul 30 2014

Mednet Solutions, a provider of clinical trial management and electronic data capture software, has received a $4 million investment to grow its business.

http://www.mednetstudy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/12/2014-July-Arrowroot-Investment-in-MedNet-Solutions_FINAL.pdf
Jul 30 2014

Proteus, the maker of the "wired" pill that tracks compliance by reporting if it has been digested, has digested another  $172 million of financing.

http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20140729/NEWS/307299945?AllowView=VDl3UXk1TytDUDJCbkJiYkY0M3hlMFNyaGtVZER1TT0=&utm_source=link-20140729-NEWS-307299945&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=hits&utm_name=top
Jul 30 2014

According to a Black Book survey, hospitals are greatly increasing their use of coding and documentation vendors.

http://www.fiercehealthit.com/press-releases/clinical-documentation-improvement-heats-half-us-hospitals-expect-be-prepar?utm_medium=nl&utm_source=internal
Jul 29 2014

Now here is a spooky one--Emulate makes "organs on a chip" to help drug companies analyze and understand living tissue reactions to experimental compounds and has raised $12 million for that business.

http://www.pehub.com/2014/07/emulate-secures-12-mln-series-a/