Patient engagement and education platform PatientPoint is merging with rival Outcome Health to create a new platform named PatientPoint Health Technologies, which is focused on facilitating patient-clinician communications.
This news comes over a year after news broke that Outcome Health and its executive team faced a slew of legal battles over falsified advertising practices.
While the companies revealed that the new entities will be operating under the PatientPoint brand, the terms of the agreement weren't disclosed.
The new patient engagement platform will be led by PatientPoint's leadership team, including CEO Mike Collette, Chief Client Officer Linda Rushau, CFO Pat O'Brien and Chief Provider Officer Chris Martini. Outcome Health's technology leadership Glenn Keighley and Sean Barden will be joining the new entity's engineering and information team.
WHY IT MATTERS
The deal will merge the pair's clients, boosting their overall business. According to the announcement, the combined offering will reach roughly 150,000 providers, equating to 750 million patient visits.
"This timely, strategic transaction both underscores our commitment to growth, and to offering our high-value, tech-enabled patient engagement solutions to as many providers as possible to help them meet the demands of a rapidly evolving healthcare industry," Collette said in a statement.
"By leveraging the best talent and technology from both PatientPoint and Outcome Health, we will be well positioned to expand our suite of innovative patient engagement solutions to deliver improved patient outcomes and a more personalized, relevant patient experience as well as enhanced scale and efficiency for our healthcare sponsors."
THE LARGER TREND
Outcome Health has had a bumpy road over the last few years. In October of 2019, the company agreed to a $70 million settlement alongside an admission that the company’s former executives and employees sold falsified advertising inventory from 2012 to 2017.
Just a month later, news broke of a criminal indictment filed in the Northern District of Illinois. The filing outlined charges against former CEO and cofounder Rishi Shah, former President and cofounder Shradha Agarwal, former CFO Brad Purdy and former EVP Ashik Desai, alleging a $1 billion scheme to defraud clients. Currently, the former executives are awaiting trial. According to the Chicago Tribune, Shah, Agarwal and Purdy pled not guilty to the charges, and Desai pled guilty to his role in the scheme.
PatientPoint has been on the scene for quite some time. In 2017, the company landed $140 million to expand its digital patient and physician education footprint. Since then, it's made a number of partnerships. In 2019, the company teamed up with the American Medical Association to help improve the prevention, identification and management of Type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease.
