ePACT Forms Automation

Clubessential Holdings, the leading provider of club membership management and payment solutions, today announced its strategic acquisition of ePACT Network Ltd., the recognized industry standard for emergency forms automation.

"Our mission in the parks and recreation industry is to empower communities to connect through next-generation software built upon decades of industry knowledge and experience, and personalized services and support," said Randy Eckels, CEO of Clubessential Holdings. "I'm thrilled with our latest acquisition of an organization that is so perfectly aligned with this mission. Stewart Aguanno and his team at ePACT have been committed for more than a decade to creating their easy-to-use software platform trusted by over five hundred customers and more than a million participants to keep their private health records secure and contact information accessible in the event of an emergency. We are excited about the expanded functionality ePACT adds to our integrated recreation management offering."

ePACT's online emergency network helps recreation departments, YMCAs, educational institutions, camps, childcare, youth sports, and many other organizations eliminate the paper forms used to collect emergency contact and medical information, waivers, and consents from families registering for their programs and services. Automating customizable electronic health records, waivers, vaccine tracking, COVID-19 health screening, contactless check-in/out, and emergency communications via text, email, and voice enables ePACT to significantly reduce the customer's heavy administrative workload. ePACT provides an industry-leading experience to patrons supplying information, mitigates risk for organizations, and ensures easy access to emergency information via website and mobile App even when offline.

"Our core goal at ePACT has always been to deliver a secure, market-leading solution to our valued customers. With the increase in demand for automating every aspect of the patron experience, we evaluated how to better serve our customers and support our partners while continuing ePACT's rapid expansion in the coming years," said Stewart Aguanno, CEO of ePACT Network Ltd. "Joining Clubessential Holdings, with its best-in-class reputation for technology in the parks and recreation space, allows us access to an expanded team of resources and a network to fuel expansion across North America with a trusted partner with whom we already integrate closely."

Through brands Vermont Systems and RecTrac, Clubessential Holdings has a four-year history as a valued ePACT integration partner. Its comprehensive recreation management and payment processing solutions provide program registration, ticketing, facility and court reservations, membership management, equipment rental, point of sale, childcare management, and much more. Vermont Systems and RecTrac increase efficiency and productivity while providing extensive reporting, comprehensive business intelligence, and an intuitive interface for community patrons of municipalities, golf clubs, colleges & universities, and the United States Military.

For more information, visit the Clubessential Holdings and Vermont Systems websites. 

ePACT Forms Automation

Clubessential Holdings logo

Breakthrough
Breakthrough, the leading patient demand platform

Within 72 hours, more than one hundred physical therapists signed Breakthrough's pledge to fix the healthcare system last week at the American Physical Therapists Association's Private Practice annual conference. By signing the PT pledge, they agreed to join a national campaign for a better, safer, more affordable healthcare system that educates patients about conservative care options. This is a major milestone in Breakthrough's mission to help 1 billion people solve their health challenges naturally by 2030.

"The current US healthcare system is not sustainable, affordable, or effective… It is, in fact, very harmful," said Chad Madden, MSPT, Co-Founder of Breakthrough.

Last weekend, Breakthrough shared staggering statistics about healthcare in the US with APTA conference attendees:

• US healthcare ranks at the bottom of nearly every major health statistic but is the most expensive worldwide: According to CMS, it surpassed $4.3 Trillion, 19.7% of the GDP in 2021.
• In 2021 US healthcare spending per person reached $12,956 annually. For perspective, that means healthcare now costs over 74% of the median household income for a family of four.
• The US wastes $460 billion on unnecessary & ineffective prescriptions & hospital care.
• In contrast, CMS reports that only $34 billion was spent on physical therapy and occupational therapy combined (that's 0.78% of total US healthcare expenditure).

Breakthrough's solution is Patient Demand.

People are often unaware they can choose the care that's right for them and avoid surgery or pills. Patient Demand refers to educational marketing and business strategy designed to increase public awareness for conservative care.

"People need to know the truth about what is best for their health. The way the current system works doesn't share how exercise and physical therapy can solve issues... Instead people are sent straight to risky surgeries or drugs, some with bad side effects. People need awareness so they can make the best decisions for themselves," said Carl Mattiola, Co-Founder of Breakthrough.

Breakthrough announced its new campaign and published PatientDemand.com on Nov. 2, 2022, at the annual conference of the American Physical Therapy Association's Private Practice Section (PPS). They printed an entire newspaper and delivered it in front of every hotel door, highlighting the grim state of US healthcare and inviting attendees to join the Patient Demand campaign.

The PT pledge includes:

• A commitment to educating the public about the truth of the US Health System, and the solutions that conservative care provides.
• A commitment to building patient demand and putting the choice of care in the hands of the patients themselves.

"Something has to change...fast."
~Amanda Lightsey, DPT, Lightsey Physical Therapy

"People need to know they have options. They get discouraged and think they have to live with their issues, so they limit themselves and their lives. We want to empower people to be more proactive and make better choices."
~Brooks West, Discover PT and Wellness

"I'm tired of time and money wasted on ineffective treatments. PT first...and PT for the win!"
~ Sean Weatherston, PT, OCS, CSCS, Altitude Physical Therapy

PatientDemand.com is currently collecting more pledges like these every day, with a goal of 1,000 pledges to start. 

The next phase is a nationwide commercial to the public, heightening public awareness of conservative care even more. There will also be a directory of pledging practices made available online.

About Breakthrough

Breakthrough is the leading patient demand platform for conservative care practices looking for consistent, predictable revenue growth. Co-founders Carl Mattiola and Chad Madden, MSPT, started their mission to "flip the pyramid" (put preventative care before surgery) in 2012. Ten years later, they have a massive following for their marketing education resources, digital marketing management, and powerful software products that have helped thousands of practices grow. The company offers tested and client-ready social media campaigns on Facebook, Instagram, Google, TikTok, as well as email and SMS campaigns, all made easily trackable with automated ROI reports.

More information about how to get involved and take the PT pledge is available at www.patientdemand.com.

HealthMe (https://healthmedocs.com) announced today that their price transparency and direct-pay platform has been selected by the largest independent orthopedic practices in Texas and California, in addition to several prestigious groups all recognized for their quality and outcomes. Golden State Orthopedics & Spine (GSOS), the Fondren Orthopedic Group (a division of OrthoLoneStar), and the Newport Orthopedic Group, the largest orthopedic and musculoskeletal group in coastal Orange County have all signed partnership agreements with HealthMe in the past 30 days.

This expansion signals the rapid growth of the HealthMe client base coupled with a nationwide expansion building upon a foundation of leading orthopedic practices in the Southeast US including the Center for Sports Medicine and Orthopaedics (CSMO) in Chattanooga, TN, OrthoSC, Tennessee Orthopedic Clinics, and more. As a result, HealthMe has developed one of the largest networks of US orthopedic surgeons, in practices ranging from 1 to 150 surgeons, that serve the growing population of self-pay patients.

"At GSOS, we are committed to bringing innovative, customized care to every patient, and an important part of that commitment is to present transparent pricing for our care," commented KC Campion, CEO of GSOS. "As price transparency becomes a key driver in the national healthcare conversation, it's vital that we anticipate changes in the healthcare landscape and reduce the complications of compliance around new federal and state regulations on price transparency. HealthMe is the right digital health partner to help us take the lead in this effort."

Michael Havig, MD, CEO and founder of HealthMe commented, "With the rapid growth of high-deductible health plans and self-insured small business, patients are becoming more proactive in their search for quality health care with pricing that is both easy to understand and is affordable." HealthMe believes that doctors should optimize their time focused on patient care and office staff should be more engaged with patients instead of complex paperwork. "Our mission is to help our partners achieve these goals, and our sustained and rapid growth is a testament to that effort."

About HealthMe™

Price transparency experts and transformers of the patient payment experience, HealthMe™ (https://healthmedocs.com) delivers an online platform that gives medical groups and practices a simple and proven solution to serve the growing population of Direct-Pay patients and health consumers. Founded and developed by doctors, HealthMe's revenue accelerator platform combines the best features of a consumer-friendly online marketplace with the security of a specialized healthcare payment processing solution. With validated success in automating the process of Good Faith Estimates (GFE's), HealthMe is the first company to provide GFE's in eleven languages. HealthMe helps patients find the best healthcare options while saving money on their care while streamlining administrative process for overburdened staff. 

 InterMed Resources Tennessee and UroViu Corp, a company that develops and commercializes highly portable single-use endoscopy platforms, announced their new partnership with InterMed Resources Tennessee as the exclusive distributor to HealthTrust Purchasing Group for all UroViu products.

Under the agreement, UroViu will sell its entire product line at a contracted price for distribution exclusively through InterMed Resources Tennessee to HealthTrust Purchasing Group's 1,600 member facilities throughout the United States.

"HealthTrust Purchasing Group represents a significant opportunity to access a large number of hospitals," said Bruce OuYang, President and CEO of UroViu Corp. "UroViu's cost-effective, ready-anytime, and time-saving solution will enable HealthTrust facilities to implement single-use cystoscopy and hysteroscopy, an efficient, safe, and reliable option for their patients, in clinics as well as acute and emergency care settings, eliminating the need for dedicated procedure rooms."

The single-use platform ranges from a 12-Fr diagnostic semi-rigid cystoscope and equivalent hysteroscope, a 14-Fr injection cystoscope with an integrated needle for drug delivery, to a flexible, deflectable, and rotatable 16.5-Fr cystoscope. Single-use endoscopy is a safe and reliable alternative to traditional reusable scopes that must be cleaned and sanitized after every use. The difficulty of servicing traditional scopes has led to FDA scrutiny due to inherent cross-contamination risks. UroViu's single-use scopes eliminate those risks.

"InterMed Resources is constantly on the search for the most innovative, cost-effective technology to deliver cutting-edge healthcare resources to our partners," pointed out Roger Biles, CEO of InterMed Resources. "We are very excited about what UroViu can deliver for HealthTrust members and their patients."

About UroViu Corporation

UroViu Corporation's mission is to revolutionize the endoscopy platform for improved patient care and provider efficiency with operations in California and Washington and production facilities in Asia. UroViu is the developer of the always-ready cystoscopy & hysteroscopy platforms, the highly portable, self-contained, and versatile single-use endoscopy solution to meet the needs of Urologists, UroGynecologists, and Gynecologists. The unique portable platform and product suite are protected by a portfolio of 20+ patents granted worldwide and many more pending patents. UroViu's vision is to simplify the scope of patient care. For more information, please visit www.uroviu.com.

About InterMed Resources TN

InterMed Resources, located in Brentwood, Tennessee, is a minority-owned business that provides national and corporate consulting and contract management services to a variety of medical device manufacturers and suppliers focused on acute care, surgery centers, hospitals, long-term care, and physician markets. InterMed specializes in representing innovative medical device companies and suppliers in small and medium business market segments. Its management team has extensive clinical, sales, distribution, and national contracting experience (over 50 years collectively) in medical devices.

Virufy

Lessons learned from the COVID-19 pandemic underscore the need for more rapidly scalable, low-cost, and broadly available approaches in responding to public health emergencies. Digital tools like smartphone or web-based applications present opportunities for new classes of medical countermeasures that could complement traditional approaches. Aiming for easy detection of Covid-19, Virufy has created an IA-based app that should make the diagnosis of the disease more inclusive.

Through AI/ML algorithms, smartphone and computer applications can use images and audio captured with the phone or computer's existing hardware to assess aspects of a person's health. Health-related image and audio recordings contain much more information than the human eye or ear alone can process, but AI/ML algorithms could be used to process that information, detect differences and patterns among images and sounds, and identify disease signatures. These digital tools could empower individuals with actionable information about their infection status or acute skin condition and symptoms so that they can self-isolate and seek medical care if appropriate.

Virufy is developing an app that uses a few seconds of cough audio, collected through a smartphone or computer microphone, to identify cough patterns indicative of a current COVID-19 infection. Virufy has demonstrated this capability based on an analysis of several thousand samples from international clinical networks and through crowdsourcing. With DRIVe's support, Virufy will conduct additional clinical studies to refine and test their algorithm. Virufy will also initiate proof-of-concept work on AI algorithms to screen for other respiratory diseases based on cough audio.

VisualDx aims to create an AI/ML algorithm that analyzes user-provided skin lesion images together with a symptom questionnaire on a smartphone app. The algorithm can provide information on the indicated disease and other similarly presenting conditions. If successful, this project would demonstrate the power of AI/ML-based image analysis for easily and rapidly accessible symptom checking for potentially any pox-based virus such as smallpox or monkeypox, and provide a digital health solution that could be modified easily in a future outbreak.

BARDA's 2022-2026 Strategic Plan emphasizes the importance of preparing for future public health emergencies by collaborating with innovators to develop medical countermeasures that can help save lives. Cutting-edge, digital guidance tools that can pivot and be brought to scale in response to new threats could aid in public health response. These DRIVe projects, if successful, could demonstrate the power of these tools to rapidly respond to other threats such as influenza and smallpox.

These awards have been made under the Easy Broad Agency Announcement (EZ-BAA) area of interest (AOI) #9: Digital Medical Countermeasures.

This project has been funded in part with Federal funds from HHS/ASPR and BARDA, under Contract No. 75A50122C00034.