Dr. Owen Muir on the potential of TMS for treating depression.

Digital Health

Laudio Lands $13M to Tackle Burnout

Workforce management startup Laudio landed a $13M Series B round to tackle labor productivity and burnout, two challenges proven large enough to attract funding in any environment. 

Unlike staffing solutions aimed at adding more people, Laudio helps retain the talent healthcare organizations have already invested in by automating repetitive work and nudging managers toward next best actions.

• Laudio’s AI-driven software automates tasks such as employee rounding, new hire check-ins, quality audits, and overtime assessments. It also helps with reminders for events like employee birthdays and work anniversaries. 

• Example: If a nurse has worked several consecutive shifts with new employees, Laudio will alert the manager to reach out and thank them, deliver scheduling recommendations, and suggest follow-ups.

Laudio plans on using the funding to build out its AI capabilities and recommendation engine, while adding more partnerships with health systems throughout the country.

• Over 20 health systems already use Laudio, and it attributes its early success to its focus on becoming an all-in-one platform for frontline managers, who frequently turn to a variety of point solutions for quality audits and employee engagement.

• Laudio counts major systems like Novant and UNC Health among its early adopters, and reports that the platform has reduced RN turnover by 26% by driving a single meaningful interaction every month between frontline managers and nursing team members.

The Takeaway

Health systems have been stuck in a vicious cycle of high turnover leading to burned out workers leading to even more turnover. If Laudio can use its Series B funds to prove it can break that chain, it’ll have no shortage of hospitals lined up to streamline the workflows of their frontline managers.

Goodbye Staffing Shortages, Hello Peace of Mind

connectRN, the leading nurse community, provides highly qualified, W2 clinicians at rates you can count on. Post shifts, build relationships, and keep your community staffed with connectRN’s user-friendly platform.

Upgrade Your Prescribing Workflows

Whether you’re a care delivery organization or building products that have prescribers, there’s no need to build your prescribing workflow from scratch. Find out how connecting your prescribers to clinical decision support powered by real-time drug data can help provide the patient-centered insights needed for medication success.

Patient-Centered Design for Diabetes Care

Glooko’s recently overhauled Mobile App makes it easier than ever for diabetes patients to organize, log, visualize, and share their data. Head over to this conversation with Glooko’s product and design team for a behind-the-scenes look at how patient-centered design is improving diabetes outcomes.

The Wire

• TMS Effective in Real-World Settings: A real-world follow-up of 1,351 patients with major depression demonstrated that the most likely outcome of deep transcranial magnetic stimulation (Deep TMS) with the “H1” stimulator – an FDA-approved medical device – was remission. Thirty sessions of Deep TMS led to a 65.3% remission rate, which seems to indicate that TMS is significantly more effective than the standard of care. This article from one of the study’s authors does a good job explaining how current reimbursement models and oral antidepressants prescribed as dictated by “fail first” health plans have been getting in the way of new treatments.

• The Wound Company Launch: The Wound Company (TWC) emerged from stealth with $4.3M in seed funding to offer hybrid care from its team of highly trained wound care and ostomy nurses, as opposed to the traditional model of using PCPs, specialists, or RNs. Those nurses create personalized treatment plans and stay connected with patients over text, phone, and video, although TWC plans to expand its in-person services in the coming months. TWC works with Medicaid and Medicare Advantage as a preferred provider through VBC contracts.

• US Healthcare Expenditures to Hit $7.2T: CMS is now predicting that a surge in Medicare spending will push US healthcare expenditures to $7.2 trillion by 2031, up from $4.3 trillion last year. The projections anticipate that the combination of an aging population and federal policy changes will grow Medicare costs 7.5% annually between 2022 and 2031, outpacing GDP’s expected 4.6% annual growth. The IRA’s new $2,000 cap on Medicare Part D enrollees’ OOP costs will likely be a significant cost driver before the effects of drug price negotiations kick in later in the decade.

• Enhancing the Clinical Experience: An excellent new CareOps article breaks down why care delivery orgs in the midst of a clinical talent war should prioritize Care Experience (CareEx) to attract and retain clinicians. The piece outlines the five dimensions of CareEx (cognitive load, flow state, feedback loops, emotional/psychological stress, control/autonomy), as well as a framework for improving each dimension to boost clinician productivity and satisfaction. Definitely worth checking out for anyone managing a clinical workforce. 

• Therapy Preferences and Misconceptions: A Brightside Health survey (n=714) published in JMIR Formative Research found that 78% of people receiving mental health treatment prefer online therapy to in-person appointments, or have no preference between the two. Researchers also pointed to several patient misconceptions that providers might want to address with their marketing campaigns, including that many individuals incorrectly assume therapy is a lifetime commitment: 35% thought therapy duration was indefinite, 14% selected 6-12 months, and 8% selected 1-3 months.

• Carta Closes Series B: Carta Healthcare closed its $25M Series B round as it looks to automate clinical data abstraction, or the process of pulling relevant data from medical records and standardizing it to fill out hospital database forms. Carta raised the first $20M of the round in November, but received $5M in additional investments from Memorial Hermann Health System and UnityPoint Health to expand its focus beyond hospitals’ cardiology units to new specialties such as oncology and neurology. The startup’s Series B pitch deck is posted online for a closer look at how the sausage is made.

• Alcohol’s CVD Benefits: MGH researchers found that light-to-moderate alcohol consumption (1-2 drinks/day for men, 1/day for women) reduces people’s risk of future cardiovascular events. The researchers first analyzed over 50k Biobank participants, finding that light/moderate alcohol consumption was associated with a “substantial reduction” in major adverse cardiovascular events. They then analyzed PET/CT brain scans from 754 individuals, finding that people who were light/moderate drinkers had lower stress signaling in their brains, as well as fewer heart attacks and strokes.

• Concert + Froedtert: Concert Health is partnering with Wisconsin-based Froedtert Health to improve access to behavioral health services for pediatric, women’s health, and primary care patients. Froedtert physicians can now refer their patients directly to Concert’s team of mental health clinicians that works alongside the referring provider to ensure a consistent level of care. The Collaborative Care Model is geared toward putting primary care providers at the center of a patient’s behavioral health journey to improve access and eliminate stigma.

• Vasectomies on the Rise: A recent analysis of Komodo Health data from The Economist found that the overturning of Roe. v. Wade in June of last year was associated with a 29% increase in vasectomies between July and September, and a 17% increase in the six months after the ruling. Survey data from 2019 shows that 6.9% of the male population aged 18-45 has had a vasectomy (up from 5.4% in 2002), with those figures climbing the fastest in states such as Texas and Arizona where “trigger bans” severely limited abortions after the ruling (vasectomies up 41%).

• Octave Scores $52M: Hybrid behavioral healthcare provider Octave scored $52M in Series C funding to expand its reach as it aims at having a presence in all 50 states by 2024. Octave provides in-network care for employer-sponsored health plans through several payors, offering personalized care plans and outcome tracking for individuals, couples, and families.

• Docs Harassed on Social Media: There’s a downside to doctors using social media for public health advocacy. A study in JAMA Network Open found that two-thirds of physicians have been attacked on social media, mostly for advocacy on topics like firearms, vaccinations, and abortion access. Researchers surveyed 359 physicians, finding that 66% reported harassment on social media, with high levels of gender- and race-based harassment (45% and 27%).

Patient Engagement for a VP of Patient Experience

Nuance’s patient engagement guide for hospital execs gives a patient’s-eye view of the engagement experience and explores what the growing demand for convenient interactions means for the VP of Patient Experience.

How Medallion Helped Skintap Launch in 15 States

In order to launch and scale, Skintap had to build a network of dermatologists who could see patients across the US. Learn how Medallion helped Skintap’s providers get licensed in over 15 states in less than four months – without any headaches and well before their launch date.

Successful RPM Through End-to-End Support

From needs assessments and program deployment to security enhancements and call center monitoring, Clear Arch Health offers fully customizable support services to help you get the most from your RPM solution.