Sword Health CEO Virgílio Bento

Remote Care

TytoCare Lands $49M to Expand to Chronic Care

TytoCare is $49M closer to making virtual primary care a reality after landing a Series D extension to help expand its portfolio of remote diagnostic solutions.

One of telehealth’s biggest hurdles has been the difficulty of conducting remote physical exams, which is exactly what TytoCare’s Home Smart Clinic sets out to address.

The Home Smart Clinic is a modular handheld device with different attachments that allow patients to conduct their own ear, throat, heart, and lung screenings.

• These exams can either be guided by a live video chat with a physician, or performed asynchronously with the results transmitted to the care team.

• That’s also backed by Tyto Insights smart diagnosis support, as well as the Tyto Engagement Labs suite of user-engagement and tracking services.

CEO Dedi Gilad told STAT that the funding increased TytoCare’s valuation and provided enough runway to break even over the next few years as the company sets its sights on an eventual public offering.

The round will also accelerate TytoCare’s expansion into chronic conditions that require more management than the occasional virtual visit, such as asthma and COPD.

• TytoCare recently received FDA Clearance for its first longitudinal care module for Wheeze Detection, which analyzes sounds recorded by the stethoscope attachment for signs of respiratory issues.

• It’s also worth mentioning that TytoCare is taking full advantage of its massive remote exam data set to train the AI models that serve as the backbone of its diagnostic support, and the Wheeze Detection module was apparently trained on the largest lung sound database of its kind.

The Takeaway

We’ve covered plenty of studies highlighting telehealth’s limitations when it comes to accurate remote diagnosis, and TytoCare is leading the charge to make virtual care viable for more conditions. The Home Smart Clinic gives TytoCare a key advantage over competitors that rely solely on video to try to replicate the experience of a doctor’s visit at home, and the modular design is a solid foundation for bolting on new functionality down the road.

Clear Arch Health Reduces Readmissions at Altru

When Altru Health System set out to reduce hospital readmissions, it turned to Clear Arch Health to find the solution. Learn how Clear Arch Health’s complete RPM platform and clinical monitoring system helped Altru lower readmissions while improving post-acute care quality.

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.

The Wire

• Nurses Turn to Side Hustles: A new survey of 1,300 nurses from connectRN and The Nursing Beat found that half of nurses are now turning to entrepreneurship for extra income. Eight in ten nurses said they have ambitions to start their own business, and 26% are already planning on leaving the profession to make their side hustle their full time job. Nurses that joined the profession during the pandemic are even more keen to trade long hours at the bedside for entrepreneurship, with 50% looking to commit to their side hustle full time.

• CVS Q2 Report: CVS posted a mixed bag of a second quarter, beating expectations with $88.9B in revenue (up 10% YoY) but seeing net income slashed by a third to $1.9B due to heavy M&A integration costs. CEO Karen Lynch made it clear on the call that CVS is going all-in on Oak Street as a major growth driver, with plans to open 50+ clinics in 2024 as it starts shifting toward a co-located model. CVS also announced that it’s shedding 5,000 mostly corporate positions to help rein in expenses during the Oak Street acceleration, surprisingly less than 2% of its total workforce. 

• Pfizer Cost-Cutting: Cost-cutting seemed to be a common theme for Q2 earnings, with Pfizer also looking to manage losses after low uptake of its COVID vaccine caused revenue to plunge 54% to $12.7B. In January, Pfizer projected that it would administer 60M shots in the U.S. during 2023, yet only 12.4M doses of any COVID vaccine have been administered through the first six months of the year.

• Weight Loss Drug Drawbacks: A KFF Health Tracking Poll found that nearly half of adults would be interested in taking prescription weight loss drugs, but far fewer would be open to them after reading the fine print. Only 23% would be interested in using a weight loss drug if it had to be taken by injection, 16% if it wasn’t FDA approved specifically for weight loss, 15% if their health plan didn’t cover the cost, and 14% if they might gain the weight back after stopping use.

• Almost Time for IPO Season? Axios got the scoop on a couple of “IPO bake-offs” over the coming weeks from companies looking to list by the end of the year, suggesting that the iced over IPO market might finally be starting to thaw. Private equity analysts cited in the article gave a shortlist of companies to keep an eye on, including cardiac diagnostic leader HeartFlow, virtual care company Included Health, and digital MSK startup Sword Health. 

• Amwell CEO Virtual Care Interview: A Healthcare IT News interview with Amwell CEO Dr. Roy Schoenberg gave a great overview of The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic’s overarching digital strategy and where he sees telemedicine heading over the next five years. Dr. Schoenberg lays out how few health systems have been as successful as Cleveland Clinic in making the leap to a hybrid care model, and unless they move to close the gap, they’ll be set back in the fight for healthcare talent and patient mindshare. 

• Discharge Planning Problems: Referral volume to skilled nursing facilities has doubled since 2022, with ongoing staffing shortages and an increased demand for care taking center stage in WellSky’s 2023 Evolution of Care Report. Patients in the hospital are now 6% more acute at discharge than in 2019, and hospital length of stay has increased by 12% for those discharged to SNFs. WellSky found that home health agencies might have it even worse, with HHA rejections spiking 40% since 2022 despite already reaching an all-time high last year.

• Duke + Microsoft: Duke Health and Microsoft entered a five-year partnership to launch an AI Innovation Lab and Center of Excellence aimed at responsible development of generative AI in medicine. Through the collaboration, Duke will use Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform to develop both administrative and clinical AI applications, with the goal of helping other organizations benefit from the shared best practices and lessons learned.

• Signify Adds In-Home Kidney Evals: CVS subsidiary Signify Health announced the addition of a new comprehensive kidney health evaluation as part of its diagnostic and preventive service offerings. The exam will be conducted by one of Signify’s 10k credentialed providers through its in-home health evaluations to help with early diagnosis of CKD (impacts 37M U.S. adults), marking the first expansion of the company’s IHEs since the roll out of spirometry screenings for COPD in 2022.

• Hospital Operating Margins Improve: Kaufman Hall’s June Hospital Flash Report found that median year-to-date operating margins increased to 1.4% (vs. 0.7% in May), although the gap between high-performing and struggling hospitals continues to widen. Average length of stay dropped 2% month-over-month while ED visits fell by 1%, yet the 2% uptick in operating revenue suggests that “people are continuing to shift away from inpatient settings.”

• Docs Get Surprise Billing Victory: Physicians got a victory in the battle over implementation of the federal No Surprises Act. A Texas judge ruled in favor of physician groups suing to stop CMS from raising the fee for managing billing disputes under the act’s independent dispute resolution (IDR) process from $50 to $350. The judge nullified the increase, prompting CMS to halt the IDR process and put a hold on new billing disputes within Medicare and Medicaid.

Glooko Outcomes Using Real-World Data

Modern diabetes management requires personalized, always-on, and connected care. Explore Glooko’s latest clinical studies to see how remote patient monitoring is making real-word improvements across multiple glycemic outcomes.

Clinical Documentation Integrity For VBC

The growing use of risk-adjusted reimbursement in outpatient settings means clinical documentation needs to keep up, or health systems risk leaving revenue on the table. Check out Nuance’s new blog to learn how shifting reimbursement models make clinical documentation excellence more important than ever, and how AI can help you achieve it.

3 Ways to Ease the Pain of Provider Credentialing

Is provider credentialing adding cost and time to your bottom line? Check out Medallion’s new blog for three ways to ease the pain of provider credentialing so that you can focus on delivering quality care.