PointClickCare Technologies plans to acquire health IT company Audacious Inquiry to build out the company’s data exchange and care coordination services.
Audacious Inquiry is a national connected care platform that supports care coordination by enabling data exchange between at-risk healthcare providers, care managers, payers and others value-based care partners.
The acquisition will help accelerate PointClickCare’s mission to address critical gaps in healthcare and enable better care for vulnerable patients, the company said.
Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. The acquisition is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions.
PointClickCare is a cloud-based software provider for the long-term post-acute care and senior living provider markets, and its electronic health record is used in 70% of U.S. skilled nursing facilities, according to the company.
"This acquisition will enable PointClickCare to expand the reach of our solutions by adding Audacious Inquiry’s strong products and network of relationships as the shift to value-based care fuels the growing market demand for intelligence and collaboration tools,” said Dave Wessinger, PointClickCare chief executive officer.
The deal follows the post-acute electronic health record EHR company's acquisition of Collective Medical in December 2020 to expand its reach into care coordination across the acute, ambulatory and post-acute markets.
That deal was for nearly $650 million, according to Business Insider.
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Establishing the policies and technology infrastructure to enable data sharing was "step one" and now companies like PointClickCare and Audacious Inquiry are focused on "layering innovation on top" to enable care to be more effective, Wessinger told Fierce Healthcare.
"We made a commitment to move faster and we started with Collective [Medical] last year," he said. "We started doing some things as partners [with Audacious Inquiry] and as one company I think we can move faster and make a meaningful difference in a shorter period of time."
He added, "This will allow us to take a platform with connections and go to step two and drive insights to those providing the care. It's about bringing insights to the people who have an impact on the care of that patient and connecting in a timely manner to provide meaningful information and drive care collaboration, regardless of the setting."
With the addition of Audacious Inquiry's network, PointClickCare’s scale now reaches 2,700 hospitals, more than 2,000 ambulatory sites and more than 22,000 long-term and post-acute care facilities.
PointClickCare and Audacious Inquiry both focus on ensuring smooth transitions of care for patients discharged from the hospital to post-acute facilities or to the home.
"Transitions are fundamentally a dangerous time for patients when information isn't shared," Scott Afzal, president of Audacious Inquiry, told Fierce Healthcare. "But there's a huge opportunity to improve outcomes and reduce the cost of care by getting that right. By ensuring that the patient's provider and care team know when they leave the hospital to make sure they get their medications, are taking their medications and schedule follow-up care. Our ability to do that with the PointClickCare team at a different level of scale gives us an opportunity to be more impactful."
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About 92% of U.S. hospitals discharge patients to a facility using PointClickCare Technologies' solutions, according to Wessinger. With the addition of Audacious Inquiry's capabilities, PointClickCare can better automate the medication reconciliation process, which can have a huge impact on reducing unnecessary hospital readmissions.
"If we can solve med rec for the nation, and we could run out and do that ourselves and it would take 20 years. But I think within three years, we have that problem solved [with Audacious Inquiry]," he said.
Audacious Inquiry has been in the health IT market for 18 years and works to improve care collaboration by building a dense network of connectivity to share patient information among organizations. The company developed an encounter notification service platform that facilitates the sharing of patient data to reduce patient readmissions to hospitals.
Over the past two decades, Audacious has built a suite of SaaS solutions supported by strategic advisory services. The company partners with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as well as regional health information exchanges, hospital associations, state government, health systems, payers and ACOs.
Wessinger said PointClickCare and Audacious Inquiry share a similar culture and mission focused on improving the lives of seniors by connecting disparate points of care.
"We truly feel we can transform healthcare and we’ve been in it for 25 years. We're passionate as heck about it. With the culture and focus we have, that's the secret to our success," he said.