Virtual care company eVisit acquires Bluestream Health

Article By:  Brian T. Horowitz

Blog Source From : https://www.healthcaredive.com/

Dive Brief:

• Virtual care platform eVisit announced last week that it acquired Bluestream Health, a platform as a service that offers a digital front door platform and a virtual care workflow, for an undisclosed sum.
• EVisit will add Bluestream’s language interpreting services, which includes 198 languages plus American Sign Language.
• Bluestream customers will not be required to transition to eVisit’s platform, per eVisit’s website. The two products will operate in parallel for at least six months.

Dive Insight:

Digital front door platforms often incorporate virtual waiting rooms, online appointment scheduling and chatbots to triage patient symptoms, and can also provide tools to check-in patients to physical or virtual locations. Platforms aim to improve healthcare access and include front door offerings from companies including Phreesia and Orion Health.

EVisit aims to offer a streamlined interface by integrating its automated care navigation platform with Bluestream’s digital front door platform, allowing clinicians to customize workflows in both acute and ambulatory settings.

EVisit’s workflow tools lured Bluestream to partner with the virtual care operating platform, said Matthew Davidge, CEO and co-founder of Bluestream Health.

“EVisit is the right strategic partner to further Bluestream’s mission of bringing virtual care to patients, developing innovative workflow tools and driving better health outcomes,” Davidge said in a statement.

Meanwhile, eVisit does not plan to immediately sunset features in Bluestream but may streamline capabilities in the future to eliminate overlapping, according to eVisit.

A key customer using Bluestream’s platform includes MedStar Health, a Washington, D.C. area health system.

“With this news, MedStar Health welcomes advancing this successful partnership with eVisit to further accelerate the functionality, integration and innovative possibilities of telehealth offerings within our care delivery model,” Bill Sheahan, chief innovation officer for MedStar Health and executive director for the MedStar Institute for Innovation, said in a statement.

Physicians that use eVisit will be able to access a digital front door by using a QR code, phone, web page or an EHR or web portal.

EVisit will keep more than 90% of Bluestream’s workforce, eVisit confirmed to Healthcare Dive.

More than 500 healthcare facilities and over 50,000 healthcare providers have adopted the Bluestream Health virtual care solution. Bluestream offers application program interface integrations to enable healthcare organizations to integrate multiple platforms.

More than 275,000 clinicians across the United States can access eVisit health systems using the platform, including those at Texas Health Resources, Banner Health and NYC Health + Hospitals.

Hospitals, Health IT