Health Catalyst made news on a couple different fronts this week, as it announced its plans to acquire Yakima, Washington-based Vitalware and entered a long-term strategic-analytics partnership with Northwell Health.

Vitalware, which develops revenue-workflow optimization and other cloud-based analytics tools for healthcare providers (supporting all major EHRs and serving as an integration point for health systems with multiple systems) will also help Health Catalyst boost the financial insights available through its DOS platform.

The acquisition gives Health Catalyst a "strategic anchor technology in the revenue space," according to the company, expanding the tools available for healthcare chief financial officers.

Its chargemaster technology and other revenue integrity and price transparency tools can help providers manage the complex regulatory and compliance demands of value-based reimbursement.

The deal, expected to close later this year, is for an aggregate purchase price of about $120 million, with an earnout of an additional $30 million. Health Catalyst plans fund the transaction using a mix of stock and cash.

"We are excited to welcome the Vitalware team to support our shared mission to be the catalyst for massive, measurable improvements," said Health Catalyst CEO Dan Burton in a statement. "Ultimately, DOS, our cloud-based data platform, will further enhance the analytics insights made available by Vitalware's technology by integrating charge and revenue data with claims, cost and quality data."

"Analytics backbone"

Northwell Health, meanwhile, has joined with Health Catalyst for a long-term strategic partnership to transform the quality of patient care by using data and analytics to better anticipate and respond to the evolving needs of patients, providers and payers in today's rapidly evolving healthcare ecosystem.

Northwell – New York State's largest provider, with 23 hospitals, 800 ambulatory sites and 18,500 affiliated physicians – is looking for more efficient data mapping and storage, and wants more advanced analytics to drive clinical, financial and operational improvements. 

Health Catalyst's DOS platform will be deployed across Northwell Health to help turn raw data into actionable insights. The health system will also gain access to Health Catalyst's newer COVID-19-focused technologies, including a registry, staff- and patient-tracker, and capacity planning tool.

"Health Catalyst will become our data and analytics backbone," said Northwell CIO John Bosco, "[enabling] our organization to take our current data adoption and transformation to entirely new heights. We are looking forward to leaning on DOS to create an affordable, yet innovative, enterprise solution that will further enable transformative care to the patients we serve."

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com

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