Clinical decision support software developer QPID Health, formed at Massachusetts General, agreed to an acquisition by benefit management solutions company eviCore Healthcare recently. In an interview at HIMSS, QPID CEO Mike Doyle talked about how the deal went down, although he declined to offer financial details of the transaction.
He recalled that QPID hadn’t been looking for an M&A deal when it sat down with the South Carolina-based medical benefits manager but things took a turn.
“We just wanted to partner with eviCore but we developed a close relationship and it developed from there.”
Doyle said a key determinant of the sale was synergistic coming together of the two companies through conversations over the past six months.
QPID’s clinical decision support tool for its cloud-based program works on top of providers’ electronic medical record systems. The Q-Guide is designed to be used before high-cost, high-volume medical procedures to give physicians a better way to weigh the need for a procedure with the patient’s risk factors. By using the Q-Guide, eventually hospitals will no longer have to clear certain medical procedures with payers ahead of time — a process referred to as prior authorization.
It also collaborated with EMR provider Epic on a “grouping” solution that physicians might use to group clinical entities based on certain classifications. Instead of Epic customers developing their own Grouper content, QPID has annual content subscription service which provides diagnostic Groupers, updated quarterly. It associates the top 100 diseases with more than 6,000 medications and 2,500 lab tests, according to QPID’s website.
The Q-Guide has focused on high-cost and high-volume procedures — particularly cardiovascular and orthopedic surgery such as hip and knee replacements — it has also added bariatric surgery.
A Deep-dive Into Specialty Pharma
A specialty drug is a class of prescription medications used to treat complex, chronic or rare medical conditions. Although this classification was originally intended to define the treatment of rare, also termed “orphan” diseases, affecting fewer than 200,000 people in the US, more recently, specialty drugs have emerged as the cornerstone of treatment for chronic and complex diseases such as cancer, autoimmune conditions, diabetes, hepatitis C, and HIV/AIDS.
eviCore and QPID believe there will be a “coming together” of the provider market. Although he did not specify numbers, Doyle said staff will double in size across engineering, development, customer service and client services.
The company will function as a wholly owned subsidiary of eviCore.
“We will continue what we’re doing right now, but we’ll have a much bigger company behind us,” Doyle said. Looking ahead, he said it would add more products for providers supporting a shift to value-based care.
QPID raised about $16.2 million in a couple of rounds from investors such as Matrix Partners, Cardinal Partners, New Leaf Ventures, Partners Innovation Fund and Massachusetts General Physicians Organization.
