In a surprise announcement Monday, telephony vendor Sandata LLC (formerly Sandata Technologies Inc.) announced that it has agreed to acquire the home healthcare assets of Health Systems Solutions, Inc., the New York- and Florida-based software company that provides products such as VividNet, The Analyzer and benchmarking services from the former HQS.
Port Washington , NY – March 29, 2010 – Sandata, LLC, the Long Island, NY provider of telephony and other home care IT systems, announced today that it has acquired the home healthcare assets of New York City and Tampa, Florida-based Health Systems Solutions, Inc. (HSS). It was Sandata’s second major announcement in four days (see below).In an exclusive interview hours after the news was released, Sandata CEO Harold S. Blue told HCTR that the deal had quietly been in the works for several months. "This acquisition will add about 200 customers to Sandata and will round out our product line." Sandata, he said, has always focused on the Medicaid and medical staffing side of home care; adding the HSS product line will place them squarely in the Medicare world.
Relatively new himself, Harold S. Blue joined Sandata as Vice-Chairman and CEO in November, 2009 but had worked closely with Chairman Bert E. Brodsky for years in his capacity with HealthEdge Investment Partners, a private equity healthcare buyout fund.
HSS began as a benchmarking software company, once known as HQS, but grew through acquisitons of its own in recent years, adding CareKeeper’s private duty software system, VividNet, as well as a growing line of peripheral systems designed to supplement an agency’s capabilities over what its back office application might be able to do. The Analyzer is a PPS episode manager and OASIS analysis tool. PreciseTrax is a GPS system to provide a real-time view of a mobile workforce. Other HSS products include Clinical PDA, CareTab, Executive Dashboard and Advantage.
CEO Blue indicated that the HSS acquisition would increase Sandata’s overall size by about 15% – 20%. "It brings in a nice IT group," he told HCTR. "They know home care and they know their product line. Development and support will continue without interruption." Sandata will add 38 HSS associates to its existing team of more than 160 and bring Sandata’s total base to more than 1,500 customers nationwide.
In fact, HSS development teams in Manhattan and sales department in Tampa will remain intact, Blue said. The only former HSS staff not joining Sandata will be company president Stan Vashovsky and his team of software engineers who had been working on non-homecare contracts for Philips Medical’s hospital products division.
Vashovsky stated, "HSS’s corporate management team will continue to work closely with Sandata as part of a Transition Services Agreement and has entered into a long-term strategic relationship with Sandata for Sandata to exclusively distribute our advanced tracking and location-based technology tools such as Precise Trax™."
HSS acquisition closely followed arrival of new investor and a name change
On March 25, Sandata announced that Stripes Group completed a minority investment in the company. Ken Fox, Founder and Managing Partner of Stripes Group, will become a member of the Sandata board. In connection with the Stripes investment, TD Bank provided new senior debt financing to retire existing debt and to fund future growth.
The announcement marked a renewed marketing and branding effort that the home care community will see evolve over the coming year, Sandata CEO Harold Blue said. "To mark the beginning of the rebranding effort, we have changed the company’s official name from Sandata Technology Inc. to Sandata LLC."
Chairman Brodsky said Stripes will be a minority investor and partner who will "help us manage the next stage of our evolution and growth."
Fox added that Sandata is "well-positioned to take advantage of what we believe will be a period of hyper-growth as the home healthcare market continues to implement technology to improve quality of care, efficiency in operations, and reduce fraud and abuse."
A Sandata news release announcing the acquisition briefly described the HSS products mentioned above.
- Advantage – a suite of web-based, integrated applications designed to facilitate the clinical, financial and operational aspects of Medicare agencies
- Clinical PDA – Point-of-Care “Smart Phone” applications that enable the real-time capture of clinical information, real-time data transmissions and improved communication among care team members
- Analyzer – decision support tools that enable home healthcare agencies to manage Medicare PPS episodes on a real-time basis; executive dashboard provides instant desktop access to key statistics and metrics
- Performance Advisors – a specialized healthcare consulting service that helps agencies understand and improve outcomes by capturing and benchmarking key data to reveal opportunities to improve quality of care, financial performance and business operations
- Vivid – a set of hosted, enterprise and IVR telephony products for Medicaid/Private duty agencies, which integrate client and caregiver profiles, scheduling, billing and payroll into a single, comprehensive tool
- Precise Trax ™ – a sophisticated GPS tracking application for mobile devices, which can be used to pinpoint the location of field staff in any urban, suburban or rural environment; Sandata will utilize Precise Trax™ under an exclusive license agreement
