CLEVELAND, January 13, 2020
By Lydia Coutré, crainscleveland.com
Hyr Medical — a Cleveland startup that connects health care providers to places to practice — has partnered with Axuall, a digital verification company, also in Cleveland, to pilot portable digital credentials across portions of Hyr's network of more than 650 physicians.
The partnership will leverage Axuall's national network of primary-source credential issuers to enable physicians to present fully compliant credential sets to places where they apply to practice via the Hyr platform. Hyr Medical's online network directly connects qualified physicians and health care systems for freelance ("locum tenens"), telehealth and permanent jobs.
Regulations require health care employers and health plans to credential practitioners upon hire and periodically after that. The process, which can be a significant operating expense and take anywhere from three to six months to complete, is repeated for each additional care setting where a physician works, leaving qualified physicians waiting to start work, patients waiting for care and health care systems losing money, according to the release.
"Together, the Hyr and Axuall technologies will play complementary roles in reducing unnecessary costs and time to place qualified physicians into much-needed positions," Charlie Lougheed, Axuall's CEO, said in a prepared statement. "We expect to learn a great deal during this pilot as we observe how this technology reshapes workflows and improves efficiencies."
Supported credential types include, according to the release: medical education, training, licensing, board certification, work history, competency evaluations, sanctions and adverse events.
Axuall's network leverages patent-pending blockchain technology to enable physicians to acquire digital versions of their credentials from authorized issuers, including medical schools, residency programs, license bureaus and medical boards, according to the release. They can then share those credentials securely with health care systems and medical groups.
"As the U.S. health care system grapples with the challenges of meeting the growing demand for care coupled with the disparity in physician density between metro and rural locations, health care employers are looking for new ways to attract, engage and deploy practitioners," Hyr Medical CEO Manoj Jhaveri said in a prepared statement. "We expect new models like on-demand freelancing, telehealth and faster placement to play a significant role in addressing these challenges. Technologies like Axuall and Hyr will enable these advancements."
As part of the pilot, the companies will study the experience of the practitioners acquiring, managing and sharing their digital credentials with employers. Collected data will help them better understand how technologies "improve workflow, reduce redundancy and create empowering experiences for physicians," according to the release. Axuall has recently started separate pilots with two health systems, details of which will be announced "shortly," according to the release.
