Verisma Welcomes Two New Board Members to Propel Strategic Growth

Verisma Welcomes Two New Board Members to Propel Strategic Growth

Mar 5, 2025 | News

Strengthens Mission of Ensuring Health Data is Trusted, Secure and Actionable
through Intelligent Technology

Washington, D.C. – March 5, 2025  – Verisma, a leading provider of health data lifecycle solutions, is proud to announce the appointment of Joel Portice and Patrice Wolfe to its board of directors. These accomplished leaders bring decades of expertise in healthcare technology, advanced artificial intelligence (AI) solutions, data analytics, and organizational transformation—further strengthening Verisma’s mission of ensuring health data is trusted, secure, and actionable through intelligent technology.

Joel Portice is an experienced entrepreneur and industry innovator. He joins Verisma’s board with a proven track record of driving growth and scaling businesses in healthcare technology and data analytics. Portice, president and CEO at egnite Health, applies AI to produce business intelligence for healthcare, elevating data in critical decisions. He consistently transforms organizations and delivers exceptional results such as:

  • Founding and leading multiple successful analytics companies, including Integrity Plus Services and Enclarity, acquired by UnitedHealth Group and LexisNexis, respectively
  • Driving Verisk Health’s unprecedented revenue growth over five years as president, prior to its acquisition by a private equity firm
  • Leading Intermedix, a revenue cycle management company, through its acquisition by R1 RCM
  • Carving egnite Health from a major life sciences organization and transforming it into a pioneering data analytics company

Exceptional leadership earned Portice numerous accolades including Most Admired CEO by the Nashville Business Journal in 2017 and 2019, the Alumni Achievement Award for Professional Achievement from the University of South Dakota, and the Distinguished Alumni Award from Hamline University.

“Joel’s extensive knowledge scaling companies, driving innovation, and leading AI initiatives makes him a perfect fit for Verisma,” says Marty McKenna, President and Chief Executive Officer at Verisma. “His vision and understanding of data analytics, along with his entrepreneurial spirit, is invaluable as we carve a path toward unprecedented growth.”

Patrice Wolfe, a seasoned leader with decades of involvement transforming healthcare technology organizations across the provider and payor sectors, joins Verisma’s board to help drive growth and innovation. Wolfe has served as the CEO of AGS Health since 2019, where she leads a global team supporting top U.S. healthcare systems and physician organizations in optimizing their revenue cycle performance through hybrid intelligence solutions. This aligns with Verisma’s mission to streamline record retrieval for 20,000+ healthcare sites nationwide, while accurately managing provider records. Some of Wolfe’s career highlights include:

  • Growing AGS Health over 20 percent annually since 2019 to 14,000+ employees in four countries, serving most of the top 20 health systems in the United States
  • Spearheading Aetna’s healthcare technology business serving payors, providers and employers
  • Leading several divisions within McKesson (now Change Healthcare) and Truven (now Merative), driving operational excellence and strategic growth
  • Developing and leading transformative strategies to modernize healthcare systems and improve payer-provider relationships

Wolfe earned a bachelor of science degree from Tufts University, and a master of business administration from Yale University’s School of Management. Her expertise fostering innovation and aligning technology with healthcare outcomes is highly regarded industrywide.

“Patrice’s ability to deliver transformational change in healthcare technology is inspiring,” adds McKenna. “Her leadership is critical as we continue to shape Verisma’s strategy and deliver exceptional value to our clients and the patients they serve.”

ABOUT VERISMA

Verisma is redefining how healthcare organizations manage and use health data, ensuring it is trusted, secure, and actionable for real-time, high-stakes decision making. Our lifecycle-driven approach prioritizes health data integrity, management, exchange, and usage with a strong focus on protecting sensitive data from misuse. With Verisma’s intelligent technology, data is more than just information, it’s a foundation for progress. For more information, please visit www.verisma.com.

CONTACT

Amanda Ingalls
aingalls@verisma.com

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Mitigating Compliance Risk: HIPAA Unauthorized Disclosures Process

Mitigating Compliance Risk: HIPAA Unauthorized Disclosures Process

Feb 14, 2025 | Blog

By Elizabeth McElhiney, MHA, CHPS, CPHIMS, CDH-L, CRIS, CC
Director of Compliance and Government Affairs
Verisma
February 8, 2025

Unfortunately, unauthorized disclosures (UAD) are a reality for today’s healthcare organizations. We’ve all been there – a staff member accidentally mistypes a fax number, or a patient ends up with one page of another patient’s protected health information (PHI) in their mailed medical records. What happens next determines if you have a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Office for Civil Rights (OCR) reportable breach on your hands. When notified that PHI may not have been delivered as directed, your compliance team needs to spring into action to mitigate any risk to PHI.

Don’t have a compliance team? Not sure what steps and procedures define your processes for HIPAA unauthorized disclosures? Read on for recommendations and best practices for mitigating compliance risk.

Develop Investigation Protocol

When you are aware of a possible UAD, mitigate the possible risk as quickly as possible. Because we oversee hundreds of millions of record requests annually, our volume is substantially higher than most – and we have a designated Compliance Officer and support team. Therefore, we have developed our UAD Investigation Protocol based on years of experience and countless processed records.
The moment a release of information specialist (ROIS) is aware of a possible incident, he or she has a short amount of time to initiate an incident report and submit it to the Compliance team. In many organizations, employees fear admitting mistakes. Creating a culture of compliance includes reassuring your team, “to err is human and to report is divine.” If your staff isn’t reporting errors to you, it is not because they are not making them, they are not admitting it. Not knowing about an incident is far worse for your organization than being aware and taking measures to mitigate the damage of compromised PHI.

When an incident occurs, we rely on our team to notify us immediately. The Compliance team then begins working the risk assessment right away to research how the situation occurred. It is important to quickly contact the unauthorized recipient and collaborate with them to securely destroy, or return, the PHI. Additionally, to assert a low probability of PHI compromise or harm, a confidentiality statement must be obtained from the unauthorized recipient, outlining the secure destruction and assuring no further disclosure of the information occurs.

It is critical that you take steps to mitigate the possibilities of future UADs. Supervisors need to re-train the ROIS on best practices and auditing procedures based upon the mistake the ROIS made. If an ROIS working at a front desk were to hand one patient another patient’s medical records, you would want to spend time discussing best practices about double checking discharge paperwork off the printer before handed over the counter.

After re-training, the Compliance Officer completes the risk assessment. On the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Risk Assessment, the Compliance Officer reports whether the PHI has been acquired or viewed, and determines the extent of PHI risk, following federal HIPAA guidelines and state laws. After you are aware there is a possible breach, you have 60 days to complete your investigation, unless your state requires a shorter amount of time.

Violation vs. Breach

UADs typically fall into two categories, violation or breach.

A violation is a UAD with low probability of PHI compromise. If low risk is determined and supported by the assessment, reporting the incident to the OCR and patient is not necessary. For instance, if unauthorized PHI is disclosed to a covered entity, they have a legal responsibility to protect that information. Once the covered entity has destroyed the PHI, there is a low probability of compromise and it is classified as a violation.

If there isn’t low probability of PHI compromise, the UAD is a breach. For example, if you are not able to obtain a confidentiality statement from an unauthorized recipient, there is not a proven low probability of compromise. The breach needs to be reported to the OCR and the patient must be notified, explaining how their PHI was compromised.

According to the OCR, between 2019-2023 there was a substantial 89 percent increase in hacking and a massive 102 percent increase in ransomware. Realizing the agency can issue up to a $50,000 fine per incident with an annual cap of $1.5 million is how healthcare nightmares are made.

ROI Partner

Healthcare providers often face the challenge of managing a high volume of medical record requests, which can be time-consuming and prone to manual errors. Collaborating with a trusted ROI partner transfers the workload to a team of specialists who are dedicated to handling these requests accurately, securely and efficiently – freeing up valuable time for your staff to focus on patient satisfaction.
Verisma’s team of healthcare data experts is equipped to simplify workflows with advanced technology to manage the complexities of HIPAA compliance and mitigate risks associated with UADs. We understand the importance of policies and procedures and have processes in place to protect PHI. Our compliance team can quickly assess the situation, contact unauthorized recipients, and take necessary steps to secure the information.

Ready to reduce workloads and improve patient experience? Contact us today to discuss how we can help.

 

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How Do I Fulfill Continuity of Care Requests?

How Do I Fulfill Continuity of Care Requests?

Dec 9, 2024 | Blog

By Elizabeth McElhiney, MHA, CHPS, CPHIMS, CRIS
Director of Compliance and Government Affairs
Verisma
December 9, 2024

When a patient moves between healthcare providers, their medical information and records often need to follow. Records necessary for care of the patient fall under the treatment provision on the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) Privacy Rule and (generally) don’t require an authorization from the patient or their personal representative. But when sharing records with another facility for treatment purposes, what and how much should you disclose?

What’s Transfer of Care?

While a Continuity of Care request is often a patient travelling between providers, the patient remains actively involved with both organizations. Consider a patient moving between a primary care physician and a cardiologist. It’s important for both providers to know what the other facility’s treatment of the patient entailed. So, they may submit a Continuity of Care request to obtain the records from the other provider.

A Transfer of Care request is different. In a Transfer of Care, the patient is transferring who’ll provide his or her care from one provider to another, and there’s no intent for the patient to return to the originating organization. Transfer of Care requests happen most often when the patient has moved and established care with a new provider.

Minimum Necessary Standard

The minimum necessary standard of the HIPAA Privacy Rule requires a provider to disclose the minimum amount of information be disclosed to accomplish the intended purpose. However, the minimum necessary standard isn’t required to apply to provider-to-provider requests for treatment purposes. Providers are permitted to request and disclose the amount of PHI necessary to treat a patient. The releasing provider is permitted to rely on the requesting provider’s judgment about what’s the minimum amount of information needed. Even though minimum necessary may not be required for Continuity of Care or Transfer of Care requests, the framework can serve as a best practice to get the most meaningful information to another provider.

When a provider receives hundreds of pages of medical records, it’s burdensome for them to sort through the information and determine what’s needed. The electronic health record (EHR) can be filled with “note bloat” and templated, duplicative information. For Continuity of Care purposes, most providers only need the most recent records of a patient. Sending all records for Continuity of Care requests can be a waste of time and resources. Applying the minimum necessary standard to Continuity of Care and Transfer of Care requests allows providers to receive the most pertinent information often on the first request. Of course, if the requesting provider needs more records, a second release of information (ROI) can occur with the transfer of the additional records.

Creating a Continuity of Care Policy

It’s important healthcare organizations create policies and procedures remaining consistent when applying standards like the minimum necessary. This can be done through a general ROI policy or within linked procedures and workflows. In either case, when your organization implements the minimum necessary standard for Continuity of Care or Transfer of Care requests, you should outline what factors are considered to limit the number of pages or information initially disclosed.

These factors could include, but aren’t limited to:

  • An understanding with the receiving practice on what they want to receive
  • Patient age
  • Patient condition
  • Size of the medical record
  • Organization’s EHR solution
  • The specialty of the provider

If your organization decides to limit the information initially sent to the requesting provider, it’s critical you make the receiving facility aware not all the information has been sent. This can be incorporated through a cover letter indicating the most recent records have been sent and include instructions on how the provider may request additional records if needed.

Release Record Requests to a Partner

If you find Continuity of Care, Transfer of Care, and all other record requests take too much of your staff’s valuable time, consider releasing this administrative burden to a partner. Verisma processes hundreds of millions of record requests annually and is an industry-leader with the highest accuracy rate. If you need to focus more on patient care, request a demo today to see how we can help.

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Verisma Acquires Olah, Streamlining Patient Data Management for Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities Nationwide

Verisma Acquires Olah, Streamlining Patient Data Management for Hospitals and Healthcare Facilities Nationwide

Nov 20, 2024 | News

Advances Strategy to be the Leading End-to-End, Secure, Intelligent Data Management Company

Alpharetta, Ga., Nov. 20, 2024 – Verisma, a leading provider of intelligent health data management solutions, announces today the company is acquiring Olah Healthcare Technology. Olah’s Enterprise Archiving Solution (EAS) seamlessly integrates with electronic health records (EHR), offering secure and efficient ways to retire, archive and access legacy data. Together, the companies will empower healthcare providers with a scalable, interoperable and trusted platform safeguarding patient information, enhancing regulatory compliance, and optimizing data accessibility and security.

“Olah is thrilled to join Verisma,” says Chad Hill, CEO at Olah joining as SVP of Data Archiving at Verisma. “We’re eager to further invest in our EAS capabilities to continue to simplify the archiving process while leveraging Verisma’s expertise to improve data management. We look forward to driving efficiency gains, saving providers money, and reducing IT frustration – allowing the focus to remain on patient care.”

Verisma, honored for the fifth consecutive year as the top release of information (ROI) and audit management provider in Black Book’s 2024 client survey, has been a trusted partner in patient privacy and data management for over 22 years – now supporting 20,000 healthcare facilities nationwide. With this extensive experience, Verisma has unique perspective on data usage and is well-equipped to integrate archiving into a comprehensive data management solution built on the promise to protect truth and accuracy.

At the time of publication, the Data Archiving 2024 report by KLAS Research rated Olah the highest company among KLAS segments in their market – highlighting the organization’s strengths in flexibility, interoperability, and strong customer support. Black Book’s 2023 and 2024 user surveys also recognized Olah as a top-performing vendor driving the industry forward in Enterprise Data Archiving and Migration.

“Acquiring Olah furthers Verisma’s vision to be the market leader in data management across the healthcare continuum,” says Marty McKenna, President and CEO at Verisma. “Millions of patient records are accessed and delivered between systems and non-healthcare third parties every day – creating the need for health systems to partner with a technology vendor to manage this process in a private, secure and compliant manner. Providers require a trusted solution, and we’re a one-stop shop delivering the complete picture – helping manage accurate patient data across multiple sources flowing into, and out of, systems reliably.”

ABOUT OLAH

Olah makes it easy for healthcare systems and hospitals to let go of old applications without letting go of the critical information inside them. Olah’s modern enterprise archiving solution (EAS™) can move just one or all critical legacy systems at once using lift-and-shift technology that preserves data integrity and vital access. Olah’s solution works for any system, from EMRs to business systems, patient records to finance. For more information, please visit www.olahht.com.

ABOUT VERISMA

Verisma’s leading technology and solutions empower healthcare providers to streamline the exchange of protected health information that facilitates value-based care programs, bridges gaps in care coordination, and supports legal proceedings. Our HITRUST®-certified technology enhances interoperability to deliver cutting-edge release of information (ROI) and care coordination solutions (CCS) that adhere to the highest standards in data security and patient protection. For more information, visit www.verisma.com.

CONTACT

Amanda Ingalls
aingalls@verisma.com

Verisma Compliance Resources

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Verisma Recognized as #1 Release of Information Solution in Annual Black Book Survey, Driving Patient Satisfaction and Operational Excellence

Verisma Recognized as #1 Release of Information Solution in Annual Black Book Survey, Driving Patient Satisfaction and Operational Excellence

Oct 17, 2024 | News

Oct. 16, 2024 – Verisma, a leading provider of intelligent health data management solutions, has been named the top overall vendor for release of information (ROI) and audit management for the fifth consecutive year in the annual Black Book Research Release of Information Client Survey, a comprehensive polling of providers, payers and patients.

This recognition reflects Verisma’s continued leadership and commitment to empowering healthcare organizations with secure, compliant and efficient ROI solutions prioritizing operational efficiency and patient satisfaction. The 2024 survey includes feedback from 902 physician practices, 772 hospital and health system users, and 130 health plan executives – underscoring Verisma’s broad industry impact. ROI solutions play a critical role in ensuring compliance with HIPAA regulations while protecting sensitive patient data.

“Verisma’s platform facilitates the safe exchange of patient information and helps improve care coordination, allowing healthcare teams to deliver higher-quality care,” said Doug Brown, Founder of Black Book Research. “By streamlining data sharing, Verisma’s ROI solutions enhance clinical decision-making and ensure accuracy, which is essential for providers and patients.”

An ad hoc Q3 survey focused on the patient perspective of ROI satisfaction comprised of 1,220 healthcare consumers – including 445 health plan members and 775 provider patients – further emphasized the importance of consumer satisfaction in shaping the development of ROI solutions. Patients now expect greater transparency, speed and security when accessing their health information. “Verisma’s solutions have been designed with these expectations in mind, offering user-friendly interfaces, timely information processing, and the highest levels of data security to meet patients’ needs,” added Brown.

Key features of ROI solutions users rated highest across the field of 20 solutions providers include:

  • User-Friendly Interfaces: Verisma’s intuitive design rated #1 for patients to retrieve their records, improving satisfaction by simplifying access to vital information.
  • Timeliness of Information: Accelerated release of patient information, reducing delays and improving the overall patient experience by ensuring timely delivery of requested records, another key performance indicator Verisma rated top among competitors and demanded 99 percent of surveyed providers, payers and patients collectively.
  • Transparency and Trust: Clear communication, informing patients what data is being shared and why, fostering trust and improving satisfaction – including vendor accountability and ethics.
  • Data Security and Privacy: With patient concerns about health data security on the rise, ROI solutions’ robust encryption and compliance with HIPAA regulations provide peace of mind, enhancing patient confidence and engagement.
  • Seamless EHR Integration: ROI solutions must seamlessly integrate with major EHR systems, ensuring accuracy and completeness of shared information, directly impacting patient satisfaction.

Verisma achieved the highest client experience ratings in 12 out of 18 ROI-centric performance indicators, particularly standing out for its seamless integration with EHR systems, cybersecurity, usability, and its robust management of the protection of patient data.

According to 97 percent of surveyed clients, Verisma’s ROI solutions significantly enhanced patient experience by expediting the release of information. Faster and more accurate access to health records was directly linked to higher patient satisfaction, demonstrating the critical role ROI technology plays in improving patient engagement.

“While ROI solutions bring numerous advantages, their success relies on aligning with organizational policies, regulatory requirements, and thorough user training to ensure maximum efficiency and compliance,” Brown added. “Verisma’s continued leadership in the industry reflects its unwavering commitment to advancing patient-centric solutions balancing operational needs with the highest standards of care and security.”

ABOUT VERISMA

Verisma’s leading technology and solutions empower healthcare providers to streamline the exchange of protected health information that facilitates value-based care programs, bridges gaps in care coordination, and supports legal proceedings. Our HITRUST®-certified technology enhances interoperability to deliver cutting-edge release of information (ROI) and care coordination solutions (CCS) that adhere to the highest standards in data security and patient protection. For more information, visit www.verisma.com.

ABOUT BLACK BOOK

Black Book Research does not engage in any contractual, bartering, or direct service agreements with firms mentioned in its rankings. It reports satisfaction and client experience results publicly before notifying vendors and does not charge participation, review, or consultation fees. Neither Black Book™, its founder, nor its staff hold financial interests in any vendors surveyed. Since 2000, Black Book™ has polled satisfaction in over 30 industries globally and, since 2009, has focused on healthcare software and services, validated the opinions of nearly three million technology users and the performance history of four thousand vendors across various healthcare sectors.

Source: Black Book Research

ABOUT BLACK BOOK MARKET RESEARCH

Black Book Market Research LLC, provides healthcare IT users, media, investors, analysts, quality minded vendors, prospective software system buyers, and pharmaceutical manufacturers with client experience competitive analysis and purchasing trends.

http://www.blackbookmarketresearch.com | Media Room

COMPANY ADDRESS

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Tampa, FL 33607
United States

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