Author: Charlie Lougheed

CLEVELAND, November 18th, 2021 – Axuall announced today that Joey Blogna joined the company as its Director of Talent Acquisition and Development. Joey will be responsible for leading Axuall’s growth strategy with primary focus on acquiring Top Level Talent for our organization as well as helping expand our teams capabilities through ongoing development.

“Joey’s experience and success in recruiting for roles in all areas of technology and growth companies will be a big boost as we continue to scale our team,” commented Charlie Lougheed, Axuall CEO. “Excited about the culture and the strong team assembled at Axuall, Joey has a vision to expand the employment brand and attract top-tiered talent to accelerate growth. We are excited to welcome Joey to the team.”

Prior to Axuall, Joey led strategic talent and growth initiatives for numerous start-ups across the globe. He has spent the majority of his 20 year career in Information Technology, Product and Services organizations focused in emerging technologies. His efforts have led to multiple acquisitions and most recently helped a Salesforce Platinum partner (focused in the Healthcare and Life Sciences) expand into 3 different countries.

MedStar’s Melissa Walters shares their digital transformation story as the $4.3 billion healthcare system changes how they engage clinicians, empower their MSPs, and eliminate information delays that stand in the way of timely clinical deployment.

Watch the presentation

CLEVELAND, September 7, 2021 – Axuall announced today that Scott Canupp joined the company as Vice President of Sales and Revenue Operations. Scott will be responsible for leading the go-to-market strategy and sales support initiatives for Axuall, which will include sales and revenue planning, sales tools, pricing and contracting, and seller enablement as Axuall continues to ramp up its market presence.

Scott joins Axuall with extensive experience in sales, sales strategy, and sales operations, with the last six years spent in health care. He recently led solutioning and contracting for IBM Watson Health, having joined the company through Cleveland-based Explorys, where he was responsible for sales operations and oversaw the go-to-market integration with IBM. Previously, Scott led a regional sales team for the data networking company CenturyLink, following a seventeen-year career at Verizon Enterprise Services, where he held various roles with increasing responsibility in sales leadership and sales strategy.

“I’m thrilled to work alongside Scott again as we take the business to the next level,” commented Charlie Lougheed, Axuall CEO. “Scott’s experience as a strong operator will be instrumental in our market growth as we scale up to meet demand.”

Scott holds a Bachelor of Sciences degree from Kent State University and currently resides in Cleveland, Ohio.

Two Cleveland startups — Hyr Medical and Axuall — are working together to streamline the credentialing process for health care practitioners.

Hyr connects health care providers with places to practice, while Axuall has developed technology that enables health care providers to acquire authenticated digital versions of their credentials and qualifications in real time. After initially partnering at the start of 2020 to pilot their concept of portable digital credentials, the two now have integrated their technology and are addressing what many have long viewed as a cumbersome part of the approval process to get physicians working.

Read the full Crain’s article.

Major Healthcare Organizations and Investors Back the Company’s Continued Progress Towards Solving the Provider Data Problem in Healthcare

Cleveland, OH – July 13, 2021 – Axuall, a digital professional identity network that enables healthcare providers to share their authenticated credentials and qualifications in real-time, announced today that they closed $10.4 million in Series A funding led by Flare Capital Partners. Additional co-investors include Intermountain Ventures, University Hospitals Ventures, MedStar Health, Epsilon Health, InHealth Ventures, AV8 Ventures, JumpStart, M25 Ventures, and North Coast Ventures.

Capital from this financing will be used to accelerate R&D, implementations, sales, and marketing as the company grows its customer base of healthcare organizations. “Led by Flare Capital Partners and representing over two dozen healthcare organizations, this financing represents a ringing endorsement from the healthcare community”, said Axuall’s CEO, Charlie Lougheed. “We are thrilled to work alongside the most innovative healthcare organizations in the world to address the workforce challenges that this space faces.”

Provider data delays and blind spots cost the U.S. healthcare sector billions of dollars per year, contributing to care gaps for patients, physician burnout, and unnecessary inefficiencies for healthcare organizations. A recent study conducted by the Health Management Academy in 2021 identified the disjointed process of verifying provider credentials as a central pain point among clinicians and organizations alike. “The traditional credentialing process is a cumbersome and slow experience for clinicians,” said Michael Greeley, co-founder and general partner, Flare Capital Partners. “Axuall has streamlined this process, with its real-time digital credential network that provides coverage across the entire healthcare workforce and enables workforce intelligence across the industry.”

Built on a provider-centric model, the Axuall network enables healthcare systems, staffing firms, telehealth groups, and health plans to leverage a vast array of verified real-time provider data to eliminate information delays in onboarding staff, develop virtual networks with partners, and manage their care delivery networks.

“As an investor, we’re always on the lookout for the trifecta opportunity: a material unmet need; a scalable technology that addresses the problem to be solved, and a leadership team we believe has the experience to operationalize and execute. Axuall exemplifies this,” said David Sylvan, President of UH Ventures, the innovation and commercialization arm of University Hospitals. “We look forward to continued collaboration with Axuall, and we’re excited to participate in this journey.”

Axuall was formed in 2018 with $3 million of venture funding to develop a national network for professional career identity that serves the needs of healthcare providers and the organizations they work with. The solution was developed and piloted with three major healthcare systems, University Hospitals, MedStar Health, and MetroHealth, and launched commercially in late 2020.

Axuall has expanded its work with innovative healthcare systems in 2021 as the company develops additional solutions to bridge the data divide between providers, systems, and health plans. “Axuall is solving a fundamental problem in healthcare. Their solutions are driving clinical impact by enabling patient access and enhancing the overall quality of care,” stated Nickolas Mark, Managing Director and Partner, Intermountain Ventures.

About Flare Capital Partners

Flare Capital Partners strives to help build significant healthcare technology, digital health and healthcare services companies to improve health outcomes and broaden access while lowering costs of care. We partner with inspirational entrepreneurs who seek to transform the business of healthcare by developing innovative and impactful products and services. Flare Capital is a team of proven healthcare technology investors and senior operating executives known for thought leadership and unparalleled strategic industry resources. Our firm has raised some of the industry’s largest dedicated venture capital funds focused on early stage opportunities in healthcare technology innovation, and our investors include leading healthcare companies, major institutional investors, important family offices, foundations and sovereign wealth funds. We are full life-cycle investors in our portfolio companies as we support and work alongside entrepreneurs over their entire company-building journey. Select portfolio companies include Aetion, Aspen RxHealth, Bright Heath, Cohere Health, Eden Health, HealthVerity, Iora Health, Somatus, Tausight and VisitPay. Learn more at Flare Capital Partners and follow us on Twitter @flarecapital

About Axuall

Formed in 2018, Axuall, Inc. addresses the national imperative to improve access to quality healthcare by helping to eliminate unnecessary inefficiencies in workforce deployment. Axuall is a national digital network that enables clinicians, healthcare systems, and primary source institutions to share and manage authenticated credentials in real-time. With this, we empower health systems to accelerate the time-to-deployment of qualified healthcare professionals while at the same time reducing physician burnout.

For more information, visit www.axuall.com. Follow Axuall on LinkedIn and Twitter.

CLEVELAND, June 15, 2021 – Axuall announced today that it has successfully completed its SOC 2 Type 2 audit. SOC 2 engagements are based on the AICPA’s Trust Service Criteria. SOC 2 audit reports focus on a Service Organization’s non-financial reporting controls as they relate to security of a system. The audit was conducted by Dansa D’Arata Soucia LLP (www.darata.com). In doing so, Axuall maintains its adherence to one of the most stringent, industry-accepted auditing standards for service companies and provides additional assurance to its clients, through an independent auditor, that its business process, information technology and risk management controls are properly designed.

The official audit report provides a thorough review of Axuall’s internal controls and policies for security and process. It also reviews Axuall relating to risk management and subservice (vendor) due diligence, as well as Axuall’s entire IT infrastructure, software development life cycle, change management, logical security, network security, physical & environmental security, and computer operations.

“We are pleased that our SOC 2report has shown that we have the best-practice controls in place to mitigate risks related to the services we provide to our customers,” said Charlie Lougheed, Axuall CEO. ”In addition, it demonstrates our dedication to end-user privacy and data protection for our healthcare partners and the providers they work with.”

About Axuall

Formed in 2018, Axuall, Inc. addresses the national imperative to improve access to quality healthcare by helping to eliminate unnecessary inefficiencies in workforce deployment. Axuall is a national digital network that enables clinicians, healthcare systems, and primary source institutions to share and manage authenticated credentials in real-time. With this, we empower health systems to accelerate the time-to-deployment of qualified healthcare professionals, while at the same time reducing physician burnout. www.axuall.com

About Dansa D’Arata Soucia LLP

Dansa D’Arata Soucia LLP (“DDS”) is a full service CPA firm based out of Buffalo, New York. Over the past decade, DDS has built a team of auditors dedicated to understanding the AICPA’s Trust Service Criteria and how properly applying best practices to comply with this set of criteria results in a mitigation of risk as it relates to protecting sensitive data. DDS understands that a SOC 2 audit can be initially intimidating. As such, DDS has worked tirelessly on finding ways to streamline the audit process to be as minimally invasive as possible on company resources. This allows the management teams of their clients to stay focused on growing their businesses! To learn more about DDS and their SOC services, please contact Daniel Garigen, CPA at dgarigen@darata.com and visit their website at www.darata.com.

CLEVELAND, June 8, 2021 — Axuall, a workforce intelligence technology company, is proud to announce it has earned Credentials Verification Organization (CVO) accreditation from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA), receiving certification for 11 out of 11 verification services. The certification demonstrates that Axuall has the systems, processes and personnel in place to thoroughly and accurately verify clinicians’ credentials.

Axuall provides networked computer software to healthcare systems, staffing agencies, and health plans, that is used to acquire information from clinicians, data partners and NCQA-approved primary sources to support credentialing, privileging, and health plan enrollment processes. The Axuall solution enables partners to dramatically reduce onboarding and enrollment time by streamlining the secure sharing of digitally verified

credentials between clinicians, authorized verifiers and organizations that

require this information quickly and continuously to meet patient demand,

ensure clinical coverage and optimize related operations.

“Axuall’s platform and software empower our medical staff and credentialing operations division to meet the high bar we’ve set for ourselves as a high-quality, innovative health system and CVO. This achievement of NCQA accreditation confirms Axuall’s commitment to quality and the value that they immediately bring to their partner organizations,” said Melissa Walters, Assistant Vice President of Medical Staff Operations at MedStar Health.

In addition to the software Axuall has developed, the company can now provide NCQA Certified CVO support services. This allows the company to act as a technology partner and/or a traditional CVO as needed, to best support the unique needs of each organization.

“Earning NCQA certification across all categories showcases our team’s dedication to the highest standards as we look to solve some of the most pressing issues in healthcare workforce management today,” said Charlie Lougheed, Axuall CEO. “This accomplishment also underscores the importance of the workforce intelligence solutions we are building, ultimately supporting organizations across the healthcare industry in their own pursuits of compliance and quality.”

About NCQA: NCQA is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to improving health care quality. NCQA accredits and certifies a wide range of health care organizations. It also recognizes clinicians and practices in key areas of performance. NCQA’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS®) is the most widely used performance measurement tool in health care. NCQA’s website (ncqa.org) contains information to help consumers, employers and others make more-informed health care choices. NCQA can be found online at ncqa.org, on Twitter @ncqa, on Facebook at facebook.com/NCQA.org/ and on LinkedIn at linkedin.com/company/ncqa.

CVO Certification is governed by NCQA’s rigorous Standards for Certification, developed with the assistance of representatives from the credentials verification industry, as well as input from managed care organizations. Certification is awarded to participating organizations on the basis of individual credentials elements. Organizations may be certified for all, some, or none of the 11 credentials elements addressed in the NCQA Standards. These elements are:

• License to Practice
• DEA Registration
• Education and Training
• Board Certification Status
• Work History
• Malpractice Claims History
• Medical Board Sanctions
• Medicaid/Medicare Sanctions
• CVO Application and Attestation Content
• Practitioner Application Processing
• Ongoing Monitoring

About Axuall: Formed in 2018, Axuall, Inc. addresses the national imperative to improve access to quality healthcare by helping to eliminate unnecessary inefficiencies in workforce deployment. Axuall is a national digital network that enables clinicians, healthcare systems, and primary source institutions to share and manage authenticated credentials in real-time. With this, we empower health systems to accelerate the time-to-deployment of qualified healthcare professionals, while at the same time reducing physician burnout. www.axuall.com

Axuall Expands its Real-Time Workforce Intelligence Network to Support Physician Assistants and Nurse Practitioners.

CLEVELAND, April 13, 2021 – Building upon its comprehensive support for physicians, Axuall has announced expanded coverage for Advanced Practice Providers (APP). The Axuall network now empowers APPs to manage and securely share their clinical credentials with their employers. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Physicians and Advanced Practice Providers make up nearly 1.2 million of the healthcare workforce in the United States.

Axuall is a workforce intelligence company that streamlines the secure sharing of verified credentials between clinicians, authorized verifiers, and healthcare organizations to eliminate clinical workforce deployment delays. This enables healthcare systems to meet patient demand, inform network planning, and maximize revenue capture as they expand their coverage across traditional and emerging delivery channels.

“Real-time digital credentials are the core of workforce intelligence in healthcare,” stated Charlie Lougheed, Axuall CEO. “This data not only enables healthcare organizations to ensure high levels of quality, safety, and deployment speed among incoming clinicians, it provides insight into how to effectively deploy their existing staff across an ever-expanding landscape of delivery channels and service offerings.”

As healthcare organizations continue to search for ways to boost revenue, attract top talent, and reduce clinician burnout and patient leakage, a recent study revealed that accelerated and improved workforce deployment would significantly drive these key growth areas. To help fuel this growth, Axuall plans the continued expansion of its real-time digital credential network to ultimately provide coverage across the entire healthcare workforce and enable workforce intelligence across the industry.

Learn more about how Axuall can benefit your healthcare organization.

The Health Management Academy publishes insights from leading healthcare systems analyzing the hidden costs of credentialing delays and how real-time digital credentials will address this problem.

CLEVELAND, February 16, 2021 – The Health Management Academy (The Academy) has released a whitepaper detailing the results of a recent study involving eight U.S. health systems. The study, sponsored by Axuall, analyzed the impacts that delays in practitioner credentialing have on these organizations, focusing on three key areas: leakage, burnout, and financial performance. Applying operational data and executive interviews, the study describes how integrating real-time digital credentials into onboarding processes can address these challenges, resulting in millions in bottom-line savings.

A thorn in the side of administrators and practitioners alike, practitioner credentialing is a process that traditionally takes months to complete. One executive described it as “a metaphor for all the brokenness in healthcare.” Meanwhile, patients wait longer for care or go elsewhere if they can’t. Health systems are consistently at risk of network and referral leakage, with timely access to care being a leading cause of patient leakage.

Digital credentials store facts about practitioners’ careers, including their education, training, licenses, certifications, work history, hospital affiliations, privileges, peer references, competency evaluations, malpractice coverage, sanctions, and disclosures. Because digital credentials are encrypted, their authenticity, integrity, and primary source can be verified instantly when connected to a national data network like Axuall.

The case study found that by reducing unnecessary delays in practitioner onboarding, health systems can capture services revenue that would otherwise be lost. “When it comes to delays in provider credentialing, we don’t think about it as delayed revenue; we think about it as lost revenue,” said a Medical Group President at one health system. An in-depth analysis of one large health system indicated it will save $74,000 per physician by integrating real-time digital credentials into its processes.

“The insights provided by these health systems shed light on a significant opportunity to improve operating efficiency and reduce practitioner burnout, all while enabling them better meet patient needs,” stated Charlie Lougheed, CEO of Axuall. “It provides yet another example of how real-time data is improving healthcare for everyone.”

University Hospitals, a leading health system that participated in the study in 2020 and is now rolling out Axuall digital credentials to their practitioners, will share their experience and perspectives during the upcoming Health Management Academy webinar on March 3rd. Registration is free and open to the public. The published whitepaper is available for download on Axuall’s website.

Axuall Launches Pilot with MedStar Health to Advance Digital Credential Technologies to Securely and Rapidly Deploy Clinicians

MedStar Health becomes the fifth pilot partner to leverage Axuall’s network to develop innovative and compliant pathways for reducing barriers to verifying clinician credentials

CLEVELAND, January 28, 2021 – Axuall, Inc. announced today that it is launching a pilot with MedStar Health through its MedStar Institute for Innovation (MI2) to further deploy and develop new technologies that more efficiently verify the credentials of newly-recruited clinical staff and existing staff as periodically required. Axuall is a national digital network that enables clinicians, healthcare systems, and relevant institutions to share and manage authenticated credentials such as a practitioner’s academic and employment history in real-time, all while meeting regulatory standards.

Throughout the U.S. healthcare system, the process of verifying physician credentials typically takes three to four months to complete, a manually intensive set of activities that can delay a practitioner’s ability to deliver care. Axuall and MedStar Health began discussions last year to identify opportunities to pilot blockchain and digital credential technologies to create more efficient pathways to onboard and retain practitioners and enable credential portability between partners. These emerging technologies provide the ability to immediately ensure that verifications have originated from authorized sources, helping healthcare providers more rapidly onboard or fulfill periodic requirements to respond to increased patient demand, expand care channels (e.g., telehealth), or address other needs.

“We are thrilled to work with MedStar Health in another historic step toward addressing this national imperative,” stated Axuall CEO Charlie Lougheed. “Practitioners are the lifeblood of health care, and the application of secure means of authenticating their professional credentials will enable innovative systems to more efficiently meet patient demand, especially across expanding delivery channels.”

The pilot with MedStar Health will leverage and refine these Axuall digital credential technologies for compliance, workflow integration, physician adoption, and deployment efficiency gains. This work builds on Axuall’s success with major health systems, staffing firms, and telehealth providers in recent years and opens new possibilities for meeting growing demand and enabling more elastic workforces. Axuall made its network commercially available to the market in November of 2020.

“As healthcare systems across our nation face demand and transformation that is making public health history as we fight the COVID-19 pandemic, the need to identify and efficiently deploy qualified providers has never been more universally urgent,” said Mark Smith, MD, chief innovation officer of MedStar Health and the director of the MedStar Institute for Innovation. “Axuall’s work has the potential to revolutionize an aspect of care delivery that is essential to healthcare missions yet is also under-recognized as an area in need of innovation within the U.S. healthcare system to support patient care, provider well-being, and administrative efficiency. MedStar Health looks forward to working with Axuall to explore how blockchain and digital credential technologies can help us create and accelerate an increasingly positive future for physician onboarding and compliance.”

About Axuall, Inc.

Formed in 2018, Axuall, Inc. addresses the national imperative to improve access to quality healthcare by helping to eliminate unnecessary inefficiencies in workforce deployment. Axuall is a national digital network that enables clinicians, healthcare systems, and primary source institutions to share and manage authenticated credentials in real-time. With this, we empower health systems to accelerate the time-to-deployment of qualified healthcare professionals, while at the same time reducing physician burnout.

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