Central Logic, a company developing transfer management software for hospitals, sold a majority stake to a private equity firm for an undisclosed amount. Boulder-based Rubicon Technology Partners, which invests in software companies, acquired a majority stake in Central Logic, the companies announced on Tuesday.
Central Logic plans to use the funds to grow its team, and expand to serve more public and private health organizations, CEO Angie Franks said in a phone interview.
“We are at a point where we’ve been growing rapidly, we have an impressive list of health system clients that we’ve worked with for a long time,” she said. “What we see in this pandemic, we see our public health system and private health system needing to work more closely and collaboratively for patients and people in their communities.”
In April, Arizona’s Department of Health tapped Central Logic to help create a platform to prepare hospitals across the state in the event of Covid-19 surges. The system was designed to help facilitate patient admission, transfer and discharge. Hospitals also shared bed and ventilator status to a central hub to be able to quickly discern if beds are available.
Franks said Central Logic’s staff brought the system live within 10 days of when they got the first phone call.
“The problem that we solve for a health system is the exact problem that a community or a region has. It’s just more health systems across a broader geography,” Franks said. “The pace of growth and ability to serve that market has really been exacerbated with Covid-19. It opens a market that six months ago wasn’t in our plan.”
Central Logic was founded in 2005 with the goal of speeding up the process of patient transfers. When hospitals don’t have a software system in place, that process can take between three and six hours, as providers call hospitals to see who has an open bed and a physician ready to take the patient.
“It’s basically a series of phone calls from the providers,” Franks said. “When you’re talking acute inter-facility transfers, these are people who are sick and it’s time sensitive.”
The company streamlined this process to just one phone call. The reason for transfer is documented, the patient’s care team holds a consultation with the appropriate on-call doctor, and a bed is held for them. This process can be used for physical transfers as well as telemedicine visits.
Admissions and transfer data can be surprisingly hard to come by, but that’s expected to change next year. Interoperability rules passed in March would require hospitals to notify a patient’s primary care provider when they are admitted to a hospital, transferred to another facility or discharged from the hospital
“This pandemic puts a spotlight on the weakness of the ability of our system to be able to do this,” Franks said. “There’s never been a time of demand or interest in what we do quite like what we’re seeing right now.”
Photo: John Slater, Getty Images
