Agassi's Cogent adieu

Antoine Agassi, former president and COO of Cogent healthcare, has stepped down, is taking a breather after years of M&A busyness. More here.

Cogent-HMG wed

Cogent, the Brentwood hospitalist company, and Hospitalist Management Group (Canon, Ohio) are to wed, with the consummation expected soon. This should give Knoxville-based TeamHealth something to ponder. Np.com has it.

Cogent buys Endion

Cogent Healthcare, the hospitalist company based here, announced its acquisition of Endion Hospitalist Systems in western NY State. Brentwood-based Cogent's revenues are believed greater than $100MM, annually.

Cogent in pact with Seton

Brentwood-based Cogent Healthcare today announced a hospital medicine affiliation with 375-bed Seton Medical Center, located in Daly City, Calif., and the Daly City Hospitalist Medical Group, a Seton physician group, to develop a "distinctive hospitalist care delivery system." Release here.

Cogent lands Hackensack

Brentwood-based Cogent Healthcare announced today it's now contracted for hospitalist services with Hackensack (N.J.) University Medical Center, a 775-bed facility and the state's largest provider of inpatient and outpatient services.

Cogent eyes hospitalist acquisitions

Cogent CEO Gene Fleming (at left) told NashvillePost.com he intends for the company to grow significantly via aquisitions, but no deals announced. VNC's earlier profile of the hospitalist company is here.

Hospitalists get more ammo

With the pressure-trifecta of transparency, accountability and outcomes bearing-down on providers, Cogent Healthcare is touting a new study that shows hospitalists' patients have 'profoundly lower' re-admission rates. This is the kind of 'meaningful difference' for which all payers are increasingly scouting. Cogent's release is here. Related Cogent stories, here.

Economy: Tennessee's been told

An Associated Press economic stress report out today in The Washington Post makes clear the linkages between improving higher-ed, tech-industry concentration, healthcare and quality-of-life amenities and the future well-being of states and communities. A key question raised: Whether Sun Belt states, in particular, will generate revenue necessary to improve and sustain education. One AP Photo caption accompanying the Post story notes, "Despite the current recession, Nashville has continued to be a Mecca for music recording and production." Meanwhile, Gov. Phil Bredesen has been pressing to focus state efforts on improving the University of Tennessee's standing as a national research university, and today's report in the Times Free Press provides perspective on that issue, which looms large in Tennessee's future. (Photo: AP via WashPost)

HyperLocalism

Vanderbilt University unveiled the GoLocal online health resource, tailored to cities, while HelloMetro touted Nashville as one of its hyperlocal news and entertainment sites.

Friday's fantasy healthcare media roll-up

Playing connect-the-dots has been a lifelong passion. Today, I'm thinking ConnectivHealth and DigiScript should sit down and talk. This was prompted partly by ConnectivHealth's release of a survey of what media physicians favor. True, the touted answers somewhat predictably point to ConnectivHealth's product portfolio, but that doesn't mean the results are invalid. So, as I got to imagining why docs wouldn't like getting info via a PDA -- maybe they've got too many gadgets and pagers on their belts, a'ready -- I thought of another local company, DigiScript, which happens to have filed for debtor-in-possession bankruptcy. ConnectivHealth uses its infomagic slicer and dicer to create trusted content streams. DigiScript offers training, event and rich-media services. Can either of these businesses scale profitably, without many more M&As and tranches than they've done?

Nashville's hospitalist secret is out

'Don't remember for sure, but the first time I heard someone refer to the hospitalist specialty as the 'fastest-growing segment' in medical history, I was probably tempted to file that factoid in the hyperbole bin. However, eventually I looked into the numbers -- including hospitalist-centered Cogent Healthcare's 35 percent compound annual growth rate. At that point, earlier blurry events came back into focus: There was, for example, Cogent's move to Nashville from Irvine, Calif., 15 months ago. And, earlier this year, there was the hospitalist industry's first IPO -- for LA-based IPC The Hospitalist Company. That offering had set VC radars a'whirring, here and elsewhere. Paradoxically, though, it's the relative quiet around "hospitalists" here in town that has caught my attention. It's the kind of quiet that surrounds a business concept that has been deeply accepted. Is the so-called hospitalist trend in fact fait accompli, and we're just waiting Big Money to book its flight to BNA? We'll see. Meanwhile, what do you think? Here's the story.