Panacea Healthcare Solutions Acquires MedLearn Media

Kevin Chmura

Welcome to Beyond the Bottom Line. I’m your host, Kevin Chmura, CEO of Panacea Healthcare Solutions. After eight years apart, MedLearn Media has rejoined Panacea and I couldn’t be more pleased about that and I want to share why. Today I’m sitting down with Angela Kornegor, head of MedLearn, to talk about our shared history. MedLearn’s trusted Education brands which include MedLearn Publishing, RACmonitor and ICD10monitor and how combining our forces completes the model of software, consulting and professional level education. Our goal is simple, give coding, HIM and compliance teams the tools, insights and accredited education they need to keep up with complex rules while protecting revenue and focusing on patient care.

So, Angela, welcome. Welcome to Panacea. Let me be the first to welcome you to Panacea. But I guess I should do this appropriately and welcome you back to Panacea. That’s probably the way to say it, right? Ours is an interesting.
History, Panacea and MedLearn. And you’re probably more qualified to talk about it than I am because you, your time spanned both the time we were one company and the time we were and now we are again. So maybe I could ask you to just give me a couple of minutes on the history for everybody that’s listening.

Angela Kornegor

Yeah. Well, it’s been eight years. So, it’s been eight years since MedLearn was a part of Panacea, which was great. We were together for six years. At that time, we had MedLearn Publishing, RACmonitor, ICD10monitor, which we still have, but we didn’t have the depth of content in the digital format that we have now, eight years ago.

Kevin Chmura

Yeah, yeah, that’s it. And so a series of M&A moves brought the company together, brought the companies together, broke them apart. And then we found our way home to each other just a month or two ago. How long has it been?

Angela Kornegor
It’s been a long time, but it’s just officially a month ago.

Kevin Chmura

Deals are hard. Deals are hard and you were great during the deal. We have said this to each other that that the deals are hard because for so many people in a deal, the day of the closing is their last day. For you and me, it’s the beginning.
We were involved in the rest of it as well.

You were great. So, I’m looking forward to, you know, really working with you, not just to get the deal done. So, look for the Panacea customers who are pretty, pretty tight on what we do. I thought maybe you could give me a couple of minutes on.
On MedLearn, generally catch everybody up. There are those who will remember MedLearn from the past and as you just stated, you’ve evolved greatly. So, you just if you give us a couple of minutes on what you’re doing today.

Angela Kornegor

Absolutely, absolutely. So again, we still have our three brands. So MedLearn Publishing, RACmonitor, ICD10monitor. Our goal there is to focus on trusted deep.
Content that will help with regulatory rules and all the burdensome government changes that are going on left and right to help make sure that they can A) get accredited content because that’s what they need to keep their credentials up, but we want to help make sure that they’re continuing to be the hero at what they do because it’s not an easy job, it’s tough. And these complex rules make getting their revenue, focusing on patient care a challenge. And we want them focusing on patient care because that’s what impacts all of us.

Kevin Chmura

Yeah, yeah, it’s interesting. You know the coding HIM in in healthcare often called mid-rev cycle and it really is it’s the core. And when you think about it’s… The core is the handoff from the clinical to the financial and that handoff is so critical and we as an industry has not. We haven’t made it easy for the folks that are professionals in that space. We don’t need to have. I spent 30 years in the back end of the revenue cycle, certainly could get credentialed in different things, but was never required to unlike coders. So, what MedLearn does is so critical to that world and we’re excited to bring it to Panacea. I think that for us, where we live, several of our deliverables have clinical or coding or compliance orientation and we’ve been very proud of what we’ve done, especially in our coding audit space, bringing education back to our customers and our education is superior relative to competitors, but it’s still based on what we learned during that audit.

We never had or I shouldn’t say until we came back together. We were really unable to extend that with professional level education and that’s what MedLearn is going to bring to our customers. So, we’re excited about doing that for our customers to be able to bring the subscription-based model that you have for some of your education, even the books, right? Yeah, coders still love books.

Angela Kornegor

Oh, they do.

Kevin Chmura

They do. And I have them on my desk as you know, I sort of leave them out as props today, but they. They’re super high quality and great. And without that, without that content available to people that we hadn’t had, we always had as complete a model as we could make it. And I really think that now at Panacea we’ve completed the model. So, we’re really excited about that. What’s exciting to you?

Angela Kornegor

There’s a few things. Definitely what we didn’t have, which now we’re going to have is a deeper level of expertise on pricing, price transparency that is going to give us more content and more well-rounded to be able to take our digital subscriptions and our accredited content to customers. So, we’re going to be able to get into deeper areas that we haven’t gotten into before, which are imperative. I cannot wait.

Kevin Chmura

Yeah, yeah, I’ll tell you what I’m excited about all of that. And two things. One, we’re bringing together two talented groups of people. So that just accrues benefits to the customers. So, it’s going to be wonderful to work with you, but you are not MedLearn alone, right? You’ve got a very talented group of people. You’ve got a big, big network of subject matter experts that you bring to the table as well.

We’re excited to get to work with them. And then for me, what we have collectively is a very large customer base. We do business collectively with thousands of hospitals on an annualized basis of thousands of providers of all types to physician practices, clinics, ASCs and the Panacea deliverables really addressed most of those markets. The Medlearn content addresses all of them. So, what we have is a collectively large customer base that we can extend from software to consulting and now education. I don’t think there is another group out there that has what we have right now. So, what we pull together here is unique but makes so much sense. Almost obvious in a way, and I want to take credit for it and so should you. Except we used to be one company.

Angela Kornegor

Yes, exactly.

Kevin Chmura

And so homecoming of sort, and it makes a ton of sense.
So we have some amazing things that we will be rolling out over the next year. I don’t know how long it, you know, there’s some immediate things that people will say. I think what for MedLearn customers, one thing that’s important to stress is the MedLearn brand name and delivery and approach and quality.

It’s why we wanted to bring the companies together. We have no interest in changing that. So, if you’re a MedLearn customer out there, MedLearn will still be MedLearn. It will be a Panacea company. We’ll bring additional technology, a lot of resources, some sales, other things to the equation, but we intend to leave MedLearn alone otherwise and we think that’s really important. And but we also expect to benefit Panacea with that, so you’ll start to hear if you’re a Panacea customer, you’ll start to see an up leveling of our education and the quality of the information that we bring into our deliverable, which is exciting.

So, we’re looking forward to that. What else can we tell everybody?

Angela Kornegor

I think we need to say what we’re going to bring to the table from a continuum of just, you know, from RACmonitor, ICD10monitor, Northern Publishing, such a wide expertise of CE credential content, digital subscriptions that are really affordable. We’re going to allow clients to be able to get access to everything, which is nice. You know, we’re, if they’re if they want multiple domains, multiple product lines, users, our goal is to make sure that we can offer this great trusted education that’s been around for over 30 years at a very affordable rate, because that’s what our market needs.

Kevin Chmura

Definitely, definitely. Yes. Margins at our customers are not getting wider. So, opportunities to spend more money will not be there. One thing that I think our collective customer base and prospect base can expect from us too, is what we have in Panacea and MedLearn are two companies that are very good at outreach to our customers, multiple channels. You’ve got several successful podcasts, webcasts that are on a weekly basis. ICD10monitor, RACmonitor. Tune into those if you don’t already, those are amazing, including a bunch of the webcasts. We have podcasts, we do a lot of webinars, educational webinars and our outreach on both companies is pretty vast. I think you’ll see a lot more of that and but all with educational content sort of baked into now. Which I think that’s going to be a game changer for our customers, which is exciting.

So you’ll get to travel to New Jersey a little bit more. As we sit here today.

Angela Kornegor

I’m getting used to the turnpike. I can do this. I can do it.

Kevin Chmura

The turnpike can stay on the car side, stay from the trucks and-

Angela Kornegor

I did pay attention-

Kevin Chmura

You did well getting here. So that’s good. Well, I have had the pleasure of traveling out to Saint Paul quite a bit, which is where you’re located as we are headquartered there. So, that makes life convenient, but I’ve not actually rented a car while I was there. I’ve been Ubering. So, for all I know, I can’t drive in Minnesota, so I won’t comment at all. But I’m looking forward to a really good long stretch that we’ll have together.

Angela Kornegor

Yeah, I am too. This is gonna be exciting. Great.

Kevin Chmura

Okay.

Angela Kornegor

Thank you. Yeah, you’re welcome. Thank you.

Kevin Chmura
I’m Kevin Chmura and this has been Beyond the Bottom Line by Panacea. Stay tuned for upcoming episodes featuring more expert guests. We invite you to join the conversation on LinkedIn.

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