A Medical Device Daily

Hospira (Lake Forest, Illinois), a provider of clinical information and medication delivery technologies, reported that it has acquired TheraDoc (Salt Lake City), a clinical informatics company that develops hospital surveillance systems. TheraDoc's two leading products, Infection Control Assistant and Antibiotic Assistant, join Hospira's expanding portfolio of medication safety and infection management products.

As part of the agreement, Hospira acquired additional assets related to the TheraDoc business, including the headquarters in Salt Lake City, and the TheraDoc employees are now a part of Hospira. Financial details of the agreement were not disclosed.

"The acquisition of TheraDoc aligns well with Hospira's focus on improving the clinical outcomes, caregiver productivity and safety of patient care," said Philip Settimi, MD, VP, Global Marketing, Devices, Hospira. "TheraDoc is the gold-standard in enterprise-wide clinical surveillance and decision support. Hospira now offers a truly comprehensive solution for medication safety and infection management, which are two of providers' most pressing healthcare challenges."

According to the Centers for Disease Control, there are 99,000 deaths due to hospital-acquired infections (HAI) and 1.7 million HAIs annually. Careful monitoring of infections is critical with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services' emphasis on avoiding "Never Events," and hospitals facing reduced funding and coverage based on infection rates.

TheraDoc's Infection Control Assistant provides continuous infection monitoring, intelligent alerts and timely analysis of hospital infections. The product joins Hospira's portfolio of infection management tools, including the LifeShield TKO and Antimicrobial CLAVE, devices that are designed to help address potential infection-related contamination.

A key advantage of the TheraDoc technology for OSF and other multi-hospital systems is the ability to access information about infections across all facilities from one central location. As a result, TheraDoc provides a system-wide picture of what is happening with infections.

TheraDoc's Antibiotic Assistant provides real-time point-of-care screening to arm clinicians with timely and relevant information about antimicrobial resistance trends. This allows clinicians to effectively monitor and analyze the spread of infectious diseases so that the right antibiotic treatment can be prescribed. Antibiotic Assistant complements Hospira's medication safety products like Symbiq and Plum A+ smart infusion pumps and Hospira MedNet safety software, which were also designed to support safe and effective drug delivery.

"Hospira and TheraDoc share a dedication to advancing the quality and safety of care through advanced medical technology," said Stanley Pestotnik, co-founder, president/ CEO of TheraDoc. "TheraDoc's leadership in providing real-time clinical decision support, combined with Hospira's market-leading position driving medication safety and infection management, will result in expanded access to technologies that are integral to patient care."

TheraDoc has about 85 employees and prominent customers across the U.S. The company's products are also under evaluation by hospitals in Canada, the UK and Australia.

In other dealmaking news, Healthcare Trust of America (HTA; Scottsdale, Arizona), a self-managed, non-traded, real estate investment trust, reported the execution of a purchase and sale agreement to acquire a long-term acute care hospital (LTACH), located in Dallas, for about $27.35 million The closing of the acquisition is subject to the satisfaction of a number of conditions.

The roughly 52,300 square foot LTACH contains 60 private, licensed beds and is located between Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas and Medical City Dallas Hospital, each located north of downtown Dallas in an area which is considered the north central medical district. The LTACH is subject to a long-term lease with RehabCare (St. Louis), a national provider of post-acute services.

The 4-story LTACH was developed two years ago by the seller, which is a partnership between local physicians and Gulf States Health Services who are the Sellers.