HealthStream Profile
HealthStream, Inc. primarily provides Software-as-a-Service (‘SaaS’) based applications for healthcare organizations—all designed to improve business and clinical outcomes by supporting the people who deliver patient care.
The company is focused on helping healthcare organizations meet their ongoing clinical development, talent management, training, education, assessment, competency management, safety and compliance, scheduling, and provider credentialing, privileging, and enrollment needs. The company is organized and operated according to its One HealthStream approach, with its hStream technology platform at the center of that approach. Increasingly, SaaS-based applications in its diverse ecosystem of solutions utilize its proprietary hStream technology platform to enhance their value proposition by creating interoperability with and among other applications.
The company is characterized by its single platform strategy, which is designed to create interoperability among the various applications in the company’s ecosystem through its proprietary hStream technology platform.
For healthcare organizations— the company’s primary customers—HealthStream’s solutions help to effectively onboard, retain, engage, educate, manage, and develop workforce talent; meet rigorous GRC requirements; optimize staff scheduling and capacity management; and automate the management of medical staff credentialing, privileging, and enrollment.
For healthcare professionals and students— the company’s primary end users—HealthStream’s solutions help them to professionally develop their knowledge and skills, manage and fulfill their required continuing education and certifications, manage their schedules, including swapping and filling shifts, engage with peers, provide personalized competency development, and optimize their career pathways.
For both healthcare organizations and healthcare professionals and students, HealthStream’s solutions are generally accessed through SaaS application suites that are increasingly enhanced through the company’s hStream technology platform. The company’s learning, credentialing, and scheduling application suites are designed to help solve the most critical problems facing the healthcare workforce. They accomplish this by utilizing a combination of established and cutting-edge technologies, such as initiative and workflow management capabilities; proprietary taxonomy engines; dynamic engagement models; artificial intelligence (AI) driven clinical assessments; physical-based simulations; healthcare-specific benchmarks; and automated license monitoring and validation.
HealthStream’s Solutions
HealthStream’s products, services, and operations are organized and managed under the company’s One HealthStream approach. Through this One HealthStream approach, the company collectively helps healthcare organizations meet their ongoing learning, clinical development, credentialing, and scheduling needs. HealthStream’s solutions are provided to a wide range of customers within the healthcare industry.
All of the company’s solutions are powered by its hStream technology platform, which enables activity across HealthStream's diverse ecosystem of solutions. As of December 31, 2023, HealthStream had contracts with customers for approximately 5.79 million subscriptions to hStream. Under the company’s One HealthStream approach, the hStream technology platform benefits both customers and partners. The company has international operations in several countries outside of the United States, including Canada, Australia, and New Zealand.
The company’s underlying solutions are primarily consisted of SaaS, subscription-based applications that are used by healthcare organizations to meet a broad range of their workforce development needs around learning, clinical development, credentialing, and scheduling. Nursing schools, nursing students, as well as individual healthcare professionals are also beginning to utilize the company’s training and education solutions. The company’s numerous content libraries allow customers to subscribe to a wide array of courseware, which includes content from leading healthcare and nursing associations, medical and healthcare publishers, and other content providers. The company’s scheduling solutions provide customers with real-time visibility into clinical staff scheduling that enables them to optimize their workforce, reduce costs, and improve care. The company’s flagship credentialing, privileging, and enrollment solution, CredentialStream, provides customers an intuitive, modern user experience with a continual stream of enhancements, evidence-based content, and curated data, all which provides healthcare organizations with tools to support the provider lifecycle management from recruiting, application submission, verification of licensure and other credentials, privileging, appointments by credentialing committees, enrollment, network, management, onboarding, and performance evaluations of providers.
The company offers implementation, training, and account management services to facilitate adoption of the company’s subscription-based solutions. Fees for implementation services are based on the time and efforts of the personnel involved. Training fees vary based on the size, scope, and complexity of the project. The company’s platform and subscription-based solutions are hosted on a combination of private-cloud infrastructure and public-cloud infrastructure, leveraging Amazon Web Services and Azure, which allows authorized personnel access to the company’s services through the Internet, thereby eliminating the need for onsite local implementations of installed workforce development products. HealthStream also sells a growing number of products directly to individuals in the healthcare industry and these products are primarily based on per-unit retail price.
Other Applications on the company’s Platform — HealthStream offers an array of other applications on the company’s platform, each serving a unique function for healthcare customers. Each application on the company’s platform has its own value. Examples of individual applications that are offered on the company’s platform include applications for performance appraisal, competency management, disclosure management, clinical competency, assessment, development, simulation-based education, clinical rotation and onboarding management, quality management, scheduling, and industry training.
Business Acquisitions
As part of the company’s overall growth strategy, the company evaluates opportunities for mergers and acquisitions, and since the beginning of 2022, the company has completed two acquisitions. In May 2022, the company acquired the remaining ownership interest (representing approximately 82% of the outstanding equity interests) of CloudCME, LLC (CloudCME) and in December 2022, the company acquired substantially all of the assets of Electronic Education Documentation System (d/b/a eeds) (eeds).
Customers
The company provides its solutions to customers across a broad range of individuals and entities within the healthcare industry, including private, not-for-profit, and government entities, as well as pharmaceutical and medical device companies. More recently, HealthStream has begun to market and sell its solutions to nursing schools and students as well. The company derives a substantial portion of its revenues from a relatively small number of customers that are healthcare providers.
Sales and Marketing
The company markets its products and services primarily through the company’s direct sales teams, who are located throughout the United States.
The company conducts a variety of marketing programs to promote the company’s products and services, including via the company’s hStream content marketplace, user groups, trade shows, social media, Internet promotion and demonstrations, digital marketing campaigns, public relations, distribution of product-specific literature, direct mail, advertising, and in partnership with third parties. The company has marketing teams that are responsible for these initiatives and for working with and supporting the company’s product management and sales teams.
Operations and Technology
The company’s ability to establish and maintain long-term customer relationships, obtain recurring sales, and develop and maintain new and existing products are dependent on the strength of the company’s operations, customer service, product development and maintenance, training, and other support teams. The company’s operations teams are primarily associated with technical support, customer implementation and training, product management, software development and quality assurance, and other functions.
The company’s services are designed to be reliable, secure, and scalable. The company’s software is a combination of proprietary and commercially available software and operating systems. The company designed the applications that provide its services to allow each component to be independently scaled by adding commercially available hardware and a combination of commercially available and proprietary software components.
The company’s software applications, servers, and network infrastructure that deliver the company’s services are hosted by a combination of third-party data center providers and cloud-based infrastructure. The company maintains fully redundant disaster recovery data centers that are located in geographically separate locations. The company’s technology equipment is maintained in secure, limited access environments, supported by redundant power, environmental conditioning, and network connectivity.
Competition
The company compete with companies, such as Cornerstone OnDemand, Ultimate Kronos Group, Oracle, SAP, Infor, and Workday, which provide their services to multiple industries, including healthcare. The company also competes with companies that are dedicated to, or have operating units focused on healthcare, such as Relias Learning, RLDatix, Symplr, Verisys, MD-Staff, and AMN Healthcare.
Government Regulation
As a HIPAA business associate of certain of the company’s customers, the company is required to report certain breaches of protected health information to the company’s customers, who must in turn notify affected individuals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and/or other governmental agencies, and in certain situations, the media.
The company’s HealthStream CNE Provider Unit is accredited as a provider of NCPD by ANCC. The company is also approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing and the Florida Board of Nursing.
The company is recognized as an accredited provider of CME for physicians by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME).
HealthStream is an organization accredited and/or approved by the Commission on Accreditation for Prehospital Continuing Education (CAPCE) and the Florida Department of Health.
Further, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued Compliance Program Guidance for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and for the Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics, Orthotics, and Supply Industry (collectively, the Guidelines). The Guidelines address compliance risks raised by the support of continuing educational activities by pharmaceutical and medical device companies. The Guidelines have affected the type and extent of commercial support the company receives for its continuing education activities.
Some continuing education organizations issue standards applicable to the company’s services. For example, the company complies with the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education to ensure that the company’s CME and CNE activities are evidence-based, designed to improve patient care and/or community health, and are free from commercial influence. The company follow all standards/criteria/guidelines set-forth by ACCME, ANCC, and other continuing education organizations regarding the regulation of educational program sponsorship and support.
Intellectual Property and Other Proprietary Rights
The company owns federal trademark and service mark registrations for several marks, including without limitation ‘HEALTHSTREAM’, ‘HEALTHSTREAM LEARNING CENTER’, ‘HSTREAM’, ‘JANE’, ‘HEALTHSTREAM EPORTFOLIO’, and ‘COMPLYQ’. The company also has obtained registration of the ‘HEALTHSTREAM’ mark in certain other countries. Additionally, the company holds a number of patents related to the solutions the company provides. Applications for several trademarks and patents are pending.
History
HealthStream, Inc. was founded in 1990. The company was incorporated in 1990 as a Tennessee corporation.
