Commure Growth Explodes in 2024: Powering AI and Sensors for 250K Providers, Transforming Healthcare Delivery

North East Medical Services (NEMS) completed a ten-week, head-to-head pilot comparing multiple AI scribing tools, with Commure Ambient AI emerging as a finalist against another large, Epic-integrated AI scribe solution. After testing across diverse ambulatory settings, NEMS selected Commure Ambient AI for full Epic integration.

Key factors driving the decision included superior multilingual capabilities, flexible note generation, strong AI platform partnership potential, and exceptional service quality. Commure Ambient AI stood out as the ideal choice for enhancing clinical documentation.‍

Meeting Complex Needs with Multilingual Support

NEMS, a prominent health system in the San Francisco Bay Area, serves a patient population where over 70% of patients speak primarily Cantonese and Mandarin. Robust translation services were an essential criteria as NEMS sought a solution to alleviate clinicians' documentation burdens while providing quality, culturally-sensitive and linguistically competent care.

Commure’s ambient AI technology rose to the occasion, seamlessly integrating into NEMS' Epic workflows and offering language support for Cantonese, Mandarin, Vietnamese, Spanish, as well as combined dialects like Spanglish and Chinglish. This feature, in addition to our deep commitment to hands-on customer service, set Commure apart from competitors.

NEMS appreciated Commure's responsiveness, collaborative iteration process, and commitment to integrating provider feedback effectively. Commure worked closely with NEMS’ EHR system administrators to ensure seamless integration with Epic workflows. Hands-on, on-site training ensured providers were comfortable and confident using the clinical documentation technology from day one.

Improved Patient Experience and Time Savings

The pilot concluded with significant time savings, and providers reporting they could leave work 20 to 30 minutes earlier than usual—a difference maker in work-life balance.

Beyond time savings, providers have seen a tangible difference in their patient interactions. 

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“I feel like I can listen more actively during patient encounters. I did not anticipate how much it actually improves my time and interactions with my patients. Commure has really been a lifesaver.” - Dr. Lauren Quan, NEMS

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Across the core group of participating providers, usage of Commure’s ambient AI saw a dramatic rise of 87% over the 30 days. Clinicians quickly embraced the solution, integrating it into their daily workflows, with a 73% utilization rate among fully engaged providers (above average compared to industry standards for utilization ranging between 50-66%).

Commure Ambient AI is highly scalable and adaptable to any clinical context; Configuring more scribe templates for specialized workflows—such as pediatrics, gynecology, and annual physical exams—will drive even greater efficiency and adoption rates in the future.‍

Advancing Healthcare with Ambient AI

Commure’s solution sets a new standard for what ambient AI technology can achieve in healthcare, by combining superior multilingual translation services with seamless EHR integration.

Take it from Dr. Jerry Jew, VP and Chief Strategy Officer, at NEMS: 

“Healthcare is in drastic need of innovations that can help providers be providers... allowing clinicians to spend more time and attention with patients instead of writing the medical notes. I found the Commure [Ambient AI scribe] to be accurate, reliable, and flexible. I am pleased with the product and my patients were amazed when reading the note!"

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To discuss how Commure Ambient can meet the needs of your clinicians and patients in a multilingual context, meet with Commure leadership at JP Morgan Healthcare Conference in San Francisco. 

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Get in Touch

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Today I’m excited to share that Commure/Athelas is signing to acquire Augmedix (NASDAQ: AUGX) and take the company private. Combined, we believe we’re creating one of the largest, most comprehensive, and fastest-growing artificial intelligence software suites in healthcare.

Augmedix is a pioneer in the space of Ambient AI-powered medical scribing, with technology and personnel serving over 20 major health systems and hundreds of sites of care. Together, we believe we can dramatically boost the productivity of every physician in America using language models that transcribe appointments, autonomously code them, and supercharge back-office operations for billing teams.

The companies together are on track to power over 3 million physician appointments using artificial intelligence, ambient scribing, and revenue cycle automation this year. Commure/Athelas Scribe, and Augmedix Go on average save a physician 2 hours of documentation time a day, reducing documentation time by more than 80%, and help generate billions of dollars in productivity savings for providers across the country.

Augmedix and Commure/Athelas both partner closely with the country’s premiere hospital systems.  Augmedix’s progress in deploying LLM-powered technology within those systems has been genuinely amazing.

Commure/Athelas today processes billions of dollars worth of healthcare payments, and has the fastest growing Ambient AI scribe + documentation tool deployed within hundreds of health systems and private practices. Our technology suite helps power over 250,000 providers nationally. And with the Augmedix acquisition that number will grow even further.

As I’ve gotten to know Ian and Manny - founder and CEO respectively at Augmedix - it’s become clear they share a common passion with Commure/Athelas for deploying artificial intelligence to supercharge provider operations and boost the productivity of the US economy.

In line with the health assurance vision, we believe this combination further unlocks an ecosystem of companies that can collaborate to transform healthcare. In partnership with Augmedix, Commure/Athelas is poised to become the single, AI-powered interface for providers, accelerating innovation and our shared goal of creating a more proactive, accessible, and affordable system of care.

In the coming months, we hope to announce much more about how the combined company’s product suites will help transform provider operations at all the systems we partner with.

As a former health system CEO, I know that ensuring appropriate staffing remains a top priority.  But a staggering 85% of hospital nurses plan to leave their current position within the next year.  Today’s challenging workforce environment is going to get even tougher: an expected 193,100 nurses will retire every year through 2032.  And that exodus will occur while the US population continues to age, with the 2050 national demographics mimicking Florida in 2020.  

Digging deeper, National Nurses United (NNU) surveyed nurses between January and December of 2023 on the impact of workplace violence and found that 65% reported anxiety, fear, or the need for increased vigilance at work, and 37% considered leaving the profession entirely. Given that Becker’s reported that 86% of nurses say that a safer work environment would make them more likely to stay, these numbers are particularly troubling. And beyond turnover and other economic costs, workplace violence is simply unacceptable.  

Nurses are a cornerstone of health systems and of our society, but what can be done?

To answer this question, I had the privilege of moderating a panel of industry experts in a webinar hosted by Modern Healthcare to discuss the evidence-based approach to workplace violence with a focus on technologies and processes utilized by leading healthcare organizations:

Joe Byham - VP of Public Safety at Thomas Jefferson University and Jefferson Health

Melissa Jones - Network Director of Workplace Violence Prevention Program at Inspira Health Network

Erin Jaynes - Chief Nursing Executive and Strategic Advisor at Commure Strongline

Watch the Full Webinar

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Enabling Healthcare Workplace Safety

Staff-Inclusive Programs
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Too often decisions are made by healthcare organizations on new procedures or technologies without involving the end users whose day-to-day lives are affected by these changes. As Melissa Jones explains:

“If you pick a system and you don’t involve the staff and the staff don’t like it, they will find a workaround or they will just not use it, and you have basically wasted your money.”

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To ensure staff buy-in, healthcare organizations must actively involve frontline workers in both the development and implementation of staff safety measures. At Inspira Health, for example, Melissa Jones shared that their workplace violence committee consists of “at least 50 percent direct line staff,” ensuring that those who are most affected by violence have a voice in shaping the solutions. Erin Jaynes echoed this sentiment saying “Let your staff tell you what they want. If you ask, they will tell you.”

The Role of Technology
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Technology is a cornerstone of patient safety and the same opportunities exist to keep team members safe.  When it comes to technologies that address workplace safety in healthcare, one category stands out among the rest: staff duress alerting solutions such as Commure Strongline. Joe Byham agrees saying:

‍“The biggest thing we ever did, bar none, has been implementing the Strongline wearable duress badge, and it’s really not even close; people feel safe and it shows results in the reduction in injuries without a doubt.”

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Just having onsite security personnel, video monitoring and fixed location panic buttons is wholly inadequate. All staff must be protected and actions and interventions need to be guided by data and analytics, just as they do in patient safety.  Wearable duress badges achieve exactly that, as Joe adds:

“We now know where you are and how to get there. We know exactly who we’re going to. We’re not running around looking for you. And it really has reduced our security response time.”

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While nurses are most commonly on the frontlines experiencing the bulk of workplace violence, this issue extends to everyone working in a patient-facing capacity. Melissa Jones provides insight into her own workplace:

‍“When we talk about personal duress buttons, every single one of our staff in our hospitals have one. I don’t care if you’re EVS, if you’re finance, I don’t care who you are. You are going to have a duress button because workplace violence is on the rise.”

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Knowing help is just a button press away helps to ease the anxiety and fear surrounding workplace violence and it is instrumental in enabling assistance for early de-escalation to avoid further harm.‍

Gaining Leadership Buy-In Through ROI
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Investing in solutions like duress alerting to keep staff safe isn’t just a moral imperative, it’s also a business imperative. Industry data shows a single act of workplace violence is costly: The average cost per workplace violence victim due to disability and leave time is nearly $20,000, while the average cost to replace a single nurse is $56,000, according to NSI Nursing Solutions. That quickly adds up, according to Erin Jaynes:

"You can look at how many staff leave every year due to workplace violence. It's somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 to 20 percent depending on the type of incidents that an organization is experiencing. Then you have healthcare costs and potential liability expenses for people who are injured due to workplace violence, who on average, cost somewhere between 2.5 and 3.5 million a year that organizations are spending on workplace violence.” 

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Speaking specifically to Commure’s Strongline duress badges Erin said, “there is almost an instantaneous ROI that will happen when you deploy these types of systems that we’re talking about in that you are going to hear from nurses and other staff who say, ‘I’m never going to work at another place that doesn’t have something like this.’”

By facilitating rapid de-escalation and reducing incident intervention times, Strongline curtails these harmful financial impacts of WPV and supports a robust culture of safety. We have seen hospitals and health systems recoup the cost of the system within 3-4 months, and reduce annual incident costs by up to 30%.

Why Staff Retention Starts with Keeping Staff Safe from Harm

Keeping team members safe from workplace violence is a leader’s number one responsibility. It is also an essential investment with a significant return.  Preventing and mitigating workplace violence requires innovative technology solutions and adherence to evidence-based best practices along with direct feedback from those working on the frontlines. This blog covers only  a few aspects of what the panel had to share on this important topic, including how to involve staff in ideation, how to effectively implement duress badge technology, and approaches to demonstrate ROI to leadership.

To dive deeper into this topic and learn how you can transform your organization’s safety, watch the full on demand webinar and discover practical steps to create a safer, more secure environment for your healthcare team.

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Watch the Full Webinar

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Healthcare’s maze of point solutions, technology, and administration is an unsustainable path. Figures from a recent Medscape survey of over 9,000 physicians across 29 specialties found:

• 54% report feeling symptoms of strong to severe burnout
• 61% cite bureaucratic tasks as the number one cause of burnout
• 5.9 hours reported spent on average each day on charting and documentation (73% of an 8-hour day)

Becker’s Hospital Review recently sat down with an expert panel to discuss the “death of point solutions,” and the solutions that are paving the way to a better healthcare experience for clinicians and patients:

• Tanay Tandon, CEO at Commure
• Vikesh Tahiliani, MD, VP of Care Transformation and Innovation at HCA Healthcare
• Joseph Byham, VP of Public Safety at Jefferson Health
• Steve Klasko, Board Chair at DocGo, former President and CEO at Jefferson Health

Panelists discussed best practices for implementing cutting-edge technology like artificial intelligence and real-time location systems across real-world use cases. Speakers also discussed Commure’s unique co-development model, including why HCA selected Commure as its exclusive ambient AI partner, and how Jefferson Health worked closely with Commure to develop the RTLS-powered Strongline platform for duress alerting.

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Watch On Demand

How AI Can Reverse the Technology Fatigue

Tanay Tandon describes a “work tax” phenomenon in healthcare saying, "There's this proliferation of point solutions or individual apps and pieces of software that each solve a small piece of the problem. It's logging into forty different apps in a given day, remembering passwords, dealing with single sign-on and multi-factor authentication. The overhead from that is insane. If you're an administrator, you feel it. If you're a physician, you definitely feel it."

AI can reverse this trend by simplifying workflows and removing repetitive tasks that make healthcare more focused on tech than people. The impact on the healthcare workforce will be profound: AI doesn’t just save time—it can help clinicians reconnect with why they chose to pursue medicine in the first place.

Steve Klasko emphasizes this, saying, "I talk to thousands of doctors a year, and they say 'AI is going to take my job', and I always say, 'AI is not going to take your job. Someone who knows how to work with AI might take your job.'"

To fully harness the power of transformational solutions without adding additional strain, organizations must prioritize a platform-powered approach over point solutions. The most impactful AI technologies will be platform-powered and bidirectionally communicate with EHRs and other critical health IT systems. 

Co-Developing Platform-Grade Solutions‍

The panelists discussed Commure’s platform approach, co-development approach, and forward deployment model, including Commure's ambient AI solution, developed alongside HCA Healthcare, and Commure Strongline, first developed at Jefferson Health.

Commure’s ambient AI solution listens to patient interactions and automatically produces AI-drafted notes, suggests ICD-10 codes, and incorporates custom templates to automate workflows. This has a dramatic effect on efficiency, averaging an 81% reduction in total documentation time and a 32% increase in same-day note closures.

When asked why HCA chose Commure as its exclusive ambient AI partner, Vikesh Tahiliani responded, “We were seeking the latest and greatest most sophisticated engine we could find, and through our vetting process, we landed on Commure.” Vikesh also spoke to the co-development that took place with Commure for the Ambient AI solution, “Their engineers were on site with our physicians and the providers would see a patient, come back, sit with the engineers, and say, ‘My note looks really good, but I would love these two tweaks to be made’, by the time they got back from their next patient, those tweaks were already made.”

Commure Strongline’s RTLS platform enables real-time duress alerting and response via a discreet badge worn by all healthcare staff. Strongline also extends outside of hospital environments, providing protection in garages, outdoor common areas, and even when offsite at patient homes. This gives staff peace of mind knowing that help is just a button press away, leading to higher workplace satisfaction, lower turnover, and a safer overall environment. 

When discussing how Commure Strongline was developed in conjunction with Jefferson Health, Joe Byham shared, “It truly is a partnership with the frontline staff, it can’t be people sitting in offices states away, then nothing gets done. Having this partnership [with Commure] is really important to make these systems evolve.”

Unified, Human-Centered Healthcare

Healthcare faces a profound challenge: half of the physician workforce reports feeling burned out, primarily due to the overwhelming complexity of modern systems. Fragmented point solutions have contributed to this problem, creating inefficiencies and technological fatigue. To address these issues, the industry must shift toward platform-based solutions that integrate cutting-edge technologies like AI and RTLS.

By simplifying workflows and enhancing safety, these innovations can significantly reduce clinician burnout and allow healthcare professionals to focus more on their core mission—delivering quality care. Achieving this transformation requires close collaboration between healthcare providers and technology innovators to ensure solutions address real frontline needs.

HCA Healthcare and Jefferson Health exemplify this approach by partnering with Commure to tackle critical challenges. Through hands-on, iterative development with clinicians, Commure engineers have fine-tuned technologies that drive meaningful impact. This level of radical collaboration is key to solving healthcare’s toughest challenges and paving the way for a more efficient, human-centered future.

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Healthcare providers today face unprecedented demands on their time, with documentation burdens ranking as the top contributor to burnout. Physicians spend nearly 50% of their day in the EHR, an NIH statistic underscoring the critical need for innovative solutions to simplify workflows and enable clinicians to focus on delivering high-quality care.

Enter Commure Ambient: a powerful solution for reducing the documentation burden on clinicians. Following our successful acquisition of Augmedix in October, Commure Ambient re-platforms and enhances Augmedix’s core capabilities and services onto the Commure platform. This game-changing advancement not only harnesses the untapped potential of EHR data, but also redefines how care teams document, access, and utilize critical patient information—all while reducing friction in existing workflows.

We’re excited to share that Augmedix, part of Commure Ambient, achieved Oracle Validated Integration, and is part of the Oracle PartnerNetwork. This validation opens the door to scaling across over 2,700 hospitals, 4,000 physician practices, and over 45,000 providers who rely on Cerner every day.

Enhanced Capabilities Powered by Deep EHR Integrations

At the heart of Commure’s innovation is a commitment to deep EHR integration. This allows Commure Ambient to seamlessly orchestrate patient data from various sources—including historical records, labs, imaging, and more—into a single, context-driven view for providers. By embedding intelligent AI capabilities across the entire provider workflow, the platform enables clinicians to:

Before the Visit: Automatically surface the most relevant data from the EHR, eliminating pre-charting burdens.

‍During the Visit: Leverage ambient AI to transform patient encounters into structured clinical notes in real time, while surfacing decision-support care cues when needed.

‍After the Visit: Deliver pre-drafted documentation for physician review and attestation, ensuring accuracy, compliance, and efficient billing processes.

This seamless integration of Commure Ambient within the EHR allows providers to spend more time with patients and less time navigating screens—restoring the provider-patient relationship while enhancing operational efficiency.

Transforming Documentation into a Strategic Asset

With Commure Ambient, healthcare organizations gain:‍

Improved Outcomes: Streamlined workflows reduce documentation time, freeing providers to focus on care delivery.

‍Operational Excellence: AI-driven accuracy minimizes claim denials and supports compliance with evolving coding standards. The ability to generate error-free documentation enhances operational efficiency, while optimizing revenue cycle.

‍Enhanced Quality: Deep EHR integrations surface critical data and ‘care nudges’ during patient encounters, driving better patient insights and outcomes.

Ultimately, patients reap the rewards of clinicians who are freed to focus on meaningful interactions and informed, data-driven decision-making. In a time of rising costs, mounting burnout, and heightened scrutiny over care quality, this platform redefines documentation as a strategic asset—empowering all stakeholders and enhancing outcomes at every turn.

Building a Healthier, Connected Future

This milestone with Oracle is just the beginning for Commure. It represents not just a technical achievement but a reaffirmation of our mission to simplify healthcare with AI and create a better, more cost-effective healthcare experience, at scale.

By turning documentation into a strategic asset, Commure Ambient is redefining healthcare efficiency and creating a path toward a more connected, patient-focused future.

Welcome to Commure Up Close! In this employee spotlight series, we sit down with team members from across Commure to learn about their backgrounds, their perspectives on our company culture, and their lives beyond work. Through these stories, we aim to provide a deeper look into why talented individuals choose Commure and how we work together to transform and simplify healthcare with cutting-edge technologies.

In this issue, we are excited to highlight Allison Park, who works as a Chief of Staff to the Chief Technology Officer and has been with Commure since January of 2024.

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Tell us about your background and how you landed at Commure?
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I'm originally from Irvine, California, but I spent much of my academic and early professional life on the East Coast. After studying civil engineering and economics at MIT, I moved to New York to work as an engineer for ExxonMobil in their Brooklyn office. While working at Exxon was an incredible experience getting structured training right out of college, I was always interested in what living the startup life could be like. During my four years at Exxon, I discovered my passion for entrepreneurship and how rewarding working in a startup environment can be via a wine startup I helped grow.

To further pursue this passion, I attended Harvard Business School, focusing on scaling and launching tech ventures. Before joining Commure, I was at a tech-enabled Medicare brokerage where I led operations and served as Chief of Staff to the co-founders. Now at Commure as the Chief of Staff to the CTO, I'm excited to dive back into engineering and tech while collaborating with an exceptional team at a growing company.

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What does a day in the life look like for you?
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In short, I'm here to help our CTO oversee the engineering, product, and design teams. Some days, I'm syncing with recruiting on key engineering hires, including tracking the pipeline and figuring out where we need to focus, other times, I'm catching up with PMs and engineers on specific projects. 

Right now, I'm focusing a lot on driving adoption of our ambient AI scribe product, Augmedix, with HCA who is one of the nation’s largest healthcare providers. I join daily standups with our Augmedix engineers and PMs, check progress, review specs, and work with HCA on key initiatives. I also occasionally go on-site to gather feedback on what we shipped and improve our products in real time.

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How would you describe the company culture at Commure?
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Our company culture is pretty unique. It's incredibly fast-paced, and everyone has a high sense of urgency, we all want to ship quickly, and our velocity is unmatched. There's a strong sense of ownership here, which goes hand in hand with one of our company values of “Extreme Ownership”. Everyone feels like they own the product and genuinely want to make it better. We also have a culture of accountability, which leads to high-quality outcomes. Plus, there's this "yes before no" mentality. We believe anything is possible and tackle challenges with that mindset.

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What advice would you give somebody on their first day at Commure?
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Be ready to hit the ground running! This place moves fast, but there's nowhere else with such a steep growth curve. You'll grow a ton very quickly. If you want ownership, it's yours, the sky's the limit. Absorb as much as you can, lean on your peers, ask for help, and don't fail silently. The team here is amazing, and you'll learn so much from them.

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What made you decide to join Commure?
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I was looking for a change from my last company and wanted to lean more into tech. Dhruv, our CTO, is an incredible leader, he’s structured, sharp, technical, and empathetic. A lot of people on the team are drawn to that, and I knew I wanted to work with someone like him.

The team also stood out to me. I wanted to be around motivated, hardworking people who are committed to building high-quality products. I've never been at a company where everyone is this passionate and driven.

Another reason I joined Commure is the impact the company has on healthcare. We're making tangible, positive changes in providers' daily lives, and the work we do directly affects them in a positive way. That was really appealing to me.

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What has been your biggest accomplishment so far at Commure?
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I joined Commure in January 2024, and my first big project was tackling issues concerning eligibility with our Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) product. We launched key rules engines, revamped eligibility handling, and integrated a third-party API. The customer feedback was fantastic—it was a big win for Q1.

Another big accomplishment was integrating with the company we recently acquired, Augmedix. I was very involved in making sure we combined the teams well, aligned them with our culture, and kept everything on track. We are also continuing to expand our partnership with HCA. They're one of our major customers, and we're focused on improving and scaling with them.

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As a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?
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My dad's a veterinarian, so for a long time, I wanted to be a vet. I love animals, we always had cats and dogs around growing up. But then I saw a surgery, and I quickly realized that wasn't for me. I've always loved building things, and that's what led me to engineering in college. It's also why I love my role at Commure. I love being on the tech side, building things and making an impact.

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What do you like to do outside of work?
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I love staying active and try to spend as much time outdoors as possible. I grew up playing soccer and continued throughout college. These days I have enjoyed playing golf as well. Family is really important to me; they all live in the Bay Area now which I love. I've got an older sister, a younger brother, a new niece named Nora, and of course my cat, Wally, she's the love of my life!

Interested in a career building the next generation of healthcare technology powered by AI? We are always looking for talented people across our departments.

Explore Career Opportunities

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Healthcare now routinely reaches beyond hospitals into patient homes, creating a vital need to keep these caregivers safe. Over 200,000 U.S. nurses—including RNs, LPNs, and APRNs—provide home health care today and that number is expected to grow significantly in coming years. Strongline, our wearable safety duress solution, already protects over 250,000+ nurses in and around the hospital and ambulatory, and is designed to ensure safety for those in home health settings as well.

Strongline Companion

Co-developed with nursing and security leaders from the country's most renowned healthcare organizations, the Strongline Companion App empowers healthcare workers to signal duress and call for immediate assistance by discreetly pressing the Strongline Pro badge.

Key Features

1. Wearable Badge with Mobile App Integration:
   Our badge connects instantly with the app, working seamlessly across hospitals, outdoor campuses, and patient homes.
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2. Walk-With-Me Mode:
   ‍Activates real-time tracking and alerts security if assistance is needed or there’s a route deviation.
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3. Check-In Mode:
   ‍Automatically schedules check-ins and alerts security if one is missed, and also enables
geo-fencing based alerts.
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4. Direct-to-911 Mode:
   ‍Discreetly contacts 911 for immediate help in emergencies without the need to be on the phone. Seamless integrations with county directories ensure the right emergency responders are sent
to the right location, minimizing response time.
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5. Ambient Safety Listening:
   ‍Using Commure AI Scribe, the app can record safety events for improved documentation and trigger alerts based on safe words.
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6. All-in-One Dashboard:
   ‍Centralizes real-time safety monitoring across hospital and home settings.
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7. Customizable Settings:
   ‍Set up workflows in the way that works best for your organization. Tailor alerts and custom instructions for each location, employee type, or staff member, ensuring that security teams can adapt their response to specific needs and environments.

‍Providing Safety, Wherever Work Takes Place

If you are an existing Strongline customer, or you are looking for a proven solution to bolster the safety of your staff, the Strongline Companion App extends Strongline’s powerful duress alerting capabilities to wherever work takes you.

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About Strongline

Strongline safeguards hundreds of thousands of clinical workers across 50+ major U.S. healthcare systems. Powered by Commure, Strongline leverages proprietary hardware and AI-driven software to deliver reliable, scalable solutions for modern healthcare environments.

Commure Team

Health equity is a primary focus across the U.S. healthcare system today, with frameworks established by CMS and HHS to help clinicians improve the health of underserved communities while reducing the cost of care. Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) and Rural Health Centers (RHCs) are vital providers of care to those communities who need it most, regardless of their ability to pay. According to HRSA:

• Over 1,400 FQHCs and 4,400 RHCs served over 30 millions Americans in 2022. 
• FQHCs and RHCs provide essential access to high-quality primary healthcare services in medically underserved areas, low-income communities, and rural areas. 
• Cost of care is determined by a sliding scale. Among people who received care at FQHCs in 2021, 20% were uninsured and 48% were covered by Medicaid. 

Technology can help FQHCs and RHCs unlock clinical, financial, and operational efficiencies to advance key community health goals and maximize the efficiency utilization of public grants and other funding mechanisms. Here are three ways that clinical care coordination technology can help meet the needs FQHCs and the patients they serve:

1- Improving Clinical and Business Outcomes with Evidence-Based Patient Engagement

Digital patient education and appointment reminders can help improve clinical outcomes by guiding patients on evidence-based clinical journeys to achieve outstanding clinical outcomes, boosting preventative care goals, and patient care adherence to prescribed therapies. Failure to complete preventative health screenings that are essential for early detection of cancers and other diseases that can disproportionately impact communities that FQHCs serve. 

For example, studies have shown that women with public or no insurance are more likely to be diagnosed with breast cancer at a later stage and have more aggressive pathology than those with private insurance. Medicaid-insured patients also have lower breast cancer screening rates and larger time gaps between mammograms. To help fill preventative care gaps, FQHCs can leverage personalized evidence-based patient communications which have been shown to increase patient adherence with critical screenings that can help save lives, such as mammograms. 

Commure Engage is working with Cornell Scott-Hill Health Center (CSHHC) on a multilingual, breast cancer screening program and enterprise-wide appointment reminders. A similar program has been proven to have success reducing the no-show and same-day cancellation rates for breast cancer screenings by 54% at Yale New Haven Health System (where CSHHC is affiliated). 

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Read the Case Study

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Beyond improving outcomes through preventative care, clinical care coordination technology plays a critical role in the long term management of chronic diseases by providing ongoing education, remote patient monitoring, and AI-supported timely intervention. By reducing no-shows and improving patient care plan adherence, FQHCs can optimize the efficiency of their resources and precious provider time. This is essential for nonprofit organizations dependent on public funding and grants. 

Additionally, technology such as AI-powered revenue cycle management solutions can also help automate the processes of getting reimbursed properly for the cost of delivering care –– an especially complex process for FQHCs who provide care on a sliding pay scale for Medicare and Medicaid populations. 

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Learn More About Commure RCM

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2- Scaling Population Health Initiatives to Address Public Health Concerns

The behavioral health crisis, including the opioid epidemic, and persisting health disparities related to social determinants of health, including the digital divide, are costly challenges facing FQHCs, RHCs, and the U.S. at large today. In terms of cost of care, a McKinsey analysis revealed that 60% of overall national medical expenditures are driven by the 23% of members who have mental or substance use disorders. This makes sense because symptoms of mental health and substance use disorders can hinder how patients approach and experience the medical care they need. Additionally, nearly 70% of patients with mental health or substance use issues also have a medical comorbidity. 

FQHCs and RHCs can leverage automated patient engagement and clinical coordination technology to better integrate behavioral health factors into overall patient care. Patient engagement technology can be used to scale behavioral health risk assessments such as the PHQ-9, ASAM, SRA, and others to patient populations at large, and specific tools like The Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) in maternal-fetal health. FQHCs and RHCs can then prioritize targeted follow up and digital navigation pathways for individuals who are most at-risk, and facilitate coordination between primary and behavioral/mental health care. 

Research suggests that up to 80% of all health outcomes – good or bad – are due to Social Determinants of Health, factors that deeply interconnect  public health with individual health and wellbeing. For example, socioeconomic status is a known determinant. 6 in 10 adults with Opioid Use Disordered are considered low-income, and nearly 1 in 5 are uninsured, underscoring how the population FQHCs serve are impacted by the opioid epidemic. Life expectancy can vary dramatically based on zip code; in one example in Washington, D.C., a difference of 10 miles translated to a gap in life expectancy by 33.5 years. 

Community resource centers can help fill critical gaps related to social determinants of health. FQHCs can leverage technology to help streamline the process of connecting patients with community resources to meet their individual needs. For patients with Opioid Use Disorder (OUD), this could entail connecting the individual with stable housing, settings that provide Medications for Opioid Use Disorder (MOUD), or other treatment programs like Digital Therapeutics for behavioral and mental health like ADHD or Depression.

3- Increasing Access and Closing Care Gaps with Digital Health Tools

The pandemic dramatically accelerated the adoption of telehealth. Patients have spoken loud and clear that they are going to consume healthcare when they want it and where they want it, and that is largely in the home. Their expectations around digital engagement are here to stay. FQHCs and RHCs should be embracing these technologies to expand access to the communities they serve. With CMS loosening reimbursements on Medicare and Medicaid coverage for telehealth appointments that is more feasible. In communities and geographic areas with limited provider coverage, such as rural communities, digital health tools like virtual health appointments, remote therapeutic monitoring, and hospital at home can fill critical gaps to educate and engage patients along their health care journeys. 

While digital tools hold great potential, digital access is now recognized as a Super Determinant of Health. Multiple Federal and State initiatives exist today to bridge the digital divide. Among low-income adults (households below $30K/year), 4 in 10 don’t have access to broadband services or a desktop/laptop computer, and 1 in 4 do not own a smartphone. RHCs and FQHCs require creative partnerships with payers, payvidors, digital health companies and telecom providers to ensure that their communities have access to the essential resources like mobile phones and basic broadband internet access to be able to engage with state of the art clinical medicine using evidence-based digital health tools. 

Creating Affordable, Equitable, and Enjoyable Care For All 

Now more than ever, the entire healthcare industry must think in terms of creative technology uses and innovative partnerships in order to make real strides on our shared goal of health equity. FQHCs and RHCs serve critical missions to improve the health of communities who need it most. Commure is proud to be one such solution provider to deliver automated clinical care coordination and revenue cycle management technologies that can power the clinical, financial, and operational efficiencies to advance key community health goals.