HealthStream Acquires Electronic Education Documentation System, LLC (d/b/a “eeds”)

HealthStream (Nasdaq: HSTM), a leading provider of workforce and provider solutions for the healthcare industry, today announced that it has acquired substantially all of the assets of eeds, an Ashville, North Carolina-based healthcare technology company. With this acquisition, HealthStream expands its ecosystem with an innovative, SaaS-based continuing education management system for healthcare organizations, representing its third acquisition in this specialty area within the last 13 months and completing its planned investment strategy in this space.

Across all healthcare organizations where patient care is delivered, many hours of CME and CE (“continuing medical education & continuing education”) for physicians and clinical staff are mandated—with the amount and frequency required dependent upon state requirements and particular area of practice. Industry-wide in 2021, approximately 204,000 accredited educational activities were held or offered where, cumulatively, approximately 49,800,000 individual CME/CE learning experiences were completed by U.S. healthcare professionals—a 10 percent increase over the prior year. The eeds application greatly helps in this process, supporting multiple continuing education credit types, including those designated via providership statuses or obtained via approving bodies.

Approximately 50 percent of the 1,668 organizations that currently hold an “accredited” status by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) are hospitals or health systems. To earn and maintain the accredited status, which grants a hospital the ability to create, designate, and award continuing education credits, hospitals are responsible for demonstrating that they meet ACCME requirements for delivering independent CME. This process is thorough; it requires hospitals’ detailed tracking and recording of related workflows and educational documentation, along with a broad series of evaluations, interviews, and assessments. For these purposes, the eeds application streamlines these processes, supporting hospitals’ continuous work along this journey.

“Since its inception, eeds has utilized cutting-edge technology that is focused on making both the CE provider and the CE Participant experience intuitive, easy, and efficient, which has made us a market leader for CME and CE management applications over the years,” said Paul Martin, M.D., co-founder and Chief Executive Officer, eeds. “I am confident that our customers will continue to receive outstanding support as part of HealthStream with great customer care and expanded resources while also benefitting from being a part of one of the most innovative, forward-thinking healthcare IT companies in the industry.”