June 2, 2021
Change of ownership, implementation of robust EHR platform usher rural community hospital into a new era of comprehensive care
Medsphere Systems Corporation, the leading provider of affordable and interoperable healthcare IT platform solutions, today announced that Galesburg Cottage Hospital (GCH) in Galesburg, Illinois, is now live on the company’s CareVue Cloud electronic health record (EHR) and RCM Cloud revenue cycle management (RCM) solutions. Acquired last year by SBJ Group, a business entity owned and operated by Dr. Sanjay Sharma, GCH is a 133-bed hospital accredited by The Joint Commission.
Galesburg Cottage offers a secured inpatient geriatric psychiatric unit; cardiac and respiratory services; orthopedic robotic surgery; vascular, digestive, and general surgical services; a wound healing center with hyperbaric oxygen chambers; and an emergency department. Additionally, the hospital is certified as a Primary Stroke Center by The Joint Commission.
“We appreciate the relationship we’ve developed with Medsphere and wanted to extend the benefits of the company’s solutions to providers at GCH, our most recent hospital acquisition,” said Dr. Sharma. “CareVue Cloud and RCM Cloud comprise an affordable and functionally robust platform, which isn’t easy to find, and Medsphere has been a responsive development partner in terms of enhancing the platform to enable our specific goals. We appreciate that CareVue solutions can be adapted to a variety of clinical environments.”
The Sharma family also owns Infrahealth, a healthcare administrative services firm based in Austin, Texas, and they are majority owners in the St. Martinus University Medical School in Curacao. In 2016 the Sharma family purchased Pontiac General Hospital in Pontiac, MI, and shortly after, implemented CareVue with positive results.
“Many in healthcare have watched with alarm as America continues to lose rural hospitals,” said Medsphere CEO Irv Lichtenwald. “The Sharmas have a proven plan for turning around some of these struggling facilities and for ensuring essential care remains viable for residents of rural communities. We’re proud to be a part of that effort.”
Medsphere provides clinical and financial healthcare IT solutions for emergent, ambulatory, and inpatient behavioral health settings, as well as a supply-chain management suite. The company’s outsourcing / consulting division works with hospitals to improve facility function and backstop hard-to-retain IT roles.
About Galesburg Cottage Hospital
Celebrating nearly 130 years of serving Western Illinois, Galesburg Cottage Hospital is a 133-bed facility that provides complete inpatient, outpatient and emergency care with an award-winning wound healing center complete with two hyperbaric healing chambers. Cottage operates the area’s only inpatient senior psychiatric unit to assist with the increasing demand for dementia services. Galesburg Cottage Hospital is accredited by The Joint Commission (TJC), certified as a TJC Primary Stroke Center, and its Emergency Department is approved for pediatrics by the State of Illinois.