The federal government has officially certified Covera Health—a tech startup focused on addressing misdiagnoses in radiology—as a patient safety organization, officials announced Friday.
Following the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s decision, the New York-based company joins a list of less than 100 such organizations in the U.S. As a PSO, Covera Health can both study and implement “safety-forward” initiatives aimed at improving healthcare delivery.
“Since inception, we’ve made it our mission at Covera Health to support radiologists and the broader physician community in providing high-quality care for patients, above all else,” Chief Medical Officer Richard Herzog, MD, who also serves as director of spinal imaging at the Hospital for Special Surgery in New York, said in a statement. “The Covera PSO allows us to further deepen our collaboration with these physicians, both to improve care for patients nationwide and to demonstrate the fundamental value of high-quality radiology in leading to better healthcare outcomes.”
The company first grabbed headlines last year when it announced a partnership with Walmart to help the retail giant spotlight quality radiologists and save on unnecessary downstream care services. Since then, Covera has raised tens of millions of dollars in funding and last month announced its first partnership with a commercial payer.
Founded in 2017 by entrepreneur Ron Vianu, Covera Health bills itself as a “leading clinical analytics company,” working with providers and payers to address misdiagnoses in imaging. Its Radiology Centers of Excellence Program now operates in all 50 states.
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.