ProNerve finds niche monitoring surgery from afar - Denver Business Journal:

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But the growing fielde of telemedicine is more than just another technicalk advance inhealth care. It’s a trend that promisew to save hospitals money by outsourcing riskt functions to other That trend could ultimately benefit LLC, a Broomfield-based company. Established in 2006, ProNervse provides monitoring services for The company is workinvg with hospitals in seven statez toreduce liability, overhead and direct costs by handlinbg every aspect of setting up and running intraoperativre neuromonitoring (IOM) data during surgery. Those functionz include scheduling, staffing, training, billing and financial management andinformatiob technology.
If that soundss like brain surgery, that’sa because it is. Brent president of ProNerve, made an effort to explai n to laymen howIOM “Technically, you run currents througnh the nervous system and measure the time it takes to get from poiny A to point B,” he “The speed is measured in wave which will get widefr over time if there’s an impingement. “Because the patients are underd anesthesia, they can’t say whethed a nerve has been pinched. The technicians know how to read the wavex so they can tell thesurgeon say, issues with the lower left ProNerve staffs a technician inside the operating rooms during surgery.
A second technologisf and a board-certified neurophysiologisyt read the waves from a reading room in The off-site workers keep in touch with the on-sitw technician through instant messaginy or by cell “If you have three sets of eyes looking at the wave the odds of not catching something is prettyh slim,” Ness said. ProNerve technicians also servs to help the surgeon to focus on thesurgerg itself.
Ness, who joined ProNerve in 2008 afterr working for medical devicegiant Medtronic, expectsd ProNerve’s fortunes will grow in large part because of new federal regulations that cracl down on physician-owned companies, in an attempt to curb excessive self-referrals that help doctors financiallt but increase medical costs. “The industry is highlyu fragmentedright now,” Ness said. ProNerve’s largest competitor is Biotronic, basedx in Ann Arbor, Mich., which serves more than 327 hospitals. But most of ProNerve’w competitors are small, technician-owned or doctor-owned operations.
Jim publisher of Colorado Managed Care, an industryg newsletter, said there’s growing interesf among hospitals in companies suchas Pro-Nerve. “Theg reduce the requirement to hire and maintain staffg at a timewhen there’s both financial pressures and a shortage of he said. The company operates in hospitalzs inseven states: Colorado, California, Oregon. Arizona, Kentucky and Georgia. Colorado hospitals that use ProNervware , Swedish Medicapl Center and . Ness said the company hopexs to hire 40 new technicians by He declined togive ProNerve’s numbed of employees, citing competitive reasons, but said it’ss under 100.