HealthStream, Inc. (‘HealthStream’) primarily provides Software-as-a-Service (‘SaaS’) based applications for healthcare organizations—all designed to improve business and clinical outcomes by supporting the people who deliver patient care.
The company focuses on helping healthcare organizations meet their ongoing clinical development, talent management, training, education, assessment, competency management, safety and compliance, scheduling, and provides credentialing, privileging, and enrollm...
HealthStream, Inc. (‘HealthStream’) primarily provides Software-as-a-Service (‘SaaS’) based applications for healthcare organizations—all designed to improve business and clinical outcomes by supporting the people who deliver patient care.
The company focuses on helping healthcare organizations meet their ongoing clinical development, talent management, training, education, assessment, competency management, safety and compliance, scheduling, and provides credentialing, privileging, and enrollment needs. The company is organized and operated according to its One HealthStream approach, with its hStream technology platform at the center of that approach. Increasingly, SaaS-based applications in its diverse ecosystem of solutions utilize its proprietary hStream technology platform to enhance their value proposition by creating interoperability with, and among, other applications.
The company is characterized by its single platform strategy, which is designed to create interoperability among the various applications in its ecosystem through its proprietary hStream technology platform.
For healthcare organizations—The company’s primary customers—HealthStream’s solutions help to effectively onboard, retain, engage, educate, manage, and develop workforce talent; meet rigorous GRC requirements; optimize staff scheduling and capacity management; and automate the management of medical staff credentialing, privileging, and enrollment.
For healthcare professionals and students—The company’s primary end users—HealthStream’s solutions help them to professionally develop their knowledge and skills, manage and fulfill their required continuing education and certifications, manage their schedules, including swapping and filling shifts, engage with peers, provide personalized competency development, and optimize their career pathways.
For both healthcare organizations and healthcare professionals and students, HealthStream’s solutions are generally accessed through SaaS application suites that are increasingly enhanced through the company’s hStream technology platform. The company’s learning, credentialing, and scheduling application suites are designed to help solve the most critical problems facing the healthcare workforce today. They accomplish this by utilizing a combination of established and cutting-edge technologies, such as initiative and workflow management capabilities; proprietary taxonomy engines; dynamic engagement models; artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) driven clinical assessments; physical-based simulations; healthcare-specific benchmarks; and automated license monitoring and validation.
Solutions
HealthStream’s products, services, and operations are organized and managed under its One HealthStream approach. Through this One HealthStream approach, the company collectively helps healthcare organizations meet their ongoing learning, clinical development, credentialing, and scheduling needs. HealthStream’s solutions are provided to a wide range of customers within the healthcare industry.
The company’s underlying solutions consist primarily of SaaS, subscription-based applications that are used by healthcare organizations to meet a broad range of their workforce development needs around learning, clinical development, credentialing, and scheduling. Nursing schools, nursing students, as well as individual healthcare professionals are also beginning to utilize its training and education solutions. The company’s numerous content libraries allow customers to subscribe to a wide array of courseware, which includes content from leading healthcare and nursing associations, medical and healthcare publishers, and other ecosystem partners. The company’s scheduling solutions provide customers with real-time visibility into clinical staff scheduling that enables them to optimize their workforce, reduce costs, and improve care. The company’s SaaS-based credentialing, privileging, and enrollment solution, CredentialStream, provides customers an intuitive, modern user experience, evidence-based content, and curated data, all of which provide healthcare organizations with tools to support the provider lifecycle management from recruiting, application submission, verification of licensure and other credentials, privileging, appointments by credentialing committees, enrollment, network management, onboarding, and performance evaluations of providers.
Pricing for hStream and HealthStream’s products is primarily subscription-based, with fees based on the number of subscriptions, solutions provided, and other factors. The company offers implementation, training, and account management services to facilitate the adoption of its subscription-based solutions. Fees for implementation services are based on the time and efforts of the personnel involved. Training fees vary based on the size, scope, and complexity of the project. The company’s platform and subscription-based solutions are hosted on a combination of private-cloud infrastructure and public-cloud infrastructure, leveraging Amazon Web Services and Azure, which allows authorized personnel access to its services through the Internet, thereby eliminating the need for onsite local implementations of installed workforce development products. HealthStream also sells a growing number of products directly to individuals in the healthcare industry, and these products are primarily based on per-unit retail price.
Other Applications on the Company’s Platform — HealthStream offers an array of other applications on its platform, each serving a unique function for healthcare customers. Each application on the company’s platform has its own value. Examples of individual applications that are offered on its platform include applications for performance appraisal, competency management, disclosure management, clinical competency, assessment, development, simulation-based education, clinical rotation and onboarding management, quality management, and industry training.
Business Acquisitions
As part of the company’s overall growth strategy, it evaluates opportunities for mergers and acquisitions, and since the beginning of 2022, it has completed four acquisitions. In October and November 2024, it acquired substantially all of the assets of Total Clinical Placement System (doing business as TCPS) (TCPS) and The Clinical Hub, Inc. (d/b/a The Clinical Hub) (The Clinical Hub), respectively.
Customers
The company provides its solutions to customers across a broad range of individuals and entities within the healthcare industry, including private, not-for-profit, and government entities, as well as pharmaceutical and medical device companies, and nursing schools and their students. The company derives a substantial portion of its revenues from a relatively small number of customers that are healthcare providers.
Sales and Marketing
The company markets its products and services primarily through its direct sales teams, who are located throughout the United States. HealthStream has also expanded its e-commerce sales capabilities, building on its existing sales channels and establishing new online sales channels. This has enabled the company to begin extending beyond its traditional business-to-business sales model to also include functionality to support sales made directly to healthcare professionals and students, including those direct sales that can be made by the buyer.
The company conducts a variety of marketing programs to promote its products and services, including via its hStream content marketplace, user groups, trade shows, social media, Internet promotion and demonstrations, digital marketing campaigns, public relations, distribution of product-specific literature, direct mail, advertising, and in partnership with third parties. The company has marketing teams that are responsible for these initiatives and for working with, and supporting, its product management and sales teams.
Operations and Technology
The company’s ability to establish and maintain long-term customer relationships, obtain recurring sales, and develop and maintain new and existing products are dependent on the strength of its operations, customer service, product development and maintenance, training, and other support teams. The company’s operations teams are primarily associated with technical support, customer implementation and training, product management, software development and quality assurance, and other functions.
The company’s services are designed to be reliable, secure, and scalable. The company’s software is a combination of proprietary and commercially available software and operating systems. It has designed the applications that provide its services to allow each component to be independently scaled by adding commercially available hardware and a combination of commercially available and proprietary software components.
The company’s software applications, servers, and network infrastructure that deliver its services are hosted by a combination of third-party data center providers and cloud-based infrastructure. The company maintains redundant disaster recovery data centers that are located in geographically separate locations. The company’s technology equipment is maintained in secure, limited access environments, supported by redundant power, environmental conditioning, and network connectivity.
Competition
The company competes with companies, such as Cornerstone OnDemand, Ultimate Kronos Group, Degreed, Oracle, SAP, Infor, and Workday, which provide their services to multiple industries, including healthcare. The company also competes with companies that are dedicated to, or have operating units focused on healthcare, such as Relias Learning, RLDatix, Symplr, Verisys, MD-Staff, and AMN Healthcare.
Government Regulation
As a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) business associate of certain of the company’s customers, it is required to report breaches of protected health information to its customers, who must in turn notify affected individuals, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), and/or other governmental agencies, and, in certain situations, the media.
The company’s HealthStream Continuing Nursing Education (CNE) Provider Unit is accredited as a provider of nursing continuing professional development (NCPD) by The American Nurses Credentialing Center (ANCC). The company is also approved by the California Board of Registered Nursing and the Florida Board of Nursing.
The company is recognized as an accredited provider of Continuing Medical Education (CME) for physicians by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME).
HealthStream is an organization accredited and/or approved by the Commission on Accreditation for Prehospital Continuing Education (CAPCE) and the Florida Department of Health.
Further, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) has issued Compliance Program Guidance for Pharmaceutical Manufacturers and for the Durable Medical Equipment, Prosthetics, Orthotics, and Supply Industry (collectively, the Guidelines). The Guidelines address compliance risks raised by the support of continuing educational activities by pharmaceutical and medical device companies. The Guidelines have affected, and may continue to affect, the type and extent of commercial support the company receives for its continuing education activities.
Some continuing education organizations issue related standards applicable to the company’s services. For example, the company complies with the ACCME’s Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education to ensure that its CME and CNE activities are evidence-based, designed to improve patient care and/or community health, and free from commercial influence. The company follows all standards/criteria/guidelines set forth by ACCME, ANCC, and other continuing education organizations regarding the regulation of educational program sponsorship and support.
Intellectual Property and Other Proprietary Rights
The company owns federal trademark and service mark registrations for several marks, including, without limitation, ‘HEALTHSTREAM’, ‘HSTREAM’, ‘HEALTHSTREAM LEARNING CENTER’, ‘CREDENTIALSTREAM’, ‘JANE’, ‘HEALTHSTREAM EPORTFOLIO’, and ‘COMPLYQ’. The company has also obtained registration of the ‘HEALTHSTREAM’ mark in certain other countries. Additionally, the company holds a number of patents related to the solutions it provides. Applications for several trademarks and patents are pending.
History
HealthStream, Inc. was founded in 1990. The company was incorporated in 1990 as a Tennessee corporation.