Nashville-based 180 Health Partners has raised an $8 million Series B financing round led by Spring Mountain Capital for the purpose of a national expansion. The company provides immediate and realistic accessibility to medical and behavioral health care to pregnant mothers caught up in the nation’s opioid crisis.

Existing investors Frist Cressey Ventures, Resolute Venture Partners and Altitude Ventures also participated in the round.

180 Health has primarily served patients throughout Tennessee and is currently contracted with all the Medicaid health plans in the state. With this round of funding, the company will launch its program in other states with similar critical need.

Former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, M.D., who serves on the 180 Health Partners board, added, “By providing comprehensive care to opioid-dependent expecting mothers, with each patient we touch we not only change one life but two. This funding will provide widespread access to the program, giving us the ability to impact many more lives.”

Shearwater Health earns URAC accreditation

Shearwater Health, based in Nashville, has earned URAC accreditation in workers’ compensation utilization management and certification in health utilization management for its Philippine Delivery Centers.

URAC is the independent leader in promoting healthcare quality through accreditation, certification, and measurement.

By achieving this status, Shearwater Health has demonstrated a comprehensive commitment to quality care, improved processes, and better patient outcomes.

“This is our second time earning the URAC accreditation, and we are honored to continue the standard of excellence in healthcare delivery,” says Shearwater’s CFO & COO Tom Kendrot. “The steps we take to ensure our URAC accreditation is part of a larger culture of compliance to ensure we maintain the highest level of quality and security in the services we deliver to our clients.”

Tri Star Energy launches emission program

Nashville-based Tri Star Energy, LLC and its Twice Daily convenience store locations in Middle Tennessee are in a partnership to offer Thrive – a reduced emissions program.

Tri Star’s partners in the sustainability program, set to launch in April at all Twice Daily locations, are GreenPrint, the Arbor Day Foundation and GROW Enrichment.

Middle Tennessee residents will be able to reduce their carbon footprint, plant trees, and lessen their impact on the environment by refueling at the Twice Daily stores. The program will reduce consumers’ tailpipe emissions on all grades at the pump through certified carbon investment projects such as tree plantings, renewable energy development, and other efforts.

Unlike other alternative fuel products or programs, GreenPrint’s program requires no new hardware or software, and no new tanks or equipment.

“With our Twice Daily stores being locally owned and operated, we’re focused on our communities and how best to support and give back to them,” says Steve Hostetter, CEO of Tri Star Energy. “It’s important that we continue to support initiatives that are important to our guests and our communities and ‘Thrive’ with GreenPrint will help us do that.”

The Thrive program will also plant 25,000 trees in Middle Tennessee.

Vanderbilt expands cancer partnership

Boehringer Ingelheim, a global research-driven pharmaceutical company, and Vanderbilt University are expanding their successful existing collaboration to develop novel anti-cancer compounds.

The research partnership will focus on the discovery and development of new chemical therapeutics targeting the pro-survival protein MCL1 as a potential therapy against MCL1 dependent cancers. This is the third collaboration between Boehringer Ingelheim and Vanderbilt to pursue discoveries made in the laboratory of Stephen W. Fesik, Ph.D., at Vanderbilt School of Medicine.

“Boehringer Ingelheim and Vanderbilt University have the expertise and are jointly focused on discovering breakthrough medicines against the cancer-causing proteins KRAS, SOS and now, MCL1,” says Darryl McConnell, Ph.D., vice president and research site head, Boehringer Ingelheim, Austria. “Together, we are committed to driving scientific research and development forward to help patients win the fight against cancer.”

“MCL1 is one of the Top 10 overexpressed genes in human cancer where it plays a role as a survival factor,” says Lawrence J. Marnett, Ph.D., Dean of Basic Sciences at Vanderbilt.

“It is a great target for therapy but candidate drugs need to disrupt high affinity protein-protein interactions, which is very challenging,” Marnett adds. “The Fesik laboratory has made impressive strides in developing such compounds and it is exciting to see them advanced toward clinical development through the partnership with Boehringer Ingelheim.”

LifePoint wins Eisenberg Award for patient safety

Brentwood-based LifePoint Health is the recipient of the 2017 John M. Eisenberg Award for Innovation in Patient Safety at the Local Level.

Presented annually by The Joint Commission and the National Quality Forum, Eisenberg Awards acknowledge major achievements in health care quality and patient safety.

The first investor-owned health system to earn the award, LifePoint is being recognized for its National Quality Program, a structured process for ensuring consistent, high standards of quality and patient safety.

The program, created in partnership with Duke University Health System, has led to significant enhancements across the LifePoint network, including a more than 60 percent improvement in aggregate patient safety.

“Receiving the John M. Eisenberg Award is an honor and one of the proudest moments of our company,” says Bill Carpenter, chairman and chief executive officer of LifePoint Health.

“Since our company was founded, we committed ourselves to always putting quality and patient safety first. We, along with our partners at Duke, created the LifePoint National Quality Program as a way to institutionalize and ensure this undisputed top priority and way of life across our system.

“This recognition is a testament to the hard work and commitment of our dedicated employees, physicians and leaders across the nation.”

Covenant has sales in Nashville, Greenville

Covenant Capital Group, LLC, a Nashville-based real estate investment manager, announces its February 2018 apartment property sales.

They are as follows:

Apex, Nashville for $14,250,000.

2900 North, Greenville, South Carolina, for $17,850,000;

Metropolitan Greenville, Greenville, South Carolina, for $27,000,000

“We invested in Greenville and Nashville by renovating and updating these apartment communities,” says Govan D. White, managing partner and co-founder of Covenant Capital Group. “We’re confident these communities will continue their considerable momentum under new ownership.”

Covenant focuses on revitalizing properties into premier, institutional quality assets. Through its process, it sustains valuable housing inventory in high-growth areas to positively impact communities.

IQuity introduces fibromyalgia blood test

Nashville-based data science company IQuity has announced the release of IsolateFibromyalgia, a pioneering blood test that uses RNA analysis to accurately and quickly detect fibromyalgia syndrome.

Fibromyalgia is a central nervous system disorder that affects between 6 and 12 million Americans, according to the American Chronic Pain Association.

IsolateFibromyalgia uses a simple blood draw to detect, with 94 percent accuracy, if a patient’s gene expression pattern is consistent with fibromyalgia syndrome. The extensive disease controls used in the creation of IsolateFibromyalgia make the test highly accurate in differentiating fibromyalgia from conditions that it mimics or that could be misdiagnosed as fibromyalgia.

Dollar General offers paid parental leave

Goodlettsville-Dollar General has announced a new paid parental leave policy and adoption assistance benefit.

New benefits will be available for qualifying events to all eligible full-time and part-time employees throughout the company’s more than 14,000 retail locations, 15 distribution centers and the corporate offices.

Dollar General’s parental leave policy will provide employees two weeks of paid time off for qualifying parental leave. Birth mothers will receive eight weeks of paid time off comprised of two weeks of qualifying paid parental leave and an additional six weeks of qualifying paid maternity leave.

Additionally, Dollar General will now provide employees up to $4,000 in adoption assistance. Benefits are subject to employees meeting certain requirements, including eligibility requirements.

Strategy Corps earns top workplace honor

StrategyCorps, headquartered in Nashville, has been named as one of the 2018 Best Places to Work in Financial Technology by American Banker and Best Companies Group.

This awards program is designed to identify, recognize and honor the 20 best employers in the financial technology industry that are benefiting the industry’s economy, workforce and businesses.

StrategyCorps works with financial institutions across the U.S. to provide mobile and online consumer checking solutions that enhance customer engagement and increase fee income.

This includes a customizable mobile rewards app that delivers protection benefits and thousands of local merchant discounts to the customer’s phone, as well as an analytical tool that helps the financial institution understand their customers’ financial productivity.

“We’re incredibly proud of our team that has lead us to become a fintech partner to hundreds of financial institutions,” says Dave Crook, StrategyCorps’ managing partner.