The scanner used to be the thing that moved. In HealthMark Group’s early days, employees carried scanners between healthcare facilities, sometimes bringing full-sized copiers along. The patient’s chart stayed put. The equipment came to it. There is something wonderfully revealing about that arrangement: a business devoted to moving information began by moving machinery.
- HealthMark handles the work of releasing medical records for hospitals and practices.
- Its software comes with people who manage requests, checks and exceptions.
- Buying Purview in 2026 brought medical images into the picture.
Founded in Dallas in 2006, HealthMark built MedRelease to help manage medical-record release. Founder Scott Bagley appears in Texas A&M’s Aggie 100 records; public company histories also identify Brad McPherson as a co-founder. The problem they entered has outlasted the paper chart. A record can live on a computer and still be surprisingly difficult to obtain.
The scanner went to the chart
Think about the difference between putting a document in a filing cabinet and handing it to the right person. Healthcare has spent years improving the cabinet. HealthMark works on the handoff: the request, the authorization, the search, the checking and the delivery. That sequence is what the industry calls release of information.
The customers are hospitals, health systems and physician practices. The people asking for information include patients, other clinicians, health plans and attorneys. These requests arrive for different reasons. A patient wants a personal copy. An insurer wants documentation. A practice needs records for continuing care. All require a process that can distinguish an authorized disclosure from an inappropriate one.
Software tracks the queue. Specialists handle the work.
HealthMark occupies that administrative layer. It does not replace a hospital’s electronic health record. Its July 2025 investment announcement described connections to more than 100 EMR systems. The attraction is working across the systems a provider already has, while giving someone responsibility for what happens between them.
A queue with an owner
GI Alliance supplies a useful example. Its published HealthMark case study describes hundreds of practices across 14 states, with decentralized processes, inconsistent standards and little visibility into workflows. Growing request volumes made those weaknesses harder to ignore. The first problem was knowing what was happening across the enterprise.
The case study reports a 6.2-hour average turnaround across a snapshot of 268,000 requests. Those figures describe one customer’s reported experience, rather than a promise to every patient. The operational lesson is more portable: gather the requests, make their status visible and measure the time spent moving them.
Average turnaround
268,000 requests in the case study
“Release of information is unique in that you have to trust a vendor with your patients”
Kate Conklin
GI Alliance · Chief Ethics & Compliance Officer
MedRelease gives clients reporting and request visibility. Request Manager gives patients and other requestors a place to submit requests and receive records. Audit support adds coordination with auditors. FMLA and disability specialists prepare forms and handle communication, leaving providers to review and sign. The business combines software with the people needed to finish the job.
The price of getting your own chart
For a patient requesting a digital copy of their own records for personal use, HealthMark says the price is zero. The request starts with an email address and a secure link, without another username and password to remember. Once processing is complete, an email points the patient to the download.
Other services can cost money. Physical delivery can carry shipping charges. FMLA and disability support carries a fee; one customer, Dallas Orthopedic and Shoulder Institute, lists $30 paid directly to HealthMark. That is a provider-specific example, rather than a company-wide tariff. Third-party record requests can also have charges.
Speed needs similar care. HealthMark’s provider page says 85% of requests are completed within eight business hours. Its patient page tells people to expect standard requests generally in two to three business days, and FMLA or disability forms in about seven. A performance statistic and a planning estimate serve different purposes. Patients should use the guidance for their request.
From three states to the imaging cloud
Bart Howe and Matt Howe joined the executive team in 2018. Ridgemont Equity Partners invested the following year. By the July 2025 announcement bringing in TA Associates as lead investor, Ridgemont described a footprint that had expanded from three states to 49. Management and Ridgemont retained stakes; the deal’s financial terms were undisclosed.
Growth continued after that investment. Inc. ranked HealthMark No. 2,154 in 2026, reporting 157% growth over three years. In June, the company appointed Nichole Sweeney as its legal and privacy leader. Her background includes national interoperability governance. That hire makes sense in a business where knowing whether information should move matters as much as making it move quickly.
The portfolio changed along the way. HealthMark acquired patient-intake business OTech in 2020; investment bank Healthcare Growth Partners records its divestiture in 2024. That matters when reading older descriptions that still present patient check-in as a current HealthMark product.
In February 2026, HealthMark acquired Purview, an Annapolis company offering cloud medical-imaging tools. Images bring their own transportation problem: the physical disc. Purview’s technology supports ingesting, viewing and sharing imaging data. For a company concerned with getting records to authorized recipients, it is a practical extension of the same task.
The people remain part of the proposition. HealthMark calls its values CRAFT: client-focused, respectful, accountable, fair and team-oriented. Its careers page offers remote-work support and career development alongside paid volunteering. Those are the employer’s stated commitments. They fit a service business whose everyday product still includes a person answering a question.
The part you can copy
Datavant, MRO and Verisma also sell release-of-information services. HealthMark’s particular combination is MedRelease, managed operations, audit and forms support, and now imaging. Free digital patient copies and visible request tracking give buyers concrete features to examine. They do not establish that competitors lack comparable capabilities.
The useful lesson is to give a recurring queue an owner. Then make its age, status and exceptions visible. Outsourcing can help an overloaded practice, but it still depends on the provider relationship, appropriate authorization and complete documentation. A specialist cannot supply a physician’s signature by making the software faster. The handoff improves when every remaining human task has somewhere to go.