News 2/15/23

Top News

HHS, ONC, and The Sequoia Project announce that CommonWell Health Alliance, EHealth Exchange, Epic Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement Interoperability Services, Health Gorilla, Kno2, and Konza have been approved to implement TEFCA as prospective Qualified Health Information Networks.

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Doximity launches a beta version of DocsGPT, which allows providers to submit prior authorization documentation to insurers using the AI chatbot technology of ChatGPT. In an “only in healthcare” convergence of cutting edge and ancient technologies, Doximity will also integrate ChatGPT with its fax solution. DocsGPT errored out every time I tried to use it, which I assume is because ChatGPT was overloaded.

In the UK, hospital software vendor System C acquires Clevermed, which offers the BadgerNet system for pregnancy and newborns.

Sales

• Emirates Health Services will deploy Care.ai’s smart care facility platform throughout the UAE, with a focus on redesigning clinical and operational workflows through ambient monitoring and virtual inpatient care.
• Mary Washington Healthcare (VA) will launch an inpatient virtual nursing program using technology from Caregility.
• Montana’s Big Sky Care HIE selects Lyniate’s Rhapsody Interoperability Suite.

People

Joe Sedlak, RN, MBA (Xealth) joins Vital as VP of client success.

Regenstrief Institute names Rachel Patzer, PhD, MPH (Emory University School of Medicine) president and CEO.

Alan Portela (AirStrip) joins Masimo as SVP of strategic business and hospital automation.

Government and Politics

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-MT) says the VA’s EHR Modernization Program must move forward, pointing out that issues with the new Oracle Cerner system do not outweigh those with the department’s legacy VistA system. Tester co-authored the VA Electronic Health Record Transparency Act, which was signed into law last summer, that requires VA Secretary Denis McDonough to update Congress on the software’s costs, performance, and outcomes.

Oracle Cerner, meanwhile, continues to push back on recent legislative efforts to shut down or overhaul the VA’s EHR program. Oracle EVP Ken Glueck has followed up his February 3 criticism of those bills with a new blog post that outlines the benefits to veterans and end users and points out the folly of the “improvements” act, which places “the go/no go decision to migrate to the new EHR to …171 different medical centers.”

ONC announces that 95% of certified health IT developers met the December 31 deadline to update and provide their customers with technology that, among other things, enables access to information through FHIR-based APIs “without special effort.”

Other

Malaysia’s Selayang Hospital, one of the first hospitals in the world to go paperless in 1999, struggles technically after shutting down its Cerner system, switching to a Notepad-like text editor called BHIS that it had developed for barebones data entry during downtime, and then overloading that system 18 months later in forcing a switch to yet another homegrown system that was designed for COVID-19 quarantine centers. The hospital has also shut down its IT department after outsourcing to a vendor whose contract was terminated. The radiologist who developed BHIS in just four hours says he was limited in that most hospital computers were running Windows XP with Internet Explorer 6.0, the hospital’s network speed was limited, and the virtual server the hospital gave him had only 1 GB of memory. The hospital’s website still declares that its now-mothballed Total Hospital Information System makes it “a showcase to the rest of the world.”

UnityPoint Health (IA) begins charging patients between $36 and $70 for messaging their physicians via its MyChart patient portal. UnityPoint Clinic President and CEO Patricia Newland, MD says the organization decided to start charging due to the “tremendous increase” in messaging seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Patients will not be billed for messages that are related to appointment scheduling or prescription refills.

Duke University researchers discover that acquiring mental health data from data brokers is fairly easy, inexpensive, and typically comes with few strings attached. Researchers approached 37 data brokers for bulk mental health data and received offers from 11, that said they could provide potentially identifiable data on people with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder sorted by demographic information including credit scores. Some brokers offered information on 5,000 people for as little as $275.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity CEO Russ Thomas joins the Florida Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
• Azara Healthcare publishes a new customer success story, “Alaska Health Centers Improve Diabetes Care Through Data-Driven Healthcare Model.”
• Baker Tilly publishes a new case study, “State health department captures more complete and timely data on highly transmissible diseases through ECR implementation.”
• Censinet debuts its new Risk Never Sleeps Podcast, focusing on the people protecting patient safety across healthcare.
• Thirty-two community, critical access, and specialty hospitals select Oracle Cerner’s CommunityWorks technology.
• Clearsense publishes a new whitepaper, “How AI and Governance Can Transform Healthcare.”
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of The Informonster Podcast, “The CDC Shares the Success of Collaboration During a Crisis.”
• Direct Recruiters celebrates 40 years in business.

Blog Posts

• From Transactions to Transformations: Putting a Premium on Human Connection in Registration (Access)
• 5 Key Performance Indicators to Monitor for a Healthy Revenue Cycle (AGS Health)
• Futureproofing care: New models in care delivery (Arcadia)
• Health Systems’ Untapped Growth Opportunity: Pharmacy (Arrive Health)
• Taking the temperature of health systems (Nordic)
• How to Create a Continuous Healthcare Experience (Artera)
• Health IT Innovation: Opportunities to Protect Your Health System in a Volatile Economy (CereCore)
• Social Determinants of Health (ChartSpan)
• Epic EHR and Google Cloud Announce Partnership (HealthTech Resources)
• How Vulnerabilities Hide in Plain Sight (& How to Mitigate Them) (Clearwater)
• Helping Physicians Overcome Barriers in Risk-based Documentation and Coding (Curation Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
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Monday Morning Update 2/13/23

Top News

Terry Admirim, MD, MPH, MBA, program executive director of the VA’s EHR Modernization Integration Office, will leave the VA to pursue unstated other opportunities.

Serving as interim after her February 25 departure will be Neil Evans, MD, senior advisor to the assistant secretary for information and technology and CIO and head of the VA’s Connected Care program.

Reader Comments

From Tempus Fugit: “Re: Olive. I heard endlessly about their unicorn status and huge customer count, which sounded like BS and probably means they are counting some rando clinic that is using a tiny solution as a customer. I know a sales guy there and he said the company paid them a ton to sell consulting engagements, but with nothing meaningful deployed, they went back to selling small patient access solutions. He said customers were unhappy that they were promised a 5x ROI that hasn’t happened anywhere.” Unverified. Axios reviewed LinkedIn records in May 2022 to determine that among the 20 Olive employee departures in the previous month were its EVP/GM, senior director of partner programs. director of data engineering, chief marketing officer, and VP of product. Axios also reported in April 2022 that Olive overpromises, under-delivers, and doesn’t actually use AI/ML. The company told the reporter at that time that it had 1,000 hospitals in 200 enterprise customers using its products and services, although an Axios review of internal documents shows 80 customers. The company has raised $856 million in funding through a Series H round, with its last investment being in July 2021.

From Domainatrix: “Re: company layoffs. A positive aspect is that young workers will now know that their employer isn’t their friend, co-workers aren’t their families, and employers as well as employers are free to end their bargain for any reason.” Long-timers who have been negatively affected at some point by company decisions rolled eyes at the unquestioning willingness of fresh go-getters to work ridiculous hours or grind away at crappy jobs, convinced that they would be rewarded by their benevolent bosses. Fast-forward to the end of boom times that has put employers back in control with little fear of mass resignations. The result is a scaling back of work-from home programs and an insistence that “valued associates” work harder or longer because the company has found itself in a jam, often of its own making. Bosses aren’t friends, the job of the chief people officer is mostly to work against the interest of employees, and you would be replaced and turned into a break room trivia question within three months of your departure.

From Purported Victim: “Re: hospitals ending some services or closing in poor areas. So much for being a charitable non-profit.” You will always be disappointed if you expect any person or organization to take any action that isn’t the one that is most beneficial to them.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Patient portal, telephone, and online forms are the most common ways poll respondents have recently sent medical information to a clinician.

New poll to your right or here: Did your most recent clinician encounter, in whatever form, make you feel “cared for?”I voted yes because when I recently texted my direct primary care doctor about refill, she asked me how I was doing and mentioned that I hadn’t seen her for a while and might want to drop by for routine lab work and a health review, none of which increase her income.

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Business Insider looks at the “fleet of secret workers” who aren’t visible to customers but who perform much of the work that is attributed to sexy technology or who are required to keep that technology running. The author concludes that robots, automation technology, and AI chatbots won’t replace employees, but they may allow companies to shift less-visible offshore to lower their costs. I would say that we are in the early days of companies overstating their use of AI and other tools in failing to mention that behind-the-scenes humans are doing a lot of the actual work, the “10,000 diligent Indians” concept a vendor CEO once told me about. It’s kind of a sad state when companies brag on their tools rather than their humans, but investors love employee-lite scalability and companies yearn to be viewed as a technology high-flyer instead of a low-tech sweatshop.

NPR notes that hospitals are outsourcing their EDs to staffing companies that are owned by private equity investors, with a result being that doctors are being replaced by nurse practitioners and physician assistants to boost margins. The change is motivating some ED doctors to change their work setting because they went into medicine to see patients, not supervise lesser-trained employees.

Sales

• Norman Regional Health System selects VisiQuate Denials Management Analytics, Revenue Management Analytics, and PayFlo.
• Onsite Women’s Health will use Volpara Health’s analytics software to improve mammography quality by assessing positioning, compression, and radiation dose.
• Complete Care implements the EClinicalWorks EHR.

People

Health Catalyst promotes Cathy Menkiena, RN, MBA to GM/SVP Northeast.

Industry long-timer and former CHIME VP Tim Stettheimer, PhD died February 9 of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was 56.

Announcements and Implementations

Stick around until the Friday morning keynote of HIMSS23 (which is asking a lot) and you can hear just-announced speaker and NFL player Damar Hamlin, who was saved by CPR and AED after suffering cardiac arrest in a game on January 2. He will speak on “Winning the Game of Life.”

A new KLAS report covers IT advisory services.

Sponsor Updates

• CloudWave launches its Cybersecurity Insider Program to offer members access to information about the latest cybersecurity trends and threats, as well as ongoing education.
• Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast featuring UCHealth CMIO Dr. CT Lin.
• PeriGen partners with Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital, and the Malawi Ministry of Health to assist with successful newborn in Malawi using PeriGen’s AI-augmented continuous electronic fetal monitoring.
• PerfectServe publishes a new case study, “How Savannah Neurology Specialists Reinvented Their Medical Answering Service Workflows.”
• Sphere releases a new e-book, “Unaffordable Medical Bills: A New Social Determinant of Health.”
• Spok receives ISO 13485:2016 certification from Dekra Certification.
• Talkdesk has been recognized as a Customers’ Choice in the 2023 Gartner Peer Insights “Voice of the Customer” for contact center as a service.

Blog Posts

• OpenAI and ChatGPT: A Primer for Healthcare Leaders (Orbita)
• The PINC AI Applied Sciences Team Partners with NWCF to Advance Health Equity and Expand Education (Premier)
• ChatGPT is coming to your contact center (Talkdesk)
• MIPS Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances Policy Update (WebPT)
• As Emergency Department Clinicians Struggle with Burnout, Clinical Decision Support Emerges as a Potential Lifeline (Zynx Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 2/10/23

Top News

CVS Health will acquire primary care company Oak Street Health for $10.6 billion in cash.

Oak Street Health’s 600 primary care providers work from 169 medical centers in 21 states.

Meanwhile, CVS Health reports Q4 results: revenue up 9.5%, adjusted EPS $1.99 versus $1.98, beating Wall Street expectations for both. CVS shares are down 20% in the past 12 months versus the Dow’s 5% loss.

Reader Comments

From Another Company Debacle: “Re: Allscripts / Veradigm. Major layoffs this week in R&D and solutions involving employees in both the US and India. Veradigm (formerly Allscripts) Practice Management took a big hit. Veradigm Interface Engine too.” Unverified.

From Jay Glick: “Re: Oracle Cerner. Fared poorly in Best in KLAS, wouldn’t you say?” Agreed. Oracle Cerner finished last among software suites, 20 points behind Epic and mostly “well below average” scores in every product segment except for attaining “average” in virtual care. In the all-important large hospital market, Epic scored 89.4 versus Oracle Cerner’s 70.0. Oracle Cerner finished first in no categories versus its last-place showing in a bunch of them. In trying to come up with a “glass half full” conclusion, I have two thoughts: (a) at least Oracle Cerner will keep making a lot of money from the federal government unless it gets shown the VA’s door and loses its only prime contractor deal, not to mention that a lot of Oracle’s recent revenue and earnings growth came from the former Cerner; and (b) perhaps the corporate stumbles that followed Neal Patterson’s death, along with high-visibility revenue cycle product problems, made it inevitable that the keys needed to be turned over to a new owner who has the money and objectivity to right the ship. From the “glass half empty” perspective, few health IT examples exist where a big outside company improved a vendor by acquiring it. Another sobering thought for Oracle is that KLAS reports only what customers are saying, and some of the older Cerner sites may re-muster the fortitude and cash that would be needed to move to Epic.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I suppressed my HIMSS23 indifference long enough to book my hotel, so the “am I going or not” question has been answered. The exhibit hall will be open full days on Tuesday (April 18), Wednesday, and a slightly shortened day Thursday. The hotel I was considering was nearly $500 per night on Expedia and on the chain’s loyalty club site, which would have kept me home, so kudos to HIMSS for making it available to attendees at barely more than half that price for the same dates. The website shows 764 exhibitors. I don’t think I’ve been to Chicago since HIMSS15. Opening day temperature highs going back from 2022 were 42, 55, 42, 76, and 43 degrees, and of course many remember the HIMSS09 opening reception near-blizzard where the McCormick Place coat check people had actual coats to manage instead of just last-day luggage holds.

I realized that I wasn’t seeing Altera Digital Health Sunrise (the former Allscripts Sunrise that is now owned by N. Harris) on the Best in KLAS report, where for years it topped the list of large-hospital inpatient EHRs. It had too few customers surveyed to be stacked up against Epic and Oracle Cerner (the only two products that were ranked), but its performance score was the lowest of all at 63.8. In the midsize category, it performed even worse at 54.6 (and Altera’s Paragon got a 37.6 score, also with too few responses to compare, and also pegged the lowest score in the small hospital category at 49.0). Also on the KLAS report, I also didn’t see segment categories for ED, anesthesia, laboratory, radiology, and pharmacy management systems, so I guess those products are no longer reported as part of Best in KLAS.

Webinars

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Olive lays off a reported 215 employees, about one-third of the company. The company has reduced its headcount from a one-time peak of 1,400. The robotic process automation vendor, which once had a valuation of $4 billion, has been plagued by customer and executive defections along with reports that its promises of hospital savings have rarely materialized. 

A leaked internal email indicates that healthcare will remain a top priority of Oracle and is the primary focus on CTO and executive chair Larry Ellison. The company is also moving its data and AI unit under its cloud business.

Google’s valuation drops by $100 billion the day that its newly announced Bard chatbot was found to have given an inaccurate response in a company promotional video, raising questions about Google’s competitive position against Microsoft, which has already integrated ChatGPT functionality into its Bing search.

Virtual behavioral service company Mindstrong, which has raised $160 million in funding from high-profile investors, will wind down its operation and lay off 130 employees starting in late March.

Healthcare staffing marketplace operator Nomad reportedly lays off 20% of its headcount as pandemic-fueled demand and payment rates cool. The company has raised $200 million, including $105 million seven months ago.

Sales

• McClow, Clark, and Berk, PA Radiology Services (FL) selects Healthcare Administrative Partners for revenue cycle management.
• Southern Illinois Healthcare will implement Xealth to allow clinicians to find and order digital health tools and programs.
• Southern New England Health chooses Koan Health’s Datalyst for population health and medical economics.

Announcements and Implementations

Highlights from KLAS’s Best in KLAS in software and services for 2023:

• Epic, Impact Advisors, Nordic, Medasource, and Chartis were named for notable performances.
• Software suite rankings were topped by Epic and Meditech.
• Most improved software products were Veradigm’s FollowMyHealth and KPMG’s ERP business transformation and implementation leadership services.
• Top physician practice ranking went to Epic, followed by Meditech and Athenahealth.
• The overall IT services category was a tie between Impact Advisors and Nordic.

CareCloud integrates the Quippe Clinical Data Engine of Medicomp Systems into its EHR platforms.

Researchers at University of Missouri School of Medicine find that a small group of EHR testers identified 2.5 usability concerns for each new function, 70% of which were correctable before rollout.

Government and Politics

A KHN investigation finds that HHS has ignored repeated congressional mandates, going back to 2006, to implement a public health network that can detect and address infectious disease outbreaks. Experts say HHS didn’t follow through because the task is complex, funding is inadequate, consensus is lacking on the data that is needed in an emergency, and HHS can’t decide which of its operating divisions should lead the project.

Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL), chair of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs — who is involved with two bills that would change or end the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation – says he will listen to more moderate proposals that are submitted by Democrat lawmakers to hold the company and the VA more accountable, but adds via a spokesperson that “the time for half-measures and tinkering around the edges is over.”

Other

NHS England’s technology budget has reportedly been cut in half to just over $1 billion, which will likely impact requests for electronic patient records. 

A survey of 9,500 consumers in six countries, including the US, finds that far fewer of them feel “cared for” than their primary care doctors believe. Key consumer issues are faster and more accurate diagnosis, convenient access, a focus on long-term health, and making healthcare more affordable. China leads the other countries in use of health portals, digital health apps, and telehealth. Half of consumers think that doctors and hospitals should be leading the charge to connect health information, but US physicians say they don’t do that because they aren’t paid extra, obtaining patient consent is a pain, they are experiencing data overload, they don’t know how to use the data, and technology doesn’t work well. Only 40 to 50% of US consumer respondents say they would share their health information even if the result was improved health, better-tailored services, safer treatments, or lower costs.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare consumer platform operator League will offer healthcare cost and quality information from Kyruus-owned HealthSparq.
• Everbridge adds DigitalOps Insights, a new AI-powered situational awareness tool, to its Digital Operations solutions bundle.
• Southern Ohio Medical Center reports a 30% drop in hospital-acquired C. difficile infections following the development of expedited testing tools by Meditech Professional Services.
• First Databank names Joe Bodkin (Franciscan Health) clinical informatics pharmacist specialist, Angela Johnston (Astra Zeneca) regional representative, and Shafer Grytness (Insight Global) software engineer.
• OSF HealthCare releases a new podcast featuring Get Well Supervisor of Clinical Digital Care Kate Johnson and Digital Patient Care Manager Kara Roat.
• InterSystems releases a new Healthy Data Podcast, “FFS vs. Integrated Care.”
• Intelligent Medical Objects secures SOC 2 Type 2+ HIPAA certification.
• Meditech shares the ways in which Valley Health System (NJ) clinicians have used its Surveillance tool to quickly identify patient conditions, provide relevant data, and expedite orders to initiate treatment.
• NeuroFlow completes its SOC 2 audit, reinforcing its commitment to protecting health data.
• Everest Group names NTT Data a Leader in its Provider Digital Services Peak Matrix Assessment 2023 report.

Blog Posts

• Unlocking the Power of Meditech Through a Robust Health IT Infrastructure (Healthcare Triangle)
• EHR Integrations: To Build or Not to Build (Healthjump)
• Most Popular Healthcare Technology Trends of 2023 (HealthTech Resources)
• Optimum CareerPath Spotlight: Meet Pratik Shekade (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Newly Minted Rural Emergency Hospitals Face Old RCM Challenges (Medhost)
• Celebrating #1 Best in KLAS for image exchange: Innovative ways patients and providers are sharing without boundaries (Nuance)

HIStalk sponsors that were named as Best in KLAS Software and Services 2023 or Best in KLAS Global Software 2023:

• Agfa HealthCare (PACS Middle East / Africa)
• Arcadia (value-based care managed services)
• Azara Healthcare (population health management)
• Findhelp (social determinants of care network)
• Fortified Health Security (security and privacy managed services)
• Impact Advisors (security and privacy consulting services, ERP implementation leadership, financial improvement consulting)
• InterSystems (clinical portals Europe)
• Lyniate (integration engines)
• Meditech (acute care EMR small)
• Nordic (HIT core clinical implementation leadership)
• Nuance (computer-assisted physician documentation, speech recognition front-end EMR, image exchange)
• Oracle Health (acute care EHR Middle East /Africa)
• Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company (managed IT services)
• Premier / PINC AI (value-based care consulting)
• Sectra (PACS large, PACS small, PACS Asia / Oceania, PACS Canada)
• Visage Imaging (universal viewer)
• Wolters Kluwer (infection control and monitoring, patient-driven care management)
• Zynx Health (clinical decision support care plans and order sets)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 2/8/23

Top News

A blog post by Oracle EVP and lobbyist Ken Glueck fires back at members of Congress with unusually aggressive criticism of two recent bills that would postpone or cancel the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation. Some points:

• 1980s-era VistA can’t meet the health challenges of veterans, can’t communicate with DoD systems, and has always been nearly impossible to maintain and modernize, so reverting to it at live sites would be a disaster.
• There’s no magic wand for modernization, but moving to commercial off-the-shelf system workflows is always worth doing.
• It was a mistake to schedule the first VA go-live in the pandemic’s peak days of October 2020 when caregivers were overwhelmed.
• With the Oracle acquisition of Cerner, “VA now has essentially two vendors for the price of one” in providing both clinical and engineering expertise.
• DoD and public hospitals around the world have successfully rolled out Cerner as the VA struggles, suggesting that the VA’s issues aren’t related to product capabilities.
• A particular VA challenge is that it runs 130 instances of VistA, which Cerner attempted to fix by combining them into a single workflow that turned out to be too cumbersome, such as dozens of options for ordering a liver enzyme test when commercial instances of Millennium might offer four or five.
• Glueck reiterated Oracle’s commitment to have the first beta test of a rewritten Millennium EHR available in 2023 at no extra cost to the VA or DoD. The cloud-based application will include a modern, Web-based, mobile-friendly user interface and will support voice recognition and AI-based clinical decision support.

Reader Comments

From Krill Feeder: “Re: more slide decks from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Are health IT vendors increasingly using the ‘land and expand’ investor pitch for growth prospects as is common in other industries? Get the customer using a low-cost initial sale, then cross-sell and upsell to create annuity-like profits. Do readers think this still works in a stock market downturn?” Incumbent vendors, unless they are inept, always have the upper hand in making add-on sales by gaining access to health system decision-makers and removing the uncertainty and effort that is required to onboard a new vendor. I like the concept since it encourages vendors to perform well after the sale, which is a win-win, but whether investors should believe such claims is a different issue. A variant is when one company acquires another purely to sell into its customer base, which is often traumatic for those customers whose carefully researched product and vendor assumptions are rendered uncertain by new ownership bearing ulterior motives.

From Pete Drucker: “Re: [vendor name omitted]. To exit the market. Last day for employees is Friday.” Unverified, so I didn’t include the company name. I could not find a press contact or employee email address anywhere, so I’ve sent a Twitter direct message to the CEO and will update with any response.

Webinars

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CVS Health is reportedly close to acquiring primary care operator Oak Street Health for $10.5 billion.

Sales

• WellSpan Health (PA) selects Epic-based KeyCare as its virtual care partner for its on-demand care service. The health system was part of the startup’s Series A investment round.
• VirtualHealth adds automated prior authorization capabilities from Edifecs to its Helios utilization and complex care management technology.
• Virtua Health (NJ) will implement Memora Health’s automated clinical intelligence software as a part of its care programs for congestive heart failure, specialty pharmacy, and colonoscopies.

People

April Saathoff, DNP, MS, RN (Harris Health System) joins Johns Hopkins as VP/CNIO.

ChartSpan names Dan PIessens, MS (RevealRx) CTO.

Emids names Sean Narayanan, MS (Apexon) as CEO. He replaces founder and CEO Saurabh Sinha, who will transition to board chair.

Medsphere promotes Jeri Judkins to CEO, replacing Irv Lichtenwald.

Mass General Brigham promotes Fran Hinckley to VP of digital solutions delivery of its community division.

Announcements and Implementations

Grocery store operator Albertsons Companies launches Sincerely Health, a digital health and wellness app that offers a questionnaire-calculated health score, linking to activity trackers such as Apple Health and Fitbit, and pharmacy management. The company’s merger with Kroger is pending approval.

OSF St. Francis Hospital (IL) launches a tele-NICU program using technology from Teladoc Health.

Alpine Health develops AI-powered predictive analytics to help hospital case managers ensure that at-risk patients transition to the right care settings with appropriate social services upon discharge. The startup is the product of a partnership between OSF Healthcare (IL), its innovation center, and consulting firm High Alpha Innovation.

Virginia Mason Franciscan Health (WA) uses hospital-at-home services and technology from Contessa to launch its Home Recovery Care program at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma.

Microsoft launches previews of Bing and Edge that are enhanced with the big brother of AI chat tool ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Google rushes chatbot AI tool Bard to testers in reaction to ChatGPT’s threat to Google’s search.

Medical technology company Imperative Care launches Kandu Health, which offers digital support for recovering stroke patients.

Government and Politics

The Defense Health Agency’s National Capital Region — which includes Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and several other facilities — will go live on MHS Genesis next month.

Privacy and Security

Federal officials attribute last December’s 988 mental health helpline outage to a cyberattack on Intrado, the emergency communications software company that has managed the service since it launched last summer.

Other

Moffitt Cancer Center (FL) researchers determine that 25,500 virtual visits conducted through its Department of Virtual Medicine during the pandemic saved patients 3.4 million miles and between $147 and $186 per visit. The center plans to expand its telemedicine capabilities to include clinical trials.

Sentara Healthcare creates a remote patient monitoring department to oversee the installation and management of 108 remote cameras in rooms across its hospitals in Virginia and North Carolina. The $1.7 million project follows a four-year period of product evaluations, pilot projects, data compilation, and establishment of policies and procedures. Trained technicians at two control centers are responsible for monitoring patients at a dozen facilities.

Did you see this in person as I did? A 3,875-foot scanned document that was created at HIMSS08 in Orlando holds the Guinness World Record as the longest ever. Attendance that year was 28,000 and keynote speakers included former AOL CEO Steve Case, “Freakonomics” author Steven D. Levitt, PhD, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity presents scholarships to students from Jean Ribault High School as part of its Beyond School Walls program with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Florida.
• Diameter Health, now Availity, earns Certified Data Partner designation in NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program.
• King’s College Hospital London – Dubai will implement Oracle Cerner, utilizing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
• AdvancedMD publishes “The Top 6 Healthcare Trends Making an Impact on Medical Practices in 2023.”
• Nordic publishes a podcast featuring UCHealth CMIO C.T. Lin, MD.
• Agfa HealthCare announces the successful go live of its breast imaging AI solution at Dubai Academic Health Corp.’s Dubai Hospital.
• Artera expands its multilanguage support to 109 languages.
• Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Creating an effective corporate compliance program for healthcare providers.”
• Bamboo Health names Missi Ledbetter senior program manager, Courtney Forrest onboarding specialist, and Omer Khalil software engineer intern.
• Emirates Health Services implements Care.ai’s ambient healthcare intelligence platform to enable its smart facility initiative.
• ChartLogic integrates FlexScanMD’s inventory management and tracking system into its ambulatory practice management solution.
• Clearwater publishes a new whitepaper, “Understanding Cloud Security Basics: How to Ensure HIPAA Security and Compliance in a Cloud Environment.”
• CloudWave will exhibit at the North Carolina Healthcare Association Winter Meeting February 15-17 in Cary, NC.
• WellSky announces that its CarePort Care Management and CarePort Discharge care transition solutions can now coordinate with Dialyze Direct service sites.
• Azara Healthcare adds cost and utilization analytics and visualizations to its DRVS population health management platform.

Blog Posts

• 3 Ways Pharmacy Technology Creates Efficiencies that Reduce Staff Stress (OmniSys)
• The Power of the Smartphone & How Consumer Behavior is Shaping the Future of Healthcare ESignature (Access)
• Most Popular Healthcare Technology Trends of 2023 (HealthTech Resources)
• Risk-Adjustment & Hierarchical Condition Category Coding: What Are They and Why Do They Matter? (AGS Health)
• 5 Key Healthcare IT Trends to Watch in 2023 (Keysight Technologies)
• What are the 12 social determinants of health factors and why do they matter? (Arcadia)
• How to Think Differently to Find Talent in 2023 (Ascom)
• CMS National Healthcare Directory RFI Blog Series: (A Quiet) HealthTech Response (CareMesh)
• Sese Bennett Shares How Hospitals Can Be Best Prepared for Cybersecurity Breach (CereCore)
• Effective Cloud Migration is Crucial for Your Organization – Here’s How to Get it Right (CTG)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 2/6/23

Top News

Democrats on the House Committee of Veterans’ Affairs are working on an alternative to last week’s two Republican-sponsored bills that would end the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation and convert live sites back to VistA.

FedScoop cites sources who say that the proposal may involve changes that would affect all of the VA’s IT projects.

Reader Comments

From Krill Feeder: “Re: more slide decks from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. All vendors know, want, and fear the trademarked Gartner Magic Quadrant, which can have a strong impact on sales and corporate fate. Is NextGen Healthcare’s use of a similar graphic in a May 2022 investor deck without mentioning Gartner sketchy, smart marketing communications, both, or neither? And was its absence from the JPM event deck due to brevity constraints, Gartner objections, or evolving corporate spin?”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Nearly three-fourths of poll respondents who attended HIMSS22 will go to HIMSS23, while 80% of those who didn’t go to HIMSS22 will repeat their absence in April.

New poll to your right or here: Which ways have you used in the past year to send medical information to a clinician? I like nearly everything about my direct primary care doctor, but most of all I like being able to text, call, or email her directly without having to pierce the veil of inept, self-important gatekeepers (she practices alone).

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Constellation Software delays posting its Q4 and annual reports, blaming the complexity of its May 2022 acquisition of the hospital and large physician practice business of Allscripts, which is now known as Altera Digital Health within Constellation’s N. Harris Computer Corporation business.

Announcements and Implementations

A regional network of OB-GYN practices and hospitals in New Jersey will collaborate to launch a statewide, value-based maternity care initiative that will be powered by the maternal digital tools of Wildflower Health.

Jefferson Center goes live on Netsmart’s MyHealthPointe consumer engagement platform for remote patient monitoring and engagement for behavioral health services. It has launched a pilot with assessments for medication check-in, patient health questionnaires, and weekly check-ins and developing new technology services for family support, text communication, wearables, and notifications.

Privacy and Security

Tallahassee Memorial Hospital diverts patients and cancels non-emergency procedures following “an IT security event” – reportedly a ransomware attack — that occurred late Thursday.

Duke Health will sell de-identified patient data to drug companies via Nference, with which it may also create a for-profit spinoff business. Bioethicists contacted by the local newspaper question whether it should be made more clear to patients that their data may be used to generate profit. Duke Health announced its relationship with NFerence on January 4, 2023, where it talked a lot about community health and research breakthroughs without mentioning that it was being paid for providing patient data.

Other

Colorado counties report being overwhelmed with 911 calls that start coming in every morning when the ski lifts open and skiers start falling, which sets off the fall detector in their Apple Watches. The interim director of Summit County’s emergency service, which responded to 185 false alarm calls from Watch-wearing skiers in a single week, says that “Apple needs to put in their own call center if this is a feature they want.” She also notes that operators rarely receive false 911 calls from Android phones. The Watch gives wearers 10 seconds to suppress the call before it starts dialing, but those who are wearing ski gear often don’t notice the warning and don’t respond to the 911 call-back, which requires responders to be dispatched. One county’s sheriff has instructed 911 operators to ignore all automated calls from ski slopes, reasoning that there’s nearly always someone around who would call 911 in a real emergency.

In Germany, a nurse in a top teaching hospital confesses to killing two elderly patients by overdosing them on sedatives (unintentionally, the nurse says) so they wouldn’t bother him while he suffered from a hangover. He admits that he did as little work as possible in his job, ignored patients, turned their wheelchairs toward the wall so they couldn’t talk to others, and found it easy to obtain sedatives because “in the hospital, they don’t pay much attention to this.” He has been charged with two counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder. Note: the newspaper article says without explanation that the man “pretended to be a nurse,” but they incorrectly translated the original report from a German publication – he really was a nurse, but working in an area where he had minimal qualifications.

Political anthropologist and medical resident Eric Reinhart, MD, PhD says in a New York Times opinion piece that physicians are getting burned out and leaving the profession not because of working conditions, but rather because they are “witnessing the slow death of American medical ideology” and feel complicit in putting profits over people. He says that the AMA convinced doctors to fight healthcare as a public service because it would threaten their autonomy and income, forcing doctors to lecture patients on personal health responsibility and their duty to avoid health risks that are mostly driven by economic disparity. He urges doctors to unionize, then demand universal healthcare.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases a new podcast, “Making Rounds: The up and downside of disintermediation.”
• Everest Group names NTT Data a leader in its Healthcare Provider Digital Services PEAK Matrix Assessment 2023 report.
• Sectra publishes a new case study featuring St. Maria General Hospital in Belgium, “How to save time on implementation while creating brilliant workflows.”
• MGMA’s Insights Podcast features Surescripts Clinical Informatics Pharmacist and Manager of Product Performance Bri Palowitch.
• Talkdesk names Miles Ennis (Aspen Technology) SVP of sales for North America.
• WebPT wins three awards from TrustRadius in the categories of Best Feature Set, Best Value for the Price, and Best Relationship.

Blog Posts

• AHCA Population Health Summit Recap: Four Takeaways from Industry Experts (Netsmart)
• Cybersecurity Threats in Healthcare – Protect Your Patients and Business (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Are You Ready to Shift Test-to-Treat into Hyperdrive? (OmniSys)
• 12 Steps of an EHR Roadmap and Why It’s Essential (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Real Risks Involved With Blockchain Technology (HealthTech Resources)
• Debunking Five Myths Healthcare Providers Have About AP Automation (Premier)
• Five steps to creating a competitive care delivery model with healthcare automation (Relatient)
• Finding the Why: Driving innovation in the cloud through process and workflow analysis (Tegria)
• Improving Patient Safety Through Unified Clinical Collaboration (TigerConnect)
• All Virtual Care and Care Management Must Be Grounded in Evidence (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Controlling Hospital Expenses: No Margin for Error (Zynx Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 2/3/23

Top News

Prescription discount site GoodRx will pay $1.5 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it shared the health data of users with advertisers using the Meta Pixel website user tracker.

This is significant because GoodRx is not a covered entity under HIPAA, but was charged under FTC’s Health Breach Notification Rule that covers any vendor of personal health records and third-party service providers. This is the first enforcement of the rule, which was created in 2009.

The company also agreed to obtain consent for any use of patient information, notify users whose information was exposed, demand that companies that received the information confirm its deletion in writing, create a privacy program, and commission a third-party privacy assessment.

GoodRx comments on the action:

• The issue was addressed nearly three years ago, before FTC stared its inquiry.
• The company admits no wrongdoing, but says the settlement avoids the cost of litigation.
• The advertising pixel, which GoodRx removed in early 2019, remains in common use, including by hospitals and the federal government.
• The company disputes the charge that it violated the Health Breach Notification Rule, saying that it believes its use of the advertising pixel was compliant.
• The only information that was shared was IP address and website URLs of content that the user reviewed, with confidentiality agreements in place.

A follow-up tweet from the author of the GoodRx article linked to above says that despite the permanent ban, GoodRx is still sending health data to advertisers. The company responded to his inquiry by insisting that it isn’t a problem because it is tracking such use as required by its new compliance obligations.

Reader Comments

From SeekingEmployment: “Re: Kyruus. Seventy people were let to Wednesday morning.” Unverified, but layoffs were reported by several now-former employees on LinkedIn. A company spokesperson responded to my inquiry by saying that while Kyruus is streamlining operations in integrating three organizations under the Kyruus umbrella, it will not comment on specific changes.

From Krill Feeder: “Re: more slide decks from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Health Catalyst uses a happy-flywheel graphic, albeit without inclusion of the textual ‘virtuous circle’ claim that was used by aggressive e-commerce vendors. Is it persuasive?” The virtuous circle (or cycle), as the opposite of a vicious circle, refers to a recurring series of events in which each positively improves the effect of the next as a never-ending cycle of good news. Whether it is inevitable or aspirational probably depends on who is displaying it and for what reason. Company investor pitches are of the “never is heard a discouraging word” variety except for the 2-point font “forward-looking statements” section that is mostly ignored because it is as entirely negative as the rest of the slide deck is positive. Readers, what say you about virtuous circles and flywheels in particular and the use of descriptive graphics in general?

From Fry Salter: “Re: hospital websites taken down by Killnet hackers. The hospitals aren’t admitting that they were breached.” Probably because they weren’t. Taking a website offline via a DDoS attack is like spray-painting your name on a hospital’s billboard – the hospital IT folks can bring it back quickly to restore their few mission-important functions (like paying bills or scheduling appointments). It’s the technology equivalent of angry truck drivers clogging up highways to bring attention to their plight, except that most hospitals aren’t going to suffer much from lack of website availability. The pro-Russian Killnet group that is behind the attacks claims that it has exfiltrated data from unnamed hospitals, which would be a much more important development.

From Ibis: “Re: HIMSS Accelerate. It launched 18 months ago. I haven’t heard it mentioned by any colleagues even once.” All I see on the site is endless cross-posts from Healthcare IT News. It looks like it was expensive to develop and payoff seems minimal. I give HIMSS credit for trying something new, especially after the HIMSS20 cancellation brought it to its knees and raised sobering questions about the future of running profitable in-person conferences.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

You may have had problems reaching us by our HIStalk email addresses over the past week due to two problems (warning: geek talk) that I hadn’t noticed with the server migration: (a) required changes to the SSL certificate and SMTP server name and port changes weren’t made; (b) the webhost didn’t update the email A record to point at the new server. Anyway, all appears to be fixed and working now.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

DrFirst acquires the caregiver collaboration tools of Diagnotes.

Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek launches Neko Health, which will offer 15-minute, full-body diagnostic scans followed by a physician’s consultation for $164. The Sweden-based company was founded in 2018 as HJN Sverige prior to Ek’s investment.

A newly laid off employee of Seattle-based consulting firm Brightwork Health IT reports on LinkedIn that the company has closed. Several former employees have updated their profiles with a January 2023 job end date. One of those is Tabitha Lieberman, former president of the company’s EHR and healthcare applications business, who was laid off after just eight months on the job after a long career with Providence St. Joseph Health. She says on LinkedIn that “Brightwork will continue, but in a smaller form.”

Business Insider lists the 15 formerly highest-valuation healthcare startups, most of which haven’t raised funds lately and some of which may struggle to find operating cash:

1. VillageMD – $16 billion valuation (primary care operator).
2. Devoted Health – $15 billion (health insurance).
3. Tempus Labs – $10 billion (precision medicine software).
4. Datavant – $7 billion (health data software).
5. Ro – $7 billion (prescriptions for erectile dysfunction and hair loss, telehealth for skincare).
6. Cityblock Health — $6 billion (Medicaid clinics).
7. Hinge Health – $6 billion (virtual physical therapy and surgical rebab).
8. Lyra Health – $6 billion (mental health services for employers).
9. Cerebral – $5 billion (therapy and prescriptions for ADHD and depression).
10. Color — $5 billion (genetic testing for health risks).
11. Olive – $4 billion (services automation).
12. Noom – $4 billion (weight loss).
13. Commure – $4 billion (healthcare data integration).
14. Everly Health – $3 billion (home lab testing).
15. Komodo Health –- $3 billion (healthcare data analysis).

Health IT investor John Gorman predicts “an impending extinction-level event” for many early and mid-stage health tech companies that will start late this year, as most startups raised two years of cash in 2021 and 2022, cut their burn rate to extend their runway, but still have less than 12 months to try raising again in a difficult market or either selling the company or merging. He advises his own firm’s portfolio companies:

• Raise money now before the rush later this year.
• Cut burn rate decisively, although recognizing that R&D and sales are must-haves.
• Focus on survival rather than valuation.
• Bring in veteran C-suite operators since launch teams often struggle in difficult environments.
• Go on offense to gain market share while competitors are struggling.
• Consider mergers and joint ventures to better compete on RFPs.

Sales

• Beacon Health System chooses Biofourmis for remote patient monitoring technology for its eight hospitals, initially focusing on congestive heart failure and COPD.
• In Canada, the Nova Scotia government will implement Oracle Cerner in a 10-year, $275 million project.
• Floyd County Medical Center (IA) upgrades to Meditech Expanse with assistance from Healthcare Triangle.
• Atlanta Women’s Health Group chooses EClinicalWorks and Healow.
• Wellity chooses EClinicalWorks and Healow.
• Samaritan Health Services will replace its legacy PACS with Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform in an eight-year, $9 million agreement.

People

Johns Hopkins University and Medicine hires Richard Mendola, PhD, MBA (Emory University) as VP/CIO.

Bhaskar Sambasivan, MEng, CEO of CitiusTech for 16 months, posts on LinkedIn that he will resign once a replacement is found.

Scott Frederick, RN, MSHI (RPM Advisory Group) joins newly launched vestibular rehabilitation remote monitoring platform vendor TheraVista Health as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Azara Healthcare launches a cost and utilization application for its population health platform.

Clew Medical launches a program to convert users of Philips EICU software to its virtual ICU platform in 12 weeks, including FDA-cleared predictive models, a workflow platform, and integration with EHR, monitoring devices, and AV equipment. Industry long-timer Paul Roscoe came on as CEO in November 2022.

Yale researchers are using machine learning to predict physician turnover, using de-identified EHR and physician data to review the amount of time they are using EHRs, their patient volumes, and their ages and length of employment. The small study of 319 physicians in a single health system correctly predicted departures 97% of the time. The authors note as an example that the risk of departure was highest for doctors between the ages of 45 to 64. They also noted that higher levels of EHR documentation time was associated with a lower departure risk for doctors who were hired within the past 10 years,  but a higher risk for longer-employed doctors.

Government and Politics

A press update indicates that HHS will recognize the first set of organizations that will be approved as QHINs under TEFCA on Monday, February 13.

Banner Health will pay $1.25 million to settle HHS OCR HIPAA charges from a 2016 data breach that involved the records of nearly 3 million patients.

Other

A woman is billed $14,000 for her newborn’s NICU stay at in-network Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital because that hospital covers using doctors from Lurie Children’s Hospital – which is connected to Prentice Women’s via a walkway – which was not in her insurer’s network. Lurie turned her balance over to collections, but wouldn’t talk to reporter about why, citing HIPAA even though the woman signed a release. Faced with media coverage, Lurie suddenly decided after months that she owned nothing after all. Lurie denied knowledge of a 2011 state law that prohibits billing out-of-network rates for certain types of doctors, including neonatologists, and the state attorney general’s office says it has never enforced it.

Sponsor Updates

• CTG earns AWS Service Delivery designation for the Amazon Connect cloud-based contact center service.
• Ellkay publishes a new client success story, “Seattle Children’s: The Value of Choosing the Right Data Management Partner.”
• Fortified Health Security names George Srour (Critical Insight) regional sales director.
• Nordic publishes DocTalk Ep. 202, “The Marvel of In-House Business Intelligence.”
• Juniper Networks expands its global Juniper Partner Advantage Program with a host of new updates in 2023.
• Healthtech Consultants, a Nordic Global company, earns the top performance score in KLAS’s first report on EMR consulting services in Canada.
• Pennsylvania’s HAPevolve will offer hospitals the care transition platform of WellSky-owned CarePort.
• Meditech AVP Cathy Turner, BSN, RN receives the 2023 HIMSS Changemaker in Health Award.

Blog Posts

• Patient Engagement as a Strategic Priority: How to Get There, and Why You Should (Get Well)
• Why Cloud is Ideal for Healthcare Backup and Disaster Recovery (Healthcare Triangle)
• EMR Technology: Closing the Communication Gap Between Patients and Providers (HealthTech Resources)
• Increasing access to behavioral health resources (Nordic)
• With TEFCA, Interoperability in the United States Launches Ahead (InterSystems)
• 5 things to know: IMO’s January clinical terminology release (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Three Ways Medical Groups Can Leverage Digital Self-Service to Drive Growth (Kyruus)
• The Front-End Steps to RCM Optimization (Medhost)
• Identify and Overcome 5 Common Patient Engagement Challenges in Outpatient Rehab Therapy (Net Health)
• The Stand-Alone Mental Health App is a Dead End (NeuroFlow)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 2/1/23

Top News

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) introduces a bill, co-sponsored by eight other members of Congress, that would scuttle the $20 billion Oracle Cerner overhaul of the VA’s EHR software. The bill would order the VA to stop the project within 180 days, dissolve its Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office, and revert all live Oracle Cerner sites back to VistA/CPRS.

Rosendale was named this week as chair of the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, which oversees technology within the VA.

House Veterans Affairs Committee chair Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) had warned in July 2022 that the project might be cancelled “if there isn’t major progress by early next year.”

Reader Comments

From Employees Deserve a Voice: “Re: Findhelp. Employees are trying to unionize.” Axios reports that 150 employees of Austin, TX-based Findhelp — whose platform connects people who are in need with available social services — have filed to hold a union election. The employees say they want management to address pay inequity, return-to-office policies, and the use of workplace monitoring software.

From Krill Feeder: “Re: investor relations slide decks. Here’s first of several I’ll mention from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Veradigm claims 170,000 ‘partners’ that are grouped with paying customers, which seems unusual and/or a sign of desperation to please Wall Street. What do your readers say?” Consider this an invitation to weigh in. Also interesting is that Veradigm notes that it has pushed 20 billion drug company ad impressions on providers since 2011, presumably via its Practice Fusion EHR. More nuggets from other companies to come.

From Public Health Enemy: “Re: public health and COVID-19 emergencies ending on May 11. Has anyone listed the health IT implications?” I’m interested too. I assume it will end the use of consumer technology to conduct virtual visits, reinstitute pre-pandemic licensing requirements for providers who offer services via telehealth or across state lines (including contract nurses), restore previous policy that limits the prescribing of controlled substances without an in-person evaluation, and change payment parity policies. I assume it will also affect payment for remote patient monitoring and for audio-only visits. More broadly, it will mark the end of free COVID-19 testing, home test kits, vaccines, and treatments for many or most people, depending on their insurer. Confounding the unwinding is products that are being sold under FDA’s emergency use authorization and the layers of state-level waivers.

From Papal Cut: “Re: HIMSS board. What are they doing meeting with the Pope, per this LinkedIn post from board member Amy Compton-Phillips?” I think we can rule out asking him to get the nuns to take US healthcare back over from the profiteers. Maybe they’re pressing him to keynote HIMSS23 to boost attendance. Will the board be meeting with the heads of other religions that have a strong presence in US healthcare?

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health data management company Clearsense raises $50 million in a Series D funding round.

Philips will cut another 6,000 jobs globally over the next two years as it struggles to recover from market value losses caused by a recall of its respiratory devices in the United States. The company announced it would lay off 4,000 employees last October. I interviewed Philips VP Elad Benjamin in December.

Health data infrastructure company Smile Digital Health raises $30 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to $50 million.

Prescriber marketplace operator PrescriberPoint raises an unspecified growth investment  from two drug companies, Adobe, and Mastercard.

Tivity Health, which runs the SilverSneakers and other health programs, acquires Burnalong, which offers a health and wellness platform.

Sales

• PeaceHealth expands its agreement with Loyal for provider data management and physician search.

People

Rebecca Woods (Bluebird Tech Solutions) joins Divurgent as SVP of delivery.

Former Oracle SVP Troy Tazbaz joins the FDA as the director of its Digital Health Center of Excellence, which offers regulatory advice and support to the FDA’s regulatory review of digital health technology.

Announcements and Implementations

CitiusTech announces GA of RealSight, a price transparency data analytics tool.

Government and Politics

Fox Army Health Center (AL) reports that since going live on MHS Genesis in September, call center wait times have been reduced from two hours to 15 minutes, and that online appointment booking and pharmacy text alerts will soon be available.

Privacy and Security

Governance software vendor Diligent notifies customer UCHealth of a data breach that involved the unauthorized downloading of some UCHealth files. Diligent provides hosted services for the Colorado-based health system.

The Killnet group of Russian hackers attacks 14 hospital websites, forcing them offline for various amounts of time. Stanford Healthcare (CA), Duke University Hospital (NC), Cedars-Sinai (CA), Atrium Health (NC), and University of Michigan Health were among those affected by Monday’s breach.

Other

In the UK, a report finds that last year’s data center downtime Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust — which was caused by data center cooling problems when temperatures in London hit 104 degrees — required running as a “paper hospital” for two months until its 371 legacy systems were restored. The trust had been warned that the cooling systems were old and inadequate and that having two sites in the same area serve as each other’s failover created exposure to environment-related problems. The report also notes that NHS supplier Advanced was hit with a cyberattack during the trust’s downtime, taking down its CareNotes and Adastra medical records systems for four months. The trust will go live with Epic in April 2023, which the report says will reduce risk and make recovery easier, but it warns that the trust will need to work hard to regain user confidence.

A Bloomberg opinion piece says that management consulting firms have nothing to sell once they have lost their integrity to ethical lapses and greed, focusing in McKinsey as an example of a company who thinks highly of itself despite “tawdry episodes” such as leading Enron to ruin, helping drug companies flood the country with inappropriately prescribed opioids, and connecting authoritarian regimes to corrupt middlemen. It concludes:

They are con men because they exploit their victims’ illusions. They play on people’s greed and desperation by pretending that they can enable companies to “transform your business” or “do more with less.” They also routinely offer low-ball deals so that they can get their feet in the door. But once inside, they transform themselves into vampire squids and set about sucking the lifeblood out of their victims. The ideal consulting engagement from the consultants’ point of view is one that leaves the client permanently dependent on the consultant: With its internal capacities diminished, it needs to keep employing outside help; with its appetite for “transformation” whetted, it remains on the lookout for the next big idea, calling in yet more consultants to solve the problems that the previous collection of consultants created in the first place.

IHI’s Don Berwick, MD says in a JAMA opinion piece that financial self-interest holds a grip on the US healthcare system. He notes that drug companies employ monopoly pricing for products that result from taxpayer-funded research;  Medicare Advantage insurers are gaming the system at a cost of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars; and hospitals are claiming large losses even as they sit on billions of dollars of assets. He recommends that healthcare professionals speak louder about unchecked greed; insist that their guilds and trade organizations demote the endless pursuit of higher payment; lobby Congress to reform patent laws, change coding and billing rules, and enforce antitrust laws; and demand that hospitals invest in improving the social influences on health.

Sponsor Updates

• Compass Medical, a 95-provider organization with six locations in Massachusetts, uses EClinicalWorks to excel at value-based care and combat physician burnout.
• Ascom launches a Center of Excellence to help customers transform their clinical workflows with the Ascom Healthcare Platform using end points like handsets and smart nurse call systems, as well as middleware and services.
• AvaSure recognizes AvaPrize winners from MaineHealth, ShorePoint Health, Providence Health & Services – Oregon Region, and the VA North Texas Health Care System for excellence in virtual care delivery.
• The American Medical Association partners with Azara Health to improve blood pressure control across the country.
• The Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit will recognize Bamboo Health Senior Advisor Jay Desai with its 2023 West Coast Digital Healthcare Innovator Award February 1 in La Jolla, CA.
• Healthcare risk management solutions vendor Censinet announces record customer growth in 2022, with an 80% year-over-year increase in customers.
• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Scaling IT for Growth and Why Managed Services Make Sense.”
• Clearwater publishes a new white paper, “Understanding Azure Cloud Security Basics: How to Ensure HIPAA Security and Compliance in a Cloud Environment.”
• ConnectiveRx SVP of Market Development Chris Dowd receives a Pinnacle Award from Medical Marketing and Media.
• Current Health will exhibit at SCOPE February 6-9 in Orlando.

Blog Posts

• New Evaluation & Management (E/M) Code Updates for 2023 (AdvancedMD)
• The Business Case for Involving RCM in Health Equity Strategies (AGS Health)
• 5 key strategies to implement and improve value-based care (Arcadia)
• More Personalized Care, More Patient Engagement (Artera)
• A Solution for Exchanging Health Plan Member Data May Be Closer Than We Think (Availity)
• 6 Leaders Talk Hybrid Care in 2022 & Share What’s Forecasted for 2023 (Bardavon Health Innovations)
• CPT Codes for Annual Wellness Visits (ChartSpan)
• Application Rationalization: Top 5 Lesser-Known Benefits (Clearsense)
• Closing the SDOH Gap with AI, ML, and Data Analysis (Divurgent)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 1/30/23

Top News

The New York Times profiles Paradigm, which launched last week after raising $203 million in a Series A funding round.

The company has developed a platform that it says will merge the disciplines of clinical care and research. It does this by transforming EHR information into clinical trials data. It also helps doctors match patients to active studies.

Reader Comments

From Natty Boh: “Re: mistake in the 1/27 post. You confused Inspirata with Imprivata. It was Imprivata that acquired Caradigm.” The post is correct. Imprivata acquired just the identity management business of Caradigm from GE Healthcare in October 2017. Inspirata acquired the actual company Caradigm, including its core business of analytics and population health tools, from GE Healthcare in June 2018. Caradigm was formed as a 50-50 joint venture between Microsoft and GE Healthcare in 2011, with Microsoft bowing out in 2016. Caradigm’s identity management business came from Microsoft, which had acquired Sentillion in 2009, renamed it Vergence, and then rolled it into Caradigm along with the ExpreSSO single sign-on product. That’s what Imprivata acquired.

From I’ll RxPass: “Re: Amazon’s flat-fee monthly generic drug RxPass. Odd that patients in eight states can’t participate even though Amazon Pharmacy operates in them.” Odder still is that customers who are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or any other government-sponsored insurance aren’t eligible, which is strange since it’s a cash-only, unsubsidized business. Although you can probably just answer “no” to the prompt knowing they can’t check – it’s easier to demand proof of existence rather than of non-existence.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Quite a few poll respondents will not be able to take jobs with specific companies when they leave their current one. AT reasonably opines that while non-competes might be justifiable for employees who voluntarily take a job with a competitor, those restrictions should be waived if the employee is involuntarily shown the door for whatever reason. Frank suggests negotiating such agreements to require the company to pay severance for whatever amount of time they don’t want you working for a competitor, or failing to convince them to do that, at least insist that the agreement be narrowed down to performing specific tasks rather than broadly excluding even unrelated jobs with competitors.

New poll to your right or here: What are your plans for attending HIMSS23 in person? My supply chain of enthusiasm has been disrupted, but at some point I’ll need to choose go/no go and will probably end up fast-roping into Chicago for a day or two in the exhibit hall as a habit of seasonal migration.

We’re probably all sick of people showing off their ChatGPT results like proud parents, but it’s still fun to see the result of creative requests. It offered this when I asked it to develop a short story plot about a hospital computer programmer turned criminal:

Title: The Code Criminal

The story revolves around a hospital computer programmer named Jack who is highly skilled and efficient at his job. He is well respected by his colleagues and patients alike. But little do they know, Jack is not who he seems to be. In his off hours, Jack uses his knowledge of the hospital’s computer systems to carry out criminal activities. He steals sensitive patient information and sells it to the highest bidder on the black market. One day, the hospital’s IT department discovers that patient data is being leaked and they track it back to Jack’s computer. They confront him, and Jack is forced to flee the hospital. As Jack is on the run, he realizes that the stolen patient information has been used to carry out a string of identity theft crimes, causing harm to innocent people. Jack realizes the gravity of his actions and decides to make amends. He returns to the hospital and confesses his crimes to the authorities. He offers to help them track down the people who bought the stolen information from him, and use his skills to secure the hospital’s computer systems. In the end, Jack is sentenced to prison, but he feels a sense of redemption for using his skills to make things right. The hospital is able to recover from the breach, and patients are able to trust the hospital with their personal information once again.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

People

AirStrip CEO Alan Portela announces that he will leave the company after 12 years.

Industry long-timer Paul Valentine (Ncontracts) joins KPi-Tech Services as president.

Michael Johnson (Enlace Health) joins Rialtic as chief growth officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Orbita announces Blaze, which provides care-finding and chatbot services to provider websites.

Optum Rx launches Price Edge for its pharmacy benefits manager customers, which shows customers the lowest available cash-only price for generic drugs along with what they would pay using insurance and then applies their payment toward their deductible when they buy.

Government and Politics

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD says in a Society for Clinical Trials opinion piece that post-market clinical research is disaggregated and often fails to answer clinical care and public health questions. He recommends (a) integrating data from EHRs and wearables; (b) paying doctors and patients to participate in trials; and (c) developing policies for ethical data sharing.

Other

University of Iowa surgeons remove a condom-wrapped banana from the small intestine of a man who, as paraphrased from the medical journal article by a British newspaper, an “unnamed bloke” had “gulped the fruity contraceptive whole during what he claimed was a fit of rage” and then was “unable to go to the loo.” The authors note that they had it easy compared to most cases of “body packing” where the condom or balloon contains cocaine or other drugs that, if mishandled, could kill the patient. I can’t envision the degree of rage that is required to swallow a whole banana, or why the swallower would expect to create an improved situation by doing so.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart’s GehriMed EHR earns ONC Health IT 2015 Edition Cures Update certification via the Drummond Group.
• Verato publishes a new case study, “GRIPA: Next-Generation EMPI for Healthier, Happier Community.”
• Pivot Point Consulting A Vaco Company, describes how it implemented Epic for the 29,000 employees of UW Medicine.

Blog Posts

• How Technology Drives Game-Changing Workforce Satisfaction (Netsmart)
• Healthcare IT Trends You Can Expect in 2023 (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Understanding the Shift to Value-Based Care for Pharmacy, Part 1 (OmniSys)
• What is a Clinical Communication and Collaboration Platform? (PerfectServe)
• PINC AI Data: Urgent Hospital Care for Opioid Use Disorders Varies Heavily by State (Premier)
• Patient scheduling tools, tips, and templates (Relatient)
• Hospital smart rooms: What to consider (Sonifi Health)
• Enhance customer experience through your hospital contact center (Spok)
• Data Privacy & Healthcare Cybersecurity: Addressing the Growing Challenge for Healthcare Organizations (TigerConnect)
• Value-Based Care Continues to Loom as the Healthcare Industry’s Cost-Quality Savior (Zynx Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 1/27/23

Top News

Pearl Health, which offers population health analytics software for providers who participate in value-based care for Medicare patients, raises $75 million in a Series B funding round.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Oracle Health EVP and engineering lead Don Johnson, MS reportedly leaves the company after six months in that position and nine years with Oracle.

Fujifilm completes its purchase of the digital pathology assets of Inspirata, placing the former Dynamyx business under its US healthcare division and forming a pathology division of its medical informatics business. Cancer-focused Inspirata is best known in health IT for acquiring the former Caradigm from GE Healthcare 2018.

Elaborate, which uses EHR information to deliver contextualized lab result messages to patients, raises $10 million in seed funding. The company says that sending friendlier, actionable lab results to patients reduces their anxiety and saves providers time.

Sales

• Kansas City University College of Dental Medicine chooses the cloud-based electronic dental record of EClinicalWorks for training future dental professionals.

People

Sonifi Health promotes 27-year employee Kelly Boyd, MBA to general manager.

Todd Mingo, MBA (RLV Digital Health) joins Divurgent as SVP of client services.

Announcements and Implementations

St. Margaret’s Health – Peru (IL) closes, at least temporarily, after its ED services contractor declines to provide services. The hospital’s CEO says that the organization’s finances have deteriorated because of staffing shortages that were caused by COVID-19 as well as a February 2021 cyberattack. 

Azara Healthcare will offer healthcare organizations access to AMA’s MAP BP metrics via its DRVS population health reporting and analytics platform.

Researchers develop a wearable, continuous imaging sensor for cardiac ultrasound, which will allow real-time remote monitoring of cardiac function.

A Texas study finds that patients who were seen in a primary care visit within 30 days of hospital discharge had 53% fewer ED visits and and 61% fewer re-hospitalizations when the clinician looked up their records in a community HIE.

CHIME announces its PRIME CHIME CIO Boot Camp Package, which offers members a discount on participating in its CIO Boot Camp when bundled with ViVE conference registration. Other ViVE discount packages are available for those who sit for a CHIME certification exam or register as a hosted buyer.

Government and Politics

VA facilities experience major system slowdowns of its Oracle Cerner system after DoD makes a change to their shared database that interrupts network connectivity. The problem also impacted half of the DoD’s Oracle Cerner users.

Ireland’s health service executive resigns, saying that his efforts to introduce new digital health solutions have been blocked by senior administrators, placing patients at risk for poor outcomes.

HHS OIG coordinates fraud charges against 25 people who it alleges provided fraudulent degrees and transcripts from three accredited, since-closed nursing schools in Florida – which were also involved in the scheme that generated $100 million — to 7,600 people who used them to sit for national RN and LPN exams. The announcement does not indicate how many of the buyers became nurses or whether their employers have been notified.

The Department of Justice says that it has infiltrated and dismantled the Hive international ransomware group, whose victims include at least one hospital that paid the demanded ransom to restore its systems (unnamed, but most likely Memorial Health System). DOJ says the group extorted $100 million in its first year.

Other

The journal Nature lays out its rules for authors who using AI tools such as ChatGPT in writing articles. AI tools can’t be listed as authors and researchers must explain how they used AI tools in the paper itself. Publisher Springer Nature is working on tools that can detect AI-generated text and hopes that AI companies will be able to embed watermarks in their output.

Canada’s Alberta Health Services experiences delays and resorts to paper charting as a network change creates a widespread outage.

The New York Times covers the practice of providers billing patients for answering their email messages. Cleveland Clinic says its patient email volume has doubled since 2019, but it is charging for less than 1% of the 110,000 emails that are sent to its providers each week. The article notes that CMS added Medicare billing codes in 2019 for responding to a patient’s inquiry that requires five minutes or more of time, and some private insurers have followed its lead. Cleveland Clinic says it isn’t charging Medicaid patients, Medicare patients pay a co-pay of $3 to $8, and patients with high-deductible private policies could owe up to $50 per exchange. AMA says the fees are a way to adjust healthcare models to new ways of interacting with patients.

Sponsor Updates

• Bellin Health increases patient self-scheduling following its implementation of  Kyruus ProviderMatch on its website.
• Experity will host its Urgent Care Connect Conference February 22-23 in Miami.
• The Passionate Pioneers Podcast features Lumeon CEO Greg Miller.
• Meditech publishes a new case study, “North Country Healthcare implements Meditech Expanse Surgical Services in Three Critical Access Hospitals.”
• Meditech signs nine new clients in Q4 for its Meditech as a Service offering.

Blog Posts

• Stepping onto the health IT platform (Nordic)
• CMSWire: What Should You Do in the First 3 Months as CXO (Get Well)
• What Does Healthcare Disruption Look Like? (Healthwise)
• How to Complete an EHR System Selection (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Lessons on data quality in healthcare from 5 peer industries (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• How is healthcare automation like making your morning latte? (Lumeon)
• 6 Ways a Clinician-Driven EHR Empowers Your Providers (Medhost)
• How Analytics Can Support SNF Success (Net Health)
• Temple Health improves clinical workflows with tailored Dragon Medical One training (Nuance)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 1/25/23

Top News

In Canada, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton implements a “digital first, no fax policy” after an audit by Ontario’s privacy commissioner finds that misdirected faxes caused 563 privacy breaches in 2020.

A hospital staffing error led to patient health records being faxed to primary care physicians who had changed their numbers.

The privacy commissioner concluded, “Fax machines have no place in modern healthcare delivery.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Care.ai. The Orlando-based company is bringing the transformative power of ambient intelligence to healthcare, enabling healthcare organizations to become smart-care facilities. Its technology platform leverages advanced sensors and AI to create a neural network that reimagines clinical and operational workflows to power more human care. Deployed in over 1,500 healthcare facilities,Care.ai partners with health systems and long-term care facilities with a unique, integrated solution, including ambient monitoring and inpatient virtual care including virtual nursing and virtual sitting. Thanks to Care.ai for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Innovaccer lays off 245 employees, 15% of its workforce.

Amazon Pharmacy announces RxPass, a $5 per month flat fee, cash-only subscription for Prime customers that delivers all of the generic prescription drugs they take from a list of 50. Patients in eight states are not eligible for reasons that the company did not state.

Sales

• Orlando Health selects hospital-at-home remote patient monitoring technology from Biofourmis.
• Meditech will embed clinical direct messaging capabilities from MedAllies within its Expanse MaaS EHR.
• The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services will offer Medicaid beneficiaries access to the Philips Pregnancy+ patient education and support services app.
• Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (TN) will implement Epic.

People

Colorado-based HIE Quality Health Network promotes Marc Lassaux to executive director and CEO.

Sarah Bennight joins Carenet Health as VP of product marketing and sales enablement.

AMC Health hires James Considine, MBA (Philips) as COO.

MRO Corp. names Matt Wildman (Fortified Health Security) chief commercial officer and Moliehi Weitnauer (Cotiviti) chief product officer.

Harry Totonis, board chair and former CEO of ConnectiveRx, returns to the CEO role in replacing Jim Corrigan.

Tegria promotes Jennifer Montlary, MEd to SVP of marketing and communications.

Announcements and Implementations

Amberwell Health (KS) goes live on Meditech Expanse at its Hiawatha and Highland facilities.

University of Maryland Medical System and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield will pilot the use of Curation Health’s provider-plan collaboration platform for value-based care.

Government and Politics

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority will review the planned $1.5 billion acquisition of healthcare software vendor EMIS Group by an affiliate of UnitedHealth Group’s Optum UK.

The FTC asks a federal judge to hold pharma bro Martin Shkreli in contempt for failing to pay a $65 million fine and violating a lifetime ban from working in the pharma industry. Shkreli finished his stint in prison last May and launched a new company, Druglike, just two months later. The business bills itself as a “a Web3 drug discovery software platform co-founded by Martin Shkreli.”

Other

Researchers at Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale determine that less than 33% of the pharmaceuticals most heavily advertised on television between 2015 and 2021 had high levels of therapeutic value. Pharma companies spent a combined $16 billion on advertisements for the 73 drugs analyzed in the study.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD publishes a new e-guide, “2023 MIPS Improvement Activities.”
• Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Corporate compliance for healthcare providers.”
• HeiligHart Hospital in Belgium upgrades its Agfa HealthCare IMPAX PACS system to Agfa’s cloud-based enterprise imaging.
• Bellin Health (WI) adds ProviderMatch digital appointment scheduling capabilities to its KyruusOne provider data management platform.

Blog Posts

• Why 85% of Americans with Smartphones Expect Mobile Patient ESignature Options (Access)
• Trusted RCM Partnerships: Look Beyond the Problem to Achieve Long-Term Goals (AGS Health)
• Patient Segmentation: How – and Why – You Should Be Analyzing Your Patient Population Segments (Artera)
• The Point-of-Care Reimagined: Giving Providers Actionable Data (Arrive Health)
• Happiness, recruitment, and retention (Nordic)
• This Nurse Needed Work-Life Balance. Thanks to a New Career in Sales, She Found It. (Bamboo Health)
• CMS National Healthcare Directory RFI Blog Series: Provider Response (CareMesh)
• Celebrating Our Healthcare Heritage: 2022 CereCore Employee Awards (CereCore)
• Public health from the global perspective (Oracle Cerner)
• Improving Data in Healthcare: The Discussion We Should Be Having (Clearsense)
• “It’s the best thing that has happened to me.” (Current Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 1/23/23

Top News

Fitch Ratings downgrades the bonds of Marshfield Clinic Health System, blaming its Oracle Cerner implementation for aging receivables, throughput errors, lower collections, and an unexpected level of productivity disruption that has impacted top-line revenue.

Fitch says the conversion of several legacy systems to Oracle Cerner will eventually provide significant benefit once the implementation is complete.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents have used some form of social media in the past week, with the most common platforms being LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. Twitter places a surprisingly distant fifth place.

New poll to your right or here: Does your employment agreement limit who you can work for when you leave? If you have insisted that an employer change the employment agreement before signing, click the poll’s comments link and describe the changes you required and how you brought it up. You could probably get away with making an identical version, removing objectionable terms (or perhaps adding your own personal golden parachute or something), and then printing and signing a copy since the HR clerk probably won’t check every word.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

India-based telehealth and lab test startup MediBuddy reportedly lays off 200 employees, 8% of its headcount.

Sales

• Seattle’s UW Medicine will implement cloud-based Visage 7 Open Archive, Workflow, and Viewer in replacing its legacy PACS.

People

Tower Health promotes Tom Bartiromo to CIO.

VantageHealth.ai promotes Brian Unell, MBA to CEO.

Art Nicholas (Strata Health) joins Interlace Health as chief commercial officer.

CareConnectMD hires Ray George (Third Eye Health) as chief growth officer.

Steve Evans, MBA (LivePerson) joins Netsmart as VP of consulting sales.

Privacy and Security

NextGen Healthcare confirms a hacker group’s claim that its systems were attacked by ransomware on Tuesday. NextGen says it secured the network and has returned to normal operations.

Other

In the UK, newly retired doctor poses beside the forms that are required to admit a patient to an NHS hospital, estimating that nurses spend 70% of their time on paperwork. He says every new issue results in someone creating a new form that then carries over to electronic systems. 

Sponsor Updates

• The American Oncology Network and RxLightning partner to offer AON’s community oncology practices with an all-digital approach to financial assistance enrollment for specialty medications.
• Veradigm adds Sphere’s TrustCommerce patient payment tool to its practice management software.
• TigerConnect remains a leader in the Clinical Communication and Collaboration category on G2 for Winter 2023.
• West Monroe releases a new This is Digital Podcast, “How to Shift from a Project to a Product Mindset.”
• VisiQuate will exhibit at the HFMA Western Region Symposium January 22-25 in Las Vegas.
• Zynx Health parent company Hearst Health, in partnership with the UCLA Center for SMART Health, is accepting submissions for the 2023 Hearst Health Prize through February 24.

Blog Posts

• Honoring His Legacy, In Service to Others (Netsmart)
• See a Mumpsimus? Stop a Mumpsimus! (Nordic)
• How do you decide which staffing model is right for you? (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Make your website search conversational and consumer-friendly: Healthcare’s next-generation digital front door (Orbita)
• Revenue Cycle Outsourcing: To Do or Not to Do? (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Improving Data in Healthcare: The Discussion We Should Be Having (Clearsense)
• Clinical Communication in 2023: Trends and Predictions (PerfectServe)
• What Makes a “Good” Peer Group? (Premier)
• How ENT and Allergy Associates Automatically Corrects 82% of Their Claim Errors (RCxRules)
• How to Document and Bill for Home-Based Outpatient PT Services (WebPT)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 1/20/23

Top News

Bayer acquires Scotland-based Blackford Analysis, which offers radiology and imaging AI tools.

The companies worked together previously in developing Bayer’s Calantic medical imaging AI platform.

Reader Comments

From Jobber: “Re: position seekers. Would you consider sharing a link to the LinkedIn profile of health IT people who are looking for jobs?” I might be willing to do that in a weekly roundup or something, but only for people who explicitly ask me to share their names, previous job, and sought-after position in the briefest of tables along with a link to their LinkedIn that contains all their other information. But first, a question – would this provide value to those who are listed and to readers, or would I just be creating another pointless task for myself?

From Oracular Degeneration: “Re: Oracle Cerner. Mike Sicilia assured the Senate in late July 2022 that the company would move the VA’s implementation to the cloud and rewrite its pharmacy module within six to nine months. We are at six months now, so is it just about done?” I haven’t heard anything about the self-imposed April 2023 deadline.

From Epic TS: “Re: HIMSS. All Verona-based Epic employees will have the opportunity to attend HIMSS this year, so it might have quite the large population of 22-24 year olds.” Interesting, if this report is accurate. It would seem hard to justify opening up conference attendance to 10,000+ vendor employees.

From RunFromThis: “Re: vendor exec pleads guilty. See attached court record.” [Name redacted], senior partner of [health IT consulting company name redacted], was arrested on March 4, 2022 (at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Miami at the start of ViVE-CHIME) and charged with being captured on surveillance video punching the company’s EVP of sales in the nose at 2:00 in the morning at the hotel bar. The information is public record, but I’m still not entirely comfortable running his name and that of his company over a misdemeanor battery charge. However, should you want to read more, enter citation # 202200018175 on this page. The executive-slash-puncher was 6’2” and 300 pounds, according to his arrest report, and the punchee reports on LinkedIn that the blow required emergency surgery that was followed by a quick exit from the company.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The biggest challenge in system implementations or upgrades, at least in some hospitals, is working up the nerve to actually pull the trigger to bring the change live knowing that while some things won’t work right, at some point you have to stop maintaining two systems. That feeling arose with my recent HIStalk server upgrade, where I fully expected issues after dozens of applications and endless custom coding so it would work with new server and database software (the term “deprecated function” comes up a lot). Most everything has been upgraded and/or fixed; web scripts and programming have been modified to work with new versions of PHP, MySQL, and server OS; the virtual firewall is finally working properly; and the new server is faster with more capacity.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Teladoc Health lays off 300 employees, 6% of its headcount, as part of a cost-saving restructuring. TDOC shares have lost two-thirds of their value in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 26% loss.

Real-time benefits tools vendor Arrive Health (formerly RxRevu) acquires medication adherence tools from UPMC Enterprises and has received an investment from UPMC.

Sales

• Highland Rivers Behavioral Health chooses Findhelp to help its clients to connect with local social care resources.
• Eudora Medical Center implements EClinicalWorks Cloud EHR.
• MultiCare Health system acquires Yakima Valley Memorial Hospital and will spend $100 million to replace its Cerner system with Epic.
• Cleveland Clinic will implement Palantir’s Virtual Command Center.

People

Hicuity Health hires Young Ahn, MD (Jiahui Health) as chief medical officer.

Clarus Care hires Rick Stevens (SoftServe) as vice chair and head of strategic accounts.

Announcements and Implementations

St. Bernards Healthcare (AR) upgrades to Meditech Expanse, assisted by the company’s professional services team. It replaces Meditech’s legacy system, three ambulatory systems, and a patient portal. (Questioning: since the health system is named after St. Bernard Tolomei, why does it incorrectly omit the apostrophe from its name?)

Fortified Health Security publishes its healthcare cybersecurity report for 2023.

Socially Determined partners with Datavant to offer patient-level social risk data to life sciences companies.

My favorite health IT market review is from Healthcare Growth Partners, which just released its annual report, whose masterfully concise and authoritative writing style always makes me a little bit jealous. Tidbits:

• Market sentiment is showing a glimmer of rebound as the Fed attempts to steer the economy to a soft landing with a resilient labor market. Health IT market activity has been falling, but remains at a healthy level historically.
• The rising cost of capital and concerns about a recession have reduced the risk tolerance and thus acquisitive interest in investors, but seller interest remains strong and an economic uptick could create significant deal flow.
• Investor pullback in health IT is not being driven by company or sector fundamentals, but rather hospital financial pressure (which is easing) that elongated sales cycles.
• High-quality growth companies continue to command premium valuations, while buyers will find relative bargains in acquiring sound companies and those with strong bookings and recurring profits.
• Health IT sectors with the strongest valuations, as reported publicly, are analytics, revenue cycle management technology, and telemedicine. 
• Companies have three valuation inflection points – proof of concept, growth scalability, and mature scalability.
• Notable take-private transactions as public market valuations plummeted include Cerner, Change Healthcare, Vocera, Tivity Health, Convey Health Solutions, Castlight, and SOC Telemed.

ECRI lists its “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2023”:

1. Communication challenges when medical device manufacturers notify users of recalls.
2. A concerning number of defective single-use medical devices.
3. Inappropriate use of automated dispensing cabinet overrides.
4. Undetected dislodging of hemodialysis venous connections.
5. Failing to manage the cybersecurity risks of cloud-based clinical systems.
6. Inflatable pressure infusers for IV bags delivering air emboli.
7. Cross-contamination in cleaning ventilators.
8. Improper use of electrosurgical units.
9. Overuse of cardiac telemetry on non-cardiac patients, which causes alarm fatigue, clinician cognitive overload, and unrecognized critical events.
10. Underreporting of device-related issues.

Government and Politics

The State of Georgia’s proposed budget calls for $105 million for Medical College of Georgia to implement Epic. The college is part of Augusta University, which is negotiating the transfer of its assets to Epic customer Wellstar. I think the August University Health hospitals are using Cerner. The top reason given by the health systems for partnering was to expand digital health offerings to improve access to care and care personalization.

Privacy and Security

A ProPublica investigation finds that online pharmacies that sell abortion pills are sending potentially identifiable website user data to Google’s tracking tools, potentially exposing customers to prosecution in some states.

Other

A case study describes how Brigham and Women’s Hospital uses an electronic handoff tool when transferring patients from ED to inpatient, yielding high clinician utilization and a reduction in clarifying calls to ED clinicians from 51% of admissions to 10%.

Sponsor Updates

• PeriGen supports a Virtual Learning Day for perinatal and neonatal nurses titled “Partners in Practice: Uncovering Solutions and Strategies for Staffing and Reproductive Justice” on January 26.
• Netsmart achieves ONC Health IT Cures update certification for its human services EHR solutions.
• Ascom Americas expands its partnership with reseller Newtech Systems so that its clinical workflow solutions are available to hospitals in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “Brookhaven Heart & MD365: Streamlining Patient Engagement and Intervention with RPM.”
• The Authentically Successful Podcast features Get Well CEO Michael O’Neil.
• Censinet publishes a research report titled “The Impact of Ransomware on Patient Safety and the Value of Cybersecurity Benchmarking.”
• GHX will present at the Contract Administration Conference February 6 in Cape Coral, FL.
• Healthjump earns NCQA’s Validated Data Stream Designation.

Blog Posts

• Tips for Payer Reviews: How to Handle Pre-payment, Post-payment, and Probe (Experity)
• 7 Clinical Guidance Innovations to Empower Retail Pharmacists (First Databank)
• Igniting a Positive Human Experience in Healthcare (Get Well)
• Real Risks Involved with Blockchain Technology (HealthTech Resources)
• Disrupting Healthcare Through Innovation (InterSystems)
• RxNORM 101: What you need to know for clinical documentation (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• How do you decide which Staffing Model is Right for You?  (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Helping Consumers Find a “Provider Like Me” and Why It Matters (Kyruus)
• Better Outcomes, Lower Costs: How Innovative Partnerships Are Overcoming Rural Staffing Shortages (Medhost)
• Engaging your patient population through care programs (Meditech)
• See a Mumpsimus? Stop a Mumpsimus! (Nordic)
• How Prior Authorization Software Takes Your Patients’ Intake Experiences to a New (Nicer) Place (Myndshft)
• Reporting All Medical Director Hours for SNFs: Why It Matters (Net Health)
• Key Benefits of Mental Health Treatment in Primary Care (NeuroFlow)
• Three trends that will define the future of healthcare (Nuance)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 1/18/23

Top News

Definitive Healthcare will lay off 55 employees, about 6% of its workforce, as part of a restructuring plan that is intended to boost profits.

An email to employees from CEO Robert Musslewhite says the company must address its cost structure since the economy has slowed and companies are purchasing more cautiously.

Webinars

January 19 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Supercharge Your Clinical Data Searches.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenter: Paul Robbins, MSMBA, VP of product, Particle. Particle’s team will preview the exciting results of Specialty Search, a new condition-specific record locator service. This webinar will review how to collect patient records from top Centers of Excellence across the entire country; how healthcare organizations of all types are benefiting from Specialty Search capabilities, using Particle’s simple API; and why a focused search of chronic condition data — in oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, orthopedics, and more — has an outsized impact on care outcomes.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Home care and staffing company Viemed invests $2 million in ModoHealth, which offers value-based care and patient management software. Viemed will join Modo’s provider network and use its technology.

Sales

• The San Francisco VA Health Care System will implement CareView’s Patient Safety System with help from Decisive Point Consulting Group.

People

Michael Hawkins (Patient Discovery) joins Axuall as CTO.

CalvertHealth (MD) promotes CTO Melissa Hall, RN to CNO and VP of clinical affairs.

Michele Norton, RN, MSN, MS (MobileSmith Health) joins Avalon Healthcare Solutions as SVP of product marketing.

CereCore promotes Craig McCollum to VP of Meditech International services.

EVisit promotes Sachin Agrawal, MSc to CEO. He replaces co-founder Bret Larsen, who will move to executive board chair.

InnovAge hires Cara Babachicos, MHA (South Shore Health) as CIO.

Lisa Castanzo (Oracle Cerner) joins Elsevier as VP of software engineering, clinical solutions.

Sean Lara (Akasa) joins Censinet as chief revenue officer.

CHOC Children’s promotes Steven Martel, MD to VP/chief health information officer.

Fred Sheffield (HealthPay24) joins TeleVox Healthcare as chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Lightbeam Health Solutions announces GA of Radian, a clinical and social data analytics tool designed to help providers with health equity projects.

Persown uses analytics from SAS to develop a Sepsis Monitoring and Alerting System for Hospitals and Homes (SMASH-H).

Other

The Washington Post looks at the use of smartphone apps that collect patient clinical measures and send them to doctors, concluding that if the AI/ML they use requires doctors to interpret the results, the apps can’t really solve access and cost issues.

Safety officials in Bonner County, Idaho attribute a spike in unintentional 911 calls to skiers and snowboarders on local Schweitzer Mountain whose Apple Watches and Iphones automatically called emergency services when their fall-detection technology kicked in.

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom Americas Managing Director Kelly Feist receives a 2023 BIG Innovation Award from the Business Intelligence Group.
• Baker Tilly publishes a new case study, “Medical practice company implements cloud financial management platform to support evolving needs.”
• The Fixing Healthcare Podcast features Oracle Cerner Chairman David Feinberg, MD, “How leadership can fix healthcare.”
• Nordic releases another episode of its “In Network” podcast, “Designing for Health: Dr. Zafar Chaudry.”
• The American Medical Informatics Association elects Clinical Architecture CEO Charlie Harp the 2023-24 chair of its Informatics Partnership Council.

Blog Posts

• E-Signature 2.0 to 3.0 & the Progression of Patient-centric Solutions (Access)
• Data Reconnaissance: Understanding your practice’s data landscape (AdvancedMD)
• Industry Collaboration Day 2023 (Agfa HealthCare)
• Accounts Receivable: A Healthy Approach (AGS Health)
• How to Establish a Digital Patient Engagement Committee (Artera)
• Understanding the Impact and Importance of School-based Health Centers (Azara Healthcare)
• Taming the trouble from too much noise (Philips Capsule)
• How a Nurses-First Model Ensures Chronic Care Management Success (ChartSpan)
• The Intersectionality of Technology, Industry Growth, and Patient Outcomes: Clearsense 20/20 (Clearsense)
• Leveraging Agile in Testing – What You Need to Know (CTG)
• How Healthcare is Going Google (Divurgent)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 1/16/23

Top News

The Government Accountability Office rejects bid protests involving the VA’s selection of Booz Allen to continue managing its Oracle Cerner implementation for another five years.

Unsuccessful bidders Cognosante and Pro Sphere Tech said that Booz Allen has an organization conflict of interest because the $860 million contract will allow it to steer work under a different VA task order to its subsidiary Liberty IT Solutions, which it acquired in June 2021 for $725 million.

GAO dismissed a similar year-ago protest by a Liberty IT Solutions competitor, determining that Liberty and Booz Allen are performing different kinds of work that is managed by different VA offices.

Reader Comments

From Cron: “Re: disruptors. Does any company actually disrupt anything?” Rarely in healthcare, since those companies that would be disrupted are usually entrenched, well funded, and politically connected. Expectations are misplaced that scrappy startups will somehow fix our healthcare non-system for us since politicians won’t. The job of a startup is to survive, grow, and make money, and tangling with huge insurers, health systems, and vendors isn’t a great way to do that.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents are mixed on assigning responsibility to the VA’s struggling rollout of Oracle Cerner.

New poll to your right or here: Which social media service have you used in the past seven days?

Several folks have reached out about the death of industry long-timer Frank Pecaitis. His family has started a GoFundMe to establish a scholarship in his name.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor RxLightning. The New Albany, IN-based company enables physicians to accelerate patient access to their preferred specialty therapies. Its MedAccess platform was designed for physicians and their clinical team to re-imagine the entire specialty medication experience without paper forms or fax machines, supporting over 1,200 specialty medications across all therapeutic specialties. Ninety-four percent of patients get access in less than one hour and 99% in less than one day. Its proven approach simplifies the historically cumbersome process of specialty medication access by providing visibility into the entire patient journey through a digital platform, which acts as a single source of truth for all stakeholders. This MedAccess Ecosystem optimizes the patient journey from enrollment to fulfillment and makes the disconnected, connected. Thanks to RxLightning for supporting HIStalk.

Thanks to these companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo for more information.

January 19 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Supercharge Your Clinical Data Searches.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenter: Paul Robbins, MSMBA, VP of product, Particle. Particle’s team will preview the exciting results of Specialty Search, a new condition-specific record locator service. This webinar will review how to collect patient records from top Centers of Excellence across the entire country; how healthcare organizations of all types are benefiting from Specialty Search capabilities, using Particle’s simple API; and why a focused search of chronic condition data — in oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, orthopedics, and more — has an outsized impact on care outcomes.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Not directly healthcare related, but interesting. JP Morgan Chase sues Charlie Javice, the 30-year-old founder of student loan signup platform vendor Frank, which it acquired for $175 million in September 2021 and has since shut down. Executives of Frank allegedly hired a data science professor to create 4.25 million phony user accounts versus its actual 300,000 users who used the service to apply for school loans. The company came under Congressional scrutiny in 2020 on suspicions that it was misleading students and  selling their personal information to advertisers. JP Morgan discovered discrepancies when it asked for a customer list so it could begin marketing its own offerings to students, then found that three-fourths of test emails were undeliverable and only 1% were opened.

Jingyun Fan, MS, founder and CEO of app-based insomnia coaching startup Shuni, lists the lessons she learned that resulted in shutting the company down after three years:

1. Founders must manage their egos in balancing the many naysayers while still listening to legitimate feedback.
2. First-time founders focus on “build it and they will come” instead of the real challenge of distribution. They should learn about marketing and sales and split their time equally between product and growth.
3. Operational excellence is easily copied and just doing something better isn’t enough to provide the returns that venture capital seeks.
4. Startups should not focus on building a services business, which is operational excellence that incumbents can copy given their capital and reputation.
5. Don’t try to sell platform technology into healthcare since better technology is a nice-to-have that may never result in a sale, and it’s hard to disrupt Epic or Oracle Cerner.
6. For behavioral health offerings, focus on direct-to-consumer growth rather than pursuing academia-grade outcomes data that would interest only employers and insurers.
7. Cost-of-acquisition is high in behavioral health and marketing strategies should focus on long-form content written by authentic personalities as brand representatives, making YouTube as the primary channel because you can speak directly to target clients, has good discoverability, and is good for search engine optimization.
8. Make sure as a founder that the problem you are addressing is worth dedicating a major part of your life to.
9. Venture capital isn’t right for every business. Capital comes with timeline expectations and what startups need is time.
10. Ignore these lessons. People do the impossible all the time, doing meaningful work and transforming their own lives.

Sales

• Two hospitals on the border between France and Belgium choose Sectra for digital pathology in a joint project.
• Owensboro Health (KY) outsources revenue cycle management and IT to Optum, which will take on 575 health system employees.

Government and Politics

ONC publishes Draft Version 4 of USCDI.

Sponsor Updates

• Current Health publishes a new case study, “UMass Memorial Health Builds Leading Hospital at Home Program.”
• EClinicalWorks releases a new customer success story, “Value-Based Care Achieved Through PCMH and HEDIS.”
• Relatient publishes a new case study featuring One Pediatrics, “Activating Patients Through Targeted Messaging and Segmentation.”
• West Monroe appoints TED Conferences CEO Jay Herratti to its board.

Blog Posts

• Are You Compliant? New CURES Act Rules in Effect (Pivot Point Consulting)
• How Bedside Manner Improves Patient Recovery (PerfectServe)
• How The Bellevue Hospital is Transforming their Supply Chain – and Maximizing Savings (Premier)
• Your guide to the average speed of answer in a call center (Talkdesk)
• 2023 Top Healthcare Cybersecurity Threats (TigerConnect)
• Upfront Healthcare 2022 Year in Review (Upfront Healthcare)
• 4 Tips to Boost Physical Therapy Documentation Training in Your Clinic (WebPT)
• The Cost of Doing Nothing (VisiQuate)
• Carequality & EHealth Exchange Annual Meeting Highlights (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 1/13/23

Top News

Alphabet’s Verily health sciences unit will lay off 240 employees, 15% of its workforce, as the company tries to bolster its financials to reduce reliance on its parent.

The company will end early-stage projects that involved remote patient monitoring and microneedles for drug delivery.

Reader Comments

From High Vibration Go On: “Re: J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. You should ask your readers for their assessment and any zingers, predictions, etc.” Readers who attended JPM, what thoughts do you have?

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The migration to the new, more powerful server overnight went mostly OK, with a few errors due to permissions, security certificates, and the “contact us” online forms (still working on those). Let me know if you see anything that is irritatingly broken.

Webinars

January 19 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Supercharge Your Clinical Data Searches.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenter: Paul Robbins, MSMBA, VP of product, Particle. Particle’s team will preview the exciting results of Specialty Search, a new condition-specific record locator service. This webinar will review how to collect patient records from top Centers of Excellence across the entire country; how healthcare organizations of all types are benefiting from Specialty Search capabilities, using Particle’s simple API; and why a focused search of chronic condition data — in oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, orthopedics, and more — has an outsized impact on care outcomes.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Censinet raises $9 million in new funding.

Talent Group acquires Queen Consulting Group.

Sales

• C By Precision Care chooses EClinicalWorks, Healow, and PRISMA.
• Meditech UK chooses CloudWave’s OpSus Cloud Services to deploy its cloud-based Meditech Expanse implementation at two NHS trusts.
• Eye Health America will implement NextGen Patient Experience Platform and NextGen Pay powered by InstaMed.
• Jefferson County Human Services (WI) chooses Eleos Health’s natural language understanding technology to interpret behavioral health conversations and reduce documentation time.
• Transcarent will offer expert second opinions from specialists at The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic, which is a joint venture between Cleveland Clinic and Amwell.
• Nicklaus Children’s Hospital will implement the ActX Genomic Decision Support platform.

People

Life sciences medical intelligence company Dr. Evidence hires Rose Higgins, RN, MPM (HealthMyne) as CEO.

DrFirst promotes G. Cameron Deemer to CEO. He replaces founder James Chen, MS, who moves to executive chairman of the board. The company also promotes Anthony Brooke to chief technology and innovation officer.

ModMed hires Jody Beaverson (Change Healthcare) as chief people officer.

Industry long-timer Frank Pecaitis — who held executive roles at QuadraMed, Medsphere, GE Healthcare, PatientSafe Solutions, Agfa HealthCare, and most recently at Philips in a 30-year career — died December 24 at 59.

Announcements and Implementations

A trigger method adverse event study of 11 hospitals in Massachusetts finds that nearly one-fourth of admissions included an adverse event, of which about 1% were both serious and preventable. The most common type of events involved drugs (39%), surgeries or procedures (30%), nursing care (15%), and healthcare-associated infections (12%).

Northwell Health releases a pregnancy chatbot for its patients that offers education and triage with escalation.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic posts a new episode of DocTalk titled “The two sides of digital health.”
• Healthjump earns Validated Data Stream designation in the new NCQA Data Aggregator Validation Program.
• EClinicalWorks customer Children First Pediatrics reports successful process automation, increased patient compliance, and general cost savings using the company’s Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS).
• Ellkay hosts a virtual blood drive through the Red Cross in support of National Blood Donor Month.
• Fortified Health Security names Ayinde Mitchell (Cognoa) regional sales director.
• HCTec sponsors five families as part of Operation Stand Down Tennessee’s holiday program.
• Impact Advisors announces that is has been recognized as one of the top leaders in Canada in the KLAS Canada EMR Consulting Services 2023 report.
• Kyruus reports a landmark year in 2022, serving over 100 health systems, 500 independent medical groups, and 100 health plan brands.

Blog Posts

• Customer-Centric Healthcare Tech Commercialization (Get-to-Market Health)
• Digital Innovations Behind the Future of Life Sciences Industry (Healthcare Triangle)
• How Technology is Affecting Hospitals From the Top Down: The Role of Today’s CIO (HealthTech Resources)
• How Patient Education Can Increase Compassion in Healthcare (Healthwise)
• Unlocking the power of digital healthcare solutions in three steps (InterSystems)
• A history of home healthcare payment models (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Meltdown: Why Resiliency Programs Alone Can’t Reverse Physician Burnout (Medhost)
• 4 essential factors to a successful, multi-year, phased implementation project (Meditech)
• How NeuroFlow Prioritizes User Experience to Improve Digital Mental Health (NeuroFlow)
• An In-Depth Q&A with Cathy Thomas Hess, Chief Clinical Officer of Wound Care (Net Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 1/11/23

Top News

Capacity management and patient flow software vendor LeanTaaS acquires Hospital IQ, which offers hospital automation solutions.

Webinars

January 19 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Supercharge Your Clinical Data Searches.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenter: Paul Robbins, MSMBA, VP of product, Particle. Particle’s team will preview the exciting results of Specialty Search, a new condition-specific record locator service. This webinar will review how to collect patient records from top Centers of Excellence across the entire country; how healthcare organizations of all types are benefiting from Specialty Search capabilities, using Particle’s simple API; and why a focused search of chronic condition data — in oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, orthopedics, and more — has an outsized impact on care outcomes.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kaufman Hall will acquire six-employee advisory firm and media publisher Gist Healthcare.

Behavioral health clinical database company Holmusk raises $45 million in a Series B funding round led by Veradigm, which will incorporate segments of its behavioral health and related de-identified patient data into Holmusk’s NeuroBlu Database.

CVS Health is reportedly interested in acquiring senior-focused primary care provider Oak Street Health in a deal that could be worth $10 billion. The retail pharmacy chain is in the midst of an $8 billion acquisition of home healthcare company Signify Health. Chicago-based Oak Street, which went public in 2020, operates 170 clinics across the country.

Tech-enabled kidney care company Monogram Health raises $375 million, bringing its total to $547 million.

Carbon Health announces a $100 million investment from CVS Health Ventures less than a week after announcing layoffs and the shuttering of several business lines. CVS will pilot the primary and urgent care company’s operating model and software within several of its CVS Health locations.

Wolters Kluwer Health acquires nursing education and training company NurseTim.

National telemedicine provider Avel ECare acquires after-hours remote pharmacy service NightWatch. Avel ECare got its start at South Dakota health system Avera Health before it was sold to private equity buyers and renamed in 2021.

Microsoft is in talks to invest $10 billion in ChatGPT owner OpenAI at a valuation of $29 billion

Sales

• Connecticut Children’s Care Network will offer nursing mothers Nest Collaborative’s virtual lactation consultation service.
• The VA will integrate Renalytix’s KidneyIntelX kidney disease assessment and management software with its EHR.
• Bon Secours Mercy Health (OH), Adventist Health (CA), Northside Hospital (GA), Duly Health and Care (IL), and Onsite Women’s Health (TN) select Volpara Health’s breast cancer screening and detection software.
• Meditech UK will use CloudWave’s OpSus Cloud Services to power its Expanse EPR at East Cheshire NHS Trust and Mid Cheshire Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

People

Retired Army Colonel Bobby Saxon, MS (CMS) joins Leidos as a VP focused on customer advocacy.

Curve Health names Matthew Michela, MBA (Life Image) CEO.

R1 RCM promotes Kyle Hicok, MBA to chief commercial officer.

Nordic Consulting promotes Terri LeFort, RN, MBA to president of Nordic International and hires Kieran Hughes (Tegria) as president of its markets in Europe and the Middle East and Thomas O’Shaughnessy, MSc (Deloitte) as president of its Canada-based subsidiary Healthtech.

Ventra Health hires Steven Huddleston (Pelitas) as CEO.

Consulting firm Brightwork Health IT hires Eliza Corrigan (Tasman Global) as chief sales officer.

Divurgent promotes Hannah Ellerbee, MBA to chief customer officer.

Colin Ashby (Talkdesk) joins Healthmap Solutions as VP of sales for healthcare systems.

Announcements and Implementations

Ardent Health Services (TN) will implement remote patient monitoring and virtual care services from Cadence as part of its remote care programs for patients with chronic conditions.

In Canada, 23 hospitals form a shared services IT organization as they implement a shared instance of Meditech Expanse.

Other

The Bermuda Hospitals Board provides a breakdown of costs and timelines associated with the rollout of its Oracle Cerner-based PEARL system, noting that its staff had to work through several COVID waves and a hurricane as its October 29 go-live approached. The board saved $1.3 million by hosting planning meetings remotely, though it spent $1.7 million to feed and house 160 extra support staff at the Hamilton Princess & Beach Club. The net cost of the project is expected to be $30 million paid over 10 years.

The Better Business Bureau alerts consumers to the shady business practices of North Texas-based telemedicine company Doctor Alexa. The bureau revoked the company’s accreditation last June after it failed to address 24 of the 46 consumer complaints filed on the BBB’s website. Complaints related to paying for services never rendered, chronic lack of communication, and failure to send prescriptions to pharmacies after virtual consults. The BBB received over 300 complaints related to telemedicine between 2019 and 2021.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD announces that it has been awarded 21^st Century Cures Act Certification from ONC.
• Baker Tilly releases a new BuzzHouse Podcast, “Fostering healthcare and housing through relationships as a community investment.”
• ChartSpan welcomes Lauren Wyatt (Change Healthcare) as client success director and Shelby Statom (Everly Health) as implementation project manager.
• Netsmart’s MyUnity earns ONC’s Cures Update certification, the first post-acute EHR to do so.
• CHIME releases a new Leader2Leader Podcast featuring Symplr Chief Product Officer Brian Fugere.
• Diameter Health again achieves the Certified Partner designation in NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation program.

Blog Posts

• What does Experity do? (Experity)
• Improving Business Development at Your Medical Practice (AdvancedMD)
• The Role of RCM in Health Equity (AGS Health)
• CMS National Healthcare Directory RFI Blog Series: Provider Response (CareMesh)
• The Secret to One Hospital’s $115k Savings in EHR Build Costs (CereCore)
• Content Roundup: Top 5 Blog Posts of 2022  (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Talking Cyber Resilience and Business Risk to Your Board and Executives (Clearwater)
• 3 Tips for Optimizing Your Cloud Costs (CTG)
• The Right Analytics Solution Involves More Than Data Alone (Dimensional Insight)
• A Renewed Focus on Employee Engagement (Direct Recruiters)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

News 1/6/23

Top News

Allscripts changes its company name to Veradigm.

The company sold many of its health IT assets in the past two years. It says it has now consolidated its remaining portfolio of EHR, PM, and patient communication systems into the Veradigm Network.

Shares will continue to trade under the MDRX ticker symbol. They are down 8% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 34% drop.

Reader Comments

From Publius: “Re: non-competes. This would significantly impact Epic, which would have a mass exodus of employees. I assume they would fight it in court.” The Federal Trade Commission proposes banning the use of non-compete clauses that prevent employees from taking jobs with competitors or starting their own businesses. FTC says the clauses are exploitative, affect one in five American workers, and are sometimes imposed by companies on low-earning employees who don’t have significant company knowledge. Previous studies have shown that non-compete agreements protect established companies from startups, reduce competition, and limit the ability of companies to hire the best-suited workers. FTC says the change would provide new opportunities for 30 million Americans and raise wages by $300 billion per year. The proposed change would not affect non-disclosure agreements, but those could be subject to FTC review if they interfere with workers changing jobs. Among the companies named in FTC’s complaints are two Michigan-based security companies that prevented low-wage security guards from working within a 100-mile radius for two years after leaving.

From Pure Energy: “Re: M&A in a down market. Predictions?” Previously overvalued but cash-burning startups that have no obvious path to profitability will find themselves selling out to larger competitors – assuming any are interested in attaching new weights to their corporate ankles – at barely more than asset value as being ‘disruptive” and “innovative” without making money causes newly focused eyes to roll. Modestly or selectively successful companies will shed non-core business in hopes of generating quick cash from carve-outs. Companies that went public during the recent boom, especially those that took the sketchy SPAC route, will have to figure out how to continue operating (or not) based on trashed share price with zero chance of obtaining favorable funding. This is healthy and necessary, just like thinning and pruning deadwood, and survivors will emerge stronger. Also important is that the profitable aspects of the entire hospital and health system market may be consolidated into a couple of dozen big provider and provider-insurer players over the next 10 years, so it will be feast or famine for companies who sell into that market whose participants are focused on decreasing their vendor count.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’ll be migrating HIStalk to a new server shortly, which includes a lot of changes to the underlying programming and databases, so expect the usual (hopefully minor and short-lived) glitches.

Webinars

January 19 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Supercharge Your Clinical Data Searches.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenter: Paul Robbins, MSMBA, VP of product, Particle. Particle’s team will preview the exciting results of Specialty Search, a new condition-specific record locator service. This webinar will review how to collect patient records from top Centers of Excellence across the entire country; how healthcare organizations of all types are benefiting from Specialty Search capabilities, using Particle’s simple API; and why a focused search of chronic condition data — in oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, orthopedics, and more — has an outsized impact on care outcomes.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Salesforce will reduce its workforce by 10%, about 7,000 jobs, and will close offices in some markets, reductions the company blames on reduced customer spending and its own excessive hiring during the pandemic’s boom times. It not break out how many of the job cuts were related to healthcare. The company’s market value has dropped more than half to $134 billion from its late-2021 high.

Shares of GE spinoff GE HealthCare begin trading on the Nasdaq under the GEHC ticker. Shares closed their first day of trading Wednesday up 8%.

Epic-integrated virtual care platform vendor KeyCare completes its $27 million Series A funding round.

Onc.AI, which offers a medical oncologist clinical decision-making platform, raises $25 million in Series A funding.

Sales

• East Tennessee HIN chooses 4medica’s patient matching system.

People

Ardent Health Services hires Brad Hoyt, MD (Utica Park Clinic) as CMIO.

Acadia Healthcare Company hires Laura Groschen (Medtronic) as CIO.

Experity promotes Brian Berning, MS to CFO.

Curve Health hires Matt Michela, MBA (Life Image) as CEO.

Nicholas Anderson (G2o) joins Olah Healthcare Technology as VP of product management.

Announcements and Implementations

EHNAC publishes new versions of its program criteria for its accreditation programs.

The new quarterly market report of Pivot Point Consulting, A Vaco Company makes these points:

• Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical gives the company partnerships with big health systems and a business that has off-the-charts member satisfaction, 90% retention, and 300% member growth over five years, plus a growing Medicare and Medicare Advantage business via its Iora Health.
• Amazon’s relaunched virtual service of Amazon Clinic will be challenged to attract both consumers and providers to its platform, with modest synergies with its pharmacy business but little impact on expensive chronic condition spending.
• CVS Health gained 10,000 contracted clinicians with its September 2022 acquisition of Signify Health, which also gives it a Medicare presence with its Caravan marketplace.
• The acquisition of Summit Health by Walgreens-controlled VillageMD, which closed Thursday will double the company’s PCP count to 2,800 working in 680 locations.
• Walmart made no healthcare acquisitions in 2022, but expanded its telehealth and Medicare preventive care markets using its 4,000-stores footprint.
• Pivot Point recommends that providers start with the digital front door to enhance patient and staff experience, use data to innovate, and build partnerships with payers since the big retailers have shown little interest in hospital care.

An EpicShare article describes how University of Michigan Health – West uses Nuance’s DAX to reduce physician time spent writing notes, with some doctors reporting a total daily effort of 10 minutes to review the results. The organization says the cost can be high and DAX works better in primary care than with specialties, but notes got better and faster over time, more prior authorization requests were approved on the first try, and patients say they enjoy seeing their own words in the doctor’s notes in MyChart.

Withings announces U-Scan, a toilet bowl device that takes daily biomarker readings. The device, which is pending US FDA clearance, will debut in Europe with consumer health cartridges for women’s cycle tracking and hydration.

Government and Politics

A JAMA Network opinion piece warns that clinical algorithms may be found to violate antidiscrimination laws under the Affordable Care Act or may be regulated by FDA as medical devices, both of which the authors urge the federal government to avoid for lower-risk algorithms and until discrimination aspects are better defined. 

Other

Amy Abernethy, MD, PhD, who runs Verily’s life sciences clinical studies platforms, discusses the state of clinical trials in a brief Politico interview:

• Clinical trials will move to using existing data from EHRs and claims, along with sensor data, although data quality mismatches need to be resolved.
• Clinical trials need to involve a low burden for participants to generate representative participation.
• Clinical trials recruitment needs to include digital marketing, call centers, and extra service.
• Future clinical trials will involve long-term following of participants, which will require new ways of thinking about keeping people enrolled.

This is an interesting observation by Will Weider, although perhaps less relevant than it seems to healthcare since ordering is the focus at Amazon and most of us have done it many times. I don’t mind a chat bot as long as it doesn’t hog the screen, make sounds, or pop up on every new page after I’ve already dismissed it. I always renew my car registration online and DMV’s chat bot is like a nicer, field-prompting version of an online form. At least even the dumbest chat bot is smarter than the smartest telephone auto attendant.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity associates volunteer at the 24th annual Make-a-Wish Request-a-Thon.
• Medicomp Systems releases a new Tell Me Where IT Hurts Podcast featuring National Coordinator Micky Tripathi.
• Wolters Kluwer Health marks the 30th anniversary of its UpToDate clinical decision support solution by announcing that it has donated over 100,000 subscriptions to UpToDate to caregivers and organizations in 159 countries.
• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story featuring Orthopaedic Institute of Ohio, “Prisma: How Better Data Improves Care and Reduces Costs.”
• Everbridge appoints RSA CEO Rohit Gai and Blackbaud EVP David Benjamin to its Board of Directors.
• Nordic launches a new podcast series titled “In Network.”
• The Empowered Patient Podcast features First Databank VP of Product Management Virginia Halsey, “Improving Access for Pharmacists to Appropriate Drug Interaction and Dosing Data.”
• Get Well offers a digital inclusivity toolkit to help healthcare teams address workplace violence.
• InterSystems announces it has been positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of the recently published Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems.
• Juniper Networks announces it has been named a leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure for the third consecutive year.
• Meditech publishes a new case study, “Frederick Health Aligns Workflows Across Care Settings with Meditech Professional Services.”

Blog Posts

• 5 Modern Must-Have Features in Urgent Care Technology (Experity)
• Top Trends Transforming the Future of Healthcare in 2023 and Beyond (Healthcare Triangle)
• Top 5 Challenges in Value-Based Care (and How to Solve Them) (Healthjump)
• More Than Two Years Into the Pandemic, Hospital Budgets Are Beginning to Crack (HealthTech Resources)
• Telehealth Finance Variables and Successful Business Models (Impact Advisors)
• 5 things to know about the 2023 CPT code updates (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• When it Comes to Wired & Wireless Access, Juniper Mist is in the Driver’s Seat (Juniper Networks)
• Voices from the Frontlines: Key 2022 Consumer and Provider Research Findings (Kyruus)
• Redefining Productivity to Assist with the Healthcare Staffing Crisis (Lumeon)
• Five Crucial Topics for Healthcare Leaders in 2023 (Medhost)
• How Volunteer Attorneys are Helping Patients Overcome the “Financial Toxicity” of a Cancer Diagnosis (Myndshft)
• Don’t Be Forgotten: Reduce Rehab Therapy No-Shows by Addressing the ‘Whys’ Behind Missed Visits (Net Health)
• Rebuilding Trust to Empower the Future of Healthcare (Nuance)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.