News 12/8/23

Top News

Providence will sell its Acclara revenue cycle management company to R1 RCM for $675 million in cash, warrants to purchase $135 million worth of R1 shares, and a 10-year contract to receive revenue cycle management services from R1.

R1 shares, which are up 11% in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500’s 16% rise, rose slightly on the news, valuing the company at $4.7 billion.

Reader Comments

From Green Slime: “Re: award. See this LinkedIn post about another vanity award.” Dayton Children’s CIO J.D. Whitlock is tongue-in-cheek proud to be nominated for “Most Pioneering Magnetic Leader Revamping The Healthcare, 2024,” which he can win by paying $2,800. I found a back issue from issuer The CIO World, which is full of grammatical errors and odd wording that makes it obvious that its editorial terroir is not nearby. It describes itself as “an archway that caters to Entrepreneurs’ quench of technology and business updates.” Still, what they are doing is legal and in fact is perhaps the perfect business – selling vanity strokes to folks who crave them, even those who work in The Healthcare. The downside is that you look like a loser when you’re caught bragging on an obvious pay-for-play award.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor SnapCare.SnapCare is an AI-enabled workforce marketplace that serves the entire continuum of care. Its platform offers healthcare facilities complete visibility into the ideal talent mix for their unique needs and associated costs. The company designed its workforce solutions to significantly improve client savings and efficiencies, minimizing the need for intermediate agencies, returning control to healthcare facilities, and ensuring total transparency in pay and pricing. Its pioneering technology and comprehensive staffing services offer a smarter way for facilities to manage their workforce needs and deliver quality patient care. Thanks to SnapCare for supporting HIStalk.

I found this SnapCare explainer video on YouTube.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Novant Health will outsource some of its IT department’s work to India-based Wipro, but declines to say how many positions will be affected.

People

Industry long-timer Brent Dover (Kalderos) joins AI-powered clinical data management technology vendor Carta Healthcare as CEO.

William O’Toole, JD (O’Toole Law Group) joins DrFirst as counsel.

Fortified Health Security hires Greg Breetz, Jr. (Valera Health) as CFO.

Sarah Jones, MBA (Firefly Health) joins B.well Connected Health as chief outcomes officer.

Announcements and Implementations

InterSystems announces GA of TrakCare Assistant, a search-based navigation tool for its TrakCare EHR. Internal testing shows that Assistant reduces EHR interaction time by up to 66%.

In Canada, Fraser Health will pilot the use of Google Cloud’s generative AI to help create clinical documentation in Meditech Expanse.

Three-fourths of ambulatory care physician leaders who were surveyed by WellSky say that their organizations don’t have relationships with post-acute care providers, and most referrals to them are sent by fax or telephone. Most respondents expect their participation in value-based care programs to increase, while more than half of those surveyed say they don’t participate in Medicare’s Transitional Care Management because of shortages of staff, data, or technology.

A new KLAS report on data and analytics services lists Chartis, CitiusTech, Impact Advisors, and Prominence as being broadly validated across four disciplines – advisory consulting, technology services, operations improvement consulting, and managed services.

Privacy and Security

HHS lays out its plan to improve cybersecurity in healthcare, which includes setting healthcare organization performance goals, providing financial incentives for implementing cybersecurity practices, and enforcing cybersecurity standards within Medicare, Medicaid, and HIPAA.

Epic raises concerns about an ONC proposal that would require EHR vendors and HIEs to remove reproductive health information from data-sharing programs upon patient request. Epic says that the proposal would increase clinician documentation burden and is not technologically feasible, while a family doctor observes, “EHRs have been working so hard to share data automatically that we’re now behind in thinking about how to not share when that data can be used to criminalize a patient.” Proponents say that patients and providers could be charged with felonies in states where abortion is illegal if information from abortion-legal states is shared across state lines.

Washington University (MO) sues the state’s attorney general over his demand for access to patient records from its transgender center, which he is seeking under a consumer protection law that addresses false advertising. The AG’s office says it is entitled to information about treatment, referrals, prescriptions, and compliance with standards of care, while the university says that HIPAA pre-empts state law and allows disclosure of PHI only to a “health oversight agency.”

Security researchers report that a security flaw in the DICOM medical imaging standard has caused millions of patient images and exam notes to be exposed to the Internet. The affected servers, most of them hosted in the cloud either did not have security measures enabled or used weak authorization.

Other

Ardent Health Services restores access to Epic after nearly two weeks of downtime following a November 23 cyberattack.

The local paper profiles Jonathan Hatfield, who graduated college with a degree in bible studies, became a night shift janitor at Klickitat Valley Health (WA), taught himself IT, started the hospital’s IT department, was assigned responsibility over other departments, and then was chosen to be CEO of the hospital. 

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research outsourcing services survey respondents recognize Dimensional Insight as the top outsourced analytics solution.
• First Databank’s FDB Vela e-prescribing network earns HITRUST risk-based, two-year certified status.
• Mobile Heartbeat announces that its cloud-based clinical communication and collaboration solution, Banyan, is now available on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace.
• Healthcare Growth Partners publishes a snapshot of the radiology software landscape, 2019-2023.
• KLAS Research recognizes Impact Advisors as a top provider of data and analytics services in its Data & Analytics Services 2023 report.
• Medicomp Systems releases a new “Tell Me Where It Hurts” podcast featuring Bob Taylor, DO, chief product strategies of TouchWorks EHR, Altera Digital Health.
• Meditech Lead Designers Tammy Coutts and Michael Shonty describe their work to advance disability inclusion within EHRs and to update the HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association’s Personas Library to include accessibility in recent HIMSS EHRA blogs.

Blog Posts

• Smart Coverage Detection Equals Better Patient Care + Stronger Bottom Line (EClinicalWorks)
• “Living Positive” Film: a Community of Hope, Brought Together by HIV (Findhelp)
• 3 Ways to Optimize Automation in Revenue Cycle Management (FinThrive)
• Is Data Migration to the Cloud Inevitable? (Five9)
• Navigating incident response: Lessons from a hospital cyber attack (Fortified Health Security)
• 5 Reasons Why Consistent Health Education is Important (Healthwise)
• Leadership Through Service: Our 2023 Social Impact Report (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Empowering maternal and newborn health research with Inovalon data (Inovalon)
• Streamlining EMR Interactions with a Reimagined User Experience (InterSystems)
• Hiding in Plain Sight: Leveraging Existing Patient Data for Early Detection of Diabetes (Lucem Health)
• 3 Tips for Surviving the Holiday Emergency Department Rush (Medhost)
• How Cloud Technology is Changing the Face of Clinical Communication (Mobile Heartbeat)

Contacts

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

News 12/6/23

Top News

CVS Health will use the name CVS Healthspire for its health services business that include Oak Street Health, Signify Health, MinuteClinic, Caremark, and its recently created biosimilar company Cordavis.

The company is following the lead of competitors that offer both health insurance and health services, such as UnitedHealth Group (Optum), Cigna (Evernorth Health Services) and Elevance Health (Carelon).

CVS also announced that its pharmacy pricing formula will change to a more transparent cost-plus model, following the lead of Mark Cuban’s Cost Plus Drugs.

Reader Comments

From Joy DiVive: “Re: North Carolina’s NCCARE360. A non-profit human services organization says that that weaknesses in Unite Us’s referral platform is the biggest threat to the $24 million Healthy Opportunities Pilot as funded by federal taxpayers.” Verified, per the communication that HSO Reinvestment Partners sent to the state complaining of poor invoice tracking, deficiencies in protecting confidential patient information, deficient case tracking, and the inability to upload and export data. That’s one organization’s opinion, anyway.

From Ellipse: “Re: CareRev. Another reduction in workforce today, about one-fourth of the company.” Unverified. The nurse shift-bidding platform reportedly laid off 100 employees, about one-third of its headcount, in June. The decreased use of gig clinicians post-COVID was a problem, unnecessarily enhanced by the loose lips of the now-departed co-founder and CEO who told co-workers of his love for microdosing LSD.

From Tick Tock: “Re: Oracle Health. Have they lost interest in the VA or in healthcare in general? None of the promised improvements have been delivered and the company no-shows congressional hearings.” Either they are focusing on basic blocking and tackling with the VA or they have lost interest as the project struggles. Oracle closed its Cerner acquisition in June 2022, and after some initial lofty healthcare pronouncements from Larry Ellison, most of the news since has involved layoffs, an expressed fervor to milk Cerner’s profits harder in a provider climate where that will be difficult, and selling unrelated Oracle products to health systems. They were supposed to rewrite Millennium, deliver a new pharmacy system to the VA by April 2023, and switch to a voice-first user interface. The company also promised to grow Cerner’s community presence in Kansas City, which has gone the other way. It will get ugly if the VA can’t get its implementations going again or if ORCL shares tank for unrelated reasons and all-important investors demand a quick turnaround. Their best hope, given Oracle’s army of lobbyists, would have been federal government, except that not much is left after bagging DoD, VA, Coast Guard, and IHS. Second best hope is overseas sales, although Epic is growing in the most attractive areas. The company promised a couple of big sales this quarter that added up to $1 billion, although much of that may come as subcontractor to General Dynamics for the $2.5 billion Indian Health Service contract.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Generous donations from Michael and Natalie, matched with funds from multiple sources including those from my Anonymous Vendor Executive, fully and anonymously funded these Donors Choose teacher grant requests:

• Headphones for Mr. S’s elementary school class in San Antonio, TX.
• STEM and engineering tools for Ms. T’s elementary school class in Waluku, HI.
• Science materials for Ms. M’s high school class in Homestead, FL.
• Math supplies for Ms. C’s elementary school class in Peoria, IL.
• Books for the computer science lab of Ms. C’s elementary school in Revere, MA.
• Math workbooks for Ms. A’s elementary school class in Spring Valley, CA.
• Headphones for Ms. F’s elementary school class in San Diego, CA.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

KONZA National Network and the Kansas Department of Health and Environment are piloting the use of real-time alerts for incoming or transferred patients who are actively diagnosed with multi-drug resistant organisms. The alerts are delivered directly to a provider’s EHR in less than five minutes using Direct Secure Messaging, allowing immediate isolation and implementation of transmission-based protocols. 

Sales

• UofL Health (KY) will implement Verato’s healthcare master data management software to help improve identity management across its system.
• Emory Healthcare (GA) will use Nference’s Nsights de-identified patient data technology to support its research in several therapeutic areas.

People

Children’s Hospital Colorado promotes Amy Feaster to SVP/CIO and chief digital officer. She replaces Dana Moore, who will retire at the end of the month.

Ric Downs (Veris Health) joins Fuse Oncology as VP of sales.

Amenities Health names Scott Heatherly (Hyro) VP of sales.

Stanford University medical school professor and Stanford Health Care radiology informatics director Curtis Lanlotz, MD, PhD is named president of RSNA. He earned his medical degree, master’s in AI, and doctorate in medical information science from Stanford.

Announcements and Implementations

Ireland’s National Forensic Mental Health Service goes live on InterSystems TrakCare.

Government and Politics

HHS will name the initial group of Qualified Health Information Networks in a livestreamed QHIN Designation Ceremony next Tuesday at 9:00 a.m. ET.

Politico says that members of Congress are concerned that Google is using advanced AI in healthcare before the government has created guidelines for such use, with particular concerns about patient privacy. The article notes that Google is hiring former federal healthcare regulators —  such as former National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc and several former FDA officials — and is raising the concerns of startups that its deep pockets will squeeze smaller companies out.

Privacy and Security

Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center announces that it was the victim of a cyberattack just before Thanksgiving.

The Rhysida ransomware gang claims responsibility for a ransomware attack on London’s King Edward VII Hospital. The hackers allege that some of the stolen data, which they’ve threatened to put up for sale online, includes information pertaining to the British royal family. Hospital officials, on the other hand, insist that only a limited amount of “benign hospital systems data” was copied from its IT system.

Other

UCLA Health researchers find that 20% of patients whose electronic medical data showed them as suffering from serious illness were in fact dead. Researchers analyzed the health data of 11,700 patients across 41 UCLA Health clinics over two years, then compared it with data from California’s Department of Public Health Public Use Death File. A state law prohibits death file data from being shared with healthcare institutions, resulting in what the researchers deem “wasteful outreach that strains resources and healthcare workers’ time.” The authors say the problem could be easily solved if the state didn’t restrict death record sharing except for financial institutions.

A fascinating LinkedIn post by Chris Deacon, JD questions how big-brand, non-profit health systems (Cleveland Clinic, Brigham) are allowed to accumulate billions of dollars in hedge funds and overseas investments – generated from US tax breaks, astronomical patient charges, and charitable donations – to build massive medical palaces in London, UAE, and China. She calls for non-profit health systems to account for their international spending given that their local communities are footing the bill even as services to those local communities are curtailed or to overloaded to book. A comment by my favorite curmudgeon Matthew Holt speculates that big health systems hold $250 billion in hedge funds, with another $250 billion owned by non-profit insurers like BCBS and Kaiser Permanente.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Billy Nicolich.”
• Agfa HealthCare recaps its time at RSNA with daily updates.
• AvaSure publishes a new whitepaper, “Roadmap to virtual nursing: How UCHealth scaled its program and saved lives.”
• The HLTH Matters Podcast features Bamboo Health Chief Clinical Innovation Officer Nishi Rawat, MD.
• The Safeopedia Podcast features Bardavon Chief Clinical Officer Dorothy Riviere and VP of Injury Prevention Scott Coleman, “Revolutionizing Workplace Safety: The Power of Tech-Enabled Safety Cultures.”
• Black Book Research’s latest user satisfaction survey ranks MedEvolve as the leading vendor for RCM workflow optimization and automation services.
• Censinet releases a new Risk Never Sleeps Podcast, “The Key to Job Fulfillment: Autonomy, Complexity, and Reward, with Matt Christensen, Senior Director Cybersecurity at Intermountain Health.”
• ConnectiveRx releases a new podcast, “Empowering Communities: Pharmacists’ Crucial Role in Patient Health.”
• Dimensional Insight will sponsor the Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association’s Annual Women Leaders in Healthcare Conference December 7 in Waltham.
• Divurgent releases a new episode of The Vurge Podcast, “Coming Together for Women in HIT and Cybersecurity.”
• DrFirst publishes a new case study, “Cone Health Finds Medication History for 93% of Patients by Connecting with Local Pharmacies and Leveraging AI.”

Blog Posts

• Help Your Patients Pay Less for Their Prescriptions (AdvancedMD)
• Underpaid Claims: Navigating the Challenges (AGS Health)
• Future-forward healthcare: Data platform considerations (Arcadia)
• Digitize Medical Billing for Atypical Providers with Quick Claims (Availity)
• Advancing Health Equity: The Role of AI in Healthcare and Clearsense’s Approach to Value-Based Care (Clearsense)
• Why is Documentation Important in Healthcare? (Consensus Cloud Solutions)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 12/4/23

Top News

Intermountain Health spinoff Culmination Bio, which offers drug companies a clinical study recruitment platform that contains 40 years’ worth of de-identified EHR and biospecimen data, raises a $10 million investment from two drug company investment funds.

Reader Comments

From Spangler: “Re: physicians in rural areas. It’s concerning that we are facing a shortage even if telemedicine and AI try to help.” The real issue is that the dismal conditions of working as a corporate physician are driving many away from patient care or out of medicine. This exodus is tempered only by the need to repay massive school loans. It’s worth reconsidering the necessity of an eight-year education plus internships and residencies for primary care physicians (PCPs) that push their career entry into their late 20s or early 30s. Alternatives could include expanding the roles of nurse practitioners, physician assistant, and pharmacists. Additionally, integrating AI into medical training could accelerate training, especially given the rapid obsolescence of classroom work, and could be used to provide support as needed for more unusual cases. Meanwhile, the profit-obsessed US healthcare system is increasingly strained as major physician employers compete for the essential yet limited clinical workforce.

From Poppy: “Re: ChatGPT 4 Plus or Pro. You can now add any file type and it will analyze and even visualize the data for you. I’ve used it to sort DEI survey responses as either friendly or antagonistic and it works like a charm.” ChatGPT keeps adding features to the point I can’t keep up. I use custom instructions to ask it to include source links as well as its numeric confidence rating of its response, both of which are helpful. I’ve also upload images and files and asked it to perform simple functions, although I’m still using it mostly to analyze writing or to generate ideas, and while I wouldn’t call it mission-critical to my work, it’s getting there. I would like to hear from readers – what are some less-than-obvious ChatGPT capabilities that you are using to get work done? I’m still anxiously awaiting an easily installed, inexpensive chat/search function that would provide a front-end for searching HIStalk, which contains everything important that has happened in health IT since 2007.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The biggest PCP frustration among poll respondents by far is trying to book an appointment.

New poll to your right or here: How would you grade health IT conferences on their level of presenter diversity? An additional question that is more for commentary than polling – should conferences be held accountable for offering a diverse roster of presenters and panelists when the underlying cohort mostly involves white males? 

Generous donations from Karen, Bill, another Bill, and Mike, with matching funds from third parties and my Anonymous Vendor Executive, fully and anonymously funded these Donors Choose grant requests from teachers who are working in historically underfunded schools:

• A math book series for Ms. K’s middle school class in Fort Stockton, TX.
• STEM station materials for Mr. G’s middle school class in Greenacres, FL.
• STEM activity kits for Ms. G’s elementary school class in Baltimore, MD.
• A lectern for Mr. P’s high school class in Pharr, TX.
• Headphones and math manipulatives for Mr. W’s elementary school class in North Las Vegas, NV.
• Math games for Ms. C’s elementary school class in Jamaica, NY.
• A coding robot and math manipulatives for Ms. K’s elementary school class in Orlando, FL.
• Headphones for Ms. M’s middle school class in Glendale, AZ.
• Home health aide training books for Ms. W’s high school class in La Jara, CO.
• A bilingual STEM center for Ms. R’s elementary school class in Las Cruces, NM.
• Headphones for Mr. S’s elementary school class in Yonkers, NY.
• Headphones for Ms. K’s elementary school class in Tyler, TX.
• Science books for Ms. S’s elementary school class in Natchez, MS.
• STEM books for Ms. P, a librarian at a middle school in Coffeyville, KS.
• An achievement button making machine for Ms. E’s high school class in Goodyear, AZ.
• Books for Ms. K’s high school class in Bronx, NY.
• STEM development activities for Ms. F’s elementary school class in Indian Orchard, MA.
• STEM model building kits for Ms. W’s elementasry school class in South Ozone Park, NY.
• Programmable robots for Ms. J’s elementary school class in San Diego, CA.
• Headphones for Mrs. H’s elementary school class in Kinston, NC.
• Classroom supplies for Ms. G’s elementary school class in Mission, TX.
• Accelerated reading and anti-racism books for Ms. H’s elementary school class in Shreveport, LA.

You can do these things to support HIStalk:

• Join my spam-free mailing list.
• Connect on LinkedIn and join Dann’s HIStalk Fan Club, which tells me when you change jobs and gives you Swiftie-level influence points for favors asked.
• Tell my sponsors, or potential ones, that you value their support of what I do.
• Share news, rumors, and intriguing insights.
• Consider being interviewed if you are full of brash, eminently quotable expertise.
• Companies, consider booking my Top Spot Ad that lords over the entire HIStalk page and earns a commensurate number of reader clicks.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Hippocratic AI launches a development partnership program that includes OhioHealth, Roper St. Francis Healthcare, Evernow, HarmonyCares, and Guidehealth.

Potrero Medical, which offers medical devices and analytics for monitoring acute kidney injury, files Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Announcements and Implementations

Black Book posts results from its healthcare cybersecurity satisfaction analysis, with the overall KPI leader being CrowdStrike. The report concludes that cybersecurity solutions that were purchased before the beginning of 2023 may already be outdated in their ability to protect against hacks and breaches, with remote patient access systems and telehealth offering new entry points for cyberattacks. 

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart takes first and third place among 115 teams that competed in the AWS re:Invent Jam.
• Nordic expands its partnership with Fortified Health Security to strengthen security operations and deploy global response capabilities for customers.
• Wolters Kluwer Health expands its Sentri7 clinical surveillance suite to include the Sentri7 Drug Diversion solution, formerly Flowlytics from Invistics.
• Gartner names NTT Data a Leader in its 2023 Magic Quadrant Managed Network Services and a Leader in its 2023 Magic Quadrant Network Services, Global.
• Nuance shares success stories from early adopters using its PowerScribe Smart Impression generative AI solution for radiology reporting.
• Nym names Hen Sinai junior backend engineer, Adi Sivan software engineer, Yuval Shtechman medical data analyst, Barbi Elmore director of product, Zack Hechtman customer success associate, and Yuval Tov junior backend engineer.
• Rhapsody announces a long-term partnership with Blackford Analysis to enhance Blackford’s medical AI solutions platform by providing deeper clinical workflow integrations.
• RxLightning names Christopher Hemminger cloud data architect and Karen Outlaw project manager.

A Black Book Market Research survey of top cybersecurity customers ranks solutions according to highest user satisfaction. HIStalk sponsors include:

• Clearwater – cybersecurity advisors and consultants / compliance and risk management solution.
• Fortified Health Security – cybersecurity awareness training and education.
• CloudWave – outsourcing and security networked managed services.
• PerfectServe – secure communications platforms: physician practices
• Spok – secure communications platforms: hospitals and health systems.

Blog Posts

• How Technology Can Help Providers Get Paid and Common Challenges (CereCore)
• Two years later – what one hospital on Cerner learned from automating intake, registration, authorizations and more (Notable)
• How University of Michigan Health-West improved clinician wellbeing (Nuance)
• The Growth Equation – Boosting Your Operations to Scale for Growth (Netsmart)
• Before implementation, think about prehabilitation (Nordic)
• How Patient Journey Mapping Improves the Patient Experience (PerfectServe)
• Up in the Cloud: Future-Proofing Healthcare Data with Productive Edge and Redox (Redox)
• How Healthcare Organizations Can Offset the Labor Shortage with Sensing-as-a-Service (SmartSense by Digi)
• Supply Chain Experts Explore Top Priorities for Healthcare in 2024 (Symplr)
• Navigating SupportCaregiving.org: Insights and Federal Strategies on Caregiving (Trualta)
• Waystar Advisory Board: 5 takeaways from our inaugural True North conference (Waystar)

Contacts

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

News 12/1/23

Top News

Health insurers Cigna and Humana are negotiating a merger that they hope to finalize in the next four weeks, according to insider reports.

The companies are sure to face anti-trust challenges as they did in their failed 2015 merger attempt.

Humana focuses on Medicare Advantage plans, while Cigna recently announced its intention to exit that business to focus on its pharmacy benefit and commercial insurance offerings.

The value of the combined companies would approach $140 billion. Cigna and Humana shares dropped on the news.

Reader Comments

From Ex-HHC: “Re: Donors Choose. Can you re-post donation instructions?” I will, while adding that while I use the term “my Donors Choose project,” I don’t actually have a project and I don’t actively bug readers to support one (that constitutes “virtue signaling,” as one cynical reader stung me with). It’s a great cause in which you are donating directly to Donors Choose, I apply matching money from my Anonymous Vendor Executive, and I fully and anonymously fund STEM-related teacher projects of my choosing as that person requests. Above is a photo from Ms. D, whose Ohio middle school class has already received a tablet and 30 sets of headphones courtesy of Mark’s donation just two days ago. Anyway, long story short (too late):

• Purchase a gift card in the amount you’d like to donate.
• Send the gift card by the email option to mr_histalk@histalk.com (that’s my Donors Choose account).
• I’ll be notified of your donation and you can print your own receipt from Donors Choose for tax purposes.
• I’ll pool the money, apply all matching funds I can get, and publicly report here the projects I funded, including occasional teacher follow-up messages and photos.

From Litany of Brittanys: “Re: winter holiday. What was that one you mentioned last year?” That holiday is Yalda, which falls on December 21. Below is my explanation from last year, but I’ll also throw in an interesting and slightly related factoid — while the winter solstice signifies the fewest hours of daylight for those of us who are north of the equator, the earliest sunset occurs on December 8, for reasons that are too astronomically complicated to explain here. Back to Yalda:

Yalda celebrants, most of them in Iran and nearby countries, observe the winter solstice, the last day of autumn and the longest night of the year, after which hours of daylight start increasing again. People stay up all night, eat watermelon and pomegranates (their glowing colors symbolize dawn and life), read poetry, and dance and play drums when the sun rises in a triumph of light over dark. Yalda means “birth.” I like it even beyond my personal obsession with changing hours of daylight — nobody is excluded or favored since the same sun shines down on us all, although I suppose folks in the Southern Hemisphere would need to buy their Yalda pomegranates in June.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m getting inquiries lately from companies that want to pay me to do a video interview or podcast with an executive, highlight their product, or feature their press release. Other sites do this without disclosing the paid arrangement, they say, so they seem surprised when I tell them that my integrity isn’t for sale. I appreciate the interest, but it’s a no.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Meanwhile, a KFF article notes that some hospitals are dropping their acceptance of Medicare Advantage plans — even as seniors more frequently choose that alternative to traditional Medicare — because of low and late payments and bureaucratic approval and denial processes. This could be a significant issue because it isn’t easy for a consumer to switch from an MA plan to traditional Medicare with a Medigap policy, potentially leaving them insured but with no in-network hospital nearby.

Experian acquires Wave HDC, which captures patient insurance and demographics at registration.

Stat’s Bob Herman notes that UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Health provider division now employs 90,000 physicians, up from 70,000 one year ago.

Mayo Clinic will spend $5 billion to redesign its Rochester campus that features “health neighborhoods” that are more convenient for extended care and for patients who have multiple health issues. Technology will play a key role, Mayo says. The plan is built around Rochester’s “Destination Medical Center” 20-year economic development plan, not that US healthcare wasn’t already confusing enough to the rest of the developed, longer-lifespan world without hinging regional growth on selling medical services.

People

PeriGen hires John Parker, MD (OhioHealth) as chief medical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Duke Health begins its use of Microsoft Copilot, with IT employees developing Microsoft 365 use cases involving email management, editing and creating documents and presentations, and creating summaries of virtual meetings.

St. Joseph’s / Candler Health System (GA) goes live on Meditech Expanse ambulatory and launches implementation of Expanse Oncology.

HFMA and FinThrive launch a peer-reviewed, five-stage Revenue Cycle Management Technology Adoption Model, with initial analysis indicating that 42% of health systems are at Stage 1.

HIMSS announces Alabama football coach Nick Saban as the HIMSS24 closing keynote speaker, trying to pre-refute “any willing celebrity” smirks with the dubious explanation that there exist “so many parallels from football to healthcare.” I’ll consider this as validation of my decision to skip attending the boat show for the first time in forever. The HIMSS24 exhibitor count is at 483 versus the 1,216 of HIMSS23, which suggests either exhibitor procrastination or a disastrous drop under conference operator (or is it owner?) Informa Markets.

A new KLAS report on PACS finds that 20% of health systems plan to replace their systems in moving from legacy systems and moving toward enterprise imaging strategies. Sectra leads by far in purchase energy due to peer recommendations, strong customer relationships, and EHR integration, although cost considerations sometimes discourage smaller organizations. Visage Imaging’s cloud-based diagnostic viewer is gaining momentum among large health systems who like its radiologist-friendly user interface and strong integration, although its recently introduced vendor-neutral archive has seen limited adoption. (click the image to enlarge).

Other

A survey finds that 72% of consumers are unable or unwilling to pay their medical bills immediately, two-thirds of them because of money problems. Half of the respondents say they have postponed care and prescription fills due to cost, while one-third have no confidence in their ability to pay a medical bill over $500.

Tech expert Robert Scoble highlights how a Texas prison is using AI mental health conversation analysis software from Savantcare to address the 1,300 inmates who are being unconstitutionally held because they can’t mentally understand the charges they face.

Sponsor Updates

• Health Data Movers announces a strategic partnership with Workday as a certified Workday Advisory Services Partner.
• CHIME selects Meditech vice chair Howard Messing for its CHIME Foundation Industry Leader Award.

Blog Posts

• The Sequoia Project Annual Meeting Recap: This Event Was FHIR! (HealthMark Group)
• Unlocking the full picture of patient care: The power of linked, comprehensive, and actionable insights (Inovalon)
• Get Proactive About Security with Malware Emulation (Keysight Technologies)
• From Data to Decision: How AI Streamlines Early Identification of Those at Highest Risk of Progression from Prediabetes to Type 2 Diabetes (Lucem Health)
• 5 Reasons Why Offering Online Bill Pay is a Game Changer for Your Healthcare Facility (Medhost)
• Maximizing data at Palo Pinto General Hospital (Meditech)
• 5 Keys to Choosing the Best Rehab Therapy EMR Solution (Net Health)
• Industry Insights: Mandi Wasik, Availity’s Data Connectivity Program Manager, on Clinical Data Aggregation, Quality Improvement, and DAV Certification (Availity)

Contacts

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

News 11/29/23

Top News

Ardent Health Services works to recover from a November 23 ransomware attack that forced it to take its computer systems offline across its six-state network of 36 facilities.

The health system specifically mentions in its latest data security update that it is working to restore access to Epic.

Numerous of its providers resorted to ED diversions and postponing surgeries and appointments.

Reader Comments

From Drupal: “Re: community hospitals that offer oncology and don’t use Epic or Cerner. I am looking to speak to a hospital contact who understands the market opportunity for chemotherapy ordering, medication preparation, and patient-reported outcomes. Can you offer advice or contacts?” I’ll ask readers who have ideas to contact me and I’ll connect you.

From Reese Peace: “Re: AI. It seems that use cases have polarized to the complex and theoretical on one end and and the rather dull effectiveness boosters on the other.” I expect initial AI successes to focus on that latter category, where solutions could be developed that are inexpensive, non-threatening to clinicians, free of FDA oversight, and non-intrusive to patients. Examples:

• Journal article search, although that will be limited by the paywalls of for-profit journals that will expect to be paid for allow their content – which was provided free by authors, many of them working under taxpayer grants – to be used for AI training and then for user access.
• EHR search, including PDFs and free text. This is simple and already being done to unknown extent.
• Creating patient-facing documents, including those specifically create clinician dictation and then formatted and optimized for patient-level reading.
• Pre-visit triage and summarization. In-person visits could be prefaced, as with telehealth, by a pre-visit chatbot interview or data collection to avoid wasting encounter time.
• Encounter transcription and data extraction, as with ambient clinical documentation.
• Continuous monitoring of data from wearables and remote patient monitoring.
• Streamline insurer prior authorization and initial claim validation.
• Monitoring during surgery with visual and audio alerts or responses to questions.
• AI-powered robotics for manual tasks.
• Improving and personalizing available clinical decision support.
• Inbox management, which is clearly the frontrunner for AI value in healthcare.
• Guide non-physicians through patient encounters via protocols and guidance under some level of supervision.
• Predict workload, staffing needs, patients who are likely to miss appointments, and scheduling preferences.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I added a previously unnoticed sort-by-date option to the HIStalk search function, which is powered by Google Site Search and is listed as a link at the top of the page. I’ll definitely use this.

Bitdefender offered me a one-year renewal for my soon-expiring five-device Total Security for $50, after which a quick Google search led me to find a two-year renewal on Best Buy for $31. You can buy a renewal at any time, and paste the key code into Bitdefender Central, where it tacks the additional years onto your expiration date.

Reader Mark once again celebrated the holidays with a generous donation to my Donors Choose teacher grant project, which I then boosted with GivingTuesday matching funds as well as those from my Anonymous Vendor Executive to fully and anonymously fund these STEM-related projects:

• Noise-cancelling headphones for Ms. D’s middle school science academy class in Youngstown, OH.
• Math games for Ms. O’s elementary school class in Rosharon, TX.
• Math manipulatives for Ms. R’s elementary school class in Redford, MI.
• Hydroponic gardening kits for Mr. K’s high school class in Burton, MI.
• STEM manipulatives for Ms. I’s elementary school class in Far Rockaway, NY.
• Gardening kits for Mr. H’s elementary school class in Paterson, NJ.
• STEM activity kits for Ms. A’s elementary school class in Savannah, GA.
• Math puzzles for Mx. R’s middle school class in Saint Cloud, MN.
• Geometry review books for Mr. H’s high school class in Bronx, NY.
• A laptop speaker for Ms. G’s elementary school class in San Lorenzo, CA.
• Math manipulatives for Ms. R’s elementary school class in Magna, UT

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

India-based Tata Consultancy Services, which was just assessed with $140 million in punitive damages for stealing Epic’s intellectual property by having its employees pretend to be hospital consultants, is hit with a similar $210 million judgment involving insurance software. The lawsuit alleges that a TCS employee copied a competing firm’s source code and documentation and sent it to colleagues who were struggling to figure out how to perform an insurance calculation.

Bloomberg says that Amazon has failed to disrupt healthcare while over-promising and under-delivering. Current and former employees say the company is overconfident that it can beat healthcare incumbents without hiring healthcare expertise or listening to experts, adding that its recently announced One Medical discount for Prime members isn’t much of a development.

Sales

• Baptist Memorial Health Care (TN) chooses Optimum Healthcare IT to lead its EHR implementation on Amazon Web Services.

People

PointClickCare Technologies promotes Travis Palmquist to SVP/GM of emerging markets.

Sondra Hornsey, MS (Stanford Health Care) joins Vanderbilt University Medical Center (TN) as chief privacy officer.

Hearst promotes Carolyn Simpkins, MD, PhD to president of its Zynx Health business.

Shally Pannikode, MBA (Liberty Mutual) joins Zelis Health as CTO.

Erica Drazen, MS, ScD — who retired in 2013 after a 40+ year health IT career that included roles at Arthur D. Little, First Consulting Group, and CSC — died November 25. She was 77. 

Announcements and Implementations

Klickitat Valley Health (WA) launches virtual consult technology from Eagle Telemedicine to support its ED, hospitalists, and nurses.

Nym makes its autonomous medical coding technology available to inpatient facilities.

Glacial Ridge Health System will go live on Meditech Expanse this week.

Amazon Web Services announces Amazon Q, a generative AI assistant for businesses.

Other

A technology conference is exposed for using AI to create fictitious female speakers to create the illusion of gender diversity and attract presenters who decline events with all-male lineups. The for-profit DevTernity conference brags that it selects speakers using the “Hollywood Principle” in which it replaces calls for papers with “don’t call us, we’ll call you.” The conference organizer says it was too hard to get women speakers for the $870 online conference and the phony bios were just a placeholder. The conference was cancelled after speakers and sponsors pulled out. The conference organizer is also suspected of creating a fake female tech Instagram influencer who mostly showed skin as she pitched the conference.

A South Dakota hunting lodge operator is gored by a bison and is evaluated and treated in the ambulance from an ED doctor who was 140 miles away. Jim Lutter, 67, was picked by a ambulance squad volunteer, who left his hardware store job to respond to the 911 call and used the state-funded ambulance telehealth system to get ED physician instructions and then alert the hospital that they were coming.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “Transforming Care with RPM Seamless Integration.”
• Sydney Adventist Hospital in Australia enhances its MRI appointment utilization and patient care through Foxo and Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise imaging platform.
• Dimensional Insight announces that it has been recognized as the top outsourced analytics solution in Black Book Market Research’s annual outsourcing services survey.
• Trillium Health Partners in Canada adds AI-as-a-Service capabilities from Sectra to its Sectra enterprise imaging technology.
• SouthLake Regional Health Centre clinicians in Ontario reduce time spent on medication reconciliation by 64% using DrFirst’s MedHx powered by SmartSuite technology, according to the results of a recent pilot study.

Blog Posts

• The Evolution of Patient Access: A Look at the Modern Landscape (Vyne Medical)
• Future-forward healthcare: Data platform considerations (Arcadia)
• Trusted Data Sharing and Collaboration for Health and Biomedical Research – Pick your acronym (Aridhia)
• Cameras and Computer Vision: Accurately Capturing Human Movement with Injury Prevention Tech (Bardavon)
• Beyond the Media Buy: Opening the Pandora’s Box of Point-of-Care Program Measurement (ConnectiveRx)
• Why Healthcare Organizations Should Pursue a Multi-Cloud Strategy (CloudWave)
• The Role of Data in Healthcare Performance Improvement (Dimensional Insight)
• The Evolution of Healthcare Technology Roles: A Guide for Hiring Managers (Direct Recruiters)
• AI, Analytics, and Burnout: CHIME 2023 Fall Forum Insights (Divurgent)
• Optimizing Medication Management Workflows in Your EHR (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 11/27/23

Top News

The Department of Defense completes the last of 23 MHS Genesis go-live waves.

The military’s final Oracle Health implementation is scheduled for March 2024 at Lovell Federal Health Care Center, which it jointly operates with the VA.

DoD says that its teams are anxious to move on to optimization and applying analytics at the site and enterprise levels.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents aren’t optimistic that any of the usual suspects can disrupt healthcare, but they choose retailers as the best hope. I’m intrigued that they chose employers as the least likely given that they are footing much of the bill and have the only significant amount of clout, which they never seem to use.

New poll to your right or here: What is your single biggest frustration with your primary care provider? I’m allowing only one answer to hide the noise of problems that aren’t the main one.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

London-based Phare Health, which offers medical coding tools, raises $3.1 million in a seed funding round.

Sales

• Memorial Hermann Health System will implement Laudio’s worklfow automation tool for frontline leaders and has invested in the company.

Announcements and Implementations

Researchers develop a wireless acousto-mechanical system whose wearable sensors continuously transmit data about body movement sounds such as breathing, digestion, and cardiac activity.

London-based digital-first home healthcare provider Cera says it will provide 5 million care visits this winter to help address hospital capacity problems. Founder and CEO Ben Maruthappu, BM BCh. MPH was trained at London School of Hygeine and Tropical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Harvard, and University of Oxford.

A health official in China touts the country’s digital health success, listing online diagnosis and treatment, prescription services, fever clinic information, and hospital wait time.

A16z lists the jobs that AI could perform to reduce provider burnout and increase effectiveness, which it says should be supported by CMS in the form of increased payment for AI-assisted or augmented care (click the image to enlarge).

Privacy and Security

Saint Joseph’s Medical Center (NY) pays $80,000 to settle HHS OCR charges that it provided photos and information of three patients in April 2020 to the Associated Press for a COVID-19 story without their approval.

A notice filed by Virgin Pulse-owned Welltok says that the personal information of 8.5 million people was exposed in a breach of its Moveit file transfer system. Affected customers include BCBS plans, Sutter Health, Stanford Health Care, and The Guthrie Clinic. Virgin Pulse acquired the company in November 2021.

Other

Politico notes that a physician shortage will force the federal government to stitch together a primary care system that is delivered by nurses, physician assistants, and virtual visits, with no promise that people can get, much less keep, a regular doctor. Long appointment waits are sending sick people to the ED, urgent care, or pharmacy-located clinic where services are purely transactional with no promise of prevention or taking the patient’s personal or even medical history into account.

Cigna creates public outcry when it denies transplant coverage to a 47-year-old woman who was being prepped for a double lung transplant after being rushed to Vanderbilt University Medical Center when a matching donor had been found. VUMC sent her home and took her off the transplant waitlist. Cigna had previously approved the procedure, but found that the woman had the unapproved condition of terminal cancer. As is often the case, the insurer paid more attention to the bad press than to the patient and doctors in reversing its decision that it declared to have been an “error.” The patient now requires additional tests, the donor lungs are no longer available, and her only hope is to be placed back on the waitlist. Cigna got the black eye, while VUMC has drawn no public ire for declining to perform the transplant in the absence of Cigna’s willingness to pay.

Sponsor Updates

• Health Data Movers appoints Curtis Cole, MD (Cornell University) to its board.
• Through partnerships with Redox and Xealth, Tidepool develops EHR integrations for its diabetes data visualization software.
• Five9 will present at the UBS Global Technology Conference November 29 in Phoenix and the Barclays Global Technology Conference December 7 in San Francisco.
• Fortified Health Security names Kameron McNicholas senior SOC engineer.
• Health Data Movers names Curtis Cole (Cornell University) to its Board of Directors.
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast, “Leading Through Growth and Change.”
• Inovalon develops Converged Analytics Benchmarking to provide health plans with monthly determinations of their relevant national and state benchmarking for quality measurement and improvement initiatives.
• InterSystems launches its HealthShare Health Connect Cloud solution in New Zealand.
• A recently published study on brain health, “Using digital assessment technology to detect neuropsychological problems in primary care settings,” features Linus Health’s Core Cognitive Evaluation digital assessment technology.
• Nordic names Claire Staple VP of strategy and country manager in Ireland.

Blog Posts

• ECW – Your AI-powered EHR (EClinicalWorks)
• Tech-Enabled Health Equity: Bridging Language Barriers in Health Education (Healthwise)
• Prevention is Key: How AI-driven Early Detection Can Enhance Population Health Outcomes (Lucem Health)
• The Hidden Recipe for Successful EHR Implementation (Medhost)
• Expanse Genomics: How we’re extending our industry-leading solution (Meditech)
• New Policy Changing the Mental Health Landscape: Better Mental Health Care, Lower-Cost Drugs, and Extenders Act (NeuroFlow)
• How NTT Data & Carpl.ai are revolutionizing medical imaging (NTT Data)
• DSN: Healing the Healthcare System (OmniSys)
• How Patient Journey Mapping Improves the Patient Experience (PerfectServe)
• Optimizing Workflows: 8 Benefits for Faster and Easier Credentialing (QGenda)
• California says goodbye to fax machines. Hello to DxF. (Redox)
• 6 Reasons Your Risk Reporting System is Failing You (Symplr)

Contacts

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

News 11/22/23

Top News

NHS England awards a consortium that includes Palantir and Accenture a five-year, $415 million contract to develop and operate the Federated Data Platform data-sharing platform across NHS trusts and care sites.

Medical groups and other watchdogs immediately expressed concern that a US firm that is best known for providing military and espionage software to the CIA and foreign governments will be handling sensitive patient information. They also noted that founder and chair Peter Thiel in on record as declaring that NHS “makes people sick” and should be privatized. He has also stated that NHS support by Britons is a form of “Stockholm syndrome.”

The contract, which follows extensive government lobbying by Palantir, does not include Scotland or Wales.

PLTR shares dropped on the news, valuing the company at $43 billion.

Reader Comments

From Ossifier: “Re: Forward Health’s CarePods. Maybe when they fail in the US and the company pivots once again, they can offload their unused pods to the French government.” France’s national railway will install appointment-only Loxamed telemedicine setups in 300 train stations that are located in medical deserts by 2028, which will feature on-site nurses who use connected medical equipment and sessions with virtual physicians, with services are billed to the national social security system. France’s physician union has objected strongly to the plan, saying that “There can be no good medicine that comes from the touch of a button, at a distance, from a doctor who does not know the patient.” Loxamed was formed in March 2020 by an equipment rental company to offer COVID-19 diagnosis and eventually vaccination. My take is that people could initiate their own telemedicine visits from home, so the advantage of this plan is the ability to be evaluated by an in-person nurse who can take vital signs and perform assessment before the remote physician takes over.

Webinars

December 7 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Waystar + Epic Workflow 101: How to Maximize your Epic Investment.” Sponsor: Waystar. Presenters: Christine Fontaine, solution strategist, Waystar; Lori Anderson, channel partner director, Waystar; Ashley Rose, associate director of client consulting, Waystar. Many users are curious about enhancing their Epic environments, but how do you know which features your organization needs? During this session, you will be provided a proven process to help you evaluate Epic-related decisions, tangible examples of need versus want criteria, and concrete steps to extract full value from Epic workflows and environment.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AstraZeneca launches Evinova, a separate business that will further scale digital health solutions that are already used by the pharmaceutical company; and develop and market digital products in the areas of clinical trials, remote patient monitoring, and therapeutics.

UpHealth will sell Cloudbreak Health and its Martti telehealth language interpretation services to private equity firm GTCR for $180 million. UpHealth is in the process of selling off or winding down certain service lines, with its focus now on its behavioral health business in Florida. Several UpHealth subsidiaries filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September.

Novant Health (NC) will buy three South Carolina-based hospitals from Tenet Healthcare in a $2.4 billion deal that includes RCM services from Tenet subsidiary Conifer Health Solutions.

App-based chronic care company Vida Health raises $28.5 million, bringing its total raised to $216 million.

Clinical notes analysis startup Layer Health raises $4 million in seed funding. Its debut product, Distill, helps clinicians find and submit data to clinical registries. The company’s five co-founders all have MIT-related backgrounds in AI, machine learning, and computer science.

Likely sensing a vacuum since the departure of Cerner for greener Oracle pastures, non-profit Digital Health KC hopes to help launch or lure 20 digital health companies to the Kansas City area using $4 million in grants.

Sales

• NYU Langone signs a $115 million contract with Philips for enterprise informatics, pathology, AI-powered diagnostic imaging, and patient information technologies; as well as its Capsule Medical Device Information Platform.
• Oregon Health & Science University will implement Visage Imaging’s Visage 7 enterprise imaging software.
• McAlester Regional Health Center (OK) selects Smart Analytics from Sixth Sense Intelligence.
• Children’s National Hospital in Washington, DC will use IT infrastructure services and technology from Kyndryl.
• The Florida Department of Children and Families will implement Juno Health’s behavioral health EHR at Florida State Hospital.
• Teladoc Health will open a virtual ED in a rural, remote part of Canada’s Newfoundland Labrador Health Services under a two-year, $16 million contract in which the patient will first see an in-person clinician, then be diagnosed and treated virtually.

People

Joe Murad (WithMe Health) joins Vida Health as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Washington County Hospital and Clinics in Iowa goes live on Epic.

Fifteen faculty members of UTHealth’s bioinformatics school are awarded $31 million in grants. $19 million of which came from NIH’s National Institute on Aging.

Lincata launches an in-room hospital entertainment system that features patient engagement and health system marketing opportunities. The company’s executive board chair is industry long-timer Tom White, MBA, who is best known as co-founder and CEO of Phynd until the company was acquired by Symplr.

Government and Politics

Tata Consultancy Services will pay $140 million in punitive damages to Epic related to a 2014 case in which Epic accused TCS of downloading confidential material from UserWeb by having its employees pretend to be Epic customer consultants. The original award of $940 million has been reduced several times in court reviews. The US Supreme Court rejected TCS’s appeal of punitive damages on Monday, where the company argued that it had already paid $140 million in compensatory damages from the original award.

HHS OIG warns consumers that scammers are cold calling Medicare enrollees to obtain their Medicare ID, after which they are signed them up for phony remote patient monitoring services that are billed monthly from pharmacies or durable medical equipment companies.

Other

The South Eastern Health and Social Care Trust in Northern Ireland celebrates the birth of the first baby born with an Encompass digital health record. The trust went live on Epic November 9. The system will be rolled out to remaining trusts over the next 18 to 24 months.

An AvaSure study of virtual patient sitting technology versus in-person sitting at Providence finds that virtual sitting is correlated to lower levels of burnout.

KFF’s Bill of the Month involves a woman’s first prenatal checkup, during which the nurse suggested having the standard panel of blood tests drawn at an office down the hall for convenience. The office belongs to a hospital that is run by religious non-profits Texas Health Resources and AdventHealth, whose lab billed her insurance at hospital rates for $9,500. Anthem BCBS negotiated the price to $6,700 and paid $4,300, leaving the patient to owe $2,400 for standard blood chemistry and STI tests. The average price of a CBC in Texas is $6 in an independent lab and $58 in a hospital, while the hospital in this case billed her insurance $207. She spent 10 months trying to ask questions, during which the hospital sent her bill to collections and ignored complaints that she had filed with the state’s attorney general. The hospital responded only when KFF started asking questions for its story, after which it cancelled all charges that, as it turn out, had been incorrectly submitted as diagnostic rather than preventive, which BCBS would have covered even at the inflated prices. Experts contacted by KFF questioned how well insurers negotiate hospital contract prices.

Sponsor Updates

• Baker Tilly publishes a new case study, “Healthcare organization tests technical security controls and internal security awareness training with phishing campaign.”
• Bamboo Health adds discharge summaries to its Pings real-time care notifications platform.
• Prisma Health integrates Artera’s patient communications platform with Gozio Health’s location-aware mobile engagement platform.  
• The Northern Virginia Technology Council recognizes DrFirst as a top technology company for the fourth year in a row.

Blog Posts

• How a Growth Mindset Can Drive Automation Success in Healthcare (Vyne Medical)
• The Journey to True Autonomous Coding (AGS Health)
• How the data lakehouse will revolutionize healthcare (Arcadia)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 11/20/23

Top News

NextGen Healthcare files WARN documents indicating that it will lay off 84 employees it St.Louis in the first months of next year.

Meanwhile, executives who are cashing in on the November 10 sale of the company to private equity firm Thoma Bravo by selling shares include President and CEO David Sides ($15 million), CFO James Arnold ($12 million), and board member Srinivas Velamoor ($9 million).

Reader Comments

From AnInteropGuy: “Re: Veradigm. Continues to miss their filing deadlines and met with NASDAQ about the delisting situation — no news on how they will rule — but they have not been able to restate any of the questioned quarters. Leadership continues to say ‘very close’ but the remains substantially quiet on what the timeline looks like. Their last claim in September was that they would file by early November ahead of the NASDAQ meeting. That was before the announcement of the delisting notice so they had been made aware that they were facing delisting. They are still trying to gather contracts, payments, etc for the previous quarters and years — now apparently reaching all the way back to 2015.” A final SEC de-listing hearing was held on Thursday, but the decision hasn’t been announced. I don’t know the extent of accounting work that is required, but it seems strange that a publicly traded company whose shares are about to be de-listed can’t muster the resources, as other firms have done, to meet ASC 606 revenue recognition requirements. As a skeptic, I wonder if other motivations may be in play.

From Epson: “Re: Forward Health’s CarePod. I’m interested in predictions.” OK, here’s mine: (a) the company will deploy less than 250 devices versus its 3,200 goal; (b) issues with maintenance, limitations of the clinical model it was developed around, and lack of member loyalty will stall rollouts and raise questions about the viability of that business; and (c) Forward will try yet another pivot and the CarePods will move from malls to landfills given that no other company would have a use for them. I could be wrong, but Forward Health’s core business doesn’t seem to be sound enough to warrant gadgetary distraction, not to mention that as an N-of-one analysis I can’t see myself paying for such a service as described.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents report seeing diminished influence across many of the newly established C-level technology roles within healthcare systems. What’s your experience with these positions being eliminated or downgraded? A LinkedIn wizard could probably find examples.

New poll to your right or here: Who is most likely to disrupt the US healthcare system to benefit patients?

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4. Share news, rumors, and intriguing insights.
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Also, for companies that have 2023 marketing funds to spend, we can bill you now and you can send your ad and materials later when you are ready. You get a full 365 days of sponsorship starting when your ad is posted. I’m mentioning this because Lorre has received the question several times this week.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Digital staffing platform vendor Aya Healthcare acquires Winnow AI, which identifies physicians who are open to new positions and relocation who match open roles.

Mass General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s announce that they cannot accept new primary care patients because their appointment waitlists are months long.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Stanford Health Care, and Children’s Medical Center of Dallas implement Wolters Kluwer’s Ovid Synthesis for evidence-based practice workflow applications.

Open AI’s board fires high-profile co-founder and CEO Sam Altman for unspecified reasons in a surprise announcement that wasn’t shared in advance with investors such as Microsoft, which owns 49% of the company. The rumored issue was product safety versus profit and Altman’s work to raise funds to create AI hardware companies outside of OpenAI’s non-profit oversight. Greg Brockman, co-founder, president, and board chair, was removed from the company’s board and then resigned. Several senior scientists also quit. The blowback has reportedly convinced the board to negotiate for Altman’s return, although he says he’s not that interested and would require significant governance changes to return. Meanwhile, the action that has likely cost Open AI much of its $80 billion valuation and the confidence of developers who use its products has also resulted in speculation that Altman and the other departed executives will immediately start a competing company, along with speculation that Microsoft should save OpenAI by buying the rest of it.

People

Lynsi Garvin, MSN, RN (Google Health) joins Intermountain Health as associate chief clinical information officer.

Adrienne Morrell (SCAN Health Plan) joins MRO Corp. as VP of governmental affairs.

Announcements and Implementations

Oracle will hold a one-day health summit on February 13 in Nashville, where the company is significantly expanding.

A new report from Center for Connected Medicine at UPMC finds that the patient engagement potential of health system-owned ambulatory pharmacies is being threatened by drug chains and technology firms that offer more convenient and innovative services and digital tools. Top operational challenges are 340B limitations and staffing issues, while the biggest consumer issue is lack of physical accessibility due to location, lack of transportation, and limited hours of operation. Top tools include delivery service and text-based refill reminders, while telepharmacy kiosks and self-pickup lockers have low interest.

Government and Politics

Memorial Hermann Health System and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton settle the AG’s investigation into reports that its patient portal could not be accessed by the parents of patients aged 13 to 17. Texas law gives parents and legal guardians the right to access the medical records of their children except in specific circumstances where the child can indicate that they don’t want their information shared. The health system agreed to provide better instructions for accessing family records on its patient portal and also cited its planned migration to Epic.

Other

Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, JD says that she has used ChatGPT to contest questionable medical bills. She didn’t say how she used it specifically, but ChatGPT suggests that it can provided detailed breakdown of charges, explain how insurance applies, identify discrepancies, offer negotiation tips, and draft appeal letters.

The Madison paper covers Nurse Disrupted, which offers a virtual nursing platform. The founder and CEO of the eight-employee company is Bre Loughlin, MS, RN, a former bedside nurse and Epic executive.

Sponsor Updates

• Vyne Medical publishes a case study titled “Cloud Fax Reduces IT Burden for Large Health System.”
• Mobile Heartbeat publishes a new customer success story featuring Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital.
• Lucem Health will incorporate AccurKardia’s ECG interpretation software into its Reveal solution to identify high-risk patients.
• NTT Data publishes a new report, “Innovation Index: How North American Organizations are Achieving Growth, Value, and High Performance.”
• Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Margaret Lozovatsky, MD.”
• PerfectServe congratulates customers Elmhurst Hospital, Beverly Hospital, and UNC Health Rex on receiving 24 consecutive “A” grades for safety from The Leapfrog Group.
• SmartSense by Digi’s second annual Live23 user conference sees a 300% increase in attendance year over year.

Blog Posts

• Overcoming 3 top workforce challenges driving RN turnover (Inovalon)
• Caring for the Caretakers: An Interview with Medhost SVP of Human Resources, Carla Stephenson (Medhost)
• Using Automation to Improve Payer Collaboration: On Air Insights (MRO)
• Intelligent patient experiences, part 4: How effectively can your clinicians manage patient care? (Nuance)
• How to Improve Compliance Processes in RCM with Transparent Medical Coding Automation (Nym Health)
• Beyond Gratitude: Ozark Center’s Transformative Impact on Veterans’ Lives (Netsmart)
• Empower with ServiceNow Knowledge (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Empowering Community Health and Revenue Growth: The Test and Treat Advantage for Pharmacies (OmniSys)
• Six reasons to consider cloud migration (Rhapsody)
• Biosimilars are Changing the Game (Surescripts)
• The Evolution of the CMIO Role in Hospitals & Health Systems (Symplr)
• Finding a Way: The ABC Act’s Aim for Easier Access to Caregiving Resources (Trualta)
• Don’t Miss the Opportunity: G2211 Primary Care Add On Payment in 2024 (VisiQuate)
• From Exhaustion to Empowerment: How to Alleviate Patient Burnout in Healthcare (Vyne Medical)
• Ensure Successful Service Desk Partnerships with Preparation (CereCore)

Contacts

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

News 11/17/23

Top News

VA CIO Kurt DelBene tells a House committee that despite improvements, he has “significant concerns” about Oracle Health related to new incidents, failing to meet standards, end user responsiveness, and workflow.

On the positive side, the VA has had no complete system outages in six months.

Also from the hearing:

• Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) cited a KLAS survey of VA employees in which only 26% said the EHR is available when they need it, leading him to question whether the VA’s help desk makes it too hard for employees to report problems.
• Deputy CIO Laura Prietula, MS, EdD  blamed VA-approved customization of the base Oracle Health platform for its implementation struggle compared to the private sector. She added that the VA is now trying to reverse that customization and go back to out-of-the-box functionality.
• Rosendale cited a report saying that it will take Oracle Health 15 more years to match VistA’s functionality. Prietula responded that she doesn’t think it will take that long.
• Rosendale says that Oracle “hold themselves out as the experts in this field” but the VA’s VistA has 99.9% uptime and “it’s baffling that anyone could pay billions of dollars and set a lower standard.”
• Rosendale noted that the committee invited Oracle EVP Mike Sicilia to attend the hearing, but he didn’t attend or send an alternate.

Reader Comments

From Chip Ludd: “Re: CarePod. Serious Silicon Valley Kool-Aid is being slurped by anyone who thinks this will work.” The likelihood of success for this clinician-less health app kiosk in malls has two dimensions – whether it’s a viable business (which I doubt) or if it’s a medical breakthrough (which I’m sure isn’t the case). My reactions:

• HealthSpot went bankrupt in early 2016 after failing to gain traction for a similar offering even after installing its gadgets at the facilities of its partners Cleveland Clinic and Rite Aid. Higi offers a national network of free Smart Health Stations, but it was acquired for nearly nothing in early 2022 by Babylon Health, whose share price is also approaching near-nothingness. And everybody remembers the endlessly hyped but modestly featured Scanadu Scout tricorder-like device, whose 2017 shutdown after an 18-month study led some to call it Scamadu.
• Memberships cost $99 per month, and don’t include in-person clinic access. Insurance is not accepted.
• Customers still have to drive to a physical location, although finding a parking space at a dying mall shouldn’t be a problem.
• I would be hesitant about having my orifices penetrated by a machine that has a single, non-licensed attendant who will probably be so bored between breakdowns and reboots that they’ll hang out at Cinnabon.
• I assume that the company will need to navigate a regulatory maze in performing scans and blood draws using self-developed equipment that operates without clinician oversight.
• The company is investor-hungry, so it adds the obligatory AI connection – the box will perform AI searches of medical literature and generate a care plan that clinicians review. I’m not sure most of primary and preventive care requires real-time literature review.
• The gadget is a pivot for the company, whose core business is running a few clinic locations that they like to compare Apple Stores.
• The functions the technology can assess are limited compared to what a skilled human can perform in a real examination. Only so many sensors and algorithms are available and approved.
• The target audience seems to be young, worried well people who prefer faceless machines and tons of prevention-focused data or congratulatory test results to interacting with a clinician. That actually is a pretty good business model. Reviews for the company’s in-person clinics are almost all from customers in their 20s and early 30s.
• Forward attracted a fresh $100 million from investors, but this is an entirely different, capital intensive, and less-certain business mode than its actual operating business of running clinics.
• From a societal health perspective, convincing people that running app tests in a mall is equal or better to seeing an actual clinician is not a positive accomplishment, nor is a system that cares so little about consumerism and preventive health that people flee to the healthcare equivalent of a photo booth in front of a defunct Sears.

Also interesting is that the company’s clinics have mediocre reviews from their $149-per-month members, with comments like these making you wonder if investors are watching the company’s member retention rate (independent PCPs, especially direct primary care docs, everything you need for your marketing plan is right here):

• There’s no way to talk to a real human being on the phone, it’s all done through chat, and often the people I were chatting with didn’t understand the issue I was trying to explain to them. Wait times to see a doctor are horrendous, usually longer than 2 weeks. The app that they offer is mediocre and is much worse than record keeping systems used by other medical providers.
• Slow followup on things like bloodwork and other tests. Billing issues. Inconsistencies on providers & quality of care/advice. 10 out of 10 do not recommend.
• Tone def. Limited communication channels – no one available on phone. Virtual experience – not in person. They define your health priorities and disregard the health priorities that are important to you. They do not solicit your medical records – they rely on the patient to share that information. Not data backed guidance. The app is not intuitive – very poor user experience
• At my 1 year checkup recently, all that happened was collection of lab blood by staff and a report on my app without any guidance from my doctor. Fortunately, things are going well for me, but I would like to keep that going. I am looking for more of a partner in healthcare instead of a monitor.
• Initially had potential yet with physician turnover, outsourced labor and a lack of continuity in records and communication you are no better off than dealing with the typical primary care physician. Save yourself the money and perhaps try a different concierge-like medicine platform.
• I had a membership for several years and always had frustrations, mostly about the doctors and their poor advice. Eventually though I got tired of not getting prompt replies and having physicians change repeatedly, the new ones never seeming to bother with reading your history. They contradict each other. It really doesn’t feel safe. For example, they can’t administer the Covid vaccine. They can’t handle simple things like annual skin cancer exams. They take pictures of your moles and send them to someone. They have to send you to a specialist outside of their system for EVERYTHING.

From Dockside: “Re: BJC. I work there and the CEO aid in a town hall this week that the merger with Saint Luke’s in Kansas City is set to close on January 1, 2024. For now, the systems will operate as BJC HealthCare in eastern Missouri and Saint Luke’s Health System in western Missouri.” Unverified, but previously rumored as planned “by the end of the year” The merger would create a 28-hospital, $10 billion health system. I think they’re both running Epic.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m noting with grammarian interest the sudden pervasiveness of the word “lovely,” which I actually kind of like despite (or maybe because of) its time capsule images of grannies sipping tea pinkies-up on lace doilies. I hereby propose the resurrection of the similarly aged “splendid.”

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Primary care chain Forward Health raises $100 million in growth capital to roll out CarePod, which it calls “the world’s first AI doctor’s office” for members who pay $99 per month for access to the app-equipped kiosks that will be installed in retail locations.

The estates of two deceased individuals sue UnitedHealth Group (UHG), alleging its AI algorithms, which came from its acquisition of NaviHealth in 2020, deny necessary care to Medicare Advantage seniors. The complaint highlights a 90% error rate in the AI system when its decisions are challenged, with the plaintiffs alleging that UHG’s Medicare Advantage patients receive substandard care compared to traditional Medicare patients.

The healthcare business that 3M will spin off in the first half of 2024 will be named Solventum.

Sales

• University of Miami Health System chooses Aidoc to identify and triage abnormalities in patient images.
• Lee Health (FL) will offer virtual urgent care from KeyCare, which patients can launch from MyChart.

People

Elation Health hires Tom Natt (ConnectRN) as chief growth officer.

Greg Tracy. MS joins Wondr Health (ResMed) as CTO.

VCU Health hires Jeffrey Kim, MD (Loma Linda University Health) as CMIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Rimidi will provide its remote patient monitoring technology to Atlanta-based non-profit Brighter Day Health Foundation, which will offer RPM and chronic condition management services to underserved communities from local churches. Rimidi CEO Lucienne Ide, MD, PhD founded the company in 2011, and before her medical training, served as a signals analyst for the National Security Agency.

California health and social data-sharing organization Connecting for Better Health restructures as a non-profit and announces its initial board of directors.

Sectra will integrate its enterprise imaging diagnostic application for radiology with GE HealthCare’s AW Family Advanced Visualization applications.

A new KLAS report on patient engagement finds that patient portals, patient surveys, and telehealth are widely adopted and health systems are moving on to implement provider search and patient self-scheduling. Two-thirds of respondents say their plans involve their EHR vendor, either alone or with third-party solutions, with 58% of Epic-using respondents and nearly as many Meditech customers saying that the vendor aligns with their plans, while one-third of Oracle Health’s customers say the same. Technologies most mentioned for consolidation are virtual care and patient communications.

Privacy and Security

Mail order pharmacy fulfillment vendor Truepill files a breach notice that the information of 2.4 million people was exposed in an August cyberattack.  

Other

Snips from the Digital Health Most Wired 2023 survey:

• Health system IT budgets have stabilized, with most returning to pre-pandemic levels and likely to increase as they acquire technology to address labor shortages, wage inflation, and reduced margins.
• They are looking for solutions that offer a clear, measurable ROI.
• The average Digital Health Most Wired score has increased steadily from 63% in 2019 to 77% in 2023.
• An ever-increasing amount of stored data has increased use of advanced analytics, although often involving multiple vendor solutions across locations and departments, with limited integration.
• End users need to improve their understanding of how to use data, but scaling education programs is hard as systems rapidly evolve.
• Health systems are trying to integrate data from patient-wearable devices into their EHR.
• The role of the CIO is becoming complex as cybersecurity, innovation, and analytics require leadership that may or may not fall under the CIO’s oversight.
• Few large health systems place cybersecurity under the CIO, as 90% of them have a CISO or other VP-level position.

Mark Cuban disagrees with a tweet that says Big Tech won’t disrupt healthcare, offering a detailed response that I’ll summarize:

• Tech companies that claim to “optimize” the system are improving only its rent-seeking aspects.
• Healthcare consolidation has used lack of transparency to “extract rents everywhere and anywhere they can” so that nobody can see who pays how much.
• PBMs and insurers add complexity and are not needed given the ability for employers to contract directly with providers, adding that “is it really insurance if they do everything possible not to pay claims?”
• Providers know that contracts, pricing, and network games that big insurers play are ruining the quality and cost of care, but they are too scared to speak up.
• Employer CEOs don’t understand that they are enabling the status quo by working with incumbents, but they are finally realizing the need to change for financial and employee wellness reasons.

UCLA sues Mattel for reneging on its 2017 pledge to donate $49 million to its children’s hospital, claiming that the toymaker is instead offering a few million dollars plus a bunch of toys. UCLA wants the full $49 million plus damages, but Mattel says the donation was earmarked for adding a new tower to UCLA Mattel Children’s Hospital that UCLA decided not to build.

Sponsor Updates

• CHIME gives its 2023 collaboration award to Ellkay and Signature Healthcare. 
• Eric Sellari joins Health Data Movers as account manager.
• Biofourmis and HealthXL publish a report titled “Unlocking the Value of Digital Measures in Drug Development.”
• Ascom Americas names Kim Hendrix, RN regional director, Healthcare Alliance.
• The Outcomes Rocket Podcast features Availity AuthAI CTO Rob Laumeyer, “We Can’t Make Healthcare Error-Free, But We Can Make the Errors More Traceable.”
• AvaSure publishes a new guide, “AI Powered Enhancements for Your Virtual Care Workflow.”
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “In Network” podcast titled “Designing for Health: Interview with Margaret Lozovatsky, MD.”
• Bamboo Health will exhibit at the Medicare Star Ratings Summer December 6-8 in Orlando.
• Bardavon joins the National Safety Council’s TechHub Marketplace.
• Recent KLAS reports recognize Care.ai’s virtual care solutions based on the company’s expert staff, premium hardware, and advanced AI features.
• The This Week in Pharmacy Podcast features CereCore Physician Consultant Charles Bell, DO and CereCore Manager Andrea Corner, PharmD, “Pharmacists and Physicians Refining the EHR.”
• Clinical Architecture releases a new Informonster Podcast, “Documentation in the OR with AORN.”
• KLAS Research’s 2023 Data & Analytics Platforms Performance Report names Dimensional Insight a top performer.
• Divurgent releases a new Vurge Podcast, “Exploring the Power of Data and Analytics in Healthcare.”
• EClinicalWorks announces that Moreno Valley Physician Associates (CA) has successfully implemented its new AI assistant tools.
• First Databank receives the American Medical Informatics Association’s Silver Corporate Partner Award for its contributions to the association and the field of informatics.
• FinThrive relocates its corporate headquarters to Plano, Texas.

Blog Posts

• Minimizing administrative burden to maximize data insights and healthcare impact (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• The RCM Maturity Framework: A Path to Digital Transformation and Operational Excellence (AGS Health)
• Unlock healthcare productivity with data portability: A path to provider well-being and enhanced patient outcomes (Arcadia)
• Addressing Workforce Challenges and Keeping Patients Safer: How CHS is Deploying Virtual Patient Monitoring (AvaSure)
• How Technology Can Help Providers Get Paid and Common Challenges (CereCore)
• The Benefits of AI in Healthcare Are Vast, So Are the Risks (Clearwater)
• Using High-Impact Point-of-Care Messaging Without Third-Party Cookies (ConnectiveRx)
• Finding the Needle in the Tech Stack: What to Look for in a Platform Engineering Services Partner (CTG)
• 3 Takeaways from KLAS Research’s Data and Analytics 2023 Report (Dimensional Insight)
• The Evolving Role of Hiring Managers in Remote Work Environments (Direct Recruiters)
• Strategies to Prevent Coding Denials and Increase Revenue (EClinicalWorks)
• Beyond Alert Fatigue: Understanding Roadblocks to Customizing Medication Decision Support (First Databank)
• Supporting Mental and Behavioral Health (Findhelp)
• Improving the Efficiency of Healthcare RCM: A Key to Financial Health (FinThrive)
• Healthcare cybersecurity threats: October 2023 (Fortified Health Security)
• Hands Off! How You Can Protect Patient Data from Unauthorized Intruders (HealthMark Group)
• Tips for a Blended Content Strategy (Healthwise)

Contacts

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

News 11/15/23

Top News

New York Governor Kathy Hochul proposes regulations that would require hospitals to establish a cybersecurity program led by a CISO, assess their cybersecurity readiness, and develop and test response plans.

The state budget includes $500 million for healthcare facilities to upgrade their technology.

Reader Comments

From Kvetcher: “Re: investigative reporting. I would like to see more of that.” I always appreciate reader ideas for doing more, while simultaneously noting that all the writing you see on HIStalk is done by a two of us part-timers, or about 1 FTE, who have to be careful about overcommitting.

From Spock: “Re: SPACS. Maybe you’ve posted before, but I’m curious on the logic and money flow. Seems like I read every day another whose value has declined tremendously.” My SPAC opinions summarized:

1. Special purpose acquisition companies were a popular, backdoor method of going public in a “blank check merger” while offering minimal opportunities for investor due diligence, thus attracting low-quality companies whose financials could pass only superficial examination. SPAC sponsors could and did make wild, unsupported financial projections and lit up their social media accounts with self-serving bunk the SEC couldn’t do anything about it because IPO rules don’t apply to mergers. Most people haven’t noticed that the now-bankrupt WeWork went public via a SPAC merger, taking investors for a rough four-year ride as its valuation sank from $47 billion to less than $100 million while making its former CEO a billionaire (everything you need to know about SPACs is contained in that last sentence).
2. SPACs mostly benefitted their hype-spewing sponsors, who skimmed 20% or more of the overvalued proceeds immediately as their fee and then left less-knowledgeable investors ending up like Halloween night homeowners at their front doors stomping out a flaming bag of excrement .
3. SPACs were legally required to find merger partners within two years or else shut down, and mating became desperate as closing time neared.
4. The result was the companies that couldn’t pass IPO muster often failed spectacularly, leaving investors holding the bag and SPAC sponsors moving on to find new ways to move money from investor pockets to their own.
5. Some of healthcare’s big SPAC mergers were Babylon Health (went public in mid-2021 at a $4.2 billion valuation, since declaring bankruptcy for key businesses and selling parts for scrap); Clover Health (valuation dropped from $7 billion to less than $500 million); Cano Health (once valued at nearly $3 billion, now at $38 million and likely to shut down); 23andMe ($6 billion to $400 million); Butterfly Network ($3 billion to $230 million); Sharecare ($3 billion to $400 million); SOC Telemed ($1 billion to being taken private for $300 million); and ETAO ($1 billion to $17 million).
6. Struggling digital health companies were a favored SPAC target because they were already overhyping their prospects and performance, making them the perfect partner for scammy SPAC sponsors.
7. My takeaway is that SPACs were just another manifestation of greed as usual. Nobody forced investors to buy shares in obviously poor-quality companies – they did so voluntarily hoping to find a greater fool down the road who would buy them at an even more inflated price.

From Bergamoot: “Re: HIMSS. What business are they in selling tech services to Taiwan?” HIMSS sold its annual conference and now seems to harbor ambition for doing global consulting, which doesn’t seem like a core competency of a membership group. They signed a deal with Taiwan’s national insurance organization to provide “subject matter experts, thought leadership, and advice” in cybersecurity, analytics, and national education programs. HIMSS would not come to my mind in thinking of organizations who provide these services regularly and arguably well, although I would likely list the names of companies that support HIMSS financially and now find themselves as its competitors. Maybe HIMSS sees revenue opportunity in offering a marketplace for vendors who pay it for matchmaking them with clients.

From Horse Pistol CIO: “Re: CHIME. Made a pretty big tactical error by running its fall forum from Friday to Sunday. The number of CIOs who exited early was palpable. The final event on Saturday night was basically a vendor fest which is not ideal for anyone. It’s probably not surprising that folks would prefer to not give up an entire weekend for a conference and then have to go to work the very next day. Rumor was that it ran through the weekend due to prior feedback and that they won’t do it again. To me it was a big miss. Lots of heavy hitters were gone by Friday. Bummer.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

It’s funny how much stupider my Alexa devices and Google searches seem now that I’m using ChatGPT to selectively replace them.

Webinars

November 16 (Thursday) 1 ET. “How Scheduling Helped Streamline Memorial Hermann’s Communication.” Sponsor: PerfectServe. Presenter: Amee Amin, MD, hospitalist, Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. Dr. Amin will discuss the challenges she experienced in creating schedules for her team of hospitalists, and how an optimized solution transformed her workflow. Attendees will learn now TMC gleans crucial data and analytics from their scheduling system, the impact of real-time schedules being pushed out to other applications, and how Lightning Bolt’s optimized, auto-generated schedules improve provider satisfaction and work-life balance.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

A former employee’s LinkedIn post says that Health Catalyst laid off another 120 employees this week, as suggested in last week’s earnings call in which the company said it would lay off 10% of its people in late Q4. The same call touted the company’s high level of employee engagement and winning five “best places to work” awards. HCAT shares are down 19% in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500’s 12% gain, valuing the company at $456 million.

Henry Schein reports Q3 results: revenue up 3.1%, adjusted EPS $1.05 versus $1.09, falling short of estimates for both even though the quarter was impacted by its October cyberattack. The company lowered full-year revenue and earnings estimates. It says it will file a cyber insurance claim, but its policy has a $60 million limit. Schein expects to restore online ordering next week, which represents most of its business, and said on the earnings call that it hopes to regain the 10 to 15% of its sales that were to customers who order exclusively electronically without a sales rep who took their business elsewhere when systems were offline.

Well Health reports Q3 results: revenue up 40%, adjusted EPS $0.05 versus $0.07.

Hackensack Meridian Health signs a partnership with Amazon’s One Medical primary care service, the latest of a couple of dozen big health systems opening brick-and-mortar locations together, sell One Medical memberships to employers (the same package that Amazon Prime members get for $99 per year), and then the health system gets the referrals for specialty care from all over the state in claiming to offer coordinated care and connected technologies. Amazon doesn’t like low-margin business, so it would be interesting to see contract details to know whether the health systems are paying Amazon for referral exclusivity or a share of the business it generates. Also, this deal seems to be based on signing up employers to pay the membership fee, which would seem to keep the health system from getting referrals of uninsured patients.

MIT spinoff Layer Health comes out of stealth mode with $4 million in funding. Its Distill product uses AI to use unstructured patient data for a variety of chart review tasks.

Sales

• Presbyterian Hospital (NM) chooses the social services referral platform of Unite Us.

People

Availity hires Sean Keneally, MBA (Elevance Health) as COO.

Announcements and Implementations

Australian Capital Territory Government notes the one-year anniversary of its Epic go-live, listing statistics about MyDHR use, internal messaging, and turnaround time for diagnostic studies.

Surescripts applies to become a QHIN.

A Stat investigation finds that UnitedHealth group used a computer algorithm to cut off rehabilitation services to Medicare Advantage plan members, threatening to discipline or fire employees who failed to hit a 1% variation target even when Medicare coverage rules warranted more days of service. Ironically, the algorithm that was developed by NaviHealth – a company that UHG acquired in early 2020 – was designed to help patients meet their rehab goals, not to cut off their financial access to it. Algorithm-denied care isn’t exactly the poster child that AI healthcare proponents are seeking.

Marketing and PR firm Amendola Communications wins awards for its work with KeyCare, DrFirst, and Equality Health.

John Muir Health implements Epic integration with Ambience Healthcare’s ambient AI scribing system, which allows clinicians to view their Epic schedule in the Ambience app, record audio of their visits on desktop or mobile, and immediately view and edit AI-generated documentation within Epic.

FDA designates Mednition’s AI early sepsis detection solution as a breakthrough device.

Mercy launches The Chen Chemotherapy Model, which sends a daily text message to outpatient chemotherapy patients and uses their responses about symptoms to proactively manage their care. It was named after former Mercy data scientist Jiajing Chen, PhD, MPH, who developed it before dying of cancer in January 2023 at 42.

Other

The American Medical Association reviews at its interim house of delegates meeting a previously rejected member proposal to ban the corporate practice of medicine. A radiologist member who spoke on behalf of reviewing the measure said,

We are being picked clean by private equity. There are people who don’t know where their next paycheck is even going to come from because their groups have been flipped so often … [This resolution] is protecting both physicians and patients, it is preserving physician autonomy and preventing burnout. Seventy-four percent of physicians [are] employed; just four years ago it was 50 percent. Private equity has spent $1 trillion in the last decade on acquisitions in buying medical practices. We need to have something to talk about with respect to private equity at this meeting.

Andreessen Horowitz predicts that the “Google –> WebMD –> Friend” protocol of patients entering the health system via a doctor friend or relative will be replaced by personalized large language models that will use a few rules to send instructions to third-party software while simulating empathetic guidance. It describes a potential experience in referencing the Baymax healthcare robot from the movie “Big Hero 6,” which it argues could give companies control of revenue streams worth billions of dollars in connecting an LLM to a marketplace of services that consumers can book directly:

One day, you wake up with a hint of a headache and a sniffle. You sneeze. What do you do next? You turn to your Baymax-like app, input your symptoms, and after a few follow up questions, it predicts— given your current location, the weather, your recent sleep scores, your diet, and your personal trends—that you’ve got allergies. It offers you a same-day appointment with a nearby allergist covered by your insurance to confirm the diagnosis. In the meantime, it recommends you try an over-the-counter allergy medication, offering to have it delivered to your house. It orders extra tissues for you, for good measure.

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 11/13/23

Top News

Doximity reports Q2 results: revenue up 11%, adjusted EPS $0.22 versus $0.17, beating Wall Street expectations for both and sending shares sharply up.

DOCS shares are down 32% in the past 12 months versus the SP& 500’s 12% gain, valuing the company at $4.4 billion.

The company laid off 10% of its employees and reduced revenue guidance in August 2023.

Reader Comments

From Quite the Tenses: “Re: NextGen Healthcare. Thoma Bravo closed on its acquisition and immediately announced a 20% RIF in a town hall meeting. Details to be shared next week.” Unverified, but reported by multiple readers. TB paid $1.8 billion to take NextGen private. The company’s Mirth integration product line didn’t get a lot of airtime in the announcements even though it launched a cloud-based version a few months ago, so I’m wondering how that fits into the new owner’s expectations.

From Big Night: “Re: Amazon One Medical. Why do you call it concierge medicine?” Your $99 per year gets you no medical services except for telehealth visits, and should you show up in one of the company’s limited number of physical locations, either you or your insurance will be paying full price. One Medical’s annual fee was $199, so the only thing new is the $100 discount through Prime. The price is low for concierge medicine, but greater than the $0 memberships that most primary care practices charge. The company also offers Amazon Clinic, which is a marketplace for the telehealth services of paying advertisers. Everybody’s getting overly excited about Amazon’s monetizing of its $4 billion acquisition of One Medical early this year, but it could be a minimally seismic event like when it bought Whole Foods.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents confirm that it is common for health systems to shut down community-needed services that aren’t profitable.

New poll to your right or here: Which position seems to be losing popularity or influence the most in health systems?

I appreciate the comments of Kat McDavitt and Lisa Bari of the Health Tech Talk Show, who recapped my Olive implosion summary and described HIStalk as “still the reigning number 1 health tech hotsheet. Despite the 1998 UI.” That appearance-shaming assessment is accurate and I am pleased in an “all cattle, no hat” sort of way. I like to think of HIStalk’s quirks as being the velvet rope that industry leaders happily sidestep to join their peers in consuming what’s inside, while others flee for prettier, shorter content with all the abbreviations spelled out. 

My polls are mostly for entertainment and to generate timely reaction, but vendors who wrap advertising around a poll they have conducted should include this information to  support validity and thus newsworthiness:

• The way you chose and invited respondents and whether random sampling was involved.
• The sample size and response rate.
• The method of delivery.
• A sample survey instrument so it can be reviewed for bias, quality of wording, and verification that the lofty conclusion is supported by the actual questions.

Webinars

November 16 (Thursday) 1 ET. “How Scheduling Helped Streamline Memorial Hermann’s Communication.” Sponsor: PerfectServe. Presenter: Amee Amin, MD, hospitalist, Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. Dr. Amin will discuss the challenges she experienced in creating schedules for her team of hospitalists, and how an optimized solution transformed her workflow. Attendees will learn now TMC gleans crucial data and analytics from their scheduling system, the impact of real-time schedules being pushed out to other applications, and how Lightning Bolt’s optimized, auto-generated schedules improve provider satisfaction and work-life balance.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Value-based care and population health management company Cano Health reports Q3 results: revenue up 19%, EPS –$91.87 versus $0.23, sending shares sharply down as investors question its ability to stay in business. The company’s market cap is down to $32 million. It went public via a SPAC merger in November 2020 at a $4.4 billion valuation.

Elucid, whose AI-powered imaging analysis system assess cardiovascular diseases, raises $80 million in a Series C funding round.

People

Flatiron Health promotes Nathan Hubbard, MBA to chief business officer.

Courney Starnes, MBA (Saint Luke’s Health System) joins Kaleida Health as SVP/CIO.

CommonSpirit Health promotes Jamie Trigg, MSITM to system VP of primary EHR systems.

CHIME names Shafiq Rab, MD of Tufts Medicine as its 2024 John E. Gall, Jr. CIO of the Year.

Announcements and Implementations

A Healthcare IT Leaders survey of CHIME members finds that while AI adoption is in its early stages, two-thirds plan to implement or pilot projects with 12 to 24 months. Half expect AI to help alleviate worker shortages, while nearly all involve clinicians in their AI decisions.

In Canada, McGill University Health Centre goes back to paper and cancels appointments as its Telus Health Oacis clinical system crashes following a software update.

An AI system is used for the first time to autonomously negotiate a non-disclosure agreement between to companies with no human involvement, which took just a few minutes.

A new KLAS report finds that digital pathology is used in only 5% of US cases, but early users anticipate benefits such as better patient care, increased efficiency for pathologists, faster image access, reduced storage and delivery costs, and new opportunities for reference labs to attract hospital clients. They also foresee digital pathology paving the way for AI-assisted diagnostics, case screening, and improved quality assurance. The majority of these early adopters, typically having 30 or more pathologists, are progressively implementing digital pathology, initially focusing on applications that simplify pathologists’ tasks.

Privacy and Security

Tri-City Medical Center (CA) diverts ambulances following an unspecified cyberattack that is rumored to involve ransomware.

Other

The Verona paper summarizes its annual update from Epic:

• The company added 1,500 employees in 2023.
• Epic will open three new office buildings in 2024 that will provide 1,100 spaces.
• A sixth campus will be opened within two years.
• Software releases for 2023 focused on physician burnout and nurse staffing shortages, which included work with generative AI.
• The company trains 850 people on campus each week.

Sponsor Updates

• MRO sponsors a Stuffed Animal for Charity event at the recent HFMA Region 9 conference, benefiting Our Lady of the Lake Children’s Hospital and Ochsner.
• HIStalk sponsors exhibiting at RSNA 2023, which will take place November 26-30, include Agfa HealthCare, Elsevier, Nuance, QGenda, Rhapsody, Sectra, Visage Imaging, and Wolters Kluwer Health.
• Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare adopts Optimum Healthcare IT’s IT Service Management.
• Wolters Kluwer Health launches Lippincott Partnership for Nursing Education and Testing, which offers a full curriculum suite of educational products and services for prelicensure nursing programs.

Blog Posts

• 3 strategies Cerner EHR-based organizations are using to improve patient access to healthcare (Notable)
• Intelligent patient experiences, part 3: How quickly can your patients get answers and advice? (Nuance)
• Apollo’s Curse: When AI Predicts and Doctors Resist (Nordic)
• Capturing the right data to power better healthcare (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Nurses of Note 2023: The RN Case Manager (PerfectServe)
• Why Healthcare Organizations Should Prioritize Centralized On-Call Scheduling (QGenda)
• Shaping the Future of IT Contracting in Healthcare: A Tale of Two Organizations (Revuud)
• RSNA 2023 spotlight: Sectra empowers improved work-life balance for radiologists (Sectra)
• Congress Eyes Policies to Bolster Pharmacists as Care Providers (Surescripts)
• The Evolution of the CMIO Role in Hospitals & Health Systems (Symplr)
• Visage Soars with CloudPACS at RSNA 2023 (Visage Imaging)
• California’s Path to Better Healthcare: Understanding the CA Data Exchange Framework (DxF) (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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

News 11/10/23

Top News

Indian Health Service chooses General Dynamics Information Technology and Oracle Health for its new EHR, which will replace its VistA-based RPMS.

The 10-year contract is valued at up to $2.5 billion.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Listening: London-based all-female Hawxx, whose chaotic, cathartic punk-tinged alt-metal music addresses themes such as mental health struggles, societal norms regarding appearance and femininity, and why metal needs marginalized voices on stage and in the audience. The music is loud but smart, sometimes resembling Rage Against the Machine and at other times Nightwish. 

Webinars

November 16 (Thursday) 1 ET. “How Scheduling Helped Streamline Memorial Hermann’s Communication.” Sponsor: PerfectServe. Presenter: Amee Amin, MD, hospitalist, Memorial Hermann-Texas Medical Center. Dr. Amin will discuss the challenges she experienced in creating schedules for her team of hospitalists, and how an optimized solution transformed her workflow. Attendees will learn now TMC gleans crucial data and analytics from their scheduling system, the impact of real-time schedules being pushed out to other applications, and how Lightning Bolt’s optimized, auto-generated schedules improve provider satisfaction and work-life balance.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Amazon launches One Medical for Prime, which offers access to its One Medical primary care business for $99 per year, which covers all virtual care visits. It offers little benefit for in-person primary care visits at the 24 One Medical locations since those will continue to be billed to insurance or as out-of-pocket costs. Non-Prime members can continue to sign up for $199 per person for an annual membership, so the Prime offer is really just a $100 annual discount. This would be a good time to remind folks of the difference between direct primary care (you pay your doctor a flat monthly fee that includes most services, easy access, and no use of insurance) versus concierge medicine (you pay to skip the line to see doctors who still bill your insurance or you personally at their usual rates). I have the former and question the value of the latter.

Eleos Health, which offers behavioral healthcare providers AI-powered clinical documentation and insights software, raises $40 million in a Series B funding round.

Former Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg and other high-profile investors launch Cercle, whose platform organizes unstructured medical data into a standard format to help clinicians develop personalized treatment plans for women’s health, especially fertility care.

CPSI announces Q3 results: revenue flat, EPS –$0.24 versus $0.15, beating earnings expectations but falling short on revenue. CPSI shares have lost 52% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 29% gain, valuing the company at $164 million.

Sales

• Delaware Department of Health and Social Services chooses Findhelp to help residents find substance use disorder and mental health services.
• Resilience Healthcare will implement Altera Digital Health’s Paragon EHR and its Ventus contract management, compliance, and coding solutions.
• Mass General Brigham chooses Best Buy Health to support its hospital at home program with its Current Health care-at-home platform, coordination services, and personal emergency response solutions. 

People

Jeff Park (WellDyneRx) joins Waltz Health as president.

Announcements and Implementations

Enterprise Health announces the Wellby AI assistant to its occupational and employee health solutions, providing clinicians with a concise medical records summary, preparation of standard referral and return-to-work letters, and a proposed care plan based on encounter details.

Health system owned Truveta announces availability of 57 million clinical observations from 2.7 million ECG reports and 1.7 million de-identified patients

KLAS takes its first look at Epic Payer Platform, which extracts clinical data from providers and sends it to payers, finding that all six interviewed customers are satisfied and would buy the solution again.

Privacy and Security

US Radiology pays $450,000 to settle New York State charges that outdated computer hardware allowed a ransomware attack that exposed the information of 92,000 state residents.

Cook County Health notifies 1.2 million patients that their information was compromised in a data theft incident involving its transcription vendor Perry Johnson & Associates. The health system has terminated its relationship with the company.

Five Ontario hospitals whose IT shared services organization was taken offline in a ransomware attack on October 23 say they won’t have systems fully restored until late December. The hospital declined to pay the ransom demanded by the hackers, who have been publishing their patient data online.

Sponsor Updates

• Fortified Health Security and Nordic sponsor Valley Presbyterian Hospital’s golf tournament.
• Inovalon expands its Schedule Management software to include management of third-party agency staff.
• Ampla Health (CA) optimizes operational workflows using EClinicalWorks V12.
• Everbridge secures a new patient in the field of AI, relevant to technology used in analytics dashboards for critical event management software.
• Medical history platform vendor Hona will use Particle Health’s API for medical record retrieval outside of the provider’s EHR.
• First Databank names Andrew Anderson integration specialist, Sarah Callis technical writer, and Pranav Acharya advanced software engineer.
• Clinical Architecture publishes a new episode of its “The Informonster” podcast titled “Documentation in the OR with AORN.”
• Ushur’s Customer Experience Automation solution is listed on the Five9 CX Marketplace.

Blog Posts

• Understanding Nurse-to-Patient Ratios and How They Affect Quality of Care (SnapCare)
• Visage Soars with CloudPACS at RSNA 2023 (Visage Imaging)
• Embracing Technology for Startup Weight Loss and Medical Spa Clinics (EClinicalWorks)
• Addressing Medicare Bad Debt Reimbursement Issues in Healthcare (FinThrive)
• EHR Essentials: 5 Proven Steps for a Successful Epic Implementation (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Considering Cashless Check-Ins for Your Front Desk? (Impact Advisors)
• Can Software Testing Deliver ROI? (Keysight Technologies)
• What to Ask When Choosing a Healthcare Interoperability Partner (Medhost)
• Giving nurses a voice in EHR launch at Boone Health (Meditech)

Contacts

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

News 11/8/23

Top News

Surescripts acquires ActiveRadar, a prescription drug benefits data company that identifies therapeutic alternatives.

ActiveRadar’s original iteration was launched by Safeway Food Stores to help its union employees save money on prescription drugs. It was later sold to a private equity firm and rebranded as RxTE, ultimately becoming a standalone company ActiveRadar in 2017.

Reader Comments

From Poindexter: “Re: Amazon Clinic. I received this email. It’s a big step for Amazon.” The service, which recently expended to cover all 50 states, is not all that innovative since it’s just a virtual marketplace for Amazon’s telehealth partners. Still, Amazon’s reach and experience standardization should boost the business of those participating companies and make telehealth a more widely known option. Amazon sells $50 billion worth of ads each year with high margins, renting online space to feature “sponsored products,” company stores, and display ads within its store pages that steer Amazon customers to bigger-spending vendors, so this aligns with their strategy. Amazon says that 60% of its sales come from independent sellers, and some experts think its ad business will even surpass its cloud revenue.

From Chief Pixel Herder: “Re: chief digital officer. I read that the health system job title is being phased out just about as fast as it was phased in.” It’s probably not a good time to hold a newly created C-level position in money-challenged health systems whose primary expense is labor. I wouldn’t expect them to revert back to old titles for chief digital officers and chief innovation officers, but I can see eliminating those folks who occupy newly created positions. Health systems love chasing trends like making everybody and their brother a VP and now a C-leveler, but at some point the suit proliferation becomes embarrassing when pleading poverty from atop extravagant buildings.

From Sveltese: “Re: Olive. A friend worked for them, his job being to automate the denial of prior authorization requests.” That wouldn’t surprise me, in the vein of the brightest minds of a generation spending their days getting people to click on ads. Put your money on insurers versus patients and doctors in choosing a prior authorization winner.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor QGenda. The Atlanta-based company revolutionizes healthcare workforce management everywhere that care is delivered. QGenda ProviderCloud, a purpose-built healthcare platform that empowers customers to effectively deploy workforce resources, includes solutions for scheduling, credentialing, on-call scheduling, room and capacity management, time tracking, compensation management, and workforce analytics. In 2022 and 2023, QGenda won Best in KLAS for Physician Scheduling, as well as Nurse and Staff Scheduling. More than 4,500 organizations, including leading physician groups, hospitals, academic medical centers, and enterprise health systems, use QGenda to advance workforce scheduling, optimize capacity, and improve access to care. Thanks to QGenda for supporting HIStalk.

Lorre’s email has been on the fritz for a few weeks, we belatedly discovered, as emails to her histalk.com address were being delivered to the server but failed to complete the final leg of their journey to her Gmail account. I checked the server to find those that were stuck and set up an auto-forwarder as a backup, but email her again if she didn’t respond since she doesn’t just ignore emails. Email problems are never-ending and reliability has gone way down with the proliferation of complex setups, spam filters, and black lists.

Was Olive a scam, and if so, who are the victims?

The abrupt shutdown of one-time unicorn Olive have led to declarations that the company was an obvious scam all along. I agree that expectations were inflated with the encouragement of the company’s executives, but I don’t think it meets the definition of “scam” given that savvy customers and private investors voluntarily gave the company money without complaint.

Olive has sold off the remaining pieces of its business for an unreported and likely unimpressive price. Waystar has acquired most of it, but the buyer of  its prior authorization business is Humata Health, which was founded in February 2023, presumably with the specific purpose of buying that business. Humata’s company’s founder is  Jeremy Friese, MD, MBA, who was co-founder and CEO of Verata Health, which Olive acquired in December 2020 to form the business that he is now buying back.

Olive reported annual revenue of $49 million. It had raised $856 million, most recently a July 2021 Series H round with investors Vista Equity Partners, Tiger Global Management, and Base10 Partners that valued the company at $4 billion.

An Axios article quoted former employees and other sources who said that despite calling itself Olive AI, the company was actually using primitive screen-scraping and bot tools that frequently broke when vendors of the EHR and claims software they communicated with changed their systems.

The Axios article questioned the company’s cost savings projections, which rarely materialized. Olive’s sales executives knew that overpromises would still get its foot in the door, where health systems would then reassign employees and make it hard for them to change course and kick Olive out. Olive claimed to have 200 enterprise customers, although Axios reviewed internal documents that showed only 80.

Olive’s KLAS reviews are mostly bad overall, although it scored pretty well in the prior authorization business that it had acquired from Verata. Customers reported some successes, but complained of high executive turnover, lack of focus on customers, and layoffs that caught customers by surprise and reduced the company’s responsiveness. Still, the company featured testimonials from Gundersen, WVU Healthcare, Allegheny Health Network, Renown Health, and others.

I would argue that customers were not scammed. They could have demanded Olive’s full customer list and contacted them before buying. Poor KLAS scores were a lagging indicator, but a big red flag. Customer contracts should have included penalties for failing to hit cost-saving goals.

Public investors weren’t scammed because the company dismantled itself before it could rush an IPO or SPAC merger, which might suggest that the wheels had been coming off for some time. Its reputable, experienced investors had access to internal information that would have revealed warts and all, although the investment environment encouraged big bets of the “greater fool” variety rather than a forensic analysis of whether the company was blowing smoke in claiming to have invented “the Internet of Healthcare” and its ability to “deliver a new healthcare experience for humankind.”

Those who don’t know health IT history and thus are doomed to repeat it should note these lessons:

• Investors, prospects, or a prospective employees need to look beyond the glad-handers and perform due diligence.
• Customers should contractually obligate their vendor to meet whatever results and metric led them to buy in the first place. Cover the items that you need and fear most.
• Companies brag on their use of AI in hopes of commanding a higher valuation as a tech company, as did their late 1990s predecessors in appending .com to their names, but customers shouldn’t care whether a vendor uses AI or an army of offshore workers as long as they receive the expected benefits.
• Sketchy companies generate a lot of hype that is rarely echoed by their actual customers.
• Companies can be wheezing their last even as they pay big money for impressive exhibits and sponsored events at conferences.
• Rapid company expansion, acquisitions that look like an attention-diverting shell game, and a product line that is too confusing to summarize in a single “what does your company do” sentence are reasons for skepticism.
• All companies and investors look smart when the economy is booming.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health Catalyst acquires Electronic Registry Systems, which specializes in cancer registry services and software.

Bain Capital will acquire consulting firm Guidehouse for $5.3 billion from Veritas Capital. Modern Healthcare says that Guidehouse is the second-largest healthcare consulting firm.

Sales

• Accountable Health Partners, a clinically integrated network based in Rochester, NY, selects Health Catalyst’s Data Operating System, enterprise analytics, and professional services.
• NorthShore-Edward-Elmhurst Health (IL) will implement population health software from Lumeris.
• Emory Healthcare (GA) will roll out Andor Health’s ThinkAndor virtual sitter technology, initially piloting it at two hospitals.

People

Direct Recruiters hires Huntsville Magazine owner Christian Byrd, MA (BC Executive Search Firm) as leader of its medical device practice.

Ovation Healthcare names John Mason, MBA (OakHorn Solutions) president of Tempo Technology Services.

Kali Durgampudi, MS (Zelis) joins Apprio as president and CEO of its healthcare automation division.

Announcements and Implementations

Glacial Ridge Health System (MN) will swap out its Healthland EHR for Meditech Expanse on December 1.

Midwestern University Clinics in Illinois and Arizona replace four EHRs with Epic.

A majority of hospitals will turn to outsourcing certain services over the next five years, according to a Black Book poll of management representatives from 1,428 healthcare organizations.

A new KLAS report on data and analytics platforms finds that Dimensional Insight leads the category with an easy-to-use platform that creates digestible metrics that drive outcomes, while Epic and Oracle Health customers struggle with ease of use.

Government and Politics

NSW Health in Australia will spend $640 million to replace nine systems, predominantly Cerner solutions, with Epic over the next 10 years. The decision to make the switch was first announced in 2020 with an initial deployment goal of 2026.

A watchdog agency  reports that the bankrupt Idaho Health Data Exchange spent $92 million in federal funds with little oversight or accountability because the state created it as a private, non-profit corporation.

Privacy and Security

Duke University researchers find that it costs less than $0.50 to buy data about a military service member from a data broker, including their fully identifiable health and financial information. The authors note that the availability of such information could compromise national security and also note that the US lacks privacy regulation that would prohibit the practice elsewhere.

Other

Virginia Mason Franciscan Health launches an enhanced care registered nursing program at St. Anne Hospital (WA), its second this year. The ECRN virtual nursing program was developed to help combat staffing shortages and help prevent burnout. ECRNs joins bedside shift huddles via Zoom and then typically visit patients virtually twice per shift, largely focusing on home medication lists, care plans, and discharge details.

Sponsor Updates

• Consensus Cloud Solutions sponsors Cognosante’s charity golf tournament benefiting Final Salute.
• Southern Endocrinology Associates increases collections by more than 200% using EClinicalWorks and Healow.
• Netsmart showcases advancements driving value-based care success for senior living providers at LeadingAge 2023 through November 8 in Chicago.
• AdvancedMD receives the 2023 ISV Builder Partner of the Year Award from Zoom Video Communications.
• A Geek Leader Podcast features Arrive Health CEO Kyle Kiser.
• Symplr will host a happy hour at the CHIME Fall Forum on Friday, November 10 at the JW Marriott.
• Artera achieves SOC 2 Type 2 compliance for data security, availability, and privacy.
• AvaSure will sponsor the Insights Summit on Virtual Nursing November 15-16 in Washington, DC.
• Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Navigating the healthcare financial landscape in 2024.”
• Bardavon publishes a new injury prevention case study on insurance carriers and brokers, “Reduce Musculoskeletal Claims Volume Using Wearable Technology and Data Analysis.”
• Censinet releases a new Risk Never Sleeps Podcast, “Bridging the Education Gap in War-Torn Ukraine.”
• Current Health will host its US customer summit, This Way Home, November 15-16 in Boston.

Black Book’s top-ranked Q3 2023 managed services vendors include the following HIStalk sponsors:

• Symplr – credentialing and privileging
• Cloudwave – cybersecurity
• Dimensional Insight – data analytics
• Healthcare IT Leaders – ERP support
• Ellkay – integration and interoperability
• Clearwater – privacy, HIPAA, and compliance
• Experity – teleradiology and diagnostic imaging / urgent care
• Tegria – IT outsourcing/partial services

Blog Posts

• Rural Healthcare: Why Advocacy, Community Engagement, and Technology Matter (CereCore)
• Addressing Challenges in Implementing HCC Coding and Risk-Adjusted Coding Programs (AGS Health)
• 3 ways technology has evolved health care (Arcadia)
• Meet the Clinician – Huyen Cam, RRT, RCP (Ascom)
• 10 Questions to Ask When Evaluating Clinical Data Assets (Availity)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 11/6/23

Top News

Ransomware hackers claim to have taken Henry Schein down again, two weeks after the medical supply distributor’s systems went offline from a similar attack that it reported on October 15. The company is again directing customers to place orders by telephone.

The BlackCat ransomware group says it has re-encrypted 35 terabytes of the company’s just-restored data. It posted company data publicly but later deleted it, hinting that Schein is either actively negotiating with the hacker group or has already paid its demanded ransom.

New SEC rules require publicly traded companies to disclose cyberattacks that could have a material impact, which the company has not done. However, it has asked the SEC for more time in filing its quarterly report due to the malware-caused shutdown of some operations.

The same ransomware group was behind the May 2021 shutdown of the Colonial Pipeline that caused gas shortages until the company paid a $5 million ransom. It claims that its actions have already cost Schein $150 million, adding that its other attacks cost Clorox $500 million and Dole $200 million.

Reader Comments

From Enigmass: “Re: mission versus money. Anyone else hearing that this is a hotter and hotter topic at hospitals? Hearing lots of stories about hospital / systems closing money losing birthing centers, satellite offices, mobile health vans, etc. to help the bottom line. Also hearing when local residents find out about it the public backlash is extreme.” This seems to be a daily occurrence, except possibly for the “public backlash” part since the facilities or services that are being shut down are nearly always located in areas that have low political clout. I’ll run a poll below. I suppose one could argue that businesses in general have the right to close unprofitable locations, but hospitals get huge tax breaks for the limited charity care they provide and are seemingly becoming less worried about public reaction to pruning their portfolio, just as they are no longer shamed to be paying their executives multi-million dollar salaries.

From Kvetcher: “Re: anonymous comments about companies. I’d like to see an example.” Here’s a recent one from “Don Draper” that I have heavily redacted. I’ll explain below why it is problematic to run it unedited even though I appreciate receiving it:

Next up [after Olive] is [company name] and their sponsored [events] while they’re laying off people left and right. CEO [x] is out, CRO [x] is out, supposed data genius [x] is now a “consultant,” and they’re laying off many more. They’re no longer selling a platform that never existed, they’re just doing data archival. Word is they lost their biggest account due to issues similar to what Olive’s clients experienced. No delivery. Then they pump out an announcement that they landed [big health system] which is just a data archiving project. Big secret is, the CIO at [big health system] has a son that sells for [the company]. How do these hospitals not see that they’re getting fleeced by their own people making decisions that enrich themselves and not the hospitals. But no news about this stuff. Everybody just keeps it under wraps because nobody wants to be outed as the fool.

Notes:

• LinkedIn and the company’s executive page do not show any job changes for the three people named. 
• It shows that someone with the CIO’s last name sells for the company, so I’m sure that’s true, but not necessarily indicative of misconduct.
• No layoffs have been announced, but since just about every company has laid people off, that is almost certainly true to unknown degree.
• The company still markets a platform, so I’m not sure if the comment means that they retired it or that customers are buying services instead.
• My takeaway is that this comment is probably mostly or completely accurate, at least from the unstated vantage point of the commenter. I haven’t heard customer complaints, but those are usually communicated via reference site inquiries.
• Bottom line: companies nearly always overstate their capabilities and successes – which isn’t necessarily a scam — and it’s the prospect’s job to perform due diligence by contacting existing customers, which is easily done without waiting for breaking news.
• It’s my job to look for and responsibly report red flags in hopes of generating non-anonymous verification. The Axios report on Olive was paywalled, so my recap may have been news to many.
• Olive claimed to have 900 hospital customers, so now that the company is defunct, I would appreciate hearing performance details and/or seeing what their signed agreements promised. I would also like to see what KLAS had to say about the company after talking to its customers. 
• One last point. Sometimes reference sites are compensated for touting a vendor’s product. Talk to the people who actually work with it or who should benefit from its results, not C-level folks whose next job could hinge on not burning vendor bridges.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

LinkedIn is the only social media tool that poll respondents are using significantly more for work-related purposes than two years ago.

New poll to your right or here: has a local hospital or health system closed money-losing businesses or locations in the past year to the community’s detriment?

I hoped to like the new tune that is attributed to the Beatles, but George Harrison was right: it’s a sweet but “rubbish” poor-quality John Lennon demo that he rightfully discarded, reworked by AI into a fake Beatles reunion. About the only positive I can muster is that Yoko didn’t insist on shrieking along and it came with new nostalgia-inducing video showing Paul and Ringo recording their parts. Don’t let “Now and Then” be your final Beatles memory – re-watch “A Hard Day’s Night” or the video of their farewell rooftop concert or listen to “In My Life” or “Here, There and Everywhere” when they actually played together. The Fab Four’s jobs are safe from AI.

Happy end of Daylight Saving Time, with the falling back meaning that (a) driving home from work involves headlights; and (b) the time-challenged among us who incorrectly express times as EST for the full year can enjoy being right for the next four months.

Thanks to the following companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo to learn more about them.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The Wall Street Journal reports that chain drugstore understaffing – exacerbated by reduced front-of-store sales as customers shop online and by investor focus on the newly acquired medical practices of drug chains – has cratered their customer satisfaction, caused medication errors, and created prescription filling delays.

People

Shahzad Safar, MBA (Rx Savings Solutions) joins Trualta as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

AMIA recognizes Susan Newbold, PhD, RN of Nursing Informatics Boot Camp with its Virginia K. Saba Informatics Award.

Other

A Washington Post review describes how hospitals hastily discharge elderly patients who lack immediate relatives by petitioning to have them assigned to court-appointed guardians. The guardians, who in Florida are required only to complete a 40-hour course, immediately gain control over the patient’s finances and assets. The article recounts a former pilot who was assigned a guardian through a hospital-retained attorney – who also served as the guardian’s counsel at $300 per hour – despite having living relatives. The guardian moved the patient to a nursing home, sold his house at a lowball price with help of a phony valuation report to a buyer who flipped it as-is for a 50% profit, and liquidated his belongings in a cash-only estate sale. The guardian claims that she never saw all the cards and gifts that were mailed to the patient’s home from family members. The state declined to pursue a criminal investigation, but the guardian was reprimanded for filing late reports and ordered to take eight more hours of training.

Sponsor Updates

• Symplr staff raise money for breast cancer research by participating in the Susan G. Komen More Than Pink Walk.
• NeuroFlow will present at Behavioral Health Tech 2023 November 15-17 in Phoenix, AZ.
• Notable announces the 2023 recipients of the Notable Impact Awards, which recognize health systems and executive champions who are driving tech-led transformation.
• Netsmart will incorporate ReThink Behavioral Health’s practice management software for applied behavioral analysis and pediatric therapy into its CareRecords software.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new case study, “UHealth: Supporting the unique ITSM needs of an Academic Medical Center.”
• PerfectServe’s Lightning Bolt achieves top marks for overall performance, ease of use, quality of support, and proactive service in the 2023 KLAS Physician Scheduling Report.
• Redox releases a new Diagnosing Healthtech Podcast, “Treating veterans and interoperability with former Secretary of the VA, Dr. David Shulkin.”
• Waystar will present at the HFMA Hawaii Chapter 2023 Revenue Cycle Seminar November 9 in Honolulu.
• West Monroe launches Nigel, a generative AI-powered internal chat platform designed to enhance employee productivity and efficiency.

Blog Posts

• The new dawn of senior care: Digital health’s role in aging in place (Nordic)
• Don’t Get Spooked by Cloud Call Center Solutions (PerfectServe)
• The Role of Medical Necessity in Healthcare (RCxRules)
• Through the Lens of Lynne Nowak, MD, Our New Chief Data and Analytics Officer (Surescripts)
• No Surprises Reboot (VisiQuate)

Contacts

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

News 11/3/23

Top News

The American Hospital Association, Texas Hospital Association, Texas Health Resources, and United Regional Health Care System sue the federal government over an HHS rule that prohibits health system from using web user tracking tools such as Meta Pixel and Google Analytics.

The plaintiffs note that the federal government, including HHS, uses those same technologies. They also claim that the new rule oversteps HHS’s HIPAA statutory authority.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor DrFirst of Rockville, MD. Since 2000, the healthcare IT pioneer has empowered providers and patients to achieve better health through intelligent medication management. It improves healthcare efficiency and effectiveness by enhancing e-prescribing workflows, improving medication history, optimizing clinical data usability, and helping patients start and stay on therapy. In the last few years, DrFirst has won over 25 awards for excellence and innovation, recognizing its game-changing use of clinical-grade AI to streamline time-consuming healthcare workflows and prevent medication errors. The company’s solutions are used by more than 350,000 prescribers, 71,000 pharmacies, 300 EHRs and health information systems, and 2,000 hospitals in the US and Canada. Visit their website and follow @DrFirst. Thanks to DrFirst for supporting HIStalk.

I’m thrilled when readers comment on HIStalk articles, but I should explain a ground rule. It wouldn’t be fair for me to approve anonymous comments that make specific legal or moral allegations about people or companies who are named specifically. Comments such as “Company X is all smoke and mirrors and knowingly sells a product that doesn’t work” or “CEO John Smith has had affairs with three consecutive assistants” may well be true, but I have no way of knowing (and comfortably publishing) that.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Bloomberg highlights Apple’s unfulfilled health ambitions even as the company uses health-centric selling points for its Watch and the company’s 2024 roadmap that includes hypertension and sleep apnea detection, turning AirPods into hearing aids, adding health capabilities to its Vision Pro headset, and launching an AI-driven paid health coaching service. Apple’s core market remains the “worried well,” and venturing into medical domains and patient care could embroil it in global regulatory complexities. Insider accounts reveal that Apple has shelved various health projects in fearing that a subpar consumer experience would tarnish its reputation. Apple even flirted with running in-store clinics staffed by employed doctors and engaged in acquisition talks with Crossover Health and One Medical for staffing them, but abandoned the idea because the cost was competitive only for young, healthy customers.

Meditech announces a return to office plan that requires employees to spend 40% of each pay period in the office — spread among Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday as full-time days — beginning in March 2024. That seems entirely reasonable to me, although an employee tells me that it’s a big jump from today’s twice-per-month requirement.

AdaptX, which offers AI-powered EHR analytics tools, raises $10 million in funding. CEO Warren Ratliff, JD was a co-founder and COO of Caradigm.

AI-enabled radiology performance measurement software vendor Covera Health raises up to $50 million in a Series C funding round and finalizes its acquisition of CoRead, a hospital AI quality assurance company.

Ambulatory practice technology vendor IKS Health acquires coding and documentation outsourcer AQuity Solutions for $200 million, increasing its headcount to 14,000 and its annual revenue to $330 million.

Doximity launches DocDefender, a free service for physicians that removes their personal contact information from public websites.

Waystar will delay its IPO due to market conditions, pushing the offering back to December at the earliest but more likely into next year.

Sales

• Inland Empire Health Plan and Molina Healthcare of California will offer 72,000 teens in two counties access to BeMe’s behavioral health platform.

People

Walgreens Boots Alliance hires Neal Sample, PhD (Northwestern Mutual) as EVP/CIO.

Luke Bonney steps down from the CEO position at Redox, naming Trip Hofer, MBA (Optum Behavioral Health Solutions) as his replacement.

Matt Cardoso, MS, MBA (Quest Diagnostics) joins WellStack as VP of product management.

Announcements and Implementations

DrFirst launches Fuzion, an enterprise-wide, AI-powered, Epic-integrated platform to streamline medication reconciliation, prescription price transparency, and prescription reminders. Baptist Health says it saved 19,000 hours of clinician work by using DrFirst solutions to convert nine million medication instructions in multiple EHRs to standard sigs during its conversion to Epic.

Government and Politics

In Australia, Victoria’s health department reports dozens of doctors to the country’s practitioner regulator for failing to perform a mandatory check its SafeScript prescription drug monitoring program to detect doctor-shoppers.

Privacy and Security

A Massachusetts medical management company pays $100,000 to settle HIPAA charges that it failed to protect patient information from a December 2018 ransomware attack that came 20 months after the malware was installed. The breach affected the information of 207,000 patients of covered entities with which Doctors’ Management Services is a business associate. The settlement is HHS OCR’s first that involves ransomware.

In Canada, five Ontario hospitals confirm that patient data that was stolen in a recent ransomware attack against their self-created shared services organization has been published online.

Other

A UCSF Health study finds that physicians who conducted visits by telemedicine due to the pandemic spent one additional hour per day working in the EHR, both during and outside of normal hours, despite not receiving an increased number of patient messages.

The Miami paper delves into the thriving business of cosmetic surgery in South Florida, which has created an underground network of illicit post-op recovery centers for medical tourists that are nestled within suburban homes, some of them rented. A recent raid of one such home found 17 recuperating patients who were each paying at least $250 per night. Some centers employ registered nurses, but others opt for untrained, underpaid staff. Despite the modest risk of being arrested due to a thinly spread four-person investigative unit that also investigates Medicare fraud, the recovery center operations can generate up to $90,000 monthly from a single inexpensive house. A review of emergency calls that were linked to terms “lipo,” “plastic surgery,” and “BBL” (Brazilian butt lift) over six years yielded 2,220 records, of which 1,500 patients required a hospital trip, 200 were bleeding, 19 had experienced a heart attack, and five were already dead by the time an ambulance arrived.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity’s “Big Brothers” and “Big Sisters” meet their new “Littles” at Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Florida.
• Elsevier Health’s first “Clinician of the Future 2023: Education Edition” finds that most medical and nursing students are planning careers outside of patient care.
• Findhelp announces that Navigate has incorporated its social care referral capabilities into Navigate’s wellness platform.
• Nordic publishes a new episode of its Healthcare Chronicles series, “Maximizing your investment in the EHR | Solving tomorrow’s problems today.”
• Netsmart integrates RethinkFirst’s practice management software that was designed for Applied Behavior Analysis and pediatric therapy into human services workflows into Netsmart CareRecords.
• FinThrive will present at the Florida Association of Health Plans 2023 Conference November 8.
• Zoom recognizes AdvancedMD as an ISV Partner of the Year for innovative use of its videoconferencing platform.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a case study titled “UHealth: Supporting the unique ITSM needs of an Academic Medical Center.”
• HCTec will host a CHIME Fall Forum cocktail hour November 10 in Phoenix, AZ.
• New research from Inovalon and Harvard University finds that Medicare Advantage beneficiaries have superior quality outcomes relative to traditional Medicare.
• InterSystems partners with analytics company BritHealth in Indonesia.
• JTG Consulting Group names Henry Ford Health System veteran Lisa Dwyer project manager.

Blog Posts

• Hospital-at-Home Programs Present New Opportunities & Risks (First Databank)
• How AI is Changing Contact Centers & How to Benefit (Five9)
• How to Successfully Navigate HIPAA Cybersecurity Requirements (Fortified Health Security)
• Your Guide to HIPAA Rules for Transferring Medical Records (HealthMark Group)
• Overcoming 5 Healthcare Marketing Challenges (Healthwise)
• Job Haunting: 5 Ways Candidates Scare Hiring Managers (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Rely on Workday Releases to Advance Your Spend Management Capabilities (Impact Advisors)
• HBMA 2023 wrap-up: Top challenges and opportunities for billing companies (Inovalon)
• 8 Ways Your EHR Can Transform Healthcare Efficiency (Medhost)
• Deeper Connections: Reflections on the KLAS Interoperability Summit (Meditech)
• From Inpatient to Outpatient: 5 Ways to Enhance Your Hospital Therapy Operations (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 11/1/23

Top News

Healthcare robotic process automation vendor Olive AI shuts down after selling its clearinghouse and patient access assets to Waystar and its prior authorization line to Humata Health.

Olive, which was once valued at $4 billion after raising $856 million from investors, previously sold its payer-facing prior authorization business to Availity and its business intelligence solution to BurstIQ.

Olive renamed itself from CrossChx in 2018 after divesting its legacy patient check-in technology to focus on AI. Co-founder Sean Lane told TechCrunch last year that Olive had pivoted its business model 27 times.

Axios reported in early 2022 that Olive’s automation software wasn’t saving health systems the millions of dollars it promised. Sources said that the sophisticated AI technology that it claimed to deploy was actually powered by 1990s-era screen scraping tools. They also reported that customers who were receiving a fraction of the expected benefits didn’t speak up because they were embarrassed. Epic made Olive stop using its name, which it said was being used to mislead prospects, and KLAS noted that Olive overstated its capabilities and was not proactive in addressing issues.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I received my renewal notice for dental insurance, which reminds me that we not only treat the oral cavity as a non-medical part of the body that requires its own specialists, we also buy “insurance” for their services that is really not insurance at all:

• It covers predictable, inexpensive costs fairly well (like cleanings), but pays little for major dental work, whether planned or not.
• Annual maximum benefits in the $1,500 range mean that the insurer rather than the insured is protected against financial catastrophe.
• There’s no risk pooling since anyone can sign up, and most customers know that they will use basic preventive services.
• The only real value of dental insurance is to provide treatment price discounts that dentists illogically don’t offer to cash-paying patients. Any dental practice could easily craft a better package — two cleanings each year plus best-offered price on everything else – and charge patients directly as a membership, cutting out the middleman while also locking their patients into receiving all their care at their particular practice.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kinsa, which offers smart thermometers that feed a tracking and resource prediction system for contagious illnesses, closes its doors. Founder and CEO Inder Singh is hoping to sell the company’s IP. 

Canada-based Kento Health will use $4.1 million in new funding to bring its AI-powered cardiovascular care software to the US market. Its offerings include predictive analytics, remote patient monitoring, and real-time feedback for cardiac rehab and cardiovascular disease support.

Commure acquires Mount Sinai spinoff Rx.Health and will integrate the company’s care coordination software with its Commure Engage automated care coordination technology. Rx.Health CEO Richard Strobridge is now Commure’s VP of sales.

Ambulatory-focused health IT vendor IKS Health acquires AQuity, which offers acute care organizations clinical documentation, coding, and RCM software and services, for $200 million.

Business Insider investigates Spora Health, a $10-per-month virtual-first primary care practice for people of color, after its readers questioned an interview it did with the company’s CEO Dan Miller. Miller claimed that the company had signed several large companies as customers and was seeing thousands of patients, but actually had shut the company down and laid off all employees in 2022 after failing to make payroll. Reporters found that the company allowed its business registrations to lapse in several states and that most of the clinicians that its website lists no longer work there.

GLP-1 prescription issuing startup Calibrate, which is restructuring under a new private equity investor, fires founder and CEO Isabelle Kenyon.

Virtual cardiac telemetry platform vendor InfoBionic will work with Mayo Clinic to enhance the company’s algorithms and analytics for cardiac monitoring from hospital to home. CEO Stuart Long is an industry long-timer with executive stints at imaging vendors, Philips Capsule, and Monarch Medical Technologies.

Sales

• Behavioral health treatment network Zinnia Health (RI) will use social care referral software from Unite Us as a part of its Healing for Heroes program for veterans and first responders.
• Missouri Department of Mental Health will implement Oracle Health’s EHR.

People

Chris Skiffington, MBA (Oracle) joins Annexus Health as chief commercial officer.

Mia Nease, DBA (Komodo Health) joins Trio Health as chief commercial officer.

Imad Nijim, MBA (Virtual Radiologic) joins United Theranostics as chief information and technology officer.

Jack Courtney, who served as an executive CTG for 25 years until his retirement in 1993, died on October 18 at 87. His daughter Kathy Hochul is governor of New York.

Announcements and Implementations

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust in England delays its Oracle Health implementation, reportedly due to problems it unearthed during testing.

Flatiron Health will integrate Guardant’s genomic profiling tests into its OncoEMR oncology EHR.

Cleveland Clinic will use Zipline’s drones to deliver drugs to the homes of patients starting in 2025.

One-fourth of surveyed US medical students are considering dropping out, while more than half of students who are studying medicine and nursing are hoping to get jobs that don’t involve patient care.

Government and Politics

HHS proposes info-blocking penalties for providers that would result in the loss of Meaningful User status under the Medicare Promoting Interoperability Program, result in a score of zero in the Promoting Interoperability performance category of MIPS, and result in the loss of eligibility to participate in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, among other disincentives. Comments are due January 2.

Other

A New York Times article notes — in referencing the White House’s newly issued executive order to set AI standards — that FDA has authority over using AI tools for patient care only if they are commercially sold, leaving health systems and insurers free to build and use AI tools without government oversight or mandatory transparency. The order requires FDA’s parent HHS to establish an AI safety program.

More than half of surveyed CMIOs serve on the executive leadership team of their employers, while 80% say their responsibilities have grown to include digital transformation, AI tools, and analytics. Three-fourths continue to practice clinically to some degree, with most of those indicating that the revenue generated by their patient work helps cover their informatics compensation.

Symplr creates a “Moments that Matter” movie series that honors nurses who have been nominated for Daisy Foundation awards.

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom Americas employees help sort 28,000 pounds of apples at the Food Bank of Central & Eastern NC.
• Inovalon announces that customers using its cloud-based Converged Quality solution for quality measurement, reporting, and improvement outperformed other health plans on the 2024 Medicare Advantage Star Ratings released by CMS.
• AdvancedMD announces that DeepScribe has joined its marketplace as an integration partner.
• Bamboo Health will exhibit at CrisisCon November 13-16 in Charlotte, NC.
• Cardamom Health will sponsor the 365 Leadership Summit November 6-7 in Madison, WI.
• Censinet releases a new “Risk Never Sleeps” podcast titled “Implementing Effective Cybersecurity Measures.”
• Nordic releases an episode of its In Network podcast, “Designing for Health: Interview with Deepti Pandita, MD.”
• Clearsense announces that it is an Amazon Web Services Healthcare Partner.
• ConnectiveRx will sponsor the Access Insights Conference November 6-8 in Orlando.
• CloudWave and Divurgent will sponsor the Bluebird Leaders S.O.A.R. Without Borders Conference November 1-3 in Scottsdale, AZ.
• Symplr announces that its technology has been recognized as the leading workforce management software for staff retention, clinician scheduling, time and attendance, and compliance in a recent series of awards and industry reports.

Blog Posts

• Integrating Clinical Documentation Improvement and Utilization Management (AGS Health)
• EPA Q&A with Christie Callahan: Putting patient-provider relationships first (Arrive Health)
• Navigating the Path to Health Equity Through Effective Patient Communication (Artera)
• Clearsense + AWS Marketplace: The Next Step in Healthcare Innovation (Clearsense)
• Leading versus Lagging in Healthcare AI Adoption (Dimensional Insight)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 10/30/23

Top News

TT Capital Partners acquires a majority share of Cantata Health Solutions, which offers health technology for providers of behavioral health, human services, acute care, and post-acute care.

Healthcare Growth Partners advised Cantata in the transaction, which is its sixth deal in five months. 

Cantata was formerly Keane, then a division of NTT Data.

Reader Comments

From Breathe In and Hold: “Re: Epic. I’m a Epic-experienced physician and would love to get involved in a new customer’s build instead of fixing someone else’s setup. Wondering if you know about any possible Epic signings coming up?” I responded privately with a rumored deal that would be huge while also noting that Epic’s momentum outside the US is growing, but otherwise I’ll ask readers.

From Go Noles: “Re: Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare. Replacing Cerner with Epic, it seems.” Unverified, but they just posted several Epic-related jobs and some are for inpatient.

From Very Peeved: “Re: use of the word ‘very.’ Annoying to me. To you, too?” It is, and is among the words that I excise most often from interviews and reader-submitted articles where everything is “very good” or “really efficient.” 

From HIT Sleuth: “Re: [company name omitted.’’] Rumored to be making [industry CEO’s name omitted] to improve the company’s scale and stability.” Unverified, so I felt ethically bound to render this comment nearly useless by anonymizing it. The company is (or once was) valued at billions, while everybody knows the CEO.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Health IT folks don’t believe their wares have done much to influence quality, clinician satisfaction, cost, or equality, but instead of made it easier for consumers to engage with our high-cost, low-quality health systems.

New poll to your right or here: Which social media tools are you using more frequently now than two years ago for job-related tasks? I probably lurk more on LinkedIn than before, I have found YouTube to be surprisingly useful although mostly for non-work purposes and mindless entertainment, and Twitter/X to be less important than before.

It feels heretical to say out loud, but I’m contemplating skipping my first HIMSS conference (or is it the Informa conference?) in many years, disrupting my spring migratory pattern. I had already tapered off my HIMSS conference dosage by shortening my stay and my onsite wandering range, with that and my nagging dread leading me to question the value. I’m open to arguments either way. I’m pretty sure that if I break the habit by skipping Orlando, then I’m certainly unlikely to go to Las Vegas the next two years since I don’t like visiting there.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Revuud. The Charlotte, NC-based company – its name is pronounced as “reviewed” — is a leading healthcare IT staffing marketplace that helps healthcare organizations connect with top talent. Its mission is to revolutionize the way healthcare organizations hire IT talent by providing a faster, more efficient, and cost-effective solution. Streamline your hiring process by leveraging Revuud to find, hire, onboard, manage, and pay your IT contractors, all in a single platform at a fraction of the cost. Thanks to Revuud for supporting HIStalk.

I’m always happy to find a new sponsor’s explainer video, so here’s the one from Revuud.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Spok reports Q3 results: revenue up 5%, EPS $0.22 versus $0.15. SPOK shares are up 78% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 17% rise, valuing the company at $302 million.

The $1.5 billion acquisition of England-based healthcare software vendor Emis Group by UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Health Systems UK closes.

Sales

• VHC Health chooses Vyne Medical’s Refyne Cloud Fax and Trace platforms to automate management of electronic records and images.
• NYC Health + Hospitals and Montefiore choose Findhelp to connect community members with social care services.  

Announcements and Implementations

A new KLAS report on financial improvement consulting finds that the most common engagement is for financial performance improvement, while the most common outcome is improved efficiency. Impact Advisors, which was 2023 Best in KLAS for financial performance consulting, topped the performance score list, while already high satisfaction with Guidehouse jumped dramatically since 2020.

Sponsor Updates

• Pivot Point Consulting sponsors the annual UVA Community Health Friends of the Foundation Golf Classic.
• NeuroFlow releases a new Bridging the Gap Podcast, “Making the Financial Case for Digital Health Innovation.”
• Nordic releases a new Making Rounds Podcast, “Lab information, at your service.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new case study, “Sentara: Strategic Portfolio Management with ServiceNow.”
• Spok publishes “The 2023 State of Healthcare Communications Report.”
• Waystar will exhibit at the HFMA Region 9 Annual Conference in New Orleans October 29-31.
• West Monroe will co-sponsor the HIMSS Washington Chapter’s Unleash the Future of Healthcare with Microsoft Technologies event November 2 in Redmond, WA.

Blog Posts

• Intelligent patient experiences, part 2: How easily can your patients manage their appointments and prescriptions? (Nuance)
• Securing healthcare data: The critical need for cyber resilience (Nordic)
• Reducing Burden on Your Maxed-Out Healthcare Technology Team (CereCore)
• Hot 7 with Larry King: A Listicle on Future-Forward Pharmacy (Surescripts)
• The Value of Time in Nursing: Maximizing Patient Care and Outcomes (Symplr)
• Sandwich Generation Caregiver Caring for Her Father with Parkinson’s (Trualta)

Contacts

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