Morning Headlines 1/16/25

Iron Health Acquired by Metronomic Inc.

Maternal healthcare-focused digital health company Metronomic acquires Iron Health, which offers Ob/Gyn practices add-on services including virtual visits, messaging, and care coordination and outcomes tracking.

UnitedHealth hid its Change Healthcare data breach notice for months

TechCrunch reports that Change Healthcare, which experienced a debilitating ransomware attack last February, has hidden its data breach notice webpage from search engines.

HHS Office for Civil Rights Settles HIPAA Case Against Memorial Healthcare System Over Patient Access to Records

Memorial Healthcare System (FL) will pay $60,000 to settle allegations that it violated HIPAA by taking nine months to provide a patient with access to his medical records.

Healthcare AI News 1/15/25

News

OpenAI launches Tasks, a beta feature for ChatGPT that allows users to instruct the LLM to execute tasks or reminders at specified times in a Siri-like way. Example: “Every Friday, provide a list of weekend activities based on my location and the forecasted weather.” The rollout of Tasks is the first step of OpenAI’s AI agent strategy, where ChatGPT can go beyond answering questions to actually performing actions selectively.

A survey by Gwynedd Mercy University of American adults finds that 59% expect AI to improve outcomes, 57% believe it will reduce costs, and 77% believe it can reduce healthcare disparities in the next five years.

The Peterson Health Technology Institute launches an AI task force that will assess AI’s current and potential impact on cost and efficiency, the uptake of AI scribe systems, and the need for metrics and evidence.

UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer says that AI analysis of NHS patient records can speed development of treatments and tests, saying that he doesn’t think a “defensive stance” can deliver possible breakthroughs. He cited diagnostic imaging AI and models that identify patients who are likely to miss appointments.

Business

Microsoft’s venture fund invests in RAAPID, which offers an AI-powered risk adjustment coding platform. Founder and CEO Chetan Parikh, MS previously held executive roles at EzDI and Mediscribes.

Mayo Clinic launches Mayo Clinic Digital Pathology, with assistance from Nvidia and Aignostics. The system was trained on 20 million digital slides and 10 million patient records from Mayo. Mayo apparently intends to commercialize it given its announcement at the J.P. Morgan Health Conference.

The American Hospital Association publishes “Building an Implementing an Artificial Intelligence Action Plan for Health Care.” It lists the top use cases that can generate a quick ROI for health systems: predicting claims denial, optimizing OR time, managing supply chain data, and streamlining discharge planning.

Amazon Web Services and investment firm General Catalyst will collaborate to develop and deploy AI solutions. General Catalyst’s portfolio includes Summa Health acquirer Health Assurance Transformation Company, Commure, and Aidoc. 

Hippocratic AI launches an AI agent app store for clinician creators, who have developed 300 agents covering 25 specialties in the past few weeks. 

UK-based digital-first home healthcare provider Cera raises $150 million in financing, valuing the company at over $1 billion. The company reduces hospitalization through AI-powered fall prediction, vital signs monitoring, and next best action.

Research

Researchers from Penn’s medical school use AI to analyze the EHR data of long COVID patients and identify those who may need care from specific departments and teams.

Other

The Military Health System recaps the work that it completed in 2024 to prepare for AI: inventorying use cases, enhancing collaboration with other government agencies, creating a digital health strategy, and completing an exercise to identify AI’s vulnerabilities, risk, and biases in a military medicine setting.

California’s attorney general reminds healthcare users and developers that AI must be tested, validated, and audited to ensure that its use is safe, ethical, lawful, free of bias, and transparent with regard to system training and provider use in making decisions.

Two Tenet hospitals delete a job fair announcement when people notice that the depicted employees are sporting extra fingers and unrealistic hair due to what appears to be an “AI fail.” 

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Morning Headlines 1/15/25

Leading US health systems launch the Truveta Genome Project, creating the world’s largest and most diverse database to discover the science of humanity

Several health systems launch the Truveta Genome Project, which will create a database of genotypic and phenotypic information.

Health Care Service Corporation Co-Leads Solera Health Series E Financing to Expand Access to Quality Digital Health

Solera Health, which offers employers and payers access to curated digital health programs, announces $40 million in new funding.

UK’s latest unicorn Cera raises $150M to reduce NHS strain with AI healthcare platform

UK-based digital-first home healthcare provider Cera raises $150 million in financing, valuing the company at over $1 billion.

News 1/15/25

Top News

Several health systems launch the Truveta Genome Project, which will create a database of genotypic and phenotypic information. The data will be collected by using leftover biospecimens from the routine lab tests of tens of millions of consented, de-identified volunteers.

Truveta is made up of several big health systems that collect and sell EHR data to life sciences companies and researchers.

The company sell the genomic data for use in drug discovery, clinical trials design, and AI model training.

Reader Comments

From Buzzball: “Re: UpStream.care. Looks like the company is in liquidation. I look forward to your analysis. Interview Fergus Hoban?” The Greensboro, NC-based company provides support and technology for primary care physicians who provide value-based care to Medicare beneficiaries. It filed a WARN act notice in July 2024 that it would be laying off 66 employees after losing a contract with Triad Healthcare Network. The company reported funding of $185 million and a billion-dollar valuation as of late 2022. LinkedIn profiles indicate that most of its executive team left in late 2024. I emailed the “contact us” address from the website and it bounced back as undeliverable. I couldn’t find an email address for Fergus Hoban, founder and executive chairman.

Webinars

January 23 (Thursday) 11 ET. “Maximizing Revenue With Minimal Resources: Work Smarter, Not Harder in Claims Management.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenter: Travis Fawver, senior sales engineer, Inovalon. Navigating the challenge of hitting revenue goals is daunting, but billing doesn’t have to be. The presenter will explore how strategic adoption of new technology can transform claims management processes from reactive to proactive. Learn how to reduce denials while empowering staff to focus on high-value activities, and gain proven strategies to simplify workflows, automate routine tasks, and build a more efficient RCM operation to maximize reimbursement.

Stream on demand. “Healthcare Data Security: Aligning Processes with Evolving Threats & Regulations.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenters: Anthony Houston, MBA, senior director of security, risk, and compliance, Inovalon; Paul Wilder, MBA, executive director, CommonWell Health Alliance; Luke McNamara, MPA, deputy chief analyst, Google Cloud; Michael Quinn, VP of strategic partner development, Inovalon. Hear leaders in healthcare data security discuss some of the top recent threat evolutions and how organizations can proactively respond by making ongoing improvements to security protocols.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare operations optimization software company Qventus announces $105 million in Series D funding.

Health data and analytics vendor Health Catalyst will acquire patient engagement-focused Upfront Healthcare Services.

RCM vendor Access Healthcare secures funding from New Mountain Capital, which had reportedly been interested in acquiring the company. The PE firm was in the mix last year to acquire R1 RCM, which wound up being taken private by CD&R and TowerBrook at a $9 billion valuation. It announced plans to acquire AI healthcare payments company Machinify last week.

Virta Health, which offers payers nutrition-focused, virtual-only programs for diabetes reversal and weight loss, says that it has scaled to $100 million in annualized revenue.

UK-based digital-first home healthcare provider Cera raises $150 million in financing, valuing the company at over $1 billion.

Technology news site The Register interviews a lead attorney representing plaintiffs in a lawsuit against software vendor MultiPlan. The attorney alleges that MultiPlan uses commingled pricing data from multiple insurers to reduce payments for out-of-network provider claims. The lawsuit argues that this sharing of payment data constitutes an anti-trust “cartel,” effectively forcing providers to accept below-market rates. It highlights a similar practice from 1996 to 2008, when insurers used software from UnitedHealthcare-owned Ingenix until lawsuits forced shifting the work to independent vendors serving as “liability shields.” The Register’s headline describes MultiPlan’s service as “price fixing as a service.”

Sales

• Renown Health (NV) selects patient experience and employee engagement software from NRC Health.
• Mayo Clinic (MN) will roll out Abridge’s AI-powered clinical documentation technology across its enterprise.
• Missouri HealthNet will implement social care payment capabilities from Unite Us as a part of its Transformation of Rural Community Health program.
• OrthoNebraska will adopt Health Catalyst’s Ignite data and analytics technology.
• Vizient selects ambient AI clinical documentation software from Augmedix.
• TidalHealth (MD) will implement Glytec’s Glucommander diabetes and insulin management technology.

People

Susan Kristiniak, DHA, MSN, RN (RV Healthcare Solutions) joins Caregility as CNO.

HHS names Meghan Dierks, MD (Komodo Health) chief AI officer, ASTP/ONC.

Access TeleCare names Michael Genovese, MD, JD (Acadia Healthcare) chief medical officer for behavioral health.

Inbox Health hires Patrick Block (Titan Cloud) as CFO.

Michael Kallish (Encoda) joins OP Solutions as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Availity adds Concert Genetics clinical criteria, coding standards, and genetic test identifier to its automated insurance authorization software.

New York-based Arnot Health and Cayuga Health affiliate to form Centralus Health, which will roll out Epic in March. It replaces EClinicalWorks and QuadraMed at Arnot and EClinicalWorks and Meditech at Cayuga.

Arcadia announces GA of a new AI-powered precision medicine solution for improved development of treatment pathways.

Labette Health (KS) will go live on Meditech Expanse this spring.

Waystar launches AltitudeAI, a set of new AI capabilities designed to help providers appeal denied claims.

A study finds that patient self-reported responses about their sleep quality, stress, mood, and pain that were collected using NeuroFlow’s digital health platform predicted suicidal thoughts.

Duke Critical Care Informatics opens registration for a two-day datathon on April 26-27, where critical care clinicians and data scientists will develop data-driven models using de-identified EHR data.

Government and Politics

Philips issues a Class I recall – FDA’s most serious classification – following reports that its remote cardiac monitoring patch failed to alert cardiology technicians of high-risk ECG events, causing 109 patient injuries and two deaths.

Privacy and Security

A former employee of Rhode Island Quality Institute sues President and CEO Neil Sarkar, whom she accuses of misusing confidential patient data from the state’s health information exchange to conduct personal research as a professor at Brown University. The complaint claims that Sarkar used his position at RIQI to persuade data analysts at CurrentCare – which is run by RIQI — to release the data while bypassing the plaintiff, who was responsible for ensuring patient confidentiality.

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom publishes a new case study featuring Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, “Reducing response times and the number of patients falling with Smart Nurse Call.”
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “Pharmacy Benefits 101: Pharmacy Audits.”
• The This Week Health Podcast features Clearsense CEO Jason Rose, “Maintaining Efficiency while Ensuring Quality and Secure Data.”
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of The Informonster Podcast, “Standardizing Healthcare: Carol Macumber Talks HL7.”
• Consensus Cloud Solutions announces that it has been recognized as a Leader in the “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Fax 2024 Vendor Assessment.
• DrFirst publishes a new whitepaper, “AI, But Make It Clinical: The Perils and the Promise of Machine Learning in Healthcare.”

Blog Posts

• What Makes Medical Device Risk Management Healthcare’s Most Interesting Opportunity (CereCore)
• Healthcare Trends to Watch in 2025 (AGS Health)
• Reconnecting through technology: How ambient listening bridges the old and new in medicine (Altera Digital Health)
• All About AI: A Conversation with Artera Leaders Guillaume de Zwirek and Ashu Agte (Artera)
• The transformative potential of AI in healthcare: Trends to watch in 2025 (Cardamom Health)
• CloudWave’s Predictions for Healthcare IT in 2025 Part 1: Hospitals Will Adopt a Patient-First Cybersecurity Approach (CloudWave)
• Epic Community Connect: A Strategy for Growth (CTG)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 1/14/25

New Mountain Nears Deal to Acquire Access Healthcare

New Mountain Capital is reportedly prepping to acquire RCM vendor Access Healthcare in a $2 billion deal.

Qventus Announces $105 Million Investment, Series D Led by KKR

Healthcare operations optimization software company Qventus announces $105 million in new funding.

Health Catalyst Signs Definitive Agreement to Acquire Upfront Healthcare Services

Salt Lake City-based health data and analytics vendor Health Catalyst will acquire patient engagement-focused Upfront Healthcare Services.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 1/13/25

I’ve worked in two different situations where the arrival of private equity funding dramatically changed the patient care environment.

The first was when I was working in the emergency department. Although I was a contractor, I worked for a physician-owned organization that treated us fairly and was overall pleasant to work for. Unfortunately, our contract ended, and rather than renew it with us, the hospital went with a private equity-backed firm that promised to onboard the existing staff so that there would be no problems with quality of care. As one can guess, this didn’t happen. Although the full-time physicians were hired, none of the part-time physicians were offered contracts. Instead, we were replaced by midlevel providers, some of whom were brand new to the safety net hospital environment.

Since I was also working on the informatics team, I saw that in the first six months, there were spikes in emergency department wait times, an increase in patient complaints, and a host of other data findings that supported concerns about how the new provider group was operating. We went from having zero administrative leadership meetings where the emergency department was a topic to having to address issues at nearly every session. Hundreds of hours of administrative time were spent dealing with all of the complaints and issues and threatening the new group with contractual penalties. They would improve just enough to get our leaders to back off, and then things would slide again. After three years of this, their contract ran out and they were replaced with another group. I can’t help but think about how many hours were wasted dealing with their nonsense and how that time could have been better spent on patient-centric initiatives.

The next time I encountered private equity folks in the clinical space was in the urgent care setting, when the physician founders sold a 51% stake to a private equity organization. There was a lot of cheerleading when the announcement was made on our 7 a.m. provider call. I was fortunate to be at home during that call and not at one of the facilities, so I could immediately dig up some information on who had just bought us.

It turns out that although they were an established organization, they were just starting to get into the healthcare space. Their experience had been with multiple franchises of a chicken wing restaurant, although they had a couple of imaging center acquisitions under their belts. Although we had been pressured previously to maximize billing and promote our highly profitable in-house pharmacy, the pressure to focus on these measures rather than actual patient care outcomes was intense. I ended up resigning not long after the private equity firm took control, but had to work out a 90-day notice period, which was far more painful than I would have imagined.

It was with these experiences in mind that I saw an original investigation piece that was published in JAMA this week, directly addressing the topic of “Changes in Patient Care Experience After Private Equity Acquisition of US Hospitals.” The authors looked at 73 private equity-acquired hospitals alongside 293 control hospitals, finding that “global measures of patient care experience worsened after private equity acquisition of hospitals, as did patient-reported staff responsiveness.” Additionally, the changes in these measures continued to increase with each year following the acquisition.

In digging deeper into the research, I found that it looked at data from 2008 to 2019 and looked specifically at patient experience measures from three years prior to an acquisition to three years after. The primary outcomes of the study were part of the standardized Hospital Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (HCAPS) survey, namely the overall hospital reading and patient willingness to recommend the facility. Secondary outcomes were also assessed from among the remaining HCAPS measures and included those on clinical process, communication, and environmental measures. It should be noted that this goes beyond patient satisfaction – bad experiences have been associated with longer times to recover from an illness, failure to follow treatment plans, and increased utilization of healthcare resources.

The authors followed a thorough process in matching the acquired hospitals with relevant controls, looking at bed count, whether or not the facility was a teaching hospital, metropolitan versus non-metropolitan, safety status, geographic region, and year. In their discussion, they review a number of reasons why care experience might change as a result of private equity ownership of hospitals. The first one is fairly straightforward – nurse staffing. There is a strong association with staffing ratios and patient care experience, and one of the first things that private equity-led organizations do when they come in is to reduce the nurse-to-bed ratios. In states where there are no laws addressing this, conditions can become downright dangerous. I’ve heard horror stories from my peers at large for-profit organizations, and concerns that leadership just becomes desensitized to the fact that patients are actual human beings and not just nebulous “consumers.”

These organizations also institute cost-cutting measures that span all aspects of patient care, from the supply chain to housekeeping and facilities management. The authors note that such strategies “may not be aligned with clinician and health system efforts to improve patient care.” They go on to call upon policymakers to consider a higher level of oversight for private equity acquisitions and to consider minimum staffing ratios to further protect patients. The authors note that there are some limitations to the study, one being the relative opacity on data surrounding private equity acquisitions. In my experience, however, when PE comes to town, all you have to do is talk to the people caring for the patients because they’re highly motivated to share what is going on. They also start buffing up their resumes and may ask if you’re hiring within your competitor organization. It doesn’t take much to figure out what is going on.

Large numbers of my physician colleagues are burned out and quite a few continue to choose early retirement. When you ask them what the most significant issues are, inability to do the right thing for their patients tops the list, along with lack of physician autonomy. The problem of administrators who are more focused on profits than patients is right up there, and depending on the facility, might be cited as the primary problem. As long as our healthcare system is for profit (we all know the non-profits are making buckets of cash too, they’re just not calling it a profit) I don’t see anything changing.

What do you think about the continued movement of private equity into the healthcare space? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 1/13/25

Walgreens shares soar 27% on big earnings beat, as drugstore chain cuts costs

Shares jump on the news of Walgreens Q1 results: revenue up 7.5%, EPS –$0.31 versus –$0.08, beating expectations for both.

MultiCare Capital Partners Invests in Layer Health to Accelerate Deployment of Responsible AI in Healthcare

Automated chart review vendor Layer Health announces new funding from MultiCare Health System’s investment arm.

Datavant is on the M&A hunt as the $7B health data company bulks up before a potential IPO

Datavant, which has made 11 acquisitions since 2017, is reportedly looking to buy one or two more companies in early 2025.

US Department of Health and Human Services: Strategic Plan for the Use of Artificial Intelligence in Health, Human Services, and Public Health

HHS publishes a strategic plan for the use of AI in healthcare, focusing on four areas that will help the department responsibly develop and use the technology within its programs.

Monday Morning Update 1/13/25

Top News

Walgreens announces Q1 results: revenue up 7.5%, EPS –$0.31 versus –$0.08, beating expectations for both. Shares of WBA, the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 last year, jumped 27% Friday on the news. From the earnings call:

• The pharmacy services business was strong enough to offset weakness in its front-end retail business, which the company says is due to changing consumer behavior.
• CEO Tim Wentworth says that store closures will ramp up with another 450 this year, reminding investors that, “We have a lot of experience with store closures, having closed about 2,000 of our locations over the past decade.”
• The company will launch new scheduling optimization technology this month that will use store-specific demand projections and staff work preferences.
• Walgreens continues to move some prescription processing to micro-fulfillment centers, which will give in-store pharmacists more time for patient care and clinical services such as vaccine administration and medication therapy management.
• Wentworth says that sale of its VillageMD primary care business is underway, while it is considering options for Summit Health – CityMD.
• The company will roll out digital and virtual check-in for pharmacy patients.
• Wentworth said that shoplifting is a “hand-to-hand combat battle,” but sales drop when merchandise is displayed in locked cabinets.

Reader Comments

From Buck Tanner: “Re: TORCH. The Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals, of which all 158 Texas rural hospitals are members, hosted a webinar to explore a potential partnership with Epic to create a Unified Care Infrastructure. This is a bold, critical step to address the state’s rural healthcare challenges. The leadership of President and CEO John Henderson, who is a former CEO of a Texas critical access hospital, is instrumental in driving this effort forward.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Last week’s poll had interesting results, although brand perception may be impacted more by marketing than personally experienced results (health systems count on this, of course). I’m surprised that drugstores and imaging centers fared poorly.

New poll to your right or here: What was the provider wearing during your most recent visit? I’ll define “visit” as a health-related encounter with a paid provider. Meanwhile, I’m amused by the image of status-seeking doctors who sport stethoscopes in non-clinical settings or who work in roles where auscultation isn’t exactly a job requirement, like psychiatrists or physician executives. My experience is that nurses, who probably use their stethoscopes far more than anyone else, don’t feel the need to flaunt them at meetings or while running errands.

Companies, you can kick off 2025 by sponsoring our little HIStalk party of health tech insiders for less money than coffee runs at ViVE and HIMSS. Former sponsors and startups might get some spiffs besides. Maybe this year will be tough or maybe it will be one of those “we’re so back” boom cycles, but 365-day visibility is key either way. Even though I’m hopelessly old school in eschewing flashy stuff or self-promotion, everybody who is anybody in the industry follows HIStalk (proof: you’re reading it now). Talk to Lorre.

Webinars

January 23 (Thursday) 11 ET. “Maximizing Revenue With Minimal Resources: Work Smarter, Not Harder in Claims Management.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenter: Travis Fawver, senior sales engineer, Inovalon. Navigating the challenge of hitting revenue goals is daunting, but billing doesn’t have to be. The presenter will explore how strategic adoption of new technology can transform claims management processes from reactive to proactive. Learn how to reduce denials while empowering staff to focus on high-value activities, and gain proven strategies to simplify workflows, automate routine tasks, and build a more efficient RCM operation to maximize reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Inventory management technology vendor Bluesight acquires Protenus, which offers a healthcare compliance analytics platform. Investment firm Thoma Bravo acquired Bluesight in July 2023, after which the company acquired drug diversion software vendor Medacist and Sectyr, which offers 340B audit and compliance tools. Bluesight was known as Kit Check until its December 2022 rebrand.

Redditors report that Oracle Health employees who work under Seema Verma and who live within 50 miles of an Oracle office will be required to work from that office for at least 50% of the week starting February 1, with details left to manager discretion. Insiders report the same issues that other RTO companies have experienced – lack of available office space, new hires who were promised permanent remote work, employees who don’t live near a company office, and the perception that companies are using RTO to reduce headcount without paying severance or earning negative publicity.

Infosys sues Cognizant and its CEO Ravi Kumar, who it claims stalled development of the Infosys Helix healthcare platform in his previous job as Infosys president, after which he left the company to become Cognizant CEO. Infosys also accuses Kumar of poaching key Infosys executives who were involved with Helix. This counters a previous lawsuit that was brought five months ago by Cognizant subsidiary TriZetto, which accused Infosys of stealing trade secrets to develop Helix.

Prospect Medical Holdings, which operates 17 hospitals, files Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell at least three of its hospitals. The state of Pennsylvania is suing the company’s private equity owners, who made $500 million by loading the hospitals with debt and mortgaging their real estate for $1.1 billion as the hospitals ran out of medical supplies due to unpaid bills. Chairman and CEO Sam Lee netted $128 million while the private equity firm owner collected $600 million in dividends and management fees. The company’s hospitals are in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and California. A cyberattack in August 2023 led Yale New Haven Health to seek dissolution of its agreement to buy three Prospect  hospitals, with the bankruptcy adding more complexity to the long-delayed deal. 

Business Insider reports that Datavant, which has made 11 acquisitions since 2017, is looking to buy one or two more companies in early 2025. The company is reportedly planning an IPO for this year and reports $1 billion in annual revenue. Datavant’s mid-2021 acquisition of Ciox Health valued the company at $7 billion.

Innovaccer raises $275 million in a Series F funding round, bringing its total to $675 million. The company will use the proceeds to add AI and cloud capabilities, create a developer ecosystem, and develop AI copilots and agents. Co-founder and CEO Abhinav Shashank describes the healthcare status quo that he hopes to disrupt:

We have got this massive connectivity problem. Doctors, payers, patients, life sciences companies, nurses, everyone’s using different systems that just … don’t talk to each other. At all. You’ve got hundreds of solutions managing everything from patient care to insurance claims to clinical trial enrollment. But they are all isolated, and don’t even get me started on the patient’s electronic health record. Interestingly, information exchanges in other industries happen at the tap of a button or the swipe of a card, but your doctor literally has to pick up the phone and wait on hold just to get basic info about you from another provider. Some still use fax machines (hold your gasps, it’s true). This system doesn’t work for anyone. This isn’t just frustrating — it costs us around $1 trillion in healthcare waste. That’s trillion with a T! In a world where you can transfer money or order anything with a single tap, why are we stuck in the healthcare dark ages?

Sales

• HSHS-partnered Door County Medical Center (WI) will implement Epic, replacing Meditech.

People

Health and wellness marketing company Merge hires Stephanie Trunzo, MBA, MAPW, former SVP/GM of Oracle Health, as CEO.

Lety Nettles, MBA (Novant Health) joins orthotic and prosthetic product and services vendor Hanger, Inc. as EVP/CIO. 

Announcements and Implementations

Stanford Medicine creates an AI-powered tool that creates a patient-friendly draft interpretation of their lab results that is ready for physician review, which it self-developed using Anthropic’s Claude LLM through Amazon Bedrock. Doctors say that patients appreciate having their doctor add understandable, empathetic comments. It extends previous development by Stanford Medicine of a draft message generator to respond to patient messages.

SmartSense by Digi launches Voyage, which provides visibility, control, and tracking of supply chain assets in shipment for healthcare and other industries.

Private practice doctors sue Saint Agnes Medical Center (CA) for restricting inpatient care to hospitalists who work for Vituity. They note that the hospital is owned by Trinity Health, whose president is a former Vituity executive, and that the company sometimes uses temporary traveling physicians who won’t know anything about their patients. 

Industry long-timer John Glaser, PhD publishes a book titled “101 Questions From My Daughters.” which seems like quite a deal at $7.95 when purchased directly from his site. Need due diligence that he writes well and is interesting? Check out his bio, which makes me feel dull and lazy in comparison (he gets good practice by writing his family a weekly four-page letter, which he has done for 35 years). Those with long HIStalk memories will recall his “Being John Glaser” series that I ran way back in 2008-2009, when he described himself as an “irregular regular contributor” to HIStalk. 

Government and Politics

HHS publishes a strategic plan for the use of AI in healthcare. It recommends these actions:

• Catalyze adoption through public-private partnerships, clarify regulatory oversight, and support collection of outcomes evidence.
• Promote development of trustworthy AI, including mitigating equity, biosecurity, data security, and privacy risks.
• Democratize AI use through information sharing and developing open source AI tools.
• Cultivate an AI-empowered workforce through training and development of an AI talent pipeline.

The US Trade Representative warns that 96% of the world’s 35,000 online pharmacies are operating illegally, putting consumers at risk of being sold counterfeit or pirated products.

Stat reports that the Department of Justice is interviewing former UnitedHealth Group doctors about the company’s reported pressuring of physicians to add lucrative diagnosis codes for Medicare Advantage patients.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore publishes “Partnership Perspectives: Q4 2024.”
• Impact Advisors publishes a new case study, “Health System Employees Eliminate Over 1 Million Non-Value-Added Hours.”
• Netsmart will present at Ideal Healthcare’s second annual event January 18 on Florida’s Marco Island.
• PerfectServe releases a new case study, “How Optimized Provider Scheduling Improves Patient and Room Scheduling.”
• QGenda wins Brandon Hall Group’s Bronze Technology Excellence Award for Best Advance in Time and Labor Management.
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company, becomes a Premier Partner with Today’s Practice for Finance.
• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new guide, “5 Tips to Ensure Your Data is Analytics-Ready.”

Blog Posts

• MIPS Changes for 2025 (AdvancedMD)
• The Dual Role of AI in Healthcare Cybersecurity in 2025 (FinThrive)
• Navigating Enterprise Reorganization: The Crucial Role of Change Management (Impact Advisors)
• 2025’s healthcare imperative: merge innovation and human-centered strategies to improve access (Nordic)
• Caregivers 101: Everything You Need to Know (SnapCare)
• Add This Healthcare Podcast to Your 2025 New Year Resolutions (Surescripts)
• Revitalizing Patient Financial Engagement in 2025 (Tegria)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 1/10/25

Hippocratic AI Completes $141MM Series B Financing Round Led by Kleiner Perkins, Valuing the Company at $1.64B

Healthcare AI agent developer Hippocratic AI will use $141 million in new funding to help it begin marketing its solutions to payers and pharmaceutical companies and to expand into additional global markets.

Bluesight Expands Compliance Capabilities and Strengthens Platform through Acquisition of Protenus

Inventory management, procurement, and compliance vendor Bluesight acquires Protenus, a healthcare compliance analytics company based in Baltimore.

Qualified Health Launches with $30M Seed Funding to Develop the Infrastructure for Generative AI in Healthcare

Qualified Health, which offers healthcare AI governance infrastructure, raises $30 million in seed funding.

Amwell divests virtual psychiatric care business to Avel ECare in all-cash transaction

Amwell sells its virtual psychiatric care service to Avel ECare for $21 million in cash.

Innovaccer aims to become healthcare’s AI powerhouse with $275M Series F

Innovaccer announces $275 million in a Series F funding round, bringing its total raised to $675 million.

News 1/10/25

Top News

Transcarent, which offers employee healthcare benefits navigation services, acquires rival Accolade for $621 million in cash.

ACCD shares have lost 78% in the past 12 months and are down 90% since the company’s July 2020 IPO. Transcarent will pay a 110% share premium to take Accolade private.

Analysts suggest that Transcarent got a fire sale deal for Accolade and predict similar M&A in the short term, especially with struggling publicly traded companies that have run out of investor patience.

Reader Comments

From Debaser: “Re: Oracle Health. Have you heard anything about the Cerner Client Connect team being abolished? From what I understand, our client executive was let go last week, along with the entire group. We received no communication about this. Yet more frustrating behavior from a vendor that has been frustrating to deal with for many years now.” Those in the know, can you assist?

From Who Dis?: “Re: Becker’s list of CIOs to know.’ They never list their selection criteria” Becker’s says that their never-ending “to know” C-level lists are based on nominations and editorial research. I take this to mean that youthful staffers just Google, pull biographical information off LinkedIn, and “curate” the results into a click-baity list that is about as meaningful as a first-grader’s gold star. Still, pulling names out of the air  — 133 CIOs are listed on the latest list, which hardly makes it an exclusive club — to bestow awards is a smart, cheap way to turn personal and corporate vanity into free publicity. I’m also puzzled by what “to know” means.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare AI agent developer Hippocratic AI raises $141 million in Series B financing, valuing the company at $1.6 billion.

Qualified Health, which offers healthcare AI governance infrastructure, raises $30 million in seed funding.

EHR integration technology vendor Red Rover Health raises $4 million in seed funding. CEO John Orosco, who is a former Cerner developer, is also president and CEO of JASE Health, which offers Oracle Health technical consulting.

Warburg Pincus, the private equity owner of specialty EHR vendor Modernizing Medicine, is considering options for the company that could include a sale at a $5 billion valuation.

Population health analytics vendor HealthEC and VirtualHealth, which offers a medical management platform, unite (in an unstated manner) to form Elligint Health. HealthEC Chris Caramanico will be CEO of the new business, so one might assume that HealthEC acquired VirtualHealth. Or perhaps more likely, that the businesses were combined by their shared investor HLM Venture Partners.

Provider data vendor H1 acquires Ribbon Health, which offers a doctor-finding service for consumers.

Caduceus Capital Partners announces Launch, a 12-week pre-seed digital health startup accelerator that will be led by industry long-timer Mitch Morris, MD.

Amwell sells its virtual psychiatric care service to Avel ECare for $21 million in cash. Amwell acquired behavioral digital health startup Aligned Telehealth in November 2019 and then paid $320 million for SilverCloud Health and Conversa Health in July 2021. AMWL shares have lost 71% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $112 million. They are 99% off their all-time high in January 2021, which occurred shortly after the company’s IPO.

Healthcare workforce solutions vendor CSI Companies acquires healthcare IT consulting firm MedSys Group.

In England, the North Somerset Council recommends approval of Epic’s plans for its UK campus, which will include a 3,000-seat auditorium, offices, and a training facility. Epic expects the first office buildings to be completed in 2028, the auditorium in 2033, three more offices in the 2030s, and then project completion in 2041. The 90-acre campus will house up to 2,000 employees.

Sales

• Infusion provider New England Life Care will implement Inovalon’s ScriptMed Infusion cloud-native pharmacy system for specialty and home infusion pharmacies.
• Tidelands Health (NC) and Honor Health (AZ) choose Five9’s contact center as a solution to replace legacy on-premise contact centers
• Duke Health chooses Abridge for ambient documentation in its 150 clinics.

People

Industry long-timer Tim Nash (Aidoc) joins Linus Health as SVP of healthcare.

ClearPoint Health hires Tawfiq Bajjali, MS (Lyric) as CTO / chief product officer and president of its newly launched ClearQuote benefits proposal system vendor.

Scott Nourse (Change Healthcare) joins Accuity as regional VP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

South Central Regional Medical Center (MS) will implement Epic, with assistance from HCTec and replacing Oracle Health.  

Other

The mayor of a remote small town in Italy orders residents to avoid accidents, travel, and sports activities, hoping to raise awareness that its health center is often closed and doctors are available only during weekday business hours.

Sponsor Updates

• Waystar will present at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference January 13 in San Francisco.
• SmarterDX names Jonathan Wald, MD (InterSystems) solutions architect.
• Black Book Research publishes a free 60-page technical guide to practice management technology.
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces that its Lippincott Ready for NCLEX-RN nursing education resource now features AI-driven remediation with personalized, multi-modal improvement plans.
• Ellkay publishes a new customer success story featuring Lehigh Valley Health Network.
• Findhelp welcomes new customers Essen Health Care (NY), TriWest Healthcare Alliance (AZ), and Rainbow Housing Assistance (AZ).
• Healthmonix announces that MIPSpro and APP Impact have been approved by CMS as a Qualified Registry for the 2025 performance year under the Quality Payment Program.
• Impact Advisors publishes “Building a ‘Smart Hospital’ from the Ground Up.”
• Medicomp Systems releases a new “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast featuring Micky Tripathi, PhD, MPP, Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy.
• Lewis County Health System (NY) implements Meditech Expanse’s Continuing Care Medication Management functionality.

Blog Posts

• Best Practices in Denial Management (FinThrive)
• EHR Implementation is a Big Lift Without Automation (CereCore)
• Ransomware attacks the California Health System with claims of 17 million patient records stolen (AdvancedMD)
• Forget 2025 — Here Are My Top Predictions for CX in 2030 (Five9)
• Beyond the Dose: Past, Present and Future of Specialty Pharmacy (Inovalon)
• Supporting HHS’ Renewed Focus on Cybersecurity in Healthcare (Fortified Health Security)
• Taking a coordinated approach to strengthen rural healthcare systems against cyberattacks (Meditech)
• Five Key Strategies to Protect Healthcare Organizations from Cyberattacks (Med Tech Solutions)
• Why Investing in Internal Auditing Tools is Key to Reducing Coding Risks and Financial Losses (MRO)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 1/9/25

The hot topic around the virtual water cooler this week was the push to use real-world evidence (RWE) while caring for patients. This topic has become more relevant as increasing number of clinicians have access to RWE while caring for patients.

This kind of data can have particular strengths, including demonstrating how medications and other treatments actually work with real patient populations versus those found in clinical trials. It can also be used for post-marketing surveillance of new drugs and treatments.

However, there can be challenges depending on how clinicians are looking at the data. For example, if you’re looking at how clinicians are treating certain types of patients, one has to still understand why they might be choosing those therapies and whether those patterns are consistent with the evidence from rigorous clinical trials.

If you don’t take that into consideration, there can be a slippery slope where “everyone’s doing it, I should too” overrules graded recommendations. Depending on how data is sourced, there’s the potential for RWE to function as an echo chamber.

For example, if a large health system is pulling RWE data from their EHR, it’s going to be influenced by the formularies that are in place at its facilities. One might not see more appropriate treatment patterns that better match conventional evidence because the majority of drugs that are being prescribed for a given condition are done so in order to achieve formulary compliance and to avoid prior authorizations or additional work.

The consensus among physicians in the discussion was that real-world evidence has its place, but it shouldn’t overshadow the recommendations that are gleaned from robust clinical trials or gathered through expert consensus.

Mr. H. mentioned it earlier this week, but I would be remiss if I didn’t include my own mention of the Lown Institute’s 2024 Shkreli Awards, recognizing “the worst examples of profiteering and dysfunction in healthcare.” The list is named after so-called pharma bro Martin Shkreli. If you’re not familiar with his exploits, I would recommend spending a minute or two with your favorite search engine.

There have been a number of terrible individuals and organizations in healthcare over the last several decades. I might have reconsidered my career choices had I known how bad it could be. My academic advisor had a sweet job lined up for me in the world of publication, and although I’m sure it would have been interesting, I can’t imagine it would have been as much of a thrill ride as healthcare has been.

For people who are new to the industry, I would encourage you to look at previous iterations of the Awards. Many of you are inspired and altruistic, and previous lists will provide some clues about things to watch out for.

This year’s list includes a medical school that failed to notify the next of kin before selling the body parts of the deceased, inappropriate procedures to “treat” infant tongue ties, exorbitant air ambulance bills, the focus on profits of private equity hospitals, and insurance companies behaving badly. Although it only ranked fourth on the list of 10, my personal pick for the worst of the worst is an oncologist who recommended unnecessary cancer treatment for patients. Let me know if you have other callouts for folks that should have made the list but didn’t.

Speaking of tacky behavior, I recently received a so-called “grateful patient” solicitation from an organization where I recently received care. The problem is that the care I received was not in keeping with the standard of care and left me confused, concerned, and a witness to a HIPAA violation. I reported these issues to the provider at the time of care and was asked to reflect them in my patient survey when I received it. I did that and have had exactly zero contact from the institution. Let’s see if attaching a summary of my recent visit to the grateful patient response card inspires anyone there to reach out.

I admit that I fall victim to clickbait-style headlines as much as the next person, so this one caught my attention: “Hospital at home needs an ‘Uber app,’ Mayo Clinic leader says.” The piece features comments from Michael Maniaci MD, chief clinical officer of advanced care at home for the organization. He notes that Mayo Clinic can’t scale beyond its current volume of 30-35 patients per day due to lack of coordination for staffing, supply, and other patient needs. He states, “Imagine an Uber app where the car chassis, the tires, the fuel, the engine, and the driver all show up separately. You have the tubing coming from someplace, prescription medication coming from another place, the nurse coming from one place, the DME and the pump coming from another place — and they all have to show up at the same time.”

Sounds a bit like what healthcare organizations have been doing in other developed countries for years, minus the “we need an app” bit. I have a medical school classmate who worked for an organization in Germany that provided care to patients in their homes. It sent out a fully equipped medical vehicle that was stocked with almost everything you could receive from a high-acuity urgent care or freestanding emergency department. Another classmate who worked in the United Kingdom was partnered with public health nurses who rounded on patients and provided care beyond what we consider typical nursing care in the US.

For these models to be successful, you need a certain degree of vertical integration that we don’t typically have in our fragmented healthcare system. When your insurance contracts with a home care agency that isn’t affiliated with the hospital from which you were just discharged, there will be disconnects. I’m not convinced that an app is the answer, and would instead put my money on concepts that align all facets of care with the patient and their outcomes rather than aligning with profit motives or passing the buck to other agencies.

Another article that caught my eye this week was a viewpoint piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association that addressed health privacy and the use of synthetic data. Although this approach can help mitigate issues with insufficient private health data, it introduces additional challenges due to the fact that healthcare is a complicated and highly regulated environment. The authors note difficulties in creating data points that accurately represent rare conditions or highly complex clinical presentations such as scenarios that take place in the intensive care unit. There is also the risk of bias with synthetic data particularly when it is used at scale.

They go on to state the need for standards to generate and evaluate synthetic data. I woud be interested to hear from readers who are involved in organizational use of synthetic data and the approaches that are being taken to ensure that the promise is fulfilled.

Shortly after many people around the world rang in the New Year with a cocktail, US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy released a recommendation that alcohol products receive a warning label that advises consumers of the increased cancer risk associated with alcohol consumption. This would literally require an act of Congress. As we head towards HIMSS and another year of conferences, it will be interesting to see if health-forward organizations continue hosting alcohol-laden happy hours in their booths or if they use it as an opportunity to trim budgets as well as to promote health.

Will you reduce or eliminate alcohol consumption based on these recommendations? Whether yes or no, what’s your favorite beverage pick for 2025? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 1/9/25

Transcarent To Acquire Accolade

Transcarent, which offers a member-focused benefits navigation, clinical guidance, and virtual care platform, will acquire personalized healthcare platform developer Accolade for $621 million.

Red Rover Health Raises $4 Million in Funding to Grow Healthcare App Store Platform

Healthcare app integration company Red Rover Health raises $4 million in seed funding.

Warburg Pincus explores $5 billion-plus sale of Modernizing Medicine, sources say

Private equity firm Warburg Pincus is reportedly considering selling Modernizing Medicine, which it first invested in eight years ago and considered selling in 2022.

MDaudit Announces Strategic Growth Investment from Bregal Sagemount and Primus Capital

Medical billing company MDaudit announces new funding from Bregal Sagemount and Prime Capital.

Net Health Acquires Alinea Engage to Further Optimize Patient Engagement and Outcomes in Rehab Therapy

Wound care and rehab therapy software company Net Health acquires rehab therapy-focused automation and patient engagement software vendor Alinea Engage.

Healthcare AI News 1/8/25

News

FDA issues draft guidance for supporting development and marketing of AI-enabled devices throughout the Total Product Life Cycle. It also publishes draft guidance for the use of AI to support development of drugs and biologicals.

Women’s health smart ring maker Movano announces EvieAI, a chatbot that was trained on peer-review medical journals. The company said in its CES announcement that the chatbot’s accuracy is 99%.

Law professors suggest that the Supreme Court’s recent overruling of the Chevron Doctrine — which allows federal agencies, rather than courts, to interpret and implement statutes when authorized by Congress — could impact the FDA’s ability to regulate AI, as its approach often relies on non-binding guidance documents and position papers.

Business

Hartford HealthCare implements Aidoc’s AI platform, which includes 17 FDA-cleared algorithms.

UK-based digital pathology vendor Deciphex raises $32 million in a Series C funding round.

Research

Researchers in China develop a health insurance fraud detection model for insurers and auditors.

A study finds that while AI is effective at making a diagnosis when fed exam-style questions, if fares worse when analyzing real-world conversations. The authors make these recommendations for AI developers:

• Train and test systems on conversational, open-ended questions as are found in unstructured doctor-patient conversations.
• Assess the model’s ability to ask the right questions.
• Design models to work across multiple conversations.
• Design models that can capture both textual data and images.
• Incorporate non-verbal cues such as facial expressions, voice tone, and body language.

Other

A health news site lists ways that North Carolina providers are using AI:

• Analyzing lung nodule scans to predict cancer risk (Atrium Health).
• Electronic follow-up with patients who have received a hip or knee replacement (OrthoCarolina).
• ED scanning of images to detect serious conditions (Novant Health).
• AI-drafted responses to patient portal messages (Atrium Health and WakeMed).
• Cognitive impairment detection (Wake Forest University School of Medicine).
• Flagging patients who are due a follow-up visit or imaging (Wake Forest Baptist).
• Early detection of sepsis (Duke Health, UNC Health).
• Suicide risk assessment (Novant Health).
• Optimizing OR use by predicting the length of surgical procedures (Duke Health).
• Answering provider administrative questions (UNC Health).

A popular TV journalist in Israel who lost his voice due to Lou Gehrig’s disease returns to Channel 12 by using AI that was trained on his voice to narrate his stories.

Health authorities in Sudan are hoping that AI can perform some of the work of doctors who have been killed in the country’s civil war.

A bioethicist warns that healthcare AI systems that allow customization could restrict exposure to important information in catering  to the user’s preferences and biases. She presents distinctions between systems that are customized for information discovery and those intended for information delivery.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Contact us.

Morning Headlines 1/8/25

NeuroFlow Announces Strategic Deal to Incorporate Intermountain Health’s Sophisticated Behavioral Health Risk Model into NeuroFlow’s Analytics Suite

Behavioral health technology and analytics vendor NeuroFlow acquires a behavioral health analytics module developed by Intermountain Health.

Highlander Health Announces Inaugural Investment of Target RWE

Evidence generation platform vendor Highlander Health, launched in September 2024 by oncologists Amy Abernethy, MD, PhD and Brad Hirsch, MD, acquires real-world datasets company Target RWE.

Onrad Inc. Acquires Direct Radiology in a Move That Expands Capabilities, Enhances Quality and Outcomes

Teleradiology services company Onrad acquires the 80-radiologist Direct Radiology practice from Philips, making it the largest independent teleradiology vendor in the US.

Providence Ventures spins out, forms Allumia Ventures

Health tech venture capital firm Providence Ventures spins off from Providence to form Allumia Ventures.

HHS Office for Civil Rights Settles 8th Ransomware Investigation with Elgon Information Systems

Massachusetts-based Elgon Information Systems will pay $80,000 to settle federal allegations related to its failure to prevent a March 2023 ransomware attack that would up exposing the protected health information of 31,000 patients.

News 1/8/25

Top News

Clinical surveillance and alarm management company AirStrip Technologies acquires Decisio Health, which specializes in clinical decision support and remote patient monitoring software.

Former AirStrip CEO Alan Portela launched Depth Health, which is focused on AI-enabled patient care and traffic flow optimization, last August.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Sanford Health (SD) finalizes its acquisition of Marshfield Clinic Health System (WI), which was announced in July. Hospital leaders expect that pooled resources and access to Sanford’s $350 million virtual care center will enable the combined systems to offer more virtual care services to their rural patient populations. The organizations will invest up to $500 million to transition Marshfield from Cerner to Epic.

CalmWave announces $5.25 million in new funding. The company has developed AI software to help ICUs manage alarm fatigue.

Evidence generation platform vendor Highlander Health acquires Target RWE, which generates real-world datasets. Highlander Health was launched in September 2024 by oncologists Amy Abernethy, MD, PhD and Brad Hirsch, MD.

Teleradiology services company Onrad acquires the 80-radiologist Direct Radiology practice from Philips, making it the largest independent teleradiology vendor in the US.

Health tech venture capital firm Providence Ventures spins off from Providence to form Allumia Ventures.

Sales

• The Illinois Public Health Institute will use 4medica’s data-sharing technology to power its new Chicago Regionwide Community Information Exchange.
• AdventHealth will implement hospital-at-home software and clinical care services from Biofourmis as a part of its new remote patient monitoring program for patients in Central Florida.
• USA Health (AL) selects managed services from Healthcare IT Leaders.

People

Direct Recruiters promotes Stephen Benson and Bradley Morrison to partners.

US Air Force veteran Eric Gardner, MBA (Flagship Health) joins Leidos QTC Health Services as VP of operations. Gardner’s 20-year career in the Air Force included stints as a Medical Service Corps officer and as the CFO and VP of the Air Force Medical Operations Agency.

Topcon Healthcare names Jacques Gilbert (Nuance) chief strategy and business development officer and Christian Odaker, PhD (Smart Reporting) CTO.

Susan Grant, DNP, RN (Wellstar Health System) joins Symplr as chief clinical officer.

Impact Advisors names Wes Arnett (Compassus) as president of its revenue cycle managed services business.

Parkland Health promotes Brett Moran, MD to SVP / chief health officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Six health systems in Southeastern Ontario form the Lumeo Regional Health Information System to implement Oracle Health throughout their enterprises.

A study finds that nearly two-thirds of patients who reviewed a standard prostate pathology report were unable to determine whether they had cancer, whereas nearly all of those who received a plain-language version could easily understand their diagnosis.

Uvalde Memorial Hospital (TX) goes live on Meditech Expanse.

Analysis finds that the claims-based undiagnosed dementia algorithm of Linus Health-owned Together Senior Health can accurately identify high-risk patients.

A review by TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company finds that 96% of surveyed providers accept patient credit cards, 69% offer flexible payment plans, and four of five identify expanding payment options as a key focus area.

Other

People in every other developed nation will struggle to grasp this. A White House rule will ban lenders from factoring medical debt into loan approval decisions (affecting 15 million people owing $49 billion) and prohibit repossessing medical devices, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs from those who can’t pay (imagine that repo job). While it protects credit scores from billing errors that are awaiting resolution, a health justice group’s take highlights the wagging tail of medical debt while ignoring the dog: our wildly overpriced healthcare “system” that this change does little to fix:

Nobody, no matter where we live or how much money we have, should be forced to make the impossible choice between getting essential care and going into debt. And they should not have to worry that medical debt could prevent them from buying a house or securing an auto loan because of its impact on their credit.

The Lown Institute names the 2024 winners of its Shkreli Awards, which are named after the notorious price-gouging, ex-con pharma bro CEO Martin Shkreli:

1. Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD: Collected $250 million in private equity profits while the hospitals under his management declared bankruptcy.
2. UnitedHealth: Boosted Medicare Advantage profits through rushed patient visits and aggressive coding practices.
3. Amgen: Ignored research showing that its cancer drug was effective at lower, safer doses that would have reduced its revenue by $180,000 per patient annually.
4. An oncologist at St. Peter’s Hospital (MT): Administered unnecessary cancer treatments and altered patients’ end-of-life plans without their consent, becoming the hospital’s top earner.
5. Private equity-owned New Mexico Hospital: Denied care to cancer patients, even those with insurance, unless they made upfront payments.
6. Pretty in Pink Boutique: Operated a fraudulent medical supply scheme, one of seven suppliers that billed Medicare $2 billion for questionable urinary catheters in 2023.
7. Cigna: Refused to cover a $98,000 air ambulance bill for an infant who was in respiratory distress, labeling the transport as medically unnecessary.
8. Zynex Medical: Profited from shipping unordered batteries and electronic pads to users of its nerve stimulation devices, with these supplies accounting for 70% of the company’s revenue.
9. Dentist who perform dubious tongue-tie surgeries on babies: One supplier of equipment for the surgeries hosted a “Tequila and Tongue Ties” dentist training session that was followed by shots and margaritas.
10. University of North Texas Health Science Center: Sold body parts from unclaimed bodies to for-profit companies after making minimal efforts to locate relatives.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders partners with Locums Choice and Christmas Tree Santas for its annual Christmas tree giveaway benefiting the Children’s Development Academy.
• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Automating EHR Implementations: A Must-Have for Managing Healthcare Informatics.”
• Uvalde Memorial Hospital (TX) upgrades its Meditech system to Meditech Expanse.
• Inovalon completes its three-year transformation of its analytics platform to the cloud.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast titled “High-Cost Orphan Drugs, Securing Claims Data, and More, with Dr. Eric Bricker.”
• Censinet releases a new episode of its “Risk Never Sleeps. podcast, “From Stage Fright to Spotlight: Building Presentation Skills That Inspire, with Anthony Lee, partner at the Heroic Voice Academy.”
• DrFirst publishes a new guide, “Unlocking Faster Access to Specialty Medications With Prior Authorization Automation.”

Blog Posts

• Introducing Pharmafusion’s Patient Wellness Dashboard – The S’MORE of AdvancedMD data! (AdvancedMD)
• Denial Remediation: The Road to Revenue Recovery (AGS Health)
• Streamline Clinical Workflows with Meditech Expanse 2.2: A How-to Guide (CereCore)
• Maximizing Revenue Through Efficient A/R Management: Best Practices for Hospitals (FinThrive)
• Use Cases for Automated Messaging in Healthcare (Artera)
• What to Expect in Healthcare in 2025 (Dimensional Insight)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 1/7/25

Virtual visits to play an increased role as a part of Marshfield, Sanford merger

Sanford Health (SD) and Marshfield Clinic Health System (WI) expect to offer additional virtual care services to their respective patient populations as a result of Sanford’s recently finalized acquisition of Marshfield.

AirStrip Technologies Adds Clinical Decision Support Capabilities with Strategic Acquisition of DECISIO Health

Clinical surveillance and alarm management company AirStrip Technologies acquires Decisio Health, which specializes in clinical decision support and remote patient monitoring software.

FDA Issues Comprehensive Draft Guidance for Developers of Artificial Intelligence-Enabled Medical Devices

The FDA publishes draft development and marketing recommendations for developers of AI-enhanced medical devices, with comments due April 7.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 1/6/25

Since the Snowpocalypse is upon large portions of the US, I decided to show solidarity by staying home, making baked goods, and working on my reading list.

I’ve gravitated towards audiobooks in a big way. They have become my preferred way to consume fiction because I can enjoy them while doing household tasks, driving, and in many more situations than I can enjoy a paper book or even one on my trusty Kindle. For non-fiction, I still like to have a physical book in hand, especially one that references previous sections or chapters since it’s so much easier to flip back and forth.

This weekend’s paper read was one I had picked up from the library a number of weeks ago. I decided to finish it so that it could go back into circulation. I was originally drawn to the book through a reference in an article I was reading that talked about how the internet is responsible for making people “dumber.”

Barely into the first chapter, I was seeing parallels between the book’s discussion of how true expertise is being devalued and the conversation I had recently with a colleague who cited “patients arguing with me all the time” as the chief source of her burnout. The first chapter addresses the idea of differentiating “experts” from “citizens” and the role that each has played in society. Experts typically have specific credentials, although the book identifies different levels of experts bearing credentials: those with aptitude or talent or experience in the field who also have credentials, and those who just have credentials.

We see the latter in medicine and I see it often in the startup world. People who have the MD or DO degree decided to go into business rather than completing a residency, and thus have never cared for patients independently or learned to bear the direct individual responsibility for another person’s life. It’s different when you’re talking about lives in the abstract or in the aggregate than when you’re sitting at the bedside with a patient and family whose treatment didn’t go the way they expected. Those with credentials but not experience or aptitude may be charismatic and may be recognized as entrepreneurs, but they will never be recognized in the same way as a physician who actually went through the steps to be board certified and to carry that kind of a load personally.

Partway through the first chapter, I had to check on its publication date. The copy I had in hand was a first edition version from 2017. On one hand, I was relieved, because reading about the debacle that was the first couple of years of COVID is still triggering for me as a frontline provider who had COVID deniers coughing in my face during the 12-hour shifts that were nearly always 14 hours long.

A lot of us who went through that experience felt at the time that COVID had magnified the willingness of patients to argue with us, largely due to conspiracy theories and medical misinformation that was found all around us. But the book reminds us that it was happening well before then, which reminds me of a patients who would arrive with stacks of pages printed from internet blogs that they would cite as evidence for the treatments they were demanding.

The book also talks about influencers and uses Gwyneth Paltrow and her GOOP brand as a prime example. I’ll admit my bias upfront here – it is my strong personal belief that “influencers” will be the death of Western Civilization as we know it. I remember when I was a kid, and there was such a focus on the idea of peer pressure and how it was something to be avoided, and that people should be critical thinkers and use their own values rather than doing something just because their friends were doing it.

The in-your-face nature of influencers and the rise of social media and TikTok have been terrible for many segments of the population, whether it’s because they wind up in the emergency room after doing some inane TikTok Challenge or whether they waste their money on unproven treatments or so-called wellness products that are more multilevel marketing than evidence-based.

The book has a short section on conspiracy theories that made me chuckle. At least to me in hindsight, the conspiracy theories that were out there in 2017 were far more benign than some of those we hear today. There’s an interesting section on how changes in higher education have led to the death of expertise, including the up-branding of small local colleges to universities without a commensurate change in the education they’re delivering, along with an attitude that people attend college or university because they are pressured to do so or feel they have to as a next logical step in their lives.

The author talks about the difference between “having a college experience” and “getting an education” and how the former has changed attitudes at institutions of learning. We’ve definitely seen this in healthcare and I’ve seen it quite a bit in the for-profit healthcare training programs out there. Graduates come out of some of these programs with no experience other than shadowing, which is truly a travesty.

My favorite chapter is the one titled “Let Me Google That for You,” which really should be the anthem for my generation. I run into a lot of people who think that because it’s on the internet it must be true, and I agree with the author that many people don’t have the skills to critically appraise their sources and to determine whether they should be trusted. Honestly, if I see one more friend posting on “cough CPR” — which is where if you think you’re having a heart attack while driving you are supposed to cough forcefully while driving yourself to the hospital — I am going to scream. This is a myth and that has been debunked by numerous reputable sources. I always post links to those sources when I see that post and remind people that if you think you’re having a heart attack while driving, you should pull over and dial 911 or hit the emergency button on your phone rather than trying to drive yourself and risk the lives of those around you.

Even in 2017, the author touches on Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and vaccines and other medical misinformation. He reminds us that “a search for information will cough up whatever algorithm is at work in a search engine, usually provided by for-profit companies using criteria that are largely opaque to the user.”

He notes that “The deeper issue here is that the Internet is actually changing the way we read, the way we reason, even the way we think, and all for the worse. We expect information instantly. We want it broken down, presented in a way that is pleasing to our eye – no more of those small-type, fragile textbooks, thank you – and we want it to say what we want it to say.”

People do not do research so much as they “search for pretty pages online to provide answers they like with the least amount of effort and in the shortest time.” The resulting flood of information, always of varying quality and sometimes of uncertain sanity, creates a veneer of knowledge that actually leaves people worse off than if they knew nothing at all. It’s an old but true saying: “It ain’t what you don’t know that will hurt you. It’s what you do know that ain’t so.”

He also tackles the evolution of journalism (fun fact: I now know the origins of the TV show “Nightline”) and reviews some specific studies from the University College of London about how people often interact with the internet by “reading” articles by consuming the first few lines or sentences and then going on to the next thing.

The phrase “power browse” was used and I definitely see that in some of my own behavior, usually when I’m trying to cull through all the noise out there in order to write for HIStalk. It’s useful in that context, but might be dangerous if I’m trying to read about patient care or learn the nuances about a specific course of treatment. It makes me wonder how easily people can shift between those approaches in the fragmented timeline of a day caring for patients.

The book is a relatively quick read at 230 pages, and of course you can power browse it if you’re not quite ready for a deep read. I’d encourage the latter, however, because they author has a couple of really funny statements in there that I would have missed by skimming.

Have you read it and what did you think? Any other good reads you’d recommend for 2025? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.