Weekender 6/1/18

Weekly News Recap

• France-based Withings buys back the consumer digital health business it sold to Nokia two years ago and will restore the brand to the market
• Providence St. Joseph Health modifies its EHR to store patient advance directives and display them to clinicians during care events
• IBM reportedly lays off a significant number of employees of its Watson Health business
• Orion Health lays off 177 employees and is rumored to be pursuing a sale of some or all of the company with unnamed parties
• Personal injury lawyers in Philadelphia are buying geofencing-powered advertising campaigns to identify smartphone users who are in hospital EDs and so they can solicit lawsuit business afterward

Best Reader Comments

Zane: HISsie 2018 nomination + a lock on “Biggest Sore Winner” in a one-horse race. (Another Dave)

Why is it that every time IBM announces another quarterly loss (is this the 25th or 26th consecutive quarter?) that the people who have been busting their tails for years are the ones who unceremoniously get let go while the people in leadership continue to collect their massive salaries and are pretty much immune to any excision-related actions? (Genteel Giant)

Are there really so few women or people of color who making newsworthy HIT career moves? (ellemennopee87)

Keeping current on industry trends is smart, and I think writing thoughts and trends down in your own words (versus just skimming) industry news, if even just a couple sentences a day or even per week, is a good way to stay current. (Kallie)

Practice Fusion is a little clunky in some areas, very slick in others, but the great thing about it is that it’s continually improving. Someone there really cares about users and keeps making the little refinements that make the physician’s day easier. Hopefully, whoever they are, they’ll stick around after the Allscripts acquisition! We’re paying the $100/provider/month for now and we’ll see how it goes. (Dr. Herzenstube)

Is Sutter claiming that there were not any adverse events due to all records of all patients having gone black in one fell swoop? Did any patients die from the delays in care? (Sandi Green)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

Reader donations funded a three-day academic camping trip in the Santa Monica Mountains for Ms. V’s fifth grade class in urban Los Angeles. She reports, “The project made a world of difference in the lives of so many students such that they are able to have the resources that they need in order to be able to succeed in a natural learning environment. Going to fifth grade camp has been such an incredible experience for my students, not only for learning academic science standards, but also for learning how to work together. For some of the students, it’s the first time that they’ve ever spent the night away from their parents, and it’s truly special to be able to share this with them and their friends.”

In Canada, a Nova Scotia doctor says it’s not fair that the province has singled him out for enforcing its “no new EMRs” policy as it tries to implement a big-picture system in a project started years ago. He says he’s the only one of 15 orthopedic surgeons who is stuck using a paper-based system since his peers ignored the ban and implemented EMRs.

A private addiction hospital in Scotland opens a rehab program for people addicted to trading cryptocurrencies, mostly young males and casino workers. 

Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns gives Mayo Clinic a preview of scenes from the upcoming film he executive produced titled “The Mayo Clinic: Faith, Hope, Science.” It will air on PBS in September.

HBO Documentary Films is creating a film covering the rise and fall of Theranos.

A drug company rep who struggled to push its Subsys fast-acting fentanyl spray that costs $25,000 per prescription because patients were “already addicts” was told to literally beg pain management doctors to prescribe its drug, according to a newly unsealed whistleblower lawsuit. Salespeople report taking doctors to strip clubs and shooting ranges, posing as medical practice office staff to convince insurers to cover the prescriptions, and hiring a male doctor’s girlfriend once he agreed to “turn on the Subsys switch.” The former rep says her employer, Insys Therapeutics, hired a former stripper and escort service manager as a sales executive, along with another rep who was described by her boss as being “dumb as rocks” but willing to have sex with doctors. He described the ideal candidate for an open drug rep position: “A doctor’s girlfriend, son, or daughter. Banging a doctor, that would be perfect.” The company reportedly also developed a script to push reps into selling the drug for off-label uses and used a mail-order pharmacy that didn’t question prescriptions for excessive doses and quantities.

A small study of doctors in two safety net hospitals finds that providing emergency-only hemodialysis to undocumented immigrants contributes to the physicians’ professional burnout due to: (a) seeing patients needlessly suffer and die for non-medical reasons; (b) their lack of control over the treatment criteria; (c) the moral distress that results from seeing care decisions made for non-medical reasons and only after gaming the system; and (d) being inspired for advocacy. 

A New York gynecologist files a $1 million defamation lawsuit against a patient who gave him bad reviews of her one and only visit. The patient claimed that the doctor’s business practices are “very poor and crooked” on Facebook, Yelp, and doctor review sites after she was stuck with a $427 bill when he billed her insurance for a new-patient visit plus sonogram instead her covered annual exam. The practice says the doctor has to base his clinical decisions on patient need, he always gives new patients a sonogram, and it’s not his job to keep current on the intricacies of every insurance company. The patient claims that after the reviews, the practice publicly posted her entire medical record in retaliation. Dim-witted Yelpers reacted as they always do – they flocked to Yelp to leave their own scathing reviews of the doctor, making sure to include a hefty dose of ethnic insults because he was born in Korea. Scouting Yelp, the woman has also left lengthy, bitter one-star reviews for a dentist (“I don’t know why anyone would put up with this type of abuse”), a professional women’s association (“everything was not explained to me”), a gym (“I suffered a terrible trapezius injury”), and Fedex (“all of their services are a rip off in my opinion”). Maybe doctors need their own version of a doctor-shopper database to share information about patients likely to complain, lie, or sue. Meanwhile, nothing in this story alters my perceived reality that while I use Yelp regularly, it attracts more unintelligent, sour, and writing-challenged users by far than other review sites like Tripadvisor and OpenTable. Yelp desperately needs the ability for readers to filter out the results (and ratings contribution) of users whose reviews are consistently unhelpful or untrustworthy, especially those one-review contributors who are almost certainly company plants.

In Case You Missed It

• News 6/1/18
• EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 5/31/18
• Readers Write: Modern Practice: Automation and Lifestyle Management are Key Drivers for Growth
• HIStalk Interviews Ron Remy, CEO, Mobile Heartbeat
• News 5/30/18
• Monday Morning Update 5/28/18
• What I Wish I’d Known Before … Taking My First Job Managing People

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