Weekender 6/15/18

Weekly News Recap

• GPB Capital acquires Maryland-based RCM/EHR vendor Health Prime International.
• Inspirata acquires Caradigm from GE Healthcare
• Former IBM employees say Watson Health’s troubles stem from the company’s inability to successfully merge the assets of its acquired Phytel, Explorys, and Truven Health
• The VA announces plans to create a device implant registry

Best Reader Comments

I think many rural providers/clinicians feel like they are forgotten or not considered in the larger healthcare picture. (Kallie)

Digital health / telemedicine is going to be the cheap, low-quality option that serves the masses while high-touch, in-person visits with an actual physician is going to be the gold standard that is expensive in 10 years. You already see this playing out in the wealth management industry and healthcare will be no different. (Lazlo Hollyfeld)

Someone can have full knowledge of what the #MeToo movement is about and still feel that it should be acceptable to acknowledge a male’s contributions to his field. Even if that guy has his flaws, although admittedly, I don’t know how big they are – the news coverage seems sensationalistic and other accusations are somewhat vague. (Clustered)

I love my 20+ year marketing career, but there are definitely “special internal challenges” faced by marketing teams that other teams like finance and development would never have to deal with, i.e. everyone knows how to do marketing. (Christine)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

We provided STEM materials for Ms. H in Alabama, whose DonorsChoose teacher grant request explained that her school provides at-home services to special needs children who have experienced significant vision or hearing loss. She reports, “This means the world to me and my students. By providing our students with materials to TAKE HOME is amazing. We have never had the opportunity to send materials home with students before. The materials have allowed the students the ability to show off their progress and things we have been working on at school to their parents. Students are going to succeed above and beyond due to your generosity.”

Also checking in was Ms. H from Ohio, whose first graders received take-home math and science materials. She says, “When we opened the boxes, they were excited that they would be able to take these materials home with them. They were happy that they would get to use these with their families at home. We have been able to help build and grow our math and science skills. These resources create meaningful and engaging activities for the students.”

Uber files a patent application for an AI-powered enhancement to its app that would analyze a user’s typing mistakes, walking patterns, and time and location in the hopes of identifying ride requesters who are drunk, allowing the company to alert the driver (who might be paid more to deal with an intoxicated passenger) and possibly to decline to dispatch a shared ride.

This it fascinating. Forty years ago in June 1978, punk rock band The Cramps played at a California state mental hospital, caught on low-quality videotape despite pre-HIPAA patient confidentiality concerns. The fascinating part is that the band overcame a puzzled, tepid reception to rock the place out and dance with the residents. Lead singer Lux Interior (who died of aortic dissection in 2009 at 62) bluntly told the audience, “Somebody told me you people are crazy, but I’m not so sure about that. You seem to be all right to me.”

Forbes profiles the billionaire founder of a Minnesota hearing aid company that he started by buying an existing business for $13,000, after which he built it into the country’s largest hearing aid manufacturer. It’s not a feel-good recap, though, as the company has struggled since the founder moved on to charitable efforts and misdeeds by his assigned replacements – one of them his stepson – have led to loss of market share as innovation stalled.

A hospital in Vancouver that caters to “birth tourism” — in which expectant mothers from China have their babies delivered there to earn them instant Canadian citizenship — sues a since-vanished mother from China whose baby required a $300,000 stay. The hospital, which has been labeled a “passport mill” along with untold numbers of “baby houses” that market to cash-paying foreigners, delivers an average of one baby per day to parents from China.

Coming this fall: Two-Point Hospital, a PC video game that’s interesting to me because of odd items in the make-believe hospital: old-fashioned radiators, live plants in most rooms, and a Sega videogame in the lobby.

In Case You Missed It

• News 6/15/18
• EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 6/14/18
• News 6/13/18
• HIStalk Interviews Jeremy Schwach, CEO, Bluetree Network
• HIStalk Interviews John Birkmeyer, MD, Chief Clinical Officer, Sound Physicians
• Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 6/11/18
• Monday Morning Update 6/11/18
• What I Wish I’d Known Before … Working in Public Relations or Marketing

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