Weekender 6/29/18

Weekly News Recap

• Amazon announces that it will acquire mail order pharmacy PillPack for a rumored $1 billion in cash
• Cerner settles an unpaid overtime employee class action lawsuit for $4.5 million
• The VA says it will bring three sites live on Cerner by 2020
• GE announces that it will spin off its GE Healthcare business into a standalone company
• A GAO report finds that the VA was spending $1 billion per year on VistA, but needs to consider how to replace the nearly 50 percent of VistA applications that don’t have a Cerner counterpart
• Outcome Health’s two co-founders leave its board following their previous departure as executives amidst fraud claims by investors
• Details of CareSync’s closure indicate that a planned acquisition fell through, leaving the company in such dire straits that it sent 292 employees home and closed its doors for good
• Qualcomm seeks a buyer for a majority stake in its Qualcomm Life subsidiary, which includes the 2net remote patient monitoring system and Capsule medical device integration platform
• Allscripts reportedly is offering voluntary retirement to a large number of employees

Best Reader Comments

My spouse has worked at several start ups (non-HIT). It’s amazing how quickly you turn from invaluable employee with critical deadlines to “sorry, you have an hour to clean out desk.” And how easy it is to put your head down to do all the work demanded of you, and then forget to poke your head up often to get the lay of the land. I would always ask, do you see lots of suits crawling around the office?” And before every hatchet, yup, sudden influx of suits in C-level area. (TXY)

Is anyone else alarmed that only 50 percent of the VistA applications will be replaced by Cerner? What “modernization” and “standardization” effort is that going to take so that there aren’t 20 versions of the same points of integration? It is a complex socio-technical environment. This needs to be done well for those who have served the United States of America. (Art_Vandelay)

Don’t expect any major changes for GE’s Healthcare business and strategy in the short-term; the unit was pretty self sufficient in terms of business operations and has had a fairly major cull, “trimming the fat” already. The bigger issue might be the split of cross-division research and development initiatives (big data analytics, IoT), harming competitiveness in the mid term. (Plucky_Brit)

As unfortunate as this is, I think what goes unmentioned is the inherent risk that comes with working at a startup. Having worked for three, I can tell you that nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that happens regarding financing, strategic partnerships, or anything related to funding is guaranteed when you are working for a startup. Is it OK to be optimistic? Absolutely. Is it OK to get excited about your prospects when you hope the company is bought out or sold in the future and you have the options to cash in your chips? 100 percent. My point is that it’s easy to become complacent, and as the CareSync case points out, the proverbial rug can be yanked at any time no matter how rosy things may seem. (John Trader)

The JAMA article which suggests that “HHS should consider creating and enforcing penalties for failure to release all relevant clinical information to treating clinicians in a timely fashion” is a terrible idea. While I agree that HIPAA both by design and by misinterpretation can cause harm I don’t think more legislation is going to fix anything. HHS has implemented a set of often vaguely written regulations for which they fine organizations heavily if they fail to implement properly. Thus, they have created the “better safe than sorry” mentality that seems to be standard operating procedure at many covered entities these days. Creating the type of penalties described would likely be a “damned if you do, damned if you don’t” scenario. (Mike Cottle)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

Readers funded the DonorsChoose teacher grant request of Mr. M, who asked for math activities for his Significant Support Needs elementary school students in Colorado. He reports, “The students were ecstatic when they opened the boxes for the first time! We have already put the new tools to use. Our students are on such a variety of levels, these materials allow us to modify for each student’s ability. Using them in our small group instruction during math is the primary use. They are always allowed to use them during recess. They love the game portion of the materials. We as teachers, love the learning portion! Our student will continue learning and growing with wonderful donors as yourself. Without you, we would not be able to have such wonderful materials in our Significant Support Needs classroom.”

Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences breaks ground on a $33 million simulation center that will use virtual reality and haptic (touch) technology to train its medical students. A Mayo Clinic doctor agrees that simulation is beneficial in keeping up skills, but says low-cost, low-tech versions – Mayo has residents practicing on homebrew patients made of rubber hoses and cardboard that cost as little as $5 – work just as well or better and will be the wave of the future.

Technology companies in China are hoping to cash in on the country’s $1 trillion annual healthcare spending by developing systems that can ease the bottlenecks caused by its vast doctor shortage, especially in remote areas. Among them: ambulance routing, allocating doctors by expected demand, medical image analysis, virtual visits, and Internet-only hospitals that could manage patients and sell prescriptions online.

A JAMA-published study finds that Medicare-insured seniors were in 2015 less likely to die in hospitals instead of their homes compared to 2000. It also notes that while 29 percent spent time in the ICU in their final 30 days, that percentage has leveled off. Hospice use by dying patient increased from 22 percent to more than 50 percent.

The NFL denies the request of its only player-doctor — Kansas City Chiefs guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, MD – to append “MD” to his name on the back of his jersey.

I am certain that Weird News Andy never sausage a challenge in researching just the right ICD-10 code for this story. A Philadelphia Phillies baseball fan is injured when the team mascot accidentally shoots her in the face with a duct tape-wrapped hot dog blasted into the crowd from a mobile launcher. She urges fans to pay attention to what’s happening on the field even between innings, but isn’t planning to sue for her tubesteak trauma.

In Case You Missed It

• News 6/29/18
• EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 6/28/18
• News 6/27/18
• Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 6/25/18
• Monday Morning Update 6/25/18

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