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Monday Morning Update 4/22/19

April 21, 2019 News 2 Comments

Top News

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HHS opens Draft 2 of its Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement for public comment.

ONC will present a webinar on Draft 2 on April 23.

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In related news, ONC announces that it will open a four-year, $900,000 per year (first year) funding opportunity for a non-profit to serve as the Recognized Coordinating Entity to oversee TEFCA’s Common Agreement for qualified Health Information Networks.


Reader Comments

From Looming Clouds: “Re: health IT fire hose. Give me five things I need to know about healthcare as an outsider.”

  • Fix a problem using the most appropriate tools and methods, which may have nothing to do with technology. Companies desperately seeking a nail for their software hammer to pound always end up quietly slinking off in shame.
  • Remember that you, your friends, and your family are all patients at one time or another. You probably wouldn’t want someone like yourself affecting their care with your technology tinkering.
  • It’s tough to automate an industry whose key players (clinicians) don’t really buy into the idea of conveniently computer-amenable concepts such as evidence-based medicine, standardized practices, and reducing practice variation, especially when they are right. Medicine is half business, half science. Even those of us in the industry don’t really care which technology tools our doctors (or our accountants, or our carpenters, etc.) use – we judge them on the factors that, at best, are invisibly influenced by the technology they choose. Clinicians of all types rarely love hospital-mandated software because 80% of its functionality enforces rules set by their many overlords that add nothing to patient care and force them to enter data for someone else’s benefit.
  • People and organizations, even those in healthcare (maybe especially those in healthcare) do whatever rewards them most personally as long as they don’t have to intentionally harm patients. It’s not as ethical and purely motivated as you see on medical TV shows. Don’t be fooled into thinking that medical practices (which are always for-profit) are less nobly motivated than theoretically not-for-profit health systems and insurers. All of them will find the money no matter where Medicare and insurers hide it.
  • The only thing that matters that long-term outcomes are improved, patient access is made easier, or costs are reduced. Everything else is a nice-to-have at best. Do patients and your business a favor and find some other profit opportunity if you can’t address these issues.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Two-thirds of poll respondents spend 1-3 hours each week reading healthcare and healthcare IT news, which is plenty of time to catch up on the latest news, rumors, and opinions on HIStalk (maybe 30-45 minutes of skimming per week, tops) plus whatever else is out there.

New poll to your right or here: Will Cerner, Epic, and Meditech face any new health system EHR competition in the next 10 years? If so, from whom? A lot of people (admittedly, most of them clueless) seem to think that EHRs are dinosaurs that are in imminent danger of being felled in their tracks by a Silicon Valley-launched asteroid and are planning an after-party in which a replacement product suddenly sheds all the unpleasant functionality (coding, billing, documentation) in giving clinicians a fun, rewarding system written just for their needs that will free them from the electronic shackles created by the people who provide their incomes. Those whose deep psychological insight allows them read between the lines I write might detect my skepticism.

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Thanks to Prepared Health for upgrading its HIStalk sponsorship. The company’s EnTouch Network makes it easier for patients to stay healthy at home by connecting them with providers, caregivers, and payers. Health systems use the platform to stay connected to referral sources, involve the patient’s caregivers in their care, receive real-time alerts of changes in risk or care setting, and monitor for fraud and abuse via GPS-powered visit verification. The co-founders have a long industry history going back to the early days of Medicity, which I should mention was HIStalk’s first-ever sponsor back in 2005 or so. The big company news this week is that Jefferson Health chose Prepared Health its digital technology partner for post-acute and transitional care for its 14 hospitals.


Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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Haven opens a New York City office to attract technology talent, according to a LinkedIn post by its CTO. Open positions — which are described with just a generic job title — include clinical, data and analytics, product, and technology.

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The Kansas City business paper provides an update on Phase 3-4 construction at Cerner’s $4.5 billion Innovations Campus, with the latest efforts adding 777,000 square feet. Campus construction will be completed in 2025 with space for 16,000 employees. You have to wonder if this was a bad idea (at least in the absence of a reliable crystal ball when it was announced in 2016) given the company’s subtle retrenchment for what seems likely to be a tougher haul, which might also be true of Epic.

Several Blue Cross Blue Shield plans are sponsoring ACOs and opening their own primary care practices and urgent care centers to reduce the use of expensive hospital care.

I hadn’t checked NantHealth’s share price lately – it is $0.79, valuing the company at just $86 million and no doubt annoying those IPO-day buyers who in mid-2016 paid $21 per share (now sporting a 96% haircut). Shares of the other health IT train wreck Castlight Health are down 91% from their IPO day close in March 2014. It’s always good to remember an inviolate Wall Street rule – buying company shares early means that insiders who know way more than you are happy to dump shares on you at the price they have set.


People

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David Bean (Complete Merchant Solutions) joins Prepared Health as SVP of sales and marketing.


Announcements and Implementations

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NYC Health + Hospitals brings Epic live at 19 more locations, increasing its total to 50 and taking the $1 billion project it calls H2O past the halfway point of 45,000 users.

MDLive launches CareLink, a telehealth program that helps health plans and systems improve quality metrics via increased member engagement and lower cost. Optima Health (VA) is a pilot site.


Other

Weird News Andy will love this. An ambulance headed for a hospital ED with a patient whose heart is racing at 200 beats per minute restores normal rhythm when the ambulance hits a pothole.


Sponsor Updates

  • Formativ Health will demonstrate its Patient Engagement Platform at the NAHAM annual conference April 23-26 in Orlando.
  • Lightbeam Health Solutions will exhibit at NAACOS Spring 2019 April 24-26 in Baltimore.
  • Vyne Medical, Experian Health, and Relatient will present and exhibit at NAHAM April 24-26 in Orlando.
  • Mobile Heartbeat will exhibit at the 2019 LONE Spring Conference April 25-26 in New Orleans.
  • Clinical Computer Systems, developer of the Obix Perinatal Data System, will exhibit at the AWHONN Colorado State Conference April 25-26 in Colorado Springs.
  • CloudWave partners with Nutanix to bring the first certified health information solution to healthcare organizations running Meditech.
  • Redox will exhibit at the AWS Healthcare & Life Sciences Symposium April 24-25 in Boston.
  • Surescripts will exhibit at Matrixcare Directions 2019 April 24-26 in Nashville.
  • T-System will exhibit at the 2019 EDPMA Solutions Summit April 28-May 1 in Scottsdale, AZ.
  • TriNetX CMO Manfred Stapff, MD publishes “First-line treatment of essential hypertension: A real-world analysis across four antihypertensive treatment classes” in the Journal of Clinical Hypertension.
  • Voalte will exhibit at the NC HIMSS Chapter Annual Conference April 23-25 in Raleigh.
  • Vocera will exhibit at the Minnesota Organization of Leaders in Nursing 2019 Spring Conference April 25 in Brooklyn Park, MN.

Blog Posts


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Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Currently there are "2 comments" on this Article:

  1. Nice to see Cerner continuing with their new campus. I am sure our implementation of their highly questionable revenue cycle and ambulatory modules MAY be done by the time their bright, shiny, new campus will be complete. Priorities, Cerner, priorities!

    • JTR, Cerner is re-tooling itself from a software company (sic) into a service company. The company needs a place to put all those people whose time they will sell you to arm-wrestle the questionable software into a passable workaround. The priorities line up, though it’s fair to question why they’re not building the campus closer to DC.

      If you’re looking for staff commitment to their R&D priorities, you’ll find that commitment in India.







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