I had an old physician colleague whose favorite hobby was bitching about EHRs, and one day told a story about…
News 5/3/19
Top News
Allscripts announces Q1 results: revenue flat, adjusted EPS $0.16 vs. $0.15, beating on earnings but falling short of revenue expectations.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor SailPoint Technologies. The Austin, TX-based company’s platform manages digital identities, allowing organizations to see and control access to apps (on-premise, cloud, web), devices, infrastructure, and structured and unstructured data. Deployment options include SaaS, AWS or Azure cloud, data center, or via a managed service provider. Specific functionality includes provisioning, self-service access requests, access certifications, separation of duties, user-managed password resets, file access management including Microsoft Office, and AI-driven reporting. Specific platforms supported include Epic, Cerner, SAP, Workday, Box, Dropbox, and SharePoint. PeaceHealth dropped its 28-day turnaround time for providing access to two days, is able to run yearly employee access certification campaigns, and has reduced provisioning contractor headcount by 25. Thanks to SailPoint Technologies for supporting HIStalk.
Listening: the new, final album from The Cranberries, completed by the band from demo tracks found on the hard drive of singer Dolores O’Riordan, who died in January 2018 at 46 of accidental drowning. The Cranberries have made recordings in that manner before — she poured so much emotion into the demos that her studio versions couldn’t match them, so they sometimes went with the first draft. She had been through a lot, so the new album is more wistful, reflective, and less angry than “Zombie,” of which I would say her 1995 performance on SNL is still one of the rawest and best in that show’s history from long ago when singers wrote their own songs, performed them with emotion, and used minimal stage equipment with no computers, Auto-Tune corrected vocals, or sequiny dancers. My expectation of just listening to the new album without emotion turned out to be unrealistic as I spent the afternoon looping the achingly perfect title track “In The End.”
It’s a big holiday weekend, so happy Cinco de Cuatro to all.
Webinars
None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stocks
CirrusMD raises $15 million in a Series B funding round. Its chat-based telemedicine software will be implemented at three VA medical centers.
Medical device integration and patient monitoring company Capsule Technologies acquires clinical surveillance software vendor Bernoulli Health. Capsule Technologies was acquired by Francisco Partners from Qualcomm just before HIMSS, where it re-emerged from its Qualcomm Life brand as Capsule Technologies (before Qualcomm, it was Capsule Technologie).
CBNC reports why the FBI raided venture-funded microbiome startup UBiome: the company was billing insurers multiple times without patient consent and pressuring its doctors to approve its tests (which it should be noted have zero proven clinical value). The company has placed its two co-founders – who are also its co-CEOs – on administrative leave.
Medhost adds hospital business office outsourcing services.
ResMed announces Q3 results: revenue up 12%, adjusted EPS $0.89 vs. $0.92.
Inovalon reports Q1 results: revenue up 57%, adjusted EPS $0.10 vs. –$0.04.
Sales
- Oklahoma Spine Hospital selects Evident’s Thrive EHR.
People
Netsmart promotes Kevin Kaufman to CFO.
Mindy Heintskill (Walgreens) joins MDLive as chief marketing officer.
Medhost promotes Jason Myers to CIO and Rick Brown to chief development officer.
Cerner Chief People Officer Julie Wilson will retire on June 30 after 16 years in that position and 24 with the company.
Announcements and Implementations
Cantata Health adds a resident referral portal to its NetSolutions EHR for skilled nursing facilities.
In Massachusetts, Lahey Health System and Tufts Medical Center implement secure communications and notification capabilities from Secure Exchange Solutions as part of the ELINC HIE.
Woman’s Hospital (LA) goes live on Meditech Expanse Point of Care.
North York General Hospital in Toronto goes live on Spok’s Care Connect contact center technology.
Other
AMIA announces its first group of Fellows (FAMIA) in applied informatics.
DirectTrust seeks members to serve on its Direct Standards Consensus Body.
Medlio co-founder Lori Mehen recounts her negative experience in applying for the Cedars-Sinai Accelerator, saying that the CIO (presumably Darren Dworkin) told her seven minutes into her 15-minute scheduled meeting with him that not only would he vote no, but that he would also “veto anyone who says yes,” describing his tone as “belligerent and hateful” in telling her, “We don’t need your help getting our patients to find our doctors.” (It should be noted that this is one side of the story and other companies, especially those who were actually accepted into the program, have spoken positively about their experience and Darren’s involvement). She concludes:
We’re certain that we’re not going to be accepted. Nevertheless, it was imperative that I write this before they make their final decision. I’ve discussed this with my partners and they both agree, in the off chance we would have been accepted, we want to go on record as saying Cedars can go f%&k themselves. I’m not supposed to say this because doing so will almost certainly cost me, but that’s exactly why I must. Not just for me, or for my co-founders, but for all the other startups he has abused and will continue to abuse.
The University of Maryland works with local officials to deliver a kidney via drone to the University of Maryland School of Medicine three miles away, where it was successfully transplanted into a 44 year-old woman who had been on dialysis for eight years. Baltimore traffic must be awful to risk having a kidney-bearing drone come crashing to earth for such a short trip.
I’m not sure if this is an example of social engineering hacking, incredibly bad security practice, or incredibly good cybersecurity humor.
Sponsor Updates
- Securance Consulting gives Engage a five-star for the fourth year in a row for being a Best Practice Meditech Hosting Provider.
- Elsevier will work with PhactMI to develop a new semantic search portal that will offer providers scientifically accurate, current, and unbiased information.
- EClinicalWorks will exhibit at the 2019 AAOE Annual Conference May 4-7 in Nashville.
- EPSi extends early-bird pricing for the Visis EPSi Summit, taking place October 22-24 in Austin, TX, through May 31.
- HCTec publishes a new case study featuring St. Luke’s University Health Network.
- Iatric Systems will exhibit at the NCHiMA Quad-State event May 5-8 in Myrtle Beach, SC.
- InterSystems will exhibit at the DoD/VA & Gov Health IT Summit May 8-9 in Alexandria, VA.
- Kyruus announces the availability of ProviderMatch DirectBook in the Cerner App Gallery for direct scheduling into Cerner Millenium.
- OptimizeRx will integrate Eversana’s patient support and specialty distribution models into its real-time EHR network.
- Artifact Health partners with HCPro to provide compliant, time-saving CDI templates for provider queries.
- The Customer Relationship Management Institute awards Wolters Kluwer customer support teams the NorthFace ScoreBoard Award for exceeding customer service expectations.
- Henry Ford Health System (MI) expands its use of CarePort software with the implementation of Guide, Connect, and Insight solutions.
- ROI Healthcare Solutions launches a new “day-in-the-life” content series focusing on its project managers.
- Dimensional Insight publishes a new white paper, “How Successful Are Healthcare Organizations with Clinical Analytics?”
Blog Posts
- 4 Ways to Reduce Physician Burnout with EClinicalWorks (EClinicalWorks)
- Targeting Populations Prioritized by Risk Factors: The First Attribute in a Modern Care Management Model (Ensocare)
- Healthcare Executives Share Ideas on Optimizing Billing Compliance Programs (Hayes Management Consulting)
- User Story: Epic Health System Troubleshoots ‘Citrix is Slow’ (Goliath Technologies)
- Leading Effective Protocol Consensus Meetings (Healthfinch)
- Is the Wrong Health Education Solution Crippling Your Care Managers? (Healthwise)
- Coming soon to a city near you: Hyland Healthcare Forums (Hyland)
- The Two Tales of Remote Access Security (Iatric Systems)
- Expanding Data Access: Considerations for Decentralizing Analytics (Impact Advisors)
- Introducing Healthcare Seamless SSO: Q&A with Wes Wright (Imprivata)
- Demystify Payroll Taxes with this BSI Solution (ROI Healthcare Solutions)
- 4 Opportunities to Reduce Costs in Your Hospital (Optimum Healthcare IT)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates. Send news or rumors.
Contact us.
“It’s a big holiday weekend, so happy Cinco de Cuatro to all.” Don’t you marginalize all of your Latino/Hispanic readers and advertisers with this flippant comment?
Possibly those who aren’t “Arrested Development” fans (from which the term and photo I used originated, easily Goggle-able) or who don’t quite understand intentional irony (like those folks who are blessed with finely tuned obersvational power who note that my smokin’ doc caricature is indeed smoking and feel the need to register their righteous indignation). The entire point of those AD episodes is to make fun of Americans who, with the help of beer company promoters, have Gringoized and marginalized Cinco de Mayo —celebrating a Mexican victory over the French while Americans were busy killing each other in the Civil War — into the most hideously cartoonish spectacle of Mexican stereotypes imaginable, just to sell more Corona (owned by a Belgian company), sombreros (made in China), and Speedy Gonzalez #1 lunch combos.
Amen on Dolores and the Cranberries. Possibly the best, rawest and most emotional vocalist ever. May she rest in peace.
Re: Medlio
Is it possible they didn’t present as good of an idea as they think they have? If it were me with the great idea I’d just quietly move on and get $100k from someone else.
As a cheaps seats observer, I would say that personalities aside, Cedars and Medlio don’t match up well. I don’t know why a doctor-finding app would be appealing to Cedars and that’s basically what they said. Cedars is looking for technology they can actually use immediately — they aren’t a charity or just looking to invest randomly in hopes of financial gain.
I don’t really understand Medlio’s business model — they seem to be all over the place with yet another provider look-up with a personal health record, virtual insurance card, online payments, practice website hosting, and fitness tracker database. The site contained virtually no information about the providers it lists — it looks like it’s just an NPI extract with blank fields for photos, insurances, services, training, etc. Each provider page has a bunch of links that don’t work for download records, request, appointment, send message, etc. If the idea was to sell sponsored pages to practices, that’s a really tough market to crack, as other companies have found out after assuming that providers would just find them in the absence of any kind of sales force or marketing campaign. That doesn’t even address the issue of getting consumers to find and use your site or app in the first place.
I’m not sure Medlio should even be considered a startup since they’ve been around since January 2013, having raised just $250,000 in a single seed round six years ago. They post little to social media and haven’t issued any press releases, which seems odd given that the founder who blasted Cedars in her article has spent her entire career in marketing. At some point, you have to stop blaming the world and take a hard look at the focus and benefit of your offering, your ability to reach prospects to sell it to them, and why after six years not much is happening.
I’m sure the founders are passionate, but the article strongly suggests they are running out of enthusiasm and money after quitting their day jobs in the past few months even as the health IT boom has cooled. I don’t understand the company’s big vision of “trying to fix healthcare” and “making the world a better place” compared to their product offering. The expectation that the CIO of Cedars-Sinai — who would be responsible for implementing and supporting the technologies they agree to pilot — shouldn’t be able to “dictate what startups can and can’t do” is kind of ridiculous, especially when you want (and apparently desperately need) their money. Complaining about it bitterly and publicly afterward was a bad knee-jerk reaction to disappointment, and while the personal attack may generate a few sympathy comments, it has made the company look bad to anyone who might want to work with them in the future (with no upside other than revenge and a plea for emotional support).
There are other accelerators and investors if the idea is good and the founders seem passionate and competent to those controlling the purse strings. If those opportunities continue to not pan out, then it’s probably time to stop writing uncomfortably critical articles that insult well-respected industry notables and go back to those day jobs.