Morning Headlines 11/1/19

UnitedHealth, an insurance giant, just scooped up patient monitoring start-up Vivify Health

Optum acquires remote patient monitoring startup Vivify Health.

Exclusive: ‘Inappropriate’ email reveals Queensland Health’s ploy to avoid political scrutiny of hospital IT outages

Australian media outlets report that senior Queensland Health officials ordered staff at the region’s hospitals to avoid performing upgrades to digital systems – including Cerner’s problematic IEMR software – while parliament is in session so as to avoid embarrassing scrutiny from politicians.

Audacious Inquiry and The Sequoia Project Announce National Collaboration to Support States in Disaster Response Through the Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies (PULSE)

Audacious Inquiry will work with The Sequoia Project to expand availability of the Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies (PULSE) during disaster response efforts.

WMH announces 35 layoffs, reduction of services

Williamson Memorial Hospital in rural West Virginia attributes layoffs and the closure of several clinics to extreme delays in collections and an absence of cash flow stemming from its Meditech implementation several months ago.