News 6/17/20

Top News

Epic cancels its UGM 2020 user meeting, which was scheduled for August 24-27 in Verona, WI.

Epic says some UGM elements will be offered online even though “we truly believe that an in-person meeting is irreplaceable.”

A CIO reader says the CEO council and CIO roundtable will still be offered, although they add, “Not sure who is attending either one given travel budget cuts.”

Reader Comments

From Newly Jobless: “Re: [company name omitted.] Laid off 25% of staff today.” Unverified. I didn’t get this in time to confirm with the company before my Tuesday evening deadline and I saw nothing on TheLayoff.com, but if you were affected, let me know.

From Prudent Investor: “Re: your readership stats. How now compared to last year?” Up, and I’m surprised to be getting more inquiries from potential sponsors than back in the heady days of Meaningful Use. I guess the lost conference year of 2020 left companies with more marketing money but fewer channels for exposure. Investment activity seems robust as well, so I suspect companies are eyeing the opportunity to gain competitive advantage in a suddenly leveled playing field.

From Hopeful Employee: “Re: Revint. I’ve been here two years and they just announced the third CEO since I started. I hope this one fires the management team and invests to integrate all these companies that New Mountain Capital has thrown together. They weren’t even honest about firing the current CEO, we employees aren’t idiots.” Scroll down to the People section for the new CEO’s details.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Halo Health. The Cincinnati-based, physician-founded company offers the Halo Clinical Communication and Collaboration Platform (CCCP), a scalable, AWS cloud-based solution that includes secure messaging, on-call, role-based scheduling, VoIP calling, critical results, alerts, and care team tools in a unified mobile platform. The Halo Platform’s unique workflow management system instantly delivers time-sensitive information to the right person, role, or team, allowing health systems to accelerate patient care, increase clinician efficiency, and improve financial outcomes. Halo is a strategic technical and clinical workflow partner dedicated to achieving customer objectives such as standardizing communication, consolidating technology, and connecting the physician community. Thanks to Halo Health for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

June 18 (Thursday) 12:30 ET. “Understanding the ONC’s Final Rule: Using FHIR HL7 for Successful EHR Integrations.” Sponsor: Newfire Global Partners. Presenters: Bob Salitsky, healthcare IT expert, Newfire Global Partners; Jaya Plmanabhan, MS, healthcare data scientist. This fast-paced, 30-minute webinar will provide an overview of the Final Rule and describe how technology vendors, payers, and providers can use FHIR HL7 to deliver true interoperability. Attendees will learn how to define the data, technology, and flows needed for their EHR integration projects; how products can retrieve health information while meeting compliance regulations; and the benefit of adopting quickly to the future of data exchange while simplifying future integration efforts.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Proteus Digital Health, the “smart pill” digital health darling that was once valued at $1.5 billion, files Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company staked its future on the support of drug manufacturers, who are known for deep pockets but a short attention span for shiny technology objects.

Walmart acquires the technology assets of online pharmacy CareZone for a rumored $200 million. The company’s app allows consumers to scan their pill bottles to create a medication profile, set up reminders, and track health measurements. CareZone will continue to operate its pharmacy, which was excluded from the network of pharmacy benefits manager Express Scripts a couple of years ago in a contract dispute.

Abacus Insights, which combines EHR and third-party data to allow health plans to personalize the care experience of their members, raises $35 million in a Series B funding round.

CareMesh – whose communications platform includes a national provider directory, event notifications, secure communications, and care transition workflows – raises $5 million in a seed funding round.

Surgisphere, the tiny company whose questionably sourced aggregated EHR data was responsible for two major research article retractions, takes down its website and social media accounts. I noticed that founder Sapan Desai, MD, PhD has also removed his LinkedIn. Some speculate that the company has shut down, which would be reasonable given the permanent stench that is now attached to its name.

People

Geeta Nayyar, MD, MBA (Greenway Health) joins Salesforce as executive medical director.

Revenue integrity technology vendor Revint hires Lee Rivas (RELX) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Experity launches Face Sheet, a patient history view of its urgent care EHR that provides an overview of past visits, supporting urgent care “hybrid clinics” that are providing primary care services or other continuing services.

Inspira Health (NJ) goes live on KyruusOne and ProviderMatch for Consumers, both from Kyruus.

COVID-19 testing company Curative is using the interoperability platform of Redox to send results to state health departments.

Epic highlights the use of its Pulse Central, which aggregates data from 1,200 Epic-using hospitals, to send standard COVID-19 metrics to public health organizations in near real time.

Carequality publishes an implementation guide for electronic case reporting, which can be used to report infectious disease cases to public health organizations.

Access releases Impression, a new version of its paperless, web-based electronic forms solution that allows hospitals to send patients forms (such as for pre-registration) for electronic completion and signing from anywhere. 

The American College of Cardiology will offer its members Heartbeat Health’s digital platform for cardiology-specific telemedicine and virtual care, which incorporates doctor-patient sharing of wearables-powered diagnostics, remote patient monitoring, and outcomes tracking. I interviewed Heartbeat Health founder and CEO Jeff Wessler, MD, MPH a few months back and I confess that it’s one of my favorites – he was refreshingly thoughtful about his vision of how cardiology practice can be optimized with a combination of in-office visits and virtual care that emphasizes prevention as well as treatment.

COVID-19

FDA revokes its emergency use authorization of hydroxychloroquine and chloroquine for treating COVID-19, finding that the drugs don’t have enough potential benefit to outweigh their risk of side effects that are sometimes fatal. HHS Secretary Alex Azar says that the only impact of the decision is that hospitals can no longer use federal stockpiles of the drugs — doctors can still prescribe them however they want and the FDA change may clear up misunderstanding that they are for hospitalized patients only.

Researchers question whether the medical journal peer review process is broken following retraction of articles by NEJM and The Lancet whose flaws that were obvious to expert readers. Issues:

• Peer review isn’t intended to detect outright fraud, which may or may not be involved in the retracted articles that used data from Surgisphere.
• COVID-19 has created an urgency to get information to the front lines within days rather than the usual many months, leaving little time for review.
• The supply of unpaid, uncredited, well-credentialed peer reviewers is limited.
• NEJM says it should have used hospital data experts in its peer review and pledges to require independent validation of database quality going forward.

The New Yorker describes how some Utah startups with little healthcare knowledge threw together COVID-19 tools (testing, online assessments, and a command center) to rush into a no-bid contract with the state in public-private partnership called TestUtah that was expanded to other states. The reliability of TestUtah’s results came into quick question; it was using tests that had not been allowed in the US until an FDA emergency use authorization was issued; its testing machine was approved only for use on agricultural DNA rather than human RNA; and it was stockpiling hydroxychloroquine in planning to offer treatment as well as diagnosis. TestUtah processed its lab tests in an unmarked back room of a 122-bed hospital that had equipment stacked on old desks and conference room tables sitting on carpeted floors, using a home food sealing machine to seal specimens. CMS inspectors noted several problems with its process and threatened to sanction the hospital’s lab for failing to supervise its work. TestUtah blames the criticism it received on political partisanship and the desire of University of Utah’s lab company and Intermountain Healthcare to squelch competition. The state overrode the recommendations of its public health director to extend TestUtah’s contract, then demoted her.

A tiny lab in Texas is billing insurance companies several thousand dollars for a COVID-19 test that costs just $100 from the major labs, taking advantage of a mandate from Congress that requires insurers to pay the full costs of the tests for out-of-network lab work.

FDA gives emergency use authorization for US hospitals to use an AI-powered COVID-19 patient deterioration early warning tool that was developed by Israel-based tele-ICU platform vendor CLEW. 

Other

A study finds that the rate and completeness of public health disease reporting by hospitals, practices, and labs improves when using HIE-generated, pre-populated forms instead of filling out and faxing paper forms.

Sponsor Updates

• Pivot Point Consulting will offer health-risk trajectory analytics from Jvion to help hospitals get employees back to work and patients back to their normal care activities.
• A proof-of-concept study finds that patients who used Glytec’s Glucommander insulin dosing software with a continuous glucose monitoring system showed a 26% improvement in time in range.
• AdvancedMD releases a new e-book, “Post-COVID-19: Moving to ‘Better Than Normal’ – four essential elements in getting past merely normal.”
• Microsoft features Central Logic in its special COVID-19 podcast series.
• Clinical Computer Systems, developer of the Obix Perinatal Data System, releases a new episode of its Critical Care Obstetrics Podcast, “Simulation Mistakes.”
• Black Book ranks Nordic as #1 in client satisfaction in the category of strategic initiatives advisory.

Blog Posts

• 3 Reasons You Need Professional Healthcare IT Testing for Interoperability (314e)
• Three tips for a better nurse engagement that drives quality care (Ability Network)
• The Essential Resource Guide to Hospital-Enabled Virtual care: Part 1 of 5 (Access)
• 5 Reasons Why Health Systems Need to Implement an Enterprise Imaging Platform (Agfa Healthcare)
• The Case for a Situational Awareness Network for Emergency Response (Audacious Inquiry)
• Health Plan Learnings from Our COVID-19 Efforts (CarePort Health)
• Legacy Data Archive: Avoiding the Sticker Shock of Data Retention (CereCore)
• ChartLogic Lands Among SoftwareAdvice’s EHR FrontRunners (ChartLogic)
• Navigating new Medicare hospital outpatient department authorization requirements (Nordic)
• Be Ready for a Breach: The Case for Remote DFIR and Virtual Incident Response (CI Security)
• 10 Steps to Ensure ERP Health (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Meeting the Needs of Complex Patient Populations Through Care Collaboration (Collective Medical)
• Electronic Prescription Management and Enrollment for Specialty Medications (CoverMyMeds)
• The Future of Healthcare: How Telehealth Will Change After COVID-19 (Dimensional Insight)
• BAYADA: Proactive COVID Safety Plan Helps Client Acquisition, Staff Retention (Dina)
• Finding a New Normal: The Patient Experience (EClinicalWorks)
• 7 must haves for your patient scheduling system (Experian Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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