Weekender 11/27/20

Weekly News Recap

• Telemedicine kiosk vendor HealthSpot winds down its five-year bankruptcy with just $47,000 left to pay creditors after having raised $47 million.
• The University of Vermont Health Network restores full access to Epic at all sites after a month of malware-caused downtime.
• Germany-based health IT company CompuGroup Medical announces its intention to acquire ambulatory-focused health IT vendor EMDs for $240 million.
• Phone-connected ultrasound transducer manufacturer Butterfly IQ will go public on the NYSE via a SPAC merger that values the company at $1.5 billion.
• Cloudbreak Health and UpHealth Holdings use a SPAC merger to create a telemedicine company that is valued at $1.35 billion.

Best Reader Comments

That’s a lot of money for eMDs, though it isn’t clear how the financing works. At face value, it would take CompuGroup more than a decade to make their money back. It makes you wonder what Richard Atkins has been doing. He was brought in to sell Greenway Health and apparently there are buyers interested in that kind of small practice EHR business. Why can’t he make the sale? (IANAL)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

Readers funded the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Ms. B in North Carolina, who asked for a globe carpet for a reading area for her elementary school class. She reported in late April, “The students have really enjoyed using the bean bag and carpet for flexible seating. They race to get there every day when we have flexible seating time. It is a joy to see them being so comfortable while learning. Your donation has also brightened our learning environment. The carpet is so colorful and matches perfectly with our World theme. I am a global educator and as such tries very hard to make my students globally and culturally aware. Your carpet does that. They have tried to identify the continents and places on the carpet. Thank you for allowing my students this opportunity to be in a comfortable learning space and also to have flexible seating. They absolutely love it!”

Employees of NYC Health + Hospitals say that everybody was in favor of providing extra compensation for COVID-19 overwhelmed frontline employees as long as someone else footed the bill, turning the process into a meme: “How did your hospital reward you for being essential, and what type of pizza was it?”

Pulmonologist Joseph Varon, MD is captured in a photo taken in Houston’s United Memorial Medical Center comforting a COVID-19 patient in the ICU in his 252nd straight day of working in the hospital.

A recently licensed nurse’s “how it started, how it’s going” photo of herself a at graduation and then after working in the ICU shows the toll that COVID-19 takes on caregivers.

Orthopedic surgeon Elvis Francois, MD has a big Wednesday – he is unmasked on “The Masked Singer” and is named to People magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” list.

In Case You Missed It

• News 11/25/20
• Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 11/23/20
• Monday Morning Update 11/23/20
• Katie the Intern 11/20/20

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