Monday Morning Update 12/7/20

Top News

The non-profit Commons Project has connected its CommonHealth app to 230 health systems, allowing the majority of Americans who use Android devices to use Apple Health-like functionality to obtain their health records from connected providers.

The Commons Project says it will integrate with 110 more health systems this month and has already connected to LabCorp.

The app’s developers were UCSF, Cornell Tech, and Sage Bionetworks.

The Commons Project also offers a COVID risk questionnaire and the CommonPass passport-like app to prove COVID-19 testing and vaccination status.

Reader Comments

From Unplanned Demise: “Re: NTT Data. The company previously bought the Meditech hosting business of Dell (formerly Perot and JJWild), which has 100 hosted customers. It is down to about 40 customers, and I think most of us have received contract termination letters that blame the pandemic and its economic impact. I suspect that the reality is that NTT Data is anxious to get out of the Meditech business and go after larger, better-funded health systems and the pandemic gives them a convenient excuse.” Unverified. NTT Data is publicly traded, and if its Meditech hosting business really has dropped off that sharply, then they probably are doing the right thing from a business perspective to redirect energy to seek growth elsewhere. The only reason companies stick around in situations like this is if they don’t want to disappoint customers who might buy something else. The corporate Pacmanning (thanks to the reader from whom I stole that term) looks like this: Perot Systems acquired Meditech-focused services organization JJWild for $89 million in 2007, Dell acquired Perot in 2009 for $3.9 billion, and NTT Data bought Perot from Dell in 2016 for $3.1 billion. Paging Vince Ciotti: I don’t know what happened to the original J. J. Wild (senior and junior — the former founded the company in 1956 and the latter took over in 1975) or what business JJWild was in back in the 1950s.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIMSS, CHIME, and AMIA are the membership organizations to which poll respondents most commonly belong, although #1 among the options is “none of the above.” I gather from the CHIME count that I have more provider IT C-level executives as readers than I assumed, but I might need to reach out more to nurse informaticists to “unlock readership” (making fun yet again of the aspirational yet stupid business phrase “unlock revenue.”) 

New poll to your right or here: What grade would you give your preferred local hospital on being patient-friendly, trustworthy, and effective? I was thinking about this after hearing from a friend who said they received marvelous care during their heart surgery, but they learned to wave a cheery, roving hospitalist away from their door several times per day since every one of her 15-second “hey, how are you doing?” greetings was, in his previous visit, recorded as another out-of-network professional encounter that ended up totaling thousands of dollars that insurance wouldn’t cover. I can understand community-based doctors billing the patient for in-hospital care, but permanently assigned hospitalists cranking out their own bills for their private equity-owned employer seems to stretch the definition of  hospital (is it just a clean hotel with bad food that, like a Mexican beach, fails to discourage persistent peddlers who keep casting a shadow over you while you’re trying to snooze in the sand?)

Thanks to the following companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo for more information.

Reader Bill sent me a Donors Choose gift card, which with matching funds from my Anonymous Vendor Executive and other sources, fully funded these teacher requests:

• Digital resources for online learning for Ms. S’s elementary school class in Sacaton, AZ.
• Two monitors for online teaching for Mr. B’s high school class in Melvindale, MI.
• Online and hands-on math supplies for Ms. F’s elementary school class in Stonewall, OK.
• A math fluency kit for Ms. E’s elementary school class in Madison, FL.
• A library of books and science and math activity kits for Ms. R’s middle school class in Mobile, AL.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Shares in the Global X Telemedicine & Digital Health exchange-traded fund rose 7.3% in the past month, about the same as the Nasdaq and S&P 500 indices.

Former VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD and health IT consulting firm Healthium announce a joint venture to enable health IT innovation between United Arab Emirates and Israel. The organization will connect companies with US counterparts for partnerships, with particular interest in AI, behavioral care, COVID-19 response, interoperability, digital health, EHR support, population health, analytics, and telehealth.

A. G. Breitenstein, MPH, JD — who founded analytics company Humedica and sold it to UnitedHealth Group for an unreported amount in 2013 — launches Folx Health, which will offer telehealth-prescribed, cash-only “queer and trans healthcare delivered on our terms” hormone therapy, STI testing, and meds for HIV prophylaxis and erectile dysfunction.

People

Tenet Healthcare hires J. Roger Davis (Revint Solutions) as president and CEO of its Conifer Health Solutions business.

John Hallock (Livongo) joins Crossover Health as SVP of corporate communications.

Jeff Fuller, MBA (UNC Health) joins CipherHealth as VP of data and analytics.

Announcements and Implementations

Vanderbilt Health adds an End of Life Care Plan feature to Epic, which prompts its MyChart users to download a generic advance directive, customize it as needed, sign it in front of witnesses or a notary, and then upload it. Care teams will also be prompted by Epic to ask inpatients and outpatients if they have completed their documents so they can either steer them to MyChart or help them scan and upload.

COVID-19

The US saw 225,000 new COVID-19 cases on Friday and 101,000 infected Americans were occupying hospital beds, both all-time highs that are increasing. The South’s seven-day case average has exceeded that of the Midwest for the first time in months as cooler weather pushes south. The seven-day average death count rose to a record 2,123 per day and is moving sharply upward due to Thanksgiving travel and gatherings. COVID-19 was the leading cause of death in the US last week as the total death toll reached 281,000.

The COVID Tracking Project says that the operations and capacity data that hospitals are reporting to the federal government’s HHS Protect / TeleTracking system has stabilized and now mostly matches state-reported information once data definition differences and reporting lag times are considered. It says that states aren’t consistent in their reporting – some report hospitalizations of only confirmed COVID-19 cases while others include suspected cases, some report numbers without defining what they mean, and others use non-standard definitions.

NIH says that a new name and billing codes should be assigned to treat “COVID long-haulers” who experience a syndrome of breathing, heart, fatigue, and brain fog problems long after they have “recovered” from their initial infection. In a stark example of the issue, the topic was examined in an NIH meeting in which four patients were scheduled to speak, but two of them couldn’t participate because they were hospitalized. Johns Hopkins says that more than half of its COVID-recovered patients experience some degree of cognitive impairment in the first three months.

CDC will issue paper vaccination cards to remind people which COVID-19 vaccine they have received and when their next dose is due. An Operation Warp Speed display shows that each vaccination kit will include the vaccine, a face shield, a mask, alcohol preps, a syringe, an instruction sheet, and the vaccination card.

CDC analysis finds that, adjusted for age, Hispanic and black Americans  are dying at nearly three times the rate of whites. American Indians and Alaska Natives die at 2.6 times the rate of whites.

The Chicago Department of Public Health and Rush University Medical Center launch a COVID-19 tracking hub to which all 28 area hospitals have agreed to contribute lab test results, CCDA information from Epic-using sites, and capacity information. The system will provide management dashboards to hospital and civic leaders as well as information for researchers. They hope to secure a federal grant to enhance reporting and to develop a COVID-19 immunization registry.

Other

Sanford Health and Intermountain Healthcare cancel their proposed merger a week after Sanford Health fired its CEO for emailing employees to declare that he would not be wearing a mask because he believed himself immune from COVID-19 after recovering from it.

Epic describes how its user experience designers created a new look for MyChart, including displaying health history as a news feed, providing easy jumps to most-used actions, highlighting announcements, and offering week-to-week pregnancy updates. My only previous experience with MyChart was an obviously incompetent implementation by a hospital whose mediocrity was evident in every aspect, but a recent visit with a physician who works for a much better health system showed MyChart’s full power in a clean, intuitive layout – I could schedule and reschedule appointments, view a health calendar with reminders, review my doctor’s bio and send them a message, complete a pre-visit questionnaire, handle billing and payments, and review the full notes of my visit afterward (the health system has rolled out OpenNotes). I also gave approval to match me with clinical studies and was invited to participate in one, while the Share Everywhere option lets me give access to anyone I choose with a custom-generated access code. I don’t know if this is the new version, but it’s pretty cool and highly useful regardless.

Sponsor Updates

• Ellkay makes its Expert Exchange Series of 30-minute discussions featuring high-profit health system IT executives available online.
• Southern Illinois Healthcare begins validating automated testing scripts for the acute/inpatient setting as part of its continued Test Automation as a Service work with Santa Rosa Consulting.
• CareSignal CEO Blake Marggraff provides a video overview of the company’s deviceless remote patient monitoring to the Innovation Challenge Virtual Showcase.
• Zynx Health updates and expands its free-of-charge COVID-19 clinical decision support.

Blog Posts

• Densitas AI platform automates breast density, image quality, and breast cancer risk assessment (Nuance)
• Covid, virtual trials, and a rapidly evolving supply chain (OpenText)
• In Case You Missed It: Outcomes-Based Care for Justice-Involved Individuals (Netsmart)
• Miles to Go Before I Sleep: Reimagining Patient Engagement (PCare)
• Lazy Data – What Your Organization Can Learn from Steve Martin & Kevin Costner (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Ransomware’s Impact on Healthcare (PMD)
• COVID-19 Vaccine Information: 3 Things to Know (QliqSoft)
• Q4 2020 Product Updates: Preparing for the Future (Redox)
• How New Decision Support Tools Enable Informed Prescribing at the Point of Care (RxRevu)
• How to Choose a TeleNeurology Partner: Five Critical Areas to Consider (SOC Telemed)
• The Ultimate CCPA Compliance Checklist (Spirion)
• Clinical diagnostics: Why today’s critical test result processes are broken (Spok)
• Surescripts Commends CMS on Decision to Proceed with EPCS Mandate Without Delay (Surescripts)
• You Can’t Just Say: “Tomorrow, we’re going to be a High Reliability Organization” (TransformativeMed)
• Leveraging a propensity-to-pay solution to drive collections (Waystar)
• 8 Reasons You Should Attend Ascend 2021 (WebPT)
• Help patients make sense of complicated health information when the stakes are high (Well Health)

Contacts

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