Monday Morning Update 5/24/21

Top News

An FBI advisory says that at least 16 US healthcare and first responder networks were attacked by Conti ransomware in the past year.

Reader Comments

From Pat Hand: “Re: CEO selling. Can you ask your readers at what stage of a company’s growth it become detrimental for the CEO to lead pitch meetings with the prospect hospital’s C-suite? My startup employer has hired tremendous HCIT leaders, but our CEO (who is also a co-founder) struggles to relinquish control of the initial discovery and pitch process. He isn’t great at reading a room, asking discovery questions, giving succinct answers, and simplifying the pitch based on need. When our sales execs ask him to let the salespeople do their jobs, he says that the first meeting should be C-suite to C-suite and they can take over afterward. Do prospects see this negatively and do they question a premium price tag when the CEO is the de facto sales rep?” I’ll invite readers to weigh in. My experience from being on the health system receiving end of pitches is that I would find it puzzling and perhaps a bit desperate to have a vendor CEO show up in the first meeting. I would rather meet with the sales folks, decide mutually what happens next, and hold back the CEO’s participation until either (a) the first meeting on the vendor’s campus, and even then just for a short meet and greet; or (b) as a final reassurance during contract negotiations. The company folks will defer silently when their CEO is in the room, which is the same reason that I as the health system person wouldn’t invite our high-ranking folks to those first meetings. I think the company should stop sending the CEO out on sales calls as soon as it can afford to hire experienced salespeople.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents are generally upbeat about the hiring practices of their employers through the end of the year.

New poll to your right or here: How does the HIMSS21 “vaccinated attendees only” policy change your plans to attend?

It’s a shorter post and no Weekender since Mrs. H and I took a great 12-hour drive in the splendor of late spring to a family event, a road trip that I enjoyed immensely. She probably needed some “Lonesome Dove” backstory to understand my enthusiastically blurted quote: “Ain’t nothing better than riding a fine horse in new territory.”

Webinars

June 3 (Thursday) 2 ET: “Diagnosing the Cures Act – Practical Prescriptions for Your Success.” Sponsor: Secure Exchange Solutions. Presenters: William E. Golden, MD, MACP, medical director, Arkansas Medicaid; Anne Santifer, executive director, Arkansas Department of Health – Office of Health Information Technology; Kyle Meadors, principal, Chart Lux Consulting. A panel of leading experts will provide practical guidance on how to prepare for the Cures Act. Will it upend your business model? What is information blocking? How can standardized technologies be applied to meet Cures Act requirements? What must I do now as well as in the next five years?

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Sales

• France’s Institut Curie will implement digital pathology from Sectra.

People

Jeff Webber (Healthcare Triangle) joins Tegria-owned Navin Haffty as VP of operations.

JoRel Nye (Aledade) is named chief product officer at Stellar Health.

Announcements and Implementations

Change Healthcare launches a vaccination record solution that is based on the open standards of the  Vaccination Credential Initiative. Vaccination and testing providers, state registries, pharmacies, and labs can send their vaccination records at no cost, allowing pharmacies, testing labs, and government agencies to develop API-powered digital vaccine proof apps. The company notes that this approach puts consumers in control of how their vaccination information is selectively shared.

Bose launches an $850, no-prescription hearing aid – the first that FDA has approved for direct-to-consumer sale — for people with mild to moderate hearing loss, which includes an app that wearers use to tune them to their preference or to their immediate surroundings.

Other

This is an interesting concept: robotic process automation vendor UIPath offers StudioX, a no-code builder that allows employees to automate their own tasks that also includes corporate governance tools, such as permissions control and logging. I’ve used Macro Scheduler for many years to automate desktop and browser tasks and to tie applications together like the examples above.

Two ED doctors in Ireland, whose national health IT systems remain down from a ransomware attack, say that a big problem is that the country never developed a universal identifier that would allow accessing a patient’s records from multiple hospitals.

Advocate Aurora Health will change 12,000 non-clinical positions to remote-first, eliminating their physical offices in departments such as finance, accounting, administration, and consumer experience in allowing employees to work from wherever they want.

Sponsor Updates

• LexisNexis Risk Solutions releases the “2021 COVID-19 Mental Health Impact Report,” validating that mental health telehealth claims have increased significantly during the pandemic.
• Nordic, Pivot Point Consulting, Protenus, and Surescripts are included on Modern Healthcare’s “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” list.
• The Business of Pharmacy Podcast features RxRevu CEO Carm Huntress in its episode on improving prescribing decisions.
• Innovaccer will integrate the Healthwise Knowledgebase patient education solution into its Health Cloud
• Spirion wins four Global InfoSec Awards from Cyber Defense Magazine, including for next-gen in privacy management software.
• Visage Imaging will sponsor the virtual SiiM21 Annual Meeting May 24-27.

Blog Posts

• Celebrating Skilled Nursing Clinicians with Strategies for Self-Care Success (Netsmart)
• Pharma-HCP Interactions Go Virtual During the Pandemic (PatientBond)
• How Outdated On-Call Scheduling is Hurting Your Hospital (PerfectServe)
• When It Comes to Your Patients, Good Communication is Key (PMD)
• Five Ways Predictive Analytics are Driving Proactive Clinical Care (Premier)
• A $25B Health System’s Investment Arm is Banking on Protenus – Your Hospital Should, Too (Protenus)
• What are Custom Claim Edits and Why are They Important? (RCxRules)
• Guide to Phone Appointment Reminders with Free Call Scripts (Relatient)
• Dramatic Telehealth Growth During COVID Driven by Mental Health Surge (SOC Telemed)
• Working with Spok just became even easier (Spok)
• Broward Health expands print pub to digital to drive patient traffic (Krames)
• Scaling Up Your Workflows (Summit Healthcare)
• Three Tips for Maintaining Active Engagement with Patients and Families (Vocera)
• 4 Steps to Take Now if You Dream of Opening Your Own Practice Someday (WebPT)
• Enhancing Home Healthcare Delivery with Evidence-Based Care Plans (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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