Weekender 5/28/21

Weekly News Recap

• Ireland’s health system says it may be weeks before it goes back online following a May 14 ransomware attack.
• McKesson will combine RelayHealth and two of its other businesses under the CoverMyMeds organization and name.
• VA OIG says the VA’s $16 billion Cerner implementation budget failed to include up to $2.6 billion in required infrastructure upgrades.
• Google will develop algorithms for HCA Healthcare using HCA’s patient data.
• Iodine Software acquires Artifact Health.
• Weight loss app vendor Noom raises $540 million in new funding at a $3.7 billion valuation.
• Bassett Healthcare will outsource analytics, IT, and RCM to Optum, which will take on 500 Bassett employees.
• Zocdoc fixes a software problem that exposed patient data.
• FBI says that at least 16 US healthcare and first responder networks were attacked by Conti ransomware in the past year.

Best Reader Comments

PE has absolutely brought a net negative in terms of societal value – they have sucked dollars out and devastated so many major areas of our society and economy – newspapers, retailers, housing stock, emergency rooms, ambulances and now of course, hospitals. And VCs are not too far behind. But as the guy says in the documentary – hey, don’t blame them for taking advantage of the way rules of the game are set up. Of course, no one says the quiet part aloud – that these guys are also actively funding politicians who block any changes to rules of the game. (Ghost of Andromeda)

Buried in an Epic EHRN.org study published today, Epic now has data on over 100 million people in Cosmos. (EHRN Watcher)

Looks like a net shift of ~30,000 beds from Epic to Cerner in the United States. I think it raises a couple of questions – although # of hospitals are still roughly similar does this put a dent in the narrative that Epic and Cerner are the two biggest fish in the sea? Seems like Epic is starting to pull away on this one. Perhaps the DoD and VA contracts may have been a bit of a poison pill for Cerner. (EHRMusing)

I don’t think it is reasonable to expect health insurance or health insurance tech startups to be profitable before they are at national scale. There are high costs to enter that market. To my mind, there are two Medicare Advantage strategies that potentially could work. First is that mega health systems are well positioned to offer MA plans but don’t have the organizational competence to do it. Bright is sort of going for that. Second is for the insurer to successfully insert themselves between the patient and the interaction with the high cost healthcare system, then guide the patient to lower cost alternatives. If there aren’t lower cost alternatives available in the market, the insurers should provide them. This is a little bit of Devoted Health’s strategy and a bit of UHC’s strategy. (IANAL)

Does Cerner currently have an employee exodus? That seems to be a concern at the hospital organization I work with. Lots of turnover in IT. Can’t imagine it wouldn’t also apply to vendors, especially if one is struggling. How is Cerner doing? And Meditech? And Epic? Or what about Allscripts? I’m definitely concerned for our own turnover, but am much more scared.if our vendor is also losing people we work with. (Neil’s Parking Lot)

For all those who are vaccinated, what’s the concern by August whether there are people on the [HIMSS21] floor that are not? I have an idea. “Let’s assume attendees are stupid and will all require vaccinations. Then we will tell them if they present a topic, they need a face shield to protect vaccinated people from vaccinated people. Oh, and we can’t have the vaccinated people too close, so we’ll spread out their booths. Then, cocktail hours in booths, oh no, we can’t have that. Push them outside in the August Las Vegas temps and they can drink warm wine and beer to go along with to go bags. They can shout at each other six feet away. Plenty of business will get done there. Oh and we won’t tell them that we cannot require the support staff, Venetian employees, and anyone else that will be on prem to be vaccinated.” Never mind what everyone does on their own time in casinos, bars, restaurants and god knows where in Vegas. But, we are protecting them and others.” LAUGHABLE – who’s falling for this stuff? (Mike_T)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

Readers funded the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Ms. M in California, who asked for a headset and webcam for teaching her transitional kindergarten students virtually, She reports, “Thank you for helping this old teacher ( I didn’t think I was old until we started Distance Learning) get hip with new technology! Having a extra webcam that I can use as a document reader really helps my instruction daily. I can Zoom with students on one screen and share the work with the camera. This is especially important with our littlest learners when we are learning how to write our letters. Students learn so much through teacher modeling, I can model how to color in the lines, write from top to bottom and read from left to write. So much learning fun. Thank you!”

Doctors in India threaten to sue a politically connected, billionaire yoga guru who told followers that “allopathy [medicine] is a stupid and bankrupt science,” claimed that medicinal treatment has killed more people in India than oxygen shortages and COVID-19, and questioned why doctors get sick if medicine is so efficient. He also recorded a video mocking people who were desperately searching for oxygen cylinders for their relatives who were dying of COVID-19, urging them to “just breathe the free oxygen.” His company sells a COVID-19 cure that is made up of three herbs, falsely claims that the product has been cleared for use by WHO, and when threatened with charges for misleading claims, instead convinced the BJP government to distribute 100,000 of his kits as an immune booster. 

A new book called “Women in White Coats” looks at the “she-doctor” panic of 1869, when students of Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania attended a medical lecture at Philadalphia’s Pennsylvania Hospital. They were forced to enter via the back stairs; subject to curses, thrown objects, and tobacco-spitting by the 300 male medical students in attendance; and were stoned by the male students as they left while someone played the taunting military discharge song “The Rogues March.” The county medical society had previously barred women from attending public teaching clinics or joining medical societies.

The husbands of two IT employees of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta go into renal failure within days of each other, requiring a transplant from someone other than their wives due to blood type mismatch. The employee were sharing their stories with each other when they realized that they were each a match for the other’s husband, so they donated kidneys that were successfully transplanted.

In Case You Missed It

• News 5/28/21
• EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 5/27/21
• News 5/26/21
• Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 5/24/21
• Readers Write: How the New ONC Cures Act Will Transform Patient Access to Healthcare Data
• Readers Write: Alert: Three Keys to Navigating the Traffic Ahead on the Road to Healthcare Access
• Monday Morning Update 5/24/21

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