Monday Morning Update 6/28/21

Top News

Health Catalyst will acquire patient engagement technology vendor Twistle, which it says will allow it to offer a comprehensive population health management solution to healthcare providers and life sciences companies.

SEC filings indicate that Health Catalyst will pay up to $170 million for Twistle, which has $8 million in annual revenue and will lose an expected $3 million in 2022.

Reader Comments

From William Pay: “Re: Doxo. Our hospital is getting complaints from patients about Doxo. The consumer bill pay network is paying for Google search results for specific hospital names.” Doxo came up in the top handful of my Google results for some randomly chosen hospital names plus “online bill pay.” The link leads to specific webpages that Doxo has created for those hospitals. Each hospital’s Doxo page clearly says that Doxo has no connection to that hospital. Doxo has generated 185 complaints on the Better Business Bureau website, quite a few of them from people who had problems with fees or delayed payment resulting from their use of Doxo to pay their hospital bills. Several business and city government websites have warned their customers against using Doxo, with some of them directly calling Doxo a scam.

From Informatics MD: “Re: Epic Sepsis Model. The published work is important and highlights the need for internal validation, but their experience is not shared by our institution or others we’ve interfaced with since. The implication is that health systems implemented the model without validation or careful oversight. We validated it in a unique, limited setting (the ED) and found its performance to be acceptable enough to proceed with cautious implementation through a controlled quality improvement intervention. Our results are forthcoming, although we can’t discuss them yet due to standard journal embargo policy.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Personal connections enabled half of poll respondents to get their present jobs.

New poll to your right or here: Should companies pay remote workers based on their local cost of living?

Webinars

June 30 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “From quantity to quality: The new frontier for clinical data.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Dale Sanders, chief strategy officer, IMO; John Lee, MD, CMIO, Allegheny Health Network. EHRs generate more healthcare data than ever, but that data is of low quality for secondary uses such as population health, precision medicine, and pandemic management, and its collection burdens clinicians as data entry clerks. The presenters will review ways to reduce clinician EHR burden; describe the importance of standardized, harmonious data; suggest why quality measures strategy needs to be changed; and make the case that clinical data collection as a whole should be re-evaluated.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Shares of Doximity closed at $55.98 on Friday, valuing the physician social network platform vendor at $10 billion. The company booked $207 million in revenue and $50 million in net income in the latest fiscal year. CEO Jeff Tangney has beneficial ownership of $3 billion worth of shares.

Announcements and Implementations

HIMSS announces that Dwight Schrute from “The Office” (actor Rainn Wilson) will keynote at HIMSS21. HIMSS says he will deliver a hilarious, insightful talk full of anecdotes and warmth.

Government and Politics

Britain’s Health Secretary Matt Hancock resigns after a tabloid publishes photos of him kissing a health advisor-lobbyist in early May before indoor cross-household contact was allowed under national COVID-19 restrictions. He and the advisor, who he appointed, are married to others. The government is investigating whether the photos were intentionally leaked. Hancock’s replacement will be former Chancellor and Home Secretary Sajid David. 

Other

UF Health (FL) restores its EHR at its Leesburg and The Villages campuses after nearly a month of ransomware-caused downtime.

Sponsor Updates

• Divurgent launches a Customer Experience Program focused on creating additional value for its clients before, during, and after an engagement.
• Vocera announces that its solutions are used in six out of 10 children’s hospitals included in the latest US News & World Report honor roll.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new customer success story, “Record Retrieval Made Easy with Prisma.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT adds The University of Texas at San Antonio Alumni Association to its Optimum CareerPath apprenticeship program.
• Summit Healthcare publishes a new client use case, “Cody Regional Health Enlists Summit Healthcare’s Integration Services to Support Epic Migration.”
• EY announces that Protenus co-founder and CEO Nick Culbertson is an Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 Mid-Atlanta Award finalist.
• Parity.org includes Quil Health on its 2021 Best Companies for Women to Advance list.
• Ascom expands its Unite software ecosystem with the addition of the new Unite Collaborate communication application.
• Twistle publishes a new case study, “ChristianaCare: Improving Detection and Management of Postpartum Hypertension.
• Well Health receives a Rising Star Award as part of the 2020-2021 South Coast Business & Technology Awards.
• Vyne Medical releases a new podcast, “The New Era of Patient Access and Revenue Cycle.”

Blog Posts

• Automating Clinical Workflows with AI (Nuance)
• #Innovate4Outcomes: Expanding Professional Healthcare Communities for Innovative Collaboration (OptimizeRx)
• Keeping Us Productive, Safe, and Supported: Enterprise IT (Netsmart)
• Healthcare Technology Consumers Wan to Use After the Pandemic (PatientBond)
• Pivot Point Consulting Celebrates 10 Years: 10 Things We’ve Learned (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Positive Takeaways from 2020 – Empathy, Understanding, and Flexibility (Summit Healthcare)
• Gen Z Has Arrived, What Does It Mean for Telehealth? (PMD)
• Banner Health’s Three Innovative Supply Chain Strategies During COVID-19 (Premier)
• The Key to Denial Management in Healthcare: Intervene on the Front End (RCxRules)
• Clear Communication Benefits Both Patients and Providers (RxRevu)
• Using Telehealth to Enhance Consumers’ Overall Health Experience (SOC Telemed)
• Identifying and Removing Communication Barriers in Healthcare Experiences (Avtex)
• Connect 21: In person or virtual – we’re here for you (Spok)
• Network Upgrades in the Name of Patient Safety (Surescripts)
• The ultimate guide to customer satisfaction (Talkdesk)
• What’s Old is New Again: Custom Development and Integration in a Post-EHR World (Tegria)
• Lessons from ISPOR 2021: The Importance of Real-World Data and Real-World Evidence in Chronic Disease Research and the Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic (TriNetX)
• The future of Medicare Advantage: What providers need to know (Waystar)
• Breaking News: The CDC Recommends Rehab Therapy for Patients with Long COVID (WebPT)

Contacts

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