News 10/15/21

October 14, 2021 News No Comments

Top News

Imaging management platform vendor Intelerad acquires competitor Ambra Health, whose clients include Johns Hopkins Medicine, Memorial Hermann, and New York Presbyterian.

The reported price was $250 million, valuing the combined companies at nearly $2 billion.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor EVisit. The Mesa, AZ-based company simplifies healthcare delivery with its market-leading virtual care platform, which works seamlessly across enterprise service lines and departments to improve outcomes, reduce costs, and boost revenue by enabling healthcare organizations to deliver faster, more accessible virtual care using their own network of providers across any specialty. With its distinct and leading position in the telehealth marketplace as a business-to-business company supported by a team of expert virtual care consultants, the flexible, end-to-end technology platform can match and virtualize any clinical workflow. Its system does not come with a competing provider network. EVisit is helping HCOs, including the largest systems in the US, innovate and succeed in today’s changing healthcare market. The company is the leader in the “Forrester Wave: Virtual Care Platforms in Digital Health, Q1 2021” and is a representative vendor in the “Gartner 2020 Market Guide for Virtual Care Solutions.” See them at HLTH21 next week. Thanks to EVisit for supporting HIStalk.

I found a brand new EVisit overview video on YouTube.

Webinars

October 28 (Thursday) 1 ET. “A New Streamlined Approach to Documentation and Problem List Management in Cerner Millennium.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; David Arco, product manager, IMO; Nicole Douglas, senior product marketing manager, IMO. IMO and Cerner announce the launch of the IMO Core CSmart app, an in-workflow offering to improve clinical documentation and problem list management in Cerner Millennium. The presenters will review the challenges and bottlenecks of clinical documentation and problem list management, discuss how streamlined workflows within Cerner Millennium can reduce clinician HIT burden, and demonstrate how IMO Core CSmart can help clinicians document with ease and specificity, improve HCC coding, and make problem lists more relevant. Additional sessions will be offered on November 17 and December 1.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Shares in healthcare cloud and data technology vendor Healthcare Triangle closed down 10% on their first day of trading Wednesday. They shed another 2.5% at Thursday’s market close, valuing the company at $118 million.

Medsphere acquires Plano, TX-based Systeem Medical, which offers managed IT services to medical practices.

Walgreens invests another $5.2 billion in value-based primary care center operator VillageMD, increasing its stake to 63% and supporting the opening of 1,000 in-store practices by 2027.

GetWellNetwork renames itself to Get Well.

Sales

Atlantic Health System will implement Syft’s enterprise-wide supply chain management system.
In Netherlands, Amsterdam UMC chooses Infor CloudSuite Healthcare with the support of system integrator Avaap.
Virginia Cardiovascular Specialists selects HealthSnap’s remote patient monitoring platform for chronic condition management.

People

Industry long-timer Matthew Tuck, MBA (IRIS) joins NextGen Healthcare as VP of account management.

Medical equipment tracking software vendor Cohealo hires Tom Cady (Kareo) as COO.

Announcements and Implementations

Several big-name health systems form the Advanced Care at Home Coalition advocacy group, which will seek to extend COVID-driven payment coverage for at-home care permanently.

Nordic opens a security operations center at its Madison, WI headquarters.

Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital (VA) goes live on enterprise imaging from Mach7 Technologies. Twelve Sentara hospitals have migrated 22.5 million studies from multiple PACS into Mach7’s vendor-neutral archive.

Bluestream Health announces Care Navigator, which offers patients a personalizable page and link from which they can initiate a app-free visit in which a dropped connection will reconnect automatically.

CHIME names Daniel Barchi, MEM, CIO of New York-Presbyterian Hospital, as its CIO of the Year.

GE Healthcare and Apprise Health Insights launch an HHS-funded real-time hospital occupancy solution in Oregon that will be implemented statewide next year. The system will be expanded beyond beds and ventilators to include specialty bed, PPE ED, and ECMO capacity as extracted from hospital EHRs.

A small study of the Epic Signal event log activity finds that ambulatory care network physicians who spent less time working in the EHR, especially in managing their inbox, were more likely to quit. The authors speculate that the counterintuitive findings may have been caused by physicians who were planning to leave and thus were winding down their patient activities or that EHR-proficient doctors may have been more marketable for new jobs. They also think that EHR workload or burnout is perhaps less directly related to turnover than other studies have suggested.

A Kyruus survey finds that consumers are increasingly using and preferring digital access channels to research providers, services, and care sites. Health plan websites have a strong role that is growing. Consumers place high value on understanding insurance acceptance, clinical expertise, reputation, and appointment availability and 40% of them prefer booking appointments online.

KLAS looks at health systems that manage downside risk contracts, which make up just 10% of the average system’s revenue. Successful organizations say that contract management is crucial and that interoperability with systems and payers needs to improve to apply advanced analytics. Vendors that primarily serve ambulatory providers – such as Azara Healthcare, HealthEC, and Cedar Gate Technologies – earner higher functionality ratings, while Innovaccer scores well for integration in larger organizations. Allscripts customers report frustration with interface management.

COVID-19

A highly anticipated study finds that it’s OK to mix and match initial vaccine doses and boosters, and in fact those people who initially received Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine initially mounted a stronger immune response when given a Moderna or Pfizer booster instead of another round of J&J.

FDA’s vaccine advisory committee unanimously recommends approving a half-dose booster for Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for the same high-risk groups for which Pfizer’s vaccine was cleared.

Time magazine describes how a cobbled-together chain of acquired pharmacies took advantage of loosened telehealth rules, millions in PPP loans, and demand for unproven COVID-19 treatments to make millions selling ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine at exorbitant prices via telemedicine visits, sometimes failing to deliver the expected medication to the desperate families of unvaccinated patients. Ravkoo, a “digital pharmacy” whose predecessor organization had several executives charged with running various opioid and kickback schemes, has not drawn scrutiny from the federal government even though customers – most of them referred by partner America’s Frontline Doctors — complain of price-gouging, lack of responsiveness, and threats about negative reviews.

Other

A security researcher finds that FHIR APIs are vulnerable to hacking, noting that a single log-in provided access to 4 million patient and clinician records. Every FHIR app tested gave access to the information of other people. EHR security was strong, but third-party data aggregators and mobile apps were full of security holes. The report calls for use of API security shielding solutions such as that offered by study sponsor Approov.

An EpicShare report describes how Seattle Children’s involves its patient family advisory councils in technology decisions. Parents provided input on its initial Epic and MyChart configuration for scheduling complex appointments, requesting prescription refills, and providing access to multiple caregivers. The council also tested its virtual visit access instructions for patients early in the pandemic.

Sponsor Updates

Everbridge announces that its CareConverge telemedicine solution has won a 2021 Stratus Award from the Business Intelligence Group.
Black Book Research recognizes Fortified Health Security as a top outsourcing vendor for cybersecurity.
Jvion CMO John Frownfelter, MD will present a Tech Talk on AI and health equity at HLTH October 18 in Boston.
Kyruus publishes its fifth annual “Patient Access Journey Report.”
University of Michigan Health-West expands its adoption of Nuance’s Dragon Ambient EXperience across its entire primary care group.

Blog Posts