News 10/20/21

Top News

General Catalyst and Jefferson Health form an innovation partnership in which the health system will use technologies from the venture capital firm’s Health Assurance Network of companies.

GC’s Health Assurance Network portfolio includes Commure, Tendo, Transcarent, and Olive.

The announcement suggests that Jefferson will de-emphasize the “hundreds of technology solutions who are vying for a piece of the hospital system’s growing technology budget” and instead will give preference to the General Catalyst-backed vendors.

Retiring Jefferson Health CEO Stephen Klasko, MD, MBA co-wrote “Unhealthcare: A Health Assurance Manifesto” with General Catalyst managing partner and billionaire Hemant Taneja last year.

Reader Comments

From Yuma Dew: “Re: having a PCP who knows you. It seems more important that they know your data.” I agree that “knowing about me” is a lot more important and achievable than “knowing me.” One of the most important clinician functions should be contributing and consuming patient data across providers, even though patients have low expectations and payers don’t seem to care. Thoughts:

• My direct primary care doctor “knows me” because of the nature of that kind of relationship, but I doubt that has much impact on my health. She still documents the elements she needs to remember.
• I don’t have records from other providers to review, but if I did, I should expect (and prepare to be disappointed) that they will be available if needed.
• The provider should review my documentation before my visit, whether in-person or virtual, so they aren’t wasting our limited time together. Taking a 10-second glance at a printout before knocking on the exam room door is not ideal.
• EHRs aren’t always ideal at allowing providers to tag those parts of a patient’s record that they find especially important or relevant.
• The provider should document whatever is important to both of us even if it is in narrative form. My perception of symptoms her to-do items for down the road are as important as recording conveniently numeric lab or vital signs data. For that reason, Microsoft Word with speech-to-text might be a better documentation platform than an EHR if it didn’t have to generate bills.
• We should all choose providers who value our data, maintain it rigorously, and share it with us so we can verify its accuracy and understand their thought process. That data should paint a concise picture for another provider who receives our records via interoperability.
• Every provider who is being paid to work on the patient’s behalf — specialist, telehealth, therapist, pharmacy, urgent care, etc. — should be held accountable for documenting their work into the patient’s “permanent record” that at this stage of interoperability is mostly a pipe dream. By definition, they are documenting what is important to them, so that same information would likely be important to other providers and thus to the patient. Why should we expect less?

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

Israel-based Navina, whose AI model turns point-of-care data into a “Patient Portrait” for PCPs, raises $15 million in a Series A funding round. The co-founders worked in Israel’s military intelligence AI labs.

Privacy-enforcing data sharing platform vendor TripleBlind raises $24 million in a Series A funding round that includes the participation of Mayo Clinic.

Trinity Health (MI) invests $1 million in digital prescription referral vendor Xealth, increasing its Series B funding round to $25 million.

Redi.Health raises $1.3 million in seed funding to develop technologies and services for chronic disease management. Offerings currently include a patient-facing app with medication management, symptom tracker, educational content, and PHR. The startup offers pharma support companies the ability to integrate their services with the app. Co-founder and CEO Luke Buchanan was previously with CoverMyMeds, as was co-founder and Head of Business Development Nate Rehm.

Insiteflow raises $2.3 million. The company has developed integration software to enhance the interoperability between third-party apps and EHRs.

Health insurer software vendor HealthEdge will acquire Wellframe, which offers digital health management solutions for health plans.

Sales

• UnityPoint Health (IA) will work with B.well Connected Health to offer patients access to all of its digital health tools in a single app.

People

Fivos hires Susan Andrise (Global Payments) as CFO.

Availity names former US Navy SEAL Jim McNary (Consortium Health Plans) COO.

Remote patient monitoring platform vendor Veta Health hires James Sutcliffe (DayToDay Health) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

InnovaQor subsidiary Health Technology Solutions announces GA of virtual CIO services focused on IT infrastructure security and management.

Grand Rounds Health and Doctor on Demand rebrand as Included Health, the name of the healthcare navigation and care concierge vendor the merged companies acquired several months ago.

Other

A CHIME survey of member CISOs finds that nearly 50% have experienced a phishing email or compromising business email at their organizations within the last year, while nearly 30% have suffered through an EHR or system outage. Fifteen percent have experienced a patient safety incident related to a cyber event, and 10% have had to divert patients as a result. Top areas of needed cybersecurity assistance include grants and federal assistance, and on-site guidance and expertise from cybersecurity experts associated with regional extension centers.

Sponsor Updates

• Change Healthcare releases a new podcast, “Cost Transparency: Driving Better, More Informed Care Decisions.”
• CHIME releases a new Digital Health Leaders Podcast featuring John Kravitz, chairman of the CHIME Board of Trustees and CIO of Geisinger Health, and Marc Potash, founder and CEO of Certify Global.
• Clearwater Chief Risk Officer and SVP of Consulting Services Jon Moore will present at The Healthcare MSO Conference October 22 in
• Dimensional Insight announces it has been named a top performer in KLAS Research’s “Data and Analytics Platforms 2021” report.
• Tegria publishes a new case study featuring Engage, “EHR Implementation Project Transcends Multiple Natural Disasters.”
• EZDI will exhibit at the ACDIS Conference October 25-28 in Dallas.
• Healthcare Triangle advances to Google Cloud Premier Partner status based on its success in building, deploying, and managing Google Cloud solutions for healthcare and life sciences organizations

Blog Posts

• Critical Insight’s 2021 Health Data Breach Report (AdvancedMD)
• Introducing Bluestream Health Care Navigator: The Future of Virtual Care (Bluestream)
• PPCP and CarePort: Complex care management (CarePort)
• Alert Fatigue: A Story from the Patient’s Perspective (CereCore)
• How Care Coordination Activities Create the Blueprint for Positive Patient Outcomes (ChartSpan)
• Healthcare Remains a Target for Cyberattack (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Imagining Forward – The Personal Health Record (CloudWave)
• From Potential to Power: How Verisk and Diameter Health are Harnessing the Untapped Potential in Raw Clinical Data to Drive Underwriting Decisions (Diameter Health)
• Delivering In-Home Care: Technology is Key to Solving Complex Challenges (Dina)
• Five Best Practices for Virtual Care Training (EVisit)
• No Surprises Act Summary: What your organization needs to know (Experian Health)

Contacts

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