News 2/23/22

Top News

WellSky will acquire TapCloud, whose patient engagement platform collects a one-minute check-in that asks about their symptoms, concerns, and available support.

WellSky says the patient-generated data will expand its dataset to support the development of care models that predict patient risk factors for deploying interventions.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Should we be talking about ICD-11, which is being used in 35 countries?

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health Catalyst will acquire KPI Ninja, which offers interoperability solutions and population health analytics.

HealthStream announces Q4 results: revenue up 4%, EPS –$0.01 versus $0.03, beating expectations for both. HSTM shares are up 3% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 4% loss, valuing the company at $630 million.

Release of information solutions vendor MRO acquires competitor MediCopy.

Cerner announces Q4 results: revenue up 4%, adjusted EPS $0.93 versus $0.78. The company’s acquisition for $95 per share by Oracle remains on track for sometime in 2022. Shares closed Tuesday before the announcement at $91.83.

People

Nicole Rogas, MBA (Experian Health) joins Symplr as president.

Brian Silverstein, MD (The Chartis Group) joins Innovaccer as chief population health officer.

Global health pioneer, humanitarian, author, professor, and anthropologist Paul Farmer, MD, PhD died Monday at the university and hospital he had established in Rwanda. He was 62. The non-profit group he co-founded, Partners in Health, was an early proponent of considering social determinants of health, questioning why people were being treated for diseases and then returned to the same circumstances that had helped cause them.

Announcements and Implementations

A top pharmaceutical company deploys OptimizeRx’s digital therapy initiation workflow to streamline patient therapy initiation challenges.

DCH Health System (AL) implements real-time patient admission and discharge notification technology from Secure Exchange Solutions.

Windom Area Health (MN) rolls out telemedicine services from TeleHealth Solution for after-hours care.

Veriff announces GA of identity verification solutions for the healthcare industry that include digital health record protection, automated intake, and secure telemedicine and prescription delivery.

Government and Politics

NIH will require researchers to include a data management and sharing plan in their grant requests, which must include the software or tools that were used to analyze the data and a plan for publishing the data publicly. Information from failed or unpublished studies must also be published to potentially help other researchers. An estimated $10 to $50 billion is spent on US research whose data methods are insufficient, with most of the money coming from federal taxpayers. Experts note that most labs and institutions don’t have data managers and are likely to push the task onto trainees and early-career investigators.

A 33-year-old resident of Pakistan is sentenced to 12 years in prison and ordered to pay $48 million in restitution for submitting fraudulent Medicare claims for 20 home health agencies he had acquired in Illinois, Indiana, Nevada, and Texas using false names. Muhammad Ateeq was also ordered to forfeit a $2.4 million cashier’s check and $1 million in cash. Medicare paid his companies $40 million for services that had not been rendered, with DOJ noting that he had control of their billing and EHR systems.

Privacy and Security

HHS’s cybersecurity office publishes a report on EHRs in healthcare, which is mostly a glossy overview of the status quo. They urge healthcare organizations to  review Remote Desktop Protocol and consider protecting it with a VPN that uses multi-factor authentication, use endpoint detection and response, and implement email tools that filter URLS and move attachments to a sandbox.

Other

Some interesting thoughts on digital health companies from investor and former Livongo CFO Lee Shapiro of  7wire Ventures, interviewed by Marissa Schlueter of OMERS Ventures:

• Companies need a cash runway of 18-24 months to weather current market turbulence and should be prepared to describe their expected path to profitability to investors.
• Startups need a CFO, or at least an experienced controller, by their third year to prepare for the historical documentation that investors will want to review down the road in their C and D funding rounds.
• The market valuation of some publicly traded companies is less than the cash on their balance sheets and those could become acquirers or acquisition targets.
• Some companies suffer from Shiny Object Syndrome in expanding in too many markets or attacking multiple go-to-market channels.
• Companies whose revenue is less than $50 million will need to merge to attain the scale that is needed to address the challenges of health plans.
• Virtual-only companies could merge with brick-and-mortar companies to create an omnichannel brand.
• Shapiro recommends that investors should watch what hedge funds are doing, some of which are turning to the bargains that are available in the public market instead of private market investing.

Sponsor Updates

• Azara Healthcare has earned Certified Data Stream status for NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program.
• Bamboo Health has joined the National Association of Mobile Integrated Healthcare Providers.
• Clearwater publishes a new white paper, “Keeping Patient Data Secure in the Cloud.”
• Change Healthcare releases a new podcast, “Enterprise Imaging in the Cloud: Adoption and Outlook.”
• Enlace Health will exhibit and present at the 2022 Healthcare Bundled Payments Conference February 24-25 in Nashville.

Blog Posts

• Value-Based Care Strategies: A Roadmap for Success (Actium Health)
• NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program – What it Takes to Earn Certified Data Stream Status (Azara Healthcare)
• Important Activation Prep Activities to Ensure a Smooth Go-Live (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Bamboo Health’s OpenBeds Crisis Management Solution helping to support the New Hampshire Rapid Response System (Bamboo Health)
• Nurse Leadership Forum Middle East (Clinical Computer Systems, developer of the OBIX Perinatal Data System)
• CoverMyMeds Leaders Analyze 4 Key Trends from Medication Access Report (CoverMyMeds)
• Handling Hospital ADT Notifications with Direct Messaging (EClinicalWorks)
• Success at a glance: automating healthcare collections (Experian Health)

Contacts

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