RE: Change HC/RansomHub, now that the data is for sale, what is the federal govt. or DOD doing to protect…
News 2/25/22
Top News
Teladoc Health reports Q4 results: revenue up 45%, EPS -$0.07 versus -$3.07, beating Wall Street expectations for both.
TDOC shares dropped sharply on Wednesday following the announcement, then gained 12% on Thursday. They are down 76% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s flat performance, valuing the company at $11 billion.
Teladoc was touted in August 2020 as having created a $37 billion company with its acquisition of Livongo for $18.5 billion.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
I’m declining to speculate further on attendance at ViVE and HIMSS22 since they are just 10 and 18 days away, respectively. You’re either going or not at this point. The conference and healthcare attendee environment has been reset since the pre-pandemic, pre-virtual status quo, so it’s early days in figuring out what that market wants in education and networking.
Meanwhile, I received an email from HIMSS whose subject line suggests that the healthcare-irrelevant former occupations of its keynote speakers is the big draw.
Listening: video from the 2014 reunion concert – the surprisingly excellent first of many shows after a 16-year break – of one of my favorite bands, Failure. My favorite track: Daylight. The alt-rockers are touring this summer and my ticket procurement process is underway to make up for considering but not attending that 2014 LA show.
Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor VisiQuate. The Santa Rosa, CA-based company empowers healthcare organizations to achieve peak business health, through expert service-enabled technologies that dramatically improve performance and reduce process waste. They deliver optimized enterprise outcomes through a unique combination of complex data curation, deep AI & ML, advanced analytics, and intelligent process automation. Thanks to VisiQuate for supporting HIStalk.
An obvious core competency of VisiQuate is creating compelling and enjoyable videos, so instead of the usual explainer, I’ve chosen from YouTube a fun company overview set to the tune of “I Will Survive.” You may sing along.
Webinars
None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Allscripts reports Q4 results: revenue up 1%, adjusted EPS $0.79 versus $0.20.
Specialty remote patient monitoring vendor Story Health raises $23 million in a Series A funding round.
Omada Health, which offers virtual-first chronic condition care, raises $192 million in a Series E funding round that values the company at $1 billion.
Sales
- Northern Ireland’s Health and Social Care Board chooses medication ordering decision support from First Databank.
- Ciox Health will implement Diameter Health’s Fusion engine to transform patient medical record data into analytics-ready form.
People
Meditech adds COO to the title of 32-year company veteran EVP Helen Waters. The COO role was previously held by President and CEO Michelle O’Connor before her promotion in early 2021.
Patrick Murta (Humana) joins BehaVR as chief platform architect.
Umar Afridi, MPharm, co-founder and CEO of pharmacy fulfillment, telehealth, and diagnostic provider Truepill, is replaced by co-founder and president Sid Viswanathan.
Mark Citrone (Healthfinch) joins Doximity as AVP of national sales.
Announcements and Implementations
Medhost announces two solutions that address CMS’s Promoting Interoperability Program, a Cures 2023 Interoperability Solution and Electronic Case Reporting.
A economic study by healthcare market analytics company Trilliant Health finds that only about one-fourth of Americans have had a telehealth-based encounter during the pandemic and half of those had just one encounter (often to obtain a COVID-19 test), suggesting that people use it mostly when in-person visits aren’t available. The study says that the law of small numbers makes it seem that telehealth is enjoying accelerated adoption, but in reality it hasn’t impacted many people, especially those who need it most, and it hasn’t bridged the gap in available in-person primary care visits. Behavioral care is an exception, where many people prefer virtual visits. The study notes that while the marginal cost of offering a telehealth visit is effectively zero, the retail cost ranges from $59 to $75 and the patient’s payment portion increased by 110% from 2020 to 2021.
A new KLAS report on medication inventory management (par levels, clean room, facility-to-facility transfer tracking, formulary management, ordering and receiving) finds that Epic has the top-rated functionality even though the company’s doesn’t specialize in pharmacy. Customers of Swisslog are least likely to achieve outcomes such as improved compliance, inventory transparency, purchasing efficiency, and usage efficiency and are also least-satisfied with their vendor relationship.
Government and Politics
The Department of Justice sues to block the $13 billion acquisition of Change Healthcare by UnitedHealth Group, saying that the deal would give the insurer details on how competing insurers bill and then undercut them. DOJ also says that UHG could withhold Change Healthcare’s products from its competitors, keep innovations for itself, and give UHG a monopoly in how claims are checked for errors.
Epic sues non-practicing entity (aka patent troll) GreatGigz Solutions for shaking down Christus Health to pay it licensing fees for its use of MyChart. GreatGiz bought some old online job recruiting patents that is says MyChart infringes on and is demanding that Christus buy licenses. GreatGigz has similarly sued Lyft, Uber, DoorDash, Postmates, CVS Health, Subway, ZipRecruiter, Target, Freelancer, Robert Half International, and countless other companies in hopes that they decide that it’s cheaper to pay GreatGigz to go away than to shovel money into mounting a defense. Epic has historically been one of few companies willing to do whatever it takes to defend itself, and in this case, the involvement of one of its customers is likely to unleash its legal dogs.
Privacy and Security
Ireland’s health service says the cost of last year’s ransomware attack has reached nearly $50 million and could rise to over $100 million.
Other
A large Medscape physician survey looks at burnout:
- Nearly half of physician respondents said they feel burned out, up 4% from 2020, with female doctors reporting higher rates and critical care being the highest percentage specialty.
- Sixty percent of doctors say bureaucratic tasks, such as charting and paperwork, are the main issue, double the #2 factor of lack of respect. Computer issues rank #6, with about one-third of respondents naming it as a problem.
- Doctors say the three things that would most reduce their burnout are a better work schedule, higher pay, and more respect (I would say that “higher pay” was more of an aspiration since money isn’t likely to eliminate burnout, just make it more cost effective).
Sponsor Updates
- PerfectServe publishes a new report, “The Rise of Emoji in Healthcare Communication.”
- TransformativeMed launches its Cores Intelligent Care Platform on Olive’s marketplace, The Library.
- Get Well publishes a new white paper, “Today’s Health Equity Goal: Shifting from Headlines to Impact.”
- Imprivata has recognized partners Softcat, Conecto, Data#3, and SVA with its international IPartner Awards.
- The Engage Your Tribe Podcast features NextGate VP of Global Marketing Richard Dark.
Blog Posts
- Committed to Veterans: Get Well Government Services Year in Review (Get Well)
- CMS Has Decided to Put its Muscle Behind Glycemic Management – Why Now? (Glytec)
- Survey Illustrates Importance of a Strategic Approach to Healthcare Cloud Investment (Healthcare Triangle)
- Hiring and Coaching Leaders to Transform Healthcare (feat. Sarah Richardson) (HCI Group)
- The Benefits of Healthcare Revenue Cycle Outsourcing (Impact Advisors)
- From quality measurement to quality care (Intelligent Medical Objects)
- Discussing top IT trends with a fellow innovation enthusiast (Meditech)
- What is patient engagement for a Chief Medical Information Officer? A guide for CEOs (Nuance)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Contact us.
Hats off to Epic and Judy for supporting their client and directly going after that patent troll. Too many companies just roll over as they don’t want to deal with the hassle, thereby leaving these patent trolls free to roam.
Epics legal team is net harmful to the world, I’d recommend not working on it from an ethical perspective. Reducing risk for customers and generating good press is an easy business decision to make as a cash rich company owned by one person.
Well, isn’t it great that the “one person” who owns the “cash rich company” pledged 99% of her profits from the company to go to philanthropic ventures, going so far as to lock her shares away for thousands of years to ensure the company does not go public.
Or would you rather the money go to the patent troll?
I don’t have any strong opinion on that person. Both of those things can be seen in in the light you want to see them. Charity is an easy way to gain status when you’re rich and some peoples top priority is that they don’t lose control of their creations. I’m too far away from her in a social or societal sense to pass judgement, but her I would say a met positive. The Epic legal team though just does what they’re told even when that thing is harmful for the country and they should have had enough backbone to disagree. They like to win cases and are pretty impressed with themselves. I guess they are pretty good at that, but that’s about as good or impressive to me as juggling.