Hard agree, and not just because I'm a spreadsheet nerd. Why are we all here? Isn't it in the service…
News 4/8/22
Top News
UnitedHealth Group and Change Healthcare extend their merger closing deadline to December 31.
Courts will review DOJ’s lawsuit in August. If DOJ’s merger challenge is upheld, UHG’s Optum will pay a $650 million breakup fee to Change.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Orbita. Innovative healthcare, life sciences, and medical technology organizations rely on the Boston-based company to power high-value virtual assistants for digital front door applications, remote patient support, pre and post-visit outreach, and other critical interactions throughout the care journey. Orbita’s robust conversational platform is designed for both developers and business users to quickly build, deploy, and easily manage “Automation with Empathy” virtual assistants for smart speakers, web and mobile chat apps, text messaging applications, interactive voice systems, and custom devices. Orbita’s platform is HIPAA compliant and SOC2 certified. Its customers and partners include Medstar Health, Mayo Clinic, Philips Healthcare, Amwell, Janssen, Medtronic, Yale New Haven Hospital, Bristol Myers Squibb, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, and others. Thanks to Orbita for supporting HIStalk.
Webinars
On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
Here’s the video of this week’s webinar from Mend titled “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits,” along with the accompanying ebook.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
RCM provider Aspirion acquires health system RCM outsourcer ARx.
Eon, which use computational linguistics to identify patients with incidental findings, raises a $16 million growth equity investment.
IntelyCare, whose platform matches freelance nurses with available shifts, raises $115 million in a Series C funding round that values the company at $1.1 billion.
Clarify Health, whose software performs “Moneyball”-type analytics to identify optimal care interventions and therapies, raises $150 million in a Series D funding round.
AI-powered diagnosis system vendor Viz.ai raises $100 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $1.2 billion.
Walmart opens five Walmart Health centers in Florida, which offer primary care, labs, X-ray, EKG, behavioral health, dental, optical, hearing, and care navigation. The centers, the company’s first in Florida, will be open seven days per week, covering Sundays with telehealth only. The company’s announcement notes that its Florida locations will be the first to use Epic.
Sales
- DME/HME software provider Bonafide Medical Group chooses Clearwater’s ClearAdvantage cybersecurity and HIPAA compliance managed services program.
People
Cerner hires former US Army Major General Patrick Sargent, MS (OptumServe) as SVP/GM of Cerner Government Services and promotes Alaa Adel, MBA to SVP/President of Cerner Global.
Brent Michael (Eye Care Leaders) joins DrChrono as president.
Health data curation vendor Verinovum hires Mureen Allen, MD, MS, MA (UnitedHealth Group) as CMIO.
Announcements and Implementations
The EU clears the AI-powered chest X-ray analyzer of Lithuania-based Oxipit to be used autonomously without radiologist review to identify images as showing no abnormalities.
Surescripts enhances its the patient matching capabilities of its MPI to include additional demographic data, which identified 2.2% additional medications in last month’s use.
Other
An Axios investigative article (which I can’t read because it is paywalled) says that startup Olive, which is valued at $4 billion, doesn’t deliver on its promises to save money and caregiver time, sometimes generating only a fraction of the savings it promises.
Sponsor Updates
- Net Health announces that its rehabilitation outcomes management system is now available in Epic’s App Orchard.
- Lyniate has been selected for inclusion within Epic’s Garden Plot SaaS model for independent medical groups.
- PeriGen wins Best AI Product in Health for its PeriWatch Vigilance solution at the 2022 CogX Awards.
- EVisit publishes a new Insights Report, “The Cost of Expanding Telehealth; Future-proofing Healthcare; Telehealth and Disabilities, & More.”
- Healthcare Triangle will present at the Noble Capital Markets Investor Conference April 20-21 in Miami.
- Surescripts introduces new innovations in patient matching through its master patient index that will improve more patient and provider experiences across a number of its solutions.
- Nordic releases a new podcast, “The value of data infrastructure modernization for the health system.”
Blog Posts
- Crossings Healthcare Solutions is better than ever, with some new faces! (Crossings Healthcare Solutions)
- Accessing Healthcare: Easing Digital Frictions in the Patient Journey (Experian Health)
- Deploying Digital Technology for Health Equity (Get Well)
- Change Management Metrics: Define Targets and Track Progress in Your Organization (Impact Advisors)
- Natural Language Processing 101: A guide to NLP in clinical documentation (Intelligent Medical Objects)
- Symptom Checker: Answering Health Questions in Real Time + Easing the ER Burden (Loyal Health)
- Analytics to Drive Hospital Performance Improvement (Medhost)
- A Quick Guide to HIPAA Physical Therapy Guidelines in 2022 (MWTherapy)
- Wound Care Clinics Could Really Benefit from Predictive Analytics (NetHealth)
- KLAS gives DAX an A in its Emerging Technology Spotlight Report (Nuance)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
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Contact us.
Good to finally see some journalistic investigation into Olive… took the 14 day trial to give this a read, the allegations are troubling and awfully reminiscent of Outcome Health & Theranos. I imagine will start seeing more soon.
In reading the article, I think it’s a classic Silicon Valley over-raising story, which as you noted, does not work well in healthcare. Sell a big vision (“the internet of healthcare”), do whatever it takes to get signed contracts including promising something you know you can’t deliver, and then hope that you can figure it out before it blows up in your face. It’s always interesting to see the lengths that these companies go to try to distract people from reality – Olive builds fancy, modern offices at client sites and drives around in a purple bus – without actually spending the money delivering on promises. Between an abrasive culture and realized revenue woes, it will exciting to see who ends up holding the bag. Maybe Sean will be able to successfully avoid a lengthy FBI investigation for misleading investors with disingenuous accounting unlike the other two, but we’ll see…
Pretty shoddy “journalism” by Axios. Fundamental misunderstanding of HIPAA. Clearly not reviewed by anyone with tech expertise. Clickbait.