Monday Morning Update 4/18/22

Top News

A JAMA-published study finds that sending warning emails to professional staff who were detected by monitoring technology inappropriately accessing patient EHR information reduced repeat incidents by 95%.

The study involved sending same-day emails to staff who accessed EHR charts outside of approved work purposes, as identified by Protenus technology.

Two percent of those who received the email warning committed unauthorized access a second time, while 40%  of those who were not warned did so repeatedly over several months.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Health systems and the American Hospital Association claim that hospital mergers and acquisitions should be allowed to flourish because they improve the cost and quality of the care delivered, but only 20% of poll respondents agree. Most say the acquired hospitals have higher costs, reduced services, and lower quality.

New poll to your right or here: What media-related activities have you spent at least an hour on after HIMSS22? I haven’t taken even a casual glance at conference-related audio, video, and HIMSS Accelerate postings, so I’m trying to determine whether I’m among a slothful minority.

Webinars

April 22 (Friday) 1 ET. “CMIO 3.0: What’s Next for the CMIO?” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Becket Mahnke, MD, CMIO and pediatric cardiologist, Confluence Health; Dale Sanders, chief strategy officer, IMO. The relatively short history of the CMIO role includes Version 1.0 (EHR implementation, Meaningful Use, and regulatory compliance) and Version 2.0 (quality and efficiency). Version 3.0 is at the forefront of predictive analytics, population health initiatives, and optimization of data-driven tools. The presenters will discuss the digital revolution’s impact on CMIO responsibilities; the connection between clinical informatics, analytics, population health and the CMIO; and how CMIO 3.0 will be involved in the adoption of advanced technologies.

April 28 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Undercoded and Underpaid: Making It Easier to Document to Optimize Reimbursement.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, senior director of informatics, IMO; Nicole Douglas, sales engineer, IMO. The presenters will discuss how to simplify precise documentation for clinicians; the effects of imprecise coding on reimbursement; why accurate code capture at the point of care can have positive downstream impact on population health initiatives; and how third-party solutions integrated with the EHR can reduce documentation burdens.

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

Sales

• Revo Health  implements revenue cycle automation from RCxRules.
• Canada’s Saskatchewan government chooses a virtual care platform from Lumeca Health in a three-year, $3.8 million deal.

People

Michael Dunn (SAS) joins Glytec as AVP of hospital sales.

OmniSYS hires Ann Howard, MBA (GoNoodle) as EVP of product management.

HCA Healthcare promotes Jared Mabry, MS to VP of digital patient experience.

Mike Murray, founder and CEO of healthcare cybersecurity company Scope, died April 6 at 46.

Other

In England, the president of the Royal College of GPs – who holds an ownership stake in a telehealth technology vendor – takes heat for saying in a conference that the most positive development of the pandemic was a huge boost in telehealth. The head of a senior citizens’ group disputed the assertion of Professor Dame Clare Gerada that patients prefer visits by phone or computer to those conducted in person.

Aledade CEO and former National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, MSc describes on Twitter the challenges he encountered as he and his family members fell ill with COVID-19:

• Confirmatory PCR tests are hard to get scheduled, are often available only from for-profit companies at high prices, and require several days to receive results.
• Paxlovid for treatment is widely available, but his father’s academic medical center PCP was unresponsive to messages sent via the patient portal and telephone answering machine.
• Unable to reach the PCP, he booked a virtual visit to get a Paxlovid prescription, but prescribing it requires a recent renal function test.
• He got the prescription, but the instructions were confusing, involving multiple tablets in two colors that had dosage adjustments listed on an add-on sticker.
• He tried to get bebtelovimab for his mother, and despite being in ample supply, PCPs don’t have access to it. He was able to get the monoclonal antibody infusion through the Massachusetts Department of Public Health.
• He does not agree with CDC’s recommendation that people can leave isolation five days after without requiring a negative antigen test. He says that it’s widely misunderstood by professionals that while PCR tests can keep showing positive long after the person is no longer infectious, a positive antigen test almost certainly means the person can still spread COVID-19.
• His mother tested positive a week after his father returned home with a negative antigen test, most likely due to his father’s viral shedding.
• Farzad tested positive until Day 15.
• He concludes that even people who have financial means and the knowledge and persistence to work the system may still not receive adequate treatment.

The Onion resurfaces a fine year-ago item.

Sponsor Updates

• Clearsense releases a new Tech Talk video, “Finding Value in Data by Enterprise Application Rationalization.”
• OptimizeRx will sponsor the MedDev E-Marketing Summit June 7-9 in San Diego.
• Olive, an official sponsor of the Boston Marathon, will donate proceeds from its Boston Marathon Fan Fest activities to Boston’s Children’s Hospital.
• Vocera releases a new podcast, “Leading the Evolving Healthcare Workforce – Rose O. Sherman.”
• Well Health names Istvan Kadar-Toth (Play’n Go) engineering director and Hungary site lead.
• West Monroe releases a new report, “The Future of Due Diligence in Private Equity.”

Blog Posts

• How Healthcare Providers Can Raise Awareness About the Advantages of Integrating Clinical Research into Their Practice (PatientBond)
• Initial Steps for Effective Nurse Manager Succession Planning (Symplr)
• PINC AI Data: CMS Data Underestimates Hospital Labor Spending (Premier)
• Creating a new model of care to enhance the patient experience (Talkdesk)
• 5 Considerations for Choosing a Clinical Collaboration Platform (TigerConnect)
• Innovating with Simple Digital Tools for Sustained Patient Engagement (Twistle)
• Nearly 300,000 new breast cancer cases predicted among US women this year (Volpara Health)
• Get Ready for Ascend 2022: What 10 Speakers are Saying (WebPT)
• Four Factors Contributing to the Nursing Shortage – and How Hospitals Can Help (Zynx Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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