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Monday Morning Update 5/16/22

May 15, 2022 News 2 Comments

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Remote monitoring and financial incentives had no impact on readmissions or deaths among discharged heart failure patients, a randomized clinical trial finds.

Participants were given a digital scale, a monitored pill bottle for diuretics, and daily “regret lottery” incentives for providing medication and weight measures from the previous day.

The authors conclude that success may require earlier or deeper patient engagement and might need to include unrelated issues that cause HF readmissions.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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These are timely poll results since former Vanderbilt nurse RaDonda Vaught was sentenced Friday to three years of probation (no jail time) following her conviction on negligent homicide charges after killing a patient by giving the wrong medication. Most poll respondents favor open investigations and a review of the work setting rather than charging clinicians with a crime or revoking their license. I spent time reviewing technology-related medical errors in a large academic medical center and the “Swiss cheese effect” is real, where errors were rarely caused by one rogue, incompetent clinician but rather by a series of unusually aligned events, such as systems going down, drug shortages that required substituting an unfamiliar alternative, and lack of coordination in workload-necessitated handoffs among clinicians who weren’t accustomed to working together. It’s not like insurance fraud, where someone takes individual illegal action in return for payment. It’s more like a skilled programmer who makes an honest mistake that affects users because they are overworked or undertrained and the programmer’s employer doesn’t run a competent QA function.

New poll to your right or here: What will be the impact on Epic when CEO Judy Faulkner is no longer involved? She will turn 79 this year and the company’s succession plan will eventually take effect. We saw dramatic changes when Cerner CEO and Chairman Neal Patterson died in 2017, leaving the company without its leader and most visible co-founder for the first time in its 38-year history.

I’m getting more of my “People” updates from LinkedIn since organizations don’t always issue formal announcements. Connect with me and I’ll see and possibly mention your job change. Minimal effort is required and there’s no downside.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

West Monroe will expand its its digital services business in Western Europe, opening new offices and hiring 1,000 employees.

Amwell announces Q1 results: revenue up 11%, EPS –$0.26 versus –$0.16, missing analyst expectations for both. AMWL shares are down 88% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 6.6% gain, valuing the company at $855 million. The company spent most of the earnings call talking about Converge, a technology platform that it says will improve patient connectivity and user experience when interacting with providers and payers.


Sales

  • The UK’s Kent NHS trusts choose Sectra’s enterprise imaging system.

People

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Community Health Systems promotes Paul Novak to CIO.


Announcements and Implementations

TriNetX enhances its real-world research offerings by launching Follow the Patient, which allows researchers to segment, tag, and monitor de-identified patients over months or years.

Hospitals of Community Health Systems that offer OB services implement PeriGen’s PeriWatch Vigilance for maternal-fetal early warning.

HLTH retools its November conference to push attendees into the exhibit hall (or in its own buzzwords, “focus on audience journeys–tailoring pathways through content, programs, and meetings based on a deeper learning about each population and individual that interacts with us.”) Attendees will be required to sit in the exhibit hall for sessions and meals, the conference will emphasize the “hosted buyer” format in which healthcare buyer attendees earn registration discounts for meeting with vendors, and both HLTH and ViVE will offer a digital health innovation track that is co-sponsored with investment company StartUp Health.


Other

South Korea requires hospitals to install video surveillance cameras in operating rooms to record all surgeries involving general anesthesia, as lawmakers address widespread reports of “ghost surgeries” in which doctors turn procedures over to unsupervised assistants. The problem arose in the 2010s as the government started promoted medical tourism and plastic surgeons took advantage of demand by allowing nurses, assistants, and even medical device technicians to perform procedures. The practice then spread to spinal surgery centers that saw a profitable opportunity when faced with high demand and few available doctors to perform relatively uncomplicated surgeries.

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I missed this earlier. Netherlands-based Aimedis creates Aimedis Health City, which it calls “the first hospital chain in the metaverse” in which de-identified data will be exchanged and monetized. It plans to offer provider advertising, virtual consultations, patient and clinician interaction, education, and rehab courses. It will offer space for rent or purchase using its own NFT marketplace.


Sponsor Updates

  • Tegria partners with the One Roof Foundation and Duwamish River Community Coalition to provide asthma remediation items to local families.
  • OptimizeRx will present at the RBC Healthcare Conference May 17-18 in New York City.
  • Olive publishes a new analysis, “Long COVID leads to longer hospital stays, time in OR.”
  • HLTH releases a new podcast featuring Optum MedExpress CEO Kristi Henderson, NP.
  • Community Health Systems will present encouraging results seen after its implementation of PeriGen’s Vigilance early warning and clinical decision support system at the IHI Patient Safety Congress May 16-18 in Dallas.
  • Talkdesk has won 2022 Top Rated Awards for contact center, call center workforce optimization, call recording, and VoIP.
  • Twistle will exhibit at the OR Business Management Conference May 16-18 in San Antonio.
  • Volpara Health will exhibit at the SBI/ACR Breast Imaging Symposium May 16-19 in Savannah.
  • Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new book, “Coping with COVID-19: The Mental, Medical, and Social Consequences of the Pandemic.”
  • Zen Healthcare IT achieves HITRUST risk-based, two-year certification to mitigate risk in third-party privacy and security.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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Currently there are "2 comments" on this Article:

  1. I think it’s a bit weird to speculate on this founder change topic since that probably entails a significant change or end of someone’s personal life.
    For epic, I think the succession plan is really clear, the ownership goes to a trust and the management mostly stays the same at the top level. there can be decades and decades of personal profiting for the top brass; it would be really hard to run the company into the ground at this point.
    Meditech is the more interesting one. There’s one founder that controls most of the company either through direct ownership or through a profit sharing trust. They are much more hands off in company operations but do some small approving and vetoing. Meditech could bankrupt itself in a decade if it really screwed up. And there’s so much more that can quickly go wrong when the relationships change from founders still having the final word to multiple inheritors owning a company run by a set of long time employees. The existence of a third plausible vendor makes the hospital EHR market different both market structure wise and from the government’s perspective on a monopoly that the gov had a role in creating.

  2. Is it really a surprise that various incentives (for patients or clinicians) doesn’t change readmission rates? These are multifactorial processes, the attribution models are erratic (at best), and the actual incentives are minuscule. Plus the additional documentation and reporting requirements are burdensome. And that’s on the provider side. On the patient side, we know from years of research and experience that behavioral changes are difficult and hard to maintain. The current CMS approaches are unworkable and not consistent with the evidence. This is not just an issue of “earlier or deeper patient engagement” or inclusion of “unrelated issues that cause HF readmissions.” New payment mechanisms and incentives are essential!







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