Monday Morning Update 6/20/22

Top News

VA OIG finds that at least 148 veterans in Inland Northwest were harmed by a Cerner software flaw that the company was aware of, but failed to disclose to the VA.

The VA OIG’s draft report concludes that the Cerner system failed to deliver 11,000 orders for specialty care and lab work due to unrecognized locations that sent the mismatched orders to the “unknown queue.” Each order had to be reviewed and re-entered by VA employees.

A statement from Oracle said the company will bring additional resources to the VA’s Cerner program.

VA OIG contacted four Cerner employees for further information. Two of them, including a Cerner VP, did not respond to repeated requests, while the other two offered no reason that the VA wasn’t notified of the problem.

Meanwhile, the VA will delay further Cerner rollouts until 2023 to ensure “adequate reliability.” Puget Sound VA’s go-live that was scheduled for August will now take place in March 2023, while VA Portland will move its implementation from November to April 2023.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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New poll to your right or here: How will US healthcare cost and quality be affected by Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Optum UK will acquire Leeds-based healthcare software vendor EMIS Group Plc for $1.5 billion in cash.

Virtual mental health provider Talkspace reportedly rejects the acquisition overtures of Amwell. Talkspace turned down a previous offer for $465 million, with its valuation now at $256 million versus its IPO market cap of $1.4 billion.

Sales

• Visage Imaging extends its agreements with Sutter Health and WellSpan Health.
• In the UK, Homerton Healthcare chooses Sectra for enterprise imaging.
• Boston Children’s Hospital will replace Cerner with Epic, as internally announced Friday. Its physician group is already using Epic.

People

Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company, names Ryan Sousa (Seattle Children’s) as VP of data and analytics.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic will apply to join TEFCA later this year as a Qualified Health Information Network.

Other

Australia’s My Health Record continues to see low participation despite its $1.4 billion cost since 2012. Consumers are finding that their information is incomplete due to lack of provider data submissions, with ED doctors and nurses accessing the records of just 2% of patients.

A reader-forwarded research article notes that an American family of four who is covered by an employer’s PPO plan will spend $30,000 per year on healthcare in 2022, up 20% from 2020. Hospitals took 51% of the total.

I was fascinated by this look back at telemedicine in the US, which included these milestones:

• A Lancet article from 1879 noted the benefit of diagnosis by telephone.
• A Dutch physician won the Nobel Prize for his work in developing an early electrocardiogram, as described in a paper from 1903.
• A magazine publisher who also invented the first home radio receiver looked at radio’s potential for medical diagnosis in 1925, which predicted use of a “teledactyl” in which doctors would examine patients remotely with robotic arms.
• An RSNA paper from 1950 described the use of sending X-rays over the telephone in the Philadelphia area, predicting that it would revolutionize care in rural hospitals.
• Two Nebraska hospitals 112 miles apart established a TV link in 1948 that was used for psychiatric diagnosis, speech therapy, and seminars.
• NASA funded remote monitoring for astronauts that was later used to support a mobile health unit for Arizona’s Tohono O’odham tribe.
• An article published in 2000 titled “The Internet versus the telephone: what is telehealth anyway?” concluded that the Internet would become a critical aspect of telecare.

Sponsor Updates

• West Monroe staff in Dallas deliver 46 meals to Meals on Wheels clients.
• OneMedNet appoints Eric Asbury to its board.
• Pivot Point Consulting promotes Harold Cramer, Jr. to director, managed services service desk.
• Quil collaborates with AI and IoT company People Power to bring innovative, AI-enabled health tech to seniors aging at home.
• Juniper Networks publishes a white paper titled “Improve Patient Outcomes and Reduce Costs with AI-Driven Networking.”
• RCxRules publishes a new e-book, “Simplify Your Revenue Cycle Workflow Through Automation.”
• TriNetX partners with Finnish Biobanks to increase clinical and biomedical trials in Finland.
• Vocera publishes a new case study, “UnityPoint Health Allen Hospital – Relieving Nurse Burden and Strengthening Safety.”

Blog Posts

• Avia Insights: Q&A with Matthew Sappern of PeriGen: Making Childbirth safer (PeriGen)
• Introducing the Value Analysis Maturity Curve: A Five-Step Guide (Symplr)
• Bringing the Joy Back to Medicine with PINC AI Clinical Decision Support (Premier)
• How Large AMC Took a Proactive Approach to Drug Diversion Monitoring (Protenus)
• The Full Range of Digital Health Strategy Positions – What’s Yours? (Quil)
• Get more value from the cloud (and skip to the good part) (Redox)
• Interoperability: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty? (Surescripts)
• Improving the customer experience: A 6 step guide for call centers (Talkdesk)
• Preventing Breast Cancer Requires a New Approach to Screening and Detection (Twistle)
• The Unexpected Drivers of PT Patient Success (WebPT)
• Leadership Voices: Isabelle Meyer Stapf on How Parenting Lessons Can Make You a Better Leader (Well Health)
• RPM Benefits Patients and Caregivers (VitalTech)

Contacts

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