News 7/20/22

Top News

Healthcare automation vendor Olive AI lays off 450 employees, one-third of its total headcount, saying that economic realities have forced it to “reconcile missteps” related to its aggressive expansion.

The company was valued at $4 billion a year ago.

The company says it will sharpen its focus on revenue cycle for providers and utilization management for payers, which generate 80% of its revenue.

Olive shares CEO Sean Lane with Olive spinoff and Medicaid care management technology vendor Circulo, which laid off 25% of its workforce one month ago.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

GE Healthcare, which is separating itself into three publicly traded companies that each focus on a high-growth sector, will name the healthcare business GE HealthCare when it spins off in early 2023.

An internal email that was shared on Reddit – and confirmed by Oracle as authentic by the Kansas City business paper — outlines significant changes in the former Cerner business that is now owned by Oracle:

• The business is now called Oracle Health, one of Oracle’s Global Industry Units (GIUs), with no mention of whether the Cerner name will continue to be used. 
• Former Cerner President and CEO David Feinberg, MD, MBA will become chairman of Oracle Health, with unstated responsibilities and reporting structure.
• Former Chief Client and Services Officer Travis Dalton, MPA, who led Cerner Government Services, will run Oracle Health as its general manager.
• Former CTO Jerome Labat and other Cerner technology executives will report to Oracle EVP Don Johnson, the company’s cloud executive who will now oversee Oracle Health engineering.
• Corporate functions such as IT, finance, legal, and HR will be moved to Oracle teams.

People

California health information network Manifest MedEx promotes Erica Galvez to CEO.

Tanner Health promotes Abe Manasrah, MS to VP/chief data officer.

Industry long-timer Ron Strachan, MSA, whose SVP/CIO roles have included WellStar Health System and McLaren Health Care, offers advisory and interim CIO services in his newly founded company Optimize Health IT.

OneMedNet hires Joe Walsh, MBA, MA (AllStripes) as chief commercial officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Loyal integrates Google Business Messages – the  asynchonrous chat function that is built into Google’s search and map tools — with its digital platform, allowing users to carry their conversations forward from Google searches to a hospital’s website or patient portal without losing the discussion.

Microsoft announces a digital contact center platform that is powered by tools from Nuance, Dynamics 365, Teams, and Power Platform.

Teladoc Health’s Livongo chronic condition management business will place its fees fully at risk for improvements in measures for hypertension, diabetes, and weight management.

Holzer Health System goes live on PeraHealth’s Rothman Index Trend and Mobile to monitor patient condition.

The non-profit Digital Medicine Society releases four toolkits for integrating data from wearables and digital sensing products.

A new KLAS report on remote patient monitoring concludes that interest and investment is growing in a fragmented market, but RPM’s future will be driven by insurer payments. The offerings of Health Recovery Solutions and Vivify Health have the highest usage, but the latter suffers from steadily declining customer satisfaction due to low support quality and poor EHR integration. Organizations say they need better EHR integration to streamline clinician workflows and capture billing data, also hoping that patient ease of use will improve. Most of the RPM activity is tentative exploration by large health systems who plan to support their RPM programs through insurance billing or by reducing costs under value-based care contracts.

Government and Politics

ONC publishes USCDI Version 3.

HHS OCR settles 11 cases in which providers failed to give patients copies of their medical records in a timely manner, assessing civil money penalties that range from $3,500 to $240,000. One medical practice refused to provide medical records to a patient who had an outstanding balance, another claimed that a patient’s durable power of attorney did not include access to medical records, and Memorial Hermann Health System paid the largest penalty of $240,000.

Privacy and Security

Fortified Health Security’s mid-year cybersecurity report finds that malicious attacks make up of 80% of breaches and organizations that use cybersecurity tools that use AI/ML can detect and contain breaches faster than those that don’t use automation.

Sponsor Updates

InterSystems UKI supports its employees during record-high temperatures and the resulting school closings by inviting the families of employees to spend the day in its air conditioned offices.

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