News 8/3/22

Top News

Oracle lays off staff in its marketing and customer experience divisions. Some Oracle Cerner employees also appear to be affected, according to this Reddit thread sent over by a reader, which includes rumors of the departure of several former high-level Cerner executives.

Oracle is pursing $1 billion in annual compensation savings, which probably means the loss of 5,000 to 10,000 jobs of its 140,000.

Webinars

August 10 (Wednesday) 12:30 ET. “Navigating healthcare’s data quality challenge: An actionable discussion.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Alastair Allen, CTO, Better; Dale Sanders, chief strategy officer, IMO. Achieving a consolidated patient record is challenging in an environment of hospital M&A, where EHR rip-and-replace projects are expensive and HIEs and FHIR connectivity haven’t significantly accelerated progress. The underlying problem is that systems don’t speak the same language due to a lack of comprehensive, persistent clinical terminology and data standards adoption. UK-based Better offers a unique, FHIR-based approach to integrating disparate EHR data. The presenters will explore how to improve clinical data quality and how interoperable information can be used to support patient safety, reimbursement, and population health management.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Lyniate acquires Denmark-based clinical terminology management vendor CareCom. It’s the health data integration company’s second acquisition of the year, having purchased patient identity management company NextGate in March.

Business Insider describes how weight loss startup Calibrate uses technology not only to scale its business growth, but also to scale its business cutbacks, but without the empathy and support it claims to offer customers. The company laid off 150 employees, some of whom had just started their jobs the same week, via a two-minute webinar for which they were given 30 minutes notice. Calbrate’s subscribers pay $138 per month to get a prescription for GLP-1 weight loss drugs such as semaglutide along with virtual coaching, then they or their insurance pay hundreds of dollars each month for the drug itself.

Dandelion Health launches a platform by which health systems can sell de-identified patient data to life sciences companies to train their AI systems, with its first two members being Sharp HealthCare and Sanford Health.

Sales

• Gaylord Specialty Healthcare (CT) selects Meditech Expanse.
• Valley Health (VA) will implement Epic in its own instance instead of through Inova Health System in a 16-month, $50 million project.

People

Scott Raymond, MHA, RN (NetApp) is named chief information and innovation officer of Nebraska Medicine.

Northwell promotes Sophy Lu to SVP/CIO.

Brady Thomas (Specialized Bicycle Components) returns to Divurgent as chief of staff.

Iodine Software hires Priti Shah, MBA (Finvi) as chief product officer.

Cardinal Health promotes Michelle Greene, MS to CIO.

Steven Hendrick (Huron) rejoins Healthlink Advisors as VP.

Michael Ruffino, MBA (Hillrom) joins About as VP of health system partnerships.

Industry long-timer Simon Hawken, who led US and European sales for Merative (formerly IBM Watson Health), died July 25.

Announcements and Implementations

A study of 2,000 Ascension employees finds that adherence to organizational COVID-19 policies improved by 4.9% in the two-week study period when they were texted a reserved date for vaccination using the Relatient system, although no difference was observed from the control group once the vaccination deadline was reached.

Government and Politics

Carequality expands its interoperability framework to federal agencies via an update to its Carequality Connected Agreement that will allow those organizations to opt in to EHealth Exchange’s Carequality Bridge.

The 42nd Medical Group (AL) at Maxwell Air Force Base and 1st Special Operations Medical Group (FL) at Hurlburt Field will transition to Oracle Cerner-based MHS Genesis next month.

Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) asks the Federal Trade Commission to perform a high-priority review of Amazon’s planned acquisition of One Medical, which he says gives Amazon too much power to push non-prescription blood pressure medications at Whole Foods that are based on One Medical patient data (note to the Senator – I agree to some extent with your concerns, even though blood pressure medications are not sold without a prescription at Whole Foods or anywhere else in the US).

Other

The Washington Post obtains a confidential government review of a January 2021 report by the White House’s US Digital Service, which says the country’s organ transplant matching system — operated by the United Network for Organ Sharing, or UNOS — is outdated, unreliable, dependent on manual data entry, and of unknown security status. The report concludes that the non-profit UNOS, which developed the system 36 years ago, is a monopoly that should be broken up in separating its role as a system vendor from that of a transplant policy organization. The federal government pays $6.5 million annually to UNOS under an agreement that requires it to buy the system for $55 million if it switches vendors.

Fox Chase Cancer Center (PA) nurses Maria Market, RN and Allison Ward, RN, MSN create the Oral Chemo Tracker, an EHR-compatible smart form that helps clinicians better monitor oral chemotherapy. The pair developed the digital form last year after a review found that just 33% of oral chemotherapy patients had a documented plan, only 7% were assessed for adherence, and none had record of steps taken to address non-adherence.

Sponsor Updates

• Wolters Kluwer Health makes Monkeypox content free to clinicians worldwide in response to the WHO-declared global health emergency.
• Ascom expands its channel partner network in Canada to better serve acute care customers in the areas surrounding Montreal.
• Bamboo Health names Amber Rogers proposal manager, Meredith Dougherty customer success manager, Whitney Minard implementation specialist, and Ibrahim Alabi associate product manager.
• Oracle Cerner publishes a new client achievement, “Allies in opioid stewardship: Fort HealthCare implements high-risk alerts to combat epidemic.”
• Loyal reaffirms its commitment to health data privacy and security with SOC 2 Type II certification.
• Divurgent publishes a new client success story, “On-Demand Staffing.”
• Ellkay earns Validated Data Stream Designation via the new NCQA Data Aggregator Validation program.
• Well Health promotes Tyler Ledbetter to manager of enterprise sales development.

Blog Posts

• Best Practices for Negotiating Health Insurance Contracts (AdvancedMD)
• Prioritizing CDI on the Ambulatory Side of healthcare facilities (AGS Health)
• Data analytics pave ACOs’ path to success (Arcadia)
• Interoperability: We have technology, data standards, and a compelling use case – so why isn’t everyone on board? (Availity)
• How digitizing at-home care can improve recovery for hysterectomy and c-section patients (Bravado Health)
• Interoperability Without a Directory is Like Blue Cheese Without Celery! (CareMesh)
• Is Outsourcing an Answer to Financial Pressures Post-Pandemic? (CereCore)
• How to Maximize Medicare Shared Savings (ChartLogic)
• Creating the Standard of Digital Care: An Enterprise-Grade Approach to Population Behavioral Health (NeuroFlow)
• Understanding Insider Threats and How to Protect Your Organization (Clearwater)
• Fighting for Medication Access and Adherence: Market Outlook Beyond 2022 (ConnectiveRx)
• Closing the Gap Between Patients and Their Records (EClinicalWorks)
• The Case for Health Data Interoperability (EVisit)

Contacts

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