Monday Morning Update 8/8/22

Top News

From the Allscripts earnings call:

• CEO Richard Poulton says the company’s potential acquisitions will be chosen to avoid past accusations of the company being “Frankenstein, because things didn’t really work together very well.”
• Acquisitions will focus more on payer and life sciences than providers, but Allscripts is interested in revenue cycle and getting providers paid faster.
• Asked by an analyst about a publicly traded competitor that is predicting a higher growth rate in the provider space, Poulton responded that “talk is cheap” and it’s laughable when someone predicts that their margins will double.
• Asked about existing clients whose contracts cover products that were sold to Constellation as well as some that stayed with Allscripts, Poulton says overlap exists FollowMyHealth and with practice management systems used by large physician practices. He says that the contracts stayed with whichever business owns the products, and where a contract covers multiple solutions that were split between the companies, they will be served by both companies until the contract expires. He added that FollowMyHealth “is not a big piece of the provider business at all.”

Reader Comments

From Jimbo: “Re: API fees. People used to talk a lot about how vendors who send or receive data on behalf of clients would charge for that service. I’m wondering from your readers which ones do?” That was a big deal early on, as some vendors were using a “how much can we make from it” approach to interoperability. Anyone care to weigh in on API-related charges?

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Inconclusiveness is evident among poll respondents who weighed in on how Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner will impact the VA’s implementation.

New poll to your right or here, repeating a poll question I asked three years ago:  For those over 50, what is the #1 thing you wish you had done differently?

I’m interested in the dynamic of being laid off via a Zoom call from your home office. I think I would rather accept the corporate coup de grace remotely and in private versus being marched out of the office under the shocked but relieved gaze of co-workers. Those affected are surely stunned by the impersonal, scripted process regardless of its service location, but in my experience from being on both sides of layoffs, it’s best to get it done quickly and consistently and then send the person home so they can react in their own way elsewhere. I recall asking hospital security to be unobtrusively nearby when we were telling a bunch of our IT folks that their services were no longer needed, which seemed kind of slimy when it involves people you’ve known for years, but you never know how people will react. Then comes the classic Kubler-Ross stages of grief: (a) it surely was a mistake that will be fixed or customers and co-workers will rise in protest to override my dismissal; (b) management is clueless in failing to value my contribution to this train wreck of a company; (c) maybe I should have seen it coming, changed teams, or changed behavior less-valuable people got to keep their jobs; (d) realizing that the “please come back” call isn’t coming and the team and/or company is running fine; and finally (e) accepting what happened as unchangeable and figuring out how to move on. It’s dangerous deriving so much of your identity from a job that someone else can end with an Excel formula.

Thanks to the following companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo for more information.

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

The Wall Street Journal reports that value-based home care provider Signify Health, which has been exploring strategic alternatives, will likely receive an acquisition bid from CVS Health. The company’s NYSE share price values it at $4.7 billion.

Healthcare commercial intelligence vendor Definitive Healthcare reports Q2 results: revenue up 37%, EPS –$0.05, beating expectations for both. The company says it will continue to make acquisitions, expecting to close one or two per year. DH shares dropped 16% Friday following the announcement. They jumped 40% on their first day of trading in September 2021, but have since lost 43% of their value versus the Nasdaq’s 16% loss, valuing the company at $2.4 billion.

People

Spok promotes Mike Wallace to president / COO and Calvin Rice, CPA to CFO.

Government and Politics

The federal government posts an earlier-than-expected RFP for implementation of an EHR for the Indian Health Service.

The VA’s Cerner system goes down for several hours due to database corruption. The outage reportedly also affected DoD and Coast Guard sites.

Privacy and Security

The UK’s NHS 111 non-emergency call line is affected by a cyberattack on its systems, causing delays in dispatching ambulances, booking appointments, obtaining referrals, and having emergency prescriptions filled. The affected patient management, electronic patient record, and care management are operated by vendor Advanced.

Other

Customers of NC-based eye care practice EHR/PM vendor Eye Care Leaders accuse the company of concealing its ransomware attacks in 2021 that included a week-long outage, claiming that the vendor ignored IT requests, threatened them legally, was unable to restore current practice data because it backed its systems up only weekly, and may have failed to file the required breach notice with OCR. They also claim that the company didn’t reduce their next month’s subscription fee despite failing to meet their uptime service level agreement. Several practices have signed on to a proposed class action lawsuit to break their contracts, get their data, and seek payment for damages. CEO Roni Amiel’s experience includes stints as CIO / CISO of NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and Blythedale Children’s Hospital.

Sponsor Updates

• West Monroe staff volunteer with Boys Hope Girls Hope of Colorado to offer students career pathways insight, interview tips, and college internships.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Improving Patient Safety by Avoiding Medical Abbreviations.”
• Pivot Point Consulting promotes Kelly Robinson to senior operations specialist.
• Relatient releases a new Dash Talk Podcast, “Activating Patients Through Targeted Messaging and Segmentation: A One Pediatrics Case Study.”
• Surescripts releases a new podcast, “There’s a Better Way: Smart Talk on Healthcare and Technology, “The Nightmare & Silver Lining: Walgreens’ Tasha Polster on the Impact of COVID-19.”
• Talkdesk CEO Tiago Paiva is recognized as the UC Leader of the Year during the UC Awards presented by UC Today.
• Zynx Health partners with clinical data and intelligence company LogicStream Health to deliver advanced performance improvement capabilities to health systems.

Blog Posts

• Hospital Marketing: How to Use Market Segmentation to Improve Patient Activation and Retention (PatientBond)
• Nurses of Note Awards 2022: The Senior Manager of Clinical Professional Development (PerfectServe)
• Medication decision support systems help build a resilient digital healthcare foundation (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• 7 ways contact center AI provides better customer experiences (Talkdesk)
• How to Leverage Communication and Data to Improve Patient Handoffs (TigerConnect)
• Allina’s Journey: Improving Outcomes for Total Joint Replacement (Upfront Healthcare)
• A Framework for Achieving Your Smart, Connected Hospital Vision (Vocera)
• The ROI of RTM: Maximizing Profitability with Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (WebPT)
• Improving Readmission Rates: Strategies for Skilled Nursing Teams (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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