Sounds reasonable, until you look at the Silicon Valley experience. Silicon Valley grew like a weed precisely because employees could…
Monday Morning Update 9/26/22
Top News
Tony Blair Institute for Global Change recommends that the UK government recruit 30% of adults to participate in wearables-powered public health interventions by 2027.
It also recommends that the government restart pilots that motivate people to improve nutrition and exercise and to give people over 50 years of age free devices if they meet activity targets.
The executive summary says that the Department of Health & Social Care focuses on managing patient demand, but only one paragraph mentions prevention, which it says is essential to NHS’s survival.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Questionable terminology aside, the “quiet quitting” thing might be real — 45% of poll respondents say they aren’t willing to work as hard now as they did two years ago.
New poll to your right or here, following up on my conversation with Lyniate’s Erkan Akyuz: Should healthcare create a member-owned network, like banking’s SWIFT, so participants can exchange information reliably and cost-effectively?
I got my COVID booster and flu shot Thursday in the same arm at Walgreens, with no problems except a little bit of dull soreness if I rub it just right. Mrs. H had moderate fatigue and whole-body muscle aches after her injections, which leads me to hope that my minimal reaction was due to luck rather than failure to mount a robust immune response. I’m still embarrassed that the primary output is a paper card with scrawled entries, but at least Walgreens keeps an electronic record and I keep photos of my two-card set on my phone for whomever is the first person to ask to see them.
For prospective HIStalk sponsors (everybody else cover your ears): sign up now and beat 2023’s price increase, the first in many years. Tell Lorre you’re in. I appreciate the support, and my influential readers are usually interested in hearing about companies that provide it. A 2021 survey found that 94% of readers gain interest in a company that they read about on HIStalk, while 82% say they have a higher interest in my sponsors (who don’t gain any influence over what I write, in case you didn’t know that already).
Webinars
October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Kaufman Hall will acquire clinical documentation consulting firm Claro Healthcare.
Covenant Health outsources some IT functions, most notably cybersecurity, to Long80, which will offer employment to the 104 affected health system employees. Long80 is a collaboration between global IT services provider GAVS Technologies and Premier, Inc.
Announcements and Implementations
UnitedHealth Group’s Optum increases licensing fees for academic institutions to use its de-identified insurance claims data, forcing researchers to scramble for alternatives to spending tens of of thousands of dollars per study.
South Korea-based Hanwha Techwin integrates its intelligent IP pan-tilt-zoom cameras with Epic, which will allow hospital staff to monitor patients remotely by video and to conduct two-way communication with a remote sitter.
Government and Politics
Former HHS officials challenge an HHS OIG report’s findings that its HHS Protect system of hospital COVID-19 data collection using technology from TeleTracking, which was implemented in nine days, did not meet basic cybersecurity standards. OIG rescinded the report, citing inaccuracies, and says it will reissue a revised version.
Other
Sansum Clinic CIO Sean Johnson, RN, MHA (aka Professor Sean – he’s also a MHA adjunct at USC) posts the first in a series of nicely done consumer-focused YouTube courses called “Healthcare 101.”
Lumeris VP Rick Goddard, MS posted this graphic (click to enlarge) on LinkedIn that shows the relative strength of healthcare’s vertical integrators (Optum, CVS, Amazon, and local health systems) in each part of the care continuum. I might suggest adding Walmart and Walgreens to the chart. (You can check out his original blog on the topic here.)
Two of Saturday’s top stories in the New York Times involve the profits that are being generated by tax-exempt health systems:
- Providence’s “Rev-Up” program – designed by consulting firm McKinsey at a cost of $45 million — strong-armed patients to pay bills even if they were legally entitled to free care. The article notes that Providence avoids paying $1 billion per year in taxes while offering a low percentage of charity care, pays its CEO $10 million per year, and runs a Wall Street-style venture capital fund as part of its $10 billion reserves.
- Bon Secours Mercy Health, which generated $100 million per year in profit from inner city Richmond Community Hospital by taking advantage of 340B drug discounts and then investing the mark-up profits in wealthy neighborhoods. The Times says Bon Secours made $1 billion in profit last year, avoided $440 million in taxes as a non-profit, and paid its CEO $6 million. It says that the city gave Bon Secours a below-market lease on land to expand Richmond Community’s facilities and to open a nursing school, but the chain instead built luxury apartments and turned the hospital into a “glorified emergency room” in stripping services and shutting down its ICU. The 340B discount allows Richmond Community to buy a $25,000 per dose cancer drug for $3,400, giving the hospital an overall 44% profit margin, the highest in the state. A former Richmond Community ED doctor summarizes, “Bon Secours was basically laundering money through this poor hospital to its wealthy outposts.”
Sponsor Updates
- Ascom publishes a new report, “Nursing Satisfaction: What Matters Most at Work.”
- Oracle Cerner expands its partnership with customer King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Saudi Arabia to include developing shared ideas and research around data and AI.
- Optimum Healthcare IT advances to Elite Partner status in the ServiceNow Partner Program.
- Quil publishes a “Caregiver Discussion Guide.”
- Volpara Health launches a professional services program to help customers maximize the value of their high-risk cancer assessment programs.
- PodSass features SyTrue CEO Kyle Silvestro on its latest podcast.
- TigerConnect releases a new episode of The Connected Care Team Podcast, “Coordinating Clinical Workflows at CommonSpirit.”
- Volpara Health will sell RevealDx’s RevealAI-Lung, AI-powered software that helps accelerate lung cancer diagnosis and reduce unnecessary procedures, in Australia and New Zealand.
- WebPT publishes “The Complete Guide to Physical Therapy Billing.”
- West Monroe publishes a new client story, “MyEyeDr: A new digital scheduling experience increases online bookings by 2.5 times.”
- Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new case study, “Conway Regional achieves sepsis program quality and financial goals.”
Blog Posts
- 5 metrics for a more effective utilization management program (Olive)
- Digital-first for Better Patient Outreach and Improved Response (Orbita)
- Why Providers and Patients Benefit from Value-Based Care (PatientBond)
- ONC Cures Act Final Rule: 4 Tips for Compliance by October 6 (Pivot Point Consulting)
- Research Needs Robust Data: The CDC Utilizes the PINC AI Healthcare Database (Premier)
- How Smart Speakers Can Enhance Aging at Home (Quil)
- Insights from the RCxRules 2022 National User Conference: Staffing Shortages and Remote Work are Still Top of Mind (RCxRules)
- Ophthalmology: this is enterprise imaging (Sectra)
- Soothing the Economic Sting with the Inflation Reduction Act – and Health Technology (Surescripts)
- How to leverage AI in the contact center to improve health plan member experience (Talkdesk)
- Social Determinants of Health: Where Do We Start? (Zynx Health)
HIStalk sponsors exhibiting at AHIMA October 9-12 in Columbus, OH include:
- AGS Health
- Clinical Architecture
- Intelligent Medical Objects
- Nuance
- Nym Health
- Optum
- Wolters Kluwer
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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I, too, have had “minimal reaction” to all my Moderna vaccines (5 in all!) and every time I’ve wondered ‘Geez, I wonder if it took this time’. Nevertheless, I have never had Covid (to my knowledge) or tested positive. So who knows? At this point, it seems clear that humans not only react differently to getting Covid, but also the vaccines. I like to think somebody behind the curtain is studying all this. ???
I doubt that many COVID antibody levels are drawn since CDC doesn’t recommend using levels to make clinical decisions and we are probably too far into vaccination cycles to be able to compare, but it would be interesting to know how antibody levels compare to infections and to vaccination reactions. It seems logical that immune system reactions would be a good thing and that antibody levels increase with the injection, but there’s still the question of whether lack of reactions is a bad thing. And if someone is higher risk for COVID because they are immunocompromised, which might mute their vaccination reaction, whether the vaccine gives them as much protection as it would otherwise.
Regarding Bon Secours use of 340b funds, what do the Rx pros think about the story? Is this standard practice to utilize the program optimally and enable other strategic business development? I don’t know this landscape well, but doesn’t seem like they’ve done anything wrong by the business books.
I’ll see your flu vaccine and COVID booster, and raise you 1 Prevnar 23 and a cortisone shot to my shoulder. I felt like a toddler getting so many shots this week at my primary care appt! I switched brands on this booster, just to see if if would be any different. My prior 4 were Moderna and I did Pfizer this time. A little tired on day 2. I’m shocked my arm was not sore as I had 3 in one arm. My granddaughter asked how many stickers I got from the doctor for my shots, lol!
“I switched brands on this booster, just to see if if would be any different.” – sounds like a real scientific approach you have there. Maybe by your 249th booster, you can get some flavored spritzers added for better variety?
It’s okay, the science already supports vaccine switching, and there are more studies underway. Any other snark you need help researching?
https://www.science.org/content/article/mixing-covid-19-vaccines-appears-boost-immune-responses
https://www.nih.gov/news-events/news-releases/nih-clinical-trial-evaluating-mixed-covid-19-vaccine-schedules-begins
“I changed a condition to see if I would observe a different outcome” is quite literally the definition of a scientific approach. The irony. Do you also harass old people who get flu vaccines each year?
Cannot remember flu vaccines ever having such immense virtue signaling potential, to be honest? Are we now proceeding with the assumption that it is acceptable to try and “observe a different outcome,” by just not putting it into your body in the first place, or is that path still only for those who are deemed to be mentally insufficient?