News 11/4/22

Top News

Specialty EHR/PM/RCM vendor ModMed pays $45 million to settle a 2017 whistleblower lawsuit claiming that the company – which was formerly known as Modernizing Medicine — falsely attested that its EHR met Meaningful Use criteria, ignored patient-endangering software defects, illegally paid kickbacks, and sold systems to providers who were promised increased revenue through upcoding.

The Department of Justice joined the whistleblower lawsuit filed by former ModMedVP Amanda Long, who will receive $9 million of the settlement. 

Reader Comments

From Sloopy: ‘Re: a list of best jobs in health IT. Check out the source.” The kids who write for Becker’s often fail to filter out click bait stories as they desperately seek headlines to repurpose. Their source for this item is a poorly written, mostly offshore-staffed Internet of Things website whose article looks like a bored freelancer spent 10 minutes stringing together random Google search results, such as “CIOs can keep tabs on how their companies utilize IT to figure out where cyber security can be tightened up” and “you can be sure that your decision to stick to this sector is good because for a stable livelihood, you need a good stable job.” The methodology it used to determine the “best healthcare technology jobs” wasn’t mentioned because there wasn’t one. The bio of the author, who clearly values quantity over quality, says that she has written 40,000 articles. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Access. The Dallas-based company believes that hospitals and their patients deserve better than paper. The company eliminates paper troubles by providing EHR-integrated eForms and eConsent solutions that save hospitals money, make the lives of clinicians easier, and provide a better patient experience. Access has led the way with purpose built patient electronic solutions for hospitals for 20 years and now launches its next-generation Focus offering — which will be introduced in a November 9 webinar – that breaks the convention of forms in favor of adaptable digital experiences, positioning hospitals to effectively engage with their patients on their own devices, anywhere, any time. Thanks to Access for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Allscripts reports Q3 results: revenue up 5%, adjusted EPS $0.23 versus $0.21, beating analyst expectations on earnings but falling short on revenue.  

Clinical data abstraction platform vendor Carta Healthcare raises $20 million in a Series B funding round.

Hint Health, which sells EHR-integrated membership management and billing software, acquires AeroDPC, which offers an EHR/PM system for direct primary care physicians.

CPSI announces several leadership appointments under Chris Fowler, who was promoted to president and CEO in July 2022.

The president of virtual health provider Cerebral admits that the company tried to grow too fast when federal prescribing regulations were relaxed during the pandemic, drawing federal scrutiny over its controlled drug prescriptions and overspending on advertising to the point that it laid off 20% of its employees last week. Cerebral will abandon several of its existing and planned programs to focus on mental health, with the CEO adding that it needs to become self-sustaining instead of relying on uncertain additional investor funding.

Sales

• Palomar Health will implement Get Well’s GetWell Loop digital care management solution, followed by phases for inpatient experience, ED experience, care gap closure, and health equity.

People

KONZA National Network hires Karla Mills, MS, MBA (Health Gorilla) as COO.

Jared Klingeisen (Medable) joins specialty medication prescribing software vendor RxLightning as COO.

CommonSpirit Health hires Daniel Barchi, MEM (New York-Presbyterian) as senior executive VP and CIO.

ChenMed promotes Chase Titensor, MBA to VP of strategic payer partnerships.

Announcements and Implementations

Truveta announces GA of Truveta Studio, which allows researchers to analyze the de-identified, daily-updated data of its 25 health system members that represent 700 hospitals and 20,000 clinics. Truveta, which was launched in February 2021 by 14 large health systems, has raised $195 million.

Nine organizations licensed the cloud-based model of Meditech Expanse in the third quarter, raising the count of Meditech as a Service hospitals to 70. Five of the nine were new to Meditech.

Redesign Health will create pediatrics-focused healthcare technology products and companies in partnership with KidsX, whose 40 children’s hospital participants work with early stage digital health companies.

UK health IT vendor EMIS Group says that its $1.4 billion all-cash acquisition by Optum UK will be completed in early 2023.

Privacy and Security

The International Committee of the Red Cross will create a “digital red cross” that it hopes will work like its physical counterpart to prevent cyber harm to the systems of medical facilities and Red Cross offices during armed conflicts.

The office of Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) issues a report titled “Cybersecurity is Patient Safety” that provides issue background and describes policies that could be considered, such as:

• What should a healthcare cybersecurity framework look like? Is NIST’s guidance sufficient and being used?
• Should HIPAA be modernized beyond its focus of PHI protection by covered entities?
• How should Congress create minimum cyber hygiene practices? Should they be deployed under a facility’s Medicare Conditions of Participation?
• Should Congress offer a “cash for clunkers” program to incentivize life cycles for medical equipment? Should providers have a right to repair using third parties?
• Should Congress require healthcare software vendors to publish a “software bill of materials” to allow vulnerabilities to be assessed?
• Should providers be required to train all staff members to use alternate systems during downtime?
• Should providers receive FEMA disaster funds after experiencing a cyber event?
• Should Congress regulate cyber insurance or create its own reinsurance program?

A LexisNexis Risk Solutions study finds that half of participating healthcare payers had a data breach in the past five years, averaging 12,000 compromised records and an average incident cost of $5.4 million. Social engineering was the most common payer cyber fraud source, followed by ransomware. Most respondents say that online identity and credential verification is challenging, especially on mobile apps.

Other

Sixteen medical colleges and hospitals in India’s second-largest state have been using paper charts and radiology film since July 5, when a vendor shut down its hospital system over unpaid bills.

Researchers in Australia apply an electronic Frailty Index similar to that used by UK GPs, using a 36-item screening of PCP EHRs to detect patients with age-related decline who could be treated with vitamins, strength training, and chronic disease management.

Police file several charges against a UPMC ED physician who they say was driving his Tesla at 125 miles per hour in a 35 mph zone when he lost control, killing his passenger, a fellow ED doctor who was not wearing a seatbelt. The driver’s blood alcohol level was twice the legal limit.

Contacts

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