News 11/23/22

Top News

Care.ai, which offers AI-powered ambient monitoring technology for healthcare facilities, raises $27 million.

Its sensor-equipped Smart Care Facility Platform is designed to enhance an organization’s virtual nursing, virtual sitting, and other patient monitoring programs.

Founder Chakri Toleti sold his previous company, patient engagement vendor HealthGrid, to Allscripts for $60 million in 2018.

Reader Comments

From Oslo Dave: “Re: Texas AG Paxton’s inquiry into Epic’s children’s health information policies. Why would he be talking to them? Memorial Hermann has signed to implement Epic, but hasn’t even started.” The health system signed a deal to replace Oracle Cerner with Epic in September 2022, but the implementations won’t start until 2023. The patient portal is Cerner’s, so I’m not sure why the AG thinks Epic is involved.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’ve seen a few Twitter-related mentions of Price’s Law, which that competence grows linearly in a growing company’s workforce while incompetence grows exponentially, with the result being that 50% of the work is accomplished by the square root of the total headcount. If your company has 100 employees, 10 of them get half the work done, while the remaining 90 employees do the other half. The conclusion is to hire and retain those people whose productivity is high enough to put them in that minority of workers, and also to look cynically at employee turnover numbers because losing stars will hurt even with small percentages

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient financing solutions vendor PayZen raises $20 million in equity financing.

Hospital for Special Surgery raises $21 million in a Series A funding round to launch virtual physical therapy clinic RightMove.

Sales

• Telepsychiatry company MindCare Solutions selects Andor Health’s ThinkAndor virtual triage capabilities.
• Parkview Health (IN) will use Veta Health’s remote patient monitoring and virtual care technology as a part of its telehealth monitoring program.
• Aware Recovery Care selects Bamboo Health’s Pings real-time care notification software.
• NSW Health in Australia will replace 20 health IT systems with Epic.

People

24By7 Security promotes Ryan Sanders to VP of healthcare and advisory services.

Laure Tessier-Delivuk (GE Healthcare) joins Inspirata as VP of operations, oncology informatics.

Laolu Fayanju, MD joins RubiconMD as CMO. He was previously a regional medical director with Oak Street Health, which acquired RubiconMD last year.

CPSI promotes Dawn Severance to chief sales officer and David Dye to COO.

Divurgent promotes Adam Tallinger, RPh, MHA to EVP of client service.

Announcements and Implementations

Evangelical Community Hospital (PA) will go live on Epic December 4.

3M HIS announces GA of Ambulatory Potentially Preventable Complications analytics software for outpatient and ambulatory surgery centers.

Sonoma Valley Hospital (CA) will replace Allscripts with Epic on December 3.

AdventHealth (KY) celebrates the start of its Epic implementation journey with a “Follow the Yellow Brick Road to Epic” party. The system will go live in March 2023.

Privacy and Security

South County Hospital in Rhode Island resolves phone and network issues that forced it to revert to downtime procedures and cancel surgeries last week.

San Gorgonio Memorial Hospital (CA) recovers from a malware attack last week that caused it to shut down its EHR for six days.

Other

A Freedom of Information request finds that IT systems and telephones went down for 20 hours at Queensway Carleton Hospital in September, leading its doctors to question why the ED remained open. They also said that lack of connectivity required them to get imaging reports using their own cell phones, which violates health privacy rules. The hospital distributed backup pagers, assigned runners to deliver hand-written notes, and told nurses to listen for patient call bells since they could not receive alerts via wireless phones. The hospital said that it would normally post downtime signs in the ED, but couldn’t find them. 

Heart transplant recipient Tom Johnson, a retired nurse, respiratory therapist, and healthcare IT manager, meets Amber Morgan, the mother of his organ donor, four years after the procedure. Johnson assured Morgan he is taking great care of her daughter’s heart, letting her listen to her daughter’s heartbeat through a stethoscope: “Today, I can play with my five grandkids, something I wasn’t able to do before. I feel so blessed because I’ve been praying for the family ever since my transplant.”

Sponsor Updates

• Access publishes a new e-book, “Paper Informed Consents Sabotage Your Surgical Services Economies.”
• AdvancedMD publishes a n e-guide, “Billing Options for the Modern Practice.”
• Agfa Healthcare Global CMO Anjum Ahmed joins The British Institute of Radiology’s board.
• Bamboo Health publishes a new intelligence brief, “In-Depth Analysis of Final Cohort Joining the ACO REACH Model in 2023.”
• CHIME honors TrueCare Chief Innovation Officer Tracy Elmer and Artera with its 2022 Collaboration Award.
• Clearwater will sponsor the H-ISAC Fall Americas Summit December 6-8 in Phoenix.
• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “Brookhaven Heart &MD365: Streamlining Patient Engagement and Intervention with RPM.”
• Get Well has been recognized as a Top Company in Patient Education by Avia Connect.
• InterSystems invites developers to enter its Iris for Health Contest: FHIR for Women’s Health.
• Lyniate announces that Rhapsody and EMPI have qualified for the UK Government’s G-Cloud Framework.
• Meditech congratulates its customers named to CHIME’s 2022 Digital Health Most Wired list.
• Denver Health Medical Plan CMO Christine Seals Messersmith joins Divurgent’s advisory board.

Blog Posts

• 4 Challenges Healthcare Organizations Face Today and How to Solve Them (Arcadia)
• Why Managed Services Helps Organizations Move Forward, Fast – From the CEO’s Perspective (CereCore)
• Resiliency and resourcefulness: the power of rural health providers (Oracle Cerner)
• What Data Can Tell Us About Mental Health (Dimensional Insight)
• Data quality in healthcare and the elusive digital twin (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Modernizing the Digital Experience for Parents & Caregivers: Insights from Boston Children’s Hospital (Kyruus)
• Stabilizing Medicare Access to Rehabilitation and Therapy (SMART) Act (H.R. 5536) (Net Health)

Contacts

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