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News 12/2/22
Top News
NextGen Healthcare will acquire Chapel Hill, NC-based value-added reseller TSI Healthcare, which sells specialty-specific NextGen solutions, for $68 million.
Webinars
None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Therapy Brands acquires behavioral health EHR vendor The Echo Group.
People
David Graham, MD (Graham Healthcare Advisors) joins LifeBridge Health as VP/CMIO.
AvaSure hires John Vaillancourt (RaySecure) as CFO; David Roth, MS (FDS) as chief marketing officer; Chris Kocsis, MPA (CoSource Consulting Group) as chief people officer; and Jacob Hansen, MBA (Calyx) as chief product officer.
Bill Kloes (OnPointPX) joins Navenio as COO.
Announcements and Implementations
NHS England makes a last-minute change to its plan to automatically enable patient viewing of their primary care records via the NHS app, moving to phased rather than mass rollout in which individual practices will be notified in advance before records of their patients are made visible. Practices that asked EHR vendors EMIS and TPP to not enable the records access will have those requests honored as support plans are developed. The changes were announced on November 29, the day before the scheduled automatic activation.
Merative, the former IBM Watson Health, will stop making current and historic pricing information for specific drugs available to media outlets following complaints from drug companies.
Privacy and Security
An HHS OCR bulletin reminds covered entities and business associates that any website tracking tools they use cannot disclose protected health information. OCR specifically warns that sharing PHI with tracking technology vendors for marketing purposes, such as Meta Pixel, constitutes impermissible disclosure under HIPAA.
The Wyoming Supreme Court rules that a hospital must provide the parents of a newborn who was diagnosed with cerebral palsy the audit trail records of its Centricity EHR. Riverton Memorial Hospital provided records from its hospital management system, but refused to provide the Centricity audit trail, saying that the information was irrelevant, not part of the medical record, and had also been lost. The court ruled that the hospital hadn’t looked hard enough for the record, such as checking the backup server.
Sponsor Updates
- First Databank names Tu Tran clinical pharmacist, Payton Corn operations technical analyst, and Alex Givens associate product manager.
- Get Well will present at Next Generation Patient Experience 2022 December 5 in Indian Wells, CA.
- Healthwise announces that it has been recognized by Avia Connect as a top company in patient education.
- Sphere integrates its TrustCommerce platform with Veradigm Practice Management.
- InterSystems releases a new Healthy Data Podcast featuring Divurgent CEO Ed Marx.
- Meditech publishes a new case study, “Major Health Partners uses Meditech to improve home medication verification workflow in the ED.”
Blog Posts
- How to Identify Super Users? (It’s Not So Obvious) (Optimum Healthcare IT)
- How New Epic EHR Partnerships Will Improve Molecular Testing Processes (HealthTech Resources)
- HLTH 2022 recap: Clinician burnout, empowering patients, and FemTech (Intelligent Medical Objects)
- Demonstrating the Value of Patient Access in Challenging Times (Kyruus)
- Making a List, Checking it Twice: Tips for Preparing Your Emergency Room for the Holiday Rush (Medhost)
- Talking Turkey: How Prior Authorization Software Satisfies Everyone at the Table (Myndshft)
- Take Faxing Back to the Future: New Tool Enables Rehab Therapists to More Efficiently, Securely Share Information (Net Health)
- A Holistic Approach to Digital Mental Health Providers Access for All (NeuroFlow)
- 5 keys to a healthy Community Connect host-affiliate partnership (Nordic)
- Data Governance is NOT a Dirty Word, It’s Asset Management (Part 1) (Clearsense)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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We really need to talk about that OCR bulletin. It appears to say that healthcare providers are forbidden from using any sort of marketing tech on their website since even an IP address or any unique code (ie cookie) is considered PHI, even without any other accompanying identifiable information. So if someone visits the website looking for a colonoscopy, healthcare providers can’t use targeted advertising of that service to them. I can’t think of any other good or service that has a precedent like this.. Guns, pharma, porn, and clickbait ad nauseam can market to anyone, but not healthcare services. Of course the Meta Pixel doesn’t belong inside MyChart. I’m very pro-privacy but this seems to be a bridge too far in the interpretation of PHI. I’d love to hear what others think.