News 12/16/22

Top News

Analytics vendor Komodo Health lays off 78 employees, 9% of its headcount, as part of a structuring and the planned departure of its CFO later this month.

An early 2021 funding round valued the company at $3.3 billion, since reduced following a down round. Plans for a summer IPO have been shelved. The company has raised $514 million.

Reader Comments

From Tally: “Re: Intrado outage. Did I miss your report, and do you have more information? Our patient reminder calls have been down since December 1. We get unclear updates from the vendor, who stated network issues. They took down the 988 Crisis Lifeline, at least for a time – hoping that is back up. SFTP files began dropping again a few days ago, but still no calls are going out.” I mentioned the downtime on December 5. I’ve emailed the company but haven’t heard back. Intrado’s status page says that most services have been restored, but individual integrations and SFTP may still be problematic. Intrado has had several outages over the years, one of which took 911 services down in 14 states for an hour in 2020 for which the company paid a $1.75 million settlement to the FCC. Intrado was involved in other 911 outages in 2014 (it paid $1.4 million to the FCC settle that incident) and 2018. Private equity-owned Intrado announced a month ago that it is changing its name to West Technology Group following the anticipated sale of its Safety business, along with the Intrado name, to an investment firm for $2.4 billion, which is expected to close in Q1 2023.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor AvaSure. The Belmont, MI-based company is the pioneer of video-based sitting and virtual nursing solutions, offering the most proven, scalable virtual care platform. It enables bedside nurses to work at the top of their license and empowers them with more time for direct patient care by extending care teams with new virtual roles, integrating virtual safety attendants and virtual nurses into existing clinical workflows. KLAS named it as a “Emerging Solutions Top 20” as #1 in reducing the cost of care. Provider bottom lines are enhanced by eliminating one-to-one sitters, reducing adverse events, and making work more efficient. Specific use cases include isolation precautions, workplace violence, suicide prevention, fall prevention, and adverse event prevention. The company offers a free on-site assessment and an online hospital cost calculator for falls and sitters. Thanks to AvaSure for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s a recent AvaSure webinar I found on YouTube titled “Connecting the Bedside to the Webside: Virtual Nursing as a Service.”

Lorre reports strong end-of-year signups from companies that are anxious to spend their leftover money on HIStalk sponsorships and promoted webinars, so she is offering a sweetener or two to new supporters. I tactfully didn’t point out to her that companies traditionally offer deals when business is bad, not good, but you can sort that out with her.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual chronic pain solution vendor Override — which was founded by former VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD along with daughter and chronic pain sufferer Jennie Shulkin, JD, who will serve as CEO — raises $3.5 million in seed funding. The company used some of the proceeds to acquire pain management coaching business Take Courage Coaching.

Fortified Health Security announces an unspecified growth investment from two investment firms and Nordic Consulting.

A New York Times article in its “Profits Over Patients” series calls out Ascension, whose aggressive headcount reductions left it short of help during the pandemic to the point of endangering patients. The Times notes that Ascension characterizes itself as a ministry rather than a business, with its non-profit status allowing it to avoid paying $1 billion in taxes even though it generates nearly $30 billion in annual revenue, runs an investment company that manages $41 billion, and pays its CEO $13 million. The investment arm is run by Ascension’s former CEO, who was paid $11 million in his first year in that position. Former executives say that executives talked only about achieving financial targets, not how the money might be used to advance Ascension’s charitable mission, with one former division COO saying the company’s approach “was right out of the Wall Street playbook.”

Sales

• American Endovascular & Amputation Prevention goes live on EHR and health information search from EClinicalWorks.
• Washington Health Benefit Exchange chooses Leap Orbit’s provider data management system.
• Canada’s Niagara Health will implement Oracle Cerner.

People

Centene names Brian LeClaire, MBA, PhD (Arsenal Capital Partners) as CIO.

PatientPay hires Rick Bell (Bottomline Technologies) as SVP of business development.

Kaley Simon, MPH (Olive) joins MedAdvisor as SVP of product.

Summit BHC hires Jeanne Sands, DHA, MBA (SSM Health) as CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Orion Donovan-Smith, a reporter Spokane newspaper The Spokesman-Review, wins a National Press Foundation award for his  investigative reporting of Cerner problems at the VA Mann-Grandstaff Medical Center. The competition judges said of Donovan-Smith, “It takes serious guts for a reporter and editor anywhere (let alone at a small newspaper) to devote dozens of stories to IT failures – and hope any meaningful journalism will come out of it.” I have made a donation to the paper on behalf of HIStalk readers in honor of Donovan-Smith, whose position is funded by a Report for America reporter grant. He did a pretty amazing job covering a complex and controversial story that had national implications.

The Milwaukee business paper describes how Epic brought all of its 11,000 employees back to the office a year ago, starting with three days per week in July 2021, four per week in August, all but two days per month in the office in September and October, and then a full in-office workweek starting in November. The article says that Epic’s headcount has grown since then from 11,300 to 12,500 and it has not laid anyone off.

A consumer study by Global Healthcare Exchange (GHX) finds that half of Americans are avoiding hospitals because of COVID-19 fears, lack of nurses, and shortcomings in physical security.

The Sequoia Project publishes the “Data Usability Implementation Guide.”

Other

Crook County Medical Services District (WY) will implement Cerner in replacing CPSI, which it says is a bottleneck to productivity, has created cash flow issues, and has tied up nurses by “wanting to know what someone’s shoe size is.”

A UCSD natural language processing study of Epic inbasket messages received by physicians finds no association between message contents and professional burnout, but notes that patient messages frequently include profanity and  violent words that indicate frustration with the physician or the health system that could induce stress and that could be used to drive quality improvement initiatives.

Healthcare IT Leaders will donate $10 to Atlanta’s Cristo Rey Atlanta high school for each response that describes, in a few words that take about 15 seconds to enter, what makes you hopeful for 2023. The school offers a college preparatory program for students in low-income families. The company hopes to raise $10,000 for the students.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems features National Coordinator Micky Tripathi, PhD, MPP in its “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast.
• Konza National Network announces that its Qualified Health Information Network application has been accepted for review by The Sequoia Project.
• CloudWave shares news of its continued growth in Q3 of 2022.
• Findhelp publishes a new report, “Meeting the Moment: Community Organizations Nationwide See Challenging Times Ahead.”
• InterSystems congratulates EHealth Exchange on surpassing 1.35 billion monthly transactions.
• MUSE celebrates its 40th year and announces its 2023 events for Meditech users.

Blog Posts

• Holland Bloorview’s interoperability initiative connects MEDITECH EHR with Epic, uniting pediatric hospitals in Canada (Meditech)
• 4 Tips for Patient Education Governance (Healthwise)
• A Different Point of View: DOJ Suit Against Cigna – It’s Just the Beginning (Medicomp Systems)
• With VBC, Everyone Across the Value Chain Wins – Including Employers (Enlace Health)
• Smart Infusion Pump Drug Libraries: Addressing the Challenges of Optimizationv (First Databank)
• A Spotlight on Get Well Clinicians Who are Supporting Clinicians (Get Well)
• Unduly noted: Why EHR documentation is creating an informational quagmire (Nordic)
• 2022 Wrapped Playlist (Clearsense)
• Overcoming Obstacles to Adopt Blockchain Technology (HealthTech Resources)
• How normalization can support the data quality of meds and labs (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Top 10 patient safety concerns according to the ECRI Institute (Meditech)
• Overcoming Obstacles to Adopt Blockchain Technology (HealthTech Resources)
• Standardizing Risk Assessments Across Your EH Organization (Net Health)
• Health Plans, Boost Partners’ Value-based Care Strategy with Behavioral Health (NeuroFlow)
• Navigating outpatient best practices, part 1: Why clinical documentation integrity is more important than ever (Nuance)

Contacts

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