RE: Change HC/RansomHub, now that the data is for sale, what is the federal govt. or DOD doing to protect…
News 1/6/23
Top News
Allscripts changes its company name to Veradigm.
The company sold many of its health IT assets in the past two years. It says it has now consolidated its remaining portfolio of EHR, PM, and patient communication systems into the Veradigm Network.
Shares will continue to trade under the MDRX ticker symbol. They are down 8% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 34% drop.
Reader Comments
From Publius: “Re: non-competes. This would significantly impact Epic, which would have a mass exodus of employees. I assume they would fight it in court.” The Federal Trade Commission proposes banning the use of non-compete clauses that prevent employees from taking jobs with competitors or starting their own businesses. FTC says the clauses are exploitative, affect one in five American workers, and are sometimes imposed by companies on low-earning employees who don’t have significant company knowledge. Previous studies have shown that non-compete agreements protect established companies from startups, reduce competition, and limit the ability of companies to hire the best-suited workers. FTC says the change would provide new opportunities for 30 million Americans and raise wages by $300 billion per year. The proposed change would not affect non-disclosure agreements, but those could be subject to FTC review if they interfere with workers changing jobs. Among the companies named in FTC’s complaints are two Michigan-based security companies that prevented low-wage security guards from working within a 100-mile radius for two years after leaving.
From Pure Energy: “Re: M&A in a down market. Predictions?” Previously overvalued but cash-burning startups that have no obvious path to profitability will find themselves selling out to larger competitors – assuming any are interested in attaching new weights to their corporate ankles – at barely more than asset value as being ‘disruptive” and “innovative” without making money causes newly focused eyes to roll. Modestly or selectively successful companies will shed non-core business in hopes of generating quick cash from carve-outs. Companies that went public during the recent boom, especially those that took the sketchy SPAC route, will have to figure out how to continue operating (or not) based on trashed share price with zero chance of obtaining favorable funding. This is healthy and necessary, just like thinning and pruning deadwood, and survivors will emerge stronger. Also important is that the profitable aspects of the entire hospital and health system market may be consolidated into a couple of dozen big provider and provider-insurer players over the next 10 years, so it will be feast or famine for companies who sell into that market whose participants are focused on decreasing their vendor count.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
I’ll be migrating HIStalk to a new server shortly, which includes a lot of changes to the underlying programming and databases, so expect the usual (hopefully minor and short-lived) glitches.
Webinars
January 19 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Supercharge Your Clinical Data Searches.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenter: Paul Robbins, MSMBA, VP of product, Particle. Particle’s team will preview the exciting results of Specialty Search, a new condition-specific record locator service. This webinar will review how to collect patient records from top Centers of Excellence across the entire country; how healthcare organizations of all types are benefiting from Specialty Search capabilities, using Particle’s simple API; and why a focused search of chronic condition data — in oncology, cardiology, endocrinology, orthopedics, and more — has an outsized impact on care outcomes.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Salesforce will reduce its workforce by 10%, about 7,000 jobs, and will close offices in some markets, reductions the company blames on reduced customer spending and its own excessive hiring during the pandemic’s boom times. It not break out how many of the job cuts were related to healthcare. The company’s market value has dropped more than half to $134 billion from its late-2021 high.
Shares of GE spinoff GE HealthCare begin trading on the Nasdaq under the GEHC ticker. Shares closed their first day of trading Wednesday up 8%.
Epic-integrated virtual care platform vendor KeyCare completes its $27 million Series A funding round.
Onc.AI, which offers a medical oncologist clinical decision-making platform, raises $25 million in Series A funding.
Sales
- East Tennessee HIN chooses 4medica’s patient matching system.
People
Ardent Health Services hires Brad Hoyt, MD (Utica Park Clinic) as CMIO.
Acadia Healthcare Company hires Laura Groschen (Medtronic) as CIO.
Experity promotes Brian Berning, MS to CFO.
Curve Health hires Matt Michela, MBA (Life Image) as CEO.
Nicholas Anderson (G2o) joins Olah Healthcare Technology as VP of product management.
Announcements and Implementations
EHNAC publishes new versions of its program criteria for its accreditation programs.
The new quarterly market report of Pivot Point Consulting, A Vaco Company makes these points:
- Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical gives the company partnerships with big health systems and a business that has off-the-charts member satisfaction, 90% retention, and 300% member growth over five years, plus a growing Medicare and Medicare Advantage business via its Iora Health.
- Amazon’s relaunched virtual service of Amazon Clinic will be challenged to attract both consumers and providers to its platform, with modest synergies with its pharmacy business but little impact on expensive chronic condition spending.
- CVS Health gained 10,000 contracted clinicians with its September 2022 acquisition of Signify Health, which also gives it a Medicare presence with its Caravan marketplace.
- The acquisition of Summit Health by Walgreens-controlled VillageMD, which closed Thursday will double the company’s PCP count to 2,800 working in 680 locations.
- Walmart made no healthcare acquisitions in 2022, but expanded its telehealth and Medicare preventive care markets using its 4,000-stores footprint.
- Pivot Point recommends that providers start with the digital front door to enhance patient and staff experience, use data to innovate, and build partnerships with payers since the big retailers have shown little interest in hospital care.
An EpicShare article describes how University of Michigan Health – West uses Nuance’s DAX to reduce physician time spent writing notes, with some doctors reporting a total daily effort of 10 minutes to review the results. The organization says the cost can be high and DAX works better in primary care than with specialties, but notes got better and faster over time, more prior authorization requests were approved on the first try, and patients say they enjoy seeing their own words in the doctor’s notes in MyChart.
Withings announces U-Scan, a toilet bowl device that takes daily biomarker readings. The device, which is pending US FDA clearance, will debut in Europe with consumer health cartridges for women’s cycle tracking and hydration.
Government and Politics
A JAMA Network opinion piece warns that clinical algorithms may be found to violate antidiscrimination laws under the Affordable Care Act or may be regulated by FDA as medical devices, both of which the authors urge the federal government to avoid for lower-risk algorithms and until discrimination aspects are better defined.
Other
Amy Abernethy, MD, PhD, who runs Verily’s life sciences clinical studies platforms, discusses the state of clinical trials in a brief Politico interview:
- Clinical trials will move to using existing data from EHRs and claims, along with sensor data, although data quality mismatches need to be resolved.
- Clinical trials need to involve a low burden for participants to generate representative participation.
- Clinical trials recruitment needs to include digital marketing, call centers, and extra service.
- Future clinical trials will involve long-term following of participants, which will require new ways of thinking about keeping people enrolled.
This is an interesting observation by Will Weider, although perhaps less relevant than it seems to healthcare since ordering is the focus at Amazon and most of us have done it many times. I don’t mind a chat bot as long as it doesn’t hog the screen, make sounds, or pop up on every new page after I’ve already dismissed it. I always renew my car registration online and DMV’s chat bot is like a nicer, field-prompting version of an online form. At least even the dumbest chat bot is smarter than the smartest telephone auto attendant.
Sponsor Updates
- Availity associates volunteer at the 24th annual Make-a-Wish Request-a-Thon.
- Medicomp Systems releases a new Tell Me Where IT Hurts Podcast featuring National Coordinator Micky Tripathi.
- Wolters Kluwer Health marks the 30th anniversary of its UpToDate clinical decision support solution by announcing that it has donated over 100,000 subscriptions to UpToDate to caregivers and organizations in 159 countries.
- EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story featuring Orthopaedic Institute of Ohio, “Prisma: How Better Data Improves Care and Reduces Costs.”
- Everbridge appoints RSA CEO Rohit Gai and Blackbaud EVP David Benjamin to its Board of Directors.
- Nordic launches a new podcast series titled “In Network.”
- The Empowered Patient Podcast features First Databank VP of Product Management Virginia Halsey, “Improving Access for Pharmacists to Appropriate Drug Interaction and Dosing Data.”
- Get Well offers a digital inclusivity toolkit to help healthcare teams address workplace violence.
- InterSystems announces it has been positioned in the Visionaries Quadrant of the recently published Gartner Magic Quadrant for Cloud Database Management Systems.
- Juniper Networks announces it has been named a leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Wired and Wireless LAN Infrastructure for the third consecutive year.
- Meditech publishes a new case study, “Frederick Health Aligns Workflows Across Care Settings with Meditech Professional Services.”
Blog Posts
- 5 Modern Must-Have Features in Urgent Care Technology (Experity)
- Top Trends Transforming the Future of Healthcare in 2023 and Beyond (Healthcare Triangle)
- Top 5 Challenges in Value-Based Care (and How to Solve Them) (Healthjump)
- More Than Two Years Into the Pandemic, Hospital Budgets Are Beginning to Crack (HealthTech Resources)
- Telehealth Finance Variables and Successful Business Models (Impact Advisors)
- 5 things to know about the 2023 CPT code updates (Intelligent Medical Objects)
- When it Comes to Wired & Wireless Access, Juniper Mist is in the Driver’s Seat (Juniper Networks)
- Voices from the Frontlines: Key 2022 Consumer and Provider Research Findings (Kyruus)
- Redefining Productivity to Assist with the Healthcare Staffing Crisis (Lumeon)
- Five Crucial Topics for Healthcare Leaders in 2023 (Medhost)
- How Volunteer Attorneys are Helping Patients Overcome the “Financial Toxicity” of a Cancer Diagnosis (Myndshft)
- Don’t Be Forgotten: Reduce Rehab Therapy No-Shows by Addressing the ‘Whys’ Behind Missed Visits (Net Health)
- Rebuilding Trust to Empower the Future of Healthcare (Nuance)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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So you think Epic customers (health systems) don’t poach from each other?
Epics non compete is mostly enforced by customers right? The customers know something bad will happen if they directly hire from Epic.that wouldn’t be covered here. This would affect working at the dozen or so EHRs that Epic considers their competition.
If the FTC actually does take this regulatory action, expect Epic to sue, so they can try to establish a second anti-worker landmark precedent. I have zero faith that the Roberts court will do anything to hinder corporations from exploiting workers.
Allowing non-compete agreements is one of the ways we coddle corporations.
How do we know that this is corporate coddling?
1). Corporations engage in exactly the behaviour their non-compete agreements prohibit, every day. Recruiting/Raiding staff from competitors? Yes please! Corporate espionage? Done! Wage arbitrage so as to get their preferred expense structure? Well that’s just smart business!
2). Corporations are entirely fine with employees making self-interested decisions. At the competition. It’s only their own employees who get the stink eye if they try this;
3). What is one of the fundamental advantages we tout for Capitalism? It’s competition. And yet we ignore the anti-Capitalist implications of the term “non-compete agreements”;
4). Why do recruits then sign these non-compete agreements? Well, it’s routinely presented as a Go/No Go requirement of the job offer. And many recruits hope that the job becomes permanent, and the non-compete agreement is therefore irrelevant. Plus there are multiple jurisdictions where non-compete agreements are not enforceable;
5). Why then do corporations pursue non-compete agreements, even in jurisdictions where they aren’t enforceable? The corporation may hope for a change in law or procedure such that the non-compete agreements becomes enforceable. Even if that doesn’t happen however, having a non-complete in place is a handy weapon against the workforce. The employer has vastly more resources than any employee. Even a doomed enforcement action may succeed; the employer merely has to wait out their former employee, employing threats and procedural stalling tactics;
6). We’ve made corporations “legal persons” for what are some entirely defensible reasons. That status implies some sort of equality with actual citizens. Yet in this case, the corporation gets to treat actual persons differently than the corporation itself is treated. Why? If corporations acted against other corporations this way in our economy, they commit one of various crimes. Collusion, anti-trust, monopolistic practices, these are the ways this behaviour is treated in law. Yet we permit corporations to suppress competition in their workforce.
7). Non-compete agreements used to be limited to the most senior employees, and they were strictly time limited too. Do you see any of that in our employment landscape now? No, non-compete agreements are used everywhere, without limits. It’s as routine as a cup of coffee in the workplace.
It’s corporate coddling. Defenses of the practice read more like a list of excuses than any solid effort to protect the IP of affected corporations. I mean, seriously, name any 3 corporations that didn’t willingly leak their IP to Asian manufacturers in a determined effort to lower production costs.
Replying to Brian Too above. Re: your #5 – there is another factor and that is that hiring companies honor the non-compete from another firm for a couple of reasons. One – like attorneys – ‘professional courtesy’. It reinforces the power of the NC for all companies if your new employer isn’t willing to go against it. I’ve been told all my life that a non-compete isn’t worth the paper it is written on, especially for anyone below “seriously key employee” status.
My daughter had an interesting situation. Her employer (of 5 years) was downsizing and merging, and let many staff go. But offered to her and about 10% of the remaining management a deal to keep them from bailing during the critical one year merger activity. The deal was “we’ll pay you $XX lumpsum now, if you sign an agreement to stick here for 12 months, AND sign this document. Which included a non-compete that did not exist in her original hiring papers that blocked working for a client until 6 months after departure. Four months later, the company decided they didn’t need everyone for the full 12 months, so said “we’re moving your jobs to [another city several states away]. You have to reapply for a job and pay your own move. No job for her was open. So she was sitting under a NC where she honored the deal to stick around, yet they let her go.
Fortunately for her, the leader at her main client was filling a position and said “Gee, too bad we can’t find someone like [my daughter]. Someone spoke up and said “Actually, she’s looking”. Got most of the way thru the hiring process, I happened to see her NC and said that it looked like a roadblock. We discussed ignoring it, but she did the right thing and told her new boss. His response “We’re their biggest customer, this won’t be a problem”. And it wasn’t. And she got an even better job with them than she had had. But that was a special case.
If the FTC actually cracks down on non-competes, I don’t think it will make an impact on Epic unless it goes after retaliation. The non-compete’s teeth come from Userweb Access. Epic doesn’t need to litigate to enforce the non-compete, when the Userweb exists.