Monday Morning Update 2/6/23

Top News

Democrats on the House Committee of Veterans’ Affairs are working on an alternative to last week’s two Republican-sponsored bills that would end the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation and convert live sites back to VistA.

FedScoop cites sources who say that the proposal may involve changes that would affect all of the VA’s IT projects.

Reader Comments

From Krill Feeder: “Re: more slide decks from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. All vendors know, want, and fear the trademarked Gartner Magic Quadrant, which can have a strong impact on sales and corporate fate. Is NextGen Healthcare’s use of a similar graphic in a May 2022 investor deck without mentioning Gartner sketchy, smart marketing communications, both, or neither? And was its absence from the JPM event deck due to brevity constraints, Gartner objections, or evolving corporate spin?”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Nearly three-fourths of poll respondents who attended HIMSS22 will go to HIMSS23, while 80% of those who didn’t go to HIMSS22 will repeat their absence in April.

New poll to your right or here: Which ways have you used in the past year to send medical information to a clinician? I like nearly everything about my direct primary care doctor, but most of all I like being able to text, call, or email her directly without having to pierce the veil of inept, self-important gatekeepers (she practices alone).

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Constellation Software delays posting its Q4 and annual reports, blaming the complexity of its May 2022 acquisition of the hospital and large physician practice business of Allscripts, which is now known as Altera Digital Health within Constellation’s N. Harris Computer Corporation business.

Announcements and Implementations

A regional network of OB-GYN practices and hospitals in New Jersey will collaborate to launch a statewide, value-based maternity care initiative that will be powered by the maternal digital tools of Wildflower Health.

Jefferson Center goes live on Netsmart’s MyHealthPointe consumer engagement platform for remote patient monitoring and engagement for behavioral health services. It has launched a pilot with assessments for medication check-in, patient health questionnaires, and weekly check-ins and developing new technology services for family support, text communication, wearables, and notifications.

Privacy and Security

Tallahassee Memorial Hospital diverts patients and cancels non-emergency procedures following “an IT security event” – reportedly a ransomware attack — that occurred late Thursday.

Duke Health will sell de-identified patient data to drug companies via Nference, with which it may also create a for-profit spinoff business. Bioethicists contacted by the local newspaper question whether it should be made more clear to patients that their data may be used to generate profit. Duke Health announced its relationship with NFerence on January 4, 2023, where it talked a lot about community health and research breakthroughs without mentioning that it was being paid for providing patient data.

Other

Colorado counties report being overwhelmed with 911 calls that start coming in every morning when the ski lifts open and skiers start falling, which sets off the fall detector in their Apple Watches. The interim director of Summit County’s emergency service, which responded to 185 false alarm calls from Watch-wearing skiers in a single week, says that “Apple needs to put in their own call center if this is a feature they want.” She also notes that operators rarely receive false 911 calls from Android phones. The Watch gives wearers 10 seconds to suppress the call before it starts dialing, but those who are wearing ski gear often don’t notice the warning and don’t respond to the 911 call-back, which requires responders to be dispatched. One county’s sheriff has instructed 911 operators to ignore all automated calls from ski slopes, reasoning that there’s nearly always someone around who would call 911 in a real emergency.

In Germany, a nurse in a top teaching hospital confesses to killing two elderly patients by overdosing them on sedatives (unintentionally, the nurse says) so they wouldn’t bother him while he suffered from a hangover. He admits that he did as little work as possible in his job, ignored patients, turned their wheelchairs toward the wall so they couldn’t talk to others, and found it easy to obtain sedatives because “in the hospital, they don’t pay much attention to this.” He has been charged with two counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder. Note: the newspaper article says without explanation that the man “pretended to be a nurse,” but they incorrectly translated the original report from a German publication – he really was a nurse, but working in an area where he had minimal qualifications.

Political anthropologist and medical resident Eric Reinhart, MD, PhD says in a New York Times opinion piece that physicians are getting burned out and leaving the profession not because of working conditions, but rather because they are “witnessing the slow death of American medical ideology” and feel complicit in putting profits over people. He says that the AMA convinced doctors to fight healthcare as a public service because it would threaten their autonomy and income, forcing doctors to lecture patients on personal health responsibility and their duty to avoid health risks that are mostly driven by economic disparity. He urges doctors to unionize, then demand universal healthcare.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases a new podcast, “Making Rounds: The up and downside of disintermediation.”
• Everest Group names NTT Data a leader in its Healthcare Provider Digital Services PEAK Matrix Assessment 2023 report.
• Sectra publishes a new case study featuring St. Maria General Hospital in Belgium, “How to save time on implementation while creating brilliant workflows.”
• MGMA’s Insights Podcast features Surescripts Clinical Informatics Pharmacist and Manager of Product Performance Bri Palowitch.
• Talkdesk names Miles Ennis (Aspen Technology) SVP of sales for North America.
• WebPT wins three awards from TrustRadius in the categories of Best Feature Set, Best Value for the Price, and Best Relationship.

Blog Posts

• AHCA Population Health Summit Recap: Four Takeaways from Industry Experts (Netsmart)
• Cybersecurity Threats in Healthcare – Protect Your Patients and Business (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Are You Ready to Shift Test-to-Treat into Hyperdrive? (OmniSys)
• 12 Steps of an EHR Roadmap and Why It’s Essential (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Real Risks Involved With Blockchain Technology (HealthTech Resources)
• Debunking Five Myths Healthcare Providers Have About AP Automation (Premier)
• Five steps to creating a competitive care delivery model with healthcare automation (Relatient)
• Finding the Why: Driving innovation in the cloud through process and workflow analysis (Tegria)
• Improving Patient Safety Through Unified Clinical Collaboration (TigerConnect)
• All Virtual Care and Care Management Must Be Grounded in Evidence (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Controlling Hospital Expenses: No Margin for Error (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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