Hard agree, and not just because I'm a spreadsheet nerd. Why are we all here? Isn't it in the service…
News 2/8/23
Top News
A blog post by Oracle EVP and lobbyist Ken Glueck fires back at members of Congress with unusually aggressive criticism of two recent bills that would postpone or cancel the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation. Some points:
- 1980s-era VistA can’t meet the health challenges of veterans, can’t communicate with DoD systems, and has always been nearly impossible to maintain and modernize, so reverting to it at live sites would be a disaster.
- There’s no magic wand for modernization, but moving to commercial off-the-shelf system workflows is always worth doing.
- It was a mistake to schedule the first VA go-live in the pandemic’s peak days of October 2020 when caregivers were overwhelmed.
- With the Oracle acquisition of Cerner, “VA now has essentially two vendors for the price of one” in providing both clinical and engineering expertise.
- DoD and public hospitals around the world have successfully rolled out Cerner as the VA struggles, suggesting that the VA’s issues aren’t related to product capabilities.
- A particular VA challenge is that it runs 130 instances of VistA, which Cerner attempted to fix by combining them into a single workflow that turned out to be too cumbersome, such as dozens of options for ordering a liver enzyme test when commercial instances of Millennium might offer four or five.
- Glueck reiterated Oracle’s commitment to have the first beta test of a rewritten Millennium EHR available in 2023 at no extra cost to the VA or DoD. The cloud-based application will include a modern, Web-based, mobile-friendly user interface and will support voice recognition and AI-based clinical decision support.
Reader Comments
From Krill Feeder: “Re: more slide decks from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Are health IT vendors increasingly using the ‘land and expand’ investor pitch for growth prospects as is common in other industries? Get the customer using a low-cost initial sale, then cross-sell and upsell to create annuity-like profits. Do readers think this still works in a stock market downturn?” Incumbent vendors, unless they are inept, always have the upper hand in making add-on sales by gaining access to health system decision-makers and removing the uncertainty and effort that is required to onboard a new vendor. I like the concept since it encourages vendors to perform well after the sale, which is a win-win, but whether investors should believe such claims is a different issue. A variant is when one company acquires another purely to sell into its customer base, which is often traumatic for those customers whose carefully researched product and vendor assumptions are rendered uncertain by new ownership bearing ulterior motives.
From Pete Drucker: “Re: [vendor name omitted]. To exit the market. Last day for employees is Friday.” Unverified, so I didn’t include the company name. I could not find a press contact or employee email address anywhere, so I’ve sent a Twitter direct message to the CEO and will update with any response.
Webinars
March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
CVS Health is reportedly close to acquiring primary care operator Oak Street Health for $10.5 billion.
Sales
- WellSpan Health (PA) selects Epic-based KeyCare as its virtual care partner for its on-demand care service. The health system was part of the startup’s Series A investment round.
- VirtualHealth adds automated prior authorization capabilities from Edifecs to its Helios utilization and complex care management technology.
- Virtua Health (NJ) will implement Memora Health’s automated clinical intelligence software as a part of its care programs for congestive heart failure, specialty pharmacy, and colonoscopies.
People
April Saathoff, DNP, MS, RN (Harris Health System) joins Johns Hopkins as VP/CNIO.
ChartSpan names Dan PIessens, MS (RevealRx) CTO.
Emids names Sean Narayanan, MS (Apexon) as CEO. He replaces founder and CEO Saurabh Sinha, who will transition to board chair.
Medsphere promotes Jeri Judkins to CEO, replacing Irv Lichtenwald.
Mass General Brigham promotes Fran Hinckley to VP of digital solutions delivery of its community division.
Announcements and Implementations
Grocery store operator Albertsons Companies launches Sincerely Health, a digital health and wellness app that offers a questionnaire-calculated health score, linking to activity trackers such as Apple Health and Fitbit, and pharmacy management. The company’s merger with Kroger is pending approval.
OSF St. Francis Hospital (IL) launches a tele-NICU program using technology from Teladoc Health.
Alpine Health develops AI-powered predictive analytics to help hospital case managers ensure that at-risk patients transition to the right care settings with appropriate social services upon discharge. The startup is the product of a partnership between OSF Healthcare (IL), its innovation center, and consulting firm High Alpha Innovation.
Virginia Mason Franciscan Health (WA) uses hospital-at-home services and technology from Contessa to launch its Home Recovery Care program at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma.
Microsoft launches previews of Bing and Edge that are enhanced with the big brother of AI chat tool ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Google rushes chatbot AI tool Bard to testers in reaction to ChatGPT’s threat to Google’s search.
Medical technology company Imperative Care launches Kandu Health, which offers digital support for recovering stroke patients.
Government and Politics
The Defense Health Agency’s National Capital Region — which includes Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and several other facilities — will go live on MHS Genesis next month.
Privacy and Security
Federal officials attribute last December’s 988 mental health helpline outage to a cyberattack on Intrado, the emergency communications software company that has managed the service since it launched last summer.
Other
Moffitt Cancer Center (FL) researchers determine that 25,500 virtual visits conducted through its Department of Virtual Medicine during the pandemic saved patients 3.4 million miles and between $147 and $186 per visit. The center plans to expand its telemedicine capabilities to include clinical trials.
Sentara Healthcare creates a remote patient monitoring department to oversee the installation and management of 108 remote cameras in rooms across its hospitals in Virginia and North Carolina. The $1.7 million project follows a four-year period of product evaluations, pilot projects, data compilation, and establishment of policies and procedures. Trained technicians at two control centers are responsible for monitoring patients at a dozen facilities.
Did you see this in person as I did? A 3,875-foot scanned document that was created at HIMSS08 in Orlando holds the Guinness World Record as the longest ever. Attendance that year was 28,000 and keynote speakers included former AOL CEO Steve Case, “Freakonomics” author Steven D. Levitt, PhD, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
Sponsor Updates
- Availity presents scholarships to students from Jean Ribault High School as part of its Beyond School Walls program with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Florida.
- Diameter Health, now Availity, earns Certified Data Partner designation in NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program.
- King’s College Hospital London – Dubai will implement Oracle Cerner, utilizing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
- AdvancedMD publishes “The Top 6 Healthcare Trends Making an Impact on Medical Practices in 2023.”
- Nordic publishes a podcast featuring UCHealth CMIO C.T. Lin, MD.
- Agfa HealthCare announces the successful go live of its breast imaging AI solution at Dubai Academic Health Corp.’s Dubai Hospital.
- Artera expands its multilanguage support to 109 languages.
- Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Creating an effective corporate compliance program for healthcare providers.”
- Bamboo Health names Missi Ledbetter senior program manager, Courtney Forrest onboarding specialist, and Omer Khalil software engineer intern.
- Emirates Health Services implements Care.ai’s ambient healthcare intelligence platform to enable its smart facility initiative.
- ChartLogic integrates FlexScanMD’s inventory management and tracking system into its ambulatory practice management solution.
- Clearwater publishes a new whitepaper, “Understanding Cloud Security Basics: How to Ensure HIPAA Security and Compliance in a Cloud Environment.”
- CloudWave will exhibit at the North Carolina Healthcare Association Winter Meeting February 15-17 in Cary, NC.
- WellSky announces that its CarePort Care Management and CarePort Discharge care transition solutions can now coordinate with Dialyze Direct service sites.
- Azara Healthcare adds cost and utilization analytics and visualizations to its DRVS population health management platform.
Blog Posts
- 3 Ways Pharmacy Technology Creates Efficiencies that Reduce Staff Stress (OmniSys)
- The Power of the Smartphone & How Consumer Behavior is Shaping the Future of Healthcare ESignature (Access)
- Most Popular Healthcare Technology Trends of 2023 (HealthTech Resources)
- Risk-Adjustment & Hierarchical Condition Category Coding: What Are They and Why Do They Matter? (AGS Health)
- 5 Key Healthcare IT Trends to Watch in 2023 (Keysight Technologies)
- What are the 12 social determinants of health factors and why do they matter? (Arcadia)
- How to Think Differently to Find Talent in 2023 (Ascom)
- CMS National Healthcare Directory RFI Blog Series: (A Quiet) HealthTech Response (CareMesh)
- Sese Bennett Shares How Hospitals Can Be Best Prepared for Cybersecurity Breach (CereCore)
- Effective Cloud Migration is Crucial for Your Organization – Here’s How to Get it Right (CTG)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.
Interesting to hear from Oracle EVP Ken Glueck. I have some sympathy for his points, though I would caution this is certainly “point of view of the vendor, take with a healthy grain of salt” stuff.
What are the weakest parts of his argument? Here is my take:
1). “…schedul[ing] the first VA go-live in the pandemic’s peak days of October 2020…”;
OK, that’s true, but what was the alternative? Such a huge project develops a momentum of it’s own. People want to know what all that money was spent on and a Hold can be portrayed as “hiding something”. Remember, this system has political enemies.
Also, a Hold at that point will cost more money, and no one at the time knew when vaccines would be available, or when the pandemic would officially end. Thus the entire project goes into limbo.
2). “…Cerner attempted to fix by combining [130 instances] into a single workflow…”
We want to believe that prior analysis would have caught this. However I suspect that the Instance Combining was an architectural decision that would have been made well before the issues with the excessive order choices would have been discovered.
Just the same. Cerner can correct this (In principle only! I don’t know if Cerner can actually do this) by having order contexts. In other words, partial order filters can run and filter out large numbers of non-applicable ordering options.
I have sympathy for the Users here because I’ve seen other systems do this. They continually offer choices that do not apply, will never apply, and simply clutter up the interface. It’s also an opening for user error that need not exist. And yes, it happened because a massive systems consolidation took place.
My reaction to these talking points was fairly incredulous –
Point #2 – “it’s always worth it to move to a commercial solution” is only true if your use case is what the commercial solution was designed for.
Point #4 – “two vendors for the price of one” is a good thing? More committee meetings, more swirl, more ‘cooks in the kitchen’. This is an interesting way to spin “increased meddling due to corporate buyout.”
Point #5 – “others are using is successfully” similar to point #2, this is only relevant if the VA use case is sufficiently similar to the commercial uses it’s currently being successful in.
Point #6 – “over 130 instances causing huge amounts of variability” correct me if I’m wrong but this is one of the specific problems that this project was meant to fix. When your company has been given $20 billion to fix something, you’re unlikely to garner a lot of sympathy by complaining about it being very hard.
Point #7 – “rewritten Millennium EHR in 2023” if they pull this off and come out with a safe and viable product it will be an impressive feat of software engineering.
Starting with what “service men and women deserve” … That’s rich. They definitely don’t deserve THIS.
Only other quibble is that reality is closer to “two vendors for the price of 20.”