News 2/15/23

Top News

HHS, ONC, and The Sequoia Project announce that CommonWell Health Alliance, EHealth Exchange, Epic Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement Interoperability Services, Health Gorilla, Kno2, and Konza have been approved to implement TEFCA as prospective Qualified Health Information Networks.

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

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

Doximity launches a beta version of DocsGPT, which allows providers to submit prior authorization documentation to insurers using the AI chatbot technology of ChatGPT. In an “only in healthcare” convergence of cutting edge and ancient technologies, Doximity will also integrate ChatGPT with its fax solution. DocsGPT errored out every time I tried to use it, which I assume is because ChatGPT was overloaded.

In the UK, hospital software vendor System C acquires Clevermed, which offers the BadgerNet system for pregnancy and newborns.

Sales

• Emirates Health Services will deploy Care.ai’s smart care facility platform throughout the UAE, with a focus on redesigning clinical and operational workflows through ambient monitoring and virtual inpatient care.
• Mary Washington Healthcare (VA) will launch an inpatient virtual nursing program using technology from Caregility.
• Montana’s Big Sky Care HIE selects Lyniate’s Rhapsody Interoperability Suite.

People

Joe Sedlak, RN, MBA (Xealth) joins Vital as VP of client success.

Regenstrief Institute names Rachel Patzer, PhD, MPH (Emory University School of Medicine) president and CEO.

Alan Portela (AirStrip) joins Masimo as SVP of strategic business and hospital automation.

Government and Politics

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-MT) says the VA’s EHR Modernization Program must move forward, pointing out that issues with the new Oracle Cerner system do not outweigh those with the department’s legacy VistA system. Tester co-authored the VA Electronic Health Record Transparency Act, which was signed into law last summer, that requires VA Secretary Denis McDonough to update Congress on the software’s costs, performance, and outcomes.

Oracle Cerner, meanwhile, continues to push back on recent legislative efforts to shut down or overhaul the VA’s EHR program. Oracle EVP Ken Glueck has followed up his February 3 criticism of those bills with a new blog post that outlines the benefits to veterans and end users and points out the folly of the “improvements” act, which places “the go/no go decision to migrate to the new EHR to …171 different medical centers.”

ONC announces that 95% of certified health IT developers met the December 31 deadline to update and provide their customers with technology that, among other things, enables access to information through FHIR-based APIs “without special effort.”

Other

Malaysia’s Selayang Hospital, one of the first hospitals in the world to go paperless in 1999, struggles technically after shutting down its Cerner system, switching to a Notepad-like text editor called BHIS that it had developed for barebones data entry during downtime, and then overloading that system 18 months later in forcing a switch to yet another homegrown system that was designed for COVID-19 quarantine centers. The hospital has also shut down its IT department after outsourcing to a vendor whose contract was terminated. The radiologist who developed BHIS in just four hours says he was limited in that most hospital computers were running Windows XP with Internet Explorer 6.0, the hospital’s network speed was limited, and the virtual server the hospital gave him had only 1 GB of memory. The hospital’s website still declares that its now-mothballed Total Hospital Information System makes it “a showcase to the rest of the world.”

UnityPoint Health (IA) begins charging patients between $36 and $70 for messaging their physicians via its MyChart patient portal. UnityPoint Clinic President and CEO Patricia Newland, MD says the organization decided to start charging due to the “tremendous increase” in messaging seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Patients will not be billed for messages that are related to appointment scheduling or prescription refills.

Duke University researchers discover that acquiring mental health data from data brokers is fairly easy, inexpensive, and typically comes with few strings attached. Researchers approached 37 data brokers for bulk mental health data and received offers from 11, that said they could provide potentially identifiable data on people with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder sorted by demographic information including credit scores. Some brokers offered information on 5,000 people for as little as $275.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity CEO Russ Thomas joins the Florida Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
• Azara Healthcare publishes a new customer success story, “Alaska Health Centers Improve Diabetes Care Through Data-Driven Healthcare Model.”
• Baker Tilly publishes a new case study, “State health department captures more complete and timely data on highly transmissible diseases through ECR implementation.”
• Censinet debuts its new Risk Never Sleeps Podcast, focusing on the people protecting patient safety across healthcare.
• Thirty-two community, critical access, and specialty hospitals select Oracle Cerner’s CommunityWorks technology.
• Clearsense publishes a new whitepaper, “How AI and Governance Can Transform Healthcare.”
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of The Informonster Podcast, “The CDC Shares the Success of Collaboration During a Crisis.”
• Direct Recruiters celebrates 40 years in business.

Blog Posts

• From Transactions to Transformations: Putting a Premium on Human Connection in Registration (Access)
• 5 Key Performance Indicators to Monitor for a Healthy Revenue Cycle (AGS Health)
• Futureproofing care: New models in care delivery (Arcadia)
• Health Systems’ Untapped Growth Opportunity: Pharmacy (Arrive Health)
• Taking the temperature of health systems (Nordic)
• How to Create a Continuous Healthcare Experience (Artera)
• Health IT Innovation: Opportunities to Protect Your Health System in a Volatile Economy (CereCore)
• Social Determinants of Health (ChartSpan)
• Epic EHR and Google Cloud Announce Partnership (HealthTech Resources)
• How Vulnerabilities Hide in Plain Sight (& How to Mitigate Them) (Clearwater)
• Helping Physicians Overcome Barriers in Risk-based Documentation and Coding (Curation Health)

Contacts

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