News 8/11/23

Top News

Doximity reports Q1 results: revenue up 20%, adjusted EPS $0.19 versus $0.14, beating analyst expectations for both.

Shares fell more than 20% on the news, however, as the company lowered sales projections and announced plans to lay off 10% of its headcount.

DOCS shares have lost 31% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 11% gain, valuing the company at $5 billion.  

Webinars

August 24 (Thursday) 2 ET. “RCM analytics in action: How to use your data to drive decisions + revenue.” Sponsor: Waystar. Presenter: Laura Tungate, solution strategist team lead, Waystar. This webinar will describe how to use RCM analytics to take control of your data even if you use outdated or multiple tools. Attendees will learn how to target improvements, describe the KPIs that are key to revenue cycle leaders, prioritize dashboards that spotlight organizational goals and build alignment, and how and when to apply RCM analytics to go from analysis to action faster.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

California Heathline questions how Kaiser Permanente can meet its stated goal of reducing healthcare costs by spending $5 billion to create the Risant Health hospital group, whose first acquisition will be Geisinger. The deal doesn’t involve KP’s physician group, whose physicians are paid on a per-member, per-month basis, and the non-profit KP doesn’t own health plans and practice groups in other states, which is one reason that its previous expansion attempts failed. Experts question whether KP is planning an expansion into lucrative fee-for-service operations, or if not, whether Risant Health will distract KP from its core operations and increase costs.

One-time digital health high-flyer Babylon Health swirls further down the drain following the collapse of its planned take-private merger with MindMaze. The company announces the shutdown of its US business, the laying off of its 94 employees, and its hopes to sell its UK operations. BBLN went public via a SPAC merger in 2021 and saw its market cap hit $8 billion shortly after. Shares are now at under $0.02 after losing another 20% on Thursday, valuing the company at $350,000.

The private equity owner of video and voice communications vendor Intermedia Cloud Communications is exploring the company’s options, which could include a sale for up to $1 billion. The company’s healthcare call center is integrated with vendor platforms such as Athenahealth, Veradigm, and Oracle Health.

Startup Hey Jane, whose saw its business of selling abortion drugs by mail limited by state legislation, adds new virtual services to treat UTIs, yeast infections, emergency contraception, and herpes treatment. The new offerings will be limited to customers in the same 11 states where its abortion services remain legal.

Sales

• Cigna’s health benefits group will offer its members Virgin Pulse’s health behavior change app.

People

Alaska’s HIE hires Kendra Sticka, PhD, MS, RDN (University of Alaska Anchorage) as executive director.

Chris Alberto (Change Healthcare) joins Divurgent as VP of client service.

CHIME hires Nicole Kerkenbush, RN, MHA, MN (Monument Health) as VP of education. She previously held IT leadership roles in the Army Office of the Surgeon General and the DoD and was a US Army colonel.

Cathy Donohue, MBA (Commure) joins CodaMetrix as SVP of product.

Mike Doyle (Health Catalyst)  joins Impact Advisors as VP. 

Announcements and Implementations

Digital cloud fax and interoperability solutions Consensus Cloud Solutions announces Clarity Clinical Documentation, which uses AI and ML to extract clinical information from faxes, handwritten notes, and scanned documents and post it to the correct patient’s electronic patient record.

Privacy and Security

Zoom’s founder and CEO says that the company’s recently changed terms of service, which seemed to require users to accept Zoom’s use of their recordings for AI training, was “a process failure internally.” He promises customers that “we will never use any of their audio, video, chat, screen sharing, attachments, and other communications like poll results, whiteboard, and reactions to train our AI models.” Customers had complained, and in some cases left the platform, over concerns that their proprietary company information could be exposed, patient privacy could be compromised, and the opt-in decision was at the administrator level so that meeting participants had no choice except to leave.

Other

A Washington Post report showcases New York’s Mount Sinai Hospital as being among the elite hospitals whose executives are spending hundreds of millions of dollars on AI software and education, while employees are expressing concern about AI mistakes, privacy issues, the possibility of staff cuts, and using software that has not undergone clinical trials. The dean of AI at Sinai’s medical school says that AI vendors are overhyping its capabilities and urges oversight by physicians and the federal government, while its VP of digital experience says the hardest part of introducing AI is the reluctance of doctors and nurses to change their decades-old ways.

Billionaire celebrity and influencer Kim Kardashian draws heat from her fans for pitching a startup’s full-body “preventative” MRI scans for $2,500. She and the company claim that she wasn’t paid for her endorsement. Her followers note that the Prenuvo tests aren’t covered by insurance and are therefor not affordable for most of them.

Sponsor Updates

• Five9 interns volunteer as part of Habitat for Humanity’s Playhouse Program.
• Clearwater launches its Cyber Now Initiative, offering providers educational assistance, assessment of cybersecurity practices, and expert resources to build and manage cybersecurity programs.
• Best Medical Care (NY) upgrades to EClinicalWorks Cloud.
• Meditech will host its Meditech Live leadership summit September 20-22 in Foxborough, MA.
• Arcadia publishes a report titled “The Current State of Healthcare Analytics Platforms.”
• Black Book Market Research survey-takers recognize Netsmart as the top overall client-rated, post-acute technology platform for the ninth year in a row.
• Impact Advisors welcomes 28 new colleagues to the company.
• Lucem Health releases a new episode of its This Week in Clinical AI Podcast.
• Medhost will exhibit at the Mid-South Critical Access Hospital Conference August 15-17 in Point Clear, AL.

Blog Posts

• Using Data to Stay Compliant with Joint Commission Standards (Dimensional Insight)
• Our expanding community of caring (Findhelp)
• Healthcare cybersecurity threats: July 2023 (Fortified Health Security)
• 5 Ways to Get the Most Out of Nuvolo (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Why new Alzheimer’s drugs rely on early diagnosis & screening (Linus Health)
• Securing an Interconnected World: Minimizing the Risks of Vendor Sprawl (Medhost)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.