Monday Morning Update 8/14/23

Top News

HHS’s Office for Civil Rights launches a federal civil rights investigation of Vanderbilt University Medical Center for providing Tennessee’s attorney general with the fully identified medical records of transgender patients. Patients who were involved have already initiated a class action lawsuit against VUMC for that release, as demanded by the AG.

An attorney who is representing the patients in the lawsuit against VUMC for failing to de-identify the records said, “The more we learn about the breadth of the deeply personal information that VUMC disclosed, the more horrified we are. Our clients are encouraged that the federal government is looking into what happened here.”

The office of Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti said it hasn’t heard about the investigation, but told reporters, “Turning a disagreement about the law into a federal investigation would be plainly retaliatory and would reflect a dangerous politicization of federal law enforcement.”

Reader Comments

From Nicholas S. Desai, MD: “Re: using generative AI. We are using software that develops working clinical summaries or drafts of the patient’s status that display right in the patient list in Epic. Our physicians, nurses, and case managers are using in real-time on the front lines. We recently reached the 1 million mark and I think there are a lot of great lessons on how to deploy AI in clinical workflows from our experience. We are seeing good time savings from the tool, as well as good user reception and adoption. There are not many real world examples of clinical generative AI in actual use and at fairly high scale that I am aware.” Dr. Desai is chief medical officer and chief quality officer at Houston Methodist Health System (Sugar Land). They are using software from Dallas-based Pieces Technologies, which was spun off from Parkland Memorial Hospital several years ago, which notes that its product has autonomously generated 1 million real-time clinical summaries for 72,000 patients in the first seven months after go-live.  

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents don’t expect AI-powered systems to be used to diagnose and treat patients without a doctor’s involvement any time soon. However, some commenters note that doctors have successfully supervised other practitioners for years, allowing EMTs and other clinically trained people to work within established guardrails with the oversight of a physician medical director.

New poll to your right or here: What type of doctor would be your #1 clinical choice for a telehealth visit for a urinary tract infection? I’m eliminating price, insurance coverage, etc. to get an idea of all things being equal, who would you want treating your UTI, and you can say N/A if you would choose an in-person visit if available. I’m also saying “doctor” to simplify voting, but “doctor” could be a different type of clinician if appropriate.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Cardamom Health. With a multidisciplinary, team-based approach, The Madison, WI-based company brings a modern model of delivering low cost EHR data, analytics, and applications services. Cardamom helps healthcare organizations tackle some of today’s toughest challenges – including patient engagement, value-based care, clinical research, and revenue cycle management – with a sharp focus on integrating and harmonizing data to generate meaningful, timely, and actionable insights. Founded by a KLAS award-winning managed services leadership team, the company’s data, analytics, and applications experts have decades of experience serving over 150 healthcare organizations, including some of the most complex health systems in the US. The company empowers its clients to maximize the value of their IT investments by providing results-based services to improve quality, business outcomes, and overall patient experience – all at a much lower cost than traditional consulting. Thanks to Cardamom Health for supporting HIStalk.

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

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority provisionally clears UnitedHealth’s $1.5 billion acquisition of healthcare software vendor EMIS after identifying no anti-competitive concerns.

Sales

• Children’s Health Ireland chooses Oneview Healthcare’s digital patient engagement and education system.
• Ireland-based Bon Secours Health System launches a project to implement Meditech at its five hospitals, with the assistance of Nordic. 

Announcements and Implementations

Mount Sinai Health system will become the first health system to move its Epic instance to Microsoft Azure Large Instances.

Other

Oracle talks up the desirability of Nashville – for which the company received $278 million in government incentives to open a facility there – and says it will move a “national healthcare conference” of Oracle Health there. The invited guests at an Oracle event in Nashville were almost entirely drawn from healthcare.

Sponsor Updates

• NTT Data staff support the AFCEA Educational Foundation’s golf tournament fundraiser.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Empowering Communities, Analytics for Better Patient Care.”
• Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Karim Jessa, MD.”
• Optum and Capella University announce a new nurse practitioner program to address the growing national need for skilled clinicians.
• Surescripts publishes a new data brief, “Prescribers & Pharmacists Look for More Collaboration & New Technologies to Improve Care.”
• Waystar will exhibit at the MedInformatix Summit August 15-17 in Fort Lauderdale, FL.Forrester includes West Monroe in its new report, “The Digital Transformation Services Landscape, Q3 2023.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces strong results for the Lippincott portfolio of journals in the 2022 Journal Impact Factor rankings released by Clarivate Analytics.
• Zen Healthcare IT will exhibit at the Civitas conference August 20-23 in National Harbor, MD.

Blog Posts

• Humbitious: Why low-ego and high-drive is the way to lead through healthcare challenges (Meditech)
• Where to Find Mental Health Funding – A Cheat Sheet (NeuroFlow)
• Q&A: How one health system helps radiologists get more done in less time with PowerScribe One (Nuance)
• EHRs or social interactions: Can’t we have both? (Nordic)
• Four Pros for Standardizing the Formulary (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Insights from MedDev: Omnichannel Marketing Solutions for Medtech Brands (OptimizeRx)
• A New Partnership with Databricks (Redox)
• On-call scheduling: 4 ways to boost patient care and satisfaction (Spok)
• The Importance of Focusing on Healthcare Inequalities with SDOH (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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