News 3/8/24

Top News

A hacker who claims to have given the BlackCat ransomware group access to Change Healthcare’s network says that BlackCat reneged on paying him or her their 60% to 90% share of the $22 million ransom the company has been rumored to have paid. The affiliate hacker also claims to have kept copies of Change’s data. Click above image to enlarge.

Meanwhile, BlackCat claims to have shut down because of FBI pressure and claims that it will sell its ransomware source code, which some experts call an “exit scam” form of fake shutdown that is intended to avoid paying freelancers like the one above who participate in its ransomware-as-a-service operation.

A cybersecurity expert says that “this is our Colonial Pipeline,” referring the 2021 ransomware attack that was orchestrated by the same group, which disrupted fuel supplies in the eastern US for several days until the demanded ransom was paid to restore systems.

Reader Comments

From Full Price: “Re: Change Healthcare. I haven’t seen reported that pharmacies can’t process manufacturer coupons for their drugs. I am not sure how patients will be able to afford them.” Manufacturer co-pay assistance cards can’t be processed by pharmacies last I heard because of the Change outage, so that $5 per month Humira prescription will cost $8,000 per month. Patients can’t even use GoodRx for the $1,000 or so Humira savings it would provide because pharmacies can’t process that either.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I recently traveled internationally and was reminded that WhatsApp is like the metric system – logically and productively used by the entire rest of the world, but stubbornly resisted in the US. The free, Zuck-owned app offers superior group chats, end-to-end encryption, the ability to make free international voice and video calls over the Internet, and can be used on the desktop or web. The product even offers click-to-message advertising for contact a rep or ordering a product from a company’s website. It also doesn’t diminish Android users by displaying their messages in blue.

I was thinking about Kipp Lassetter, MD, who in 2011 sold HIE technology vendor Medicity to Aetna for $500 million, after which the insurer basically let it die. Anyway, I was fascinated to learn via LinkedIn that Kipp is the proud owner since 2012 of Scottsdale, AZ’s The Thumb, a wildly popular auto spa, gas station, bakery, and barbeque restaurant and catering operation that has been featured on “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives” (that’s him with Guy above), I like that Kipp used Aetna’s money to pivot to brisket. Fun fact: Kipp emailed in around 2004 to say that he was a fan of HIStalk, of which I didn’t know I had any, and he helped me figure out how Medicity could become my first sponsor 20 years ago.

HIMSS24

HIMSS removed the HIMSS24 exhibitor count from the conference website a while back, but I used some amateurish data parsing techniques to scrape their exhibitor page, which I now know lists 1,007 booths. It occurred to me as I was scraping that self-promotion doesn’t end at the exhibit hall exit door, however, as attendees will be trying to convince each other of their employability, party attendee desirability, and producer of endless podcasts and videos.

I’m pleased to have spotted just a handful of “HIMMS” spelling gaffes this year, so I will be better rested to gripe about people who can’t master the idea that this weekend means replacing EST with EDT.

Support my sponsors by seeing what they’re doing at the conference.

Orlando weather calls for partly cloudy days next week, with highs around 80. Early arrivals and booth setter-uppers will sweat out 89 on Saturday.

Webinars

March 27 (Wednesday) 3 ET. “Houston Methodist: Deploying clinical AI at scale for improved outcomes.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Khurram Nasir, MD, MPH, chief of cardiovascular disease prevention and wellness, Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center; Brenda Campbell, RN, senior consultant, HM Health System Innovations; Nassib Chamoun, MS, founder and CEO, HDAI. The presenters  will share how an interdisciplinary team collaborated to successfully use predictive models and a novel AI-driven approach to address post-discharge mortality. They will also describe how they expanded use of the platform to reduce clinician time spent digging through the EHR with a one-page risk profile, including codes extracted from notes using generative AI, and targeting their highest risk patients for extra attention. They will speak to how they overcame barriers to bringing AI at scale to support clinicians across the care continuum.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health and human services software vendor Healthy Together acquires previously-shuttered Kinsa Health, which offered AI-powered epidemiological prediction models using consumer smart thermometers as well as healthcare demand forecasting.

Patient engagement technology vendor Carenet Health acquires the population health management business of Health Dialog from Rite Aid, which is restructuring under bankruptcy.

Cigna subsidiary Evernorth Health Services offers companies and health plans that want to cover GLP-1 drugs the ability to have the cost capped, with the EncircleRx program also including virtual lifestyle support via Omada’s digital health tools.

Salesforce announces healthcare conversational AI solutions: Einstein Copilot (allows providers to schedule appointments, send referrals, and get a patient summary) and Assessment Generation (health assessment surveys).

PE Hub reports that the private equity owners of Netsmart are reviewing first-round bids for the company that could value it at $5 billion. The firms bought their stake from Allscripts in 2018 for a reported $525 million.

Sales

• An unnamed, 10-hospital US university health network chooses Sectra One Cloud for imaging.

People

VirtualHealth hires Sameer Gaikwad (HealthEdge) as VP of account management and customer success.

Jerry Hogge, JD, MS (Calibre Systems)  joins MultiPlan as COO.

Curae hires Joe Block (GeBBS Healthcare Solutions) as SVP of sales.

Clinical Architecture promotes Marck DuBois to chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

InterSystems announces GA of TrakCare Assistant, a navigation and search tool for its EHR that the company says can reduce EHR interaction time by 66%.

The Meditech Traverse Exchange Canada goes live, connecting four Meditech-using hospitals and 65 long-term care sites that use PointClickCare.

A new KLAS report characterizes patient self-scheduling as “an early but broadening market,” as providers choose from EHR offerings, patient engagement platforms, and standalone solutions. Self-scheduling represents a small percentage of visits. Relatient has the highest overall performance, followed closely by Zocdoc, although the report notes that while Zocdoc customers love the product, they aren’t thrilled with paying a per-booking charge for canceled or no-show visits.

Government and Politics

In Ireland, watchdogs warn that delays in replacing Beaumont Hospital’s 25-year-old IT system present a serious operational risk.

FDA gives marketing clearance for Dexcom’s non-prescription continuous glucose monitor for diabetics who don’t use insulin. The wearable sensor captures blood glucose levels every 15 minutes and can be worn for 15 days before replacing.

Other

A closed nursing home blames its failure on the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which halted new admissions to the facility last fall over safety concerns. The facility is awash in unpaid bills and payroll, which it blames on the Change Healthcare cyberattack.

This headline must be surprising to Walgreens, which owns VillageMD.

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom Americas staff sort, inventory, and pack toy donations at Zach’s Toy Chest for delivery to local children’s hospitals in North Carolina.
• Bella Medical (TX) adds Sunoh.ai medical scribe software to its EClinicalWorks implementation.
• FinThrive releases a new Health Rethink Podcast, “Let’s Get Bio, Socio, Psych with It!”
• Verato is awarded a patent for its Referential Matching technology for healthcare identity resolution.
• Five9 continues to grow, surpassing revenue records with industry-leading AI innovations, international expansion, and partner acceleration.
• Healthcare IT Leaders provides assistance for organizations affected by the Change Healthcare incident.
• Arcadia, Inovalon, InterSystems, Wolters Kluwer, Availity, Ellkay, and MRO will exhibit at the Rise National Conference March 17-19 in Nashville.

Blog Posts

• Partnering to Care for People with Cancer (Findhelp)
• 4 Ways to Streamline the Prior Authorization Process (FinThrive)
• Healthcare Cybersecurity Threats: February 2024 (Fortified Health Security)
• 5 Myths of Content and SEO (Healthwise)
• Understanding UKG Multiple Assignments and the Benefits for Healthcare (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Creating a “Way of Life” Around Healthcare Labor Management (Impact Advisors)
• MEDITECH to spotlight intelligent interoperability at HIMSS24 (Meditech)
• Overcoming patient demographic data verification challenges with Insurance Discovery and Demographic Verification (Inovalon)
• Regulating the Math? Statistical Observations on GenAI in Healthcare (InterSystems)
• Undiagnosed Diabetes: Why We Need a More Proactive Approach (Lucem Health)
• A House of Cards: Third-Party Vendor Security and Community Hospitals (Medhost)
• Meditech Expanse takes center stage at ViVE 2024 (Meditech)

Contacts

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