Monday Morning Update 4/15/24

Top News

Memorial Hermann – Texas Medical Center abruptly shuts down its abdominal transplant program after suspicious irregularities pertaining to patient eligibility criteria come to light. The hospital believes Steve Bynon, Jr., MD, head of the program since 2011, has been manipulating a federal transplant database to deny certain patients access to the potentially life-saving procedures.

His motive remains unclear, though plenty of speculation around bribes for higher-priority spots on the list have been suggested on Reddit.

Red flags have included donor criteria that mandate impossible ages and weights, such as a “300-pound toddler.”

A Redditor points out that, “A database for such a high criticality function should have several data validation measures. Preventing data like a 300lb toddler requirement should have been done at the design level. As appalling as the doctor’s behavior here is, it’s almost just as appalling how easy it was to inject bad data in the system. I can imagine scenarios where a well-meaning provider misses a decimal point for a 30.0lb toddler and now we’re in the same boat. Why were there no data validation and data review processes?”

HHS is investigating.

Reader Comments

From Lanman: “A provider is actually going to bet on Oracle Health (Cerner).” Lanman caught my mention last week of AtlantiCare’s decision to implement Oracle Health as a part of its Vision 2030 program. I didn’t find their current vendor with a quick search, but I think they may have already been using Cerner and maybe some old McKesson stuff.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Insurance companies lead the pack when it comes to frustrations with healthcare-related organizations. Feed up in Boston would have selected insurance company, specialist, and ambulance company given that all three enabled hackers to steal his personal data.

New poll to your right or here: Do you think high-profile CEOs or founders make their companies more attractive acquisition targets? What role, if any, have you seen the cult of personality play in healthcare M&A?

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Epic informs customers that it has cut off its connection to Particle Health because it believes the company is using patient data in “unauthorized and unethical ways that have nothing to do with treatment.” Epic filed a formal complaint several weeks ago with Carequality, of which Particle Health is a member, over the same concerns. Particle Health insists the company has always acted in good faith, and is working with Epic to address its concerns.

People

Benjamin Gold (Optum) joins Nym as SVP of product management.

Announcements and Implementations

Newly opened Sarina Hospital in Australia goes live with Oracle Health as part of the state of Queensland’s facility-wide implementation.

Government and Politics

VA Secretary Denis McDonough says that the department will resume rolling out its Oracle Health-based EHR before the end of fiscal year 2025, despite the fact that the 2025 budget doesn’t include any funding for additional deployments. The department rolled out the technology to a handful of sites over a three-year period, pausing further deployments in 2023 while it worked with Oracle Health to address numerous patient safety, technical, end-user, and budget concerns.

A litany of patient safety concerns at Hampton VA Medical Center (VA) and allegations of leadership cover-ups prompt lawmakers to ask VA Secretary McDonough to look into the hospital’s lengthy, documented history of substandard care within its surgical department. Among its transgressions, many of which have been investigated by the Office of Inspector General, is the March 2021 failure of a primary care physician to correctly enter bone scan orders into a patient’s EHR, ultimately delaying results that indicated possible metastatic bone disease.

Other

An analysis in JAMA of 100 acute hospital websites finds that 96% share user data with third-parties. Seventy-one of those sites offer public privacy policies disclosing that practice. Of those, 40 disclose the specific third parties that receive that information.

UC Davis pilots a digital health program for colon cancer screening that uses text messages to remind patients of screening timelines, gauges their interest in and eligibility for Cologuard at-home screening kits, and gives them an opportunity to schedule screening appointments.

Tesla owner MaxPaul Franklin credits his car’s self-driving feature with safely getting him to a hospital 13 miles away while suffering from a mild heart attack. Other Tesla owners stress that the car’s new Full Self-Driving capability requires a certain amount of driver supervision, and thus should not be used in lieu of an ambulance. I have to wonder at what point during his day did Franklin don his Tesla T-shirt.

Sponsor Updates

• VieCure expands its implementation of DrFirst’s medication management platform to include DrFirst’s Rcopia e-prescribing capabilities.
• Netsmart will exhibit at NatCon24 April 15-17 in St. Louis.
• Vyne Medical will exhibit at the NAHAM Annual Conference April 23-26 in Dallas.
• Nym names Sheaira Williams medical coding and compliance auditor, Esti Kahanowich medical data analyst, Barak Golan dev ops engineer, Yael Golan medical data analyst, Ido Reiss NLP research engineer, and Elias Honegger EHR integration analyst.
• PerfectServe partners with TeamBuilder to offer its predictive staff scheduling platform in conjunction with its Lightning Bolt provider scheduling software.
• Sectra publishes a new white paper, “AI making its way into cardiologists’ hearts.”
• Upfront Healthcare will present at the Urgent Care Association Annual Convention April 16 in Las Vegas.
• Verato adds Smart Steward, a generative AI-based assistant for healthcare data stewardship teams, to its HMDM platform for healthcare identity data management.
• Trualta adds Caregivers Essential Certification to its caregiver education and support platform.

Blog Posts

• Medi-Cal Enhancements for at-Risk Populations: What Does It Mean for Providers? (Netsmart)
• Crafting an AI strategy in healthcare: A deep dive with Dr. Patrick McGill (Notable Health)
• 5 top tips for optimizing your workflow with Dragon Medical One (Nuance)
• The relationship Rx: Unlocking healthcare’s hidden superpower through human-centered design (Nordic)
• 4 Tips for Modernizing Healthcare HR Operations (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Shift Efforts from a Focus on Burnout to a Holistic Wellbeing Approach: Important resources from the CDC to address employee wellbeing (QGenda)
• After Leading Epic Go-Lives for Over 15 Years, Here’s What We’ve Learned. (ReMedi Health Solutions)
• Trust is Always the Foundation (Rhapsody)
• Overcoming Access: How Innovative Tech Can Streamline Enrollment and Reduce Adherence Barriers (RxLightning)
• Optimize your contact center with guidance from real-life success stories (Spok)
• Sig IQ Saves Prescribers from an Eternity of Mouse Clicks (Surescripts)
• HIMSS 2024: What You Missed & Why It Matters (Symplr)
• Reflections on HIMSS24 (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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