News 7/12/24

Top News

ONC publishes its Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Patient Engagement, Information Sharing, and Public Health Interoperability (HTI-2) proposed rule for public comment.

The rule would include new certification criteria for public health and payers, including the technical requirements to support CMS’s Interoperability and Prior Authorization rule. 

The proposed rule introduces certification criteria for a real-time prescription benefit tool.

The rule would mandate adoption of USCDI version 4 by January 1, 2028. It would also update standards that are related to clinical image exchange and the use of multi-factor authentication.

It also clarifies the information blocking regulations to address concerns that entities could be penalized for choosing to limit sharing of a patient’s reproductive health information.

Reader Comments

From Peds MD: “Re: the Epic Care Everywhere matching problem for newborns that I reported earlier this week. Epic reached out to me, facilitated by Mr. HIStalk. They agreed that the Epic (and probably every EMR) newborn matching needs special considerations since many normal demographics change for newborns. In discussion are that the Care Everywhere ID (or any other quasi-national identifier) should be accessible for newborns, and with it, the requestor probably should only need one other matching point to be able to see a possible match. I will be bringing this complex topic to a Newborn Informatics Standardization Workgroup and Epic will be participating in this. The Epic staff wanted to encourage other clinicians with questions to contact Epic so that they can work with them, too.”

From SunsetSister: “Re: ModMed. Heard thy are sunsetting TRAKnet (podiatry EHR) and Exscribe (ortho EHR). Can you confirm? Both EHRs were acquired by ModMed in 2021. Maintaining status quo for three years and then telling customers they need to make a choice – convert to ModMed’s version or find a new system – the timing sounds about right.” I’ve emailed the company’s press contact, who provided this response:

As part of our overall strategy to deliver best-in-class experiences to our customers, ModMed has been upgrading clients using TRAKnet and Sammy to ModMed Podiatry for some time. We’ve taken the best of both platforms and built a superior cloud-based solution in ModMed Podiatry that is trusted by thousands of providers. ModMed is a leader in the podiatry space, and making this change places us in an even stronger position to continue providing state-of-the-art features, including artificial intelligence, enhanced patient engagement, and intuitive revenue cycle capabilities to our customers.

From Minor Kibble: “Re: Marshfield Clinic being acquired by Sanford. They will move to Epic, the latest in the clinic’s 10-year journey in which it tried to become a vendor by selling its homegrown EHR, abandoned that strategy in 2017 and replaced the homegrown EHR with Cerner even though Epic dominates in Wisconsin, and then begin replacing Cerner with Epic the year after its Cerner installs were complete.” The combined organization would have 56 hospitals, 56,000 employees, and $10 billion in annual revenue. The memorandum of understanding says that the combined system will invest up to $500 million to transition to Epic.   

From Dr. Q: “Re: AI. See this article from the journal Gastroenterology about using AI alone or with the involvement of an endoscopist in the optical diagnosis of colorectal polyps. Neither excelled, but AI did better working alone than when it was ‘corrected’ by the doctors. My impression so far is that AI is great for pictures and patterns. The language stuff, meh.” I’m thinking of driverless cars, where it became obvious that the best way to train them was to just let them watch humans who are doing it, which is how you would train your not overly bright 16-year-old to achieve driving competence purely by observation and practice instead of writing down 100,000 rules. The AI could fall well short of perfection and still be consistently safer than reckless or inattentive human drivers. The other interesting aspect of this article is that we want AI that enhances rather than replaces physician judgment, but we also know that physicians overweight their own personal experience in their narrow patient population, so they may override AI’s correct conclusions in assuming that they are smarter than the machine.

Webinars

July 18 (Thursday) noon ET. “New CMS Final Rule: Strategies to Get EHR and IT Vendors Up to Speed.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. The new final rule that was issued by CMS on June 13, 2024, goes beyond a basic upgrade of SCRIPT standards and improves care connections among doctors, pharmacies, and patients. The presenters will lead EHR and IT vendors through the final rule, provide details on key provisions and compliance deadlines, offer tactics to tackle roadmap development, and provide direction on where and how partners can best leverage the requirements for the benefit of their customers.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AI-driven cardiac device monitoring manufacturer Octagos Health raises $43 million in a Series B funding round.

Clinical insights platform vendor Regard closes a $61 million Series B funding round.

A private equity firm makes an unstated investment in healthcare-focused IT managed services provider Medicus IT.

ExactCare, which acquired Tabula Rasa HealthCare in November 2023, renames the combined business to AnewHealth, which offers pharmacy services and technology for managing chronic conditions in home and community settings. CEO John Figueroa has held CEO roles at CarepathRx, Genoa Healthcare, Apria Healthcare Group, and Omnicare. He is a former Army captain and Ranger. 

Sales

• Carle Health will deploy Nabla’s ambient AI assistant to 1,500 providers, starting with its multi-specialty physician group.

People

Clearsense hires Jonathan Cook (Arcadia) as CTO, Ken Misch, MBA (Medhost) as CFO/COO, and Glen Wirick (Adhere Health) as chief commercial officer.

RLDatix names August Calhoun, PhD (Optum Insight) as president/GM of RLDatix North America and Mike Allelunas (ConcertAI) as president/GM of RLDatix Life Sciences.

Announcements and Implementations

Porter County, IN’s health department launches a Findhelp-powered website that provides information on free or reduced-cost community services.

The New Hampshire business paper covers the rollout of Nuance’s DAX at Elliot Health Systems.

KONZA National Network launches Birth Connect, which immediately alerts OB/GYNs when one of their patients has delivered a baby. The HIE and QHIN says the alert solves EHR interoperability issues that cause delayed reporting and minimizes record loss due to temporary use of “baby girl” or “baby boy” as a first name.

Government and Politics

A federal jury convicts the former CEO of publicly traded hospital supply chain data services vendor SCWorx on two counts of securities fraud. Marc Schessel announced publicly in the early days of the pandemic that the company had a contract to acquire and sell millions of COVID test kits from an Australian supplier, sending SCWorx shares up 400%, but the company’s tests were not FDA approved, SCWorx didn’t have the money to pay for them, and they ended up not acquiring a single test to sell.

The CDC-funded Data Modernization Implementation Center Program selects CRISP Shared Services as one of its three implementation centers, along with Guidehouse and Mathematica.

Privacy and Security

Mt. San Rafael Hospital (CO) reports being hit by a ransomware attack.

The US Navy disciplines a jhospital corps member who attempted to look up President Biden’s records in MHS Genesis three times in February. He was unable to do so because the access to the President’s records is restricted, although he did access the records of a different Joe Biden.

Other

Authors from University of Colorado Health describe its Virtual Health Center, which provides 4,100 interventions for 800 patients daily across it 12 hospitals. Some of its programs:

• A virtual sitter program, where patients who are flagged by a fall risk model are monitored by video and are verbally requested to wait for help when trying to get out of bed unassisted.
• A sepsis prediction tool.
• Triaging ill employees early in the pandemic.
• Discharging stable inpatients with COVID-19 for home monitoring, although some had to be given smartphones because their only Internet access was public Wi-Fi.
• Future projects include work with wearables and virtual programs for primary care, care transitions, and admissions.

Sponsor Updates

• Vyne Medical publishes a new whitepaper, “From Costly Paper Processes to Streamlined Operations: How Healthcare Can Build a Better Future.”
• Notable achieves Oracle Validated Integration Expertise across all Oracle Health domains for its bidirectional integration of the Notable platform for healthcare operations.
• Elsevier’s new “Insights 2024: Attitudes Toward AI” report reveals researchers and clinicians believe in AI’s potential but demand transparency in order to trust tools.
• Laudio publishes a new case study, “MemorialCare Enhances Support for Nurse Managers, Boosts Nurse Engagement and Retention.”
• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its “Tell Me Where it Hurts” podcast, featuring Christopher Kunney, managing partner of Iotech Consulting.
• Meditech publishes a new customer success story, “Expanse delivers cost savings, scalability for Harrison County.”
• MRO will exhibit at the FHIMA Annual Convention July 14-17 in Orlando.

Blog Posts

• CIO Advice from Marty Paslick: ‘Healthcare Professionals First, Then Technologists.’ (CereCore)
• What You May Have Missed at HFMA 2024 – Industry Trends and More (FinThrive)
• The New CX: AI and Agents in Conversation (Five9)
• Healthcare Cybersecurity Threats: June 2024 (Fortified Health Security)
• Guarding the Gates: Why Provider Oversight is Important for Medical Record Audits (HealthMark Group)
• 3 Major CMMS Roadblocks that Mobile Apps Can Overcome (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Importance of Application Rationalization as the First Step in Cloud Cost Optimization (Impact Advisors)
• AI in RCM: Bridging the Gap Between Enthusiasts and Doubters (Inovalon)
• Digital health equity: Harnessing design systems to advance EHR accessibility (Meditech)
• What is the Right ICD-10 Code for Headaches? (Net Health)
• Why Owl and NeuroFlow Have Joined Forces to Improve Patient Monitoring & ARM Providers with the Data They Need (NeuroFlow)

Contacts

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