Monday Morning Update 8/5/24

Top News

The local paper describes how the CrowdStrike update problem affected Duke Health:

• 40,000 of the health system’s 60,000 devices got the bad patch, 22,000 of those went to the Blue Screen of Death, and 18,000 stayed up only because they hadn’t been rebooted.
• SVP/Chief Digital Officer Jeff Ferranti, MD, MS says that it was the first time that an IT problem required the health system to activate the hospital incident command system.
• Every affected machine had to be touched by a one of 100 IT volunteers to decrypt the drive, delete the errant file, and reboot, which he says took five to eight minutes.
• The high-priority devices were flagged with a yellow sticky note to be fixed first.
• All machines were restored within 72 hours, including those that gave the BSOD on Monday morning when some closed offices reopened.
• Clinicians were advised to use IPads or IPhones to access Epic until machines were restored.

Reader Comments

From Ye Hack: “Re: ransomware. My mother’s cardiology care was delayed when Ascension’s computers went down for weeks, and now my father is unable to donate blood thanks to the OneBlood breach. The pool of patient safety incidents is likely large.” Ransomware attack frequency is starting to take down multiple and sometimes overlapping services in the same area, such as hospitals, 911, and government. It’s probably only a matter of time before someone takes down one of the big drug chains or a drug distribution company like McKesson.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Laid off recently? It might not just be you.

New poll to your right or here: Which technologies have you used in the past year?

Listening: Tombstone Three, which I Shazamed after hearing it on a telenovela-type series Mrs. H and I were watching. I can find nothing online about this band, which then adds obscurity points for me. The music is surf rock meets Nick Cave and falls into a genre I hadn’t heard of called “dark country,” which blends traditional country music with dark, Southern Gothic-themed storytelling. I’m not a fan of country, but I’m liking this more authentic and less commercial subgenre. I’m also deep-tracking REM in a wave of guitar band nostalgia that doesn’t seem to have a place in today’s music, faves being this earworm song and this concert.

I was thinking about ambient documentation leading the AI charge in healthcare and recalled that we should be thanking Carl Dvorak of Epic for coming up with the idea in 2014, based on my 2020 interview with Nuance executive Joe Petro:

Ambient clinical intelligence is super exciting. Five or six years ago, Carl Dvorak at Epic was having a conversation with us and floated the notion of a room being able to listen. At the time, we didn’t have any necessarily tangible connection with how we were actually going to accomplish that. As conversational AI and other technologies developed, we started to get a firmer notion around what the exam room of the future could look like.

Thanks to these companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo to check them out and to thank them for keeping my keyboard clacking.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

KFF News reports that University of Florida Health and a private equity-backed firm have opened three combined urgent care center and emergency room facilities in suburban areas, with doctors triaging and recommending which side of the building to go to. Consumer advocates worry that hospitals have an incentive to steer patients to the much more expensive ER service instead of the urgent care service, which charges a flat $250. UF Health’s partner is Intuitive Health, which has similar arrangements with a dozen other health systems in 10 states. A sign on the door wants patients that the doctors inside may be out of their network and that they will be charged an average facility fee of $1,491. 

People

Podimetrics hires Matthew Oefinger, PhD (Ahara Corporation)  as chief data and technology officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Telehealth hardware provider VSee Health and Ava Robotics will develop telepresence solutions for ICUs, including a robot.

Government and Politics

The Department of Justice launches a program that pays corporate whistleblowers up to 30% of the first $100 million of assets forfeited. One of four eligible areas is fraud committed by private insurers or against patients and investors.

Sponsor Updates

• Arcadia earns Certified Data Partner designation in NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation program.
• PerfectServe releases a new Lightning Bolt case study, “How to Rapidly Deploy a Scheduling Solution Across a Large Health System.”
• The Digital Healthcare Roundtable Podcast features SnapCare co-founder, COO, and chief development officer Jeff Richards.
• Waystar will exhibit at the HFMA 2024 Mid-America Summer Institute August 5-7 in Omaha.

Blog Posts

• Initial Visit vs. SOC Comprehensive Assessment – SOC Dates Explained (Netsmart)
• Why healthcare needs a robust strategy to secure IT service desks (Nordic)
• EMRs and GenAI (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Streamlining Form Completion: Seven Essential Capabilities Your Credentialing Software Must Have (QGenda)
• Healthcare IT Transformations: Lessons from Baptist Health and Overlake Medical (Rhapsody Health)
• 4 ways interactive technology can help anxious parents (Sonifi Health)
• How to Choose the Right RCM Company (TruBridge)
• SIIM 2024 | Visage’s Top Five (Visage Imaging)

Contacts

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