News 8/7/24

Top News

OneBlood, a blood center that serves 250 hospitals in the Southeast, restores its critical software systems after a July 29 ransomware attack forced them offline.

The organization says that its processing and distribution of blood products has returned to nearly normal levels.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Guidehealth announces $14 million in seed funding. The company specializes in value-based care programs that incorporate AI-enhanced technology and clinical services. It acquired Arcadia’s managed services organization and value-based care business last year.

Orlando Health will acquire Tenet Healthcare’s Brookwood Baptist Health system (AL) for $910 million, and will enter into a 10-year contract with Tenet-owned Conifer Health Solutions for revenue cycle services for the newly acquired system.

Startup investment in Wisconsin dropped significantly last year after the boom years of 2021 and 2022, but healthcare accounted for half the dollar total.

Definitive Healthcare reports Q2 results: revenue up 5%, EPS $0.09 versus $0.08, meeting analyst expectations. DEFN shares have lost 68% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $433 million.

Sales

• Samaritan Medical Center (NY) selects Loyal’s directory listings management software.

People

Prashant Thumma (Teladoc Health) joins 3Aware as CTO.

Josh Hoders, MBA (SteadyMD) joins WellSync as SVP of growth.

Jocelyn Keegam (Health Level Seven International) joins Aetna, A CVS Health Company as VP of Aetna interoperability.

Announcements and Implementations

Baptist Anderson Regional Medical Center (MS) rolls out Epic as part of a system-wide implementation.

Government and Politics

A US Government Accountability Office review of the Veterans Health Administration’s Accessing Telehealth at Local Area Stations (ATLAS) Pilot Program determines that the agency needs to develop performance goals and measures so that it can assess the effectiveness of the program on a regular basis. Established in 2019, the program offers veterans access to telemedicine services at 24 non-VA locations in rural areas. Over the last two years, however, veterans had only visited 10 of those ATLAS sites.

A federal court orders a patent troll to pay the attorney fees of Epic, whose customers it had sued claiming patent infringement. “We will not back down to patent trolls looking to shake down Epic or our customers,” says Epic SVP Stirling Martin. Two dozen other entities, including EHR vendors, paid to settle the lawsuits that were brought by Decapolis Systems, whose claims the court assessed as “if not fully spurious, was dilatory at best.”

Privacy and Security

McLaren Health Care (MI) announces that an unspecified IT issue has taken down computers and phone lines across all of its facilities. Its websites are also down, and several of its facilities have enacted ambulance diversions. It has not yet offered updates on restoring functionality.

HHS OCR fines emergency medical services provider American Medical Response $115,200 for failing to provide a patient with their requested medical records in a timely manner.

Other

The New York Times documents New York City’s “zombie pharmacies,” vacated buildings that previously held now-closed chain pharmacies that are stuck with unbreakable, long-term leases at above-market rates. More than a million square feet of prime real estate serve empty eyesores as 222 chain pharmacies have closed since the pandemic started. The overall pharmacy count has remained the same, however, as independent drug stores have opened near the vacant buildings.

The US Navy profiles Lieutenant J.G. David Tegtmeyer, a US Naval Academy graduate who decided to pursue Navy Medicine instead of flight school. He is deputy CIO and operations manager at the Navy’s training center in Bremerton, WA, which went live in the first wave of MHS Genesis deployments.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Behind the Scenes: Mayo Clinic’s Data Strategy for Transforming Patient Care.”
• AvaSure publishes a case study, “How the North Texas VA Improved Patient Safety and Reduced Costs with Virtual Sitters.”
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare podcast, “Selling Pharmacy Benefits: Building Relationships & Meeting Clients’ Needs, with Nick Van Hook.”
• The Driving the Deal Podcast features Clearwater CFO Baxter Lee, “Safeguarding Healthcare – Cybersecurity Insights with Baxter Lee from Clearwater Security.”
• Revuud, which operates a healthcare IT talent marketplace, reports a 100% increase in engagement and 40% in client count in the first half of this year compared to last year.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Know Your No-Shows and Optimize Your Schedule.”
• Clinical Architecture publishes its “2024 Healthcare Data Quality Report.”
• Consensus Cloud Solutions celebrates its 25^th anniversary and the evolution of its e-fax solution.
• CloudWave publishes a new whitepaper, “Patient-Centric Incident Response in Healthcare – A New Approach: What You Need to Know.”
• Wrightington, Wigan and Leigh Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust adds Altera Digital Health’s patient flow solution to its Altera Sunrise system.

Blog Posts

• Agfa Insights: When it Comes to Enterprise Imaging in the Cloud, Does One Size Fit All? (Agfa HealthCare)
• 6 Best Practices for Managing a Hybrid EBO Staffing Model (AGS Health)
• An ED Emergency: Why rural emergency departments are struggling (Altera Digital Health)
• Enhancing the Patient Experience Through Post-Discharge Texting: Insights from a Houston Methodist Study (Artera)
• The Role of Technology in Modern Recruiting (Direct Recruiters)
• Pioneering a New Era in Remote Work (DrFirst)

Contacts

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