News 11/8/24

Top News

The non-profit Alliance for Smart Healthcare Excellence launches with former HIMSS CEO Steve Lieber as president and CEO. It will offer the Smart Hospital Maturity Model.

The organization, which is funded by Stryker and was developed with the assistance of CHIME, will use a survey model to assess the level of smart care adoption. The initial survey has been completed by 170 hospitals.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health and human services system vendor VitalHub acquires Strata Health, which offers patient flow solutions.

The non-profit Health Commons Project acquires OneHealthPort, Washington State’s HIE.

Analytics technology vendor Health Catalyst will acquire cybersecurity company Intraprise Health.

Drug wholesaler Cencora, which renamed itself from AmerisourceBergen in August 2023, will acquire 300-specialist Retinal Consultants of America from its private equity owner for $4.6 billion in cash plus another $500 million in performance payouts. The company has practices in 23 states.

CVS Health reports Q3 results: revenue up 6%, EPS $0.07 versus $1.75, beating expectations for both. President and CEO David Joyner, who replaced  Karen Lynch last month, says that the company’s Aetna insurance business had higher than expected medical costs that he expects to continue. CVS Health took a $1.2 billion impairment charge this quarter for the 270 drugstores that it expects to close next year.

Sales

• Augusta Health (VA) selects Meditech Expanse.
• Iowa’s state HIE CyncHealth will implement Health Catalyst’s Ninja Universe analytics platform.

People

CommonSpirit Health hires Brady Small (Oracle) as CIO of its Mountain Region.

The VA names Kim Stevens, DNP, MSN, RN (Accenture) as chief health informatics officer.

Regenstrief Institute hires Chris Harle, PhD, MS (University of Florida Health) as CIO. He will continue serving as a professor at Indiana University. 

Announcements and Implementations

AMIA announces 87 new FAMIA inductees.

Vancouver-based UniDoc Health will ship an H3 Health Cube, its self-contained virtual clinic, to Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital.

Summa Health (OH) signs an agreement to be acquired by General Catalyst’s HATCo for $485 million in cash, $350 million in capital funding, and $200 million in strategic investment. The next step is regulatory review. The initial letter of intent was signed in January 2024 after Summa failed in previous attempts to find a partner who could help with its $800 million in debt. General Catalyst will use the health system to pilot its technology-driven demonstration of “health assurance” that it says will replace “sick care.”

A new KLAS report of customers who are running Epic on the public cloud finds that the large organizations that are in full production are satisfied with both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, reporting high reliability and scalability. Most have implemented Epic disaster recovery. Neither customer base reports cost savings, as the cloud solutions cost as much or more than their on-premises environments. Their biggest challenges are integration with non-Epic systems and lack of internal cloud expertise that requires hiring third-party consulting companies.

Other

A New England doctor pleads guilty to prescribing controlled substances to patients who paid him $250 in cash even though he knew they were selling the drugs on the street. According to HHS OIG, substance abuse clinic operator Adnan Khan, MD “ran his medical practice with the corruption and recklessness of a common drug dealer.”

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new podcast, “16 Healthcare Podcasts You Should Listen or Subscribe To.”
• Inovalon’s Empower 2024 summit delivers groundbreaking insights and innovation to achieve data-driven healthcare.
• North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust extends the rollout of the InterSystems TrakCare system to streamline ICU admissions processes.
• Surescripts expands its Medication History for Populations solution to health plans to better support patient care, improve medication adherence, and lower costs.
• Bizmatics marks 21 years of empowering independent healthcare providers with reliable drug knowledge from First Databank.
• Findhelp welcomes Carrot Fertility, Buhl Regional Health Foundation, and City of Hope to its network.
• Five9 announces that it has again been positioned by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service for its Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.
• Black Book Research announces the recipients of its 2024 Customer Satisfaction Awards in the behavioral health management sector, including HIStalk Sponsor Netsmart in the categories of EHR, behavioral health hospitals and health systems providers; and EHR, behavioral health agencies and government providers.
• Healthcare Growth Partners releases a new “Market Matrix” podcast, “Navigating a Health IT Market in Flux: Key Insights as We Head Into Q4.”
• Medhost completes certification for HTI-1 Decision Support Interventions and announces general availability.
• The “Leading Difference” podcast features Medicomp Systems Chief Medical Officer Jay Anders, MD.
• Meditech congratulates four hospital customers that make up the CARE4 partnership in Central Ontario for receiving the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model Stage 6 validation from HIMSS.

Blog Posts

• 6 Things to Know About the Next Generation of Workday AI (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Conference Ends, but the Learning Goes On (EClinicalWorks)
• My Lifelong Journey of Curiosity, Innovation, and Compassion as a Pharmacist (First Databank)
• The Importance of Accurate Charge Capture: Avoiding Common Pitfalls (FinThrive)
• New Data Shows 75% of Consumers Crave Talking to a Human — How Smart Automation Can Elevate CX, Not Replace It (Five9)
• Navigating New York’s Cybersecurity Regulations for Hospitals (Fortified Health Security)
• Attending NAACOS: Insights and innovations shaping the future of ACOs (Healthmonix)
• Achieving Sustainable Margin Results with an “Operations and Capacity Center” (OCC) (Impact Advisors)
• Think in Threes to Maximize Health Plan ROI on Electronic Prior Authorization (InterSystems)
• 3 perspectives for executing mobility strategies (Meditech)
• Why Your Final MIPS Score Might Be Different from What You Expected – and What You Can Do About It (MRO)
• Physical Therapy Documentation Software: A Comprehensive Guide (Net Health)

Contacts

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