I just checked the notes from last month's annual wellness visit. I'm healthy, so it was pretty perfunctory and I…
Monday Morning Update 4/28/25
Top News
An anonymous HHS official says that despite last week’s announcement, it will not create a registry of people with autism. NIH will continue with plans to build a $50 million repository of de-identified data that will be available to selected researchers.
NIH Director Jay Bhattacharya, MD, PhD said last week that NIH would be “developing national disease registries, including a new one for autism,” raising concerns about patient privacy and the use of private data sources such as insurance claims and pharmacies.
CBS News reports that doctors who treat autism are being overwhelmed by patients who are asking that their data be deleted and their appointments cancelled.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has described autism as a “preventable disease.” He has stated that HHS will determine its cause by September, although Bhattacharya has since said that the research grants won’t be issued until then.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Respondent choices were decisive in last week’s poll. I’m curious to know if your satisfaction with a vendor has ever improved with its acquisition?
New poll to your right or here: Do you trust government-led health data initiatives to handle your personal health information securely and responsibly?
Listening: Viagra Boys, raw post-punk with a saxophone kicker from Sweden, although the singer was born and raised in California. I’m not sure I love it yet, but it got my attention. They are probably best enjoyed in cramped, sweaty club where the lead singer’s stomach-leading slouch and sometimes non-musical growling shows his indifference to what we non-creatives think.
Today I learned (courtesy of ChatGPT) the term “zero complementizer” versus “explicit complementizer,” the latter of which makes a sentence easier to read. I change this constantly when editing someone else’s writing, but I didn’t know what to call it. Examples:
- The singer says that she won’t appear. The word “that” is an explicit complementizer. It is more formal and also easier to read.
- The singer says she won’t appear. This word “that” is implied but omitted.
The generous annual donation of long-time reader Mike funded these DonorsChoose teach grant requests, which also benefitted from matching funds from third party organizations and my Anonymous Vendor Executive:
- Headphones for Ms. T’s elementary school class in Fayette, MS.
- Tablets for Ms. E’s elementary school class in Tarzana, CA.
- Math learning games and centers for Ms. H’s elementary school class in Naples, FL.
- Lego kits for the elementary school robotics club of Ms. M in Dawson, GA.
- Research center furniture for Ms. C’s elementary school class in Dundee, MS.
- STEM centers for Ms. H’s elementary school class in Montgomery, AL.
- Coding robots for Ms. U’s elementary school class in Miami, FL.
- Uniform shirts for Mr. P’s high school class in Camden, NJ.
- Scientific calculators for Dr. W’s middle school class in Camden, NJ.
Sponsored Events and Resources
None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre to have your resource listed.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Business Insider publishes the pitch deck of Doctronic, which just raised $5 million in seed funding. The company’s website offers a symptom-checker that suggests possible diagnoses, then prompts the user to book a telehealth visit from its site. The deck says revenue will also eventually come from referrals and medication orders.
North York General Hospital becomes the first Cerner client in Canada to migrate to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, after which it reported improved EHR response times.
Sales
- KONZA National Network will participate in Phase 2 of the Missouri Department of Mental Health’s Electronic Long-Term Services and Supports (eLTSS) Data Exchange Project.
People
NYC Health + Hospitals promotes Divya Pathhak, MS, MBA to VP/chief data and artificial intelligence officer.
Suzanne Cogan, MBA (Aspirion) joins WebPT as chief customer officer.
Announcements and Implementations
MedStar Health will replace Oracle Health with Epic, targeting a fall 2027 go-live. A reader-shared internal memo says that Oracle Health’s software “has unfortunately not matured over time” and that MedStar has “evolved beyond the capabilities of our current technology.” Leadership also expects Epic’s RCM system to boost revenue. All other tech projects for FY2026 and beyond are paused unless individually approved by the executive team. MedStar, a Cerner customer since 1999, has 10 hospitals, 35,000 employees, and $8.3 billion in annual revenue.
Government and Politics
The DoD hires telehealth founder Justin Fulcher as a senior DoD advisor. Fulcher co-founded Singapore-based RingMD, which went bankrupt, and worked with the DOGE team at the VA.
Privacy and Security
Yale New Haven Health notifies 5.5 million people that their data was exposed in a March 2025 cyberattack, according to a breach notice filed with HHS OCR.
Other
A Reddit post from a current Epic employee shows retrospective insight about losing the VA contract:
Looking back, we weren’t really ready for what implementing and supporting the VA meant in terms of complexity, red tape, rigidity … Our philosophy is that your organization will change to effectively use the software, while Oracle’s philosophy is that they will tailor the software to work for your organization. Every core competency and technical or functional advantage Epic has today originates from the advantage of that fundamental difference in approach to software in an industry as complex as this … We have more than 450 … organizations live on Epic and making each one change to match how the other 449 orgs do something in the system is significantly easier than making the system different for each of those 450 orgs. It makes implementation, long term support, and development of new features infinitely easier. It also makes it easier on the actual users.
Sponsor Updates
- Altera Digital Health publishes a new client story titled “Systems up at Hendrick Health: How Altera streamlined a major upgrade.”
- Black Book Research ranks the digital interoperability performance of healthcare systems across 18 high-income countries.
- StoneGate Senior Living implements WellSky’s EHR and RCM technologies.
- Optimum Healthcare IT achieves AWS Premier Tier Services Partner status.
- Redox releases a new episode of its “Shut the Back Door” podcast titled “The lost and found files – Data Loss Prevention with guest Zak Cowan.”
- RLDatix will exhibit at HSPA’s annual conference April 27-29 in Louisville, KY.
- SmarterDx will present at ACDIS 2025 May 6 in Kissimmee, FL.
Blog Posts
- Crisis Response in Action: 5 Strategies to Strengthen 988 and Community-Based Care (Netsmart)
- How can a hospital improve the inpatient experience? Start with a map. (Nordic)
- Certification Tester: A Game Changer for Your NCPDP Upgrade (Surescripts)
- Teamwork & Team Leaders: Making the Difference in Retaining & Supporting Nurses (Symplr)
- Comparing Technology Initiatives: How Small and Large Hospitals Strategize (CereCore)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Regarding Medstar – I have to wonder how many decisions were made to go to Cerner over Epic based on cost and they now are moving to Epic anyway? I know of an install for Cerner (Oracle) that has taken 10 years and it has to have cost them more than Epic and being done in 3 years, four at the most instead of 10.
There is inherent cost to move to the “next generation” EHR from Oracle Health and I think organizations are just now realizing this. Significant work to optimize/standardize is required before moving to the cloud. And moving to the cloud is not an option – new functionality being developed requires it.
Has anyone heard any details on Oracle’s nextgen EMR announced last year? I’ve seen very little information about clients actually moving to it or what it supports. I keep hearing it referenced, with minimal evidence to suggest that it’s a viable option for existing Millennium clients.
on a related note to JustaCIO’s comment above, I wonder how many boards, CEOs and CIOs chose to move to Epic from MEDITECH in the past 10 years based on forecasts of increased revenue or increased physician satisfaction and are now paying down the debt associated with that move but not seeing the increased revenue.
And yet the general trend towards Epic adoption continues!
I am reminded of the wars between Blackberry and the iPhone. As a former BB shop, I know all about the technical advantages that BB had over the iPhone. In terms of enterprise fleet management, BB was clearly superior. Still is in some ways.
We won quite a few battles but lost the war. That was the lesson of BB vs. iPhone.
What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. Unless you have any examples, but best guess is that there are 0 such examples.
I am a bit confused – wasn’t the VA contract a no-bid award, with no actual other proposals? While the competitive one that Epic and IBM lost to Leidos and Cerner was the DoD contract.
Epic actually had a contract for just a scheduling system for the VA and (iirc) was live at one site before the no-bid contract for the full Vista replacement was given to the organization formerly known as Cerner. The presumed plan was to use it as a foot-in-the-door to making the VA full enterprise customer.
I think it would have been interesting to see the sparks that would have flown from the conflict between the VA’s “we’ve always done it this way” and Epic’s “you’re not doing it that way anymore”. But I agree with the poster it was probably best for Epic that they did not win the MHS Genesis or the VA contracts.