Going to ask again about HealWell - they are on an acquisition tear and seem to be very AI-focused. Has…
News 7/10/24
Top News
Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Arianna Huffington (Thrive Global) announce that their companies will jointly fund Thrive AI Health, which will develop a personalized coaching application to support health-related behavior change.
The new company will be led by former Google sensor and fitness product management leader DeCarlos Love.
Launch partners include Stanford Medicine, the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, and West Virginia University’s neuroscience institute.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Crossings Healthcare Solutions. The King of Prussia, PA-based company is a subsidiary of Universal Health Services, a large hospital system and longtime Oracle/Cerner client and vendor. UHS’s dedicated resources develop solutions to optimize the Oracle Millenium EHR, with the support of Oracle leadership. These solutions embed directly into the Oracle EHR and do not create any third-party solutions. Its MPages and Advisor solutions are installed at more than 85 hospitals across the country, with tools that are tailored to nursing documentation, physician communication, and pharmacy workflows. All of these tools promote usability, safety, and satisfaction of the Oracle EHR. Aside from acute care, UHS also has a large behavioral health representation, with over 300 facilities across the country. It has developed electronic treatment planning with a number of additional MPage enhancements for their BH facilities that are also offered through Crossings. The company is dedicated to making sure that Oracle users are satisfied with the overall use of their EMR, as it is both a client and a vendor. Thanks to Crossings Healthcare Solutions for supporting HIStalk.
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
SAIGroup acquires patient engagement technology vendor Get Well. The private investment firm’s portfolio also includes Concert AI, RhythmX AI, and SymphonyAI.
The Wall Street Journal reports that insurers questionably identified “gaps in care” that allowed them to pocket an extra $50 billion from the Medicare Advantage program without performing any additional services for patients. Insurance companies offered patients gift cards to convince them to agree to a home visit, during which time a clinician found – or made up – additional medical conditions that would increase CMS payments. More than 66,000 MA patients were diagnosed with diabetic cataracts even though their damaged lens had already been replaced with a plastic one, with members of UnitedHealth being 15 times more likely to have a diagnosis of diabetic cataracts that patients who were enrolled in traditional Medicare.
A PBS review of internal Amazon documents finds that some patients of its One Medical primary care business were placed at risk when the company shifted their calls and texts to a call center that was staffed by minimally trained employees. Patients of the former Iora Health, the high-touch primary care group for people 65 and over that One Medical acquired for over $2 billion in September 2021, were directed to call center staff who didn’t always have access to their charts. In several cases, patients who reported “red flag” urgent symptoms – such as chest pain or blood in their stool – were scheduled for future appointments instead of being quickly connected to a trained employee.
Sales
- Ohio State University Medicine will use Andor Health’s ThinkAndor AI-powered virtual care software to improve access to remote specialty interventions.
- P3 Health Partners selects physician engagement and population analytics software from Innovaccer.
People
Ken Webb, MBA (OnShift) joins Artera as VP of sales.
Yeman Collier (UT Health San Antonio) will join University of Chicago Medicine as SVP/CIO on July 28. Michael Schnabel, MBA will serve as UT Health San Antonio’s interim VP/CIO.
Korea-based medical AI company Lunit names Terry Thomas, RN, MSN (Volpara Health, which was acquired by Lunit in May 2024) as chief business officer.
Allan Kyburz, MBA (OnShift) joins HCIT Consulting as EVP of growth.
DrFirst hires Todd Helmink (Atlas Health) as SVP of specialty strategy and business development.
Dan Delaney (Wolters Kluwer Health) joins MRO as VP of enterprise implementation.
Announcements and Implementations
Hospitals in Israel report an EHR malfunction that caused errors in recording patient information such as blood types, diagnoses, and procedures.
A new KLAS report on non-US EHR market share finds that Dedalus was the most-chosen vendor, but Epic contracted with more hospitals.
Government and Politics
Cybersecurity experts and NHS employees point to outdated IT systems as a major contributor to the recent ransomware attack on pathology services vendor Synnovis. Despite the fact that the NHS has spent $443 million on cybersecurity over the last seven years, some staff say they are still working with old computers that run Windows 7 and crash every few months. A 2022 report from the British Medical Association found that clinicians were wasting 13.5 million hours annually due to outdated systems.
A federal judge will likely invalidate the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on non-compete agreements based on her preliminary decision that FTC does not have the authority to issue a nationwide ban, in which case non-compete rules would shift back to individual states.
Other
In Sacramento, UC Davis Health and WellSpace Health launch a digital support program for recently incarcerated patients that includes free smartphones, messaging capabilities, and guides to community and social care resources.
A patient in Iowa sues Zoll Laboratory Services and Zoll Medical after discovering that cardiac data attributed to her Zoll heart monitor was actually from another patient. That incorrect data led her to having a pacemaker implanted during an operation that was performed without sufficient sedation. Her physician discovered the discrepancy in data days after the unnecessary operation while reviewing Zoll data in her EHR, the dates of which didn’t line up with her usage of the device.
Sponsor Updates
- Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “Empowering Pharmacists, with NASPA’s Krystalyn Weaver, PharmD, JD.”
- Divurgent VP of Delivery Jeff Fuller will speak on August 20 at the UNC Center for the Business of Health’s first event of the academic year.
- CereCore releases a new podcast, “CIO Leadership Lessons and Advice from Marty Paslick.”
- Vyne Medical publishes a new case study titled “Journey to Efficiency: An Award-Winning Hospital’s Path to Workflow Optimization.”
Blog Posts
- AGFA Insights: SIRM 2024 Key Takeaways (Agfa HealthCare)
- The Journey to Coding Automation (AGS Health)
- Optimizing network utilization with data: A case study on how to prevent healthcare leakage (Arcadia)
- Addressing Fractional Quitting: How Augmedix AI Saves $5.5M Annually and Impacts Clinician Retention (Augmedix)
- AI in the Revenue Cycle – A Use Case for Denial Prevention (Availity)
- Surgery Partners: A Growth-Focused Managed Services IT Partnership (CereCore)
- Understanding Business Email Compromise and Common Social Engineering Tactics (Clearwater)
- Practical Steps for Meeting the New Healthcare and Public Health Sector-Specific Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CloudWave)
- Navigating Hospital Revenue in Value-based Care (Dimensional Insight)
- The Power of Personal Branding in the Job Search (Direct Recruiters)
- Success Stories: How AI is Improving Medication Management for 3 Healthcare Providers (DrFirst)
- The Healthcare Contact Center: Efficiency Hacks, Best Practices, & an eBook (Five9)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.
RE: A federal judge will likely invalidate the FTC’s ban on non-compete agreements based on [states rights].
Ah yes, yet another example (presumably) in which the whole States Rights ideology makes the nation worse.
You know, I’m willing to listen and accept that certain matters ought to be states rights. If there were objective and reasonable criteria to determine what ought to be a states right versus a national-level right.
Instead, there seems to be a never-ending agenda to make *everything* a State Right. And you may remember, there was that embarrassing episode where racism against Black people was defended, for no other reason than States Rights (which was nothing more than a fig leaf for the racism). You don’t just get to do that and then claim a mulligan.
To the matter at hand. I contend that non-compete agreements are anti-Capitalist, anti-competition, anti-citizen,and anti-family. For the most part. They unilaterally protect Corporations and do nothing for the workers. It’s all part of a Corporatist agenda and damn the consequences.
The old way of using anti-competes? Where they were severely restricted to small numbers of key employees? That was fine. The new way of using anti-competes? Where everyone is asked to sign one “just because”? It’s a plague upon the economy, and locks up Capitalism itself. Corporate evolution is curtailed. It’s bad for society.
But sure, States Rights. Now instead of lobbyists having their way with one National government, they can have their way with 50 State governments, with the attendant 50x increase in opportunities for bribe-, er, political contributions. Unconnected to any specific policy benefit to the bribe-, er, contributor (officially).
Re: “If there were objective and reasonable criteria to determine what ought to be a states right versus a national-level right.”
It’s called the Constitution. https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution
There was a time when I would have accepted such an argument. It’s pithy, accurate, and has long been accepted by the polity. Yet that time is over, at least given current political realities.
Everyone claims to support the Constitution, yet some act in ways that are distinctly unconstitutional.
There is a recent interview available, with Constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar. I won’t link to that interview because it’s a little too close to recent events and I wish for some distance from that.
The interview concerned a recent Supreme Court ruling. Amar stated, and I’m paraphrasing slightly, “this decision renders the Constitution itself unconstitutional.” Now how is that even possible?
This isn’t some corrupt regional court. The Supreme Court is supposed to be the Nation’s A-team. The SC isn’t supposed to issue rulings that are “incoherent”.
And the problems aren’t limited to the Supreme Court. Everyone garbs themselves in the robes of Constitutional credibility, but sometimes it’s just a rhetorical trick. Far too many will act against the Constitution if the opportunity presents.
Further, even if we could entirely trust in respect for the Constitution? The Constitutional still needs interpretation. One of the crucial jobs of the Supreme Court is this interpretation.
It’s no longer sufficient to just say, “it’s all in the Constitution” and walk away with a mike drop.