News 8/23/24

Top News

Home testing kit vendor LetsGetChecked will acquire pharmacy fulfillment company Truepill in a deal worth $525 million.

The acquisition involves just $25 million in cash for Truepill, which was once valued at nearly $2 billion, with the remainder in shares and possible earn-outs. Both of the money-losing companies are backed by Optum Ventures.

Truepill settled DEA charges in November 2023 that it was filling huge quantities of prescriptions for Adderal from telehealth companies such as Cerebral, whose prescribers in some cases were not appropriately licensed. That was right after the company reported a data breach that exposed the information of 2.4 million patients.

Reader Comments

From 404_NotFound: “Re: MyChart and Vot-ER. Vot-ER’s Shopify site has a now-defunct URL for downloading a ‘toolkit adding non-partisan voter registration into Epic’s MyChart.’” I found an archived page above from April 2024 on the Vot-ER website that announces its Epic integration. It’s hardly a smoking gun for the claims of Newsmax that giving patients a way to register to vote creates a scenario where “millions of illegals and non-citizens passing through safety net hospitals who serve lower income and undocumented could be registered to vote.” Meanwhile, Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) saw the Newsmax story and has sent letters to Epic CEO Judy Faulkner and the director of Vot-ER to say, “Specifically, as evidence non-citizens have illegally registered to vote in federal elections mounts throughout the country, I write to inquire about the steps your organizations are taking to ensure non-citizens do not register to vote under your joint effort.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Epic UGM attendees: what was the most important company news or announcement that you heard? Did anything change your perception of the company’s direction or strategy? Let me know.

Webinars

September 10 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Overcoming Hurdles in Specialty Med Access Under Medical Benefits.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drew Hunsinger, VP of corporate business development, DrFirst; Tyler Wince, MEd, VP of product and technology specialty solutions, DrFirst. More specialty medications, which made up 80% of FDA’s new drug approvals last year, are falling under medical benefits, which challenges the patient care processes and efficiency of providers. Medication access experts will discuss how automation and unified medication management solutions can ensure better outcomes for patients and providers by addressing patient access hurdles and enhancing the ‘stickiness’ of EHRs. They will also provide insights into how regulatory changes such as interoperability and prior authorization mandates will affect healthcare stakeholders.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare marketplace operator Sesame will sell compounded semaglutide – the active ingredient in weight loss drugs Wegovy and Ozempic – for $249 per month  versus the $1,000 per month cost of the brand name products. The price includes care from the patient’s choice of Sesame’s providers. The CEO, however, emphasizes that the program is temporary, as selling compounded versions of the brand-name products is legal only during an FDA-declared shortage.

AI-powered mental health chatbot vendor Slingshot AI reportedly raises $30 million in funding, valuing the company at $220 million.

The chief pharmacy officer of Walgreens lays out the company’s plans to enhance the services that are provided by its drugstores to offset declining prescription reimbursement:

• Convince the federal government to allow pharmacists to bill Medicare as providers for treating certain conditions.
• Negotiate with payers to increase compensation for providing extra services.
• Fill prescriptions from offsite fulfillment centers to give in-store pharmacists more time to work with patients.
• Allow customers to schedule testing, treatment, and vaccination appointments from a global appointment scheduler with QR code check-in.

China-based online healthcare services operator Ping An Healthcare Technology posts its first-ever profit, which it attributes to higher demand and its use of AI to assist with diagnosis, treatment, prescribing, and creating medical records. The company has delivered 1.3 billion consultations to its 440 million registered users and partners with 3,000 hospitals and 208,000 pharmacies that perform one-hour prescription delivery 24×7 in 150 cities.

Sales

• Atlantic Health will expand its use of WellSky’s CarePort Insight and CarePort Connect to improve its performance in value-based contracts.

People

Healthcare IT Leaders promotes Justin Couch, MBA to COO.

Announcements and Implementations

Healthcare Growth Partners publishes a free, downloadable white paper that covers due diligence topics in health IT investment, liquidity event, or acquisition. It’s pretty packed with information in summarizing the issues that the banking and advisory firm has seen in advising and leading 140 transactions worth $5 billion. I always enjoy their reports, which cover complex business and economic topics with just the right amount of simplification for non-experts like me.

Government and Politics

The Indian Health Service will launch its first Oracle Health pilot in 2026 as it replaces its 40-year-old RPMS EHR in a 10-year, $2.5 billion project.

A federal judge in Texas blocks the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on non-compete agreements that would have taken effect on September 4, setting up a likely higher court review based on a conflicting ruling from another federal court.

Privacy and Security

A Kentucky man is sentenced to six years in prison for hacking into Hawaii’s death registry system to declare himself dead using a stolen doctor’s login, which would then allow him to avoid paying child support. The man also used stolen credentials to breach corporate and government networks, then offered to sell logins on the dark web.

Other

AMIA posts a job opening for CEO following the February 2024 departure of Tanya Tolpegin, MBA after three years in that role.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity releases a new episode of the “Availity on Air” podcast, “Embracing Innovation in Healthcare: Highmark Health.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health adds “Client Cases for Clinical Judgment” to the Lippincott Partnership for Nursing Education and Testing family of offerings for pre-licensure nursing education programs.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Cutting Costs and Improving Care Seamlessly.”
• Findhelp welcomes Somos Community Care (NY), Delta Dental of Michigan, Davis County Government (UT), and The Cornerstone Resource Center (UT) to its network.
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new “Leader to Leader” podcast, “Leading a Digital Transformation.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a case study titled “Optimum CareerPath Powers Switchboard, MD Growth.”
• The “InterOp Now!” podcast features InterSystems Director of Healthcare Solution Innovation Alex MacLeod, “The Future of Clear and InterSystems with Jason Sherwin and Alex MacLeod.”
• Konza National Network CEO Laura McCrary will speak at the WEDI National Conference October 11 in Washington, DC.
• Med Tech Solutions will exhibit at the NACHC CHI & Expo August 24-26 in Atlanta.
• MRO will exhibit at the E-Solutions Xchange Conference August 25-28 on Amelia Island, FL.
• NeuroFlow publishes a new case study, “The Villages Health Amplifies the Impact of its Integrated Care Program Using NeuroFlow.”

Blog Posts

• Advancing Automation: Why Embracing Change is Now a Must in Healthcare (Vyne Medical)
• The ABCs of Back to School – for Patients and Practices (EClinicalWorks)
• Informatics Pharmacists Are Forging Trust Through Times of Rapid Technological Change (First Databank)
• Why Reducing Denials and Rejections Matters More Than Clean Claim Rates (FinThrive)
• Reflections on Black Hat 2024: A Year of Alliances, AI, and Leadership (Fortified Health Security)
• Aligning Testing and Change Management: A Human-Centric Approach (Impact Advisors)
• Advancing Automation: Why Embracing Change Is Now a Must in Healthcare (Vyne Medical)
• HFMA 2024 Recap: Revolutionizing Revenue Cycles from Prior Authorizations to Peak Productivity (Inovalon)
• Patient Throughput & Early Disease Detection: Perspectives from Lisa Meyer (Lucem Health)
• What to Ask When Choosing a Healthcare Interoperability Partner (Medhost)
• What nurses want from their leadership (Meditech)
• Five Tips for Healthcare RCM Improvement and Financial Recovery (Med Tech Solutions)
• What is Value-Based Payment? A Guide to the Reimbursement Model (Net Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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