News 10/23/24

Top News

Remote patient monitoring company CopilotIQ acquires competitor Biofourmis to offer tech-enabled, home-based care to seniors with chronic conditions.

Reader Comments

From Suspicious Minds: “Re: HIPAA. Why is the excuse used everywhere? You can’t record our time together because of HIPAA?” The policy makes sense if the sign is hanging in the lobby, where a patient shooting video doesn’t violate HIPAA (they aren’t a covered entity) but would raise valid privacy concerns. HIPAA also doesn’t address patients recording their own encounter, although it prohibits the provider from doing the same without the patient’s permission. I’m not sure what the sign means by “recorded media,” although I’m guessing that it is awkwardly referring to audio recording.

From HLTH Bellth: “Re: HLTH. Where the substance at?” HLTH attendees do three things, according to the visual evidence that they provide: go to parties, mug for selfies with pals, and stand around vendor booths. Not to mention interviewing each other for podcasts and videos that nobody will consume and seeking celebrity elbows to rub. HLTH seems to be where high-level executives throw around vaguely futuristic ideas without fear of anyone remembering later when they turn out to be wrong (everybody’s a futurist in the short term). Substantive accomplishments are still mostly announced at HIMSS, or even better, immediately instead of holding them for PR reasons that ceased to be valid 10 years ago.

Webinars

October 24 (Thursday) noon ET. “Preparing for HTI-2 Compliance: What EHR and Health IT Vendors Need to Know.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. Failure to meet ASTP’s mandatory HTI-2 certification  and compliance standards could impose financial consequences on clients. The presenters will discuss the content and timelines of this key policy update, which includes NCPDP Script upgrades, mandatory support for electronic prior authorization, and real-time prescription benefit. They will offer insight into the impact on “Base EHR” qualifications and provide practical advice on aligning development roadmaps with these changes.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Medbridge, which offers patient education and care software, acquires AI-enhanced rehab app development company Rehab Boost. Paul Jaure, Rehab Boost’s founder, will join Medbridge as head of AI.

HealthEx launches its patient-centric health data preferences and consent solution with $14 million in funding.

Counsel Health, which offers asynchronous messaging with physicians, raises $11 million in a seed funding round. Founder and CEO Muthu Alagappan, MD was previously chief medical officer of healthcare intelligent agent workflow vendor Notable.

Cleveland Clinic will open a Northeast Ohio primary care office in affiliation with Amazon One Medical, which offers members same-day or next-day appointments, 24/7 on-demand care, care team messaging, and insurance billing.

HealthSstream announces Q3 results: revenue up 3.9%, EPS $0.19 versus $0.13, beating earnings expectations but falling short on revenue. HSTM shares are up 36% in the past 12 months, valuing the workforce solutions company at $914 million.

Pelvic pain virtual care platform Zencape Health shuts down. Founder and CEO Abi Sundaram says that the company earned positive user feedback and signed a health system partnership, but ran out of money and found that its model was too reliant on expensive physician time.

Sales

• Palomar Health (CA) selects IKS Health’s Care Enablement Platform.
• Rush University System for Health (IL) will incorporate Clear’s identity verification software into its MyChart password reset within its My Rush app.

People

Enlitic hires Brenda Rankin (Nuvoke) as COO.

Jonathan Malek (Veradigm) joins Avodah as CTO. Malek co-founded Practice Fusion in 2004 and transitioned to Allscripts (now Veradigm) when it acquired the company in 2018 for $100 million.

Vitalchat Telehealth names Michael Raymer (Health Advisory Partners) CEO.

Orbita hires Jeff Taylor, MS (Innovative Consulting Group) as CEO.

Fullscripts names Chief Financial and Strategy Officer Ashley Koch to the additional role of president.

Moffit Cancer Center rehires its former CIO Beth Lindsay-Wood, MBA (City of Hope) as SVP and chief informatics and technology officer.

Derek Anderson (The HCI Group) joins HCTec as VP of sales.

William Hudson, MBA (Aidoc) joins Hippocratic AI as chief transformation officer.

Kaia Health hires Adam Pellegrini (Jasper Health) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Prairie Lakes Healthcare System (SD) will implement Epic through its affiliation with Sanford Health.

Cleveland Clinic adds Ayble Health’s digital care pathways and behavioral health content to its virtual care program for patients with chronic digestive diseases.

The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services rolls out Epic across the state’s six psychiatric hospitals.

Laudio and the American Organization for Nursing Leadership publish a nurse manager trends report that uses the company’s 200,000-employee dataset and nurse manager interviews.

Confluence Health (WA) adds virtual visit capabilities from KeyCare to its virtual care services.

Blue Shield of California and Salesforce will offer a prior authorization platform as part of Salesforce Health Cloud. The system will assemble relevant EHR information into an electronic form that physicians can submit immediately to Blue Shield, which will approve or deny the PA request before the end of the visit.

Samsung enhances its Health app to allow users to collect their health records from providers electronically, after which the app will offer insights, alerts, and next best steps. The app will also add barcode scanning to its food tracker. Data access is provided by B.well Connected Health.

Government and Politics

England’s health secretary unveils a plan to issue “patient passports” for data-sharing across providers that will save an estimated 40,000 hours of NHS staff time each year and reduce wait lists. The government will also explore the use of patient wearables for self monitoring.

Other

Senators want drugmakers Pfizer and Eli Lilly to explain why their direct-to-consumer programs don’t violate anti-kickback statutes by offering telehealth prescribing for the drugs they manufacture.

A Black Book Research survey of 300 HLTH attendees finds that the majority are window-shopping for generative AI, machine learning, cybersecurity, and post-acute care technologies. Their organizations likely won’t invest in these areas for at least another 18 months.

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom Americas employees in Morrisville, NC pack 200 disaster relief kits for the American Red Cross.
• AGS Health, HealthMark Group, MRO, TruBridge, Vyne Medical, and Wolters Kluwer Health will exhibit at AHIMA October 27-29 in Salt Lake City.
• WellSky partners with Connect 211 to improve online data sharing and make community resources easier to find.
• Black Book Research shares the results of its latest survey of health information management professionals, revealing critical challenges confronting the medical coding industry in Q3 2024.
• St Jansdal hospital in the Netherlands extends its enterprise imaging software contract with Agfa HealthCare.
• Altera Digital Health publishes a new client story, “Inland Empire Health Plan brings benefits of data interoperability to 1.5M members.”
• Arcadia CTO Aneesh Chopra will present at the NCQA Health Innovation Summit October 31 in Nashville.
• Avia Marketplace recognizes AvaSure in its “Top Virtual Nursing Companies” report for 2024.
• Consensus Cloud Solutions, Netsmart, SnapCare, Waystar, and WellSky will exhibit at the LeadingAge Annual Meeting October 27-30 in Nashville.

Blog Posts

• Cybersecurity Risk Mitigation Suggestion: Share the Burden (CereCore)
• CMS Announces Resources for Hurricane Milton (AdvancedMD)
• How AI is Reshaping the Future of Medical Coding (AGS Health)
• Creating a Thriving Ecosystem for a Seamless Patient Experience (Artera)
• Q&A with Availity CISO Mike Green: Part 1 (Availity)
• Clearwater Cyber Briefing: Key Trends and Takeaways for October 2024 (Clearwater)
• Building an Interconnected Digital Corridor Beyond the Digital Front Door (Cordea Consulting)
• Building a Strong Employer Brand: Key Strategies for Recruitment Success (Direct Recruiters)
• AI, Outages, and Interoperability: Top Takeaways From a CMIO Summit (DrFirst)

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