Thanks, appreciate these insights. I've been contemplating VA's Oracle / Cerner implementation and wondered if implementing the same systems across…
News 11/1/24
Top News
Global Payments will sell EHR/PM vendor AdvancedMD, which it acquired in 2018 for $700 million, to Francisco Partners for $1.1 billion.
AdvancedMD President Amanda Sharp, who has been with the company for 19 years starting as an accounts receivable clerk, will take on the title of CEO.
Reader Comments
From Ralphie: “Re: Oracle Health. We are a long-time Cerner customer evaluating the potential of moving to Epic. The internal Epic champions are going to throw the ‘crumbling architecture’ comment at everything. How does Oracle Health justify the last few years of our expense implementing and enhancing their solutions? How does an organization do a cost analysis on OH vs Epic? Too many questions that will likely force more organizations in the midst of this analysis to pursue Epic.” That remarkably clueless comment came from Seema Verma, who as CMS administrator mostly took political shots against the very programs she was paid to oversee, and now she’s slamming the former Cerner with similar insider contempt. Imagine being an Oracle Health sales rep who is trying to stem the Epic tide who now has to explain why “crumbling architecture” shouldn’t be a concern. Maybe the plan is to admit an inability to compete with Epic and put all the marbles into the lucrative VA and DoD contracts, knowing that they are the only former Cerner customers who don’t care about the company’s longstanding revenue cycle struggles.
From Beelzebub: “Re: HLTH conference. The founder has started and sold several conferences and has already moved on to his next one.” Jonathan Weiner has not only sold a previous conference to HLTH acquirer Hyve, he also sold one to Informa, which recently bought the HIMSS annual conference. He’s now starting an AI conference while staying on with HLTH for whatever time the acquisition terms specify. Terms of the HLTH deal weren’t announced, but the number most often bandied about, based on the revenue of comparable events, is $100 million, continuing the string of startup-pitching conferences that are far more successful than the companies that they promote. As the old saying goes, the smartest person in a gold rush is the one who sells shovels.
Webinars
None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
IRhythm Technologies reports Q3 results: revenue up 18%, adjusted EPS –$1.26 versus –$0.89, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings. IRTC shares have lost 11% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $2.2 billion.
Amwell reports Q3 results: revenue down 1%, EPS –$2.87 versus –$9.54, beating analyst expectations for both. AMWL shares have lost 67% of their value in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $137 million.
A Kansas City publication questions “What’s Going On With All The Empty Cerner Buildings?” in noting that Oracle has closed two of the former Cerner’s three campuses and uses the former Innovations Campus to house a limited number of employees who don’t work remotely. The article concludes, “What’s scarier than the empty Northland headquarters building and its futuristic metal spire? The prominent Cerner street signage that remains at the campus entrance, suggesting a false promise of a place that once provided livelihoods for thousands but doesn’t exist anymore.”
Sales
- Augusta Health (VA) will implement Meditech Expanse.
- Belgium’s UZ Leuven will implement digital pathology from Sectra.
People
1upHealth hires Andrew Boyd, PhD (Personify Health) as CEO.
Glynn Stanton is named CIO for Yale New Haven Health System, Yale Medicine, and Yale Health and will continue in his role as the health system’s CISO.
Announcements and Implementations
Oracle founder Larry Ellison says at the Oracle Health Summit that “Cerner took about 25 years to write their system. We have completely rewritten that system in 14 months.”
Athenahealth integrates ambient documentation from Suki and IScribe with AthenaOne.
A new KLAS report on EHRs for under-200 bed hospitals finds that 42% use legacy systems and most new considerations involve Epic Community Connect, Meditech Expanse, and Oracle Health. Most Oracle Health and TruBridge respondents say they wouldn’t buy the solution again. Meditech and Epic Community Connect customers are happiest with the value received.
Privacy and Security
Elon Musk asks his followers on X to submit their medical images to his AI platform Grok to be used for its training, raising significant privacy concerns. It would also give Grok free, immediate access to protected health information without requiring signed patient consent forms.
Other
The board of Jennie Stuart Health (KY) confirms to the public that its decision to seek acquisition by Deaconess Health was driven by its desire to implement Epic, which the small hospital can’t afford on its own. The health system says that its 2022 implementation of Altera Digital Health caused problems, with the hospital’s medical staff president adding that Altera had not lived up to its promises. He says that the hospital could be live on Epic through Deaconess in six to nine months. A community member had previously cited the hospital’s $8 million purchase of an “artificial intelligence boondoggle” as a significant financial issue.
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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I see no pizza delivery vehicles in the Cerner parking lot…..
We are getting less than 40 hours of work from a large number of our K.C.-based EMPLOYEES. The parking lot is sparsely used at 8 a.m.; likewise at 5 p.m.
…
The starving masses, and thus the pizza man who serves them, have left the building(s).
I am one of the many former Cerner employees that were changed from salaried to hourly, thus no pizza delivery.
To be fair, if there’s no one there at 5 or any other time, why should the pizza guy come at 7.30?
Re: Oracle Health…Remember when Allscripts acquired Eclipsys, rebranded to Sunrise, and then announced plans to build a new solution with the help of Northwell? We all say how well that worked out.
So let me get this straight, Oracle completely rewrote Millenium in 14 months, which, assuming is true, must have cost an incredible amount of money, time, and resources. But Oracle also thinks that Millenium has a “crumbling infrastructure” that was not suitable for enhancement and will develop a totally new EMR from scratch to migrate new customers to?
I’m used to tone deaf corporate PR announcements, but this seems a bit beyond the pale here. What in the heck is going on?
Per Larry’s visionary vapor session, they’re calling it New Millennium and completed it with 500 people prompting Oracle’s proprietary AI code-writer.