News 10/24/18

Top News

Clearlake Capital Group will acquire provider management, credentialing, and payer enrollment technology vendor Symplr. Terms were not disclosed.

Symplr acquired Cactus Software (provider management) in early 2016 and Vistar Technologies (provider management) in mid-2017.

Reader Comments

From Vaporware?: “Re: Cerner at DoD MHS. The system is not operable, much less interoperable, after 20 months of being live overall and Congress should get to the bottom of it. EHR stabilization is usually measured in low single-digit weeks. Any CIOs willing to compare?” Politico says that a preliminary DoD report concludes that MHS Genesis at Madigan Army Medical Center is “not effective and not suitable” – the same conclusion reached after evaluating the three previous test sites – and adds that the system is “not interoperable.”

Webinars

October 30 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “How One Pediatric CIN Aligned Culture, Technology and the Community to Transform Care.” Presenters: Lisa Henderson, executive director, Dayton Children’s Health Partners; Shehzad Saeed, MD, associate chief medical officer, Dayton Children’s Health Partners; Mason Beard, solutions strategy leader, Philips PHM; Gabe Orthous, value-based care consultant, Himformatics. Sponsor: Philips PHM. Dayton Children’s Health Partners, a pediatric clinically integrated network, will describe how it aligned its internal culture, technology partners, and the community around its goal of streamlining care delivery and improving outcomes. Presenters will describe how it recruited network members, negotiated value-based contracts, and implemented a data-driven care management process.

November 7 (Wednesday) 3:00 ET. “Opioid Crisis: What One Health Plan is Doing About It.” Presenter: Samuel DiCapua, DO, chief medical director, New Hampshire Health Families; and chief medical officer, Casenet. Sponsor: Casenet. This webinar will describe how managed care organization NH Health Families is using innovative programs to manage patients who are struggling with addiction and to help prevent opioid abuse.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kyruus lists its ProviderMatch for Salesforce on the Salesforce AppExchange and announces a $4 million Series D investment by Salesforce Ventures, increasing its total to $76 million.

CNBC reports that Silicon Valley-based, VC-backed smart breast pump startup Naya Health —  whose CEO had blamed the company’s sluggish start on the male-dominated VC industry despite what she claimed is a $30 billion market opportunity – has apparently shut down and left customers without support for its $1,000 device amidst complaints from some of its users that it does not work.

The company that was hired to auction the assets of the defunct CareSync asks the court to expedite a $1 million sale to risk adjustment technology vendor Vatica Health, requesting via an emergency motion to finalize any and all bids by November 5. CareSync had raised $49 million before closing abruptly in June 2018.

Sales

Island Hospital (WA) replaces its existing electronic signature product with that of Access, integrated with Meditech. 

People

Divurgent hires Gary Germaine (Leidos Health) as VP of client services.

Mordecai Kramer (Baim Institute for Clinical Research) joins Carevive Systems as VP of data generation and outcomes, life sciences.

Medtronic co-founder Earl Bakken, who created the modern medical technology industry with the company’s introduction of the first implantable pacemaker in 1960, died Saturday at 94. The former electronics repairman founded the company with his brother-in-law, working from a Minneapolis garage to offer hospital equipment repair and TV installation.

Announcements and Implementations

Healthcare Growth Partners looks at the vendor “haves and have-nots” from EHR consolidation brought on by high overall market penetration as well as hospitals employing physicians and acquiring practices (HGP estimates that over 50 percent of doctors now work for hospitals). Cerner and Epic are winning the replacement market; specialty EHR vendors are doing well in specialized practice areas not as well served by Epic and Cerner; but Healthland, the former Siemens, the former McKesson Enterprise, and Allscripts Practice Fusion are losing ground as the “have-nots.”

Denver Health Epic Data Architect Mark Iannucci publishes Epic UserWeb Search on the Chrome Web Store, which allows search terms prefaced with “uw” to search UserWeb or those starting with “uw sherlock” to find occurrences in Sherlock logs, all while skipping the Galaxy screen (assuming you’re already logged into Epic UserWeb and are using the Chrome browser, of course).

Laudio releases its staff relationship management platform that allows hospital managers to manage employee recognition, accountability, burnout risk, onboarding and career development, and work issues. The founder and CEO is industry long-timer Russ Richmond, MD. 

Government and Politics

A White House-proposed rule would not only push “junk” health insurance plans (short-term and association health plans) that potentially contain extensive exclusions, it would also encourage employers to offer healthcare imbursement arrangements that give each employee a fixed dollar amount with which to purchase their own insurance, which the administration acknowledges would reduce the number of insured people. All of the new recommendations would support states offering plans that are not ACA compliant in such areas as pre-existing conditions and lifetime payment limits.

Other

A New York Times article provides advice from chronically ill people on how to make best use of the US healthcare system (or more precisely, two ways to do that plus two suggestions for bypassing it in favor of getting informal personal advice).

Researched published in JAMA finds that use of medical crowd-funding campaigns is growing, people often ask for money to obtain treatments that are not evidenced-based or that may be harmful, meaning those who donate are helping line the pockets of practitioners who are delivering questionable care.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD will exhibit at the American Academy of Ophthalmology event October 27-30 in Chicago.
• IDC MarketScape names Arcadia a leader in its assessment of US population health analytics vendors.
• TMC names Atlantic.Net a 2018 Cloud Computing Security Excellence Award winner.
• Bluetree will exhibit at the CHIME CIO Leadership Academy 2.0 October 29-30 in San Diego.

Blog Posts

• Is your health system’s chief digital/innovation officer positioned for success? (Advisory Board)
• How to Make or Break the Bedside Patient Experience (Access)
• A model to build on: The synergy of imaging, clinical knowledge and Information Technology (Agfa Healthcare)
• ACOs and Proposed MSSP Changes (Arcadia)
• The Brain: Key things to consider when implementing or optimizing (Bluetree)
• A Day in the Life of a Telemetry Nurse (Bernoullli Health)
• Technology Innovation has the Potential to Improve the Future of Healthcare (ChartLogic)
• Better Transparency for the Patient and Physician Helps Resolve Challenges for Pharmacists (CoverMyMeds)
• Why Interoperability is Paramount in the New Healthcare Landscape (Dimensional Insight)

Contacts

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