News 1/17/20

Top News

ONC publishes a draft of its five-year strategic plan for federal health IT initiatives. Goals include promoting health and wellness; enhancing care delivery and experience; building a secure, data-driven ecosystem to accelerate research and innovation; and connecting stakeholders and their data through interoperability. Comments are due March 18.

Webinars

January 29 (Wednesday) 2:00 ET. “State of the Health IT Industry 2020.” Sponsor: Medicomp Systems. Presenters from Medicomp Systems: Dave Lareau, CEO; Jay Anders, MD, MS, chief medical officer; Dan Gainer, CTO; Toni Laracuente, CNO. Despite widespread adoption of EHRs, healthcare professionals struggle with several unresolved systemic challenges, including the lack of EHR usability, limited interoperability between disparate systems, new quality reporting initiatives that create administrative burdens, and escalating levels of physician burnout. Join the webinar to learn how enterprises can address current industry roadblocks with existing market solutions and fix health IT’s biggest challenges.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Bon Secours Mercy Health makes an undisclosed investment in Lirius Health and will adopt the company’s AI-based behavioral change software for women’s health programs and those that encourage use of digital health tools like patient portals. The organizations will also develop and market programs for patients at risk of chronic disease.

Digital triage startup Buoy Health raises $20 million in an oversubscribed Series B round.

Sales

• WakeMed Health and Hospitals (NC) will implement Health Catalyst’s Data Operating System and Rapid Response Analytics.
• ChristianaCare (DE) selects patient engagement and payment software from Cedar.
• PIH Health (CA) extends its enterprise solutions, services, and outsourcing agreement with Allscripts through 2025; and will implement Sunrise, TouchWorks, and CareInMotion at the recently acquired Good Samaritan Hospital.
• Utah’s UHIN HIE will replace its patient-matching software from IBM with NextGate’s Enterprise Master Patient Index.
• Orlando Health (FL) will deploy Andor Health’s care team communication technology.

People

Piedmont Healthcare (GA) names Lacy Knight, MD (Northwestern Medicine) chief health information officer.

First Databank promotes Bob Katter to president. He succeeds Charles Tuchinda, MD who becomes executive chairman.

Announcements and Implementations

MDLive announces GA of virtual primary care services for health systems and payers that enable patients to develop ongoing relationships with the same telemedicine doctor.

Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services leverages CarePort Health’s care transition and management capabilities to improve the experiences of patients in the state’s Dual Eligible Demonstration program.

HSHS St. Mary’s Hospital (IL) implements tele-ICU software and services from Advanced ICU Care.

Other

Cerner achieves top marks for hospital technology support services for the fourth year in a row, according to Black Book Research’s latest survey of 2,448 senior-level health IT end users. The study also found:

• Ninety percent of survey-takers believe multi-level tech support will be a key differentiator in health IT purchasing over the next five years.
• Though the same number of respondents won’t look for replacement systems in the coming year, 80% believe it is easier than it was five years ago to take their business elsewhere.
• Fifty-three percent say they’d pay more for greater tech support that results in enhanced provider productivity and improved patient satisfaction.
• Eighty-two percent prefer tech support come directly from their vendor.
• Of those that do outsource, 81% are significantly dissatisfied with service quality and support levels in the first year after go live.

The well-tweeted excesses and idiosyncrasies of the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference come to an end in San Francisco.

Kudos to the organizers of this fundraising campaign for trying to funnel some of that excess into ameliorating the city’s homelessness problem. Looks like they are over halfway to their $15,000 goal.

Sponsor Updates

• Patientco staff sort 849 pounds of medical products and pack 102 boxes for MedShare, impacting 708 patients.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises medical device company ImPact Applications in its acquisition by Riverside Insights.
• Ensocare hires Jennifer Gardner and Parker Stock as regional sales directors.
• Hayes Management Consulting extends early bird registration for its MDaudit User Group Meeting in May to January 31.
• Impact Advisors hires John Klare (Navigant) to lead its Performance Excellence service line.

Blog Posts

• The State of Telehealth in 2020 (EClinicalWorks)
• AWS re:Invent brings EPSi together with technology leaders for innovation and transformation (EPSi)
• How Chrome is helping enterprises still using Windows 7 (Google Cloud)
• How One Major Health Plan is Tackling Care Manager Efficiency (Healthwise)
• HIMSS interview: The future of Australian medicine (Hyland)
• 2020 Already Becoming Year of Social Determinants of Health for Payers (Imat Solutions)
• Why SSO is the key to unlocking digital transformation in the NHS (Imprivata)
• Streamlining Vitals Technology: The Future of Bedside Care (Capsule)
• Revisiting Some of 2018’s Most Significant Healthcare IT Topics in 2020 (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Augmented Intelligence is the New “AI” (Definitive Healthcare)

Contacts

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