News 11/4/20

Top News

Teladoc Health completes its $18.5 billion acquisition of Livongo.

TDOC shares have dropped since the acquisition was completed, valuing the company at $28 billion.

Reader Comments

From Ossified Institution: “Re: HIMSS21. Keynote speaker ideas? HIMSS20 would have been President Trump, Chris Christie, Terry McAuliffe, and Alex Rodriguez.” Here’s who I would most like to see, looking for that combination of selfless health-related experience plus the requisite celebrity appeal to make attendees feel important:

• Amy Abernethy, MD, PhD, FDA
• Jose Andres, World Central Kitchen
• Richard Carmona, MD, MPH, physician, nurse, University of Arizona medical school professor, and 17th Surgeon General of the United States
• Paul Farmer, MD, PhD, humanitarian
• Anthony Fauci, MD, NIAID
• Bill Gates, Gates Foundation
• Scott Gottlieb, MD, former FDA commissioner
• Jen Gunter, MD, physician
• Mona Hanna-Attisha, MD, MPH, physician
• Siddhartha Mukherjee, MD, physician and author
• Devi Shetty, MBBS, Narayana Health
• Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, MD, NFL player and physician

Webinars

November 11 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Beyond the Firewall: Securing Patients, Staff, and the Healthcare Internet of Things.” Sponsor: Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. Presenter: Daniel Faurlin, head of network solutions for healthcare, Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. The biggest cybersecurity risk for healthcare IoT isn’t the objects themselves, but rather the “network door” they can open. This network infrastructure-oriented webinar will address overcoming the challenges of architecting a network to provide security, management, and monitoring for IoT, devices, and users using ALE’s Digital Age Networking blueprint, a single service platform for hospital networks. Digital Age Networking includes an autonomous network, onboarding and managing IoT, and creating business innovation with automated workflows. Specific use cases will describe enabling COVID-19 quarantine management, contact tracing, locating equipment and people, and ensuring the security of patients and more.

November 12 (Thursday) 5 ET: “Getting Surgical Documentation Right: A Fireside Chat.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Alex Dawson, product manager, IMO; Janice Kelly, MS, RN, president, AORN Syntegrity; Julie Glasgow, MD, clinical terminologist, IMO; Lou Ann Montgomery, RN, BSN, nurse informaticist, IMO; Whitney Mannion, RN, clinical terminologist, IMO. The presenters will discuss using checklists, templates, the EHR, and third-party solutions to improve documentation without overburdening clinicians. They will explore the importance of surgical documentation in perioperative patient management, the guidelines and requirements for surgical documentation and operative notes, how refining practices and tools can improve accuracy and efficiency, and the risks and implications of incomplete, inconsistent, and non-compliant documentation.

November 16 (Monday) 1 ET. “COVID-19 and Beyond: A CISO’s Perspective for Staying Ahead of Threats.” Sponsor: Everbridge. Presenter: Sonia Arista, VP and global chief information security officer, Everbridge. While hospitals worldwide work to resume elective care amid COVID-19, they’re quickly adapting and responding to a variety of emerging risks that have tested their resilience, including a surge in cybersecurity and ransomware attacks. This webinar will highlight emerging IT vulnerabilities and best practices designed to help hospitals anticipate and quickly mitigate cybersecurity risks. A former hospital CISO will share her expertise in responding to high-impact IT incidents and mitigating risks during critical events given the “new normal” that COVID-19 has created.

November 18 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Do You Really Have a Telehealth Program, Or Just Videoconferencing?” Sponsor: Mend Family. Presenters: J. D. McFarland, solutions architect, Mend Family; Nick Neral, national account executive, Mend Family.  Healthcare’s new competitive advantage is telehealth, of which a videoconferencing platform is just a small part. This presentation will describe a comprehensive patient journey in which an organization can acquire new patients, reduce check-in time, reduce no-shows, and increase patient satisfaction, all using virtual care. Health systems did a good job in quickly standing up virtual visits in response to COVID, but telehealth and the digital front door are here to stay and now is a good time to re-evaluate tools and processes that support patient scheduling, digital forms, telehealth, and patient engagement as part of a competitive strategy.

November 18 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “Leveraging a Clinical Intelligence Engine to Solve the EHR Usability Crisis.” Sponsor: Medicomp Systems. Presenter: Jay Anders, MD, MS, chief medical officer, Medicomp; David Lareau, CEO, Medicomp. Healthcare is long overdue for a data makeover. Clinician burnout is fueled by inaccurate, inconsistent, and incomplete clinical data, but that can be improved without scrapping existing systems. The presenters will describe the use of tools that work seamlessly with EHR workflows to deliver actionable data, improve interoperability; support the clinician’s thought process; and improve usability for better decision-making and accurate coding.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Meditech reports Q3 results: revenue down 5.3%, EPS $0.82 versus $2.44. Product revenue decreased 29.9% due to pandemic-related implementation delays, but service revenue increased 6.3% as more customers went live.

People

Sentara Healthcare hires Tim Skeen (Anthem) as SVP/CIO.

Data privacy and security company FairWarning names Lisa Counsell, RN (Soar Vision Group) VP of healthcare sales.

Saad Chaudhry (Gartner) joins Luminis Health as CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Naval Hospital Camp Pendleton (CA) goes live on Cerner as part of the DoD’s MHS Genesis program.

Cape Cod Healthcare (MA) implements Epic.

Hackensack Meridian Health deploys provider search and scheduling software from Kyruus.

In Australia, the first five hospitals go live on NSW Health Care’s implementation of Sectra radiology imaging.

Seton Medical Center (CA) rolls out CPSI’s Evident EHR.

Novarad offers a free, AI-powered COVID-19 diagnosis tool for CT scans.

COVID-19

North and South Dakota lead the world in the daily number of new COVID-19 cases per million population at 1,457 and 1,309, respectively. Europe remains in a nearly vertical case count increase, having moved from 50,000 per day in early October to nearly 250,000 now. Experts say uncontrolled US spread will likely peak in mid-January, with daily deaths exceeding 1,000 for a sustained period.

A study finds that Quidel’s widely used quick COVID-19 test performs poorly in detecting infection in people who don’t have symptoms, detecting only 32% of the cases that were flagged by the less-timely PCR test. Quidel’s test earned FDA’s emergency use authorization for diagnosis people with symptoms, but the federal government has encouraged its use as a mass screening tool. Experts warn that no tests can accurately predict whether someone is actively infectious in being contagious to others.

Hospitals, especially rural and small facilities, are scrambling to get nursing staff as pandemic burnout is causing resignations and sending those over 50 into retirement. The answer, as always, is paying sign-on bonuses and hiring traveling nurses in competing for the limited supply of licensed personnel.

Other

In North Carolina, the local news covers Sentara Albemarle Medical Center’s use of the “Sepsis Sniffer,” an algorithm developed by Mayo Clinic several years ago that looks for signs of impending sepsis using 4,000 patient data points found in real time within the EHR. Medical and Surgical ICU Director Daniel Mulcrone, MD says the predictive technology has been especially helpful in monitoring COVID-19 patients.

Sponsor Updates

• Surescripts honors 10 healthcare leaders with its White Coat Award for e-prescription accuracy.
• Arcadia’s MSSP ACO customers averaged $5.9 million in shared savings in 2019.
• Cerner unveils the Cerner Charitable Foundation focusing on home, health, and heroes.
• Health Catalyst will participate in the Credit Suisse Virtual Healthcare Conference November 12.

Blog Posts

• 4 Major Considerations for Healthcare Data Conversion (314e)
• Protecting Your Practice from Growing Telehealth Cybersecurity Threats (Part 1) (AdvancedMD)
• #RSNA20 – Entering a new era, in exactly one month (Agfa HealthCare)
• HEDIS Transitions of Care Measure: How CarePort Can Help Health Plans (CarePort)
• Civic Duty (Change Healthcare)
• What to do as Ryuk ransomware hits healthcare & manufacturing (CI Security)
• 6 Things Health Systems Need in Medication Access Technology (CoverMyMeds)
• Looking Back at Our First Virtual National Conference #eCWNC20 (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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