Monday Morning Update 4/25/22

Top News

Tenet Health complains to a South Florida TV station that it is “preposterous” to suggest that charting on paper during EHR downtime could cause medication errors.

The TV station’s report on downtime at two of Tenet’s South Florida hospitals included comments from a patient who was being treated at the time. He expressed concern about errors when he noticed that WiFi was down, staff had to go outside to use their phones, nurses were charting on paper, and one nurse dropped a big stack of manual records.

Tenet asked WPTV to remove the story and to “maintain a higher level of integrity when reporting on this topic moving forward.” WPTV told Tenet to take a hike.

St. Mary’s Medical Center and Good Samaritan Medical Center have been down since Wednesday for reasons that Tenet has declined to share.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Few poll respondents are interested in revisiting HIMSS22 electronically, so I feel vindicated that I’m not the only one to choose the “none of these” option. You would have thought in Orlando that the whole world was breathlessly awaiting the release of conference-related podcasts and videos given the phalanx of A/V warriors armed with microphones and cameras who were pontificating theatrically to each other all over the convention center.

New poll to your right or here: Which factor will most influence whether AI has a significant healthcare influence in five years? I didn’t include every possible factor, so feel free to click the poll’s “comments” link to argue for something I omitted.

Webinars

April 22 (Friday) 1 ET. “CMIO 3.0: What’s Next for the CMIO?” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Becket Mahnke, MD, CMIO and pediatric cardiologist, Confluence Health; Dale Sanders, chief strategy officer, IMO. The relatively short history of the CMIO role includes Version 1.0 (EHR implementation, Meaningful Use, and regulatory compliance) and Version 2.0 (quality and efficiency). Version 3.0 is at the forefront of predictive analytics, population health initiatives, and optimization of data-driven tools. The presenters will discuss the digital revolution’s impact on CMIO responsibilities; the connection between clinical informatics, analytics, population health and the CMIO; and how CMIO 3.0 will be involved in the adoption of advanced technologies.

April 28 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Undercoded and Underpaid: Making It Easier to Document to Optimize Reimbursement.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, senior director of informatics, IMO; Nicole Douglas, sales engineer, IMO. The presenters will discuss how to simplify precise documentation for clinicians; the effects of imprecise coding on reimbursement

Sales

• Allied Anesthesia Associates and Clínica Hamburguesa de Anestesiologia will implement PerfectServe’s AnesthesiaGo OR case scheduling solution.

People

Tara Nooteboom, MS (Rush University Medical Center) joins UCI Health as head of consumer digital strategy.

Michael Fenlon (Change Healthcare) joins Relatient as VP of client support.

TigerConnect promotes John Montealegre, MBA to CFO, Harish Panchal to chief sales officer, and Allie Vu to chief people officer.

Government and Politics

Spokane VA officials confirm that a veteran was hospitalized with heart failure in March after his heart medication prescription – which was ordered a year previously, before Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center’s conversion to Cerner  – disappeared off his Cerner active medication list and was not renewed. The incident has been classified as a sentinel event that had the potential to cause significant patient harm, although in this case the veteran was discharged, apparently well, after a five-day inpatient stay. The VA expires all prescriptions after one year and suspects that the heart drug was already discontinued before Cerner was went live, adding that it remained visible on Cerner’s “historical medications” screen. Five Mann-Grandstaff clinicians say they have seen the problem of prescriptions expiring and disappearing from the meds list, but weren’t adequately trained on the process. The VA’s VistA system that Cerner replaced also expired prescriptions after one year, but left them on the active medication list to prompt providers to renew them when appropriate instead of dumping them onto a historical list of inactive meds that could go back years.

Other

Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador — which is running a 1980s-era Meditech Magic system that is no longer enhanced — hasn’t followed through on recommendations that it upgrade to a new version of Meditech in a $92 million project that auditors say would more than pay for itself.

Quebec’s health ministry apologizes for tweeting a link to COVID-19 statistics that actually pointed to a foot fetish video site. One might reasonably speculate that the government’s social media person had the site open while tweeting and copied the wrong URL, which should raise some interesting internal discussions. 

Sponsor Updates

• Orbita raises $3,000 for charitable causes by sponsoring a 5k in Boston during its first in-person meeting of the year.
• Healthcare Triangle achieves HITRUST risk-based certification to manage risk, improve security posture, and meet compliance requirements.
• CEO Monthly has recognized PatientBond CEO Justin Dearborn as “The Most Influential CEO 2022 – the USA.”
• Clearsense publishes a new case study, “Archiving Solution Delivers Rapid ROI.”
• The HIT Like a Girl Podcast features Pivot Point Consulting CEO Rachel Marano.
• Protenus names Daniel Thompson junior engineer, Nick Strand infrastructure engineer, and Sean Richwine staff infrastructure engineer.
• Netsmart promotes Natalie Caruso to senior communications specialist.
• Redox and Well Health will exhibit at AAOE April 29-May 2 in Chicago.
• RxRevu adds new functionalities to its real-time prescription benefit solution to improve transaction success rates and display additional plan cost data.

Blog Posts

• Mapping the Care Journey for Misdiagnosed Patients with Precision Engagement (OptimizeRx)
• Closing care gaps with context and connectivity (Olive)
• Key Takeaways from NatCon22, the Largest Conference in Mental Health and Substance Use Treatment (Owl Health)
• Patient Experience Best Practices: 4 Examples to Follow (PatientBond)
• How Remote Patient Engagement Solutions Reduce Readmissions (PerfectServe)
• Teamwork and Team Leaders Make the Difference in Retaining, Supporting Nurses (Symplr)
• Fluid Shortages: Current Challenges in Accessing a Staple Supply (Premier)
• Managing HCC Capture During the Great Resignation (RCxRules)
• Make the Switch, Your Patients Will Thank You (RxRevu)
• 10 practical ways to keep text messaging in your hospital safe and secure (Spok)
• The Great Resignation: How to turn it into an opportunity for your contact center (Talkdesk)
• The Importance of Real-Time Communication in Hospice Care (TigerConnect)
• Patient Adherence: Understanding Why We’re All Bad at It (WebPT)
• Nursing Shortage Consequences and What Hospitals Can Do (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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