News 3/8/23

Top News

Transcarent will acquire virtual primary care company 98point6’s care delivery division — which includes an AI-powered chatbot, physician group, and self-insured employer business — for $100 million.

Transcarent, which has relied on contracted clinicians, will gain 98point6’s 150 directly-employed doctors and support staff.

98point6 has raised $270 million in funding.

After the acquisition, 98point6 will stop providing patient care and will develop and sell technology to health systems. MultiCare Health System has signed on as its first software customer.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Webinars

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

WW, known as WeightWatchers until a 2018 name change, will acquire telehealth-based weight management company Sequence for $132 million. Sequence’s $99 per month membership plan provides prescriptions for high-demand weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, a price that does not include the $1,000+ monthly cost of the drugs themselves. Sequence touts its prior authorization technology as a differentiator. WW shares, which have slimmed down 57% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 12% loss,  jumped 79% on the news, valuing the company at $489 million.

Best Buy will set up in-home virtual care systems for Atrium Health in a three-year deal. Atrium expects to monitor 100 patients remotely, buying devices from Best Buy and having them installed by its Geek Squad. Best Buy Health’s president is Deborah DiSanzo, MBA, who was formerly GM of IBM Watson Health and CEO of Philips Healthcare.

Newly launched Opkit announces GA of a health insurance verification platform for telehealth companies and virtual clinics.

Sales

• De Baca Family Clinic (NM) selects EHR and patient engagement software from EClinicalWorks.
• CareView Communications adds Sonifi Health’s interactive communications technology to its patient video monitoring software, giving patients the ability to communicate with care teams from bedside smart TVs.

People

Healthcare identity management vendor Verato hires Avi Mukherjee, MBA (Verily Life Sciences) as chief product officer.

Waystar promotes Missy Miller to chief marketing officer.

Direct Recruiters promotes Shayla Jastrzebski to partner.

Cookeville Regional Medical Center (TN) promotes Tim McDermott, MBA to CIO.

Kyruus promotes Heather Berndt, MA to VP of mid-market and client sales.

Announcements and Implementations

The Medical University of South Carolina takes over management of Regional Medical Center and will convert it from Cerner to Epic.

Vitalchat announces GA of AI-Enabled E-Sitter, virtual nursing technology that enables clinicians to remotely monitor up to 100 patients from a central hub.

Weill Cornell Medicine (NY) uses AI-powered ProviderIQ technology from Hatchleaf to more effectively match patients with best-fit providers across specialties.

A study of procedure documentation modalities for hand surgery – AI-based virtual scribe, medical scribe, transcription service, and EHR voice recognition –  finds that all four generate acceptable results. The AI scribe required the least amount of surgeon time and was able to identify most of the elements needed, but the plans it generated required clinician review.

An NYU School of Medicine study finds that prescribing rates for mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists doubled when cardiologists were presented with an EHR banner alert reminding them of the appropriateness of the treatment for their heart failure patients. MRAs can greatly improve survival rates but are ordered for only one-third of eligible patients, resulting in an estimated 20,000 preventable deaths in the US each year.

A new KLAS review of small-hospital patient accounting finds that Meditech Expanse tops the list, with Epic coming in second because service quality varies under the CommunityConnect model in which the host hospital provides services instead of Epic.

Government and Politics

The Defense Health Agency launches a six-month pilot of a tool that offers validated health information to patients and providers.

The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Subcommittee on Technology Modernization held the first of a series of oversight hearings on the VA EHR program Tuesday afternoon. Notes:

• Chair Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) said that VA IT systems exist to improve care, not to “turn out cushy contracts to technology companies.” He says that all EHR projects or options will be evaluated on patient safety, reliability, user satisfaction, and cost.
• Rosendale says that some elements of VistA will be used for at least 10 years, and some parts that aren’t addressed by Oracle Cerner may never go away, so VistA must be maintained.
• Rosendale said Mann Grandstaff VA Medical Center has become “the most dangerous VA hospital in the country” based on its post-Oracle Cerner patient safety reports of 500 per year versus an average of 55 per year from VistA-using facilities.
• Former VA CIO Roger Baker says concrete evidence exists that veterans have better outcomes from facilities that use the VA’s legacy VistA system instead of Oracle Cerner.
• Baker says that lobbyists are falsely claiming that VistA can’t be improved because of age, complexity, and technology. He says that big modernization improvements were made under his tenure even though VA had cut off VistA improvements for 16 of the last 24 years.
• Baker says that replacement of VistA Laboratory with the cloud version of Cerner’s laboratory system in 2007 was a failure that never expanded beyond the first hospital because of the cost and timelines required to customize it using available parameters.
• Baker says Oracle Cerner is the VA’s third attempt to replace VistA, following HealtheVet and IEHR, and all have failed because the VA’s culture values local control rather than software standardization.
• Baker says that studies have shown that only 16% of large US government IT projects succeed, and as the largest federal IT project, “VA has no chance of actually succeeding on this program.”
• Former VA executive Peter Levin testified that the billions of dollars that have already been spent on Oracle Cerner cannot scale to enterprise-wide clinical services. He said that DoD fared better because they had already transitioned to a centrally administered workflow, they planned better, and predecessor system AHLTA was a mess that made Cerner look like an improvement to users.
• Asked about Cerner being awarded a no-bid contract, Levin says he doesn’t think the selection was unfair, but there were “political exigencies.”
• VA IT executive Daniel McCune says that the annual cost of maintaining VistA has ranged from $418 million in 2018 to $891 million in 2022, and the cost will continue to increase until Oracle Cerner is fully implemented.

Privacy and Security

The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency release a Cybersecurity Advisory to help healthcare providers protect their networks from the Royal ransomware variant.

Other

A Black Book survey of 2,500 health IT leaders finds that 30% plan on investing in health data integration solutions this year. Reducing duplicate and unnecessary procedures, increasing volume of consumer health data, patient demands for nearly immediate health results, and gaps in clinical device connectivity were cited as top reasons for investment. Innovaccer took top marks for its data integration solutions.

CNBC profiles Denmark-born Ida Tin, whose company launched popular menstrual health app Clue. She coined the term “femtech” to describe the trillion-dollar market to attract investors who would not have been comfortable with “a company that helps women not pee their pants.” She stepped down as CEO of birth control app vendor Clue in 2021, explaining that, “I could see that the things that I would have had to learn to really serve the company were things I’m not that good at, and I was not so interested in a lot of very serious operational stuff and that didn’t excite me as much.” She became interested in business when she got lost at the college where she was studying art and ended wandering by mistake into a business course interview.

Sponsor Updates

• Sam Larson, head of marketing for Philips Capsule, and his family will take a team to Jamaica’s Mustard Seed Communities this summer to complete several work projects.
• AdvancedMD publishes a new e-book, “2023 MIPS Attestation Guide.”
• Bardavon Health Innovations acquires injury prevention company Preventure and launches a Safety Intelligence Suite for employers and insurers.
• CarePort publishes an e-book, “5 levers for hospital success under value-based care.”
• ChartLogic will exhibit at the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons Annual Meeting March 8-10 in Las Vegas.
• ConnectiveRx will sponsor the Point-of-Care Marketing Summit March 22 in New York City.
• AdvancedMD publishes a new e-guide, “2023 CPT/HCPCS Codebook.”
• Netsmart will integrate the CAMS-care Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality Framework and Suicide Status Form with its CareFabric platform.
• Nordic releases a new podcast, “Making Rounds: The Big Squeeze in Healthcare.”
• Optum will exhibit at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy Conference March 21-24 in San Antonio.
• Sectra publishes a new case study, “AI frees up valuable time for radiologists in a Swedish healthcare region.”
• Spok earns top honors for the sixth consecutive year in a recent Black Book survey for its secure communications platform.
• Verato publishes a new case study, “Large Texas non-profit health system avoids costs, enhances productivity, and improves scalability.”
• West Monroe promotes 16 new managing directors.

Blog Posts

• Is Hospital Pre-Registration Possible Without Portal Adoption? (Access)
• Understanding the HHS-HCC Risk Adjustment Model (AGS Health)
• Healthcare disrupted: How to keep pace in a rapidly changing world (Arcadia)
• Ascom Workflow Technology Designed for Interoperability to Make 1+1=3 (Ascom)
• 7 Step Roadmap to Developing a Virtual Nursing Program (AvaSure)
• Using Real-Time Insights to Improve Value-Based Care Outcomes (Bamboo Health)
• Why Double Down on Injury Prevention? CEO Matt Condon Talks About Our New Safety Intelligence Suite (Bardavon Health Innovations)
• Epic Go-Live Planning: Keys to Successful HOD Implementation (CereCore)
• What is a Care Manager? (ChartSpan)
• Enabling Value with Interoperability & Analytics Using the 1Clearsense Platform (Clearsense)
• Harnessing Big Data for Suicide Prevention (Dimensional Insight)
• The 21st Century Cures Act and its Impact on Interoperability and Healthcare (HealthTech Resources)
• Long-Term Cost-Saving Opportunities in Healthcare (Divurgent)
• Key Tips for Successfully Managing and Optimizing Your Revenue Cycle (Vyne Medical)
• Beyond the call: How to differentiate your telehealth experience post-visit (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Using EHRs to Increase Employee Satisfaction and Retention (Netsmart)
• Be the Poison Control (or help desk) operator your colleagues need you to be (Nordic)
• Combatting Burnout and Fatigue in Healthcare (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• So, Food is Medicine, What Does That Mean for Pharmacy? (OmniSys)
• Break the Backlog: 6 Strategies to Reduce Report Queue Backlogs (Pivot Point Consulting)
• How Clinical Communication Helps Critical Access Hospitals Improve Patient Outcomes (PerfectServe)
• Three Ways Premier is Supporting Continuum of Care Providers (Premier)
• How to Succeed in Value-Based Care Without In-House HCC Coders (RCxRules)
• FAQ: How do healthcare organizations define optimal provider-patient communication? (Relatient)
• Why your hospital should be using patient discharge checklists (Sonifi Health)
• 5 hospital contact center trends to watch (Spok)
• Tegria on Techquity (Tegria)
• The Value of One Integrated Clinical Communication Platform (TigerConnect)
• Advancements in PT Technology and Emerging Digital Trends (WebPT)
• How Evidence-Based Care Leads to Value-Based Care (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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