News 5/26/23

Top News

Mobile patient intake form platform vendor Florence acquires Zipnosis, which sells a white label asynchronous telehealth solution that is based on questionnaires.

Florence launched in March 2023 with $20 million in seed funding.

Failing insurer Bright Health acquired Zipnosis in April 2021.

Webinars

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Shares of Healthcare Triangle, Inc. drop sharply on the news that it will conduct a 1-for-10 reverse stock split to meet Nasdaq’s share price requirements. HCTI shares are down 50% in the past 12 months to $0.26, valuing the company at $11 million. Shares have lost 93% of their value since the company’s IPO in October 2021.

Vodafone creates Vodafone in Health to accelerate the use of healthcare technology in the UK.

Sales

• Health information sharing non-profit Contexture will implement Verato’s healthcare master data management solution for patient matching.

People

Nicole Kerkenbush, RN, MN, MHA (Monument Health) joins CHIME as VP of education.

Carteret Health (NC) promotes VP of general services / CIO Kyle Marek, MS to president and CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Conduent releases a provider data management solution to help insurers keep their physician directories current.

Synapse Medicine and CompuGroup Medical will partner to offer clinicians prescription support.

In Canada, Meditech will support electronic prescribing for Expanse EHR users by connecting to the PrescribeIT national prescribing service.

UK-based Acurable earns US FDA clearance for its self-applied wearable that diagnoses sleep apnea without a polysomnography study.

Government and Politics

Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) demands that the VA avoid reducing headcount or services at its Spokane and Walla Walla facilities to offset a $35 million shortfall caused by its Oracle Cerner implementation. She says the VA should redirect the money that it would have spent to implement the system in other facilities since those go-lives are on hold, and instead move those funds to those hospitals that are already live.

Husband and wife doctors who are charged with sharing the medical records of US military officials with Russia to support its invasion of Ukraine were recorded by FBI agents who were posing as Russian operatives. Johns Hopkins anesthesiologist Anna Gabrielian, MD is accused of sharing her laptop screen containing patient records with the undercover agent. Her spouse, Army Major Jamie Lee Henry, MD – who was one of the first active duty US military officers to come out as transgender in 2015 – reportedly described themselves as a “coward” over potential HIPAA violations, struggled with technology problems in trying to share their screen with the undercover agent, and ending up giving the agent a paper notebook of records. The doctors, who are charged with conspiracy and HIPAA violations, argue that they were entrapped.

The American Hospital Association asks HHS OCR to stop considering the IP addresses of hospital website visitors as protected health information under HIPAA. AHA says pending lawsuits over pixel tracking have pushed website technology providers such as Google to stop supporting hospital websites, making regulation unnecessary, but if HHS OCR disagrees, then IP addresses should only be considered PHI if they are used from within patient portals.

Privacy and Security

Medical practice services vendor Practicefirst will pay $550,000 to the state of New York for failing to protect patient records that were exposed in a 2020 cyberattack. The breach, which involved the records of 1.2 million people of which 428,000 were New Yorkers, happened after the company failed to apply firewall software updates.

Sponsor Updates

• IntegrityCheck, the house band of InterSystems, wins $100,000 for the ALS Foundation in a Boston battle of the bands for charity.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advised Intelligent Medical Objects in its acquisition of Melax Technologies.
• InterSystems launches HealthShare Health Connect Cloud in AWS Marketplace.
• Healthcare Triangle sponsors CalvertHealth’s annual golf tournament in Lothian, MD.
• Indiana Health Centers reduces onboarding errors by using the EClinicalWorks Business Optimizer.
• Tegria CMO Ray Gensinger, MD joins Symplr’s effort to “Advance Healthcare Operations.”
• Nordic releases a new episode of its In Network podcast, “Designing for Health: Dr. John Whalen.”
• Netsmart earns top user satisfaction rankings among home health technology vendors, according to a Black Book survey of 2,285 end-users.
• Dimensional Insight publishes a new case study featuring Children’s Hospital of the King’s Daughters.
• In Europe, elder care organization Korian Benelux selects AI-powered enterprise solutions from Juniper Networks, including wireless and wired access, to optimize network performance and reliability.
• Konza National Network congratulates over 200 Konza-powered members that have been awarded accreditation through the NCQA Data Aggregator Validation program.
• The Patient Journey Pioneers Podcast features Kyruus CEO Graham Gardner, “Find a Physician & Beyond: Guiding the Digital Patient Journey.”

Blog Posts

• What IT advancements are needed to improve value-based care (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• A Different Point of View: The Age of TEFCA and QHINs Mandate Point-of-Care Diagnostic Filtering and Interoperability (Medicomp Systems)
• 10 Best Interview Questions to Ask Candidates (Direct Recruiters)
• Why Healthcare Needs Organizational Change Management (Divurgent)
• The pros and cons of using ChatGPT in clinical radiology: An open discussion (Elsevier)
• An inch deep and a mile wide (Nordic)
• Does Your Data Analytics Solution Find Patients Missing from Cohorts? (First Databank)
• Single sign-on vs. multi-factor authentication: Do you know the difference? (Fortified Health Security)
• Managed Services: The Case for Externalizing Aspects of Health System IT Operations (HCTec)
• Expanding After-Hours Virtual Care Options for Children (Health Data Movers)
• Am I Information Blocking? (With Examples!) (HealthMark Group)
• Five Key Considerations for a Successful EHR Optimization (HealthTech Resources)
• Does Your Patient Education Experience Pass the Accessibility Test? (Healthwise)
• When to Consider an Oracle Cerner Optimization Assessment (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• From raw to refined: Striving for high quality data in healthcare (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• How AI-Driven User Experience Testing Enhances Digital Health Accessibility (Keysight)
• Patients Need More Than a Better Compass to Navigate Healthcare (Lumeon)
• How EHRs Enhance Care Planning for Nurses (Medhost)

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