News 6/14/23

Top News

Oracle reports Q4 results: revenue up 17%, adjusted EPS $1.67 versus $1.54, beating Wall Street expectations for both and sending shares to an all-time high. From the earnings call:

• Total cloud revenue was up 55%.
• The Cerner business contributed $1.5 billion to the company’s $13.8 billion of total revenue that was up 18%.
• The company is partnering with Nvidia to build the world’s largest high-performance computer, which will run AI at 16,000 GPUs.
• CTO and Chairman Larry Ellison says that cloud usage is charged by the minute, making Oracle half the price of competitors because it runs twice as fast. He adds that a new Oracle version of MySQL is 1,000 times faster than Amazon Aurora.
• Ellison says Oracle loves Java for building applications, but the company uses Apex for a tenfold developer productivity gain, which he says is why the company believes that it can rewrite Cerner’s entire suite in a “very, very short period of time.”
• Ellison says that the company will earn many healthcare wins because of Oracle’s application breadth, also noting that competitors say they are “cloud” when they are actually “hosted.”
• Ellison adds, “We not only have all the Cerner healthcare apps for hospitals, we’ve specialized our ERP system for hospitals, we’ve specialized our HCM for managing the hospital workforce. We’ve done a bunch of things around the healthcare industry. One of the things we want to do is, you know, we’re the largest provider of clinical trial software. But the clinical — the results of the clinical trial goes to a government regulator. And we’re now working with the government regulators to develop the software that allows them to take the clinical trial output in digital form and get it through the regulatory process much faster at a much lower cost. So, we’re looking at the entire healthcare ecosystem and trying to automate both sides of the transaction.”
• CEO Safra Catz says “we’re still at the beginning” with the Cerner business, as Oracle has been focused on stabilizing the operation, but work remains to increase Cerner’s profit margins and to move its products to Oracle Cloud.

Reader Comments

From Apex: “Re: Elation Health. We were notified that our implementation manager is no longer with the company, apparently part of a structured RIF. Not sure how big, but it was a sign of companies hunkering down for the recession and the lack of non-AI investor capital.” Unverified, because I couldn’t find a press contact on their site to confirm the non-anonymous report.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Ronin. The San Mateo, CA-based company’s advanced data science and human-centered interfaces embedded in the EHR help clinicians make more precise, confident, and personalized patient care decisions while enhancing the patient and care team experience. Intuitive display of the patient journey: More efficiently and more confidently guide patient care using a reimagined dashboard within the EHR that presents all available patient data in a single click. Efficiently rendered data reduces clinicians burden and supports data-driven decisions. Actionable data insights for personalized care: Preempt adverse events and improve treatment effectiveness using predictive insights delivered at the point of care in the patient chart to accelerate informed, individualized decisions about patient care. Real-time symptom monitoring for effective intervention with PROs: Identify and proactively course-correct at-risk patients for fewer adverse events and emergency department visits through EHR-integrated capture of patient reported outcomes, remote monitoring, effective patient management, and intelligent alerting. Thanks to Ronin for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

June 22 (Thursday) 2 ET. “The End of COVID Public Health Emergency is Here. Is Your Rev Cycle Ready?” Sponsor: Waystar. Presenter: Vanessa L. Moldovan, commercial enablement + insights program manager, Waystar. This webinar will describe the proactive steps that are needed to avoid increased rejections and denials. It will cover regulatory waivers and flexibilities, major shifts in telehealth, changes to reimbursement, and the impact of the end of the PHE on Medicaid coverage.

July 12 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “101: National Network Data Exchanges.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenter: Troy Bannister, founder and CEO, Particle Health. It’s highly likely that your most recent medical records were indexed by a national Health Information Network (HIN). Network participants can submit basic demographic information into an API and receive full, longitudinal medical records sourced from HINs. Records come in a parsed, standardized format, on demand, with a success rate above 90%. There’s so much more to learn and discover, which is why Troy Bannister is going to provide a 101 on all things HIN. You will learn what HINs are, see how the major HINS compare, and learn how networks will evolve due to TEFCA.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

A new survey of C-level health system executives by marketing intelligence firm Panda Health looks at the “Churn Index,” as digital health contracts that health systems signed during the pandemic will start expiring, forcing customers to evaluate whether their renewal is cost effective. Telehealth and remote patient monitoring solutions have a potentially high Churn Score due to moderate levels of dissatisfaction.

Forbes questions why Andreessen Horowitz led a recent $50 million seed funding round in healthcare startup Hippocratic AI even though its founder came from a Medicare Advantage broker with a history of debt, laid-off employees, and unpaid invoices.  Several Health IQ co-founders and executives, including CEO Munjal Shah, MS, moved to Hippocratic AI, angering the small companies – mostly lead generators and call center operators — that are stilled owed millions by Health IQ.

People

Will Weider, MS (PeaceHealth) joins Aspirus Health as SVP/CIO.

UCSF promotes Julia Adler-Milstein, PhD as chief of its clinical informatics and digital transformation division.

Spencer Korn (Salesforce) joins League as SVP of sales and business development.

PatientNow hires Bethany Little, MA (Community Brands) as CEO.

Curt Thornton, MHS, MBA (Anatomy IT) joins Linus Health as chief growth officer.

AvoMD hires Mark Citrone (Doximity) as chief commercial officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Artera launches Artera Harmony to unify and streamline patient messaging from across the enterprise.

KLAS reports that as health system acquire independent oncology practices and care centers, more are being moved to Epic and Oracle Health, with Epic users reporting satisfaction with the company’s development roadmap but noting that the system’s complexity creates a user learning curve. Oracle Health users say that PowerChart Oncology is customizable and well integrated, but development is slow and the system is hard to learn.

Government and Politics

Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes says she can’t afford to pay $250 per month toward the $452 million that she and former COO Sunny Balwani have been ordered to pay as restitution to defrauded investors. Holmes says she will spend the rest of her working life trying to pay her legal bills, although her attorneys did not object to starting a payment plan from prison at $100 per year. 

Privacy and Security

St. Margaret’s Health (IL) will cease operations this week after failing to overcome staff shortages, the lingering effects of the pandemic, and a 2021 ransomware attack on parent organization SMP Health that prevented it from submitting claims to payers for nearly three months.

Other

Bon Secours Mercy Health (OH) develops a Community Health Data Hub for public health research.

Allina Health will re-examine its recently exposed policy of withholding services from patients who have accrued $4,500 in medical debt. The Minnesota-based nonprofit will not, however, restore care for those who are already flagged as debtors.

Sponsor Updates

• Five9 publishes a demonstration video titled “Five9 Helps with Medicaid Redetermination.”
• AssociatesMD (FL) increases patient engagement after implementing Healow technology from EClinicalWorks.
• Waystar enhances its healthcare payments platform for improved transparency, efficiency, and accuracy.
• Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Navigating challenges in 2023 and beyond for healthcare provider organizations.”
• Nordic releases an episode of its In Network podcast titled ““Making Rounds: Turning data into insights with managed services”
• Bamboo Health names Amelia Burnett and Laura Reese software engineers, David Antosh cloud engineer, and Bill Alderson senior payroll specialist.
• The local business paper honors Care.ai with a 2023 Fire Award in the Fresh Faces category.
• CHIME releases a new Trailblazers Podcast, “Digital Future Optimization, Efficiency, Process – Where Do We Start?”
• AGS Health, Amenities, Arcadia, Availity, CereCore, Current Health, Medhost, Nordic, Nym Health, Optum, Sphere, VisiQuate, and Waystar will exhibit at HFMA June 25-28 in Nashville.

Blog Posts

• How to Transition from Meditech Legacy EHR to Expanse (CereCore)
• Rising costs of prescription drugs could drive alternate options (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• We Surveyed Our Customers on Mental Health Issues. Here’s What We Learned. (AdvancedMD)
• Preventing Revenue Leakage with Integrated Financial Clearance and Patient Access (AGS Health)
• Value-based care and ROI: Connecting an Allen wrench to healthcare analytics (Arcadia)
• The Top 5 Takeaways from Artera’s First-Ever Customer Conference, Heartbeat. (Artera)
• Getting to grips with chronic disease management (Nordic)
• Improving the Patient Experience Through Technology (Ascom)
• From Challenge to Opportunity: Exploring Clinical Data Acquisition and Integration in the Healthcare Ecosystem (Availity)
• Utilizing DRVS Tools to Address Social Drivers of Health in Your Community (AGS Health)
• 5 ways patient engagement can improve outcomes (CarePort)
• FHIR-side Chats with Clearsense (Clearsense)
• Recent OCR and State Attorney Generals’ HIPAA Enforcement Actions Stress the Critical Importance for Asset-Based Risk Analysis of All Systems with EPHI (Clearwater)
• The Danger Within: How Unpatched Vulnerabilities Leave Your Hospital Open to Cyberattacks (CloudWave)
• A Roadmap to Successful Application Modernization (CTG)

Contacts

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