News 9/13/23

Top News

From the Oracle earnings call, following a Q1 revenue miss, slowed cloud sales, and lowered expectations that sent shares down 13% on Tuesday:

• The company expects to sign two new Cerner contracts that are valued at over $1 billion in total in the current quarter. (Readers: who could this be? New customers, which would suggest an Epic displacement, or a new cloud contract for existing Cerner clients?)
• Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison says that healthcare AI requires vast amounts of training data, including image information, and Oracle’s new vector database will contain anonymized EHR training data that will be good for its database business.
• Ellison answered an analyst’s question about the one-year anniversary of Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner, saying that the move to “a new Millennium” involve rewriting the software one piece at a time using the Apex code generator, with the first step being hardening the system and moving customers to the cloud.
• Ellison says that cloud-based revenue recognition has caused “a bit of a revenue headwind” since Cerner previously recognized a chunk of revenue at contract signing.
• CEO Safra Catz added that Oracle is “always looking to save as much money as we can and spend as little” while modernizing the Cerner system and, as she has repeatedly said, working to “drive Cerner profitability to Oracle standards.”

Reader Comments

From Digital Health CEO: “Re: our news on your site. We get a lot of positive social channel feedback on our mentions on HIStalk, which still has the best reach in healthcare.” Thanks. This is a actual comment from a non-anonymous CEO just in case anyone suspects made-up self promotion. It’s a good audience, skewed hard toward decision-maker careerists.

From Keep Me Anonymous Health System CIO: “Re: the Cerner input you requested. Here’s mine.” A summary:

• Millennium is a decent inpatient EHR that works after expending the effort, while ambulatory has improved and our providers are receptive to using it.
• Millennium Patient Accounting significantly lags Epic in functionality, ease of use, and analytics.
• The Soarian-based RevElate system that is supposed to replace PA is a better product than Millennium PA, but there’s only one GA option to integrate it and that requires interfaces. Integrating workflows is difficult and requires dual maintenance, such as charge masters and providers. It is still being developed with implementation partners, so the expected benefits have yet to be proven.
• I’ve seen no positive improvements since the Oracle acquisition. Oracle Health (or is it Oracle Cerner?) has had multiple rounds of layoffs, going beyond duplicative functions such as HR and marketing in getting rid of the core workforce, which is baffling. They lack the bench strength to executive anything timely and customers find it difficult to get knowledgeable people for supports and projects.
• The last round of layoffs eliminated most, if not all, of their clinical experts, such as physicians and nurses.
• Most of Oracle’s promises to improve the Cerner project involve infrastructure and moving to the cloud, but Cerner’s remote hosting was its most reliable service. Oracle is fixing something that is not broken and that holds little value to customers.
• I’ve seen no roadmap for system development.
• Oracle promises to rewrite the EHR, but I’m not sure who will redesign it given the lack of clinical bench strength.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Notable Health. The San Mateo, CA-based company is the leading automation platform for patient engagement and staff workflows. Deployed at over 3,000 sites of care, Notable automates over a million repetitive workflows every day across scheduling, registration, intake, referrals, and authorizations. The result: personalized, streamlined care for patients, the elimination of burdensome manual work for caregivers, and improved financial health for healthcare providers. Notable is backed by leading investors, including ICONIQ Growth, Greylock Partners, F-Prime, Oak HC/FT, Maverick Ventures, and 8VC. Find out why healthcare providers of all sizes, including Intermountain Health, Medical University of South Carolina, North Kansas City Hospital, and more have partnered with Notable to redefine what’s possible in healthcare. Thanks to Notable Health for supporting HIStalk.

Lorre is offering three companies a sweet deal – sign up as a Platinum sponsor and she will include the rest of 2023 for no extra charge. Contact her to see if three other folks beat you to it.

A mostly forgotten memory for DoD-Cerner watchers, which I recalled while fondly re-reading the DoD series written for HIStalk by the mystical Dim-Sum. Part of the ultimately successful Leidos proposal to DoD was the involvement of Intermountain Healthcare.

Webinars

September 21 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Unlock open enrollment best practices to stop future denials.” Sponsor: Waystar. Presenter: Lauren Tungate, solution strategist team lead, Waystar. Nearly half of insured Americans consider changing their insurance coverage each fall, necessitating provider safeguards to stop increased denials, find hidden coverage, and prevent uncompensated care. This webinar will crack open enrollment best practices, such as using different data sources to get an accurate picture of benefit details; leveraging automation to identify hidden coverage, confirm active insurance, and avoid lost revenue; and simplifying eligibility workflows to reduce the financial burden on patients and strain on staff.

October 25 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “Live Ask Me Anything Webinar: The Power of Data Completeness.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenters: Jason Prestinario, MSME, CEO, Particle Health; Carolyn Ward, MD, director of clinical strategy, Particle Health. Is fragmented data impacting your organization and its ability to scale quickly? Our experts will discuss the advantage of having a 360-degree, real-time view of your patients. Access to analytic-ready data supports proactive care by enabling rapid clinical decision-making, stratifying high-risk patients, developing and using personalized treatment plans, lowering cost, and quickly closing care gaps.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Online Medicare Advantage insurance sales firm Health IQ, which raised $200 million from big-name investors, files Chapter 7 bankruptcy with $1.3 million in assets and $257 million in debt. Co-founder Munjal Shah and some of Health IQ’s leadership are now involved with Hippocratic AI, which has raised $65 million from Andreessen Horowitz and which lost big on Health IQ.

Sales

• Infirmary Health (AL) selects chronic care management and virtual care software and services from Wellbox.
• Community Health Systems (TN) will use Mindoula’s virtual behavioral healthcare service as a part of its primary care offerings.
• In England, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust will implement Oracle Cerner in a $55 million project.

People

CereCore names James Lobban (Meditech) regional VP of business development.

Edifecs names practicing VA staff physician Summerpal Kahlon, MD, MS (Change Healthcare) chief medical officer.

Julia Goebel (Symplr) joins Komodo Health as head of marketing.

Surescripts hires Lynne Nowak, MD (Lark Health) as its first chief data and analytics officer.

Kristen Lalowski, RN (VillageMD) joins LetsGetChecked as EVP of product.

Fivos Health promotes Eric Nilsson to CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Geisinger will expand its in-home chronic care management program, which includes equipment setup by Best Buy’s Geek Squad and data collection and monitoring by Best Buy-owned Current Health.

Broadmeadows Hospital and Northern Hospital in Melbourne, Australia go live on Oracle Health as part of Northern Health’s systemwide implementation, first announced in late 2020.

In Oregon, Blue Mountain Hospital and its Strawberry Wilderness Community Clinic implement Oracle Health’s CommunityWorks EHR.

A study of 200 provider executives by Bain & Company and KLAS Research finds that most health systems increased their spending on software and IT significantly in the past year, with revenue cycle management and clinical workflow optimization being the top investment areas while patient engagement has moved up the list. Two-thirds of the respondents say they will look first at their existing vendors, especially their EHR supplier, when looking for new functionality. Few organizations have an AI strategy, but 50% are either developing one or will do so soon.

Government and Politics

The Senate confirms Army veteran and VA Chief of Staff Tanya Bradsher as deputy secretary, where she will be responsible for the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation.

Privacy and Security

Prospect Medical Holdings works to determine if patient information within its 16 hospitals was breached in a reportedly $1.3 million ransomware attack by the Rhysida group nearly six weeks ago. Prospect is also still working to bring all of its hospital systems back online.

Hospital Sisters Health System (IL) restores its Epic system after a cyberattack forced it to downtime procedures two weeks ago. Affiliate Prevea Health (WI), which was also a part of the attack, has yet to bring its systems fully back online.

Other

HealtheLink, an HIE serving Western New York, will use a $1 million grant from ONC to gather advance care planning documents and make them digitally available to providers within its network.

University of Utah Health research finds that poor EHR user experience strongly correlates with EHR-related patient safety concerns, particularly in the areas of medication alerts related to drug-drug interactions, patient allergies, duplicate orders, and excessive dosing.

Sponsor Updates

• Artera names Nicole Ossey (Knock) VP of people.
• DePaul Community Health Centers reduces days in accounts receivable by more than 50% with RCM solutions from EClinicalWorks.
• The Agile Giants Podcast features Arcadia CEO Michael Meucci.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its In Network podcast in partnership with Amazon Web Services, “Making Rounds: Emerging opportunities with cloud-based EHRs.”
• Ascom Americas will sponsor the Hack the Building 2.0 Hospital Edition September 18-22 in Columbia, MD.
• Bamboo Health will exhibit at NAACOS 2023 September 20-22 in Washington, DC.
• CloudWave will exhibit at the Torch Fall Conference September 25-28 in Round Rock, TX.

Blog Posts

• Five key features telehealth patients want: Insights for healthcare developers (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• The Next Big Thing for Healthcare IT Service Desks – Support with Clinical Context (CereCore)
• Leveraging Analytics in the Revenue Cycle Management Maturity Journey (AGS Health)
• Optimum’s ServiceNow Store Opens (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• How Arrive Health is Creating a Better Prescribing Experience, Including Eliminating 87% of RTPB Noise (Arrive Health)
• Decreasing falls and cutting costs in the LTACH setting (AvaSure)
• Driving Operational Efficiency + Patient Outcomes: Clearsense 20/20 (Clearsense)
• 7 Ways to Ensure Your Incident Response Plan is Incident-Ready (Clearwater)

Contacts

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