News 1/5/24

Top News

Oracle Health General Manager Travis Dalton will leave the company to join MultiPlan as president and CEO on March 1. Dalton was previously chief client and services officer of Cerner, as well as president of its government business, when Oracle acquired the company for $28 billion in June 2022.

MultiPlan offers payer cost management services that include analytics and revenue integrity.

MPLN shares have risen 26% in the past 12 months, slightly outperforming the S&P 500 and valuing the company at $850 million. They dropped 7% Thursday in a flat market following the announcement that Dalton will replace Dale White, who will move to executive board chair.

Dalton is the fifth of Cerner’s 10-member executive team to leave the company following its acquisition.

SEC filings indicate that Dalton will be paid a signing bonus of $500,000, a starting annual salary of $825,000, an annual bonus of $1 million, shares worth $8 million, and another $5 million in stock options.

Reader Comments

From Dowser: “Re: HIMSS and Informa. The takeover of the annual conference has been quiet. Wonder if the deal didn’t pan out.” HIMSS24 isn’t listed on the events page of Informa Markets and a search for HIMSS on Informa’s website turns up nothing. However, online conference materials now reference Informa, including headers and footers on the conference home page and an Informa copyright notice. The organizations were maddeningly vague about their business arrangement, with HIMSS calling it a partnership, while Informa characterized it as an acquisition. Still, it’s none of my business since my loyalty to HIMSS as a long-time member, chapter officer, and conference attendee has waned with its new leadership, to the point I rarely give the organization a thought. The boat show will likely improve with the addition of Informa and the subtraction of me.

Webinars

January 19 (Friday) 1 ET. “Unlocking Reliable Clinical Data: Real-World Success Stories.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Alistair Erskine, MD, MBA, CIO/CDO, Emory Healthcare; Jason Hill, MD, MMM, associate CMIO, Ochsner Health; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. Health system leaders will describe how they are empowering clinicians with reliable patient data while minimizing workflow friction within Epic. They will offer real-world experience and tips on how to deliver the best possible medication history data to clinicians at the point of care, use clinical-grade AI to infer and normalize prescription instructions in Epic, and encourage patient adherence to medication therapies for optimal outcomes.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Drug maker Lilly launches LillyDirect, which will offer home delivery of its drugs for obesity, migraine, and diabetes directly to patients via the Truepill pharmacy service. The service will offer a provider search tool and access to independent telehealth providers. The website indicates that Lilly will offer cash discounts on high-price drugs to patients whose insurance doesn’t cover them, such as weight loss drug Zepbound for $550 per month, about half its list price. The telehealth providers are 9amHealth (diabetes), Cove (migraine), and FORM (obesity). The interesting aspect is that Lilly is eliminating unrelated middlemen, such as pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers, by creating its own package of independent virtual providers and a pharmacy and consolidating its patient discount programs under its own roof.

Mercy completes its acquisition of SoutheastHealth (MO), whose CEO says the hospital needed help because of a big jump in spending on outside labor, the loss of several providers in money-making services, and the cost of upgrading its EHR. The hospital will replace Cerner with Epic.

Walgreens announces Q1 results: revenue up 10%, EPS –$0.08 versus –$4.31, beating Wall Street expectations for both. The company will cut its dividend by nearly 50% to increase cash flow.

Newly formed Arbital Health, which offers technology and third-party adjudicator services to assess whether value-based care outcomes were received, acquires Santa Barbara Actuaries and completes a $10 million Series A funding round. The company also offers value assessments to vendors of healthcare point solutions.

Cigna is reportedly negotiating to sell its Medicare Advantage business to Health Care Service Corp, which operates BCBS plans in five states. for up to $4 billion. The move follows Cigna’s failed attempt to acquire Medicare Advantage insurer Humana less than four weeks ago.

At-home remote diagnostics provider Nanowear receives FDA 510(k) clearance for SimpleSense-BP, a non-invasive, cuffless blood pressure monitor. SimpleSense is an AI-enabled wearable that captures 85 data points to monitor heart rate and sounds, respiration rate, lung volume, and physical activity.

People

Patric Cua (HSG Partners) joins Glytec as president and CEO.

Best Buy Health hires Benjamin Zaniello, MD, MPH (PointClickCare) as chief medical officer.

Wisconsin Statewide Health Information Network promotes Steven Rottmann, Jr. to CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

DirectTrust publishes updated criteria for 19 of its accreditation programs.

Government and Politics

National Coordinator Micky Tripathi, PhD, MPP explores the need for a FHIR API to allow patients to electronically request their insurer’s notes about denied claims.

Privacy and Security

23andMe blames its users for a breach of its systems that exposed the genetic and ancestry data of 6.9 million people. The company says that a hacker’s brute force password attack gave them access to 14,000 user accounts, but the breach expanded because users had activated the DNA Relatives feature that allows 23andMe users to share data with others to whom they appear to be related. The company also says the breach wasn’t its fault because users didn’t change their passwords after they were exposed in security incidents involving other sites.

Other

In the UK, the local paper questions why Princess Alexandra Hospital spent $75,000 to send employees to the Oracle Health Conference in Las Vegas. CIO Phil Holland says other NHS also attended using funding from NHS England’s digital strategy program. The hospital is implementing Oracle Health Millennium.

Sponsor Updates

• Optimum Healthcare IT names Matt Divenere (Optum) director of content development.
• Healthwise employees collect toys for 64 children through the Boys & Girls Club of Ada County in Idaho.
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast, “Innovation Through Simplification: Minimizing IT Complexity to Drive Results.”
• Gartner recognizes InterSystems as a Challenger in its Magic Quadrant for cloud database management systems.
• KONZA National Network reports that 333 KONZA-powered sites have earned and/or maintained validated data stream designation in NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation program.
• Meditech staff have contributed gifts to 35 local families over the holiday season through its Adopt-A-Family initiative.

Blog Posts

• Looking Back: Five Key Success Stories from 2023 (EClinicalWorks)
• Health Equity Quality Measures: Supporting Accreditations, Regulations, & Policy (Findhelp)
• How to Create a Contact Center Scorecard (Five9)
• Advisory Services for an Educational Partner (Health Data Movers)
• The 3 Most Popular Patient Data Blogs of 2023 (HealthMark Group)
• Putting the “E” Back in ERP: How to Realize True Enterprise-Level Benefits (Impact Advisors)
• Understanding the Critical Connection Between AFib and Stroke (Lucem Health)
• How to Get the Most Out of CMS Price Transparency Rules (Medhost)
• From App to Powerhouse Platform: Wrapping Up 2023 (Mobile Heartbeat)
• 10 Critical Questions to Ask About Wound Care EHR Software (Net Health)

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