Morning Headlines 7/2/19

QGenda Announces Acquisition of OpenTempo

Provider scheduling solutions vendor QGenda acquires OpenTempo, which offers clinical resource optimization tools.

Telemedicine apps are thriving because working moms love the convenience of their smartphones

Telemedicine providers say that mothers are their super users and advocates in their role as “chief medical officers of the family.”

Physicians’ Well-Being Linked To In-Basket Messages Generated By Algorithms In Electronic Health Records

Researchers find that EHR-generated messages account for half of the 243 such messages the average doctor receives each week, multiples of the number sent by colleagues and patients.

Morning Headlines 7/1/19

Form S-1 Registration Statement – Livongo Health, Inc.

Diabetes management technology startup Livongo files for a $100 million IPO.

Public Comments on the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement Draft 2

ONC publishes the 100 comments it received for TEFCA Draft 2.

Demonstrating the Value of Nursing Care Through Use of a Unique Nurse Identifier

Authors recommend assigning nurses a unique identifier for use in EHRs and other systems that can help measure nursing contributions, improve nursing practice, and support research.

SA Health hunts for inaugural e-health chief

South Australia Health creates a new position for a top-level executive who will be tasked with salvaging its Allscripts implementation and developing a new digital health strategy.

Craneware shares plummet 34% as sales in US stall

Scotland-based revenue, cost, and financial decision support software vendor Craneware says sales volume and timing were off in the second half of the year, but it remains focused on being used by every US hospital.

Morning Headlines 6/28/19

Change Healthcare’s shares debut below target

Shares of Change Healthcare began trading on the Nasdaq exchange, with shares opening at $13 and rising to $15 at market close.

Providence St. Joseph Health Acquires Bluetree Epic Consulting

Providence St. Joseph Health acquires Epic consulting firm Bluetree Network.

Google and the University of Chicago Are Sued Over Data Sharing

A former patient at University of Chicago Medical Center files a class-action lawsuit against the medical center and Google, alleging that the organizations violated HIPAA when they did not properly de-identify PHI that was used in a joint research project.

Morning Headlines 6/27/19

Sansoro Health and Datica Announce Merger

Healthcare data integration companies Sansoro Health and Datica will merge under the Datica brand.

Omada Health Raises $73 Million to Accelerate Program Expansion

Digital behavioral health company Omada Health raises $73 million, bringing its total funding to $200 million.

Xtend Healthcare plans to invest $1.3 million in Sumner County

Revenue cycle management and technology vendor Xtend Healthcare will expand its operations in Hendersonville, TN with the addition of 200 employees.

Remedy Raises $10 Million to Bring Quality Care Closer to Patients

On-demand urgent and primary care company Remedy raises $10 million in a Series A financing round led by Santé Ventures.

Morning Headlines 6/26/19

Healthcare Information Technology Leader, Vyne, Acquired by The Jordan Company

Private equity firm The Jordan Company acquires electronic health and dental information exchange platform vendor Vyne from PE firm Accel-KKR.

UNC Health Care Launches Innovative Fully Integrated Epic Telehealth Solution

UNC Health Care launches an American Well-powered, Epic-integrated telehealth solution that allows existing UNC Health Care patients to schedule video visits from MyChart that the provider conducts within the Epic environment.

Queensland Health boss resigns amid hospital software rollout issues

In Australia, Queensland Health’s director-general will resign following highly publicized cost and patient safety problems with its $1 billion Cerner implementation.

CommonWell Health Alliance Awards Change Healthcare Six-Year Contract to be the Provider of Clinical Interoperability Services

CommonWell extends its contract with Change Healthcare for the provision of clinical interoperability services such as document retrieval and patient identification and record locator services.

Electronic health record program launched nationwide

The first phase of Iran’s nationwide EHR roll out goes live.

Morning Headlines 6/25/19

UnitedHealth buys PatientsLikeMe, which faced Trump administration scrutiny over Chinese investor

UnitedHealth adds newly-acquired PatientsLikeMe to its research and development group.

President Donald J. Trump is Putting American Patients First by Making Healthcare More Transparent

President Trump signs an executive order requiring hospitals to publicly disclose what patients can expect to pay for services in easy-to-read formats, and giving stakeholders more access to data that will help in pricing transparency efforts.

CentralReach Acquires Pathfinder Health Innovations

Applied behavior analysis EHR and practice management vendor CentralReach acquires competitor Pathfinder Health Innovations.

Morning Headlines 6/24/19

Healthcare software provider Phreesia files for a $125 million IPO

Phreesia, which offers online appointment scheduling, revenue cycle, health risk screening, and check-in kiosks, files for a $125 million IPO.

Jobs in danger as Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital plans e-records transition

Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital (FL) will replace Cerner with Epic, which is used throughout Hopkins Medicine.

Electronic Health Records at 26 Hospitals Hit by Two-Hour Outage

Hospital operator Universal Health Services says 26 of its facilities were taken offline for two hours Friday due to Cerner data center problems.

Flatiron Health Expands its Headquarters in Manhattan’s Soho

Oncology EHR and research company Flatiron Health will nearly double its Manhattan office space and add 200 jobs by the end of the year.

Morning Headlines 6/21/19

CityMD and Summit Medical Group Announce Plans to Merge to Deliver an Unparalleled Patient Care Experience

Private equity firm Warburg Pincus will buy NJ-based, 900-provider multi-specialty practice Summit Medical Group and merge it with its 120-location CityMD urgent care holding.

Leading Health and Technology Organizations Release Common Cancer Data Standards to Enable Sharing Across EHR Systems and Improve Patient Care

The American Society of Clinical Oncology, Mitre, and the Alliance for Clinical Trials in Oncology Foundation develop an open source set of common cancer data standards and specifications that can be incorporated into EHRs via FHIR.

AHN Partners with Mercy Virtual to Enhance Critical Care Services at Community Hospitals through Innovative Telemedicine Program

Allegheny Health Network (PA) will roll out telemedicine services from Mercy Virtual, a subsidiary of the Mercy health system in St. Louis, at its four hospitals over the next 12 months

Morning Headlines 6/20/19

THL snaps up Francisco Partners’ Nextech in more than $500 mln deal

Private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners acquires EHR and practice management vendor Nextech in a $500 million deal.

eSolutions Acquires RCM Software Vendor Practice Insight

RCM vendor Esolutions acquires competitor Practice Insight for an undisclosed sum.

Echo, the medication management app, has been acquired by LloydsPharmacy-owner McKesson

McKesson acquires UK-based prescription delivery and medication management app startup Echo.

VirtualHealth Raises Series B Funding to Revolutionize HealthCare with Unified Data

Care management company VirtualHealth wraps up a $15 million Series B funding round that brings its total raised to $25 million.

Morning Headlines 6/19/19

Sanofi and Google to develop new healthcare Innovation Lab

Drug maker Sanofi and Google will establish a virtual innovation lab that will use analytics to understand diseases and to extract patient insights to understand which treatments work best.

Social Impact Startup Aunt Bertha Secures $16 Million in Series C Funding

Community-based organization referral platform vendor Aunt Bertha raises $16 million in a Series C funding round.

Fueling the next phase of our growth: What’s next at Collective Health

Collective Health, which offers a health benefits management system for self-insured employers, raises $205 million in a Series E funding round.

Morning Headlines 6/18/19

CMS proposes to update e-prescribing standards to reduce provider burden and expedite access to needed medications

CMS issues a proposed rule that will give providers the option to complete prior authorizations electronically and in real time so that patients can be assured their Medicare Part D prescriptions will be filled before going to the pharmacy.

New opioid treatment center ‘OneFifteen’ opens in Dayton

Stakeholders host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the opioid addiction treatment center OneFifteen, soon to be a campus of tech-enabled recovery and social services launched by Kettering Health Network, Premier Health, and Verily.

Rite Aid Partners with Adobe to Drive Digital Transformation

Rite Aid will leverage Adobe’s Experience Cloud to gain better insight into customer preferences and habits, and to help its pharmacists better connect customers to the store’s health and wellness offerings.

A controversial startup that charges $8,000 to fill your veins with young blood and halted operations after an FDA warning now says it’s back up and running

Ambrosia resumes its “rejuvenating” blood transfusion service in San Francisco and Tampa, FL after shutting it down in February due to an FDA warning letter.

Morning Headlines 6/17/19

Nashville company ups IPO to more than $1 billion

Change Healthcare raises the amount of its IPO again, this time to $1.2 billion.

Accumen Acquires Halfpenny Technologies

Lab, imaging, and clinical optimization company Accumen acquires clinical data exchange vendor Halfpenny Technologies for an undisclosed amount.

Patients frustrated over computer system outage at Abrazo Health Hospitals

Patients complain that the Cerner system of Abrazo Community Health Network (AZ) has been down for several days, which the hospital says was caused by a Cerner upgrade.

Cisco and American Well are teaming up to let you talk to your doctor from your TV

Cisco is working with telemedicine vendor American Well to develop a device that will enable consumers to access virtual consults from their televisions.

Bribes and Backdoor Deals Help Foreign Firms Sell to China’s Hospitals

A New York Times investigation finds that GE, Siemens, Philips, and Toshiba are bribing poorly paid Chinese hospital officials to buy their medical equipment.

Morning Headlines 6/14/19

Allscripts is buying ZappRx, a prescription drug start-up

Allscripts will buy specialty drug prescription prior authorization platform vendor ZappRx, according to reports, as it moves toward diversifying its EHR business.

General Electric wants to sell its stake in more than 100 start-ups

GE Ventures looks for a buyer for its stake in 100-plus startups that include 27 healthcare companies, as parent company GE attempts a turnaround.

Dassault Systèmes and Medidata Solutions To Join Forces To Accelerate the Life Sciences Industry Innovation For Patient-Centric Experience Through End-to-End Collaborative Platform

French company Dassault Systèmes will acquire clinical trials software vendor Medidata for $5.8 billion.

Sutter secretly sharing patients’ private info with Google, others, Sacramento lawsuit alleges

Two people file a class action lawsuit claiming that Sutter Health is sharing patient medical information with Facebook, Google, and Twitter so those sites can target Internet advertising.

Morning Headlines 6/13/19

Congress Questions Leadership of VA Health Record Overhaul

Lawmakers continue to express frustration with a lack of leadership over the VA and DoD’s EHR projects, calling the proposed Federal Electronic Health Record Modernization Program Office more of a concept than a concrete step towards joint governance.

Queensland Health chief’s secret concerns about hospitals digital upgrade revealed in recordings

In Australia, Queensland Health Director-General Michael Walsh admits having to publicly praise the systemwide rollout of the Cerner IEMR project despite hearing end-user complaints about software glitches, costs, and skyrocketing stress levels.

Hospital to pay $300,000 in damages in medical records case

A jury awards Amy Pertuit $300,000 after determining that Medical Center Enterprise (AL) knew about and took no action against employee Lyn Diefenderfer, MD after she illegally accessed Pertuit’s medical records and passed PHI along to the lawyer of another patient involved in a custody battle with Pertuit.

Morning Headlines 6/12/19

Humana and Epic to Enhance Patient, Provider and Payer Collaboration

Epic will integrate Humana’s real-time prescription benefits checking tool within its e-prescribing workflow.

EQT to Sell Press Ganey

Swedish investment firm EQT will sell healthcare advisory and analytics company Press Ganey to a consortium of funds managed by Leonard Green & Partners and Ares Management affiliates.

Genome Medical Raises $23 Million in Series B Financing to Advance the Adoption of Genomics in Everyday Medical Care

Telegenomics company Genome Medical raises $23 million in a Series B round led by Echo Health Ventures.

French tech giant Dassault is nearing deal to buy health software company Medidata

Dassault’s interest in acquiring clinical trials software company Medidata is intensifying, with insiders reporting that a deal is imminent.

Morning Headlines 6/11/19

Connecticut and Illinois Open Investigation into Quest Diagnostics, LabCorp Data Breach

Attorneys general from Connecticut and Illinois launch an investigation into the cause of the American Medical Collection Agency breach, which may have exposed the data of 20 million people.

DLH Announces Acquisition of Social & Scientific Systems

Health and human services tech company DLH acquires Social & Scientific Systems, a public health research organization, for $70 million.

The AMA has a new president-elect

The AMA names allergist and immunologist Susan Bailey, MD president-elect.

Morning Headlines 6/10/19

Medisanté Enters U.S. Market and Chairs the Direct-to-Cloud IoT Activity Work Group in the Personal Connected Health Alliance

Switzerland-based medical Internet of Things vendor Medisanté enters the US market with the opening of an office in Bridgewater, NJ.

KRMC website shut down since April, possible security breach

Kingman Regional Medical Center (AZ) works to rebuild its website, down since April 8, after discovering that its configuration enabled unauthorized users to view information entered by KRMC patients.

NSA Cybersecurity Advisory: Patch Remote Desktop Services on Legacy Versions of Windows

NSA takes the unusual step of issuing a call for Windows 7, Windows XP, and Server 2003 and 2008 users to install a Microsoft-issued patch as a preemptive measure against the BlueKeep vulnerability.