Morning Headlines 4/28/22

HHS puts $90M toward improving health center data collection

HHS allocates $90 million to help health centers modernize their data and reporting capabilities, enabling them to gain a better picture of social determinants of health.

Tenet Reports Cybersecurity Incident

Tenet Healthcare confirms that a cybersecurity incident disrupted patient care last week at several acute care facilities, though normal operations are now being resumed.

Implicity Raises $23M to Broaden Use of Its Cardiac Remote Monitoring Platform

Cardiac remote monitoring and data management technology vendor Implicity raises $23 million in a Series A funding round.

Introducing Source: The Infrastructure Layer for Virtual Care

Virtual care tech startup Source Health launches with $3 million in funding.

Morning Headlines 4/27/22

3M is said to consider sale of its healthcare IT division

3M is reportedly seeking a buyer for its Health Information Systems revenue cycle and software business.

Biden Administration Increases Access to COVID-⁠19 Treatments and Boosts Patient and Provider Awareness

The White House’s plan for expanding access to COVID-19 treatments such as oral antivirals includes working with EHR vendors, with Cerner and Epic specifically mentioned, to incorporate antiviral treatment content and availability information.

OneMedNet, An Expert and Leader in Clinical Imaging Innovation and Data Solutions, to Become Publicly Traded Via Combination with Data Knights Acquisition Corp.

Imaging real-world data vendor OneMedNet will go public via a SPAC merger at a valuation of $317 million.

VA electronic health record system hit with further outages at Walla Walla site

VA and Cerner officials are looking into the cause of two EHR system outages at the Jonathan M. Wainwright Memorial VA Medical Center in Walla Walla, WA earlier this week.

Morning Headlines 4/26/22

UnitedHealth agrees to sell Change Healthcare’s ClaimsXten business for $2.2bn

UnitedHealth has agreed to sell Change Healthcare’s ClaimsXten claims payment and editing software business to TPG Capital for $2.2 billion, provided its acquisition of Change is finalized.

Ann Arbor’s Fifth Eye Partners with Texas Health Care Analytics Firm

AirStrip invests in clinical analytics company Fifth Eye as part of a collaboration that will include integration of Fifth Eye’s AHI System with AirStrip’s One platform for inpatient surveillance.

LifePoint Health to Lead Investment in Specialist TeleMed

Specialist TeleMed secures an undisclosed amount of funding from LifePoint Health (TN).

Fathom Secures Investment From Vituity’s Inflect Health

Medical coding automation vendor Fathom secures funding from Inflect Health, the innovation arm of Vituity, a provider group based in Emeryville, CA.

Morning Headlines 4/25/22

Tenet Health says systems are coming back, calls patient worries ‘preposterous’

A TV station’s report on downtime at two of Tenet Healthcare’s South Florida hospitals prompt the company to complain that it is “preposterous” to suggest that charting on paper during EHR downtime could cause medication errors.

Veteran hospitalized at Spokane VA after missing heart medication, highlighting health record system’s prescription problems

Spokane VA officials confirm that a veteran was hospitalized with heart failure in March after his heart medication prescription – ordered before Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center’s conversion to Cerner  – disappeared off his Cerner active medication list.

Newfoundland and Labrador healthcare information system ‘fragmented, outdated’: report

Canada’s Newfoundland and Labrador hasn’t followed through on recommendations that it upgrade to a new version of Meditech in a $92 million project that auditors say would more than pay for itself.

Morning Headlines 4/22/22

Netsmart Expands the CareFabric Platform to Support Physical Therapy, Rehabilitation and Wellness Providers

Netsmart acquires TheraOffice, an EHR/PM for physical therapy and rehabilitation practices that will be incorporated into Netsmart’s CareFabric platform.

Mendel Raises $40 Million Series B Round to Expand its Team and Grow Product Offering

Mendel, which uses natural-language processing and AI to transform unstructured clinical data into analytics-ready information, raises $40 million in a Series B funding round.

Reify Health Raises $220M Series D to Bridge the Diversity Gap in Clinical Trials

Clinical trials solutions vendor Reify Health raises $220 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at nearly $5 billion.

NexHealth Raises $125M Series C at $1B Valuation

Healthcare API developer NexHealth raises $125 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $177 million.

Morning Headlines 4/21/22

MetroWest Medical Center Turned Away Ambulances & Patients Earlier Today

MetroWest Medical Center and St. Vincent Hospital – facilities in Massachusetts owned by Tenet Healthcare – divert patients for several hours in response to a likely cyber attack.

CDC Launches New Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics

The CDC has launched the Center for Forecasting and Outbreak Analytics to enhance the federal government’s ability to respond to outbreaks using data, models, and analytics.

CentralReach Leases Space at Bell Works

CentralReach, a behavioral health EHR vendor based in New Jersey, will relocate its headquarters to build out a remote-first hybrid work space for its 400 employees.

Morning Headlines 4/20/22

The Chartis Group Welcomes National Health Equity Advisory Firm Just Health Collective

The Chartis Group acquires health equity advisory firm Just Health Collective, whose founder and CEO Duane Reynolds, MHA has worked in inclusion and diversity executive roles with UnitedHealth Group and the American Hospital Association.

Protenus Granted New Patent “Methods and Systems for Analyzing Accessing of Drug Dispensing Systems”

The US Patent Office awards patient privacy monitoring company Protenus a patent for “Methods and Systems for Analyzing Accessing of Drug Dispensing Systems.”

RevX upgrades MHS GENESIS at Puget Sound Military Health System

Puget Sound Military Health System, Madigan Army Medical Center, Naval Health Clinic Oak Harbor, the Air Force’s 62nd Medical Squadron, and Naval Hospital Bremerton upgrade their Cerner-powered MHS Genesis EHR software with Revenue Cycle Expansion features.

Morning Headlines 4/18/22

Effectiveness of Email Warning on Reducing Hospital Employees’ Unauthorized Access to Protected Health Information

A JAMA-published study finds that sending warning emails to professional staff who were detected by monitoring technology inappropriately accessing patient EHR information reduced repeat incidents by 95%.

Mental health startup Ahead got behind

Virtual ADHD treatment provider Ahead, which launched in 2019, announces it will shut down after raising $9 million.

Furious patients hit out as doctors’ chief dismisses concerns about the difficulties of getting face-to-face GP appointments as ‘a lot of noise’

In England, the president of the Royal College of GPs – who holds an ownership stake in a telehealth technology vendor – takes heat for saying in a conference that the most positive development of the pandemic was a huge boost in telehealth.

Morning Headlines 4/15/22

MedTrainer Announces $43 Million Series B Funding Round Led by Vista Equity Partners

Healthcare compliance and learning platform vendor MedTrainer raises $43 million in a Series B funding round.

Iris Telehealth Raises $40 Million in Series B Funding to Combat Behavioral Healthcare Crisis

Virtual mental health company Iris Telehealth raises $40 million in Series B funding.

9am.health Raises $16 Million Series A To Build a Comprehensive Virtual Diabetes Destination Nationwide

Virtual diabetes clinic 9am.health raises $16 million in a Series A funding round.

Morning Headlines 4/14/22

Northwell Health and Aegis Ventures Launch Ascertain – Healthcare AI Company Creation Platform to Improve Quality and Access to Care

Northwell Health (NY) and Aegis Ventures launch Ascertain, a joint venture devoted to developing and commercializing healthcare AI companies.

Healthtech firm Biofourmis to earn unicorn status with General Atlantic funding

Sources say that upcoming funding from General Atlantic will give virtual care and digital therapeutics vendor Biofourmis a valuation of over $1 billion.

Top Integrated Practice Management, Revenue Cycle & EHR Solutions Rating Awarded to ModMed by Surgical Specialists, Black Book Annual Physician Survey

ModMed achieves the top customer ranking for its integrated practice management, EHR, and RCM software, according to a Black Book survey of end users working in surgical specialties.

Morning Headlines 4/13/22

Expiration Date of Tender Offer for Cerner Corporation Shares Extended to May 11, 2022

Oracle extends its Cerner acquisition deadline from April 13 to May 11, with no other changes of terms to the $28 billion deal.

Imprivata Acquires SecureLink to Deliver the Only Single-Vendor Platform to Manage and Secure All Enterprise and Third-Party Digital Identities

Imprivata acquires digital identity management vendor SecureLink.

CliniSys acquires ApolloLIMS to grow community and public health diagnostics capability

Laboratory systems vendor CliniSys Group acquires ApolloLIMS.

Morning Headlines 4/12/22

Vytalize Health raises over $50M Series B to advance value-based care

Senior-focused value-based care company Vytalize Health raises $50 million in a Series B funding round.

Forge Health Secures $11M Growth Investment Led by HC9 Ventures to Expand Proven Value-Based Behavioral Health Model

Tech-enabled mental health and substance use treatment provider Forge Health raises $11 million in a funding round led by HC9 Ventures.

Diligent Robotics Raises Over $30 Million in Series B Funding Round to Deploy Collaborative Robots to Healthcare Systems Across the Nation

Diligent Robotics, developer of the Moxi robot that performs delivery tasks for healthcare teams, raises $30 million in a Series B funding round.

Morning Headlines 4/11/22

VA looking into ‘root cause’ of EHR outage that also hit DoD, Coast Guard

All federal Cerner systems – DoD, VA, and Coast Guard – went down for two hours Wednesday due to a server problem.

Doceree Closes $11 Million Series A Funding Round Led by Eight Roads Ventures

Healthcare marketing firm Doceree, which helps brands reach physicians on point-of-care platforms like EHRs, raises $11 million in a Series A funding round.

Eleanor Health Raises $50 Million to Combat Historic Mental Health Crisis and Expand Proven Value-Based Care Model for Addiction and Mental Health

Hybrid mental health and substance abuse treatment provider Eleanor Health raises $50 million in a Series C funding round.

Morning Headlines 4/8/22

Viz.ai Raises $100 Million in Series D Funding, Led by Tiger Global and Insight Partners at $1.2 Billion Valuation

AI-powered diagnosis system vendor Viz.ai raises $100 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $1.2 billion.

UnitedHealth, Change Healthcare extend closure of merger deal by 9 months

UnitedHealth Group and Change Healthcare extend their merger closing deadline to December 31.

Aspirion Health Resources Announces Combination with ARx

RCM provider Aspirion acquires health system RCM outsourcer ARx.

Morning Headlines 4/7/22

Evernow Raises $28.5M in Series A Funding to Redefine Menopause Treatment

Women’s telemedicine and online prescription startup Evernow raises $28.5 million in a Series A funding round.

Adam Boehler and Martin Ventures Invest in Healthcare Company for People with Disabilities

StationMD, a telemedicine company specializing in treatment for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, raises $3.2 million.

Healthtech Leader Eon Announces $16MM Growth Equity Investment Led by Integrity Growth Partners

Patient capture, engagement, management, and tracking software vendor Eon raises $16 million.

Morning Headlines 4/6/22

Clarify Health Closes $150M Series D Funding to Unlock the Promise of Value-Based Care with End-to-End Intelligence on Every Patient Journey

Cloud-based analytics and value-based payments software vendor Clarify Health raises $150 million in a Series D funding round.

HealtheMed Secures Funding to Fuel Expansion of Digital Care Service

Home-based virtual care company HealtheMed, which focuses its services on Medicaid patients in Minnesota, raises $1.2 million in seed funding.

Mindtree Invests in COPE Health Solutions to Accelerate its Healthcare Business

Technology consulting firm Mindtree invests in consulting and analytics company Cope Health Solutions.

Eleos Health Raises $20M to Unlock In-Session Behavioral Health Voice Data

AI-powered, clinical documentation company Eleos Health raises $20 million in a Series A funding round led by F-Prime Capital and Eight Roads Ventures.

News 4/6/22

Top News

Private equity firm Patient Square Capital will acquire acute care telemedicine provider SOC Telemed for $3 per share, for a total of about $300 million.

SOC Telemed went public via a SPAC merger in November 2020 at $10 per share.

TLMD shares traded at a low of $0.58 in late January 2022.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A reader asked whether anyone visited the booth of First Line Software at HIMSS22, thinking that they operate in Russia. I received this response from Anatoly Postilnik, head of the company’s healthcare practice. First Line Software’s healthcare offerings include real-world evidence and data, health data management, AI/ML, systems development and integration, and clinical quality and safety systems. He clarifies:

First Line is a US consulting and custom software development company with a stellar reputation. We are headquartered in Cambridge, MA and have no affiliation with Russia or its government, which is currently waging a horrific war in Ukraine. We have offices on every continent and used to have a presence in Russia, but much like McDonald’s, Microsoft, and other respected US and International companies, we have aggressively pulled out of Russia and severed all ties with this country, relocating our employees to other countries and providing financial assistance to them to alleviate hardship.

Listening: Gilbert Neal, whose tracks I found randomly on Spotify and then played most of the day Monday. It is genre-bending excellence in singing and songwriting, every track highly listenable with smart, clear lyrics (not the usual love-and-lust prattling trying to pass as profound) and musicality that might at any given moment suggest Billy Joel, Steely Dan, Moxy Fruvous, or a 1970s prog rock band. I haven’t heard music this emotionally engaging for a long time. Website. The best phrase I’ve heard lately is Gilbert’s term for a group of his friends that would make a smashing band name– “a cabal of ne’er-do-wells.”

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Advocate Aurora Enterprises, the development and commercialization arm of the Illinois-based health system, acquires MobileHelp, which offers remote patient monitoring and personal emergency response systems.

Cloud-based analytics and value-based payments software vendor Clarify Health raises $150 million in a Series D funding round, bringing its total raised to $328 million. The company acquired analytics company Embedded Healthcare last month.

Nurse-1-1, a nurse chat software startup that works with digital health companies, raises $2.3 million in seed funding.

Home-based virtual care company HealtheMed, which focuses its services on Medicaid patients in Minnesota, raises $1.2 million in seed funding.

Sales

• Rady Children’s Hospital – San Diego will offer patients tech-enabled, home-based physical therapy services from Luna Care.
• Desert Oasis Healthcare (CA) will implement Lark Health’s digital cardiovascular coaching program.
• MemorialCare (CA) will integrate TytoCare’s AI-powered remote medical exam technologies with its telehealth services.
• HonorHealth goes live on Loyal’s Symptom Checker.

People

Protenus names Michael Baglio (Codametrix) CTO and Sonal Patel (DataBank) VP of professional services.

Konica Minolta Healthcare Americas promotes Fumihiko Hayashida to president and CEO.

Kelly Ostertag (Pivot Point Consulting) joins Continuum Health IT as VP of operations.

Kyruus hires Gail Airasian, MBA as GM of emerging markets.

Edward T. A. Fry, MD begins his term as president of the American College of Cardiology. He helped launch Ascension-owned data quality management company Navion Healthcare Solutions.

Orbita hires Sara Inman, MA (Press Ganey)  as SVP of sales and Elizabeth Glaser (2bPrecise) as SVP of marketing.

Madaket Health promotes Martin Cody to VP of sales.

Tiffani Misencik (Intelerad Medical Systems) joins Greenway Health as chief revenue officer.

Craig Richardville, MBA (SCL Health) becomes SVP/CIO of Intermountain Healthcare as it completes its acquisition of SCL Health, expanding Intermountain to 33 hospitals, 385 clinics, and 59,000 employees with operations in seven states.

Announcements and Implementations

Amerimed Medical Solutions implements Bamboo Health’s Pings and Spotlights real-time care notification and performance metrics technologies.

A survey of community mental health center executives conducted by Owl and MCHA finds that top priorities are staff training, delivering treatments to the right person at the right time, expanding care access, delivering evidence-based guidelines, and measuring individual outcomes.

A new KLAS report on the EHR market in Europe finds that Dedalus and CompuGroup Medical expanded their market share via acquisitions, with Cerner selling its Selene and Medico products to CGM in shifting its focus to Millennium and I.S.H. Med. Software Medical and Epic had the largest organic growth, while Epic’s performance score topped the list. Low-scoring vendors are ChipSoft and Cambio (Benelux and Northern Europe) and InterSystems and Dedalus (Western Europe), although InterSystems TrakCare has high user satisfaction in Southern Europe, particularly Italy. 

Government and Politics

ONC publishes the agenda for its 2022 Virtual Annual Meeting February 2-3 (education sessions) and April 13-14 (panel sessions, exhibit hall, and networking).

Other

In Germany, a 60-year-old man is arrested for forgery for receiving COVID-19 vaccine injections 90 times to obtain vaccination proof cards to sell. He was caught when he showed up at the same vaccination center on consecutive days.

Sponsor Updates

• The HIT Like a Girl Podcast features Ascom Americas VP of Sales & Business Development Shelly Bond.
• CareMesh publishes a new white paper, “5 Things Hospitals Can Do to Turn Epic into a Powerful Care Coordination Platform.”
• GHX will hold its 2022 Summit May 9-12 at the Diplomat Beach Resort in Hollywood, FL.
• Cerner releases a new podcast, “Breaking down bulk APIs.”
• CHIME and HIMSS pay tribute to health IT visionary David Garets.
• Clearwater publishes a new whitepaper, “The Guide to 405(d) Health Industry Cybersecurity Practices.”
• Diameter Health will present at the virtual NLP Summit April 6.
• Clearsense releases a new Tech Talk video, “The Rise of Clinician Data Scientists.”
• Sonifi Health releases digital whiteboard features that enhance the patient experience in hospital maternity units.

Blog Posts

• Healthcare Leaders Reveal 3 Key Factors in Financial Recovery (Ability Network)
• Top 5 Way Medical Practices Can Combat Inflation (AdvancedMD)
• How Operational Capacity Sensing Enables Successful Always-On Programs (Actium Health)
• It’s 2022. Which Database is Informing Your Real-World Evidence? (Premier)
• An Interview with an Expert on Interoperability in Healthcare (Bamboo Health)
• The great surgical migration: 7 workflows for optimal outpatient procedures (Bravado Health)
• Meditech Expanse: Bringing Ambulatory and Acute Under One EHR (Meditech)
• Ten Tips for a Successful Care-at-Home Program (Current Health)
• Highlights from the HIMSS22 Global Health Conference & Exhibition (Dimensional Insight)
• Honoring All Our Doctors (EClinicalWorks)
• Complex Technology and Its Threat to Healthcare (Enlace Health)

Contacts

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