Morning Headlines 12/6/23

CVS To Rebrand Growing Health Services As ‘CVS Healthspire’

CVS Health will use the name CVS Healthspire for its health services business that includes Oak Street Health, Signify Health, MinuteClinic, Caremark, and its recently created biosimilar company Cordavis.

Tower Health laid off 30 people on Tuesday

Tower Health (PA) lays off 30 employees and outsources some of its IT department to an outside vendor.

Army veteran files lawsuit alleging VA computer system delayed cancer diagnosis

A Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center (WA) patient sues the federal government and the companies responsible for the development of the center’s Oracle Health-based EHR over alleged flaws in the system that led to a delay in his now-terminal cancer diagnosis.

Morning Headlines 12/5/23

Gemspring Capital Announces Sale of Valant

Gemspring Capital sells mental health-focused EHR and practice management software company Valant Medical to private equity firm Resurgens Technology Partners.

Digital Health Strategies Closes Series A Funding Round to Expand Its Share of Health Patient Loyalty Platform

Digital Health Strategies, a patient loyalty and healthcare marketing firm based in Washington, DC, secures an undisclosed amount of Series A funding.

Notice of information security incident involving Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center

Seattle-based Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center announces that it was the victim of a cyberattack just before Thanksgiving.

Morning Headlines 12/4/23

Culmination Bio Raises $10M From Amgen Ventures and Merck Global Health Innovation Fund to Bring Longitudinal Health Data to Biopharma

Intermountain Health spinoff Culmination Bio, which offers drug companies a clinical study recruitment platform that contains 40 years’ worth of de-identified EHR and biospecimen data, raises $10 million from two drug company investment funds.

Potrero Medical Announces Restructuring and Continued Operations

Potrero Medical, which offers medical devices and analytics for monitoring acute kidney injury, files Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

Hippocratic AI Launches Early Access Partnership Program With Leading Healthcare Organizations Including OhioHealth, Roper St. Francis Healthcare, Evernow, HarmonyCares, and Guidehealth

Hippocratic AI launches a development partnership program that includes OhioHealth, Roper St. Francis Healthcare, Evernow, HarmonyCares, and Guidehealth.

Morning Headlines 12/1/23

Cigna, Humana in Talks for Blockbuster Merger

Health insurers Cigna and Humana are negotiating a merger that they hope to finalize within the next four weeks, according to insider reports.

Experian Health Acquires Wave HDC, Immediately Enabling Real-Time, Single Inquiry Insurance Discovery/Verification at the Point of Patient Registration

Experian acquires Wave HDC, which captures patient insurance and demographics at registration.

HFMA Aligns with FinThrive to Introduce the Industry’s First Revenue Cycle Management Technology Adoption Model for Health Systems

HFMA and FinThrive launch a peer-reviewed, five-stage Revenue Cycle Management Technology Adoption Model, with initial analysis indicating that 42% of health systems are at Stage 1.

Morning Headlines 11/30/23

Tampa General and Synapse Florida Seek Innovation Solutions to Reduce Cancer Mortality in Rural Communities

Tampa General Hospital, its Innoventures venture capital arm, and Synapse Florida launch a $50,000 innovation challenge to discover solutions that may improve cancer care in rural areas.

Mayo Clinic unveils plans for a new $5 billion campus in downtown Rochester

Mayo Clinic will redesign its campus in Rochester, MN to create health neighborhoods where patient care is more streamlined through remote patient monitoring, AI, and automation.

Honoring Excellence: CHIME Recognizes Outstanding Achievements of Digital Health Leaders and Professional Services Firms with the 2023 CHIME Awards

CHIME names Tufts Medicine EVP, Chief Digital Officer, and System CIO Shafiq Rab its 2024 CIO of the Year.

Morning Headlines 11/29/23

Here is why IT major TCS has to pay $210 mn to rival firm DXC

Tata Consultancy Services, which was just assessed with $140 million in punitive damages for stealing Epic’s intellectual property by having its employees pretend to be hospital consultants, is hit with a similar $210 million judgment involving insurance software.

Aidoc Unveils $30M Investment in Revolutionary Foundation Model for Imaging AI at RSNA 2023

Medical imaging AI vendor Aidoc will use $30 million in recently announced funding to develop an imaging AI foundation model.

Harmony Healthcare IT Partners with Novacap to Accelerate Innovation and Growth in Healthcare Data Management

Health data management company Harmony Healthcare IT secures an undisclosed amount of funding from Canadian investment firm Novacap.

PayGround Announces $19.7M Oversubscribed Series A Funding Round

Patient payment app startup PayGround raises $19.7 million in a Series A funding round, enabling it to expand beyond its ambulatory roots into more inpatient settings.

Morning Headlines 11/28/23

Ardent Health Services Reports Information Technology Security Incident

Ardent Health Services works to recover from a November 23 ransomware attack that forced it to take systems offline across its six-state network.

RepeatMD lands capital to grow its aesthetics and wellness booking business

Patient acquisition and retention software startup RepeatMD raises $40 million, bringing its total raised to $56 million.

Wyden, Merkley: USDA Invests $2.28 Million to Expand Health Care and Broadband Assistance in Rural Oregon

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) will distribute a grant of $2.28 million to providers in five Oregon counties so that they can provide more virtual care.

Morning Headlines 11/27/23

DOD’s EHR Deployment Nearly Complete

The Department of Defense completes the last of 23 MHS Genesis go-live waves.

BSA diverting ER patients after ‘potential security incident’ causes network outage

BSA Health System (TX) reverts to downtime procedures including ER diversion due to a Thanksgiving Day network outage.

Hackers accessed sensitive health data of more than 8 million Welltok patients

A notice filed by Virgin Pulse-owned Welltok says the personal information of 8.5 million people was exposed in a breach of its Moveit file transfer system, with affected customers including BCBS plans, Sutter Health, Stanford Health Care, and The Guthrie Clinic.

HHS’ Office for Civil Rights Settles HIPAA Investigation of St. Joseph’s Medical Center for Disclosure of Patients’ Protected Health Information to a News Reporter

Saint Joseph’s Medical Center (NY) pays $80,000 to settle HHS OCR charges that it provided photos and information of three patients in April 2020 to the Associated Press, which was writing an COVID-19 story, without the approval of the patients.

Morning Headlines 11/23/23

Tri-City Medical Center resumes nearly full operations after cybersecurity attack

Tri-City Medical Center (CA) resumes normal operations after a ransomware attack November 9 forced it to downtime procedures.

Company operating Nacogdoches Memorial Hospital files for bankruptcy

In Texas, Nacogdoches Memorial Hospital operating company Lion Star files for bankruptcy with debts of $10 million to $50 million owed to between 200 and 1,000 vendors, including $1 million owed to an EHR vendor.

Queensland Health fixes ieMR system crash after staff unable to login for hours

Queensland Health resolves an EHR log-in issue that had prevented users at its 24 facilities from accessing the Oracle Health system for several hours.

Morning Headlines 11/22/23

Patient privacy fears as US spy tech firm Palantir wins £330m NHS contract

NHS England awards a consortium that includes Palantir and Accenture a five-year, $415 million contract to develop and operate the Federated Data Platform data-sharing platform across NHS trusts and care sites.

TCS Q3 to take $125 million hit on Epic Systems Corporation legal woes

Tata Consultancy Services will pay $140 million in punitive damages to Epic related to a 2014 case in which Epic accused TCS of downloading confidential material from UserWeb by having its employees pretend to be Epic customer consultants.

McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics researchers awarded $31M in grants for medical artificial intelligence innovation research

Fifteen faculty members of UTHealth’s bioinformatics school are awarded $31 million in grants, $19 million of which came from NIH’s National Institute on Aging.

Morning Headlines 11/21/23

Medmo Raises $9M in Funding

Medical imaging technology company Medmo, which matches patients with partner imaging centers, raises $9 million.

Reed Jobs’ Yosemite makes first digital health bet on Maia Oncology

Maia Oncology, a virtual primary care clinic for cancer patients, raises $4.25 million in seed funding.

AstraZeneca launches Evinova, a health-tech business to accelerate innovation across the life sciences sector, the delivery of clinical trials and better health outcomes

AstraZeneca’s new stand-alone Evinova business will develop and market digital products in the areas of clinical trials, remote patient monitoring, and digital therapeutics.

Morning Headlines 11/20/23

Over 80 St. Louis NextGen Healthcare workers to be laid off

NextGen Healthcare files WARN documents indicating that it will lay off 84 employees in St.Louis in the first months of next year.

Novant Health to acquire three hospitals from Tenet Healthcare

Novant Health (NC) will acquire three South Carolina-based hospitals from Tenet Healthcare in a $2.4 billion deal that includes RCM services from Tenet subsidiary Conifer Health Solutions.

Aya Healthcare Acquires Winnow AI, a Data Science Driven Platform to Recruit Passive Physicians

Digital staffing platform vendor Aya Healthcare acquires Winnow AI, which identifies physicians who are open to new positions and relocation who match open roles.

GTCR to Acquire Cloudbreak Health

Private equity firm GTCR will acquire telehealth language interpretation services company Cloudbreak Health from UpHealth for $180 million.

Morning Headlines 11/17/23

VA still has ‘significant concerns’ as Oracle works to get EHR modernization back on track

VA CIO Kurt DelBene tells a House committee that despite improvements, he has “significant concerns” about Oracle Health related to new incidents, failing to meet standards, end user responsiveness, and workflow.

AAPC Expands Its Technology Solutions Portfolio with the Acquisition of Semantic Health

RCM organization AAPC acquires Semantic Health, a Toronto-based startup specializing in AI-powered coding and auditing software.

3M Healthcare Spinoff Gets a Name: Solventum

The healthcare business that 3M will spin off in the first half of 2024 will be named Solventum.

Morning Headlines 11/16/23

Forward Raises $100M and Announces Forward CarePod

Primary care provider Forward Health announces CarePod, a self-contained, unstaffed “doctor in a box” that is available to members who pay $99 per month to access AI-powered apps that perform screening and create care plans.

UnitedHealthcare’s broken AI denied seniors’ medical claims, lawsuit alleges

The estates of two deceased men sue UnitedHealth Group, claiming that the company uses an algorithm to override physician assessments in denying care to its Medicare Advantage enrollees.

Aranscia Acquires YouScript from Invitae

Precision diagnostics vendor Aranscia acquires select assets of the YouScript personalized medication management platform from digital medical genetics company Invitae.

Health Disinformation Use Case Highlighting the Urgent Need for Artificial Intelligence Vigilance

Researchers find that ChatGPT can rapidly and effortlessly create medical disinformation blog posts about vaccines and vaping, including impressive but fake patient and clinician testimonials and literature citations.

Morning Headlines 11/15/23

Henry Schein Reports Third-Quarter 2023 Financial Results and Updates Full-Year Guidance

The medical supply vendor misses estimates for both revenue and earnings and lowers guidance even though the quarter was over before its October cyberattack.

UnitedHealth pushed employees to follow an algorithm to cut off Medicare patients’ rehab care

The company reportedly threatened to fire employees who failed to hit targets to limit the rehab care of Medicare Advantage patients to an algorithm-predicted appropriate number of days.

The Next WebMD: An LLM as Your Front Door to Healthcare

A16Z predicts that the model of Googling symptoms and then asking a medical friend or relative could be replaced by AI chatbots that could refer people to a marketplace of services offered for sale, giving the LLM company control of revenue streams worth billions.

AristaMD and Sitka Form Single Company, Secure Series C of $16.5M for the Expansion of Specialty Care Access via Electronic and Video Consultation Services

EConsult and referral management solution provider AristaMD acquires Sitka, which offers a platform for primary care providers to request video consultations from specialists.

Morning Headlines 11/14/23

Governor Hochul Announces Proposed Cybersecurity Regulations for Hospitals Throughout New York State

New York State will require hospitals to establish a cybersecurity program, implement protective measures, assign a chief information security officer role, and implement two-factor authentication for external access, with the plan including $500 million in available grants to help fund compliance.

Dutch hospital uses AI to answer patients’ questions

Groningen University’s teaching hospital UMCG rolls out chatbot to help answer patient questions, which scans their records and providers a clinician-reviewed response in what the hospital says is the first such use in Europe.

How Generative AI Could Help Us Predict the Next Pandemic

Harvard researchers develop an AI tool that can predict the emergence of concerning variants of COVID-19 and other viruses.

A majority of Americans are optimistic that AI will improve healthcare in 2024

A survey of randomly sampled Americans find that half expect AI to create major advancements in healthcare next year, especially in diagnosis and access, although few of them would prefer to work with a doctor who uses AI extensively.

Morning Headlines 11/13/23

Thoma Bravo Completes Acquisition of NextGen Healthcare

The private equity firm takes NextGen Healthcare private in closing its $1.8 billion acquisition.

Doximity Announces Fiscal 2024 Second Quarter Financial Results

The medical professional network beats expectations for revenue and earnings.

MUHC clinical platform crashes, patient appointments cancelled

A software update takes down the Oacis clinical platform of McGill University Health Centre. 

Cano Health Announces Financial Results for the Third Quarter 2023

A $92 per share loss by the value-based primary care company raises questions about its ability to remain in business.