Morning Headlines 10/7/22

Call it data liberation day: Patients can now access all their health records digitally 

Federal rules take effect that will enable patients to obtain all of their medical records in digital format upon request.

CMS Asks for Public Input on Establishing First, National Directory of Health Care Providers and Services

CMS solicits feedback on the idea of developing a national directory of healthcare providers and services.

Alleva Raises $12 Million Series A Led By Ankona Capital

Behavioral health IT vendor Alleva raises $12 million in a Series A funding round.

Nordic Consulting Acquires Healthcare Consulting Company Hygeian

Nordic Consulting acquires Hygeian, a healthcare consulting and staffing firm that serves customers in the UK and Middle East.

Morning Headlines 10/6/22

PatientPoint Acquires Rendia to Accelerate Expansion into Ophthalmology Specialty

Patient engagement vendor PatientPoint acquires eye care-focused competitor Rendia for an undisclosed sum.

Drummond Group Introduces Pediatric Health IT Certification Program

Drummond Group, the certifying body for ONC’s Health IT Certification Program, launches a Pediatric Health IT Certification program to help health IT vendors advance pediatric EHR capabilities.

TPG seals $2.2B deal for ClaimsXten

Private equity firm TPG acquires Change Healthcare’s ClaimsXten business for $2.2 billion as part of the terms of UnitedHealth’s acquisition of Change.

Morning Headlines 10/5/22

Paper charts, canceled appointments at VMFH clinics, hospitals as network outage drags on

Computer networks remain offline at numerous facilities within the multi-state CommonSpirit Health system due to an unspecified IT security incident that occurred Monday.

Epic overhauls popular sepsis algorithm criticized for faulty alarms

STAT reports that Epic now recommends that its sepsis prediction model be trained on a hospital’s own data before clinical use, and that the company has changed its definition of sepsis onset to a more commonly accepted standard.

Smile CDR Rebrands to Smile Digital Health

Clinical data repository vendor Smile CDR rebrands to Smile Digital Health to reflect its expanded focus on health data and integration.

The Way Forward for Mental Healthcare: A Message from Dr. David Mou, CEO, Cerebral

Cerebral CEO David Mou, MD vows to enhance the online mental healthcare company’s clinical safeguards and patient identification verification protocols and software, among other changes, in response to scrutiny around its prescribing, marketing, and patient identity verification practices.

Morning Headlines 10/4/22

CTG Acquires Eleviant Tech to Accelerate Digital Transformation Strategy and Portfolio Innovation

CTG acquires Eleviant Tech, a digital transformation company specializing in mobile, cloud, robotic process automation, and AI across multiple verticals including healthcare.

Optum and Change Healthcare Complete Combination

UnitedHealth finalizes its $8 billion acquisition of Change Healthcare, which it will merge with its Optum business.

EHNAC and CARIN Alliance Announce New CARIN Code of Conduct Accreditation Program

The Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission and the CARIN Alliance, a collaborative focused on consumer-directed health data exchange, launch an accreditation program to bring the CARIN Code of Conduct and EHNAC’s criteria review process to healthcare stakeholders.

Morning Headlines 10/3/22

Major in the United States Army and a Maryland Doctor Facing Federal Indictment for Allegedly Providing Confidential Health Information to a Purported Russian Representative to Assist Russia Related to the Conflict In Ukraine

Federal prosecutors indict US Army Major Jamie Lee Henry and his wife, Anna Gabrielian, for conspiracy and disclosing the health information of military personnel to assist Russia with its war against Ukraine.

Talkspace investor demands appointment of CEO, plan to stabilize stock price

Investor Firstime Ventures calls for therapy app vendor Talkspace to appoint a permanent CEO, share its long-term plan, and address rumors of a potential sale.

Grow Therapy Raises $75 Million to Expand Access to Affordable Mental Healthcare

Tech-enabled mental healthcare company Grow Therapy raises $75 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to $90 million.

Careviso Raises Over $17 million in Series B Funding to Enhance Transparency and Access for Diagnostic Testing

Patient access and transparency technology vendor Careviso raises $17 million in a Series B funding round.

Morning Headlines 9/30/22

Cerebral Treated a 17-Year-Old Without His Parents’ Consent. They Found Out the Day He Died.

The Wall Street Journal exposes lax patient identification verification at Cerebral, an online prescription drug company that has come under fire in recent months for potentially violating the Controlled Substances Act.

VA ‘not confident’ EHR issues preventing future rollouts are resolved following Oracle fix

VA Secretary Denis McDonough says it’s too soon to tell if an August EHR update by Oracle Cerner has finally fixed an “unknown queue” problem that caused thousands of clinical orders to disappear in an unmonitored inbox, causing patients to miss follow-up appointments.

Kahun Secures $8M Round for its ‘XAI’ Engine for Clinical Reasoning

Israel-based clinical assessment chatbot startup Kahun raises $8 million in a seed funding round.

Morning Headlines 9/29/22

InterWell Health Enhances Capabilities to Transform Kidney Care with Addition of Acumen Physician Solutions

Kidney care company InterWell Health acquires Acumen Physician Solutions, which offers EHR and practice management software for nephrologists.

New Mental Health Company Led by Consumer Brand Industry Veterans to Revolutionize Mental Health Care Delivery for Seniors

Tech-enabled, senior-focused mental healthcare startup Rippl launches with $32 million in seed funding.

10 Healthcare Organizations Band Together to Urge HHS to Postpone Information Sharing Compliance Deadlines

Citing a lack of guidance on best practices and potential enforcement, plus a lack of preparedness on the part of some smaller vendors, provider organizations band together to urge HHS to give stakeholders an additional year to comply with the information-sharing compliance deadline, currently scheduled for October 6, 2022.

Morning Headlines 9/28/22

Prevalence and Sources of Duplicate Information in the Electronic Medical Record

A JAMA study of 104 million clinical notes made over six years within the Penn Medicine Health System finds that the total text of 50.1% had been copied from prior text written about the same patient.

DocSpera Raises $10 Million to Accelerate Commercialization of Automated Surgical Workflow Solutions to Hospitals and Ambulatory Surgery Centers

Surgical care coordination software vendor DocSpera raises $10 million in a Series B funding round.

Hospitals, other providers question State of Nebraska’s failure to pay health data provider

CyncHealth warns the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services that it will no longer be able to operate the state’s HIE and PDMP if the department doesn’t make good on the $11 million owed on its contract.

Morning Headlines 9/27/22

Clarus acquires California software company

Call triage software vendor Clarus acquires Call Simplified, which specializes in after-hours call management.

Health startup Olive fires CFO and CPO

Healthcare automation company Olive reportedly fires CFO Ali Byrd and Chief Product Officer Rohan D’Souza, a little over two months after laying off 450 employees.

PracticeTek Acquires GrowthPlug to Help Healthcare Practices Modernize

PracticeTek, a retail healthcare practice management company, acquires practice marketing and patient relationship management firm GrowthPlug.

Morning Headlines 9/26/22

The Watch Is Ticking: A Five-Year Plan to Harness Wearable Health Tech

Tony Blair Institute for Global Change recommends that the UK government recruit 30% of adults to participate in wearables-powered public health interventions, restart pilots that motivate people to improve nutrition and exercise, and give people over 50 years of age free devices if they meet activity targets.

Dozens of Dartmouth Health staff being shifted to Texas-based billing company

Fifty Dartmouth Health (NH) employees will transition to employment with Conifer Health Solutions, which manages the health system’s billing and collections.

Claro Healthcare to Join Kaufman Hall

Kaufman Hall will acquire clinical documentation consulting firm Claro Healthcare.

IT restructuring at Bangor hospital’s parent organization affects more than 100 employees

Covenant Health outsources some IT functions, most notably cybersecurity, to Long80, which will offer employment to the 104 affected health system employees.

Morning Headlines 9/23/22

Acquisition Failures at VA Lead to Congressional Calls for Enhanced Oversight

Several members of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee want to increase congressional oversight of the VA’s technology acquisitions, citing as examples its $2 billion supply chain management system adopted from the DoD and Oracle Cerner, which analysts predict will ultimately cost $58 billion.

NTT DATA Announces Intent To Acquire Apisero To Enhance MuleSoft Data Integration Capabilities

NTT Data will acquire MuleSoft consulting firm Apisero.

Bicycle Health Announces $5 Million Investment From Cobalt Ventures to Scale Its Virtual Opioid Use Disorder Treatment

Virtual opioid addiction treatment company Bicycle Health raises $5 million as part of a Series B round, bringing its total raised to $83 million.

Morning Headlines 9/22/22

VA EHR ‘not even close’ to meeting patient needs right now, deputy secretary tells senators

Deputy VA Secretary Donald Remy says the VA’s Oracle Cerner-based EHR is in need of major improvements if further roll outs, tentatively scheduled for early next year, are to proceed.

Durham’s On Track Technologies lands new funds for remote patient monitoring system

On Track Technologies will use a new round of funding to expand its remote patient monitoring capabilities beyond nephrology.

IT services group Wipro fires 300 employees moonlighting for competitors

Wipro, which counts healthcare among the many verticals it supports with IT services, fires 300 employees for also working for competitors.

Morning Headlines 9/21/22

UnitedHealth Wins Court Approval of Its Change Healthcare Takeover

A Washington federal judge clears the way for UnitedHealth Group to acquire Change Healthcare, rejecting a Department of Justice lawsuit that attempted to block the deal.

Internal memo: PillPack founders will leave Amazon at the end of the month

PillPack founders TJ Parker and Elliott Cohen announce that they are leaving Amazon, which acquired the online pharmacy in 2018 for $753 million.

McKesson Signs Agreement to Acquire Rx Savings Solutions

McKesson will acquire Rx Savings Solutions, which offers an app that recommends cost-saving prescription changes to members, for  up to $875 million in cash.

Morning Headlines 9/20/22

Telemedicine Company That Pushed Ketamine on TikTok Announces Its ‘Closure’

Online prescription startup Peak stops offering its ketamine-based psychedelic therapy for drug-resistant depression and anxiety to new patients, and will cease operations at the end of November.

Zócalo Health Closes $5M Seed Funding

Zócalo Health will use $5 million in seed funding to launch its virtual primary care services for Latino patients in Washington, Texas, and California by the end of the year.

Starfish Partners Acquires Direct Recruiters Inc. (DRI)

Investment firm Starfish Partners acquires Direct Recruiters, which specializes in staffing solutions for a variety of industries including healthcare IT and digital health.

Morning Headlines 9/19/22

AMA: Physicians propelling health care’s digital transformation

An American Medical Association survey of digital health solution use finds that 80% of physician respondents used telehealth systems in 2022 versus 14% in 2016, with use of remote monitoring tools increasing from 12% to 30%.

Intelerad Acquires Life Image, Establishing the Clear Medical Image Exchange Market Leader and Path to a Global Open Image Exchange Network

Enterprise imaging company Intelerad Medical Systems acquires enterprise image exchange vendor Life Image.

Judge Rejects Pegasystems Motion to Overturn $2 Billion Jury Verdict

A state court orders low-code platform vendor Pegasystems to pay $2 billion to competitor Appian in a trade secrets case.

Morning Headlines 9/16/22

Prealize Health Announces Acquisition of CentraForce Health’s Social Determinants of Health (SDoH) IP

Analytics vendor Prealize Health acquires the social determinants of health intellectual property of former partner CentraForce Health.

Tabula Rasa HealthCare Announces Leadership Transition

The two co-founders of medication technology vendor Tabula Rasa Healthcare, who are also husband and wife pharmacists, resign their executive and board positions under pressure from the hedge fund that holds a 25% stake in the company.

Columbus health IT firm Enzee raises $1.5M from Rev1, others to expand hospital software

Quality assurance and compliance software vendor Enzee raises $1.5 million in a seed funding round.

The DEA is investigating Done over ADHD drug prescriptions

The DEA is reportedly investigating ADHD telehealth vendor Done, which like competitor Cerebral, has been accused of overprescribing Adderall and other addictive drugs by taking advantage of COVID-relaxed telehealth rules.

Twilio to lay off 11% of workforce

Cloud communications software company Twilio, which powers Epic’s telehealth service, will lay off 11% of its workforce as part of a restructuring plan.

Morning Headlines 9/15/22

Epic Launches Life Sciences Program, Unifying Clinical Research with Care Delivery

Epic debut its new Life Sciences Program, designed to help providers better match patients with clinical trials, increase trial efficiency, and offer data-driven insights into medication administration.

Pharos Capital Invests in Renal Care 360º, Capitalizes New Chronic Kidney Care Management Platform

Kidney care practice management and predictive analytics company Renal Care 360º secures an undisclosed amount of funding from Pharos Capital Group.

BabyLiveAdvice Announces $1.1M Seed Investment to Improve Maternal-Infant Health Outcomes

Maternal virtual care company BabyLiveAdvice raises $1.1 million in seed funding.