Morning Headlines 1/15/20

Physician Time Spent Using the Electronic Health Record During Outpatient Encounters: A Descriptive Study

Physicians spend 16 minutes per encounter doing EHR work, according to a Cerner study that reviewed client data from its Lights On Network.

Medsphere to Grow Interoperable Healthcare IT Platform with $40 Million Preferred Equity Investment from TPG Sixth Street Partners

Medsphere raises $40 million in new funding to support growth and pursue acquisitions.

Masimo to Acquire Connected Care Business from NantHealth

Masimo buys NantHealth’s Connected Care business for $47 million in cash.

AHRQ Advances New Frontiers in Digital Healthcare

AHRQ launches a Division of Digital Healthcare Research, which will produce and disseminate evidence about how digital health can support healthcare quality, safety, and effectiveness.

Morning Headlines 1/14/20

Bill Frist launches CareBridge, a new health care tech company backed by Google

Former US Senator Bill Frist, MD launches CareBridge, a Nashville-based technology company that will use an initial $40 million in funding to improve home healthcare.

DrChrono Raises $20 Million Growth Capital Round to Accelerate Growth

EHR, practice management, and RCM vendor DrChrono raises $20 million from Orix Growth Capital.

R1 Announces Agreement to Acquire SCI Solutions, a Leading Provider of Digital Patient Engagement Solutions

R1 RCM acquires SCI Solutions for $190 million just days after SCI announced its acquisition of Tonic Health.

Arcadia Finishes Strongest Performance Year Ever by Closing Fully-Subscribed Growth Equity Investment

Population health management vendor Arcadia raises $29.5 million through an investment from Cigna.

Framingham’s Definitive Healthcare expands its data business by acquiring PatientFinder

Market intelligence company Definitive Healthcare acquires PatientFinder, which has developed software companies can use to find physicians with patients who would benefit from their products.

Morning Headlines 1/13/20

Teladoc Health to acquire InTouch Health

Teladoc will acquire telehealth platform vendor InTouch Health for $600 million in cash and TDOC shares.

Inside Google’s Quest for Millions of Medical Records

The Wall Street Journal reports that Cerner passed on Google’s offer of $250 million in incentives to use its cloud storage system because Google wouldn’t fully divulge its plans for using Cerner-stored patient EHR data, leading Cerner to choose Amazon instead.

SCI Solutions Acquires Tonic Health

Digital engagement technology vendor SCI Solutions acquires Tonic Health, which offers a mobile patient intake, survey, and payments platform.

A billion medical images are exposed online, as doctors ignore warnings

Researchers determine that lax cybersecurity at hundreds of healthcare facilities have left over 1 billion medical images exposed on the Internet.

HCA Healthcare Acquires Technology and Analytics Company Valify

HCA Healthcare acquires purchased services analytics vendor Valify.

Morning Headlines 1/10/20

Kyruus Raises $42 Million in New Financing After Delivering Another Year of Record Growth

Kyruus raises $42 million in a Series D funding round, increasing its total to $125 million.

Support for Windows 7 is nearing the end

Microsoft’s support of Windows 7 will end on January 14, leaving some significant number of hospital and practice users without security updates.

Premier process on hold as ownership structure is considered

Premier postpones its sale for six months so it can poll its health system shareholders on whether they plan to roll their equity to a new owner or to cash out.

Apple Stole Tech for Watch, Masimo Claims in Patent Suit

Patient monitoring technology vendor Masimo files a lawsuit claiming that Apple hired away key employees in order to steal trade secrets that it used in the development of the Apple Watch.

Morning Headlines 1/8/20

Healthgrades Acquires Evariant

Physician directory and patient scheduling vendor Healthgrades acquires Evariant, which sells patient and physician relationship management systems.

Pieces Technologies raises $25.7 Million Series B led by Concord Health Partners

Clinical analytics vendor Pieces Technology raises $25.7 million in a Series B funding round, increasing its total to $58 million.

Clearlake Capital-Backed Provation Acquires MD-Reports

Specialty EHR vendor Provation acquires MD-Reports, which offers EHR and practice management systems for ambulatory surgery centers and specialty practices.

HCTec’s HIM Business Line Acquired by GHR

Recruitment agency GHR Healthcare acquires HCTec’s HIM business, leaving its health IT and managed services businesses intact.

Morning Headlines 1/7/20

Walgreens names new chief medical officer

Former Athenahealth CMO Kevin Ban, MD takes on a similar role at Walgreens.

Perficient Announces Acquisition of MedTouch

Perficient adds to its healthcare marketing and technology consulting capabilities with the acquisition of MedTouch.

Philadelphia health tech firm raises $1.75M, plans to double headcount

Hospital discharge planning software startup Repisodic raises $1.75 million.

Morning Headlines 1/6/20

AMIA Announces Departure of President and CEO, Douglas B. Fridsma

The American Medical Informatics Association fires President and CEO Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD after five years.

Alphabet-backed One Medical files for IPO as money-losing tech companies struggle on public market

Membership-based primary care company One Medical files for a $100 million IPO.

NHS gets £40m to cut login times on its IT systems

England’s NHS will receive $50 million to implement single sign-on technology across its facilities.

Morning Headlines 1/3/20

Changes in Quality of Care after Hospital Mergers and Acquisitions

NEJM-published research finds that not only does hospital quality usually not improve after a merger, it sometimes gets worse as lower-rated hospitals acquire those with better quality scores.

Liberty IT Solutions Awarded $95M Management Consulting Services and Healthcare Revenue Workflow Management and Business Information Technology Tools Task Order

The government consulting firm expands its VA contract portfolio to over $800 million with more Cerner-related work.  

It Looks Like Health Insurance, but It’s Not. ‘Just Trust God,’ Buyers Are Told.

One million Americans have chosen unregulated cost-sharing health ministry plans to save money over traditional insurance, even though the companies issuing them are not obligated to pay claims, they don’t cover pre-existing conditions, they have a fixed limit on payouts, and they require adherence to a Christian lifestyle.

Morning Headlines 1/2/20

Doctors, Nurses and the Paperwork Crisis That Could Unite Them

Professors of nursing and medicine urge the professions to come together to reduce the documentation requirements enforced by the “bureaucratic nightmare” of EHRs.  

Using AI to improve breast cancer screening

A study in UK hospitals with the participation of Google Health finds that an AI model that supports radiologists in detecting breast cancer produced a modest reduction in false negatives and positives even though the model did not have access to patient histories and prior mammograms.  

The Family Wanted a Do Not Resuscitate Order. The Doctors Didn’t.

A ProPublica report finds that transplant doctors sometimes talk families out of asking for DNR or withdrawing life support within 30 days to avoid skewing the survival statistics of their programs. 

Social media hosted a lot of fake health news this year. Here’s what went most viral.

The most widely shared health misinformation on social media in 2019, much of it originating with anti-vaccination groups, include the US government conspiring with drug companies to hide cancer cures, herbs and homeopathy that cure cancer and chronic conditions more effectively than medical treatments, and the injuries and deaths caused by vaccines.

Woman wrongly told she had cancer when software misheard doctor

A hospital in England apologizes to an endoscopy patient for telling her doctor that her exam revealed “cancer,” which it says was an unnoticed mistake made by its speech recognition software that misunderstood the word “candida” that relates to the patient’s yeast infection.

Morning Headlines 12/31/19

FDA Failed to Ensure Safe Prescribing of Opioids, Documents Show

Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers find that FDA was lax in failing to require opioid manufacturers to collect data to prove that their physician prescribing training was effective in reducing addiction, overdoses, and deaths and instead allowed those companies, in the absence of such data, to regulate themselves.

I tracked my sleep with an Oura ring — here’s what I learned

CNBC’s Chrissy Farr says Oura’s sleep tracking ring provided a lot of sleep quality data over a two-week period, but the 15 minutes she spent with a sleep coach – which the company does not offer – provided more value.

What’s Next for Health: Leading Through Change with a Strategic Direction

HIMSS touts its “new strategic direction and brand re-alignment” that includes a reorganization to remove silos, an emphasis on its value beyond the annual conference, and its intention to become “a catalyzer to transform the global health ecosystem through the power of information and technology.”

The Big Change Coming to Just About Every Website on New Year’s Day

The California Consumer Privacy Act, which takes effect January 1, requires the websites of large companies to provide ways – including web buttons saying “Do Not Sell My Personal Information” – to their websites, which will be available to all US citizens since the sites can’t target Californians specifically.

Morning Headlines 12/30/19

DCH Health System patients file federal suit over ransomware attack

Four patients of the Alabama-based health system claim their care was disrupted by an October ransomware attack.

Verily Partners with Emory Healthcare to Analyze Medication and Lab Ordering Patterns for Improved Cost-Effectiveness and Operational Efficiency

The health system hires Alphabet-owned Verily to use analytics to find value opportunities.

Just what the doctor ordered: How AI will change medicine in the 2020s

Eric Topol, MD again calls for technology to give doctors “the gift of time” that will allow them to develop deeper relationships with their patients.

New York doctor sues Apple over irregular heartbeat detection

NYU Langone Health cardiologist Joseph Wiesel, MD says Apple violated his patented method for detecting atrial fibrillation after he shared details with the company in September 2017.

Morning Headlines 12/27/19

The Watch Is Smart, but It Can’t Replace Your Doctor

A physician author says in a New York Times article that the public health value of the Apple Watch’s atrial fibrillation detection capability is overhyped and that even study participants mostly ignored its guidance.

Artificial Intelligence Is Rushing Into Patient Care – And Could Raise Risks

AI systems have already made significant healthcare mistakes as technology companies their rush products to market without the benefit of peer-reviewed studies and with minimal FDA oversight.

Mayo Clinic names chief digital officer to lead transformative digital strategy, create Center for Digital Health

Mayo Clinic hires Rita Khan (United HealthCare, Best Buy, Macy’s) as chief digital officer.

Augmedics Announces FDA 510K Clearance and U.S. Launch of xvision, the First Augmented Reality Guidance System for Surgery

Chicago-based Augmedics earns FDA’s F10(k) clearance for its augmented reality system that allows surgeons to visualize 3D spinal anatomy and track instruments and implants while looking directly at the patient.

Morning Headlines 12/26/19

Artificial Intelligence Is Rushing Into Patient Care – And Could Raise Risks

Experts say AI could have a big healthcare impact, but worry about excessive hype, the tech industry’s mantra to “fail fast and fix it later,” systems whose training allows them to base predictions on meaningless data points, and the absence of any randomized clinical trials proving that such systems actually work.

Pentagon Warns Military Personnel Against At-Home DNA Tests

The military urges service members to decline to take consumer DNA tests because they create security risks, their results are unreliable, and they could lead to unintentional discovery of genetic information that could jeopardize their military career.

CoverMyMeds about to grow to 1,500 jobs – as outgoing CEO Matt Scantland charts what comes next

CoverMyMeds will grow to 1,500 employees by the end of March, triple its headcount since McKesson acquired the medication prior authorization company three years ago.

Morning Headlines 12/24/19

Electronic Health Records Creating A ‘New Era’ Of Health Care Fraud

Kaiser Health News covers fraud by hospitals and medical practices in receiving Meaningful Use payments, by vendors that overstated their MU compliance, and in false claims settlements by Greenway Health and EClinical Works, with experts concluding that the MU program was poorly conceived and that most of the money was handed out too early in the program when providers were paid for doing little beyond agreeing to participate.

Health documents reveal patient harm linked to Queensland’s new medical record system

In Australia, a TV news department’s Right to Information request finds that 95 cases of patient harm have been attributed to Queensland Health’s Cerner IEMR system in just over a year, with 45 incidents being caused by user error and 32 by poor usability.

Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre and Evident Partner to Improve Patient Outcomes in Canada

CPSI’s Evident business unit and Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre announce plans to develop a Canada-specific hospital information system that will combine the health center’s Sunnycare system with the Evident EHR.

Besler acquires majority ownership in Panacea Healthcare Solutions Inc.

Reimbursement solutions vendor Besler acquires a majority ownership position in Panacea Healthcare Solutions, which offers physician revenue cycle services and technology. 

For Her Head Cold, Insurer Coughed Up $25,865

A woman’s insurer pays $26,000 for a PCP visit in which she received only a throat swab and blood test, with much of the expense being the exotic DNA tests – all of which were negative – the doctor sent off to an out-of-network lab whose price was 20 times higher than average in her area. The lab is apparently owned by the doctor. 

New FDA Commissioner Takes Over Predecessor’s Twitter, Deletes All Previous Tweets

New FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, MD converts the @SGottliebFDA twitter account to @SteveFDA to keep his predecessor’s 44,000 followers for “maximum exposure,” but also deletes all of Gottlieb’s tweets and public comments, which some some experts say raises ethical concerns.

Morning Headlines 12/23/19

Australians shun My Health Record with only 9 per cent ever logging in

Government health officials in Australia admit that while 23 million people have a My Health Record online health account, 91% of them have never logged in and most of those who did log in have not returned.

Abbott Labs kills free tool that lets you own the blood-sugar data from your glucose monitor, saying it violates copyright law

Drug maker Abbott Labs issues a takedown notice to a diabetes support group that told users how to extract their own blood sugar readings from the company’s continuous glucose monitor and monitor them on a free software tool.

New Software Targets ICU Delirium

Epic works with Vanderbilt University Medical Center (TN) to release workflows that prevent ICU delirium.

Morning Headlines 12/20/19

NCPDP & Experian Health Announce 100% of the U.S. Population Has a Universal Patient Identifier, Powered by Experian Health UIM and NCPDP Standards™

Standards developer NCPDP and Experian Health announce that they have assigned a Universal Patient Identifier to all 328 million Americans.

Hospital execs say they are getting flooded with requests for your health data

Hospitals report that they are being inundated with requests to sell patient information to technology companies, many of them well-funded Silicon Valley startups that need to train their newly developed AI systems.

Mass General team detects Alzheimer’s early using electronic health records

Massachusetts General Hospital scientists say they can predict dementia by scanning their EHR data for a list of cognitive-related terms using natural language processing.

Morning Headlines 12/19/19

Streamline Health(R) Announces Signing of Definitive Agreement to Sell Enterprise Content Management (ECM) Business to Hyland

RCM vendor Streamline Health will sell its enterprise content management business to Hyland.

Blue Button 2.0 API Update

CMS temporarily shuts down the Blue Button 2.0 system after a developer notifies the agency of a bug that may have improperly exposed Medicare beneficiary data.

NTT DATA Services to Acquire NETE, Expanding Digital Transformation Capabilities in the Federal Healthcare Sector

NTT Data Services will acquire 300-employee NETE, which provides digital services including analytics and cybersecurity to NIH, CMS, and HRSA.

LifeLabs users wise to worry about fraud, ID theft after mass data breach say experts

Canada’s largest laboratory testing company notifies patients of an October ransomware attack that compromised a server used for online appointment bookings.