News 1/22/25

Top News

Struggling consumer genetic testing company 23andMe considers selling its Lemonaid telehealth business.

23andMe acquired the business in 2021 for $400 million.

23andMe’s entire board resigned last September over differences in the company’s direction. It  announced a restructuring plan several months later that included laying off 40% of its staff and cutting several therapy programs.

Reader Comments

From ACIO: “Re: Children’s National. If I may, this isn’t a net-new deal against Epic. Children’s National (AKA The Bear Institute) was one of the first Cerner ITWorks clients, where Cerner basically took over all of IT (essentially full IT outsourcing). About the last ITWorks deal out there is University of Missouri (The Tiger Institute) as I believe at this point they pay almost nothing to Cerner and we all know that a university in today’s climate would really have a PR nightmare if they tried to replace an IT system to the tune of several 100s of millions of dollars.”

From What Happens In Vegas: “Re: Epic. It was recently reported that Carl Dvorak is no longer president of Epic. For as long as I can remember, the names ‘Carl and Judy’ were always mentioned together. Judy is getting older, so it seems like news that the person who was assumed to be taking over might not be poised to do so.” Carl recently said that he took a job in Epic’s international business sometime around May 2024. Sumit Rana’s LinkedIn says that he became president in August 2024. Sumit has been at Epic for 26 years and started as a developer, which I think I remember is a board requirement to run the company per Judy’s wishes. Carl has been with the company for 38 years, wrote a lot of Epic’s code at the beginning, and led the company’s architecture decisions. Google stalking suggests that Judy is 81, Carl is 59, and Sumit is 48.

From Matthew: “Re: Color Screens. Pretty sure Glen Tullman was an investor in the company that made the weird computer doors for Walgreens. EWTD (Everything Walgreens Touches Dies), including itself?” The company’s website had a now-archived web page that listed Glen Tullman as co-founder and vice chair. Co-founder and board chair of Chicago-based Cooler Screens (now CoolerX) is Greg Wasson, former president and CEO of Walgreens.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A reader’s donation funded the purchase of a document camera for Ms. H in Yonkers, NY, who provided the view above from her middle school classroom as she projects material onto the screen that all can now see. Students are also using it for collaboration projects. I will say, having directing other people’s money to hundreds of DonorsChoose projects, that the biggest bang for the buck comes from document cameras, headphones for students, Chromebooks, and small PA systems to allow the teacher to be heard without wrecking their voice. In fact, I see that Ms. H is asking for headsets to allow students to interact with AI-tailored reading lessons, the use of which is being piloted by her classroom (OK, I admit that I just fully funded that one since another teacher’s funded project was cancelled, which freed up some money).

Here’s a fantastic opportunity to support frontline teachers through DonorsChoose, courtesy of Volpara Health, a wholly owned subsidiary of Lunit Inc. that provides clinically validated AI-powered software for personalized breast cancer screening and early detection. Teri Thomas, MSN, RN — Volpara’s CEO and an industry long-timer – will make a generous Donors Choose donation for each health system executive, technologist, or radiologist who completes a short, anonymous survey describing their organization’s AI purchasing plans. It’s like a slot machine where you pull the lever once, the money jingles into my teacher bucket, and I choose STEM projects to support. Not only will your participation fund classroom needs, Volpara’s donation will be doubled by matching money that is provided by my Anonymous Vendor Executive. If you work for a provider in administration, technology, or radiology, please answer 11 easy questions and Volpara and I will do the rest.

Webinars

January 23 (Thursday) 11 ET. “Maximizing Revenue With Minimal Resources: Work Smarter, Not Harder in Claims Management.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenter: Travis Fawver, senior sales engineer, Inovalon. Navigating the challenge of hitting revenue goals is daunting, but billing doesn’t have to be. The presenter will explore how strategic adoption of new technology can transform claims management processes from reactive to proactive. Learn how to reduce denials while empowering staff to focus on high-value activities, and gain proven strategies to simplify workflows, automate routine tasks, and build a more efficient RCM operation to maximize reimbursement.

Stream on demand. “Healthcare Data Security: Aligning Processes with Evolving Threats & Regulations.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenters: Anthony Houston, MBA, senior director of security, risk, and compliance, Inovalon; Paul Wilder, MBA, executive director, CommonWell Health Alliance; Luke McNamara, MPA, deputy chief analyst, Google Cloud; Michael Quinn, VP of strategic partner development, Inovalon. Hear leaders in healthcare data security discuss some of the top recent threat evolutions and how organizations can proactively respond by making ongoing improvements to security protocols.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Percipio Health officially launches with $20 million in Series A funding from investors that include UPMC Enterprises and Labcorp. The company offers app-based population health monitoring and management. Medhost founder and former CTO Eric Rock started the company with David Lucas, a former colleague at Medhost, Vivify Health, and Optum, in 2022.

Inovaccer acquires actuarial software vendor Humbi AI.

Behavioral telehealth vendor Iris Telehealth acquires InnovaTel, which offer telepsychiatry services.

Sales

• University of Kentucky HealthCare will implement Visage Imaging’s Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform.
• University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust and Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trust in England will go live on Epic in 2026.

People

CompuGroup Medical US promotes Benedikt Brueckle to CEO, a position he also held between 2017 and 2021.

Qure.ai names Jim Mercadante (RapidAI) chief commercial officer.

Rob Cornelssen (Huron) joins Health Systems Informatics as VP of business development.

Ken Kaufman (Mpaired) joins Sirona Medical as CEO.

Waystar promotes Todd Woods, MBA to chief growth officer, ambulatory.

RevSpring hires Nicole Rogas, MBA (Symplr) as president.

Announcements and Implementations

Arrive Health develops Arrive Accelerate to offer providers AI-generated guidance on medication coverage requirements for improved prior authorization workflows.

In New York, Somos Community Care, Forward Leading IPA, and Western New York Integrated Care Collaborative implement Findhelp’s social care referral software.

OCH Regional Medical Center (MS) will go live on Oracle Health on January 27.

Government and Politics

ASTP/ONC publishes newly updated SAFER guides, which address EHR safety.

Northeast Surgical Group (MI) will pay $10,000 to settle federal allegations that it violated the HIPAA Security Rule by failing to conduct risk analyses on its information system. A ransomware gang attacked the group in 2023, exposing the PHI of 15,300 patients.

Privacy and Security

Allegheny Health Network files a breach report indicating that the information of 294,000 of its home medical equipment and home infusion patients was compromised by a cyberattack on IntraSystems, which manages AHN’s servers.

Sponsor Updates

• Consensus Cloud Solutions offers a free plan of its flagship digital cloud fax solution, eFax, to aid in disaster response.
• Ascom names Tobias Stanelle (Philips Healthcare) managing director for the Ascom Americas region.
• Capital Rx adds more than 80 new partnerships in 2024 and prepares for another year of record growth.
• Gartner recognizes Dimensional Insight in its Peer Insights Voice of the Customer for Analytics and Business Intelligence Platforms report with an overall rating of 4.6 out of 5.

Blog Posts

• How verifying insurance eligibility can increase revenue + ease staff burden (Waystar)
• 5 Eye-Opening Reasons to Assess Your Healthcare IT Today (CereCore)
• The Role of AI and Automation in Revenue Cycle (AGS Health)
• Specialty practices: How a tailored system avoids disruption (Altera Digital Health)
• Top 5 Cybersecurity Pitfalls in Operational Technology (OT) (CTG)
• Executive Search for Startup Companies: Building a Leadership Team from Scratch (Direct Recruiters)
• Why Device Readiness is Critical in an EHR Implementation (Divurgent)
• From Prescribing to Adherence: Tackling the Toughest Medication Management Challenges (DrFirst)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
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Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 1/20/25

Top News

ASTP / National Coordinator Micky Tripathi, PhD, MPP says his goodbyes after four years.

Reader Comments

From Granular Argument: “Re: Children’s National. Has chosen Epic to replace Oracle Health, contracting underway.” Unverified. This reader reported in October that the hospital was doing demos of both. I wouldn’t be surprised since Oracle wins few (any?) net-new deals against Epic.

From Deal Kvetcher: “Re: Health Catalyst. SEC filings show that it paid $86 million in cash plus up to $33 million in earnouts to acquire Upfront Healthcare.” Crunchbase shows that Upfront has raised $30.5 million, with the last round being a $10.5 million Series C in September 2022. Meanwhile, Health Catalyst’s JPM presentation this month shows a steadily declining revenue growth since its 2019 IPO (38% to 3%) and consistent losses from operations. HCAT shares have lost 86% of their value since their first day of trading and are down 41% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $334 million.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Pondering: why does a telehealth doctor need to wear scrubs or a white coat? Maybe they are dashing online between in-person visits. I could have asked about a stethoscope, which clearly has zero utility when “seeing” a patient virtually. I also notice that 6% of poll respondents had their most recent encounter in video form. I’ve never had a video visit, but perhaps I’ll buy one of those ill-concealing exam gowns for future use in amusing the online doctor.

New poll to your right or here: What is the patient impact of private equity firms buying healthcare provider organizations? I added an “it depends” option, but I hereby restrict its use to respondents who promise to leave a poll comment that provides an example of when patients benefited from having their provider bought by PE.

Webinars

January 23 (Thursday) 11 ET. “Maximizing Revenue With Minimal Resources: Work Smarter, Not Harder in Claims Management.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenter: Travis Fawver, senior sales engineer, Inovalon. Navigating the challenge of hitting revenue goals is daunting, but billing doesn’t have to be. The presenter will explore how strategic adoption of new technology can transform claims management processes from reactive to proactive. Learn how to reduce denials while empowering staff to focus on high-value activities, and gain proven strategies to simplify workflows, automate routine tasks, and build a more efficient RCM operation to maximize reimbursement.

Stream on demand. “Healthcare Data Security: Aligning Processes with Evolving Threats & Regulations.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenters: Anthony Houston, MBA, senior director of security, risk, and compliance, Inovalon; Paul Wilder, MBA, executive director, CommonWell Health Alliance; Luke McNamara, MPA, deputy chief analyst, Google Cloud; Michael Quinn, VP of strategic partner development, Inovalon. Hear leaders in healthcare data security discuss some of the top recent threat evolutions and how organizations can proactively respond by making ongoing improvements to security protocols.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Startup Our Expert Doc launches a digital electronic second opinion service that is aimed at connecting non-US patients with US doctors for a flat fee of $350 (and 50% off in January). The principals aren’t listed, but the company’s website address is a nice Raleigh, NC house that is owned by a quadruple-boarded Duke pulmonologist who is also listed as one of the available doctors (the company’s listed phone number is also his own, it appears). I was prepared to launch a snark attack about what seemed at first glance to be a questionable business (especially after viewing their YouTube videos, which feature a computer voice that says medical REE-cord), but I have to say that the providers listed are mostly amazingly well credentialed, and quite a few of them also work for Duke. PR seems to be a bit of a struggle for the company, so I offer to interview Dr. M if he is so inclined (my cred: I recently interviewed The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic CEO Frank McGillin, which also offers virtual second opinions in a joint venture with Amwell).

Chatham Emergency Services (GA) implements ArcGIS software that displays the diversion status of local hospitals and shows EMS crews how long it takes to get patients off the stretcher and inside, which allows them to seek the fastest care for situations such as stroke. The hospital dashboard can also be used by the public, as shown above.

Epic’s plans for a 90-acre, 2,000-employee European headquarters in North Somerset, England are approved despite 700 objections about loss of green belt, a local disapproval rate of 96%, and public gallery observers of the voting shouting “shame.” The project still requires approval by the secretary of state.

People

Surgical coordination software vendor Surgimate hires Kraig Brown (Office Practicum) as CEO. He replaces founder Rebecca Brygel, who will transition to product ambassador.

Announcements and Implementations

WellSky launches WellSky Extract for Home Health, which uses AI to extract information from patient documents and prescription labels to populate its home health EHR. The company says this is the first of a series of modules that it calls SkySense, with the next offerings being an ambient scribing solution and an EHR summarization application.

Government and Politics

The House Budget Committee lists the cost-cutting options it is considering to keep paying for federal tax cuts. Some of the healthcare-related ones:

• Eliminate the non-profit status for hospitals, taxing them as for-profit businesses.
• Eliminate federal healthcare tax credits and Medicaid access for non-citizens.
• Roll back the ACA’s expansion of Medicaid.
• Stop reimbursing hospitals for the unpaid debts of Medicare beneficiaries.
• Implement Medicare site-neutral payments.
• Replace payments to hospitals for uncompensated cares with a new fund that will include care delivered outside of hospitals.
• Reform ACA subsidies.
• Reform graduate medical education payments.
• Eliminate Medicare’s inpatient-only list so that more surgeries can be performed in lower cost outpatient settings.
• Reform the prescription price-setting aspects of the Inflation Reduction Act.
• Reform Medicare physician payments.

Other

A Redditor vows that ChatGPT saved his life after he entered his post-workout symptoms (muscle weakness and pain) and ChatGPT urged him to go to the hospital because it suspected a muscle breakdown condition called rhabdomyolis. The hospital ran lab tests that confirmed the diagnosis, which he knew almost immediately because he ran his results through ChatGPT as well. Redditors understood the takeaway – use ChatGPT to interpret symptoms, then go to a doctor to confirm and treat.

This is only slightly healthcare related, but a good business lesson. Happiest Baby, the maker of the $1,700 “smart bassinet” Snoo that rocks affluent babies to sleep, sparks customer outrage by introducing a $20 monthly subscription fee to use features that were previously free. The company defends the move as a “critical step” to counter losses from the thriving resale market, which they say undercuts new-product sales. Health tech folks will get this — the company’s long-term strategy isn’t to lower prices, but rather to get corporations, insurance companies, and government agencies to subsidize the Snoo’s cost. Customers are complaining to the FTC that a retroactive subscription requirement is a bait-and-switch tactic that should not be allowed.

Walgreens scraps the futuristic “smart doors” it installed on drugstore refrigerators, which were intended to display video ads, track inventory, and dynamically price items. The screens failed to deliver the promised sales boost, and the then-CEO reportedly asked, “Why do our stores look like an effing casino?” Screen vendor Cooler Screens sued Walgreens for $200 million and retaliated by cutting off data feeds, leaving customers — many of whom disliked the opaque screens from the start — staring at blank displays or makeshift printed signs. The failed project left $50 million worth of unusable custom screens gathering dust in a warehouse. This debacle echoes Walgreens’ earlier misstep with Theranos, which cost the company millions in customer lawsuit settlements over faulty in-store blood tests.

Sponsor Updates

• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a white paper titled “5 Things to Know Before You Invest in ServiceNow”
• Netsmart offers a new case study featuring Amedisys, “Making Major Time-Savings Possible for Collectors.”
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast, “Interview with Brendan Keeler.”
• QGenda will exhibit at ASA Advance 2025 January 31-February 2 in Atlanta.
• TruBridge will exhibit at HFMA Western Region Symposium January 19-22 in Las Vegas.

Blog Posts

• CloudWave’s Predictions for Healthcare IT in 2025 Part 3: A Growing Threat of Healthcare Supply Chain Attacks (CloudWave)
• Clinical benefits of medical device connectivity (Philips Capsule)
• The future of healthcare: 5 resolutions you can’t ignore (Nordic)
• How Staff Self-Scheduling Can Boost Retention and Satisfaction (SnapCare)
• Ready for Action: Advancing Pharmacy Interoperability (Surescripts)
• Why Data Analytics Is Driving Healthcare’s Shift to the Cloud (Tegria)
• Coverage Detection 101: How RCM teams find missing or hidden insurance (Waystar)

Sponsor Spotlight

Planning a Workday project? Healthcare IT Leaders has released the ultimate Workday resource planning and staffing guide, including a comprehensive breakdown of the staffing requirements for each phase of a Workday project in healthcare organizations. The whitepaper provides detailed role breakdowns across six critical areas — from legacy system support to post-implementation optimization — so organizations can better plan their resource needs. Download the guide here.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

News 1/17/25

Top News

Canada’s Nova Scotia Health pauses its two-day-old rollout of medical appointment text reminders after the system sent incorrect information, failed to indicate whether the visit was in-person or virtual, and in some cases referred to a non-existent appointment.

The organization blames integration challenges with the 900 scheduling systems that providers use. A patient provided the above reminder for a 2:45 p.m. appointment that instead indicated 6:45 p.m.

Reader Comments

From Asking for a Friend: “Re: Baxter. Heard through the grapevine that it is discontinuing its DoseEdge product in 2028. Can you confirm? Will it be replaced with another solution?” I have emailed Baxter’s media contact for any news about the pharmacy workflow product, which Baxter acquired with its Baxa acquisition in 2011. UPDATE: Baxter provided this response:

After careful consideration due in part to third-party manufacturing constraints, Baxter will end of life the DoseEdge Pharmacy Workflow Manager after December 31, 2028. We are committed to supporting our customers throughout this transitional period.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk sponsors who are participating in the ViVE conference February 16-19: fill out this form with your details by February 7 and I’ll include you in my conference preview.

Dr. Jayne weighs in on the most annoying and overused trendy words, which inspired me to make my own list while not exactly following instructions since I included some phrases.

1. Suss. Somehow we got by with “understand” until recently.
2. Unpack. Did “analyze” or “explain” fail to do the job all of a sudden?
3. Utilize. You don’t look a bit smarter by not just saying “use,” and I would argue the opposite. See: “leverage.”
4. Unlock. A favorite of hack PR writers, they would have you believe that buying a company’s product will allow you to “unlock” something that is tantalizingly just out of reach until you write them that check.
5. Journey. Everything is a journey all of a sudden.
6. Gaslight. I still get confused about what it really means, especially when it seems to be misused often.
7. Curate. Everything that isn’t random has been curated by definition, and you’re no smarter just because you made a list.
8. Disinterested. Not the same as “uninterested,” instead indicating that the person has not been influenced by personal benefit.
9. Build out. Means the same as “build” with twice as many syllables. Press release people embrace it because it sounds decisive and explicitly defined when companies pledge to “build out” one thing or another.
10. LOL and LMAO. Mostly used, strangely enough, to project contempt or aggressive anger against an Internet stranger than to signal amusement.

Webinars

January 23 (Thursday) 11 ET. “Maximizing Revenue With Minimal Resources: Work Smarter, Not Harder in Claims Management.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenter: Travis Fawver, senior sales engineer, Inovalon. Navigating the challenge of hitting revenue goals is daunting, but billing doesn’t have to be. The presenter will explore how strategic adoption of new technology can transform claims management processes from reactive to proactive. Learn how to reduce denials while empowering staff to focus on high-value activities, and gain proven strategies to simplify workflows, automate routine tasks, and build a more efficient RCM operation to maximize reimbursement.

Stream on demand. “Healthcare Data Security: Aligning Processes with Evolving Threats & Regulations.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenters: Anthony Houston, MBA, senior director of security, risk, and compliance, Inovalon; Paul Wilder, MBA, executive director, CommonWell Health Alliance; Luke McNamara, MPA, deputy chief analyst, Google Cloud; Michael Quinn, VP of strategic partner development, Inovalon. Hear leaders in healthcare data security discuss some of the top recent threat evolutions and how organizations can proactively respond by making ongoing improvements to security protocols.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

UnitedHealth Group reports Q4 results: revenue up 6.8%, EPS $6.81 versus $6.16, beating earnings expectations but falling short on revenue. Investor concern about higher medical costs sent shares down slightly. UHG finished the year with $400 billion in revenue and $32 billion in earnings from operations, with its Optum services business generating $17 billion in earnings on $253 billion in revenue. The company’s market cap is $478 billion.

Medical imaging solution vendor Core Sound Imaging raises a $80 million growth investment and gives the private equity investor the executive chair seat on the board.

Sales

• In Canada, Novia Scotia Health will deploy Novari’s surgery wait list management system in a five-year, $12 million contract.
• Denver Health chooses Nabla for ambient documentation.

People

Larry Adams, RN, MSN, MBA (ShiftMed) joins CareRev as chief nurse executive and SVP of strategy.

Announcements and Implementations

Healthmonix releases its 2025 MIPSpro Enterprise qualified clinical data registry.

Fortified Health Security publishes its healthcare cybersecurity guide for 2025.

Amazon Web Services and investment firm General Catalyst will collaborate to develop and deploy AI solutions. General Catalyst’s portfolio includes Summa Health acquirer Health Assurance Transformation Company, Commure, and Aidoc.

Government and Politics

A New York Times report finds that medication access company Apexus has earned big profits in the 20 years that it has been running the federal government’s 340B drug discount program, which gives hospitals and clinics that serve low-income or uninsured patients mandatory discounts on outpatient drugs. Apexus, a former non-profit that is now a for-profit subsidiary of Vizient, earns a fee for the drugs that are purchased, which gives it an incentive to increase use. The organization has an 80% profit margin in booking an estimated $227 million in annual revenue as the 340B program has grown to $66 billion in annual drug sales involving half the country’s non-profit hospitals.

The Washington Post reports that healthcare entrepreneur Chris Klomp is the choice of nominated CMS Administrator Mehmet Oz to run the $1 trillion Medicare program. The Salt Lake City-based Klomp became chairman and CEO of care notification technology vendor Collective Medical in 2014, which was sold to PointClickCare for $650 million in late 2020. He serves on the board of Nomi Health, Maven Clinic, InnovaCare Health, and HealthJoy.

Privacy and Security

Tech Crunch reports that UnitedHealth-owned Change Healthcare tagged its breach notice webpage with the “noindex” HTML meta tag, which would have hidden it from web searches.

Other

A University of Michigan survey finds that patient portals are the most-used digital health technology among older adults. The authors note that black patients are more reliant on portals because they don’t trust health systems enough to engage with them otherwise.

Gallup’s annual poll finds that Americans rank nurses as the most honest and ethical profession for the 23rd straight year. Pharmacists and physicians finished at #4 and #5, although trust in doctors has fallen from 77% in 2020 to 53% now. Holding the bottom spots are lobbyists, members of Congress, TV reporters, and advertising professionals, all of whom finished below car salespeople.

Sponsor Updates

• Neurogen Biomarking, which offers tools for early detection of cognitive impairment, will integrate the cognitive assessments of Linus Health.
• Black Book Research releases a new report, “The 2025 Black Book of Healthcare IT Consultants and Advisory Firms.”
• QGenda publishes a new report, ““State of Healthcare Digital Transformation: Untapped Strategies to Simplify Healthcare Workforce Management.”
• MRO offers a recap of its 2024 achievements, including recognition of its CEO and new customer partnerships.
• Rachel Pataky joins Nordic as managing director and MEDITECH practice lead.
• CloudWave appoints healthcare cybersecurity expert Lewie Dunsworth to its Board of Directors.
• Real Leaders and Built In recognize Findhelp as, respectively, a top impact company and best place to work.
• Fortified Health Security ranks ninth among leading healthcare cybersecurity vendors, according to the latest KLAS cybersecurity report.
• Goliath Technologies publishes a new case study, “Licking Memorial Health System Proactively Identifies and Resolves Citrix Slowness Issues Before Epic Hyperdrive Speed & Reliability Impacts Users.”

Blog Posts

• CloudWave’s Predictions for Healthcare IT in 2025 Part 2: Shifting from Detection to Prevention in Healthcare Cybersecurity (CloudWave)
• Why medical device connectivity needs a vendor-agnostic approach (Philips Capsule)
• A Dream Realized: It’s Time to Integrate Pharmacists into Pharmacogenomic Medication Decision-Making (First Databank)
• The High Stakes of Hospital Price Transparency Compliance (FinThrive)
• MRO Starts 2025 Strong with Top CEO Award, Major Client Wins, and Record-Breaking Growth (MRO)
• Understanding the CMS MIPS cost measure for Melanoma Resection (Healthmonix)
• The Generative AI Revolution: 9 Trends Reshaping Healthcare in 2025 (Impact Advisors)
• Full speed ahead: Interoperability at MEDITECH enters a new era (Meditech)
• Top Five Predictions for the Healthcare IT Industry for 2025 (Med Tech Solutions)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

News 1/15/25

Top News

Several health systems launch the Truveta Genome Project, which will create a database of genotypic and phenotypic information. The data will be collected by using leftover biospecimens from the routine lab tests of tens of millions of consented, de-identified volunteers.

Truveta is made up of several big health systems that collect and sell EHR data to life sciences companies and researchers.

The company sell the genomic data for use in drug discovery, clinical trials design, and AI model training.

Reader Comments

From Buzzball: “Re: UpStream.care. Looks like the company is in liquidation. I look forward to your analysis. Interview Fergus Hoban?” The Greensboro, NC-based company provides support and technology for primary care physicians who provide value-based care to Medicare beneficiaries. It filed a WARN act notice in July 2024 that it would be laying off 66 employees after losing a contract with Triad Healthcare Network. The company reported funding of $185 million and a billion-dollar valuation as of late 2022. LinkedIn profiles indicate that most of its executive team left in late 2024. I emailed the “contact us” address from the website and it bounced back as undeliverable. I couldn’t find an email address for Fergus Hoban, founder and executive chairman.

Webinars

January 23 (Thursday) 11 ET. “Maximizing Revenue With Minimal Resources: Work Smarter, Not Harder in Claims Management.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenter: Travis Fawver, senior sales engineer, Inovalon. Navigating the challenge of hitting revenue goals is daunting, but billing doesn’t have to be. The presenter will explore how strategic adoption of new technology can transform claims management processes from reactive to proactive. Learn how to reduce denials while empowering staff to focus on high-value activities, and gain proven strategies to simplify workflows, automate routine tasks, and build a more efficient RCM operation to maximize reimbursement.

Stream on demand. “Healthcare Data Security: Aligning Processes with Evolving Threats & Regulations.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenters: Anthony Houston, MBA, senior director of security, risk, and compliance, Inovalon; Paul Wilder, MBA, executive director, CommonWell Health Alliance; Luke McNamara, MPA, deputy chief analyst, Google Cloud; Michael Quinn, VP of strategic partner development, Inovalon. Hear leaders in healthcare data security discuss some of the top recent threat evolutions and how organizations can proactively respond by making ongoing improvements to security protocols.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare operations optimization software company Qventus announces $105 million in Series D funding.

Health data and analytics vendor Health Catalyst will acquire patient engagement-focused Upfront Healthcare Services.

RCM vendor Access Healthcare secures funding from New Mountain Capital, which had reportedly been interested in acquiring the company. The PE firm was in the mix last year to acquire R1 RCM, which wound up being taken private by CD&R and TowerBrook at a $9 billion valuation. It announced plans to acquire AI healthcare payments company Machinify last week.

Virta Health, which offers payers nutrition-focused, virtual-only programs for diabetes reversal and weight loss, says that it has scaled to $100 million in annualized revenue.

UK-based digital-first home healthcare provider Cera raises $150 million in financing, valuing the company at over $1 billion.

Technology news site The Register interviews a lead attorney representing plaintiffs in a lawsuit against software vendor MultiPlan. The attorney alleges that MultiPlan uses commingled pricing data from multiple insurers to reduce payments for out-of-network provider claims. The lawsuit argues that this sharing of payment data constitutes an anti-trust “cartel,” effectively forcing providers to accept below-market rates. It highlights a similar practice from 1996 to 2008, when insurers used software from UnitedHealthcare-owned Ingenix until lawsuits forced shifting the work to independent vendors serving as “liability shields.” The Register’s headline describes MultiPlan’s service as “price fixing as a service.”

Sales

• Renown Health (NV) selects patient experience and employee engagement software from NRC Health.
• Mayo Clinic (MN) will roll out Abridge’s AI-powered clinical documentation technology across its enterprise.
• Missouri HealthNet will implement social care payment capabilities from Unite Us as a part of its Transformation of Rural Community Health program.
• OrthoNebraska will adopt Health Catalyst’s Ignite data and analytics technology.
• Vizient selects ambient AI clinical documentation software from Augmedix.
• TidalHealth (MD) will implement Glytec’s Glucommander diabetes and insulin management technology.

People

Susan Kristiniak, DHA, MSN, RN (RV Healthcare Solutions) joins Caregility as CNO.

HHS names Meghan Dierks, MD (Komodo Health) chief AI officer, ASTP/ONC.

Access TeleCare names Michael Genovese, MD, JD (Acadia Healthcare) chief medical officer for behavioral health.

Inbox Health hires Patrick Block (Titan Cloud) as CFO.

Michael Kallish (Encoda) joins OP Solutions as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Availity adds Concert Genetics clinical criteria, coding standards, and genetic test identifier to its automated insurance authorization software.

New York-based Arnot Health and Cayuga Health affiliate to form Centralus Health, which will roll out Epic in March. It replaces EClinicalWorks and QuadraMed at Arnot and EClinicalWorks and Meditech at Cayuga.

Arcadia announces GA of a new AI-powered precision medicine solution for improved development of treatment pathways.

Labette Health (KS) will go live on Meditech Expanse this spring.

Waystar launches AltitudeAI, a set of new AI capabilities designed to help providers appeal denied claims.

A study finds that patient self-reported responses about their sleep quality, stress, mood, and pain that were collected using NeuroFlow’s digital health platform predicted suicidal thoughts.

Duke Critical Care Informatics opens registration for a two-day datathon on April 26-27, where critical care clinicians and data scientists will develop data-driven models using de-identified EHR data.

Government and Politics

Philips issues a Class I recall – FDA’s most serious classification – following reports that its remote cardiac monitoring patch failed to alert cardiology technicians of high-risk ECG events, causing 109 patient injuries and two deaths.

Privacy and Security

A former employee of Rhode Island Quality Institute sues President and CEO Neil Sarkar, whom she accuses of misusing confidential patient data from the state’s health information exchange to conduct personal research as a professor at Brown University. The complaint claims that Sarkar used his position at RIQI to persuade data analysts at CurrentCare – which is run by RIQI — to release the data while bypassing the plaintiff, who was responsible for ensuring patient confidentiality.

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom publishes a new case study featuring Harrogate and District NHS Foundation Trust, “Reducing response times and the number of patients falling with Smart Nurse Call.”
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “Pharmacy Benefits 101: Pharmacy Audits.”
• The This Week Health Podcast features Clearsense CEO Jason Rose, “Maintaining Efficiency while Ensuring Quality and Secure Data.”
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of The Informonster Podcast, “Standardizing Healthcare: Carol Macumber Talks HL7.”
• Consensus Cloud Solutions announces that it has been recognized as a Leader in the “IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Digital Fax 2024 Vendor Assessment.
• DrFirst publishes a new whitepaper, “AI, But Make It Clinical: The Perils and the Promise of Machine Learning in Healthcare.”

Blog Posts

• What Makes Medical Device Risk Management Healthcare’s Most Interesting Opportunity (CereCore)
• Healthcare Trends to Watch in 2025 (AGS Health)
• Reconnecting through technology: How ambient listening bridges the old and new in medicine (Altera Digital Health)
• All About AI: A Conversation with Artera Leaders Guillaume de Zwirek and Ashu Agte (Artera)
• The transformative potential of AI in healthcare: Trends to watch in 2025 (Cardamom Health)
• CloudWave’s Predictions for Healthcare IT in 2025 Part 1: Hospitals Will Adopt a Patient-First Cybersecurity Approach (CloudWave)
• Epic Community Connect: A Strategy for Growth (CTG)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 1/13/25

Top News

Walgreens announces Q1 results: revenue up 7.5%, EPS –$0.31 versus –$0.08, beating expectations for both. Shares of WBA, the worst-performing stock in the S&P 500 last year, jumped 27% Friday on the news. From the earnings call:

• The pharmacy services business was strong enough to offset weakness in its front-end retail business, which the company says is due to changing consumer behavior.
• CEO Tim Wentworth says that store closures will ramp up with another 450 this year, reminding investors that, “We have a lot of experience with store closures, having closed about 2,000 of our locations over the past decade.”
• The company will launch new scheduling optimization technology this month that will use store-specific demand projections and staff work preferences.
• Walgreens continues to move some prescription processing to micro-fulfillment centers, which will give in-store pharmacists more time for patient care and clinical services such as vaccine administration and medication therapy management.
• Wentworth says that sale of its VillageMD primary care business is underway, while it is considering options for Summit Health – CityMD.
• The company will roll out digital and virtual check-in for pharmacy patients.
• Wentworth said that shoplifting is a “hand-to-hand combat battle,” but sales drop when merchandise is displayed in locked cabinets.

Reader Comments

From Buck Tanner: “Re: TORCH. The Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals, of which all 158 Texas rural hospitals are members, hosted a webinar to explore a potential partnership with Epic to create a Unified Care Infrastructure. This is a bold, critical step to address the state’s rural healthcare challenges. The leadership of President and CEO John Henderson, who is a former CEO of a Texas critical access hospital, is instrumental in driving this effort forward.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Last week’s poll had interesting results, although brand perception may be impacted more by marketing than personally experienced results (health systems count on this, of course). I’m surprised that drugstores and imaging centers fared poorly.

New poll to your right or here: What was the provider wearing during your most recent visit? I’ll define “visit” as a health-related encounter with a paid provider. Meanwhile, I’m amused by the image of status-seeking doctors who sport stethoscopes in non-clinical settings or who work in roles where auscultation isn’t exactly a job requirement, like psychiatrists or physician executives. My experience is that nurses, who probably use their stethoscopes far more than anyone else, don’t feel the need to flaunt them at meetings or while running errands.

Companies, you can kick off 2025 by sponsoring our little HIStalk party of health tech insiders for less money than coffee runs at ViVE and HIMSS. Former sponsors and startups might get some spiffs besides. Maybe this year will be tough or maybe it will be one of those “we’re so back” boom cycles, but 365-day visibility is key either way. Even though I’m hopelessly old school in eschewing flashy stuff or self-promotion, everybody who is anybody in the industry follows HIStalk (proof: you’re reading it now). Talk to Lorre.

Webinars

January 23 (Thursday) 11 ET. “Maximizing Revenue With Minimal Resources: Work Smarter, Not Harder in Claims Management.” Sponsor: Inovalon. Presenter: Travis Fawver, senior sales engineer, Inovalon. Navigating the challenge of hitting revenue goals is daunting, but billing doesn’t have to be. The presenter will explore how strategic adoption of new technology can transform claims management processes from reactive to proactive. Learn how to reduce denials while empowering staff to focus on high-value activities, and gain proven strategies to simplify workflows, automate routine tasks, and build a more efficient RCM operation to maximize reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Inventory management technology vendor Bluesight acquires Protenus, which offers a healthcare compliance analytics platform. Investment firm Thoma Bravo acquired Bluesight in July 2023, after which the company acquired drug diversion software vendor Medacist and Sectyr, which offers 340B audit and compliance tools. Bluesight was known as Kit Check until its December 2022 rebrand.

Redditors report that Oracle Health employees who work under Seema Verma and who live within 50 miles of an Oracle office will be required to work from that office for at least 50% of the week starting February 1, with details left to manager discretion. Insiders report the same issues that other RTO companies have experienced – lack of available office space, new hires who were promised permanent remote work, employees who don’t live near a company office, and the perception that companies are using RTO to reduce headcount without paying severance or earning negative publicity.

Infosys sues Cognizant and its CEO Ravi Kumar, who it claims stalled development of the Infosys Helix healthcare platform in his previous job as Infosys president, after which he left the company to become Cognizant CEO. Infosys also accuses Kumar of poaching key Infosys executives who were involved with Helix. This counters a previous lawsuit that was brought five months ago by Cognizant subsidiary TriZetto, which accused Infosys of stealing trade secrets to develop Helix.

Prospect Medical Holdings, which operates 17 hospitals, files Chapter 11 bankruptcy and will sell at least three of its hospitals. The state of Pennsylvania is suing the company’s private equity owners, who made $500 million by loading the hospitals with debt and mortgaging their real estate for $1.1 billion as the hospitals ran out of medical supplies due to unpaid bills. Chairman and CEO Sam Lee netted $128 million while the private equity firm owner collected $600 million in dividends and management fees. The company’s hospitals are in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, and California. A cyberattack in August 2023 led Yale New Haven Health to seek dissolution of its agreement to buy three Prospect  hospitals, with the bankruptcy adding more complexity to the long-delayed deal. 

Business Insider reports that Datavant, which has made 11 acquisitions since 2017, is looking to buy one or two more companies in early 2025. The company is reportedly planning an IPO for this year and reports $1 billion in annual revenue. Datavant’s mid-2021 acquisition of Ciox Health valued the company at $7 billion.

Innovaccer raises $275 million in a Series F funding round, bringing its total to $675 million. The company will use the proceeds to add AI and cloud capabilities, create a developer ecosystem, and develop AI copilots and agents. Co-founder and CEO Abhinav Shashank describes the healthcare status quo that he hopes to disrupt:

We have got this massive connectivity problem. Doctors, payers, patients, life sciences companies, nurses, everyone’s using different systems that just … don’t talk to each other. At all. You’ve got hundreds of solutions managing everything from patient care to insurance claims to clinical trial enrollment. But they are all isolated, and don’t even get me started on the patient’s electronic health record. Interestingly, information exchanges in other industries happen at the tap of a button or the swipe of a card, but your doctor literally has to pick up the phone and wait on hold just to get basic info about you from another provider. Some still use fax machines (hold your gasps, it’s true). This system doesn’t work for anyone. This isn’t just frustrating — it costs us around $1 trillion in healthcare waste. That’s trillion with a T! In a world where you can transfer money or order anything with a single tap, why are we stuck in the healthcare dark ages?

Sales

• HSHS-partnered Door County Medical Center (WI) will implement Epic, replacing Meditech.

People

Health and wellness marketing company Merge hires Stephanie Trunzo, MBA, MAPW, former SVP/GM of Oracle Health, as CEO.

Lety Nettles, MBA (Novant Health) joins orthotic and prosthetic product and services vendor Hanger, Inc. as EVP/CIO. 

Announcements and Implementations

Stanford Medicine creates an AI-powered tool that creates a patient-friendly draft interpretation of their lab results that is ready for physician review, which it self-developed using Anthropic’s Claude LLM through Amazon Bedrock. Doctors say that patients appreciate having their doctor add understandable, empathetic comments. It extends previous development by Stanford Medicine of a draft message generator to respond to patient messages.

SmartSense by Digi launches Voyage, which provides visibility, control, and tracking of supply chain assets in shipment for healthcare and other industries.

Private practice doctors sue Saint Agnes Medical Center (CA) for restricting inpatient care to hospitalists who work for Vituity. They note that the hospital is owned by Trinity Health, whose president is a former Vituity executive, and that the company sometimes uses temporary traveling physicians who won’t know anything about their patients. 

Industry long-timer John Glaser, PhD publishes a book titled “101 Questions From My Daughters.” which seems like quite a deal at $7.95 when purchased directly from his site. Need due diligence that he writes well and is interesting? Check out his bio, which makes me feel dull and lazy in comparison (he gets good practice by writing his family a weekly four-page letter, which he has done for 35 years). Those with long HIStalk memories will recall his “Being John Glaser” series that I ran way back in 2008-2009, when he described himself as an “irregular regular contributor” to HIStalk. 

Government and Politics

HHS publishes a strategic plan for the use of AI in healthcare. It recommends these actions:

• Catalyze adoption through public-private partnerships, clarify regulatory oversight, and support collection of outcomes evidence.
• Promote development of trustworthy AI, including mitigating equity, biosecurity, data security, and privacy risks.
• Democratize AI use through information sharing and developing open source AI tools.
• Cultivate an AI-empowered workforce through training and development of an AI talent pipeline.

The US Trade Representative warns that 96% of the world’s 35,000 online pharmacies are operating illegally, putting consumers at risk of being sold counterfeit or pirated products.

Stat reports that the Department of Justice is interviewing former UnitedHealth Group doctors about the company’s reported pressuring of physicians to add lucrative diagnosis codes for Medicare Advantage patients.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore publishes “Partnership Perspectives: Q4 2024.”
• Impact Advisors publishes a new case study, “Health System Employees Eliminate Over 1 Million Non-Value-Added Hours.”
• Netsmart will present at Ideal Healthcare’s second annual event January 18 on Florida’s Marco Island.
• PerfectServe releases a new case study, “How Optimized Provider Scheduling Improves Patient and Room Scheduling.”
• QGenda wins Brandon Hall Group’s Bronze Technology Excellence Award for Best Advance in Time and Labor Management.
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company, becomes a Premier Partner with Today’s Practice for Finance.
• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new guide, “5 Tips to Ensure Your Data is Analytics-Ready.”

Blog Posts

• MIPS Changes for 2025 (AdvancedMD)
• The Dual Role of AI in Healthcare Cybersecurity in 2025 (FinThrive)
• Navigating Enterprise Reorganization: The Crucial Role of Change Management (Impact Advisors)
• 2025’s healthcare imperative: merge innovation and human-centered strategies to improve access (Nordic)
• Caregivers 101: Everything You Need to Know (SnapCare)
• Add This Healthcare Podcast to Your 2025 New Year Resolutions (Surescripts)
• Revitalizing Patient Financial Engagement in 2025 (Tegria)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

News 1/10/25

Top News

Transcarent, which offers employee healthcare benefits navigation services, acquires rival Accolade for $621 million in cash.

ACCD shares have lost 78% in the past 12 months and are down 90% since the company’s July 2020 IPO. Transcarent will pay a 110% share premium to take Accolade private.

Analysts suggest that Transcarent got a fire sale deal for Accolade and predict similar M&A in the short term, especially with struggling publicly traded companies that have run out of investor patience.

Reader Comments

From Debaser: “Re: Oracle Health. Have you heard anything about the Cerner Client Connect team being abolished? From what I understand, our client executive was let go last week, along with the entire group. We received no communication about this. Yet more frustrating behavior from a vendor that has been frustrating to deal with for many years now.” Those in the know, can you assist?

From Who Dis?: “Re: Becker’s list of CIOs to know.’ They never list their selection criteria” Becker’s says that their never-ending “to know” C-level lists are based on nominations and editorial research. I take this to mean that youthful staffers just Google, pull biographical information off LinkedIn, and “curate” the results into a click-baity list that is about as meaningful as a first-grader’s gold star. Still, pulling names out of the air  — 133 CIOs are listed on the latest list, which hardly makes it an exclusive club — to bestow awards is a smart, cheap way to turn personal and corporate vanity into free publicity. I’m also puzzled by what “to know” means.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare AI agent developer Hippocratic AI raises $141 million in Series B financing, valuing the company at $1.6 billion.

Qualified Health, which offers healthcare AI governance infrastructure, raises $30 million in seed funding.

EHR integration technology vendor Red Rover Health raises $4 million in seed funding. CEO John Orosco, who is a former Cerner developer, is also president and CEO of JASE Health, which offers Oracle Health technical consulting.

Warburg Pincus, the private equity owner of specialty EHR vendor Modernizing Medicine, is considering options for the company that could include a sale at a $5 billion valuation.

Population health analytics vendor HealthEC and VirtualHealth, which offers a medical management platform, unite (in an unstated manner) to form Elligint Health. HealthEC Chris Caramanico will be CEO of the new business, so one might assume that HealthEC acquired VirtualHealth. Or perhaps more likely, that the businesses were combined by their shared investor HLM Venture Partners.

Provider data vendor H1 acquires Ribbon Health, which offers a doctor-finding service for consumers.

Caduceus Capital Partners announces Launch, a 12-week pre-seed digital health startup accelerator that will be led by industry long-timer Mitch Morris, MD.

Amwell sells its virtual psychiatric care service to Avel ECare for $21 million in cash. Amwell acquired behavioral digital health startup Aligned Telehealth in November 2019 and then paid $320 million for SilverCloud Health and Conversa Health in July 2021. AMWL shares have lost 71% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $112 million. They are 99% off their all-time high in January 2021, which occurred shortly after the company’s IPO.

Healthcare workforce solutions vendor CSI Companies acquires healthcare IT consulting firm MedSys Group.

In England, the North Somerset Council recommends approval of Epic’s plans for its UK campus, which will include a 3,000-seat auditorium, offices, and a training facility. Epic expects the first office buildings to be completed in 2028, the auditorium in 2033, three more offices in the 2030s, and then project completion in 2041. The 90-acre campus will house up to 2,000 employees.

Sales

• Infusion provider New England Life Care will implement Inovalon’s ScriptMed Infusion cloud-native pharmacy system for specialty and home infusion pharmacies.
• Tidelands Health (NC) and Honor Health (AZ) choose Five9’s contact center as a solution to replace legacy on-premise contact centers
• Duke Health chooses Abridge for ambient documentation in its 150 clinics.

People

Industry long-timer Tim Nash (Aidoc) joins Linus Health as SVP of healthcare.

ClearPoint Health hires Tawfiq Bajjali, MS (Lyric) as CTO / chief product officer and president of its newly launched ClearQuote benefits proposal system vendor.

Scott Nourse (Change Healthcare) joins Accuity as regional VP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

South Central Regional Medical Center (MS) will implement Epic, with assistance from HCTec and replacing Oracle Health.  

Other

The mayor of a remote small town in Italy orders residents to avoid accidents, travel, and sports activities, hoping to raise awareness that its health center is often closed and doctors are available only during weekday business hours.

Sponsor Updates

• Waystar will present at the JP Morgan Healthcare Conference January 13 in San Francisco.
• SmarterDX names Jonathan Wald, MD (InterSystems) solutions architect.
• Black Book Research publishes a free 60-page technical guide to practice management technology.
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces that its Lippincott Ready for NCLEX-RN nursing education resource now features AI-driven remediation with personalized, multi-modal improvement plans.
• Ellkay publishes a new customer success story featuring Lehigh Valley Health Network.
• Findhelp welcomes new customers Essen Health Care (NY), TriWest Healthcare Alliance (AZ), and Rainbow Housing Assistance (AZ).
• Healthmonix announces that MIPSpro and APP Impact have been approved by CMS as a Qualified Registry for the 2025 performance year under the Quality Payment Program.
• Impact Advisors publishes “Building a ‘Smart Hospital’ from the Ground Up.”
• Medicomp Systems releases a new “Tell Me Where IT Hurts” podcast featuring Micky Tripathi, PhD, MPP, Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy.
• Lewis County Health System (NY) implements Meditech Expanse’s Continuing Care Medication Management functionality.

Blog Posts

• Best Practices in Denial Management (FinThrive)
• EHR Implementation is a Big Lift Without Automation (CereCore)
• Ransomware attacks the California Health System with claims of 17 million patient records stolen (AdvancedMD)
• Forget 2025 — Here Are My Top Predictions for CX in 2030 (Five9)
• Beyond the Dose: Past, Present and Future of Specialty Pharmacy (Inovalon)
• Supporting HHS’ Renewed Focus on Cybersecurity in Healthcare (Fortified Health Security)
• Taking a coordinated approach to strengthen rural healthcare systems against cyberattacks (Meditech)
• Five Key Strategies to Protect Healthcare Organizations from Cyberattacks (Med Tech Solutions)
• Why Investing in Internal Auditing Tools is Key to Reducing Coding Risks and Financial Losses (MRO)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

News 1/8/25

Top News

Clinical surveillance and alarm management company AirStrip Technologies acquires Decisio Health, which specializes in clinical decision support and remote patient monitoring software.

Former AirStrip CEO Alan Portela launched Depth Health, which is focused on AI-enabled patient care and traffic flow optimization, last August.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Sanford Health (SD) finalizes its acquisition of Marshfield Clinic Health System (WI), which was announced in July. Hospital leaders expect that pooled resources and access to Sanford’s $350 million virtual care center will enable the combined systems to offer more virtual care services to their rural patient populations. The organizations will invest up to $500 million to transition Marshfield from Cerner to Epic.

CalmWave announces $5.25 million in new funding. The company has developed AI software to help ICUs manage alarm fatigue.

Evidence generation platform vendor Highlander Health acquires Target RWE, which generates real-world datasets. Highlander Health was launched in September 2024 by oncologists Amy Abernethy, MD, PhD and Brad Hirsch, MD.

Teleradiology services company Onrad acquires the 80-radiologist Direct Radiology practice from Philips, making it the largest independent teleradiology vendor in the US.

Health tech venture capital firm Providence Ventures spins off from Providence to form Allumia Ventures.

Sales

• The Illinois Public Health Institute will use 4medica’s data-sharing technology to power its new Chicago Regionwide Community Information Exchange.
• AdventHealth will implement hospital-at-home software and clinical care services from Biofourmis as a part of its new remote patient monitoring program for patients in Central Florida.
• USA Health (AL) selects managed services from Healthcare IT Leaders.

People

Direct Recruiters promotes Stephen Benson and Bradley Morrison to partners.

US Air Force veteran Eric Gardner, MBA (Flagship Health) joins Leidos QTC Health Services as VP of operations. Gardner’s 20-year career in the Air Force included stints as a Medical Service Corps officer and as the CFO and VP of the Air Force Medical Operations Agency.

Topcon Healthcare names Jacques Gilbert (Nuance) chief strategy and business development officer and Christian Odaker, PhD (Smart Reporting) CTO.

Susan Grant, DNP, RN (Wellstar Health System) joins Symplr as chief clinical officer.

Impact Advisors names Wes Arnett (Compassus) as president of its revenue cycle managed services business.

Parkland Health promotes Brett Moran, MD to SVP / chief health officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Six health systems in Southeastern Ontario form the Lumeo Regional Health Information System to implement Oracle Health throughout their enterprises.

A study finds that nearly two-thirds of patients who reviewed a standard prostate pathology report were unable to determine whether they had cancer, whereas nearly all of those who received a plain-language version could easily understand their diagnosis.

Uvalde Memorial Hospital (TX) goes live on Meditech Expanse.

Analysis finds that the claims-based undiagnosed dementia algorithm of Linus Health-owned Together Senior Health can accurately identify high-risk patients.

A review by TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company finds that 96% of surveyed providers accept patient credit cards, 69% offer flexible payment plans, and four of five identify expanding payment options as a key focus area.

Other

People in every other developed nation will struggle to grasp this. A White House rule will ban lenders from factoring medical debt into loan approval decisions (affecting 15 million people owing $49 billion) and prohibit repossessing medical devices, wheelchairs, and prosthetic limbs from those who can’t pay (imagine that repo job). While it protects credit scores from billing errors that are awaiting resolution, a health justice group’s take highlights the wagging tail of medical debt while ignoring the dog: our wildly overpriced healthcare “system” that this change does little to fix:

Nobody, no matter where we live or how much money we have, should be forced to make the impossible choice between getting essential care and going into debt. And they should not have to worry that medical debt could prevent them from buying a house or securing an auto loan because of its impact on their credit.

The Lown Institute names the 2024 winners of its Shkreli Awards, which are named after the notorious price-gouging, ex-con pharma bro CEO Martin Shkreli:

1. Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD: Collected $250 million in private equity profits while the hospitals under his management declared bankruptcy.
2. UnitedHealth: Boosted Medicare Advantage profits through rushed patient visits and aggressive coding practices.
3. Amgen: Ignored research showing that its cancer drug was effective at lower, safer doses that would have reduced its revenue by $180,000 per patient annually.
4. An oncologist at St. Peter’s Hospital (MT): Administered unnecessary cancer treatments and altered patients’ end-of-life plans without their consent, becoming the hospital’s top earner.
5. Private equity-owned New Mexico Hospital: Denied care to cancer patients, even those with insurance, unless they made upfront payments.
6. Pretty in Pink Boutique: Operated a fraudulent medical supply scheme, one of seven suppliers that billed Medicare $2 billion for questionable urinary catheters in 2023.
7. Cigna: Refused to cover a $98,000 air ambulance bill for an infant who was in respiratory distress, labeling the transport as medically unnecessary.
8. Zynex Medical: Profited from shipping unordered batteries and electronic pads to users of its nerve stimulation devices, with these supplies accounting for 70% of the company’s revenue.
9. Dentist who perform dubious tongue-tie surgeries on babies: One supplier of equipment for the surgeries hosted a “Tequila and Tongue Ties” dentist training session that was followed by shots and margaritas.
10. University of North Texas Health Science Center: Sold body parts from unclaimed bodies to for-profit companies after making minimal efforts to locate relatives.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders partners with Locums Choice and Christmas Tree Santas for its annual Christmas tree giveaway benefiting the Children’s Development Academy.
• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Automating EHR Implementations: A Must-Have for Managing Healthcare Informatics.”
• Uvalde Memorial Hospital (TX) upgrades its Meditech system to Meditech Expanse.
• Inovalon completes its three-year transformation of its analytics platform to the cloud.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast titled “High-Cost Orphan Drugs, Securing Claims Data, and More, with Dr. Eric Bricker.”
• Censinet releases a new episode of its “Risk Never Sleeps. podcast, “From Stage Fright to Spotlight: Building Presentation Skills That Inspire, with Anthony Lee, partner at the Heroic Voice Academy.”
• DrFirst publishes a new guide, “Unlocking Faster Access to Specialty Medications With Prior Authorization Automation.”

Blog Posts

• Introducing Pharmafusion’s Patient Wellness Dashboard – The S’MORE of AdvancedMD data! (AdvancedMD)
• Denial Remediation: The Road to Revenue Recovery (AGS Health)
• Streamline Clinical Workflows with Meditech Expanse 2.2: A How-to Guide (CereCore)
• Maximizing Revenue Through Efficient A/R Management: Best Practices for Hospitals (FinThrive)
• Use Cases for Automated Messaging in Healthcare (Artera)
• What to Expect in Healthcare in 2025 (Dimensional Insight)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 1/6/25

Top News

The Wall Street Journal reports that UnitedHealth Group has significantly increased its Medicare Advantage payments by electronically prompting its employed and affiliated doctors to add new diagnoses.

Patient sickness scores rose by 55% among those patients who switched from traditional Medicare to UHG’s Medicare Advantage plan, boosting UnitedHealth’s revenue by $5 billion over three years.

UnitedHealth disputes the findings, asserting that it complies with Medicare payment rules and that its patients are sicker. Doctors have pointed out that the company’s motivations are likely non-clinical since it does not suggest additional diagnoses for traditional Medicare patients, as doing so would raise its costs without increasing revenue.

A previous WSJ analysis revealed that Medicare Advantage insurers collected $50 billion over three years by adding diagnoses for which doctors performed no treatment. One example is a bruising condition that generated an additional $1,900 per year per patient, which was diagnosed 28 times more often in MA patients versus traditional Medicare, with one doctor saying that the diagnosis is pointless since all she can do is tell affected patients, “Wear some sunscreen. Maybe stop bumping the wall.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Two-thirds of poll respondents think that health AI has reached Gartner’s Peak of Inflated Expectations, which is defined as generating a lot of excitement and widespread adoption attempts that fizzle when the technology’s limitations are discovered.

New poll to your right or here: Which of your local care providers has earned your most positive brand perception? I ran this poll a few years ago and a hospital / health system was the winner, but that outcome may have been influenced by respondent demographics.

I’ve played so much R.E.M. during the slow last week that I created a playlist of similar bands from all eras (mostly old by definition) that play alternative, guitar-heavy, melodic indy pop. My research turned up these and a bunch of others, all of which I’m enjoying: The Lemonheads, Bob Mould (I notice that the video includes former Superchunk drummer Jon Wurster), The Connells, Michael Penn, Matthew Sweet, Teenage Fanclub, The Posies (I recognized co-founder Ken Stringfellow because he played keyboards and bass on several R.E.M. tours), Urge Overkill, and The Auteurs. I pasted the list into ChatGPT and asked for similar bands, which gave me another few dozen to investigate.

Pundits are cranking out their annual attention-seeking lists of safely vague predictions for 2025, which hopefully will prove to be more accurate than the ones from previous years. Here is my one and only: the new administration and its replacement of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan, JD will allow private equity firms and big companies (including big health systems and their vendors) more leeway in acquiring, merging, and engaging in potentially anti-consumer behavior. Beyond that, FTC has been directly involved in the Health Breach Notification Rule, the proposed (but failed so far) banning of non-compete clauses, the requirement to disclose pay-for-play social media product reviews, the distribution of potentially biased AI algorithms, the use of consumer data by health app vendors, drug company and pharmacy benefits manager pricing, healthcare price transparency, and health-related advertising.

If I was forced to make a second prediction, it would be that major health systems will turn over some of their specialty-specific chronic care management and care coordination functions to AI tools, which will test FDA’s willingness to give its OK to such systems under the new administration. The good news is that (a) even mediocre AI is probably better than the best current efforts; (b) those new systems don’t need to connect to external data that could cause hallucinations; and (c) the scope of this work focuses on specific conditions and clinical rules. The unknown is the extent of payer willingness to give hospitals money for performing those functions, whether AI or manual.

OK, one more. My aspirational #3 prediction is that doctors will finally reassert their autonomy and push back against their undervalued role as compliant rubber stampers of patient-unfriendly corporate decisions that are imposed by insurers, health systems, and private equity owners. However, I doubt that disunited physicians can effectively challenge the status quo, as they fail to recognize the collective power they could wield if they overcame divisions based on specialty, employer type, geography, and fears of being displaced by non-physician clinical providers. The lack of cohesive leadership compounds the issue, particularly given that so few practicing physicians—especially younger ones—are AMA members and don’t agree with its business-friendly, revenue-generating positions, which leaves basically no other group or individual to lead the charge.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Censinet. The company is the leading collaborative risk network for healthcare organizations and vendors. Censinet RiskOps is the first and only cloud-based integrated platform that consolidates enterprise risk management and operations capabilities across critical business areas: clinical, regulatory, cybersecurity, research, and supply chain. This includes the company’s foundational success with third-party risk management (TPRM) for healthcare and transforms enterprise risk by making data and insight actionable. Thanks to Censinet for supporting HIStalk.

I found this video that describes how Northwell Health converted its TPRM programs and processes to Censinet.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Siemens questions whether its 75% ownership of Siemens Healthineers justifies its $47 billion investment, advising investors that it will make a decision about its involvement by the end of the year.

A Financial Times opinion piece says that investors aren’t realizing a substantial return on the $100 billion they put into digital health companies from 2020 to 2022. Factors include stiff competition, low consumer switching costs, high user acquisition costs, and the introduction of competing products from big tech companies such as Amazon.

Veradigm extends the six-month contract of interim CFO Leland Westerfield for the second time. The company fired its CEO and CFO in December 2023 for failing to comply with financial reporting. Original interim CEO Shih-Yin Ho, MD, MBA stepped down in May 2024 and was replaced as interim by Tom Langan, who remains in that role. MDRX was delisted from the Nasdaq in February 2024 for not filing its annual report for 2022.

People

ChristianaCare hires Rob Hartmann, MBA (Tegria) as VP of EHR transformation, where he will oversee its Oracle Health to Epic project.

Justin Mooneyhan, MBA (Amsurg) joins IVX Health as VP of IT / CISO.

Charlie Gibbs, who founded early hospital IT software companies Gibbs Computer Systems and First Coast Systems, died December 30. He was 84. Long-timers may want to search Vince Ciotti’s HIS-tory for his name to get a fuller picture of Jacksonville-based FCS.

Announcements and Implementations

A Department of Defense crowdsourced test identifies 800 vulnerabilities in using AI to summarize clinical notes and for powering a consumer medical chatbot. DoD will use its findings to evaluate future vendors and to develops its best practices and policies. The study was conducted by the non-profit Humane Intelligence, which gives AI model evaluators a platform for auditing and performing impact assessments. Co-founder and CEO Rumman Chowdhury PhD, MS has done similar work at Twitter and Parity, the latter of which she founded.

Black Book reports its top EHRs for specialty practices for 2025, also naming as top innovation leaders ModMed, NextGen Healthcare, Netsmart, ClinicMind, Epic, and RXNT.

DirectTrust announces updated versions of its 26 accreditation programs that took effect on January 1.

Sponsor Updates

• HCTec offers holiday support to an elderly care facility in Hohenwald, TN, and Operation Stand Down Tennessee.
• First Databank will present at the ASAP 2025 Annual Conference January 16 at Amelia Island, FL.
• Goliath Technologies publishes a new client success story, “Maimonides Medical Center Quickly Troubleshoots ‘Citrix is Slow’ Complaints.”
• Black Book Research highlights Australia’s digital health transformation in its “2025 Global Healthcare IT Rankings” report.
• QGenda publishes a new case study, “Children’s Nebraska Improves Clinical Capacity Management.”
• The “DGTL Voices with Ed Marx” pPodcast features SmartSense by Digi President Guy Yehiav, “SmartSense Disruption in Healthcare & Simple Hacks to Become a CEO.”
• TruBridge names Merideth Wilson (Experian) financial health general manager.
• Clearwater releases a new “Clear Perspective” podcast, “The Truth About EDR Killers.”
• The Philadelphia Business Journal recognizes Crossings Healthcare Solutions parent company UHS CEO Marc Miller as one of the region’s Most Admired CEOs.
• Direct Recruiters recognizes its Healthcare IT Team as a top producing team in 2024.
• EClinicalWorks announces that Indiana University Student Health Center has integrated Sunoh.ai’s AI-powered ambient listening solution with its EHR.
• Ellkay supports the Pajama Program, an initiative providing children with new pajamas and storybooks to foster a comforting and safe bedtime routine.

Blog Posts

• Transforming primary care: Inside the Making Care Primary (MCP) model (Healthmonix)
• CMS 2026 Proposed Rules: Key Takeaways for Quality and Stars Managers (Inovalon)
• Meditech Expanse: It’s Electric (Meditech)
• MRO is Advancing Quality Control Solutions for Release of Information (MRO)
• 2025 Healthcare Forecast: The Convergence of Behavioral Health, Technology, and Measurable Impact (NeuroFlow)
• 5 Ways AI is Revolutionizing IDD Care (Netsmart)
• The Power of More Data: AI’s Wheelhouse (Rhapsody)
• The Ultimate Guide to Choosing the Right QHIN: 5 Questions Every Healthcare Leader Should Ask Themselves (Surescripts)
• Key Insights From 2024: Our Experts Share Their Best Takeaways From Leading Healthcare Events (Tegria)
• Nearly 70% of the Private Practices We Surveyed Lack a Comprehensive Patient Engagement Strategy (AdvancedMD)
• Current Procedural Terminology® 2025: Key Changes and Updates (AGS Health)
• Future-forward healthcare data platform considerations (Arcadia)
• RCM Strategies: Shift Left to Prevent Denials Before They Start (Availity)
• Top 5 Ways IT and Clinical Leaders Can Collaborate on Virtual Care Programs (AvaSure)
• Pharmacy Benefits 101: The Importance of the Network (Capital Rx)
• Predictions and Prerequisites for Healthcare IT in 2025 and After (CereCore)
• How Electronic Prior Authorizations Cut Through Complexities of Specialty Medication Access (DrFirst)
• 2025 – The Year of AI Validation and Human-Centered Innovation (Medicomp Systems)
• The Unbeatable eClinicalWorks Experience (EClinicalWorks)
• Gundersen Health System Makes 15,000 Referrals in 3 Years (Findhelp)
• Why is Revenue Cycle Management Important in Healthcare? (FinThrive)
• Forget 2025 — Here Are My Top Predictions for CX in 2030 (Five9)
• A Legacy of Connection: Transforming Healthcare Through Innovation and Care (Fortified Health Security)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 12/30/24

Top News

HHS OCR issues a proposed update to the HIPAA security rule, which hasn’t been changed since 2013, to modernize the required cybersecurity practices of covered entities and their business associates.

Reader Comments

From Opus Two: “Re: VA salary cuts. A friend who is a VISN executive is about to finish reclassification of 4,000 lower-level, non-clinical jobs, which will result in sharp pay cuts. The reclassification was recommended in 2012, but the VA was able to avoid cuts by arguing that the jobs are critical. The VA also plans to reduce its workforce by 10,000 FTEs, primarily within medical facilities, during FY2025.” The American Federal of Government Employees union is pressing the VA to stop considering all position downgrades, arguing that they will hurt hiring and retention. Like all federal agencies, the VA claims that that it is understaffed (at 471,000 employees) and disputes the characterization that it never fires underperformers.

From E: “Re: Philips. More ‘silent layoffs’ that avoid drawing attention to their stock dropping.” The company has reportedly laid off around 10,000 employees in the past year or two. PHG shares are up 10% over the past 12 months, but are off nearly 60% from their five-year high in April 2021.

From Ken: “Re: VA EHRM. Is nobody noticing that the plan is now to have no implementations in 2025?” The VA says that its next Oracle Health go-live has been moved back again, this time until mid-2026. Its most recent of its six live VA Medical Centers was in March 2024, although that’s with an asterisk because it was at Lovell FHCC, which is jointly operated between the VA and DoD. Oracle Health is live in three of the VA’s 18 VISNs (Veterans Integrated Services Networks), with the planned Michigan go-lives in 2026 adding no new ones since VISN 10 is already live in Columbus, OH. The VA originally said that all of its deployments would be completed by 2028, 10 years after it signed a $10 billion no-bid contract with Cerner. A VA-commissioned  independent life cycle cost estimate in 2022 said the project will cost more than $50 billion.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

It’s Christmas or nothing for the most important winter holiday, most poll respondents said.

New poll to your right or here: Where does today’s health AI fall on the Gartner Hype Cycle?

I usually throw out an invitation for companies whose marketing budget resets on January 1 to contact me about becoming an HIStalk sponsor, which unlike conference booths or pay-for-play video interviews, offers benefits for a full year. I’ll even add a spiff or two for startups (the definition of which is beneficially vague to such prospects) or former sponsors who come back.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Telemedicine provider Avel ECare acquires Hospital Pharmacy Management, which offers remote pharmacy order verification and hospital pharmacy management.

William Febbo, CEO of drug company marketing technology firm OptimizeRx, leaves the company

Sales

• Duly Health will implement Pro Medicus’s Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform in a 10-year, $19 million contract.

People

Workforce management technology vendor Hallmark hires Michelle Lichte (Nordic Consulting Partners) as chief client success officer and promotes Brandon Chamberland to chief strategy and partnerships officer.

Haffty Consulting promotes Mark Valutkevich to VP of client services.

Announcements and Implementations

Critics warn that Health New Zealand’s planned layoff of 1,100 digital and data jobs will impact patient care and increase the risk of cyberattacks. Health NZ said two weeks ago that it will cancel or defer 136 IT projects in hopes of saving $62 million following government budget cuts. It had previously diverted funds from its widely touted Patient Summary data sharing system to stabilize its aging, unstable payroll system.

A new study finds that telehealth visits are not reliable for diagnosis tonsillitis due to the lack of ability to remotely assess all of the CENTOR diagnostic criteria (fever, tonsillar exudates, lymph node tenderness, and absence of cough) to determine if antibiotics are indicated.

Other

It’s probably more true now than ever, due to declining reading comprehension and pervasive clickbait, that the headline writer is more influential than the reporter. Shame on NPR for making TL;DR types think that Y2K was an IT cry-wolf overreaction or meme-to-be, while the actual story acknowledges that January 1, 2000 was uneventful only because an army of programmers — many of them gray-haired COBOL coders who were brought out of retirement — reviewed and fixed billions of lines of legacy code by the hard-stop due date.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
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Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 12/23/24

Top News

Ascension tells Maine’s attorney general that its May 8 ransomware attack exposed the medical and insurance information of 5.6 million people.

The 140-hospital system’s EHR was down for more than a month.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Not making the list above from last week’s poll – entering health tracking information, viewing OpenNotes, and using an app that a clinician prescribed or recommended.

New poll to your right or here: Which winter holiday is most important to you?

A Reader’s Notes from the Joint Annual Meeting of The Sequoia Project and Carequality

The meeting was held December 11-12 in Nashville.

Micky Tripathi

• Nothing groundbreaking or new. Mostly rehashed stats and updates that have been shared in other forums.
• HTI-2 final rule published that morning is a very lightweight set of changes related to TEFCA, mainly codifying terminology and procedures.
• Picture shows some TEFCA stats. Unclear why the number of participants per category doesn’t quite add up to the total of 10k.

Panel discussion on what qualifies as treatment

• Lively conversation and one of the most refreshing panels I’ve seen at a conference, if only because everyone didn’t get up there and agree with one another and pat each other on the back.
• Unstated but obvious was that the motivation for the session was the Epic-Particle dispute.
• Panel went through a few nuanced scenarios and debated whether they fit the definition of treatment (specifically, HIPAA treatment…TEFCA treatment has a slightly narrower definition). Example: provider group is part of an ACO and a physician wishes to query an HIE for records on their attributed patients to identify gaps in care, so that the provider can focus on closing those gaps. Deven McGraw (former HHS OCR Deputy Director for Health Information Privacy): once you start asking for patient information in bulk, you shift from a Treatment purpose to an Operations purpose. This led to an interesting debate on whether sending a bulk transaction (e.g., bulk FHIR) would count as Operations but writing a script to send many individual transactions patient-by-patient would count as Treatment.
• Tripathi: key thing to remember is that under HIPAA, the data responder has the prerogative to identify whether the request is for treatment or not.

Interoperability for public health

• Electronic case reporting was still a proof of concept by the end of 2019 but suddenly had to go big bang and scale due to COVID.
• Michelle Meigs (APHL): Public health has a business problem. The funding is piecemeal and focused on specific cases or reportable diseases, so it is challenging to build a comprehensive technology and interoperability framework. The fragmentation doesn’t help. Because public health is mostly handled at the state and local levels, there are 50+ sets of rules to follow.
• Craig Behm (CRISP HIE): data usability and alert fatigue are major issues for providers. They piloted public health data exchange through TEFCA with three provider organizations, .but they didn’t get any responses to their TEFCA queries in the first few months.

The theme of trust came up several times and was the focus of multiple sessions. That said, it would be more accurate to say “verification” as the main changes seem to be HIEs/QHINs introducing tighter guardrails and stronger vetting processes to prevent misuse of data.

Panel on the Carequality dispute process

• Purposefully avoided commenting on the Epic-Particle dispute, though everyone knows that’s the impetus for the discussion.
• Dispute process intentionally errs on the side of “minimum necessary” when it comes to sharing information with the public, to prevent sharing any sensitive info.
• Panelists (members of the Carequality board and steering committee) generally felt the timelines defined for the formal dispute are OK, given the time needed for the responding party to build a defense against the complaint. It also takes time to establish a dispute panel who will hear the arguments from both sides. These are all volunteers at the end of the day. Goal is that formal disputes are rarely or never needed since parties should work things out informally first.

Fireside chat with Daniel Polk (Special Agent, FBI Atlanta field office) on cybersecurity

1. Broke down the various types of malicious actors (picture attached).
2. Discussed common infiltration and deception tactics.
3. 2FA is critically important to good security, but it can be defeated. A common tactic today: hackers send you a phishing email with a malicious link. You click on it and are taken to a fake login page where you enter your username and password. Hacker receives a real-time notification and logins into the real account with your credentials. This triggers a 2FA code or push notification, which you enter or acknowledge, allowing the hacker to access your real account.
4. As soon as you believe you are the victim of ransomware, reach out to the FBI. They generally don’t publicize this, but they may have a decryption key that will work in your situation.
5. Polk highlighted the fines OCR has been leveraging on organizations who do not have good cyber hygiene and who have suffered from unauthorized disclosures.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Commure acquires Memora Health, which offers a care navigation platform.

Norway-based healthcare software vendor Omda AS acquires Aweria, which offers a best-of-breed emergency department information system.

Streamline Health reports Q3 results: revenue down 28%, EPS –$0.61 versus –$3.15. STRM shares have lost 32% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $15 million. CEO Ben Stillwel says that the company may need to seek additional non-equity capital resources to fuel growth and that he “needs to live and breathe sales.”

People

Mouneer Odeh, MA (Inova Health System) joins Cedars-Sinai as VP/chief data and AI officer.

Haffty Consulting promotes Erin Mueller to VP of client services.

Announcements and Implementations

The UT Health San Antonio School of Dentistry combines the dental and medical health records of its patients by integrating Epic’s Wisdom dental module with its EHR. Patients can view all their records and make appointments through MyChart. Epic replaces Exan’s AxiUm dental system for academic practices, which is owned by Henry Schein One.

Government and Politics

Epic asks a federal district court to dismiss the antitrust lawsuit that was brought against the company by Particle Health in September. Epic says the lawsuit fails to prove that Epic engaged in anticompetitive behavior. It adds that Particle filed the suit as revenge for Epic’s revelation that some of Particle’s customers were obtaining confidential patient information under false pretenses.

The Department of Justice sues CVS Pharmacy for knowingly filling prescriptions for controlled substances that lacked legitimate medical purpose or were invalid, many of them generated by known pill mill doctors. DOJ says CVS ignored internal data and information from its own pharmacists to keep filling the prescriptions so the company could meet corporate performance metrics that triggered field manager bonuses. CVS is also accused of preventing its pharmacists from warning each other about certain prescribers and setting pharmacist staffing levels so low that they couldn’t perform due diligence or even pay attention to computer safety alerts. One pain management doctor in Hawaii wrote prescriptions for specific patients, then picked them up himself and charged them to his own credit card, generating 60% of the prescriptions that the CVS store filled.

The VA will restart restart Oracle Health go-lives in mid-2026 at its Michigan facilities in Ann Arbor, Battle Creek, Detroit, and Saginaw.

In Canada, a former employee of Alberta Health Services is fined $12,000 for falsifying the COVID-19 records of 200 people in Meditech, which sends data to the province’s immunization system.

US healthcare spending rose 7.5% in 2023 to nearly $5 trillion, with prescription drugs showing the biggest increase due to GLP-1 drugs. Hospital services consumed $1.5 trillion of the total, rising by 10.4% in their highest growth in three decades. The US finished in near last place among 38 OECD countries in infant mortality and life expectancy despite spending four times the average dollars per capita.

Other

Doctors in Scotland voice concerns over the bankruptcy filing of In Practice Systems Limited, the provider of the Vision system widely used by the country’s GP practices, citing potential risks to system availability and access to medical records. The company is owned by Cegedim Group. NHS National Services Scotland has set up an incident response team.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders partners with Jackson Health System’s IT group to bring holiday cheer to children.
• CTG announces the retirement of long-time manager and director Christine Blanchard.
• Indiana University Student Health Center successfully uses AI-powered ambient listening solution Sunoh.ai, integrated with eClinicalWorks, to streamline clinical documentation.
• Nordic names Amy Ferro marketing content manager.
• Black Book Research releases the results of a survey highlighting how nations are leveraging advanced digital solutions to revolutionize population health management and address critical healthcare challenges.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast, “Interview with Brian Urban.”
• RLDatix releases a new episode of “The Connection” podcast, “Technology + Humanity in Healthcare: Insights from Dan Michelson, CEO of RLDatix.”
• Sectra will provide its platform for medical education, Sectra Education Portal, to the University of Hartford in Connecticut.
• SnapCare co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer Jeff Richards receives the 2024 Georgia Titan 100 award.

Blog Posts

• From Compliance to Care: The Expanding Role of EVV in Personal Care Services (Netsmart)
• 3 top benefits of AI for the IT support desk (Nordic)
• CHIME’s Fall Forum: Shaping the Future of Healthcare with AI and Data Modernization (Prominence Advisors)
• Streamline Clinical Workflows with MEDITECH Expanse 2.2: A How-to Guide (CereCore)
• From Complexity to Simplicity: One Clinic’s Journey to Corepoint (Rhapsody Health)
• How to use QR codes in patient rooms (Sonifi Health)
• On the Same (Sheet of Music) in Healthcare (Surescripts)
• Key Insights From the 10th Annual NGPX Healthcare Experience Conference (Tegria)
• RSNA 2024: Visage’s Top Five (Visage Imaging)
• Year in review: 6 key milestones that advanced Waystar’s mission in 2024 (Waystar)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

News 12/20/24

Top News

Alphabet’s Verily will reportedly shift focus in 2025 to offering AI tools, data aggregation, and privacy systems for healthcare providers and startups.

The company plans to relaunch Lightpath, its diabetes and hypertension app with AI and human coaching, in 2026.

The most profitable business of Verily, which is often criticized for its unfocused life sciences projects, is Granular Insurance, which helps employers cut healthcare costs.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Long-time HIStalk Founding Sponsor Healthwise (they first signed up in 2011) is leaving the fold due to its acquisition by WebMD. That leaves a rare opening in the two ad positions at the top of the page, so if your company would like to join Medicomp up there in the HIStalk stratosphere, contact Lorre. Could be a new sponsor, could be an upgrading one … we usually go with whoever commits first.

Ms. G from Texas sent over some photos of her fourth graders using the headphones that were provided by a reader’s donation and matching funds from my Anonymous Vendor Executive. She says, “These students are more engaged and confident, showing improved focus during lessons and taking more ownership of their learning. The headphones have also encouraged collaboration, as students can now listen to different parts of a lesson at their own pace while sharing insights with classmates.”

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Finland-based smart ring maker Oura raises $200 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $5 billion, with glucose biosensing company Dexcom participating in the round.

Confido Health raises $3 million in funding to continue rollout of its no-code AI agents for appointment management, insurance verification, and care coordination in specialty practices. It provides the “AI workers” to customers at an hourly rate.

Sales

• Safety net, 150-bed Nashville General Hospital will implement Oracle Health CommunityWorks.
• Johns Hopkins Medicine will implement Abridge’s ambient documentation solution across its six hospitals and 40 care centers.
• Arisa Health selects Netsmart’s CareFabric.

People

Symplr names Steve Filler, MHA, MPH (Boston Consulting Group) as COO and Matt Grill (UKG) as chief delivery officer.

Advantus Health Partners hires Rick Roycroft, MBA (Huron Consulting Group) as chief commercial officer.

Amwell adds COO to the role of CFO Mark Hirschornm who joined the company in October 2024.

Announcements and Implementations

Doc.com will expand its AI-powered healthcare platform to provide initially free hospital tools for telemedicine and online pharmacy services. The company received $300 million in equity financing a year ago. The Mexico-based company has faced skepticism for making questionable product claims and its active involvement in the cryptocurrency market.

Agilon Health will integrate Navina’s AI engine with its value-based care platform.

Mesh Health Solutions and KONZA will partner to stream the prior authorization process.

Government and Politics

The VA will resume its implementation of Oracle Health this fiscal year after placing rollouts on hold in April 2023 due to problems in its first five live sites. The VA says that system crashes and performance issues dropped 50% after its latest round of software updates, also noting that it discovered that many users were logging in via VPN even while connected to its internal network, which caused performance lags. VA officials downplayed the possible impact of having the new administration’s political appointees taking VA leadership roles.

Sponsor Updates

• Five hundred Meditech employees donate a variety of items to support 32 households during the company’s annual Holiday Giving initiative.
• Black Book Market Research publishes its survey findings on population health applications in emerging markets.
• Wolters Kluwer’s new “25 for ‘25” report predicts key healthcare technology trends driving momentum amid dramatic change in 2025.
• EClinicalWorks announces that customer Fairfax Medical Facilities (OK) was recognized by HRSA with a ‘Health Center Quality Leader – Gold’ badge for its 2023 Uniform Data System submissions.
• RLDatix supports The Leapfrog Group’s Proposed Changes to the 2025 Leapfrog Hospital Survey, specifically revisions calling for greater specification in the collection of data related to ICU staffing and the nursing workforce.
• Black Book Research identifies top vendors of FHIR-based prior authorization interoperability solutions, including Availity, Redox, and Rhapsody.
• First Databank will present at the American Society for Automation in Pharmacy 2025 Annual Conference January 16 in Amelia Island, FL.
• Findhelp welcomes the Appalachian Children Coalition, Community Foundation of Elkhart County, Hospital Sisters Health System, and Nassau County Department of Health to its network.
• CTG announces the retirement of Managing Director Christine Blanchard after 27 years with the company and the national search for her replacement.
• Fortified Health Security launches its inaugural advisory board.
• Goliath Technologies publishes a new case study, “Leading not-for-profit health system isolates and resolves speed & reliability of Citrix related Epic and ChromeOS device issues.”
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast, “From the Gift Shop to the C-Suite.”
• Impact Advisors releases a new Impactful AI Podcast, “The Ethics of Human Autonomy in AI.”
• Inovalon releases a new “Inovators” podcast, “AI in Healthcare: The Value of Innovative Technology, Paired with Clinical Expertise.”

Blog Posts

• 2025 – The Year of AI Validation and Human-Centered Innovation (Medicomp Systems)
• Driving momentum in healthcare technology amid dramatic change (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Boost Staff Productivity and Cut Costs with RPA in Healthcare (FinThrive)
• 5 Common Examples of Unintentional HIPAA Violations (HealthMark Group)
• Essential Customer Service Skills Every Contact Center Agent Should Master (Five9)
• 5 Ways an IT Partner Can Cure Physician Headaches and Boost Practice Efficiency (Med Tech Solutions)
• Essential strategies for value-based success in 2025 (Navina)
• How MUSC Leverages Telehealth to Reimagine Rural Healthcare (NeuroFlow)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

News 12/18/24

Top News

ASTP publishes the HTI-3 final rule, which addresses information blocking.

The rule adds a definition of “reproductive health care” and protects patients from legal action where an actor limits the sharing of their electronic health information that may relate to reproductive healthcare.

HTI-3 will likely require review by the new administration, which may have motivated the publication of the HTI-2 rule and its reproductive healthcare section separately to avoid delaying HCI-2’s USCDI standard version, certification program standards, and TEFCA standards. ASTP said that HTI-2, whose draft version was slimmed down by 85% for the final version, will be spread over several separate rules.

Reader Comments

From Bexley: “Re: charges for insurance appeals. See this BCBS notice to clients in which the company has decided to charge $205 for second-level appeals. I have never seen anything like this and am frankly appalled that insurance would put such an onerous demand on rural and CAH markets. My fear is that there will be more to come that will tilt the deck against financially struggling facilities. My suspicion is that they are doing this because automated appeals have broken their revenue models, which depend on a majority of claims never been appealed by hospitals and other providers.”

From Elucidate: “Re: conferences. HLTH was always for-profit and investor-backed, and now the HIMSS conference is, too. Is that the new standard?” Apparently. Member non-profits have done a good job in creating and managing their conferences, but it takes a lot of expertise and focus to scale them up and to extract the maximum all-important revenue from corporate supporters. For member groups, conferences are the core revenue generator but not the core business. One might speculate that the Big Daddy of healthcare conferences, RSNA and its 40,000 attendees, has had options for its future extended. Here’s a fun fact to know and tell: with the HIMSS conference and HLTH/ViVE acquired in just over 12 months, both conferences are now operated by London-based companies, where the sun never sets on the British conference empire.

This item made me think of my previous areas of uncertainty about HIMSS:

• IRS Form 990 — still hasn’t filed one since FY2021 that I’ve seen. I’m still wondering if they converted to for-profit since IRS requires yearly reporting for non-profits.
• Listed as a non-profit on the IRS website — no.
• HIMSS Accelerate — seems to have been finally shut down as the previous link now redirects to the HIMSS membership page and former Accelerate Managing Director Dennis Upah’s LinkedIn says that “much of the functionality was ultimately reorganized within HIMSS itself” as he gave up his Accelerate managing director role in September.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Navina. Navina is the market-leading clinical intelligence platform, leveraging AI to transform fragmented patient data into a concise patient profile with actionable clinical insights. Designed for and loved by physicians, Navina enables proactive and empathic patient care, increasing clinician satisfaction, reducing burden, and improving value-based care outcomes. Privia Health, Agilon Health, and Millennium Physician Group are among some of the leading value-based care organizations leveraging Navina’s AI platform to transform clinical workflows and improve quality performance. The company won recognition in the 2024 MedTech Breakthrough Awards, KLAS Emerging Solutions Top 20 report, and the CB Insights Digital Health 50 list. Founded in 2019, Navina is used daily by over 7,000 clinicians across the United States, impacting the lives of more than two million patients. Thanks to Navina for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Toronto-based Healwell AI will acquire global healthcare technology company Orion Health, based in New Zealand, for $116 million. Healwell acquired a majority stake in Mutuo Health Solutions earlier this month, and acquired Canadian healthcare data software vendor VeroSource for $24.5 million in June.

Tuva Health, an open-source healthcare data and analytics startup, raises $5 million in seed funding. Co-founders Aaron Neiderhiser and Jorge Zuloaga spent time in executive roles at Health Catalyst and Strive Health, respectively, before launching Tuva in 2021.

Enterprise identity security company SailPoint Technologies acquires Imprivata’s identity governance and administration business.

Kahuna Workforce Solutions, which offers skills and competency management solutions, receives an unspecified investment from Memorial Hermann Health System.

Sales

• Mid and South Essex Foundation Trust and Essex Partnership University NHS Foundation Trust in England will implement Oracle Health in 2026-27.
• Rural healthcare cooperative Cibolo Health selects population health management software from The Garage.

People

Mari Spung, MBA (Clinical Computer Systems) joins Medhost as SVP of research and development.

Adele Merritt, PhD (Office of the Director of National Intelligence), joins the National Institutes of Health as CIO.

HealthEdge hires Julie Coviello (E4health) as VP of professional services – delivery executive.

Aptarro, formerly Alpha II, hires Lori Jones (Agiliti) as chief growth officer and promotes Dave Douglas, MBA to COO.

Announcements and Implementations

MultiPlan announces GA of CompleteVue healthcare pricing analytics.

Black Book Research offers free access to the 2025 edition of “The Black Book of Global Healthcare Information Technology,” a 540-page guide to healthcare IT adoption worldwide. The company also releases its ratings of 175 EHR vendors across 110 countries, based on 18 critical performance indicators. 

Epic announces that its Nexus QHIN has connected 625 hospitals since it joined the framework in December 2023.

Government and Politics

Nebraska Attorney General Mike Hilgers sues Change Healthcare, UnitedHealth Group, and Optum for allegedly violating the state’s consumer protection and data security laws during and after the ransomware attack on Change in February 2024 that exposed the information of 575,000 residents. Hilgers says that while Nebraska is the first state to file such a lawsuit, it likely won’t be the last.

Privacy and Security

An unidentified ransomware group threatens via fax to publish data stolen from PIH Health (CA) during a December 1 ransomware attack that continues to impact the provider’s IT systems. PIH staff are “scrambling,” according to one employee. “It’s a day-to-day thing. The majority of locations have not used paper in 15 years. It’s a stark awakening.”

Watsonville Community Hospital (CA) restores its EHR after a ransomware attack the day after Thanksgiving forced its staff to move to paper-based documentation.

A new federal breach report from Phreesia indicates that 900,000 people that their personal health data was exposed in a May breach of its ConnectOnCall telehealth and on-call answering platform, which it acquired in October 2023.

Other

Houston Methodist and Rice University establish the Digital Health Institute to develop new AI-enhanced solutions for telehealth, patient self-management, medical devices and wearables, predictive analytics, and early detection and diagnosis of conditions.

Nebraska Medicine opens the 17-room Innovation Design Unit at University of Nebraska Medical Center. The patient care unit will allow clinical staff and researchers to design, test, and validate advanced care models, new technologies, and facility designs.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Physician CIO on the Value of Clinical IT Support.”
• Linus Health announces that its Core Cognitive Evaluation solution has earned European Union Medical Device Regulation Class IIa certification. 
• Artera offers a new customer success story, “Jane Pauley Community Health Center Increases Access to Care Across Community-Based Populations in Central Indiana with Artera.”
• Ascom launches the Myco 4 DECT-WiFi smartphone, combining DECT and WiFi capabilities.
• AvaSure becomes a founding sponsor of the American Telemedicine Association’s new Center of Digital Excellence.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare podcast, “What Project 2025, RFK Jr., and Dr. Oz Could Mean for the Business of Healthcare Under Trump.”
• DrFirst offers a new whitepaper, “The Perils and the Promise of AI in Healthcare.”

Blog Posts

• How Outside Partners are Changing Epic Implementations for the Better (CereCore)
• Agfa Insights: RSNA 2024 Key Takeaways (Agfa HealthCare)
• State of Patient Access: Survey Results and Insights Centralization, Analytics, and Automation (AGS Health)
• Extending your reach: How outsourcing your revenue cycle drives better financials (Altera Digital Health)
• Risk adjustment in healthcare: The ultimate guide for payers (Arcadia)
• Embracing Diversity and Inclusion in Recruitment: Building a More Inclusive Workforce (Direct Recruiters)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

Readers Write: The Path To Getting Value From AI In Healthcare

The Path To Getting Value From AI In Healthcare
By Vikas Chowdhry

Vikas Chowdhry, MS, MBA is founder and CEO of  TraumaCare.AI.

What are the three most critical elements for deriving value from AI in healthcare? In my view, it comes down to: Workflow! Workflow! Workflow!

What does workflow mean in practical terms? It means a deep understanding of:

1. The jobs that your users are doing.
2. The constraints in which they are doing those jobs.

And then figuring out how (if) AI can be used precisely to help them with those jobs.

Here, I use “jobs” in the sense of Clayton Christensen’s “jobs to be done” framework, which focuses on the core tasks users need to accomplish.

In healthcare, workflows vary widely. A surgeon’s daily routine differs drastically from that of a critical care nurse or a radiologist. Even within the same specialty, factors like location — an urban hospital versus a suburban health system — further shape how work is done.

A scene from the movie “Shocktrauma,” which portrays the life of Dr. R Adams Cowley (often called the father of trauma medicine), captures this point well. In this scene, William Conrad, playing Dr. Cowley, discusses trauma care with a skeptical hospitalist, Dr. “Tex” Goodnight:

Conrad: “Shock! Think of it as a pause in the act of dying.”

Tex: “So what do you do about it? What’s different here?”

Conrad: “You tell me, a patient comes to see you, what do you do? What’s the first thing?”

Tex: “Well, I first take history.”

Conrad: “OK, so you tell him to sit down, you sit in your chair, and you smile at him, and then you say very slowly and very quietly – have you ever had a heart attack sir, are you a diabetic, is there cancer in your family?”

Tex: “That’s right”

Conrad: “And then what?”

Tex: “Then I examine him.”

Conrad: “Which prompts more questions. Where does that scar come from, does this hurt, have you always had those bumps? All right. Now that the history and examination have been done, now what you do?”

Tex: “I make a diagnosis.”

Conrad: “And then you can start to treat, is that right?”

Tex: Nods.

Conrad: “Except by then, our kind of patient is dead. We’ve got to get them fast.”

This conversation highlights how a clinician’s workflow — what steps they take, in what order, and under what time constraints — defines what information they need and when.

More recently, our potential users have expressed similar sentiments. During a brainstorming session to redesign our user interface, a trauma surgeon we closely collaborate with said, “I think the differentiator now is not just ‘Give me data.’ Don’t just hand me a number from your predictive mode Give me information I can act on. I need something that helps me do something next, right? Give me information so I can make a decision in a very short period of time.”

That’s workflow!

If you’re providing AI software to trauma surgeons, you must deliver actionable insights to them within seconds. If you’re providing solutions for a clinician like Dr. Tex, the functionality and interface need to reflect his more measured diagnostic process. That takes research, effort, and a deep commitment.

In the health tech ecosystem, workflow-oriented solutions are sometimes trivialized as point solutions and the goal often is to become a platform, for two reasons:

1. Platforms suggest a larger total addressable market and lofty growth projections, which investors love.
2. Healthcare organizations often prefer fewer vendors to manage, which makes a single platform appealing.

But to truly realize value from AI, we need to see platforms and workflow solutions as complementary rather than competing approaches. Think of it this way: a strong foundation and solid structure are essential for any house. But designing a home that people actually want to live in demands attention to how they will use each space. Healthcare workflows, if anything, are infinitely more complex and variable than day-to-day needs of people living in a house. So, a healthcare AI platform might provide the technical backbone, but truly valuable solutions require deep understanding of the day-to-day workflows of the people who rely on it.

By prioritizing workflow-oriented AI solutions, we ensure that healthcare professionals get the support they need, in the form they need it. That’s the key to driving adoption, improving the quality of care, and ultimately realizing meaningful value from AI in healthcare.

Monday Morning Update 12/16/24

Top News

The American Telemedicine Association launches the ATA Center of Digital Excellence, whose big-name health system members will work to advance the integration of digital care pathways.

Reader Comments

From Sparky: “Re: Payer EDI systems. I hear they are having major volume and congestion issues, particularly eligibility.” Readers, what say you?

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

It’s 2:1 IPhones to Android phones among poll respondents.

New poll to your right or here: Which health activities have you performed on a mobile device in the past year? (multiple answers OK)

Friday will mark the most universal, logical, and non-contentious winter holiday of Yalda, an ancient celebration of the longest night of the year (although not the earliest sunset, which was December 7 for astronomically complicated reasons). Here’s the definition I run every year:

Yalda celebrants, most of them in Iran and nearby countries, observe the winter solstice, the last day of autumn and the longest night of the year, after which hours of daylight start increasing again. People stay up all night, eat watermelon and pomegranates (their glowing colors symbolize dawn and life), read poetry, and dance and play drums when the sun rises in a triumph of light over dark. Yalda means “birth.” I like it even beyond my personal obsession with changing hours of daylight — nobody is excluded or favored since the same sun shines down on us all, although I suppose folks in the Southern Hemisphere would need to buy their Yalda pomegranates in June.

Long-time reader Bill made a generous donation to Donors Choose, which after applying some nice matching money from various sources that include my Anonymous Vendor Executive, fully funded these teacher grant requests:

• Math flashcards and formula reference sheets for the Honors Algebra and Geometry middle school classes of Ms. W in Oklahoma City, OK (she sent the above note within a few minutes of the project’s funding Sunday afternoon).
• Whiteboard markers and erasers for Ms. B’s middle school class in Tarboro, NC.
• Math posters and learning games for first-year teacher Mr. P’s bilingual middle school classes in Chicago, IL.
• Headphones for Dr. H’s high school class in New Orleans, LA.
• Cell models for Ms. A’s middle school class in Dallas, TX.
• A document camera for Ms. H’s middle school class in Yonkers, NY.
• Microscopes, human body models, and STEM building kits for Ms. P’s elementary school class in Dallas, TX.

Meanwhile, here’s a photo from Ms. J in San Diego that shows her students using the reader-funded Ozobot coding tools in her elementary school class. She also sent a note: “The students have loved our new Ozobot coding center which has come to life thanks to this project. Thanks to the child friendly way that Ozobot is able to operate, I was able to quickly explain how the Ozobots work with the color code magnets, then leave the students to create pathways and code by themselves. My students are enamored with creating their own instructions for the Ozobots, and then watching the Ozobots go around their custom made paths. I wish I was able to send video through Donors Choose, because the way they interact with each other while building their own paths is heartwarming.”

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Sales

• Bamboo Health will provide the State of Hawaii with enhanced prescription drug monitoring that is integrated with EHR and pharmacy management system workflows.

People

David Grandy (Kaiser Permanente) joins Risant Health as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

A Black Book survey of 820 UK clinicians, IT staff, and administrators finds that nearly all believe that NHS needs to replace its antiquated system to reduce productivity losses. They also recommend expanding training and engaging clinicians in EHR procurement decisions. The IT leaders identified the need for vendor-neutral, standards-based platforms to foster data sharing.

Orlando Health and the Florida Department of Health go live on CDC-funded Detor, which allows sharing lab test orders and results among providers and public health laboratories. The initial use case is to allow health system clinicians to see the results of newborn screening, which is mostly performed by public health labs. The organizations are Detor’s first users. The system is built on AIMS, the cloud-based healthcare messaging service that was developed by the Association of Public Health Laboratories.

Five-hospital Independence Health System (PA) launches a joint venture with Mitsui & Co. to form healthcare analytics firm AveHealth USA.

Government and Politics

A GAO report notes that the VA’s implementation of Oracle Health was preceded by three EHR modernization projects, all of which were abandoned: HealtheVet, IEHR, and VistA Evolution. GAO made 10 recommendations to the VA in May 2023 to address change management, user satisfaction, trouble ticket resolution, and independent assessments, with the VA concurring with all 10 but having implemented none so far. GAO made several other recommendations related to the VA’s IT governance, software licenses, and cloud computing, none of which have been implemented. The VA has requested $894 million for the Oracle Health project for FY2025 and $6.2 billion for the total budget of its Office of Information and Technology. 

NASA posts an RFI for a possible replacement of its decades-old EHR, which is primarily used at Johnson Space Center. I’m not clear on how that differs from a similar one from March 2024.

The government of Slovakia warns 3,300 hospital physicians who have resigned effective January 1 over poor working conditions that they will be jailed if they don’t keep working. A similar dispute with the medical trade union in 2011 required the government to bring in military doctors from Czechia. Doctors also staged a work protest that year in writing sick notes for each other, which has been banned in the new decree.

Other

Eric Topol, MD summarizes a new journal article that calls for developing personalized lab result reference values instead of the current “one size fits all” population-based ones. He suggests using AI to study an individual’s “setpoints” from the results of multiple CBCs to call out subtle changes that could identify high-risk people.

In China, a pregnant woman is forced to walk to catch a cab ride to a hospital to deliver her baby after her EV car fails to start because it was in the middle of a 51-minute software update that her husband inadvertently approved. Her husband called Li Auto, the car’s manufacturer, and was told that the update could not be stopped. The woman’s unplanned brisk walk elevated the fetal heart rate, requiring an emergency C-section once she reached the hospital, She summarizes, “I have a car, but I had to walk through the agony of a dilated cervix just to hail a taxi. Every step is excruciating.”

Sponsor Updates

• Rhapsody Health offers a new customer story, “From data ingestion to production in less than 30 days: How Zephyr AI uses Rhapsody Semantic to create precise AI models at scale.”

Blog Posts

• Empowering Leadership in the IDD Community: 4 Lessons from Precious Myers-Brown’s Inspiring Keynote (Netsmart)
• Breaking the rules to save lives: Why healthcare needs a policy to override policies (Nordic)
• CHIME’s Fall Forum: Shaping the Future of Healthcare with AI and Data Modernization (Prominence Advisors)
• What to Look for in a Healthcare Staffing Partner: Your Ultimate Guide to Building a Better Workforce (SnapCare)
• 2025 Predictions: Going Places Together—with a Shared Purpose (Surescripts)
• Succeeding in Value-Based Care: Part 3 (Tegria)
• Year in review: 6 key milestones that advanced Waystar’s mission in 2024 (Waystar)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

News 12/13/24

Top News

ASTP publishes a slimmed-down version of the TEFCA HTI-2 final rule. Some parts that were unrelated to TEFCA, such as those related to public health data exchange and payer API standards, were moved to another final rule that is being reviewed by the Office of Management and Budget.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Teacher Mr. F in New York City sent over photos of his middle school students using the STEM kits that were provided by a reader’s donation.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Analytics platform vendor Particle Health, which recently filed a lawsuit against Epic for antitrust behavior, raises $10 million from existing investors. Insiders say the money won’t be used to fund the lawsuit’s expenses.

CoachCare,which offers tools for remote patient monitoring and virtual care, raises $11 million in funding.

Patient engagement software vendor SpinSci raises $53 million in growth equity funding.

Health system risk analytics vendor 1m raises $10 million in Series A funding, most of it from large health systems. The two co-founders are former Goldman Sachs VPs.

Business Insider profiles Claimable, which offers patients an AI-powered platform to help them appeal their health insurer’s medication coverage denials. The company says that its $40 service has an 85% success rate in getting denials overturned.

Microsoft hires several former employees of Google’s DeepMind to run its new London-based AI consumer health team.

Sales

• University of Cincinnati Health chooses Laudio’s workflow hub for hospital frontline leaders.
• Gibson Area Hospital and Health Services, the country’s fifth-largest Critical Access Hospital, will implement Meditech Expanse under the Meditech-as-a-Service cloud delivery model.

Announcements and Implementations

The first participants in Meditech’s Traverse Exchange — the company’s nationwide private, FHIR-first network that went live in the US in August following its launch in Canada — begin exchanging health data. The service includes connections to CommonWell and Carequality and offers an embedded record locator service.

The Sequoia Project publishes the Data Usability Implementation Guide Version 2 that was created by its Interoperability Matters Data Usability Workgroup.

Ellkay seeks nominations for its Women in Health IT digital health series.

Atropos Health, which provides evidence-based clinical insights by analyzing real-world data, offers access to its Atropos Evidence Network to developers and health systems for AI training.

Privacy and Security

Puerto Rico-based clearinghouse Immediata Health Group pays $250,000 to settle charges that it stored the information of 1.5 million patients unsecured on the internet, allowing it to be found via Google searches. The company previously paid $2.5 million in civil settlements that were related to the misconfigured server.

A report finds that hospitals are administering pain and epidural medications to pregnant women during their C-sections, then reporting the women to child welfare authorities when their newborns test positive for the same drugs. Hospitals often file the reports without checking the mother’s medical records, frequently placing the responsibility on social workers who have little drug testing experience or authority. At least 27 states require reporting a baby’s positive test, but none of them require hospitals to confirm the results before doing so.

A UK court dismisses an appeal that would have reactivated a privacy case that involves the transfer of patient data from The Royal Free London NHS Trust to Google-owned DeepMind to use in a kidney injury detection app.

Sponsor Updates

• A new EClinicalWorks survey finds that AI is a catalyst to transform the healthcare industry, with 90% of respondents reporting favorable views of AI.
• Ellkay publishes a new success story featuring Delta Pathology + Omega Diagnostics, “Optimizing Efficiency for Independent Labs.”
• Findhelp offers a new case study, “NYC Health + Hospitals Supports 100,000+ Patients in Six Months Using Automated Epic-Findhelp Social Determinants of Health Assessment Integration.”
• Five9 announces that it has won the 2024 Aragon Research Innovation Award for AI Contact Centers and been named a Leader in two Aragon Research Globe reports, “AI Agent Platforms in the ICC, 2025,” and “Intelligent Contact Center, 2025.”
• Goliath Technologies releases a new case study, “Leading not-for-profit health system isolates and resolves speed & reliability of Citrix related Epic and ChromeOS device issues .”
• Modern Healthcare recognizes Clearwater and Laudio as two of the Best in Business of 2024.
• Impact Advisors releases a new Impactful AI podcast titled “Inside the ‘Minds’ of LLMs: Behavioral Capabilities & Quirks.”
• Linus Health names former Providence president Mike Butler as an independent board director.
• KLAS Arch Collaborative features Meditech customer Ozarks Healthcare’s enhanced physician user experience in two case studies.

Blog Posts

• AI and the Age of Intelligence Has Arrived (EClinicalWorks)
• Healthcare Cybersecurity Threats: November 2024 (Fortified Health Security)
• Transforming Patient Access: Epic Optimization Drives Scheduling Efficiency and Revenue Growth (Health Data Movers)
• Release of Information and Audits: Birds of a Feather (And They Should Stick Together!) (HealthMark Group)
• How to Use Epic Gold Stars to Maximize Your EHR Investment (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Is Your ACO Prepared to Report Promoting Interoperability Measures for All ACO Participants? (Impact Advisors)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

News 12/11/24

Top News

CVC Capital Partners will likely acquire German health IT company CompuGroup Medical in a take-private deal valued at $1.2 billion. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2025.

CGM acquired EMDs in 2020 in a $240 million deal that included the assets of Aprima Medical Software, which EMDs had acquired the year before. CGM, which has a US office in Austin, also acquired certain European assets of Cerner’s portfolio around the same time for $236 million.

Reader Comments

From Independent Primary Care: “Re: CareMax. Has laid off 530 employees since filing for bankruptcy in November. I think it’s safe to say that the Medicare Gold Rush has ended with the implosion of VillageMD, Walmart Health, Cano Health, Clinical Care Medical Centers, and now CareMex. Who’s next? Amazon’s One Medical, CVS’s Oak Street, or Optum?” CareMax, which is a Medicare Advantage delivery system, hopes to sell its management services organization and care centers to Revere Medical, the private equity-backed recent acquirer of Steward Health Care’s physician group. CMAX shares, which began trading in 2021 via a SPAC merger, are approaching worthlessness. The sustainability of MA value-based care is uncertain due to high labor costs, unexpectedly high demand for services, competition among publicly traded companies, and more complicated payment rules that are tied to quality ratings. The MA business isn’t making anyone happy, as those plans cost taxpayers a lot more money than traditional Medicare, companies use questionable diagnostic and documentation practices to exploit the system, and sicker patients who encounter MA denials or restrictions can move their high costs to traditional Medicare when it benefits them.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Oracle reports Q2 results: revenue up 9%, EPS $1.10 versus $0.89, missing Wall Street expectations for both and sending shares moderately down. The company’s healthcare business wasn’t mentioned except as a use case for its AI agents.

Walgreens is reportedly considering selling itself to private equity firm Sycamore Partners in a take-private transaction. The drugstore operator is struggling with lower prescription payments and front-of-store competition with Walmart and online retailers such as Amazon. It took a $6 billion charge this year for the declining value of its investment in primary care operator VillageMD, its only significant non-drugstore business. Sycamore invests in dying mall retail businesses such as Hot Topic, Belk, and Lane Bryant and, like most PE firms, has a history of loading its acquisitions with debt and pulling out billions of dollars from the already-struggling businesses.

The US Patent and Trademark Office grants TeamBuilder a patent for its predictive staff scheduling technology that incorporates patient volume, workflow, and employee availability and characteristics.

Healthcare workflow AI startup Evidently raises $15 million in a Series A funding round.

A new KLAS report on clinical communications technologies finds that PerfectServe Telmediq is the most broadly adopted and has the most users live on physician scheduling, while users of TigerConnect and Symplr report simple deployments and easy adoption. End user training and integration are the biggest implementation obstacles.

Sales

• Syracuse Area Health (NE) will launch telenephrology services using technology from Teledigm Health.
• Sanford Health (SD) selects Availity’s Essentials Pro RCM software.

People

Wolters Kluwer names Mark Sherwood, MBA (Microsoft) EVP/CIO.

Lori Jones (Agiliti) joins Aptarro as chief growth officer.

C3HIE promotes Jim Hoag, MA, MBA to interim CEO. He takes over from Phil Beckett, who will join Texas Health Services Authority as CEO.

RhythmX AI names Andrei Zudin, PhD (Carequality) head of interoperability and security.

Tyler Turner (Optum) joins Edifecs as RVP of payer sales.

Announcements and Implementations

Broward Health (FL) goes live on Epic.

Privacy and Security

HealthAlliance (NY) will pay a $550,000 fine for its failure to prevent a cyberattack in July 2023 that exposed the information of 243,000 patients. The organization had been made aware of a system vulnerability by one of its vendors, but failed to implement a patch because of technical issues.

Other

Informatics researchers propose adapting the Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments (CLIA) model — which allows labs to develop and modify FDA-approved tests without further review — to regulate healthcare AI. The framework could include local oversight, risk stratification, assurance of appropriate staff training, validation of developer claims using local data, a recalibration schedule, ongoing quality control, and a certification program for AI-competent organizations.

Sponsor Updates

• Cardamom Health moves to new offices in downtown Madison, WI.
• The Norwegian healthcare region Helse Nord RHF will expand its use of Sectra’s enterprise imaging solution to include digital pathology.
• Agfa HealthCare recaps its team’s experience at RSNA with daily updates.
• Arcadia publishes a new report, “The current state of healthcare analytics platforms.”
• Availity promotes Sujin Park to senior marketing operations manager.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “What’s Hot In and Around the Pharmacy Supply Chain, with RSM’s Tom Evegan.”
• Cardamom Health moves to new and expanded office space in downtown Madison, WI.
• CTG publishes a new whitepaper, “Optimizing the Epic Journey: Workflow Alignment as the Cornerstone of EHR Success.”
• Divurgent publishes a new success story, “Integrating Project Portfolio and IT Operations Management at the Child Mind Institute (CMI).”

Blog Posts

• Succeeding in Value-based Care: Part 2 (Tegria)
• Flipping the script: Why nurses stay (Altera Digital Health)
• VA Hospital Fall Prevention: A Pathway to Zero Falls (AvaSure)
• Navigating the HIPAA Privacy Rule for Reproductive Healthcare: Compliance Essentials Before the December 2024 Deadline (Clearwater)
• Physician CIO Advice: Scaling Health IT in Rural America (CereCore)
• Speeding Access to Specialty Meds in Oncology: How Electronic Prior Authorizations Make It Possible (DrFirst)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 12/9/24

Top News

HHS OCR fines Children’s Hospital Colorado $548,000 for HIPAA breaches involving phishing and cyberattacks.

In the first incident from 2020, an IT help desk technician disabled two-factor authentication for a physician’s account and forgot to turn it back on. The 2020 breaches occurred when two employees accepted phony multi-factor authentication requests.

Multi-factor authentication attacks usually involve sending a user a phishing link to a phony login page that looks like the real thing, using the login credentials that they enter to initiate a password reset, and then getting them to divulge the 2FA code that they receive by text message.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents expect HHS to change for the worse under the new administration and leadership. I intentionally didn’t qualify what “better” or “worse” means, allowing respondents to make their own interpretation.

New poll to your right or here:  What OS runs your primary personal cell phone?

Listening: a dazzling remake of Pink Floyd’s “Comfortably Numb” by Body Count, rapper Ice-T’s 35-year-old heavy metal band. The Tonight Show video shows how good he and his band are at reworking a legendary song after obtaining unlikely permission from the perpetually feuding David Gilmour and Roger Waters. His wall of guitars is searing on Fallon, but the official video features the 80-year-old Gilmour himself – who approved Ice-T’s request and then asked if  he could get involved — reprising the song that he and Waters wrote 50 years ago with a full six minutes of his unmistakable guitar. A lyrical snip:  “You’ve got a TV, a computer, so you don’t care; A roof, some clothes, some food, that’s right, it’s all there; Lock yourself in your house, try to forget about; The millions dyin’ from wars, starvation and drought.” Also deep from life’s experience: new from Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds (live video here). Cave has pushed through the deaths of two sons to turn grief into hope and reflection on “Wild God,” which takes exuberant advantage of his full band and a choir compared to some sparely accompanied poetry on his last couple of albums.

Pet peeve: websites that won’t let you look at a page until you disable your adblocker, after which it then throws up a paywall lockout.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cardiac imaging Cleerly raises $106 million in a Series C funding extension. The company applies AI to heart CT scans for early detection of coronary artery disease.

Sales

• Four Interim HealthCare agencies will implement Netsmart’s CareFabric EHR in their post-acute care settings.

Announcements and Implementations

Oura enhances its smart rings with Symptom Radar, an “illness warning light” that watches for changes from the wearer’s long-term baseline of pulse, heart rate variability, temperature, and respiratory rate.

OnMed unveils CareStation, a “clinic in a box” system that targets underserved communities. The company says that its product, which offers real-time clinician consultation and tools for measuring vital signs, is being used in five locations. It will be officially introduced next month at CES, where zero attendees have the slightest clue about underserved communities or the systemic health equity problems that a doc-in-a-box can’t overcome.

Other

The Guardian reports that a hospital in Malawi saw stillbirths and neonatal deaths drop by 82% three years after implementing AI-powered fetal monitoring software. Just 10% of the hospital’s delivery doctors have been trained to perform traditional electronic monitoring, so the software automatically alerts them of potential problems. The perinatal solution was donated by PeriGen in collaboration with the global women’s health program of Texas Children’s Hospital.

A HLTH conference expert AI panel unanimously suggests that health systems resist the trend of hiring a chief AI officer. Baptist Health Medical Group CMIO  Brett Oliver, MD believes that organizations need to raise their AI literacy before putting someone in that role, which might send the message that only that person is responsible for AI deployment. His group established a broad AI oversight committee to create a governance structure.

I ran across this magazine cover from 100 years ago, which is even more notably prescient given that TV itself wasn’t invented until a couple of years later. Editor Hugo Gernsback also predicted the next year the use of the “teledactyl,” a feel-at-a-distance device that he described as, “The doctor manipulates his controls, which are then manipulated at the patient’s room in exactly the same manner. The doctor sees what is going on in the patient’s room by means of a television screen.” Gernsback created science fiction as a genre right after this issue ran with his launch of Amazing Stories magazine. Smithsonian Magazine’s 2012 story about him, which features fascinating illustrations, is worth a look for sure.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders sponsors the Third Annual Golf Classic benefiting the Florida Cancer Specialists & Research Institute Foundation.
• PerfectServe integrates Five9’s customer experience platform and Intelligent Virtual Agent technology with its Operator Console for improved contact center operations.
• Tegria publishes a new case study, “Automated Estimates Increase Accuracy and Transparency.”
• King Abdullah Medical City Makkah in Saudi Arabia upgrades its EHR to the latest version of InterSystems TrakCare.
• Nordic and Benevolence Health partner to support healthcare organizations with the new CMS TEAM bundled payment model.
• Rhapsody publishes a new customer story, “Axia Women’s Health saved $300,000, replacing a standalone API engine with Rhapsody Corepoint.”
• Surescripts offers a new whitepaper, “The Current Landscape of Pharmacy Interoperability.”
• Visage hires Victoria Hibbits as executive enterprise sales director.
• WellSky publishes a new case study, “Client value: The story behind $2M in recovered aged receivables.”

Blog Posts

• Lessons learned from operating Medicare Advantage Clinics (MACs) (Notable)
• The Power of AI: Fueling Organizations and Elevating People Part II (Netsmart)
• 3 Ways to Manage Your Data Like an Asset With the ServiceNow Platform (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Transforming Healthcare with AI: Current Innovations and Future Opportunities (PerfectServe)
• Financial Benefits of Optimized Cardiology Scheduling: Reducing Costs with Efficient Utilization (QGenda)
• Top 6 States for Travel Nursing in 2024 (SnapCare)
• 5 Conversations on QHINs and the National Data Exchange Framework (Surescripts)
• Operations: The Power of Revenue Cycle Management Automation (TruBridge)
• Revenue cycle 101: AI + generative AI in healthcare payments (Waystar)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Follow on X, Bluesky, and LinkedIn.
Contact us.