News 12/6/24

Top News

Apple CEO Tim Cook repeats his previous assertion that health apps will define the company’s legacy.

Cook says in an excellent Wired interview that enabling AirPods as hearing aids for moderate hearing loss is “the democratization of health.”

He summarizes that Apple is “pouring all of ourselves” into health, such as real-time biometric data analysis.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Two former HIStalk sponsors rejoined the fold this week, in both cases because employee turnover had left them unaware that they had unintentionally departed in the first place. Other potential prodigal sons and potential new sponsors can contact me directly and I’ll either answer your inquiry myself or send you over to Lorre. I can also confirm your sponsorship status if you aren’t sure.

Listening: Teenage Fanclub and 311, both of which having been playing guitar rock for 25 years. I discovered them from my recent infatuation with REM and my request to ChatGPT to find other bands that I would like. I’ve been watching REM concert videos for at least a half hour every night to catch up on their body of work, from which I note the contributions of retired drummer Bill Berry (he played multiple instruments and added another layer of harmony with Mike Mills in addition to orchestral drumming), replacement drummer Bill Rieflin (he died in 2020 at 59), and “fifth member” Scott McCaughey (I can’t get enough of his licks in the live version of one of my favorite REM songs “Supernatural Superserious,” which also has a fine contribution by Rieflin). My favorite concert video is from an appearance in Athens, Greece, although they did a great show at the other Athens in Georgia at the 40-Watt Club. I would choose REM as the best rock band in American history, perhaps nostalgically since now the “band” concept is passé in favor of computers, collaborations, and outsourced songwriting.

If you attended the ASTP annual meeting in person this week, let me know what you thought was important or interesting. They livestreamed it, but the hallway conversations are the good stuff.

Reader Vicki’s generous donation on Giving Tuesday allowed me to stack up a bunch of matching funds, including the matching money that was donated by my Anonymous Vendor Executive, to fully fund these Donors Choose teacher needs:

• Whiteboards and equation solving supplies for Ms. D’s middle school class in Kerens, TX.
• Headphones for Ms. G’s elementary school class in Pharr, TX.
• Math learning tools for Ms. C’s elementary school class in Brooklyn, NY.
• STEM learning kits for Ms. C’s elementary school class in Chino, CA.
• Geometric transformation supplies for Ms. S’s middle school class in Chicago, IL.
• STEM kits for Ms. B’s kindergarten class in Sacramento, CA.
• Headphones for Ms. N’s elementary school class in Greensboro, NC.
• Podcasting equipment for Ms. P’s high school Podcast News class in Santa Rosa, NM.
• Headphones for Ms. J’s elementary school English as a Second Language class in Fridley, MN.
• A printer for college applications for Ms. N’s high school class in Hollywood, FL.
• Motivation awards for Ms. S’s elementary school class in Ontario, CA.
• Research project tools for Ms. P’s middle school class in New York, NY.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Black Book Research lists nine countries that its expert panel says are poised for significant EHR adoption in 2025.

Aya Healthcare, which operates a travel nurse staffing service and job-matching website, will acquire staffing company Cross Country Healthcare for $615 million in cash.

Marketing firm Supreme Group acquires health tech and life sciences PR and marketing agency Amendola Communications. Amendola will keep its name and founder Jodi Amendola will remain as president. I interviewed her a month ago.

Publicly traded Embecta, which earned FDA clearance for its first insulin patch pump in September with plans to add a dosing algorithm, will lay off 118 employees and end that program to focus on its core business of making pen needles and insulin syringes.

Sales

• Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust will implement Meditech Expanse.

People

Frank Forte, MBA (Anatomy_IT) joins EnableComp as CEO.

Chris Paton, DPhil, MBA is named editor in chief of BMJ Digital Health & AI.

Retired Vanderbilt informatics professor and health tech pioneer Edward Shultz, MD, MS died last week at 76.

Announcements and Implementations

ECRI names the use of AI in healthcare as the most significant health technology hazard for 2025. The patient safety non-profit emphasizes the need to balance innovation with privacy and safety.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s IT department goes live on alert tool that can send messages directly to the computer displays of employees who will be affected by upcoming changes. The software is from Lakeside.

University of Central Florida offers students in its Health Informatics and Information Management BS degree program training on Epic, with materials and a simulated environment provided by Orlando Health.

The Joint Commission recognizes Inova as the first health system to earn its voluntary Responsible Use of Health Data certification.

Government and Politics

The Indian Health Service becomes the first federal health agency to go live on TEFCA, selecting EHealth Exchange as it designated QHIN.

FDA publishes recommendations for a smoother process for manufacturers to update their AI-enabled devices.

ASTP issues its first AI contract to Audacious Inquiry, a PointClickCare company, for technology to improve efficiency in its core areas. The reasoning behind using the technology of a care collaboration company to automate back-office government processes wasn’t stated.

Privacy and Security

Mount Nittany Health offers to pay $1.8 million to settle a lawsuit over its use of pixel tracking software on its website and patient portal.

Kevin Holland dives into Meta policy changes that will affect healthcare and health tech advertisers, as the company will restrict tracking of form fills and retargeting based on medical information starting in January. He concludes that condition-specific products or marketing campaigns will face significant restrictions and that direct conversation tracking will disappear as a campaign metric.

The Sequoia Project publishes a free Information Blocking Rule educational toolkit.

Three-hospital PIH Health takes its systems, network, and phone system offline following a ransomware attack Sunday.

In England, two NHS trusts continue their restoration of systems following ransomware attacks.

Other

Only mildly health tech related, but eye-catching as a societal observer. A 22-year-old OnlyFans model earns Internet scorn after sharing a TikTok of herself in the hospital room of her 85-year-old boyfriend, dancing and joking about speeding up her inheritance. She describes their relationship as, “He takes me to Cartier, I take him to pound town.” Meanwhile, a fellow OnlyFans adult content creator has made $43 million so far this year, leading me to ponder society’s valuation of a 20-year-old — who claims that she is a devout Christian and a virgin, which I can see would draw a certain demographic whether accurate or not — as equal to a couple of hundred doctors. She says that one smitten follower has made it rain nearly $5 million for her in the past few months.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthmonix team members support Ann’s Heart in Phoenixville, PA.
• Agfa HealthCare integrates Rad AI’s reporting and FHIRcast solutions with its enterprise imaging platform.
• Meditech Alliance triples its membership to 37 solution members whose products complement, enhance, or extend Expanse.
• FindHelp welcomes CenCal Health, Maryland Physicians Care, BronxCare Health System, and Central Iowa Shelter & Services to its network.
• Commure’s Augmedix achieves Oracle Validated Integration with Industry Healthcare Expertise for its full suite.
• Five9 announces that SVP Jake Butterbaugh has been named a Channel Futures Top UC/Contact Center Leader for 2024.
• Fortified Health Security names William Hicks EOD security engineer.

Blog Posts

• EClinicalWorks: The One-Stop Solution for Cutting-Edge AI Tools (EClinicalWorks)
• Understanding the Claims Lifecycle: A Step-by-Step Guide (FinThrive)
• Congratulations To HCTec’s 2024 Accelerate Graduates (HCTec)
• The Importance of Integrating Workday with Your Hospital or Health System’s EHR (Impact Advisors)
• Harnessing data to address SDOH and improve health equity (Meditech)
• Current State of Healthcare IT Staffing: Navigating Persistent Challenges (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 12/4/24

Top News

The Drug Enforcement Administration says that criminals who have been committing prescription drug fraud are now using EHRs and e-prescribing systems to create bogus prescriptions that are often sent to pharmacies all over the US.

Those involved are generating up to 1,000 prescriptions per day for a given prescriber’s DEA number.

DEA says the solution will need to involve doctors, EHR vendors, prescription processing companies, and pharmacies. It recommends that providers check their profile in their state’s prescription drug monitoring program to look for irregularities.

Reader Comments

From Lattice: “Re: Bluesky. I was surprised by your strong endorsement of a platform you mentioned not having fully explored. Are you suggesting that it offers a superior experience compared to X?” I wasn’t endorsing Bluesky, just mentioning that I am using it. I like Bluesky for mostly superficial reasons — the absence of ads, the control I have over what posts I see, and a clubbier vibe that feels like a cool secret society (at least until the trolls and bots on X join me). It’s also open, so people are building apps on top of it whereas X has shut off most of its APIs to wall off its garden. My timing was triggered because of its huge influx of new users, whose reasons aren’t necessarily the same as mine, that give it critical mass. I like that I don’t have to pledge exclusivity since it’s free and easy to use both services, plus I wouldn’t be too smart if I abandoned my 14,000 followers on X versus the 140 I have on Bluesky. My plan:

• I’m not a very active user of X, but I will continue to post on both services, probably a bit more interesting stuff on Bluesky.
• I will spend far less time reading X’s “For You” algorithm-pushed posts that are designed to enrage, silo, and troll to boost engagement.
• I will still check X’s “Following” posts, probably a few times each day. I follow only 109 accounts, so I can zip through those quickly.

From Summoner: “Re: Chromebook. I’ve been meaning to thank you for recommending a ruggedized, small, light and cheap model a number of years ago, which I picked up for $150.” I love my Chromebook, which fills the gap between using my laptop at my desk versus my IPad from a comfy chair when I don’t need a real keyboard or Windows-only tools. I paid $99 in mid-2022 for my low-end Lenovo that has 4 GB of memory and 64 GB of storage. I like the 11.6 inch, 2.4 pound form factor, the automatic updates, and a battery that runs for days.

From Researcher: “Re: Altmetric. The social media citation measurement tool that journals use to measure interest in their article now cites HIStalk as both a news organization and a blog.” Thanks, I didn’t know that. The site calculates a real-time Attention Score for each journal article that is based on media mentions. I read this morning that it just added Bluesky posts. The value of such a service is that the feedback is immediate compared to measuring citations months or years later when new articles finally emerge from the research journal sausage maker.

From Old Aprima: “Re: CompuGroup Medical, which had acquired EMDs and Aprima. Just did its fourth round of layoffs this year, with 15 people let go, including some high tenure employees.” Unverified.

From Spellchequer: “Re: RSNA. Add this to your list of conference misspellings such as HIMMS.” A search of this site – which I won’t name even though I could shame them as an HIStalk competitor — surfaces dozens of examples of RSNA butchering, most often in headlines, going back to 2011.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A reader’s donations funded the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Mr. M in Dallas, who asked for a wireless voice amplifier and microphone to help his pre-schoolers hear him without straining his voice. He sent a photo, although my face-blurring hides the brand new headset he wanted to show us. Speaking of Donors Choose, a donation from reader Natalie, boosted by some juicy matching funds including those from my Anonymous Vendor Executive, funded these projects:

• A laptop for the seventh grade science class of first-year teacher Ms. E in Grand Island, ME.
• Interactive STEM games for Mr. W’s high school class in Conyers, GA.
• Headphones for the second grade class of Ms. S in Paterson, NJ.
• Mini whiteboards for Mr. S’s English as a Second Language high school class in Chicago, IL.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor SmarterDx. SmarterDx builds clinical AI that empowers hospitals to true the patient record to fully capture the value of care delivered. Founded by physicians in 2020, its proprietary AI platform understands the nuances of clinical reasoning, enabling hospitals to true every patient record. By doing so, hospitals recover millions in earned revenue, enhance care quality metrics, successfully overturn denials, and optimize healthcare operations. Discover how SmarterDx is transforming healthcare.

Here’s a recent SmarterDx explainer video.

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 AI-enabled decision support vendor Healwell acquires a majority stake in Mutuo Health Solutions, which offers an ambient scribe product.

Healthcare quality organization ECRI acquires The Just Culture Company, which addresses workforce culture.

Soda Health, whose platform helps members use their health insurance benefit dollars to pay for approved goods and services, raises $50 million in a Series B funding round.

Sales

• Great River Health System (IA) will switch from Oracle Health to Epic in 2026.

People

VillageMD names President and COO Jim Murray interim CEO following the departure of co-founder Tim Barry. Parent company Walgreens Boots Alliance, which has invested over $6 billion in the primary care chain, is considering selling all or parts of VillageMD due to struggling profitability.

Cotiviti hires Suvajit Gupta, MS (Appian Corporation) as CTO.

Former Intermountain Health CIO Ryan Smith, MBA (Graphite Health) rejoins the health system as chief digital and information officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Marshfield Clinic Health System (WI) implements Switchboard, MD’s MDAware inbox management technology at three facilities.

Xsolis launches an AI-powered solution for appeals documentation, with MultiCare Health System serving as its pilot site.

Academy Medtech Ventures releases Move PT, a home rehab care system that uses AI, computer vision, and remote therapeutic monitoring.

A new KLAS report on imaging AI reveals that high-volume organizations are leading adoption, with mid-sized ones poised to follow. AI is now more commonly used in neurology and stroke cases than computer-aided detection, with breast and mammography applications ranking second. The most widely used solutions are RapidAI and Viz.ai, while Aidoc and Nuance top the list of those under consideration for purchase.

Government and Politics

HHS secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. suggests that CMS, rather than the American Medical Association’s RUC panel of doctors, should be tasked with recommending provider payments amounts for individual CPT codes for Medicare billing. CPT products such as licenses generate $266 million annually, which represents half of AMA’s revenue.

Privacy and Security

HHS OCR levies a $1.19 million fine against Gulf Coast Pain Consultants, who it says violated HIPAA when a former contractor used patient information from its EHR to file 6,500 fraudulent Medicare claims. The contractor was previously indicted but found not guilty.

Holy Redeemer Family Medicine (PA) pays $35,581 to settle federal allegations that it potentially violated HIPAA when it disclosed a patient’s full health record to a prospective employer, including information about reproductive healthcare, rather than the single test result that the patient had authorized.

Other

Unity Health Toronto puts together a fun “Breaking News” video to celebrate its Epic go live across its three hospitals. You can almost smell the typical command center Eau de Parfum (picked-over “I’ll just have a half” everything bagels and congealed pizza).

Sponsor Updates

• Goliath Technologies publishes a case study about Intermountain Healthcare’s use of the company’s solution to identify reliability and response time issues to improve end user EHR experience.
• Agfa HealthCare Rubee AI customers can now access Carpl.ai’s marketplace of 140 AI applications, testing, deployment and monitoring tools.
• TheMuse.com recognizes Arcadia with its 2024 VIBE (Voted in by Employees) Award in the employee health and wellness category.
• Artera offers a new case study, “Jane Pauley Community Health Center Increases Access to Care Across Community-Based Populations in Central Indiana with Artera.”
• AvaSure publishes the results of its “Inpatient Virtual Care Insight Survey.”
• Capital Rx releases a “Best of 2024” episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast.”
• Clinical Architecture will present at the 2024 Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy Annual Meeting December 5 in Washington, DC.
• CliniComp shares insights from recent site optimization visits at VA facilities in Atlanta and Augusta, GA.

Blog Posts

• The Future of Medical Coding: Artificial Intelligence, Automation, and People (AGS Health)
• AMA Coding Overhaul: A New Era for AI Medical Documentation in the ED (Augmedix)
• Experts Predict Increasing Digital Health Investment in 2025: Innovators Can Turn Cybersecurity into Value Creation (Clearwater)
• You’re (Probably) Hiring the Wrong People (Divurgent)

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 12/2/24

Top News

Business Insider reports that many digital health startups are cutting their valuations, shutting down, or being quietly acquired for parts after raising no new venture capital since the ZIRP heyday of 2021.

Venture capitalists provided bridge funds in helping their startups reach their next funding round, but have lost patience with those that haven’t performed as expected, choosing instead to put their money into AI startups.

The author says that quite a few health-related business that stalled at seed or Series A rounds have shut their doors with little attention.

Reader Comments

From Whaleback: “Re: HIS-tory. Folks on the former Cerner Reddit are looking for Vince Ciotti’s industry history and how Cerner’s acquisitions may have created a confusing patchwork of Millennium functionality.” Vince’s fascinating HIS-tory that I ran many years ago contains health tech’s early lessons that can be learned the easy way (by reading) or the hard way (by repeating those same mistakes). Vince retired from his 50-year health IT career in 2019 and died in 2021. He said in our 2019 conversation that he hoped to be remembered for his HIS-tory above all else. Click the graphic to see Vince’s recap of Cerner’s acquisitions, and if you open the big HIS-tory file, be aware that some PDF readers work better than others.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents overwhelmingly named emergency response time as their biggest fear of hospital-at-home treatment.

New poll to your right or here: How will HHS change under the new administration? I’m not encouraging political conversation, but rather seek predictions of how companies and consumers will fare under expected new priorities and leadership. As a reminder, HHS runs a $2 trillion annual budget and includes CMS (Medicare), CDC, FDA, NIH, the Public Health Service, HHS OIG, AHRQ, Office for Civil Rights, and ASTP. 

Pondering: do RSNA attendees ever get to eat leftover turkey sandwiches?

I’m winding down my use of X in favor of Bluesky (you can follow me here), so as a noob who initially thought Bluesky was an unfamiliar ghost town even though it has 24 million users, I’ll offer some tips on what to do after opening an account. Add your own tips via a comment if you like.

• Choose a few X accounts that you like and follow them on Bluesky if they are there, which trains Bluesky’s algorithm to understand what you like. Commenting, liking, reposting, and quoting helps build your connection list and get more Bluesky participation.
• SkyBridge helps you find and follow your X connections, although I haven’t tried it.
• Click Profile on the menu bar to the left, then click Edit Profile at the top of your feed to add a display name, description, and an image. Otherwise you won’t get followers because nobody will know who you are. Some of my new followers are listed with the default profile of “johnsmith.bsky.social” without a display name or description, so add those to get more followers.
• Create custom feeds by clicking the #Feeds menu item, then look for new feeds that mirror your interests. Click the plus sign to follow them, which will then add them to the top of your feed as clickable options. For example, I added Popular with Friends, Mutuals (posts from fellow users who have followed you back), and News.
• Find another user’s relevant Starter Pack or search the 40,000 available ones. Click a starter pack to connect with all of the users it lists.
• Click the Notifications menu item to see who has recently followed you. Follow them back to expand the network.
• Click the Settings menu item and then Sort Replies to choose oldest, newest, most-liked, or random.
• Click the Settings menu item and then Moderation to filter posts by words, tags, or adult content. I need to figure out if this can be used to hide follower posts that relate to sports, politics, and pets.  
• Click the Settings menu item, then Content and Media to enable media players such as YouTube.
• Enjoy ad-free, bot-limited quiet and thoughtful conversations that aren’t pushed in your face by a profit-driven algorithm while simultaneously lamenting that bot farmers and trolls have discovered Bluesky just like everybody else.
• My wish list for Bluesky includes an easier verification process (fake accounts are already proliferating); and a native IPad app.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor TeamBuilder. TeamBuilder is the first predictive staff scheduling platform built specifically for ambulatory care. Staffing in ambulatory care is fundamentally complex, with fluctuating patient demand, varying specialty needs, multiple locations, and diverse staff preferences. Yet, 95% of ambulatory organizations still rely on outdated paper or Excel-based scheduling, which makes it difficult to optimize staffing effectively. This results in costly overstaffing, administrative inefficiencies, and a lack of visibility into critical operational metrics, such as cost per visit. TeamBuilder transforms this process by using predictive technology and advanced data science to deliver real-time, optimized schedules that meet both patient demand, clinical workflow and staff availability, ensuring the right staff are always in place. With TeamBuilder, you gain more than just a smarter scheduling tool— you unlock the ability to reduce staffing costs, improve patient access, eliminate administrative inefficiencies, and gain deep visibility into your operations. With TeamBuilder, you’ll always know exactly who you need today, tomorrow, and next month –empowering you to make smarter, more strategic decisions. Let TeamBuilder help you reimagine staff scheduling. Thanks to TeamBuilder for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s a TeamBuilder intro video.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Canada-based practice management software vendor Practice Better raises $13 million in growth capital.

Radiology platform vendor Sirona raises $42 million in a Series C funding round.

The Winston-Salem paper notes the 2023 compensation of top executives of Novant Health, which includes EVP/Chief Digital and Information Officer Onyeka Nchege at $947K in total compensation.

Sales

• Trinity Health will implement the cloud-based Visage 7 enterprise imaging platform in a $215 million, 10-year contract.
• NYU Langone Health, which was the first on-premise customer of Visage Imaging, extends its contract in a $24 million, five-year deal to implement the company’s full stack in the cloud.

People

CTG promotes Chad Alessi, MS, MBA to managing director of cybersecurity. He is a US Marine Corps veteran.

Health Systems Informatics promotes Joe Ranieri to VP of business development.

Brian Roy, MBA (Simplify Healthcare) joins Zyter TruCare as VP of sales.

The Garage In hires Stacy Fox (Acclivity Health Solutions) as SVP of market development and growth.

Announcements and Implementations

LGI Healthcare Solutions launches a healthcare workforce management platform for the Canadian market.

Government and Politics

The CEO of a bar association for Social Security attorneys and Epic’s policy team leader Ladd Wiley, JD describe how Epic’s integration with the Social Security Administration’s IT systems supports timely disability determinations. Epic facilitated the exchange of 2.5 million patient records between its hospital clients and SSA last year. However, the authors note that only 15% of disability claims are reviewed using data obtained via EHR interoperability, with the rest being managed by mail and fax. They recommend that TEFCA be expanded to include use cases involving government benefits determinations.

Privacy and Security

Texas Governor Greg Abbott threatens to end state funding of Texas Children’s Hospital because one of its cardiologists posted a TikTok video advising patients that while the hospital is required to ask their citizenship status based on Abbott’s November 1 executive order, those patients are not required to answer.

Other

Dean Sittig, PhD and Hardeep Singh, MD, MPH publish a JAMA viewpoint piece that makes recommendations for healthcare organizations to ensure the safe implementation and use of AI in clinical care, emphasizing the need for governance, real-world testing, clinician and patient engagement, performance monitoring, and risk mitigation to prevent harm and improve outcomes.

Multiple authorities in Sweden are investigating reported problems with the newly rolled out Oracle Health Millennium in the Västra Götaland region. Clinicians and other users in western Sweden reported significant problems with the $190 million project, some of them reportedly placing patients at risk.

New Mexico jurors award an all-time record $412 million malpractice judgment against a multi-state men’s health clinic. The lawsuit was filed by a 66-year-old man who visited one of the facilities complaining of fatigue and weight loss, for which he says the clinic ordered thrice-weekly penile injections for erectile dysfunction that caused damage. NuMale Medical Center offers hard-sell treatments for ED, premature ejaculation, hair restoration and transplants, testosterone replacement, and weight loss. 

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore releases a new case study, “Oklahoma Heart Hospital: Partnership for Interface Optimization.”
• The Digital Health Hub Foundation names Linus Health the 2024 Longevity Best in Class winner of its Digital Health Awards.
• The CH Béziers hospital in France will adopt Sectra’s digital pathology solution.

Blog Posts

• Use the “Holiday Diet” to Trim Your Clinical Productivity Variances (Impact Advisors)
• Navigating the CMS 2025 Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule (MRO)
• Future-Proofing Your Public Health Programs: Top 5 Things to Consider (Netsmart)
• How to improve bedside handoffs with digital whiteboards (Sonifi Health)
• Striking Gold: How Washington State is Empowering the Care Team Evolution (Surescripts)
• Unlocking Efficiency and Profitability with End-to-End Revenue Cycle Management (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

News 11/27/24

Top News

England’s three-hospital Wirral University Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust cancels outpatient appointments due to an unspecified cybersecurity incident. Patients were asked to avoid visiting the emergency department for non-emergencies.

A hospital employee told a newspaper that “everything is down” and records can’t be accessed.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor CTG Health Solutions. With 35+ years of expertise, CTG stands as a beacon in today’s healthcare IT consulting market. The company’s Healthcare Consulting Solutions blend innovative services with cutting-edge technologies to address the unique challenges, requirements, and regulations of the healthcare market. Connect to explore how CTG’s healthcare experts can help transform challenges into opportunities, ensuring that your organization not only succeeds but thrives in a rapidly evolving landscape. Thanks to CTG Health Solutions 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

Cofactor AI, which offers AI-powered software to help providers appeal denied claims, launches with $4 million in seed funding.

Medication affordability, access, and adherence software company TailorMed secures $40 million in new financing.

Sales

• Self Regional Healthcare (SC) will adopt Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging Cloud.
• Carle Health (IL) selects value-based care software and services from Lumeris.
• The Queen’s Health Systems (HI) will implement remote patient monitoring services from Health Recovery Solutions as a part of a new RPM program offered through the Native Hawaiian Health Department.
• Hartford HealthCare (CT) will use WellStack’s data integration and analytics software to enhance the efficacy of its Google Cloud Platform and overall digital health strategy.
• Cambridge Health Alliance (MA) selects Abridge’s AI-powered speech recognition and clinical documentation technology.

People

Steve McDonald (Nordic Global) joins Pivot Point Consulting as executive partner.

Announcements and Implementations

WVU Medicine goes live on DrFirst’s medication management platform.

Emory Healthcare (GA) implements Switchboard.MD’s MDAware Inbox Management software across four specialty clinics. Switchboard.MD founder, CEO, and CTO Blake Anderson, MD is also an Emory physician.

Teladoc adds AI-powered patient movement detection capabilities to its Virtual Sitter solution that will allow staff to intervene in fall risk situations. 

Other

Mount Sinai Health System opens the Hamilton and Amabel James Center for Artificial Intelligence and Human Health in a repurposed building on the campus of its hospital in Manhattan. The new center will serve as a space for the research, development, and application of new AI solutions.

Industry luminary and friend of HIStalk Ivo Nelson posted a link to this video of the Glaser Society presentation, at which Epic’s Judy Faulkner was named the recipient of the John P. Glaser Health Informatics Innovator Award. Check out the fireside chat with John, Judy, and Ivo at the 25:50 mark of the video that was made by the McWilliams School of Biomedical Informatics at UTHealth Houston.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore publishes a new info sheet, “MEDITECH Regulatory Reporting and Submission Services.”
• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “Smarter Patient Care with AI Technology.”
• AGS Health publishes a new e-book, “eBook Medical Necessity in Ambulance Coding.”
• Altera publishes a new client story, “Health New Zealand – Te Whatu Ora Advances Digital Transformation with Provation IPro: Streamlining Elective and Acute Care Pathways at Waikato.”
• CIO Outlook names Ascom Americas Managing Director Kelly Feist one of the year’s most influential female leaders in healthcare technology.
• The American Telemedicine Association Virtual Nursing Insights Summit recognizes AvaSure with its Best Case Study Award.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast,” “Pharmacy Benefits 101: Formularies & Formulary Management, with Nisha Bhide, PharmD.”
• Cardamom Health sponsors and hosts the HFMA Colorado Chapter’s Women in Leadership conference.
• DrFirst publishes a new guide, “Navigating the New Norm in a Regulatory Storm.”
• First Databank will present at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists 2024 Midyear Clinical Meeting and Exhibition December 8-12 in New Orleans.
• FinThrive publishes a new “Contract Management Case Study: Midwestern Health Network.”
• Fortified Health Security wins the Healthcare Cybersecurity Solution of the Year Award from CyberSecurity Breakthrough.

Blog Posts

• Empower Clinical Informaticists for Reimbursement Wins in 2025 (CereCore)
• National Rural Health Day: An RN’s POV (Altera)
• Artera’s Approach to AI (Artera)
• Clearwater Cyber Briefing: Key Trends and Takeaways for November 2024 (Clearwater)
• Getting Down to Business with AI: Key Observations from HLTH (Consensus Cloud Solutions)
• Beyond Legacy Systems: Unlocking Operational Efficiency and Cost Savings Through Application Rationalization in Healthcare (Cordea Consulting)
• AI in Healthcare is Only as Effective as the People Using It (Dimensional Insight)
• Redefining Patient Access: The Rise of Intelligent Contact Centers (EClinicalWorks)
• Medicare Bad Debt 101 (FinThrive)
• Modernization and Expansion of an Outpatient Surgery Center (Health Data Movers)
• Elevating data security with HITRUST certification, HIPAA compliance, and employee awareness (Healthmonix)

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 11/25/24

Top News

Executives of Forward — the CarePods and medical office company — have moved on to start a new venture just one week after Forward shut down after raising $650 million.

Forward founder and former CEO Adrian Aoun says that one of Forward’s biggest investors called him the day the company closed with an offer to back his next startup, which amazed him:

We just burned not quite half a billion dollars on an idea. A lot of people’s reaction is, what are you doing next? Let’s do it again. What sort of special ass culture did we create in Silicon Valley where this is reality? This is absurd.

Reader Comments

From Slipknot: “Re: Oracle. When Cerner Millennium was new, I watched it get thrown out by a big health system when Cerner couldn’t deliver anything that worked, not to mention that the salespeople were like stereotypical used car salesmen. I’ve been mortified watching the VA implementations go as I expected they would. Now Congress has decided not to keep monitoring them. I wanted to believe that they would do better or that Oracle would force changes to their business model.” The new administration will have to decide whether to continue the flailing project in a cost-cutting environment and amid Congressional criticism. Larry Ellison has strong connections to Elon Musk and Oracle commands a formidable army of lobbyists, so that may be a factor. Hacking away at the sprawling, plodding VA bureaucracy might improve the project’s chance of success. Saber-rattling politicians may or may not realize that the VA has only two unsavory alternatives – attempt to move to Epic (knowing that the company probably wouldn’t deal with the VA’s VISN fiefdoms and political meddling) or stick with its wildly expensive, endlessly customized VistA dinosaur. I would probably bet on VistA at this point since it’s the only option that does not require the VA to change.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Forty percent of poll respondents who have taken a DNA test received results that surprised them. I should probably have asked whether that surprise was good or bad.

New poll to your right or here: What would concern you most about receiving hospital-at-home treatment?

I strayed onto the IPhone / IPad automation feature Shortcuts. I used it immediately to create an icon that shuts the phone down, another that opens the camera app ready to take a photo, and one that opens the Amazon app and displays my orders. You can also create an icon to turn on Do Not Disturb until you change locations, speed dial a given contact, open a ChatGPT session, turn on low power mode when the charge reaches a given percentage, and text someone the ETA from your current location to your destination using Apple Maps. Other than tapping an icon, you can also tell Siri to run a shortcut by name.

In further technical exploration, I decided to try Bluesky as an X alternative. I was initially dismayed at the lack of a native IPad app, but the webpage works great. Hopefully it can get enough network effect users to avoid becoming another Clubhouse or Mastodon. Unlike certain similar services, it is ad-free, gives users instead of its owner control of their feeds, and has sane moderation practices. Follow me there if you like since I’ll probably post HIStalk updates there along with X.

My Anonymous Vendor Executive topped off my supply of Donors Choose matching money. Does anybody have ideas for encouraging corporate donations so that I have something to match with? Teachers have a lot of classroom needs and I can usually match a donation at least 3x from various sources. About all I can offer in return, other than the satisfaction of supporting a good cause, is company exposure for a job well done.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Change Healthcare restores its clearinghouse services, nine months after they went offline in a February ransomware attack.

Three hundred academic primary care doctors at Mass General Brigham petition the National Labor Relations Board to unionize with an affiliate of SEIU. MGB medical fellows and residents voted to unionize in 2023 but are still negotiating their first contract.

People

Brian Dixon, PhD, MPA is named director of the Regenstrief Institute’s Clem McDonald Center for Biomedical Informatics after serving as interim since June 2022.

MetroHealth promotes Nabil Chehade, MD, MSBS to senior EVP /  chief clinical transformation, innovation, and strategy officer.

Brian Gildea (FinThrive) joins Simple Health as chief sales officer.

JoAnn Ploen (Optum) joins DexCare as VP of enterprise sales.

Government and Politics

The VA posts an RFI for a cloud-based human capital management system that its 6,300 HR employees will use to process one million personnel actions per year, including 487,000 mass pay adjustments. One might speculate that Oracle will pitch its Fusion Cloud HCM.

Today I learned that Hopkins surgeon and FDA commissioner nominee Marty Makary, MD, MPH is chief medical officer for weight loss telehealth vendor Sesame, which can legally sell compounded GLP-1 drugs because of an FDA-declared shortage of the brand name products. 

Other

A Texas ED patient’s TikTok video goes viral in which staff at Houston Methodist Hospital questioned her about citizenship status and assigned sex at birth as required by Governor Gregg Abbott’s executive order from August. The employee asked the questions in a public waiting room that offered no privacy barriers. The hospital responded that they are legally required to ask the questions and record the responses in Epic, but the law doesn’t require patients to answer.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe announces that it has been positioned as a Leader and furthest for Completeness of Vision in the 2024 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Clinical Communication and Collaboration.
• Notable successfully completes SOC 2 Type 2 compliance.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast titled “Interview with Scott MacDonald, MD.”
• Sectra releases a new episode of its “Let’s Talk Enterprise Imaging” podcast titled “Greater Manchester’s path to AI in chest x-ray imaging.”
• The “AI @ HLTH” podcast features WellSky, “From Data to Care: How WellSky is Revolutionizing Healthcare.”
• Vyne Medical announces the expansion of the company’s cloud fax services and email-to-fax technology in a major academic medical center.

Blog Posts

• Bridging the gap between evidence and practice in healthcare (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Future-Proofing Your Public Health Programs: Top 5 Things to Consider (Netsmart)
• Is the gold card the golden ticket to fixing prior authorization? (Nordic)
• Hydrate your cloud environment with Redox’s new Cloud Connectivity Tools (Redox)
• Understanding the Role of a Pediatric CNA: A Comprehensive Guide for Clinicians (SnapCare)
• How to improve bedside handoffs with digital whiteboards (Sonifi Health)
• Top Trends in Patient Payments and Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare (TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company)
• Innovating for Impact: Easing Burdens & Increasing Medication Safety (Surescripts)
• Building a Data Culture Helps Hospitals Stay One Step Ahead (Tegria)
• The Link Between Efficient Billing and Positive Patient Experiences (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

News 11/22/24

Top News

House lawmakers pass a VA legislative package with its original EHR oversight requirements removed. The bill will move to the Senate.

The originally submitted version would have increased Congressional oversight of the VA’s struggling Oracle Health implementation, which included requiring facilities to return to pre-deployment efficiency before moving on to the next go-live.

A House VA Committee spokesperson said that the EHR provisions were removed during negotiations “due to a lack of political viability in both the House and Senate.”

Rep. Mark Tarkano (D-CA) accused Oracle of using its “army of lobbyists” to kill the EHR requirements. Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) said, “Oracle Cerner bought and bullied their way into getting this bill passed without their company being scrutinized.”

Reader Comments

From Sportsman: “Re: Oracle. This article says it will ‘trounce’ Epic.” This piece is an example of someone who (a) doesn’t know what they’re talking about in healthcare, or (b) is trying to spew hot takes for clicks and advertiser attaboys. Maybe both. My issues with it are these:

• The author who wrote the article – which is a facts-lite opinion piece — owns the cloud-focused media site that ran it. He is basing his conclusion on Oracle’s size and technology expertise.
• His site sells marketing services, with one of his clients being Oracle and one of his non-clients being Epic.
• Not only does the author have zero healthcare experience, he spent five years as an Oracle PR flack and is a fanboy of Larry Ellison, who he claims recruited him personally.
• Healthcare is an afterthought for Oracle, while it is Epic’s only business. That seems important.
• Oracle Health placed below Epic, Meditech, or both in every Best in KLAS 2024 EHR category. Oracle also finished #3 in a three-horse race in healthcare ERP and scored a dismal 60 versus Epic’s 92 in large hospital patient accounting, with customers raising serious concerns about Oracle Health’s lack of results, product roadmap, and ability to execute.
• He ignores Epic’s massive market share and fanatic customer loyalty and doesn’t mention that Oracle Health is headed south on those scales.
• He says that the entire resources of Oracle have been committed by Larry Ellison, while he’s alive anyway, to address “the entire $16 trillion healthcare industry.”
• He really hates that Epic accuses the former Cerner of interoperability foot-dragging, dramatically concluding that, “to the degree Ellison gives any thought to Epic as he undertakes that mission, Epic’s silly ankle-nipping will only serve to reinforce Ellison’s resolve.”

Notes from Wednesday’s “Oracle Health Inside Access: The Future of the EHR” webcast

The overly gushy host of the webcast ran the charitable foundations of Cerner and now Oracle Health (she has no healthcare or technical experience or education). Oracle Health Chairman David Feinberg, MD, MBA made a somewhat brief appearance from a room with a sweeping view that sent me Googling to see if it was the $18 million LA penthouse that he bought from The Weeknd (it apparently wasn’t, based on celebrity real estate listing photos).

Most of the webcast involved a nicely done demo with product director Jeffrey Wall, MD that had been recorded at the Oracle Health Summit. It was not clear on whether the work in progress that was shown is the new EHR, old Millennium with a facelift, or Oracle’s digital assistant.

• The functions shown were running in a browser and was apparently a mix of live code and mock-ups.
• Oracle’s Clinical AI Agent displays an input bar at the top. The physician clicks the microphone icon to initiate voice input, much like using ChatGPT in voice mode.
• The system covers ambulatory practice only. Non-physician use was not mentioned.
• It can answer questions about the day’s visits and create generative AI summaries of individual patient histories.
• A new concept is an AI timeline of encounters that helps the physician visualize the patient’s history.
• The information that is displayed by the AI references its source.
• The voice operation opens whatever function the user’s question references, and from there it’s clicking and scrolling to interact with the information that is displayed.
• The user interface is visually logical and offers a good presentation of information.
• The user can drill down into individual problems to see history, notes, and meds for that condition.
• It occurred to me in watching the demo that whatever the physician speaks to the AI will be heard by the patient who is in the room, which may be interesting in some cases. Also, the physician will need to stay close to keyboard and microphone.
• Incoming patient messages are displayed with full chart context.
• The physician can ask about medication doses and side effects from Oracle Health-owned Multum.
• Creating a new prescription brings up that user’s most common prescriptions as well as those of physicians like them.
• Patients can enter free text when confirming their appointment or checking in. AI will interpret and route based on what they enter.
• The new EHR will be open and connected as part of an ecosystem that will allow data to flow.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Release of information vendor Verisma acquires Olah Healthcare Technology, which offers an enterprise archiving solution.

Clinical collaboration technology company TigerConnect acquires Twiage, whose software supports pre-hospital communication involving emergency medical services.

Sales

• UCHealth chooses competency management software from Kahuna Workforce Solutions.
• Sarasota Memorial Health Care System will implement Epic in a $160 million project, replacing Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise.

People

Chris Penwarden (Minerva Surgical) joins Eagle Telemedicine as VP of sales. He is a West Point graduate who served in combat roles in Iraq and Afghanistan as a US Army rifle and anti-tank platoon leader and company commander before retiring from the military after 14 years due to injuries sustained in combat.

HarmonyCares hires Jonathan D’Souza, MS (MedArrive) as chief product and technology officer.

Community Medical Centers President and CEO Craig Castro will retire after 22 years with the organization. He joined the health system in 2002 as SVP/CIO and held that position for 10 years before adding the CEO role at Clovis Community Medical Center.

Announcements and Implementations

Veradigm launches an ambient scribe platform for its EHR using AvodahMed’s generative AI.

ED physicians at Canada’s Alberta Health Services are testing a doctor-created AI scribe in a two-year project that is being funded by a Canadian Medical Association grant.

KLAS looks at security and privacy consulting and managed service providers.

Other

Fun fact: an article about businesswoman and sports teams owner Michele Kang’s $30 million women’s soccer donation mentions that she made her money in health IT. She was founder and CEO of federal IT healthcare contractor Cognosante, which she sold to Accenture Federal Services earlier this year (she had previously sold the company’s consulting practice to NTT Data). She emigrated from South Korea to the US as a student at the University of Chicago and then Yale.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders staff bring holiday cheer to Head Start families at the YMCA of Greater Kansas City with Christmas Tree Santas.
• Artera promotes Adrianna Hosford to chief communications officer and head of marketing, and Zach Wood to chief product officer.
• FinThrive announces new capital to support its accelerated growth.
• The Northern Virginia Technology Council recognizes DrFirst as a top technology leader for the fifth year in a row.
• ACOs participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program that use a combination of Arcadia and CareJourney solutions achieve one-and-a-half times more savings compared to other ACOs nationally.
• Health Data Movers releases a new “Quick HITs” podcast titled “Dr. Aaron Neinstein on AI, Automation, and the Future of Healthcare.”
• Netsmart announces that several of its solutions, including its EHR for public health, have received Level 2 Certification from the Texas Risk and Authorization Management Program.
• Ellkay profiles Cook Children’s Health Care System SVP and CDIO Theresa Meadows as a part of its “Women in Health IT” series.
• Wolters Kluwer Health and the Australian College of Mental Health Nurses will partner to develop mental health resources available via the Lippincott Procedures Australia educational resource.
• Five9’s GenAI Studio wins Best New Product from the 2024 Big Awards for Business.
• Meditech lists its customers that have been recognized as CHIME Digital Health Most Wired.
• Fortified Health Security names Dow Perkins senior threat defense analyst, Kerry Shelton threat assessment analyst, and Guy Denton penetration tester.
• CHIME recognizes Impact Advisors co-founder and Managing Partner Andy Smith with its Foundation Industry Leader Award.
• Linus Health Director of Cognitive Science Ali Jannati, MD, PhD receives the 2024 Neuropsychopharmacology Editor’s Award for a Review from the American College of Neuropsychopharmacology.
• MRO publishes a new case study, “Healthcare Providers Explore Payer Direct Access to EHRs, but Most Are Still Awaiting the Benefits.”

Blog Posts

• Automate Your Fax Inbox with Image AI Assistant (EClinicalWorks)
• Medicare Bad Debt 101 (FinThrive)
• Understanding Communication Styles: A Guide for Customer Service Agents (Five9)
• Elevating data security with HITRUST certification, HIPAA compliance, and employee awareness (Healthmonix)
• Quality, Workflow, and Health Information Exchange (Konza National Network)
• Meditech customers share their innovations with the healthcare industry (Meditech)

Contacts

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

News 11/20/24

Top News

HHS OIG rates HHS’s information security program as “not effective” in its annual review, the same rating it gave HHS last year.

OIG made six recommendations to HHS:

1. Update its inventory of enterprise architecture and software / hardware.
2. Complete the implementation of a cybersecurity risk management strategy.
3. Require operating divisions to assess the security impacts of planned changes.
4. Implement a supply chain risk management program.
5. Establish oversight of background investigations of employees and contractors.
6. Use automation to review the logging and activity of privileged user accounts .

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I applied several sources of matching, including dollar-for-dollar money provided by my Anonymous Vendor Executive, to the annual donation of reader Mark to fully fund these Donors Choose teacher grant requests. I was reading today that teachers, who aren’t necessarily richly compensated in the first place, spend an average of nearly $1,000 of their own money each year to buy supplies and resources for their students, so the funded projects below are kind of a big deal:

• STEM activities for Ms. N’s high school class in Hatch, NM.
• Dry erase boards and markers for Ms. A’s elementary school class in San Juan, TX.
• Overhead lighting filters for Ms. P’s high school computer lab in Las Vegas, NV.
• Reading and math manipulatives from Ms. S’s kindergarten class in Wailuku, HI.
• Hands-on STEM activities for Mr. F’s middle school class in Brooklyn, NY.
• Laboratory safety supplies for Ms. V’s middle school class in Casa Grande, AZ.
• Drone supplies for Mr. D’s middle school class in Enid, OK.
• Science binders and supplies for Ms. O’s middle school class in Wilson, NC.
• Books, snacks, and classroom supplies for first-year teacher Ms. B’s elementary school class in Rocky Mount, NC.
• Headphones with microphones for Ms. E’s elementary school class in Chicago, IL.
• A virtual documentary workshop from a PBS documentary filmmaker for Dr. H’s high school early college class in Bronx, NY.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Care coordination software vendor ThoroughCare raises $5 million in Series A funding.

Sales

• Lee Health (FL) will implement remote patient monitoring technology from Biofourmis as a part of its new Hospital at Home program.
• Tenet Healthcare will deploy Commure’s AI medical scribe software across its Tenet Physician Resources physician network.

People

John Supra, MS (UpStream) joins Cone Health (NC) as chief digital health and analytics officer.

Guidehouse names Mark Korth. MHA, MBA (Intermountain Healthcare) and Angela Hunt, RN, MBA (Vizient) partners in its health segment.

Virtual second opinion provider The Clinic by Cleveland Clinic appoints David Peter, MD, MBA – who was interim president, VP, and chief medical officer of Cleveland Clinic Indian River Hospital – to chief medical officer.

Fairfax Radiology Centers promotes Terry Johnson, MA, MBA to CIO.

Memorial Hermann Health System promotes Oliver Galicki, MHSA to VP of clinical applications.

Matt Ripkey (Redox) joins Blockit as VP of sales and marketing.

Episode Solutions promotes Kyle Cooksey to president and CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Emory Healthcare (GA) will launch a population health collaborative across its primary care network using technology and value-based managed care services from Guidehealth.

Arcadia announces GA of Vista Push automated performance analytics and Enhanced Benchmarks, which incorporate recently acquired CareJourney’s market intelligence and analytics.

EHR vendor Canvas Medical announces Anova, an EHR for longevity medicine.

The Digital Medicine Society launches its International Regulatory Pathways project to help digital health technology developers understand country-specific regulatory insights to get products to market faster.

Smart ring maker Oura will integrate glucose biosensing data from Dexcom, which will invest $75 million in Oura’s Series D funding round. Oura says that 97% of its users are interested in the effect of food on their health.

In Scotland, Royal Aberdeen Children’s Hospital is piloting Kinetic-ID’s Bedside Intelligent Cabinet for patient self-administration of medications. The hospital will explore integration with its EHR to keep prescriptions current.

Other

Sanford Health (SD) opens its new Virtual Care Center, which offers areas for provider education and training, innovation, and patient and family experience. Accelerator rooms are also available for digital health startups that want to partner with Sanford on scaling their products.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD employees volunteer at the St. Vincent Dining Hall, Utah Food Bank, and the Green Urban Lunchbox organization during the company’s Day of Caring.
• Royal Adelaide Hospital in Australia implements Altera Digital Health’s IQemo electronic chemotherapy prescribing solution.
• Augmedix offers a new case study, “Augmedix in Primary Care: Enhancing Efficiency and Patient Engagement.”
• The WellSky Foundation donates $200,000 from its Week of Giving teammate project that will be used to furnish 75 new bedrooms that are operated by Kansas City-based non-profit Amethyst Place, which provides support services to single mothers and their children. 
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast” titled “Searching for Answers – Understanding Transparency, Alignment, and Incentives in Healthcare with Andrew Gordon.”
• AMIA honors Clinical Architecture CEO Charlie Harp with its Leadership Award.
• CloudWave will sponsor the annual Rural Health Association of Tennessee Conference November 20-22 in Knoxville.
• Wolters Kluwer Health releases the results of its third “Pharmacy Next: Health Consumer Medication Trends” survey.
• Surescripts expands its Sig IQ technology, first introduced for Medication History in 2022, to e-prescribing transactions, including NewRx and RxRenewal Requests and Responses.

Blog Posts

• Leveraging RCM and Coding to Address the Health Equity Gap (AGS Health)
• Three keys to unlock operational efficiency in the revenue cycle (Altera Digital Health)
• The Impact of KLAS: Improving Healthcare through Transparency (Availity)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 11/18/24

Top News

Södra Älvsborg Hospital in Sweden pauses its use of the recently implemented Oracle Health Millennium. The regional director apologized, acknowledging that “the introduction has not gone according to plan.”

Specific user complaints include system slowness as well as displaying incorrect diagnoses, such as changing “no bleeding” to “bleeding.”

Hundreds of employees staged a demonstration to return to the old system, citing decreased efficiency and patient safety. Västra Götalands Medical Association is considering taking legal action over patient safety risks.

The previous system has been reactivated and some functions have been moved back to paper while Millennium problems are being addressed.

According to one chief physician, “It’s a lousy system that’s completely impossible to work in. These days, I’ve basically been unable to produce any healthcare.”

Reader Comments

From Lanman: “Re: AblePay. Do any readers know anything about it? My big health system says that those who can’t pay will get assistance, while those who can ‘may’ save up to 13%. Anyone know if it is legit / good idea?” The company’s website says that it contracts with providers at higher rates, provides members with cards with AblePay as the secondary payer, and guarantees that providers will be paid within two weeks of billing. Online member reviews are mixed, with one saying that it’s better to ask the hospital for a cash discount from rack rates or use the hospital’s no-interest payment plan instead of giving AblePay a credit card number that they will charge immediately. Your comments are welcome, especially if you have AblePay experience as a patient or provider. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents like Madison as the US’s health tech capital. A couple of folks questioned why a Cerner-less KCMO or Minneapolis weren’t listed as choices.

New poll to your right or here: Have you taken a consumer DNA test such as Ancestry or 23andMe? Several of my acquaintances, especially older ones who were raised in different cultural times, have been shocked to find evidence of previously unknown siblings, learned that they were raised by someone who wasn’t their biological parent, or saw strong indications of being the result of incest.

I funded some new Donors Choose teacher grant requests using money that was provided by my Anonymous Vendor Executive, who is happy to offer a 1:1 match on your donation that you can submit as below. Companies that donate a matchable $1,000 will receive a couple of sentences in an HIStalk news post to convey any message they choose (a company pitch, for example).

• Purchase a gift card in the amount you’d like to donate.
• Send the gift card by the email option to mr_histalk@histalk.com (that’s my Donors Choose account).
• I’ll be notified of your donation and you can print your own receipt from Donors Choose for tax purposes.
• I’ll pool the money, apply all matching funds I can get, and publicly report here the projects I funded, including occasional teacher follow-up messages and photos.

These are the new, fully funded projects, all of which involved historically underfunded schools in which at least 50% of students come from low-income households:

• Weeding tools for the ecology club garden of Ms. M’s middle school class in Hawthorne, CA.
• Headphones for Mr. G’s elementary school class in Pasadena, TX.
• STEM kits for Ms. M’s middle school class in Moreno Valley, CA.
• Microphones and speaker for Ms. B’s elementary school math and science class in Kinston, NC.
• STEM supplies for Ms. M’s elementary school class in Seguin, TX.
• Electric car microcontrollers for Mr. P’s high school physicians and robotics classes in Brooklyn, NY.
• Math manipulatives for Ms. A’s kindergarten class in Sussex, VA.
• A voice amplifier for Mr. M’s preschool class in Dallas , TX.
• Flexible seating for Ms. H’s elementary school class in Port Saint Lucie, FL.
• An LED aquarium hit for Ms. G’s high school AP biology and environmental science classes in Savanna, GA.

A Reader’s Notes from the CommonWell Fall Summit, November 4-5, Nashville

General Overview

• Thirteen new CommonWell members in the past year (several appear to be general members rather than service adopters). The network now consists of 37,000+ providers, 248+ million individuals (primarily adults), and 9 billion health records retrieved. Currently seeing about 0.5 billion records (documents) exchanged each month.
• Labcorp is a newer member and is pushing CommonWell towards more discrete data exchange via FHIR. Labcorp will be an exception in the network in that it will only respond in FHIR format.

Product roadmap

• Individual Access Services (patients requesting their records) through FHIR is currently in testing. Will still be document-based through the exchange of FHIR DocumentReferences and Binaries.
• They have implemented passive indexing, which tracks the locations that have attempted to find a patient’s records. This gives them a sense for where the patient has been treated and, therefore, where you could go look for treatment-related records later on.
• Expecting to support the Healthcare Operations Exchange Purposes under TEFCA by the end of the year. Additional Exchange Purposes will be supported in the first half of 2025.
• Replacing their legacy Event Notification System with a new ADT & Patient Alerts framework; the latter will allow consuming systems to subscribe to updates when a patient has certain activity, such as a new link to an organization in the network.

TEFCA

• Additions to the TEFCA directory have been paused for several weeks due to concerns around vetting of participants. There is a new Vetting Process SOP coming out very soon to define a process for vetting participants, and the hope is that directory additions can resume by the end of November. (Of course, as I draft this email, the SOP is published.)
• The SOP involves a series of steps to follow, which vary based on the kind of provider being onboarded. It governs how QHINs submit a participant for inclusion in TEFCA and how other QHINs can object.
• Anyone already in TEFCA must still go through the vetting process, though they can continue to query through TEFCA while that plays out.
• Through August 2024, TEFCA has seen 486 million patient searches (this is an inflated number since each patient search hits every QHIN and therefore is counted multiple times), 4.9 million document queries, and 2.5 million document retrievals.
• In September 2024, CommonWell specifically saw 30.6 million patient searches from Epic, 547,000 from KONZA, and 12 from Kno2.
• Average response time to patient searches by QHINs varies, from as little as 40 ms to as much as 6455 ms.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

WellSky releases SkySense, AI-powered tools for its EHR sollutions that extract key information, perform ambient scribing, and summarize chart data.

Upheal, which offers a clinical documentation personal assistant for mental health professionals, raises $10 million in a Series A funding round.

Urgent care telehealth provider HealthLynked reports Q3 results: revenue down 56%, EPS –$0.01 versus $0.00. HLYK shares have lost 12% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $11 million.

People

UT Health San Antonio promotes Michael Schnabel, MBA  to VP/CIO.

Pete D’Addio, MS (Moffit Cancer Center) joins LCMC Health as VP of technology.

Announcements and Implementations

Truveta Data says that its  EHR-sourced database contains the de-identified records of 120 million patients.

Government and Politics

ProPublica calls out the lax enforcement of state regulations that require insurers to keep their provider directories current. A previous New York study of “ghost networks” found that 86% of the listed mental health professionals had incorrect contact information, weren’t actually in the stated network, or weren’t accepting new patients.

Sponsor Updates

• Five9 expands its partnership with ServiceNow to deliver a turnkey, AI-powered solution combining Five9’s Intelligent CX Platform with ServiceNow’s Customer Service Management.
• Rheumatology Associates of Oklahoma reports significant time savings using EClinicalWorks AI Assistant for Images.
• WellSky adds SkySense, a new suite of AI-powered tools designed to increase operational and clinician efficiencies, to its EHR systems.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast, “Interview with Graham Walker, MD.”
• CHIME honors Optimum Healthcare IT with the 2024 CHIME Foundation Partner Award.
• RLDatix will sponsor and present at the ACHE Scottsdale Cluster November 18.
• Sectra receives a CSA STAR Level 2 security certificate, facilitating cloud adoption in healthcare.
• Visage Imaging is featured in a new video titled “The Imaging Wire Show – The Road to Cloud-Based PACS.”
• SmartSense by Digi achieves SOC 2 Type II compliance.
• Sonifi Health releases a new e-book, “Reimagining Patient TVs.”
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company, publishes a new e-book, “TrustCommerce Community Connect Program.”
• Tegria publishes a case study, “Azure Data Lakehouse Enables Higher-Visibility Reporting Across Data Sources.”
• Spain’s Health Ministry renews its agreement with Wolters Kluwer Health for UpToDate clinical decision support solution.
• Agfa HealthCare, Artera, Elsevier, QGenda, Sectra, Visage Imaging, and Wolters Kluwer Health will exhibit at RSNA December 1-5 in Chicago.

Blog Posts

• Healthcare Literacy: A Language of Care that Goes Beyond Technology (CereCore)
• Accelerating quality performance in the real world (Notable)
• 4 Ways a Strategic Collaboration Helps Maximize Public Health Funding (Netsmart)
• Oracle’s next-gen EHR: A new era of AI in healthcare (Nordic)
• Nurses of Note 2024: The Occupational Health RN (PerfectServe)
• Fostering Community and Environment: Morgan’s Dedicated Service with Cleanup Club Chicago (Prominence Advisors)
• Financial Benefits of Optimized Cardiology Scheduling: Reducing Costs with Efficient Utilization (QGenda)
• Expand Your Nursing Career With the Oregon Licensure Program (SnapCare)
• Waystar True North™ 2024: 3 tips for healthcare revenue cycle leaders (Waystar)

Contacts

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

News 11/15/24

Top News

Forward, a primary care delivery company that brought AI-powered doc-in-a-box CarePods to market last November, abruptly shuts down. Current patients will have access to care support until December 13, according to an announcement posted on what’s left of the company’s website.

Former employees said key problems were lack of patient interest, skeptical commercial building landlords, blood draw technology failures that forced the company to stop offering lab tests, and machines that left patients stuck inside.

Forward managed to install just five of the devices, which cost $1 million each to build.

My analysis of the original announcement, especially given the history of Forward’s predecessors and comments made by its members, wasn’t optimistic.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Babylon Health founder Ali Parsa, PhD launches healthcare AI assistant company Quadrivia with seed funding from a Swedish VC firm. (A bit of a health kiosk-related side note: Babylon, which shut down last year, acquired Smart Health Station vendor Higi for $5 million in 2022.)

Impilo raises $11.5 million in Series A funding. The company offers white label remote care software and support services.

Sales

• The US Virgin Islands Office of Health Information Technology will work with CRISP Shared Services to develop an HIE. The organizations launched an interoperability pilot program last year.

People

Thomas Elbert (Health Catalyst) joins Get Well as COO.

Announcements and Implementations

Niagra Health in Ontario goes live on Oracle Health.

Sentara Norfolk General Hospital (VA) implements Andor Health’s ThinkAndor virtual nursing technology.

UConn John Dempsey Hospital (CT) rolls out 15 video monitoring camera carts as part of its new telesitter program.

Government and Politics

A new report from the Government Accountability Office points out that HHS has failed to act on several GAO cybersecurity recommendations made earlier this year. It stresses that the department must do a better job of coordinating and monitoring ransomware mitigation efforts and tracking provider adoption of cybersecurity practices so that it can better determine the need for cybersecurity resources.

The Defense Health Agency and US military hospitals in Japan warn patients of a website masquerading as the MHS Genesis patient portal that attempts to direct visitors to download a non-existent MHS Genesis mobile app. The DHA Cyber Operations Center has since blocked the fake site, which uses a .info rather than .mil web address.

Other

A study of primary care appointments at five VA clinics reveals that physicians often don’t digitally document what patients discuss with them during the visit. Physician-initiated concerns were included in 92% of EHR notes, while just 45% of patient-initiated discussions were documented. Researchers also noticed that nearly 50% of notes found in the EHR for these appointments were not found in visit transcripts.

Sponsor Updates

• Cardamom Health team members volunteer with non-profit Rise Wisconsin, helping it to prepare for the 45th anniversary celebration of its Respite Center.
• Artera’s government solutions business promotes Kari Baldonado to general manager and Marsha Laird-Maddox to senior director of strategy and operations; and names Matt Beirne (Cerner) director of federal growth and strategy.
• Arcadia launches new product modules, Enhanced Benchmarks and Vista Push, and previews upcoming solutions to further enable success with value-based care.
• Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital expands its Agfa HealthCare enterprise imaging system to its cardiology department.
• Inovalon promotes Sandy Warford to director of product marketing.
• Five9 expands its Genius AI suite with the launch of AI Agents, the next-generation of Five9 Intelligent Virtual Agents, which incorporates generative AI.
• Healthmonix congratulates Houston Methodist on its achievement in the Medicare Shared Savings Program, as recognized by CMS.
• Lucem Health names Mansi Goel (Johns Hopkins) associate data scientist.
• Meditech congratulates Ozarks Healthcare hospitalist and CMIO Priscilla Frase, MD on being recognized as CHIME’s Innovator of the Year.
• Altera Digital Health becomes a member of the The Sequoia Project.
• Visage Imaging publishes a new white paper, “Progress Towards Cloud: Relief, Considerations and New Opportunities.”

Blog Posts

• Why HCOs Should Deploy Private, Secure AI Chat Now (Tegria)
• 3 Ways to Change Unproductive Touches in Your Revenue Cycle (EClinicalWorks)
• Findhelp’s Colorado Health Solutions Summit (Findhelp)
• Top 5 Mistakes in Claims Management – And How to Avoid Them (FinThrive)
• From Military Intelligence to Healthcare Cybersecurity (Fortified Health Security)
• Use the “Holiday Diet” to Trim Your Clinical Productivity Variances (Impact Advisors)
• The present and future of AI converge at Google’s Cancer AI Symposium (Meditech)
• What is HEDIS? The Basics, Objectives and Significance (MRO)
• Occupational Health Software Must-Haves (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 11/13/24

Top News

McKesson, Oracle, and NextGen Healthcare’s private equity owner Thoma Bravo are reportedly vying to acquire health IT, analytics, and data vendor Veradigm. A deal is expected to be reached by Thanksgiving.

Veradigm’s market valuation is $1.2 billion.

Reader Comments

From Swede: “Re: Oracle Health Millennium. Went live in Sweden for the first time, apparently without being registered with the Swedish equivalent of the FDA.” A Sweden-based publication says that Millennium doesn’t have a certificate from the Medical Products Agency, which is required for products that perform clinical calculations. Oracle has an option to CE-mark the product in another EU country, which would make the sale and use legal.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Drug distributor Cardinal Health will acquire a majority stake in national gastroenterology practice GI Alliance at a $3.9 billion valuation. GIA’s 900 affiliated physicians work in 345 locations in 20 states, which includes 135 ambulatory surgical centers, 165 hospital networks, and 95 infusion centers.

AI-focused digital physical therapy services provider Sword Health reportedly lays off 13 of its physical therapists, about 17% of its clinicians, as the $3 billion startup prepares for an IPO next year and follows through on plans to manage more patients using AI. Former employees say that the company is using AI to conduct patient conversations and to prioritize patients. Sword announced plans in September to land more employer customers by offering outcomes-based pricing.

Sales

• In the UK, five NHS trusts go live on Agfa HealthCare’s image sharing network.
• Augusta Health (VA) chooses Meditech Expanse.

People

William Morris, MD, MBA (Google Cloud) joins Ambience Healthcare as chief medical officer.

Nick Giannasi, PhD (Datavant) is named CEO of Aspirion.

William Walders, MHA (BayCare Health System) joins The Joint Commission as VP/CDIO.

Healthcare Integrated Technologies hires Caleb Dixon, MBA (Socket Health) as chief customer officer.

Announcements and Implementations

CarolinaEast Health System (NC) will go live on Epic on November 30.

Government and Politics

The VA announces plans to eliminate co-pays for telehealth services and to fund the deployment of telehealth kiosks in communities.

A Veterans Day announcement from Epic touts enhanced interoperability with the VA that allows Epic users to screen patients to determine their available VA benefits. Epic says the connection, which went live earlier this year at Tufts Medicine and Sanford Health, has identified 100,000 eligible veterans.

Rep. Vern Buchanan (R-FL), chairman of the US House Ways and Means Subcommittee on Health, asks CMS to encourage the use of digital health innovations in Medicare by changing the practice expense category of the Physician Fee Schedule.

Sponsor Updates

• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new case study, “Sentri7 Drug Diversion boosts detection at large academic medical center.”
• The Groupe santé CHC in Belgium selects Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise imaging for its medical imaging department.
• The Slice of Healthcare Podcast features Arcadia CEO Michael Meucci.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare” podcast, “Pharmacy Benefits 101: DMP & MTM, Explained, with Nash Albadarin, PharmD.”
• The “2024 KLAS Emerging Solutions Top 20” report features Care.ai’s Smart Care Facility Platform.
• CliniComp celebrates its 41st anniversary.
• Consensus Cloud Solutions will present and exhibit at the HIMSS Gulf Coast Conference November 14 in Mobile, AL.

Blog Posts

• New Remote Monitoring Codes for 2026 (AdvancedMD)
• Optimizing Healthcare Efficiency and Revenue through Utilization Management (AGS Health)
• Harnessing the power of an avalanche of healthcare data (Altera Digital Health)
• Where Are Hospitals in Executing Strategic Priorities for 2024? (Ascom)
• The Key to Fewer Denials: Unlocking Automation with Advanced Real-Time Eligibility (Availity)
• OCR Doubles Down: Risk Analysis Now a Key Enforcement Priority (Clearwater)
• Data is at the Heart of Population Health (Dimensional Insight)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 11/11/24

Top News

Clinician network and drug marketing operator Doximity reports Q2 results: revenue up 20%, adjusted EPS $0.30 versus $0.22, beating expectations for both and sending DOCS shares up 34% in valuing the company at $11 billion.

The company said in the earnings call that its most profitable business is selling ads in its news feed,  while its fastest-growing offering is the AI-powered Doximity GPT workflow assistant, which processed 1 million prompts in Q2.

Reader Comments

From Anonymous: “Re: [vendor executive name omitted]. Removed from a plane intoxicated and arrested.” I’m not naming names per my longstanding policy of not calling out individuals who are involved in off-the-job arrests, lawsuits, or indiscretions. It’s news only if the company makes a statement to distance itself. For example, I wrote about a telehealth CEO who had a work-unrelated public altercation that I wouldn’t have mentioned except that his employer announced that he had been fired as a result, so that made it news. I am Golden Ruling it here — you yourself could get arrested for public intoxication, road rage, or a domestic issue, but I wouldn’t trash your reputation and maybe your career just because I have salacious details. Summon the oracle of Google if you need to know.

From Duopoly: “Re: Kaleida Health. I hear they are replacing Cerner with Epic.” Unverified, but they are listed on Epic’s UserWeb. Their open positions don’t have anything that is specific to Epic, but they have a ton of IT analyst openings. Kaleida spent $125 million to upgrade its Cerner system in early 2019.

From Griswold: “Re: Summa Health. A venture capital firm paying more than $1 billion to acquire a debt-laden, money-losing health system and turn it into a for-profit is one hella expensive technology test bed.” It will also be a public demonstration project for General Catalyst’s technology portfolio companies, which take a black eye if their products fail to improve Summa’s profit and quality. I don’t recall many (any?) cases where a health system gets better under the ownership of an investment firm that portrays itself as a money-indifferent white knight.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say that Oracle’s biggest challenge with its new EHR will be getting former Cerner customers to switch to that system instead of Epic. I signed up for an Oracle Health webinar next week that will provide a sneak peek.

New poll to your right or here: Which city or region has the strongest claim for being the US capital for health tech? How times have changed with the former obvious answers of Malvern and Kansas City don’t make the list and Atlanta is a long shot.

A handful of HIStalk sponsors have left the fold because they were acquired, ran short of money, changed strategy, or lost the only employee who knew anything about their sponsorship. Contact Lorre to replace them, especially if they were your competitor. She will offer some spiffs if you’re a startup or maybe if you are a former sponsor.

I used the image analysis capability of the ChatGPT phone app twice yesterday. I was looking for an unusual, inexpensive wine to serve to a neighbor who is coming over for dinner, so I took pictures of each label that I was considering and asked ChatGPT to tell me about each wine’s quality and whether it would go with what we were serving. Later that day, Mrs. H mentioned wanting to preserve old family recipes that have been handed down to her over the years, so I took a photo of each and had ChatGPT convert the barely readable cursive handwriting into text that I could copy-paste into Word (pro tip: the best recipes have the most smudges). I bet it would have excelled at interpreting old-school handwritten prescriptions.

Thanks to veterans – no matter when, where, or how you served – on Veterans Day. Sunday was the 249th birthday of the US Marine Corps, so thanks to those who always run toward the sounds of chaos.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health Catalyst reports Q3 results: revenue up 3%, adjusted EPS $0.07 versus $0.03, meeting revenue expectations but falling short on earnings. HCAT shares are up 37% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $501 million.

TruBridge reports Q3 results: revenue down 1%, adjusted EPS –$0.21 versus $0.45, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings. TBRG shares are down 3% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $203 million. COO David Dye, who has been with the company for 34 years, will retire at the end of the year.

Waystar reports Q3 results: revenue up 22%, adjusted EPS $0.14 versus –$0.09, beating expectations for both. WAY shares are up 51% since the company’s IPO on June 7, 2024, valuing the company at $5.4 billion.

Evolent Health reports Q3 results: revenue up 22%, EPS $0.04 versus $0.30, falling short on expectations for both and send shares down 46% in valuing the technology-focused care management company at $1.5 billion. The company blames higher-than-expected medical costs that will require it to renegotiate or exit some of its risk-based contracts with payers.

People

Optimum Healthcare IT promotes Dan Robinson to VP of client services.

Government and Politics

HHS awards Leidos a $235 million contract to modernize the country’s Organ Procurement and Transplant Network (OPTN). The system has been operated since 1986 by the United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS) and has generated more than 1,000 complaints and accusations of a monopoly.

Privacy and Security

Former organ donation organization employee Trent Russell is sentenced to two years in prison for accessing and screen-shotting the EHR data of then-Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose hospital chart then showed up on 4chan conspiracy theory message board. The prosecutor said that Russell “offered completely implausible excuses with a straight face,” referring to the defendant’s insistence that his cat must have run across his keyboard.

Other

FDA Commissioner Rob Califf, MD urges clinicians to help their patients understand medical misinformation, adding that AI may help by giving them more time for such discussions during encounters.

Sponsor Updates

• Inovalon announces that customers who are using its Converged Quality healthcare quality data analysis and improvement software realized a 5% increase above the national average of 2025 Medicare Advantage Star Ratings.
• WellSky partners with the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services to publish survey results on how state directors plan to comply with the CMS “Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services” rule.
• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Happy Doctors and Technology: A CMIO and Practicing Physician’s POV.”
• RLDatix publishes a new resource, “AdventHealth Reduced Falls by 80% With Scalable, Data-Driven Bootcamp.”
• SmartSense by Digi will exhibit at the ASHP 2024 Midyear Clinical Meeting & Exhibition December 8-12 in New Orleans.
• A new study by WellSky Foundation and Meals on Wheels America reveals meal delivery services significantly reduce senior hospitalizations.
• Clinical Architecture, InterSystems, Wolters Kluwer Health, and Elsevier will sponsor and/or exhibit at AMIA 2024 November 9-13 in San Francisco.

Blog Posts

• What to Expect at UKG Aspire 2024 (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Succeeding in Value-Based Care: Part 1 (Tegria)
• Streamlining pre-registration: Lessons from Augusta Health’s AI-powered automation journey (Notable)
• Celebrating National Family Caregivers Day: 3 ways to give back to those who give so much (Netsmart)
• Grounded by pilots: why healthcare innovation rarely takes off (Nordic)
• Healthcare Communication Software: History and Future Predictions (PerfectServe)
• Promoting Safety and Awareness: David’s Impactful Community Service with Elgin Fire Department (Prominence Advisors)
• Optimizing Cardiology Scheduling: A Complete Guide to Better Care and Workflow (QGenda)
• The Right Focus for Technology Innovation: CEO Curtis Watkins POV (CereCore)
• Protecting Against the Top Cause of Data Breaches: Human Error (TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company)
• What Came After the Heart Attack (Surescripts)
• Revenue Cycle Outsourcing: How To Optimize Healthcare Financial Operations (TruBridge)
• Embracing Full Cloud Adoption: Why Hybrid Solutions Compromise Security and Efficiency (Visage Imaging)
• Automated prior authorization 101: How to activate staff + exception-based workflows (Waystar)
• What’s on the healthcare horizon: Focusing AI to benefit care teams, harnessing data, consumer-centric care (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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

News 11/8/24

Top News

The non-profit Alliance for Smart Healthcare Excellence launches with former HIMSS CEO Steve Lieber as president and CEO. It will offer the Smart Hospital Maturity Model.

The organization, which is funded by Stryker and was developed with the assistance of CHIME, will use a survey model to assess the level of smart care adoption. The initial survey has been completed by 170 hospitals.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health and human services system vendor VitalHub acquires Strata Health, which offers patient flow solutions.

The non-profit Health Commons Project acquires OneHealthPort, Washington State’s HIE.

Analytics technology vendor Health Catalyst will acquire cybersecurity company Intraprise Health.

Drug wholesaler Cencora, which renamed itself from AmerisourceBergen in August 2023, will acquire 300-specialist Retinal Consultants of America from its private equity owner for $4.6 billion in cash plus another $500 million in performance payouts. The company has practices in 23 states.

CVS Health reports Q3 results: revenue up 6%, EPS $0.07 versus $1.75, beating expectations for both. President and CEO David Joyner, who replaced  Karen Lynch last month, says that the company’s Aetna insurance business had higher than expected medical costs that he expects to continue. CVS Health took a $1.2 billion impairment charge this quarter for the 270 drugstores that it expects to close next year.

Sales

• Augusta Health (VA) selects Meditech Expanse.
• Iowa’s state HIE CyncHealth will implement Health Catalyst’s Ninja Universe analytics platform.

People

CommonSpirit Health hires Brady Small (Oracle) as CIO of its Mountain Region.

The VA names Kim Stevens, DNP, MSN, RN (Accenture) as chief health informatics officer.

Regenstrief Institute hires Chris Harle, PhD, MS (University of Florida Health) as CIO. He will continue serving as a professor at Indiana University. 

Announcements and Implementations

AMIA announces 87 new FAMIA inductees.

Vancouver-based UniDoc Health will ship an H3 Health Cube, its self-contained virtual clinic, to Ukraine’s largest children’s hospital.

Summa Health (OH) signs an agreement to be acquired by General Catalyst’s HATCo for $485 million in cash, $350 million in capital funding, and $200 million in strategic investment. The next step is regulatory review. The initial letter of intent was signed in January 2024 after Summa failed in previous attempts to find a partner who could help with its $800 million in debt. General Catalyst will use the health system to pilot its technology-driven demonstration of “health assurance” that it says will replace “sick care.”

A new KLAS report of customers who are running Epic on the public cloud finds that the large organizations that are in full production are satisfied with both Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, reporting high reliability and scalability. Most have implemented Epic disaster recovery. Neither customer base reports cost savings, as the cloud solutions cost as much or more than their on-premises environments. Their biggest challenges are integration with non-Epic systems and lack of internal cloud expertise that requires hiring third-party consulting companies.

Other

A New England doctor pleads guilty to prescribing controlled substances to patients who paid him $250 in cash even though he knew they were selling the drugs on the street. According to HHS OIG, substance abuse clinic operator Adnan Khan, MD “ran his medical practice with the corruption and recklessness of a common drug dealer.”

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new podcast, “16 Healthcare Podcasts You Should Listen or Subscribe To.”
• Inovalon’s Empower 2024 summit delivers groundbreaking insights and innovation to achieve data-driven healthcare.
• North Tees and Hartlepool NHS Foundation Trust extends the rollout of the InterSystems TrakCare system to streamline ICU admissions processes.
• Surescripts expands its Medication History for Populations solution to health plans to better support patient care, improve medication adherence, and lower costs.
• Bizmatics marks 21 years of empowering independent healthcare providers with reliable drug knowledge from First Databank.
• Findhelp welcomes Carrot Fertility, Buhl Regional Health Foundation, and City of Hope to its network.
• Five9 announces that it has again been positioned by Gartner as a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Contact Center as a Service for its Completeness of Vision and Ability to Execute.
• Black Book Research announces the recipients of its 2024 Customer Satisfaction Awards in the behavioral health management sector, including HIStalk Sponsor Netsmart in the categories of EHR, behavioral health hospitals and health systems providers; and EHR, behavioral health agencies and government providers.
• Healthcare Growth Partners releases a new “Market Matrix” podcast, “Navigating a Health IT Market in Flux: Key Insights as We Head Into Q4.”
• Medhost completes certification for HTI-1 Decision Support Interventions and announces general availability.
• The “Leading Difference” podcast features Medicomp Systems Chief Medical Officer Jay Anders, MD.
• Meditech congratulates four hospital customers that make up the CARE4 partnership in Central Ontario for receiving the Electronic Medical Record Adoption Model Stage 6 validation from HIMSS.

Blog Posts

• 6 Things to Know About the Next Generation of Workday AI (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Conference Ends, but the Learning Goes On (EClinicalWorks)
• My Lifelong Journey of Curiosity, Innovation, and Compassion as a Pharmacist (First Databank)
• The Importance of Accurate Charge Capture: Avoiding Common Pitfalls (FinThrive)
• New Data Shows 75% of Consumers Crave Talking to a Human — How Smart Automation Can Elevate CX, Not Replace It (Five9)
• Navigating New York’s Cybersecurity Regulations for Hospitals (Fortified Health Security)
• Attending NAACOS: Insights and innovations shaping the future of ACOs (Healthmonix)
• Achieving Sustainable Margin Results with an “Operations and Capacity Center” (OCC) (Impact Advisors)
• Think in Threes to Maximize Health Plan ROI on Electronic Prior Authorization (InterSystems)
• 3 perspectives for executing mobility strategies (Meditech)
• Why Your Final MIPS Score Might Be Different from What You Expected – and What You Can Do About It (MRO)
• Physical Therapy Documentation Software: A Comprehensive Guide (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 11/6/24

Top News

Online mental healthcare company Cerebral will pay $3.6 million as part of a 30-month non-prosecution agreement for encouraging the unauthorized distribution of controlled substances between 2019 and 2022.

The company agreed earlier this year to pay $5 million in consumer refunds and $2 million in civil penalties as part of additional settlements with the DoJ and FTC.

CEO Kyle Robertson left the company in December 2022 and immediately founded telehealth operator Zealthy, which offers virtual treatment of anxiety and depression, weight loss, hair loss, and erectile dysfunction.

Reader Comments

From Eyeball: “Re: Oracle Health’s new EHR. It has no menus or drop-downs that would allow clinicians to find information other than by speaking. How is privacy and interference with ambient noise handled?“

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

A Healthcare Growth Partners survey of private equity investment professionals finds that:

• Valuations have declined for new investment and exits even as activity has increased.
• Buyout and growth equity investors see the focus on profitability as being a return to discipline, while  venture capital investors think the market has overreacted in increasing the emphasis on profitability over growth.
• Most investors are confident despite IPO slowdowns and rising interest rates.
• AI is a focus, but more as a tool to improve operations rather than a driver of new investments.

Sales

• Alameda County Health (CA) will use analytics software from Innovaccer to enhance its Social Health Information Exchange.
• The US Defense Health Agency will deploy Volpara Health’s Patient Hub mammography technology across the military health system.

People

Agfa HealthCare names Eric Sumner (Samsung Healthcare) SVP of sales for North America.

Harris Data Integrity Solutions promotes Rachel Podczervinski, MS to SVP.

Clarify Health names Dan Olson (Pearl Health) chief commercial officer and Alejandro Reti, MD, MBA (UnitedHealth Group) chief product officer.

Integris hires Dan Magoc, MBA (Mercy) as CIO.

Jonathan D’Souza (MedArrive) joins HarmonyCares as chief product and technology officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Brook Health combines Linus Health’s digital cognitive assessment software with its remote care technology, offering providers and patients same-day assessment and treatment planning capabilities.

In Washington, primary care provider Palouse Medical will implement Epic through an arrangement with Pullman Regional Hospital.

Epic releases an expanded set of APIs that support USCDI v3, supporting tribal affiliation, disability status, caregiver relationships, preferred language, and Social Drivers of Health. The federal government requires developers to implement USCDI v3 by December 2025. Epic has already committed to supporting USCDI v4 and v5.

Government and Politics

CMS publishes the 2025 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Final Rule, which includes codes that will enable providers to bill Medicare for certain FDA-approved mental health apps and related services.

Canadian Forces Health Services announces plans to replace its proprietary health information system with an off-the-shelf EHR. CFHS hopes to have core systems replaced by 2028 and full system functionality by 2031.

Privacy and Security

Memorial Hospital & Manor, a hospital and nursing home in rural Georgia, deals with a ransomware attack that it discovered early Saturday morning.

Other

Memorial Healthcare System launches a Care Coordination Center for its six acute care facilities that incorporates Epic and virtual nursing software from Artsight.

Epic’s latest “Hey Judy” describes how the company asked one of its developers – who had created a gaming tips website on his own time – to develop a way for doctors to review patient charts at home. The result was Epic Web, which was rolled out to health systems in 1997 and celebrated in a series of three comic books. Those systems asked if they could share Epic Web with their affiliate providers, which spurred development of EpicCare Link that allowed school nurses, skilled nursing facility staff, and small clinics to exchange information with health systems. 

Only in America. An Oregon ambulance driver who was making a right turn hits a bicyclist who is riding in the same direction, then transports him to the hospital for treatment of a fractured nose, after which the ambulance company billed him $1,900 for the ride. He’s suing the the ambulance provider for $997,000.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks introduces a series of AI-powered enhancements and solutions designed to optimize practice and provider efficiency.
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast, “Innovations in Home Care Technology.”
• The Outcomes Rocket Podcast features Arrive Health CEO Kyle Kiser, “Reintroducing Consumer Choice in Prescription Decisions.”
• AvaSure will sponsor the ATA Virtual Nursing Insights Summit November 17-19 in Arlington, TX.
• Capital Rx earns full URAC reaccreditation in pharmacy benefit management.
• CereCore Principal CISO Ryan Finlay becomes a Fellow of the American College of Health Information Management.
• Clinical Architecture publishes a new whitepaper, “The 6 Cs Framework for Assessing Value Set Quality.”
• Cordea Consulting owner and CEO Jen Jones joins the advisory board of A-S Medical Solutions.
• Direct Recruiters expands into post-acute executive search services through the strategic integration of sister company Full Spectrum Search Group.

Blog Posts

• A clear data strategy is crucial for equitable care (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Why You Need a Workday Staffing Partner (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• The Microsoft Healthcare Threat Intelligence Briefing (AdvancedMD)
• Best Practices for Seamless Clinical Operations (AGS Health)
• A day to remember: Altera Digital Health Gives Back on 9/11 (Altera Digital Health)
• Takeaways from HLTH 2024: A Bold Move Toward Action-Oriented Healthcare (Amenities Health)
• Navigating Post-Discharge Communication and Achieving Clinical Excellence (Artera)
• AI Can Help Solve Prior Auth’s Connectivity Problem (Consensus Cloud Solutions)
• The Changing Landscape of Cybersecurity Accountability in Healthcare (CloudWave)
• Data Quality is Paramount in Healthcare (Dimensional Insight)
• Partnering with a Recruiter: Your Guide to Career Success (Direct Recruiters)
• Med History Gaps? How Carle Health Connects the Dots With AI for Confident, Safe Prescribing Decisions (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 11/4/24

Women’s health unicorn Maven Clinic cuts 10% of its workforce weeks after raising $125M

Maven Clinic, which offers virtual women’s and family health services, reportedly lays off 10% of its headcount weeks after it raised a $125 million Series F funding round at a $1.7 billion valuation.

Providence Alaska introduces telenurses, but bedside nurses protest the change

Providence Alaska’s efforts to introduce virtual nursing in two of its units leave bedside nurses concerned that their workloads will increase, potentially compromising patient safety, despite initial promises to the contrary.

CoachCare acquires Dedica Health

Remote patient monitoring and virtual care business CoachCare acquires Dedica Health, which specializes in RPM and chronic care management.

Monday Morning Update 11/4/24

Top News

Maven Clinic, which offers virtual women’s and family health services, reportedly lays off 10% of its headcount weeks after it raised a $125 million Series F funding round at a $1.7 billion valuation.

Employees say on online forums that the layoffs are in preparation for an upcoming company IPO.

Maven posted an article last year about “Workplace Survivor Syndrome” that wrapped up with “How Maven can help you support employees following layoffs.”

Reader Comments

From Jerry Rigged: “Re: Oracle Health. Aren’t they just using a code generator to transform Millennium to new technology?” That was the original plan, but now it sounds like they are developing from scratch, or at least spiffing up the front end without changing the functionality and data schema. Competing with Epic will require more than just an improved UI with some AI thrown in – Epic could match that if it thinks that’s what the market wants. The “crumbling infrastructure” comment isn’t exactly confidence-inspiring to existing customers who Oracle expects to stick around while they create a replacement product like other big outsiders have previously failed to do.. Maybe someone can answer these questions:

• How much of Millennium’s functionality will be included in the new product, and how will integration work with those modules that won’t be part of the initial release? Pharmacy, surgery, pathology, and radiology have to be complete and error-free.
• How will the new system address existing user customization?
• Will the problematic revenue cycle system be rewritten, and if not, how will the existing one integrate with the new EHR? Why would you not first fix RCM when its weaknesses are obviously hurting product sales and retention?
• How will CCL customization, rules and alerts, MPages, and custom interfaces be addressed?
• How will users interact with the system if they don’t like voice navigation or it doesn’t work in some situation?
• What’s the incentive for an existing customer to serve as a beta site?
• How long will it take for the new product to get market momentum, which will require convincing some number of Epic customers to de-install? Epic is expensive and organization-altering – not to mention that de-installs have been few – so what’s the best guess of the length of the buying cycle where Oracle Health could be back on the table?

From Robert D. Lafsky, MD: “Re: NEJM article. Good, although I would dispute how much AI can make the derp filling up most of my shared EMR any worse. Although several primary care colleagues are using AI assistants in the room, I stubbornly stick with dictating a narrative and some concluding clinical reasoning using Dragon. If only their AI geniuses could figure out how to get it to distinguish between the words ‘in’ and ‘and’ it would be nearly perfect.” The NEJM perspective piece makes these points:

• The problem-oriented, click-driven medical record was supposed to help clinicians by organizing information to support decision-making, but has placed limits on conveying the “patient’s story” and hasn’t been proven to have improved quality.
• AI-generated chart information could reduce the quality and reliability of documentation.
• The clinician’s reasoning might be diminished if AI creates the documentation without requiring them to synthesize the information themselves.
• Transcription and chart summarization seem like low-risk uses of AI, but may not perform as well as clinicians in conveying which information is relevant and creating a concise clinical impression that conveys the clinician’s degree of confidence.
• AI is confident even when it is wrong, making it harder for clinicians to detect hallucinations.
• AI excels in a free-form environment, meaning that it might have worked better with old-school paper records rather than with EHRs.
• AI models may collapse when they are fed training data that was generated by AI in the first place.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HLTH attendance isn’t beneficial to patients and healthcare in general, according to 81% of poll respondents overall and two-thirds of those who actually attended. Steve says that the conference is more geared toward getting investors and CEOs in the same room, while UnHLTHy says that HLTH ends up being companies that are trying to sell stuff to each other – an exhibitor told them that just 270 providers were on the list of 9,000 attendees.

New poll to your right or here: What will be Oracle Health’s biggest challenge in developing a new EHR? Those of us who have been involved in designing or implementing a new clinical software product could have extended the choice list by dozens, but I tried to keep it high level.

Congrats to everyone who proudly sticks to always tagging times as “EST” — you have finally entered the 33% of the year when you are not wrong. Pro tip: switch to just “ET” and you’ll be right 100% of the time. Beyond the time change that affects all Americans except for those in Hawaii and most of Arizona, I wish you a belated happy Halloween, Diwali, and Día de Muertos.

I accidentally found some useful LinkedIn options given that I have never checked my profile settings. Click “Settings & Privacy” under your profile picture on the top toolbar, after which you can do several things:

• Turn off autoplay videos.
• Turn off sound effects.
• Don’t show profile photos of people who aren’t either a connection or in your network.
• Turn off seeing political content in your feed.
• Choose “most relevant” or “most recent” posts for your feed view (I changed to the latter).
• Under Settings/Visibility, you can also choose to hide your name when you visit someone’s profile, turn off the ability for connections to see your connections list or people you follow, hide your last name, and hide profile visibility from outside LinkedIn.
• Under Advertising data, you can turn off a bunch of options that LinkedIn uses to target ads and disallow showing personalized ads from outside of LinkedIn.

Thanks to these companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo to learn more or contact Lorre to join the list.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

UK-based Definition Health, which offers surgical workflow software, raises $7.5 million in pre-seed funding.

Cigna reports a “non-cash investment loss” of $1 billion related to its $2.5 billion investment in VillageMD in November 2022. The company wrote off nearly $2 billion of that investment in May 2024 when VillageMD majority owner Walgreens started closing its clinics.

Sales

• Children’s Mercy Kansas City begins its implementation of Epic, which will replace Oracle Health.

Announcements and Implementations

Oracle Health and Meharry Medical College announce plans to create a health technology education and research collaborative, a health innovation hub, and a community care and wellness center in Nashville.

Privacy and Security

In Ireland, whistleblowers report confidentiality concerns that employees of Children’s Health Ireland are using the GoToMyPC remote desktop software on personal phones and laptops to access confidential patient information on hospital systems.

Other

The rapidly aging population of Hong Kong, combined with China’s goal to care for 97% of its elderly citizens at home, is driving digital health innovation. Biometric sensor companies have developed wearables that monitor heart rate and blood oxygen levels, diagnose sleep apnea at home, function as non-prescription hearing aids, and detect heat stress. The company Well Being Digital focuses on earbud sensors, citing studies showing that earbuds are more commonly worn than watches or rings and offer more stable, accurate measurements compared to wrist- or finger-based devices. Additionally, earbuds – which the company calls “hearables” – allow interactive and intervention features, such as direct clinician communication.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore will participate in the CHIME Fall Forum this week.
• WellSky and the National Association of State Directors of Developmental Disabilities Services publish the results of a survey that assess the readiness of states to comply with CMS’s Ensuring Access to Medicaid Services final rule.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a data and analytics governance capability maturity model.
• Clearwater and Guidehouse partner to offer solutions that help healthcare organizations mitigate cybersecurity risk.
• Vyne Medical publishes a case study titled “How Hurley Medical Center Expanded Services to Increase Access to Care.”
• Inovalon announces the winners of its 2024 Inovalon Impact Awards.
• Optimum Healthcare IT posts an episode of its “Healthy as Tech” podcast titled “4 Ways to Increase Epic ROI With ServiceNow.”

Contacts

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

News 11/1/24

Top News

Global Payments will sell EHR/PM vendor AdvancedMD, which it acquired in 2018 for $700 million, to Francisco Partners for $1.1 billion.

AdvancedMD President Amanda Sharp, who has been with the company for 19 years starting as an accounts receivable clerk, will take on the title of CEO.

Reader Comments

From Ralphie: “Re: Oracle Health. We are a long-time Cerner customer evaluating the potential of moving to Epic. The internal Epic champions are going to throw the ‘crumbling architecture’ comment at everything. How does Oracle Health justify the last few years of our expense implementing and enhancing their solutions? How does an organization do a cost analysis on OH vs Epic? Too many questions that will likely force more organizations in the midst of this analysis to pursue Epic.” That remarkably clueless comment came from Seema Verma, who as CMS administrator mostly took political shots against the very programs she was paid to oversee, and now she’s slamming the former Cerner with similar insider contempt. Imagine being an Oracle Health sales rep who is trying to stem the Epic tide who now has to explain why “crumbling architecture” shouldn’t be a concern. Maybe the plan is to admit an inability to compete with Epic and put all the marbles into the lucrative VA and DoD contracts, knowing that they are the only former Cerner customers who don’t care about the company’s longstanding revenue cycle struggles.

From Beelzebub: “Re: HLTH conference. The founder has started and sold several conferences and has already moved on to his next one.” Jonathan Weiner has not only sold a previous conference to HLTH acquirer Hyve, he also sold one to Informa, which recently bought the HIMSS annual conference. He’s now starting an AI conference while staying on with HLTH for whatever time the acquisition terms specify. Terms of the HLTH deal weren’t announced, but the number most often bandied about, based on the revenue of comparable events, is $100 million, continuing the string of startup-pitching conferences that are far more successful than the companies that they promote. As the old saying goes, the smartest person in a gold rush is the one who sells shovels.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

IRhythm Technologies reports Q3 results: revenue up 18%, adjusted EPS –$1.26 versus –$0.89, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings. IRTC shares have lost 11% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $2.2 billion.

Amwell reports Q3 results: revenue down 1%, EPS –$2.87 versus –$9.54, beating analyst expectations for both. AMWL shares have lost 67% of their value in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $137 million.

A Kansas City publication questions “What’s Going On With All The Empty Cerner Buildings?” in noting that Oracle has closed two of the former Cerner’s three campuses and uses the former Innovations Campus to house a limited number of employees who don’t work remotely. The article concludes, “What’s scarier than the empty Northland headquarters building and its futuristic metal spire? The prominent Cerner street signage that remains at the campus entrance, suggesting a false promise of a place that once provided livelihoods for thousands but doesn’t exist anymore.”

Sales

• Augusta Health (VA) will implement Meditech Expanse.
• Belgium’s UZ Leuven will implement digital pathology from Sectra.

People

1upHealth hires Andrew Boyd, PhD (Personify Health) as CEO.

Glynn Stanton is named CIO for Yale New Haven Health System, Yale Medicine, and Yale Health and will continue in his role as the health system’s CISO.

Announcements and Implementations

Oracle founder Larry Ellison says at the Oracle Health Summit that “Cerner took about 25 years to write their system. We have completely rewritten that system in 14 months.”

Athenahealth integrates ambient documentation from Suki and IScribe with AthenaOne.

A new KLAS report on EHRs for under-200 bed hospitals finds that 42% use legacy systems and most new considerations involve Epic Community Connect, Meditech Expanse, and Oracle Health. Most Oracle Health and TruBridge respondents say they wouldn’t buy the solution again. Meditech and Epic Community Connect customers are happiest with the value received.

Privacy and Security

Elon Musk asks his followers on X to submit their medical images to his AI platform Grok to be used for its training, raising significant privacy concerns. It would also give Grok free, immediate access to protected health information without requiring signed patient consent forms.

Other

The board of Jennie Stuart Health (KY) confirms to the public that its decision to seek acquisition by Deaconess Health was driven by its desire to implement Epic, which the small hospital can’t afford on its own. The health system says that its 2022 implementation of Altera Digital Health caused problems, with the hospital’s medical staff president adding that Altera had not lived up to its promises. He says that the hospital could be live on Epic through Deaconess in six to nine months. A community member had previously cited the hospital’s $8 million purchase of an “artificial intelligence boondoggle” as a significant financial issue.

Contacts

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

News 10/30/24

Top News

Oracle Health will release a voice-powered, AI-enabled EHR in 2025.

The new system will be developed from scratch rather than being built on Cerner Millennium architecture, which will then require existing customers to migrate to the new one.

The company says that it discovered that Millennium has a “crumbling infrastructure” that was not suitable for enhancement.

Reader Comments

From TooCuteByHalf: “Re: Oracle Health’s application to become a QHIN. This is great news for interoperability … eventually. The application process takes months at the earliest, and even at that, it won’t be till at least mid 2025 before the first Oracle Health hospital goes live. TEFCA is nearly a year old, with millions of documents being shared, and the founding QHIN’s have been in the game for literally years. What took Oracle so long, and why take a victory lap in a race you’re not winning?” I’m even more interested in how Oracle Health plans to release a from-scratch EHR in the next few months that does not use Millennium’s underpinnings. It seems challenging to develop, test, document, and install a brand new EHR that will require existing customers to migrate, which is probably why no company has succeeded in rolling out a competitive inpatient EHR in decades. It’s a high-wire act to put out a huge software platform that directly affects patient care, especially given significant loss of former Cerner subject matter experts, and it wouldn’t take many clinically unfortunate missteps to send Oracle Health’s remaining customers fleeing to Epic. Meanwhile, having thrown the only available product under the bus after what seems to have been poorly executed due diligence, Oracle won’t likely make many new sales until the replacement system goes GA, not that it is selling much anyway. 

From Big Dog: “Re: Epic. Is the shared version (where multiple clients are on the same instance) of Epic a reduced functional version of Epic when it’s a standalone version? Was talking to a nurse at a local hospital the other day and they recently converted from Cerner Community Works and the nurse was stating they must have purchased the cheap version as it was no better than what they had been using.“

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

This week is a first, in that both Jenn and I are away on vacation at the same time. I’ll put in enough hours to not miss anything important, but will keep it simple otherwise.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

London-based events operator Hyve acquires HLTH, whose HLTH USA conference will become its largest event by revenue. Hyve will take over HLTH USA (Las Vegas), ViVE (Nashville), and HLTH Europe (Amsterdam). Hyve says it has targeted HLTH for years as the top conference in healthcare, noting a post-pandemic trend in which the largest conferences are growing at the expense of smaller ones. Hyve will bring over 80 HLTH employees and founder Jon Weiner. Hyve was taken private by two private equity firms in June 2023.

Alpha II, which acquired RCxRules in October 2023, changes its name to Aptarro. 

A study by Peterson Health Technology Institute finds that digital hypertension management tools – which include blood pressure monitoring, medication management, and behavior change – don’t provide overall health spending value even though they can be effective. It concludes that solutions that send data to care teams for medication management are most effective, while those that focus on patient behavior change deliver substandard results compared to traditional care.

Sales

• Northeast Georgia Health System chooses Optimum Healthcare IT to support execution of its cloud strategy with Amazon Web Services.

People

Lissy Hu, MD, MBA (WellSky) joins healthcare learning solutions vendor Ascend Learning as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Oracle Health will apply to become a Qualified Health Information Network. The company says that it will continue to support CommonWell Health Alliance as a founding member. Epic welcomed Oracle Health to TEFCA, noting that Epic already has 700 hospitals live on TEFCA as a founding member and adding, “Epic hopes that today’s Oracle Health announcement indicates that they are finally ready to take interoperability seriously—and to deliver the technology that patients and providers deserve instead of making distracting, untrue statements.”

Altera Digital Health announces GA of Paragon Denali, a cloud-native EHR that runs on Microsoft Azure and is targeted to rural, critical access, and community hospitals.

Medscape announces a free, AI-powered scribe solution that transcribes and summarizes encounters.

Emory University and Emory Healthcare will consolidate their IT operations into a single organization under Alistair Erskine, MD, MBA,  who has been named to the newly created position of enterprise chief information and digital officer. He joined Emory Healthcare as chief information and digital officer in March 2023.

Inovalon announces new products for eligibility verification, network provider utilization, AI-powered record review, FHIR API connectivity for health plans, a research network, and expanded pharmacy functionality.

A new KLAS report on ambient speech solutions finds that Nuance is most often considered while Abridge is strong in affordability and physician acceptance,with both companies benefiting from their relationship and integration with Epic. Suki and Augmedix are often considered by Meditech users. 

Contacts

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