News 10/4/24

Top News

Virtual care chronic disease management vendor Omada Health files SEC paperwork for an IPO that is planned for early 2025.

The 13-year-old company has raised $450 million. It was valued at $1 billion in its most recent funding round in 2022.

Omada offers coaching, connected devices, and care plan management for diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and joint pain.

Reader Comments

From We Need More Good Actors: “Re: Particle vs. Epic. It was truly interesting to hear ‘The Health Tech Talk Show’ take this perspective: ‘This is a total freaking stunt, and they [Particle] are skirting around the actually problem that is they are bad guys, doing bad things, and totally destroying trust in the market.’” We’re all cheap-seaters until Particle’s scattershot complaint gets legally fleshed out and Epic and Carequality tell their side of the story, but these are my thoughts as I look at this week’s reader poll, in which 80% of respondents think that Epic’s case is stronger:

• Particle appears to have knowingly either bent or broke the data-sharing rules of the road.
• Carequality’s guidelines allow companies like Epic to turn off exchange with an organization if they suspect problems with privacy and security practices, so one rogue Particle customer could cause all customers to be turned off.
• The most relevant verbiage in the complaint is this: “Just a few months after Epic began its conduct, however, Particle’s revenue growth dropped so sharply and so dramatically that it was barely able to meet one-third of its previous projections, which up to that point it had regularly exceeded. And, unfortunately, that downward trend is continuing, all because of Epic’s anticompetitive campaign.”
• I don’t think the lawsuit is a stunt since generating PR won’t really help Particle, but rather a last-gasp effort by Particle to try to extract settlement cash from Epic to mollify investors who have pumped $40 million into the now-struggling company.
• What were they thinking in signing on an ambulance-chasing law firm as a customer?
• I expect one of two outcomes: (a) Particle will drop its lawsuit as the proceedings drag on with the lawyer cash register ringing, especially if HHS rejects Particle’s complaint of Epic’s information blocking and/or Carequality’s rules and records seem to indicate that Epic followed its rules and Particle didn’t; or (b) Particle will go broke while trying to ride out an expensive, tough-to-prove antitrust lawsuit.
• The most relevant industry questions are: (a) how far does the “treatment” definition and that of secondary uses extend?; (b) what level of responsibility do companies like Particle have for vetting and monitoring their customers?; and (c) what are Carequality’s responsibilities in defining and monitoring acceptable user behavior?
• The T in TEFCA stands for “trusted” and Particle’s lawsuit may convince the industry that Epic has been a good steward of patient data and responded appropriately.
• Perhaps Particle hopes to rally the industry around the “Epic is a bully” theme that unsuccessful competitors repeat regularly, but I’m not sure that this lawsuit will accomplish that or that Particle will benefit as a result.

From Steve Stanic: “Re: Lake Charles Memorial Health System (LA). We went live with Epic on October 1, replacing Paragon and local niche ambulatory vendor IMed after an 18-month implementation that replaced decades-old technology.” Steve is CIO there.

From Karma Chameleon: “Re: CVS Health. I was inspired to write this since my fellow physicians and I, as well as our patients, are chronically having to endure BS from CVS.” This is masterfully poetic and acerbic:

I have no tears for CVS
Nor sadness that they’re in distress
Indeed, if they are in a mess,
I’m quite delighted (I confess)

For in their money-grubbing quest,
Their PBM denied with zest,
And now it seems they must divest.
Most will concur — it’s for the best!

Tons of money they should lose
For all the staff that they abuse
Consumer care is just a ruse
All of this should be old news

The other thing, if truth be told
(And at the risk of being bold)
That dreadful music while on hold
Should mandate CVS be sold.

And so, my friends, I will not wail
If CVS begins to fail
If its investors start to bail
And karma bites it in the tail.

Webinars

October 24 (Thursday) noon ET. “Preparing for HTI-2 Compliance: What EHR and Health IT Vendors Need to Know.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. Failure to meet ASTP’s mandatory HTI-2 certification  and compliance standards could impose financial consequences on clients. The presenters will discuss the content and timelines of this key policy update, which includes NCPDP Script upgrades, mandatory support for electronic prior authorization, and real-time prescription benefit. They will offer insight into the impact on “Base EHR” qualifications and provide practical advice on aligning development roadmaps with these changes.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Teladoc COO Michael Waters, MHA will leave the company as part of a restructuring under new CEO Chuck Divita. He joined the company in July 2022 after nearly 10 years at Providence.

Sales

• Connective Health will use Availity’s Fusion data transformation engine to normalize, enrich, and reorganize clinical data.
• Ardent Health will implement the perioperative solution of Qventus to optimize its robotics surgery program.

People

TigerConnect hires Marissa Carlson, MS (Intelerad) as chief marketing officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Henry Ford President and CEO Robert Riney says that he is excited about implementing Epic at the former Ascension Michigan hospitals, naming that as one of his top priorities.

Rush Health announces Rush Connect, which offers virtual specialty care, virtual urgent care, E-visits via MyChart messaging, and self-scheduled cancer screenings.

Sponsor Updates

• First Databank staff volunteer at the Food Pantry at Riverside Park in Indianapolis.
• FeaturedCustomers names Artera, Backline by DrFirst, and PerfectServe as top performers in its “Fall 2024 Hospital Communications Software Customer Success Report.”
• Black Book Research’s latest survey of IT leaders lists eight technologies draining value from health systems.
• Ellkay will exhibit at the New England Epic User Collaborative October 8 in Waltham, MA.
• Clinical Architecture and 4medica partner to offer a harmonized, longitudinal whole-person medical record.
• Findhelp releases a new episode of “American Compassion The Safety Net” podcast, “The Broken US Safety Net.”
• Fortified Health Security names Caroline Nee business development representative.
• Healthcare Growth Partners publishes the September 2024 edition of its “HGP Observations.”
• Impact Advisors will present at the MGMA Leaders Conference October 7 in Denver.
• Inovalon previews its annual Empower Summit, taking place October 27-29 in Washington, D.C.
• “The Lead at the Top of Your Game” podcast features KeyCare CEO Lyle Berkowitz, MD discussing “How Tech-Empowered Virtual Healthcare Teams May Save Your Life.”
• The “NCQA Quality Matters” podcast features Konza National Network President and CEO Laura McCrary, “When Exchanging (and Trusting) Data Grows Up.”

Blog Posts

• Expert tips to take your healthcare data from chaos to clarity (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Sunoh.ai – The Ultimate AI Scribe Solution for your Healthcare Practice (EClinicalWorks)
• NYC Health + Hospitals & EVisit (EVisit)
• Good to Great: Crafting Killer Digital Experiences for Exceptional Results (Five9)
• Confused About Interoperability? We’ve Got You Covered (HealthMark Group)
• From a Single Point of Failure to Multiple Paths: Industry Shifts in Response to Major Disruption (Inovalon)
• The relative number of new healthcare managers is growing 7% per year (Laudio)
• FIB-4 Score: Exploring Current Limitations & Improvement Opportunities (Lucem Health)
• Insights from the AWS Executive AI Forum (Medhost)
• Three Key Questions for Evaluating Healthcare Integration Engine Performance (Med Tech Solutions)
• Types of Occupational Therapy: Specialties That Set the Profession Apart (Net Health)
• Lessons from the NeuroFlow Summit: As Industries Converge, Quality Behavioral Health Data Is Essential (NeuroFlow)

Contacts

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

News 10/2/24

Top News

Private equity firm Accel KKR acquires VisiQuate, which offers revenue cycle analytics and workflow automation.

Reader Comments

From Slivovitz: “Re: Particle Health versus Epic. Particle may be unhappy about Epic’s behavior, but it’s a Hail Mary to claim antitrust behavior, which is rarely  successful.” Particle will need to prove not only that Epic holds a monopoly in the payer platform market, but also that it gained it through illegal means and that consumers were harmed as result. Courts often side with the antitrust defendant company’s business justification, and Epic has a strong one in protecting patient privacy. Epic always defends itself vigorously at whatever legal cost is required, making it unlikely that they will pay Particle to settle the lawsuit. Also to Particle’s disadvantage is that the Federal Trade Commission and Department of Justice are not involved, the lawsuit was not structured as a class action, and Particle’s complaint is mostly limited to itself, which doesn’t seem to be a strong antitrust argument. These cases often take years to resolve, so I assume that Particle’s business litigation law firm is working on contingency in hopes of earning a cut of any damages that Epic pays. The lead attorney represented AliveCor in its successful patent violation case against Apple.

Webinars

October 24 (Thursday) noon ET. “Preparing for HTI-2 Compliance: What EHR and Health IT Vendors Need to Know.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. Failure to meet ASTP’s mandatory HTI-2 certification  and compliance standards could impose financial consequences on clients. The presenters will discuss the content and timelines of this key policy update, which includes NCPDP Script upgrades, mandatory support for electronic prior authorization, and real-time prescription benefit. They will offer insight into the impact on “Base EHR” qualifications and provide practical advice on aligning development roadmaps with these changes.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Autonomous medical coding company Nym announces $47 million in new funding.

Private equity firm TPG takes a majority position in Surescripts, which hired an investment bank to search for potential buyers in April 2024.

CVS Health will lay off 2,900 employees and is reportedly considering breaking up the company’s businesses.

Sales

• Ballad Health (TN) selects oncology treatment and care management software and consulting and professional services from Varian, which Siemens Healthineers acquired in 2021 for $16 billion.
• Novant Health (NC) will implement data, analytics, and digital services from CitiusTech.
• Open Mind Health will incorporate NeuroFlow’s behavioral health technology into its virtual health and wellness services.

People

Ashley Blankette (Highmark Health) joins CAQH as chief product officer.

Jeff Pearson, MBA, MBL (Solis Mammography) joins Catalyst Health Group as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

United Regional Health Care (TX) rolls out Care.ai virtual nursing technology in 16 emergency department rooms.

TidalHealth launches virtual nursing pilot programs at its Peninsula Regional and Nanticoke campuses.

Clearway Health launches a patient management system for specialty pharmacy programs that are operated by a health system.

My favorite big-picture healthcare analyst is Sanjula Jain, PhD, chief research officer of Trilliant Health. Her points from my March 2022 interview have aged well. Her new report highlights trends:

• The US health economy defies the laws of economics because employers have allowed the status quo to persist, have absolved state and federal governments from underpaying for healthcare services for Medicare and Medicaid enrollees, and via EMTALA have allowed the federal government to delegate responsibility for societal ills to hospitals.
• Value for money will be a defining trend of of the US health economy over the next decade. This is different from value-based care, which does not create value for the ultimate payer, such as the employer or federal government.
• The physical and mental health of Americans is deteriorating and the prevalence of chronic conditions is growing, even as the US spends more than other countries with worse results with costs growing, especially with Medicare.
• Healthcare administrative costs increased 40% to $278 billion from 2011 to 2021.
• HHS has been experimenting with value-based care for more than a decade and has implement other efforts to constrain costs, with limited effect on reducing cost or improving quality. CMS quality  measurement burden remains high and hospital quality reporting is expensive.
• Competition does not have a clear effect on hospital quality and negotiated rates are often lower in monopoly markets.
• Life sciences lobbying is 4.5 times that of other industries.
• The US pays 422% more for the same brand name prescription drugs than 33 other OECD countries.
• Use of CPT codes for AI indicates that its highest use is in cardiac conditions.
• Telehealth’s value as a clinical tool is limited. Patients don’t consider it a substitute for in-person care except for behavioral health, which accounts for 70% of telehealth volume.
• The shortage of primary care physicians could reach 40,000 by 2036.
• The average American doesn’t understand or use transparency efforts, which have had little impact on outpatient spending.
• Retailers have learned that delivering primary care is hard and running a specialty pharmacy is profitable.

A new KLAS report on population health management finds that health system interest has cooled considerably in recent years as they consolidate vendors and focus on value-based care. Arcadia is the most-considered solution. Systems from Lightbeam, Arcadia, Oracle Health, and HealthEC are most often being considered for replacement.

Government and Politics

The DoD’s Defense Health Agency is developing care delivery technology that will connect data and combat environments to MHS Genesis sometime next year, according to EHR optimization updates from the DHA.

The VA Inspector General and federal law enforcement are investigating at least 12 VA employees who violated HIPAA when they snooped into the medical files of veterans and vice-presidential nominees Senator JD Vance (R-OH) and Governor Tim Walz (D-MN) this past summer. Investigators are trying to determine if the records were shared and why the employees accessed the files. VA OIG found that the records are relatively easy to view because the system is set up to give quick access to doctors.

Privacy and Security

UMC Health (TX) continues to divert patients and utilize downtime procedures as it works to restore systems impacted by a ransomware attack that began last Thursday.

Other

Epic CEO Judy Faulkner, who at 81 says she isn’t planning to retire, tells Forbes how Epic will be run without her:

• Epic will remain private and her nearly 50% share of the company — along with all of Epic’s voting shares — will be moved to a trust that is run by her husband, three children, and five senior Epic managers.
• The rules of the trust prohibit an IPO, sale, or acquisition.
• Three long-time Epic customers will serve as trust protectors to make sure that the rules are followed.
• The next CEO will be required to be a long-term Epic employee who has software developer experience.

Oracle Health EVP Seema Verma disputes KLAS’s numbers on the company’s loss of customers to Epic, saying that Epic can’t solve major healthcare problems because its only offering is an EHR and that “KLAS’s short-sighted research” doesn’t reflect that.

Prisma Health opens a new convenience store using Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology at its Richland Hospital in South Carolina.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Oklahoma Heart Hospital and Their 11-Month Epic Implementation.”
• Surescripts recognizes 10 healthcare organizations with its 2024 White Coat Awards for their leadership in performance, innovation, and accuracy.
• Artera introduces the 2024 Artera Heartie Award Winners.
• Ascom employees join Team Ascom to participate in the Great Cycle Challenge and raise money to help kids fight cancer.
• Medicomp Systems re-architects its Quippe solutions to meet W3C web component standards.
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere company announces that its next-generation Cloud Payments product has been certified on all major payment processing platforms.
• Capital Rx announces that its enterprise health platform, JUDI, has earned certified status by HITRUST for information security.
• Health Level Seven elects Clinical Architecture EVP of Client Services Carol Macumber chair-elect of its Board of Directors.
• CloudWave will exhibit and present at the Central and Southern Ohio HIMSS Chapter Fall Conference October 18 in Dublin, OH.
• Divurgent will present at the HIMSS Virginia Annual Conference October 15-16 in Williamsburg.

Blog Posts

• Best Practices: How To Solve IT Issues When EHRs Touch More People (CereCore)
• Agfa HealthCare showcases Interoperability Expertise at the IHE Europe 2024 Connectathon. (Agfa HealthCare)
• Key Takeaways from the FY 2025 ICD-10-CM Code Updates (AGS Health)
• Automate Your RCM Like the Portfolio Companies of Audax, Shore Capital, and TA Associates (Alpha II)
• Defeating Downtime with the Power of Cloud Hosting (Altera Digital Health)
• Fostering Payer-to-Payer Data Exchange Through Collaboration and Testing (Availity)
• Cultivating a Technology-Driven Revenue Cycle Through the Right Partnership (Cardamom Health)
• Perspective on the Proposed Health Infrastructure Security and Accountability Act (Clearwater)
• An Attackers’ Perspective on Cybersecurity Exploits (CloudWave)
• The Role of AI in Discovering New Medicines (Dimensional Insight)
• In the Next 10 Years, You May Wish You Had These Business-Related Skills (Direct Recruiters)
• Overcoming Hurdles in Specialty Medication Access: Key Insights From Our Recent Webinar (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 9/30/24

Top News

Epic asks Carequality to publicly release its resolution regarding the dispute between Epic and Particle Health.

Epic filed a dispute with Carequality against Particle customers, which it says were downloading patient records for non-treatment purposes in violation of Epic’s policies. Epic blocked Particle’s access to its data, naming Particle customers such as Integritort, which it claims used EHR data to assist personal injury law firms in identifying potential class action lawsuits. Also named were Reveleer (risk adjustment) and Novellia (personal health records).

Epic asserts that Particle mischaracterized Carequality’s resolution and is urging Carequality to make those findings public. Particle says that Carequality had originally requested that the resolution remain confidential, but says it has no objection its release.

Particle filed an anti-trust lawsuit against Epic last week, accusing the company of leveraging its market dominance to block Particle’s entry into the payer platform market. Particle also lodged an information blocking complaint against Epic with HHS OIG.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The US is the only wealthy, industrialized nation that does not provide universal health insurance / healthcare, and poll respondents say that implementing that would be the best way to improve our collective health. That wouldn’t fix our issues with industrial-manipulated food and our general appetite for unhealthy behaviors, but at least it would start with fixing the symptoms and then moving upstream to the problems. Which will never happen, of course, because someone’s pocketing profit with every one of these.

New poll to your right or here: Which party seems to have a stronger case in the Particle Health vs. Epic lawsuit? This is a first reaction kind of poll since we’ve only seen Particle’s complaint and Epic’s brief response.

Webinars

October 24 (Thursday) noon ET. “Preparing for HTI-2 Compliance: What EHR and Health IT Vendors Need to Know.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. Failure to meet ASTP’s mandatory HTI-2 certification  and compliance standards could impose financial consequences on clients. The presenters will discuss the content and timelines of this key policy update, which includes NCPDP Script upgrades, mandatory support for electronic prior authorization, and real-time prescription benefit. They will offer insight into the impact on “Base EHR” qualifications and provide practical advice on aligning development roadmaps with these changes.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Digital musculoskeletal therapy provider Hinge Health hires investment bankers to take the company public next year. It was last valued at $6 billion in October 2021.

California-based telehealth startup Done Global, which prosecutors allege has operated as an Adderall pill mill, has reportedly moved its operations to China and shifted management to employees there to continue business as usual despite the arrest of its US executives. US-based clinicians are still issuing prescriptions, with some of them reporting minimal review of patient records. One nurse practitioner earned $43,000 in May 2024 alone by prescribing for 3,000 patients. Team members claim that the company instructed its Philippines-based customer care staff to sit in on patient appointments and shared patient information internally via WeChat, which raises concerns about potential US privacy violations. The company’s founders were arrested in June 2024 for illegal distribution of 40 million pills of Adderall, which earned them $100 million.

The investment firm owner of US-based, 12,000-employee health IT services firm AGS Health will seek a buyer for its five-year-old investment at a valuation of $780 million.

WW International (WeightWatchers) fires its CEO, who pivoted the company into digital health and GLP-1 prescribing with the $132 million acquisition of weight management telehealth provider Sequence in March 2023. Tech executive Sima Sistani took the CEO job in early 2022. 

Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD – who was held in contempt of Congress last week for refusing to comply with a Senate subpoena to answer questions about corporate greed and the financial struggle of Steward’s hospitals – will resign this week.

Sales

• Sectra will implement its Sectra One Cloud enterprise imaging solution in all of Quebec’s public hospitals.

Announcements and Implementations

ChristianaCare President and CEO Janice Nevin, MD, MPH confirms its Cerner-to-Epic switch via a video announcement. Go-live is planned for 2026.

Government and Politics

US Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) tells the technology modernization committee of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs that the VA should not have shut down its $624 million, Epic-powered MASS appointment scheduling system project in 2019 (which it later downgraded to a pilot project) in a “disastrous” decision to move to Cerner. He also wants the VA to explain its decision to turn off the its $278 million WellHive external provider scheduling system due to budget problems.

The VA expands its tele-emergency care pilot nationwide after finding that it avoided an ED trip for 59% of callers.

Ireland’s competition regulator opens an investigation into 1,000-employee global healthcare software vendor Clanwilliam to review the company’s EHR, referral, and text messaging business. Clanwilliam launched as Medicom in 1996 and renamed itself in 2014 after making several acquisitions.

Privacy and Security

The Atlantic warns that 23andMe’s rapid company decline should concern “anyone who has spit into one of the company’s test tubes” since the only asset it has left to sell is the genetic information of 15 million customers. The company is not bound by HIPAA and its privacy policies state clearly that it can sell customer data if merged or acquired. 23andMe’s market cap, which was nearly $5 billion three years ago, is down to $150 million and its entire board quit last week, leaving CEO Anne Wojcicki as the only remaining member. 

The New York Times reports that behavioral health patients are feeling “stunned, ambushed, and traumatized” after learning that their progress notes are available to other clinicians on the patient portals of hospitals that have adopted OpenNotes data sharing.

Other

A San Francisco software engineering manager is convicted of tax evasion for offsetting his three-year income of $1.2 million with a claimed $1.1 million in medical expenses for a 2010 appendectomy that actually cost him just a few hundred dollars. DOJ didn’t say where he works, but a LinkedIn search suggests Apple.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks works with HealthEfficient to complete Hyndman Area Health Center’s (PA) UDS+ submissions to HRSA.
• Availity publishes a new whitepaper, “From Complexity to Connectivity: The Journey of Availity’s Payer-to-Payer Data Exchange Cohort.”
• Rhapsody announces that it has been recognized as Sample Vendor in Gartner’s Hype Cycle for Real-Time Health System Technologies report in the Next-Generation EMPI category.
• Redox publishes a new report, “DIY or Outsource: EHR Integration Costs for Providers.”
• Verato will present at the Reuters Total Health Conference October 8-9 in Chicago.
• Waystar will exhibit at ACEP24 September 29-October 2 in Las Vegas.

Blog Posts

• BCA Best Practices: Strategies for Success with MEDITECH Business and Clinical Analytics (Tegria)
• Embracing AI in Healthcare: Overcoming Reluctance and Unlocking Potential (Netsmart)
• Why Secure Medical Texting Works Better for Patients (PerfectServe)
• Key Areas Where Technology Should Support Optimized Workforce Scheduling (QGenda)
• Unlocking Healthcare Innovation through Digital Health Enablement (Rhapsody)
• Nurses Corner: 5 ways to improve education views (Sonifi Health)
• Smooth Sailing: A Case Study on Medication Adherence (Surescripts)
• How to Get the Most Insights From Your Data (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

News 9/27/24

Top News

Graybill, a California-based primary care group, will split from Palomar Health Medical Group, citing that organization’s inadequate support following an April 2024 cyberattack that took systems offline for months.

Palomar disputes Graybill’s claim that some of its systems are not yet fully recovered. It also suggests that Graybill shares responsibility, noting that a Graybill physician serves as Palomar Health Medical Group CMIO.

San Diego-based Arch Health Medical Group and Graybill Medical Group joined Palomar Health to create the 170-physician Palomar Health Medical Group in November 2020.

Reader Comments

From A Frustrated Vet: “Re: VA. Happening as I write this on the House VA Technology Modernization Subcommittee: ‘Our veterans would have been much better served if the VA had not abandoned the Medical Appointment Scheduling System (MASS) in 2019. This project had implemented Epic’s scheduling system and patient portal in Columbus, Ohio, and they were working well. But the VA leaders at the time made a special effort to eliminate it, paving the way for Cerner to duplicate the work and install an inferior system. This was a disastrous decision that we are all still paying for.’ – Chairman Rosendale (R-Mont.)” Thanks. I will recap more fully in the weekend’s news once the hearing is finished.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Conference season is the ideal time to become an HIStalk sponsor and get year-round exposure to decision-makers instead of betting the farm on a booth rental. Lorre is likely offering incentives for new sponsors, startups, and former sponsors who return to my little fold, although she will also ensure that current sponsors, some of whom have supported me for more than a decade, don’t get shortchanged. Also for sponsors, if your company is attending HLTH 2024 in any capacity, send me your info soon to be featured in my online guide.

One last housekeeping item: hair-trigger spam filters always inappropriately unsubscribe readers from my spam-free update list. Drop your email here to stay in the loop—you won’t get duplicate emails regardless.

I got the ChatGPT update today with Advanced Voice Mode. It’s cool, though not revolutionary—it allows for natural voice conversations, pauses if interrupted, and adjusts its responses based on what you say. It’s fun that you can choose a voice with a personality that affects tone and word choice. Advanced Voice makes Alexa, Google Assistant, and Siri seem even more primitive, and it’s convenient to interact with ChatGPT via voice. The microphone stays open until you turn it off, so my phone sits beside my keyboard, ready to respond without requiring a wake word or key press.

I politely declined the interview invitation of Kat McDavitt, Lisa Bari, and Melissa Denino, the boundless energy folks who are behind the “Health Tech Talk Show.” Reasons for no-ing: (a) I avoid the spotlight like a vampire shuns sun; and (b) I say everything I know right here and don’t see the value of repeating myself. Still, I offered to help them feed the content beast by inviting potential interviewees to email them at hello@healthtechtalkshow.com. It’s refreshing not to need to stab the eject button seconds-in on a host who is long on self-importance but short on industry knowledge and a compelling style.

Webinars

October 24 (Thursday) noon ET. “Preparing for HTI-2 Compliance: What EHR and Health IT Vendors Need to Know.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. Failure to meet ASTP’s mandatory HTI-2 certification  and compliance standards could impose financial consequences on clients. The presenters will discuss the content and timelines of this key policy update, which includes NCPDP Script upgrades, mandatory support for electronic prior authorization, and real-time prescription benefit. They will offer insight into the impact on “Base EHR” qualifications and provide practical advice on aligning development roadmaps with these changes.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

India-based Qure.ai completes a $65 million Series D funding round to expand into the US market and to pursue acquisitions.

Sales

• UAB Health System will implement Epic as its single EHR in a seven-year, $380 million project, replacing Oracle Health.
• ChristianaCare will implement Epic, replacing Oracle Health.
• Children’s Hospital of Orange County will deploy Oneview Healthcare’s Care Experience Platform on patient room TVs.

People

Susan Worthy (Amwell) joins Gainwell Technologies as chief marketing officer.

Former Cerner executive Maria Flynn, MBA, MS is named president and CEO of the Patterson Family Foundation, a $1.5 billion asset non-profit that focuses on rural health and was founded by Cerner founder Neal Patterson and his wife Jeanne, both deceased. She was also co-founder of Digital Health KC.

Announcements and Implementations

Cobb County, GA joins the Find Help social network to launch an online resource that connects residents with assistance programs.

Sonifi Health integrates NESA’s Epic-integrated virtual care system with its patient room TVs.

Meditech kicks off its annual customer leadership conference in Foxborough, MA.

A new KLAS report on smart IV pumps finds that BD Alaris recalls and the FDA’s approval of next-generation technology are driving earlier replacement and expansion decisions. EHR integration is the most important factor in purchasing, usage, and satisfaction, followed by cost and ease of use.

KLAS also takes an initial look at Epic’s Hello World integrated SMS messaging system. All interviewed organizations are satisfied, would recommend it, and would buy it again. Customers say it reduces appointment no-shows using reminders, speeds communication with patients, and is deployed via MyChart.

Government and Politics

HHS OIG finds that the use of remote patient monitoring for Medicare patients has increased dramatically, but needs additional oversight to prevent fraud as patients are not always receiving all required services and Medicare lacks the information to oversee its use. CMS agrees with OIG’s recommendations: (a) require a provider’s order for RPM that is included on claims and encounter data; (b) develop ways to identify the health data that providers say they are monitoring; (c) educate providers about billing for remote patient monitoring; and (d) identify and monitor those companies that are billing for RPM. OIG says that 43% of Medicare enrollees did not receive all three mandatory RPM components: education and device setup, collection of an adequate number of device readings, and use of the data to manage treatment.

The Senate unanimously votes to hold Steward Health Care CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD in contempt of Congress for ignoring its subpoena to answer questions about his compensation as the bankrupt company’s hospitals struggled to deliver safe, effective care. A spokesperson for de la Torre says that he has the right to not answer questions under the Fifth Amendment and won’t be intimidated by Congress. He faces prison time as the first person to be held in contempt by the Senate since 1971.

Other

Allina physicians report problems that were caused by order entry confusion resulting from the health system’s switch of in-house outpatient lab work to Quest Diagnostics last week.

I truly enjoy reading the “Hey Judy” posts on Epic Share, where she has written these ruminations for September:

• She paid her 15-year-old son – who wrote contest-winning computer games from their home basement where Judy was working on Epic — $5 to develop a programmer test after hiring Epic’s first programmer and then realizing that people aren’t always as talented as they think. Epic used that test for 18 years to choose new employees, then expanded the question bank when they leaked out.
• She describes the origins of Share Everywhere, which Dave Furhmann created (he’s now SVP of R&D) after Judy learned that Cerner hospitals couldn’t exchange information with each other.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research ranks Inovalon #1 in its 2024 provider enterprise RCM analytics solutions survey, with top ratings across 12 KPIs.\
• A new KeyCare survey of 400 patients finds that the majority prefer telehealth to office visits for medical issues including urgent care, preventive care, chronic care, and specialty services.
• Black Book Research publishes the results of its 2024 supply chain customer experience survey, with Dimensional Insight taking the top spot for benchmarking and comparative analytics.
• Inovalon promotes Sandy Warford to director of product marketing.
• Five9 and Verint expand their partnership to deliver AI-driven customer experiences.
• Fortified Health Security will present and Healthcare IT Leaders will sponsor the Georgia HIMSS Conference October 1 in Atlanta.
• Linus Health unveils new tools for early dementia detection at AAFP’s FMX 2024 conference.
• Meditech customer Ontario Shores Centre for Mental Health Sciences becomes the first hospital in Canada to implement Expanse Genomics.
• MRO will exhibit at the Medical Practice Excellence: Leaders Conference October 6-9 in Denver.

Blog Posts

• Healthcare’s Current State vs Perfection: Which is Best? (Vyne Medical)
• Revenue Cycle Management: Boosting Operational Efficiency and Productivity (EClinicalWorks)
• Addressing Healthcare Staff Satisfaction through Innovation and Support (FinThrive)
• A year of DAX Copilot: Healthcare innovation that refocuses on the clinician-patient connection (Microsoft)
• Embracing Generative AI as a Change Agent to Drive Clinical and Financial Value (Impact Advisors)
• Maximizing ROI on IT Required by CMS Rule 0057 Takes a Village (InterSystems)
• Solving Quality Issues in Healthcare Data: KONZA’s Leadership in NCQA DAV Accreditation (Konza National Network)
• NAFLD Guidelines: A Shift in Understanding & Focus (Lucem Health)
• Your Guide to HTI-1 (Medhost)
• Why We Need Proactive Technology And Human Collaboration To Combat Medicare Fraud (Medicomp Systems)
• One year in: How Suki and Meditech are transforming clinician workflows with voice AI capabilities (Meditech)
• Med Tech Solutions Broadens EHR Support Expertise (Med Tech Solutions)
• Hospital Physical Therapy: Empowering Patients Toward a Safe Transition Home (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 9/25/24

Top News

A new report from the VA OIG finds that the VA’s Oracle Health-based EHR that has been implemented at six facilities experienced 826 major performance incidents between October 2020 and March 2024.

Over half of the incidents — including outages, performance degradations, and incomplete functionality — occurred after the VA put further EHR go-lives on hold. Major incidents collectively impacted the system’s performance for nearly 80 days.

The VA plans to restart EHR rollouts sometime next year.

Reader Comments

From Joe Friday: “Re: Particle Health. I believe in sticking with the facts, of which I think maybe they are playing loose and fast. They claim that the Carequality Steering Committee fully agreed with their arguments and did nothing wrong. That’s a knowable fact, isn’t it? I wonder if the steering committee’s report would actually say that. And if not, I would question just how factual the entire suit is.” Particle should be able to produce documentation to support these claims:

• Particle says that both insurers and their software vendors have a right to access EHR patient treatment information. This should be an easy question for ASTP to answer.
• Epic limits the use of its data for treatment purposes, while Carequality’s policy allows it to also be used for healthcare operations and research. All of that is surely documented, assuming that any policy other than Epic’s matters when you’re getting your data from Epic.
• Epic coerced its big-investment customers to stop using Particle. Any such communication should be discoverable.
• The company says that Epic urged its customers to flood Particle with inquiries. The lawsuit cites an Epic recommendation to its clients that they email a generic company support address if they needed Particle’s technical help to audit use of their patient data.
• Epic claims that Particle admitted wrongdoing. Particle should provide the source of this information. It apparently relates to one Particle customer that Epic complained about, which Particle immediately removed from its system.
• Particle cites the Carequality Steering Committee as finding the company guilt-free, yet required Particle to conform to a corrective plan. That documentation should be readily available from Carequality, which will certainly need to get involved in the lawsuit discovery since some of Particle’s accusations involve Carequality and its board decisions. 
• Particle says that Epic turned off access to 20% of Particle’s customers “who were seemingly chosen at random.” If I remember correctly, Epic said its logs identified organizations that were retrieving a lot of treatment data without sending anything back to the network, which suggests that they weren’t actually providing treatment and thus were violating its policies.

From Patients Paying the Price: “Re: Oracle Health to Epic conversions. Been a part of a handful of these over the past few years. More often than not, it seems like the legacy systems are poorly implemented and the root cause is hospital/IT leadership. I’ve seen only one instance where I would definitively say that the vendor was at fault. You would think that spending one-fourth of the 8-9 figure price tag of these systems on optimization, hiring more senior employees, and spending the time on governance and training would yield better results. Maybe it’s an easier sell to the board than a harder-to-quantify optimization cycle, that CIOs want a sexy project instead of getting into the day-to-day work of improve patient care and user experience, or maybe I’m just being overly cynical and this is an expected outcome of the implementation rush from the Meaningful Use days of yore. Probably all of the above, but it makes me wonder if these new installs will go any better or they’ll be ripped and replaced in another 10 years for something ‘better.’ At the end of the day, we all know who is actually paying for all of this (patients) and you have to wonder if the cost will pay dividends back.” Health systems try to forget that they have perpetually promised that expensive technology will make American healthcare better, faster, and cheaper.

From Readers Take Note: “Re: scrubbing personal information from the interwebs. You mentioned a service that you liked so much that you upgraded to the annual plan. Could you repost the company’s name?” I’ve used Optery for three years and just upgraded to its extended plan at renewal for $149 per year that covers 186 data brokers (I ended up paying $120 using some promo code I found online). Signing up for a free account shows you which sites are displaying your details, while the subscriber dashboard shows the shocking level of detail that Optery has removed from web searches. You could find and contact those sites yourself, but that would be a lot of work and regular rechecks.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I also published today:

• Responses–What Companies Should I Consider for a Mid-Career Sales Job?
• Particle Health Versus Epic Lawsuit Summary

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Hancock Regional Hospital (IN) will transition 49 employees to its RCM vendor Revology.

AssureCare, a population health management company focused on the health and human services sector, acquires competitor Clinigence Health.

Seven directors resign from 23andMe’s board, citing differences of opinion on the company’s future. Co-founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki, the only remaining board member, has expressed strong interest in taking the company private amidst declining revenue and a sharp drop in valuation, which has plummeted from $3.5 billion to under $200 million. 23andMe is also facing $30 million payout to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of failing to protect the records of 7 million customers whose information was breached in 2023.

Scribenote, which has developed an ambient documentation system for veterinarians, raises $8 million in seed funding. The brother-and-sister company cites studies that find high burnout rates of veterinarians whose heavy case loads require after-hours medical records completion. Scribenote’s system costs $165 per DVM per month for unlimited records.

A Time article says that reduced payments from pharmacy benefits managers have helped drive drugstore patient satisfaction down 10% in 2024 alone. The article describes the pharmacy customer experience as “miserable” due to understaffed and closed stores, merchandise that has been moved behind lock doors due to shoplifting, and excessive workload that has left some stores with inexperienced pharmacists. Another factor was that the pandemic encouraged consumers to buy prescriptions and merchandise online, which they learned saved them money.

Sales

• Ballad Health will implement Andor Health’s ThinkAndor virtual care technology to unify its virtual care services across facilities in four states.
• Surescripts will use Clear’s identity verification software to enhance ongoing identity validation within its network.
• CareRing Health selects WellSky’s EHR, analytics, and services.
• Wellsheet will add Wolters Kluwer Health’s UpToDate clinical decision support tool to its Smart EHR UI clinical workflow application.

People

Prolucent names Jason Phibbs, MA (Press Ganey) VP of growth.

David Carmouche, MD (Walmart Health) joins Lumeris as EVP and chief clinical transformation officer.

Episode Solutions names Kyle Cooksey (Monogram Health) president.

Paul Burke (Zelis) joins Reveleer as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Long Island Community Hospital (NY) rolls out MyWall interactive bedside tablets using technology from OneView Healthcare as part of an enterprise implementation across NYU Langone Health.

Government and Politics

HRSA awards contracts to to five federal contractors to overhaul the national Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network’s systems that are provided exclusively by United Network for Organ Sharing (UNOS).

ASTP publishes a draft of the 2024 Federal FHIR Action Plan. 

The Indian Health Service says that it will avoid the VA’s mistakes with its own Oracle Health project:

• The IHS system was competitively bid, unlike the VA’s $10 billion, no-bid contract.
• IHS’s $2.5 billion project will be managed by government contractor GDIT, where the VA allowed Oracle Health (Cerner at that time) serve as its own prime contractor.
• IHS will invite participation of tribes and urban Indian organizations and will require implementation only at those clinics that IHS manages directly.

Other

A transplant surgeon at Memorial Hermann Health System admits to state health authorities that he changed patient data to move specific transplant candidates higher on the list.

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom employees volunteer at the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Raleigh, NC, helping to organize, sort, tag and put items on display for resale.
• Dronning Ingrids hospital in Greenland will implement Sectra’s enterprise imaging software.
• AdvancedMD staff win numerous medals, raise $2,600 for the Utah Food Bank, donate 22 units of blood to the American Red Cross and the local blood donor center, and win the Heart & Soul Award during the Salt Lake County Corporate Games.
• Availity releases a new episode of its Availity on Air Podcast, “A New Approach to Prior Auths with Elevance Health.”
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “The Rise of GLP-1s & Partnering to Manage Chronic Diseases, with Vida Health.”
• The Empowered Patient Podcast features CliniComp SVP of Client Services Sandra Johnson, “Innovation in the EHR Landscape to Break Down Data Silos and Improve the Healthcare Provider Experience.”

Blog Posts

• Key Insights From the 2024 KLAS Digital Health Investment Symposium (Tegria)
• Meditech Expanse 2.1 to 2.2: What Will Nurses Think? (CereCore)
• Driving Revenue Cycle Success with Intelligent Automation (AGS Health)
• Learn How Top PE-Backed Medical Groups Scale Their Team’s Expertise (Alpha II)
• Increase revenue by complying with current Medicare waste/charge billing requirements (Altera Digital Health)
• Hiring for Culture Fit: Why It Matters and How to Do It Right (Direct Recruiters)
• From the Last Go Live to the First Upgrade (Divurgent)

Contacts

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

Responses–What Companies Should I Consider for a Mid-Career Sales Job?

I am grateful for these responses to the reader’s question from this week’s Monday Morning Update: “ I’m a mid-career sales health IT lifer, with experience in both large and niche vendors as a generalist and with clinical applications. I’m looking for a new sales position. What companies have you seen that are solving important problems, have differentiated themselves, and can execute?”

HSi-corp.com.

Redox, Validic.

DexCare — critical problem solving, great tech, tremendous CEO.

Clariti Solutions.

Wolters Kluwer. We have an open sales role in the West to sell Drug Diversion and Clinical Surveillance software, Sentri7. We will have two openings posted in October for sales roles selling our Pharmacy Compliance suite, including Simplifi+ IV Workflow.

Cardamom is planning to hire into a sales role in 2025.

Waystar, InstaMed, a J.P. Morgan company.

Couple of things to think about with this question after being laid off recently and running through interviews and multiple discussions with different vendor HIT organizations and recruiters. When you are middle aged, most companies want you mainly for your contacts. I say stay away from these companies.

Make sure you are solving a problem that customers see value in, not because the company you are representing thinks their is one.  Talk to other sales executives on the team and ask what does a typical day and week look like. Dig into the management culture and the executive team. This is super important to see how they operate.

Service organizations are tricky as you are usually trying to displace another vendor. Software companies are great if you hit them the right time and they have a good portfolio of products.

Out of all the companies I talked to, QGenda seems like a great company. Not too big, has a good name and organizations like their products. Also the recent Harris buy makes them more attractive. I also talked to RhythmX AI. AI is so hot right now and this company may make progress.  If interested in revenue cycle, SmarterDX has a very cool solution that finds cash and they go at risk.

Carta Healthcare. We are looking for exceptional sales talent.

DrFirst. Innovative minds and culture create exciting products and services.

iCare.com.

Artera.io.

Artisight is one of the coolest companies I have come across in awhile

Bayesian Health is red hot. In terms of general hygiene, I would suggest your reader make sure:

• Company has a strong plan to work with or around Epic. Anything in between is a dog’s breakfast.
• Have a solid exec team, not just one or two impressive leaders. What they are all trying to do is hard. They need enough good people steering the ship to make it.
• The product is truly differentiated, has a clear ROI, and their product vision is readily understandable.

Particle Health Versus Epic Lawsuit Summary

Case Summary

Particle Health applies analytics to patient data that it retrieves from external sources to provide insights to payers, providers, and software developers. The company is suing Epic, accusing it of using its EHR market dominance to hinder competition in the payer platform market by blocking Particle’s access to essential medical records and by undermining its customer relationships.

Specific allegations include Epic cutting off access to Particle’s customers without reason, spreading false information about Particle’s security vulnerabilities, and delaying the onboarding of Particle’s new clients. The legal claims include antitrust violations under the Sherman Act, as well as tortious interference and defamation under state law.

Particle is asking the court to enjoin Epic from anticompetitive behavior and to compel it to pay damages to Particle.

Complaint Summary

Particle says in its federal antitrust lawsuit that it recognized in 2023 that payers are offering treatment-related services under value-based care arrangements, which it says constitutes data access for treatment purposes. It says that payers are then free to use the same data for secondary purposes under federal requirements.

The lawsuit centers around a 2023 incident when Epic learned that a Particle customer was sending data to Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, after which Epic allegedly coerced clients into severing ties with Particle. By March 2024, Epic began cutting off Particle customers’ access to EHR data, offering to reinstate access only if they stopped using Particle’s platform.

Additionally, the complaint says that Epic spread false information in claiming that Particle improperly disclosed PHI and admitted wrongdoing, which the company denies. Epic also coerced its customers to overwhelm Particle with privacy-related inquiries.

Epic took the dispute to Carequality in accusing three Particle customers (not Particle itself) of misusing data, but the Carequality Steering Committee — where Epic holds influence — found the claims to be unfounded, although it still imposed a corrective action plan because of Epic’s powerful role.

Particle says that Epic’s actions caused its revenue to drop to one-third of projections and also harmed patients whose treatment information, specifically from the OneOncology network, was made unavailable to health systems.

Epic’s Response

“Particle’s claims are baseless. This lawsuit attempts to divert attention from the real issue: Particle’s unlawful actions on the Carequality health information exchange network violated HIPAA privacy regulations. Particle’s complaint mischaracterizes Carequality’s decision, which in fact proposes banning Particle customers that were accessing patient data for impermissible purposes. Epic’s software is open and interoperable, allowing healthcare organizations to easily share data under HIPAA and all relevant regulations. Epic will continue to protect patient privacy and vigorously defend itself against Particle’s meritless claims.”

A previous Epic statement said that one of Particle Health’s customers is Integritort, which it says was identifying potential participants in class action lawsuits while claiming that it was retrieving data for treatment purposes. That company’s home page states, “Our advanced platform retrieves and analyzes real-time medical records, ensuring accurate and up-to-date information for each case. This not only minimizes the risk of fraudulent claims but also expedites the legal process, benefiting both plaintiffs and defendants.”

Monday Morning Update 9/23/24

Top News

Drugmaker Eli Lilly sends letters to people who have taken compounding pharmacy versions of its Zepbound and Mounjaro weight loss drugs. It asks the patients to authorize release of their medical records to the company so it can “obtain more details from the treating physician around your experience.”

The company did not say how it obtained the patient names and contact information.

Lilly CEO Dave Ricks said in an interview, “We’re going after this with our legal tools. We send letters to people and threaten them. We can challenge the physicians who are doing the prescribing.”

Bankers say that compounding pharmacies have sold up to $1 billion of GLP-1 drugs, which they can legally make and sell as long as the brand name drugs remain under an FDA-declared shortage.

I must have been subconsciously considering the source of the letter when I misread “patient safety” as “patent safety.”

Reader Comments

From Long-Time Reader: “Re: companies to consider. I’m a mid-career sales health IT lifer, with experience in both large and niche vendors as a generalist and with clinical applications. I’m looking for a new sales position. What companies have you seen that are solving important problems, have differentiated themselves, and can execute?” I will seek the counsel of readers who have a better viewpoint than I. Can you help me respond with what companies this person — who has an extensive track record as a C-level sales exec – might want to have on their radar? A short reply with just a company name is fine, or you can add some color to explain why. I will send Long-Time Reader a summary of de-identified responses so that everybody stays anonymous. Thanks for your help. If I get enough interesting responses, I may list the companies here for everybody’s benefit, even those who aren’t job hunting. UPDATE: I started receiving great responses from star-level readers within 10 minutes of posting this and I really appreciate that.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I guess we should be pleased that just 6% of poll respondents were asked by a provider to bring in their paper medical records.

New poll to your right or here, as suggested by a reader who was interested in the rather depressing Commonwealth Fund report: Which action would be most effective in improving the health and welfare of US citizens?

I took some heat for writing this in mid-2022 in response to a reader said that remote work in healthcare gave employees power and would remain the standard, but I think it mostly played out as I predicted now that Amazon is ending remote work:

I think that moment was fleeting. Economic and industry conditions have put bosses back in charge and they know that they need to manage costs while fretting less that their employees might flee to greener pastures. I never understood the “great resignation,” assuming (perhaps naively) that the same number of people still need to work and the total number of available jobs hasn’t changed much even though job mix has shifted. Some jobs can be performed remotely (and always could have been), but work-from-home was, like telemedicine, a temporary compromise whose adoption will settle at numbers higher than pre-pandemic but much lower than in 2020-21. I bet many executives agree with me that you can’t build and maintain a great company when employees are doing task work in their living rooms and communicating via Slack and Zoom while missing face-to-face meetings, chance encounters, personal relationships, and exposure to broader company work. I expect companies to compromise by offering a hybrid model of 1-2 offsite work days per week or maybe going with a permanent four-day workweek, which adds flexibility and reduces commute headaches but without conferring geographic freedom. Employee threats to sell their services elsewhere if they are required to show up at the office are ringing pretty hollow now versus a year ago.

Attention HIStalk sponsors that will participate in the HLTH 2024 event next month: send me your details to be included in my online guide, which will go up the week before the conference.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Ferrum Health, which offers a secure platform for health systems to deploy AI, raises $16 million in a Series A funding round.

CorroHealth — the parent brand of TrustHCS, T-System, RevCycle+, Visionary RCM, and Versalus Health — closes its acquisition of Navient’s Xtend RCM business.

Healthcare AI call agent developer Hippocratic AI adds $17 million to its Series A funding round, increasing its total raised to $137 million.

Sales

• Logan Health (MT) will implement Oracle Health , replacing Meditech, following its merger with Oracle Health customer Billings Clinic in September 2023.

People

Industry long-timer Mark Crockett, MD (TeleDaas) joins Phigenics as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Sentara will buy 6,000 smartphones to replace basic phones, pagers, and computer carts with Epic-connected devices.

Government and Politics

The Indian Health System will go live on Oracle Health’s EHR at three Oklahoma pilot sites in 2025.

Pieces Technology says that Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton misrepresented the nature of the company’s settlement of deceptive claims charges that were related to its AI-powered products. The company says that the AG’s press release about the agreement it signed us a “disappointing and damaging misrepresentation of this agreement” that includes these errors:

• It does not mention that the settlement does not include any financial terms or penalty payments.
• The agreement raises no issues related to the safety of the company’s products and does not suggest that the public interest has ever been at risk.
• Pieces agreed to report its hallucination rates via and independently developed risk classification system given that no standard classification system is available for clinical summarization.
• The company will avoid making misleading claims and will give customers more information about the model’s training, its intended use, and areas where the provider might create patient risk by misusing it.

FDA issues the final version of its recommendations to drug companies that plan to submit EHR and claims data related to a drug’s safety or effectiveness.

Privacy and Security

A new Federal Trade Commission report addresses the “vast surveillance” of social media users by nine companies, including Meta, YouTube, and TikTok. It specifically calls out the sharing of tracking pixels among health-related apps and social media platforms for ad targeting.

Other

A study finds that malicious actors can use AI to generate deceptive medical texts that earn higher ranking in biomedical knowledge graphs (medical KG), which summarize the medical literature and are used by downstream applications. The human-undetectable papers “poisoned” the medical KGs by suggesting that a promoted drug has a stronger connection to a particular targeted disease, which sounds a lot like SEO and other Google-fooling word tricks.

Medical professor and immunologist Derya Unutmaz, MD reports on X how he used OpenAI’s new Strawberry (the ChatGPT o1 preview) to develop a cancer treatment project. He predicts that only the top 10-20% most skilled and dedicated physicians will continue to hold fulfilling jobs as AI limits the number needed, especially in diagnostics and routine treatments, and says it is becoming unethical to not consult AI in medical practice given the 12 million people who are misdiagnosed in the US each year.

In Australia, a coroner rules that a hospital’s electronic charting process contributed to the death of a Canberra Hospital inpatient from liver failure that was caused by an acetaminophen overdose. The attending doctor reduced the ordered amount of 1,000 mg IV four times per day to 600 mg on a paper chart, but another doctor who transcribed the order into the EHR re-entered the original dose.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast, “Interview with Joel Klein, MD.”
• QGenda and RLDatix will exhibit at NAMSS 2024 September 29-October 2 in Denver.
• SnapCare co-founder and COO Jeff Richards joins the Lewis College Advisory Board.
• Verato will present at Reuter’s Total Health Conference October 8-9 in Chicago.
• Waystar will exhibit at the HFMA Region 6 Conference September 25-27 in Columbus, OH.

Blog Posts

• 5 Ways to Drive Meaningful Innovation Through Collaboration (Netsmart)
• From anxiety to action: Human-centered solutions to increase follow-up after false positives (Nordic)
• Nurses of Note 2024: The Clinical Excellence Project Manager (PerfectServe)
• Focusing on whole-person care to build resilient telehealth strategies (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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

News 9/20/24

Top News

Care enablement vendor Fabric acquires TeamHealth’s 50-state virtual care service.

Fabric’s other three acquisitions in the past 18 months include Walmart-owned virtual care provider MeMD, conversational AI solution vendor Gyant, and asynchronous virtual care solution vendor Zipnosis.

Reader Comments

From Another Oracle Bytes the Dust: “Re: Inspira Health. Dropping Oracle Health in favor of Epic. Announcement called out attrition rate post-Cerner-acquisition as one of the reasons.” Unverified since they haven’t posted Epic jobs and aren’t yet listed on UserWeb. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Mrs. H had a miserable (and ultimately final) experience with Walgreens this week. They were out of her thyroid med, they capitulated after she pressed them by telling her that they had arranged for her to pick up an emergency supply at another Walgreens the next day, and of course it wasn’t ready when she got there and the pharmacy people were equally balanced between cluelessness and indifference in telling her to sit there for an hour while they tried to figure it out. She called a mom-and-pop independent pharmacy whose folks were friendly, efficient, and on the ball as far as getting the prescription transferred and her insurance set up nearly instantly. My direct primary care doctor emailed all of her patients that Walgreens and CVS regularly tell patients that she didn’t send the prescription even though she has the electronic receipt proving that they received it up to half a dozen times. I’m not shocked that shares of these two chains have tanked. Independent pharmacies need to tell their story better. In fact, independent everything in healthcare needs to tell their story better.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Analytics platform vendor MedeAnalytics acquires healthcare procurement marketplace company SubPop Health.

Healthcare governance, risk, and compliance solutions company RLDatix acquires SocialClimb, which specializes in provider reputation management and patient satisfaction data.

Reuters reports that providers who temporarily signed contracts with Waystar, Availity, and Inovalon during Change Healthcare’s February downtime are extending their agreements with those smaller competitors, suggesting that providers see the benefit of using multiple claims processing companies to avoid a single point of failure.

People

Elsevier Health hires Omry Bigger, MBA (LexisNexis) as president of clinical solutions.

Nias Puthenveettil, MBA, MS (Litmos) joins Azra AI as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

DirectTrust will deploy public key infrastructure that will support TEFCA Facilitated HL7 FHIR.

A Portland, OR TV station profiles the patient monitoring command center of Oregon Health & Science University, which monitors patients in 61 Oregon hospitals.

This is a great story. InterSystems founder and owner Phillip “Terry” Ragon and his wife Susan donate $400 million for a “Manhattan Project on HIV” that will fund early-stage HIV vaccine research. The 74-year-old billionaire said in a rare interview that he hoped to become a rock star following his graduation from MIT, and when it became obvious that Cream wouldn’t be calling him to replace Clapton any time soon, he took a job with Meditech even though he knew next to nothing about computers. He learned the MUMPS programming language, left Meditech a year and half later to co-found a MUMPS-based medical billing company, then launched what became InterSystems in 1978. The database company grew slowly in serving its two largest customers the VA and Epic, finally hitting $1 billion in annual revenue in 2023. The Ragons have signed The Giving Pledge to donate the majority of their wealth to charity upon their deaths.  

Government and Politics

Healthcare AI company Pieces Technologies settles State of Texas charges that it deceptively marketed its patient summary products to Texas hospitals by making misleading statements about their accuracy and safety. The company agreed to increase customer transparency about how its data models work, the areas in which they are not as reliable, and how its metric for system hallucinations is determined.

CVS Health-owned primary care clinic operator Oak Street Health will pay $60 million to resolve federal False Claim Act accusations that it paid kickbacks to insurance agents to recruit Medicare Advantage patients.

Veterans will resume paying prescription co-pays at the five VA facilities that are live on Oracle Health / Cerner after a two-year suspension that was implemented due to software problems.

Privacy and Security

Microsoft warns that a ransomware-as-a-service hacker group called Vanilla Tempest is using a new ransomware strain to target the healthcare sector.

Other

Madison’s weekly paper describes how COVID-19 spurred Epic’s medical research work in offering anonymized health data from participating health system customers. CDC contacted Epic Research to help answer questions about the effectiveness of mpox vaccine, when went from getting the CDC’s call right before Thanksgiving and having a publication-ready manuscript ready by early December.

A Commonwealth Fund report finds that “the US continues to be in a class by itself in the underperformance of its healthcare sector” that differs from comparable countries in failing to meet basic healthcare needs, including universal coverage, despite the highest level of spending.

Sponsor Updates

• Ellkay sponsors the Auxiliary of Emerson Health 25th Annual Golf Tournament in Hudson, MA.
• Health Data Movers posts a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast titled “Transforming Healthcare with Data & AI: A Conversation with Dr. Michael Pfeffer.”
• Nordic will partner with Microsoft and CHIME to establish the Rural Health IT Community at the CHIME Fall Forum November 6.
• Consensus Cloud Solutions will offer Olah Healthcare Technology customers its EFAx Corporate cloud fax platform.
• Findhelp welcomes New Jersey Prevention Network, Fairfax County Government, and Providence Saint Joseph Medical Center (CA) to its network.
• Inovalon, Surescripts, and Wellsky will exhibit at NACP 2024 October 6-9 in Nashville.
• Konza National Network will present at the HEDIS & Quality Improvement Summit in Las Vegas September 29-October 1 in Las Vegas.
• Meditech will exhibit at the TORCH Fall Conference & Trade Show September 23-26 in Round Rock, TX.
• The WellSky Foundation donates $100,000 each to five non-profits that offer programs in the Kansas City area.

Blog Posts

• FDB’s Meducation: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence for Better Medication Adherence & Patient Outcomes (First Databank)
• Addressing Healthcare Staff Satisfaction through Innovation and Support (FinThrive)
• Four Safe Applications of Generative AI in the Contact Center (Five9)
• AI Regulation in the US and Beyond: What You Need to Know (Fortified Health Security)
• 4 Ways to Detect Changing Patient or Resident Insurance Coverage (Inovalon)
• Diagnosing MASH (Liver Disease): A Meaningful Opportunity for Early Detection (Lucem Health)
• The Med Tech Solutions Family is Growing! (Med Tech Solutions)
• 4 Reasons Why the Adoption of FHIR Brings Immense Value to Medical Record Requesters (MRO)
• The CORE of Your Wound Care Program’s Success: Documentation and ThinkFlow (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 9/18/24

Top News

Healthcare automation vendor Vyne Medical acquires Extract Systems, which specializes in automated data classification and indexing, extraction, and redaction.

Vyne Medical will integrate the ML/AI capabilities of Extract Systems with its Trace healthcare workflow tool for managing structured and unstructured data.

Reader Comments

From TEFCAadvocate: “Re: at Datapalooza. Lots of talk has been around the need for EHRs to standup and be counted as either in or out. And if out, why? Giants like Epic are leading the way, while others like Cerner remain on the sidelines. Columnist Ken Blackwell said it best on twitter today. ‘What’s your plan @healthcareSeema? Don’t be the biggest single barrier to #TEFCA!’” Ken Blackwell, MEd is a conservative activist who has served as treasurer and secretary of state of Ohio, mayor of Cincinnati, and candidate for state governor.

Webinars

September 19 (Thursday) noon ET. “Improving EHR Speed and Reliability.” Sponsor: Goliath Technologies. Presenters: Jenna Anderson, VP of collaborative insights, KLAS Research; Thomas Charlton, CEO, Goliath Technologies. The presenters will describe the improvement in speed and reliability for clinicians with major EHRs such as Epic, Oracle Health, and Meditech. The actionable data follows up a KLAS Arch Collaborative EHR Experience Survey that notes the prevalence of clinician speed and reliability issues, the frequency and length of poor performance, and the root causes for remediation.

September 19 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Cutting-Edge Conversations: A Fireside Chat With Top CMIOs.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drex DeFord, MSHI, MPA, This Week Health; Lacy Knight, MD, MSMI, Piedmont Health; Jake Lancaster, MD, MSHA, MS, Baptist Memorial Health Care; Colin Banas, MD, MSHA, chief medical officer DrFirst. This fireside chat will distill key points from 15 CMIO participants of the 229 Executive Summit. Topics include the impact of AI on clinical workflows, strategies for optimizing healthcare operations, addressing physician burnout and patient safety, and advances in population health management.

October 3 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Navigating AI-Powered Medical Interpretation: Insights for Health Leaders.” Sponsor: Globo. Presenter: Dipak Patel, CEO, Globo. AI is redefining how providers can communicate with patients who speak limited English. However, not all LLMs are created equal, and their potential and limitations need to be examined further. Globo has published its results from testing several LLMs. This webinar will address the promises and perils of AI-enabled medical interpretation in summarizing that research in four key domains: the process of AI interpretation, how to measure it, the state of AI tools today, and the areas where AI falls short with interpretation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Nirvana, a New York City-based startup that provides AI-powered health insurance verification software, raises $24 million.

Medication management vendor Scriptology acquires RxLive, which offers medication management, virtual care, and analytics. Scriptology launched out of health tech accelerator Redesign Health earlier this year.

Sales

• Newfoundland and Labrador Health Services in Canada will implement Epic in 2026.
• Nebraska Medicine will implement Palantir’s AI software for patient flow, nursing allocation, clinical supply management, and revenue cycle optimization.

People

Courtney Green, MSN, RN (Ultimate Kronos Group) joins QGenda as VP of nurse and staff solutions.

Aetion names Kevin Riley, MBA (ZyterTruCare) president.

Color Health names Rebecca Miksad, MD, MMS, MPH (Boston University School of Medicine) chief medical officer.

Ryan Duffy (Capital Rx) joins RazorMetrics as chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Hackensack Meridian Health (NJ) will launch a digital primary care service this fall using AI medical chat technology from K Health.

LifeBridge Health (MD) implements Care.ai’s virtual tele-sitting software at its Northwest Hospital and virtual nursing in the progressive care unit at its Sinai Hospital. Care.ai’s acquisition by Stryker closed Tuesday.

DirectTrust launches a cybersecurity workgroup that will address healthcare cybersecurity challenges, shaping accreditation standards, identifying advocacy priorities, and promoting industry-wide best practices through collaboration and advocacy.

Oracle Health releases a free framework that allows VA and community providers to securely share patient health information in support of the Veteran Interoperability Pledge. Signers of the pledge commit to accurately identifying veterans when they seek care in the community, connect them with VA and community resources, and coordinate care for shared patients. Marshfield Clinic Health System is an early adopter.

Government and Politics

PointClickCare asks a federal appeals court to overturn an injunction that is related to the efforts of Real Time Medical Systems to extract analytics data for its skilled nursing clients. RTMS claimed that PCC used CAPTCHA tests to limit its activities with the intention of stifling competition. PCC told the court that it deployed CAPTCHA because RTMS was using bots that slowed down PCC’s system performance, also noting that PCC’s contracts explicitly ban the use of bots.

ASTP / ONC awards $2 million in funding to two projects. Columbia University will study ways to use AI to harness nursing knowledge using data, while Oregon Health & Science University will adapt an open source SMART on FHIR application based on HL7 Multiple Chronic Condition care plan for three behavioral health use cases.

Privacy and Security

Brunswick Hospital Center, an inpatient psychiatric facility in New York, deals with a ransomware attack by ThreeAM. The group claims to have stolen and leaked 22GB of data.

Other

Black Book’s latest report reveals trends in hospital outsourcing via group purchasing organizations, with 46% of surveyed stand-alone and independent hospitals likely to consider outsourcing digital platforms that automate procurement and provide real-time analytics.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD, Availity, and Inovalon will exhibit at the HBMA 2024 Annual Revenue Cycle Management Fall Conference through September 19 in Austin.
• Agfa HealthCare will host its North American User Group September 23-35 in Orlando.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “Pharmacy Benefits 101: Clinical Programs, with Bonnie Hui-Callahan, PharmD.”
• Clinical Architecture will present at LOINC 2024 September 18 in Washington, DC.
• CloudWave will sponsor and present at Bluebird Leaders S.O.A.R. 2024 September 18-20 in Atlanta.
• Inovalon announces that, for the fourth year in row, it has been ranked number one by health plan and payer organizations surveyed by Black Book Research for its robust data integration and predictive analytics.

Blog Posts

• AdvancedMD Surveyed Our Customers on Their Biggest Medical Billing Challenges. Here’s What We Learned. (AdvancedMD)
• Confronting Underpayments with Custom Solutions for Revenue Recovery (AGS Health)
• The Secret to RCM System Optimization Trusted by PE-backed Organizations (Alpha II)
• Calling all leaders: A sneak peek of the HCTC Executive Summit (Altera Digital Health)
• Activating data to improve quality of care and workforce productivity (Arcadia)
• Setting a New Standard for the Future of Pharmacy Benefit Administration (Capital Rx)
• Essential Packaging for Self-Service Reporting and Healthcare Analytics (Cardamom Health)
• Reproductive Health Privacy Rule Lawsuit May Signal Shift in Balance of Power (Clearwater)
• AI-Driven Strategies for Reducing Hospital Readmissions: Innovations in Healthcare (Cordea Consulting)
• Succession Planning: Helping Companies Prepare for Executive Transitions (Direct Recruiters)
• Prioritizing Brain Health for Employees through Continuous Learning (Divurgent)
• The Path to Safer Care: World Patient Safety Day 2024 (RLDatix)

Sponsor Spotlight

Ascom recently launched Telligence 7,  its next-generation nurse call system designed to elevate the clinical workflow experience. Developed for acute care environments, Telligence 7 simplifies technology ownership with seven new features that make it secure, adaptable, and affordable for hospitals. One of the improvements features a no-downtime benefit. Hospital IT administrators can now make configuration changes and push updates without any disruption to clinical delivery. This helps eliminate five to eight minutes of downtime per IP device or unit and encourages delivering improvements to workflows as they’re needed. (Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.

Get HIStalk updates.

Send news or rumors.

Contact us.

Monday Morning Update 9/16/24

Top News

Elevance Health’s Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield accuses physicians of falsifying patient medical records with the intention of getting the insurer to pay for improper prescribing of the diabetes drug Ozempic for weight loss, a use that is not approved by the FDA.

The insurer is demanding that those prescribers reimburse the company directly and is sending them bills. It warns providers that falsifying medical records or prior authorization requests to obtain insurance payment constitutes fraud.

Anthem notified one physician that he had submitted prior authorization forms for 125 Ozempic prescriptions for 22 patients and asked him to pay the $126,00 that the company had covered for patients. The doctor said that he did not submit any PAs and never claimed that the 22 patients were diabetic – he says he just issued the prescriptions and Anthem paid.

Experts suggest that it is unlikely that doctors can be compelled to pay the insurer since they did not benefit directly from issuing the prescriptions. They also note that providers can legally prescribe a drug for any purpose regardless of FDA’s approval for a given condition, although insurers make their own decisions about coverage.

Reader Comments

From Bigdog: “Re: S&P Consultants. Did they divorce from Nordic?” Nordic acquired the company in December 2021. The LinkedIn of Andrew Splitz says he worked for Nordic / S&P from the acquisition until September 2023, then lists him as S&P’s founder and CEO as of September 2024. Also updating LinkedIn from Nordic to S&P effective this month is newly announced S&P president Zach Johnson. The old website still had Nordic on the logo until that site was inactivated in December 2023.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents have seen modest impact on their health and happiness that can be attributed to the IT decisions of their providers and insurers.

New poll to your right or here, because of a comment by Dr. Jayne: In the past two years, have you carried your paper medical records from one provider to another?

Webinars

September 17 (Thursday) noon ET. “Level Up Your Stars – Innovative Approaches to Boosting Quality Performance.” Sponsor: Navina. Presenters: Dana McCalley, MBA, VP of value-based care, Navina; Michael S. Barr, MD, MBA, chief medical officer, PreferCare; Yair Lewis, MD, PhD, chief medical officer, Navina. The presenters will explore strategies to boost quality performance and close care gaps effectively. Topics include enhancing quality metrics, developing strategies for care gap closure, leveraging AI for enhanced performance, and optimizing workflows.

September 19 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Cutting-Edge Conversations: A Fireside Chat With Top CMIOs.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drex DeFord, MSHI, MPA, This Week Health; Lacy Knight, MD, MSMI, Piedmont Health; Jake Lancaster, MD, MSHA, MS, Baptist Memorial Health Care; Colin Banas, MD, MSHA, chief medical officer DrFirst. This fireside chat will distill key points from 15 CMIO participants of the 229 Executive Summit. Topics include the impact of AI on clinical workflows, strategies for optimizing healthcare operations, addressing physician burnout and patient safety, and advances in population health management.

October 3 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Navigating AI-Powered Medical Interpretation: Insights for Health Leaders.” Sponsor: Globo. Presenter: Dipak Patel, CEO, Globo. AI is redefining how providers can communicate with patients who speak limited English. However, not all LLMs are created equal, and their potential and limitations need to be examined further. Globo has published its results from testing several LLMs. This webinar will address the promises and perils of AI-enabled medical interpretation in summarizing that research in four key domains: the process of AI interpretation, how to measure it, the state of AI tools today, and the areas where AI falls short with interpretation.

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

Sales

• Bergen New Bridge Medical Center chooses NeuroFlow’s tools to identify and prioritize the behavioral health needs of ambulatory care patients. 
• Curry Health Network (OR) goes live on Epic via the Community Connect model, replacing CPSI Evident Thrive.

People

Virtual nursing solution provider Collette Health promotes Holly Miller to CEO and hires Leif Cefalo, MBA (TraceLink) as VP of revenue operations and Terri Davis, MA (HealthEC) as VP of marketing.

Announcements and Implementations

UTHealth Houston will collaborate with OpenAI to give students, faculty, and staff access to ChatGPT Education to develop HIPAA-compliant applications.

A new KLAS report on EHR/PM in practices with 10 or fewer physicians is topped by NextGen Healthcare and Athenahealth, with all other vendors trailing significantly. Elation Health and Epic Community Connect scored well but with limited user feedback. The top add-on solutions clients that sought elsewhere are telehealth, patient engagement, patient intake, RCM, and analytics.

Privacy and Security

Atrium Health notifies patients that an unauthorized third party gained access to multiple employee email accounts in a phishing attack. The health system says that the two-day incident affected only patients and employees whose information was contained in the emails or attachments of the affected accounts.

23andMe will pay $30 million to settle a lawsuit that accused the company of failing to protect the records of 6.9 million of its users whose information was exposed in a 2023 breach.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore wins ClearlyRated’s 2024 Best of Staffing Client and Talent 5 Year Diamond Awards for service excellence.
• Knox Public Health improves revenue with EClinicalWorks EHR and RCM optimization services.
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new podcast, “Focus on Employee Health and Cost Savings at Northwell Direct.”
• Waystar will exhibit at the HBMA Revenue Cycle Management Fall Conference September 17-19 in Austin.
• Optimum Healthcare IT launches a data and analytics governance offering and hires Terri Mikol (Clearsense) as principal data governance advisor.

Blog Posts

• Building a Workday Resource and Staffing Plan for Healthcare (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• 5 Ways to Empower DSPs in Recognition of Direct Support Professionals Month (Netsmart)
• Governing GenAI in healthcare: a strategic imperative (Nordic)
• Ensuring Technical Readiness for Your Go-Live (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Healthcare Contact Center Top Challenges: How to Solve Them (PerfectServe)
• Innovation Day: A Day Dedicated to Moving Mountains (Prominence Advisors)
• Mastering Anesthesia Scheduling for Optimal Efficiency and Care (QGenda)
• Adapting IT Recruiting Practices for Healthcare Projects (Revuud)
• How RLDatix Supports Readiness and Implementation of CMS Patient Safety Structure Measure (RLDatix)
• What is a Travel Nurse? Salary, Benefits, and Everything You Need to Know (SnapCare)
• Optimize Plan Design with 4 Practice Use Cases for Therapeutic Alternatives (Surescripts)
• The Ethics of RCM: Balancing Profitability with Patient Care (TruBridge)
• Beyond De-Duplication: Innovative Use Cases for Master Data Management in Healthcare (Verato)

Contacts

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

News 9/13/24

Top News

Revenue cycle automation vendor Candid Health raises $29 million in a Series B funding round.

Co-founder and CEO Nick Perry, who came from Palantir Technologies, earned an MS in biomedical informatics from Stanford. 

Reader Comments

From Dr. Lovestrange: “Re: AI. Just came across this resource, which makes me think that we are underestimating the potential problems that are associated with AI.” The MIT-developed AI Risk Repository is a taxonomy of 700 AI risks that were documented in 43 frameworks. My search for “privacy” as a keyword turned up 41 sources.

From Oracle client: “Re: Oracle. While its earnings were higher, the company laid off client account execs on the Oracle Health side, continuing the ongoing gutting of support.” Unverified.

From Boingo: “Re: CVS. They are exiting the HDMS data analytics by the end of 2025, which leaves clients scrambling as they are in the throes of annual benefit planning. The only obvious players they can switch to on short notice are Optum or Truven. Once again, we have a great example of large players who think they can fix healthcare failing miserably.” CVS must have really ruined the business, which dropped into their lap as part of their $70 billion Aetna acquisition in late 2018, if the best option is to shut it down rather than turf it off to private equity.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Google released a test version of NotebookLM, a personalized research assistant that is powered by its Gemini 1.5 pro LLM, so of course I had to try it. I sent it a link to Tuesday’s news post and asked it to create what is basically a podcast. Here’s the resulting file, which sounds no less annoying or inexpert than many of the health tech podcasts that have proliferated like loquacious weeds. I need to play with the tool more since it seems to do a lot.

Webinars

September 17 (Thursday) noon ET. “Level Up Your Stars – Innovative Approaches to Boosting Quality Performance.” Sponsor: Navina. Presenters: Dana McCalley, MBA, VP of value-based care, Navina; Michael S. Barr, MD, MBA, chief medical officer, PreferCare; Yair Lewis, MD, PhD, chief medical officer, Navina. The presenters will explore strategies to boost quality performance and close care gaps effectively. Topics include enhancing quality metrics, developing strategies for care gap closure, leveraging AI for enhanced performance, and optimizing workflows.

September 19 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Cutting-Edge Conversations: A Fireside Chat With Top CMIOs.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drex DeFord, MSHI, MPA, This Week Health; Lacy Knight, MD, MSMI, Piedmont Health; Jake Lancaster, MD, MSHA, MS, Baptist Memorial Health Care; Colin Banas, MD, MSHA, chief medical officer DrFirst. This fireside chat will distill key points from 15 CMIO participants of the 229 Executive Summit. Topics include the impact of AI on clinical workflows, strategies for optimizing healthcare operations, addressing physician burnout and patient safety, and advances in population health management.

October 3 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Navigating AI-Powered Medical Interpretation: Insights for Health Leaders.” Sponsor: Globo. Presenter: Dipak Patel, CEO, Globo. AI is redefining how providers can communicate with patients who speak limited English. However, not all LLMs are created equal, and their potential and limitations need to be examined further. Globo has published its results from testing several LLMs. This webinar will address the promises and perils of AI-enabled medical interpretation in summarizing that research in four key domains: the process of AI interpretation, how to measure it, the state of AI tools today, and the areas where AI falls short with interpretation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

MPulse acquires insurer consumer engagement technology vendor Zipari.

People

Mount Sinai Health System names Lisa Stump, MS, RPh (Yale New Haven Health) as chief digital information officer and dean for information technology.

Ambient AI vendor Corti hires Chad Compton, MBA (Microsoft) as chief revenue officer; Frederik Brabant, MD (Microsoft) as chief medical strategy officer; and Yvonne Kirsch (Philips) as VP of partnerships.

Veritas Labs hires Rich Kenny, RN, MMCi (SAS) as chief clinical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Salesforce announces out-of-the-box AI services for 15 industries, including patient services and benefits verification for healthcare.

NEJM will present “AI in Health Care – Putting Patients First,” a free virtual event on October 9.

NHS England’s procurement body will create a supplier framework that covers diagnostics and AI,  valued at $1 billion.

AvaSure will collaborate with Oracle Cloud and Nvidia to develop a virtual hospital concierge solution for nurses and families.

Netsmart launches Bells Virtual Scribe, which offers transcription and ambient documentation.

Government and Politics

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), who is a physician, tells the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee that Oracle Cerner “should be abandoned today” because it was not a good choice for the VA. He says the VA should admit, “We screwed up, we made a mistake, we picked the wrong system, and we move on to a better system.”

Privacy and Security

Lehigh Valley Health Network will pay a $65 million settlement for a Russian hacker group’s cyberattack that exposed patient information and images of nude cancer patients on the dark web.

Other

I had given up on HIMSS ever filing their IRS Form 990 information returns and they never answer my requests to send them my way, but I accidentally ran across what seems to be a recent filing for the fiscal year ending December 31, 2021 (it seems like they should have filed for 2022 and 2023 by now and I didn’t find those). Highlights:

• Total revenue increased from $65 million to $87 million.
• Total expenses jumped from $47 million to $106 million.
• Net income dropped from $17.9 million to –$19 million.
• Net assets dropped from –$8.4 million to –$29.9 million.
• HIMSS sold 25% of its assets, $21 million, to fund operations during the COVID-19 downturn. It was paid $775,000 in insurance proceeds (presumably related to the cancelled HIMSS20) and took in $5.4 million in federal PPP COVID-19 funds.
• HIMSS employed 404 people at the time of filing.
• President and CEO Hal Wolf earned $1.2 million.
• Others topping the HIMSS compensation list are Chief Operating and Strategy Officer Sebastian Krolop ($770,000 – left in January 2023), EVP Bruce Steinberg ($597,000 – left in December 2023), VP of Media Sales Frank Bilich (433,000), and HIMSS Analytics EVP Reid Oakes ($402,000).
• HIMSS paid $10.3 million for consulting, including $1 million to McKinsey.
• Conference and meeting revenue was $31.7 million, which was 42% of total revenue, while membership dues totaled $10.2 million..
• The organization spent $2.3 million for legal services, $11.1 million for IT, and $129,000 for lobbying.
• HIMSS launched the Office of Scientific Research in November 2020, which reported zero income for 2021.

The New York Times investigates the conversion of a 1,200 acre Utah ranch into a luxury hunting retreat by Mike Siaperas, founder and CEO of medical RCM and credentialing firm Med USA. The Times found that he received $5 million from Utah lawmakers to clear cut his property using a technique that can flatten 100 acres of trees per day, which the state supported as an ecology project. The Times notes that Utah’s legislative session lasts just 45 days, leaving part-time lawmakers – who are overrepresented by developers and real estate investors – with little time to seek expert opinion or public feedback.

In India, a teen dies following a failed gallbladder operation that was being performed by a fake doctor who was following along with YouTube surgery tutorial videos on his phone while cutting. The “surgeon,” who dismissed the family’s concerns during the operation with “Am I the doctor here, or you?” is the subject of a police search after he fled following the teen’s death.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Skyrocket RCM Productivity with EClinicalWorks & Healow.”
• Ellkay will exhibit at the Athenahealth Thrive event October 28-30 in Austin.
• Findhelp welcomes North Star Health, Southeast Community Health Systems, and All Hours Adult Care to its network.
• FinThrive will present at the Florida HFMA Central Education & Networking Event September 20 in Clearwater.
• Behavioral health software vendor ContinuumCloud will integrate medication management solutions from DrFirst into its EHR platform.
• Impact Advisors will exhibit at Workday Rising 2024 September 16-19 in Las Vegas.
• Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Humanitarian City in the Middle East upgrades to InterSystems TrakCare Mobile Enabled User Interface.
• Laudio publishes a new case study, “How Novant Health Alleviated Pressure on Nurse Managers, Improved Employee Engagement, and Reduced RN Turnover by 15%.”
• Australia-based software startup DidgUgo will add interoperability, FHIR, and AI functionality to its visit verification solution using InterSystems Iris for Health.
• Linus Health will exhibit at the AAFP’s FMX 2024 conference September 24-28 in Phoenix.
• Med Tech Solutions publishes a new guide, “How Cloud EMR/EHR Can Transform Your Practice in 90 Days.”
• MRO will exhibit at the 2024 Tri-State HIM Summit September 15-17 in Myrtle Beach, SC.

Blog Posts

• Healthcare Practices Benefitting with EClinicalWorks AI Capabilities (EClinicalWorks)
• The Biosimilar Boom is Creating Medication Data Challenges for Stakeholders Across Healthcare (First Databank)
• Road to Dreamforce Part 2: The Power of Five9 and Salesforce Integration (Five9)
• AI Regulation in the US and Beyond: What You Need to Know (Fortified Health Security)
• How to Achieve a Strong Eligibility Verification Process (Inovalon)
• Transforming Rural Healthcare: Blue Ridge Medical Center’s Transition to a Sustainable REH Model (Medhost)
• 5 customers shine spotlight on health equity strategies (Meditech)
• Normal Wound Healing: Myths, Reality, and Tech Innovation (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 9/11/24

Top News

Oracle reports Q1 results: revenue up 7%, adjusted EPS $1.39 versus $1.19, beating Wall Street expectations for both and sending ORCL shares to an all-time high.

Cerner / Oracle Health was not mentioned in the earnings call except that Larry Ellison used healthcare as an example in response to an analyst’s general question about monetizing AI:

• Oracle uses AI to prepare a pre-visit patient summary for the physician.
• Ambient AI is used to document the visit.
• Stanford needed three people to find his son’s X-rays in Epic, but with Oracle, the physician just says “Oracle, please show me Larry Ellison’s latest X-ray.” He adds, “Our user interface is so different than Epic.”
• Ellison says that “all of Cerner is the monetization,” where AI will fuel expansion of the health business, but won’t be sold as a separate product.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

On the musical front, I’m still digging deeper and longer into the REM catalog and can confidently recommend “All The Way to Reno,” “Crush with Eyeliner,” and the magnificent “Find the River.” Original drummer Bill Berry retired after collapsing on stage in 1997 with a brain aneurysm and seems to still suffer from some of the effects in recent interviews, but pre-1997 concert videos show his energetic, symphonic drumming and harmonizing, not to mention that his absence as a songwriter changed the band’s sound a lot for their remaining five albums. He and bassist Mike Mills were the most experienced and musically trained members of the band, but selflessly plugged away on the seemingly simple rhythm instruments because someone had to do it.

Webinars

September 17 (Thursday) noon ET. “Level Up Your Stars – Innovative Approaches to Boosting Quality Performance.” Sponsor: Navina. Presenters: Dana McCalley, MBA, VP of value-based care, Navina; Michael S. Barr, MD, MBA, chief medical officer, PreferCare; Yair Lewis, MD, PhD, chief medical officer, Navina. The presenters will explore strategies to boost quality performance and close care gaps effectively. Topics include enhancing quality metrics, developing strategies for care gap closure, leveraging AI for enhanced performance, and optimizing workflows.

September 19 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Cutting-Edge Conversations: A Fireside Chat With Top CMIOs.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drex DeFord, MSHI, MPA, This Week Health; Lacy Knight, MD, MSMI, Piedmont Health; Jake Lancaster, MD, MSHA, MS, Baptist Memorial Health Care; Colin Banas, MD, MSHA, chief medical officer DrFirst. This fireside chat will distill key points from 15 CMIO participants of the 229 Executive Summit. Topics include the impact of AI on clinical workflows, strategies for optimizing healthcare operations, addressing physician burnout and patient safety, and advances in population health management.

October 3 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Navigating AI-Powered Medical Interpretation: Insights for Health Leaders.” Sponsor: Globo. Presenter: Dipak Patel, CEO, Globo. AI is redefining how providers can communicate with patients who speak limited English. However, not all LLMs are created equal, and their potential and limitations need to be examined further. Globo has published its results from testing several LLMs. This webinar will address the promises and perils of AI-enabled medical interpretation in summarizing that research in four key domains: the process of AI interpretation, how to measure it, the state of AI tools today, and the areas where AI falls short with interpretation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The private equity owners of Zelis consider selling their minority stake in the healthcare payments company in a potentially $17 billion deal. Bain Capital and Parthenon Capital merged Zelis with payment data company RedCard Systems in 2019 in a transaction valued at $6 billion.

Global investment firm EQT will acquire revenue cycle and health information management company Gebbs Healthcare Solutions from ChrysCapital for a reported $850 million. EQT is also reportedly considering strategic alternatives for RCM vendor AGS Health, including a potential sale. EQT’s health IT investments also include Citius Tech, Lumeon, and Waystar.

Clinical generative AI company Pieces Technologies announces $25 million in new growth funding from investors that include OSF HealthCare (IL) and Children’s Health (TX).

AMA releases CPT 2025, which includes 270 new codes, 112 deletions, and 38 revisions.

Healthcare IT Leaders will open an Overland Park, KS office on the Aspiria campus and will add 25 positions there.

Sales

• Gillette Children’s Hospital (MN) selects data, analytics, and care management technology from HealthEC.
• Healthcare-at-home service provider CareRing Health will implement WellSky’s EHR and analytics software across its locations in five states and Washington, DC.

People

Glenn Wada (Blue Ocean Go to Market Partners) joins Iris Telehealth as chief growth officer.

MDClone hires Bruno Lempernesse, MS (Health Catalyst) as president.

Industry long-timer Mark Erwich, MBA (Verato) joins Health Launchpad as chief strategy officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Mercy Cedar Rapids Women’s Center (IA) goes live on Volpara Health’s breast cancer risk assessment and care management software.

Renown Health (NV) implements DetectRx drug diversion monitoring software from IatricSystems.

Royal Columbia Hospital in British Columbia goes live on Meditech Expanse as part of Fraser Health’s facility-wide implementation.

LogicSource will collaborate with Cleveland Clinic to create non-clinical procurement best practices and benchmarking.

Apple adds sleep apnea detection to the Apple Watch and incorporates hearing features in AirPods Pro that include passive noise reduction, a clinical grade hearing test, and the ability to use AirPods Pro as an over-the-counter hearing aid for mild to moderate hearing loss.

Amy Abernethy, MD, PhD (Verily) and Brad Hirsch, MD (Verily) launch Highlander Health, which will focus on evidence generation and related investment.

A KLAS Arch Collaborative Report on EHR interoperability finds that a major clinician pain point is using outside patient data.

Privacy and Security

Five hospitals in Ontario and their shared IT services provider will spend $6.6 million on recovery efforts stemming from a ransomware attack in October 2023. Bluewater Health restored all of its systems, including Meditech, in February of this year. It will go live on Oracle Health in November. Windsor Regional Hospital, which is still working on a full recovery, has spent the majority of its recovery costs on staff overtime.

Just 20% of small and rural hospitals are taking advantage of free and low-cost cybersecurity resources from Microsoft and Google, according to new stats from White House officials. The vendor offerings are part of a federal initiative launched in June designed to help select healthcare facilities shore up their cybersecurity defenses.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Skyrocket RCM Productivity with eClinicalWorks & Healow.”
• AGS Health will exhibit at the Revenue Integrity Symposium September 12-13 in Oak Brook, IL.
• Altera Digital Health releases a new e-book, “Sunrise: The Flexible EHR to Meet Your Evolving Needs.”
• The Department of Commerce appoints Arcadia Chief Strategy Officer Aneesh Chopra to its National AI Advisory Committee.
• AvaSure will host its 2024 Symposium October 2-4 in Grand Rapids, MI.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of “The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “Customer Care in Healthcare: Setting a Higher Bar, with Will Tafoya.”
• CereCore releases a new podcast, “5 Communication Tactics for Better IT and Business Alignment.”
• The “InteropNow” podcast features Consensus Cloud Solutions EVP of Healthcare Strategy and Policy Bevey Miner, “Bringing Healthcare to Structured Data with Consensus Cloud Solutions.”
• Laudio publishes a case study titled “How Novant Health Alleviated Pressure on Nurse Managers, Improved Employee Engagement, and Reduced RN Turnover by 15%.”
• CloudWave publishes a new whit epaper, “Patient-centric Incident Response in Healthcare: A New Approach – What You Need to Know.”

Blog Posts

• 5 Communication Tactics for Better IT and Business Alignment (CereCore)
• No-show rates, virtual nursing programs & common medical billing mistakes (AdvancedMD)
• Demonstrating AI’s new role in medical imaging at Tampa General Hospital’s first ever Innovation Week! (Agfa HealthCare)
• Unlocking RCM Optimization for Private Equity-backed Medical Groups: Insights from Industry Leaders (Alpha II)
• Five Keys to Growing Through Memberships (Amenities Health)
• Ascom Asks the Experts: Exploring the Benefits of a Connected Healthcare Platform – Insights from the Industry (Ascom)
• Reproductive Health Privacy Rule Lawsuit May Signal Shift in Balance of Power (Clearwater)
• A Year in the Evolution of Data Quality (Clinical Architecture)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 9/9/24

Top News

A cybersecurity researcher finds an unsecured web database that contains the information of patients of the ironically named Confidant Health, an AI-powered mental health and addiction treatment provider.

The database contained 120,000 files and included lengthy psychiatry patient intake notes. It also included audio and video recordings of sessions. Information in the files suggests that some of it was collected by Confidant’s conversational chatbot called Alfie.

The company says that less than 1% of those files could be accessed openly.

Confidant says that it fixed the problem within an hour of being notified. It objects that the findings were publicized in a “sensational” way.

Reader Comments

From Enlighted Analyst: “Re: CVS Health. Has announced that it will sunsetting its HDMS business as of the end of 2025. HDMS provides data warehousing and analytic services to health plans and large employers and was acquired by CVS Health as part of its acquisition of Aetna.” Reported in a CVS announcement. Health Data and Management Solutions offers the Enlight data solutions and visualization platform. It describes its business as “build[ing] connected health views for employers, health plans, providers, and brokers. We transform unrefined data, often disparate and difficult-to-access, into integrated insights.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

You are (sadly) beating poll respondent averages if you spend six or more hours dealing with work-related messages after hours. I have to commend employers who have somehow convinced their workers that spending their free (literally) time doing company work is OK.

New poll to your right or here: How much impact has the information technology that is used by your providers and insurers had on your overall health and happiness?

Webinars

September 10 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Overcoming Hurdles in Specialty Med Access Under Medical Benefits.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drew Hunsinger, VP of corporate business development, DrFirst; Tyler Wince, MEd, VP of product and technology specialty solutions, DrFirst. More specialty medications, which made up 80% of FDA’s new drug approvals last year, are falling under medical benefits, which challenges the patient care processes and efficiency of providers. Medication access experts will discuss how automation and unified medication management solutions can ensure better outcomes for patients and providers by addressing patient access hurdles and enhancing the ‘stickiness’ of EHRs. They will also provide insights into how regulatory changes such as interoperability and prior authorization mandates will affect healthcare stakeholders.

September 17 (Thursday) noon ET. “Level Up Your Stars – Innovative Approaches to Boosting Quality Performance.” Sponsor: Navina. Presenters: Dana McCalley, MBA, VP of value-based care, Navina; Michael S. Barr, MD, MBA, chief medical officer, PreferCare; Yair Lewis, MD, PhD, chief medical officer, Navina. The presenters will explore strategies to boost quality performance and close care gaps effectively. Topics include enhancing quality metrics, developing strategies for care gap closure, leveraging AI for enhanced performance, and optimizing workflows.

September 19 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Cuttng-Edge Conversations: A Fireside Chat With Top CMIOs.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drex DeFord, MSHI, MPA, This Week Health; Lacy Knight, MD, MSMI, Piedmont Health; Jake Lancaster, MD, MSHA, MS, Baptist Memorial Health Care; Colin Banas, MD, MSHA, chief medical officer DrFirst. This fireside chat will distill key points from 15 CMIO participants of the 229 Executive Summit. Topics include the impact of AI on clinical workflows, strategies for optimizing healthcare operations, addressing physician burnout and patient safety, and advances in population health management.

October 3 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Navigating AI-Powered Medical Interpretation: Insights for Health Leaders.” Sponsor: Globo. Presenter: Dipak Patel, CEO, Globo. AI is redefining how providers can communicate with patients who speak limited English. However, not all LLMs are created equal, and their potential and limitations need to be examined further. Globo has published its results from testing several LLMs. This webinar will address the promises and perils of AI-enabled medical interpretation in summarizing that research in four key domains: the process of AI interpretation, how to measure it, the state of AI tools today, and the areas where AI falls short with interpretation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Oracle acquires the former Cerner demonstration center on the vacant campus at 2800 Rockcreek Parkway. Oracle exercised the purchase option for the 125,000 square foot building that Cerner moved into in early 2019 in a sales-leaseback contract with North Kansas City.

Announcements and Implementations

Palantir launches HealthStart, a program for startup developers that focuses on three layers: streamlining compliance approvals, a starter kit for builders, and ontology as a service.

Government and Politics

Texas sues the federal government for implementing a HIPAA medical privacy rule that prohibits state investigators from obtaining the medical records of women who cross state lines to obtain abortion services. The lawsuit questions HHS’s ability to determine the scope of federal privacy and says that such action unlawfully limits state investigative authority, which is guaranteed by HIPAA.  

Two independent reviews find that VA hospitals outperformed non-VA hospitals in patient satisfaction (79% four or five stars versus 40%) and hospital quality ratings (58% four or five stars versus 40%).

Sponsor Updates

• NeuroFlow staff volunteer with Cradles to Crayons to help pack bookbags for local students.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Cutting Costs and Improving Care Seamlessly.”
• Netsmart recaps its 17th annual Connections2024 conference in Dallas, which showcased customer achievements and AI innovations of its CareFabric platform.
• Wolters Kluwer Health offers free, online access to evidence-based information about mpox in a dedicated mpox resource center.
• RLDatix will host a lunch and learn session featuring customers Bozeman Health and St. Francis Hospital at NAMSS 2024 September 30 in Denver.
• Laudio publishes a new report, “Frontline Leaders in Focus: Executive Strategies for Top Workforce Trends.”
• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its Tell Me Where IT Hurts Podcast featuring ASTP/ONC Deputy Director, Certification & Testing Division, Jeffery Smith.
• Med Tech Solutions expands its capabilities into the acute care market by enhancing its Epic, Oracle Health, and Meditech expertise.
• Inovalon, Arcadia, Wolters Kluwer, and MRO will sponsor Rise West 2024 September 11-13 in Colorado Springs.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health: podcast, “Interview with Steve Muething, MD.”
• Pivot Point Consulting Physician Executive Partner Nick Patel, MD joins the HIMSS 2025 Americas Board of Advisors.
• Rhapsody Health publishes a new case study, “Qventus achieves 10X performance and reduces customer onboarding time by 50%.”
• Sectra releases a new podcast, “From co-development to go-live: Inside Penn Medicine and Sectra’s genomics journey.”
• SmartSense by Digi will exhibit at the Health Connect Partners Hospital Pharmacy Fall Conference September 30-October 2 in Columbus, OH.
• SnapCare will exhibit at the Colorado Healthcare 2024 Fall Convention September 10-12 in Loveland.
• Gartner names Verato a Sample Vendor in its latest Hype Cycle for Real-Time Health System Technologies report.

Blog Posts

• Empower pharmacists and streamline processes with advanced data visualization (Meditech)
• CPT vs. ICD-10 Codes: Mapping the ‘Why’ and ‘What’ of Rehab Therapy Patient Journeys (Net Health)
• 3 Health Checks to Know a Workday and ServiceNow Integration is Right for Your Organization (Optimum Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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

News 9/6/24

Top News

Private equity firm New Mountain Capital will combine three of its healthcare billing portfolio businesses into a new company that is valued at $3 billion.

The companies are Rawlings Group, Apixio’s payment integrity business, and Varis.

Datavant has acquired Apixio’s Connected Care platform and value-based care solutions as part of the transaction.

The CEO of the unnamed company will be David Pierre, formerly COO of CVS Health-acquired Signify Health.

Reader Comments

From ID Protector: “Re: Optery. The CEO mentioned on their website is me, and the friend that introduced me to Optery was you, from an HIStalk post.” Pretty cool. Optery is a service that gets your name and personal information (address, phone number, age, family members, etc.) removed from websites that are easily found by Googling. Sign up for a free Optery account to see where your information is available for the world to see. I mentioned my personal experience with it in October 2021. I’ve been paying $3.99 per month for basic removal, but because of this CEO’s memory jog, I just now upgraded to Optery Extended for $120 paid annually after applying a promo code that I found online. His example was shocking – someone used his online information to obtain a fake driver license and apply for $50 million in PPP loans, not to mention that the personal information of employees makes it easier for hackers to breach a company. I just now chose a high-profile, Optery-free executive, and within 60 seconds, had photos of their house, what they paid for it, the names and ages of their family members, and details about their spouse’s employer.

Webinars

September 10 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Overcoming Hurdles in Specialty Med Access Under Medical Benefits.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drew Hunsinger, VP of corporate business development, DrFirst; Tyler Wince, MEd, VP of product and technology specialty solutions, DrFirst. More specialty medications, which made up 80% of FDA’s new drug approvals last year, are falling under medical benefits, which challenges the patient care processes and efficiency of providers. Medication access experts will discuss how automation and unified medication management solutions can ensure better outcomes for patients and providers by addressing patient access hurdles and enhancing the ‘stickiness’ of EHRs. They will also provide insights into how regulatory changes such as interoperability and prior authorization mandates will affect healthcare stakeholders.

September 17 (Thursday) noon ET. “Level Up Your Stars – Innovative Approaches to Boosting Quality Performance.” Sponsor: Navina. Presenters: Dana McCalley, MBA, VP of value-based care, Navina; Michael S. Barr, MD, MBA, chief medical officer, PreferCare; Yair Lewis, MD, PhD, chief medical officer, Navina. The presenters will explore strategies to boost quality performance and close care gaps effectively. Topics include enhancing quality metrics, developing strategies for care gap closure, leveraging AI for enhanced performance, and optimizing workflows.

September 19 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Cuttng-Edge Conversations: A Fireside Chat With Top CMIOs.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drex DeFord, MSHI, MPA, This Week Health; Lacy Knight, MD, MSMI, Piedmont Health; Jake Lancaster, MD, MSHA, MS, Baptist Memorial Health Care; Colin Banas, MD, MSHA, chief medical officer DrFirst. This fireside chat will distill key points from 15 CMIO participants of the 229 Executive Summit. Topics include the impact of AI on clinical workflows, strategies for optimizing healthcare operations, addressing physician burnout and patient safety, and advances in population health management.

October 3 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Navigating AI-Powered Medical Interpretation: Insights for Health Leaders.” Sponsor: Globo. Presenter: Dipak Patel, CEO, Globo. AI is redefining how providers can communicate with patients who speak limited English. However, not all LLMs are created equal, and their potential and limitations need to be examined further. Globo has published its results from testing several LLMs. This webinar will address the promises and perils of AI-enabled medical interpretation in summarizing that research in four key domains: the process of AI interpretation, how to measure it, the state of AI tools today, and the areas where AI falls short with interpretation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Netsmart acquires post-acute market intelligence firm HealthPivots, which it will integrate with CareFabric to support the transition to value-based care.

National oncology practice operator OneOncology acquires Navigating Cancer, which offers a patient engagement and care management platform.

Business Insider profiles Commure as “the weirdest startup in healthcare,” having raised $1 billion at a $6 billion valuation but then walking away from its original mission of developing a healthcare data integration platform to instead offer efficiency-boosting automation for healthcare administrative tasks. The company’s acquisitions include Augmedix, PatientKeeper, Strongline, and Rx.Health. Insiders say that the October 2023 “merger” of Commure and Athelas was actually a Commure acquisition, with products from Athelas becoming Commure’s primary growth engine. Athelas CEO Tanay Tandon took over as Commure’s fourth CEO in October 2023.

Sales

• In Canada, Nova Scotia Health will implement conversational web visitor search tools, EHR search, and radiology workflow from Google Cloud in a five-year, $31 million project.
• Sentara Home Care Services goes live on WellSky CareInsights and Value-Based Insights, integrated with their EHR. 

People

City of Hope hires Simon Nazarian, MBA (Optum) as EVP/chief digital and technology officer.

Michael Justice, MBA (Medical Advantage) joins Mind 24-7 as SVP of technology.

University of Chicago Medicine promotes Karen Habercross, MBA, MSW to VP/chief information security and privacy officer.

Industry long-timer Laura Anderson (Elsevier) joins IKS Health as chief product officer.

EHR vendor Canvas Medical promotes Adam Farren, MBA to CEO. He replaces founder Andrew Hines, who will transition to CTO.

Erik Johnson (BioMérieux) joins Harmony Healthcare IT as VP of marketing.

NVoq hires Dawn Iddings (Netsmart) as chief revenue officer.

Hugh Brennnan (11TEN Innovation Partners) joins Cordea Consulting as EVP of sales.

Greenway Health hires Geordie Sanborn (Arvest Bank) and Chuck Rackley (Infinx) as sales VPs.

Announcements and Implementations

University of Iowa Health Care rolls out Nabla’s ambient technology to all of its clinical workforce, including faculty, advanced practice providers, allied health professionals, trainees, and students. UI Health Care will work with Nabla to develop new use cases and improve its Epic integration.

IRhythm, which offers an ambulatory cardiac monitoring system, signs an exclusive license to incorporate BioIntelliSense’s technologies that measure pulse oximetry, accelerometry, and trending non-invasive blood pressure.

A new KLAS report on patient education solutions notes that 2024 Best in KLAS winner Healthwise, which was acquired by WebMD this year, is used by the widest variety of organizations. Wolters Kluwer is strong in EHR and portal integration, while Elsevier shines with its patient-friendly content. New vendor Mytonomy publishes short-form videos.

Government and Politics

The Republican National Committee alleges to election officials in six states that Vot-ER may be violating election laws, stating that the organization’s goal is to turn “every check-up and doctor’s visit into a political lecture” by pressuring patients to vote in a certain way as a condition of receiving medical care. Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) previously asked Epic to respond to his concerns that its users could be registering non-citizen voters in Vot-ER. Vot-ER Executive Director Aliya Bhatia, MPP provided this response:

Vot-ER is proud of empowering health professionals and patients to vote, many of whom face significant barriers to civic participation. It’s unfortunate and frankly a shame that our nonpartisan efforts to promote civic engagement are coming under unwarranted scrutiny. Vot-ER has always been clear in its mission to remain nonpartisan, and we are guided by a bipartisan advisory board, including Republican and Democratic former elections officials, to ensure that our work reflects the needs and concerns of all voters, regardless of political affiliation. Vot-ER does not promote or endorse any political party or candidate, participation is entirely voluntary, and nothing in our programming remotely suggests that patients are pressured or coerced to register to vote. Moreover, we have protocols and technology in place to prevent ineligible individuals from registering, and any suggestion otherwise is simply false.

I mentioned the Epic app name post from interoperability guy Brendan Keeler earlier this week, so here’s another fun thread in which he looks at some of the interesting comments that ASTP received about HTI-2. He cites an anonymous commenter who was “coming out guns blazing” with these points (not Brendan’s):

• Questionable applications have already joined the network by exploiting its lenient onboarding process, which could include using fake NPIs and websites.
• Ineffective monitoring allows organizations to siphon off data without sharing data of their own.
• ASTP should follow Carequality’s focus on thorough vetting and continuous monitoring, which could include real-time participant monitoring and removal and notifying practices when their credentials are used.

Other

Kaiser Permanente hematologist / oncologist Faisal Cheema, MD says that he’s happy that they are using Abridge for ambient documentation after piloting Nabla Copilot. He says that Copilot was effective but not integrated with Epic (he didn’t say whether it was an app problem or KP decision) and Abridge’s integration with Epic Haiku was a game-changer. Next, he would like to see transcription of virtual visits directly from the smartphone app. 

Hamilton Health Sciences profiles cardiologist Darryl Leong, MBBS, MPH, MBiostat, PhD, who is also associate CMIO for research, and his involvement with the organization’s use of Epic in research.

Sponsor Updates

• Middletown Medical (NY) sees reduced claim rejections, decreased claims submission lag, and ROI savings after adding RCM capabilities to its EClinicalWorks EHR.
• Black Book’s latest survey of VC and PE healthcare leaders reveals priorities for healthcare IT investments in 2025.
• CereCore will present at Meditech Live September 27 in Foxborough, MA.
• Arcadia publishes a new report, “The healthcare CIO’s role in the age of AI.”
• Artera publishes a new customer snapshot featuring Newton Clinic.
• Availity partners with Iodine Software to bring advanced mid-revenue cycle solutions to its Availity Essentials Pro customers.
• AvaSure will host the 2024 AvaSure Symposium October 2-4 in Grand Rapids, MI.
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “Never Move Again, a Paradigm Shift in Pharmacy Benefits, with AJ Loiacono.”
• The American Health Law Association features Clearwater Chief Risk Officer and Head of Consulting Services and Client Success Jon Moore on its latest podcast.
• Memphis VA Medical Center (TN) expands its use of CliniComp solutions.
• CloudWave publishes a new case study, “Safeguarding Patient Care: Emanate Health Adopts OpSus Live for Enhanced EHR Security.”
• Crossings Healthcare Solutions, FinThrive, and Nordic will sponsor Oracle CloudWorld 2024 September 9-12 in Las Vegas.
• Ellkay will exhibit at Mayo Clinic’s Leveraging the Laboratory Conference September 17-18 in Rochester, MN.
• Elsevier offers free access to research and clinical resources via its Mpox Information Center to accelerate the fight against viral disease.
• FinThrive releases a new episode of its Healthcare Rethink Podcast, “Is the Boom of Digital Health Really Booming?”
• Five9 will present at SaaStr Annual 2024 September 10 in San Francisco.

Blog Posts

• Epic’s UGM 2024: Innovations, insights, and the future of healthcare (Nordic)
• 5 Fundamentals to Master Healthcare Delivery at Scale (AGS Health)
• Specialty practices and the need for a mold-breaking EHR (Altera Digital Health)
• Elevating Patient Registration: Improving the First Step in Accessing Care (Amenities Health)
• Ascom Asks the Experts: The Future of Nursing – Embracing Virtual Care (Ascom)
• A Candid Conversation with the FDA: Medical Device Cybersecurity (CloudWave)
• Enhancing Diversity and Inclusion in Hiring (Direct Recruiters)
• The Emerging Role of AI Medical Scribes in Patient Engagement (EClinicalWorks)
• Pharmacists Serve as Last Line of Defense Against Drug Overdoses (First Databank)
• Streamline for Success: Top 3 Signs It’s Time to Consolidate Your Healthcare RCM Vendors (FinThrive)
• Healthcare Cybersecurity Threats: August 2024 (Fortified Health Security)
• Infrastructure Management Services (HCTec)
• Integrating Workday with Scheduling Applications (Impact Advisors)

Contacts

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

News 9/4/24

Top News

UK-based virtual hospital and remote patient monitoring technology vendor Doccla raises $46 million in a Series B funding round.

The company will use the funds to expand in Europe beyond UK and Ireland.

Reader Comments

From Don O: “Re: Epic’s hiring practices. During my 17-year stint (now retired), I never met another vendor ex-employee. I’d be hard pressed to remember if Epic ever brought someone on from a customer, with possibly a couple of MDs who could not be part of the site’s installation team. Excludes the Emeritus program of experts that have retired from their organization primarily functioning in consulting roles.”

From Samsara Psychiatrist: “Re: mental health professional shortages. This is both in overall numbers as well as in-network psychiatrists, many of whom have full practices or are hospital based and don’t see outpatients at all. This is never reflected in the provider listings. Insurers want patients to make a bunch of unsuccessful phone calls before giving up and either paying cash or not obtaining care at all. Even those who are wiling to pay cash can wait six months for an appointment. Most problematically, patients with the most severe mental illnesses have the most difficulty in getting outpatient treatment since they are more likely to have Medicare or Medicaid and need complex, coordinated services that the average mental health professional is not equipped to give. On the health IT front, initiatives such as meaningful use, MIPS, and MACRA have made it increasingly less likely that mental health professionals will want to participate in these programs. Significant numbers of psychiatrists are retiring or cutting back their hours. The availability of telehealth has increased interest in psychiatry as a specialty, but there are still a limited number of residency training positions, and CMS rules — such as not allowing virtual supervision for in-person resident patients — should be more flexible. Insurers are certainly a big piece of the problem, but not the only one. Big changes are needed.”

From Danny DeVino: “Re: Epic trademarks. Industry interoperability guy Brendan Keeler had fun trying to figure out which of Epic’s trademarks involve products that either didn’t came to fruition or have been retired.” It’s a fun list.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

About half of poll respondents say that their company culture has changed in the past year, and two-thirds of those say it got worse.

New poll to your right or here: How much time do you spend each week managing work-related messages after normal working hours?

Readers sent me questions last week about Epic related to Vot-ER and how Epic finances startup participation in its Workshop program. My experience is that the PR contacts of most companies don’t respond at all, and if they do, not quickly enough for that same day’s HIStalk news post. Epic always gets back to me quickly with an acknowledgment and then provides a company statement shortly after, which I appreciate since I can give my readers a timely response. It’s also good for companies to address rumors that are likely being discussed more widely than by the one person who asks me.

Webinars

September 10 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Overcoming Hurdles in Specialty Med Access Under Medical Benefits.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drew Hunsinger, VP of corporate business development, DrFirst; Tyler Wince, MEd, VP of product and technology specialty solutions, DrFirst. More specialty medications, which made up 80% of FDA’s new drug approvals last year, are falling under medical benefits, which challenges the patient care processes and efficiency of providers. Medication access experts will discuss how automation and unified medication management solutions can ensure better outcomes for patients and providers by addressing patient access hurdles and enhancing the ‘stickiness’ of EHRs. They will also provide insights into how regulatory changes such as interoperability and prior authorization mandates will affect healthcare stakeholders.

October 3 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Navigating AI-Powered Medical Interpretation: Insights for Health Leaders.” Sponsor: Globo. Presenter: Dipak Patel, CEO, Globo. AI is redefining how providers can communicate with patients who speak limited English. However, not all LLMs are created equal, and their potential and limitations need to be examined further. Globo has published its results from testing several LLMs. This webinar will address the promises and perils of AI-enabled medical interpretation in summarizing that research in four key domains: the process of AI interpretation, how to measure it, the state of AI tools today, and the areas where AI falls short with interpretation.

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

People

RxLightning names Peter Simmons, RPh as COO.

Nathan Gnanasambandam, PhD (HealthPointe Solutions) joins RhythmX AI as VP of AI.

Flatiron Health promotes Quincy Weatherspoon, MBA to VP/GM of Flatiron Point of Care Solutions.

Announcements and Implementations

Niagara Health in Ontario prepares to launch Oracle Health in November. Six hundred clinicians have signed up for extra training during the “Operation Monarch” implementation project, which was first announced in 2022.

Salem Township Hospital (IL) will go live on Epic next month.

The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center goes live on Epic-integrated Cloud Payments from TrustCommerce, a Sphere company.

A new KLAS report on data archiving finds that the systems that are most commonly involved are EHRs from Altera Digital Health, Oracle Health, and Athenahealth. Top performance scores for complex archiving projects were earned by Galen Healthcare Solutions, an RLDatix Company; and Harmony Healthcare IT, while Triyam performed well in lower-complexity work.

Government and Politics

Clinicians at Lovell Federal Health Care Center (IL) continue to focus on improving the Oracle Health-based EHR that was implemented five months ago at the facility, which is jointly run by the VA and DoD. Areas of focus, dubbed “big rock” projects, include fine-tuning referral management, standardizing and consolidating user roles, improving training, and improving coordination between prescribers and pharmacists.

Other

Michigan researchers find that EHRs are not consistent in documenting the racial and ethnic designations of pediatric patients. They recommending implementing some form of gold standard that is appropriate for children who may not be able to self-report.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Know Your No-Shows and Optimize Your Schedule.”
• Meditech releases a new podcast, “Zack Kass on seizing the healthcare AI advantage.”
• The Surescripts Role and Value of the Pharmacist Founder’s Donor Fund contributes $75,000 towards a grant that the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs Foundation will use to study the current pharmacy technology landscape.
• The Kansas City Business Journal honors Netsmart Chief People Officer Wendy Hill with its Women Who Mean Business Award.
• Revuud names Mark McDowell, Brian Litten, and Scott Schubert to its Board of Directors.
• A 2024 Forrester Consulting Total Economic Impact study reveals a 193% return on investment over three years for interviewed health technology teams using Rhapsody healthcare data integration solutions.
• RLDatix supports healthcare organizations in assessing their readiness for the new CMS Patient Safety Structural Measure, which takes effect next year.
• Waystar will exhibit at the WellSky Care Forum September 8-11 in Denver.
• Wolters Kluwer Health CMO Peter Bonis, MD will present at the HIMSS AI in Healthcare Forum September 5 in Boston.
• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Breaking Down Barriers: Fostering A True IT and Business Partnership.”

Blog Posts

• Carequality and Epic Make TEFCA Transition Announcements. How Does this Impact Nationwide Data Exchange? (Zen Healthcare IT)
• Navigating the new Epic Gold Star criteria with strategic approaches (Nordic)
• Summer Rewind: Top Healthy as Tech Hits (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• How Redox + Snowflake have teamed up to unlock AI and ML use cases for providers (Redox)
• Do You Need a Nurse Mentor? (SnapCare)
• 3 Ways Providers Can Add Digital Wallets to the Patient Payments Mix (TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company)
• Predictive Healthcare Staffing: Generating More Value Through AI Innovation (Symplr)
• Your Guide to Improving Payer-Provider Collaboration (Tegria)
• Outsourcing RCM: Why Choosing the Right Partner Matters (TruBridge)
• Healthcare leaders share how Verato improves the Epic experience (Verato)
• Five IT Infrastructure Points CIOs Should Discuss with Their Leadership (CereCore)

Contacts

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

News 8/30/24

Top News

PatientPay completes its acquisition of billing, statement, and payment technology vendor ClearGage.

The combined companies will have 1,600 healthcare organization clients and 1.2 million patient digital wallets.

Reader Comments

From Not So Vendor Neutral: “Re: Epic. I’ve heard from multiple sources that Epic is making deals for cash and equity as part of its Workshop program, where they give access to Epic resources while promoting those vendors to their customer base.” An Epic spokesperson provided this response to my inquiry:

We undertake a significant amount of R&D to co-develop products with Workshop vendors for the benefit of our provider community. Rather than front-loading this expense on start-ups, we’ve entered into novel financial arrangements, including warrants in rare cases. This way, the start-ups can delay the bulk of their payment until they are successful and we can share in that success. We have no intention of company ownership.

From ExMeditech: “Re: Epic hiring only entry level people. See this from Meditech’s Neil Pappalardo from a 1991 book.” Neil said this in the book “Entrepreneurs in High Technology: Lessons from MIT and Beyond,” which was written by the late MIT professor and Meditech co-founder Ed Roberts. It’s a reminder that Epic and Meditech shared some DNA and management philosophies in the early days:

We view ourselves as a family. We always hire entry level people, whether in software or sales. We don’t hire new people into managerial slots. All of our managers have been promoted from within. We want our people to join us when they’re still young and get their training here in our culture. They don’t have much experience when they start but at least they’re malleable at that age. And they learn quickly.

From Band Saw: “Re: Oracle CloudWorld. The band Journey is playing. Does the conference draw enough old dudes who care?” “Don’t Stop Believin” is my most-detested song, and I wouldn’t expect it to sound better played by the sole remaining original member in a million-dollar corporate jukebox show for IT geeks. The band’s most recent album is from 2022, but its later works are superfluous since — like skimpily talented insects trapped in musical amber – their music is indistinguishable from the 40-year-old stuff that includes that shriek-along favorite of tipsy karaoke moms. Don’t expect comradely glances between the keyboardist and guitarist, each of whom is a 50% band owner and opposing litigant in a money dispute that caused their upcoming European nostalgia-milking tour to be cancelled, and don’t expect to hear their singer – a non-English speaker from a Philippines tribute band who they saw on YouTube and hired purely because he sounds like Steve Perry despite looking as unlike him as is possible — since the audience will insist on singing along badly. The only deceased founding member is rhythm guitarist George Tickner, who according to his 2023 obituary was a registered nurse who left the band in 1975 to “pursue his PhD at Stanford University Medical School on a full scholarship.”

Webinars

September 10 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Overcoming Hurdles in Specialty Med Access Under Medical Benefits.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Drew Hunsinger, VP of corporate business development, DrFirst; Tyler Wince, MEd, VP of product and technology specialty solutions, DrFirst. More specialty medications, which made up 80% of FDA’s new drug approvals last year, are falling under medical benefits, which challenges the patient care processes and efficiency of providers. Medication access experts will discuss how automation and unified medication management solutions can ensure better outcomes for patients and providers by addressing patient access hurdles and enhancing the ‘stickiness’ of EHRs. They will also provide insights into how regul

Sales

• Chicago-based Collaborative Bridges chooses HealthEC’s data and analytics solution.

People

EvidenceCare promotes Amy Deaton to president / COO.

Care2U promotes Lon Hecht to CEO.

Altais hires Kumar Murukurthy, MBBS (Walmart Health and Wellness) as chief information and digital officer.

Announcements and Implementations

CommonWell Health Alliance announces that Athenahealth, ModuleMD, and Solace Health are live on its new TEFCA-ready platform and QHIN that was developed with Ellkay.

University of Iowa Health Care CHIO James Blum, MD posted on LinkedIn that they have deployed Evidently’s EHR-embedded clinical decision support to all of their caregivers, of which 2,000 launched it on the first day.

Sponsor Updates

• FinThrive staff pack 576 “food paks” for Children’s Hunger Fund in Frisco, TX.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Say Hello to Easy Joint Documentation with EClinicalWorks.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces that 15 of its Lippincott healthcare journals received 37 Awards for Publication Excellence during the most recent APEX competition.
• Tegria, CloudWave, Nuance, and DrFirst will sponsor Meditech Live September 24-27 in Foxborough, MA.
• Fortified Health Security names Keenen Garnett (Deaconess Health System) penetration tester.
• Avoyelles Hospital (LA) adds Medhost’s Clinician Experience, Pharmacy Experience, and PDMP capabilities to its Medhost EHR.
• Meditech customer Ozarks Healthcare earns two EHR Experience Breakthrough Awards at the KLAS Arch Collaborative Summit.
• CliniComp earns “Great Place to Work” certification for the second year in a row.
• Revuud announces new board members Mark McDowell; Brian Litten, JD; and Scott Schubert, CPA.
• Surescripts CEO and pharmacist Frank Harvey recaps the company’s hosting of the Care Team Evolution Summit, in partnership with AHIP and the American Pharmacists Association, in Washington, DC last month.

Blog Posts

• Customer Obsession & Epic UGM Highlights (Health Data Movers)
• Steering Your Practice Towards Success (EClinicalWorks)
• 4 Key Customer Insights on AI Adoption (Five9)
• Irreverent, enlightening, and interesting: My experience on the OverReaction Podcast (Get-to-Market Health)
• EHR Consulting 101: Enhancing Patient Care Through Technology (HCTec)
• Leveraging Social Drivers of Health Data and Analytics for Enhanced Patient Access, Adherence, and Health Equity (Inovalon)
• The Evolution Of Telehealth: Time To Bust Some Old Myths (KeyCare)
• Achieving cost savings and elevated care with the Expanse MaaS model (Meditech)
• Wound Care Documentation: The New Rules (Net Health)
• How NeuroFlow’s Maternal Mental Health Care Pathways Support Parents at Every Stage of Pregnancy (NeuroFlow)

Contacts

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