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News 3/6/24

March 5, 2024 News 1 Comment

Top News

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Cybersecurity analysts surmise from underground forum chatter and evidence of a Bitcoin deposit that Change Healthcare may have paid a $24 million ransom to the BlackCat ransomware group on March 1.

They also point out that the ransomware group has made a remarkable comeback, given that the FBI took down its dark websites and issued decryption keys to victims last December.

HHS says that it has made clear that Change Healthcare owner UnitedHealth Group needs to do everything it can to ensure provider continuity of operations. It says it “is taking direct action” to support providers who are experiencing cash flow problems as a result of the downtime, including accelerated payments on a case-by-case basis.

HHS lists flexibilities that include help in switching claims clearinghouses; encouraging Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and CHIP organizations to remove or relax prior authorization; and reminding Medicare Administrative Contractors that they must process paper claims from providers who need to file them.

Practice owner Christine Meyer, MD has provided commendable visibility into the outage’s provider impact:

  • Optum claimed it would offer provider loans for 80% of historical claim submissions, but her practice was offered just $4,000 per month, or less than 1%.
  • Banks are cold-calling to offer large lines of credit that include “ridiculous terms and strings.”
  • Three RCM companies have offered to “take the pressure off” for fees ranging from 7% to 10%.
  • One offered a not-free trial of an AI tool.
  • A VC she had previously declined to sell her practice to is trying again.
  • Asked if she would decline to accept UnitedHealth Group patients, she says she would consider it, but doesn’t want to abandon patients based on their insurer.

Reader Comments

From Mambo: “Re: Change Healthcare breach. Not widely reported is that healthcare entities have an obligation to inform patients of a breach, but have little idea how to determine which patients may have had data compromised. No one is sure where the line is.”

From HITGirl: “Re: Nuance. A bunch of layoffs today.” Unverified, but parent company Microsoft has been cutting headcount in some areas.

From HIMSS Question: “Re: HIMSS. How does it handle ethical breaches on their Davies awards? Do they have a way to report an ethical breach? Have any previous Davies award winners had to return their award due to fraud, lies, or fake data or reporting fake data? Anything similar for presenters at the HIMSS conference?”


Webinars

March 7 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Live Q&A: Waystar leaders answer provider questions on implementation, solutions + more” (this session will focus on ambulatory and other providers – a session specific to hospitals and health systems will be offered at 3 ET). Sponsor: Waystar. Presenters: Chris Schremser, CTO, Waystar; Laura Canzano, EVP provider and partner client experience, Waystar. Waystar leaders will explore how our secure, mission-critical software yields powerful results, like a 33% increase in staff productivity, while integrating with 530+ EHR/PM systems. We’ll talk through our smooth implementation process, which has earned us a 94% client satisfaction rate and a 74+ client NPS. And we’ll offer details about our hands-on support, which clients can reach in less than 11 seconds and which satisfies 96% of users. We’ll also explore how Waystar can accelerate implementation to alleviate disruption to your revenue cycle, all while helping you increase revenue and decrease manual efforts. For a limited time, Waystar is offering accelerated implementation for those experiencing disruptions due to data security.

March 27 (Wednesday) 3 ET. “Houston Methodist: Deploying clinical AI at scale for improved outcomes.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Khurram Nasir, MD, MPH, chief of cardiovascular disease prevention and wellness, Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center; Brenda Campbell, RN, senior consultant, HM Health System Innovations; Nassib Chamoun, MS, founder and CEO, HDAI. The presenters  will share how an interdisciplinary team collaborated to successfully use predictive models and a novel AI-driven approach to address post-discharge mortality. They will also describe how they expanded use of the platform to reduce clinician time spent digging through the EHR with a one-page risk profile, including codes extracted from notes using generative AI, and targeting their highest risk patients for extra attention. They will speak to how they overcame barriers to bringing AI at scale to support clinicians across the care continuum.

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Starfish Partners companies Direct Recruiters and Innova People will merge their healthcare and technology staffing divisions to create Innova Healthcare and Innova Tech staffing practices.

Kaiser Foundation Hospitals will lay off several dozen IT workers in California’s Bay Area, following a December 2023 layoff of 115 IT employees.

Scotland-based Craneware reports six-month results: revenue up 8% adjusted EPS $0.43 versus $0.41. CRW shares are up 37% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $740 million.

Oracle Health reportedly laid off some number of employees this week, with insiders listing scrum masters, project managers, developers, and testers as affected.


Sales

  • Morehouse School of Medicine (GA) selects ThinkAndor AI-powered remote patient monitoring technology from Andor Health.
  • WebMD Ignite will integrate First Databank’s Meducation personalized medication instruction software with its Krames on FHIR patient education technology for prescribers.
  • Amwell adds Suki’s voice-enabled digital assistant technology to its Converge virtual care software.
  • Millennium Physician Group will implement WellSky’s technology and clinical services to improve patient outcomes.
  • Intermountain Health will use Memora Health’s intelligent care enablement platform to implement new care delivery programs, initially focusing on cancer care.

People

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David Finn, MA (CHIME) joins First Health Advisory as EVP of governance, risk, and compliance.

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Bardavon Health Innovations promotes Alex Benson, MPA to CEO.

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Geisinger names Terry Gilliland, MD, MS (Cogitativo) as president of Geisinger Health and its next CEO.


Announcements and Implementations

Christus Health (TX) implements Epic at six of its hospitals.

UVA Health Prince William Medical Center implements telehealth capabilities within its Level III NICU, enabling providers to virtually consult with pediatric specialists at UVA Health Children’s and families to stay connected with their newborns and care teams.

Orchid Wellness in Texas implements EHR, online appointment scheduling, and text-to-pay software from EClinicalWorks.


Government and Politics

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A whistleblower lawsuit accuses primary care practice network Aledade of rigging its coding software to overbill Medicare by inflating diagnoses, such as coding anxiety as depression, to earn higher payments. The lawsuit claims that Medicare Advantage patients who were overweight were diagnosed with the higher-paying “morbid obesity” codes at 10 times the national average using coding guidance that was referred to as “Aledade gospel.” The suit was filed by Kushwinder Singh, MD, MHA, who served for a few months as a senior medical director for Aledade until he says the company fired him for raising fraud concerns. The investor-backed Aledade, which was recently valued at $3.5 billion, was co-founded in 2014 by former National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD. Aledade EVP Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH left the company in last year after two years to become CDC director. The federal government has declined to join the case.

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Lawmakers propose a fiscal year 2024 budget package that includes $1.3 billion for the VA’s continued rollout of its Oracle Health EHR, with a contingency that 25% of that funding be tied to transparency with Congress about efforts to address ongoing performance issues.

NASA’s Johnson Space Center issues an RFI for and EHR for its clinic, which serves astronaut, employees, and contractors. The clinic notes that its current EHR is housed on-premises and has significant dependencies on Microsoft BizTalk for interfacing.

The White House and the Biden Cancer Moonshot tout adoption of USCDI + Cancer to allow providers to share EHR information about cancer patients. Epic, Oracle, Ontada, Meditech, Flatiron, and ThymeCare have committed to adopting the core elements, while CVS Health and Athenahealth are working on it.


Privacy and Security

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Lurie Children’s Hospital (IL) announces that it has restored its Epic EHR and other key systems. The hospital experienced a ransomware attack on January 31.


Other

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Elliot Hospital (NH) launches a virtual ER service to help patients determine and receive an appropriate level of care and to alleviate capacity strain on its emergency room.

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Guam Memorial Hospital Authority concludes that its clinicians have struggled to use its $5 million Medsphere CareVue EHR since it was purchased in October 2022 because the system was built for behavioral health rather than for use by acute care hospitals. GMH will issue an RFP for a replacement system that could cost $20 million to $60 million. 

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Privacy advocates call for a review of Verilogue, a medical research firm that pays doctors to record conversations with their patients that de-identified and then provided to drug companies to fine tune drug marketing in working around clinician and patient objections. Verilogue, which is part of Publicis Groupe, paid doctors up to $2,500 per month to make the recordings with patient consent, and leaked records suggest that the company charged $135,000 for 50 visit recordings to drug companies that wanted to increase opioid sales.


Sponsor Updates

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  • TruBridge staff ring the Nasdaq opening bell in celebration of its corporate rebrand.
  • Serviam Care Network will leverage Netsmart’s population health technology and expertise as part of its Higher Path Operating System for senior living operators.
  • Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust and Agfa HealthCare announce the launch of the real-world evaluation of Agfa’s Enterprise Imaging Rubee AI Package for Mammography.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/4/24

March 3, 2024 News 5 Comments

Top News

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Change Healthcare executives hint that the company’s ransomware-crippled data exchange systems could remain down for weeks, as the financial and operational impact on provides ripples throughout the industry.

Parent company UnitedHealth Group has announced a loan program for providers who are unable to receive payments, although some of those providers say the available funding is too low to be useful to help their high-expense, low-margin businesses that are quickly running out of cash.

The company announced Friday that it has brought an alternate e-prescribing solution online.

Meanwhile, Aledade founder and CEO Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM observes that had Change not been acquired by UnitedHealth for $13 billion in October 2022, Change would likely have already been forced into bankruptcy by the event, which started nearly two weeks ago.

When its systems are running, Change processes 15 billion healthcare transactions each year, impacting one out of three patient records.


Reader Comments

From MrCernerPizzaDriver: “Re: Children’s Minnesota. Announced internally that they are moving from Cerner to Epic, with go-live planned for fall 2026.” Unverified.

From Where Peeps At: “Re: HIMSS conference. What attendance do you predict?” I stopped doing that years ago because the way HIMSS counts heads is not transparent. It’s like a half-empty baseball ballpark that is claimed to be a sellout by the team, which has every incentive and counting method at its disposal to make itself look more popular than butts in seats would suggest. I wandered in the vast Nevada sunbake that was the COVID-delayed HIMSS21 in a futile search for my supposed 20,000 fellow attendees.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Two-thirds of poll respondents say that they or their employers have been affected by downtimes at AT&T or Change Healthcare.

New poll to your right or here: Does Epic operate as a monopoly in the health system market? Cheat sheet for what constitutes a monopoly: the only available producer, high market share, high barrier to entry, and can name their price since no close substitutes exist. That’s not the same as merely dominating the market, which means that my poll question is loaded, but I’m still curious who chooses the monopoly option.


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Hello to former HIStalk sponsors who understandably had to tighten their belts over the past couple of years. Spring seems to have sprung, so bring your brand out of hibernation with my Welcome Back package for Platinum-level returning sponsors, which offers special recognition, a CEO interview, and bonus months for the first year. Contact Lorre.


Thanks to these companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo for more information.

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Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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WebMD acquires the assets of Healthwise, the non-profit provider of patient educational resources. WebMD will move Healthwise’s offerings into its Ignite patient engagement solutions business, which will serve 50% of US hospitals post-acquisition. Healthwise will continue as a non-profit whose board will explore new ways the company can help people make better health decisions. Healthwise was formed in Boise, ID in 1975 by Don Kemper to distribute patient handbooks. Kemper, who retired in 2016, told the Idaho Statesman after the acquisition was announced, “We’re trying to look at the good work that we’ve done through the years and the recognition that the world is changing. It’s exceptional for our little independent nonprofit to last for 50 years.”

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Project Ronin – which offered oncologists and their patients a platform to plan, personalize, and manage their care journey – shut down without notice on Friday, according to several former employees who said that the company ran out of money due to sales challenges. Oracle’s Larry Ellison was a co-founder and the primary financial backer of the San Mateo, CA-based company. I interviewed CEO Dave Hodgson and Chief Scientific Officer Christine Swisher, PhD last year. Ronin’s now-available 150 former employees include informaticists, data scientists, software engineers, and NLP scientists, providing a target-rich environment for companies who need their high-demand skills.

I was curious about CNBC’s headline that General Catalyst’s planned purchased of Summa Health “has Ohio community on edge,” wondering if they did a mass area survey or covered a protest march to reach the conclusion that the entire community is biting nails over the deal. It’s click bait, of course, the usually all-hat, no-cattle fake journalism in which the entire story was based on the skimpiest of sources:

  • A DC-based health plan group says she’s excited to see if the change brings new approaches even though she’s not sure how it will work.
  • A Tennessee-based health venture studio CEO says the idea makes people nervous, but he’s excited to see someone taking big swings.
  • The article recycled quotes from elsewhere from the city’s mayor and a member of its city council, noting that 450 people have signed a petition to urge the health system to remain non-profit.
  • Bottom line: 450 of the area’s 700,000 residents have signed a petition, and CNBC used 65 paragraphs to provide nothing conclusive or useful in mostly just citing old news from elsewhere.

People

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Innsena promotes Britteny Matero to SVP and partner.

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Optimum Healthcare IT hires Allie Messimer (Abra) as EVP of enterprise application services.

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Healthcare IT Leaders hires Steven Cardenas, MBA (DMCA) as SVP of government relations. He spent 23 years in the US Air Force, retiring as colonel.

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Ed Roberts, PhD, a former MIT Sloan management professor and co-founder of Meditech, died February 27. He was 88.


Privacy and Security

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Lurie Children’s Hospital has been mostly offline for a month from a ransomware attack, and now the hackers who are responsible are offering to sell its data for $3.4 million. The screenshot is from cybercrime expert Alexander Leslie.


Other

Christine Meyer, MD describes how the Change Healthcare cyberattack has impacted her practice:

  • They are submitting claims individually via paper and payer portals, but expect cash flow to dry up within two weeks.
  • Once that happens, staff and essential services will be cut, leaving phones unanswered and referrals and refill requests unprocessed.
  • Practice hours will be cut back, with same-day and walk-in appointments eliminated, sending patients to overloaded EDs.
  • She says that Optum’s loan offer is $4,000 per month versus her payroll of $350,000 per month.
  • A commenter notes that it’s nice for parent UnitedHealth Group that while patients will get turned away because of the Change downtime, UHG will still be collecting their insurance premiums without paying claims.

An unintended consequence of requiring hospitals to post their prices: Mount Sinai is strong-arming UnitedHealthcare for a 50% rate increase after the health system used the public transparency data to find that competitors are paid more.


Sponsor Updates

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  • QGenda employees serve breakfast at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
  • PerfectServe opens nominations for its 2024 Nurses of Note awards program.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 3/1/24

February 29, 2024 News 24 Comments

Top News

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A ransomware group claims that its cyberattack against Change Healthcare yielded 8 terabytes of data from every provider that sends data to Change, including medical records, insurance records, and data from active military service members. The group quickly removed its post, raising speculation that the company might be negotiating a ransom payment.

CommonWell uses Change technology and has disabled its network as a precaution.

Meanwhile, the American Hospital Association asks HHS for help with the Change Healthcare attack, requesting better communication and transparency from Change, help with payments that will be delayed, pausing of citations related to wait times, enforcement discretion for the lack of ability to create good faith estimates, and added flexibility in e-prescribing regulations.

MGMA lists the problems its medical group members are experiencing due to the Change Healthcare disruption:

  • Claims cannot be submitted.
  • Prior authorization requests cannot be submitted.
  • Patient eligibility can’t be checked.
  • Health plan payments cannot be received.
  • Prescriptions and lab orders cannot be transmitted electronically.
  • Medical groups don’t carry reserves year-over-year due to tax consequences, so they are running short on working capital due to their inability to bill and be paid.

Reader Comments

From EHRMusing: “Re: Epic. I’m interested in your thoughts on this article that examines whether it’s a monopoly.” The Forbes article – which was pretty good except for spelling Judy Faulkner’s name wrong – makes these points:

  • Epic holds a 36% market share of US hospitals, short of the usual monopoly definition of 50%.
  • The company’s aggressive IP protections, such as non-competes and controlling who can work on a client’s Epic team, could be construed as monopolistic behavior.
  • Epic increases third-party costs by limiting developer access, and controls access to its ecosystem via its new Showroom third-party marketplace.
  • The nature of buying Epic gives more influence to health system CIOs and thus Epic.
  • Epic pre-empts competition by announcing products before their release and by publishing a “Products You Can Replace With Epic” guide.
  • Epic plays a positive role in filtering “innovation noise” from flaky startups, gives health systems a single point of contact, and has been around for 45 years with no involvement by outside investors.
  • The article didn’t mention other important monopoly factors – a high barrier to entry, the ability to set prices above competitive levels, and lack of substitutes, all of which apply to Epic.
  • My opinion is that the IP concerns are valid, but otherwise Epic grew because if offers a better product for the academic health systems where it enjoys a high market share. Monopolistic behavior requires intention, and I don’t think Epic intentionally stifles competition in unsavory ways. The market voluntarily accepted its offerings as superior, and if CIOs preferred Epic because of the cool factor and future job prospects, that’s not Epic’s fault.
  • Most amazing to me is that the fresh-from-college kids that Epic sends to prestigious health systems earn the full attention of C-level executives who buy into Epic’s way of running health systems, which is either a tribute to Epic or a criticism of those highly paid executives who let a software vendor tell them how to run their business.

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From HisTalk2Fan: “Re: Teladoc results. Any comments? Do you think the company will survive long term?” My thoughts:

  • TDOC shares are down 46% since the company’s IPO in mid-2015, and even worse, are down 95% over the past three years. Share price dropped 25% on the most recent earnings report, with the company blaming macroeconomic conditions rather than its own missteps. Shares in competitor Amwell have tanked equally dramatically, suggesting that the problem is that virtual visit demand didn’t stick once the pandemic eased.
  • The company has reported just one profitable quarter in 32 earnings reports.
  • Everybody knows that the company wildly overpaid for Livongo in October 2020, as experienced investor Glen Tullman hypnotized Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic – who had no CEO experience prior to Teladoc – into buying Livongo for a staggering $18.5 billion, stoking Gorevic’s ambition to become a mini-Glen level industry player in a swing (and a miss) for the fences. Teladoc announced vague plans to spend the proceeds of temporarily popular COVID virtual visits to expand beyond telehealth, which based on dramatically falling telehealth demand, might have been the right idea, but certainly the wrong execution. 
  • Gorevic somehow kept his job and at least provided the overhyped healthcare startup market with a cautionary tale about irrational exuberance. Teladoc filed a $13.7 billion loss from the acquisition just two years later, and the company’s bragging about its $37 billion value has quieted down now that the whole package is worth just $2.5 billion.
  • Meanwhile, last week’s earnings report showed a 46% fall in telehealth visits as Gorevic warned of a well-penetrated market and low single-digit growth for US virtual care products. He also announced plans to expand into weight management and pediatrics while characterizing its virtual care business as a “very stable asset” despite obvious evidence to the contrary.
  • BetterHelp, which was about the only good news for the company in previous quarters, failed to meet expectations for revenue and margins.
  • I assume the company will survive in some form, but its heyday – if it ever had one – is long past, and they are left with rounds of cost-cutting and trying to shoo away the circling vultures.

From Nomenclaturist: “Re: health system mergers. Why do you usually call them acquisitions?” A merger implies that two companies will combine to do business as a newly formed company, which is rarely the case with health systems. If Health System A and Health System B announce that they will merge and will operate under the Health System A name, then I assume that Health System A is the acquirer and the “merger of equals” characterization is to avoid making the acquired system feel inferior (which they obviously are or they wouldn’t be selling out). I also look to see which company provides the CEO and if one of the health systems will assume the liabilities of the other. 


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’ve been away and mostly offline for several days, and the fact that you didn’t notice is a tribute to Jenn, who happily follows my doggedly exacting but sometimes quirky writing rules so that the “product” does not vary in my absence. It was fun to enjoy HIStalk as a reader and to find nothing to second guess about the news items she chose or the way she worded them. In fact, Jenn could probably have outdone me today since I’m recovering from a bug.

This is the final call for sponsors to tell me about their HIMSS24 plans for my guide.

Some folks seem surprised that Billy Idol was good at ViVE. Not me, since I saw him years ago when House of Blues Las Vegas comped me a ticket to his show when I was scouting for HIStalkapalooza there. I figured that the spiky, sneering, nearly septuagenarian Billy hadn’t made waves in 40 years and even then in the now-defunct genre of angry Brit punk, but he put on a good show to a self-selected audience who prefer listening to music from their college-aged years.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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The Washington Post says that since Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical — the parent company of Medicare-focused Iora Health, which operates in nine metro areas – the business now known as One Medical Seniors has shortened appointments, laid off clinicians, pushed virtual visits to reduce in-person ones, and eliminated much of Iora’s legendary personal interaction and care coordination, all under the usual corporate excuse-making as necessary to “position One Medical for long-term, sustainable success.” The report also notes that Amazon will be challenged to scale One Medical by offering Prime members a discount because of the its limited geographic coverage. The company has implemented a call center and AI chatbot triage to manage an increased number of telehealth visits. Business Insider reported a couple of weeks ago that Amazon has talked about spinning off the former Iora Health business to reduce One Medical’s projected loss of $342 million this year.

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Columbus-based Redi Health, which offers digital pharma support to patients with chronic conditions, raises $14 million in Series B funding. Co-founder and CEO Luke Buchanan came from CoverMyMeds.

Healthcare interoperability vendor Moxe Health receives $25 million in growth capital. CEO Dan Wilson founded the company in 2012 after several years at Epic.

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Northwell Health announces plans to acquire Nuvance Health, which would create a 28-hospital system with $18 billion in annual revenue. 

The federal government launches an antitrust investigation into UnitedHealth Group, with an apparent focus on the relationship between its insurance business and the healthcare services business of its subsidiary Optum, which is the largest employer of physicians in the US. The justice department previously challenged the company’s $13 billion acquisition of Change Healthcare in 2022, but lost. Change Healthcare’s ransomware attack that has brought US healthcare to its knees is making a good case for the feds.

Online vanity drug prescribing company Hims & Hers Health reports Q4 results: revenue up 65%, EPS $0.01 versus –$0.05, becoming on of the first digital health companies (if that’s what you call it) to show a profit. The company says that new services for weight loss, mental health, and dermatology could each deliver $100 million in revenue starting next year. The company seems excited about the launch of its compounded Hard Mints chewable version of erectile dysfunction drugs.


People

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Rhapsody hires Jitin Asnaani, MBA (Health Gorilla) as chief product officer.

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Beth Gall (Mantra Health) joins Rainfall Health as VP of sales.

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Mark Gee (WellSky) joins Medecision as chief revenue officer.

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Former Estes Park Health (CO) CIO Gary Hall, who retired in September 2023, is running for town mayor.


Announcements and Implementations

The Sequoia Project and HL7 will collaborate to accelerate the adoption of FHIR standards in the US. Their initial focus will be on:

  • Scalable registration, authorization, and authentication.
  • Interoperable digital identity and patient matching.
  • Hybrid / intermediary exchange.
  • Consent at scale.

Highmark Health will use Epic’s Payer Platform running on Google Cloud to glean insights that can be used to inform consumers of the next best actions. The company says that more than half of its 7 million members are attributed to an Epic-using provider, allowing it to close care gaps automatically.

Several health systems and vendors begin beta testing Hippocratic AI’s healthcare-built LLM, with priority areas being chronic care management, post-discharge follow-up, social determinants of health surveys, health risk assessments, and pre-operative outreach. I was amused to see that the company’s dozen unlabeled photos of healthcare professionals are almost certainly generated by AI in the “dogfooding” style, as verified by Is It AI that places the AI-generated odds at 99.27%.

Keysight announces an AI/ML network validation and optimization solution. 

Elsevier Health launches ClinicalKey AI, which provides clinicians with a personalized conversational search interface for medical literature that incorporates patient context and provides linked citations.

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A study finds that 58% of the NeuroFlow users who were flagged via NLP as as having possible suicidal ideation would not have been identified otherwise.

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A new KLAS report on home health technology finds that Homecare Homebase has a wide lead in market share, but Netsmart, WellSky, and ResMed have good market share among mostly smaller clients. Most often considered are Homecare Homebase, MatrixCare, and Epic.


Privacy and Security

The White House issues an executive order to protect the sensitive personal data of Americans – including personal health and genomic data — from “exploitation by countries of concern.” It focuses on commercial data brokers that can sell information to other countries, potentially raising privacy, counterintelligence, and blackmail concerns.


Other

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The American Prospect describes what happened when Steward Health acquired Rockledge Regional Medical Center (FL):

  • The CEO of Wuesthoff Health System, the two-hospital nonprofit that owned Rockledge, sold out to Health Management Associates, which earned his C-suite a $10.6 million golden parachute, after which the hospital was then sold to Community Health Systems and then sold again to Steward, who used money from the medical properties trust that bought Steward’s real estate. 
  • Steward immediately sold the hospital’s hospice center and home health business and outsourced entire departments.
  • Nurses report that the hospital runs short of medical supplies and has had medical equipment repossessed. The hospital has been sued by dozens of vendors for non-payment.
  • Five of the hospital’s nine elevators have been out of service for a year.
  • The company balked at paying exterminators $1 million to remove 5,000 bats from the facility whose guano backed up hospital sinks and pipes.
  • Steward stopped showing up at legal proceedings after the Boston paper noted that the company was $1.4 billion in the red when founder and CEO Ralph de la Torre bought himself a $40 million yacht and the Globe exposed the flight records of the company-owned jet that showed trips to Corfu, Santorini, and Antigua.
  • Despite all of its problems, the hospital passed its Joint Commission survey and earned an A grade from the Leapfrog Group. Former employees said that the only thing Steward is good at is hiding problems from inspectors.
  • Negative company news hasn’t been run in Florida, leading some to predict that the chain is trying to morph into a Florida-only system as state legislators look the other way and lean on news outlets to do the same.

Sponsor Updates

  • Censinet publishes its “2024 Healthcare Cybersecurity Benchmarking Study.”
  • Lucem Health incorporates Ryght’s generative AI capabilities into its AI SolutionOps platform.
  • Arcadia releases its next-generation data platform powered by an open lakehouse architecture.
  • Odessa General Surgery Robotics (TX) adds Sunoh.ai medical AI scribe capabilities to its EClinicalWorks EHR.
  • Symplr releases the results of its “State of Healthcare Supply Chain Survey.”
  • HealthMark Group adds Credo Health’s PreDx record retrieval technology to its Request Manager medical records software.
  • AvaSure selects Oracle Cloud to power its AI-enabled virtual care platform.
  • Black Book Research’s latest analysis recognizes Netsmart as the top-performing provider in geriatric medicine EHR and practice management software.
  • Net Health publishes findings from a new study, “What’s Delaying Advanced Analytics Adoption in Healthcare?”
  • FinThrive releases a new episode of its Healthcare Rethink Podcast, “Take a Deep Breath … Virtual Healthcare is Here!”
  • Healthcare IT Leaders CEO Ben Hilmes will chair the Kansas City Light the Night Corporate Walk in support of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
  • Inovalon will exhibit at Rise National March 17-19 in Nashville.
  • Konza National Network publishes its 2023 Annual Impact Report.
  • Medhost releases a new customer testimonial featuring Freestone Medical Center in Texas.
  • Meditech announces that the Rotherham Hospital is at the forefront of patient data-sharing with the integration of GP Connect.
  • MRO will exhibit at the Minnesota HFMA’s HLAMN Winter Conference March 5-6 in St. Paul.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 2/28/24

February 27, 2024 News 3 Comments

Top News

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Veradigm will acquire healthcare AI company ScienceIO for $140 million.

Additionally, Veradigm reports that it will not be able to meet Nasdaq compliance deadlines for filing annual and quarterly reports from 2022 and 2023. It expects to receive a delisting notice and to be subsequently dropped from Nasdaq trading. Veradigm’s Board of Directors has put together a stockholder rights plan as it prepares for the possibility of acquisition offers.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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B.well Connected Health raises $40 million in a Series C funding round, bringing the consumer-focused health data aggregator’s total raised to $88 million since launching in 2015.

R1 RCM shares spike on the news that majority shareholder New Mountain Capital has offered to acquire it in a deal valued at $5.8 billion. Meanwhile, the company reports break-even Q4 earnings per share and a 7.8% increase in Q4 revenue, falling short of analyst expectations for both.

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Providence Health plans to more than double its workforce in India to increase capacity for its own off-shore management operations and to expand its technology services to other hospitals. Providence seems to have gotten out of the RCM business with the sale late last year of its Acclara RCM business to R1 RCM for $675 million.


People

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Former Concord Hospital CIO Aaron Wootton joins Huntzinger Management Group as chief digital officer.


Announcements and Implementations

Censinet announces GA of new Risk Register software, designed to help healthcare organizations identify cyber risk exposures in real time across the enterprise; and Connect Copilot software, which automates cybersecurity risk assessment questionnaires.

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OSF HealthCare (IL) implements Curbside Health’s clinical decision support software.

VerifiNow develops PatientVerifi to help virtual healthcare providers securely and accurately confirm patient identities.

Somerset Hospital (PA) will implement Epic through its affiliation with UPMC Health. The hospital expects to go live in late 2025 or 2026.

Imprivata announces GA of its Biometric Patient Identity technology.


Government and Politics

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Several Defense Health Agency hospitals in Japan and Alaska have reported intermittent MHS Genesis outages lasting for several hours on Tuesday. Military pharmacies have also been affected by the cyberattack on Change Healthcare, causing them to notify patients that prescriptions will be triaged and filled using manual procedures until the disruption is resolved.


Privacy and Security

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The Health-Information Sharing and Analysis Center publishes a Threat Bulletin on the Change Healthcare cyberattack that includes details on its possible connection to recent ConnectWise ScreenConnect vulnerabilities and suggested mitigation steps. The BlackCat ransomware group has claimed responsibility for the February 21 attack.

Change Healthcare parent company UnitedHealth Group says 90% of the nation’s pharmacies have set up electronic workarounds to handle prescription processing while they wait for Change’s systems to come back online.


Sponsor Updates

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  • Consensus Cloud Solutions celebrates two years of being listed on the Nasdaq.
  • Agfa HealthCare enterprise imaging goes live at Policlinico Umberto I in Rome.
  • Altera Digital Health upgrades the Singapore Ministry of Defence’s Sunrise EHR system while also implementing Altera Opal document management software.
  • Bamboo Health will exhibit at Behavioral Health Business Value March 11-13 in Miami.
  • Biofourmis partners with GE HealthCare to scale and deliver innovative care-at-home solutions.
  • Care.ai partners with CHIME to launch an industry advisory panel that will help to develop the Smart Hospital Maturity Model.
  • Censinet announces the winners of its Cybersecurity Transparent Awards, which include HIStalk sponsors Divurgent, Ellkay, and Fortified Health Security.
  • DrFirst announces that nominations are now open for its 2024 Healthiverse Heroes Award.
  • AvaSure adds episodic care capabilities to its Intelligent Virtual Care Platform.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 2/26/24

February 25, 2024 News Comments Off on Monday Morning Update 2/26/24

Top News

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AI clinical documentation company Abridge raises $150 million in a Series C funding round co-led by Lightspeed Venture Partners. Lightspeed Advisor Paul Ricci is a former chairman and CEO of Nuance, one of Abridge’s biggest competitors. I interviewed Abridge founder and CEO Shivdev Rao, MD nearly one year ago.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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A majority of readers, whether on their own dime or their employer’s, plan to attend conferences like ViVE and HIMSS for the networking opportunities. Scoring new customers and/or prospecting comes in at a close second. The results seem pretty intuitive, but Ex Epic makes a good point by reminding readers that these events offer folks being pulled back into office settings after working remotely for the last several years “a good opportunity for teambuilding and seeing coworkers in person.”

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New poll to your right or here: Has the AT&T or Change Healthcare outage affected you or your organization? I’m wondering if a majority of readers felt the pinch of non-existent wireless service or have had trouble processing prescriptions, either as a patient or provider. Share your experience by leaving a comment.

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ViVE kicks off today in Los Angeles, though social media chatter indicates an influx of health IT folks flew in on Saturday. I have to wonder if the Clearsense-sponsored Billy Idol concert Tuesday night will get as many people out on the dance floor as Party on the Moon did at past HIStalkapaloozas. Feel free to email me your conference observations, anecdotes, and pix so that HIStalk readers who’ve stayed at home can live vicariously through your (anonymous if you so choose) experiences.

Check out HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

DarioHealth, which offers digital solutions for the management of chronic conditions, will acquire mental health and wellness app company Twill.


Sales

  • Yale New Haven Health (CT) selects Abridge’s AI clinical documentation software.

People

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Mednition promotes Deena Brecher, RN to chief nursing officer.


Announcements and Implementations

Vyne Medical adds automation capabilities to its Trace clinical communication management software.

25m Health will work with Clearwater to develop custom cybersecurity and compliance programs for companies within its portfolio of startups.

CenTrak announces GA of its cloud-based Connect RTLS management software.

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NorthBay Health Urgent Care (CA) will take over management of its facilities, which had been operated by primary and urgent care company Carbon Health since 2017. The clinics will transition to NorthBay’s Oracle Health EHR when they re-open March 4. Meanwhile, Carbon Health, which operates clinics in 13 states, announced a fourth round of layoffs last week.


Privacy and Security

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Change Healthcare continues efforts to recover from a cyberattack that parent company UnitedHealth Group suspects is the brainchild of a “nation-state,” according to its Thursday filing with the SEC. Change, which processes 15 billion healthcare payment transactions annually and is one of the country’s largest prescription processors, says it’s taking multiple approaches to restore its systems.


Other

A coroner warns that ill-configured software likely contributed to the death of an emergency department patient, according to findings presented at the inquest of an NHS dietician who died of a pulmonary embolism in 2022. University Hospital of North Durham in England had implemented new Oracle Health software two months before Emily Harkleroad was admitted to its ED, a period of time during which clinicians complained that the new system didn’t adequately alert users to the sickest patients – a flaw the coroner believes delayed any potentially life-saving treatment Harkleroad may have received. The hospital and Oracle Health have been asked to issue a plan of remediation.

It comes to light that an unspecified IT error at an NHS hospital gave physician associates access to e-prescribing privileges that allowed them to illegally prescribe opiates and sedatives 22 times over a seven-month period.

Netsmart achieves top customer satisfaction rankings for behavioral health and post-acute care technology, according to recent Black Book Research surveys.


Sponsor Updates

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  • Netsmart sponsors The Battle Within’s Heroes Journey event, which helped to raise $350,000 for its cause.
  • Healing Hands Ministries (TX) adds Sunoh.ai medical AI scribe capabilities to its EClinicalWorks system.
  • Artera welcomes Azara Healthcare, Health IPass, Memora Health, Feedtrail, and more to the Artera Marketplace.
  • Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast featuring Mark Townsend, MD.
  • Sectra publishes a new case study, “Paving the way with AI at innovative Dutch hospital.”

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 2/23/24

February 22, 2024 News Comments Off on News 2/23/24

Top News

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Change Healthcare disconnects its systems after detecting a cybersecurity issue early Wednesday that has since compromised the ability of military and retail pharmacies nationwide to process prescription payments through insurance. Athenahealth customers are also reportedly affected, given that Athena’s electronic data interchange is supported by Change Healthcare technology.

The company’s latest status update says the disruption will last at least through Thursday, February 22.

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum acquired Change Healthcare in 2022.


Reader Comments

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From Lanman: “Well, Oracle Health (aka mostly Cerner) has a new logo. It is just as focused as Oracle is with what they are doing with the ex-Cerner stuff. BTW, this was supposed to be secret, so shhh …”


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CPSI will rebrand to TruBridge, the RCM, business management, consulting, and managed IT services subsidiary it created in 2017. CPSI has made strategic changes to its business over the last several years, acquiring Health Resource Group in 2022 and selling American HealthTech to PointClickCare earlier this year.

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Fabric raises $60 million in a Series A funding round. The company offers AI-powered healthcare enablement software for virtual and in-person visits. It acquired AI-based virtual assistant business Gyant earlier this month.

Teladoc Health’s quarterly earnings send its stock plummeting 25%. The virtual visit company’s revenue grew 4% to $660.5 million, but missed analyst expectations. Its Q1 2024 revenue is also expected to miss Wall Street estimates, reflecting an industry-wide slow down in telehealth appointments.

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HealthSnap, a remote patient monitoring and chronic care management company based in Miami, raises $25 million in a funding round led by Sands Capital.


Sales

  • Tufts Medicine (MA) selects Clearstep’s digital triage and care navigation software.
  • Sentara Health (VA) will roll out predictive and generative AI software from RhythmX AI to its primary care physicians.
  • Kettering Health Hamilton (OH) will implement Regard’s AI-based clinical task automation technology.

People

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Amwell promotes Cynthia Horner, MD to chief medical officer and president of Amwell Medical Group.


Announcements and Implementations

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Tidelands Health in South Carolina will implement Epic next month.

Particle Health announces GA of its new Patient Monitoring Solution, featuring ADT and EHR system integration, referral management, and care journey mapping capabilities.


Other

A Black Book Research survey determines that 66% of providers are relying on advisory firms to help them navigate value-based care models.


Sponsor Updates

  • Pivot Point Consulting names Brian Beinborn managing director of enterprise solutions, Kathy Krypel managing director of enterprise applications, and MJ Stojak managing director of analytics and AI.
  • Surescripts Health Information Network advances to the candidate phase in its process to become a QHIN.
  • Meditech releases its redesigned Expanse Pathology solution for its Expanse EHR.
  • Netsmart supports whole-person care provisions in the 42 CFR Part 2 Final Rule.
  • Trualta joins the PointClickCare Marketplace of integrated solutions.
  • Impact Advisors joins Epic’s new Rev Cycle Partners program.
  • AGS Health names Conrad Coopersmith (AccuReg Software) general manager of coding automation.
  • FinThrive will exhibit and present at the HFMA Revenue Cycle Conference February 28-1 March 1 in San Diego.
  • Fortified Health Security hires John Lockhart III (Pentera) as enterprise regional director.
  • Health Data Movers names Bob Coman (Vitas Healthcare) sales director.
  • Lumeon announces that Panda Health has designated it as a Panda Partner.
  • Net Health publishes the results of the 2024 Skilled Nursing Outlook Survey.

Black Book’s list of top, physician-rated small hospital health IT vendors includes the following HIStalk sponsors:

  • Meditech Expanse – EHR, rural inpatient care
  • Waystar – RCM platforms/rural end-to-end software systems
  • CereCore – helpdesk support outsourcing
  • Spok – clinical communications and secure messaging
  • QGenda – workforce management
  • Inovalon – data analytics

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 2/21/24

February 20, 2024 News Comments Off on News 2/21/24

Top News

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The DoJ and international law enforcement partner agencies announce they have effectively taken down the LockBit ransomware group. The gang, which first surfaced in 2019, has targeted 2,000 victims including hospitals and healthcare software companies and received $120 million in ransom payments.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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UnityAI, an AI-powered hospital bed management software startup, raises $4 million in seed funding.


Sales

  • OSF HealthCare (IL) will leverage healthcare technology and services from GE Healthcare and Pointcore, an OSF affiliate, across its nuclear medicine, oncology, and radiology departments.

People

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Lisa Jordan (University of Utah Pivot Center) joins St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital as its first SVP of tech commercialization.


Announcements and Implementations

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Coastal Medical (RI) goes live on Epic as part of parent system Lifespan Health’s implementation.

Healthcare compliance company Abyde announces GA of HIPAA for Business Associates software.


Other

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Eighty-seven percent of administrators at small hospitals say that, as of Q1 2024, they have been unable to afford new or replacement technology, according to a recent Black Book Research survey of 1,657 hospital executives. A similar percentage of IT managers at similar facilities say they’ll lean on their EHR and RCM vendors to help get the most out of current technology investments in an effort to avoid spending money on system replacements.

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OSF Healthcare’s Innovation Studio digitizes its homegrown Device Table, previously an 80-page document laminated and attached to surgery carts that listed implantable medical devices and the procedures needed to disconnect them before surgeries. The initially two-page spreadsheet was developed several years ago by surgery nurses at OSF HealthCare Saint Francis Medical Center (IL) to help prevent surgery cancellations. The nurses have launched OpenSurg to commercialize the software, which now includes data on 1,200 devices used in outpatient procedures.


Sponsor Updates

  • EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “Boosting Wellness Visits & Incentive Revenue in Healthcare.”
  • Agfa HealthCare welcomes RedSalud Chile to its enterprise imaging network.
  • Artera publishes a new case study, “Dayton Children’s Hospital – Self-Service Analytics.”
  • Availity publishes the company’s Responsible Artificial Intelligence Principles.
  • The Inspiring Women Podcast features Bamboo Health Chief Clinical Officer Nishi Rawat, MD, MBA.
  • Ellkay will exhibit at the PointClickCare Summit February 26-28 in New Orleans.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 2/19/24

February 18, 2024 News 1 Comment

Top News

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Virtual and in-home care software vendor Dina raises $7 million. Osage Venture Partners led the Series A funding round, bringing Chicago-based Dina’s total funding to $11 million.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Most poll respondents own shares or equity in a health-IT related company, typically one that they’ve had a professional connection to. Demo Chic is of that majority, commenting that, “I have equity in multiple startups where I’ve worked, but zero hopes of actually realizing anything from the blood, sweat, and tears contributed. Maybe a nice-to-have boost in retirement but doubt they will ever amount to anything.”

New poll to your right or here: In light of ViVE kicking off next week in Los Angeles, what do you hope to gain by attending conferences like ViVE and HIMSS? My list of reasons doesn’t encompass every possibility for every type of attendee, so please share your particular goals by leaving a comment.


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Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Altera Digital Health. A global healthcare IT leader, Altera Digital Health develops and elevates technology to connect and inspire healthier communities. Altera’s approach to our clinical, financial, and interoperability solutions is changing the way healthcare is delivered. Altera designs digital health services that lead healthcare to a higher place, while we guide those we partner with, all along the way. Together, with our clients, we’re bringing next-level healthcare within reach. Thanks to Altera Digital Health for supporting HIStalk.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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Amwell reports Q4 revenue of $71 million, with annual revenue of $259 million. An annual net loss of $679 million, plus end-of-year layoffs, were also mentioned in the company’s latest earnings announcement. Amwell is ramping up organizational efforts to begin work on the $180 million Defense Health Agency virtual care contract it was jointly awarded with Leidos back in October.


Sales

  • Virtua Health (NJ) will implement Care.ai’s virtual care technologies across its acute care facilities, beginning with Virtua Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.
  • Appalachian Regional Healthcare selects the I-Pass clinical care transition bundle as part of the Kentucky Hospital Association Transitions and Communication in Hospitals Program.

People

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Melissa Prusher (Avaap) joins Nordic Consulting as head of marketing.


Announcements and Implementations

Senior health management technology company Spectator Health adopts e-prescribing capabilities from Surescripts.


Privacy and Security

Lurie Children’s Pediatric Partners Clinically Integrated Network, owned in part by Chicago-based Lurie Children’s Hospital, is offering certain community pediatric practices short-term emergency loans to help see them through any billing gaps that might occur as a result of the cyberattack that has forced Lurie’s Epic system offline since January 31. The practices, many of which use Lurie’s system for billing, can apply for up to $50,000 per doctor.


Other

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New research from Linus Health finds that the Digital Clock and Recall assessment within its Core Cognitive Evaluation solution outperforms the most commonly used paper-based assessment in detecting early, mild cognitive impairment and dementia.

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Most digital health companies use standards-based APIs like FHIR when integrating with EHRs, according to research from ONC. Those that connect their apps or software with multiple EHRs use these APIs at higher rates than those that connect to just one. Barriers to adoption of standards-based APIs include high fees, a dearth of realistic clinical testing data, and data elements that are of little interest or value.


Sponsor Updates

  • AdvancedMD’s 2024 Winter Release gives private practices elevated levels of operational agility and more streamlined billing capabilities.
  • Ellkay congratulates customer CommonWell Health Alliance on its QHIN designation.
  • Experity announces the recipients of its Limelight Awards at its 2024 Urgent Care Connect Conference.
  • EClinicalWorks customer Be Well Primary Care Medicine (TX) reports that over 95% of its patients use Healow Sign for faster check-in during office visits.
  • Nym Health celebrates its sixth anniversary.
  • Sectra publishes a new whitepaper, “True SaaS or a Cloudy Promise? A guide to navigating SaaS and achieving imaging excellence.”

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 2/16/24

February 15, 2024 News 2 Comments

Top News

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Investment firm KKR acquires a co-ownership stake in healthcare payments and analytics vendor Cotiviti from Veritas Capital for $10.5 billion. Buzz about the deal with KKR began circulating several months ago.


Reader Comments

From Beltone: “Being a well-funded, SF-based start-up doesn’t guarantee success in healthcare. Former high flyer Medallion – SaaS provider credentialing – is facing financial challenges. Laid off their US-based provider enrollment team to outsource to India, creating HIPAA and security challenges. And didn’t tell their customers. CIOs and health systems probably deserve to be told that their provider data is moving offshore and back onshore. Health systems are demanding NCQA-certified provider enrollment staffs and going offshore isn’t going to make compliance leadership happy.” The company has raised $85 million since launching in 2020, with its last funding round in 2022. At least one comment on Glassdoor suggests that the company laid off some onshore staff without warning last month.


Webinars

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


Sales

  • St Vincent’s Health Australia Private Hospitals will implement Meditech Expanse at its 10 facilities in New South Wales, Queensland, and Victoria.
  • WellSpan Health (PA) selects remote patient management technology from Biofourmis.

Announcements and Implementations

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Benefis Health System (MT) will roll out Epic next month. Hospital staff say the year-long implementation project has been good for the local economy, generating 1,900 flights, 10,000 meals at restaurants, and 3,300 nights at hotels. The economic bump will continue through the first few weeks of March, when 600 consultants descend for go-live.

Nicklaus Children’s Health System (FL) implements Kyruus Connect online appointment scheduling software from Kyruus Health.

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Synthesis Health launches with GA of a cloud-native PACS with AI-based reporting module. CEO Murray Reicher, MD founded and led PACS vendor DR Systems for 22 years before selling it to IBM Watson Health in 2015.

Cleveland Clinic leverages technology from Palantir to create an AI-powered Virtual Command Center, the initial iteration of which offers an enterprise view of patient throughput and capacity forecasts, staffing needs, and OR utilization and scheduling opportunities.


Government and Politics

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The VA Office of the Inspector General reveals that patient medication histories are not transferring between the Oracle Health EHR used at five VA hospitals and the VistA system used at the VA’s other facilities, putting 250,000 veterans at risk of potential medication errors. Though the VA says no veterans have been harmed because of the problem, the OIG says at least one veteran wasn’t given critical medication in a timely manner due to the glitch, and that the VA hasn’t notified patients that their medication records may be incorrect.


Privacy and Security

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Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago restores external email capabilities and most of its phone lines two weeks after a cyberattack on its communication systems. Its Epic system is still offline.


Other

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Ozarks Community Hospital (MO) abruptly transitions its Evergreen Clinic to a telehealth assistance hub, three weeks ahead of the date originally given to clinic employees. Patients in the area can now see clinicians remotely via virtual visit at the clinic, or travel to other OCH facilities further afield.

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MUSC Health (SC) pilots a telehealth triage service at two of its emergency rooms in an effort to help patients get care more quickly, resulting in the rate of patients who leave without being seen dropping to almost zero. The health system plans to add secure messaging to the telehealth service so that ED patients can communicate directly with staff.


Sponsor Updates

  • CloudWave will partner with USI Insurance Services to provide cybersecurity and IT services for USI’s PrivaSafe service.
  • Medical Risk Solutions reports a 40% decrease in patient call volume after implementing Healow Open Access online appointment booking software from EClinicalWorks.
  • First Databank names Brad Titus technical writer, Michael Cruz senior cloud operations engineer, and Kate Struthers people operations specialist.
  • Findhelp welcomes Best Buy Health, Pediatric Associates Families of Companies, Merck, and Olympic Community of Health to its network.
  • Aragon’s Research Globe ranks Five9 as a leader of conversational AI in the intelligent contact center.
  • Fortified Health Security hires Georganne Miller (Latitude Information Security) as security compliance advisor.
  • Health Data Movers joins the ServiceNow consulting and implementation partner program.
  • The Career Reconstituted Podcast features Inovalon Director of Sales Engineering Wilson Tam, PharmD.
  • InterSystems earns NCQA’s Certified Data Partner designation for a second consecutive year.
  • Net Health will exhibit at APTA CSM February 15-17 in Boston.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 2/14/24

February 13, 2024 News Comments Off on News 2/14/24

Top News

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ONC and The Sequoia Project designate Kno2 and CommonWell Health Alliance as Qualified Health Information Networks under TEFCA. They join Konza National Network, EHealth Exchange, Epic Nexus, Health Gorilla, and MedAllies, which were designated in December.


Webinars

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


Sales

  • Biofourmis signs four contracts with pharmaceutical companies for its digital health and decentralized clinical trial solutions.

People

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NRC Health promotes Helen Hrdy to chief customer officer.

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ClinicMind promotes Kathleen Casbarro to SVP of its new Institutional Platform as a Service division.

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Tomer Levy (Change Healthcare) joins Augmedix as SVP of engineering.


Announcements and Implementations

Children’s Hospital of Los Angeles implements Vital’s ERAdvisor software as a part of its MyVisit app.

MercyOne rolls out its TogetherTeam Virtual Connected Care virtual nursing program at all five of its hospitals in Iowa.

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UC Davis Health (CA) launches a remote patient monitoring program for patients who’ve undergone Percutaneous Coronary Interventions using text messaging software from Twilio and RPM technology from Clinii.


Government and Politics

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Air Force officials confirm that the switch to MHS Genesis has, as with the Navy and Army, lengthened the amount of time it takes to medically clear recruits due to an increase in initial, potentially disqualifying conditions that require further investigation. DoD representatives told Senate Armed Services Committee members last September that the switch to the Oracle Health-based system had added three more days to the recruitment process, though the Navy reported that up to 60 additional days were sometimes necessary.

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An Idaho Department of Health official tells state legislators that the state should withdraw from the Idaho Health Data Exchange, given that it has no legal recourse for management oversight. The HIE, which currently has 190 customers, emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last summer after running up $4 million in debt.

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Tension escalates between the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, Indian Health Service, and Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment due to a technological glitch that has, for more than a year, prevented the Southern Ute Health Clinic from sending daily immunization data to the state registry via the IHS Resource and Patient Management System. None of the affected parties has been able to identify the problem, though the tribe has offered to cover the cost of a solution.


Privacy and Security

The Health Sector Cybersecurity Coordination Center within HHS alerts organizations to the tactics and targets of the relatively new Akira ransomware group.


Other

Australia’s Northern Territory Health temporarily suspends use of InterSystems TrakCare software at the emergency departments of Palmerston Regional and Royal Darwin hospitals, citing concerns that the software, dubbed Acacia, is slowing down access to patient records. Staffing shortages and other unspecified operational pressures also contributed to suspension of the system, which NT Health has been rolling out across its facilities since 2017.

Black Book Research survey respondents rank Surgical Information Systems as the top vendor for ambulatory surgical center software.

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Through word of mouth and dedicated facilities teams, an NHS clinician in London reunites a fellow clinician working 100 miles away with a diamond ring she’d accidentally left in her scrubs five days prior.


Sponsor Updates

  • EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Boosting Data Analysis in Healthcare.”
  • CereCore releases a new podcast, “Rolling Out EHRs in the Rural Setting: An Expert Guide.”
  • Availity adds automation and process mining capabilities from Janus to its Availity Essentials Pro software.
  • Arrive Health Senior Software Engineer Edward Kerns joins Code for Good West Michigan’s board as sponsorship coordinator.
  • Censinet releases a new Risk Never Sleeps Podcast, “Deepfakes, Identity, and Insider Threats, with Jason Elrod, Chief Information Security Officer at MultiCare Health System.”
  • Clearwater and 1stResponder partner to expand cybersecurity incident response within Clearwater’s Managed Security Service Provider portfolio.
  • New research from Linus Health determines that its Digital Clock and Recall assessment within its Core Cognitive Evaluation solution outperforms the most commonly used paper-based assessment in detecting early, mild cognitive impairment and dementia, and with less ethnic and racial bias.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 2/12/24

February 11, 2024 News 9 Comments

Top News

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The National Association of Accountable Care Organizations analyzes Medicare’s claims database to alert the federal government that 450,000 of its beneficiaries were billed for urinary catheters in 2023 versus the usual 50,000 in previous years, running up  $2 billion in suspicious charges.

Pretty in Pink Boutique — whose Medicare registration is for a house address in El Paso, TX and whose phone rings to an auto body shop — billed Medicare for at least $267 million in just over a year for catheters.

Patients and doctors who reported suspicious activity to CMS say they never got a response. Dozens of NYT commenters said the same, that the CMS person either expressed resignation with the status quo or lack of motivation to add to their workload.


Reader Comments

From Jerry Aldini: “Re: Oracle Health. Interesting comments on the Cerner Reddit.” Examples, all unverified:

  • “Oracle thought Cerner was worth buying for Larry’s little healthcare data hobby, but once everything is converted to OCI, nobody would ever want to buy what Cerner was ever again. So when Larry is no more or gets bored, it’s the end of the story.”
  • [On the company’s pledge to rewrite Millennium using AI] From everyone I’ve talked with, it is vaporware, and even then demos went to crap pretty quickly. I’m just riding this out until all clients abandon ship.”
  • “Maybe Congress would like to know more about Larry’s new wonderful AI software engineer and how it means that they can maintain a multi-billion-dollar system for America’s service people and veterans with nothing even remotely resembling what would be considered a normal software engineering company. Like, why bury the lede, Larry? You’ve successfully removed the need for high-cost, hard-to-find employees to maintain software. This is a coup for the entire tech industry. Forget the EMR, let’s hear about the AI, that’s where the money is.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Most poll respondents think that the former Cerner business has become less competitive since Oracle acquired it.

New poll to your right or here: Do you own shares or equity in a health IT-related company? You can use the poll’s comment function to describe times when you made or lost big money from a health IT investment.

Help me out by signing up for spam-free updates and connecting on LinkedIn.

I am an India-phile, fascinated with the culture, food, and business and technology advances of the world’s largest democracy. I also enjoy regional English usage. I collected these examples from HIStalk-related emails with people from India that featured words and terms that are accurate, just not commonly used here:

  • Prepone – the opposite of postpone, to describe moving an event earlier.
  • Revert back – not a redundant expression, but rather to ask for a reply, as in “kindly revert back.”
  • Cent percent – 100%.
  • Full stop – Indians were using this term long before trendy Americans embraced it in referring to the period at the end of a sentence, or to some, the more emphatic break at the end of a paragraph that signals a new train of thought.
  • Mention not – this is a great alternative to the wishy washy “you’re welcome.” I might start using this with hopes of displacing the dreaded “no problem,” although saying “mention not” after the person has already “mentioned” doesn’t quite fit.

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Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor TruBridge. The Mobile, AL-based company connects providers, patients, and communities with innovative solutions to support financial and clinical solutions, creating real value in healthcare delivery. By offering technology-first solutions that address diverse communities’ needs, it promotes equitable access to quality care and foster positive outcomes. Its industry-leading HFMA Peer Reviewed RCM suite provides visibility that enhances productivity and supports the financial health of organizations across care settings. It champions end-to-end, data-driven patient journeys that support value-based care and improve outcomes and patient satisfaction. It supports efficient patient care with EHR products that integrate data between care settings. TruBridge clears the way for care. Thanks to TruBridge for supporting HIStalk.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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Omnicell announces Q4 results: revenue down 13%, EPS –$0.32 versus –$0.64, beating Wall Street expectations for both. OMCL shares have lost 49% in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500’s 26% gain, valuing the company at $1.4 billion. The CFO said in the earnings call that customers are cautious about implementing new workflows because of IT and nursing staff shortages, while the CEO said that big health systems aren’t ready to implement innovation until they develop strategies for dispensing medication across their broad footprints.

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Virgin Pulse and HealthComp, which merged in November 2023, name the $3 billion business Personify Health.

Marathon Health, which bought Cerner’s employer occupational health clinics in August 2023, acquires Everside Health, expanding its services to 680 health centers in 41 states.

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Aptar Digital Health, a division of Aptar Pharma, will take over the digital health solutions of Biogen, which address neurological and rare diseases.


Sales

  • England’s Torbay and South Devon NHS Foundation Trusts chooses Epic.

People

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University of Tennessee Medical Center names Lynnette Clinton, MBA (BayCare) as SVP/CIO.


Announcements and Implementations

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Amenities Health launches plug-and-play provider search and scheduling for a health system’s public-facing website, extending its mobile app experience.

AdventHealth brings the last five of its 48 hospitals live on Epic, completing its conversion from Cerner. AdventHealth announced that it would implement Epic in early 2020, displacing the Cerner system that it had installed in 2002.

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Sparked, Australia’s national FHIR accelerator, opens the draft of its Australian Core Data for Interoperability Release 1 for comments.


Government and Politics

CMS tells Medicare Advantage insurers that they can use AI and algorithms to assist them in making coverage determinations, but they must make sure that the tools use complete information and they can’t use technology alone to deny hospital admission or downgrade to observation stay. CMS also warns that MA insurers should make sure that their systems are free of bias.

A North Carolina health news site observes that Atrium Health wields its status as a “unit of local government” to get tax breaks, the power of eminent domain, and anti-trust immunity that allowed it to acquire 40 hospitals in four states, after which it merged with Advocate Aurora Health to form the country’s third-largest non-profit health system with $27 billion in revenue.


Other

In India, a review finds that 11 of 40 of Bangalore tele-ICUs in rural “spoke hospitals” are not functional due to lack of Internet connectivity, lost software copies, and clinician shortages.

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Medical malpractice physician Jeff Willis, MD, MHA notes that 28 states give full practice authority to nurse practitioners and another 10 are considering it. He says that while the NP lobby was smart to take advantage of the primary care crisis to expand practice, he ponders that it’s a broken healthcare system that created the need and that it raises malpractice issues. A commenter says that several states also allow advanced practice chiropractors to do physician-like work, while another says that NPs are important in rural areas because doctors won’t work there given low volumes that drive RVU-based compensation. A physician commenter says that the rural idea sounds nice, except a lot of the NPs chase the money that comes from running IV bars, Botox shops, and med spas in urban areas.


Sponsor Updates

  • Kellum Medical Group (TX) leverages the Sunoh.ai AI medical scribe as part of its EClinicalWorks EHR implementation.
  • Amenities adds online patient scheduling to its Digital Front Door Platform.
  • Availity achieves the CAQH Committee on Operating Rules for Information Exchange (CORE) Eligibility & Benefits, Claim Status, Payment & Remittance, Prior Authorization & Referrals, and Health Care Claims Operating Certification seals.
  • Health Data Movers joins CHIME as a member.
  • QGenda and Spok will exhibit at the AHA Rural Health Care Leadership Conference February 11-14 in Orlando.
  • Waystar will exhibit at Nymbl.Con 2024 February 14-16 in Scottsdale, AZ.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 2/9/24

February 8, 2024 News Comments Off on News 2/9/24

Top News

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CMS approves the use of HIPAA-compliant secure texting platforms for sending patient information and patient orders in hospitals and critical access hospitals.

Previous guidance from late 2017 allowed texting patient information if a secure platform was used, but prohibited texting of patient orders in all situations.

HHS separately announces new provisions to the Confidentiality of Substance Use Disorder Patient Records that address one-time patient consent, redisclosure, accounting of disclosures, use of records in legal proceedings, and breach notification.


Reader Comments

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From Moon Pie: “Re: Best in KLAS. Notice that Oracle Health finished last for overall software suite?” I did notice. I don’t know if Oracle cares, but $28 billion is a lot to have spent to buy the last-place finisher. Oracle Health also took the bottom spots in the health system-owned ambulatory EHR and practice management system categories. Scores for Oracle Health’s patient accounting and patient systems were even more abysmal, bottoming out at 48.6 for mid-sized hospitals, a full 30 points behind second-place finisher Meditech. This is like when GE Healthcare took quite a few top-performing companies from first to worst after buying them. At least Oracle Health’s EHR beat Altera Digital Health’s Sunrise by a lot for large hospital EHR, although it’s a hollow victory when neither are selling much to big hospitals.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I published “HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2024,” which includes information about my sponsors that are participating. I’ll leave the collection form for HIMSS24 open a bit longer.

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I haven’t run a Donors Choose teacher photo in a while, so here’s one from Ms. P in Kansas, a school librarian who was excited to receive 10 STEM books from a reader’s donation and matching funds from my Anonymous Vendor Executive. She reports, “We are a large elementary school in a rather poor area and so it was nice to get these new books and make them available to our students to check out. We have a lot of smart, curious students and so they will enjoy these books and the hands-on projects that they can create by following the directions. We are so grateful for Donors Choose contributors. Your investment in our library is an investment in the future. Thank you so much.”


HIStalk Sponsors Named Best in KLAS

  • Agfa HealthCare – imaging universal viewer.
  • Arcadia – value-based care managed services (now Guidehealth).
  • Dimensional Insight – data and analytics platform.
  • EVisit – non-EHR virtual care platform.
  • Findhelp – social determinants of health networks.
  • FinThrive – insurance discovery.
  • Fortified Health Security – security and privacy managed services.
  • Healthwise – patient education.
  • Impact Advisors – overall IT services firm; ERP implementation leadership; financial improvement consulting
  • Meditech – acute EHR small; patient accounting and patient management small.
  • MRO – release of information.
  • Nuance – clinical documentation integrity; front-end EHR speech recognition; image exchange.
  • Optimum Healthcare IT – go-live support.
  • PerfectServe – physician scheduling.
  • Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company – managed IT services; technical services.
  • QGenda – nurse and staff scheduling.
  • Rhapsody – integration engines.
  • Sectra – PACS large; PACS small.
  • Symplr – time and attendance.
  • Tegria – application hosting.
  • Waystar – patient financial engagement.
  • WellSky – personal care services and private duty nursing.

Let me know if I missed anyone or if you need sponsorship information.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Unlearn, which creates digital twins that allow smaller and faster clinical trials, raises $50 million in a Series C funding round.

Private Equity Stakeholder Project publishes a list of the 460 US hospitals that are owned by private equity firms. Texas is the state leader by far with 97.

Amazon will lay off several hundred people in its One Medical and Amazon Pharmacy businesses as part of a company cost-cutting campaign. Insiders say that Amazon executives want One Medical to save an additional $100 million this year. They also report tension between Amazon’s leadership and One Medical that is likely to lead to the departure of some of One Medical’s executives.

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Neura Health expands its direct-to-consumer virtual neurology clinic for headaches and and migraines to include sleep disorders, epilepsy, concussion/TBI, stroke recovery, and tremor. Members pay $300 per year for access to $189 video visits with a neurologist within two days, 24/7 care team access, and health coaching. Its clinicians can issue prescriptions in 22 states, and insurance is accepted.


People

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Ed Lee, MD, MPH (The Permanente Medical Group) joins Nabla as chief medical officer.

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Healthcare IT Leaders promotes Ben Hilmes, MHA to CEO. He replaces Bob Bailey, who will remain executive chairman.

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Mary Langowski, JD (Solera Health) joins Walgreens Boots Alliance as EVP and president of the company’s US healthcare business.

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Rob MacNaughton, MBA (Redesign Health) joins Calibrate as CEO.

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Erik Smith (Stanson Health) joins Sprinter Health as VP of enterprise partnerships. 


Announcements and Implementations

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Mile Bluff Medical Center (WI) goes live with Meditech’s AI-powered Expanse search and summarization, powered by Google Health.

DirectTrust creates a standards body for interoperable cloud fax to support identity assurance, standards-based exchange of metadata, and federated standards for security. It is looking for members from several sectors.

Companies designated as notable performers in “Best in KLAS Software & Services 2024”:

  • Epic – top overall software suite.
  • Athenahealth – overall physician practice vendor.
  • Impact Advisors – overall IT services firm.
  • Evergreen Healthcare Partners – overall implementation services firm.
  • Chartis – overall healthcare management consulting firm.
  • The population health management solution of Lightbeam Health Solutions was the most improved software product, AGS Health’s Extended Business Office Services had the most improved services solution, and EClinicalWorks was named as the most improved physician practice product.

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Elsevier launches Complete HeartX, an educational tool for Apple Vision Pro.

The National Library of Medicine posts a guest piece on AI from OHSU informatics professor William Hersh, MD, in which he calls for conducting randomized controlled trials or systematic reviews of RCTs.


Privacy and Security

Computers, telephones, and Internet remain down at Lurie Children’s Hospital after a January 31 cyberattack.

Montefiore Medical Center pays $4.75 million to settle HHS OCR charges that one of its employees stole and sold patient information over six months in 2015. That’s a lot of money and a lot of time between the event and the settlement.


Sponsor Updates

  • The Blue Bonnet Family Medicine Health and Wellness Clinic in Texas attributes a 10% increase in patients seen to its use of EHR and AI assistant technology from EClinicalWorks.
  • The Point-of-Care Partners Podcast features KONZA National Network, “TEFCA Chronicles – Konza’s Journey to Becoming a QHIN.”
  • Riverside Doctors’ Hospital Williamsburg successfully deploys Upfront Healthcare’s platform for orthopedic total joint care journeys, achieving positive results in a number of areas.
  • First Databank becomes a Silver Corporate Partner of AMIA.
  • FinThrive will present at the HFMA Revenue Cycle Conference February 28 in San Diego.
  • Health Data Movers joins the ServiceNow consulting and implementation partner program.
  • The NerdMDs Podcast features KeyCare CEO Lyle Berkowitz, MD.
  • Linus Health publishes a whitepaper, “Expanding Cognitive Screening & Assessment: A Practical Guide for PCPs.”

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Health IT Market Review 2/8/24

February 8, 2024 News Comments Off on Health IT Market Review 2/8/24

Christopher McCord, MBA, CFA is managing director of Healthcare Growth Partners , an investment banking and strategic advisory firm in Houston, TX. I follow the company’s reports and invited Chris to contribute a summary of their latest analysis.

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We’ve been ardent followers of HIStalk since our inception in 2005, hanging on to every post of insightful and in-depth reporting on the health IT landscape. We can’t stress enough its value as a resource for anyone wanting to stay informed about the latest trends and developments in the industry.

To that end, we’re excited to share some highlights from our latest “Health IT Market Review.” This report delves into key areas like mergers and acquisitions, investment flows, and market valuations, offering data-driven insights gleaned from our own experience and research. We believe it’s a valuable resource for anyone looking to understand the current state of the health IT market and its future trajectory.


Key Takeaways

  • M&A activity rebounds. Deal volume surpasses pre-pandemic levels, up 50% in Q4 2023 as compared to Q4 2022 and trending up in January, but valuations remain below historical norms, ~25% lower than the pre-COVID average and 57% off their COVID peak (based on multiples of revenue).
  • Investment declines. Investment in health IT continues to decline, falling to $743 million in January 2024, levels not seen since 2017.
  • Public market struggles. The number of public health IT companies has contracted from 68 to 53, and 13 are at risk of de-listing due to non-compliance.
  • Future outlook. Despite the challenges faced in 2023, positive signals abound, mostly fueled by anticipated decreases in inflation and interest rates.

First, we’ll attempt to describe how we, the collective health IT enthusiasts, got here in a few sentences.

The past decade in health IT was shaped by a potent cocktail of regulatory and economic forces. Starting with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act’s HITECH Act, which incentivized Electronic Medical Record (EMR) adoption, and followed by the Affordable Care Act, significant regulations fueled an initial boom. The 21st Century Cures Act later evolved Meaningful Use into a more dynamic data platform, now laying the groundwork for AI integration.

Simultaneously, a decade of near-zero interest rates and quantitative easing inflated the US money supply, creating an environment where a generation of professionals became accustomed to expansionary policy and rising valuations. The COVID-19 pandemic further amplified these trends, dramatically validating the investment thesis in digital health across sectors like telehealth, mental health, and drug discovery.

The pandemic’s vivid demonstration of health informatics’ value undoubtedly contributed to a period of heightened investor confidence in the sector. It’s no wonder investors felt invincible.

The current market presents a dynamic interplay of forces, largely a byproduct of the complex macroeconomic and interest rate environment. While health IT M&A activity has witnessed a surprising resurgence, now exceeding pre-pandemic levels in terms of volume (but not value), new investments still show a declining trend. Valuations remain below pre-COVID levels, but are rebounding after hitting a floor in the first half of 2023.

Where does it go from here? The following charts and commentary delve into this critical unknown, leveraging data and experience gleaned from our own journey, to help you piece together your own market mosaic.

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After hitting a Q4 2022 nadir, 2023 US health IT M&A and buyout volume rebounded to levels higher than pre-COVID. The last quarter of 2023, with 84 transactions, marked a 50% surge compared to Q4 2022. The upward trend was maintained in January, with 30 US health IT transactions during the month, annualizing to 360 deals versus 319 in 2023.

While M&A volume has rebounded, M&A deal value sits at the lowest levels since 2017. This is attributed to a confluence of factors: rising capital costs, broader macroeconomic concerns, a tech-specific valuation reset, and a more cautious approach by investors – all concerns that are showing signs of dissipating.

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The following is what we think is the most important piece of data – valuation trends of health IT M&A and buyout transactions. The HGP Health IT Transaction Index sits at 3.6x revenue, a 22% discount from its pre-pandemic 4.6x average and a 55% discount from the peak of 8.1x seen during the COVID hype cycle. Despite the valuation gap, there are positive signals in both the data and macroeconomic picture. Notably, the standard deviation of transaction valuations has widened over recent months, meaning that more transactions are trading at both higher and lower multiples than the average, which is a promising signal that the average has room to move up.

The recent wider band of valuations reflects healthier market activity and perhaps and revival of traditional SaaS transactions, while the lower band generally represents the sale of distressed assets and divestitures of prior acquisitions. For those unfamiliar with valuation multiples, we’ve added an explanation at the end of this piece.

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Enterprise SaaS (multi-industry, not pure health IT) currently trades at a discount to pre-COVID averages, trending down from 8.8x to 6.5x forward revenue. The current 26% discount is even more staggering compared to its COVID peak of 18.8x, representing a 66% discount. The overarching question weighing on the market is whether valuations will revert to the mean and the definition of that mean. Low interest rates raised valuations, high interest rates lowered them, and the general expectation is that valuations will find the reversion to the mean as interest rates return to the FOMC’s “Neutral Rate”, generally defined as 3-3.5% (compared to February 2024’s 5.25-5.5% rate).

Recent transactions signal that investors see opportunity at these valuations. For those looking for points of reference for health IT valuations, Thoma Bravo’s acquisition of Everbridge, a critical event and communications vendor, is a legitimate comp. On February 5, Thoma Bravo announced a $1.5 billion go-private of Everbridge. The purchase price implies a 3.2x and 15x multiple of forward (2024) revenue and EBITDA, respectively, for a company with a <5% growth rate, 73% gross margins, and a 22% EBITDA margin, noting that the business traded for over 20x revenue during the post-COVID euphoria and posted growth rates 30-40% at that time. While today’s investors may be valuing profitability more over growth, this valuation would indicate that growth matters.

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Going deeper into valuation, HGP keeps tabs on the distribution of revenue and EBITDA multiples for M&A and buyout transactions, summarized in the following charts since 2017. Notably, while the COVID period represents 25% of the period (which we define as Q3 2020 – Q1 2022), this period represents 37% of transaction multiples, a reflection of the outsized share of transaction activity that occurred during this time. HGP believes the exclusion of the COVID period best represents valuations in the current market environment, which is described in more detail in our full report.

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Investment in health IT continues to slide, falling to levels not seen since 2017. Activity fell further in January 2024, with $743 million ($8.9 billion annualized) invested in 21 companies (252 annualized) in the US. The median investment round declined from $20 million in 2021 to $11.5 million in 2023, still above a pre-COVID average of ~$8 million.

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Not surprisingly, the COVID cycle saw the rise and fall of $100 million+ investment rounds. Despite the decline, the number of mega-rounds is higher today than pre-COVID, likely a result of larger private equity funds that were raised during the COVID cycle.

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The health IT public market scene has undergone major transformations since the end of the almost three-year drought of health IT IPOs that ended in 2019. Following a surge of activity that was supercharged by the rise in SPAC popularity in 2021, the market reversed course, almost inversely mirroring the 2019-2021 flurry of new entrants with seven de-listed companies in 2022 and 10 in 2023. Of the remaining 53 constituents, 13 trade below or dangerously near $1, risking de-listing due to noncompliance.

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We believe many emerged from this year stronger and nimbler, and many are encumbered by challenging capital structures because of recent market dislocations. Inflation and interest rates are projected to fall, and valuations may benefit from money supply to risk assets. Private equity dry powder sits at all-time highs at $2.5 trillion globally, and money market funds are sitting on a record $6 trillion in assets. These funds will likely be drawn down as rates fall, stimulating demand and supporting valuations for both private and public equities, with further stimulation as the credit markets get back into swing. Despite stubborn inflation, a presidential election year, and uncertain geopolitical backdrop, the economic and overall picture in the US is more positive and stronger than this time last year, injecting a much-needed dose of confidence into the market for the year ahead.

About Valuation Multiples

Compared to complex discounted cash flow methods, the most common way to value a business relies on revenue and EBITDA multiples. These multiples offer a standardized way to compare companies based on their financial performance. They’re valuable for comparing businesses, assessing potential investments, understanding industry trends, and negotiating deals. Investors compare companies to multiples derived from market data of publicly traded companies and similar recent acquisitions in the same industry.

These “multiples” are essentially valuation benchmarks. They’re applied to a company’s revenue or EBITDA to estimate its value. While popular for its simplicity and market data reliance, this method requires finding truly comparable companies, which can be challenging due to differences in size, maturity, and market position. Additionally, several factors beyond these multiples, like revenue models, growth potential and customer retention, can influence valuation. By analyzing these factors and their impact on multiples, investors can gain valuable insights into a company’s relative value and make more informed decisions.

HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2024

February 7, 2024 News Comments Off on HIStalk’s Guide to ViVE 2024

Care.ai

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Booth 1402

Contact: Lexi Lutz, marketing manager
lexi.lutz@care.ai
407.800.1937

Care.ai is revolutionizing healthcare with the world’s first and most advanced AI-powered Smart Care Facility Platform and healthcare’s leading Always-Aware Ambient Intelligent Sensors. Care.ai transforms physical environments into self-aware smart care spaces, increasing safety, efficiency, and quality of care in acute and post-acute settings while at the same time autonomously improving clinical and operational workflows and enabling new virtual models of care for Smart Care Teams, including Smart-From-The-Start Virtual Nursing solutions.


CereCore

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Contact: Jillian Whitefield, business development manager
Jillian.Whitefield@CereCore.net
248.891.5557

CereCore is a proud sponsor of Club CHIME, so drop by the Club CHIME Lounge for some refreshment, swag, and to connect with our experts. Schedule a meeting with us on Feb 26 or Feb 27 from 8 a.m. – 6 p.m.

CereCore works behind the scenes to empower hospitals and health systems with IT services around the nation and globe. Looking for IT and application support, technical professional and managed services, strategic IT consulting and advisory services, or EHR consulting? We should meet if you are interested in EHR experts, technical and support teams to supplement yours, looking for the right talent so you can better manage IT operations, or searching for support desk solutions that will result in happier users and providers. Find meaningful change with CereCore’s healthcare IT managed services. Let’s connect at ViVE 2024.


Clearsense

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Booth 1702

Contact: Larry Kaiser, chief marketing officer
lkaiser@clearsense.com
516.978.5487

Get ready to rock at ViVE 2024! This exclusive event is where digital health execs connect with our 1Clearsense healthcare data analytics and interoperability platform. At ViVE, you will find us at booth #1702, in the Hosted Buyer Meeting program, and rocking Industry Night as a proud co-sponsor of an exclusive concert with legendary punk rocker Billy Idol.


Clearwater

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Booth 1549 in the Cybersecurity Pavilion

Contact: Julie Catron, director, product and content marketing
julie.catron@clearwatersecurity.com
217.620.0874

Healthcare’s largest pure-play cybersecurity and compliance firm, the Clearwater team is excited to meet you at ViVE 2024! Regardless of where you are in the healthcare ecosystem, we’re committed to helping you move to a more secure, compliant, and resilient state. Whether you’re looking for ideas, help with a stand-alone initiative, 24/7 SOC services and incident response, or someone to partner with you through a true managed services program, we’d love to talk with you. 

As a title sponsor of the Cybersecurity Pavilion, share some exciting things we’ve been working on. Here are a few of the things you won’t want to miss at our booth:

  • Monday, 2/26, 10:40 in the Cyber Pavilion – Chasing a Cyber Attacker: A play-by-play recount of threat detection and response and lessons learns about improving cyber resiliency.
  • Monday, 2/26: 1:30-2, Tuesday, 2/27: 10-10:30 2-2:30 – How Academy Medtech Ventures Navigates Cybersecurity, Compliance, and Sustainable Growth in Digital Health: Come meet AMV President JJ Mosolf as he demonstrates their cutting-edge Operating System of Cognition and shares how cybersecurity has been critical to scaling this digital health company quickly.
  • Information and giveaways at booth 1549.

Clinical Architecture

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Booth V2537

Contact: Jaime Lira, VP of marketing
jaime_lira@clinicalarchitecture.com
317.580.8400

Please join us on Tuesday, February 27 at 10:45 a.m. PST for a 30-minute case study presentation “Where Data Quality and Master Data Meet” featuring Will Lloyd, System Director Clinical Data Governance at CommonSpirit Health and Charlie Harp, CEO at Clinical Architecture in the InteropNOW! pavilion.

Clinical Architecture delivers data quality solutions for healthcare enterprises focused on managing vast amounts of disparate data to succeed with analytics, population health, and value-based care. Our industry-leading software provides semantic interoperability of data through robust content authoring, mapping and distribution architecture at speed and scale.


DrFirst

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Booth 1830

Contact: Erin Lease Hall, senior manager of events
eleasehall@drfirst.com
216.650.7687

Visit DrFirst at ViVE! Where Digital Health Execs Go to Redefine Medication Management What if less work – with up to 80% fewer clicks and keystrokes – is the key to getting your clinicians the clean, complete medication data they need? If that sounds implausible, it may be time to redefine medication management. And we can help. Heading to ViVE 2024 in Los Angeles? Stop by booth 1830 and learn how redefining medication management with better patient data can boost patient safety and outcomes to transform your business. Not heading to ViVE? Not to worry. We can still talk redefining medication management. Schedule a meeting with us.


ELLKAY

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Booth 1336

Contact: Auna Emery, VP of marketing
Auna.Emery@ELLKAY.com
201.808.9504

ELLKAY’s innovative, cloud-based solutions address the challenges that our partners across all healthcare environments face. ELLKAY delivers bi-directional, standards-based connectivity to hundreds of sources with access to discrete and actionable data, and provides tailored solutions to achieve your unique connectivity goals. Don’t miss our InteropNow! sessions with CommonWell Health Alliance at the InteropNow! Pavillion:

  • “Behind the Curtain of the 226M+ Persons National Network – CommonWell Health Alliance – powered by ELLKAY.” Get a glimpse of the interworking’s of CommonWell’s national network powered by ELLKAY, serving over 34,000 provider organizations to enable seamless health data exchange across member organizations, nearing close to 226 million+ individuals impacted through this network. The CommonWell Health Alliance chose ELLKAY to serve as the Technical Service Provider to enable clinical data exchange at scale and serve as a critical partner to achieve QHIN designation under TEFCA.
  • “CommonWell Health Alliance- powered by ELLKAY.” Understand how CommonWell Health Alliance is using ELLKAY to fuel the connectivity for its network. Get to know more about the updates to the CommonWell platform and how ELLKAY is providing the technical infrastructure to deliver a seamless patient data exchange to participating providers. Come learn who the CommonWell Health Alliance members are and the impact of participation in this national network.

Visit Team ELLKAY at booth #1336 – Mimosa Bar, Monday, February 26, 3:30-6:00 p.m., Ice Cream Bar, Tuesday, February 27, 3:30-6:00 p.m., Donut Bar, Wednesday, February 28, 8:30-10:30 a.m.


Five9

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Booth V946

Contact: Roni Jamesmeyer, senior healthcare marketing director
roni.jamesmeyer@five9.com
972.768.6554

Five9 offers a HIPAA-compliant healthcare cloud contact center solution that empowers you to seamlessly monitor and report call volumes in real-time across critical areas such as patient access, scheduling, prescription refills, and revenue cycle management, enhancing your staff’s efficiency. The Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center seamlessly integrates with various back-end systems, including electronic health records, serving as a central hub to facilitate digital engagement, provide comprehensive analytics, optimize workforce performance, and leverage AI for improved outcomes and measurable business success.


Fortified Health Security

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Booth 1850

Contact:Robert Pullins, growth marketing manager
rpullins@fortifiedhealthsecurity.com
615.600.4002

A two-time Best in KLAS award winner, Fortified works with healthcare organizations to construct client-centric, customized programs leveraging both new and existing solutions. We are committed to building a stronger cybersecurity landscape for both our client ecosystem and the healthcare industry as a whole.

We are Healthcare’s Cybersecurity Partner and we’re coming to ViVE with a schedule full of collaboration and socializing! We hope you can join us for one of these events:

  • 3-track Tasting at the Figueroa: From 5-8 p.m. on Monday, February 26, CISOs and CIOs are invited to join us in hotel Figueroa and select a tasting track of spirits, wines or mocktails led by Blackfin Experiences sommelier Michael Stefanakos. Contact us to RSVP at connect@fortifiedhealthsecurity.com.
  • CHIME members only: Focus group titled “Future-proofing healthcare IT: A collaborative discussion on HHS’s new cybersecurity strategy” held Sunday, February 25 at 10 a.m.
  • Daily drawings at booth #1850 for travel JBL speakers.

Get-to-Market Health

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Contact: Steve Shihadeh, CEO
Steve@gettomarkethealth.net
610.613.4074

Get-to-Market Health is a specialized consultancy focused exclusively on accelerating sales and driving revenue growth for our healthcare technology clients. We work with business leaders to simplify the complexity and unique buying patterns of the healthcare technology market.


Healthcare IT Leaders

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Booth 3123

Contact: George Major, RVP of sales
george.major@healthcareitleaders.com
484.682.3614

Healthcare IT Leaders is a national leader in IT staffing, managed services, and consulting for healthcare systems. We provide strategy and talent for healthcare transformation across clinical, business, and operational systems. Areas of focus include EHR, ERP, HCM, WFM, RCM, Cloud, and Data where our consultants implement and optimize enterprise software solutions from leading vendors including Epic, Oracle Health, Workday, UKG, Oracle, Infor, SAP, Snowflake, AWS, Azure, GCP, and more.


Laudio

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Meeting Pod 2852

Connect with Laudio on-site. Tuesday, 2/27 at 10am: Join UNC Health CHRO Scott Doak, and Laudio co-founder and CEO Russ Richmond, MD, as they share their Playbook for Nurse Retention. Discover how UNC Health’s approach with Laudio’s automation software improved nursing management and reduced nurse turnover, leading to $5.4 million in annual savings.

Laudio empowers healthcare leaders to drive large-scale change through everyday human actions. Our AI-enhanced platform streamlines workflows for frontline leaders, strengthens interpersonal connections, and aligns C-suite objectives with frontline efforts, boosting operational efficiency, employee engagement, and patient experience. Laudio makes it possible for patients, frontline workers, and health system leaders to thrive together. Discover how at www.laudio.com.


Linus Health

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Contact: Laura Kusek, event and partner marketing manager
events@linus.health
954.825.8389

Chief Growth Officer Curt Thornton and Chief Product Officer John Showalter, MD will be in attendance. Please email events@linus.health to request a meeting.

Linus Health is a digital health company focused on early detection of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. We combine rich clinical expertise with cutting-edge neuroscience and AI to help providers spot and intervene on early signs of cognitive impairment – even those invisible to the human eye. Our digital cognitive assessment platform puts specialist-level insights about a patient’s cognitive function at providers’ fingertips in a matter of minutes.


Medicomp Systems

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Booth V1337

Contact: James Aita, director of business development and strategy
jaita@medicomp.com
647.207.0080

Clinical AI has healthcare abuzz. But how can you harness it to help make clinicians’ lives easier? Large language models (LLMs) are great at generating text, but clinicians need solutions to help them navigate compliance and quality reporting and complex billing requirements. The Quippe Clinical Intelligence Engine leverages LLM output, converts it into actionable data, and makes sense of it to help clinicians find what they need at the point of care to make their jobs easier. Meet with at Vive booth V-1337 to learn more about Medicomp’s clinical-grade AI solutions and Smart-on-FHIR apps for CQM compliance, HCC coding and risk adjustment, bi-directional interoperability, CDI and audit-readiness, point-of-care decision-making and more.


MEDITECH

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Booth 1524

Contact: Rachel Wilkes, director of marketing
rwilkes@meditech.com
781.774.4555

From the deployment of the latest AI solutions to industry-leading efforts in precision medicine and interoperability, discover how MEDITECH is making its vision for healthcare transformation a reality at ViVE 2024. MEDITECH staff and executives will be available at booth #1524 to discuss new Expanse tools for addressing key industry issues including: mobility, precision medicine, innovative care models, efficiency of care teams, interoperability, and AI.

In addition to activities in the booth, MEDITECH executives will also be speaking as part of the ViVE agenda:

On Monday, February 26 at 3 p.m., LACC, Show Floor, Venice Beach Stage MEDITECH’s Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer Helen Waters will be joined by leaders from Oracle and Epic for the “Back to the Future of Healthcare: Tomorrow’s EHR Landscape” session. They will discuss the future of healthcare and the transformative impact technological advancements have on patient experience and healthcare delivery.

MEDITECH Senior Director of Interoperability Market and Product Strategy Mike Cordeiro will host a session on Intelligent Interoperability on Monday, February 26 at 2:15 p.m. at the Tech Talk Stage. His presentation will focus on how EHRs should operate as data platforms – collecting, integrating, managing, analyzing, and presenting data in meaningful and actionable ways. Cordeiro will also highlight MEDITECH’s strategy for supporting interoperability standards and open API approaches that enable healthcare organizations to share meaningful data.

MEDITECH customer leaders will also participate as panelists in ViVE sessions, including: On Monday, February 26 at 2:00 p.m., LACC, Show Floor, Sunset Strip Stage Emanate Health Chief Information Officer Daniel J. Nash, MBA, PMP, CHCIO, CDH-E will discuss healthcare’s post-pandemic financial and workforce challenges in the session “Inside Job: Operating with Lean Staff and Healthy Margins.” The healthcare leaders will share cost-control strategies including workforce optimization and utilization of technology to enhance operational efficiency. HCA Healthcare Senior Vice President and Chief Information Officer Marty Paslick will join other panelists in discussing the ethical considerations, possible biases, and other challenges with AI in medical decision-making in the session “Awakenings: The Perils of AI Success” on Monday, February 26 at 4 p.m., LACC, Show Floor, Hollywood Stage. Attendees will learn more about the importance of responsible implementation to ensure patient safety and privacy.


QGenda

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Booth 2112

Contact: Dan Kamyck, senior director of growth marketing
Dan.Kamyck@qgenda.com
770.399.9945

As a CHIME Foundation Member, QGenda executives will also be available for meetings at Club CHIME, located at Booth 2801.

Healthcare workforce optimization starts with the schedule. QGenda transforms healthcare workforce management with QGenda ProviderCloud, a single platform to activate, deploy, and optimize the entire care team. QGenda executives are on hand to help you manage change within your healthcare workforce. CHIME members – Be sure to sign up for QGenda’s Focus Group session, “Navigating Change: Digital Transformation to Optimize Your Workforce,” which will take place on Sunday, February 25 at 1:15 p.m. PST. To attend, please sign up with CHIME.


ReMedi Health Solutions

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Contact: GP Hyare, managing director

g.hyare@remedihs.com
281.413.8947

ReMedi Health Solutions is a nationally recognized, physician-led healthcare IT consulting firm specializing in peer-to-peer, physician-centric EHR implementation and training. We’re a clinically driven company committed to improving the future of healthcare. We’re passionate “Clinician Whisperers” that believe understanding the “why” behind each EHR decision is as important as the “what” or “how”. We listen to physicians, nurses, and healthcare leaders in order to understand their biggest challenges, and we leverage our decades of experience to develop efficient solutions that greatly impact the delivery of care.

ReMedi designs customized training solutions that incorporate clinical workflows, evidence-based content, financial performance, and patient experience. Our clinicians and management consultants work with clients to: Improve physician satisfaction and engagement by enhancement of workflow and enabling efficient use of available tools. Enable physicians to more easily and accurately document patient conditions, comorbidities and acuity. Improve financial performance by capturing patient complexity. Evaluate reporting capabilities which allow the tracking of provider documentation and implications for the revenue cycle. Improve intra- and interdepartmental workflows between registration, physicians, and coding.


Rhapsody

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Booth 2423

Contact: Michelle Blackmer, marketing
Michelle.Blackmer@Rhapsody.Health
312.520.1873

Visit Rhapsody at ViVE! Heading to ViVE 2024 in Los Angeles? Stop by booth 2423 and learn how health systems and digital health teams rely on Rhapsody to reduce the barriers to digital health innovation adoption by streamlining patient data access. Not heading to ViVE? Not to worry. We can still talk digital health enablement. Schedule a meeting with us.


Tegria

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Booth 1624

Contact: Kristin O’Neill, senior director of external relations
kristin.oneill@tegria.com
617.319.5516

Tegria is a global healthcare consulting and services company delivering end-to-end solutions that leverage technology to help provider and payer organizations transform healthcare. Let’s schedule time to connect at Tegria’s Transformation Hub, located at booth 1624! Tegria solution experts will be available throughout the event, so this would be a great opportunity for us to brainstorm about solutions to your latest challenges. Schedule time to connect with us.

  • Tech Talk: “Scoring Big on Patient and Provider Experiences.” Monday, February 26 at 2:30 p.m. PT Mark your calendar and join Tegria at the Tech Talk Stage as we discuss the importance of taking a team-based approach to patient experience. Join us for this must-attend session to explore how a collaborative approach can transform healthcare delivery.
  • Happy Hour at the Tegria Transformation Hub Monday, February 26 at 4 p.m. PT After a full day of sessions and networking, stop by our Transformation Hub at booth 1624 beginning at 4:00 p.m. where you’ll be able to swap stories from the show floor, share your thoughts about a particularly interesting session you attended, or just unwind with some of your favorite Tegria experts.

TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company

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Booth 1249

Contact: Ryne Natzke, chief revenue officer
rynen@spherecommerce.com

Visit TrustCommerce at Booth #1249! TrustCommerce provides comprehensive patient card payment solutions integrated with top EHRs that has earned the trust of many of the largest healthcare organizations in the US. Transform the way you process payments with TrustCommerce’s 20+ years of expertise in healthcare provider support. Experience secure and compliant payment processing, anytime and anywhere – all while being seamlessly connected to leading EHRs like Epic, Veradigm, and AthenaIDX. Meet our team, enter to win an Amazon Echo Show, catch a demo, and pick up some cool swag at booth #1249. See you there!


Upfront Healthcare

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Booth 2130

Contact: Margy Enright, VP brand strategy and experience
menright@upfronthealthcare.com
913.568.1520

Upfront is a mission-driven healthcare company delivering tangible outcomes to leading healthcare systems and provider groups. Its patient engagement platform makes each patient feel seen, guiding their care experience through personalized outreach. The backbone of the Upfront experience is its data engine, which analyzes clinical, sociodemographic, and patient-reported data. These insights, along with its advanced psychographic segmentation model, allow Upfront to individually activate patients to get the care they need while building a meaningful relationship between the patient and their health system. Upfront is rooted in partnership, leveraging best-in-class healthcare expertise to maximize the impact of technology and deliver a next-generation patient experience.


News 2/7/24

February 6, 2024 News Comments Off on News 2/7/24

Top News

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Inovalon acquires clinical surveillance and patient safety software vendor VigiLanz.

The deal marks Inovalon’s fifth recent acquisition and the first since the company was acquired by a private equity consortium in 2021 at a $7 billion valuation.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Laudio. The Boston-based company empowers health system leaders to drive large-scale change through everyday human actions. Its platform streamlines workflows for frontline leaders, strengthens interpersonal connections, and aligns C-suite goals with frontline actions – helping health systems improve operational efficiency, employee engagement, and patient experience. Laudio makes it possible for patients, frontline workers, and health system leaders to thrive together. Thanks to Laudio for supporting HIStalk.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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Healthcare tech sales and market intelligence startup Bonfire Analytics raises $2 million.

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Ambience Healthcare, which has developed an AI operating system, raises $70 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to over $100 million. The co-leaders of the round are OpenAI’s Startup Fund and Kleiner Perkins.

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Hamilton Beach Brands acquires Ireland-based HealthBeacon, which offers a digital health platform for patients who inject medications at home for chronic conditions. The company previously marketed HealthBeacon’s product in the US within its Hamilton Beach Health brand, which it plans to expand into remote monitoring systems.

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Digital sleep therapy app vendor Stellar Sleep raises $6 million in seed funding.

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Astarte Medical, which sells precision nutrition software for NICUs, will shut down and offer its intellectual property for sale. The eight-year-old company blames long hospital sales cycles that caused lower-than-expected sales that didn’t meet the expectations of investors, who suggested to co-founder and CEO Tracy Warren, MBA that she throw in some AI to capitalize on the funding boom. She said she would not be comfortable with AI-recommended therapy and instead chose to close the business.

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Publicly traded value-based primary care provider Cano Health files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and is looking for a buyer. Shares are down 99% since the company went public in June 2021 via a SPAC merger, valuing the company at $12 million.


Sales

  • Yuma Regional Medical Center (AZ) selects NRC Health’s Human Understanding patient experience optimization software and programs.
  • The Queen’s Health System (HI) chooses Medaptus Assign to assign patients to hospitalists with rules-based patient census integration with Epic.
  • Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation licenses the NSights de-identified patient database that the company sources from several premier health systems.

People

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HCA Healthcare promotes Chad Wasserman, MBA to SVP/CIO upon the retirement of Marty Paslick.

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Availity names Jennifer Irwin (Alegeus) chief marketing officer.

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Aaron Wootton, MBA (Henry Ford Health System) joins Huntzinger Management Group as chief digital officer.

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Alphabet’s Verily hires Myoung Cha, JD, MBA (Carbon Health) as chief product officer.


Announcements and Implementations

Variety Care (OK) goes live with EVisit’s telehealth platform at three of its clinics and across its behavioral healthcare team.


Government and Politics

SAMHSA and ONC launch the Behavioral Health Information Technology Initiative, which will invest $20 million over the next three years to promote the use of health IT within behavioral healthcare and practice settings.


Privacy and Security

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Northern Light Health, a 10-hospital system in Maine, brings its computer systems back online after a weekend cyberattack forced it to activate downtime procedures. Hospital officials say the attack was not the result of ransomware.


Other

San Diego-based Sharp HealthCare’s Spatial Computing Center of Excellence distributes 30 of the newly launched Apple Vision Pros to physicians, nurses, informaticists, software developers, and others to determine how the virtual reality headset can best used in healthcare settings. Sharp is working with Epic on possible uses.

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Primary care physicians are spending an increasing amount of time working in their EHRs, according to a new report that looks at the usage data of 141 UW Health PCPs over a four-year period. The 28-minute increase was mainly driven by patient portal messaging, with patient medical advice requests being the biggest chunk of messaging volume.

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The University of Rochester Medical Center (CT) installs Higi health stations at three community banks as part of an initiative to provide patients living in rural areas with better access to care.


Sponsor Updates

  • Netsmart announces its support for the launch of the CMS Innovation in Behavioral Health model.
  • AdvancedMD announces QBSolutioneers as its newest integration partner.
  • Health Data Movers joins the ServiceNow Partner Program.
  • Optimum Healthcare IT launches a new healthcare IT information and best practices newsletter called The Optimum Pulse.
  • Artera receives Frost & Sullivan’s 2023 Customer Value Leadership Award.
  • Censinet will present at the AHA Rural Health Care Leadership Conference February 11-14 in Orlando.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 2/5/24

February 4, 2024 News 2 Comments

Top News

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The National Institutes of Health seeks $200 million in funding to replace its Altera Digital Health Sunrise system that it calls CRIS.

NIH Clinical Center CIO Jon McKeeby says that 40 of his 120 IT employees are at retirement age, raising concerns about support for the complex, best-of-breed system that the hospital installed in 2004 when it was known as Eclipsys Sunrise Clinical Manager. 


Reader Comments

From Snowbound: “Re: Oracle Health. Laid off 124 Cerner employees in Springfield, MO after CoxHealth announced that it is moving to Epic.” Oracle filed a WARN act notice with the state on February 1, adding that the health system has already made offers of employment to all of the employees who were affected.

From Twin Cities Healthcare Watcher: “Re: Allina outsourcing RCM to Optum. This will be interesting considering the MN AG’s focus on Allina’s billing practices and the history of regulatory intervention in MN with outsourced billing services such as at Fairview in 2012-2013.” Fairview’s former RCM vendor Accretive Health, renamed in 2017 to R1 RCM, paid a fine and agreed to stop doing business in Minnesota in 2012 after being charged with lax security practices and sending high-pressure employees into the hospital ED to demand payment in advance from patients who were suffering from strokes and heart attacks. Accretive referred to the practice as “Accretive Secret Sauce” that it internally proclaimed “check out our ASS.” Accretive’s big customer Ascension partnered with a private equity firm to buy a 40% stake in the company for $200 million in late 2015, since increased to a 54% share.

From LinkedIn Park: “Re: interview. It seems like everyone in the industry I know reached out to me the day my interview with you ran, and I have quantified the HIStalk effect by observing that my LinkedIn profile views are up over 300%.” Thanks for letting me know. 


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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A majority of poll respondents say they have experienced discrimination that hurt their careers, most commonly related to age and sex.

New poll to your right or here: How has the market competitiveness of the former Cerner changed since Oracle acquired it in June 2022?

Thanks to these companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo for more information. Also, extra thanks to long-time HIStalk Founding Sponsors Healthwise and Medicomp Systems

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Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Allina Health will outsource IT and revenue cycle management services to Optum, which will rebadge 2,000 health system employees effective May 5.

HCA Healthcare says in its earnings call that a key area of investment will be advancing the company’s digital capabilities to “unlock the embedded value we see in our operations.”

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A Boston Globe reporter tracks down the 190-foot, $40 million, Galapagos-docked yacht that is owned by Ralph de la Torre, MD, MS, the former heart surgeon who partnered with a private equity firm to create Steward Health Care Systems as CEO. The reporter notes that Steward, which is teetering on insolvency that may force a taxpayer bailout, quadrupled the private equity firm’s investment by selling the land under its hospitals, allowing the company to walk away with $800 million and de la Torre to award himself a $100 million bonus, after which he yachted up.


Announcements and Implementations

In Canada, a university IT professor says that the health system has squandered billions of dollars on proprietary software development that led to all 10 provinces having their own expensive IT systems that don’t work together. He advocates developing open source software for billing, labs, and diagnostic imaging instead using HermesAPI, which would mean “sending less money to prop up American software companies.”

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Visage Imaging launches Visage Ease VP for Apple Vision Pro. It includes a cinematic rendering engine, 4K resolution on virtual screens, independence from room lighting, and natural input using hands, eyes, and voice.

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Cedars-Sinai develops Xaia, a mental health support app for the Apple Vision Pro. It offers immersive therapy sessions that are led by a digital avatar that simulates a human therapist. The hospital has licensed the system to VRx Health for commercialization.

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The Permanente Medical Group publishes its initial experience with Nabla’s smartphone-based ambient scribing system, which it says has been used by 3,400 of the 10,000 invited physicians, of which around 1,000 have used it for more than 100 encounters. Physicians report that it is saving them time, even though they are required to approve the AI’s draft version, and patient feedback has been positive. The most common reasons for not using the tool include the required activation steps, lack of familiarity, and lack of integration with other workflow solutions.


Government and Politics

Two Texas doctors are indicted in federal court for submitting phony medical bills to the insurers of student athletes that they had not treated. The doctors, who owned sports medicine practice management system vendor Vivature, used the patient information that had been entered by athletic trainers to submit fraudulent bills for other services. The indictment lists three universities, including Auburn University, that shared the payment that Vivature received. The defendants are also charged with fraudulently billing for COVID-19 testing in partnership with international resorts who tested Americans who were traveling aboard. The DoJ says the defendants obtained $70 million between the schemes.


Privacy and Security

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Computer, phone, and email systems remain down at Lurie Children’s Hospital (IL) following a February 1 cyberattack.

The CEO of one of the five hospitals whose shared services organization was taken offline by cyberattack in October 23 says that some major systems remain down and he expects that it will take most of 2024 for the hospital to fully recover from the attack.


Other

Not (yet) healthcare related. A finance employee of a huge Hong Kong company makes a $26 million money transfer for a confidential corporate transaction, as instructed in a video call with the CFO and other executives. He learned afterward that the video call attendees were AI-generated deepfakes and the money recipients were scammers.


Sponsor Updates

  • Waystar joins Meditech’s Alliance program
  • EClinicalWorks announces that its Sunoh.ai AI-powered ambient listening technology now integrates with EClinicalMobile and EClinicalTouch apps on iOS and Android smartphones, iPads, and Microsoft Windows and macOS devices.
  • NeuroFlow will exhibit at the AMSUS 2024 Annual Meeting February 12-15 in National Harbor, MD.
  • RxLightning (Claritas Rx) names John Paulson senior director of business development.
  • SnapCare will exhibit at the ACNL Conference February 4-7 in Monterey, CA.
  • Symplr achieves milestone recognitions in 2023, garnering industry and employee acclaim as a leader in healthcare operations.
  • Wolters Kluwer Health makes the NEJM AI journal available on its Ovid medical research platform.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 2/2/24

February 1, 2024 News 2 Comments

Top News

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A Stat review says that digital therapeutics is stagnating in the US, as evidenced by vendor bankruptcies and lack of Medicare coverage for their products.

The authors note that Pear Therapeutics shut down less than a year after CMS denied the company’s request to consider its substance abuse order product (pictured above) as a billable medical device.

Few commercial payers cover digital therapeutics because of concerns about efficacy, which poorly designed vendor studies have failed to prove.

The article says that vendors who want their products covered like traditional drugs will need to perform similar studies that meet a comparable standard of evidence, which is risky because of high cost and the possibility that their products aren’t effective. They could also sell their products to providers who might be reimbursed by payers for achieving specific results.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Thanks to the folks at DrFirst, which booked the Top Spot banner (at the upper right of the HIStalk page) for the long term, initially to showcase their participation in the ViVE conference. I appreciate the support.

Repetitive, I know, but winding down – sponsors that are participating in ViVE and/or HIMSS should complete the respective forms so I can list you in my guides pro bono (does that word make you think of U2 or Cher?)


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cardinal Health acquires group purchasing company Specialty Networks for $1.2 billion in cash, calling out the strategic value of its AI-driven PPS Analytics product that analyzes data from EHR/PM, imaging, and dispensing systems for clinical decision-making and for purchase by drug companies.

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Medical practice patient communication technology vendor Vital Interaction raises $15 million in Series A funding.

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Fabric, a healthcare enablement startup that was formerly known as Florence, acquires Gyant, which offers health systems an AI-powered virtual assistant.

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Prior authorization technology vendor Cohere Health raises $50 million in equity funding, increasing its total to $106 million. It has five health plan customers.

Hindenberg Research predicts a “breakdown” for private equity-backed mental health rollup LifeStance, which has 6,400 clinicians, 600 centers in 33 states, a market cap of $2 billion, and a mountain of debt. It says the company is running out of cash, employs mostly therapists who bill at low rates compared to psychiatrists, provides stock grants to its highest-performing prescribers of drugs that have a high abuse potential, and pushes clinicians to see up to 30 patients per day. Former employees say that the industry has such low barriers to entry that LifeStance provides no value or even negative value because “all you need to do to open up your own private practice is post a thing on Facebook and start seeing private, cash-only patients.”


Sales

  • Smile Train will provide its partners and affiliates access to select medical journals via Wolters Kluwer Health.
  • VNAcare expands its relationship with Netsmart to implement its MyUnity EHR.
  • ACO Vytalize Health will use WellSky Next-Generation Provider Solution for care coordination between acute and post-acute providers.

People

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Oracle expands the role of former CMS Administrator Seema Verma, MPH to EVP/GM of Oracle Health, the former Cerner business.

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Workforce management solutions vendor Hallmark Health Care Solutions names industry long-timer Bruce Cerullo, MS as CEO. He replaces co-founder Isaac Ullatil, MBA, who will transition to strategic advisor.

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JTG Consulting Group hires Jaimie Augustine (Copan Diagnostics) as chief growth officer. She replaces Lisa Potter, who was promoted to COO.


Announcements and Implementations

Atlantic Health will acquire Saint Peter’s Healthcare (NJ) and move it to Epic.

ECRI lists its top health tech hazards for 2024:

  1. Usability of medical devices intended for in-home use.
  2. Insufficient cleaning instructions for medical devices.
  3. Drug compounding without technology safeguards.
  4. Environmental harm from patient care.
  5. Lack of AI governance in medical technologies.
  6. Ransomware.
  7. Burns from single-foil electrosurgical electrodes.
  8. Medication errors caused by damaged infusion pumps.
  9. Defects in orthopedic implantables.
  10. Web analytics software and the misuse of patient data.

Publicly traded hospital operator Community Health Systems migrates to a FHIR-based clinical data platform on Google Cloud and is implementing the company’s AI technologies.


Government and Politics

A law firm says that an Epic case that was heard by the Supreme Court raises the legal issue of proving that employees actually signed arbitration agreements that include employment class action waivers. It notes that employees are arguing that they don’t remember signing the agreement, which places the burden on the employer to prove that their electronic signature wasn’t provided by someone else.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration makes some COVID-19 flexibilities permanent, including the ability for Opioid Treatment Programs to prescribe opioid use disorder medications via telehealth without an initial in-person evaluation.

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England’s health regulator finds that IT systems at Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals – a Global Digital Exemplar and HIMSS EMRAM Stage 6 designee – are not always integrated and don’t always promptly provide staff with information they need. Inspectors noted that OR information is documented on paper and then entered into electronic systems afterward because of slow systems, which was measured at 45 minutes from log-in to retrieval of a single patient’s vital signs and fluid balance. The inspectors also observed that maternity staff are required to document the same information in two systems due to lack of integration.

Regional West Medical Center settles its contract dispute with Oracle for $6 million versus the $15 million that the company wanted, freeing it to convert to Epic. The hospital blamed financial losses and the lowering of its bond ratings on the revenue cycle disruption that was caused by its 2018 implementation of Cerner Millennium.


Other

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A data manipulation expert uses AI to determine that a Harvard Medical School neuroscientist included plagiarized images in 21 journal articles, including images that came from other papers and from vendor websites.


Sponsor Updates

  • CereCore publishes a new case study, “Liverpool Women’s NHS Foundation Trust: Successful EPR Transition Journey.”
  • Hyndman Area Health Center expands its use of EClinicalWorks technology with the addition of AI solutions including the Sunoh.ai virtual scribe.
  • WellSky will use cloud, analytics, and AI technologies from Google Cloud.
  • Impact Advisors joins Epic’s new Rev Cycle Partners program.
  • Findhelp names Dallas Mudd (United Way of Northwest Arkansas) senior director of partnerships.
  • Health Data Movers welcomes Eric Williams (Kaiser Permanente) to its board.
  • Inovalon names Katie Smith (Inari Medical) senior manager of clinical analytics.
  • The Lean HealthTech Podcast features KeyCare CEO Lyle Berkowitz, MD “Virtual Visionaries: KeyCare’s Revolutionary Approach to Telehealth.”
  • Konza National Network appoints Jonathan Smith, MPH (Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health) to its Board of Directors.
  • Broadlawns Medical Center (IA) maximizes efficiency with Meditech’s labor and delivery solution.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

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