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News 5/24/24

May 23, 2024 News 4 Comments

Top News

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HHS/NIH’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) offers up to $50 million to fund development of technology that can secure hospital IT environments.

The system, which it calls UPGRADE, will scan hospital computer systems for vulnerabilities and weaknesses and automatically apply patches as needed.

ARPA-H says that achieving its goals will likely require the formation of teams with different kinds of technical expertise. A virtual Proposers’ Day webcast will be held on June 20.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor RLDatix. Every day around the world, thousands of patients are harmed by care delivery errors, many of which are preventable. We want to change that. RLDatix is on a mission to improve healthcare by enabling a world where patients receive the best and safest care possible. Trusted by thousands of clients around the world, our connected healthcare operations platform combines software and trusted services to empower organizations with critical data insights across risk, safety, compliance, provider lifecycle, and workforce management. Our user-centric approach provides a holistic, real-time view of healthcare operations, connecting disparate information across the enterprise, thus giving organizational leadership the contextualized data they need to make better-informed decisions. Thanks to RLDatix for supporting HIStalk.


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It’s Summer Doldrums ‘round these parts, where the industry takes a collective hammock nap until Labor Day and we do a PBS-like sponsor pledge drive. Do you need website traffic, exposure to potential business or M&A partners, or to stay top of mind with prospects? You read HIStalk and so do many of the industry’s decision-makers. Contact Lorre, Jenn, or me about sponsorship spiffs for:

  • Former sponsors who return to the fold.
  • Startups.
  • Webinar promotion (Lorre does BOGO in the slow months).
  • Email promotion.

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Today I learned that the nine-question PHQ-9 paper form that primary care doctors use to screen patients for depression was developed by a drug company to increase sales of its antidepressants. The marketing team of drug maker Pfizer designed the form to overcome the reluctance of PCPs to prescribe antidepressants such as Pfizer’s own Zoloft. Such drugs were previously ordered almost entirely by psychiatrists who weren’t likely to generate big sales volumes. The form was never intended to be anything more than a conversation-starter between doctor and patient, but overloaded PCPs often use it as a standalone tool.

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Check out what some HIStalk sponsors have in store for the 2024 Muse Inspire Conference next week in the Denver area.

I was amused that EHR vendor Fusion Health announced a sale to Illinois Department of Corrections, a target market that the company calls “movement-restricted communities.” They might have made up that term since I don’t see it used elsewhere.


Webinars

June 6 (Thursday) noon ET. “From Data to Decisions: The Vital Combination of AI and Human Expertise in Patient Care.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: David Wetherhold, MD, CMIO of ambulatory systems, Scripps Health; Dana Darger, RPh, director of pharmacy, Monument Health Rapid City Hospital; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. In this Epic Med Management Fireside Chat, two health system leaders will share real-world examples of how AI is working in concert with their clinicians to streamline medication management by populating medication histories into Epic. generating initial drafts of patient conversations, and summarizing complex information. The presenters will also cover the latest developments on the critical and expanding role of pharmacists in patient care.

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Vancouver-based  technology-based workplace health solution provider CloudMD will be taken private by a private equity firm as it struggles with liquidity following several acquisitions and its failure to file a Q4 earnings report. DOC.V shares are at $0.045, valuing the company at $14 million.

Twin Health, which uses a digital twin AI platform to help members achieve remission from type 2 diabetes, expands into the obesity market with a program that focuses on sustainable weight loss that complements the use of GLP-1 drugs.

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Real-world data and evidence platform vendor Atropos Health raises $33 million in a Series B funding round. The company was founded in 2019 by three Stanford University PhDs as the Green Button research project.


People

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Ellkay hires Nicholas Szymanski, MBA (Signature Healthcare) as COO.

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Industry long-timer Terri Steinberg, MD, MBA (Medecision) retires.

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Cynthia Porter, MBA retires after 34 years as CEO of Porter Research.


Announcements and Implementations

Ontario-based Halton Healthcare joins Project AMPLIFI, care coordination program that connects long-term care facilities and Meditech hospitals to allow sharing patient medical histories.

Microsoft announces GigaPath, a whole-slide foundation model for digital pathology that it developed with Providence and University of Washington.

Redox will partner with Snowflake to facilitate data exchange between legacy healthcare systems and Snowflake’s Healthcare & Life Sciences Cloud.


Government and Politics

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The Irish government publishes “Digital for Care: A Digital Health Framework for Ireland 2024-203.”

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ONC reports that 70% of hospitals engaged in all four domains of interoperability (send, receive, find, and integrate) in 2023, up from 46% in 2018. Other tidbits:

  • The percentage of hospitals that routinely engage in that exchange rose from 28% to 43%, with a much higher percentage among system-affiliated hospitals.
  • While 71% of hospitals have electronic access to clinical data from other providers, only 42% of clinicians regularly use that information.
  • Most hospitals aren’t sending summary of care documents to external hospitals or ambulatory care providers.
  • While 17% of hospitals send information to long-term, post-acute care providers, only 8% receive information back from them.
  • ONC concludes that the interoperability bar needs to be raised to focus on routine exchange of information.

Sponsor Updates

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  • In Kansas, Blue Valley School District honors Netsmart COO Tom Herzog with its Friends of Education Award.
  • DrFirst announces the winners of its 2024 Healthiverse Heroes Awards.
  • Meditech’s Traverse Exchange Canada connects its first pilot organization, Champlain Association of Meditech Partners, to Oracle’s e-Hub.
  • The Association for Community Affiliated Plans names First Databank a preferred vendor.
  • FinThrive releases a new Healthcare Rethink Podcast, “Got a Healthcare IT Renovation Project? We have a DIY Book for you!”
  • Five9 will present at three upcoming investor conferences.
  • MRO launches a new podcast, “The MRO Exchange: Connecting Healthcare Executives,” with healthcare quality reporting as its first topic.
  • Fortified Health Security welcomes Alex Callahan as its summer accounting intern.
  • Healthcare Growth Partners releases the May edition of “HGP Observations.”
  • Konza National Network announces that Family Health Center (MS) has joined its QHIN.
  • MRO launches a podcast, “The MRO Exchange: Connecting Healthcare Executives.”
  • NeuroFlow develops a suicide risk calculator to help healthcare leaders understand the risk in their patient populations.

The following HIStalk sponsors will exhibit at the MUSE Inspire Conference May 28-31 in Denver – CereCore, CloudWave, Consensus Cloud Solutions, Dimensional Insight, DrFirst, Ellkay, Elsevier, FinThrive, First Databank, Meditech, Nuance, Tegria, TruBridge, Vyne Medical, and Waystar.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

HIStalk’s Guide to MUSE Inspire 2024

May 23, 2024 News Comments Off on HIStalk’s Guide to MUSE Inspire 2024

CereCore

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Booth 417

Contact: Jillian Whitefield, business development manager
jillian.whitefield@cerecore.net
248.891.5557

We get it. You need more from your EHR. Discover our full lineup of sessions and resources that can help you. Go beyond the basics by attending one of our seven educational sessions covering Expanse workflows, digital scheduling, charge reconciliation, rules-driven order screens, and much more. Moving to Expanse? Find guides and how we saved a hospital $115k in build costs with automation. Need a roadmap to the most productive optimization projects? Request a MEDITECH assessment and gain insight on immediate functionality and revenue cycle opportunities. Evaluating MEDITECH hosting and backup? The “Buyer’s Guide to MEDITECH Hosting” helps you compare the options. Need to streamline manual processes? Check out rules and worklists and our downloadable starter pack. Find CereCore MUSE 2024 session times, resources, or schedule a meeting here.


Healthtech

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Booth 218

Contact: Steve McDonald, MEDITECH practice lead
stephen.mcdonald@nordicglobal.com
617.777.3822

Healthtech, a Nordic Global Company, is thankful and proud of our 40+ year journey helping MEDITECH customers achieve their healthcare IT objectives while enhancing patient care and optimizing their performance. Our experience with MEDITECH clients has extended across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. By leveraging our deep clinical and operational knowledge, global reach, and the full suite of offerings from Nordic, our MEDITECH clients are achieving success at an exceptional rate. Some of our key offerings include: MEDITECH Expanse implementation with embedded performance improvement; MEDITECH MAAS implementation, training, and maintenance support; total cost of ownership comparisons and full planning engagements; complete managed services for MEDITECH – support and maintenance of all applications; legacy system support and maintenance; revenue cycle optimization; and digital health.

Nordic’s extensive knowledge of the patient experience and the healthcare ecosystem enables us to identify and deliver measurable outcomes for healthcare organizations. From initial assessment through design and implementation of customized solutions, we listen to understand strategic priorities and operational and technology needs. Clients turn to us again and again, because we share industry best practices and put partnership and collaboration first, all to improve quality of care and financial sustainability. Please visit us at Booth #218


DrFirst

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Booth 313

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

Since 2008, we have provided MEDITECH with innovative EHR enhancements, DrFirst’s e-prescribing and medication history are integrated with MEDITECH, giving clinicians access to best-in-class solutions. Adding SmartSig technology to safely translate and infer medication history data can streamline medication reconciliation by up to 50%. Other integrations that support e-prescribing include price transparency, electronic prior authorization, and controlled substance modules.

Don’t miss Ii: Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 2:20 PM MST. Ben G. Long, MD, and Brooke Brown, RN, Magnolia Regional Health Center. Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a significant burden on patients and health systems nationwide. Hear how Magnolia Regional Health Center’s Nurse Navigator program reduced prescription gaps in standard medication treatment for CHF and improved medication adherence using digital tools, clinical documentation, and report writing in MEDITECH Expanse.


Vyne Medical

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Booth 228

Contact: Meg Michael, chief client officer
meg.michael@vynecorp.com
336 254.2951

Is your health system struggling under the weight of a heavy administrative burden? Vyne Medical solutions can help. Trusted nationwide as a leading healthcare workflow tool for 25+ years, our software functions as a suite of products that can be customized to meet a health system’s unique processes and needs. By harnessing automation to complete the front-end’s mundane, manual tasks like capturing, managing, and exchanging disparate data, our software integrates with your EMR system to automatically index captured data directly to the patient record, providing significant time and money savings. Vyne Medical’s newest innovative tool, FormUSign Powered by Docubee, is digitizing and automating traditional form management in healthcare. By facilitating the creation of a reusable template that can be easily shared among multiple users, FormUSign allows users to choose specific fields for automatic population. Visit booth 228 to schedule a product demo or to learn more about our healthcare-specific solutions, plus get a preview of other exciting upcoming products.

News 5/22/24

May 21, 2024 News 5 Comments

Top News

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A Business Insider piece titled “Oracle’s deadly gamble” says that Oracle’s Larry Ellison had a vision that acquiring Cerner and then applying Oracle’s AI models to its data would create the EHR of the future, but found out afterward that “Cerner was a total mess.”

Points from the piece:

  • Cerner was receptive to the acquisition when approached in 2021 because problems with its architecture and software were piling up.
  • Oracle took a black eye when care lapses and deaths in the VA system were attributed to the Cerner system. One Oracle executive describes the VA contract as a “shackle” that distracts Ellison from his grander vision.
  • Oracle has stopped taking customization requests from the VA because every facility wanted the system to work exactly their way, which was a luxury they had with the VA’s custom-written VistA. VA officials hoped to force standardization by implementing Cerner.
  • Company executives admit that much of the client dissatisfaction was created when Oracle laid off experienced Cerner resources.
  • The article notes that Ellison’s big bet on applying AI to Cerner’s patient data is losing value as clients and their data move to Epic, including flagship accounts such as Intermountain and UPMC.
  • Providence’s chief strategy and digital offer says that people perceive that “Cerner is circling the drain.”

Webinars

June 6 (Thursday) noon ET. “From Data to Decisions: The Vital Combination of AI and Human Expertise in Patient Care.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: David Wetherhold, MD, CMIO of ambulatory systems, Scripps Health; Dana Darger, RPh, director of pharmacy, Monument Health Rapid City Hospital; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. In this Epic Med Management Fireside Chat, two health system leaders will share real-world examples of how AI is working in concert with their clinicians to streamline medication management by populating medication histories into Epic. generating initial drafts of patient conversations, and summarizing complex information. The presenters will also cover the latest developments on the critical and expanding role of pharmacists in patient care.

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


Sales

  • St. Vincent’s Private Hospital in Ireland will implement Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise imaging software.
  • Children’s Nebraska selects remote patient monitoring technology from Locus Health.
  • Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, and Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust in England will roll out a shared Oracle Health system in 2026.
  • Centra (VA) will enhance its stroke care with Sevaro’s OneCall telemedicine service.
  • WakeMed Health & Hospitals will implement Regard’s automated clinical data review and insights software across its three hospitals in North Carolina.
  • University Hospitals (OH) selects insulin management software from Glytec.
  • Beacon Health System will implement Notable’s AI platform to reach out to patients who have had diagnostic procedures and tests ordered and then allow them to schedule their appointments digitally.

People

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CareCloud promotes Crystal Williams to COO.

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Apprio hires Srinivasan Krishnan, MS (Greenway Health) as CTO.


Announcements and Implementations

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St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute (MO) implements Story Health’s virtual and asynchronous care program for AFib patients.

WellStar Health (GA) co-develops and pilots patient check-in software that incorporates Clear Verification technology.


Privacy and Security

Ascension’s May 21 update contains no new information about the restoration of their systems from a May 8 cyberattack.

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The American Medical Association, state medical societies, CHIME, and AHIMA ask HHS to confirm that Change Healthcare and UnitedHealth Group, not providers, will be responsible for HIPAA breach notifications related to their cyberattack.


Sponsor Updates

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  • Impact Advisors donates $10,000 to the Midwest Health Foundation in support of its UChicago Medicine AdventHealth GlenOaks School and Transition Program.
  • AvaSure announces the winners of its 2023 AvaPrize Winners for Virtual Care Excellence.
  • Clinical Architecture sponsors the AMIA 2024 Clinical Informatics Conference May 21-23 in Minneapolis.
  • Nordic publishes a new episode of its “In Network” podcast titled “Designing for Health: Interview with Diana Anderson, MD.”
  • Divurgent will present at the E-Health Conference and Tradeshow May 27 in Vancouver.
  • Ellkay wins a KLAS Points of Light Award for its collaborative work on closing care gaps for HEDIS measures through natural language processing.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 5/20/24

May 18, 2024 News 1 Comment

Top News

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The all-important KLAS report on the US acute care EHR market finds that Epic gained 153 hospitals in 2023 while losing none, while all other vendors showed a net loss of hospitals and beds. Epic now holds a 39% market share of US hospitals, representing 52% of beds.

Oracle Health finished last in losing a net 71 hospitals representing 15,000 beds.

Most of Oracle Health’s wins since 2016 have been in standalone hospitals of under 200 beds. Those hospitals aren’t buying due to economic pressures.

Meditech, which enjoyed an all-time high customer retention rate of 84% in 2022, saw that drop to the lowest-ever 30%, with 25% of that due to M&A.


Reader Comments

From Benny Jets: “Re: article naming the top 10 healthcare AI companies. Most of the list is obvious, but the interesting name is Merative. This is the IBM Watson Health spinout that is led by Gerry McCarthy. In two years, they have reversed the ridiculous IBM strategy and have led each of the core solutions back to the top of their respective markets. Big tech shouldn’t be allowed in healthcare. It is just a matter of time before Oracle drives Cerner into the ground and Francisco Partners buys and fixes that too.” IBM sold the business – which includes the former Truven, Merge Healthcare, and Curam — to Francisco Partners for a reported $1 billion in 2022, after which it hired Gerry – who has spent nearly 35 years in our industry — and renamed itself. I’m not linking to the article in the UK-based magazine because that publication reeks strongly of pay-for-play, it does not include the criteria of how it chooses its many click-baity Top 10 lists, and nobody involved seems to have any experience or knowledge about healthcare. I also don’t know how much AI is used in Merative’s offerings or why even cursory research should have caught the May 2024 list’s inclusion of Babylon Health, a pretty scammy company that filed bankruptcy and died an ugly death last summer. But I agree that Merative is flying under the radar and seemingly shedding the Watson Health baggage.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Most poll respondents support the idea of a mandatory, government-issued national patient identifier, although thoughtful comments address the realities of making that happen.

New poll to your right or here: does your business card or email signature list a certification or fellowship credential?

I’m watching more YouTube videos as their quality has improved – documentaries, concert videos, and travel recaps. My use and satisfaction has always been limited by intrusive ads (not Ryan Reynolds again), but I wasn’t willing to spend $18.99 per month to avoid them. I was happy to find that I don’t need to since YouTube Premium is only $13.99 per month or $11.67 if paid annually, provided that you buy it from the website and not the IOS app, where Apple’s 30% skim will cost you an extra $5 per month. There’s also a 90-day free trial. I’m enjoying the ad-free experience, the ability to download videos, playing videos in the background, and the surprisingly strong Apple Music, which I would use constantly if I didn’t already have Spotify Premium. Dig beyond the narcissistic, TikTok style dreck that is good only for wasting time while stunting your brain and you’ll find some solid content out there. Not only that, the experience is stupendously better when played on the big screen.

I’m finding that I use ChatGPT more for web searching. It’s like a pleasant vacation from Google’s ads, spam, and SEO-juiced junk content. I see why Google started holding emergency meetings basically the day that OpenAI released ChatGPT 3.5.

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Readers funded the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Ms. I in New York, who asked for STEM manipulatives for her class of three year olds. She reports, “I hope this note finds you well and filled with the same warmth and gratitude with which our classroom overflows, thanks to your incredible generosity. As a teacher, witnessing the excitement and enthusiasm radiating from my students as they engage with the STEM supplies you’ve provided fills my heart with. Your generosity has transformed our classroom into a dynamic learning environment where curiosity thrives, creativity flourishes, and innovation knows no bounds.”


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Waystar is reportedly considering a June IPO after tabling those plans last year due to market conditions.


Sales

  • Sturdy Health will implement Notable’s healthcare operations platform, integrated with Oracle Health, for patient outreach and self-service.

People

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Cleveland Clinic promotes Sarah Hatchett, MBA to SVP/CIO.


Announcements and Implementations

The Toronto newspaper covers the Meditech Expanse rollout in 23 hospitals in northeastern Ontario.

Epic issues a rare press release in recapping the 9,000-attendee XGM (Expert Group Meetings) that concluded on May 9. It seems like a university’s Alumni Weekend, where people flock back to campus to once again to reconnect with with the like-minded in the hallowed halls, sit around the campfire, and pose for treehouse pictures. All that’s missing is a football game.

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HCA Healthcare runs a Q&A with Chief Nursing Informatics Officer Sherri Hess, RN, MS-IS.


Privacy and Security

Ascension has issued no ransomware attack updates since May 15.


Other

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Therapists are making more money as influencers who crank out empathetic TikTok self-help videos than they made seeing patients, according to The Cut, which quoted the therapist above who is making $1 million per year via brand deals, selling merchandise, and charging for subscriptions. Still, that therapist still warns that he’s burned out from making videos, dealing with hate comments, and working under a system where “Daddy Algorithm is my boss and I get a performance review every single day based on an algorithm that’s mysterious and doesn’t make any sense.”


Sponsor Updates

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  • HCTec sponsors the AltaMed Foundation’s annual golf tournament, supporting patients of the AltaMed Medical and Dental Group (CA).
  • QGenda announces new and add-on customers of its enterprise credentialing solution, including UT Health San Antonio, Crouse Health, OB Hospitalist Group, and Parkland Health.
  • Availity wins two Bronze Stevie Awards for sales and customer service.
  • Wolters Kluwer Health launches Ovid Nutrition and Health, an exclusive interdisciplinary health research database.
  • Redox releases a new Diagnosing Healthtech Podcast, “Data interoperability now: Why healthcare can’t afford to wait.”
  • Hospital Universidad del Norte in Colombia selects Sectra’s enterprise imaging technology.
  • Spok publishes an e-book, “Six strategic advantages of consolidated contact centers.”

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 5/17/24

May 16, 2024 News 6 Comments

Top News

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The House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs committees introduce legislation related to the VA’s implementation of Oracle Health:

  • Rollouts will be paused until the facilities that are live on the system “have recovered to return to normal operational levels.”
  • The project and the VA’s Oracle Health contract will be cancelled two years after the bill is passed unless the VA can show metrics that prove overall improvement.
  • The metrics that the VA reports to Congress would be expanded to include user adoption, employee satisfaction, and employee retention.
  • The VA will be required to provide an additional report to Congress that provides the cost and module-by-module status of its legacy VistA system.

Reader Comments

From Slow Green: “Re: Greenway Health. Tiffani Misencik, chief revenue officer, has departed.” I compared the company’s executive page to the year-ago version and note these changes:

  • No longer listed: Tiffani Misencik, chief revenue officer; Terri Gonzalez, chief HR officer.
  • Newly added: Frank Piraino, chief of staff; Mark Goodwin, SVP of Greenway Revenue Services; Brandi Kline, VP of marketing; Nallajerla Murthy. GM of Greenway Health India.

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From Sprinter: “Re: Vince Ciotti’s HIS-tory series. Do you have a link to the file?” The 1,400-page file that the late Vince wrote for HIStalk over the years covering the industry from the 1960s to the 1990s is here. I ask him in a 2019 conversation what his epitaph would say, to which he replied, “If I could be remembered for anything, it would probably be my HIS-tory files, which I thank you for posting over such a long time, two and a half years. I hope some of the future CIOs read them and learn from them. I hope that’s what they remember me by, the guy that warned them about not repeating these mistakes of the past.”


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The Wall Street Journal notes that hospitals raised prices 7.7% in April, the largest increase in 13 years.


Sales

  • Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin will offer 24×7 virtual urgent care visits via MyChart from KeyCare.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic will roll out a “patients like this one” type tool to its users in Indiana this summer. It will compare the active patient’s chart to Epic’s Cosmos database to help doctors make decisions about treatment options.

Meditech reports that its clients took three of the top five top digital maturity scores among NHS trusts and Integrated Care Systems.

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Get-to-Market Health announces Commercial Health Check, a fixed-price review of a client’s go-to-market efforts that details areas of strength and potential improvement. The company’s principals are Steve Shihadeh and MP Brock Zimmerman, who have spent their entire careers in digital health.

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MassDevelopment issues $400 million in tax-exempt bonds to fund Beth Israel Lahey Health’s real estate needs and its upgrades to Epic.

Transcarent adds AI-powered patient navigation to its system, which provides a single app and log-in for members to access their benefits, obtain medical advice, and initiate virtual care.

Athenahealth announces GA of AthenaOne modules for women’s health and urgent care.

Epic announces that two of its hospitals in the Netherlands are the first to use its AI-powered patient summaries, presumably in the Dutch language.


Privacy and Security

Ascension has posted no news on its Cybersecurity Event Update. Regional updates indicate that pharmacies still can’t fill prescriptions, patient care may be delayed, and results from imaging and tests may take longer. From press reports:

  • One patient whose doctor hadn’t seen her pulled out her own IV and left.
  • Another said they can’t get their scheduled chemotherapy.
  • A post-surgery patient couldn’t get pain meds because there’s no record of the procedure.
  • Patient class action lawsuits have been filed.
  • A family member of a patient who died at an Ascension hospitals says they can’t proceed with cremation because the hospital can’t access her cause of death.
  • An ultrasound tech says that some areas have working fax machines, while others don’t, adding, “We don’t really have a lot of direction from anyone in upper admin or management.”
  • A nurse at an Ascension hospital in Nashville describes the situation as “pure and utter chaos from the second you walk in the door.”
  • Ascension Via Christi sent several ICU nurses home after they raised concerns about inadequate staffing.
  • Some nurses worry that a mistake made due to the lack of electronic patient safety checks, such as those offered by drug dispensing cabinets and bedside barcoding, could jeopardize their licenses.
  • The local paper reports that Ascension Seton medical offices in the Highland Lakes area of Texas have had their systems restored.

Australia’s federal government investigates a ransomware attack of Melbourne-based MediSecure, which offers an e-prescribing system. The company says that it has been affected by a cybersecurity incident. Its website and phone lines are down. It suspects that the incident originated at one of its vendors.


Sponsor Updates

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  • Five9 employees volunteer in their local communities as part of Five9 Day.
  • First Databank expands its Meducation Solution medication instructions to include translations of Hindi and Punjabi.
  • Health Data Movers publishes a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast titled “Advancing Health Equity through Technology: A Conversation with Dr. Julia Skapik.”
  • FinThrive releases a new Health Rethink Podcast, “Health Equity is Earned, and Learned!”
  • Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast, “Building a Purpose-Driven IT Organization.”
  • Inovalon publishes a new case study, “Guardian Angels Senior Services Sees Overtime Drop with Smart Scheduling.”
  • The HITea with Grace Podcast features KeyCare Chief Medical Officer Carrie Nelson, MD, “Dr. Carrie Nelson Spills the Tea on Telehealth Patient Safety & Quality.” 

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 5/15/24

May 14, 2024 News Comments Off on News 5/15/24

Top News

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Ascension’s most recent update from Monday evening reaffirms that it will take some time – no timelines were announced — for it to return to normal operation following its May 8 cyberattack.

The update confirms that the attack involved ransomware.

Ascension also added region-specific updates for its patients. It warns that it is unable to accept credit card payments, wait times will be extended, and that some of its retail pharmacies cannot fill prescriptions.


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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Specialty care coordination company Switchboard Health raises $6.5 million in seed funding. Health IT veteran Derek Baird co-founded the company in 2022.

A Black Book survey of 30,000 physician office leaders and practitioners about their response to the Change Healthcare outage finds that 92% of medical practices are navigating short-term fixes and long-term vendor solutions. Nearly all complained that they first heard about the cyberattack from sources other than Change Healthcare. Black Book also notes that healthcare organizations that are negotiating new clearinghouse contracts should consider the value of the data that is contained in their claims, rights to which may have been signed over to their vendor in their original contracts. The top-rated competitors to Change Healthcare are Veradigm Payerpath, Waystar, Experian, and Availity.

Sturdy Health (MA) implements Notable Health’s AI-powered patient engagement, intake, and payments software.

Adam Selipsky, MBA, CEO of Amazon Web Services, will leave the company after three years. He will be replaced by AWS sales and marketing SVP Matt Garman, MS, MBA.

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CareCloud reports Q1 results: revenue down 13%, EPS –$0.02 versus –$0.28, beating earnings expectations but falling short on revenue, sending shares down sharply and valuing the company at $30 million.

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Augmedix reports Q1 results: revenue up 40%, EPS –$0.12 versus –$0.14, beating expectations for both. Shares dropped 51% as the company announced lowered revenue expectations, which it attributed to providers pausing to evaluate competing AI offerings. The company’s market cap is $56 million.


Sales

  • Elbert Memorial Hospital (GA) selects telehealth services from Equum Medical.
  • Meditech chooses Ellkay to provide interface services, including supporting the technical infrastructure involved in implementing Expanse as Meditech-as-a-Service.

People

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Alpha II promotes Ashley Womack to CEO.

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Censinet names David Woska, PhD (PHD Consulting Services) CISO.

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Justin Jacobson, MBA (Microsoft) joins Symplr as managing director/SVP of its contract and supplier management business.

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Suzanne Delbanco, PhD, MPH, founding CEO of The Leapfrog Group and co-founder and executive director of Catalyst for Payment Reform, has died of cancer.


Announcements and Implementations

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LG Electronics announces Primefocus Health, which offers digital health solutions for in-home care.

Nuffield Health, the UK’s largest healthcare charity, goes live on a new digital booking experience for health assessments with assistance from Lumeon.

Dandelion Health, which offers a real-world data and clinical AI platform, launches a clinical dataset of 200,000 patients who are taking GLP-1 drugs, as extracted from the systems of its non-academic health system partners.

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Researchers that include Eric Topol, MD introduce medical image interpretation dataset MedInterp, which contains 13 million annotated instances across three modalities. It will support the development of the “learnable orchestrator” that they call MedVersa.

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Meta will shut down its enterprise communication system Workplace and is recommending Zoom-owned Workvivo as its replacement.


Government and Politics

HHS offers new funding opportunities for projects related to accelerating the adoption of health IT in behavioral healthcare settings, and to developing novel ways to evaluate and improve the quality of health care data used by AI solutions.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare will likely end its contract with the bankrupt Idaho HIE unless the exchange improves transparency over security, financials, and employees. The HIE has spent $94 million of mostly federal tax funds, but a watchdog found that the 10-year-old organization has instituted few accountability measures.


Privacy and Security

Johnson Memorial Hospital (IN) President and CEO David Dunkle, MD says that the hospital is still feeling the effects of the ransomware attack that crippled its computer network in 2021: “We are forced to spend millions on cybersecurity, and we’re still suffering from higher insurance rates because of our attack, and we pay more than our peers, our same size peers do, because we had an attack. We see what Ascension is going through. My heart breaks for them because I’ve been there.”


Other

OpenAI’s newly announced GPT4o includes integration with the Be My Eyes app for the vision impaired. The ability for a blind person to hail a taxi as shown at the 0:35 mark is spectacular.


Sponsor Updates

  • Availity and Waystar rank highest in physician customer satisfaction with clearinghouses during and after the Change Healthcare ransomware attack.
  • CereCore releases a new podcast, “Cybersecurity Expert from Defense Weighs in on Healthcare’s Opportunities.”
  • Consensus Cloud Solutions will sponsor the Colorado HIMSS Spring Conference May 15-16 in Denver.
  • CloudWave will exhibit at the HIMSS New England Spring Conference May 16 in Norwood, MA.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 5/13/24

May 12, 2024 News 5 Comments

Top News

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Ascension’s 140 hospitals in 19 states remain offline following a ransomware attack on Thursday. An unstated number of the facilities are diverting ambulances.

The health system says restoring the systems “will take some time to complete,” adding, “we will be utilizing downtime procedures for some time.”

Ascension advises patients to bring in their own appointment notes and prescription information. A hospital family nurse said, “Patients are getting harmed. No one can tell you otherwise.”

A patient who was hospitalized when the attacked started reports, “It was like 1980. Everyone’s running to get pieces of paper, charts, clipboards. They have no computers whatsoever. It was chaos.” The patient, a colon cancer survivor who was vomiting blood, left the hospital two days after admission because he still hadn’t been seen by a doctor.

CNN reports that the Russia-linked ransomware group Black Basta was responsible for the attack. The federal government issued a warning about its ransomware variant on Friday.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Here are the results from last week’s poll. For me, the convenience of co-locating a medical and dental practice with a big-box store doesn’t hold value since plenty of doctors and dentists have offices in easily accessible locations. Some respondent comments that I’m paraphrasing:

  • Walmart shut it down because they can generate higher margins elsewhere. The company benefits only from bringing in more dollars per square foot, not from supporting “healthier communities.”
  • Health systems know that primary care and pediatrics are loss leaders, but Walmart missed that fact. They can’t sell enough groceries and TV sets to make up the cost.
  • Walmart didn’t differentiate its services. It was just a bigger box with more expensive executives who were disconnected from any kind of healthcare transformation. Still, the company probably isn’t done with healthcare and an acquisition is likely.

New poll to your right or here: Should the federal government issue a national patient identifier?

I was pondering another poll: which platform’s users have the apparent lowest IQ or technical capability, Facebook or Nextdoor?


I always offer a Summer Doldrums Sponsorship Special, which usually involves some free months for the first year. Contact Lorre. Former sponsors also get a deal for returning. All gain visibility with the most influential people in the industry, who read HIStalk quietly but religiously.


Webinars

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


Sales

  • The Centers chooses Netsmart CareFabric, which includes the MyAvatar EHR.

People

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Industry long-timer Dann Lemerand (Navv Systems) joins Otter Products as healthcare vertical lead. Dann created the 4,200-member HIStalk Fan Club on LinkedIn many years ago, of which I can’t cite any specific benefits except to my ego when it gets bruised.


Government and Politics

Three members of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee call for the VA to take advantage of its recently renegotiated contract with Oracle Health – which changed the contract’s five-year term to five, one-year terms – to strengthen accountability and oversight terms. They note that poor service delivery in the previous five-year period resulted in just a few hundred thousands of dollars in credits being extended toward the $10 billion contract.


Sponsor Updates

  • Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new “UpToDate Point of Care Report: An enterprise approach to unify healthcare.”
  • EVisit announces a business development partnership with digital consulting firm Monsterlab.
  • TruBridge announces Multiview’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning software as its preferred financial management solution for its customers.
  • Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Farhan Ahmad and Jon Keevil, MD.”
  • PerfectServe honors 150 outstanding nurses in its fourth annual Nurses of Note Awards program.
  • Sonifi Health will exhibit at the HIMSS Texas Regional Conference May 13-16 in Grapevine.
  • Tegria publishes a new case study, “Custom Demo Environment Accelerates EHR Adoption.”

The following HIStalk Sponsors are named MedTech Breakthrough Award winners:

  • Amenities – best online search and scheduling solution
  • Nym – health administration innovation award
  • Bamboo Health – best care orchestration platform
  • Artera- best patient communication solution
  • Elsevier – AI innovation award
  • Symplr – best provider data management platform
  • Inovalon – best data visualization solution
  • Waystar – healthcare payments innovation award

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 5/10/24

May 9, 2024 News 2 Comments

Top News

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Ascension’s 140 hospitals and 2,600 healthcare sites in 19 states divert patients and go back to paper documentation following an unspecified cybersecurity event that forced the health system to take down “select technology network systems” Wednesday morning.

Ascension has urged its business partners to disconnect from its systems, which would suggest a ransomware attack.

Hospital visitors say that they saw younger doctors struggling to use fax machines, pneumatic tube systems, and paper prescription pads for the first time.


Reader Comments

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From Rashaverak: “Re Steward bankruptcy filing. Hoping that the Commonwealth of MA sues Cerberus Capital to recoup some of the nearly $1 billion profit via its fleecing of Steward’s MA hospitals. Steward spun off its MA real estate to a real estate holding company for $1.25 billion in 2016. It appears that none of those dollars went into improving Steward patient care, but more likely to Cerberus’ pockets.” Blame the game, not the player, for employing immoral but not illegal behavior to do what private equity (aka pirate equity) firms do best – buy a company, load it with debt, pay investors all their money back immediately, and then walk away with bro high-fiving when the business is financially starved because it can’t even pay the interest on the loans that were taken out in its behalf. I’m sure that Steward chairman and CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD is anguishing over the plight of patients and communities from his $40 million yacht that operates out of the Galapagos Islands (one of two that he owns). He awarded himself a $100 million bonus when Cerebrus quadrupled its investment by selling the land from under its hospitals, pocketing $800 million.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Last chance for HIStalk sponsors to get a free mention in my guide to the MUSE Inspire conference. I have just one response versus the several companies that are exhibiting, so my work will be minimal.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CareCloud hires an investment bank to review its capital structure after it turns down an unsolicited acquisition offer. CCLD shares have lost 64% of their value in the past 12 months and are 91% off their all-time high, valuing the company at $17 million.

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A Bloomberg report that is based on interviews with former Cerner clients and employees concludes that the business lost at least 12 large clients in 2023. Bold product ideas have been placed on hold as Oracle’s engineers struggle with moving the Cerner product to the cloud. Internal documents predict that Oracle Health sales will decline 5% this fiscal year due to the VA project’s hold. Insiders say that Larry Ellison’s boasting that most Cerner clients have been moved to the cloud is accurate, but misleading – it’s a bunch of small medical practices, but no huge health systems that are likely to have customized the product.


People

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NextGen Healthcare hires Jacob Sims (Gainwell Technologies) as CTO and Garo Doudian (Moody’s Analytics) as CIO/CISO.

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Nisha Gandhi, RN, MBA (AbleLight) joins KeyCare as chief growth officer.

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Nordic hires Stuart McLean, MBA (Alvarez and Marshal) as interim CEO following the retirement of Jim Costanzo. The company also lists Uyon Johnson, MBA (Bon Secours Mercy Health) as interim chief human resources officer.  


Announcements and Implementations

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Valley Health System (NJ) opens a new “smart hospital” as its flagship in Paramus, which uses Meditech Expanse, in-room monitors to allow patients to review their medical information and manage room environment, RTLS-based display of the names of caregivers who enter the room, and AI-powered fall monitoring.

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Customer experience app vendor Ushur releases a white labeled medication adherence solution for payers and pharmacy benefit managers.


Privacy and Security

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Some systems at Palomar Health Medical Group (CA) remain down after the organization took them offline following suspicious computer activity on Sunday.


Sponsor Updates

  • Symplr launches a new Symplr Workforce mobile app feature to enable healthcare professionals to nominate nurses for a DAISY Award.
  • FinThrive publishes a new case study, “McCurtain Memorial Hospital Cuts Weekly Verification Time by 30 Hours with Real-Time Insurance Discovery.”
  • Arcadia publishes a study that finds that nearly half of all healthcare data is not used in decision-making.
  • HCTec will sponsor the Texas Regional HIMSS Spring Conference May 14-16 in Grapevine.
  • The Medicomp Systems Tell Me Where IT Hurts Podcast earns an honorable mention in the PR News Digital Awards program.
  • Mobile Heartbeat partners with technology consulting firm Signet.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 5/8/24

May 7, 2024 News 4 Comments

Top News

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Multi-state hospital operator Steward Health Care files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and seeks up to $300 million in financing to keep the doors of its 31 remaining hospitals open.

The company blames declining reimbursements from government payers, rising labor costs, and inflation for its current financial state.

The private equity sharks who looted the business and walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars weren’t mentioned.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Today I learned (by experimentation) that I can project photos on my phone to the Roku device and thus to our non-smart TV using AirPlay. Flipping through vacation and family pictures on the big screen is a lot more interesting than squinting at them in my palm.

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Happy 60th birthday to BASIC. Kudos to those keyboard warriors from the sepia-toned tech trenches of yesteryear who paid the bills or found new careers after mastering DIM, INSTR, and SHELL.


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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Tech-enabled musculoskeletal care management company Livara Health raises $15 million in Series B funding. The company, formerly known as SpineZone, has raised $27 million since it was launched in 2014 by brothers and orthopedic surgeons Kian and Kamshad Raiszadeh.

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Rad AI raises $50 million in Series B financing. The company, which has raised a total of $79 million, offers AI-powered radiology reporting workflow software.

Healthcare cybersecurity solutions vendor Blackwell Security raises $13 million in additional funding and hires Geyer Jones (Cylera) as its first CEO.

Nworah Ayogu, MD, MBA, general manager and chief medical officer of Amazon Clinic, has left the company to join healthcare-focused venture capital firm Thrive Capital.


Sales

  • Geisinger Health Plan will implement OncoHealth’s value management and virtual cancer care services. The company’s CEO is industry long-timer Rick Dean.

People

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Cone Health (NC) promotes Keith Jones, MHA to CIO.

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Kyle Armbrester, MBA (CVS Health’s Signify Health) joins Datavant as CEO.

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Dean Dalili, MD, MHCM (DispatchHealth) joins DeepScribe as chief medical officer.

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Manifold hires industry long-timer Alex Akers (Health Catalyst) as VP of growth.

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Nick Raup, MS (Optum) joins E4health as SVP of AI and automation solutions.


Announcements and Implementations

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WVU Medicine Thomas Hospitals goes live on Epic.

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Arrowhead Regional Medical Center (CA) works with Tegria to redesign its clinical decision-making governance structure.

MetroHealth (OH) implements Ovatient’s virtual care services. MetroHealth and MUSC Health (SC) created Ovatient in 2022.

NHS National Services Scotland goes live on Rhapsody’s EMPI, hosted in Microsoft Azure.

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NeuroFlow, which offers behavioral health technology and analytics, launches perinatal and postpartum care pathways to support behavioral health after pregnancy.

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A new KLAS report on virtual care platforms finds that those that are offered by Teladoc Health and Caregility have seen broad adoption, with Teladoc Health’s InTouch seen as a critical tool for expanding specialty coverage. Customers of Amwell report problems with slow development, inadequate support, and high costs, with Epic clients in particular considering replacing it with Epic’s outpatient virtual care offering. Andor Health was noted as being especially flexible, while Best in KLAS 2024 winner for virtual care platforms EVisit is seen as solid for outpatient use cases.


Government and Politics

A health insurance broker sues several companies over a scheme in which a data marketing company gave consumers low-cost health insurance in return for allowing their internet and cellphone usage to be electronically tracked and sold to marketing companies. Customers complained after finding that their “junk” insurance plans offered little coverage.


Sponsor Updates

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  • AdvancedMD employees volunteer with numerous organizations during the company’s day of service.
  • Atrys in Brazil selects enterprise imaging technology from Agfa HealthCare.
  • Five9 publishes a white paper titled “Exact Sciences Achieves 45% Containment Rate.”
  • Arrive Health publishes a new whitepaper, “The Crushing Weight of Prior Authorization – And What You Can Do About it Today.”
  • Artera will exhibit at the OCHIN Learning Forum May 13-16 in New Orleans.
  • Nordic publishes a new episode of its “In Network” podcast titled “Designing for Health: Interview with Farhan Ahmad and Jon Keevil, MD.”
  • Ascom announces that Premier Inc. has awarded it national group purchasing agreement for its clinical workflow solutions.
  • Care.ai adds new members to its Smart Hospital Maturity Model advisory panel.
  • Clearwater Chief Risk Officer and Head of Consulting Services and Client Success Jon Moore authors “AI Governance and Strategy Alignment: Empowering Effective Decision-Making.”
  • Symplr is recognized as a US Best Managed Company.
  • Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of The Informonster Podcast, “Data Quality in Healthcare: Decoding the PIQI Framework.”
  • CloudWave will exhibit at the HIMSS New England Chapter Spring Conference May 16 in Norwood, MA.
  • Divurgent will present at the HIMSS Virginia Data and Analytics Symposium May 9 in Staunton.
  • Healthcare IT Leaders announces it has been named a Workday Staffing Partner.
  • The Pacific Islands Primary Care Association and partner HealthEfficient announce that three community health centers involved in their federally-funded Pacific Islands Electronic Health Initiative have implemented EClinicalWorks.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 5/6/24

May 5, 2024 News 4 Comments

Top News

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Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asks the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division to investigate the pricing algorithms that are used by MultiPlan to reduce insurer payments to providers for out-of-network claims.

The senator questions whether the practice constitutes price-fixing.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Just under half of poll respondents who are covered by a non-compete agreement say they’ll be more open to changing jobs once those are gone.

New poll to your right or here: What is the single biggest reason that Walmart Health failed? The “all of the above” option is compelling but intentionally absent. Most interesting to me is why the company so quickly about-faced from “we’re expanding to 75 locations by the end of 2024” to “we’re shutting the whole thing down because it’s not profitable.” I would guess that finding and paying staff was harder than Walmart expected. I also questioned from the beginning whether the “doc in the big box” strategy of Walmart and its equally struggling drugstore competitors is sound when most of us are surrounded by the offices of providers who work for health systems, themselves, or giant corporations such as Optum. There’s just not much opportunity for scale and brand recognition for offering primary care, which is financially challenging even without trying to carve out the financial returns that investors in publicly traded companies expect.


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

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HIStalk sponsors that are participating in the MUSE Inspire conference later this month: tell me about it so I can include your information in my conference guide.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Spok announces Q1 results: revenue up 5%, EPS $0.21 versus $0.16. SPOK shares are up 11% over the past 12 months, valuing the company at $291 million.

FDA qualifies the Apple Watch as the first digital health tool to monitor atrial fibrillation during clinical studies.

A Wall Street Journal article on AI-created digital twins profiles Unlearn, which uses the health data of a clinical trials participant to forecast how they would progress in the placebo group without denying them the potentially beneficial treatment. The CEO says that a top reason that people don’t participate in clinical trials is that they don’t want to be randomized into the control group that receives placebo rather than the therapy that motivated them to sign up in the first place.


Sales

  • Hospice of the Chesapeake implements Netsmart’s MyUnity EHR.
  • Intermountain Health will deploy Nuance’s DAX enterprise-wide to automate clinical documentation.

People

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John Seguin (PT Solutions Physical Therapy) joins RevSpring as VP of business development, West Coast.

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Industry long-timer Peter Witonsky (Arctevity) joins Innovative Consulting Group as chief revenue officer.


Announcements and Implementations

Sectra and Leica Biosystems earn FDA 510(k) clearance to use DICOM images for pathology diagnostics, which allows replacing proprietary formats and technologies.

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Bardavon, which offers workers’ compensation and musculoskeletal health technology, launches Recovery+, a health coaching platform for recovery and return-to-work.


Government and Politics

Kentucky becomes the first state to decriminalize medical errors that are due to mistakes rather than gross negligence or intentional misconduct.


Privacy and Security

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Atlanta-based staffing company Insight Global will pay $2.7 million to resolve federal False Claims Act charges that it failed to protect the health information of COVID-19 contract tracing subjects under its CDC-funded contract.


Sponsor Updates

  • Surescripts launches the third season of its award-winning podcast, “There’s a Better Way.”
  • Clearsense earns the Validated Data Stream designation from NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program.
  • First Databank will present at the NCPDP Annual Technology & Business Conference May 7 in Scottsdale.
  • Optimum Healthcare IT will present at Knowledge 24 May 8 in Las Vegas.
  • RxLightning founder and CEO Julia Regan receives the Rising Entrepreneur of the Year Award at TechPoint’s annual Mira Awards gala.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 5/3/24

May 2, 2024 News 9 Comments

Top News

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UnitedHealth Group CEO Sir Andrew Witty tells the Senate Finance Committee – which was questioning him about the Change Healthcare cyberattack – that the half-trillion dollar market cap UHG isn’t all that big. He commented that the company doesn’t own hospitals or drug companies and employs just 10,000 physicians, although he acknowledged that another 80,000 doctors choose to work with the company.

He blamed the ransomware attack on the outdated cybersecurity tools of Change Healthcare, which he says UHG was in the process of upgrading following its October 2022 acquisition of the company. He admitted that two-factor authentication was not implemented.

Witty also admits that he personally made the difficult decision to pay the $22 million ransom that the hackers demanded in hopes of keeping patient information private.

Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) went after Witty hard over lax cybersecurity and monopolistic practices. When Witty touted the company’s offer of credit monitoring to those who were affected by the breach, Wyden chastised him that “credit monitoring is the thoughts and prayers of data breaches.”


Reader Comments

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From MizzuPharmD: “Re: Liberty Hospital. Will be acquired by University of Kansas Health System. May drive antitrust scrutiny.” The two organizations have consummated their mating as was originally announced in November. Lawmakers considered blocking the deal in expressing territorial indignation that a Kansas health system would take over a Missouri hospital. The acquirer runs Epic, while the acquiree runs (or at least did at some point) Altera Digital Health / Allscripts Sunrise.

From Oh the Irony: “Re: Epic. Interesting comment considering the company’s usual take on non-competes, ha!” Judy Faulkner says in a “Hey Judy” post that early-days Epic decided not to challenge a competitor’s theft of Epic’s internal information, concluding that, “Even if someone copies everything in our filing cabinets, it won’t make much of a difference. The corporate culture can’t be easily copied.”

From Dr. Bass: “Re: Walmart Health Centers. Wonder what they will do with all the patient records they need to maintain for years?” They will need to export them from Epic into some sort of retrievable archive, I assume, which is probably easy but not common since few Epic customers have replaced the system or closed their doors. Negotiating a contract cancellation with Epic might be harder, especially since they just signed it in 2021.

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From Relayer: “Re: Change Healthcare breach. The portal and underlying systems that caused the problem – and that don’t have multifactor authentication – are the original RelayHealth products that McKesson acquired in 2006. McKesson then ‘merged’ the business with Change Healthcare even though McKesson kept a 70% stake and made billions when Change went public in mid-2019. Acquired companies lose intellectual capital and don’t focus on the stepchild products, so it’s not surprising that these products become vulnerable after being sold off and orphaned.” The breach, as well as the government’s unhappy scrutiny over Change’s lack of two-factor authentication, has raised the user access bar for all software vendors, and likely health systems as well. It’s a squirmy position to be in when members of Congress angrily ask you to defend why you didn’t implement two-factor authentication when other organizations have.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Attention to the several HIStalk sponsors who will participate in the MUSE Inspire conference in Denver May 28-31: I’ll include you in my conference guide if you provide your information.

The latest chapter in my quest to achieve grammar curmudgeonliness involves leaving in the word “that” to make sentences easier to read. I’ll show, not tell: the second sentenced is easier to read than the first:

  • The doctor said I need to schedule an appointment.
  • The doctor said that I need to schedule an appointment.

Listening (and watching): 11-year-old Ellen Alaverdyan, aka EllenPlaysBass, whose little fingers have mastered the sheer complexity and energetic fret-hopping of Chris Wolstenholme’s bass line in Muse’s “Hysteria.” Her videos, which usually include her instructor-dad Hovak, are a treasure. Watch her smile break out toward the end when she realizes that she has nailed the piece. She did a fine, grinning version of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” when just nine years old. Keep in mind that she not only has to play the songs, she must learn every single note and nuance before picking up the bass.


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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CVS Health reports Q1 results: revenue up 4%, adjusted EPS $1.31 versus $2.20, sending shares down 17% on the news as the company also lowered full-year guidance. Shares have lost 24% in the past 12 months. From the earnings call:

  • Its Medicare Advantage business saw a 60% drop in operating income due to higher utilization and payments that were reduced because of lower star ratings.
  • The company set aside $500 million for claims that wouldn’t be paid as planned due to the Change Healthcare cyberattack.
  • It is performing a cost review, looking at outlier claims, membership selection bias, and pharmacy benefit spend.
  • Recent changes in Medicare Part D will disrupt benefits, the company says, also noting that its rate notice was not sufficient and that it will need to consider plan-level benefits changes and exiting some counties.
  • The Inflation Reduction Act enriched the value of Part D to patients and plans have greater liability in the catastrophic layer. Some companies may exit the business, and higher prices may push some beneficiaries into Medicare Advantage plans.
  • Drugstore sales were up 7% and Oak Street added 33 centers in the past 12 months and expects to add up to 60 more. CVS Health hopes to see a boost from its Cordavis biosimilars business.
  • The company is using AI to identify members who could benefit from care management.
  • Meanwhile, CVS Health has just acquired Hella Health, a direct broker that sells Medicare Advantage and Medicare supplemental plans that are offered by Aetna CVS Health and its competitors.

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Transcarent raises $126 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $2.2 billion.

Telemedicine provider Avel ECare acquires Horizon Virtual, which offers virtual hospitalists.

Wearable cardiac monitoring vendor IRhythm Technologies announces Q1 results: revenue up 18%, adjusted EPS –$1.23 versus –$1.10. IRTC shares have lost 17% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $3.5 billion.

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Financial Times reports that drug maker Pfizer will follow the lead of competitor Lilly in rolling out an online platform where patients can order the company’s drugs directly, connecting US customers with independent telehealth consultants who will send prescriptions to a drug dispensing partner. According to a global health professor, drug companies have realized that “The best way to convert customers is through patient portals where they can act as a consumer in medicine. They can go to the website, they can get the information they need, they can be linked to a prescriber and then a pharmacy, and do all those things independent of a primary care provider.”

Following its acquisition of Cerner in June 2022, Oracle Health has reduced its employee count in Kansas City from a peak of 14,000 to 6,400.

Bloomberg declares that “Austin’s glow is fading,” with the latest blow being Oracle’s planned headquarters relocation to Nashville after just four years in the Texas city. The article says that companies are rethinking their big plans for Austin, 25% of its commercial real estate is vacant, and residential real estate prices have dropped more than in any other US city. It adds, “That Oracle went to archrival Nashville is particularly painful for Austinites. The two cities compete over which has the more vibrant live music scene and who plays the better host to bachelor and bachelorette parties. There are heated debates over where to find the best custom-made cowboy boots.”


Sales

  • Three community health centers that are part of the federally funded Pacific Islands Electronic Health Initiative choose EClinicalWorks.

People

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Chris Durham (Medhost) joins HCTec as VP of service desk operations.


Announcements and Implementations

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman describes ChatGPT 4 as “incredibly dumb” as he looks to newer versions that will operate beyond the chat interface into deploying AI-driven agents that are capable of performing tasks with a deep understanding of the user’s specific needs.

Truveta expands its 800-hospital research database to include family history, medication details, complex concepts, and de-identified medical images.

Lucem Health announces Reveal for Lung Cancer, which applies an AI model to EHR data to flag patients who meet USPSTF criteria for lung cancer screening. The company says that a provider organization can expect to identify 60% more patients who have early-stage lung cancer.


Other

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Healthcare AI deployers, be careful out there. Catholic Answers defrocks its days-old, AI-powered “Father Justin” after it went rogue in telling users that it was a real priest, took confessions and granted penance, and told one user that it was OK to baptize a baby in Gatorade. The organization says the AI chatbot will be retooled as just plain old layperson Justin, noting, “We didn’t anticipate that someone might seek sacramental absolution from a computer graphic.”


Sponsor Updates

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  • Healthcare IT Leaders sponsors foster care charity A Door of Hope’s golf tournament.
  • Inovalon earns Great Place to Work certification for the second consecutive year.
  • Nordic will offer sales, consulting, and implementation of the diagnostic and treatment analytic platform of Clinical Healthcare Analytics.
  • EVisit will sponsor and exhibit at the California Hospital Association’s 2024 Emergency Services Forum May 6 in Newport Beach.
  • Australian vendor Consultmed re-platforms its software on InterSystems Iris for Health, including InterSystems TrakCare.
  • Net Health names Arman Samani president of its rehab therapy division.

Blog Posts

Black Book releases its 10th annual “State of the Healthcare Cybersecurity Industry” report. A corresponding ranking of top cybersecurity firms based on customer satisfaction ratings includes the following HIStalk sponsors:

  • Clearwater – cybersecurity advisors and consultants / compliance and risk management solution.
  • Fortified Health Security – cybersecurity awareness training and education.
  • CloudWave – outsourcing and security network managed services.
  • PerfectServe – secure communications platforms, physician practices.
  • Spok – secure communications platforms, hospitals and health systems.

Contacts

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

News 5/1/24

April 30, 2024 News 12 Comments

Top News

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Walmart Health announces that it will close its clinics and virtual care service, noting that it can no longer sustain a business model that is beset by rising costs and declining reimbursements. The company had previously said that it would open 22 additional health centers this year.

Walmart Health grew to 51 locations in five states during its five-year run, implementing Epic across its clinics in 2022. The concept was piloted in Dallas, GA in 2019, where it offered $40 visits and physicals from standalone offices. Walmart simultaneously ran Care Clinics from inside its stores in three states. Walmart acquired multi-specialty telehealth provider MeMD in mid-2021 and renamed the business to Walmart Health Virtual Care a year later.

The retail giant will continue to focus on the development of its pharmacy and vision offerings, of which there are, respectively, 4,600 and 3,000 in-store sites.

The company launched Walmart Health Care Research Institute in October 2022 to pair members of underrepresented communities with clinical trials, which included digital tools for research participants to manage their health records and insurance information. Walmart says that business will continue.


Reader Comments

From Wiggles: “Re: Walmart Health Centers. We’ve been patients since it opened. It was convenient, offered easy access, and was super affordable. I guess it was too good to be true. My only frustration with the numerous times they cancelled appointments because they didn’t have available clinicians.” The upside is that physicians might be realizing that they can (or could) control delivery since giants like Walmart can’t scale with them, much less without them. Healthcare still requires doctors who might be in short supply, who don’t enjoy offering care-by-wire encounters, or who don’t find that wearing a Walmart-logoed white coat carries the prestige they expected. This is the chance for doctors to wrest control back from the suits in a medical form of a rollback special.

From Spindrift: “Re: Walmart Health. They must have spent a fortune implementing Epic for the short time they used it.” Agreed.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Today I learned that Larry Ellison’s son David is founder and CEO of Skydance Media, which makes the “Mission: Impossible” and “Star Trek” films and is negotiating a multi-billion dollar merger with Paramount Pictures. David’s wife is Larry’s connection to Nashville – she’s a country singer (who I could find next to nothing about, which I assume that she’s still hoping to break out) who has a house there.

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I’m thinking of all the ways that Epic could theoretically limit the career options of its employees even if non-compete agreements are banned. I found the above language in the Epic contract of Ardent Health, which was filed with the SEC and which I think I recall is Epic standard contract boilerplate. Lawyers, is this legal, or just unlikely to be found illegal because affected employees don’t have the time or money to challenge it?


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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Oracle Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison’s headquarters relocation declaration likely won’t impact most of the company’s US employees, given that the majority — including Ellison, who spends most of his time on his Hawaiian island of Lanai — are remote. Seven thousand are still based in the company’s original home state of California, while 6,400 largely former Cerner employees reside in Missouri. Just 2,500 call the company’s current Austin, TX, headquarters home.

HCA reports Q1 results: revenue up 11%, EPS $5.93 versus $4.85, beating analyst expectations for both. HCA shares are up 23% in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500’s 12% gain, valuing the company at $82 billion.

Streamline Health reports Q4 results: revenue down 19%, EPS –$0.02 versus –$0.04. Shares dropped on the news, valuing the company at $17 million, down 82% in the past 12 months.


Sales

  • SSM Health St. Mary’s Hospital (MO) will use Inbound Health’s hospital-at-home services, including virtual care, as part of its new Recovery Care at Home program.
  • Ochsner Health (LA) selects self-service triage, care navigation, and capacity optimization software from Clearstep.
  • Akron Children’s Hospital will implement Health Catalyst’s population health and analytics solutions.
  • Houston Methodist will implement EVideon’s Vibe Health smart room technology at its West Hospital and Cypress Hospital, which will open next year.

People

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Penn Medicine promotes Mitchell Schnall, MD, PhD, to SVP of data and technology solutions.


Announcements and Implementations

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Hackensack University Medical Center (NJ) implements AvaSure’s TeleSitter virtual care technology.

Researchers find that using AI to analyze the high-risk ECGs of hospitalized patients was associated with a 31% drop in all-cause mortality, the first randomized clinical trial to show that AI saves lives.


Government and Politics

Noting that, “There is no Plan B,” Deputy VA Secretary Tanya Bradsher says that the department is committed to rolling out Oracle Health. She made that promise during her second visit to the Mann-Grandstaff Medical Center in Spokane, WA, which went live on the software in 2020. Resuming implementations at VA facilities will depend upon the readiness of the system and each medical center, which will be determined by analysis of a “readiness scorecard,” according to VA EHR Modernization program lead Neil Evans, MD. Restarts will likely begin in 2025 and go-lives a year later.


Privacy and Security

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UnitedHealth Group CEO Andrew Witty confirms via written testimony that hackers used stolen credentials to remotely access a Change Healthcare Citrix portal, which did not have multifactor authentication. The criminals spent nine days nosing around Change systems before initiating the ransomware attack. Witty, who will present his testimony to a US House Committee May 1, adds that paying the ransom was “one of the hardest decisions I’ve ever had to make.”


Other

In Ohio, Montgomery County officials will work with the Greater Dayton Area Hospital Association, Montgomery County Behavioral Task Force, and area providers to develop a behavioral health services referral portal. The project will be funded in part with nearly $2 million received by the county as part of an opioid settlement earlier this year.

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Notes from Oracle’s Larry Ellison from his healthcare fireside chat last week:

  • Ellison says that hospital pathology departments can’t detect mutated bacteria or viruses, so the next version of Millennium’s pathology module will focus on gene sequencing to support global outbreak surveillance.
  • He notes that Oracle is “by far the largest provider of automation systems to hospitals and clinics throughout the world,” with virtually every NHS hospital as clients as well as those in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Kenya, Rwanda, Indonesia, and Japan.
  • Ellison was surprised that real-world evidence of drug effectiveness isn’t used for quick approval by FDA for specific conditions, so drug companies spend 10 years and millions of dollars to run another clinical trial, concluding that “classical clinical trials [aren’t] the only way you discover things work”  and proposing the idea that “a clinical trial should never end” in reviewing data on the first 5,000 patients and then ignoring data from the next 50 million.
  • He adds that Cerner goes beyond the EHR into life sciences.
  • Ellison talked up autonomous digital infrastructure for cybersecurity, with Oracle’s first customers for it being the CIA, NSA, and Britain’s MI6.
  • Passwords will be eliminated from all Oracle systems by the end of the year.
  • Ellison says that buying Cerner wasn’t just about automating hospitals, but also the hospital-payer interface, noting that high healthcare costs threaten democracy in Europe, with half of the UK’s budget being consumed by healthcare.
  • He says that Oracle Health needs to get involved with medical devices, FDA oversight, hospital workforce management with emphasis on the “gig economy” where nurses and doctors aren’t hospital employees, and hospital inventory management.
  • Ellison blurted out that “we’re moving this campus, which will ultimately be our world headquarters, we’re moving that to Nashville.” He then laughed that “I shouldn’t have said that,” and then said “what might ultimately be our world headquarters.” He added, “This is where I’d love to go to work. This is the center of the industry we’re most concerned about, which is the healthcare industry.”

A former Cigna medical director says that her bosses pushed her to speed up her review of cases that nurses had flagged for coverage denial, saying that she wasn’t given enough time to review the literature or review the patient’s medical records. She said that peers simply copied and pasted the company’s denial language, which company insiders called “click and close,” even though the company’s Philippines-based review nurses often make mistakes that would have led to inappropriate denial of coverage.


Sponsor Updates

  • TruBridge will host its national client conference through May 2 in Las Vegas.
  • Black Book shares findings from its latest user satisfaction survey regarding specialty RCM firms.
  • AdvancedMD welcomes new integration partners Jopari Solutions, TriumpHealth, DMEconnected, and EirSystems.
  • Aga Khan University Hospital in Pakistan goes live on Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging Platform.
  • Ascom Americas will exhibit at Avaya Engage May 13 in Denver.
  • The DGTL Voices Podcast features AvaSure Chief Clinical Officer Lisbeth Votruba.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 4/29/24

April 28, 2024 News 4 Comments

Top News

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Teladoc Health reports Q1 results: revenue up 3%, EPS –$0.49 versus –$0.42, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings.

Shares dropped slightly on the news. They are down 53% in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500’s 23% gain, valuing the company at $2.2 billion. From the earnings call:

  • The company says AI will help the company engage with members.
  • Its BetterHelp online behavioral health business continues to be challenging as both user count and revenue dropped year over year, although Teladoc has replaced its leadership, hopes to see improvement later this year, and will continue selling only via direct-to-consumer.
  • Teladoc says interest is growing in its weight management business and the new members that it brings creates cross-selling opportunities.
  • The company says that the it has seen no impact in the former Livongo business from Peterson Health Technology Institute’s critical review of the value of digital health solutions, continuing to be believe that Teleadoc’s chronic care programs provide clear ROI.

Reader Comments

From VendorVP: “Re: Steward Health Care. Wonder what Meditech will do when Steward goes bankrupt and stops paying their invoices?” Steward completed its 18-hospital Meditech Expanse implementation in mid-2022.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Most poll respondents, including me, believe that the VA will continue their Oracle Health rollouts this year. Straddling two systems is not sustainable and the VA can’t risk giving Congress more reasons to criticize it.

New poll to your right or here: What effect will the elimination of non-compete agreements have on your present job?


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

An unnamed Epic spokesperson says that the company agrees with FTC’s regulation to end the use of non-compete agreements as long as the agreements weren’t created to protect intellectual property. I’m reading between the lines in concluding that Epic thinks its own non-competes are fine but is happy that chain restaurants can’t use them to limit the careers of sandwich assemblers.


People

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Paula Cobb, MBA (Blackbaud) joins AvaSure as VP of marketing.

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Amy Rettler, MS (TheraManager) joins Evergreen Health Partners as SVP of EHR solutions.


Announcements and Implementations

The US Army celebrates the replacement of its MC4 battlefield EHR with Operational Medicine Information Systems – Army (OMIS-A).


Government and Politics

FTC Chair Lina Khan warns that healthcare price fixing could be accomplished without back-room deals by using AI algorithms to set prices without undercutting each other. FTC is also looking into the possibility that companies could use AI to set prices dynamically for individual consumers.

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The European Parliament approves the European Health Data Space, which will allow cross-border sharing of electronic health data with patient opt-out and give researchers who are issued permits to access to de-identified patient data. Covered data sources include EHRs, disease registries, claims data, prescription dispensing, genomic information, social determinants of health, environmental factors, and the output of medical devices and health apps. Click the graphic above to enlarge.


Privacy and Security

The VA notifies 15 million veterans that the Change Healthcare ransomware attack may have exposed their health information.

The Federal Trade Commission finalizes changes to the Health Breach Notification Rule that requires vendors of health apps and related technologies to notify individuals, the FTC, and the media if personally identifiable health data is exposed.

Kaiser Permanente notifies 13.4 million current and former members of its health plan that website user tracking tools may have sent their personal information to third-party vendors.


Other

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California Nurses Association members picket Kaiser Permanente’s San Francisco Medical Center holding signs that said “Patients are not algorithms” and “Trust nurses, not AI.” The union’s president expressed concern that Kaiser is promoting itself as an AI leader in healthcare, but is likely to use the technology to boost profit rather than to improve care.


Sponsor Updates

  • EClinicalWorks will host its 2024 Health Center Summit May 8-10 in Boston.
  • Netsmart welcomes Vandoit, which offers mobile vehicles for healthcare, to the Netsmart Marketplace.
  • Sonifi Health adds Enghouse Video’s video conferencing technology to its interactive TV systems.
  • RxLightning celebrates unprecedented growth and achieves meaningful medication access milestones.
  • University medical centers in Germany choose Sectra’s radiology solution to streamline workflows and shorten lead times for patients.
  • Spok releases a new e-book, “The Six Strategic Advantages of Consolidated Contact Centers.”
  • Surescripts publishes a “QHIN Readiness Guide.”
  • Health Data Movers publishes a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast with guest Shafiq Rab, MD, MPH, CDO/CIO of Tufts Medicine.
  • Symplr adds Branch’s workforce payments software to its Contingent Talent Management platform.
  • Waystar will exhibit at the OPIE Software: Driving Practice Success customer conference May 2-3 in Oklahoma City.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

News 4/26/24

April 25, 2024 News 8 Comments

Top News

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Optum shuts down its virtual-first urgent and primary care service, three years after it formed Optum Virtual Care during the pandemic’s peak days.

The company had added a discounted prescription-writing and refill service as part of Optum Perks in January 2024.


Reader Comments

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From Oracle of Delphi: “Re: Oracle. Larry Ellison seemed to be riffing off-script when he announced that the company would relocate its headquarters to Nashville.” The company has been holding various events in the city and Larry now says it’s important for the company to be located in healthcare-centric Nashville. He made that surprising announcement during a fireside chat at the company’s healthcare conference, which must have driven its unprepared PR people crazy. I’m surprised that the tiny Cerner tail is wagging the massive Oracle dog, especially since the company – other than Larry – mostly complains that the former Cerner business is not profitable enough, while also surely thinking but not saying that Epic is eating its lunch. The headquarters role is somewhat symbolic, given that Oracle has just 4,000 of its 164,000 employees housed in Austin following its 2020 HQ relocation to there from Silicon Valley. My takeaways:

  • This is Larry talking, not an official company announcement. What Larry says doesn’t always happen.
  • It could be that the company just wants to take a dig at Austin for some reason or is just incentive-milking given the prestige of having Oracle’s HQ in their city.
  • While Ellison said in his surprise proclamation that “Nashville is a fabulous place to live” (note: he doesn’t live there), employees may not be happy to be forced to move there, especially since many of them just moved from California to Texas.
  • It’s probably not unrelated that both Texas and Tennessee don’t have state income tax and that quite a few companies are bailing on Austin because of cost that has been driven by high growth.
  • I’ll be curious how and when Oracle’s PR people spin this and how quickly the company actually seals the deal by buying or building a headquarters campus.

From Panama Hat: “Re: obtaining your own health records. I am an advanced practice nurse and have had significant issues obtaining my own health records. Especially with M&A, outsourcing HIM request to outside companies, and the lack of access to actual humans. I wonder if in-house IT teams created work flows of the antiquated process involved and validated them afterwards, especially after the hospital merged or outsourced some HIM services.” I don’t have recent experience, although I detailed my frustration with the patient-hostile process way back in 2016, which included a compliant to OCR that they closed in saying that they had provided “technical assistance to the hospital.” Perhaps new information blocking provisions will scare foot-dragging hospitals into doing the right thing and eliminating idiotic policies that require patients to explore the hospital basement to find HIM so they can fill out a paper form in person, or Google an online fax service to (ironically) request electronic copies of their own information. Readers, I would be delighted to hear about your recent experience in obtaining copies of your records, especially if you are still mad about it.

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From Mailman: “Re: Epic shutting down data exchange with Particle Health customers that are using it for non-treatment purposes. The wildest example was Integritort, where class action lawyers were using Particle to pull down real-time medical records for lawsuits.” Particle founder Troy Bannister posted a self-righteous LinkedIn diatribe against Epic for closing access to some questionable Particle customers who seemed to be using patient data for non-treatment purposes (which isn’t allowed), but I haven’t heard a peep from him since. My takeaways: (a) it’s pretty easy for Epic to compare which entities are downloading data without sending any back to Epic, which would suggest that those users aren’t actually treating patients; and (b) struggling startups will push ethics aside in favor of plausible deniability (“we didn’t know that our clients were doing anything wrong”) if they gain revenue or investment. Bannister said when he left the company as CEO a year ago that its goal was being refocused to “creating as much value as possible from the growing amount of data we have access to,” which says a lot about trusting startups with healthcare data.

From List Sucker: “Re: Newsweek’s list of best digital health companies. Review their methodology.” Most healthcare company lists are pure clickbait, paid company promotion, or some “content writer” trawling the Internet to make up a worthless and often laughable list (anyone who refers to their pitiful intellectual output as “content” is just trying to fill space for cash). Newsweek’s list of “best” companies looked at financial performance (which is obviously not much of a metric for privately held companies that self-report), website and app traffic data (which is clearly irrelevant), and whatever input Holon IQ chose to provide (its own lists seem to use self-nomination in the absence of auditable company-provided numbers). All companies love being named to “best” lists, even when the award comes from someone who is too ashamed of their criteria to list them, and handing over cash to make the list is not uncommon. The good news is that absolutely nobody cares except company marketing people who report their big win like it came from careful analysis.

From Disruptive Behavior: “Re: readers’ list of realistic first steps to improve US healthcare. Unfortunately ‘realistic’ change means that Congress doesn’t have to act, industry incumbents won’t have their revenue or power reduced, jobs aren’t reduced, and nothing runs afoul of capitalism or the Constitution.” I agree, which is why throwing out great but entirely unlikely options like universal health insurance doesn’t get us anywhere. In the US, healthcare is a right for everyone who sells it.


A recap of Oracle Health Summit this week in Nashville from an attendee

  • Seema Verma said that Millennium will be at the center of Oracle Health’s offerings. Product roadmaps have been published, although they didn’t provide them to this group.
  • Upcoming products: a payment solution, Oracle Clinical Digital Assistant (expected to GA in a couple of months), public APIs of unspecified variety (addition FHIR APIs, polished up versions of Cerner’s existing ones, use cases not specified).
  • HealthIntent has been rebranded as Oracle Health Data Intelligence and has new functionality and user interface.
  • A new patient portal will be released this year, with the company saying they have pulled ideas from food and beverage and retail industries.
  • Larry Ellison let it slip – accidentally or otherwise – that Oracle’s headquarters will “ultimately” be moved to Nashville. He said it will have a community clinic, a concert venue, a lake, and a pedestrian bridge over the river that will connect the campus to downtown Nashville.
  • Ellison took shots at AWS, saying that the Change Healthcare breach wouldn’t have happened if they had been on Oracle Cloud and autonomous databases.
  • He says that 50% of Cerner customers have moved to Autonomous Cloud in Oracle Cloud infrastructure.
  • The company will add gene sequencing technology to PathNet.
  • Ellison says that passwords will be eliminated in all Oracle systems by the end of the year, replaced with passcodes and other authentication methods.
  • EVP Mike Sicilia says that the company will focus on a constant stream of incremental improvements rather than large releases and upgrades.
  • The consistent theme of attendees per this individual is that Oracle has made big promises and delivered little. Compared to Epic UGM, this meeting had few customers placed front and center, it didn’t offer tangible product previews, and attendees found little to take back home as action items. Oracle had some big names on the panels who tried to seem visionary. Big execs like David Feinberg and Mike Sicilia were accessible and mingling, but that might have been because it was only around 500 attendees.

Thoughts on the FTC’s ban on companies forcing employees to sign non-compete agreements

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I received more reader feedback on this topic than any in recent memory. I’ll summarize their thoughts and mine:

  • FTC says that 45% of US physicians – as opposed to 20% of American employees in general — are working under non-compete agreements and estimates that healthcare costs will be reduced by $194 billion over 10 years by eliminating them.
  • The FTC’s decision will certainly be challenged. It wouldn’t surprise me if Epic gets involved.
  • The American Hospital Association loathes the idea, declaring it “bad law, bad policy, and clear sign of an agency run amok” that has ample legal precedent to be challenged. They are particularly galled that FTC would dare regulate “certain tax-exempt, non-profit organizations” whose multi-million dollar executives are among the worst offenders of interfering with a free job market for clinicians to expand their regional and national empires by smothering competitors.

Highlights of the rule:

  • It takes effect 120 days after being published in the Federal Register, at which time all existing non-competes – except for those of senior executives who make more than $150,000 and are involved in corporate policy-making – are no longer enforceable. Physicians cannot be excluded from the regulation just because they are highly paid, although health systems might argue that they are involved in corporate policy-making through their medical staff policy involvement.
  • FTC urges companies to notify current and former employees that their non-compete clauses are no longer valid.
  • FTC clarifies that the popular myth that FTC has no jurisdiction over non-profits is incorrect. It notes that a healthcare system can’t simply hide behind its non-profit IRS status, saying that it will go after organizations that were set up specifically to offer benefits to stakeholders or that have partnered with a for-profit company that gains control of the business. It also says IRS has rejected the non-profit claims of non-profits that pay excessively to executives, founders, board members, families, and other insiders.
  • FTC cites precedents by some states that have banned non-competes. It estimates that 58% of non-profits and 19% of government-operated hospitals will likely be covered by the final rule. Its research found that non-competes are almost always used specifically as an unfair method of competition.
  • Workers who are contracted by non-profit hospitals from a for-profit staffing company or physician group are explicitly covered by the policy. Their employer can’t use non-competes and their assigned work location is irrelevant.
  • FTC says that non-profit health systems that manage to escape FTC jurisdiction will still suffer “self-inflicted damage” because while they can continue to trap current employees with non-compete threats, they will have a tough time recruiting.
  • The rule takes a direct shot non-profit health systems that “are operating to maximize profits, paying multi-million-dollar salaries to executives, deploying aggressive collection tactics with low-income patients, and spending less on community benefits than they receive in tax exemptions.”

Additional comments about Epic:

  • The company, which requires employees to sign some of the industry’s most restrictive non-compete agreements, has no way to wiggle around this policy as it is currently written.
  • However, FTC ruling aside, Epic still controls where former employees (both their own and those who work for client hospitals) can take software-related jobs by controlling access to UserWeb, ongoing training, and certification. It would be difficult for an Epic employee to mount a long-expensive legal challenge of these internal company decisions. If Epic doesn’t want you working for an employer that is included on its long length of “competitors,” you will have a tough time getting hired there regardless of FTC’s proclamations, at which time your only legal recourse is to hire your own attorney to face off against Epic’s. Potential hirers don’t want to poke the Epic bear and FTC rulings won’t change that, except possibly in the part of the rule that prohibits any activity that would prevent worker from seeking a new job or starting a new business (which makes it even more likely that Epic will get involved in the legal debate).
  • I believe that Epic’s client contracts preclude their hospitals from hiring employees from other Epic sites except under specific conditions or approvals. I don’t know if those terms violate the FTC’s regulation since the agreement is between the two companies, with no involvement and perhaps no knowledge by the employee.

Healthcare impact, assuming that the regulation stands after inevitable challenges:

  • A huge chunk of America’s doctors and other clinician can now change jobs freely and will likely do so. Health systems can no longer strong-arm them into staying and instead had better start addressing their clinical and employment issues since a hospital without doctors and nurses is just a massively expensive, poorly run hotel.
  • Doctors who are disgruntled at being stuck working for Optum or other companies that bought their employers are free to leave the building.
  • The worst outcome would be if lobbyist-heavy “non-profit” health systems manage to evade the rule and for-profit medical practices don’t, which would allow hospitals to continue to kill off private practices. FTC’s estimate that up to 40% of hospitals don’t fall within their jurisdiction is troubling.
  • The regulation calls into question the practice of health systems with multi-billions of dollars in revenue, executive offices filled with million-dollar employees, and market control that spans ever-widening geographic areas should be allowed to hide as non-profits under IRS rules and therefore tie their current stable of doctors to existing agreements to prevent them from taking better jobs.
  • Vendors and start-ups will be challenged to see their IP walking out the door in the form of free-market employees who move to competitors mostly because of what they know about their former employer. They are also free to start their own competing firm in using that information.
  • Companies can continue to use non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements to protect their IP, and the wording and deployment scope of those might be expanded.
  • It’s a good time to be a healthcare recruiter, especially of physicians.

Lawyers or policy wonks – what will FTC’s enforcement mechanism be? Does it have to sue the violator, or will the employee have to file their own lawsuit and then have FTC join? Assuming it can address civil contempt and civil penalty actions, how likely is FTC to quickly intervene with and then resolve the large number of employee complaints that it will receive? Hospitals don’t worry too much about most regulatory issues that don’t involve CMS payment threats, especially if the financial benefit of ignoring the requirement is greater than paying the fine.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Three companies reached out in the past week to ask about their sponsorship, only to find that it expired long ago because our company contact had left and nobody else returned our reminder emails. Hint: if your company isn’t listed under Sponsor Quick Links on the right side of the desktop version of the web page, you aren’t a sponsor. Fortunately, the fix is simple — contact Lorre.

I focus on reporting industry news instead of creating videos, podcasts, or self-congratulatory social media campaigns. However, I might be overlooking the value of using LinkedIn to stay in touch with HIStalk readers. Question: if you were me, would you hire someone part-time or contract who knows LinkedIn well to more actively use that channel, even if they aren’t health IT experts? I don’t like the idea of just shouting “Hey, I’m here” in hopes of drawing clicks, but perhaps some of what I’m already doing could be made more accessible there.


Webinars

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


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

98point6, which previously operated as a virtual primary care provider and then sold that business to Transcarent to focus on selling its software, lays off what appears to be most of its employees who remained after previous headcount reductions. The company bought chat-based telehealth provider Bright.md in January 2024 and had raised $300 million of venture capital investment as of early 2023.

Walgreens launches a $24 billion annual revenue specialty pharmacy that will add gene and cell services to its AllianceRx specialty and home delivery business.

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Epic breaks ground on its sixth campus called Other Worlds, which draws inspiration from “The Lord of the Rings” and “The Chronicles of Narnia.” The company has 13,000 employees, up 40% over the past six years. New buildings will open this year in its Storybook and Wizards Academy campuses. Interesting: 80% of employees work in individual offices, with the remainder sharing two-person offices, and each office has its own thermostats and windows that open. Also interesting: the company calls its whimsical decorating style “cheap and cheerful,” as it doesn’t cost more to choose colorful paint and carpet and its “cozy spaces” are decorated with thrift store furniture.


Sales

  • National reference laboratory ARUP Laboratories will implement Ellkay’s LKOrbit to support its clients in ordering, results delivery, and collecting billing information.

People

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Clover Health hires Peter Kuipers, MBA (Omnicell) as CFO.

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Linda Stotsky (Boston Software Systems) joins ClinicMind as chief marketing officer.

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Prominence Advisors hires Mark Ostendorf, MBA (DrFirst) as chief revenue officer.


Announcements and Implementations

Innovar Healthcare announces an OSS Mirth Connect plug-in that adds OpenAI technology for task automation.

Truveta publishes a mother-child EHR dataset for research, which includes clinician notes and images from 30 health systems that are linked to claims, SDOH, and mortality data.

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A new KLAS report looks at CRM, finding that Best in Class winner Innovaccer’s clients are highly satisfied even though it’s the newest CRM market entrant and its user base is small. Epic is seeing increased adoption of Cheers, although nickel-and-diming issues have been reported. Salesforce has the largest market share, but respondents question its value and 60% of them gripe about extra fees for training, support, implementation, and new functionality.


Government and Politics

Seattle Children’s Hospital, which sued Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for demanding what it says is a “sham” investigation into transition gender care provided to Texas residents, says that the AG’s office has withdrawn its demands for patient-level information. Paxton declared the dismissal as a win, saying that his questions led the hospital to forfeit its registration to do business in Texas.

ONC publishes Common Agreement Version 2.0, which provides updates for FHIR APIs.

California has spent $500 million to offer young people free, app-based virtual counseling sessions for behavioral health issues, provided by BrightLife Kids and Soluna. Response has been close to non-existent – only 0.1% of those who are eligible have even signed up and one company has missed its committed date to deliver an Android version. The state has declined to say how many of those 15,000 registrants have actually engaged with the apps and no schools are promoting their use. Some experts are concerned that the companies – one VC backed, the other publicly traded – sometimes use unlicensed coaches who might miss problems that should be referred to clinicians.

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A GAO report says that DoD and VA will  not likely reach the integration goal that was set at the jointly operated and newly live Lovell Federal Health Care Center. GAO also finds that DoD user satisfaction is lower with the Oracle Health system than for the legacy systems it replaced as well as private sector systems. GAO also found that years-old problems remain with the Henry Schein Dentrix dental module, to the point that DoD is looking to replace it.  


Other

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A NEJM Catalyst case study from NYU Langone Health finds that AI can help improve poor clinical note quality, also noting that the real challenge is that (a) no universal standard exists for measuring note quality, leaving it up to each organization to define their own standards; and (b) peer-to-peer review of notes organizationally doesn’t scale well. The organization developed components of note quality, then trained AI to grade them by the thousands to perform quality reporting, identify physicians who could benefit from peer feedback, evaluate the impact of new templates and educational interventions, and assess individual performance. The organization also provides data review links to minimize note bloat that was caused by text tables. This is good work because instead of just using AI to summarize a chart or facilitate voice-to-text enhancement to create the same note that could have been done manually, it takes a bigger swing in laying out AI-measurable note quality standards.

It’s Y2K all over again: a 101-year old woman must fly commercial as an “unescorted minor” because airline booking systems translate a birth year of 1923 to 2023.

The times in which we live: Vancouver Island Health Authority tells hospital nurses to allow patients to use illicit drugs in their rooms and suggests that they teach patients to inject their personal stash into their IV lines, extending previous requirements for nurses to offer them crack pipes and matches.


Sponsor Updates

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  • Healthcare IT Leaders staff conduct a used clothing drive for the No Longer Bound Thrift Store in Atlanta.
  • KLAS Research highlights Agfa HealthCare in its new “Enterprise Imaging Report 2024: Vendors and Providers Driving Market Progress.”
  • First Databank’s Targeted Medication Warnings earns Epic’s Toolbox designation in the Medication Dosing Decision Support Toolbox category.
  • DrFirst will combine its prescription fill data with remote monitoring data from PatchRx to equip providers with the data they need to improve patient medication adherence.
  • MRO extends its automated retrieval services by automating data exchange between providers for continuity of care purposes.
  • Marshfield Clinic Health System honors Findhelp with its 2023 Outstanding Partner in Community Health Award.
  • FinThrive publishes “The Complete Guide to Prior Authorizations.”
  • HealthMark Group will present at the American Alliance of Orthopaedic Executives Annual Conference April 26 in Chicago.
  • Konza National Network welcomes Wichita Surgical Specialists to the Konza QHIN.
  • Medhost publishes a new white paper, “A Guide to Finding a Secure EHR Hosting Service.”
  • Meditech works with the Massachusetts Association of the Blind and Visually Impaired to test the accessibility of the Expanse Patient and Consumer Health Portal for the blind and visually impaired.
  • Net Health will host its inaugural Net Health Next Customer Conference May 9 in Tampa Bay, FL.

Blog Posts


Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Healthcare AI News 4/24/24

April 24, 2024 News Comments Off on Healthcare AI News 4/24/24

News

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In-home health screening startup Reperio Health raises $14 million in its latest funding round. The company plans to expand its offerings beyond digital health screening kits and apps to include virtual consults with nurses and AI software that analyzes test results and suggests treatment plans.


Business

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Enterprise network security company Prophet Security raises $11 million in seed funding. Launched last fall, the startup uses AI to aggregate, stratify, and summarize the potential cybersecurity threats and alerts that bombard organizations on a daily basis. The company’s large language model can also be added to third-party cybersecurity products.

Karoo Health, a value-based cardiac care company, announces GA of Kohere.ai, an AI-powered platform that offers automated workflows; analytics and risk stratification; and APIs for health data exchange, sorting, and storage.

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After piloting the technology at several HCA Healthcare facilities, Augmedix officially launches its AI medical documentation software for emergency departments.


Research

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Mount Sinai researchers determine that LLMs are no substitute for human medical coders after giving LLMs from Meta, Google, and ChatGPT the chance to analyze and code 27,000 unique diagnoses. The LLMs showed limited accuracy, assigning the correct codes less than 50% of the time.

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A Mass General Brigham study of LLM-generated replies to patient messages finds that physicians feel the technology has value in terms of reducing workload, but that a clinician should be kept in the loop so as to avoid sending replies with incomplete, incorrect, or delayed information.


Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Send news or rumors.
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News 4/24/24

April 23, 2024 News 1 Comment

Top News

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Sources say that members of the BlackCat ransomware group broke into Change Healthcare’s systems nine days before initiating the February 21 ransomware attack, using stolen employee credentials to log in to a remote network access application. They also confirm that parent company UnitedHealth made a ransomware payment to the group, a fact that the company has since substantiated, though it hasn’t specified the amount. Reports over the last several weeks have put that payment at $22 million.

UnitedHealth Group, meanwhile, issues its own update on the ransomware attack. The highlights:

  • An ongoing data review determines that files containing the PHI or PII of a “substantial proportion” of American consumers were stolen.
  • The company expects it will take several more months before it is able to fully identify and begin notifying impacted customers and individuals.
  • It has set up a website and call center to begin helping those impacted by the breach.
  • Publication of stolen data by bad actors seems to have been limited to 22 screen shots of files that were posted to the dark web for about a week.
  • Pharmacy services, medical claims, and payment processing are back to nearly pre-incident processing levels.
  • Eighty percent of Change Healthcare’s functionality has been restored, with remaining services expected to come back online in the coming weeks.

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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Lumeris, a tech-enabled population health management company, raises $100 million in a funding round led by Deerfield Management. Lumeris also operates a Medicare Advantage plan through its Essence Healthcare business, which Oracle Health (then Cerner) invested heavily in back in 2018.


Sales

  • Community Health Network (IN) selects care-at-home technology from Biofourmis.
  • Auxilio Mutuo Hospital in Puerto Rico will implement Oracle Health’s EHR and patient accounting software.

People

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Availity names Sean Barrett (R1 RCM) chief product officer.

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Laurie McGraw (McGraw Advisory) joins Transcarent as EVP.


Announcements and Implementations

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WakeMed (NC) goes live on Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging Platform.

PriMale Health (TX) implements EHR and patient engagement technology from EClinicalWorks, and AI medical scribe software from Sunoh.ai.


Government and Politics

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The VA reassures the public that the Change Healthcare ransomware attack did not result in harm to its patients, though it did delay the filling of prescriptions, most of them refills, for 40,000 veterans. The department’s IT team did have to develop workarounds to deal with issues related to CommonWell connectivity, access to clearinghouse services for its Community Care Network claims, inbound prescription orders, and configuring medical imaging storage and retrieval systems. 

The HHS Office of Civil Rights launches a web page featuring frequently asked data breach questions about the Change Healthcare ransomware attack.


Sponsor Updates

  • Revuud adds its new AI Matching Algorithm to its IT talent acquisition technology.
  • Bamboo Health will exhibit at the California Medical Association HIT Summit May 7-8 in San Francisco.
  • The Alliance of Women in Workers’ Compensation names Bardavon SVP of Client Experience and Network Expansion Saray Meyer an ambassador of its Northeast Florida chapter.
  • AvaSure, Care.ai, EVisit will exhibit at ATA Nexus 2024 May 5-7 in Phoenix.
  • Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of The Informonster Podcast, “Data Quality in Healthcare: Inside the Patient Information Quality Improvement (PIQI) Framework.”
  • CloudWave will present at the HealthTech Community Hospital Leadership Conference May 5-8 in Nashville.
  • Canyonville Health and Urgent Care (OR) expands to chronic care management services using EHR technology from EClinicalWorks and AI medical scribe software from Sunoh.ai.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 4/22/24

April 21, 2024 News 2 Comments

Top News

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About Healthcare, which specializes in software for patient flow management across healthcare settings, acquires patient flow predictive analytics vendor Edgility.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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A majority of voters believe high-visibility CEOs make their companies more attractive acquisition targets. Samantha Brown points out that, “Healthcare, like every other industry, gets caught up in the idolatry of the ‘innovators.’”

New poll to your right or here: Do you think the VA will in fact restart Oracle Health EHR roll outs next year?


Webinars

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


Sales

  • Health First (FL) will implement Epic as part of its two-year, $160 million Mission Unity project.

People

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Michael Reagin, MBA (Sharp Healthcare) will join Banner Health as VP and CTO in June.

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Nordic Consulting will promote Don Hodgson to CEO upon the retirement of Jim Costanzo this summer.


Government and Politics

The VA issues an RFI for testing support for the department’s Oracle Health-based EHR Modernization program, which is set to restart go lives at additional facilities sometime next year.

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The Defense Health Agency solicits bids for digital front door technology that will enhance the DoD’s MHS Genesis EHR by offering provider search, appointment scheduling, secure messaging, and data management support; as well as integration with wearables and devices. The department also hopes to expand its digital health capabilities to include virtual nursing, remote patient monitoring, and hospital command center features.


Sponsor Updates

  • Netsmart launches the Netsmart Marketplace, advancing interoperability and integration offers for community-based providers.
  • Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Josh Liu, MD.”
  • Spok publishes a case study, “How North Mississippi Medical Center overcame high call volumes and staffing shortages.”
  • Upfront Healthcare co-founder and COO Carrie Kozlowski joins an episode of the HIT Like a Girl Podcast.
  • Waystar will exhibit at the MGMA Financial Focus Conference April 24-27 in San Diego.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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

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