Monday Morning Update 2/27/23

Top News

The White House proposes a crackdown on telehealth-related prescribing of some medications when the COVID public health emergency ends on May 11.

Providers would be required to conduct at least one in-person visit before prescribing or refilling Schedule II drugs such as Adderall and opioids.

The DEA says the rule change was prompted by online telehealth companies that took advantage of pandemic-relaxed restrictions to overprescribe drugs such as Adderall, OxyContin,  and ketamine.

The proposed rule would allow prescribing a 30-day supply of Schedule II, IV, and V controlled substances after an initial telemedicine visit, but refills would require the patient to be seen in person. Patients who have seen their practitioner in person or were referred by them to a new practitioner can have all of their prescriptions issued via telehealth visits. 

Reader Comments

From Suzette Crepes: “Re: Teladoc Health. Interesting that it is framing its nearly $14 billion FY22 loss as irrelevant to future success. We use their software and it still is missing features that are in Zoom, Teams, and other software. Reliability is erratic – if a patient receives a phone call during a session, it switches the screen’s focus and disconnects Teladoc. I know some behavioral health clinicians who have left the company and are looking for other opportunities, which are ample, and that may be a worrisome sign.” Unverified. If I were investor in TDOC, I would not find it easy to forgive its executives for satiating their lust for diversified growth by wildly overpaying for Livongo and its skimpy six-year track record. Especially when they failed to make executive retention part of the terms, allowing 11 of the 12 Livongo suits to bail (all but the HR VP). The investor saying to “bet on the jockey, not on the horse” works both ways, and this particular TDOC jockey – who wasn’t a founder and had never been a CEO — was occupying the other end of the steed than Zane Burke. Zane was given the best gift of his life by being disliked by Neal Patterson enough to be passed over for the Cerner CEO job in favor of a far less qualified outsider who had also never been a CEO, allowing Teladoc to make Zane a billionaire in return for his big chair occupancy of less than two years. I don’t know what the TDOC board was thinking, although that of LVGO was surely high-fiving and ka-chinging.

From Benny: “Re: re-imposition of rules requiring an initial in-person visit for prescribing. This is unfortunate, since while a few highly publicized startups were engaging in cavalier practices, most clinicians used this flexibility appropriately. It’s already a challenge to get ADHD care, and stimulants if needed, due to limited availability of professionals, many of whom switched their practices away from in-person healthcare to focus on telehealth. In-person visits are challenging for patients because of transportation and time off from work. Evidence is clear that appropriate treatment ADHD with stimulants improves educational or other outcomes, so this imposed constraint will reduce treatment, worsen outcomes, and increase patient hassle. This will be superimposed on the existing adverse effects of stimulant drug shortages due to regularly constraints placed on manufacturing capacity, of which no evidence exists that it will reduce misuse.” I’m still surprised that DEA is blaming companies rather than individual prescribers, the same as it did with opioid mills where drug distributors paid billions to settle charges for having their products dispensed via the prescriptions of ethically challenged prescribers who were mostly left to keep practicing. ChatGPT could probably spit out a list of shady doctors given only the prescription records of Walgreens or CVS.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Nearly 80% of poll respondents who park at work do so for free, and of those who pay, it’s a 50-50 split between employer-controlled and public parking.

New poll to your right or here: Should physicians be allowed to open and operate hospitals? They can’t for the most part due to Medicare restrictions that were intended to prevent self-referral.

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

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

People

Optimum Healthcare IT hires Jennifer Mahoney, MS (AdventHealth IT) as VP of HR.

Announcements and Implementations

NHS is testing the use of AI-powered software from Deep Medical to predict the likelihood that a patient will miss their scheduled appointment so that they can be rescheduled in advance. I was briefly entertained by the original version of the announcement (above).

Wolters Kluwer Health launches Lippincott Medical Procedures, a point-of-care guide for performing core procedures, and a new medical and healthcare learning solution called Lippincott Connect.

Government and Politics

An employee health plan sues its health insurance administrator for refusing to turn over claims data that would allow the employer to verify the accuracy of charges against its self-funded health insurance plan. Medical supply vendor Owens & Minor says Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield has refused to provide it with claims data since 2021 as required by federal law. Anthem says its claims data involves proprietary arrangements that it doesn’t want to make public. Several similar lawsuits have been settled out of court, with details hidden behind non-disclosure agreements.

Other

American healthcare in a nutshell: sign-waving protesters demand a change in leadership at struggling Brooklyn hospital Maimonides Medical Center, recruited from Craigslist for $600 per week as part of a $1 million campaign by a group called Save Maimonides that refuses to name its donors. Hospital leaders say the effort is being funded by Eliezer Scheiner, a wealthy operator of a chain of bottom-rated nursing homes who proposed installing 16 new board members of his choosing who would donate $2 million each in holding a majority of the 30 board seats. The hospital says Scheiner wants to gain control over the hospital’s purchasing to steer business to his many supply and services companies. He denies any involvement in the campaign, saying he gave up trying to help the hospital months ago. The money-losing safety net hospital paid its CEO $3.2 million in 2020.

ProPublica reviews the sprawling family empire that was created by the non-profit Liberty HealthShare, whose healthcare sharing ministry heavily markets its medical insurance alternative to people who didn’t like the political ideology or cost involved with Affordable Care Act policies. The ministry took in $300 million in annually, steering much of it to dozens of businesses that were operated by the same Beers family, who bought an airline, a wedding venue, a marijuana farm, a wholesale carpet chain, a hunting lodge in Canada, and a bank that is now selling services to other healthcare sharing ministries. Healthcare ministries pool customer premiums and pay their bills under their own rules, allowing them to avoid regulation as insurers and to claim religious persecution when investigated. ProPublica found that the ministry collected $1.9 billion in revenue in six years while failing to report $1 billion of that to tax authorities, using self-developed software to make it look as though members controlled their own payments to avoid being regulated as an insurer. The company started rejecting claims and lowballing providers in late 2016, causing at least 50 hospitals – including Intermountain Healthcare – to refuse to negotiate with the ministry.

Sponsor Updates

• Healing Hands Ministries uses the PRISMA health information search tool of EClinicalWorks.

Blog Posts

• Tips for Payer Reviews: How to handle Pre-payment, Post-payment, and Probe (Experity)
• OptimizeRx’s EHR Network: Insights from Therapy Brands’ Danny Shipman (OptimizeRx)
• 5 Keys to Unlock Metrics That Matter for Process Improvement (Pivot Point Consulting)
• How to Combat Physician Burnout in Cardiology (PerfectServe)
• Healthcare Supply Chain 2.0: Tapping Actionable Data for Resiliency (Premier)
• Go beyond appointment reminders with optimized appointment-related messaging (Relatient)
• Moving Interoperability Mountains to Improve Patient Care (Surescripts)
• A primer on ChatGPT, large language models, and generative AI (Talkdesk)
• Communication Silos: What Clinicians Need to Know About EHRs (TigerConnect)
• First, Gradually, and Then All at Once: Amazon Puts a Premium on Patient Experience (Upfront Healthcare)
• MIPS Quality Measures vs. Improvement Activities (WebPT)
• Adopting Digital Mindsets: Where Healthcare Stakeholders Are Succeeding and Where They’re Falling Short (West Monroe)
• How Are Care Plans Created? (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 2/24/23

Top News

Teladoc Health reports Q4 results: revenue up 15%, EPS –$0.23 versus –$0.07, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings.

The company reported a staggering $13.7 billion loss for FY 2022, much of that attributed to goodwill write-downs related to its $18.5 billion acquisition of Livongo in August 2020.

TDOC shares have lost 56% in the past year versus the Dow’s 2% loss, valuing the company at $4.8 billion, having lost about 90% off its value since early 2021.

From the earnings call:

• CEO Jason Gorevic called Q4 results a strong finish to a “challenging year” in a “more challenging macro environment” that he expects will persist.
• The company will cut costs, including layoffs and restructuring.
• Teladoc’s BetterHelp online behavioral health business, which it acquired in early 2015 for $4.5 million, performed well. Teladoc says it has become a billion-dollar business. The company will start reporting performance in two segments, integrated care and BetterHelp.
• The company expects its employed physicians to eventually conduct more than 50% of visits versus its use of independent contractors, which it says will increase physician productivity and patient satisfaction.

Meanwhile, an outstanding article in MedCity News asks former Livongo CEO Zane Burke directly, “Did you sell a lemon to Teladoc or did they mess up?” Burke says Livongo was a “freaking good business” and that Teladoc was the pursuer of the transaction, but Teladoc’s executives “really liked themselves a lot” and thought they were “clever” in operating a roll-up business versus Livongo’s organic growth and intellectual property. He says Teladoc’s timing was terrible in hindsight and questions why Teladoc’s offer didn’t require Livongo’s executives to stay on board when the acquisition closed, after which 11 of 12 members of Livongo’s leadership team departed.

Reader Comments

From Another NY SR IT Leader: “Re: Sunrise. In addition to Northwell moving to Epic, Altera has Memorial Sloan Kettering, St. Barnabas Bronx, and Brooklyn Hospital all implementing Epic. NYC was once a stronghold for the former Eclipsys Sunrise.”

From Humeris: “Re: HIMSS. Sebastian Krolop, MD, PhD, global COO and strategy officer at HIMSS, has left. Cultural differences with Hal were cited. Another sore spot was his failure to get any traction with Accelerate, the networking platform that he engaged McKinsey to plan and develop.” Verified that he has left after four years, per his LinkedIn post of three weeks ago. As for Accelerate, even HIMSS CEO Hal Wolf hasn’t posted anything, and its LinkedIn page’s last updates were from HIMSS22.

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Amazon closes its $3.9 billion acquisition of primary care provider One Medical as the Federal Trade Commission fails to challenge the deal by the deadline. FTC has warned the companies that closing the acquisition before its approval is at their own risk, as FTC is still reviewing the transaction. Amazon has already launched a $144 first-year membership in One Medical, which offers 24/7 virtual care via messaging or video, online appointment scheduling, and prescription management. One Medical also runs  physical offices in 22 metro areas that offer on-site lab services. One Medical is a concierge medical practice rather than direct primary care — it bills services to the patient and their insurance like any other non-DPC practice, promising only a more satisfying patient experience.

Independent primary care network operator Aledade acquires Curia.ai, which offers AI-based value-based care analytics for optimizing patient care and engagement.

Premier Inc. acquires the “Top 100 Hospitals” program from Merative, formerly IBM Watson Health, which it will integrate with its PINC AI technology and services brand.

Chartis acquires DES Health Consulting, whose workforce assessment tool will be offered as the Chartis Center for Burnout Solutions.

Axios reports that healthcare automation startup Olive AI will sell its payer prior authorization business, one of the company’s two remaining business lines. Olive’s headcount has been reduced by more than half via previous asset sales and layoffs.

Sales

• Memorial Healthcare System implements a virtual care service that is powered by KeyCare’s Epic-based platform.
• Augusta University Health chooses the turnkey virtual health solution of Biofourmis to expand its Virtual Care at Home program.
• Silverado will implement hospital and palliative care software and analytics from WellSky.
• Mount Graham Regional Medical Center (AZ) will implement BridgeHead Software’s HealthStore as a clinical data repository for retired applications.

People

Benefits administration technology vendor Bridgeway Benefit Technologies hires Todd Plesko, MBA (GHX) as CEO. He replaces Jenny Morgan, MS, who will retire and serve as board chair.

Deborah Norton, MBA, who retired as CIO/SVP for operations from Harvard Pilgrim Health Care in  mid-2021,  died Saturday at 69.

Announcements and Implementations

A new KLAS report on long-term care EHRs finds that PointClickCare has the highest market share and customer satisfaction, while Epic performs well for health system-owned LTCs.

Ambience Healthcare launches an AI-powered, human-free medical scribe that embeds in EHR workflow to allow providers to review, edit, and sign off on their notes nearly immediately. The company has raised $30 million through a Series A round.

Government and Politics

A VA official warns that the problem that forced a delay in the planned Oracle Cerner go-live at its Ann Arbor operation, which it announced last week, is likely to affect any VA hospital that conducts clinical research and needs integration with research-based systems.

Companies may no longer require laid-off employees to sign confidentiality agreements or non-disparagement clauses as a condition of receiving severance benefits, per a National Labor Relations Board ruling that takes effect immediately.

The American Hospital Association writes a letter of opposition to the FTC’s proposed rule that would prohibit employee non-compete agreements. AHA says that FTC doesn’t have the authority to enforce the rule, it would affect only new agreements since FTC doesn’t have retroactive authority, the rule should not apply to highly paid hospital executives and physicians, and FTC does not have legal authority over non-profit entities and therefore a non-compete ban would place for-profit hospitals at a disadvantage.

Other

Folks who tamp ear wax into their skulls by using Q-tips like Civil War cannon rammers might want to swap out for Smart Visual Ear Cleaner, a $30 smartphone-paired tool that features an in-ear camera and a series of silicone scrapers. Although I might spring an extra $5 for the Bebird version that Best Buy sells (pictured above). Some people are addicted to shoving swabs into their ears with the regularity of brushing teeth, sometimes puncturing their ear drum and surely knowing from a basic anatomical standpoint that it’s a bad idea. The third, non-technical hygiene option is perhaps best – use an ear wax removal kit that contains a peroxide solution that fizzes wax right out, which offers comfort of knowing it is working by the sounds of percolation that seem to emanate from deep inside your head and the trickle of the resulting output running down your cheek.

Sponsor Updates

• Ellkay will exhibit at Rise National March 6-8 in Colorado Springs.
• GHX has been named a Notable Vendor in the 2022 Gartner Vertical Industry Context: ‘Magic Quadrant for Multienterprise Supply Chain Business Networks.’
• InterSystems announces that its HealthShare Unified Care Record has earned a Certified Data Partner designation from NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program.
• Clearsense posts a new case study, “Accelerating Research and Delivering Enhanced Patient Insights with Population Health.”
• VA names NeuroFlow one of the winners of its Mission Daybreak Grand Challenge, designed to discover new solutions to reduce veteran suicides.

Blog Posts

• Is Your Clinical Data Analytics Solution Missing Vital Drug Data? (First Databank)
• Partnering to Improve COVID-19 Vaccine Outreach (Get Well)
• How Cloud Technology Transforms the Life Sciences Organizations (Healthcare Triangle)
• How to Succeed in HIT Implementation: Taking Technological Change to the Next Level (HealthTech Resources)
• How Patient Education Improves Patient Experience (Healthwise)
• Achieving scale in health IT: The power of terminology-based normalization solutions (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• 2022 Cost of a Data Breach Report: What You Need to Know (Medhost)
• Using technology for more efficient transitions of care and a better patient experience (Meditech)
• Overcoming Staffing Shortages in the Lab: Finding the Right Fit Consulting Firm (JTG Consulting Group)
• 4 Questions to Drive Effective Data Management for the Future in Healthcare Analytics (Net Health)
• Navigating outpatient best practices, part 2: How AI-powered workflows drive appropriate documentation accuracy and reimbursement (Nuance)

Contacts

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

News 2/22/23

Top News

ONC publishes “Social Determinants of Health Information Exchange Toolkit.”

Reader Comments

From NY CIO: “Re: Northwell Health. Word is it will announce its move to Epic and that it will bring a large number of their Allscripts-outsourced employees back in-house.” Unverified. I’ve been watching the Northwell job site, which lists a handful of positions that include Epic implementation.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

ViVE and HIMSS23 exhibitors: the conferences will have come and gone within a few weeks, but contact Lorre if you want a full year of HIStalk sponsor exposure for little more than you’ll spend on coffee for your booth people.

This seems like an interesting webinar topic with a compelling title that I ran across on LinkedIn: “TEFCA Kills the National Networks: Or Does it?” offered by Zen Healthcare IT.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Mobile Heartbeat. The Waltham, MA-based company offers the health industry’s leading unified clinical communication and collaboration solution. The MH-CURE platform securely engages colleagues across every department and accelerates decision-making, improves care delivery, and increases patient throughput. Its scalability and reliability is evidenced by a robust user base of 260,000 active users and 130,000 deployed iPhones. Open architecture, anchored in standards-based API, supports both innovation and integration with third-party solutions. Adoption-driven pricing model with unlimited users and a bed-based pricing structure encourages widespread adoption. Thanks to Mobile Heartbeat for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AGS Health acquires the India-based patient access outsourcing business of Availity, which adds 200 team members to AGS Health’s 11,000 RCM experts.

RCM services provider Ventra Health acquires Deras Global Services, a Philippines-based provider of RCM services for hospital-based physician specialties.

HealthStream announces Q4 results: revenue up 7%, EPS $0.08 versus –$0.01. HSTM shares are up 3% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 15% loss, valuing the company at $800 million.

A new American Hospital Association report covers recent developments involving retail, payer, and technology disruptors of healthcare in the $260 billion primary care market:

• Amazon. Will acquire primary care provider One Medical for $3.9 billion pending FTC approval. Added the RxPass generic medication program. Offers home lab testing. Uses AWS to drive innovation. Runs a healthcare accelerator and has invested in disease management.
• CVS Health. Markets its services to health plan customers that were acquired with its purchase of Aetna. Will expand its HealthHUB to 1,500 locations. Will acquire primary care provider Oak Street Health for $10.6 billion pending FTC approval. Acquired home health company Signify Health for $8 billion. Has expanded its virtual mental health services. Will create health subscription models and commercialize its data and analytics. Has high usage of its CarePass program for free medication delivery and its self-serve digital tool for completing pre-appointment forms. Will spend $3 billion to expand its digital offerings and improve the customer experience. Runs a $100 million early-stage digital health venture fund.
• UnitedHealth Group. Will process transactions for 85 million patients via its merger with Change Healthcare. Has funded multiple virtual behavior health providers. Invested in care coordination companies and a provider credentialing vendor. Has invested in several tech-heavy remote patient monitoring and home care companies along with several virtual care solution vendors.
• Walgreens Boots Alliance. Acquired two-thirds interest in primary care provider VillageMD and will have 1,000 practices by 2027. Is buying Summit Health, which operates urgent care provider CityMD, for $8.9 billion. Acquired specialty pharmacy Shields Health Solution. Paid $330 million for controlling interest in CareCentrix, which manages patients in their homes.
• Walmart. Is continuing to open freestanding health centers. Acquired telehealth provider MeMD last year. Is partnering to extend value-based care to Medicare beneficiaries. Works with Epic to enhance communication and information sharing.
• Apple. Is creating relationships with payers, health systems, and researchers via health-related features for the Watch and IPhone.
• Google/Alphabet. Collects health information via Google Fit. Is actively working with drug companies to cut drug development costs via AI. Is focusing on, and investing in, the use of AI ii radiology. Has launched three Health Data Engine accelerators.

Sales

• Lifepoint Health will use virtual care technology from Midi Health to launch a telemedicine service for women experiencing perimenopause and menopause.

People

Mass General Brigham hires Rebecca Mishuris, MD, MPH, MS (Boston Medical Center) as VP/CMIO.

Greg Kidd (Glytec) joins Revuud as regional VP.

Zachary Lipton, PhD (Amazon AI) joins clinical documentation company Abridge as chief scientific officer.

Nancy Heininger (Athenahealth) joins Koan Health as RVP of sales.

XiFin, parent company of OmniSys, promotes Scott Warshaw, MPA to chief strategy officer.

Announcements and Implementations

The Sequoia Project launches a Consumer Voices Workgroup to learn first-hand about the barriers they experience while accessing, using, and sharing their health information. Nearly all of the members serve as caregivers for patient, 80% of whom don’t use technology.

Sunrise Mountain Family Medical Clinic (NV) implements cloud-based EHR technology from EClinicalWorks.

Infor launches a module for its Workforce Management suite that analyzes EHR data to measure workload for each patient to support nurse scheduling and reduce overtime.

Redox will offer its interoperability systems on Google Cloud.

Government and Politics

President Biden upholds an International Trade Commission ruling that could ban importation of the Apple Watch over EKG patent complaints filed by AliveCor. Masimo has also sued Apple over pulse oximetry patents and has won an initial ruling, which could also apply an import ban to some versions of the Watch. Apple has appealed the AliveCor decision, and experts say that even if Apple loses either decision, it will probably just negotiate a licensing fee with the plaintiff.

HHS OCR reports that large HIPAA breaches jumped 58% between 2017 and 2021, with HIPAA complaints spiking 39% in that same timeframe. The office says that its funding has not kept up with these increases, limiting its HIPAA enforcement capabilities.

The federal government shuts down Missouri non-profit Medical Cost Sharing Inc., a healthcare cost-sharing ministry that took in $7.5 million in membership fees while paying out only $246,000 to cover the submitted healthcare bills of members. The two founders pocketed at least $4 million for running a minimally regulated ministry whose members pay premiums that are used to cover the medical bills of other members. Medical Cost Sharing, which required members to attend church and abstain from using drugs and alcohol, offered plans starting at $90 per month that included telemedicine and discounts on visits with its in-network providers.

Privacy and Security

Lehigh Valley Health Network (PA) refuses to pay the ransom that was demanded by hackers who breached a radiation oncology imaging computer at one of its physician practices.

Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (FL) restores its computer systems and resumes normal operations 13 days after an unspecified security incident. Sources have suggested that the hospital had been waiting on an insurance payout to meet ransomware demands.

Other

The New York Times looks at the telehealth-powered growth in prescriptions of the psychedelic-like drug ketamine, also known as club drug Special K, whose use has expanded from surgery sedation to treating mental health conditions, frequently for unapproved uses and supplied by compounding pharmacies that operate outside FDA’s oversight. The authors note the narrowing gap between legitimate medical treatment and online shopping. Online seller Joyous charges $129 per month for a telehealth consultation, medication delivered to the customer’s home, and daily text messages for adjusting dose.

Optum Tri-State CEO Kevin Conroy responds to patient complaints about delays in scheduling appointments, requesting refills, and connecting with care team members, pledging to improve its call center operations, add clinicians, and extend hours. Optum’s Medical Care practice, formerly CareMount Medical PC, stationed a security guard outside of one of its urgent care facilities late last year as tensions rose over service issues.

A study of the low credit scores of residents of Southern states finds that medical debt is a key contributor, driven by the high prevalence of chronic disease and having eight of the 11 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid. A new policy change will eliminate the two-thirds of medical debt collections from credit reports that involve balances under $500, but people in the South are more likely to have debt over that threshold.

Sponsor Updates

• An Arrive Health analysis of 78 million prescription transactions finds that its Real-Time Prescription Benefit solution surfaces 37 million transactions in which a $0 medication is available.
• Bamboo Health will exhibit and Diameter Health will present at the State Healthcare IT Connect Summit March 6-8 in Baltimore.
• Nordic releases a new episode of its “Designing for Health” podcast featuring Memora Health’s Omar Nagji.
• HealthMark Group CEO Bart Howe, MBA is elected president of the Association of Health Information Outsourcing Services.

Blog Posts

• Understanding the CMS Hierarchical Condition Category (HCC) Coding Model (AGS Health)
• What’s included in a healthcare data platform? (Arcadia)
• Dashboards are Pretty Sweet: Data Visualization in DRVS (Azara Healthcare)
• Extending your Epic Investment: How to Optimize Your EMR for Success (CarePort)
• Top of Mind Questions: Managed Services, Staffing, and Technology Investments (CereCore)
• Optimum CareerPath Spotlight – Meet Chris Cameron (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Population Health and SDOH: What’s driving the push for better, and how can your organization compete? (Clearsense)
• Go big, go fast, and go to the front lines (Nordic)
• Recovering from a cyberattack, responding to the OCR, and building a cyber resilient posture for the future (Clearwater)
• Better Care Coordination Starts with Consensus All Access (Consensus Cloud Solutions)
• Squashing the Digital Transformation Buzzword (Divurgent)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 2/20/23

Top News

The VA postpones its planned July 2023 Oracle Cerner go-live at its Ann Arbor, MI facilities until later this year or early in 2024.

The service region is concerned about “how well EHRM would interact with VA Ann Arbor’s vital medical research mission.”

Reader Comments

From AT: “Re: pet peeves with service industry words and phrases. ‘I appreciate you,’ following my thanking you and leaving you a tip, which suggests that we are like-minded, decent people even though you have no way of knowing that. Second is thanking someone with ‘of course,” implying that I’m either too stupid to know the obvious answer or should not have even said thanks.” I will admit that even my curmudgeonly self has no problem with either of these, especially ‘I appreciate you’ that I first heard among polite Southerners who likely meant it. “No problem” is much worse in my mind – should I feel relieved that my thanking you for doing the job for which you are paid isn’t a bother? Others that bug me at least a little:

1. “Yeah-no” or “no-yeah.” Why do people think that appending these opposites adds emphasis?
2. “Curated.” Unless you are observing nature or some random phenomenon, everything you experience was “curated” by someone.
3. “It is what it is.” This phrase is intended to convey a philosophical acceptance of immutable circumstances, but most people who use it seem more inarticulate than profound.
4. “I could care less,” said by people who mean that they could not care less.
5. Marketing emails that contain “hope you are well” (should I tell you if I’m not?) and using the flabby “please don’t hesitate to call me” as though I not only require an invitation to call, but I have to do it quickly.
6. Starting a sentence with “know,” as in “know that I am here for you.” Just say what you want me to “know” and I’ll know it without being ordered.
7. “Now,” “presently,” “today,” or “at this point in time.” It’s always now unless you indicate otherwise.
8. “Build out” as an unnecessarily wordy way to say “build.” Build it out and they will come?
9. “Simplistic” means a dangerous oversimplification, which is not at all synonymous with “simple” and does not take an adjective such as “too simplistic.”
10. I won’t even bother with “reimbursement” as a financially appalling and less-forthright euphemism for “payment.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents felt cared for during their most recent clinician encounter. However, some of them left comments indicating that while the physician did a good job, they are moated off by the bureaucracy of hospitals, insurers, indifferent front desk staff, and a preoccupation with following mandatory workflows.

New poll to your right or here, following up on last week’s musing: Do you have to pay to park at your primary work site? I’ve only ever had to pay at one employer, an academic medical center. Parking lots are assigned by seniority, so new hires get stuck parking far from their work sites and sometimes extend their workdays for free during waits for shuttle buses both ways. You are also buying access to a garage, not a reserved spot, so your day starts by looking at taillights of your co-workers who are fighting for the same first available spots. The university defended its parking policies by saying that students would otherwise be leaving cars all over the place, but of course those students were also customers who were paying many thousands of dollars each year on top of parking fees. Even worse was charging patients and visitors to cruise dark garages looking desperately for a space as they ran late for appointments, often forgetting how to find their car after leaving, and then being stuck in the exit’s pay line while trying not to forget the clinician’s instructions. My personal gripe was that when I drove in to see a doctor on a different campus as a patient, I theoretically could have been issued a ticket because my permanently affixed sticker (they didn’t use hang tags back then) made it appear that I was parking inappropriately in a spot that was reserved for patients, not to mention that they stopped validating. This is a good marketing lesson – no matter how much good patients get from their visit, the first and last thing they encounter is an impersonal, frustrating parking experience, which you don’t see at CVS and suburban medical buildings that share a plaza with Home Depot.

I get frequent emails from teachers whose Donors Choose grant requests were funded by reader donations along with matching money from my Anonymous Vendor Executive. Here’s a new one from Mrs. S in California:

My amazing scholars not only use, but enthusiastically ask for “Fun Friday” every single week in order to explore the STEM materials YOU helped provide for them! They are building worlds using their imagination, and solving problems as they arise while using the engineering design process. They utilize critical thinking skills, and collaborative skills to learn science through creative fun spaces. Never were so many rowdy 5th graders ready to get their hands moving and brains working so late on a Friday afternoon. Thank you for giving them that that joyful opportunity!

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

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

Sales

• University Hospitals (OH) will work with Premier’s PINC AI Applied Services on projects related to real-world data, prospective research, clinical trials, and the use of natural language processing for early disease identification.

Announcements and Implementations

A Wolters Kluwer Health survey finds that while most patients prefer receiving educational materials from their providers, they often end up looking online because they have left an encounter with unanswered questions.

Government and Politics

Two Idaho state lawmakers co-sponsor a bill that would make it illegal to administer MRNA vaccines.

Other

Romania investigates five doctors who are accused of faking diagnoses, or intentionally inducing cardiac problems with medications, as an excuse to charge for implanting into their patients medical devices that they had removed from dead people.

Sponsor Updates

• CTG publishes a new case study, “Healthcare System for Children Transforms Their Data Management Strategy with CTG’s Help.”
• Meditech will present at the 2023 AHA Rural Health Care Leadership Conference February 19-22 in San Antonio.
• RxLightning’s MedAccess ecosystem solves specialty medication enrollment problems while relieving healthcare burnout.
• West Monroe announces Strategic Workforce Optimization with Work 4D, which analyzes a company’s work and aligns it to the most appropriate type of talent – employees, contractors, outsourcers, or automation. 
• Sectra wins four awards for customer satisfaction – 10 consecutive years of winning in the US.

Blog Posts

• Overcoming Staffing Shortages in the Lab: Finding the Right Fit Consulting Firm (JTG Consulting Group)
• Why it’s time to amplify virtual care experiences (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Taking the temperature of health systems (Nordic)
• Supporting Working Women Caregivers (Optum)
• 4 Ways to Modernize the Hospital Call Center (PerfectServe)
• RCxRules Conferences and Events: Where Should We Go? (RCxRules)
• AI ethics and CX: How to build effective AI chatbots (Talkdesk)
• Benefits of Investing in Patient Engagement (TigerConnect)
• Think Globally, Act Locally: Finding New Patients to Stay Financially Viable (WebPT)
• As Emergency Department Clinicians Struggle with Burnout, Clinical Decision Support Emerges as a Potential Lifeline (Zynx Health)
• Population Health and SDOH: What’s driving the push for better, and how can your organization compete? (Clearsense)

Contacts

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

News 2/17/23

Top News

Unified communications and collaboration services vendor Avaya, whose healthcare offerings include solutions for virtual care, collaboration, and patient access technology, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in six years.

The Durham, NC-based company reported lower than expected revenue and earnings last year, blaming accounting problems with its cloud subscription revenue, after which it replaced its CEO.

AVYA share price has dropped 98% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $24 million.

Reader Comments

From Baby Payer: “Re: IVF coverage. In an example of our messed up healthcare system, women are taking Amazon jobs and quitting after one day to get fertility benefits.” Women claim that they took a job working in an Amazon warehouse, were covered immediately by its Progyny fertility benefits, and then quit the next day and paid their own COBRA premiums going forward. The women supposedly prefer warehouse jobs because hiring and quitting are automated processes, with no interview required.

From Lou Sassol: “Re: ViVE. Will you be reporting from there?” Probably not. I can’t justify the $2,400 general admission registration and I don’t know of any easy way to attend undercover as a free media attendee. At other conferences, I have either registered at full price under my own name using a phony company name or used someone’s exhibitor pass. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I was searching for something on HIStalk and ran across my old Time Capsule series, which I think is my best work in mixing snark with occasionally insightful observations, fueled by mania that was induced by working several jobs simultaneously with little sleep way back in the mid-2000s. You don’t see a lot of health IT sites running titles like “In a Capitalist Society, Somebody Will Always Sell a Fat Man a Speedo or an Unprepared Hospital a Clinical System.”

Pondering: are hospitals the only businesses that charge customers and employees to park on the lots that they themselves own?

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Spacelabs Healthcare acquires PeraHealth and its Rothman Index patient deterioration software for undisclosed terms.

Primary care EHR vendor Elation Health acquires Lightning MD, which sells billing and payer connectivity systems.

Centura Health, which is operated as a partnership between CommonSpirit Health and AdventHealth, will dissolve as the partners decide to manage their own respective hospitals. CommonSpirit also announces that it will acquire Steward Health Care’s Utah sites, which includes five hospitals and 35 clinics.

Business Insider runs a first-person report of using Amazon’s new RxPass service that covers dozens of commonly prescribed generic drugs for a flat rate of $5 per month, citing these issues as reasons to not use it again:

• The service isn’t available in eight states and can’t be used by people covered by Medicare and Medicaid. Amazon explains that those programs don’t allow pharmacies to charge cash prices for medications that they cover.
• The display of available meds lists items multiple times – with insurance, without insurance, or with RxPass – and it’s easy to miss the one that is flagged as available under the program.
• Transfer of prescriptions from CVS took a long time.
• One prescription was rejected because it didn’t exactly match Amazon’s inventory, which required starting the process over with the patient’s doctor.

CPSI announces Q4 results: revenue up 12%, EPS $0.61 versus $0.70, beating Wall Street expectations for both. Shares are up 6% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 15% drop, valuing the company at $447 million.

R1 RCM announces Q4 results: revenue up 35%, EPS –$0.09 versus $0.11, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings. RCM shares are down 46% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 15% loss, valuing the company at $6.6 billion.

CommonSpirit Health blames its $474 million quarterly loss on the pandemic, labor shortages, staffing costs, inflation, and its October 2022 ransomware attack. Its financial report says the month-long outage in October has cost $150 million so far.

Sales

• Mosaic Life Care (MO) will start its Epic go-live on March 4, replacing Cerner.
• Care Choice Family Clinic will implement EClinicalWorks.

People

Vanderbilt University Medical Center promotes Dara Mize, MD, MS to CMIO.

Joshua Newman, MD, MSHS, SVP of healthcare and life sciences at Salesforce, will leave the company.

Hongfang Liu, PhD (Mayo Clinic) joins UTHealth Houston as director of the Center for Translational Artificial Intelligence in Medicine and VP for Learning Health Systems.

Lumeon hires Matt Duffy (NextGen Healthcare) as VP of product and Kathy Ruggiero (Commure) as VP of marketing.

Clement Chen, MBA (Leidos Health Group) joins DSFederal as CEO.

Ochsner Health SVP/CIO Laura Wilt, MBA has resigned.

Announcements and Implementations

WebPT enhances its rehab therapy platform with upgraded single sign-on capabilities, enterprise identity management, in-app history reporting, and a Snowflake-powered data warehouse solution.

Purdue-connected HemaChrome wins an NIH challenge for its smartphone app that measures blood hemoglobin non-invasively using phone pictures or screenshots from video calls.

NeuroFlow’s behavioral health platform is named one of the Phase 2 winners of the VA’s Mission Daybreak for suicide prevention solutions. I interviewed co-founder and CEO Molara – a West Point graduate and former Army captain and field artillery officer who served as a platoon leader in Iraq — last year.

Newly spun off GE HealthCare announces plans to develop hospital software to help guide care and assign resources.

Four hospitals in Ontario go live on a centralized patient portal as part of their shared deployment of Meditech Expanse.

Government and Politics

The State Department approves Oracle Cerner’s $250 million contract to implement military health IT systems for Kuwait’s Military Medical Command.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthjump Interoperability Platform is featured in a new KLAS First Look report.
• Elsevier launches the Reproductive Health Hub to support healthcare professionals with trusted information about reproductive health topics.
• Health Data Movers promotes Karla Christopher, Brandon Camp, and Michael Martin.
• Black Book Research surveys of a combined 10,000-plus end users rate Surgical Information Systems the top ambulatory surgical center technology vendor and ModMed the top health IT vendor for integrated practice management, RCM, and EHR solutions.
• CTG publishes a new case study, “CTG Helps Contract Research Organizations Leader Create Business Alignment.”
• Fortified Health Security names Robert Clark (Code42) regional director.
• The HCI Group launches its Epic Center of Excellence in Jacksonville, FL.
• Health Data Movers promotes Michael Martin to senior director of delivery.
• InterSystems releases a new Healthy Data Podcast, “Transitions of Care: Data Integration, Standardization, featuring BJ Evans, Stonerise Healthcare.”
• Kyruus publishes a new whitepaper, “Five Ways to Prioritize Provider Data Management.”
• The Care4 project in Ontario has launched a patient portal shared across four hospitals and ambulatory clinics using Meditech Expanse.
• Net Health will exhibit at APTA CSM 2023 February 23-25 in San Diego.

Blog Posts

• Choice architecture to the rescue (Nordic)
• Healthcare Consumer Behavior – Is Everything Old New Again? Now Quite. (Get Well)
• Epic EHR and Google Cloud Announce Partnership (HealthTech Resources)
• Behind the Scenes: DEI in Health Education Illustrations (Healthwise)
• Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity in Healthcare (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• CMS proposes major changes to Medicare Advantage payment models (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• 3 Healthcare Consumer Engagement Trends for 2023 (Medhost)
• Getting Better Provider Face Time Begins with a Better EHR (Net Health)
• How Array Behavioral Care Addresses Access and Continuity of Care (NeuroFlow)
• Navigating outpatient best practices, part 2: How AI-powered workflows drive appropriate documentation accuracy and reimbursement (Nuance)
• How Automation Fixes the Biggest Issues Facing Healthcare Service Desks Today (NTT Data)

Contacts

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

Readers Write: Faster Horses? Let’s Think Different

Faster Horses? Let’s Think Different
By Stuart Hanson

Stuart Hanson, MBA is CEO of Avaneer Health of Chicago, IL.

American industrialist and business magnate Henry Ford is purported to have said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” The same could be said when it comes to what it’s going to take to transform the US healthcare system, one of the most administratively complex in the world.

When compared to other high-income nations, we spend the most, yet have poorer outcomes. While we have many initiatives in place to fix our current administrative inefficiencies, what we really need is an entirely new way for healthcare stakeholders to connect, collaborate, and conduct business. That requires the industry to put aside “faster horses” thinking and move beyond more API connections, HIEs, or revenue cycle management bolt-on technologies.

Our healthcare system was designed around payer and provider processes. But at its core, healthcare is human. At the center of every procedure, every diagnosis, every transaction is a human being — a real person with expectations of being treated with dignity at a moment when they are most vulnerable. Yet our back-office processes aren’t built around the patient; they are designed around transactions. Those transactions move across disparate data silos, point solutions, aged technology infrastructure, and manual processes. Many of us can share experiences of how we have been personally impacted by our current systems.

It’s time to create a new way of working together that puts the patient first, restoring the humanity of healthcare. That requires a level of data fluidity that we currently lack, fluidity that enables the sharing of data and seamless collaboration for more effective back-end processes and better patient experiences.

While APIs are great at establishing point-to-point connectivity, they aren’t the answer for achieving true, seamless interoperability that puts the patient first. APIs are still focused on the transaction and the transaction type. We need a digital ecosystem built on a highly secure, decentralized peer-to-peer network that leverages common infrastructure, as well as tools that enable collaboration and trust — a data superhighway. This approach puts the patient, patient identity and all needed data at the center.

With the type of interoperability delivered in a decentralized network:

• Participants retain ownership of their data while giving access (with permission) to the data needed.
• Instead of sending files back and forth, there is automatic access to data and the data owner can revoke rights at any time.
• A single person identity (for the patient/member/provider) and intelligent matching creates confidence in the accuracy of the information exchange.
• FHIR standardizes the data.
• Solutions on the network enable participants to interact, transforming administrative and clinical processes.

One of the most significant benefits of a decentralized network is its ability to provide an unprecedented level of transparency and accountability, which supports greater integrity and personal responsibility among participants. With a decentralized network built upon innovative technologies, the data becomes immutable and is always refreshed and current, eliminating the need for third-party validation. This type of data fluidity would enable real-time risk adjustment, simplified quality reviews, and more proactive process improvements.

Another benefit of this type of network is that payers, providers, and solution vendors can connect to any other network participant without having to build or maintain another API. It’s a completely new way of doing business.

From a patient’s perspective, greater data fluidity via a decentralized network can eliminate much of the complexity that inhibits seamless, timely access to care. Prior authorizations can be completed in minutes instead of days or weeks, reducing delays in care. Referrals take seconds, helping to eliminate gaps in care. Accurate patient financial responsibility can be determined in real time so patients know with 100% certainty what they will owe prior to their service. Patient medical records are accessible in real time no matter where the patient has been seen in the past, giving the provider a complete view of the patient’s medical history without having to request, email, fax, or send records through the mail.

Leveraging a peer-to-peer network, developers and innovators could connect on a single platform and use common tools to collaborate with other stakeholders. Connecting innovators and stakeholders across the ecosystem on a single platform would enable co-creation, which would allow much needed innovations to reach the market faster. Payers win, providers win, vendors win, and most importantly, patients win.

Interoperability is a term that invokes thoughts of payer-provider processes. While that’s true, we need to rethink what it means in terms of the patient. We need to take a step outside of the interoperability solutions around us and rethink how the business of healthcare could work. Instead of trying to fix a broken system, we should reimagine a completely new system, one unencumbered by layers of inefficiencies that inhibit patient care and one that reinvents the patient experience for good.

News 2/15/23

Top News

HHS, ONC, and The Sequoia Project announce that CommonWell Health Alliance, EHealth Exchange, Epic Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement Interoperability Services, Health Gorilla, Kno2, and Konza have been approved to implement TEFCA as prospective Qualified Health Information Networks.

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Doximity launches a beta version of DocsGPT, which allows providers to submit prior authorization documentation to insurers using the AI chatbot technology of ChatGPT. In an “only in healthcare” convergence of cutting edge and ancient technologies, Doximity will also integrate ChatGPT with its fax solution. DocsGPT errored out every time I tried to use it, which I assume is because ChatGPT was overloaded.

In the UK, hospital software vendor System C acquires Clevermed, which offers the BadgerNet system for pregnancy and newborns.

Sales

• Emirates Health Services will deploy Care.ai’s smart care facility platform throughout the UAE, with a focus on redesigning clinical and operational workflows through ambient monitoring and virtual inpatient care.
• Mary Washington Healthcare (VA) will launch an inpatient virtual nursing program using technology from Caregility.
• Montana’s Big Sky Care HIE selects Lyniate’s Rhapsody Interoperability Suite.

People

Joe Sedlak, RN, MBA (Xealth) joins Vital as VP of client success.

Regenstrief Institute names Rachel Patzer, PhD, MPH (Emory University School of Medicine) president and CEO.

Alan Portela (AirStrip) joins Masimo as SVP of strategic business and hospital automation.

Government and Politics

Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee Chairman Jon Tester (D-MT) says the VA’s EHR Modernization Program must move forward, pointing out that issues with the new Oracle Cerner system do not outweigh those with the department’s legacy VistA system. Tester co-authored the VA Electronic Health Record Transparency Act, which was signed into law last summer, that requires VA Secretary Denis McDonough to update Congress on the software’s costs, performance, and outcomes.

Oracle Cerner, meanwhile, continues to push back on recent legislative efforts to shut down or overhaul the VA’s EHR program. Oracle EVP Ken Glueck has followed up his February 3 criticism of those bills with a new blog post that outlines the benefits to veterans and end users and points out the folly of the “improvements” act, which places “the go/no go decision to migrate to the new EHR to …171 different medical centers.”

ONC announces that 95% of certified health IT developers met the December 31 deadline to update and provide their customers with technology that, among other things, enables access to information through FHIR-based APIs “without special effort.”

Other

Malaysia’s Selayang Hospital, one of the first hospitals in the world to go paperless in 1999, struggles technically after shutting down its Cerner system, switching to a Notepad-like text editor called BHIS that it had developed for barebones data entry during downtime, and then overloading that system 18 months later in forcing a switch to yet another homegrown system that was designed for COVID-19 quarantine centers. The hospital has also shut down its IT department after outsourcing to a vendor whose contract was terminated. The radiologist who developed BHIS in just four hours says he was limited in that most hospital computers were running Windows XP with Internet Explorer 6.0, the hospital’s network speed was limited, and the virtual server the hospital gave him had only 1 GB of memory. The hospital’s website still declares that its now-mothballed Total Hospital Information System makes it “a showcase to the rest of the world.”

UnityPoint Health (IA) begins charging patients between $36 and $70 for messaging their physicians via its MyChart patient portal. UnityPoint Clinic President and CEO Patricia Newland, MD says the organization decided to start charging due to the “tremendous increase” in messaging seen since the beginning of the pandemic. Patients will not be billed for messages that are related to appointment scheduling or prescription refills.

Duke University researchers discover that acquiring mental health data from data brokers is fairly easy, inexpensive, and typically comes with few strings attached. Researchers approached 37 data brokers for bulk mental health data and received offers from 11, that said they could provide potentially identifiable data on people with depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder sorted by demographic information including credit scores. Some brokers offered information on 5,000 people for as little as $275.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity CEO Russ Thomas joins the Florida Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors.
• Azara Healthcare publishes a new customer success story, “Alaska Health Centers Improve Diabetes Care Through Data-Driven Healthcare Model.”
• Baker Tilly publishes a new case study, “State health department captures more complete and timely data on highly transmissible diseases through ECR implementation.”
• Censinet debuts its new Risk Never Sleeps Podcast, focusing on the people protecting patient safety across healthcare.
• Thirty-two community, critical access, and specialty hospitals select Oracle Cerner’s CommunityWorks technology.
• Clearsense publishes a new whitepaper, “How AI and Governance Can Transform Healthcare.”
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of The Informonster Podcast, “The CDC Shares the Success of Collaboration During a Crisis.”
• Direct Recruiters celebrates 40 years in business.

Blog Posts

• From Transactions to Transformations: Putting a Premium on Human Connection in Registration (Access)
• 5 Key Performance Indicators to Monitor for a Healthy Revenue Cycle (AGS Health)
• Futureproofing care: New models in care delivery (Arcadia)
• Health Systems’ Untapped Growth Opportunity: Pharmacy (Arrive Health)
• Taking the temperature of health systems (Nordic)
• How to Create a Continuous Healthcare Experience (Artera)
• Health IT Innovation: Opportunities to Protect Your Health System in a Volatile Economy (CereCore)
• Social Determinants of Health (ChartSpan)
• Epic EHR and Google Cloud Announce Partnership (HealthTech Resources)
• How Vulnerabilities Hide in Plain Sight (& How to Mitigate Them) (Clearwater)
• Helping Physicians Overcome Barriers in Risk-based Documentation and Coding (Curation Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 2/13/23

Top News

Terry Admirim, MD, MPH, MBA, program executive director of the VA’s EHR Modernization Integration Office, will leave the VA to pursue unstated other opportunities.

Serving as interim after her February 25 departure will be Neil Evans, MD, senior advisor to the assistant secretary for information and technology and CIO and head of the VA’s Connected Care program.

Reader Comments

From Tempus Fugit: “Re: Olive. I heard endlessly about their unicorn status and huge customer count, which sounded like BS and probably means they are counting some rando clinic that is using a tiny solution as a customer. I know a sales guy there and he said the company paid them a ton to sell consulting engagements, but with nothing meaningful deployed, they went back to selling small patient access solutions. He said customers were unhappy that they were promised a 5x ROI that hasn’t happened anywhere.” Unverified. Axios reviewed LinkedIn records in May 2022 to determine that among the 20 Olive employee departures in the previous month were its EVP/GM, senior director of partner programs. director of data engineering, chief marketing officer, and VP of product. Axios also reported in April 2022 that Olive overpromises, under-delivers, and doesn’t actually use AI/ML. The company told the reporter at that time that it had 1,000 hospitals in 200 enterprise customers using its products and services, although an Axios review of internal documents shows 80 customers. The company has raised $856 million in funding through a Series H round, with its last investment being in July 2021.

From Domainatrix: “Re: company layoffs. A positive aspect is that young workers will now know that their employer isn’t their friend, co-workers aren’t their families, and employers as well as employers are free to end their bargain for any reason.” Long-timers who have been negatively affected at some point by company decisions rolled eyes at the unquestioning willingness of fresh go-getters to work ridiculous hours or grind away at crappy jobs, convinced that they would be rewarded by their benevolent bosses. Fast-forward to the end of boom times that has put employers back in control with little fear of mass resignations. The result is a scaling back of work-from home programs and an insistence that “valued associates” work harder or longer because the company has found itself in a jam, often of its own making. Bosses aren’t friends, the job of the chief people officer is mostly to work against the interest of employees, and you would be replaced and turned into a break room trivia question within three months of your departure.

From Purported Victim: “Re: hospitals ending some services or closing in poor areas. So much for being a charitable non-profit.” You will always be disappointed if you expect any person or organization to take any action that isn’t the one that is most beneficial to them.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Patient portal, telephone, and online forms are the most common ways poll respondents have recently sent medical information to a clinician.

New poll to your right or here: Did your most recent clinician encounter, in whatever form, make you feel “cared for?”I voted yes because when I recently texted my direct primary care doctor about refill, she asked me how I was doing and mentioned that I hadn’t seen her for a while and might want to drop by for routine lab work and a health review, none of which increase her income.

Webinars

February 28 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Words Matter: Simplifying Clinical Terms for Patients.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Whitney Mannion, RN, MSN, senior terminologist, IMO; David Bocanegra, RN, nurse informaticist, IMO. The language of medicine can be confusing and contradictory to patients, challenging their ability to prepare for a procedure or pay their bills. This webinar will explore how the words that are used to communicate – online, in print, and in person – must be chosen carefully to allow patients to comprehend their diagnoses, treatments, and care plans. The presenters will also describe how the ONC Final Rule for the 21st Century Cures Act will make clinical and technical language more directly accessible through patient portals.

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Business Insider looks at the “fleet of secret workers” who aren’t visible to customers but who perform much of the work that is attributed to sexy technology or who are required to keep that technology running. The author concludes that robots, automation technology, and AI chatbots won’t replace employees, but they may allow companies to shift less-visible offshore to lower their costs. I would say that we are in the early days of companies overstating their use of AI and other tools in failing to mention that behind-the-scenes humans are doing a lot of the actual work, the “10,000 diligent Indians” concept a vendor CEO once told me about. It’s kind of a sad state when companies brag on their tools rather than their humans, but investors love employee-lite scalability and companies yearn to be viewed as a technology high-flyer instead of a low-tech sweatshop.

NPR notes that hospitals are outsourcing their EDs to staffing companies that are owned by private equity investors, with a result being that doctors are being replaced by nurse practitioners and physician assistants to boost margins. The change is motivating some ED doctors to change their work setting because they went into medicine to see patients, not supervise lesser-trained employees.

Sales

• Norman Regional Health System selects VisiQuate Denials Management Analytics, Revenue Management Analytics, and PayFlo.
• Onsite Women’s Health will use Volpara Health’s analytics software to improve mammography quality by assessing positioning, compression, and radiation dose.
• Complete Care implements the EClinicalWorks EHR.

People

Health Catalyst promotes Cathy Menkiena, RN, MBA to GM/SVP Northeast.

Industry long-timer and former CHIME VP Tim Stettheimer, PhD died February 9 of ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease). He was 56.

Announcements and Implementations

Stick around until the Friday morning keynote of HIMSS23 (which is asking a lot) and you can hear just-announced speaker and NFL player Damar Hamlin, who was saved by CPR and AED after suffering cardiac arrest in a game on January 2. He will speak on “Winning the Game of Life.”

A new KLAS report covers IT advisory services.

Sponsor Updates

• CloudWave launches its Cybersecurity Insider Program to offer members access to information about the latest cybersecurity trends and threats, as well as ongoing education.
• Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast featuring UCHealth CMIO Dr. CT Lin.
• PeriGen partners with Baylor College of Medicine, Texas Children’s Hospital, and the Malawi Ministry of Health to assist with successful newborn in Malawi using PeriGen’s AI-augmented continuous electronic fetal monitoring.
• PerfectServe publishes a new case study, “How Savannah Neurology Specialists Reinvented Their Medical Answering Service Workflows.”
• Sphere releases a new e-book, “Unaffordable Medical Bills: A New Social Determinant of Health.”
• Spok receives ISO 13485:2016 certification from Dekra Certification.
• Talkdesk has been recognized as a Customers’ Choice in the 2023 Gartner Peer Insights “Voice of the Customer” for contact center as a service.

Blog Posts

• OpenAI and ChatGPT: A Primer for Healthcare Leaders (Orbita)
• The PINC AI Applied Sciences Team Partners with NWCF to Advance Health Equity and Expand Education (Premier)
• ChatGPT is coming to your contact center (Talkdesk)
• MIPS Extreme and Uncontrollable Circumstances Policy Update (WebPT)
• As Emergency Department Clinicians Struggle with Burnout, Clinical Decision Support Emerges as a Potential Lifeline (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 2/10/23

Top News

CVS Health will acquire primary care company Oak Street Health for $10.6 billion in cash.

Oak Street Health’s 600 primary care providers work from 169 medical centers in 21 states.

Meanwhile, CVS Health reports Q4 results: revenue up 9.5%, adjusted EPS $1.99 versus $1.98, beating Wall Street expectations for both. CVS shares are down 20% in the past 12 months versus the Dow’s 5% loss.

Reader Comments

From Another Company Debacle: “Re: Allscripts / Veradigm. Major layoffs this week in R&D and solutions involving employees in both the US and India. Veradigm (formerly Allscripts) Practice Management took a big hit. Veradigm Interface Engine too.” Unverified.

From Jay Glick: “Re: Oracle Cerner. Fared poorly in Best in KLAS, wouldn’t you say?” Agreed. Oracle Cerner finished last among software suites, 20 points behind Epic and mostly “well below average” scores in every product segment except for attaining “average” in virtual care. In the all-important large hospital market, Epic scored 89.4 versus Oracle Cerner’s 70.0. Oracle Cerner finished first in no categories versus its last-place showing in a bunch of them. In trying to come up with a “glass half full” conclusion, I have two thoughts: (a) at least Oracle Cerner will keep making a lot of money from the federal government unless it gets shown the VA’s door and loses its only prime contractor deal, not to mention that a lot of Oracle’s recent revenue and earnings growth came from the former Cerner; and (b) perhaps the corporate stumbles that followed Neal Patterson’s death, along with high-visibility revenue cycle product problems, made it inevitable that the keys needed to be turned over to a new owner who has the money and objectivity to right the ship. From the “glass half empty” perspective, few health IT examples exist where a big outside company improved a vendor by acquiring it. Another sobering thought for Oracle is that KLAS reports only what customers are saying, and some of the older Cerner sites may re-muster the fortitude and cash that would be needed to move to Epic.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I suppressed my HIMSS23 indifference long enough to book my hotel, so the “am I going or not” question has been answered. The exhibit hall will be open full days on Tuesday (April 18), Wednesday, and a slightly shortened day Thursday. The hotel I was considering was nearly $500 per night on Expedia and on the chain’s loyalty club site, which would have kept me home, so kudos to HIMSS for making it available to attendees at barely more than half that price for the same dates. The website shows 764 exhibitors. I don’t think I’ve been to Chicago since HIMSS15. Opening day temperature highs going back from 2022 were 42, 55, 42, 76, and 43 degrees, and of course many remember the HIMSS09 opening reception near-blizzard where the McCormick Place coat check people had actual coats to manage instead of just last-day luggage holds.

I realized that I wasn’t seeing Altera Digital Health Sunrise (the former Allscripts Sunrise that is now owned by N. Harris) on the Best in KLAS report, where for years it topped the list of large-hospital inpatient EHRs. It had too few customers surveyed to be stacked up against Epic and Oracle Cerner (the only two products that were ranked), but its performance score was the lowest of all at 63.8. In the midsize category, it performed even worse at 54.6 (and Altera’s Paragon got a 37.6 score, also with too few responses to compare, and also pegged the lowest score in the small hospital category at 49.0). Also on the KLAS report, I also didn’t see segment categories for ED, anesthesia, laboratory, radiology, and pharmacy management systems, so I guess those products are no longer reported as part of Best in KLAS.

Webinars

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Olive lays off a reported 215 employees, about one-third of the company. The company has reduced its headcount from a one-time peak of 1,400. The robotic process automation vendor, which once had a valuation of $4 billion, has been plagued by customer and executive defections along with reports that its promises of hospital savings have rarely materialized. 

A leaked internal email indicates that healthcare will remain a top priority of Oracle and is the primary focus on CTO and executive chair Larry Ellison. The company is also moving its data and AI unit under its cloud business.

Google’s valuation drops by $100 billion the day that its newly announced Bard chatbot was found to have given an inaccurate response in a company promotional video, raising questions about Google’s competitive position against Microsoft, which has already integrated ChatGPT functionality into its Bing search.

Virtual behavioral service company Mindstrong, which has raised $160 million in funding from high-profile investors, will wind down its operation and lay off 130 employees starting in late March.

Healthcare staffing marketplace operator Nomad reportedly lays off 20% of its headcount as pandemic-fueled demand and payment rates cool. The company has raised $200 million, including $105 million seven months ago.

Sales

• McClow, Clark, and Berk, PA Radiology Services (FL) selects Healthcare Administrative Partners for revenue cycle management.
• Southern Illinois Healthcare will implement Xealth to allow clinicians to find and order digital health tools and programs.
• Southern New England Health chooses Koan Health’s Datalyst for population health and medical economics.

Announcements and Implementations

Highlights from KLAS’s Best in KLAS in software and services for 2023:

• Epic, Impact Advisors, Nordic, Medasource, and Chartis were named for notable performances.
• Software suite rankings were topped by Epic and Meditech.
• Most improved software products were Veradigm’s FollowMyHealth and KPMG’s ERP business transformation and implementation leadership services.
• Top physician practice ranking went to Epic, followed by Meditech and Athenahealth.
• The overall IT services category was a tie between Impact Advisors and Nordic.

CareCloud integrates the Quippe Clinical Data Engine of Medicomp Systems into its EHR platforms.

Researchers at University of Missouri School of Medicine find that a small group of EHR testers identified 2.5 usability concerns for each new function, 70% of which were correctable before rollout.

Government and Politics

A KHN investigation finds that HHS has ignored repeated congressional mandates, going back to 2006, to implement a public health network that can detect and address infectious disease outbreaks. Experts say HHS didn’t follow through because the task is complex, funding is inadequate, consensus is lacking on the data that is needed in an emergency, and HHS can’t decide which of its operating divisions should lead the project.

Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL), chair of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs — who is involved with two bills that would change or end the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation – says he will listen to more moderate proposals that are submitted by Democrat lawmakers to hold the company and the VA more accountable, but adds via a spokesperson that “the time for half-measures and tinkering around the edges is over.”

Other

NHS England’s technology budget has reportedly been cut in half to just over $1 billion, which will likely impact requests for electronic patient records. 

A survey of 9,500 consumers in six countries, including the US, finds that far fewer of them feel “cared for” than their primary care doctors believe. Key consumer issues are faster and more accurate diagnosis, convenient access, a focus on long-term health, and making healthcare more affordable. China leads the other countries in use of health portals, digital health apps, and telehealth. Half of consumers think that doctors and hospitals should be leading the charge to connect health information, but US physicians say they don’t do that because they aren’t paid extra, obtaining patient consent is a pain, they are experiencing data overload, they don’t know how to use the data, and technology doesn’t work well. Only 40 to 50% of US consumer respondents say they would share their health information even if the result was improved health, better-tailored services, safer treatments, or lower costs.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare consumer platform operator League will offer healthcare cost and quality information from Kyruus-owned HealthSparq.
• Everbridge adds DigitalOps Insights, a new AI-powered situational awareness tool, to its Digital Operations solutions bundle.
• Southern Ohio Medical Center reports a 30% drop in hospital-acquired C. difficile infections following the development of expedited testing tools by Meditech Professional Services.
• First Databank names Joe Bodkin (Franciscan Health) clinical informatics pharmacist specialist, Angela Johnston (Astra Zeneca) regional representative, and Shafer Grytness (Insight Global) software engineer.
• OSF HealthCare releases a new podcast featuring Get Well Supervisor of Clinical Digital Care Kate Johnson and Digital Patient Care Manager Kara Roat.
• InterSystems releases a new Healthy Data Podcast, “FFS vs. Integrated Care.”
• Intelligent Medical Objects secures SOC 2 Type 2+ HIPAA certification.
• Meditech shares the ways in which Valley Health System (NJ) clinicians have used its Surveillance tool to quickly identify patient conditions, provide relevant data, and expedite orders to initiate treatment.
• NeuroFlow completes its SOC 2 audit, reinforcing its commitment to protecting health data.
• Everest Group names NTT Data a Leader in its Provider Digital Services Peak Matrix Assessment 2023 report.

Blog Posts

• Unlocking the Power of Meditech Through a Robust Health IT Infrastructure (Healthcare Triangle)
• EHR Integrations: To Build or Not to Build (Healthjump)
• Most Popular Healthcare Technology Trends of 2023 (HealthTech Resources)
• Optimum CareerPath Spotlight: Meet Pratik Shekade (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Newly Minted Rural Emergency Hospitals Face Old RCM Challenges (Medhost)
• Celebrating #1 Best in KLAS for image exchange: Innovative ways patients and providers are sharing without boundaries (Nuance)

HIStalk sponsors that were named as Best in KLAS Software and Services 2023 or Best in KLAS Global Software 2023:

• Agfa HealthCare (PACS Middle East / Africa)
• Arcadia (value-based care managed services)
• Azara Healthcare (population health management)
• Findhelp (social determinants of care network)
• Fortified Health Security (security and privacy managed services)
• Impact Advisors (security and privacy consulting services, ERP implementation leadership, financial improvement consulting)
• InterSystems (clinical portals Europe)
• Lyniate (integration engines)
• Meditech (acute care EMR small)
• Nordic (HIT core clinical implementation leadership)
• Nuance (computer-assisted physician documentation, speech recognition front-end EMR, image exchange)
• Oracle Health (acute care EHR Middle East /Africa)
• Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company (managed IT services)
• Premier / PINC AI (value-based care consulting)
• Sectra (PACS large, PACS small, PACS Asia / Oceania, PACS Canada)
• Visage Imaging (universal viewer)
• Wolters Kluwer (infection control and monitoring, patient-driven care management)
• Zynx Health (clinical decision support care plans and order sets)

Contacts

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

News 2/8/23

Top News

A blog post by Oracle EVP and lobbyist Ken Glueck fires back at members of Congress with unusually aggressive criticism of two recent bills that would postpone or cancel the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation. Some points:

• 1980s-era VistA can’t meet the health challenges of veterans, can’t communicate with DoD systems, and has always been nearly impossible to maintain and modernize, so reverting to it at live sites would be a disaster.
• There’s no magic wand for modernization, but moving to commercial off-the-shelf system workflows is always worth doing.
• It was a mistake to schedule the first VA go-live in the pandemic’s peak days of October 2020 when caregivers were overwhelmed.
• With the Oracle acquisition of Cerner, “VA now has essentially two vendors for the price of one” in providing both clinical and engineering expertise.
• DoD and public hospitals around the world have successfully rolled out Cerner as the VA struggles, suggesting that the VA’s issues aren’t related to product capabilities.
• A particular VA challenge is that it runs 130 instances of VistA, which Cerner attempted to fix by combining them into a single workflow that turned out to be too cumbersome, such as dozens of options for ordering a liver enzyme test when commercial instances of Millennium might offer four or five.
• Glueck reiterated Oracle’s commitment to have the first beta test of a rewritten Millennium EHR available in 2023 at no extra cost to the VA or DoD. The cloud-based application will include a modern, Web-based, mobile-friendly user interface and will support voice recognition and AI-based clinical decision support.

Reader Comments

From Krill Feeder: “Re: more slide decks from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Are health IT vendors increasingly using the ‘land and expand’ investor pitch for growth prospects as is common in other industries? Get the customer using a low-cost initial sale, then cross-sell and upsell to create annuity-like profits. Do readers think this still works in a stock market downturn?” Incumbent vendors, unless they are inept, always have the upper hand in making add-on sales by gaining access to health system decision-makers and removing the uncertainty and effort that is required to onboard a new vendor. I like the concept since it encourages vendors to perform well after the sale, which is a win-win, but whether investors should believe such claims is a different issue. A variant is when one company acquires another purely to sell into its customer base, which is often traumatic for those customers whose carefully researched product and vendor assumptions are rendered uncertain by new ownership bearing ulterior motives.

From Pete Drucker: “Re: [vendor name omitted]. To exit the market. Last day for employees is Friday.” Unverified, so I didn’t include the company name. I could not find a press contact or employee email address anywhere, so I’ve sent a Twitter direct message to the CEO and will update with any response.

Webinars

March 7 (Tuesday) noon ET.  “Prescribe RPA 2.0 to Treat Healthcare Worker Burnout.” Sponsor: Keysight Technologies. Presenters: Anne Foster, MS, technical consultant manager, Eggplant; Emily Yan, MPA, product marketing manager, Keysight Technologies. Half of US health systems plan to invest in robotic process automation by the end of this year, per Gartner. The concept is evolving to help with staff burnout and physician productivity. The presenters will introduce RPA 2.0, explain how to maximize its value, demonstrate how to quickly start on RPA 2.0 and test automation in one platform, and answer questions about healthcare automation.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CVS Health is reportedly close to acquiring primary care operator Oak Street Health for $10.5 billion.

Sales

• WellSpan Health (PA) selects Epic-based KeyCare as its virtual care partner for its on-demand care service. The health system was part of the startup’s Series A investment round.
• VirtualHealth adds automated prior authorization capabilities from Edifecs to its Helios utilization and complex care management technology.
• Virtua Health (NJ) will implement Memora Health’s automated clinical intelligence software as a part of its care programs for congestive heart failure, specialty pharmacy, and colonoscopies.

People

April Saathoff, DNP, MS, RN (Harris Health System) joins Johns Hopkins as VP/CNIO.

ChartSpan names Dan PIessens, MS (RevealRx) CTO.

Emids names Sean Narayanan, MS (Apexon) as CEO. He replaces founder and CEO Saurabh Sinha, who will transition to board chair.

Medsphere promotes Jeri Judkins to CEO, replacing Irv Lichtenwald.

Mass General Brigham promotes Fran Hinckley to VP of digital solutions delivery of its community division.

Announcements and Implementations

Grocery store operator Albertsons Companies launches Sincerely Health, a digital health and wellness app that offers a questionnaire-calculated health score, linking to activity trackers such as Apple Health and Fitbit, and pharmacy management. The company’s merger with Kroger is pending approval.

OSF St. Francis Hospital (IL) launches a tele-NICU program using technology from Teladoc Health.

Alpine Health develops AI-powered predictive analytics to help hospital case managers ensure that at-risk patients transition to the right care settings with appropriate social services upon discharge. The startup is the product of a partnership between OSF Healthcare (IL), its innovation center, and consulting firm High Alpha Innovation.

Virginia Mason Franciscan Health (WA) uses hospital-at-home services and technology from Contessa to launch its Home Recovery Care program at St. Joseph Medical Center in Tacoma.

Microsoft launches previews of Bing and Edge that are enhanced with the big brother of AI chat tool ChatGPT. Meanwhile, Google rushes chatbot AI tool Bard to testers in reaction to ChatGPT’s threat to Google’s search.

Medical technology company Imperative Care launches Kandu Health, which offers digital support for recovering stroke patients.

Government and Politics

The Defense Health Agency’s National Capital Region — which includes Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and several other facilities — will go live on MHS Genesis next month.

Privacy and Security

Federal officials attribute last December’s 988 mental health helpline outage to a cyberattack on Intrado, the emergency communications software company that has managed the service since it launched last summer.

Other

Moffitt Cancer Center (FL) researchers determine that 25,500 virtual visits conducted through its Department of Virtual Medicine during the pandemic saved patients 3.4 million miles and between $147 and $186 per visit. The center plans to expand its telemedicine capabilities to include clinical trials.

Sentara Healthcare creates a remote patient monitoring department to oversee the installation and management of 108 remote cameras in rooms across its hospitals in Virginia and North Carolina. The $1.7 million project follows a four-year period of product evaluations, pilot projects, data compilation, and establishment of policies and procedures. Trained technicians at two control centers are responsible for monitoring patients at a dozen facilities.

Did you see this in person as I did? A 3,875-foot scanned document that was created at HIMSS08 in Orlando holds the Guinness World Record as the longest ever. Attendance that year was 28,000 and keynote speakers included former AOL CEO Steve Case, “Freakonomics” author Steven D. Levitt, PhD, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity presents scholarships to students from Jean Ribault High School as part of its Beyond School Walls program with Big Brothers Big Sisters of Northeast Florida.
• Diameter Health, now Availity, earns Certified Data Partner designation in NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program.
• King’s College Hospital London – Dubai will implement Oracle Cerner, utilizing Oracle Cloud Infrastructure.
• AdvancedMD publishes “The Top 6 Healthcare Trends Making an Impact on Medical Practices in 2023.”
• Nordic publishes a podcast featuring UCHealth CMIO C.T. Lin, MD.
• Agfa HealthCare announces the successful go live of its breast imaging AI solution at Dubai Academic Health Corp.’s Dubai Hospital.
• Artera expands its multilanguage support to 109 languages.
• Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Creating an effective corporate compliance program for healthcare providers.”
• Bamboo Health names Missi Ledbetter senior program manager, Courtney Forrest onboarding specialist, and Omer Khalil software engineer intern.
• Emirates Health Services implements Care.ai’s ambient healthcare intelligence platform to enable its smart facility initiative.
• ChartLogic integrates FlexScanMD’s inventory management and tracking system into its ambulatory practice management solution.
• Clearwater publishes a new whitepaper, “Understanding Cloud Security Basics: How to Ensure HIPAA Security and Compliance in a Cloud Environment.”
• CloudWave will exhibit at the North Carolina Healthcare Association Winter Meeting February 15-17 in Cary, NC.
• WellSky announces that its CarePort Care Management and CarePort Discharge care transition solutions can now coordinate with Dialyze Direct service sites.
• Azara Healthcare adds cost and utilization analytics and visualizations to its DRVS population health management platform.

Blog Posts

• 3 Ways Pharmacy Technology Creates Efficiencies that Reduce Staff Stress (OmniSys)
• The Power of the Smartphone & How Consumer Behavior is Shaping the Future of Healthcare ESignature (Access)
• Most Popular Healthcare Technology Trends of 2023 (HealthTech Resources)
• Risk-Adjustment & Hierarchical Condition Category Coding: What Are They and Why Do They Matter? (AGS Health)
• 5 Key Healthcare IT Trends to Watch in 2023 (Keysight Technologies)
• What are the 12 social determinants of health factors and why do they matter? (Arcadia)
• How to Think Differently to Find Talent in 2023 (Ascom)
• CMS National Healthcare Directory RFI Blog Series: (A Quiet) HealthTech Response (CareMesh)
• Sese Bennett Shares How Hospitals Can Be Best Prepared for Cybersecurity Breach (CereCore)
• Effective Cloud Migration is Crucial for Your Organization – Here’s How to Get it Right (CTG)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 2/6/23

Top News

Democrats on the House Committee of Veterans’ Affairs are working on an alternative to last week’s two Republican-sponsored bills that would end the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation and convert live sites back to VistA.

FedScoop cites sources who say that the proposal may involve changes that would affect all of the VA’s IT projects.

Reader Comments

From Krill Feeder: “Re: more slide decks from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. All vendors know, want, and fear the trademarked Gartner Magic Quadrant, which can have a strong impact on sales and corporate fate. Is NextGen Healthcare’s use of a similar graphic in a May 2022 investor deck without mentioning Gartner sketchy, smart marketing communications, both, or neither? And was its absence from the JPM event deck due to brevity constraints, Gartner objections, or evolving corporate spin?”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Nearly three-fourths of poll respondents who attended HIMSS22 will go to HIMSS23, while 80% of those who didn’t go to HIMSS22 will repeat their absence in April.

New poll to your right or here: Which ways have you used in the past year to send medical information to a clinician? I like nearly everything about my direct primary care doctor, but most of all I like being able to text, call, or email her directly without having to pierce the veil of inept, self-important gatekeepers (she practices alone).

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Constellation Software delays posting its Q4 and annual reports, blaming the complexity of its May 2022 acquisition of the hospital and large physician practice business of Allscripts, which is now known as Altera Digital Health within Constellation’s N. Harris Computer Corporation business.

Announcements and Implementations

A regional network of OB-GYN practices and hospitals in New Jersey will collaborate to launch a statewide, value-based maternity care initiative that will be powered by the maternal digital tools of Wildflower Health.

Jefferson Center goes live on Netsmart’s MyHealthPointe consumer engagement platform for remote patient monitoring and engagement for behavioral health services. It has launched a pilot with assessments for medication check-in, patient health questionnaires, and weekly check-ins and developing new technology services for family support, text communication, wearables, and notifications.

Privacy and Security

Tallahassee Memorial Hospital diverts patients and cancels non-emergency procedures following “an IT security event” – reportedly a ransomware attack — that occurred late Thursday.

Duke Health will sell de-identified patient data to drug companies via Nference, with which it may also create a for-profit spinoff business. Bioethicists contacted by the local newspaper question whether it should be made more clear to patients that their data may be used to generate profit. Duke Health announced its relationship with NFerence on January 4, 2023, where it talked a lot about community health and research breakthroughs without mentioning that it was being paid for providing patient data.

Other

Colorado counties report being overwhelmed with 911 calls that start coming in every morning when the ski lifts open and skiers start falling, which sets off the fall detector in their Apple Watches. The interim director of Summit County’s emergency service, which responded to 185 false alarm calls from Watch-wearing skiers in a single week, says that “Apple needs to put in their own call center if this is a feature they want.” She also notes that operators rarely receive false 911 calls from Android phones. The Watch gives wearers 10 seconds to suppress the call before it starts dialing, but those who are wearing ski gear often don’t notice the warning and don’t respond to the 911 call-back, which requires responders to be dispatched. One county’s sheriff has instructed 911 operators to ignore all automated calls from ski slopes, reasoning that there’s nearly always someone around who would call 911 in a real emergency.

In Germany, a nurse in a top teaching hospital confesses to killing two elderly patients by overdosing them on sedatives (unintentionally, the nurse says) so they wouldn’t bother him while he suffered from a hangover. He admits that he did as little work as possible in his job, ignored patients, turned their wheelchairs toward the wall so they couldn’t talk to others, and found it easy to obtain sedatives because “in the hospital, they don’t pay much attention to this.” He has been charged with two counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder. Note: the newspaper article says without explanation that the man “pretended to be a nurse,” but they incorrectly translated the original report from a German publication – he really was a nurse, but working in an area where he had minimal qualifications.

Political anthropologist and medical resident Eric Reinhart, MD, PhD says in a New York Times opinion piece that physicians are getting burned out and leaving the profession not because of working conditions, but rather because they are “witnessing the slow death of American medical ideology” and feel complicit in putting profits over people. He says that the AMA convinced doctors to fight healthcare as a public service because it would threaten their autonomy and income, forcing doctors to lecture patients on personal health responsibility and their duty to avoid health risks that are mostly driven by economic disparity. He urges doctors to unionize, then demand universal healthcare.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases a new podcast, “Making Rounds: The up and downside of disintermediation.”
• Everest Group names NTT Data a leader in its Healthcare Provider Digital Services PEAK Matrix Assessment 2023 report.
• Sectra publishes a new case study featuring St. Maria General Hospital in Belgium, “How to save time on implementation while creating brilliant workflows.”
• MGMA’s Insights Podcast features Surescripts Clinical Informatics Pharmacist and Manager of Product Performance Bri Palowitch.
• Talkdesk names Miles Ennis (Aspen Technology) SVP of sales for North America.
• WebPT wins three awards from TrustRadius in the categories of Best Feature Set, Best Value for the Price, and Best Relationship.

Blog Posts

• AHCA Population Health Summit Recap: Four Takeaways from Industry Experts (Netsmart)
• Cybersecurity Threats in Healthcare – Protect Your Patients and Business (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Are You Ready to Shift Test-to-Treat into Hyperdrive? (OmniSys)
• 12 Steps of an EHR Roadmap and Why It’s Essential (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Real Risks Involved With Blockchain Technology (HealthTech Resources)
• Debunking Five Myths Healthcare Providers Have About AP Automation (Premier)
• Five steps to creating a competitive care delivery model with healthcare automation (Relatient)
• Finding the Why: Driving innovation in the cloud through process and workflow analysis (Tegria)
• Improving Patient Safety Through Unified Clinical Collaboration (TigerConnect)
• All Virtual Care and Care Management Must Be Grounded in Evidence (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Controlling Hospital Expenses: No Margin for Error (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 2/3/23

Top News

Prescription discount site GoodRx will pay $1.5 million to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that it shared the health data of users with advertisers using the Meta Pixel website user tracker.

This is significant because GoodRx is not a covered entity under HIPAA, but was charged under FTC’s Health Breach Notification Rule that covers any vendor of personal health records and third-party service providers. This is the first enforcement of the rule, which was created in 2009.

The company also agreed to obtain consent for any use of patient information, notify users whose information was exposed, demand that companies that received the information confirm its deletion in writing, create a privacy program, and commission a third-party privacy assessment.

GoodRx comments on the action:

• The issue was addressed nearly three years ago, before FTC stared its inquiry.
• The company admits no wrongdoing, but says the settlement avoids the cost of litigation.
• The advertising pixel, which GoodRx removed in early 2019, remains in common use, including by hospitals and the federal government.
• The company disputes the charge that it violated the Health Breach Notification Rule, saying that it believes its use of the advertising pixel was compliant.
• The only information that was shared was IP address and website URLs of content that the user reviewed, with confidentiality agreements in place.

A follow-up tweet from the author of the GoodRx article linked to above says that despite the permanent ban, GoodRx is still sending health data to advertisers. The company responded to his inquiry by insisting that it isn’t a problem because it is tracking such use as required by its new compliance obligations.

Reader Comments

From SeekingEmployment: “Re: Kyruus. Seventy people were let to Wednesday morning.” Unverified, but layoffs were reported by several now-former employees on LinkedIn. A company spokesperson responded to my inquiry by saying that while Kyruus is streamlining operations in integrating three organizations under the Kyruus umbrella, it will not comment on specific changes.

From Krill Feeder: “Re: more slide decks from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Health Catalyst uses a happy-flywheel graphic, albeit without inclusion of the textual ‘virtuous circle’ claim that was used by aggressive e-commerce vendors. Is it persuasive?” The virtuous circle (or cycle), as the opposite of a vicious circle, refers to a recurring series of events in which each positively improves the effect of the next as a never-ending cycle of good news. Whether it is inevitable or aspirational probably depends on who is displaying it and for what reason. Company investor pitches are of the “never is heard a discouraging word” variety except for the 2-point font “forward-looking statements” section that is mostly ignored because it is as entirely negative as the rest of the slide deck is positive. Readers, what say you about virtuous circles and flywheels in particular and the use of descriptive graphics in general?

From Fry Salter: “Re: hospital websites taken down by Killnet hackers. The hospitals aren’t admitting that they were breached.” Probably because they weren’t. Taking a website offline via a DDoS attack is like spray-painting your name on a hospital’s billboard – the hospital IT folks can bring it back quickly to restore their few mission-important functions (like paying bills or scheduling appointments). It’s the technology equivalent of angry truck drivers clogging up highways to bring attention to their plight, except that most hospitals aren’t going to suffer much from lack of website availability. The pro-Russian Killnet group that is behind the attacks claims that it has exfiltrated data from unnamed hospitals, which would be a much more important development.

From Ibis: “Re: HIMSS Accelerate. It launched 18 months ago. I haven’t heard it mentioned by any colleagues even once.” All I see on the site is endless cross-posts from Healthcare IT News. It looks like it was expensive to develop and payoff seems minimal. I give HIMSS credit for trying something new, especially after the HIMSS20 cancellation brought it to its knees and raised sobering questions about the future of running profitable in-person conferences.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

You may have had problems reaching us by our HIStalk email addresses over the past week due to two problems (warning: geek talk) that I hadn’t noticed with the server migration: (a) required changes to the SSL certificate and SMTP server name and port changes weren’t made; (b) the webhost didn’t update the email A record to point at the new server. Anyway, all appears to be fixed and working now.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

DrFirst acquires the caregiver collaboration tools of Diagnotes.

Spotify founder and CEO Daniel Ek launches Neko Health, which will offer 15-minute, full-body diagnostic scans followed by a physician’s consultation for $164. The Sweden-based company was founded in 2018 as HJN Sverige prior to Ek’s investment.

A newly laid off employee of Seattle-based consulting firm Brightwork Health IT reports on LinkedIn that the company has closed. Several former employees have updated their profiles with a January 2023 job end date. One of those is Tabitha Lieberman, former president of the company’s EHR and healthcare applications business, who was laid off after just eight months on the job after a long career with Providence St. Joseph Health. She says on LinkedIn that “Brightwork will continue, but in a smaller form.”

Business Insider lists the 15 formerly highest-valuation healthcare startups, most of which haven’t raised funds lately and some of which may struggle to find operating cash:

1. VillageMD – $16 billion valuation (primary care operator).
2. Devoted Health – $15 billion (health insurance).
3. Tempus Labs – $10 billion (precision medicine software).
4. Datavant – $7 billion (health data software).
5. Ro – $7 billion (prescriptions for erectile dysfunction and hair loss, telehealth for skincare).
6. Cityblock Health — $6 billion (Medicaid clinics).
7. Hinge Health – $6 billion (virtual physical therapy and surgical rebab).
8. Lyra Health – $6 billion (mental health services for employers).
9. Cerebral – $5 billion (therapy and prescriptions for ADHD and depression).
10. Color — $5 billion (genetic testing for health risks).
11. Olive – $4 billion (services automation).
12. Noom – $4 billion (weight loss).
13. Commure – $4 billion (healthcare data integration).
14. Everly Health – $3 billion (home lab testing).
15. Komodo Health –- $3 billion (healthcare data analysis).

Health IT investor John Gorman predicts “an impending extinction-level event” for many early and mid-stage health tech companies that will start late this year, as most startups raised two years of cash in 2021 and 2022, cut their burn rate to extend their runway, but still have less than 12 months to try raising again in a difficult market or either selling the company or merging. He advises his own firm’s portfolio companies:

• Raise money now before the rush later this year.
• Cut burn rate decisively, although recognizing that R&D and sales are must-haves.
• Focus on survival rather than valuation.
• Bring in veteran C-suite operators since launch teams often struggle in difficult environments.
• Go on offense to gain market share while competitors are struggling.
• Consider mergers and joint ventures to better compete on RFPs.

Sales

• Beacon Health System chooses Biofourmis for remote patient monitoring technology for its eight hospitals, initially focusing on congestive heart failure and COPD.
• In Canada, the Nova Scotia government will implement Oracle Cerner in a 10-year, $275 million project.
• Floyd County Medical Center (IA) upgrades to Meditech Expanse with assistance from Healthcare Triangle.
• Atlanta Women’s Health Group chooses EClinicalWorks and Healow.
• Wellity chooses EClinicalWorks and Healow.
• Samaritan Health Services will replace its legacy PACS with Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform in an eight-year, $9 million agreement.

People

Johns Hopkins University and Medicine hires Richard Mendola, PhD, MBA (Emory University) as VP/CIO.

Bhaskar Sambasivan, MEng, CEO of CitiusTech for 16 months, posts on LinkedIn that he will resign once a replacement is found.

Scott Frederick, RN, MSHI (RPM Advisory Group) joins newly launched vestibular rehabilitation remote monitoring platform vendor TheraVista Health as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Azara Healthcare launches a cost and utilization application for its population health platform.

Clew Medical launches a program to convert users of Philips EICU software to its virtual ICU platform in 12 weeks, including FDA-cleared predictive models, a workflow platform, and integration with EHR, monitoring devices, and AV equipment. Industry long-timer Paul Roscoe came on as CEO in November 2022.

Yale researchers are using machine learning to predict physician turnover, using de-identified EHR and physician data to review the amount of time they are using EHRs, their patient volumes, and their ages and length of employment. The small study of 319 physicians in a single health system correctly predicted departures 97% of the time. The authors note as an example that the risk of departure was highest for doctors between the ages of 45 to 64. They also noted that higher levels of EHR documentation time was associated with a lower departure risk for doctors who were hired within the past 10 years,  but a higher risk for longer-employed doctors.

Government and Politics

A press update indicates that HHS will recognize the first set of organizations that will be approved as QHINs under TEFCA on Monday, February 13.

Banner Health will pay $1.25 million to settle HHS OCR HIPAA charges from a 2016 data breach that involved the records of nearly 3 million patients.

Other

A woman is billed $14,000 for her newborn’s NICU stay at in-network Northwestern Medicine Prentice Women’s Hospital because that hospital covers using doctors from Lurie Children’s Hospital – which is connected to Prentice Women’s via a walkway – which was not in her insurer’s network. Lurie turned her balance over to collections, but wouldn’t talk to reporter about why, citing HIPAA even though the woman signed a release. Faced with media coverage, Lurie suddenly decided after months that she owned nothing after all. Lurie denied knowledge of a 2011 state law that prohibits billing out-of-network rates for certain types of doctors, including neonatologists, and the state attorney general’s office says it has never enforced it.

Sponsor Updates

• CTG earns AWS Service Delivery designation for the Amazon Connect cloud-based contact center service.
• Ellkay publishes a new client success story, “Seattle Children’s: The Value of Choosing the Right Data Management Partner.”
• Fortified Health Security names George Srour (Critical Insight) regional sales director.
• Nordic publishes DocTalk Ep. 202, “The Marvel of In-House Business Intelligence.”
• Juniper Networks expands its global Juniper Partner Advantage Program with a host of new updates in 2023.
• Healthtech Consultants, a Nordic Global company, earns the top performance score in KLAS’s first report on EMR consulting services in Canada.
• Pennsylvania’s HAPevolve will offer hospitals the care transition platform of WellSky-owned CarePort.
• Meditech AVP Cathy Turner, BSN, RN receives the 2023 HIMSS Changemaker in Health Award.

Blog Posts

• Patient Engagement as a Strategic Priority: How to Get There, and Why You Should (Get Well)
• Why Cloud is Ideal for Healthcare Backup and Disaster Recovery (Healthcare Triangle)
• EMR Technology: Closing the Communication Gap Between Patients and Providers (HealthTech Resources)
• Increasing access to behavioral health resources (Nordic)
• With TEFCA, Interoperability in the United States Launches Ahead (InterSystems)
• 5 things to know: IMO’s January clinical terminology release (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Three Ways Medical Groups Can Leverage Digital Self-Service to Drive Growth (Kyruus)
• The Front-End Steps to RCM Optimization (Medhost)
• Identify and Overcome 5 Common Patient Engagement Challenges in Outpatient Rehab Therapy (Net Health)
• The Stand-Alone Mental Health App is a Dead End (NeuroFlow)

Contacts

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

News 2/1/23

Top News

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) introduces a bill, co-sponsored by eight other members of Congress, that would scuttle the $20 billion Oracle Cerner overhaul of the VA’s EHR software. The bill would order the VA to stop the project within 180 days, dissolve its Electronic Health Record Modernization Integration Office, and revert all live Oracle Cerner sites back to VistA/CPRS.

Rosendale was named this week as chair of the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, which oversees technology within the VA.

House Veterans Affairs Committee chair Rep. Mike Bost (R-IL) had warned in July 2022 that the project might be cancelled “if there isn’t major progress by early next year.”

Reader Comments

From Employees Deserve a Voice: “Re: Findhelp. Employees are trying to unionize.” Axios reports that 150 employees of Austin, TX-based Findhelp — whose platform connects people who are in need with available social services — have filed to hold a union election. The employees say they want management to address pay inequity, return-to-office policies, and the use of workplace monitoring software.

From Krill Feeder: “Re: investor relations slide decks. Here’s first of several I’ll mention from the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference. Veradigm claims 170,000 ‘partners’ that are grouped with paying customers, which seems unusual and/or a sign of desperation to please Wall Street. What do your readers say?” Consider this an invitation to weigh in. Also interesting is that Veradigm notes that it has pushed 20 billion drug company ad impressions on providers since 2011, presumably via its Practice Fusion EHR. More nuggets from other companies to come.

From Public Health Enemy: “Re: public health and COVID-19 emergencies ending on May 11. Has anyone listed the health IT implications?” I’m interested too. I assume it will end the use of consumer technology to conduct virtual visits, reinstitute pre-pandemic licensing requirements for providers who offer services via telehealth or across state lines (including contract nurses), restore previous policy that limits the prescribing of controlled substances without an in-person evaluation, and change payment parity policies. I assume it will also affect payment for remote patient monitoring and for audio-only visits. More broadly, it will mark the end of free COVID-19 testing, home test kits, vaccines, and treatments for many or most people, depending on their insurer. Confounding the unwinding is products that are being sold under FDA’s emergency use authorization and the layers of state-level waivers.

From Papal Cut: “Re: HIMSS board. What are they doing meeting with the Pope, per this LinkedIn post from board member Amy Compton-Phillips?” I think we can rule out asking him to get the nuns to take US healthcare back over from the profiteers. Maybe they’re pressing him to keynote HIMSS23 to boost attendance. Will the board be meeting with the heads of other religions that have a strong presence in US healthcare?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health data management company Clearsense raises $50 million in a Series D funding round.

Philips will cut another 6,000 jobs globally over the next two years as it struggles to recover from market value losses caused by a recall of its respiratory devices in the United States. The company announced it would lay off 4,000 employees last October. I interviewed Philips VP Elad Benjamin in December.

Health data infrastructure company Smile Digital Health raises $30 million in a Series B funding round, bringing its total raised to $50 million.

Prescriber marketplace operator PrescriberPoint raises an unspecified growth investment  from two drug companies, Adobe, and Mastercard.

Tivity Health, which runs the SilverSneakers and other health programs, acquires Burnalong, which offers a health and wellness platform.

Sales

• PeaceHealth expands its agreement with Loyal for provider data management and physician search.

People

Rebecca Woods (Bluebird Tech Solutions) joins Divurgent as SVP of delivery.

Former Oracle SVP Troy Tazbaz joins the FDA as the director of its Digital Health Center of Excellence, which offers regulatory advice and support to the FDA’s regulatory review of digital health technology.

Announcements and Implementations

CitiusTech announces GA of RealSight, a price transparency data analytics tool.

Government and Politics

Fox Army Health Center (AL) reports that since going live on MHS Genesis in September, call center wait times have been reduced from two hours to 15 minutes, and that online appointment booking and pharmacy text alerts will soon be available.

Privacy and Security

Governance software vendor Diligent notifies customer UCHealth of a data breach that involved the unauthorized downloading of some UCHealth files. Diligent provides hosted services for the Colorado-based health system.

The Killnet group of Russian hackers attacks 14 hospital websites, forcing them offline for various amounts of time. Stanford Healthcare (CA), Duke University Hospital (NC), Cedars-Sinai (CA), Atrium Health (NC), and University of Michigan Health were among those affected by Monday’s breach.

Other

In the UK, a report finds that last year’s data center downtime Guy’s and St. Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust — which was caused by data center cooling problems when temperatures in London hit 104 degrees — required running as a “paper hospital” for two months until its 371 legacy systems were restored. The trust had been warned that the cooling systems were old and inadequate and that having two sites in the same area serve as each other’s failover created exposure to environment-related problems. The report also notes that NHS supplier Advanced was hit with a cyberattack during the trust’s downtime, taking down its CareNotes and Adastra medical records systems for four months. The trust will go live with Epic in April 2023, which the report says will reduce risk and make recovery easier, but it warns that the trust will need to work hard to regain user confidence.

A Bloomberg opinion piece says that management consulting firms have nothing to sell once they have lost their integrity to ethical lapses and greed, focusing in McKinsey as an example of a company who thinks highly of itself despite “tawdry episodes” such as leading Enron to ruin, helping drug companies flood the country with inappropriately prescribed opioids, and connecting authoritarian regimes to corrupt middlemen. It concludes:

They are con men because they exploit their victims’ illusions. They play on people’s greed and desperation by pretending that they can enable companies to “transform your business” or “do more with less.” They also routinely offer low-ball deals so that they can get their feet in the door. But once inside, they transform themselves into vampire squids and set about sucking the lifeblood out of their victims. The ideal consulting engagement from the consultants’ point of view is one that leaves the client permanently dependent on the consultant: With its internal capacities diminished, it needs to keep employing outside help; with its appetite for “transformation” whetted, it remains on the lookout for the next big idea, calling in yet more consultants to solve the problems that the previous collection of consultants created in the first place.

IHI’s Don Berwick, MD says in a JAMA opinion piece that financial self-interest holds a grip on the US healthcare system. He notes that drug companies employ monopoly pricing for products that result from taxpayer-funded research;  Medicare Advantage insurers are gaming the system at a cost of hundreds of billions of taxpayer dollars; and hospitals are claiming large losses even as they sit on billions of dollars of assets. He recommends that healthcare professionals speak louder about unchecked greed; insist that their guilds and trade organizations demote the endless pursuit of higher payment; lobby Congress to reform patent laws, change coding and billing rules, and enforce antitrust laws; and demand that hospitals invest in improving the social influences on health.

Sponsor Updates

• Compass Medical, a 95-provider organization with six locations in Massachusetts, uses EClinicalWorks to excel at value-based care and combat physician burnout.
• Ascom launches a Center of Excellence to help customers transform their clinical workflows with the Ascom Healthcare Platform using end points like handsets and smart nurse call systems, as well as middleware and services.
• AvaSure recognizes AvaPrize winners from MaineHealth, ShorePoint Health, Providence Health & Services – Oregon Region, and the VA North Texas Health Care System for excellence in virtual care delivery.
• The American Medical Association partners with Azara Health to improve blood pressure control across the country.
• The Digital Healthcare Innovation Summit will recognize Bamboo Health Senior Advisor Jay Desai with its 2023 West Coast Digital Healthcare Innovator Award February 1 in La Jolla, CA.
• Healthcare risk management solutions vendor Censinet announces record customer growth in 2022, with an 80% year-over-year increase in customers.
• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Scaling IT for Growth and Why Managed Services Make Sense.”
• Clearwater publishes a new white paper, “Understanding Azure Cloud Security Basics: How to Ensure HIPAA Security and Compliance in a Cloud Environment.”
• ConnectiveRx SVP of Market Development Chris Dowd receives a Pinnacle Award from Medical Marketing and Media.
• Current Health will exhibit at SCOPE February 6-9 in Orlando.

Blog Posts

• New Evaluation & Management (E/M) Code Updates for 2023 (AdvancedMD)
• The Business Case for Involving RCM in Health Equity Strategies (AGS Health)
• 5 key strategies to implement and improve value-based care (Arcadia)
• More Personalized Care, More Patient Engagement (Artera)
• A Solution for Exchanging Health Plan Member Data May Be Closer Than We Think (Availity)
• 6 Leaders Talk Hybrid Care in 2022 & Share What’s Forecasted for 2023 (Bardavon Health Innovations)
• CPT Codes for Annual Wellness Visits (ChartSpan)
• Application Rationalization: Top 5 Lesser-Known Benefits (Clearsense)
• Closing the SDOH Gap with AI, ML, and Data Analysis (Divurgent)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 1/30/23

Top News

The New York Times profiles Paradigm, which launched last week after raising $203 million in a Series A funding round.

The company has developed a platform that it says will merge the disciplines of clinical care and research. It does this by transforming EHR information into clinical trials data. It also helps doctors match patients to active studies.

Reader Comments

From Natty Boh: “Re: mistake in the 1/27 post. You confused Inspirata with Imprivata. It was Imprivata that acquired Caradigm.” The post is correct. Imprivata acquired just the identity management business of Caradigm from GE Healthcare in October 2017. Inspirata acquired the actual company Caradigm, including its core business of analytics and population health tools, from GE Healthcare in June 2018. Caradigm was formed as a 50-50 joint venture between Microsoft and GE Healthcare in 2011, with Microsoft bowing out in 2016. Caradigm’s identity management business came from Microsoft, which had acquired Sentillion in 2009, renamed it Vergence, and then rolled it into Caradigm along with the ExpreSSO single sign-on product. That’s what Imprivata acquired.

From I’ll RxPass: “Re: Amazon’s flat-fee monthly generic drug RxPass. Odd that patients in eight states can’t participate even though Amazon Pharmacy operates in them.” Odder still is that customers who are covered by Medicare, Medicaid, or any other government-sponsored insurance aren’t eligible, which is strange since it’s a cash-only, unsubsidized business. Although you can probably just answer “no” to the prompt knowing they can’t check – it’s easier to demand proof of existence rather than of non-existence.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Quite a few poll respondents will not be able to take jobs with specific companies when they leave their current one. AT reasonably opines that while non-competes might be justifiable for employees who voluntarily take a job with a competitor, those restrictions should be waived if the employee is involuntarily shown the door for whatever reason. Frank suggests negotiating such agreements to require the company to pay severance for whatever amount of time they don’t want you working for a competitor, or failing to convince them to do that, at least insist that the agreement be narrowed down to performing specific tasks rather than broadly excluding even unrelated jobs with competitors.

New poll to your right or here: What are your plans for attending HIMSS23 in person? My supply chain of enthusiasm has been disrupted, but at some point I’ll need to choose go/no go and will probably end up fast-roping into Chicago for a day or two in the exhibit hall as a habit of seasonal migration.

We’re probably all sick of people showing off their ChatGPT results like proud parents, but it’s still fun to see the result of creative requests. It offered this when I asked it to develop a short story plot about a hospital computer programmer turned criminal:

Title: The Code Criminal

The story revolves around a hospital computer programmer named Jack who is highly skilled and efficient at his job. He is well respected by his colleagues and patients alike. But little do they know, Jack is not who he seems to be. In his off hours, Jack uses his knowledge of the hospital’s computer systems to carry out criminal activities. He steals sensitive patient information and sells it to the highest bidder on the black market. One day, the hospital’s IT department discovers that patient data is being leaked and they track it back to Jack’s computer. They confront him, and Jack is forced to flee the hospital. As Jack is on the run, he realizes that the stolen patient information has been used to carry out a string of identity theft crimes, causing harm to innocent people. Jack realizes the gravity of his actions and decides to make amends. He returns to the hospital and confesses his crimes to the authorities. He offers to help them track down the people who bought the stolen information from him, and use his skills to secure the hospital’s computer systems. In the end, Jack is sentenced to prison, but he feels a sense of redemption for using his skills to make things right. The hospital is able to recover from the breach, and patients are able to trust the hospital with their personal information once again.

Webinars

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

People

AirStrip CEO Alan Portela announces that he will leave the company after 12 years.

Industry long-timer Paul Valentine (Ncontracts) joins KPi-Tech Services as president.

Michael Johnson (Enlace Health) joins Rialtic as chief growth officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Orbita announces Blaze, which provides care-finding and chatbot services to provider websites.

Optum Rx launches Price Edge for its pharmacy benefits manager customers, which shows customers the lowest available cash-only price for generic drugs along with what they would pay using insurance and then applies their payment toward their deductible when they buy.

Government and Politics

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf, MD says in a Society for Clinical Trials opinion piece that post-market clinical research is disaggregated and often fails to answer clinical care and public health questions. He recommends (a) integrating data from EHRs and wearables; (b) paying doctors and patients to participate in trials; and (c) developing policies for ethical data sharing.

Other

University of Iowa surgeons remove a condom-wrapped banana from the small intestine of a man who, as paraphrased from the medical journal article by a British newspaper, an “unnamed bloke” had “gulped the fruity contraceptive whole during what he claimed was a fit of rage” and then was “unable to go to the loo.” The authors note that they had it easy compared to most cases of “body packing” where the condom or balloon contains cocaine or other drugs that, if mishandled, could kill the patient. I can’t envision the degree of rage that is required to swallow a whole banana, or why the swallower would expect to create an improved situation by doing so.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart’s GehriMed EHR earns ONC Health IT 2015 Edition Cures Update certification via the Drummond Group.
• Verato publishes a new case study, “GRIPA: Next-Generation EMPI for Healthier, Happier Community.”
• Pivot Point Consulting A Vaco Company, describes how it implemented Epic for the 29,000 employees of UW Medicine.

Blog Posts

• How Technology Drives Game-Changing Workforce Satisfaction (Netsmart)
• Healthcare IT Trends You Can Expect in 2023 (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Understanding the Shift to Value-Based Care for Pharmacy, Part 1 (OmniSys)
• What is a Clinical Communication and Collaboration Platform? (PerfectServe)
• PINC AI Data: Urgent Hospital Care for Opioid Use Disorders Varies Heavily by State (Premier)
• Patient scheduling tools, tips, and templates (Relatient)
• Hospital smart rooms: What to consider (Sonifi Health)
• Enhance customer experience through your hospital contact center (Spok)
• Data Privacy & Healthcare Cybersecurity: Addressing the Growing Challenge for Healthcare Organizations (TigerConnect)
• Value-Based Care Continues to Loom as the Healthcare Industry’s Cost-Quality Savior (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 1/27/23

Top News

Pearl Health, which offers population health analytics software for providers who participate in value-based care for Medicare patients, raises $75 million in a Series B funding round.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Oracle Health EVP and engineering lead Don Johnson, MS reportedly leaves the company after six months in that position and nine years with Oracle.

Fujifilm completes its purchase of the digital pathology assets of Inspirata, placing the former Dynamyx business under its US healthcare division and forming a pathology division of its medical informatics business. Cancer-focused Inspirata is best known in health IT for acquiring the former Caradigm from GE Healthcare 2018.

Elaborate, which uses EHR information to deliver contextualized lab result messages to patients, raises $10 million in seed funding. The company says that sending friendlier, actionable lab results to patients reduces their anxiety and saves providers time.

Sales

• Kansas City University College of Dental Medicine chooses the cloud-based electronic dental record of EClinicalWorks for training future dental professionals.

People

Sonifi Health promotes 27-year employee Kelly Boyd, MBA to general manager.

Todd Mingo, MBA (RLV Digital Health) joins Divurgent as SVP of client services.

Announcements and Implementations

St. Margaret’s Health – Peru (IL) closes, at least temporarily, after its ED services contractor declines to provide services. The hospital’s CEO says that the organization’s finances have deteriorated because of staffing shortages that were caused by COVID-19 as well as a February 2021 cyberattack. 

Azara Healthcare will offer healthcare organizations access to AMA’s MAP BP metrics via its DRVS population health reporting and analytics platform.

Researchers develop a wearable, continuous imaging sensor for cardiac ultrasound, which will allow real-time remote monitoring of cardiac function.

A Texas study finds that patients who were seen in a primary care visit within 30 days of hospital discharge had 53% fewer ED visits and and 61% fewer re-hospitalizations when the clinician looked up their records in a community HIE.

CHIME announces its PRIME CHIME CIO Boot Camp Package, which offers members a discount on participating in its CIO Boot Camp when bundled with ViVE conference registration. Other ViVE discount packages are available for those who sit for a CHIME certification exam or register as a hosted buyer.

Government and Politics

VA facilities experience major system slowdowns of its Oracle Cerner system after DoD makes a change to their shared database that interrupts network connectivity. The problem also impacted half of the DoD’s Oracle Cerner users.

Ireland’s health service executive resigns, saying that his efforts to introduce new digital health solutions have been blocked by senior administrators, placing patients at risk for poor outcomes.

HHS OIG coordinates fraud charges against 25 people who it alleges provided fraudulent degrees and transcripts from three accredited, since-closed nursing schools in Florida – which were also involved in the scheme that generated $100 million — to 7,600 people who used them to sit for national RN and LPN exams. The announcement does not indicate how many of the buyers became nurses or whether their employers have been notified.

The Department of Justice says that it has infiltrated and dismantled the Hive international ransomware group, whose victims include at least one hospital that paid the demanded ransom to restore its systems (unnamed, but most likely Memorial Health System). DOJ says the group extorted $100 million in its first year.

Other

The journal Nature lays out its rules for authors who using AI tools such as ChatGPT in writing articles. AI tools can’t be listed as authors and researchers must explain how they used AI tools in the paper itself. Publisher Springer Nature is working on tools that can detect AI-generated text and hopes that AI companies will be able to embed watermarks in their output.

Canada’s Alberta Health Services experiences delays and resorts to paper charting as a network change creates a widespread outage.

The New York Times covers the practice of providers billing patients for answering their email messages. Cleveland Clinic says its patient email volume has doubled since 2019, but it is charging for less than 1% of the 110,000 emails that are sent to its providers each week. The article notes that CMS added Medicare billing codes in 2019 for responding to a patient’s inquiry that requires five minutes or more of time, and some private insurers have followed its lead. Cleveland Clinic says it isn’t charging Medicaid patients, Medicare patients pay a co-pay of $3 to $8, and patients with high-deductible private policies could owe up to $50 per exchange. AMA says the fees are a way to adjust healthcare models to new ways of interacting with patients.

Sponsor Updates

• Bellin Health increases patient self-scheduling following its implementation of  Kyruus ProviderMatch on its website.
• Experity will host its Urgent Care Connect Conference February 22-23 in Miami.
• The Passionate Pioneers Podcast features Lumeon CEO Greg Miller.
• Meditech publishes a new case study, “North Country Healthcare implements Meditech Expanse Surgical Services in Three Critical Access Hospitals.”
• Meditech signs nine new clients in Q4 for its Meditech as a Service offering.

Blog Posts

• Stepping onto the health IT platform (Nordic)
• CMSWire: What Should You Do in the First 3 Months as CXO (Get Well)
• What Does Healthcare Disruption Look Like? (Healthwise)
• How to Complete an EHR System Selection (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Lessons on data quality in healthcare from 5 peer industries (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• How is healthcare automation like making your morning latte? (Lumeon)
• 6 Ways a Clinician-Driven EHR Empowers Your Providers (Medhost)
• How Analytics Can Support SNF Success (Net Health)
• Temple Health improves clinical workflows with tailored Dragon Medical One training (Nuance)

Contacts

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

News 1/25/23

Top News

In Canada, St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton implements a “digital first, no fax policy” after an audit by Ontario’s privacy commissioner finds that misdirected faxes caused 563 privacy breaches in 2020.

A hospital staffing error led to patient health records being faxed to primary care physicians who had changed their numbers.

The privacy commissioner concluded, “Fax machines have no place in modern healthcare delivery.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Care.ai. The Orlando-based company is bringing the transformative power of ambient intelligence to healthcare, enabling healthcare organizations to become smart-care facilities. Its technology platform leverages advanced sensors and AI to create a neural network that reimagines clinical and operational workflows to power more human care. Deployed in over 1,500 healthcare facilities,Care.ai partners with health systems and long-term care facilities with a unique, integrated solution, including ambient monitoring and inpatient virtual care including virtual nursing and virtual sitting. Thanks to Care.ai for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Innovaccer lays off 245 employees, 15% of its workforce.

Amazon Pharmacy announces RxPass, a $5 per month flat fee, cash-only subscription for Prime customers that delivers all of the generic prescription drugs they take from a list of 50. Patients in eight states are not eligible for reasons that the company did not state.

Sales

• Orlando Health selects hospital-at-home remote patient monitoring technology from Biofourmis.
• Meditech will embed clinical direct messaging capabilities from MedAllies within its Expanse MaaS EHR.
• The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services will offer Medicaid beneficiaries access to the Philips Pregnancy+ patient education and support services app.
• Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare (TN) will implement Epic.

People

Colorado-based HIE Quality Health Network promotes Marc Lassaux to executive director and CEO.

Sarah Bennight joins Carenet Health as VP of product marketing and sales enablement.

AMC Health hires James Considine, MBA (Philips) as COO.

MRO Corp. names Matt Wildman (Fortified Health Security) chief commercial officer and Moliehi Weitnauer (Cotiviti) chief product officer.

Harry Totonis, board chair and former CEO of ConnectiveRx, returns to the CEO role in replacing Jim Corrigan.

Tegria promotes Jennifer Montlary, MEd to SVP of marketing and communications.

Announcements and Implementations

Amberwell Health (KS) goes live on Meditech Expanse at its Hiawatha and Highland facilities.

University of Maryland Medical System and CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield will pilot the use of Curation Health’s provider-plan collaboration platform for value-based care.

Government and Politics

The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority will review the planned $1.5 billion acquisition of healthcare software vendor EMIS Group by an affiliate of UnitedHealth Group’s Optum UK.

The FTC asks a federal judge to hold pharma bro Martin Shkreli in contempt for failing to pay a $65 million fine and violating a lifetime ban from working in the pharma industry. Shkreli finished his stint in prison last May and launched a new company, Druglike, just two months later. The business bills itself as a “a Web3 drug discovery software platform co-founded by Martin Shkreli.”

Other

Researchers at Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale determine that less than 33% of the pharmaceuticals most heavily advertised on television between 2015 and 2021 had high levels of therapeutic value. Pharma companies spent a combined $16 billion on advertisements for the 73 drugs analyzed in the study.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD publishes a new e-guide, “2023 MIPS Improvement Activities.”
• Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Corporate compliance for healthcare providers.”
• HeiligHart Hospital in Belgium upgrades its Agfa HealthCare IMPAX PACS system to Agfa’s cloud-based enterprise imaging.
• Bellin Health (WI) adds ProviderMatch digital appointment scheduling capabilities to its KyruusOne provider data management platform.

Blog Posts

• Why 85% of Americans with Smartphones Expect Mobile Patient ESignature Options (Access)
• Trusted RCM Partnerships: Look Beyond the Problem to Achieve Long-Term Goals (AGS Health)
• Patient Segmentation: How – and Why – You Should Be Analyzing Your Patient Population Segments (Artera)
• The Point-of-Care Reimagined: Giving Providers Actionable Data (Arrive Health)
• Happiness, recruitment, and retention (Nordic)
• This Nurse Needed Work-Life Balance. Thanks to a New Career in Sales, She Found It. (Bamboo Health)
• CMS National Healthcare Directory RFI Blog Series: Provider Response (CareMesh)
• Celebrating Our Healthcare Heritage: 2022 CereCore Employee Awards (CereCore)
• Public health from the global perspective (Oracle Cerner)
• Improving Data in Healthcare: The Discussion We Should Be Having (Clearsense)
• “It’s the best thing that has happened to me.” (Current Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 1/23/23

Top News

Fitch Ratings downgrades the bonds of Marshfield Clinic Health System, blaming its Oracle Cerner implementation for aging receivables, throughput errors, lower collections, and an unexpected level of productivity disruption that has impacted top-line revenue.

Fitch says the conversion of several legacy systems to Oracle Cerner will eventually provide significant benefit once the implementation is complete.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents have used some form of social media in the past week, with the most common platforms being LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube. Twitter places a surprisingly distant fifth place.

New poll to your right or here: Does your employment agreement limit who you can work for when you leave? If you have insisted that an employer change the employment agreement before signing, click the poll’s comments link and describe the changes you required and how you brought it up. You could probably get away with making an identical version, removing objectionable terms (or perhaps adding your own personal golden parachute or something), and then printing and signing a copy since the HR clerk probably won’t check every word.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

India-based telehealth and lab test startup MediBuddy reportedly lays off 200 employees, 8% of its headcount.

Sales

• Seattle’s UW Medicine will implement cloud-based Visage 7 Open Archive, Workflow, and Viewer in replacing its legacy PACS.

People

Tower Health promotes Tom Bartiromo to CIO.

VantageHealth.ai promotes Brian Unell, MBA to CEO.

Art Nicholas (Strata Health) joins Interlace Health as chief commercial officer.

CareConnectMD hires Ray George (Third Eye Health) as chief growth officer.

Steve Evans, MBA (LivePerson) joins Netsmart as VP of consulting sales.

Privacy and Security

NextGen Healthcare confirms a hacker group’s claim that its systems were attacked by ransomware on Tuesday. NextGen says it secured the network and has returned to normal operations.

Other

In the UK, newly retired doctor poses beside the forms that are required to admit a patient to an NHS hospital, estimating that nurses spend 70% of their time on paperwork. He says every new issue results in someone creating a new form that then carries over to electronic systems. 

Sponsor Updates

• The American Oncology Network and RxLightning partner to offer AON’s community oncology practices with an all-digital approach to financial assistance enrollment for specialty medications.
• Veradigm adds Sphere’s TrustCommerce patient payment tool to its practice management software.
• TigerConnect remains a leader in the Clinical Communication and Collaboration category on G2 for Winter 2023.
• West Monroe releases a new This is Digital Podcast, “How to Shift from a Project to a Product Mindset.”
• VisiQuate will exhibit at the HFMA Western Region Symposium January 22-25 in Las Vegas.
• Zynx Health parent company Hearst Health, in partnership with the UCLA Center for SMART Health, is accepting submissions for the 2023 Hearst Health Prize through February 24.

Blog Posts

• Honoring His Legacy, In Service to Others (Netsmart)
• See a Mumpsimus? Stop a Mumpsimus! (Nordic)
• How do you decide which staffing model is right for you? (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Make your website search conversational and consumer-friendly: Healthcare’s next-generation digital front door (Orbita)
• Revenue Cycle Outsourcing: To Do or Not to Do? (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Improving Data in Healthcare: The Discussion We Should Be Having (Clearsense)
• Clinical Communication in 2023: Trends and Predictions (PerfectServe)
• What Makes a “Good” Peer Group? (Premier)
• How ENT and Allergy Associates Automatically Corrects 82% of Their Claim Errors (RCxRules)
• How to Document and Bill for Home-Based Outpatient PT Services (WebPT)

Contacts

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