News 3/17/23

Top News

VA officials testify before the Senate Veterans Affairs Committee that its Oracle Cerner system has been linked to six incidents of severe patient harm, including four deaths.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, threatened to withhold funding for the system’s implementation until problems have been addressed.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT) raised questions about why Cerner was awarded a no-bid, $10 billion contract that lacks adequate accountability for patient harm or system downtime. Tester urged the VA to continue its implementation efforts but to renegotiate its contract, which is set to expire on May 17, for more favorable terms. The VA’s top contracting offer responded, “That’s absolutely the plan.”

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) said of VA employees, “I have never in my life seen such resistance to modernizing a program. You’ve got a vendor sitting right next to you. They’re making a good faith effort to bring something forward. Why can you not tell employees, ‘This is your job. If you don’t want to do this, go work somewhere else?’”

Reader Comments

From Bread Zeppelin: “Re: AI in healthcare. Would readers other than me like to have that section added to the HIStalk news posts, similar to the COVID-19 news coverage?” Let’s ask them in this poll, which I’ll also post on LinkedIn to see if anyone notices.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’ve decided that LinkedIn will serve my social media needs best, especially given its significant participation by my decision-making readers, so follow the HIStalk page for updates there. Or stick with Twitter since I’m not abandoning it. 

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Senior care software vendor PointClickCare acquires Patient Pattern, which offers a value-based care EHR and care management platform.

White-label telehealth services vendor OpenLoop raises $15 million in a Series A funding round. It offers provider staffing as well as services to assist with regulatory monitoring and credentialing. Co-founder and CEO Jon Lensing, MD graduated medical school in 2020 and started the company instead of pursuing a residency.

Maribel Health, which offers solutions to support hospital-at-home and community-based palliative care programs, raises $25 million in a Series A funding round.

Interoperability platform vendor Zus Health raises $40 million in funding and announces that EHR vendor Elation Health will integrate Zus Aggregated Profile to allow clinicians to view expanded records.

Microsoft and its Nuance business announce a Copilot AI-powered feature for Nuance Mix Builder that allows teams to build intelligent chatbots with minimal technical skills. In other AI news, both Microsoft and Google announced that they have added generative AI to their Office and Workspace apps, respectively, that will create draft documents from a user’s description of what they need.

Sales

• UR Medicine Highland Hospital will implement Medaptus Assign to manage inpatient physician assignment.
• FQHC Access Family Care (MO) chooses EClinicalWorks EHR and related modules.
• Lakes Region Mental Health Center will expand its 33-year relationship with Netsmart by adopting its CareFabric platform.
• Zuyderland signs a 10-year renewal with Sectra and will move to its cloud-based enterprise imaging solution.

People

Industry long-timer Peter Butler, president and CEO of MDaudit, retires. He will be replaced by COO Ritesh Ramesh, MS, MBA. 

Athenahealth hires Caleb Anderson (Netsmart) as chief sales officer.

Brian White, healthcare partner with LogicSource and long-time health system executive, died Sunday. He was 48.

Announcements and Implementations

Google introduces Open Health Stack to help Android developers create FHIR-based digital health solutions.  

An Urban Institute survey of adults ages 18 to 64 finds that 15% of their families have past-due medical debt, most of it involving hospital bills. About 80% of those with overdue medical bills had insurance when the expense was incurred, and while one-third of them were offered a payment plan by hospitals, few hospitals offered to discount the total owed or offered to help them apply for Medicaid. Overall, 100 million US adults have medical or dental bills that they are paying off over time or that are overdue.

TytoCare receives FDA clearance for its AI-powered wheeze detection for remote diagnosis.

Other

I ran across a testimonial from Laurence Beer, MD, chief clinical officer at Transitional Care Physicians of America, on the company’s use of free Chrome browser productivity extension Magical to boost documentation productivity. He set up variables so populate patient details into the EHR note, saving one hour per day per user. He says that clinicians needed six mouse clicks to use an EHR shortcut to start a physical exam note that says “well-nourished, elderly male in no acute distress” while Magical did it with one. The organization distributed the shortcuts as a team list to standardize documentation.

Denmark-based Be My Eyes – which links mobile-connected volunteers to people with vision problems to complete such as identifying a product or navigating an airport — develops a GPT-4 powered Virtual Volunteer version. The new assistant, which is in beta testing, helps users identify household items, avoid fall hazards, hear a summary of web page and search content, and navigate public transportation.

Sponsor Updates

• Metrigy recognizes Five9 as a Contact-Center-as-a-Software MetriStar Award Winner.
• Fortified Health Security names Melissa Schroeder (Oracle) security compliance advisor.
• GHX recognizes North America’s 2022 50 best healthcare providers for supply chain excellence.
• Healthcare Triangle confirms that it does not hold any cash or maintain any accounts at Silicon Valley Bank.
• InterSystems releases a new Healthy Data podcast, “Clinical Staffing – Patient Ratio & Documentation Burden.”
• Konza National Network will present at the AHIMA Advocacy Summit March 20 in Washington, DC.
• Kyruus will exhibit at AMGA March 28-30 in Chicago.
• Kingman Regional Medical Center (AZ) moves toward eradicating hepatitis C with support from Meditech Professional Services.

Blog Posts

• VBC Can’t Work Without Specialists on Board (Enlace Health)
• High Acuity Patients in Urgent Care: Defining and Solving Acuity Degradation (Experity)
• ‘To Err is Human’ Update Finds Inpatient Adverse Events Still a Challenge (First Databank)
• Inefficiencies in EHR Systems Can Cause Healthcare Worker Burnout (HealthTech Resources)
• How to Improve Care for Spanish-Speaking Patients (Healthwise)
• Innovation, Partnerships Driving Nationwide Interoperability to Address Healthcare’s Top Challenges (Surescripts)
• Oracle Cerner RevElate Common Questions and Implementation Tips (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Rapidly Evolving and Increasing Cyberthreats: Why You Need an IT Assurance Service Program (Impact Advisors)
• 9 HIT conferences to attend in 2023 (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• MEDITECH continues moving health IT forward (Meditech)
• Advancing Interoperability in the Age of TEFCA: An Interview with CommonWell’s Executive Director, Paul L Wilder: Part 2 (Medhost)
• Myndshft Advocates for Da Vinci Standards in Public Comments to CMS Proposed Prior Authorization Rule (Myndshft)
• The Power of Pairing EHR and MDS Data Together for SNFs (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 3/15/23

Top News

Stat reports that Medicare Advantage plans are using “unregulated predictive algorithms under the guise of scientific rigor” to cut off payment for the treatment of seniors.

A palliative care facility official says that “the appeal outlasts the beneficiary” as people who will die within three months are forced into an appeals process that takes up to 2.5 years. A Medicare beneficiary lawyer says that her MA patients start getting payment denials 14 days into their SNF stay even though they are entitled by traditional Medicare to stay up to 100 days.

Former CMS Administrator Tom Scully founded NaviHealth after seeing how nursing homes nearly always keep discharged Medicare Advantage patients for the full number of days of their coverage, sold the company for $410 million to Cardinal Health, who then sold it to a private equity firm that paid $1.3 billion, who then sold it to UnitedHealth for $2.5 billion. The company manages post-acute care for insurers who contract with the company for a share of the savings, with providers saying that the number of denials increased greatly when the company changed hands.

A hospital case manager reports, “NaviHealth will not approve [skilled nursing] if you ambulate at least 50 feet. Never mind that you may live alone or have poor balance. MA plans are a disgrace to the Medicare program, and I encourage anyone signing up to avoid these plans because they do NOT have the patients best interest in mind. They are here to make a profit. Period.”

Reader Comments

From Zoey: “Re: ChatGPT. It’s going to get wild when Open-AI releases the new, much more powerful GPT-4 next week.” I’m paying for access to ChatGPT just for my own education, so the GPT-4 model came live for me midday Tuesday (and is also live in Bing’s AI search preview). “Wild” is probably a good word to describe what will happen when AI goes broader and deeper into even more questionably sourced information. Bigger computing power or broader sources aren’t necessarily better for AI training. Would you want your doctor diagnosing you from a system that was trained on Internet junk content, or would it be better to train a system only on medical literature to accomplish that? We saw that in the early days of Internet search, when the novelty of being able to find anything wore off and the quest for higher-value, higher-relevance information that is tailored to individual searchers became obvious. For example, AI could analyze a patient’s EHR to provide clinicians with critical information that is hidden among the chart bloat, although daily batch training would be necessary to avoid limitations as in ChatGPT’s knowledge cut-off of September 2021. Oracle is in an ideal position to do this with its Cerner EHR.

Speaking of AI, the new version of Google’s Med-PaLM medical domain AI tool – which was the first to “pass” the US medical board test last year with a score of 60%, scores 85% at “expert” doctor level. Apparently that model is trained on valid medical information, which Eric Topol, MD says will soon allow AI to create office notes, manage prescriptions, schedule appointments and labs, obtain pre-authorization, and aggregate and summarize medical records.

From Moneylender: “Re: SVB. VCs created their problem and will benefit from the government’s solution.” Agreed. Some VCs and pundits stirred up Internet mob mentality by urging people to withdraw their deposits from SVB and the banking system isn’t set up to deal with a bunch of me-me-me Internet-fueled toilet paper hoarders. Banks and stock markets require people to believe that they are stable, well regulated, and fair to all participants (the equivalent of the Monty Python sketch about buildings that start to fall once you stop believing that they won’t). Note to CEOs willing to learn from SVB’s former one: never publicly use the phrase “don’t panic” since that acknowledges the fear that people are indeed panicking, which like the aforementioned toilet paper hoarders, doesn’t matter whether it’s justified or not.

From Desert Frosé: “Re: Larry Ellison. Is he trying to train ChatGPT with misinformation or something by bragging on the ‘one patient, one record’ accomplishments of four Epic clients?” I honestly don’t know why he brought that up in the earnings call, where he seems to take credit for Epic’s interoperability in four of its big customers.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor HealthMark Group. The Dallas-based company is a leading provider of digital health information management solutions for healthcare providers across the country. Guided by over 15 years of experience in healthcare IT, HealthMark helps organizations transform administrative processes into seamless, digital encounters. It provides medical, billing and imaging record release as well as FMLA and audit support. Its technology-driven approach to managing medical record requests improves patient satisfaction and keeps patient data secure and compliant. Thanks to HealthMark Group for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s a HealthMark Group explainer that I found on YouTube.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The FDIC transfers all deposits of Silicon Valley Bank to a new bridge bank headed by Tim Mayopoulos, formerly president of mortgage startup Blend and a former Fannie Mae CEO. The government will protect depositors of Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, using a funding program that offers banks loans against securities to avoid emergency asset sales. The FDIC fund, financed by banks rather than taxpayers, will protect depositors but not investors or creditors. However, the majority of SVB’s clients are venture capital firms and their portfolio companies, not small depositors who will benefit from government support. SVB remains open and assures investors that they will have full access to all of their deposits beyond the FDIC’s $250,000 of insurance.

Bardavon Health Innovations acquires injury prevention company Preventure to expand its worker and health mobility solutions into a complete, end-to-end musculoskeletal solution. Its Safety Intelligence Suite includes customized injury prevention solutions, an AI movement coach, digital and human interventions, and use of engagement data to determine rehabilitation protocols for improved return-to-work times.

Tegria rebrands its RCM business as Acclara, naming Tegria RCM managing director Lincoln Popp as CEO.

Sales

• Providence will offer remote physical therapy services from Luna.
• Prime Healthcare (CA) selects Ceiba Healthcare’s Integrated Virtual Care technology for tele-neurology, tele-stroke, and virtual critical care services.

People

Ray Gensinger, Jr. MD (Hospital Sisters Health System) joins Tegria as SVP/chief medical officer.

Broward Health (FL) names Steven Travers (USA Health) CIO.

Philips hires Julia Strandberg, MBA (Pear Therapeutics) as chief business leader of its Connected Care business.

Pivot Point Consulting promotes Max Hanner to SVP of business development, Laura Kreofsky to SVP of advisory, Zack Tisch to SVP of innovation and life sciences, and Jillian Wood to SVP of strategy and transformation.

Carium hires David McCormick, MBA (Innovista Health Solutions) as COO.

Announcements and Implementations

Ellkay releases LKOpera, an interoperability platform that allows partners to executive a connected digital ecosystem that accelerates go-lives and gives teams full control and transparency.

Children’s Wisconsin integrates Xealth’s patient education software with its EHR.

Avaneer Health launches a blockchain-based data-sharing network for payers and providers that aims to improve administration workflows. I remain just as skeptical of blockchain-based healthcare solutions as I did back in 2021, when the company launched: “Blockchain is a hammer looking for nails that never seem to get pounded, and while healthcare has a ton of inefficiency and lack of interoperability (weren’t government-subsidized EHRs and HIEs supposed to fix those problems?), the historic safe bet is to be skeptical of companies that pre-profess their technology’s ability make it better.”

UCHealth’s “no-touch estimate” function is serving 36,000 patients per month with no manual work, generating 99% of patient estimates from Epic in which 72% of them estimate the patient’s portion within 5% or $50 of the final billed amount.

PeriGen launches automated quality reports for L&D that review hypertension recognition and response, perinatal core measure 06 (PC-06) unintended harm in the newborn, and persistence of concerning FHR conditions over time.

A new KLAS report on clinical documentation strategies finds that Nuance’s DAX ambient speech recognition shows initial promise, but front-end speech recognition is becoming the go-forward platform, led by Nuance Dragon Medical One. Computer-assisted physician documentation offers benefits but low physician buy-in, with Nuance CAPD leading the category. Users of Clinical Documentation Integrity solutions, where Iodine Software and Nuance are the top category scorers, believe that development has stagnated with some vendors. Transcription services are on the wane, and while 94% of users of virtual scribes report positive impact, quality is inconsistent, especially when the assigned scribe is replaced.

Government and Politics

The VA publishes an EHRM Sprint Report acknowledges that the Oracle Cerner implementation “has not met Veteran or VA expectations,” but places the blame on the VA itself for failing to standardize processes and fix issues that arose in its initial deployments. The VA will:

• Analyze the EHR’s safety performance using Leapfrog’s tool.
• Improve over-the-shoulder support based on best practices from other health systems.
• Modify PowerPlans to support research.
• Prioritize new service requests using a patient safety framework.
• Create a site readiness dashboard for go-lives.
• Get live sites back to baseline productivity before bringing new sites live.
• Simulate patient safety risks at the VA National Simulation Center or other locations.

Other

Scripps Health lays several dozen employees, most of them in IT, according to LinkedIn commenters.

Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta sues two apparel companies over their allegedly unauthorized use of the phrase “Grady Baby.”

This could be a public service announcement for choosing both friends and alcohol consumption wisely. Doctors in Nepal remove a vodka bottle that had been inserted in the lowest part of the lower GI tract of a drunk man by his “friends”. A similar incident occurred nearby a few days before, when a group of party-goers decided to see what would happen if they inserted a 3×5 inch steel drinking glass into the nether regions of their drunken bro.

Sponsor Updates

• WEDI features Arrive Health CEO Kyle Kiser on its latest podcast, “Lucy Up! Improving Patient Access, Affordability, and Outcomes.”
• Lumeon names Jennifer Bowman (Molina Health), Karen Cox, RN (Chamberlain University), Christy Dempsey, RN (Press Ganey/Missouri University School of Nursing), Jessie Israel, RN (Denver Wellness Associates), and Timothy Zoph (McKinsey) to its new Thought Leadership Council.
• Baker Tilly publishes a new case study, “Health system realizes cost savings by outsourcing system integration and ad-hoc IT projects.”
• Sentara Healthcare (VA) and Hollywood Presbyterian Medical Center (CA) use Wolters Kluwer Health’s Ovid Synthesis Clinical Evidence Manager to enhance their clinical research programs.
• Agfa Healthcare will introduce its Imaging Health Network at HIMSS23.
• The HLTH Matters Podcast features Biofourmis co-founder and CMO Maulik Majmudar, “Harnessing the Power of Tech and Data to Bring the Right Care to Patients, No Matter Where They Are.”
• E-prescribing software vendor DAW Systems implements Arrive Health’s real-time prescription benefit technology.
• Medhost joins the CommonWell Health Alliance.

Blog Posts

• Technology adoption making patient safety the primary goal at Primary Health Care Corporation (Oracle Cerner)
• The Power of Mobile Care & How It’s Changing the Way Patients Choose Hospitals (Access)
• 4 Ways AI-enabled RPM Helps Close Gaps in Patient Care (AdvancedMD)
• Fixing the Front-End of the Revenue Cycle: Integrated Financial Clearance (AGS Health)
• Using risk adjustment for better patient outcomes (Arcadia)
• MEDITECH showcases patient-centered interoperability strategies at HIMSS23 (Meditech)
• US Nursing Cliff a Catalyst for Change (Ascom)
• AvaSure Virtual Classroom Series: Virtual Nursing 101 (AvaSure)
• 9 Benefits of ServiceNow’s Enterprise Service Management Platform (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Reducing Injuries for High-Risk Employees Calls for Fully Integrated Musculoskeletal Solutions (Bardavon)
• We Must Dramatically Streamline Clinical Workflows: Here’s Why. (CareMesh)
• 5 Indicators Your HIT Staffing Partner is a Good One (CereCore)
• Inefficiencies in EHR Systems Can Cause Healthcare Worker Burnout (HealthTech Resources)
• Protect Your Practice: Mitigating the Risks of Medicare Fraud and Abuse with an In-House CCM Program (ChartSpan)
• 7 Ways to Minimize Privacy Risk Created by Online Tracking Technologies (Clearwater)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/13/23

Top News

Silicon Valley Bank, a major player in tech company financing, collapses and is taken over by federal regulators in the biggest US bank failure since 2008.

SVB has business relationships with half of all venture-backed technology and healthcare companies.

SVB failed as higher interest rates devalued its long-term, low-interest bond portfolio even as venture capital deposits dwindled in a down market, with the unrealized losses raising fear in depositors who created a bank run in trying to withdraw their money.

Notes:

• Deposits are FDIC insured up to $250,000, meaning that 95% of the money held by SVB is uninsured.
• Tech companies that can’t get their deposits out of SVB are expressing doubt that they can meet payroll and pay bills in the short term.
• Venture capital firms used their now-frozen SVB lines of credit to make investments quickly. However, they also triggered the SVB bank run by advising their portfolio companies to pull their money out, which created a liquidity event that forced SVB to convert unrealized losses to actual losses in an attempt to cover withdrawals.
• Some of the VCs issued their SVB warnings on Twitter, which created a panic that one investor summarized as, “If you are in a movie theater and it’s not on fire and you yell fire, and then you congratulate yourself for being out first while other people are laying on the floor, do you sleep well tonight?”
• SVB supporters note that the bank has been an ally of innovation, didn’t mishandle deposited funds, and instead chose a conservative investment approach involving government-backed funds that was derailed by interest rate hikes. The company held so much startup money deposited from fundraising proceeds that it couldn’t originate enough profitable loans to invest it, so it turned to low-interest but safe investments.
• FDIC is expected to pressure another bank to buy SVB, which holds enough assets – albeit long-term and discounted — to cover deposits if it can continue operation.
• Long-term observers question the involvement of the Federal Reserve in first holding interest rates artificially low, then raising them repeatedly. They also worry that fear will drive companies to move their money from banks to other investments, which will cause other banks to fail as depositors withdraw their funds.
• Private equity investor Bijan Salehizadeh, MD, MPH, MBA worries that portfolio companies whose funds are tied up in SVB can’t count on their VCs to provide an emergency bridge loan since many or most VC funds also bank at SVB and can’t get their money either, and opening new accounts at overwhelmed banking competitors is not a quick process. He also notes that some companies are funded under terms that require banking with SVB, which means other banks may be wary of taking them on. He says that the federal government needs to force a big bank to buy SVB over the weekend or else “we have not just an academic catastrophe, but an actual catastrophe.” He also urges affected companies to stop all accounts payable activity immediately to preserve cash for payroll.

I would welcome opinions from readers who are involved in venture capital or whose company is being affected by SVB’s collapse.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

One in five poll respondents have used telehealth to get a prescription they wanted knowing that the evaluation process would likely be superficial.

New poll to your right or here, following up on Dr. Jayne’ s impressions of ATA: what disappointed you most at the most recent in-person conference you attended? Someone told me once that the single most important item for attendees is food and the opportunities to socialize while consuming it, which brings back painful memories of waiting in endless food and coffee lines at HIMSS conferences only to end up sitting alone on the floor with my wildly overpriced purchase because of lack of seats.

Attention clock spring-forwarders, which is everybody in the continental US except those in Arizona. Avoid embarrassing yourself and mothball EST, CST, MST, and PST until November 5 since it’s all EDT, CDT, MDT, and PDT until then. You don’t get to pick which one you like better, but in a rare confluence of decreased effort accompanying increased accuracy, just write ET, CT, MT, and PT year round to always be correct (those of us in those time zones already know what time it is here). Perhaps unfairly, I assume that anyone who has lived their entire life under Daylight Saving Time but still writes it wrong can’t be all that bright or attentive to detail. TL;DR version – always abbreviate Eastern time as ET.

I keep seeing these clickbait articles in the form of “XXX hospital executives to know” whose selection methodology is whatever the fresh grad writer’s Google searches turn up. Does the “to know” encourage people to cold-call those who are named get acquainted? Otherwise, if they are so important that we should know them, wouldn’t we already?

I don’t often do book reviews, but I found the new, physician-written novel “The Algorithm Will See You Now” to be worth reading and describing.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

From the Oracle earnings call:

• CEO Safra Catz says that “cloud is no longer about just renting commodity white boxes” and instead offers velocity and value that supports business transformation.
• She says that Oracle has improved Cerner’s operating margin by more than five percentage points in its three quarters of ownership.
• Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison says that Cerner’s healthcare contract base has increased by $5 billion since the acquisition. He called out wins at Ascension Health, Auxilio Mutio, Vandalia Health, Banner Health, VA, DoD, and NHS.
• Ellison said that MD Anderson has reduced readmissions by 30% by using Project Ronin’s AI model running on Oracle Cloud.
• Responding to an analyst’s question about “when does it become clear that Oracle is helping improve the quality of care and saving lives,” Ellison cited implementations at DoD, VA, and Nova Scotia, along with an NHS bid in progress.
• Ellison stated that Oracle has built “one patient, one record in the database” at Stanford, UCLA, Mayo Clinic, and Cleveland Clinic, failing to note that all of those organizations user Oracle Cerner competitor Epic.

OptimizeRx reports Q4 results: revenue down 3%, adjusted EPS $0.25 versus $0.22.

Sales

• An unnamed drug manufacturer hub services company will use OptimizeRx’s technology to determine patient drug eligibility and affordability.

People

Laura Wilt, MBA (Ochsner Health) joins Sutter Health as SVP/CDO.

Washington University in St. Louis hires Greg Hart, PhD (FTI) as its first CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

An AHA-commissioned report by Kaufman Hall finds that 53% of US hospitals expect to lose money this year, driven by high labor and supply costs.

Government and Politics

Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT), who was recently appointed chair of the VA’s subcommittee on technology modernization, says that he would like to cancel the VA’s Oracle Cerner contract, claw back some of the money that the company has been paid, and focus instead on improving the VA’s legacy VistA system. He says VistA is a better system for supporting safe, high-quality care, citing high dissatisfaction rates among the VA’s users of Oracle Cerner.

The former CEO of now-bankrupt medical device company Stimwave is indicted for selling a non-functional piece of plastic as a $16,000 implantable medical device for chronic pain patients. Stimwave settled for $10 million in October 2022. Doctors complained that the implantable part of the original nerve stimulator device was too big, and since the company knew that the technology could not be made smaller, created a plastic dummy component that could be cut to fit, enabling the doctor to bill for implanting the fake device.

Privacy and Security

Virtual mental health startup Cerebral notifies HHS that it use of pixel tracking has inadvertently exposed the information of 3.2 million users to third parties. The shared information includes website visitor responses to a mental health questionnaire that includes responses about panic attacks, alcohol abuse, and personality disorder.

Sponsor Updates

• Wolters Kluwer launches the Outpatient Prospective Payment System Batch Grouper and Calculator Service within its MediRegs coding, reimbursement, and compliance solution.
• Nordic releases a new In Network Podcast, “Designing for Health: Interview with Dr. Srinath Adusumalli.”
• OptimizeRx announces a multi-million-dollar, three-year agreement with a leading Hub services company that will leverage its technology to accelerate patient access for its life sciences brands.
• Pivot Point Consulting announces new appointments to its Managed Services, Data & Analytics, Clinical Systems/EHR, Business Systems, and Advisory Services segments.
• Premier publishes a new success story, “Premier’s Pinc AI Clinical Intelligence: A Key to Reducing Clinical Variation and Improving Quality at St. Luke’s University Health Network.”
• Redox releases a new podcast, “Automation’s Impact on the Patient/Provider Relationship with Mytonomy’s Vinay Bhargava.”
• Spok earns top honors for the sixth consecutive year in a Black Book Market Research survey of healthcare industry clients on top-rated secure communications platforms.
• Volpara Health highlights studies presented at the 2023 European Congress of Radiology that demonstrate the important role AI plays in objective breast density assessment, cancer risk assessment, and mammography quality evaluation.

Blog Posts

• Financial Challenges Facing Hospitals & How to Solve Them (Vyne Medical)
• Breaking down the barriers to health equity (Nordic)
• Can Healthcare Technology Beat Burnout? Not On Its Own. (PerfectServe)
• Four Trends Guiding Healthcare Supply Chain Workforce Management (Premier)
• AI in the contact center just expanded (Talkdesk)
• Advancements in PT Technology and Emerging Digital Trends (WebPT)

Contacts

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

News 3/10/23

Top News

Oracle reports Q3 results: revenue up 18%, adjusted EPS $0.68 versus $0.84, beating earnings expectations but falling just short on revenue.

The company’s much-watched cloud revenue jumped 45%.

ORCL shares dropped 5% in after-hours trading following the announcement as investors reacted to revenue of $12.4 billion versus the average analyst expectation of $12.41 billion.

Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison highlighted the contributions of its June 2022 Cerner acquisition, saying that its healthcare contract base has increased by $5 billion. He says Oracle is pleased with those results, but expects new healthcare contract signings to accelerate further over the next few quarters.

The Cerner business contributed $1.5 billion in revenue for the quarter, 12% of Oracle’s total revenue.

Reader Comments

From Marmaduke: “Re: WW. Didn’t they have problems with data privacy issues in the past?” The former Weight Watchers — which changed its name to WW in 2018 to emphasize holistic wellness instead of counting calories – acquired children’s diet app vendor Kurbo Health in 2018 for $3 million. FTC accused the companies of violating COPPA by encouraging users under 13 to falsely state their age to avoid seeking parental consent, then illegally collecting their personal information. WW settled with FTC in 2022 by paying $1.5 million and shutting down Kurbo. WW cautions in its latest SEC filing that it has limited experience in telehealth and drug marketing laws, so success in its planned acquisition of weight loss telehealth vendor Sequence will likely require retaining that company’s management team.

From Dingo with Ears: “Re: wax. While I love your regular news updates and have to come to depend on them, your highlighting the smart visual ear cleaner as an alternative to the trusty ear pickers I’ve been using for years is life changing. Wax on/ wax off!” I have seen roving ear cleaners in Chengdu, China whose patients sit among gaping onlookers in public parks to have their ears probed for many minutes by professionals who are armed with a variety of disturbing-looking tools that supposedly elicit pleasurable sensations (but the faces they make suggest that it isn’t always comfortable). I’ll take the app-powered self-cleaner any time.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The increasing trend of prescribing pricey and fashionable weight loss medications via telehealth prompts me once again question the value of making a drug prescription-only. The widespread availability of telehealth services that will sell patients what they want with minimal medical scrutiny – superficially reviewing their checkbox form entries –suggests that neither doctors nor patients see value in traditional exams and responsible prescribing. The telehealth companies make money like a club bouncer who waves a patron around the velvet rope after pocketing a $50 bill. I expect the pendulum to eventually swing back, either because prescribing requirements will tighten or some kid’s telehealth startup will find itself on the wrong end of a huge-dollar medical malpractice lawsuit when it turns out that the checkbox wasn’t a good replacement for actual medical care.

The single top-of-page banner on HIStalk is almost always booked long term and thus is rarely available, but it is now. Contact Lorre.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Business Insider reports that Elemy, which raised over $300 million to open clinics to treat children with autism, has pulled out of 11 of the 14 states it covered and conducted five rounds of layoffs as it hopes to transition from delivering care to selling software to clinicians to command a higher investor valuation. A former employee likened its strategy to “darts being thrown at a dart board.” A leaked recording of a company meeting suggests that it hopes to a scheduling app and an EHR to behavioral analysts, but its 31-year-old founder admits that its early efforts at developing technology were not successful.

Investor Jacob Effron posts a fascinating interview with Naomi Allen, whose worked at Castlight Health and Livongo before starting investor-backed mental health startup Brightline. Snips:

• Service layer vendors that can connect the digital health ecosystem to get solutions online faster are driving innovation.
• Most US counties have no pediatrics-trained mental health providers, leaving virtual and hybrid care as the only option.
• Castlight struggled because nobody had sold digital health solutions to employers and it was tough to prove value to companies and their users.
• She believes consumers can be incented to shop responsibly for healthcare services via specialty tiers, value-based networks, and incentives for seeing high-quality providers and getting second opinions.
• She wonders if the down market, with its reduced competition for employees, will require companies that sell solutions that are perceived as an employee benefit will need to find new sales approaches.
• Livongo figured out member delight early on, identifying pain points such as the cost and effort required to get blood glucose strip refills. It also identified data signals that would allow it to take action immediately instead of having insurer case managers calling randomly.
• It’s hard to convince patients to cut cords with their child’s behavioral therapist, which creates clinician shortages. Few therapists use measurement to determine when the child can exit care or be well served by other modalities, insurers don’t pay for mental health screening, and evidence doesn’t exist to connect level of care to acuity. 
• She thinks the Teladoc acquisition of Livongo made sense because Livongo’s impact was limited by two of its acquisitions that used only coaches rather than clinicians. However, Teladoc didn’t invest in keeping Livongo’s executives and its culture clashed with that of Livongo.

Revenue cycle management solutions vendor AGS Health opens an office in Manila, Philippines. The company has 11,000 employees.

Sales

• The new “smart” hospital of Valley Health System (NJ) will use Meditech Expanse, along with in-room monitors, RTLS patient locating for energy efficiency, and AI-powered video surveillance systems to prevent falls.
• Shaare Zedek Medical Center implements Juniper Networks Astra software to automate data center network operations.

People

Alistair Erskine, MD, MBA (Mass General Brigham) joins Emory Healthcare as chief information and digital officer.

Medhost hires Michael Yzermanm, MS (Avelead) as SVP of customer success and support.

David Wellons (Windy Hill Group) joins Penon Partners as VP and practice leader of sales operations and CRM process optimization.

Tegria promotes Brian Cahill, MBA to CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Healthcare interoperability vendor Health Gorilla and CLEAR, which offers a secure identity verification platform, launch a service that allows consumers to access their health information securely. The program will start in Puerto Rico via the PRHIE.

An NTT Data survey finds that only half of the consumer respondents are aware of at-home care options, while three-fourths would prefer a telehealth visit or house call over making a trip to a provider.

Nuance adds GPT-powered chatbot capability to its Nuance Mix self-service contact center solutions.

Other

An investigative report finds that mental health non-profit Koko searched the social media posts of people 18 to 25 to find crisis-related mental health language so it could direct them to chatbot questionnaires on its website. Experts question why the organization didn’t set up the experiments as human subject research that would have protected the safety and privacy of users. The company previously raised flags by experimenting with AI to allow users to advise each other on mental health issues. A bioethicist concludes, “If this is the way entrepreneurs think they can establish AI for mental diseases and conditions, they had best plan for a launch filled with backlash, lawsuits, condemnation, and criticism, all of which are entirely earned and deserved. I have not in recent years seen a study so callously asleep at the ethical wheel. Dealing with suicidal persons in this way is inexcusable.” The company’s co-founders came from Airbnb.

An NHS scientist wins a racism lawsuit after her complaints about co-workers resulted one of them changing her name in a shared worksheet to “paininarse.”

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Keeping Patients Safe and Compliant.”
• Intelligent Medical Objects publishes a new case study, “Improving patient cohorts with comprehensive code mapping.”
• Nordic releases a new episode of DocTalk.
• Meditech’s Expanse Patient Care helps Major Health Partners realize a 30% time-savings for home medication verification in the emergency department.
• Nuance publishes a case study, “University of Rochester Medical Center enables effortless image sharing.”

Blog Posts

• Improving Patient Safety in Hospitals (Vyne Medical)
• VBC Doesn’t Happen Overnight. But It’s Happening Now. (Enlace Health)
• Front Desk Checklist PDF for Better Urgent Care Billing (Experity)
• Drug Overdose Deaths Continue to Surge (First Databank)
• How Transition from Web 2.0 to Web 3.0 Revolutionizes the Life Sciences Industry (Healthcare Triangle)
• 2023’s Top 4 AI Use Cases in Healthcare Communications (Five9)
• 5 Factors in a Successful Medical Record Abstraction (HCI Group)
• Is Poor Tech Support Losing You Patients, Revenue, and Reputation? (HCTec)
• Boost Financial Performance by Improving Patient Outcomes (Healthjump)
• Muscle Building for Transformative Change (InterSystems)
• The cost of building a clinical informaticists team (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Getting Started with Online Scheduling: 5 Key Steps for a Successful Launch (Kyruus)
• From Ribs to Regimens: Your Complete Guide to Medication Reconciliation (Medhost)
• A can’t miss opportunity awaits you at our 2023 Home Care Symposium (Meditech)
• Full Steam Ahead: Regulations Create Momentum for Streamlined Healthcare Data Exchange & Prior Authorization Automation (Myndshft)
• Claims-Based vs. MDS-Based Insights: What’s the Difference? (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 3/8/23

Top News

Transcarent will acquire virtual primary care company 98point6’s care delivery division — which includes an AI-powered chatbot, physician group, and self-insured employer business — for $100 million.

Transcarent, which has relied on contracted clinicians, will gain 98point6’s 150 directly-employed doctors and support staff.

98point6 has raised $270 million in funding.

After the acquisition, 98point6 will stop providing patient care and will develop and sell technology to health systems. MultiCare Health System has signed on as its first software customer.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Hear ye, HIStalk sponsors participating in ViVE 2023 — send me your details for inclusion in my conference guide. It’s easy, free, and fun (well, maybe “fun” is a stretch) but why not tell reader attendees why they should drop by your expensive booth?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

WW, known as WeightWatchers until a 2018 name change, will acquire telehealth-based weight management company Sequence for $132 million. Sequence’s $99 per month membership plan provides prescriptions for high-demand weight loss drugs such as Wegovy and Ozempic, a price that does not include the $1,000+ monthly cost of the drugs themselves. Sequence touts its prior authorization technology as a differentiator. WW shares, which have slimmed down 57% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 12% loss,  jumped 79% on the news, valuing the company at $489 million.

Best Buy will set up in-home virtual care systems for Atrium Health in a three-year deal. Atrium expects to monitor 100 patients remotely, buying devices from Best Buy and having them installed by its Geek Squad. Best Buy Health’s president is Deborah DiSanzo, MBA, who was formerly GM of IBM Watson Health and CEO of Philips Healthcare.

Newly launched Opkit announces GA of a health insurance verification platform for telehealth companies and virtual clinics.

Sales

• De Baca Family Clinic (NM) selects EHR and patient engagement software from EClinicalWorks.
• CareView Communications adds Sonifi Health’s interactive communications technology to its patient video monitoring software, giving patients the ability to communicate with care teams from bedside smart TVs.

People

Healthcare identity management vendor Verato hires Avi Mukherjee, MBA (Verily Life Sciences) as chief product officer.

Waystar promotes Missy Miller to chief marketing officer.

Direct Recruiters promotes Shayla Jastrzebski to partner.

Cookeville Regional Medical Center (TN) promotes Tim McDermott, MBA to CIO.

Kyruus promotes Heather Berndt, MA to VP of mid-market and client sales.

Announcements and Implementations

The Medical University of South Carolina takes over management of Regional Medical Center and will convert it from Cerner to Epic.

Vitalchat announces GA of AI-Enabled E-Sitter, virtual nursing technology that enables clinicians to remotely monitor up to 100 patients from a central hub.

Weill Cornell Medicine (NY) uses AI-powered ProviderIQ technology from Hatchleaf to more effectively match patients with best-fit providers across specialties.

A study of procedure documentation modalities for hand surgery – AI-based virtual scribe, medical scribe, transcription service, and EHR voice recognition –  finds that all four generate acceptable results. The AI scribe required the least amount of surgeon time and was able to identify most of the elements needed, but the plans it generated required clinician review.

An NYU School of Medicine study finds that prescribing rates for mineralocorticoid receptor antagonists doubled when cardiologists were presented with an EHR banner alert reminding them of the appropriateness of the treatment for their heart failure patients. MRAs can greatly improve survival rates but are ordered for only one-third of eligible patients, resulting in an estimated 20,000 preventable deaths in the US each year.

A new KLAS review of small-hospital patient accounting finds that Meditech Expanse tops the list, with Epic coming in second because service quality varies under the CommunityConnect model in which the host hospital provides services instead of Epic.

Government and Politics

The Defense Health Agency launches a six-month pilot of a tool that offers validated health information to patients and providers.

The House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs, Subcommittee on Technology Modernization held the first of a series of oversight hearings on the VA EHR program Tuesday afternoon. Notes:

• Chair Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) said that VA IT systems exist to improve care, not to “turn out cushy contracts to technology companies.” He says that all EHR projects or options will be evaluated on patient safety, reliability, user satisfaction, and cost.
• Rosendale says that some elements of VistA will be used for at least 10 years, and some parts that aren’t addressed by Oracle Cerner may never go away, so VistA must be maintained.
• Rosendale said Mann Grandstaff VA Medical Center has become “the most dangerous VA hospital in the country” based on its post-Oracle Cerner patient safety reports of 500 per year versus an average of 55 per year from VistA-using facilities.
• Former VA CIO Roger Baker says concrete evidence exists that veterans have better outcomes from facilities that use the VA’s legacy VistA system instead of Oracle Cerner.
• Baker says that lobbyists are falsely claiming that VistA can’t be improved because of age, complexity, and technology. He says that big modernization improvements were made under his tenure even though VA had cut off VistA improvements for 16 of the last 24 years.
• Baker says that replacement of VistA Laboratory with the cloud version of Cerner’s laboratory system in 2007 was a failure that never expanded beyond the first hospital because of the cost and timelines required to customize it using available parameters.
• Baker says Oracle Cerner is the VA’s third attempt to replace VistA, following HealtheVet and IEHR, and all have failed because the VA’s culture values local control rather than software standardization.
• Baker says that studies have shown that only 16% of large US government IT projects succeed, and as the largest federal IT project, “VA has no chance of actually succeeding on this program.”
• Former VA executive Peter Levin testified that the billions of dollars that have already been spent on Oracle Cerner cannot scale to enterprise-wide clinical services. He said that DoD fared better because they had already transitioned to a centrally administered workflow, they planned better, and predecessor system AHLTA was a mess that made Cerner look like an improvement to users.
• Asked about Cerner being awarded a no-bid contract, Levin says he doesn’t think the selection was unfair, but there were “political exigencies.”
• VA IT executive Daniel McCune says that the annual cost of maintaining VistA has ranged from $418 million in 2018 to $891 million in 2022, and the cost will continue to increase until Oracle Cerner is fully implemented.

Privacy and Security

The FBI and Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency release a Cybersecurity Advisory to help healthcare providers protect their networks from the Royal ransomware variant.

Other

A Black Book survey of 2,500 health IT leaders finds that 30% plan on investing in health data integration solutions this year. Reducing duplicate and unnecessary procedures, increasing volume of consumer health data, patient demands for nearly immediate health results, and gaps in clinical device connectivity were cited as top reasons for investment. Innovaccer took top marks for its data integration solutions.

CNBC profiles Denmark-born Ida Tin, whose company launched popular menstrual health app Clue. She coined the term “femtech” to describe the trillion-dollar market to attract investors who would not have been comfortable with “a company that helps women not pee their pants.” She stepped down as CEO of birth control app vendor Clue in 2021, explaining that, “I could see that the things that I would have had to learn to really serve the company were things I’m not that good at, and I was not so interested in a lot of very serious operational stuff and that didn’t excite me as much.” She became interested in business when she got lost at the college where she was studying art and ended wandering by mistake into a business course interview.

Sponsor Updates

• Sam Larson, head of marketing for Philips Capsule, and his family will take a team to Jamaica’s Mustard Seed Communities this summer to complete several work projects.
• AdvancedMD publishes a new e-book, “2023 MIPS Attestation Guide.”
• Bardavon Health Innovations acquires injury prevention company Preventure and launches a Safety Intelligence Suite for employers and insurers.
• CarePort publishes an e-book, “5 levers for hospital success under value-based care.”
• ChartLogic will exhibit at the American Association of Orthopedic Surgeons Annual Meeting March 8-10 in Las Vegas.
• ConnectiveRx will sponsor the Point-of-Care Marketing Summit March 22 in New York City.
• AdvancedMD publishes a new e-guide, “2023 CPT/HCPCS Codebook.”
• Netsmart will integrate the CAMS-care Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality Framework and Suicide Status Form with its CareFabric platform.
• Nordic releases a new podcast, “Making Rounds: The Big Squeeze in Healthcare.”
• Optum will exhibit at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy Conference March 21-24 in San Antonio.
• Sectra publishes a new case study, “AI frees up valuable time for radiologists in a Swedish healthcare region.”
• Spok earns top honors for the sixth consecutive year in a recent Black Book survey for its secure communications platform.
• Verato publishes a new case study, “Large Texas non-profit health system avoids costs, enhances productivity, and improves scalability.”
• West Monroe promotes 16 new managing directors.

Blog Posts

• Is Hospital Pre-Registration Possible Without Portal Adoption? (Access)
• Understanding the HHS-HCC Risk Adjustment Model (AGS Health)
• Healthcare disrupted: How to keep pace in a rapidly changing world (Arcadia)
• Ascom Workflow Technology Designed for Interoperability to Make 1+1=3 (Ascom)
• 7 Step Roadmap to Developing a Virtual Nursing Program (AvaSure)
• Using Real-Time Insights to Improve Value-Based Care Outcomes (Bamboo Health)
• Why Double Down on Injury Prevention? CEO Matt Condon Talks About Our New Safety Intelligence Suite (Bardavon Health Innovations)
• Epic Go-Live Planning: Keys to Successful HOD Implementation (CereCore)
• What is a Care Manager? (ChartSpan)
• Enabling Value with Interoperability & Analytics Using the 1Clearsense Platform (Clearsense)
• Harnessing Big Data for Suicide Prevention (Dimensional Insight)
• The 21st Century Cures Act and its Impact on Interoperability and Healthcare (HealthTech Resources)
• Long-Term Cost-Saving Opportunities in Healthcare (Divurgent)
• Key Tips for Successfully Managing and Optimizing Your Revenue Cycle (Vyne Medical)
• Beyond the call: How to differentiate your telehealth experience post-visit (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Using EHRs to Increase Employee Satisfaction and Retention (Netsmart)
• Be the Poison Control (or help desk) operator your colleagues need you to be (Nordic)
• Combatting Burnout and Fatigue in Healthcare (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• So, Food is Medicine, What Does That Mean for Pharmacy? (OmniSys)
• Break the Backlog: 6 Strategies to Reduce Report Queue Backlogs (Pivot Point Consulting)
• How Clinical Communication Helps Critical Access Hospitals Improve Patient Outcomes (PerfectServe)
• Three Ways Premier is Supporting Continuum of Care Providers (Premier)
• How to Succeed in Value-Based Care Without In-House HCC Coders (RCxRules)
• FAQ: How do healthcare organizations define optimal provider-patient communication? (Relatient)
• Why your hospital should be using patient discharge checklists (Sonifi Health)
• 5 hospital contact center trends to watch (Spok)
• Tegria on Techquity (Tegria)
• The Value of One Integrated Clinical Communication Platform (TigerConnect)
• Advancements in PT Technology and Emerging Digital Trends (WebPT)
• How Evidence-Based Care Leads to Value-Based Care (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/6/23

Top News

Epic will add 1,700 employees to its current headcount of 11,600 in the next 12 months, housing them in two new office buildings that it will build within its Harry Potter-themed Wizards Academy complex.

Two-thirds of poll respondents think that restrictions banning physicians from opening or operating hospitals should be lifted.

New poll to your right or here: Have you used telehealth to obtain a prescription for a drug that you wanted knowing that few questions would be asked?

I’ve done nothing to prepare for HIMSS23 except book a hotel, so I fired up the Meta Quest 2 and Wander, which has become my most-used VR app. I searched for my hotel by name and then could take a virtual stroll through Chicago to check out nearby restaurants, points of interest, and the Riverwalk. It brought back memories of previous HIStalkapalooza events that were in Trump Tower and the House of Blues, the latter of which is still my favorite venue of those I’ve used.

I am amused annually by the American Telemedicine Association, which advocates virtual care to those who attend its in-person conference.

A doctor friend received a PET scan report with good numbers last week, but the dictated summary said that he had heart damage and could expect a significantly shortened lifespan. He spent 12 hours researching the test and its interpretation, then messaged the doctor that the report didn’t make sense. He got a quick response saying that the doctor had pressed the wrong keys in Epic, then received a corrected report indicating that he’s fine after all. He raises these points:

• What if he was a layperson?
• Had he been referred, would a specialist had paid attention to the numbers, or would they use the erroneous summary to make medical decisions?
• Will his medical record reflect that the initial report was incorrect or that the doctor didn’t check the report carefully?
• Does this happen often?

I’m always losing subscribers to my email updates because of spam filters and company policies. If you’re not getting my updates, sign up again and be confident that you won’t get duplicate emails no matter what. While you’re at it, connect with me on LinkedIn so I can see your posts and job changes. If you send me news or a job update and I’m not immediately familiar with you or your company, I check if we are connected, how many connections we share, and if you’re in Dann’s HIStalk Fan Club to help decide whether readers will be interested.

Thanks to the following companies that recently supporting HIStalk. Click a logo for more information.

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.

People

Stuart Miller (Infor) joins Craneware as VP of sales.

Jamie Coffin, PhD (Sema4) joins Nature’s Toolbox as CEO.

Evernorth Health Services hires Sean Tuley, MBA (Global Medical Response) as Evernorth utilization management CIO.

Integra Connect promotes Marie Finnegan, RN to VP of product management.

Government and Politics

Teladoc Health-owned virtual mental health company BetterHelp pays $7.8 million to settle FTC charges that it shared the information of website and app users with Facebook and other social media platforms. Teladoc, which acquired the company in 2015 for around $5 million, says it’s a billion-dollar business.

Other

Telehealth-based weight loss startup NextMed is using fake reviews and before-and-after photos to promote its services to prescribe trendy diabetes drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy, often omitting government-mandated warnings. The company, whose founder just graduated college, outsources clinical work to telehealth companies and customer service to offshore firms. It touts as a competitive differentiator its software that quickly process prior authorizations for the expensive drugs. Customers complain that the company is slow to respond to cancellation requests and offers Amazon gift cards for taking down negative reviews.

Contacts

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

News 3/3/23

Top News

VA Deputy Secretary Donald Remy, JD, who oversees the VA’s Oracle Cerner implementation and other initiatives as its equivalent to COO, resigns as of April 1.

Remy’s departure follows that of VA EHR Executive Director Terry Admirim, MD, MPH, MBA, who left the agency last week.

The VA will nominate a replacement for Remy for Senate confirmation.

Meanwhile, Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA), ranking member of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee, warns that the VA’s Oracle Cerner project “is on its fourth director in five years, and continues to burn money and disrupt care.” The head of the GAO told the committee that while the VA has addressed some challenges, its bureaucratic, decentralized structure makes positive change difficult and EHR project requires a more disciplined approach. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I invited HIStalk sponsors who are participating in the ViVE conference to send me details for my online guide (I should call it a “curated” guide since that’s a crutch word for ViVE). I feel the need to repeat that invitation because I received only one response, and that was from a company that isn’t a sponsor, so I’ve curated them out. I’m amused at the intersection of ViVE’s commercial ambitions versus its attempt to come off as breezy and unorthodox, such as its lengthy “brand guide” that includes a section on making “key messaging” resemble casually created graffiti, murals, or doodles. That is some excellent curating.

I get a lot of feedback from teachers whose classes have benefitted from the Donors Choose donations of HIStalk readers, including Ms. S in California, who provided this update after receiving hands-on STEM tools:

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. They always see these items on TikTok and never have gotten the chance to explore it for themselves. Thank you for giving them that that joyful opportunity!

Today I learned about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, which describes the “unconscious incompetence” in which people who lack knowledge or skill also lack the intelligence to realize just how incompetent they are.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Five9. The San Ramon, CA-based company is an industry-leading provider of cloud contact center solutions, bringing the power of cloud innovation to more than 2,500 customers worldwide and facilitating billions of customer engagements annually. Five9 provides end-to-end solutions with digital engagement, analytics, workforce optimization, and AI to increase agent productivity and deliver tangible business results. The Five9 platform is reliable, secure, compliant, and scalable. Designed to help customers reimagine their customer experience, the Five9 platform connects the contact center to the business while delivering exceptional customer experiences that build loyalty and trust. Thanks to Five9 for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s an intro video on Five9’s The Intelligent Cloud Contact Center and Workflow Automation.

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

Veradigm, formerly Allscripts, delays its Q4 and annual results reports because a software problem caused it to overstate earnings going back to Q3 2021. Veradigm has also lowered its annual  revenue expectations by 2% and adjusted earnings per share by 10%. MDRX shares dropped nearly 13% on the news. They have lost 27% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 15% loss, valuing the company at $1.6 billion.

Health Catalyst reports Q4 results: revenue up 7%, adjusted EPS –$0.05 versus –$0.19, beating estimates for both. HCAT shares have lost 46% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 16% loss, valuing the company at $780 million.

Walmart will open 28 new Walmart Health locations in 2024, increasing its count to 75 as it expands into Missouri and Arizona. The 5,750-square foot centers, housed in Walmart Supercenters, offer primary care, dental care, behavioral health, labs, X-ray, audiology, and telehealth.

Health insurer Bright Health – fresh off layoffs, the exiting of most lines of business, an impending delisting of shares on the NYSE, and a $1.4 billion loss in 2022 – warns that it has overdrawn its credit and expresses doubt that the company can continue as a going concern. Its valuation is down 97% since its IPO peak of $11 billion in June 2021. Bright Health paid its CEO $181 million in 2022.

UnityPoint Health and Presbyterian Healthcare Services announce their intention to create a parent company for their health systems, which will operate as a 40-hospital, 40,000-employee organization while retaining their existing brands.

Sales

• Genomics England deploys enterprise imaging from Sectra.
• University of Kansas Health System will implement AI-powered medical documentation from Abridge, which was created at the Pittsburgh Health Data Alliance that includes Abridge investor UPMC. 
• Compass Health Network chooses NextGen Behavioral Health Suite.
• Deaconess Health System will implement Health Catalyst’s enterprise analytics and outcomes improvement.
• Bryan Health selects Health Catalyst for population health analytics and value-based care performance improvement.

People

Holly Urban, MD, MBA (Oracle Cerner) joins CliniComp as VP of clinical product design.

Adam Terzich (Redox) joins MediQuant as RVP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

Wolters Kluwer Health launches Coder Workbench, a high-productivity risk adjustment solution based on the Health Language Data Platform.

A small consumer survey commissioned by KeyCare finds that two-thirds of respondents who needed minor but urgent medical services during out-of-state travels chose telehealth visits with their regular clinicians over urgent care and telehealth visits with non-affiliated providers.

Epic will incorporate patient experience functionality from Press Ganey, initially into MyChart and Cheers, and eventually into other modules. Former Cedars-Sinai SVP/CIO Darren Dworkin joined Press Ganey as president and COO in August 2022 .

HealthBook+ launches to offer a care and guidance platform for healthcare workers that aggregates patient data to offer next best health steps.

Louisiana Children’s Medical Center goes live with Sapphire Health’s AWS-based Epic Cloud Read-Only ransomware recovery tool. Sapphire Health’s founder and CEO is Austin Park, who served two stints as interim CTO at LCMC.

Virtual care technology company Biofourmis and Chugai Pharmaceutical Co. will develop digital solutions for objective assessment and management of endometriosis pain, pairing the Biofourmis Biovitals platform with data that has been collected in studies involving Chugai’s investigational drug product for endometriosis pain.

The Australian Digital Health Agency launches My Health, which provides mobile access to My Health Record’s medical history, lab results, vaccination management, allergy tracking, hospital discharge summaries, and prescription information.

Privacy and Security

The government of Ireland fines provider Centric Health $490,000 for GDPR violations following a 2019 ransomware attack. The personal health information of 2,500 patients was permanently deleted from Centric’s Primacare systems, which is was in the process of replacing. Centric paid an unspecified ransom, but was too late to prevent the data loss.

The Federal Trade Commission warns Amazon that it will be monitoring its use of patient data following its acquisition of primary care provider One Medical, noting that it will judge pre-acquisition privacy promises by the standard of a “reasonable consumer” rather than that of a HIPAA expert.

Other

Osama Alswailem, MBBS, MA, an informaticist who is CIO at King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Saudi Arabia, lists technologies that are driving healthcare in the Middle East: virtual health, AI, wearables, blockchain, 3D printing, and personalized medicine. He says the CIOs have been redefined to chief digital officer as healthcare organizations rely more on data-driven decision-making. His hospital is using AI to improve resource management via a unified command center, working with 3D-printed prosthetics, and using virtual reality for staff training and patient education.

A New York Times opinion piece asks the question, “Why are ketamine ads following me around the internet?” as telehealth startups are taking advantage of pandemic-relaxed rules to aggressively tout the drug for questionable uses, underplaying the abuse potential and potentially dangerous side effects (permanent bladder damage, anyone?) The author brings up an interesting point: the US is one of two countries that allow drug companies to pitch their wares directly to consumers – increasingly, via social media – but even those companies, unlike telehealth companies, are required to stick to FDA-approved uses. Unmentioned in the article is a review of why telehealth-paid doctors are willing and able to ignore science to give customers whatever they want.

An orthopedic surgeon whose planned surgery was denied by the patient’s insurer finds that the company’s peer reviewer is a surgeon who was permanently banned from the OR by the state medical board. The surgeon dug up what he believes is an X-ray from the case that triggered the board’s action against the peer reviewer, in which an artificial hip was implanted backward. Stunned Twitter doctor commenters question whether the surgeon was impaired or incompetent, noting that (a) he also performed two follow-up corrective surgeries without fixing the problem, which was finally caught when the patient was seen by a new surgeon; and (b) horrifically botched surgery or not, the doctor kept his medical license and can practice however he likes outside the OR.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks achieves Google’s Chrome Enterprise Recommended designation.
• Experity recognizes three urgent care leaders with Limelight Awards at its Urgent Care Connect Conference in Miami.
• Vyne Medical publishes a new case study, “How to Save Time and Increase Profitability with Auto-Indexing.”
• CloudWave’s OpSus Live cloud hosting for healthcare infrastructure as a service achieves a ‘Best Practice’ rating after completing the Meditech Infrastructure and Supporting IT Process audit.
• The Health Plan Innovation Roundtable honors Enlace Health with the Fall 2022 Innovator Traction Award.
• Nordic publishes a podcast titled “Making Rounds: The Big Squeeze in Healthcare.”
• Fortified Health Security names Dylan Storm (Optiv) renewals specialist, Benjie Graham (Corpay) client success manager, and Jason McKellips (Allied Universal) regional director.
• Get Well honors Product Manager Andrew Todtenkopf with its Heart Award for his extraordinary contribution to company performance and culture.
• Kyruus publishes a new guide, “Successful Online Scheduling in 5 Steps.”

Blot Posts

• Where Does the Fax Machine Fit in 2023? (Vyne Medical)
• Enabling Value with Interoperability & Analytics Using the !Clearsense Platform (Clearsense)
• Equity, Environment, Resiliency, and Risk: Future Considerations for Healthcare Value Analysis (GHX)
• 5 Reasons You Could Benefit from Out-of-Pocket’s Healthcare 101 Course (Healthjump)
• NeuroFlow Helps Organizations Address the Youth Mental Health Crisis with Innovative Solutions for Adolescent and Pediatric Populations (NeuroFlow)
• EHR Advancements for 2023 and Beyond (HealthTech Resources)
• Combatting Burnout and Fatigue in Healthcare (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The push for patient-friendly terminology (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Advancing Interoperability in the Age of TEFCA: An Interview with CommonWell’s Executive Director, Paul Wilder: Part 1 (Medhost)
• Confronting maternal mortality with Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital (Meditech)
• The future of ambulatory care documentation, part 1: It’s time to challenge the status quo (Nuance)

Contacts

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

News 3/1/23

Top News

Cerebral announces its third round of layoffs in the past few months as the beleaguered direct-to-consumer telemedicine company attempts to reorganize and streamline its services.

Cerebral has struggled since the federal government launched an investigation of its prescribing practices for mental health issues, especially its heavily promoted prescribing of Adderall.

Cerebral’s valuation reached nearly $5 billion just over a year ago.

Reader Comments

From Pete Drucker; “Re: Quil Health. To exit the market, with the last day for employees being February 10 and for executives February 24.” This was sent to me on February 7, but I didn’t mention the company’s name pending verification. Quil’s web page has been taken down and CEO Carina Edwards has updated her LinkedIn with a February 2023 end date and references to the company changed to past tense. Philadelphia-based Quil was formed in 2019 as a joint venture between Independence Health Group and Comcast, offering medical alert and monitoring tools to support care-at-home for seniors. I interviewed Carina Edwards 10 months ago.

From Plural Effusion: “Re: plural words. I see examples daily where someone sticks in an unneeded apostrophe.” Plurals shouldn’t have apostrophes except for one-letter items, such as the Oakland A’s or minding your p’s and q’s.

From You Interviewed Me: “Re: my HIStalk interview. It received lots of attention. You have certainly built an engaged group of readers.” Thanks to this CEO for giving me a rare post-interview report. I’m always up for talking to CIOs, clinician executives, frontline people, or anyone who would be interesting to readers who comes from the non-vendor side of the table. If that’s you and you can spare 30 minutes for a call, let me know.

From Pshaw: “Re: attrition goals. Epic in a nutshell.” Former Amazon managers say that the company meets its attrition goals by rating decent performers as not meeting its expectations. The company refers its “unregretted attrition rate,” where it expects managers to rank 5% of employees in the lowest tier that the company wouldn’t mine losing, voluntarily or otherwise. Amazon replaces a set percentage of less-performing employees annually. UPDATE: I’m changing this since while I was thinking that Epic stack ranks employees and I thought I read long ago that the company’s philosophy was to intentionally replace the bottom tier, I’m not sure that employees in that tier are fired. Perhaps some who works at Epic can elaborate further.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk sponsors benefit from being listed in our guide to major conferences, which provides on-site details for those that are exhibiting or attending so attendees can seek them out. Send me your ViVE 2023 information  by Wednesday, March 15 to be included. The ViVE 2023 exhibit hall floor plan shows 169 exhibiting companies, with separate musical stages for pop, hip hop, bluegrass, classics, and country (the latter being the largest by far, which wouldn’t be a plus for me). Glancing down the exhibitor list, I see a few dozen HIStalk sponsors, so those remaining dozens are welcome to contact Lorre to extend their reach beyond occupying a small patch of carpet for a half week.

Speaking of ViVE, I just got an email saying that the Clearsense-sponsored industry night entertainment is the Black Crowes. Two perpetually feuding brothers are all that’s left of the original lineup that formed 40 years ago, also the only two who played on their monster 1990 album “Shake Your Money Maker” or on their last new album in 2009.

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

Automated coding technology vendor CodaMetrix raises $55 million in a Series A funding round. The company was spun out of Mass General Brigham in 2019 and is led by former LifeImage CEO Hamid Tabatabaie.

Sales

• Baptist Memorial Health Care (TN) selects LookDeep Health’s Clinical Action Platform to enhance its inpatient video monitoring capabilities.
• Augusta University Health (GA) will expand its Virtual Care at Home program using technology from Biofourmis.
• Southwestern Health Resources (TX) selects referral management software from LeadingReach.
• Yale New Haven Health (CT) will implement RxLightning’s automated pharmacy workflow software.
• Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust in England will replace its Dedalus EHR with Oracle Cerner’s Millenium software next year.

People

Engooden Health, the former Cohort Intelligence, names Tom Frosheiser, MBA (Nvolve)  as CEO.

Dan Michelson, MBA joins 7wire Ventures as entrepreneur-in-residence, rejoining his former Allscripts executive colleagues Glen Tullman and Lee Shapiro. He was CEO of Strata Decision Technology through May 2022.

Leah Ray (Jvion) joins Linus Health as chief customer officer.

Chris Belmont, MBA (Memorial Hospital at Gulfport) joins Ochsner Health as SVP/CIO, a position he held from 2009 to 2013.

Announcements and Implementations

Southern Illinois Healthcare implements PocketHealth’s diagnostic image-sharing software for patients and providers.

NIH-funded researchers from Cleveland Clinic and MetroHealth will use digital twins, created from de-identified EHR data, to understand healthcare disparities based on living location.

A pre-print journal article finds that ChatGPT performs well in suggesting improvements to the logic of clinical decision support alerts.

Practice management software end users give EClinicalWorks, ModMed, NextGen, and Veradigm top customer satisfaction marks in Black Book’s latest annual survey.

Government and Politics

HHS OCR renames its Health Information Privacy Division to the Health Information Privacy, Data, and Cybersecurity Division as part of a reorganization that will better enable the office to more effectively respond to complaints. An OCR report published earlier this month pointed out that the office lacks the financial resources it needs to investigate HIPAA complaints and enforce penalties, both of which increased considerably between 2017 and 2021.

Privacy and Security

Researchers at Duke University’s public policy school find that since technology companies, app  vendors, wearables manufacturers, and social media platforms aren’t covered by HIPAA, they are legally selling the health data of their users to data brokers without their knowledge or consent. The authors looked specifically at at mental health data:

• Some data brokers are offering user health data on the open market, with minimal vetting of customers and few stated limits on its use.
• Brokers don’t always make it clear whether their health data is de-identified, and some seem to imply that they are willing to provide identifiable data.
• The most active brokers offered data of people with depression, ADHD, insomnia, ADHD, and bipolar disorder that also included ethnicity, age, gender, ZIP code, religion, number of children living in the home, marital status, net worth, credit score, and data of birth.

Other

It’s not just doctors who are burned out, a Times article says, citing evidence that patients are being burned out by poor healthcare customer service that includes long appointment lead times, short visits, high prices, surprise bills, insurance aggravation, and too much focus on the EHR. Experts say to watch how patients vote with their feet as they flock to non-traditional settings that offer same-day appointments, walk-in visits, flat-rate memberships, and telehealth.

A Stat review of the boards of 15 top-ranked academic medical centers finds that 44% of board members come from the financial sector, while 13% are physicians and 1% are nurses. The authors conclude that board composition may explain why non-profit health systems focus on revenue instead of community need and employee satisfaction. They cite previous surveys showing that a big percentage of hospital board members are white males.

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom Americas gives Fairchild Communication Systems the ability to re-sell Ascom clinical workflow solutions in the additional market of Toledo, OH.
• Azara Healthcare and Bamboo Health will exhibit at Rise National March 6-8 in Colorado Springs.
• Availity will present and exhibit at State HIT Connect March 6-8 in Baltimore.
• Baker Tilly names Kat Mako (IMethods) and Cindy Kmiecik (Uniper) business development directors of healthcare IT.
• Bardavon Health Innovations partners with the Gray Institute to offer discounted CEUs to its BNotes customers.
• Biofourmis, Care.ai, Clearwater, EVisit, and Optum will exhibit at ATA 2023 March 4-6 in San Antonio.
• CTG publishes a new case study, “CTG Improves Gundersen’s Patient Portal Support with Amazon Connect.”

Blog Posts

• Survey: Your Practice is Losing Almost a Month to Financial Busy Work (AdvancedMD)
• Robotic Process Automation & Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare: Two Distinct Technologies with Distinct Benefits (AGS Health)
• Population health trends across the United States (Arcadia)
• Part 4: Supporting the Patient Experience with Pharmacy Technology (Arrive Health)
• We Must Dramatically Streamline Clinical Workflows: Here’s Why. (CareMesh)
• Voice of the Assessor (Censinet)
• Building a Unified EHR with Meditech Expanse: A Look Back at Key Decisions (CereCore)
• 7 Ways to Minimize Privacy Risk Created by Online Tracking Technologies (Clearwater)

Contacts

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

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.
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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.