News 10/14/22

Top News

Walgreens will buy the remaining shares of care coordination and benefit management platform vendor CareCentrix for $392 million.

The total acquisition cost, including the previous investment by Walgreens, is $722 million.

CareCentrix CEO John Driscoll, MBA, MPhil will take a Walgreens role as EVP and president of US healthcare. He has previously served as a top leader of Surescripts, Castlight Health, and Waystar.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Synapse Medicine. The France-based company believes in medication success and is dedicated to making it possible for everyone. To achieve this goal, it has built an extensive, global medication knowledge base using algorithms to ensure the most reliable, up-to-date data. On the front end, Synapse Medicine provides a SaaS platform and UI components that are used to prescribe, dispense, and manage medications across the entire patient journey. The company is working with world-leading hospitals and digital health companies in the United States, Europe, and Japan to transform today’s medication regimens into tomorrow’s medication success. The company offers a webinar titled “Optimizing Prescription Safety for Your Health Tech Product.” Thanks to Synapse Medicine for supporting HIStalk.

Mrs. H insisted that I take a COVID-19 test before we went out to dinner with higher-risk friends Wednesday since I had mild nasal congestion, a bit of fatigue, and a scratchy throat after our recent travels. I did a swab test just to humor her and to make sure I wasn’t a risk to our friends and it turns out that her concerns were well founded – I tested positive (it felt odd to tell them, “We can’t come because I have COVID.”) The mild initial symptoms have eased and no new ones have emerged, so I’m hoping my vaxxed-to-the-max immune system is repelling the viral siege and protecting me from long COVID. I can only imagine how I would have felt – literally and figuratively – had I been infected in the pre-vaccine dark ages of 2020. Mrs. H, who tested negative and whom I see only from a masked distance as I isolate, masked up and went to Walgreens to buy a couple of $20 boxes of rapid tests for follow-up, where she learned from the helpful clerk that people with insurance can get four boxes of rapid antigen tests (two tests per box) per family member every 30 days at no charge. I don’t want to know who is ultimately picking up that tab.

Webinars

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Well Health will acquire CloudMD’s Cloud Practice Canada-focused business — which includes the Juno EMR, billing software, and three primary care clinic – for just under $6 million.

Specialty EHR/PM vendor Nextech acquires TouchMD, which sells patient visualization and marketing systems to plastic surgery and dermatology practices.

Property and casualty EDI vendor Data Dimensions acquires Providerflow, whose platform manages electronic claims attachments and requests from patients and third parties.

Prescription discount platform GoodRx launches Provider Mode, which allows providers to compare costs, send coupons to patients, and repeat searches via their own dashboard.

Weight loss coaching app vendor Noom lays off another 10% of its employees, mostly from its coaching team, as it attempts to transition into enterprise sales and a broader, more personalized mind-body platform. The company has raised $650 million and was planning a 2022 IPO at a $10 billion valuation. An Insider review found that the company doesn’t offer the personalized support it claims, and instead cranks out canned calorie-counting plans for a high subscription price with little evidence of long-term weight loss success. The company has generated thousands of Better Business Bureau and FTC complaints for billing users without their consent and making it hard for them to cancel subscriptions.

Behavioral health assessment and triaging platform vendor NeuroFlow secures a $25 million growth investment. I interviewed CEO Chris Molaro in March 2022.

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project calls out the former ownership of safety net hospital system Prospect Medical Holdings by private equity firm Leonard Green & Partners. They say that the PE firm reaped $658 million in fees and dividends over its 10-year ownership by burying the hospital chain in debt and slashing costs to the detriment of patient care. The PE firm sold the chain last year, releasing it from responsibility for the chain’s $3.1 billion of debt. LGP’s investment portfolio also includes health IT-related business MultiPlan (cost management), Press Ganey (hospital patient and employee analytics), WCG (clinical trials), and WellSky (post-acute care software).

Investment firm Francisco Partners the BSwift benefits technology business from CVS Health.

KHN reports that private equity firms are creating and running hospital obstetrics emergency departments – often consisting of a single small room — which allows patients who have pregnancy or post-partum medical concerns to be seen quickly and then billed at high ED rates. Few interviewed patients were told that they were about to incur ED services as they entered the unmarked rooms, often the same triage rooms as before. A physician researcher concludes, “To have people get an emergency room charge when they don’t even know they’re in an emergency room — I mean, that doesn’t meet the laugh test,” while UCSF professor Bob Wachter, MD says that hospitals “will always have a rationale for why income maximization is a reasonable and moral strategy.”

Sales

• CDC awards Accenture Federal Services a three-year, $189 million contract to for cloud migration services.
• ConvergeOne chooses Redox for EHR integration.

People

John Hallock (Transarent) joins Quantum Health as chief communications officer.

Diligent Robotics hires Gregg Springan, RN, MSN (Epic) as head of clinical informatics and Nicholas Bloom, MPH (Cedars-Sinai Accelerator) as head of client success.

Christopher Kunney, MSMOT (DSS) joins Divurgent as SVP of digital acceleration.

Announcements and Implementations

Walmart launches the Walmart Healthcare Research Institute and a related app to increase community access to clinical trials. The My Health Journey app helps patients find studies and send their medical and insurance records to investigators. FDA data suggests that studies are not representative of the entire US population because they recruit participants from their own urban locations who have the time and money to participate.

A Relatient poll of provider group executives finds that while most of them believe that online patient scheduling is critical for patient satisfaction, they are still using phone calls or automated phone messages to communicate with patients before their appointment, partly because that’s what patients prefer. The authors conclude that provider groups understand the importance of automation and digital tools and their associated reduction in staffing requirements, but need to choose the services that patients will actually use.

Campbell County Health (WY) kicks off its year-long, $8 million project to replace Meditech with Epic in an affiliation with UCHealth. An HIStalk search finds several references to the health system – it sent employee W-2s to a hacker who impersonated a hospital executive in 2017, lost $200,000 in Medicaid payments due to billing system failures in its acquisition of a private surgery center in 2018, and went on diversion due to a ransomware attack in 2019.

A Dubai health system goes live with a Metaverse-based hospital, which it says will eventually replace traditional telemedicine services and support its medical tourism program.  

Florida-based AdventHealth University and Full Sail University launch a virtual reality research center that will focus on healthcare employee training and patient safety technologies.

Providence spinoff DexCare, which offers system capacity and appointment booking software, acquires Womp Inc., which offers digital front door systems and mobile optimization technology.

CHIME appoints three CIO members to its board of trustees – Daniel Barchi, MS (New York Presyterian), Terri Couts, RN, MHA (Guthrie Clinic), and Tressa Springmann, MAS (LifeBridge Health). Named as director of the CHIME Foundation Board is Sean Kelly, MD of Well Health.

Government and Politics

Forbes updates its article on North Carolina’s sole-source choice of Unite Us’s social services integration platform. A recap:

• The state chose Unite Us for a federal Medicaid social services pilot without having its product reviewed by IT teams. Reports suggest that it will require modification to meet federal privacy requirements.
• Former state HHS Secretary Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH, who is now CEO of Aledade Care Solutions, intervened to get Unite Us the business even though state health systems preferred that of competitor Findhelp.
• Unite Us President and Co-Founder Taylor Justice complained to Cohen that UNC Health was about to choose a different vendor. She promised to call UNC Health CEO Wesley Burks, MD to get him to reconsider. Emails obtained under the Freedom of Information Act indicate that Justice told Cohen, “I shouldn’t have let this happen and it will never happen again.”
• State lawmakers met Wednesday to ask the governor’s administration to explain why it used an non-competitive technology selection process and why, after three years and $27 million of federal Healthy Opportunities Pilot money spent, the only tangible result is that 10 families are receiving food deliveries.

Nebraska’s corrections department OIG says that a female inmate who was incarcerated for life died of cervical cancer because its Excel-based chronic care tracking system allowed her to go 10 years without having a Pap smear performed. OIG notes:

• A seven-year-old state statute requires keeping inmate medical records in an EHR, but NDCS still uses only paper charts like the ones above.
• The Nebraska Department of Correctional Services department spent a $150,000 EHR study grant in 2017 to buy an electronic medication administration record system instead.
• NDCS was appropriated $1.4 million to implement a commercial EHR in 2019, but never opened an RFP.
• In 2021, NDCS received another $745,000 to implement a commercial EHR, but then decided to develop a system internally. Nothing has gone live except for a behavioral health module and an intake form.
• Employees say they waste a lot of time phoning and faxing information that could be easily shared via a commercial EHR and that the lack of an EHR hinders the hiring of medical personnel.
• Among OIG’s recommendations is that if the homegrown system isn’t fully live by 2025, NDCS should abandon the effort and again seek the money to buy a commercial EHR.

Privacy and Security

CommonSpirit Health, which operates 142 hospitals in 21 states, confirms that its continued downtime that started October 3 was caused by a ransomware attack.

Other

An interesting post by Cyrus Bahrassa, founder and CEO of healthcare integration consulting firm Ashavan, opines that OAuth rather than FHIR is the most important interoperability standard. He provides a straightforward definition of OAuth, which is how “log in with Google” or “login in with Facebook” works without exposing App 1’s user account information to App 2.

Two NHS trusts move to downtime paper recordkeeping after an apparent database error in Oracle Cerner required most of a day to resolve. During the downtime, Royal Free London, which was ironically in the middle of a “go paperless” campaign, nearly ran out of paper.

In the UK, the doctor of a 12-year-old girl who died by suicide after being bullied online says she was not able to see the girl’s history of self-harm because her practice’s EHR could not access that of the girl’s previous doctor.

Sponsor Updates

• An InterSystems charity walk event on Thursday included music from an all-company band that features industry long-timer and VP Don Woodlock on drums.
• Nordic posts a new episode of its DocTalk video series called “The Impact of Long COVID.”
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises blood and biologics supply chain automation company BloodHub during its sale to InVita Healthcare Technologies.
• Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at the OR Manager Conference October 17-19 in Denver.
• Meditech Greenfield expands to include new collaborative environments – Greenfield Alliance and Greenfield Workspace.
• Baker Tilly US and Artisight launch a strategic implementation collaboration for AI-enhanced workflow automation.
• Netsmart will exhibit at LeadingAge October 16-19 in Denver.
• Nordic joins the Microsoft Cloud Partner Program.

Blog Posts

• The Future is Unsure for the COVID-19 PHE (Experity)
• Retail Pharmacists are Called to Embrace an Expanded Role (First Databank)
• Can expertise on-demand Solutions help your cybersecurity staffing challenges? (Fortified Health Security)
• Health Literacy: Patients Who Understand Content, Use Content (Get Well)
• How to Enhance EHR Use Measures to Mitigate Clinician Burnout (HealthTech Resources)
• OptimizeRx Announces Strong Results from its use of Previously Announced AI/RWE Solution (OptimizeRx)
• Five things to know about the 2023 ICD-10-CM updates (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Don’t be Fooled by Fake Login Pages: How Multi-Factor Authentication Protects Internet-Facing Servers (Medhost)
• 3 Clear Warning Signs That You Need Prior Authorization Software (Myndshft)
• How Occupational Health Executives Can Plan for the Future of Work (Net Health)
• How the US Naval Academy is Making Mental Health a Top Priority (NeuroFlow)
• Harnessing outcomes-focused AI in radiology reporting: It all starts with the data (Nuance)
• EHR consolidation: How to lead with empathy (Nordic)

Black Book Market Research’s latest ranking of health IT and management advisory firms includes the following HIStalk sponsors:

• Allscripts/Altera Implementation – ReMedi Health Solutions
• Blockchain – Healthcare Triangle
• Compliance, HIPAA, Risk Management, Regulatory – Clearwater
• Epic Implementation – Tegria, Bluetree Network
• HIT Staffing – Tegria
• Interoperability & Integration – Zen Healthcare IT
• Value-Based Care Hospitals – Premier

Contacts

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

News 10/12/22

Top News

Medicaid virtual mental health provider Brave Health raises $40 million in a Series C funding round.

The round was led by Town Hall Ventures, of which former acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt is a general partner.

The company serves patients in 10 states.

Brave Health’s two co-founders came from General Assembly, which offers technology courses to executives. It was acquired by a workforce development company for $413 million in cash in 2018.

Reader Comments

From Salient Point: “Re: Medicare. The Urban Institute says that the Medicare Part A trust fund will be exhausted by 2028. That’s especially interesting because it’s a presidential election year, meaning we will see a lot of political posturing and paralysis.” US debt is at $31 trillion, which was a big enough time bomb even before interest rates started to rise, so Medicare is another problem that will defy resolution with the near-certain lack political compromise and the voting power of seniors who don’t want to pay more or receive less.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

If your company isn’t an HIStalk sponsor, you have a few weeks to get on board for 2023 at 2022 rates (the same benefit existing sponsors enjoy, in other words). Beat the price increase and maybe use some leftover 2022 marketing money by contacting Lorre ASAP.

Companies or their PR firms have asked / demanded a few times that I remove my summary of a legitimate news source’s unflattering investigative report. They always say they are seeking to have the original article corrected, although I don’t recall that ever actually happening given that journalists and their editors are pretty careful to fact-check before publishing. My policy is this — if the source updates their article, I’ll update my reference to it, but otherwise I won’t bury or sugarcoat a story just because the company doesn’t like it. They are welcome to state their rebuttal in a comment and let the reader decide.

Thanks to Jenn for covering my recent several days off. It’s a testament to her abilities that you probably didn’t even notice my absence. I traveled only with my $99 Chromebook and it worked flawlessly — it was the lack of decent connectivity (and maybe a lack of personal motivation) that kept me mostly offline.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor KONZA. The Topeka, KS-based company’s next-generation KONZA National Network supports the delivery of unequaled actionable intelligence, including clinical information at the point of care, while supporting value-based payment models, care management, and analytics. As a member of the EHealth Exchange, it allows health systems to share data internally and with their external partners such as the VA, MHS, CVS, and DaVita. The Azure-powered system, which is available to any organization and does not require participation in a local or state HIE, allows health systems to query aggregated data to monitor care gaps, ED use, opioid use, and readmissions. It can also be queried to match patients with rare conditions with clinical trials and to identify health disparities and provides ADT alerts, submission of quality metrics to CMS, payer analytics, and updating the personal health records of patients when new data arrives. Thanks to KONZA for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

October 12 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “In Praise of the Problem-Oriented Medical Record (POMR).” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, KeyCare; Amber Sieja, MD, senior medical director of informatics, UCHealth and Ambulatory Services; Jim Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. The problem-oriented medical record – initially developed in the 1960s by Lawrence Weed, MD – brought important structure to paper charting, and in particular, the problem list. Yet, today, the tool that was once the gold standard for organizing and making sense of patient history is often cluttered and unmanageable. Fortunately, tools and strategies exist to help make the problem list more meaningful, helping to synthesize patient data, highlight insights, and support patient care. The expert panel will share their experiences with POMR, including documentation practices and tools to improve workflows and efficiency, the impact of POMR and charting on the overall health of a patient, and the challenges and obstacles clinicians face when practicing POMR and charting and how they can be overcome.

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Insurer risk assessment technology vendor Milliman IntelliScript acquires API-based EHR records retrieval system vendor OneRecord.

The merged Beaumont Health and Spectrum Health system, which is Michigan’s largest employer, names itself Corewell Health.

People

Former Allscripts CEO Paul Black joins Thomas H. Lee Partners as a consultant for its healthcare investment group.

St. Clair Health hires Jim Kohler (Allscripts) as VP/CIO.

Hutchinson Clinic hires its recently retired CMIO Verlin Janzen, MD as interim CEO.

Mark Burgess (NextGen Healthcare) joins Agfa HealthCare as chief revenue officer for North America. 

Announcements and Implementations

Aspen Valley Hospital (CO) goes live on Epic.

Ascom works with Oracle Cerner to give nurses access to a patient’s EHR on Ascom’s Myco 3 VoWiFi smartphone.

In England, County Durham & Darlington NHS Foundation Trust goes live on Cerner.

UCHealth (CO) implements Eon’s patient management software.

The Sequoia Project seeks feedback on its “Draft TEFCA Facilitated FHIR Implementation Guide.”

Government and Politics

A Forbes report says that North Carolina chose Unite Us as its technology contractor for the federal Healthy Opportunities Pilot for Medicaid beneficiaries in a sole-source contract that did not undergo state IT review. Emails suggest that former state HHS Secretary Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH — now CEO of Aledade Care Solutions — intervened to win Unite Us the business over an unnamed competitor (reportedly Findhelp, formerly called Aunt Bertha), which was the preferred choice of the state’s health systems.

Privacy and Security

In New Zealand, hackers notify Pinnacle Midlands Health Network that they’ve uploaded the stolen data of 450,000 patients to the dark web. The cyberattack on one of the primary care network’s IT systems took place September 28 and Pinnacle issued a statement within a week.

Other

Health IT consulting contracts are on the upswing, according to Black Book Market Research’s latest market analysis. Seventy percent of surveyed providers say they’ll seek out consulting help for RCM optimization projects within the next 15 months. Low-priority projects, according to providers, include those related to EHR optimization, support, and training; and physician burnout. The Chartis Group was noted as the top enterprise health IT consulting firm.

Pediatric cardiologist and CMIO C. Becket Mahnke, MD compares paper charts to EHRs based on his annual cardiology volunteer work in Palau:

• Information retrieval isn’t too bad with paper charts, but is incomplete compared to accessing patient information via HIEs and Epic’s Care Everywhere.
• Lack of filters and search means flipping through paper pages.
• Documentation is faster using pen and paper instead of an EHR, allowing visits of 12 minutes per patient, including ECG time. However, legibility issues are a problem.
• Ordering is faster on paper, but again legibility issues cause problems with the receiving department and there’s no way to track ordering patterns over time.
• Lack of in-basket capability saves time with paper charts, but there’s no easy way to send information to colleagues or to receive result notifications.
• Paper charts aren’t readily analyzable for monitoring, quality improvement, and hypothesis generation.

The New York Times profiles Myron Rolle, MD, MSc, a former Florida State University football star, Rhodes Scholar in medical anthropology, and NFL player whose fizzled pro football career led him to a Mass General medical residency as a neurosurgeon, where he is in his sixth year of the seven-year program. Asked for advice for people who feel stuck, he said, “One: It’s never too late. Two: You’re needed. You’re still needed in this life. Your lane can be yours and it’s for you. What God has for you is going to be for you. Perfect it. Hone it. Be a master of it. Love it. Do it well. Impact people when you do it and help bring somebody up with you.”

Sponsor Updates

• Clearsense supports the George Landess Memorial/NEFL Scottish Games Golf Tournament, benefitting Challenges Enterprises.
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces that 10 of its healthcare publications from its Lippincott portfolio have been honored with 13 awards in the 2022 Folio: Eddie and Ozzie Awards.
• Agfa HealthCare supports The Royal College of Radiologists’ first Global Congress in Dubai.
• Tegria and Microsoft Azure services firm 3Cloud partner to offer EHR clients advance their AI/ML capabilities.
• Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “New markets tax credits for healthcare providers.”
• Relatient publishes an e-book titled “2022 Patient Engagement Report: Provider Perspectives on Optimizing Patient Scheduling and Communication.”
• Cordea Consulting will exhibit at the Delaware Valley / New Jersey HIMSS Fall Conference October 12-14 in Atlantic City, NJ.
• Tegria will offer its customers a healthcare-optimized ServiceNow solution to deliver ITSM and CSM solutions.

Blog Posts

• Cybersecurity Tips for Healthcare IT Consultants (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Five Ways to Optimize Practice Resources While Driving Higher Quality Care (AdvancedMD)
• In-House Medical Coding Post-Pandemic: Is It Worth the Effort? (AGS Health)
• Insights from the RCxRules 2022 National User Conference: Staffing Shortages and Remote Work are Still Top of Mind (RCx Rules)
• Five phrases to grow and nourish a care management program (Arcadia)
• Best Practices for Referral Management (CarePort)
• HFMA Poll: CFO and CIO Synergy is Crucial to Successful Initiatives (CereCore)
• Increase Patient Trust and Retention Using EHR Policies and HIPAA Compliance Safeguards (ChartLogic)
• The Exponential Savings Potential for ACO Participants (ChartSpan)
• A Look at Emerging Healthcare Technology & Associated Security Risks (Clearwater)
• How Leaders and Team Members Can Prioritize Mental Health (Divurgent)
• ‘Value Over Volume, Patients Like Family’ (EClinicalWorks)

Oracle Cerner will host its Health Conference October 17-19 in Kansas City, MO. Exhibiting HIStalk Sponsors include:

• Arrive Health
• Ascom
• Ellkay
• First Databank
• Fortified Health Security
• Get Well
• Healthwise
• Intelligent Medical Objects
• Impact Advisors
• Kyruus
• Loyal
• Medicomp Systems
• Net Health
• Nuance
• Relatient
• Surescripts
• Wolters Kluwer Health

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 10/10/22

Top News

Virginia Mason Franciscan Health (WA), part of the CommonSpirit Health system, updates patients on the ongoing, unspecified IT incident that last week forced many CommonSpirit facilities to revert to downtime procedures, divert ambulances, and reschedule appointments.

CommonSpirit has yet to issue a statement.

Patients, meanwhile, are growing frustrated by the lack of digital access, which has turned online appointment scheduling and record retrieval into processes more laborious than usual. Prescription refills have also been impacted.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The majority of poll respondents are in favor of the HHS decision to hold firm on the October 6 deadline for information sharing.

New poll to your right or here: Which of the following items did you earn after age 35 that has been most valuable in your career? If you’ve done something on the list that turned out to be a great career booster in your 30s or after, others would no doubt be interested. I’m sure I didn’t think of every possible item, so add a poll comment if you earned some other credential that paid off big time.

An Olive rep clarified some points from Thursday’s news post regarding the company’s decision to divest its population health and 340b products: Those offerings make up less than 3% of the company’s revenue and no longer align with Olive’s product strategy. Two of its customers gave notice in August and September, in contrast to the number in the original article.

Webinars

October 12 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “In Praise of the Problem-Oriented Medical Record (POMR).” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, KeyCare; Amber Sieja, MD, senior medical director of informatics, UCHealth and Ambulatory Services; Jim Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. The problem-oriented medical record – initially developed in the 1960s by Lawrence Weed, MD – brought important structure to paper charting, and in particular, the problem list. Yet, today, the tool that was once the gold standard for organizing and making sense of patient history is often cluttered and unmanageable. Fortunately, tools and strategies exist to help make the problem list more meaningful, helping to synthesize patient data, highlight insights, and support patient care. The expert panel will share their experiences with POMR, including documentation practices and tools to improve workflows and efficiency, the impact of POMR and charting on the overall health of a patient, and the challenges and obstacles clinicians face when practicing POMR and charting and how they can be overcome.

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Sales

• The VA selects Coforma to assist it in developing clinical decision support apps and EHR integrations.
• A Northeastern health system selects VisiQuate’s denials management, revenue management, and reserve analytics.

Announcements and Implementations

Image-sharing vendor Send Mammogram implements ClearData’s CyberHealth cybersecurity technology.

Box Butte General Hospital (NE) postpones its roll out of Meditech Expanse as it takes into account lessons learned from a mock live event held in late September.

EClinicalWorks announces the addition of sign, patient survey, and chatbot capabilities to its family Healow patient engagement apps at its annual user conference, where it also launched the latest version of its EHR. CFO Mark Speyer noted that the company has increased its staff count by 10% in 2022, and will continue to hire in the next year.

Government and Politics

Oracle Cerner engineers resolve an application package coding issue that caused the VA’s EHR pharmacy module to go down for 11 hours last week. In a separate incident, certain patients were unable to access the Defense Enrollment Eligibility Reporting System, a database of US military members, family members, veterans, and others eligible for military benefits. That issue resolved without technical intervention.

Other

The Nebraska Hospital Association and the University of Nebraska Medical Center prepare to launch an initiative that will give researchers access to the hospital’s de-identified claims data. The association hopes to partner with additional hospitals willing to give researchers access to similar data sets.

Intermountain Healthcare (UT) begins offering delivery of specialty pharmaceuticals and certain over-the-counter medications by drone to eligible patients in the Salt Lake Valley area. The health system, which first announced its drone delivery plans in 2018, has partnered with San Francisco-based company Zipline to offer the service.

Sponsor Updates

• Clearwater sponsors the Nashville Health Care Council Golf Tournament.
• Meditech and Forward Advantage develop the PxMobile healthcare system-branded app.
• Methodist Health System extends its 25-year relationship with Oracle Cerner with a 10-year contract extension.
• Optimum Healthcare IT names Shane Kuppler (Health Care District of Palm Beach County) Epic revenue cycle analyst.
• Relatient releases a new episode of Dash Talk Podcast, “How Better Access Gives OrthoSC a ‘Leg Up’ on Care Delivery.”
• Talkdesk receives two Frost & Sullivan 2022 Customer Value Leadership Awards for vertical market excellence.
• Tegria will present at the HFMA Region 2 Annual Fall Institute October 13 in Verona, NY.
• Volpara Health receives a 2022 Good Design Award for Volpara Analytics in the digital design category.

Blog Posts

• Key Takeaways: Evolution of Healthcare Systems (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Nurses of Note Awards 2022: The Clinical Practice Specialist (PerfectServe)
• Top 3 Takeaways from the AHIP Consumer Experience & Digital Health Forum (Redox)
• In-house vs. Outsourcing: The Benefits of a Chart Abstraction Service (ReMedi Health Solutions)
• What is call center routing and how does it improve customer experience? (Talkdesk)

Contacts

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

News 10/7/22

Top News

Federal rules take effect today that – in theory – will enable patients to obtain all of their medical records in digital format upon request.

A number of provider organizations attempted to get the October 6 deadline extended so that they could have more time to prepare for patient requests, and to better understand the penalties of failing to comply.

CMS has not yet made clear the ways in which providers and health IT vendors will be held accountable for failing to adapt to this new era of liberated patient data.

Webinars

October 12 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “In Praise of the Problem-Oriented Medical Record (POMR).” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, KeyCare; Amber Sieja, MD, senior medical director of informatics, UCHealth and Ambulatory Services; Jim Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. The problem-oriented medical record – initially developed in the 1960s by Lawrence Weed, MD – brought important structure to paper charting, and in particular, the problem list. Yet, today, the tool that was once the gold standard for organizing and making sense of patient history is often cluttered and unmanageable. Fortunately, tools and strategies exist to help make the problem list more meaningful, helping to synthesize patient data, highlight insights, and support patient care. The expert panel will share their experiences with POMR, including documentation practices and tools to improve workflows and efficiency, the impact of POMR and charting on the overall health of a patient, and the challenges and obstacles clinicians face when practicing POMR and charting and how they can be overcome.

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient acquisition, engagement, and remote patient monitoring company PatientPoint acquires eye care-focused competitor Rendia for an undisclosed sum. Rendia CEO Smitha Gopal will also take on the new role of PatientPoint EVP of subscription and procedure-based specialties.

Private equity firm TPG acquires Change Healthcare’s ClaimsXten claims-editing business for $2.2 billion as part of the terms of UnitedHealth’s acquisition of Change.

Health information management vendor ScanSTAT Technologies reportedly puts itself up for sale. It acquired competitor Resolve ROI in August.

Nordic Consulting acquires Hygeian, a healthcare consulting and staffing firm that serves customers in the UK and Middle East.

Healthcare automation company Olive will sell its population health management and 340b program assets to Rotera. The move is in keeping with its decision earlier this year to streamline its offerings. Olive launched Rotera, which also offers healthcare automation software, out of its venture studio in 2021.

Sales

• Acute Behavioral Health (TN) will use Owl’s measurement-based care software to help its staff track patient progress and quantify treatment effectiveness.
• Virtual primary care vendor CirrusMD selects NeuroFlow’s behavioral health-focused clinical decision support, intervention services, and patient engagement capabilities.

People

Chesapeake Regional Information System for Our Patients promotes Craig Behm to president and CEO of CRISP and CRISP Shared Services.

Announcements and Implementations

The SSI Group leverages Myndshft’s automated prior authorization software to power its new PA technology.

CommuniCare implements EClinicalWorks across its 22 sites in Texas.

Google Cloud announces GA of its new AI-enabled Medical Imaging Suite.

Birmingham and Solihull Integrated Care System, Coventry and Warwickshire ICS, and Herefordshire and Worcestershire ICS implement InterSystems HealthShare.

Littleton Regional Healthcare (NH) goes live on Oracle Cerner’s Community Works EHR.

WVU Medicine adds Findhelp’s social and human services search tool to its Epic patient portal.

Nym makes its medical coding engine available to radiology departments.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions launches the Gravitas Network, a clinical research data hub incorporating de-identified data sets from PointClickCare, Ovation, Solis Mammography, health systems collective Truveta, and the Institute for Health Metrics.

Software development company Academy Medtech Ventures implements Clearwater’s ClearAdvantage managed cybersecurity and compliance services.

Government and Politics

CMS solicits feedback on the idea of developing a national directory of healthcare providers and services.

Privacy and Security

CommonSpirit Health facilities in Iowa, Nebraska, Tennessee, Virginia, and Washington continue to deal with the effects of Monday’s unspecified IT incident, which impacted several enterprise systems, including its EHR. Local news reports say that many CommonSpirit sites in those states have reverted to paper-based procedures, diverted ambulances, and postponed appointments.

Sponsor Updates

• CereCore staff volunteer with the Utah Food Bank and Nashville-based Pencil.
• CHIME releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast featuring Clearsense President Kevin Field.
• EVisit ranks among the top three telemedicine vendors for customer satisfaction, according to a JD Power study.
• Net Health integrates Alinea’s workflow automation and patient and family engagement capabilities with its Therapy for Senior Living software.
• Experity encourages urgent care leaders to submit nominations for its annual Industry Limelight Awards through November 14.
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions publishes a new customer success story, “VGM & Associates and Its Members Increase Market Share and Improve Sales Targeting.”
• Lyniate publishes a new case study, “Greater Bristol Connecting Care underpins Exemplar status with Lyniate EMPI by NextGate for identity data management.”
• Medicomp Systems releases a new Tell Me Where It Hurts Podcast featuring CHIME VP of Public Policy Mari Savickis.
• Meditech adds sepsis detection tools to its Sepsis Management Toolkit.

Blog Posts

• Four Easy Ways to Protect Yourself Online (Fortified Health Security)
• Bring Your Own Device: The Evolution of Patient Engagement (Get Well)
• How Can Supply Chain Do More with Less in the Face of Unprecedented Turnover? (GHX)
• Hire a Consultant for IT Changes and Keep Your Hospital Running Smoothly (HealthTech Resources)
• Souped-Up Search Results: How They Save Clinicians Time (Healthwise)
• Path to Patient Empowerment: Why Healthcare Must Break Data Silos (InterSystems)
• A Q&A with IMO: NextGen and EHR workflows (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Digital Self-Service: A Must Have for Consumers (Kyruus)
• Healthcare Cybersecurity Awareness Resources (LexisNexis Risk Solutions)
• 3 Major Healthcare IT Security Topics for 2023 (Medhost)
• A new era of health IT transformation revealed at Meditech Live (Meditech)
• Productivity: Why This KPI Matters for Skilled Nursing Rehab Therapy Teams (Net Health)
• Ambient clinical intelligence (ACI) – what it is and why you need it (Nuance)
• Telehealth and LTPAC Part 1: Making Virtual Care a Reality Beyond COVID-19 (Netsmart)
• De-implementation: “Just say no” isn’t enough (Nordic)
• Three potential patient safety risks that can be addressed through technology (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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

News 10/5/22

Top News

UnitedHealth finalizes its $7.8 billion acquisition of Change Healthcare, which it has merged with its Optum business. Change Healthcare has requested that Nasdaq de-list its stock from the exchange.

Reader Comments

From Apoagathos: “Re: CHI Catholic Health Initiatives. Looks like they were the victim of a ransomware attack yesterday.” CommonSpirit Health, CHI’s parent company, experienced an IT security incident Monday that impacted some of CHI’s facilities. CHI took some of its systems offline, including Epic.

Webinars

October 12 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “In Praise of the Problem-Oriented Medical Record (POMR).” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, KeyCare; Amber Sieja, MD, senior medical director of informatics, UCHealth and Ambulatory Services; Jim Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. The problem-oriented medical record – initially developed in the 1960s by Lawrence Weed, MD – brought important structure to paper charting, and in particular, the problem list. Yet, today, the tool that was once the gold standard for organizing and making sense of patient history is often cluttered and unmanageable. Fortunately, tools and strategies exist to help make the problem list more meaningful, helping to synthesize patient data, highlight insights, and support patient care. The expert panel will share their experiences with POMR, including documentation practices and tools to improve workflows and efficiency, the impact of POMR and charting on the overall health of a patient, and the challenges and obstacles clinicians face when practicing POMR and charting and how they can be overcome.

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CTG acquires Eleviant Tech, a digital transformation company specializing in mobile, cloud, robotic process automation, and AI across multiple verticals including healthcare.

People

ChartSpan names Nic Erickson (Anthem) VP of patient enrollment and clinical operations.

Appalachian Regional Healthcare (KY) promotes VP of IT and CTO Mike Roberts to the additional role of CISO.

Jeff Silverman (Qualifacts) joins AccessOne as its first chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Harnett Health (NC) switches from Meditech to Epic as part of its affiliation with Cape Fear Valley Health.

Government and Politics

ONC launches a dedicated information blocking webpage ahead of the October 6 information-sharing compliance deadline. It will host virtual office hours on October 6 and 27 to help healthcare stakeholders better understand information sharing under ONC’s information-blocking regulations. 

Other

Five months into the role, Cerebral CEO David Mou, MD shares several things the online mental healthcare company is doing in light of federal and media scrutiny around its prescribing, marketing, and patient identity verification practices:

• Expanding internal infrastructure and safeguards to prioritize the most vulnerable patients, especially those at risk for suicide.
• Improving patient ID verification protocols and software to ensure information is accurate and that treatment isn’t offered to minors.
• Reallocating resources from marketing to clinical quality efforts.
• Establishing a Quality Commission of outside experts to conduct performance reviews.

STAT reports that Epic now recommends that its sepsis prediction model be trained on a hospital’s own data before clinical use, and that the company has changed its definition of sepsis onset to a more commonly accepted standard. Epic’s model came under scrutiny earlier this year when a study in JAMA Internal Medicine found that it did not retroactively identify two-thirds of sepsis patients.

Sponsor Updates

• The Ascom US team participates in the Great Cycle Challenge to help beat kids’ cancer.
• Azara Healthcare integrates FindHelp’s social services referral and reporting tool with its Azara DRVS and Care Connect solutions.
• CHIME releases a new Leader2Leader Podcast featuring Oracle Cerner Chief Health Officer Nasim Afsar, MD “Advancing Health Equity.”
• Clinical Architecture EVP Carol Macumber receives the HL7’s 2022 W. Edward Hammond, PhD, Volunteer of the Year Award.
• Wolters Kluwer Health updates its Ovid medical research platform with two new, curated research collections – the Public Health Advantage collection and the Evidence-Based Health collection.
• Baker Tilly publishes its “Healthcare M&A Update H1 2022.”
• Southeast Kansas Mental Health Center upgrades its adoption of Netsmart’s CareFabric platform in support of it becoming a Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic.

Blog Posts

• AHUG 2022: Impressions of User Group Meetings (Agfa HealthCare)
• Determining the MS-DRG – Clinical Documentation Improvement (AGS Health)
• Build vs. buy and the capabilities that matter in healthcare IT (Arcadia)
• Hospital-at-home as a care delivery model (Baker Tilly)
• A 988 IT Infrastructure Conversation with Bamboo Health’s Carol Tsang (Bamboo Health)
• Physician opinion: Preparing for the changing role of the practicing physician (Bravado Health)
• By Initiating Pas, Providers Can Give Pharmacists Time with Patients (CoverMyMeds)
• Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt: The Promise of Cloud Computing in Healthcare (CTG)
• Data Standardization and APIs Can Help Pave the Way Toward Data-Driven Healthcare (Diameter Health)
• The Importance of Data Integration is Front-Page News (Dimensional Insight)
• 6 Tips for Becoming a Great Mentor (Divurgent)
• Back to School – for Your Practice, Too! (EClinicalWorks)
• Leader to Leader: A Data Revolution in a Consumer-First World (Clearsense)
• The Exponential Savings Potential for ACO Participants (ChartSpan)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 10/3/22

Top News

Federal prosecutors indict US Army Major Jamie Lee Henry and his wife, Anna Gabrielian, for conspiracy and disclosing the health information of military personnel to assist Russia with its war against Ukraine.

Henry was a staff internist stationed at Fort Bragg, and Gabrielian an anesthesiologist working at Johns Hopkins during the time of the alleged conspiracy. They met several times with an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian Embassy employee to stress their level of dedication to aiding Russia, eventually handing over the health information of a number of patients at Fort Bragg and Johns Hopkins to demonstrate their ability to access data they believed Russia could then exploit.

They both face up to 15 years in prison.

Reader Comments

From Jaffer Traish: “Re: The White House Conference on Hunger, Nutrition, & Health. Many announcements listed on the White House fact sheet of commitments. There is an important interop commitment outlined here.” The White House introduced a national strategy on hunger, nutrition, and health at a conference last week, incorporating five pillars that include ensuring public and private healthcare systems address the nutritional needs of all people. To do this, the government recommends screening for food insecurity, incentivizing providers and payers to conduct screenings for food insecurity and other social determinants of health, and supporting the data infrastructure necessary to do so. Traish refers to HL7’s Sync for Social Initiative, which aims to help healthcare stakeholders “better integrate nutrition information within a patient’s electronic health record by accelerating a standards-based approach to implementing universal social needs screening.” Committed participants include Oracle-Cerner, Meditech, Epic, and a number of health systems, payers, and other vendors.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents are in favor of creating a SWIFT-like network for healthcare similar to that of banking, although a significant number aren’t sure what all that involves.

New poll to your right or here: What should HHS do with the October 6 deadline for information sharing?

Webinars

October 12 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “In Praise of the Problem-Oriented Medical Record (POMR).” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, KeyCare; Amber Sieja, MD, senior medical director of informatics, UCHealth and Ambulatory Services; Jim Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. The problem-oriented medical record – initially developed in the 1960s by Lawrence Weed, MD – brought important structure to paper charting, and in particular, the problem list. Yet, today, the tool that was once the gold standard for organizing and making sense of patient history is often cluttered and unmanageable. Fortunately, tools and strategies exist to help make the problem list more meaningful, helping to synthesize patient data, highlight insights, and support patient care. The expert panel will share their experiences with POMR, including documentation practices and tools to improve workflows and efficiency, the impact of POMR and charting on the overall health of a patient, and the challenges and obstacles clinicians face when practicing POMR and charting and how they can be overcome.

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Frustrated with Talkspace’s declining share price, lack of frontline leadership, and opaque business plans, investor Firstime Ventures calls for the therapy app vendor to appoint a permanent CEO, share its long-term plan, and address rumors of a potential sale. The company has reportedly received acquisition offers from Amwell and MindPath. It went public via a $1.4 billion SPAC in June 2021, but quickly lost stock market momentum. Its co-founder and CEO and head of clinical services both stepped down towards the end of 2021 due to lackluster Q3 results. Talkspace is likely still in the midst of a class-action lawsuit, filed earlier this year, that alleges it misled investors about its financials ahead of its IPO.

Sales

• Memorial Hermann Health System (TX) will switch from Oracle Cerner to Epic beginning early next year.
• EMedical Practice selects Sphere’s TrustCommerce payment processing software.
• Campbell County Health (WY) will go live on Epic next year.

People

Andrea Facini (Active Network) joins WebPT as chief product, marketing, and growth officer.

Verisma names GE Healthcare veteran Michael Fritts (Forced Physics DCT) COO, and promotes Julia Applegate to chief client officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Advata announces GA of Advata Smart AR, automated accounts receivable technology. The company was formed in June through the merging of six of Providence-owned Tegria legacy companies.

Verato develops Universal Identity technology, comprising patient data from EHRs, consumer data from CRMs and other demographic data sources, and provider data from national databases.

Allen County Regional Hospital (KS) goes live on Epic.

Meditech adds patient transport workflows, including an app for transport staff, to its Expanse EHR.

Government and Politics

Madigan Army Medical Center (WA) hosts a decommissioning ceremony for its Composite Health Care System. Science Applications International, now Leidos, was contracted to develop, design, and implement the system for the DoD in 1988. It rolled out across all military treatment facilities between 1992 and 1996, eventually running at 104 host sites with more than 100 interfaces with internal and external systems across the DoD and VA. It went live at Madigan in 1996, and experienced downtime only once, according to Col. (Dr.) David Owshalimpur, chief of nephrology at Madigan: “I always had it open during clinic days. If you knew the correct ‘cheat codes,’ you could fly through CHCS. It was also a much faster way to order labs, medications, and rads [radiological imaging] than AHLTA. So, CHCS was a nice backbone for both Essentris and AHTLA.” The medical center went live on MHS Genesis in 2017.

Other

Researchers at Houston Methodist develop analytics that predict hospitalization outcomes for geriatric patients with dementia on the first or second day of hospital admission with 95.6% accuracy. They hope to develop a corresponding mobile app for ICU and other hospital staff that will alert them to a patient’s likelihood of hospitalization and suggest interventions.

A survey of 115 healthcare executives finds that 55% believe integrating their disparate patient engagement capabilities will be a high priority in the coming year, though 84% believe it will be tough to accomplish with existing technology.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe customer Bon Secours Mercy Health leverages the company’s Clinical Collaboration solution as part of its new Care Mobility project for nurse communication.
• Premier’s PINC AI Applied Sciences and partners AstraZeneca and Clinithink win a BWB Award for their use of technology-enabled healthcare solutions in the Digital Medicine category.
• RCxRules hosts a successful 2022 National User Conference.
• Surescripts releases a new There’s a Better Way: Smart Talk on Healthcare and Technology Podcast, “More is Not Always Better: Making Interoperability Work for Patients & Clinicians.”
• Upfront Healthcare achieves HITRUST risk-based, two-year certification to manage risk, improve security posture, and meet compliance requirements.
• Volpara Health wins a Gold Good Design Award for its Volpara Analytics mammography reporting and quality software.
• WebPT names Marcus Osborne (Walmart Health) to its Board of Directors.
• Wolters Kluwer Health acquires UK-based IJS Publishing Group, which offers peer-reviewed medical journals supporting scientists and authors.
• Vyne Medical will present at the MGMA Medical Practice Excellence: Leaders Conference October 9-12 in Boston.

Blog Posts

• Freezing the squeeze: The three A’s of efficiency (Nordic)
• Address Physician Burnout with Real-Time Prescription Benefit Tools (Arrive Health)
• How to Improve Patient Experiences and Reduce Healthcare Costs (PerfectServe)
• How Caregiving Has Changed Over the Years (Quil)
• Why you should attend Redox Connect Conference 2022 (Redox)
• Empower agents with AI call center capabilities (Talkdesk)
• Delivering on Denials: Novant’s Culture Creates Wins for Physicians, Patients, and Staff (Tegria)
• How to Create Better Physician Schedules: Integrating Technology and Data (TigerConnect)
• The Coming of Age of Cash-Based Practices (WebPT)
• How to enhance your experience when migrating to Epic (Verato)
• Zen Healthcare IT’s Guide to Understanding the Trusted Exchange Frameworks (Zen Healthcare IT)
• The Importance of Providing Meaningful Educational Resources to Your Patients (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 9/30/22

Top News

The Wall Street Journal exposes lax patient identification verification at Cerebral, an online prescription drug company that has come under fire in recent months for potentially violating the Controlled Substances Act. An internal memo obtained by the paper says the company eschewed using its patient ID verification software because it slowed down the registration process, enabling some minors to receive treatment without parental consent. 

The company, which has raised $462 million, is facing an FTC investigation into its advertising and marketing, a federal inquiry into its prescribing practices, and the refusal of retail pharmacies like CVS and Walmart to fill its prescriptions.

Cerebral fired its founder and CEO in May and began laying off 350 employees in July.

Webinars

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kidney care company InterWell Health acquires Acumen Physician Solutions, the nephrology-focused EHR and practice management software division of Fresenius Medical Care. Acumen’s offerings include technology co-developed with Epic. Fresenius’ value-based care division, Fresenius Health Partners, merged with Cricket Health and InterWell last month.

Tech-enabled, senior-focused mental healthcare startup Rippl launches with $32 million in seed funding. The company will initially offer its virtual and home-based care programs through payers in the Seattle area.

People

Avel ECare promotes Kelly Rhone, MD to chief medical officer.

Dave Cassel (Safe Health Systems) joins Health Gorilla as SVP of customer success and operations.

Keltie Jamieson (Horizon Health Network) joins the Bermuda Hospitals Board as CIO ahead of its Cerner go-live next month.

Announcements and Implementations

Particle Health develops an API enabling EHR vendors to connect their customers to Carequality, CommonWell, and EHealth Exchange.

Christus Southeast Texas Health System launches a stroke-detection program using telestroke services from TeleSpecialists and care coordination software from Viz.ai.

Government and Politics

The FDA issues new guidance for clinical decision support software that should be regulated as medical devices, including AI-powered technologies that predict the likelihood of sepsis, heart-failure hospitalizations, and/or patient deterioration; as well as software that flags patients who may be addicted to opioids.

A GAO analysis of telehealth services used by Medicare beneficiaries between April 2019 and December 2020 finds that use of services increased from 5 million to 53 million visits – an increase in keeping with the temporary waiver of certain Medicare restrictions on telehealth during the pandemic, and that 5% of providers delivered 40% of services. Analysts recommend that CMS offer providers more concrete guidance on billing for audio-only visits, require providers to identify when virtual visits are conducted in patient homes, and assess the quality of virtual care delivered during the pandemic. It also recommends that OCR offer providers guidance on how to explain privacy and security risks to telemedicine patients.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough says it’s too soon to tell if an August EHR update by Oracle Cerner has finally fixed an “unknown queue” problem that caused thousands of clinical orders to disappear in an unmonitored inbox, causing patients to miss follow-up appointments. “We continue to have concerns about queues, unknown queues, unknown kind of areas where … veterans may end up,” he said. “I think that concern is significant enough that we’re not talking about a single, discrete issue that would suggest … a single discrete fix. But rather, they’re a pretty fundamental set of improvements. We’re continuing to make assessments about how big the challenge is.”

Other

Hurricane Ian leaves catastrophic damage caused by severe flooding, high winds, and power outages after hitting Florida’s West Coast Wednesday. Staff at HCA Florida Fawcett Hospital in Port Charlotte saw the ICU flood after its roof was blown off, and storm surge flood the lower level emergency room.

Sponsor Updates

• NTT Data sponsors The Children’s Inn Golf INNvitational.
• First Databank names Brittany Pritsch and Jasmine Stuckey research associates, and Nikki Sleeper regional manager.
• Get Well publishes a new case study, “Putting the patient first in digital care management.”
• Intelligent Medical Objects publishes a new case study featuring the University of Manchester, “Enhancing NLP with clinical terminology.”
• Netsmart announces its intent to become a Qualified Health Information Network.
• Sultan Bin Abdulaziz Humanitarian City in Dubai extends its contract with InterSystems for another five years.
• Clearsense publishes a new infographic, “6 Questions for Healthcare Data Transparency.”
• Zynx Health introduces a complimentary Monkeypox order set and care plan bundle.

Blog Posts

• The medical problem list toolkit (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Execution Over Perfection: Use the ‘Gift of Constraints’ to Help Your Rehab Therapy Clinic Succeed (Net Health)
• AI in Radiology, part 5: How to amplify the impact of radiology reporting (Nuance)
• What’s a vCISO and Why Do You Need One? (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Physician EHR as a Detriment to Patient Experience? (ChartLogic)

Contacts

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

News 9/28/22

Top News

A JAMA study of 104 million clinical notes made over six years within the Penn Medicine Health System finds that the total text of 50.1% had been copied from prior text written about the same patient. Duplication increased yearly, from 33% for notes written in 2015 to 54.2% for notes written in 2020.

The study’s authors say duplication “casts doubt on the veracity of all information in the medical record,” makes certain information hard to find, and causes information scatter.

The implications of copy-and-paste-induced “note bloat” were also mentioned in a recent JAMIA article, “Do electronic health record systems ‘dumb down’ clinicians?” The authors pointed out that the use of copy-and-paste is potentially misleading and dangerous. (Dr. Jayne offers a summary of and her thoughts on the members-only content here.)

Webinars

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Surgical care coordination software vendor DocSpera raises $10 million in a Series B funding round.

The local paper looks at NeuroFlow’s new 16,000-square-foot office space in Philadelphia, its fifth location since launching at the University of Pennsylvania in 2016. The software company, which focuses on helping physical healthcare providers integrate behavioral healthcare services, has raised $32 million. I interviewed CEO Christopher Molaro in March.

Sales

• Baptist Health South Florida selects remote patient monitoring technology from Raziel Health.
• Mater Private Network will implement Meditech Expanse across its nine facilities in Ireland by 2024.

People

Excela Health (PA) names Vasanth Balu (Optum) SVP and CIO.

Everbridge names David Alexander (F5) chief marketing officer.

David Peterson (AccuReg) joins Edifecs as SVP of marketing.

CereHealth promotes Shane Quint to president and CTO.

Bamboo Health hires Russell Olsen (WebPT) as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Watertown Regional Medical Center (MA) launches a remote monitoring program for patients with chronic conditions using technology from Cadence.

Clearsense adds Alexandria Charts, unstructured clinical data analysis technology developed by UPMC Enterprises, to its data management software.

AGS Health announces GA of AI-powered, automated revenue cycle management services.

Allegheny Health Network (PA) adds appointment scheduling capabilities from DocASAP, part of Optum, to its Epic patient portal.

Government and Politics

The 20th Medical Group at Shaw Air Force Base (SC), Naval Hospital Jacksonville and Naval Branch Health Clinics Jacksonville, Key West, and Mayport (FL), and the 14th Medical Group at Columbus Air Force Base (MS) go live on MHS Genesis. CAFB has warned patients that hackers have created fake MHS Genesis website links to take advantage of the system transition, and to only use the official MHS Genesis website address to access information.

VA officials consider proposing new patient care eligibility standards in the coming months, including pushing veterans to telemedicine appointments before giving them the option of care outside of the VA system.

CyncHealth warns the Nebraska Department of Health and Human Services that it will no longer be able to operate the state’s HIE and PDMP if the department doesn’t make good on the $11 million owed on its contract. State officials have blamed the payment shortage on changes in federal funding. CyncHealth, meanwhile, has had to borrow money to pay its 75 employees, and has been unable to pay some of its technology vendors.

Other

An analysis of NHS England prescription and patient safety data reveals that 98 hospital trusts saw an increase in prescription errors in 2021, while 105 saw a decrease. Records indicate that 6,000 patients suffered some level of harm from those errors, with 49 experiencing severe harm and 29 leading to death. Nearly one in six NHS England facilities have yet to implement electronic prescribing.

A digital artist discovers that her medical photos are now part of a data set used to train AI image generators, despite signing a consent form indicating they were not to be shared.

Sponsor Updates

• Arcadia will host its annual Aggregate Conference October 12-14 in Chicago.
• Bamboo Health will sponsor Tufts University’s Women in Tech even October 1 in Boston.
• Biofourmis will present at DTxEast September 28 in Boston.
• ChartSpan partners with the South Carolina Medical Association.
• CHIME releases a new 30^th Anniversary Podcast, “Unity with Rick Skinner, 1999 Board Chair.”
• Clearwater will present at the Virginia HIMSS Fall Conference September 26-28 in Williamsburg, VA.
• Cloudwave will exhibit at the New England HIMSS Regional NH/VT Fall Conference September 28.
• CoverMyMeds employees have spent 1,508 hours volunteering with 100-plus organizations as part of the company’s CoverMyCommunity initiative.
• Diameter Health will present at the virtual NLP Summit October 4.

Blog Posts

• Virtual waiting rooms: How to create a five-star telehealth experience (AdvancedMD)
• Value-based care and fully delegated risk: Which model is right for your healthcare organization? (Arcadia)
• Leverage internal audit to minimize risk in medical leadership contracting and compensation processes (Baker Tilly)
• Simplifying administrative tasks for improved health outcomes and enhanced provider experience (Bravado Health)
• Digital Certificates Help Protect Healthcare Data from Cyberattack (Philips Capsule)
• Takeaways from the Chicago Care Coordination Summit (CarePort Health)
• Healthcare IT Service Desk: How to Improve Work Life Balance and Satisfaction (CereCore)
• True marriage of health and tech is needed to improve lives globally (Oracle Cerner)
• Physician EHR as a Detriment to Patient Experience? (ChartLogic)
• That Hospital EHR System Costs Too Much (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 9/26/22

Top News

Tony Blair Institute for Global Change recommends that the UK government recruit 30% of adults to participate in wearables-powered public health interventions by 2027.

It also recommends that the government restart pilots that motivate people to improve nutrition and exercise and to give people over 50 years of age free devices if they meet activity targets.

The executive summary says that the Department of Health & Social Care focuses on managing patient demand, but only one paragraph mentions prevention, which it says is essential to NHS’s survival.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Questionable terminology aside, the “quiet quitting” thing might be real — 45% of poll respondents say they aren’t willing to work as hard now as they did two years ago.

New poll to your right or here, following up on my conversation with Lyniate’s Erkan Akyuz: Should healthcare create a member-owned network, like banking’s SWIFT, so participants can exchange information reliably and cost-effectively?

I got my COVID booster and flu shot Thursday in the same arm at Walgreens, with no problems except a little bit of dull soreness if I rub it just right. Mrs. H had moderate fatigue and whole-body muscle aches after her injections, which leads me to hope that my minimal reaction was due to luck rather than failure to mount a robust immune response. I’m still embarrassed that the primary output is a paper card with scrawled entries, but at least Walgreens keeps an electronic record and I keep photos of my two-card set on my phone for whomever is the first person to ask to see them.

For prospective HIStalk sponsors (everybody else cover your ears): sign up now and beat 2023’s price increase, the first in many years. Tell Lorre you’re in. I appreciate the support, and my influential readers are usually interested in hearing about companies that provide it. A 2021 survey found that 94% of readers gain interest in a company that they read about on HIStalk, while 82% say they have a higher interest in my sponsors (who don’t gain any influence over what I write, in case you didn’t know that already).

Webinars

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kaufman Hall will acquire clinical documentation consulting firm Claro Healthcare.

Covenant Health outsources some IT functions, most notably cybersecurity, to Long80, which will offer employment to the 104 affected health system employees. Long80 is a collaboration between global IT services provider GAVS Technologies and Premier, Inc.

Announcements and Implementations

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum increases licensing fees for academic institutions to use its de-identified insurance claims data, forcing researchers to scramble for alternatives to spending tens of of thousands of dollars per study.

South Korea-based Hanwha Techwin integrates its intelligent IP pan-tilt-zoom cameras with Epic, which will allow hospital staff to monitor patients remotely by video and to conduct two-way communication with a remote sitter.

Government and Politics

Former HHS officials challenge an HHS OIG report’s findings that its HHS Protect system of hospital COVID-19 data collection using technology from TeleTracking, which was implemented in nine days, did not meet basic cybersecurity standards. OIG rescinded the report, citing inaccuracies, and says it will reissue a revised version.

Other

Sansum Clinic CIO Sean Johnson, RN, MHA (aka Professor Sean – he’s also a MHA adjunct at USC) posts the first in a series of nicely done consumer-focused YouTube courses called “Healthcare 101.”

Lumeris VP Rick Goddard, MS posted this graphic (click to enlarge) on LinkedIn that shows the relative strength of healthcare’s vertical integrators (Optum, CVS, Amazon, and local health systems) in each part of the care continuum. I might suggest adding Walmart and Walgreens to the chart. (You can check out his original blog on the topic here.)

Two of Saturday’s top stories in the New York Times involve the profits that are being generated by tax-exempt health systems:

• Providence’s “Rev-Up” program – designed by consulting firm McKinsey at a cost of $45 million — strong-armed patients to pay bills even if they were legally entitled to free care. The article notes that Providence avoids paying $1 billion per year in taxes while offering a low percentage of charity care, pays its CEO $10 million per year, and runs a Wall Street-style venture capital fund as part of its $10 billion reserves.
• Bon Secours Mercy Health, which generated $100 million per year in profit from inner city Richmond Community Hospital by taking advantage of 340B drug discounts and then investing the mark-up profits in wealthy neighborhoods. The Times says Bon Secours made $1 billion in profit last year, avoided $440 million in taxes as a non-profit, and paid its CEO $6 million. It says that the city gave Bon Secours a below-market lease on land to expand Richmond Community’s facilities and to open a nursing school, but the chain instead built luxury apartments and turned the hospital into a “glorified emergency room” in stripping services and shutting down its ICU. The 340B discount allows Richmond Community to buy a $25,000 per dose cancer drug for $3,400, giving the hospital an overall 44% profit margin, the highest in the state. A former Richmond Community ED doctor summarizes, “Bon Secours was basically laundering money through this poor hospital to its wealthy outposts.”

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom publishes a new report, “Nursing Satisfaction: What Matters Most at Work.”
• Oracle Cerner expands its partnership with customer King Faisal Specialist Hospital & Research Centre in Saudi Arabia to include developing shared ideas and research around data and AI.
• Optimum Healthcare IT advances to Elite Partner status in the ServiceNow Partner Program.
• Quil publishes a “Caregiver Discussion Guide.”
• Volpara Health launches a professional services program to help customers maximize the value of their high-risk cancer assessment programs.
• PodSass features SyTrue CEO Kyle Silvestro on its latest podcast.
• TigerConnect releases a new episode of The Connected Care Team Podcast, “Coordinating Clinical Workflows at CommonSpirit.”
• Volpara Health will sell RevealDx’s RevealAI-Lung, AI-powered software that helps accelerate lung cancer diagnosis and reduce unnecessary procedures, in Australia and New Zealand.
• WebPT publishes “The Complete Guide to Physical Therapy Billing.”
• West Monroe publishes a new client story, “MyEyeDr: A new digital scheduling experience increases online bookings by 2.5 times.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new case study, “Conway Regional achieves sepsis program quality and financial goals.”

Blog Posts

• 5 metrics for a more effective utilization management program (Olive)
• Digital-first for Better Patient Outreach and Improved Response (Orbita)
• Why Providers and Patients Benefit from Value-Based Care (PatientBond)
• ONC Cures Act Final Rule: 4 Tips for Compliance by October 6 (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Research Needs Robust Data: The CDC Utilizes the PINC AI Healthcare Database (Premier)
• How Smart Speakers Can Enhance Aging at Home (Quil)
• Insights from the RCxRules 2022 National User Conference: Staffing Shortages and Remote Work are Still Top of Mind (RCxRules)
• Ophthalmology: this is enterprise imaging (Sectra)
• Soothing the Economic Sting with the Inflation Reduction Act – and Health Technology (Surescripts)
• How to leverage AI in the contact center to improve health plan member experience (Talkdesk)
• Social Determinants of Health: Where Do We Start? (Zynx Health)

HIStalk sponsors exhibiting at AHIMA October 9-12 in Columbus, OH include:

• AGS Health
• Clinical Architecture
• Intelligent Medical Objects
• Nuance
• Nym Health
• Optum
• Wolters Kluwer

Contacts

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

News 9/23/22

Top News

VA Deputy Secretary Donald Remy tells Congress that its Oracle Cerner system is “not even close” to meeting patient needs and that “major improvements” are needed to resolve patient safety issues, which may force planned go-lives to be pushed back.

The VA’s top contracting officer added in the Senate appropriations subcommittee hearing that the VA “shouldn’t blindly follow” DoD even though that’s why VA originally chose Cerner in a $10 billion no-bid contract. He added that the VA may renegotiate its Oracle Cerner deal when the base contract expires in May.

Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT), chairman of the Senate Committee on VA Affairs, said that the implementation has been a “train wreck.”

The VA’s Cerner project will cost $58 billion over 28 years, according to the testimony of Brian Rieksts, PhD of the Institute for Defense Analysis, which the VA asked to perform an independent life cycle cost estimate.

Oracle EVP Mike Sicilia told the subcommittee that Oracle Cerner will “deliver a system that will leapfrog commercial EHRs” at no extra cost to the VA. “We intend to rewrite the Millennium EHR as a stateless cloud application which will deliver a modern user interface, ease of use, mobility, voice recognition, and self service. It will have machine learning-based clinical decision support and analytics that are built in from the ground up. We intend to deliver a beta of this new system in 2023 and we commit to deliver it across VA as a cost-free upgrade under the current contract.” Sicilia says that new modules will run in parallel with existing Millennium software, allowing VA to decide when to switch to the new ones without requiring data conversion.

Asked by Sen. Tester where the VA’s project fits within Oracle’s priorities, Sicilia said, “This is the most important effort we have going on in the company. We have recast over 2,000 people, existing Oracle employees, to now work specifically on the VA EHRM program, in addition to the existing Cerner team.” He says the original 10-year timeline is still achievable.

Oracle has contracted with Accenture for training, which Sicilia admits was managed better with the DoD’s project.

Meanwhile, several members of the House Veterans’ Affairs Committee want to increase congressional oversight of the VA’s technology acquisitions, citing as examples its supply chain management system (adopted from DoD at a $2 billion cost, with OIG saying it meets less than half of VA’s needs) and Oracle Cerner, which Chairman Mark Takano (D-CA) calls “the poster child for major acquisition issues at the VA.”

Reader Comments

From Buoyancy: “Re: Touchstone Imaging security incident. I received this letter from the company, which has $200 million in annual revenue, nine months after the incident with no explanation of what happened. They didn’t even offer free credit monitoring.” The company’s imaging centers basically shut down temporarily after the December 24, 2021 incident, with employees telling reporters that a hacker had taken down their phones, computers, and imaging systems. In older related news, Touchstone paid $3 million in 2019 to settle HHS OCR charges that a misconfigured FTP server allowed patient information to be Googled by anyone, claiming at first that no PHI was exposed until OCR’s investigation found otherwise. Touchstone was apparently acquired in late 2018 by US Radiology Services, a private equity-backed diagnostic imaging provider, although the companies refer to their connection as a “partnership.”

From Hatton Hand: “Re: Emerge. The data archive solution has been down for more than two weeks and I can’t access critical patient health information. The company is unresponsive.” I contacted Emerge, which provided this response:

Emerge is in discussions with a number of potential equity partners to restart operations and help the company grow to its potential. Emerge understands the concerns of its customers and the importance of getting back online as quickly as possible and is doing everything that it can to make that happen by the end of September.

From Patient Identity: “Re: SOP for Individual Access. Wondering if anyone has reviewed this recent SOP from ONC? I’m interested in what industry folks think. Check out twitter feed for @HITpolicywonk on this topic.” The Standard Operating Procedure document describes how the identities of patients who are seeking access to their information are verified by a credential service provider. Genevieve Morris worries that subtle wording of the requirements make participation optional and may lead EHR vendors to charge CSPs to access their systems.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A New York Times piece led me to check out the YouTube series of King Crimson’s 76-year-old leader Robert Fripp, who is mostly known as a scowling, audience-indifferent, hard-to-work-with musical perfectionist. Fripp, wearing his usual vest and tie, plays guitar and rolls his eyes as his wife of 36 years – singer and actress Toyah Willcox — sings and gyrates remarkably in the couple’s kitchen to music ranging from Radiohead to Britney Spears in their video series titled “Sunday Lunch with Toyah & Robert.”  

Webinars

October 18 (Tuesday) 2 ET. “Patient Payment Trends 2022: Learn All The Secrets.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, co-founder and CEO, Mend. Many industries offer frictionless payments, but healthcare still sends paper bills to patients who are demanding modern conveniences. This webinar will review consumer sentiment on healthcare payments, recent changes to the Telephone Consumer Protection Act that create opportunities for new patient financial engagement, and new tactics to collect more payments faster from patients.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Financial analysts warn that outpatient surgery center and physician staffing operator Envision Healthcare will likely run out of cash and file bankruptcy by the end of the year.

NTT Data will acquire MuleSoft consulting firm Apisero.

Sales

• England’s University Hospitals of Derby and Burton NHS Foundation Trust chooses BridgeHead Software for application decommissioning.
• Life sciences research company Nference will use de-identified EHR data from Mayo Clinic and will create a Mayo-branded version of its NSights platform..

People

Amwell promotes Brian Donahue, MHSA to VP of sales of Amwell Behavioral Health.

Wolters Kluwer, Health promotes Chris Sullivan, MBA to VP/GM of the commercial segment for clinical effectiveness.

Matt Lenz (Teladoc Health) joins Posterity Health as SVP of sales and partnerships.

MPulse Mobile hires Lara Stell, CPA (GlobalTranz) as CFO and Sanjeev Sawai, MS (HealthEdge) as chief product and technology officer.

Announcements and Implementations

A CMS-funded study by National Quality Forum looks at using EHR-generated measures to improve care communication and coordination. A few of its ideas:

• Update data bi-directionally in real time between EHRs and HIEs with patient permission, sharing the information with non-traditional healthcare settings and community-based organizations.
• Collect patient-reported intake and outcome data electronically.
• Add patient and caregiver preferred languages as an EHR data element.
• Support patient and care team communication via secure email and telemedicine.
• Allow patients to upload their own information, such as records from other providers, via the patient portal.
• Configure EHRs to notify clinicians when a patient misses an appointment or fails to fill a prescription.
• Allow clinicians to “Google the chart” to find relevant data.
• Use EHR data to calculate risk for the clinician and patient to review together.
• Identify all care team members, their roles, and the contribution to outcomes.
• Add standardized data elements for care planning, goals of care with clinician assessment, reasons for transitions in care, perceived accuracy of clinical notes with edit capability, perceived care quality and trust, and patient preferences such as advance directives.

Maryland’s state legislature grants CRISP, the state-designated HIE, authority to operate as a health data utility, where it will be required to provide patient data to support public health goals. The state’s department of health, nursing homes, electronic health networks, and pharmacies will be required to send data to CRISP.

The Sequoia Project’s Information Blocking Compliance Workgroup publishes resources to help entities comply with the information blocking requirements of the 21st Century Cures Rule that go into effect on October 6.

USPTO issues a patent to Medicomp Systems for intelligent prompting of clinical protocols.

Emory Healthcare will go live on Epic on October 1, replacing Cerner.

Privacy and Security

A Washington Post review finds that several popular Android health apps send information to advertisers. It notes that the identifiers that are sent don’t directly identify the user, though privacy experts warn that being targeted by an advertiser using specific health concerns or conditions is jarring.

HHS waives HIPAA sanctions and penalties in Puerto Rico, where a public health emergency has been declared following Hurricane Fiona.

Other

IT services firm Wipro fires 300 employees who took advantage of work-from-home policies to moonlight for competing firms.

An NHS trust apologizes to 1,800 patients who were removed from its six-month appointment waiting list by robotic process automation technology that wasn’t being monitored. RPA software vendor Blue Prism found a caching issue, but a significant problem was that the RPA rules hadn’t been updated with new procedures for managing various NHS wait lists because the hospital’s only RPA expert had changed jobs.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart announces its intention to become a Qualified Health Information Network.
• Oracle Cerner publishes a new e-book, “Improving Clinical, Financial, and Operational Workflows as a Real-Time Health System.”
• GHX VP of Healthcare Value Karen Conway receives a Women in Supply Chain Award from Supply & Demand Chain Executive.
• Kyruus publishes a new case study, “Reinventing Digital Patient Access at SCL Health (now Intermountain Healthcare).”
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions awards Virginia Commonwealth University student Taylor Johnson its inaugural Life Lessons Scholarship.
• Lyniate publishes a new white paper, “Avoiding the pitfalls of poor patient identification.”
• Netsmart Technologies and NeuroFlow will include CAM-care’s Suicide Status Form in their platforms and client records to better assess and treat suicidal thoughts.
• KLAS ranks Nuance’s Dragon Ambient EXperience number one for improving clinician experiences in its “2022 Emerging Solutions Top 20” report.

Blog Posts

• True marriage of health and tech is needed to improve lives globally (Oracle Cerner)
• For physicians, less is often more (Nordic)
• Let HDM Manage Your Epic Go-Lives (Health Data Movers)
• Don’t Boil the Content Ocean: Tips for a Focused Content Strategy (Healthwise)
• Improved Revenue Cycle Management with Data Interoperability (InterSystems)
• The ‘new black:’ Why specificity matters in clinical terminology (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• How Medhost EHR Leverages AWS Analytics (Medhost)
• How Can Value-Based Care Models, Like MIPS, Help Improve Quality of Care in Rehab Therapy? (Net Health)
• Question, Persuade, and Refer: The Importance of Suicide Prevention Training (Netsmart)
• Curing the post-implementation blues (Nordic)

HIStalk sponsors exhibiting at the MGMA Medical Practice Excellence: Leaders Conference October 9-12 in Boston include:

• Availity
• Bamboo Health
• CoverMyMeds
• Dimensional Insight
• EClinicalWorks
• HCTec
• Kyruus
• Meditech
• Nuance
• TigerConnect
• Upfront Healthcare
• Vyne Medical
• Well Health

Contacts

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

News 9/21/22

Top News

A Washington federal judge clears the way for UnitedHealth Group to acquire Change Healthcare, rejecting a Department of Justice lawsuit that attempted to block the deal. DOJ had argued that the acquisition would give UnitedHealth’s insurance business access to the claims data of competing payers, which would increase healthcare costs.

The acquisition price is $7.8 billion versus the $13 billion that was reported when the acquisition was first announced in January 2021.

The approval requires Change Healthcare to divest its ClaimsXten claims payment and editing software business to TPG Capital for $2.2 billion.

UnitedHealth will merge Change with its Optum Insight analytics and consulting business.

Reader Comments

From Bonedigger: “Re: executive coaching. What advice do you have to make that a career?” My advice would be to choose something else, at least based on my experience with a few health IT folks who tried the executive coaching biz and failed quickly. Senior-level people may overestimate the value of their experience in unrelated work such as consulting, teaching, and coaching, but many organizations prey on their vanity by selling them coaching education and certifications. They still have to find customers (which is the hardest part, like in all businesses), develop the right chemistry, and do good enough work to be retained. The fact that few of them hired coaches for themselves isn’t much of an endorsement.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A memory of a long-ago health IT executive sent me back to Vince Ciotii’s remarkable HIS-tory series, which turned into several hours of “where are they now” Google searches of the folks he mentions in it. I interviewed Vince for the last time in September 2019 and asked him what his epitaph would say, and he replied that the series was his proudest work in 50 years as a health IT executive. Vince’s own final chapter was written upon his death in September 2021.

Webinars

September 22 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2023 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, marketing director, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, marketing manager, IMO. The yearly update to ICD-10-CM is almost here. Prepare your organization for a smooth transition, and avoid any negative impacts to your bottom line, with an in-depth look at the upcoming changes. Listen to IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders discuss the 2023 ICD-10-CM coding changes. This webinar will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the ICD-10-CM code set and how to make sure you get properly reimbursed.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Search firm investor Starfish Partners acquires Direct Recruiters, which specializes in staffing solutions for a variety of industries including healthcare IT and life sciences.

Online prescription startup Peak stops offering its ketamine-based psychedelic therapy for drug-resistant depression and anxiety to new patients, and will cease operations at the end of November.

Enterprise imaging company Intelerad Medical Systems acquires image exchange vendor Life Image for an undisclosed sum. Intelerad now boasts one of the largest image exchange networks, having acquired competitor Ambra Health last year.

PillPack founders TJ Parker and Elliott Cohen announce that they are leaving Amazon, which acquired the online pharmacy in 2018 for $753 million with little impact since.

McKesson will acquire Rx Savings Solutions, which offers an app that recommends cost-saving prescription changes to members, for  up to $875 million in cash. Founder and CEO Michael Rea, PharmD started the company in 2009 after working as a pharmacist for Walgreens and OptumRx.

Transcarent launches a medication price transparency program to give self-insured employers more control over their prescription benefits.

The 28-year-old founder of digital shopping cart vendor Bold – who quit the CEO job in January 2022 days after a fundraising round that valued the company at $11 billion – will become founder and CEO of Love, a Kickstarter-like crowdsourcing and clinical studies platform for homeopathic products. The company will sell digital tokens, which allows investors to vote on which studies to fund. Ryan Breslow – who avoids meat, gluten, caffeine, alcohol, supplements, and after-dark lights and electronic screens – says, “I think my superpower is that I’ve never done health before.”

Sales

• Albany Med Health System (NY) will implement Epic in 2024.
• Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta selects real-time location systems software from Vizzia Technologies.
• The VA renews its VistA-integrated dialysis EHR contract with DSS in a five-year, $27 million deal.

People

Orb Health names Lisa Simon, CPA (Monongalia Health System) CEO; Gordon Jaye, MS (Aspirion) SVP of transformation and patient engagement; and Eric Van Portfliet (Firstsource) CTO.

William Cavanaugh, MBA (Lyniate) joins Concord Technologies as president.

DMEscripts hires John Brady (Anthem) as CEO.

Global Healthcare Exchange promotes Tina Murphy to president and CEO. She replaces Bruce Johnson, MBA, who will become executive board chair.

Announcements and Implementations

Johns Hopkins Medicine’s Office of Telemedicine announces that it has conducted 1.5 million telemedicine visits with 420,000 patients since March 2020. The office plans to expand emote patient monitoring capabilities to include ambulatory and complex care and the availability of virtual consults between Johns Hopkins facilities.

West Cecil Health Center (MD) implements Bluestream Health’s virtual care platform-as-a-service.

Verato launches a Universal Identity platform that consists of Verato Patient Journey and Verato Provider Data Management. 

Epic implementations in Denmark and Finland are “still troubled” years after go-live, according to authors of an article in the International Journal of Medical Informatics who say that usability has not been optimized, clinical time to perform tasks has increased, and clinician dissatisfaction is at 32%. The authors noted these issues, which are common in large implementations:

• Project participants failed to pay attention to the extent of user changes that were involved and issues raised in Denmark’s first go-live were not addressed before the second.
• Grand expectations are needed to generate project enthusiasm, but may gloss over real-life concerns when realities intrude.
• Tax-supported Nordic healthcare does not require billing insurers, but Epic’s US-centric clicks and worfklows that support it could not be configured away. Translation of user interfaces from English to Danish and Finish also caused problems, especially with search functions.
• Both countries spent years configuring Epic for their requirements, with Danish regions focusing mostly on standardization and the Finnish region on local preferences. The authors say that “neither approach has resulted in a well-liked system.”
• The EHR rollouts, which increase documentation requirements, created clinician stress. The plan to lay off medical secretaries to save money and then transfer their documentation work to physicians was a key issue.
• The authors recommend following up promptly with users who report problems, assume that a return to productivity will take at least 3-12 months and likely longer in these countries, and be cautious about changing work processes that clinicians oppose.

A large group of expert authors proposes to reduce deviations in best-practices patient care by using EActions, which are validated expert systems that are designed to manage a specific clinical task or condition by considering existing patient information to the point that no clinician review is required. The authors distinguish between using such closed-loop technology to make evidence-based treatment decisions – which is possible once a diagnosis has been made – instead of for generating a diagnosis, for which AI is not sufficiently mature. Rules-based treatment for acute respiratory distress syndrome is replicable because if-then rules can adjust ventilator settings and order labs just as clinicians would do, while treating heart failure is not replicable (and thus not suitable as an EAction) because the logic is more complex than simply matching if-then rules to existing data points. The authors predict that implementation of EActions will reduce clinician burden and EHR data noise, allowing comparative effectiveness clinical research questions to be addressed by learning healthcare systems as a by-product of delivering evidence-based care.

Fast Company names Kaiser Permanente as its 2022 Design Company of the Year for its app redesign, which KP says was associated with an 80% increase in online appointment booking, a doubling of website visits, an increase of digital experience satisfaction from 86% to 92%, and an 84% digital registration rate of members. KP says it is piloting a feature in which the app will offer location-based notification of available services to campus visitors.

NIH awards a $2.7 million grant to Eko to develop a machine learning algorithm to detect pulmonary hypertension using its smart stethoscopes

Government and Politics

Anonymous US Army recruiters complain that the DoD’s Cerner system, which was supposed to speed up the time required to get new recruits processed and in uniform, has instead lengthened the timelines to the point that parents are complaining and recruits are changing their minds about enlisting. The recruiters say new policies and capabilities force them to wait to receive medical records relating to Cerner-flagged histories from providers, which can take weeks. Army officials say that the problem isn’t Cerner, it’s that recruits are often taking antidepressants and ADHD drugs and thus require a heath review that may get them disqualified for service. Anonymous online commenters complain that it was easier in the good old days because recruits could simply lie or plead ignorance about their medical histories.

A lead story in the New York Times says that the lack of public health data limits US response to outbreaks, observing that state and local health departments remain stuck in a world of fax machines, manual data entry, and phone calls. CDC’s attempts to quantify the spread of the Omicron variant of COVID-19 required it to ask Kaiser Permanente to analyze its own patient data. The lack of data has limited the government’s ability to make decisions about boosters and to understand breakthrough cases. The federal government is requiring hospitals to show progress toward automating CDC case reports as triggered by EHR diagnoses, but only 15% hospitals have accomplished that.

Other

A South Dakota paper profiles Sanford Health’s plans for its recently announced $350 million Virtual Care Center and the impact it will have on local and regional patients, as well as nearby health systems: “We would like to be a partner in that,” says Horizon Healthcare CIO Scott Weatherill … We’re definitely drinking the Kool Aid on this, and we fall back on telemedicine readily to continue to provide care, keep our clinics open, and offer additional services to our patients.”

Cooper University Health Care’s MD Anderson affiliate will get a new $2 billion building that will add 100 beds to its Camden, NJ campus.

A Surescripts analysis finds that prescription pick-up rates increased by 3.2% when prescribers used the company’s Real-Time Prescription Benefit, which also saved an average of $38 per prescription.

Paging Dr. Weird News Andy: a man in India is hospitalized for three weeks as doctors remove a 7.5-inch deodorant can from his colon, whose presence he declined to explain.

Sponsor Updates

• Oracle Cerner publishes a new business brief, “How a Real-Time Health System Addresses Challenges.”
• Agfa HealthCare embarks on an upgrade enterprise imaging project with UC Christus Health Network in Chile.
• IDC MarketScape includes Agfa HealthCare in the Leaders Category in its “European Enterprise Medical Imaging 2022 Vendor Assessment.”
• AGS Health publishes a new case study, “CAC Implementation improves hospital revenue by $1.03MM.”
• Arrive Health names Nikki Heider marketing manager.
• Therapy Brands renews its partnership agreement with OptimizeRx, which gives users of its e-prescribing platform access to diagnosis support, affordability, access, and adherence resources.
• Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Trends, issues, and updates in the senior service industry.”
• Biofourmis will present at the Academy of Physicians in Clinical Research Annual Meeting October 7 in Fort Lauderdale, FL.
• Black Book Market Research publishes its latest “State of Global Healthcare Technology” report, which reveals adoption trends, market dynamics, and top-rated vendors across 55 countries.
• Divurgent announces a refocused mission, vision, and advisory services.

Blog Posts

• Build vs. buy in healthcare IT: The battle for buy-in (Arcadia)
• Climbing the Executive Ladder – One Class at a Time (Ascom)
• CHQR Badges – What are They and Why They’re Important to Community Health Centers (Azara Healthcare)
• What is Whole Person Care? (Bamboo Health)
• 7 ways to optimize expenditures associated with surgical procedures (Bravado Health)
• Bringing “Top Flight” Communications to the Academic Medical Center (CareMesh)
• Looking forward to new innovations in the healthcare industry (Oracle Cerner)
• Overcoming Healthcare IT Staffing Challenges (HealthTech Resources)
• What Conditions Qualify for Chronic Care Management? (ChartSpan)
• Measuring Digital Identity and IAM Maturity to Advance Digital Initiatives in Healthcare (CHIME)
• We’ve Unveiled Our Brand-new Brand (Clearsense)
• Healthcare Apps Promise Powerful Outcomes – If Patients Use Them (CoverMyMeds)
• Evolving the Training Paradigm – A Breakout Session at the Arch Collaborative Learning Summit 2022 (Divurgent)
• Keeping an Eye on Patients in Transition (EClinicalWorks)
• Research Needs Robust Data: The CDC Utilizes the PINC AI Healthcare Database (Premier)

Sponsor Spotlight

ChartSpan recently released new clinical claims data on the effectiveness of Chronic Care Management programs. If you are looking for a partner in high-quality value-based care programs that actually deliver results, contact us today.

(Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 9/19/22

Top News

An American Medical Association survey of digital health solution use finds that 80% of physician respondents used telehealth systems in 2022 versus 14% in 2016. AMA has surveyed the same group of doctors in 2016, 2019, and 2022 about digital health.

Use of remote monitoring tools increased from 12% in 2016 to 30% in 2022.

Telehealth and remote monitoring technologies were also ranked highest in physician enthusiasm. Beyond telehealth, enthusiasm for digital solutions has been mostly stagnant since 2019. Still, nearly 60% of respondents believe that technology can improve chronic disease management and preventative care.

Older doctors and specialists are more likely to see no advantage to digital health, but number of doctors aged 51 and over who see a digital health advantage is growing.

(click the graphic to enlarge).

Reader Comments

From LongLiveA4HealthMatics: “Re: Allscripts. Is rebranding its EHR to Veradigm EHR. Looks like the push to sanitize the word Allscripts from the company that is still called Allscripts has begun.” The email to customers says that ”the commercial brand for Allscripts will be Veradigm, while the corporate entity will remain Allscripts.” The logic behind the change, which was hinted at months ago, was not stated. MDRX shares are up 18% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 24% loss, valuing the company at $1.8 billion.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The employers of two-thirds of poll respondents require their workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, and of those that don’t make it mandatory, one-fourth of them previously did but reversed themselves.

New poll to your right or here, which addresses the unproven but wildly over-discussed concept of “quiet quitting”: How much effort and sacrifice are you willing to put into your job now versus two years ago?

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Cordea Consulting. The Edmond, OK-based company, which was founded in 2008 by CEO Jen Jones, specializes in the full life cycle of health IT solutions, exclusively serving the healthcare industry by working with clients to develop and implement systems, plans, and strategies. It offers advisory services (strategy, cost optimization, change management, IT governance, innovation programs); IT leadership services (program and project management, interim leadership, executive placement); and implementation and support (upgrades, go-live support, training, report writing, EHR data conversion and integration). A recent client survey finds that 100% would recommend the company, whose consultants average 12 years of real-life healthcare experience and many of whom are clinicians who know how to use informatics to improve patient care. Thanks to Cordea Consulting for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

September 22 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2023 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, marketing director, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, marketing manager, IMO. The yearly update to ICD-10-CM is almost here. Prepare your organization for a smooth transition, and avoid any negative impacts to your bottom line, with an in-depth look at the upcoming changes. Listen to IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders discuss the 2023 ICD-10-CM coding changes. This webinar will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the ICD-10-CM code set and how to make sure you get properly reimbursed.

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

People

Oracle promotes Greg Aaron to group VP/GM of investor owned and emerging markets of Oracle Cerner.

Government and Politics

A JAMA-published study of telemedicine encounters by Medicare patients in the first half of 2021 finds that 423,000 involved an out-of-state provider, two-thirds of whom had seen the same patient in person previously. Nearly 60% of the out-of-state visits involved patients who lived in a county within a few miles of a state border. The authors conclude that restoring licensure restrictions that were eased during the pandemic would have the biggest impact on people who live near a state borders, those who live in rural areas, and patients who need primary care or mental health treatment.

A state court orders low-code platform vendor Pegasystems to pay $2 billion to competitor Appian in a trade secrets case. Pegasystems was accused of hiring an employee of a government contractor to give it access to Appian’s software so it could enhance its own system and teach its sales team. A circuit judge rejected the motion by Pegasystems to overturn the verdict, then tacked on another $24 million in attorney fees and 6% in annual interest. Pegasystems says it will appeal.

Other

A social media celebrity posts her sister’s medical bill in which a medical practice charged her $40 – without offering consolation or inquiry – because she cried.

Sponsor Updates

• Arcadia makes its de-identified EHR and integrated claims data available on the Snowflake Marketplace.
• Psychiatric practice Talkiatry expands its use of EClinicalWorks technology to include Healow TeleVisits.
• Premier releases a new episode of its InsideOut Podcast, “Merging the quality and access gap in healthcare.”
• Relatient releases a new episode of its Dash Talk Podcast, “The End of the Phone Tag Era: Advancing Consumer Experience in Healthcare.”
• ReMedi Health Solutions publishes a new white paper, “Best practices for improving patient care through clinical chart abstraction.”

Blog Posts

• Looking forward to new innovations in the healthcare industry (Oracle Cerner)
• Getting it Right, the First Time, With Your Epic Managed Services Model (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• 4 Ways Patient Engagement Improves Health Outcomes for Chronic Diseases (PatientBond)
• Accelerate Your Data & Analytics Program with these 4 steps (Pivot Point Consulting)
• COO Jeff Brown Celebrates PerfectServe’s 25th Anniversary (PerfectServe)
• How Smart Speakers Can Enhance Aging at Home (Quil)
• 60.2% of digital health builders in a recent survey are likely to use the FHIR industry standard for their own application development or infrastructure decisions (Redox)
• Survey Says: Overcome These Challenges to Keep Specialty Prescriptions Moving (Surescripts)
• Bridging Barriers, Closing Gaps: SEARHC Simulations Build Community Resilience (Tegria)
• Can Technology Really Help Solve the Hospital Worker Shortage? (TigerConnect)
• From new technologist to one of the best in the world (Volpara Health)
• 13 Signs You Need a New Physical Therapy Billing System (WebPT)
• What Employers Can Learn from the Healthcare Industry: A Whole-Person Approach to Caring for Employees (Well Health)
• When a Patient Falls, Misery Ensues: Building a Strategic Fall Prevention Program (Zynx Health)
• Curing the post-implementation blues (Nordic)

Contacts

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

News 9/16/22

Top News

Epic launches a life sciences program that will match providers and their patients with clinical trials.

Reader Comments

From Due App: “Re: Oracle Cerner’s new pharmacy app. EVP Mike Sicilia told the Senate on July 20 that a beta version will be available 6-9 months, which would be April 20, 2023 at the latest. Larry Ellison now says it will be finished within year. Odds of either happening?” Delivery by either date would be aggressive, even if progress is already quietly being made. That probably means accepting the existing product’s design as sufficient and refactoring it using the Oracle Apex low-code development platform to improve application performance and maintenance. That approach would bypass endless design sessions and make the project a purely technical exercise that hits Oracle’s sweet spot, allowing enhancements to be addressed later. The biggest challenge might be integration with legacy Cerner apps. Rewriting apps from scratch provides little user value and makes sense only if the underlying platform is outdated, developers are hard to find, and system maintenance and performance are lagging. Replatforming is easier when the same vendor that owns the app also owns the technology and cloud technology. Still, it always takes longer than expected, so consider the dates a target.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor HealthTech Resources. The Phoenix-based company has served providers and payers for 20 years. Its mission is to help people and companies achieve their goals by providing the highest quality of outsourced employment and human resources services, taking the time to understand the needs and long-term growth objectives of large health systems, academic medical centers, public health plans, and more to empower them to focus on what they do best. The company is proud to concentrate specifically on healthcare, not only because this singular focus strengthens its service offerings, but also because it plays a role in supporting innovation within electronic health records, healthcare enterprise architecture, and the digital systems that help improve how people work and how people heal. Its employees enable improved care and treatment methods for patients, and improved workflows for essential workers allows them to focus more on what matters most, their patients. Thanks to HealthTech Resources for supporting HIStalk.

Another advantage of obtaining Mrs. H’s new contact lens prescription from a somewhat sketchy online exam that I just realized – the PDF prescription can be used throughout its one-year life by simply uploading it to any lens seller. You can also stock up on as many lenses as you would like by ordering before the prescription expires. Neither is true of a medication prescription.

Webinars

September 22 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2023 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, marketing director, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, marketing manager, IMO. The yearly update to ICD-10-CM is almost here. Prepare your organization for a smooth transition, and avoid any negative impacts to your bottom line, with an in-depth look at the upcoming changes. Listen to IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders discuss the 2023 ICD-10-CM coding changes. This webinar will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the ICD-10-CM code set and how to make sure you get properly reimbursed.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The two co-founders of medication technology vendor Tabula Rasa Healthcare, who are also husband and wife pharmacists, resign their executive and board positions under pressure from the hedge fund that holds a 25% stake in the company. Shares of TRHC that peaked in mid-2018 at $88 are now worth under $5 following several unprofitable acquisitions and lowered sales projections, valuing the company at $129 million.

A study finds that drug makers file a “patent thicket” of post-approval patent applications to extend their US monopolies beyond their initial 20 years of patent protection. Three expensive, top-selling drugs – Humira, Eliquis, and Enbrel – have been available from cheaper competitors for years in Europe but not here, with Enbrel’s biosimilar not expected to be sold here until 2029, 13 years after it was first sold in Europe.

Analytics vendor Prealize Health acquires the social determinants of health intellectual property of former partner CentraForce Health.

Sales

• North West London Integrated Care System chooses InterSystems HealthShare Health Connect Cloud via an AWS cloud deployment for interoperability.
• Washington County Hospitals and Clinics (IA) will implement Epic using a $753,000 grant from the US Department of Agriculture.
• Thailand’s new Srisawan Hospital will implement InterSystems TrakCare and IRIS for Health.

People

Industry long-timer Bruce Brandes, MBA (Teladoc Health) joins Care.ai as president.

InterSystem hires Andy Zook, MBA (SAS) as VP of North American sales.

Virtual care technology vendor Wheel hires Sameer Merchant, MS (Autodesk) as CTO and Steve Manning (Autodesk) as SVP of product.

Amwell hires Vaughn Paunovich (UnitedHealth Group) as EVP of enterprise platforms and Matthew McAllister, MBA (Amazon) as chief product officer. 

Mark Dunnagan (Smartlink Health Solutions) joins Chess Health Solutions as VP of health informatics.

Announcements and Implementations

Relatient launches Dash Chat, which allows patient inquiries that are entered as live chat from the practice’s website to be answered by providers and staff, reducing call volumes.

A survey of medical alert system users and caregivers finds that fall detection is the most-desired feature, affordability and battery life are key considerations, and 91% are more confident when performing daily activities knowing that they can reach immediate assistance. Two-thirds of users say they have used their system to get help. Thirty percent use in-home systems, while the rest use a home/mobile bundle, a watch-powered system, or a mobile device.

Epic will use Milliman MedInsight’s analytics in its Value-Based Performance Management module that will be released next year.

WebPT releases WebPT Billing, an integrated billing solution for the in-house billing teams of rehab therapy organizations. It’s the same solution that the company uses for its own outsourced physical therapy RCM service.

KLAS asks 16 healthcare executives to review previous reports to choose the top emerging solutions that are most likely to disrupt their respective Quadruple Aim categories, with these topping the list:

• Improve outcomes – Atlas, which connects health systems with philanthropic aid.
• Reduce the cost of care – AvaSure, which offers remote patient monitoring.
• Improve patient experience – DeliverHealth, which provides a digital front door solution.
• Improve clinician experience – Nuance’s Dragon Ambient Experience.

Government and Politics

The DEA is reportedly investigating ADHD telehealth vendor Done, which like competitor Cerebral, has been accused of overprescribing Adderall and other addictive drugs by taking advantage of COVID-relaxed telehealth rules. Surely the doctors who took the money of these companies did so knowing that they were expected to ignore accepted medical practice, which doesn’t pay as well.

NIH announces an $8 million prize competition for developing home-based or point-of-care diagnostic devices, wearables, or remote sensing technology to improve postpartum care in underserved areas.

Privacy and Security

OakBend Medical Center (TX) is still restoring IT systems that went down in a September 1 ransomware attack.

Other

I believe this press release has mistake’s.

Sponsor Updates

• Newly named Oracle Health GM Travis Dalton is interviewed by the company about Oracle’s vision, the changes with Cerner over the years, and the client opportunities that the acquisition creates.
• Nordic posts a new episode of DocTalk titled “Remote patient monitoring for chronic disease management.”
• Everbridge adds external risk intelligence monitoring to its Control Center physical security management system.
• Healthcare IT Leaders publishes a client profile featuring Northeast Georgia Health System.
• CereCore and BridgeHead will jointly offer comprehensive data management services.
• Meditech will host Meditech Live 2022 September 20-23 in Foxborough, MA. HIStalk sponsors supporting the event include CloudWave, CereCore, and Interbit Data.
• Divurgent publishes a white paper titled “Digital Acceleration in Healthcare: Guiding Speed and Direction for Digital Health.”
• NeuroFlow’s behavioral health technology platform has earned HITRUST Implemented, 1-year Certification.
• Clearsense unveils a new website and updated company brand.

Blog Posts

• How University Bridges Language Barriers to Improve Medication Adherence and Outcomes (First Databank)
• Individualized Care in Nursing: ‘Not Just Another Patient’ (Get Well)
• How to drive implant order change at your organization and with vendor partners (GHX)
• Ensuring Success During Your Epic Refuel Project (Impact Advisors)
• How Data and Dynamic Decisioning Enables a Frictionless User Experience (LexisNexis)
• Diagnosing Rural Health with Beth O’Connor, NRHA President (Part II) (Medhost)
• A Different Point of View: Clinical Usability Requires Diagnostically Connected Data (Medicomp)
• How a design system lays the foundation for a better user experience (Meditech)
• 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 9/14/22

Top News

Oracle reports Q1 results: revenue up 18%, EPS $0.58 versus $0.89, meeting Wall Street expectations for revenue but falling short on earnings.

Notes from the earnings call:

• Unfavorable foreign currency exchange rates cost the company $0.08 in adjusted EPS.
• Cerner contributed $1.4 billion of Oracle’s quarterly revenue, 12% of its total.
• Cloud revenue increased significantly, representing 30% of total revenue.
• CEO Safra Catz says that Oracle’s quarterly margin of 39% will increase “as we drive Cerner and its profitability to Oracle standards and continue to benefit from economies of scale in the cloud.”
• The company says it has migrated Cerner’s back office systems to its Oracle Fusion ERP system.
• CTO Larry Ellison says Oracle Cerner’s first newly developed application will be released within 12 months, developed with Oracle’s new Apex low-code tool and running on Oracle Cloud Database. He says Apex has security and fault tolerance built in, with the stateless application immediately failing over to another data center when problems arise.

Oracle offers a free OCI Cloud Tier that includes Apex Application Development and SQL Developer. It also offers a 10-minute tutorial on using Apex to transform a spreadsheet into a secure, scalable, multi-user web application.

Reader Comments

From Home Boy: “Re: Oracle. You should interview EVP Mike Sicilia, who is basically in charge of Cerner at this point.” I requested an interview with him a few weeks from Oracle’s press contact, who didn’t respond.

From Saving Private Orion: “Re: contact lenses. Your wife’s experience with the eye doctor’s receptionist is a reminder that most of what is awful about US healthcare isn’t the provider.” I agree. Nearly all of my healthcare frustration has been caused outside the exam room. Small practices often hire unwisely and manage poorly, and while hospitals often get better people, they drown them in customer-unfriendly policies. I would bet that clinicians are even more annoyed than patients in those environments since they have to live every day under the same management that created the patient-facing problems.

From Reese: “Re: Emerge. Customers say all modules and applications have been down for over two weeks with no root cause or ETA. Rumor is it’s legal trouble between Emerge and third-party database provider MongoDB, which has taken the systems offline.” Unverified, but reported by a couple of readers, one of whom summarized, “Practices that relied on Emerge for historical clinical documentation and imaging studies are SOL.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I remember when your first day on a new job involved desk-side teammate introductions and lunch out with the boss instead of jumping on a video call while caressing a mailed box of company swag.

Webinars

September 22 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2023 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, marketing director, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, marketing manager, IMO. The yearly update to ICD-10-CM is almost here. Prepare your organization for a smooth transition, and avoid any negative impacts to your bottom line, with an in-depth look at the upcoming changes. Listen to IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders discuss the 2023 ICD-10-CM coding changes. This webinar will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the ICD-10-CM code set and how to make sure you get properly reimbursed.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Provider search platform vendor Kyruus acquires Epion Health, which offers patient engagement solutions.

Healthcare analytics company PurpleLab raises $40 million in a Series B funding round. The company had reportedly explored putting itself up for sale earlier this year.

St. Elizabeth Healthcare (KY) launches an innovation center with a $25 million venture fund that it will use to invest in new healthcare companies and technology.

Startup builder Redesign Health closes a $65 million funding round that reportedly values the company at nearly $2 billion.

Sales

• Digital health solutions vendor BrightInsight chooses Lyniate Envoy for interoperability.

People

Seattle Children’s promotes Eric Tham, MD, MS to SVP and chief research operations officer.

UC Davis Health hires Vimal Mishra, MD (American Medical Association) to lead digital transformation and care at home.

Sean Brindley (Olive) joins Intelligent Medical Objects as VP of strategic partnerships.

Telehealth genetic counseling company Genome Medical lays off 23 employees and announces the departure of its founder and CEO Lisa Alderson, MBA, who will maintain an advisory role. Chief Customer Officer Jill Davies, MSc will replace Alderson. Davies was co-founder and CEO of GeneMatters, which Genome Medical acquired last year.

Mark Anderson (Accenture) joins Beth Israel Lahey Health as VP of EMR clinical strategy and implementation.

ShiftMed hires Greg Rakas (Pearl Health) as VP of enterprise sales.

Heath Chester (Infor) joins Lyniate as SVP of sales.

Arcadia hires Michael Tiffany, MBA, MSPT (EarlySense) as SVP of operations.

David Gascoigne (GNS Healthcare) joins OneMedNet as COO.

Announcements and Implementations

Houlton Regional Hospital (ME) will go live on Meditech Expanse on October 1.

Cody Regional Health (WY) will deploy Epic through a partnership with St. Vincent Healthcare.

Edifecs develops automated, point-of-care prior authorization technology.

Government and Politics

The 81st Medical Group at Keesler Air Force Base (MS) and the 96th Medical Group at Eglin Air Force Base (FL) will go live on MHS Genesis September 24.

A paper in Spokane, WA profiles the healthcare plight of veteran Charlie Bourg, who discovered that his delayed cancer diagnosis was caused by a system defect within the Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center’s Cerner EHR that put his primary care doctor’s follow-up appointment and urology referral in a scheduling queue limbo for months. An Oracle Cerner rep says the EHR isn’t responsible for Bourg’s now-terminal condition: “Our findings show that nothing related to the EHR’s functionality or performance had anything to do with the care this veteran received and was unrelated to their diagnosis or treatment. The Oracle Cerner EHR is successfully in use at many thousands of health care facilities across the United States without incident. We remain a committed partner to VA to ensure its EHR system, and everyone who uses it, is able to provide the best possible care that our veterans deserve.”

Other

A HBR article whose authors include health IT emeritus John Glaser says that we need better tools to improve outcomes using ever-increasing amounts of health data. It’s a big problem, they say, that quality measurement is limited to using insurance claims — which focus on revenue-generating information within a snapshot of care long after the fact — as their foundation. The authors list four imperatives:

• Reduce the cost and improve the timeliness of data collection by adopting software and wearables to generate information as a byproduct of managing care.
• Incorporate wearables data, patient-report outcomes measures, environmental data, and social determinants of health.
• Enhance EHRs to give clinicians better real-time support that is personalized to each patient’s needs and desires.
• Standardize clinical measures, reduce paper-based quality measure description, automate the work of human data abstracters, and audit and clean data using automated tools.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity associates, friends, and family raise nearly $3,000 for the American Heart Association during the 2022 First Coast Heart Walk.
• King Abdulla Medical City in Makkah upgrades to the consolidated Agfa HealthCare Enterprise Imaging platform.
• Arcadia publishes a new white paper, “Risk Adjustment – Simplified.”
• Baker Tilly grants $10,000 to Leaps & Bounds Pediatric Therapy.
• Bamboo Health names Caitlin Kolar (One Home Health Agency) account growth director and Rob Duarte (Clif) business development representative.
• Clinical Architecture will exhibit at SNOMED CT September 29 and 30 in Portugal.
• ConnectiveRx will present at Hub and Specialty Pharmacy Models West September 14-15 in San Diego.
• Current Health will exhibit at DPharm September 13-14 in Boston.
• Ellkay will exhibit at Mayo’s Leveraging the Laboratory September 21-22 in Rochester, MN.
• Enlace Health donates $10,000 to an East Kentucky community grocery store affected by flood damage.
• Surescripts publishes a new data brief, “Specialty Medication Experience: Obstacles & Opportunities.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health makes its Lippincott ClinicalPulse CME platform available in an audio format.

Blog Posts

• Availity and Diameter Health: Our Mission to Solve Healthcare’s Most Intractable Challenges with Better Data for Better Decision Making (Diameter Health)
• Enable accurate collections with insurance eligibility verification (AdvancedMD)
• How to steer clear of healthcare data blind spots (Arcadia)
• How NYC H+H tests and treats the most COVID-19 patients in New York (Bluestream Health)
• Overcoming health literacy barriers for increased care plan accessibility (Bravado Health)
• The ACO REACH Model: Your Questions Answered (CarePort)
• Epic Transition and Go-Live Planning: Cutover Essentials (CereCore)
• Effectivity of Chronic Care Management Programs (ChartSpan)
• ‘Hospital at Home’ As a Care Delivery Model (CHIME)
• Understanding the Cyber Kill Chain and Impacts on Patient Care Delivery (Clearwater)
• Why Pharmacists Need New Digital Tools to Meet Evolving Patient Needs (CoverMyMeds)
• Change Management: An Essential Ingredient for Successful Digital Transformations in Healthcare (CTG)
• Increased Integration Provides More Opportunities for Pharmacy Analytics (Dimensional Insight)
• 4 Types of Company Culture (Direct Recruiters)
• The Challenges of Shifting to a Value-Based Care Model (Divurgent)
• One Month to Go: Come to Orlando and See for Yourself! (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 9/12/22

Top News

Former VA Secretary David Shulkin, MD says in an opinion piece that Congress should create a licensure compact program that would allow states to recognize each other’s medical licensees.

Shulkin says the process should work like the national driver license compact, where drivers obtain one license and can drive in any state as long as they follow that state’s regulations. That is different from telehealth laws, in which the patient’s location rather than the provider’s defines the licensure requirement.

Shulkin touts the VA’s success in relaxing geographic limits so that clinicians can be assigned to locations as needed and can perform home visits.

Jay Sanders, MD of The Global Telemedicine Group, notes in a LinkedIn comment that telemedicine is already a puzzling outlier – doctors can see any patient in person as long as that patient comes to their location, with telehealth being an electronic version of that same interaction. Also noted by other commenters, however, is that the similarly structured Nurse Licensure Compact has not been adopted by 11 states that still require their own specific licensing.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents who were recently involved in a health IT purchase most often attribute the initial interest to references or company recommendations.

New poll to your right or here: Does your employer require most or all employees to be vaccinated against COVID-19? Reports suggest that some companies have rescinded their mandatory vaccination policies not because of new scientific knowledge, but because they were losing employees to competitors who didn’t make vaccination required.

Mrs. HIStalk’s (now-former) eye doctor practice was unyielding in its refusal to sell her a box of contact lenses to tide her over until their next-available appointment in November even though her prescription has never changed. A couple of minutes of Googling turned up several contact lens companies that let you do a quick-and-dirty (albeit questionably effective) online eye exam. She did a five-minute, $20 exam through 1800contacts standing in front of her computer, received a prescription PDF signed by a state-licensed ophthalmologist shortly afterward, and ordered contacts through Lens.com, which  was cheaper and faster than her usual supplier Costco (not to mention that their online exam is on sale for $10, I now realize). An online exam isn’t worth much other than for verifying that refraction hasn’t changed, if even that, but I assume it fulfills a market need in which doctors generate short-term prescriptions without the ability to offer short-term appointments.

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

Webinars

September 22 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2023 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, marketing director, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, marketing manager, IMO. The yearly update to ICD-10-CM is almost here. Prepare your organization for a smooth transition, and avoid any negative impacts to your bottom line, with an in-depth look at the upcoming changes. Listen to IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders discuss the 2023 ICD-10-CM coding changes. This webinar will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the ICD-10-CM code set and how to make sure you get properly reimbursed.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

A study of private equity-acquired ambulatory surgery centers finds that unplanned hospital visits, cost, and encounter volume were no different afterward compared to ASCs that were not acquired.

The shutdown of Amazon Care will drive 159 Amazon layoffs in Washington, while another 236 will be let go from its medical provider Care Medical, according to company notifications to the state.

Health coaching and wellness app vendor Twill lays off 10% of its headcount, two months after changing its name from Happify Health.

Verily announces a $1 billion funding round led by Alphabet, the replacement of its CEO, and the resignation of its CFO. The company says it will use the funding proceeds to expand its work on precision health, including real-world evidence generation, healthcare data platforms, and research.

People

CommonSpirit Health promotes Jamie Trigg, MSITM to system VP of healthcare operating systems.

Optimum Healthcare IT hires Cheryl Abbott (Precision Talent Group) as VP of marketing.

John Curin (Burwood Group) joins Impact Advisors as VP.

Ascension hires Kristi Roe (Qualtrics) as VP of patient and consumer experience.

Nicole Bailey, PhD, MPH (Health Catalyst) joins Aetion as VP of real-world data. 

Raintree hires Bill Sillar (Symplr) as VP of business development.

Announcements and Implementations

A UCSF-led survey of digital health companies and their experience with EHR integration finds that:

• About half rely partially or fully on proprietary APIs, with the remainder using mostly standards-based APIs.
• Two-thirds of the companies that use non-RESTful APIs or don’t use APIs at all say it’s because RESTful APIs don’t meet their business needs.
• The level of effort required to establish or maintain integration with EHRs doesn’t vary widely regardless of whether proprietary APIs, standards-based APIs, or third-party APIs are used.
• Use of FHIR was reported by 84% of the companies.
• EHR APIs were used for read access by 91% of respondents, 27% for update, 24% for write, and 7% for delete.
• Top-reported barriers to EHR integration via APIs were high fees, lack of realistic clinical testing data, lack of standards-based APIs, and lack of valuable data elements.
• Responding companies said that the federal policies that have most influenced integration progress are Cures Act API regulations, Cures Act information blocking regulations, and HL7 FHIR accelerators.
• UCSF is seeking to expand survey participation beyond the 104 companies that have responded of 704 that were identified as integrating with EHRs or payer systems. The survey is open.
• The preliminary survey results will be presented at the ONC Tech Forum on September 16.

The Oracle Cerner Health Conference will return as an in-person event October 17-19, also offering a virtual track to those who prefer to attend remotely.

A study finds that expanded use of telehealth during the pandemic did not increase the overall use of primary care services, suggesting that it is serving as an alternative to in-person encounters instead of adding costs.

Other

In England, hospitals of Manchester University NHS Foundation Trust report delays of 12 hours and more along with cancelled appointments as they go live on Epic in a project they have named Hive.

I received a PR pitch from investor-backed, Toronto-based veterinary telehealth service Vetster, which cites a study that found that the US needs 41,000 additional veterinarians by 2030 as existing practices are being overwhelmed by a pandemic-driven increase in pet ownership that has backed up appointments for up to five months and cause some vets to stop taking new patients. The company says its telehealth marketplace for non-urgent services improves access, increases veterinarian income, and frees up clinics and urgent care hospitals to focus on cases that require hands-on treatment. The company also offers prescription delivery in some areas.

Hospitals are sending unprofitable outpatient primary care patients to independent, non-profit “Health Center Program Look-Alikes” that they create themselves, which are paid higher rates by Medicare and Medicaid, are eligible to buy discounted drugs under the 340B program, and can qualify newly hired doctors for federal help with student debt. KHN says that 108 look-alike health centers are in operation, sometimes on hospital campuses and sometimes staffed fully by hospital employees, to make it easy to divert non-urgent cases away from the ED. Lee Health says the program reduced unnecessary ED visits by 20%.

Sponsor Updates

• Upfront Healthcare adds new features to its patient engagement and access platform related to content and patient experience, interoperability and integration, and provider experience and outcomes measurement.
• Sectra publishes a new case study, “One for all – native support for automated breast ultrasound in Sectra’s expanded breast imaging PACS.”
• Surescripts releases a new There’s a Better Way: Smart Talk on Healthcare and Technology Podcast, “Innovation, Please: What’s Next and What’s Needed in Specialty Therapy.”
• Vocera releases a new Caring Greatly Podcast, “Managing the Polarity of Changing the System Versus Personal Resilience – Cynda Rushton.”
• Optum is recognized as Best in Class in the Aite Matrix for Payment Integrity, Number 1 in the 2022 HFS Top 10 Report on IT/Business Services for Healthcare Provider, and a leader in Everest Group’s 2022 RCM Operations PEAK Matrix Assessment.
• Well Health shares a new case study, “UNC Health App Increases Patient Engagement Through Well Health and Gozio Partnership.
• West Monroe publishes a new healthcare communications client story, “Building a digital customer success platform drives a 75% increase in new customers.”

Blog Posts

• Six Challenges to Delivering Quality Healthcare (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Nurses of Note Awards 2022: The Lead Advanced Practice Provider (PerfectServe)
• Lack of Standardized Data Collection Impedes Efforts to Advance Health Equity (Premier)
• The “Risk” of Value-Based Care (SyTrue)
• How Healthcare Technology Can Optimize Nursing Workflows (TigerConnect)
• The Importance of Mentorship in Private Practice (WebPT)
• ANCC’s Magnet Certification Journey: An Attractive Proposition (Part 2) (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 9/9/22

Top News

Walmart and UnitedHealth Group sign a 10-year deal to jointly offer preventive care for seniors and virtual healthcare for all age groups.

The deal gives Walmart access to new Medicare Advantage members while offering UnitedHealth a retail audience of potential insurance enrollees.

The venture will kick off in January at 15 Walmart Health locations in Georgia and Florida, with a focus on value-based care.

UHG’s Optum will provide analytics and decision support tools to Walmart Health’s clinicians, the companies will launch a co-branded Medicare Advantage plan in Georgia, and Walmart’s virtual care services will be added as an in-network offering of UnitedHealthcare’s Choice Plus PPO plan.

The companies plan to expand the collaboration across more insurers to include access to food, addressing social determinants of health, offering prescriptions and OTC medications, and providing dental and vision services.

Reader Comments

From EpicHiccup: “Re: Epic’s latest quarterly upgrade. Customers are being told to delay due to response time issues.” Verified. The company is telling customers to hold off until some fixes can be incorporated since the upgrade doesn’t contain any urgent regulatory or functionality updates.

From MN Nice: “Re: CMS No Surprises act. Enjoyed seeing my local provider find a good spot for displaying ‘your rights.’” At least the obscuring plant doesn’t seem fake or dead, which is always a discouraging sight in the office of someone you are trusting to help you stay alive and healthy.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Being peevish, I humbly request that work experience not be stated in the form of, “Tom has over 21 years of sales experience.” Just call it 21 with the realization that the world doesn’t care about Tom’s fractional years of employment. Otherwise, every working human would waste space – except on their hiring anniversary — prefacing their years with “over.”

Webinars

September 22 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2023 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, marketing director, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, marketing manager, IMO. The yearly update to ICD-10-CM is almost here. Prepare your organization for a smooth transition, and avoid any negative impacts to your bottom line, with an in-depth look at the upcoming changes. Listen to IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders discuss the 2023 ICD-10-CM coding changes. This webinar will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the ICD-10-CM code set and how to make sure you get properly reimbursed.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Vera Whole Health and Castlight Health rename their combined value-based care and navigation company Apree Health and hire former Cerner President Donald Trigg as CEO. Vera acquired Castlight for $370 million in February 2022.

Mental health app and services vendor Headspace Health acquires Shine, which offers a meditation and self-care app.

Investment firm Carlyle forms Atmas Health, which will acquire medical technology and life sciences companies as buy-and-build, carve-out and take-private transactions.

Streamline Health Solutions reports Q1 results: revenue up 109%, EPS –$0.07 versus $0.00. STRM shares are down 6% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 23% loss, valuing the company at $81 million.

Premier-owned Contigo Health pays $178 million in cash to acquire contracts with 900,000 providers and cost containment technology from TRPN, from which it will create a new out-of-network health plan administration product for self-funded employer health plans.

Sales

• Michigan Medicine expands its use of Loyal’s digital experience technology by adding chatbot functionality to answer consumer questions about locations, providers, bills, and COVID support.
• Patient education video company Mytonomy chooses Redox to integrate its video-based patient engagement solution with EHRs.

People

Therapy and rehab EHR/PM vendor Raintree hires Nick Hedges, MBA (MomentFeed) as CEO, Darian Hong, MBA (Act) as CFO, and Rob Rust (Wondr Health) as CTO.

Health Catalyst promotes Kevin Freeman to chief growth officer, Tarah Bryan, MA to chief marketing officer, and Dave Ross to CTO. President Patrick Nelli will transition to advisor.

Cue Health hires David Tsay, MD, PhD (Apple) as chief medical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

CloudWave launches OpSus Cloud Services with seven healthcare clients, bringing its total customer count to 250 in completing the company’s best-ever quarter.

Cipher Skin, which offers a sensor-powered musculoskeletal rehabilitation remote monitoring platform, rolls out biometric extremity sleeves, a chest motion sensor, bill capture for RTM services, and EHR data sharing with Kno2.

Augmedix releases Prep, a service that organizes chart details to allow physicians to quickly prepare for an encounter.

Government and Politics

An HHS OIG report finds that telehealth use by Medicare beneficiaries jumped 88-fold early in the pandemic, which also resulted in flagging 1,714 providers for submitting questionable bills that totaled $128 million. An interesting finding is that more than half of these high-risk providers practice in a medical group that has a least one other high-risk provider, suggesting that certain practices are encouraging questionable billing. OIG also notes that many providers billed questionably but under the threshold of this report, including 18,000 of them who billed the same service to both Medicare and Medicare Advantage and 5,700 who added a facility fee to a telehealth encounter bill.

Other

A new Compliance Today article not only has a fantastic title that references “When A Stranger Calls,” but brings attention to the non-EHR data that providers should consider in preparing for the next round of information blocking requirements that goes into effect on October 6. Examples of what an organization probably needs to be able to provide:

• Radiology images to outside providers.
• The ability to bring in records of outside providers to be used for diagnosis and treatment decisions.
• Data submitted to cancer and tumor registries.
• Pharmacy, case management, and billing data that is stored outside the EHR.
• Information in legacy EHRs and billing systems that wasn’t brought into the current one.

Insider asks several VCs which health tech startups are the most promising. Those that are health IT focused and have no financial connection to the recommender:

• Commure (data exchange tools).
• Flexpa (allows patients to collect and share their health information).
• Infinitus (voice-powered provider-insurer insurance verification).
• Lasso (healthcare marketing).
• Ribbon Health (automatically collects data about providers, insurers, and care quality).
• Truepill (telehealth, at-home lab testing, and mail-order prescription delivery).
• Turquoise Health (consumer healthcare and insurance price comparison).

Sponsor Updates

• Quippe Clinical Lens from Medicomp Systems is added to the Cerner App Gallery.
• First Databank names Kim Hart customer success consultant, Chris Buckley inside sales manager, and Kyle Doneth talent acquisition manager.
• Clearwater will sponsor the AEHiS Healthcare Security Leaders Forum September 26-28 in Lake Buena Vista, FL.
• HCTec publishes a new case study, “HCTec’s Legacy EHR Support Enables Prisma Health’s Epic Transition.”
• CHIME releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast, “Rapid Change, Remote Success, and RPA with Andy Smith,” founder and managing partner of Impact Advisors.

Blog Posts

• How Education Helps with Suicide Prevention (Healthwise)
• Bridging the Digital Divide in Healthcare – No Person Left Behind (InterSystems)
• Clinical interface terminology: Healthcare’s Rosetta Stone (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Diagnosing Rural Health with Beth O’Connor, NRHA President (Part 1) (Medhost)
• Healthcare is not aviation (Nordic)
• 4 ways Berkshire Health System is optimizing Expanse Ambulatory (Meditech)
• Respirator Fit Test and Flu Season for Employee Health: How to Manage it Together (Net Health)
• How to Solve America’s Adolescent Mental Health Crisis (NeuroFlow)
• AI in Radiology, part 3: How can AI’s ‘super-vision’ reduce cognitive load in radiology reporting? (Nuance)

Contacts

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

News 9/7/22

Top News

CVS Health will acquire home-based care company Signify Health for $30.50 per share in a deal valued at $8 billion.

Amazon and UnitedHealth had also expressed interest in the company.

Signify Health CEO Kyle Armbrester, MBA, who came to the company in 2018 after seven years with Athenahealth, will continue to lead the business as a part of CVS Health.

The deal is CVS Health’s second largest in recent years, having acquired Aetna in 2018 for $70 billion.

Modern Healthcare notes that the three largest Medicare Advantage insurers will now control the three largest homecare providers.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents are mixed on why Amazon is closing Amazon Care, with the most common speculation being that its pending acquisition of One Medical is more important to the company or that the company is realizing that healthcare is too complicated to disrupt. IANAL says One Medical is a disruptor that has a better business model than Amazon Care’s selling telehealth and low-acuity home to employers, Fail fast ponders just how poorly things were going with Amazon Care if Amazon didn’t even attempt to combine its work with One Medical, and DD says anything short of creating a national, vertically comprehensive solution won’t appeal to big employers.

New poll to your right or here: In the most recent health IT purchase or sale with which you were involved, what initially triggered the buyer’s interest? It’s probably not easy to say with certainty and I couldn’t list every possible answer, but I’m curious what got the buyer’s initial attention.

Webinars

September 22 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2023 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, marketing director, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, marketing manager, IMO. The yearly update to ICD-10-CM is almost here. Prepare your organization for a smooth transition, and avoid any negative impacts to your bottom line, with an in-depth look at the upcoming changes. Listen to IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders discuss the 2023 ICD-10-CM coding changes. This webinar will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the ICD-10-CM code set and how to make sure you get properly reimbursed.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

BJC HealthCare and Washington University School of Medicine will collaborate with CuriMeta, which will provide de-identified, real-world data for research. The organizations also led the company’s $6 million Series A funding round. Founder Davis Walp, MBA previously provided real-world data brokerage services to pharma.

Virtual primary care company 98point6 secures $20 million in new funding, which it will use to scale the licensing of its services to health systems. MultiCare Health System (WA) has implemented 98point6’s technology as part of its Indigo Health ambulatory division, which operates hybrid primary and urgent care clinics.

AESOP Technology, which offers AI-powered medication management and clinical decision support software, raises $3 million. The company, a spinoff of Taipei Medical University in Taiwan, opened an office in San Francisco in 2020.

Business Insider reports that Amazon is internally testing a direct-to-consumer telemedicine and online prescription drug service that will compete with the likes of Hims and Ro.

A New York Times opinion piece says that while Amazon is a Goliath in product sales, its money, technology, and logistics can’t fix the mess that is American healthcare:

Any company claiming its innovation will revolutionize American healthcare by itself is selling a fantasy. There is no technological miracle waiting around the corner that will solve problems caused by decades of neglectful policy decisions and rampant fraud. And a fix aimed at just the upper crust of employer-sponsored health coverage has no hope of making healthcare more accessible to those who are truly being left behind. Amazon Care and One Medical saw the same market opportunity within the crisis-ridden American healthcare system: a paid escape hatch for the better-off … But part of why Amazon Care had difficulties is that not all aspects of primary care are so simple that they can be performed in your home or through a video consultation (which is nevertheless a valuable service that is no doubt here to stay). For anything more complicated, patients would still have to visit a traditional clinic, meaning they would have to contend with all the things that are most tiresome about American healthcare: insurance, phone calls, and drug prices — if they can get the time off to visit the doctor at all.

People

Eric Brill (Hillrom) joins AirStrip as SVP of advanced clinical alarm communications and care coordination.

WellSky promotes Lauren Witlen to VP of marketing, connected networks.

UConn Health names Rick McCarthy, MS (White Plains Hospital) CIO.

George “Buddy” Hickman, MS (Harris Health System) joins First Health Advisory as chief strategy officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Bonita Community Health Center (FL) will transition to Epic as part of its acquisition by Lee Health.

Biotech company Freenome launches a study of cancer risk factors using Oracle Cerner’s Learning Health Network and study enrollment technology from Elligo Health Research, in which Oracle Cerner is an investor.

Government and Politics

The Federal Trade Commission launches an anti-trust investigation into Amazon’s plan to acquire One Medical as part of the deal’s regulatory approval process.

Moncrief Army Health Clinic at Fort Jackson (SC) will go live on MHS Genesis later this month.

Privacy and Security

The Ottawa Hospital in Canada recovers from an unspecified hardware issue that took its Epic, Cerner, PACs, Rhapsody, and Spok systems offline over the weekend.

Other

The Verona paper reports that 5,500 Epic customers attended UGM, double the number that came to last year’s COVID-compromised conference.

Regional Medical Center (SC) is working with its auditors to adjust its financial reporting model following its year-ago conversion to Cerner CommunityWorks, which it says “is still not functioning as originally expected” as gross accounts receivable increased by 70% and bill submission slowed.

A study of 175,000 Medicare beneficiaries with opioid use disorders finds that those who were offered expanded access to telehealth services remained in treatment longer and experienced reduced risk of overdose.

In Finland, 619 doctors file a complaint with the National Supervisory Authority for Health and Welfare about Epic’s patient record software that was installed at Helsinki University Hospital District last year. The doctors say the system has caused problems with patient data exchange and medication management, has lost information, and offers poor user experience.

Sponsor Updates

• PMD launches a new website reflecting its shift to end-to-end healthcare solutions.
• Microsoft publishes a case study featuring EClinicalWorks, “EClinicalWorks thrives in the cloud with Azure Virtual Machines and Azure Disk Storage.”
• Premier’s Pinc AI Applied Sciences division will use Datavant Switchboard and Privacy Hub to connect, certify, and license or provide research services on linked tokenized datasets for life sciences and health system partners.
• Nuance reports that customers like RWJBarnabas Health, University of Michigan Health-West, and others average 47% cost savings with 40% call containment and 30% patient self-service rates with its patient engagement solutions.
• Surescripts reports that providers used its Record Locator & Exchange service to access the health records of more than 62 million patients and exchange more than 622 million clinical documents in the first half of 2022.
• Clearwater completes its acquisition of CynergisTek, bringing together cybersecurity, privacy, and compliance leaders.
• Bamboo Health and CarePort will exhibit at the National Association of ACOs Fall 2022 Conference September 8-9 in Washington, DC.
• Biofourmis will present at the Mobile Tech in Clinical Trials Conference September 12 in Boston.
• Oracle Cerner publishes a new client achievement, “HHSC Kauai Region implements a clinically driven revenue cycle for a healthier bottom line.”
• CloudWave will exhibit at the TORCH Fall Conference September 12-15 in Round Rock, TX.

Blog Posts

• Nurse retention strategies: 3 practical ways to reduce nurse turnover (Ability Network)
• 3 ways AI-enabled RPM is improving care delivery (AdvancedMD)
• Understanding Hospital KPIs: The Role of Technology in Improving Performance (AGS Health)
• How to steer clear of healthcare data blind spots (Arcadia)
• Quitting Time Part 2: DRVS Tools to Support Tobacco Cessation Programs (Azara Healthcare)
• 5 ways to prioritize patients and profitability (Bravado Health)
• IT Service Desk Performance Resources for Continuous Improvement (CereCore)
• The Issue of Persisting Clinical Communication Gaps (ChartLogic)
• It’s Hard to Improve Cyber Resiliency When Reactive Security Prevails (Clearwater)
• Highlights from the 2022 Hub and Specialty Pharmacy Models East Conference (ConnectiveRx)
• The Complex Spiral of Oncology Medication Prior Authorization (CoverMyMeds)
• How Digital Twins Can Accelerate Healthcare Transformation (CTG)
• Why Usability is So Critical to Healthcare IT (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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