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.

News 9/2/22

Top News

Emergency medical services technology vendor ESO acquires Occam Technologies, which offers an EMPI platform.

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

Wheel, which offers virtual health infrastructure and clinical services, lays off 35 employees, representing 17% of its headcount. The company says the workforce reduction will allow it change focus from building a marketplace to developing an enterprise platform.

Sectra creates a genomics IT business unit and will work with University of Pennsylvania Health System to develop a precision medicine solution.

Insurer Oscar Health announces in an SEC filing that a Florida health plan is cancelling its contract to use Oscar’s technology platform. Health First Health Plans, which previously announced that it was pausing its implementation of the +Oscar system due to integration challenges, was generating $60 million in annual revenue for Oscar.

Walgreens Boots Alliance completes its acquisition of a majority stake in CareCentrix, which sells predictive analytics and homecare technology.

Innovaccer reportedly lays off 120 employees, about 8% of its workforce, nine months after it ran a $150 million Series E funding round that valued the company at $3 billion.

Specialty acute care telemedicine vendor SOC Telemed acquires Forefront Telecare, which offers virtual behavioral health services.

Sales

• Visage Imaging signs contracts with Montage Health, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Bay Imaging Consultants.

People

Katherine Virkstis, ND (Advisory Board) joins Get Well as VP of clinical advisory services.

Announcements and Implementations

The Sequoia Project publishes QHIN standard operating procedures and an application for designation, which it will begin accepting on October 3.

The CommonWell Health Alliance will apply to become a QHIN.

Ochsner Health incorporates oncology precision medicine information from Tempus in its Epic system.

Southern Ohio Medical Center reports a 30% reduction in hospital-acquired C. difficile infections following work with Meditech Professional Services and implementation of Expanse tools.

Wellstar Health System will close money-losing 460-bed Atlanta Medical Center on November 1, leaving Grady Memorial Hospital as the city’s only level 1 trauma center.

Masimo releases its $499 W1 consumer health watch, which offers continuous monitoring of oxygen saturation, pulse rate, respiration rate, and hydration levels. The medical version, which is available only outside the US, adds spot check ECG, atrial fibrillation detection, and a remote monitoring and telehealth application for clinicians and hospitals.

Privacy and Security

Credit rating agency Fitch Ratings says that the cost of cyber risk mitigation is increasing for non-profit hospitals even as their margins are decreasing, placing them at more risk for cyberattacks.

Other

A physician-authored opinion piece calls the EHR inbox an “after-hours second job for physicians” who are expected to respond to patient messages and manage low-value inbox notices without compensation or adjusted productivity targets. The authors recommend:

• Measure the volume of inbox messages and the time required to manage them.
• Turn off low-value messages, such as for tests ordered but not yet resulted and notifying primary care physicians of every test ordered during an inpatient stay.
• Assign a lower-license team to review new messages, resolve those they can, and then meet with the physician to manage the rest.
• Pay physicians for providing patient services via email and include that work in productivity measures.
• Research the non-visit inbox work across specialties, assess the risk and benefits to patient care of that work, and study the effectiveness of interventions that are intended to reduce inbox management demands.

A behavioral health researcher whose bipolar disorder has required numerous medication changes over the years recommends that clinicians use a simple, shareable form to document when a patient’s drugs are started, stopped, or adjusted along with the reason for the change. The document would help patients remember their medication history and avoid having a medication ordered that was previously unsuccessful.

An emergency medicine physician leaves the specialty, citing inappropriate ED use that is fueled by hospital administrators and contracted ED operators who boost profits by encouraging people to visit the ED for sports physicals and other non-emergent issues. Leonard Arnavi, MD also observes that hospitals push HIPAA responsibilities onto doctors even though ED layouts guarantee a lack of privacy, tie compensation to patient satisfaction surveys that force doctors to choose between practicing good medicine versus giving patients what they want, and train resident physicians poorly in their quest to capture GME funds and to create a supply of cheap labor.

Zus Health founder Jonathan Bush provides his always-interesting perspective to Fast Company. Snips:

• The hospital itself can only serve the people that can drive there. They’re in a local battle for a deep, vertical monopoly … [new market entrants are saying], “I’m going to take one narrow thing—anxiety, prediabetes—and crush it nationally.” These new companies don’t give a shit about vertical monopoly. They have no plans on even having an exam room, let alone a lab, a pharmacy, an operating room, an imaging center.
• A new class of company that on their most selfish day are happy to share data because that’s not how they make money; they can’t win by controlling your referral patterns beyond what they’re focused on.
• While Amazon has been able to keep its true North Star ever “closer to the customer,” One Medical has needed to seek payment from one hospital provider over another. This channel conflict with consumer interest will be very tough to iron out as the market heats up.
• [Health IT startups should] quickly get to the thing that no one else has and spend all your R&D, design, product time on that and rent everything else, at least until you get to break even or get to some sort of operational stability. That may be obvious advice, but during this last orgy of nearly free capital, people forgot it, and many young people started businesses not ever knowing that was a thing, and they’re about to get a massive bucket of water on their head explaining it to them.

Sponsor Updates

• Tegria supports the Snoqualmie Valley Schools Foundation in Snoqualmie, WA.
• PerfectServe celebrates its 25th anniversary.
• Surescripts releases a new episode of its There’s a Better Way: Smart Talk on Healthcare and Technology Podcast, “Healthcare, Tech, and Capitol Hill.”
• Vocera releases a new Caring Greatly podcast, “Linking Leader and Team Member Well-Being.”
• Sixteen of Wolters Kluwer Health’s Lippincott healthcare publications earn 24 wins in the annual Awards for Publication Excellence competition.
• Surescripts announces that use of its Record Locator and Exchange increased by 76% in the first half of 2022 versus 2021, exchanging 622 million clinical documents for 62 million Americans.

Blog Posts

• How Better Clinical Communication Can Reduce Sentinel Events (PerfectServe)
• How optimizing your emergency department system improves the clinician and patient experience (Meditech)
• Data management in the age of telehealth (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Leveraging the Find Care Experience to Help Alleviate Workforce Shortages (Kyruus)
• Top 3 Strategies for Rural Healthcare Success (Medhost)
• TEFCA: A leap toward achieving nationwide interoperability (Oracle Cerner)
• Your Rehab Therapy EMR: The Key to Documentation Efficiency (Net Health)
• Behavioral Health CPT Codes for 2023 Encourage BHI & Technology Adoption (NeuroFlow)
• How Data Interoperability Can Be an Elixir for Expediting Clinical Trial Results (NTT Data)
• How to Alleviate Staffing Challenges with Automation (Nym)
• Can OpenNotes Be Too Open? (Nordic)
• Revamp the Patient Journey to Increase Revenue (PatientBond)
• Three Key Policies to Advance At-Home Care (Premier)
• Care for the Caregiver: It’s Not Selfish … It’s Practical (Quil)
• 2023 is Coming! Plan (and Budget) for These Risk Adjustment Challenges (RCxRules)
• 6 things to consider with inpatient virtual care (Sonifi Health)
• How digital transformation in healthcare improves patient experience (Talkdesk)
• 5G and the Coming Home Health Revolution (Tegria)
• 4 Things You’re Missing Out on by Not Leveraging Remote Therapeutic Monitoring (WebPT)
• ANCC’s Magnet Certification Journey: An Attractive Proposition (Part 1) (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 8/31/22

Top News

Politico points out that the HHS Office for Civil Rights can’t keep up with investigating healthcare cyberattacks, helping healthcare organizations better protect themselves against attacks, and enforcing HIPAA.

The office lacks funding, staff, and other resources. Fewer than 100 OCR investigators, some of whom are tasked with other duties, are expected to deal with 53,000 cases this year.

A 2023 budget increase, if passed, will allow the office to hire 37 more investigators.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I failed to add some of Dr. Jayne’s photos in her Monday recap of Epic UGM, so check out the updated version.

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

Post-acute care coordination software vendor Olio Health raises $13 million in a Series A funding round.

Critical event management technology company Everbridge reportedly considers putting itself up for sale, causing its share price to jump 17% in after-hours trading. The Vermont-based company went through a proxy fight earlier this year with an activist investor who called for Everbridge’s sale in the midst of falling share prices. David Wagner (Zix) joined the company as CEO in July.

Healee raises $2 million in a seed funding round led by Nina Capital. The company’s white-label technology helps providers set up telehealth, digital appointment scheduling, and patient check-in services.

Medical product RFID tracking vendor Biolog-ID announces plans to go public in a $300 million SPAC merger.

Sales

• ScionHealth (KY) will implement Cadence’s remote patient monitoring and virtual care technology across its 18 community hospitals.

People

Former National Coordinator and Health Evolution founder David Brailer, MD, PhD joins Cigna as EVP/chief health officer.

Nilesh Patil (Emids) joins WellStack as chief growth and strategy officer.

Medhost names CFO Matthew Higgins president of MedTeam Solutions, its newly consolidated and expanded line of business services.

Steve Gottfried (Curasev) joins Myndshft as VP of business development.

New York-Presbyterian Hospital promotes Rhonda Bartlett, DBA, RN to VP of digital services.

Announcements and Implementations

Blessing Health System (IL) implements Wolters Kluwer Health’s POC Advisor for sepsis detection and patient management at Blessing Hospital and Illini Community Hospital.

Conduit Health Partners announces GA of remote patient monitoring nursing services.

Children’s Hospital New Orleans will use Cleveland Clinic’s e-radiology service to ensure that its clinicians have around-the-clock access to pediatric radiology experts.

Lee Health (FL) expands its virtual care services with remote patient monitoring capabilities from Health Recovery Solutions.

Redox announces a major expansion of its interoperability operations in Canada.

Government and Politics

The VA names Lynette Sherrill deputy assistant secretary for information security and CISO.

Lyster Army Health Clinic at Fort Rucker Army Base (AL) and the 78th Medical Group at Robins Air Force Base (GA) will go live on MHS Genesis next month.

Other

Morris Hospital & Healthcare Centers (IL) recognizes Nikki Jackson as its Fire Starter of the Month for her work as an applications specialist within its IT department. CIO John Wilcox says Jackson’s value was especially evident during the Kronos timekeeping outage last year: “Nikki was able to build a temporary timekeeping system for us through iShare, something many organizations that were in the same situation weren’t able to replicate. It really displayed what Nikki is able to do for our organization every day.”

West Virginia University Medicine opens its first pediatric telemedicine and specialty clinic in an effort to help families in rural, southern parts of the state access care.

Sponsor Updates

• Surescripts joins Civitas Networks for Health as a strategic business and technology partner.
• Ascom receives FIPS 140-2 certification for the Myco3 smartphone.
• Baker Tilly publishes a new case study, “Real-world evidence help medical device company navigate CMS reimbursement rule.”
• Bamboo Health donates technology to Jefferson County Public Schools, the Louisville Tool Library, and UpLouisville.
• Nordic releases a new video highlighting its metadata-driven pipeline.
• Oracle Cerner releases a new podcast, “How data and tech advancements enabled innovation in the Middle East.”
• KLAS rates Clearwater as a top performer in its new research report reviewing the security and privacy consulting services market.
• Clinical Architecture celebrates its 15^th anniversary.
• Direct Recruiters hires Guru Brandes-Swamy (LetsGetChecked) as director of analytics for its healthcare IT and life sciences practice.
• Texas Children’s Hospital CIO Myra Davis joins Divurgent’s advisory board.
• Ellkay publishes a new customer success story, “WakeMed Health. Connectivity and Error Reduction Produce Big ROI.”
• KLAS recognizes Impact Advisors for exceeding client expectations in its new research report reviewing the security and privacy consulting services market.

Blog Posts

• Back to school: Top scholarly tools for 2022 (AdvancedMD)
• The Future of HIM Audits (AGS Health)
• What is value-based care? ACOs and the future of healthcare (Arcadia)
• Three Ways to Manage the Healthcare Supply Chain in An Era of Disruption (Ascom)
• Tips for managing patient-provider communications during a practice merger (Bravado Health)
• Optimize Orders in Meditech Now to Save Providers Time Later (CereCore)
• 4 Characteristics to Look for in a Change Management Partner (CTG)
• The Healthcare Economy’s New Conundrum (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Power of Data is Expanding: Reflections from the CMS HL7 FHIR Connectathon for 2022 (Diameter Health)
• Making the Case for Value-Based Care: BCBS Execs Speak Out (Enlace Health)
• Digital Care Management: The Evolution of Patient-First Solutions (Get Well)
• How data supports initiatives to automate implant orders (GHX)
• St. Luke’s University Health Network’s Cloud Transformation Journey (HCI Group)
• Tips for Hiring and Managing Remote Workers (Healthcare IT Leaders)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 8/29/22

Top News

An August 5 ransomware attack on software vendor Advanced that took down England’s 111 service along with mental health and community systems may not be resolved for several weeks, hospital employees are told.

Hospitals say that updating patient information after the systems are restored usually requires two weeks for each day of downtime, meaning that it could take up to a year before clinicians have access to full patient records online.

People who call 111 are waiting on hold for an average of 6.5 minutes versus the target of 20 seconds. Public health campaigns are urging people to call 111 instead of visiting hospital emergency departments in anticipation of backups this winter that are caused by “fuel poverty,” with gas and electricity bills expected to double in October.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Nearly two-thirds of poll respondents would not post a “looking for work” item on LinkedIn. Some say that strategy might work for a new grad or someone who needs a job, any job quickly, but basically LinkedIn is just another resume that will be ignored, especially with the “Facebook-ization” of the platform. I concur with DrShowoff’s advice: clean up your profile, add quantifiable numbers that illustrate your performance, use words that will help Linkedin searchers find you, and make sure your headshot is current and of high quality. To which I would add:

• Don’t refer to yourself in the third person as though an unseen, admiring biographer penned your profile.
• Write like you talk.
• Make your “About” summary the story you would want to tell a potential hirer first.
• Be concise in your “Experience” items and don’t waste space describing the business that each employer was in (anyone likely to hire you knows that Cedars-Sinai Medical Center is a hospital, for instance).
• The objective is brevity, so omit anything that won’t impact your being hired – your GPA, your one-month try at consulting between jobs, and the membership groups that anyone can join by writing a check.
• Consider writing posts that show what you know, including videos if that’s a strength.
• Use the platform for messaging specific contacts instead of passively hoping that someone finds your profile.
• I usually pay no attention to bottom part of the profile (Skills, Interests, Honors and Awards, Organizations, etc.) although I’ll sometimes glance at “Recommendations.”

Speaking of LinkedIn advice, I’m spending my morning removing connections or unfollowing folks who hopefully understand that their repeated likes and comments are pushed into my newsfeed. I can grit my teeth through “humbled” self-promotion, company pitches, topics unrelated to healthcare IT, and vapid “inspiration” posts written as one-sentence paragraphs, but I’m not here (or anywhere else) for individual insights about politics, sports, or just about any topic that starts with “I don’t usually share personal posts on LinkedIn” and ends with doing exactly that. Surely we all know that potential employers or customers look people up on LinkedIn and make decisions accordingly, and that social media platforms power their most annoying and evil activities via newsfeeds that intentionally push content that you didn’t ask for.

New poll to your right or here: What is the #1 reason you think Amazon is shutting down its Amazon Care primary care business? I couldn’t list every possible answer, so feel free to add a poll comment with yours.

I’m feeling the need to learn. Who outside of the vendor world would make a good interview? Should I review a book or other creative work? I’m most interested in the less-represented folks rather than those who are amply promoted by themselves or others, although it’s often a challenge for the rank-and-file people to get employer permission to be interviewed.

Webinars

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

Sales

• SAP-owned marketing technology vendor Emarsys contracts for cybersecurity and HIPAA compliance managed services from Clearwater.

People

Net Health hires Gabe Hesse (Arrive Health) as CTO and promotes Kevin Keenahan, MSE to chief product officer.

Kidney care company Somatus hires Joe Kimura, MD, MPH (Atrius Health) as chief medical officer.

Gene Sawyer (Optum) joins Evergreen Nephrology as CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

A eight-customer KLAS review of Microsoft cloud technologies in healthcare is favorable, with clients reporting stable cloud solutions that aren’t oversold. However, they are less enthused about the company’s delivery of new technology and its track record of keeping promises, noting specifically that Teams needs work and the company’s licensing and cost issues are concerning. Amazon Web Services rates stronger in technology and keeping promises, while Microsoft performs better in executive involvement and partnership. Common uses of Azure are virtual desktops, virtual data centers, digital pathology image storage, AI/ML computing, and EHR hosting. More than half of customers say Microsoft’s cloud technologies reduced specific costs and shortened project timelines.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Can OpenNotes be too open? (Nordic)
• Medicare Mythbusters: 5 Medicare Advantage Insights to Know for Open Enrollment (PatientBond)
• How Better Clinical Communication Can Reduce Sentinel Events (PerfectServe)
• Three Key Policies to Advance At-Home Care (Premier)
• 6 things to consider with inpatient virtual care (Sonifi Health)
• How Medical Systems Solve Clinical Workflow Challenges with TigerConnect Roles and Teams (TigerConnect)
• To help retain nurses, fix communication: NASA TLX survey (Vocera)

Contacts

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

News 8/26/22

Top News

Amazon will close Amazon Care on December 31. It says that despite high patient satisfaction, the three-year-old virtual care offering did not provide a complete solution for its target audience of employers, concluding in an internal email that the business “wasn’t going to work long term.”

Amazon says it knew the business was not likely to be successful before it decided to acquire primary care chain One Medical, which was announced July 21. Some observers speculate that Amazon decided to focus on One Medical, which also sells to employers and offers telemedicine services. That acquisition has not yet received regulatory clearance.

Amazon had recently announced an expansion of Amazon Care locations and services for 2022.

A Washington Post article from last week quoted company nurses who questioned Amazon’s heavy-handed operation of the business despite its limited healthcare knowledge.

Shares in Medicare Advantage home care operator Signify Health, which is reported to be the target of acquisition interest by Amazon (along with UnitedHealth and others), jumped on the news.

Some of the online reactions:

• The company may have concluded that it makes more sense to work with providers instead of self-insured employers since the most expensive patients aren’t usually covered by employer insurance.
• Amazon Care may have hit a wall in hiring clinical employees.
• One Medical offers telehealth services, but also runs in-person clinics.
• Some speculate that Amazon is closing the business to ease any regulatory concerns that are related to its One Medical acquisition.
• The implications of Amazon not finding a go-forward path in telehealth may spill over into traditional providers.
• The failure of both Amazon Care and its Haven joint project may have caused Amazon to realize the challenges of building versus acquiring a healthcare business.

Webinars

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

Sales

• Baptist Health South Florida will implement Innovaccer Health Cloud for population health analytics, provider engagement, and care management.
• Northern Ireland’s Department of Health chooses Lyniate to connect health and social systems to Epic, which goes live nationally in 2023.
• MedAllies will implement Lyniate EMPI by NextGate.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic CEO Judy Faulkner says at the company’s UGM conference that the records of 162 million Americans are stored in its Cosmos research database, which was used to author an article with the CDC that progressed from first draft to publication in one month. The company also announced a Cosmos feature called “Look-alikes” that will allow physicians to submit symptoms of a puzzling diagnosis to identify patients who have similar issues and to share information with their doctors . An Epic developer took the stage to lay out the benefits that are accruing from moving to a web-based platform, including easier upgrades and the ability to improve usability.

Pacific Dental Services completes the implementation of Epic in its 900 practices, which it says will support the role of oral health in overall health. The company trained 14,000 employees in converted the records of 10 million patients in the transition from its previous practice management system.

In England, the Royal Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Foundation Trust goes live on GE Healthcare Edison True PACS on Amazon Web Services, which it says allows continuous cybersecurity patching and reduced carbon footprint.

Cardiology virtual care vendor MediCardia Health and aging-related genomics company Human Longevity launch a platform that uses extracted EHR data for patient risk assessment and remote patient monitoring. MediCardia founder and CEO Indrajit Choudhuri, MD completed fellowships in nuclear medicine, cardiovascular disease, and cardiac electrophysiology before starting the company in 2020.

First Databank launches FDB Navigo, which provides retail pharmacists with the patient’s most important risks, as derived from the pharmacy’s computer system, to help determine the “next best step.” 

Google announces the next generation of Fitbit wearables that includes the advanced, $300 Sense 2 smartwatch, which includes continuous heart rate monitoring and tracking of sleep and stress.

.

A new KLAS report on security and privacy consulting services finds high customer satisfaction with First Health Advisory and Impact Advisors, lowest overall scores for Intraprise Health and Meditology Services, and high satisfaction with managed services firms Fortified Health Security and CynergisTek (which will be acquired by Clearwater).

Government and Politics

The White House eliminates the optional 12-month journal article paywall embargo for federally-funded research projects, requiring journal publishers to make the articles and their associated data promptly available at no charge starting in 2026.

The Federal Trade Commission files a complaint about advertising technology vendor Kochava, saying that the company’s tools potentially violate the health privacy of consumers whose location and time are logged and then sold. The company denies the allegations, but says it will stop collecting mobile device user locations that involve health.

Other

A study of Epic Cosmos data finds that while 50% of suspected overdose patients are tested for opiates in the ED, only 5% of them are also tested for fentanyl, which was involved in 56,000 overdose deaths in 2020. The authors speculate that fentanyl testing is uncommon because it is usually not included in ED toxicology screening panels.

The New Yorker takes an on-the-ground look at what it’s like for residents of a nursing home that is acquired by a private equity firm. Spoiler: executives care only about cutting costs, always painfully and sometimes dangerously, and using complex corporate structures to protect the parent organization from the inevitable lawsuits over lower care quality.

Sponsor Updates

• NTT Data staff serve children and families staying at The Children’s Inn at the National Institutes of Health.
• Intelligent Medical Objects publishes a new case study featuring Piedmont Healthcare, “Optimizing OR scheduling and perioperative workflows.”
• Juniper Networks announces key milestones that highlight the company’s growth in the wired and wireless access space, including gaining the largest US healthcare provider as a customer.
• Nordic joins KLAS’s Arch Collaborative that looks at EHR best practices and clinician burnout.
• Surescripts joins interoperability organization Civitas Networks for Health.

Blog Posts

• Blessing Health targets smarter sepsis surveillance with Wolters Kluwer (Wolters Kluwer)
• How to Collect Patient Feedback in Urgent Care (Experity)
• The STAR Method: Four Steps to Make a Lasting Impression in Your Next Interview (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Leverage Your Hospital EHR to Reduce Medication Dispensing Errors (Medhost)
• The role of EHR extensions in enhancing patient care (Nordic)
• Keeping patients up to date on immunizations with patient registries (Meditech)
• Hold on Tight: Waves of Healthcare Regulations Ahead in Effort to Solve Prior Authorization Woes (Myndshft)
• Be Consistent, Focused In Your Rehab Therapy Marketing Strategy (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 8/24/22

Top News

Struggling Babylon Health cancels its last NHS contract eight years early, saying that the projects aren’t profitable enough to continue in a cost-cutting environment.

Babylon had offered an AI-based chatbot for triaging patients and a telehealth service.

The company will focus on the US market, where the for-profit healthcare system generates more potential funding.

BBLN shares are down more than 90% since the company went public in a SPAC merger in October 2021.

Reader Comments

From Long Island IT: “Re: Northwell. Word in metro New York is that it is talking to Epic now that its CIO, who was tied tightly to Allscripts, is gone and the product set has been sold to Harris.” Unverified. Northwell and Allscripts announced in October 2019 that they would co-develop a next-generation EHR (which never happened) and Northwell extended its Allscripts contracts through 2027.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Shares of Signify Health jump on the news that Amazon is reportedly interested in acquiring the home healthcare company, joining CVS Health and UnitedHealth. Final bids for Signify, which could achieve an $8 billion valuation, are due around Labor Day. UnitedHealth’s bid of $30 a share has made it the frontrunner thus far, followed by Amazon, which acquired membership-based primary care company One Medical last month for nearly $4 billion.

Virtual care company Recuro Health acquires Competitive Health, which offers digital health programs to employers. Recuro, which was founded last year by Teladoc founder Michael Gorton, acquired virtual primary care company WellVia in April.

Shares of Zoom took a beating on Tuesday as the company reported mixed quarterly results and lowered its forecast after enterprise sales failed to offset the loss of consumer users. A huge growth in Microsoft Teams users isn’t helping. ZM shares peaked in October 2020 at $559. They are now at $81, having lost 75% of their value in the past 12 months.

Sales

• Baptist Health chooses Censinet for vendor and product risk assessment.
• BronxCare Health System will implement virtual physical therapy, care paths, and remote education from Force Therapeutics for its orthopedic patients.

People

Suki names Belwadi Srikanth, MBA (Google) VP of product and design.

Brittany Carter, MBA (Cboe Global Markets) joins ChartSpan as CFO.

Todd Garlitz, MBA (LexisNexis Risk Solutions) joins virtual genomic services company Genome Medical as VP of growth marketing.

David Wardlaw, MBA (MobileSmith Health) joins Avant-garde Health as SVP of sales.

Tamara Elias, MD (Merck) joins Nuance / Microsoft as SVP of strategy and business incubation.

Announcements and Implementations

Cone Health’s payer subsidiary, HealthTeam Advantage, implements Bamboo Health’s Pings real-time care notification technology.

Brown & Toland Physicians makes e-consults with Stanford Health Care (CA) subspecialists available to its network of primary care physicians.

The Sequoia Project selects HITRUST as the certifying body for organizations looking to prove compliance with TEFCA security requirements for designation as Qualified Health Information Networks.

Payments technology vendor Anomaly announces an AI-powered claims prediction engine that it says can identify likely actionable denials with 97% accuracy.

The National Cancer Institute awards a grant to Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center to publish best practices for telehealth-enabled cancer care, which will include a study of its MSK@Home program for breast and prostate cancer.

Privacy and Security

Methodist McKinney Hospital (TX) refuses to pay hackers to retrieve 360 gigabytes of data that was stolen in a recent ransomware attack, which also affected two Methodist surgery centers. The attack occurred between May and July. The hackers have threatened to sell the data on the dark web.

In France, ransomware hackers demand $10 million to restore the systems of 1,000-bed CHSF Hospital Centre, which is sending patients to other hospitals.

The federal government warns hospitals about voice phishing attacks, in which hackers use telephone calls to convince computer users to install malware. The targeted user receives an email indicating that a subscription that they never signed up for is ending or from what is claimed to be a government entity or technology company, with instructions to call a provided telephone number for more information.

Other

The Verona paper profiles Epic’s artist-in-residence Manabu Ikeda, whose on-campus studio is open for visitors each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 2:30 to 3:30 p.m.

A reader sent this shot of the famous opening campfire of Epic UGM. They offered kudos to the Verona fire department for managing the actual campfires. Meanwhile, I’ve read quite a few horror stories about would-be attendees who are sitting home because the airlines couldn’t figure out how to get them to Verona.

I had a photo of Judy’s keynote at Epic UGM inserted here that I should have noticed (as a couple of readers did who told me) that it was actually from last year’s conference, when the hall seemed emptier with distancing in place. That’s what I get for just searching Twitter for “EpicUGM” and forgetting that I would get old results since I almost never do a Twitter hashtag search. Anyway, Deep Space was apparently packed this week with 11,000 people in the audience. Thanks for the folks who let me know I goofed, and thanks in advance to whomever sends me a photo from this year’s session.

Sponsor Updates

• WebPT releases the Keet Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Dashboard and announces enhanced integrations with WebPT and Insight EHRs.
• Ellkay adds CRM data archiving to its LKArchive platform.
• CarePort will exhibit at the Chicago Care Coordination Summit August 30.
• An OptimizeRx study finds that its Evidence-Based Physician Engagement solution successfully identified doctors whose patients have treatment plans that may lapse due to a loss of insurance coverage.
• Biofourmis COO Jaydev Thakkar will present at the 2022 DPharm Idol Disrupt Event September 13 in Boston.
• Diameter Health exhibits at the Civitas Networks for Health Conference through August 24 in San Antonio.
• Bamboo Health makes its Crisis Management System available to support 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline regional call centers.

Blog Posts

• Healthcare leaders share four key insights on RCM innovation (Ability Network)
• How this simple cybersecurity practice could save you from a data breach (AdvancedMD)
• Healthcare analytics: build or buy? (Arcadia)
• Quitting Time Part 1: Integrating Programs to Drive Tobacco Cessation (Azara Healthcare)
• Leveraging Direct EHR Integration for Improved Clinical Efficiency and Patient Care (Bamboo Health)
• Making SDOH actionable at the point of care (Bravado Health)
• Patient Matching: It’s More Complicated Than You Think (CarePort)
• Meditech Expanse: Why Clinicians Love It (CereCore)
• Most Common IT Vulnerabilities for Practices (ChartLogic)
• Empowering Providers Through a Technology-Driven Physician Practice Management Platform (Clearwater)
• Defeating Copay Maximizer Programs: Supporting Clients in the Battle Against Payer Cost-Shifting (ConnectiveRx)
• Nursing Success within Hospital at Home (Current Health)
• Divurgent Turns 15 – A Look at Past, Present, and Future (Divurgent)
• Addressing the Acute Need for Chronic Care Services (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 8/22/22

Top News

VA data obtained by FedScoop under the Freedom of Information Act shows that the VA has had a least 45 days of Oracle Cerner downtime and 498 major incidents since its first rollout in September 2020.

The VA itself was responsible for one-third of the incidents.

The system issues caused 930 hours of incomplete functionality, 103 hours of degraded performance, and 40 hours of compete downtime.

The VA lists five medical centers as being live on the Oracle Cerner system — Spokane, WA; Walla Walla, WA; Columbus, OH; Roseburg, OR; and White City, OR. It has paused deployments that were scheduled for 2022 until next year.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough said in response to the FedScoop report, “The bottom line is that my confidence in the EHR is badly shaken … the system is not meeting those goals and needs major improvement. We at VA could not be more frustrated on behalf of Veterans and providers, and we’re holding Cerner, Oracle, and ourselves accountable to get this right.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The employers of most poll respondents haven’t had big layoffs in the past year.

New poll to your right or here: Would you post a “looking for work” article on LinkedIn if you needed a job? I’ve seen a ton of those lately and I would do the same – there’s no shame in seeking the next gig and LinkedIn’s reach is broad, although of unknown effectiveness.

The weather looks good for this week’s Epic UGM, with daytime highs barely reaching 80 and nicely cool, campfire nights in the high 50s. A few HIStalk sponsors updated me on what they’ll be doing there, so check that out. Your photos and reports are welcome.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor KeyCare. The newly launched company offers health systems access to a network of independent virtual care providers via its Epic-based platform, avoiding the challenge of overwhelmed internal providers and third-party telehealth vendors that use poorly integrated technologies. Health systems can easily augment their care teams, optimize capacity, and enhance their digital front doors by partnering with a nationwide network of virtual care groups, while patients can schedule appointments with virtualists from the health system’s MyChart portal or call center. Encounters are then documented in KeyCare’s Epic system, ensuring a seamless experience. The company’s first customer is BHSH Spectrum Health West Michigan Division, which says the service provides patient convenience while ensuring robust data sharing and streamlined clinical workflows. KeyCare and Spectrum Health will present details of their work at Epic UGM this week. KeyCare’s founder and CEO is industry long-timer Lyle Berkowitz, MD, aka DrLyle. The company just announced a $24 million Series A funding round. Thanks to KeyCare for supporting HIStalk. 

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Idaho Health Data Exchange files Chapter 11 bankruptcy after federal and state funding dries up, leaving it $4 million in debt. IHDE, which was created in 2008, says it will reduce costs and move toward heavier use of subscription and user-based fees. 

Announcements and Implementations

NHS will pilot the use of smart glasses by home care nurses, hoping to reduce nurse administrative work by sending visit transcription to the EHR and offering them a way to obtain instant second opinions virtually. The software was developed by physician-launched Concept Health, which offers virtual and augmented reality based programs for remote consultation, chronic condition recovery, pulmonary rehab, relaxation, pain relief, and fall prevention.

Government and Politics

The Federal Trade Commission says that hospital mergers that are approved by states under Certificates of Public Advantage – state laws that shield hospital mergers from federal antitrust enforcement – usually don’t improve quality, increase employee compensation, improve access, or lower costs. FTC notes that most of the hospitals that sought COPAs to accomplish a merger ended up creating a single-hospital monopoly and that competition is the best way to improve cost and quality.

Privacy and Security

Novant Health sends 1.3 million letters to patients whose information it shared with Facebook via the Meta Pixel website visitor tracking tool. Novant says it implemented the technology in May 2020 to track the effectiveness of its marketing campaign for the use of Epic MyChart to boost virtual visits, adding that Facebook received more information than the health system intended because Novant configured the tracking tool incorrectly. Novant says it may have sent email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, emergency contact lists, appointment types and dates, and button clicks and freetext entries. Website The Markup told several hospitals in May 2022 that they were sending PHI to Facebook, after which Novant and some other named health systems removed it. Novant says it asked Meta Facebook about removing the information of its patients, but the company never responded.

Other

Amazon Care nurses say they were surprised by some of the company’s decisions in running a health business virtually. Examples:

• Home care nurses were asked to dispose of medical waste at home and to use blood centrifuge machines in their cars.
• The company didn’t collect patient emergency contact information until clinical staff told them it was necessary.
• Amazon chose a “bargain basement” off-the-shelf EHR instead of waiting for a vendor to develop a custom one and equipped nurses with wireless stethoscopes that didn’t always work.
• Nurses were sent to see patients in hotel rooms and at street protests without tracking their locations or giving them emergency button software.
• They struggled to keep up with state-specific telehealth regulations and worried about outcomes from the company’s use of untrained contract nurses.
• They worried about the cultural divide between nurses and Amazon employees, one of whom reportedly told a telehealth nurse that they were considered “the warehouse workers of Amazon Care.”

A Wall Street Journal report describes the drug overdose death of a pre-med student who obtained Adderal from online mental health provider Done. Points:

• Companies such as Done generate prescriptions for stimulants such as Adderal after video calls that list as little as 10 minutes and pressure their contracted clinicians to issue prescriptions if patients seek them.
• The patient, who lived in a sober-living house, didn’t disclose his drug addiction history to Done’s nurse practitioner. He relapsed shortly afterward and died of a drug overdose.
• The nurse practitioner was new to the company and had little experience with ADHD. She says she checked California’s prescription drug monitoring database as required by law, but didn’t notice the patient was  prescribed Suboxone by a rehab center.
• The company, which was started by a former Facebook executive who has no medical background, considered firing the nurse practitioner because she was supposed to name a supervising physician as state law requires and had failed to do so.
• Done’s clinicians are paid $10 per month for each monthly renewal, with one of them saying that she made $20,000 per month cranking out refill prescriptions at 30 seconds each.
• The company responded to complaints about its practices from the patient’s mother by saying that it offers only a technical platform that matches patients to medical professionals, with no responsibility for any prescriptions that result.

Sponsor Updates

• Optum publishes a new success snapshot, “Regional One amplifies utilization review effectiveness with Optum Case Advisor.”
• Surescripts releases a new episode of its There’s a Better Way: Smart Talk on Healthcare and Technology Podcast, “The Giant Sequoia as a Metaphor for Advancing Interoperability.”
• Vocera publishes a new white paper, “Smart, connected hospital framework.”
• Ragan honors Well Health VP of People Marissa Morrison with a Platinum HR Award in the Future Leaders category.
• Verato will exhibit at the Civitas Networks for Health Annual Conference August 21-24 in San Antonio.

Blog Posts

• Telehealth Grants: The What, Where and Why (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Hospital Call Center Software: How to Solve the Top 3 Issues (PerfectServe)
• Physician Documentation Improvement Software Helps Bellin Health Improve RAF Score by 16 Percent (Premier)
• Five Ways to Ease Difficult Conversations About Transitions in Care (Quil)
• 6 Overwhelming Statistics That Illustrate the Staffing Challenge RCM Leaders Are Up Against (RCxRules)
• How health systems accelerate their RPM strategies with Redox (Redox)
• 10 ways digital signs can improve your hospital (Sonifi Health)
• Applying Blueprints to Revenue Cycle: How Christus Health Elevates Future-State Operations (Tegria)
• Understanding the financial impacts of clinical communication and collaboration (TigerConnect)
• 5 Ways to Retain Rehab Therapy Staff in 2022 and Beyond (WebPT)
• The Future of Healthcare: Acute-at-Home (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 8/19/22

Top News

KeyCare, which offers an virtual-first care platform that gives Epic-using health systems access to a network of independent virtual care providers, raises $24 million in a Series A funding round.

KeyCare’s founder and CEO is industry long-timer Lyle Berkowitz, MD.

The company’s website says that patients can use the service directly to connect with clinicians starting later this year

Reader Comments

From Quiet Cacaphony: “Re: Epic. Posted a job for a medical biller who will work on RCM activities for clients. Is this the start of a tentative or aggressive entry into rev cycle outsourcing, which Epic has eschewed? The job is based at headquarters with full benefits, so the strategy certainly doesn’t involve leveraging squeezed labor costs.” The job listing is nearly identical from one from mid-2017, when Epic was first launching billing services for Resolute Professional Billing customers, so this doesn’t seem like something new.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

UGM 2022 attendees: connect with HIStalk sponsors while you’re in Verona.

I dislike using “reimbursement” to refer to provider payments since the word means being repaid for expenses you incurred.  The correct but obsolete term is “imburse,” which simply means getting paid. It’s odd that hospitals and doctors try to hide the fact that they send bills, get paid, and make a profit from income that exceeds expense by calling it something else.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient engagement and access platform vendor Upfront acquires PatientBond, which offers patient relationship solutions. Upfront has raised $20 million through a Series B funding round.

Nurse job-matching website Incredible Health raises $80 million in a Series B funding round that values the company at $1.7 billion. Co-founder and CEO Iman Abuzeid, MBBS, MBA went directly from medical school into health consulting, worked in project management for AliveCor, and then started a healthcare customer retention software company with a colleague that they shut down to start their current venture.

ASG, which buys and runs vertical SaaS companies, acquires MediMatrix, which sells a solution for portable radiology imaging services.

HIPAA-compliant email vendor Paubox raises $10 million in funding.

Impact Advisors acquires business intelligence consulting firm C2 Healthcare.

Sales

• Warren General Hospital will implement Meditech Expanse in a $2.3 million project.
• British Columbia’s Fraser Health Authority chooses Picis Preop Manager, Anesthesia Manager, and PACU Manager for 11 acute care hospitals, integrated with Meditech as the health system replaces Client / Server with Expanse in an agreement signed in April 2022.
• Santa Cruz Health Information Organization chooses Verato’s master patient index and identity management platform.

People

Vyne promotes Steve Roberts to CEO. He replaces Lindy Benton, MS, who will serve as executive chair of the company’s board.

McLaren Health Care hires Derek Morkel, MHA (HealthTechS3) as SVP/CIO after serving as interim since late 2021.

Adam Tallinger, RPh, MHA takes a new position with Divurgent as VP of delivery.

Announcements and Implementations

Nuance and diagnostic intelligence company Covera Health launch the Quality Care Collaborative, which brings together payers, providers, and self-insured employers to support radiology quality improvement initiatives. Walmart has already joined the AHRQ-certified Patient Safety Organization as its first large-employer member.

Medical software vendor Parker Health will integrate First Databank’s FDB Vela, a cloud-native e-prescribing network, with its EHR.

Government and Politics

The Wall Street Journal reports that HHS is formulating how to shift the cost of COVID-19 vaccines and treatments to the commercial market instead of the federal government paying for everything.

Other

A study finds that higher-level EHR use is associated with a reduction in operating costs of urban hospitals – driven mostly by general / ancillary and outpatient costs – but rural hospitals don’t see any cost savings from their use. The authors note that rural hospitals more often choose vendors such as CPSI, Healthland, Evident, and Medhost than their urban counterparts, making the effect of vendor support uncertain when comparing urban versus rural hospitals.

Sponsor Updates

• CloudWave sponsors The Foundations for Firelands “Caddyshack” Open Golf Outing in support of cancer patients treated at Firelands Health.
• Get Well adds a new monkeypox digital care management plan to its library of over 250 digital care management plans.
• HIMSS Oregon appoints Pivot Point Consulting SVP Laura Kreofsky secretary and VP Joe Clemons sponsorship chair.
• Everbridge integrates its Travel Risk Management and Critical Event Management solutions into Everbridge Travel Protector for healthcare, businesses, and government organizations.
• Fivos Health will exhibit at AMP 2022 through August 20 in Chicago.
• Nordic posts a new episode in its “DocTalk” video series.
• Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at the Civitas Networks for Health 2022 Annual Conference August 21-24 in San Antonio.
• Lyniate releases the latest version of its Enterprise Master Patient Index by NextGate.
• Medicomp Systems releases a new Tell Me Where It Hurts Podcast featuring MedAllies CEO John Blair, MD.
• Meditech releases a new podcast, “Sparking Passion and Resilience: True Stories from Nurse Leaders.”
• NTT Data Senior Director of Statewide Consulting Patti Garofalo receives a Medicaid Enterprise Systems Conference Collaboration Award at MESC 2022.

Blog Posts

• Stay Compliant: Coding Updates Effective 10/1/22 (Experity)
• Eye-opening Facts Increase Urgency to Automate Bill-only Implant Orders (GHX)
• Eliminating Barriers to Digital Transformation in Healthcare: Practical Tips (Healthcare Triangle)
• Understanding the Evaluation and Management (E/M) Level Coding Changes for 2023 (Impact Advisors)
• Coevolving with the Evolution of Healthcare Management (InterSystems)
• What’s next for the CMIO? Ten leaders weigh in. (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Diameter Health & Availity: Building the Premier Healthcare Data and Engagement Platform for Better Health and a More Efficient Healthcare System (Diameter Health)
• Know Your Cybercriminals: Using physical and digital identity attributes to identify bad actors (LexisNexis Risk Solutions)
• How Pre-Payment Billing Procedures Reduce Denials (Medhost)
• Prior Authorization and Benefits Verification Automation for Diagnostic Labs (Myndshft)
• Confessions of an EHR CEO (Net Health)
• What is “cognitive load” – and how can we help clinicians manage it? (Nuance)
• Location Matters: The Importance of Meeting Clients Where They Are (Netsmart)

Contacts

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

HIStalk Sponsors at Epic’s UGM 2022

Availity

Booth #214. People interested in reaching out to Availity can contact Stephanie Hastings at stephanie.hastings@availity.com or Kim Kirincic at kimberly.kirincic@availity.com.

Availity is the place where healthcare finds the answers needed to shift focus back to patient care. We work to solve communication challenges in healthcare by creating a richer, more transparent exchange of information among health plans, providers, and technology partners. As one of the nation’s largest health information networks, Availity facilitates billions of clinical, administrative, and financial transactions annually. Our suite of dynamic products, built on a powerful, intelligent platform, enables real-time collaboration for success in a competitive, value-based care environment. 

Baker Tilly

As Baker Tilly will not have a booth at UGM, we will be coordinating meetings with interested readers by emailing charlie.cook@bakertilly.com.

We have been providing Epic advisory services, end-to-end implementations, Refuels, upgrades, and staff augmentation resources since 2008. Our Epic Practice Director will also be at UGM and she is available for meetings from Monday – Thursday during UGM.

ELLKAY

Booth #206. ELLKAY Attendees: Ajay Kapare (Ajay.Kapare@ELLKAY.com) and Leah Gorman (Leah.Marshall@ELLKAY.com).

ELLKAY empowers hospitals, health systems, diagnostic laboratories, healthcare IT vendors, payers, and healthcare organizations with cutting-edge solutions. Since 2002, ELLKAY’s system capability has grown to over 58,000 practices connected and 700+ EMR/PM systems across 1,100+ versions.

Join us for “ELLKAY’s Taste of Wisconsin” on Monday, August 22 from 7-9 p.m. Enjoy locally-sourced favorites from Cedar Grove Cheese Curds to beers from the top six breweries in Wisconsin. Come get whisked away by the flavors from farmers and producers in the state of Wisconsin which will be paired with great conversation! RSVP today! https://lnkd.in/gk3Zjyxn.

Elsevier

Booth #201.

Since 2004, Elsevier has worked with Epic to deliver the highest quality content and solutions, ensuring you not only have the content necessary to support critical thinking and decision-making, but also seamless integration to optimize your IT investment. Elsevier can help you maintain consistent top performance, reduce variability in care, and ultimately improve patient outcomes. Come visit the Elsevier booth to learn more about all we are doing to support Epic customers for nursing and patient solutions (acute care plans, ambulatory care plans, patient education content and FHIR solutioning) reference (Skills, ClinicalKey Point of Care for Physician, Nurse, Pharmacy), provider pathways (ClinicalPath), and more.

FDB (First Databank)

Booth #211.

FDB (First Databank) creates and delivers the world’s most powerful drug knowledge that ignites, inspires, and illuminates critical medication decisions. We collaborate with our partners to help improve patient safety, operational efficiency, and health outcomes. Our drug databases drive healthcare information systems that serve the majority of hospitals, physician practices, pharmacies, payers, and all other areas of healthcare and are used by millions of clinicians, business associates, and patients every day.

Major solutions we will be sharing with our Epic user colleagues at the Epic UGM:

• CDS Analytics. An intuitive and powerful analytics tool to easily evaluate and improve the efficacy of clinical decision support for meds and beyond.
• Targeted Medication Warnings. Actionable medication guidance from a patient-first perspective. Including hyperkalemia, QT prolongation, opioid use risk assessment, nephrotoxicity, bleeding risk and pharmacogenomics.
• Pharmacogenomic CDS. Actionable drug-gene guidance within the workflow for appropriate drug therapy, to help prevent patient harm and ensure effective treatments.
• AlertSpace. Enabling clinicians to collaboratively improve and customize alerts to make them more meaningful, intuitive, and actionable.
• Meducation. Address patient medication adherence and understanding with personalized and simplified medication instructions, multilingual labeling support, and custom calendars in 30+ languages.
• FDB Vela. A new cloud-native electronic prescribing network that enables the seamless flow of critical prescription information, real-time benefits verification, and decision support between prescribers, payers, and pharmacies.

KeyCare

KeyCare and Spectrum Health will be presenting more details about their innovative use of the Epic platform and its Telehealth Anywhere technology.

Lyniate

Booth #207. People interested in reaching out to Lyniate can contact Mike Barbour at mike.barbour@lyniate.com.

Lyniate partners with healthcare organizations around the globe delivering a flexible interoperability suite that reliably connects people and the quality data they need. The Lyniate interoperability suite includes:

• Lyniate Corepoint Integration Engine
• Lyniate Rhapsody Integration Engine
• Lyniate Envoy Managed Service
• Lyniate Rapid API Gateway
• Lyniate EMPI
• Lyniate HealthTerm Clinical Terminology Management

Earlier this year, Epic selected Lyniate for integration within its Garden Plot offering, Epic’s new hosted and supported Software as a Service (SaaS) model for independent medical groups.

Sphere

Visit Sphere | TrustCommerce at Booth #200.

Sphere, powered by TrustCommerce, is trusted by the nation’s largest health systems to facilitate their integrated patient payments. Sphere helps clients process payments anytime, anywhere—securely, in compliance, and connected with core business software including EHRs. Stop by Booth #200 to learn about:

• Sphere’s TrustCommerce patient payment platform and its new digital wallet support within MyChart.
• How Sphere is now included in the Epic Garden Plot offering with integrated payments.

We’ll be giving away a set of Apple Airpod Pros. Visit us and enter to win.

News 8/17/22

Top News

CDC will regain control of hospital-reported COVID-19 data on December 31 when the government’s contract with TeleTracking ends.

HHS hired the patient flow technology company in July 2020 via a direct call to its co-CEO. HHS then instructed hospitals to stop sending their data to CDC and to instead use TeleTracking to populate the HHS Protect system.

TeleTracking has earned $50 million from the contract.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk sponsors who are attending Epic UGM, send me your participation information and I’ll include it in an online guide that I’ll run later this week. I’ve only heard from Availity, FDB, and Sphere so far, not counting the non-sponsors that submitted a form that will unfortunately remain unused. After-hours social events likely abound, so send me your info if you’re running short on invitees.

Mrs. HIStalk drafted me into doing some video recording and YouTube posting for a non-profit where she volunteers. My quickly assembled on-the-cheap technology arsenal involves an IPhone, a $32 wireless lavalier microphone, and Movavi Video Editor Plus 2022, for which I Googled to find an online coupon that dropped the no-subscription-required license down to $40. That software made it easy to edit and connect various video clips with one-click color and volume correction, insert some royalty-free opening music, and add a few text titles. I think I chose wisely (if somewhat randomly) since the Movavi software is easy to use while having a lot of powerful functions that are unobtrusive until needed. I’m not a video expert and have no interest in becoming one, so the small expenditure of cash and effort hit my sweet spot.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

UK-based digital healthcare company Babylon denies reports that it may be seeking a buyer as it wrestles with sinking share price. The business, which initially made a name for itself by offering virtual care services to the NHS, has gained a foothold in the US by acquiring 700-physician Meritage Medical Network; health kiosk vendor Higi; and DaytoDay Health, which offers patients pre- and post-visit care education, communication, and clinical support via personal care teams. BBLN went public via a SPAC merger in October 2021 at a valuation of $4.2 billion, with share price having dropped 93% in the ensuing 10 months for a company valuation of $335 million.

Sema4, which offers precision medicine and clinical trials tools, eliminates 250 jobs, 13% of its workforce. The founder and president has left the company and board. SMFR share price dropped 33% Tuesday on the news and have shed 86% of their value since the company went public via a SPAC merger in July 2021, valuing the company at $611 million.

Chronic disease management software and services company CareHarmony raises $15 million in a Series A funding round.

Hospital cost management system vendor SpendMend acquires Trulla, which sells pharmacy procurement software. That’s a pretty large misspelling of “visibility” on their webpage above.

Signify Health, the value-based home health provider that is reportedly being pursued by CVS Health, will lay off 489 people beginning October 1. The majority of affected workers work remotely, according to the company, which says the workforce reduction is the result of its decision to shutter its Episodes of Care Services segment.

Enterprise medical imaging vendor Intelerad acquires PenRad Technologies, which offers productivity tools for breast imaging and lung screening.

Activist investor Elliott Management buys a large stake in Cardinal Health and nominates five candidates for board positions. 

Sales

• Christus Health will implement the KyruusOne provider data management platform to create a digital directory.
• SSM Health will work with Optum to develop new inpatient care delivery models, billing processes, and patient engagement experiences using clinical technologies and analytics.
• University of Florida Health Shands chooses Syntellis Performance Solutions for financial planning, cost accounting, and decision support.

People

Ross Martin, MD, MHA (360 Degree Insights) joins consulting firm Agilian as CMIO.

Health Gorilla hires Steven Lane, MD, MPH (Sutter Health) as chief medical officer.

The SSI Group promotes Lori Brocato to SVP of product management.

University of Chicago Medicine names Maia Hightower, MD (University of Utah Health) chief digital and technology officer.

Philips will promote Roy Jakobs, head of its connected care business, to president and CEO when Frans van Houten steps down on October 15.

Nicole Dowsley, MBA (Genomind) joins Clearwater as chief transformation officer.

Verato hires Richard Jordan (Sutherland) as chief commercial officer.

Announcements and Implementations

NextGen will apply to ONC to become a TEFCA-enabled, vendor-agnostic Qualified Health Information Network. According to the company, it is the first ambulatory-specific vendor to apply to become a QHIN.

The California Department of Public Health will implement lab result collection and reporting software developed by Manifest MedEx as part of its new Surveillance and Public Health Information Reporting and Exchange. Manifest MedEx, Diameter Health, and Lyniate developed the SaPHIRE system.

Duke Health (NC) implements Scanslated’s interactive radiology reporting service at its three hospitals and 14 outpatient imaging facilities.

Australia’s Northern Territory Government deploys the first phase of its $182 million patient health record system. Built on InterSystems TrakCare software, the technology will ultimately replace six legacy systems.

Government and Politics

The 6th Medical Group at Macdill Air Force Base (FL) and Fox Army Health Center (AL) will go live in the next wave of MHS Genesis deployments on September 24.

FDA will allow hearing aids to be sold over the counter to people who have mild to moderate hearing loss, starting in the next few weeks. FDA says that 80% of the 30 million Americans who have hearing loss don’t seek help, audiologist exams aren’t covered by insurance, and the market is dominated by a handful of companies that sell the devices for thousands of dollars. Experts say that FDA’s decision will spur innovation that could radically change the way that hearing devices work and look. My prediction is that the future’s hearing aids will be like listening to the Spotify phone app on Beats by Dre wireless buds, because why not? Get in there, Apple.

Privacy and Security

Conifer Health Solutions reports that an unauthorized user gained access earlier this year to a Microsoft Office business email account that was associated with Brookwood Baptist Medical Center (AL). The RCM vendor has been unable to determine if the personal information of BBMC patients has been accessed. 

An internal report determines that an IT systems failure in May at four hospitals in the UK cost $686,000 and led to the cancellation of 1,000 appointments. The report also revealed that the outage, which was caused by a VMware software defect, led to 330 incidents of patient harm.

Other

Researchers and stroke experts from Wake Forest University School of Medicine (NC) and Atrium Health Wake Forest Baptist’s Comprehensive Stroke Center develop COMprehensive Post-Acute Stroke Services – Care Plan, a digital health tool that uses algorithms to create custom-made care plans for stroke patients. The COMPASS-CP tool can be embedded within a patient’s EHR and integrated with remote patient monitoring programs. Wake Forest’s Innovations arm has created Care Directions Inc. to commercialize the technology.

A study published in a data science journal finds that digital health companies are sending data to Facebook to target user advertising, sometimes violating their own policies that prohibit user tracking across websites. The authors found that participants in an online cancer community had their activity tracked by apps from Color Genomics, Myriad Genetics, Invitae, Health Union, and Ciitizen. The only company of the five companies to inquiries by Forbes was Health Union, which said it tracks information but gives users the option to accept or reject cookie-based tracking, also noting that the company isn’t bound by HIPAA because it isn’t a provider. Facebook parent Meta said the companies should not be sharing user information using its Business Tools.

Physician and author Danielle Ofri, MD, PhD describes in an article in The Atlantic why her experience took her from telemedicine skeptic to advocate, labeling it as “an indisputable complement to in-person care:”

• She saw how hard it was for patients to miss a day’s pay to take public transportation to office visits.
• Telemedicine dropped her no-show rate to nearly zero since patients weren’t canceling because of unexpected job demands or transportation difficulties.
• Eye contact has improved, as she can focus on the on-screen patient rather than the computer screen, and they can see each other face-to-face without masks.
• She can see the patient’s living situation and get to know them better by meeting their families and aides.
• Research has shown that routine physical exams are “largely ceremonial” and chronic illness mostly requires cognitive and conversational interaction.
• Providers, like patients, can work from home if they have sick children or are affected by COVID-19.

Sponsor Updates

• HCTec sponsors AltaMed Foundation’s East LA Meets Napa charity fundraiser to help women and families access necessary resources.
• Arcadia makes its research available in the Prognos Marketplace for life science customers.
• CHIME releases a new 30^th Anniversary Podcast featuring 2005 CHIME Board Chair Pat Skarulis.
• Dresner Advisory Services names Dimensional Insight an overall leader in business intelligence in its annual Industry Excellence Awards.
• Sectra will launch the next generation of its Education Portal for medical educators and students this fall.

Blog Posts

• How SDoH improves patient outcomes for community care organizations (Arcadia)
• Policy Perspectives: Why Choice Matters in Healthcare (Arrive Health)
• The Future of Health Information is Bright (Availity)
• Azara Team Completes Pan Mass Challenge 2022 Raising Over $35,000 for Cancer Research (Azara Healthcare)
• EHR Hosting and Backup: Budgeting and Planning Tips that Avoid Surprise Costs (CereCore)
• Pharmacogenomics: The Time is Now (First Databank)
• Top Reasons Fail to Fill Post-Discharge Prescriptions (and what you can do about it) (ConnectiveRx)
• Joining Forces to Drive Powerful Positive Changes in Our Nation’s Health System (Diameter Health)
• How Analytics Can Help Solve Your Patient Leakage Problem (Dimensional Insight)
• The Top 5 M&A IT Challenges and How to Overcome Them (Divurgent)
• National Health Center Week 2022 (EClinicalWorks)
• NG Healthcare Digital Summit Recap: Accelerating Consumer-Centric Care (EVisit)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 8/15/22

Top News

Truepill reportedly conducts its third round of layoffs in 2022, this time involving 175 employees that represent about one-third of its workforce.

The company, which offers white-labeled, API-connected virtual pharmacy and telehealth solutions as well as home diagnostic kits, claimed last year that it was bringing in $300 million in annual revenue. It was reported to have been valued at $1.6 billion after raising $255 million.

CEO Sid Viswanathan says the company will focus on increasing revenue and cutting expenses.

Truepill was the preferred pharmacy provider of virtual mental health provider Cerebral and had acquired competing virtual ADHD provider Ahead. It shut down Ahead in April 2022 as the Drug Enforcement Administration started investigating the prescribing practices of both of the online ADHD providers, leading Cerebral to stop issuing those prescriptions. 

Reader Comments

From Derek Smalls: “Re: new Oracle Cerner deals. Notice how small the new clients are?” The Cerner announcement lists six of the 11 new CommunityWorks hospital clients the company signed since April, ranging from 15 to 35 beds. I would say that it’s encouraging that these rural, community, and critical access hospitals can implement Cerner in a way that is affordable and technically feasible.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Life’s lessons from poll respondents who have lived them: plan your financial future early, take more risks, stay healthy, and don’t ignore your family.

New poll to your right or here: Has your employer conducted a layoff that you would consider significant in the past 12 months?

Epic’s UGM is coming up August 22-24. It never occurred to me that I could feature how HIStalk sponsors are participating in that and other events as I do with the HIMSS conference, but let’s give it a shot. Sponsors, complete an information form by Wednesday, August 17 and I’ll summarize the results later this week for those who are traveling to Verona. I’ll do this for other conferences if response is good.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Shares in the Global X Telemedicine and Digital Health ETF health IT index were up 11% in the past 30 days versus the Nasdaq’s 13.5% rise. However, they are down 27% in the past year and 17% since their July 2020 inception, meaning that your money would have been better invested in Nasdaq index funds.

A business filing indicates that BD’s price to acquire hospital pharmacy software vendor MedKeeper was $93 million.

Medicare Advantage primary care chain ChenMed is considering selling its majority stake in JenCare, a joint venture with Humana that runs 30 clinics in five states, at a company valuation of $4 billion. Family-owned parent company ChenMed also owns Dedicated Senior Medical Center and Chen Senior Medical Center. ChenMed CIO Hernando Celada runs two other ChenMed businesses, Curity (AI-powered care management) and IntuneHealth (primary care centers and telehealth).

Dental software vendor Planet DDS acquires the QSIDental cloud-based dental practice management software platform from NextGen Healthcare.

Sales

• Oracle Cerner executed 161 new, extended, or expanded contracts from April to June 2022, including 11 new clients.

People

Julie Schubert, RN, MS joins Well Health as VP of professional services.

Intermountain Healthcare President and CEO Marc Harrison, MD, MMM resigns to run an unnamed healthcare platform business for venture capital firm General Catalyst. He earned $6 million in 2020, according to Intermountain’s most recent tax filings, and like other former big-system CEOs, further blurs the already faint line between being a highly compensated non-profit executive and taking leadership roles in the most capitalistic organizations in American society.

Government and Politics

A security researcher tells a Defcon security conference audience that the decades-old encryption system that the VA’s VistA system uses could be easily defeated, allowing a hacker to perform clinician functions.

Privacy and Security

An Oregon hospital becomes the latest in a list of those that overpaid their employees during several weeks of ransomware-caused Kronos payroll system downtime that are trying to get employees to return the extra money. St. Charles Health System says the average employee amount owed is $780. The Oregon Nurses Association says it will issue a cease-and-desist letter to the hospital because its demand for repayment is illegal and the health system has provided no evidence that anyone was actually overpaid.

Other

A Commonwealth Fund blog post whose authors include former National Coordinator David Blumenthal, MD says that Amazon’s acquisition of primary care chain One Medical won’t resolve the “international embarrassment” of the US healthcare system. Snips:

• While Amazon shouldn’t be underestimated, its previous healthcare forays have largely failed, such as its Haven partnership and its minimally disruptive Amazon Pharmacy.
• One Medical has always lost money because third-party payers pay little for primary care, leading the authors to predict that Amazon will need to pursue value-based care contracts with commercial insurers instead of the usual Medicare and Medicaid market.
• The authors expect that Amazon will uncharacteristically need to restrict customer choice by negotiating preferred rates with local PCPs, which may not be acceptable in the employer-funded insurance model where the employees complain about being excluded from the big-brand medical centers.
• Amazon must complete with Optum and CVS Health / Aetna, which already have scaled up provider employment and bring unparalleled expertise in managing risk.
• The article concludes that the real question is whether profit-driven entrepreneurship and innovation can bring the US healthcare system up to the level of most other developed countries that do a better job of keeping people healthy at an affordable cost. 

Sponsor Updates

• Diameter Health CEO Eric Rosow and CTO Harvard Pan raise money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute through their participation in the Pan-Mass Challenge.
• The Hazelden Betty Ford Foundation integrates Xealth’s digital therapeutic content distribution capabilities with its Oracle Cerner EHR, making it easier for patients to access educational content through their patient portals.
• PerfectServe adds more than 400 physician practices across 37 states in the first half of 2022.
• Sphere will exhibit at Epic UGM August 22-24 in Verona, WI.
• Spok announces that 18 of the 20 adult hospitals and all 10 children’s hospitals named to US News & World Report’s 2022-23 Best Hospitals Honor Roll use Spok secure healthcare communication solutions.
• Vocera will exhibit at the 2022 Defense Health Information Technology Symposium August 16-18 in Orlando.
• West Monroe publishes a new report, “2022 Be Digital Research.”

Blog Posts

• Checking-in on Check-Ups: 3 Tactics to Advance Patient Communication in Healthcare (PatientBond)
• 3 Steps to Powering Data Innovation with Analytics & AI (Pivot Point Consulting)
• PINC AI Data Analysis Update: Maternal and Infant Health Trends, 2008-2020 (Premier)
• In full view: Redox Recs on FHIR and digital health integrations (Redox)
• Patient experience tips for mother-baby units (Sonifi Health)
• Becoming great: 5 common characteristics of the best hospitals (Spok)
• How Healthcare Can Change the Odds with Value-Based Care (TigerConnect)
• 5 Practical Ways to Make Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Work in the Clinic (WebPT)

Contacts

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