News 7/8/22

Top News

The federal government warns healthcare organizations to defend themselves against potential North Korea-sponsored cyberattacks that are using Maui ransomware.

FBI, CISA, and Treasury urge healthcare and public health organizations to:

• Deploy PKI and digital certificates to authenticate network connections, including to the EHR.
• Inactivate generic administrator accounts.
• Turn off network device management interfaces.
• Secure PHI with encryption at rest and firewalls.
• Implement multi-layer network segmentation.
• Store backups offline.
• Use tools to monitor IoT devices for erratic use.

Webinars

July 12 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Digital Data Stewardship for Trusted, High-Quality Data Exchange.” Sponsor: Clinical Architecture. Presenter: Carol Graham, MS, RN, product manager, Clinical Architecture. Organizations face challenges in ensuring that the patient data they received and send is consistent, accurate, and usable. Use cases include receiving multi-source data across health information networks with variation in formats and content; merging and de-duplicating provider, payer, and research data; uplifting legacy data for current use cases and formats; and normalizing and formatting data for public health surveillance, quality measure reporting, and providing directly to the patient. This webinar will cover Pivot, a comprehensive Digital Data Steward solution that orchestrates format harmonization, content (vocabulary) normalization, de-duplication, and data quality validation into a single solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Axios reports that Premier Inc. is considering strategic alternatives that include being taken private. The company’s market cap is $4.4 billion, with PINC shares having gained 4% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 21% loss.

Patient payments startup Cedar, valued at $3 billion, lays off 24% of its workforce “in order to adapt to current market realities.”

In England, seven NHS trusts that traded de-identified patient data for shares in an AI startup lose millions of pounds, as shares in Sensyne Health are de-listed due to a company reorganization.

Sales

• In England, two Cheshire NHS trusts will collaborate to replace their paper-based systems with Meditech Expanse.
• In The Bahamas, Doctors Hospital Health System chooses CloudWave to host its new Meditech Expanse EHR on OpSus Healthcare Cloud.

People

Peter Bridges, MBA (Curai Health) joins Transcarent as chief commercial officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Caris Life Sciences will integrate its molecular testing products with Epic’s Orders and Results Anywhere network.

In England, South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust becomes the UK’s first 5G-connected hospital, launching a trial of Virgin Media O2 Business connectivity. A key app is vital sign monitoring and documentation of physician observations.

Teladoc Health offers members of its Primary360 primary care program in-home lab specimen collection services from Scarlet Health. Those members also receive free same-day medication delivery from Capsule.

University of Colorado School of Medicine launches the Department of Biomedical Informatics.

A new KLAS status report on telehealth platforms finds that Caregility performs well (especially in inpatient settings), Amwell is often considered even though its legacy product has higher dissatisfaction, and Doximity works well as an easy-to-use and lightweight solution for simple outpatient settings. Customers of Caregility, Teladoc Health InTouch, and SOC Telemed report positive effects in clinical outcomes, while those of Doxy.me say it reduces missed appointments and providers patient benefits at a good price. Vidyo lost ground after Epic replaced it with Twilio. Microsoft Teams and Zoom are frequently used for multi-party calls even in organizations that use different products for regular telehealth visits.

Government and Politics

Former Theranos President and COO Sunny Balwani joins his former fellow executive / former romantic partner Elizabeth Holmes in being convicted of federal charges, in his case, that he defrauded patients and investors. Holmes was acquitted of those same charges, but was found guilty on investor charges. Both face up to 20 years for each count at their September sentencing, 12 in Balwani’s case and four for Holmes.

Privacy and Security

IT security and technology reseller SHI, which has 5,000 employees and $12 billion in annual revenue, remains down from a ransomware attack last weekend. That’s not the best look for a company that sells cybersecurity and disaster recovery solutions.

Other

An interesting article on telehealth in China, written by a Harvard public health researcher, makes these points:

• Telehealth grew hugely in the pandemic’s early days, but the government had already been trying to build a digital health ecosystem to alleviate public hospital overcrowding.
• Telehealth didn’t remove all geographic barriers, as some patients exhibit “home bias” in preferring to be seen by a doctor who practices in their own province.
• Online price transparency should increase competition and lower prices.
• Telehealth doctors are usually full-time employees of public hospitals, raising concerns that their work as private telehealth contractors interfere with their public hospital duties.
• Affordability is a concern since telehealth is primarily an out-of-pocket expense and access to public hospital appointments may worsen for lower-income patients if telehealth referrals fill appointment slots with private pay patients.

Vermont regulators consider revoking the state license of Walgreens after one of its stores closed for months after a fire but kept billing patients and insurers for prescription refills that couldn’t be picked up. The state says the company, which runs 23 stores in Vermont, also shut down stores without notice, closed the pharmacy department for 325 days in a 21-month period because of staffing shortages, and in some cases left the pharmacy open without having a pharmacist-manager present.

The Atlanta newspaper profiles rising local high school senior Asanshay Gupta, who in 2020 – at age 14 – developed a free app to help hospitals calculate the demand for oxygen due to COVID-19 patient requirements. Among its users was a 10-hospital chain in India who used it to ensure that ambulances were stocked with enough oxygen, which was in short supply, for patients being transported. He hopes to study biomedical engineering or medicine after his graduation next year.

My favorite recent article is “Truly Humbled to Be the Author of This Article,” where David Brooks describes those endless LinkedIn and Twitter humble-braggers who shamelessly tout their own accomplishments and all-around wonderfulness while claiming to be “humbled” or “honored.” He cleverly notes that the humble-braggers slather on a bonus layer of false humility by eliminating the personal pronoun, as in “Humbled to be …” instead of “I am humbled to be …” A snip:

You are showing the world that you haven’t let your immense achievements go to your head! You’ve remained completely egalitarian—you just happen to be a better egalitarian than most people (and you are humbled by that fact). It’s easy to be humble when you’re most people. But just think about how amazing it is to be humble when you’re as impressive as you!

Sponsor Updates

• First Databank names Sneha Jingar senior Salesforce administrator.
• Healthcare Triangle facilitates secure data-sharing for drug discovery through “Neutral Zone.”

Blog Posts

• Why Telemedicine Matters (EVisit)
• Automating Veteran Patient Education to Address Readmissions (Get Well)
• The evolving EHR: Workflow improvements for today’s clinician (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• What is Advanced Scheduling? Q & A with Dave Johnson (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Education, Resources, and Training to Improve Preeclampsia Awareness (Medhost)
• How to Hire a Physical Therapist: 7 Tips for Hiring the Best Fit (MWTherapy)
• Net Health Community Brings Healthcare Industry Peers Closer Together (Net Health)
• Autonomous Coding vs. Computer-Assisted Coding – Part 2: Key Differences (Nym Health)
• Patient referral leakage: Are health systems making it easy to do the right thing? (Nordic)

Contacts

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

News 7/6/22

Top News

Francisco Partners completes its acquisition of the data and analytics assets of IBM Watson Health and renames the business Merative.

Chosen as CEO is industry long-timer Gerry McCarthy, who has served in executive roles with ESolutions, TransUnion, HealthMEDX, and McKesson. The company’s headquarters will be in in Ann Arbor, MI. Former Watson Health Paul Roma will transition to senior advisor to Francisco Partners. Much of the remaining IBM Watson Health executive team will remain in place.

The company, which FP acquired for a reported $1 billion versus the $4 billion IBM spent to create it from a series of acquisitions, will organize around six product lines – Health Insights; MarketScan; Clinical Development; Social Program Management and Phytel; Micromedex; and Merge Imaging solutions.

Reader Comments

From Spare Change: “Re: return to office. We are seeing the result of employees who have power like they have never had, the ability to work from anywhere.” I think that moment was fleeting. Economic and industry conditions have put bosses back in charge and they know that they need to manage costs while fretting less that their employees might flee to greener pastures. I never understood the “great resignation,” assuming (perhaps naively) that the same number of people still need to work and the total number of available jobs hasn’t changed much even though job mix has shifted. Some jobs can be performed remotely (and always could have been), but work-from-home was, like telemedicine, a temporary compromise whose adoption will settle at numbers higher than pre-pandemic but much lower than in 2020-21. I bet many executives agree with me that you can’t build and maintain a great company when employees are doing task work in their living rooms and communicating via Slack and Zoom while missing face-to-face meetings, chance encounters, personal relationships, and exposure to broader company work. I expect companies to compromise by offering a hybrid model of 1-2 offsite work days per week or maybe going with a permanent four-day workweek, which adds flexibility and reduces commute headaches but without conferring geographic freedom. Employee threats to sell their services elsewhere if they are required to show up at the office are ringing pretty hollow now versus a year ago. Have you seen a shift in the employee-employer dynamic in the last couple of months?

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

It’s about an even poll respondent split between telehealth being more important now versus in 2019.

New poll to your right or here: From your most recent encounter, how much of the clinician’s time seemed to be spent on tasks that lower-level people could have done? My perception is mixed – sometimes it seems that being the only person in the room with the patient makes the clinician feel that it’s easier to do low-value work than to bring someone in to help, or lures them into a comfort zone of happily performing comfortably mindless work.

HIStalk sponsors: prices will increase a bit starting January 1, 2023, although the cost will still be less — taking inflation into account — than in 2014, when it last changed. This is the cue for on-the-fence companies to sign up sooner rather than later.

Webinars

July 12 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Digital Data Stewardship for Trusted, High-Quality Data Exchange.” Sponsor: Clinical Architecture. Presenter: Carol Graham, MS, RN, product manager, Clinical Architecture. Organizations face challenges in ensuring that the patient data they received and send is consistent, accurate, and usable. Use cases include receiving multi-source data across health information networks with variation in formats and content; merging and de-duplicating provider, payer, and research data; uplifting legacy data for current use cases and formats; and normalizing and formatting data for public health surveillance, quality measure reporting, and providing directly to the patient. This webinar will cover Pivot, a comprehensive Digital Data Steward solution that orchestrates format harmonization, content (vocabulary) normalization, de-duplication, and data quality validation into a single solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Concierge primary care operator One Medical is reportedly considering its options after attracting and then rejecting preliminary acquisition interest from CVS Health. Shares in One Medical’s parent company have lost 75% of their value in the past year, giving the company a market cap of $2 billion.

Sales

• Midwest Orthopaedic Center (IL) selects cloud-based EHR and RCM software from EClinicalWorks.

People

Eric Newman, MD (Geisinger Health) joins Eon as chief innovation officer.

Well Health names J.P. Knapp, MHA (Vocera) VP of sales.

Brian Lancaster (Nebraska Medicine) joins Children’s Mercy Kansas City as SVP/CIO.

Cured promotes Josh Kalscheur to VP of business development.

Announcements and Implementations

CaringWays taps Clearwater to develop and implement a cloud-based cybersecurity and compliance program for its digital fundraising software for patients.

Cone Health (NC) implements ActX’s EHR-integrated, genomic decision-support software.

The American Nursing Informatics Association publishes the first in a series of toolkits that support the practice of nurse informatics.

FDA gives clearance for LiveMetric’s LiveOne, a wrist-worn monitor that takes blood pressure from the radial artery every 10 seconds and records the results over several days to help understand the connection between BP and lifestyle, behavior, and medications.

A new KLAS report on EHRs for practices of 11 or more clinicians finds that Epic and Meditech lead the the pack in finishing a close 1-2. Ease of use and workflow is by far the most pressing concern of practices of that size. Cerner users are frustrated with outpatient workflows and the company’s focus on resolving inpatient problems, while Greenway Health’s customers are an outlier in putting functionality improvements at the top of their list of needs. Allscripts has two of the three bottom-rated products, along with poor ratings for support, relationships, and overselling product capabilities.

Government and Politics

A California Medical Association bill would require health plans to exempt doctors from obtaining prior authorization for prescriptions if they have historically practiced within that plan’s rules 80% of the time. Other physicians would be given the right to have their PA appeals conducted by a physician in their specialty.

Privacy and Security

HHS posts a review document titled “HIPAA Privacy Rule and Disclosures of Information Relating to Reproductive Health Care.”

Other

Damages in Epic’s 2016 trade secrets lawsuit against Tata Consultancy are reduced by a federal court to $140 million. The original damages assessed to Tata were set at $940 million, but were reduced to $420 million and later to $280 million.

Norton Healthcare (KY) attributes ongoing computer connectivity issues at several facilities to an unspecified hardware problem that began July 1.

Munson Healthcare’s virtual urgent care program sees an uptick in usage that it says is mostly due to word of mouth. It triages patients to video visits after initial phone screenings and has seen 250 patients as of early June. It is staffed by 20 Munson physicians who pick up shifts on their days off. Next up for Munson is patient text messaging and enhancing the system’s doctor-finder tool with online scheduling.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “How Price Transparency Can Offer a Competitive Edge.”
• Azara Healthcare completes the NCQA HEDIS Health Plan Measure Certification Program for MY 2022 HEDIS measures.
• Bamboo Health hires Dana Koetz as growth director, Brian St.Amour as data integration engineer, Anvesh Muthyala as senior software engineer, Kamilla Ionesia as partnerships manager, Dean Cikins as strategic accounts director, and Milacy Travieso as project manager – data science.
• Biofourmis releases a new Out of Patients Podcast.
• CareMesh names Samantha Davis, RN (Medical Solutions) senior clinical project manager.
• CoverMyMeds will exhibit at McKesson IdeaShare July 7-10 in Washington, DC.
• Enlace Health achieves HITRUST certification to further mitigate risk in third-party privacy, security, and compliance.
• Nuance will offer its Dragon Medical One speech recognition software to Meditech users in Puerto Rico through a partnership with health IT firm Scientia Puerto Rico.

Blog Posts

• The importance of surveillance-level data monitoring in hospitals (Philips Capsule)
• How Allia Group Recovers Out of Network Revenue with its Proprietary Platform Paired with AdvancedMD Reporting (AdvancedMD)
• The Royal Brompton and Harefield Hospitals celebrate one year of clinical imaging collaboration between Radiology & Cardiology (Agfa HealthCare)
• SNFs vs. recovery at home: Acquiring the data to determine the appropriate care setting for recovery after surgery (Bravado Health)
• Healthcare Literacy and the Patient Portal: Explore Hands-on Video Resources to Increase User Confidence (Part 2) (CereCore)
• Changing Influence of the Healthcare CIO (CHIME)
• The Future of Health Data in the UK: What HCPs Need to Know (Clearsense)
• How to Overcome Community Connect Adoption Challenges (CTG)
• How to Create a Culture of Data Literacy in Urgent Care – and Why (Experity)

Contacts

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

News 7/1/22

Top News

A NEJM perspective piece says that today’s care delivery policies and technologies sacrifice the “solution shop” work of doctors (solving patient problems and building patient trust) for “production line” work (approving prescription refills, entering orders, completing preventive screenings).

It notes that most of the patient visit can be consumed by clinicians completing EHR checkboxes, entering orders, manually completing prior authorization requests, and managing inbox messages.

It also observes that since it’s easier to measure the production line work in the EHR, quality metrics represent those tasks disproportionately.

The article also says that healthcare financial resources have moved away from direct patient care to tech companies, data aggregators, drug and insurance companies, and performance measurement subcontractors, as insurers and pharmacies automated their practices to meet more complex billing requirements while leaving doctors with more production line work.

The authors conclude that the solution and production work streams be designed to match worker skills, supported by policies and workflow.

The physician who sent the article my way says that the “workflow versus thoughtflow” challenge requires a major reengineering of physician processes to allow either (a) lower-level staff to do them where appropriate; or (b) the physician to perform them while still addressing higher-level thinking tasks. 

Webinars

July 12 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Digital Data Stewardship for Trusted, High-Quality Data Exchange.” Sponsor: Clinical Architecture. Presenter: Carol Graham, MS, RN, product manager, Clinical Architecture. Organizations face challenges in ensuring that the patient data they received and send is consistent, accurate, and usable. Use cases include receiving multi-source data across health information networks with variation in formats and content; merging and de-duplicating provider, payer, and research data; uplifting legacy data for current use cases and formats; and normalizing and formatting data for public health surveillance, quality measure reporting, and providing directly to the patient. This webinar will cover Pivot, a comprehensive Digital Data Steward solution that orchestrates format harmonization, content (vocabulary) normalization, de-duplication, and data quality validation into a single solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient engagement and release-of-information technology vendor HealthMark Group acquires Acton Corporation, its third ROI acquisition in 15 months.

Sales

• In England, East Suffolk and North Essex and West Suffolk trusts choose Sectra for digital pathology.
• NHS Scotland names Citadel Health as supplier of its Laboratory Information Management System framework.

People

Kyruus hires Paul Merrild MBA (Sound Physicians) to the newly created position of president.

CloudWave promotes Mike Donahue to VP of client services.

Former Kareo CEO Dan Rodrigues takes the CEO role at Tebra, the company he co-founded when Kareo merged with PatientPop last year.

Privacy and Security

Baton Rouge General is forced to chart on paper due to a Tuesday cyberattack.

Other

Funniest news of the week: the federal government fines accounting firm Ernst & Young $100 million for failing to act on reports that many of its employees were cheating on their CPA exams. The best part – the section they were cheating on was ethics. Those involved say they were short on after-work study time or had already failed the exam multiple times.

Sponsor Updates

• California State University, Dominguez Hills becomes the seventh higher education institution to join Optimum Healthcare IT’s CareerPath program, which offers students who are interested in a healthcare IT career a two-phase training program that includes a digital health certification program that was co-developed with CHIME followed by application-specific technical tracks.
• Visage Imaging joins the Amazon Web Services Partner Network as an Advanced Technology Partner.
• Premier honors The Breakaway, an Indiana recovery home for women battling addiction, with its Monroe E. Trout Premier Cares Award and a $100,000 prize.
• West Monroe publishes a new report, “Understanding Major Trends in Healthcare M&A and Investment.”
• The HIT Like a Girl Podcast features EVisit Chief Strategy Officer Juli Stover.
• FDB hires Jaelyn Ibarra as a research associate.
• GHX congratulates customer Spectrum Health on earning the 2022 Top Supply Chain Projects Award from Supply & Demand Chain Executive.

Blog Posts

• Strengthening HCP Engagement with Omnichannel Strategies (OptimizeRx)
• Brand Loyalty: How to Reach New Patients and Keep Them Coming Back (Symplr)
• HL7 FHIR DevDays top 5 takeaways (Redox)
• Arrive Health Helps Doctors Cut Prescription Costs for Patients (Arrive Health)
• The Art of a Data Detective (Surescripts)
• What’s the Difference Between Omnichannel and Multichannel Customer Support? (Talkdesk)
• Embracing Modern Clinical Communication and Collaboration Methods (TigerConnect)
• How Managing Chronic Conditions is Streamlined with Digital Technology (Twistle)
• Breaking Down the 2021 MIPS Preliminary Feedback Fact Sheet (WebPT)
• A Different Point of View: Solving the ‘Inter (without) Operability’ Conundrum (Medicomp Systems)
• FHIR Dev Days – What a Difference Three Years Makes! (Diameter Health)
• Visuals in Health Education: The Positive Impact is Easy to See (Healthwise)
• SHIELD: Overcoming obstacles to lab information interoperability (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Providers are Onboard with Online Scheduling: What Healthcare Organizations Should Do Now. (Kyruus)
• H is for ‘Empathy’ (Lyniate)
• For Rural Hospitals, It Pays to Be Transparent (Medhost)
• How clinicians can use AI to improve patient care (Meditech)
• From Data to Actionable Insights: Create a Data-Driven SNF Rehab Therapy Team (Net Health)
• Bridging the Gap in Primary Care: Behavioral Health Integration Best Practices (Neuroflow)
• Bringing Equity to the Forefront with CalAIM (Netsmart)
• Revenue cycle transformation: 3.4% increase in net revenue and still growing (Nordic)

Contacts

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

News 6/29/22

Top News

The National Academy of Medicine publishes a paper titled “The Promise of Digital Health: Then, Now, and the Future” whose authors are digital health household names that include Amy Abernethy, Patti Brennan, Atul Butte, Judy Faulkner, John Halamka, Kevin Johnson, Don Rucker, and Eric Topol. Points:

• US health policies and health system investments are misaligned with WHO’s definition of health as incorporating physical, mental, and social well-being, not just the absence of disease.
• Digital health has done little to improve care effectiveness, efficiency, equity, and continuity of care, as inpatient data is largely sequestered and difficult to integrate due to a lack of data standards.
• The promise of real-time generation of evidence to fuel a learning health system exists only in a few pilot projects.
• Potential uses of digital innovation include advancing diagnosis and treatment, ensuring care continuity, managing patients offsite via telemedicine, partnering with individuals for self-management, and reducing errors and waste.
• Digital health measured the impact of COVID-19 by race, economic states, and underserved populations and has the potential to identify, measure, and modify the root sources of illness.
• Social determinants of health, which cause up to 15% of premature deaths, need to be considered as in-scope by providers and health systems, as supported by the collection and integration of SDoH into EHRs and mobile apps. The risk of algorithmic bias should be considered, however, such as stigmatizing no-show patients who struggle with employment and childcare issues.
• Digital health can also contribute to the understanding of environmental factors, such as air pollution and climate change.
• Behavioral interventions, such as weight management programs, often don’t work, and digital programs that claim otherwise are usually not supported by evidence and weren’t produced by experts in health behavior change.
• AI/ML as applied to genetic, genomic, and medical history data could provide near real-time feedback to individuals using a voice assistant as a “digital health coach.”
• Architecture should focus on the individual, embed equity and transparency, and realign health system payments around outcomes and value.

Reader Comments

From Das Kapital: “Re: slow news days. I’m disappointed when there’s not much news to read in HIStalk.” That’s a feature, not a bug. Unlike most news sites, I have no incentive to pad out the good stuff with junk to draw clicks or increase time-on-page numbers. My gift to you on those slow news days is time that you can reallocate.

Meanwhile, that’s a reminder for me to offer the annual Summer Doldrums first-year, extra-months deal for new sponsors. If your company is failing to reach decision-makers; was surprised to learn that your since-departed junior marketing person ignored our renewal emails and got you cancelled; or is a small startup, Lorre can hook you up. You get a year’s worth of exposure for less than what some companies spend on Starbucks for conference booth staff.

From Oracle of Secrets: “Re: Oracle Cerner (still feels weird to write that). Larry’s reading of marketing mumbo jumbo about quality and cost improvements with the acquisition wasn’t convincing.” You should assume until proven otherwise that Oracle’s entire interest in buying Cerner is (a) to boost sales of Oracle’s existing products, especially cloud services, by getting (or making) Cerner users replace anything from Oracle’s big tech competitors Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc.; (b) to sell more Oracle products such as ERP into the Cerner market; (c) to gain access to a supply of de-identified patient data that can be used from everything from AI training to selling on the open market; and (d) to get a bit closer to massive healthcare spending in both the US and elsewhere. Oracle may do great work in healthcare, but market precedents aren’t encouraging. It will be interesting to see how hard Oracle upsells into the Cerner client base and whether that drives clients to Epic, which by the way already offers a lot of what Larry was extolling. Readers, what is your experience with Oracle as a vendor?

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Listening: Turnstile, Baltimore-based, high-energy punkish rockers who I found accidentally who then made a big splash at Glastonbury this week. They kind of remind me of Rage Against the Machine, but they can take an enjoyable hard turn from scrapping with throngs of on-stage mosh pit divers to playing thoughtful melodies.

I talked to a HIMSS insider about recent changes there. Notes from our chat, with the usual disclaimer that this is one non-anonymous person’s opinions and observations that have not been confirmed:

• Some employees felt that HIMSS22 was an awkward conference, with low HIMSS employee morale and a lack of visibility of President and CEO Hal Wolf. Turnover increased immediately before and after the conference.
• Some regional events that should have been popular have been cancelled due to lack of sponsoring vendors. HIMSS laid off around 50 people, most of them in the events area, a few weeks ago.
• Hal’s vision was a Netflix or New York Times type subscription model for HIMSS, where people could buy a basic subscription and pay extra for add-ons.
• Hal runs HIMSS more like a for-profit business than his predecessor Steve Lieber, with a quick, confusing switch of tactics from a non-profit and the hiring on of quite a few of Hal’s former for-profit company colleagues.
• HIMSS wasn’t prepared for the buzz of the ViVE conference and “mouths dropped” internally upon seeing the energy it drew. HIMSS didn’t send anyone to scout ViVE, but saw recaps and photos from the brightly colored, fun conference with interesting people on stage in Miami. The industry’s aggravation level with HIMSS was high, making it the perfect time to start a competing conference. Still, HIMSS isn’t making major changes, just strategizing to increase HIMSS23 registration numbers and streamline the entry process for the “45 minute PowerPoints in windowless rooms” educational format.
• HIMSS had previously tried something similar to HLTH and ViVE by buying Health 2.0 to get a younger and hipper crowd and to tap into investors, but “wrung the life out of it” by making it into a mini-HIMSS that suffered from “death by committee.”
• The sale of HIMSS Analytics was “shocking” since that business had given HIMSS a way to understand health IT as an influencer rather than just a cheerleader.
• HIMSS Accelerate was the “jump the shark” moment as HIMSS tried to push members where they wanted them instead of where those members actually wanted to be. It was supposed to change the way that HIMSS does business, but people don’t need or want another social media platform. Accelerate use is negligible outside of HIMSS employees.

Webinars

July 12 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Digital Data Stewardship for Trusted, High-Quality Data Exchange.” Sponsor: Clinical Architecture. Presenter: Carol Graham, MS, RN, product manager, Clinical Architecture. Organizations face challenges in ensuring that the patient data they received and send is consistent, accurate, and usable. Use cases include receiving multi-source data across health information networks with variation in formats and content; merging and de-duplicating provider, payer, and research data; uplifting legacy data for current use cases and formats; and normalizing and formatting data for public health surveillance, quality measure reporting, and providing directly to the patient. This webinar will cover Pivot, a comprehensive Digital Data Steward solution that orchestrates format harmonization, content (vocabulary) normalization, de-duplication, and data quality validation into a single solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

A trade court judge rules that Apple infringed on AliveCor’s atrial fibrillation detection technology, a decision that if affirmed by the International Trade Commission, could force Apple to stop selling Watch in the US or to remove the disputed technology.

PicnicHealth raises $60 million in a Series C investment round, bringing its total funding to over $100 million. The San Francisco-based startup uses de-identified patient data culled from its PHR offering to build datasets for research.

App-enabled at-home and point-of-care testing company Cue Health will reportedly lay off 170 employees, citing economic hardships and a shrinking market for COVID-19 testing. The company had signed testing contracts with the NBA, MLB, and HHS, among others, during the height of the pandemic.

Hartford HealthCare (CT) spins out H2O, a cloud-based predictive analytics company focused on offering providers insight into patient length of stay, and patient flow through the emergency department and during surgery. The software, developed in collaboration with MIT professor Dimitris Bertsimas, PhD, will be offered commercially by the end of the year.

People

R1 RCM names former Cloudmed CEO Lee Rivas, MBA president. R1 finalized its acquisition of the RCM software vendor last week.

Hackensack Meridian Health (NJ) names Sameer Sethi (Bon Secours Mercy Health) SVP and chief data and analytics officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Olive announces GA of its Autonomous Revenue Cycle, a group of solutions designed to help providers automate time-consuming, revenue-related administrative tasks.

Trinity Health of New England partners with virtual lactation platform vendor Nest Collaborative to offer virtual breastfeeding support for families who give birth at the health system’s three birthing hospitals, generally paid for by health insurance.

TriHealth says that integrating Tempus oncology genomic testing workflows with Epic helped identify available clinical trials, recommend an FDA-approved treatment, improved genetic counseling, alerted clinicians when appropriate new treatments became available for existing diagnoses, and made clinician ordering easier.

Yale researchers develop an EHR-embedded software tool to help ED doctors initiate buprenorphine treatment for opioid abuse.

Government and Politics

The Government Accountability Office recommends that HHS develop a way for covered entities to offer feedback on the breach reporting process. Hacking and IT incidents have increased by 843% since 2015, while unauthorized access and disclosures have increased by 43%.

Other

An Insider investigation of virtual mental health startup Cerebral finds that the company ran itself without regard to clinical standards until the federal government intervened. The report says that the company took on patients it should not have, assigned them to clinicians — mostly nurse practitioners — and other employees who lacked training and oversight, pushed those clinicians to issue prescriptions to 95% of patients, and placed the licenses of its clinicians at risk via its policies and its disregard for state regulations. Insiders say Cerebral’s clinicians sometimes ignored the company’s requirement that they check prescription drug monitoring databases before prescribing controlled substances. Cerebral is being investigated by the DEA, DOJ, and FTC, while health insurers and pharmacies have cut ties. The company at one time had 210,000 active patients and 4,500 employees, with plans to expand to 10,000 employees by the end of this year as it planned to expand into weight loss.

A study concludes that most digital health startups have low levels of clinical robustness, as evidenced by few regulatory filings, clinical trials, and data shared publicly.

Sponsor Updates

• Agfa HealthCare further develops enterprise imaging workflows for the Yorkshire Imaging Collaborative and South Yorkshire & Bassetlaw regions in England.
• Everest Group’s RCM Operations Peak Matric Report names AGS Health a Star Performer and Leader for growth, innovation, and positive impact on the healthcare market.
• Baker Tilly donates $10,000 to Camp Good Mourning as part of its Wishes grant program.
• BDO publishes a new insight, “Minimizing Revenue Loss Due to Inpatient Status Downgrades.”
• Clearwater hires Alka Kumar (HealthWorks) as a compliance and privacy consultant.
• Optimum Healthcare IT hires Kenneth Martin (Elliot Hospital) as application team manager within its managed services team.
• Divurgent names Kristal Wittman director of digital health.
• AGS Health is again named a Leader and Star Performer in Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) Operations by Everest Group.
• Enlace Health will present at the World Forum Bundled Payments Conference July 14 in Chicago.
• The American Society of Nephrology has entered into a publishing agreement with Wolters Kluwer Health to publish Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, and Kidney360.

Blog Posts

• How cumbersome RCM processes are hurting your employee morale (Ability Network)
• The Importance of Patient Engagement in a Medical Practice (AdvancedMD)
• Can data help eradicate long-COVID? (Arcadia)
• The Brand Lessons That Are Having an Impact This Year in B2B (Ascom)
• Six Key Statistics on the Behavioral Health Crisis in the US (Bamboo Health)
• 5 ways to better manage patient expectations for improved satisfaction scores (Bravado Health)
• The Dedication to Giving Back (CHIME)
• Competing against generic alternatives? Highlight Your Savings Offer While Prescribers are in the EHR. (ConnectiveRx)
• How to Overcome Community Connect Adoption Challenges (CTG)
• Dermatology Made Easier This Summer (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 6/27/22

Top News

The White House signs the VA Electronic Health Record Transparency Act of 2021, which requires the VA to report the costs of its EHR modernization project to congressional committees each quarter. The report will also include a breakout of project funding sources.

The VA must also submit quality, performance, safety, and value metrics, along with a list of patient safety reports, incidents, alerts, or disclosures.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents are skeptical that Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner will improve cost or quality.

New poll to your right or here: How important to you personally is telehealth today versus in 2019? I realized while posing the question is that it hasn’t changed for me – I’ve yet to have a telehealth visit, although I wouldn’t be opposed to it as an alternative to the physician office visits that I rarely require.

I’m surprised to see pundits who confidently state that Larry Ellison is CEO of Oracle, a position he hasn’t held since 2014.

The need is evident.

Webinars

July 12 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Digital Data Stewardship for Trusted, High-Quality Data Exchange.” Sponsor: Clinical Architecture. Presenter: Carol Graham, MS, RN, product manager, Clinical Architecture. Organizations face challenges in ensuring that the patient data they received and send is consistent, accurate, and usable. Use cases include receiving multi-source data across health information networks with variation in formats and content; merging and de-duplicating provider, payer, and research data; uplifting legacy data for current use cases and formats; and normalizing and formatting data for public health surveillance, quality measure reporting, and providing directly to the patient. This webinar will cover Pivot, a comprehensive Digital Data Steward solution that orchestrates format harmonization, content (vocabulary) normalization, de-duplication, and data quality validation into a single solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Myriad Genetics will integrate its provider genetic test ordering and resulting program with Epic.

Healthcare Triangle launches a digital front door app for users of Epic’s MyChart.

Sales

• Altus Neighbors Emergency Centers will use the billing system of Sphere-owned Health IPass.
• Lutheran Health Network, Flowers Hospital, and North Knoxville Medical Center implement the PeriWatch Vigilance maternal-fetal early warning system.
• Health Alliance launches a remote patient monitoring program powered by CareSignal.

People

Healthcare Growth Partners hires Brooks McElveen, MS (New Capital Partners) as VP.

Announcements and Implementations

Microsoft will collaborate with Volpara Health Technologies on AI-powered detection and quantification of breast arterial calcification.

PerfectServe will further develop its cloud-based call center solution.

Baker Tilly and MedeAnalytics develop Service Line Data Signs, an easy-to-use analytics solution for supply and pharmacy expenses.

Other

CHOP SVP/CIO Shakeeb Akhter recaps the health system’s recent conversion from Ascom phones to Epic communications, including secure messaging, Voalte voice calling, and Rover alerts and alarms.

Sponsor Updates

• OptimizeRx extends the reach of its omni-channel medication adherence platform through a partnership with pharma marketing technology company Equals 5.
• Pivot Point Consulting promotes Nicole Gerten to senior operations specialist.
• Protenus has received the highest overall performance score for its drug diversion surveillance solution in the recent KLAS Drug Diversion Monitoring report.
• Symplr announces the winners of its 2022 Lean Human Capital Elite Honor Roll program.
• Premier has named Henry Ford Health the winner of the 2022 Premier Alliance Excellence Award.
• TigerConnect and its Critical Alert business have announced that Mount Nittany Health nurse Jodie McClure, RN has won its Nurses at the Heart of Healthcare contest.
• VisiQuate expands its Payer Action Center to help providers reclaim millions in unpaid claims.
• The following HIStalk Sponsors will exhibit at HFMA through June 29 in Denver: AGS Health, Arrive Health, Availity, Change Healthcare, Experian Health, Iodine Software, Nym Health, Olive, Optum, Oracle Cerner, Premier, Tegria, VisiQuate.

Blog Posts

• What Will the Future of Healthcare Look Like? (Experity)
• Healthcare data standards 101: HL7, FHIR and more (Olive)
• Why is it Important to Reduce Hospital Admissions? (PatientBond)
• Breakthroughs Bulletin: Spotlight on Our Innovation Showcase Suppliers (Premier)
• Key Takeaways from the 2022 APG Annual Conference: ACO REACH and Health Equity (RCxRules)
• 6 best practices to know before implementing a cloud contact center solution (Talkdesk)
• The Unexpected Drivers of PT Patient Success (WebPT)
• 7 Patient Engagement Strategies to Improve Outcomes (Well Health)
• Top 3 Things to Look for in a Healthcare Integration Service Provider (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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

News 6/24/22

Top News

MemorialCare’s innovation fund makes an unspecified investment in IoT security vendor Asimily.

Reader Comments

From Pointy Solution: “Re: Cures Act vendor requirements. NextGen, at least, is reaching out to customers about their responsibilities.” NextGen reminds its customers via email that the Cures Act prohibits EHR vendors from enforcing “gag clauses” and reiterates that its customers are free to communicate about system usability, interoperability, security, and user experience regardless of what their contracts do or don’t say (the company says it does not believe that any of its agreements contain gag clauses). I’m not sure if such customer communication is required, but regardless, nice job by NextGen.

Webinars

July 12 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Digital Data Stewardship for Trusted, High-Quality Data Exchange.” Sponsor: Clinical Architecture. Presenter: Carol Graham, MS, RN, product manager, Clinical Architecture. Organizations face challenges in ensuring that the patient data they received and send is consistent, accurate, and usable. Use cases include receiving multi-source data across health information networks with variation in formats and content; merging and de-duplicating provider, payer, and research data; uplifting legacy data for current use cases and formats; and normalizing and formatting data for public health surveillance, quality measure reporting, and providing directly to the patient. This webinar will cover Pivot, a comprehensive Digital Data Steward solution that orchestrates format harmonization, content (vocabulary) normalization, de-duplication, and data quality validation into a single solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Ro, which offers telehealth visits for ED, hair loss, skin care, and fertility, joins an ever-lengthening list of formerly high-valuation digital health startups that are laying off employees. Business Insider reports that the company laid off 18% of its headcount on Thursday, four months after reaching a paper valuation of $7 billion.

Sales

• Intermountain Healthcare goes live on Gyant’s asynchronous e-visit system Async, which provides AI-powered clinical assessment within the health system’s My Health+ app and routes patients to an asynchronous visit when appropriate.
• Urgent care provider Innovative Care goes live on Nym Health’s medical coding technology for revenue cycle management.

People

Signify Health hires Paymon Farazi, MBA (Tausight) as chief product officer.

InstaMed, a JP Morgan Company, promotes Jeff Lin to president.

Announcements and Implementations

Global Healthcare Exchange launches a digital solution to support health systems capture, review, and report vaccination information.

Change Healthcare releases a patient engagement solution that incorporates its revenue cycle management capabilities with Luma Health’s patient engagement software.

Wolters Kluwer, Health and Laerdal Medical launch a VSim for Nursing simulation training course area for advanced medical-surgical and critical care scenarios.

Optum develops a laboratory benefit solution to reduce unnecessary lab testing, which it saves could save health plans $3 billion per year.

WellSky-owned CarePort expands its care coordination data connections to 17 HIES and data sources.

KLAS says that Oracle Cerner’s go-forward RCM product RevElate won’t necessarily solve the company’s high-profile revenue cycle problems, as customer experience with implementation and training of its underlying Soarian Financials product has been mixed. Customers say that Soarian Financials is a solid system that drives good outcomes despite usability issues, but requires more add-on products than expected, has exposed customers to more nickel-and-diming since Cerner acquired the product in 2015, and won’t solve Oracle Cerner’s challenges of hiring and keeping employees who can facilitate successful outcomes.  

Other

North Carolina’s state treasurer says that pandemic-related federal hospital funding was a “huge wealth transfer to wealthy hospital systems,” noting that the state’s seven dominant health systems saw profits swell to $5.3 billion last year. Treasurer Dale Folwell – who notes that Atrium Health collected $719 million in provider relieve funds and then merged with a competitor, while Duke Health’s profit margin jumped from 11% in 2019 to 41% last year – says that big health systems “have turned into stock market, private equity, and real estate development firms” that “disguise themselves as non-profits.”

A KHN article ponders whether a small town is better off with a bad hospital than having none at all, describing two rural Missouri hospitals that were bought by a private equity-backed firm that collected federal relief money, hired directors with little hospital experience, stopped paying their bills, missed paychecks, ran out of supplies, and racked up a long list of CMS deficiencies before closing the hospitals 18 months after buying them. Noble Health Corporation, which operated Audrain Community Hospital and Callaway Community Hospitals, announced on March 18 that it would limit services and divert ambulances temporarily because of an unspecified IT issue with RCM and EHR systems that it said was causing cash flow problems, then locked the doors for good six days later.

Sponsor Updates

• The Health Information Resource Center recognizes Healthwise with seven Digital Health Awards for its medical illustrations and health education videos.
• FDB hires Christopher Marks (State Farm) as information security officer.
• Jinuper Networks publishes an information sheet titled “Revolutionize the Network for Modern Healthcare.”
• CarePort, a WellSky company, has expanded its data connections to 17 HIEs and data sources across the country to provide enhanced visibility into a growing number of providers and increased care coordination capabilities.
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions publishes a new interoperability report, “Assessing the Evolution of Health Data Exchange.”
• Medicomp Systems releases a new Tell Me Where It Hurts Podcast, “On Innovation with Dr. Nick van Terheyden.”

Blog Posts

• HHS Updates Guidance for HIPAA-Compliant Audio-Only Telehealth (EVisit)
• Healthcare data: the value of historical patient data (Experian Health)
• Why Crisis Management Preparedness Matters (Everbridge)
• How to Prioritize the Patient in a Digital-First Experience (Get Well)
• 3 Ways to take your Healthcare IT Service Desk to the next level (The HCI Group)
• Embracing Health at Home – Key Strategies to Optimize Health Outcomes (HCTec)
• Strengthen your security posture with identity governance and privileged access management (Imprivata)
• 6 factors to consider when calculating real EHR downtime costs (Interbit Data)
• IMO asks: What’s next for the CMIO? (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• 3 Reasons Your Healthcare Facility Should Offer Online Bill Pay (Medhost)
• How to reduce prescription abandonment and improve medication adherence (Meditech)
• 5 Inspiring Physical Therapy Innovations (MWTherapy)
• Fantastic First Impressions Set the Foundation for Future Rehab Therapy Referrals (Net Health)
• What is ambient clinical intelligence – and how is it transforming healthcare? (Nuance)
• Autonomous Coding vs. Computer-assisted Coding – Part 1: The Evolution of Medical Coding (Nym)
• The big squeeze: Navigating the confluence of post-COVID challenges (Nordic)

Contacts

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

News 6/22/22

Top News

An NBC News article notes the reduced availability of telehealth visits as state-level pandemic emergency health orders expire, reinstating more restrictive practice requirements.

Patients are being forced to change doctors, drive to in-person treatment locations, or answer questions about where they will be physically located during their appointment to comply with individual state laws that regulate cross-border provider practice.

Only 12 states still have telehealth waivers and some of those expire soon.

Additional challenges will be introduced when the federal pandemic order expires and Medicare’s telehealth and payment waivers will end.

Webinars

July 12 (Tuesday) 1 ET. “Digital Data Stewardship for Trusted, High-Quality Data Exchange.” Sponsor: Clinical Architecture. Presenter: Carol Graham, MS, RN, product manager, Clinical Architecture. Organizations face challenges in ensuring that the patient data they received and send is consistent, accurate, and usable. Use cases include receiving multi-source data across health information networks with variation in formats and content; merging and de-duplicating provider, payer, and research data; uplifting legacy data for current use cases and formats; and normalizing and formatting data for public health surveillance, quality measure reporting, and providing directly to the patient. This webinar will cover Pivot, a comprehensive Digital Data Steward solution that orchestrates format harmonization, content (vocabulary) normalization, de-duplication, and data quality validation into a single solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Telehealth infrastructure provider SteadyMD acquires BlocHealth, which offers a clinician licensing, credentialing, and payer enrollment platform.

Sales

• Union General Health System (GA) selects digital patient intake technology from Qure4U.
• Mount Sinai Health System (NY) will implement MphrX’s Minerva clinical data-sharing software.
• Valley Health System will install EVideon’s Vibe Health smart room technology at its new hospital in New Jersey next year.
• Appalachian Regional Healthcare (KY) will use virtual care and AI-based predictive analytics technology from Biofourmis as part of its new Rural Home Hospital project.
• Pfizer will use real-world, de-identified pharma safety evidence from Truveta, which represents 20 health system members.

People

Former ConnectiveRx and Surescripts executive Rick Ratliff (CAQH) joins Australian medication management app company MedAdvisor as its US-based CEO and general manager.

Kris Bhambhani (Columbia University Irving Medical Center) joins Amazon Web Services as global head of healthcare compliance.

Pinkrose Hamilton (Hackensack Meridian Health) joins University of Iowa Health Care as chief data analytics officer.

Rich Steinle (Innovista Health Solutions) joins Carium as CEO, replacing co-founder Scott Pradels upon his transition to COO.

Orion Health names Craig White (Concerto HealthAI) chief data officer and Grant Anthony (Verisure) CISO.

Joe Cabralm MS (Press Ganey) joins Prolucent Health as chief growth officer.

Industry long-timer Pete Mounts, partner with Himformatics and former executive with McKesson and Eclipsys, has died.

Announcements and Implementations

CloudWave announces that seven healthcare facilities, including Doctors Hospital (the Bahamas), Franciscan Hospital for Children (MA), Blythedale Children’s Hospital (NY), and Wooster Community Hospital (OH), have implemented its OpSus Cloud Services.

RxRevu, whose platform delivers patient-specific cost and insurance coverage information within provider decision-making workflows, renames itself to Arrive Health.

Chicago-based WellBe Senior Medical implements Bluestream Health’s virtual care platform-as-a-service.

GE Healthcare announces GA of Portrait Mobile, wireless vitals monitoring technology for hospital patients.

Government and Politics

In Australia, the Queensland government will allocate an additional $200 million USD for the continued implementation of its enterprise Cerner EHR project over the next five years. Sixteen of a hoped-for 27 hospitals have gone live to some degree on the new system. Originally launched in 2011 with a budget of $288 million, the IEMR project ballooned to an estimated completion cost of $840 million. An audit in 2018 found the scheme to be 40% over budget. Further problems, including outages in 2019, physician complaints, and the departure of the director-general have hampered go-live timelines.

The VA seeks bids for its $650 million Accelerating VA Innovation and Learning contract, which will focus on five innovation task areas – personalized care, data transformation, digital care, immersive technology, and care and service delivery models. Offers are due June 30.

The 49th Medical Group at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico celebrates the launch of MHS Genesis.

Privacy and Security

Baptist Health System notifies over 1 million patients in Texas of a data breach after noticing that an unauthorized entity installed a line of malicious code on the back-end of its website in late March, gaining access to its computer network for several weeks.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD recognizes Product Developer Kylie Jensen with a FIT Award.
• CTG publishes a case study titled “VCU Health Partners with CTG for Successful Epic Go-Live.”
• Baker Tilly will sponsor and present at the Chief Patient Officer Summit July 19-20 in Boston.
• Nordic posts DoctTalk Ep. 106, “Redefining health for a new era of care.”
• CareMesh welcomes Elle Scott as a sales and account intern.
• Executives from Ascension, CVS, and Cognetivity Neurosciences will keynote the InterSystems Health Leadership Conference June 23 in Seattle.
• CloudWave sponsors the 2022 HIMSS Colorado Golf Classic in Littleton.
• Encompass Health implements Cerner at its 150^th post-acute inpatient rehab hospital.

Blog Posts

• How to save time and money with internal interoperability (Ability Network)
• Agfa HealthCare celebrates another User Conference! (Agfa HealthCare)
• Real-world data IRL: Accelerate your research with new FDA guidelines (Arcadia)
• Connecting DRVS to Your HIE: A High-Value Proposition (Azara Healthcare)
• Ask These Questions Before You Pursue an M&A Transaction (BDO)
• Going Beyond the Firewall: How to Prepare and Plan for a Cyberattack (Philips Capsule)
• Epic Hyperdrive: How You Can Prepare for the Transition (CereCore)
• How EHR Data and Survey Responses Mitigate Clinical Research Bias (ChartLogic)
• Creating Opportunities to Connect is CHIME’s Secret Sauce (CHIME)
• A Holistic Approach to Cyber Risk Management (Clearwater)
• ‘I Just Tried to Be Inventive:’ One Patient’s Plan for Medical Bills (CoverMyMeds)
• 4 Ways to Align Test Automation and Agile Development (CTG)
• Beside the Bed and Behind the Screen: Experienced Nurses are Finding New Energy in Hybrid Care (Current Health)
• Disease Explorer: Effectiveness Through Cohorts (EClinicalWorks)
• Payer COVID-19 Screening Policies and Boosting Your Online Security (Experity)

Sponsor Spotlight

RxRevu, the nation’s leading provider of integrated cost and coverage data, has renamed itself Arrive Health in an effort to better reflect the company’s mission to improve patient access to care, reduce friction in provider workflows, and increase awareness of affordable care options. In conjunction with the renaming, Arrive Health has launched a new corporate website and new product offerings to better serve providers, care teams, and patients. Arrive Health will be exhibiting at the upcoming HFMA Annual Conference in Denver, from June 26-29.

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 6/20/22

Top News

VA OIG finds that at least 148 veterans in Inland Northwest were harmed by a Cerner software flaw that the company was aware of, but failed to disclose to the VA.

The VA OIG’s draft report concludes that the Cerner system failed to deliver 11,000 orders for specialty care and lab work due to unrecognized locations that sent the mismatched orders to the “unknown queue.” Each order had to be reviewed and re-entered by VA employees.

A statement from Oracle said the company will bring additional resources to the VA’s Cerner program.

VA OIG contacted four Cerner employees for further information. Two of them, including a Cerner VP, did not respond to repeated requests, while the other two offered no reason that the VA wasn’t notified of the problem.

Meanwhile, the VA will delay further Cerner rollouts until 2023 to ensure “adequate reliability.” Puget Sound VA’s go-live that was scheduled for August will now take place in March 2023, while VA Portland will move its implementation from November to April 2023.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents don’t check email and messages obsessively outside of normal working hours.

New poll to your right or here: How will US healthcare cost and quality be affected by Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Optum UK will acquire Leeds-based healthcare software vendor EMIS Group Plc for $1.5 billion in cash.

Virtual mental health provider Talkspace reportedly rejects the acquisition overtures of Amwell. Talkspace turned down a previous offer for $465 million, with its valuation now at $256 million versus its IPO market cap of $1.4 billion.

Sales

• Visage Imaging extends its agreements with Sutter Health and WellSpan Health.
• In the UK, Homerton Healthcare chooses Sectra for enterprise imaging.
• Boston Children’s Hospital will replace Cerner with Epic, as internally announced Friday. Its physician group is already using Epic.

People

Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company, names Ryan Sousa (Seattle Children’s) as VP of data and analytics.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic will apply to join TEFCA later this year as a Qualified Health Information Network.

Other

Australia’s My Health Record continues to see low participation despite its $1.4 billion cost since 2012. Consumers are finding that their information is incomplete due to lack of provider data submissions, with ED doctors and nurses accessing the records of just 2% of patients.

A reader-forwarded research article notes that an American family of four who is covered by an employer’s PPO plan will spend $30,000 per year on healthcare in 2022, up 20% from 2020. Hospitals took 51% of the total.

I was fascinated by this look back at telemedicine in the US, which included these milestones:

• A Lancet article from 1879 noted the benefit of diagnosis by telephone.
• A Dutch physician won the Nobel Prize for his work in developing an early electrocardiogram, as described in a paper from 1903.
• A magazine publisher who also invented the first home radio receiver looked at radio’s potential for medical diagnosis in 1925, which predicted use of a “teledactyl” in which doctors would examine patients remotely with robotic arms.
• An RSNA paper from 1950 described the use of sending X-rays over the telephone in the Philadelphia area, predicting that it would revolutionize care in rural hospitals.
• Two Nebraska hospitals 112 miles apart established a TV link in 1948 that was used for psychiatric diagnosis, speech therapy, and seminars.
• NASA funded remote monitoring for astronauts that was later used to support a mobile health unit for Arizona’s Tohono O’odham tribe.
• An article published in 2000 titled “The Internet versus the telephone: what is telehealth anyway?” concluded that the Internet would become a critical aspect of telecare.

Sponsor Updates

• West Monroe staff in Dallas deliver 46 meals to Meals on Wheels clients.
• OneMedNet appoints Eric Asbury to its board.
• Pivot Point Consulting promotes Harold Cramer, Jr. to director, managed services service desk.
• Quil collaborates with AI and IoT company People Power to bring innovative, AI-enabled health tech to seniors aging at home.
• Juniper Networks publishes a white paper titled “Improve Patient Outcomes and Reduce Costs with AI-Driven Networking.”
• RCxRules publishes a new e-book, “Simplify Your Revenue Cycle Workflow Through Automation.”
• TriNetX partners with Finnish Biobanks to increase clinical and biomedical trials in Finland.
• Vocera publishes a new case study, “UnityPoint Health Allen Hospital – Relieving Nurse Burden and Strengthening Safety.”

Blog Posts

• Avia Insights: Q&A with Matthew Sappern of PeriGen: Making Childbirth safer (PeriGen)
• Introducing the Value Analysis Maturity Curve: A Five-Step Guide (Symplr)
• Bringing the Joy Back to Medicine with PINC AI Clinical Decision Support (Premier)
• How Large AMC Took a Proactive Approach to Drug Diversion Monitoring (Protenus)
• The Full Range of Digital Health Strategy Positions – What’s Yours? (Quil)
• Get more value from the cloud (and skip to the good part) (Redox)
• Interoperability: Is the Glass Half Full or Half Empty? (Surescripts)
• Improving the customer experience: A 6 step guide for call centers (Talkdesk)
• Preventing Breast Cancer Requires a New Approach to Screening and Detection (Twistle)
• The Unexpected Drivers of PT Patient Success (WebPT)
• Leadership Voices: Isabelle Meyer Stapf on How Parenting Lessons Can Make You a Better Leader (Well Health)
• RPM Benefits Patients and Caregivers (VitalTech)

Contacts

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

News 6/17/22

Top News

An investigative article finds that the websites of 33 of Newsweek’s top 100 US hospitals send Facebook the IP address of people who schedule an appointment online. The Meta Pixel tracker also sends Facebook the doctor’s name and the search term that the user entered to find them.

The hospitals include Hopkins, UCLA, New York Presbyterian, Northwestern, and Duke.

Reporters also found that at least seven health systems have installed Meta Pixel on their patient portals, including Community Health Network, Edward-Elmhurst Health, and Novant Health.

The hospitals may have violated HIPAA in sharing personally identifiable health information with third parties without the consent of patients.

Reader Comments

From Cedar: “Re: pre-Oracle attempts to develop a national EHR. I recall one entrepreneur in the 2000s who had no healthcare experience who announced he was developing a national EHR. I believe it was Jim Clark of Netscape. Are you aware of any other famous Silicon Valley heads who made a big splash and then went nowhere?” Jim Clark’s Healtheon was certainly all over healthcare, trading on his success with Netscape to eventually merge with WebMD. Intel co-founder Andy Grove also hatched grand healthcare technology plans in the mid-aughts that went nowhere. Google and Microsoft had their own arrogance-fueled failures with personal health records. Sun Microsystems made some national noise in the mid-2000s, then sold out to Oracle in 2010. IBM had a bunch of now-forgotten projects. I’ll invite readers to help me recall other big tech companies that showed misplaced confidence in planning to show us healthcare folks how it’s done before slinking away shortly thereafter with the newfound knowledge that you can’t fix a dysfunctional, profit-obsessed healthcare system with technology.

Webinars

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

People

CloudWave promotes Chris Mellyn to VP of marketing.

Aetna/CVS Health promotes Ron Wampler to executive director of interoperability.

Melissa Bell (Intelligent Medical Objects) joins TigerConnect as president.

Cone Health hires Jeetu Nanda, MD, MS, MBA (Cerner) as CMIO.

David Kates, MBA, MSEE (Manifest MedEx) joins Unified Patient Network as CTO.

Opala hires Ken Chandler (Premera Blue Cross) as CEO.

Krista Hawk (HealthPay24) joins Doctivity Health as VP of sales and business development.

Announcements and Implementations

Providence and Microsoft launch a nine-month clinical innovation fellowship.

Walgreens launches a clinical trial business that includes patient recruitment, a decentralized clinical trial platform, and real-world evidence.

Other

The Washington Post calls out Phreesia for using the patient information it collects from its patient check-in app collects to target drug company ads.

A Kaiser Health News investigation finds that 41% of US adults are saddled with healthcare-related debt, much of it hidden in the form of credit card balances, family loans, or provider payment plans. An expert says that debt is a main product of a health system that is “almost perfectly designed to create debt.” One in seven people who have medical debt say they can’t receive further care because of their unpaid bills. The authors note that the Affordable Care Act caps out-pocket costs, but few Americans can afford the $8,700 annual maximum and high-deductible plans require paying thousands of dollars before coverage even begins. 

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks announces its continued partnership with Witham Health Services (IN) to further improve patient communications and achieve overall operational efficiency in more than 30 locations.
• Diameter Health publishes a new white paper, “Healthcare ROI: How Health Plans Use Diameter Health’s Automated, Scalable Technology to Maximize Value from Clinical Data Investments and Avoid Significant Operational Cost.”
• Pivot Point Consulting promotes Molly Kalinowski to director of managed services application support.
• AGS Health opens an office in Jaipur, India.
• Experian Health releases a new infographic, “The Digital Healthcare Gap: Streamlining the Patient Journey.”
• Research from Juniper Networks finds AI adoption has expanded tenfold across enterprises while governance lags.

Blog Posts

• Why Health Plans Need Automation to Get ROI from Clinical Data (Diameter Health)
• Engaging Inactive Patients Through Personalized Outreach (Get Well)
• 7 Benefits Digital Health Education Brings to Care Management (Healthwise)
• Why your Zero Trust strategy needs a third-party privileged access component (Imprivata)
• EHR Report Distribution: 3 workflow basics for hospital efficiency (Interbit Data)
• Disrupting Healthcare Through Innovation (InterSystems)
• How clinical documentation impacts revenue cycle management (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• How Digital Support Groups Bridge the Patient-Provider Divide (Medhost)
• Physical Therapy Superbill vs. Courtesy Billing: Difference & Uses (MWTherapy)
• Transparency vs Status Quo: Why Point-of-Care Patient Financial Responsibility Calculations Up Your Star Rating (Myndshft)
• Looking for Ways to Keep Patients Enrolled and Engaged in Skin and Wound Clinical Trials? Do This … Not That (Net Health)
• NeuroFlow’s Journey Gallery Improves Access to Self-Guided Behavioral Health Support (NeuroFlow)

Contacts

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

News 6/15/22

Top News

Oracle says in its earnings call that it will review Cerner’s product portfolio to find opportunities to move from third-party technologies to those of Oracle, including moving to Oracle’s cloud infrastructure.

Larry Ellison added that Oracle’s plan for a national health records database is “clearly going to be our largest business.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m mostly recovered from my infection that may or may not have been COVID (all tests were negative, so who knows). The upside of being flat-on-back for a week is that I rediscovered the amazing decades-old hospital drama “St. Elsewhere,” of which the entire 137-episode run is available on Hulu. Also occupying my fuzzy-minded time is the first podcast I’ve ever listened to, the spectacular “Gilbert Gottfried’s Amazing Colossal Podcast!,” which like me obsesses over obscure TV shows and one-hit musical wonders as described by guests who were involved.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

ResMed will acquire Germany-based MediFox Dan, which offers out-of-hospital software solutions. ResMed will pay $1 billion for the acquisition, about 12 times net revenue.

Bardavon Health Innovations, whose network offers musculoskeletal health services for workers’ compensation cases, acquires PeerWell, which offers a MSK care coordination platform.

London-based Proximie, which virtually connects surgeons to ORs and cath labs, raises $80 million in a Series C round.

Sales

• Digital health company Zyter selects PatientBond’s psychographic segmentation model and patient engagement software to improve risk stratification and care plan adherence.

People

Cardiovascular Associates of America hires Jack Sunderman, MS (Clearwater Cardiovascular Consultants) as CIO.

Joe Rostock (AllosLogic) joins Avaneer Health as COO.

Amino Health hires Greg Born, MBA (MDsave) as chief growth officer.

CoverMyMeds promotes Clay Courville to chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

The University of Miami Health System’s Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center implements an internally-developed bilingual symptom and practical-needs screening and referral tool within its Epic EHR. Patients fill out the electronic survey through their patient portal before an appointment and are then triaged to supportive services and/or medical teams during their visits.

Gadsden Regional Medical Center (AL) implements PeriGen’s PeriWatch Vigilance AI-based maternal-fetal early warning system within its labor and delivery department.

Premier expands its PINC AI clinical surveillance technology to long-term care facilities, including automated COVID alerts, outbreak group tracking, documentation, and submission of infections to the CDC.

Startup Rune Labs earns FDA clearance to use its Apple Watch software, combined with a brain signal monitoring implant, to help doctors optimize therapy for Parkinson’s disease.

Government and Politics

HHS issues guidance on using remote communication technologies to provide audio-only telehealth services when OCR’s enforcement discretion is no longer in effect.

Eisenhower Army Medical Center at Fort Gordon (GA) works through patient portal appointment scheduling issues in its new MHS Genesis system, which went live over the weekend. The go-live marked the half-way point for the DoD’s facility-wide rollout of the Cerner-based system. The department anticipates wrapping up the enterprise deployment by the end of 2023.

Other

Surescripts reports that 620,000 prescribers – half of those in the United States – used its Real-Time Prescription Benefit cost and coverage tool between December 2021 and May 2022, a 7.5% year-over-year increase The company attributes the technology’s growth to increased adoption among EHR vendors including Athenahealth, CompuGroup Medical, and Greenway Health.

A UK doctor apologizes to the family of a 92-year-old woman for incorrectly diagnosing her with terminal liver failure during a virtual visit, after which he recommended initiating end-of-life care. The family took her to the hospital, where she recovered fully after a four-day stay.

Sponsor Updates

• Meditech is named 2021 Google Cloud Industry Solution Partner of the Year for healthcare.
• Hamad Medical Corp. and Primary Health Care Corp. adopt Cerner managed technology to deliver better outcomes in Qatar.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Healow Payment Services: Convenient, Electronic, and Easy to Use.”
• Baker Tilly publishes a case study, “Rural hospital draws $1.8 million in annual Medicare reimbursements through status change.”
• WellSky-owned CarePort announces that 2,500 post-acute providers and 13,000 home- and community-based services joints its network in 2021.
• Premier Inc.’s PINC AI will collaborate with R1 RCM to offer expanded end-to-end revenue cycle solutions.
• Change Healthcare, Olive, Optum, Surescripts, Bamboo Health, InterSystems, Diameter Health, Neuroflow, RxRevu, Talkdesk, and Wolters Kluwer will exhibit at AHIP 2022 June 21-23 in Las Vegas.
• CTG will present and host virtual investor meetings at the annual East Coast IDEAS Investor Conference June 23.
• Ellkay has raised $49,000 for the Alpine Learning Group through its team participation in Go the Distance for Autism.

Blog Posts

• 5 Tips to Urgent Care Reputation Management (for 5-Star Reviews) (Experity)
• CloudWave and Tausight: Protecting PHI (CloudWave)
• How technology transformed a medical billing company’s revenue cycle management (Ability Network)
• UKIO and ECR: Agfa HealthCare, enterprise imaging pioneer, showcases radiology innovations at class-leading European events (Agfa HealthCare)
• The Evolution of Coding and What’s on the Horizon (AGS Health)
• Want to reduce claims calls? There’s an API for that. (Availity)
• Got Referrals? How to Improve Measure Results in 5 Minutes (Azara Healthcare)
• Minimizing Revenue Loss Due to Inpatient Status Downgrades (BDO)
• Digitizing CABG prep and at-home follow-up care for improved quality of life (Bravado Health)
• A Healthcare IT Consultant Story: Why You Need a Guide (CereCore)
• Techquity: Using technology and data insights to deliver more equitable patient care (Oracle Cerner)
• Multifactor Authentication: An Extra Layer of Security for Healthcare Organizations and Business Associates (Clearwater)
• A Guide to Better Serving Burnt-Out Physicians (ConnectiveRx)
• Navigate Common EHR Challenges with Stewardship from an Experienced Partner (CTG)
• Take Advantage of Big Data in the Healthcare Industry (Dimensional Insight)
• A Behavioral Health Module That Behaves Like One (EClinicalWorks)
• Value-based Care is the Answer for Humana (Enlace Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 6/13/22

Top News

Oracle Executive Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison says in a Cerner acquisition update that hospital EHRs – he names Cerner, Epic, and Allscripts – fragment records across providers because each hospital buys and operates its own, preventing providers from accessing a patient’s records in an emergency and limiting the value to public health researchers.

Ellison says Oracle will create a national EHR database that is continuously updated via updates from provider EHRs. Providers will be able to access identifiable information if authorized by the patient, while public health researchers would be limited to a de-identified view.

Ellison says Millennium will be significantly enhanced with voice UI, AI models, and automated clinical management. He mentioned the oncology decision support work of Project Ronin, of which Ellison is a co-founder.

Much of the presentation touted Oracle’s other healthcare offerings, such as ERP, workforce management, clinical trials, and cloud services.

Cerner will operate under the name Oracle Cerner, according to several references in the presentation.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents are evenly split about feeling welcome and appreciated when contacting their preferred hospital. One commenter says the hospital person always reads the appropriate script even though it’s clear their main job is as a goalie to keep people from talking to someone who could answer questions. ServiceWithaSnarl says that the academic medical center where they work as a physician faculty member at least gives everyone equally horrible service, physician or not.

New poll to your right or here: How often do you read or send work-related email and messages on evenings and weekends?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

IBM Chairman and CEO Arvind Krishna tells attendees at a stock market analyst conference that the company sold Watson Health to Francisco Partners for $1 billion in January because IBM just didn’t have the domain expertise to keep the product viable in healthcare. The company is now focused on developing Watson’s AI capabilities for automated order-taking at fast-food chains and IT operational efficiencies.

Sales

• The Pennsylvania Department of Human Services awards Cognosante a $16 million contract to migrate the state’s Patient and Provider Network and Public Health Gateway to a new HIE platform the company will also help to develop.

People

First Databank hires Any Comeau (Greensea Systems) as SVP of sales and marketing.

Mobile Heartbeat names Annabaker Garber, RN, PhD chief clinical officer.

Matthew Grose (Optum) joins Ōmcare as CTO.

Thomas Bartiromo (Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia) joins Tower Health (PA) as VP/CTO.

Doctivity promotes Cathryn Connolley-Kluck to president and Haili Coombe to VP of client engagement and software product innovation.

Announcements and Implementations

Carilion Clinic (VA) integrates TytoCare’s telemedicine software and devices into its virtual care program.

Other

In Canada, Hamilton Health Sciences employees celebrate the seven-hospital system’s Epic go-live.

A recent study from Net Health company Focus on Therapeutic Outcomes finds that 82% of physical therapy patients with low back pain who received rehabilitation via telemedicine during the pandemic were very satisfied with their treatment results. Outcomes were found to be equally effective and visits as efficient as in-office appointments.

Sponsor Updates

• EVisit wins a silver Digital Health Award in the connected digital health: telehealth/RPM category.
• Black Book Research announces that Netsmart has earned the 2022 award for highest customer satisfaction in its annual client experience performance ratings for enterprise behavioral health EHR vendors.
• Everbridge joins the AWS Independent Software Vendor Accelerate program.
• FDB names Patrick Mulry customer success manager.
• Nordic posts a video titled “The Impact of Cloud on Patient Care.”
• Healthwise wins a merit Digital Health Award in the digital health media/publications: video category.
• Imprivata wins three awards from Cyber Defense Magazine in the categories of most comprehensive identity and access management, next gen identity security, and market leader privileged access management.
• The Empowered Patient Podcast features Medicomp Systems CEO Dave Lareau.
• NTT Data publishes a new case study showcasing how its solutions have improved Independent Health’s IT experience for employees and transforms its infrastructure services.
• Symplr partners with human resources analytics company Visier to develop healthcare workforce analytics to help organizations more effectively recruit, hire, and retain staff.

Blog Posts

• The Value of Hybrid Care for Emergency Departments and EMS (EVisit)
• Using digital patient payment solutions to expedite healthcare collections (Experian Health)
• Navigators: The Human Heart of Virtual Care Navigation (Get Well)
• Save Your Top AP Talent from Back-office Burnout (GHX)
• A “Neutral Zone” for Data Sharing Allows Researchers to Share Data for Drug Discovery While Remaining HIPAA-compliant, Preventing Data Leaks (Healthcare Triangle)
• Keys to a Successful Chart Abstraction Project (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Is your hospital unwittingly making these healthcare downtime mistakes? (Interbit Data)
• How Collaborative IT Can Unlock Collaborative Care (InterSystems)
• Interpreting clinical terminology with NLP (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• What Rural Hospitals Can Do About Denial Management Right Now (Medhost)
• 9 questions to ask your EHR vendor (Meditech)
• Understanding Work Conditioning vs. Work Hardening in PT (MWTherapy)
• 5 Content Marketing Strategies for your Rehab Therapy Website (Net Health)
• Our Mission Together: Healthcare and Digital Transformation in the UK (Nordic)

Contacts

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

News 6/10/22

Top News

CMS issues the first civil money penalties against hospitals that failed to comply with federal price transparency laws.

Northside Hospital Atlanta will pay $883,000, while Northside Hospital Cherokee will pay $214,000.

CMS says that Northside Hospital Atlanta ignored its warning notice and argued that the best way for patients to obtain pricing information is to use its Price Estimate telephone line.

Northside Hospital Cherokee also ignored CMS’s warning and also intentionally removed previously posted pricing files from its website.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’ve been miserably ill for five days with COVID symptoms that may not actually be COVID since antigen tests and PCR were negative. I have extreme fatigue, a temperature and cough, muscle weakness, reduced visual acuity, and brain fog. I’m sure I’ve made mistakes, so bear with me.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The acquisition of Nordic Consulting Partners by Accrete Health Partners reportedly cost $400 million.

Providence-owned Tegria combines six of its legacy companies to form Advata, which will focus on improving patient outcomes using advanced analytics.

People

Amwell hires Carrie Nelson, MD, MS (Advocate Aurora Health) as chief medical officer.

Surescripts names Frank Harvey, MBA (ATLS Investments) as CEO.

Julie Haluska, MPA (AllianceOne) joins HealthRecon Connect as VP of enterprise sales.

Sponsor Updates

• PatientBond publishes a new case study, “Improving Patient Satisfaction Rates for Specialty Pharmacy.”
• Pivot Point Consulting promotes Matt Curtin to managing director, enterprise client solutions.
• Symplr embeds Visier’s people analytics capabilities in its recruiting solution to support deeper insights into people management and decision-making.
• Nordic publishes a video titled “Considerations for successful EHR extensions.”
• Quil Health CEO Carina Edwards will keynote at the virtual Connected Health Summit June 16.

Blog Posts

• Making the Case for a Digital Revolution in Market Access (OptimizeRx)
• Financial Health: How to Thrive in Healthcare’s Changing Landscape (Premier)
• Driving Departmental ROI (Protenus)
• What is call center software and how does it work? (Talkdesk)
• Enabling Hospital Personnel through ServiceNow’s Powerful Access Catalog (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• How to decrease patient no-show appointments (TigerConnect)
• New eBook: Simplify Your Revenue Cycle Workflow Through Automation (RCxRules)
• 4 Private Practice Management Mistakes and How to Fix Them (WebPT)
• Evaluating Patient Communication Solutions – Realistic Timelines (Well Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 6/6/22

Top News

Harris acquires EHR training vendor Sedona Learning Solutions, which will operate as a division of the company’s IatricSystems.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A reader emailed me an interesting point about the historical drivers of EHR use. Meaningful Use incentives made medical practice adoption widespread, but hospitals were more motivated by the shame of the IOM’s 1999 report “To Err is Human” and Y2K, with the resulting system implementation and replacement activity taking the industry into a three-horse EHR race of Cerner, Epic, and Meditech.

Poll respondents report quite a bit of employer-paid time off, with a surprising 29% indicating that their PTO is unlimited. Commenters suggest that maybe unlimited PTO isn’t the big gift that it seems – employees can’t tell if they are using too much compared to everyone else, and in the absence of someone else to cover their work, it’s just waiting for them when they return anyway. One commenter questions whether for-profit companies that change from accrued PTO to unlimited might be cleaning up their books in anticipation of selling the company.

New poll to your right or here: Do you feel welcome and appreciated when you contact your preferred health system by telephone, email, or in person?

Thanks to these companies for recently supporting HIStalk. Click a logo for more information.

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 mirrored the Nasdaq’s performance in the past month, dropping 7%. EDOC shares are down 35% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 11% loss.

Sales

• Allina Health signs a $20 million contract to implement Visage 7 Workflow and Visage 7 Viewer from Visage Imaging.

People

Dan Dwyer (Cecelia Health) joins Wildflower Health as SVP of sales.

Other

In Israel, at least five hospitals report that physicians have been sent inaccurate lab test results due to a software problem.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “A Bridge to the Future of Behavioral Health.”
• Pivot Point Consulting promotes Gisela Cuddihee to senior manager of engagement management and Tom Slowe to senior manager of engagement management, training, and activation.
• Premier Chief Pharmacy Officer and Group VP of Supply Chain Jessica Daley and Group VP of Life Sciences Denise Juliano join CancerCare’s Board of Directors.
• Vocera publishes a new case study, “UnityPoint Health – Allen Hospital: Relieving Nurse Burden and Strengthening Safety.”
• Visage Imaging will exhibit at SIIM 2022 in Kissimmee, FL June 9-11.

The following HIStalk Sponsors have achieved top customer rankings, according to a recent Black Book financial solutions survey:

• Experian Health – EMPI, hospital claims management systems
• VisiQuate – RCM analytics
• Premier – ERP
• Relatient – patient financial communications & satisfaction solutions
• Change Healthcare – financial technology digital transformation consultants

Blog Posts

• An Ounce of Prevention (Nordic)
• New England HIMSS 2022: What Does the Future Hold for Health IT Innovations? (Diameter Health)
• Making the Case for a Digital Revolution in Market Access (OptimizeRx)
• 3 Ways a Patient Engagement Strategy Makes a Difference for Your Pharmacy (OmniSys)
• Payor Strategy for High Value Behavioral Health Networks (Owl)
• 5 risk factors for COVID-19 breakthrough infections (Cerner)
• How COVID-19 Changed the Relationship Between Healthcare and Life Sciences (PatientBond)
• Nurses of Note Awards 2022: Retired Interior Designer Embarks on Second Career as a Nurse (PerfectServe)
• Symplr Roundtable Explores Health Plan Challenges with No Surprises Act (Symplr)
• What’s cloud got to do with it? (Nordic)
• Financial Health: How to Thrive in Healthcare’s Changing Landscape (Premier)
• Driving Departmental ROI (Protenus)
• Cloud: this is enterprise imaging (Sectra)
• On the Hunt for Network Anomalies (Surescripts)
• Webside Manner: The Key to Improving Patient Experiences (TigerConnect)
• Ascend 2022 Recap: 5 Takeaways from WebPT’s 9th Annual Business Summit (WebPT)
• Evaluating Patient Communication Platforms – Researching Vendors (Well Health)

Contacts

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

News 6/3/22

Top News

Newly launched digital holding company Accrete Health Partners – a spinoff of Bon Secours Mercy Health — acquires Nordic Consulting Partners, with no financial details provided.

Accrete is led by BSMH Chief Digital Officer Jason Szczuka, JD.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Oracle clears regulatory review of its acquisition of Cerner, with completion of the tender offer expected on Monday, June 6. Oracle’s update emphasizes “our new, easy-to-use systems” whose primary user interface will be hands-free voice technology and the “huge growth engine” that will result from Oracle expanding Cerner’s user base to additional countries. Oracle Chairman and CTO Larry Ellison and other Oracle executives will discuss the acquisition in a June 9 webinar titled “The Future of Healthcare.” 

Online mental health startup Cerebral will lay off an unstated number of employees this month as it undergoes a federal probe into its prescribing practices.

Tech-forward medical care provider Carbon Health lays off 250 employees, about 8% of its workforce, citing “changing market conditions” such as reduced demand for its COVID-specific services and the investor market shifting to an emphasis on profit rather than revenue growth. The company has raised more than $500 million, with valuation reaching at least $3 billion last year. The headcount reduction was reportedly focused on corporate staff.

Sales

• VHC Health will implement Certify Health’s facial biometrics positive patient ID at all its locations, starting with pilot programs in radiology and cardiology this month. 

People

Bamboo Health hires Guy Mansueto, MM (PartsSource) as chief marketing officer.

Sachin Agrawal, MSc (RLDatix) joins EVisit as president.

Southeast Health (AL) promotes Ravi Nallamothu, MD to chief health information officer.

Brightwork, Health IT hires Tabitha Lieberman (Providence St. Joseph Health) as president of EHR and healthcare applications.

Huron promotes Ronnie Dail to COO.

Announcements and Implementations

Net Health’s wound imaging and analysis software, Tissue Analytics, earns FDA designation of Breakthrough Device Status, the first time an EHR company has been given that distinction.

A new KLAS Arch Collaborative report finds that health systems fall short in meeting user expectations for EHR reliability and system response time, which are key factors for driving clinician EHR satisfaction. The report notes that system speed, which is one of the lowest-satisfaction user issues, is interpreted by users as an indicator of poor EHR reliability. Many clinicians who are dissatisfied with EHR speed or reliability also mention hardware issues and slow log-in times.

Government and Politics

A VA OIG report says that the year-ago implementation of Cerner at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center (WA) has caused gaps in performance, quality, and access metrics, with employees questioning whether the hospital can pass an upcoming Joint Commission accreditation survey. Employees are performing laborious workarounds and making best guesses since the hospital is reporting only 13 of the VA’s 103 organizational performance metrics. OIG listed challenges such as Cerner’s failure to deliver metrics reports, lack of VA resources and training, and the VA’s failure to assess EHR metrics before go-live.

Privacy and Security

FBI Director Christopher Ray tells attendees of a cybersecurity conference that its intelligence uncovered a planned cyberattack against Boston Children’s Hospital by Iran-sponsored hackers last year, which the hospital blocked with the FBI’s help. The hospital’s systems went down for a week in 2014 from a cyberattack by a member of the Anonymous hacker group that was related to a custody battle involving a teenage patient.

Other

KHN looks at proposed “right-to-repair” laws for power wheelchairs, of which the two largest suppliers are owned by private equity firms. Users of malfunctioning wheelchairs, replacement of which is limited by insurance to every five years, face software and hardware locks, restricted access to parts and manuals, failure of lower-quality products with no coverage for preventive maintenance, and months-long waits for replacement parts as suppliers wait for insurance approval.

In Canada, members of the equity, diversity, and inclusion committee of Hamilton Health Sciences say that Epic – on which HHS will go live this weekend in a $140 million project – does not capture information such as race, ethnicity, disability, gender, sexual orientation, language, and length of time in Canada. The hospital says it will enhance the system after go-live.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “How Online Booking is Helping a Cardiology Practice.”
• Cerner secures 331 new, expanded, and extended customer contracts in the first quarter of 2022.
• CTG donates needed supplies to FeedMore WNY to support their work in local communities.
• FDB hires Abby Yu as a clinical informatics specialist.
• Black Book names Netsmart as the top-rated post-acute ambulatory health solutions vendor in customer satisfaction.
• Meditech adds an Obstetric Hemorrhage Management Toolkit to its Expanse EHR.

Blog Posts

• 3 Technologies for Health Education Explained (Healthwise)
• Virtual Care Terminology: Telemedicine, Telehealth, and Hybrid Care Defined (EVisit)
• 5 Questions to Assess Your Strategic Digital Direction (GHX)
• Reducing Physician Burnout with EHR Optimization: 3 Examples (Healthcare Triangle)
• The future of HIPAA-compliant faxing (Interbit Data)
• An ounce of prevention (Nordic)
• What Rural Hospitals Can Do About Denial Management Right Now (Medhost)
• Preparing for Hurricane Season (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• 5 easy ways to improve HCAHPS scores through patient satisfaction (Meditech)
• Understanding Work Conditioning vs. Work Hardening in PT (MWTherapy)
• The Great Resignation and Understaffing Are Here. Can Automating Prior Authorization Help You Cope? (Myndshft)
• Making Wound Care Without Walls a Reality (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 6/1/22

Top News

Population health management vendor Lightbeam Health Solutions will acquire Jvion, an Atlanta-based company that specializes in AI-powered predictive analytics and social determinants of health software.

Lightbeam acquired remote patient monitoring startup CareSignal last November.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents most commonly expect the stock market downturn to cause companies to cut expenses, employees to keep working for the same employer longer, and for vendors to buy each other.

New poll to your right or here: How much annual paid vacation time / PTO do you get from your employer?

HIStalk’s 19th birthday is this week. I started putting my thoughts online on June 3, 2003 since I had no hobbies outside my health system IT executive job. That’s a lot of blank screens filled since.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner is reported to be on track to close within the next couple of weeks.

Sales

• St. Peter’s Health (MT) selects the Innovaccer Health Cloud Data Activation Platform to unify patient records across its facilities.

People

Divurgent names Bismoy Beura (Tata Consultancy Services) VP of client services.

Christine Havlin, RN (Optum) joins MobileSmith as chief marketing officer.

Medecision promotes Terri Steinberg, MD, MBA to chief strategy officer / chief medical officer.

Transcarent names Tim Rosa (Fitbit) chief marketing officer.

Gerry Lewis (Ascension) joins US Radiology Specialists as CIO.

World Wide Technology hires Erin Jospe, MD (Kyruus) as chief healthcare advisor.

Provation Medical promotes Craig Moriarty, MS to chief revenue officer.

Baystate Health hires Kevin Conway (Tegria) as SVP/chief information and digital officer.

Change Healthcare promotes Archie Mayani, MBA to SVP and chief product officer of decision support.

Announcements and Implementations

Hospital General Menonita and Manati Medical Center in Puerto Rico adopt CloudWave’s OpSus Live cloud hosting service.

The Connecticut Children’s Neonatal ICU at UConn Health will go live on Epic later this month.

In Pennsylvania, Butler Health System launches a telemedicine clinic at Rimersburg Medical Center that was developed by Butler surgeon Rod Stevenson, MD.

Pawnee Valley Community Hospital (KS) transitions its family medicine clinic to Meditech.

Government and Politics

The VA awards By Light Professional IT Services a five-year, $82 million contract for the continued development, security, and operation of its My HealtheVet patient portal.

Other

WVU Medicine Children’s has increased its urology telemedicine clinics from three to four, with a fifth in the works, after an internal study found that virtual visits between 2018 and 2020 were clinically effective and saved families an average of nearly five hours in driving time and $175 in fuel.

Bizarre: two male avatars on Meta’s social networking platform invite the avatar of a female human behavior researcher to a private virtual party, then rape her avatar as they make lewd comments and pass a bottle of virtual alcohol between them. The researcher says it was especially creepy because the Oculus VR headset transmitted physical sensations to her controller when the male avatars touched her. Another researcher says that within 60 seconds of joining the same VR platform, a group of male avatars sexually assaulted hers.

Sponsor Updates

• CTG staff donate items for the Community Baby Shower hosted by the United Way of Buffalo & Erie County.
• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story featuring Provida Family Medicine, “How the EClinicalWorks EHR Integrates Data from Other EHRs.”
• AGS Health publishes a new e-book, “5 Reasons to Select AGS Health as Your Offshore Service Provider.”
• WellSpan Health profiles the success its physicians have had using Nuance’s Dragon Ambient EXperience AI-powered voice recognition software to automatically transcribe patient visits.
• Baker Tilly will present at the Healthcare Capital Markets & Innovation Summit June 1 in Columbus.
• Bamboo Health has co-sponsored the Columbia River Mental Health Services Spring 2022 Gala.
• Cerner releases a new podcast, “How COVID-19 impacted consumerism and how healthcare organizations can adapt.”
• Clearwater publishes a new case study, “Owensboro Health on Taking Cyber Risk Management Beyond the EHR.”

Blog Posts

• How a digital, all-in-one software solution helps you grow your practice & refocus on patient care (AdvancedMD)
• How ACOs can use health equity plans to reach underserved populations (Arcadia)
• 2022 Annual User Conference Highlights (Azara Healthcare)
• The Future of Health & Human Services: A Tale of Two Worlds (BDO)
• 5 ways to leverage digital health tools to negotiate more advantageous payer contracts (Bravado Health)
• IT Managed Services in Healthcare: CereCore CIO Cohort Perspectives (CereCore)
• Relationships: The CHIME That Echoes Around the World (CHIME)
• Creative Ways to Increase Patient Volume (Experity)

Contacts

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

News 5/27/22

Top News

Healthcare cybersecurity vendor Clearwater signs a definitive agreement to acquire competitor CynergisTek for $17.7 million in cash.

CTEK shares, which were trading at around $0.60 on the NYSE American small-cap market before the announcement, were down 65% in the past 12 months and were 91% off their 2017 all-time high.

Reader Comments

From Lollygagger: “Re: Arnot Health. Has an ongoing technical issue that is affecting ambulatory offices and the patient portal.” The health system says its downtime, which has persisted for more than a week, is not related to malicious activity.

From Kermit: “Re: Jamcare Medical. An interesting niche. Wonder how they handle the documentation?” Jamcare Medical, which seems to be a non-profit, provides medical services such as crisis intervention and drug intervention to music festivals and concerts, which it says avoids unnecessary medical transports and legal involvement for their promoters. Basic service includes a team to help management overdoses and behavioral health issues; its middle-tier offering provides the complete first aid response team, a first aid booth, and around-the-clock grounds surveillance to prevent problems such as “dehydration, fights, and slips and falls;” while its premium package adds an onsite or online physician.

From Long-Time Fan: “Re: medication adherence. We are building a solution and seeking beta partners such as payers, manufacturers, and health systems, anyone who has a vested interest in helping people with chronic conditions take their medications regularly. Do you know of specific organizations that are open to new adherence solutions?” I do not, but I’ll invite readers who have that interest, or know who might, to email me and I’ll forward the information (this is a early-stage company that isn’t quite ready to make a public splash).

From Pajeet Pete: “Re: Ascension. Gerry Lewis is out, replaced by Gagan Singh.” Gerry is still listed on the executive team page and hasn’t changed his LinkedIn, but Gagan’s LinkedIn shows that he was promoted from chief data officer to SVP/CIO this month. A layoff discussion board entry says Lewis left as of May 13. He was also CEO of Ascension Technologies, whose web page now lists Singh as SVP/CIO. They outsourced a lot of IT work offshore, which continues to draw discussion board vitriol.

From Mark: “Re: wearables. A recent panel concluded that a problem is keeping the devices charged.” Experts say that one of the biggest compliance challenges for remote patient monitoring is that the devices needed to be recharged, leading to hopes that someone will figure out how to power them from body heat or kinetic energy.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Walmart and CVS will stop accepting controlled drug prescriptions from online ADHD providers Cerebral and Done, which face a federal review of their compliance with controlled substance prescribing. Both ADHD companies also mail out prescriptions directly to their customers, which seems to be a touted feature, so it isn’t clear what percentage of their prescription volume goes through the drug chains. It’s an interesting situation:

• The business model of the companies was always at risk since pandemic telehealth waivers will eventually expire.
• A federal probe will likely review the rigor of the process – or lack of it — by which the companies declared after a brief telehealth conversation that a patient had ADHD that required Adderall or Ritalin.
• Contracted or employed doctors generated every one of those diagnoses and prescriptions, so their licenses are on the line regardless of what the company told them to do.
• Should observers be correct in their speculation that the company was complicit in selling drugs to people who used fake IDs or duplicate mailing addresses, the crackdown on telehealth patient vetting could be significant.
• The companies can’t survive without generating prescriptions, so they are certain to strengthen their prescribing guidelines. Cerebral is already phasing out prescribing of controlled substances.The percentage of their resulting drop in business – which will be huge – will signal how much of it was inappropriate.
• Other services still advertise “anxiety meds from your couch” and easy access to antidepressants, which may be reviewed by states who receive a wake-up call about what Cerebral and Done were doing even though non-controlled substances are involved.

Change Healthcare reports Q4 results: revenue up 8%, adjusted EPS $0.39 versus $0.42, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings.

Broadcom will acquire cloud services vendor VMware for $61 billion.

A leaked presentation from Silicon Valley VC firm Sequoia Capital says that the market boom is over, predicts that recovery will not be quick, and warns its portfolio companies that they should review projects, R&D spending, and marketing expenses to prepare for cutting costs to avoid a “death spiral.”

I’ve written previously about Miami-based MSP Recovery, which recovers inappropriate Medicare payments for which Medicare does not have primary payment responsibility. The company announced last fall that it would go public via a SPAC merger at a valuation of $33 billion, $23 billion of which would have flowed to the pockets of founder and CEO John Ruiz, who also runs a law firm that represents MSP in claims. The money-losing company, which claimed it would generate $5 billion annual profit by 2026, began trading on the Nasdaq Tuesday, then lost 60% of its value in its first few minutes of trading after opening at $10 per share. MSPR shares have continued their journey south, now trading at $2.56. Trial lawyer Ruiz just bought a $25 million house in Coral Gables, FL, owns another estate he bought for $49 million from the founder of Leon Medical Centers, and zips above mere mortals in his personal jet, a Boeing 767.

Sales

• Health and Social Care Northern Ireland chooses Tegria and Cloud21 – in which Tegria holds an investment — for its decade-long Encompass program in which Northern Ireland will become the first UK country to implement an EHR that spans acute care, mental health, community care, and social services. Tegria invested an unspecified sum in London-based digital health consultancy Cloud21 in March 2022.
• Wise Health System (TX) will implement a care-at-home program using the Hospital@Home program of Biofourmis.
• Zing Health selects Availity’s network for answering provider questions about patient health plan coverage and payments.
• India’s Narayana Health signs a digital technology collaboration agreement with Honeywell that will emphasize sensor-based applications for patient monitoring and fire safety.

People

SyTrue hires Chad Wege (Apixio) as VP of product.

Azara Healthcare promotes Matthew Iezzi to VP, national accounts commercial.

Kalderos hires Jared Crapo as chief of staff.

Scott Weingarten, MD (Cedars-Sinai) joins Medicare value-based care provider Vytalize Health as chief value officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Drummond Group launches a pediatric health IT certification program.

NCH Healthcare System (FL) will go live on Epic next week in a $65 million project, replacing Cerner.

Lyniate launches a AWS cloud deployment model for its Corepoint integration engine.

NextGen Healthcare launches Health Data Hub Insights, a data warehouse and analytics solution.

Hoag Hospital (CA) pilots Hoag Compass, an internally developed, IOS-only mobile app for consumers that includes appointment scheduling, provider messaging, health records review, lab results reporting, and prescription refills. Users who pay $50 per month for the premium plan also gain access to personalized care plans, urgent care support, an on-demand care team, and access to an executive lounge at the Hoag On-Demand Care and Innovation Center.

A new KLAS report finds that health systems and vendors aren’t delivering the patient engagement tools that many patients want. Providers and vendors fall short of expectations for self-scheduling and prescription refill requests, but have overdelivered on technologies in which patients have limited interest, such as pre- and post-visit communication, patient education, and satisfaction surveys. While most patients are satisfied with virtual visits, they would like to gain a better understanding of the kinds of issues that aren’t best managed by telehealth, be sent an email link before the virtual visit, and spend less time waiting for the clinician to join. Few patients use patient portals regularly, and those who do are more interested in scheduling appointments, requesting refills, and messaging providers than using provider-benefiting services such as updating insurance information or paying bills.

Government and Politics

Australia’s state of Tasmania will spend $106 million to trial a statewide EHR and patient record viewer in a four-year project that will connect all public and private providers. The state’s overall digital health plan calls for spending $336 million over 10 years.

Miruna Sasu, PhD, MBA, president and CEO of real-world oncology data vendor Cota Healthcare, says that FDA could facilitate the use of real-world data by capturing it cleanly in the EHR so that it looks similar to clinical trial data instead of trying to clean it up afterward.

The VA launches Mission Daybreak, a $20 million challenge program to develop suicide prevention solutions, including the use of digital footprint data and technology that improves access to the Veterans Crisis Line.

Other

The lab manager of the VA’s Walla Walla, WA medical center says its newly implemented Cerner system saves employees three hours per day by digitally tracking specimens. He says his goal was to ignore the negative narrative about Cerner and instead spend time preparing for the implementation.

A GHX survey of senior healthcare leaders finds that staff shortages and burnout is their top concern, with 80% of them planning to use automation to reduce manual labor.

Sponsor Updates

• Baker Tilly awards a $10,000 Wishes Grant to Turner’s Heroes, a nonprofit pediatric cancer patient support and research organization.
• In the Netherlands, Northwest Clinic expands its enterprise imaging contract with Agfa HealthCare to include the company’s Rubee for AI platform.
• AGS Health publishes a new white paper, “The Evolution of Coding: Understanding How Technology is Assisting Us.”
• Ascom Americas adds Forerunner Technologies to its mobility partner network.
• CereCore wins a Silver Stevie Award for its achievement in customer satisfaction.
• Cerner VP and CMO Lu de Souza, MD and Lead Physician Executive Mehul Steth, MD are named Fellows of AMIA.
• CHIME and WEDI launch the “Think Before You Click” campaign to help consumers prevent the loss of health information.
• Clearwater founder and Executive Chairman Bob Chanut, author of “Stop the Cyber Bleeding,” will deliver three Online MS in Cybersecurity Badge Courses for Quinnipiac University.
• RCxRules  publishes an infographic titled “Overcoming Staffing Challenges.”
• TechVibe Radio features ConnectiveRx SVP of Product Development Mary Beth Sirio.
• Dina names Mary Naylor, PhD, RN (Pennsylvania School of Nursing) to its Board of Directors.
• Divurgent names Debbie Rieger (Gold Coast Health Plan) payer principal.
• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “Advocate Aurora Health: Helping a Regional Nonprofit with Population Health Solutions.”
• FDB names Kristina Shausmanov (FIFA) quality management data analyst.
• Mach7 Technologies will exhibit at SIIM22 June 9-11 in Kissimmee, FL.
• Meditech congratulates the more than 90 customers that have been recognized with 2022 Healthgrades Patient Safety Excellence Awards.
• Nordic will present at the EHealth 2022 Virtual Conference + Tradeshow June 1-2.
• OneMedNet names Robert Golden, CPA (Cohen, Bender & Golden) to its Board of Directors.
• Magenta Care Continuum joins the Olive Library to revolutionize the risk adjustment process.
• Symplr partners with Susan G. Komen to raise $1 million in the fight against breast cancer.
• Premier joins the Biden administration’s Healthcare and Public Health Sector Joint Supply Chain Resilience Working Group to drive greater resiliency in the US healthcare supply chain.
• ReMedi Health Solutions will present at the Healthcare IT Institute June 12-14 in San Antonio.
• Talkdesk donates over $25,000 to various charities as part of its annual Digital Showdown: Innovations in CX event.
• Wolters Kluwer Health will publish the American Association for the Study of Liver Diseases’ four specialty journals.

Blog Posts

• Five Ways to Improve Your FQHC’s Financial Health (BDO)
• Using tech to measure and improve the patient financial experience (Ability Network)
• How a digital, all-in-one software solution helps you grow your practice & refocus on patient care (AdvancedMD)
• How the 988 hotline will revolutionize mental healthcare (Arcadia)
• CIO Top Priorities: Embracing Digital Transformation in Healthcare (Well Health)
• Recent Nursing Criminal Case Calls for Systemic Changes in Nursing Operations (Ascom)
• What You Need to Know About Availity Essentials Plus (Availity)
• Shining a Light on Mental Health Awareness Month (Bamboo Health)
• Colonoscopy challenges: Managing the social determinants of health for colorectal cancer screenings (Bravado Health)
• How Surveillance-Level Data Monitoring Supports Safer Care in Hospitals Despite Staffing Challenges (Philips Capsule)
• Five Questions to Determine if Your EHR Solution is Meeting Your Medical Practice Needs (ChartLogic)
• Your Business is NOT Data Illiterate! (Clearsense)
• Education, training, and resources to improve Preeclampsia awareness (OBIX Perinatal Data System, developed by Clinical Computer Systems)
• Improving Mental Health in Healthcare: Three Ways to Care for Clinicians and Staff (Commure)
• End-User Role Mapping for Epic Training (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Telehealth’s Trouble: How Virtual Care Complicates Interoperability (CoverMyMeds)
• How to Engage Patients with Care at Home (According to Our Nurses) (Current Health)
• The Best of Healthcare IT in the Heart of America (EClinicalWorks)
• Navigating a Care Delivery Tipping Point (EVisit)
• How to keep up with changing payer requirements (Experian Health)
• As Cybersecurity Strains Healthcare, the 405(d) Program and Task Group Offers Help (Fortified Health Security)
• There’s No Mystery Behind the Clinically Integrated Supply Chain – Only Teamwork (GHX)
• The Revenue Collection Revolution: Automation to the Rescue (Gyant)
• Navigating Healthcare Staffing in a New World: Q&A with Permanent Hiring Director Andrea MacMillan (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• 3 unsolved business continuity problems for hospitals (Interbit Data)
• Precise Patient Matching with an EMPI (InterSystems)
• Clinical workflows and natural language processing (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Tips to Bring Your IDN’s Digital Experience (Actually) Under One Roof (Kyruus)
• Patient Access APIs – How Easy is Data Exchange Today? (LexisNexis)
• 5 Key Ways Medhost Contract Management Solutions Empower Your Business Office Services (Medhost)
• Community and connection: Top takeaways from the 2022 HITMC Conference (Meditech)
• Physical Therapy Staff Motivation: 4 Tips to Motivate Your PT Staff (MWTherapy)
• End-of-Life Dreams and Visions Hospice Patients May Experience – and How to Support Them (Net Health)
• 3 Ways to Overcome Integrated Behavioral Health Challenges (Neuroflow)
• Going Beyond Whole-Person Care with California’s Medi-Cal Project CalAIM (Netsmart)
• Help HCPs Keep Patients on Course with a Precision Engagement Approach (OptimizeRx)
• Ways to Win with Behavioral Health Patient Engagement (PatientBond)
• Important Qualities in an EClinicalWorks Support Partner (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Nurses of Note Awards 2022: The Dynamic Nurse IT Leader (PerfectServe)
• Three Strategies to Take Your Clinical Trials into the Future (Premier)
• How to Improve Revenue Cycle Integrity as Denials Trend Upwards (RCxRules)
• Simple health equity tips (Sonifi Health)
• To Email or Not to Email: HIPAA Considerations to Weigh Before Hitting Send (WebPT)
• Evaluating Patient Communication Platforms: Key Criteria to Consider (Well Health)
• Top 3 Things Your Healthcare Organization Can Do to Enhance Security Video (Zen Healthcare IT)
• Managing the Challenges of Sepsis (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 5/25/22

Top News

The EU reportedly gives Oracle unconditional antitrust clearance for its proposed $28 billion acquisition of Cerner.

Webinars

May 25 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “Leveling Up Your Defenses: Health IT Security and Risk Management.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Lori Kevin, VP of security and enterprise IT, IMO; Nicole Pearce, JD, associate general counsel, IMO. The presenters will explain how to fortify security and respond to current threats by establishing security frameworks and managing risks introduced by ransomware attacks, breaches, and phishing schemes. They will describe the drivers of IMO’s privacy and security program, objectives for continuous review of risk management, and the framework for implementing an incident response program.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual care company VitalTech raises $14.1 million in equity.

Kaid Health raises $4.25 million in Series A funding. The company has developed AI-powered Whole Chart Analysis software to help providers more quickly identify gaps in care.

Sales

• Garrett Regional Medical Center (MD) will use $650,000 in federal funding to replace its 20-year-old Meditech EHR with Epic.
• Marlette Regional Hospital (MI) will implement telemedicine hospitalist and specialty consult services from VeeOne Health.
• Geisinger (PA) selects AWS as its cloud provider and will migrate all of its 400 applications to AWS.
• Morris Heights Health Center (NY) selects NextGen Enterprise EHR/PM.

People

Talkdesk names Jeff Haslem (PluralSight) as its first CIO.

Ashish Kachru (Altruista Health) joins DataLink as CEO.

Komodo Health Chief Medical Officer Aswin Chandrakantan, MD takes on the additional role of COO.

Regional One Health (TN) promotes Daniel Thomas to VP of IT operations.

Gregg Veltri, former CIO of Denver Health and Charleston Area Medical Center, has died at 64.

Announcements and Implementations

Northwest Health (AR) launches its Care Management at Home program using remote patient monitoring technology and services from Cadence.

Chase County Community Hospital (NE) implements Avel ECare’s remote hospitalist services, including telehealth care boards.

Lynn County Hospital District in Texas rolls out care coordination software from CrossTx as part of its chronic care management efforts.

TidalHealth Peninsula Hospital (MD) goes live on the Copernicus electronic referral system for organ and tissue donation.

Tufts Medicine says it is the first health system to transition its digital health ecosystem to the cloud, having moved 40 applications to Amazon Web Services with a goal of 300 at completion. It has also deployed a chatbot powered by Amazon Lex and telehealth and virtual care services using Amazon Connect’s cloud-based contact center.

Government and Politics

The Roseburg VA Health Care System (OR) will launch its new Cerner EHR on June 11.

US Army Medical Logistics Command at Fort Detrick, Maryland honors the efforts of its healthcare technology management workforce – “from factory to foxhole” – during its annual HTM Workshop.

Other

ChristianaCare will use a $1.5 million grant from the American Nurses Foundation to deploy five Diligent Robotics Moxi robots, integrated with Cerner to relieve nurses of delivery tasks and to use AI to predict when they will need equipment, supplies, and medications.

Tennessee’s most expensive home, a $50 million, 20,000-square-foot mansion on 50 acres, is listed for sale by its billionaire owner, HCA Healthcare co-founder Thomas Frist, Jr., MD. 

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic posts another episode of its monthly “DocTalk” series titled “Soft Interoperability.”
• Dina appoints Mary Naylor, PhD, RN to its board.
• Gyant publishes a case study about OSF Healthcare’s use of its Clare virtual assistant on its website as a virtual care navigation assistant, which it says has generated $2.4 million in revenue.

Blog Posts

• Three Strategies to Take Your Clinical Trials into the Future (Premier)

Contacts

Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.