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.

Monday Morning Update 5/23/22

Top News

The state of Montana will invest $20 million in the Big Sky Care Connect HIE, which will fund improvements to the state-designated HIE that include a clinical data repository, ADT alerts, a quality measurement program, and image exchange capabilities.

BSCC’s members include 75 provider organizations and half of the state’s hospital systems.

Reader Comments

From Preferred Investor: “Re: Cerner. Could stock market conditions cause Oracle to reconsider its acquisition?” I don’t know enough to comment beyond restating known facts. ORCL is paying $95 per share in cash, and of course CERN shares haven’t budged from that price in the mean time since everybody knows the eventual payoff. ORCL shares are down 23% since the deal was announced December 20 versus the S&P 500’s 15% drop. Oracle’s tender offer expires on June 6 after being extended a few times. The deal requires Cerner to pay Oracle a $950 million termination fee under certain circumstances, but I don’t know what if anything happens if Oracle reconsiders. I’ll invite experts to weigh in.

From Ballywood Man: “Re: [company name omitted]. Getting out of the North America provider market due to diminishing success, will focus on life sciences, pharma, and payers / insurers. They  ran into issues providing competitive offshore services for Cerner and Epic customers and accounts are managed by people who came through the IT ranks and know nothing about healthcare solutions as required for consultative selling. Senior sales and consulting leadership has been RIFed. “ Unverified, so I’ve left out the name of the publicly traded company. Reports are welcome. The RIF must have been recent since I see no LinkedIn changes for the executives listed.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Few poll respondents see Epic as being better without Judy Faulkner. Sam observes that, like Amazon, changing CEOs shouldn’t trigger major changes since Epic’s culture is wide and deep. IIRC differs, providing examples where the departure of larger-than-life leaders has a negative company impact (giving as examples Meditech, Cerner, GE, Microsoft, and Chrysler). Others are confident that Carl Dvorak has been running the company with Judy and can easily take over, especially given the extensive succession planning that Epic has been performing for decades.

New poll to your right or here: What impact will a stock market downturn have on health IT?

Listening: Aeon Station, basically a solo project of the former co-leader of the Wrens, a band I’ve liked for years. Indie rock, especially the melodic and thoughtful kind, has been somewhat lost in a sea of vapid hip hop collaborations and diva-led formulaic hit factories, so this mature, low-tech alternative sounds fine to my ear. The duct tape that holds Kevin Whelan’s bass guitar together deserves a liner note.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Juniper Networks of Sunnyvale, CA. Juniper Networks empowers healthcare IT leaders to deliver simplified experiences for those who run networks and the patients, clinicians, and staff who depend on them. Our solutions deliver industry-leading insight, automation, security, and AI for improved IT operations resulting in better experiences and health outcomes. Thanks to Juniper Networks for supporting HIStalk.

I found this Juniper Networks YouTube video that features Northeast Georgia Health System CIO Chris Paravate, MBA talking about the health system’s AI-powered clinician mobility strategy.

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

“Venture Valkyrie” Lisa Suennen applies her experience from the dot-com bust and 2008 stock market correction to predict how recent market drops might affect investors and startups:

• A venture capital downturn lags a stock market decline by 3-6 months.
• The lack of a healthy IPO market means private companies can’t go public and can exit only by selling out. VCs take advantage of the situation by making lowball offers.
• Publicly traded potential acquirers pass on deals involving companies that will dilute their earnings per share, which includes most startups.
• Cash-heavy venture funds will hoard the best deals and lead “down rounds” in investing at lower valuations, damaging smaller, capital-poor funds that can’t afford to meet term sheet requirements of making ongoing investments.
• Companies with less funding or less-resourced investors have to keep the company going to avoid a downward spiral of lower valuations, trading “growth at all costs” for cost-reducing survival mode where company fundamentals suddenly matter.
• Capital-rich funds get to buy later-stage companies at lower valuations.
• Angel investors head for the exits “when the drain is working faster than the tap.”

People

Interoperability vendor Health Gorilla hires Derek Plansky, SM (Informatic Ideas) as SVP of product.

The HCI Solution promotes Dan Collins to EVP.

Care New England Health System CIO Phil Kahn, MS, MBA retires this week.

Announcements and Implementations

Integrated healthcare payments and security software vendor Sphere launches a plug-and-play payment solution, which integrates with PAX terminals, for independent software vendors that offer SaaS products.

Other

A survey of medical students in German-speaking countries finds that while most received some form of rapidly implemented digital education during the pandemic, they didn’t like the lack of patient contact, in-person case studies and discussions, and studying PowerPoints and PDFs alone without instructor interaction. The students suggest that medical schools expand their use of online office hours, faculty Q&A sessions, and simulations and virtual reality.

A Michigan law that takes effect next year will require health plans to take action on urgent prior authorization requests within 72 hours, although a Blue Cross Blue Shield Association VP says that electronic prior authorization holds the most promise for reducing delays, citing a pilot project in which decision time was reduced 69% to six hours.

Former Vanderbilt University Medical Center ICU nurse RaDonda Vaught, who killed a patient in 2017 by giving the paralyzing agent vecuronium instead of the ordered sedative Versed, is interviewed by ABC News following her sentencing to probation:

• VUMC settled with the patient’s family without reporting the error to state and federal officials as the law requires.
• Vaught says she performed manual overrides of the drug dispensing system and ignored several warnings because she was training a new nurse and was distracted.
• Her attorneys say VUMC bears some responsibility because it allowed her to override warnings and a CMS investigation noted some deficiencies, although VUMC was not punished.
• Vaught concludes, “There’s a fine line between blame and responsibility, and in healthcare, we don’t blame. I’m responsible for what I failed to do. Vanderbilt is responsible for what they failed to do.”

Sponsor Updates

• ZeOmega integrates Change Healthcare’s clinical guidelines into its new Smart Auth Gateway electronic prior authorization solution.
• Experity’s EHR/PM software has been recognized with a 2022 MedTech Breakthrough Award in the best practice management solution category.
• CarePort releases its “Evolution of Care” report.
• Arcadia wins the KLAS 2022 Points of Light award for its collaboration with Community Health Plan of Washington.
• Olive has invested in Miami University’s College of Engineering and Computing to expand its healthcare research capabilities.
• The HIT Like a Girl Podcast features PeriGen CNO Alana McGolrick.
• The VA’s Cerner-powered Opioid Advisor wins FedHealthIT’s innovation award.
• Drug Store News LexisNexis Risk Solutions, OmniSys, and Surescripts with Retail Excellence Awards in the technology and automation category.
• Wolters Kluwer Health Director of Clinical Sales Support Karen Eckert wins the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs’ Benjamin D. Ward Distinguished Member Award.
• HFMA’s Voices in Healthcare Finance Podcast features VisiQuate EVP of Product Management Anthony Comfort.

Blog Posts

• Your Business is NOT Data Illiterate! (Clearsense)
• 4 Healthcare Transaction Trends to Know (BDO)
• Inefficient Access Pathways Cost More Than Just HCP Time and Effort (OptimizeRx)
• Digital communication tools can break down language barriers in healthcare (Olive)
• Nurses of Note Awards 2022: The Nurse Informatics Team at Mecklenburg County Public Health (PerfectServe)
• Healthcare Supply Chain Software Improves Providers’ Work, Promotes Partnership (Symplr)
• Improving HCC Coding Accuracy with Stanson Health’s PINC AI clinical decision support at Bon Secours Mercy Health (Premier)
• Determined to Deliver (Protenus)
• Straight talk on remote mental healthcare (Redox)
• Now is the Time for Health Tech to Capitalize on Legislation Moves (RxRevu)
• Understanding the impact of objective, automated evaluation of mammograms (Volpara Health)
• 5 Things to Look for in a Modern EMR Platform (WebPT)
• CIO Top Priorities: Embracing Digital Transformation in Healthcare (Well Health)

Contacts

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

News 5/20/22

Top News

The board of online mental health provider Cerebral fires co-founder and CEO Kyle Robertson and shakes up the remaining management team. The company is facing a federal probe into whether it took advantage of pandemic-relaxed mental telehealth regulations to issue excessive numbers of Adderall and Xanax prescriptions to drug-seeking customers.

Cerebral says it will stop prescribing most controlled substances, starting with new patients this week and to existing patients by October.

Cerebral was valued by its most recent investment at nearly $5 billion.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I sometimes include a click counter on links that I run, for two reasons: (a) It helps me fine-tune the kinds of news items I write about based on reader interest; and (b) I’m curious about which companies readers follow. I took a rare look today at the results over time:

• The top four most-clicked items were the links that I included in a new sponsor announcement, which ranged from 4,100 to 5,800.
• A company’s top-of-page banner got 4,000 clicks, while the one before that drew 3,700.
• The highest-drawing webinar link has received 3,600 clicks.
• My favorite write-up about the Valcom guys and their post-HIMSS18 adventures with the Smokin’ Doc in Las Vegas drew 3,400 clicks to Valcom’s website.

I just started playing around with no-code web builder Bubble, which seems pretty cool. The fully functional demo allows editing a copy of Bubble’s home page, which of course was developed with its own product. An alternative for developers who need to use an existing SQL database (instead of creating a database within Bubble) is WeWeb. Both would be useful for developing prototypes or minimum viable products or quickly creating internal company tools. Stacker is even simpler in using Airtable or Google Sheets as a source database. 

I had personal experience with the hotel equivalent of a digital front door this week when I visited a surgery-recovering relative and spent a single night in a cheap chain hotel I had booked through Expedia, which I allow to send me text messages. I received a reservation reminder with contact information a couple of days ahead of time; received check-in messages containing the wifi password, a link to local restaurants, and inviting me to respond to management with my first-impression room experience and to let them know if I need anything; and got a message at checkout thanking me and wishing me safe travels. My lesson learned – hotels and restaurants always lament that customers should alert management to problems in real time instead of ripping them in online reviews later when it’s too late to address the problem, so the hotel’s texts let them detect improvement opportunities as they occur. Hospitals and practices have ample such opportunities, but I’m not sure they are as eager or incented as a budget hotel to hear what customers think about excessive waits or surly personnel.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Multi-specialty national telehealth provider MeMD, acquired by Walmart in May 2021, changes its name to Walmart Health Virtual Care. The service, which includes a diabetes program, will expand beyond Florida in the next several months.

Physician social network and pharma marketing vendor Doximity reports Q4 results: revenue up 40%, adjusted EPS $0.21 versus $0.09, providing lowered guidance that sent shares to all-time lows in after-hours trading Tuesday. DOXM shares began trading in June 2021 at $26, then closed their first day at $53. They rebounded Thursday to $32.39, down 43% in the past 12 months in valuing the company at $6.2 billion. Doximity is promoting digital-first drug marketing campaigns, noting that drug companies are cutting back on salespeople and moving money to digital advertising. The company said in the earnings call that pharma is recession-resilient and that physician resignations are good for its business because Doximity sells job-seeking doctors 30-day temporary phone numbers that they can give to recruiters who then can’t “keep calling and texting you for years.”

Harris acquires workers’ compensation EHR/PM/RCM vendor Innovative Medical Management and MedBill IQ, which will become part of the company’s Resolve Healthcare revenue cycle business unit.

Amwell launches a behavioral health program that includes virtual therapy, psychiatry, and coaching. The program incorporates the digital behavioral health programs of SilverCloud Health, which Amwell acquired in July 2021 along with virtual care company Conversa Health for $320 million.

Transcarent adds a behavioral care offering that will connect its self-insured employer members with virtual or in-person mental health providers.

Sales

• Charlotte Radiology will implement Volpara Health’s breast density assessment, mammography reporting, and patient communication software, expanding its use of the Volpara Analytics mammography quality assurance system.
• Zing Health selects Availity’s real-time health information network to allow providers to share information to close clinical care gaps.
• The Wyoming Board of Pharmacy chooses Bamboo Health for its prescription drug monitoring program.

People

John Kelly (PatientKeeper) joins Xifin as CIO.

Divurgent promotes Brittany Williams to VP of marketing and communications.

Adam Seyb (West Monroe) joins Janus Health as chief customer officer.

Imaware promotes Angie Inlow to chief growth officer.

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

Mark Grasso (Virtustream) joins Holon Solutions as VP of sales.

SyTrue hires Steven Lang (Apixio) as SVP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

CPSI pilots Medicomp’s Quippe Clinical Lens to enhance the information in its Patient Data Console.

Cerner, Elligo Health Research (in which Cerner is an investor), and Freenome will participate in an early cancer detection clinical trial using Cerner’s Learning Health Network, which sells de-identified patient data from participating health systems.

UTHealth Houston celebrates its March 2021 go-live on Epic that was performed with all members of Epic’s team, its own project team, and many of its end users working remotely. They earned a $550,000 Good Install credit from Epic.

Other

An internal medicine physician sues Indiana University Health, which he claims fired him for complaining about a policy that limits doctor visits to 10 minutes as monitored via the EHR. An IU Health spokesperson responded that the 10-minute EHR time limit doesn’t necessarily include face-to-face time and in fact was intended to encourage more doctor-patient interaction instead of computer work. The doctor, IU School of Medicine Clinical Assistant Professor Brian Leon, MD, was also a medical director and is a pharmacist.

Researchers find that AI can identify a patient’s race from their X-ray images, raising concerns of inadvertent bias. The study authors found that AI can predict a patient’s self-reported race even when image quality is poor and when clinicians cannot.

Cerner will pay an unreported sum to Sweden’s Västra Götaland to settle complaints over Millennium implementation delays that Cerner attributes to the pandemic and to the region itself. Cerner says it is ready to proceed with the project, has 250 employees working in Sweden, and plans to bring up parts of the system this fall. The region was reportedly seeking payment of $50 million to offset its increased costs.

Malaysia’s government-developed COVID-19 app, which has 38 million registered users, sees usage drop 97% as national check-in requirements are dropped and controversy has erupted over the app’s ownership. The government had planned to expand the app’s use beyond COVID and as a key part of public health efforts.

A Tennessee county that was touted as the exception to low vaccination rates among rural, white, and conservative Southern counties drops to mid-pack after a longstanding ZIP code problem is fixed. The state manually corrected cases in which a single ZIP code straddles multiple counties, as incorrectly reported by Arizona-based STChealth, whose immunization information system is used by several states. Meigs County dropped from 65% to 43% vaccinated overnight. The state says STChealth is fixing the problem, but other states avoided the issue in the first place by geocoding the company’s data for correct county attribution.

Sponsor Updates

• First Databank hires Vivian Nguyen (Pine Park Health) as a customer success solution architect.
• GHX has recognized the recipients of its 21st annual GHXcellence Awards during its annual summit.
• Gyant has completed the Service Organization Controls 2 Type II certification.
• Nordic publishes a video titled “Modernizing Healthcare Data Infrastructure with the Cloud.”
• Meditech congratulates DCH Health CIO Billy Helmandollar for receiving the Alabama Chapter ORBIE CIO of the Year Award in the large corporate category.
• RCxRules publishes a free EBook titled “Simplify Your Revenue Cycle Workflow Through Automation.”
• Nuance congratulates Mary Presti, head of Dragon Medical, on her Lillian Sholtis Brunner Alumni Award for Innovation from Penn Nursing.
• Netsmart COO Tom Herzog signs the ESGR Statement of Support to show its dedication to employees who serve in the National Guard and Reserves.
• Nordic transitions the Tasman brand, and its presence in Europe and the Middle East, to the Nordic global brand.

Blog Posts

• Telemedicine for a Post-COVID World (EVisit)
• 4 strategies to find missing insurance coverage as COVID-19 funding ends (Experian Health)
• Behavioral Health Support Drives Whole Health (Get Well)
• Two Ways to Increase Your Patient Engagement (Healthwise)
• Your Business is NOT Data Illiterate! (Clearsense)
• Protect your Healthcare Organization from Third-Party Risks (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Essential ephemera: The sad, over-too-quickly life of a wearable datum (Nordic)
• Payment models and value-based care (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Habilitative vs. Rehabilitative Therapy Billing Differences (MWTherapy)
• Get the FAQs About Automated Prior Authorization (Myndshft)
• Measurement-Based Care is Crucial to Behavioral Health, and It Needs an Upgrade (Neuroflow)

Contacts

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

News 5/18/22

Top News

A Venezuelan cardiologist and self-taught programmer is charged with the development, use, and sale of plug-and-play ransomware and creating profit-sharing arrangements with his customers, whom he often persuaded to leave positive online reviews.

The criminal complaint, brought against him by US authorities, claims that “the multi-tasking doctor treated patients, created and named his cyber tool after death, profited from a global ransomware ecosystem in which he sold the tools for conducting ransomware attacks, trained the attackers about how to extort victims, and then boasted about successful attacks.”

The cardiologist’s preferred pseudonyms included “Aesculapius” and “Nosophoros,” Greek words referring to the ancient Greek god of medicine and disease, respectively.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

PatientIQ, an outcomes data and insights vendor, raises $20 million in a Series B funding round. The company gathers its data from 1.4 million patients across more than 200 healthcare organizations.

Sales

• Bon Secours Mercy Health will use Strive Health’s CareMultiplier technology and clinical care teams to improve its care for chronic kidney disease and end stage kidney disease patients across Ohio.

People

CTG names Scott Clark (Ensono) VP of North American sales.

Mikael Öhman (TransformativeMed) joins KMS Healthcare as CEO.

Bakul Patel, former chief digital health officer at the FDA, joins Google as senior director of global digital health strategy.

University Hospital hires Paul Contino, MA (Guthrie) as CIO.

Thynk Health hires Jim Farmer (FYNS) as SVP of sales.

CPSI President and CEO Boyd Douglas will retire from that position and the company’s board on June 30 after 34 years. Replacing him is COO Chris Fowler.

Announcements and Implementations

Novant Health (NC) works with Health Recovery Solutions to launch a remote patient monitoring pilot program for bariatric patients.

In England, The Queen Elizabeth Hospital King’s Lynn NHS Trust implements enterprise imaging software from Agfa HealthCare.

In Norway, Helseplattformen brings Trondheim kommune live on Epic. Epic’s Rachel Kantosky reports on LinkedIn,

On top of the complexities of a ‘typical’ Epic install, the team added enterprise applications into a system live solely on Beaker lab, translated over 4 million system terms into Norwegian, and completed several significant development projects, including SFM ePrescribing integration, eMessaging, and digitizing the Norwegian pregnancy card. Go-live is just the beginning and we are looking forward to further rollouts and optimization! I’m also incredibly proud of the 32 American expats who moved their lives to Norway to support this important work.

Government and Politics

A VA Office of Inspector General report determines that lack of prompt EHR documentation and care coordination between a VA provider and private chiropractic clinic contributed to the spinal and rib fractures of an 87 year-old patient. The nearly century-old Ohio facility is one of 35 that the VA is considering closing within the next several years.

DoD facilities including Naval Branch Health Clinic and the 3rd Combat Aviation Brigade, Hunter Army Airfield, both in Georgia, will transition to MHS Genesis next month.

Other

A lawyer and veteran advocate writes a satirical article on using the VA’s MyHealtheVet to “micro-manage your VA doctor from your sofa.” A snip:

I swear, sometimes, I feel like some VA personnel intentionally dupe us into keeping a request verbal. When the floor falls out on whatever issue you were trying to resolve, when the time comes to “prove it,” the conversation never happened. It will be your word against theirs, and you will lose. Remember, if it’s not written down, it did not happen. This is why tools like My HealtheVet are so great. It can allow you direct access to your care team. It allows you direct access to at least some (but not all) of your health records. It gives you the power to put it in writing even after the appointment, just to be sure everyone is on the same page. What an empowering tool, no? Should your physician refuse a procedure but not write it down, you can send a note about it later that should be added to your records. If you need to appeal the refusal in a clinical appeal, healthcare appeal, or if it comes up in a malpractice matter, the request will be documented.

A nurse and former cardiovascular director sues MercyOne, alleging that she was fired in retaliation after she reported that a cardiothoracic surgeon was not obtaining proper patient consent, was performing too many add-on procedures, lied to patients about likely outcomes, and put patients with poor post-surgical outcomes on ventilators for 30 days so their deaths would not be reported to the Society of Thoracic Surgeons database as being due to surgical complications. She also claims the surgeon screamed at her in a meeting about the issues and referred to her as “this little girl.”

Sponsor Updates

• About releases a new podcast, “US Healthcare: Understanding Challenging Trends for Hospitals and Health Systems with David Burik.”
• Availity makes its Enhanced Claims Status, a multi-payer RESTful API, available to its trading partner network.
• BDO expands its alliance with Microsoft to deliver solutions that create value for its global clients.
• TechVibe radio features ConnectiveRX VP of Product Development Mary Beth Sirio.
• Get-to-Market Health celebrates its five-year anniversary.
• Experity earns 2022 Great Place to Work Certification.
• Sonifi Health integrates the HealthTouch food service system from MCR Technologies into its interactive patient engagement platform.
• Imaging data vendor OneMedNet announces a joint referral partnership agreement with data management company Flywheel for biomedical research and collaboration.

Blog Posts

• RCD: What You Need to Know (Ability Network)
• Stop Making Patients Work So Hard (Orbita)
• Healthcare Claim Denials: How to avoid common medical coding errors (AGS Health)
• It’s a Small World in Clinical Communication and Collaboration (Ascom)
• Peer-Reviewed Study Validates NarxCare as Effective Patient Screening Solution for Opioid Risk (Bamboo Health)
• Pros and cons of centralized vs. decentralized staffing models for value-based care success (Bravado Health)
• Healthcare M&A: Why Clinical Operational Readiness Matters (CereCore)
• A Look at Risk Analysis – 9 Steps to Getting It Right (Clearwater)
• Asembia 2022: Specialty Patient Access, Centricity and Adherence (CoverMyMeds)
• The Benefits of Partnering with the Right Healthcare IT Managed Services Provider (Divurgent)
• HEDIS: Completing the Picture of Patients’ Health (EClinicalWorks)
• 5 Essential Qualities of Front Office Staff (Experity)
• Hiring an Epic Team? Start with a plan. (Healthcare IT Leaders)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 5/16/22

Top News

Remote monitoring and financial incentives had no impact on readmissions or deaths among discharged heart failure patients, a randomized clinical trial finds.

Participants were given a digital scale, a monitored pill bottle for diuretics, and daily “regret lottery” incentives for providing medication and weight measures from the previous day.

The authors conclude that success may require earlier or deeper patient engagement and might need to include unrelated issues that cause HF readmissions.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

These are timely poll results since former Vanderbilt nurse RaDonda Vaught was sentenced Friday to three years of probation (no jail time) following her conviction on negligent homicide charges after killing a patient by giving the wrong medication. Most poll respondents favor open investigations and a review of the work setting rather than charging clinicians with a crime or revoking their license. I spent time reviewing technology-related medical errors in a large academic medical center and the “Swiss cheese effect” is real, where errors were rarely caused by one rogue, incompetent clinician but rather by a series of unusually aligned events, such as systems going down, drug shortages that required substituting an unfamiliar alternative, and lack of coordination in workload-necessitated handoffs among clinicians who weren’t accustomed to working together. It’s not like insurance fraud, where someone takes individual illegal action in return for payment. It’s more like a skilled programmer who makes an honest mistake that affects users because they are overworked or undertrained and the programmer’s employer doesn’t run a competent QA function.

New poll to your right or here: What will be the impact on Epic when CEO Judy Faulkner is no longer involved? She will turn 79 this year and the company’s succession plan will eventually take effect. We saw dramatic changes when Cerner CEO and Chairman Neal Patterson died in 2017, leaving the company without its leader and most visible co-founder for the first time in its 38-year history.

I’m getting more of my “People” updates from LinkedIn since organizations don’t always issue formal announcements. Connect with me and I’ll see and possibly mention your job change. Minimal effort is required and there’s no downside.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

West Monroe will expand its its digital services business in Western Europe, opening new offices and hiring 1,000 employees.

Amwell announces Q1 results: revenue up 11%, EPS –$0.26 versus –$0.16, missing analyst expectations for both. AMWL shares are down 88% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 6.6% gain, valuing the company at $855 million. The company spent most of the earnings call talking about Converge, a technology platform that it says will improve patient connectivity and user experience when interacting with providers and payers.

Sales

• The UK’s Kent NHS trusts choose Sectra’s enterprise imaging system.

People

Community Health Systems promotes Paul Novak to CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

TriNetX enhances its real-world research offerings by launching Follow the Patient, which allows researchers to segment, tag, and monitor de-identified patients over months or years.

Hospitals of Community Health Systems that offer OB services implement PeriGen’s PeriWatch Vigilance for maternal-fetal early warning.

HLTH retools its November conference to push attendees into the exhibit hall (or in its own buzzwords, “focus on audience journeys–tailoring pathways through content, programs, and meetings based on a deeper learning about each population and individual that interacts with us.”) Attendees will be required to sit in the exhibit hall for sessions and meals, the conference will emphasize the “hosted buyer” format in which healthcare buyer attendees earn registration discounts for meeting with vendors, and both HLTH and ViVE will offer a digital health innovation track that is co-sponsored with investment company StartUp Health.

Other

South Korea requires hospitals to install video surveillance cameras in operating rooms to record all surgeries involving general anesthesia, as lawmakers address widespread reports of “ghost surgeries” in which doctors turn procedures over to unsupervised assistants. The problem arose in the 2010s as the government started promoted medical tourism and plastic surgeons took advantage of demand by allowing nurses, assistants, and even medical device technicians to perform procedures. The practice then spread to spinal surgery centers that saw a profitable opportunity when faced with high demand and few available doctors to perform relatively uncomplicated surgeries.

I missed this earlier. Netherlands-based Aimedis creates Aimedis Health City, which it calls “the first hospital chain in the metaverse” in which de-identified data will be exchanged and monetized. It plans to offer provider advertising, virtual consultations, patient and clinician interaction, education, and rehab courses. It will offer space for rent or purchase using its own NFT marketplace.

Sponsor Updates

• Tegria partners with the One Roof Foundation and Duwamish River Community Coalition to provide asthma remediation items to local families.
• OptimizeRx will present at the RBC Healthcare Conference May 17-18 in New York City.
• Olive publishes a new analysis, “Long COVID leads to longer hospital stays, time in OR.”
• HLTH releases a new podcast featuring Optum MedExpress CEO Kristi Henderson, NP.
• Community Health Systems will present encouraging results seen after its implementation of PeriGen’s Vigilance early warning and clinical decision support system at the IHI Patient Safety Congress May 16-18 in Dallas.
• Talkdesk has won 2022 Top Rated Awards for contact center, call center workforce optimization, call recording, and VoIP.
• Twistle will exhibit at the OR Business Management Conference May 16-18 in San Antonio.
• Volpara Health will exhibit at the SBI/ACR Breast Imaging Symposium May 16-19 in Savannah.
• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new book, “Coping with COVID-19: The Mental, Medical, and Social Consequences of the Pandemic.”
• Zen Healthcare IT achieves HITRUST risk-based, two-year certification to mitigate risk in third-party privacy and security.

Blog Posts

• Connect with Providers When Their Patients Need to Change Therapies (OptimizeRx)
• Navigating the Medication Journey: How Digital Patient Engagement Tools Help (PatientBond)
• Innovating for Tomorrow (Protenus)
• 3 Reasons Why It’s Time to Switch to a Concurrent Risk Adjustment Review (RCxRules)
• The Role of Price Transparency in Improving Patient Access to Care (RxRevu)
• 6 Questions to Ask When Evaluating Clinical Communication & Collaboration (TigerConnect)
• How to Improve Patient Adherence for Physical Therapy (WebPT)

Contacts

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

News 5/13/22

Top News

Bon Secours Mercy Health launches Accrete Health Partners, a digital holding company that will manage its digital health services, investments, and partnerships.

It will be headed up by Chief Digital Officer Jason Szczuka, JD.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Experity.The Machesney Park, IL-based company is the leading software and services company for on-demand healthcare in the US urgent care market, providing an integrated operating system complete with electronic medical record, practice management, patient engagement, billing, teleradiology, business intelligence, and consulting solutions. Nearly 50% of the US urgent care market runs on Experity solutions. With Experity, providers can best meet the demands of the evolving on-demand space and deliver high-quality, high-velocity care by streamlining operations, improving patient experiences, and optimizing revenue. A GTCR portfolio company, Experity’s leadership is comprised of growth-minded urgent care experts and business leaders committed to improving on-demand healthcare for all. Thanks to Experity for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health Catalyst acquires Armus, which provides clinical registry development and data services.

This is an insightful comment from digital health advisor Marc Sluijs.

Sales

• Mount Sinai Medical Center chooses ActX Genomic Decision Support, integrated with Epic.
• American College of Cardiology chooses the care management platform of Biofourmis as the exclusive virtual platform for its TRANSFORM(3) study.

People

Kermit Randa (Syntellis Performance Solutions) joins recruiting software vendor Symphony Talent as CEO.

Ryan McDaniel (Huron Consulting Group) joins Impact Advisors as VP / ERP service line leader.

Announcements and Implementations

Atrium Health and Advocate Aurora Health announce plans to merge, creating a system that will have 67 hospitals, 150,000 employees, and $27 billion in annual revenue with locations in Illinois, Wisconsin, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama. The combined organization will be called Advocate Health, with headquarters in Charlotte, NC and with an academic component in Wake Forest University School of Medicine. Both organizations use Epic. The announcement cited several technology issues as contributing to the decision to merge – healthcare becoming more digital, population health management, and analytics. The health systems pledge to create 20,000 new jobs while making healthcare more affordable.

Microsoft-owned Nuance and The Health Management Academy form The AI Collaborative, which brings together executives of hospitals that are using AI technologies. The big draw for participants is that they get a trip to Microsoft’s headquarters – which always arouses both technical and business geeks – and attend annual summits.

A new KLAS report on go-live support finds that CSI Healthcare IT is busiest, and along with Experis Health, is best at vetting resources.

Government and Politics

Cerner will issue the VA an unspecified credit for failing to meet the minimum system uptime requirements specified in the $10 billion contract.

Two owners of a “purported” telemedicine company plead guilty to participating in an elaborate scheme of bribes, kickbacks, and fraudulent prescriptions for drugs and medical equipment that netted them $32 million and cost insurers $64 million.

Other

The BMJ reports that drug companies and universities that were found in NHS Digital audits to have breached patient data-sharing agreements – repeatedly, in some cases — have not had their access to that data revoked. The article notes that clinical commissioners authorized the release of patient data to Virgin Care without patient permission and the company then refused to allow NHS Digital to audit their compliance while also refusing to delete the information.

US hospitals are rationing the use of contrast media after a GE Healthcare facility in Shanghai, China temporarily closes due to COVID-19 lockdowns. Experts say not only does most of our contrast supply comes from a single country, hospitals sign preferred vendor contracts that give them no alternative source.

A NordPass review of user passwords finds, not surprisingly, that number-formed combinations starting with “12345” represent seven of the top 10 most common. but a common one I hadn’t thought of us “1Q2W3E,” which alternates top and bottom row keys at the left of the keyboard. A similarly digitally lazy choice at #33 is “ZXCVBNM,” which is the first six bottom-row keys left to right. Several of the commonly used passwords include f-bomb variants, which would make an interesting analysis to see if unrestrained anger toward passwords is linked to even more bitter interaction with online humans.

Sponsor Updates

• Bamboo Health announces record company growth and the opening of its office in Boston.
• CereCore joins the ServiceNow Partner Program.
• Get Well will offer medically-endorsed guided imagery and meditation audio programs from Health Journeys to its customers and their veteran patients.
• GHX makes Exchange Advantage, a unified platform that automates end-to-end digital transactions, available to all suppliers in North America.
• Interbit Data publishes a new white paper, “The value of 24/7 access to critical patient data – a nurse’s perspective.”
• InterSystems will relocate its Boston headquarters, taking up the top 14 floors of a new building at One Congress.
• Diameter Health publishes a new brief, “Why Upcycling Data Matters.”

Blog Posts

• Best Practices for Fielding a Project Team (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Using “SMART” Reference IDs for Workday (ERP) Data Conversion (Impact Advisors)
• 3 Ways to Increase Telehealth ROI (EVisit)
• 4 digital enhancements to improve patient access (Experian Health)
• 5 Elements of a Superior Solution for Health Systems That Need to Grow Margins (Gyant)
• Honoring the Role of Nurses in Empowering Patients (Healthwise)
• Did Your IT Project Fail? Here are 4 Ways Change Management Could Change the Outcome (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Using “SMART” Reference IDs for Workday (ERP) Data Conversion (Impact Advisors)
• AI in healthcare: A wicked problem and needed solution (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Why Upcycling Data Matters (Diameter Health)
• Hospital Week 2022: Celebrating Healthcare Systems and Healthcare Workers (Loyal)
• Medhost University: Multiple Options for Optimizing Medhost Product Knowledge (Medhost)
• How to Make Coordination of Benefits More Transparent and Truly Coordinated (Myndshft)
• Avoid Information Overload: Making Business Intelligence Data Actionable for SNF Rehab Therapy (Net Health)
• National Nurses Week: How can we better support the nurses that work so hard to care for us? (Nuance)
• Achieving Interoperability in the Real World (Netsmart)

Contacts

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

News 5/11/22

Top News

Harris rebrands the hospital and large physician practice software business it acquired from Allscripts to Altera Digital Health.

The business’s president will be Marcus Perez, MS, MBA, senior EVP of Harris Healthcare.

The $700 million acquisition, which closed May 2, included Sunrise, Paragon, TouchWorks, Opal, Star, HealthQuest, and DbMotion.

Allscripts has not removed the divested products from its website or announced how its developer program and App Expo will work post-acquisition.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Pondering: is intelligence deficit disorder, as evidenced by Facebook postings, a pandemic? Or, does Facebook attract a disproportionate number of users who can’t express a cohesive thought, use the Internet without help, or resist adding opinions even when they are irrelevant or poorly considered?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

RCM solutions vendor Med-Metrix acquires PatientPal, which offers patient engagement and front-end RCM software.

Mental health EHR and research startup Osmind raises $40 million in a Series B round that brings its total funding to $57 million.

Sales

• Novant Health (NC) will implement Infor’s cloud-based healthcare ERP software with consulting help from Grant Thornton.
• ScionHealth selects R1 RCM’s software and services for its 61 long-term acute care hospitals.
• In the UK, NHS Lancashire and South Cumbria will implement Citadel Health’s laboratory information management system in $12 million project.
• Cleveland Clinic chooses Medically Home Group to develop a program to care for acute and post-acute patients at home via a virtual command center.

People

Martin Spence (Fujifilm Medical Systems) joins Clearwater as virtual CISO and principal consultant.

Telstra hires Monica Trujillo, MBBS, MPH (Cerner) as chief health officer.

Instamed, a J.P. Morgan Company hires Steve Sewell (Optum) as executive director of product management.

Brett MacLaren, MBA (Providence) joins Kaiser Permanente as SVP of data and analytics.

B.well Connected Health hires Nathan Weems, MBA (VitalConnect) as CFO.

Announcements and Implementations

Patient engagement software vendor PatientTrak announces GA of digital patient intake forms for outpatient facilities.

IatricSystems launches DetectRx drug diversion and automated evidence-based response software. Iatric was acquired by Harris in 2018.

Interbit Data launches Beacon, an enterprise care continuity solution that addresses downtime, including cybersecurity incidents.

Advance care planning organization Five Wishes creates a lifetime digital version of its advance directive, which will be stored on Vynca’s advance care planning platform.

Government and Politics

A survey of 701 DoD providers finds that 58% have identified inaccurate or incomplete data in the agency’s Cerner-powered MHS Genesis system, leading to inaccurate, delayed, or incomplete diagnoses; multiple patient visits to complete care; and longer patient visit times. Medical device integration with MHS Genesis was also found to be problematic, with respondents noting that “…eye care devices are not connected to the system and this creates significant delays and repeat imaging,” and “the process to get medical devices connected is CONTRARY to 21st century healthcare delivery. We just choose to ignore that equipment isn’t connected.”

Government-run psychiatric treatment provider directories — such as SAMHSA’s FindTreatment.gov that was intended to give patients a better option than having their Google searches exposed to marketers — contain outdated and incorrect provider information. Patients report reaching disconnected numbers, contacting facilities that aren’t accepting new patients, or finding that clinicians have retired or moved. The directory does not vet submissions beyond verifying licensure and does not include quality indicators.

Other

Apple retires my once-beloved IPod Touch, marking the end of the 20-year-old IPod line. Other IPod models along the that have been largely forgotten – I think I’ve had and/or gifted them all multiple times — were the Mini, Nano, and Shuffle. The Touch, ownership of which I bragged on starting in 2010, was basically an inexpensive IPhone without the “phone” part and free of ongoing cost, capable of just about anything as long as a WiFi connection was available.

Sponsor Updates

• AGS Health leaders work with United Way to create handmade educational kits for underprivileged students.
• Agfa HealthCare profiles a new customer success story, “Enterprise Imaging supports successful major transformation at Ziekenhuis Oost-Limburg (ZOL), Belgium.”
• The First Coast Worksite Wellness Council recognizes Availity with its Healthiest Companies Platinum Level Award for the eighth year in a row. 
• Baker Tilly releases a new episode of its Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Key factors and trends impacting M&A activity in the healthcare industry.”
• Delaware documents 100,000 referrals in the third year of its use of Bamboo Health’s OpenBeds referral network.
• CareMesh names Martin Armitage (NaviHealth) director of strategic accounts.
• CHIME and more than 100 additional healthcare organizations sign a letter urging Congress to removal the ban on funding for a national patient health identifier standard.
• Interbit Data launches the next generation of its Beacon Platform, designed to help hospitals with communications and care continuity during downtimes.
• Ellkay will exhibit at the NEHIMSS Spring Conference May 12 in Norwood, MA.
• PerfectServe honors over 130 exceptional nurses in its second annual Nurses of Note Awards program.
• Wolters Kluwer Health adds diversity, equity, and inclusion content to its Ovid medical research platform.
• WebPT adds PVerify’s Advanced Eligibility solution to its EHR for physical therapists.

Blog Posts

• From Risky Business to Data-Backed Decision (Arcadia)
• Celebrating National Nurses Week with Bamboo Health’s Alycia Sepe, BSN, RN (Bamboo Health)
• 5 ways to improve patient satisfaction scores to prepare for OAS CAHPS reimbursements (Bravado Health)
• Meditech Expanse: Customizable Features that Improve Clinician Satisfaction (CereCore)
• How do you balance understaffing during the pandemic? By turning data into knowledge (Cerner)
• Did Your IT Project Fail? Here are 4 Ways Change Management Could Change the Outcome (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• 5 Key Questions You Should Ask Your IT Provider Annually (ChartLogic)
• The Evolution of Chronic Care Management (ChartSpan)
• Introducing A New Category of Technology for Innovation in Healthcare: the Healthtech Operating System. (Commure)
• Asembia 2022: Specialty Patient Access, Centricity, and Adherence (CoverMyMeds)
• How EClinicalWorks RCM Service Boosts Efficiency (EClinicalWorks)
• No Surprises Act Part 1: A Surprise for Providers (Enlace Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 5/9/22

Top News

From the Allscripts earnings call:

• CEO Paul Black resigned Friday, effective immediately, saying that a new generation of leaders is needed now that the company’s focus is its Veradigm business.
• President and CFO Rick Poulton, who has been with the company for 10 years and is 56 years old, took over as CEO on Saturday.
• Black will leave the company’s board when his term expires this year.
• SVP/GM Thomas Langan has been promoted to president, while SVP/GM Leah Jones has been named CEO.
• Poulton said that selling the company’s hospital and large practice software business to Constellation Software will leave Allscripts more focused and with 5,000 fewer employees.
• With the sale, Veradigm represents 95% of Allscripts revenue, along with a “small unrelated product line” that makes up the remaining 5%.

Allscripts shares dropped 6% Friday after the earnings announcement after Thursday’s market close. They are up 22% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 12% loss, valuing the company at $2.2 billion. They are up 68% in Paul Black’s 10-year tenure as CEO versus the Nasdaq’s 309% gain.

Reader Comments

From Door Shower: “Re: HIMSS. Recently laid off several dozen folks. As usual when that happens, many others are leaving voluntarily.” Unverified, although I’ve heard this from former employees.

From Awardee: “Re: MedTech Breakthrough awards. Who runs this?” Parent company Tech Breakthrough, which runs dozens of cloned awards sites, apparently would rather you didn’t know who’s in charge since they provide no contact information or employee names and hide their domain registration information. They are equally protective of their awards criteria and how much companies pay the marketing company to tout their “wins” in press releases. I’ll speculate from experience given the company’s lack of forthrightness – it’s a handful of India-based tech people who are banking rupees for giving companies awards whose validity is questionable but rarely actually questioned. I’m happy to update with specifics should the company be interested in providing them.

From Punjab Pete: “Re: Ascension. Lost $884 million in Q1. CIO Gerry Lewis is out, HCL outsourcing contract is axed.” The loss is verified, the other items are not, although being discussed on layoff sites.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

One-third of poll respondents have recently struggled to pay a medical bill. Northerner slyly expresses bafflement about the question because they live in Canada.

New poll to your right or here: What action should be taken when a clinician’s mistake kills a patient?

Thanks to the following companies that recently supported 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 & Digital Health exchange-traded fund were down 20% in the past month versus the Nasdaq’s 13% loss. They’re down 26% since the fund’s inception in July 2020 versus the Nasdaq’s 15% gain.

Sales

• A Leidos-led consortium that includes MediRecords, Coviu, and Nous Group wins a $230 million contract to implement an EHR for the Australia Defence Force. The system will replace EMIS-powered DeHS, which went live in 2014 at a cost of $94 million versus an initial budget of $16 million.
• Three-hospital Appalachian Regional Healthcare System signs a management service agreement with UNC Health, under which ARHS will implement Epic. The health system went live on Allscripts Sunrise in 2013.

People

Consulting firm Avia hires Daniel Clark, MBA, RN (Optum) as SVP of its Center for Care Transformation.

South Georgia Medical Center promotes Chuck Marshburn, MBA to CIO.

Adam Landman, MD, MHS, MS, MIS (Brigham and Women’s Hospital) joins Mass General Brigham as CIO/SVP of digital. 

Definitive Healthcare promotes Robert Musslewhite, JD to CEO as of August 1. Founder and CEO Jason Krantz, MBA will move to executive chair.

Government and Politics

An OIG joint audit of efforts by the DoD and the VA to make their Cerner systems interoperable notes that migration of legacy data into Cerner could have been more consistent, that medical device integration could be improved, and that user access should be limited to information needed to perform job duties.

The VA confirms that Cerner was unavailable 50 times for at least some users singe going live in its Pacific Northwest sites, but the outages were not widespread. The VA’s Oregon and Idaho sites will go live next in June.

Sponsor Updates

• TigerConnect publishes a report titled “It’s Time To Modernize How Health Systems Connect.”
• Arcadia partners with Datavant to accelerate biopharma research.
• Optum partners with the Dallas Cowboys to host a mental health awareness event in Frisco May 9.
• Vocera publishes a report titled “Reimagining Nursing for the Future” by Chief Nursing Officer Rhonda Collins, RNP, RN.
• Quil publishes a new case study, “Penn Medicine Improves Discharge to Home Rates, Expands Partnership Systemwide with the Help of Quil.”
• TMC awards Talkdesk’s AI Trainer with its 2022 Customer Product of the Year award.
• Interbit Data will participate on MUSE in Dallas the week of May 15.
• TigerConnect sponsors the Nurses at the Heart of Healthcare Contest to recognize nursing professionals who have shown an unwavering commitment to their profession.
• TriNetX appoints Launch Therapeutics CEO Anshul Thakral to its Board of Directors.
• Healthcare Growth Partners publishes research titled “Seeking Balance in the Hyperactive Mental Health Tech Market.”
• Kyruus ProviderMatch for Consumers is named “Best Patient Registration & Scheduling Solution” by an independent marketing group.
• Twistle publishes a new case study featuring Ashley Clinic, “Controlling Blood Pressure with Remote Physiologic Monitoring.”
• WebPT has been certified as a Great Place to Work for 2022.
• Relatient, Change Healthcare, Experian Health, Myndshft, Well Health, and Vyne Medical will exhibit at NAHAM 2022 May 10-13 in San Diego.
• West Monroe hires Rissa Reddan (Equifax) as chief marketing officer.
• Wolters Kluwer Health will exhibit at the RISE Risk Adjustment Forum May 9-11 in Chicago.
• Zen Healthcare IT’s Gemini platform receives HITRUST CSF r2 Certification.

Blog Posts

• “Clickbusters” can bust more than clicks (Nordic)
• 5 Tips for Hiring and Retaining Top Talent (Olive)
• The Top 5 Reasons Why Hospitals Should Optimize Patient Engagement (PatientBond)
• The Great Resignation: Key Takeaways (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Focus on Access Management for Safety in Healthcare (Symplr)
• 10 Years of MSSP: 2012 Fears Versus 2022 Realities (Part 2 of 2) (Premier)
• Three Qualities to Consider When Selecting a Healthcare Technology Partner (Protenus)
• Nurses are Calling for Innovation. Let’s Listen. (Vocera)
• Takeaways from the MTMI breast cancer risk assessment webinar (Volpara Health)
• It’s All Up from Here: Advancing Our Profession Through Next-Level Data Intelligence (WebPT)

Contacts

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

News 5/6/22

Top News

Allscripts reports Q1 results: revenue up 7%, adjusted EPS $0.13 vs. $0.08. Expectations are muddied, as the company has carved out Veradigms’s financials separately.

CEO Paul Black will reportedly step down, with President Rick Poulton taking on the role effective immediately.

Allscripts finalized the sale of its hospital and large practice software business to Constellation Software subsidiary N. Harris earlier this week.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

OptimizeRx reports Q1 results: revenue up 22%, adjusted EPS $0.01 vs. $0.04, beating revenue expectations and meeting those for earnings.

Sales

• Oklahoma’s MyHealth HIE selects Orion Health’s Amadeus population health management software, and consulting services from HealthTech Solutions.
• Cardiac monitoring vendor MediLynx selects EHR integration capabilities from Redox.
• The Capital Region in Denmark will implement cloud-based enterprise imaging from Sectra at its hospitals.

People

South Georgia Medical Center promotes Chuck Marshburn to CIO and HIPAA privacy officer.

Announcements and Implementations

HCTec announces GA of staffing and consulting support for Epic Hyperdrive.

Magellan Federal integrates NeuroFlow’s digital behavioral healthcare assessment, triage, and management capabilities into its Military & Family Life Counseling program.

Mankato Clinic will implement virtual care software and services from Bluestream Health at its 13 facilities in Minnesota.

Other

Pivot Point Consulting’s latest report on healthcare IT trends suggests that hospital leaders should:

• Adjust staffing models to accommodate hybrid and remote workers.
• Evaluate supply chains and legacy applications in light of cyber risks from third-party risk management and managed services vendors.
• Carefully evaluate proposed remote patient monitoring technologies and services.
• Prepare to work with TEFCA-enabled Qualified Health Information Networks.
• Consider the ways in which ERP and business systems can be successfully adopted to enhance workflow efficiencies.

Sponsor Updates

• Myndshft joins enterprise automation software company UiPath’s Tech Alliance Program.
• Lyniate publishes a new case study, “Clinify Health helps improve financial stability for FQHCs with Lyniate Envoy.”
• Meditech recaps its virtual Home Care Symposium, which brought 275 attendees together to network and collaborate on strategies for the future.
• Nuance joins Athenahealth’s Marketplace to broaden physician access to the Nuance Dragon Ambient EXperience for automated clinical documentation.
• HCTec celebrates the opening of its expanded office space in Winston-Salem, NC.
• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story featuring Innova Primary Care, “How Healow Payment Services Transforms Collections.”
• CloudWave will implement Tausight’s situational PHI awareness platform and deliver turnkey PHI monitoring, management, and response to healthcare providers.
• Cerner will offer its customers access to Akasa’s AI-based Unified Automation platform for healthcare revenue cycles.

The following HIStalk sponsors have won MedTech Breakthrough Awards:

• WebPT – Best patient registration and scheduling solution
• Kyruus – Best online search and scheduling solution
• GHX – Compliance management innovation
• Nym – Health administration innovation
• Talkdesk – Best patient relationship management solution
• Elsevier – Best patient education solution
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions – Best HIE solution
• Fortified Health Security – Best overall healthcare cybersecurity company
• Current Health – Best hospital technology implementation

Blog Posts

• Reduce Patient Leakage with More Care Options, Part 2 (EVisit)
• Better claims management: faster patient payments and reduced denials (Experian Health)
• How CISOs Can Guard Against Evolving Physical and Digital Corporate Security Threats (Everbridge)
• 10 reasons why hackers think your HDO is an easy target (Imprivata)
• How to Improve Patient Experience with Data Management (InterSystems)
• Data normalization: Working toward a common clinical terminology (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• 4 Key Steps to Creating a Holistic Find Care Experience (Kyruus)
• 4 Ways to Measure Chatbot ROI (Loyal)
• Healthcare Interoperability – How can Medhost help you comply? (Medhost)
• Physical Therapy Core Values for PTs & PTAs at Your Practice (MWTherapy)
• Why Automation is the Key to Fixing Prior Authorization (Myndshft)
• A Look at Current Unmasking Initiatives in OccMed (Net Health)
• How interoperability can support value-based care (Nordic)

Contacts

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

News 5/4/22

Top News

Allscripts closes the sale of its hospital and large practice software business to Constellation Software’s subsidiary N. Harris.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Global Healthcare Exchange. Founded in 2000, GHX pioneered healthcare’s largest cloud-based supply chain network, which today connects tens of thousands of healthcare organizations across the globe. The network represents healthcare providers operating more than 80% of licensed beds in the US and suppliers representing more than 85% of the medical-surgical products used in healthcare delivery. With the support of GHX, healthcare organizations have removed billions of dollars of wasteful healthcare spend. Over the last two decades, GHX has continued innovating alongside a passionate community of healthcare providers, suppliers, distributors, and other industry stakeholders, all united around a common purpose: to simplify the patient-centered business of healthcare to improve outcomes. The company’s passion for uniting the best of healthcare is driven by a powerful vision: create a viable and sustainable future for healthcare by arming organizations with the data, insights, and technology they need to thrive in healthcare’s value-based future, where patients are at the heart of every decision. GHX believes that by empowering organizations to move beyond process efficiency, and toward efficiency of outcomes, organizations will thrive and the vision of a viable and sustainable future for healthcare will become a reality. Thanks to GHX for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cerner reports Q1 results: revenue up 4%, adjusted EPS $0.93 versus $0.78, meeting earnings expectations but falling short on revenue.

Configo Health, a startup that has developed benchmarking analytics for pediatric hospitals, raises $2 million in a seed funding round.

Plug-and-play virtual care software developer Capable Health raises $6 million in seed funding. Its technology allows developers to launch digital clinics.

Kidney care-focused analytics and population health management vendor Healthmap Solutions raises $35 million, bringing its total funding to $136 million.

Online pharmacy Truepill stops filling Adderall and Vyanse prescriptions as online mental health companies such as Cerebral and Don Health raise concerns about overprescribing. Major drug chains such as Walmart and CVS have also reportedly delayed or declined to fill such prescriptions.

The American College of Physicians and the American Telemedicine Association will develop a framework for assessing digital health technologies that are used by providers and consumers. The US-focused framework covers privacy and security, clinical assurance and safety, and usability.

Sales

• Rochester Regional Health (NY) will incorporate TytoCare’s telemedicine software and hardware into its virtual care services.
• University of Michigan Health will use analytics from Loopback Analytics to improve its specialty pharmacy program.

People

OncoHealth promotes Jennifer Haas to chief marketing officer.

Divurgent names Ed Marx (The HCI Group) CEO. He replaces founder Colin Konschak, who will become executive chairman.

Lynne Nowak, MD (Evernorth) joins Lark Health as chief medical officer.

IKS Health hires Ben Crocker, MD (Massachusetts General Hospital) as SVP of care design and innovation.

Stan Opstad, MBA (Inovalon) joins Zipari as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Audubon County Memorial Hospital & Clinics (IA) staff will implement Epic this week.

Jefferson Radiology goes live on Philips Collaboration Live for diagnostic tele-ultrasound, allowing remote radiologists to connect virtually with patients during their imaging appointments to provide a diagnosis, answer questions, or request additional imaging from the sonographer.

Consumer-focused healthcare wearables company Withings launches enterprise remote patient monitoring devices and software for patients and providers.

Personal ECG app vendor AliveCor launches KardiaComplete, a remote personal monitoring and virtual cardiologist service for people with hypertension and arrhythmias, sold through employers and payers.

Government and Politics

Winn Army Community Hospital at Fort Stewart in Georgia will go live on Cerner next month as part of the DoD’s continued wave of MHS Genesis roll-outs.

VA Secretary Denis McDonough says the agency will continue rolling out its new Cerner software despite five recent outages that have caused some lawmakers to call for a halt to implementations. The VA’s Central Ohio Healthcare System in Columbus went live on the EHR over the weekend. McDonough said he is “very concerned about the execution of the program to date” and added that the first of the downtimes was so “egregious” that Cerner CEO David Feinberg, MD, MDA issued a signed apology.

Privacy and Security

Virtual chronic care management and remote patient monitoring startup MyNurse notifies users of a March data breach, adding that it will cease operations at the end of the month for unrelated reasons.

Good Samaritan Medical Center Director Amy Travland reminds staff to print their names and avoid abbreviations when paper charting during downtime, referring to a cybersecurity incident last week. Good Samaritan was one of two Tenet Healthcare facilities in Florida that took systems offline as a result of the breach.

Other

Cardiologists express concern that tens of millions of consumer devices that can issue atrial fibrillation warnings will consume doctor time and healthcare expense to confirm or rule out a diagnosis, all for uncertain benefit. Symptom-free patients will have medical-grade monitors attached for days and then potentially have expensive anticoagulants prescribed that can cause side effects. One cardiologist said that tech companies introduced such alerting “because they could” and said that doctors are trying to catch up to the “test doctors didn’t order.”

Mozilla finds that of 32 mental health and prayer apps it reviewed, 28 raise strong data management concerns and 25 fail to meet minimum security standards. Mozilla’s lead privacy expert called the apps “exceptionally creepy” and that the companies that offer them are “negligent and craven.” The biggest offers named are Better Help, Youper, Woebot, Better Stop Suicide, Pray.com, and Talkspace.

Authorities in Venezuela arrest Jose Lopez for working at several healthcare facilities with fake medical credentials. His crime came to light after several women became pregnant after he had supposedly implanted them with subdermal contraceptive coils. He had, in fact, implanted lollipop sticks.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD Director of Sales Operations Carla Huggard wins a Utah Women in Sales Award.
• Actium Health publishes a new report, “State of Patient Engagement in 2022.”
• Baker Tilly will sponsor the Maryland HIMSS 10^th Annual Golf Tournament May 9 in Valley.
• Bamboo Health will exhibit at the Skilled Nursing Clinical Executive Conference May 5 in Chicago.
• CHIME posts a podcast titled “Filling the Talent Pipeline” with guest Geoff Blanding, EVP of Optimum Healthcare IT.
• Cerner releases a new podcast, “Combatting clinician burnout.”
• GHX names 80 provider and supplier organizations to its Millennium Club that have achieved the highest levels of supply chain automation through the GHX Exchange.
• CTG will sponsor the AWS Summit Atlanta May 18-19.
• Divurgent names Andrew Wells (McCormack Plastic Surgery) senior director of business development.
• Change Healthcare will work with Luma Health to develop new patient engagement solutions that unify clinical, operational, and financial touchpoints.
• The Iowa Hospital Association will offer its members access to ChartSpan’s chronic care management services.
• Experian Health, PatientKeeper, ManpowerGroup, CereCore, Change Healthcare, CloudWave, Dimensional Insight, Ellkay, Elsevier, FDB, Healthcare Triangle, Intelligent Medical Objects, Interbit Data, Intrado, Nuance, OBIX Perinatal Data Systems by Clinical Computer Systems, Sphere, Tegria, and Meditech will exhibit at the MUSE Inspire Conference May 15-18 in Dallas.

Blog Posts

• Three Pillars of Single-Path Coding (AGS Health)
• More meaningful care through data (Arcadia)
• Healthcare Technology Can Drive the Fourth Industrial Revolution (Ascom)
• How Azara DRVS Supports Behavioral Health Services (Azara Healthcare)
• GHX Announces Upcoming GHX Summit 2022 Highlights (GHX)
• Leadership – What Does it Really Mean? (CHIME)
• Tips to Effectively Fund Your Enterprise Cyber Risk Management Program (ECRM) (Clearwater)
• The Link Between EHR Satisfaction and Clinician Burnout (Dimensional Insight)
• Managing Post-Acute Care: A Critical Success Factor for ACOs (Dina)
• Insights and Takeaways from the 2022 Internet 2.0 Conference (Divurgent)
• Who are the 29 Million Americans Who Use Health Centers? (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 5/2/22

Top News

Walmart rolls out a diabetes telehealth program for employers that includes diabetes education, behavioral health analysis and counseling, and discounts on insulin, diabetes medications, and test kits.

The program was developed with the American Diabetes Association.

The service is provided through MeMD, a Phoenix-based multi-specialty telehealth provider that Walmart acquired in May 2021.

Walmart will sell the program as a standalone offering or as part of a comprehensive telehealth program.

Reader Comments

From Enumerator of Beans: “Re: Teladoc’s share price. Stupendously bad, but take a look at Amwell’s enterprise value, which is less-famously awful.” Refresher: enterprise value (EV) looks beyond a publicly traded market capitalization to also include the company’s debt and cash, which is how a potential acquirer would evaluate it. Amwell’s market capitalization is around $900 million as Teladoc’s woes dragged AMWL shares to record lows, but even worse, Amwell’s EV has tanked from $3 billion a year ago to $150 million now, which seemingly provides a buying opportunity for the strong-stomached investor or down-trending competitor. Teladoc’s market cap has shed more than 80% in that same year as EV slid from $29 billion to $6 billion even as management was hyping the company’s business prospects (I can’t imagine that won’t trigger a bunch of lawsuits). The smartest person in the telehealth room turns out to have been invited visitor Glen Tullman, who found a buyer-in-heat in Teladoc who was willing to massively overpay for largely untested Livongo in that brief pandemic moment where telehealth looked unstoppable, insatiable investors were wildly overfunding digital health companies, and companies sought acquisitions that would arouse or confuse investors (or both). No wonder Glenn is ubiquitous as a conference keynoter, with the sometimes comical train wreck that was Allscripts under his watch being long forgotten.

From Curious from Across the Pond: “Re: American healthcare. Has all the money spent my vendors and the federal government actually improved patient care compared to Europe? It seems that most of the money is to make sure that health systems can bill and collect for ‘patient care’ and that it’s all about growing market share and preserving monopolies and patient care is the last thing on their mind.” US healthcare is bureaucracy-powered big business, not a social obligation, but governments love it because it creates high employment, big political donors, the illusion of economic growth, and shiny new buildings where politicians can pose cutting ribbons. Technology and policies that claim to have the power to improve outcomes and cost can only be as effective as the underlying healthcare system they support, and ours is a mess with no political will to change it given that the wealthy like it just fine. As far as health IT claims, vendors and fawning press cheer every announcement but fail to mention the frequent failure that follows or the user missteps that contributed.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say that the factors that are most important to AI’s eventual success in healthcare are maturation of the technology, proven outcomes, and building trust. Commenters noted the need for better-quality EHR data and the alignment of economic incentives.

New poll to your right or here: Within the past two years, have you had to pay a medically related bill that created at least a modest degree of financial hardship?

I received a brilliant spam email this week – Bitdefender warned me that the “unsubscribe” link pointed to a phishing page.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Weight loss app vendor Noom lays off 180 coaches and will part ways with 315 more employees in the next few days, according to a Business Insider report. The company is trying to pivot to scheduled video-based coaching instead of immediate text-based engagement that often involved canned messages and lessons. At least the company is loyal to the video-based model – the employees who were laid off were notified in group video calls.

Spok announces Q1 results: revenue down 6%, EPS –$0.37 versus –$0.12. The company says its strategic alternatives review resulted in no options to sell the company, so it will continue to operate as a standalone business.

Ambulatory surgery software vendor HST Pathways acquires competitor Simplify ASC.

People

Renee Emmer, RN, MS joins VCU Health as associate VP of clinical informatics.

Ann Baty (OmniSys) joins HealthMark Group as VP of marketing.

Announcements and Implementations

Olive releases Care Campaigns, an automated patient communication and outreach solution whose first user is Gundersen Health System.

Canada’s seven-hospital Hamilton Health Sciences will go live on Epic on June 4 in a rare move straight from paper charts that are scanned into CGI Sovera.

Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center (WI) joins a clinical trial of UltraSight Echocardiographic Guidance, a machine learning app that helps medical professionals who don’t have advanced echocardiography training to position the transducer.

Rochelle Community Hospital (IL) goes live on Epic, replacing Meditech and Athenahealth. 

Oxford University Press launches Oxford Open Digital Health, an open access journal that will focus on digital health interventions in low- and middle-income countries. The editor-in-chief is Alain Labrique, PhD, MHS, MS, professor and founder of the Johns Hopkins University Global MHealth Initiative and chair of the WHO Digital Health Guidelines Development Group. 

In Norway, St. Olav’s Hospital trains volunteers from the local senior center on HelsaMi, its patient portal that is powered by Epic MyChart, so they can help other seniors.

Government and Politics

Interesting from Politico: a historical graph of how many years Medicare’s Part A fund for hospital expenses has left before running out of money. Today’s number is four years, as in 2026 the fund will go broke because the number of enrollees and their expenses has risen faster than funding from payroll taxes, and that doesn’t even account for pandemic-related impact. The long-term fix would be to shift to value-based care, which would require not only a lot of legwork, but rare political unity. The “gimmick fix” would be to shift some Part A services to Part B, which is funded by premiums and other taxes.

Other

Neonatologist Ross Sommers, MD, who recently founded NICU-at-home monitoring software company Firstday Healthcare, posted this on LinkedIn. I found it interesting given the cost and family disruption involved with NICU babies. The company offers continuous vital signs monitoring monitored by board-certified neonatologists, AI-powered deterioration prediction, a parent app that includes medical records, and care coordination.

A small University of Colorado survey of patients who were given online access to their radiology images and reports finds that most said it was helpful in understanding their condition and few reported being worried or confused. One-third of them saved a copy, one-fourth shared them with a doctor, 15% used them to get a second opinion, and 3% posted them on social media.

Sam Johnson, fired last year as CEO of telehealth vendor VisuWell after he was caught on video telling high school senior Dalton Stevens that they “look like an idiot” for wearing a dress on their way to the prom, sues comedian Kathy Griffin for making fun of him. He says the ridicule triggered a backlash against him and his family. Johnson says he is suing “to stand up against the woke social mob that wants to strip of us of our livelihoods and careers.” He says his issue wasn’t the student’s attire, but rather that the group was being obnoxious and profane in one of his favorite restaurants. Johnson says that he will never again sign an employment agreement that doesn’t contain a “slow action cause” that subjects employment actions resulting from a news story, social media post, or boycott demand to a 30-day cooling-off period. Johnson says that VisuWell and “several health systems” made false statements that were published and urges followers to read the coverage on Fox News. Two months ago, he accused the Nashville Business Journal, VisuWell, and LinkedIn of flagging one of his LinkedIn posts as harmful, which he summarizes as “scared pansies.”

The metaverse quickly got creepy. Bored Carnegie Mellon researchers fit haptic sensors into an Oculus Quest 2 headset that transmits kissing sensations to the wearer’s lips, teeth, and tongue. They describe mundane game-playing uses such as brushing teeth, smoking, and drinking coffee, either naively or coyly overlooking more lucrative integration. SecondLife perverts have a new home.

Sponsor Updates

• KLAS research ranks Meditech among the top two EHR vendors market share growth.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “How EClinicalWorks RCM Service Boosts Efficiency.”
• OptimizeRx will exhibit at MedDev 2022 June 7-9 in San Diego.
• Optum donates COVID-10 test kits to increase access to free testing among underserved communities in Chicago.
• PatientBond will exhibit at the UCA/CUCM 2022 Annual Convention through May 4 in Las Vegas.
• PerfectServe will present at the Powderkeg Unvalley virtual conference May 11-12.
• Premier’s S2S Global donates urgently needed medical supplies to Ukraine via United Help Ukraine.
• The HIT Like a Girl Podcast features Tegria Director of Patient Access and Technology Rodina Bizri-Baryak.

Blog Posts

• Stop Making Patients Work So Hard (Orbita)
• Preventing Violence Against Healthcare Workers: Perspective From a Former CEO (Commure)
• How the Pandemic Changed Patient Experience, and Why It Matters (Symplr)
• X12 got you down? Light it on FHIR with Redox. (Redox)
• 10 interesting facts about nurses (Spok)
• Innovation Allows for Swifter, Smarter Specialty Prescribing & Fulfillment (Surescripts)
• How payers can improve member experience with modern contact centers (Talkdesk)
• Improving Healthcare Communication and Collaboration within Doctors’ Offices and Beyond (TigerConnect)
• Top Things to Know About Patient Engagement Technology (Twistle)
• Filler Words to Avoid in PT Treatment Notes (and Other Documentation Missteps) (WebPT)

Contacts

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