News 4/15/22

Top News

A CB Insights Q1 digital health report finds that:

• Digital health funding dropped 36% over Q4, a much larger decrease that the financial and retail tech sectors. Funding was down across all global regions.
• Mental health tech funding dropped 60%, while telehealth was down 32%.
• Mega-round funding dropped in contributing to the overall funding decrease.
• Just one company launched an IPO in Q1 versus 23 in the previous quarters, and zero SPAC deals occurred, likely because of poor IPO returns in 2021. IPO activity was the lowest in years.
• Six new companies attained billion-dollar “unicorn” valuation in Q1, less than half of the previous quarter’s number.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I apologize that several companies sent urgent phone and email messages to Lorre on Tuesday after I mentioned that my top-of-page ad banner is available for the first time in years. I didn’t expect that much interest in committing immediately. The fairest way we could think of was to go with the earliest timestamp.

I had plans to offset my slacking off at HIMSS22 by watching some recorded education sessions online, but I’m finding that my indifference has transformed from in-person to virtual. I haven’t looked at anything related to the conference since I left Orlando and most likely won’t. Beyond official education sessions being recorded, it seemed like half of the conference attendees were bantering with the other half for their dopey podcasts and video interviews, so I doubt the limited interest in consuming them is increasing as weeks go by.

Speaking of HIMSS, I checked to see if anything was happening on Accelerate (not much that I saw), but I was surprised to see a newly posted pitch for a paid networking group by HITLAB that costs from $99 to $1,999 per year. I’m not sure the industry needs another option “for individuals in healthcare looking to amplify their brand impact” or how that business might compete with that of HIMSS, and if so, why it is being promoted on a HIMSS platform. I don’t know anything about HITLAB except they used to run an innovation contest with AARP.

Webinars

April 22 (Friday) 1 ET. “CMIO 3.0: What’s Next for the CMIO?” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Becket Mahnke, MD, CMIO and pediatric cardiologist, Confluence Health; Dale Sanders, chief strategy officer, IMO. The relatively short history of the CMIO role includes Version 1.0 (EHR implementation, Meaningful Use, and regulatory compliance) and Version 2.0 (quality and efficiency). Version 3.0 is at the forefront of predictive analytics, population health initiatives, and optimization of data-driven tools. The presenters will discuss the digital revolution’s impact on CMIO responsibilities; the connection between clinical informatics, analytics, population health and the CMIO; and how CMIO 3.0 will be involved in the adoption of advanced technologies.

April 28 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Undercoded and Underpaid: Making It Easier to Document to Optimize Reimbursement.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Deepak Pillai, MD, physician informaticist, IMO; June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, senior director of informatics, IMO; Nicole Douglas, sales engineer, IMO. The presenters will discuss how to simplify precise documentation for clinicians; the effects of imprecise coding on reimbursement; why accurate code capture at the point of care can have positive downstream impact on population health initiatives; and how third-party solutions integrated with the EHR can reduce documentation burdens.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Biofourmis will reportedly receive an investment from General Atlantic that will value the company at over $1 billion.

Healthcare compliance and learning platform vendor MedTrainer raises $43 million in a Series B funding round.

Virtual mental health company Iris Telehealth raises $40 million in Series B funding.

Virtual diabetes clinic 9am.health raises $16 million in a Series A funding round.

Drugmaker Pfizer offers $74 million to acquire Brisbane, Australia-based ResApp, whose smartphone app analyzes coughing sounds to diagnose COVID-19 with 92% accuracy. The app is already being used to diagnose asthma and pneumonia during telehealth visits.

Sales

• Fraser Health will upgrade its Meditech Client/Server system to Expanse.
• North York General Hospital chooses Sectra’s radiology and breast imaging modules and VNA.
• Howard Brown Health selects Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company, to provide project management, resourcing, and advisory services for its OCHIN Epic implementation.
• Senior care technology support vendor UpStream Healthcare chooses Innovaccer’s Health Cloud, Data Activation Platform, and application suite.

People

Kevin Dias, MS (TransUnion Healthcare) joins Myndshft as chief customer officer.

Laurance Stuntz (Massachusetts EHealth Institute) joins Xealth as SVP of customer success.

Announcements and Implementations

Northwell Health and startup studio Aegis Ventures launch Ascertain, which will develop and commercialize healthcare AI companies. The company will use $100 million in seed funding to develop product ideas, commercialize scientific developments, and partner with foreign companies to bring their offerings to the US.

A large KLAS Arch Collaborative clinician survey looks at turnover and the EHR experience:

• Nurses are the clinicians who are most likely to leave at more than 20%.
• Burnout, the factor most strongly correlated with planned departures, is most often fueled by chaotic work environment, time required to complete bureaucratic tasks, lack of teamwork, no personal control over workload, and lack of shared values with leadership.
• One-third of clinicians who think their organizations perform poorly on EHR implementation training, and support say they are likely to leave within the next two years.
• Suggested EHR actions include reducing after-hours charting, optimizing nurse workflows to reduce duplicative charting, and offering workflow-specific EHR training,

Government and Politics

HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, JD asks ONC to review possible bias in healthcare AI algorithms and its impact on health equity. 

Other

Mayo Clinic launches an observational study to determine if Apple Watch ECG and symptom reporting, as sent to an Epic dashboard, are good enough to support AI-powered diagnosis of cardiovascular problems.

ED doctors diagnose a 20-year-old man with breathing problems and chest pain with a lung air leak problem that is usually caused by violent coughing or strenuous exertion. His etiology was the latter, with an asterisk – he admitted that he was stricken during a vigorous session of self-gratification. He went home four days later, having learned unknown lessons.

Sponsor Updates

• Aleris-Hamlet in Demark implements Agfa HealthCare’s digital radiography technology.
• EVisit becomes a top-level member of the American Telemedicine Association.
• Conversational AI vendor Hyro will offer its healthcare customers provider search, match, and scheduling functionality from Kyruus.
• Wolters Kluwer Health’s Ovid medical research platform now offers access to the Astute Doctor Communicate Program, a collection of interactive and evidence-based online courses.
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions publishes a new customer success story, “Delivering ROI with De-Identified Medical Claims Data.”

Blog Posts

• A Different Point of View: Healthcare IT’s History of Magical Thinking (Medicomp Systems)
• Training Your Practice with Telehealth (EVisit)
• Why patient experience matters to your revenue cycle (Experian Health)
• News Headlines Suggest Heightened Cybersecurity Awareness, IT Practitioners Know the Reality (Fortified Health Security)
• Digital as a Tool, not a Strategy: A Conversation with Christopher Longhurst (The HCI Group)
• Autism Awareness: A Personal Perspective (Healthwise)
• Four Warning Signs You’ve Outgrown Your HCM System (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• We’re expanding the Imprivata family: Welcome, SecureLink! (Imprivata)
• Data quality is the key to semantic interoperability (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Redefining Patient Intake for the Digital Era: 3 Reasons to Care (Lumeon)
• Memos from the Medhost CISO: Preparing for Potential Cyberwarfare (Medhost)
• Supporting assault survivors and nurse examiners with electronic assessments (Meditech)
• 5 Crucial Components Your PT EMR Needs (MWTherapy)
• Happy 25th Birthday, Dragon! (Nuance)
• Modern love: Why modernizing the enterprise beats an innovation-only focus (Nordic)

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

News 4/13/22

Top News

Oracle extends its Cerner acquisition deadline from April 13 to May 11, with no other changes of terms to the $28 billion deal.

Oracle says that 11.5% of CERN shares have been tendered as of Friday.

Reader Comments

From HIS-Oldimer: “Re: Bon Secours Mercy Health. Is considering outsourcing infrastructure, Epic, Workday, and other platforms. The project, which is valued at $200 million over three years, could affect 350 to 900 employees. who will be rebadged to the winning firm (the usual suspects – Atos, Deloitte, and HCL) and released 6-12 months after training their offshore replacements. It will close Q3 2022.” Unverified.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Myndshft of Mesa, AZ. Myndshft’s software-as-a-service automates and simplifies time-consuming healthcare patient access tasks associated with prior authorization, eligibility and benefits verification, and patient financial responsibility, freeing providers and payers to concentrate more fully on patient care. Myndshft works with leading providers, payers, and health information exchanges. A company overview is on YouTube. Thanks to Myndshft for supporting HIStalk.

It’s been a long time since the top-of-page banner spot was available. It gets lots of clicks, so contact Lorre to book it long term.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Laboratory systems vendor CliniSys Group acquires ApolloLIMS.

Senior-focused value-based care company Vytalize Health raises $50 million in a Series B funding round. The company has partnered with 280 primary care practices in 16 states to offer their patients virtual and in-home care enabled by its technology. Vytalize acquired patient communication company MedPilot last year.

Moxi hospital delivery robot developer Diligent Robotics raises $30 million in a Series B funding round. The company will use the investment to expand integration capabilities with hospital EHR and clinical communication software.

Imprivata acquires digital identity management vendor SecureLink.

Sales

• Wayne Health (MI) will implement digital health services from Qure4u that include online scheduling and appointment reminders, telehealth, remote patient monitoring, digital health screenings, and patient-to-provider communications.

People

Divurgent promotes Katherine Isaza to VP of client services.

Holon Solutions names Mike Kaminaka (Innovaccer) chief growth officer.

Krister Mattson (Essentia Health) joins Gundersen Health System (WI) as VP of enterprise analytics and data science.

Mukta Nandwani, MS (Epic) joins Findhelp, the social care connection technology vendor formerly known as Aunt Bertha, as CTO.

In England, Tunstall Healthcare hires Emil Peters (Cerner) as group CEO.

Nick Gauen (Greenway Health) joins Innovaccer as area sales VP.

IllumiCare hires Ralph Keiser (EPSi) as chief strategy officer.

Elsevier Clinical Solutions promotes Maryann Abbruzzo-White, MBA to SVP of global marketing.

Pegasystems hires Kikelomo Belizaire, MD, MPH (Anthem) as chief medical officer and Barry Chaiken, MD, MPH as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

Alice Hyde Medical Center goes live on Epic as part of the University of Vermont Health Network’s third phase of implementation.

New York-based HIE Healthix implements FHIR-based patient record snapshot technology developed by Hixny, an HIE serving New York and Vermont.

Netsmart will integrate Bamboo Health’s OpenBeds resource with its CareManager population health management software to better enable healthcare organizations to respond to demands for crisis-oriented care. The Missouri Behavioral Health Council will implement the new technology as part of its statewide crisis management program.

A new KLAS vendor-only report finds that the company’s own overall performance score, such as Best in KLAS, is not among the strongest predictors of sales among the factors that KLAS measures. Sales volume predictions are most closely correlated to KLAS categories of likely to recommend, supports integration goals, delivery of new technology, and executive involvement. Factors associated with lower sales are money’s worth and median number of years live, both of which are indicative of products that are late in their life cycle and thus at risk of being replaced. KLAS says that Best in KLAS is mostly used by buyers to create short lists and to identify questions to ask, with few organizations mindlessly buying the top-rated product. An unstated possibility is that customers don’t actually use KLAS to make product decisions and that KLAS reports reflect rather than influence vendor performance.

Government and Politics

A VA-sponsored study of veterans with mental health issues living in rural areas finds that 36% of the 13,000 who received a video-enabled tablet during COVID-19 were less likely to make a suicide-related visit to an ER, and that 22% were less likely to show suicidal behavior.

HHS will collect data from more than 2,000 providers on their medical bill collection practices as part of the federal government’s efforts to crack down on consumer medical debt. The data will be used in future grantmaking and policy decisions.

FDA warns providers that imaging software cannot be used to diagnose stroke patients, only to prioritize cases for a radiologist’s review. FDA also tells providers that the devices may be specific to certain arteries only rather than all intracranial vessels and are unable to rule out the presence of large-vessel occlusion.

FDA clears the atrial fibrillation detection algorithm of Google-owned Fitbit, which assesses heart rhythm while the user is passive or sleeping. The algorithm measures heart rhythm via a blood vessel expansion optical sensor that will soon to be incorporated added to Fitbit devices. The company’s ECG app will remain in place so that users can perform a spot-check rhythm screening and ECG capture, while the new technology supports long-term background assessment.

Other

Allscripts and Cerner achieve top customer rankings for their integrated EHR and RCM technologies, according to Black Book’s latest survey of 1,700 community hospital end users.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart showcases the power of a digitized platform and Certified Community Behavioral Health Centers leadership at the National Council for Mental Wellbeing 2022 Conference through April 13 in Washington, DC.
• The Incremental Healthcare Podcast features About Healthcare CMO and co-founder Darin Vercillo, MD.
• KLAS Research highlights Agfa HealthCare as one of the most frequently considered vendors in the Middle East.
• Philips Capsule will exhibit at AONL in San Antonio through April 14.
• CareMesh publishes a new case study, “From the Hospital to the Extended Care Team: Tampa General Hospital Notifies, Transitions, and Connects with Any Healthcare Provider in the Country Digitally.”
• Get-to-Market Health’s Steve Shihadeh interviews investor Lee Shapiro of7wire Ventures in Part 1 of  “How Health Tech Companies can Grow and Thrive in Today’s Challenging Environment.”
• CarePort will present at ACMA National 2022 May 3 in Dallas.
• Change Healthcare publishes the “2021 Laboratory Ordering Index.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT posts a video titled “Optimum CareerPath Testimonial: Ben Mensalis, CHIME’s 2021 Innovator of the Year.”
• CHIME releases a new podcast, “Leader to Leader: Getting to Interoperability with Ajay Kapare and Marc Probst.”
• Clearsense has sponsored the Banner Health Children’s Open golf fundraising tournament.
• Crossings Healthcare Solutions names Marjorie Fiorilli (Ascension) project manager, and Shyla Dubois and Lucien DeCecco account executives.
• Dina joins the Florida Association of ACOs.

Blog Posts

• Improve Practice Outcomes by Outsourcing Your Revenue Cycle (AdvancedMD)
• Proactive External Audits and Other Tips for Avoiding OIG Investigation (AGS Health)
• Developing and Engaging Preferred Post-Acute Networks (Bamboo Health)
• 3 conference takeaways: Activating patient data across the care journey (Bravado Health)
• 2022 CHIME CIO Survey Results Are In (CereCore)
• Easing Clinician Burnout, Cybersecurity Fatigue (Cerner)
• 21st Century Cures Act: Interoperability and Information Blocking and What it Means for Healthcare Organizations (Clearwater)
• Hospital-at-Home Patient Testimony: Joy (Current Health)
• How Data Analytics Can Help Advance Your EHR Strategy (Dimensional Insight)
• Focusing on Public Health: Staying Connected with the Community (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 4/11/22

Top News

All federal Cerner systems – DoD, VA, and Coast Guard – went down for two hours Wednesday due to a server problem.

The irony is that the server in question was running database software from Oracle, soon to be Cerner’s owner in giving CIOs their “one throat to choke.”

VA Deputy Secretary Donald Remy says that the VA and Cerner will conduct a root cause analysis of the downtime.

Meanwhile, the VA’s Walla Walla facilities went live as planned on March 26. Columbus is up next on April 30.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Two-thirds of poll respondents were laid off or fired more than five years ago, and two-thirds of those said it turned out to be a good thing career-wise.

New poll to your right or here: What is the most significant result of hospital mergers?

Listening: Pink Floyd’s first new recording since 1994 in “Hey, Hey, Rise Up!,” a fundraiser that protests Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The song features Boombox singer Andriy Khlyvnyuk, who cancelled the band’s US tour and returned to Ukraine to take up arms to defend his country.

Webinars

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

Announcements and Implementations

• Inova Health System signs an eight-year, $24 million contract with Visage Imaging to replace two legacy PACS with Visage 7, implemented in the public cloud.

Other

A reader sent me a copy of the paywalled Axios piece whose author claims that $4 billion startup Olive “overpromises and underdelivers.” It’s not exactly a smoking gun or a showcase of investigative journalism technique, obsessing instead with the company’s being “buzzy,” richly valued by investors, and driving purple buses around conferences. The article’s click-baity headline seems equally prone to underdelivering:

• Axios interviewed 16 “former and current employees, health tech executives, and others,” but apparently no actual current or former Olive customers, which seems to be a glaring omission for an investigative piece that focuses on customers. It does not list any cancelled contracts, aborted sales, or litigation that would suggest that Olive’s users are unhappy with the value they are receiving.
• The company claims that it uses AI/ML to automate administrative tasks, but often actually uses old-fashioned screen scraping. It is hardly unique to Olive that a lot of mundane technology has been optimistically relabeled as AI/ML because that imprecise term arouses prospects and especially investors. If Olive delivers the results it promises, I’m not sure the customer cares how they do it anyway.
• Former employees say the company uses questionable calculations to estimate potential cost savings, with one claiming that customers who expect $10 million in value “ultimately got less than a fifth of that.” A specific example would have been nice, hopefully including the reaction of the actual customer rather than that of a single ex-employee whose previous role wasn’t stated.
• The company doesn’t track outcomes and cost savings, and in some cases, has no way to do so. I would think that the customer is in the best position to audit Olive’s performance, so I’m not sure I find this relevant.
• Epic asked Olive to remove its name from company materials, saying Olive was misrepresenting the relationship internally and externally. I seem to recall writing about this as a reader rumor.
• Several sources say Olive salespeople installed capabilities that customers didn’t necessarily request because they know that the solutions would be difficult to remove afterward.
• Olive said in its response to Axios that it serves 200 enterprise customers, but Axios says internal documents say the real number is 80.
• My conclusion is that the article is thin on sourcing, not especially authoritative or insightful, and chose an easy target in a company whose market valuation is high but whose level of innovation is murky.
• The article doesn’t really change the basic of being a smart customer of Olive or any other vendor – perform due diligence of reference sites, get promises and expectations in writing, and share risk with the vendor instead of just writing them checks.

Amazon lists another interesting healthcare job. The senior clinical informaticist will join a team that is building “a completely new healthcare experience” (quibblers such as myself might point out that the “completely” is redundant and “new” might be as well). The job involves Amazon Care’s clinical systems, specifically its EHR.

It’s a slow news weekend, so I caught up on tweets from iconoclast Jay Parkinson, MD, MPH, who is about to launch a new venture, but meanwhile has some fresh thoughts that interest me (paraphrasing):

• The gold standard in healthcare is the status quo. If that is a procedure, we’re probably the best in the world. If it’s a service, near the worst, yet the worst is fiercely defended.
• Patient histories at Jay’s former company Sherpaa ended with the same last question – what do you think you have? Patients were right 95% of the time. That would be an interesting way to design a telehealth service.
• It’s interesting that one-condition companies pivot to add more to grow their bottom line, like Noom doing weight loss for 15 years and now they are adding stress and anxiety.
• Journalists covering digital health funding, rather than reporting milestones that justify company valuations, is like baseball news reporting only that a new batter is up.
• Medical is pills, procedures, and feeling fleeced. Health is fun, it feels good, and people are happy to pay for that. The most successful DTC brands in “digital health” are consistently “health” rather than medical.
• The evidence for a drug is at the population level, not at the individual level. Since most people aren’t doctors acting on populations, they only think at the “me” level. They don’t really realize that most drugs are a crapshoot at the “me” level.
• Teladoc transitioning from being known for 20 years as one of the many places to turn to for a quick prescription for a UTI or pink eye to now wanting to manage all things serious and branding it as the “whole health” of a population … well, that must be a real bear.
• The amount of money and time people will spend to see the same guys on different stages answering the same questions is astounding. It proves that there is insatiable demand for health conferences, and if you really want to make a buck, start a
  platform for health conferences powered by AI and schedule one every week with the same lineup. To scale up, develop Glen Tullman and Jonathan Bush robots who can appear on stage, and they themselves can invest in it so they can focus on being CEOs.

Sponsor Updates

• Applied Clinical Trials magazine features OptimizeRx VP of Data Product Mike Rousselle in a new episode, “A Passion for Predictions.”
• Olive will open a new office in Columbus, Ohio, adding 400 jobs.
• Symplr CEO BJ Schaknowski joins Susan G. Komen’s Board of Directors.
• Premier releases a new podcast, “How AI Can Drive Value in Healthcare.”
• The Highway to Health Podcast features Relatient VP of Marketing Josh Byrd in a new episode, “How Josh Byrd Uses Songwriting Experience to Tell the Patient Story.”
• TriNetX enabled researchers at Hospital Universitario 12 de Octubre to leverage European real-world data for a study that found that multiple myeloma patients were more likely to contract COVID-19 and suffer a higher risk of mortality than non-MM patients.
• Optum publishes a white paper titled “5 priorities to improve financial performance.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new report, “Nursing’s Wake-up Call: Change is Now Non-Negotiable.”
• VisiQuate announces major enhancements to its Flo and Late Charges predictive analytics solutions that help healthcare organizations achieve peak business health.

Blog Posts

• Patient Engagement Strategies that Improve Health Outcomes (PatientBond)
• 4 Healthcare Trends from HIMSS22 (Pivot Point Consulting)
• PerfectServe’s Clinical Collaboration Solution Reduces Care Team Toil (PerfectServe)
• The Quest for Evidence in Value-Based Care (Symplr)
• Geisinger Implements EHR Alerts, Reduces Costly Lab Orders (Premier)
• Why you shouldn’t underestimate the importance and value of contact center technology (Spok)
• 3 Benefits of Advanced Clinical Workflows in Alarm Management (TigerConnect)
• The year ahead in cancer statistics: Why personalized risk assessment remains so important in cancer care (Volpara Health)
• Better Together: What Joining Forces with Clinicient and Keet Means for the Industry (WebPT)
• How Patient-Provider Communication Can Support Community Mental Health (Well Health)
• If you built it, people will come – when you build what matters (West Monroe)

Contacts

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

News 4/8/22

Top News

UnitedHealth Group and Change Healthcare extend their merger closing deadline to December 31.

Courts will review DOJ’s lawsuit in August. If DOJ’s merger challenge is upheld, UHG’s Optum will pay a $650 million breakup fee to Change.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Orbita. Innovative healthcare, life sciences, and medical technology organizations rely on the Boston-based company to power high-value virtual assistants for digital front door applications, remote patient support, pre and post-visit outreach, and other critical interactions throughout the care journey. Orbita’s robust conversational platform is designed for both developers and business users to quickly build, deploy, and easily manage “Automation with Empathy” virtual assistants for smart speakers, web and mobile chat apps, text messaging applications, interactive voice systems, and custom devices. Orbita’s platform is HIPAA compliant and SOC2 certified. Its customers and partners include Medstar Health, Mayo Clinic, Philips Healthcare, Amwell, Janssen, Medtronic, Yale New Haven Hospital, Bristol Myers Squibb, Cancer Treatment Centers of America, and others. Thanks to Orbita for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

Here’s the video of this week’s webinar from Mend titled “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits,” along with the accompanying ebook.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

RCM provider Aspirion acquires health system RCM outsourcer ARx.

Eon, which use computational linguistics to identify patients with incidental findings, raises a $16 million growth equity investment.

IntelyCare, whose platform matches freelance nurses with available shifts, raises $115 million in a Series C funding round that values the company at $1.1 billion.

Clarify Health, whose software performs “Moneyball”-type analytics to identify optimal care interventions and therapies, raises $150 million in a Series D funding round.

AI-powered diagnosis system vendor Viz.ai raises $100 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $1.2 billion.

Walmart opens five Walmart Health centers in Florida, which offer primary care, labs, X-ray, EKG, behavioral health, dental, optical, hearing, and care navigation. The centers, the company’s first in Florida, will be open seven days per week, covering Sundays with telehealth only. The company’s announcement notes that its Florida locations will be the first to use Epic.

Sales

• DME/HME software provider Bonafide Medical Group chooses Clearwater’s ClearAdvantage cybersecurity and HIPAA compliance managed services program.

People

Cerner hires former US Army Major General Patrick Sargent, MS (OptumServe) as SVP/GM of Cerner Government Services and promotes Alaa Adel, MBA to SVP/President of Cerner Global.

Brent Michael (Eye Care Leaders) joins DrChrono as president.

Health data curation vendor Verinovum hires Mureen Allen, MD, MS, MA (UnitedHealth Group) as CMIO.

Announcements and Implementations

The EU clears the AI-powered chest X-ray analyzer of Lithuania-based Oxipit to be used autonomously without radiologist review to identify images as showing no abnormalities.

Surescripts enhances its the patient matching capabilities of its MPI to include additional demographic data, which identified 2.2% additional medications in last month’s use.

Other

An Axios investigative article (which I can’t read because it is paywalled) says that startup Olive, which is valued at $4 billion, doesn’t deliver on its promises to save money and caregiver time, sometimes generating only a fraction of the savings it promises.

Sponsor Updates

• Net Health announces that its rehabilitation outcomes management system is now available in Epic’s App Orchard.
• Lyniate has been selected for inclusion within Epic’s Garden Plot SaaS model for independent medical groups.
• PeriGen wins Best AI Product in Health for its PeriWatch Vigilance solution at the 2022 CogX Awards.
• EVisit publishes a new Insights Report, “The Cost of Expanding Telehealth; Future-proofing Healthcare; Telehealth and Disabilities, & More.”
• Healthcare Triangle will present at the Noble Capital Markets Investor Conference April 20-21 in Miami.
• Surescripts introduces new innovations in patient matching through its master patient index that will improve more patient and provider experiences across a number of its solutions.
• Nordic releases a new podcast, “The value of data infrastructure modernization for the health system.”

Blog Posts

• Crossings Healthcare Solutions is better than ever, with some new faces! (Crossings Healthcare Solutions)
• Accessing Healthcare: Easing Digital Frictions in the Patient Journey (Experian Health)
• Deploying Digital Technology for Health Equity (Get Well)
• Change Management Metrics: Define Targets and Track Progress in Your Organization (Impact Advisors)
• Natural Language Processing 101: A guide to NLP in clinical documentation (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Symptom Checker: Answering Health Questions in Real Time + Easing the ER Burden (Loyal Health)
• Analytics to Drive Hospital Performance Improvement (Medhost)
• A Quick Guide to HIPAA Physical Therapy Guidelines in 2022 (MWTherapy)
• Wound Care Clinics Could Really Benefit from Predictive Analytics (NetHealth)
• KLAS gives DAX an A in its Emerging Technology Spotlight Report (Nuance)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 4/4/22

Top News

The American Hospital Association tells federal regulators that hospital mergers lower costs and create better outcomes, benefiting their patients and communities.

AHA specifically calls out the technology benefits of mergers:

• Expanded repositories of clinical and cost data.
• Real-time support of diagnoses and treatments.
• Advanced analytics.
• Large health systems making advanced technologies available to their smaller affiliates that otherwise couldn’t afford them.

AHA says the government’s merger guidelines don’t require big changes and should retain market definitions as a component of competition analysis.

AHA adds the FTC and DOJ should focus instead on “anticompetitive mergers and deceptive conduct by insurance companies.” It specifically supports DOJ’s lawsuit to block UnitedHealth Group’s planned acquisition of Change Healthcare.

Reader Comments

From Brody Brodock: “Re: solutions that connect patients to clinical trials. I know of one, Ciitizen, although they seem to do only cancer trials.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The employers of most poll respondents will focus this year getting and keeping employees and developing new offerings.

New poll to your right or here: For those who were laid off or terminated more than five years ago: what was the impact on your career? I did a similar survey years ago and it was shocking to see the super-high percentage of folks who said their unplanned job loss was a positive career event. As I often say, who wants to work for a company that lays people off, especially if you’re one of them? Although today’s truth is that nearly every company lays people off, kicking one set of “valued associates” to the curb while publicly bragging on company success that requires a fresh batch.

I received a large donation for Donors Choose and funded a bunch of classroom projects.

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

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Buyouts magazine awards Francisco Partners its “Deal of the Year” recognition for carving out medical device integration technology vendor Capsule Technologies and selling it to Royal Philips for $635 million in early 2021 at a 233% gross internal rate of return. Qualcomm acquired Capsule Technologie (its original name as a France-headquartered company) in 2015 and made it part of Qualcomm Life, which Francisco Partners acquired in February 2019. FP renamed the business to Capsule Technologies, refocused it back on addressing inpatient hospital communications, hired former Spok CEO Hemant Goel to lead the company (he’s now at NThrive / FinThrive), and acquired clinical monitoring technology vendor Bernoulli Health, all in its first six months of ownership. FP sold the company to Philips two years after acquiring it, where it operates as Philips Capsule.

Hospital pharmacy consulting firm Visante acquires The Robertson Group, which offers pharmacy informatics and technology consulting.

People

Debra Carpenter, PhD (Crowe Healthcare Risk Consulting) joins Tri-State Memorial Hospital as CIO.

Change Healthcare hires Edward Baird (Spectralink) as VP of strategic accounts.

Industry long-timer Joyce Sensmeier, MS, RN retires as senior advisor of informatics at HIMSS.

Announcements and Implementations

Cerner won’t require non-client facing employees to be vaccinated until June 6, when workers are expected to return to in-office work.

Other

England scales back its pandemic surveillance programs in a move toward living with COVID-19 rather than trying to eliminate it, raising concerns among health experts that the dialed-back data systems will not support the early detection of new surges and variants. Britain was the global leader in performing random community testing, genomic sequencing, and combining the results with electronic medical records and epidemiology to provide the world with much of its COVID intelligence.

Amazon Web Services posts a job for head of worldwide health technology solutions, which involves building health system relationships, working with partners, and creating AWS business opportunities.

Sponsor Updates

• VisiQuate founders and staffers travel to Ensenada, Mexico with Baja Bound to build a house for a working family.
• The Urban Health Today Podcast features PeriGen CEO Matthew Sappern and his insights on rural maternity deserts, nursing burnout, and how AI is helping.
• Protenus will exhibit at the NADDI National Healthcare Facility Rx Diversion Summit April 25-26 in Raleigh, NC.
• TigerConnect will exhibit at AONL 2022 April 11-14 in San Antonio.
• TriNetX has signed a partnership agreement with Mitsui to expand its global research network in Japan.
• Consulting magazine names West Monroe partners Christina Powers and Melanie Prestridge Leading Women in Technology in the future leader and excellence in client service categories, respectively.

Blog Posts

• Pharma USA Takeaways: Implementing a Practical Approach to AI and Real-World Data that Improves Care Journeys (OptimizeRx)
• One Big Question: How can we improve the human experience of healthcare? (Olive)
• How Insurers Can Make Improvements for Medicare Open Enrollment (PatientBond)
• Use Technology in 5 Ways to Ease Administrative Burden (Symplr)
• Culture is Priority #1: The Cornerstone of Impact Advisors (Impact Advisors)
• Five Steps to a Successful Healthcare Analytics Program (Premier)
• How the Right Digital Health Tools Can Help Providers Operate at the Top of Their License (Quil Health)
• 14 phone-based customer support best practices (Talkdesk)
• Software in Cash-Based Practice, Part 3: Streamlining Clinic Communications (WebPT)

Contacts

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

News 4/1/22

Top News

Private equity firm Thomas H. Lee Partners acquires Intelligent Medical Objects for a reported $1.5 billion.

Reader Comments

From Kaizen: “Re: HIMSS22. I meant to wander by the booths of Intetics (from the Ukraine) and First Line Software (Russia). Wondering if anyone checked them out and how their traffic was.” Offshore developer Intetics has (or maybe “had”) offices in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and other cities in Europe and the US. Software engineering firm First Line Software  has a US headquarters and lists offices in other countries that don’t include Russia. Anybody drop by their HIMSS22 booths? UPDATE: First Line provided an update – the US-based company formerly had a presence in Russia, but in protest of that country’s invasion of Ukraine, has pulled its people out and severed all ties with Russia. For that, I’m adding a little plug for its services with real-world evidence data, health data management and governance, AI/ML, systems development and integration, and clinical quality and safety systems.

From Green Lantern: “Re: clinical trials. Wondering if there are good systems that help patients find them?” I think most systems are aimed at physicians who are helping connect their patients to trials, so other than ClinicalTrials.gov, I don’t know of any that are intended for consumer use. Reader input is welcome.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Keep an eye on Epic’s website Friday for their annual creative April Fool’s shenanigans. I had a dream that the fake news included a retirement announcement from Judy that, in a bit of excellent Epic wit, turned out to be sadly real.

I’ll let others share their Dave Garets anecdotes since I have just this one. It was at the opening session at a long-ago HIMSS conference, and the stage curtains opened to a band playing some searing, nasty, surprisingly loud blues that made me want to drink a breakfast beer and take up smoking. Finally, I thought, HIMSS has hired some actual musical pros instead of bringing in the usual white bread “Up with People” Disney day-jobbers who shoot for “inspiration,” but instead hit “collective embarrassment.” The band wrapped up way too soon and its members turned out to be Dave, Jonathan Teich, and some other health IT folks I’ve forgotten, all of whom had spent time as professional musicians.

I’m trying not to snicker at the expert insight that is being widely offered unsolicited by attendees of “HIMMS.”

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Precision medicine and drug discovery analytics vendor Zephyr AI raises $18.5 million in seed funding.

Sales

• Blessing Health System chooses Biofourmis for its hospital-at-home program that includes biosensors, a patient companion app, and analysis of wearable streaming data and patient-reported outcomes using the AI-powered Biovitals Analytics Engine.
• Carevive Systems will use technology from Datavant to de-identify its oncology patient experience data and connect it for sale to life sciences companies.

People

Dina promotes Tim Coulter to president, where he will also continue in his role as COO.

Keith Tode, MBA (IPM.ai) joins Net Health as VP of clinical research.

Sansum Clinic promotes Sean Johnson, MHA, RN to CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

New Zealand Health IT renames itself to the Digital Health Association.

Intermountain Healthcare will use a $100,000 grant from Intel to purchase 70 additional cameras for its Patient Safety Monitoring remote observation program. Intermountain says the program reduces room traffic and thus COVID exposure, frees up CNA time, and allows immunocompromised caregivers to continue caring for patients.

Telehealth vendor Hims & Hers Health will refer its patients who have complex clinical needs to primary and urgent care provider Carbon Health.

Medchart — which provides patient-authorized records release to legal, insurance, and research customers – announces Marble, an API that makes that information available to developers.

Athenahealth announces improved gender-affirming care capabilities for AthenaOne.

Surgical Information Systems moves to a new corporate headquarters in the Avalon community of Alpharetta, GA.

Government and Politics

Practice Fusion will pay $200,000 to settle federal charges that it failed to comply with the terms of its $145 million EHR opioid kickback settlement in January 2020. The US Attorney alleged that Practice Fusion failed to maintain and fund an Oversight Organization as the settlement required, which the company denied.

A former Yale University ED finance director pleads guilty to stealing $41 million from the medical school by repeatedly authorizing purchases of Suface Pros and IPads, which she broke into individual orders to fall within her $10,000 purchasing authority, then having the items shipped to a business that sold the devices and paid her a cut. Yale didn’t notice until an anonymous tipster questioned her high purchasing volume and why she was placing the equipment into her own car. Her purchasing limit means that she had to generate 4,000 purchases at $10,000 each over eight years – around two purchase orders per weekday — that the School of Medicine failed to notice. Federal investigators say Jamie Petrone-Codrington spent the money on cars, real estate, and travel, also raising the IRS’s interest for not filing tax returns that should have generated $6 million in federal taxes. She will forfeit $560,000 in her business’s bank account, two Mercedes, a Land Rover, two Cadillac Escalades, and a Dodge Charger, along with several real estate holdings. She faces up to 23 years in prison.

Other

Jonathan Bush explains that despite the impediments to interoperability – the challenge of building cross-app experiences, anti-competitive behavior, and broader networks that raise trust issues – he is optimistic:

To steal from Inigo Montoya: I know something that perhaps you do not know. COVID has ushered in a massive explosion in the number and funding of digitally forward, virtual-first healthcare providers. These companies have incredible outcomes, almost no fixed cost base (compared to old med), and an always-on, super convenient access layer. They are also almost all “focus factories” in that they take on one narrow problem, but solve it on a national level. As focus factories, they selfishly WANT a shared record. The amazing irritable bowel syndrome team at Oshi Health has absolutely no designs on taking over your diabetes care someday, but would really like a real-time holistic picture of their patients! They don’t just want federated data because it is clinically and ethically superior, but because they make more money when it exists. The incentives were not so for the Facebook application developer community of the Open Graph era and not so for the medical record guardians of Old Med.

Sponsor Updates

• CTG publishes a white paper titled “Continued Acceleration—Digital Transformation in 2022.”
• Cerner recaps Children’s National Hospital’s go-live on its clinically driven revenue cycle as an ITWorks client.
• Symplr CEO B.J. Schaknowski is named to the board of Susan G. Komen.
• Everbridge teams with technology leaders to offer a critical communications platform to support humanitarian efforts in Ukraine.
• First Databank becomes the NCPDP Foundation’s inaugural Patient Safety Founder Gift Donor with a donation of $100,000.
• Well Health names Malissa Miot (Carium) Northeast enterprise director of sales.
• InterSystems is recognized with the Business Intelligence Solution Provider of the Year award in the Data Breakthrough Awards program.
• The InteropNow! Podcast features Lyniate Chief Marketing Officer Michelle Blackmer in a new episode, “Removing the Confusion of Interoperability Solutions with Lyniate.”
• Meditech congratulates its customers that were included in The Chartis Group’s lists of top 100 rural and community, and critical access hospitals
• NTT Data is accepting applications for the NTT Data Hackathon as part of TechGig Code Gladiators 2022.

Blog Posts

• Managing Epic Community Connect Recipients’ Loss of Control (Impact Advisors)
• ServiceNow Knowledge Articles Empower All (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Intelligent Healthcare Orchestration Can Reduce Burnout (About)
• More Insights from HIMSS 2022 (Part 2) (EVisit)
• New Naloxone Formulation Signifies Progress in Preventing Opioid-Related Adverse Events (First Databank)
• Inclusive Innovation: Repurposing Technology in Service of Health Equity (Get Well)
• Choosing a Managed Services Partner for EHR Support – Part 3 (HCTec)
• Reflections on HIMSS22: The Importance of Reconnecting (Healthwise)
• Staving Off March (security) madness: Digital identity management is your key defense strategy (Imprivata)
• Why You Should Invest in Upcycling Clinical Data (Diameter Health)
• A helping hand for health information exchanges (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• How Provider Data Management Helps Health Systems Embrace Healthcare Consumerism (Kyruus)
• Using Personalized AI to Make Communities (Heart) Healthier (Loyal Health)
• Our HIMSS22 Reflections: Re-imagining Care and Innovative Partnerships (Medhost)
• Strategies to Mitigate the Physical Therapist Shortage in 2022 (MWTherapy)
• Responding to the Challenges with MHealth Apps for Depression and Suicide Prevention (NeuroFlow)
• Guidelines will rule the world (Nordic)

Contacts

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

News 3/30/22

Top News

AmplifyMD, which connects hospitals to specialists via telemedicine, raises $23 million in a Series A funding round. The San Francisco-based startup’s software also incorporates care management, billing, and analytics.

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

RCM software vendor NThrive will change its name to FinThrive. The company acquired TransUnion Healthcare late last year for $1.7 billion, and is in the process of purchasing Pelitas, which specializes in patient access, intake, and RCM software.

Change Healthcare will reportedly sell its ClaimsXten claims payment and editing software business to Availity as potential acquirer UnitedHealth tries to work through DoJ antitrust concerns. Legal experts suggest the sale of ClaimsXten may weaken the DoJ’s lawsuit against the proposed sale of Change to UnitedHealth. The companies have until April 5 to walk away from the $8 billion deal.

Novant Health (NC) launches Novant Health Enterprises, an independent business focused on developing, acquiring, and scaling clinical, financial, and patient-oriented solutions.

Cardiologist John Spertus, MD files a copyright infringement lawsuit against Epic claiming that it has made some of his diagnostic questionnaires available in its EHR. Spertus is the director of health outcomes research at Saint Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute in Kansas City, MO.

Sales

• In Ireland, Mater Private Network will implement Meditech Expanse across its hospitals and clinics.
• Digital home care company Vesta Healthcare selects Bluestream Health’s virtual care platform-as-a-service.

People

David Garets, whose long health IT career included leadership roles with Gartner and HIMSS Analytics, died Monday at 73.

Inderpal Kohli (Hospital for Special Surgery) joins Englewood Health (NJ) as VP of IT and CIO.

Other

A local website’s profile of Epic Systems hints at a forthcoming app that will enable physicians to research best patient care practices using real-world evidence culled from the company’s Cosmos dataset, and outlines the company’s plans to continue expanding its 1,100 acre campus in Verona, WI. It opened its new 350-office Mystery building last week, and will open a similar building, dubbed Castaway, later this year. Three more additions will open within the next five years.

Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clickbusters program has helped reduce alert fatigue through a six-month review process that has modified 42 clinical decision support alerts and turned off 10. Eighty-four alerts were reviewed by physicians, nurses, and pharmacists, ultimately resulting in 71,227 fewer interruptive alerts being sent per week, and a 15% reduction in total interruptive alerts.

Sponsor Updates

• The Ascom marketing team has worked with Habitat for Humanity to paint two houses in Cary, NC.
• Healthcare IT Leaders publishes a new managed services case study featuring Northeast Georgia Health System.
• AdvancedMD awards Client Support Specialist Hannah Dixon an FIT Award.
• Arcadia publishes a new case study, “How Summit Health’s transitional care management creates value for patients and practices across multiple payment models.”
• Baker Tilly will present at the Pennsylvania Association of Directors of Nursing Administration Convention March 29-April 1.
• Bamboo Health will present at the Rx Drug Abuse and Heroin Summit April 19 in Atlanta.
• Dina will present at the TAG Digital Health Summit March 30 in Atlanta.

Blog Posts

• Debunking three common misconceptions about gateway edits (Availity)
• How a Virtual Care Platform as a Service enables better care (Bluestream Health)
• What orthopaedic surgeons need to know about surprise billing legislation (Bravado Health)
• Unleashing the Power of Communications for Healthcare (CareMesh)
• 5 Qualities That Add Value to a Managed IT Services Partner (CereCore)
• Why RHCs and FQHCs Should Care About Chronic Care Management (ChartSpan)
• 7 Things Healthcare Leaders Should Know About 405(d) HICP (Clearwater)
• It’s Time to Rethink Healthcare Data Backups (CloudWave)
• Clinical Research Study Aims to Improve Obstetric Outcomes in Uganda (Current Health)
• HIMSS22 Outlines Opportunities in Healthcare (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/28/22

Top News

The US Department of Justice joins a whistleblower lawsuit brought against Modernizing Medicine (now ModMed) and its CEO Daniel Cane.

The lawsuit, which was filed in 2017 by former VP of Product Management Mandy Long, accuses ModMed of falsely attesting that its EHR met Meaningful Use criteria, which caused users to submit inaccurate reports to CMS in earning MU incentives.

The lawsuit claims that the company ignored patient-endangering software defects in favor of developing new products to increase revenue; illegally paid kickbacks; and sold systems with promises of increasing provider revenue that were enabled by inappropriately upcoding E/M codes and procedure code modifiers.

Reader Comments

From Friend to Nurses: “Re: burned-out nurses. HCIT needs people with clinical experience, not wild ideas from Silicon Valley, and I have several friends who are in their early 30s with 10+ years of nursing experience. Do your readers know of companies that are hiring nurses, or perhaps would companies step up here and say they want to hire nurses?”

From From Great to Horrible: “Re: Tegria.Laid off at least 50 people Friday with no warning or explanation. As someone who became an employee via the acquisition of Bluetree, it hurts to see an organization transform so quickly from having an amazing culture to one that most people dread working for.” A company spokesperson provided this response to my inquiry: “Tegria is implementing changes to better serve our customers and streamline our organization. Like all companies, we evaluate our business on a regular basis in response to ever-changing market needs, which can involve reductions in some roles and hiring in other roles.”

From Payola Pavlova: “Re: companies paying for running their own ‘news.’ Here’s a new example.” It’s not new that some industry sites are auctioning off their editorial space (and ethical principles) with the zeal of Nascar plastering ads on race cars. It doesn’t bother me in health IT as long as it’s made clear, as in this case with the prominent “sponsored” label, that objectivity was bribed to look the other way.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Three-fourths of poll respondents say that patients don’t get ROI in indirectly paying for attendance at industry conferences, including 58% of those who attended ViVE, HIMSS22, or both.

New poll to your right or here: What will your employer focus on most in 2022 to ensure long-term success?

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Net Health. Net Health Employee Health and Occupational Medicine offers total compliance tracking and employee wellness oversight in one specialized and paperless documentation solution. Rely on integrated telehealth technology to provide care and services across locations. The Pittsburgh-based company provides EHR software and predictive, actionable analytics for medical specialties, including rehab therapy, wound care, home health and hospice agencies, and employee health. Its solutions are trusted by 23,000 facilities, including the nation’s leading hospitals, skilled nursing facilities, senior living facilities, home health and hospice agencies, and outpatient clinics. Thanks to Net Health for supporting HIStalk.

I found this Net Health explainer video on YouTube.

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

On demand: “Cybersecurity Threats Facing Healthcare Today.” Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Jason James, MS, CIO, Net Health; Monique Hart, MBA, CISO, Piedmont Healthcare; Jeffrey Rosenthal, , MBA CIO, Reliant Rehabilitation; David Jollow, MBA, CISO, Healogics. The panel of CIO and CISO leaders will discuss the cyberthreats that healthcare faces today. They will review security priorities for the increasingly complex healthcare IT environment that includes cloud-based applications, an increased number of endpoints that include connected devices and patient wearables, and patient portals.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Tegria makes an unspecified “major” investment in England-based digital health consulting firm Cloud21, whose customers include several NHS hospitals.

Sales

• OmniLife chooses Redox for EHR integration of its newly developed referral and status update modules to its transplant center platform.

People

Canada-based Quinte Health Care hires Gina Johar (Brockville General Hospital) to the newly created position of VP / chief digital officer.

Paige Lisk, MBA (DrFirst) joins Verato in the newly created role of chief people officer.

Huron CEO Jim Roth will resign at the end of the year, replaced by President and COO Mark Hussey, MBA. The healthcare segment of the publicly traded management consulting firm generates 42% of its revenue.

Announcements and Implementations

Google recaps some of its health AI developments and projects in its “The Check Up” event that features Chief Health Officer Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MSc.

• Smartphone screening for diabetic retinopathy.
• Using a smart phone’s microphones to record heart sounds as a basic stethoscope.
• Applying AI to pregnancy ultrasound.
• Upcoming: Google Search will show provider appointment availability and allow booking a visit, starting with CVS MinuteClinic.

The VA launches its second site on Cerner as Walla Walla Health Care goes live.

Other

John Roach, who in the late 1970s turned Tandy-owned Radio Shack – mostly known for selling weird electronic parts and CB radios — into a pioneer of the home computer market as the company’s chairman and CEO, died last week at 83. The home computer industry was arguably born in 1977 with the introduction of the Radio Shack TRS-80 (the TRS stands for Tandy Radio Shack, but the system was widely panned as the “Trash 80”), the Apple II, the Commodore PET, and Digital Research’s CP/M operating system that paved the way for Microsoft’s MS-DOS and 1981’s IBM PC.

A former Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurse is found guilty of criminally negligent homicide for killing a patient by administering the wrong medication. RaDonda Vaught ignored several drug dispensing cabinet warnings and failed to perform basic medication checks in administering the paralyzing drug vecuronium to a 75-year-old patient instead of the ordered sedative Versed before an imaging procedure. A nurse colleague who worked in the same neuro ICU unit said that VUMC’s Epic conversion had caused delays in updating the drug dispensing cabinet information, forcing hospital administration to tell nurses to perform system overrides to obtain patient meds. The imaging area did not have a barcode scanner to verify the drug chosen. A nurse advocate says that medication errors are common and can be made by anyone, adding that a jury of Vaught’s peers would have been ICU nurses. Experts question whether VUMC’s systems and processes were at least partly to blame and ponder the potentially negative impact on error reporting of holding medical professionals criminally responsible for making mistakes. VUMC was not penalized even though it did not report the error as required by law and paid a settlement to the patient’s family that barred them from commenting public on the incident, which was revealed months later in an anonymous tip to CMS. VUMC also told the medical examiner that the patient died of natural causes.

Saint Francis Hospital (CT) stages a “clap out” for the departing team of 20 US Air Force personnel who completed a 30-day FEMA assignment to help with the COVID-19 surge. The hospital offered a similar welcome when the service members arrived in February.

Sponsor Updates

• OptimizeRx will present during the virtual RWE Symposium April 11-12.
• Olive teams up with Akava through its Deploy Partnership Program to accelerate the delivery of cybernetic solutions to the healthcare market.
• PatientBond helps national PBM WellDyne boost member engagement to achieve increases in text message engagement, actions taken on text-based refill reminders, and medication adherence.
• Pivot Point Consulting publishes a new case study highlighting how long-time customer Indiana Hemophilia & Thrombosis Center has found strategic and operational value in interim CIO services.
• PerfectServe accelerates speed to care with faster delivery of critical lab results.
• Curation Health Chief Medical Officer Matt Lambert, MD writes a Physicians Practice article titled “No doctor is an island.”
• Spok has reduced the size of its board to six members to better align its size and composition with the company’s recently announced business strategy.
• Talkdesk introduces new mobile apps to its On-the-Go suite of contact center solutions.

Blog Posts

• 5 Tips to Increase Patient Engagement Through Personalization (PatientBond)
• Quality Measurement 101: Risk Adjustment Isn’t Risky Business (Premier)
• Preventive Compliance Monitoring: Why It Matters (Protenus)
• Key Takeaways from Rise National 2022 (RCxRules)
• Evolving Prescribing Practices and Payer Coverage Throughout the COVID-19 Pandemic (RxRevu)
• Addressing the Burnout Challenge in Healthcare (About Healthcare)
• 4 ways interactive technology can help anxious parents (Sonifi Health)
• Affordable Medication and Adherence: Two Sides of the Same Coin (Surescripts)
• 3 key takeaways from ViVE 2022 (Talkdesk)
• HIMSS22: Connection, Equity, and The Patient Experience (TigerConnect)
• Healthcare Workplace Violence. Staffing Pressures. We Have Solutions. (Vocera)
• How to Tell if a Clinical Case Study is Bogus (WebPT)
• Like Everyone Else, Seniors are Texting (Well Health)
• One Year into Hybrid Work, the Digital and Talent Imperatives are Clear (West Monroe)
• SNOMED CT: Why It Matters to You (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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

News 3/25/22

Top News

VA Deputy Secretary Donald Remy says the agency is ready to launch a new Cerner system at the VA medical center in Walla Walla, WA this weekend.

Several lawmakers have called for a halt to future deployments after the VA OIG issued several reports citing patient safety issues at the initial go-live site in Spokane, WA.

Reader Comments

From Killer Clown: “Re: ViVE and HIMSS. I attended both. I had more fun at ViVe and more meetings at HIMSS. In general, HIMSS was more valuable to my revenue stream. ViVE was for socializing. Relationship building was had at both and a necessity to business.”

From Canasta Disasta: “Re: [vendor name omitted]. Executive [name omitted] was arrested in Miami during ViVE for battery. Drunk, uncooperative, and no motive upon arrest.” I’ve removed identifying information since I don’t usually report on job-unrelated arrests of individuals who haven’t yet been convicted and whose details are skimpy or unconfirmed. The executive bonded out for $1,500 after pleading not guilty. His battery misdemeanor trial is set for April 14.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor CareMesh in Reston, VA. CareMesh is a healthcare communications platform that connects the care continuum so that any provider working with any electronic health record can instantly communicate and collaborate with any other. CareMesh cloud-based services allow hospitals and health systems, public health agencies, physician groups, and others to communicate about patients, maintain complete control over when and where information is shared, and rapidly reduce reliance on outdated tools such as fax and phone calls. Thanks to CareMesh for supporting HIStalk.

I found this recent YouTube video that shows how CareMesh Navigate works within a clinical program or specialty group to manage inbound referrals, monitor patients through treatment, and provide regular updates to referring providers.

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Virtual reality-based surgical training and assessment company Osso VR raises $66 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $109 million.

Kaiser Permanente is reportedly selling its $1.5 billion stake in several private equity funds, which includes investments in Ginger.io, Ingenious Med, Nordic, Rock Health, and Validic.

Sales

• Mount Sinai Health System (NY) selects post-quantum cryptography technology from Sandbox AQ to enhance its cybersecurity.

People

Nordic Consulting names Shae Crawford (Berkeley Research Group) SVP and head of HR.

Cota promotes Miruna Sasu, PhD, MBA to president and CEO.

Summer Brown (Feedtrail) joins Cipher Health as chief customer officer.

Centene hires its vice chair Sarah London, MBA as CEO. She previously served as the company’s SVP of technology innovation and modernization and held roles in Optum that included oversight of its data and analytics solutions as former VP of Optum-acquired Humedica. She replaces Michael Neidorff, who is retiring after taking medical leave.

Michael Donovan (ROI Healthcare Solutions) rejoins Helix Health Solutions as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

The non-profit EHealth Exchange will award up to $550,000 in grants and other incentives to organizations that are pursuing innovative ways to increase exchange of electronic health information or establish new technical advancements in connectivity.

MercyOne pilots patient-provider matching software from PatientBond. The Iowa-based health system will roll the software out to all of its facilities later this month.

Government and Politics

Bayne-Jones Army Community Hospital at Fort Polk (LA) goes live on Cerner as part of the DoD’s Wave Hood MHS Genesis deployment. Col. Aristotle Vaseliades, hospital commander, said the information management department did an amazing job, rolling out nearly 3,000 pieces of equipment, conducting 176 training sessions, and running countless miles of computer cable. He didn’t mention which department handled embroidering MHS Genesis baby onesies.

The VA awards General Dynamics Information Technology a $45 million contract to support its business and IT modernization initiatives, including integrating new cybersecurity technologies, and ensuring connected devices and telehealth services are protected. The VA is also using GDIT’s cloud-based, AI-powered image classifier, which provides real-time assessments of potentially cancerous skin lesions.

Other

The annual patient payments report from InstaMed – acquired by JP Morgan for $500 million in mid-2019 – finds that 87% of consumers were surprised by a medical bill in 2021 even as providers show little interest in price transparency; 70% of people are sent medical bills by mail even though nearly none of them prefer paying by check; and 74% of millennials say they would change providers to gain a better payment experience.

HIMSS says that total HIMSS22 attendance – combining in-person and digital – was nearly 29,000 and 1,000 exhibitors were present in the hall. My perception on the ground was that HIMSS22 was pretty much back to normal with a slight scaling back that I was not unhappy about. Interest in the digital version seemed modest at best, even though HIMSS sent (to me, anyway) a last-minute code for anyone to register for free.

Sponsor Updates

• Everbridge Senior Engagement Manager Radu Cioata has collected and delivered five vans’ worth of goods to Ukrainian refugees.
• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its Tell Me Where It Hurts Podcast featuring Janae Sharp of The Sharp Index.
• EVisit will increase access to telehealth services in underserved communities using cloud computing credits from the AWS global health equity program.
• First Databank opens up its new Vela e-prescribing network to veterinarians.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises employee wellbeing software vendor MoveSpring in its sale to Reward Gateway.
• Healthcare IT Leaders congratulates customer Kootenai Health on its Epic go-live.
• Meditech discusses FHIR and the future of interoperability on CommonWell TV.
• NextGate adds Verify to its EMPI tool, giving patients the ability to review records and flag inaccuracies.
• The St. Louis County Department of Public Health in Missouri expands its use of Bamboo Health’s technologies and services to include delivery of ifs PDMP.

Blog Posts

• How will rising inflation affect the healthcare revenue cycle? (Experian Health)
• Return to Growth: Patient Activation (Get Well)
• Stepping Up Security of Sensitive Data: 3 Questions Health IT Leaders Should Consider (Healthcare Triangle)
• Enterprise Data Warehouse Implementation: A Cybernetic-Boydian Approach (Health Data Movers)
• 3 Strategies for Sourcing Patient Health Education (Healthwise)
• The Designated Record Set (DRS): Straightforward Questions & Answers (Impact Advisors)
• Filling in gaps in the medical problem list (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Loyal’s partnership with UCLA Health Brings Answers and Reassurance to Los Angeles Community (Loyal Health)
• HIMSS22 kicks off with KLAS celebration, merger news, and good ol’ fashioned facetime with friends (Lyniate)
• Support ISMP’s Newest Medication Best Practices with MedAware (MedAware)
• Reducing Medical Errors with Physician-Centric EHR Integrations (Medhost)
• Adapting to the new realities of physician practices (Meditech)
• 10 Physical Therapy Specialties to Amplify Your Career (MWTherapy)
• Unlocking the future of patient care with ambient clinical intelligence (Nuance)
• Houston, we have a data problem (Nordic)

Contacts

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

News 3/23/22

Top News

Madison, WI-based DeliverHealth acquires PresidioHealth, which offers automated coding and revenue workflow capabilities for physician groups, urgent care centers, and freestanding ERs.

PresidioHealth founder and President Douglas Evans, MD CTO Tom Gregory, and VP of Client Success Carlie Richard will join DeliverHealth’s executive team.

The company’s last acquisition was in late 2020, when it purchased Nuance’s HIM and EHR go-live services businesses. DeliverHealth CEO Michael Clark, MBA was previously SVP/GM of Nuance’s provider solutions.

Reader Comments

From: ROI Healthcare Solutions. “Re: Changes in leadership. We’re continuing to experience tremendous growth both within the US and internationally and are excited for our future and our ability to better serve our customers. The ROI team has increased from a staff of 12 people in 2014 to over 160 today. With growth comes change, and change can be challenging. The leadership changes that have happened at ROI have taken place over time. Some were voluntary departures, while others were strategic and forward-looking. We are forever grateful for the contributions of each of these individuals. They each helped bring us to where we are today with a solid foundation upon which to grow.”

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

TimeDoc Health raises $48.5 million in a Series B funding round led by Aldrich Capital Partners. The company, which has raised nearly $60 million, specializes in helping primary care physicians virtually manage the care of their patients between office visits.

Cardiac recovery startup Recora raises $20 million in Series A funding. The New York City-based company offers cardiac rehab programs to health systems and payers that incorporate virtual care, remote patient monitoring, and dedicated care teams. Co-founder Abhi Chandra’s previous venture was Spring Health, where he and his two other Recora co-founders developed a mental healthcare platform for employers.

People

Davis Medical Center (WV) physician James Gainer, MD takes on the additional role of CMIO at Davis Health System.

Sansum Clinic (CA) promotes Sean Johnson, RN to CIO.

Summer Brown (Feedtrail) joins CipherHealth as chief customer officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Rush Health (IL) has implemented Arcadia’s population health management software across its four hospitals and 140 practices.

Heritage Valley Health System (PA) leverages Bluestream Health’s virtual care integration capabilities to offers its patients a more seamless digital experience.

Hicuity Health announces GA of standalone virtual nursing services.

Government and Politics

The US Supreme Court will not take up Epic’s challenge to an appeals court’s decision to cut the amount of damages it won in its stolen trade secrets case against Tata Consultancy Services back in 2017. A judge had initially awarded the company $940 million in damages, but that figure was later deemed unconstitutionally high and slashed to $420 million.

The VA and Cerner promise to perform a thorough root-cause analysis of the software bug that caused Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center and associated clinics in Washington and Idaho to take their Cerner EHR offline and revert to paper records earlier this month. The troubled roll-out of the new system at Mann-Grandstaff, the VA’s initial go-live site in its projected $16 billion facility-wide Cerner implementation, has prompted several lawmakers to call for the postponement of future implementations.

Carl R. Darnall Army Medical Center (TX) at Fort Hood, the 71st Medical Group at Vance Air Force Base (OK), and Womack Army Medical Center (NC) at Fort Bragg have gone live on Cerner as part of the DoD’s MHS Genesis EHR overhaul. The new system will be deployed in several more waves this year to 54 facilities, the DoD’s largest group in any calendar year.

Other

The trial of a former Vanderbilt University Medical Center nurse accused of reckless homicide and impaired adult abuse begins this week. The charges stem from a medical error in which she injected an elderly patient with the paralyzing agent vecuronium (Norcuron) instead of the ordered sedative midazolam (Versed), which was intended to to overcome the patient’s claustrophobia before having a PET scan. As I mentioned when she was first charged, the nurse withdrew the wrong medication from the automated dispensing cabinet after typing in the letters VE for versed, then after not finding the drug’s name, overrode the system to gain access to the vecuronium. The patient was left alone in the scanner for up to 30 minutes where she experienced cardiac arrest and brain death, then died the next day after life support was turned off. In testifying before the nursing board last year, the nurse said that Vanderbilt encouraged overrides when necessary to overcome cabinet delays and constant technical problems caused by the system-wide transition to Epic.

Sponsor Updates

• NTT Data Research publishes a new report, “Innovation Index: Digital Strategies for an Era of Constant Disruption.”
• AdvancedMD recognizes Channel Marketing Manager Carri Hamilton with a FIT Award.
• AGS Health exhibits at the OHIMA 2022 Annual Meeting & Trade Show in Columbus, OH through March 23.
• Ascom welcomes David Gutillo (Spok) as senior key accounts manager.
• Availity partners with Vim to connect payer data to clinical workflows at the point of care.
• Azara Healthcare earns ONC-Health IT 2015 Edition Certification from the Drummond Group.
• Baker Tilly releases a new edition of its Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “The value of cybersecurity in the healthcare industries.”
• Bamboo Health publishes a new case study, “How the Mass League is Increasing Interoperability & Coordinating Care with Pings.”
• Cerner congratulates customer Intermountain on achieving HIMSS Stage 7 status for the third time.
• Optimum Healthcare IT announces that Red Lake Nation College has joined its CareerPath health IT apprenticeship program.
• CHIME will host a Clinical Informatics Leadership Boot Camp May 15-18 in Salt Lake City.
• CMS certifies Netsmart’s electronic visit verification system as the state solution in Georgia.

Blog Posts

• Agfa HealthCare recognized as Cybersecurity Transparent Leader (Agfa HealthCare)
• Drive Patient Volume Through Always-On Automation (Actium Health)
• The digital transformation of colonoscopy prep (Bravado Health)
• Patient Monitoring vs. Clinical Surveillance: There are Differences (Philips Capsule)
• Four Ways to Support Patient Safety Through Healthcare Technology and Communication (CereCore)
• Poised for Growth: How Digital Health Companies Can Meet Cybersecurity and HIPAA Compliance Expectations (Clearwater)
• HIMSS22: A snapshot into the brave new world of health information and technology (ConnectiveRx)
• How One Nurse Rediscovered Her Passion Within Hospital at Home (Current Health)
• Here’s What We’ve Discovered About Clinical Data After Studying It for the Last 10 Years (Diameter Health)
• Top Cybersecurity Investments for Healthcare in 2022 (Dimensional Insight)
• The First Step: Patient-Centered Medical Home (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/21/22

Top News

Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) demands that the VA delay its planned March 26 Cerner go-live at the Walla Walla VA following VA OIG reports of continuing problems at the first live site at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane.

VA OIG issued a report Thursday in which it substantiated several user complaints related to medication management at Mann-Grandstaff, along with deficiencies in migrating DoD patient information to Cerner.

OIG substantiated reports that Cerner was not configured to accept future clinic orders for subsequent outpatient visits, so it cancelled them without notifying the provider. They also noted that if RNs entered multiple medication orders, only the first one was held pending physician authorization.

Reader Comments

From RFT: “Re: ROI Healthcare Solutions. Jason Berry left as president in February and not replaced. Marketing VP Danielle Watson, Controller Don DeHaven, Sales VP Brent Prosser, VP Lane Tucker, and CFO Jimmy Haddad all gone.” I compared the leadership page to its year-ago cache to note that four of the eight listed executives are no longer there, and all of the folks that the reader named have indeed left. I’ve omitted some of the reader’s other comments because I have no way to verify them as factual or to ascertain what that person’s connection is to the company.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

End-of-winter alert: it is officially spring as of yesterday (Sunday), it’s getting dark later, and the HIMSS conference is over. That’s two long, dark COVID winters down, hopefully none to come. Another noteworthy day from last week, in addition to St. Patrick’s Day and sporting events, was Friday’s Match Day, when medical students learn where they will be spending their next few years as residents (or begin their panic over not matching and thus being dumped into the last-chance maelstrom of The Scramble).

Dear vendors, as a “Start at Zero” zealot, I won’t publish your graph whose X axis doesn’t begin at zero. Otherwise, you are intentionally misrepresenting a trend as being more significant than it is. I also won’t run poll or survey results that don’t include the number and type of respondents, a description of how those respondents were chosen, and preferably the exact wording of the questions that were asked. It’s easy to turn science into marketing fiction via shaky statistical methods.

Most poll respondents, whether attending HIMSS22 or not, expected to be working harder last week.

New poll to your right or here: Do patients get their money’s worth for indirectly paying the cost of providers and vendors to attend conferences like ViVE and HIMSS? It’s easy to forget that all those expensive hotels, lavish parties, and eye-popping exhibits are funded on the backs of sick people and taxpayers. Those sumptuous trappings also serve as the unintentionally ironic backdrop for brow-furrowing discussions about why the underperforming US healthcare system is the world’s most expensive.

Speaking of those conferences, I’m interested to hear from people who attended both as either an exhibitor or attendee. What were their strengths and weaknesses? How did the first “real” HIMSS conference since 2019 deliver? How well did the CHIME program integrate with ViVE compared to when it was offered with HIMSS? Which one(s) will you attend in 2023? Email me.

I found little value in most of the HIMSS22-related tweets last week. Conference tweets would ideally recap educational sessions for the benefit of those not attending, but most of what I saw was (a) endless mugging “look at me with my pals” selfies; (b) party photos; (c) overtweeting from people who were running around making pointless videos or podcasts; and (d) exhibitor booth staff photos or announcements. I actually kind of enjoyed (d) anyway since those people who worked the booths deserve some recognition and sometimes the company announcements were useful.

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

France-based Doctolib — which offers doctor search, scheduling, virtual visit booking, and document sharing — becomes the country’s highest-valued startup at $6 billion based on a new funding round. The 2,300-employee company plans to enhance its provider-only, subscription-based offerings, which start at $140, with physician-to-physician instant messaging.

Sales

• In the Netherlands, Erasmus University Medical Center will implement Sectra’s digital pathology solution.
• Legacy Health chooses Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company to provide Epic help desk support.

People

Jonathan Lloyd (Epic) joins AccessOne as VP of implementation.

Announcements and Implementations

Data warehouse as a service vendor Snowflake launches Healthcare & Life Sciences Data Cloud, which it says will allow organizations to centralize, integrate, and exchange sensitive data. Customers include Anthem, IQVIA, Spectrum Health, and Siemens Healthineers. SNOW shares jumped 6% Friday following the announcement, valuing the Bozeman, MT company at $68 billion, although they’re down 45% since mid-November 2021. Director Carl Eschenbach of Sequoia Capital Operations holds shares worth $3.4 billion, while  CEO Frank Slootman’s stake is worth around $7 billion.

InterSystems announces HealthShare Health Connect Cloud, a platform as a service for interoperability and data integration among clinical applications.

Salesforce announces enhancements to Customer 360 for Health to include Slack-powered patient care coordination, virtual care, unified health scoring, patient data platform, and a patient commerce portal.

Connecticut Children’s goes live on Nym Health’s autonomous medical coding system for RCM in its emergency department.

Secure transaction exchange among Surescripts network users increased 17% in 2021, with huge jumps in the use of Clinical Direct Messaging, Medication History, and Record Locator & Exchange. Electronic prescribing increased from 84% of all prescriptions to 94%.

A survey of 240 physicians, most of them PCPs, finds that most of them have used telehealth and expect to continue doing so. Most of them conducted telehealth visits by video or phone, with much smaller percentages using secure messaging, email, and text messaging. More than half or providers were frustrated by the quality of care they can provide via telehealth, the unrealistic expectations of patients of what can be accomplished virtually, and the quality of the technology.

Cerner will integrate Nuance’s DAX ambient clinical documentation with Millennium. It’s interesting that a company that is about to be acquired by Oracle – which made integration of Millennium with its own hands-free voice interface as the acquisition driver — would tout integration with Microsoft-owned Nuance and its Azure-hosted voice solution. Somehow I doubt that this latest announcement will come to fruition unless the acquisition deal falls apart since I don’t see Oracle playing all that nice with Microsoft, Google, or anyone else.

Government and Politics

Naval Medical Center Camp Lejeune is among several DoD locations in North Carolina that are going live on Cerner this week.

Other

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in leaked audio from a November all-hands company meeting that he considers Amazon Care primary care business as one of the company’s most innovative projects. He said that Amazon is a “significant disruptor” in healthcare and that the cumbersome process of seeing a doctor in a traditional visit would seem “crazy” 10 years from now. The company plans to integrate and expand its three major healthcare businesses – primary care, online pharmacy, and diagnostics – into a one-stop shop that will offer “a much better value” than the usual primary care experience. Amazon is reportedly considering an entry into the Medicare Advantage market, working with health plans such as BCBS to become an in-network benefit, and to partner with startups and health systems. It is also considering launching a brick-and-mortar pharmacy that uses its cashierless technology and also adding pharmacies to its Whole Foods locations.

Bloomberg Businessweek questions whether ADHD drugs are too easy to obtain online, focusing on investor-backed online mental health provider Cerebral. Snips:

• The growth-obsessed startup targets patients with social media ads. Google “buy Adderall” and a Cerebral-sponsored result is headlined with “ADHD Meds Prescribed Online – First Month $30.”
• The company’s revenue comes from subscriptions that cost up to $325 per month.
• Providers are assigned high numbers of daily patients and are required to prescribe medications such as Adderall, amphetamines, and Xanax to 95% of patients, but not 100% since that might make the service look like a pill mill.
• A former Cerebral coordinator says she was assigned 1,000 patients on her first day and received 100 messages from them each day, some of them in crisis.
• Patients who are angered by Cerebral providers who choose not to prescribe what they want are offered a “second opinion” from a more prescription-friendly company provider.
• Former nurse employees of the company say they fear that not only is Cerebral meeting demand, it is creating it and likely fueling a new addiction crisis.
• One former employer said of 30-year-old founder and CEO Kyle Robertson, “Whenever he talks about ‘providing quality mental health care,’ his eyes are dead. He does not care.”
• Cerebral’s biggest fear is that DEA will go back to stricter pre-pandemic rules for prescribing controlled substances. The company has joined 300 others in calling for Congress to extend telehealth waivers.

I didn’t know that UTHealth’s School of Biomedical Informatics offers the country’s first DHI (doctorate in health informatics) degree, which is a practice degree rather than a research doctorate like a PhD. Joe Bridges is its first graduate.

England’s chief nursing officer calls for every healthcare organization to employ a CNIO to give nurses a stronger voice in healthcare change.

Sponsor Updates

• PatientBond publishes a new case study, “Recovering Missed Patient and Insurance Payments.”
• Redox releases a new podcast, “The Return to HIMSS.”
• West Monroe promotes 13 employees to managing directors and appoints new office leaders to continue scaling its next stage of growth.

Blog Posts

• Guide to interoperability for healthcare leaders (Nordic)
• How automation can support caregivers and patients (Olive)
• The One-Stop Test to Treat Plan in Pharmacy (OmniSys)
• Develop a Clinical Communication Governance Strategy (PerfectServe)
• Three Ways to use Real-World Evidence to Improve Research and Outcomes (Premier)
• Healthcare Security’s Top Priority (Protenus)
• How to Manage Conversations About Caregiving Technology Supports (Quil Health)
• 3 challenges keeping nurses up at night (3 technology solutions to help) (Spok)
• How to use call center reporting and analytics to improve performance (Talkdesk)
• The CNO’s Guide to Alarm Management & Event Notification (TigerConnect)
• Improving Care for Rural Communities with Digital Health Tools (Twistle)
• New lung screening and coverage guidelines expand access to lung screening in America (Volpara Health)
• Enhancing the Front Desk Experience: How to Turn Patients’ First Impressions into Lasting Ones (WebPT)
• Patient Engagement is Top of Mind for Healthcare Leaders (Well Health)
• Embracing the right tools and opportunities to build health equity for resource-limited populations (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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

From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 3/17/22

Today was the last one for the exhibit hall. I was pleasantly surprised by how many attendees stuck it out through the afternoon. Usually by noon on Thursday, the hall is a ghost town filled with bored booth reps, some of whom are trying to pack up their goods without looking like they’re packing up. This year, people were still combing the halls and reps were largely engaged, which is a testament to how desperate people were to return to in-person conferences.

Booth swag was being freely given nearly everywhere except for Salesforce, which was insistent on requiring participation in their quest around the booth before they would grant anyone a pair of socks.

Intermountain Healthcare had several different styles of shirts they were clearing out. I was happy to score one that says “Talk Data to Me.” Their reps were friendly and didn’t act annoyed even when there was a feeding frenzy of attendees coming at them.

Intelligent Medical Objects again brought their A-game to the footwear contest, winning the day with these Lion King-themed socks featuring Pride Rock along and also with this eye-catching Oxford/sock combination.

The best sandals of the show were submitted by a reader who spotted them at the opening reception and sent along a photo.

Get Real Health had a leprechaun at their booth in honor of St. Patrick’s Day.

Mr. H mentioned the EK USA booth earlier this week and featured their Cat Crap lens defogger. I stopped by to check it out and learned that it works not only to mitigate the glasses / mask issue, but also for motorcycle helmet visors, which should come in handy given some of my upcoming activities. The company also manufactures badge holders and reels designed for high-risk environments such as the US military, nuclear power providers, manufacturing, and healthcare. Organizations are at risk if employees lose their ID badges, especially if they allow proximity access to sensitive systems. Replacing lost badges is both a materials and personnel cost, not to mention lost time and productivity by the employee who is temporarily without a badge. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a certified card holder, but I do now. This is their first time at HIMSS, but clearly not their first trade show – the booth reps were some of the most engaging I encountered this week and I brought several people by to visit them. The company has been around for decades, and I hope they do well in the healthcare space.

I must have walked by the Welt booth a dozen times this week but didn’t notice it since it was on the main aisle, which was generally busy Tuesday and Wednesday. They have a smart belt that can track gait and look for signs of deterioration that can indicate worsening of status for patients with movement disorders. They are a spinoff of Samsung. I’m looking forward to learning more about them.

IBM’s color-changing booth was pretty cool, although when it was flooded with white light, it looked a bit bland. My booth crawl companion and I think they should project movies on it next year.

I’m glad I stayed till Thursday, but after lunch I reached the point where I was done and headed to the airport early. My airline is handling so many bags due to spring break that they had to split how they were accepting checked bags and sent passengers to a secondary bag drop to try to maximize capacity. The airport was fairly chill except for the man in front of me who refused to remove his Air Pods for TSA. When they forced the issue and asked him to place them in a bin to go on the conveyor (he wanted to just put them on top of his loose driver’s license so they wouldn’t touch the belt), he started demanding “something to sanitize this bin with” and they pulled him aside. Sounds like someone needs to start carrying some cleaning wipes or perhaps a bag in which he could have put his loose items. I wonder how long he was detained with whatever secondary screening they decided he needed.

That’s a wrap for HIMSS22. Thanks for going on this journey with me, and I’ll see you next year in Chicago!

News 3/18/22

Top News

Healthcare analytics and provider performance transparency company Embold Health increases its Series B funding round to $23 million, bringing its total raised to $53 million.

The Nashville–based company offers solutions for physicians, payers, employers, and benefits companies. Founder and CEO Daniel Stein, MD previously served as chief medical officer for Walmart Care Clinics.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Curation Health. The Annapolis, MD-based company was founded by a team of healthcare veterans and clinicians to help providers and health plans effectively navigate the transition from fee-for-service to value-based care. Its advanced clinical decision support platform for value-based care drives more accurate risk adjustment and improved quality program performance by curating relevant insights from disparate sources and delivering them in real time to clinicians and care teams. With Curation Health, clinicians enjoy a streamlined, comprehensive clinical documentation process that enables better clinical and financial outcomes while simultaneously reducing clinical administrative burdens on providers. The company takes pride in combining the flexibility and speed of a startup with decades of leadership experience and know-how from roles in leading services companies including Clinovations, Optum, Evolent Health, and The Advisory Board Company.  Thanks to Curation Health for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Avive Solutions has raised $22 million in a Series A round of funding. The company has developed automated external defibrillator technology that wirelessly connects to local 911 and EMS services, and other medical professionals.

Sales

• Baptist Health will implement PatientBond’s psychographic segmentation model and leverage its Insights Accelerator to enhance its patient engagement strategies.
• The VA will use medical imaging workflow technology from Laurel Bridge Software during its transition from VistA to Cerner.
• UNC Health selects Oncology Pathways software from Philips.
• Newman Regional Health (KS) will connect its Meditech Expanse EHR to nearby Coffey Health System.
• Cerner will integrate Nuance’s Dragon Ambient Experience voice-enabled automated documentation software with its Millennium EHR.
• Novant Health (NC) will implement EVideon’s Vibe Health smart room technology, incorporating Caregility’s virtual care capabilities.

Announcements and Implementations

Southeast Iowa Regional Medical Center has implemented Healthcare Triangle’s Elastic Recovery Service on AWS to ensure the stability of its Meditech system during a natural disaster or cyberattack.

Fisher-Titus Medical Center in Ohio has integrated RevSpring’s PersonaPay and IVR Advantage payment data and communications technologies with its Cerner system.

Government and Politics

Reynold’s Army Health Clinic at Fort Sill in Oklahoma will go live on Cerner this weekend as part of the DoD’s MHS Genesis deployment.

Other

Grant Memorial Hospital (WV) will launch a telemedicine cancer care program this summer using connected medical devices and technology from Elekta.

Sponsor Updates

• Health Data Movers promotes Alex Janssen to senior consultant.
• Healthcare Growth Partners has advised Symplr during its acquisition of GreenLight Medical.
• Healthcare IT Leaders publishes a new case study featuring OSHU-Tuality Healthcare.
• Intelligent Medical Objects publishes a new case study featuring its efforts to help HIE CORHIO standardize data from a variety of sources.
• Kyruus will work with government-focused digital care navigation company WellHive to make it easier for veterans to find and schedule appointments with the Veterans Health Administration.
• Mach7 Technologies will offer analytics from Biologics as part of its enterprise imaging solution.
• Medhost publishes a new infographic, “An EHR Implementation Timeline Model: Layering for a Strong Foundation.”
• Meditech releases a new podcast, “Preventing Violence Against Healthcare Workers.”
• NTT will donate $2.5 million to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, the United Nations Children’s Fund, and other organizations to support humanitarian efforts for Ukraine.
• Get Well, VitalTech, Current Health, Twistle, Biofourmis, PeriGen, and CareSignal earn spots on Avia Connect’s list of Top 50 Remote Patient Monitoring Technologies.
• The latest release of the Philips Capsule Surveillance solution has received 510(k) market clearance from the FDA.

Blog Posts

• Epic Community Connect Support: Workflow Analysis and Training (Impact Advisors)
• 10 Physical Therapy Specialties to Amplify Your Career (MWTherapy)
• Assessing the value of application managed services (Nordic)

Contacts

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

From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 3/16/22

Today was a whirlwind of activity. I hit the exhibit hall as soon as the doors opened. I was looking for a few specific solutions for my clients, so I had to make the day count.

One of my first stops was eMedApps to check out their EHR archive solution. I think we’re starting to see a new wave of people migrating away from legacy EHRs who don’t want to tackle conversions. Archiving data but linking to it within the patient chart seems like a nice compromise.

From there, I visited First Databank for a deep dive into the FDB Targeted Medication Warnings solution. I had a great conversation with their experts about finding the balance between presenting adequate alerts to clinicians and not killing them with too many. Sometimes people think it’s a bad thing when alerts aren’t being surfaced very much, but their team brought up the fact that it’s a good problem to have – it means clinicians are doing the right thing the majority of the time, allowing the alerts to catch the edge cases where they really matter. Given the diversity of FDB’s products, the conversation was wide ranging, and we touched on pharmacogenomics as well. Finally, we talked a bit about FDB Vela, which was announced this week. It has the potential to shake up the world of e-prescribing and I’m looking forward to seeing how things unfold over the next few months.

Then I met up with Nordic Chief Medical Officer Craig Joseph, who is possibly one of the most entertaining booth crawl partners I’ve had in a while. He has so many funny stories and kept me laughing. We were distracted by this shirtless model at Butterfly and stopped in to learn more about their point of care ultrasound solutions. I didn’t know exactly why their technology was so affordable, but their rep Melissa explained it to us, then took us to a workstation for a deeper dive. She was one of the most knowledgeable and enthusiastic reps I have interacted with the show and handled our wacky questions with ease as we put on our “cranky doctor” and “cranky CFO” hats to explore the solution. I wish I had been able to have one in my pocket when I was in the in-person urgent care trenches.

Juno Health had a booth with t-shirt artists printing creations that said, “Kiss me, I’m a Provider.” Not sure which audience I’d want to wear that around, so I took a pass.

Socks were a big giveaway in the exhibit hall this year, and I was trying to pick up a few cool sets for someone at home. I noticed the Skyflow booth, not only for their well-displayed socks, but also for their sales team, which was facing out and engaging the crowd. I loved their “excuse me, but could you tell me what that orange sticker is on your badge?” play as a way to start conversations. They gave me a straightforward rundown on their product and also humored me with some conversation about the cost of living in Palo Alto. Props to the team for a job well done.

From there, I learned about Prescription Digital Therapeutics courtesy of Pear Therapeutics. What they’re doing with substance abuse treatment is fascinating and they’ve also launched a solution for chronic insomnia. There is a huge need for the latter, especially with the small number of cognitive behavioral therapists who specialize in treating the condition. I was excited to see migraine therapy on their road map and will be keeping an eye on them.

Onward I went to Healthwise to check out the Healthwise Advise solution that they’ll be taking live this summer with their Epic clients. I’ve been a fan and a user of their products for quite some time and am an even bigger fan of solutions that make the clinicians’ lives easier while helping patients better manage their health conditions.

I stopped by the Epic booth for some conversation about telehealth solutions and patient engagement as well as to check out their Cheers customer relationship management system. The booth was smaller than previous years (as were many vendors’ booths) but the artwork was great as always, including a carousel-style unicorn covered in bottle caps and a supersized dog.

I always enjoy a spin through the innovation area and the team at Skedulo was spot-on at engaging prospects and getting them to stop and listen. They work in other industries beyond healthcare and made my list of companies to read about on the flight home.

I also enjoyed chatting with the team at VisiQuate and learning about their solutions. They were channeling blue and yellow in support of Ukraine, including both shoes and shirts.

Continuing to stroll the booths with one of my HIMSS BFFs, we stopped by the Arcadia “Sips and Socks” happy hour so I could complete my sock collection and learn about what they’re doing to support managed care. They’ve got some great success stories and serve a diverse client base, which always makes doing business more interesting.

The Wednesday party scene was a good one, starting with Redox at Taverna Opa. Attendees were greeted by performers in stilts wearing LED lights, which was a fun reminder of how HIMSS used to be. Years ago, you might see those kinds of antics in the booths. They also had a custom cocktail that was being poured through an ice sculpture, which was fun. We ended up there at the end of the night and the sculpture was ceremonially smashed, which was really something.

I also dropped in on the Lightbeam Health event at Cuba Libre, which featured hand-rolled cigars as well as the chance to visit with the team from CareSignal, which the company recently acquired. I’ve worked with both teams in a variety of capacities and it was fun to catch up.

From there, I met up with friends and we ended up splitting into two groups, those who headed out for karaoke and those who knew when to call it a night. The fact that today’s walking total was close to nine miles made a member of the latter, so I was glad to get back to the hotel, put my feet up, and start the mental game of Tetris as I contemplate repacking my suitcase.

What’s the best thing you’ve seen this week? Leave a comment or email me.

From HIMSS 3/16/22

It was quieter and cooler in the exhibit hall today, which was more enjoyable to me. I expect it will be really slow and laid back Thursday, but I’ll remind booth reps that the last day is when decision-makers sometimes emerge to roam unfettered among the thinned exhibit hall crowds. Also, the HIMSS conference is a great place for companies to find partners, and that too is easier and thus possibly more likely on the last day. Don’t just pile up luggage and clock-watch.

I saw very few booth reps immersed in phone-land yesterday and today, which was encouraging. It felt like more reps were not only more heads-up in noting their surroundings, but also making eye contact and offering greetings. As basic as it sounds, sometimes you pass a booth and feel unwelcome because nobody looks up or acknowledges that you are standing there clearly waiting for assistance while reps look phoneward or gab with each other.

I realized today that I’ve yet to see even one instance of HIMSS22 fist- or elbow-bumping as handshaking is back as the standard. Also rarely seen is attendees picking up hand sanitizer giveaways. COVID-19 spread is almost entirely via the respiratory route, so it makes sense to worry less about spreading by touch. Wearing masks would be a theoretically good idea given that HIMSS didn’t require a negative COVID test, but sightings of those are rare.

Another item that is MIA – at least in my limited convention center travels – were those ball cap-wearing people sticking Healthcare IT News print copies in your face at every opportunity. Maybe they don’t do that any more.

I asked several exhibitors how the conference was going for them. Most common answer: “slow,” but they were trying to be upbeat about it. One exhibitor who was worn out from doing ViVE last week and said they didn’t feel that conference was worth it because few providers came to the exhibit hall, so they were a lot happier with HIMSS22.

I’ve heard from attendees of recent conferences that some people are annoyed with the member organization CEO inserts themselves into scripted entertainment or oratory in the opening session. I’ve also observed this over the years and have been kind of turned off. I think the CEOs of those member organizations forget that 99% of members don’t know or care who they are, so trying to serve as a highly visible host or presenter causes eye-rolling because that’s not why people attend. Certainly an organizational update or report is welcome if it’s short and not too “insider,” but the conference is a separate entity from the group’s leadership to most people and taking a self-congratulatory victory lap as the group’s executive doesn’t play well. I don’t go to a concert expecting to see the CEO of the band’s record label make a speech.

Curation Health was excited about becoming a new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor, so I feel bad that I forgot to mention them in Tuesday’s various posts because it was late and I was tired. Jenn will give them the full introduction in Thursday night’s news, but I’ll acknowledge them now with thanks. Curation Health was founded by a team of healthcare veterans and clinicians to help providers and health plans effectively navigate the transition from fee-for-service to value-based care. Its advanced clinical decision support platform for value-based care drives more accurate risk adjustment and improved quality program performance by curating relevant insights from disparate sources and delivering them in real time to clinicians and care teams. With Curation Health, clinicians enjoy a streamlined, comprehensive clinical documentation process that enables better clinical and financial outcomes while simultaneously reducing clinical administrative burdens on providers. The company takes pride in combining the flexibility and speed of a startup with decades of leadership experience and know-how from roles in leading services companies including Clinovations, Optum, Evolent Health, and The Advisory Board Company. Thanks to Curation Health for supporting HIStalk.

People from Mississippi-based Howard Medical were giving out Moon Pies in various flavors. My flavor choice was yellow.

Alan from EK USA explained that Cat Crap is a crazy good cleaner and anti-fogger for glasses that has boomed lately because masks-wearers always struggle with fogged-up specs. I checked out their website and an ingenious offering is Not A Lock, a massive padlock that doesn’t actually lock – bad guys don’t usually actually test a padlock and this fake one prevents the owner from locking themselves out. Problems will always encourage people to create interesting solutions.

The people at Kit gave me a review of their mail-out lab test offering, where patients are sent sampling kits that they then return for lab processing. The list of available tests is short since most labs require venipuncture, so until someone invents a “blood draw at home” technology, they can only go so far in eliminating that particular last mile problem. The company was acquired by Ro last year just 17 months after its founding, with one of the draws (no pun intended) being Kit’s procedure for monitoring the test process so that life insurance companies, for example, can use the results to approve policies without sending someone into the applicant’s home to verify that their testing process was followed.

Alpesh from Vayyar gave me a demo of the company’s senior monitoring solution, in which a small device is mounted to a wall or ceiling (it looks like a small smoke alarm) to monitor a patient’s movement without cameras or wearables. The radar-type device uses AC power, covers about 13×16 feet, and updates itself over the air. It can check for falls, room presence, in and out of bed status, and respiration (coming later this year). Providers or companies can design their own alerts and analytics per their specifications. I like this way, way better than phone-powered wearables.

I looked at Visier, which offers “people analytics” that can analyze various HR systems to answer questions about nurse retention, for example, to determine which employees are motivated by career advancement or educational opportunities instead of other benefits such as free parking.

I now know that Innovaccer’s name comes from “innovation accelerator.” It manages data for population health management and pay-for-performance programs.

EClinicalWorks has a new product called Prisma that’s like a search engine and singular view for patient records, including those collected through Carequality and claims data. It can also collect and display data from wearables.

ESRI has theater presentations that cover a wide variety of interesting use cases for GIS in healthcare.

I thought the Silex people were kidding with the “free beer” cooler since it was 11 a.m., but it was the real thing. The beer came from a microbrewery in the company’s Nashville home and the unfamiliar can design meant that one could (theoretically, you understand) roam the hall sipping a cold one around folks who still had egg on their breath. Silex was exhibiting with AbacusOne to offer RCM automation. They weren’t aware that ViVE is coming to Nashville next March and seemed pretty excited about it, as I kind of am since I’ve never been to Nashville except to visit one of my health system’s hospitals near there a few times many years ago.

SkyFlow explained its Healthcare Data Privacy Vault, a quickly implemented API solution that manages role-based and policy-based access, consent-based sharing, IP and geolocation controls, and time-based access.

That’s one big fireplace. Or being in the pun-heavy world of health IT, is that FHIRplace?

Maybe the two saddest days in health IT were Neal Patterson dying and now to see what is likely the final exhibit of Cerner as an independent company.

From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 3/15/22

Day 1 is in the books, and let me tell you it was a blur like I’ve not experienced in a long time. I’m sure my conference attendance muscles have atrophied over the last couple of years, but it was good to be back in person. I’m pretty sure I’m going home with COVID, though – virtually no one is masked. There are a lot of comments about people doing ViVE all week and being OK, but usually their expressions change when I remind them that attendees at ViVE had to show a documented negative COVID test, unlike at HIMSS.

The opening keynote was moderately attended, with plenty of empty seats in the back of the room. Attendance figures were quoted at 26,000 but it wasn’t clear whether that included both in-person and digital attendees. After greetings from the HIMSS team and the mayor of Orlando, Jonathan Bush delivered a brief keynote. He had some great analogies about HIMSS being like Hogwarts of Harry Potter fame, as well as it being like “the savanna” where prospective customers visited a feeding ground where vendors could hunt them. He skewered organizations for how much money they spend on HIMSS, and putting on my patient hat, it’s entirely appropriate to question the funding. People forget that every dollar spent at or on this show came from a patient or a taxpayer in one way or another.

The main keynote speaker was Ben Sherwood of Disney fame. He gave a great history of Walt Disney World and what it did to the growth of the Orlando economy. As someone who does a lot of work on sustainability and the environment, I noted that he completely left out the impact on the land and other downsides of the vast growth of tourism. He also talked about the Battle of Trafalgar and how Horatio Nelson had the ability to see the world differently as he planned his strategy for the battle. Sherwood noted that Nelson was killed in the battle and his body was taken back to England in a barrel of spirits, which is a detail that always reminds me of my days in gross anatomy lab.

He closed with some comments on E. M. Forster’s novel “Howard’s End,” which happens to be not only one of my favorites, but one upon which I did some scholarly work during my undergraduate years. He urged people to heed the advice given at the end of the book, and in thinking of how we all need to work together to solve the many problems facing healthcare, I agree with the wisdom: “Only Connect.”

From there it was straight into the craziness of the exhibit hall. I stopped by to see the Dash offering by Relatient (booth 4879) and to catch up with the team about how the tool brings communication and scheduling solutions together for better patient care.

Bandwidth (booth 1927) caught my eye with their sparkly sequined jackets and their plush unicorn giveaways (also wearing sequined tops). Their staff was friendly and engaged, but I’m glad they turned away for a moment so I could capture the picture.

Pure Storage (booth 2421) kicked off the exhibit hall social hour with a fantastic bourbon tasting. I was happy that Dr. Nick van Terheyden @drnic1 spotted it during our first annual booth crawl. It certainly made the afternoon more smooth. He had a lot of great things to say about the newest evolution of DAX (Dragon Ambient eXperience) at Nuance (booth 1941). Apparently, it’s come a long way since the last time I saw it in a demo, so I’ll be sure to see it before the week ends.

There was a strong footwear game happening at Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO, booth 3849) during the social hour as well. IMO is one of my favorite companies and I was glad to see some longstanding colleagues for a catch-up.

I managed to score a Pink Socks scrunchie courtesy of my most longstanding HIMSS pal. Based on the humidity and the rain, I’ll need it tomorrow. Other giveaways that caught my eye included socks, cotton candy, and of course hand sanitizer. Less thrilling was the booth rep who was leaping at people in the aisles asking “would you like a light-up pen” and he asked me at least three times in the span of 10 minutes. There were of course plenty of disengaged booth reps, which is sad for Day 1 of the conference. If they couldn’t make it through 2 p.m., I have no idea how they’ll have the stamina to do it again tomorrow.

Edifecs (booth 5171) is again running their #WhatIRun campaign to support women in healthcare IT. The initiative highlights the fact that women are estimated to be involved in 80% of healthcare decisions but continue to be underrepresented in leadership roles. For each social share of the #WhatIRun hashtag, they’ll donate $1 to brightpink.org. I’ve been a long-time fan, so please stop by and give them a shout out. I met some fascinating women today, including some cybersecurity experts, and had the chance to learn about one’s experience with the Chief membership network. HIMSS is always a great place to learn things you never expected and to make new connections.

Tonight was my big dinner out for the week, courtesy of Nordic (booth 3965) at the Sharks Underwater Grill at Sea World. It was great to have the opportunity to talk with other CMIOs and people who are directly working in healthcare IT and to hear their experiences and challenges. The conversation was great and the drinks were flowing, and of course the sharks were fascinating. After dashing through the rainstorm at the end of the night and trying to find my Uber at the mysterious rideshare pickup point, I was starting to feel like these two chaps that I spotted at the bottom of the tank. My feet were done for the night, so I was glad to just head back to the hotel to recharge and prepare for Wednesday.

What were your personal highlights from the show floor? Anything particular I should check out? Leave a comment or email me.

From HIMSS 3/15/22

From Fault Line: “Re: HIMS22. Not sure about others, but for me, it was 45 minutes for cab at airport, then and outside and inside line to check in at hotel. Why did we miss traveling again?”

I added some reader comments to the ViVE attendee reactions from last week.

Tuesday’s commingled lines for health check, registration, and badge pickup snaked forever through the convention center with nobody from HIMSS directing folks where to line up. It’s a rare logistical slip-up by HIMSS that caused folks to be late for their sessions or for the 10:00 a.m. exhibit hall opening. Someone behind me said the lines were like Space Mountain, snaking down the hall and around corners. I guess that’s a good thing for HIMSS, which supposedly announced in-person attendance of 26,000 in the opening session that I didn’t attend.

I secretly want to be a bus driver as my next job. Every time I attend a HIMSS conference, I’m envious of their bouncy seats and horizontal steering wheels.

It felt like a pre-HIMSS20 conference, as the exhibit hall was packed with no extra spacing, masks were optional and therefore rarely seen, and the booths featured snacks, performers, and throngs of people. I’m sure the exhibitor and square footage count were down from their pre-pandemic prime, but the energy was excellent. It’s like a band that could either fill a 1,000-seat theater or half-fill an arena – the theater wins on vibe and excitement.

I threw smoked brisket away for the first time in paying $19 for a horrible lunch from the 4 Rivers Smokehouse exhibit hall stand. I love barbeque in nearly every form, but this was inedible. I should have known this from the non-existent line and their use of homey skillets to hold badly prepared smoked meat and macaroni and cheese. I threw half away and still felt queasy for hours after.

Know what we have? A truck. A big one. So there.

Salesforce had an impressive booth. I don’t really understood its point, but it was like summer camp for technology folks.

I tend to like booths that while phony, imitate life. So I was more than OK with 3M’s.

And Intelerad’s, which was like a homey restaurant booth with cushions.

My favorite booth was that of McKessson-owned CoverMy Meds. It was beside the booth of Redox. I feel some parental pull toward both companies because they sponsored HIStalk before anyone had heard of them and are now a big deal. I don’t usually call out favorite companies, but CoverMyMeds is a spectacular success story and co-founder Matt Scantland has impressed me both times I’ve interviewed him.

Nice summary, Experian Health.

Tax-advantaged provider, investor in for-profit-companies, and vendor? Correct answer — all of the above. Big booth.

Epic claims to have no marketing people, but someone’s doing an excellent job regardless of their title.

The Epic booth person told me that its Cheers CRM is just the same old products like MyChart overarched with a new name. I’m not sure if that’s correct, but they would know better than I.

The Vocera booth was quite busy.

Change Healthcare was taking headshot photos, which judging from the LinkedIn profiles of some attendees, are desperately needed.

The nicest exhibitors are always the folks from the Philippines, who not only provide more nurses to the US than any other country, they offer advantages for outsourcing health IT companies in various forms. I have never been to that country in my somewhat limited world travels, but they always make a positive impression at HIMSS conferences.

I liked Glooko’s remote patient monitoring platform for diabetes.

The folks at Pro Forma were cool in describing their promotional products. They agreed with me in wondering where the out-of-the-blue trend came from of exhibitor employees wearing outdoor-type vests, which I saw all over the hall. Other sartorial trends – light brown shoes with suits of any color, tennis shoes with suits, and semi-dress shoes worn without socks.

I took a look at HPE’s Zerto ransomware testing and recovery tool.

UKG (Ultimate Kronos Group) had a big booth, which I would guess at times was invaded by customers irate at its weeks-long cloud payroll system downtime that left hospitals in endless arguments with employees who weren’t paid correctly.

Palo Alto Networks gave me a nice overview of their system that monitors the network, finds and fixes performance problems, and evaluates the network problems of individual users such as those trying to participate in a Zoom call. They’re giving away a home appliance that does the same thing while looking cool.

I don’t know if I detected any particular HIMSS22 trend, but candidates would be cybersecurity and interoperability.

I saw people riding on Segways who were not G.O.B. Bluth.

Vendors – make your booth people disperse within the confines of your booth. It is off-putting to have them talking with each other in a closed circle that is unwelcome for prospects to penetrate.

Sphere is giving away ring lights for those who don’t have them for their Zoom or Teams sessions.

I went to a session in which Meditech and Google Health laid out their partnership to make Google Health’s Care Studio search tool available in Expanse. Meditech EVP/COO Helen Waters suggested that perhaps EHR vendors should focus on their platform and assume that companies like Google Health are amply equipped to overlay their products with consumer-grade UI. Meditech is looking for Care Studio to integrate its legacy products with Expanse.

Pondering – are booth reps playing with their phones because nobody is there, or is nobody there because booth reps are playing with their phones? I didn’t see nearly as much “expensive phone booth” time as in years past, so good job, folks.

I tried to use the HIMSS22 app, but it kept freezing on the title screen.

I skipped out early because my regrettably untested shoes weren’t up to the carpet-trodding task and therefore my back and legs were paying dearly for exhibit hall miles, but I’ll be back Wednesday. If you’ve seen something amazing that I should check out, let me know.