From HIMSS 8/12/21

The conference was pretty dead today. Even Epic’s booth had basically nobody in it except a few employees. Some booths were already cleared out as practicality outweighed the HIMSS policy that requires booth tear-down only after the hall closes at 4:00. Everybody’s mind was on getting safely home.

Supplies of conference totes are ample if anyone needs one or 25.

Siemens Healthineers had a huge booth that was almost empty today, although I seem to recall that it had some decent traffic earlier in the week.

Thanks to Ultimate Kronos Group (UKG) for a hot doughnut that I accessorized with lava-hot pistachio sauce and tutti-frutti. NOTE: a reader found that the doughnuts were provided by InterSystems, which I should have suspected since I remember its Wall of Doughnuts at HIMSS19.

I liked this tee shirt from Vivify Health, which offers remote patient monitoring tools.

I stood in the hot, bright sun for a few minutes waiting for this rotating video display to hit the CoverMyMeds banner again after I saw it flash by. You can see the splashing of the fountain between the Wynn and Palazzo at the lower right.

I asked HIMSS for in-person attendance at HIMSS21, which they are supposed to be sending me, hopefully with an explanation of how the count was derived (registered or actually showed up to get a badge, exhibitors versus non-exhibitors, etc.) I only care about in-person, paid  attendance excluding exhibitor passes.

A-Rod has probably faced more DEA agents than the number of audience members he’ll see in his 1:15 p.m. Friday session called “Mindset of a Champion,” with that mindset apparently being that it’s OK to cheat by using performance-enhancing drugs and then lie about it as long as the personal payoff is significant. If anyone actually sticks around to hear what he has to say, please take a photo of the audience since anything other than a tiny turnout would be shocking given the time slot. I understand that he’s a celebrity entrepreneur and all, which seems easier when you start out with a few hundred million dollars, but I don’t see the healthcare connection. I’m sure HIMSS paid dearly to get Patrick Dempsey, Rainn Wilson, and A-Rod to add star power along with minimal relevance.

Someone who wasn’t at HIMSS21 tweeted that they had heard that a bunch of exhibitor staff were unmasked. I saw nothing of the sort — with maybe one or two exceptions that may well have been short term, everybody I saw was responsible. That wasn’t necessarily true outside the HIMSS velvet ropes, although even there compliance was pretty good. I got invaded a second time by someone unmasked crashing into the  hotel elevator as the door was closing (perhaps the disdain for others extends from not mask-wearing to refusing to politely wait for the next elevator), to the annoyance of the other passengers who were all masked up but trapped.

I pressed even harder against the back wall of the elevator since I had just heard from a relative who got COVID-19 during a group camping trip this week, one of at least 10 people there who have tested positive after spending time in a nearby bar. All of them had been vaccinated. The symptoms are apparently miserable, and while the odds of hospitalization or death are low for those who are vaccinated and thus have a “mild” case, the chance of experiencing long COVID symptoms is maybe 20%. Another set of relatives, a family of four who had decided that vaccination was unnecessary, just messaged that two of them have been diagnosed with COVID-19 (one of them is a child) and a third is now showing symptoms. At this point, you’re either going to get vaccinated or you’re going to get COVID, and regrets from the former are minimal while those of the latter are sometimes expressed in writing while dying on a ventilator.

A couple of folks asked about the after-hours party risk from attending HIMSS. I did not attend anything outside the conference areas and ate only at uncrowded restaurants whose tables were widely spaced, but I walked by the bar-restaurants in the Palazzo and Venetian (like Sugarcane and Chica) and they were wall-to-wall crammed with HIMSS attendees who were displaying the behavior that makes bars a hotbed of viral spread — leaned-in and loud conversations (lots of vocal cord spray), no masks, no spacing, and extended periods of close contact. That wouldn’t be too bad if it were just conference-goers of known vaccination status, but at least one of the packed venues was not closed to the public at the time. HIMSS can’t control conditions outside its boundaries, but I assume that some of those folks are going back to work at hospitals — many of them overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients — and I hope they will either get tested or isolate before going anywhere near patients or caregivers.

Something to consider for HIMSS22 or other conferences that limit attendance to vaccinated people. Require exhibitors sign a form that they won’t have after-hours events unless they are held in venues that are closed off to the general public (in Orlando, unlike Las Vegas, I believe that HIMSS controls the entire hotels). Arrange some kind of dining options that don’t require exiting the vaccination bubble — discounted room service, outside food delivery with conference rooms for group eating to scratch the socializing itch, or ballroom-type food service accessible only by badge — and include bar service. Leave the bubble if you want, but you aren’t required to given provided options. Feeding attendees in the exhibit hall like an extended happy hour would be a win-win with exhibitors. Basically to keep live conferences from becoming superspreader events and thus risking cancellation, you have to control more than just the meeting rooms and give your attendees easy ways to avoid people who are unmasked and possibly unvaccinated. And perhaps give them an easy way to take a COVID test before  they return to work. News item: RSNA just announced that it will require vaccination and masks.

A couple of companies ask Lorre to stop by to say hello and she wants me to give a shout-out specifically to Nordic, who welcomed her like a queen when she dropped by wearing her now-vintage HIStalk tee shirt. Nordic has been a longtime supporter and several of its executives rushed over to chat and make her feel welcome.

I got an overview of Telemedicine 911, which allow telemedicine providers whose patient experiences an emergency during their session (like a heart attack or stroke) to get in direct connection with the patient’s 911 emergency services dispatcher and send details or patient background. The nurse practitioner who was working in the booth said she once had a patient say they intended to harm themselves during a telehealth visit, she asked the patient if it was OK if she sent some help, and she got in direct contact with the 911 team in the patient’s local area so they could respond.

The folks at PORTL got in touch after I mentioned that their hologram technology was interesting, but nobody would explain it in the booth of its partner Avaya. They offered a private showing that I declined, but here’s a video of how University of Central Florida’s medical school is using it to allow students to diagnose 3D patients. The technology has been used for the Emmys red carpet and for musical performances.

I’ll be back to normal posting this weekend, where I’ll ask for feedback about both versions of HIMSS21. HIMSS22 is just seven months away.

From HIMSS 8/11/21

It’s Day 2 of HIMSS21. It was even quieter and less crowded than yesterday. I bet some vendor folks have already headed home and I’m sure luggage will be carefully hidden within booth confines tomorrow for afternoon dashes to the airport.

Meanwhile, here’s what is happening with COVID-19 in Florida, the home (maybe) of HIMSS22 seven months from now. UPDATE: a reader correctly noted that CDC initially posted inflated case count data for Monday in failing to adjust for Florida’s Monday through Friday only reporting, but this hospitalization data was correct since it was a snapshot. Florida’s hospitals have more than 15,000 COVID-19 patients in beds, representing 28% of their overall capacity, and 3,100 COVID-19 patients are in their ICUs. Florida also has the highest rate of children hospitalized with COVID-19 in the US, with 8.1 per 100,000 residents versus the national average of 2.2.

I heard several thought leaders claim today that their pet topic (virtual visits, cybersecurity, whatever) “has to change,” which always leads me to question why they think it “has” to change versus their desire that it change for reasons reasons self-serving or otherwise. These are the only healthcare change factors that I’m aware of, in order of least to most potency:

• It’s the right thing to do.
• Patients would like to see things done differently.
• Patients will seek competitive alternatives if the change isn’t made.
• Changing will increase profit.
• The change is required by law.

Change Healthcare has one of the busier booths in the hall.

Avaya’s hologram thing was cool, but the reps were too busy looking at each other and their phones to tell me its purpose even after I stood around expectantly for a couple of minutes with nobody else around.

Here’s a footwear combo that I think Dr. Jayne will like.

Smart marketing — you have probably seen and remember this guy in the “please scan me” suit adorned with QR codes. It’s for data company MDACA. It reminds me of the old days when provocatively clad pairs of ladies would roam the hall wearing “follow me” shirts hoping that eyes-bulging attendees (mostly male, presumably) would follow them like lemmings. Companies would justifiably be called out instantly if they tried that kind of stunt today. This is a more clever and subtle variation and the guy was very nice when I chatted with him.

I like this “tiny house within a booth” concept for meeting space, TeleTracking in this case. Leg room is apparently challenging, at least beyond the first leg.

This vendor got a huge booth, but then again, they are also putting on the conference. HIMSS has a lot of space to tout their own offerings in their exhibit hall.

All but one of the booth folks I talked to said that while traffic is way down, they are having good conversations. The other exhibitor — who is CEO of a smallish company — said the lack of people was awful, he felt ripped off by HIMSS, and anyone saying otherwise was just trying to put a positive spin on a bad situation. I’ll survey readers after it’s all over for their thoughts and to see what conclusions they take into HIMSS22.

The good news for smaller exhibitors is that they aren’t lost in the shuffle of massive booths, armies of big-company employees, and highly publicized announcements. This version of the HIMSS conference felt more like an even playing field where even small-booth vendors could earn some attention.

It occurred to me that the HIMSS Bookstore isn’t here, so maybe it’s no longer a thing. I can’t say I ever bought any books there and some of its tomes were self-stroking vanity works, but I sometimes stopped in.

I had a brief chat with Sandeep Jain, MD, founder and CEO of ListenMD. The company offers a distraction-free doctor messaging app that allows both message sender and recipient to set deliverability preferences. It also allows the medical practice to set recipients and times for receiving messages from patients.

I acted on a company tweet to check out Nationwide Medical Licensing, which offers a turnkey service to license physicians and other professionals in multiple states, which is keeping them busy due to telemedicine. They also work for companies that need to get their doctors licensed in additional states, taking care of the forms and documentation and returning a simple file containing everything that is required. They also do physician credentialing. I am fascinated that CEO Alexis McGuire worked for the Brevard Zoo (UPDATE: fixed, I originally wrote Broward) in Florida until late 2018 while also working her way up from receptionist at NML.

J.J. Richa, CEO of Quality Care Metrics, gave me a quick booth overview of its Deep Empathy patient questionnaire solution. Patients answer psychology-based questions (not so obvious as “do you have suicidal thoughts”) that assess pain levels and psychological issues and report back to the clinician, including telehealth providers.

I chatted briefly with the folks from Clearstep, which offers automated a healthcare screening and routing triaging type solution that is used by CVS Health, BayCare, and HCA Healthcare. It also delivers population health insights on the back end and has been used for COVID-19 screening.

I took a look at Hyro‘s conversational solutions Adaptive Communications Platform, which it says is more effective than intent-based chatbots and IVR systems. It has impressive nameplate customers such as Weill Cornell (where it was developed), SCL Health, and Novant Health.

From Cornwall: “Re: HIMSS coverage I have been in the industry for about 10 years and have read HIStalk, on the days it is published, all of that time. HIStalk is by far the best HIT source that I read. I appreciate the amount of effort that you put into this as well as how steadfast you are about your anonymity given the quality of the work. Have a great HIMSS.” Thank you. I went anonymous after almost getting fired from my hospital job for being too honest about our vendors even though I was scrupulous about not using any information I obtained from my IT leadership job. In addition, I have no interested in turning into a narcissistic talking head or trading tepid fame for for cash, so being anonymous means there’s no temptation for journalistic impropriety. I even attend HIMSS anonymously, changing up names, using a low-level job titles like “intern” and claiming made-up employers so that I get no special treatment, which sometimes means I get ignored completely.

Accenture, which sells cybersecurity services, is hit by a ransomware attack. The hackers say they will publish company data publicly if they don’t pay up.

1upHealth offers to test the patient access APIs of health plans at no charge to see if they meets CMS requirements to connect with third-party developers.

Verizon’s BlueJeans Telehealth virtual health app will allow users of IOS devices to share their IOS-only Apple Health record with telehealth providers after the upcoming IOS 15 upgrade is installed. I’ve never heard of BlueJeans Telehealth and I loathe IOS-only patient apps (talk about running roughshod over health equity), but good for them I guess. UPDATE: Verizon reached out to say the Apple Health integration is actually already available with IOS 14 and that they recognize the limitations of an IOS-only solution and are working on more integration. Verizon was scheduled to exhibit at HIMSS21 with more information but decided to opt out. I appreciate that update. BlueJeans, I learned by Googling, was a year-ago collaboration tool acquisition by Verizon for $500 million and the telehealth offering was announced four months ago.

From HIMSS 8/10/21

HIMSS21 looked quite a bit different than usual – far fewer exhibitors and attendees, big expanses of open space in the exhibit hall that featured widened hallways and the unused booth space of cancelled exhibitors, lack of blockbuster announcements and newly issued federal rules, and fewer C-level level provider and vendor executives who stayed home and let their underlings attend. I’m going to take the contrarian point of view and say that I might have enjoyed it more than usual, for these reasons:

• It was calm and quiet everywhere, but not necessarily in a “this place is dead” kind of way.
• Seating was ample, boosted by the no-show vendors whose spaces were turned into makeshift lounges with plenty of tables and chairs.
• Food lines were minimal and places to sit and eat overpriced convention center food were plentiful.
• It felt more like a scientific conference in the absence of jugglers, costumed and/or scantily clad booth reps, non-clinicians wearing white coats and scrubs, and over-the-top giveaways and food service in the hall.
• The many booth folks I asked said the conversations they had were of high quality and made it worth exhibiting since product and service demand was pent up from the long pandemic holding period.
• HIMSS did its usually great job organizing it all, even given the sting of the cancelled HIMSS20, the distraction of the digital track, and the always-present possibility that the in-person HIMSS21 could have been cancelled at the last minute.

I always gripe that the HIMSS conference has grown to be too big, too unfocused, and too much of a celebratory blowout that earns its high attendance only because of FOMO and vendor worries about being one-upped by competitors. For me, HIMSS21 was more to my liking. We’ll see how HIMSS22 lays out, although Florida’s world-leading COVID-19 case count and hospitalizations is raising questions about whether a spring conference is likely to happen. At least HIMSS won’t have to worry about rolled-over registrations from HIMSS21.

I felt perfectly COVID safe in the conference areas, but I worry about what attendees might be bringing home other than booth swag when I saw the hotel bars and restaurants packed 10-deep with unmasked people, mostly attendees, talking closely and loudly. We all know that bars are among the highest areas of COVID spread and some of those venues didn’t appear to be closed to the public. I steered clear and hope those attendees don’t work around patients or at least plan to isolate.

I had forgotten since HIMSS19 just how much young sales guys curse when conversing with each other in private conversations near others.

The cost of Palazzo room service coffee – $20 plus 18% plus $9 (around $33). The line at the hotel’s Starbucks at 6 a.m. – about 50 people, most likely Easterners who crashed early Monday night after gaining three hours and then woke up early seeking a caffeine jumpstart.

I almost welcomed once again seeing the conference phenomenon of people walking slowly down the middle of busy conference hallways while screwing around with their phones, unaware of how many rear-end crashes they are narrowly avoiding.

Is it overly ironic when people at an in-person conference demand that virtual medical visits be paid for because they are efficient and convenient, but watching educational sessions virtually instead of spending patient money to congregate in Las Vegas apparently is not acceptable? Especially when every part of the hall is already jammed with amateur and professional videographers, talking heads, and podcasters who are recording content that few will ever bother to consume?

I cringe every time someone call this city “Vegas.” Three syllables isn’t all that many.

One of few areas in which HIMSS planned poorly was having educational and exhibit sessions in the Caesars Forum (note: the missing apostrophe is correct), which is easily accessed through a 50-yard outdoor walkway bridge from the end of Aisle 22 of the exhibit hall (it is not anywhere near Caesars Palace, either). The problem is that HIMSS scheduled early morning sessions in that building, and that bridge was therefore not accessible until the exhibit hall opened at 9:30 a.m., leaving the shuttle bus or walking as the only alternatives. Otherwise, that brand new facility was super nice, and I enjoyed visiting the exhibit hall and specialty pavilions there even though I entered it every time temporarily blinded by the hot, bright sun.

Some exhibitors were understandably not quite ready when the hall opened at 9:30, as employee were still unpacking boxes and bringing monitors to life.

Seating was plentiful throughout the exhibit hall thanks to reduce vendor count, some from last-minute decisions. I like that those vendors, or perhaps HIMSS itself, paid Freeman a fortune to have their areas populated with benches or tables and chairs.

The much-reviled Hall G exhibit area downstairs, which was like a poorly planned basement rumpus room, has been closed, thankfully, although not before I paid $5,000 several years ago to have a tiny, seldom-visited booth down there. Exhibitors revolted one year against low traffic, forcing HIMSS to install new signage, announce overhead its pleas for people to go down there, and comped lunch for those folks who took in the subterranean spectacle. The area is blocked off from the main hall now and the only HIMSS attendee access was via the downstairs entrance, where you could see its only tenant, the COVID-19 testing center.

The big exhibit hall booth winner was Ellkay, for these reasons: (a) its booth was across the aisle from Epic’s; (b) it drew people like crazy from the moment the hall opened until it closed, outdrawing even its neighbor Epic; and (c) it was a big space that was well designed and staffed by helpful employees. Someone from the company told me Ellkay has grown from 60 employees to 650 over a short period. Their booth was packed every time I walked by, from hall opening at 9:30 on.

Some vendors suffered from poor location. I hope HIMSS offered a big discount for this space.

Canon Medical had a mini-museum of disruptive technology, including this display related to music. The rep told me that Canon invented autofocus.

The Zipnosis folks were sporting cool orange shoes, which they said were Allbirds.

Man & Machine was showing washable medical grade and sealed keyboards and mice. Founder, CEO, and self-proclaimed “The Big Cheese” Clifton Broumand, MSE is apparently quite a character.

I got a quick look at the patient engagement platform of Twistle by Health Catalyst, which had some nice folks working their booth.

I was surprised at the customer logo gallery of virtual care platform vendor EVisit, which includes Texas Health Resources, Trinity Health, and Banner Health. It declares that unlike telehealth technology competitors, “it does not and never will include a competing provider network.”

Bravada Health’s Ayva offers an interesting surgical journey system that offers videos, checklists, and reminders to give patients the best outcome, all without installing an app.

And the winner of Best Customer Name-Dropping is …

This isn’t a brilliant marketing idea but a true story, the rep said. Which makes it a brilliant marketing idea.

Epic’s booth was predictably decorated with big, weird pieces, but I didn’t see Judy or Carl there, probably because UGM is coming up shortly.

Cylera was printing custom tee shirts, of which Lorre got me this one.

NCQA had a great happy hour today, with food that exceeded typical convention center expectations (although by exhibit hall policy it certainly must have come from said convention center).

Raintree Systems founder and CEO Richard Welty died last month at 57, the company announced.

Adobe announces Adobe Experience Cloud for Healthcare. It’s hard to tell what it does from the company’s excessively lofty description, but it sounds like online marketing, audience insights, and digital enrollment.

Automation vendor Olive acquires revenue cycle management vendor Healthcare IP.

A SymphonyRM consumer survey finds that physicians dropped off their communications with patients during the pandemic and that infrequent communication was the top reason patients lost confidence in their doctor during that time. About 20% of respondents say they will look for a new doctor because of how they handled COVID-19. Fewer than half received COVID-19 information from their doctors and only one-third received communication about the vaccine.

Healthcare professional network operator Doximity announces Q1 results: revenue up 100%, adjusted EPS $0.11 versus $0.00, sending shares up in after-hours trading. The company’s market cap is $9.4 billion. Its IPO was in late June.

Salesforce announces new Health Cloud features that include remote patient exception monitoring, intelligent appointment management, and medication management. I wasn’t sure if they really pulled out of HIMSS21, but swinging by their listed booth to check out the new features yielded only a large expanse of bare carpet.

Philips adds Health Suite features – Patient Flow Capacity Suite and Acute Care Telehealth.

Zoom launches a beta release of a no-app mobile browser version of Zoom for Healthcare, available only for patients who use IOS.

I’m looking for interesting stuff to see Wednesday now that I’ve done a superficial surf of the HIMSS21 landscape, so send suggestions my way. Lorre will be in the hall Wednesday and Thursday if any current or prospective sponsors want to chat. She doesn’t really have anything to do since we aren’t exhibiting or doing HIStalkapalooza, thank goodness.

From HIMSS 8/9/21

My trip to Las Vegas was thankfully uneventful, with all plane passengers I saw masked up. Uber pricing was crazy at the Las Vegas airport, showing $45 to get to the Palazzo versus Lyft’s $21. I ended up taking a cab since the rate is fixed at $27, there was no waiting, and I could see the vehicle right in front of me before choosing. I pulled up Uber for other destinations from the hotel and it was always double Lyft’s rate, which reminded me why I always use Lyft in Las Vegas. It’s hot outside, but who goes outside  during a conference that is held in the desert at connected venues?

Pondering: why does HIMSS spend money to buy airport signs? Do Las Vegas visitors really register for the conference on a whim, or do registrants require reassurance that they are in the right city?

Masking within the Venetian area is maybe 75% at best, with lots of pulled-down masks and some folks who walked right by the “masking required” signs with no mask in evidence. Compliance was close to 100% in the HIMSS areas, which offers little comfort since you can’t avoid the casinos, hotel hallways, and restaurants full of the unmasked. Overall, I would say I have felt safe since leaving home, but I frequently wanted to commit mayhem on someone who clearly doesn’t care about being responsible around others or who defiantly ignores clearly posted policy.

HIMSS21 check-in was painless, although signage wasn’t perfect (maybe because of the hotel and convention center not being purely dedicated to the conference) and some of the “ask me” information people didn’t seem to be fully informed when I posed questions. I can’t quite figure out how to get to the Caesar’s building for educational sessions, although it seems to involve passing through the exhibit hall that was closed today to get to a bridge that was also closed today. I’m not sure why prior HIMSS conferences in Las Vegas were all contained within the Sands-Venetian complex and now the much-smaller HIMSS21 requires walks or shuttles to the Wynn and Caesar’s Forum Conference Center (not to be confused with the Caesar’s hotel since they are not adjacent), but that has dampened my already-minimal enthusiasm for attending educational sessions. I’ll probably just stick to the exhibit hall and surrounding areas this week.

No badge holders were provided this time, just a clip-on lanyard that fits onto the paper badge. I’m not too sure about the integrity of these. Names are also not printed in large font, so it will be hard to recognize masked folks. It was weird walking the HIMSS21 hallways and not being able to recognize people since you can’t see their faces. I predict that chance encounters will be greatly reduced.

I snuck into the exhibit hall when a security guard’s attention was diverted. It has the widest aisles and booth spacing that I have ever seen. The exhibitor count has dropped another 20 or so since Friday to 709. Setup was still in progress, so it’s hard to say whether the layout will be thankfully spacious or embarrassingly sparse. Unlike previous conferences, it was quiet instead of risking being run over by heavy equipment that was loading in booth components in a superhighway-like layout.

That was it for my HIMSS21 experience today since the opening keynote and reception didn’t interest me. My room at the Palazzo is excellent and a good deal at $229 and I had great and well-priced happy hour beer (the locally brewed Bonanza, which was outstanding) and oysters on the half shell at its Sugarcane restaurant. I’ll probably spend all of tomorrow in the exhibit hall, leaving my day fully planned except to come up with a dinner idea that hopefully doesn’t involve the mostly overpriced hotel restaurants that are like a food court for rubes who think celebrity chefs are actually in the kitchen cooking. I confess that my favorite Las Vegas restaurants from past conferences are Home Plate, Italian American Club, and the Village Pub at Ellis Island, so my preference is inexpensive, off the beaten track, and devoid of other HIMSS conference badge-wearers. It may be also that exhibitors provide enough snacks to tide me over anyway.

Reader Comments

From Excitable: “Re: HIMSS21. You seem jaded by the conference.” I think everyone who has attended more than a handful of HIMSS conferences would say that they aren’t all that enthused at the prospect of returning or assured of the ROI for showing up. Most of the bubbly folks who tweet out their barely-contained excitement about attending are lower-level employees who don’t have a lot of experience, and for them, I understand, but don’t share, the newbie thrill of travel expense reimbursement, mugging with others for group selfies, and vendor parties. The last thing I want to do at HIMSS is to sacrifice an entire evening just to get free vendor food and drinks or to huddle protectively with other rookies.

Webinars

On-Demand Webinars:

“Key Differences: Value Based Care vs. Fee-For-Service.” Part 1 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 1 webinar covers which aspects of the fee-for-service health system payment model look the most different compared to fully value-based systems (clinical, back-office, analytics, etc.)

“Current Innovation and Development in Value-Based Care.” Part 2 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 2 webinar discusses what health systems should know about the transition to value-based care, including macro versus micro shifts.

“Future of Value-Based Care: Predictive Analytics, Technology, Policy.” Part 3 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 3 webinar discusses the role analytics will play in the shift to value-based care and how financial and clinical ROIs for analytics-oriented products must differ when applied to FFS and VBC models.

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

Sales

• Mount Nittany Health (PA) chooses Health Catalyst’s population health solutions.

People

Luis Saldana, MD, MBA (StarBridge Advisors) joins Zynx Health as VP of clinical strategy.

Announcements and Implementations

First Databank launches FDB CDS Analytics, which supports tracking of the effectiveness of clinical decision support.

Premier brands its benchmarking, analytics, reporting, and clinical technologies under the name PINC AI.

GE Healthcare will offer its imaging applications and Edison Health Services platform on Amazon Web Services.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks releases a new customer success video, “Healow Check-In and Healow Pay are Helping Chisholm Trail Pediatrics.”
• CoverMyMeds expands its interoperable prescription decision support technology to clinical staff with MedCheck, its newest in-workflow solution.
• AGS Health has achieved the Leaders and Star Performers category on the Everest Peak Matrix RCM Operations – Services Peak Matrix Assessment 2021.
• Stratum Med will offer CareSignal’s Deviceless Remote Patient Monitoring technology to its alliance members.
• OBIX Perinatal Data System, developed by Clinical Computer Systems, will exhibit at the AWHONN Indiana Section Conference August 20 in Fishers.
• Dresner Advisory Services names Dimensional Insight an overall leader in business intelligence in its Industry Excellence Awards.

Blog Posts

• Easy claims management: how a billing consultant keeps it simple (Ability Network)
• Catalysts for Change: Celebrating National Health Center Week 2021 (Azara Healthcare)
• 3 Practical Principles for Managing Data from Different EMRs (CereCore)
• How to Navigate the Relationship Between Telehealth and EHR Documentation (ChartLogic)
• Your Guide to Maximizing Your CPT 99490 Reimbursement – 2021 Edition (ChartSpan)
• Summer Can Mean Orthopedic Trouble and EClinicalWorks Can Help (EClinicalWorks)
• Boost vaccination rates with frictionless self-scheduling (Experian Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 8/9/21

Top News

From the Allscripts earnings call, following Q2 results that beat Wall Street expectations for revenue and earnings:

• The company expects a Microsoft Azure-hosted version of Sunrise to drive new sales due to high availability, cybersecurity, and disaster recovery and business continuity capabilities.
• Quarterly revenue in the core clinical and financial segment was flat, while the Veradigm analytics business delivered double-digit gains that it expects to continue.
• The company booked a $5 million recovery in its Department of Justice settlement over Practice Fusion.
• Allscripts is solving interoperability rule requirements by having a reseller agreement with CarePort, which it recently divested.
• The company will potentially look for bolt-on acquisitions around Veradigm, probably smaller players since those assets are expensive.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents would rather not have contact with a health system employee who has not been fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Some comment themes: (a) you shouldn’t be working in healthcare if you don’t believe in science or have judgment too poor to opt in for a lifesaving vaccine; (b) some people are not candidates for vaccination under current guidelines and you can’t blame them for not getting it; (c) the vaccine has not yet earned FDA’s full approval; and (d) it might be OK under urgent circumstances, if employees are required to be tested regularly as an alternative, or if the respondent-patient knows the person hasn’t been vaccinated and can put a mask on. My take – you won’t be able to tell which employees have been vaccinated if health systems don’t require it for all employees, so about all you could to is ask each employee directly (kind of like the “have you washed your hands” patient interrogation effort to reduce healthcare-associated infections), then hope they answer honestly and offer to send someone else in if you object.

New poll to your right or here: Healthcare providers: is your employer mandating COVID-19 vaccination? Use the poll’s comment function to elaborate further on what proof is required, whether a history of infection or antibody test can be substituted, or whether exceptions are allowed.

It’s been nearly two years since Northwell Health and Allscripts announced via press release that they would develop a new cloud-based, voice-enabled, AI-based EHR. How about an update that might also include whether the Avenel EHR, announced by Allscripts in early 2018, will ever see the light of day?

HIMSS21 Updates

From Dateless and Desperate?: “Re: HIMSS21. Attached is the third email I’ve received from HIMSS trying to get me to accept free registration for the digital version of HIMSS21. They must be desperate to get the numbers up. I hope you don’t fly across the country only to find minimally staffed booths with third-tier employees who can’t find their ass with both hands.” Folks who paid $895 for HIMSS20, had their registration involuntarily rolled over to HIMSS21 when it was cancelled, and then decided not to attend HIMSS21 in person probably aren’t thrilled to know that HIMSS is just giving away registrations for the virtual version. HIMSS also charged some unknown number of folks $495 or more for that same, now-free registration.

I also noticed that someone tweeted out the complimentary registration code, so HIMSS21 digital is now like Woodstock, where some suckers bought tickets, but most attendees just crashed the gate.

Some experts say that cloth masks alone aren’t protective enough against the delta variant in indoor gatherings, suggesting instead that people either use N95 masks instead or wear a surgical mask under the cloth one. That made me wonder what kinds of masks will be available from HIMSS and HIMSS21 exhibitors.

Epic’s UGM starts Sunday, August 22. I wonder how many more people might have attended HIMSS21 if it wasn’t so close to UGM?

I’m leaving for Las Vegas Monday morning. I’m not sure if I’ll do anything HIMSS-related on Monday since I find the opening reception to be dull, but I’ll post an update of what I see in general. Dr. Jayne will be covering the virtual conference. Both of us would appreciate hearing your impressions as attendees to avoid that “blind men describing an elephant” HIMSS conference problem. I’ll be as scathing as a Fyre Festival tweeter if I get there and feel duped by small crowds and low energy that I traveled into a COVID hotbed at my own expense to see.

Webinars

On-Demand Webinars:

“Key Differences: Value Based Care vs. Fee-For-Service.” Part 1 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 1 webinar covers which aspects of the fee-for-service health system payment model look the most different compared to fully value-based systems (clinical, back-office, analytics, etc.)

“Current Innovation and Development in Value-Based Care.” Part 2 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 2 webinar discusses what health systems should know about the transition to value-based care, including macro versus micro shifts.

“Future of Value-Based Care: Predictive Analytics, Technology, Policy.” Part 3 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 3 webinar discusses the role analytics will play in the shift to value-based care and how financial and clinical ROIs for analytics-oriented products must differ when applied to FFS and VBC models.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Remote patient monitoring vendor Cadence launches with $41 million in funding and a deal to deliver remote care to 100,000 chronic patients of LifePoint Health. Co-founder and CEO Chris Altchek previously co-founded a publishing company, while co-founder Kareem Zaki co-founded healthcare-related companies Scope Security, Nava, and Cedar.

Nuance announces Q3 results: revenue up 13%, EPS –$0.09 versus $0.06, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings. The company will not host an earnings call due to the expected closing of its acquisition by Microsoft by December 31.

OptimizeRx announces Q2 results: revenue up 55%, adjusted EPS $0.10 versus $0.02, beating analyst expectations for both. Shares are up 294% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 34% gain, valuing the life sciences provider and patient messaging company at $1.2 billion.

Verifiable, which offers a provider credentialing, network enrollment, and onboarding platform that is access via APIs, raises $17 million in a Series A funding round. Founder and CEO Nick Macario previously co-founded a blockchain-powered digital credentials service and a company that developed a remote work platform.

Announcements and Implementations

GoodRx will provide drug discount price information to prescribers using Surescripts Real-Time Prescription Benefit.

Cerner announces a new solution, Cerner Determinants of Health, which includes a dashboard and tools that are integrated with Millennium. Jvion will also integrate its SDOH and behavior health insights with Cerner’s products. 

HL7 posts SDOH Clinical Care for Multiple Domains v1.0.0.

Microsoft renames its Azure API for FHIR to Azure Healthcare APIs. I was interested that the graphic above shows as one of its health data sources as “social influencers of health,” which sounds someone confused SDOH with a Kardashian Instagram, but I learned by Googling that it’s actually a common term.

COVID-19

US COVID-19 deaths have reached 616,000.

Florida’s count of hospital-admitted COVID-19 patients hits a new high. Its seven-day rolling average of new deaths per day has increased from 22 one month ago to 88 now as its overall total breaks through 40,000. Test positivity rate is at 22%. As Eric Topol points out, Florida and Louisiana have the highest per-capita cases of COVID-19 of any state or country in the world except for Botswana. In Texas, Austin’s mayor warns that the situation is “dire” as 180 COVID-19 patients fill most available ICU beds, 102 of them on ventilators, and officials in several other cities deliver the same warning about COVID-19 cases creating staff and bed shortages and prolonged 911 response times. 

This is an insightful tweet that notes yet another lack of actionable COVID-19 data.

The Sturgis Motorcycle Rally in South Dakota this weekend was expected to draw 700,000 mostly unmasked attendees whose infections will be hard to measure since they will develop symptoms, become hospitalized, or die only after returning home. Sturgis is in Meade County, which has just 37% of its residents fully vaccinated. Chicago’s Lollapalooza festival drew 385,000 attendees last week, but required proof of vaccination or a recent negative test.

A Florida radio personality who referred to COVID-19 as a “scamdemic,” urged followers to not be vaccinated, and railed against mask-wearing dies of COVID-19 at 65. He is among several recent COVID doubters whose deathbed message was to get vaccinated.

Other

Dr. Jayne called out Mount Sinai Health System (NY) for handing out COVID-19 challenge coins to employees on the front line, which were issued with the thanks of President and CEO Kenneth Davis, MD. Understand that Dr. Davis is personally coin-ineligible, however, since he was not actually present on those front lines in those frantic March 2020 days of trash bag-wearing nurses, as he elected to hunker down for weeks in his Florida waterfront mansion. He says his doctor told him to stay in his six-bedroom, eight-bathroom spread because he’s over 70. Decisions, decisions — he chose that $2.6 million home instead of his $2 million Long Island one or his $7 million Aspen digs. He probably doesn’t need a phony coin anyway since Mount Sinai is his own mint — he made more than $12 million in 2017.

Sponsor Updates

• Vocera customers from Baptist Health Hardin and Metro Health – University of Michigan Health will share their respective experiences with Vocera technology during HIMSS presentations next week.
• Wolters Kluwer Health releases Lippincott Skills for Nursing Education, combining evidence-based content with digital learning tools.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new video featuring Prisma, “Our Health Record Information Search Engine in Action.”
• PatientBond attends the 2021 HealthTrust University Conference.
• PatientKeeper co-founder Sally Butta shares “The Five Lifestyle Tweaks That Will Help Support People’s Journey Towards Better Wellbeing.”
• Protenus CEO and co-founder Nick Culbertson wins EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2021 Mid-Atlantic Award Winner.
• The Slice of Healthcare podcast features RxRevu founder and Chief Innovation Officer Carm Huntress.
• Leading children’s hospitals use interactive technology from Sonifi Health to ease pediatric patients’ anxiety.
• SymphonyRM debuts its new Hello Health Podcast, “Where to Start with Health Equity.”

Blog Posts

• 5 Ways to Accelerate your Digital Health Strategy Leveraging the CY 2022 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule Proposed Rule (Pivot Point Consulting)
• The Power of Mass Communication: Delivering COVID-19 Updates with OptimizeRx Technology (OptimizeRx)
• Collaborative Approach to Care: North Range Behavioral Health Launches Co-Responder Service (Netsmart)
• Connecting the future of healthcare (Nordic)
• 5 Services to Drive Medicare Patients to Your Medical Clinic (PatientBond)
• A Look Ahead at HIMSS 2021: How Appriss Health and PatientPing are Working Together to Drive Change Through Improved Care Coordination (PatientPing)
• Physician’s Corner: What Post-Acute COVID-19 Looks Like for Physicians – the Good, the Bad, the Interesting (PMD)
• “This Call Is Being Recorded for Quality Assurance:” The Importance of Call Recording for Health Systems (Vyne Medical)
• 5 Questions to Ask Your CISO (Pure Storage)
• Overcoming Common HCC Coding Challenges Part 1: Limited Coder Staffing (RCxRules)
• FIFO Parallel Processing for Healthcare Data Streams (Redox)
• Bunker Model vs. TeleICU: A Comparison (SOC Telemed)
• 5 common HIPAA violations in mobile communications (and how to avoid them) (Spok)
• What it takes to elevate the patient and provider experience (Talkdesk)
• “Yes, we can do this. Yes, it will be hard.” (Tegria)
• Why Using Real-World Data Internally During Clinical Trial Design is a Must for Every Sponsor (TriNetX)
• Why Patient Satisfaction Surveys Matter (Vocera)
• What the Aftercare? How to Use Z Codes in ICD-10? (WebPT)
• Selecting a Comprehensive Virtual Care Platform (VitalTech)

Contacts

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

News 8/6/21

Top News

Healthgrades splits its business, creating a software company that will be called Mercury Healthcare and selling its Healthgrades.com doctor marketplace media business to RV Health, which owns websites such as CNET, Healthline Media, and The Points Guy.

Reader Comments

From Doctor CIO: “Re: HIMSS21. Maybe this is the safest time to visit Las Vegas since the HIMSS is requiring vaccination and masks. Unless you will isolate at home, the HIMSS floor might be the safest places you can see people.” I agree, although the downside is that the conference hotels will be teeming with people of unknown vaccination status outside the HIMSS21 velvet ropes, airports are crowded and still iffy, the multiple HIMSS21 venues require walking among the general public, and always-risky restaurants are mandatory unless you can live on room service. Las Vegas case counts are out of control, so while I will feel comfortable in the HIMSS21 areas  — trying not to think about the possibility that attendees faked their vaccination cards or that my antibody response to the vaccine may not have been robust or long-lasting – the rest of Las Vegas is a Petri dish. While I’ll probably still go even as I constantly reconsider my options, the key issue is whether a stripped-down conference is worth attending given that we’ll be doing it again in six months (or not, depending on viral whims). I think I’m a go unless a bunch of big companies announce their non-participation Friday, which isn’t likely at this point.

From Uh Oh: “Re: HIMSS21. My company pulled out. A former colleague says his company is going, but employees aren’t allowed to leave their rooms all week except to go to the show floor. They will be allowed to eat only in the booth or in a reserved hospitality suite.” I’m fascinated that some companies have said publicly that they are sending only a skeleton crew of junior folks and leaving the executives safely at home.

From Utility Outfielder: “Re: HIMSS21. I keep hearing that more vendors are pulling out. Some that I know have done so still show up on the floor plan. I don’t think the floor plan can be considered accurate.” I don’t know that I would assume that the floor plan is being promptly updated with cancelled exhibitors, if for no other reason than it isn’t in the best interest of HIMSS to fuel a rush for the doors like last year. Still, it seems to mostly align with announced cancellations, although not all cancellations will be announced.

From Scrivener: “Re: health IT media consolidation. HIStalk will eventually be the only independent media outlet left.” TechTarget acquires Xtelligent Healthcare Media, expressing ambition to serve advertising “customers” using “intent data productization” (readers are apparently incidental widgets in this process). I can’t say I’ve ever read any of their 10 sites, but good for them for being acquired.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m just now considering what it will be like to attend an all-masked conference, which is much weirder than just masking up for a grocery store full of strangers. A lot of memorable conference experiences involve random across-the-hall eye contact with someone you know, where you recognize the face, wait for confirmatory matching eyebrow-lifts and smiles, and then launch an unplanned catch-up conversation. We will only be seeing printed names on badges this year, so let’s hope the font is large enough for that same across-the-hall identification.

HIMSS has long said that the digital version of HIMSS21 will be entirely separate in content from the live conference, but it is now waffling by deciding to stream some sessions live using its new Accelerate platform and offer others for next-day playback.

Las Vegas weather: cooling off a bit from Thursday’s high of 112 this weekend to around 106 each day and “plenty of sunshine.”

Early in my interview with Carrie Kozlowski of Upfront Health this week, she casually mentioned, as captured by my recording of the call, “I should preface this, and this may be a first for you, I am presently trapped in an elevator, so they may release me at some point during our call.” Many folks, especially claustrophobes, would skip the call to reschedule once freed, but she soldiered through in what was indeed a first for me. I once did an interview with the CEO of a publicly traded company from a Mexican restaurant due to poor timing on my part, where I joked about the Mariachi music playing in the background, asked my first question just as the food arrived, and then muted the phone so I could crunch chips during their answer. I did another having forgotten about it until the call started, making up questions on the fly with zero preparation and conducting the conversation from the car.

HIMSS21 Exhibitor Updates

Exhibitors that have publicly stated that they won’t attend or that have been removed from the exhibitor list:

• Ambra Health
• Athenahealth
• Clearsense
• First Databank
• Imprivata
• InterSystems (not pulling out, but reducing its show floor presence)
• Medicomp
• Nuance
• Olive
• Premier
• Qliqsoft
• Tegria
• TeraRecon

Exhibitors that readers say aren’t going, but that haven’t confirmed that I’ve seen:

• Accenture
• Amazon Web Services
• Definitive Healthcare
• Philips
• Salesforce

Webinars

On-Demand Webinars:

“Key Differences: Value Based Care vs. Fee-For-Service.” Part 1 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 1 webinar covers which aspects of the fee-for-service health system payment model look the most different compared to fully value-based systems (clinical, back-office, analytics, etc.)

“Current Innovation and Development in Value-Based Care.” Part 2 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 2 webinar discusses what health systems should know about the transition to value-based care, including macro versus micro shifts.

“Future of Value-Based Care: Predictive Analytics, Technology, Policy.” Part 3 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 3 webinar discusses the role analytics will play in the shift to value-based care and how financial and clinical ROIs for analytics-oriented products must differ when applied to FFS and VBC models.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Allscripts announces Q2 results: revenue up 1%, EPS $0.15 versus –$0.05.

Clinical decision support vendor EvidenceCare acquires Healthcare Value Analytics, which developed the ValueBar cost transparency tool that lets physicians know the cost impact of their clinical decisions. Both companies are based in Nashville.

Care management software vendor Evolent Health will acquire Vital Decisions, which helps patients with cancer and heart disease and their providers align treatment goals, for up to $130 million.

Healthcare analytics vendor Clarify Health acquires Apervita’s value optimization business.

Change Healthcare announces Q1 results: revenue up 25%, adjusted EPS $0.41 versus $0.25, beating Wall Street revenue expectations but falling short on earnings. Meanwhile, anonymous sources report that the Department of Justice may sue to block the $8 billion cash acquisition of the company by UnitedHealth Group’s OptumInsight, which was announced in January.

JPMorgan recovers from its Haven healthcare cost management failure by investing $50 million in Vera Whole Health, which offers primary care services to employers on a per-patient, per-month basis. Vera has primary care centers in 10 states and also partners with Central Ohio Primary Care. The care model is not unusual for Medicare programs, but hasn’t been tried at scale with employers.

Real Time Medical Systems, which offers a collaboration platform to connect hospitals to post-acute care partners, raises $20 million in a Series C funding round.

People

Pharmacy benefits technology vendor Truveris promotes Nanette Oddo to president and CEO.

Autonomous medical coding technology vendor Nym Health hires Melisa Tucker, MBA (Flatiron Health) as SVP and head of product.

Industry longtimer Merrie Wallace, MSN (FairWarning) joins interpretation platform vendor Boostlingo as chief revenue officer.

Health Data Movers hires Patrick McDermott, MBA (Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company) as business development executive.

Announcements and Implementations

Medicomp launches Quippe Nursing, which allows nurses to quickly complete care documentation and planning using clinical data filtering and links to Clinical Care Classification terminology.

CoverMyMeds announces Med Check, a clinician version of its real-time prescription benefit solution that displays a patient’s previous meds, drug interactions, cash pricing, formulary alternatives, and prior authorization requirements.

Imprivata launches Enterprise Password AutoFill, which allow users to use a proximity badge tap to enter their username and password.

Providence-owned Tegria and Cedar will offer their revenue cycle management services and financial engagement platform, respectively, to each other’s customers. Providence will implement Cedar’s post-visit patient engagement and payment platform. Cedar co-founder and CEO Florian Otto, MD, DDS, PhD was formerly sales VP for ZocDoc and founder of Groupon Brazil.

NTT Data announces a global Health and Wellbeing initiative that focused on closing care gaps in underserved communities and using technology to improve health outcomes.

Change Healthcare announces beta testing of a cloud-native solution for medical imaging in radiology practices. The company will consolidate its cloud-native enterprise imaging solutions under the name Change Healthcare Stratus Imaging.

Government and Politics

The US again ranks last among high-income countries in access to healthcare, equity, and outcomes. It’s also the only one of the 11 countries that does not have universal health insurance. The US finished last in administrative efficiency because of the time patients and providers have to spend filing medical paperwork and arguing with insurance companies.

CMS will use AI to infer a Medicare patient’s race based on their name, ZIP code, and language preference in cases where their race is not available on hospital forms. The de-identified data will be shared with hospitals for reducing inequity, but privacy advocates warn that the algorithm could unintentionally amplify the biases of its developers.

COVID-19

US COVID-19 hospitalizations are trending sharply up and now exceed last year’s peaks in the first two COVID waves, although still falling short of January’s high. Florida has more patients hospitalized with COVID-19 that at any time in the pandemic, with Louisiana and Arkansas not far behind. Meanwhile, Florida hospitals are struggling to obtain oxygen as COVID-19 cases increase and the expiration of the public health emergency limits the supply of truck drivers who are qualified to transport oxygen.

Demand for COVID-19 tests is delaying results reporting and lengthening waiting lines once again. The positivity rate is above 9% versus June’s 2% low.

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD notes that CDC’s reporting of breakthrough case hospitalizations and death cover only January through June and thus misses much of what has happened with the delta variant, which he notes reflects CDC’s lack of near-time reporting capability for questions that require analytical methods.

Leana Wen, MD, MSc, MA says in a Washington Post op-ed piece that CDC seemed to be blaming vaccinated people for the need to wear masks again, but unvaccinated people are responsible for most of the spread and risk. She says CDC’s message should have been (a) that vaccinated parents of unvaccinated children need to wear masks indoors in public areas to avoid passing infection to their kids due to the more readily spread delta variant; and (b) the only reason to mandate that everyone wear masks indoors is because unvaccinated people can’t otherwise be trusted to wear them.

New York will extend its Excelsior Pass COVID-19 vaccine verification to create Excelsior Pass Plus, which will interoperate with the SMART Health Cards Framework that was developed by the VCI consortium. The framework has been adopted by several states (including California), Walmart, Apple, Epic, and Cerner. VCI’s steering group includes Mayo Clinic, Mitre Corporation, Microsoft, The Commons Project Foundation, Evernorth, CARIN Alliance, UC San Diego Health, and Apple.

The drummer of the band Offspring is kicked out when he refuses to receive COVID-19 vaccine because of a history of Guillain-Barré Syndrome. Among those arranging his dismissal is molecular biologist Dexter Holland, PhD, who performed research on the molecular dynamics of HIV and who is also the band’s lead singer.

Other

In Thailand, police arrest the director of a state-run hospital in a sting operation that was triggered by a vendor’s complaint that the director was demanding a 35% commission of the company’s $8,500 bid to install a computer system. The accused director admits that he asked for the money and accepted the marked bills, but says he planned to use it for the hospital. He has faced similar complaints in the past.

I enjoy the LinkedIn updates of industry long-timer Steve Hau, who posted photos of new Ukraine-based team members of his Newfire Global Partners. I like seeing health IT workplace pictures.

Sponsor Updates

• 3M Health Information Systems will offer Waystar’s revenue capture solutions to its customers.
• Halo Health publishes a new case study, “Improving HIPAA-Compliant Communication for Accredited Home Care.”
• Twistle publishes a case study from Ashley Clinic (KS), which saw 80% of patients achieve an average BP of 140/90 after completing a 14-day or 28-day cycle of the company’s Controlling Blood Pressure Pathway.
• NTT Data launches a health and wellbeing initiative, and publishes a new white paper, “Improving the Health of Me.”

Blog Posts

• Delivering Digital Exercise Therapy for COVID-19 Patients (GetWellNetwork)
• Leveraging Data to Craft a Best-In-Class Glycemic Management Program (Glytec)
• The COVID-19 Impact on Mental Health & Results of Improved Technology (Halo Health)
• The Prior Authorization Process: Need-to-Know Changes for 2021 (Health Catalyst)
• 4 ways payers are using clinical data to address COVID-19 challenges (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Identity maturity means healthcare security. How does your strategy measure up? Find out now with our new assessment tool. (Imprivata)
• New interoperability solution for Healthcare organization to better leverage and analyze their data (Infor)
• From Transactional to Personal: The Future of Virtual Care (InterSystems)
• Coding for gold: Tokyo 2020 and ICD-10-CM codes (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Getting Smart on SDOH: A Q&A with Dr. John Showalter, Chief Product Officer at Jvion (Jvion)
• Reducing Fragmentation in Digital Care Navigation: A ‘Win-Win-Win’ for Payers, Providers, and People (Kyruus)
• What payers need to know about integrating clinical data (Lyniate)
• How Medhost is migrating electronic health record data to AWS for compliance and gaining valuable insights (Medhost)
• Thinking outside the box with our EHR and Surveillance in the rehab setting (Meditech)
• Tapping Digital Identity to Support the Rise of Retailization and Consumerism in Healthcare (NextGate)

Contacts

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

News 8/4/21

Top News

Renown Health opens a Transfer and Operations Center to better coordinate care across 27 counties in California and Nevada.

The center, which includes remote home monitoring capabilities using technology from Masimo, will soon add remote monitoring for its tele-ICU services.

The center will coordinate all incoming patient arrivals, match patients to beds, coordinate transportation and housekeeping services, offer ICU monitoring and telehealth visits, monitor patients at home, and provide emergency and disaster management information.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIMSS21 will almost certainly go on as scheduled next week. Medicomp, Olive, and Imprivata are the only big vendors I know of that have cancelled attendance, although companies aren’t required to publicly announce their decision to stay home. I usually stick to the exhibit hall and skip the celebrity keynotes and educational sessions that often aren’t actually educational, but if there’s a must-see HIMSS21 event that has caught your eye that I should know about, tell me.

Looking ahead to next week, it’s hot as blazes in Las Vegas and COVID-19 is running rampant through unvaccinated residents and visitors. My intense dislike of Las Vegas is a benefit since I have always avoided the virus’s hunting grounds of celebrity chef restaurants, casinos, and seas of people at their worst behavior. I’ll stick to the conference areas almost entirely, attend no events, mask up everywhere, and likely forget many times to do the silly-looking but epidemiologically superior elbow bump instead of shaking hands.

I’m surprised at how many companies and people have touted their HIMSS21 attendance on LinkedIn and Twitter, spelled everything correctly, then embarrassingly ended with “#HIMMS21.”

Webinars

On-Demand Webinars:

“Key Differences: Value Based Care vs. Fee-For-Service.” Part 1 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 1 webinar covers which aspects of the fee-for-service health system payment model look the most different compared to fully value-based systems (clinical, back-office, analytics, etc.)

“Current Innovation and Development in Value-Based Care.” Part 2 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 2 webinar discusses what health systems should know about the transition to value-based care, including macro versus micro shifts.

“Future of Value-Based Care: Predictive Analytics, Technology, Policy.” Part 3 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 3 webinar discusses the role analytics will play in the shift to value-based care and how financial and clinical ROIs for analytics-oriented products must differ when applied to FFS and VBC models.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CPSI announces Q2 results: revenue up 15%, EPS $0.42 versus $0.12. CPSI shares are up 28% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 37% rise, valuing the company at $464 million.

Registry data and analytics company CorEvitas acquires Vestrum Health, which offers data culled from retina care-focused EHRs for research, analytics, and commercialization. CorEvitas rebranded, quite understandably, from Corrona earlier this year.

CORHIO and Health Current merge to form Contexture, an umbrella organization that will oversee the respective HIEs’ work in Colorado and Arizona.

Sales

• Health Recovery Solutions selects Lyniate’s Rhapsody integration technology to enhance customer connectivity with its remote care solutions.
• Eastside Health Network will use Arcadia’s analytics to improve the value-based care performance of its provider network in Washington.
• Idaho Health Data Exchange selects Orion Health’s Amadeus HIE platform.
• St. Vincent Health (CO) implements Infor’s CloudSuite Healthcare for resource management.
• Ashley Clinic (KS)  will use Emerge’s ChartGenie, ChartScout, and ChartPop data conversion and integration technologies during its EHR conversion later this year.

People

The Missouri Hospital Association hires Jon Dolittle (Mosaic Medical Center – Albany) as president and CEO. He was a senior business developer for Cerner from 1998 to 2009.

Mads Kvalsvik (Madaket Health) joins UCM Digital Health as CTO.

WellHive hires Chris Faraji (Salesforce) as EVP.

Announcements and Implementations

ChartSpan provides bi-directional data exchange between its chronic care management platform and provider EHRs using Ellkay’s integration capabilities.

First Databank will offer its clients RxRevu’s prescription cost and coverage solution, allowing physicians to choose cost-effective medications based on patient pharmacy benefits in their EHR workflows.

PadInMotion rebrands to Equiva and announces GA of its new health relationship management software, which combines patient engagement, care management, and marketing capabilities.

CitiusTech develops Medictiv, a open healthcare AI model directory of more than 250 ready-to-use models for data science and digital health teams.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center establishes MSKCC India, a virtual care service for cancer patients in India that will use telemedicine technology from India-based IClinic and oncology expertise from New York City-based MSKCC providers.

Surescripts announces GA of Care Event Notifications and enhancements to its Medication History for Populations service.

Data privacy vault vendor Skyflow announces a PHI-specific, API-delivered Healthcare Data Privacy Vault.

UNC Health extends its mobile app functionality, which was developed with Gozio Health, to include MyChart access, visit scheduling, and wait time display.

Cerner is named as the hospital category winner in the ECR Now FHIR App Challenge for electronic case reporting for COVID-19 and other diseases of public health interest. Cerner’s solution sends a near real-time Electronic Initial Case Report to the Association of Public Health Laboratories AIMS platform, whose development was funded by CDC. The solution is open source and has been made available by Cerner to non-Cerner clients and EHRs.

Sphere launches a patient self-scheduling tool called Book My Doc that extends its Health IPass revenue cycle management and patient engagement platform.

Other

This would be an embarrassing way for a hospital to get hacked. Security researchers warn of vulnerabilities in Swisslog Healthcare’s Ethernet-connected pneumatic tube systems, which are used in 3,000 hospitals worldwide. A new firmware update offers fixes for all but one of the known issues.

Sponsor Updates

• Surescripts makes its Medication History for Populations service available to Lightbeam Health Solutions customers.
• The Chartis Group announces 13 promotions – three directors and 10 principals.
• CloudWave sponsors the New Bridge Medical Center Foundation 2021 golf outing.
• EZDI releases a new case study, “Auburn Community Hospital Improves Bottom Line – Impact Totaling $1.03MM by Implementing EZDI’s CAC.”
• RxRevu partners with First Databank to expand the delivery of its prescription coverage and cost data as a supplementary service to FDB’s network of clinical drug information customers.
• UnityPoint Health expands its use of SOC Telemed’s Telemed IQ telemedicine software and psychiatrists to an additional four hospitals in Iowa.

Blog Posts

• 5 ways to maximize revenue on every claim (Ability Network)
• How a Texas family practice uses technology to overcome barriers to chronic care management (AdvancedMD)
• Roundtable takeaways: home- and community-based care, and new care models (CarePort)
• The Top Three Components Your Medicare AWV Program Needs (ChartSpan)
• Countdown to HIMSS21 (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Future of Telehealth Following the COVID-19 Pandemic (Dimensional Insight)
• “Game-Changing” Technology Connects Care at Redeemer Health (Dina)
• When Prisma Can Lead to Better Care (EClinicalWorks)
• Success at a glance: Turning incomplete patient data from COVID-19 testing and vaccinations into valid reimbursable claims (Experian Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 8/2/21

Top News

Cerner announces Q2 results: revenue up 10%, adjusted EPS $0.80 versus $0.63, exceeding analyst expectations for both. 

From the earnings call:

• The company is increasing its earnings outlook for the year.
• DoD is live at 42 commands and 663 locations with 41,000 activated users. The Coast Guard’s deployment will be completed this year.
• Cerner says the results of the VA’s strategic review focused on governance, training, and readiness rather than Cerner-caused problems, consistent with the findings of an internal assessment that Cerner conducted earlier this year. It also notes that the DoD’s initial go-live resulted in similar required work in the 12 months following.
• The search for a CEO replacement for Brent Shafer continues and “has been very active.”
• The company continues to look for acquisitions that enhance Cerner’s competitive position, exceeds its cost of capital, is accretive over time, and creates shareholder value. Areas being considered cybersecurity, technology to support provider networks operating in both fee-for-service and fee-for value arrangements, and data.
• Cerner will continue selling unneeded office space that represents half of its owned property.
• The company laid off 500 employees in the quarter and eliminated 300 open positions, which will deliver $70 million in annualized savings.
• Asked by an analyst about Amazon’s HealthLake announcement, Travis Dalton said, “There’s a long history of big cap entry and big cap exit from healthcare. There’s an inherent complexity at the intersection of healthcare and IT. I see market interest in areas that we’re focused on is very validating of the growth opportunity that exists.” He added that healthcare data is dirty and requires normalization around Master Data Management.
• Cerner expects to have 80 provider organizations selling data to life sciences via its Learning Health Network by the end of the year.

Reader Comments

From Ephraim: “Re: news items. How many readers click to the announcement or story you link to?” I don’t track those clicks, but I will say that if I’ve done my job well in summarizing the news item, most readers won’t need to click over. I only run items that I consider newsworthy (which excludes probably 95% of industry PR), so I expect that many readers get the gist (the company, the person, or whatever the item relates to) without actually clicking anything. My experience with Twitter is similar – most people skim the tweet but don’t click to learn more.

From Yes Sars: “Re: COVID-19. Time to start up your COVID-19 news section again?” Maybe, if readers want me to. I thought pandemic doom scrolling was behind us given availability of an effective, safe, and free vaccine, but here we are again with overcrowded hospitals.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Jenn put together our HIMSS21 guide (PDF version), which includes the participation information of those of my sponsors that submitted it.

I’ve heard from maybe three tiny companies that they have decided to join Medicomp and Olive in cancelling their HIMSS21 exhibitor plans. The exhibitor count has dropped by only three in the past few days, although that might be questionably useful information unless those companies notify HIMSS and they are removed from the exhibitor list quickly. I will play Las Vegas bookmaker and place the odds at 70% that the conference will go on and will increase those odds to 95% if HIMSS doesn’t cancel it Monday. Not much else could go wrong unless Las Vegas cracks down in ways that would be hard to fathom given its historical focus on protecting tourism revenue. I assume HIMSS won’t refund attendee registration fees under any circumstances since they cover both the in-person and virtual version and the latter allows checking the box as delivered, but exhibitor fees that also include rolled-over HIMSS20 credits would be hit hard if the exhibit hall is cancelled. I would cancel my own attendance except I think readers have a strong interest in living it vicariously. 

It’s a fairly even poll respondent split of who is most responsible for the VA’s Cerner rollout issues. My take: nearly all of the misfires were by the VA, which has a long history of struggling to successfully complete projects, but perhaps compounding the issue is Cerner acting as its own prime contractor. The question is whether Cerner told the VA about the training, infrastructure, budgeting, and support issues and nothing was done, or if Cerner drew a box around what it considered as its responsibility and let VA worry about the rest. Epic’s implementation approach would have put problems front and center, but that doesn’t mean that VA would be as obedient to fix them compared to a health system with hundreds of millions of dollars on the line. DoD seems to be doing pretty well with its Cerner rollouts and using Cerner’s services successfully, or at least we aren’t hearing as much about any problems.

New poll to your right or here: Would you as a patient be OK with having contact with a masked health system employee who hasn’t received COVID-19 vaccine?

Webinars

On-Demand Webinars:

“Key Differences: Value Based Care vs. Fee-For-Service.” Part 1 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 1 webinar covers which aspects of the fee-for-service health system payment model look the most different compared to fully value-based systems (clinical, back-office, analytics, etc.)

“Current Innovation and Development in Value-Based Care.” Part 2 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 2 webinar discusses what health systems should know about the transition to value-based care, including macro versus micro shifts.

“Future of Value-Based Care: Predictive Analytics, Technology, Policy.” Part 3 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 3 webinar discusses the role analytics will play in the shift to value-based care and how financial and clinical ROIs for analytics-oriented products must differ when applied to FFS and VBC models.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

WellSky will acquire Healthify, which connects providers with community-based social services organizations to address social determinants of health of patients. Terms were not disclosed. Healthify had raised $26 million, including $16 million in a Series B round in November 2019.

Handheld ultrasound and medical imaging vendor Exo raises $220 million in Series C funding.

A newspaper in Ireland says that Amwell paid $250 million for Ireland-based SilverCloud Health and $70 million for Conversa Health in the combined acquisition that was announced only at a total of $320 million. The companies had raised $26 million and $34 million respectively and have $15 million in combined annual revenue, meaning Amwell paid 21 times revenue.

Vocera announces Q2 results: revenue up 19%, adjusted EPS $0.15 versus $0.08, beating Wall Street expectations for both. From the earnings call: the company had six sales of more than $1 million in the quarter and follows its largest sale ever to Providence  in Q1. VCRA shares are up 36% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $1.4 billion.

Spok announces Q2 results: revenue flat, EPS –$0.04 versus $0.20.

Sales

• Health and Social Care Northern Ireland will implement First Databank’s Multilex to provide e-prescribing decision support within Epic.

People

Guthrie promotes Terri Counts, MHA, RN to SVP/CIO.

Other

MIT Technology Review notes that AI tools that were supposed to help hospitals diagnose or triage COVID-19 patients didn’t accomplish anything, though a few turned out to be harmful. Significant problems included the use of quickly published and low quality data, researchers using data whose provenance wasn’t considered, and showing falsely accurate results by testing systems on the same data they were trained on. One system was trained on chest scans that the researcher didn’t know were limited to children, and instead of the system learning to recognize COVID versus non-COVID patients, it simply learned to recognize that the image was that of a child. Another issue is that researchers can’t make a name for themselves by validating or improving existing models, so they create new models that incorporate all the mistakes that were made by previous researchers.

Epic will require all of its US-based employees to be fully vaccinated by October 1. The company says that nearly 97% of its Verona-based staff already meet that requirement. Epic will require masks for meetings if the room occupancy is 75% or more or if any attendee voices a preference that masks be worn.

Ozarks Healthcare (MO) posts a video of CMIO Priscilla Frase, MD describing how some patients are wearing disguises and pleading anonymity when coming in for COVID-19 vaccine over concerns about the negative reaction of their friends, family, and co-workers.

Sponsor Updates

• The AI in Action Podcast features OptimizeRx VP of Data and Products Adam Almozlino.
• Spok announces that all 20 adult hospitals and all 10 children’s hospitals named to US News & World Report’s 2021-22 Best Hospitals Honor Roll use Spok’s secure healthcare communication solutions.
• Health Catalyst CFO Bryan Hunt will present during the Canaccord Genuity Growth Stock Conference August 11.
• CareSignal is included in a CHCF case study of engagement results at Axis Community Health.

Blog Posts

• Solving the issues Part 3: Purpose-built workflow – Moving beyond the worklist (Nuance)
• Creating Opportunities in Huma Services: Two Insiders’ View (Netsmart)
• Closing Gaps in Care: 3 Simple Methods for Providers (PatientBond)
• How Organizations in the Retail, Healthcare, and Financial Services Industries are Pioneering Customer Experience (Avtex)
• Providers Take Note: Huron Perth Embraces Electronic Documentation Tools and Processes (PatientKeeper)
• Emergency Departments, Substance Use Disorders, and Federal Laws (PatientPing)
• 4 Revenue Cycle Transformations to Watch in 2021-2022 (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Epic User Settings Deep Dive (ReMedi Health Solutions)
• Advice from one of the world’s largest digital pathology implementations (Sectra)
• 2022 PFS Proposed Rule Part 3: APP, Advanced APM and MSSP Proposal (Impact Advisors)
• 10 Lessons Learned after over a Million Telemedicine Consults (SOC Telemed)
• What to know about automated compliance tools (Spirion)
• Becoming great: 5 common characteristics of the best hospitals (Spok)
• Patient video education has a new dynamic duo: The Wellness Network joins Krames in WebMD’s push to deepen patient engagement services (Krames)
• The Cost of an EHR Downtime (Summit Healthcare)
• 5 ways to optimize call abandonment rate (Talkdesk)
• The Next Mile: A Blueprint for Addressing Vaccine Hesitancy (Upfront Healthcare)
• Celebrating Sys Admins for Daily Contributions That Elevate Healthcare (Vocera)
• 5 success strategies every Federally Qualified Health Center needs to know (Waystar)
• 5 Things Bad Rehab Therapy Clinic Managers Say (WebPT)
• Well ChatAssist AI: AI-Enabled Conversations for Healthcare (Well Health)
• 4 ways payers are using clinical data to address COVID-19 challenges (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Addressing Social Determinants of Health through Functional Design and Human Touch (VitalTech)

Contacts

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

HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS21

AGS Health

To arrange a meeting, contact Amy Marie Bergau.

Contact: Amy Marie Bergau, director of marketing
amy.bergau@agshealth.com
312.975.4333

AGS Health is an analytics-driven, technology-enabled revenue cycle management company serving healthcare providers across the US. AGS Health partners with hospitals and physician groups to optimize their revenue cycle through intelligent use of data. The company leverages the latest advancements in automation, process excellence, security, and problem-solving through use of technology and analytics – all made possible with college-educated, trained RCM experts. The company was awarded 2021 Best in KLAS for Outsourced Coding and is highly ranked for Extended Business Office capabilities, scoring in the 90th percentile. AGS Health partners with 85+ clients across different care settings, specialties, and billing systems. It’s revenue cycle … reimagined.

AGS Health CEO Patrice Wolfe will speak on “Growing the Ranks of Female Executives in Healthcare,” Session 124, August 11. Other AGS Health executives will also be attending this event. To meet with an AGS exec, contact Amy Marie Bergau.

Arcadia.io

Booth 3416

Contact: Jasmine Gee, VP of marketing
jasmine.gee@arcadia.io
617.501.7736

Arcadia is dedicated to making a difference with healthcare data. We transform data from disparate sources into targeted insights, putting them in the decision-making workflow to improve lives and outcomes. In doing so, we have created the data supply chain for enterprise-wide, evidence-based healthcare management. Through our partnerships with the nation’s leading health systems, payers, and life sciences companies, we are growing a community of innovation to provide better care, maximize future value, and evolve together to meet emerging challenges and opportunities. For more information, visit Arcadia.io. 

This year we will have some exciting giveaways, including our ever-popular survival kit packed with essentials to keep you going at HIMSS21.

CareSignal

Booth 2461

Contact: Ann Conrath, senior business development executive
ann.conrath@caresignal.health
708.359.7136

CareSignal is a Deviceless Remote Patient Monitoring platform that improves payer and provider performance in value-based care. The company leverages real-time, self-reported patient data and artificial intelligence to produce long-term patient engagement while identifying clinically actionable moments for proactive care. Its evidence-based platform has been proven in 13 peer-reviewed studies and over a dozen payer and provider implementations across the US to sustainably scale care teams to help 10 times more patients, resulting in significant improvements in chronic and behavioral health outcomes and reduced ED utilization. With confidence in its outcomes, CareSignal offers partners at-risk pricing and consistently delivers 4.5 times to 10 times ROI within the first year of its partnerships. For more information, visit our website or try a self-guided demo.

Clinical Architecture

Booth 5654

Contact: Amanda O’Rourke, VP of marketing
amanda_orourke@clinicalarchitecture.com
317.580.6400

Clinical Architecture delivers healthcare enterprise data quality solutions focused on managing vast amounts of disparate data to help customers succeed with analytics, population health, and value-based care. Our solutions produce trusted, actionable data to enable smart decisions that mitigate risk, reduce cost, and improve outcomes.

Founded in 2007 by a team of healthcare and software professionals, Clinical Architecture is the leading provider of innovative healthcare IT solutions focused on the quality and usability of clinical information. Our healthcare data quality solutions comprehensively address industry gaps in content acquisition and management, content distribution and deployment, master data management, reference data management, data aggregation, clinical decision support, clinical natural language processing, semantic interoperability, and normalization.

Check out our latest Informonster stuffed animal toys and learn how we can help you tame your Informonster.

Dina

To arrange a meeting, contact Klaudia Rudny.

Contact: Klaudia Rudny, marketing communications specialist
krudny@dinacare.com

Dina powers the future of home-based care. We are an AI-powered, care-at-home platform and network that can activate and coordinate multiple home-based service providers, engage patients directly, and unlock timely home-based insights that increase healthy days at home. The platform creates a virtual experience for the entire healthcare team so they can communicate with each other – and help patients and families stay connected – even though they may not physically be under the same roof. Dina helps professional and family caregivers capture rich data from the home, using AI to recommend evidence-based, non-medical interventions. For more information, visit  DinaCare.com.

Dina CEO Ashish Shah and Jefferson Health Chief Population Health Officer Katherine Behan will lead the conference session “The Rise of Home-Based Care: Engaging More Patients at Scale,” Thursday, August 12, from 10:15-11:15 am at The Venetian, Lando Room 4301. Shah and Behan will share insights on how to:

• Identify how digital technology can extend your reach in the home and improve provider and patient/caregiver engagement. 
• Recognize how hospital-at-home programs can help position your system for value-based payment changes.  
• Evaluate whether your organization should implement a hospital-at-home model, and how to meet hospital conditions for participation.

About the technology partnership: At the height of the pandemic, Jefferson Health partnered with Dina to launch remote patient monitoring technology to extend care to people who were COVID-positive and recovering in their homes. Now, they have expanded the program to remotely monitor people with chronic conditions such as congestive heart failure, diabetes, and hypertension, and have managed more than 5 million “digital dialogues” to help keep people connected to their care teams.

Dina is not an exhibitor, but you can reach Ashish Shah at ashish@dinacare.com or DinaCare.com. To learn more about Jefferson Health, go to JeffersonHealth.org.

Ellkay

Booth 5026

Contact: Auna Emery, director of marketing
auna.emery@ellkay.com
520.481.2862

At our HIMSS booth, 5026, Team Ellkay will host the following activities:

• Happy hour from 4-6 pm on Tuesday, August 10 and Wednesday, August 11.
• Talking connectivity, interoperability, and strategies to reach your data management initiatives. 
• And of course, distributing our delicious LKHoney, produced by our very own honeybees from our headquarters’ rooftop!   

Stop by our booth anytime during exhibit hours or pre-schedule in person and virtual meetings here.

As a nationwide leader in healthcare connectivity, Ellkay has been committed to making interoperability happen for nearly 20 years. Ellkay empowers hospitals and health systems, providers, diagnostic laboratories, healthcare IT vendors, payers, and other healthcare organizations with cutting-edge technologies and solutions. Ellkay is committed to ongoing innovation, and developing cloud-based solutions that address the challenges our partners face. Our solutions facilitate data exchange, streamline workflows, connect the care community, improve outcomes, and power data-driven and cost-effective patient-centric care. With over 58,000 practices connected, Ellkay’s system capability arsenal has grown to over 700 EHR/PMS systems across 1,100 versions. To learn more about Ellkay, please visit Ellkay.com.

The HCI Group

Booth 2632

Contact: Chris Parry, VP of marketing
chris.parry@thehcigroup.com

We are excited to share that Cris Ross of Mayo Clinic will join Ed Marx at the HCI booth to present on patient experience and digital health. In addition, we will be talking about virtual care, reducing IT operating costs, automation, security, and more. We’re inviting healthcare leaders to view HealthNxt, a unified enterprise platform that brings together all things virtual care to enable an enhanced patient and clinician experience.

HCTec

Booth C413

Contact: Karli Mertins, marketing manager
kmertins@hctec.com
262.695.1871

HCTec and Talon will be at HIMSS21 at booth C413, offering attendees free, onsite help-desk cost assessments. We are also available by appointment to share our wide range of service offerings and look forward to discussing the future of managed IT support for healthcare systems and providers.

HCTec recently acquired Talon, an industry leader in managed IT helpdesk services, regularly rated by KLAS as a top performer in help desk services for clinicians, IT resources, and patients. Based in Tennessee, best-in-class IT services firm HCTec delivers innovative healthcare IT staffing, managed services, and EHR expertise to diverse health systems and healthcare provider organizations across the US.

LexisNexis Risk Solutions

To arrange a meeting in the LexisNexis-hosted HIMSS Living Room, contact Tamyra Hyatt.

Contact: Elly Wilson, marketing manager
elly.wilson@lexisnexisrisk.com
320.333.8478

LexisNexis Risk Solutions Healthcare is hosting the HIMSS Living Room in the Titian Ballroom 230A on level 2. Drop by, put your feet up, and recharge. While you’re there, take a minute to learn about how we can help your organization use the power of advanced analytics to increase patient engagement and improve care. Go to our HIMSS21 information page to request a meeting and to download featured literature. Our healthcare solutions leverage identity, medical claims, and provider data to deliver powerful insights: 

• Interoperability Exchange: Normalize and enrich patient data with a single API.   
• Identity Access Management: Authenticate identities across all access points.   
• Absolute Patient Matching: Mitigate over/under linking penalties.   
• Social Determinants of Health: Understand individuals’ risks and help improve wellness.

OBIX by Clinical Computer Systems

Booth C200-20

Contact: Christina Olson, director of sales
christina.olson@obix.com
224.357.2653

The team from OBIX by Clinical Computer Systems will be available to meet with you at Caesars Forum Conference Center in the Academy Ballroom within the Interoperability Showcase. You will find us at our kiosk, booth C200-26, and participating in The Newborn Experience Connected Demonstration.

Join us as we demonstrate how the OBIX Perinatal Data System provides L&D units with distinguished surveillance and archiving capabilities. Its design has the clinicians in mind by delivering a comprehensive solution for central, bedside, and remote electronic fetal monitoring. We will also highlight the OBIX BeCA fetal monitor (*with the Freedom for wireless monitoring), a device that fits at the bedside while offering an accurate and clear visual of the status of the fetus and mother. Using the system’s e-tools, with its FHR tools, and the UA tool, assist clinicians’ critical thinking and management of electronic fetal monitoring as well as the monitoring of uterine activity parameters, crucial to safe labor in support of their day-to-day care provided to patients. See how we work cooperatively with industry-leading EHR companies to secure a seamless integration between systems to deliver a premier, perinatal software solution for obstetrics patient care. Together, we can improve outcomes for mothers and babies. 

*The OBIX BeCA fetal monitor and the Freedom – used for wireless monitoring, will be available in our kiosk for closer inspection.

Optimum Healthcare IT

Booth MS855

Contact: Larry Kaiser, VP of marketing and communications
lkaiser@optimumhit.com
516.978.5487

Optimum Healthcare IT is a Best in KLAS healthcare IT staffing and consulting services firm based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Optimum provides world-class professional staffing services to fill any need, as well as consulting services that encompass advisory, EHR implementation, training and activation, managed services, enterprise resource planning, technical services, and ServiceNow – supporting our client’s needs through the continuum of care. Our leadership team has extensive experience in providing expert healthcare staffing and consulting solutions to all types of organizations. At Optimum Healthcare IT, we are committed to helping our clients improve healthcare delivery by providing world-class staffing and consulting services. By bringing the most proficient and experienced consultants in the industry together to work with our clients, we work to customize our services to fit their organization’s goals. Together, we place the best people and implement proven processes and technology to ensure the success of our clients.

PatientKeeper

To arrange a meeting in room MP550, contact Andrew Robertson.

Contact: Andrew Robertson, senior director, technical solutions
arobertson@patientkeeper.com
857.540.9634

PatientKeeper’s EHR optimization software streamlines clinical workflow, improves care team collaboration, and fills functional gaps in existing hospital EHR systems. With PatientKeeper as the “system of engagement” complementing the EHR, providers can easily access and act on all their patient information from smartphones, tablets, and Web-connected PCs. In addition, PatientKeeper’s Charge Aggregator solution helps maximize revenue for provider organizations by streamlining the professional coding and billing workflow in central billing offices that process charges from disparate systems across a health network. PatientKeeper has more than 75,000 active users across North America and the UK.

Protenus

Booth 3011

Contact: Monica Giffhorn, VP of marketing
monica.giffhorn@protenus.com
410.995.8811

Come to booth 3011 and enter to win an Apple Watch. Don’t miss the session “Healthcare Compliance Analytics in Practice” with Nick Culbertson, CEO of Protenus, and Alessia Shahrokh, compliance investigations manager at UC Davis Health. The session will take place on Tuesday, August 10 at 11:00 am at the Caesars Forum 123.

Quil

To arrange a meeting, contact Ashley Stevens.

Contact: Ashley Stevens, VP of provider sales
astevens@quilhealth.com
614.893.2419

Quil’s digital-forward health engagement platform does not replace, but rather enhances, the patient-provider experience, strengthening the established, trusted relationships that patients have built with their doctors, pharmacists, PTs, etc., while removing the natural silos between provider, payor, employer, patient, and caregiver. As the most comprehensive solution on the market, we are creating a fully integrated experience. Stop by the Comcast Business booth to hear more about Quil’s engagement solutions and platform.

Platform Capabilities:

• Available on all panes of glass: Web, smartphones, tablets and on Comcast Xfinity TV service nationwide. 
• Delivers health system branded, personalized, and dynamic digital care plans. 
• Captures patient-reported outcomes and interprets scores for clinical research and intervention.
• Performs remote patient monitoring through patient self-reported information and integration with IoT devices. 
• Delivers alerts and notifications to patients, caregivers, and providers to nudge patients back on track or inform the care team of required intervention. 
• Integrated into the EHR-based clinical workflow and patient portal experience and provides detailed patient analytics through client enterprise application.

ReMedi Health Solutions

To arrange a meeting, contact GP Hyare.

Contact: GP Hyare, managing director
g.hyare@remedihs.com
281.413.8947

ReMedi Health Solutions is a national healthcare IT consulting firm specializing in peer-to-peer, physician-centric EHR implementation and training. We’re a clinically-driven company committed to improving the future of healthcare. Our mission is to provide comprehensive healthcare solutions that support enhanced patient care, efficient clinical workflows, and improved performance for healthcare systems.

Sphere

Booth 4071

Contact: Andy Moorhead, VP of sales
andy.moorhead@spherecommerce.com
949.387.3747 x3821

Sphere, powered by TrustCommerce, is trusted by more than a third of the nation’s 100 largest health systems to facilitate their integrated patient payments. With more than 15 years of supporting healthcare providers, Sphere helps its clients process payments anytime, anywhere – securely, in compliance, and connected with core business software including EHRs like Epic. Sphere’s Health IPass solution collects more patient dollars while improving engagement from pre-arrival to final payment. By simplifying the check-in, intake, and payment processes through a user-friendly mobile platform, patients know what they will owe and can pay with ease. Stop by our booth to see a demo and to enter to win Apple AirPods Pro.

Spok

Booth 5637

Contact: Jessica Baker, senior PR and social media marketing manager
jessica.baker@spok.com
701.213.5939

We hope you’ll visit Spok at HIMSS21 in booth 5637 (near the Epic booth), and at the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase, booth C200-136 at Caesars Forum Conference Center, where we’ll showcase Spok Go, our industry-leading clinical communication and collaboration platform. This unified communication platform enables hospitals and health systems to use one platform to enhance clinical workflows and improve patient care – including clinical, laboratory, and radiology workflows. Spok will also present its innovative new ReadyCall Text waiting room pager. ReadyCall Text enables seamless waiting room and on-site communication for patients or visitors using a small, convenient messaging device. Messages provide simple instructions or information to the user without the need to return to the staff desk. This paging solution allows staff to be more productive, spending less time managing waiting areas and more time attending to the immediate needs of patients and other visitors. The ReadyCall text pager’s antimicrobial casing design eliminates germs on contact, reducing the risk of microorganisms spreading within a building or person-to-person, making Spok an industry leader in providing this type of protection. 

Spok will also offer some exciting giveaways. Receive a Starbucks gift card when you schedule a demo in the booth. In addition, scan your badge for the chance to win one of three daily drawings for a $500 airline voucher. Learn more and book a demo or meeting at resources.spok.com/himss21.

Twistle

Booth C437-38

Contact: Carlene Anteau, VP of marketing
carlene.anteau@twistle.com
303.330.1018

Twistle’s patient engagement software keeps patients on track with their plan of care between visits and encounters, which improves outcomes, lowers costs, and builds brand loyalty. Attendees should visit Twistle’s booth to learn how to build a solid business case for your patient engagement initiatives and gather tips on best practices that drive 90%+ adoption.     Visitors will also be able to talk to Twistle leaders about its recent acquisition by Health Catalyst and our future plans! We envision great product synergies through the automatic initiation of Twistle’s secure patient messaging protocols based on Health Catalyst’s identification of individual health risks, gaps in care, and unmet quality measures, and we want to hear your thoughts on other use cases!

Those who visit the booth can learn about #pinksocks, a phenomenon that ignited a movement at HIMSS15, which will be continued at HIMSS21. A limited supply of #pinksocks will be gifted at the booths to represent a shared belief that we can all do our part to make a positive impact on the world and change it for the better.

All attendees are also encouraged to enter a drawing to win free software and services to help them overcome health disparities. Three winners will be announced on Thursday, August 12 at 3:30 pm, and may choose one of the following pathways:

• Managing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or congestive heart failure (CHF) patient populations to improve quality of life.
• Supporting the pregnancy journey or detecting postpartum hypertension, which is particularly helpful for rural populations, but certainly applicable for an entire patient panel.
• Diagnosing and managing high blood pressure to prevent over-treatment and support lifestyle changes that reduce the risk of heart attack and stroke.

News 7/30/21

Top News

HIMSS will require HIMSS21 attendees and exhibitors to wear masks on the conference campus. This decision follows publication of new CDC guidelines and state and local emergency orders.

HIMSS says that 18,000 people have registered for the in-person and virtual versions of HIMSS21. HIMSS19 had 43,000 registrants.

Clark County’s test positivity rate is at 15.5%. County hospitalizations are at 1,000 versus early January’s all-time high of around 1,400.

Medicomp cancelled its HIMSS21 participation Thursday afternoon, the first company that has told me directly that deteriorating COVID conditions convinced them to stay home.

Reader Comments

From Oliver Twist: “Re: HIMSS21. It’s time to do the right thing and cancel. As much as I want it to happen, it would be the wrong decision, and the only reason to proceed is financial. If public health is not a HIMSS priority, what is? Just don’t wait until next week and add to the hardship.” I’m waiting until the weekend to see if HIMSS cancels the event (a couple of companies have told me they’re doing the same). If they don’t cancel, I’m probably 60% likely to attend, down from 100% a few days ago, but that number is declining as I weigh the ever-worsening risk versus reward as evidenced by new studies regarding Delta variant breakthrough infections, the possibility of tapering vaccine protection, and the potential of developing long COVID from a mild breakthrough infection. Plus HIMSS22 is just 227 days away and should be the first non-asterisked HIMSS conference since 2019. I have $895 invested in rolled-over HIMSS20 registration fees, a few hundred dollars in a flight that probably isn’t refundable, and $1,000 for the OnPeak-booked hotel that appears to be refundable minus one night. I feel sorry for HIMSS, which weathered the financial hit and no-refund fallout of HIMSS20, only to see the pre-Christmas joy of cheering on the Pfizer trucks that were delivering the miracle of science dashed by the reality that a lot of people are indifferent or hostile to science.

From HIMSS Fail: “Re: HIMSS21. Disappointed that HIMSS isn’t offering the Nursing Informatics Symposium virtually. My registration fees for last year were transferred to this year, but as a healthcare professional, I don’t think it’s responsible given the rise in the Delta variant to travel to Las Vegas and be exposed to crowds of people. HIMSS has had a year to figure out how to host a virtual an in-person conference. So I’ve lost my registration fees and perhaps in the future HIMSS will lose my membership fees.”

From MyAlias: “Re: HIMSS21. Word is that vendors and health systems are pulling out. Are you hearing the same?” No, but companies wouldn’t necessarily tell me. Last year’s pullout was evidenced by diminishing numbers on the frequently updated HIMSS20 exhibitor list, which I haven’t seen with the HIMSS21 list. It could be that the exhibitor list isn’t being updated the same way, and regardless we wouldn’t easily know how many provider organizations have banned travel to Las Vegas. Let me know if your employer has cancelled your planned attendance.

From Calico: “Re: HIMSS21. Is the exhibitor count apples to apples with that of previous years? Half the usual number doesn’t seem like a bad turnout.” That includes a bunch of first-time exhibitors and 125 or so companies that booked a meeting room (either instead of or along with a regular booth). I see 410 occupied booths in Sands Expo of 200 square feet or larger, so that leaves maybe 285 good-sized booths that aren’t in MP. Jump to 400 square feet – still pretty modest – and you’re down to about 65 companies. I haven’t run the lists to see which of the usual suspects won’t be exhibiting.

From Rashaverak: “Re: Epic. Accused of paying health systems exorbitant amounts to use its ~20 often inaccurate predictive diagnosis models. Epic says it doesn’t do marketing, but it appears its practices are no different than any other software vendor.” Stat News says unidentified employees of several health systems told its reporters that Epic’s sepsis prediction model is unreliable, but Epic pays hospitals incentives for using them in its voluntary Epic Honor Roll programs.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Listening: the reader-recommended new album from Blue Oyster Cult. It sounds good, in a snarly biker kind of way, for band whose remaining original members are 76 (Eric Bloom) and 73 (Buck Dharma). The video includes some self-parody when BOC’s original drummer Albert Bouchard pops in to provide “more cowbell.” There’s also a Spinal Tap reference.

Webinars

On-Demand Webinars:

“Key Differences: Value Based Care vs. Fee-For-Service.” Part 1 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 1 webinar covers which aspects of the fee-for-service health system payment model look the most different compared to fully value-based systems (clinical, back-office, analytics, etc.)

“Current Innovation and Development in Value-Based Care.” Part 2 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 2 webinar discusses what health systems should know about the transition to value-based care, including macro versus micro shifts.

“Future of Value-Based Care: Predictive Analytics, Technology, Policy.” Part 3 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 3 webinar discusses the role analytics will play in the shift to value-based care and how financial and clinical ROIs for analytics-oriented products must differ when applied to FFS and VBC models.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cerner will announce Q2 earnings Friday morning at 9:00 ET, which will be a much-followed event given its CEO search and takeover speculation. UPDATE: Cerner reports that revenue was up 10%, adjusted EPS $0.80 versus $0.63, beating analyst expectations for both.   

Telehealth provider Amwell will acquire digital mental health platform vendor SilverCloud Health and text-based automated patient interaction developer Conversa Health for a combined $320 million.

Avera Health (SD) sells its telemedicine services company Avera ECare to a private investment firm that will take on its 230 employees and rename the company Avel Ecare. Services include behavioral health, correctional health, emergency, hospitalist, ICU, pharmacy, school health, specialty clinic, and senior care. Terms of the acquisition were not announced.

Clinical performance management technology vendor MDmetrix announces a $6 million Series A funding round and a name change to AdaptX. Co-founder and CEO Warren Ratliff, JD was co-founder and COO of Caradigm.

Private equity firm Hughes & Company closes its first fund at $116 million, which will make investments of $5-$20 million in lower middle market healthcare software and technology enabled companies. The firm has an active investment in Azara Healthcare and exited its stake in Aldera, Aperture, and IN2L.

Sales

• UMass Memorial Health chooses Halo Health for clinical communication and collaboration.

People

US Army Lieutenant Colonel Alison Murray, MS, MSN, RN is assigned to clinical informatics specialist and CMIO at Dwight D. Eisenhower Army Medical Center. She has also been named a recipient of the Order of Military Medical Merit.

MDClone promotes Erin Giegling to VP of marketing.

Scottsdale Institute promotes Janet Guptill, MPH to president and CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Health Catalyst announces PowerLabor, an AI-enabled view of health system labor data that is part of its Financial Empowerment Suite.

Cerner will sell its Continuous Campus in Kansas City, KS as a predominantly hybrid work model reduces its real estate needs.

Dubai-based Etisalat Digital launches a cloud-based EHR to meet the UAE government’s requirement for a centralized, connected medical record for every citizen and resident.

The digital arm of India’s Apollo Hospitals Group will launch a Microsoft Teams-based solution that will offer virtual visits with Apollo physicians, prescription ordering, and scheduling lab sampling at home.

Well Health launches ChatAssist AI, a chatbot that it says completes 95% of patient-provider conversations without human intervention. Epic user Sansum Clinic’s six-month pilot focused on the chatbot’s use for telehealth, portal enrollment, insurance verification, and COVID-19 vaccination. 

A new KLAS report on nurse and staff scheduling finds that the strongest products for using predictive analytics to manage staffing up to two months in the future are Symplr ShiftSelect and HealthStream ANSOS Staff Scheduling. Those products were acquired by their current vendors in February 2019 and November 2020, respectively. Cerner Clairvia delivers high customer satisfaction for same-day analytics.

Government and Politics

ONC opens the synchronized feedback period for the Interoperability Standards Advisory, the Standards Version Advancement Process, and the draft United States Core Data for Interoperability Version 3.

Sponsor Updates

• Meditech will host its virtual Expanse Summer Showcase August 10-11.
• First Databank VP of Clinical Content Joan Kapusnik-Uner co-authors the study, “Using Medicare Data to Assess the Proarrhythmic Risk of Non-Cardiac Treatment Drugs that Prolong the QT Interval in Older Adults: An Observational Cohort Study.”
• The Atlanta Healthcare Entrepreneur Meetup will feature Jvion Chief Marketing Officer Lizzy Feliciano August 5.
• Medicomp’s Tell Me Where It Hurts Podcast features Jessica Cox, RN from Holy Name Medical Center.
• Meditech publishes a new case study, “Emanate Health Advances COVID-19 Contact Tracing with Meditech Professional Services.”

Blog Posts

• Operational Resilience: Grow Your Business Despite Increasing Threats (Everbridge)
• EMR vs. EHR: Understanding Electronic Health and Medical Records (Experity)
• Is a Digital Rounding Solution Right for Your Organization? (GetWellNetwork)
• Cerner Recognized as a Leader in Diversity, Equity and Inclusion by Forbes, Kansas City Chamber (Cerner)
• Optimize Your Labor Management with Health Catalyst PowerLabor (Health Catalyst)
• 2022 PFS Proposed Rule Part 2: MIPS Value Pathways (MVPs) Proposals (Impact Advisors)
• Looking Back and Leaping Forward: How Unprecedented Times Shaped the Way of the Future for Health Seekers’ Online Experience (Loyal)
• Why A Patient Engagement Solution May Not Be the Best Choice for Patient Experience (Lumeon)
• Digital vaccination passports put a new twist-er on leaving your house (Lyniate)
• CMS Ups the Ante on Price Transparency Compliance (Medhost)
• 8 Powerful Team Building and Motivational Strategies for Physical Therapists (MWTherapy)

Contacts

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

News 7/28/21

Top News

British health IT company System C acquires medication management vendor WellSky International from parent company WellSky Corp.

WellSky International will change its name to CareFlow Medicines Management and operate as a division of System C, which primarily serves NHS trusts.

WellSky International, the former JAC and Mediware Information Systems BV, took that name in mid-2019 following the 2018 renaming of then-parent company Mediware to WellSky.

Reader Comments

From Essential Oils: “Re: McLeod Health, SC. Replacing Cerner with Epic.” Verified, according to a health system announcement. The health system chose Cerner Millennium in late 2016 to replace Cerner / SMS Invision and Soarian. The first of McLeod’s seven hospitals went live on Millennium in early 2019 and the rollouts continued through at least early 2020, so that was a short stay. The health system says that the move to Millennium was the largest project in the health system’s history.

From Nanner Puddin: “Re: HIMSS21. My company has zero confirmed face-to-face meetings versus our requirement of having five booked at least two weeks before the conference, so we have decided against attending.”

From New to the Startup World: “Re: EHR. I recently started working at one of those telehealth disruptor type Silicon Valley startups after many years in health IT. I laughed so hard I nearly fell out of my chair when I heard they are planning to build their own EHR. I don’t see how they can get by without a certified EHR and I don’t see how it makes sense to build one purely for internal use. Amy I the crazy one? Does anyone still build their own EHR? Can you get by without a certified EHR? Oh, also note that the company does not have any staff with EHR experience.” I used to argue that non-traditional providers that don’t deal with insurance could gain competitive advantage by building their own EHR-lite that is centered around patients and providers, basically more like a CRM (although for that purpose, maybe an actual CRM would be the best option). A few investor-backed primary care companies that tried that failed, although most likely for other reasons. The Silicon Valley argument for building would be Uber or other company whose entire physical and business presence is a seemingly simple app that is powered by a lot of hidden computing power. A smart, aggressive, well-funded, and disruptive telehealth provider might convince me that a custom-developed EHR is essential, but hopefully they at least keep integration in mind since we’ve learned that even telehealth companies with their own providers can’t exist responsibly in a medical silo.

Webinars

July 28 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Stop running from your problem (list): Strategies for streamlining the EHR’s front page.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, CMIO Services LLC; James Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. How can clinicians mitigate the longstanding EHR problem list challenges of outdated or duplicative entries, rigid displays, and limited native EHR capabilities? The presenters will describe how to analyze current problems, create a problem list governance strategy, and measure improvement progress.

On-Demand Webinars:

“Key Differences: Value Based Care vs. Fee-For-Service.” Part 1 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 1 webinar covers which aspects of the fee-for-service health system payment model look the most different compared to fully value-based systems (clinical, back-office, analytics, etc.)

“Current Innovation and Development in Value-Based Care.” Part 2 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 2 webinar discusses what health systems should know about the transition to value-based care, including macro versus micro shifts.

“Future of Value-Based Care: Predictive Analytics, Technology, Policy.” Part 3 of a three-part series. Sponsor: Net Health. Presenters: Bill Winkenwerder, MD, chairman, CitiusTech; Josh Pickus, CEO, Net Health. Dr. Bill Winkenwerder, former assistant secretary of defense for health affairs for the US Department of Defense, shares his unique perspective on the future of value-based care (VBC) systems in the public sector and how VBC differs from fee-for-service models in the private sector. This Part 3 webinar discusses the role analytics will play in the shift to value-based care and how financial and clinical ROIs for analytics-oriented products must differ when applied to FFS and VBC models.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Bloomberg reports that Europe-based private equity investor Nordic Capital is in talks to acquire health data analytics vendor Inovalon. Since going public in 2015, Inovalon has acquired Avalere Health, Ability Network, Complex Care Solutions, and Creehan & Company. INOV shares rose 70% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $6 billion.

Sales

• CPSI will integrate Medicomp’s Quippe Clinical Data Engine with its acute and post-acute EHR products.
• Adventist Health (CA) selects GetWellNetwork’s full line of digital patient engagement technologies.
• In Australia, South West Alliance of Rural Health and Barwon Health will deploy the InterSystems Iris for Health data extraction and analysis software.
• LTC ACO will implement PatientPing’s real-time care notification and coordination software across more than 700 member facilities.
• Marshfield Clinic Research Institute (WI) joins TriNetX’s global health research network.
• The ACT Health Directorate in Australia will use Capsule’s device integration technology to connect medical devices with its new Epic system, set to go live in September.
• Everest Rehabilitation Hospitals will implement WellSky’s rehabilitation software, including its EHR, across its facilities in Texas, Arkansas, Ohio, and Florida.
• LifeBridge Health (MD) selects Intelerad’s cloud-based medical imaging managed services.
• University Hospitals (OH) will launch its Hospital at Home program using Edgility technology.
• HealthLinc will use Greenway Health’s telehealth solution.

People

Siv Raman, MD (Lumilla) joins 314e as chief product officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Infor announces GA of its FHIR Server for improved data storage and exchange based on the FHIR standard.

Ochsner Health (LA) adds ActX’s genomic decision support to its Epic system.

UnityPoint Health develops social services referral software using technology from Aunt Bertha.

I assume all of us HIMSS members received an email today pitching Accelerate, a HIMSS-developed app that hopes to connect users, HIMSS-designated thought leaders, and HIMSS exhibitors and content. Mostly so far it seems to push Healthcare IT News articles into a news feed. HIMSS apparently formed a new company called One OpCo, LLC to support the app and apparently hopes to sell it to “enterprises, organizations, and associations interested in getting access to their members.” HIMSS uses Accelerate name for innovation-related products, including what used to be called VentureConnect. The app tracks a ton of user data, according to app store privacy details. I don’t see me launching the app a second time since I rarely find HIMSS-generated content useful and my experience is that healthcare IT folks aren’t interested in contributing content and participating in discussions.

Other

From Tuesday afternoon’s CDC press conference:

• Fully vaccinated people are now advised to wear masks when indoors in areas where spread is extensive.
• Teachers and students are urged to wear masks indoors regardless of vaccination status.
• The Delta variant makes up 83% of new cases and most transmission is occurring in low-vaccination areas, which includes most counties in Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
• It appears that some people who have been vaccinated can spread the Delta variant, which wasn’t common with previous strains.
• CDC Director Rochelle Walensky, MD, MPH said that coronavirus is “just a few mutations potentially away” from becoming resistant to COVID-19 vaccines.

Penn Medicine (PA) will launch the Center for Applied Health Informatics to develop best practices for data projects across its health system and foster informatics leadership. Initial projects will focus on telehealth expansion and COVID-19 response efforts. Collaborators will include Information Services, the Center for Health Care Innovation, and the EHR Transformation team, among others.

Kaiser Permanente develops a COVID-19 HotSpotting Score to help providers predict COVID-19 surges up to six weeks ahead of time. The predictive modeling tool’s estimates, which incorporate variables like COVID-19 test rates, inpatient and clinic data, and call center and patient email data, strongly correlated with COVID-19 hospital activity during the last half of 2020.

Sponsor Updates

• Cerner receives an award from the Missouri House of Representatives commending its mass vaccination efforts during Operation Safe.
• CloudWave and Vital Images will partner to deliver enterprise imaging as a cloud-based service.
• Audacious Inquiry and the Georgia Hospital Association announce that hospital participation in GA Notify, powered by Audacious Inquiry’s Exposure Notification Service, has tripled over the past six months.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a video titled “Optimum CareerPath: A Different Approach to Building a Team.”
• Mach7 Technologies has received the Frost & Sullivan Global Enterprise Imaging Solutions Product Leadership Award, has been recognized by Industry Tech Insights magazine as one of its Top 10 Companies Revolutionizing Healthcare in 2021, and has been named one of the Top 20 Most Promising Workflow Solution Providers by CIO Review magazine.

Blog Posts

• How an insurance discovery app drove double-digit increases for a collections agency (Ability Network)
• Healthcare Cybersecurity & The Shocking Truth About 3rd Party Vendor Risk (Access)
• E-Prescribing Potency Codes Sunset & Modifications (AdvancedMD)
• Increasing SNF and home health referral volumes with CarePort Referral Management (CarePort)
• Meditech Expanse Registration Worklists: A Quick Win for EHR Optimization and Revenue Cycle (CereCore)
• 2022 PFS Proposed Rule Part 1: Traditional MIPS Programs Proposals (Impact Advisors)
• A Pandemic Melts Traditional Healthcare Silos, Shining a Light on How to Turn Disruption and Change into Opportunity (CentralLogic)
• Everything You Need to Know About PDMP (ChartLogic)
• If You Don’t Do This, Your Medicare Chronic Care Management Program Will Fail (ChartSpan)
• Supporting Care Teams with the Technology They Need When It’s Needed (CoverMyMeds)
• Physician’s Time – A Critical Asset (Part 2) (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• New Chief Medical Officer Talks About the Power of Connecting to the Home (Dina)
• Using Prisma to Create Better Patient Records (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/26/21

Top News

Clinical data and genomic platform vendor Sema4, a Connecticut-based venture of Mount Sinai Health System, goes public via a SPAC merger at a valuation of around $3 billion.

A health IT connection is President and COO Jamie Coffin, PhD, whose history includes time with Dell and IBM.

Reader Comments

From Exit the Kraken: “Re: HIStalk fan club on LinkedIn. Seems like a lot of company promotion going on there.” Some of the HIStalk “fans” use the group to pitch competing sites or advertise their non-supporting companies in a way that seems distasteful, but I guess that’s the nature of PR-seeking LinkedIn users. I’ll take it as a compliment that my readership is larger and more influential to the point that folks abandon their pride in an attempt to reach it.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents expect Amazon to be the strongest healthcare market participant in the tech world, although I probably shouldn’t have listed it among pure tech companies since their competitive advantage mostly lies elsewhere. Eddie T. Head throws down the “you heard it here first” gauntlet in boldly speculating that the winner will be Oracle after they buy Cerner.

New poll to your right or here: Who is most responsible for the VA’s Cerner rollout challenges?

I didn’t get many responses to my inquiry about folks who had planned to attend HIMSS21 but recently changed their mind, which may or may not mean that there aren’t many of them. A couple of folks say their employer has banned travel, a mom who is breastfeeding her new baby and would have had to bring them along says it’s not worth the exposure given the rise in the Delta variant, one says they fear being infected even with vaccination even though it likely wouldn’t be fatal, one is under UK travel restrictions, and one says they won’t give personal information such as vaccination status to HIMSS.

Meanwhile, hospitals in Las Vegas – along with those in other low-vaccination states like Missouri, Florida, Louisiana, and Arkansas — say they are straining with high numbers of COVID-19 patients, most of them young and unvaccinated. Cases in Clark County have jumped fivefold in the past month and hospitalizations are reaching peaks that approach last year’s summer surge. Only 39% of county residents are fully vaccinated. That number is almost certainly underestimated since it would not include the many visitors who unknowingly take the virus home during its 2-14 day incubation period.

The challenge for HIMSS is that unlike in Orlando, the Las Vegas conference areas cannot be secured from unvaccinated outsiders since hotels were intentionally designed to force people to pass through the casinos to reach conference areas, guest rooms, and restaurants. Still, that incidental contact is unlikely to support respiratory spread, so the danger zone is outside the cordoned off HIMSS21 areas where exposure is extended (bars, restaurants, casinos, shows, etc.) Vaccinated attendees are unlikely to become infected and any breakthrough infections should be mild, but while vaccinated people are less likely to spread COVID-19 to some unknown but likely significant degree, hospitals may decide the risk isn’t worth it for their employees and keep them home.

The security membership group ISC West just wrapped up its conference at the Sands Expo & Convention Center (which, by the way, will be renamed to The Venetian Expo on September 2) with about 11,000 attendees – less than half the usual number – so we will see if any superspreading is reported (actually, it’s unlikely to be detected since contact tracing just isn’t done here). That conference did not require vaccination proof or masks – video from there (above) shows basically nobody masked — and instead relied on the usual pointless hygiene theater of obsessively disinfecting surfaces and pushing hand sanitizer after checking temperatures at the door.

Webinars

July 28 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Stop running from your problem (list): Strategies for streamlining the EHR’s front page.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, CMIO Services LLC; James Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. How can clinicians mitigate the longstanding EHR problem list challenges of outdated or duplicative entries, rigid displays, and limited native EHR capabilities? The presenters will describe how to analyze current problems, create a problem list governance strategy, and measure improvement progress.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Digital front door systems vendor Qure4U raises $25 million in funding.

CHIME’s fall healthcare CIO boot camp will be held in San Diego October 23-26. I should interview a freshly graduated participant one of these days since I suspect people who haven’t worked as an IT executive would find the content interesting.

Announcements and Implementations

UPMC will pay $2.65 million to settle a class action lawsuit that charged it with failing to protect employee information that was stolen and used in a phony tax refund scam.

Sponsor Updates

• Pivot Point Consulting sponsors and participates in the Wellspan York Health Foundation Benefit Golf Tournament.
• Fortified Health Security releases a new video, “Cyber Insurance Requirements Have Changed. Are You Prepared?”
• Authority Magazine interviews Nordic Advisory Services Practice Lead John Distefano.
• The HIMSS Podcast, “What We Learned About Health IT During the Pandemic,” features PatientKeeper VP of Product Management Cathy Donohue.
• Pure Storage expands as-a-Service offerings designed to support business outcomes.
• RxRevu publishes a new whitepaper, “How Accurate Prescription Data Can Drive Valuable Decision Making at the Point of Care.”
• Masstricht University Medical Center, Laurentius Hospital, and VieCuri MC in the Netherlands jointly select Sectra’s digital pathology solution.
• Spok releases a new video, “Go ‘beyond’ secure texting in healthcare.”
• Tegria publishes a new case study featuring Val Verde Regional Medical Center and Engage’s work to implement a remote-hosted EHR during COVID time pressure.
• Waystar appoints former JP Morgan executive Heidi Miller to its Board of Directors.

Blog Posts

• Solving the issues – Part 1: Quality analytics – Revealing actionable insights to deliver value (Nuance)
• Advancing Oncology Treatment and Health Equity – An ASCO Recap (OptimizeRx)
• Caring for Chronic Conditions? Two Ways Population Health Management Solutions Can Drive Success (Netsmart)
• How Psychographic Segmentation Improves the Specialty Pharmacy Patient Journey (PatientBond)
• PatientPing + Appriss Health: Solving Care Collaboration Challenges Better and Faster to Transform Whole-Person Care (PatientPing)
• What is Revenue Cycle Management (RCM)? (PMD)
• Data Unlocks the Future of Healthcare Accounts Payable (Premier)
• Diversion Professional Services: The Extra Hand Your Team May Need (Protenus)
• The New Normal: Digital Health in the Post-COVID World – Part 2: Physicians and Digital Health, the Road to Greater Adoption (Quil)
• A Revenue Cycle Guide for Private Equity Firms in Healthcare (RCxRules)
• Applications: What’s in Your Portfolio? (Impact Advisors)
• What is Redoxiness? (Redox)
• When Technology Does Its Job, You Can Do Yours (RxRevu)
• ICU Statistics During COVID Drove Pandemic Response (SOC Telemed)
• Remote work and data protection: How data governance teams can get control over an ever-expanding IT frontier (Spirion)
• 3 ways digital health trends are meeting pandemic-shaped patient expectations (Krames)

Contacts

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

News 7/23/21

Top News

The VA tells the House Veterans Affairs Committee that it won’t bring any more sites live on Cerner for at least six months. From the hearing (in addition to misstating the Eastern time zone as “EST” above):

• Rep. Matt Rosendale (R-MT) said that despite the VA’s assurance, “we’re going to find out the proof is in the performance. If the army of crackerjack management consultants, and tiger teams, and advancement teams, and adoption coaches, and change management experts can’t make headway with the situation in Spokane, the reason is probably pretty simple. The software just isn’t any good, folks. Either that or it isn’t good for the VA.”
• VA OIG told the committee that VA’s modernization committee reported that 89% of users passed proficiency tests with a score of at least 80%, but OIG found an earlier draft stating that just 44% passed at that level, indicating that the report was altered before submission. The VA says it will consider disciplinary action if its investigation shows it to be warranted.
• Acting Deputy Secretary Carolyn Clancy, MD told the committee that “we will not be scheduling any deployments in the next six months” as the VA reviews infrastructure requirements and develops a new rollout schedule that will be driven by site readiness.
• Rep. Mark Takano (D-CA) expressed skepticism that the VA gave Cerner the minimum passing grade of “satisfactory,” questioning whether it did so just to avoid having the contract cancelled.
• Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) expressed frustration with the project’s overall cost, noting that VA OIG’s list of missed items could swell the budget to $21 billion and also recalling that former VA CIO Roger Baker originally gave a number of $30 billion. The original project estimate was $10 billion.
• The VA is reviewing Cerner’s patient portal and its contractual obligations, with Dr. Clancy predicting that the end result will be a combination of Cerner’s product and the aspects of My HealtheVet that veterans like.
• Rep. Rosendale pressed Cerner executive Brian Sandager on why Cerner’s bid was so far off the mark even though the company was the sole-source bidder and thus the presumed expert. Sandager blamed changing requirements and lack of access to VA staff because of the pandemic.

Reader Comments

From Banned Book: “Re: Cerner. Seems like a lot of execs are moving on lately.” Maybe, but Cerner is a huge, publicly traded company with deep talent, and some of those folks have been around long enough to realize that maybe they’ve peaked at Cerner and need to move out to move up. The lackluster company performance over the past few years that led to Brent Shafer’s announced departure and his uncertain replacement is likely accelerating the exodus. I don’t think it’s necessarily a poor reflection on the company or an indication of executive dissent – it’s a hot health IT market out there and well-funded startups need some adults in the room.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Upfront Healthcare. The Chicago-based company navigates patients to the care they need as new digital services, sites of care, and non-traditional competitors reshape the way they expect to interact with their health system. The company delivers superior outcomes through personalization, in which advanced analytics is used to adapt communication channel and content to eliminate barriers to patient engagement. The frictionless experience requires no download or login as it guides patients to the services they need to close care gaps, attend visits, reschedule in a single click, enroll in services, improve medication adherence, follow up after a transition of care, prepare for an episode of care, and schedule open referrals. It provides the contact center and care team with a unified view of patient communications for all modalities (SMS, email, digital voice, etc.) and can be launched from the EHR or CRM with integration using API, HL7, SMART on FHIR, and batch files. Co-founder and CEO Ben Albert, MBA is an industry long-timer who founded what is now Crimson Care Management. Thanks to Upfront Healthcare for supporting HIStalk.

Were you planning to attend HIMSS21 but have changed your plans in the past couple of weeks? Tell me why. The beginning of the end for HIMSS20 was companies – including health systems – that banned travel due to the alarming rise in COVID-19 cases and readers keep asking me if that could happen again.

If you attend HIMSS21 in person instead of watching the virtual version, you’ll miss the virtual-only keynote of “Grey’s Anatomy” star and TV doctor Patrick Dempsey. His credentials are a bit shy of being a real doctor — he dropped out of high school to join the circus, and once he became famous on TV years later, his high school just gave him the diploma he didn’t earn.

Dann Lemerand, who started the HIStalk Fan Club on LinkedIn in mid-2008, says it has 4,000 followers. I can’t make a strong argument for joining since you don’t get anything for doing so, but at least you’ll be rubbing virtual elbows with some pretty high-level industry folks who signed up. I really should review my LinkedIn connections and recommendations for an emotional lift in those moments where I question the wisdom of sitting in an empty room filling an empty screen.

Webinars

July 28 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Stop running from your problem (list): Strategies for streamlining the EHR’s front page.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, CMIO Services LLC; James Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. How can clinicians mitigate the longstanding EHR problem list challenges of outdated or duplicative entries, rigid displays, and limited native EHR capabilities? The presenters will describe how to analyze current problems, create a problem list governance strategy, and measure improvement progress.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Staff and consulting services vendor Optimum Healthcare IT is acquired by Achieve Partners, which invests in skills development technologies and businesses that can create American jobs. Achieve will expand Optimum’s paid health IT apprenticeship program.

Imprivata acquires Xton Technologies and will incorporate its privileged access management solutions into its digital identity framework.

Bon Secours Mercy Health makes an unspecified investment in healthcare analytics vendor Trilliant Health.

Digital health vendor B.well Connected Health raises $32 million in a Series B funding round, increasing its total to $59 million.

Sales

• Health engagement company Higi chooses Ellkay for platform integration with its healthcare partners.
• Laboratory data integration services vendor Diagnostic Support Services chooses Lyniate Corepoint to enable advanced interoperability.
• Winton Hills Medical & Health Center (OH) selects Emerge’s ChartGenie data conversion solution for its move to Athenahealth along with the company’s ChartScout and ChartPop products.

People

Ted Pfeiffer, MBA (Sg2) joins healthcare consulting firm The Greeley Company as VP of product innovation.

Syntellis Performance Solutions, the former Kaufman Hall software division, names Flint Brenton (Centrify) as CEO. He replaces Kermit Randa, who will leave the company now that it has been taken independent with investments from Thoma Bravo and Madison Dearborn Partners.

Mike Nill (Cerner) joins Rx Savings Solutions as strategic advisor.

Announcements and Implementations

Vocera announces Edge, a cloud-based clinical communication and collaboration solution for smartphones.

Google Cloud offers a private preview of Healthcare Data Engine, which creates real-time views of longitudinal patient records. The company says the product can map 90% of HL7v2 messages to FHIR out of the box.

Canon Medical Systems will rename its health IT division, which includes Vital Images, to Canon Medical Informatics.

Document Storage Systems (DSS) launches a commercial division called Juno Health, which will offer an EHR and solutions for e-prescribing and emergency services.

Highlights from the just-issued “Semi-Annual Market Review” of Healthcare Growth Partners, which as usual drew me in to read every word instead of the quick skim I envisioned:

• The company estimates that digital health company valuations have risen 30% since the pandemic began, with high-performing companies seeing even bigger premiums.
• M&A is on track to jump 43% this year, while investment value is on pace to rise 85%.
• HGP sees four factors driving this activity: excess financial market liquidity, impending increases in the capital gains tax, the obvious appeal of digitizing and virtualizing healthcare, and the fear of missing out (buyers) and of losing it all (sellers).
• SPACs are popular with lower-revenue companies and share price of those less-mature companies is more volatile due to their appeal to inexperienced investors and lower share supply. Digital health IPO stocks have increased significantly in price, while SPAC stocks trade below offer price on average.

Government and Politics

A Georgia law firm files an ONC information blocking complaint against Doctors Hospital of Augusta, Meditech, and Ciox Health, claiming that the patient records the firm requested on behalf of its malpractice client were not provided as an OCR-readable PDF file.

ONC seeks feedback on use of the HIPAA Security Risk Assessment tool.

Other

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green (R-GA) tells a reporter who asked if she’s been vaccinated for COVID-19 that the question is “a violation of my HIPAA rights.” She is likely not the only member of Congress who thinks HIPAA is something it isn’t.

University of Vermont Medical Center discloses how ransomware took its systems down for a month and cost it at least $50 million – an employee took a hospital laptop on vacation and used it to open an email from their homeowners’ association, which had been hacked and whose email contained malware. When the employee came back to work and connected to the hospital network, the malware was spread.

HIMSS says it expects a smaller attendance for HIMSS21 than in previous years, but says that paid professional attendance has reached 75% of the 2019 total. First-time attendees make up 40% of the total registered. The exhibit hall will host 750 companies, 200 of them first-timers. HIMSS says that it is “mindful” of COVID-19 case numbers and recognizes that some registrants may not be able to attend due to various travel policies. A conference update says that all venue and hotel staff will be masked per recent Southern Nevada Health District guidance, while masks are encouraged but not required on the HIMSS21 campus since attendees must prove they’ve been vaccinated to enter.

Sponsor Updates

• InterSystems announces that Forrester has recognized its Iris data platform as a leader in “The Forrester Wave: Multimodel Data Platforms, Q3 20201.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health releases the second edition of its “Future of Technology in Nursing Education” survey.
• EClinicalWorks releases a customer success video featuring Zeid Medical Group, “Using Prisma and Interoperability for Better Records.”
• Upfront Healthcare partners with Firstsource to offer personalized patient navigation.
• Redox launches an Amazon HealthLake Connector offering and announces its support for the Amazon for Health initiative.
• Healthcare IT Leaders, BD, and TrackMy Solutions provide COVID-19 testing services and support to Camp Barney Medintz.
• Fortified Health Security releases its “2021 Mid-Year Horizon Report.”
• Goliath Technologies publishes a new case study, “Central Maine Healthcare Drastically Reduces Citrix & Cerner Clinician Time to Remediation.”
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises MDTech in its sale to EverCommerce.

Blog Posts

• Causes & Solutions for Healthcare Staff Burnout in Urgent Care (Experity)
• Expand Medical Device Integration to Drive Operational Clinic and Safety Benefits (Capsule)
• Collaborate to Innovate: Leveraging Clinical Leadership to Reimagine Glycemic Management (Glytec)
• Unify Clinical Communication: The 5 W’s (Halo Health)
• Interoperability: Get Your Head in the Cloud (Healthcare Triangle)
• The HCI Group attending HIMSS21 Global Conference (The HCI Group)
• Adding Talent & Capabilities to HCTec (HCTec)
• The Secret Behind Resilient Healthcare Organizations: High Reliability (Health Catalyst)
• ICD-10 is here again: A look at the 2022 code updates (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Use Personal Referrals to Boost Your Network and Build Your Career (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Newsflash: TEFCA Anticipated to be LIVE in 2022! (Impact Advisors)
• You need complex passwords. Clinicians don’t. Here’s how to strike the right balance. (Imprivata)
• Future of Patient Engagement at AHA Leadership Summit (Intrado)
• Caution ahead: The ongoing challenge of vaccinating the most vulnerable (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Patient Access Leading Digital Transformation Push (Lumeon)
• HIMSS2021: Trends in educational sessions over the past 5 years (Lyniate)
• Is Your Revenue Cycle Springing Leaks? (Medhost)
• Delivering seamless, integrated care at Southern Ohio Medical Center with Expanse Labor & Delivery (Meditech)

Contacts

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

News 7/21/21

Top News

WebMD acquires The Wellness Network, which offers advertising-supported patient education videos and broadcast channels for hospitals.

Reader Comments

From A Concerned Citizen: “Re: HIMSS21. Will it be cancelled, or just set records for poor attendance? Between the delta variant and the White House report that ranks Las Vegas the most dangerous of all metropolitan areas, registration must be falling quickly.” A couple of readers said their employers have instituted policies that will prohibit their planned attendance. I was about to say that it’s too close to the conference kickoff to contemplate shutting down the live component, but then I recalled that HIMSS20 was cancelled March 5, four days before it would have started. A virtual-only conference is the backup plan, but I don’t think that HIMSS could survive losing its main money-maker for two consecutive years. I predict the show will go on, even with an attenuated audience.

From Tom Paine: “Re: IBM Watson. Former CEO Ginny Rometty is to blame for overhyping it. It was presented as the great hope for IBM, while more important initiatives like the cloud fell further behind.” Rometty should have been skeptical about the Watson hype given that her degree was in computer science and electrical engineering and her IBM background was mostly spent in technical roles. IBM is usually late to parties at which competitors have already taken the best seats, so maybe the draw of being an early entrant into AI was appealing. The company’s biggest Watson mistake was probably choosing healthcare as its showcase, a hill that many swaggering tech companies have died whimpering on. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I found the Clear Health Pass app frustrating to use for HIMSS21 vaccination verification, especially since my submission is stuck in “pending verification” status. I strongly recommend using Safe Expo Vaccine’s online option instead, as recommended by reader Susan Newbold. The submission page is 1990s clunky, but it took seconds to submit photos of my driver license and vaccination card and then just another 1-2 minutes to have it confirmed by email.

More evidence of the decline of US journalism – it seems that every news website now features cursory “product reviews” that hope to entice readers to click to buy, generating an affiliate commission for the site. The link is almost always to Amazon because it pays those commissions reliably and people are more likely to buy from Amazon anyway, meaning that non-Amazon products are ignored along with other sites that offer the same item cheaper.

Webinars

July 28 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Stop running from your problem (list): Strategies for streamlining the EHR’s front page.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, CMIO Services LLC; James Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. How can clinicians mitigate the longstanding EHR problem list challenges of outdated or duplicative entries, rigid displays, and limited native EHR capabilities? The presenters will describe how to analyze current problems, create a problem list governance strategy, and measure improvement progress.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The Massachusetts EHealth Collaborative dissolves and distributes its assets to six public charities. The organization says it has completed its work and fulfilled its mission related to interoperability, standards development, and health IT policy.

Sales

• Georgia-based ACO TC2 will implement Jvion’s Avoidable Admissions technology.
• St. Bernard’s Hospital (AR) selects NICUtrition clinical decision support software from Astarte Medical.
• North Mississippi Health Services will implement Picis Total Perioperative Automation software with Envision Analytics from Picis Clinical Solutions.

People

Adam Laskey (Cerner) joins EverCommerce as GM of EverHealth.

VitalTech names Chad Haynes (Cerner) as chief commercial officer.

John McCullough (Cleveland Clinic) joins The Chartis Group as principal in its Informatics & Technology practice.

Patricia Daiker, RN (Dragonfly Lights) joins Orb Health as VP of clinical operations.

Signify Health names Sam Pettijohn (Cerner) chief growth officer and Erin Kelly (CVS Health) chief commercial officer.

Industry long-timer Scott Weingarten, MD, MPH (Cedars-Sinai) joins Medicare Advantage insurer SCAN Group as its first chief innovation officer, where he will launch its geriatric primary care medical group.

Shayna Schulz (Blue Shield of California) joins Grand Rounds Health and Doctor on Demand as COO.

Announcements and Implementations

Illinois Bone & Joint Institute begins implementing Epic at its facilities in Illinois and Indiana.

McLaren Health Care implements Medi+Sign’s automated patient communication technology across its network in Michigan and Ohio.

Covenant Health rolls out tele-ICU services at its facilities in Tennessee using technology from Hicuity Health.

InterSystems develops HealthShare Message Transformation Service, enabling users to convert existing data formats to FHIR standards to populate Amazon HealthLake.

Amazon’s AWS machine learning blog profiles Medhost’s migration of all its data to AWS to provide patient access and to support advanced analytics and compliance needs. 

Wolters Kluwer announces EmmiEducate, which delivers patient educational material.

Other

JAMA-published research finds that medical debt is the largest source of debt in collections in the US, now totaling $140 billion from the 18% of Americans who hold medical debt that has gone to collection. Total medical debt is likely larger since hospitals are increasingly suing patients rather than selling their debt to collections agencies at a discount. The total also does not include balances owed on credit cards or payment plans. Medical debt is increasing faster in the 12 states that do not participate in the ACA’s Medicaid expansion program (AL, FL, GA, KS, MS, NC, SC, SD, TN, TX, WI, WY).

And EHR trigger analysis of the VA’s corporate data warehouse finds that nearly one-third of patients who were admitted for stroke had been discharged from the ED with seemingly benign headache or dizziness in the previous 30 days. The authors approached the study not to prove the existence or extent of diagnostic errors, but rather to (a) highlight the need to validate the data that appears to prove such problems for such issues as miscoding; and (b) use it as a springboard for reviewing ED workflow and clinician diagnostic methods to reduce future harm from missed diagnoses.

Sponsor Updates

• InterSystems and University Hospital Sharjah celebrate a decade of successful partnerships for digital transformation.
• Infor and Change Healthcare announce their support for the AWS for Health initiative.
• Kyruus describes the use of its ProviderMatch platform by AtlantiCare (NJ).
• Diameter Health has been selected by AWS as a Connector Partner for Amazon HealthLake.
• CereCore welcomes Michael Gagnon (NTT Data) as its first Enterprise Fellow.
• Diameter Health publishes a case study featuring HealtheConnections, “Improving Ambulatory Clinical Quality Measurement Using a Consolidated Patient View.”
• The Lifelong Customer Podcast features Dimensional Insight VP of Marketing Kathy Sucich.
• Elsevier Clinical Solutions releases a new Clinical Insights Podcast, “How Well are COVID-19 Vaccines Working in the Real World?”
• Experian Health announces that its Enterprise Health Patient Identifier Solution and Hospital Claims Management Systems have been deemed top-rated solutions in Black Book’s 2021 “Top Client-Rated Financial Solutions Achieving Accelerated Digital Transformation in the Nation’s Healthcare Systems.”
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “How Population Health Solutions Improve Patient Outcomes and Experiences.”

Blog Posts

• How a family medicine practice protected revenue and served more patients with telehealth (Ability Network)
• What are the economics of remote patient monitoring for your practice? (AdvancedMD)
• Acquire and Secure Medical Images with Mobile Devices (Agfa HealthCare)
• Disaster Preparedness: How Ready Are We for Hurricane Season? (Audacious Inquiry)
• Understanding First Call Resolution and what it means for your healthcare system’s bottom line (Bluetree)
• Pre- and Post-Pandemic: Comparing SNF Quality Ratings (CarePort)
• Advancing health equity: Understanding and meeting the challenges with data (Cerner)
• Reining in Costs by Closing Care Gaps: Next Steps for Payers (Collective Medical)
• Reimagining Healthcare Technology at NCPDP 2021 (CoverMyMeds)
• Insights from the Inside: CHIME Members Discuss the Future of Managed Services (Cumberland Consulting Group)
• Winning the Medical Information Game (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/19/21

Top News

The New York Times says that IBM Watson failed to achieve its goals to transform industries and make IBM successful. It says that Watson’s capabilities were oversold by IBM’s top executives – mostly former sales and services people – who ignored the warnings of the company’s scientists that it was a one-trick pony that was built purely to win “Jeopardy.”

The article notes that Watson’s healthcare “moon shot” failed in multiple health systems, as the technology was not capable of performing real-time cancer diagnosis or smart literature searches. IBM has discontinued its genomics and oncology offerings after they failed in high-profile health systems.

IBM’s Watson Health business spent $4 billion to acquire Merge Healthcare, Phytel, Explorys, and Truven Health Analytics. The company is reportedly considering selling those businesses as it lags competitors in cloud computing. Watson Health is reportedly bringing in $1 billion in annual revenue but still loses money.

NYT says Watson is “a sobering example of the pitfalls of technological hype and hubris around AI,” but says the technology has improved to the point that it can manage workhorse natural language tasks as offered by IBM’s cloud competitors, such as task automation and virtual assistants.

Reader Comments

From He’s Not Here: “Re: remote patient monitoring. Doesn’t that term contain a bit of geographic paternalism?” It does. Healthcare was historically built around the “my patients come to where I am” model, where other than for the rare house call, the provider has always sat in their building and waited for people in need to show up. I would say that in itself is not paternalistic since it’s no different than any other retail or professional business that doesn’t involve services that are provided in the home or on the road, but the idea that a patient is “remote” begs the question, remote from what? It’s the same as “after hours” care – after whose hours? Still, while some monitoring could be performed regardless of patient location, the capability must exist to react to it by dispatching humans, and that’s a last-mile problem for many patients, especially when health systems and the emergency services providers who have boots on the ground are almost always disconnected and sometimes competitive.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents presume that information blocking exists when Epic-using providers in the same area aren’t sharing patient data. My opinion is that we know that most EHRs can exchange patient data – as evidenced by at least one client of each vendor who is actually doing it – so ONC should focus on eliminating the “we weren’t aware” provider excuse via outreach and setting patient expectations to increase interoperability demand.

New poll to your right or here: Which tech company will have the most impact on US healthcare in five years? I will leave it up to respondents to define “healthcare impact.”

Dear companies – while I appreciate the option to engage with your website chatbot even though I can’t imagine a situation in which I would actually do so, please do not make it beep at me, especially every time I navigate to a new page of your site. That’s not exactly a testament to your software usability expertise.

We’re doing some pre-HIMSS summer slacking off around here lately. Jenn was vacating last week so we posted few sponsor updates, while I was day-tripping with Mrs. HIStalk Friday and elected to skip writing the Weekender. It feels good to have places to go and things to do after losing last summer to hunkering down, but sometimes having so many options available again makes me anxious that I’ll miss something.

Webinars

July 28 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Stop running from your problem (list): Strategies for streamlining the EHR’s front page.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, CMIO Services LLC; James Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. How can clinicians mitigate the longstanding EHR problem list challenges of outdated or duplicative entries, rigid displays, and limited native EHR capabilities? The presenters will describe how to analyze current problems, create a problem list governance strategy, and measure improvement progress.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

OM1, which offers chronic disease registries and real-world data, raises $85 million in financing.

Sales

• Baystate Health (MA) expands its Cerner implementation with HealtheIntent for its physician organization and unspecified revenue cycle solutions.  

People

Gary Christoph, PhD died earlier this month of Parkinson’s Disease at 76. He spent time as CIO of HCFA (now CMS), leading it through Y2K and cybersecurity and writing many of the regulations contained in HIPAA. He also led IT for NIH and Northrop Grumman’s healthcare IT group.

Government and Politics

The Senate confirms Donald Remy, JD as VA deputy secretary, its second-highest official. He will take charge of the VA’s Cerner project. Remy, who was confirmed in a 91-8 vote, is an Army veteran and COO / chief legal officer of NCAA.

A patient advocacy group’s review of the websites of 500 hospitals finds that 471 have not posted their prices as required by federal transparency rules that took effect January 1. The group says the $300 per day penalty should be increased.

Other

A JAMA Network Open article suggests that physicians avoid the use of “stigmatizing language” in their notes since patients may see them. The authors suggest avoiding language that questions patient credibility, indicates disapproval, stereotypes race or social class, indicates that the patient is difficult, or that conveys a paternalistic tone.

Three weeks before HIMSS21, the COVID-19 resurgence in Las Vegas causes the Venetian, Palazzo, and Sands to once again require their employees to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status. The health district is also recommending that everyone wear masks while indoors, advice that will surely be ignored by 99.5% of visitors. The Nevada Gaming Control Board has not re-imposed casino masking policies so far. The HIMSS21 “no masks required” policy remains aligned with CDC and county recommendations since all attendees must be vaccinated. COVID-19 case counts, positivity rates, and hospitalizations in Southern Nevada have returned to February levels, with 78% of those new cases being accounted for by Clark County. More than half of the state’s residents have not been fully vaccinated. The situation is so significant that the public health chief of Los Angeles has advised locals, especially those who are unvaccinated, to avoid travel to Las Vegas.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• A Revenue Cycle Guide for Private Equity Firms in Healthcare (RCx Rules)
• 10 Key Facts Hospitals Should Know About Denials in 2021 (Vyne Medical)

Contacts

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

News 7/16/21

Top News

VA Secretary Denis McDonough tells the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee that he is putting the VA’s Cerner implementation on hold. This follows completion of a three-month project review that found serious “governance and management challenges.”

McDonough says that the VA’s first implementation at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center (WA) in October 2020 did not live up to its promise of “seamless excellence in VA care,” adding that the report found “numerous patient safety concerns and system errors” as well as significant negative impact on productivity.

McDonough said he commissioned the review after hearing firsthand about duplicated prescriptions at Mann-Grandstaff and a user’s complaint that a Cerner help desk employee was unable to answer a user’s questions because he had just one week’s experience. He added that clinicians tell him that most of the integration between the respective Cerner systems of the VA and DoD happens inside their heads, not on their computers.

McDonough vowed to improve training and testing, to increase its oversight of Cerner, and to make leadership changes to get the project back on track. He also says the original plan to roll out Cerner by geographic area was a mistake and scheduling of go-lives will now be based on evidence of readiness.

The cost of the project, which was originally estimated at $10 billion when Cerner was awarded a no-bid contract in 2017, has risen to over $20 billion. McDonough has ordered a new budget estimate for the entire project, which will include the several billion dollars of infrastructure upgrades that the original estimate missed.

Committee chair Senator Jon Tester (D-MT) told the group, “I’ve had the impression for some time there are folks out there milking the cow. Every day they go out and they see this cash cow, and they’re getting every dime they can get out of it. There’s been damn little accountability. I hope Cerner’s watching this. Cerner’s not up to making a user-friendly electronic medical record, and in fact what’s transpired here is we’re going in the opposite direction, then they ought to admit it and give us the money back so we can start over.”

McDonough identified specific project issues:

• The VA lacks a specific definition of a patient safety issue and how to manage open issues.
• The decrease in productivity includes problems in revenue cycle, where much of the claims and payments process requires manual entry.
• Cost estimates did not include any issues beyond the Cerner contract, infrastructure readiness, and the project management offices.
• The VA did not create key performance indicators.
• The patient portal experience was fragmented, leading the VA to study the user experience to support “decisions on the future of the portal” that takes legal and contractual obligations into account.
• Testing did not reflect real-world workflow.

Also offering testimony to the committee was Ellkay Chief Innovation Officer Marc Probst, MBA, who described the rollout of Cerner at Intermountain Healthcare when he was CIO and the keys to a successful EHR implementation. He responded to a question about what Congress should expect by urging clear goals, reductions in support tickets and complaints over time, and performance against real milestones. Asked if anything stood out for immediate action, Probst recommendation resetting expectations against original and current requirements and reviewing detailed project work plan milestones.

Reader Comments

From Rashaverak: “Re: Woman’s Hospital, Baton Rouge. This is the first I’ve heard that the sheer cost of an EHR implementation is driving a hospital’s business strategy, essentially forcing it into an affiliation or merger because it can’t afford its EHR of choice. It must be a record for Epic if the hospital’s stated cost is indeed $200 million over seven years – has Epic no shame for pricing the system at 10% of the 168-bed hospital’s total expense? That kind of pricing will keep Meditech and Allscripts around and makes the $1.2 billion that Partners spent over 10 years look like a bargain. Isn’t the goal of IT to bend the cost downward instead of upward?”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor VitalTech. The Plano, TX-based company offers more than telehealth. More than RPM. More than population health. VitalTech is the nation’s first fully integrated virtual care platform. The company develops technologies, platforms, and hardware that empower patients to better care for their health and wellness while enabling clinicians and health systems to remotely monitor, manage, and care for patients. Its integrated digital health platform, VitalCare, aggregates and contextualizes critical data that is collected from multiple devices, EHRs, and third-party sources. Data is then pushed via the VitalCare cloud to user apps, family connection apps, care teams apps, administrative web portals, and third-party integrations in real time so actionable insights can be made. The solution enables health systems, physicians, payers, employers, senior living facilities, skilled nursing facilities, and home health providers to streamline workflows while improving health outcomes, increasing patient safety, and lowering the cost of care. The suite includes easy-to-use devices and software that increase patient engagement and compliance. Thanks to VitalTech for supporting HIStalk.

VitalTech sent over a link to this intro video and client testimonial. Holy Name Medical Center CEO Michael Maron movingly describes how contracting COVID-19 and then infecting his own family was a “burden I’ll have to bear for the rest of my life,” but he says that being monitored by VitalTech’s system at least allowed them to recover at home.

Listening: old Genesis, which I didn’t follow until pandemic times. “Firth of Fifth” and “Supper’s Ready” are as good as music gets to my ear, and while I can’t abide the treacly 1980s hits of Phil Collins, he spent the late 1970s effortlessly backing and then leading a band of individual musical geniuses by drumming the most complex time signatures imaginable. Genesis wrote and played their best music, which I predict will be as timeless as Beethoven, in their late teens and early 20s.

I’m jealous of people starting new jobs who post photos on LinkedIn of the cool company swag that was waiting at their desk on their first office day. I don’t think I ever got anything when I took a new health system job.

It’s about time to post my HIMSS21 guide describing what HIStalk sponsors will be doing there, so submit your information this week. I’ve received submissions from 19 companies, including two who aren’t actually sponsors and thus will be regretfully unrepresented.

Webinars

July 28 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Stop running from your problem (list): Strategies for streamlining the EHR’s front page.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, CMIO Services LLC; James Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. How can clinicians mitigate the longstanding EHR problem list challenges of outdated or duplicative entries, rigid displays, and limited native EHR capabilities? The presenters will describe how to analyze current problems, create a problem list governance strategy, and measure improvement progress.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare payments software vendor Waystar will acquire Patientco, whose technology includes patient payments, communications, and engagement.

Bloomberg reports that the private equity owner of healthcare payments analytics vendor Cotiviti is considering an IPO that would value the company at $15 billion.

Sales

• MedStar Health chooses oncology data and analytics vendor COTA to support cancer research and care.
• An unnamed drug company will use OptimizeRx’s platform to offer physicians choices when their Medicare patients risk treatment lapse due to loss of coverage.
• Blessing Hospital (IL) selects CarePort Interop to allow it to meet CMS event notification requirements.

People

Frank Nydam, MBA (VMware) joins Tausight as chief development officer.

Glytec hires Scott Bettner, MS (Hillrom) as regional VP. 

Announcements and Implementations

Non-invasive digital sensor developer Rockley Photonics announces plans for trials of “clinic on the wrist,” a combination of hardware, firmware, and cloud analytics that measures biomarkers such as body temperature, blood pressure, hydration levels, and measures of blood alcohol, lactate and glucose. The company hopes to complete testing and release the product for commercial use next year. The company is about to go public via a SPAC merger.

Amazon announces AWS for Health, a set of services and partner solutions for healthcare, genomics, and biopharma.

Applied behavior analysis EHR vendor CentralReach acquires Behavior Analysts, Inc., which offers an ABA assessment system.

Amazon Web Services selects Diameter Health as a Connecter Partner for Amazon HealthLake.

OSF HealthCare opens its OSF OnCall Digital Health building at its headquarters in Peoria, IL. Capabilities of the “virtual hospital” include remote patient monitoring, fall prevent innovations, virtual nurse triaging, ICU monitoring, and monitoring 40 telehealth carts.

A KLAS report on cardiology systems says that no individual offering stands out, as organizations have pieced together multiple systems but are re-evaluating as part of their enterprising imaging strategy. Most often considered are Philips, IBM Watson Health, and Fujifilm, while Epic is often chosen as part of its product suite even though it lacks a cardiology archive and offers weak structured reporting.

Government and Politics

ONC hopes to have the Trusted Exchange Framework and Common Agreement (TEFCA) network open for participation in the first quarter of 2022.

The companies contracted by ONC to develop draft EHR Reporting Program developer measures seek feedback by September 14, 2021.

Other

In Ireland, people complain that their names are misspelled on their government-issued COVID-19 digital travel certificates and worry that the mismatch will prevent them from boarding flights, which the government says is due to hospital, doctor, and pharmacy systems that can’t handle language-specific punctuation and characters such as the fada.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Step Back To Move Forward on Interoperability (Cumberland)
• 5 Signs you Need a Managed Services Partner (Optimum Healthcare IT)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
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News 7/14/21

Top News

ONC releases USCDI v2, which provides interoperability standards for the optional exchange of social determinants of health, sexual orientation, and gender identity.  

Reader Comments

From Shoot the Messenger RNA: “Re: post-COVID hospitalization. This is interesting work using Epic Cosmos.” A study of 8.6 million vaccinated patients using Epic’s Cosmos customer data set finds that only 0.049% tested positive afterward and just 0.018% (1,600 people) were hospitalized for COVID-19 after being fully vaccinated. Also interesting is that the study was performed  as a Dual Team Study as defined by Epic Health Research Network, where two groups are assigned the same study, work independently, and then present their work only if their conclusions are the same. Another EHRN study I noticed while looking up the first one found that most adults didn’t experience a significant weight change during the pandemic, and nearly as many patients lost weight as gained weight. These types of studies have limitations, however – they cover only patients of Epic users and researchers can see only the information that resides in Epic. The first study must have determined vaccination status as reported by patients since many or most health system patients would not have received their vaccinations from a hospital, while the second study is limited by definition to patients who had an encounter in which their weight was captured. Just about all of our inferential research data sources are imperfect due to lack of data sharing, the presence of valuable information only in freetext form, and the unreliable proxy of using billing codes to infer clinical status and activities.

From Conference Confrere: “Re: HIMSS21. Will I wish I was leaving early if attendance or energy is down?” Maybe, which is why I booked a flight out Thursday night instead of Friday morning, limiting my time in Las Vegas to three nights. I left my hotel reservation for four nights, figuring that will allow me a more leisurely departure for my red-eye flight late Thursday. But I may find that I’ve seen everything interesting in the first couple of days and end up just hanging around. Meanwhile, Las Vegas and Clark County are experiencing a mini-outbreak of COVID-19, with 1,600 new cases over the weekend, an 11% test positivity rate, and the lagging indicator of hospital admissions going up. Nevada’s vaccination rate is under 50%, visitors from everywhere are packing casinos and restaurants unmasked and undistanced, and you’ll struggle to avoid potential exposure outside the HIMSS21 protective bubble if that even works. US cases are up 94% in the past two weeks.

From Pinhead: ”Re: company pins. I’m seeing a resurgence of those lapel adorners.” Me too, even though I never understood why people would so deeply identify with the faceless company that sends them paychecks that they would be bursting to tell the uninterested world. It is fascinating to me that people who claim to be fiercely independent free thinkers pigeonhole themselves publicly by wearing garb that provides free advertising for their favorite employer, political cause, or sports team, encouraging the world to ignore everything else about them. Mrs. HIStalk reminds me that people who ask “what do you do” are really asking “what’s your job, so I can stereotype you” so they can avoid considering you to be something more than your job, so I suppose wearing a company lapel pin makes the impersonality more efficient. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Mach7 Technologies. The South Burlington, VT company’s philosophy is based on a simple premise: legacy radiology solutions were not designed to carry healthcare organizations into the future. From its first line of code, its solutions were designed to meet the imaging needs of the entire healthcare enterprise. Its data management, workflow, enterprise and diagnostic viewing, teleradiology, PACS, mammography, and other solutions are focused on integration, workflow, scalability, and performance to ensure that imaging data can be made available wherever it is needed. Mach7 is focused on the future of healthcare. It gives healthcare organizations unprecedented technology independence and flexibility to deploy its solutions according to their needs, whether in their individual components or unified into a comprehensive end-to-end enterprise imaging platform. Its solutions bridge an organization’s legacy solutions to meet the full spectrum of multi-disciplinary imaging needs, and position them to grow, adapt, and innovate. The company’s unique approach to enterprise imaging empowers healthcare organizations of all sizes to increase their efficiency, achieve profound operational cost savings, leverage their existing IT investments, improve the experience for patients and medical professionals, and support healthier outcomes. Stop by booth #4243 at HIMSS21 to learn more. Thanks to Mach7 Technologies for supporting HIStalk.

The Clear Health Pass app – required for attending HIMSS21 – is still showing “pending verification” of my COVID-19 vaccination card, which I had to submit as a photo since by provider wasn’t listed for a direct connection. Beats me whether it will get me into the conference.

I’m watching the slow but perhaps inevitable morphing of LinkedIn into Facebook (perhaps intentionally) as I’m getting force-fed more posts about politics, lame philosophical manifestos, sports, and personal and family bragging. I can always unfollow or mute someone, but I’m wondering if the folks who “like” one of those non-business posts or add a comment to them realize that the feeds of their connections are then polluted with unwanted junk?

Webinars

July 28 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Stop running from your problem (list): Strategies for streamlining the EHR’s front page.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, CMIO Services LLC; James Thompson, MD, physician informaticist, IMO. How can clinicians mitigate the longstanding EHR problem list challenges of outdated or duplicative entries, rigid displays, and limited native EHR capabilities? The presenters will describe how to analyze current problems, create a problem list governance strategy, and measure improvement progress.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Recently formed Truveta, whose health system members sell their de-identified patient data to drug companies and providers, raises $95 million in a Series A funding round. The company announced new members Baylor Scott & White Health, MedStar Health, and Texas Health Resources.

Israel-based medical imaging AI vendor Aidoc raises $66 million in a Series C funding round.

Health IT services firm HCTec acquires managed IT solutions company Talon Healthy IT Services, which offers healthcare help desk services.

Healthcare analytics vendor VisiQuate raises a $50 million equity investment.

Harris acquires long-term and post-acute care software vendor ADL Data Systems, which it will combine with its Collain Healthcare LTPAC EHR business.  

CrossBridge, which offers technologies that address the cost and outcomes of treating patients who have chronic inflammatory diseases, acquires the PACER rheumatology disease management software from its developer Geisinger.

Sales

• UNC Health will deploy the radiology module of Sectra’s enterprise imaging solution, integrated with Epic and replacing several legacy vendors.
• Stamford Health will implement the Route solution of Appriss Health-owned PatientPing for sending ADT event notifications.

People

Olive promotes Rohan D’Souza to chief product officer.

Meditech officially confirms the months-ago promotion of President and COO Michelle O’Connor to president and CEO. She replaces Howard Messing, who remains on the company’s board.

Cerner SVP of Client Relationships Ben Hilmes, MHA joins Adventist Health as SVP / chief integration officer.

David Butler, MD (Calyx Partners) joins The Chartis Group as principal, informatics and technology.

Sonifi Health hires Mark Dyer (DaytoDay Health) as SVP of sales.

Leidos promotes James Perea, MBA to VP of VA health solutions.

Glytec promotes Jordan Messler, MD to chief medical officer.

Glenn Keet (Clinithink) joins Ciitizen as VP of HIE strategy.

Tegria promotes Justin Jozwik of its Bluetree Network business to managing director, international.

Riverside Healthcare (IL) hires Kirk Larson, MHSA, MBA (Rochester Regional Health) as VP/CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Holy Name Medical Center’s ED goes live on Holy Name’s self-developed EHR, which is powered by Medicomp’s Quippe Clinical Data Engine. They will demonstrate the system at HIMSS21.

HealthShare Exchange and Audacious Inquiry extend the ENShare encounter notification service outside the HSX network in the Philadelphia area.

Patient transport software vendor Cheyenne Mountain Software renames itself to Motient.

KLAS’s first report on healthcare’s use of public cloud providers covers Amazon Web Services, with 11 responding organizations saying that AWS has saved them time and/or money. Respondents say that AWS offers strong product quality and development, but less-effective service and support, mostly waiting for customers to proactively engage rather than reaching out to them. Click the graphic above to see KLAS’s nicely done framework for healthcare cloud solutions. Future reports will address Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure.  

Other

Stat covers the sharp drop in telehealth visits as state emergency declarations expire and insurers phase out coverage. The article notes that as doctors are once again being prohibited from conducting virtual visits for patients who are located in states where they aren’t licensed, some of the doctors are asking their patients participate in a virtual visit by driving across the state line to the first available retail store parking lot. Providers favor a telemedicine-only national license that would allow doctors to care for established patients regardless of that patient’s location.

Hospitals sue the manufacturer of the Da Vinci surgical robot for forcing them to purchase maintenance services and replacement parts at inflated prices that generate the bulk of Intuitive Surgical’s $4 billion in annual revenue. Company engineers have threatened hospitals that they will turn their expensive machines into “paperweights” if they buy parts or services from competitors, while one hospital says the company remotely shut down a machine in the middle of a surgery upon hearing that the hospital was talking to a third party about a service contract. Intuitive Surgical’s market cap is $113 billion despite a lack of evidence that machine-assisted surgeries deliver better outcomes. Axios reporter Bob Herman notes that the lawsuit is “one monopoly fighting another.”

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Use Personal Referrals to Boost Your Network and Build Your Career (Healthcare IT Leaders)

Contacts

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