News 10/7/20

Top News

Harris acquires Australia-based Meridian Health Informatics, which offers maternity and clinical solutions.

Harris says its strategic growth plan calls for more acquisitions in Australia.

Canada-based N. Harris Computer Corporation, which operates as Harris under Constellation Software, operates 18 acquired health IT brands that include Amazing Charts, Iatric Systems, IMDSoft, Picis, and QuadraMed.

Reader Comments

From Pointy Skull: “Re: health IT podcasts and video versions of podcasts. Can you review this one?” I could, but I’m a written word, short attention span kind of guy who values conciseness and weeding out pointless fluff and would thus vastly prefer a skimmable transcript or excerpted high points (if, indeed there were any). Podcasts and videos are fine for entertainment or where a picture is worth 1,000 words, but just watching an undisciplined and / or un-insightful presenter rambling away on a screen drives me crazy. But then again, I’m often critical of industry folk whose books, presentations, or writings seem to fall short on either effort or ability.

From Usurious Rates: “Re: Hims and other vanity prescription-writing companies. Are they telehealth?” They don’t seem like it to me. Companies that sell prescription-only products related to hormones, sex, hair, or skincare by hiring doctors as prescription-writing robots are just exploiting human weaknesses — impatience, vanity, and embarrassment — in allowing customers eschew actual medical advice in favor of getting a quick prescription for whatever they’ve decided they want. I bet 98% of people who are “evaluated” by these sites end up with a prescription that creates no harm, raising the question of why the drug is prescription-only in the first place. I’m really skeptical about Hims getting into the anxiety and depression telehealth business.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

RIP rock legend Eddie Van Halen, who died of cancer Tuesday morning at 65.

Webinars

October 28 (Wednesday) noon ET: “How to Build a Data-Driven Organization.” Sponsor: Newfire Global Partners. Presenters: Chris Donovan, CEO and founder, Adaptive Product Consulting; Harvard Pan, CTO, Diameter Health; Jason Sroka, chief analytics officer, SmartSense by Digi; Jaya Plmanabhan, data scientist and senior advisor, Newfire Global Partners; Nicole Hale, head of marketing services, Newfire Global Partners. The panel of data experts will discuss the opportunities that data can unlock and the challenges involved with becoming a data-driven organization. Attendees will learn why having a data strategy is important; how to collect, manage, and share data with internal and external audiences; and how to combat internal resistance to create a data-driven culture.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Rock Health’s latest analysis shows that 2020 is already the largest funding year ever for digital health, with $4 billion invested in startups during Q3, for a total thus far of $9.4 billion. On-demand healthcare services like telemedicine, prescription delivery, and at-home urgent care have seen the most attention, with 48 deals totaling $2 billion.

Medicare insurance plan operator Clover Health will go public through a merger with Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings, giving it a valuation of $3.7 billion. The company, which also offers clinical decision support software, inked a deal with Walmart Health last week to offer its Medicare Advantage plans to patients in Georgia.

Sales

• The Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP), Maryland’s statewide HIE, selects patient engagement technology — including secure access to COVID-19 testing results — from Get Real Health.

People

Remote patient monitoring company WithMyDoc hires Frank Astor, MD (Naples Community Hospital Healthcare System) as chief medical officer.

Shandy Guharoy (Evolent Health) joins healthcare and social services referral software vendor Unite Us as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

New Jersey Urology becomes the first large, independent urology group to implement Epic.

San Luis Valley Health (CO) implements Meditech with consulting help from Engage.

Phelps Health (MO) rolls out Epic.

A new KLAS report on team-shared mobile devices for nurses and other care team members finds that hospitals like the IPhone because it is solid and integrates will with Epic, Meditech, and Mobile Heartbeat; the ruggedized Zebra TC51-HC is heavy and expensive but allows hot-swapping batteries and can be used for barcode scanning and taking photos; and the Vocera Smartbadge has very strong software and security that is used primarily for push-to-talk conversations and texting. Spectralink and Ascom have not been able to regain the market share they lost from their early devices that were heavy and featured small screens.

Government and Politics

Defense Health Agency Director Lieutenant General Ron Place congratulates sites in California and Nevada on their MHS Genesis go-lives, part of the DoD’s Wave Nellis launch in late September. The next wave of go-lives – the department’s third – will happen next month.

COVID-19

The White House rejects the FDA’s higher standards for the safety and effectiveness of a COVID-19 vaccine after it says drug companies complained and the new standards would delay release until after Election Day. FDA says it has not heard those concerns from drug companies and all but one of the companies in the vaccine race have expressed their support for FDA’s guidance in the interest of bolstering public confidence. Pfizer’s CEO went on record Tuesday morning as saying the company has not discussed FDA’s guidelines with the White House. FDA says it will move ahead with the stricter standards. UPDATE: the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday afternoon that the White House has dropped its objections and will sign off on FDA’s toughened guidelines that call for companies to monitor recipients for two months before requesting FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization.

CDC republishes its previously withdrawn warning that coronavirus can spread via airborne droplets at distances greater than six feet and linger in the air for minutes or hours, especially in poorly ventilated areas. It stresses, however, that most spread occurs from close contact with someone who is infected. The information was accidentally published to CDC’s website a few weeks ago before it had been approved and was then removed.

The White House will not perform contact tracing on attendees of the Rose Garden celebration 10 days ago that has infected at least eight people. Meanwhile, New Jersey health officials scramble to perform contact tracing of the 206 people who attended President Trump’s fundraiser at his golf club there on Thursday, for whom the Republican National Committee provided only email addresses without phone numbers or physical addresses. That event was held after White House aide Hope Hicks had tested positive, meaning everyone who had been in close contact with her for more than 15 minutes should have been self-isolating for 14 days.

Public Health England’s use of Microsoft Excel for COVID-19 test results compilation causes 16,000 cases to go unreported. PHE’s developers chose the old .XLS file format (which was replaced by .XLSX in 2007) for converting the CSV files of commercial labs, unaware that its limit of 65,536 rows would allow a single file to truncate rows after hitting around 1,400 cases.

Salesforce announces Work.com for Vaccines, and end-to-end vaccine management system for governments and healthcare organizations that includes a public health command center, inventory management, appointment scheduling, outcome monitoring, and public health notifications.

Other

Universal Health Services confirms it has completed the recovery process for servers at its corporate data center, and that all of its US-based inpatient facilities have been reconnected. The company was the victim of a cyberattack last week that impacted all 250 of its US facilities.

A former New York City hospital IT employee is sentenced to 30 months in prison for installing a keylogger program on the computers of 70 workers, most of them female, to steal the login credentials for password-protected personal accounts, photos, documents, and tax records. The unnamed hospital spent $350,000 to remediate the resulting network damage.

Sponsor Updates

• The local news features CI Security’s Drex Deford’s analysis of the Universal Healthcare Systems breach.
• Frost & Sullivan recognizes CoverMyMeds with its 2020 North American Product Leadership Award for Prior Authorization Solutions.
• TransformativeMed will combine its clinical communication and collaboration software with clinical decision support from Crossings Healthcare Solutions.
• Business Group on Health honors Cerner with its Helen Darling Award for Excellence in Health Care Value and Innovation.
• Elsevier Senior Director for Scientific Services for R&D Solutions Matthew Clark wins bronze in the VHA Innovation Ecosystem and precision FDA COVID-19 Risk Factor Modeling Challenge.
• Everbridge announces the 4^th Annual Critical Event Management Impact Awards recognized the innovative use of its technology for mitigating the impact of COVID-19 and other crises in 2020.
• Registration is now open for Experity’s Virtual User Experience half-day conference on October 15.

Blog Posts

• Interoperability for the 21st Century Cures Act Era (314e)
• All claims management isn’t created equal: what you should know (Ability Network)
• Reflections on the History of the Patient Unified Lookup System for Emergencies (PULSE) (Audacious Inquiry)
• The Impact of COVID-19 on Hospital Readmissions (CarePort Health)
• Meditech Patient Portal: Are you missing out on engagement tools you already own? (CereCore)
• Leveraging Real-Time Data to Reduce Unnecessary ED Utilization (Collective Medical)
• Community Partnerships Enrich Student Learning (CoverMyMeds)
• Reflections on the Virtual St. Jude Walk/Run Boston 2020 (Dimensional Insight)
• Cerner is Advancing the Health Care Data Revolution (Cerner)
• Meet the Dina Team at HLTH! (Dina)
• Surviving COVID-19: Telehealth and Beyond (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 10/5/20

Top News

Meditech will end its status as an SEC public reporting company by running a reverse stock split that will allow it to de-register its shares.

Shareholders with fewer than 5,000 shares will be paid out at $45 per share to reduce the shareholder count to under 300, which will allow the company to take itself private.

Meditech says that its public reporting status benefits its competitors, incurs costs, and provides little benefit since its shares are not traded on any public market.

More than 1,500 current and former shareholders will receive a cash buy-back that ends their company ownership and will trigger capital gains taxes.

Neil Pappalardo controls 45% of the company‘s shares, both his own $450 million worth as well as another $308 million worth that he votes as the sole trustee of the company’s profit sharing trust.

Shareholders will vote on the proposal, but board members have unanimously approved it and own enough shares to ensure its passage.  

Reader Comments

From Sea Legs: “Re: Allscripts. Another big round of layoffs, restructuring and realigning regions yet again, and rumors that some products will be sold off.“ Unverified, but reported by several people claiming to be employees on TheLayoff.com. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents who have experienced pandemic-driven job changes most often report seeing decreased compensation or benefits, but quite a few have changed jobs and a good number saw their compensation and/or benefits improved or were promoted. I didn’t offer a “no change” option because I was interested in the changes rather than the percentage who have or have not experienced them.

New poll to your right or here: what is your most valued use of LinkedIn? I only use it to verify the job title, job history, and educational credentials of someone I’m writing about or to grab their headshot, but lately Microsoft seems to be attempting to turn it into a businessperson’s Facebook, a place where overly aggressive salespeople are unleashed to pester strangers with boilerplate pitches, and a publishing site for articles of sometimes questionable quality.

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

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

StayWell, which includes Krames patient education solutions and the StayWell employee health platform, renames itself to Krames. The company was acquired by Internet Brands, which owns WebMD and Medscape, from drug maker Merck in March 2020.

Four health IT companies are acquired by private equity firm The Carlyle Group and will operate under the single brand of CorroHealth – TrustHCS (coding services), Visionary RCM (coding services), T-System (emergency documentation technology), and RevCycle+ (coding solutions). The SEO will be Patrick Leonard, MBA, who spent several years at McKesson before moving into health IT investment.

Virgin Pulse announces Winter ‘20, a program for health plan members and employees of client companies that will provide connections to Apple Health and Google Fit, health incentives, AI-powered member interaction and recommendations, next-best-action wellbeing tools, and a partner ecosystem. It will also help users manage their health benefits, offers evidence-based programs for weight management and pre-diabetes, and provides health content.

Shares in the Global X Telemedicine & Digital Health exchange-traded fund (EDOC) rose 3.3% in the past month versus the Nasdaq’s loss of 1.1% and the S&P 500’s loss of 2.1%.

Government and Politics

The VA tells a House subcommittee that it is considering retiring the My HealtheVet portal in favor of Cerner’s MyVAHealth, but that move would cost $60 to $300 million since it isn’t included in its Cerner contract. The VA will initially run the two portals in parallel, with Spokane-area veterans getting the Cerner portal by default after the Cerner go-live there this month, while all others will continue to access MyHealtheVet. 

Former venture capital executive David Wagner, who received loans and grants from Connecticut’s economic development agency while he was facing fraud allegations in other states, pleads guilty to securities fraud and wire fraud charges in a plea deal. The state’s money was given to CliniFlow, a company that Wagner controlled that he said would move three medical technology startups to a building owned by Hartford Hospital in a $45 million project that would create 195 jobs. Prosecutors say it was a Ponzi-like scheme in which money from new investors was used to pay off previous investors or to pay Wagner’s personal expenses. The startups were SpearFysh, Vox MediData, and 3si Systems.

COVID-19

HHS issues a second $10 million contract to TeleTracking Technologies for its HHS Protect COVID-19 hospital data collection system, even as Congressional committees are investigating the circumstances under which the company was awarded the no-bid first contract. The next $10 million contract extension is due in March.

Regeneron presents the first results from early studies of its monoclonal antibody cocktail three days before the product was administered to President Trump. The placebo-controlled trial of 275 asymptomatic to moderately ill people found that the drug has little effect on those who have measurable coronavirus antibodies, but it reduces viral loads and symptoms in those who don’t. Eli Lilly reported similar results two weeks ago from testing of its single-monoclonal antibody, also reporting since its study is further along that it reduced hospitalizations and ED visits. Regeneron says patients should be screened for virus levels and antibodies to decide whether to use its product, while Lilly thinks theirs should be offered to all patients who are high risk because they are elderly, have diabetes, or are overweight. 

Public health experts question the White House’s sole reliance on Abbott’s quick COVID-19 test as protection, in which event attendees who tested negative are told that masks and distancing are unnecessary. Abbott’s ID Now test has not been approved as a surveillance tool because of limited sensitivity that can give false negative results, with FDA’s emergency use authorization covering only people with symptoms. Quarantining was not done by the President and staffers, who traveled to public events after the known positive test result of Hope Hicks, while Attorney General Bill Barr, Vice-President Pence, and other White House and campaign officials say they won’t quarantine even now despite CDC recommendations. CDC guidelines call for a 14-day isolation period for anyone who has come in contact with someone who is known to be positive, regardless of the results of their own test or lack of symptoms. Minnesota’s three Republican congressmen flew home on a Delta flight Friday night in violation of Delta’s post-exposure policies.

Other

India’s recently announced National Digital Health Mission will provide each citizen with a national health ID card that is tied to an account that will eventually include their complete medical record from all providers and serve as a research database, but experts wonder how many hospitals (especially private ones) will participate in the voluntary information-sharing program. They suggest that the country follow the models of Thailand and India, whose digital platform integrates with private health services but is deployed at the district rather than national level to keep participant counts per system at a reasonable several million.

Clinical trials software vendor EResearch Technology is hit by a ransomware attack, forcing contract research organizations – some of which are managing COVID-19 vaccine trials – to revert to paper. The company says that three-fourths of the drug trials that led to FDA approvals last year were managed using its software.

Sponsor Updates

• Relatient’s patient engagement technology seamlessly supports hybrid care with telehealth integrations.
• WebPT becomes Physical Rehabilitation Network’s platform partner for its Therapy Alliance for rehab therapy clinics in California.
• SOC Telemed names Eunice Kim (Symantec) general counsel.
• OmniSys integrates digital Medicare enrollment capabilities into its suite of software solutions.
• Business Insider’s “AI in Healthcare Administration” report includes Wolters Kluwer among healthcare AI leaders targeting physician burnout.
• OpenText publishes a new report, “COVID-19 Clicks: How Phishing Capitalized on a Global Crisis.”
• In partnership with InterSystems, Ready Computing continues to deliver successful interoperable and scalable solutions for healthcare organizations.
• Redox re-enters the Salesforce/Mulesoft ecosystem.
• FritoLay recognizes the community service of Surescripts executive Ron Tyson through his High Fives organization as part of its Everyday Smiler program benefiting Operation Smile.
• Premier announces that 75% of its Population Health Management Collaborative ACOs participating in the Medicare Shared Savings Program earned savings for the government, with 44% of those qualifying for shared savings payments.

Blog Posts

• Telehealth was a Bright Spot Long Before the COVID-19 Pandemic (Central Logic)
• 4 Ways the 9% Cut Will Harm Medicare Patients (WebPT)
• Five Key Takeaways: The Innovative Use of Data and Technology in Reducing Variation and Improving Margin (Premier)
• The “Other” Telemedicine That’s Changing the Face of Healthcare Delivery (SOC Telemed)
• Ambient clinical intelligence technology addresses priority concerns for physicians (Nuance)
• Looking to Solve the Telehealth Riddle? Consider a Platform Approach (PCare)
• FCC to Offer More Telehealth Funding: 3 Actions You Can Take to Prepare Now (Pivot Point Consulting)
• The Power of Provider Schedule Availability (PerfectServe)
• Seniors See Success with Mobile Telemedicine (PMD)
• Customers Shouldn’t Live with Experience – They Should Love It (Pure Storage)
• Improved Subscription Visualization (Redox)
• Relatient’s Technology Seamlessly Supports Hybrid Care with Telehealth Integrations (Relatient)
• Physician Burnout: Chipping Away at Unnecessary EHR Burden (RxRevu)
• Cybersecurity Awareness Month: Focus on changing perimeter protection (Spirion)
• How Do You Keep Up with the Happenings in Healthcare? (Spok)
• 3 Practices to Perfect the Patient Experience (Krames)
• Preparing for the New CMS Rule: ADT Alerts Now Required for Hospitals (Summit Healthcare)
• Breast Cancer Screening and the Women it Saves (SymphonyRM)
• Three Pearls of Wisdom from the First COVID-19 Surge (Vocera)
• Now is the time to focus on the ‘why’ (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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

News 10/2/20

Top News

A GAO report finds that lack of integration of state prescription drug monitoring program tools with EHRs is the key challenge in PDMP use for patient care, with lookups requiring 3-5 minutes without integration versus 2-15 seconds with.

Physicians said PDMP access helps them detect doctor-shoppers and also helps them avoid prescribing duplicate drugs or ordering doses that are too high when taken with other drugs.

Most of the 31 doctors who were interviewed said their PDMP is not integrated into their EHR.

They also reported that they could not access the PDMPs of other states, that dispensing records from opioid treatment facilities and the VA aren’t always included, and that PDMP searches are hampered by patient matching problems.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A reader asked me to note that Nordic VP Pat Hingley will hit the 50-year mark in her healthcare IT career Friday, going all the way back to her teen job as a full-time “data processing” employee who rigged an IBM 402 accounting machine (a punch card reader with an integrated printer) to produce clinic reports (gifters: the 50th calls for gold). Congratulations to Pat. Is anyone else out there hitting their health IT semicentennial?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Nordic acquires Netherlands-based EHR consulting firm Tasman Global, which expands the company’s reach into Europe and Asia. Tasman founder and CEO Adrienne Flatland was a Willow implementer at Epic for seven years, then started the company in 2015.

Walmart will offer Medicare Advantage plans for Georgia seniors that will give them access to its Walmart Health Centers.

Patient intake platform vendor Phreesia acquires two workflow applications that were developed by Geisinger and drug company Merck – Family Caregiver (a SMART on FHIR-integrated patient-provider communication app) and MedTrue (medication reconciliation and adherence).

Israel-based personal health monitoring solutions vendor G Medical Innovations files IPO plans that values the company at $329 million. The early-stage company reports annual revenue of $5 million. The company will de-list its shares from the Australian Securities Exchange, which have a market cap of $33 million, before moving to the Nasdaq. One-year performance on the ASX finds company shares down 65% to $0.04. 

ProPublica looks at a private equity firm’s acquisition and expansion of Prospect Medical Holdings, which it expanded to 17 hospitals and loaded with $400 million in debt, with the PE firm’s CEO and one of his executive peers personally pocketing $222 million. Meanwhile, the hospitals report non-working elevators, ambulances that can’t fill their gas tanks because of unpaid gas card bills, and shortages of medical supplies and PPE because of overdue bills. One of its hospitals had the first COVID-19 death of an ED doctor, who reported being forced to wear a single mask for four days, while another had six COVID patient deaths in a 21-bed locked psychiatric ward due to poor infection control. The chain has been accused of fraudulent Medicare billing and is running out of cash with high debt and a laundry list of hospital quality issues.

People

Medical practice marketing technology vendor PatientPop hires Arman Samani, MBA (AdvancedMD) as chief product officer. He was announced as chief product officer for animal health technology vendor Covetrus on June 1, 2020, but I guess that didn’t work out since it’s not on his LinkedIn.

Announcements and Implementations

FastMed Urgent Care goes live on Epic at its 29 Arizona locations, the first independent urgent care operator to do so. The company’s clinics in North Carolina and Texas are up next in early 2021. FastMed chose Epic in January 2020 and announced last month that it has formed a joint venture with Phoenix-based non-profit health system HonorHealth, which uses Epic, to operate all of its Arizona clinics.

Netsmart integrates its MyUnity hospice EHR with Delta Care’s pharmaceutical care solution, allowing hospice nurses to consult with Delta Care’s pharmacists for medication changes that are then integrated into the EHR.

Amwell will integrate TytoCare’s $250 on-demand medical exam device with its telehealth platform, allowing providers use its stethoscope, thermometer, otoscope, tongue depressor, and camera in virtual visits. 

Banner Health reduces unnecessary medication-related decision support and dosing alerts by one-third, working with Cerner Continuous Improvement Delivery to by studying its own alert history and implementing best practices from other Cerner clients.

Specialty pharmacy operator AllianceRx Walgreens Prime will integrate medical data from the recently announced Inovalon DataStream. I spent several minutes reading the announcement and Inovalon’s website trying to figure out exactly what DataStream, ScriptMed Cloud, and Inovalon One do exactly (beyond spawning buzzwords) but I lost interest.

OSF Healthcare goes live on Kyruus ProviderMatch for Consumers on its website.

Government and Politics

The Department of Justice charges 345 people, including more than 100 medical professionals, with submitting $6 billion in fraudulent medical claims, most of them related to telemedicine. Telemedicine company executives were accused of paying doctors and nurse practitioners to order medically unnecessary medical equipment, genetic counseling services, and pain medications with minimal or no interaction with the patient, then selling the orders to other companies. CMS has revoked the Medicare billing privileges of 256 more medical professionals for their involvement.

Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center (WA) will go live on Cerner on October 24 in the VA’s first activation.

COVID-19

Bloomberg describes the coronavirus precautions used by the University of Arizona, which include installing tents so students can wait for classes outdoors in the shade, sending student health ambassadors around campus in golf carts to hand our masks and to offer distancing reminders, requiring returning students to take a rapid coronavirus test, and performing daily wastewater analysis to quickly identify dorms in which someone is infected. The program was designed by 17th Surgeon General of the United States Richard Carmona, MD, MPH, who is a public health professor at the university. He dropped out of high school to join the US Army Special Forces as a medic and was decorated for combat in Vietnam. He earned a GED, completed a nursing program, then attended UCSF to earn undergraduate and medical school degrees and later University of Arizona for an MPH. Carmona has practiced as a paramedic, RN, surgeon, and deputy sheriff and has held leadership roles in emergency services, hospitals, and the Pima County, AZ health system. He issued the Surgeon General’s report on the effects of second-hand smoke.

Cornell researchers find that President Trump is the single largest driver of coronavirus misinformation that has appeared in major English language news outlets around the world, which they found ran false information – often without the publication’s own commentary or correction — about miracle cures, political conspiracy theories, and Anthony Fauci, MD. Mentions of the President made up 38% of the overall “misinformation conversation.” Just under 3% of articles contained falsehoods.

University of Minnesota researchers develop an Epic-integrated AI algorithm that can diagnose COVID-19 from chest X-rays, which Epic and M Health Fairview will make available to all Epic sites without charge. All 12 M Health Fairview hospitals are using it.

Northwell Health develops a COVID-19 early warning system that analyzes patterns in its website traffic to predict demand for staffing and supplies. It says the two-week prediction has tracked closely to actual caseload so far, adding that it will offer the source code to other health systems who have the expertise to convert it to work with their own websites.

The CEO of Pfizer says in a company memo that he is disappointed that political rhetoric around coronavirus and vaccine development is “undercutting public confidence,” adding that despite the $2 billion the company has risked in not accepting money from any government, it will not succumb to political pressure to release a vaccine either faster or more slowly than “the speed of science” allows.

Two companies that were developing at-home, antigen-based saliva tests for coronavirus have abandoned those plans, as public health experts say it was naive to think that the virus antigen would predictably collect in the mouth. Saliva seems to work for PCR testing, but those tests are subject to testing material shortages and require hours to provide a result.

The US government turns distribution of remdesivir back over to its manufacturer, Gilead Sciences. The drug, which has proven to be modestly useful in shortening COVID-19 hospital stays without reducing deaths and whose development was partly paid for by US taxpayers, costs $3,120 per course of treatment. The company will make at least $9 billion in 2020-21 since its manufacturing cost has been speculated to be less than $1 per vial.  

Other

Kaiser Health News covers the offshore scribe industry, where young, aspiring healthcare professionals in India toil overnight their time to create EHR documentation of US office visits. Augmedix recruits college graduates who can pass tests for English reading, listening comprehension, and writing, then sends them to a three-month training program that covers medical terminology, anatomy, and physiology and then takes them through mock visits. Scribes there earn an average of $500 per month, 20% of what their US counterparts are paid, and their time is billed at $12 to $25 per hour. Companies say remote scribing is a small but growing part of the market. Doctor-owned Physicians Angels offers audio-only services (saying that video is intrusive to patients and scribes should be paying attention only to what the provider verbalizes), says it can’t be breached since scribes enter information only in the client’s EHR, completes charts the same day since anything else is just a transcription service, and offers a no-obligation trial for 30 days at $15 per hour. The company’s founder and CEO is a Toledo-based, US-educated otolaryngologist. 

Canada-based preventive health operator Medisys Health Group pays a ransom to restore the data of 60,000 of its patients. The company is owned by digital health solutions vendor Telus Health, which bought the chain from its private equity owner in August 2018 for $100 million. Parent company Telus, a telecommunications vendor, offers cybersecurity services. 

Mayo Clinic researchers find in a small study that 85% of people who receive an atrial fibrillation warning from their Apple Watch don’t end up with a corresponding diagnosis, leading them to warn that such widespread screening is likely causing overuse of healthcare resources from the “worried well.” They also observe that 8.7% of the patients who reported Watch AF warnings were under 22 years of age and 22% had known atrial fibrillation, meaning that they should not have been using the Apple technology per FDA guidance regarding use cases that have not been studied.

Campbell County Health (WY) receives a $1 million insurance settlement toward an estimated $1.5 million in cost for a September 2019 ransomware attack that wasn’t fully resolved until December 2019.

Sponsor Updates

• Insight Success names Goliath Technologies Chairman and CEO Thomas Charlton a top 10 influential leader in medtech.
• Arcadia extends its free vaccination, preventative screening, and appointment reminder outreach program to additional at-risk patient populations.
• Cerner releases a new podcast, “Why you don’t want to miss Cerner Health Conference 2020.”
• Saykara will host a virtual roundtable on using AI to reduce physician burnout on October 28.
• Hayes CTO Ritesh Ramesh wins Silver in the CEO World Awards, Executive Achievement of the Year for IT Services category; and the company wins Bronze for Team of the Year in the inaugural COVID-19 Business Response category.
• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new report, “Closing the Nursing Education-Practice Readiness Gap.”
• Medhost and Senator Bill Frist discuss improving rural healthcare.

Blog Posts

• Glytec Celebrates World Patient Safety Day by Calling Attention to Glycemic Management Safety (Glytec)
• Payment System Improvements Boost Patient Satisfaction (PMD)
• Mobile Clinical Communication Platforms Streamline Collaboration and Reduce Costs (Halo Health)
• Automating Cloud Services to Meet Security and Compliance (Healthcare Triangle)
• How to Enable Enterprise Digital Transformation (The HCI Group)
• Remaining Focused on the Mission of Excellent Health Care (HCTec)
• Epic to Integrate Microsoft Teams Connector (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• An Effective Financial Response to COVID-19: Three Ways to Leverage Data (Health Catalyst)
• Get digital identity right with the Imprivata Digital Identity Framework for Healthcare (Imprivata)
• Congrats to Christus Health, Infor’s 2020 Customer Excellence Award Winner for healthcare. (Infor)
• How COVID-19 is accelerating digital trends in healthcare payments (InstaMed)
• RxMx: Upgrading the Pharma Industry with Automation and Real-Time Information (InterSystems)
• A helping hand for health information exchanges (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Building AI Champions One Nurse at a Time (Jvion)
• Redeploy and Rebalance Staff for COVID-19 Response and Recovery (LiveProcess)
• Surprise Bills are in the Headlines Again. Let’s Solve the Problem (Loyale Healthcare)
• At the corner of 21st and TEFCA: Preparing for new interoperability rules (Meditech)
• Get a Head Start on Your 2021 Physical Therapy Marketing Plan (MWTherapy)
• 5 Strategies to Increase Cybersecurity at Your Healthcare Organization (Netsmart)
• The risks of EHR theater (Nordic)

Contacts

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

News 9/30/20

Top News

Universal Health Services begins recovering from a Sunday morning malware attack that locked computer and phone systems at 250 facilities, forcing some to close departments and divert patients.

An anonymous staffer reported seeing the phrase “shadow universe” on computer screens as the breach commenced, leading cybersecurity experts to assume that Ryuk ransomware was involved.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I had to switch concierge doctors after mine closed his practice to take a drug industry job. Allow me to correct my own convenient but incorrect use of the term “concierge doctor,” which mine was not. A concierge practice still bills your insurance company and/or you personally — you are just snootily buying your way around the velvet rope at a cost of thousands of dollars per year. What I have is “direct primary care,” where you pay an average of $75 per month for anytime access to your family practice doctor via call or text, unlimited office visits or telehealth sessions, wellness exams, physicals, health maintenance, minor in-office treatments and surgical procedures, and often at-cost labs and prescriptions right in the office. Savings on routine lab work alone – paying the heavily discounted doctor’s cash price instead of your insurance’s deductible — can cover much of the entire year’s cost. I feel like a VIP when I have a minor, obvious health issue (pinkeye and a swollen toe being the most recent examples), I text a photo to my doctor on a weekend or holiday, and almost immediately I have a prescription waiting to pick up at the drugstore, with follow-up available if I need it. I keep my regular insurance, with the few hundred dollars per year DPC cost a modest luxury that lets me avoid the usual poor customer service. I expect quite a few physicians fail at DPC due to inadequate business skills (especially marketing), but otherwise small panel size, lack of insurer meddling, and freedom from bureaucracy makes it a great model for both doctor and patient when done right. Plus doctors can choose which patients they want to work with.

Webinars

September 30 (Wednesday) 11 ET. “The Hidden Threat: New Research on Security Vulnerabilities and Privacy Gaps in Healthcare Apps.” Sponsors: Verimatrix, NowSecure. Presenters: Neal Michie, MEng, director of product management, Verimatrix; Brian Lawrence, direction of solution engineering, NowSecure. The presenters will present research on the security risk profile of 1,000 healthcare apps in managing patient privacy, how they compare to those in other industries, and where the biggest vulnerabilities lie. Attendees will learn how to make their healthcare apps more secure in managing protected health information.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Defunct personal health record vendor Medlio notifies users that cancer reference lab NeoGenomics Laboratories has acquired some of its assets, but will sunset the patient-facing mobile app and health records download service. Medlio co-founder Lori Mehen took a full-time product manager job with NeoGenomics Laboratories early this year.

Sales

• Henry Mayo Newhall Hospital (CA) will implement Ensocare’s Transition and Choice automated referral software.
• The US Air Force selects NeuroFlow’s behavioral health integration technology, beginning with deployment to a division of Space Force.
• Provider communications platform vendor Updox will integrate its systems with inpatient EHRs using technology from Redox.
• CareSignal will white-label a conversational AI chatbot from QliqSoft to automate the traditional call center model of remote patient monitoring.

People

The Chartis Group promotes Roger Ray, MD to chief physician executive.

Mount Sinai technology commercialization spin-off Rx.Health names Richard Strobridge (Nextbridge Health) CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

LifeBridge Health implements Artifact Health’s mobile physician query software at Levindale Hebrew Geriatric Center and Hospital and Grace Medical Center in Maryland.

West Tennessee Healthcare deploys Cedar’s patient engagement, messaging, and billing platform.

EMpower Emergency Physicians (AZ) and Integrated Care Physicians (FL) adopt RCM software and services from R1 RCM.

A new KLAS report on  oncology software finds Elekta as the leader in both medical and radiation oncology software, with Varian (slated for acquisition by Siemens Healthineers for $16 billion) coming in second. EHR vendors Cerner and Epic have seen significant adoption of their medical oncology software, but with functionality gaps and click-heavy, multiple ways to complete tasks that hurt usability and training. Medical oncology EHR vendor Flatiron Health, acquired by drug maker Roche for $2 billion in April 2018, placed in the middle of the pack with strong product design and support expertise that is dragged down by poor communication around enhancement requests, upgrades, and delayed support response. Varian leads in the tiny field of radiation therapy treatment planning, as more than half of Philips Pinnacle treatment planning software customers say they’re switching to a different vendor (presumably Varian) due to lack of development effort and failure to keep promises.

Best Buy-owned GreatCall releases the Lively Flip smartphone for seniors, which builds on the previous Jitterbug phone in adding Alexa voice services, a bigger screen and keyboard, a dedicated button for calling an urgent care provider, and 24/7 access to its telehealth service. The phone costs $100 plus a $35 activation fee, while monthly plans run $20 to $35 not counting unlimited text and talk, which adds $20. Best Buy acquired Great Call for $800 million in August 2018.

Government and Politics

HHS and ONC launch a program with the American Board of Family Medicine to measure the use and potential burdens of health IT by office-based physicians.

Premera Blue Cross will pay the HHS Office for Civil Rights $6.85 million to settle potential HIPAA violations stemming from a 2015 data breach that affected 10.4 million members. An OCR investigation found the Pacific Northwest payer failed to implement risk management and audit controls and failed to conduct an enterprise-wide risk analysis.

COVID-19

Health systems are creating “one-stop shop” clinics for patients who have survived COVID but who are experiencing ongoing problems such as lung or heart damage, neurological issues, fatigue, and anxiety. The director of the Center for Post-COVID Care at Mount Sinai says that if even if less than 10% of infected patients experience long-term symptoms, that means 500,000 Americans will require medical care of unknown duration. He says half of the clinic’s patients have test results that show damage, while the other half have symptoms but inconclusive test results.

The White House will send 150 million Abbott BinaxNOW rapid coronavirus tests, purchased for $750 million, to states and other jurisdictions by the end of the year, with several million going out this week to be used for vulnerable populations such as nursing homes. The tests use a shallow nostril swab, require no special equipment, and give results in 15 minutes, so they can be used in medical practices and pharmacies. However, they are approved for use only in symptomatic people, must be administered within the first seven days of symptoms, and cannot be self-administered at home. Experts praised the news, but say 150 million tests is a drop in the bucket given their likely use and they still don’t solve the problem of assessing true prevalence. Public health officials also question how the results of the tests will be reported, particularly if administered outside the health system such as in schools.

The federal government has sent rapid COVID-19 test machines to 14,000 nursing homes since last month, but they come with a catch. The nursing homes must agree to test each employee and resident weekly and pay for their own supplies at $32 per test, meaning that even small facilities could be on the hook for thousands of dollars each week. They also report that manufacturer BD is back-ordered on testing supplies. Health departments haven’t figured out how to collect data from nursing home tests. Some facilities that have become frustrated by the cost and availability challenges of the BD tests are using state labs, but they don’t get results back for several days.

Other

@Cascadia is right – the VaccineFinder website operated by Boston Children’s Hospital, CDC, Harvard Medical School, and HealthMap shows no locations offering flu vaccine anywhere, which I can personally contradict since I got my flu shot yesterday. At least some other vaccine searches seem to work, although the location list seems incomplete when it says no Walgreens in Chicago offers Tdap or shingles vaccine.

UnitedHealthcare and Anthem will end their virtual visit benefit Thursday, after which patients will once again pay co-pays, co-insurance, and deductibles for virtual visits that are not related to COVID-19. Nobody knows how much patients will have to pay or how the cost of a telehealth visit compares to the co-pay for an office visit. Other insurers that had planned to end expanded telehealth coverage on September 30 have extended the program until the end of the year.

A Spok survey of 600 healthcare professionals finds an inability to communicate effectively, remote workers, and lack of or insufficient devices have been the biggest communication problems during COVID-19. H

Amazon announces a palm vein scanner that will let customers of in-person shops check out with a wave of the hand, which hopefully will reinvigorate the healthcare interest in that biometric technology that made perfect sense a few years ago to positively identify patients in a non-threatening way compared to fingerprints and retinal scans. HT Systems (PatientSecure, now owned by Imprivata) and Fujitsu (PalmSecure) were the healthcare players in palm vein scanning 10 years ago and I was a fan of the idea.

Not related to health IT, but fascinating and fun to watch, is this UK paramedic’s test of a 1,000-horsepower jet suit made by Gravity Industries for air ambulance response in the mountains of Cumbria. I pondered how much a private equity-owned ambulance or air flight service would charge for that trip in the US.

Sponsor Updates

• Kyruus will host ATLAS, its Annual Thought Leadership on Access Symposium, virtually October 20-22.
• CarePort Health wins the 2020 Tech Cares Award from TrustRadius.
• CareSignal develops AI-powered predictive models to help providers and payers keep patients engaged with digital health programs.
• Datica achieves top marks for interoperability solutions from Chilmark Research.
• Everbridge announces that, in addition to Anthony Fauci, MD and Sanjay Gupta, MD, a former World Head of State will speak at its COVID-19 R2R: The Road to Recovery virtual leadership summit October 14-15.
• Audacious Inquiry founder and CEO Chris Brandt joins University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center’s Board of Operations.
• Arcadia publishes a new case study, “CareMount ACO Uses Arcadia Analytics to Build a Narrow SNF Network and Reduce ALOS by 4 Days.”
• MassChallenge features “A Look at How OSF Health Care Teamed with Startup CareSignal to Help Their COVID-19 Response.”
• Ellkay sponsors the BCBS 2020 Virtual Summit through October 2.
• Experity opens registration for its half-day Virtual User Experience October 15.
• Black Book Market Research publishes, “Top Healthcare Human Resources Outsourcing Solutions Vendors.”

Blog Posts

• Edge Computing: How New Technology Energizes This Old Concept (Capsule)
• The Power of Data Science in Healthcare to Drive Advanced Analytics (314e)
• Avoid postal delays with paperless claims and statements (Ability Network)
• Six Common Mistakes with Informed Consents that Lead to Medical Malpractice (Access)
• Patient Estimates: A Breath of Fresh Air (Bluetree)
• A Guide to the Internship Experience: From a Software Engineering Intern (Bright.md)
• Getting the Most from EHR Virtual Training (CereCore)
• Understanding information blocking exceptions and compliance (Cerner)
• Benefits, Process, and Reimbursement in Remote Patient Monitoring and Chronic Care Management (ChartLogic)
• Ransomware Causes Patient Death (CI Security)
• Compassion, Clinical Effectiveness & Burnout: Essential Strategies for Nurse Leadership (Clinical Computer Systems, developer of the Obix Perinatal Data System)
• Streamlining Utilization Management Through Care Collaboration (Collective Medical)
• EPA Report Findings: Prospective PA Decreases Time to Therapy (CoverMyMeds)
• Creating Value through Collaboration: HIE-Payer Alliances at Work (Diameter Health)
• COVID-19 in Children and Young Adults Part 1: Infants and Children (Dimensional Insight)
• 3 Important healow TeleVisits Features (EClinicalWorks)
• CMS Quarterly Update Q3 2020 (ESolutions)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 9/28/20

Top News

Allegheny Health Network (PA) and a Pittsburgh investor create AlphaLab Health, an innovation hub that will provide seed funding to companies that are involved in diagnostics, therapeutics, medical devices, and health IT.

The hub will be housed in the former Suburban General Hospital in Pittsburgh’s Bellevue community, which Allegheny Health Network has mostly closed since acquiring it in 1994, leaving only an urgent care center and outpatient clinics.

A predecessor organization to Allegheny Health Network was AHERF, which went from running just Allegheny General Hospital to Pennsylvania’s largest health system, which include acquisitions of Medical College of Pennsylvania and Hahnemann Medical College and their hospitals. AHERF filed bankruptcy in June 1998 in what was then the largest non-profit healthcare system failure with $1.3 billion in debt. West Penn Hospital  was merged with the Pittsburgh assets of AHERF to form West Penn Allegheny Health system, which struggled to compete with UPMC and eventually sold itself to insurer Highmark, which was anxious to strike a deal since its relationship with UPMC was deteriorating. Highmark Health remains AHN’s parent. AHERF’s Philadelphia-area hospitals were bought out of bankruptcy by Tenet in becoming that area’s first for-profit hospital chain.

Reader Comments

From CIO: “Re: HIStalk. Just wanted to let you know that I still make my team read HIStalk and occasionally quiz them to make sure they do.” Thanks. Similarly, a CEO recently told me that a new investor made him promise to read HIStalk daily. I appreciate that even if I can’t really comprehend it since my view of HIStalk is an empty screen that I fill in solitude each day with whatever interests me.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Vendor experience with virtual conference exhibit halls hasn’t been good. Commenters note that the volume of leads is good but the quality is not, while low engagement leaves reps starting alone at a Zoom screen for hours.

New poll to your right or here: How has your job changed since the pandemic began? Click the poll’s comments link after responding to explain further with your anonymous thoughts.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Newfire Global Partners. The Boston-based company partners with healthcare businesses globally to make innovation happen, such as in developing custom digital health solutions, speeding up the drug development cycle, and de-risking growth without compromising interoperability and security to turn the new normal into a durable, competitive advantage. Nearly 90% of the company’s 350 employees hold advanced degrees, working from offices in the US, Ukraine, Croatia, Singapore, and Hong Kong to offer services in advisory (assessments and due diligence, strategic marketing, interim operating roles); talent (blended teams, dedicated teams, specialized expertise); and AI-powered software development management. Healthcare-specific offerings include FHIR integration, data science and analytics, provider and patient adoption, and interoperability. Chairman and CEO Stephen Hau, MS is an industry long-timer who founded PatientKeeper and co-founded Shareable Ink. Thanks to Newfire Global Partners for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

September 30 (Wednesday) 11 ET. “The Hidden Threat: New Research on Security Vulnerabilities and Privacy Gaps in Healthcare Apps.” Sponsors: Verimatrix, NowSecure. Presenters: Neal Michie, MEng, director of product management, Verimatrix; Brian Lawrence, direction of solution engineering, NowSecure. The presenters will present research on the security risk profile of 1,000 healthcare apps in managing patient privacy, how they compare to those in other industries, and where the biggest vulnerabilities lie. Attendees will learn how to make their healthcare apps more secure in managing protected health information.

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

People

Ori Lotan, MD (Universal Health Services) will join MultiCare (WA) as VP / chief health information officer. 

Central Logic hires Maija Costello, MBA (Accenture) as VP of people and culture; Samantha Endres, MBA, CPA (West Acadamic Publishing) as CFO; and Robert Zdon (RAZR) as chief marketing officer.

Government and Politics

UT Southwestern Medical Center Assistant Professor of Radiology Lorraine De Blanche, MD pleads guilty to intentionally misleading federal agents who questioned her in a telemedicine fraud investigation that occurred while she was employed as a radiology professor at University of Arkansas. She admitted that she prescribed durable medical equipment and compounded prescription drugs without talking to the patients involved. She faces five years in prison and will pay $213,000 in telemedicine proceeds and fines. 

COVID-19

HHS takes $300 million from CDC’s budget to run a “defeat despair” advertising blitz that features celebrities and administration officials discussing the pandemic and the White House’s response to it, with airings to begin before Election Day. Interviews have already been recorded with Dennis Quaid (who has publicly praised the administration’s COVID-19 response) and CeCe Winans (who was chosen for improving messaging with black viewers). HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo said before he took medical leave that President Trump demanded personally that he create the campaign, which he says will draw ire from Democrats and “their conjugal media and the leftist scientists that are working for the government” because he’ll be running $250 million worth of taxpayer-funded ads.

A White House aide demands that FDA justify its toughened standards for a COVID-19 vaccine on the same day that the President branded the changes as a “political move.” FDA planned to release the guidance last week, but is instead working on its explanation of extending safety studies to two months after the second injection, which makes a pre-Election Day vaccine release unlikely.

Minnesota stops a door-to-door coronavirus survey after public health workers were intimidated by people who shouted ethnic and racial slurs, followed the workers, videotaped them, and threatened to call police. The mayor of one small town says it is reasonable that residents become concerned when they see a car with California plates.

Just about all infectious disease experts warn that it will be a gloomy US winter as people move back indoors, schools and business return to some degree of normal with increasing contact, and people gather for holidays. The predicted post-Labor Day case jump is already happening. IHME projects 372,000 US COVID-19 deaths by January 1, with daily deaths increasing from today’s 780 to 3,000 (or 6,600 if mandates are eased) and ICU bed demand rising from 8,400 to 31,000. California’s HHS secretary warned Friday afternoon that he expects COVID-19 hospitalizations to double by late October.

ProPublica reports how the CEO of a telemedicine vendor, who was also an ex-convict, convinced two South Texas elected officials to promote local government use of his telemedicine services during the pandemic and to urge other leaders to buy his unapproved COVID-19 tests.

Other

USA Today lists several new consumer gadgets devices can serve – now or down the road — as a dedicated Zoom devices, including Amazon’s Echo Show 10 for $250, a webcam plugged into a Fire TV Cube that can be displayed on large-screen TVs, and Facebook Portal TV. Benefits include freeing up hands and computer screens for taking notes and untethering webcam placement. The Echo Show 10 even auto-frames the user with pan and zoom. It will also connect with Amazon Chime pay-per-use service for business calls and meetings. Amazon sells the Alexa-powered Facebook Portal TV for $149. I suspect remote work and videoconferencing is here to stay, so the modest investment to make it better and easier seems worth it.

Contacts

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

News 9/25/20

Top News

CMS will threaten next week to terminate the Medicare participation of the 76% of US hospitals that aren’t submitting daily COVID information to the new HHS Protect system, according to an NPR review of internal documents.

The pending update will allow hospitals to submit PPE and ventilator data weekly instead of multiple times per week, but it will also add several new data elements that are related to influenza patients.

HHS previously justified the need for the abrupt system switchover from the CDC’s system in July by saying that the 85% of hospitals that were reporting voluntarily was inadequate and that the White House Coronavirus Task Force requires 100% participation. Since then, only 24% of hospitals are complying with the new mandatory data submission requirements.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I wanted to schedule a checkup from a former provider and remembered that I have an associated Epic MyChart account that has been dormant for several years. I logged back in and it was impressive, especially compared to my experience with an academic medical center’s MyChart deployment a few years back in which I concluded that their mediocrity spanned both technical and clinical domains. This provider’s version contained useful health reminders, strong security (such as two-factor authentication), easy appointment scheduling, provider messaging, complete medical records, and the ability to update my own medication and health issues lists subject to provider confirmation. It even let me know of a study I could participate in. I would have given it a perfect score other than my submitted insurance information has yet to be verified by the provider’s office after several weeks, so I still don’t know what to expect when I show up waving my card.

Webinars

September 30 (Wednesday) 11 ET. “The Hidden Threat: New Research on Security Vulnerabilities and Privacy Gaps in Healthcare Apps.” Sponsors: Verimatrix, NowSecure. Presenters: Neal Michie, MEng, director of product management, Verimatrix; Brian Lawrence, direction of solution engineering, NowSecure. The presenters will present research on the security risk profile of 1,000 healthcare apps in managing patient privacy, how they compare to those in other industries, and where the biggest vulnerabilities lie. Attendees will learn how to make their healthcare apps more secure in managing protected health information.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

KKR acquires 1-800 Contacts – which has branched beyond COVID-boosted lens sales with technology that allows consumers to perform at-home eye exams and to scan their glasses to generate prescription details — in a deal worth $3 billion.

People

Nuvance Health promotes interim SVP/CIO Geoff Hook, MBA to the permanent role.

Announcements and Implementations

NYC Health + Hospitals launches a telehealth solution for non-urgent needs, powered by NYC-based Bluestream Health.

Change Healthcare expands its pharmacy claims billing solution to include COVID-19 tests, which pharmacists can order, administer, and bill under recent HHS rules.

CareSignal offers an at-risk pricing option for its Device-less Remote Patient Monitoring, allowing providers and payers who are paid under value-based contracts to maximize their return on investment.

Redox announces new integrations with Salesforce Health Cloud and MuleSoft.

NantHealth releases APIs that will allow provider and revenue cycle organizations to connect to payers via the NaviNet Open Platform.

Government and Politics

HHS and ONC award $2.7 million to four health IT acceleration projects:

• CRISP, which will work on using FHIR for participating in the American College of Cardiology’s disease registries.
• MedStar Health Research Institute, which will demonstrate using bulk FHIR data extraction for research.
• Children’s Hospital Corporation, which will develop tools to allow researchers to annotate data extracted by bulk FHIR for analytics, de-identification, and cohort assignment.
• Missouri Department of Mental Health’s developmental disabilities division, which will implement the integration of standardized data to advance person-centered planning, outcomes, and value-based payment models.

COVID-19

A fourth coronavirus vaccine candidate begins Phase 3 clinical trials as Janssen starts testing of its single-dose regimen with up to 60,000 volunteers.

The presidents of the National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Medicine issue a statement insisting that pandemic policymaking, especially that involving vaccines, “must be informed by the best available evidence without it being distorted, concealed, or otherwise deliberately miscommunicated.” They add that they find that “the politicization of science, particularly the overriding of evidence and advice from public health officials and derision of government scientists, to be alarming.” 

Helsinki’s airport deploys two coronavirus-sniffing dogs in a pilot program for voluntary passenger testing. Travelers wipe their skin, deposit the wipe in a sample, and the dogs then smell it to detect coronavirus with near-100% accuracy within 10 seconds.

California expands its home address confidentiality program that was designed for victims of violence and abuse to include public health workers, following the resignation of a dozen workers after they were harassed at home or received death threats after enforcing masking and stay-at-home orders.

Missouri Governor Mike Parson, who shunned mask-wearing in saying that most people can figure out how to stay safe without government intervention, tests positive for COVID-19, along with his wife. The state reported its highest-ever COVID-19 death total of 83 on Wednesday, although the state attributes the high number to delayed reporting of death certificates.

President Trump says in a press conference that the White House “may or may not” approve FDA’s just-announced higher standards COVID-19 vaccines, saying that the change is politically motivated and that he “has tremendous trust in these massive companies” that are developing the vaccines. The White House’s authority to override FDA decisions is not clear. White House advisor Scott Atlas, MD said in the same press conference that CDC Director Robert Redfield, MD “misstated something” in reporting that CDC blood sampling indicates that 90% of Americans are still susceptible to infection in the absence of antibodies, saying that T cells and exposure to related viruses “make the antibodies a small fraction of the people who have immunity.”

Google Maps will add a COVID overlay that displays the seven-day confirmed COVID-19 case count per 100,000 people for each state, county, and some cities.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo announces that the state will perform its own review of coronavirus vaccines that have been approved by FDA, saying that President Trump’s criticism of FDA’s more rigorous standards as a “political move” has led him to determine that “we can no longer trust the federal government.” The state would have little say in the matter other than determining its own rollout plan.

Other

A US federal court sentences an extradited UK citizen who is a member of The Dark Overlord hacking group to five years in prison. Nathan Wyatt will also pay $1.5 million in restitution for stealing the data of several companies since 2016, several of them hospitals, and threatening to sell their data unless they paid a Bitcoin ransom. Among his big scores is the sale of 9.3 million patient records that he obtained by breaching an unnamed health insurer.

Specialty EHR vendor Net Health moves to a permanent Work From Anywhere model, which it says will improve recruiting, increase retention, and reduce costs. It hopes to encourage community building with virtual team meetings, CEO emails, one-on-one video meetings that include pets and kids, virtual field trips and happy hours, and development of affinity groups.

As noted by @Cascadia: the care plan that Amazon is piloting for its Seattle-area employees posts a job opening for a healthcare-experienced Business Development Manager – Network Strategy, with responsibilities that include defining an executing a strategy for acquiring and managing provider networks; creating the highest-quality, lowest-cost referral network; and driving customer adoption via insurance company partnerships. Amazon Care, whose pilot started in September 2019, offers employees text chat with clinicians, video visits, nurse visits in the home or office, and courier delivery of medications.

Contacts

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

News 9/23/20

Top News

FDA launches the Digital Health Center of Excellence, which will provide expertise and advise FDA on modernizing digital health policies and regulatory approaches.

Bhaku Patel, MSEE, MBA will serve as the first director of the center, which will operate within the Center for Devices and Radiological Health.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise. The mission of the Colombes, France-based company is to make everything connect to create the customized technology experience customers need. It delivers on-premise, cloud, and hybrid networking and communications solutions that work for your people, processes, and customers. A heritage of innovation and dedication to customer success has made Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise an essential provider of enterprise networking, communications, and services to over 830,000 customers worldwide. The company has a global reach and local focus with more than 2,200 employees and 2,900+ partners who serve over 50 countries. Thanks to Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise for supporting HIStalk.

I’m about to assess time-outs to overly aggressive PR firm people who keep sending me bulk-emailed pitches for their “story ideas” (apparently unaware that I do not run such “stories” on HIStalk) that ask me to respond if I’m interested, then “circle back” or “just pinging you” a couple of days later when I’ve already conveyed my incuriosity precisely as instructed by not responding. Gmail’s filter rules should work nicely to delete their messages automatically, although without some minor hacking it can’t automatically reply that they’ve been squelched.

Webinars

September 30 (Wednesday) 11 ET. “The Hidden Threat: New Research on Security Vulnerabilities and Privacy Gaps in Healthcare Apps.” Sponsors: Verimatrix, NowSecure. Presenters: Neal Michie, MEng, director of product management, Verimatrix; Brian Lawrence, direction of solution engineering, NowSecure. The presenters will present research on the security risk profile of 1,000 healthcare apps in managing patient privacy, how they compare to those in other industries, and where the biggest vulnerabilities lie. Attendees will learn how to make their healthcare apps more secure in managing protected health information.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Carlyle Group will acquire a majority stake in global health research network TriNetX for an unspecific price and valuation.

Teladoc sends a letter to competitor Amwell warning that its digital scope, stethoscope, and some of its telemedicine carts infringe on Teladoc’s patents.

Walmart-owned Sam’s Club offers its members text-based primary care telehealth services through 98point6, expanding a pilot project from last year. Individuals pay $134 per year plus $1 per visit, which is conducted via text messaging through the app of the company, which has 39 doctors.

Sales

• Mount Sinai South Nassau selects Infor Cloud Cloverleaf for interoperability that includes API standards such as FHIR.

People

Behavioral EHR/PM vendor Therapy Brands hires Jessica Kasirsky, DO (NextGen Healthcare) as chief medical officer / VP of regulatory affairs.

Announcements and Implementations

A new KLAS Arch Collaborative report finds that while 25% of nurses report that they are experiencing burnout, EHR satisfaction isn’t a significant cause, and organizations should instead focus on the work environment, employer-imposed bureaucracy, improved teamwork, shared values, and control over schedules.

Decentralized clinical trials software vendor Medable announces GA of a remote consent and re-consent product that allows patients and clinicians to sign up from any location. The company also offers remote patient and site monitoring, telemedicine, and patient engagement tools for clinical outcome assessment.

Optimum Healthcare IT completes virtual Epic training and a go-live at Australia’s Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Cerner will integrate Vynca’s advance care planning system with Millennium to display end-of-life preferences to clinicians and in the patient portal.

Microsoft announces Cloud for Healthcare, a managed service that includes Dynamics 365, Azure, 365, Teams and its new EHR connector, and Healthcare Bot Service for developing self-assessment tools. GA will be October 30. 

QliqSoft will offer patient self-scheduling in its virtual care platforms in partnership with Blockit. The company offers the Quincy chatbot as well as its Virtual Visit telehealth solution.

COVID-19

CDC publishes guidance Friday acknowledging for the first time that coronavirus spreads by almost exclusively by air, but then pulls the guidance down Monday in saying that it was posted prematurely before full approval. CDC says it will publish revised guidance soon. The recalled guidance – which says the virus can survive for long periods while suspended in the air and can travel more than six feet — would have had an impact on people (avoiding indoor gatherings, restaurants, and bars), businesses (improved ventilation and and filtration systems), and hospitals (increased use of negative-pressure rooms for infected patients). It would de-emphasize the importance of handwashing and physical cleaning given the low incidence of spread.

Scotland-based infections disease and virology professor Muge Cevik, MD, MSc, MRCP summarizes what we know about coronavirus spread:

• Risk is related to contact pattern (duration, proximity, activity), individual factors, environment, and socioeconomic factors (housing, job security).
• Sustained close contact drives the majority of infections and clusters. Contact with family and friends as well as gatherings create higher risk than brief contact while shopping or in the community.
• Non-household contacts dining together involves especially high risk.
• Transmission is 20 times higher indoors than outdoors, making those beach-shaming media photos pointless.
• Attack rates are highly correlated to symptom severity. Asymptomatic spread is less important.
• Susceptibility increases with age.
• Much of the world’s outbreaks involve nursing homes, homeless shelters, prisons, and meat-packing plants where people share communal spaces for long periods. The largest US clusters have been associated with prisons and jails.
• Lower-paid essential workers are at risk because they cannot isolate, often use public transportation, and are exposed to more people.
• Residents of urban area are at higher risk due to lower incomes, denser living conditions, and a higher proportion of immigrants. Social distancing worked best in more affluent households during the H1N1 pandemic of 2009.
• Viral load peaks require immediate self-isolation as soon as symptoms appear, which will require policies to support that isolation.

Rural hospitals that received federal pandemic aid are afraid to spend the money on COVID-related improvements since the funds were officially in the form of a loan that is due to be repaid this month, with those that aren’t able to repay then having their Medicare payments withheld.

Only 51% of polled Americans would get a COVID-19 vaccine if it were available today, down from 72% in May as people worry that a vaccine will be distributed without adequate testing or with unknown side effects.

CDC tells a federal advisory group that the first people who receive COVID-19 vaccines will be monitored by daily text messages and emails. The 20 million essential workers who are expected to be among the first recipients will be sent daily text messages asking about side effects for the first week afterward, then weekly messages over six weeks.

Sanford Health (SD) is sponsoring a 5,000-attendee, masks-optional October country music concert along with the state’s governor, who previously endorsed the Sturgis motorcycle rally of 500,000 people who have spread infection to an estimated 260,000 new COVID-19 cases. Ticketmaster shows mostly packed spectator sections with no distancing, with the 50% capacity limit being technically accomplished by closing the upper deck while crowding attendees into the lower level. The health system itself – which has 46 medical centers, 210 clinic locations, 233 senior living centers, 158 skilled nursing and rehab facilities, and 48,000 employees — is limiting patient visitors, screening employee and visitor temperatures, mandating social distancing, and requires clinic employees to wear masks at all times.

FDA is reportedly preparing tougher standards for Emergency Use Authorization of COVID-19 vaccines that will require manufacturers to follow participants for at least two months after they receive their second dose, which is likely to push back release until at least December. The requirements will also include having at least five severe cases of COVID-19 in the placebo group, as well as some cases involving older people. 

Other

A JAMIA article calls for creating a sub-field of informatics called social informatics, which would drive research on the data, interoperability, and ethical challenges that are involved in integrating social and medical care.

Madison magazine ponders what will happen to the Wisconsin area’s “Epiconomy” when Judy Faulkner leaves Epic. It questions how the foundation to which she will donate her shares will operate within IRS guidelines that require it to distribute 5% of its endowment each year, says the company’s planned return to on-campus work was a “spectacularly bad decision” that may have tarnished the brands of both Epic and Madison in the eyes of the new college graduates Epic hires, and observes that Faulkner does little mentoring and the company doesn’t invest in Madison companies even though its former employees formed several of them. It also notes that Faulkner and her husband donate heavily to liberal political candidates, but Epic has engaged in several legal battles to limit worker rights, such as forcing its employees in its employee agreements to accept binding arbitration instead of filing class action lawsuits. A business professor says that founders who try to “control the [company’s] future from the grave” often mess it up in limiting how much it can think and adjust on its own without them.

Real-time website privacy inspector Blacklight went live today. HIStalk did well with only a couple of traffic counters that I’ve installed but rarely use, but boy is HIMSS.org loaded with questionable stuff, including the Hotjar keystroke tracker. AHIMA’s site, in contrast, is about the same as HIStalk, while CHIME’s gets a perfect score.

Count me out. Airlines are filling seats for “flights to nowhere,” in which people who miss flying so much are buying expensive tickets to board a plane that circles around for a few hours, then lands back at the same airport. I’m personally thrilled to avoid the ever-increasing indignities of American Airlines, including one memorable flight in which my first class upgrade (to avoid AA’s industry-leading cramming of an extra seat in every row of steerage) got me a “lunch” of a few stale triangles of pita orbiting around a sad puddle of hummus. People for whom flying is a fond memory need to get out less.

Sponsor Updates

• InterSystems releases HealthShare CMS Solution Pack to help customers meet the interoperability and patient access final rule that takes effect on January 1.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
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Monday Morning Update 9/21/20

Top News

Healthcare robotic process automation vendor Olive raises $106 million in an equity investment, increasing its total to $220 million.

The 360-employee company’s “AI workforce” has been adopted by 600 hospitals. One of its investors is Ascension Ventures.

The company, formerly known as CrossChx, offers AI-as-a-Service, in which an annual price covers scoping, implementation, support, and ongoing optimization. Its Deep Purple taps the collective data of its customers to model the network-wide impact of promising solutions.

Founder and CEO Sean Lane is a former US Air Force captain and National Security Agency intelligence officer who has founded several companies.

Reader Comments

From Anti Autocorrect: “Re: Phil Ehr for Congress. Wonder how many times he has become Phil Her for Congress?” The Florida candidate invites supporters to join the “Ehr Force,” which suggests his name is pronounced “Air.” I’m sure we can all have fun thinking up punny ways like Phil’s to sound out “Ehr” as “Air,” such as calling a company an “Air Vendor.”

From Where My Testers At?: “Re: Epic’s latest Rover update. Requires nurses to key in the full date and time on the MAR since the shortcuts ‘T’ for today and ‘N’ for now have been removed. One more straw on the back of already-burdened nurses. Amazing that the testing protocols aren’t robust enough to pick this up.”

From IT Analyst: “Re: Signature Healthcare (MA). Went live with Meditech Expanse for Ambulatory on 9/16, replacing Allscripts Touchworks, which had been in place for 10 years.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

About 60% of poll respondents have participated in a virtual conference and just over half of those would recommend that others do so. Two-thirds of those who have not participated say they are unlikely to do so down the road. Those respondents who provided positive comments say that it’s nice to be able to work during the sessions and not lose travel time, organizers are getting better at mastering digital conferencing tools, and the format allows attendees and vendors to participate in conferences that would have been impossible previously due to cost and logistics. Those with less enthusiasm say they miss the feeling of connection, they don’t like presenters who sit at home in casual clothes delivering death by PowerPoint, technical glitches seem to occur frequently, and presenters have not always rehearsed using the actual delivery technology and fumble during their moment in the spotlight.

New poll to your right or here, in a related question suggested by a reader: For companies that have participated in a virtual conference’s exhibit hall, were you satisfied?

Listening: new from Declan McKenna, a startlingly good 21-year-old English singer-songwriter who turns out polished music that sounds like a combination of the Beatles, Neil Young, and David Bowie but with lyrics that often fall into the protest song category. People this young aren’t usually capable of writing wry words like this on climate change in what seems to be a shot at Elon Musk: “Everybody gets so tired of hearing what you said, When you think your money’s gonna stop you getting wet, So Noah, you best start building, You better have ten thousand children, Because everybody wants to be one.” His band mates look like kids who are awkwardly pretending to play after school in Mom’s garage, but ears are a better judge than eyes. You could play the new album “Zeros” and immediately get into it like I did, but I think it would remain interesting after several plays. I hope his handlers keep bad influences away so that he has a long, productive career onto which we can hitch a ride.

RIP Lee “Bear” Kerslake, former drummer for Uriah Heep and Ozzy Osbourne, who died Saturday of prostate cancer at 73.  For real deep-cut types, he played in the mid-1960s at age 20 with the somewhat obscure group The Gods, whose alumni eventually included Ken Hensley (Uriah Heep), Paul Newton (Uriah Heep), Greg Lake (ELP), Mick Taylor (The Rolling Stones), and John Taylor (Jethro Tull).

Webinars

September 30 (Wednesday) 11 ET. “The Hidden Threat: New Research on Security Vulnerabilities and Privacy Gaps in Healthcare Apps.” Sponsors: Verimatrix, NowSecure. Presenters: Neal Michie, MEng, director of product management, Verimatrix; Brian Lawrence, direction of solution engineering, NowSecure. The presenters will present research on the security risk profile of 1,000 healthcare apps in managing patient privacy, how they compare to those in other industries, and where the biggest vulnerabilities lie. Attendees will learn how to make their healthcare apps more secure in managing protected health information.

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

Sales

• NYU Langone Health will replace several legacy PACS with Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform in four hospitals, including all radiology and sub-specialty imaging departments. The organizations will also work together to develop new enterprise imaging products and Visage will establish an R&D hub in New York City.
• Houston Methodist chooses patient scheduling and referral management from Blockit.

People

Baptist Health South Florida hires Tony Ambrozie, MEng, MSIM, MBA (The Walt Disney Company) to the newly created position of SVP / chief digital officer.

COVID-19

HHS Secretary Alex Azar bars the FDA from signing any new rules, including those related to vaccines, ordering in a memorandum that such power is now “reserved to the Secretary.” Observers say the timing will raise concerns that Azar is muzzling FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, MD to prevent vaccine-related surprises or obstacles before the election.

A New York Times investigation finds that controversial new CDC guidance – which advises that symptom-free people shouldn’t be tested for COVID-19 even if they are known to have been exposed — was written by HHS and posted to CDC’s website over the objections of CDC scientists. HHS and the White House coronavirus task force wrote the policy, which reversed previous recommendations to test more people, then posted it to CDC’s website even though it contains errors and recommendations that are not consistent with CDC’s guidance. HHS did the same for school re-opening guidelines that were posted to CDC’s site without its involvement. The original recommendation was restored this weekend in what was listed as a “clarification” that clearly says the opposite of the guidance it replaced in urging for symptom-free people who have been exposed, “You need a test.”

Other

William “Bill” Stead, MD, professor and chief strategy officer of Vanderbilt University Medical Center, will retire from the medical center’s senior leadership team after a 29-year career. He will remain on the faculty of the Department of Biomedical Informatics. Stead has directed the Informatics Center, served as CIO, was the founding chair of what was originally called the Division of Biomedical Informatics, directed the biomedical library, was chair of Vanderbilt Center for Better Health, and was chief information architect. He was the founding editor-in-chief of JAMIA, was president of the American College of Medical Informatics, and chaired the Board of Regents of the National Library of Medicine. He got his start as a work-study undergraduate student at Duke University, where he got himself assigned to a heart research project that included the university’s first minicomputer, then started medical school and research under fellow informatics pioneer Ed Hammond, PhD.

Sponsor Updates

• Waystar partners with Louisville-based Cafe9M and ElderServe to provide weekly meals to community members in need.
• PMD releases a new video (filmed at 350 mph!), “A Day in the Life – Dave (The Company Pilot).
• Pure Storage will acquire Portworx, a Kubernetes data services platform, for $370 million.
• Redox releases a new episode of its Shift+6 podcast featuring the Broad Institute’s Danielle Ciofani.
• CareSignal announces that its device-less remote patient monitoring system has supported 20,000 patient-years, a metric it follows as a Clinically Relevant Engagement Duration that focuses on the long-term engagement of patients.
• Relatient publishes a new case study, “QualDerm Partners’ VP Talks Scaling a Physician Network, Leveraging Patient Engagement, and Responding to COVID-19.”
• SOC Telemed recognizes health system customer Guthrie for outstanding results in its telestroke program.
• Spirion develops a Global Alliance Partner Program to offer an ecosystem of best-in-class solutions.
• InterSystems joins the CARIN Alliance, a collaborative working to advance consumer-directed exchange of health information.

Blog Posts

• More than ever, CDI teams make high-quality patient care possible (Nuance)
• What Technology is Needed for Pharmacists to Achieve Provider Status? (OmniSys)
• How to select the best remote access solutions in 2020 (OpenText)
• What to Look for When Selecting Care Team Coordination Software (PatientKeeper)
• Beyond the Digital Front Door: The Digital House (Phynd Technologies)
• COVID-19 Meets Flu Season: Guidance for Medical Practices (Premier)
• Simplify Ransomware Recovery with Pure Storage and Commvault (Pure Storage)
• E/M Code Changes: Your Transition to Simplified Code Selection and Documentation Requirements (Healthcare Triangle)
• Identity Governance is Critical Every Step of the Way (SailPoint)
• The “Other” Telemedicine That’s Changing the Face of Healthcare Delivery (SOC Telemed)
• Spirion receives International Business Award for response to global pandemic (Spirion)
• Enterprise Imaging: Data Quality, Migration and Management (Impact Advisors)
• Connect 20 Virtual: Meet your speakers (including these hospitals!) (Spok)
• COVID-19 Test System Integration (Summit Healthcare)
• Improve Patient Satisfaction with EASE (Vocera)
• How to Set a Fee Schedule for Unemployed and Uninsured Patients (WebPT)
• Greg Samios of Wolters Kluwer: Five Things You Need to Be a Highly Effective Leader During Turbulent Times (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Sponsor Spotlight

Bluetree’s integrated team approach helps healthcare providers realize higher returns from their Epic EHR. Since 2019, Bluetree operates as an independent subsidiary of Providence. It received Inc. Magazine’s Best Places to Work award in 2019 and has a client base of more than 155 health systems nationwide, including all 10 organizations listed in the 2020-21 US News and World Report Best Hospitals Honor Roll rankings.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
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News 9/18/20

Top News

Gastrointestinal procedure documentation vendor Provation acquires EPreop, which sells anesthesiology quality reporting and perioperative care solutions.

Reader Comments

From Count Chocula: “Re: women on executive teams. It seems you have a threshold, so what is the right number?” I don’t know, other than it isn’t zero, but I would question the culture of a company that doesn’t at least have 30% female executives listed on its “about us” page. They can hire whoever they want, but we on the provider side are also free to choose vendors whose practices align with our beliefs and expectations. The percentage of women executives in a few companies I checked: Meditech 43%, Cerner 36%, Allscripts 35%, Change Healthcare 25%, Cognizant 8%, Athenahealth 23%, Nuance 27%, and NextGen Healthcare 27%.

From Frontliner: “Re: our continuing abysmal public health and Infectious disease management supply pipeline. Children’s Health in Dallas can’t get microbiology culture supplies due to national shortages, so they are sending stool samples for E. coli testing to a reference lab, which adds 2-3 days to the turnaround time.” I’m skeptical of just-in-time inventory practices — it has been many years since interest rates and thus inventory holding costs were high enough to make the faddish practice worthwhile. MBA consultants pushed holding inventory measured in days or even hours, a mostly pointless logistical exercise that stops being harmless when supply chains are disrupted or demand increases, as we saw with hospitals desperately bidding against each other for PPE. Similarly, aggressively managed hospital staffing practices created labor shortages and excessive traveling clinician costs when faced with similar resource supply challenges. Frontliner and I conclude that making healthcare a free-market system run by profiteers hasn’t proven to be in the best interest of its customers (which includes all of us at one time or another). Imagine a country whose healthcare non-system is so broken that the only way we can come  up with to reduce crippling drug prices is to import them on the sly from smarter countries (watch your prescription prices, Canada, because we’re going to drive them up), beg for help with medical expenses via crowdfunding sites, and leaving a large chunk of the population unable to afford either health insurance or health services costs, making bankruptcy a key component of most care plans.

From Mark Edelstein: “Re: HIStalk. I finally retired after a 40-year career in health IT, which included time with GerberAlley, Initiate Systems, Phamis, SMS, GTE, and RelayHealth. Reading HIStalk each day these past several years has really been a pleasure and has kept me so informed and educated , well beyond what knowledge I was able to uncover on my own. You have great energy and offer a terrific product. Keep it going!” Thanks and happy retirement (a.k.a. not the rocking chair, but rather the next phase of doing interesting work) to Mark, who is co-founder and executive director of MedGift, which encourages folks to “skip the flowers” for someone who is starting a care journey and instead use its platform to offer financial and emotional support through their support page. I hear occasionally from readers who no longer work in health IT, having either moved on to other industries or to retirement, but who still follow the companies and people that were once important in their daily lives. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor SOC Telemed. The SOC in the name of the Reston, VA company stands for Specialists On Call. It’s the largest national provider of telemedicine technology and solutions to hospitals, health systems, post-acute providers, physician networks, and value-based care organizations. Its proven, scalable, enterprise-wide platform Telemed IQ – which powers 850 facilities and eight of the 10 largest US health systems an integrates with the Big Four inpatient EHRs – offers  rapid deployment of optimized, sustainable telemedicine programs using the health system’s own clinicians. The company also provides neurology, psychiatry, and ICU telemedicine solutions that are staffed by its 200 board-certified clinicians. SOC was the first provider of acute clinical telemedicine services to earn The Joint Commission’s Gold Seal of Approval and has maintained that accreditation every year since inception. It helps health systems be the provider of choice, improve the patient experience, obtain or maintain accreditation for stroke and other programs, improve operational and clinical performance, and maintain clinician work-life balance. Customers include AdventHealth, Banner Health, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, and WellStar. Thanks to SOC Telemed for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Toronto-based employee mental health and wellness digital education vendor LifeSpeak raises a $42 million growth investment.

Sales

• Rush University System for Health will develop and deploy an ED command center, working with Leidos.

People

Nordic hires Jeff Buss, MS, MBA (EY) to the newly created position of CIO.

B. Well Connected Health names John J. Ostlund, MBA (VRBO) as CTO and Imran Qureshi (Clarify Health Solutions) as CIO.

Clinical decision support vendor EvidenceCare hires Bo Bartholomew, MBA (Shearwater Health) as CEO. He replaces co-founder Brian Fengler, MD, who will transition to chief medical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Microsoft integrates Nuance’s Dragon Ambient Experience with Microsoft Teams to allow clinicians to conduct telehealth visits via Teams and have the conversation turned into EHR clinical documentation.

Allscripts announces that its Allscripts Client Experience user group meeting will be held virtually October 6-8, 2020, with free attendee registration.

Meditech partners with AHIMA and hosting provider Sisu Healthcare Solutions to expand use of its Expense EHR as the flagship EHR in AHIMA’s online training environment for 16,000 students in 300 colleges and universities.

COVID-19

Analysis by Epic Health Research Network and Kaiser Family Foundation finds that people of color are more likely to test positive for COVID-19 and to require a higher level of care compare to white patients. Black, Hispanic, and Asian people had higher rates of infection, hospitalization, and death.

President Trump says CDC Director Robert Redfield, MD was confused and mistaken when he told a Senate subcommittee that distribution of a COVID-19 vaccine will likely happen in late spring or early summer, a timeline that other federal health officials agree is reasonable. Vice-President Pence told Fox News on Wednesday that the administration’s goal is to have 100 million doses available by December 31. The President also disputed Redfield’s statement that wearing masks could be more effective than a vaccine in some cases.

HHS spokesperson Michael Caputo takes a 60-day medical leave of absence after five months on the job following a Facebook Live video rant in which he claimed that CDC’s scientists “don’t want America to get well,” urged supporters of President Trump to arm themselves, and said that “my mental health has definitely failed.” Caputo previously admitted that he has never actually read CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report even though his team demanded to edit each issue to make sure that its scientific content does not conflict with White House statements.

In England, a leaked document shows that top leadership of NHS Test and Trace includes just one clinician or public health expert.

WHO warns that COVID-19 cases are rising alarmingly in Europe, exceeding their previous March peak with 300,000 new cases reported last week. The US reported 261,000 new cases in the past week as deaths approached 200,000.

Texas health officials admit that the method that has been used to report COVID-19 test positivity rate has understated the level of spread, encouraging officials to justify the re-opening of bars, restaurants, stores, and child care centers. The state now uses the date that a test was administered rather than the date it was reported, which means that the seven-day positivity rate was 8.4% instead of 5.84% when the re-opening decision was made. The governor ordered bars to be re-closed and masks to be worn on June 26, when the reported positivity rate was 13.7%, but it was actually 18.5%. Governor Greg Abbott announced Thursday that business in most regions will be permitted to operate at 75% capacity and nursing homes can accept visitors starting next week, but bars will remain closed.

Moderna provides details of how it will conduct and evaluate clinical trials of its COVID-19 vaccine, responding to scientists who have called for more transparency. The document suggests that the company won’t really know whether the vaccine works until spring, but will seek emergency FDA approval if the first data review sometime in October through December proves its effectiveness. Later Thursday, Pfizer also released its vaccine protocol.

Other

Forbes says that Epic founder and CEO Judy Faulkner is among the members of its Forbes 400 whose net worth increased the most in the past year, estimating that she gained $1.7 billion to hit $5.5 billion.

Amazon donates 99 Echo Show devices to Southeast Health (AL) to enable two-way audio and video conversations between COVID-19 patients and staff via Aiva Health’s Alexa-powered voice assistant. Amazon also donated 74 Fire tablets.

Sponsor Updates

• Redox’s EHR Integration is now available in AWS Marketplace.
• Health Data Movers publishes a new white paper, “Physiological Monitor Deployment.”
• Epion adds OptimizeRx prescription cost-saving recommendations to its patient check-in solution.
• Healthcare Growth Partners advises EPreop in its acquisition by Provation.
• Health Data Movers Inc. (HDM) ranks No. 475 on the 2020 Inc. 500.

Blog Posts

• A Tipping Point for Inpatient Glycemic Management. Finally. (Glytec)
• Managing the anticipated surge in coronavirus cases (The HCI Group)
• Data Visualization Dashboards: Three Ways to Maximize Data (Health Catalyst)
• The Tipping Point for Digital Chart Adoption (Diameter Health)
• Is COVID-19 Content Leaving Entire Communities Behind? (Healthwise)
• How Payers Can Meet New CMS and ONC Patient Access API Rules (Imat Solutions)
• E/M Code Changes: Your Transition to Simplified Code Selection and Documentation Requirements (Healthcare Triangle)
• Successful Business Transformation with ERP System Projects (Impact Advisors)
• Exploring the value of time in clinical settings today (Imprivata)
• New Infor Workforce Management features to help keep people safe and healthy at work (Infor)
• 5 Functions That Improve Practice Management and Back-Office Processes (Ingenious Med)
• Surge Staffing Preparation Tips (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Clinical terminology and the “long-haulers” of COVID-19 (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Patient Perspectives on Virtual Care Part 2: How to Differentiate Your Virtual Care Experience (Kyruus)
• Health System Manages Staff COVID-19 Exposure and Symptom Tracking (LiveProcess)
• 4 Changes Healthcare Providers Must Embrace for Success After COVID (Loyale Healthcare)
• Medhost Discusses Optimizing HCIT Configuration to Improve Care and Efficiency at NRHA (Medhost)
• How EHRs can help providers reduce opioid use (Meditech)
• 6 Proven Strategies to Increase Patients in Your Physical Therapy Clinic (MWTherapy)
• Three Ways Artificial Intelligence Can Aid Patient Matching (NextGate)
• Replenishing Provider Engagement: Cornerstones of Care (Netsmart)

Sponsor Spotlight

Optimum Healthcare IT provides professional staffing services as well as consulting services that encompass advisory, EHR implementation, training and activation, EHR optimization, community connect, managed services, enterprise resource planning, security, and ancillary services – supporting our client’s needs through the continuum of care. Our organization is led by a leadership team with extensive experience in providing healthcare staffing and consulting solutions to all types of organizations.

Contacts

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

News 9/16/20

Top News

MDLive secures $75 million through a $50 million crossover equity investment from Sixth Street Growth and $25 million in debt expansion from other investors, bringing its total raised to nearly $175 million. The company plans to IPO early next year.

Webinars

September 17 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2021 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.“ Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, VP of global clinical services, IMO; Theresa Rihanek, MHA, RHIA, mapping manager, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, clinical terminologist, IMO. IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the 2020 ICD-10-CM code set that will be critical in coding accurately for proper reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Capsule Technologies receives FDA 510(k) clearance for its Vitals Plus monitoring solution with Masimo’s NomoLine ISA CO2 module, giving providers the ability to monitor patients for respiratory deterioration in addition to other vital signs.

Change Healthcare will permanently close its headquarters in Nashville and transition as many as 700 employees to remote work.

Sales

• In the UK, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Integrated Care System will implement Cerner’s HealtheIntent population health management software and HealthEDW analytics.
• The State of Utah selects HHS Technology Group’s MediBook software to be the backbone of record-sharing software patients, providers, and payers can access during natural disasters.
• The Nebraska Health Information Initiative will leverage Collective Medical’s ADT-based care coordination software.

People

Ray Wolski (Wolters Kluwer Health) joins Lumeon as chief revenue officer.

Experity names Calibrater Health co-founder Tim Dybvig SVP of patient engagement following its acquisition of the company.

Craig Bloom (Cancer Treatment Centers of America) joins Intercept Telemed as chief growth officer.

Medication safety software vendor Tabula Rasa HealthCare hires Bob Sullivan (Corsis) as its first CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

Adventist Health (CA) adds provider look-up and patient self-scheduling capabilities from Kyruus to its website, and embeds them within its Cerner-powered patient engagement software.

AHIMA will offer Meditech Expanse as part of its online VLab, which offers students access to multiple software programs and corresponding lab lessons.

COVID-19

New research from 23andMe finds that people in blood group O seem to test positive for COVID-19 less frequently than those with other blood types. The research, part of a forthcoming study still awaiting peer-review, also found that people who tested positive and had a specific variant of a certain gene seemed more likely to have serious respiratory symptoms. Analysts caution that these findings, while novel, won’t impact treatment decisions.

Other

Former Kansas City Chiefs right guard Laurent Duvernay-Tardif, MD shares his experience working for nine weeks in a long-term care clinic in Montreal during the initial COVID-19 outbreak, and his reasons for opting out of the 2020 NFL season. He will instead study nutrition, biostatistics, and epidemiology at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health via online classes.

After launching as an invite-only program a year ago, Amazon opens up its HIPAA-compliant Alexa skill program to interested app developers. Atrium Health, Swedish, Livongo, and Cigna were among the program’s initial participants.

Apple adds a blood oxygen monitoring feature to the newest version of Apple Watch, unveiled today at the company’s product event. It will partner with three healthcare organizations to study the feature and its benefits. Apple is also working with Mount Sinai Health System to study the impact of COVID-19 on front-line healthcare workers using the watch.

Sponsor Updates

• Everbridge announces that the latest version of the Everbridge COVID-19 Shield: Contact Tracing app is available in the Apple and Google app stores.
• The Over Quota podcast features Arcadia VP of People Operations Tammi Pirri.
• An annual Black Book Market Research survey ranks North American Partners in Anesthesia as the top Anesthesia Management Services outsourcing vendor for the fourth consecutive year.
• Ellkay will exhibit at the AHIP National Conference on Medicare, Medicaid & Dual Eligibles through September 17.
• ESolutions exhibits at the virtual HBMA 2020 Conference through September 17.
• Ingenious Med’s point-of-care solution is now available in the Epic App Orchard.
• Nuance’s Dragon Ambient eXperience clinical documentation software is now available through Microsoft Teams for virtual consults.
• OptimizeRx partners with Epion Health to give patients point-of-care access to savings programs sponsored by life sciences companies.
• Saratoga Hospital staff recount how Vocera Badges worn under PPE helped them prepare for and manage surges of COVID-19 patients.
• Google Cloud hires Hans Thalbauer (SAP) as managing director of global supply chain, logistics, and transportation solutions; and Paula Natoli (Blue Yonder) as director of supply chain, logistics, and transportation solutions for North America and Latin America.

Blog Posts

• 3 Common Mistakes in Epic Training (314e)
• Desperate to trim your labor budget? Start with overtime. (Ability Network)
• Digitize admin tasks to reduce staff burdens (AdvancedMD)
• Impressive research by Agfa/RSNA R&E Grant recipient (Agfa Healthcare)
• Blueleaf Banter: Transforming Your Training Strategy to Digital (Bluetree)
• COVID-19: The New Normal for Acute and Post-Acute Care (CarePort Health)
• Meditech Expanse: What’s New in Version 17 (CereCore)
• How SNFs Are Managing COVID & Avoiding Penalties (Collective Medical)
• The IT Conductors: Focus on What You Are Good At, Have Someone Else Do the Rest (CloudWave)
• Healthcare Must Move Beyond Fax Machines to Survive COVID-19 (CoverMyMeds)
• Data Analytics and Artificial Intelligence in the Race for a Coronavirus Vaccine (Dimensional Insight)
• Thank You to Our Healthcare Environmental Professionals (EClinicalWorks)
• Join Meditech in signing the 2030 World Sepsis Declaration (Meditech)
• ONC CMS Interoperability Final Rules Start Now to Comply by the Deadlines Webinar Recap (Wolters Kluwer Health Language)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 9/14/20

Top News

Kaiser Permanente launches Virtual Plus, a virtual-forward health plan for members in six Washington counties to get care for their non-urgent issues via phone, online chat, video, or email.

KP says it is conducting 65% of appointments virtually versus 20% prior to the pandemic, which led it to create the plan.

Members will be attended to by the same doctors and clinicians that work in KP locations, who will have their EHR data available. The patient may be asked to complete an in-person visit for follow-up.

Members will also have access to KP’s pharmacists through online or video visits, with delivery of 30-day supplies of medications within 1-2 days.

Kaiser Permanente says Virtual Plus will be its most affordable health plan. Individual visits are covered at no charge.

Virtual visits are available only when the patient is within Washington due to laws that prevent doctors from providing care across state lines. Members can receive in-person care while traveling out of state at any KP location, in-network urgent care, or CVS MinuteClinic in states in which KP doesn’t operate. Referrals to the in-person option are not required, but patients will have a cost depending on their plan’s benefits.

Virtual Plus will be available beginning January 1, 2021 pending state approval.

Reader Comments

From Publicly Anonymous: “Re: volunteering for COVID vaccine trials. I received a typo-laden email, ostensibly from AstraZeneca’s research partner, and dismissed it as spam. I was contact the next day by phone to set up an appointment. The consent forms seem legitimate and the study location is my former PCP. I’m not sure if this is spam or if the intentional typos are to recruit less-educated people.” Investor-backed, North Carolina-based research services vendor Javara Research (or is that “Reserach?”) is legit, but this is certainly an embarrassingly poorly edited email if it really did come from them. Information in the email seems the same as that of a Javara Facebook post that is recruiting volunteers for the same study, so I’m pretty sure it’s the real thing. Let’s hope that the rigor of their science exceeds that of their editing.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents would not be comfortable working for a company that regularly fires adequate performers in seeking to replace them with stars.

New poll to your right or here: What is your recent experience with virtual conferences? They probably aren’t going away any time soon, so feel free to add your comments about the features you like or would recommend to make them more valuable.

I received only a few responses to hanging out your health IT marketing/PR shingle, so either few have done it or they’re reluctant to talk about their experience.

Welcome (back) to HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Meditech, which took a short, understandable break while focusing on the COVID-19 needs of their clients and employees. The company has been an EHR leader for over 50 years, and I’ve never seen anything like the reinvention and reinvigoration that came from (or that led to) development of its web-based Expanse EHR, which also offers a mobile experience, virtual assistant, and virtual care, all with a no-capital subscription pricing model. The company’s leadership team (of which six of 14 members are women) have all worked their way up through the ranks, with a quick eyeballing of the exec team roster showing that those with the shortest company tenure have still been there for 30 years. Thanks to Meditech for supporting HIStalk since 2016.

I found a new YouTube video overview of Meditech Expanse.

Webinars

September 17 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2021 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.“ Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, VP of global clinical services, IMO; Theresa Rihanek, MHA, RHIA, mapping manager, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, clinical terminologist, IMO. IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the 2020 ICD-10-CM code set that will be critical in coding accurately for proper reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Venture-backed national radiology practice Radiology Partners will acquire competitor Mednax Radiology Solutions for $885 million, increasing its radiologist count to 2,400. The transaction includes Virtual Radiologic, which Mednax acquired for $500 million in 2015. Radiology Partners raised $700 million a year ago and said it would likely pursue acquisitions. It has raised $2.4 billion in total.

Sales

• Atlantic Health System standardizes on storage-as-a-service supplier Pure Storage, which it originally selected as a scalable foundation for Epic.

People

Greenway Health hires Pratap Sarker, MBA (Conduent) to the newly created position of president.

Announcements and Implementations

Cerner will integrate AxiaMed’s patient payment solution with Millennium and other products.

Elsevier announces the US launch of PatientPass, a cloud-based personalized patient education platform that is listed in Epic App Orchard.

Southern Ohio Medical Center goes live on Meditech.

COVID-19

A cardiac magnetic resonance imaging study of 26 Ohio State athletes who are recovering from COVID-19 infection finds that 15% seem to have myocarditis and another 31% have findings that suggest myocardial injury.

Contact tracing finds that 12 children who were infected with COVID-19 in Utah child care facilities spread it to at least 12 of 46 adult contacts outside the facility.

UC San Diego and UC San Francisco will pilot the use of the Google/Apple Exposure Notification smartphone app to see if student volunteers who receive notifications will self-isolate more quickly.

Politico reports that politically connected, non-medical HHS communications employees have demanded to be given control over CDC’s weekly public health journal to “ensure it is fair and balanced and complete” in matching White House statements. HHS officials claimed that CDC’s reporting of coronavirus spread in a Georgia overnight camp was intended to undermine the President’s push to return children to schools, to the point that the officials considered shutting down the publication. HHS spokesperson and former Trump campaign official Michael Caputo responded to media inquiries by claiming that his oversight is required because of “ulterior deep state motives in the bowels of the CDC.”

The Oxford COVID-19 vaccine trial of AstraZeneca resumes after one participant’s suspected adverse event was determined to present no risk to the others.

President Trump’s touting of convalescent plasma treatment for COVID-19 has stifled the expected spike in demand as people recall his previous erroneous claims about the efficacy and safety of hydroxychloroquine. The American Red Cross says that demand has not increased even as federal taxpayers paid for a $340 million public relations campaign to encourage plasma donation.

Other

Insurance claims analysis by the Health Care Cost Institute finds that non-urgent care dropped tremendously in April, which isn’t surprising, but people aren’t catching up with deferred preventive care such as mammograms, vaccinations, and colonoscopies as many assumed would happen with re-opening.

Several medical journals publish the first clinical trials guidelines for AI protocols and publication.

Sponsor Updates

• OpenText opens registration, and announces the agenda and speakers for OpenText World, which will be hosted virtually October 26-29.
• Redox releases a new podcast, “The State of Interoperability in 2020 with Redox’s Brendan Keeler.”
• CareSignal’s remote patient monitoring technology has supported tens of thousands of patients with heart failure, COPD, diabetes, depression, and dozens of other conditions for a duration of more than 20,000 patient years.
• CoverMyMeds, Health Catalyst, InterSystems, Premier, RxRevu, and SailPoint will sponsor HLTH VRTL October 12-16.
• Spok publishes a new infographic, “Ray Baum’s Act and Kari’s Law.”
• SymphonyRM, Intermountain Healthcare, and MDClone significantly enhance care for chronic kidney disease patients in early identification and engagement.
• Harlem Consolidated School District will use donated space at Experity’s headquarters to store furniture so that it can build out socially distant classrooms on its campus.
• Visage Imaging will present at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine’s virtual conference, CMIMI20, September 13-14.
• Chung Shan Medical University Hospital in Taiwan joins the TriNetX research network to streamline research and accelerate data analysis.
• The Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust in England reports an 84% improvement in care team response time after replacing pages with the Vocera smartphone app and hands-free communication badge.
• WebPT becomes the Alliance for Physical Therapy Quality and Innovation’s first At-Large Member and strategic partner.
• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new report, “Nurse Executives: Driving Change in the Era of COVID-19.”
• Zen Healthcare IT launches an educational video series on national trusted exchange networks.

Blog Posts

• Migrating content, data, and operations to the cloud (OpenText)
• How Kat McDavitt of Collective Medical Tackles the Extreme Work Life Balance of Being a Woman Business Leader During COVID-19 (Collective Medical)
• Looking to Solve the Telehealth Riddle? Consider a Platform Approach (PCare)
• The Integration of Arts and Humanity in the Health Care World and Beyond (PMD)
• Are You Ready for a COVID-19 Joint Commission Survey? (Premier)
• Turning Personal Experience into Better Patient Outcomes (Surescripts)
• Marketing on a Budget: 7 Inexpensive Ways to Boost Patient Volume in Your Practice (WebPT)

Sponsor Spotlight

Dina powers the future of home-based care. We are an AI-powered care coordination platform that can activate multiple home-based service providers, engage patients directly, and plug into remote monitoring devices. Dina helps professional and family caregivers capture rich data from the home, using artificial intelligence to recommend evidence-based, non-medical interventions. The platform creates a virtual experience for the healthcare team so they can communicate–and help patients and families stay connected–regardless of location.

(Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

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

News 9/11/20

Top News

Telehealth vendor Amwell announces IPO details that include selling $525 million in shares that, along with a $100 million private placement with Google, will value the company at $3.6 billion.

The company’s SEC filing says that it lost $88 million on $149 million in revenue in 2019 and has lost $113 million on revenue of $122 million in the first half of 2020.

The filing also indicates that Amwell, working with its investor Google, will develop an app-free video visit platform called Amwell Now.

Founders, brothers, and Co-CEOs Ido Schoenberg, MD and Roy Schoenberg, MD, MPH each hold shares worth about $300 million at the IPO price. Their Class B shares give them 51% voting power at all times.

Reader Comments

From Non-Attendee: “Re: virtual conferences. I would not attend, even at no cost, since I don’t like watching video in real time.” Neither would I. I would rather watch recorded sessions afterward, where I’m free to fast-forward, bail out if it gets boring, or skim a transcript, which plays up the advantages of video compared to in-person sessions. Virtual conferences have significant challenges: (a) educational sessions weren’t the primary draw for most conference attendees, who were looking more for networking and self-celebration, and the overall quality of these sessions isn’t enough to carry the concept; (b) it already feels virtuous to attend an online session and being required to pay for it makes it even less of a draw (expensive universities have that same challenge); and (c) people are already sick of staring at on-screen video wearing sweatpants all day. I was leery of the value of conference educational sessions even pre-pandemic, having skipped them entirely at the last several HIMSS conferences after wasting time in sessions that were poorly done, boringly presented, and that contained increasing amounts of promotion of companies and the presenters themselves, so watching those same questionable presentations on video is about as compelling as an Adam Sandler movie marathon.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A reader asked me to create a Meditech news history page like I did for Cerner, so that’s done and also added to the top menu in the “Company News History” category. News items that were significant enough to make the HIStalk news cut will be copied and pasted there, creating an easily referenced longitudinal view of “real” company news that will get longer and more valuable over time.

We always offer new sponsors a little sweetener this time of year. Sign up now and Lorre will make your renewal date 12/31/21, giving you the rest of this year free. Existing Platinum sponsors get a deal, too – I’ll run a Sponsor Spotlight if you fill out this form. Contact Lorre or Jenn. It will at least give you something to do while waiting out the long dry spell until HIMSS21. 

Webinars

September 17 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2021 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.“ Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, VP of global clinical services, IMO; Theresa Rihanek, MHA, RHIA, mapping manager, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, clinical terminologist, IMO. IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the 2020 ICD-10-CM code set that will be critical in coding accurately for proper reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Hyland will acquire Alfresco, which offers cloud-native content services solutions.

Truepill, which just raised $75 million in a Series C funding round, says that its annual revenue will reach $200 million by the end of the year. The company offers API-connected, white-label pharmacy and lab services to sites such as Hims and Nurx that sell direct-to-patient prescriptions for hair loss, erectile dysfunction, and weight loss. Truepill is launching a third product line in which it will sell at-home lab tests. Co-founder Umar Afridi was working as a CVS pharmacist three years ago, while his co-founder is a biomedical engineer who came from LinkedIn.

The co-founder and former CEO of one-time health IT high flyer Zocdoc, which offers consumer-facing provider search and scheduling, sues the company that was once valued at $1.8 billion, claiming that his two co-founders and the company’s CFO pushed him out in a 2015 coup. He wants his old job back.

Grand Rounds, which offers self-insured employers a health navigation app, telemedicine services, and medical opinions for their employees, raises a $175 million investment that increases its total to $270 million.

Healthcare Growth Partners says in its August review that “M&A is back and the velocity of the rebound has outpaced all expectations” with summer deals that include recapitalizations of WellSky, QGenda, and Edifecs and M&A involving Teladoc-Livongo and Waystar-ESolutions. The health IT sector has delivered a 42% return year to date.

Sales

• Tampa General Hospital and USF Health go live on CareMesh to deliver event notifications, referrals, and transitions of care from Epic to community providers and practices.
• Monument Health will implement Nuance’s Dragon Ambient Experience conversational AI for capturing encounter information that then updates the EHR.
• Four of Finland’s regions will work with Cerner to develop a digital platform to support moving municipal healthcare services under a regional authority.
• Mount Sinai Health System chooses Artifact Health’s mobile physician query platform for clinical documentation improvement.
• RWJBarnabas Health will implement Wellsheet’s EHR predictive workflow tool in seven of its hospitals. The health system is an investor in a fund that has a financial interest in Wellsheet.

People

Uber Health GM Dan Trigub – who previously served in a similar role with Lyft — will leave the company after two years to launch a care access startup.

Behavioral health data analytics vendor Evidation Health names Christine Lemke as co-CEO and appoints co-CEO Deb Kilpatrick, MS, PhD as executive chair of the board. The company has five co-founders on its executive team.

Announcements and Implementations

Meditech launches Expanse Virtual Assistant, a voice navigation system powered by Nuance that can allows users to perform hands-free actions.

East Alabama Medical Center goes live on the Enhanced Physician Documentation System of Crossings Healthcare Solutions, which provided virtual training and conversion support. The company offers Cerner Millennium enhancements that include solutions for documentation, order renewal, catheter management, physician notification, quality advisors, direct submission of professional billing from the chart, blood transfusion advisor, insulin management advisor, patient care dashboard, ED triage management, interdisciplinary rounding, a CCL smart template wizard, and tools to compare builds and perform change management. Demos are online.

B. Well Connected Health launches a COVID-19 return-to-work solution for employers that includes a self-screening questionnaire and recommendations.

The latest results of the Social Progress Index finds that only the US, Brazil, and Hungary have move down the list since it was first published in 2011. The US — which came in at #28 among 163 countries in areas that include nutrition, safety, freedom, the environment, and health – finished behind 96 countries in access to quality healthcare.

AMA adds two coronavirus-related CPT codes to cover time spent complying with safety protocols and running antibody tests.

Virtual, site-less clinical trials vendor Science 37 adds EHR integration to its platform.

Strata Decision Technology completes the 50th virtual implementation of its StrataJazz financial planning, analytics, and performance applications since mid-March, including Duke University Health System, Christus Health, and Sharp HealthCare.

Government and Politics

An investigation by House and Senate Democrats finds that CMS Administrator Seema Verma spent $6 million of taxpayer funds on GOP-connected consultants who billed up to $380 per hour to promote her personal brand by pitching her for magazine interviews and leadership awards. One consultant threatened to bar a Modern Healthcare reporter from CMS press calls after the magazine ran a story Verma didn’t like, while another scored her a photo shoot for a HealthLeaders puff piece. Taxpayers footed a consultant’s $3,000 bill to arrange a “girls’ night” that was thrown in Veema’s honor at the home of USA Today Washington Bureau Chief Susan Page, while another charged $1,000 to place an op-ed on Fox News to tout President Trump’s changes to the Affordable Care Act. She also disclosed details about her plan to overhaul the EHR market to the consultants three months before the new rules were released – after overriding the concerns of federal officials — in hopes of getting CNN’s Sanjay Gupta to run a story on her.

CMS launches Care Compare, a provider search website for consumers.

COVID-19

President Trump says in audio recordings of interviews with journalist Bob Woodward that were made over several months that he knew, even before the first US COVID-19 death in early February, that the virus was deadly. He described to Woodward in significant detail how coronavirus spreads, its lethality, and that young people are infected, but says he intentionally kept that information from citizens because he didn’t want to create a panic. He said publicly for weeks afterward that COVID-19 was no worse than flu, that it would go away on its own, and that mask-wearing was unnecessary. The President tweeted Thursday afternoon that the recording shows his “good and proper answers,” and otherwise Woodward should have reported them at that time to save lives instead of holding them for a future book.

Florida’s state government orders counties to stop publishing infection details for individual schools, citing privacy concerns. The state has threatened to withhold funding for districts that did not open by August 31. WHO says that the infection rate should be under 5% for safe school re-opening, while Florida’s average is 14.5%. The state has seen more than 10,000 positive cases in children under 18 since school started.

University of Wisconsin will move all classes online for two weeks and will quarantine students in two of its largest dorms after seeing 1,000 COVID-19 infections five days after it started classes under its “Smart Restart” program. At least 46 outbreaks are linked to the Madison campus and test positivity rates are at 20%. The university wisely won’t send students home to spread the infection further. The university’s interim president is former governor Tommy Thompson, who served as federal HHS secretary from 2001-2005.

Eighty percent of polled Americans don’t expect a COVID-19 vaccine to be widely available by Election Day, but if it does hit the market, 54% say they won’t take it.

Other

JP Morgan’s annual healthcare conference in San Francisco will move to a virtual format in January. The influential gathering is best known for creating a constellation of nearby meetings of moneyed folk who aren’t even attending the conference proper, a ticket that is mighty hard to come by. Zoom will likely not prove to be a good substitute for glad-handing and deal-making. Seema Verma is a keynote presenter, referred to in the program as “Dr. Seema Verma” even though I believe her highest degree is an MPH, not a doctorate.

UK Health Secretary Matt Hancock says NHS will receive $65 million to support several AI/ML projects.

A Health Affairs article lists five ways to integrate telehealth into primary care practices:

1. Pay the same rate for telehealth and in-person visits.
2. Create billing codes and payment models to cover the time that is required to address technology issues.
3. Provide insurance coverage for home monitoring devices such as connected thermometers and blood pressure cuffs.
4. Provide incentives for companies to develop telehealth technology that is more patient- and provider-friendly, including integrating interpreter services.
5. Review malpractice issues such as delivering care across state lines, standards of care, and the possible propensity of patients to sue a provider they have never met in person.

Sponsor Updates

• In England, Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital NHS Trust reports an 84% improvement in care team response time after replacing pagers with Vocera’s smartphone app and badge.
• Saykara President and Chief Medical Officer Graham Hughes, MBBS writes ”The promise of conversational AI in helping restore the doctor-patient relationship.”
• Jvion’s momentum continues in 2020 with initiatives to address COVID-19 disparities, expanded product offerings, and industry recognition.
• Gartner includes CI Security as a Representative Vendor in the Managed Detection and Response category in its “Market Guide for Managed Detection and Response Services” report.

Blog Posts

• The Psychology of Leadership (The HCI Group)
• Employing IT’s Growing Needs in a COVID World (HCTec)
• Creating a Positive Employee Orientation Impact – Virtually! (Impact Advisors)
• EHR integrations and the power of third-party solutions (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Are Healthcare Data Breaches Increasing Because of COVID-19? (Optimum Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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

News 9/9/20

Top News

A federal court dismisses a class action lawsuit that was brought by a patient of University of Chicago Medical Center who objected that the hospital shares the de-identified records of adult patients with Google for machine learning research.

The plaintiff says the hospital shares patient dates of service and free-text medical notes, both of which could make it easier for Google to re-identify their data. He adds that the company could link his information to the many databases it controls, including geotracking information, which could compromise his anonymity.

The court found that while the hospital probably breached the express contract that is represented by its Notice of Privacy Practices by “selling” de-identified data in return for free software licenses, courts have not ruled that such data has market value. It also said that the plaintiff did not prove that the value of his records was diminished by having them shared with Google.

The court noted a legal precedent in which a HIPAA violation can’t be pursued as a breach-of-contract lawsuit.

The patient sought damages, an argument that the court found was not supported by proof of any losses. The ruling also observed that the plaintiff signed the hospital’s authorization form, which specifies that patients don’t get paid even if their information is used to create commercial value.

Reader Comments

From HITCurious: “Re: HIMSS20. The exhibitor settlement contract alludes to class action lawsuit. Anyone have details?” HIMSS provided a timely response to my inquiry, which I appreciate:

HIMSS confirms that in early June, one of its exhibitors filed a lawsuit in federal district court in Illinois, seeking a refund of fees for the 2020 Global Conference. This exhibitor also seeks to represent a class of other exhibitors that it claims are similarly situated. This lawsuit is captioned HatchMed Corp. v. Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, Inc., Case No. 1:20-cv-03377 (N.D. Ill.). HatchMed alleges that HIMSS had an obligation to refund fees paid by exhibitors for the 2020 Conference, after the Conference was cancelled due to COVID-19. No class has been certified, and HIMSS disputes the basis for HatchMed’s claims. 

HIMSS is grateful for the support of exhibitors and attendees through these unprecedented times, and gratified by the overwhelming support of exhibitors for the upcoming HIMSS21 conference, scheduled for August 2021.

[HatchMed, which sells nurse call cables and device mounts and reports 2-10 employees, booked a 10×20 booth for $11,075].

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Reminder: if you have struck out on your own in health IT marketing/PR at some point in your career, share your experience with those who are considering such a move.

Webinars

September 9 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “APIs for Data Liquidity in Pandemic Times.” Sponsor: Chilmark Research. Presenters: Brian Murphy, research director, Chilmark Research; Gautam “G” Shah, VP of platform and marketplace, Change Healthcare; Drew Ivan, chief product and strategy officer, Lyniate; and Dave Levine, MD, co-founder and chief medical officer, Datica. This webinar will present the findings from a recently published research report on the state of the healthcare API market. The presenters will describe their work in deploying APIs to enable new functionality to address COVID-19. They will cover the use cases that have been most reliable for enabling effective data liquidity, how developers are using APIs to respond to the pandemic, and how different parts of the healthcare system are making APIs more widely available.

September 17 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2021 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.“ Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, VP of global clinical services, IMO; Theresa Rihanek, MHA, RHIA, mapping manager, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, clinical terminologist, IMO. IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the 2020 ICD-10-CM code set that will be critical in coding accurately for proper reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

ConnectiveRx invests in HelpAround, a patient engagement and medication adherence startup that is focused on app-based messaging for patients undergoing specialty treatments.

People

Access EForms promotes Rob True to VP of professional services.

Collaborative Imaging names Arun Douglas (Zinc) chief technology and security officer and David Silva (Baylor Scott & White Health) chief compliance officer.

Health Catalyst co-founder Steve Barlow returns as SVP after a three-year missionary stint. Bryan Hinton will be promoted to CTO in replacing Dale Sanders, who will move to senior advisor.

Australian Digital Health Agency hires Amanda Cattermole, MS, MBA (Services Australia) as CEO. She replaces Tim Kelsey, who took an SVP job with HIMSS in January 2020.

Announcements and Implementations

A new KLAS report finds that health system use of a single vendor for all revenue cycle needs remains a work in progress, with clients of Change Healthcare and Experian Health reporting the highest usage of available components as the slow transition from best-of-breed solutions continues. Waystar clients say they want to implement available patient access functionality, those of NThrive say its technology can handle complexity, and both companies have multiple customers using HIM functionality that has limited industry-wide enterprise use.

COVID-19

North Carolina becomes the latest of several states for which published COVID-19 numbers have been skewed due to data reporting problems. The state’s HHS says that unspecified technical issues have caused hospitalization data to be underreported since Friday.

Stat assesses the progress that has been made by Operation Warp Speed in its first five months:

• It spent $10 billion to support vaccine manufacturer research and production.
• It spent $450 million to support the monoclonal antibody treatment manufacturing capacity of Regeneron (and soon to Eli Lilly, which is working on a similar product). This is its only investment in COVID-19 treatment.
• It has done little with diagnostics.
• It has issued $500 million worth of no-bid contracts with companies that manufacture syringes and glass vials.
• Stat gives OWS low marks for transparency, such as explaining why it chose particular vaccine projects to fund.

Economics researchers estimate that the 500,000 attendees in early August’s Sturgis, SD motorcycle rally — most of whom did not wear masks or use social distancing — created 250,000 new coronavirus cases that will incur $12 billion in public health costs.

A pre-print of a randomized study of 464 hospital inpatients by India-based researchers finds that convalescent plasma treatment was not associated with reduced mortality or a halt in disease progression. The authors note that while CP therapy is authorized for off-label use in India and is safe, it requires a lot of resources to collect and store plasma and its sale on the black market has driven prices up.

The Washington Post says that businesses that perform “deep cleaning,” spray disinfectant freely, and make employees wear gloves is just “sanitation theater” that may distract from the more important need for people to socially distance, wear masks, and avoid enclosed spaces. it may also provide a false sense of security in making it appear that the virus can be controlled.

A pathologist employee of Texas-based freestanding ED operator Physicians Premier ER quits after the company bills his insurer $11,000 for a COVID-19 antibody test. The doctor, who ironically oversees the company’s COVID-19 antibody testing program, was a temporary employee between jobs whose short-term “junk insurance” plan was issued by United Healthcare-owned Golden Rule. ED staff told him that he wouldn’t have to pay anything. Golden Rule paid $2,100 without questioning the total, but then the facility sent him a bill for $8,900, which included services he says he didn’t receive in his 30-minute visit. The company’s advertising says the test costs $75 and Medicare pays $42 for it. The doctor reported his concerns to Golden Rule, whose investigator told him he wasn’t surprised and then didn’t follow up.

Other

A local news outlet looks at the impact observational studies that are published through Epic’s recently launched Health Research Network have had on COVID-19 treatments:

• Data queried by researchers at Lee Health (FL) showed that COVID-19 patients were three times as likely as others to develop blood clots, which led doctors to routinely give blood thinners to high-risk patients.
• Mount Sinai Health (NY) researchers found that patients in their 60s and 70s with dementia were more likely to be hospitalized or die from COVID-19 than patients the same age without dementia.
• Epic’s own analysis of COVID-19 patients with high blood pressure found those on RAAS inhibitors did no worse than those on other drugs, and did better than those not taking any blood pressure medication.
• The company’s months-long analysis of cancer screenings has found that, though they have rebounded from significant drops in the spring, they’re still one-third lower than normal.

Sponsor Updates

• Arcadia publishes a new case study, “CareMount ACO Uses Arcadia Analytics to Build a Narrow SNF Network and Reduce ALOS by 4 Days.”
• Collective Medical enables SNFs to rapidly generate reports on COVID-positive patients and report to CMS.
• ESolutions publishes a new white paper, “How the RAP Phase Out will Affect HHA Billing Requirements.”
• Everbridge risk intelligence provides major corporations, healthcare organizations, and government entities with situational awareness to mitigate threats from COVID-19.
• Health Catalyst completes its seventh annual and first ever virtual Healthcare Analytics Summit, with record registration of over 3,500 attendees.

Blog Posts

• How to Create Health EHR Interfaces (314e)
• Is telehealth right for your practice: Key considerations for physicians interested in virtual care (Ability Network)
• The Access Points Podcast: Tools, Habits, & Ideas for Peak Performance (Access)
• Creating the Visually Sustainable Healthcare System (Agfa Healthcare)
• Demo: Epidemiology and Epidemiology Rate Dashboards (Bluetree)
• Saratoga Hospital Uses Vocera Solution to Prepare for COVID-19 and Improve Staff Safety (Vocera)
• The Right Medical Device Integration Strategy can Increase the Efficiency of Medical Device Security (Capsule)
• Tips and Tricks for New VSAC Authors (Clinical Architecture)
• Managing Chronic Disease: 3 Steps Payers are Taking (Collective Medical)
• What Patients Want Out of Healthcare is Changing (CoverMyMeds)
• How COVID-19 Contact Tracing Works (Dimensional Insight)
• Care Traffic Control: Monitoring Patient Progress at Home (Dina)
• Back to the Basics During the COVID-19 Era (EClinicalWorks)
• We Owe it to Patients to Eliminate Faxing: Here’s How to Get Started (Ensocare)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 9/7/20

Top News

FCW reports that the VA’s implementation of Cerner’s scheduling solution in the Midwest’s VISN10 region will be followed by the full Cerner rollout there. VISN10 will go live on the VA’s 1.1 capability set for small and medium-sized hospitals.

COVID-19 has delayed developing the 2.0 set for its large centers that will go live first at Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center in Spokane, WA. Go-live there is set for spring 2021.

VISN10 was the first scheduling go-live because Wylie VA Ambulatory Care Center was a user of the previous Epic-powered MASS scheduling, which is being retired.

I’m assuming that this change explains the VA’s recent award of a $161 million work order to Cerner for infrastructure work in VISN10, which was announced last week without details.

Reader Comments

From Legal Beagle: “Re: telehealth medication counseling. The White House has asked the Supreme Court to reinstate a rule that requires women who are seeking pregnancy-ending drugs to make a physical visit to a doctors’ offices or clinics to pick up the pills for home use, which was a previous FDA requirement that was relaxed due to COVID-19 exposure concerns. What science exists to explain FDA’s view that only this particular drug out of thousands requires a face-to-face encounter instead of telehealth for patient safety? ACOG and others are challenging the must-travel rule, which the White House is asking the Supreme Court to overrule even pre-trial.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondent expectations for Amazon Halo are low. Naysayers say the wearable isn’t all that innovative among a plethora of fitness trackers, while one respondent provides this rather brilliant if non-cheery warning: “Imagine if you will a dystopian corporate future where one of the largest companies in the world provides all products and meals in a cardboard box left at your door, your personal data is bought and sold without your knowledge, and they provide you with faceless grey tracking bands that silently tracking your movements and health metrics. Oh wait, I’m describing Amazon today.”

New poll to your right or here, triggered by something you’ll read further down the page: Would you be comfortable working for a company that regularly fires “adequate” employees in seeking only stars?

A reader asked me about leaving the corporate health IT world and hanging out their own shingle in areas such as marketing and PR. If you’ve done that sometime in your career, please share your experience and I’ll run the answers on HIStalk.

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

Listening: Pentagram. I believe that “Starlady” is one of the most brilliantly written and performed hard rock songs ever, not even counting that it was recorded on a shoestring by a bunch of nobodies. I will listen to that song 10-20 times in a row every now and then just to appreciate the drumming and guitar and the way the rhythm swells and the transitions move it in different directions. Kiss’s Gene Simmons and Paul Stanley watched a mid-1970s rehearsal and decided to pass on signing Pentagram to Casablanca Records because they weren’t pretty (hello, no-makeup Gene Simmons, meet mirror) and Kiss is more of a profit-obsessed corporation than a group of inspired musicians (not to to mention the least-talented band I’ve ever seen play live). I’m due a re-watch of “Last Days Here,” a documentary about Pentagram’s rocky history and its only permanent member and modestly talented Bobby Liebling, whose mental and drug problems created a large group of alumni – 11 guitarists, nine bass players, and 11 drummers. But in the late summer days of 1976, their supernova was captured on primitive recording equipment while the world was distracted by lesser musical lights.

Webinars

September 9 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “APIs for Data Liquidity in Pandemic Times.” Sponsor: Chilmark Research. Presenters: Brian Murphy, research director, Chilmark Research; Gautam “G” Shah, VP of platform and marketplace, Change Healthcare; Drew Ivan, chief product and strategy officer, Lyniate; and Dave Levine, MD, co-founder and chief medical officer, Datica. This webinar will present the findings from a recently published research report on the state of the healthcare API market. The presenters will describe their work in deploying APIs to enable new functionality to address COVID-19. They will cover the use cases that have been most reliable for enabling effective data liquidity, how developers are using APIs to respond to the pandemic, and how different parts of the healthcare system are making APIs more widely available.

September 17 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2021 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.“ Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, VP of global clinical services, IMO; Theresa Rihanek, MHA, RHIA, mapping manager, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, clinical terminologist, IMO. IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the 2020 ICD-10-CM code set that will be critical in coding accurately for proper reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Shares in the exchange traded fund Global X Digital Health & Telemedicine underperformed the broader market in the past month, slipping 1.9% as the Nasdaq index rose 4.2% and the S&P 500 was up 3%.

Shares in videoconferencing tech firm Zoom run up 41% after the company reports strong, pandemic-fueled revenue and earnings, making the company worth more than IBM and increasing the value of shares held by its founder-CEO to $20 billion. I wouldn’t be a buyer given low switching costs and barriers to entry, questionable future demand, and the target on its back that comes with sudden, unplanned ubiquity, but maybe my lack of vision is why I’m not wealthy. A $10,000 investment in ZM on March 6 would be worth more than $32,000 today, or $40,000 had you sold last Tuesday.

Sales

• Holy Redeemer Health System expands its partnership with Dina to connect its hospital and home care agencies and organize and empower its post-acute, home and community-based care providers.

COVID-19

Several drug companies that are working on a COVID-19 vaccine will sign a pledge that they will release a vaccine only after data exists to prove that it meets efficacy and safety standards, seeking to reassure the public that White House pressure to get a vaccine on the market before the election won’t affect their science. President Trump suggested Friday that he is involved in the regulatory process, saying that a drug companies have told him that vaccine approval would take 2-3 years under a “a more typical kind of president.”

The FBI warns University of North Carolina and other universities that state-sponsored cyberhackers from China, Russia, and Iran are targeting their COVID-19 research data. China is using information taken from the World Health Organization to choose targets and is also using its US university research partnerships to collect information, while China and Russia are using social media to spread disinformation about the virus to fuel the US anti-vaccine movement.

The state of Utah paid $3 million plus $300,000 per month to a small technology firm to develop its Healthy Together contact tracing app that is being used by just 200 people, even after the state shut down its primary but most controversial feature of user location tracking. The primary business of year-old tech firm Twenty, which developed the app, is an meet-up app that targets Millennials. Both founders are BYU graduates.

The WHO says new evidence shows that severe and critically ill COVID-19 patients should be treated with steroids such as dexamethasone, hydrocortisone, and methylprednisolone as a standard of care in first-line treatment. 

Other

I read an interesting article on the culture of Netflix, which the company makes sure that prospective employees understand before hiring on. Some points:

• The mission, vision, and value statements of most companies are ignored. They demonstrate their actual values by who they reward and who they fire.
• Netflix encourages independent decision-making, shared information, plain speaking, and the avoidance of rules in creating dream teams of people, valuing people over process.
• Good employees listen before reacting, think clearly under pressure, and are concise and articulate in speech and writing.
• Employees are expected to say what they think if it’s in the best interest of the company, even if it is uncomfortable, and are expected to say things about co-workers only if they would be willing to say them to their faces.
• The dream team concept means that “we give adequate performers a generous severance package” so they can replace them with a star. They suggest that people who value stability, seniority, and companies that are willing to work around ineffective performance look elsewhere.
• Netflix has a team, not a family, since families include unconditional love and life-long attachments that teams do not. They say, “Unconditional allegiance to a stagnant firm or to a merely adequately performing employee is not what we are about.”
• Managers run the “keeper test” to decide who to retain – which if their employees would they fight to keep if they were considering leaving the company?
• The company does not hire “brilliant jerks” since the cost to teamwork is too high.
• Netflix does not give raises, but instead surveys the talent market and pays at the top end of what employees could make elsewhere since “the market for talent is what it is” and “your economic security is based on your skills and reputation, not on your seniority at one company.” They encourage employees to interview for jobs outside the company and share what they learn with their managers.
• The company observes that as companies get bigger, they place too much emphasis on process, the average talent and passion level slips, and they then throw more management at the pockets of chaos that result and stifle creative thinkers who question the status quo.
• All company documents are published for everyone to read and comment on.
• The company does not implement spending controls, contract signing controls, and policies for travel, entertainment, and gifts, assuming that employees will use good judgment and seek advice as needed.
• Netflix has no vacation policy except to take one when needed.
• Employees get to choose the mix of salary versus 10-year fully vested stock options for their salary. Employees who leave keep the full value of their options.
• Netflix has seen a few examples of employees abusing their freedom, but avoids over-correcting because most employees can be trusted.
• Decisions are made by one assigned “captain” instead of committees that are slow and diffuse responsibility and accountability.
• The company does not believe in executives who remain immersed in deep product details or micromanagement, instead priding itself on how few decisions senior managers make.

CNET describes Sutter Health’s use of EICUs in two hubs to scale up services to handle up to 600 patients to meet any COVID-19 surge. It also observes the geographic opportunities, such as Emory Healthcare’s use of intensitivists in Western Australia to monitor its patients in Georgia. Sutter says that development of the EHR was the most important for their EICU program, followed by increased bandwidth, high-definition cameras, and cheap LCD monitors.

Sponsor Updates

• Opus Research recognizes Nuance as a leader in its “Intelligent Authentication and Fraud Prevention Intelliview Report.”
• Consulting and managed services firm IntraSystems will offer its customers Citrix app monitoring solutions from Goliath Technologies.
• OpenText publishes a new study, “Hybrid Cloud Enables Agile Content Management and Collaboration.”
• Pure Storage names Jason Rose (SAP) chief marketing officer.
• Spirion launches new compliance and analytics products to simplify compliance with expanding privacy laws and regulations.

Blog Posts

• The Real View: Integrating AI into radiology workflow to accelerate future growth (Nuance)
• Five Tools for Clinical Collaboration in 2020 and Beyond (PatientKeeper)
• Ensuring a Steady Supply of Flu Vaccine (Premier)
• Ingesting, Processing and Storing Healthcare Data (Redox)
• The Kiosk is Dead. And other considerations for patient engagement post-COVID-19 (Relatient)
• Nurses of Spok: David Gutillo on communication and clinical experiences (Spok)
• Improve Patient Satisfaction with EASE (Vocera)
• CMS Threw Down the Gauntlet: Aer We Ready to Fight the 9% Medicare Cut? (WebPT)

Contacts

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

News 9/4/20

Top News

Boston-based Biofourmis raises $100 million to further develop its predictive analytics-based remote patient monitoring technology.

The company sells data and intervention opportunities to drug companies and offers hospitals a platform for monitoring their newly discharged patients remotely.

The company’s products have earned FDA 510(k) clearance for heart failure and arrhythmia detection.

Biofourmis uses Biovotion’s Everion armband sensor, which monitors 22 parameters, including heart rate, temperature, respiratory rate, blood oxygenation, motion intensity and steps, energy expenditure, sleep quality, and heart rate variability. Biofourmis acquired Biovotion in November 2019.

Reader Comments

From Significant Brother: “Re: remotely hosted EHRs. A practice asked their hosting vendor why the information of 50,000 of their patients was missing. The vendor told them that someone in the practice had deleted multiple directories. Should a vendor’s security practices allow records to be deleted by the thousands, especially in light of MU and HIPAA requirements for protecting patient records?” Readers, please weigh in. We’re missing an important piece of the story here — did the vendor identify the employee, were that user’s credentials maintained properly by the customer, and were backups or logical (rather than physical) deletes not available for restoring the missing records? Healthcare has seen a few instances where a fired employee trashed company data, and cloud configuration might allow limiting the extent of their destruction. But if the practice fired someone without turning off their access, or if they are sloppy in giving users more privileges than their jobs require, then that’s the age-old issue of running a business like something other than a business.

From Transmaniacon: “Re: COVID testing technology. I’m interested in a cloud-based patient registration system – basically a lightweight EHR – that can be installed quickly and easily to send results back to the person. Maybe you know of something.” I’ll enlist reader help here.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Jenn is continuing to update the Cerner-specific news page for: (a) those who care mostly about only Cerner news, and (b) those who want to see a longitudinal view of previous, significant news from the company. These items have already been vetted and summarized by appearing in HIStalk, so it’s not just regurgitated fluff. I also added a menu item called “Company News History” that lets you jump to that page, and maybe later to similar news summary pages for Epic, Meditech, and Allscripts. Somebody who asked for this years ago expressed interest in sponsoring this particular page and of course I didn’t retain that information because I lack discipline, so let me know if that was you.

Webinars

September 9 (Wednesday) 1 ET: “APIs for Data Liquidity in Pandemic Times.” Sponsor: Chilmark Research. Presenters: Brian Murphy, research director, Chilmark Research; Gautam “G” Shah, VP of platform and marketplace, Change Healthcare; Drew Ivan, chief product and strategy officer, Lyniate; and Dave Levine, MD, co-founder and chief medical officer, Datica. This webinar will present the findings from a recently published research report on the state of the healthcare API market. The presenters will describe their work in deploying APIs to enable new functionality to address COVID-19. They will cover the use cases that have been most reliable for enabling effective data liquidity, how developers are using APIs to respond to the pandemic, and how different parts of the healthcare system are making APIs more widely available.

September 17 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2021 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.“ Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, VP of global clinical services, IMO; Theresa Rihanek, MHA, RHIA, mapping manager, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, clinical terminologist, IMO. IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the 2020 ICD-10-CM code set that will be critical in coding accurately for proper reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Nordic lays off 72 of its 1,000 US-based employees due to the pandemic-induced financial disruptions its customers have faced.

Publicly traded Medicare primary care center operator Oak Street Health will open clinics in three former Walmart Care Clinic locations in Texas. Shares of the Chicago-based company, which operates 55 locations, jumped 90% on their first day of trading in early August, with the company now valued at $12 billion.

Sales

• Bayless Integrated Healthcare (AZ) will implement Saykara’s app-based, automated clinical documentation software across its eight locations in Phoenix.
• Prime Therapeutics selects RxRevu’s Real Time Benefit Check, giving prescribers on-demand information about drug options and pricing, and pre-authorization requirements.

People

William Mintz (Leidos) joins Cerner as chief strategy officer.

Announcements and Implementations

DeWitt Hospital (AR) implements Azalea Health’s EHR.

Arkansas Surgical Hospital adopts Medhost’s cloud-based EHR.

KLAS finds that the risk adjustment and analytics space is dominated by Change Healthcare, Cotiviti, Inovalon, and Optum, although of that group, only Optum was willing to share its customer list. Apixio and SCIO Health Analytics stand out in customer satisfaction, while Advantasure has the least-satisfied users.

AHRQ names Premier as the winner of its predictive analytics challenge, in which its PremierConnect most closely predicted admissions and length of stay.

Government and Politics

The US Coast Guard goes live on the DoD’s Cerner-powered MHS Genesis EHR at four facilities in California, with facility-wide deployment expected by 2024. The Coast Guard join the DoD’s EHR program two years ago after spending $60 million over seven years to unsuccessfully develop its own software.

The DoD’s Defense Innovation Unit will work with Google Cloud to develop a digital pathology solution that will include augmented reality microscopes and AI models for more accurate and timely cancer detection.

COVID-19

CDC Director Robert Redfield, MD sends an urgent letter to state governors asking them to clear the way for getting McKesson-operated COVID-19 vaccine distribution sites up and running by November 1. That presents challenges — the leading vaccine candidates require storage and delivery at below-freezing temperatures and people who get the shot must return for a second injection 3-4 weeks later. States will need to create immunization registries to track those who have received the initial dose, remind them to come back for the second dose, and ensure that the doses are distributed to the right locations in adequate supply. Hospitals will need to arrange delivery logistics and freezer capacity for a large amount of product, while rural clinics and health centers will be especially challenged.

The US, EU, Japan, and UK have contracted with drug companies for 3.7 billion doses of a successful COVID-19 vaccine and China and India will use the doses they manufacture for their own citizens, leaving much of the world, especially poor countries, without access to any successful vaccine.

Atul Gawande says in The New Yorker that the key to beating coronavirus in the US is what other countries have done — running widespread, inexpensive testing and recommitting to public health. He notes that the only-in-America health system’s maze of referrals, prior authorizations, co-pays, insurer policies, large number of uninsured people, and inconsistent screening criteria have made it hard for people to get tested, and delayed results reporting by the four companies that run most US tests is limiting their value. He concludes, “The lunacy of our testing system is the lunacy of our health system in a microcosm.” He advocates addressing logistics issues, such as creating a testing grid similar to that of electric companies, where samples would be routed to labs with excess capacity while others are overwhelmed, describing the testing industry as, “The big four commercial labs are really logistics and distribution companies wrapped around a network of regional laboratories.” He calls out the success of San Francisco, which applied its experience in addressing HIV/AIDS to mobilize a rapid, effective COVID-19 public health response.

Penn State’s athletic medicine director says that one-third of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 showed mycoarditis on cardiac MRIs, regardless of whether or not they showed COVID-19 symptoms. 

Israel’s largest hospital uses facial recognition software, in conjunction with its existing security cameras, to identify visitors who aren’t wearing masks and give them encouraging messages like, “No mask kills my vibe.”

Other

TechCrunch profiles Peer Medical, a startup that offers lung cancer patients the ability to share treatments with each other using de-identified EHR data. Patients can search Peer Medical’s database by biomarker, stage, age, or gender to review verified treatments and care journeys.

A Surescripts report on health IT adoption finds that e-prescribing and real-time prescription benefit utilization have increased over the last six months.

Two-thirds of Americans who file bankruptcy do so because of healthcare expenses. Experts say a lot of those people have insurance that provides poor financial protection given that only 40% of Americans have enough savings to cover a $1,000 emergency expense.

Points from Epic CEO Judy Faulkner’s online interview with Cleveland Clinic CEO Tom Mihaljevic, MD:

• She was supposed to college summer work at University of Rochester in particle physics, and since she had never seen a computer, they gave her a Fortran book and one week to learn.
• She applied to graduate school in math, but University of Wisconsin moved her without asking to computer science, which she did not know was an option. She worked with informatics pioneer Warner Slack, MD and was later asked to develop a clinical system in the days before commercial EHRs and widespread use of commercial database management software.
• She started Epic as a half-time employee with two half-time assistants, working from a basement.
• She says the Midwest is a great company location because people are friendly and work hard and having a rural footprint means the company has room to put up new buildings as needed.
• Technology is moving from rules-based systems to artificial intelligence, with statistical methods providing ways to issue early alerts for potential sepsis and to manage drug-drug interactions.
• Clinician notes are four times longer in the US than in other countries due to the administrative requirements for getting paid.
• Clinicians should review their software options to make the system work their way, and where that isn’t possible, examine how they do things to see if there’s a better way that the system can support. It’s helpful to have specialist physician builders who know how to configure systems for their specialty.
• Epic has created the role of BFFs, who take the “best friends forever” approach in recognizing and publicizing client innovation and bringing back developments from other clients.
• MyChart is available to 165 million patients. Only 0.5% of MyChart users want to manage their own information, and the even that tiny number falls off with time. Patients want their health system to maintain and exchange their records.
• Epic Cosmos has 60 million customer patient records that are being used for research. Epic is building a “best care for your patient” module that will use this data along with that of the specific patient to provide clinicians with evidence-based recommendations.

Sponsor Updates

• Cerner associates deliver care kits, school supplies, and gift cards to those affected by Iowa’s devastating windstorm.
• Wolters Kluwer publishes “5 Forces for the Future: Virtual care reaching the vulnerable.”
• Frost & Sullivan recognizes Jvion with its 2020 North American Technology Innovation Leadership Award for its Care Optimization and Recommendation Enhancement (CORE) technology.
• Premier takes first place in AHRQ’s Bringing Predictive Analytics to Healthcare Challenge.
• Bumrungrad International Hospital in Thailand uses InterSystems TrakCare Lab Enterprise to create one of the first fully digital microbiology laboratories in the world.
• MDLive works with the Soldiers’ Angels’ Women of Valor Program to offer caregivers of veterans virtual care for physical and mental health.
• NextGate updates the usability, reporting, and performance of its Enterprise Master Patient Index with version 11.
• Goliath Technologies partners with IntraSystems to help IT professionals anticipate, troubleshoot, and document Citrix end-user performance issues.

Blog Posts

• The Right Medical Device Integration Strategy Can Increase the Efficiency of Medical Device Security (Capsule)
• Your Insulin Management Process is Wasting Nurses’ Time (Glytec)
• How to Troubleshoot “Citrix is Slow” for Remote Workers (Goliath Technologies)
• Beginners guide to painless machine learning (Google Cloud)
• Plan Now for New Electronic ADT Notification Requirements (Healthcare Triangle)
• The Post-Pandemic Leadership Conundrum: Balancing Expenses While Investing in Digital Transformation (The HCI Group)
• Telehealth is here to stay. Now what? (HCTec)
• Virtually Kicking Off the 2020 Healthcare Analytics Summit (Health Catalyst)
• Health Literacy Lessons from COVID-19 (Healthwise)
• Healthy People 2030 Elevates Social Determinants of Health (Imat Solutions)
• QPP Proposed Rule for 2021: Update & Analysis (Impact Advisors)
• Growing Our Company Culture While Working from Home (Imprivata)
• Data is Key to COVID-19 Contact Tracing and Syndromic Surveillance (InterSystems)
• Surgical schedules slow to recover even as operating rooms reopen (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• COVID-19: Healthcare Consumerism’s Tipping Point (Loyale Healthcare)
• A Guide to Patient Retention for Physical Therapists (MWTherapy)
• Apart But Not Alone: How Grief Support Prevails Amid a Pandemic (Netsmart)

Contacts

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

News 9/2/20

Top News

PicnicHealth — which assembles a user’s health history from the medical records of their providers using phone and fax, packages them into a personal health record, and then allows the user to send their anonymized data to drug companies as real-world evidence for research — raises $35 million in Series A and B funding rounds.

It’s not a free or even inexpensive service. Users pay $299 upfront to have their information gathered from their providers and then $39 per month to keep it current. They can choose the research studies to which they want their information released, but receive no compensation.

It seems unlikely that large numbers of people will pay that much. CareSync had a similar service with more user benefits and charged a fraction of this cost before the company shut down in June 2018.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Cerner. Cerner Corporation’s health technologies connect people and information systems in thousands of contracted provider facilities worldwide, dedicated to creating smarter and better care for individuals and communities. Recognized globally for innovation, Cerner assists clinicians in making care decisions and assists organizations in managing the health of their populations. The company also offers an integrated clinical and financial system to help manage day-to-day revenue functions, as well as a wide range of services to support clinical, financial, and operational needs, all focused on people. Healthcare is too important to stay the same. Thanks to Cerner for supporting HIStalk.

I found this YouTube video that describes how Great Lakes Health System is creating a single patient record using Cerner.

Webinars

September 3 (Thursday) 2 ET. “How Does A Global Pandemic Reshape Health IT? A Panel Discussion.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Rob Wallace, chief product officer, IMO; Andrew S. Kanter, MD, MPH, chief medical officer, IMO; Lori Kevin, VP of enterprise IT and security, IMO; Sahas Subramanian, MCA, enterprise architect, IMO. As COVID-19 continues to spread, regulation changes, code system updates, and an increased reliance on technology are making it hard to stay on top of the many ways the pandemic is altering health IT. What’s more, we’re confronting challenges that rely heavily on technological solutions – like accurate reporting tools or telehealth adaptations – and we need those solutions now. The panel of subject matter experts across the enterprise will share insights on how the global pandemic is reshaping the health IT world.

September 17 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2021 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.“ Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, VP of global clinical services, IMO; Theresa Rihanek, MHA, RHIA, mapping manager, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, clinical terminologist, IMO. IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the 2020 ICD-10-CM code set that will be critical in coding accurately for proper reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

TigerConnect acquires Adjuvant’s physician scheduling tool, which it will release as TigerSchedule in combining physician scheduling with clinical collaboration.

Germany-based Semalytix — which analyzes patient-generated treatment experience information from their posts on blogs, forums, and social media and sells the insights to drug companies – raises $5 million in a Series A funding round.

Sales

• Oregon Health & Science University will implement Bright.md’s automated telehealth platform as part of its Virtual Care Hub, which will guide patients through an online interview whose results are combined from their EHR information to display a chart-ready SOAP note to the provider.

People

Chris Bayham, MBA (Brookdale Senior Living) joins payer-provider precision medicine technology vendor Xsolis as COO.

SignalPath hires Andy Corts  (Sarah Cannon Research Institute) as as SVP of sponsor and CRO solutions.

Announcements and Implementations

Collective Medical releases an infection control reporting solution for skilled nursing facilities that allows them to meet federal requirements for reporting COVID-19 cases to the federal government.

The American Medical Association releases the 2021 CPT code set, which includes the proposed CMS changes that take effect January 1, 2021.

Boston startup Statum Systems announces a mobile communication and collaboration system that communicates with traditional paging systems as a backup to WiFi and cell connections. Users add a smart card to their ID badge or smartphone case to allow their phone to connect via Bluetooth to a pager receiver, after which the system will choose from the best available communications network even during outages or when in areas with low signal penetration.

Government and Politics

The VA awards Cerner a $161 million contract to implement an enterprise health services network at four of its Ohio facilities. I assume, but haven’t confirmed, that this is a milestone payment for the VA’s general implementation of Cerner.

COVID-19

HHS bids out a $250 million contract for a public relations firm to “defeat despair and inspire hope” related to COVID-19 and to encourage businesses to reopen to restart the economy, with most of the money to be spent by the end of the year.

New White House medical adviser neuroradiologist Scott Atlas, MD is urging the White House to embrace a herd immunity strategy for COVID-19, calling for lifting restrictions so that the virus will spread through healthy populations while the government focuses on protecting high-risk people. Sweden’s use of that strategy yielded infection and death rates that are among the highest in the world and failed to prevent economic problems. Epidemiologists, of which Atlas is not one, project that reaching 65% herd immunity in the US would require over 2 million deaths.

Wesleyan University is testing every student and on-campus employee twice per week for COVID-19,  arranging for a 10-day isolation period for those who test positive, and performing contact tracing. Students, faculty, and staff members bring their ID to a tent, where they are given a nasal swab kit, perform their own swab, and return their sample to testing staff. The school has reported four positive results in nearly 5,000 tests.

An article in The Atlantic explains why contact tracing works everywhere in the world except the US:

• The US didn’t start early before case numbers became unmanageable.
• People often don’t answer their phone when called by someone they don’t know.
• Test results often take several days to arrive and people don’t always self-isolate while waiting for them.
• A significant number of Americans don’t trust the government or believe in conspiracy theories.
• The US doesn’t provide much social support, so those who test positive are expected to isolate away from work and family at their own expense and in what could be space-limited living quarters.

NIH announces that a Phase 3 trial of an investigational COVID-19 vaccine that was developed by Oxford University has begun and will ultimately include 30,000 adult volunteers in 30 states. AstraZeneca has purchased the rights to the vaccine.

ProPublica notes that the US has no overall strategy for testing symptom-free people for COVID-19 because of the different needs involved with clinical versus public health use. Symptom-free testing offers no clinical value since treatment would be the same whether positive or negative, but public health departments want to be able to identify those silent carriers to assess the overall severity and source of the infection’s spread and to perform contact tracing to ask people to isolate themselves.

The National Institutes of Health concludes says the data used by the FDA to support its Emergency Use Authorization for convalescent plasma treatment is not adequate to recommend the treatment or to make it a standard of care. NIH says no conclusions can be drawn in the absence of randomized clinical trials even though FDA, HHS, and the White House publicly announced the EUA as a historic breakthrough that will save 35 of 100 hospitalized patients in misinterpreting the study’s results.

The US will not participate in the World Health Organization’s 170-country Covax effort to develop, manufacture, and equitably distribute a coronavirus vaccine. A White House spokesperson announced that “we will not be constrained by multilateral organizations influenced by the corrupt World Health Organization and China.” Experts say the downside of the “America first” policy is that if none of the vaccines being tested here work, then Americans won’t have access to successful ones that other countries are testing. The global concern is that the US will hoard doses and vaccinate even low-risk people while other countries are left without.

Florida’s health department cuts ties with Quest Diagnostics after it discovers that the company failed to submit 75,000 COVID-19 positive results going back to April. Quest apologized, saying that a technical issue prevented it from reporting 75,000 test results of the 1.4 million tests it performed, and notes that individual patients and providers received their results in a timely manner even though the state did not.

Studies find that proper ventilation can help reduce coronavirus spread indoors, as researchers recommend that schools and business upgrade their air circulation systems and open windows when possible.

Apple and Google will include COVID-19 exposure notification in the next updates of IOS and Android that begin rollout immediately, eliminating the need for users to install them as a separate app. Users will receive a push notification of the public health options that are available in their area should they choose to opt in.

Sponsor Updates

• Arcadia makes its Outreach module available for free to payer and provider partners so that they can communicate with patients about pediatric vaccination needs and other gaps in care.
• Impact Advisors publishes a white paper titled “EHR Hostring Strategies and Options.”
• The Chartis Group hires James Green as a director of its revenue cycle practice.
• CereCore wins ClearlyRated’s 2020 Best of Staffing client and talent awards for service excellence.
• Public sector technology vendor Tyler Technologies and Cerner will help state health departments comply with Medicaid reporting requirements using Tyler’s Entellitrak and Cerner’s HealthIntent.
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of The Informonster Podcast, “The COVID-19 Interoperability Alliance.”
• Dresner Advisory Services names Dimensional Insight an overall leader in business intelligence in its annual Industry Excellence awards.
• Everbridge and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children celebrate six years of successful collaboration.

Blog Posts

• Top 6 Problems with Paper Consent Forms (Access)
• 3 Steps to Ensure Smooth Medical Billing with Every Patient (AdvancedMD)
• The Immunization Gateway Portfolio: Preparing for COVID-19 Mass Vaccination (Audacious Inquiry)
• Maximizing Staff Scope of Practice (Bluetree)
• Interoperability e-Notification CoPs: Why a National Network is Critical (CarePort Health)
• Millions are Uninsured Due to COVID-19: What This Means for Payers (Collective Medical)
• CoverMyQuest: Updates from Our 2019 Winners (CoverMyMeds)
• Virtual Healthcare IT Projects Webinar Recording (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• What is FHIR and Why it Matters (Diameter Health)
• Going Big for Their Go-Live (EClinicalWorks)
• Tearing Down SDoH Barriers to Discharge During a Pandemic (Ensocare)
• Optimizing Data for Revenue Recovery in Your Health System (ESolutions)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 8/31/20

Top News

Konica Minolta will pay $500,000 to settle false claims act charges involving its former subsidiary Viztek, which the federal government says fraudulently obtained certification for its Exa EHR that allowed users to falsely collect Meaningful Use payments.

Also named was EHR certification company InfoGard, which “facilitated and participated” in Viztek’s false attestations by certifying the product even as its tester noted obvious manipulation.

Details of the whistleblower’s complaint, in which the government intervened without filing its own complaint, are more interesting than the $500,000 settlement might suggest:

• PACS vendor Viztek announced rollout of its EHR-PACS integrated Exa EHR in mid-2014. It developed that product in reworking its previously acquired Opal EHR, which was ONC certified.
• Viztek’s India-based developers underestimated the work that was required to bring Exa EHR up to 2014 edition standards.
• The whistleblower – Exa EHR’s product manager – said Viztek founder and president Joe Cermin told her that “I don’t care if you have to lie, beg, cheat, steal, or kill” to earn certification since failure to do so would jeopardize the millions of dollars that would result from the company’s acquisition by Konica Minolta, which was underway during the certification testing.
• Konica Minolta acquired the 120-employee, North Carolina-based Viztek in October 2015.
• Viztek chose the remote testing option so it could manipulate the testing scenarios using a hard-coded product version that was never released. The whistleblower was told to keep multiple tabs open on her screen, one to run the test script and the other to show an already-configured result. The software failed testing at several points, at which time the company’s executives would ask for a break to allow two on-call teams in India to dummy up test results on two versions of the software, then demonstrate the result of whichever team finished first. At several points, the developers accidently displayed live patient data.
• The developers hard-coded the EHR to pass the XML output requirements for Common MU Data Set by using programming they found on an ONC testing website. They didn’t even bother to remove the other EHR vendor’s name that was still embedded in the programming.
• InfoGard “facilitated and participated” in the false attestations by giving Viztek multiple attempts to pass and approving frequent breaks and delays that gave developers time to falsify the programing. The InfoGard tester passed the product even though she noticed that on-screen version numbers, colors, and field layouts changed after the developers had taken breaks.
• The UL subsidiary of Underwriters Laboratories acquired InfoGard in December 2015.

Reader Comments

From Debbie Downer: “Re: [health IT executive name omitted.] Does it seem they had to be at least somewhat evil to have made their way to the top?” We all have a good-bad behavior ratio that changes situationally, earning us a perceived “jerk score” that may be based on only superficial aspects of our character as observed at our most inopportune moments. Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, and Neal Patterson kicked their dents in the universe with a psychologically obsessive focus, notoriously flaring temper, an intolerance of naysayers, psychological issues that in some cases were tied to a traumatic childhood, and a general indifference to the wellbeing of the folks who were rowing their corporate boat. But they built lasting and daringly innovative companies in their image that likely would not have happened if they were easygoing everymen. It’s probably not true that nice people finish last, but it is true that people who are successful in any field have to push themselves and others in ways that cheap-seaters would likely find despicable. Whether that leaves them happier on their deathbeds or whether society is better off as a result is an issue that is above my pay grade. Maybe my conclusion is that you can be happy only if you act as your natural self, regardless of how acceptable that may or may not be to others, and the vast majority of jerks don’t accomplish all that much.

From Woodstock Generation: “Re: US withdrawal from WHO. All of my HIM colleagues say no impact will result. We will continue to use ICD-10 diagnoses from WHO and modify them as usual to crate our ICD-10 CM. We will also will continue to create procedure codes (ICD-10 PCS) for use only in the US.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Many poll respondents say that their family connection and money situations have improved in the past year, although quite a few others don’t have much positive to report (with “optimism” taking a big hit, likely due to COVID-19).

New poll to your right or here: how much consumer and healthcare impact will the Amazon Halo wearable have?

Webinars

September 3 (Thursday) 2 ET. “How Does A Global Pandemic Reshape Health IT? A Panel Discussion.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Rob Wallace, chief product officer, IMO; Andrew S. Kanter, MD, MPH, chief medical officer, IMO; Lori Kevin, VP of enterprise IT and security, IMO; Sahas Subramanian, MCA, enterprise architect, IMO. As COVID-19 continues to spread, regulation changes, code system updates, and an increased reliance on technology are making it hard to stay on top of the many ways the pandemic is altering health IT. What’s more, we’re confronting challenges that rely heavily on technological solutions – like accurate reporting tools or telehealth adaptations – and we need those solutions now. The panel of subject matter experts across the enterprise will share insights on how the global pandemic is reshaping the health IT world.

September 17 (Thursday) 1 ET. “ICD-10-CM 2021 Updates and Regulatory Readiness.“ Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: June Bronnert, MSHI, RHIA, VP of global clinical services, IMO; Theresa Rihanek, MHA, RHIA, mapping manager, IMO; Julie Glasgow, MD, clinical terminologist, IMO. IMO’s top coding professionals and thought leaders will review additions, deletions, and other revisions to the 2020 ICD-10-CM code set that will be critical in coding accurately for proper reimbursement.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Prescription shopping vendor GoodRx files for an IPO, showing first-half results of $55 million in profit on $257 million in revenue with high growth in both. The company was valued at $3 billion in a 2018 funding round.

COVID-19

US COVID-19 deaths are at 183,000, with 220,000 projected by November 1.

Public health experts question whether COVID-19 PCR tests are overly sensitive, causing people who are carrying insignificant amounts of virus to be labeled as positive and treated as contagious. The answer isn’t to stop testing, as CDC’s controversial new guidance suggests, but instead to use the newly introduced rapid tests that are less sensitive. Other options would be to confirm PCR tests a few hours later with a rapid test, or to interpret the same PCR test result using lower cycle threshold ranges. A run of samples at New York’s state lab identified 794 positive results using the common setting of 40 cycles, but detuning the sensitivity to 35 cycles reduced that number in half, which would make the results more meaningful and make contact tracing easier. The experts also question why labs report their test results as simply positive or negative instead of listing the actual measured viral load.

HHS dismisses two of its high-level PR experts following the backlash that followed erroneous statements made by FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, MD about the effectiveness of convalescent plasma treatment that he later declined to correct in a public forum. Hahn, President Trump, and HHS Secretary Alex Azar touted FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization of the treatment as a “very historic breakthrough” that offers a 35% reduction in deaths, a wildly incorrect misinterpretation of results from an observational study that showed that a tiny subset of patients had 35% fewer deaths when given the treatment early versus those who were given it later. Hahn tweeted that he misspoke in characterizing the findings as an “absolute reduction” instead of a “relative reduction,” but he has not elaborated further or provided more accurate information to the public. No randomized clinical trial has been done to prove that convalescent plasma treatment reduces deaths, and even taking the data at face value suggests a 5% mortality reduction at best from using the 100-year-old treatment.

FDA assigns Emergency Use Authorization to allow all hospitalized COVID-19 patients to receive remdesivir, although no research has been published to prove its benefit. FDA issued an EUA in May for using the drug in non-ventilated hospitalized patients who need oxygen. FDA Commissioner Stephen Hahn, MD said that “data show that this treatment has the potential to help even more hospitalized patients,” citing one study from May and another that found only that five days of treatment work as well as 10. Hospitals worry that broader authorization is unproven, it came in the absence of new research, and the EUA will make it harder to obtain the drug for patients whose need is better documented by evidence.

FDA Commissioner Hahn says the agency will authorize widespread use of a COVID-19 vaccine via Emergency Use Authorization before Phase III clinical trials are complete if they think the benefits outweigh the risks. He says it won’t be a political decision – companies apply for such authorization and FDA makes a determination based on the evidence they submit. The only countries that have approved vaccines before their clinical trials were completed are China and Russia.

People who are misinterpreting CDC’s data are spreading the rumor that only 6% of reported coronavirus deaths were caused by COVID-19, confusing the fact that 6% have COVID-19 as the only ICD-10 code listed while the other 94% include COVID-19 as well as comorbidities such as obesity or diabetes, as is common in many Americans and nearly ubiquitous in older people. It was already widely published that older, sicker people are more likely to die of COVID-19, as are minorities and those who are poorer. The pandemic won’t just go away by pretending that people who die of pneumonia in conjunction with coronavirus infection didn’t really die of COVID-19 and therefore everybody else’s odds are better. But you want to blame people for letting COVID-19 kill them by daring to be older, sicker, poorer, or less white, then these are some good numbers to share with others who don’t really care about their deaths either.

Other

Ascension Michigan will lay off 223 employees of its IT network operations and service desk in October as the health system outsources their jobs. SVP/CIO Gerry Lewis said in a blog post two weeks ago that “we have begun shifting some of our technology functions to third-party partners who specialize in these services” as part of its “digital transformation.”

Cleveland Clinic President and CEO Tom Mihaljevic, MD will interview Epic CEO Judy Faulkner on Wednesday, September 2 at 6 p.m. ET as part of the speaker series “Ideas For Tomorrow.” It will be live-streamed on Facebook and YouTube Live.

Elon Musk’s Neuralink demonstrates its skull-inserted brain-computer link in a pig, as the company continues its progress toward creating “neural shunts” that could allow paraplegics to regain use of their limbs. Musk also envisions people communicating using “conceptual telepathy” without writing or speaking. He admits that people will be wary of the technology that he calls “a Fitbit for your skull,” acknowledging that “this is increasingly sounding like a ‘Black Mirror’ episode.”

Sponsor Updates

• OptimizeRx CEO William Febbo will present at the LD 500 virtual investor conference on September 3.
• The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs honors Surescripts Clinical Informatics Manager Larry King with its Rising Star Award.
• TriNetX announces that Duke-NUS, a medical school in Singapore, has joined its global research network.
• Vocera will present virtually at the Baird 2020 Global Healthcare Conference September 9, Wells Fargo Virtual Healthcare Conference September 10, and Morgan Stanley Virtual Global Healthcare Conference September 14.
• Wolters Kluwer launches “5 Forces for the Future” series to reimagine healthcare post-COVID-19.

Blog Posts

• The difference between ambient clinical intelligence and ambition (Nuance)
• How Far We’ve Come: Immunizations (OmniSys)
• My Unexpected First 100+ Days (PatientKeeper)
• Clarifying 5 Misconceptions about CMS’s E-Notifications Condition of Participation (PatientPing)
• Investing in Partnerships Pays Dividends (PMD)
• Executive Analysis Elevates a Transfer Center’s ROI and Strategic Value (Central Logic)
• Take Advantage of the PAMA Deadline Extension (Premier)
• Sell to hospitals. Get your product live. (Redox)
• Back to the Future with SailPoint Predictive Identity (SailPoint)
• 3 key questions to determine if your data protection software is Privacy-Grade (Spirion)
• How to strengthen your emergency call system to comply with Kari’s Law and the Ray Baum’s Act (Spok)
• Vocera and EASE: Humanizing the Patient and Family Experience, Together (Vocera)
• What Healthcare Can Learn From Fintech’s Digital Evolution (Waystar)
• Is Professional Liability Insurance Worth It? (WebPT)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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