News 1/21/22

Top News

Wheel, which offers companies a platform and services to develop a virtual-first care offering, raises $150 million in a Series C funding round, increasing its total to $216 million.

Webinars

February 9 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “2022 – Industry Predictions and Medicomp Roadmap.” Sponsor: Medicomp Systems. Presenters: David Lareau, CEO, Medicomp Systems; Jay Anders, MD, chief medical officer, Medicomp Systems; Dan Gainer, CTO, Medicomp Systems. The presenters will provide an update on the health IT industry and a review of the company’s milestones and insights that it gained over the past two years. Topics will include Cures Act implications, interoperability, AI, ambient listening, telehealth-first primary care, chronic care management, and new Quippe functionality and roadmap.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Quest Diagnostics will acquire virtual health coaching company Pack Health in an all-cash deal whose value was not disclosed. Quest will place the company in its HealthConnect extended care services offering, which offers insurance companies services for members such as in-home risk assessments, health screening, and social determinants of health review. HealthConnect was formed in 2018 via Quest’s acquisition of home-based risk assessment and monitoring vendor MedXM. Pack Health CEO Mazi Rasulnia, PhD, MPH, MBA founded the company in 2013.

Outpatient physical rehabilitation platform vendor WebPT acquires Clinicient, which offers an outpatient rehab therapy EHR/PM and a patient outcomes tracking and benchmarking service.

Lyra Health, which offers online and in-person workforce mental health solutions, raises $235 million in financing.

Gale Healthcare Solutions, whose platform helps hospitals contract and manage per diem and travel nurses, receives a $60 million growth equity investment.

Big Health, which sells apps for insomnia and anxiety to employers and health plans, raises $75 million in a Series C funding round, increasing its total to $129 million.

Investor Mark Cuban launches an online pharmacy that offers low prices on 100 generic drugs to cash-paying consumers. Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company buys drugs directly as a registered wholesaler, then sells prescriptions at actual cost plus 15% and a pharmacist fee. The company says it will not work with with third-party pharmacy benefits management companies that it says inflate drug prices. The online pharmacy is operated on Truepill’s digital health platform. The company lists a 30-day supply of thyroid drug levothyroxine at $4.20 versus the $16 list price, although I notice that Walmart sells it for $4.

Cerner SEC filings indicate that President and CEO David Feinberg and CTO Jerome Labat have waived their right to voluntarily leave the company within 12 months of the close of Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner. If Oracle terminates them, they will get $4.5 million and $2.3 million in cash, respectively, plus accelerated share vesting. Feinberg was hired in August 2021 and Labat in June 2020.

Points from the twice-yearly health IT market review of Healthcare Growth Partners:

• Revenue multiples in M&A and buyout transactions rose from 5.1x just before the pandemic started to 6.9x today, a 36% increase that still fell short of the Nasdaq’s 50% rise.
• Health IT private equity investment increased from a steady $10-$15 billion per year to more than $30 billion.
• M&A deal volume increased 50%, but has settled back to a 13% increase.
• The early 2021 “deal frenzy” was driven by excess market liquidity, the looming capital gains tax hike, pandemic-driven IT needs, and the fear of missing out. The second-half cool-down was caused by pullback of stimulus funds and a tax hike that was below expected levels, reducing transaction urgency.
• HGP speculates that the market’s high value may level off, but may have hit a “new normal” as capital keeps flowing in at high valuations.
• The highest median multiples involved companies whose business was revenue cycle management, telemedicine, population health management, and analytics, and life sciences technology. 
• Not all health IT companies command premium valuations. Multiples are justified by growth, profitability, and recurring revenue.
• Health IT had a “painful downturn” in the second half of 2021, underperforming the market and ending the year down 16% versus 2020’s 62% increase, with 71% of health IT companies ending the year with a lower share price.
• Three-fourths of companies that began initial trading in 2020 or 2021 are trading below their initial price, with new SPAC-merged companies down an average of 44%.

Sales

• DCH Health System (AL) will implement Pelita’s patient access and Virtual Intake Management systems.
• Hunt Regional Healthcare (TX) will implement Cerner Millennium via its CommunityWorks delivery model.

People

Huntzinger Management Group promotes Stephanie Wallace to VP of sales operations.

UCSF Health hires Suresh Gunasekaran, MBA (University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics) as president and CEO. He spent much of his career as CIO at UT Southwestern Medical Center and worked for IBM/Healthlink.

George Pappas (DrFirst) joins cybersecurity firm Intraprise Health as CEO.

Patient engagement system vendor MobileSmith Health hires industry long-timer Chris Caramanico (Orthus Health) as CEO. He replaces Jerry Lepore, who will remain on the company’s board.

Coding solution vendor Aidéo Technologies hires Jason Sroka, PhD (SmartSense by Digi) as chief data sciences officer and Brent Backhaus (Olive) as CTO.

Cheston Newhall (Appriss Insights) joins Bamboo Health as chief of staff.

Atul Dhir, DPhil, MBBS (New Century Health)  joins PatientsLikeMe as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Ellkay enhances its LKCOVID-19 COVID-19 testing platform for large employers to include an employer dashboard, employee self-scheduling, direct-to-employee results, reports for compliant testing, pooled testing, and employee self-service for registration.

A National Academy of Medicine discussion paper says that while the pandemic increased the adoption of telehealth, it also exposed deficiencies in healthcare’s data infrastructure, where questions about COVID vulnerability factors, infection spread, hospital capacity, PPE availability, and identification of effective treatments and outcomes remained unanswered despite widely available yet disconnected digital data. The authors note that decision-makers were flying blind early in the pandemic because COVID-19 codes were not yet available in EHRs, EHR encounters could not be correlated to ERP-monitored staffing and physical capacity, and public health systems ran on underpowered, siloed systems.They also note that temporarily easing regulations related to HIPAA enforcement and clinician licensing improved patient care quickly. They compare EHRs to libraries, where moving paper documents to microfiche added little value beyond reduced storage costs, but moving records to machine-readable digital form opened up new “business linkage between data and services” paradigms such as online search and retrieval. They advocate incentivizing data-sharing and interoperability and the use of real-world evidence.

A University of Chicago study finds that negative patient descriptors – such as “resistant,” “non-compliant,” and “defensive” – were used by providers to describe black patients 2.5 times more often than for white patients. The authors note that previous research has shown that patients who are described with stigmatizing terms are less like to have their pain management needs met.

Omron’s VitalSight is recognized with “best of” honors at CES 2022. The physician-ordered remote patient monitoring solution is delivered to the patient’s home pre-configured to share blood pressure measurements without requiring a WiFi or cellular connection.

Government and Politics

Hundreds of VA anesthesiologists complain about its intention to allow nurse anesthetists to practice without their supervision. That plan is related to a VA proposal to implement national standards that would take precedence over individual state laws, with those standards being implemented in its Cerner rollout.

Other

Researchers find little proof in the medical literature that mental health apps are effective. They conclude that some mobile-powered interventions might be better than nothing, which given their potential scale, might still be good news. Weaknesses of their study are that it was performed by meta analysis (reviewing existing literature, some of which includes poor study design and author bias) and it grouped apps together in broad categories. 

In Lisbon, Portugal, Uber Eats adds the capability to order a $23 physician telehealth session or a $91 house call.

Healthcare IT Leaders awards its employee recruitment prize to Kendy Valburn, a contact tracer and team lead for the company’s Healthy Returns return-to-work COVID-19 program. He provided a heartfelt, emotional response to the news that he will receive a new Tesla.

Sponsor Updates

• HCI Group Chief Digital Officer Ed Marx joins QliqSoft’s advisory board.
• Redox and PatientBond partner to offer personalized healthcare content within any EHR.
• Meditech EVP Helen Waters will participate on panels during Google’s Healthcare 360 event on January 26 and MicroStrategy’s World 2022 event on February 1.
• Healthcare Triangle releases a shareholder update.
• The Wyoming Department of Health uses technology and services from NTT Data to overhaul its Medicaid program.

Blog Posts

• A Different Point of View: Dumpster Diving for Data in Today’s Legacy EHRs (Medicomp Systems)
• Patient Care and Confidence Affected by Cyber Attacks on Healthcare (Fortified Health Security)
• Change Management: Techniques to Drive Enablement in Your Organization (Impact Advisors)
• How Digital Health Technology Can Help with Staffing Shortages (Get Well)
• Doing what’s right: Expert teams and engaging culture fuel Nordic’s continued growth (Nordic)
• The Emerging Role of a Chief Digital Officer in Healthcare: A Conversation with Craig Richardville – Part 1 (HCI Group)
• Vaccine and Testing Directives: What’s Next After the SCOTUS Rulings? (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Clinical terminology and COVID-19: The challenges to data management (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• How Can We Bring Back the Joy of Nursing in 2022? (Lumeon)
• Did You Know the Three Most Common Medical Billing Denials Are Also the Easiest to Avoid? (Medhost)
• Improving health equity one medication at a time (Meditech)

Contacts

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

News 1/19/22

Top News

ONC and The Sequoia Project publish the Trusted Exchange Framework and the Common Agreement (TEFCA) that will allow entities to apply for designation as Qualified Health Information Networks.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

YouTube has recently been suggesting to me videos related to ASMR — autonomous sensory meridian response — in which the sounds of whispering or nature cause some people to tingle or to relax. Camping, romantic role play, and cooking are common subjects of the audio-emphasized videos. They don’t do much for me, but I’m intrigued to learn that the name — and the attempt to apply science to the phenomenon — originated in 2009 with Jennifer Allen, an interface analyst with Allscripts (she’s now a cybersecurity expert) who thought the initially proposed term “brain-gasm” wasn’t optimal. Quite a few YouTube “personalities” or “ASMRtists” are making as much as $6 million per year each from their cut of ASMR video ad revenue, although you would think that the YouTube-inserted ads would disrupt whatever ASMR experience was in progress.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

England-based ordering communications and laboratory information management systems vendor CliniSys — which was acquired by Sunquest owner Roper Technologies in 2015 — acquires Raleigh, NC-based Horizon Lab Systems. The combined companies will operate as CliniSys, apparently retiring the Sunquest name. CliniSys’s president and CEO is industry long-timer Michael Simpson, who has held executive roles with McKesson, QuadraMed, GE Healthcare, Caradigm, and Sunquest.

Digital mental health company Talkspace faces a class action lawsuit alleging that its proxy statement misled investors before its SPAC merger last year. The suit contends that the company hid its lower margins and higher customer acquisition costs and overvalued its accounts receivable from health plans. Husband and wife co-founders Oren and Roni Frank left the company in November ahead of disappointing third-quarter results. Talkspace found itself in hot water in August 2020 when reports surfaced that the company was mining session transcripts for marketing purposes and asking employees to create fake positive app store reviews. Shares that closed on their first day of trading in June 2021 at $9.19 are now at $1.58, valuing the company at $248 million. The company tried to soothe investors at last week’s JP Morgan Healthcare Conference by saying that it hopes to increase the time users engage with the app, make it easier for cash-paying customers to use their insurance, find a CEO, and bundle its services.

Sales

• Truveta will integrate a new Patient Centric Token from the healthcare business of LexisNexis Risk Solutions with its data platform, giving its 17 health system members access to a wide range of de-identified data sets that can be used for clinical research, and population health and health equity studies.

People

Josh Byrd (Savista) joins Relatient as VP of marketing.

Archana Dubey, MD joins AliveCor as chief clinical officer.

Startup Health promotes Jamey Edwards to COO.

Therapy Brands hires Mary Carol Morrissey, MBA (HMS) as SVP of sales; Jason McNeil (NextGen Healthcare – not pictured) as EVP of revenue cycle management; and Kevin Smith, MBA (Accenture) as EVP of substance abuse recovery solutions.

Announcements and Implementations

The Orlando VA Medical Center implements WellHive’s ION scheduling software, enabling VA providers to more easily schedule patient appointments with non-VA physicians.

Premier leverages its PINC AI technology to develop on-demand, self-service health data analytics, queries, and visualizations.

ECRI lists its “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2022”:

• Cybersecurity incidents.
• Supply chain shortfalls.
• Infusion pumps that are damaged in ways that may not be apparent.
• Emergency stockpile items that may not be ready for use.
• Telehealth solutions that don’t meet patient and provider needs, aren’t easy to use (especially for patients), and create large volumes of irrelevant data.
• Syringe pumps that deliver incorrect doses because of low-volume infusion rates.
• AI reconstruction of images from MRI and CT that may be fooled by anatomic variation, patient movement, and device malfunction.
• Insufficient cleaning and disinfection of duodenoscopes.
• Misuse or mislabeling of disposable isolation, surgical, and cover gowns.
• Wifi dropouts and dead zones that circumvent safety features, interrupt workflow, and don’t allow critical alerts to be delivered.

Government and Politics

HHS signs a $12 million, 12-month extension of its contract with TeleTracking for its hospital bed and supply-tracking database. The database was originally commissioned in April 2020 as part of federal efforts to streamline hospital submission of COVID-related capacity, patient count, and supply information. The company came under Congressional fire several months later for the original no-bid contract, which prohibited it from discussing how it collects and shares data, the nature of its proposal to HHS, and communication it may have had with the White House or other government officials.

Privacy and Security

Jackson Hospital (FL) recovers from a ransomware attack late Sunday night that infected its ER charting system. The 600-employee hospital took all of its systems offline and reverted to downtime procedures. IT Director Jamie Hussey and his 12-person team have since brought nearly everything back online. He expects the charting system, which is maintained by a third party, to be back up and running later this week. Hussey, a 26-year Jackson employee, explained to CNN, “It’s better to be down a day than be down a month. Lock it down and piss people off. It’s what you have to do just to secure your network.”

Other

Security researchers say that the smartphone app that China is requiring athletes to use for COVID tracking during next month’s Olympics exposes health data because of encryption shortcomings. The app also contains a dictionary of political terms that China censors, although it’s not clear that the app uses it. The security flaws theoretically violate China’s personal data protection laws and the app store policies of Google and Apple. The experts assume that the flaws were unintentional, but note that fixing them might interfere with the government’s online surveillance tools.

Topping Gallup’s annual poll of honesty and ethics are nurses, medical doctors, grade school teachers, pharmacists, and military officers. The bottom five are state office holders, advertising practitioners, members of Congress, car salespeople, and lobbyists.

Sponsor Updates

• CloudWave recaps its 2021 achievements, including adding 50 hospitals to its OpSus Cloud, partnering with Vital Images, and expanding its engineering and cloud teams.
• Optimum Healthcare IT celebrates its 10th anniversary and unveils a new company logo.

Blog Posts

• 2022 CPT Code Updates: Part One (AGS Health)
• A Modern Approach to Patient Activation and Engagement (Actium Health)
• How to Reduce Downtime to Keep Data Insights Flowing (Capsule Technologies)
• Vaccine and Testing Directives: What’s Next After the SCOTUS Rulings? (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• 2021 CereCore Awards Recognize Mission Motivated Employees (CereCore)
• What the Data Shows About Omicron (Dimensional Insight)
• What Population Health Is and Why It Matters (EClinicalWorks)
• Reducing claims denials to get paid faster (Experian Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 1/17/22

Top News

Verana Health, which sells real-world evidence data to life sciences companies, raises $150 million in a Series E funding round, increasing its total to $289 million.

The San Francisco-based company offered a tele-ophthalmology triage app under the name DigiInsight Technologies until 2018, when it signed a deal to commercialize the patient dataset of the American Academy of Ophthalmologists and pivoted into life sciences data.

The company’s real-world data network has 20,000 medical society member providers in ophthalmology, urology, and neurology.

Reader Comments

From Veteran of the Psychic Wars: “Re: HIMSS show dropouts. Will you be reporting them again this year?” I will when I hear about them, which really happened only during HIMSS20, when a company that decided not to attend was noteworthy enough to warrant issuing a press release or tweet. It isn’t in the best interest of HIMSS to announce pullouts, so the only surefire way to track dropouts would be if HIMSS religiously updates their conference exhibitor floor plan, in which case (a) it could be screen-scraped with the “not really exhibiting” vendors  who haven’t booked a 10×10 booth or larger could be excluded; and (b) the result could be exported to a database and compared with previous versions. The exhibitor count is at 640, up from 603 a week ago. Let me know if your company had signed up to exhibit but has decided against it. Still, I’ll offer the same advice as I did in 2020 and 2021 – exhibit or not based on your own comfort level, not on what everybody else is doing.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

About 20% of poll respondents have tested positive for COVID-19 at some point, with about 4% of those requiring hospitalization and the others evenly split between no impact or having some degree of symptoms.

New poll to your right or here: Which social networks are you using much less now than two years ago? I admit that I don’t use most of them and I’m weaning myself off Facebook because I feel worse after looking at it instead of better. I probably waste more time in the rabbit hole of YouTube than the others.

HIMSS isn’t the only conference trying to figure out how to implement safety protocols in Florida. Less than 50 days from its start in Miami Beach, the inaugural ViVE conference — put on by CHIME and HLTH March 6-9 — hasn’t announced COVID protocols, saying only that it hasn’t decided about requiring vaccination and hopes that “masking and social distancing can become personal decisions.” The conference expects 3,500 attendees, 300 sponsors, and 250 speakers.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare conversational AI vendor MPulse Mobile acquires healthcare communications vendor HealthCrowd. MPulse Mobile has raised $42 million through a Series C round, including a new investment that makes growth equity firm PSG its majority shareholder.

A federal court orders former drug company CEO Martin Shkreli to repay $65 million and bans him from participating in the drug industry for life for his role at Vyera Pharmaceuticals, formerly known as Turing Pharmaceuticals, which acquired the exclusive rights to old toxoplasmosis treatment drug Daraprim and immediately raised its price by 5,000%. The New York attorney general declared him “a pharma bro no more.” He will complete a seven-year federal prison sentence for securities fraud in November. Shkreli’s swaggering, obnoxious personality and declarations that his actions were simply “capitalism at work” got him in trouble for doing pretty much what all drug companies do in monopolizing markets by buying off would-be competitors or burying them in legal challenges – he should have worn a suit, spoken soaringly about human health while quietly stuffing cash in the mattress, and jacked Daraprim’s price up steadily over a few years like insulin manufacturers have learned to do to prevent an immediate uproar for profiting on the backs of desperately ill people.

Sales

• In England, five NHS trusts in Surrey and Sussex will implement Sectra radiology imaging.

People

Hartford HealthCare names Joel Vengco, MS, MA (Baystate Health) as SVP / chief information and digital officer. He replaces Richard Shirey, who is retiring.

Optimum Healthcare IT Chief Marketing Officer Larry Kaiser takes on additional responsibility in the same role with related company Clearsense.

David McSwain, MD, MPH (MUSC) joins UNC Health as CMIO.

Laboratory information management system vendor Ovation.io hires Curt Medeiros, MBA (Ontrak) as CEO.

Matthew Anderson, MD, MBA (Banner Health) joins HonorHealth Medical Group as CMIO.

Announcements and Implementations

CHIME launches the degree-granting CHIME University for digital health professionals, which will begin classes on January 31 for the 45 credit hour Master of Digital Healthcare and 60 credit hour Doctor of Digital Healthcare degrees. The degrees are self-paced and offered digitally, with a rolling enrollment allowing learners to start at any time. Each degree costs a flat $12,000 with discounts offered to CHIME members, CHIME Foundation members, and CHIME-affiliated organizations. CHIME University, which has not earned accreditation but will seek it, will initially offer its programs to residents of 21 states.

Kaiser Permanente joins member-led, non-profit digital health company Graphite Health, joining SSM, Presbyterian Health Services, and Intermountain Healthcare. The company offers a marketplace for digital health solutions.

Government and Politics

The VA pushes back its second Cerner go-live from March 5 to April 30 at its Columbus, OH facility, which it says has experienced training delays because 200 of its 1,700 employees are absent.

Privacy and Security

File transfer software vendor Accellion reaches an $8 million settlement for a December 2020 breach that affected 9 million people, 3.5 million of them patients with Centene, Kroger, Trinity Health, and others. Hackers sent extortion emails to at least 100 companies, threatening to publish their sensitive data online. The company says in its settlement proposal that it did not guarantee the security of its software, adding that its license agreement disclaims those guarantees and includes a limitation of liability for breach-related damages. New sales of the company’s 20-year-old File Transfer Appliance software ended in 2016, but customers were allowed to renew their licenses even though the software’s final security update was in February 2019. The company now markets its products under the name Kiteworks.

Other

NPR covers the month-old ransomware downtime of Kronos Private Cloud, which has affected 8 million employees, including those of many health systems. AHA says that hospitals have been hit especially hard with the manual payroll work that is required as they deal with heavy COVID-19 workload. AHA says that hackers are obviously to blame, but it is disappointed with Kronos for a lack of transparency and its failure to protect its systems. The company said Friday that it has restored access for 1,000 customers, putting it ahead of schedule for its target of a complete recovery by January 28. Kronos also says that “a relatively small volume of data” was exfiltrated by the hacker in the December 11 attack and it has notified affected customers.

Sponsor Updates

• InterSystems publishes a report, “The High Cost of Bad Data and Analytics on Strategic Healthcare Decisions.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health and Laerdal Medical release the next generation of VSim for Nursing, which provides real-world, evidence-based training scenarios for nursing students.
• OptimizeRx names Ash Roozbehani (Delta Dental) as senior counsel.
• PatientBond joins Olive’s marketplace, The Library.
• Premier’s Contigo Health business expands its provider-sponsored health plan offerings through a new partnership with OhioHealthy.
• Talkdesk is recognized by TrustRadius with 2022 Best of Awards for Feature Set, Value, and Relationship in the Contact Center category.

Blog Posts

• 4 healthcare leaders envision the healthcare ecosystem of the future (Olive)
• What community health looks like in 2022 (PatientBond)
• Back-to-Basics: HIPAA-compliant Texting (Symplr)
• Bad Data, Evolving Payer Requirements, and Staffing Challenges: Overcoming Roadblocks in 2022 (RCxRules)
• RTPB: A Surprise and Delight in the EHR (RxRevu)
• How to be smart with integrations (Sonifi Health)
• One secret to the success of pagers. (The answer might surprise you.) (Spok)
• What providers need to elevate patient experience (Talkdesk)
• Simplifying Communication, Protecting Staff During COVID-19 (Vocera)
• How to Make Benefit Verification Less Painful (WebPT)
• Timely Referral Scheduling is Key to Positive Patient Outcomes (Well Health)
• Beyond Software and Content: Zynx Informaticists Enhance Effective Clinical Decision Support (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 1/14/22

Top News

Axios reports that  private equity firm GTR is close to a signing a deal to acquire urgent care EHR vendor Experity for around $1.2 billion.

The company’s owner, private equity firm Warburg Pincus, formed Experity in May 2019 by merging DocuTAP and Practice Velocity.

Experity’s software is used by more than 50% of US urgent care clinics.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Ambient patient-physician voice scribing solution vendor DeepScribe raises $30 million in a Series A funding round. The company says it has 400 physician users and has integrated its system with Claimpower, Elation, AdvancedMD, Practice Fusion, Athenahealth, and DrChrono. It says doctors save an average of three hours per day at one-sixth the cost of human scribes. 

Telehealth system vendor Caregility raises $25 million in funding.

Mindfulness app vendor Headspace Health acquires Sayana, which offers an AI-powered self-help app.

Data exchange platform vendor Avaneer Health raises $50 million in seed funding.

Medically Home, which provides hospital-at-home support services and technology to health systems, raises $110 million in funding from investors that include Baxter International, Cardinal Health, Mayo Clinic, and Kaiser Permanente. The company has raised $275 million. It says 7,000 patients have been treated using its offerings.

Health system patient acquisition and capacity management software vendor DexCare, which was spun off by Providence, raises $50 million in a Series B funding round.

Sales

• Roche Diagnostics USA will offer Glytec’s Glucommander insulin dosing support system as the first software application to run on its just-announced Cobas Pulse point-of-care blood glucose system.
• The VA signs a $13 million contract for Google Cloud’s Apigee API management platform.
• Johnson & Johnson Medical Devices Companies chooses Microsoft as its preferred cloud provider for digital surgery solutions, which provide medical device insights about patients to surgeons to increase consistency.

People

Patient engagement software vendor Tendo hires Bala Hota, MD, MPH (Rush University Medical Center) as SVP / chief informatics officer.

Healthcare Triangle names Sanjay Dalwani, MBA (Capgemini) as chief revenue officer.

Patient engagement software vendor Clearwave hires Saji Rajasekharan, MBA (Premier) as CTO.

Mayur Yermaneni, MBA, MS (EQHealth Solutions) joins healthcare analytics and consulting form Blue Health Intelligence as chief strategy and growth officer.

Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center hires Rémy Evard, MS (Flagship Pioneering) as chief digital officer and head of technology.

David Wright, MPH (Get Well) joins Vital Software as chief growth officer.

Announcements and Implementations

A JAMIA perspective piece says that health systems that switch EHRs – because they are acquired or want to replace their existing system – should apply the principles of Requisite Imagination in visualizing the desired future state to identify what might go wrong, especially with regard to patient safety. The authors make six recommendations:

• Choose a leadership structure that includes technical and operational experts who encourage users to speak up about problems. Pay clinicians for content development.
• Conduct a self-assessment of risk using ONC’s SAFER Guides checklists.
• Standardize features, functions, nomenclature, and workflows to avoid unwarranted variation.
• Create a standard taxonomy to track performance indicators from multiple sources, such as adverse event reports, help desk tickets, audit logs, and operational performance and patient satisfaction measures.
• Import as much coded and free-text as possible from the old EHR, then provide an easily understood summary of the old chart for reconciliation with the new system during the first visit.
• Communicate clearly to users what changes are upcoming, how quality care will be maintained, and how they will be supported. Offer workflow-specific training, dedicated practice time, and one-to-one support for clinicians who are struggling and consider reducing patient loads where possible in the first few weeks after go-live.

Atlantic Health System (NJ) expands its use of Kyruus ProviderMatch to offer online scheduling on its website.

HIMSS updates its HIMSS22 Right of Entry Protocols with two options for attendees, exhibitors, and speakers: (a) voluntarily provide proof of COVID-19 vaccination (boosters are not required) before badge pick-up; or (b) present negative antigen or PCR test results no older than the day before badge pick-up. Masks must be worn at all times while on the campus. The next update will be January 26, which will presumably provide details about how vaccination proof can be submitted before arrival.

Other

Drug maker and COVID-19 vaccine manufacturer Pfizer will lay off several hundred sales reps in predicting that doctors will prefer drug company contact to be conducted virtually 50% of the time even after the pandemic ends. Competitor Amgen took the same action a year ago, eliminating 500 sales rep jobs as the pandemic limited in-person contact.

Commonwealth Fund President and former National Coordinator David Blumenthal, MD says in a Harvard Business Review piece that big corporations – CVS-Aetna, Walgreens, Walmart, Amazon, Optum – are hiring PCPs and buying primary care practices, which will have an unknown effect on the US’s failing primary care system, where many people don’t see the value of PCPs or can’t find one. He says those big corporations need to figure out how to pay PCPs, who make much less than their procedure-driven counterparts, more without burning them out, with three options: (a) treat primary care as a lost leader to draw customers in who will buy greeting cards or lawn chairs; (b) use physician extenders to increase productivity and therefore profit under the fee-for-service system, with the risk that corporations will create provider and patient discontent or add on billable services to the detriment of the healthcare system; or (c) allow health insurers to manage chronic conditions for which they already bear financial risk for unnecessary hospitalizations and ED visits, which can allow both lowered premiums and higher profits. Blumenthal says Option C is the most promising.

Zus Health Product Manager Brendan Keeler provides an concise Twitter summary of the Big Three healthcare interoperability networks (Epic’s Care Everywhere, Carequality, and CommonWell):

• Care Everywhere is CDA-based (not FHIR) and allows both querying and pushing patient-level summaries, encounter-level summaries, specialty CDAs, and non-discrete data such as PDFs. Epic turns it on by default so all Epic hospitals can share data with each other, but some of its customers block that exchange by turning it off.
• Carequality is a distributed exchange (not a centralized HIE) and is roughly equivalent to Care Everywhere.
• CommonWell uses a centralized record locator service and stores only the demographics that are needed to match patients. It is primarily based on CDA, but uses some FHIR APIs.
• Carequality and CommonWell connected in 2018 to form a “somewhat comprehensive” national network for obtaining patient summaries, but it does not support pushing data like Care Everywhere does.
• Epic’s EHR exposes more data via these networks than other vendor EHRs, which mostly provide just a patient summary and possibly encounter summaries.

I always enjoy scouring the exhibit hall rules of the HIMSS conference for nuggets like these, each of which must have been triggered by real-life violation:

• Exhibitors cannot enter the booth of another exhibitor without permission. This is expressed in a badly worded rule that says, “Exhibitors are required to remain in their own booth space during exhibit hours and non-exhibit hours,” suggesting incarceration and the use of adult diapers.
• “Sideshow tactics” such as using megaphones, clowns, flash mobs, dancing, body painting, and bungee jumpers aren’t allowed. In addition, “clothing must be worn at all times (including tops and bottoms).” I’m curious how the bungee jumping worked and who was guilty of exhibiting topless or bottomless.
• “Special talent” is not allowed to walk the show floor, although the term was not defined.
• Soliciting isn’t allowed in the convention center lobby, outside, or within any HIMSS block hotel.
• Exhibitors can’t give away or sell marijuana or other controlled substances on the show floor.

Sponsor Updates

• Everbridge appoints former Citrix president and CEO David Henshall to its board.
• Redox doubled its network reach in 2021.
• The HCI Group releases a new DGTL Voices Podcast, “How Cancer Transformed Us.”
• Nordic achieves Select Partner and Public Sector Partner within the Amazon Web Services Partner Network.
• Tidelands Health sees a 52% drop in inappropriate telemetry orders using Meditech’s professional services.

Blog Posts

• 3 Signs That a Partnership is Complementary (Healthwise)
• Eight “Ates” for Managing Change in Healthcare IT (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• How to Call Patients for Recall (Intrado)
• Interoperability, information blocking, and the coming data tsunami (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• 9 Healthcare Predictions for 2022 (LexisNexis)
• Determining the Right Opioid Dose and Duration for Post-Operative Pain Management (MedAware)
• Best Practices for Setting Up Clinical Content (Medhost)
• Medicare Physical Therapy Guidelines PTs Need to Know (MWTherapy)
• Executive Cybersecurity Awareness for 2022 (NTT Data)
• Transforming the patient and physician experience with Dragon Medical (Nuance)

Contacts

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

News 1/12/22

Top News

Revenue cycle technology and services company R1 RCM will acquire competitor Cloudmed for $4.1 billion.

R1 has made a handful of acquisitions over the last several years, including VisitPay for $300 million, Cerner’s RevWorks business for $30 million, Intermedix for $460 million, and SCI Solutions for $190 million.

The company made a comeback after several widely reported missteps under its former name Accretive Health – settlement payouts for aggressive patient collection tactics and lapses in data security, followed by delisting of its shares from the New York Stock Exchange – and was renamed to R1 RCM in 2017.

RCM shares trade on the Nasdaq, with a market capitalization of $6.5 billion.

CloudMed Solutions – sold to Revint, then named Cloudmed — was founded by Jason Merck, now EVP of Cloudmed, in 2015.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’ve long wished for IOS-type capability in Chrome to be able to send a web page’s link (nearly always to myself) via Gmail, but somehow I never thought to Google a solution until today, when I found an ancient Chrome extension called Send from Gmail (by Google). It hasn’t been updated since 2013, but it seems to work fine, much easier than copying the web address and composing a new email and pasting it in.

Discuss: a physical line of people waiting for something indicates a failure of technology to meet a need.

Webinars

January 13 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Cultivating gender equity in STEM.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Laura Miller, CEO, TempDev; Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, CMIO Services, LLC; Deidra Jackson, VP of IFP customer success, Bright Health; Sunita Tendulkar, VP of agile portfolio management, IMO. Despites strides that are being made, women make up only 27% of the STEM workforce. This panel discussion will cover mentorship, STEM education, pay gaps, and debunking stereotypes.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Clinical communications, collaboration, and scheduling technology company PerfectServe acquires AnesthesiaGo, a developer of automated daily case assignment software for anesthesia staff.

Multi-vertical analytics and data services company Qlik files for an IPO, with date, number of shares, and pricing yet to be determined. Thoma Bravo acquired Qlik in 2016 in a $3 billion deal, taking it private after facing pressure from activist hedge fund Elliott Management.

Healthcare collaboration software vendor TigerConnect secures $300 million in funding from Vista Equity Partners, bringing its total raised to $400 million. Competitors Voalte and Vocera were acquired by medical technology vendors in 2019 and 2022, respectively, for $180 million and $3 billion.

Transcarent, the employer health insurance cost management software company led by Glen Tullman, raises $200 million in a Series C funding round that values the company at a reported $1.6 billion. It has raised $300 million in just over a year. Transcarent inked a deal with Walmart last October to offer the retailer’s pharmacy services to its self-insured employer customers.

OR block time management technology vendor Copient Health raises $3.2 million in a Series A funding round. The co-founder and CEO of the Atlanta-based company is industry long-timer Mike Burke, who previously founded Dialog Medical and Clockwise.MD.

ASC revenue cycle management company National Medical Billing Services acquires MdStrategies, which offers medical coding services to ASCs.

Primary care enablement company Aledade acquires Iris Healthcare, which offers advance care planning solutions. It is the first acquisition for Aledade, which was co-founded in 2014 by former National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, MSc, who serves as the company’s CEO.

Sales

• Baptist Health (KY) and Prisma Health (SC) select Well Health’s patient communication software.
• Pullman Regional Hospital (WA) will partner with Providence to replace its Meditech Magic system with Epic by March 2023.
• Grail will use Premier’s PINC AI clinical decision support technology to better identify patients eligible for its Galleri multi-cancer early detection test.
• Meditech will integrate SecureLink’s critical vendor access management software with its systems.

People

Availity hires Bobbi Coluni (IBM Watson Health) as chief product officer.

Niall Brennan (Health Care Cost Institute), a former CMS chief data officer, joins Clarify Health as chief analytics and privacy officer.

Revenue cycle technology vendor MedEvolve hires Branden Barkema, MBA (North Florida Surgeons) as chief revenue cycle officer.

Kerri-Lynn Morris (Microsoft) joins The SSI Group as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

Wolters Kluwer Health announces GA of its Ovid Synthesis application suite, which includes Clinical Evidence Manager, its first cloud-based workflow management module.

Pivot Point Consulting’s “Healthcare IT Directions Report” highlights four trends for 2022:

1. Healthcare and health IT will be challenged in unknown ways by job resignations.
2. Telehealth and remote patient monitoring will cover a wide scope based on patient demand, patient population characteristics, and access enablers / limiters.
3. Spending on public health infrastructure will ease data access and reporting while creating career opportunities.
4. Deployment of interoperable EHRs to retail sites – such as Walgreens, CVS, and Walmart rolling out Epic – will allow retailers to compete with traditional healthcare providers, with the latter needing to embrace a digital strategy to offer a frictionless patient experience as a differentiator to offset the convenience of retail healthcare.

Other

Healthcare visionary and cardiac surgeon Devi Shetty, MBBS, MS — chairman and executive director of India-based hospital operator Narayana Health — says that 95% of illnesses will soon be treated via telemedicine since healthcare requires only data, with few patients needing hands-on services such as surgery. He also predicts that EHRs will diagnose conditions better than doctors within five years, and that shortly after, doctors will be required to obtain a second opinion from software before initiating treatment.

A non-profit consumer group publishes Upsolve, a free app that allows consumers to file Chapter 7 bankruptcy – often necessitated in the US by medical debt — without an attorney, paying only a $338 federal court filing fee (which the app also applies to have waived). The company’s mission is to destigmatize bankruptcy for consumers as has already happened with businesses, for which it is just a smart financial strategy to avoid paying debt. The group warns, however, that people can file Chapter 7 only once every eight years, so they should consider when to file if they are undergoing long, expensive cycles of chemotherapy.

Sponsor Updates

• Meditech will offer Expanse users access to role-based, interactive online training courses from MedPower.
• Clearwater publishes a new white paper, “Technical Testing and the HIPAA Security Rule: What’s Needed to Protect Your Healthcare Organization.”
• Appriss names Annie Edwards (Luma) chief people officer of its Bamboo Health and Appriss Retail businesses.
• Azara Healthcare will host its annual user conference May 2-4 in Boston.
• Fortified Health Security CEO Dan L. Dodson is elected to the AEHIS Board of Trustees.
• Delaware’s DHSS Division of Substance Use and Mental Health surpasses a milestone of 100,000 referrals through the Delaware Treatment and Referral Network, which is built on Bamboo Health’s OpenBeds platform.
• Frost & Sullivan recognizes About as a patient access and orchestration leader with its 2021 Best Practices Customer Value Leadership Award.
• Divurgent publishes its “2022 IT Trends & Insights Report.”
• Elsevier adds its most advanced 3D full female model to its Complete Anatomy 3D platform.

The following HIStalk sponsors have achieved top rankings in Black Book Market Research’s latest population health tools and solutions report:

• Population health AI tools: Olive AI
• Population health/value-based care consultants: hospitals & health systems: Change Healthcare

Blog Posts

• If Vulnerabilities Could Talk: The Year in Risk Analysis (Clearwater)
• A Modern Approach to Patient Activation and Engagement (Actium Health)
• Healthcare Industry Trends 2022 (CereCore)
• A New Approach to Ongoing EHR Training (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• 2021: A Year in Review (ConnectiveRx)
• 6 Trends Shaping Pharmacy Growth and Automation in 2022 (CoverMyMeds)
• Top Healthcare BI Trends of 2021 (Dimensional Insight)
• The Shift to Care-at-Home: Are You Ready? Why You Need to Be (Dina)
• Using personalized healthcare marketing strategies to boost patient retention (Experian Health)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 1/10/22

Top News

Medical technology vendor Stryker will acquire clinical communication and workflow platform company Vocera Communications for $3 billion.

Stryker says the acquisition will help it “significantly accelerate our digital aspirations to improve the lives of caregivers and patients.”

Stryker got its start as a manufacturer of hospital beds like its competitor Hillrom, as both companies expanded into technology. Hillrom, which acquired Vocera competitor Voalte in early 2019 for $180 million, was acquired by Baxter International last month for $10.5 billion.

Shares of Vocera, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in early 2012, had risen 55% in the year prior to the acquisition announcement. The company has 1,900 hospitals and healthcare facilities as customers. Its Smartbadge was named to Time’s list of the “100 Best Inventions of 2020.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Only a small percentage of poll respondents believe they are less effective when working from home. I would expect that some jobs that involve heads-down individual work (programming, writing, etc.) or remote contact (customer service and support) can be performed as well or better at home. I wonder, though, whether companies are being damaged in ways that aren’t yet obvious with the lack of culture-building personal contact, reduction of serendipitous hallway interactions, and having managers in charge whose forte is visually monitoring piecework production.

New poll to your right or here: What is your personal experience with COVID-19? I’m not sure it’s a relevant question since I’m pretty sure we will all have tested positive soon, but I’m curious.

Meanwhile, HIMSS still hasn’t announced any changes to its Right of Entry Protocols for HIMSS22 that may be required by Florida laws. The conference is just over 60 days away. Exhibitor count is at 603, lower than HIMSS21 although the number will likely increase as the conference draws closer. HIMSS21 had 14 booths of 2,000 or more square feet while the HIMSS22 floor plan is showing 32, so that’s a positive sign of increased exhibitor interest. The big question now, assuming that the conference won’t be cancelled because HIMSS can’t afford a skipped year, is whether COVID-drowning hospitals will allow their employees to attend a conference.

The number of friends and family members who have tested positive for COVID-19 in the past few days is getting too hard for me to track, especially since it’s not the first go-round for some of them. Mrs. H went to a tiny-town Walgreens Thursday for hairspray or something and the clerk said they had already sold out of the 4,000 antigen tests they received that same morning, even with a purchase limit of four. PCR testing lines are impossibly long and results are taking 4-5 days to come back in many cases, rendering testing somewhere close to pointless. Home testing, no-testing, and other under-reporting probably means that we’re at 3 million or more cases per day, and many of those folks who will be sick and/or isolating (and/or spreading infection because they can’t afford to miss work) are critical workers and healthcare staff. Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD estimates that up to 40% of Americans may end up becoming infected with Omicron, spreading the virus widely because their mild symptoms aren’t obviously COVID-19 and tests are too hard to get to verify. Let’s hope, probably unreasonably, that the supply chain for prescription drugs and medical supplies holds up since hospital beds and physician appointments are going to be scarce for a while.

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

Webinars

January 13 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Cultivating gender equity in STEM.” Sponsor: Intelligent Medical Objects. Presenters: Laura Miller, CEO, TempDev; Amanda Heidemann, MD, CMIO, CMIO Services, LLC; Deidra Jackson, VP of IFP customer success, Bright Health; Sunita Tendulkar, VP of agile portfolio management, IMO. Despites strides that are being made, women make up only 27% of the STEM workforce. This panel discussion will cover mentorship, STEM education, pay gaps, and debunking stereotypes.

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

People

Divurgent hires Joe Grinstead, MBA (Healthcare Triangle) as principal.

Industry long-timer Amy Fuller-Heffernan (Verinovum) joins Interbit Data as VP of client strategy.

Chris Apgar, president and CEO of security and privacy consulting firm Apgar & Associates, died last month at 60.

Announcements and Implementations

TriNetX announces Bring Your Own Model for applying machine learning capabilities to real-world research data.

HIMSS launches a new certification to its stable, Certified Professional in Digital Health Transformation Strategy. The cost is $1,299 plus a renewal fee. I would question whether someone passing the exam will suddenly find themselves more employable or whether the market really needs HIMSS to sort out the lesser-competent players in it, but I always underestimate the yearning of insecure industry folks to add new letters to their walls, business cards, and LinkedIn profiles. For them, HIMSS also offers CAHIMS (associate in healthcare information and management systems) and CPHIMS (professional in healthcare information and management systems). All require healthcare IT experience, so candidates must have been boldly working without certification for employers who didn’t seem to mind.

A study finds that in-hospital mortality at the former Lutheran Medical Center (NY) declined from 2.6% to 1.9% after it was acquired by NYU Langone Health and the hospital saw improvements in central line infections, catheter-associated UTIs, and patient recommendations. Three of the five post-acquisition focus areas were related to IT – implementing Epic, using real-time analytics and dashboards, and implementing EHR-embedded clinical decision support.

Government and Politics

ONC releases final technical specifications for Project USA, which hopes to standardize the representation of patient addresses to support identity matching.

Other

A.O. Fox Hospital (NY) becomes the latest hospital to make local news for failing to pay its employees accurately because of the Kronos payroll system ransomware downtime. Most affected hospitals are paying hourly employees the same amounts as on their last system-issued paycheck in early December, meaning they aren’t being paid accurately for overtime, holiday pay, or COVID-19 coverage and instead are being promised that their money will be sent retroactively once Kronos comes back up (or, even less positively, that employees whose early December hours exceeded those afterward will need to return the overpayment).

HHS reports that 18% of available US hospital beds were being occupied by COVID-19 patients this weekend as the COVID curve resists flattening (thank goodness for our US profit-driven overbedding). Brown School of Public Health Dean Ashish Jha, MD, MPH warns that the US healthcare system is in even more trouble than is obvious, as 1 million Americans could need hospitalization for COVID-19 over the next 4-6 weeks, far exceeding aggregate hospital capacity (note also that average length of stay times a million admissions is an unfathomable number of patient days, not to mention that hospital beds don’t sit on a grid so that total supply can meet local needs). The New York Times says that hospitals are being bombarded with punishing patient loads as they operate short-staffed because of employees who have quit or who have COVID-19 themselves.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity partners with PriorAuthNow to deliver timely prior authorization services.
• The Consulting Report includes Nordic CEO Jim Costanzo on its list of “Top 50 Consulting Firm CEOs of 2021.”
• Olive appoints Credit Karma executive Nichole Mustard to its board.

Blog Posts

• Bringing Quality and Financial Viability to Long-Term Care (Netsmart)
• Marketing Your Hospital Services: How to Attract Loyal Patients (PatientBond)
• How can we make billers’ and coders’ hard jobs easier? (PatientKeeper)
• Support Nurses’ Ability to Easily Communicate with Providers and Patients (PerfectServe)
• Most Important Metrics for a Healthcare Quality Management Dashboard (Symplr)
• All Fun and Games: Gamification and Its Application to Health Care (PMD)
• Healthcare Innovation for New Year: Andy Brailo with Premier members (Premier)
• Year in Review: Top 2021 Trends in Digital Health and What They Mean for 2022 (Quil)
• How Leading NextGen Users Leverage our Revenue Cycle Engine (RCxRules)
• Infographic: The ongoing power of paging (Spok)
• Always Striving to Be Better Than We Were (Surescripts)
• For healthcare organizations, the patient experience is paramount (Talkdesk)
• Improving Patient Use of At-Home Testing and Medical Device Management (Twistle)
• RSNA 2021 / Visage’s Top Five (Visage Imaging)
• MIPS and the 2022 Final Rule: Key Takeaways (WebPT)
• Evidence-based Clinical Decision Support to Improve Care in Skilled Nursing Facilities (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

News 1/7/22

Top News

Vera Whole Health, which offers healthcare navigation, care coordination and coaching to its members, will acquire navigation technology vendor Castlight Health for $370 million in cash, representing a 25% premium to Castlight’s share price.

Castlight customer Anthem will make an investment in the combined company.

Vera Whole Health’s president and CEO is Ryan Schmid, MBA, who founded the company in 2007 while operating a non-profit fitness center.

CSLT went public in March 2014 with a first-day trading pop of 149% as shares closed at $38.85. They were at $1.63 prior to the acquisition announcement.

Reader Comments

From Optum Employee 1160: “Re: Optum-owned remote patient monitoring vendor VivifyHealth. CEO, chairman, and founder Eric Rock is out, replaced by Optum Technology CMIO Alejandro Reti, MD, MBA. The CTO and COO have also left.” Unverified. I’ve reached out to the company.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I mention below the deaths of two health IT pioneers who were also pathologists, reminding me of the outsized contributions of experts in laboratory medicine, pharmacy, and radiology in the history of clinical IT. Those folks who worked in the relative solitude of hospital basements far from patients, especially pathologists, were involved in more patient-benefitting technology projects than anyone, often running rogue operations involving under-desk servers to avoid being shut down by old-school, command-and-control MIS/DP departments who focused on the care and feeding of billing mainframes. It is interesting that companies like Cerner and Meditech got their start with laboratory information systems, while Epic didn’t roll out Beaker until late in the game (presumably to avoid the heavily-regulated environment of labs, Elizabeth Holmes notwithstanding).

I took advantage of holiday slack time to upgrade my laptop to Windows 11, with no problems or noteworthy improvements to report.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Employer healthcare payment vendor Nomi Health acquires employer benefits analytics platform vendor Artemis Health for $200 million. Both companies are headquartered in the Salt Lake City area.

Digital health technology vendor Babylon acquires health kiosk vendor Higi. Higi has raised $91 million, most recently in a May 2020 Series B round that was led by Babylon. London-based Babylon went public on the Nasdaq via a SPAC merger in November 2021. Share have since dropped 42%, valuing the company at $2.6 billion.

Life sciences real-world evidence vendor Aetion acquires Replica Analytics, which generates privacy-protected copies of real world data. Price was not disclosed, but Replica has raised just $1 million and reports just a handful of employees. CEO Khaled El Emam, PhD is a scientist Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario Research Institute and director of its laboratory that studies the identifiability of health information and how to measure it.

Axios reports that IBM is once again trying to find a buyer for IBM Watson Health at a rumored price of more than $1 billion.

Federal IT contractor Octo acquires B3 Group, which offers low code/no-code software development and holds a $686 million contract to develop the VA’s Digital Transformation Center.

Sales

• Seattle Children’s will implement AdaptX’s EHR-powered Mission Control Center for care management.

People

Healthcare information distribution and business continuity vendor Interbit Data hires industry long-timer Steve McDonald, MBA (Impact Advisors) as president.

Oncology systems vendor Flatiron Health hires Stephanie Reisinger (Allscripts Veradigm) as SVP/GM of real-world evidence.

Ronald Weinstein, MD, a hospital pathologist who developed the concept of telepathology in the 1980s and led the Arizona Telemedicine Program at the University of Arizona in Tucson for 25 years, dies at 83.

Industry pioneer Sidney Goldblatt, MD died Monday at 87 in Johnstown, PA. The hospital pathologist and entrepreneur founded Sunquest Information Systems in Tucson, AZ in 1979, took it public, and sold the company to Misys in 2001. He then founded precision medicine company Goldblatt Systems, genomics testing firm MolecularDx, and forensic science center ForensicDx.

Announcements and Implementations

PointClickCare and Sound Physicians will offer a long-term and post-acute care virtual health solution.

Alternate site infusion vendor Option Care Health will provide connectivity via the CommonWell Health Alliance in partnership with WellSky.

A surgeon’s letter to the editor of the BMJ notes that while Theranos news stories are focusing on Elizabeth Holmes being found guilty of investor fraud, some of the company ‘s hundreds of employees must have known that its technology was issuing erroneous patient lab results, and those complicit folks have likely found related jobs elsewhere.

A report reviews the telehealth regulations of individual states, evaluating best practices such as:

• Not requiring an initial in-person visit.
• Recognizing all remote care and monitoring modalities.
• Allowing providers to serve patients in other states.
• Allowing licensed, non-physician providers to provide services via telehealth.
• Allowing nurse practitioners to practice without physician supervision.
• Not imposing mandates that all services be covered since outcomes vary by service type.
• Not requiring telehealth services to be paid at the same rate as in-person visits.
• Supporting licensure compacts that allow providers to provide services in multiple states without high cost and laborious application requirements.
• Not allowing health systems to charge facility fees for telehealth.

Massachusetts Health Quality Partners President and CEO Barbra Rabson, MPH observes that surveys show that patients are a lot happier with their telehealth visits than their providers. Patients save the sometimes full-day effort that is required to show up for a 10-minute provider visit, but providers are less enthused because it’s a different experience from their training, they were thrown into telehealth with no transition in the pandemic’s early days, and telehealth quality varies based on organizational practices. An MHQP group recommends creating mode-appropriate triaging guidelines, measuring and comparing physician satisfaction across modalities, asking providers about their technical support needs, promoting community and workplace sites for patients to have telehealth visits, and studying barriers to patient use.

Former White House health advisors say in a JAMA Viewpoint article that the “zero COVID” vaccine-centric strategy is not valid and a new US strategy is needed to move from crisis to control in exiting “a perpetual state of emergency” to recognition that the virus is likely to remain endemic. They recommend recognizing that COVID-19 is one of several respiratory viruses whose risk should be aggregated (instead of ignoring older ones like flu and RSV) with a focus on hospitalizations and deaths. They also call out the need to develop a real-time, digital public health infrastructure that links respiratory viral infections to hospitalization, deaths, outcomes, and immunizations from local, state, and national public health units, health systems, laboratories, and universities. In this and two other JAMA articles, the six former White House health advisors also call on universal access to low-cost testing, N95 masks, and oral COVID treatments; next-generation vaccines that address variants or are delivered nasally or via skin patch; and continued research to develop of a universal coronavirus vaccine. They also express support for an electronic vaccine certification platform. One of the physicians says that the White House has not invested enough in tests, treatments, and public health protections, concluding that, “No one wants to face up to the reality. You can pay for it with prevention, as we’ve outlined, or you can pay for it on the back end, which is the American way.”

Government and Politics

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy issues an RFI that seeks information about how digital health technologies are being used, or could be used, to transform community health, individual wellness, and health equity. The request is part of OSTP’s Community Connected Health initiative.

Privacy and Security

Ciox Health notifies 32 health systems that an unauthorized person accessed the email account of one of its employees last summer and may have downloaded emails and attachments that contained limited patient information. The company says the attack appears to have been intended to collect email addresses to launch phishing attacks unrelated to Ciox.

Patient portal vendor QRS is accused in a class action lawsuit of failing to adequately secure its systems in an August cyberattack that involved 320,000 patients. One lawsuit participant says he believes that his information was sold on the dark web since his bank account and credit card were hit with unauthorized charges and he was targeted by robocall scams.

Other

Cerner co-founder Cliff Illig is interviewed by former Cerner President Donald Trigg in a new episode of the latter’s podcast that covers health IT entrepreneurship (it was recorded before the Oracle acquisition announcement, so perhaps a follow-up is indicated). All three Cerner founders grew up in families of kitchen-table businesspeople and saw in the early 1970s how computers were starting to be used by businesses, then started selling custom built problem-solving software in a half-dozen industries, with healthcare being on the list of industries they knew nothing about until a medical lab engaged them. Illig says Cerner sought venture capital because they needed credibility, not money, then were reasonably pushed by the VCs into going public as a liquidity event. He says that entrepreneurs shouldn’t be scared of complexity, which is common in healthcare, because you can figure it out by breaking it down into pieces. He says Neal Patterson was the most biased toward action of any of Cerner’s leaders and had an intolerance for things taking too long, spending too much time on analysis, and studying market surveys to decide what to do. The Cerner founders said that rather than studying every possible course of action, they just picked one by “shooting real bullets” and learned from the results.

The labor union of Ontario-based London Health Sciences Centre will file a grievance against Sodexo on Friday if the contractor can’t resolve payroll problems that have been caused by the Kronos ransomware attack. The union says more than 50 of its employees haven’t received their full paycheck for a month. In a related item, the Montana Nurses Association accuses Missoula’s for-profit Community Medical Center of illegally underpaying its nurses an average of $1,000 for work hours that they recorded manually during the Kronos downtime. Kronos has not been able to provide a resolution date for the the December 11 ransomware attack on its private cloud solutions.

Another quirk in the quirky US healthcare non-system: a man whose injury from being hit by another driver requires major surgery learns the hard way that an auto policy’s personal injury protection is the primary medical payer in auto accidents. The hospital and surgeon billed $700,000 (Medicare would have paid $29,500) and his auto insurance’s PIP coverage was limited to $250,000. Not only that, auto insurers often have no network or negotiated discounts, so patients end up being out-of-network and are subject to paying full list price. He owes $89,000 despite having bought the maximum PIP coverage and carrying health insurance.

A defibrillator delivered by drone helps save the life of a 71-year-old man in Sweden who went into cardiac arrest while shoveling snow in his driveway. A physician who was driving to the hospital saw the collapsed man, started CPR, and called Sweden’s equivalent of 911, which dispatched an Everdrone-delivered defibrillator that the doctor used to resuscitate him. The drones can also be used to deliver naloxone, EpiPens, and other medical devices.

Sponsor Updates

• Cerner associates donate 646 toys to local charities during its virtual toy drive.
• A recent Meditech podcast features First Databank Director of Product Management Anna Dover, “How Genomics will Revolutionize Healthcare in the Next Decade.”
• Konza has earned the Validated Data Stream designation in the NCQA’s new Data Aggregator Validation program.
• Meditech publishes a new case study, “KDMC gives back 100+ hours to nurses with Meditech Expanse Patient Care.”
• PM360 recognizes OptimizeRx’s evidence-based physician engagement solution as one of the most innovate life sciences products of 2021.

The following HIStalk sponsors have achieved top rankings in Black Book Market Research’s latest cybersecurity survey:

• Security advisors & consultants: Clearwater
• Compliance & risk management solution: Clearwater
• Outsourcing & security network managed services: Fortified Health Security
• Secure communications platforms: physician practices: PerfectServe
• Secure communications platforms: hospitals & health systems: Spok

Blog Posts

• A Historic Year for Enterprise Resilience (Everbridge)
• Healthcare Trends in 2021: Moving from Headlines into Practice (Get Well)
• Stories of a Post-Modern Healthcare CIO (feat. Ed Marx) (HCI Group)
• Reflecting on the Past, Anticipating the Future (HCTec)
• Here’s How Personalization Increases Patient Engagement (Healthwise)
• 4 Health IT Employment Trends for 2022 (Health IT Leaders)
• How athenahealth Users Leverage the Revenue Cycle Engine for Increased Efficiency (RCx Rules)
• Electronic Health Information (EHI) Made Simple (Impact Advisors)
• Save the dates: 2022’s standardized code system updates (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Thought Leaders: Simplicity, Flexibility to Shape the Future of Patient Access (Kyruus)
• 9 Healthcare Predictions for 2022 (LexisNexis)
• Optimum Healthcare IT Top 5 Posts of 2021 (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• How to Use the CMS H&P Exception to Improve Surgical Pre-Assessment Caseload by +60% (Lumeon)
• 3 Dangerous Medication Errors Missed by Legacy CDS Tools (MedAware)
• Memos from the Medhost CISO: Stop Zero-Day Attacks with a Team Effort (Medhost)
• 7 healthcare IT leaders to follow in 2022 (Meditech)
• 6 New Technology Trends in Physical Therapy in 2022 (MWTherapy)
• Open System Imaging empowers next-generation radiology reporting with PowerScribe One (Nuance)

Contacts

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

News 1/5/22

Top News

After seven days of deliberation, a jury finds Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes guilty of four out of 11 counts in her criminal fraud trial.

She had raised nearly $1 billion during the life of her blood testing startup, earning the company a valuation of $9 billion before it closed in 2018 after civil and criminal inquiries.

Jurors decided that those investments were raised using false claims about the technology’s effectiveness, including doctored reports, exaggerated capabilities, and concealment of the use of third-party devices and faked demonstrations. She was found not guilty on charges of defrauding patients.

Holmes, who will be sentenced at a later date, faces up to 20 years in prison.

Reader Comments

From Orlando: “Re: HIMSS. HIMSS and its Accelerate solution group — created by Hal Wolf and McKinsey — started layoffs this week.” Unverified, because the HIMSS press contact quit and I don’t see her replacement listed on the HIMSS site. I signed on to Accelerate and my reaction was the same as months ago — all I see is HIMSS hawking its vendor-paid webinars, a bunch of lame promotional stories with the obligatory stock photos from Healthcare IT News, and Accelerate people trying unsuccessfully to get users to interact. The default group lists 6,700 members, but searching for users named “Smith” and “Jones” turned up just 10 names each. None of the people Accelerate recommended that I follow have completed their profiles or posted anything to the site. LinkedIn shows 27 employees and 348 followers, with the HIMSS VP in charge appearing to be Barry Edelman (who lists “himms.org” on his lightly used Twitter profile). I will say from experience that readership and interaction happens quickly or not at all. Accelerate aspires to be the “digital platform that drives 365 healthcare transformation,” but like a lot of health IT websites, its “curated content” from its first five months of existence doesn’t strike me as being even slightly useful. I invite Accelerate users to correct me in explaining the value that rewards their participation.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say they will beef up their COVID-19 precautions by avoiding unnecessary gatherings, upgrading cloth masks, and getting a booster shot. Most will follow the nearly universal trend of ignoring the one technical solution of contact tracing apps, whose minimal acceptance and low value demonstrate what happens when big tech companies barge into healthcare convinced that cool apps are disruptive.

New poll to your right or here: How does your work-from-home job effectiveness compare to working in the office?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Jacob Reider, MD announces in a blog post that Circulo acquired his company, social determinants of health-focused Huddle Health, last October. Olive CEO Sean Lane launched Medicaid-focused managed care company Circulo nearly a year ago alongside a $50 million funding round. Reider, a former deputy national coordinator for health IT, has taken on the role of general manager of health solutions at Circulo Health.

Symplr will acquire Midas Health Analytics Solutions from Conduent for $340 million in cash. The deal marks the twelfth acquisition for Symplr, a healthcare governance, risk, and compliance technology vendor.

Waymark, which supports Medicaid primary care providers with technology-enabled community care teams, raises $45 million in a Series A funding round. The co-founders are MD-PhDs who care for Medicaid patients.

Healthcare market intelligence vendor Trella Health acquires PlayMaker Health, which offers a post-acute CRM and EMR referral management system.

Consumer engagement and telehealth solutions vendor Carenet Health acquires healthcare collaboration platform vendor OpenMed.

Share price of the Global X Telemedicine and Digital Health Fund was flat in December, up 7% since their first day of trading in July 2020.

Sales

• Priority Health, the country’s third-largest provider-sponsored health plan, will use Epic’s Payer Platform.

People

Harris promotes Mihir Shah, MBA to EVP of its Clinical Computer Systems business, developer of the OBIX Perinatal Data System.

Bamboo Health promotes Rob Cohen, MCIT, MBA to CEO.

Marcus Gordon, MBA (Lumeris) joins Sharecare as SVP of growth marketing.

Jvion hires Curt Thornton (Medicom Health) as chief growth officer; Jim Stansell (TeleHealth Solution) as CTO; and Leah Ray (Zelis) as chief customer officer.

Kimberly Lynch, MPH (Aledade) joins Stellar Health as COO.

Marcus Osborne, MBA, SVP of Walmart Health & Wellness, announces on LinkedIn that he has left the company. Walmart removed Osborne from running its clinics reassigned in September 21, the same day it removed the SVP/COO over Health & Wellness.

Kieran Murphy, MSc, president and CEO of GE Healthcare, leaves the company as previously announced after 4 1/2 years in that role. He will be replaced by Peter Arduini, formerly president and CEO of Integra LifeSciences.

Announcements and Implementations

The Bermuda Hospitals Board will go live on Cerner Millennium across its two hospitals and urgent care center later this year.

Mary Washington Hospital (VA) will launch an e-ICU using remote patient monitoring technology from Hicuity Health later this month.

CES, the Consumer Electronic Show, will end a day early due to COVID-19 concerns. Several major exhibitors have cancelled their participation in the Las Vegas show, which will now run for three days.

At CES, Withings announces the Body Scan Connected Health Station, which measures weight, body composition, heart rate, and vascular age. It also includes a six-lead ECG function and nerve assessment. The $300 scale, which is awaiting FDA clearance, will be sold with a health monitoring service that includes coaching, clinical services, and health goals planning.

Amazon’s at-home COVID-19 PCR test earns FDA’s Emergency Use Authorization. Users register their $40 kits online, drop off their nasal swab sample at a UPS location with prepaid label attached, then have their results posted on the website within 24 hours of receipt. Amazon says it built its own CAP-accredited, CLIA-certified lab for its own employees in April 2020 and is now extending its services to Amazon customers.

Privacy and Security

Broward Health (FL) reports that the medical and personal information of 1.4 million patients was exposed in an October breach in which someone penetrated its network via the office of an unnamed third-party medical provider.

MU Health Care says it will implement a new time-keeping system after some employees report not being paid in full as a result of the Kronos ransomware attack last month. Hospital representatives say pay discrepancies will be resolved this week. Meanwhile, some UF Health (FL) employees say they are looking for new jobs after the Kronos problem left them underpaid for actual hours worked since the health system can’t track overtime with the system down.

Other

Fast Company says “the telehealth bubble has burst” as pandemic lockdowns have ended, proving wrong the technology experts who declared that most healthcare services will be delivered online. Soaring telehealth company share prices have crashed hard — Teladoc Health shares have tanked 70% in less than a year, Amwell is down 86%, and Hims has shed 75%. Telehealth companies are trying to figure out how to pivot, with behavioral health being the only service that has earned a permanent spot. Key issues are payments by CMS and insurers; the possible incorporation of telehealth into other areas such as retail clinics; and the possible future of individual tools and services being rolled up into an Amazon-like patient experience.

A NEJM perspective piece says that the US public health system is a patchwork of policies and technologies that the pandemic has exposed as being expensive while delivering poor population health outcomes. Notes:

• The federal government has 21 major agencies that are involved with pandemic preparedness.
• State health departments are sometimes independent but more commonly parts of other organizations, and top state health officials are governor-appointed.
• Local health departments often perform fewer than half of the services HHS has deemed core to public health, with many of them offering nothing in tobacco prevention, opioid addiction, chronic disease management, and injury surveillance.
• Much state and local public health work is conducted on paper, with limited ability to obtain, analyze, and share information. Just 3% of local health departments say their IT systems are interoperable.
• Health officials who support evidence-based public health measures are often harassed and threatened and 32 states have passed new laws that limit the authority of public health departments during emergencies.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity employees volunteer at the Jacksonville Humane Society.
• Bluestream Health adds PCare’s patient engagement software to its virtual care platform.
• Change Healthcare AVP Edward Hafner has received WEDI’s 2021 Andrew H. Melczer Leadership in Volunteerism Award.
• Pivot Point Consulting has been honored for the eighth consecutive year as a winner in The Best and Brightest Companies to Work for in the Nation program, as well as the new 2021 regional program.
• Cerner Director of Interoperability Strategy Hans Buitendijk joins the GAO’s National Health IT Advisory Committee.
• Healthcare Triangle reports developing tech solutions to help the post-COVID healthcare industry use big data to deliver better care.
• OptimizeRx CEO Will Febbo will moderate a panel on virtual care at the LifeSci Partners Corporate Access Event January 6.
• AGS Health’s learning and development team has won an award from TISS Leap Vault CLO in the Best Induction Program category for new hires in healthcare.
• Arcadia publishes a new study, “Reduced Incidence of Long-COVID Symptoms Related to Administration of COVID-19 Vaccines Both Before COVID-19 Diagnosis and Up to 12 Weeks After.”
• CHIME releases a new podcast, “A Conversation with John Kravitz, 2020/21 CHIME Board Chair – The Year in Review.”
• Emerge has improved revenue and quality for a multi-specialty group using natural-language processing.
• Glytec’s EGlycemic Management System has achieved HITRUST CSF certification for information security.

Blog Posts

• 2021 Year in Review – Looking Toward 2022 (Azara Healthcare)
• Coordinating Behavioral Healthcare for a Healthier America (Bamboo Health)
• Behind the IT Support Desk: Why It Matters for Your Patients (CereCore)
• A dramatic change in CCM reimbursement rates kicked into effect January 1st (ChartSpan)
• The Future of HEDIS is Digital: How Plans Can Prepare (Collective Medical)
• Supporting Patients to Help Them Get and Stay on Specialty Therapies (CoverMyMeds)
• Meeting Staffing Needs: Looking Beyond COVID-19 (EClinicalWorks)
• Four Major Takeaways from the ATA EDGE2021 Conference (EVisit)
• Preparing for Omicron: streamlining care with digital scheduling tools (Experian Health)

Contacts

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

News 12/31/21

Top News

Rhode Island’s attorney general is investigating a breach of the state’s Public Transport Authority after thousands of people who have never worked for RIPTA were told that their health information had been compromised in the incident.

RIPTA says a previous insurer had sent it files that contained the information of people who had no connection to RIPTA. It did not name the insurer or explain why the information was not deleted.

RIPTA’s HHS breach filing says that 5,000 people were affected, but the letters it sent said that the information of 17,000 people was involved.

Webinars

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

People

Juli Stover (Envision Healthcare) joins EVisit as chief strategy officer.

Industry long-timer Miriam Paramore retires as president and chief strategy officer of OptimizeRx.

Hannah Luetke-Stahlman, MPA (Cerner) joins WellSky as VP of its personal care solutions business.

Dan Ferris, MBA (Hillrom) joins Iris Telehealth as chief marketing officer.

Announcements and Implementations

HealthStream CEO Robert A. Frist, Jr. donates $2.25 million worth of his personally held company shares that will be distributed to 1,000 employees who don’t receive executive-level equity grants.

Privacy and Security

The president of Capital Region Medical Center (MO) warns of long ED wait times and overloaded phone lines as the health system recovers from a December 17 cybersecurity incident.

A surgeon in Spain is sentenced to a year in jail for illegally accessing the medical records of his housekeeper of 23 years to verify that she was sick enough to justify missing work.

Other

Computerworld interviews Mark Eimer, SVP, associate CIO, and CTO of 17-hospital Hackensack Meridian Health (NJ), about his department’s IT accomplishments in 2021:

• Rolled out 3,000 Chromebooks to employees who were being shifted to remote work, increasing its Chromebook count to 5,000 with Citrix Workspace providing access to Epic.
• Replaced Office 365 with Google Workspace for 40,000 employees who now use Docs, Meet, Chat, and Spaces. He observes that Office 365 applications don’t work well together, while Google offers a seamless experience in providing 80% of Office’s functionality. He also notes that Microsoft’s pricing was “exorbitant” in an environment where hospital payments are being reduced.
• Moved ahead with a goal “to move off as many Microsoft platforms as we can” because  Windows is always targeted by ransomware attacks.
• The health system is expanding its use of Google Cloud and is talking with Google executives about developing Workspace apps that support healthcare-specific workflows.

A NEJM Catalyst commentary piece says that telemedicine’s value can be maximized through sustaining innovation (improving what is already being done) and disruptive innovation (providing simpler solutions for simpler needs or for patients whose needs are not being met). It says that both in-person and virtual physician visits give patients “more than what they need and less of what they want,” with an example being people who use virtual solutions for hair loss, obesity, and contraception who haven’t seen a doctor for years. The authors tout the potential value of remote patient monitoring and coaching for chronic conditions. The graphic above shows the complexity of patient needs (and eventual profitability of the solution) at the top of the pyramid that is occupied by Firefly Health, which has expanded its virtual primary care platform by starting a health plan (the company’s executive chair is former Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush).

An anonymous physician describes how their telehealth work ruined their career:

• Their work as an independent telehealth contractor turned into an “antibiotic dispensary service.” Physicians had to keep patients happy at all costs since they were being graded on customer service scores.
• They were placed on a performance plan for using templated notes, with the alternative being that the telehealth company would report them to the National Practitioner Data Bank.
• The terms of the performance plan limited them to 10 consults per day for one month, after which the company told them they failed the plan because they  didn’t work 30 consecutive days. The company reported the physician to the NPDB.
• NPDB allows any health entity to report a physician. The reported physician cannot challenge the claim.
• The physician says their professional reputation was damaged, they lost income, and they are having a hard time finding work, leading them to question whether they should leave medicine.

Physicians at Durham, NC-based private, for-profit Private Diagnostic Clinic — whose doctors work at Duke University and its health system – sue Duke for requiring 400 of PDC’s 1,850 physicians to take jobs instead with the recently formed Duke Faculty Practice to be able to continue their research. The lawsuit claims that Duke’s previous attempts to acquire PDC fell through because of its estimated value of $1 billion, so Duke is trying to take it over for free.

A virtual meeting of the Beverly, MA board of health is taken over by masking opponents who used the meeting software to hand off speaking to those with similar beliefs, including one who urged someone to burn down the house of Boston Mayor Michelle Wu. A participant declared that a proposed mask mandate would violate her HIPAA rights.

Contacts

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

Health IT Turnover Survey Results

This is a recap of the responses received over the past couple of weeks.

Vendor executive

• Significant turnover expected. Have lost 25% of staff, with marketing and sales most affected.
• Considering leaving because of an impending merger.
• Service levels have decreased at times.

Consulting contractor assigned to a single client for several years

• Significant turnover due to retirement, vaccine mandates, and junior staff who leave for better pay and less work.
• No special employer consideration except bonuses for clinical staff referrals.
• Long waits for implementation and some projects have been cancelled.

Software vendor

• Technical turnover, maybe 1%.
• Considering retiring in 2022.

Independent family practice office

• Saw 40% turnover in 2021, mostly MAs and front office. Were able to stabilize and hope turnover will decline in 2022.
• Salaries are up for existing and new employees.
• Patients haven’t been affected since staff pulled together.

Software vendor

• Turnover of 15-20%, heavier in developer roles.
• Have raised wages to closer match inflation, added monthly and annual incentive, boosted health insurance and 401K contributions.
• No impact on customers, but global sniping of roles creates musical chairs with insane pay jumps.

Academic medical center physician

• Lost 15% of faculty and added only 1-2 full-time replacements. Had to close some beds for months due to loss of nursing staff. One person left due to vaccination requirements, but the others left because they were disrespected by administrators, given inadequate protection against COVID, and were being subjected to an increased amount of physical violence and injury from patients. The IT people who left did so to retire – most could have kept working, but their pension had vested and they didn’t want to return to in-person work.
• I will probably stay where I am or retire.
• The hospital claims they are trying to enhance salaries and recruit nurses internationally. We’ve never been good at recruiting in my specialty, which has a shortage, so we’re just begging our residents to stay on July without real success. The bleak recruitment picture is fueling more departures from being forced to cover more patients.
• We aren’t able to see as many patients. Outpatient appointment waits can be 4-6 months. Inpatients get less attentive care even though we try our best.

Clinically integrated network plus insurance plan plus ACO

• Large loss of analytics headcount, not turnover, due to outsourcing. Outsourced staff left the new companies. Turnover among retained employees because of the mess.
• Would consider leaving due to leadership and management instability, lack of strategy, growing workload, and lack of morale. Seeking happy workers, remote option, sense of purpose, peer-to-peer support, professional development, and interesting not-rote work where I can think and be more than a cog in the machine.
• Employer is paying big dollars for some clinical positions such as CRNA. Bonuses in others, such as RN. Some retention bonuses around outsourcing, but not life-changing.
• Analytics and IT are seeing a loss of institutional knowledge and the good people are leaving. Service levels and response time are getting worse. We struggle to deliver analytics as other teams we rely on suffer.

Vendor executive

• We saw very high turnover in entry-level positions in Q3 2021, but this seems to have leveled out. These were mostly onsite support IT technician roles.
• Divisions have been given flexibility to offer work from home for suitable positions. HR and exec teams formed a committee that meets bi-weekly to analyze turnover data, most of which is collected in exit interviews, to develop strategy. I budgeted above-normal salary increases for 2022, anticipating that employees facing inflation will need more than the typical 3% increase to remain satisfied.
• No customer impact so far.

Consulting firm

• Turnover was 25-40%.
• Would consider leaving because of leadership response to COVID, pay discrepancies, and company culture. Will look for a more honest culture with a mission that more closely aligns with my personality. Executives with honor.
• Customers have seen slow work delivery, decrease work quality, lack of integrity.

Clinical analyst in a multi-state health system

• Heavy analyst and desktop support turnover. Long-term employees have been rebadged to contractors over the last 18 months and all of desktop are contractors now. Contracted analysts are offshore, are trained by a rebadged employee, and then the rebadged person disappears.
• I dislike physician training and that is being dumped on me, so I will look aroundfor a challenging and diverse role in a company that values loyal employees who work hard.
• The health system offers free lunch once a week, mostly for clinical and hospital staff retention, but I am remote, so nothing. We strongly feel that leaving or staying makes no difference to upper management.
• We have work not being done. One program broke and none of the replacements knows about it, so doctors just don’t get that information any more and no one cares. Tickets sit around for months because nobody knows what the product is or who handles it. Poor customer service from the help desk, especially Level 1.

Vendor technology director

• Engineering was the most affected turnover area, but it leveled off recently. I expect normal attrition next year, maybe 10-15%.
• Changed jobs for work-life balance, an opportunity to work for a more technically sound team and manager, a deeper focus on more complex clinical integrations, mission around the product, and a 65% pay raise for an equivalent role.
• We are using external recruiters and more focused sourcing. We do quarterly surveys for retention adjustments. We will start reviewing market level salaries quarterly and make adjustments.
• No impact on customers. We have grown, even with periods of significant turnover this summer. Our company is small but has strong processes and good release and monitoring capabilities, so new folks can ramp up quickly.

Health system VP/CIO

• Nursing has seen large turnover as staff leave to make more money as traveling nurses. It’s an unprecedented number. I’ve had a 20% resignation rate in IS versus a decade averaging 3%. COVID is encouraging people to reconsider their careers and either get out of IS or work remotely for more money.
• Sign-on bonuses have been critical for nursing. For IS, we are regrading all of our positions and evaluating salaries to make sure we are competitive.
• The hospitals have been full and cost is up due to the need to hire travelers and contractors. We are maintaining patient care, but not always able to staff beds, and have had to go on diversion at times. IS customers are seeing long lead times in service delivery and I have a long line of people contacting me with complaints.

Consulting firm

• My firm was acquired and we’ve seen a reduction in “material benefits,” such as FMLA at 60% after four weeks instead of full pay. I expected to see a lot of folks leave after 2021 bonuses are paid and this will likely hit us most at at the senior level.
• We are having to backfill from a contractor pool, which is fraught and limited.

Medical device vendor

• Turnover at all job categories and levels.
• Are offering referral bonuses, signing bonuses, and hiring less experienced staff so they have runway to grow.
• Customers are seeing slow delivery of new value and innovation and slower response times for services.

IT in FQHC of ambulatory clinics

• High turnover in MAs, nurses, and providers.
• Would look at offers with good compensation.
• Employer is offering more prizes in the Christmas raffle, better 401k matching, and one-time bonuses.
• No patient impact except a longer wait for appointments.

Software vendor

• I left my old job due to lack of advancement opportunities.
• Company offers flexible schedules and extensive work-from-home options.
• Customers have seen project timeline delays.

Vendor executive

• Turnover is highest in customer support, then developers.
• I would be looking for an employer with remote work and no vaccine mandates.
• The company updated the employee experience intranet, implement 360 reviews of leadership, increased referral bonus amounts, and made salary market adjustments.
• Customers have seen that we increased hiring, improved automation, upgraded our self-help knowledge base and portal, and adding chat bots for commonly asked questions.

Vendor executive

• We have seen a 15-20% turnover in sales and developers.
• I changed jobs to join a great team that offered better compensation, now hoping to stay put.
• The company pays well and treats people with respect and appreciation.
• I have seen no customer impact.

Vendor sales executive

• We have seen 35% turnover in trainers and customer support.
• My company’s new model is not sustainable and the future looks grim. I would like to work for a larger employer whose products and serves are geared for future technology.
• When we were going in to the office, the company stocked our kitchen with snacks and food for employees and offered five half-day summer Fridays on top of PTO. Now that we are remote, nothing.
• Customer support is suffering as we have lost experienced workers.

Vendor executive

• Turnover is at 15-20% and is in all areas – sales, technology, operations, legal.
• I have uncertainty about the long-term viability of the company and money.
• The company is increasing salaries, offering retention bonuses, and making a concerted effort around culture.
• Things are taking longer to get done and that cascades to our customers.

Vendor analyst

• Turnover is at 35% and I don’t expect those numbers to go down. Mid-level leadership, senior development, senior implementation, and a few VPs.
• I changed jobs because of leadership failings and layoffs that put too many good people out for no good reason. The pandemic layoff and pay cuts were particularly hard. I moved to a company that wanted to grow, needed my skill, and offered a 30% raise.
• If I leave, and I’m only thinking about it, it would be to hang out my own shingle and consult internationally.
• The company just eliminated PTO with the “take whatever you need” concept.
• Customers are struggling not only on the clinical side due to the pandemic, they don’t have the people to keep up with upgrades, new releases, and support. They need to align with a lot of new initiatives that will be available only in future releases.

Software and benchmarking vendor VP

• I anticipate very high turnover in software development, product management, high-aptitude analysts, data science and BI/data visualization, and any high performer who wants to make the jump to management.
• I plan to stay in 2022 as long as they’ll have me. I’m satisfied with my personal comp and the company mission still resonates with me.
• Employer is increasing pay bands, starting salaries, and annual merit raise percentages. However, it is also stressing a return to office and downplaying virtual work, which is hurting both recruiting and retention.
• Customers have seen no impact, but recruiting for 2022 remains a major risk point. We have plenty of revenue to invest in software development and business development, but recruiting challenges mean it’s difficult to execute with those dollars. Resignations haven’t hit us badly, but annual bonuses for 2021 are paid in Q1 2022 and we anticipate a wave of resignations.

Health insurer

• Turnover is higher than normal. We always have high turnover in our bilingual call center and it will probably get worse. Until we converted a number of jobs to full-time remote, we expected high turnover in IT.
• Full-time remote and hybrid jobs is the company’s biggest innovation in recruitment and retention. My employer was old-school about telecommuting despite being in downtown Los Angeles, where almost everyone has a lousy commute. Now that we’ve been getting the work done successfully for 18 months, they have generally accepted that it can work. We lost some staff to a competitor that advertised full-time remote jobs sooner than we did.
• Turnover has slowed a number of enterprise programs to roll out new services many of which are enabled by technology. We are a highly regulated entity and we’ve been struggling to meet all regulatory deadlines, in part because of a lack of people to do the work and make important decisions in these programs.

Health system

• 10-15% turnover in nursing and IT.
• Would consider leaving for flexibility and career advancement opportunities.
• The company is adjusting salaries.

Software vendor sales

• 10% turnover. Lots of engineering folks with a shift to cloud, on-prem resources will go. Lots of GTM changes due to poor company culture.
• Left due to company culture.

Software vendor sales

• Voluntary turnover has been low, but seems like it is ticking up. R&D has seen record turnover and I expect that to continue along with our implementation team.
• I’m concerned about the company direction. New product announcements talk about functionality we should have had years ago. I don’t see full digitization happening in the next 10 years, but shouldn’t we be working towards that assumption? We aren’t able to quickly produce new code and updates. Pay isn’t so great and there’s no indication it will improve.
• The company has had some sort of HR listening session with some teams, but it seems to have focused on soft things like culture rather than pay and product focus.
• Our customers are certainly impacted by loss of experience in the implementation team, which is directly visible to them. The R&D team is not visible to them.

Multi-hospital health system IT senior solutions architect

• We lost some folks earlier due to work-from-home policies, which have since been loosened up.
• Work-from-home is 100% and work in multiple states.

News 12/29/21

Top News

Politico notes that even though the Senate has, for the first time, removed the prohibition of spending HHS money on a national patient identifier for 2022, nothing is guaranteed because of the way HHS appropriations work.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) have filed bills that oppose the development national patient identifiers.

ONC was supposed to create a report describing how such identification would work and the benefits and risk of implementing it. That report is is overdue and is holding up the process.

Reader Comments

From IANAL: “Re: Cerner. I suspect the voice assistant statement in Oracles press release was aimed at buyers or holders of Oracle stock. Many see Oracle’s main competitor as Microsoft, which acquired Nuance/Dragon. The press releases of big, boring companies are often aimed at shareholders since shareholders are interested enough to read company press releases and usually need calming after big company decisions. I wouldn’t take it as an indication of Oracle’s actual intentions for Cerner.” Excellent point. Companies often say things in acquisition press releases that don’t match their actual intentions, instead using the limelight opportunity to improve their image with investors. The claim that Oracle will make its little-known voice assistant the primary clinician interface for Millennium may well have been smoke-blowing to make Microsoft’s acquisition of Nuance seem less significant. It seems obvious that the biggest benefit to Oracle is buying a company that in essence resells a lot of its high-margin products (like the Oracle database) and to stave off the company’s move to AWS and force customers onto Oracle’s less-competitive offering. I doubt that the worksheet analysis used by Oracle’s acquisition team contained a lot of columns that predict the acquisition’s positive impact on patients and clinicians, healthcare costs, and outcomes.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Few poll respondents expect Oracle’s acquisition of Cerner to improve healthcare. Mike thinks a new focus on infrastructure will slow down the rollout of more-important product features, turning Cerner into another McKesson Horizon that will be sold for parts. Multiple commenters say that both companies are focused on sales rather than products, which is tough in healthcare where sales cycles are long and complicated. Khyber Pass makes an eloquent comparison of US healthcare to Afghanistan, where outside powers waltzed unknowingly into the “Graveyard of Empires” and were undone by fractiousness, complexity, and problems that the locals couldn’t solve. IANAL makes several interesting predictions:

• Meditech, once Neil Pappalardo is no longer involved, will sell to Oracle or private equity, will be acquired by a consortium of customers led by HCA, or will become irrelevant due to customer attrition.
• Oracle will wait for Northwell to leave Allscripts and will then buy the Allscripts hospital division on the cheap.
• Epic seems to be growing concerned about anti-trust issues as evidenced by its no longer using slogans involving world domination or market share. Oracle is tighter with the federal government, is a preferred bidder for government work, and is willing to outsource to India. Epic will move its focus outside of hospitals once it has run out of health systems to convert and the profits no longer outweigh the anti-trust risk.
• Hospital software improvement and innovation will stop unless US healthcare undergoes major paradigm changes.

New poll to your right or here: Which COVID activities will you practice to a greater degree in the first several months of 2022 compared to mid-2021? I’m trying not to fall victim to the “I’ll get it no matter what I do, so I might as well just live my life” symptom of COVID fatigue, but I’ll at least switch from cloth to KN95 masks in some or all situations. Omicron has changed the dynamic to where all of us probably know someone personally who has had it recently. Post-holiday case numbers will be crazy, although only a small percentage of those will likely result in hospitalization (but a small percentage of a huge number is still a big number of occupied beds that will be unavailable for medical needs of all kinds).

Webinars

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

Announcements and Implementations

In India, Indian Railways – the government-owned railway system that is the world’s eighth-largest employer with 1.3 million employees —  goes live on the Hospital Management Information System at its 695 hospitals and healthcare units, linked to the patient identifier of employees, family members, and employees. 

Mid-Columbia Medical Center (OR) and OHSU Health end most aspects of their longstanding collaboration agreement, which will require MCMC to move away from OHSU’s Epic system.

Other

Dr. Jayne is annoyed that the CES show denied her request for a media pass with a curt “insufficient credentials” response, but the January 5-8 conference might wish they had let her come given high-profile pullouts of dozens of companies from the in-person conference due to COVID-19 concerns – Lenovo, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Intel, Meta (Facebook), and Omron Healthcare. Several tech reporting sites have decided not to send reporters to Las Vegas for live coverage of the conference, which drew 180,000 attendees the last time it was held in person in January 2020. CES declares that it won’t cancel the in-person show, saying that while 10% of exhibit hall space will now feature chairs and potted plants in being repurposed into impromptu lounges, smaller companies rely on the conference to do business. Some people still expect CES to either give up and cancel the show or try to put good spin (a la HIMSS and RSNA) on drawing 75% fewer attendees, many of whom had already decided to participate virtually or not at all even before emergence of the Omicron variant. According to one tech publisher, “You know something’s different on the Central Hall floor when you see the US Postal Service has really great booth position.”

A researcher says that nursing shortages, accelerated by pandemic-related retirements and reduced nursing school enrollment, will shift health system budgets away from expansion and acquisition of new technology. One travel nurse says the hospital she works at is so short staffed that she is paid more than surgeons, but many travel nurses say the money is only a short-term reason to continue practicing in a high-stress setting where hospitals don’t seem to value their mental health.

The coroner of an 80,000-resident county in Missouri – who, like many of his national peers, had no medical training or experience before he was elected to the low-paying job — tells a reporter that his office “doesn’t do COVID deaths,” having recorded COVID-19 as a cause of death zero times in 2021. Wavis Jordan, who is also a lay preacher, says families would need to provide proof of a positive test to have it included on the death certificate, which goes against CDC’s recommendation of taking symptoms and medical history into account. Many death certificates feature “garbage codes” such as “heart failure, unspecified” that are inappropriate as an underlying cause of death. A county coroner in Mississippi, where deaths labeled as “heart attacks” doubled in 2020, says family members often refuse to allow COVID-19 on death certificates until they learn that the federal government pays for the funerals of people who die of COVID-19.

HuffPost covers private equity’s heavy acquisition of hospice chains, with the number of PE-owned hospices tripling from 2012 to 2019 in a quest to cash in on dying baby boomers in a lightly regulated industry for which Medicare pays generously. Their formula involves slashing costs and staffing and pushing marketing teams to sign up people who might not actually need hospice services. One hospice company that says it is one of the fastest-growing companies in the US declines to name its owner, even after its private equity owner paid $200 million to buy a British Formula One racing team (racing reporters believe the owner is a low-key Hong Kong billionaire). Profits are high because Medicare pays the same per-day rate regardless of complexity, so an aide who feeds a patient lunch is billed at the same rate as a nurse who runs an IV. The acquired hospice market heavily to assisted living facilities since servicing patients who live under one roof increases efficiency.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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News 12/24/21

Top News

Medical software vendor CompuGroup Medical was hit by a ransomware attack on Saturday that has affected its network and telephone support systems. The company is setting up emergency telephone numbers and email addresses for customers.

Reader Comments

From Historian: “Re: Oracle acquiring Cerner. Acquisitions like this don’t usually work out well for health IT customers.” Very true, especially if the acquirer is new to healthcare and states upfront that its primary motivation of the acquisition is to increase growth. Extra negative points since Oracle seems to think that what Cerner needs to finisher higher than #2 in a three-horse race is bolted-on, market-lagging technologies such as its voice assistant. Oracle also may underestimate the challenges that lurk underneath its glib statement that it will magically increase non-US sales of Cerner products. The clinking of milkshake toasts must be echoing throughout the Verona cornfields, with the only other delighted parties being Cerner shareholders and the heirs of Neal Patterson, who are stacking their cash with fingers stuck in ears to avoid hearing him rolling over in his grave.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The EU’s regulator approves Microsoft’s acquisition of Nuance, which it says raises no anti-competitive concerns.

Sales

• MUSC Health will implement Sectra’s enterprise imaging solution in a subscription model that covers its main campus, several satellite locations, and all affiliated regional hospitals in South Carolina.

Announcements and Implementations

Vyne Dental announces enhancements to its Trellis revenue cycle and communications platform.

Government and Politics

FDA issues draft guidance on using digital health technologies for remote data acquisition in clinical studies.

Other

The co-founder of the COVID Tracking Project says in The Atlantic that the US is about go temporarily blind in the Omicron variant fight because the folks who collect and report testing results take holiday periods off. Cases will appear to be dropping sharply over the next several days due to underreporting, then will skyrocket in the first several weeks of 2022 as the data backlog is cleared (or as infection rages, or both – it won’t be possible to tell). The only data that is likely to be accurate is HHS’s hospitalization figures, which are more of a record of interventions gone wrong than an early warning system. I think hospital admissions and deaths will become the only relevant numbers since case counts and positivity mean little when nearly everybody is going to become infected and the tools that can blunt the infection’s damage become more important.

An interesting aspect of the ransomware downtime of Ultimate Kronos Group’s cloud-based payroll system. Health systems that can’t access hourly pay records are being forced to issue employee paychecks in the same amount as a weeks-ago pay period. That means that not only will they have to claw back any overpayment right after Christmas (assuming the system is restored soon); they have to deal with newly hired employees, people who received bonuses or overtime in the pay period that is used; and W-2s will potentially be affected by paycheck adjustments.

The New York Times says Pediatrix and its parent company Mednax are earning millions of dollars each year by showing up at the bedside of a newborn’s mother and offering to administer expensive hearing tests, which the mother assumes is covered by the hospital stay. Pediatrix – which also offers pediatric intensive care, pediatric surgery, and obstetric services – is administering the hearing tests to nearly 1 million babies per year. Aetna sued the companies three years ago for inflating charges by more than $50 million but eventually settled, although Mednax admitted in court that it destroyed emails in which it pestered its doctors to upcode procedures. Pediatrix sponsored a successful campaign to pass state laws requiring hearing tests for newborns, then started doing a test that costs several hundred dollars instead of the previous $50. Patients have complained about the surprise bills, with at least one hospital warning expectant parents that the company may not be an approved provider under their insurance and that the company balance-bills patients for what insurance doesn’t cover.

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News 12/22/21

Top News

Several investment firms and bond raters downgraded Oracle’s shares and debt Tuesday following its announced intention to acquire Cerner. They worry that the cash payout is large and Cerner’s offerings aren’t strategic to those areas where Oracle should focus.

Oracle has $23 billion in cash and will likely need financing to complete the Cerner acquisition for its offer of $28 billion in cash.

ORCL shares dropped 5% on the announcement Monday and were flat Tuesday.

Oracle’s biggest previous acquisition was PeopleSoft, which it acquired for $10 billion in 2004.

Reader Comments

From Change of Control: “Re: Cerner. Could CEO David Feinberg really have been key to the Oracle acquisition given that he’s been on the job for less than three months?” That was my immediate question as some seemed to give him credit for the deal. Either way, he’s even more fabulously wealthy than when he started on October 1 – shares in his $35 million compensation package have jumped in price. He is also protected by a change-of-control employment clause if Oracle fires him within 12 months of closing the deal (two years of base salary, 24 months of benefits, immediate vesting of shares, and his initial $1.35 million cash bonus). It seems from the cheap seats that Oracle would have pursued its long-rumored acquisition regardless of who was sitting in the CEO chair, and the fact that it was the new guy Feinberg is very good for him. I doubt Oracle based its plans on his ongoing involvement or found Cerner to be a more attractive target because the CEO spent less than three years working for Google. It may well be that 77-year-old Larry Ellison’s testosterone kicked in (a common tech punch line: “God doesn’t think he’s Larry Ellison”) at the chance to steal an AWS client and to match Microsoft’s acquisition of Nuance by rather wildly claiming that Oracle will make its voice assistant the primary clinician interface to Millennium.

From On-Demand: “Re: Cerner. Oracle is buying into healthcare, not buying into a sexy acquisition.” I agree. CERN revenue and shares haven’t budged much in years, the company lost a lot of its executive talent (to the benefit of other health IT vendors) while Brent Shafer kept the CEO chair warm for his short and generally forgettable three years, and Cerner is #2 and losing ground in its primary business. Oracle’s history involves milking database customers hard while missing trends such as cloud, AI, and voice assistants, but revenue from the former lets them belatedly buy their way in. Tech analysts raised interesting questions: are more Oracle acquisitions imminent since the company historically plays aggressive catch-up, and will Salesforce be pushed into broadening its modest healthcare presence?

From Bob Loblaw Law Blog: “Re: Cerner. Oracle triggers more customer complaints than any software vendor I’ve seen.” A class action suit that was filed in early 2020 claims that Oracle’s shares were tanking because it failed to predict cloud-based competitive threats, so the company boosted its numbers by forcing customers to buy its flawed cloud offerings by using a strategy called “Audit, Bargain, and Close.” The lawsuit claims that Oracle intentionally installed on-premises software that boosted the customer’s license usage without their knowledge, then threatened to impose large license agreement penalties unless the customer accepted a cloud subscription that they didn’t want and wouldn’t use. The lawsuit quotes a company executive who said that up to 95% of the company’s cloud sales involved these “financially engineered deals” that were designed to mislead investors into thinking that Oracle’s cloud strategy was working.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m curious about what you think about Oracle’s planned acquisition of Cerner. Let me know. I’m thinking of these themes:

• How does Oracle perform as a health system vendor (database, HR, ERP, EMPI, etc.)
• How well does Oracle’s Voice Digital Assistant work? Could it really be suitable as Millennium’s primary user interface for clinicians?
• What is the customer impact of Cerner moving from AWS, which is already complete for some systems and in process for others, to do an about-face move to Oracle’s Gen2 cloud services?
• How will Cerner’s VA and DoD business be affected?
• How many on-the-fence Cerner customers and prospects will be spooked by uncertainty and will instead make a quick Epic decision?
• What will Oracle’s strategy be given that much of healthcare, including Epic, uses InterSystems Cache’ rather than relational databases like Oracle’s?

Speaking of the acquisition, let’s give credit to some HIStalk readers who called it early (July 25, 2021). Eddie T. Head stated confidently that Oracle will be the top general technology firm in healthcare “after they buy Cerner,” which he expected because Cerner is a heavy Oracle user (databases and Java), Oracle is desperately late to the cloud, and Cerner seemed primed for sale. IANAL added that Oracle has acquired other sector-specific application vendors such as NetSuite and predicted accurately that it would be a $30 billion acquisition.

I’m always happy to see December 21 even though it’s the first day of winter (and another COVID one at that) because at least daylight hours start increasing.

An Anonymous Health System CIO’s Initial Thoughts About Oracle Acquiring Cerner

We’ve been a Cerner customer on the acute EHR side for quite a while and have further implemented both ambulatory and rev cycle. On the acute side, we’ve been generally pleased with the product, services, and support. However, we saw Cerner challenges with the ambulatory and rev cycle implementations. From my viewpoint, Cerner’s biggest problems today are:

• Revenue cycle functionality. Millennium still has challenges to get it to work well. I’m hoping the RevElate strategy pans out.
• Ambulatory functionality. We’re seeing improvements made, but they lack the product maturity other vendors have. Generally, we are able to make it work.
• People and process. This is actually their biggest problem. Cerner has struggled to maintain competent staff that understand healthcare and individual customer workflows. Throughout our implementations, we had major challenges with project management, availability of experienced staff, and the ability to help us make informed decisions.

Here are my thoughts on Oracle acquiring them:

• If Oracle is going to help reduce the cost of healthcare, they also need to help find savings for their customers.
• One of the things mentioned in their announcement was the use of Oracle’s voice assistant product. Our Physicians use Dragon and are very pleased with it. I don’t believe Oracle understands how difficult it is going to be to get physicians to give up something they like and benefit from.
• Oracle should be able to bring more technical resources to bear to help with Cerner’s products. However, I hope Oracle isn’t going to distract Cerner to move from their AWS strategy to an Oracle cloud strategy immediately. While this would be favorable to Oracle, I fail to find any immediate value to customers.
• Oracle is not going to be able to help bring additional healthcare resources initially.
• I hope Oracle can help improve Cerner’s service delivery through more mature processes. However, not knowing the healthcare space or Cerner products, I’m not sure what they can do initially to bring value for customers.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Bloomberg reports that activist investor Elliott Investment Management and Vista Equity Partners are considering making a joint bid for Citrix Systems, whose shares are down 36% this year and the company has been exploring its options.

Huron will acquire healthcare analytics vendor Perception Health.

Patient financial solutions vendor AccessOne acquires CueSquared, which offers a mobile payment platform for patient self-pay balances.

The executive director of the World Privacy Forum is concerned that the acquisition of Cerner will give Oracle – which runs the world’s largest third-party data marketplace – access to Cerner-stored patient data. She says that business associate rules might allow Oracle to use Cerner’s EHR patient data to train AI systems.

People

ZeOmega hires Andy Arends, MBA, MSc (NTT Data) as chief growth officer.

Other

KHN finds that small-town pharmacists are opening independent drugstores to replace big-box chains that pull out and leave those areas without pharmacy services. The article notes that the number of pharmacists employed by big-box stores peaked at 31,800 in 2012, but online and mail-order sales dropped that number to 18,000 by 2019. Experts say that people do less “roaming shopping” now, meaning that running a loss-leading pharmacy in the back of a retail or grocery store is not necessarily the most profitable use of the square footage. Rite Aid announced Tuesday that it will close another 63 stories, which follows CVS Health’s announcement that it will close 900 stores in the next three years.

The BMJ complains to Facebook that its peer-reviewed COVID-19 articles are being flagged as “false information” by Facebook’s fact-checking contractor Lead Stories. Lead Stories responds by saying that BMJ’s article “COVID-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial” and its “scare headline” were adopted by anti-vaxxers to prove that the clinical trial was fraudulent. Lead Stories says the allegation actually involves just three of 153 research sites, the whistleblower Brook Jackson is an EHR auditor rather than a scientist and had worked in the lab for just two weeks, and her Twitter account shows her support for misinformation spreader Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. It also notes that it flagged the article only as being potentially misleading without additional context. Jackson filed an FDA complaint about the clinical trial and was fired by her research contractor employer the same day.

HIMSS announces featured HIMSS22 speakers, none of whom I’ve heard of other than former Olympic swimmer Michael Phelps — the CEO of a children’s education organization, the guy who ran Disney’s ABC Television group for a short time, a couple of former Air Force pilots turned consultants (they sound pretty interesting), an audit firm’s economist, the CEO of the Society for Human Resource Management, and a “60 Minutes” correspondent (those last three are co-presenting a single session on workforce). Exhibitor count is at 550 and Oracle isn’t among them.

Oracle says it will expand non-US sales of Cerner software. The above from KLAS’s “Global (Non-US) EMR Market Share 2021” report shows where Cerner stands.

Weird News Andy, this is my holiday gift for you. In England, the bomb squad is called to a hospital ED when a patient presents with “munition in his rectum.” The patient showed little originality in claiming that he fell on the World War II-era armor-piercing projectile.

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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Oracle Acquires Cerner

Oracle will acquire Cerner for $28.3 billion in equity value in an all-cash deal, the companies announced this morning.

Oracle chairman and CTO Larry Ellison said in a statement, “Working together, Cerner and Oracle have the capacity to transform healthcare delivery by providing medical professionals with better information—enabling them to make better treatment decisions resulting in better patient outcomes. With this acquisition, Oracle’s corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud applications. This new generation of medical information systems promises to lower the administrative workload burdening our medical professionals, improve patient privacy and outcomes, and lower overall healthcare costs.”

Oracle vertical industries EVP Mike Sicilia said that Oracle will make Cerner’s systems easier to learn by making Oracle’s hands-free Voice Digital Assistant the primary interface to Millennium.

The transaction is expected to close in 2022. Cerner will operate as an industry business unit within Oracle.

The acquisition, at $95 per Cerner share, represents Oracle’s largest acquisition. Oracle says Cerner will be “a huge additional revenue growth engine for years to come” as Oracle expands its business to additional countries.

Monday Morning Update 12/20/21

Top News

Kaiser Health News call out Yale New Haven Health System, which for telehealth visits sends a separate bill for a $50 to $350 facility fee even though telehealth patients never set foot in any of the health system’s buildings.

The health system, warned by the Connecticut Office of the Healthcare Advocate that the state explicitly bans charging facility fees for telehealth visits, blamed a coding mistake.

Despite attributing an error, the health system still argued that the charges are justifiable because they cover the cost of the telehealth software, adding that “we do still have to keep the lights on.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Hard-to-change company attributes are most important to poll respondents who are seeking new opportunities, but otherwise, throwing down cash doesn’t hurt.

New poll to your right or here: How would an Oracle acquisition of Cerner change healthcare?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Online mental healthcare startup Cerebral, which was recently valued at nearly $5 billion after its latest funding round and hired Olympic gymnast Simone Biles as chief impact officer, recently changed hundreds of therapists from salaried workers to hourly and made benefits eligibility contingent on hitting quotas. Patients choose company therapists from its web directory, so the new structure means that therapists have no control over the company’s minimum billed hours threshold.

UK’s business secretary will investigate complaints that Microsoft pushed British companies out of contention for NHS contracts by giving NHS free use of its Teams remote meeting software, which small competitors say is a way to gain overall IT leverage posting as a charitable act. Also complaining is Salesforce, which owns Teams competitor Slack.

Cerner shares closed at Friday $89.77, up 13% on the rumor that Oracle will acquire the company in a $30 billion deal. ORCL shares dropped 6% on the Wall Street Journal report.

Axios reports that the two founders of PillPack, acquired by Amazon in mid-2018 for $1 billion, have been demoted to consultants to the online pharmacy. Employees who reported to T.J. Parker now report to John Love, an Amazon VP who oversees Alexa shopping.

Announcements and Implementations

KLAS finds that Epic had the largest net gain in US hospitals in 2020 with 101, which gave it 19,000 new beds. Cerner lost a net of 19 hospitals and 10,000 beds. KLAS concludes that while Epic’s biggest-gaining year was 2015 when it added 144 new hospitals, “their growth has never so decisively outpaced the competition’s.” The company lost three hospitals in 2020, all due to M&A. Meditech lost 62% of the decisions made by legacy customers in 2020, with all of its new hospitals being under 100 beds. Most of those that decided not to move to forward to Meditech Expanse chose Epic instead. UPDATE: I’ve corrected the dates – KLAS’s “US Hospital Market Share 2021” report reflects data from 2020, not 2021.

Government and Politics

The Massachusetts Supreme Court rules in favor of a former Meditech employee who claims he was fired for exercising his right to file a rebuttal in his personnel file. Terence Meehan says Meditech reorganized its 12-person regional sales department in demoting three sales reps – including Meehan – to the newly created position of “sales specialists,” who sales reps rarely used because they don’t want to share commissions. Meehan says he and the other demoted employees were placed on performance improvement plans in July 2018, and when he sent his supervisor a rebuttal, the president and CEO of Meditech immediately terminated him. He filed a complaint of wrongful discharge and the court agreed with him.

Sponsor Updates

• Two member agencies of The Arc New York collaborative will implement Netsmart’s CareFabric platform.
• Redox releases a new podcast, “Extracting paternalism from the patient experience with B.well CEO Kristen Valdes.”
• The Pharmacy, IT & Me Podcast features RxRevu CEO Carm Huntress.
• Talkdesk wins the cloud-based CX solution of the year award at Customer Contact Week.
• Vocera releases a new podcast, “The Evidence for Team Member Safety and Well-being – Kedar Mate, MD.”
• Well Health has helped providers facilitate nearly 10 million vaccine appointments and send over 63 million messages related to COVID-19.

Blog Posts

• Innovate4Outcomes: Patient Advocates Come to the Table (OptimizeRx)
• 4 Ways to Improve Patient Outcomes through Health Literacy in 2022 (PatientBond)
• What Does the No Surprises Act Mean for Providers? (Symplr)
• What Role Does Good Communication Play in Your Revenue Cycle? (PMD)
• Accounts Payable Fraud and Theft: Automation to the Rescue (Premier)
• Year in Review: Top 2021 Trends in Digital Health and What They Mean for 2022 (Quil Health)
• 10 Insider Tips to Ensure Your Product Lands on a Health System’s Shortlist (Redox)
• Crack the (OR) Code to Patient Engagement (Sonifi Health)
• Can closed-loop communication help mitigate clinical lab burnout? (A closer look) (Spok)
• The Future of Health, Fireside Chat Recap (Tegria)
• Why Patient Engagement is Critical for Chronic Disease Management (Twistle)
• Where Does Telehealth Go From Here? (WebPT)

Contacts

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

News 12/17/21

Top News

Innovaccer raises $150 million in a Series E funding round that values the company at $3.2 billion.

Reader Comments

From Marc: “Re: Scarborough Heath Network. The first client in the world to put Epic DR on AWS. Great collaboration with Deloitte, AWS, and Epic.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m interested in hearing about turnover experience – yours and your employer’s — via this short, anonymous survey, whose results I’ll aggregate in the next few days.

The JP Morgan healthcare conference, which just moved to a virtual-only format because of attendee concerns about COVID-19, will start 55 days before the first-ever ViVE conference and 63 days before HIMSS22. It’s not a great time to be in the conference business, especially when those two upcoming conferences are in Florida, which bans vaccine mandates (such as for workers at the convention center, hotels, and restaurants) and doesn’t allow requiring customers to provide proof of vaccination. HIMSS says it is reviewing its Right of Entry Protocols for HIMSS22 to determine which ones “comply with prevailing local regulations in Florida,” which is basically what ViVE is doing in simply saying that it will let people know later what it will be allowed to require (we’re just 80 days out). Would you be comfortable attending a conference where attendee vaccination cannot be verified under state law? JPM would have required attendees to prove vaccination and to wear masks indoors.

Webinars

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

Here’s the recording of Wednesday’s webinar titled “Improve Efficiency, Reduce Burnout: Leveraging Smart Clinical Communications,” presented by Spok.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Physician performance analytics vendor Embold Health raises $20 million in a Series B funding round. CEO Daniel Stein, MD, MBA founded the company in 2017 after serving as chief medical officer for Walmart’s Care Clinics.

Ophelia, which connects opioid users in 11 states to moonlighting providers who prescribe Suboxone via video visits for $195 per month, raises $50 million in a Series B funding round.

Optum sets the date for completing its $13 billion acquisition of Change Healthcare as April 5, 2022.

UK-based secure communications platform vendor Hospify will shut down its flagship service on January 31, 2022. The app, which was launched in February 2018, was the first to be approved for general provider and patient use by the NHS Apps Library. The company blames its demise on the government’s early-pandemic waiver of the Data Protection Act, which continues in allowing providers to use non-GDPR compliant consumer messaging apps such as WhatsApp. The company also questions the post-Brexit uncertainties around the UK-EU data agreements. Hospify’s movingly honest and sometimes humorous explanation of its circumstances says that the company will remain in business at it seeks new markets where “data protection is taken more seriously by the relevant governments.”

Sales

• Low-code app development vendor Appian will use Redox for healthcare data integration.
• Sage Memorial Hospital goes live on Meditech-as-a-Service with the assistance of Healthcare Triangle.
• Community Care Cooperative will implement Epic at 12 of its FQHCs.
• Medicare primary care center operator Oak Street Health will expand its use of real-time patient event notifications from Bamboo Health.

People

Optimum Healthcare IT promotes Larry Kaiser to chief marketing officer.

Commure hires Abhijit Mitra, MS, MBA (ServiceNow) as chief product and engineering officer, Manisha Shetty Gulati, MPA, MBA (Clarify Health Solutions) as chief growth officer, and Christine Tibbits, MA (Google Health) as chief people officer.

St. Luke’s (MN) names Chris Sorenson, MBA (Ascension) to the newly created position of CIO.

Integris Health hires industry long-timer Bill Hudson, MBA (John Muir Health) as VP/CIO.

NextGen Healthcare promotes Bob Murry, PhD, MD to chief medical officer. He replaces Betty Rabinowitz, MD, who is retiring.

Personalized care solutions vendor Happify Health hires Megan Callahan, MPH (Lyft Healthcare) as COO.

K Health, which offers “people like me” compiled health insights and telehealth, hires Jennifer Pena, MD (Nurx) to the newly created position of chief medical officer. She previously served as White House physician and spent 10 years as a US Army doctor.

Industry long-timer Thomas “TR” Rush – VP of business development at MedAssist and veteran of a long career at Siemens Healthcare — died unexpectedly last week, two days before the birth of his first grandchild. He was 51.

Announcements and Implementations

A study of Arcadia’s de-identified health history of 150 million patients finds that unvaccinated people were six times less likely to report multiple symptoms of long COVID if they were given their first COVID-19 vaccination in the four weeks after becoming infected. Even those who didn’t get the shot until 4-8 weeks after diagnosis were three times less likely to report multiple long COVID symptoms.

KONZA, the Kansas Health Information Network, releases Translate, which automatically sends ambulatory COVID-19 test results to public health departments without manual entry.

Epic will add mapping, navigation, and location-aware analytics via System1’s MapQuest Business-to-Business service.

Midwest grocery chain Hy-Vee launches RedBox Rx, a national, low-cost telehealth and online pharmacy service that includes free prescription shipping. The service, which offers telehealth visits for prices ranging from zero to $39, does not accept insurance. It is offered by partner MDBox, the telehealth business of Reliant Immune Diagnostics that also offers testing and monitoring.

Cigna-owned health services vendor Evernorth chooses Omada Health as its preferred vendor for digital chronic care programs for diabetes, hypertension, and prevention. It apparently displaces Livongo, which was acquired in October 2020 for $18.5 billion by Teladoc Health, whose shares dropped on the latest news in valuing the company at $14 billion. TDOC’s market cap has dropped by two-thirds – $28 billion — since February 2021.

A new KLAS report that covers EHR vendors that offer a wide range of comprehensive solutions for ambulatory practices finds that Epic, NextGen Healthcare, and Cerner earn high user satisfaction with offering technologies that meet most or all of an ambulatory practice’s needs, although the virtual care offerings of those vendors are sometimes passed over in favor of best-of-breed tools. Cerner customers remain concerned about Cerner’s revenue cycle track record and don’t always choose its practice management solution, while all interviewed customers of NextGen Healthcare and Epic report lowered costs and/or increased revenue after implementation.

Government and Politics

Two Republication US senators introduce a bipartisan bill that requires the VA secretary to report the cost, performance metrics, and outcomes of its Cerner project quarterly to Congress.

The Tampa paper notes that while Tampa General Hospital can’t legally donate money to political candidates, its for-profit, outsourced coffee shops have contributed $226,000 to mostly Republican state candidates. The coffee shop corporation’s three directors are Tampa General executives, including EVP/CIO Scott Arnold.

Privacy and Security

AMA calls for app developers to practice “privacy by design” to gain the trust of physicians who have involvement in patient app use. It notes that many people mistakenly believe that direct-to-consumer health apps are regulated by HIPAA. It also notes that developers who use software development kits from companies such as Facebook, Zoom, and Google may knowingly or unknowingly be exposing user data to third party advertisers and data aggregators, including apps that address addiction and recovery. AMA calls for apps to identify the data they are accessing, using, disclosing, and processing before collecting it and to give users control over how their information is used. AMA also calls for apps to get user approval before their data is used to develop and/or train machines or algorithms and to allow them to opt out.

Other

Among the health systems that have said publicly that they are being affected by the Ultimate Kronos Group ransomware attack are Shannon Medical Center (TX), Ascension, Baptist Health (FL), UF Health (FL), Allegheny Health Network (PA), and Franciscan Missionaries of Our Lady Health System (LA). Some UKG time clocks can store punches locally until their memory is full, but the data can’t be collected since Workforce Central connectivity is unavailable. The company recommends re-posting the previous payroll, then working with UKG to reconcile differences after systems are restored (because it’s always fun to ask overpaid employees to give the extra money back right after Christmas). UKG says the attack has left it unable to access customer environments or to provide historical reports or files.

The president and CEO of Stamford Health (CT) says that virtual health plans “should worry us all” as insurers are using them like 1990s HMO gatekeepers in their virtual-first plans to limit access to physicians, tests, and in-person visits. Kathleen Silard, RN, MS also notes that the virtual health plans often involve third-party companies whose doctors don’t know their patients and whose EHRs make data-sharing harder. She also worries about equity issues due to digital illiteracy and lack of access to computing devices and broadband. She concludes, “I know that technology is a tremendous clinical tool for lowering barriers to care. I hope it becomes a regular site of care for many patients. But don’t confuse virtual care with a virtual health insurance plan. Technology builds walls as easily as it tears them down.”

JP Morgan Chase cancels its in-person 2022 healthcare conference, bowing to pressure to hold the event online instead of in San Francisco January 10-13. The company says it is concerned about COVID-19, which had already resulted in the pullout of vaccine makers Moderna and Amgen, but big-company attendees had already called for the conference to be cancelled due to their safety concerns related to San Francisco crime and homelessness around the conference site. Some experts predict that JPM will resume in a different city in 2023 to skirt San Francisco’s overcharging vendors, but others say those who are buying $1,000 hotel rooms and $200 hourly coffee shop table rental are often conference hangers-on who don’t join the small number of invited attendees inside the Westin St. Francis anyway.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity team members decorate 18 Christmas trees at Sulzbacher’s campuses in Jacksonville, FL.
• Medicomp Systems releases a new “Tell Me Where It Hurts Podcast” featuring National Coordinator Micky Tripathi.
• Bamboo Health expands its care coordination partnership with Oak Street Health for real-time patient event notifications.
• IT Central Station has ranked Everbridge’s Digital Operations Platform the top IT alerting and incident management solution.
• Get Well publishes a new white paper, “How CIOs can lead strategic patient engagement.”
• According to KLAS, early data on the performance of Meditech’s Professional Services indicate the company is performing above average for its EHR implementation support.
• Nordic Consulting is ranked #69 of 100 US companies with the best cultures by Comparably. It also ranked #74 of the top 100 companies that are best for women.
• Healthcare IT Leaders will integrate the IBM Digital Health Pass with its Health Returns enterprise COVID-19 services.

Blog Posts

• Cerner is on FHIR; Let’s Hope it Spreads (Medicomp Systems)
• Data Breach Response: 8 Steps to Take for Your Organization’s Needs (Fortified Health Security)
• 5 Tips for Chief Quality Officers to Prepare for CMS’ New Measures on Glycemic Management (Glytec)
• Transforming Your Physician Enterprise – 5 Key Drivers (Impact Advisors)
• Breaking Down Barriers to the Move to the Cloud in Healthcare (Healthcare Triangle)
• 16 Practical Steps to Advance Your Career as a Healthcare CIO (HCI Group)
• Your Guide to Augmented Intelligence in Healthcare: Three Hows for AI Success (Health Catalyst)
• 4 Ways to Educate Through Health Awareness Events (Healthwise)
• Stay vigilant: What we can learn from the Kronos hack (Imprivata)
• What’s in store for healthcare data in 2022? (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• 6 Criteria When Selecting a Health IT Data Partner (LexisNexis)
• Addressing the Capacity Crunch in Perioperative Care (Lumeon)
• A Road Paved with Good Intentions: Looking Back at the Opioid Epidemic and Finding a Path Forward (MedAware)
• Five Steps to a Successful Clinical IT Implementation – Pt 2 (Medhost)
• 5 blogs our readers loved in 2021 (Meditech)
• 8 Tips & Tricks to Accelerate Your Physical Therapy Documentation (MWTherapy)
• The future of healthcare: 4 trends to watch in 2022 (Nuance)

Contacts

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

News 12/15/21

Top News

Shannon Medical Center (TX) reverts to downtime payroll procedures after payroll and workforce management software vendor Kronos experiences a ransomware attack Saturday.

Kronos said in an announcement that it expects the outage to last several weeks. It suggests using “alternate business continuity protocols,” which will no doubt put Christmas payrolls at risk.

Kronos says the attack affects Kronos Private Cloud, which includes UKG Workforce Central, UKG TeleStaff, Healthcare Extensions, and Banking Scheduling Solutions. Applications outside Kronos Private Cloud are unaffected.

Reader Comments

From Morty: “Re: Edifecs. Purchased Health Fidelity on the heels of its acquisition of Talix. Interesting moves being made in the risk adjustment space.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I set up a short survey that covers expected turnover at your company, what your employer is doing about it, and your own job changes. I appreciate your taking a couple of minutes to complete the form. A reader expressed alarm at the high amount of turnover that was reported in my most recent poll and hopes to learn more.

Webinars

December 15 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Improve Efficiency, Reduce Burnout: Leveraging Smart Clinical Communications.” Sponsor: Spok. Presenters: Matt Mesnik, MD, chief medical officer, Spok; Kiley Black, MSN, APRN, director of clinical innovation, Spok. The presenters will identify the technologies that most often contribute to clinician burnout, then explain how improving common clinical workflows can help care teams collaborate better and focus on what they do best—taking care of patients. They will describe how a clinical communication and collaboration platform can automate clinical consults and code calls to alleviate burnout.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cloud, managed services, and analytics company Healthcare Triangle acquires EHR and managed services company DevCool. Healthcare Triangle went public in October, raising $13 million at $4 per share.

Centauri Health Solutions, a Medicare and Medicaid technology vendor, has acquired health data exchange software company Secure Exchange Solutions.

Patient intake technology company Phreesia acquires Insignia Health, co-developer of the Patient Activation Measure program. Results from a PAM assessment, co-developed by researchers at former Insignia Health stakeholder the University of Oregon, are used to improve risk identification, better support patients, and evaluate impact as a patient-reported outcome measure.

Health IT and RCM vendor Xifin acquires retail pharmacy software company OmniSys for an undisclosed amount. OmniSys CEO John King will become president of the new OmniSys division.

Workforce management software vendor Prolucent Health raises $11.5 million in new funding.

People

Gil Kaminski (DaVita Kidney Care) joins Laguna Health as VP of clinical product.

Care Continuity names Steven Mason, Jr. (Iodine Software) CEO.

David Mulligan (PhyzData Healthcare Solutions) joins Carenet Health as EVP of technology.

OneOncology hires Andy Corts (SignalPath) as CTO.

Tissue and implant tracking software vendor TrackCore names John Weller (University of Michigan Health – West) as CISO.

Sales

• Virtua Health (NJ) chooses Kyruus for provider directory, website provider search, and online scheduling.

Announcements and Implementations

Scarborough Health Network implements Epic across its three campuses in Ontario.

Healthcare IT Leaders will enable multilingual support for its COVID-19 contract tracing services in partnership with Voyce.

Other

Announced as a HIMSS22 keynote presenter is Ben Sherwood, which HIMSS describes as “one of Disney’s greatest innovators” who will talk about leading and succeeding during disruption. He left Disney-ABC three years ago after a short three years on the job as president, passed over in favor of executives of Disney-acquired 21st Century Fox. He was the subject of a scathingly funny 1988 article that ridiculed the then-Rhodes Scholar (like his sister) as “the ultimate in a long line of centerless resume featherers” who was raised rich and shallowly ambitious and deemed by his Harvard classmates as “one of the most hated people alive.” Finally they get someone interesting.

Sponsor Updates

• Bamboo Health publishes a new e-book, “CMS’ E-Notifications CoP: The Route to Compliance: Part 4.”
• Change Healthcare releases a new podcast, “Let’s Talk Interop: Moving Toward Electronic HEDIS Measures.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a case study titled “Optimum CareerPath Accelerates Cutting Edge Software Company Clearsense.”

Blog Posts

• With cloud, the sky’s the limit for image management (Agfa HealthCare)
• Help! One Year of the New Improved DRVS Help Section Part 2: Details & Data (Azara Healthcare)
• Most Read Posts for Epic EHR Optimization (CereCore)
• 2030 Interoperability Projections – EHR Software, Physicians & Patients (ChartLogic)
• Securing Healthcare’s Digital Transformation for Providers, Vendors, and Patients (Clearwater)
• Impact of technology on the future of healthcare post COVID-19 (OBIX Perinatal Data System, developed by Clinical Computer Systems)
• (Part 3) Reaching Patients Along the Specialty Medication Journey: Persistent Patients (ConnectiveRx)
• ‘Ask Your Doctor If:’ How to Talk to Patients About Popular Drug Ads (CoverMyMeds)
• Let’s Celebrate National Influenza Vaccination Week #fightflu (EClinicalWorks)
• Streamlining prior authorizations for faster patient collections (Experian Health)

Contacts

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