Monday Morning Update 8/5/24

Top News

The local paper describes how the CrowdStrike update problem affected Duke Health:

• 40,000 of the health system’s 60,000 devices got the bad patch, 22,000 of those went to the Blue Screen of Death, and 18,000 stayed up only because they hadn’t been rebooted.
• SVP/Chief Digital Officer Jeff Ferranti, MD, MS says that it was the first time that an IT problem required the health system to activate the hospital incident command system.
• Every affected machine had to be touched by a one of 100 IT volunteers to decrypt the drive, delete the errant file, and reboot, which he says took five to eight minutes.
• The high-priority devices were flagged with a yellow sticky note to be fixed first.
• All machines were restored within 72 hours, including those that gave the BSOD on Monday morning when some closed offices reopened.
• Clinicians were advised to use IPads or IPhones to access Epic until machines were restored.

Reader Comments

From Ye Hack: “Re: ransomware. My mother’s cardiology care was delayed when Ascension’s computers went down for weeks, and now my father is unable to donate blood thanks to the OneBlood breach. The pool of patient safety incidents is likely large.” Ransomware attack frequency is starting to take down multiple and sometimes overlapping services in the same area, such as hospitals, 911, and government. It’s probably only a matter of time before someone takes down one of the big drug chains or a drug distribution company like McKesson.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Laid off recently? It might not just be you.

New poll to your right or here: Which technologies have you used in the past year?

Listening: Tombstone Three, which I Shazamed after hearing it on a telenovela-type series Mrs. H and I were watching. I can find nothing online about this band, which then adds obscurity points for me. The music is surf rock meets Nick Cave and falls into a genre I hadn’t heard of called “dark country,” which blends traditional country music with dark, Southern Gothic-themed storytelling. I’m not a fan of country, but I’m liking this more authentic and less commercial subgenre. I’m also deep-tracking REM in a wave of guitar band nostalgia that doesn’t seem to have a place in today’s music, faves being this earworm song and this concert.

I was thinking about ambient documentation leading the AI charge in healthcare and recalled that we should be thanking Carl Dvorak of Epic for coming up with the idea in 2014, based on my 2020 interview with Nuance executive Joe Petro:

Ambient clinical intelligence is super exciting. Five or six years ago, Carl Dvorak at Epic was having a conversation with us and floated the notion of a room being able to listen. At the time, we didn’t have any necessarily tangible connection with how we were actually going to accomplish that. As conversational AI and other technologies developed, we started to get a firmer notion around what the exam room of the future could look like.

Thanks to these companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo to check them out and to thank them for keeping my keyboard clacking.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

KFF News reports that University of Florida Health and a private equity-backed firm have opened three combined urgent care center and emergency room facilities in suburban areas, with doctors triaging and recommending which side of the building to go to. Consumer advocates worry that hospitals have an incentive to steer patients to the much more expensive ER service instead of the urgent care service, which charges a flat $250. UF Health’s partner is Intuitive Health, which has similar arrangements with a dozen other health systems in 10 states. A sign on the door wants patients that the doctors inside may be out of their network and that they will be charged an average facility fee of $1,491. 

People

Podimetrics hires Matthew Oefinger, PhD (Ahara Corporation)  as chief data and technology officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Telehealth hardware provider VSee Health and Ava Robotics will develop telepresence solutions for ICUs, including a robot.

Government and Politics

The Department of Justice launches a program that pays corporate whistleblowers up to 30% of the first $100 million of assets forfeited. One of four eligible areas is fraud committed by private insurers or against patients and investors.

Sponsor Updates

• Arcadia earns Certified Data Partner designation in NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation program.
• PerfectServe releases a new Lightning Bolt case study, “How to Rapidly Deploy a Scheduling Solution Across a Large Health System.”
• The Digital Healthcare Roundtable Podcast features SnapCare co-founder, COO, and chief development officer Jeff Richards.
• Waystar will exhibit at the HFMA 2024 Mid-America Summer Institute August 5-7 in Omaha.

Blog Posts

• Initial Visit vs. SOC Comprehensive Assessment – SOC Dates Explained (Netsmart)
• Why healthcare needs a robust strategy to secure IT service desks (Nordic)
• EMRs and GenAI (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Streamlining Form Completion: Seven Essential Capabilities Your Credentialing Software Must Have (QGenda)
• Healthcare IT Transformations: Lessons from Baptist Health and Overlake Medical (Rhapsody Health)
• 4 ways interactive technology can help anxious parents (Sonifi Health)
• How to Choose the Right RCM Company (TruBridge)
• SIIM 2024 | Visage’s Top Five (Visage Imaging)

Contacts

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

News 8/2/24

Top News

Teladoc Health reports Q2 results: revenue down 2%, EPS –$4.92 versus –$0.40, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings but falling short on revenue.

News of the company’s nearly billion-dollar quarterly loss sent shares down hard in after-hours trading. They closed Thursday down 9%.

TDOC shares have lost 71% of their value in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $1.5 billion versus the $42 billion it hit in February 2021, not long after it paid  $18.5 billion to acquire Livongo. From the earnings call:

• Newly hired CEO Chuck Divita says the company’s technology is essential to growth, citing member-to-provider matching engine, its patient interaction database, and its investments in data science and AI.
• The loss includes a $4.64 per share write-down, $790 million, due to sliding share price and challenges in its BetterHelp virtual mental health unit, some of that due to high customer acquisition costs and prohibitive out-of-pocket costs for patients.
• The company will no longer provide long-term financial guidance due to uncertainty about BetterHelp.

Reader Comments

From Roy G. Biv: “Re: ambient documentation and billing.  I’m not surprised about the discrepancy between the MD’s perception of billing and what is found in the notes. That is why AI can be so valuable in proper billing if it is trained to read the full EHR documentation and map to CPT codes from the language and procedures.” I’m usually not a fan of finding new ways to increase charges, but it seems fair to follow the rules in tying doctor-patient conversations to billing codes to reflect reality. It’s a rare win for both the white coats and the suits – the doctor saves time and enjoys reduced cognitive load while the bean-counters justify paying for it via more accurate (i.e., higher) charges. 

From Giddy Lee: “Re: UT Medical Center. Looking for an SVP/CIO five months after hiring one.” Lynnette Clinton’s LinkedIn doesn’t say she has left, but it sounds like they are posting that job. I don’t recall ever seeing an SVP/CIO position that reports to the SVP/CFO since that’s usually a small-hospital thing where IT is viewed as an expense in need of being managed.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Two private equity firms will take R1 RCM private at a valuation of $8.9 billion.

Eye practice software vendor Eye Care Leaders sells itself to new owners and renames the company Sightview Software. A bankruptcy court approved the sale of the company for $14.5 million to an insurance company in May 2024. Both the software vendor and the insurer have connections to investor and claimed former billionaire Greg Lindberg, who is awaiting an appeal for his federal conviction for bribery and wire fraud.

Identity solutions company HID acquires RTLS asset management system vendor Vizzia Technologies.

CompuGroup Medical promotes the son of its founder, Daniel Gotthardt, Dr. Med, to CEO. He was previously SVP and chief medical officer. Current CEO Michael Rauch, who was promoted from CFO just over a year ago, will leave the company.

MultiPlan replaces its EVP/CFO with Doug Garis (Oracle Health & Life Sciences), who shares his previous employer with MultiPlan President and CEO Travis Dalton.

Sales

• Ochsner Health will implement DeepScribe’s ambient documentation across its 46 hospitals and 370 health and urgent care centers.
• Carti Cancer Center (AR) implements Zen Healthcare IT’s Zen Insight Integration Monitor for Mirth Connect alerting and monitoring.

People

Iris Telehealth hires Glenn Wada (Blue Ocean Go To Market Partners) as chief growth officer.

Upstate Medical University names John Kairys, MD (Jefferson Health) as CMIO.

Announcements and Implementations

The Sequoia Project launches a Surescripts-funded pharmacy workgroup that will address the integration of pharmacy data and clinical services.

KONZA National Network announces Birth Connect, which will provide alerts to OB/GYNs when a birth parent who is under their care has delivered a baby. The technology will link the medical records of birth parents and newborns to solve problems such as delayed notification, loss of the infant’s medical record when they are given a full name, and providing a more complete view of birth outcomes for quality initiatives. Hartford HealthCare was the development and pilot site.

The American College of Cardiology publishes a guide for remote patient management.

Highlights from a new KLAS recap of its recent enterprise imaging summit:

• Two-thirds of participants say they will expand their EI strategy into new service lines within two years, with likely areas including point-of-care ultrasound (POCS), scopes, pathology, and ophthalmology.
• Expanding to POCS will be challenging since workflows differ across departments and the reports and images need to be sent to the EHR.
• Attendees were split on whether study distribution via a unified worklist should be managed by the EHR or by imaging vendors.
• DICOM routing is a needed component.
• Digital pathology offers many benefits, but requires more than just buying a scanner and an image management system.
• The AI value proposition includes efficiency, enhanced detection, and increased hospital revenue with lower costs, but strong governance is needed, algorithms should be validated, and the system should be tested for bias.
• A move to cloud-based imaging is inevitable even though costs will be neutral or higher than for on-premises solutions.

Privacy and Security

OneBlood, a blood center that supplies 250 hospitals in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas, warns that it is operating at reduced capacity due to a ransomware attack.

Other

The CIO of a drug manufacturer cancels a 500-employee trial of Microsoft’s Office 365 Copilot, concluding that its ability to create presentations is at middle school level and therefore not worth the cost. Copilot AI nearly doubles the cost of Microsoft 365 at an extra $30 per user per month. The CIO said the tool was good at summarizing Teams meetings, but the drug company’s legal team advised against retaining transcripts.

Sponsor Updates

• Health Data Movers posts a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast titled “Breaking Down Barriers in Healthcare IT: Insights from Stephanie Davis.”
• EClinicalWorks announces the results of a recent survey on the perceptions of how AI helps the healthcare industry.
• Five9 announces that its GenAI Studio has been named the Most Innovative Product at the 2024 UC Awards.
• Consensus Cloud Solutions celebrates its 25th year of providing online fax solutions.
• Arcadia earns Certified Data Partner designation in the NCQA Data Aggregator Validation program.
• Abhinandan Kamble (Persistent Systems) joins Fortified Health Security as threat analyst.
• Healthcare Growth Partners publishes the July 2024 edition of its “HGP Observations.”
• Inovalon publishes a new customer success story, “Cincinnati Children’s Uses VigiLanz Clinical Surveillance to Identify Patients with Penicillin Allergies.”
• The NEOM region in Saudi Arabia will implement InterSystems TrakCare health information system across its hospital and 41 clinics.
• The “DGTL Voices Podcast” features KeyCare CEO Lyle Berkowitz, MD “Embracing Opportunities and Being Prepared: Lessons from Dr. Lyle Berkowitz.”

Blog Posts

• How to Maximize Efficiency of an AI-Powered Medical Scribe (EClinicalWorks)
• 7 Effective Strategies to Prevent Healthcare Denials (FinThrive)
• The Importance of Implementing the ICU Liberation Bundle to Reduce the Risk of Post-Intensive Care Syndrome (Impact Advisors)
• MDRO RapidAlerts Pilot: Utilizing State Health Information Exchange for Automated, Real-Time MDRO Admission Alerts (Konza National Network)
• Improving Predictability & Long-Term Care Costs with Early Detection: Q&A with Alejandro Reti, MD (Lucem Health)
• Freestone’s Journey to Rev Cycle Success (Medhost)
• Enhancing continuity of care: The benefits of partnering with an FQHC (Meditech)
• Should You Opt In To MIPS? Consider These Recent Rehab Therapy Statistics (Net Health)

Sponsor Spotlight

Discover how Bermuda Hospitals Board transformed their IT contractor management with Revuud in our exclusive Q&A with CIO Keltie Jamieson. During the conversation, Keltie reveals how Revuud streamlined their access to specialized resources, improved team efficiency, and reduced costs. Learn from their experience and insights on optimizing IT contractor management and achieving strategic goals in healthcare. (Sponsor Spotlight is free for HIStalk Platinum sponsors).

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 7/31/24

Flo Health Secures More than $200M Investment from General Atlantic to Revolutionize Women’s Health; First Purely Digital Consumer Women’s Health App to Achieve Unicorn Status

England-based period and fertility app vendor Flo Health raises a $200 million investment from General Atlantic that values the company at $1 billion.

Skeptical judge sides with smaller analytics firm against giant PointClickCare over data blocking tactics

A federal judge grants analytics firm Real Time Medical Systems a preliminary injunction against EHR vendor PointClickCare for implementing CAPTCHA-controlled system access, ruling that the company violated 21st Century Cures.

VitalHub agrees to acquire MedCurrent Corporation for up to $34 million

Health and human services software vendor VitalHub will acquire clinical decision support company MedCurrent, both of which are based in Toronto.

News 7/31/24

Top News

England-based period and fertility app vendor Flo Health raises a $200 million investment from General Atlantic that values the company at $1 billion.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Yes, I monitor odd things. Epic has run its “Hey Judy” column like clockwork each month since August 2021, but hasn’t posted one for June or July.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Acute virtual care company AvaSure will acquire Ouva’s AI-enhanced care automation technology, which it has already been using as a part of its Intelligent Virtual Care Platform. Ouva will continue to operate its pediatric and wayfinding business.

Health data management and research insights company OneMedNet announces $4.6 million in new funding.

Mercy will open three primary care clinics in former Walmart Health locations in Arkansas, where Walmart is headquartered, later this summer.

Kansas City tax authorities say that Oracle Health has met the requirements for incentives that are related to the former Cerner Innovations Campus, although the company has 6,400 Missouri-based employees versus the 16,000 new jobs that were promised by Cerner before Oracle acquired the company.

Sales

• MedStar Health (MD) will use risk management solutions from RLDatix to enhance analysis of patient safety events.
• Loma Linda University Health (CA) selects specialty pharmacy-focused analytics and market access services from Loopback Analytics.
• Multi-state Sound Physicians will implement AmplifyMD’s virtual specialty care software for its tele-hospitalist services.

People

Ben Shahshahani, PhD (SiriusXM) joins Cleveland Clinic as VP/chief AI officer.

Alpha II hires Jon Danielson, MBA (Biscom) as CFO.

Erik Moore, MS (Optum) joins Bamboo Health as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

Artera announces that a dozen FQHCs — including Livingston Community Health (CA), Moses Lake Community Health Center (WA), and Bedford-Stuyvesant Family Health Center (NY) — have implemented its patient communications software.

North Arkansas Regional Medical Center implements Sunoh.ai’s ambient listening and clinical documentation technology.

UAB Medicine describes how it is using remote patient monitoring to collect data from patients at home and alert clinicians of negative trends. Cellphone-connected blood pressure cuffs, glucose monitors, and weight scales from Withings Health are issued to patients who agree to take their measurements at least 16 times per month. 

Researchers find that 25 to 40% of people who use wearables to monitor their atrial fibrillation experience life-affecting stress and anxiety as a result.

Government and Politics

A federal judge grants analytics firm Real Time Medical Systems a preliminary injunction against EHR vendor PointClickCare for implementing CAPTCHA-controlled system access, ruling that the company violated 21st Century Cures. PCC says it implemented the requirement to prevent web scraping by bots, noting that Real Time is the only one of its 1,900 partners that objected. Real Time says that PCC threatened its access to skilled nursing data because it was launching a competing service, also complaining that Real Time is HITRUST certified and should not be required to complete CAPTCHA challenges. 

MultiPlan CEO Travis Dalton has been meeting with Senate staffers to defend the company’s use of analytics to advise payers how much they should reduce billed charges from out-of-network providers, for which MultiPlan gets a cut of the savings and the patient sometimes receives a bill for the difference.

Privacy and Security

CrowdStrike customers complain that they receive error messages when they try to use the $10 Uber Eats gift card that the company offered following its global outage on July 19. Uber’s system apparently canceled the vouchers due to what it deemed to be suspiciously high usage rates.

Penn Medicine SVP for Data and Technology Solutions Mitchell Schnall, MD, PhD (who likely didn’t receive an Uber Eats gift card) recounts some of the steps his team took once they became aware of CrowdStrike’s outage, including the nearly immediate decisions to revert to downtime procedures and cancel or reschedule elective surgeries and appointments: “Imaging was interesting because we could take a CT scan on the scanner but it couldn’t go anywhere else, so we had to take the radiologist to the CT scanner to be able to read the images.”

A former organ transplant coordinator faces 22 years in prison for accessing the records of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg while she was being treated for cancer at George Washington University Hospital in 2019, then posting them to conspiracy theory and anti-semitic message boards on 4chan. Trent James Russell explained to authorities that his cat must have run across his keyboard.

Sponsor Updates

• Arrive Health employees take part in Community Give Back Week by harvesting crops at Ohio City Farm to provide healthy food to CLE’s underserved residents.
• The Sequoia Project launches a new Pharmacy Workgroup as part of its flagship Interoperability Matters program, through funding and collaboration with Surescripts.
• Arcadia publishes a new guide, “Quality management tools to balance care and rising costs.”
• Health plan XO Health selects Capital Rx as its pharmacy benefit administrator.
• Clearwater announces growing adoption of its Managed Cloud Services, which help healthcare organizations maintain data and applications in the Azure cloud with reduced security and compliance risk.
• UMethod Health incorporates Linus Health’s digital cognitive impairment detection software into its cognitive care planning solutions.
• Alpha II appoints former OmniSys CEO John King and former Availity CEO Julie Klapstein to its Board of Directors.

Blog Posts

• How to Plan for Meditech Expanse: Tips from 40+ Hospital Implementations (CereCore)
• Newborn Facility Coding: 7 Tips for Accurate Medical Coding and Documentation (AGS Health)
• Clearwater Managed Cloud Services Help Healthcare Organizations Leverage the Power of Microsoft Azure with Reduced Risk (Clearwater)
• Demystifying AI in Healthcare: The Top Seven Questions to Ask Your AI Vendor (Availity)
• Beyond Data Protection: Putting Patients First in Healthcare Cybersecurity (CloudWave)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/29/24

Top News

The US State Department indicts an alleged North Korean government-backed hacker who it says was behind ransomware attacks on hospitals in Florida and Kansas, healthcare firms in Arkansas and Connecticut, and a medical clinic in Colorado.

The government is offering a reward of up to $10 million for further information on Rim Jong Hyok.

Hyok is accused of leading a hacker group that works for for North Korea’s military intelligence agency. The state department says that the group generates ransomware proceeds that are used to conduct cyber operations that target the US government and defense contractors.

Reader Comments

From Board Stiff: “Re: Cerner. Judging from the mass customer defections, its board was smarter than they seemed in unloading to Oracle at an inflated price.” Cerner’s board made some awful decisions after Neal Patterson died, starting with his replacement and capitulating to an activist shareholder who held few shares. However, they may have offset all of that by selling the company to Oracle at premium valuation just as the wheels were starting to come off. It would not have been pretty to watch CERN’s share price tank as their big clients abandoned ship, and the insiders surely knew that Epic’s dominance and Cerner’s abject failure to fix its revenue cycle software problems was a big storm on its corporate horizon. The board’s fiduciary duty is to shareholders, not customers or industry pundits, and in that regard they performed magnificently. 

From Observer: “Re: Intermountain. Becky Fox is out as chief clinical information officer, per internal memo. CDIO, CHIO, and CCIO all out in the space of a month.” Unverified, but reported by a few folks. She took the position in December 2022 and previously shared time at Atrium Health with former CDIO Craig Richardville, who just left Intermountain. CHIO Diego Ize-Luwdlow, MD exited the health system last month.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents report no major personal impact from the CrowdStrike attack.

New poll to your right or here: Has your employer conducted a workforce reduction that you would consider significant in the past 12 months?

Steamy doldrums will end soon as noses reconnect with grindstones and companies get back to the serious business of selling, partnering, and acquiring. Decision-maker eyeballs are glued here, so contact Lorre to support HIStalk and gain competitive position. She loves working with startups, especially when it’s a company I’ve never heard of, which suggests they could use a booster rocket.

Another housekeeping announcement: sign up for the spam-free email notices that I send when I post something new (thus usually six skinny emails per week) and you’ll know stuff before those people who just cruise over when the mood strikes.

The optometrist who conducted my annual eye exam in her Target-connected practice said that my prescription would print next door at Target Optical, which apparently believes that patients who touch their printer are violating HIPAA.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Remote patient monitoring software vendor CoachCare receives a $48 million strategic growth investment.

Healthcare Growth Partners posts its first-half 2024 health IT market review:

• M&A surged, with other positive notes being increased investment and the IPOs of Waystar and Tempus AI.
• However, share price of those two IPOs is at or below the initial offering price and some of the increased M&A involved low-quality and distressed companies.
• Transaction valuations are down 20% from pre-pandemic levels.
• Valuations of public enterprise SaaS and health IT companies dropped 35% and 50%, respectively.
• Recent take-private health IT transactions at a significant premium to share price suggest a disconnect between public market valuations and health IT market sentiment.
• Health IT companies that claim AI capabilities are attracting 20% of the investment in the sector, but almost all of their output involves back-office tools that don’t improve patient care.

People

Sonifi Solutions names Jerome Ajot, MS (EPAM Systems) as CTO.

In Canada, Brightshores Health System hires Tim Pemberton, MBA (Queensway Carleton Hospital) as VP of digital health and technology, CIO, and chief privacy officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Google, the largest customer of Amazon-acquired primary care provider One Medical, will terminate its agreement with the company. Google was an early investor in One Medical and at one time made up 10% of its revenue. One Medical clinics that operate from Google’s campuses have already transitioned to Premise Health and its broader range of services, although One Medical will remain a Google in-network provider for employees who pay for their own memberships.

Privacy and Security

Philips discovers a vulnerability in its Vue PACS that could allow unauthorized users to view or modify data and install unauthorized software. Remediation involves changing network configuration until the company develops a patch.

Other

Cell phone providers in Australia will shut down their 3G mobile networks next month, which could take some medical devices offline. The Royal Flying Doctor Service uses 3G for telehealth, security cameras, and employee duress alarms and says that some insulin pumps and pacemakers will also need to be replaced quickly. Queensland Senator Malcolm Roberts says the shutdown will be “CrowdStrike 2.0.”

Sponsor Updates

• Tegria will sponsor the MUSE International Southeast Community Peer Group August 1 in Albany, GA.

Blog Posts

• Breaking barriers: How care management can bridge the gap in health data access (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• How and When to Analyze & Update Internal & External Medical Clinic Policies (Netsmart)
• Healthcare Experts Share How to ‘Go the Distance’ with Value Analysis (Symplr)
• The Benefits of Medical Coding Services (TruBridge)
• Data security, providing patient financial care + more: Navigating cyberattack ripple effects (Waystar)

Contacts

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

News 7/26/24

Top News

HHS reorganizes to give ONC broader responsibility over technology, cybersecurity, data, and AI. ONC will be elevated to assistant secretary status:

• ONC will be renamed to Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy and Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ASTP/ONC).
• National Coordinator Micky Tripathi will hold the newly titled role.
• The newly created HHS positions for CTO, chief data officer, and chief AI officer will report to ASTP/ONC.
• Cybersecurity activities will be moved from the HHS Assistant Secretary for Administration to ASTP/ONC.

Reader Comments

From Larry’s Loss: “Re: Penn State Health. Replacing Oracle Cerner with Epic.” I haven’t seen an announcement, but this reader sent along a screen shot of an internal communication. Penn State Health operates eight hospitals totaling 1,600 beds, has 20,000 employees, and generates $4 billion in annual revenue.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Unrelated, but health tech news is slow today. Redditors weigh in on trendy terms that they dislike:

• Calling everything a “journey.”
• “Lean in.”
• “I did a thing.”
• Referring to children as “littles” or pets as “doggos” or “fur babies.”
• Saying “a big ask” instead of a request.
• Referring to a long time as “a minute.”
• The means-nothing phrase “it is what it is.”
• “Curated.”
• “My bad” instead of saying sorry.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Linus Health, whose platform offers tech-powered early detection of cognitive impairment and dementias, acquires Together Senior Health, creator of the Moving Together virtual therapeutic program for cognitive decline.

Humana-owned CenterWell will open 23 senior primary care centers in former Walmart Health clinics.

Ascension will sell nine Chicago-area hospitals to for-profit hospital operator Prime Healthcare.

Sales

• Humana expands its agreement with Google to include Google Cloud and AI.
• GE HealthCare chooses Amazon Web Services for developing new healthcare applications and applying AI.

People

University of Chicago Medicine hires Yeman Collier (UT Health San Antonio) as SVP/CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Northwell Health launches a movie and TV production company. According to Northwell, “This dedicated studio will better allow us to foster creative partnerships and establish Northwell Health as a leading voice on the issues that matter most — our health and wellness.”

Government and Politics

Jeff Shuren, MD, JD, director of FDA’s Center for Devices and Radiological Health, announces his retirement after 15 years in that role. 

A GAO report finds that the VA is struggling with its implementation of a replacement benefits administration system, with estimates of total cost ballooning to $7.7 billion versus the VA’s estimate of $2.5 billion in 2019. GAO warns that the project’s planned 2030 completion is unlikely to be met because of delays in other projects such as its EHR and supply chain system replacements. The GAO also notes that the VA has not implemented two of its earlier recommendations related to cost and scheduling practices. The VA blamed a $600 million in increase in implementation costs on its underestimation of the unique challenges of each deployment.

Ukraine’s health ministry reports that 3 billion records have been entered into its electronic medical records system.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders staff volunteer with Meals on Wheels Greenville to deliver meals and care packages to 240 veterans.
• EClinicalWorks will offer customers within Aledade’s network free access to Sunoh.ai’s AI medical scribe software.
• Linus Health will present and exhibit at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference July 28-August 1 in Philadelphia.
• Medhost joins Health Gorilla’s QHIN to enhance access to clinical data and participate in TEFCA.
• Findhelp welcomes Holzer Health System (OH), York County, PA, and Health First (FL) to its network.
• Madison-based publication The Cap Times profiles consulting firm Cardamom Health and CEO Vivek Swaminathan.
• Fortified Health Security publishes its “2024 Mid-Year Horizon Report.”
• The VatorNews Podcast features KeyCare CEO Lyle Berkowitz, MD.

Blog Posts

• Drug diversion prevention: The cost of non-compliance (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Transforming Rheumatology Workflows with EClinicalWorks (EClinicalWorks)
• Usability of Pharmacogenomics Medication Decision Support is Key to Its Adoption in Clinical Practice (First Databank)
• How to Get C-Suite Buy-In for Healthcare Cybersecurity (Fortified Health Security)
• Five Questions Payers Should Ask About the Payer-to-Payer API Mandated by CMS (Inovalon)
• How Medina Healthcare System saved $10,000+ per month and other wins from their Meditech implementation (Meditech)
• CMS Proposals for Healthcare Quality Reporting in 2025 and Beyond (MRO)
• The Power of a Positive Mindset When Facing Challenges in Rehab Therapy (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 7/24/24

Top News

Congressman Matt Rosendale (R-MT), chairman of the House Veterans Affairs Subcommittee on Technology Modernization, testifies on the rollout of the combined DoD/VA Oracle Health system at the Lovell Federal Health Care Center (IL) earlier this year. He notes that pharmacy staff are only able to process about 40% of prescriptions due to poor software functionality. Rosendale says that the pharmacy required 100 new employees with another 100 on the way to keep functioning.

He says that the VA should be required to lay out the cost to finish the Oracle Cerner rollout before committing to it, adding that he is certain the $16 billion figure that the VA previously supplied will be exceeded.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

HealthStream announces Q2 results: revenue up 3%, EPS $0.14 versus $0.13, beating Wall Street expectations for both. HSTM shares have risen 29% in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500’s 23% increase, valuing the company at $903 million.

Patient engagement software vendor Loyal raises $33.5 million in a Series B funding round and announces that founder, CEO, and chairman Chad Mallory will transition to a senior advisory role. Saurabh Sinha, founder and chairman of Emids Technologies, will take over as chairman of Loyal’s board and lead a search to fill executive roles.

Sales

• NHS Norfolk and Waveney Acute Hospital Collaborative in England will implement Meditech across three trusts in 2026.
• West Tennessee Healthcare selects automated perioperative scheduling and workflow software from Qventus.
• Bon Secours Mercy Health will implement patient monitoring technology from Philips across its 49 hospitals over the next three years.

People

Volpara Health CEO Teri Thomas, RN, MSN takes on the additional role of chief business officer of Lunit’s cancer screening group, while CFO Craig Hadfield takes on the additional role of chief customer officer. Becky Weber (Health Catalyst) joins Volpara as EVP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

Abridge, Mayo Clinic, and Epic will develop an AI-powered ambient documentation solution for nurses. The group hopes to have Mayo nurses using the system by the end of 2024.

Park Medical Centers in Detroit implements Kaid Health’s Whole Chart Analysis coding, quality monitoring, and clinical analytics software.

Wolters Kluwer Health launches its ClinicalPulse continuing education app for nurse practitioners.

Owensboro Health Regional Hospital (KY) launches virtual nursing programs in its ortho-neuro and pulmonary units ahead of a systemwide rollout.

The Sequoia Project publishes a draft of its Data Usability Workgroup Implementation Guide and invites public comment.

USPTO awards pharmacy benefit manager / pharmacy benefit administrator Capital Rx a patent for the data tagging system that it developed for its JUDI enterprise health platform.

A new KLAS report on go-live support places Optimum Healthcare IT in the #1 spot for overall performance, while emerging firms Ellit Groups and Healthrise earned high client satisfaction from the limited number of their clients who were interviewed.

Government and Politics

The VA will require veterans who use its website, apps, and My HealtheVet to enroll in Login.gov or ID.me starting next year.

Privacy and Security

Schneider Regional Medical Center (USVI) reverts to downtime procedures after discovering a ransomware attack on its systems over the weekend.

Michigan Medicine notifies 57,000 patients of a data breach in late May that was caused by hackers infiltrating employee email accounts. The health system began sending out notifications last Friday, the same day that the global CrowdStrike/Microsoft update flaw temporarily crippled global IT systems across several sectors, including healthcare.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book survey-takers rank Symplr as the top end-to-end provider data management and credentialing platform for payers.
• The Government of Greece will implement Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging platform across its public hospitals.
• Arcadia publishes a new guide, “Quality management tools to balance care and rising costs.”
• Capital Rx becomes one of the Lehigh Valley Business Coalition on Healthcare’s pharmacy benefit management partners.
• Clearwater integrates the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard and NIST Cybersecurity Framework 2.0 into its IRM/Performance SaaS solution.
• The “Powered by Authenticity” podcast features Cordea Consulting founder and CEO Jen Jones, “Coaching and Mentoring Along the Way.”
• Health Data Movers posts a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast titled “Breaking Down Barriers in Healthcare IT: Insights from Stephanie Davis.”
• Direct Recruiters releases a new e-book, “The Power of People: Why AI Alone Isn’t Enough in Modern Recruitment.”
• CareCloud expands its partnership with DrFirst to include integrated RxInform functionality.
• Crossings Healthcare Solutions now offers Oracle customers customized EHR content and functionality.
• Inovalon offers Provider Market Insights to help life sciences organizations optimize investments based on market intelligence and accelerate the launch of innovative therapies.
• Surescripts releases a new report, “Clinician Perspectives & Prescribing Patterns Reveal Opportunities for Care Team Evolution.”
• CloudWave joins The Iroquois Healthcare Association as an enhanced business associate member.

Blog Posts

• The critical role of effective record-keeping for DEA compliance (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Why Health Systems are Betting Big on ERP (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Navigating the MIPS Reporting Changes: What You Need to Know (AGS Health)
• Bird flu: Here’s what you need to know (Altera Digital Health)
• The Missing Elements in Health Systems’ Digital Front Door Strategies (Amenities Health)
• A Major Milestone: Artera Academy Reaches 10,000 Learners (Artera)
• Reporting and Analytics: A Vital Component of the Revenue Cycle (Availity)
• The Power of Partnership: Advancing Medication Management Through Collaboration (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/22/24

Top News

Commure will acquire ambient medical documentation system vendor Augmedix in an all-cash, take-private transaction that values the company at $139 million.

AUGX shares had lost 80% of their value in the past 12 months prior to the announcement. The company’s market capitalization peaked at $290 million in early December 2023 and is down 62% since. The deal represents a significant share price premium and a four-quarter revenue multiple of 2.8.

Athelas acquired Commure in October 2023, claiming a total company valuation of $6 billion. It offers tools for revenue cycle management, workflow, and patient monitoring. Commure launched its free, AI-powered Ambient Scribe just a few weeks ago.

Reader Comments

From Observer: “Re: Intermountain. Craig Richardville out as CIO. Confirmed by internal memo.” His LinkedIn profile is unchanged, but his bio has been removed from the health system’s leadership webpage. He joined Intermountain Health as chief digital and information officer in April 22 after spending three years in a similar position with SCL Health, which was acquired by Intermountain in April 2022. Intermountain announced in September 2023 that it would replace Oracle Cerner with Epic.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

More than half of poll respondents reported that they experienced no major issues in their most recent PCP visit, although those who did most often named lack of appointment availability and PCP distractions.

New poll to your right or here: Were you significantly affected by CrowdStrike-caused downtime? You probably were on Friday if you interacted with airlines, public transit, banks, mail carriers, and government offices. Bonus question to which you may comment below – as in the Change Healthcare ransomware attack, how do you keep a single vendor’s technical issues from crippling a specific industry or the country in general?

Dear researchers and/or Epic: please do a Cosmos analysis of the patient effects of the CrowdStrike downtime to prove or disprove the hospital executive insistence that patient care doesn’t suffer when the EHR goes down for days.

• How long were systems unavailable as determined by deviation from normal usage?
• Were more patients discharged or transferred than usual?
• Was visit and admission volume higher afterward as patients sought care that was deferred during the event?
• Were ED visits reduced or of shorter duration?
• How many surgeries were cancelled and of what kinds?
• After the event is resolved, how were patient complications and mortality impacted during and immediately after?
• How were the schedules of clinical staff affected?
• How were patient satisfaction scores affected?

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

For-profit hospital operator Ardent Health – which owns 30 hospitals, 200 care sites, and 1,700 providers across six states – goes public at a valuation of over $2 billion. Notes:

• Shares closed on their first day of trading 6% off the IPO price, which had already been lowered.
• They have since rebounded and are up  8% from the  IPO price of $16.
• Previous owner Equity Group Investments offered 12 million shares and retained 55% voting power.
• PureHealth, which operates hospitals and other healthcare businesses in the United Arab Emirates, is the second-largest shareholder.
• Ardent EVP/General Counsel Stephen Petrovich is the largest individual shareholder with $18 million worth.
• According to the prospectus, Ardent’s implementation of Epic in 2021 “makes us a more attractive partner for emerging technology providers and facilitates physician use of novel technology.”

People

The American Academy of Nursing names Suzanne Bakken, PhD, RN as one of five “Living Legends” of nurse leadership. She is professor of nursing and biomedical informatics at Columbia University.

Announcements and Implementations

Hospitals everywhere experienced computer downtime starting Friday as a result of the CrowdStrike cybersecurity update flaw that triggered the Windows “blue screen of death.” The company has issued a fix for users of the endpoint protection system, but experts say it may take days to fix all affected systems. A Microsoft executive called the incident “the largest IT outage in history,” although Microsoft said the incident affected 8.5 million devices, less than 1% of all Windows machines. Some of the hospitals that reported outage-related patient care issues:

• Mass General Brigham cancelled non-urgent surgeries, procedures, and visits.
• Penn Medicine warned that it might need to reschedule appointments.
• Cincinnati Children’s Hospital cancelled appointments and warned of delays.
• Michigan Medicine reported a major incident.
• Mount Sinai Hospital and Hospital for Special Surgery lost access to affected systems.
• Baylor Scott & White reported outages.
• RWJBarnabas Health delayed procedures, as did Emory Healthcare and Norton Healthcare.
• UVA Health closed its ambulatory clinics and outpatient radiology services.
• Computers and phones at Greater Baltimore Medical Center went down.
• University of Miami’s UHealth lost access to its systems and went back to paper.
• Quest Diagnostics cancelled appointments and advised providers who send specimens via Fedex to hold them until that company returns to normal operations.
• A hospital employee claimed in a now-deleted Reddit post that the bug had taken down tens of thousands of hospital endpoints, adding with regard to affected machines in surgery, “We cannot reboot them without killing patients.”
• 911 services in several states were taken offline.
• EMIS, the system used by 60% of England’s GPs, went down.

Industry long-timer Drex DeFord, who worked several years as a healthcare executive for CrowdStrike until January 2024,  posted this admirably succinct description of the CrowdStrike issue, including a new warning:

Here’s what I think I know so far: Everybody runs CrowdStrike (if you don’t, lots of your partners do). Most customers have endpoint sensors set to auto-update. Bad-sensor update jammed up Windows machines. New/improved update now deployed. But customers often have to reboot machine to fix problem. Some have to boot to “safe-mode” and remove offending file. Reports now that some adversaries posing as “CrowdStrike Support” are reaching out to customers offering help — stay a little paranoid about who you are communicating with.

Government and Politics

HHS creates new positions for CTO, chief artificial intelligence officer, and chief data officer.

Privacy and Security

Oracle will pay $115 million to a lawsuit that charged the company with violating website user privacy by tracking their browsing activity and compiling it into a profile that it sold via its Oracle Data Marketplace, which the company says is the world’s largest third-party data marketplace, with “actionable audience data” covering 80% of the US internet population. 

Other

Academic publisher Taylor & Francis – a leading scholarly publisher that is owned by HIMSS conference owner Informa and whose brands include several healthcare journals — surprises its journal authors by selling access to their articles to Microsoft to use for AI training. Experts urge authors to ask publishers about their AI policies before signing contracts.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast, “Interview with Mitesh Patel, MD.”
• Rhapsody Health publishes a new white paper, “9 questions to ask to create a winning interoperability strategy.”

Blog Posts

• How Does EMR Software Improve the Patient Experience? (Netsmart)
• Navigating Organizational Challenges in Long-Term Data Governance (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Ultimate Guide to Effective Radiology Scheduling (QGenda)
• Best Practices for Charting Your Epic Optimization Journey (CereCore)
• Top 5 Challenges Shaping the Future of Healthcare Data Management for Payers (Symplr)
• Your Guide to Improving Payer-Provider Collaboration (Tegria)
• How to Find and Successfully Apply for Hospital Grants in a Rural Community (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

News 7/19/24

Top News

UnitedHealth Group raises its estimate of the full-year company financial impact of the Change Healthcare cyberattack from $1.6 billion to $2.3 billion.

UnitedHealth Group closed its $8 billion purchase of Change Healthcare in October 2022, weeks after overcoming a challenge that had been raised by the Department of Justice. The cyberattack occurred in February 2024.  

The company reported Q2 results on Tuesday: revenue up 6.4%, adjusted EPS $6.80 versus $6.14, beating Wall Street expectations for both and valuing the company at $520 billion.

The company’s $99 billion in quarterly revenue was up $6 billion quarter over quarter, with its Optum business leading the increase. Unadjusted earnings from operations reached $7.9 billion.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Freshpaint, which offers a platform for healthcare marketers to check their websites, advertising, and videos for privacy compliance, raises $30 million in a Series B funding round. The company emphasizes the warnings by HHS and FTC that website visitor tracking tools violate HIPAA. Those warnings are in question since a federal court ruled last month that HHS does not have the authority to ban use of those tools. The court also ruled that the information that is collected by most website trackers is not tied to an individual and therefore is not covered by HIPAA. 

Social care software vendor Findhelp acquires Kiip, which offers software to reduce the administrative burden of at-risk populations who are seeking community services.

GE HealthCare acquires Intelligent Ultrasound, whose AI-driven ultrasound analysis tools are used by GE HealthCare and other device manufacturers, for $51 million.

Sales

• Intermountain Health will use NeuroFlow’s behavioral health technology to identify and triage behavioral health risk within its primary care population.

People

AI-powered retinopathy screening technology company Eyenuk hires Bryan Haardt (Boehringer Ingelheim) as CEO.

Grady Health System hires Joey Meneses, MS (Akron Children’s Hospital) as executive director of technology.

Announcements and Implementations

Executives of Adventist Health confirm via LinkedIn job postings the long-reported rumor that the health system will implement Epic, which will replace Oracle Cerner. Roseville, CA-based Adventist Health has 28 hospitals and 38,000 employees.

Huma Therapeutics announces Huma Cloud Platform, a no-code system for configuring regulated disease management tools that includes pre-built modules, device connectivity, cloud hosting, APIs, and a marketplace.

UPMC researchers find that adding EHR nudges reduced the unnecessary use of lymph node biopsies in older female patients by nearly 50%. They modified the outpatient clinic EHR that is used by seven breast surgical oncologists, adding a column to the surgeon’s schedule to flag patients who meet Choosing Wisely guidelines to skip the procedure. The authors conclude that the most important takeaway is that surgeons appreciated getting the reminder on the day of the patient’s visit without having to click anything.

Government and Politics

A NEJM perspective piece says that the Supreme Court’s overturning of the so-called Chevron doctrine will impact every aspect of society, but especially HHS’s scientific and technical agencies such as CMS, CDC, FDA, NIH, and AHRQ. The authors predict that the ruling – which increases the power of courts and makes it easy for businesses to challenge the actions of federal agencies – will encourage big companies to challenge any rule or guidance that threatens their bottom lines, such as Medicare’s payment policies. They also expect companies to challenge FDA’s regulatory authority over laboratory-developed tests, which is the subject of a lawsuit that was brought by the clinical laboratory trade group. From the article, which refers to the decision under its legal name of Loper Bright:

Whereas Chevron favored the government experts charged with administering public programs, Loper Bright favors well-funded industry insiders with the resources to litigate rules that threaten to curb waste, fraud, or abuse. For example, industry-driven litigation has hampered government implementation of the No Surprises Act, which has resulted in far less savings and weaker protections for patients from surprise out-of-network bills than anticipated … Loper Bright will also most likely make it more difficult for agencies to adapt their regulatory approaches in response to changing scientific or economic circumstances. Under Chevron and related opinions, agencies retained some latitude to change their interpretations of ambiguous statutes over time.

Other

Scammers are creating deepfake videos that depict famous UK TV doctors pitching scam health products such as hemp gummies and herbal blood pressure remedies on social media platforms. Recent surveys have shown that most Americans under 26 get their health and wellness advice from TikTok because it’s fast and free, although 10% of them have experienced health issues after following influencer advice. One survey found that one in three TikTok users did not double-check the advice they got from platform users, while 10% said they would trust an influencer who has a high number of followers or likes. The platforms urge users to report misinformation, but posting a factual disclaimer triggers the influencer’s massive follower count to defend them and their medical advice.

Sponsor Updates

• Inovalon’s Converged Quality software earns HEDIS certification for the 24th consecutive year.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Say Hello to Easy Joint Documentation with EClinicalWorks.”
• TruBridge announces that it has received the Peer Reviewed by HFMA designation for its Complete Business Office solution for the fourth consecutive year, and for its RCM solution for the seventh consecutive year.
• Vyne Medical becomes a commercial member of MUSE.
• FinThrive releases a new episode of its HealthLeaders Cyber Resilience Podcast.
• Five9 announces that it has been named a Leader in the IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Contact Center-as-a-Service Applications Software 2024 Vendor Assessment.
• Wolters Kluwer Health adds its Rx Transitions for Mental Health medication management tool to its UpToDate Pro clinical decision support software.
• Linus Health will exhibit at Pri-Med West through July 20 in Anaheim, CA.
• Meditech will host Meditech Live September 25-27 at its facility in Foxborough, MA.

Blog Posts

• The 2024 EClinicalWorks and Healow National Conference: Grapevine Awaits You! (EClinicalWorks)
• How Healthcare Organizations Can Improve Their Insurance Verification Process (FinThrive)
• The Risk and Rewards of Quantum Computing in Healthcare (Fortified Health Security)
• How to Get Workday Certified (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Closing Gaps in IT Service Delivery (Impact Advisors)
• Understanding the New Price Transparency Rules: What You Need to Know (Medhost)
• An eye-opening view at the frontlines of care (Meditech)
• Advanced Wound Care: When Is It Time to Move Beyond Routine Treatments? (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 7/17/24

Top News

Healthcare governance, risk, and compliance solutions company RLDatix acquires London-based digital social care planning and management software vendor Carebeans.

Webinars

July 18 (Thursday) noon ET. “New CMS Final Rule: Strategies to Get EHR and IT Vendors Up to Speed.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. The new final rule that was issued by CMS on June 13, 2024, goes beyond a basic upgrade of SCRIPT standards and improves care connections among doctors, pharmacies, and patients. The presenters will lead EHR and IT vendors through the final rule, provide details on key provisions and compliance deadlines, offer tactics to tackle roadmap development, and provide direction on where and how partners can best leverage the requirements for the benefit of their customers.

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

Sales

• Beebe Healthcare (DE) will implement Epic across its system next year.
• In New Mexico, the City of Albuquerque and Bernalillo County will roll out social care screening and referral technology from Unite Us later this summer.
• CentraCare (MN) will offer virtual urgent care visits using technology from KeyCare.

People

Alok Chaudhary, MBA (Ballad Health) joins VCU Health (VA) as VP and chief data and AI officer.

Acentra Health names Ryan Bosch, MD, MBA (Inova Health) EVP and chief health and informatics officer.

Medicomp Systems founder, chairman, and president Peter Goltra died last month at 84.

Announcements and Implementations

The VA will pilot ambient clinical documentation software from Nuance and Abridge, which won the first phase of the VA’s AI Tech Sprint. It will integrate the AI-powered technologies with its EHR and workflows. The locations and duration of the pilots have yet to be announced.

After a four-month pilot, UVM Health Network (VT) will implement Abridge’s generative AI software for clinical documentation across its enterprise.

In New Jersey, Premier Health Associates will go live on parent organization Atlantic Health’s Epic system early next year.

Government and Politics

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD says that FDA should regulate medical AI using the same firm-based approach as it does for medical devices, in which it reviews the developer’s design approach and the product’s results rather than dissecting its underlying hardware and software. He says the VALID Act, which codifies the firm-based regulatory approach, is more appropriate for products such as AI that go through rapid cycles of innovation. He also notes that AI processing is not easily defined by tracing every possible input to its output. He urges Congress to facilitate the creation of large, reliable databases that can be used used for consistent AI development, training, validation, and post-market monitoring.

The Kansas Court of Appeals rules that healthcare providers are not required to keep patient medical records confidential, dismissing a University of Kansas Medical Center lawsuit in which a doctor took pictures during the plaintiff’s pelvic exam and sent them to two medical students whom the patient had approved to be present. The court concurred with a lower court’s decision that the state does not recognize a provider’s duty to protect patient confidentiality.

Other

St. Joseph’s Hospital (FL) implements Amazon’s Just Walk Out checkout-free payment technology at its Seasons Cafe. The new shopping workflows have enabled the cafe to stay open longer, and have not caused any employee layoffs.

A Dallas magazine profiles the leadership and funding crises that have sent White Rock Medical Center spiraling into financial and clinical chaos. The hospital has:

• Reverted to paper charting due to an inability to finance a new contract with its EHR vendor.
• Laid off employees with the only warning being a midnight email, which prompted former employees to file a class-action lawsuit against owner Heights Healthcare.
• Left vendors unpaid, causing it to scramble to borrow supplies from neighboring facilities and buy patient food from the local grocery store.

Sponsor Updates

• Clinical Architecture sponsors the The ALS Association Indiana Chapter and the Bob Kravitz ALS Golf Classic.
• SingHealth in Singapore implements Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise imaging 8.3 platform.
• Arcadia announces that it has been named as a Leader in the IDC Marketscape:US Value-based Health Analytics 2023 Vendor Assessment.
• Impact Advisors is named to Consulting Magazine’s “Best Large Firms to Work For” list.
• Artera publishes a new case study, “Wheeler Health Lowers Call Volume and Enhances Staff Efficiency with Artera.”
• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “The Power of APIs in Healthcare, with Alfonso Martinez.”
• CloudWave will exhibit at the 2024 NCHA Summer Meeting July 17-19 in Asheville, NC.

Blog Posts

• Navigating Recovery: Helping Patients Who Struggle with Substance Abuse & Addiction (AdvancedMD)
• Agfa Insights: SIIM 2024 Key Takeaways (Agfa HealthCare)
• Obstetrics Coding: Insights and Guidelines (AGS Health)
• HCTC: Connection, and client-first collaboration (Altera Digital Health)
• Strategic provider attribution: Enhancing patient-to-provider alignment in population health (Arcadia)
• The future of clinical data: building an intelligence engine with Augmedix & Google Cloud (Augmedix)
• Achieving Powerful Post-Service Claims Management (Availity)
• Incident Response Plans: Your Key to Successfully Mitigate Breach Damage and Expenses (Clearwater)
• The Secret to a Successful Epic Implementation: An Interconnected Implementation Team (Cordea Consulting)
• 12 Ways to Engage Your Stakeholders and Ensure Adoption for Your Next Digital Health Transformation (Divurgent)
• Keeping a Human in the Loop – AI for Medication Management Requires Clinical Safety Check (DrFirst)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/15/24

Top News

Ransomware hackers who breached the Vital Statistics system of Florida’s health department publish 100 gigabytes of HIV results, immunization records, and clinical notes to the dark web after the state declines to pay a ransom.

Florida says that 20,000 records from 2023 and 2024 were exfiltrated. Those records include patient names, dates of birth, addresses, Social Security numbers, and insurance information.

The system outage has caused delays in issuing birth and death certificates, as families report that they are unable to hold funerals, close bank accounts, file insurance claims, and update Social Security records.

Reader Comments

From Smitten: “Re: Epic. More campus expansion. Meanwhile, is Oracle really moving its HQ to Nashville?” The Verona paper covers how city and state government help fund Epic’s never-ending expansion, including its latest Other Worlds campus. I haven’t heard any fresh Nashville news from Oracle, although the guy who owns nearly half of the company says it will happen and he tends to get what he wants.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents name insurers as being most responsible for physician dissatisfaction.

New poll to your right or here: What did you like least about your most recent PCP visit? I’m in the N/A group because I have never had any of these problems with my direct primary care physician.

Webinars

July 18 (Thursday) noon ET. “New CMS Final Rule: Strategies to Get EHR and IT Vendors Up to Speed.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. The new final rule that was issued by CMS on June 13, 2024, goes beyond a basic upgrade of SCRIPT standards and improves care connections among doctors, pharmacies, and patients. The presenters will lead EHR and IT vendors through the final rule, provide details on key provisions and compliance deadlines, offer tactics to tackle roadmap development, and provide direction on where and how partners can best leverage the requirements for the benefit of their customers.

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

People

CereCore promotes Joel St. Francis to COO and Phil Sobol to chief commercial officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Samsung releases its first Galaxy Ring smart ring that supports AI-backed biometric monitoring of sleep, pulse, stress, and activity via the Samsung Health app. The $400 ring costs $100 more than the Oura Ring, but the latter requires a $6 per month subscription.

Other

A Microsoft Asia blog post describes how pharmacists in Taiwan’s 2,500-bed Chi Mei Medical Center doubled the number of patients they can see using a generative AI copilot that displays patient records from multiple systems. Doctors at the same hospital use a copilot for generating reports from medical records, nurses use it to create shift change reports, and nutritionists create dietary recommendations using their own copilot.

CNBC profiles SimVET, a $43 million simulated hospital in Orlando where the VA tests new technologies and procedures. The facility, which opened in 2016, has 60 full-time employees.

Sponsor Updates

• Netsmart’s TheraOffice EHR and practice management software earns ONC Certification.
• Symplr signs the US CISA Secure by Design pledge and achieves SOC 2 Type II compliance attestation for its flagship products.

Blog Posts

• Exploring the Evolving Landscape of Electronic Visit Verification (Netsmart)
• 3 ways automation and AI advance patient-centered care (Nordic)
• 3 Major CMMS Roadblocks That Mobile Apps Can Overcome (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Reduce Time to Treatment with Care Team Alerts (PerfectServe)
• Curiosity and Asking ‘Why Not’ is Helping Avant Pharmacy Rethink Healthcare (Surescripts) 

Contacts

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

News 7/12/24

Top News

ONC publishes its Health Data, Technology, and Interoperability: Patient Engagement, Information Sharing, and Public Health Interoperability (HTI-2) proposed rule for public comment.

The rule would include new certification criteria for public health and payers, including the technical requirements to support CMS’s Interoperability and Prior Authorization rule. 

The proposed rule introduces certification criteria for a real-time prescription benefit tool.

The rule would mandate adoption of USCDI version 4 by January 1, 2028. It would also update standards that are related to clinical image exchange and the use of multi-factor authentication.

It also clarifies the information blocking regulations to address concerns that entities could be penalized for choosing to limit sharing of a patient’s reproductive health information.

Reader Comments

From Peds MD: “Re: the Epic Care Everywhere matching problem for newborns that I reported earlier this week. Epic reached out to me, facilitated by Mr. HIStalk. They agreed that the Epic (and probably every EMR) newborn matching needs special considerations since many normal demographics change for newborns. In discussion are that the Care Everywhere ID (or any other quasi-national identifier) should be accessible for newborns, and with it, the requestor probably should only need one other matching point to be able to see a possible match. I will be bringing this complex topic to a Newborn Informatics Standardization Workgroup and Epic will be participating in this. The Epic staff wanted to encourage other clinicians with questions to contact Epic so that they can work with them, too.”

From SunsetSister: “Re: ModMed. Heard thy are sunsetting TRAKnet (podiatry EHR) and Exscribe (ortho EHR). Can you confirm? Both EHRs were acquired by ModMed in 2021. Maintaining status quo for three years and then telling customers they need to make a choice – convert to ModMed’s version or find a new system – the timing sounds about right.” I’ve emailed the company’s press contact, who provided this response:

As part of our overall strategy to deliver best-in-class experiences to our customers, ModMed has been upgrading clients using TRAKnet and Sammy to ModMed Podiatry for some time. We’ve taken the best of both platforms and built a superior cloud-based solution in ModMed Podiatry that is trusted by thousands of providers. ModMed is a leader in the podiatry space, and making this change places us in an even stronger position to continue providing state-of-the-art features, including artificial intelligence, enhanced patient engagement, and intuitive revenue cycle capabilities to our customers.

From Minor Kibble: “Re: Marshfield Clinic being acquired by Sanford. They will move to Epic, the latest in the clinic’s 10-year journey in which it tried to become a vendor by selling its homegrown EHR, abandoned that strategy in 2017 and replaced the homegrown EHR with Cerner even though Epic dominates in Wisconsin, and then begin replacing Cerner with Epic the year after its Cerner installs were complete.” The combined organization would have 56 hospitals, 56,000 employees, and $10 billion in annual revenue. The memorandum of understanding says that the combined system will invest up to $500 million to transition to Epic.   

From Dr. Q: “Re: AI. See this article from the journal Gastroenterology about using AI alone or with the involvement of an endoscopist in the optical diagnosis of colorectal polyps. Neither excelled, but AI did better working alone than when it was ‘corrected’ by the doctors. My impression so far is that AI is great for pictures and patterns. The language stuff, meh.” I’m thinking of driverless cars, where it became obvious that the best way to train them was to just let them watch humans who are doing it, which is how you would train your not overly bright 16-year-old to achieve driving competence purely by observation and practice instead of writing down 100,000 rules. The AI could fall well short of perfection and still be consistently safer than reckless or inattentive human drivers. The other interesting aspect of this article is that we want AI that enhances rather than replaces physician judgment, but we also know that physicians overweight their own personal experience in their narrow patient population, so they may override AI’s correct conclusions in assuming that they are smarter than the machine.

Webinars

July 18 (Thursday) noon ET. “New CMS Final Rule: Strategies to Get EHR and IT Vendors Up to Speed.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. The new final rule that was issued by CMS on June 13, 2024, goes beyond a basic upgrade of SCRIPT standards and improves care connections among doctors, pharmacies, and patients. The presenters will lead EHR and IT vendors through the final rule, provide details on key provisions and compliance deadlines, offer tactics to tackle roadmap development, and provide direction on where and how partners can best leverage the requirements for the benefit of their customers.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AI-driven cardiac device monitoring manufacturer Octagos Health raises $43 million in a Series B funding round.

Clinical insights platform vendor Regard closes a $61 million Series B funding round.

A private equity firm makes an unstated investment in healthcare-focused IT managed services provider Medicus IT.

ExactCare, which acquired Tabula Rasa HealthCare in November 2023, renames the combined business to AnewHealth, which offers pharmacy services and technology for managing chronic conditions in home and community settings. CEO John Figueroa has held CEO roles at CarepathRx, Genoa Healthcare, Apria Healthcare Group, and Omnicare. He is a former Army captain and Ranger. 

Sales

• Carle Health will deploy Nabla’s ambient AI assistant to 1,500 providers, starting with its multi-specialty physician group.

People

Clearsense hires Jonathan Cook (Arcadia) as CTO, Ken Misch, MBA (Medhost) as CFO/COO, and Glen Wirick (Adhere Health) as chief commercial officer.

RLDatix names August Calhoun, PhD (Optum Insight) as president/GM of RLDatix North America and Mike Allelunas (ConcertAI) as president/GM of RLDatix Life Sciences.

Announcements and Implementations

Porter County, IN’s health department launches a Findhelp-powered website that provides information on free or reduced-cost community services.

The New Hampshire business paper covers the rollout of Nuance’s DAX at Elliot Health Systems.

KONZA National Network launches Birth Connect, which immediately alerts OB/GYNs when one of their patients has delivered a baby. The HIE and QHIN says the alert solves EHR interoperability issues that cause delayed reporting and minimizes record loss due to temporary use of “baby girl” or “baby boy” as a first name.

Government and Politics

A federal jury convicts the former CEO of publicly traded hospital supply chain data services vendor SCWorx on two counts of securities fraud. Marc Schessel announced publicly in the early days of the pandemic that the company had a contract to acquire and sell millions of COVID test kits from an Australian supplier, sending SCWorx shares up 400%, but the company’s tests were not FDA approved, SCWorx didn’t have the money to pay for them, and they ended up not acquiring a single test to sell.

The CDC-funded Data Modernization Implementation Center Program selects CRISP Shared Services as one of its three implementation centers, along with Guidehouse and Mathematica.

Privacy and Security

Mt. San Rafael Hospital (CO) reports being hit by a ransomware attack.

The US Navy disciplines a jhospital corps member who attempted to look up President Biden’s records in MHS Genesis three times in February. He was unable to do so because the access to the President’s records is restricted, although he did access the records of a different Joe Biden.

Other

Authors from University of Colorado Health describe its Virtual Health Center, which provides 4,100 interventions for 800 patients daily across it 12 hospitals. Some of its programs:

• A virtual sitter program, where patients who are flagged by a fall risk model are monitored by video and are verbally requested to wait for help when trying to get out of bed unassisted.
• A sepsis prediction tool.
• Triaging ill employees early in the pandemic.
• Discharging stable inpatients with COVID-19 for home monitoring, although some had to be given smartphones because their only Internet access was public Wi-Fi.
• Future projects include work with wearables and virtual programs for primary care, care transitions, and admissions.

Sponsor Updates

• Vyne Medical publishes a new whitepaper, “From Costly Paper Processes to Streamlined Operations: How Healthcare Can Build a Better Future.”
• Notable achieves Oracle Validated Integration Expertise across all Oracle Health domains for its bidirectional integration of the Notable platform for healthcare operations.
• Elsevier’s new “Insights 2024: Attitudes Toward AI” report reveals researchers and clinicians believe in AI’s potential but demand transparency in order to trust tools.
• Laudio publishes a new case study, “MemorialCare Enhances Support for Nurse Managers, Boosts Nurse Engagement and Retention.”
• Medicomp Systems releases a new episode of its “Tell Me Where it Hurts” podcast, featuring Christopher Kunney, managing partner of Iotech Consulting.
• Meditech publishes a new customer success story, “Expanse delivers cost savings, scalability for Harrison County.”
• MRO will exhibit at the FHIMA Annual Convention July 14-17 in Orlando.

Blog Posts

• CIO Advice from Marty Paslick: ‘Healthcare Professionals First, Then Technologists.’ (CereCore)
• What You May Have Missed at HFMA 2024 – Industry Trends and More (FinThrive)
• The New CX: AI and Agents in Conversation (Five9)
• Healthcare Cybersecurity Threats: June 2024 (Fortified Health Security)
• Guarding the Gates: Why Provider Oversight is Important for Medical Record Audits (HealthMark Group)
• 3 Major CMMS Roadblocks that Mobile Apps Can Overcome (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Importance of Application Rationalization as the First Step in Cloud Cost Optimization (Impact Advisors)
• AI in RCM: Bridging the Gap Between Enthusiasts and Doubters (Inovalon)
• Digital health equity: Harnessing design systems to advance EHR accessibility (Meditech)
• What is the Right ICD-10 Code for Headaches? (Net Health)
• Why Owl and NeuroFlow Have Joined Forces to Improve Patient Monitoring & ARM Providers with the Data They Need (NeuroFlow)

Contacts

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

News 7/10/24

Top News

Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Arianna Huffington (Thrive Global) announce that their companies will jointly fund Thrive AI Health, which will develop a personalized coaching application to support health-related behavior change.

The new company will be led by former Google sensor and fitness product management leader DeCarlos Love.

Launch partners include Stanford Medicine, the Alice L. Walton School of Medicine, and West Virginia University’s neuroscience institute.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Crossings Healthcare Solutions. The King of Prussia, PA-based company is a subsidiary of Universal Health Services, a large hospital system and longtime Oracle/Cerner client and vendor. UHS’s dedicated resources develop solutions to optimize the Oracle Millenium EHR, with the support of Oracle leadership. These solutions embed directly into the Oracle EHR and do not create any third-party solutions. Its MPages and Advisor solutions are installed at more than 85 hospitals across the country, with tools that are tailored to nursing documentation, physician communication, and pharmacy workflows. All of these tools promote usability, safety, and satisfaction of the Oracle EHR. Aside from acute care, UHS also has a large behavioral health representation, with over 300 facilities across the country. It has developed electronic treatment planning with a number of additional MPage enhancements for their BH facilities that are also offered through Crossings. The company is dedicated to making sure that Oracle users are satisfied with the overall use of their EMR, as it is both a client and a vendor. Thanks to Crossings Healthcare Solutions for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

July 18 (Thursday) noon ET. “New CMS Final Rule: Strategies to Get EHR and IT Vendors Up to Speed.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. The new final rule that was issued by CMS on June 13, 2024, goes beyond a basic upgrade of SCRIPT standards and improves care connections among doctors, pharmacies, and patients. The presenters will lead EHR and IT vendors through the final rule, provide details on key provisions and compliance deadlines, offer tactics to tackle roadmap development, and provide direction on where and how partners can best leverage the requirements for the benefit of their customers.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

SAIGroup acquires patient engagement technology vendor Get Well. The private investment firm’s portfolio also includes Concert AI, RhythmX AI, and SymphonyAI.

The Wall Street Journal reports that insurers questionably identified “gaps in care” that allowed them to pocket an extra $50 billion from the Medicare Advantage program without performing any additional services for patients. Insurance companies offered patients gift cards to convince them to agree to a home visit, during which time a clinician found – or made up – additional medical conditions that would increase CMS payments. More than 66,000 MA patients were diagnosed with diabetic cataracts even though their damaged lens had already been replaced with a plastic one, with members of UnitedHealth being 15 times more likely to have a diagnosis of diabetic cataracts that patients who were enrolled in traditional Medicare.

A PBS review of internal Amazon documents finds that some patients of its One Medical primary care business were placed at risk when the company shifted their calls and texts to a call center that was staffed by minimally trained employees. Patients of the former Iora Health, the high-touch primary care group for people 65 and over that One Medical acquired for over $2 billion in September 2021, were directed to call center staff who didn’t always have access to their charts. In several cases, patients who reported “red flag” urgent symptoms – such as chest pain or blood in their stool – were scheduled for future appointments instead of being quickly connected to a trained employee.

Sales

• Ohio State University Medicine will use Andor Health’s ThinkAndor AI-powered virtual care software to improve access to remote specialty interventions.
• P3 Health Partners selects physician engagement and population analytics software from Innovaccer.

People

Ken Webb, MBA (OnShift) joins Artera as VP of sales.

Yeman Collier (UT Health San Antonio) will join University of Chicago Medicine as SVP/CIO on July 28. Michael Schnabel, MBA will serve as UT Health San Antonio’s interim VP/CIO.

Korea-based medical AI company Lunit names Terry Thomas, RN, MSN (Volpara Health, which was acquired by Lunit in May 2024) as chief business officer.

Allan Kyburz, MBA (OnShift) joins HCIT Consulting as EVP of growth.

DrFirst hires Todd Helmink (Atlas Health) as SVP of specialty strategy and business development.

Dan Delaney (Wolters Kluwer Health) joins MRO as VP of enterprise implementation.

Announcements and Implementations

Hospitals in Israel report an EHR malfunction that caused errors in recording patient information such as blood types, diagnoses, and procedures.

A new KLAS report on non-US EHR market share finds that Dedalus was the most-chosen vendor, but Epic contracted with more hospitals.

Government and Politics

Cybersecurity experts and NHS employees point to outdated IT systems as a major contributor to the recent ransomware attack on pathology services vendor Synnovis. Despite the fact that the NHS has spent $443 million on cybersecurity over the last seven years, some staff say they are still working with old computers that run Windows 7 and crash every few months. A 2022 report from the British Medical Association found that clinicians were wasting 13.5 million hours annually due to outdated systems.

A federal judge will likely invalidate the Federal Trade Commission’s ban on non-compete agreements based on her preliminary decision that FTC does not have the authority to issue a nationwide ban, in which case non-compete rules would shift back to individual states.

Other

In Sacramento, UC Davis Health and WellSpace Health launch a digital support program for recently incarcerated patients that includes free smartphones, messaging capabilities, and guides to community and social care resources.

A patient in Iowa sues Zoll Laboratory Services and Zoll Medical after discovering that cardiac data attributed to her Zoll heart monitor was actually from another patient. That incorrect data led her to having a pacemaker implanted during an operation that was performed without sufficient sedation. Her physician discovered the discrepancy in data days after the unnecessary operation while reviewing Zoll data in her EHR, the dates of which didn’t line up with her usage of the device.

Sponsor Updates

• Capital Rx releases a new episode of The Astonishing Healthcare Podcast, “Empowering Pharmacists, with NASPA’s Krystalyn Weaver, PharmD, JD.”
• Divurgent VP of Delivery Jeff Fuller will speak on August 20 at the UNC Center for the Business of Health’s first event of the academic year.
• CereCore releases a new podcast, “CIO Leadership Lessons and Advice from Marty Paslick.”
• Vyne Medical publishes a new case study titled “Journey to Efficiency: An Award-Winning Hospital’s Path to Workflow Optimization.”

Blog Posts

• AGFA Insights: SIRM 2024 Key Takeaways (Agfa HealthCare)
• The Journey to Coding Automation (AGS Health)
• Optimizing network utilization with data: A case study on how to prevent healthcare leakage (Arcadia)
• Addressing Fractional Quitting: How Augmedix AI Saves $5.5M Annually and Impacts Clinician Retention (Augmedix)
• AI in the Revenue Cycle – A Use Case for Denial Prevention (Availity)
• Surgery Partners: A Growth-Focused Managed Services IT Partnership (CereCore)
• Understanding Business Email Compromise and Common Social Engineering Tactics (Clearwater)
• Practical Steps for Meeting the New Healthcare and Public Health Sector-Specific Cybersecurity Performance Goals (CloudWave)
• Navigating Hospital Revenue in Value-based Care (Dimensional Insight)
• The Power of Personal Branding in the Job Search (Direct Recruiters)
• Success Stories: How AI is Improving Medication Management for 3 Healthcare Providers (DrFirst)
• The Healthcare Contact Center: Efficiency Hacks, Best Practices, & an eBook (Five9)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/8/24

Top News

Oregon Health & Science University shuts down its Connected Care Center, the 16-nurse telehealth nursing unit that it launched at the beginning of the pandemic.

OHSU is eliminating 500 positions as it pursues an acquisition of Legacy Health, which would expand its footprint to 10 hospitals and 32,000 employees.

Reader Comments

From Peds MD: “Re: Epic Care Everywhere. A baby had a very high newborn screen for a condition where confirmatory testing and treatment need to be done urgently. The baby was tested within an hour at a local hospital, using the father’s last name. Not having access to the other hospital’s Epic, I logged into the baby’s birth hospital record (Epic), which still had ‘Baby Girl’ and the mom’s name. I asked Care Everywhere to find the baby’s results. Epic said no match even though the date of birth, sex, address, and phone number were the same. Luckily the ED clinician at the testing hospital sent me the results via text. Just to get the records connected officially, the next day I got the Care Everywhere ID from the testing hospital and plugged it in. Again, no match! Learning lesson for Epic — if you have the Care Everywhere ID, which is an amazingly long set of numbers and letters, you should at least be asked ‘Is this the right person?’ And you shouldn’t even need that if other information is the same. I called it in to IT and got the famous ‘working as designed’ answer.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents are evenly divided on whether an oversupply of physician informaticists exists, with those who say yes pointing to the number of doctors who are seeking non-practice roles. 

New poll to your right or here: Who is most responsible for physician dissatisfaction?

Webinars

July 18 (Thursday) noon ET. “New CMS Final Rule: Strategies to Get EHR and IT Vendors Up to Speed.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, DrFirst; Tyler Higgins, senior director of product management, DrFirst. The new final rule that was issued by CMS on June 13, 2024, goes beyond a basic upgrade of SCRIPT standards and improves care connections among doctors, pharmacies, and patients. The presenters will lead EHR and IT vendors through the final rule, provide details on key provisions and compliance deadlines, offer tactics to tackle roadmap development, and provide direction on where and how partners can best leverage the requirements for the benefit of their customers.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Private equity firm New Mountain Capital proposes to buy R1 RCM and take the company private at a valuation of around $5.6 billion. RCM shares are down 38% over the past 12 months, valuing the company at $4.6 billion.

California’s attorney general approves UCSF Health’s acquisition of Dignity Health’s Saint Francis Memorial Hospital and St. Mary’s Medical Center, with terms that include UCSF Health spending at least $80 million on their EHR.

India-based hospital operator Narayana Health launches a Kaiser Permanente-type health plan that covers a family of four starting at $10 per month, which is about 20% of what private insurers charge. Founder, chairman, and cardiac surgeon Devi Shetty, MBBS says that Indian citizens need 70 million surgeries per year but only 20 million are performed due to lack of affordability, which he says causes many times the deaths of malaria, TB, and HIV that are covered by government programs. The policy’s benefits include treatment coverage of $6,000 and surgical expenses of $120,000. The company promises easy claims settlement, coverage of preventive checkups, and discounts on tests that are performed at Narayana’s hospitals. Thanks to the reader who sent this item my way.

Sales

• Shepherd Center will implement Kemtai’s computer vision AI assessments for people with brain injuries.

People

Primary care network Main Line HealthCare (PA) names SVP/CMIO Donald Klingen, MD as interim president.

Announcements and Implementations

Bath Community Hospital (VA) goes live on Meditech Expanse.

Australia-based telemedicine service My Emergency Doctor implements InterSystems HealthShare Health Connect Cloud for interoperability with a major suburban hospital to perform virtual overnight supervision.

Government and Politics

National Coordinator Micky Tripathi, PhD, MPP and FDA Director of Digital Health Center for Excellence Troy Tazbaz resign as non-voting members of the board of Coalition for Health AI to avoid potential conflicts of  interest. Republican lawmakers criticized FDA’s involvement with the group last month, citing concerns about potential conflicts given CHAI’s membership that includes major technology companies and health systems that develop AI businesses.

Privacy and Security

Palomar Health Medical Group (CA) notifies patients that their information may have been compromised in a May 5 cyberattack, but says it doesn’t yet know which patients and which information was involved. PHMG originally hoped to restore most of its systems by July 1, but now is targeting mid-July.

The RansomHub ransomware group claims to have publicly posted 100 GB of information that it stole from the systems of the Florida Department of Health, which declined to pay the ransom that it demanded in accordance with state policy.

An Ascension Saint Agnes Hospital NICU nurse is forced to use a fax machine for the first time when clinicians lost access to the EHR during Ascension’s cyberattack. She says that staff weren’t prepared for a four-week systems outage, when patient medications were tracked on a shared spreadsheet that was faxed to the pharmacy.

Other

The FDA orders North Shore Medical Center (FL) to stop performing mammograms, determining that the facility’s tests failed to meet American College of Radiology image quality standards. The hospital has contacted all patients who had the tests over a two-year period to advise them to have their results re-evaluated and possibly to have the test repeated. The hospital, which is owned by the bankrupt Steward Health Care, will cover the cost if the patient has the rework performed at another Steward facility.

“Jeopardy!” fans debate the decision by host Ken Jennings to accept the answer of contestant and Mary Washington Healthcare IT application coordinator Matt Brooks, who mispronounced “larynx” as “larnyx.” He eventually won the game. Some fans were appalled that Jennings accepted his answer given that it is equivalent to misspelling the word, while others said that the mispronunciation is common in the South and Midwest and noted that former host Alex Trebek had accepted the same mistake in 1997 and 2006 in explaining that a lot of people say it wrong.

Sponsor Updates

• Black Book Research’s latest survey of health plans ranks Surescripts as the top technology solutions provider for payer member safety, PBM, and pharmacy solutions.
• In Belgium, AZ Sint Lucas and AZ Sint Jan hospitals implement Sectra’s One Cloud public cloud service.
• Over 400 Konza-powered sites achieve and/or maintain Validated Data Stream Designations in NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program.
• Meditech customer Humboldt Park Health becomes the first Midwestern hospital to achieve Healthcare Equity Certification from the Joint Commission.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast, “Interview with Jeff Mounzer, PhD, and Peter Kriss, PhD.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT names Brad Sourwine (Pivot Point Consulting) director of recruiting.
• Sana Kliniken in Germany implements RLDatix’s cloud-based workforce management solutions across the enterprise.
• Waystar will exhibit at the EClinicalWorks Denver Day Show July 10.

Blog Posts

• Inovalon Backs Safer Care: Answering the PCAST Call (Inovalon)
• Maximizing the Value of Your Time: Billing for Linus Health Digital Cognitive Assessments (Linus Health)
• Healthcare CFOs Highlight the Need for End-to-End Digital Solutions (Medhost)
• Unraveling the Financial Ramifications of MSSP ACO Reporting (MRO)
• Physical Therapy Billing Units: A Comprehensive Guide (Net Health)
• The Future of Physical Therapy Documentation Software (Netsmart)
• Nurses of Note 2024: The Clinical Nurse Educator (PerfectServe)
• Optimizing Physician On-Call Schedule Management (QGenda)
• Data intelligence for all: a recap of new solutions and key takeaways from Databricks’ 2024 Data + AI Summit (Redox)
• Attracting Top Tech Talent to Healthcare: Strategies for Success (Revuud)
• Opening the Door to the Patient Cost Conversation – and to Affordable Medications (Surescripts)
• From Vision to Reality: Healthcare Leaders Share Their Vendor Compliance Journeys (Symplr)
• Moving to Meditech Expanse? Five Key Support Considerations for Post-Implementation (Tegria)
• Navigating the Complexities of Outpatient vs. Inpatient Billing (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

News 7/3/24

Top News

Heritage Valley Health System (PA) will pay $950,000 to settle potential HIPAA security rule violations related to a 2017 ransomware attack that was caused by malware that spread from Nuance to multiple healthcare organizations.

The health system filed a lawsuit against Nuance in 2019 claiming that the vendor failed to prevent the attack, but the suit was dismissed due to contractual technicalities.

Reader Comments

From Angel of AI: “Re: healthcare fraud. What was the largest fraud by number of US patients impacted? Have any that involved medical devices run unto the tens of thousands of patients?” Zeroing in on documented “fraud” rather than just product-related issues narrows the field quite a bit. I was going to say HCA’s various legal and civil challenges over the years, which I believe included performing unnecessary invasive procedures, but I don’t know the extent of that. Theranos might also make the list since while the fraud involved lab testing machines that gave inaccurate results 10% of the time but with unknown effect on outcomes.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m a new customer, but YouTube Premium is already my most-valued streaming service. Why: it’s ad free, plays in the background, includes YouTube Music, and lets me download videos to play offline. It’s $13.99 for an individual membership and $22.99 per month for families of up to five members with discounts for paying annually. Tips: I play on the big screen through a Roku streaming device, use the Roku app’s remote instead of the physical one so I can type search terms more easily, and turn on good audio like a sound bar. I will acknowledge that 98% of what’s on YouTube is purely intended as time-wasting junk, but the rest is well-made gold and YouTube is better than I expected at suggesting something I’ll like. Mostly I watch videos related to travel destinations, old TV clips, concerts, and how-to fixit help. We still subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, and one of the P-ones (I can never remember if its Paramount+ or Peacock), but I would give up YouTube Premium last.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Chronic pain management technology vendor Upside Health shuts down.

Care enablement technology company Fabric acquires virtual care service provider MeMD from the now-shuttered Walmart Health. Walmart bought the business, which was started in 2010, in 2021 for a reported $6 million. Fabric acquired virtual healthcare assistant startup Gyant and announced a $60 million Series A funding round earlier this year.

Telehealth vendor Amwell announces a reverse stock split in order to avoid delisting on the New York Stock Exchange. AMWL shares have lost 87% of their value in the past 12 months to $0.29, valuing the company at $86 million.

Google and TikTok ban ADHD telehealth provider Done Global from advertising on their platforms amidst a federal investigation that has expanded to include five additional people of interest. Done’s CEO and clinical president were arrested last month on charges of distributing Adderall, healthcare fraud, and obstruction of justice.

Virtual primary care company K Health raises a $50 million funding round.

Sales

• Babson Diagnostics will implement Ellkay’s lab-ordering software and LKCareEvolve clinician portal as a part of its BetterWay blood-testing service.
• Adventist Health (CA) selects The Garage’s population health management software.
• Cleveland Clinic will integrate Masimo’s Hospital Automation Platform with its patient monitoring technologies as part of its TeleCritical Care program.

People

Cordea Consulting promotes Thomas Sjostedt to VP of sales.

Greater Houston Healthconnect promotes Junaid Husain, ALM, MBA to CEO.

Ron Wozny, MBA (HealthSmart) joins MyDirectives as SVP of marketing and business development.

CSI Companies hires Douglas Herr (Healthcare IT Leaders) as SVP of client services and strategy.

Carrie Damon, MHA (CommonSpirit Health) joins KPMG as global chief digital officer of KPMG Delivery Network.

Announcements and Implementations

UT Health East Texas implements virtual nursing from Care.ai across its network.

UCHealth (CO) rolls out prior authorization software co-developed with Arrive Health at three of its clinics. It will implement the software across its network next year. UCHealth invested in Arrive’s (fka RxRevu) Series A funding round in 2019 after working with the company for several years through its Care Innovation Center.

The Headwaters High-Value Network clinically integrated network launches with 19 independent rural Minnesota hospitals as members. HVN will consider shared technology solutions in population health management, analytics, and are management.

Government and Politics

NHS London’s medical director says pathology services across its six boroughs are operating at 46% capacity since its pathology services vendor Synnovis was hit with a ransomware attack on June 3.

The Department of Justice recaps the recent sentences of these former Outcome Health executives who were involved in a $1 billion corporate fraud scheme. Three other executives have pleaded guilty and are awaiting sentencing. DOJ summarizes, “faking it until you make it is not an acceptable practice for any business.”

• Co-founder and CEO Rishi Shah: seven years and six months in prison.
• Co-founder and President Shradha Agarwal: three years in a halfway house.
• CEO/CFO Brad Purdy: two years and three months in prison.

Other

UTHealth San Antonio previews the technologies its new Multispecialty and Research Hospital will feature when it opens in December, including virtual nursing, smart beds, and three “Rosey” robots that will deliver items to the 144-bed facility’s nursing units.

Sponsor Updates

• Inovalon joins the Meditech Alliance ecosystem of partner organizations.
• AdvancedMD launches new automation and payment capabilities to help private practices increase productivity and drive more revenue.  
• Augmedix AI Advisory Council member Lisa Rotenstein publishes new research in JAMA Network Open, “Virtual Scribes and Physician Time Spent on Electronic Health Records.”
• AvaSure publishes a new case study, “How UCHealth used Telehealth Technologies to Slash Code Blues up to 70%.”
• Cordea Consulting promotes Michael Tierney to recruiting supervisor.

Blog Posts

• Enhancing Healthcare Practices Through Effective Benefit Verification (AdvancedMD)
• Agfa Insights: UKIO 2024 Key Takeaways (Agfa HealthCare)
• Leveraging Global Resources to Address HIM and Clinical Labor Shortages (AGS Health)
• Analytics in 2024: Making the most sense out of your data (Altera Digital Health)
• Navigating Governance: Build Your Healthcare Analytics Communication Framework (Artera)
• Inaccurate Provider Directories Create Barriers to Care (Availity)
• New York City FC & Capital Rx – More Than a Sleeve Partnership (Capital Rx)
• 7 Ways to Optimize Meditech Expanse for Provider Satisfaction (CereCore)
• Optimizing RCM for Growth Today and Tomorrow (EClinicalWorks)
• Enhance Patient Experience with Continuous Insurance Coverage Search (FinThrive)
• The 6 Logical Steps to Data Migration (Five9)
• Education on Patient Liability Should Occur Every Step of the Way (Impact Advisors)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 7/1/24

Top News

Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago reports in a data breach filing notice that the information of 791,000 people was exposed to ransomware hackers in its January 31 cyberattack.

The Rhysida ransomware group claimed in March that it had stolen the hospital’s data and sold it for $3.4 million.

The hospital finished restoring its systems on May 20.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents would like to see government review or approval when private equity firms propose to conduct a provider-related transaction. I’m siding with commenter and industry long-timer Bill Spooner, who suggests that equal attention be paid to not-for-profit transactions since the goal is the same, to eliminate competition and to buy practices as bed-fillers under the guise of integration.

New poll to your right or here, following up on Dr. Jayne’s comments last week and some excellent observations from reader DrM: Does healthcare have an oversupply of physician informaticists? I’m focusing just on the physician part of clinical informatics since that was the subject of Dr. Jayne’s original pondering.

Today I learned – at least I think I did — that my long-time dentist’s practice was acquired years ago by Heartland Dental, which is owned by private equity firm KKR. I’m speculating on the “acquired” part since Heartland labels itself as a DSO (dental services organization) that serves “affiliates,” but it sounds like they either buy practices outright or perhaps take a majority position. Whatever they do, it involves 1,700 practices, 20,000 employees, and the opening of several dozen new practices from scratch each year. I should be relieved that unlike PE-acquired medical practices or hospitals, it doesn’t seem that quality or customer service have slipped.

I don’t watch TV and therefore had never seen Conan O’Brien on anything until YouTube pushed a video at me this weekend from something called “First We Feast Hot Ones” (never heard of it), in which Conan takes over the show as only someone who is smart, funny, and schooled in improv could do (not to mention sticking to the bit while chugging down high-Scoville hot sauce). That led me down the rabbit hole of a Dr. Arroyo follow-up and then a deep dive into old appearances by Jordan Schlansky and savagely funny, Robert Smigel-operated Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, all of which were new to me. I don’t listen to podcasts, but “Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend” might lure me in. Conan sold his Team Coco podcast network for $150 million two years ago to Sirius XM, or as Triumph recently called it, “the abandoned mall of the entertainment industry” and then added, “Why get your milk for free when you could rent the cow for $21.99 a month?”

I nominate “please know” as the most irritating wording in corporate blathering history, given that it’s meaningless, superfluous (just tell us what you want us to know), and also gratingly fawning since companies use it to feign sincerity and humility, usually because of their own misstep or misbehavior. I rank it above even “please don’t hesitate to call” to attempt to sound more professional (sort of like the pompous “utilize” or “leverage” instead of “use.”) I’m more amused than annoyed at out-of-office email replies that claim “I will have limited access to email” as though the person doesn’t own a smartphone instead of just admitting that they at least temporarily have more important things to do.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Optum notifies Massachusetts regulators that it won’t follow through on a previously announced agreement to buy Steward Health Care’s physician network.

People

Optum promotes Cara Griffin to SVP of marketing.

Announcements and Implementations

A new KLAS report on digital rounding solutions for nurses finds that Huron, the 2024 Best in KLAS winner, tops the list in customer satisfaction and the ability to drive outcomes and reduce nurse workload.

Other

Australia’s SA health orders an investigation into an error in its Sunrise EHR that miscalculated the estimated due dates of 1,700 pregnant women, raising concerns that the incorrect dates may have caused clinicians to induce labor too early.

Sponsor Updates

• Consensus Cloud Solutions receives the 2024 CSO Award from Foundry’s CSO for demonstrating outstanding business value and thought leadership.
• Black Book Research declares Inovalon the top-ranked vendor in robust data integration and predictive analytics, according to feedback from managed care, health plans, and payer technology users.
• Five9 publishes a new e-book, “AI in Healthcare: How AI Drives Value for Five9 Healthcare Customers.”
• Waystar takes Black Book’s top spot for end-to-end revenue RCM solutions for health systems.
• Surescripts Chief Product Officer Tara Dragert joins the NCPDP Foundation’s Board of Trustees.
• Inovalon announces a partnership with the Meditech Alliance, which will offer the company’s end-to-end RCM to Meditech customers.
• TruBridge publishes a new case study, “How Texas Institute for Surgery Increased Cash Flow and Decreased AR Days.”

Blog Posts

• Can the ONC help drive greater API adoption? (Zen Healthcare IT)
• Enhanced Care Management: Care Coordination for California’s Most Vulnerable (Netsmart)
• The rise of inboxologists in healthcare: Does it really matter who responds? (Nordic)
• 3 Healthcare HR Challenges GenAI Can Help Solve (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• From Aspiration to Achievement: Stacia Fredericks’ Educational Journey with the Assistance of the QGenda /AACN Nursing Scholarship (QGenda)
• 2024 HL7 FHIR DevDays Top 5 takeaways (a newbie’s take) (Redox)
• 5 tips to improve patient health literacy (Sonifi Health)
• How to Provide a Scalable, Flexible, and Seamless Financial Experience (TrustCommerce)
• At Moose Pharmacy the Future of Community Pharmacy is Rooted in the Past (Surescripts)
• How to Combat Key Stressors in Nursing (Symplr)
• Their Words. Not Ours. (Visage Imaging)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
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News 6/28/24

Top News

Walgreens Boots Alliance reports Q3 results: revenue up 2.6%, adjusted EPS $0.63 versus $1.00, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings. The company also lowered FY 2024 EPS guidance, citing inconsistent consumer spending. Shares shed 22% of their value following the Thursday morning announcement, dropping their price to 1997 levels.

Walgreens will reduce its stake in primary care provider VillageMD and will no longer hold a majority share. CEO Tim Wentworth, who took the job in October, says that Walgreens will no longer seek majority ownership of primary and specialty care provider businesses and will instead pursue “capital-light services” with a larger range of providers and payers

Walgreens will close a “meaningful percent” of its underperforming stores, which represent about one-fourth of its 8,600 locations. Its review of stores to close will include proximity to other Walgreens and the local crime level in some cities. It says it will work with state Medicaid programs and local law enforcement as the “last company standing” in areas that would be pharmacy deserts otherwise. The company had already closed 625 locations.

Reader Comments

From Steve Shihadeh: “Re: your ‘Death of a Salesman’ response. Pretty good considering your experience and contempt .” Industry long-timer Steve of Get-to-Market Health adds these insights:

• The best salespeople have a great balance of product and service knowledge, relationship skills, and a real appreciation for what drives the buyer.
• AI gives good salespeople the chance to be better prepared and have more compelling presentations and facts.
• While AI is all the rage today, in some ways it is like every big technical evolution. PC, Internet, Search, WiFi, etc. The best sales people will learn about it and find the way to relate it to what the customer needs and how it impacts them in a positive manner.

From Vince Remembered: “Re: ‘Death of a Salesman.’ Your response about salespeople was slightly cynical before turning positive, but not nearly as much so as the late, great Vince Ciotti in your 2019 interview.” I love that interview with industry long-timer Vince and re-read it often. Here are Vince’s thoughts about salespeople, which may or may not remain relevant several decades after his experience:

We hired salesman at SMS and they spent one day walking around all the offices, saying hello, shaking hands. Who are you? What do you do? Oh, OK. Then boom, after one day, they were out there selling. They had no idea what they were selling. It doesn’t matter. Sales is commissions. If you sell a lot of systems, you make a lot of money and you get promoted and you become a big cheese. If you don’t sell any systems, you get fired. You’re going to go to another company and try again. You don’t learn the product. You haven’t been an installer or a customer service rep. You haven’t worked with the system. You have no idea how the system works. What you know how to do is smile, be pleasant, buy lunch, buy dinner, shake hands, be charming, have people trust you, get them to sign the contract, and then run like hell because you’ve got to make some more sales.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalk sponsors earn attention from digital health decision-makers, including provider folk, investors, and potential acquisition partners. You’re reading the site already, so imagine the pride of saying, “hey, that’s our name and ad up there.” Contact Lorre, who is motivated by the summer slowdown to offer perks and packages for new signups, and who is likely to offer attractive bundles to startups and former sponsors that rejoin the fold. Thirsty Insta influencers and podcast hosts will perform tricks like an organ grinder’s monkey in desperately seeking views and likes, but we’re talking professional B2B recognition and market influence here.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Data platform and analytics vendor Arcadia acquires CareJourney, which offers claims-sourced provider cost and quality data.

Patient access managed services vendor Hummingbird Healthcare closes a $10 million Series A funding round that was led by UCHealth. CEO Jeremy Schwach was formerly CEO Of Bluetree Network, which was acquired by Tegria in 2019.

The Private Equity Stakeholder Project publishes “The Pillaging of Steward Health Care,” which notes that former owner Cerberus Capital Management generated $1.2 billion by selling off the real estate its hospitals sat on, paid fund investors a $484 million dividend from the proceeds, expanded the chain to become the country’s largest private operator of for-profit hospitals, then dumped the investment with the help of its real estate landlord having made $800 million over its 10-year ownership. The report observes that Steward paid its ownership a $111 million dividend, after which Steward CEO Ralph de la Torre bought a $40 million yacht and the company splurged on two private jets. Meanwhile, Steward missed rent payments, racked up patient safety concerns, laid of employees, closed hospitals, and last month filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy with $9 billion in liabilities, most of it due to the real estate company to which Cerebrus sold the real estate. Terms that were part of new financing require the company to close hospitals that it can’t sell in a bidding process that started this week, as officials in the eight states in which Steward operates hospitals worry about loss of services.

New Jersey-based Atlantic Health System will acquire Saint Peter’s Healthcare System.

Amazon renames its 18-month-old Amazon Clinic to Amazon One Medical Pay-per-visit, which will offer pay-per-visit telehealth – $29 for message-based visits, $49 for video — and a membership program for on-demand virtual care and next-day appointments at One Medical offices.

Sales

• Findhelp announces new SDoH network customers Stanford Children’s Health, Virginia Association of Free & Charitable Clinics, and Connxus.
• Community Health Network will implement Microsoft Azure and Nuance Dragon Medical as it increases its use of DAX Copilot and Dragon Medical One.
• Emergency Services Inc. will implement the recently launched Augmedix Go ED ambient AI for emergency medicine at an unnamed large hospital in central Ohio.

People

Healthcare IT Leaders names Jody Buchman, MBA (Clarivate) as SVP of continuous services and David Unger (MedKick) as VP of EHR and RCM.

Government and Politics

Federal authorities will seize the $8 million Chicago mansion of Outcome Health founder Rishi Shah, one of three former company executives who are facing prison time for fraud involving electronic advertising in waiting rooms.Outcome was valued at $5.5 billion before its collapse, with Shah’s net worth estimated at $3.6 billion. The Outcome name was retired in 2021 with the acquisition of its remains by healthcare digital marketing company PatientPoint. Update: 38-year-old Rishi Shah was sentenced to 7.5 years in prison on Wednesday. Co-founder Shradha Agarwal was sentenced to three years in a halfway house on Thursday.

The VA says that it is so far behind on paying contract provider claims due to Change Healthcare’s ransomware downtime that it won’t catch up until February, a year after the original incident. It also expects that its payments from insurers won’t catch up until October.

Privacy and Security

San Diego’s PBS TV station notes that Palomar Health Medical Group’s phones and computer systems remain down from a May 5 cyberattack. Patients report problems getting paper prescriptions filled and nurses relying on the patient to tell them the doctor’s diagnosis.

Sponsor Updates

• Inovalon publishes a new study, “Race/Ethnicity and Socioeconomic Position in Emergency Department Utilization in Patients with Hepatocellular Carcinoma.”
• FinThrive publishes a new case study, “Lawrence General Hospital Successfully Switches to FinThrive After a Cyberattack.”
• Imperial Beach Community Clinic (CA) adds AI, patient engagement, and AI-powered medical scribe capabilities to its implementation of EClinicalWorks.
• First Databank will share information from RxEOB’s prescription pricing transparency application through its FDB Vela prescribing network.
• Healthcare IT Leaders CMO Alex Gramling joins the United Way of Southern Maine’s board.
• Visage Imaging will showcase new enhancements to its Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform at the SIIM annual meeting in National Harbor, MD this week.
• Children’s National Hospital (Washington, DC) expands its use of Laudio’s AI-enhanced workflow platform to include nurse educators.
• Linus Health leaders publish a new peer-reviewed paper, “Towards a lifelong personalized brain health program: empowering individuals to define, pursue, and monitor meaningful outcomes.”
• Loyal achieves TX-RAMP Level 2 Certification for its Chatbot solution from the Texas Department of Information Resources.

Blog Posts

• Pioneering Business Continuity in Healthcare: FinThrive’s Standby Solutions (FinThrive)
• New Five9 Data: AI in CX – It is not replacing humans (Five9)
• How Mature is Your Healthcare SOC? (Fortified Health Security)
• Rising and Falling Tides: The State of Money Supply and Health IT (Healthcare Growth Partners)
• Practice Managers Finding Effective Solutions to Maintain Smooth Clinical Operations Amidst Staff Shortages (Impact Advisors)
• The Promising Convergence of Payer Strategy and Compliance with the CMS Interoperability and Prior Authorization Final Rule (InterSystems)
• AI & Healthcare Marketing. Are You Ready? (Loyal)
• Tips for participating in CHIME’s Digital Health Most Wired program and survey (Meditech)
• Navigating MIPS Compliance: Tips for Medicare Wound Care Providers (Net Health)

Contacts

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