Monday Morning Update 6/10/24

Top News

An internal VA report finds that less than 20% of its Oracle Health users believe that the system helps them deliver high-quality care and just 13% believe that it helps keep their patients safe.

The survey of 2,000 VA users was conducted in March and April by KLAS, which told VA officials that their scores were the worst they have ever seen.

The Bloomberg article also notes that while Oracle is touting the DoD’s implementation, it fared only slightly better, with 30% of its surveyed users saying that the system helps them deliver high-quality care.

Another VA report says that while it hopes to raise user satisfaction scores to be comparable with those in non-VA hospitals, the $16 billion Oracle Health system – which has gone live in just six VA facilities since its first in October 2020 — may never reach the satisfaction levels of the VA’s homegrown VistA product.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The ratio of poll respondents who have a worsened opinion of Oracle Health compared to those with an improved opinion is 10 to 1.

New poll to your right or here: Do you agree with an Oracle exec’s claim that Epic’s Judy Faulkner is the biggest obstacle to interoperability? EVP Ken Glueck wrote that “everyone in the industry” understands that this is the case, so I’m interested in the poll results and any comments you would care to add. 

I’ll soon announce new sponsors who responded to my suggestion to wangle some freebies out of Lorre during the usual slow summer. She is also reaching out to a few companies that we had to cancel after they went radio silent due to staff changes or other internal disarray. Note: the only thing you can buy from me is a sponsorship — I don’t sell video interviews or sponsored content, although marketing people seem shocked to hear that since many sites do.

Webinars

June 26 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Population Risk Management in Action: Automating Clinical Workflows to Improve Medication Adherence.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst; Weston Blakeslee, PhD, VP of population health, DrFirst. What if you could measure and manage medication adherence in a way that would eliminate the burdens of medication history collection, patient identification, and prioritization? The presenters will describe how to use MedHx PRM’s new capabilities to harness the most complete medication history data on the market, benefit from near real-time medication data delivered within 24 hours, automatically build rosters of eligible patients, and identify gaps of care in seconds.

June 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “Snackable Summer Series, Session 1: The Intelligent Health Record.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. This webinar will describe how HealthVision, HDAI’s Intelligent Health Management System, is transforming care across health systems and value-based care organizations. This 30-minute session will answer the question: what if you could see critical information from hundreds of EHR pages in a one-page patient chart and risk summary that serves the entire care team? We will tour the Spotlight, an easy-to-digest health profile and risk prediction tool. Session 2 will describe HDAI’s Intelligent Analytics solution, while Session 3 will tour HDAI’s Intelligent Workflow solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Waystar raises $968 million in its IPO, which values the company at $3.7 billion. Nasdaq-traded WAY shares opened Friday morning at $21.50 and closed at $20.70. Waystar lost $50 million in each of the past two years.

OHSU will lay off at least 500 of its 21,000 employees. The health system is pursuing an acquisition of Legacy Health, touting its own financial strength and its intention to use $1 billion in bond offerings over 10 years to improve infrastructure.

People

Specialty EHR/PM vendor Nextech hires Rusty Frantz, MS (NextGen Healthcare) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Mount Sinai Health System wins the 2024 Hearst Health Prize for its NutriScan AI application that identifies malnutrition in hospitalized patients by analyzing EHR data.

A McKinsey survey finds that most health system executives see digital transformation as a high, but underfunded, priority. They named virtual health and digital front doors as potentially offering the biggest benefit. Top challenges are the limitations of their legacy systems, lack of budget, and workforce readiness. Satisfaction with digital investments is high, but the self-assessed lack of rollout progress leads McKinsey to question whether they are scaling their digital programs effectively.

Government and Politics

The VA completes its rollout of VA Health Chat in all VISNs, offering VA health services by chat as powered by CirrusMD.

Idaho ends its contract with the Idaho Health Data Exchange, citing its lack of financial transparency and previous bankruptcy. State watchdogs found that the non-profit had spent $94 million, most of it from federal grants, but the state’s creation of it as a private, non-profit corporation allowed it to operate with minimal state oversight.

Privacy and Security

Ascension’s cybersecurity event update indicates that it has restored EHR access to six of its markets and remains on track to complete all of them by June 14. It warns patients that their patient portal may not show medical record data after May 8 – the date its systems went offline – since the information that was collected on paper must now be entered into the EHR.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders staff stock shelves and help shoppers at The Our Neighbors’ Table Market in Amesbury, MA.
• Visage Imaging will exhibit at the Society for Imaging Informatics in Medicine (SIIM 2024) Annual Meeting in National Harbor, MD, June 27-29.
• CereCore publishes the latest edition of its “Partnership Perspectives” digital magazine.
• Wolters Kluwer Health partners with the Black Nurse Collaborative to increase focus on improving advocacy for underrepresented groups in nursing.
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast titled “Interview with Kit Delgado, MD.”
• Redox publishes a new case study, “Ambience Healthcare selects Redox to integrate their AI Operating System – reducing clinician documentation time by 80%.”
• Rhapsody publishes a case study, “OU Health standardizes on Epic & Corepoint Integration Engine amidst M&A activity.”
• RLDatix launches the RLDatix Safety Institute to research safety design and care delivery risk reduction best practices.
• Sectra launches a new diagnostic IT module for genomics within molecular pathology, developed in collaboration with the University of Pennsylvania Health System.
• Surescripts publishes the “QHIN Use Case Guide: 17 Clinical & Business Scenarios.”
• Tegria will present at the International Performance Management Institute Healthcare IT Institute June 10 in Orlando.

Blog Posts

• How to Think About Healthcare Data During AI Integration Planning (CereCore)
• Integrated Care: Uniting Physical and Behavioral Health with One Vision (Netsmart)
• From burnout to balance: The untapped power of medical assistants in healthcare (Nordic)
• How GenAI is Humanizing the Healthcare Employee Experience (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• 4 Best Smartphones for Nurse Communication (PerfectServe)
• Credentialing in Healthcare: Understanding the History, Hurdles, and Opportunities (QGenda)
• Empowering Healthcare IT Leaders in the Tech-Driven Staffing Landscape (Revuud)
• Transforming Specialty Medication Access: Spotlight on Allergy, Oncology, and Dermatology (RxLightning)
• Leadership Spotlight: Meghan Seus, Vice President of Product Management (Sonifi Health)
• How to Address Social Determinants of Health Factors Impacting Patient Payment Experience (TrustCommerce)
• Proof in the Pudding: More Pharmacists are Prescribing (Surescripts)
• Leadership Insights to Inspire Teams & Drive Innovation (Symplr)
• Innovating Rural Healthcare: Insights from the 2024 TruBridge National Customer Conference (TruBridge)
• Breast cancer screenings have been dialed back to age 40; plan ahead to tackle emerging care gaps (Upfront Healthcare)
• Need to improve revenue capture? Start with charge capture + DRG accuracy (Waystar)
• AI and Healthcare Data Interoperability: Opportunities and Challenges Ahead (Zen Healthcare IT)

Contacts

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

News 6/7/24

Top News

Endpoints News reports that Walmart lost $230 million last year alone on its Walmart Health clinics before announcing their closure a few weeks ago. It launched the business in April 2019.

The company had opened just 51 clinics of its planned 1,000; failed in its attempt to pivot from cash-paying customers to value-based care programs with insurers; and attracted only 932 attributed Medicare Advantage patients versus its goal of 9,600.

Former employees say the company underinvested in marketing to the point that even in-store shoppers weren’t aware of the clinics. Two employees say the company will shut down all locations on June 28.

This excellent article was written by Senior Health Tech Reporter Shelby Livingston, MS, who covered healthcare with Modern Healthcare and Business Inside before joining Endpoints News just over a month ago.

Reader Comments

From HIT_Consulting_Insider: “Re: Nordic. I’ve heard they laid off 70 core staff and potentially 300 across their family of brands. A rumor is also circulating that Bon Secours Mercy Health and its VC arm Accrete Health Partners are considering selling the company. I think a lot of the industry would be interested in knowing if either of these are accurate. Thanks for all that you do to provide transparency in the industry.” Reported by multiple readers, who also said that President Don Hodgson, who was announced seven weeks ago as the company’s next CEO to replace the retiring Jim Costanzo, was part of the RIF (the company didn’t confirm this, but his bio has been removed from its executive page). Nordic previously acquired S&P Consultants, Bails, and Healthtech. Accrete is led by Bon Secours Mercy Health CDO Jason Szczuka, JD. A Nordic spokesperson provided this response to my inquiry:

Like many of our health care clients and partners, Nordic is navigating economic challenges and has reassessed its strategic priorities to adapt to ongoing market shifts. Reductions are always a last resort, and after careful examination of our business, we have made the difficult decision to implement a 2% reduction in force. Our recent changes have been due to a variety of standard business activity, including planned retirements and departures to explore new opportunities. Our parent company, Accrete Health Partners, is committed to helping ensure that Nordic is best positioned to be successful for years to come.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m looking for interesting people to interview from outside the vendor world. I enjoy talking to folks who are insightful, articulate, and wryly cynical, with extra points for being a loose cannon who is unmuzzled by employer media policies. It only takes about 20 minutes via a Zoom session. Contact me. Writing this made me ponder how many CEO interviews I’ve done, of which I counted 766.

I’m feeling like a Luddite in admitting that I don’t really know what Apple Pay is or why I should use it instead of those hunks of plastic that live in my well-worn wallet. Remediating that will be my weekend project.

Today’s unrequested mini grammar reminder: use “who” as a relative pronoun only when referring to people (“I have a friend who likes to play golf”) and use “that” when referring to everything else (“I have a dog that is hungry.”) Bonus tip: don’t use “amount” when referring to countable nouns. “The company laid off a large amount of employees” should instead be “a large number of employees.” I don’t criticize incorrect usage, including my own, but I try hard to make it easier to understand me and I correct article submissions before I run them.

Webinars

June 26 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Population Risk Management in Action: Automating Clinical Workflows to Improve Medication Adherence.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst; Weston Blakeslee, PhD, VP of population health, DrFirst. What if you could measure and manage medication adherence in a way that would eliminate the burdens of medication history collection, patient identification, and prioritization? The presenters will describe how to use MedHx PRM’s new capabilities to harness the most complete medication history data on the market, benefit from near real-time medication data delivered within 24 hours, automatically build rosters of eligible patients, and identify gaps of care in seconds.

June 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “Snackable Summer Series, Session 1: The Intelligent Health Record.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. This webinar will describe how HealthVision, HDAI’s Intelligent Health Management System, is transforming care across health systems and value-based care organizations. This 30-minute session will answer the question: what if you could see critical information from hundreds of EHR pages in a one-page patient chart and risk summary that serves the entire care team? We will tour the Spotlight, an easy-to-digest health profile and risk prediction tool. Session 2 will describe HDAI’s Intelligent Analytics solution, while Session 3 will tour HDAI’s Intelligent Workflow solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Executive search firm Direct Recruiters, Inc. acquires Health Innovations, which recruits in the areas of population health, value-based care, and innovation. Radiologist David Gorstein, MD, managing director of Health Innovations, will lead DRI’s population health practice.

Digital stethoscope manufacturer and AI algorithm developer Eko Health raises $41 million in Series D financing, which it will use to expand access to its AI-powered, FDA-approved detection tools for cardiac and pulmonary disease.

Health Catalyst acquires Carevive Systems, which offers cancer treatment support tools for oncology providers and life sciences researchers. The company’s platform offers treatment planning, remote symptom monitoring, post-treatment care, and applied analytics.

Announcements and Implementations

DirectTrust launches an accreditation program for digital health apps, which will use privacy, security, transparency, and interoperability criteria as provided by the Digital Therapeutics Alliance trade association.

Government and Politics

Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) blames HHS for healthcare cyberattacks, saying that it has failed to regulate and oversee the industry. He says in a letter to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra that the health sector shouldn’t be allowed to self-regulate cybersecurity. He wants HHS to:

• Mandate technical cybersecurity standards for systemically important entities (SIEs) such as clearinghouses and large health systems.
• Require SIEs to demonstrate that they can recover quickly from attacks.
• Conduct cybersecurity audits as required by HITECH, including those organizations that haven’t had HHS audits performed.
• Provide cybersecurity technical assistance to providers.

A federal judge rules against FTC’s attempt  to block the $320 million sale of two North Carolina hospitals to Novant Health, ruling that the hospitals would likely close otherwise. North Carolina’s state treasurer had filed a friend-of-the-court brief supporting FTC’s request.

Mobile telehealth carts that were placed in rural New York schools remain unused as the state legislature eliminates funding for school telemedicine programs. One school district was counting on the state’s plan to pay two-thirds of the annual $16,000 operating cost to contract with provider Mobile Primary Care, with the remainder to be covered by billing the insurance of parents. The district had hoped to reduce COVID-skyrocketed absenteeism and to consider offering mental health support.

Privacy and Security

Ascension restores EHR access to its Florida, Alabama, Austin, Tennessee, and Maryland markets and remains on track to complete restoration by the end of next week. A ransomware attack took its systems offline on May 8.

Sponsor Updates

• Pivot Point Consulting sponsors Kootenai Health Foundation’s annual golf tournament.
• Inovalon, Availity, Surescripts, Arcadia, Ellkay, FinThrive, First Databank, Symplr, InterSystems, and Wolters Kluwer Health will exhibit at AHIP 2024 June 11-13 in Las Vegas.
• EClinicalWorks announces that Rocky Mountain Women’s Clinic (ID) and Stone Mountain Health Services (VA) have implemented its Sunoh.ai virtual medical scribe technology.
• First Databank names Grant Ripperda software engineer, Andrea Mitchell data test engineer, and Sean Murphy software test supervisor.
• Five9 US Radiology Specialists shares insights on areas it could automate and what AI means for its organization.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new issue of its “The Optimum Pulse” newsletter.
• Linus Health will sponsor the Alzheimer’s Foundation of America 2024 Educating America Tour stop in Boston on June 12.
• Thomas Medical Centre in Singapore goes live on Meditech Expanse.
• MRO releases a new episode of its MRO Exchange: Connecting Healthcare Executives Podcast, “Healthmap Solutions CIO Bill Moore.”
• NeuroFlow releases a new Bridging the Gap Podcast, “Policy Updates Shaking Up Integrated Care.”

Blog Posts

• Feeling burned out? There’s a tech prescription for that! (EClinicalWorks)
• Partnering to Support Pennsylvania and Give CBOs a Seat at the Table (Findhelp)
• No Surprises Act: Two Years Later, IDR Process Results and How Providers can Prepare for Success (FinThrive)
• Healthcare Cybersecurity Threats: May 2024 (Fortified Health Security)
• Leading Change Through Crisis (Impact Advisors)
• 3 Ways to Increase EMR Testing Speed & Accuracy (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• SNF Regulations: Important Updates for Compliance (Inovalon)
• Really … Billboards? (Lucem Health)
• 5 Ways MedTeam Enhances Contract Management for Healthcare Providers (Medhost)
• A revenue cycle roadmap leads to positive outcomes at Phelps Memorial Health Center (Meditech)
• Panel Discusses the Future of Rehab Therapy Tech at Next Customer Conference (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 6/5/24

Top News

Ascension says in a June 4 cyberattack update that it has restored EHR access in its Florida, Alabama, and Austin markets. It hopes to use that experience to make the EHR available to the entire organization by next Friday, June 14.

The health system adds that its retail pharmacy, home delivery, and specialty pharmacy sites have reopened and can once again receive prescriptions electronically.

Ascension’s systems have been offline for four weeks.

Ascension warns that remediation of its other systems is ongoing and will require time to complete.

Reader Comments

From Janky: “Re: conferences. How do companies justify the ROI of exhibiting? It’s not like every exhibitor goes home with a fistful of hot leads or commitments for on-site follow-up.” I don’t run conferences, but I’ll describe how I position the value of sponsoring my site that goes beyond lead generation or immediate pipeline building.

• Everything a company does, including making sales, happens because someone has heard of them, probably repeatedly. One-shot exposure, regardless of the medium, will rarely be enough to seal a deal.
• Exposure isn’t just to prospects, but also potential partners, acquirers, acquisition targets, investors, executive hires, and consultants who may influence prospects. Most of the sponsors I lose is because a company — very often another of my sponsors –buys them.
• Our industry has quite a few competitive niches with specific audiences, and conferences and sponsorships will probably reach some who are outside traditional marketing channels.
• Prospects often make buying decisions based on an early recommendation by a non-C level employee who tips their boss off to a possible solution to their specific problems. You can’t just cold call C-level employees hoping for magic. Don’t ignore the influence that is wielded by attendees and readers who are at the mid-executive level or who are clinicians.
• It’s impossible to tell which kind of exposure, and to which people, will provide a pathway to success until after the fact.
• My conclusion is that companies that expect dramatic, short-term, easily-measurable ROI from conference participation or being a sponsor will do a one-and-done because they don’t see that result. Those who see it as patiently building a foundation and making industry connections in often intangible ways will end up reaping the benefit over the longer term.

Webinars

June 6 (Thursday) noon ET. “From Data to Decisions: The Vital Combination of AI and Human Expertise in Patient Care.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: David Wetherhold, MD, CMIO of ambulatory systems, Scripps Health; Dana Darger, RPh, director of pharmacy, Monument Health Rapid City Hospital; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. In this Epic Med Management Fireside Chat, two health system leaders will share real-world examples of how AI is working in concert with their clinicians to streamline medication management by populating medication histories into Epic. generating initial drafts of patient conversations, and summarizing complex information. The presenters will also cover the latest developments on the critical and expanding role of pharmacists in patient care.

June 27 (Thursday) noon ET. “Snackable Summer Series, Session 1: The Intelligent Health Record.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. This webinar will describe how HealthVision, HDAI’s Intelligent Health Management System, is transforming care across health systems and value-based care organizations. This 30-minute session will answer the question: what if you could see critical information from hundreds of EHR pages in a one-page patient chart and risk summary that serves the entire care team? We will tour the Spotlight, an easy-to-digest health profile and risk prediction tool. Session 2 will describe HDAI’s Intelligent Analytics solution, while Session 3 will tour HDAI’s Intelligent Workflow solution.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business & Stock

Waste Management will acquire Stericycle for $7.2 billion. Stericycle specializes in medical waste disposal, compliance training, and secure information destruction. It sold off its patient engagement solutions business to Carenet Health in 2022. I remember the Stericycle team always having fun, candy-filled booths during the heyday of HIMSS.

UPMC acquires Washington Health System (PA), which includes two hospitals and 18 practices. Washington Health will presumably move its Veradigm inpatient and EClinicalWorks outpatient EHRs to UPMC’s new Epic system.

Healthcare workflow automation software startup Keragon launches with $3 million in funding. The company specializes in using AI to synchronize patient data across different apps in real time.

Sword Health, which offers AI-powered digital support solutions for issues related to musculoskeletal problems, physical therapy, and pelvic therapy, raises $130 million in financing that increases its valuation to $3 billion. The company also announces a conversational AI tool called Phoenix that conducts natural conversations with patients, provides them with verbal feedback, and summarizes their performance for their clinician.

Sales

• Visage Imaging signs new customers Consulting Radiology, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Nicklaus Children’s Hospital, Moffitt Cancer Center, and US Radiology Specialists.
• WellSpan Health (PA) will enhance primary care delivery with wraparound behavioral healthcare services and technology from Concert Health.
• Johns Hopkins Health Plans launches a multi-payer portal powered by Availity Essentials to help providers manage benefits, claims, and authorizations.

People

Adam Hameed, MBA (GrandPad) joins Glooko as president of connected care.

Baptist Health South Florida promotes Sha Edathumparampil to chief digital and information officer.

Eagle Telemedicine names Kat Thousand, RN, MHA (Envision Healthcare) VP of clinical services.

Sherman Sanchez, MHA (BN Consulting) joins Dina as president.

SSM Health (IL) hires Saad Chaudhry, MPP, MS (Luminis Health) as chief digital officer.

Health Recovery Solutions promotes Jason Comer, JD to CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

A new KLAS report finds that the move to the cloud for image viewing and/or storage is happening quickly, with Visage Imaging and Sectra generating both high customer confidence and market interest. Customer perception of Intelerad’s cloud strategy is mixed, while users of GE HealthCare question its ability to execute. Visage Imaging, Agfa HealthCare, and Sectra top the list in “confidence in vendor’s strategy for imaging in the cloud.” The biggest concerns about moving to the cloud are cost, privacy and security, the bandwidth and infrastructure that are required, and system performance.

Privacy and Security

Several London hospitals declare a critical incident and cancel procedures due to a ransomware attack on pathology services vendor Synnovis. The company is a partnership between Synlab UK and Ireland, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust, and King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust.

A judge rules that CMS inappropriately lowered the 2024 Medicare Advantage star ratings of SCAN Health Plan, which cost the plan hundreds of millions of dollars in reduced federal bonuses. As a result, the government will pay SCAN $250 million, which is likely to encourage other MA plans to seek a recalculation of their bonuses. Experts say that the star system doesn’t accurately reflect quality of care.

Sponsor Updates

• Groups of Availity HR staff work with Challenges Inc. to build and personalize wagons for Nemours Children’s Hospital and Ronald McDonald House Charities.
• Wolters Kluwer Health will offer ConsortiEX’s Assure-Trak IV Workflow Management in its Simplify+ compounding compliance suite.
• Healthcare Growth Partners launches HGP Health IT Momentum Index, which offers a real-time view into health IT M&A, investment value, and valuations.
• Visage Imaging’s Director of Customer Experience Steve Deaton participates in a new video titled “The Imaging Wire Show: Throwing Out the Imaging Playbook with Apple Vision Pro.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new case study titled “EMR Test Management at Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare.”
• Get-to-Market Health founder Steve Shihadeh joins Penn Presbyterian Medical Center’s board of trustees.
• Loyal announces that its consumer health platform is now available on the Oracle Healthcare Marketplace.
• Business Awards UK recognizes Altera Digital Health UK with its IT Product of the Year Award for its Sunrise solution.
• Arcadia publishes a new guide, “3 solutions to master data management.”
• Arrive Health publishes a new whitepaper, “The Crushing Weight of Prior Authorization and What You Can Do About It.”
• AvaSure will integrate CLEW’s advanced clinical surveillance solutions with its virtual care platform.
• Biofourmis will present at the Hospital @ Home Leadership Summit June 5 in Boston.
• Cardamom Health CEO Vivek Swaminathan celebrates the launch of the Wisconsin Investment Fund, a VC initiative that will initially invest $100 million in startups throughout the state.
• Clinical Architecture partners with Ready Computing to offer healthcare organizations an industry-leading solution to consolidate, manage, and improve the quality of clinical data at scale.
• DrFirst announces that its AI-powered SmartRenewal solution earned high ratings from customers in KLAS Research’s latest First Look report.

Black Book announces the 2024 awards for the highest user experience and customer satisfaction in health plan technology and outsourcing, recognizing the following HIStalk sponsors:

• Symplr – end-to-end provider data management and credentialing solutions.
• Inovalon – payer cloud platform.
• Surescripts – payer member safety, PBM, and pharmacy solutions.
• Availity – clearinghouse alternative solutions.

Blog Posts

• MIPS Improvement Activities: What qualifies as a high-weight activity? (AdvancedMD)
• Agfa HealthCare: Leading the Way in Healthcare Innovation at SIIM 2024 (Agfa HealthCare)
• Building Your Digital Workforce: Launching and Sustaining Your Intelligent Automation Journey (AGS Health)
• Budget-friendly ways to improve your cybersecurity (Altera Digital Health)
• What you should know about SDoH and SOGI, the data sources shaping health equity (Arcadia)
• The Impact of Prior Authorizations on Patient Care (Availity)
• Managed Services: A Scalable Solution for Community Connect Support (Cardamom Health)
• Burnout Buster: Prioritizing the “People Piece” During an EHR Replacement (CereCore)
• Capture More Revenue and Save Resources with Artera’s New Intake and Payments Solution (Artera)
• Compliance Matters: User Access Monitoring – 5 Things You May Not Be Thinking About (Clearwater)
• Cybersecurity in Healthcare: Why Response and Recovery Matter (Divurgent)

Sponsor Spotlight

Revuud has launched a new AI matching functionality designed to revolutionize talent acquisition. This advanced matching algorithm swiftly sifts through talent profiles, pinpointing candidates whose skills, experiences, and preferences perfectly align with job requirements. By leveraging continuous learning from user interactions, feedback, and successful matches, the system refines its capabilities over time, delivering increasingly accurate and relevant results. This innovation promises significant time savings, expediting the hiring process by rapidly identifying the most suitable candidates.

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 6/3/24

Top News

HHS OCR updates its cybersecurity FAQ to include the Change Healthcare cyberattack:

• Nobody has issued the breach notification that was due April 21, 60 days from when the incident occurred.
• Covered entities should contact Change Healthcare if they expect the company to issue the mandatory breach notification to affected patients on their behalf.
• Providers don’t have to issue a breach notification as long Change agrees to do so.
• All parties are responsible for ensuring that affected patients are notified.
• OCR’s interest in the business associates of the companies, including providers, is secondary.
• Determining if a ransomware attack is a HIPAA breach involves whether the attack caused PHI to be encrypted and the likelihood that the PHI is identifiable or capable of being re-identified and whether the data was actually acquired or used.

Reader Comments

From Orator: “Re: Oracle. Does the company believe that sarcastic, confrontational pieces like Ken Glueck’s blog post panning the BI article will draw healthcare admiration or improve sales?” Larry Ellison is widely recognized as Silicon Valley’s biggest bully, and one might expect his underlings to share that trait. I don’t think that this type of argumentative swagger has ever worked in healthcare, although ironically Cerner’s Neal Patterson was probably the best example before Larry bought his former company, and even Neal learned that macho personal attacks on Epic and Judy Faulkner just made Cerner look worse. Our industry respects corporate drive, but only when it is backed by some level of humility and empathy for the patients and employees of mostly non-profit health systems. Ken didn’t help the cause of the obviously butthurt Oracle by launching a public peeing match against a minimally influential website, although he’s done it before. Far better would have been a professional, factual, accomplish-centered response from David Feinberg, who at least carries healthcare credibility and holds the title of “chairman of Oracle Health,” even though it seems to be a ceremonial role of glad-handing and selfie-snapping while while the real puppet masters are Oracle’s EVPs.

Just in case any other health IT executives are considering providing their angry hot take on negative reporting about the company, I’ll offer this:

• Don’t give a negative story legs by mentioning it, unless most of the industry is buzzing about it and demands a response.
• Focus on the unemotional correction of misinformation.
• Acknowledge any claimed issues that are factual and commit to resolving them.
• Consult the employees who are the most knowledgeable to identify the article’s errors and the validity of the company’s planned response.
• Keep the tone professional and constructive since the company will be judged on it. Have a communications expert review and offer suggestions.
• Don’t take shots at competitors, or even better, don’t even acknowledge that they exist unless they are the focus of the article.
• Attribute the article to the executive who has the best credentials or highest recognition among the article’s audience.
• Consider the article’s sources and examine whether a company disconnect exists caused them to convey erroneous or negative information.
• Invite dialog and offer to continue the discussion.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

It’s close to an even split among poll respondents about the federal government paying for the development of health system cybersecurity tools. Commenters expressed these supporting thoughts: the federal government needs to protect patient information because healthcare organizations aren’t doing it well and someone needs to do something drastic before a bad actor takes the entire health system down. Counterpoints: the feds should encourage / require health systems to effectively using existing security technologies and the government should not spend taxpayer money just because health systems haven’t.

New poll to your right or here: How has your opinion about Oracle Health changed in the past 12 months?

HIStalk turns 21 this week, started by me in 2003 as a hobby that would keep me current on the industry for my health system IT executive job. The time has flown by and filling the blank screen energizes me every single day. I’m thrilled to have readers and sponsors, but my selfish motivation has always been my own satisfaction, although it’s gratifying that influential readers make decisions based on what they read here.

Webinars

June 6 (Thursday) noon ET. “From Data to Decisions: The Vital Combination of AI and Human Expertise in Patient Care.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: David Wetherhold, MD, CMIO of ambulatory systems, Scripps Health; Dana Darger, RPh, director of pharmacy, Monument Health Rapid City Hospital; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. In this Epic Med Management Fireside Chat, two health system leaders will share real-world examples of how AI is working in concert with their clinicians to streamline medication management by populating medication histories into Epic. generating initial drafts of patient conversations, and summarizing complex information. The presenters will also cover the latest developments on the critical and expanding role of pharmacists in patient care.

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

Other

Attorneys for a woman whose baby died during childbirth at Springhill Medical Center (AL) during a 2019 cyberattack ask the judge in her negligence lawsuit to force the hospital pay the settlement that they previously agreed to. The lawsuit claims that the ransomware attack took down the fetal monitoring system that should have alerted nurses to call the OB-GYN, who has said that she would have performed a C-section had she known that the baby’s umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. The hospital said that the doctor had the responsibility to notify the patient. The lawsuit is believed to be the first in which a patient’s death was attributed to ransomware.

Contacts

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

News 5/31/24

Top News

Waystar targets a valuation of nearly $4 billion in its upcoming IPO.

The company, which was formed in early 2018 by the merger of Navicure and ZirMed, was valued at $2.7 billion in a 2019 investment.

Reader Comments

From Mandible: “Re: Oracle Health. The Business Insider article struck a nerve. The company’s blog post exposes a lot of anger. It also takes a shot at Epic for their lack of commitment to interoperability.” The Oracle response is a textbook example of why companies should take a breath and get PR help before lashing out in righteous indignation, not to mention that they should follow Mark Twain’s advice to “never pick a fight with people who buy ink by the barrel.” Oracle’s blog post was penned by EVP Ken Glueck, whose background is politics and lobbying (EVP Mike Sicilia, who has gone radio silent for months, was also a company lobbyist, and neither have any healthcare experience). I’ll summarize the post further down the page. Business Insider is likely delighted that the company is giving it free publicity and probably a ton of inbound clicks for a marginally informative piece. This isn’t Ken’s first journalism rodeo – he used Oracle’s blog to go nuclear on The Intercept when it reported that Oracle was marketing its analytics software to police in dissent-suppressing countries and then doxxed the reporter (and had his Twitter account suspended for doing so) and urged followers to send him dirt about her. Click the graphic above to enlarge the archived copy before the reference was expunged. Unrelated: despite being in such a high-ranking position, Ken’s photo appears basically nowhere on the Internet and he doesn’t include it in his X and LinkedIn profiles, so I can’t include his headshot.

From Jeepers: “Re: Oracle Health. Oracle stockholders should be livid that objective due diligence was not performed before buying Cerner. Larry Ellison wanted it and all his yes men said yes. The board and maybe even the SEC has a case for dereliction of duties or similar charge.” The comment quoted in the Business Insider article came from the Senate testimony of Oracle EVP Mike Sicilia: “I would say there’s always things that you discover after the fact. You know, we certainly had read the press, and we certainly had read things that were publicly disclosed. But there’s nothing like owning something to fully understand what’s going on.” It should be noted that Sicilia was referring to the VA project specifically, not the entirety of the Cerner acquisition.

Webinars

June 6 (Thursday) noon ET. “From Data to Decisions: The Vital Combination of AI and Human Expertise in Patient Care.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: David Wetherhold, MD, CMIO of ambulatory systems, Scripps Health; Dana Darger, RPh, director of pharmacy, Monument Health Rapid City Hospital; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. In this Epic Med Management Fireside Chat, two health system leaders will share real-world examples of how AI is working in concert with their clinicians to streamline medication management by populating medication histories into Epic. generating initial drafts of patient conversations, and summarizing complex information. The presenters will also cover the latest developments on the critical and expanding role of pharmacists in patient care.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Dollar General ends its parking lot clinic program that it launched with DocGo less than 18 months ago as part of its DG | Wellbeing brand.

Virtual Therapeutics, which offers game-based mental health apps, will acquire game-based cognitive treatment vendor Akili for $34 million in cash. Akili went public via a SPAC merger in August 2022 at a $1 billion valuation and saw its shares lose 70% of their value in the first week of trading. They are now down 97%.

Pharmacy workflow automation vendor Plenful raises $17 million in a Series A funding round.

IMO, aka Intelligent Medical Objects, renames itself to IMO Health.

Cardamom Health will receive funding from the newly launched Wisconsin Investment Fund.

Oracle EVP Ken Glueck lashes out at Business Insider and its “Oracle deadly gamble” article (he dismisses it as “clickbait”) that questions its VA performance and the state of the former Cerner business in general. Summary:

• The article recycles old news, anonymous quotes, and its own piece from two years ago while omitting Oracle’s response, which he says is “your typical Business Insider preconceived ‘expose’’.”
• The Cerner system has improved since BI’s July 2022 piece. Oracle fixed the “unknown queue” problem in 2022 just 10 days after it was reported.
• DoD implemented the Cerner system successfully and it has gone live at the jointly operated Lovell Federal Health Care Center, the first go-live since Oracle acquired Cerner.
• Glueck cites a 2020 BI article about Epic that he calls a “puff piece” that contains “Epic misinformation.”
• He calls Epic CEO Judy Faulkner “the single biggest obstacle to EHR interoperability” and says that Epic’s contracts give the company ownership of patient data in “stretching HIPAA beyond recognition.”
• He says the same issues that caused other industry outsiders to fail in healthcare will cause Epic to fail and Oracle to succeed.

People

Augmedix hires Alex Stinard, MD (HCA) as chief clinical AI officer.

Phillip LaJoie (Qbase) joins the Defense Health Agency as COO of the market technology integration office.

DirectTrust’s Interoperable Secure Cloud Fax Consensus Body elects Jeffrey Sullivan, MS (Consensus Cloud Solutions) as chairperson.

Announcements and Implementations

Medicare Advantage insurer Clover Health will offer its Clover Assistant clinical decision support tool for sale to payers and providers. The company went public in a SPAC merger in January 2021 at a $7 billion valuation, now at $553 million.

Ascension says in a May 29 cybersecurity event update that it has restored EHR access in one of its markets.

UCSF and UCSF Health receive a $5 million charitable donation to develop a system that will monitor the performance of AI tools in real time for efficacy, safety, and equity.

Black Book ranks Veradigm’s Payerpath as the #1 overall provider of claims and clearinghouse platform solutions for small medical practices.

Government and Politics

HHS taps national coordinator for health IT Micky Tripathi, PhD, MPP as acting chief artificial intelligence officer while it searches for a permanent replacement. He will also continue in his national coordinator role.

Other

In England, BBC News investigates claims of a cover-up involving problems with NHS’s electronic patient record systems, which it says have been linked to three deaths, have left 200,000 medical letters unsent, and have caused payment problems in half of the trusts. The coroner who reviewed one of the deaths specifically called out its Cerner / Oracle Health system for not clearly indicating the level of acuity of ED patients as did the system it replaced.

Ukraine-connected digital health vendor BeKey runs a crowd-funding campaign for its rollout of YODD (Your Online Doctor Diagnostics), a telehealth device for homes. The company will donate devices to people in Ukraine and volunteers with Doctors4UA. Supporters will receive one of the devices later this year.

Contacts

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

News 5/29/24

Top News

Veradigm will seek strategic alternatives for the company, which could include its sale.

The company has named President and Chief Commercial Officer Tom Langan as interim CEO, starting June 7. He will replace interim CEO Yin Ho, MD, MBA, who will leave the company and resign from its board now that her term of service has expired.

Veradigm dismissed CEO Richard Poulton and CFO Leah Jones in December 2023 as the company struggled to address overdue financial reports that threatened its stock listing.

MDRX shares are down 37% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $812 million. They closed up 16% Tuesday on the news.

Veradigm acquired AI company ScienceIO in March 2024 for $140 million in cash.

SEC filings indicate that Veradigm’s board has approved stock awards of $1 million to $3 million for each of its top four officers, with accelerated vesting following a change of control.

Reader Comments

From Bombast: “Re: Ascension outages. My elderly mother, who is being treated at a Florida Ascension facility, found that the results of her CT scan can’t be shared digitally with her care team. That leaves her anxiously waiting to see if she really has a suspected blood clot near her heart, and if so, how her respective providers plan to treat it. ARPA-H’s UPGRADE effort is too little, too late.” Media sites are offering superficial coverage of Ascension hospital wait times, ambulance diversions, and patient inconvenience that are driven by its downtime, which is at 21 days and counting. Soothing corporate reassurances aside, you can bet that it’s chaos and patient harm in the uncarpeted areas of its hospitals. Health systems always justify their gazillion-dollar implementation of Epic or Cerner by touting its patient care benefit, but when that system goes offline for an extended period, they always claim that patient care is unchanged.

From Benevolence: “Re: the Business Insider article on Oracle Health. Living in KC, this felt like a giant pile-on to current and former Cernerites, deserved or not. Morale is already pretty low after rounds of layoffs and bad press.” The article was a mishmash in trying to tie together previous incursions of Big Business into healthcare IT, the VA’s stalled rollout of Oracle Health, and the legacy Cerner problems that Oracle claims that its pre-acquisition due diligence didn’t uncover. I didn’t see much new or insightful in the article other than some quotes from insiders. Oracle Health should be more worried that the industry learned nearly simultaneously – via a KLAS report that went live three days before the Business Insider article – that it lost 71 hospitals and 15,000 beds in 2023 while Epic gained 153 and 29,000, respectively. My takeaways: (a) the bandwagon effect, if nothing else, will send more Cerner clients into the arms of Epic; and (b) Oracle is already griping about low Cerner margins that are likely to worsen as customer count drops. Larry Ellison’s plans to use customer data for medical advancement won’t fly if health systems walk that data over to Epic. The article’s focus was on the VA, which is a bit harsh to Oracle Health since the VA has a long history of botching technology implementations via the disconnect between its officials who see the need for change versus civil service employees who are threatened by it. My conclusion is that the former Cerner business continues to be a nagging distraction to the otherwise surging Oracle except in Larry Ellison’s mind, and if he loses interest or dies in the saddle, a fire sale seems inevitable. Meanwhile, Oracle’s next earnings report is due June 18.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Two-thirds of poll respondents who hold certification or fellowship credentials don’t list them on their business cards or email signatures.

New poll to your right or here: Should the federal government fund the development of cybersecurity tools for health systems? Argument for: it’s arguably critical national infrastructure. Argument against: health systems are private businesses that are raking in huge profits that could fund their own security instead of waiting for taxpayers to foot the bill.

Webinars

June 6 (Thursday) noon ET. “From Data to Decisions: The Vital Combination of AI and Human Expertise in Patient Care.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: David Wetherhold, MD, CMIO of ambulatory systems, Scripps Health; Dana Darger, RPh, director of pharmacy, Monument Health Rapid City Hospital; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. In this Epic Med Management Fireside Chat, two health system leaders will share real-world examples of how AI is working in concert with their clinicians to streamline medication management by populating medication histories into Epic. generating initial drafts of patient conversations, and summarizing complex information. The presenters will also cover the latest developments on the critical and expanding role of pharmacists in patient care.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CVS Health is reportedly looking for a private equity partner to provide capital to expand its primary care chain Oak Street Health, which it acquired for $10 billion last year.

Sales

• Community Action Association of Pennsylvania will use Findhelp’s closed loop referral platform and network to develop PA Navigate, a statewide community information network that will connect people with community services.

Announcements and Implementations

Waystar says that tests of its Google Cloud-powered AI solutions show that the time that is needed needed to generate procedure pre-authorization was reduced by 99.9% by extracting requirements from payer datasets.

Government and Politics

The VA announces the winners of its AI Tech Sprint, which had use case categories of ambient dictation and outside medical record summarization:

• Ambient dictation – Nuance, Abridge, Knowtex, Althea Health, and TranscribeMD.
• Outside medical record summarization: Palantir, Althea Health, Abstractive Health, Commure, and TranscribeMD.

Privacy and Security

Ascension’s most recent cybersecurity event update from May 24 says that it hopes that patients and clinicians “will see progress across our points of care” this week. It adds that vendors and partners are reconnecting to its network.

Other

“South Park” brilliantly skewers the US healthcare system in a widely shared clip from its “The End of Obesity” episode, in which Cartman’s insurer refuses to cover Ozempic. It includes typewriters, fax machines, paper forms on clipboards, and line printers churning perforated paper. The insurance company’s refusal to pay is summarized as, “The medical director’s job is just to say no.” 

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD supports The Family Institute at Northwestern University during its Gratitude Gala fundraiser benefiting the Bette D. Harris Clinic.
• EClinicalWorks customer Rocky Mountain Women’s Clinic reports its integration of AI medical scribe software Sunoh.ai has helped its clinicians save at least two hours a day on clinical documentation.
• Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Diana Anderson, MD.”
• TruBridge earns “Peer Reviewed by HFMA” designation for its medical coding services, the company’s third solution to earn the honor.
• Mayo Clinic expands its partnership with QGenda and will implement QGenda Advanced Scheduling and On-Call for its clinicians at all campuses.
• RLDatix launches the RLDatix Safety Institute, an approved Patient Safety Organization that will research safety design and care delivery risk reduction best practices.
• Sectra publishes a new whitepaper, “Navigating the challenges of radiography – from student attrition to workforce shortages.”
• Symplr is a proud sponsor of the Children of Fallen Patriots Foundation.
• Tegria will sponsor the 2024 Cognizant Health Sciences Conference June 10-13 in Orlando.
• Verato will exhibit at the CSTE Annual Conference June 10-12 in Pittsburgh.
• CereCore publishes a new edition of its magazine, “Partnership Perspectives.”

Blog Posts

• How to Think About Healthcare Data During AI Integration Planning (CereCore)
• Organizational Change Management Challenges (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• How to Prep Your Medical Practice for the Holidays (PerfectServe)
• Your Next Innovation Opportunity: Disrupting the Status Quo in Specialty Pharmacy (RxLightning)
• 4 healthcare data challenges and their impacts (Spok)
• AI & Healthcare: Let’s Keep the Human in the Loop (Surescripts)
• How to Enhance Your Clinical Communications Improvement Project (Symplr)
• How AI is Revolutionizing RCM Analytics (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

News 5/24/24

Top News

HHS/NIH’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H) offers up to $50 million to fund development of technology that can secure hospital IT environments.

The system, which it calls UPGRADE, will scan hospital computer systems for vulnerabilities and weaknesses and automatically apply patches as needed.

ARPA-H says that achieving its goals will likely require the formation of teams with different kinds of technical expertise. A virtual Proposers’ Day webcast will be held on June 20.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor RLDatix. Every day around the world, thousands of patients are harmed by care delivery errors, many of which are preventable. We want to change that. RLDatix is on a mission to improve healthcare by enabling a world where patients receive the best and safest care possible. Trusted by thousands of clients around the world, our connected healthcare operations platform combines software and trusted services to empower organizations with critical data insights across risk, safety, compliance, provider lifecycle, and workforce management. Our user-centric approach provides a holistic, real-time view of healthcare operations, connecting disparate information across the enterprise, thus giving organizational leadership the contextualized data they need to make better-informed decisions. Thanks to RLDatix for supporting HIStalk.

It’s Summer Doldrums ‘round these parts, where the industry takes a collective hammock nap until Labor Day and we do a PBS-like sponsor pledge drive. Do you need website traffic, exposure to potential business or M&A partners, or to stay top of mind with prospects? You read HIStalk and so do many of the industry’s decision-makers. Contact Lorre, Jenn, or me about sponsorship spiffs for:

• Former sponsors who return to the fold.
• Startups.
• Webinar promotion (Lorre does BOGO in the slow months).
• Email promotion.

Today I learned that the nine-question PHQ-9 paper form that primary care doctors use to screen patients for depression was developed by a drug company to increase sales of its antidepressants. The marketing team of drug maker Pfizer designed the form to overcome the reluctance of PCPs to prescribe antidepressants such as Pfizer’s own Zoloft. Such drugs were previously ordered almost entirely by psychiatrists who weren’t likely to generate big sales volumes. The form was never intended to be anything more than a conversation-starter between doctor and patient, but overloaded PCPs often use it as a standalone tool.

Check out what some HIStalk sponsors have in store for the 2024 Muse Inspire Conference next week in the Denver area.

I was amused that EHR vendor Fusion Health announced a sale to Illinois Department of Corrections, a target market that the company calls “movement-restricted communities.” They might have made up that term since I don’t see it used elsewhere.

Webinars

June 6 (Thursday) noon ET. “From Data to Decisions: The Vital Combination of AI and Human Expertise in Patient Care.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: David Wetherhold, MD, CMIO of ambulatory systems, Scripps Health; Dana Darger, RPh, director of pharmacy, Monument Health Rapid City Hospital; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. In this Epic Med Management Fireside Chat, two health system leaders will share real-world examples of how AI is working in concert with their clinicians to streamline medication management by populating medication histories into Epic. generating initial drafts of patient conversations, and summarizing complex information. The presenters will also cover the latest developments on the critical and expanding role of pharmacists in patient care.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Vancouver-based  technology-based workplace health solution provider CloudMD will be taken private by a private equity firm as it struggles with liquidity following several acquisitions and its failure to file a Q4 earnings report. DOC.V shares are at $0.045, valuing the company at $14 million.

Twin Health, which uses a digital twin AI platform to help members achieve remission from type 2 diabetes, expands into the obesity market with a program that focuses on sustainable weight loss that complements the use of GLP-1 drugs.

Real-world data and evidence platform vendor Atropos Health raises $33 million in a Series B funding round. The company was founded in 2019 by three Stanford University PhDs as the Green Button research project.

People

Ellkay hires Nicholas Szymanski, MBA (Signature Healthcare) as COO.

Industry long-timer Terri Steinberg, MD, MBA (Medecision) retires.

Cynthia Porter, MBA retires after 34 years as CEO of Porter Research.

Announcements and Implementations

Ontario-based Halton Healthcare joins Project AMPLIFI, care coordination program that connects long-term care facilities and Meditech hospitals to allow sharing patient medical histories.

Microsoft announces GigaPath, a whole-slide foundation model for digital pathology that it developed with Providence and University of Washington.

Redox will partner with Snowflake to facilitate data exchange between legacy healthcare systems and Snowflake’s Healthcare & Life Sciences Cloud.

Government and Politics

The Irish government publishes “Digital for Care: A Digital Health Framework for Ireland 2024-203.”

ONC reports that 70% of hospitals engaged in all four domains of interoperability (send, receive, find, and integrate) in 2023, up from 46% in 2018. Other tidbits:

• The percentage of hospitals that routinely engage in that exchange rose from 28% to 43%, with a much higher percentage among system-affiliated hospitals.
• While 71% of hospitals have electronic access to clinical data from other providers, only 42% of clinicians regularly use that information.
• Most hospitals aren’t sending summary of care documents to external hospitals or ambulatory care providers.
• While 17% of hospitals send information to long-term, post-acute care providers, only 8% receive information back from them.
• ONC concludes that the interoperability bar needs to be raised to focus on routine exchange of information.

Sponsor Updates

• In Kansas, Blue Valley School District honors Netsmart COO Tom Herzog with its Friends of Education Award.
• DrFirst announces the winners of its 2024 Healthiverse Heroes Awards.
• Meditech’s Traverse Exchange Canada connects its first pilot organization, Champlain Association of Meditech Partners, to Oracle’s e-Hub.
• The Association for Community Affiliated Plans names First Databank a preferred vendor.
• FinThrive releases a new Healthcare Rethink Podcast, “Got a Healthcare IT Renovation Project? We have a DIY Book for you!”
• Five9 will present at three upcoming investor conferences.
• MRO launches a new podcast, “The MRO Exchange: Connecting Healthcare Executives,” with healthcare quality reporting as its first topic.
• Fortified Health Security welcomes Alex Callahan as its summer accounting intern.
• Healthcare Growth Partners releases the May edition of “HGP Observations.”
• Konza National Network announces that Family Health Center (MS) has joined its QHIN.
• MRO launches a podcast, “The MRO Exchange: Connecting Healthcare Executives.”
• NeuroFlow develops a suicide risk calculator to help healthcare leaders understand the risk in their patient populations.

The following HIStalk sponsors will exhibit at the MUSE Inspire Conference May 28-31 in Denver – CereCore, CloudWave, Consensus Cloud Solutions, Dimensional Insight, DrFirst, Ellkay, Elsevier, FinThrive, First Databank, Meditech, Nuance, Tegria, TruBridge, Vyne Medical, and Waystar.

Blog Posts

• Navigating the HTI-1 Final Rule with Transparent and Reliable Clinical Decision Support (Medicomp Systems)
• Navigating CMS Updates: Adapting to Evolving Healthcare Machine-Readable File Regulations (FinThrive)
• Support Maternal Health by Addressing Social Determinants of Health (Findhelp)
• Hospital Staffing in Summertime (Impact Advisors)
• Gene Scheurer: Beyond the Buzzword: Practical Digital Transformation Strategies For Health Systems (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• AAPACN 2024: Hot Topics for Skilled Nursing Facilities (Inovalon)
• AFib Management: The Latest Innovations in Screening, Treatment, and Stroke Prevention (Lucem Health)
• 3 Ways to Get Quick Returns from Your Hospital Revenue Cycle (Medhost)
• Southern Ohio Medical Center battles the opioid crisis and drives change in their community (Meditech)
• Is Physical Therapy Necessary After Hip Replacement? (Net Health)

Contacts

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

HIStalk’s Guide to MUSE Inspire 2024

CereCore

Booth 417

Contact: Jillian Whitefield, business development manager
jillian.whitefield@cerecore.net
248.891.5557

We get it. You need more from your EHR. Discover our full lineup of sessions and resources that can help you. Go beyond the basics by attending one of our seven educational sessions covering Expanse workflows, digital scheduling, charge reconciliation, rules-driven order screens, and much more. Moving to Expanse? Find guides and how we saved a hospital $115k in build costs with automation. Need a roadmap to the most productive optimization projects? Request a MEDITECH assessment and gain insight on immediate functionality and revenue cycle opportunities. Evaluating MEDITECH hosting and backup? The “Buyer’s Guide to MEDITECH Hosting” helps you compare the options. Need to streamline manual processes? Check out rules and worklists and our downloadable starter pack. Find CereCore MUSE 2024 session times, resources, or schedule a meeting here.

Healthtech

Booth 218

Contact: Steve McDonald, MEDITECH practice lead
stephen.mcdonald@nordicglobal.com
617.777.3822

Healthtech, a Nordic Global Company, is thankful and proud of our 40+ year journey helping MEDITECH customers achieve their healthcare IT objectives while enhancing patient care and optimizing their performance. Our experience with MEDITECH clients has extended across the U.S., Canada, and Europe. By leveraging our deep clinical and operational knowledge, global reach, and the full suite of offerings from Nordic, our MEDITECH clients are achieving success at an exceptional rate. Some of our key offerings include: MEDITECH Expanse implementation with embedded performance improvement; MEDITECH MAAS implementation, training, and maintenance support; total cost of ownership comparisons and full planning engagements; complete managed services for MEDITECH – support and maintenance of all applications; legacy system support and maintenance; revenue cycle optimization; and digital health.

Nordic’s extensive knowledge of the patient experience and the healthcare ecosystem enables us to identify and deliver measurable outcomes for healthcare organizations. From initial assessment through design and implementation of customized solutions, we listen to understand strategic priorities and operational and technology needs. Clients turn to us again and again, because we share industry best practices and put partnership and collaboration first, all to improve quality of care and financial sustainability. Please visit us at Booth #218

DrFirst

Booth 313

Contact: Erin Lease Hall, senior manager, events marketing
eleasehall@drfirst.com
216.650.7687

Since 2008, we have provided MEDITECH with innovative EHR enhancements, DrFirst’s e-prescribing and medication history are integrated with MEDITECH, giving clinicians access to best-in-class solutions. Adding SmartSig technology to safely translate and infer medication history data can streamline medication reconciliation by up to 50%. Other integrations that support e-prescribing include price transparency, electronic prior authorization, and controlled substance modules.

Don’t miss Ii: Wednesday, May 29, 2024, 2:20 PM MST. Ben G. Long, MD, and Brooke Brown, RN, Magnolia Regional Health Center. Congestive heart failure (CHF) is a significant burden on patients and health systems nationwide. Hear how Magnolia Regional Health Center’s Nurse Navigator program reduced prescription gaps in standard medication treatment for CHF and improved medication adherence using digital tools, clinical documentation, and report writing in MEDITECH Expanse.

Vyne Medical

Booth 228

Contact: Meg Michael, chief client officer
meg.michael@vynecorp.com
336 254.2951

Is your health system struggling under the weight of a heavy administrative burden? Vyne Medical solutions can help. Trusted nationwide as a leading healthcare workflow tool for 25+ years, our software functions as a suite of products that can be customized to meet a health system’s unique processes and needs. By harnessing automation to complete the front-end’s mundane, manual tasks like capturing, managing, and exchanging disparate data, our software integrates with your EMR system to automatically index captured data directly to the patient record, providing significant time and money savings. Vyne Medical’s newest innovative tool, FormUSign Powered by Docubee, is digitizing and automating traditional form management in healthcare. By facilitating the creation of a reusable template that can be easily shared among multiple users, FormUSign allows users to choose specific fields for automatic population. Visit booth 228 to schedule a product demo or to learn more about our healthcare-specific solutions, plus get a preview of other exciting upcoming products.

News 5/22/24

Top News

A Business Insider piece titled “Oracle’s deadly gamble” says that Oracle’s Larry Ellison had a vision that acquiring Cerner and then applying Oracle’s AI models to its data would create the EHR of the future, but found out afterward that “Cerner was a total mess.”

Points from the piece:

• Cerner was receptive to the acquisition when approached in 2021 because problems with its architecture and software were piling up.
• Oracle took a black eye when care lapses and deaths in the VA system were attributed to the Cerner system. One Oracle executive describes the VA contract as a “shackle” that distracts Ellison from his grander vision.
• Oracle has stopped taking customization requests from the VA because every facility wanted the system to work exactly their way, which was a luxury they had with the VA’s custom-written VistA. VA officials hoped to force standardization by implementing Cerner.
• Company executives admit that much of the client dissatisfaction was created when Oracle laid off experienced Cerner resources.
• The article notes that Ellison’s big bet on applying AI to Cerner’s patient data is losing value as clients and their data move to Epic, including flagship accounts such as Intermountain and UPMC.
• Providence’s chief strategy and digital offer says that people perceive that “Cerner is circling the drain.”

Webinars

June 6 (Thursday) noon ET. “From Data to Decisions: The Vital Combination of AI and Human Expertise in Patient Care.” Sponsor: DrFirst. Presenters: David Wetherhold, MD, CMIO of ambulatory systems, Scripps Health; Dana Darger, RPh, director of pharmacy, Monument Health Rapid City Hospital; Colin Banas, MD, MHA, chief medical officer, DrFirst. In this Epic Med Management Fireside Chat, two health system leaders will share real-world examples of how AI is working in concert with their clinicians to streamline medication management by populating medication histories into Epic. generating initial drafts of patient conversations, and summarizing complex information. The presenters will also cover the latest developments on the critical and expanding role of pharmacists in patient care.

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

Sales

• St. Vincent’s Private Hospital in Ireland will implement Agfa HealthCare’s enterprise imaging software.
• Children’s Nebraska selects remote patient monitoring technology from Locus Health.
• Great Western Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Royal United Hospitals Bath NHS Foundation Trust, and Salisbury NHS Foundation Trust in England will roll out a shared Oracle Health system in 2026.
• Centra (VA) will enhance its stroke care with Sevaro’s OneCall telemedicine service.
• WakeMed Health & Hospitals will implement Regard’s automated clinical data review and insights software across its three hospitals in North Carolina.
• University Hospitals (OH) selects insulin management software from Glytec.
• Beacon Health System will implement Notable’s AI platform to reach out to patients who have had diagnostic procedures and tests ordered and then allow them to schedule their appointments digitally.

People

CareCloud promotes Crystal Williams to COO.

Apprio hires Srinivasan Krishnan, MS (Greenway Health) as CTO.

Announcements and Implementations

St. Luke’s Mid America Heart Institute (MO) implements Story Health’s virtual and asynchronous care program for AFib patients.

WellStar Health (GA) co-develops and pilots patient check-in software that incorporates Clear Verification technology.

Privacy and Security

Ascension’s May 21 update contains no new information about the restoration of their systems from a May 8 cyberattack.

The American Medical Association, state medical societies, CHIME, and AHIMA ask HHS to confirm that Change Healthcare and UnitedHealth Group, not providers, will be responsible for HIPAA breach notifications related to their cyberattack.

Sponsor Updates

• Impact Advisors donates $10,000 to the Midwest Health Foundation in support of its UChicago Medicine AdventHealth GlenOaks School and Transition Program.
• AvaSure announces the winners of its 2023 AvaPrize Winners for Virtual Care Excellence.
• Clinical Architecture sponsors the AMIA 2024 Clinical Informatics Conference May 21-23 in Minneapolis.
• Nordic publishes a new episode of its “In Network” podcast titled “Designing for Health: Interview with Diana Anderson, MD.”
• Divurgent will present at the E-Health Conference and Tradeshow May 27 in Vancouver.
• Ellkay wins a KLAS Points of Light Award for its collaborative work on closing care gaps for HEDIS measures through natural language processing.

Blog Posts

• Leading Through Change in Healthcare Technology Management (CereCore)
• MDC 23: Breaking Down the Coding and Documentation Complexities (AGS Health)
• Nurses and the importance of clinical communication in the age of technology (Altera Digital Health)
• The role of generative AI in transforming patient care (Arcadia)
• Bringing Platform Trials Closer to Reality by Enabling with Digital Research Environment (DRE) Connectivity (Aridhia Informatics)
• Organizational Change Management Challenges (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Navigating Healthcare Governance: Establish a Patient Communications Governance Committee (Artera)
• Ascension: What We Know & What You Can Do Now (Clearwater)
• The Impact of Artificial Intelligence in Talent Acquisition (Direct Recruiters)
• A Revolutionary Approach to Enhance Clinical Workflows (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 5/20/24

Top News

The all-important KLAS report on the US acute care EHR market finds that Epic gained 153 hospitals in 2023 while losing none, while all other vendors showed a net loss of hospitals and beds. Epic now holds a 39% market share of US hospitals, representing 52% of beds.

Oracle Health finished last in losing a net 71 hospitals representing 15,000 beds.

Most of Oracle Health’s wins since 2016 have been in standalone hospitals of under 200 beds. Those hospitals aren’t buying due to economic pressures.

Meditech, which enjoyed an all-time high customer retention rate of 84% in 2022, saw that drop to the lowest-ever 30%, with 25% of that due to M&A.

Reader Comments

From Benny Jets: “Re: article naming the top 10 healthcare AI companies. Most of the list is obvious, but the interesting name is Merative. This is the IBM Watson Health spinout that is led by Gerry McCarthy. In two years, they have reversed the ridiculous IBM strategy and have led each of the core solutions back to the top of their respective markets. Big tech shouldn’t be allowed in healthcare. It is just a matter of time before Oracle drives Cerner into the ground and Francisco Partners buys and fixes that too.” IBM sold the business – which includes the former Truven, Merge Healthcare, and Curam — to Francisco Partners for a reported $1 billion in 2022, after which it hired Gerry – who has spent nearly 35 years in our industry — and renamed itself. I’m not linking to the article in the UK-based magazine because that publication reeks strongly of pay-for-play, it does not include the criteria of how it chooses its many click-baity Top 10 lists, and nobody involved seems to have any experience or knowledge about healthcare. I also don’t know how much AI is used in Merative’s offerings or why even cursory research should have caught the May 2024 list’s inclusion of Babylon Health, a pretty scammy company that filed bankruptcy and died an ugly death last summer. But I agree that Merative is flying under the radar and seemingly shedding the Watson Health baggage.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents support the idea of a mandatory, government-issued national patient identifier, although thoughtful comments address the realities of making that happen.

New poll to your right or here: does your business card or email signature list a certification or fellowship credential?

I’m watching more YouTube videos as their quality has improved – documentaries, concert videos, and travel recaps. My use and satisfaction has always been limited by intrusive ads (not Ryan Reynolds again), but I wasn’t willing to spend $18.99 per month to avoid them. I was happy to find that I don’t need to since YouTube Premium is only $13.99 per month or $11.67 if paid annually, provided that you buy it from the website and not the IOS app, where Apple’s 30% skim will cost you an extra $5 per month. There’s also a 90-day free trial. I’m enjoying the ad-free experience, the ability to download videos, playing videos in the background, and the surprisingly strong Apple Music, which I would use constantly if I didn’t already have Spotify Premium. Dig beyond the narcissistic, TikTok style dreck that is good only for wasting time while stunting your brain and you’ll find some solid content out there. Not only that, the experience is stupendously better when played on the big screen.

I’m finding that I use ChatGPT more for web searching. It’s like a pleasant vacation from Google’s ads, spam, and SEO-juiced junk content. I see why Google started holding emergency meetings basically the day that OpenAI released ChatGPT 3.5.

Readers funded the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Ms. I in New York, who asked for STEM manipulatives for her class of three year olds. She reports, “I hope this note finds you well and filled with the same warmth and gratitude with which our classroom overflows, thanks to your incredible generosity. As a teacher, witnessing the excitement and enthusiasm radiating from my students as they engage with the STEM supplies you’ve provided fills my heart with. Your generosity has transformed our classroom into a dynamic learning environment where curiosity thrives, creativity flourishes, and innovation knows no bounds.”

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Waystar is reportedly considering a June IPO after tabling those plans last year due to market conditions.

Sales

• Sturdy Health will implement Notable’s healthcare operations platform, integrated with Oracle Health, for patient outreach and self-service.

People

Cleveland Clinic promotes Sarah Hatchett, MBA to SVP/CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

The Toronto newspaper covers the Meditech Expanse rollout in 23 hospitals in northeastern Ontario.

Epic issues a rare press release in recapping the 9,000-attendee XGM (Expert Group Meetings) that concluded on May 9. It seems like a university’s Alumni Weekend, where people flock back to campus to once again to reconnect with with the like-minded in the hallowed halls, sit around the campfire, and pose for treehouse pictures. All that’s missing is a football game.

HCA Healthcare runs a Q&A with Chief Nursing Informatics Officer Sherri Hess, RN, MS-IS.

Privacy and Security

Ascension has issued no ransomware attack updates since May 15.

Other

Therapists are making more money as influencers who crank out empathetic TikTok self-help videos than they made seeing patients, according to The Cut, which quoted the therapist above who is making $1 million per year via brand deals, selling merchandise, and charging for subscriptions. Still, that therapist still warns that he’s burned out from making videos, dealing with hate comments, and working under a system where “Daddy Algorithm is my boss and I get a performance review every single day based on an algorithm that’s mysterious and doesn’t make any sense.”

Sponsor Updates

• HCTec sponsors the AltaMed Foundation’s annual golf tournament, supporting patients of the AltaMed Medical and Dental Group (CA).
• QGenda announces new and add-on customers of its enterprise credentialing solution, including UT Health San Antonio, Crouse Health, OB Hospitalist Group, and Parkland Health.
• Availity wins two Bronze Stevie Awards for sales and customer service.
• Wolters Kluwer Health launches Ovid Nutrition and Health, an exclusive interdisciplinary health research database.
• Redox releases a new Diagnosing Healthtech Podcast, “Data interoperability now: Why healthcare can’t afford to wait.”
• Hospital Universidad del Norte in Colombia selects Sectra’s enterprise imaging technology.
• Spok publishes an e-book, “Six strategic advantages of consolidated contact centers.”

Blog Posts

• Building more effective health systems through social determinants and patient-centered approaches (Nordic)
• The Impact of AI Trust and Literacy in Your Health System (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Nurses of Note 2024: The Infusion Nurse and ‘Ambassador of Enjoyment’ (PerfectServe)
• Leverage Innovative Technology to Drive Pharmacy Growth and Enhance Patient Care (RxLightning)
• Real-Time Prescription Benefit Goes to Work for Health Systems (Surescripts)
• 4 Current Legal Issues in Healthcare (Symplr)
• How to Identify and Address Weak Points in Your Revenue Cycle (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

News 5/17/24

Top News

The House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs committees introduce legislation related to the VA’s implementation of Oracle Health:

• Rollouts will be paused until the facilities that are live on the system “have recovered to return to normal operational levels.”
• The project and the VA’s Oracle Health contract will be cancelled two years after the bill is passed unless the VA can show metrics that prove overall improvement.
• The metrics that the VA reports to Congress would be expanded to include user adoption, employee satisfaction, and employee retention.
• The VA will be required to provide an additional report to Congress that provides the cost and module-by-module status of its legacy VistA system.

Reader Comments

From Slow Green: “Re: Greenway Health. Tiffani Misencik, chief revenue officer, has departed.” I compared the company’s executive page to the year-ago version and note these changes:

• No longer listed: Tiffani Misencik, chief revenue officer; Terri Gonzalez, chief HR officer.
• Newly added: Frank Piraino, chief of staff; Mark Goodwin, SVP of Greenway Revenue Services; Brandi Kline, VP of marketing; Nallajerla Murthy. GM of Greenway Health India.

From Sprinter: “Re: Vince Ciotti’s HIS-tory series. Do you have a link to the file?” The 1,400-page file that the late Vince wrote for HIStalk over the years covering the industry from the 1960s to the 1990s is here. I ask him in a 2019 conversation what his epitaph would say, to which he replied, “If I could be remembered for anything, it would probably be my HIS-tory files, which I thank you for posting over such a long time, two and a half years. I hope some of the future CIOs read them and learn from them. I hope that’s what they remember me by, the guy that warned them about not repeating these mistakes of the past.”

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The Wall Street Journal notes that hospitals raised prices 7.7% in April, the largest increase in 13 years.

Sales

• Group Health Cooperative of South Central Wisconsin will offer 24×7 virtual urgent care visits via MyChart from KeyCare.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic will roll out a “patients like this one” type tool to its users in Indiana this summer. It will compare the active patient’s chart to Epic’s Cosmos database to help doctors make decisions about treatment options.

Meditech reports that its clients took three of the top five top digital maturity scores among NHS trusts and Integrated Care Systems.

Get-to-Market Health announces Commercial Health Check, a fixed-price review of a client’s go-to-market efforts that details areas of strength and potential improvement. The company’s principals are Steve Shihadeh and MP Brock Zimmerman, who have spent their entire careers in digital health.

MassDevelopment issues $400 million in tax-exempt bonds to fund Beth Israel Lahey Health’s real estate needs and its upgrades to Epic.

Transcarent adds AI-powered patient navigation to its system, which provides a single app and log-in for members to access their benefits, obtain medical advice, and initiate virtual care.

Athenahealth announces GA of AthenaOne modules for women’s health and urgent care.

Epic announces that two of its hospitals in the Netherlands are the first to use its AI-powered patient summaries, presumably in the Dutch language.

Privacy and Security

Ascension has posted no news on its Cybersecurity Event Update. Regional updates indicate that pharmacies still can’t fill prescriptions, patient care may be delayed, and results from imaging and tests may take longer. From press reports:

• One patient whose doctor hadn’t seen her pulled out her own IV and left.
• Another said they can’t get their scheduled chemotherapy.
• A post-surgery patient couldn’t get pain meds because there’s no record of the procedure.
• Patient class action lawsuits have been filed.
• A family member of a patient who died at an Ascension hospitals says they can’t proceed with cremation because the hospital can’t access her cause of death.
• An ultrasound tech says that some areas have working fax machines, while others don’t, adding, “We don’t really have a lot of direction from anyone in upper admin or management.”
• A nurse at an Ascension hospital in Nashville describes the situation as “pure and utter chaos from the second you walk in the door.”
• Ascension Via Christi sent several ICU nurses home after they raised concerns about inadequate staffing.
• Some nurses worry that a mistake made due to the lack of electronic patient safety checks, such as those offered by drug dispensing cabinets and bedside barcoding, could jeopardize their licenses.
• The local paper reports that Ascension Seton medical offices in the Highland Lakes area of Texas have had their systems restored.

Australia’s federal government investigates a ransomware attack of Melbourne-based MediSecure, which offers an e-prescribing system. The company says that it has been affected by a cybersecurity incident. Its website and phone lines are down. It suspects that the incident originated at one of its vendors.

Sponsor Updates

• Five9 employees volunteer in their local communities as part of Five9 Day.
• First Databank expands its Meducation Solution medication instructions to include translations of Hindi and Punjabi.
• Health Data Movers publishes a new episode of its “QuickHITs” podcast titled “Advancing Health Equity through Technology: A Conversation with Dr. Julia Skapik.”
• FinThrive releases a new Health Rethink Podcast, “Health Equity is Earned, and Learned!”
• Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast, “Building a Purpose-Driven IT Organization.”
• Inovalon publishes a new case study, “Guardian Angels Senior Services Sees Overtime Drop with Smart Scheduling.”
• The HITea with Grace Podcast features KeyCare Chief Medical Officer Carrie Nelson, MD, “Dr. Carrie Nelson Spills the Tea on Telehealth Patient Safety & Quality.” 

Blog Posts

• Transforming Health Plan Operations with Digitized Claim Appeals (Availity)
• Evidence-based information in the EHR supports teamwork and an improved clinician experience (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• 2024 Connect Summit Recap: Building a Better Social Safety Net (Findhelp)
• From Legacy Systems to Workday: Managing Scope, Integrations, and Team Dynamics (Health Data Movers)
• How to Protect Your Healthcare Organization Against Social Engineering (Fortified Health Security)
• Embracing the Digital Transformation: Navigating the Ethical Frontiers of AI in Healthcare (InterSystems)
• The Critical Role of Early Detection of Stroke Risk: A Guide (Lucem Health)
• Denial Management in Healthcare: Benefits, Strategies & Key Trends (Medhost)
• Spotting medical provider burnout: A call to action (Meditech)
• What is a SOAP Note? (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 5/15/24

Top News

Ascension’s most recent update from Monday evening reaffirms that it will take some time – no timelines were announced — for it to return to normal operation following its May 8 cyberattack.

The update confirms that the attack involved ransomware.

Ascension also added region-specific updates for its patients. It warns that it is unable to accept credit card payments, wait times will be extended, and that some of its retail pharmacies cannot fill prescriptions.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Specialty care coordination company Switchboard Health raises $6.5 million in seed funding. Health IT veteran Derek Baird co-founded the company in 2022.

A Black Book survey of 30,000 physician office leaders and practitioners about their response to the Change Healthcare outage finds that 92% of medical practices are navigating short-term fixes and long-term vendor solutions. Nearly all complained that they first heard about the cyberattack from sources other than Change Healthcare. Black Book also notes that healthcare organizations that are negotiating new clearinghouse contracts should consider the value of the data that is contained in their claims, rights to which may have been signed over to their vendor in their original contracts. The top-rated competitors to Change Healthcare are Veradigm Payerpath, Waystar, Experian, and Availity.

Sturdy Health (MA) implements Notable Health’s AI-powered patient engagement, intake, and payments software.

Adam Selipsky, MBA, CEO of Amazon Web Services, will leave the company after three years. He will be replaced by AWS sales and marketing SVP Matt Garman, MS, MBA.

CareCloud reports Q1 results: revenue down 13%, EPS –$0.02 versus –$0.28, beating earnings expectations but falling short on revenue, sending shares down sharply and valuing the company at $30 million.

Augmedix reports Q1 results: revenue up 40%, EPS –$0.12 versus –$0.14, beating expectations for both. Shares dropped 51% as the company announced lowered revenue expectations, which it attributed to providers pausing to evaluate competing AI offerings. The company’s market cap is $56 million.

Sales

• Elbert Memorial Hospital (GA) selects telehealth services from Equum Medical.
• Meditech chooses Ellkay to provide interface services, including supporting the technical infrastructure involved in implementing Expanse as Meditech-as-a-Service.

People

Alpha II promotes Ashley Womack to CEO.

Censinet names David Woska, PhD (PHD Consulting Services) CISO.

Justin Jacobson, MBA (Microsoft) joins Symplr as managing director/SVP of its contract and supplier management business.

Suzanne Delbanco, PhD, MPH, founding CEO of The Leapfrog Group and co-founder and executive director of Catalyst for Payment Reform, has died of cancer.

Announcements and Implementations

LG Electronics announces Primefocus Health, which offers digital health solutions for in-home care.

Nuffield Health, the UK’s largest healthcare charity, goes live on a new digital booking experience for health assessments with assistance from Lumeon.

Dandelion Health, which offers a real-world data and clinical AI platform, launches a clinical dataset of 200,000 patients who are taking GLP-1 drugs, as extracted from the systems of its non-academic health system partners.

Researchers that include Eric Topol, MD introduce medical image interpretation dataset MedInterp, which contains 13 million annotated instances across three modalities. It will support the development of the “learnable orchestrator” that they call MedVersa.

Meta will shut down its enterprise communication system Workplace and is recommending Zoom-owned Workvivo as its replacement.

Government and Politics

HHS offers new funding opportunities for projects related to accelerating the adoption of health IT in behavioral healthcare settings, and to developing novel ways to evaluate and improve the quality of health care data used by AI solutions.

The Idaho Department of Health and Welfare will likely end its contract with the bankrupt Idaho HIE unless the exchange improves transparency over security, financials, and employees. The HIE has spent $94 million of mostly federal tax funds, but a watchdog found that the 10-year-old organization has instituted few accountability measures.

Privacy and Security

Johnson Memorial Hospital (IN) President and CEO David Dunkle, MD says that the hospital is still feeling the effects of the ransomware attack that crippled its computer network in 2021: “We are forced to spend millions on cybersecurity, and we’re still suffering from higher insurance rates because of our attack, and we pay more than our peers, our same size peers do, because we had an attack. We see what Ascension is going through. My heart breaks for them because I’ve been there.”

Other

OpenAI’s newly announced GPT4o includes integration with the Be My Eyes app for the vision impaired. The ability for a blind person to hail a taxi as shown at the 0:35 mark is spectacular.

Sponsor Updates

• Availity and Waystar rank highest in physician customer satisfaction with clearinghouses during and after the Change Healthcare ransomware attack.
• CereCore releases a new podcast, “Cybersecurity Expert from Defense Weighs in on Healthcare’s Opportunities.”
• Consensus Cloud Solutions will sponsor the Colorado HIMSS Spring Conference May 15-16 in Denver.
• CloudWave will exhibit at the HIMSS New England Spring Conference May 16 in Norwood, MA.

Blog Posts

• Prior Authorizations as a Use Case for Solving Interoperability (Availity)
• KLAS Research Enterprise Imaging Summit 2024 – Insights from Kyle Souligne (Agfa HealthCare)
• Cutting Through Prior Authorization Headaches: Strategies for Providers (AGS Health)
• Celebrating nurses: The impact of digital nursing (Altera Digital Health)
• From data to decisions: Enhancing healthcare outcomes through strategic data use (Arcadia)
• Aridhia’s Role in Enabling New Alzheimer’s Research (Aridhia Informatics)
• How AI in healthcare could change patient care (AvaSure)
• Surveillance Watchlists: Proactively Monitoring Patients (CereCore)
• Ascension: What We Know & What You Can Do Now (Clearwater)
• AI-Powered Medical Scribe Integration within the EHR is Revolutionizing Clinical Documentation (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 5/13/24

Top News

Ascension’s 140 hospitals in 19 states remain offline following a ransomware attack on Thursday. An unstated number of the facilities are diverting ambulances.

The health system says restoring the systems “will take some time to complete,” adding, “we will be utilizing downtime procedures for some time.”

Ascension advises patients to bring in their own appointment notes and prescription information. A hospital family nurse said, “Patients are getting harmed. No one can tell you otherwise.”

A patient who was hospitalized when the attacked started reports, “It was like 1980. Everyone’s running to get pieces of paper, charts, clipboards. They have no computers whatsoever. It was chaos.” The patient, a colon cancer survivor who was vomiting blood, left the hospital two days after admission because he still hadn’t been seen by a doctor.

CNN reports that the Russia-linked ransomware group Black Basta was responsible for the attack. The federal government issued a warning about its ransomware variant on Friday.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Here are the results from last week’s poll. For me, the convenience of co-locating a medical and dental practice with a big-box store doesn’t hold value since plenty of doctors and dentists have offices in easily accessible locations. Some respondent comments that I’m paraphrasing:

• Walmart shut it down because they can generate higher margins elsewhere. The company benefits only from bringing in more dollars per square foot, not from supporting “healthier communities.”
• Health systems know that primary care and pediatrics are loss leaders, but Walmart missed that fact. They can’t sell enough groceries and TV sets to make up the cost.
• Walmart didn’t differentiate its services. It was just a bigger box with more expensive executives who were disconnected from any kind of healthcare transformation. Still, the company probably isn’t done with healthcare and an acquisition is likely.

New poll to your right or here: Should the federal government issue a national patient identifier?

I was pondering another poll: which platform’s users have the apparent lowest IQ or technical capability, Facebook or Nextdoor?

I always offer a Summer Doldrums Sponsorship Special, which usually involves some free months for the first year. Contact Lorre. Former sponsors also get a deal for returning. All gain visibility with the most influential people in the industry, who read HIStalk quietly but religiously.

Webinars

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

Sales

• The Centers chooses Netsmart CareFabric, which includes the MyAvatar EHR.

People

Industry long-timer Dann Lemerand (Navv Systems) joins Otter Products as healthcare vertical lead. Dann created the 4,200-member HIStalk Fan Club on LinkedIn many years ago, of which I can’t cite any specific benefits except to my ego when it gets bruised.

Government and Politics

Three members of the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee call for the VA to take advantage of its recently renegotiated contract with Oracle Health – which changed the contract’s five-year term to five, one-year terms – to strengthen accountability and oversight terms. They note that poor service delivery in the previous five-year period resulted in just a few hundred thousands of dollars in credits being extended toward the $10 billion contract.

Sponsor Updates

• Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new “UpToDate Point of Care Report: An enterprise approach to unify healthcare.”
• EVisit announces a business development partnership with digital consulting firm Monsterlab.
• TruBridge announces Multiview’s cloud-based enterprise resource planning software as its preferred financial management solution for its customers.
• Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Farhan Ahmad and Jon Keevil, MD.”
• PerfectServe honors 150 outstanding nurses in its fourth annual Nurses of Note Awards program.
• Sonifi Health will exhibit at the HIMSS Texas Regional Conference May 13-16 in Grapevine.
• Tegria publishes a new case study, “Custom Demo Environment Accelerates EHR Adoption.”

The following HIStalk Sponsors are named MedTech Breakthrough Award winners:

• Amenities – best online search and scheduling solution
• Nym – health administration innovation award
• Bamboo Health – best care orchestration platform
• Artera- best patient communication solution
• Elsevier – AI innovation award
• Symplr – best provider data management platform
• Inovalon – best data visualization solution
• Waystar – healthcare payments innovation award

Blog Posts

• Navigating Standards Upgrades Together (Surescripts)
• Supporting the human aspect of care in a world of increasing burnout (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Protecting healthcare revenue flow: the power of a business continuity plan (Nordic)
• From Regulations to Reality: HIPAA Compliance and ServiceNow (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Five Best Practices for Using Credentialing Workflows – Part Five: Track and Set Milestones (QGenda)
• Finding the future of interoperability with Redox – Part 3: How Carequality can solve disconnected data for digital health (Redox)
• What it Truly Means to Be Revuud (Revuud)
• 5 Ways Provider Credentialing Leaders Can Prepare for Big Spikes (Symplr)
• Negotiating Payer Contracts: Strategies for Favorable Terms (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

News 5/10/24

Top News

Ascension’s 140 hospitals and 2,600 healthcare sites in 19 states divert patients and go back to paper documentation following an unspecified cybersecurity event that forced the health system to take down “select technology network systems” Wednesday morning.

Ascension has urged its business partners to disconnect from its systems, which would suggest a ransomware attack.

Hospital visitors say that they saw younger doctors struggling to use fax machines, pneumatic tube systems, and paper prescription pads for the first time.

Reader Comments

From Rashaverak: “Re Steward bankruptcy filing. Hoping that the Commonwealth of MA sues Cerberus Capital to recoup some of the nearly $1 billion profit via its fleecing of Steward’s MA hospitals. Steward spun off its MA real estate to a real estate holding company for $1.25 billion in 2016. It appears that none of those dollars went into improving Steward patient care, but more likely to Cerberus’ pockets.” Blame the game, not the player, for employing immoral but not illegal behavior to do what private equity (aka pirate equity) firms do best – buy a company, load it with debt, pay investors all their money back immediately, and then walk away with bro high-fiving when the business is financially starved because it can’t even pay the interest on the loans that were taken out in its behalf. I’m sure that Steward chairman and CEO Ralph de la Torre, MD is anguishing over the plight of patients and communities from his $40 million yacht that operates out of the Galapagos Islands (one of two that he owns). He awarded himself a $100 million bonus when Cerebrus quadrupled its investment by selling the land from under its hospitals, pocketing $800 million.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Last chance for HIStalk sponsors to get a free mention in my guide to the MUSE Inspire conference. I have just one response versus the several companies that are exhibiting, so my work will be minimal.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CareCloud hires an investment bank to review its capital structure after it turns down an unsolicited acquisition offer. CCLD shares have lost 64% of their value in the past 12 months and are 91% off their all-time high, valuing the company at $17 million.

A Bloomberg report that is based on interviews with former Cerner clients and employees concludes that the business lost at least 12 large clients in 2023. Bold product ideas have been placed on hold as Oracle’s engineers struggle with moving the Cerner product to the cloud. Internal documents predict that Oracle Health sales will decline 5% this fiscal year due to the VA project’s hold. Insiders say that Larry Ellison’s boasting that most Cerner clients have been moved to the cloud is accurate, but misleading – it’s a bunch of small medical practices, but no huge health systems that are likely to have customized the product.

People

NextGen Healthcare hires Jacob Sims (Gainwell Technologies) as CTO and Garo Doudian (Moody’s Analytics) as CIO/CISO.

Nisha Gandhi, RN, MBA (AbleLight) joins KeyCare as chief growth officer.

Nordic hires Stuart McLean, MBA (Alvarez and Marshal) as interim CEO following the retirement of Jim Costanzo. The company also lists Uyon Johnson, MBA (Bon Secours Mercy Health) as interim chief human resources officer.  

Announcements and Implementations

Valley Health System (NJ) opens a new “smart hospital” as its flagship in Paramus, which uses Meditech Expanse, in-room monitors to allow patients to review their medical information and manage room environment, RTLS-based display of the names of caregivers who enter the room, and AI-powered fall monitoring.

Customer experience app vendor Ushur releases a white labeled medication adherence solution for payers and pharmacy benefit managers.

Privacy and Security

Some systems at Palomar Health Medical Group (CA) remain down after the organization took them offline following suspicious computer activity on Sunday.

Sponsor Updates

• Symplr launches a new Symplr Workforce mobile app feature to enable healthcare professionals to nominate nurses for a DAISY Award.
• FinThrive publishes a new case study, “McCurtain Memorial Hospital Cuts Weekly Verification Time by 30 Hours with Real-Time Insurance Discovery.”
• Arcadia publishes a study that finds that nearly half of all healthcare data is not used in decision-making.
• HCTec will sponsor the Texas Regional HIMSS Spring Conference May 14-16 in Grapevine.
• The Medicomp Systems Tell Me Where IT Hurts Podcast earns an honorable mention in the PR News Digital Awards program.
• Mobile Heartbeat partners with technology consulting firm Signet.

Blog Posts

• Empowering Nurses for Effective Bedside Medication Counseling (First Databank)
• Solving the Top Challenges of Prior Authorizations in Healthcare (FinThrive)
• Is “Sorry” Good Enough? Insights from UHG’s Change Healthcare Testimony (Fortified Health Security)
• How Healthcare Risk Adjustment and Detailed Documentation Can Improve Member Care (Inovalon)
• Reveal: The Future of Lung-Cancer Detection (Lucem Health)
• How EHRs Help Nurses Balance Care Planning (Medhost)
• Using innovative technology to drive quality improvement efforts (Meditech)
• Choosing the Right QPP Reporting Method of MSSP ACOs in 2025 (MRO)

Contacts

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

News 5/8/24

Top News

Multi-state hospital operator Steward Health Care files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and seeks up to $300 million in financing to keep the doors of its 31 remaining hospitals open.

The company blames declining reimbursements from government payers, rising labor costs, and inflation for its current financial state.

The private equity sharks who looted the business and walked away with hundreds of millions of dollars weren’t mentioned.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Today I learned (by experimentation) that I can project photos on my phone to the Roku device and thus to our non-smart TV using AirPlay. Flipping through vacation and family pictures on the big screen is a lot more interesting than squinting at them in my palm.

Happy 60th birthday to BASIC. Kudos to those keyboard warriors from the sepia-toned tech trenches of yesteryear who paid the bills or found new careers after mastering DIM, INSTR, and SHELL.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Tech-enabled musculoskeletal care management company Livara Health raises $15 million in Series B funding. The company, formerly known as SpineZone, has raised $27 million since it was launched in 2014 by brothers and orthopedic surgeons Kian and Kamshad Raiszadeh.

Rad AI raises $50 million in Series B financing. The company, which has raised a total of $79 million, offers AI-powered radiology reporting workflow software.

Healthcare cybersecurity solutions vendor Blackwell Security raises $13 million in additional funding and hires Geyer Jones (Cylera) as its first CEO.

Nworah Ayogu, MD, MBA, general manager and chief medical officer of Amazon Clinic, has left the company to join healthcare-focused venture capital firm Thrive Capital.

Sales

• Geisinger Health Plan will implement OncoHealth’s value management and virtual cancer care services. The company’s CEO is industry long-timer Rick Dean.

People

Cone Health (NC) promotes Keith Jones, MHA to CIO.

Kyle Armbrester, MBA (CVS Health’s Signify Health) joins Datavant as CEO.

Dean Dalili, MD, MHCM (DispatchHealth) joins DeepScribe as chief medical officer.

Manifold hires industry long-timer Alex Akers (Health Catalyst) as VP of growth.

Nick Raup, MS (Optum) joins E4health as SVP of AI and automation solutions.

Announcements and Implementations

WVU Medicine Thomas Hospitals goes live on Epic.

Arrowhead Regional Medical Center (CA) works with Tegria to redesign its clinical decision-making governance structure.

MetroHealth (OH) implements Ovatient’s virtual care services. MetroHealth and MUSC Health (SC) created Ovatient in 2022.

NHS National Services Scotland goes live on Rhapsody’s EMPI, hosted in Microsoft Azure.

NeuroFlow, which offers behavioral health technology and analytics, launches perinatal and postpartum care pathways to support behavioral health after pregnancy.

A new KLAS report on virtual care platforms finds that those that are offered by Teladoc Health and Caregility have seen broad adoption, with Teladoc Health’s InTouch seen as a critical tool for expanding specialty coverage. Customers of Amwell report problems with slow development, inadequate support, and high costs, with Epic clients in particular considering replacing it with Epic’s outpatient virtual care offering. Andor Health was noted as being especially flexible, while Best in KLAS 2024 winner for virtual care platforms EVisit is seen as solid for outpatient use cases.

Government and Politics

A health insurance broker sues several companies over a scheme in which a data marketing company gave consumers low-cost health insurance in return for allowing their internet and cellphone usage to be electronically tracked and sold to marketing companies. Customers complained after finding that their “junk” insurance plans offered little coverage.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD employees volunteer with numerous organizations during the company’s day of service.
• Atrys in Brazil selects enterprise imaging technology from Agfa HealthCare.
• Five9 publishes a white paper titled “Exact Sciences Achieves 45% Containment Rate.”
• Arrive Health publishes a new whitepaper, “The Crushing Weight of Prior Authorization – And What You Can Do About it Today.”
• Artera will exhibit at the OCHIN Learning Forum May 13-16 in New Orleans.
• Nordic publishes a new episode of its “In Network” podcast titled “Designing for Health: Interview with Farhan Ahmad and Jon Keevil, MD.”
• Ascom announces that Premier Inc. has awarded it national group purchasing agreement for its clinical workflow solutions.
• Care.ai adds new members to its Smart Hospital Maturity Model advisory panel.
• Clearwater Chief Risk Officer and Head of Consulting Services and Client Success Jon Moore authors “AI Governance and Strategy Alignment: Empowering Effective Decision-Making.”
• Symplr is recognized as a US Best Managed Company.
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of The Informonster Podcast, “Data Quality in Healthcare: Decoding the PIQI Framework.”
• CloudWave will exhibit at the HIMSS New England Chapter Spring Conference May 16 in Norwood, MA.
• Divurgent will present at the HIMSS Virginia Data and Analytics Symposium May 9 in Staunton.
• Healthcare IT Leaders announces it has been named a Workday Staffing Partner.
• The Pacific Islands Primary Care Association and partner HealthEfficient announce that three community health centers involved in their federally-funded Pacific Islands Electronic Health Initiative have implemented EClinicalWorks.

Blog Posts

• Cybersecurity Expert from Defense Weighs in on Healthcare’s Opportunities (CereCore)
• Igniting the Bottom Line to Spark Success for Healthcare Organizations (AGS Health)
• Exploring the impact of electronic patient records on Altera clients in the UK (Altera Digital Health)
• How to safeguard your healthcare data journey with data seatbelts (Arcadia)
• New Insights to Tackle Major Global Health Data Research Challenges (Aridhia Informatics)
• Meet the Clinician – Don Pearce (Ascom)
• Pioneering the Next Frontier of Bidirectional Data Exchange (Availity)
• How Holzer Improved Care While Progressing from Virtual Sitting to Virtual Nursing (AvaSure)
• Embracing Integrated Care Solutions for Mental Health (Bamboo Health)
• Introducing Recovery+ (Bardavon)
• The Quick Guide to Developing an AI Use Policy for Your Organization (Clearwater)
• The Role of Technology in Solving Nursing Challenges (Dimensional Insight)
• The Bots are Here to Help (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 5/6/24

Top News

Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asks the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division to investigate the pricing algorithms that are used by MultiPlan to reduce insurer payments to providers for out-of-network claims.

The senator questions whether the practice constitutes price-fixing.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Just under half of poll respondents who are covered by a non-compete agreement say they’ll be more open to changing jobs once those are gone.

New poll to your right or here: What is the single biggest reason that Walmart Health failed? The “all of the above” option is compelling but intentionally absent. Most interesting to me is why the company so quickly about-faced from “we’re expanding to 75 locations by the end of 2024” to “we’re shutting the whole thing down because it’s not profitable.” I would guess that finding and paying staff was harder than Walmart expected. I also questioned from the beginning whether the “doc in the big box” strategy of Walmart and its equally struggling drugstore competitors is sound when most of us are surrounded by the offices of providers who work for health systems, themselves, or giant corporations such as Optum. There’s just not much opportunity for scale and brand recognition for offering primary care, which is financially challenging even without trying to carve out the financial returns that investors in publicly traded companies expect.

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

HIStalk sponsors that are participating in the MUSE Inspire conference later this month: tell me about it so I can include your information in my conference guide.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Spok announces Q1 results: revenue up 5%, EPS $0.21 versus $0.16. SPOK shares are up 11% over the past 12 months, valuing the company at $291 million.

FDA qualifies the Apple Watch as the first digital health tool to monitor atrial fibrillation during clinical studies.

A Wall Street Journal article on AI-created digital twins profiles Unlearn, which uses the health data of a clinical trials participant to forecast how they would progress in the placebo group without denying them the potentially beneficial treatment. The CEO says that a top reason that people don’t participate in clinical trials is that they don’t want to be randomized into the control group that receives placebo rather than the therapy that motivated them to sign up in the first place.

Sales

• Hospice of the Chesapeake implements Netsmart’s MyUnity EHR.
• Intermountain Health will deploy Nuance’s DAX enterprise-wide to automate clinical documentation.

People

John Seguin (PT Solutions Physical Therapy) joins RevSpring as VP of business development, West Coast.

Industry long-timer Peter Witonsky (Arctevity) joins Innovative Consulting Group as chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Sectra and Leica Biosystems earn FDA 510(k) clearance to use DICOM images for pathology diagnostics, which allows replacing proprietary formats and technologies.

Bardavon, which offers workers’ compensation and musculoskeletal health technology, launches Recovery+, a health coaching platform for recovery and return-to-work.

Government and Politics

Kentucky becomes the first state to decriminalize medical errors that are due to mistakes rather than gross negligence or intentional misconduct.

Privacy and Security

Atlanta-based staffing company Insight Global will pay $2.7 million to resolve federal False Claims Act charges that it failed to protect the health information of COVID-19 contract tracing subjects under its CDC-funded contract.

Sponsor Updates

• Surescripts launches the third season of its award-winning podcast, “There’s a Better Way.”
• Clearsense earns the Validated Data Stream designation from NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program.
• First Databank will present at the NCPDP Annual Technology & Business Conference May 7 in Scottsdale.
• Optimum Healthcare IT will present at Knowledge 24 May 8 in Las Vegas.
• RxLightning founder and CEO Julia Regan receives the Rising Entrepreneur of the Year Award at TechPoint’s annual Mira Awards gala.

Blog Posts

• Demystifying the digital front door: What works (and doesn’t) in modern patient engagement (Notable Health)
• California CARE Court: Simplifying the Complex. Serving the Most Vulnerable. (Netsmart)
• How can care management programs broaden their outreach to members? (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• The Art of the Possible: A Q&A with Healthcare Policy Wonk Deanne Primozic (Surescripts)
• Top 5 Needs Solved by Working with a CVO (Symplr)

Contacts

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

News 5/3/24

Top News

UnitedHealth Group CEO Sir Andrew Witty tells the Senate Finance Committee – which was questioning him about the Change Healthcare cyberattack – that the half-trillion dollar market cap UHG isn’t all that big. He commented that the company doesn’t own hospitals or drug companies and employs just 10,000 physicians, although he acknowledged that another 80,000 doctors choose to work with the company.

He blamed the ransomware attack on the outdated cybersecurity tools of Change Healthcare, which he says UHG was in the process of upgrading following its October 2022 acquisition of the company. He admitted that two-factor authentication was not implemented.

Witty also admits that he personally made the difficult decision to pay the $22 million ransom that the hackers demanded in hopes of keeping patient information private.

Committee Chair Ron Wyden (D-OR) went after Witty hard over lax cybersecurity and monopolistic practices. When Witty touted the company’s offer of credit monitoring to those who were affected by the breach, Wyden chastised him that “credit monitoring is the thoughts and prayers of data breaches.”

Reader Comments

From MizzuPharmD: “Re: Liberty Hospital. Will be acquired by University of Kansas Health System. May drive antitrust scrutiny.” The two organizations have consummated their mating as was originally announced in November. Lawmakers considered blocking the deal in expressing territorial indignation that a Kansas health system would take over a Missouri hospital. The acquirer runs Epic, while the acquiree runs (or at least did at some point) Altera Digital Health / Allscripts Sunrise.

From Oh the Irony: “Re: Epic. Interesting comment considering the company’s usual take on non-competes, ha!” Judy Faulkner says in a “Hey Judy” post that early-days Epic decided not to challenge a competitor’s theft of Epic’s internal information, concluding that, “Even if someone copies everything in our filing cabinets, it won’t make much of a difference. The corporate culture can’t be easily copied.”

From Dr. Bass: “Re: Walmart Health Centers. Wonder what they will do with all the patient records they need to maintain for years?” They will need to export them from Epic into some sort of retrievable archive, I assume, which is probably easy but not common since few Epic customers have replaced the system or closed their doors. Negotiating a contract cancellation with Epic might be harder, especially since they just signed it in 2021.

From Relayer: “Re: Change Healthcare breach. The portal and underlying systems that caused the problem – and that don’t have multifactor authentication – are the original RelayHealth products that McKesson acquired in 2006. McKesson then ‘merged’ the business with Change Healthcare even though McKesson kept a 70% stake and made billions when Change went public in mid-2019. Acquired companies lose intellectual capital and don’t focus on the stepchild products, so it’s not surprising that these products become vulnerable after being sold off and orphaned.” The breach, as well as the government’s unhappy scrutiny over Change’s lack of two-factor authentication, has raised the user access bar for all software vendors, and likely health systems as well. It’s a squirmy position to be in when members of Congress angrily ask you to defend why you didn’t implement two-factor authentication when other organizations have.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Attention to the several HIStalk sponsors who will participate in the MUSE Inspire conference in Denver May 28-31: I’ll include you in my conference guide if you provide your information.

The latest chapter in my quest to achieve grammar curmudgeonliness involves leaving in the word “that” to make sentences easier to read. I’ll show, not tell: the second sentenced is easier to read than the first:

• The doctor said I need to schedule an appointment.
• The doctor said that I need to schedule an appointment.

Listening (and watching): 11-year-old Ellen Alaverdyan, aka EllenPlaysBass, whose little fingers have mastered the sheer complexity and energetic fret-hopping of Chris Wolstenholme’s bass line in Muse’s “Hysteria.” Her videos, which usually include her instructor-dad Hovak, are a treasure. Watch her smile break out toward the end when she realizes that she has nailed the piece. She did a fine, grinning version of Rush’s “Tom Sawyer” when just nine years old. Keep in mind that she not only has to play the songs, she must learn every single note and nuance before picking up the bass.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CVS Health reports Q1 results: revenue up 4%, adjusted EPS $1.31 versus $2.20, sending shares down 17% on the news as the company also lowered full-year guidance. Shares have lost 24% in the past 12 months. From the earnings call:

• Its Medicare Advantage business saw a 60% drop in operating income due to higher utilization and payments that were reduced because of lower star ratings.
• The company set aside $500 million for claims that wouldn’t be paid as planned due to the Change Healthcare cyberattack.
• It is performing a cost review, looking at outlier claims, membership selection bias, and pharmacy benefit spend.
• Recent changes in Medicare Part D will disrupt benefits, the company says, also noting that its rate notice was not sufficient and that it will need to consider plan-level benefits changes and exiting some counties.
• The Inflation Reduction Act enriched the value of Part D to patients and plans have greater liability in the catastrophic layer. Some companies may exit the business, and higher prices may push some beneficiaries into Medicare Advantage plans.
• Drugstore sales were up 7% and Oak Street added 33 centers in the past 12 months and expects to add up to 60 more. CVS Health hopes to see a boost from its Cordavis biosimilars business.
• The company is using AI to identify members who could benefit from care management.
• Meanwhile, CVS Health has just acquired Hella Health, a direct broker that sells Medicare Advantage and Medicare supplemental plans that are offered by Aetna CVS Health and its competitors.

Transcarent raises $126 million in a Series D funding round that values the company at $2.2 billion.

Telemedicine provider Avel ECare acquires Horizon Virtual, which offers virtual hospitalists.

Wearable cardiac monitoring vendor IRhythm Technologies announces Q1 results: revenue up 18%, adjusted EPS –$1.23 versus –$1.10. IRTC shares have lost 17% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $3.5 billion.

Financial Times reports that drug maker Pfizer will follow the lead of competitor Lilly in rolling out an online platform where patients can order the company’s drugs directly, connecting US customers with independent telehealth consultants who will send prescriptions to a drug dispensing partner. According to a global health professor, drug companies have realized that “The best way to convert customers is through patient portals where they can act as a consumer in medicine. They can go to the website, they can get the information they need, they can be linked to a prescriber and then a pharmacy, and do all those things independent of a primary care provider.”

Following its acquisition of Cerner in June 2022, Oracle Health has reduced its employee count in Kansas City from a peak of 14,000 to 6,400.

Bloomberg declares that “Austin’s glow is fading,” with the latest blow being Oracle’s planned headquarters relocation to Nashville after just four years in the Texas city. The article says that companies are rethinking their big plans for Austin, 25% of its commercial real estate is vacant, and residential real estate prices have dropped more than in any other US city. It adds, “That Oracle went to archrival Nashville is particularly painful for Austinites. The two cities compete over which has the more vibrant live music scene and who plays the better host to bachelor and bachelorette parties. There are heated debates over where to find the best custom-made cowboy boots.”

Sales

• Three community health centers that are part of the federally funded Pacific Islands Electronic Health Initiative choose EClinicalWorks.

People

Chris Durham (Medhost) joins HCTec as VP of service desk operations.

Announcements and Implementations

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman describes ChatGPT 4 as “incredibly dumb” as he looks to newer versions that will operate beyond the chat interface into deploying AI-driven agents that are capable of performing tasks with a deep understanding of the user’s specific needs.

Truveta expands its 800-hospital research database to include family history, medication details, complex concepts, and de-identified medical images.

Lucem Health announces Reveal for Lung Cancer, which applies an AI model to EHR data to flag patients who meet USPSTF criteria for lung cancer screening. The company says that a provider organization can expect to identify 60% more patients who have early-stage lung cancer.

Other

Healthcare AI deployers, be careful out there. Catholic Answers defrocks its days-old, AI-powered “Father Justin” after it went rogue in telling users that it was a real priest, took confessions and granted penance, and told one user that it was OK to baptize a baby in Gatorade. The organization says the AI chatbot will be retooled as just plain old layperson Justin, noting, “We didn’t anticipate that someone might seek sacramental absolution from a computer graphic.”

Sponsor Updates

• Healthcare IT Leaders sponsors foster care charity A Door of Hope’s golf tournament.
• Inovalon earns Great Place to Work certification for the second consecutive year.
• Nordic will offer sales, consulting, and implementation of the diagnostic and treatment analytic platform of Clinical Healthcare Analytics.
• EVisit will sponsor and exhibit at the California Hospital Association’s 2024 Emergency Services Forum May 6 in Newport Beach.
• Australian vendor Consultmed re-platforms its software on InterSystems Iris for Health, including InterSystems TrakCare.
• Net Health names Arman Samani president of its rehab therapy division.

Blog Posts

• Reaching New Heights in Leapfrog CPOE Evaluation Compliance (First Databank)
• Unveiling the Future of Contract Negotiations in Healthcare: Intelligence-Driven Solutions (FinThrive)
• From Insight to Impact: Using Real-World Data to Drive Above Brand Strategy (Inovalon)
• Regulation as a Catalyst for Innovation: Leveraging the Interoperability and Prior Authorization Mandate (InterSystems)
• How virtual nursing can guide patients and nurses into the next era of healthcare (Meditech)
• Choosing the Right QPP Reporting Method for MSSP ACOs in 2025 (MRO)

Black Book releases its 10th annual “State of the Healthcare Cybersecurity Industry” report. A corresponding ranking of top cybersecurity firms based on customer satisfaction ratings includes the following HIStalk sponsors:

• Clearwater – cybersecurity advisors and consultants / compliance and risk management solution.
• Fortified Health Security – cybersecurity awareness training and education.
• CloudWave – outsourcing and security network managed services.
• PerfectServe – secure communications platforms, physician practices.
• Spok – secure communications platforms, hospitals and health systems.

Contacts

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