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Monday Morning Update 3/25/24

March 24, 2024 News 7 Comments

Top News

UnitedHealth Group posts target dates for restoring Change Healthcare’s systems following its February 21 cyberattack.

UHG says that it restored its electronic payments platform on March 15 and is proceeding with payer implementations, noting that “the actual cash flow timing is dependent on payers.”

The company says that its medical claims backlog is $14 billion. It has advanced $2.5 billion to affected providers.

Reader Comments

From Aging Out: “Re: Epic. What happens when Judy is replaced?” Judy Faulkner turns 81 this year and will have served 45 years as Epic’s only CEO. The company has always assured that it has a solid succession plan, and more recently, has allowed some of its executives to get more visibility. Epic says it won’t sell out or change its ways, but her Giving Pledge says that she will donate 99% of her assets, including all of the proceeds of her Epic shares that will go to a foundation. Meanwhile, Oracle’s Larry Ellison turns 80 this year, so should he exit the company vertically or otherwise, the former Cerner business will lose its only cheerleader, and Oracle’s lackluster loyalty could take a big hit. I commend Meditech for turning the reins over to a younger and more diverse executive team years ago, to which I attribute the remarkable move from the archaic Magic to today’s state-of-the-art Expanse in making the company relevant again.

From Buoyancy: “Re: fixing healthcare. I always like to push people to name the single best first step.” I would say decouple insurance from employment. Give every American at least basic coverage and limit patient-insurer churn as people change plans every year or two based on decisions by themselves, their employer, or their insurer in the antithesis of medical continuity and health maintenance. We all want health for a lifetime, not just for the next year, and everybody’s incentive needs to be longer term.

From Badman: “Re: Healthbox. It seems to have died in the HIMSS portfolio, as did Health 2.0.” I don’t recall HIMSS saying that they shut the Healthbox innovation consulting firm and accelerator down, but its online presence is outdated, and CEO Neil Patel – a former Chartis Group employee, like Hal Wolf — moved on in May 2021. I assume it was abandoned quietly like HIMSS Accelerate, which is an online ghost town. We can’t see much detail on any of this since HIMSS still hasn’t published an IRS 990 form since the end of 2020.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Thanks to readers who provided feedback on HIMSS24, which I have posted.

Longtime HIMSS executive Elli Riley, who was moved to Informa Markets with the conference’s acquisition, says that HIMSS25 will be more of a “conference within a conference” that will be personalized to attendee focus. An executive of conference logistics operator Freeman says that HIMSS24 measured attendee sentiment using technology from Zenus, which uses anonymized “ethical facial analysis” and badge reading data from discreetly installed cameras to analyze attendee reaction for exhibitors and conference organizers. Other Informa-driven changes include greater use of digital signage, creating a new conference website, changing email marketing automation, and running new conference social media accounts. The article in Trade Show Executive also notes that while HIMSS creates the member-driven content part of the conference, “Informa is responsible for overseeing all content and programming development,” which makes it sound like Informa has more control over the entire conference than the initial HIMSS “partnership” announcements suggested.

Speaking of HIMSS, I noticed in Informa’s annual report that it paid $106 million in cash to acquire the HIMSS conference outright.

Most of us haven’t had a provider visit in which conversational audio was used to create documentation.

New poll to your right or here: Have you recently asked an AI tool a question about your health or medical care? Going beyond the scope of a poll question, I would appreciate hearing anonymously from anyone who has asked AI health and medical questions and received answers that changed their life significantly – maybe a new or corrected diagnosis, medication use or side effects, advisability of surgery, or a suggestion to seek medical attention that turned out to be fortunate.

Digital health vendors must be sweating that their sectors might be next up for a deep dive by the non-profit Peterson Health Technology Institute, which just concluded what we all suspected — that lifestyle-modification diabetes apps don’t deliver enough benefits to cover their cost. The organization noted in its year-ago report that digital health investments were ballooning with little proof that they improved outcomes or cost, calling for an independent authority to evaluate the value of digital health tools (note: PHTI reviews available public and private data and evidence, so it’s up to vendors to conduct studies). I checked the backgrounds of the PHTI’s key people and found little to criticize:

Executive Director Caroline Pearson came from a research background at NORC at the University of Chicago and spent 13 years with Avalere Health in health policy consulting.
Managing Director of Strategic Operations David Silk, MBA held marketing executive roles with two health tech companies and at Google Cloud’s healthcare and life sciences group.
Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives Prabhjot Singh, MD, PhD held executive roles in provider groups and was a medical school and public affairs professor.
Managing Director of Engagement and Outreach Meg Barron, MBA was a digital health VP for the American Medical Association.
Assessment principal Vanessa Juth, PhD, MPH, MA was a digital strategy executive for two drug companies and was chair of CHOC’s biobehavioral oncology program.
Senior policy advisor Mairin Mancino worked in innovation at NORC at the University of Chicago and VP of Avalere Health, with provider-side experience at Summa Health.

Listening: Boygenius, which I Shazam’ed in a store thinking sure the song I was hearing was new, hook-heavy Nada Surf. I liked it so much that I was sorry to learn that they’re hugely popular since I was hoping it was an obscure find on my part, but now I know it’s a supergroup of Phoebe Bridgers, Julien Baker, and Lucy Dacus, all in their late 20s, playing guitar-heavy, emotional indie.

Pondering: is anyone buying Apple Vision Pros? The photos that have been posted on X of people at conferences and on streets waving their arms like Bradley Cooper in “Maestro” makes me think it’s just a more expensive way to be a Glasshole, especially given the level of social anxiety among its target audience of trend-chasing nerds. Business and private use is the sweet spot, I assume.

Webinars

March 27 (Wednesday) 3 ET. “Houston Methodist: Deploying clinical AI at scale for improved outcomes.” Sponsor: Health Data Analytics Institute. Presenters: Khurram Nasir, MD, MPH, chief of cardiovascular disease prevention and wellness, Houston Methodist DeBakey Heart & Vascular Center; Brenda Campbell, RN, senior consultant, HM Health System Innovations; Nassib Chamoun, MS, founder and CEO, HDAI. The presenters will share how an interdisciplinary team collaborated to successfully use predictive models and a novel AI-driven approach to address post-discharge mortality. They will also describe how they expanded use of the platform to reduce clinician time spent digging through the EHR with a one-page risk profile, including codes extracted from notes using generative AI, and targeting their highest risk patients for extra attention. They will speak to how they overcame barriers to bringing AI at scale to support clinicians across the care continuum.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Fortune reports that payment processor Global Payments is seeking a buyer for its AdvancedMD business at a reported asking price of $3 billion. Global Payments acquired the company in 2018 for $700 million.

People

Industry long-timer Kevin Soltysiak, whose career included roles at Shared Medical Systems, Healthtek Solutions, and Alora Home Health Software, died March 15. He was 62.

Announcements and Implementations

Montana HHS goes live on Netsmart’s electronic visit verification.

DrFirst launches TrueRx for pharmacies, which uses AI-enabled fingerprint technology and behavior outlier detection to protect against prescriber identity and prescription fraud.

Government and Politics

VA OIG issues three reports related to the VA’s implementation of Oracle Health:

A patient died from an overdose seven weeks after missing an appointment at the Columbus facility because of EHR scheduling errors. The report notes that a nurse practitioner did not evaluate the patient’s medication refill request and the psychologist failed to thoroughly evaluate their depression and to consider related critical clinical information. The facility did not send “patient caring communications” because a high-risk flag had been inactivated.
The Columbus facility went live on Oracle Health despite known pharmacy-related patient safety and usability issues, such as problems with sending newly entered allergy and medication information to VA facilities that are still running VistA. The investigators note that pharmacist burnout increased due to the EHR’s operational inefficiencies.
OIG warns that the smaller VA facilities that have gone live had problems with patient scheduling that will probably be worse in larger centers, which will require higher staffing levels and overtime pay.

Sponsor Updates

Experity migrates 300 urgent care practice customers to RCM vendor Waystar in the wake of the Change Healthcare cyberattack.
Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new book, “A Practical Guide for Nurse Practitioner Faculty Using Simulation in Competency-based Education.”
AdvancedMD renews its partnership with data automation platform vendor FrontRunnerHC.
Availity partners with Zelis to streamline the end-to-end process between providers and payers, from administrative workflows through payments.
Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Joyce Lee, MD.”
Consulting Magazine awards Pivot Point Consulting founder and President Rachel Marano its Leaders in Technology award in the Excellence in Leadership category.
RxLightning now enables prescribers and their care teams the ability to enroll patients in Free-Drug and Patient Assistance Programs managed by KnippeRx.
Sectra publishes a new whitepaper, “True SaaS or a cloudy promise?”

Blog Posts

Contacts

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

HIMSS24 Comments

March 23, 2024 News 1 Comment

Responses were evenly split between vendor and non-vendor attendees. The average rating of HIMSS24 was 3.4 on a five-star scale.

What did you like best?

Felt less crowded in a good way. Some education sessions were solid. Good networking with peers from other health systems.
I didn’t see many double decker booths, which is perhaps a reflection of current fiscal climate.
HIMSS tried to copy the Hosted Buyer format, but in a very limited way.
Opening reception was too loud and there was no awards reception / banquet this year.
Seeing and talking with current customers. That’s hands down the best part of HIMSS. The next best part was the puppy area.
Always look for the first time exhibitors and visit their booths, to learn about their product offerings, and discern their rationale for paying the exorbitant fee for tiny space, travel, and lodging. Did they feel it provided ROI?
Volunteered (did not take the gratuity) for focus groups to listen to vendor thoughts and attempts to discern the future. And to hopefully help them to understand my world, and that of my patients.
The pre-conference workshops were well done and the new best part of my week.
There seemed to be fewer attendees, which from an attendee standpoint, was good for me. Hotel rooms were more accessible — I heard people were able to book rooms only a few weeks before the conference.
Better educational sessions.
Loved the entrance to the floor with the tunnel and many photo ops. Need a photo booth where people or groups could take their photo and post on Instagram etc. The floor was beautiful, unlike Chicago, which had uncarpeted floors in the walkway, which was painful on feet and dirty feeling. It would be nice if there were a HIMSS person taking group photos or a standalone photo. Social media has improved. I liked how people had templates on their LinkedIn that they were going, but I never received instructions on how to do this.
Better exhibit hall energy than last few conferences.
The mobile app was helpful in sending reminders for appointments and announcements. Wayfinding also very helpful on the app.
I really enjoyed the variety of speakers that were on the agenda. I also felt that the venue was better than Chicago, as there were more food options at the convention center, although the prices were outrageous. I also liked the private meeting areas that were available. It’s difficult to hold a meeting when there is so much noise and conversations taking place.
Having carpet was a big improvement.
Facilities and amenities. They’re feeling competitive pressure from HLTH and ViVE and it shows in their ice cream socials, puppy parks, and “fun” events.
I like that the event has shrunken a little – it’s less overwhelming than it was in past years. Lots of food options in the exhibit hall, although expensive.
I liked that there was a main stage on the exhibit floor like ViVE so people with booth meetings can go between them and educational sessions more readily. It’s also nice to see more clinical /burnout or hot issues addressed rounding out all the AI, cyber, and cloud topics.
Great energy in the exhibit hall. Traffic was consistent right until Thursday afternoon, which is a first in my experience.
It seemed smaller, so there were chairs available in sessions. Some years, rooms were so packed there were no seats. It was possible to get through the crowd without literally knocking into people.
There seemed to maybe be more tracks this year, so the variety of sessions was good.
Orlando is a better location as well than Chicago as you can walk more easily to and from hotels in Orlando.
I was particularly impressed by the educational opportunities this year. A bit more practical.
The app.
Lobby looked good. Everything else seemed like it went backwards.
Oddly enough, the government run talks were the most entertaining to me. Well thought out and with a bit of humor.
Haha – there was edge to edge carpet throughout the exhibit hall, unlike last HIMSS. Seriously, there was good energy in the halls, attendance and interest was up over prior years.
Still a boat/car show, but a little more manageable this year.
My first HIMSS since 2019. The networks and meeting opportunities still valuable. Loved the booths that had AI displays.

What would you like to see changed?

I would love to see floor hours shortened. The last hour is painfully slow while most people are either gathered around the booths with booze, or have already left.
Coffee, water stations, and a food court, for the love of!
Organize the floor or use some methodology for grouping solutions together. It is total chaos. People could evaluate and see more solutions quicker and might even learn about someone new. So many small companies (ours is very large) that do not even get seen.
The Junior Wolf pack. Avoid Hal and his pontificating pals of their accomplishments.
Have people who know what he hell they are talking about manning the booths. This was the exception vs the rule but I ran into so many CMF’s (clueless mf’ers) standing around playing pocket pool that it boggled the mind.
Have no talks on Friday. Poor Nick Saban, although I don’t think he cared as long as he got paid.
The educational sessions always seem to be better in title than they actually are. Not sure how to fix that other than move the submission date closer to the conference.
Never do in Orlando. Too long and hard on the feet.
The quality of the presentations. There needs to be more peer review of the content, perhaps fewer sessions with better content.
Maybe a structured vendor list by hospital size. As my facility is a rural hospital, we are not going to take on new shiny object, but rather looking to optimize what we have an improve our current operations.
Unlike other years, the lunch at the informatics symposium was disappointing. There was no coffee or refreshments later in the day, and it was very cold inside.
There are not enough chairs, and we need bigger rooms for presentations and on the floor. Lots of standing.
I had trouble with the app and loading sessions. Not all sessions were in the book, which was confusing. Because of this, I missed keynotes. Also, the app’s informatics filters were missing, so I could not easily find sessions I wanted to attend or specific vendor products.
Speakers and panel discussions. Very little diversity in people and perspectives, seems to reflect the current leadership.
Being bombarded by the same HIMSS “influencers.”
Healthier food options or built in like VIVE would be nice.
Stale content in sessions – seems to be the same topics and people reshuffled.
Never use Orlando again. Ever. Worst location possible for HIMSS or any conference for that matter.
Is still often difficult to stay focused on a booth presentation when a neighboring booth is using their sound system to reach a larger crowd. Maybe we should offer presentation audio via Bluetooth so we can actually hear the presenter.
The traffic in Orlando is a nightmare. Taking the buses or Uber resulted in some long delays in reaching the convention center.
I’d like HIMSS to condense the show floor when it doesn’t sell out. The Federal Government conference area was so far off the show floor it was difficult to get to. Once they didn’t sell the west end of the show floor, they could have moved things closer together.
Better, healthier, and faster food options.
More relevant keynote speakers, shorter exhibition hall hours.
Bring HIMSS into the 21st century. Better formats, better lectures.
Conference apps and networking lack other shows. It looks like only around 1,600 people opted in for connecting / messaging, while ViVE had almost 4,800, and I assume HIMSS has significantly more attendees.
More depth and practical applications of AI. The entire conference and showroom were focused on AI, but there was no real meat to the conversations, mostly that it’s new, we need to take advantage of it, we should be careful, need to use it responsibly – words without meaning. As physicians, we’re used to new tools and new drugs, for example, and I think this mindset helps us to better embrace AI, even accepting what we don’t understand. Additionally, adding salt to the wound, were folks claiming their product used AI, when it was a simple calculation or formula without any ML.
Nothing. It will be my last after 20+ years.
More reasonable food options cost-wise. Would like to see this smaller conference consider other venues such as New Orleans or San Diego because I bet it would fit now. I hate Orlando.
There seemed to be blatant influence (paid) by big vendors doing “educational sessions” that were complete company product promotions, roadmaps with no third party or customer involved. Oracle Health was the worst! Other agenda items had good titles, but turned out invite-only, which drastically cut down options. As a person who has worked hard for years getting speakers on the agenda, something definitely seemed way off and commercially influenced.
The HIMSS police called us out multiple times for overspill of our very expensive booth, but the anchor vendors did not get the same treatment. Surprise!
HIMSS has completely lost touch with the provider community.
More time between educational sessions. All sessions should be the same duration. Maybe after the first day, every session doesn’t need the intro about handout and eval in the app.
More free food and drinks.
Even less people.
I did not like the keynotes. I think we need more healthcare people – yes, we had some, like the CEO of Hackensack Meridian – but I was not interested at all in Nick Saban, and granted it was Friday (so most people left), you might have gotten more to stay if you had a big name healthcare exec speaking then— Judy Faulkner, John Halamka, etc.
Better process for main stage. Feel like much of core content is in interop showcase and not on main stages
I ended up in a number of panel discussions. It’s good for different viewpoints, but I’m not sure that the format appeals to all subjects. I felt that some missed the main point/topic.
Buy sessions too far removed.
Floor on the far ends was a train wreck.
Attempt at being cool on social media was cringeworthy. They need to figure out their lane, stay in it, and stop copying VIVE and their other event HLTH. They did it all first — puppy park, massage, stages on floor etc. It was not a good look.
More subspecialty educational content. We’re an imaging IT company and there’s almost no relevant content to further attract the tribe of imaging IT professionals. This contrasts to the recent past, where there were always a handful of specialty talks to draw attendees.
Continue the idea of co-locating vendors.
Better food options and having it in different venue city rather than Orlando, Vegas, or Chicago if possible.
The infrastructure in Orlando is terrible. Who planned this conference during spring break? It was pretty much impossible to get anywhere or meet anyone in a timely fashion, and the service at restaurant and other locations was slow and terrible. This conference cannot be held in Orlando any more.

For those who attended both HIMSS and ViVE, how would you compare the two?

There was definitely more enterprise and implementation focus at HIMSS vs. ViVE’s partnerships and BD flavor with startups. More IT crowd at HIMSS vs. predominantly digital and innovation / investment crowd at ViVE. However, while ViVE has started bringing in CHIME crowd into its fold, HIMSS is increasingly becoming distant to innovation community.
I like that I don’t have to bother about finding food at ViVE.
ViVE in LA was just awful. Nashville was better. ViVe is trying to hard be too hip and let’s just forget the CHIME attendees actually visiting the floor except to get awards.
VIVE resembles the HIMSS of years ago, before it decided HIMSS could be everything to every industry and needed a former vendor to be the Leader of the Pack.
More entertainment.
ViVE will replace HIMSS in the next three years. HIMSS has lost its appeal to me, I have been attending for 13 years, I am ready for a change, and ViVE is a refreshing change.
This year’s ViVE in LA sux.
Both have different value. I do feel that many of the hospital CIOs did not attend HIMSS24.
Different energy and scale. HIMSS is bigger, ViVE is more personal.
ViVE had much better vendors.
ViVE makes the experience better as an attendee by providing food, drinks, and entertainment. However, from a work/business perspective, HIMSS is still the better show, and it’s not particularly close. There are just more people, more buzz, more product debuts, etc. ViVE is just a party.
ViVE is far friendlier and feels less formal than HIMSS. It’s easier to see various speakers at ViVE with many of them right on the show floor. Included food and drink is also a nice touch that gives ViVE a relaxed atmosphere. HIMSS is the button-down business conference of yesteryear while ViVE tries to market themselves more like a music festival (with mixed results).
They way they handle meals/food is so different. ViVE: Coffee stands and food spread throughout the exhibit hall, allowing many opportunities for networking. It’s very easy to grab something to eat or drink (which is built into the conference fees). Plenty of tables/spaces to grab a seat and meet others while getting something to eat. HIMSS: Coffee is $5+ and you need to wait in line in the hallway. Food is expensive and poor quality, typically far away from the events. You need to spend a bunch of time in line, then if you’re lucky you get a table but there’s a good chance you’re sitting on the floor in a hallway.
ViVE is significantly better.
ViVE is better. CIOs prefer it, so the power is shifting.
Both are expensive and do not have the patient in mind. They’re both a money grab.
They are very different conferences. At HIMSS, you have the advantage of having IT directors and clinicians (nurses and docs) talking about projects they did which, if you are CMIO/CNIO, might really help you as you work on your day to day issues. Yes, HIMSS has the tech companies, but it’s not the only group there. Also, the government track/ area at HIMSS had excellent presentations, but it was so far away (Hall F) if you were in another session you had to race, as most of these government presentations were only 30-minute “bursts” (but really good). ViVE was good too, but it’s really more tech people, companies, innovations, less clinicians (IMO). Yes. some government folks at ViVE, but not nearly as many. I think both are good meetings, but ViVE is SO expensive (the registration fee) that many groups, including mine, won’t send people. I only went as I was a speaker and got free registration.
ViVE is spot on for the relationships I need to foster and HIMSS is where I go to partner with vendors or meet a bigger cross section of a customers.
ViVE has grown, audience has evolved, and is for C-suite looking to make a difference and do business. HIMSS seemed much more mid-level in terms of the attendees. Different leagues. I will send a few (very few) from my team to HIMSS next year and my leadership team to ViVE.
ViVE had more investors, HIMSS very very few. ViVE is more of a C-suite crowd.

Comments

I miss HIStalkapalooza. The after-hours receptions hosted by vendors were a mixed bag.
I was particularly disappointed to see a heavily inebriated vendor CEO (a serial entrepreneur, no less) behave very badly with a former health system executive at a networking event, berating them publicly for not giving business to the company while being employed. It was such an unfortunate event to witness and unacceptable behavior by any measure. Vendors need to understand that “No” and “Not Now” are perfectly good answers in current fiscal climate and that business decisions aren’t driven by individual event attendance but rather through stakeholder consensus in matrixed organizations.
Having two shows so close to each other and SO similar is just a waste of limited resources for vendors and providers. Do we need one, let alone two?
CHIME and its “leadership” have completely lost their way and ruined it. They don’t realize more people are actually laughing at them vs. looking up to them for guidance. Someone said to me they are more like ET (Entertainment Tonight) vs. 60 Minutes or BBC News. John Glaser must be sad to see what they have turned it into. Parties in Russ’s rooms, lavish all expenses paid board off-sites, international travel. Can someone say 503c3? cough cough audit? My company has more oversight on expenses!
Both events took place while the US suffered arguably its worst cyberattack that directly impacted patient care. What did both organizations do to help educate? Why, they gave away even more trophies to each other, of course. Sad, frustrating, and vendors should demand an accounting of the foolishness taking place
Based on what I spent to attend, I no longer think it’s worth attending.
The people pic animes at ViVE are creepy.
Being in Vegas back to back again, I might sit out next year.
The overall feedback I heard from other attendees was that HIMSS was still where the “real” conversations were happening and VIVE was still more about the glitz and VC, aside from the CHIME Forum. There seems to be room for both, but it would be better if they weren’t so close together.
I generally enjoy these conferences, but this year it just didn’t feel right. I think I’m getting too old (LOL).
Would love to attend both HIMSS and ViVE, but simply cannot afford ViVE. It is above the limits of what my company will allow.
AI seems to have given HIMSS a new life. Lots of serious and thoughtful discussions on how to find a way forward with this new technology!
Other than reconnecting with peers from past conferences, HIMSS continues to struggle. Education sessions are stale. It’s more of a vendor conference. After more than 15 years of attending, I’m not sure I will continue attending. And I still miss HISTALKAPALOOZA. 🙂
When do we move back to patients at the center of innovation, not PE, AI? Meanwhile, huge orgs cannot secure patient data.
Likely to skip HIMSS because it is in Vegas. That is a negative, I think for many people.
Conference has outgrown Orlando.
Whatever opinion is on business model, HIMSS delivers people that want to connect either to see what is really going on vs hype, meetings with prospects, partners, and clients. As humans, we can filter out the BS. Foot traffic and talk tracks show quickly what is real and what isn’t. The AI hype, robot demos, and VR headsets are still more concept than actual real world applications. It seems like HIMSS HIT community is finally getting data quality matters.
I left after a day and a half. Content was average and floor was much smaller. All in all an OK event, but not what it used to be. Good luck to Informa. They will need it.

News 3/22/24

March 21, 2024 News 5 Comments

Top News

Digital diabetes management solutions increase healthcare spending without delivering meaningful clinical benefits, according to a review of evidence by the Peterson Health Technology Institute.

The study found that the tools facilitate small, clinically unimportant and sometimes temporary reductions in HbA1c that have little impact on overall health.

The report concludes that the solutions “increase net healthcare spending for purchasers because the small, estimated savings are less than the cost of the solution.”

The authors also note that the solutions require patients to record their self-management activities, which may not happen regularly.

Their advice for providers: “Because these digital health solutions complement (rather than substitute for) usual care, they represent an additional cost. Furthermore, these solutions can be labor intensive for provider practices to set-up and document for reimbursement, and effort from the provider and patient is required for implementation. As a result, providers should be cautious when considering the patient benefits weighed against the spending impact of these programs”

Click to enlarge the above graphic for a list of products in the categories reviewed.

Teladoc Health probably didn’t need this reminder that paying $18.5 billion for Livongo the fall of 2020 was unwise, especially now that the entire TDOC business is valued at just $2.5 billion.

Reader Comments

From CPAhole: “Re: disruption. What do you see as the next disruption in the delivery of health IT?” This technology CEO wasn’t optimistic about technology-goosed disruption in the rest of his email to me and neither am I. I don’t think you can disrupt technology without disrupting the delivery of health services, and I see little to suggest that the powers that be, including the elected ones, have an appetite to kill the golden goose. People leave HIMSS every year buzzed on their annual Kool-Aid top-off that technology will improve our embarrassing standing among developed nations in health, cost, and lack of insurance coverage. I could have expressed optimism about AI like most uninspired pundits, but I don’t see how whiz-bang diagnoses and point-of-care research findings help people who can’t afford treatments or even get appointments. Those of us who spend our days in the carpeted parts of healthcare are jarred by reality when we, or our family members, become patients who have to deal with the infuriating system that we created and that lines our pockets. Still, technology can make some inefficient and ineffective parts a bit better – just don’t expect technology to fuel consumer-level disruption or to power big moves of our societal health needle. I am now successfully vented like a time-expired Instant Pot, thank you, so it’s your turn to tell me what you think. What technology could disrupt or at least markedly improve health services delivery?

From No Cap (IYKYK): “Re: the quotes sent to Existential Dreadlocks about attending conferences. They are aren’t wrong. Conferences are a boondoggle, spurred by the FOMO inertia of company brass, salespeople, and marketers who want to be at the cool kids’ party. Thinking that the next $MM deal is there for the taking.” I’m picturing a “Self-Importance Summit,” where those industry gadabouts who are known for public displays of self-affection sit in their own booths, where they interview each other for podcasts, present each other with fake awards, and “network”at a never-ending happy hour by energetically exchanging business cards like jousting medieval knights.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Today I learned that you can send documents to Amazon’s Kindle reader app. An author sent me a PDF proof of their book, which I wanted to read on my IPad. I Googled and found Amazon’s Send to Kindle webpage, where you can send PDF and DOC files to your Kindle library and then read them pretty much like a normal Kindle book. You can also send files directly to the Kindle app on IOS and Android, export them to Kindle from Word, or email them directly to your Kindle account’s email address (who knew that it had one?) Amazon also provides a Chrome extension that can send full webpages to a user’s Kindle library. TL;DR – you can read most kinds of documents on your Kindle app or device.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Pocket Health raises $33 million in Series B funding. The company offers a patient-centric, subscription-based image exchange platform that explains medical terms, detects follow-up recommendations, and suggests questions that the patient should ask their doctor.

CareCloud reports Q4 results: revenue down 13%, adjusted EPS $0.30 versus $0.25, beating earnings expectations but falling short on revenue. CCLD shares have lost 63% of their value in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500’s 27% rise, valuing the company at $20 million. The company said in the earnings call that it will implement a cost savings program and will introduce an ambient listening solution for visit documentation. It took a $42 million goodwill impairment charge in Q4 as a result of suspending the payment of dividends, resulting in FY2023 loss of $49 million.

Process automation vendor Syllable acquires Actium Health, whose system reviews EHR data to identify patients who may need specific medical services.

People

Optimum Healthcare IT founders Gene Scheurer and Jason Mabry return as CEO and president, respectively, and the company promotes Brian Symonds, MBA to chief digital officer and head of digital transformation.

Announcements and Implementations

Artera adds a referral service to its Harmony platform that automates outreach, appointment management and self-scheduling, and pre-visit communications.

A study of Stanford Health Care’s use of AI to draft responses to patient message finds that clinician adoption was higher than expected and assessments of burden and burnout were improved, but EHR audit logs showed no time savings even though study participants perceived that the process was faster.

An Optum insider says that executives at its financially underperforming eastern division planned to order nurses to find old medical conditions in patient charts, whether they remained active or not, to support increased billing. The plan was for the nurse to add detail that would bring those issues back into the active problem list, and when the chart was next updated with a new visit, offshore coders would bill Medicare for the nurse-created codes without the physician’s knowledge.

Privacy and Security

A British privacy watchdog is investigating reports that at least one employee of the London Clinic tried to read the medical records of the Princess of Wales during her January stay for abdominal surgery.

New HHS guidance reiterates that covered entities can’t use web tracking technologies that might result in PHI disclosure, but clarifies that webpages that don’t require users to log in and that don’t have access to PHI don’t fall under HIPAA’s purview even if the user can be tied to an IP address.

Other

Someone used AI to generate this graphic that I saw on Linkedin. Which is most bizarre — the missing and deformed fingers, the oddly designed stethoscopes, the faceless watches, or the guy at the top who is either missing his right hand or using it to violate his female colleague?

Boston surgeons transplant a pig’s kidney into a patient. They didn’t mention how the pig is doing.

Sponsor Updates

Wolters Kluwer Health publishes a new case study, “Cooper University Hospital of New Jersey achieves USP compliance success with Simplifi+.”
FinThrive releases a new Healthcare Rethink Podcast, “Let’s Give Healthcare Consumers a Clean Slate!”
Healthcare IT Leaders releases a new Leader to Leader Podcast, “Technology Planning for Future Growth.”
InterSystems announces that, as part of the 2024 Best in KLAS Awards, its HealthShare Unified Care Record has been named the regional winner in the Shared Care Records/HIE category in Europe.
Neuroflow releases a new podcast, “Neuroflow NLP Technology Surfaces Suicide Risk That Assessments Alone May Miss.”

Blog Posts

Medical Billing Best Practices for Optimal Revenue in Urgent Care (Experity)
Fixing Inefficient and Costly Prior Authorization: A Path to Modernization (FinThrive)
How Cyber Attacks Impact Patient Trust (Fortified Health Security)
Themes on the path to revolutionize clinical trials at SCOPE Summit 2024 (Inovalon)
How EHRs Elevate Rural and Community Nurses (Medhost)
Connection Fuels Interoperability at HIMSS24 (Meditech)
Unlock New Telehealth and Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Opportunities in 2024 (Net Health)

Contacts

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

News 3/20/24

March 19, 2024 News 1 Comment

Top News

UnitedHealth Group reports in a March 18 status update that it has begun releasing medical claims preparation software as a part of Change Healthcare’s system restoration process. It expects the changes to be made available to “thousands of customers” over the next several days.

The company says it restored Change Healthcare’s electronic payments platform as scheduled on Friday and is proceeding with payer implementations.

UHG says it has advanced $2 billion in financial aid to cash-strapped providers who have been affected by the February 21 cyberattack.

Reader Comments

From Existential Dreadlocks: “Re: HIMSS. For the third year in a row, I have had several peers and clinical friends privately shame me for attending HIMSS and CHIME. Here are some of the emails and text. I never expected such reactions.” I’m wondering if others get comments like those that were sent to ED:

You and your peers get to work remotely, seldom come to the hospital for meetings, and then find it OK to party while many of the hospital can barely make budget. You’re all out of touch with reality.
We sent nobody this year. It sends the wrong message when the nurses see nothing but party pics and videos all lover social media. Insensitive. “Mad Men” lives on.
Why are you still going to HIMSS? What is wrong with you? It is nothing but an excuse to mooch dinners off the vendors and party with hundreds of self-promoters. Loot at me. Look at me. Look at me.
Bad idea. How do you reconcile attending the boondoggle when every week you see more hospitals failing? All the costs incurred by the vendors are being passed back to us. Not a good look.
Nice to see your IT friends who never want to come into the office have no trouble hoping a plane to a conference.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Last chance: tell me anonymously what you thought of HIMSS24. Thanks to those who have sent me their impressions, which I’m pretty sure readers will find interesting when I recap them later this week.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Nvidia invests an unspecified sum in conversational AI system vendor Abridge, which will expand its use of Nvidia’s technologies.

Hippocratic AI raises $53 million in a Series A funding round that values the company at $500 million. It also announced that it is performing safety testing of a healthcare staffing marketplace where AI software agents can be “hired” to perform non-diagnostic, patient-facing tasks.

Mayo Clinic Platform launches Solutions Studio to help digital health startups commercialize their software and services.

Augmedix announces Q4 results: revenue up 45%, EPS –$0.09 versus –$0.15, beating Wall Street expectations for both. AUGX shares rose 15% on the news and are up 137% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $190 million.

Patient intake software vendor Phreesia announces Q4 results: revenue up 23%, EPS –$0.56 versus –$0.72, beating expectations for both. PHR shares are down 25% in the past 12 months versus the S&P 500’s 28% gain, valuing the company at $1.3 billion. CEO Chaim Indig noted the company’s ongoing investment in security and compliance while referencing the Change Healthcare cyberattack:

There’s really no sugar coating that a major part of the healthcare infrastructure was attacked, and it’s pretty terrible.We’re doing everything we can to help our clients just collect dollars and making sure that they can they can keep running their businesses as they were. From what we can tell, almost all of them still are, although it’s really putting a strain on them … we started moving to our backup and alternate clearinghouses to move the vast majority of our volume … this was a pretty big attack on the American healthcare infrastructure and IT. I think it’s pretty shitty.

Sales

Texas based FQHC United Medical Centers chooses NextGen Healthcare’s EHR/PM.
Banner Health will expand its use of Regard’s AI-driven EHR navigation and task automation system to all of its 33 hospitals in 2024.

People

Healthcare Triangle appoints Chief Revenue Officer Anand Kumar, MBA to the additional role of interim CEO.

Optimize Health promotes Ryan Clark to CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Edward Hines Jr. VA Hospital implements AvaSure’s Continuous Video Monitoring System within its Community Living Center for nursing home care and hospice.

Sunoh.ai releases its medical AI scribe app for IOS and Android smartphones and IPads.

Regional Medical Associates (DE) adds Sunoh.ai medical scribe technology to its EClinicalWorks EHR.

DeKalb Regional Medical Center (AL) offers virtual neurology and stroke diagnosis consults with specialists at Erlanger Health (TN).

MyMichigan Medical Center Sault transitions from Meditech to Epic.

An excellent JAMA op-ed piece warns that “humans are terrible at vigilance” in questioning the expectation that clinicians will double-check the output of AI systems that is often correct and always authoritative, especially as organizations push higher productivity to pay for their AI investment. They offer options that have worked in other industries:

Color-code AI output based on its own assessment of certainty and whether the specific patient is representative of the population that was used to train the model.
Flag clinicians who accept AI-generated recommendations or text nearly 100% of the time in exhibiting automation bias.
Reallocate any AI-created time savings to address burnout and increase empathy rather than raising throughput expectations.
Program the AI system to deliver “deliberate shocks,” similar to TSA airport screening systems that randomly add an image of a firearm to keep operators vigilant.
Use AI like an after-the-fact spell-checker whose job is to highlight to clinicians when its conclusions differ from theirs.

A new KLAS report on ambulatory EHR/PM mindshare finds that Epic, Athenahealth, and Oracle Health are the leaders, with Epic’s Community Connect system being chosen most often across all practice sizes due to interoperability with hospitals and cost-effectiveness. Most often being considered for replacement are Greenway Health, Athenahealth, and NextGen Healthcare. (click graphic to enlarge)

Privacy and Security

Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago brings its MyChart patient portal back online after a ransomware attack took it and other systems offline six weeks ago.

Other

A Waystar survey of executives from 36 large health systems finds that while 73% work with four or more different RCM software vendors, adoption of end-to-end RCM platforms has increased significantly. All end-to-end technology adopters are already experiencing an ROI, or expect to within one to two years.

A UCLA study finds that sending influenza vaccine reminder messages to patients, using either patient portals or texting, did not improve vaccination rates.

Sponsor Updates

EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Boosting Data Analysis in Healthcare.”
Arcadia leverages Vim’s middleware platform to better enable healthcare organizations to install and reliably operate Arcadia’s Desktop and Inform solutions.
Altera publishes “Building Success: Grand Lake Health System’s Journey with Sunrise EHR and Altera.”
Agfa HealthCare receives Censinet’s Cybersecurity Transparent Leader Award for the fourth consecutive year.

Blog Posts

CIOs Rank Top Healthcare IT Priorities and Pressures for 2024 (Part 1) (CereCore)
Interoperability in Healthcare: Why It Matters (AdvancedMD)
Five Steps to an Effective Physician Query Process (AGS Health)
Announcing Paragon Denali: A true cloud-native SaaS EHR (Altera Digital Health)
5 Takeaways from the New York Care Coordination Summit (CarePort Health)
Unique Risks in Managed Care Compliance (Clearwater)
Total Experience Strategies for Improving Burnout and Patient Care (Divurgent)
Revolutionizing Work-Life Balance with a Smart AI-Driven EHR (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/18/24

March 17, 2024 News 7 Comments

Reader Comments

From Selfie Sticker: “Re: HIMSS24. We have exceeded the 50% threshold of photos in which the taker themselves is featured.” I estimate that 75% of the conference photos that were posted on X and LinkedIn involve combinations of the same 10 people, most of them mugging for selfies or a series of smiley group shots that show little about the actual event, which is apparently less important than their presence there. Still, I’ll take that over yet another cliche photo – HIMSS ran a lot of these — in which someone does the Taylor Swift heart-hand thing.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I might not have been specific enough in last week’s poll question since I’m wondering if the nearly three-fourth of respondents who said they scheduled an in-person visit using online technology alone (no phone call, email exchange, etc.) really did. Or maybe providers are further along in their self-scheduling rollouts that other reports indicate.

New poll to your right or here: In the past 12 months, has an in-person provider used conversational audio from the visit to create documentation? I’ve only seen my direct primary care doc and she types notes directly into the EHR, but she (and I) have the luxury of relaxed, one-hour visits that don’t need to feed billing or insurance, so she’s doing the listening rather than an app.

HIMSS24 attendees, tell me anonymously about what you liked or didn’t like about the conference and I’ll summarize later this week.

Possible to-do items for supporting HIStalk:

Sign up for spam-free email updates.
Share news, rumors, and intriguing insights with me.
Get a perk or two as a former sponsor for returning to the fold by contacting Lorre. Not sure if you’ve sponsored before? Let me know and I’ll look it up.

Webinars

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

Sales

In Canada, Halton Healthcare chooses Sectra One Cloud for imaging.

Announcements and Implementations

UnitedHealth Group hasn’t updated their Change Healthcare restoration status since March 14. Its target for restoring electronic payments was this past Friday and testing of claims submission was slated for Monday, March 18.

Meditech adds integration with Nuance DAX Copilot to Expanse.

The American Hospital Association tells the Senate Finance Committee that it cannot support budget proposals that call for the federal government to impose financial penalties on hospitals that have been the victim of cyberattacks. The White House has asked for hospital cybersecurity funding, but with penalties to those that don’t meet requirements. AHA also notes that HHS has limited authority to offer financial assistance to providers who have suffered from the Change Healthcare cyberattack, and without Congressional approval, can’t help with denials of claims that involve Medicare Advantage, commercial insurers, and state Medicaid programs.

Other

A commercial real estate firm pitches its listing of a Collingwood, Australia office building that is home to anchor tenant Epic. It says that the building “has appealed to a younger generation who have ample building amenities plus access to Smith Street, which was voted by Timeout Readers as the coolest strip in the world. Sackville Street is all about working, living, and playing in the same area.”

Sponsor Updates

Netsmart sponsors the Kansas Mental Health Advocacy Day.
Nordic Consulting debuts its Cloud Innovation Lab developed in partnership with Microsoft Azure and AWS.
RxLightning names Erin Townsend senior reimbursement specialist and Jason Roberts technical support engineer.
Homerton Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust in England becomes the first NHS organization to deploy Sectra’s enterprise imaging service using public cloud.
SmartSense by Digi shares why Vail Health chose SmartSense for condition and environmental monitoring.
Tegria publishes a new case study, “Strategic Revenue Integrity Improvements Generate $19.4 Million.”

Blog Posts

Unifying the care continuum with market-leading solutions (Wolters Kluwer Health)
ViVE 2024 Takeaways: The ‘Rebel Yell’ of AI and Cybersecurity (Optimum Healthcare IT)
Finding the future of interoperability with Redox: Part 1 – Bulk FHIR (Redox)
Enabling your digital health innovation goals (Rhapsody)
Leadership Spotlight: Kelly Boyd, General Manager (Sonifi Health)
Urgency in Modernizing Credentialing and Provider Data Management (Symplr)
How Healthcare Systems and Providers Can Help Caregivers to Provide Better Nutrition (Trualta)
Adapting to Change: Best practices you can put into place today to help manage the Change Healthcare outage (VisiQuate)

Contacts

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

News 3/15/24

March 14, 2024 News Comments Off

Top News

HHS OCR launches an investigation of the Change Healthcare cyberattack to determine if a PHI breach occurred and if owner UnitedHealth Group is in compliance with HIPAA.

HHS OCR also reminds the company’s partners to make sure they have business associate agreements in place and are prepared to file HHS breach notification if they are made aware of PHI exposure.

Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-OR) pressed HHS Secretary Xaviera Becerra in a hearing Thursday to hold hospital and insurer executives accountable for cybersecurity.

The company said in a Thursday update that it has reviewed and protected most of its infrastructure and brought prescription services online. It said previously that it expects electronic payments to be restored on Friday, March 15.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The number of “that’s a wrap for HIMSS24” social media messages posted Thursday must be disconcerting to HIMSS given that two keynotes and some education sessions are scheduled for Friday all the way through 2:15 p.m., although many folks consider the boat show over once the exhibit hall doors close for the week. It was both relaxing and weird the one and only year I stuck around for the last day while most folks were back in their own beds. I notice that HIMSS25 in Las Vegas will be shortened a day to run from March 3-6, but will return to a five-day schedule for HIMSS26, which is also in Las Vegas.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor TruBridge. The Mobile, AL-based company has over four decades of experience in connecting providers, patients, and communities with innovative solutions that create real value by supporting both the financial and clinical side of healthcare delivery. It’s a trusted partner to healthcare organizations with a broad range of technology offerings that address the unique needs and challenges of diverse communities, promoting equitable access to quality care and fostering positive outcomes. The company’s industry leading HFMA Peer Reviewed suite of revenue cycle management (RCM) offerings combine unparalleled visibility and transparency to enhance productivity and support the financial health of healthcare organizations across all care settings. Its solutions champion end-to-end, data-driven patient journeys that support value-based care, improve outcomes, and increase patient satisfaction. It supports efficient patient care with electronic health record (EHR) product offerings that successfully integrate data between care settings. Above all, it believes in the power of community and encourages collaboration, connection, and empowerment with its customers. TruBridge helps clear the way for care.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Innovaccer acquires Pharmacy Quality Solutions, which offers a medication quality management platform for payers.

Healthcare IT and cybersecurity vendor Anatomy IT acquires Manta HealthTech, which offers managed IT services to medical, dental, optometry, and veterinary care providers.

Massachusetts General Hospital and Brigham and Women’s Hospital will combine their clinical departments and academic programs, with a single chair overseeing each one.

Sales

In England, New Victoria Hospital chooses Meditech Expanse, hosted on Google Cloud Platform.
Arkansas Heart Hospital extends its use of Oracle Health EHR and patient accounting to its ambulatory clinics and two hospitals.

People

Net Health hires John Gresham (ValueHealth) as president of its wound care division.

Frank Jackson, MBA (Verinovum) joins MRO as SVP of clinical quality and payer solutions.

Announcements and Implementations

A HIMSS session on Thursday covered the International Patient Summary, a standards-based method of giving clinicians access to a patient’s basic medical information by scanning a QR code.

Verato will incorporate Google Cloud technology in its enterprise identity management solutions.

Privacy and Security

Lurie Children’s Hospital is conducting an investigation into the claims by the hacker group that was responsible for its recent ransomware attack that it has sold the hospital’s data.

Other

A study published by Epic Research finds that people who were prescribed Eli Lilly’s tirazepatide (Zepbound, Mounjaro) lost a median of 15% of their body weight in one year, the highest percentage loss among five GLP-1 drugs.

Doctors and employees of Copley Hospital protest the termination of ED doctor Liam Gannon, MD, who says he was fired for warning hospital administration in 2020 that the EHR they were considering – and later bought – could compromise patient safety and care quality due to problems with reported delayed or missing orders.

Sponsor Updates

Wolters Kluwer Health announces enhancements its clinical decision support solutions including UpToDate, UpToDate Lexidrug, UpToDate Patient Engagement, and UpToDate Digital Architect.
Findhelp welcomes Essex Regional Educational Services Commission, Delta Population Health Institute, and Memorial Hermann Health System to its network.
Forbes names Impact Advisors to its list of America’s Best Management Consulting Firms for 2024.
FinThrive releases a new Healthcare Rethink Podcast, “Let’s Super Charge Care Management.”
The Point-of-Care Partners Podcast features First Databank President Bob Katter, “Empowering Pharmacists: How Health IT Can Facilitate Seamless Data Exchange & Ease Workloads.”
Healthcare IT Leaders names Shelley Simkins (ProNexus Advisory) Elite Advisor.

Blog Posts

Empowering healthcare professionals with trusted and unified clinical decision support solutions (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Five Best Practices for Healthcare Contact Centers (Five9)
The next rung up: Building organization-wide “Leadership Ladders” (Laudio)
How Does AI SolutionOps Work? (Lucem Health)
Preparing Your EHR for Disaster (Medhost)
Becoming a master of change in a dynamic industry (Meditech)

Contacts

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

From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 3/13/24

March 14, 2024 News 4 Comments

It was nice enough for people to sit out on the lawn on Wednesday. The giant HIMSS letters of the past have been replaced by this globe that proudly sports the Informa Markets branding.

The exhibit hall remained crowded this morning, with plenty of people feeling free to stop and have conversations in the main aisle, which at times made navigating difficult. Absent are the transportation carts that used to be present at previous HIMSS conferences, which also served to keep people moving. The exhibit hall begins to get thin around the 6500 aisle, which brings back memories of having to look for booths up in the thousands.

The public spaces were starting to show signs of wear by lunch time, with empty water coolers and overflowing trash bins as people took their lunches outside. I found a full water cooler over by the Government pavilion, which was in a separate exhibit hall that is unconnected to the rest of the show floor. The red, white, and blue ceiling décor was a nice touch.

Luggage storage areas began filling up in the morning, which is typically on a HIMSS Wednesday. As I visited my first booth, I noticed some weird orange spots on my name tag. It turns out that the bubbly fizzy drink of last night was responsible, leaving sticky dots as a reminder of the fun I had.

Nabla had a cool retro typewriter in their booth, which was inundated when I went by. I’m looking forward to learning more about their solution and how systems are implementing it.

This is the first time I’ve seen crepes at HIMSS.

Intelligent Medical Objects (IMO) brought their A game for both shoes and socks.

First Databank delivered with HIMSS-approved axe throwing to replace their carnival game. Attendees were really getting into it, and I saw a couple of serious contenders at the end of the day.

From Bill Spooner: “Re: HIMSS. It is 30 years since my first HIMSS and I’m happy to partaking vicariously. I’ll be interested in your assessment, particularly a good comparison with VIVE. Educational substance, provider attendance (especially senior leadership and docs), hyped vendor announcements, networking, extracurricular activity, etc. If you have to choose one, which will bring the greater value? If only one were to survive, which are you rooting for?” Vendor friends told me their numbers from HIMSS indicated that there were in excess of 8,000 provider-side attendees, but they weren’t feeling that during their interactions. Several said they felt that there was a lot of business-to-business activity going on, with people trying to sell solutions to each other or talking about partnerships. I didn’t attend ViVE this year, so my comparison is more than a year old, but people were certainly talking about the two events. ViVE leads in the hype department and there were plenty of comments about the fact that it has better food and that it is included in the price. ViVE also costs twice as much to attend, so I’m sure if HIMSS wanted to up their fees, they could do better with food choices. HIMSS has also put a main stage on the show floor similar to ViVE, plus smaller embedded theaters around the hall, so it is trying to adapt.

I saw few CMOs and CMIOs in my travels, with mostly director and VP-level folks from provider organizations. HIMSS has better Continuing Medical Education offerings, so it will probably win my vote since I pay out of pocket to come and have to see tangible value. My previous ViVE experience felt like it was a “see and be seen” situation versus trying to help providers meet their state and specialty-mandated educational needs. As far as keynote speakers, the last several years have been pretty meh, but there are so many talking heads in the industry that I’m not sure who it would take for me to find them exciting.

From International Women’s Day: “Re: HIMSS. I always appreciate your hot takes. Thought you might be interested in their nursing mother’s rooms. It’s sadly not surprising that the ‘wellness rooms’ in Orlando and pretty abysmal. I used the one in Lobby C – it has a chair, a table, and a plug in a dusty room that could use a good vacuuming. No sink or fridge (fridge is kind of understandable since I’m sure they don’t want to be liable for safe breast milk storage). I’m pleased that they at least have rooms and put them on the map, but it’s a bit ironic at a healthcare conference to not have better accommodations for nursing moms.” I had peeked into one of the rooms earlier in the week before the comment arrived and found it to be drab. The room is also a shared space that invites people for prayer and meditation, which from experience have slightly different vibes than those that are channeled while trying to pump breast milk. Anyone who needs to wash pump parts would have to go across the hall to the restrooms, which have been plus/minus this week as far as having adequate supplies of paper towels and general cleanliness. I haven’t been a nursing mother in recent years, but generally I think I would prefer one of the nursing pods that you see in airports to a dusty multi-purpose space.

I spent some time at the Epic booth today, learning about new offerings and how they are helping their clients make the most of multi-million-dollar investments. There’s a staff room behind the Epic booth where workers can get drinks and recharge, since they are on-stage with clients a lot of the time. Epic also manages their own connectivity and tech behind the scenes, and I caught a peek at the team sequestered in the back of the booth making the magic happen. I hope they get some rest after this busy week.

Shoes of the day are courtesy of Relatient’s always dapper Jonathan Shivers. The colored laces are the key.

Edifecs featured ballet dancer Misty Copeland on their annual inspirational t-shirt. Past tributes have included Dolly Parton and Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

As usual, the puppy park was hopping. Who doesn’t love a puppy?

Today, it was back to the virtual salt mines, and I started traveling at 6 a.m. Orlando is one of my least-favorite airports, and it didn’t do anything to redeem itself this morning. TSA lines appeared fairly short, but apparently I was there at shift change and they were moving slower than anticipated. Additionally, they have an uneven number of PreCheck lanes compared to the number of ID screeners, which resulted in some lines not being called and passengers becoming exasperated. They had clearly posted signage about putting your passport on the scanner, but I was yelled at for not putting my boarding pass on the scanner. I haven’t had to present a boarding pass at a US airport in more than a year, so who knows what’s going on with TSA and why they’re operating outside their clearly posted process.

How was your Orlando airport experience? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 3/12/24

March 13, 2024 News 2 Comments

Tuesday was a busy day at HIMSS. As much as I thought the humidity was absent yesterday, it returned in full force this morning as I walked the ¾ mile from my hotel to the convention center.

I didn’t hear much commentary on the keynote speaker, which was supposed to be about harnessing AI to improve the patient experience. I didn’t make it to the session due to some breakfast meetings I had scheduled, and it didn’t feel like too many people were enthusiastic about the speech. When I arrived at the convention center well before the keynote was scheduled to end, there were plenty of people milling around and not attending the session. From what I’ve heard, it was lightly attended.

The exhibit hall opened at 10 a.m. and several people were killing time at the Slack vending machine outside the first entrance to the hall. Attendees could scan their badges for a chance to win prizes, including a reusable utensil kit, which is what I ended up with. I usually carry a set of utensils in my consulting bag because you never know when a take-out order will be missing them, so the set was much appreciated.

The exhibit hall was hopping from the moment it opened until the moment it closed, which made it feel like the boat-show style HIMSS of old. Hornet Security (booth 1220) had an excellent spokesperson engaging passers-by with this crazy pull-out banner inside his jacket. He wasn’t just a speaker, though, he knew all about the product and was able to answer questions about cybersecurity threats without handing them off to colleagues.

In general, booth staffers were attentive and warm in greeting those walking by. Of course, that is likely to fade as the week wears on. After a brief session of stalking the lower numbered aisles in the exhibit hall, I headed to some educational sessions so that I could at least earn enough Continuing Medical Education credits to make this trip worthwhile.

Connection (booth 1449) was filling bags for the Palm Beach VA hospital. I was glad to help, and they were good at gently redirecting people who just wanted to take a pack of tissues and didn’t understand that it was a “fill the backpack” event. They have a lofty goal of backpacks that they’d like filled before the end of the conference, so be sure to stop by and help them out.

The best shoes of the day were spotted at First Databank (booth 1747). Kudos to the ladies who chose comfort and style.

First Databank also wound up on the HIMSS naughty list with their carnival game. I arrived just as their sledgehammer prop was being hidden away, having been shut down by HIMSS officials because the noise of the bell exceeded HIMSS noise standards. Kudos to their rep who was tasked to run the game and but ended up with nothing to do, but who engaged the crowd nevertheless. I suggested a quick run to Costco for the indoor axe throwing set I saw there recently, so we’ll have to see if they have a replacement for tomorrow.

I did my annual booth crawl with Nordic CMO Craig Joseph, which was fun as usual. We decided to award Tierpoint (booth 3075) with the “best swag” award for handing out Tide pens. The booth staff were also engaging and kept up the energy level throughout the day, which is an achievement in itself.

Parlance (booth 5183) had wonderful chocolate chip cookies and promised another delivery for Wednesday and leftovers on Thursday, so be sure to check them out. I was grateful to have a snack at the end of the day, since the lunch promised by my noon focus group was never delivered.

I saw this fantastic suit several times.

Several exhibitors had happy hours at the end of the day, including Cox Health, Intelligent Medical Objects, and the Patient Experience pavilion. From there I headed to events hosted by Evergreen Healthcare Partners and Clearsense, which were both fun and great for networking.

The CommonWell Health Alliance party at Icebar had drinks powered by dry ice in the indoor bar area, sponsored by Ellkay. Those electing to don jackets and gloves were treated to cocktails served in ice mugs. Thanks to both for sponsoring the coldest part of the night.

After that, I was ready to head to my hotel and crash. It’s been 14 years since my first HIMSS and I’m definitely less of a night owl than I used to be. Kudos to the next generation who is keeping the wild nightlife vibes alive.

What has been your favorite part of HIMSS so far? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 3/13/24

March 12, 2024 News Comments Off

Oracle Stock Surges On Strong Earnings, AI Cloud Demand

Oracle reports Q3 results: revenue up 7%, adjusted EPS $1.41 versus $1.22, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings and meeting revenue expectations.

Frazier Healthcare Partners Announces Acquisition of RevSpring

Investment firm Frazier Healthcare Partners acquires patient engagement and payments technology firm RevSpring from its private equity owner.

CodaMetrix Announces $40M Series B Financing to Advance Medical Coding Quality and Clinically Enrich Claims Data Through AI

Automated medical coding software company CodaMetrix raises $40 million in Series B funding, bringing its total raised to $95 million.

News 3/13/24

March 12, 2024 News 4 Comments

Top News

Oracle reports Q3 results: revenue up 7%, adjusted EPS $1.41 versus $1.22, beating Wall Street expectations for earnings and meeting revenue expectations. ORCL shares rose sharply to a 52-week high on the news as investors reacted to the company’s cloud and AI prospects. From the earnings call:

CEO Safra Catz once again recited the need to “drive Cerner profitability to Oracle standards,” as the growth in that business lagged the company’s overall growth.
Catz said that the Cerner business ”is a significant headwind this year,“ but she expects it to return to growth next year.
Board chair and CTO Larry Ellison says that the company is using its Apex application generator and autonomous database to develop new healthcare applications. He says that an ambulatory clinic system that includes a Clinical Digital Assistant voice interface will be released in Q4.
The Clinical Digital Assistant will include ambient encounter documentation and will create prescriptions, orders, and notes that automatically update the EHR.
Ellison predicts that Oracle’s AI-centric healthcare cloud applications will allow customers to rapidly modernize their systems and transform Oracle Health into a high-growth business.
Ellison says that running Cerner on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure is less expensive than using a Cerner-dedicated data center in Kansas City; is more secure against cyberattacks; and allows automatic updates every three months.

Oracle also announced enhancements to Oracle Health Data Intelligence, formerly Cerner HealthIntent, that include a generative AI service that summarizes patient histories for care managers.

Reader Comments

From Mike: “Re: HIMSS24. Rocking my HIStalk 2014 pin for the 10-year anniversary. My awesome HIStalk mug has finally faded out, so sad. And I miss the HIStalkapalooza days — HIMSS just isn’t the same.” My ideas are often financially unsound, such as lugging boxes of pins and mugs to HIMSS14 and then trashing most of them afterward as attendees were too overwhelmed with booth swag to want more. Ditto HIStalkapalooza, which was was a financial nail-biter every year and would have wiped me out in 2020 had I not ended it with the 10th edition in 2017. Still, like many things in life, the good memories outlive the not-so-good ones. The flamingo with a stethoscope design was reasonably clever.

From Booth Crawler: “Re: HIMSS24. Twitter is lit up with ‘influencers’ who are charging vendors to promote their talks, moderate their panels, or pitch their booth presence.” I’ve noticed a lot of that this year. I started HIStalk forever ago because so-called news sites mostly ran paid vendor promos in which no discouraging word was ever heard. I’m glad that’s still the case since it gives me a reason to keep doing it my way. Everybody has to choose what works for them.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Attending HIMSS24? I’m anxious to hear your thoughts about the buzz, trends, surprises. Did you attend any HIMSS-owned educational sessions versus the Informa-owned exhibit hall? That also reminds me that SxSW’s healthcare track ended Tuesday and I haven’t heard a peep out of it even though it and CES at one time looked like potential HIMSS competitors.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cognitive assessment software vendor Linus Health acquires clinical-grade speech analytics company Aural Analytics.

Access Information Management acquires Triyam, which specializes in healthcare data conversion, migration, and archiving.

Investment firm Frazier Healthcare Partners acquires patient engagement and payments technology firm RevSpring from its private equity owner.

Trey Lauderdale, who founded and led Voalte and then sold it to Hill-Rom for $180 million in 2019, brings his new, healthcare-unrelated company Atomic Canyon out of stealth as founder and CEO. The company’s AI platform scans federal databases to help nuclear power plant operators obtain regulatory approvals

AI-enabled precision medicine technology vendor Tempus hires Morgan Stanley to take the company public.

Sales

Ferrell Hospital (IL) selects remote patient monitoring technology from CareSimple.
Foothold Technology will integrate Findhelp’s social services referral management software with its human services EHR and care coordination technology.
Children’s Wisconsin will implement Locus Health’s remote patient monitoring software.
University Hospitals Plymouth NHS Trust in England selects Epic.
Sentara Healthcare (VA) opts for virtual rheumatology care services from Remission Medical.
Halifax Health (FL) will implement Epic.

People

Walmart Health names consultant and former ChristianaCare executive Ken Silverstein, MD, MBA as VP of clinical operations.

Divurgent names Mike Nash, MBA (RPM Advisors) SVP of its new Divurgent Canada division.

Cone Health (NC) promotes Jason Wright, MA to VP of enterprise business platforms and digital solutions.

Former Cherokee Nation Health CIO Donnie Parish joins General Dynamics Information Technology as VP of strategic operations.

Clinithink names former consultant Mark Johnston as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

CommonSpirit Health (UT) goes live on Epic across 45 outpatient departments.

Crook County Medical Services District (WY) implements Oracle Health.

Wolters Kluwer Health announces the availability of UpToDate Enterprise and UpToDate Pro digital clinical decision support solutions under the UpToDate brand.

Symplr announces the GA of SymplrAI, a virtual workforce assistant designed to help streamline hospital operations.

Sonifi Health debuts cloud-based smart room technology featuring patient engagement tools at the bedside.

Stanford Health Care (CA) deploys Nuance’s DAX Copilot automated clinical documentation software.

Altera Digital Health announces Paragon Denali, an Azure-based EHR for rural, critical access, and community hospitals.

Clearwater announces an addition to its IRM|Pro platform that allows organizations to gauge their cybersecurity program performance against NIST’s framework.

Several Meditech sites are deploying ambient listening technology with its Expanse EHR using multiple voice assistant vendors.

InterSystems enhances the patient matching functionality of its HealthShare Patient Index by incorporating LexisNexis LexID.

ECRI publishes its Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns 2024, which includes these technology-related items:

Workarounds with barcode medication administration systems, such as administering meds whose barcodes won’t scan and charting after the fact.
Unintended consequences of technology adoption, such as clinician burnout, and the potential of making bad clinical decisions because of unreliable or poorly trained AI.

Apple touts the development of health and wellness apps for Apple Vision Pro, noting currently available apps for visual surgical planning, medical equipment training, and Epic Spatial Computing Concept, which allows clinicians to interact with Epic to complete charting, review results, conduct secure chats, and complete in-basket workflows.

Other

UnitedHealthcare asks Oregon regulators for emergency approval of its acquisition of The Corvallis Clinic, which it says is in imminent danger of closing because of financial challenges. It didn’t mention that those challenges were caused by the weeks-long claims and payment outage of Change Healthcare, which is owned by UnitedHealthcare. The excellent report by The American Prospect concludes that UHG-owned Optum, which is the largest employer of physicians in the US, “can add to its stable by securing purchases of companies put into a terrible position by its own ransomware hack.” The article also notes that UnitedHealth pays $662 million in medical claims each day, so it is piling up cash as its own systems prevent it from sending out the money it owes to providers.

Sponsor Updates

CereCore releases a new podcast, “Why EHR Optimization is Worth the Effort and Budget.”
Agfa HealthCare accelerates growth in enterprise imaging cloud business amidst strong market momentum.
Black Book’s latest user survey ranks Innovaccer’s Data Activation Platform as the top end-to-end population health solution.
CHIME’s Leader to Leader Podcast features Divurgent Chief of US Operations Joe Grinstead, “The Science of Organizational Change Management.”
FinThrive announces enhancements to its Analyze, Authorization Manager, and Real-Time Insurance Discover and Active Insurance Discover revenue cycle solutions.
First Databank adds CDS Hooks integration to its Targeted Medication Warnings solution.
Surescripts publishes its 2023 national progress report, “Tracking the Impact of Health Intelligence Sharing Across the United States.”
Linus Health adds Hearing Screener and Digital Trail Making Test Part B assessments to its comprehensive, AI-enhanced brain health platform.
TruBridge partners with the newly-created Trustworthy & Responsible AI Network, which aims to operationalize responsible AI principles to improve the quality, safety, and trustworthiness of AI in healthcare.
Wolters Kluwer Health announces key milestones for AI Labs, its Clinical Generative AI beta launched last year and powered by its UpToDate CDS solution.
EClinicalWorks offers a new customer success story, “Empowering Population Health & Revenue Growth.”

Blog Posts

Unlocking the Full Potential of Your EHR: Why Optimization Pays Off (CereCore)
Patient identification and safety: The truth can be scary (Altera Digital Health)
What to Know about the 2024 Physician Fee Schedule (AGS Health)
5 ways data analytics drives impact and ROI in healthcare (Arcadia)
Natural History and Real-World Data in Rare Diseases: Applications, Limitations, and Future Perspectives (Aridhia Informatics)
Expedite the Path to Modern Patient Experiences with Patient Communication Conversation Packs (Artera)
A Guide to the Successful Implementation of AI in Healthcare (Availity)
Hardening your work-from-home network and devices to weather today’s cyber storm (Clearwater)
Leading the Way: A Guide for Hiring Managers on Cultivating Effective Leadership (Direct Recruiters)
The Vibe From ViVE: The Buzz About AI, Interoperability, and Beyond (DrFirst)
Telehealth in care deserts: Helping to overcome barriers created by location, costs, or social stigma (Wolters Kluwer Health)

Contacts

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

From HIMSS with Dr. Jayne 3/11/24

March 12, 2024 News 2 Comments

Monday was my travel day since I couldn’t justify an extra hotel night and had other more exciting things to do. I was tempted to wear some mouse ears just so I could feel like I was fitting in with the rest of the crowd. Traveling to Orlando during spring break isn’t my favorite thing to do, although HIMSS seems to think it’s the best thing ever.

I was sad to receive a couple of emails and texts from people I had hoped to connect with at the conference but who wouldn’t be attending. One had become sick during travel last week and decided to keep his germs to himself, which I fully appreciate. Another had her travel withdrawn by her employer at the last minute. Seems like poor planning given the non-cancelable nature of most hotel and airline reservations, but there are plenty of poor decisions that happen in healthcare IT every day.

My home airport was a hot mess, with the TSA PreCheck line stretching about four times longer than I’ve ever seen it. Some of us were tempted to hop into the regular line, which was much shorter, but overly aggressive airport staff were turning away TSA PreCheck holders from that checkpoint and directing them to the back of our line. It turns out that before 6 a.m., there is only one person checking IDs on the PreCheck lane even though they were running three x-ray machines. Once 7 a.m. rolled around, another two ID agents were deployed and the backlog was quickly cleared. Still, there were plenty of people griping about it and one guy who claimed to have missed his flight, but it’s just one more thing to reassure those of us who are habitually early that we should continue our routines.

There were some badly behaved travelers on my flight, and they looked to be of the business traveler variety, so they should have known better. I was flying Southwest Airlines, where checked bags fly free, and the gate agent was very clear about the fact that there were 140 people ticketed on our flight and only 40 checked bags. She noted that a quick count of bags in the gate area made it look like they would have to do some last-minute gate checking and encouraged people to check their bags in advance. Of course, people didn’t comply, which made for chaos in the aisle as people couldn’t find places for their bags.

The cranky traveler in question was boarding position C20-something, which for those of you who don’t routinely fly Southwest, means he was one of the last people to board and of course that he had to check his roller bag. He was angry about that and then huffed about in the cabin because there was nowhere to put his backpack, lamenting that “this effing backpack never fits under the seat.” As a student of the English language, the “never” implies that he has experienced non-fitting of the bag multiple times previously but chooses to carry it anyway. First, there’s no reason to curse on a flight full of small children, and second, his discomfort seemed to be self-inflicted and I have little sympathy for that.

My flight was smoothed by my complimentary margarita, and after a nice nap, I emerged from my flight and found the HIMSS registration desk located in the airport baggage claim. I had printed my QR code, so badge pickup took about 60 seconds, which made me happy. The taxi line was nearly non-existent, but I had booked a last-minute discounted rental car, so I was quickly on my way. The hotel gods smiled on me with an early check-in, and from there I was on my way to take the long hike to the convention center. The weather was gorgeous with minimal humidity compared to what we usually experience in Orlando.

The opening reception kicked off with a bang, or at least a rat-a-tat-tat, as a neon-adorned drum line played in the lobby. From there, they proceeded up the escalator to the now-open doors of the reception room. Initially, there was an overactive fog machine that was making me cough, but the mist dissipated quickly. There was entertainment with acrobats on neon-adorned hula hoops, some kind of robot-looking character in an LED costume, and a DJ with lots more neon on display. The drum line made another appearance partway through the reception.

Food lines and bar lines were reasonable and the room wasn’t too crowded, although as we were leaving it appeared that a lot of the party had shifted into the lobby, probably because of the volume in the room. Overall, the vibe seemed positive. Following the reception there were a number of private parties, but after a quick round of drinks with friends, I called it a night and headed back to plot tomorrow’s adventures.

Plenty of organizations are hosting happy hours on the exhibit hall floor, which always makes me happy to reach the end of the day. I’m hoping there will be some scones or other good treats as well, but as usual I’ll settle for wine. IMO (booth 2251) won the booth happy hour advertising game with their email offering wine pairings for various healthcare IT goals. In case you’re curious:

Simplified clinical documentation pairs best with chardonnay.
Standardized condition and treatment data goes well with pinot grigio.
Meaningful problem lists are better with merlot (and I would agree).
Streamlined OR scheduling is best with reisling (personally I’d put that with optimized patient education, but that’s just me).

I’ll offer some additional pairings for those of you who prefer spirits: lab crosswalk review goes best with vodka, marketing workshops definitely require beachy rum drinks, and the art of constructing governance documents most certainly pairs best with bourbon.

What are your favorite healthcare IT and beverage pairings? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Monday Morning Update 3/11/24

March 10, 2024 News 5 Comments

Top News

UnitedHealth Group hopes to restore Change Healthcare’s electronic payments systems by March 15 and its medical claims platform the week of March 18. The company says that e-prescribing and pharmacy claims and payments came back online on March 7.

UHG has suspended some of its requirements through March 31: (a) prior authorization for Medicare Advantage plans; (b) utilization review for MA admissions; and (c) drug formulary review for Medicare Part D.

The company says that recommends that providers use multiple paths and workarounds for submitting claims, noting that, “If there’s anything we’ve learned as an industry, it’s that system redundancy is critical.” It acknowledges that some of the temporary workarounds will lack full edits and functionality, which could require rework.

The hacker who claimed to provide the BlackCat ransomware group as an a ransomware-as-a-service “affiliate” may be associated with China-base cybercrime syndicates, according to a security group that spoke to the hacker “Notchy,” who claims that BlackCat stiffed them of the 90% commission due on the $22 million ransom that UHG supposedly paid.

CMS, which initially announced plans to offer financial assistance to Medicare Part A providers (hospitals) who are experiencing claims disruption, expanded the plan to include Medicare Part B providers (physician practices).

Reader Comments

From HSA Card User: “Re: credit card. Some practices are charging for paying by credit cards, even HSA cards. Apparently processing fees are being passed to practices that are then passing them along to patients.” Charging extra to cover the cost of processing a customer’s credit card seems to be a lot more common lately, especially among restaurants that previously preferred it over managing a drawer full of cash. Some business have gone card-only. My questions in all such cases are: (a) what customer behavior are you trying to encourage?; and (b) are you willing to annoy and potentially lose customers who wouldn’t even notice a slight price bump, but resent the heck out of a separate charge for using plastic? It’s galling enough for a $15 burrito, but a $2,000 co-pay means donating maybe $60 for the privilege of giving the practice your money.

From Sunshine Superman: “Re: Children’s Minnesota. See this supposed Oracle Health insider’s comments.” The anonymous, unverified poster says that 97% of the Children’s Minnesota participants who sat through presentations from Epic and Oracle Health voted to replace Cerner after 26 years at a cost of $200 million:

Oracle Health’s approach was to admit how much they screwed up over the years and how Oracle has so much more technical talent compared to Cerner to get things done right / quickly. They couldn’t actually give any sort of commitments on what they would do to make things right other than their same BS vaporware that something great will be coming soon. Meanwhile, Epic did a full presentation on their current solutions and the future plans.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Summarized comments from a nearly even poll vote on whether Epic is a monopoly:

It would be a stronger “not a monopoly” vote if Epic didn’t charge fees for client-chosen third parties to access its APIs.
Those so say Epic is a monopoly may have competed against Epic and lost or feel that Epic doesn’t give their companies enough integration options.
Epic is the safest purchase for CIOs, although struggling health systems must be challenged to justify the cost of Epic to their boards.
Epic saw where the market was going, built all its own products, and figured out how to train new college grads to provide the large number of employees needed. Perhaps allowing health systems to resell Epic to small hospitals and clinics is questionable, but of all of healthcare’s monopolistic behaviors, Epic isn’t the real problem.
The company’s business practices thwart innovation by third parties, although that isn’t a legal monopoly.
Epic’s market share in academic medical centers meets the monopoly threshold of 50%.
Weak competitors, such as Eclipsys and McKessonHBOC, limited a prospect’s choice, and the competition seems to be getting weaker.
Mid-sized and smaller hospitals choosing Epic because it has a monopoly on interoperability, which is 100% a monopolistic practice. CIOs of any health systems under 500 beds will tell you that’s why they chose it.
CEO Judy Faulkner greased the wheel of Washington by serving on the federal health IT policy panel.
Just because something is dominant doesn’t make it a monopoly, and the DoD’s bake-off didn’t result in selecting Epic. A natural monopoly where it’s more efficient and effective for customers to have a single provider is sometimes a good thing.

New poll to your right or here: Have you scheduled an in-person medical visit purely online in the past year? Sending a request message and waiting for a return email or call doesn’t count – you have to have booked completely in real time using just your keyboard.

I don’t bury you with teacher updates from the Donors Choose projects that were funded by reader donations, but Ms. W from New York City checked in after she started using the STEM building kits we provided for just a $60 reader donation (Con Edison matched half of the $234 total cost, while my Anonymous Vendor Executive matched half of the remaining half):

I’ve seen academic benefits and positive social changes in my students. Building the kits required my students to use teamwork and collaboration as they worked together to connect the pieces. Your thoughtful contribution has improved their science knowledge and helped build friendships and communication skills. Thank you for making a lasting impact on my students’ learning journey.

Webinars

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

Sales

WellSpan Health will implement Nuance’s DAX Copilot, embedded in Epic.

People

Kulwant Gill (KPMG) joins Pivot Point Consulting, A Vaco Company as SVP of management consulting.

RadiantGraph hires Geeta Nayyar, MD, MBA (Salesforce) as chief medical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Emory Healthcare goes live on Epic on MacBook Air via Epic’s just-announced native Hyperspace app that is available in the Mac App Store. The health system expects to save $300 per device pear year in licensing and support costs by running on Macs instead of PCs.

Rhapsody announces Autopilot, an AI-powered patient linking solution that it says boosts people-based identity resolution from 72% to 85% consistency to 98%.

Albany Medical Center (NY) goes live on Epic, the first of Albany Med Health System’s four hospitals that will implement Epic.

Government and Politics

DoD goes live on Oracle Health in the Lovell FHCC that it operates in conjunction with the VA. The DoD’s MHS Genesis is now live at every DoD domestic and international site. The VA, which paused its rollout after going live at five of its 170 medical centers, says that Lovell’s results will drive its decision to restart its implementation.

Sponsor Updates

KLAS Research names AGS Health the most improved services solution in its “2024 Best in KLAS – Software & Services” report.
Nuance and Providence are working to accelerate AI innovation at scale, propel in-house solutions development, advance clinical research, and spur further collaborations between health systems and health IT vendors.
Nordic Consulting and SupraNet Communications extend their partnership to offer unlimited free WiFi services at Dane County Regional Airport in Madison, WI.
ServiceNow names Optimum Healthcare IT Senior Developer Elijah Aromola a 2024 ServiceNow MVP for the fifth year in a row.
The Customerland Podcast features SmartSense VP of Customer Success Danny Keough, “Elevating Customer Success with IoT.”
SnapCare wins the Best Use of Technology Award during the 2024 Tiara Staffing Awards.
Sphere’s TrustCommerce integrates with PayPal and Venmo to offer more flexible payment options to patients.
The FinnVoices Podcast features TruBridge Chief People Officer Amaris McComas, “Preparing the Healthcare Workforce for AI: Time to Build Culture, Upskill, and Invest.”
Visage Imaging offers a new case study, “Accelerating PACS on AWS with Visage Imaging.”

Blog Posts

FTE vs. Fractional: What’s the Right Decision? (Revuud)
Unlocking the full potential of your specialty hub (RxLightning)
Why We Built This: A Network of Innovation (Surescripts)
A Vision for Healthcare Supply Chain: Insights from Key Industry Leaders (Symplr)
How to Minimize Financial Impacts During Healthcare Cybersecurity Incidents (Tegria)
Empowering Caregivers: The Connecting Caregivers to Medicare Act (Trualta)
Beyond Process and Tech: Cultivating a Collaborative Culture for Denials Prevention (VisiQuate)

Contacts

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

News 3/8/24

March 7, 2024 News 3 Comments

Top News

A hacker who claims to have given the BlackCat ransomware group access to Change Healthcare’s network says that BlackCat reneged on paying him or her their 60% to 90% share of the $22 million ransom the company has been rumored to have paid. The affiliate hacker also claims to have kept copies of Change’s data. Click above image to enlarge.

Meanwhile, BlackCat claims to have shut down because of FBI pressure and claims that it will sell its ransomware source code, which some experts call an “exit scam” form of fake shutdown that is intended to avoid paying freelancers like the one above who participate in its ransomware-as-a-service operation.

A cybersecurity expert says that “this is our Colonial Pipeline,” referring the 2021 ransomware attack that was orchestrated by the same group, which disrupted fuel supplies in the eastern US for several days until the demanded ransom was paid to restore systems.

Reader Comments

From Full Price: “Re: Change Healthcare. I haven’t seen reported that pharmacies can’t process manufacturer coupons for their drugs. I am not sure how patients will be able to afford them.” Manufacturer co-pay assistance cards can’t be processed by pharmacies last I heard because of the Change outage, so that $5 per month Humira prescription will cost $8,000 per month. Patients can’t even use GoodRx for the $1,000 or so Humira savings it would provide because pharmacies can’t process that either.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I recently traveled internationally and was reminded that WhatsApp is like the metric system – logically and productively used by the entire rest of the world, but stubbornly resisted in the US. The free, Zuck-owned app offers superior group chats, end-to-end encryption, the ability to make free international voice and video calls over the Internet, and can be used on the desktop or web. The product even offers click-to-message advertising for contact a rep or ordering a product from a company’s website. It also doesn’t diminish Android users by displaying their messages in blue.

I was thinking about Kipp Lassetter, MD, who in 2011 sold HIE technology vendor Medicity to Aetna for $500 million, after which the insurer basically let it die. Anyway, I was fascinated to learn via LinkedIn that Kipp is the proud owner since 2012 of Scottsdale, AZ’s The Thumb, a wildly popular auto spa, gas station, bakery, and barbeque restaurant and catering operation that has been featured on “Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives” (that’s him with Guy above), I like that Kipp used Aetna’s money to pivot to brisket. Fun fact: Kipp emailed in around 2004 to say that he was a fan of HIStalk, of which I didn’t know I had any, and he helped me figure out how Medicity could become my first sponsor 20 years ago.

HIMSS24

HIMSS removed the HIMSS24 exhibitor count from the conference website a while back, but I used some amateurish data parsing techniques to scrape their exhibitor page, which I now know lists 1,007 booths. It occurred to me as I was scraping that self-promotion doesn’t end at the exhibit hall exit door, however, as attendees will be trying to convince each other of their employability, party attendee desirability, and producer of endless podcasts and videos.

I’m pleased to have spotted just a handful of “HIMMS” spelling gaffes this year, so I will be better rested to gripe about people who can’t master the idea that this weekend means replacing EST with EDT.

Support my sponsors by seeing what they’re doing at the conference.

Orlando weather calls for partly cloudy days next week, with highs around 80. Early arrivals and booth setter-uppers will sweat out 89 on Saturday.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health and human services software vendor Healthy Together acquires previously-shuttered Kinsa Health, which offered AI-powered epidemiological prediction models using consumer smart thermometers as well as healthcare demand forecasting.

Patient engagement technology vendor Carenet Health acquires the population health management business of Health Dialog from Rite Aid, which is restructuring under bankruptcy.

Cigna subsidiary Evernorth Health Services offers companies and health plans that want to cover GLP-1 drugs the ability to have the cost capped, with the EncircleRx program also including virtual lifestyle support via Omada’s digital health tools.

Salesforce announces healthcare conversational AI solutions: Einstein Copilot (allows providers to schedule appointments, send referrals, and get a patient summary) and Assessment Generation (health assessment surveys).

PE Hub reports that the private equity owners of Netsmart are reviewing first-round bids for the company that could value it at $5 billion. The firms bought their stake from Allscripts in 2018 for a reported $525 million.

Sales

An unnamed, 10-hospital US university health network chooses Sectra One Cloud for imaging.

People

VirtualHealth hires Sameer Gaikwad (HealthEdge) as VP of account management and customer success.

Jerry Hogge, JD, MS (Calibre Systems) joins MultiPlan as COO.

Curae hires Joe Block (GeBBS Healthcare Solutions) as SVP of sales.

Clinical Architecture promotes Marck DuBois to chief revenue officer.

Announcements and Implementations

InterSystems announces GA of TrakCare Assistant, a navigation and search tool for its EHR that the company says can reduce EHR interaction time by 66%.

The Meditech Traverse Exchange Canada goes live, connecting four Meditech-using hospitals and 65 long-term care sites that use PointClickCare.

A new KLAS report characterizes patient self-scheduling as “an early but broadening market,” as providers choose from EHR offerings, patient engagement platforms, and standalone solutions. Self-scheduling represents a small percentage of visits. Relatient has the highest overall performance, followed closely by Zocdoc, although the report notes that while Zocdoc customers love the product, they aren’t thrilled with paying a per-booking charge for canceled or no-show visits.

Government and Politics

In Ireland, watchdogs warn that delays in replacing Beaumont Hospital’s 25-year-old IT system present a serious operational risk.

FDA gives marketing clearance for Dexcom’s non-prescription continuous glucose monitor for diabetics who don’t use insulin. The wearable sensor captures blood glucose levels every 15 minutes and can be worn for 15 days before replacing.

Other

A closed nursing home blames its failure on the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which halted new admissions to the facility last fall over safety concerns. The facility is awash in unpaid bills and payroll, which it blames on the Change Healthcare cyberattack.

This headline must be surprising to Walgreens, which owns VillageMD.

Sponsor Updates

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Ascom Americas staff sort, inventory, and pack toy donations at Zach’s Toy Chest for delivery to local children’s hospitals in North Carolina.
Bella Medical (TX) adds Sunoh.ai medical scribe software to its EClinicalWorks implementation.
FinThrive releases a new Health Rethink Podcast, “Let’s Get Bio, Socio, Psych with It!”
Verato is awarded a patent for its Referential Matching technology for healthcare identity resolution.
Five9 continues to grow, surpassing revenue records with industry-leading AI innovations, international expansion, and partner acceleration.
Healthcare IT Leaders provides assistance for organizations affected by the Change Healthcare incident.
Arcadia, Inovalon, InterSystems, Wolters Kluwer, Availity, Ellkay, and MRO will exhibit at the Rise National Conference March 17-19 in Nashville.

Blog Posts

Partnering to Care for People with Cancer (Findhelp)
4 Ways to Streamline the Prior Authorization Process (FinThrive)
Healthcare Cybersecurity Threats: February 2024 (Fortified Health Security)
5 Myths of Content and SEO (Healthwise)
Understanding UKG Multiple Assignments and the Benefits for Healthcare (Healthcare IT Leaders)
Creating a “Way of Life” Around Healthcare Labor Management (Impact Advisors)
MEDITECH to spotlight intelligent interoperability at HIMSS24 (Meditech)
Overcoming patient demographic data verification challenges with Insurance Discovery and Demographic Verification (Inovalon)
Regulating the Math? Statistical Observations on GenAI in Healthcare (InterSystems)
Undiagnosed Diabetes: Why We Need a More Proactive Approach (Lucem Health)
A House of Cards: Third-Party Vendor Security and Community Hospitals (Medhost)
Meditech Expanse takes center stage at ViVE 2024 (Meditech)

Contacts

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

HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS24

March 6, 2024 News Comments Off

AGFA Healthcare

Booth 1860

Join AGFA HealthCare at HIMSS 2024. Connect with industry experts and see firsthand how our Enterprise Imaging Platform can help reduce IT infrastructure, maximize efficiency while minimizing cost, improve delivery of patient care, and facilitate scalable growth. You’ll have the chance to explore our cutting-edge technologies that are shaping the future of healthcare imaging. Experience live demonstrations of our innovative solutions, like Streaming Client and Cloud Services showcasing how our Enterprise Imaging Platform collaboratively addresses the organization, IT, and growth hurdles your health systems face. Visit us at Booth #1860 to see why our XERO Viewer is Best in KLAS, Universal Viewer Category. To learn more about AGFA HealthCare’s participation at HIMSS, visit here to schedule an appointment with an enterprise imaging consultant.

Arcadia

Booth 3345

Contact: Drew Schaar, communications manager
drew.schaar@arcadia.io

Visit Arcadia at booth #3345 to learn how the right data infrastructure leads the way for healthcare innovation.

Meet our team and get a one-on-one demonstration of Arcadia Analytics. You’ll walk away with a better understanding of how to harness the power of diverse data, advance global health outcomes, and drive strategic growth for your organization.
Attend our general session, “From risky business to sustainable financial performance in value-based care,” on Tuesday, March 12 from 4:15 – 5:15 PM ET in room W330A. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) is radically changing how it reimburses risk-bearing organizations practicing value-based care as it marches toward its goal of getting every Medicare beneficiary on to a value-based care plan by 2030. These policy shifts place intense financial pressure on health systems, with many still recovering from the pandemic and facing higher operating costs, staffing challenges, and shrinking operating margins. This session will detail and analyze the most critical changes by CMS and provide health system leaders with actionable strategies powered by data analytics that can help achieve sustainable financial performance in value-based care.
Attend byte-sized booth talks at various times in booth #3345. Learn from experts in data science and healthcare during short, informative sessions that will leave a lasting impression. Each session is 10–15 minutes and will get you inspired, excited, and eager to put these big ideas into practice. Q&A to follow presentations.
Attend “sips and socks” happy hour on Tuesday, March 12 4:30 – 6:00 PM ET in booth #3345. Join Arcadia for happy hour to network with peers and snag a limited-edition pair of Arcadia socks.
Attend “sips and socks” happy hour on Wednesday, March 13 4:30 – 6:00 PM ET in booth #3345. Join Arcadia for happy hour to network with peers and snag a limited-edition pair of Arcadia socks.

Learn more and view a full schedule of Arcadia’s events at HIMSS24.

Availity

Booth 4181

Contact: Matt Schlossberg, director of PR
matt.schlossberg@availity.com
630.935.9136

Availity, the nation’s largest real-time health information network, will highlight the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and automation for health plans and provider organizations at HIMSS24. Featured solutions and focus areas at Availity booth #4181 and in Meeting Place MP166 include:

Availity Lifeline. Availity is uniquely positioned to help health plans and providers in the wake of the Change Healthcare cybersecurity incident. Availity’s Lifeline support and resources are intended to enable health plans and providers to exchange critical electronic transactions during this period of disruption.
Availity AuthAI, a scalable solution designed to automate and streamline the time-consuming and manual processes involved in prior authorizations using AI. During a recent implementation, a leading health plan automated more than 1 million prior authorization requests, authorizing 75% within 90 seconds with Availity AuthAI.
Availity Essentials Pro Predictive Editing, a groundbreaking AI claims denial prediction tool that helps to identify potential denials prior to submission at the front-end of the provider’s submission workflow, allowing for timely corrections and smoother adjudication. The Predictive Editing tool flagged more than $828 million in denials with 97% precision in a proof-of-concept study of more than 100 million claims from two large health systems.
Availity Essentials Pro Preservice Clearance ensures a seamless and error-free revenue cycle by addressing key components at the beginning, before the first patient interaction. Availity Essentials Pro Preservice Clearance includes authorizations for providers, coverage locator, and patient financial clearance features.
Availity’s Trusted Partner Program, which enables partners access to exclusive content to power improved data flows and processes for claims status, coverage discovery, and API development.

Care.ai

Booth 3801

Contact: Lexi Lutz, marketing manager
lexi.lutz@care.ai
407.800.1937

Care.ai is revolutionizing healthcare with the world’s first and most advanced AI-powered Smart Care Facility Platform and healthcare’s leading Always-Aware Ambient Intelligent Sensors. Care.ai transforms physical environments into self-aware smart care spaces, increasing safety, efficiency, and quality of care in acute and post-acute settings while at the same time autonomously improving clinical and operational workflows and enabling new virtual models of care for Smart Care Teams, including Smart-From-The-Start Virtual Nursing solutions.

CereCore

Booth MP6280

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

CereCore provides IT services that make it easier for hospitals and healthcare systems to focus on supporting hospital operations and transforming healthcare through technology. We partner with clients to extend their team through comprehensive IT staffing and application support, technical professional and managed services, IT advisory services, and EHR consulting, because we know firsthand the power that integrated technology has on patient care and communities. Meaningful change happens with healthcare IT managed services. Schedule a meeting with us in #MP6280 and talk with experts in EHR implementations and optimization, managed services, support desk, and cybersecurity risk management.

Clearsense

Booth 1401

Contact: Larry Kaiser, chief marketing officer
lkaiser@clearsense.com
516.978.5487

Clearsense delivers tailored Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings designed for health systems, health plans, and diverse industry stakeholders. The 1Clearsense Platform, combining cloud-based architecture with AI capabilities, is HITRUST-certified, providing comprehensive support for healthcare organizations in value-based care initiatives, data governance, archival, and access. This includes customized PaaS offerings catering to the specific needs of healthcare clients and stakeholders across the industry. Learn more at Clearsense.com.

Clearwater

Booth 1618

Contact: John Howlett, SVP and chief marketing officer
john.howlett@clearwatersecurity.com
773.636.6449

Rated both the top Cybersecurity Advisors & Consultants and the top Compliance and Risk Management Solution in Black Book Market Research LLC’s annual “State of the Healthcare Cybersecurity Industry” report, Clearwater helps organizations across the healthcare ecosystem move to a more secure, compliant, and resilient state so they can achieve their mission. The company provides a deep pool of experts across a broad range of cybersecurity, privacy, and compliance domains, purpose-built software that enables efficient identification and management of cybersecurity and compliance risks, and a tech-enabled, 24x7x365 Security Operations Center with managed threat detection and response capabilities. Stop by our booth in the Cybersecurity Command Center to learn about our innovations in Managed Security Services and maturity assessments and to receive a free copy of Clearwater Founder Bob Chaput’s new book “Enterprise Cyber Risk Management as a Value Creator”. Also, be sure to catch our presentation at 3:45 p.m. on March 12 in Theater B of the Cybersecurity Command Center when Clearwater CEO will discuss “Beyond CPGs: Advancing Your Cybersecurity Program Using Proven Practices and Standards”.

Clinical Architecture

Booth 2281

Contact: Jaime Lira, VP of marketing
jaime_lira@clinicalarchitecture.com
317.580.8400

[New This Year] Clinical Architecture in-booth Data Quality Theater. We will be featuring 13 educational sessions featuring industry thought leaders, clients and partners. Our esteemed speakers include Didi Davis, The Sequoia Project; Dr. Bill Gregg, HCA Healthcare; Michelle Dardis, MSN, MBA, The Joint Commission; Dr. Joe Bormel, Cognitive Medical Systems; Dr. Benjamin Hamlin, NCQA; Dr. Victor Lee, Clinical Architecture; Charlie Harp, CEO of Clinical Architecture, Jim Shalaby, PharmD, Elimu Informatics; Kelly Sager, Danaher– and many others. View the full list & register here.

CloudWave

Booth 2781

Contact: Christine Mellyn, VP of marketing
cmellyn@gocloudwave.com
508.251.8899

CloudWave, the expert in healthcare data security, provides cloud, cybersecurity, and managed services that deliver a multi-cloud approach to enable healthcare organizations to architect, integrate, manage, and protect a personalized solution using private cloud, public cloud, and cloud edge resources. The company is 100% focused on healthcare and delivers enterprise cloud services to more than 300 hospitals and healthcare organizations, supporting 140+ EHR, clinical, and enterprise applications. CloudWave’s OpSus cloud services provide managed hosting, end-to-end disaster recovery, systems management, cybersecurity, backup, and archiving services. Its Sensato Cybersecurity suite enables hospitals to implement a fully managed cybersecurity program to detect threats and respond to cybersecurity incidents in a fully integrated and easy to deploy holistic platform. All CloudWave services are fully supported by around-the-clock Network and Cybersecurity Tactical Operations Centers staffed by certified healthcare IT and cybersecurity professionals in the USA. For more information, visit www.gocloudwave.com. Stop by booth 2781 to learn more, and stay for one of our brief educational presentations for a chance to win Dell portable monitor!

DrFirst

Booth 1481

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

At this year’s HIMSS event, population health, regulatory compliance, and AI will be the hot topics. And while AI may be a new concept for many in healthcare, DrFirst has been safely translating free text and inferring missing data to streamline workflows and inform decision-making since 2015. It’s also being used to drive population health initiatives. Our Chief Medical Officer Colin Banas, MD, MHA, recently appeared with Wes Blakeslee, PhD, VP of population health, on the PopHealth Perspectives podcast to discuss the challenges in healthcare data management, the importance of semantic interoperability, and how clinical-grade AI can improve medication safety and patient outcomes. They’ll both be at HIMSS so this is your chance to get some face time. On the regulatory side, Nick Barger, PharmD, VP of product, is our go-to resource for new regulations from the CMS and ONC to improve e-prescribing, prior authorization, and more. Meet with any of these clinical workflow rock stars at booth #1481 to learn more.

ELLKAY

Booth 1547

Contact: Auna Emery, VP of marketing
Auna.Emery@ELLKAY.com
201.808.9504

ELLKAY is a recognized healthcare connectivity leader, serving as the single partner to healthcare organizations for their data management and interoperability solutions. ELLKAY empowers hospitals and health systems, diagnostic laboratories, healthcare IT vendors, payers, and other healthcare organizations with cutting-edge technologies and solutions. Since 2002, ELLKAY’s system capability arsenal has grown to over 58,000 practices connected and 750+ EHR/PM systems across 1,100+ versions.

ELLKAY’s innovative, cloud-based solutions address the challenges that our partners across all healthcare environments face. ELLKAY delivers bi-directional, standards-based connectivity to hundreds of sources with access to discrete and actionable data and provides tailored solutions to achieve your unique connectivity goals.

Visit Team ELLKAY at booth #1547 for demos, drinks, and data management:

Tea & Coffee Hour

Tuesday, March 12, 10 a.m.-1 p.m.
Women in Health ITea- Wednesday March 13, 9:30 a..m. – 2:30 p.m.
Thursday, March 14, 9:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.

Happy Hour

Tuesday March 12, 4-6 p.m.
CommonWell Health Alliance – Wednesday, March 13, 4-6 p.m.

Elsevier

Booth 3048

Contact: Mary Ann Abbruzzo-White, SVP of global clinical solutions marketing
m.abbruzzo-white@elsevier.com
215.275.9091

Elsevier is committed to supporting clinicians, health leaders, educators, and students to overcome the challenges they face every day. We support healthcare professionals throughout their career journey from education to clinical practice and believe providing current, credible, accessible, evidence–based information can help empower clinicians to provide the best healthcare possible. Stop by our booth for the launch of ClinicalKey AI and learn how our new solution supports clinical decision making at the point-of-care by providing quick access to the latest evidence-based medical knowledge through conversational search.

FinThrive

Booth 4861

Contact: Jeffrey Becker, VP of portfolio marketing
Jeffrey.Becker@finthrive.com
978.289.0793

FinThrive is showcasing a number of new enhancements to its End-to-End RCM Platform at HIMSS’24, including a new intelligent prior authorization solution, continuous insurance Discover capabilities, and an end-to-end RCM analytics solution. Stop by to see what the future of RCM Platforms looks like.

Five9

We will be exhibiting with the Novelvox team at HIMSS.

Contact: Roni Jamesmeyer, senior marketing manager, healthcare
roni.jamesmeyer@five9.com
972.768.6554

Five9 is a HIPAA-compliant, healthcare cloud contact center solution that helps you real-time track and report on call volumes in patient access, scheduling, prescription refills, revenue cycle and more, all to increase your staff’s productivity. The Five9 Intelligent Cloud Contact Center is easily integrated with various back-end systems like electronic health records, acting as a control tower between them to provide digital engagement, analytics, workforce optimization, and AI to improve outcomes and deliver tangible business results.

Healthcare IT Leaders

Meeting Room MP6283

Contact: Rory Calnan, VP of sales
rory.calnan@healthcareitleaders.com
781.726.1009

Healthcare IT Leaders is a national leader in IT staffing, managed services, and consulting for healthcare systems. We provide strategy and talent for healthcare transformation across clinical, business, and operational systems. Areas of focus include EHR, ERP, HCM, WFM, RCM, Cloud, and Data where our consultants implement and optimize enterprise software solutions from leading vendors including Epic, Oracle Health, Workday, UKG, Oracle, Infor, SAP, Snowflake, AWS, Azure, GCP, and more.

KeyCare

Booth 2288

Contact:Nancy Kavadas, VP of marketing
nancy@keycare.org
312.961.2018

KeyCare connects health systems to a network of virtual care providers working on KeyCare’s Epic-based EMR and telehealth platform. This partnership provides patients with convenient virtual care access, while easing the burden on health system providers. Health systems can start with virtual on-demand urgent care (24×7, 50-state coverage), and then can easily add other virtual health services based on their organizational needs. To learn more about KeyCare, visit www.keycare.org

Linus Health

Booth 4688

Contact: Laura Kusek, event and partner marketing manager
lkusek@linus.health
954.825.8389

Linus Health is a digital health company focused on early detection of Alzheimer’s and other dementias. We combine rich clinical expertise with cutting-edge neuroscience and AI to help providers spot and intervene on early signs of cognitive impairment – even those invisible to the human eye. Our digital cognitive assessment platform puts specialist-level insights about a patients cognitive function at providers’ fingertips in a matter of minutes. Visit our booth at HIMSS to learn more about the most accurate and sensitive digital cognitive assessments on the market, meet the team, and demo the product! Learn more at linushealth.com.

Medicomp Systems

Booth 4185

Contact: Jaimes Aita, director of business development and strategy
jaita@medicomp.com
703.803.8080

Clinical AI has healthcare abuzz. But how can you harness it to help make clinicians lives easier? Large language models (LLMs) are great at generating text, but clinicians need solutions to help them navigate compliance and quality reporting and complex billing requirements. The Quippe Clinical Intelligence Engine leverages LLM output, converts it into actionable data, and makes sense of it to help clinicians find what they need at the point of care to make their jobs easier. Meet with us at HIMSS booth 4185 to learn more about Medicomp’s clinical-grade AI solutions and Smart-on-FHIR apps for CQM compliance, HCC coding and risk adjustment, bi-directional interoperability, CDI and audit-readiness, point-of-care decision-making and more.

MEDITECH

Booth 2580

Contact: Rachel Wilkes, director of marketing
rwilkes@meditech.com
781.821.3000

Join MEDITECH at HIMSS 2024 for a comprehensive look at Expanse, the foundational EHR and cornerstone to a collaborative ecosystem. Expanse guides healthcare organizations through the complexities in healthcare today and prepares them for the changes of the future. Attendees visiting booth #2580 can talk with physician and nurse leaders about their experience with Expanse, including efficiency gains through greater mobility and enhanced care coordination. MEDITECH executives and product experts will also be showcasing many of the solutions that make MEDITECH the intelligent EHR, including our approach to AI, innovative care models, precision medicine, population health, interoperability, and more. You can also learn about our latest advancements, including Expanse Pathology, ambient listening, and our cloud-based patient portal.

Additional presentations to attend include:

On Wednesday, March 13, you won’t want to miss a captivating presentation with MEDITECH Executive Vice President & COO Helen Waters and Google Cloud, Global Director of Healthcare Strategy and Solutions Aashima Gupta at 1:15 p.m. at the Main Stage Theater – Hall A, Booth 381. Throughout their session, Radical Collaboration: MEDITECH, Google, and the Intelligent EHR, they’ll share their philosophy and approach to the strategic use of AI, ML, NLP, and other advanced cloud technologies. Learn about the breakthroughs they’ve already co-developed, projects currently underway, and the advances they expect to revolutionize diagnosis, treatment, and overall healthcare delivery.
A Culturally Sensitive Approach to Acute Mental Health and Addiction Care on Tuesday, March 12 at 12 p.m., W330A, is a session led by Kelsey Sjaarda, CSW-PIP, Clinical Program Manager at the Link Community Triage Center, Avera McKennan Hospital & University Health Center. Learn about Avera’s Link Community Triage Center — a coalition of four organizations providing 24/7 care and support for individuals struggling with mental health crises and addiction, while reducing the number of custody holds by over 90%.
Achieving a Collaborative Approach to Meaningful Interoperability Across Canada on Wednesday, March 13 at 2:30 p.m., W330A, is a panel discussion led by Peter Bak, PhD, CIO, Humber River Hospital and including panelists from MEDITECH and Health Gorilla. They will discuss Traverse Exchange Canada — an ambitious new data exchange network that has the potential to connect all participating healthcare organizations across Ontario and eventually Canada through a federated, query-based model. This connection is closing care gaps with more than 300 long-term care organizations across the province, to support more seamless care transitions.
Empowering and Retaining Nurses to Improve Patient Experiences on Wednesday, March 13 at 2:30 p.m., W206A, is a session led by Sherri Hess, CNIO, Vice President, Nursing Informatics, HCA Healthcare. Hess will share insights and tactics surrounding post-pandemic nurse workforce challenges. Attendees will also participate in breakout groups to address three key questions about enhancing nurse satisfaction and building a culture of safety, the influence of technology on nurse experiences, and methods for assessing ongoing nurse satisfaction.
MEDITECH will once again be participating in the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase – Hall A, Booth 3760. You can find us at Kiosk 71, where our Interoperability team, along with several of our partners, will share strategies on the latest interoperability standards, such as the Cancer Moonshot Initiative; our latest advancements in API development; and integration of key partner technologies such as ambient listening, precision medicine — including integrated pharmacogenomics as well as therapies and clinical trial matching — and patient engagement apps. You can also learn more about the deployment of our cloud-based Traverse Exchange Canada interoperability solution.
MEDITECH will also participate in the CommonWell Health Alliance Clinical Scenario, presented multiple times a day in CommonWell’s booth, where we will highlight the benefits vendor collaboration has on patient outcomes.
GenomOncology will be in the MEDITECH kiosk (Interoperability Showcase in Hall A, at the MEDITECH Booth (Booth 3760, Kiosk 71) from March 12 – 14, starting at 12:30 p.m. ET daily
Finally, be sure to join us for a special Spotlight Presentation; Intelligent Interoperability, on March 13, at 11:15 a.m. where we will highlight strategies for leveraging EHR intelligence to ensure the right data gets to the right people at the right time. Stay tuned for an upcoming press release outlining further details on our Spotlight session and kiosk schedule.

Visit MEDITECH’s HIMSS 2024 event page for the latest updates and additional information, including session times and a special customer appreciation event.

MRO

Booth 3721

Contact: Stephanie Kindlick, senior director
skindlick@mrocorp.com
215.630.7786

MRO is accelerating the exchange of clinical data throughout the healthcare ecosystem on behalf of providers, payers and users of clinical data. By utilizing industry-leading solutions and incorporating the latest technology, MRO is helping providers, payers, and requesters of clinical data. With a 20-year legacy and as a 10-time KLAS winner, MRO brings a technology-driven mindset built upon a customer-first service foundation and a relentless focus on customer excellence. MRO connects over 250+ EHRs, 170,000+ NPIs, 35,000 practices, and more than 1,100 hospitals and health systems, while extracting more than 1.3 billion clinical records. Stop by booth #3721 and learn how MRO is solving for Quality & HEDIS Reporting; Payment, Government Audit & Prepay Claim Validation; Care, Utilization Management & Risk Adjustment; Care Gap Closure & Value-Based Care; Release of Information & Clinical Enablement. Talk to one of our representatives to enter our raffle for a $500 Brooks Brothers gift card! Join of of our Sessions!

Tuesday, March 12, 1:15 – 1:35 p.m. Facilitating Seamless Clinical Data Exchange for Optimal Data Usability. Anthony Murray, Chief Interoperability Officer, MRO.
Wednesday, March 13, 10:15 – 10:35 a.m. Streamlining Healthcare Data Exchange between Providers and Payers: CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield and Partner Experiences. Piyush Khanna, Vice President Clinical Services, CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield – Yana Ankudinova, Vice President Product Management, MRO

Redox

Contact: Andy Pung, director of sales
andy.pung@redoxengine.com
248.635.7130

Redox is the healthcare data platform that accelerates digital transformation for healthcare providers. We eliminate the burden of integration so IT teams can exchange data with any technology in just a fraction of the time and effort. They are freed from wrangling data, standing up interfaces, and constant rework and can instead focus on moving transformation forward. Presentations:

Tuesday, March 12 11 a.m. How Redox powers hospital CXO decision making with real-time streaming into Databricks #2980 Databricks.
Tuesday, March 12 1:30 p.m. AWS + Redox #1561 AWS.
Wednesday, March 13 1 p.m. Snowflake + Redox #869 Snowflake.

Rhapsody

Booth 1933

Contact: Natalie Sevcik, director of communications and content
natalie.sevcik@rhapsody.health
816.651.5586

Are you headed to Orlando for HIMSS? Visit us in booth #1933 to learn how to improve data quality, focus more time and resources on your differentiators, and unlock value faster – all by partnering with a single vendor. Learn how health systems and digital health teams rely on Rhapsody to reduce the barriers to digital health innovation adoption by streamlining patient data access. Schedule a meeting with us.

Symplr

Booth 3921

Contact: Ann Joyal, VP of marketing communications
ajoyal@symplr.com
866.373.9725

Join us at HIMSS in booth #3921 for a fun golf experience, giveaways, purple donuts and a ”BIG Putt Prize” winner announced daily during happy hour. Connect with us, see a demo, and explore how AI and enterprise-wide healthcare operations can mean more time for caregivers and better outcomes. 2024 Best in KLAS winner. Meet our leaders and sign up for a demo. Rocking happy hours 4-6 p.m. daily. Symplr is the leader in enterprise-wide healthcare operations solutions, trusted by leaders for more than 30 years and in 97% of U.S. hospitals. Our proven solutions include provider data management, workforce management, compliance, quality & safety, and contract and supplier management. Learn more at www.symplr.com.

Tegria

MP107

Contact: Kristin O’Neill, senior director of external relations
kristin.oneill@tegria.com
617.319.5516

Join Tegria at HIMSS24! Schedule time to connect at Tegria’s Meeting Room, located at MP107! Our team of solution experts will be available onsite throughout the event, offering an excellent opportunity to address your latest challenges related to growth, experiences, and collaboration. Be sure to mark your calendar for a Tegria-sponsored learning session during the conference. Complete this form to schedule time with Tegria!

Main Stage: Reaching Patient Experience Nirvana Requires Collaboration Wednesday, March 13 at 11:00 a.m. ET. Does your organization have a clear vision for your ideal patient experience? Join Tegria at the HIMSS Main Stage in Exhibit Hall A to explore the multifaceted nature of patient experience and the necessary actions to drive change. The presentation will underscore the crucial role of collaboration among clinicians, patients, and staff in shaping perceptions and outcomes. Don’t miss the opportunity to hear from Tegria’s Chief Medical Officer, Ray A. Gensinger, Jr., MD, and Peter Bonamici, VP of Revenue Cycle + Experience, as they discuss creating a healthcare ecosystem that benefits both patients and providers through improved access and elevated experiences.

TruBridge

Booth 4973

Contact: Molly Bauer, marketing operations manager
Molly.bauer@cpsi.com
208.669.0629

TruBridge connects providers, patients, and communities with innovative solutions to support financial and clinical solutions, creating real value in healthcare delivery. By offering technology-first solutions that address diverse communities’ needs, we promote equitable access to quality care and foster positive outcomes. Our industry-leading HFMA Peer Reviewed RCM suite provides visibility that enhances productivity and supports the financial health of organizations across care settings. We champion end-to-end, data-driven patient journeys that support value-based care and improve outcomes and patient satisfaction. We support efficient patient care with EHR products that integrate data between care settings. We clear the way for care.

TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company

Booth 1781

Contact: Ryne Natzke, chief revenue officer
rynen@spherecommerce.com
657.383.7967

TrustCommerce’s platform provides a comprehensive patient payment solution that has earned the trust of many of the country’s largest healthcare organizations. Here are three reasons to make a visit. Transform the way you process payments with TrustCommerce’s 20+ years of expertise in healthcare provider support. Experience secure and compliant payment processing, any time and anywhere, all while being seamlessly connected to leading EHRs like Epic, Veradigm, and AthenaIDX. See our patient friendly digital payment experience that proudly supports digital wallets such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, and PayPal. Ask us how to integrate TrustCommerce payment solutions with your digital health software to drive revenue, reduce risk, and increase workflow efficiencies. Stop by for a sweet treat, enter for a chance to win a Pickleball Racket Set, catch a demo, and join the fun at booth #1781.

Upfront Healthcare

Booth 2130

Contact: Margy Enright, VP brand strategy and experience
menright@upfronthealthcare.com
913.568.1520

Upfront is a mission-driven healthcare company delivering tangible outcomes to leading healthcare systems and provider groups. Its patient engagement platform makes each patient feel seen, guiding their care experience through personalized outreach. The backbone of the Upfront experience is its data engine, which analyzes clinical, sociodemographic, and patient-reported data. These insights, along with its advanced psychographic segmentation model, allow Upfront to individually activate patients to get the care they need while building a meaningful relationship between the patient and their health system. Upfront is rooted in partnership, leveraging best-in-class healthcare expertise to maximize the impact of technology and deliver a next-generation patient experience. To learn more, visit https://upfronthealthcare.com.

Visage Imaging

Booth 3913

Contact: Brad Levin, general manager of North America
blevin@visageimaging.com
540.454.9670

Visage Imaging is a global provider of enterprise imaging solutions that enable PACS replacement with local, regional and national scale. Visage 7 | CloudPACS is proven, providing a fast, clinically rich, and highly scalable growth platform deliverable entirely from the cloud. Be sure to check out our announcement next week to learn more about Visage’s exciting offerings at HIMSS 2024.

Waystar

Booth 2011

Contact: Valerie Jackson, trade show and events manager
valerie.jackson@waystar.com
801.874.6190

Waystar’s mission-critical software is purpose-built to simplify healthcare payments. With an enterprise-grade platform that processes over 4 billion healthcare payment transactions annually, Waystar strives to transform healthcare payments so providers can focus on what matters most: their patients and communities. Discover the way forward at waystar.com. As healthcare continues to evolve, your challenges do, too. Stop by booth #2011 for some premium giveaways or schedule a time to talk with us about how we can help you boost productivity, deliver better patient financial care, and bring in fuller, faster payments. Also join us on March 14 at 10 a.m. ET for a panel session in room W208C to hear Waystar and healthcare industry experts discuss how to build a unified revenue cycle strategy that boosts margins.

Wolters Kluwer Health

Booth 2927

Contact: Andre Rebelo, director of external communications
andre.rebelo@wolterskluwer.com
617.816.8596

See demonstrations of how Wolters Kluwer Health is helping healthcare organizations drive better outcomes in healthcare through market leading clinical decision support with GenAI, patient engagement, and drug referential solutions. On Tuesday, March 12 and Wednesday, March 13, experts will present in-booth sessions on how Wolters Kluwer is addressing today’s pressing challenges in healthcare: In “Supporting Primary Care Providers as they shoulder the burden of mental health,” Presenters discuss the shifting mental health landscape through the eyes of the primary care provider (PCP). By analyzing millions of clinician searches, UpToDate provides a unique glimpse into where clinicians struggle to serve patients in mental health matters and how clinical decision support can play a role. “AI Labs: Setting the standard for responsible point-of-care AI development” is a presentation of UpToDate’s approach to Clinical GenAI, prioritizing quality, safety, and transparency with AI Labs. Lastly, “The value of analytics: Understanding the needs of modern health systems for better clinical decision making” shifts the focus of today’s analytics to clinician insights to help drive better health outcomes.

News 3/6/24

March 5, 2024 News 1 Comment

Top News

Cybersecurity analysts surmise from underground forum chatter and evidence of a Bitcoin deposit that Change Healthcare may have paid a $24 million ransom to the BlackCat ransomware group on March 1.

They also point out that the ransomware group has made a remarkable comeback, given that the FBI took down its dark websites and issued decryption keys to victims last December.

HHS says that it has made clear that Change Healthcare owner UnitedHealth Group needs to do everything it can to ensure provider continuity of operations. It says it “is taking direct action” to support providers who are experiencing cash flow problems as a result of the downtime, including accelerated payments on a case-by-case basis.

HHS lists flexibilities that include help in switching claims clearinghouses; encouraging Medicare Advantage, Medicaid, and CHIP organizations to remove or relax prior authorization; and reminding Medicare Administrative Contractors that they must process paper claims from providers who need to file them.

Practice owner Christine Meyer, MD has provided commendable visibility into the outage’s provider impact:

Optum claimed it would offer provider loans for 80% of historical claim submissions, but her practice was offered just $4,000 per month, or less than 1%.
Banks are cold-calling to offer large lines of credit that include “ridiculous terms and strings.”
Three RCM companies have offered to “take the pressure off” for fees ranging from 7% to 10%.
One offered a not-free trial of an AI tool.
A VC she had previously declined to sell her practice to is trying again.
Asked if she would decline to accept UnitedHealth Group patients, she says she would consider it, but doesn’t want to abandon patients based on their insurer.

Reader Comments

From Mambo: “Re: Change Healthcare breach. Not widely reported is that healthcare entities have an obligation to inform patients of a breach, but have little idea how to determine which patients may have had data compromised. No one is sure where the line is.”

From HITGirl: “Re: Nuance. A bunch of layoffs today.” Unverified, but parent company Microsoft has been cutting headcount in some areas.

From HIMSS Question: “Re: HIMSS. How does it handle ethical breaches on their Davies awards? Do they have a way to report an ethical breach? Have any previous Davies award winners had to return their award due to fraud, lies, or fake data or reporting fake data? Anything similar for presenters at the HIMSS conference?”

Webinars

March 7 (Thursday) 1 ET. “Live Q&A: Waystar leaders answer provider questions on implementation, solutions + more” (this session will focus on ambulatory and other providers – a session specific to hospitals and health systems will be offered at 3 ET). Sponsor: Waystar. Presenters: Chris Schremser, CTO, Waystar; Laura Canzano, EVP provider and partner client experience, Waystar. Waystar leaders will explore how our secure, mission-critical software yields powerful results, like a 33% increase in staff productivity, while integrating with 530+ EHR/PM systems. We’ll talk through our smooth implementation process, which has earned us a 94% client satisfaction rate and a 74+ client NPS. And we’ll offer details about our hands-on support, which clients can reach in less than 11 seconds and which satisfies 96% of users. We’ll also explore how Waystar can accelerate implementation to alleviate disruption to your revenue cycle, all while helping you increase revenue and decrease manual efforts. For a limited time, Waystar is offering accelerated implementation for those experiencing disruptions due to data security.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Starfish Partners companies Direct Recruiters and Innova People will merge their healthcare and technology staffing divisions to create Innova Healthcare and Innova Tech staffing practices.

Kaiser Foundation Hospitals will lay off several dozen IT workers in California’s Bay Area, following a December 2023 layoff of 115 IT employees.

Scotland-based Craneware reports six-month results: revenue up 8% adjusted EPS $0.43 versus $0.41. CRW shares are up 37% in the past 12 months, valuing the company at $740 million.

Oracle Health reportedly laid off some number of employees this week, with insiders listing scrum masters, project managers, developers, and testers as affected.

Sales

Morehouse School of Medicine (GA) selects ThinkAndor AI-powered remote patient monitoring technology from Andor Health.
WebMD Ignite will integrate First Databank’s Meducation personalized medication instruction software with its Krames on FHIR patient education technology for prescribers.
Amwell adds Suki’s voice-enabled digital assistant technology to its Converge virtual care software.
Millennium Physician Group will implement WellSky’s technology and clinical services to improve patient outcomes.
Intermountain Health will use Memora Health’s intelligent care enablement platform to implement new care delivery programs, initially focusing on cancer care.

People

David Finn, MA (CHIME) joins First Health Advisory as EVP of governance, risk, and compliance.

Bardavon Health Innovations promotes Alex Benson, MPA to CEO.

Geisinger names Terry Gilliland, MD, MS (Cogitativo) as president of Geisinger Health and its next CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Christus Health (TX) implements Epic at six of its hospitals.

UVA Health Prince William Medical Center implements telehealth capabilities within its Level III NICU, enabling providers to virtually consult with pediatric specialists at UVA Health Children’s and families to stay connected with their newborns and care teams.

Orchid Wellness in Texas implements EHR, online appointment scheduling, and text-to-pay software from EClinicalWorks.

Government and Politics

A whistleblower lawsuit accuses primary care practice network Aledade of rigging its coding software to overbill Medicare by inflating diagnoses, such as coding anxiety as depression, to earn higher payments. The lawsuit claims that Medicare Advantage patients who were overweight were diagnosed with the higher-paying “morbid obesity” codes at 10 times the national average using coding guidance that was referred to as “Aledade gospel.” The suit was filed by Kushwinder Singh, MD, MHA, who served for a few months as a senior medical director for Aledade until he says the company fired him for raising fraud concerns. The investor-backed Aledade, which was recently valued at $3.5 billion, was co-founded in 2014 by former National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD. Aledade EVP Mandy Cohen, MD, MPH left the company in last year after two years to become CDC director. The federal government has declined to join the case.

Lawmakers propose a fiscal year 2024 budget package that includes $1.3 billion for the VA’s continued rollout of its Oracle Health EHR, with a contingency that 25% of that funding be tied to transparency with Congress about efforts to address ongoing performance issues.

NASA’s Johnson Space Center issues an RFI for and EHR for its clinic, which serves astronaut, employees, and contractors. The clinic notes that its current EHR is housed on-premises and has significant dependencies on Microsoft BizTalk for interfacing.

The White House and the Biden Cancer Moonshot tout adoption of USCDI + Cancer to allow providers to share EHR information about cancer patients. Epic, Oracle, Ontada, Meditech, Flatiron, and ThymeCare have committed to adopting the core elements, while CVS Health and Athenahealth are working on it.

Privacy and Security

Lurie Children’s Hospital (IL) announces that it has restored its Epic EHR and other key systems. The hospital experienced a ransomware attack on January 31.

Other

Elliot Hospital (NH) launches a virtual ER service to help patients determine and receive an appropriate level of care and to alleviate capacity strain on its emergency room.

Guam Memorial Hospital Authority concludes that its clinicians have struggled to use its $5 million Medsphere CareVue EHR since it was purchased in October 2022 because the system was built for behavioral health rather than for use by acute care hospitals. GMH will issue an RFP for a replacement system that could cost $20 million to $60 million.

Privacy advocates call for a review of Verilogue, a medical research firm that pays doctors to record conversations with their patients that de-identified and then provided to drug companies to fine tune drug marketing in working around clinician and patient objections. Verilogue, which is part of Publicis Groupe, paid doctors up to $2,500 per month to make the recordings with patient consent, and leaked records suggest that the company charged $135,000 for 50 visit recordings to drug companies that wanted to increase opioid sales.

Sponsor Updates

TruBridge staff ring the Nasdaq opening bell in celebration of its corporate rebrand.
Serviam Care Network will leverage Netsmart’s population health technology and expertise as part of its Higher Path Operating System for senior living operators.
Leeds Teaching Hospital NHS Trust and Agfa HealthCare announce the launch of the real-world evaluation of Agfa’s Enterprise Imaging Rubee AI Package for Mammography.

Blog Posts

Future-Proofing Healthcare: Long-Term Vision for EHR Optimization and Beyond (CereCore)
Best Practices for Effective Patient Access Services (AGS Health)
EHR usability: Critical failure in the industry, and the urgent need to respond (Altera Digital Health)
How to balance high-quality care with rising costs (Arcadia)
Working with LLMs Securely and Safely (Aridhia Informatics)
From Crisis to Innovation: Unlocking the Path to True Digital Transformation (Divurgent)
Prisma AI: Pioneering Value-based Care Through Advanced Interoperability (EClinicalWorks)

Contacts

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

Monday Morning Update 3/4/24

March 3, 2024 News 5 Comments

Top News

Change Healthcare executives hint that the company’s ransomware-crippled data exchange systems could remain down for weeks, as the financial and operational impact on provides ripples throughout the industry.

Parent company UnitedHealth Group has announced a loan program for providers who are unable to receive payments, although some of those providers say the available funding is too low to be useful to help their high-expense, low-margin businesses that are quickly running out of cash.

The company announced Friday that it has brought an alternate e-prescribing solution online.

Meanwhile, Aledade founder and CEO Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM observes that had Change not been acquired by UnitedHealth for $13 billion in October 2022, Change would likely have already been forced into bankruptcy by the event, which started nearly two weeks ago.

When its systems are running, Change processes 15 billion healthcare transactions each year, impacting one out of three patient records.

Reader Comments

From MrCernerPizzaDriver: “Re: Children’s Minnesota. Announced internally that they are moving from Cerner to Epic, with go-live planned for fall 2026.” Unverified.

From Where Peeps At: “Re: HIMSS conference. What attendance do you predict?” I stopped doing that years ago because the way HIMSS counts heads is not transparent. It’s like a half-empty baseball ballpark that is claimed to be a sellout by the team, which has every incentive and counting method at its disposal to make itself look more popular than butts in seats would suggest. I wandered in the vast Nevada sunbake that was the COVID-delayed HIMSS21 in a futile search for my supposed 20,000 fellow attendees.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Two-thirds of poll respondents say that they or their employers have been affected by downtimes at AT&T or Change Healthcare.

New poll to your right or here: Does Epic operate as a monopoly in the health system market? Cheat sheet for what constitutes a monopoly: the only available producer, high market share, high barrier to entry, and can name their price since no close substitutes exist. That’s not the same as merely dominating the market, which means that my poll question is loaded, but I’m still curious who chooses the monopoly option.

Hello to former HIStalk sponsors who understandably had to tighten their belts over the past couple of years. Spring seems to have sprung, so bring your brand out of hibernation with my Welcome Back package for Platinum-level returning sponsors, which offers special recognition, a CEO interview, and bonus months for the first year. Contact Lorre.

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

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

WebMD acquires the assets of Healthwise, the non-profit provider of patient educational resources. WebMD will move Healthwise’s offerings into its Ignite patient engagement solutions business, which will serve 50% of US hospitals post-acquisition. Healthwise will continue as a non-profit whose board will explore new ways the company can help people make better health decisions. Healthwise was formed in Boise, ID in 1975 by Don Kemper to distribute patient handbooks. Kemper, who retired in 2016, told the Idaho Statesman after the acquisition was announced, “We’re trying to look at the good work that we’ve done through the years and the recognition that the world is changing. It’s exceptional for our little independent nonprofit to last for 50 years.”

Project Ronin – which offered oncologists and their patients a platform to plan, personalize, and manage their care journey – shut down without notice on Friday, according to several former employees who said that the company ran out of money due to sales challenges. Oracle’s Larry Ellison was a co-founder and the primary financial backer of the San Mateo, CA-based company. I interviewed CEO Dave Hodgson and Chief Scientific Officer Christine Swisher, PhD last year. Ronin’s now-available 150 former employees include informaticists, data scientists, software engineers, and NLP scientists, providing a target-rich environment for companies who need their high-demand skills.

I was curious about CNBC’s headline that General Catalyst’s planned purchased of Summa Health “has Ohio community on edge,” wondering if they did a mass area survey or covered a protest march to reach the conclusion that the entire community is biting nails over the deal. It’s click bait, of course, the usually all-hat, no-cattle fake journalism in which the entire story was based on the skimpiest of sources:

A DC-based health plan group says she’s excited to see if the change brings new approaches even though she’s not sure how it will work.
A Tennessee-based health venture studio CEO says the idea makes people nervous, but he’s excited to see someone taking big swings.
The article recycled quotes from elsewhere from the city’s mayor and a member of its city council, noting that 450 people have signed a petition to urge the health system to remain non-profit.
Bottom line: 450 of the area’s 700,000 residents have signed a petition, and CNBC used 65 paragraphs to provide nothing conclusive or useful in mostly just citing old news from elsewhere.

People

Innsena promotes Britteny Matero to SVP and partner.

Optimum Healthcare IT hires Allie Messimer (Abra) as EVP of enterprise application services.

Healthcare IT Leaders hires Steven Cardenas, MBA (DMCA) as SVP of government relations. He spent 23 years in the US Air Force, retiring as colonel.

Ed Roberts, PhD, a former MIT Sloan management professor and co-founder of Meditech, died February 27. He was 88.

Privacy and Security

Lurie Children’s Hospital has been mostly offline for a month from a ransomware attack, and now the hackers who are responsible are offering to sell its data for $3.4 million. The screenshot is from cybercrime expert Alexander Leslie.

Other

Christine Meyer, MD describes how the Change Healthcare cyberattack has impacted her practice:

They are submitting claims individually via paper and payer portals, but expect cash flow to dry up within two weeks.
Once that happens, staff and essential services will be cut, leaving phones unanswered and referrals and refill requests unprocessed.
Practice hours will be cut back, with same-day and walk-in appointments eliminated, sending patients to overloaded EDs.
She says that Optum’s loan offer is $4,000 per month versus her payroll of $350,000 per month.
A commenter notes that it’s nice for parent UnitedHealth Group that while patients will get turned away because of the Change downtime, UHG will still be collecting their insurance premiums without paying claims.

An unintended consequence of requiring hospitals to post their prices: Mount Sinai is strong-arming UnitedHealthcare for a 50% rate increase after the health system used the public transparency data to find that competitors are paid more.

Sponsor Updates

QGenda employees serve breakfast at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
PerfectServe opens nominations for its 2024 Nurses of Note awards program.

Blog Posts

Contacts

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

News 3/1/24

February 29, 2024 News 24 Comments

Top News

A ransomware group claims that its cyberattack against Change Healthcare yielded 8 terabytes of data from every provider that sends data to Change, including medical records, insurance records, and data from active military service members. The group quickly removed its post, raising speculation that the company might be negotiating a ransom payment.

CommonWell uses Change technology and has disabled its network as a precaution.

Meanwhile, the American Hospital Association asks HHS for help with the Change Healthcare attack, requesting better communication and transparency from Change, help with payments that will be delayed, pausing of citations related to wait times, enforcement discretion for the lack of ability to create good faith estimates, and added flexibility in e-prescribing regulations.

MGMA lists the problems its medical group members are experiencing due to the Change Healthcare disruption:

Claims cannot be submitted.
Prior authorization requests cannot be submitted.
Patient eligibility can’t be checked.
Health plan payments cannot be received.
Prescriptions and lab orders cannot be transmitted electronically.
Medical groups don’t carry reserves year-over-year due to tax consequences, so they are running short on working capital due to their inability to bill and be paid.

Reader Comments

From EHRMusing: “Re: Epic. I’m interested in your thoughts on this article that examines whether it’s a monopoly.” The Forbes article – which was pretty good except for spelling Judy Faulkner’s name wrong – makes these points:

Epic holds a 36% market share of US hospitals, short of the usual monopoly definition of 50%.
The company’s aggressive IP protections, such as non-competes and controlling who can work on a client’s Epic team, could be construed as monopolistic behavior.
Epic increases third-party costs by limiting developer access, and controls access to its ecosystem via its new Showroom third-party marketplace.
The nature of buying Epic gives more influence to health system CIOs and thus Epic.
Epic pre-empts competition by announcing products before their release and by publishing a “Products You Can Replace With Epic” guide.
Epic plays a positive role in filtering “innovation noise” from flaky startups, gives health systems a single point of contact, and has been around for 45 years with no involvement by outside investors.
The article didn’t mention other important monopoly factors – a high barrier to entry, the ability to set prices above competitive levels, and lack of substitutes, all of which apply to Epic.
My opinion is that the IP concerns are valid, but otherwise Epic grew because if offers a better product for the academic health systems where it enjoys a high market share. Monopolistic behavior requires intention, and I don’t think Epic intentionally stifles competition in unsavory ways. The market voluntarily accepted its offerings as superior, and if CIOs preferred Epic because of the cool factor and future job prospects, that’s not Epic’s fault.
Most amazing to me is that the fresh-from-college kids that Epic sends to prestigious health systems earn the full attention of C-level executives who buy into Epic’s way of running health systems, which is either a tribute to Epic or a criticism of those highly paid executives who let a software vendor tell them how to run their business.

From HisTalk2Fan: “Re: Teladoc results. Any comments? Do you think the company will survive long term?” My thoughts:

TDOC shares are down 46% since the company’s IPO in mid-2015, and even worse, are down 95% over the past three years. Share price dropped 25% on the most recent earnings report, with the company blaming macroeconomic conditions rather than its own missteps. Shares in competitor Amwell have tanked equally dramatically, suggesting that the problem is that virtual visit demand didn’t stick once the pandemic eased.
The company has reported just one profitable quarter in 32 earnings reports.
Everybody knows that the company wildly overpaid for Livongo in October 2020, as experienced investor Glen Tullman hypnotized Teladoc CEO Jason Gorevic – who had no CEO experience prior to Teladoc – into buying Livongo for a staggering $18.5 billion, stoking Gorevic’s ambition to become a mini-Glen level industry player in a swing (and a miss) for the fences. Teladoc announced vague plans to spend the proceeds of temporarily popular COVID virtual visits to expand beyond telehealth, which based on dramatically falling telehealth demand, might have been the right idea, but certainly the wrong execution.
Gorevic somehow kept his job and at least provided the overhyped healthcare startup market with a cautionary tale about irrational exuberance. Teladoc filed a $13.7 billion loss from the acquisition just two years later, and the company’s bragging about its $37 billion value has quieted down now that the whole package is worth just $2.5 billion.
Meanwhile, last week’s earnings report showed a 46% fall in telehealth visits as Gorevic warned of a well-penetrated market and low single-digit growth for US virtual care products. He also announced plans to expand into weight management and pediatrics while characterizing its virtual care business as a “very stable asset” despite obvious evidence to the contrary.
BetterHelp, which was about the only good news for the company in previous quarters, failed to meet expectations for revenue and margins.
I assume the company will survive in some form, but its heyday – if it ever had one – is long past, and they are left with rounds of cost-cutting and trying to shoo away the circling vultures.

From Nomenclaturist: “Re: health system mergers. Why do you usually call them acquisitions?” A merger implies that two companies will combine to do business as a newly formed company, which is rarely the case with health systems. If Health System A and Health System B announce that they will merge and will operate under the Health System A name, then I assume that Health System A is the acquirer and the “merger of equals” characterization is to avoid making the acquired system feel inferior (which they obviously are or they wouldn’t be selling out). I also look to see which company provides the CEO and if one of the health systems will assume the liabilities of the other.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’ve been away and mostly offline for several days, and the fact that you didn’t notice is a tribute to Jenn, who happily follows my doggedly exacting but sometimes quirky writing rules so that the “product” does not vary in my absence. It was fun to enjoy HIStalk as a reader and to find nothing to second guess about the news items she chose or the way she worded them. In fact, Jenn could probably have outdone me today since I’m recovering from a bug.

This is the final call for sponsors to tell me about their HIMSS24 plans for my guide.

Some folks seem surprised that Billy Idol was good at ViVE. Not me, since I saw him years ago when House of Blues Las Vegas comped me a ticket to his show when I was scouting for HIStalkapalooza there. I figured that the spiky, sneering, nearly septuagenarian Billy hadn’t made waves in 40 years and even then in the now-defunct genre of angry Brit punk, but he put on a good show to a self-selected audience who prefer listening to music from their college-aged years.

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 Washington Post says that since Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical — the parent company of Medicare-focused Iora Health, which operates in nine metro areas – the business now known as One Medical Seniors has shortened appointments, laid off clinicians, pushed virtual visits to reduce in-person ones, and eliminated much of Iora’s legendary personal interaction and care coordination, all under the usual corporate excuse-making as necessary to “position One Medical for long-term, sustainable success.” The report also notes that Amazon will be challenged to scale One Medical by offering Prime members a discount because of the its limited geographic coverage. The company has implemented a call center and AI chatbot triage to manage an increased number of telehealth visits. Business Insider reported a couple of weeks ago that Amazon has talked about spinning off the former Iora Health business to reduce One Medical’s projected loss of $342 million this year.

Columbus-based Redi Health, which offers digital pharma support to patients with chronic conditions, raises $14 million in Series B funding. Co-founder and CEO Luke Buchanan came from CoverMyMeds.

Healthcare interoperability vendor Moxe Health receives $25 million in growth capital. CEO Dan Wilson founded the company in 2012 after several years at Epic.

Northwell Health announces plans to acquire Nuvance Health, which would create a 28-hospital system with $18 billion in annual revenue.

The federal government launches an antitrust investigation into UnitedHealth Group, with an apparent focus on the relationship between its insurance business and the healthcare services business of its subsidiary Optum, which is the largest employer of physicians in the US. The justice department previously challenged the company’s $13 billion acquisition of Change Healthcare in 2022, but lost. Change Healthcare’s ransomware attack that has brought US healthcare to its knees is making a good case for the feds.

Online vanity drug prescribing company Hims & Hers Health reports Q4 results: revenue up 65%, EPS $0.01 versus –$0.05, becoming on of the first digital health companies (if that’s what you call it) to show a profit. The company says that new services for weight loss, mental health, and dermatology could each deliver $100 million in revenue starting next year. The company seems excited about the launch of its compounded Hard Mints chewable version of erectile dysfunction drugs.

People

Rhapsody hires Jitin Asnaani, MBA (Health Gorilla) as chief product officer.

Beth Gall (Mantra Health) joins Rainfall Health as VP of sales.

Mark Gee (WellSky) joins Medecision as chief revenue officer.

Former Estes Park Health (CO) CIO Gary Hall, who retired in September 2023, is running for town mayor.

Announcements and Implementations

The Sequoia Project and HL7 will collaborate to accelerate the adoption of FHIR standards in the US. Their initial focus will be on:

Scalable registration, authorization, and authentication.
Interoperable digital identity and patient matching.
Hybrid / intermediary exchange.
Consent at scale.

Highmark Health will use Epic’s Payer Platform running on Google Cloud to glean insights that can be used to inform consumers of the next best actions. The company says that more than half of its 7 million members are attributed to an Epic-using provider, allowing it to close care gaps automatically.

Several health systems and vendors begin beta testing Hippocratic AI’s healthcare-built LLM, with priority areas being chronic care management, post-discharge follow-up, social determinants of health surveys, health risk assessments, and pre-operative outreach. I was amused to see that the company’s dozen unlabeled photos of healthcare professionals are almost certainly generated by AI in the “dogfooding” style, as verified by Is It AI that places the AI-generated odds at 99.27%.

Keysight announces an AI/ML network validation and optimization solution.

Elsevier Health launches ClinicalKey AI, which provides clinicians with a personalized conversational search interface for medical literature that incorporates patient context and provides linked citations.

A study finds that 58% of the NeuroFlow users who were flagged via NLP as as having possible suicidal ideation would not have been identified otherwise.

A new KLAS report on home health technology finds that Homecare Homebase has a wide lead in market share, but Netsmart, WellSky, and ResMed have good market share among mostly smaller clients. Most often considered are Homecare Homebase, MatrixCare, and Epic.

Privacy and Security

The White House issues an executive order to protect the sensitive personal data of Americans – including personal health and genomic data — from “exploitation by countries of concern.” It focuses on commercial data brokers that can sell information to other countries, potentially raising privacy, counterintelligence, and blackmail concerns.

Other

The American Prospect describes what happened when Steward Health acquired Rockledge Regional Medical Center (FL):

The CEO of Wuesthoff Health System, the two-hospital nonprofit that owned Rockledge, sold out to Health Management Associates, which earned his C-suite a $10.6 million golden parachute, after which the hospital was then sold to Community Health Systems and then sold again to Steward, who used money from the medical properties trust that bought Steward’s real estate.
Steward immediately sold the hospital’s hospice center and home health business and outsourced entire departments.
Nurses report that the hospital runs short of medical supplies and has had medical equipment repossessed. The hospital has been sued by dozens of vendors for non-payment.
Five of the hospital’s nine elevators have been out of service for a year.
The company balked at paying exterminators $1 million to remove 5,000 bats from the facility whose guano backed up hospital sinks and pipes.
Steward stopped showing up at legal proceedings after the Boston paper noted that the company was $1.4 billion in the red when founder and CEO Ralph de la Torre bought himself a $40 million yacht and the Globe exposed the flight records of the company-owned jet that showed trips to Corfu, Santorini, and Antigua.
Despite all of its problems, the hospital passed its Joint Commission survey and earned an A grade from the Leapfrog Group. Former employees said that the only thing Steward is good at is hiding problems from inspectors.
Negative company news hasn’t been run in Florida, leading some to predict that the chain is trying to morph into a Florida-only system as state legislators look the other way and lean on news outlets to do the same.

Sponsor Updates

Censinet publishes its “2024 Healthcare Cybersecurity Benchmarking Study.”
Lucem Health incorporates Ryght’s generative AI capabilities into its AI SolutionOps platform.
Arcadia releases its next-generation data platform powered by an open lakehouse architecture.
Odessa General Surgery Robotics (TX) adds Sunoh.ai medical AI scribe capabilities to its EClinicalWorks EHR.
Symplr releases the results of its “State of Healthcare Supply Chain Survey.”
HealthMark Group adds Credo Health’s PreDx record retrieval technology to its Request Manager medical records software.
AvaSure selects Oracle Cloud to power its AI-enabled virtual care platform.
Black Book Research’s latest analysis recognizes Netsmart as the top-performing provider in geriatric medicine EHR and practice management software.
Net Health publishes findings from a new study, “What’s Delaying Advanced Analytics Adoption in Healthcare?”
FinThrive releases a new episode of its Healthcare Rethink Podcast, “Take a Deep Breath … Virtual Healthcare is Here!”
Healthcare IT Leaders CEO Ben Hilmes will chair the Kansas City Light the Night Corporate Walk in support of the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.
Inovalon will exhibit at Rise National March 17-19 in Nashville.
Konza National Network publishes its 2023 Annual Impact Report.
Medhost releases a new customer testimonial featuring Freestone Medical Center in Texas.
Meditech announces that the Rotherham Hospital is at the forefront of patient data-sharing with the integration of GP Connect.
MRO will exhibit at the Minnesota HFMA’s HLAMN Winter Conference March 5-6 in St. Paul.

Blog Posts

An untapped opportunity for today’s telehealth developers: Clinical content (Wolters Kluwer Health)
Change Healthcare (Optum) Outage FAQs (Experity)
Medicaid Waivers by State: Findhelp and New York (Findhelp)
Navigating the Healthcare Staffing Shortage with People-First Technology (FinThrive)
Prioritize Your Contact Center Cybersecurity Methods (Five9)
We Answered “The Healthcare AI Question No One Wants to Answer” (Lucem Health)
The push and the pull: an interoperability update (Meditech)
Extend the Reach of Your Hospital’s EHR with Clinical Communication and Collaboration (Mobile Heartbeat)
Unlocking Specialty EHRs: Take a User-Centric Approach to Wound Care (Net Health)

Contacts

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

Going to ask again about HealWell - they are on an acquisition tear and seem to be very AI-focused. Has…

If HIMSS incorporated as a for profit it would have had to register with a Secretary of State in Illinois.…

What I wondered, after reading this? Could a single physician want to shift back and forth, dynamically, between workflows with…

I read about that last week and it was really one of the most evil-on-a-personal-level things I've seen in a…

Thank you sir

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