Morning Headlines 3/10/22

Cedars-Sinai Establishes New Division: Artificial Intelligence in Medicine

The Department of Medicine at Cedars-Sinai (CA) has established the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine division to better understand how AI can be used to improve medical care initially related to cardiac imaging, sudden cardiac arrest, COVID-19, and clinical genetics.

Reproductive health startup readies for delivery

Noula Health, a reproductive support services startup with virtual care capabilities, has raised $1.4 million in pre-seed funding.

Omega Healthcare Acquires Reventics, a Physician Focused CDI and RCM Company

Medical coding and RCM vendor Omega Healthcare acquires clinical documentation improvement and RCM company Reventics for an undisclosed sum.

HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS22

Arcadia

Booth 2711

To arrange a meeting, click here.

Contact: Jasmine Gee, VP of Marketing
jasmine.gee@arcadia.io

Arcadia (arcadia.io), the leading population health management and health intelligence platform, is hosting several informative forums focused on how to revitalize your organization’s care and research with data-driven insights.

Lunch and Learn: Data science for clinical impact – building a predictive analytics ecosystem. Arcadia’s director of data science, Michael Simon, PhD, will help attendees think through the best way to implement predictive analytics for their populations — from the use of a massive, diverse, longitudinal data asset to modern approaches to modeling patient risk to a case study on the development of a predictive algorithm for behavioral health. Thursday, March 17, 11:15 –12:15, Room 203B. Registration required – request a lunch invitation here.

Forum: Accelerate value-based performance — even when the low-hanging fruit is gone. Hear from leaders at Rush Health, Summit Health, Castell, and other pioneering organizations via case studies and interactive panel discussions. Wednesday, March 16, 11:15 –12:15, Room 202A, and 3– 5:30, Room 202A. Attendance limited to value-based care leaders – request an invitation here.

Forum: Achieving interoperability takes more than an envelope: Leaders from KLAS, Arcadia, Rush Health, Castell, and IMSNY will share strategies and how to void interoperability “gotcha” moments for effective, outcome-driven information-sharing inside and outside your walls. Tuesday, March 15, 11:15 –12:15, Room 202C and 3– 5:30, Room 203B. Attendance limited to information technology and analytics leaders – request an invitation here.

Bamboo Health

Booth 4115, Interoperability Showcase Booth 8240-75

Contact: Alison Matthiessen, senior communications manager
540.230.9021

Bamboo Health will present and exhibit our suite of digital health solutions for interoperable care coordination at HIMSS. As part of the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase, Bamboo Health Vice President, Strategy & Corporate Development Jitin Asnaani will present a session on “Harnessing the Power of Interoperability to Cultivate Whole Person Care Collaboration Across Providers, Patients, and Payers” on Tuesday, March 15 at 2:45.   

Visit the Bamboo Health booth 4115 to learn more about our progress against the behavioral health and substance use crisis through our Pings solution for real-time notifications whenever patients experience care events; OpenBeds provider-facing behavioral health solution for health systems, health plans, and state governments; and NarxCare analytics application and clinical decision support tool. Visit bamboohealth.com to learn more.   

Giveaway: Visit Bamboo Health booth 4115 to participate in our raffle for a chance to win an Oculus VR headset!

Biofourmis

To arrange a meeting, contact Sandeep Pulim.

Contact: Sandeep Pulim, medical director
sandeep.pulim@biofourmis.com
617.334.5441

Biofourmis is a global health technology company focused on leveraging software and data science to deliver virtual care and develop novel digital therapies. Their Care@Home solution utilizes medical-grade wearables to continuously collect patient data, which is analyzed by Biovitals, Biofourmis’ clinically-validated, AI-powered, predictive analytics engine. Additionally, the company discovers, develops, and delivers clinically-validated digital therapeutics to support payers and providers.

Bravado Health

Booth 5349

Contact: Shane Andreasen, VP of Marketing
561.232.9720

Visit Bravado Health at booth 5349 or schedule a meeting to learn more about Ayva, a patient engagement platform for every care journey.

Bravado Health’s award-winning designers created the dynamic patient engagement platform, Ayva, to simplify the care journey from preparation to recovery across the entire spectrum of surgeries, procedures, and disease management. Ayva packages care plans, educational videos, messaging, remote patient monitoring, and more into an accessible, Web-based experience that’s proven to engage patients, improve outcomes, and increase patient satisfaction. Ayva shares engagement data with the patient’s care team, helping clinicians make more well-informed decisions.

Clearsense

Meeting Place MP9101 

Contact: Leann Williams, marketing manager
lwilliams@clearsense.com
904.334.7500

Join our Lunch and Learn on “Advanced Analytics Empowering Change: Transform Your Data into Actionable Results in Real Time.” Join Michelle Reed, product manager of AI and analytics, and Patrick McDaniel, solutions engineer, strategy of AI and analytics, for this interactive session and learn how the Clearsense Data Platform takes your data to the next level with predictive analytics. Clearsense will present a use case around renal failure by creating a patient grouping and using advanced analytics tools.

Discover how powerful advanced analytics can be when in the hands of everyday users, including domain experts, clinicians, analysts, and researchers. This innovative, data-first approach offers the flexibility to learn and adapt. Dive into the functionality of the feedback loop, ask questions regarding a variety of use cases, and see real-time changes you can make today to impact tomorrow’s outcomes. Lunch and refreshments will be served. Registration is required to attend. Please visit https://bit.ly/3uR1WRp to learn more.

CloudWave

Booth 3633

Contact: Christine Mellyn, director of marketing
cmellyn@gocloudwave.com
781.636.8169

Visit CloudWave at HIMSS22 to learn how we help healthcare institutions architect, build, and integrate a personalized solution using managed private cloud, public cloud, and cloud-edge resources to guarantee uptime, easy access, and strong security.   

Join us for our brief educational presentation sessions at 11, 1, and 3 each day on the exhibit hall floor, in booth 3633, and earn a chance to win a pair of Apple AirPods. Topics include “Enterprise Imaging in the Cloud,” “A New Approach to the Cloud Edge,” and “The Value of Immutable Backups.”  

CloudWave’s team will be available to lead conversations around the relentless data tsunami that can either transform care for the better or threaten existing infrastructure if not handled correctly. Whether you want to operate your IT systems in your data center, in the cloud, or a combination of both, CloudWave can help. Learn how we deliver EHR and enterprise cloud services to over 235 healthcare organizations in six countries.

Current Health

Booth 4859

Contact: Lauren Levinsky, VP of marketing
lauren.levinsky@currenthealth.com
650.799.7315

Current Health offers an enterprise care-at-home platform that enables health systems to deliver safe and effective care from the comfort of a patient’s home. We bring together remote patient monitoring, telehealth, and patient engagement into a single, flexible solution that allows organizations to manage all patient populations within one platform. With our recent acquisition by Best Buy, we’re excited to be able to leverage their best-in-class supply chain, logistics, and in-home support to help deliver that last mile of care in the home. 

Visit our booth for an end-to-end demo of our solution, get a first look at our exciting new product features, and meet members of the Current Health and Best Buy team.

Diameter Health

To arrange a meeting, visit diameterhealth.com/events.

Contact: Josh Salazar, marketing manager
jsalazar@diameterhealth.com
765.409.4515

Diameter Health upcycles raw clinical data into a standards-based, interoperable asset using Fusion, our FHIR-enabled technology engine. Our comprehensive, automated data integration, normalization, and enrichment technology delivers high-quality data to streamline workflows, inform decisions, and accelerate interoperability, at scale.​

Divurgent

To arrange a meeting, contact Joe Grinstead.

Contact: Joe Grinstead, principal
joe.grinstead@divurgent.com
214.533.9313

Divurgent won’t be exhibiting, but we’re eager to meet up! We’ll have some of our most senior subject matter experts on technology, digital, and data innovation. Rather than giveaways, we’re opting for meaningful conversations – if you’re interested in solving problems and accelerating your business priorities, we’re here for that!    

Divurgent is a solutions provider focused on what matters most to our client partners. We disrupt the typical value equation by using data-infused, flexible, and scalable solutions that demonstrate and quantify value for our partners.

Ellkay

Booth 5645

Contact: Auna Emery, VP of marketing
auna.emery@ellkay.com
520.481.2862

As a nationwide leader in healthcare connectivity, Ellkay has been committed to making interoperability happen for nearly 20 years. Ellkay empowers hospitals and health systems, providers, diagnostic laboratories, healthcare IT vendors, payers, and other healthcare organizations with cutting-edge technologies and solutions. Ellkay is committed to ongoing innovation, developing cloud-based solutions that address the challenges our partners face. Our solutions facilitate data exchange, streamline workflows, connect the care community, improve outcomes, and power data-driven and cost-effective, patient-centric care. With over 58,000 practices connected, Ellkay’s system capability arsenal has grown to over 700 EMR/PM systems across 1,100+ versions. To learn more about Ellkay, please visit Ellkay.com.   

Start your morning off right by grabbing a complimentary cup of coffee with Team Ellkay the first hour each day at booth 5645. Ellkay will also host Happy Hour on Tuesday, March 15 and Wednesday, March 16 from 4:00-6:00. Stop by to discuss connectivity, interoperability, and strategies to reach your data management initiatives. And, of course, our popular LKHoney will be available at the booth!

Everbridge

Booth 821

Contact: Cristin Carr, senior marketing programs manager, healthcare
cristin.carr@everbridge.com
781.859.4129

Trusted by more than 6,000 global customers including 1,500 hospitals and healthcare organizations, the Everbridge Critical Event Management platform helps physicians, nurses, and emergency response teams overcome the challenges of clinical care communications by simplifying workflows, leading to faster clinical responses and improved patient outcomes. Similarly, during critical events such as active shooter situations, severe weather conditions, or critical business events including IT outages or cyberattacks, the CEM platform automatically gauges the severity and context of the situation, quickly activating the right staff and mitigating the risk of a disruption in hospital operations and patient care.

Stop by our booth or schedule a meeting with us here, and enter to win an Apple Watch. To learn more about CEM, visit everbridge.com.

EVisit

Booth 1909

Contact: Vanessa Sierra, VP of marketing
vsierra@evisit.com

EVisit, the leading enterprise care delivery platform built for modern health systems and hospitals, will announce the launch of EAnalyze at HIMSS22. EAnalyze is a powerful reporting dashboard that provides EVisit customers with valuable data insights, including usage, patient wait times, virtual visit traffic, duration and drop-off rate, and other key adoption metrics, prompting proactive changes that can improve the patient consumer experience and reduce costs. In addition, EVisit plans to reduce the burden on providers by integrating the most advanced medical diagnosis API into its end-to-end platform.

To learn more, please plan to attend: “Care Navigation: Getting Patients to The Front Door.” Presenter: Dave Lovecchio, product manager, EVisit. 1:30 on March 15 and 16. EVisit booth 1909

First Databank

Booth 3659

Contact: Steve Normile, director of strategic alliances
snormile@fdbhealth.com
503.598.9739

New Solution To Be Announced: FDB will launch an industry-changing new solution that touches every major segment of the healthcare industry on Tuesday, March 15.

FDB PatientFirst Solutions Yield Benefits: FDB will share how solutions within our FDB PatientFirst suite are delivering targeted and patient-focused context and drug information to help clinicians make precise, evidence-based decisions:

• How to Access Patient-Specific Medication Guidance When It Matters Most with FDB Targeted Medication Warnings.
  
• How to Leverage Actionable Insights to Boost CDS Effectiveness with FDB CDS Analytics.
  
• How to Provide Evidence-Based Drug-Gene Guidance Within the Workflow with FDB Pharmacogenomic CDS.
  
• Presentation: Anna Dover, PharmD, BCPS, director of product management with FDB, and Harvard-trained medical geneticist Marsha Fearing, MD, MPH, MMSc, with Meditech, will discuss why and how genomics is about to change healthcare in the near term. Meditech booth 3311, Tuesday, March 15 at 2 and Wednesday, March 16 at 11:30.

Additional Solutions:

• How to Tune Medication Alerts with FDB AlertSpace.
  
• How to Address Patient Medication Adherence and Understanding with Meducation.
  
• How to Combat Supply Chain Disruption with FDB Prizm.

Reception: Attendees are invited to attend FDB’s reception at our booth, 3659, for conversation and prizes on Wednesday, March 16, from 5-6. Co-hosted by FDB, Zynx Health, and MCG. Complimentary gourmet popcorn gift to all attendees Drawing for $1,000 Amazon gift card.

Fortified Health Security

Kiosk 300-26 in the Cybersecurity Command Center

Contact: Judy Cooper, director of marketing
jcooper@fortifiedhealthsecurity.com
615.600.4002

Fortified Health Security is Healthcare’s Cybersecurity Partner – protecting patient data and reducing risk throughout the healthcare ecosystem. As a managed security service provider, Fortified works alongside healthcare organizations to build tailored programs with high-touch engagements and customized recommendations that maximize the value of investments and result in actionable information to help reduce the risk of cyber events.

Stop by kiosk 300-26 in the Cybersecurity Command Center to find out how we have become healthcare’s best cybersecurity partner.

Medhost

Booth 3858

Contact: Holly Evans, SVP of customer success & marketing
holly.evans@medhost.com
615.293.0714

Medhost, a leading EHR and healthcare IT solution and service provider, will showcase key offerings from their enterprise, departmental, and digital health solutions catalog at the HIMSS22 Annual Conference and Exhibition in booth 3858, March 14-18.     

In addition to their full range of services and solutions, Medhost will showcase new offerings that will enhance hospital end-user experiences and help streamline hospital workflows. The three new solutions include but are not limited to Medhost Anesthesia Experience, Medhost Mobility Physician, and Medhost Cloud-Based Analytics. Built to complement the perioperative platform, Medhost Anesthesia Experience is a comprehensive, clinician-driven application that supports anesthesia providers. The mobile solution, Medhost Mobility Physician, provides a complete view of patients’ charted data and includes a HIPAA-secure messaging tool, all from a handheld device, offering physicians greater digital freedom and flexibility in their workflows. Medhost Cloud-Based Analytics is an out-of-the-box, browser-based analytics product that adds simplicity to capturing a holistic view of a hospital’s essential performance metrics with drill-through capabilities initially in financials, revenue cycle, and payor performance. Learn more about our solutions by visiting us at booth 3858.

Medicomp Systems

To arrange a meeting, visit: medicomp.com/himss22/ or email himss@medicomp.com.

Contact: James Aita, director of strategy & business development
jaita@medicomp.com
647.207.0080

Medicomp will showcase innovations in clinical usability and documentation workflow improvement, including clinical intelligence for EHRs to mirror the way clinicians think, enhanced FHIR/interoperability tools to make sense of incoming data by problem in health systems, breakthroughs in speech and NLP, taking “freetext” to structured data, and improvements in real-time compliance at the point of care.

Meditech

Booth 3311

Contact: Jason Patnode, marketing manager
jpatnode@meditech.com
781.774.5746

Meditech has driven EHR innovation during every stage of the industry’s evolution. Today, we’re helping healthcare organizations around the world expand their vision of what’s possible with Meditech Expanse. Meditech’s Expanse EHR delivers native, cloud-based mobility that keeps providers connected to each other as well as to their communities. See why KLAS rates Meditech Expanse the #1 EHR in three segments and a Top Performer in three others, including Overall Software Suite.    

Stop by Meditech booth 3311 to speak with fellow clinicians and Meditech executives, or to catch a demonstration of our latest solutions, including Expanse Genomics, Expanse Care Compass, Expanse Patient Connect, and Expanse Ambulatory — now available to independent physician practices. You can also find us at the Interoperability Showcase and CMIO Roundtable, which we will be moderating.

Nordic Consulting

Booth 3965

Contact: Gwen Cantarera, marketing director
gwen.cantarera@nordicglobal.com
484.678.0264

Interoperability continues to be top-of-mind across the healthcare industry, and Nordic would like to help you connect the dots to create a pathway to interoperability. Stop by our booth and let’s talk about the challenges you face with interoperability. With our deep expertise across all major EHR systems, we take a platform-based approach to enable connectivity. It’s time to turn your technology into an enabler, not a roadblock.

PatientBond

To arrange a meeting, contact Todd Helmink.

Contact: Todd Helmink, SVP of strategic partnerships
todd.helmink@patientbond.com
312.391.4233

The PatientBond patient engagement platform leverages healthcare consumer psychographic segmentation and machine learning to target interactions based on personal motivations and channel preferences that drive patient behaviors, delivering truly personalized, multi-channel engagement that drives better outcomes for health systems, payers, and life sciences vendors. We are the opposite of the one-size-fits-all approach to driving patient and member behavior.

Quil Health

To arrange a meeting, contact Ashley Stevens.

Contact: Ashley Stevens, VP of provider sales
sales@quilhealth.com

Quil is the digital health joint venture between Comcast NBCUniversal and Independence Blue Cross. We help people organize and navigate their health in partnership with their providers, health plans, and loved ones. We’re shaping the future, using technology to personalize and transform the experience of navigating health and care. The Quil solutions model best practices from the entertainment industry to revolutionize the way providers, patients, and loved ones are supported throughout their care journeys leveraging Quil Engage, the care engagement platform for health systems and patients.

Meet our team at HIMSS to get a live demonstration of the care engagement platform that informs, guides, and activates patients in their care, in partnership with their providers, payers, and loved ones. VP of Provider Sales Ashley Stevens will be taking meetings throughout the event to discuss Quil Engage and share demos of our patient engagement platform.

ReMedi Health Solutions

To arrange a meeting, contact GP Hyare.

Contact: GP Hyare, managing director
g.hyare@remedihs.com
281.413.8947

ReMedi Health Solutions is a nationally-recognized, physician-led healthcare IT consulting firm specializing in peer-to-peer, physician-centric EHR implementation and training. We’re a clinically-driven company committed to improving the future of healthcare.    

Our Physician Executive team is attending HIMSS to connect with fellow industry members and friends, and share more about our virtual solutions that have generated a major impact for our healthcare partners. Feel free to reach out and schedule an EHR strategy session with our team during the event.

RxRevu

To arrange a meeting, contact Ryan Smith.

Contact: Ryan Smith, SVP of business development
ryan.smith@rxrevu.com
440.708.3683

RxRevu will be at HIMSS to talk care access and how we help providers access reliable data at the point of care to make informed decisions. Join us on March 16 at “The Use of FHIR to Accelerate Innovation in Healthcare,” a panel moderated by Cerner that features our CEO with Microsoft and MU Health Care panelists. We’ll also discuss RxRevu’s solutions at the Cerner booth on March 15 and 16.

Sphere

Booth 1733

Contact: Ryne Natzke, SVP of growth & strategy
rynen@spherecommerce.com
657.383.7967

Sphere will showcase its digital-forward TrustCommerce end-to-end patient payments platform at HIMSS22, highlighting the solution’s new digital wallet support within Epic MyChart, and its expanding network of digital healthcare solution partners. In addition, Sphere will demonstrate new Advanced E-Billing and collections capabilities within its Health IPass platform. Stop by Sphere’s booth to enter to win an Apple Watch.

To learn more, visit trustcommerce.com/verticals/healthcare/.

Tegria

Meeting Space 9417

Contact: Kevin Kutz, VP of public relations & external communications
kevin.kutz@tegria.com

Tegria provides consulting and technology services to help organizations of all sizes humanize each healthcare experience. Founded by Providence, with teams throughout the United States and internationally, Tegria is comprised of more than 3,500 colleagues who help their customers integrate technology, transform operations, accelerate revenue, and optimize care. We meet you where you are in your journey to transform healthcare. Our team is ready to listen.   

Come and meet with the Tegria team at meeting space 9417 located in Hall F. For all inquiries, please reach out to Kevin Kutz.

We invite you to meet Tegria experts at their presentations on cloud strategy and patient access, growth, and retention. Breakfast Briefing: Thursday, 7:15-8:15. Topic: EHRs to the Cloud: Lessons from the Field. Speaker: Chad Skidmore, VP of managed services, hosting & infrastructure. Location: Room 203C, Orange County Convention Center.  

Industry Solution Session: Thursday, 8:30-9:30. Topic: Patient Access Growth and Retention. Speakers: Rodina Bizri-Baryak, director of patient access and technology, and Emily Tempels, director of patient access. Location: Room W208C, West building of the convention center.

Lunch & Learn: Thursday, 11:15-12:15. Topic: EHRs to the Cloud: Lessons from the Field. Speaker: Chad Skidmore, VP of managed services, hosting & infrastructure. Location: Room 203C, Orange County Convention Center.

TigerConnect

Booth 5959

Contact: Betsy Berken-Zaslav, senior content & event manager
bzaslav@tigerconnect.com
954.579.3934

TigerConnect offers the healthcare industry’s most widely adopted and integrated communication platform, bringing together all aspects of care collaboration, physician and resident scheduling, patient engagement, and alarm management into a single, scalable, and mobile solution. HIPAA-compliant and HITRUST-certified, TigerConnect delivers 99.99% verifiable uptime and is trusted by more than 7,000 healthcare organizations.   

Stop by the TigerConnect booth for demonstrations of how the platform integrates with EHRs and other systems to unify communication, streamline workflows, reduce costs, and improve patient outcomes. In addition to demos of its solutions, TigerConnect is offering pens, sunglasses, blue light blocking glasses, and bags to carry all your additional HIMSS giveaways!

TransformativeMed

Booth 3224

Contact: Robert Kerzman, chief growth officer
robert.kerzman@transformativemed.com
331.223.7840

TransformativeMed harnesses the data in your EHR to create an intelligent digital workspace that dramatically improves the usability of EHRs, with specialty-specific and disease-specific workflows embedded within the EHR.    

The Cores Work Manager Platform, Cores Notify, and Cores Diabetes securely synchronize clinical workflow, tasks, alerts, notifications, and messages to harmonize the care team and create seamless communication across all care providers, using any device, including mobile. We believe your EHR should work the way you always thought it would. Visit us at booth 3224 to learn more.

Upfront

Booth 6545

Contact: Patrick Dienes, VP of sales
pdienes@upfronthealthcare.com
504.214.8169

Upfront delivers dynamic, digital care navigation to improve patient experience, increase necessary visits, reduce no-shows, and improve population health performance. Its flexible, omnichannel communication capabilities, combined with personalized patient content and calls-to-action, eliminate common barriers to patient engagement and enable Upfront to support a nearly unlimited number of use cases and deliver a world-class patient experience while driving a significant return on investment for client partners.

Visage Imaging

Booth 921

Contact: Brad Levin, GM 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. The Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform is proven, providing a fast, clinically rich, and highly scalable growth platform deliverable entirely from the cloud or on-premise. Visage 7 supports the simplicity of a One Viewer philosophy that enables diagnostic, clinical, specialty, research, and mobile imaging workflows from a singular platform. Visage 7 also offers modular scalability and future-proof flexibility with enterprise workflow (Visage 7 Workflow), vendor-neutral archive (Visage 7 Open Archive), and artificial intelligence (Visage AI Accelerator) solutions, all 100% native. Visage 7 can also be experienced in the Amazon Web Services booth 1041.

Zen Healthcare IT

To arrange a meeting, contact Dan Benson.

Contact: Dan Benson, client engagements coordinator
danb@consultzen.com
949.617.1797

Marilee Benson, president, will be attending HIMSS22 and is scheduling time to meet with folks in the Interoperability Showcase. Please email DanB@consultzen.com to request a meeting time.

Zen Healthcare IT is an Interoperability Solutions company focused on removing healthcare data exchange barriers for our clients. We provide a secure, enterprise-class interoperability platform used by a wide range of HIE, provider group, hospital, and HIT vendor organizations. Our platform enables faster and more reliable data exchange. We have an excellent reputation in the interoperability space – schedule a meet up with Marilee to find out why.

Readers Write: Reimagining Healthcare in 2022 with Personal Emergency Response Services

Reimagining Healthcare in 2022 with Personal Emergency Response Services
By Janet Dillione

Janet Dillione is CEO of Connect America of Bala Cynwyd, PA.

One of the most critical moments in healthcare is the 60 minutes after a catastrophic event, such as a sudden fall, when a person has the greatest chance of recovery if they receive immediate medical care.

Among older adult patients, falls are one of the biggest worries, and for good reason. Falls are the leading cause of fatal injury among older adults. Additionally, one-fourth of US adults aged 65+ fall each year, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

When stakeholders consider reimagining healthcare to address the challenges facing patients, they often think that innovation must be manufactured out of thin air. But increasingly, leaders recognize that it is usually the most tried and true technologies, like personal emergency response services (PERS), that deliver the most effective results for patients and drive innovation forward.

Given the lingering effects of COVID-19 on healthcare, including the growing preference among senior patients to utilize telehealth and other virtual care services from the comfort of their own homes rather than in a medical facility,these patients will need more than a sensor or button to keep them safe and healthy.

It’s incumbent upon healthcare organizations to develop connective care and digital health solutions for seniors living at home, to do right by the patients they aim to care for and create fail-safe services and technologies that operate consistently. These stakeholders must build reliable and flawless systems that seamlessly integrate non-intrusive services and technologies for aging individuals remaining at home.

One encouraging note is that the industry has a strong foundation of innovative healthcare services and technologies that allow older patients to safely live at home with dignity.

Look no further than PERS, which keeps patients independent by allowing them to push a button that instantly connects subscribers with highly trained emergency response operators. For these vulnerable patients, it’s a benefit to reach someone who can assess the situation and send help if needed, whether it’s caregivers, family members, emergency services, or neighbors. Some PERS devices can even detect a fall and immediately contact an emergency operator.

While these services are both essential and remarkable, PERS provides so much more for patients in need. Behind the button is a complex network of call centers connected to 911 that make sure emergency medical services (EMS) are dispatched to the home when required. These are significant advantages compared to an ordinary watch.

Despite realistic concerns about consumer health technology, as more technology companies enter the healthcare market space, it’s critical to emphasize that no single solution is enough to deliver optimal services and care to the growing population of older adults and vulnerable aging at home.

Subsequently, there must be a system of integrated technologies and services, including traditional PERS, medication management and adherence solutions, remote patient monitoring (RPM), and a fall detection system that all combine to feed a robust analytics engine delivering actionable insights. These include alerts and risk-scoring to payers, care teams, and caregivers.

Consider PERS as the foundation for a system bringing on an increasing number of essential technologies and services into the home. RPM and hospital-at-home models build on and integrate with PERS by allowing senior adults with chronic conditions, as well as more acute illnesses, to receive care at home. These care models use medical-grade wireless devices to transmit vital health information to a virtual dashboard and a medical professional who is monitoring in case of a need to respond. Simultaneously, RPM allows clinicians to analyze aggregated data from the patient portal and electronic medical records, thereby enabling them to monitor results and accordingly update care plans for data collection and analytics.

Healthcare executives understand the entire value chain: delivering products, care, and technology must work as an integrated service. When this occurs, older and vulnerable adults have the best chance of living safely and independently in their home while avoiding costly and disruptive facility-based care.

Most importantly, healthcare organizations don’t need to create new technology or put their trust in unproven solutions. PERS and its extensive technology, communication, and services have a highly reliable track record that can serve as the platform for additional technologies and services delivering consistent, safe, and proactive care within a patient’s home.

HIStalk Interviews Sanjula Jain, PhD, SVP, Trilliant Health

Sanjula Jain, PhD is SVP of market strategy and chief research officer of Trilliant Health of Brentwood, TN.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I am a health economist by training. I’ve spent my career doing applied research both in academia and supporting provider organizations. I’m chief research officer at a predictive analytics company called Trilliant Health.

Your recent analysis found that telehealth enjoyed a temporary COVID boost that was driven more by provider supply than consumer demand. What will telehealth’s long-term place be?

The supply and demand is pretty telling. Does telehealth have a role going forward? Absolutely. But its use cases as the system is currently designed — for incentive structures, payment models, and the consumers it is reaching — are pretty narrow. We need to zoom out to say, what is the intent of telehealth? We’ve talked about it as an industry as a tool to expand access, but the data is showing that it is expanding access for those individuals who already had access to healthcare. They are your proactive healthcare people who have more resources and are slightly more affluent.

If we want to move the needle in terms of who is using the technology, We have to think about payment parity. Who are the individuals we need to reach, and why are they not using telehealth? Is it a preference thing? A lot of the data right now suggests that they like the in-person interaction with their provider. The exception is behavioral health, which makes sense as a sensitive topic where it might be OK to talk about it with someone on a phone as opposed to in person.

Physician incentive structures and patient preference is a big part and it remains to be seen. Are there patients out there who are not using it today who actually want to use it? Once we start unpacking that, we will expose the market opportunity.

What is the impact of telehealth commoditization, where patients initiate the least-expensive visit with whatever provider is sitting on a couch somewhere waiting to pick up a call?

I’m not a clinician, but wearing my health policy hat, I have concerns that it could create waste in the healthcare system. Where does quality fit? Even if it becomes so ubiquitous the way you described, how do we know if it is actually delivering greater value clinically?

We are seeing cases like the COVID testing analogy, where you had to get the pass or appointment to then go get tested. You are being vetted in an additional step. I would argue that could be a sign of waste if that model applies going forward. It remains to be seen where that utilization comes from and how it’s being used.

From a clinical perspective, how many use cases are actually delivering value? So much of healthcare requires touch and running ancillary services to be able to evaluate a patient. That’s why behavioral health becomes an exception. But even if someone can quickly dial in, what will you be able to get from that interaction beyond a prescription refill or a very limited set of services?

An early concern about telehealth that it would create new costs or, at best, move the same care for the same people to a less-expensive venue. And in the US healthcare system, today’s insurer might be saving a competitor’s future cost of treating an avoidable chronic condition. How do you see telehealth impacting overall healthcare cost?

It is yet to be determined , but the initial data is a little bit skeptical. It goes back to the downstream cost of care looking at that patient longitudinally. What else are the individuals who use telehealth regularly doing in their care patterns? What is the lag time when they go see a specialist? What are their actual broader healthcare behaviors?

The initial signals don’t suggest that it is catching things earlier, therefore leading to early intervention. Behavioral health is once again the exception, and that’s maybe an opportunity to improve outcomes from that perspective. But from a cost savings, it’s hard to see where that proves to be true.

Telehealth has created a business model of healthcare convenience, where startup prescription fulfillment services will throw in a free, rubber-stamped telehealth visit to sell birth control and hair loss products. What does that say about how consumers value clinical evaluation?

There are two pieces to that. On the consumer point, to what you are saying and what our research shows, telehealth is being treated like a commodity good. We are in an era where many of us order our groceries online or do Amazon Prime, We like that instant access and convenience. Consumers, to some extent, want that in their healthcare decisions. Those individuals are not thinking about what that means from a quality of care perspective. They are looking at it from a convenience perspective.

But we see that some consumers make different healthcare decisions. A section of the report covers psychographics, a construct that there are five profiles, and each of us by the age of 18 formulates what that is. That defines how we make decisions. Some people are brand conscious and would drive an extra hour here in the DC area to go to Hopkins and bypass the five-minute drive to Inova or MedStar, because in their psychological profile, they have a different brand perception. Those consumers may be ones who don’t engage in some of these commodity-like services. It remains to be seen whether they perceive the quality of a telehealth visit or something like an Amazon Care service to be on par with a traditional visit.

Every consumer is different. With a grocery store analogy, some consumers shop at Whole Foods versus Kroger or Safeway. Everyone associates a different value to it and the outcomes that are associated with it.

To your second point, there just is no quality data out there yet. Consumers have always struggled to make informed decisions because our system makes that hard, where it’s different from shopping for a healthcare service or finding the price of a service. We are in early innings to expect consumers to think through the advanced quality pieces of that. But we as an industry have not even begun to scratch the service there. That’s going to be the next wave, the downstream implications of this new way of interacting with the care system in being able to call in and get a bunch of prescriptions.

Despite lots of chatter about consumerism, patients aren’t entirely free to make their own decisions because they are limited by insurance or geography. Is consumer preference and satisfaction really becoming more important?

I don’t think it’s that black and white. Consumer preference is certainly important, but the way to think about it is, how do you influence consumer decisions? Assume you have two diabetes patients in a given market. One has consumed information only via text messages and virtual modalities. How a provider or health plan encourages that person to to engage in A, B and C healthy behaviors is very different than with another diabetes patient who is old school and likely to respond to things sent in the mail.

We don’t think about our healthcare patients as people who make decisions, so when I’m talking about decision making, a lot of it is a product of the choices in your market and the financial incentives. But each of us weights factors differently — convenience, price, geography, location, and distance. That’s where some of those opportunities lie. The more you understand those and understand your market of individuals, the better you can cater your offerings to your population.

How do you react to investors putting a lot of money into digital health companies whose business model requires employers to buy their apps, chatbots, or coaching services for their employees in hopes of saving healthcare costs? 

I’m not as deep on the employer market, but looking at what the trends show, the employer market is the opportunity for growth within the telehealth opportunity. We are seeing that with existing players like Teladoc and others who are shifting their model from a direct-to-consumer sale to making it an integrated benefit. That is why we made the point in the study around the margin costs being effectively zero.

The opportunity is within that population, but let’s think about who the employer population represents. It still is your commercially insured, healthcare-proactive individuals, for whom it is just an additional service. Without going too deep in a rabbit hole, I think that will be the opportunity where people are focusing, but once again, who is your market and who was telehealth intended to expand access for? Is it those who have great coverage and have a lot of access to services, or the people who with not as great health outcomes and are not regularly seeing a provider who need to be seen them more?

Compared to typical disruption, how might telehealth change the value of brick-and-mortar healthcare locations that have traditionally provided competitive advantage?

Where that is intertwined is this concept of the digital front door. Particularly for a lot of these retail players, but also traditional players like hospitals and health systems, the operating assumption is that if we have a way to engage with individuals on the front end — whether in a retail store and they come into the health system for more serious conditions or they use a digital front door like telehealth – they are going to come to us. That’s usually the operating premise for making those investments.

Analysis that I’ve done previously looked at health system traffic for what percent of patients in their market engaged with them through a telehealth encounter, then continued by seeking downstream care services at that health system, such as specialty care or other services. It’s not actually that strong of a connection, meaning there is a fair amount of leakage. Consumers want choice and options in hybrid models of care, but the data doesn’t support the extent to which telehealth investment will bring more patients to my brick-and-mortar location.

As a health economist, what technology trends do you follow most closely?

I’m spending more time on home care and some of these ancillary services and therapeutic technologies, at-home testing and things like that. It will be interesting to see whether that changes the practice of care and how that the data coming out of those technologies for treatment changes the whole system.

But ultimately, what I think about from a macro perspective is what I call the healthy tension between technological innovation and the payment model and the policy to meet that where it is. The largest payer of healthcare services is the federal government, and that share is growing. We have a lot of private sector innovation, which is great, but how does the incentive structure and the payment model support that innovation? Where does quality fit in? Where do the outcomes fit in? How do we measure that it is working and are we reaching people? That will be, no matter what the technology, the heart of how we know if it’s transforming the system or not.

Morning Headlines 3/9/22

Epic Launches Garden Plot: A Shared Environment Where Independent Medical Groups Can Grow

Epic announces Garden Plot, an Epic version for independent medical groups that is offered directly from Epic instead of requiring a Community Connect agreement with a health system.

Health Gorilla Raises $50 Million Series C to Securely Enable the Exchange of Actionable and Aggregated Clinical Data

Healthcare API developer Health Gorilla raises $50 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $80 million.

Harris Acquires Israel-based 2Team Computers Ltd.

Harris acquires Israel-based insurance software vendor 2Team Computers.

News 3/9/22

Top News

Epic announces Garden Plot, an Epic version for independent medical groups that is offered directly from Epic instead requiring a Community Connect agreement with a health system.

Epic provides the system in a software-as-a-service model that includes hosting, support, updates, and integrated third-party products.

Integrated products that are included in the offering are from Availity, Biscom, Change Healthcare, Healthwise, Intelligent Medical Objects, Iron Bridge, Lyniate, OSG Billing Services, Solarity, Sphere, Surescripts, and Wolters Kluwer.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m fast-roping into HIMSS22, arriving Monday evening and heading out early Thursday. Two days in the exhibit hall is it for me, the shortest time I’ve ever stuck around. The asterisked HIMSS21 almost convinced me to skip this year’s version entirely, but I’m like a migratory bird that can’t stay home.

I appreciate the many folks who have connected with me on LinkedIn in the past few days, some of them adding nice comments about how long and/or enjoyably they have been reading HIStalk.  My only viewpoint of HIStalk is as an empty screen demanding to be filled from my frequently occupied chair, so hearing from actual humans boosts me. For those who ponder the advantages of connecting (can’t we just be ROI-free online pals?), it’s a short list:

• I’ll see your postings.
• LinkedIn will notify me when you change jobs and I will list your new gig in my “People” section if it meets my criteria, even in the absence of a an official announcement.
• You’ll be connected to thousands of like-minded people, although I confess that I don’t really use LinkedIn beyond superficially and thus I don’t really know what benefits that offers.
• You can send me messages via LinkedIn.
• You’ll make me feel more relevant, which makes me more confidently snarky if you consider that to be an HIStalk feature rather than a bug.

Speaking of LinkedIn, I keep seeing cookie-cutter messages from people who have joined Chief, so I had to look up what that’s about. I wish I had thought of its business model, which combines vanity, networking, and employer-paid expensive dues:

• It’s an investor-funded private network for C-suite females who have at least 15 years of career experience.
• The company has raised $40 million from investors.
• Annual dues are $5,000 to $9,000, usually paid for by the member’s employer.
• Chief says it has thousands of members and thousands more on the waitlist.
• It offers meetups, mentorship connections, online discussion groups, and physical clubhouses in four cities.

ViVE attendees seem to be having a ball, with most of the Twitter photo evidence being beaming party photos. Despite the fact that I’m a certified curmudgeon with a mild case of FOMO, I am glad to see people happily interacting face to face after the long COVID drought. Hopefully healthcare cost, quality, and patient experience will get at least passing attention among the glossy good times and startup salivation. I’ll also say this for the conference timing and location — it has sucked all the air out of the HIMSS22 room, made direct comparisons inevitable, and possibly consumed much of the energy of the overlapping attendees and exhibitors who will do it all over again upstate next week. I thought it was a mistake to schedule ViVE so close to HIMSS (although not as disastrous as the initial HLTH conference right after HIMSS18 in Las Vegas), but HLTH and CHIME might have been thinking more strategically.

Meanwhile, ViVE announces that its next iteration will be March 26-29, 2023 in Nashville, ending 19 days before HIMSS23 in Chicago. I hadn’t paid attention to the HIMSS23 location — HIMSS banned its home town from future conferences twice, once because of nasty exhibit hall Teamsters and once for hotels giving RSNA attendees better rates. I assume HIMSS will save some much-needed cash with the Chicago home court advantage, with a slight negative being the chance of a blizzard like at the HIMSS09 opening reception there.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Optum. Optum is a leading information and technology-enabled health services business dedicated to helping make the health system work better for everyone. With more than 190,000 people worldwide, Optum delivers intelligent, integrated solutions that help to modernize the health system and improve overall population health. Optum is part of UnitedHealth Group (NYSE:UNH). Thanks to Optum for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s a recent YouTube video that describes Optum’s provider careers.

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Harris acquires Israel-based insurance software vendor 2Team Computers.

Former Livongo executives launch Homeward Health with a $20 million investment from General Catalyst. The startup aims to provide Medicare Advantage plan members in rural communities with primary and specialty care using local teams that provide in-person and virtual services and in-home remote patient monitoring. It is initially focusing its evidence- and value-based care model on cardiology.

Health data exchange company Consensus Cloud Solutions acquires Summit Healthcare, a health IT vendor specializing in data integration, care continuity, and workflow automation. This marks the first acquisition for Consensus, which became an independent business after parent company J2 Global split into two publicly traded companies last year.

Healthcare API developer Health Gorilla raises $50 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $80 million.

Pro Medicus co-founder and CEO Sam Hupert says that the Australian medical imaging software vendor, parent company of Visage Imaging, won’t bid for government work because of “too many gates and hoops” in the procurement process, which is led by “bureaucrats, with clinicians very much in the background. How would a bureaucrat know what makes a good clinical desktop for a radiologist?” The company recently expanded into Europe and has contracts with seven US hospitals, which provide the bulk of its revenue. Hupert and his co-founder Anthony Hall each hold nearly $1 billion worth of shares.

Sales

• The Social Security Administration’s Disability Determination Services will use Veradigm EChart Courier software from Allscripts to automate medical records retrieval.
• Johns Hopkins HealthCare Solutions will offer Glooko’s remote patient monitoring capabilities to diabetic patients who are enrolled in its Blossom diabetes management program.
• Integris Health (OK) selects population health analytics and data integration from Loopback Analytics to enhance its specialty pharmacy program.
• Northwell Health (NY) signs a 10-year agreement with Clinithink for its NLP-enabled Clix RCM technology.
• The US Defense Health Agency chooses MediQuant’s DataArk for archiving military health records as DoD transitions to Cerner.

People

ChartSpan promotes Christine Hawkins, MBA to CEO.

Stanford Health (CA) promotes Nigam Shah, PhD to the newly formed role of chief data scientist.

EHealth Technologies names Dan Torrens (ConnectiveRx) as CEO.

Virtual patient monitoring vendor AvaSure hires Adam McMullin, MBA (FDS) as CEO.

Health System Informatics promotes Stephanie Hojan to president.

Mitre hires Stephen Ondra, MD (Cygnus-AI) as chief medical adviser.

UnitedHealth Group promotes Cara Griffin to VP of marketing.

Announcements and Implementations

CloudWave announces GA of OpSus Vault, a cloud-based data storage service that is designed to protect backups from cybersecurity threats.

Tift Regional Medical Center (GA) integrates Wolters Kluwer Health’s POC Advisor sepsis monitoring software with Cerner.

Mount Desert Island Hospital and Health Centers in Maine implements Cerner.

Tausight announces a real-time detection platform to detect, track, and analyze PHI activity.

Allscripts renames its Application Store to Allscripts App Expo and opens it to all active developers with a certified solution.

Olive announces increased investment in interoperability and intelligence capabilities in its platform.

Other

I missed this a couple of weeks ago. Several states and CMS investigate Center for Covid Control, whose 242 locations tested 400,000 samples for COVID-19 using untrained workers who ignored the manufacturer’s instructions, stored and labeled specimens improperly, faked results, and told insured patients not to list their coverage on the form (they were billing the federal government for testing uninsured patients). Some patients received negative results before they were actually tested. Its associated lab – whose mailing address is a UPS store and which apparently is owned by the same couple — billed the federal government for $120 million worth of testing for uninsured people, posting “free COVID testing” signs in decrepit empty storefronts and at pop-up sites. Owners Akbar Ali Syed (35) and his wife Aleya Siyak (29) put the company together quickly in 2020 after operating a wedding photo business, a doughnut shop, and an axe-throwing lounge. They bought a $1.36 million mansion, a $3.7 million Ferrari, and several Lamborghinis. I suspect the already ample amount of healthcare fraud has been increased dramatically by the government’s frantic attempts to manage the pandemic using poorly vetted contractors and vendors.

Sponsor Updates

• Clearsense sponsors a pre-ViVE2022 golf tournament that has raised $42,000 for the CHIME Opioid Task Force.
• AGS Health and Clearwater achieve Cybersecurity Transparent certification through a voluntary risk assessment process and program from Censinet and KLAS.
• Baker Tilly will exhibit at the 34^th Annual Roth Conference March 13-15 in Dana Point, CA.
• Bluestream Health helps long-time partner MedStar Health deliver more than 1.5 million telehealth encounters during the pandemic.
• Ellkay partners with Astrata to help health plans improve quality measurement.
• Current Health expands its support for chronic care management by adding new features to its platform, including access to more integrated, third-party devices; a single platform across all populations; and new communication tools.
• Lumeon appoints former Partners, Cerner, and Siemens executive John Glaser to its board.

Blog Posts

• ViVE 2022 – Our obligation to caregivers and patients (Cerner)
• Healthcare IT Service Desk: Automation Strategies (CereCore)
• Common Prior Authorization Hurdles and How to Overcome Them (CoverMyMeds)
• Take the Worry Out of Healthcare Cloud Migration with CTG’s Cloud Solutions (CTG)
• International Women’s Day: Gender Equity in Healthcare (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• 3 Ways That Healow Pay Helped a Growing Primary Care Practice (EClinicalWorks)
• 6 strategies on how to increase outpatient revenue (Experian Health)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 3/8/22

Homeward to Rearchitect Rural Healthcare for 60 Million Americans

Former Livongo executives launch technology-enabled care delivery company Homeward Health with a $20 million investment from General Catalyst.

Consensus Cloud Solutions, Inc. Provides Fourth Quarter 2021 Preliminary Results

Health data exchange company Consensus Cloud Solutions acquires Summit Healthcare, a health IT vendor specializing in data integration, care continuity, and workflow automation.

MDisrupt Lands $6 Million in Seed Funding to Build Its Digital Health Intelligence Platform

MDisrupt will use $6 million in seed funding to expand its service, which enables digital health entrepreneurs to connect with experts, and generate real-world data needed to commercialize and scale their solutions.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 3/7/22

As a CMIO, I spend a great deal of my time thinking about patient experience. Telehealth is a major focus for my organization, and in the name of patient experience, we worry about dozens of details:

• Are the colors on the website pleasing?
• Can patients easily figure out that we offer telehealth, and what hours?
• How patient-friendly is the registration process for the patient portal?
• Have we optimized the pre-visit check-in process?
• Are we asking enough questions to gather the information the physicians want, but not so much information that patients are frustrated by the questions?
• Is the connection to the telehealth platform seamless?
• Are there risks for a poor-quality visit?
• Are the post-visit instructions clear and delivered to the patient quickly?
• Is the communication back to the rest of the care team timely?

This week I had to put my patient hat on again, and it was an experience that made me wish that healthcare executives spent half the time thinking about the in-person patient experience that I’ve spent thinking about telehealth over the last six months. The opportunities for improvement spanned the spectrum of people, process, and technology.

For background: my visit was for a radiology procedure at a large academic medical center and had been scheduled six months ago. I transferred care there last year after some medical misadventures elsewhere and didn’t know exactly what to expect.

The first miss on their part was the fact that they don’t use the capabilities of their EHR and patient portal to manage basic pre-registration and appointment confirmation tasks. Instead, I had to start playing phone tag with the registration team four days prior to the procedure. I missed their first call because I was working, and then they called again before I even had a chance to listen to the voice mail. I couldn’t answer that call either, and then when I did have time to call back, I was routed through a complicated phone tree before I finally reached a human who was able to verify my insurance and demographics. I asked about arrival instructions since I hadn’t been there for this particular procedure before, and all they could tell me was to stop and ask at the information desk because the person on the phone couldn’t see what specific procedure I was scheduled for.

Two days prior to the visit, I got another call, this time with the pre-visit instructions I had been looking for earlier in the week. Because I use Google Assistant to screen calls from unfamiliar phone numbers, I could see the beginnings of the transcript and picked up. Fortunately, it was a long looping recording that I was able to listen to a second time to make sure I had all the information. It did give more information about the arrival process, including parking information and some additional details about where to arrive at the hospital. I’m not sure how the call would have worked out had I not picked up, though, since it would have rolled to voice mail partway through the recording and likely would have been cut off.

On the day of the visit, I left in plenty of time because I knew traffic would be dicey. It wasn’t as bad as I thought, but I needed every second of extra time because there was hardly any available patient parking at 8 a.m. I made it to the registration area 30 minutes before my appointment as recommended, then had to sit for another 20 because the registrars were on break.

In the mean time, I got to observe challenges other patients were facing. One gentleman was there for laboratory testing but didn’t know the name of his physician, so the staffer couldn’t figure out his orders. Apparently they can’t be looked up by patient, only by ordering physician. The patient knew the orders were from the urology department, but the staffer said they couldn’t do anything until he could give the physician’s name. The patient had to call upstairs to the office and find out what clinician’s name the orders were under, and then they could take care of him. It seemed a little ridiculous to me, but I don’t pretend to understand how their systems are set up.

Once the registrars were back from break  — which continued an extra 3-4 minutes while they watched TikTok in the waiting room right in front of me — I was called back. There must not be an indicator as to whether patients completed the pre-registration process by phone, because I was asked if I did it, and despite saying yes, I was asked all the same questions again. They asked me to sign several consents on a signature pad without offering a readable copy of the consent. Seriously, is it even a valid consent if the patient was never given the document to read? I think it’s unlikely.

The registrar handed back a blue ticket with my insurance card and photo ID, but didn’t explain what it was. I quickly figured out that it was for parking validation, but first-time patients might appreciate some explanation. I was sent on my way with a complicated set of instructions for finding my next destination deep in the radiology department.

There I was met by another receptionist who handed me two paper forms to fill out. Neither had been generated from the EHR, so they didn’t have any of my demographics or historical information. I had to fill out all the basics again, including name, DOB, address, medications, allergies, name of my PCP, name of the referring physician, and more. All of these things could have been handled through the patient portal they day before and placed into the system for the team to review had they not already existed in the EHR. At a minimum they could have printed a pre-populated form for the patient to just update in person rather than having to start from scratch.

When I turned in my clipboard, I got chastised by the registrar for not having a visitor sticker on. I had one when I initially arrived, but I guess it fell off after moving through multiple different stations and putting my tote on and off my shoulder repeatedly.

Once I made it into the actual MRI suite, I was taken to a set of lockers and verbally given a complex set of instructions on how to use the lockers, which had recently been made keyless. I was given gowns to change into, but no scrub pants like I was used to at my previous radiology department. The tech told me they quit using pants for cost reasons, and now they just give people two gowns. Having pants definitely makes for a more pleasant patient experience, so I asked about bringing my own next time. I was told that is not allowed.

After changing, I had to find my way to the IV station, where they reviewed my allergies. The screen still showed an allergy that had been retired almost a year ago during testing by an allergist at the same academic medical center, and which I had requested be removed via the patient portal as well. The nurse updated the screen (hopefully for the last time), got the IV going, and took me to an internal waiting room.

At some point in the pandemic, every other chair in that waiting room had been taped off by placing a banner around the arms to block the seat. The banners said something about social distancing, but I didn’t retain the message because I was too busy being floored by the amount of dust and dirt that had accumulated on the unoccupied chairs. We’re talking mini-tumbleweed dust bunnies here. I know people haven’t been sitting in the chairs, but I am guessing that no one has been wiping off any of the other chairs either, because I can’t imagine a worker who was tasked with wiping chairs ignoring something that looked like that. I would have taken a picture if my phone hadn’t been impounded in the locker.

I was finally taken back for my study,. After getting situated for the MRI, I had to specifically ask for a blanket to cover my bare and freezing legs. I wonder how many patients know to ask for that.

The MRI was not entirely uneventful, but I’ll leave that story for my closest friends over cocktails. After I finally made it out of the machine, the staff confirmed that I wasn’t having any other tests or procedures that day, so they could remove my IV. Good thing I wasn’t still dizzy and feeling crummy from the test because there were no chairs in the room. I had to bend over and rest my arm on a counter for the tech to pull the IV. Had I been an elderly patient or someone with a tendency to faint with procedures like that, things could certainly have gotten bad very quickly.

After that, I had to find my way back to the locker room area, where an older patient was struggling with the lockers because she couldn’t remember how to get it to unlock. There weren’t any posted instructions, so I coached her through it before retrieving my own clothes. I changed quickly because at this point, I just wanted to get out of there.

The staff had said there was no checkout process and I was free to go, but the signage didn’t clearly tell me how to get back to the initial waiting area. I made a wrong turn and wound up in a back corridor, where they were transporting an intubated patient in a hospital bed. I quickly turned around for privacy reasons and headed back into the maze of corridors, finally making it through the waiting area to the main hallway.

Upon turning left to exit, I ran into the same transport team in the main corridor wheeling the intubated patient (whose gown was hanging half off) through the main atrium, where I’m pretty sure there aren’t supposed to be patients in hospital beds. Maybe there was a broken elevator or maybe something else was going on, but I felt bad for the gentleman’s lack of privacy as well as the other patients and visitors who probably have never seen a gravely ill intubated patient and might have found it shocking. If that’s indeed how hospitalized patients are transported to MRI, then shame on the architects for their design.

After dealing with my parking ticket (the magical blue card covered only $1.50 of my fee) I was even more eager to just get out of there. There was a line at the elevator, so I took the open staircase in the elevator atrium. When a parking garage has closed-off stairs, I expect them to be a little grubby and usually poorly lit, but these steps in the open atrium were dirtier than any big-city subway station I’ve ever visited. There was trash on the ground, used masks, and enough road salt granules to make the stair treads somewhat slippery. It made me wonder when someone from hospital administration last used those stairs and what they thought about it. It also made me wonder what the big-time donors whose names are on the building would think.

Overall, I would give my patient experience no more than 3 out of 10. If I encountered the level of dirtiness I saw at the hospital at a restaurant, I’d walk out the door. As healthcare consumers, however, we are expected to tolerate it.

If you are a hospital or health system executive, I urge you to walk the proverbial mile in your patients’ shoes, in-person as well as virtually. Fix the little things like wayfinding signage and locker instructions. Offer blankets rather than waiting for patients to ask. Let patients bring their own scrub pants for MRIs if you’re not going to provide them. And for the love of all things, use the expensive EHR to the best of its capabilities rather than continuing decades-old processes. You can bet I’ll be sharing my experience fully when the patient survey arrives.

If you’re an administrator, have you walked in the patient’s shoes, and were you shocked by what you saw? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

HIStalk Interviews Anjum Ahmed, MBBS, Chief Medical Officer, Agfa HealthCare

Anjum Ahmed, MBBS, MBA, MIS is chief medical officer, clinical safety officer, and global director of AI and innovation of Agfa HealthCare of Mortsel, Belgium.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

Agfa HealthCare is a global solution provider of imaging IT solutions. It is part of the Agfa-Gevaert Group, which has been in the industry for over 150 years. Our prime focus over the last year has been transitioning our customers from the traditional PACS approach towards enterprise imaging. That strategy of consolidating imaging service lines has evolved across the industry. We launched our flagship platform for enterprise imaging few years ago. We were first in the industry to build a platform from the ground up. The company has R&D centers across the globe in Canada, Belgium, Austria, and China.

My role with the company is global chief medical officer. I’m also head of the portfolio for innovation, for artificial intelligence, and in making sure that we are successful in rolling out these new innovations to our strategic customers.

What maturity level does enterprise imaging have in the US, and what benefits does it offer?

The rest of the world is looking at what the US is doing. If you look back at how the consolidation of electronic health records started in the US — that transition from paper to digital and from digital to electronic health record – it made CIOs and hospital systems across the US realize that now is the opportunity to think about imaging as a service line. How the consolidation that they did with electronic health records could transform the care that they are delivering to their communities. That’s one of the reasons I would say that the US as a region was one of the early adopters of the enterprise imaging strategy. It made sense because they realized gains from electronic health record consolidation. 

The question was, why not when it comes to imaging? There were multiple approaches that the health centers and health systems in the US took. The initial approach was with vendor-neutral archives that could be a starting point for consolidating imaging from service lines that go beyond traditional radiology and cardiology into oncology, point-of-care ultrasound imaging, mammography, and breast imaging use cases. That was one aspect.

Here in North America, including where I’m based in Canada, there was also another aspect, which was that we have consolidated the imaging records, but our health systems or hospitals are on multiple PACS technologies. How do we go about bringing a uniform viewing layer? That’s where the universal viewing component for enterprise imaging also came about. We have the VNA and we have consolidated the archive of images, but how do you use or visualize that data? Besides VNA, universal viewer also became an important component for not only beginning the journey for consolidation, but also the visual layer in terms of consolidation of imaging and how you view those images.

The US is pretty mature, I would say, in comparison to what’s happening in the rest of the globe, where the enterprise imaging strategy may initially be focused on bringing the new technology into radiology or cardiology, point-of-care ultrasound imaging, and GI endoscopy. Multimedia images related to surgical procedures is also something that is being spoken about.

The next wave in enterprise imaging will be led by digital pathology. If you think about holistic clinical care in terms of oncology, and along with a lot of talk about precision health and precision medicine, bringing in histopathology, digital pathology data, and seamless collaboration with other imaging records is something that we are already hearing about in the US as a region when it comes to enterprise imaging adoption.

A recent KLAS report noted that Europe is leading the adoption of digital pathology. What are the opportunities and challenges of rolling it out in the US?

I have noticed that as well. We saw the rollout of digital pathology for certain use cases in Europe in 2015 or 2016. Obviously there are regulatory challenges when we compare North America to what was done in Europe, but the biggest challenge is that there are no standards that have been adopted for digital pathology, unlike what we had in radiology with DICOM imaging and all those standards.

The other challenge with pathology was the use of scanners to scan the glass slides and convert those glass slides into digital data. That is unlike radiology imaging, where you have modalities that are generating digital data. In pathology, you still use microscopes that are being read manually. Every scanner vendor generates proprietary formats for data ingestion. That was a challenge with some of these labs that were transitioning from glass slides to digital. Should they stick to one scanner vendor, or if they have multiple clinical use cases, they might be in a multiple scanner environment, which means multiple storage solutions for each of those scanners. That is where they started exploring whether a data management strategy would be an entry point into digital pathology with enterprise imaging. That is something that UK also took when these new RFPs or tenders were coming out over the last couple of years.

Data management became a very relevant ask. Rolling out enterprise imaging outside radiology, how would you manage data from these multiple scanners that generate proprietary data in the absence of DICOM standards? That challenge had to be addressed. VNA is vendor-neutral, so there must be a strategic approach in how that data could be managed with digital pathology acquisition.

Besides the data management aspect, there is also the departmental workflow when you go digital with pathology, similar to radiology and cardiology workflows. Pathology has its own requirement in terms of the departmental model. The question was, how are we going to develop these modules within enterprise imaging similar to radiology in the pathology workflow?

The third aspect is the visual layer. Should it be a universal viewing platform? Should it be a radiology desktop kind of a solution for pathology?

This is how the industry evolved. We have seen recently in our regulatory clearances that have been coming out in the US certain use cases to consider for digital pathology. That’s one of the reasons I’m saying that there are lots of lessons learned in how Europe started with their adoption of digital pathology based on certain clinical use cases, data management acquisition, and the visualization layer. Those are the three components that will help drive the adoption of enterprise imaging further into digital pathology.

EHRs made it possible for clinicians to work from anywhere. How is the profession of radiology changing as their work becomes digital and enterprise imaging becomes more prevalent?

We witnessed that during the pandemic. Enterprise imaging is a modular platform. As part of that modular platform, we have the image exchange portfolio. Besides image exchange, there is the federated image exchange network, so that you don’t need to physically move the data. Our customers started asking us when they started working from home how they could access this desktop on their home environment with the all the tools they require. Little did the customers realize that when they invested in that enterprise imaging platform, which brought them image exchange and collaboration capabilities, it took just a click of a button to enable those collaborative workflows.

When I talk about collaboration, I talk about real-time collaboration. One benefit of building that enterprise imagine platform strategy is that you’re not sending data across to external systems, where you could be exposed to someone interfering or accessing that information. Because you have created this secure system with enterprise imaging on a single platform, you are enabling access to your users if they’re at home to leverage the same capabilities with the same viewing platform on a thin client. We have Xero Universal Viewer, which is cleared for diagnostic reading. It has built-in capabilities and real-time chat collaboration similar to WhatsApp. Within this tool, you can see your colleagues who are online, you can share interesting cases with them, and you can share securely, including with other users who may not be part of your enterprise. It generates a secure image exchange kind of a workflow.

Another thing I spoke about was the federated image exchange. Federated image exchange means that you do not need to push and pull images from one storage to another archive. We could  set up Xero universal nodes so that users are able to view our stream images from an external, non-Agfa PACS, for example. That’s one of the benefits that we have seen our customers appreciating — they were able to build these networks of communication and collaboration not only within their Agfa enterprise imaging environment, but also outside Agfa’s enterprise imaging portfolio, so that they can view those images on a common viewing platform.

The clinical community, radiologists in this case, have realized that these tools are actually much more helping and facilitating in terms of how they view cases and how can they be more productive if they are not on premise. From an IT perspective, we have gone live at certain hospitals in the US during the peak of the pandemic in a rollout of the technology that was also managed remotely. That’s where we saw a lot of collaboration, not only from a clinical perspective, but between the IT segment of the community as well with our customers, where our IT and project management got involved with the customer IT to remotely deploy some of these solutions.

The hype a couple of years ago was that AI would replace radiologists, which has moderated into thinking about how AI can support radiologists. What is the most promising use of AI in imaging to improve patient outcomes?

We started working on AI in 2015 and 2016, when there was all this discussion about whether AI would be of any use in medical imaging. We partnered with some early adopters and explored certain clinical use cases. My first question to our customers was, what problem are you trying to solve? Let’s park AI on the side and first identify those clinical challenges that your healthcare organization is trying to address. Then we can decide whether it is AI or whether it is deep learning, machine learning, automation, or pixel intelligence. What kind of technology could we apply in helping you address those clinical challenges?

We identified certain use cases associated with chronic diseases such cancer care, where we thought — and customers agreed with us — that automation could perhaps help to them in early disease detection or even automating some of the manual tasks that radiologists are performing in some of these clinical applications. When we announced our AI strategy, we called it augmented intelligence, the intersection of machine learning and advanced applications where clinical knowledge and medical data converge on a common platform. AI replaces clinical knowledge or clinicians, while augmented intelligence works with the clinical audience and facilitates their work.

We worked with our clinical users and early adopters to say, let’s define KPIs and see what outcomes we are able to improve. At Agfa, we want to focus on the workflow side of the things. We are an enterprise imaging solution provider and our customers would expect us to use AI data from several AI applications that are being developed in the market and leverage that data to do something. Some of those companies that were creating hype around replacing physicians with AI have disappeared from the market because the claims that they were making were not addressed in use cases.

There are 100-plus AI startups out there. We decided to focus on workflow, because in developing our own AI applications, we realized that a lot more needs done than just reading pixels and images. An AI algorithm developer has developed something very nice, so how can we as Agfa utilize it? We developed this framework for AI that we call RUBEE, whose goal is to embed clinical intelligence into the user’s workflow from five perspectives.

Number one is that AI generates a lot of data. How do you utilize that data and how do you visualize it? How do you show it to the clinical user? Instead of having a radiologist or a clinician use multiple applications or viewers, we have embedded those visual findings from AI into the enterprise imaging portfolio, whether it is the desktop or whether it is the Xero Universal Viewer that I spoke about.

The second and third aspects are the workflow orchestration and triage. With workflow orchestration, AI generates abnormality findings, abnormality scores, measurements, or some other aspects. With the RUBEE engine, we are able to orchestrate certain workflows and automate certain tasks that radiologists are spending time today doing.

When we released our AI package to one of our first early customers, they said that reading a particular CT scan went from taking 15 minutes to being finished in seven to eight minutes. With RUBEE, all the tasks that they were doing have been automated. They know that at the top of the list, these are the abnormal cases that they need to start their work with, these are the measurements that the AI algorithm has generated. With RUBEE, they can see where those specific cases are. We can distribute some of those cases to certain groups of radiologists who are concerned about that specific clinical scenario. That’s where the visualization, workflow orchestration, and triage help achieve certain productivity.

The fourth aspect is automation of all hanging protocols. Radiologists spend a lot of time — when they are reading certain exams, currents, priors, and certain cases — going back and looking at certain prior scans in comparison with what they are seeing now. RUBEE, based on AI findings, automates certain hanging protocols so that radiologists do not need to find a relevant prior scan for this particular patient. Early adopters told us that this is useful and they have appreciated the time savings.

The fifth element of our RUBEE strategy is, how do you communicate reports and results? AI is generating visual findings and you are orchestrating and triaging. How can you save me some time in generating reports? That varies in North America versus UK and Europe, where the use cases are different. In the North American region, we have seen customers are using specific reporting solutions, so we can provide a feed from report that is generated by AI to the reporting engine. In Europe, where customers are using the built-in module for reporting with enterprise imaging, we have created structured reporting within radiology, so that we can extract certain drop-down menus within the report itself. It becomes then easy for radiologists to do a one-click signoff to agree with the report or disagree with the report and generate their own findings.

Morning Headlines 3/7/22

Microsoft + Nuance: Better together to transform business and healthcare outcomes with AI

Microsoft closes its $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance.

Athenahealth Whistleblower Wins Fees In $18M Kickback Case

A federal judge awards a whistleblower $390,000 for helping the federal government recoup $18.3 million from Athenahealth for paying kickbacks to doctors and other EHR vendors to recommend AthenaClinicals.

Philips and the Philips Foundation provide support for the people of Ukraine

Philips and its foundation will provide a 24-bed mobile hospital and mobile check-up units to Ukraine, and provide financial assistance to displaced citizens.

Monday Morning Update 3/7/22

Top News

Microsoft closes its $19.7 billion acquisition of Nuance.

Reader Comments

From Craptacular: “Re: chief digital officer. Did you see this article claiming they are more important than the health system’s CEO?” I did not, but I’ll throw out this challenge to the author, a doctor-turned-salesperson who has never been a CEO or CDO – prove your premise with an example in healthcare, or any other industry, where the CDO is paid more than the CEO. I’m all for improving the healthcare experience with consumer-facing technology, but the motivation of big-profit health systems is more preservation of the status quo rather than its disruption, thus limiting the CDO’s star power.

A summary of reader comments (paraphrased slightly by me) on Allscripts selling just about all of its non-Veradigm business to Harris:

• The sale price of $700 million was stunningly low. Harris has years of profits ahead by collecting maintenance fees and reducing costs as customers go through the time-consuming steps to replace the former Allscripts products.
• Northwell represents 12.5% of the 2021 revenue of Allscripts, about $188 million. Companies can provide service when they have one big customer like Northwell paying the bills, but that doesn’t work if you have only small health systems to bankroll support and development.
• Harris probably won’t enhance the acquired products, but maybe it is better than Allscripts at keeping the lights on instead of focusing on acquisitions and Veradigm. “Allscripts users will get the cheap corporate experience that comes from harvesting dated enterprise software investments. And they’ll avoid the unfocused, hostile, hot garbage experience that comes from being used as a component to complement another more strategic corporate investment.”
• The last publicly traded EHR company bites the dust.
• The projected revenue drop isn’t surprising, but the company’s projection of a 10-15% drop in EBITDA may suggest that Allscripts has been aggressive on financial engineering around depreciation and amortization, especially on legacy hardware.
• “I could never figure out what leadership was doing on the Allscripts side of the house. DbMotion was declining year-over-year in sites, their Population Health Analytics solution was finally put down after years of not being able to calculate the most basic of conditions or generate a cohort list. The DbMotion solution itself was extremely expensive to configure and maintain, and the resulting data was often — troubled. The Community Integration Agent (CIA) that fed it from the Allscripts product was written by the same team that wrote Avenel. Avenel was a bowl of spaghetti that couldn’t do basic EHR functions nor even Alexa-level transcription. TouchWorks was a hot mess, being passed back and forth between continents, having outside contractors rewriting the middle tier only to have to rewrite it again, then to let the entire team go that worked on the uplift the week it was released.”
• Who wants to take bets that the company will rebrand to Veradigm by the next HIMSS conference and bury the name Allscripts for good?

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The most common healthcare financial problems that poll respondents had – of those who had any at all – were unexpectedly high out-of-pocket costs or insurance paying less than expected.

New poll to your right or here, which I like to run every couple of years: What’s better about your life now compared to a year ago?

To those sunning in Miami, my sponsors are doing stuff at ViVE they want to tell you about. I would also appreciate getting on-the-ground reports and photos. I’m interested in how ViVE intersects with the co-located but separate CHIME Spring Forum, which is open only to CHIME members and foundation partners, as Russ Branzell explained to me a few weeks ago. Attendee and exhibitor composition, exhibitor satisfaction, and general buzz are the most important aspects of both ViVE and HIMSS for 2022, especially since it’s the first ViVE and the first real HIMSS conference since 2019. I’m curious to see how ViVE’s “hosted buyer” program plays, in which providers must attend eight one-on-one vendor sales pitches to get in free instead of paying $2,500. I’ve been a buyer attendee of similar conferences over the years and it was a great experience for me (expensive accommodations, food, and events for free for attending a few awkwardly misguided pitches) but the vendors didn’t seem to be getting much value in return.

On a HIMSS22 downer note, I’m crestfallen after scanning the exhibitor list that MedData won’t even have a booth, much less use it to bake the scones of the gods.

LinkedIn users – I invite you to connect with me (I approve all non-scammy connection requests) so I can keep up with what you’re up to. While you’re there, please check your headshot and replace it if it’s tiny, grainy, taken at your wedding 10 years ago, or features a distracting background or the obvious presence of poorly cropped out others. We all have phones, so there’s not much excuse for not taking 60 seconds to take and post a clear, identifiable picture on your profile. Omission makes you look careless or ashamed of your appearance, while poor photo quality suggest sloppiness or failure to master basic Internet concepts, both of which are puzzling for someone who bothered to post a profile in the first place. It is surprising how many times I Google for a decent headshot to accompany a job change or company announcement and the Internet comes up blank.

Folks have mentioned some of their HIStalkapalooza memories on Twitter this week. Here’s video from the 2012 version, which I enjoyed more than any other because ESD was a magnificent sponsor, their folks did an amazing job making exactly what I wanted happen, and the scale was manageable. Do you see yourself or anyone you know? I was also checking out photos from the 2015 edition and reviewing the final one in 2017. I just realized that this is the first year since it ended that nobody has emailed me asking for tickets. Update: Lorre read this and let me know that she just received a request to attend this year’s event even though the final one was five years ago, which is actually kind of flattering.

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor CTG. The Amherst, NY company is a leading provider of digital transformation solutions and services that accelerate clients’ project momentum and achievement of their desired IT and business outcomes. With more than 35 years of experience in the healthcare industry, it has earned a reputation as a faster and more reliable, results-driven partner focused on improved data-driven decision-making, meaningful business performance improvements, new and enhanced customer experiences, and continuous innovation. CTG has operations in North America, South America, Western Europe, and India. Thanks to CTG for supporting HIStalk.

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

Webinars

April 6 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “19 Massive Best Practices We’ve Learned from 4 Million Telehealth Visits.” Sponsor: Mend. Presenter: Matt McBride, MBA, founder, president, and CEO, Mend. Virtual visits have graduated from a quickly implemented technical novelty to a key healthcare strategy. The challenge now is to define how telehealth can work seamlessly with in-person visits. This webinar will address patient satisfaction, reducing no-show rates to single digits, and using technology to make telehealth easy to use and accessible for all patients. The presenter will share best practices that have been gleaned from millions of telehealth visits and how they have been incorporated into a leading telemedicine and AI-powered patient engagement platform.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Shares in the Global X Telemedicine & Digital Health exchange-traded fund dropped 4.5% in the past 30 days versus the Nasdaq’s 4% decline. EDOC shares are down 11% since the fund’s July 2020 inception versus the Nasdaq’s 26% gain. Its 10 biggest holdings are Illumina, DexCom, Agilent Technologies, Tandem Diabetes Care, Labcorp, Cerner, UnitedHealth Group, Nuance, Omnicell, and Change Healthcare.

People

Lisa Potter (Data Innovations) joins JTG Consulting Group as chief growth officer.

Stephanie Sames, MBA joins Harris-owned PulseCheck as EVP.

Rx. Health hires Neri Cohen, MD, PhD (GBMC HealthCare) as CMIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Vanderbilt University Medical Center describes in a JAMIA article its Clickbusters program that reduced Epic clinical decision alerts by 15%. The ultimate alert success measure is of course whether the clinician changed their behavior as a result of a warning or suggestion, although it gets somewhat murky after that since choosing a “why I’m doing it anyway” drop-down reason is often driven by the easiest-selected choice rather to provide a useful explanation.

QGenda launches ProviderCloud, a scheduling-centric provider operations platform that brings together several of its systems.

Kootenai Health will go live on Epic this month.

Google-owned Fitbit recalls its Ionic watch that was manufactured from 2017 to 2020 after dozens of reports of burn injuries that were caused by an overheated battery.

Philips and its foundation will provide a 24-bed mobile hospital and mobile check-up units to Ukraine. The company will also provide financial assistance to displaced citizens and collect employee donations for a humanitarian relief fund.

Government and Politics

Spokane’s VA hospital warned users on Thursday to stop using its recently implemented Cerner system and to “assume all electronic patient data is corrupted / inaccurate.” The problem forced Mann-Grandstaff VA Hospital to stop new admissions, suspend the filling of prescriptions, and to review whether surgeries could be performed safely. The VA says the system went back online Friday morning. Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) says she was told that the problem was a VA database update that was performed to communicate patient demographics with Cerner, which suggests that the Cerner system itself might not have been the problem. At least one veteran reported seeing another patient’s information when they logged in to the patient portal. The VA’s second go-live is set for March 26 and another round is scheduled for June.

A federal judge awards a whisteblower $390,000 for helping the federal government recoup $18.3 million from Athenahealth for paying kickbacks to doctors and other EHR vendors to recommend AthenaClinicals. The company was accused of providing luxury trips to sporting events to decision-makers, paying customers to refer prospects, and paying competitors who were discontinuing their EHR to recommend Athenahealth as a replacement.

Other

A New York Times article notes that customer service chatbots – known for creating a “spiral of misery” of poor understanding and scripted replies — are becoming more helpful and capable of carrying on more human-like conversations. It provides an example in insurer Anthem, whose mobile app is 90% accurate in answering questions about co-payments and medications. Anthem’s long-term plan is to use AI to merge claims, clinical, and fitness tracking data to provide personalized health advice, such as offering people with diabetes the “patients like me” best suggestions for diet, exercise, and medications.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe Values Awards winners include Sales Manager Joe Faso for collaboration, Enterprise Solutions Manager Alex Van Buren for integrity, Customer Solutions Director Cameron Shahnazi for innovation, Customer Success Advisor Courtney Allnutt for service, Deployment Manager Phil Towne for purpose, People Operations & Office Coordinator Kerry Mathews for inclusion, and VP of Customer Solutions Lois Hester for leadership.
• Premier releases a new episode of The Conductiv Podcast, “How Henry Ford Health System is Leading the Way in Supplier Diversity.”
• In England, the National Pathology Imaging Co-operative expands its use of Sectra’s pathology solution.
• Talkdesk is named Cloud Innovator of the Year and Cloud Innovator of the Decade in the 2021-22 Cloud Awards.
• Volpara Health will exhibit and present at NCBC 2022 Annual Interdisciplinary Breast Center Conference March 10-11 in Las Vegas.
• Wolters Kluwer Health adds BioDigital’s 3D anatomy platform to its Ovid medical research platform for an immersive teaching and learning experience.

Blog Posts

• EVisit to Unveil “eAnalyze” Reporting Dashboard at HIMSS22 (EVisit)
• AI and RWD in HCP Engagement – Here’s the Secret to Effective Execution (OptimizeRx)
• Building with empathy: the path to health assurance (Olive)
• The Risks and Rewards of Medicare Advantage Plans (PatientBond)
• 5 Ways to Encourage Employee Engagement in Healthcare (Symplr)
• How to Answer ‘Yes’ to CMS’ New Maternal Morbidity Structural Measure (Premier)
• Attending ViVE? Don’t Miss Quil’s Activities! (Quil Health)
• Are We There Yet? How Payers Can Accelerate the Journey to Value-Based Care (Redox)
• From Founding to Funding: RxRevu’s Relentless Focus on the Provider (RxRevu)
• 5 benefits to recording contact center calls (Spok)
• ViVE, The Industry’s New Health Information Technology Event (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• How unified communications foster employee collaboration and build better customer experiences (Talkdesk)
• Technology Must Be Intentionally Designed to Appreciate Our Differences (Tegria)
• The 2022 Healthcare Workforce Rescue Package (Vocera)
• The Role of the Front Office in Patient Retention (WebPT)
• From Radiology to Urology, Accurate Patient Matching is Critical to Patient Safety (Verato)
• New CMS 2022 Guidelines: Delivering SAFER Care to Drive Better Outcomes (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 3/4/22

CancerIQ Raises $14M Series B Funding to Improve Access to Innovations in Cancer Early Detection and Prevention

Cancer risk assessment software vendor CancerIQ raises $14 million in a Series B funding round.

GTCR Announces Acquisition of Experity

Private equity firm GTCR acquires urgent care health IT vendor Experity.

Spokane VA hospital grinds to a halt after computer system corrupts patient data

Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center (WA) has taken its Cerner EHR offline after a service outage due to an issue with patient demographic data forced it to revert to downtime procedures.

News 3/4/22

Top News

Allscripts will sell its Hospitals and Large Physician Practices business segment to Canada-based Harris for up to $700 million in cash. The segment includes Sunrise, Paragon, TouchWorks, Opal, Star, HealthQuest,and DbMotion. It generated 2021 revenue of  $928 million.

The deal is expected to close in Q2.

From the investor call:

• The company sold the business because it has shrunk for three straight years and will likely continue to do so; Veradigm is growing 6% to 7% organically; and managing unrelated businesses under a single corporate structure was becoming increasingly hard.
• Allscripts hopes to “unlock value” of its shares, whose price it feels is discounted compared to peers, by “separating pieces of the company.”
• The business had adjusted EBITDA of $145 million on revenue of $928 million. Management expects the unit’s revenue to drop 3-4% in 2022 and EBITDA to shrink 10-15% year over year.
• The unit being sold generates 60% of the company’s revenue and one-third of its free cash flow.
• Allscripts will use its expected after-tax proceeds of $600 million for share repurchase and potential M&A related to Veradigm.
• Interesting: the investor slides are copyrighted and footnoted as Veradigm, with the name Allscripts only appearing on the title slide.

Reader Comments

From Former Eclipsii: “Re: Allscripts. So just under 12 years after buying Eclipsys for $1.3 billion, nine years after picking up DbMotion, and five years after acquiring Paragon from McKesson, Allscripts is selling its various parts for a loss? When I was at Eclipsys, we had looked at buying Allscripts and decided it wasn’t worth the effort.” Allscripts reportedly paid $235 million for DbMotion and $185 million for Paragon, so Allscripts spent $1.72 billion in acquisition costs alone for businesses that it is selling years later for $700 million, less than one year’s revenue. But wait, there’s more – it threw in former flagship TouchWorks as well. Last week’s earnings call made it clear that Allscripts was unhappy that its share price undervalues the company, a complaint that it makes just about every quarter, and that Veradigm is its future. I would be interested in hearing the reaction of Allscripts customers to the acquisition announcement. Also, what happened to the puffy 2019 announcement that Allscripts and Northwell would develop a next-generation EHR following the never-left-the-ground flop of Avenel?

From Mark Words: “Re: Allscripts. I predict that Harris / Constellation will acquire Meditech next since its business model is exactly what Constellation looks for – mission-critical software, high recurring revenue, and a somewhat stable market position in a mature market. Not to mention that Meditech is pretty strong in Canada and Harris already owns Iatric Systems, which has strong Meditech focus.” I agree it would be a good target. Constellation’s business model would support paying around $400 million for Meditech, which I doubt would entice its owners to sell.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Baker Tilly. Baker Tilly US, LLP is a leading advisory CPA firm, providing clients with a genuine coast-to-coast and global advantage in major regions of the US and in many of the world’s leading financial centers. On March 1, Baker Tilly merged in Orchestrate Healthcare, a multi-year Black Book and Best in KLAS awarded healthcare IT consulting firm. Combined with Baker Tilly’s legacy healthcare practice, their combined practice brings providers solutions for financial sustainability, integration and interoperability, EHR implementation and optimization, healthcare analytics, information security, and healthcare IT staffing. The company’s healthcare IT consultants are seasoned professionals with both a broad range of experiences and a deep understanding of how to listen, analyze, and innovate for process improvement. With over 1,400 healthcare IT engagements from Orchestrate and more than 3,100 healthcare clients from Baker Tilly, the company’s team of healthcare specialists excels at what they do, so your organization can excel at what you do. Baker Tilly is an independent member of Baker Tilly International, a worldwide network of independent accounting and business advisory firms in 148 territories, with 36,000 professionals and a combined worldwide revenue of $4 billion. Thanks to Baker Tilly for supporting HIStalk.

I’ve updated my guide to what HIStalk sponsors will be doing at ViVE next week. You can also download a PDF version. Want to make me look good? Let them know at the conference that you saw them listed.

Speaking of which, HIStalk sponsors who are participating in HIMSS22 should fill out my form by end of day Friday, March 4 to be included in my guide for that conference.

And speaking of HIMSS22, six exhibitors will staff booths of at least 4,000 square feet – EClinicalWorks, Epic, Microsoft, Cerner, IBM, and Athenahealth.

Don’t try this at HIMSS22: I’ve noticed several ViVE-related meetings and social events that will be held on boats. I’ve been on a couple of these in years past and they were fun, although choose your host carefully because you’ll be captive for hours.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cognizant develops a remote patient monitoring solution using Microsoft Cloud for Healthcare.

Cancer risk assessment software vendor CancerIQ raises $14 million in a Series B funding round.

Israel-based research data discovery platform vendor MDClone raises $63 million in a Series C funding round.

Sales

• University of Rochester Medical Center selects Spok Care Connect to replace its operator console and support clinical communications at Strong Memorial Hospital.
• Behavioral health staffing and services provider EvolvedMD will implement NeuroFlow’s patient registry and mobile technology to enrich collaboration with HonorHealth’s 24 locations.
• Orbita and OnCall Health choose Lyniate to solve data-sharing challenges.
• Health Gorilla will incorporate clinically validated social determinants of health scores from LexisNexis Risk Solutions in its Health Interoperability Platform.
• Respiratory remote patient monitoring platform vendor Spire Health chooses Redox for EHR integration.
• Hospice of Wichita Falls will implement WellSky’s hospice and palliative care solution.
• Opioid use disorder virtual care provider Bicycle Health will use Bamboo Health’s Pings and Spotlights for real-time insights into ED and inpatient care utilization.
• Healthwise will integrate First Databank’s Meducation multilingual monographs into its digital point-of-care and patient education solutions.

People

John Chelico, MD, MA (Northwell Health) joins CommonSpirit Health as SVP/CMIO.

Harmony Healthcare IT hires Tamara Korbel, MBA (PDS) as SVP of operations and client experience.

Christine Yang (Stanford Health Care) joins Alameda Health System as VP/CTO.

Laurence Kessler, MPH (NThrive) joins Healthrise as SVP of growth and partnerships. 

Announcements and Implementations

Styker-owned Vocera announces Minibadge, a hands-free, voice-driven communications device for mobile healthcare workers.

Diameter Health releases a technology and services solution for HIEs and data aggregators that are undertaking NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation program.

CareMesh implements FHIR-based integration of its Navigate clinical program management system with Epic and Cerner. 

VCU Health System went live on Epic on December 2021 with the assistance of CTG, which provided legacy system support, go-live preparation, data conversion, optimization, training, and at-the-elbow support.

CVS Health launches a Health Dashboard to allow people who received COVID-19 vaccination from CVS Pharmacy or MinuteClinic locations to access their record and print a QR code. The company says the dashboard will be expanded beyond vaccination and COVID test records.

Government and Politics

I missed this a couple of weeks ago: a federal jury convicts a Palm Beach, FL psychiatrist for billing private health insurers $110 million for drug urine screenings at a sober living living facility that was taking kickbacks to refer patients. The doctor, who was also the sober living facility’s medical director, wrote standing orders for the facility in exchange for a monthly fee and then had the patients sent to his office so he could bill several tests per week per patient at up to $9,000 per test. We hear a lot about insurers that are powerfully armed with big data capabilities, but how hard would this have been to detect given the dollar volume, the obviously frequently repeated tests, and the fact that it’s South Florida? Maybe this supports the argument that insurers have limited zeal for chasing fraud since it’s easier to raise premiums.

Sponsor Updates

• Cerner President and CEO David Feinberg, MD joins Humana’s board.
• Bicycle Health, a virtual care company specializing in treatment for opioid use disorder, expands its use of Bamboo Health solutions to include Pings and Spotlights solutions for real-time insights into ED and acute inpatient care utilization.
• Impact Advisors celebrates its 15th anniversary.
• Jvion will exhibit at the Rise Summit on Social Determinants of Health March 20-22 in Nashville.
• Kyruus publishes a new infographic, “The Growing Role of Health Plans in the Search for Care.”
• Nordic Consulting has received certification from HITRUST via the risk-based, two-year validation process.

Blog Posts

• Duty of Care for Business Travelers (Everbridge)
• 6 Components of a Vulnerability Threat Management Program (Fortified Health Security)
• A Renewed Appreciation for the Work Commute (HCTec)
• 9 Ways to Address Healthcare Staffing Challenges using Human Capital Management (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• The Importance of Epic Community Connect Service Level Agreements (Impact Advisors)
• The developer experience: how to nurture and retain existing tech talent (InterSystems)
• Managing HCCs for the right reimbursement (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Will We See You at the ViVE Conference? (LexisNexis Risk Solutions)
• Leveraging AI Principles from Financial Fraud Detection to Identify Medication Errors (MedAware)
• Is Double Documentation Delaying the Delivery of Surgical Care? (Medhost)
• Privileged access management helps mitigate insider threats before they happen (Meditech)
• What is a SOAP Note in Physical Therapy? (MWTherapy)
• How Vanderbilt is improving the physician and patient experience with virtual assistant technology (Nuance)
• Why healthcare leaders should embrace the cloud (Nordic)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
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EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 3/3/22

Plenty of HIMSS exhibitors are talking about ways they can support clinicians including through virtual scribes and artificial intelligence. Burnout remains a hot topic, with Medscape ranking the most burned-out specialties. Based on comments from my physician friends, they’re in agreement that burnout is everywhere, with 100% of them using the word “exhausted” at least three times in casual conversation. Medscape surveyed physicians from June to September 2021, so these are pre-Omicron numbers. Top causes of burnout included too many bureaucratic tasks, lack of respect, long work hours, lack of autonomy, insufficient pay, EHRs, and government regulations. Topping the list:

1. Emergency medicine (no surprise due to COVID).
2. Critical care (also no surprise due to COVID).
3. OB/GYN.
4. Infectious disease tied with family medicine.

Beleaguered medical practices have been in the news over the last two years, but there is some encouraging news of a potential rebound. Kaufman Hall’s latest Physician Flash Report shows higher patient volumes helping drive revenue growth in 2021. Physician work relative value units (wRVUs) grew more than 20% per full-time equivalent physician compared to the last quarter of 2020. Primary care practices in particular showed a 13% increase. These increases are partly attributed to patients presenting for care after deferring it during 2020 and early 2021. Unfortunately, expenses also grew, with the metric of total direct expense per physician rising 16% versus 2020 numbers. Word on the street is that physician groups are still cutting salaries and asking physicians to do more because of ongoing staffing shortages. I don’t see these factors positively impacting burnout rates anytime soon.

News of the weird: If you’re a physician, this headline is definitely going to catch your eye – “Healthy Man Dies After Mistakenly Drinking Equivalent of 100s of Coffees.” The patient in question had a misadventure using caffeine powder in his pre-workout drink, resulting in caffeine toxicity. He suffered cardiac arrest and was taken to a hospital, where he ultimately died. A coroner’s report listed his caffeine level at four times that which is considered deadly.

I’ve received several recruiting emails over the last couple of weeks for “a leading Government Systems Integrator” who is in need of multiple clinical informaticists. The opportunities are for a full year with up to 50%  travel “depending on the phase of the implementation.” The job involves “performing assessments and evaluation of workflows and content to support the deployment of EHR systems, facilitate process change and provide change management consulting as well as working with hospitals and/or ambulatory and clinical business units to support deployments. Cerner experience is required, so I’ll give you fewer than two guesses at who is now trying to hire the informaticists to address issues that could have been avoided had they employed the right resources in the first place.

A United States Government Accountability Office report to Congress last month found that the Department of Veterans Affairs didn’t adequately ensure the quality of migrated data as it populated the new Cerner system. Clinicians reported challenges in accessing the migrated information as well as concerns with its accuracy. The GAO watchdog noted that “the challenges occurred, in part, because the department did not establish performance measures and goals for migrated data quality.” As a result, the system being deployed “does not meet clinicians’ needs and poses risks to the continuity of patient care.” There were also apparently concerns with ensuring that clinicians knew what data was migrated and how to find it as well as not having appropriate security rights to see critical patient care data, such as immunizations.

Other concerns included data duplications, errors, and inclusion of a greater amount of data than clinicians actually needed. The bulkiness of the transferred data made it harder for clinicians to find what they were looking for. I’ve worked on more EHR data migrations in my career than I care to remember, and making sure the data is not only accurate but winds up in a place where clinicians can actually use it is critical. The GAO’s findings also illustrate the importance of training to ensure end users can hit the ground running. Role-based training would have been particularly helpful here, as would ensuring adequately trained and staffed super users to support clinicians who may not have fully absorbed all the material during training.

The GAO recommended that the VA adopt performance measures and goals so that data quality meets clinician needs in future deployments. It also suggested that the VA “use a register to improve the identification and engagement of all relevant EHR modernization stakeholders to address their reporting needs.” As a consultant, ensuring stakeholder alignment is critical to the success of any project. I still see way too many projects that don’t adequately balance technology, operations, clinical, and other needs while trying to solve complex problems. I thought a project of this magnitude and visibility might have done better, but it just goes to show that the more things evolve, the more they stay the same.

In travel news, Cleveland Clinic is examining an opportunity to open a patient lounge at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport. The facility would allow construction of a nearly 400-square-foot space to replace seating and Rock and Roll Hall of Fame murals. Staff would help coordinate travel to the hospital and provide support for families and caregivers. Approximately 3,000 patients seek care by flying to Cleveland each year from across the US and from more than 180 countries. The Mayo Clinic has its own welcome center at Rochester International Airport, so hopefully Cleveland Clinic will be able to keep up with the destination healthcare Joneses.

I’m finalizing my HIMSS travel plans and also my evening social plans. Invitations are still a little slow, but that’s to be expected given the concerns about the decline of in-person attendance. Orlando can be a tricky destination for party planning since many of the desirable venues are away from the convention center and hotel areas. At HIMSS19, there was one night when cell service issues created rideshare outages, which was extremely frustrating. Traffic is always horrible, and to be honest, the convenience and location of multiple event venues is one of the reasons I actually like Las Vegas as a HIMSS location (as long as it’s not in August).

What’s your favorite HIMSS venue? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Allscripts Sells Its Hospitals and Large Physician Practices Business to Harris

Allscripts will sell its Hospitals and Large Physician Practices business segment to Canada-based Harris for up to $700 million in cash.

The segment includes Sunrise, Paragon, TouchWorks, Opal, Star, HealthQuest,and DbMotion. Its 2021 revenue was $928 million. Allscripts will retain Practice Fusion, Professional, and Veradigm.

The companies expect the deal to close in Q2.

Harris is a subsidiary of Toronto-based, publicly traded Constellation Software, which acquires and operates mission-critical software companies with strong recurring revenue. It has sold just one of its 500 acquisitions in its history of more than 25 years. It historically has paid below-market rates for its acquisitions, 0.8 times annual sales, which is the value of this acquisition. It typically runs businesses under their own brand identity and leaves management intact. Constellation’s market cap is nearly $40 billion.

Some of the healthcare software units of Harris are Iatric Systems, QuadraMed, Ingenious Med, Obix by Clinical Computer Systems, and Picis. 

Morning Headlines 3/3/22

Constellation Software’s Harris Operating Group Acquires Allscripts Hospitals and Large Physician Practices Business Segment

Allscripts will sell its hospitals and large physician practices business segment, including its Sunrise, Paragon, and TouchWorks solutions, to Harris for up to $700 million.

Synapse Medicine raises $28 million for its medication intelligence platform

French medication decision support startup Synapse Medicine will use $28 million in new funding to open a spate of global offices, including one in New York City.

Ro acquires sperm collection and testing startup Dadi for $100 million

Online pharmacy and virtual care company Ro acquires at-home sperm collection, testing, and storage startup Dadi for $100 million.

Morning Headlines 3/2/22

Our Next Chapter: Announcing a $50 Million Growth Capital Round Led by THL & Strategic Partnership with Premier, Inc.

Automated healthcare operations technology vendor Qventus secures $50 million in growth capital from investors that include Thomas H. Lee Partners and Premier, which announced a partnership with the company last month.

Cigna Announces Significant Increase to Share Repurchase Program and Capital Deployment

Cigna will provide an additional $450 million to fund its Cigna Ventures venture capital arm, which will be used for investments in analytics, digital health, and care delivery.

Conifer to Remain Part of Tenet with Strong Path Forward

Tenet cancels plans to spin off its Conifer Health Solutions revenue cycle management business due to improved Conifer profit and expectations for increased revenue growth.