News 6/2/21

Top News

Physician networking site Doximity, which introduced a telemedicine service last year, hopes to raise $100 million in an IPO that would allocate up to 15% of its shares to qualifying physician members.

Doximity’s filing notes that it is used by 1.8 million medical professionals working in the nation’s top 20 hospitals and health systems.

The company’s revenue, which is largely subscription-based, jumped nearly 80% last year to $207 million.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Happy 18th birthday to HIStalk, which I started spontaneously on a Memorial Day weekend back in 2003 when I didn’t have anything interesting to do. I apparently still don’t.  

Slicing and dicing last week’s poll results shows that 29% of those who were planning to attend HIMSS21 won’t go because of the conference’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination requirements, while 7% of whose who weren’t planning to attend now will. Announcement of the new policy failed to change the intentions of 86% of respondents, most of whom weren’t going to attend anyway.

New poll to your right or here: Which do you surreptitiously check three or more times daily during live or video work meetings? I edited the poll after posting it to include HIStalk just for fun although I doubt many folks (other than me) are pulling it up three times per work day.

Webinars

June 3 (Thursday) 2 ET: “Diagnosing the Cures Act – Practical Prescriptions for Your Success.” Sponsor: Secure Exchange Solutions. Presenters: William E. Golden, MD, MACP, medical director, Arkansas Medicaid; Anne Santifer, executive director, Arkansas Department of Health – Office of Health Information Technology; Kyle Meadors, principal, Chart Lux Consulting. A panel of leading experts will provide practical guidance on how to prepare for the Cures Act. Will it upend your business model? What is information blocking? How can standardized technologies be applied to meet Cures Act requirements? What must I do now as well as in the next five years?

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CompuGroup Medical acquires Germany-based PACS and healthcare content management vendor Visus Health IT.

Virtual care company Babylon Health may go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company that has lined up $270 million in funding in valuing the company at $3.5 billion. London-based Babylon’s first attempt at going public via an SPAC fell apart earlier this year.

Epic will require employees to return to work at its Wisconsin headquarters in part-time capacities beginning July 19. The company had attempted a similar return-to-work scheme last August, but dropped the plan after facing pushback from employees.

Clarity Informatics, whose back office software is used by 80% of GPs in England, is acquired by medical practice software vendor Agilio Software.

People

Industry long-timer David Madaffri (Philips) joins Mach7 Technologies as SVP of global sales.

Cone Health (NC) promotes CMIO Valerie Leschber, MD to SVP / chief medical officer.

Loyal hires Angela Jones, MS (Meazure Learning) as VP of customer success.

UofL Health promotes Debbie Mullins, MBA to VP/CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic announces that its UGM 2021 – Stories of Legend and Lore – will be held as an on-campus event in Verona, WI August 23-25, 2021 for fully vaccinated attendees. Registration and hotel reservations open June 17.

Hampton Regional Medical Center (SC) opens a tele-ICU that connects ICU patients virtually with clinicians from telemedicine company Hicuity Health and Medical University of South Carolina, which provided grant money for the unit.

Syracuse Area Health (NE) will convert to Cerner this fall.

Surveyor Health develops SurveyorAI, technology that combines patient data with drug knowledge from First Databank to offer clinicians medication management tools for remote care, including risk stratification, clinical decision support, and educational resources.

Other

Doctors in England warn the public about NHS Digital’s plan to extract the medical data of 55 million people – everyone who has been registered in a GP clinic – in de-identified form to a database that will be made available for third-party research and planning. The Doctors’ Association UK says NHS DIgital has not done enough to explain to patients how their data will be used and how they can opt out. A medical confidentiality group cautions, “They’re trying to sneak it out. They are giving you six weeks nominally, and if you do not act based on web pages on the NHS Digital site and some YouTube videos and a few tweets, your entire GP history could have been scraped, never to be deleted.”

Insurer Lemonade, which portrays itself as a AI-savvy technology company, apologizes for suggesting in a since-deleted tweet that its AI analyzes non-verbal cues (physical or personal features) to automatically reject claims. The company – which sells homeowner’s, renter’s pet, and life insurance – clarifies that it uses facial recognition technology to detect claims that are submitted under more than one identity, but then sends those claims to human reviewers for a final decision. The company’s IPO filing says that its AI Jim chatbot system “handles the entire claim through resolution in approximately a third of cases … without human intervention,” but Lemonade admits that while it calls the system “AI Jim,” it uses plain old programming rules rather than the sexier-sounding AI do much of the work.

Sturdy Memorial Hospital (MA) reveals that it paid hackers an undisclosed amount of ransom after some of its systems were held hostage in February.

University of Washington researchers review several AI models that have claimed to be able to diagnose COVID-19 from chest X-rays and find that they rely on irrelevant data, such as patient position or age. They caution that such models therefore may not be generalizable outside the original setting, also noting that that most providers don’t use X-rays to diagnose COVID-19 anyway. At least one of the models has been deployed in multiple hospitals. 

The New Yorker posts a sad, enraging article called “The Death of Hahnemann Hospital,” which describes how selling a historic hospital that served vulnerable patients to a private equity firm turned out to be a predictably bad idea.

Sponsor Updates

• Kyruus appoints Tina Brown-Stevenson (UnitedHealth Group) and Rob Coppedge (Echo Health Ventures) to its Board of Directors.
• Health Catalyst will present during the William Blair Growth Stock Conference June 2.
• SOC Telemed will present during the William Blair Growth Stock Conference and Jefferies Virtual Healthcare Conference June 2.
• Agfa HealthCare publishes a new white paper, “What is Enterprise Imaging, Really?”
• AGS Health meets KLAS/Censinet Cybersecurity Transparent Initiative requirements.
• Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise receives a 2021 Silver Medal rating by sustainability assessor EcoVadis.
• Ascom signs a six-year contract with a German hospital group for mobile IP-DECT communications and alarm solutions.
• CareSignal joins the Population Health Alliance.
• Cerner releases a new podcast, “Geisinger’s innovative approach to wellness and addressing healthcare inequities.”
• EnterpriseTalk features Change Healthcare VP of Platform and Marketplace Gautam Shah.
• CHIME will host its Summer Forum June 16-17 across three cities featuring eight past and present ONC leaders.
• PM360 features ConnectiveRx Product Manager of Enterprise Analytics Kylie Hall as part of its Elite 2021 Leader of the Future program.
• CloudWave is included on Modern Healthcare’s list of “Best Places to Work in Healthcare.”
• Divurgent VP of Technology Emily Carlson has been named one of Consulting Magazine’s “2021 Women Leaders of Technology” in the category of Innovation.
• Elsevier Clinical Solutions supports the State of California in expanding its COVID-19 online learning program for registered nurses.
• PatientPing announces that Innovaccer will become a reseller of its Pings real-time notification solution, embedding it within the Innovaccer Health Cloud.

Blog Posts

• Long-term care facilities now required to report COVID-19 vaccinations under new CMS rule (Ability Network)
• Blueleaf Banter: Improving Outcomes by Aligning Workflows with Technology (Bluetree)
• Measuring SNF Quality with the CarePort Quality Score (CarePort)
• Overcoming the Challenges of Balancing Patient Care and Administrative Functions (Vyne Medical)
• How to Maximize Patient Enrollment in Your Chronic Care Management Program (ChartSpan)
• Supporting the Breastfeeding Dyad During the Pandemic (Obix Perinatal Data Systems, developed by Clinical Computer Systems)
• Our journey to do bigger things – together (CoverMyMeds)
• A Prescription for Safety, Legibility, and Ease of Use (EClinicalWorks)
• Beyond the pandemic: digital patient intake is here to stay (Experian Health)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 5/31/21

Web Doctor Babylon Is Said to Near $3.5 Billion SPAC Deal

Virtual care company Babylon Health is in talks to go public via a merger with special purpose acquisition company Alkuri Global Acquisition Corp.

Health-tech company Doximity files for IPO and says doctors will get up to 15% allocation

Physician networking site Doximity, which introduced a telemedicine service last year, files IPO paperwork that includes allocating up to 15% of its shares to physician members.

Epic Systems requiring workers to return to office July 19, resuming in-person customer meeting

Epic employees will return to its Wisconsin headquarters in a part-time capacity beginning July 19, while fully vaccinated customers will be invited to its on-campus users conference in late August.

Weekender 5/28/21

Weekly News Recap

• Ireland’s health system says it may be weeks before it goes back online following a May 14 ransomware attack.
• McKesson will combine RelayHealth and two of its other businesses under the CoverMyMeds organization and name.
• VA OIG says the VA’s $16 billion Cerner implementation budget failed to include up to $2.6 billion in required infrastructure upgrades.
• Google will develop algorithms for HCA Healthcare using HCA’s patient data.
• Iodine Software acquires Artifact Health.
• Weight loss app vendor Noom raises $540 million in new funding at a $3.7 billion valuation.
• Bassett Healthcare will outsource analytics, IT, and RCM to Optum, which will take on 500 Bassett employees.
• Zocdoc fixes a software problem that exposed patient data.
• FBI says that at least 16 US healthcare and first responder networks were attacked by Conti ransomware in the past year.

Best Reader Comments

PE has absolutely brought a net negative in terms of societal value – they have sucked dollars out and devastated so many major areas of our society and economy – newspapers, retailers, housing stock, emergency rooms, ambulances and now of course, hospitals. And VCs are not too far behind. But as the guy says in the documentary – hey, don’t blame them for taking advantage of the way rules of the game are set up. Of course, no one says the quiet part aloud – that these guys are also actively funding politicians who block any changes to rules of the game. (Ghost of Andromeda)

Buried in an Epic EHRN.org study published today, Epic now has data on over 100 million people in Cosmos. (EHRN Watcher)

Looks like a net shift of ~30,000 beds from Epic to Cerner in the United States. I think it raises a couple of questions – although # of hospitals are still roughly similar does this put a dent in the narrative that Epic and Cerner are the two biggest fish in the sea? Seems like Epic is starting to pull away on this one. Perhaps the DoD and VA contracts may have been a bit of a poison pill for Cerner. (EHRMusing)

I don’t think it is reasonable to expect health insurance or health insurance tech startups to be profitable before they are at national scale. There are high costs to enter that market. To my mind, there are two Medicare Advantage strategies that potentially could work. First is that mega health systems are well positioned to offer MA plans but don’t have the organizational competence to do it. Bright is sort of going for that. Second is for the insurer to successfully insert themselves between the patient and the interaction with the high cost healthcare system, then guide the patient to lower cost alternatives. If there aren’t lower cost alternatives available in the market, the insurers should provide them. This is a little bit of Devoted Health’s strategy and a bit of UHC’s strategy. (IANAL)

Does Cerner currently have an employee exodus? That seems to be a concern at the hospital organization I work with. Lots of turnover in IT. Can’t imagine it wouldn’t also apply to vendors, especially if one is struggling. How is Cerner doing? And Meditech? And Epic? Or what about Allscripts? I’m definitely concerned for our own turnover, but am much more scared.if our vendor is also losing people we work with. (Neil’s Parking Lot)

For all those who are vaccinated, what’s the concern by August whether there are people on the [HIMSS21] floor that are not? I have an idea. “Let’s assume attendees are stupid and will all require vaccinations. Then we will tell them if they present a topic, they need a face shield to protect vaccinated people from vaccinated people. Oh, and we can’t have the vaccinated people too close, so we’ll spread out their booths. Then, cocktail hours in booths, oh no, we can’t have that. Push them outside in the August Las Vegas temps and they can drink warm wine and beer to go along with to go bags. They can shout at each other six feet away. Plenty of business will get done there. Oh and we won’t tell them that we cannot require the support staff, Venetian employees, and anyone else that will be on prem to be vaccinated.” Never mind what everyone does on their own time in casinos, bars, restaurants and god knows where in Vegas. But, we are protecting them and others.” LAUGHABLE – who’s falling for this stuff? (Mike_T)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

Readers funded the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Ms. M in California, who asked for a headset and webcam for teaching her transitional kindergarten students virtually, She reports, “Thank you for helping this old teacher ( I didn’t think I was old until we started Distance Learning) get hip with new technology! Having a extra webcam that I can use as a document reader really helps my instruction daily. I can Zoom with students on one screen and share the work with the camera. This is especially important with our littlest learners when we are learning how to write our letters. Students learn so much through teacher modeling, I can model how to color in the lines, write from top to bottom and read from left to write. So much learning fun. Thank you!”

Doctors in India threaten to sue a politically connected, billionaire yoga guru who told followers that “allopathy [medicine] is a stupid and bankrupt science,” claimed that medicinal treatment has killed more people in India than oxygen shortages and COVID-19, and questioned why doctors get sick if medicine is so efficient. He also recorded a video mocking people who were desperately searching for oxygen cylinders for their relatives who were dying of COVID-19, urging them to “just breathe the free oxygen.” His company sells a COVID-19 cure that is made up of three herbs, falsely claims that the product has been cleared for use by WHO, and when threatened with charges for misleading claims, instead convinced the BJP government to distribute 100,000 of his kits as an immune booster. 

A new book called “Women in White Coats” looks at the “she-doctor” panic of 1869, when students of Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania attended a medical lecture at Philadalphia’s Pennsylvania Hospital. They were forced to enter via the back stairs; subject to curses, thrown objects, and tobacco-spitting by the 300 male medical students in attendance; and were stoned by the male students as they left while someone played the taunting military discharge song “The Rogues March.” The county medical society had previously barred women from attending public teaching clinics or joining medical societies.

The husbands of two IT employees of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta go into renal failure within days of each other, requiring a transplant from someone other than their wives due to blood type mismatch. The employee were sharing their stories with each other when they realized that they were each a match for the other’s husband, so they donated kidneys that were successfully transplanted.

In Case You Missed It

• News 5/28/21
• EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 5/27/21
• News 5/26/21
• Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 5/24/21
• Readers Write: How the New ONC Cures Act Will Transform Patient Access to Healthcare Data
• Readers Write: Alert: Three Keys to Navigating the Traffic Ahead on the Road to Healthcare Access
• Monday Morning Update 5/24/21

Get Involved

• Sponsor
• Report a news item or rumor (anonymous or not)
• Sign up for email updates
• Connect on LinkedIn
• Contact Mr. H

Morning Headlines 5/28/21

Change Healthcare Inc. Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year Fiscal 2021 Financial Results

Change Healthcare reports Q4 results as it prepares to be acquired by OptumInsight: revenue flat, adjusted EPS $0.42 versus $0.42.

HSE staff asked to turn on computers but it will ‘take weeks to get back online’

Ireland’s health service asks employees to turn on their 80,000 computers to automatically install a ransomware decryption key that a cyberattacker reportedly provided at no cost, but says it will still take weeks to return systems to normal.

Digital Health Company Pack4U Secures $20 Million in Private Equity Funding to Optimize Prescribed Medication

Prescription delivery and remote patient monitoring company Pack4U raises $20 million in a private equity financing round.

News 5/28/21

Top News

McKesson will combine four of its business units – RelayHealth, McKesson Prescription Automation, CoverMyMeds, and RxCrossroads by McKesson – under a single business operating as CoverMyMeds. The business segment was previously known as Prescription Technology Solutions, but each company operated under its own name.

The president of the 5,000-employee unit is McKesson long-timer Nathan Mott, MBA.

Reader Comments

From Mario: “Re: Nuance Escription. New owners DeliverHealth Solutions just experienced a multi-day outage during a routine maintenance window. Very little mention of this on news or social media.” Unverified, but Mario forwarded an email that DeliverHealth sent to customers indicating that the system was down from Sunday night until Tuesday evening. Nuance is a minority shareholder in the company, which bought Nuance’s HIM transcription and EHR go-live services businesses in November 2020.

From MC: “Re: PHS Frontline episode on safety net hospitals. I would love your thoughts.” I was going to take just a quick look at the 53-minute program that’s free to watch on YouTube, but it was too compelling to turn off. It describes how big hospitals use their marketing clout and cash to skim off profitable patients, leaving safety net hospitals with low-paying Medicaid, Medicare, and charity care. The section toward the end about how private equity firms are looting the healthcare system will make your blood boil – they buy safety net hospitals on the cheap and then cut staffing and supplies to allow paying themselves huge bonuses. Example: PE-backed Prospect loaded its Rhode Island hospitals with $1 billion in debt, immediately paid itself and its investors $457 million, has a huge debt payment due in 2022 with no obvious way to pay it, and the PE company owner (Leonard Green) is now threatening to shut down the hospitals because the state wants it to escrow $120 million to make sure the hospitals can survive.

From Mark: “Re: Base. Unnecessary testing?” Looks like it. Base is following the vanity prescription drug model in offering continuous tests and tracking to medical system-averse 30-somethings (based on the fake sample patients pictured) without concern for value received or how they will use the results, using a slick website, Apple-like physical packaging, and a coaching app with subscription-based pricing. Labs are grouped into sleep, stress, energy, sex drive, and diet, all the areas that are bothersome, hard to measure, and even harder to address. The disclaimer makes it clear that they aren’t offering medical advice, which is good since the founder quit medical school to work as an Amazon engineer, and I saw no mention of a physician’s order. It’s the usual lessons learned: (a) companies can make money selling unnecessary but desirable medical services; and (b) young folks are so turned off by the healthcare system that they will impulse-buy lab tests and drugs from websites like they would sneakers from Amazon, failing to see the value of a medical home or foreseeing their eventual need to address chronic conditions with something more than a cute app that pushes navel-gazing analytics masquerading as health management. I actually think this is good since nobody has managed to disrupt an entrenched, unhealthy healthcare non-system so far, so this kind of “buy whatever you want and see what happens” approach may open some eyes about access, skepticism, and unimpressive outcomes despite horrendous cost. I doubt anyone’s health will be improved much over the life of a subscription (which I would guess will be short), but it probably won’t hurt anything, so caveat emptor.

Webinars

June 3 (Thursday) 2 ET: “Diagnosing the Cures Act – Practical Prescriptions for Your Success.” Sponsor: Secure Exchange Solutions. Presenters: William E. Golden, MD, MACP, medical director, Arkansas Medicaid; Anne Santifer, executive director, Arkansas Department of Health – Office of Health Information Technology; Kyle Meadors, principal, Chart Lux Consulting. A panel of leading experts will provide practical guidance on how to prepare for the Cures Act. Will it upend your business model? What is information blocking? How can standardized technologies be applied to meet Cures Act requirements? What must I do now as well as in the next five years?

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Press Ganey acquires health insurance member experience measurement firm SPH Analytics.

Change Healthcare reports Q4 results as it prepares to be acquired by OptumInsight: revenue flat, adjusted EPS $0.42 versus $0.42.

Sales

• HCA Healthcare chooses Google Cloud for workflow tools and analytics.
• EHR vendor Oasis will deploy Canada-based Think Research’s clinical decision support tools to its 41 hospital customers in Saudi Arabia.
• UCSF will use Philips HealthSuite for interoperability and to develop navigation tools.
• Bassett Healthcare Network (NY) outsources revenue cycle management, analytics, and IT to Optum, which will take on 500 of the health system’s employees.

People

Brian Norris, RN, MBA (Marathon Health) joins Indiana University Health as CNIO.

Optum expands the role of Kristi Henderson, DNP, RN – who is SVP of its Center for Digital Health – to include CEO of its MedExpress urgent care center business.

Industry long-timer Chuck Duncan (CJD Healthcare IT Enterprises) joins consulting firm CPeople as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Six hospitals in Ontario, Canada go live on Cerner Millennium, which will provide a common patient chart across the four groups involved. Some of the hospitals went live without onsite help last fall since Cerner’s US employees were not allowed to enter Canada because of COVID-19.

Imprivata announces a mobile facial recognition solution that will initially allow clinicians to electronically prescribe controlled substances.

Blue Shield of California has saved $20 million over two years by using Gemini Health’s medication cost transparency system for prescribers and pharmacists.

Microsoft opens up the Teams APIs, store, and tools to allow third-party app developers to create apps that integrate with the meeting canvas, offer in-app purchases or subscriptions, and access Teams real-time video and audio.

A new KLAS report on payer care management finds that ZeOmega leads the category, 60% of interviewed Medecision customers are dissatisfied, and Casenet has struggled with a painful HTML5 rewrite.

Another new KLAs report on application management and help desk services says that Nordic, Tegria-owned Cumberland, and HCTec execute strongly and communicate well in the “expansive” offerings category. NTT Data is transitioning to larger customers with a sharp drop in satisfaction due to staff quality and low executive involvement, while Cerner satisfaction has improved. Strong performers in the “broad” category include Ettain Health, GuideIT, and Pivot Point Consulting, while in the “niche” category, the top performers are Talon Healthy IT Services (Epic help desk), ROI Healthcare Solutions (ERP), Tegria-owned Bluetree Network, and Avaap (Infor). 

Government and Politics

A VA OIG review says the VA underestimated the $16 billion budget for its Cerner implementation by $1 billion to $2.6 billion by failing to account for physical infrastructure costs, such as for electrical work and cabling. OIG also noted that the VA did not obtain the required independent cost estimate that would have allowed the omission to be identified.

Other

The CEO of Children’s Hospital Colorado declares a state of emergency in youth mental health, saying that it is overwhelmed with children who have attempted suicide or show symptoms of mental illness. The hospital’s chief medical officer says that in many weeks of 2021, the #1 reason for ED visits has been attempted suicide.

Ireland’s health service asks employees to turn on their 80,000 computers to automatically install a ransomware decryption key that a cyberattacker reportedly provided at no cost, but says it will still take weeks to return systems to normal. The May 14 attack has limited lab capacity to 20% and forced some cancer patients to travel to other cities for treatment.

Sponsor Updates

• Redox co-founder and CTO James Lloyd joins Vericred’s board.
• PatientBond announces several accolades, including an A grade from KLAS for customer peer recommendations and executive involvement with 95% overall customer satisfaction, high-performer status on the G2 vendor review website, and inclusion in the top 20% of the Financial Times’ 2021 list of the fastest-growing companies in the Americas.
• Newfire Global Partners publishes a digital cookbook to celebrate its five-year anniversary.
• Change Health publishes an e-book titled “Wired for Transformation: The State of Healthcare APIs.”
• EClinicalWorks posts a video case study titled “Neuro2Go + healow: Expertise Is Just a Click Away.”
• OptimizeRx CEO Will Febbo will present at the William Blair Annual Growth Stock Conference June 2.
• Spirion wins four Global InfoSec Awards from Cyber Defense Magazine for privacy management software, digital footprint security, compliance, and cybersecurity analytics.
• Talkdesk makes its CX Cloud available in Epic’s App Orchard.
• Vocera announces a distribution agreement with Wavelink in Australia.

Blog Posts

• Making the Complex Simple with a Data Analytics Solution for Investigating Real-time Medical Device Data (Part 1 of 2) (Capsule)
• A Clinical Perspective on Large-Scale Healthcare IT Implementations (Medhost)
• How one physician’s experience helped define Cambridge Memorial’s approach to COVID-19 (Meditech)
• Creating a Financial Forecast for Your Practice 101 (MWTherapy)
• Gartner Innovation Case Study Spotlight: A Look Inside NTT Data’s Commitment to Disruption (NTT Data)
• OptimizeRx Specialty Solutions: Technology That Optimizes Your Access Support Ecosystem (OptimizeRx)
• What Job Will Providers Do Today? (PatientKeeper)
• 5 Steps to Guard Patient Data When Using Virtual Care (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Is Your Revenue Cycle Vendor a True Strategic Partner? They Should Be … (PMD)
• Premier Data: Gap Analysis of Annual Patient Contact Hours in Primary Care (Premier)
• Insider-Related Breaches Spike After 4-Year Decline, Potentially Costing Hospitals Millions (Protenus)
• Lessons Learned from a Cerner TIP Beta Project (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Everyone’s Looking Toward the Future, but What Does Virtual Care Need Right Now? (Redox)
• 5 Health Campaign Ideas That Really Work (Relatient)
• Positive Distraction: Pediatric entertainment ideas to ease anxiety (Sonifi Health)
• Bringing Patient Insights into Focus (Surescripts)
• PatientBond Recognized by KLAS & G2 for High Customer Satisfaction (PatientBond)
• Integrating EHRs with your healthcare contact center platform for seamless patient experiences (Talkdesk)
• Remove Barriers to Medication Adherence with Step-by-Step Support (Twistle)
• 4 Things Every PT Must Do to Deliver an Excellent Patient Experience (WebPT)
• Helping Rehabilitation Facilities Succeed in 2021 (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 5/27/21

Last week, Best Buy Health launched a smartphone designed specifically for older adults who want to connect to virtual care services. Named Lively Smart (in contrast to the Lively Flip device they launched last September), the phone allows users to have one-touch access to Lively Health and Safety Services. The urgent care services offered are 24/7 and don’t require an appointment, health insurance, or co-pay. Emergency response services are also available via contacting an agent. Best Buy Health notes that its services are tailored to the “active aging population,” which is one of its key demographics.

I visited the Lively website to try to get more information about the services and how they are doing urgent care without co-pays or insurance. Despite a label to “select each product to learn more about it, including plans and pricing” on the home page, there were no links to pricing. I had to tool through the website to get more information, visiting multiple pages before I found the pricing. The Preferred Plan includes Urgent Response Service, Urgent Care, and Lively Link (which keeps caregivers informed about the health and safety of the person using the Lively products) for $24.99/month.

Centene CEO Michael Neidorff fired a shot across the bow of the Missouri Legislature, questioning whether the company will keep its headquarters there in light of the legislature’s refusal to fund Medicaid expansion even after being approved by Missouri voters. Centene is the state’s largest employer and spends plenty of money on healthcare IT and related consulting services, so a potential move would likely provide a boost to some other part of the country should they leave. Missouri has been all kinds of last in the healthcare technology game, being the last state to launch a statewide immunization registry as well as the last to have legislative approval for a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP). The latter isn’t remotely live yet, with St. Louis County’s PDMP serving as a de facto registry for the state.

The University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) announced a requirement for all employees and clinical staff to receive the COVID-19 vaccine no later than September 1. Nearly 70% of staff are fully vaccinated at this point, and those who plan to refuse vaccine must apply for medical or religious exemptions. UPHS joins the mandatory vaccine club founded by Houston Methodist, which requires vaccines by June 1. Also in the clubhouse but not quite a full member is New Jersey’s RWJBarnabas Health, which is requiring vaccination for supervisors and executives by June 30 with an anticipated mandate for all staff to follow.

I was excited to hear that Change Healthcare is entering the digital vaccine record space. The enthusiasm about their vaccination record solution was tempered by the fact that the only information available on the site was in video format and didn’t have a closed caption option, excluding some who might visit. I’m much more likely to learn more about a solution if I can just read about it as opposed to having to watch a video. From what I could gather from the video, it’s still fairly conceptual. The only way to get more information is to reach out to the company, and I definitely don’t have time to go through the usual forms and emails. If anyone at Change Healthcare wants to drop me some information, I’d be happy to read it.

We’ll get a preview of what HIMSS21 might look like as Las Vegas allows most venues to move to 100% capacity effective June 1. First in the lineup at the Las Vegas Convention Center is the International Esthetics, Cosmetics, and Spa Conference, which typically has about 20,000 attendees. The year will wrap up with the return of the National Finals Rodeo, which moved to Texas in 2020 to avoid COVID-19 restrictions. Come January 2022, the Consumer Electronics Show will be back in town. Although the event typically hosts 170,000 people, it is anticipating smaller turnouts as travel restrictions remain in place for many nations.

Speaking of consumer electronics, an AI-enabled “Smart Toilet” is being developed that will photograph stool and transmit it for analysis, specifically looking at consistency and whether blood is present. Investigators hope that the real-time evaluation will allow patients with concerning symptoms to be referred earlier. Research found the smart toilet to be 85% accurate at identifying stool consistency and 76% accurate for detecting gross blood, with findings being presented at the Digestive Disease Week 2021 virtual meeting. The AI algorithm was tested on over 3,000 images gleaned both from study participants and the internet. Gastroenterology specialists also reviewed more than 500 images to evaluate agreement with the AI-driven ratings.

The authors, hailing from the Duke Smart Toilet Lab at Duke University, hope the smart toilet will be more accurate and reliable than asking patients to keep a symptom diary. The Smart Toilet Lab page is worth a read and I tip my hat to their copy writer: “Imagine a world where important health information is leveraged, instead of flushed down the toilet.” The prototype design performs image analysis post-flush with a fingerprint scanner on the flush handle identifying the user. Apparently, the authors are well versed in the many humorous comments they hear and are also being “very systematic” about documenting them in their collection. Monitoring of sewage for public health has been a mainstay for COVID-19 surveillance in many communities, so here’s to better digestive health at the individual level as well.

I started working on the questions for my upcoming “Women in Health IT” interviews. I’ve had several good suggestions for interview candidates, but would appreciate additional nominations focusing women entrepreneurs or those in leadership roles that you’d like to hear from.

If they have sassy shoes and will be wearing them to the upcoming HIMSS conference, that’s a plus. I’m starting to put together my plan for the week even though we don’t know what we don’t know about the conference. I’ll definitely be looking for sassy mask photos as well as sassy shoe photos this time around. Regardless, it will be good to see people in person again.

Monday is Memorial Day in the US, a day designated for honoring the military personnel who have given their lives in service of the US Armed Forces. This picture from my visit to the World War II Memorial still gives me chills six years later. Please take a moment on Monday to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 5/27/21

Google cuts a deal to help develop health algorithms using patient data

Google will build custom algorithms for national hospital chain HCA Healthcare using data culled from 32 million annual patient interactions.

IG Says VA Underestimated Health Records Project Costs by Up to $2.6B

A new analysis finds that the VA will likely end up paying between $1 billion and $2.6 billion more than the original $16 billion estimated for its EHR project due to unaccounted-for physical infrastructure costs.

Press Ganey Acquires SPH Analytics

Healthcare advisory and analytics firm Press Ganey acquires healthcare measurement and analytics company SPH Analytics.

Twilio invests in adaptive communications platform Hyro

Automated healthcare communications startup Hyro raises $10.5 million in a Series A funding round.

CoverMyMeds brand grows as owner McKesson unites four health IT units

The local business paper reports that McKesson has brought its four prescription technology businesses into one operating unit under the CoverMyMeds brand.

Morning Headlines 5/26/21

Iodine Software acquires physician engagement platform Artifact Health

AI-powered revenue cycle company Iodine Software acquires Artifact Health, which offers a physician engagement and patient documentation query technology platform.

Weight-Loss App Noom Gets $540 Million in Silver Lake-Led Round

Weight loss coaching app vendor Noom raises $540 million in new funding, valuing the company at $3.7 billion as it expands into stress management, sleep, diabetes, and hypertension.

Scripps enters fourth week of ransomware attack

Scripps Health CEO Chris Van Gorder says the May 1 attack on the hospital’s computer systems was ransomware, and that its EHR and patient portal systems should be back up by the end of the week.

Bassett Healthcare Network and Optum Launch Strategic Relationship to Advance Quality Care and Improve Experiences for Patients in Central New York

Bassett Healthcare will give 500 employees the opportunity to transition to Optum as the vendor prepares to enhance the health system’s analytics, and IT and RCM systems.

News 5/26/21

Top News

AI-powered revenue cycle company Iodine Software acquires Artifact Health, which offers a physician engagement and patient documentation query technology platform.

Artifact CEO Marisa MacClary, MBA will join Iodine as EVP of the Artifact team.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A generous donation from reader Deborah, with matching funds applied from my Anonymous Vendor Executive, allowed me to fully fund the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Ms. H in Los Angeles, who asked for 3D geometry kits for her middle school class.

Webinars

June 3 (Thursday) 2 ET: “Diagnosing the Cures Act – Practical Prescriptions for Your Success.” Sponsor: Secure Exchange Solutions. Presenters: William E. Golden, MD, MACP, medical director, Arkansas Medicaid; Anne Santifer, executive director, Arkansas Department of Health – Office of Health Information Technology; Kyle Meadors, principal, Chart Lux Consulting. A panel of leading experts will provide practical guidance on how to prepare for the Cures Act. Will it upend your business model? What is information blocking? How can standardized technologies be applied to meet Cures Act requirements? What must I do now as well as in the next five years?

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Baptist Health South Florida severs ties with Health System Solutions, which had been handling the hospital’s revenue cycle management since 2018. BHSF created the RCM company as a joint venture with Navigant, transitioning nearly 600 hospital staff to the new business. The hospital will bring those employees back in-house.

The private equity arm of Adu Dhabi Investment Authority acquires a minority stake in health IT provider Dedalus Holding.

Weight loss coaching app vendor Noom raises $540 million in new funding, valuing the company at $3.7 billion as it expands into stress management, sleep, diabetes, and hypertension. The company hopes to expand from individual subscribers, who pay $60 per month, to employers and insurers. 

Sales

• MSU Health Care (MI) will implement Epion Health’s patient Check-In and Digital Screeners software.
• McLaren Health Care contracts with India-based HCL Technologies to deliver IT services to its 15 hospitals in Michigan and Ohio and create a global EMR Center of Excellence.
• Clinical management company SCP Health will expand its use of SOC Telemed’s Telemed IQ acute care telemedicine platform as it extends its telemedicine practice so it can offer both on-site and virtual care.
• US Orthopedic Alliance selects 2bPrecise’s precision medicine platform to identify drug-gene interactions.
• Colorado Center for Personalized Medicine will make the de-identified data of 7.3 million patients available to UK-based Sensyne Health, which will mine it and sell insights to drug companies, with revenue shared with CCPM. The company signed a similar deal with St. Luke’s University Health Network last week.

People

Tidelands Health (SC) family physician and Air Force veteran Gerald Harmon, MD will become AMA president next month.

Shelagh Fraser, MD (Priority Physicians) joins LifeOmic as its first CMO.

Jackson Hospital (AL) names Mark Lauteren (El Centro Regional Medical Center) AVP/CIO.

Tania Schade (Slalom Consulting) joins The Greeley Company, a division of The Chartis Group, as VP of business development.

Connect America hires Rosemary Kennedy (ECare Informatics) as chief health informatics officer.

Babylon names Darshak Sanghavi, MD (UnitedHealthcare) as global chief medical officer.

NextGen Healthcare hires Srinivas Velamoor, MBA (McKinsey) as EVP / chief growth officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Qardio implements Redox’s health data exchange API to enhance the interoperability of its remote patient monitoring solution.

Geisinger Health System (PA) launches ConnectedCare365, a remote patient monitoring program for people with chronic conditions. The program’s technology comes from virtual care delivery startup Noteworth.

CareAlign offers free access to its task management system through the rest of 2021 for clinicians who sign up as beta testers.

Queen Anne County, MD will equip paramedics and EMTs with DrFirst’s Backline for EMS, which will allow them to scan a driver license barcode to confirm identity and retrieve a six-month medication history. It also allows them to exchange messages with local hospitals.

Other

Appointment-booking website Zocdoc fixes a software glitch that improperly allowed current and former employees of doctor and dental offices to access the patient data of 7,600 people via its provider portal. The company revealed similar programming errors in 2016.

St. Luke’s Health System in Idaho expands virtual emergency services to all nine of its EDs across the state. Patients will have access to virtual neurologists, behavioral health providers, pediatricians, social workers, critical care and nursing support specialists, plus emergency physicians and nursing teams through the system’s Virtual Care Center in Boise.

Cleveland Clinic seeks a digital health venture partner for its commercialization arm.

Scripps Health CEO Chris Van Gorder says the May 1 attack on the hospital’s computer systems was ransomware, and that its EHR and patient portal systems should be back up by the end of the week. He said the organization has kept quiet about the specifics of the attack to avoid copycat hackers: “Other attackers are already using what is being reported in the media to send scam communications to our organization.”

Sponsor Updates

• SCP Health expands its use of SOC Telemed’s technologies to include its Telemed IQ software for acute care.
• Ascom publishes a new whitepaper, “The high-reliability ICU.”
• Cerner’s Charitable Foundation honors 39 employees with Volunteer Impact Awards.
• The local paper profiles CoverMyMeds’ new $240 million headquarters, set to open in the coming weeks as the company begins bringing back its 1,500 workers.
• Diameter Health Software Architect Sam Schifman will present at the 2021 HL7 FHIR DevDays on June 9.
• Avtex publishes “Omnichannel Healthcare Experience Report 2021.”
• Meditech will convene its virtual “2021 Nurse Forum: Setting the Pace” June 16-18.
• KLAS recognizes Engage as a leader for its response to the COVID-19 crisis with a perfect score within the All Services Firms category.
• Ellkay recognizes Nuance EVP and GM Diana Nole as part of its Women in Health IT program.
• WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus will speak at the Everbridge COVID-19: Road to Recovery Executive Summit May 26-27.
• First Databank is included on Modern Healthcare’s “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” list.
• Glytec releases a new video, “An Update in Glycemic Management in the Hospital: Impact and Lessons from COVID-19.”
• WebPT CEO Nancy Ham joins the HST Pathways Board of Directors.
• Georgia Hospital Health Services, a subsidiary of the Georgia Hospital Association, will promote Jvion’s All-Cause Readmissions product to member hospitals across Georgia.

Blog Posts

• How a SaaS-based scheduling system can help overcome the healthcare staffing crisis (Ability Network)
• “What About My Ovaries?” Part 2: The Paper Scanning Conundrum (Access)
• How to Bring Non-DICOM Imaging into Your Enterprise Imaging Strategy (Agfa HealthCare)
• Wildfire and Hurricane Preparedness: New PULSE Enterprise Features to Increase Flexibility and Scalability in Disaster Responses (Audacious Inquiry)
• OMOP Common Data Model: Build, Deployment, and Limitations (Bluetree)
• The Truth About Advanced Analytics: What Healthcare Leaders to Know (CereCore)
• Uber-izing the COVID Vaccination Experience (Change Healthcare)
• Role of the Healthcare CIO in Driving Digital Transformation (Divurgent)
• It’s Always Time to Switch for Value and Performance (EClinicalWorks)
• New Changes and Updates to Medical Decision-Making Guidelines from the AMA (Experity)
• “What About My Ovaries?”A Case Study Series Where It All Went Wrong – Part 1, Part 2 (Access)
• Back to Basics: HIPAA-Compliant Texting (Halo Health)
• Robotic Process Automation: An Essential Co-worker for the Digital Age (The HCI Group)
• Drive Better Outcomes with Four Data-Informed Patient Engagement Tactics (Health Catalyst)
• A Bite Size Update on Digestive and Metabolic Health IT (Healthcare Growth Partners)
• New Forrester study reveals COVID-driven Digital Identity issues and solutions (Imprivata)
• COVID-19 and the Biden administration jump-start policy focus on social determinants of health (Intelligent Medical Objects)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 5/25/21

Zocdoc says ‘programming errors’ exposed access to patients’ data

Appointment-booking website Zocdoc fixes a software glitch that improperly allowed current and former employees of doctor and dental offices to access patient data.

Recuro Health Acquires SupDoc: Expands Digital Care Platform, Enhances Virtual Primary Care and Behavioral Health Solutions

Virtual care company Recuro Health acquires chat-based telemedicine startup SupDoc.

Clinigence Holdings Announces the Signing of a Binding Letter Of Intent to Acquire Procare Health

Population health analytics company Clinigence Health acquires ProCare Health, a managed services organization serving four IPAs in California.

CHS Makes Bold Move Acquiring Healthcare Division From Selent and Associates, Inc.

Complete HealthCare Solutions, a health IT developer, reseller, and services company, acquires the healthcare division of Selent and Associates, including Computerized Business Systems and medicalbillingsoftware.com.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 5/24/21

I experienced firsthand the confusion caused by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s abrupt change in masking recommendations. Although it essentially stated that fully vaccinated individuals can go about their activities maskless, it completely failed to understand the dynamics of multi-age gatherings.

I was at a local park in an area where masks are required for groups that are outdoors, and it’s fair to say that the 11-and-under crowd isn’t going to self-select to wear masks when they see their parents and other adults kicking back with a cold drink and being maskless. Kids also aren’t going to stay three feet apart, let alone six, without someone giving them reminders. What I observed was similar to a rugby scrum made of unmasked 8- to 10-year-olds, so we can only hope that none of them were carrying COVID. Being outdoors doesn’t eliminate the risk if people are on top of each other. For the sake of all the healthcare providers who are having post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms, I hope we don’t get ourselves in trouble before vaccines are available for younger age groups.

As a primary care physician at heart, I hope that this push to get back to normal also involves patients being able to schedule appointments for needed healthcare. In my area, some primary care physicians are still limiting their schedules due to COVID-19 concerns. I’m curious how long their employers are going to be on board with it before there are repercussions. I’m sure those providers with RVU-based compensation plans are feeling the impact of limited schedules on their paychecks, but others on guarantees might just be in for a surprise when their next contract period comes around.

Third-party telehealth companies are still seeing plenty of patients asking for medication refills, often saying they can’t get an appointment with their primary physician or can’t get the office staff to contact them back. If access issues are real, you would think that practices would be eager to bring in part-time or contract physicians to help fill the gap and work through the backlog. None of the health systems in my area want to hire part-time physicians, which I find shocking. I’d love to see acute urgent patients one day a week somewhere, even just on an hourly or temporary contract, but everyone I’ve talked to would rather be backlogged than have part-time physicians on the books. It seems penny-wise but pound-foolish, but nothing is surprising any more when it comes to the people managing medical practices.

From the payer viewpoint, however, patients are getting back into the swing of things with preventive care services. Cigna CEO David Cordani said that in the first quarter of 2021, his company saw levels of mammograms, colonoscopies, pap tests, and childhood vaccine visits at levels not seen since the COVID-19 pandemic started. In an analyst call earlier this month, Cordani stated that Cigna has been focused on steering patients toward preventive services especially for services like cancer screenings. Cigna is my health insurance provider and I haven’t seen any outreach regarding services, so I’m curious what kind of programs they have in place.

Despite significant spending on COVID-19, Cigna seems to be holding its own financially. It’s Evernorth division, which includes pharmacy benefits management services, is growing, with total pharmacy prescriptions increasing by nine percent. I wonder what portion of those medications are prescribed to treat anxiety, depression, insomnia, and other conditions related to the stresses of the pandemic, distance learning, and altered family dynamics? Even in my limited time as a telehealth provider, I’m still seeing a fair number of those diagnoses. Patients are much more eager to just take a pill than to want to accept my recommendations for counseling or therapy. Although many think the pandemic is behind us, healthcare providers in the trenches know that there will likely be complications for years to come.

Speaking of telehealth, I was glad to see Arizona move to the front of the class with HB 2454, which supports telehealth policy. It allows for audio-only telehealth visits in some circumstances and also allows providers from other states to treat Arizona residents without having an Arizona-issued medical license. Essentially it makes emergency pandemic-driven measures permanent, identifying Arizona as one of the more progressive states in its treatment of the issue. Everyone talks about access to medical services for rural residents or those who struggle to get to appointments, but the press release from Governor Doug Ducey’s office also made note that the bill “allows snowbirds visiting our state to receive telemedicine from their home state.”

For those hoping to press forward with asynchronous care options, the bill does exclude emails, voice mails, and instant messages from the definition of telehealth. There are also some hitches in the way it manages license portability. Those licensed in other states who want to care for Arizona residents must register with the state board, register with the controlled substances prescription monitoring program, pay a registration fee, and agree not to have a physical office in Arizona. How arduous that process truly is will define how many telehealth providers want to reach their practices into Arizona.

The one thing I was surprised by in the bill was that medical examinations for worker’s compensation matters can be conducted via telehealth if all the parties involved are in agreement. Dealing with worker’s comp cases is one thing I will not miss from my brick-and-mortar practice, and personally I’d be surprised if there’s much uptake on telehealth delivery of those services.

I’m continuing to play the back-and-forth phone call and email game with some of my state regulatory folks, who can’t quite understand the idea that a physician has a “telehealth only” practice and doesn’t have a physical space where she treats patients. I’ve had several people tell me “you can’t do that” and I try to better explain it to them by saying it’s like a house-call only practice, but they still don’t get it. I’m going to try to make additional phone calls this week to get it sorted out, but until then, I’m running slightly afoul of a couple of regulations, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take.

Are you willing to give up your in-person primary care physician in favor of virtual visits? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: How the New ONC Cures Act Will Transform Patient Access to Healthcare Data

How the New ONC Cures Act Will Transform Patient Access to Healthcare Data
By Ariel Katz

Ariel Katz is founder and CEO of H1 of New York, NY.

On April 5, the non-partisan federal rules mandating Open Notes for healthcare data took effect. Known as the Cures Act, the rules specify that clinical notes are among electronic information that must not be blocked and must be made available free of charge to patients.

This is a game changer for any patient who’s ever had trouble getting healthcare providers to share or exchange information on their care – i.e., nearly every US patient, ever.

Data exchange among healthcare providers has been a vexing problem for patients in the US for decades. Providers make patients pay for hard copies of their own files. They force patients to pick up CDs with copies of scans in order to get the data to another provider. They clearly aren’t up to speed on care that’s been provided elsewhere — even when it’s in the same health network — and repeat tests that have already been completed. Patients often get bounced from provider to provider, answering the same questions repeatedly before any care is even provided. The list goes on and on.

All of the problems people thought EHRs were supposed to fix are finally addressed in the Cures Act.

Here are several health initiatives that the Cures Act will catalyze:

Making apps like Apple Health a central place where a person’s complete health data is stored

Patients will be able to access their own health data at any time in one place. This is great for patients, and also really useful for providers in emergencies. For example, say a person from New York gets into a car accident while in Mexico. ER staff can access their health info easily to quickly learn about the patient’s health status and provide the best treatment. Apple Health appears to be emerging as the frontrunner for this, but there are other options. like Google Fit.

Better international data sharing

Right now, the Cures Act applies only to healthcare data in the US. But I believe other countries will quickly follow with their own legislation and standards that will ease secure international data sharing. Increasingly we’re seeing patients, especially those with rare diseases, seeking treatment in multiple countries. Global data sharing would save time and resources, enabling providers to quickly assess what has and hasn’t already been done, leading to quicker and more efficient healthcare.

Better contact tracing for future disease outbreaks

If the Cures Act had been passed earlier – say, in 2019 – it would have completely transformed contact tracing for COVID-19. If all this technology was in place at the start of COVID, contact tracing would have been incredibly simple, and COVID’s effect could have been far less severe in our country, and maybe in the world. If there is ever another pandemic, contact tracing under the Cures Act should be a much faster and simpler process.

The Cures Act seems to have gone into effect almost unnoticed, with very little fanfare. But healthcare pros who are paying attention will quickly realize the potential here for empowering patients with better access to their own health data. Look for a host of new technology solutions enabled by this capability in the coming months.

Readers Write: Alert: Three Keys to Navigating the Traffic Ahead on the Road to Healthcare Access

Alert: Three Keys to Navigating the Traffic Ahead on the Road to Healthcare Access
by Karly Rowe

Karly Rowe, MBA is VP of patient access, identity, and care management products at Experian Health of Franklin, TN.

For any of us who use GPS when we drive, hearing the robot voice warn “alert, traffic ahead” is all too familiar, and usually followed by suggestions for alternate routes to our destinations. In our industry, however, there is only one road, and it’s about to get more crowded, complex, and nuanced. To help patients navigate their way through healthcare in the future, the industry is going to need to innovate.

As the economy emerges from the pandemic, there are dramatic changes in people’s lives and many industries are having to transform their operations in significant ways. For healthcare, we are going to see a changed landscape or, to put it more bluntly, there’s serious traffic ahead.

The impact on employment has been no less than stunning. Data earlier this year revealed that 78 million initial jobless claims had been filed with the Labor Department during the pandemic (that’s almost half of the country’s workforce), and that we had lost more than 10 million jobs. For those of us who remain employed, almost fourth-fifths are working differently, mostly notably through working from home.

These dramatic changes create new barriers impacting patients’ ability to access. Their coverages have changed or been lost entirely, as has their willingness to seek care in the face of their financial situations or other barriers, such as language, and their ability to do so is often impeded (this is especially true for underserved populations). Patient needs have and will also change as they contend with long-haul conditions and Americans in general learn to manage the mental health effects (about half of us have experienced such impacts already) of time in isolation and with limited human contact.

The volume of this transformation is itself a change, and a big one.

The impacts of technology on healthcare should no longer be called revolutionary, but rather the norm, as the pandemic has accelerated the transformation that was already underway. The market for wearables is expected to reach $81.5 billion this year, which is an 18% increase from a year ago. Individuals are using these technologies to manage their own health and the data are factored into a majority of wellness programs. The promise and peril of aggregating and applying these new sources of data aren’t news to you, whether in technical, administrative, or compliance terms. My point is that it’s an unavoidable component of that traffic we face going forward.

And the sheer volume of that component, to the tune of thousands of exabytes in growth annually, is a big one, too.

The road ahead is going to be tough since there are no alternate routes we can take. So, I say we embrace that clarity and apply it to three key areas of work that will help us navigate it:

Invest in tech

Challenging times challenge us to innovate, and it is clear that our systems (the “road” in my analogy) aren’t built to accommodate the changes I noted above. Telehealth is one area that shows immense promise, as patients have grown accustomed to remote interaction during the pandemic. Simply put, getting to a website can be far easier than making an office appointment, and relegating certain diagnostics to remote engagement can be more cost efficient. Integrating that data across touchpoints are important, as is exploring ways to make telemedicine available and attractive to vulnerable populations (the traffic is there, thanks to patients added due to COVID-19, so think about adding lights at entrance ramps to highways to ease traffic access and flow).

Use data to drive patient engagement

It might seem counterintuitive but the engagement and resulting data from interactions beyond the four walls of the clinic can be crucial to better health outcomes. To apply my traffic metaphor again, it’s not necessarily the volume of data, or traffic, that is the problem. Rather, it’s that the lines on the road need to be clearer. According to the Sequoia Project, about 12% of demographic data become outdated within a year due to such facts as 70% of married women change their names. Further, almost a third of that data are misspelled, incomplete, or incorrect. The challenges of consistent and reliable patient identifiers are nothing new, but they take on new currency when the challenges dependent on them increase and become more complex. Today’s solution helps preclude tomorrow’s “traffic” problems.

Don’t make the traffic worse

Patients’ healthcare journeys do not all travel the same road, but rather merge and exit at a number of points, many of which aren’t necessarily traditional sources of health services (and therefore new sources of health-related data). The technologies exist to connect patients to food banks, shelters, counseling services, and community programs, which may serve to lessen the overall impact on traffic. Then, by connecting those services, you can learn more about them and their needs. Insisting that there’s only one way to get to a desired destination – as if there were a single express lane – is old thinking, while considering the opportunities to provide patients with multiple routes while connecting the resulting data and insights into a single, overarching view (a GPS picture, if you will), may be the pathway forward.

We have a clear picture of what the road ahead looks like. While we can’t choose a different route, we can use technologies and tools to make the traffic flow better, faster, and more safely. Times of massive change are challenging, but they can also be inspiring.  We can embrace this opportunity to take our industry where it needs to go.

Morning Headlines 5/24/21

Conti Ransomware Attacks Impact Healthcare and First Responder Networks

An FBI advisory says that at least 16 US healthcare and first responder networks were attacked by Conti ransomware in the past year.

Advocate Aurora Health will make remote work permanent for 12,000 employees

Advocate Aurora Health will change 12,000 non-clinical positions to remote-first, eliminating their physical offices in departments such as finance, accounting, administration, and consumer experience in allowing employees to work from wherever they want.

HSE making progress on restoring health systems, but disruption to continue next week

Irish health officials say services will remain disrupted as their cybersecurity teams work to bring IT systems back online after last week’s systemwide Conti ransomware attack.

Monday Morning Update 5/24/21

Top News

An FBI advisory says that at least 16 US healthcare and first responder networks were attacked by Conti ransomware in the past year.

Reader Comments

From Pat Hand: “Re: CEO selling. Can you ask your readers at what stage of a company’s growth it become detrimental for the CEO to lead pitch meetings with the prospect hospital’s C-suite? My startup employer has hired tremendous HCIT leaders, but our CEO (who is also a co-founder) struggles to relinquish control of the initial discovery and pitch process. He isn’t great at reading a room, asking discovery questions, giving succinct answers, and simplifying the pitch based on need. When our sales execs ask him to let the salespeople do their jobs, he says that the first meeting should be C-suite to C-suite and they can take over afterward. Do prospects see this negatively and do they question a premium price tag when the CEO is the de facto sales rep?” I’ll invite readers to weigh in. My experience from being on the health system receiving end of pitches is that I would find it puzzling and perhaps a bit desperate to have a vendor CEO show up in the first meeting. I would rather meet with the sales folks, decide mutually what happens next, and hold back the CEO’s participation until either (a) the first meeting on the vendor’s campus, and even then just for a short meet and greet; or (b) as a final reassurance during contract negotiations. The company folks will defer silently when their CEO is in the room, which is the same reason that I as the health system person wouldn’t invite our high-ranking folks to those first meetings. I think the company should stop sending the CEO out on sales calls as soon as it can afford to hire experienced salespeople.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents are generally upbeat about the hiring practices of their employers through the end of the year.

New poll to your right or here: How does the HIMSS21 “vaccinated attendees only” policy change your plans to attend?

It’s a shorter post and no Weekender since Mrs. H and I took a great 12-hour drive in the splendor of late spring to a family event, a road trip that I enjoyed immensely. She probably needed some “Lonesome Dove” backstory to understand my enthusiastically blurted quote: “Ain’t nothing better than riding a fine horse in new territory.”

Webinars

June 3 (Thursday) 2 ET: “Diagnosing the Cures Act – Practical Prescriptions for Your Success.” Sponsor: Secure Exchange Solutions. Presenters: William E. Golden, MD, MACP, medical director, Arkansas Medicaid; Anne Santifer, executive director, Arkansas Department of Health – Office of Health Information Technology; Kyle Meadors, principal, Chart Lux Consulting. A panel of leading experts will provide practical guidance on how to prepare for the Cures Act. Will it upend your business model? What is information blocking? How can standardized technologies be applied to meet Cures Act requirements? What must I do now as well as in the next five years?

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

Sales

• France’s Institut Curie will implement digital pathology from Sectra.

People

Jeff Webber (Healthcare Triangle) joins Tegria-owned Navin Haffty as VP of operations.

JoRel Nye (Aledade) is named chief product officer at Stellar Health.

Announcements and Implementations

Change Healthcare launches a vaccination record solution that is based on the open standards of the  Vaccination Credential Initiative. Vaccination and testing providers, state registries, pharmacies, and labs can send their vaccination records at no cost, allowing pharmacies, testing labs, and government agencies to develop API-powered digital vaccine proof apps. The company notes that this approach puts consumers in control of how their vaccination information is selectively shared.

Bose launches an $850, no-prescription hearing aid – the first that FDA has approved for direct-to-consumer sale — for people with mild to moderate hearing loss, which includes an app that wearers use to tune them to their preference or to their immediate surroundings.

Other

This is an interesting concept: robotic process automation vendor UIPath offers StudioX, a no-code builder that allows employees to automate their own tasks that also includes corporate governance tools, such as permissions control and logging. I’ve used Macro Scheduler for many years to automate desktop and browser tasks and to tie applications together like the examples above.

Two ED doctors in Ireland, whose national health IT systems remain down from a ransomware attack, say that a big problem is that the country never developed a universal identifier that would allow accessing a patient’s records from multiple hospitals.

Advocate Aurora Health will change 12,000 non-clinical positions to remote-first, eliminating their physical offices in departments such as finance, accounting, administration, and consumer experience in allowing employees to work from wherever they want.

Sponsor Updates

• LexisNexis Risk Solutions releases the “2021 COVID-19 Mental Health Impact Report,” validating that mental health telehealth claims have increased significantly during the pandemic.
• Nordic, Pivot Point Consulting, Protenus, and Surescripts are included on Modern Healthcare’s “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” list.
• The Business of Pharmacy Podcast features RxRevu CEO Carm Huntress in its episode on improving prescribing decisions.
• Innovaccer will integrate the Healthwise Knowledgebase patient education solution into its Health Cloud
• Spirion wins four Global InfoSec Awards from Cyber Defense Magazine, including for next-gen in privacy management software.
• Visage Imaging will sponsor the virtual SiiM21 Annual Meeting May 24-27.

Blog Posts

• Celebrating Skilled Nursing Clinicians with Strategies for Self-Care Success (Netsmart)
• Pharma-HCP Interactions Go Virtual During the Pandemic (PatientBond)
• How Outdated On-Call Scheduling is Hurting Your Hospital (PerfectServe)
• When It Comes to Your Patients, Good Communication is Key (PMD)
• Five Ways Predictive Analytics are Driving Proactive Clinical Care (Premier)
• A $25B Health System’s Investment Arm is Banking on Protenus – Your Hospital Should, Too (Protenus)
• What are Custom Claim Edits and Why are They Important? (RCxRules)
• Guide to Phone Appointment Reminders with Free Call Scripts (Relatient)
• Dramatic Telehealth Growth During COVID Driven by Mental Health Surge (SOC Telemed)
• Working with Spok just became even easier (Spok)
• Broward Health expands print pub to digital to drive patient traffic (Krames)
• Scaling Up Your Workflows (Summit Healthcare)
• Three Tips for Maintaining Active Engagement with Patients and Families (Vocera)
• 4 Steps to Take Now if You Dream of Opening Your Own Practice Someday (WebPT)
• Enhancing Home Healthcare Delivery with Evidence-Based Care Plans (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 5/21/21

US Hospital Market Share 2021

A new KLAS report on EHR market share in US hospitals finds that Epic gained the most in 2020, while Cerner saw its second consecutive year of net market decrease.

JPMorgan Chase Launches Morgan Health

JPMorgan launches Morgan Health to improve the care of its US employees, and to develop care models for other employers.

Harris adds patient engagement solutions with the acquisition of ER Express

Harris acquires ER Express, which offers EDs and urgent care facilities software for online check-in, patient intake, and online referral.

Tegria Acquires Colburn Hill Group to Ease Revenue Cycle Management Challenges for Healthcare Providers

Providence-founded Tegria acquires RCM robotic process automation vendor Colburn Hill Group.

Scripps website back up, patient portal still down

Scripps Health (CA) announces its website is back up but its patient portal is still down nearly three weeks after a ransomware attack.

News 5/21/21

Top News

A new KLAS report on EHR market share in US hospitals finds that Epic gained the most in 2020, adding 101 hospitals representing 19,000 beds.

Cerner saw its second consecutive year of net market decrease in losing 19 hospitals and 10,000 beds, which KLAS attributes to big-hospital concerns about its revenue cycle functionality.

Epic’s market share is 31% of all hospitals and 42% of all beds, while Cerner has 25% and 27%, respectively.

All the hospitals that Meditech added in 2020 were under 100 beds and 62% of its legacy customers that made EHR decisions in 2020 moved to other vendors, Epic in almost all cases.

Reader Comments

From HIPAA To Be Square: “Re: vaccination record for conference attendance. Isn’t this a HIPAA violation involving PHI?” Of course not. HIPAA does not prevent an individual from voluntarily disclosing their own information to whoever they want. PHI is a concept that applies only to covered entities and business associates, otherwise you couldn’t tell anyone your name or email address since they are among the 18 PHI identifiers. You aren’t required to disclose your vaccination status, but conferences are not legally required to let you in if you don’t. I trust the vaccine and don’t worry about what everybody else is doing, such as presenters wearing face shields and exhibitors wiping down booth surfaces, but I’m curious why HIMSS is insistent on distancing when CDC says it isn’t necessary (HIMSS hasn’t decided on masks yet, but there’s zero chance they will voluntarily enter that minefield). More interesting to me is how conferences will use mostly untested technology to efficiently check vaccination status at scale, HIMSS21 being particularly at risk given that we’re just 80 days out. My guess is that proof will involve waving dog-eared (and easily faked) paper vaccination cards, which is ironic for a healthcare technology conference. HIMSS hasn’t said if it will allow vaccination exceptions, but its virtual version of HIMSS21 should protect it from any legal challenge by prospective attendees who can’t or won’t be vaccinated since it will be offering “reasonable accommodation.” Companies should be careful about requiring employee attendance, however, since that means asking about vaccination status and deciding how to respond to those who refuse to be vaccinated.

Webinars

June 3 (Thursday) 2 ET: “Diagnosing the Cures Act – Practical Prescriptions for Your Success.” Sponsor: Secure Exchange Solutions. Presenters: William E. Golden, MD, MACP, medical director, Arkansas Medicaid; Anne Santifer, executive director, Arkansas Department of Health – Office of Health Information Technology; Kyle Meadors, principal, Chart Lux Consulting. A panel of leading experts will provide practical guidance on how to prepare for the Cures Act. Will it upend your business model? What is information blocking? How can standardized technologies be applied to meet Cures Act requirements? What must I do now as well as in the next five years?

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

JPMorgan, fresh off its failed Haven healthcare joint venture with Amazon and Berkshire Hathaway, launches Morgan Health to improve the medical care of its 165,000 US employees and family members. The business will partner with leading healthcare organizations to develop models for other employers and will be given $250 million to invest in companies that offer promising healthcare solutions. Named as Morgan Health CEO is Dan Mendelson, MPP, who spent 21 years as CEO and founder of consulting firm Avalere Health, which was acquired by Inovalon for $140 million in 2015.

UK-based chatbot and virtual visit vendor Babylon acquires 700-physician Meritage Medical Network (CA). The company has raised $631 million in funding through a Series C round and is considering whether to launch an IPO or merge with a SPAC at a valuation of over $4 billion. 

White-labeled virtual care technology and clinician network vendor Wheel raises $50 million in a Series B funding round.

Harris acquires ER Express, which offers EDs and urgent care facilities software for online check-in, patient intake, and online referral. It will be placed within Harris’s PulseCheck business.

Providence-founded Tegria acquires RCM robotic process automation vendor Colburn Hill Group.

Allscripts files a federal trade secrets and non-solicitation complaint against its former senior VP Raj Toleti, who was CEO of mobile patient engagement platform vendor Health Grid when Allscripts acquired that company in 2018. Allscripts made Toleti an executive and he stayed until March 2020. Allscripts claims that Toleti’s other companies, Andor and India-based Mahathi, offer staff augmentation for the implementation of Allscripts FollowMyHealth and used Allscripts intellectual property in their products.

Israel-based healthcare Internet of Things cybersecurity vendor Cynerio raises $30 million in Series B funding.

Money-losing Medicare Advantage insurer Bright Health, which offers plans in 13 states, files for an IPO, having raised $1.6 billion in funding and booked a five-fold revenue increase in 2020 from its several acquisitions. The company’s S-1 form says it has developed analytics to provide care advice and is “in the process of making it fully operational.” 

Sales

• Banner Health will enable “digital health prescriptions” using the deployment platform of Xealth.
• Geisinger Health Plan will use the cost and quality transparency platform of HealthSparq as integrated with the provider search and scheduling solutions of Kyruus, which acquired HealthSparq in April 2021.

People

PeraHealth promotes Joe Beals, PhD, MBA to CEO.

Edwin Miller, MBA joins telehealth vendor Sitka as chief product officer.

ArborMetrix names Maria Siambekos, MBA (Champion Healthcare Technologies) as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Anthem signs an agreement with Epic to support bi-directional health information exchange between Anthem’s affiliated health plans and providers using Epic’s Payer Platform. Anthem says it will use patient information to identify care gaps, streamline prior authorization, and to notify providers when their patients are discharged.

Six hospitals in Ottawa, Canada develop a version of Meditech’s patient portal for French speakers.

KLAS looks at the telehealth ecosystem, concluding that Amwell and Teladoc offer feature-rich virtual care platforms, Health Recovery Solutions has broad capabilities in remote patient monitoring, Doxy.me stands out among videoconferencing platforms, Epic customers report deep adoption, and NextGen Healthcare’s EHR-agnostic product is strong in ambulatory practices and specialties.

Mitre publishes a draft national strategy for digital health that includes:

• Universal broadband access.
• A sustainable, tech-prepared workforce.
• Digital technologies that empower people to manage their health.
• Data exchange architectures, APIs, and standards.
• A digital health ecosystem that provides information for public health decision-making.
• Integrated governance.

TransformativeMed brings its Core Work Manager App to Epic as University of Washington / UW Medicine – which originally developed the specialty-specific workflow and handoff coordination tool as a Cerner-embedded MPages tool – migrates to Epic and continues its use of Core Work Manager. The original developers, trauma surgeon Erik Van Eaton, MD and lead EHR architect David Stone, founded TransformativeMed and have implemented the product in 130 hospitals.

Microsoft will retire Internet Explorer next year in favor of its Edge browser, which holds a 3% browser market share. IE is still present on Windows 10 PCs, accessible from the Search window for those looking to take a trip back in time with a browser that was slow and clunky even in its heyday.

Other

Ransomware hackers post sample information from Ireland’s health service online after the government declines to pay their demanded $20 million. The information includes patient medical files, meeting minutes, contracts, and correspondence with patients.

New Zealand’s Waikato District Health Board is experiencing “absolute chaos” after a ransomware attack Tuesday, going back to paper records and trying to properly identify patients.

Wyoming’s health director and the state’s CIO resign after COVID-19 test results ended up on GitHub due to an apparent mistake by a health department employee. Scammers have used the exposed data to call people they hope will be convinced to disclose their financial and insurance information.

A Minnesota doctor is charged with sexual assault after a female patient complained that he performed a rectal exam on her during an unrelated visit, then afterward had one hand on the computer keyboard and the other down his pants.

Sponsor Updates

• The Healthcare Technology Report includes Wolters Kluwer Health Business Unit GM Karen Kobelski and Central Logic CEO Angie Franks on its list of “The Top 25 Women Leaders in Healthcare Software of 2021.”
• Carrot Health will add social determinants of health data from LexisNexis Risk Solutions to its SDOH data and analytics software for providers and payers.
• Everbridge achieves its 16th Authority to Operate on the FedRAMP Marketplace.
• Experity, formed in 2019 in the merger of DocuTAP and Practice Velocity, says its urgent care clinic customer base – 50% of the US total – experienced a 58% increase in visit volume in 2020.
• Lumeon, Fortified Health Security, Impact Advisors, and First Databank are included on Modern Healthcare’s “Best Places to Work in Healthcare” list.
• Jvion publishes the “AI Champions Connect Quarterly Report: Artificial Intelligence & Population Health.”
• Meditech congratulates customers Avera Health and HCA Continental Division/HealthONE on being named among the Watson Health 15 Top Health Systems for 2021.
• CHIME’s Opioid Action Center Podcast features Meditech Associate VP Janet Desroche.
• NTT Data and its affiliates donate $10 million to help India through its COVID-19 surge.

Blog Posts

• The Difference Between SIEM and EDR/MDR, and Why You Need Both (Fortified Health Security)
• Active Shooter Preparedness: Best Practices and Recommendations (Everbridge)
• Partnering with The Daisy Foundation to Recognize Nurses (GetWellNetwork)
• What Are Custom Claim Edits and Why Are They Important? (RCxRules)
• Celebrating National Nurses Month and International Nurses Day: Part Two – Lorraine (Laurie) Porcaro, and Part Three – Christina Averbeck (Glytec)
• Select a Partner, Not a Clinical Communication Vendor (Halo Health)
• Consider the Benefits of ServiceNow (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Robotic Process Automation: An Essential Co-worker for the Digital Age (The HCI Group)
• The Rebound: Healthcare IT/EHR Staffing in a Post-Pandemic World (HCTec)
• Return of the RACs – What You Need to Know About Recovery Audit Contractors (Vyne Medical)
• Six Steps Towards Meaningful, Ongoing Healthcare Performance Improvement (Health Catalyst)
• 15 Tips for RCM Leaders Implementing a New Patient Accounting System (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Nurses Week Blog Series: A conversation with Donna Houlne, RN, BSN, MHA, MHRM (Infor)
• The Eyes of a Cicada: Healthcare Analytics Architectures of the Future (InterSystems)
• Making the medical problem list problem-oriented (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Warning Letters Are in the Mail After CMS Price Transparency Audits (Medhost)
• Creating a Financial Forecast for Your Practice 101 (MWTherapy)

Contacts

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