News 4/23/21

Top News

Home monitoring platform vendor Current Health raises $43 million in Series B financing.

The company says its revenue grew 3,000% last year. Its platform is FDA-cleared for performing virtual clinical trials with remote monitoring and video visits.

EHR integration – using HL7, FHIR, or Redox – is available for Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, and Athenahealth.

The CEO completed a master’s in computer engineering and left medical school in Scotland to start the company in 2015 with his co-founder and CTO, who had just completed a PhD in computing science.

The company styles itself as a “mission control” for health systems to transition care to the home. It lists as customers Mayo Clinic, Mount Sinai, Geisinger, Massachusetts General Hospital, Britain’s NHS, and drug companies AztraZeneca and Amgen.

Reader Comments

From Iza Vendor FoSho: “Re: HIMSS. Selling software now as a competitor to its corporate supporters?” HIMSS-owned Healthbox announces Idealy, a system that accepts internal submissions for innovation projects, then allows participants to score them and solicit feedback. HIMSS strays into commercial and potentially competitive territory fairly often, as do many member organizations that collect support dollars from those competitors, but this doesn’t sound like a product that steps on exhibitor toes. The target audience seems to be those big health systems that aspire to play with the big boys in the investment and innovation world, the track record of which is spotty (that’s like asking the DMV to develop photo portraiture software).  

From Ivan Issue: “Re: resume. Please review mine.” Suggestions, which I’ll generalize beyond yours specifically having looked at many LinkedIns:

• Don’t refer to yourself in the third person, aka “Mr. Smith,” as though you convinced an all-knowing deity to craft your CV.
• Personalize your “About” section beyond the usual stilted “accomplished, seasoned executive with demonstrated experience …” It’s funny how people think their overview sounds more professional when written as droning, incomplete phrases that are devoid of personality, the admirable brevity of which is often cancelled out by the barrage of tired buzzwords that follows. This is exactly what you wouldn’t do in an interview.
• Don’t list self-assigned, pretentious labels in your LinkedIn description, such as “thought leader,” “visionary,” or “change agent.” It’s mildly effective when others brag vaguely about you, but annoying when you brag vaguely about yourself. I have never seen a self-proclaimed “thought leader” whose thoughts I would allow to lead me.
• Leave out anything under “Education” that isn’t an actual degree from an accredited college or university. Nobody cares where you prepped except your fellow preppies and they already know, while weekend seminars and degrees that were sought but not attained for whatever reason don’t inspire a lot of confidence about determination.
• Include a high-resolution headshot that doesn’t include a cropped-out ex-spouse, wedding formalwear, or a vacation background. Don’t crop or shrink the image since LinkedIn does that while allowing a full-view display by clicking. Use a straight-on view that covers neck to top of head, with no artsy-craftsy poses or filters. Do not under any circumstances fail to include a photo unless you have beliefs about graven images – we all have camera-capable phones, so photo omission suggests issues with self-esteem.
• This is probably just a me thing, but it’s hard when trying to sort out an executive’s career wanderings when the list includes board assignments, volunteer work, trying to get consulting gigs while looking for a job, etc. instead of actual paid jobs working for someone else.
• Be careful about listing a bunch of licenses and certifications that aren’t relevant to the position you hold or want to hold. Health system CEOs who are looking for CIOs don’t care about your CPHIMS or MCSE.
• Spell and capitalize correctly, advice that I’m ashamed to have to offer to executives who surely could have afforded a paid proofreader or commanded an underling who writes well to review their draft.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’m reacting negatively to the overused term “sat down with” in trite reference to interviews, where given limitless quantity (and clearly limited quality) I gag through it several times per day. I say go for the “Madonna with the fake British accent” affectation and call it having a natter, a chin-wag, or a palaver.

Webinars

April 27 (Tuesday) noon ET. “The Modern Healthcare CMIO: Best Practices for Implementing Digital Innovations.” Sponsor: RingCentral, Net Health. Presenters: Nathan Gause, MD, assistant professor of medicine and orthopedic surgeon, University of Missouri Healthcare; Ehab Hanna, MD, MBA, VP/CMIO, Universal Health Services; Subra Sripada, MSIE, partner, Guidehouse; Jigar Patel, MD, VP/chief medical officer, Cerner Government Services. This panel of CMIOs will discuss how their organizations are leveraging digital medicine to improve patient outcomes and provider workflows. Topics will include AI and analytics, effectively implementing AI solutions, establishing data governance and oversight for AI-powered products, care and treatment changes on the horizon, and interoperability of large EHR systems.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Goldman Sachs predicts that even though interest in SPACs has cooled off since the first quarter – when 55 special-purpose acquisition companies were formed, creating a deal-making frenzy that exceeded even the dot-com boom – they could drive $900 billion worth of M&A deals over the next two years. It notes that 394 SPACs are looking for companies to take public, armed with $129 billion of equity capital and a two-year deadline to land a dance partner. It will be interesting to see how many seemingly successful health IT companies are lured into going public by the siren song of a SPAC – with the only surefire money-maker in the transaction being the SPAC’s sponsor – and then wilt under quarter-by-quarter investor pressure, mandatory operational transparency, a divergence of customer demands versus market realities, and the never-ending quest to convince investors that all-important growth will last forever. Not to mention that when the boom inevitably busts, either selectively or broadly, some unicorn-anointed companies that could not have survived IPO scrutiny will be suddenly living a less-rosy life filled with disillusioned investors, squirmy executives surreptitiously eyeing the exit, and curmudgeonly bystanders like me providing a constant reminder that the wisest investors – notably insiders – cashed out their stake at first opportunity before irrational exuberance collided with reality.

London-based Proximie, which offers a live, mixed-reality telesurgery collaboration platform for clinicians performing OR and cath lab procedures, raises $38 million in a Series B funding round.

Medchart, which provides patient-authorized information to attorneys, to patients themselves, and eventually to researchers, raises $17 million in seed and Series A funding. It hopes to expand its information work to researchers.

Seqster, which aggregates data from EHRs, wearables, and consumer genomics companies for payers, providers, and researchers, raises a $12 million Series A funding round.

HCA Healthcare announces Q1 results: revenue up 9%, EPS $4.14 versus $1.69, beating Wall Street expectations for both. Shares are up 87% in the past year versus the Dow’s 48% rise, valuing the company at $67 billion. HCA received $9 billion in federal COVID-19 relief funds last year, but returned all of it in October, saying the financial urgency of its 180 hospitals had passed and that returning taxpayer dollars was “appropriate and the socially responsible thing to do.”

Tenet Healthcare announces Q1 results: revenue up 6%, EPS $1.30 versus $1.28, beating expectations for both. Shares are up 172% in the past 12 months, valuing the hospital operator at $6 billion.

Sales

• Cerner chooses life insurance data vendor MIB Group to sell consented access to its 54 million patient medical records, adding to MIB’s list of EHR partners. 

People

Analytics vendor Cotiviti hires RaeAnn Grossman, MSP (Wick Healthcare Group) as EVP of risk adjustment and quality.

Chrissy Braden Worth, MBA (Helix) joins Apple in a business development and partnerships role.

Industry long-timer Mitch Morris, MD (OptumInsight) joins EMed as chief operating officer.

Announcements and Implementations

PMD adds medical billing and collection services to its revenue cycle platform offerings.

Regenstrief Institute modifies the open source EHR OpenMRS to meet the needs of Indianapolis first responders who expected to treat more COVID-19 patients in triage center. The team’s work, which took one week, allowed the EMS to register patients and collect their basic clinical information that could be sent to the state’s HIE. The system was never used, however, as the expected demand never materialized.

USPTO awards Medsphere a patent for its Multi-Disciplinary Treatment Plan solution.

PatientKeeper integrates its mobile app with Meditech Expanse, offering users access to patient lists, vital signs, lab and other test results, clinical notes, med list, allergies, and order status. 

Tech-aspirational health insurer Oscar launches +Oscar, which is some kind of health plan and member engagement platform that it poorly described. The announcement used the word “stack” eight times, which discouraged me from studying the announcement more than the first few times in my ultimately failed attempt to comprehend it.

CAQH publishes a repository of validated payer FHIR endpoints and third-party apps, allowing payers and developers to find information exchange connections.

Change Healthcare launches InterQual 2021, the latest version of its evidence-based screening tool. It adds four new Medicare criteria modules and new guidance covering COVID-19 treatment, social determinants of health, and the appropriate use of telehealth.

KLAS publishes a report covering health IT staffing firms.

COVID-19

Johnson & Johnson publishes results of its Phase 3 clinical trial of its COVID-19 vaccine, which showed a 67% efficacy 28 days after vaccination, 77% in severe and critical cases, and 64% efficacy against the South Africa variant after 28 days.

Former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, MD says in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece that the government did the right thing in pausing the use of J&J’s vaccine while reports of rare blood clots are investigated, but FDA rather than CDC should have been put in charge. CDC’s advisory panel adjourned last week without making a decision, while FDA is accustomed to assessing emerging data and advising physicians on benefits and risks.

President Biden says the government’s goal of administering 200 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine in 100 days has been met, calling on employers to use available tax credits to get their workers vaccinated. CDC reports that 52% of American adults have received at least their first shot, although numbers are declining for the first time as concerns about vaccine hesitancy begin to outweigh vaccine distribution worries.

A second wave of infection has pushed India’s cases and deaths to record highs, hospitals are swamped, and oxygen is in short supply. Thursday’s count of new cases in India reached 315,000, the highest ever reported by any country since the pandemic began.

An oxygen tank leak kills at least 22 patients at a public hospital in India that is treating 150 COVID-19 patients. Oxygen is running out everywhere, as the above SOS tweet from Delhi’s health minister makes clear (a tanker arrived at 1:30 a.m. with 30 minutes to spare). The government started building new oxygen plants in October, but none have apparently been finished, with shortages so severe that states are hijacking shipments that are headed elsewhere.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases will launch a study to determine whether the two-dose COVID-19 vaccine cycle works when the products are made by different companies. The study, which hopes to have data available by fall, will also look at whether booster doses are necessary.

Other

A good observation by AuntMinnie.com – FDA’s announcement this week of the definition of eight classification regulations says it will no longer use the term “PACS.” FDA will now refer to imaging systems as “medical image management and processing system,” which is equally acronym-friendly as “MIMPS.”

I snickered at the breathless announcement of respiratory monitoring vendor Respiratory Motion about its new logo, about which it quoted (falsely, I’m sure) its CEO who supposedly spontaneously ejaculated this in delight: “That is the symbol of action and spirit to construct a positive brand culture with different values: innovation, trust, reliability, discovery, and experiences.” In case that wasn’t eye-rolling enough, we get a pointless animation and an insider’s view, incorrectly punctuated, of how the magnificent logo was developed: “The brand name’s letters RM are exceptionally modified. With the modified crossbar and a higher contrast promoting the depth and upward movement. The balance of two simple ‘RM’ letterforms in the beginning and the end constructed the stability and solidity of the logotype.” I can almost make out the “RM” if I squint, but darned if I can spot innovation, trust, reliability, discovery, and experiences. Marketing is like many things in life – those who are good at it don’t need to convince you.

Sponsor Updates

• Everbridge announces that Steve Forbes, chairman and editor-in-chief of Forbes Media, will keynote its Spring 2021 COVID-19: Road to Recovery virtual leadership summit May 26-27.
• Inc. profiles CarePort Health CEO Lissy Hu and her journey through two acquisitions.
• Forbes names Cerner to its 2021 list of “America’s Best Employers for Diversity.”
• The HIMSS SoCal podcast features Healthcare Triangle VP of Technology Joe Grinstead.
• Impact Advisors is named as one of Modern Healthcare’s Largest IT Consulting Firms for 2021.

Blog Posts

• You’ve Invested Millions for an EHR Your Clinicians Don’t Like. Don’t Replace it – Just Fix it. (Medicomp Systems)
• Supporting the COVID-19 vaccination process with technology and data (Cerner)
• Efficiently Accessing Waveform Data Can Yield Stronger Clinical Research and Outcomes (Capsule)
• What an Emergency Mass Notification System is and Why it Matters (Everbridge)
• 5 Reasons to Conduct Yearly Penetration Testing (Fortified Health Security)
• Vital Change Management is Often Forgotten (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Glucommander Named 2021 Medical Design Excellence Awards Finalist (Glytec)
• Industry First Citrix Cloud Connector Module (Goliath Technologies)
• The History and Evolution of Conversational AI (Gyant)
• Health Literacy & Care Team Communication: Where We’re Falling Short (Halo Health)
• Predicting Denials to Improve the Healthcare Revenue Cycle and Maximize Operating Margins (Health Catalyst)
• Second Round of Funding for FCC COVID-19 Telehealth Program Announced (Impact Advisors)
• Are Adverse Drug Effects Equal Opportunity Risks? (First Databank)
• Ingenious Med: Supporting a Comprehensive Productivity Optimization Program for a Top US Physician Company (Ingenious Med)
• Part 1 – 2021 Hospital National Patient Safety Goals Series: Identifying Patient Safety Risks (Medhost)
• A Conversation with Carl Smith, CIO, King’s Daughters Medical Center (Meditech)
• 7 Signs It’s Time to Update Your PT Billing System (MWTherapy)

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 4/22/21

Clinical informaticists and genomics experts are excited about the recent announcement that the US will spend $1.7 billion to create a national network to track coronavirus variants. The main components of the plan include funding to help the CDC and state health agencies expand gene mapping; identification of six academic centers to research gene-based surveillance; and creation of a National Bioinformatics Infrastructure for sharing and analysis of data around emerging pathogens. The proposed budget is significant in that it provides funding to build systems for the future, not just for the current crisis. I look forward to seeing the transformative discoveries that could be produced by this kind of initiative.

Healthcare workers have been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, whether it’s physically, emotionally, or economically. A research letter in the Journal of the American Medical Association looks at symptoms and functional impairments tjat are found in healthcare workers who had mild cases of COVID-19. More than a quarter of patients who had the disease had at least one moderate to severe symptom that lasted for at least two months, while 15% reported at least one moderate to severe symptom that lasted for at least eight months. The most common symptoms were fatigue, shortness of breath, and change in the senses of taste or smell. The study mentioned in the letter did have some limitations, but since healthcare workers became infected on the leading edge of the pandemic, they do make an interesting research population. It will be interesting to see the percentage of subjects who continue to have long-term symptoms and what kinds of interventions might help people recover more quickly.

The American Medical Association offers up some tips on how physicians can improve their telehealth skills. The issues they cite, such as eye contact and lighting, continue to be problematic, not only for physicians, but for many of the video meetings I attend on a daily basis. With this in mind, I offer up Dr. Jayne’s tips for successful video calls:

• Make sure your camera is stationary. Use a stand, prop it up, put it on a table, but don’t let it move during the call. I continue to get vertigo when people’s cameras are bouncing around, particularly when it’s obvious they have their laptop balanced on their thighs. The worst is when people walk around the house with the camera on. Pro tip: no one wants to see your laundry baskets.
• Ensure that the camera is at a good height for eye contact. I’ve seen up enough people’s noses in the last 13 months that I’m considering a second career as an ear, nose, and throat specialist. I also can recognize the office spaces of many of my colleagues just by their ceiling fans.
• Figure out your lighting and your background. If you’re sitting in the shadows, it can be distracting. Having a window behind you isn’t generally a good idea unless you have an additional light source in front of you to balance it out. You don’t have to buy anything special – I’m repurposing a floor lamp that I purchased for sewing to help even out the lighting when I get too much natural light coming from the wrong direction.
• Check your microphone. Look at the audio settings within your meeting app and make sure your microphone isn’t set so low that it can’t pick up your voice. Experiment with background noise reduction settings if excess noise is an issue in your workspace. Some of the conferencing platforms have added fairly sophisticated settings that can allow you to adjust these settings with some specificity. I recently attended an all-Zoom musical recital, and you could really tell who followed the instructions to configure their accounts and who didn’t.
• Keep any battery-powered accessories charged and have a backup plan. I’m so tired of people’s headsets dying on afternoon calls.
• If you’re going to use in-app backgrounds, make sure they work technically and professionally. Some app/background combinations cause weird video artifacts like hairstyles disappearing or making it look like you’re just a disembodied face. Consider neutral choices – although being on the bridge of the Enterprise might seem cool, your clients might not share your enthusiasm. If using personal pictures or designs for backgrounds, make sure they’re professional. I recently saw a “taco Tuesday” themed background that was highly offensive and had to have a sidebar conversation with the presenter.
• If you’re going to share your screen, make sure you understand how it works if you have multiple monitors, multiple windows, or multiple apps open. If you’re sharing a video with sound, be sure you know how to make it work. Practice is a good idea! And to be safe, make sure any browser tabs that you don’t want the audience to see are closed. I’ve seen more than my share of cringeworthy content, including a couple of things I will never be able to unsee.
• By this point in the game, it should go without saying: LEARN HOW TO USE THE MUTE BUTTON. We all have those moments where we forget to unmute ourselves and wind up talking into the void, and I understand. I’m with you. But when the lawn service appears outside your window or family members have invaded your space, be considerate enough to mute before someone has to ask you to do so.

Of course, this last bullet point goes for non-video calls as well. If you’re not sure about making the most of your conferencing tools, don’t be shy about asking for help. Especially if your struggles negatively impact the meetings you attend, your co-workers will be grateful.

Many of us in healthcare IT are science nerds in general and have been watching the adventures of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter in anticipation of the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. After a delay during a test sequence, the four-pound helicopter took flight on Monday. Although Ingenuity’s first flight was only 39 seconds, that’s three times longer than the first flight undertaken by the Wright Brothers. The helicopter paid tribute by carrying a piece of fabric from the original Wright flyer. Science is cool, y’all.

What scientific advancements do you think hold the most promise for humanity? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 4/22/21

FCC Announces Round 2 COVID-19 Telehealth Program Application Portal Will Open April 29

The FCC will begin accepting applications for the second half of its $250 million COVID-19 Telehealth Program April 29.

MIB to Provide Life Insurance Industry with Access to More than 54 Million Patient Records from Cerner

Cerner inks its second deal with a life insurance company, giving MIB access to its trove of patient records.

Health2047 Spins Out SiteBridge Research to Improve Clinical Trial Access for Small and Community Physician Practices

AMA commercialization subsidiary Health2047 launches SiteBridge Research, a portfolio company geared towards making clinical trials more accessible through its Trial-in-a-Box software and services.

Readers Write: Hospitals Shouldn’t Skimp on Meeting May’s ADT Deadline

Hospitals Shouldn’t Skimp on Meeting May’s ADT Deadline
By Claudia Williams

Claudia Williams, MS is CEO of Manifest MedEx of Riverside, CA.

Time is running out. There is now just over a  week to go before the May 1, 2021 deadline for hospitals to meet the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation requiring hospitals to share event notifications with community providers when a patient is admitted, discharged, or transferred (ADT). If hospitals want to keep getting paid by Medicare and Medicaid, they need to act now.

While it may be anxiety-inducing to compliance and IT departments, this fast-approaching deadline will be a joyful milestone for patients and providers in the community. Studies have shown repeatedly that sending ADT notifications is one of the most impactful ways to enable care coordination and reduce readmissions after a patient is hospitalized. One University of Colorado Hospital study found that patients who didn’t receive follow-up by their primary care provider after discharge were 10 times more likely to be readmitted to a hospital.

The good news is that ADT notifications are easy, especially if hospitals work with a partner that can match and route messages to the right community provider. So easy, in fact, that in a 2019 letter in support of the rule, authors reported they “were unable to find a single example where a hospital was unable to send an ADT notification today due to lack of standards.”

But “meet the mail” approaches won’t cut it. Some hospitals and their vendors are making minimal effort to route notifications to the right community provider. That’s a risky move. This rule is about “delivering” ADT notifications, not just “generating” them, meaning these vital alerts must actually reach the health partners who need them in your community.

Non-profit health information exchanges (HIEs) across the country are a powerful solution for last mile delivery of encounter alerts. Exchanging data for more than 92% of Americans today, these statewide and regional networks have the infrastructure and information to ensure ADT notifications securely and quickly reach the right providers in your community. Hospitals simply share an ADT feed with the HIE. The HIE does all the heavy lifting of matching ADT notifications with the right providers and routing alerts to them in real time. Once notified, providers can act quickly to support patients and ensure they recover safely at home after a hospital stay.

Beyond ADT alerts, HIEs’ roles in care coordination are expanding rapidly. A 2020 report found that nearly all HIEs today have “partnered with one or more of the following community and social service organizations: correctional health, social service agencies, drug and alcohol treatment programs, first responders, school nurses, or blood banks.” With HIEs as partners, hospitals are more effective and efficient hubs of care coordination in the community, improving patient experience, strengthening relationships with referring providers, and resulting in better patient care. COVID-19 has shown just how crucial this collaboration is. New York’s HIEs reported delivering a record-breaking 10 million ADT notifications during the pandemic and doubled the number of patient record look-ups as healthcare leaders there struggled to keep patients safe.

Their report concluded that “Health information exchange (HIE) continues to play a vital role in the delivery and quality of patient care. In 2020, it was demonstrated and verified that the sharing of clinical information can be leveraged even further in support of population health initiatives, playing a role to help predict health outcomes for the coronavirus pandemic and other health care crises that may occur in the future.”

While the May 1 deadline is approaching fast, progress on interoperability is just getting started. HIE partnerships can help hospitals meet new ADT alert requirements but can also help them succeed in value-based care, strengthen community care coordination, reduce paperwork burdens, and improve patient care.

Morning Headlines 4/21/21

Why a U.S. hospital and oil company turned to facial recognition

Cedars-Sinai uses facial recognition software from Israel-based AnyVision to detect ED patients who visit repeatedly under different names or to call out those who have a history of violence or drug fraud.

VieCure Announces $25 Million Series A Investment Led by Northpond Ventures to Improve Oncology Care, Scale A.I. and Patient-focused Technologies

VieCure, which specializes in health IT for oncologists, raises $25 million in a Series A funding round.

Cerner, Athenahealth Lose Bid to Nix Hospital Management Patent

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board upholds most of CliniComp’s data-sharing patent, as challenged by Cerner and Athenahealth.

News 4/21/21

Top News

Reuters reports that Cedars-Sinai is using facial recognition software from Israel-based AnyVision to detect ED patients who visit repeatedly under different names or to call out those who have a history of violence or drug fraud.

Other companies use the product to identify campus visitors who have previously made threats or trespassed, to spot known shoplifters, and to implement touchless access control.

Reader Comments

From Harry Angstrom: “Re: Banner Health. With the announcement that they chose Phynd, does that mean that Kyruus is losing one of its ‘banner’ clients?” It does not, at least based on my interpretation of the announcement. Banner Health Network — Banner’s ACO health plan that is made up of Banner Medical Group and Neighborhood Physician Alliance — has selected Symplr’s Phynd. The rest of Banner Health will continue to use Kyruus for enterprise provider data management, search, and scheduling.

From Just CHIME’ing In: “Re: Vive annual conference, put on by CHIME and HLTH starting next year. Is that another blow to the HIMSS conference?” It’s too early to tell. The growth of the HIMSS conference seemed unstoppable before HIMSS20 — although I think I recall that attendee count had slipped a bit in the previous couple of years — but some folks were already grumbling about the conference getting too big with insufficient exhibitor ROI even before the HIMSS20 refund debacle. Meanwhile, HLTH’s glitz masked some behind-the-scenes fumbling in which its inaugural conference was held right after HIMSS18 in the same city of Las Vegas, then was moved back 18 months into fall in a belated realization that few HIMSS18 attendees really wanted to attend two conferences close together (although to be fair, HLTH’s content and audience was broader than that of the HIMSS conference). Both conferences sat out in-person events for 2020, HIMSS deferred the asterisked HIMSS21 until August in a move that could backfire if reduced interest tarnishes HIMSS22, and HLTH21 is scheduled as an in-person conference in Boston in October. HIMSS22 and Vive will happen within weeks of each other in Florida in March 2022, potentially competing for the same potential attendees who won’t likely attend both (or perhaps neither, depending on the post-COVID conference appetite).  It will not be good for HIMSS if the CHIME connection pulls CIOs and other provider decision-makers to Vive — while overall attendee count is important, exhibitor money drives the budget for big-name keynote speakers and splashy social events and those vendors will bail if decision-makers don’t show up. We also know little about Vive at this point — does its target audience go beyond C-level provider executives, will it revive the old-school requirement that attendees sign up for one-on-one vendor pitches, and does it provide what attendees want beyond a party-bookended boat show? It seemed inevitable that HIMSS and the investor-backed HLTH would eventually butt heads, but adding a new digital health conference with CHIME’s involvement must leave the HIMSS folks feeling besieged. The market will, as it always does, choose the winners and losers.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor West Monroe. The Chicago-based national consulting firm was born in technology but built for business, partnering with companies in transformative industries to deliver real, measurable results. Its healthcare practice partners with health plans, health systems and providers, dental payers and ancillary organizations, and life sciences companies to help them better understand and capitalize on the opportunities that exist in a dynamic and evolving marketplace.​ To those ends, they understand and advise on areas such as technology strategy and solutions, building data-driven operations, creating digital products and experiences, prioritizing cybersecurity, and scaling, expanding, and focusing services through strategic M&A. Thanks to West Monroe for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

April 21 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Is Gig Work For You?” Sponsor: HIStalk. Presenter: Frank L. Poggio, retired health IT executive and active job search workshop presenter.  This workshop will cover both the advantages and disadvantages of being a gig worker. Attendees will learn how to how to decide if gig work is a good personal fit, find the right company, and protect themselves from unethical ones.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

PulseData raises $16.5 million in a Series A funding round. The New York City company’s software aggregates and analyzes health data to predict the onset of kidney disease, and then matches patients with best-fit care.

VieCure raises $25 million in a Series A funding round. The Denver-based company specializes in health IT for oncologists, including clinical decision support software.

Virta Health, which offers type 2 diabetes reversal treatment using virtual health coaches, secures $133 million in Series E financing, bringing its total amount raised to $263 million.

Mobile medical communications vendor Allm raises a $50 million funding round.

Sales

• In England, London North West University Healthcare NHS Trust and The Hillingdon Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust will implement Cerner Millennium.
• In Canada, St. Joseph Health Centre chooses Picis PriorityQ to prioritize surgical backlog waitlists based on patient severity and resource availability.
• J. C. Lewis Primary Health Care Center (GA) chooses Emerge’s ChartGenie data conversion solution and its ChartScout and ChartPop integration for its conversion to Athenahealth.

People

Steve Cashman (InTouch Health) joins Caption Health as president and CEO.

CereHealth hires James Chomas, PhD (GCH, Inc.) as CEO.

ClearData names Sanjay Cherian, MHSc (Telus Health) chief strategy officer.

Divurgent promotes Shaun Sangwin to SVP of business development.

Muthu Krishnan, PhD (IKS Health) joins Conifer Health as CTO.

Sarah Richardson, MBA  (Optum) joins Tivity Health as SVP/CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Davis Regional Medical Center (NC) launches tele-neurology and tele-stroke programs using SOC Telemed’s acute care telemedicine software.

CliniComp announces GA of its Origin EHR.

CentraCare (MN) automates symptom-checking, patient inquiries, and COVID-19 screening with Orbita’s Engage virtual assistant.

Southcoast Health in Massachusetts implements Spok Go communication software for providers and staff.

Government and Politics

The Patent Trial and Appeal Board upholds most of CliniComp’s data-sharing patent, as challenged by Cerner and Athenahealth.

The Federal Trade Commission warns businesses that they may be violating federal law if they use AI algorithms that — intentionally or not – are racially biased or that discriminate based on race, color, religion, national origin, sex, marital status, age, or status as a recipient of public assistance. It also notes that companies are violating the FTC Act if they sell racially based algorithms, which it says constitutes unfair or deceptive practices. FTC cites a JAMIA article in which COVID-19 predictive models could reflect existing biases from the data on which they were trained, in which case AI could then fail to benefit all patients because it worsens disparities for people of color.

COVID-19

New COVID-19 cases hit 5.2 million globally last week, the highest since the pandemic began. Deaths also increased for the fifth straight week and stand at more than 3 million.

Moderna will use the MRNA technology that is behind its COVID-19 vaccine to develop vaccines for HIV and several infectious diseases, with two HIV/AIDS vaccine candidates expected to reach clinical trials by the end of 2021. AIDS-related causes killed 700,000 people globally in 2019.

CDC reiterates that COVID-19 is spread mostly by air, not by surfaces, and cleaning and disinfection is not likely to make much of a difference.

Sponsor Updates

• In the Netherlands, Amsterdam Academic Medical Center selects Agfa Healthcare’s enterprise imaging platform.
• Surescripts releases its annual “National Progress Report” highlighting progress made across its Network Alliance.
• Raintree Systems incorporates Sphere’s payment platform with its practice management software.
• PatientKeeper integrates its mobile EHR optimization app with Meditech Expanse.
• Pivot Point Consulting promotes Nick Loftin director of its Virtual Care practice.

Blog Posts

• Empower nurses – and boost retention – with 7 practical strategies (Ability Network)
• The new 21st Century Cures Act takes effect TODAY (AdvancedMD)
• Happy Spring! Welcoming 4 baby peregrine falcons (Agfa HealthCare)
• Healthcare cybersecurity starts with your IT network infrastructure (Alcatel-Lucent Enterprise)
• Configuring Clinical Workflows for Research Data Collection (Bluetree)
• How to Achieve Clean Claims with Less Effort (RCxRules)
• Delving Deeper into the Direct Contracting Model (CarePort)
• Hospital Transfer Center Software: Essential but Insufficient (Central Logic)
• On a mission to improve maternal safety (Obix Perinatal Data System, developed by Clinical Computer Systems)
• 10 Things Nurses Say They Need Right Now (CoverMyMeds)
• The ECW Podcast: Getting the Inside Scoop on Everything Healthcare IT (EClinicalWorks)
• Navigating the complexities of health coverage and reimbursement beyond the pandemic (Experian Health)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 4/20/21

Healthcare Startup pulseData Raises $16.5M To Help Lower Costs To Treat Kidney Disease

Kidney disease-focused health data aggregator and predictive analytics startup PulseData raises $16.5 million in a Series A funding round.

Diabetes Reversal Leader Virta Health Raises $133M Series E to Take Type 2 Diabetes Reversal Mainstream

Virta Health, which has developed a virtual care program aimed at helping patients reverse Type 2 diabetes, secures $133 million in Series E financing, bringing its total amount raised to $263 million.

Moving Analytics Raises $6M to Increase Virtual Cardiac Rehab Solutions and Expand Team Amidst Telehealth Industry Growth

Moving Analytics will use a $6 million investment to expand its virtual cardiac rehab program for new and existing patients.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 4/19/21

I’m less than three weeks from departing my clinical work at urgent care. My employer has been shockingly silent since I gave notice, and at times I struggle to decide if that’s passive-aggressive or just benign neglect. (I’m pretty sure not getting a bonus since then is passive-aggressive, but I’m letting that go.)

In the absence of any communication regarding a formal off-boarding process, I’ve started telling people and saying my goodbyes, since the shiftwork nature of our schedules means that I won’t be seeing most of the people I work with again before I leave. It’s been an interesting experience, because when I share the news, lots of people are admitting that they, too are leaving. Hopefully a not insignificant exodus will send a message to the leadership, but I doubt they will take it as anything that would mean they need to change how they operate.

The in-the-trenches teams I have worked with have been topnotch, and unlike other places I’ve worked, I can say honestly that there have only been two people that I’d never want to work with again. Both of them quickly departed the company, which is a testament to the leadership’s fail-fast ethos.

However, we’ve lost dozens of good people over the last year. On the provider side, most of those who left went to other provider jobs in the same metropolitan area, usually with eight-hour shifts instead of 12-hour days (which always end up being 13 somehow) or more predictable schedules rather than a constant rotation. In most other urgent care or emergency settings, a provider might work at a couple of facilities rather than having the potential of being sent to 30 different locations over a 40-mile radius. Several became hospitalists or tele-ICU practitioners.

Among the support staff, reasons for leaving were mixed. Many of our scribes went on to medical school or physician assistant school, and some of those who failed to gain admission went off to do research or pursue graduate coursework. Some of our paramedics and clinical techs went back to school for additional training such as radiologic technology or were accepted to the fire academies. Others went to lower-acuity situations such as medical offices or social services agencies. Certainly not less stressful, but with fewer people potentially dying in front of you or needing an ambulance transfer to a Level 1 trauma center.

Quite a few left healthcare altogether, with one of the most common reasons being the difficulty in managing childcare with 12-hour shifts. The stress and risk of working in a healthcare facility in the middle of a global pandemic was certainly a factor for others who didn’t want to take a novel pathogen home to their families, especially when personal protective equipment was scarce. One of my favorite paramedics became a personal trainer and another went into real estate. A third one has a thriving beekeeping business as a side hustle and is expanding his colonies in the hopes of being able to get out of the clinical game.

I’m grateful that I stumbled into clinical informatics years ago because it gives me options that my purely clinical colleagues don’t have. My only experience was having been a “paperless practice” pilot and being able to tell a good story, and I’m grateful to the boss who took a chance on a young, sassy doctor who wanted to change the world through technology. I’ve learned quite a bit since then, especially that CMIOs are the “little bit country, little bit rock ‘n roll” of healthcare IT and we can play either genre depending on who we’re sitting with at the table. Sometimes we’re translators and sometimes we’re mediators. Other times we’re punching bags, but having been through medical residencies, most of us developed fairly thick skins.

In hindsight, clinical informatics has saved me more than once. The first time it allowed me to take an administrative role with a health system and to leave a toxic practice environment without having to pay for medical liability tail coverage, do a buy-out, or be subject to a non-compete clause. I literally transferred my patients to my partners and walked away. That was difficult at the time, but it was the right choice, not only professionally, but personally. It saved me again when the health system eliminated full-time informatics positions and I was able to do some work in the EHR industry. In recent years, it has allowed me to work for dozens of healthcare organizations, practices, and technology companies, where I’ve had a front row seat to the evolution of healthcare IT.

Not to mention that clinical informatics has allowed me to write for HIStalk for more than a decade now, which I could never have imagined when I sent Mr. H a “top 10 reasons you should hire me” email all those years ago. I’ll even admit I wrote it on a Blackberry, which should give me some kind of legacy IT street cred. Long live the touchscreen Blackberry Torch, which is still one of my all-time favorite pieces of technology, although I do love the outstanding screen resolution, sound, and functionality of my latest phone.

Clinical informatics has also allowed me to meet some of the most amazing people. How else could I rub shoulders with the biggest names in healthcare IT in the same bowling alley? (New Orleans, I miss you!) Or meet my not-so-secret, bowtie-wearing ONC crush? I’ve had some pretty entertaining “don’t ask, don’t tell” conversations with people who were trying to figure out if I might be Dr. Jayne and I appreciate your graciousness while I dodged your questions.

I’m hoping that the next decade brings equal adventures, although the industry has changed quite a bit over the last year. I’m pretty sure the wild and crazy HIMSS parties are over, and of course there will never be anything that will quite rival HIStalkapalooza. Still, it’s not about the parties. There is plenty of work to do to make healthcare IT a better place for our patients, our families, and the generations to come.

As one of my favorite southern writers, William Faulkner, once said: “You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.” I’ve got my swim cap and my goggles and I’m ready to go. Who’s with me?

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: The Disaggregation of Healthcare and Its Implications for Care Coordination

The Disaggregation of Healthcare and Its Implications for Care Coordination
By Dhruv Vasishtha

Dhruv Vasishtha, MBA is director of product management for PatientPing of Boston, MA.

Of all the changes that are taking place in the healthcare industry, perhaps the most important of all is disaggregation – the unbundling of care — into a more open, local, and transparent model that delivers greater control to patients.

This trend towards disaggregation is a positive one, yielding the potential to make healthcare more dynamic, responsive, and innovative. But it poses challenges as well, particularly in the complex areas of care coordination and patient data flow. As Julie Yoo, a general partner at the venture firm Andreeson Horowitz, noted last year, “We are seeing the fundamental topography of the healthcare industry changing before our eyes, and it will impact all the ways that data flows and operations are run.”

This article will look at the following dynamics that are at play in the healthcare industry as it undergoes disaggregation and the implications for care coordination.

The unbundling of hospitals

How we access healthcare is changing. In the past, when we got sick, we all traveled a similar patient journey. We went to our doctor, or if our symptoms were more serious,  we went to the hospital. We got diagnosed and treated and either were hospitalized or returned home.

Today, we have many different points of access to this care beyond the hospital walls. We can receive care from retail clinics, community centers, behavioral health clinics, home healthcare providers, and virtual visits, among other options. COVID-19 has accelerated this trend, making it more acceptable for people to seek accessible, convenient, and affordable care wherever it is available.

Payers are encouraging this shift since care is costly in hospitals and patients increasingly prefer to remain in their homes and receive care conveniently via today’s technologies (telehealth, at-home testing kits, remote monitoring systems) or through medical professionals coming to them. Thanks to these and other technological advancements, along with increased public openness to receiving new methods of care, the boundaries of clinical capacity can now extend beyond traditional physical and geographic lines.

Changing care reimbursement models

The accelerating move away from fee-for-service and toward value-based care models is incentivizing the outsourcing of care to independent providers and shifting the emphasis to products and services that put the patient’s whole care experience first. This trend has similarly accelerated due to COVID-19 as healthcare entities saw how dangerous it was to rely solely on fee-for-service revenues at a time when very few Americans were seeking out care, even if it was necessary.

The US government has also leaned into value-based care, one of the few areas with bipartisan consensus, to create new financial mechanisms that incentivize new types of providers to carve out specific niche of care management and delivery and get paid for it. For example, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) created the Direct Contracting Model to expand opportunities for more diverse providers and healthcare organizations to participate in value-based care arrangements for Medicare fee-for-service beneficiaries.

The new Direct Contracting Model, which began on April 1, 2021, provides participants with increased risk options and is an integral component of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ (CMS) strategy to redesign primary care as a platform to drive reductions in costs. Rather than outsourcing services, contracts are being made directly with physicians to deliver care and get reimbursed. As a result, new physician groups are popping up that are removed from the PCP or hospital, and these groups are catering to specific populations or types of care to deliver more efficient, effective care.

Primary care provider independence

Related to the changing care reimbursement models noted above, there is a move towards greater physician independence. After years of acquisitions by hospital groups, doctors are launching their own practices or joining with other independent providers in a move away from employed positions. While employment offers physicians security and stability, independence provides them greater autonomy and flexibility and an opportunity to focus on each patient’s individual needs without limitations.

For patients, the trend towards more independent providers means greater choice, improved quality, increased access, and more affordability. However, it also means that care coordination becomes more complex, as their data is no longer centralized or easily accessible when these patients move different physicians and physician groups for care.

The impact on care coordination

As a result of these shifting market dynamics, there is a lot more fragmentation in the market, which has created an increased need for improved care coordination —  the ability for provider care team members to collaborate on shared patients to support long-term health, the cornerstone of value-based care. The promise of improved collaboration among providers, overall improvement in care quality, and ultimately successful patient outcomes cannot be realized without a successful patient care coordination program.

Care coordination is also an effective means to reduce wasteful spending. An article in JAMA examining waste in the U.S. healthcare system cited ineffective care coordination contributing up to $80 billion in wasted spend. This is because healthcare is often in silos, which leads to miscommunication, unclear ownership, fragmented patient care, and frequently poor outcomes, particularly among the most vulnerable populations.

An effective care coordination strategy can help to bridge gaps and connect silos among care teams. Key to this is the ability to share real-time information about patients’ care encounters across provider types and care settings. For example, if a patient goes to the emergency department (ED), their healthcare provider should be alerted by admission, discharge, and transfer (ADT) e-notifications that allow them to connect directly with the patient and the hospital care team to share critical details about their medical history. From there, they can determine the appropriate care plan, whether it’s post-acute care (PAC), behavioral health treatment, or visiting with their primary care physician.

In March 2020, CMS finalized the new Interoperability and Patient Access Rule to help hospitals better serve their patients through coordinated and collaborative care and prevent patient readmission. The rule creates a new Condition of Participation (CoP) requiring hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and critical access hospitals to share electronic ADT based e-notifications with other providers across the care continuum whenever patients have inpatient or emergency department care events. With the May 1, 2021 compliance deadline nearing, this interoperability can not only fill in the gaps in care, but also prevent redundant procedures.

Done correctly, care coordination can drive quality outcomes across the care continuum and lead to other benefits for providers, including:

• Lowering ED utilization.
• Preventing hospital readmissions.
• Preventing unnecessary procedures and tests.
• Eliminating medication errors.
• Treating behavioral health problems holistically.
• Identifying and managing social determinants of health.

Conclusion

The disaggregation of healthcare holds the promise of ushering in a new model of care delivery — one that is cheaper, more personalized, and more cost-effective — while still delivering value. The key to its success lies in ensuring that all participants in the care continuum have access to real-time patient data and the ability to coordinate and collaborate with other providers across care settings during patient encounters. Real-time information can provide participants with a new level of clinical intelligence to successfully prioritize and deploy care coordination services and ensure seamless transitions of care for patients while also creating optimal opportunities to achieve shared savings, delivering on the promise of the new care delivery model.

Morning Headlines 4/19/21

Medical Devices; Medical Device Classification Regulations to Conform to Medical Software Provisions in the 21st Century Cures Act

Mandated by the Cures Act, FDA excludes eight software functions that previously invoked its regulation as a medical device.

Medical Communications Company, Allm, Raises $50m in Series A Funding

Health data exchange and care collaboration company Allm raises $50 million in a Series A funding round.

Modernizing Medicine Acquires TRAKnet to Accelerate Innovation in Podiatry

Specialty practice-focused health IT vendor Modernizing Medicine acquires Nemo Health’s TrakNet EHR and billing software for podiatrists.

DignifiHealth raises a $7M seed round, scaling West Virginia healthcare startup nationally for improved community health outcomes

Population health management startup DignifiHealth raises $7 million in a seed financing round.

Monday Morning Update 4/19/21

Top News

FDA excludes eight software functions that previously invoked its regulation as a medical device. The change was mandated by the Cures Act.

Reader Comments

From Poll Vaulter: “Re: HIMSS21. Will you be doing another poll about who’s attending or not?” No. Whatever value there was in asking unvetted poll respondents about their HIMSS21 plans has been exhausted now that we’re less than four months out. Go if you want or don’t, but decide for yourself instead of anxiously asking others what they are doing. But I will offer an alternative poll as I always do right before the conference – keep reading. The HIMSS21 exhibitor count is at 439, with most of the “real” booths being on Sands Level 2, where many spaces are listed as open on the floor plan. The list shows 83 first-time exhibitors. Here’s a question for you – I’ll be at the conference, so how should I cover it differently than before? Usually I just skip the education sessions and report on what’s happening in the exhibit hall, but I could conceivably be finished the first day unless the exhibitor number increases.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say that exercise and diet are by far the most important contributors to their overall health. Personal relationships finished a distant second and all of those expensive provider encounters ended up dead last. It would be fascinating to see if clinicians share this feeling that their services are not all that important in the big picture of health. Some readers wrote in “inherited genes,” which is no doubt true, but unlike the items I included, is not something a person can control, sort of like “not being hit by a meteorite as a child.” I’m surprised, to be honest, that exercise and diet was such a decisive #1.

New poll to your right or here: For those planning to attend HIMSS21: what is your #1 reason for going? I generously included an “NA – I’m not planning to attend” option for those instruction-ignorers who would be crestfallen at being denied the opportunity to click something.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME). CHIME is an executive organization that is dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs), chief medical information officers (CMIOs), chief nursing information officers (CNIOs), chief innovation officers (CIOs), chief digital officers (CDOs), and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 5,000 members in 56 countries plus two U.S. territories and over 150 healthcare IT business partners and professional services firms, CHIME and its three associations provide a highly interactive, trusted environment that enables senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate, exchange best practices, address professional development needs, and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and care in the communities they serve. Some CHIME things you can do: (a) check the membership requirements and join; (b) complete the CHIME Digital Health Most Wired survey; (c) consider attending the hybrid CHIME21 Summer Forum June 16-17, 2021; and (d) add a calendar placeholder for the inaugural Vive annual digital health industry event, produced by CHIME and HLTH, on March 6-9, 2022 in Miami Beach, FL. Thanks to CHIME for supporting HIStalk.

Webinars

April 20 (Tuesday) noon ET. “The Modern Healthcare CIO: Digital Transformation in a Post-COVID World.” Sponsors: RingCentral, Net Health. Presenters: Dwight Raum, CIO, Johns Hopkins Medicine; Jeff Buda, VP/CIO, Floyd Medical Center. A panel of CIOs from large health systems will discuss how the digital health landscape is changing and what organizations can do now to meet future patient needs. Moderator Jason James, CIO of Net Health, will guide the panelists through topics that include continuum of care and telemedicine, employer-provided care delivery, consumerization of healthcare, and sustainability and workforce management.

April 21 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Is Gig Work For You?” Sponsor: HIStalk. Presenter: Frank L. Poggio, retired health IT executive and active job search workshop presenter.  This workshop will cover both the advantages and disadvantages of being a gig worker. Attendees will learn how to how to decide if gig work is a good personal fit, find the right company, and protect themselves from unethical ones.

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

Sales

• Banner Health selects Symplr’s Phynd for centralized provider directory, search, and scheduling for its health plan.

COVID-19

CDC reports that over 50% of American adults have received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine, 32.5% have been fully vaccinated, and two-thirds of senior citizens have been fully vaccinated. All Americans over age 16 are now eligible to be vaccinated.

In India, New Delhi reports a record 25,500 COVID-19 cases in a 24-hour period as nearly one-third of people who are tested are found to be positive. The city of 20 million people has fewer than 100 available ICU beds and hospitals are running out of oxygen an drugs.

A New York Times review says that the government’s $800 million investment in convalescent plasma last year never paid off, as the celebrity pleas for donors and feel-good touting of the treatment in the pandemic’s early days ramped up use that yielded no evidence that it is effective. It  was used mostly in lower-income hospitals that couldn’t get better proven treatments, FDA narrowed its allowed use as negative studies accumulated, inventories are piling up, and some scientists want FDA to rescind its Emergency Use Authorization.

European travel restrictions are beginning to be lifted for vaccinated Americans, as France and Greece have said they will loosen them in the next week or two. In a related story, government officials warn that scammers are selling fake vaccination cards on Ebay and other site, made possible by the federal government’s decision to provide COVID-19 vaccination documentation on easily photocopied paper cards instead of using electronic systems. An HHS OIG agent says she is disturbed by the “flippant” attitude of people who could use phony vaccination cards to spread infection to high-risk environments such as nursing homes. Insiders say CDC was forced to give up on digital vaccination tracking and fall back on paper cards due to technical problems and time pressure. Vaccinations are recorded in state and local immunization registries, but no system allows business, schools, or other organizations to access those systems to spot a falsified paper card.

Other

A drug company sues a medical journal, its editors, and the authors of several recently published research papers, arguing that the articles were based on faulty research and thus disparaged its painkiller drug.

Sponsor Updates

• Cerner, Ellkay, Imprivata, InterSystems, Meditech, Optimum Healthcare IT, Quil, and The HCI Group sign on as sponsors of the inaugural Vive conference, which will take place March 6-9, 2022 in Miami Beach.
• Nuance ranks first among the top large vendors in a new KLAS report, “Vendor Performance in Response to the COVID-19 Crisis.”
• Pure Storage’s Pure-as-a-Service sees strong customer adoption across geographies, industry segments, and use cases.
• Redox releases a new podcast, “Epic and Judy Faulkner’s Legacy with Forbes’ Katie Jennings.”
• Besler features RxRevu CEO Carm Huntress in its latest podcast, “Achieving point-of-care price transparency.”
• In Sweden, Region Kronoberg selects Sectra’s medical imaging solution as a cloud service.
• Ospedale San Raffaele in Italy joins the TriNetX Network to expand its leadership position in gene therapy research.
• Vocera introduces its first Environmental, Social, and Governance Framework.
• Vyne Medical releases a new podcast, “The Future of Healthcare IT in a Post-COVID Era.”

Blog Posts

• Ingenious Med: Supporting a Comprehensive Productivity Optimization Program for a Top U.S. Physician Company (Ingenious Med)
• #Innovate4Outcomes: Empowering Patients to Adopt Support Programs and Further Positive Outcomes. (OptimizeRx)
• Consolidated Technology Platform Will Maximize Effectiveness of Bernalillo County Resource Re-Entry Center (Netsmart)
• Patient Thoughts on COVID-19 Vaccine and How to Encourage Patients to Get It (PatientBond)
• Solving the Patient Payment Equation (PMD)
• Strategies for Success in CMMI’s Most Innovative Models (Premier)
• 9 ways digital signs can improve your hospital (Sonifi Health)
• 3 Ways to Mitigate the Cost of a Breach (Sphere)
• Solving the critical test result workflow challenge with closed loop communication (Spok)
• Legacy Health delivers patient education via portal to enhance care and workflows (Krames)
• A Demonstration of Value: AHIP Report Shows Electronic Prior Authorization’s Real-World Impact (Surescripts)
• Why basic eligibility checks may be costing you (Waystar)
• How to Create the Ideal Tech Stack for Your Rehab Therapy Clinic (WebPT)
• How Effective Referral Management Minimizes Patient Leakage (Well Health)
• Optimizing the Management of Chronic Condition Patient Populations (Zynx Health)

Contacts

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

Weekender 4/16/21

Weekly News Recap

• Digital health vendor K Health, insurer Anthem, and investment firm Blackstone form Hydrogen Health.
• CHIME will integrate its Spring Forum into Vive, an annual health IT event it will co-host with the HLTH conference beginning next March.
• Mayo Clinic launches Remote Diagnostics and Management Platform.
• The VA reaffirms that it will not bring its second Cerner site live in Columbus, OH until it has completed a strategic review of the project and shared the results with Congress.
• AI solutions vendor Olive acquires Empiric Health, which offers AI-powered surgical analytics software.
• Google will conduct a user feedback study as it prepares to develop a consumer-facing health record tool similar to Apple’s Health Record app.
• Microsoft announces that it will acquire Nuance in a deal worth nearly $20 billion.
• HHS extends TeleTracking’s COVID-19 hospital operating data collection and reporting for a third six-month term.
• US News & World Report highlights the legal efforts of Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian to leave the 51-hospital Providence system, with a key issue being clinical standardization as enforced by configuration of Epic.

Best Reader Comments

I think this acquisition makes a lot of sense for Microsoft. The future is not on a mouse and keyboard, it’s voice control and augmented reality. There will be an exciting opportunity to integrate this with the Holo Lens which as far as I can tell is one of the more mature AR gadgets out there. When you pair Dragon + Holo Lens + Hey, Epic! and other types of integrations, you have the potential for a must-have product for certain types of providers. As others noted, this will be yet another reason for existing customers to adopt Azure and/or Azure AD. Azure AD identity integration is going to play a bigger role in healthcare consolidation than people realize. Managing healthcare user identities for external users and mergers is a PITA and Azure AD helps reduce the complexity quite a bit. Dragon can now bolt right on to that. (Elizabeth H. H. Holmes)

I would add that Cortana hasn’t been well received by the market, so picking Dragon’s voice rec is a nice cherry on top of the reasons you state. They may not plan to sell a lot of the standalone product, but adding underlying technology to their stack is appealing. The talent acquisition is also nice. (Jim)

If they are paying 14 times rev for Nuance AND they manage to get almost all the Nuance revenue into the Azure “bucket” AND revenue to Azure is more profitable than the rest of MSFT and bumps up overall market cap, can they mark this whole thing as a win by adding more to MSFTS market cap? (Matthew Holt)

Re: Hoag. A hospital in Orange County (with cash–rich patients who are willing to come up out of pocket to pay for healthcare) has more ability to consumerize healthcare and give patients every option and ultimately, deliver what the patients want. Providence has facilities that can’t do that. But does that really change the ‘standard’ of care? (ellemennopee87)

Raise your hand if you’d like to see the data use agreement for Google’s PHR (I say this while realizing I’ve turned over 90% of myself to them already). The portal is like the only thing about healthcare I enjoy. Seems like another PHR failure in the making. (Android user)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

Readers funded the Donors Choose teacher grant request of Ms. W in Washington, who asked for a microphone, drawing tablet, ring light, and phone video stand for creating online lessons for her elementary school class. She reported last winter, “Beginning the school year remotely was difficult, but thanks to your help, my students have been performing to their very best online. My science classes have become familiar with Microsoft Teams, and have been working with Class Notebook (a version of One Note) specifically for science. This program has allowed for easy access to and organization of class notes and activities. Implementation has been so successful that I plan on going paperless for the majority of class activities for years to come. Being able to provide my students with high quality recordings, in which multiple screens can be viewed simultaneously, has been a blessing this year. The audio and visual quality of the content I can deliver has improved immensely with these items, and has helped our English language learners as well as special needs students to succeed in this new environment. I can’t wait to share these tools with students once we are able to meet in person in the classroom.”

Montefiore Hospital (NY) implements sleep pods that allow frontline workers to relax and energize. The HOHM pods, which are reserved via a tablet app, offer a massage chair, a privacy curtain that blocks sound, and a charging station.

Police bodycam video captures officers shooting a patient dead in the ED of Mount Carmel St. Ann’s Hospital (OH). Miles Jackson, 27, struggled with officers who felt a gun in his pants that had been missed in an incomplete pat-down. Jackson said he would comply with commands to put his hands up but was scared the officers would shoot him, after which an officer took him down with a stun gun and he was then shot by multiple officers after his gun discharged. Westerville’s police chief says he has “concerns that warrant further review.” Jackson had been taken to the ED after being found unconscious of a suspected drug overdose in a car and was being arrested in the ED on outstanding warrants.

Police charge a 31-year-old South Florida Botox clinic nurse practitioner with anonymously calling two elderly women and convincing them to wire her $20,000 to help one of their relatives that had been injured. She was also charged with drug trafficking when the arresting officers found 170 pounds of marijuana in her apartment.

The local paper profiles LaVonne Smith (at left above), who just retired as IT director of Tomah Health (WI) after a 40-year career, 36 of which was spent in IT after she was drafted from the admissions department in 1985 to help implement the hospital’s first computer system. The health system went live on Epic in 2017.

In Case You Missed It

• News 4/16/21
• EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 4/15/21
• Readers Write: Mandatory Encounter Notifications Keep Physicians in the Care Huddle
• Readers Write: A Proactive Engagement Strategy is Key to Building Patient Relationships and Driving Outcomes and Experience
• News 4/14/21
• Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 4/12/21
• HIStalk Interviews Charlie Harp, CEO, Clinical Architecture
• Microsoft Acquires Nuance for $16 Billion
• Monday Morning Update 4/12/21

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 4/16/21

K Health, Blackstone Growth, Anthem to Partner on Technology Joint Venture to Advance More Affordable, High-Quality Healthcare

Digital health vendor K Health, insurer Anthem, and investment firm Blackstone form Hydrogen Health, which will use K Health’s AI technology to develop solutions for consumers, employers, and insurers.

Coding to Hide Health Prices from Web Searches Is Barred by Regulators

HHS tells hospitals to stop hiding their federally required pricing transparency information by adding website code to make it invisible to web searches.

CHIME And HLTH Announce Launch Of ViVE, The New Digital Health Industry Event

CHIME will integrate its Spring Forum into Vive, an annual health IT event it will co-host with the HLTH conference beginning next March in Miami Beach.

News 4/16/21

Top News

Mayo Clinic launches Remote Diagnostics and Management Platform, which offers AI-powered algorithms and care protocols to help clinicians deliver care remotely.

Mayo also formed two portfolio companies with partners to support its efforts: Anumana (digital sensor diagnostics analysis) and Lucem Health (connecting remote patient telemetry devices with algorithms and for integrating insights into clinical workflow).

The companies raised Series A funding rounds in conjunction with the announcement of $25.7 million and $6 million, respectively.

Mayo Clinic Platform President John Halamka, MD says he expects its work to generate other algorithm companies as society moves from episodic care to continuous care using signals, data, and AI.

In unrelated news, John is wearing a blue dress shirt, tie, and round black glasses in the video above, sporting some new personal branding after decades of the black jacket / black tee combo with wire frames. 

Reader Comments

From History Reader: “Re: healthcare IT company names. I’ve been trying to remember the one named after a lizard and I’m stumped.” That would be Axolotl, the HIE platform vendor that was acquired in 2011 by UnitedHealth Group-owned Ingenix, which was later rolled up with several other divisions under the Optum nameplate. It was one of my favorite names and made for some fun HIMSS conference giveaways.

From Clicker Quicker: “Re: sponsors. What have you changed to attract the support of new companies?” I haven’t changed much of anything in my nearly 18 years of writing HIStalk. I just keep showing up, which in life is often enough to beat the competition. But health IT has a lot of new, well-funded digital health players who are anxious to gain a toehold and thus come a-calling. The herd-thinning that I would have predicted a year ago due to vendor consolidation was more than offset by this creation of new digital health subcategories. I haven’t seen this much vendor activity since the early days of Meaningful Use, when the investment amounts featured fewer zeroes.

From WebinAren’ts: “Re: webinars. How do sites guarantee the number of attendees? Been wondering that.” Beats me, since attendee count will be driven by the topic, abstract, presenters, and the annoyance level of the signup page, none of which are controlled by whoever is promoting the webinar. Although a chief marketing officer told me once that they advertised with an organization that guaranteed high number of leads, drew a tiny fraction of that as webinar attendees, and then were just given a bunch of random names that had been dumped from a different database to make up the difference, which hardly counts as a lead.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Sonifi Health. The Sioux Falls, SD-based personalized patient engagement company offers the technology and service platform for a smarter hospital: interactive TV with a mobile solution, streaming to patient room TVs using personal devices and subscriptions, digital whiteboards with staff information and patient goals, EHR-powered digital door signs, digital signage for public or staff spaces, and an interactive patient status board. These provide a better patient experience, deliver patient education, and improve quality and safety. The company provides a complete solution, using the client’s existing infrastructure to deliver a white-label solution to hospitals, cancer centers, ambulatory clinics, outpatient surgery centers, post-acute rehab facilities, and senior living / LTC facilities in serving 500 million end users annually around the world with 600 employees, 200 field technicians, and a 24/7 US-based call center. Clients include Stanford Health Care, University of Florida Health, Cedars Sinai, Texas Health Resources, and Adventist Health. The company offers integration with 30 systems, including Epic, Cerner, Meditech, Hillrom, Healthwise, Vocera, Cbord, Staywell, and Elsevier. Thanks to Sonifi Health for supporting HIStalk.

I found this Sonifi Health overview on YouTube.

Webinars

April 20 (Tuesday) noon ET. “The Modern Healthcare CIO: Digital Transformation in a Post-COVID World.” Sponsors: RingCentral, Net Health. Presenters: Dwight Raum, CIO, Johns Hopkins Medicine; Jeff Buda, VP/CIO, Floyd Medical Center. A panel of CIOs from large health systems will discuss how the digital health landscape is changing and what organizations can do now to meet future patient needs. Moderator Jason James, CIO of Net Health, will guide the panelists through topics that include continuum of care and telemedicine, employer-provided care delivery, consumerization of healthcare, and sustainability and workforce management.

April 21 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “Is Gig Work For You?” Sponsor: HIStalk. Presenter: Frank L. Poggio, retired health IT executive and active job search workshop presenter.  This workshop will cover both the advantages and disadvantages of being a gig worker. Attendees will learn how to how to decide if gig work is a good personal fit, find the right company, and protect themselves from unethical ones.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

UnitedHealth Group posts Q1 results: revenue up 9%, adjusted EPS $5.31 versus $3.72, beating Wall Street estimates for both. The company’s market capitalization is $369 billion.

Boston-based 1upHealth raises $25 million in a Series B funding round. The 70-employee company offers a FHIR API solution for patient and provider connectivity for payers (EHR integration, population health analytics, member data access); providers (aggregating data  from external sources, clinical trials support, patient-facing applications, payer integration, and medical research); and app developers (EHR-connected SMART tools, cost billing, and clinical trials recruitment).

NantHealth obtains $137 million in financing from existing investors. NH shares dropped 12% on the news, valuing the Patrick Soon-Shiong-controlled company at $289 million.

Jay Parkinson, MD, MPH announces in a blog post that Crossover Health shut down Sherpaa — the virtual primary care and technology company he founded and then sold to Crossover two years ago — at the end of last year. Parkinson has left Crossover, saying that he was too early with Sherpaa, he is burned out, and he is frustrated at seeing newer companies use his ideas to raise large amounts of investor cash. I’m not sure what happened to Hello Health and Myca, EHR-related vendors with which he was once associated.

The Santa Barbara, CA newspaper profiles local tech firm Evidation Health, whose platform monitors a user’s health data to send nudges. The company’s most recent funding round values it at more than $1 billion. The company lists five co-founders among its eight-member executive team, which is surely a record.

Sales

• University of California Health extends its Sectra Enterprise Imaging solution with VNA, universal viewer, and worklist manager.
• St. Joseph’s Healthcare Hamilton selects Spok Go for secure digital communication and will collaborate with the company as a development partner, initially to optimize on-call scheduling.  
• Edward-Elmhurst Health will work with Impact Advisors on innovation, business process optimization, and information services. Both organizations are headquartered in Naperville, IL.
• SIU Medicine chooses Emerge ChartScout, ChartSearch, and ChartGenie to create a consolidated, searchable database that harmonizes disparate EMR data.

People

Loyal promotes Steph Geissinger to chief customer officer.

I missed this earlier: SOC Telemed promoted President John Kalix to CEO went it went public via SPAC late last year. Former CEO and long-time industry investor Steve Shulman moved to board chair.

Senior independent living company InnovAge hires Alice Raia, MSM (Kaiser Permanente) as CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Digital health vendor K Health, insurer Anthem, and investment firm Blackstone form Hydrogen Health, which will use K Health’s AI technology to develop solutions for consumers, employers, and insurers. K Health co-founder and CEO Allon Bloch, MBA will additionally serve as the new company’s CEO.

EClinicalWorks announces implementation of its Vaccine Administration Management Solution, which is supporting COVID-19 vaccine administration in 29 states, with online appointment booking, patient reminders, contactless check-in, documentation, data transmission to vaccine registries, and inventory management.

Investor-owned hospital operator LifePoint Health and patient management software vendor Eon sign a five-year deal to develop Healthy Person Program, which will focus on early disease detection, timely notification to providers of findings and patients, and improved patient follow-up, starting with aortic aneurysms. Eon emphasizes use of its computational linguistics models to capture incidental findings, which it says is the #1 way to boost hospital earnings by keeping patients within the system. Founder and co-CEO Akrum Al-Zubaidi, DO is a pulmonologist who founded lung cancer screening technology company Matrix Analytics in 2014, which was renamed Eon in 2018. 

CHIME, which recently ended its participation in the HIMSS conference, partners with the HLTH conference to offer Vive, an annual “reimagined health technology event” whose first conference will be held March 6-9, 2022 in Miami Beach. It will offer digital health innovation content, CHIME’s Spring Forum, an exhibit hall, and a matchmaking program that pairs potential buyer attendees with vendors. Some of the 18 title sponsors are also exhibiting at HIMSS21, but notable companies that will be only at Vive, at least according to HIMSS21’s exhibitor list so far, include Allscripts, Cerner, and Meditech. In an interesting adjacency of time and space, Vive will convene eight days before and 230 miles away from HIMSS22 in Orlando.

Government and Politics

The VA reaffirms that it will not bring its second Cerner site live in Columbus, OH until it has completed a strategic review of the project and shared the results with Congress, following concerns from users at the first site in Spokane, WA.

HHS tells hospitals to stop hiding their federally required pricing transparency information by adding website code to make it invisible to web searches.

COVID-19

CDC reports that 48% of the eligible US population has received at least one dose of COVID-19 vaccine and 30% are fully vaccinated. US cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are trending up.

CDC’s independent immunization review group declines to make a recommendation on the use of Johnson & Johnson’s COVID-19 vaccine, which was paused this week after reports that six people developed severe clotting problems shortly after being vaccinated. Some committee members said they didn’t have enough information to make a recommendation or to suggest that the vaccine’s use be limited to certain populations. Experts say the group’s lack of action not only leaves J&J’s vaccine on the sidelines for what could be weeks, it also impacts vulnerable populations for whom the one-shot vaccine is their best hope of gaining COVID-19 protection. Still, observers expect the delay to last just a few days, with the more significant damage being vaccine hesitancy that is specific to the J&J product.

Moderna plans to make a COVID-19 vaccine booster shot available by fall, offering a third shot that will protect people from variants going into the fall and winter season.

Other

CHIME opens its Digital Health Most Wired survey. My early experience of multiple years of participating in (and winning) Most Wired before CHIME took it over in 2017 was that it was a kind of breezy and thus not something I found particularly brag-worthy, but a look at the 44-page, highly in-depth survey instrument shows that earning a high level of certification is a bigger deal than before.

Harvard Pilgrim, Kaiser Permanente, and Priority Health disclose enrollment numbers for their lower-cost, telehealth-first plans. Harvard Pilgrim sold one group account out of 60 pitched, KP of the Mid-Atlantic States expects 1,000 members, and Priority Health enrolled 5,000 members, 2,000 of whom switched from another of its policies. They note the challenges involved in offering telehealth-first health insurance:

• It may not be a good choice for people with limited mobile device access or poor Internet connectivity or data plans that can’t support video visits.
• Users need to be technically comfortable with updating apps and clinically comfortable taking their medical visits online.
• Healthcare.gov and other marketplaces don’t provide enough space to fully describe how telehealth-first plans work.
• New enrollees need to be contacted to make sure they understand what their plan involves and how to choose a new PCP.
• Health plans that try to launch their own telehealth service will be slowed down by individual state licensing for insurers and providers.
• Harvard Pilgrim and Priority Health partnered with Doctor On Demand, while KP developed its own program using its existing technologies and telehealth-comfortable clinicians.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a podcast titled “Strengthening Patient Engagement During a Pandemic.”
• Ingenious Med publishes a new white paper, “How to Minimize Physician Burnout and Optimize Revenues: Lessons Learned from the Pandemic.”
• CHIME honors Ellkay CIO Marc Probst with its “CIO of the Year” award.
• Change Healthcare stockholders approve the previously announced combination with UnitedHealth Group’s OptumInsight.
• Healthcare Triangle partners with CareTech Solutions to offer Meditech customers hosting solutions and managed services.
• Everbridge wins 2021 Comparably Awards for best company outlook, best global culture, best sales team, and best place to work.
• Healthcare Growth Partners publishes “Health IT Q1 2021 Insights.”
• Healthwise partners with accounting and advisory firm Frazier & Deeter in a pilot program that will help HITRUST improve its assessment process.
• Healthcare IT Leaders, BD, and TrackMySolutions delivered COVID-19 testing for sports marketing firm IMG during Masters week.
• Impact Advisors will partner with nearby Edward-Elmhurst Health on innovation and transformation, business process optimization, and information services.
• LexisNexis Risk Solutions wins several Cybersecurity Excellence Awards.
• Meditech places among the top large vendors in a new KLAS report, “Vendor Performance in Response to the COVID-19 Crisis.”
• Microsoft adds NextGate’s Enterprise Master Patient Index to its Azure Marketplace.

Blog Posts

• Bring Your Own Device: The Evolution of Patient Engagement (GetWellNetwork)
• New Software Eliminates Guess Work in Troubleshooting and Documenting Remote Worker Issues (Goliath Technologies)
• Survey Says: 3 Purchase Strategies for Healthcare Communication Solutions (Halo Health)
• Benefits of Virtual Go-Live Support (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• The Evil Side of NPM (Health Data Movers)
• The Truth About the COVID-19 Vaccine: Separating Fact from Fiction (Healthwise)
• In Healthcare, Digital Identity is More Important than Ever (Imprivata)
• Study: Clinical AI Reduces All-Cause Hospital Readmissions by 25% in 6 Months (Jvion)
• Building Consumer Relationships with Your Vaccine Rollout: A Conversation with Banner Health & Ochsner Lafayette General (Kyruus)
• Why is interoperability so important for healthcare organizations? (Lyniate)
• Improve Operating Room Operations with a Revitalized Perioperative Solution (Medhost)
• HCCs: Caring for At-Risk Patients Can Impact Your Bottom Line (Medicomp Systems)
• How Southern Ohio Medical Center uses Meditech Expanse Toolkits to provide safe, high-quality care (Meditech)
• How to Market Your PT Practice Offline (MWTherapy)

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 4/15/21

It’s a good day to be a clinical informaticist when you can put your knowledge to work and try to help people understand complex clinical topics. The recent pause in administration of the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine made today one of those days.

I put on my statistics hat and was able to deliver a quick educational webinar for one of my clients, helping the team understand the reason for the pause and what is being done to better understand the situation. The reported blood clots are cerebral venous sinus thromboses and present with low platelets in addition to the clot. They have occurred in women aged 18 to 48 within two weeks of vaccination, so we should be able to look at administration data to watch those patients more closely. Should our clinicians suspect one of these potentially vaccine-related clots, the treatment is significantly different than that for a “regular” blood clot, so we’re starting to talk about clinical decision support tools to make sure physicians check vaccine status before giving a potentially harmful drug. For my family members who don’t understand what I do when I’m not “being a regular doctor,” this is it.

When I sat for my clinical informatics board exam in 2014, a significant part of the potential content was in the realm of public health informatics. If we’ve learned nothing else during the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that shortchanging funding for public health hasn’t done anyone much good. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released annual sexually transmitted disease surveillance data for 2019, and for the sixth straight year, diseases are at an all-time high. More than 2.5 million cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea, and syphilis were reported. Although the CDC data is older, we definitely saw a boom in STDs in 2020 especially during the initial lockdown phases of the pandemic.

It’s clear that “six feet apart” means different things to different people, but it’s always good to see the visits, because it means people are being tested and treated. People underestimate the impact of STDs and their unintended consequences. While syphilis is up 74% from 2015, congenital syphilis (passed from infected mothers to their babies) is up 279%. Understanding the power of data is a big part of what I do and I’m glad to be in clinical informatics.

Since the recent requirement to make hospital pricing data public, there have been allegations that organizations are using code to block pricing data from appearing in web searches. The House Energy and Commerce committee sent a letter earlier this week to the Department of Health and Human Services, asking for strict enforcement of the price transparency rules. The letter includes a citation from a recent analysis that shows more than 3,000 sites using search-blocking code. Given competing priorities, it remains to be seen how quickly any enforcement efforts will unfold. I’ve seen news stories where physicians who violate federal controlled substance rules are hauled out of their offices by the DEA, so seeing hospital administrators being escorted out in handcuffs would make my day.

With the recent regulations requiring release of visit notes to patients, a corresponding article in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association was timely. It focused on patient and family experiences after identifying what they perceive as serious errors in visit notes. The data was from a 2016 survey of patients at two academic medical centers, and although it wasn’t recent, many of the principles likely still apply today. The authors found that among more than 8,000 patients who read at least one note, 17% identified at least one mistake. More than 40% of those patients felt the mistake was serious, and 56% contacted their providers. Barriers to reporting perceived mistakes included not knowing how to do so and concerns about being thought of as a troublemaker. Study participants also had the opportunity to provide suggestions and recommendations for how medical centers can partner with patients and families.

Some of the suggestions included making sure that the reporting process is clear; reassuring patients that there will be no retribution; making reporting templates available; normalizing the idea of patient feedback; and otherwise making feedback easier for patients. Other suggestions included creating some kind of sign-off that would show that a patient had read and approved a note, or the ability for patients to easily add an addendum to a note. Given the resistance of physicians and healthcare organizations to releasing notes in the first place, I think it will be some time before there is support for the latter suggestions. Organizations are much more likely to make the reporting process clear or create reporting templates before they will let patients write in their own charts.

I just finished reading a book about women doing unspeakable and unladylike things. “Women in White Coats” by Olivia Campbell chronicles the lives of some of the first women physicians in the US and the UK during the 1800s. The first female medical students had to endure all kinds of harassment, including being pelted with mud and physically blocked from attending class by their male classmates. Even after earning degrees and entering practice, they encountered landlords who refused to rent office space to them because it was felt their actions were unseemly. Despite the energy spent simply enduring the experience, early women physicians brought new perspectives to medicine, including a focus on public health, hygiene, and educating mothers on how to keep their families healthy. I enjoyed the read and it definitely added perspective to my career, especially since my medical school class was the first in my institution to have more women students than men and my residency class was all women.

Rideshare service Uber has teamed up with PayPal, Walgreens, and the Local Initiatives Support Group to create the Vaccine Access Fund. The goal is providing free transportation for patients who don’t have the ability to get to a vaccine site. Funds will be directed to local nonprofits who are working to ensure vaccine access.

I have some friends working towards this locally and there are still significant barriers for some patients, including long shifts at work and lack of paid time off. There are also plenty of people juggling multiple jobs and that certainly doesn’t make it any easier. I’ve made jokes about this, but it’s starting to sound more like something that could actually work: a hybrid food truck / vaccine delivery platform. It would be an ideal way to raise interest and could be routed to a different workplace every day. Throw out some lawn chairs and a couple of pop-up shelters and your clients can enjoy sliders while completing their 15-minute observation period. Who’s with me?

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 4/15/21

NantHealth Secures $137 Million Financing Package

Analytics and technology vendor NantHealth, part of Patrick Soon-Shiong’s NantWorks group of companies, raises $137 million from existing investors.

VA vows to pause EHR rollout at future sites until strategic review is complete

VA officials promise members of the House Veterans Affairs Technology Modernization Subcommittee that the agency will not move forward with further EHR go-lives until a strategic review of its Cerner-based project is completed.

This Startup Raised $25 Million To Liberate Your Healthcare Data In The Cloud

Health data interoperability startup 1UpHealth raises $25 million in a Series B funding round.

Mayo Clinic Launches New Technology Platform Ventures to Revolutionize Diagnostic Medicine

Mayo Clinic launches two new AI-focused companies to support its newly developed Remote Diagnostics and Management Platform.

Readers Write: Mandatory Encounter Notifications Keep Physicians in the Care Huddle

Mandatory Encounter Notifications Keep Physicians in the Care Huddle
By Samit Desai, MD

Samit Desai, MD is chief medical officer of Audacious Inquiry of Baltimore, MD.

Primary care physicians (PCPs) are often compared to the quarterback of a football team, as they understand all of the players involved. With this knowledge, PCPs can execute a proper game plan for their patients and direct them along the right routes in the care continuum process.

But imagine a quarterback trying to run the offense without any knowledge of what yard line the team is on. That’s often the situation PCPs face when they do not have up-to-date information about their patients.

With accurate, real-time information—such as when patients are admitted to the hospital or discharged—PCPs can make the right play calls to provide more efficient care, keep patients healthy, and reduce hospital readmissions. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) recognizes the importance of these “electronic encounter notifications” to such an extent the agency took the extraordinary step of issuing a mandate: hospitals must make admission, discharge, and transfer data available to patient-identified PCPs and other practitioners, as a condition of participation (CoP) in Medicare and Medicaid. Hospitals must meet this specific e-notification requirement by April 30, 2021.

This is good news, although it is not a simple process. I suspect many hospitals wonder if this CoP notification ruling is simply another administrative hurdle without impact. The truth is that accurate encounter notifications will improve care for patients and keep PCPs in the loop, but hospitals need to prepare now.

CMS has valued this information-sharing process and has encouraged notifications and follow up for years, including through the creation of the TCM Billing Code. These notifications, plus provider outreach to patients that can be as simple as a follow-up call, can help reduce readmissions, which in turn lowers costs for everyone. As the industry continues its steady transition to value-based care, there’s been a greater focus from government, health plans, and providers when it comes to providing access to patient data for improved care coordination. PCPs and providers are better informed through more opportunities to walk through patient conditions, debrief on procedures, conduct medication reconciliation, and coordinate any necessary next steps and communications with specialists.

These notification requirements are new for some hospitals, and compliance is not as simple as flipping a switch. Hospitals are burdened with obstacles and must account for other priorities, including updating registration workflows, supporting new EMR configurations, and preparing for regulatory audits.

To meet these challenges and remain eligible to participate in Medicare and Medicaid, hospitals are increasingly looking for an experienced partner who can help navigate federal regulations and provide the technical capabilities required to deliver effective encounter notifications. For the CoP notification requirement to serve its intended purpose, hospitals should evaluate the options available and look for services that support patient-asserted and provider-attributed alerts.

Transitions of care are among the most crucial moments for patients, and we cannot afford to let anyone fall through the cracks. These new CoP requirements are an encouraging development and will ensure that these critical care coordination technologies are available to patients nationwide.

When hospitals and other providers work from the same playbook and share real-time encounter notifications, patients will benefit from better care coordination, tailored follow ups, and improved health outcomes.