Monday Morning Update 6/24/24

Top News

A Texas federal court sides with the AHA, Texas Hospital Association, and two health systems in ruling that HHS does not have the authority to invoke HIPAA to ban the use of web tracking tools by providers.

The plaintiffs said in their lawsuit that HHS had issued an unlawful rule that masqueraded as guidance.

The judge specifically rejected HHS’s argument that website tracking data – which doesn’t identify an individual and can’t easily be used to do so – is individually identifiable health information that is protected by HIPAA.

Reader Comments

From Fact Checker: “Re: value of digital health. I see that the survey was done by a ‘creative market research agency, and their methodology was equally creative – they used an online survey of 56 health insurance executives who are involved with digital health. Of course they are going to say that customers of the company are pleased with the newfound strengths of digital health, or otherwise, they would be out of a high-paying job. They should spend more time fixing or eliminating the prior auth process rather than contracting for self-congratulatory surveys.” Industry executive surveys that ask about what they are using or how users / customers like it are prone to bias, given that the people who authorized or oversee the software they bought would be ill-advised to say anything negative and thus implicate themselves in faulty decision-making. They have nothing to gain and everything to lose by spouting off gripes, even ones where they aren’t named as a source. There’s not much value in warning people to avoid making the same mistake you did.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Most poll respondents don’t see the threat of government penalties as a way to improve healthcare cybersecurity. Reader National Geographic posted an analogy involving gazelles running from cheetahs and then finished with an even stronger one related to pirates:

Did you know that maritime piracy peaked in 2010 with 445 attacks? In 2022, there were 115 attacks. Many factors have contributed to the steep decline, including navy involvement, increased security, and targeting of originating countries. Oddly, no one suggested shooting holes in the hulls of the victims as an effective deterrence.

New poll to your right or here: should state or federal government require review and/or approval of provider-related private equity transactions? We allowed for-profit companies to by whatever healthcare assets they want, so do we let the status quo ride, draw the line at PE firms, or tighten laws on any for-profit company buying a hospital or practice?

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Augmedix. Augmedix (Nasdaq: AUGX) empowers clinicians to connect with patients by liberating them from administrative burden through the power of ambient AI, data, and trust. The platform transforms natural conversations into organized medical notes, structured data, and point-of-care notifications that enhance efficiency and clinical decision support. Incorporating data from millions of interactions across all care settings, Augmedix collaborates with hospitals and health systems to improve clinical, operational, and financial outcomes. Thanks to Augmedix for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s an intro video for Augmedix.

Webinars

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

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

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Sharecare, which went public via a SPAC merger in July 2021 at a $4 billion valuation, will be acquired and taken private by investment firm Altaris at a price of around $500 million.

Kaiser-created value-based care organization Risant Health will acquire North Carolina-based Cone Health as its second health system after Geisinger. Cone Health will retain its brand, board, and leadership team.

Philips Respironics will cut 300 manufacturing jobs in western Pennsylvania and relocate 500 workers at its Pittsburgh headquarters to nearby plants, two months after the company was hit with an FDA consent decree for selling sleep apnea machines and ventilators that contained toxic foam. The Department of Justice is continuing its investigation into whether the company knew about the problem years before its massive recall, which would subject it to criminal charges. Philips bought Respironics, which invented the modern CPAP device, in 2008. 

Change Healthcare will begin notifying individuals who were affected by its ransomware attack in late July. Andrew Witty, CEO of parent company UnitedHealh Group, previously estimated that up to one-third of Americans may have had their data compromised.

The Russian hacker group that launched a ransomware attack on UK-based pathology provider Synnovis – which disrupted operations at several London hospitals – publishes 400 GB of stolen data after its $50 million ransom demand was not met.

Sponsor Updates

• Health Data Movers releases a new “Quick Hits” podcast, “Transforming Healthcare IT with Crystal Broj.”
• Nordic releases a new “Designing for Health” podcast, “Interview with Joshua Reischer, MD.”
• Waystar will exhibit at the EClinicalWorks Dallas Day Show June 26.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a video titled “How Top Health Systems Are Using GenAI to Wow Employees.”

Black Book Research publishes the results of its 2024 RCM user survey. The following HIStalk Sponsors have achieved top rankings:

• Waystar – Inpatient hospital claims management solutions / End-to-end RCM software, large hospital chains, systems, and IDNs / End-to-end RCM software, large inpatient facilities and academic medical centers / Physician clearinghouse services, five to 10 practitioners.
• MRO – Release of information and secure provider data exchange.
• Inovalon – Provider RCM intelligence and analytics solutions.
• FinThrive – Chargemaster and price transparency solutions / Provider revenue/charge integrity and billing compliance solutions / End-to-end RCM outsourcing, community hospitals 101-250 beds.
• TruBridge – End-to-end RCM software, small/rural/critical access hospital chains, systems, and IDNs / Patient accounting systems, community hospitals.
• Availity – Physician clearinghouse services, 26+ practitioners.
• Symplr – Spend management solutions.
• QGenda – Nurse/clinician staff scheduling solutions.
• RLDatix – Financial governance and risk management solutions.
• CereCore – RCM IT infrastructure and tech support services.

Blog Posts

• How healthcare leaders can turn the burnout problem into an opportunity (Wolters Kluwer Health)
• Four EVV Challenges and How Addressing Them Can Improve Care and Operations (Netsmart)
• Best practices in enterprise care management for patient-centered care excellence (Nordic)
• Top Challenges for CNIOs: Governance, Priorities, and More (PerfectServe)
• From Aspiration to Achievement: Stacia Fredericks’ Educational Journey with the Assistance of the QGenda/AACN Nursing Scholarship (QGenda)
• Key takeaways from Snowflake’s 2024 Data Cloud Summit (Redox)
• How to Know It’s Time for a Security Best Practices Risk Assessment (CereCore)
• The List of Therapeutic Alternatives Makes Everyone Happy (Surescripts)
• Top Metrics for a Healthcare Quality Management Dashboard (Symplr)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 6/21/24

Prior Authorization Platform Humata Health Closes $25M Investment

Prior authorization technology vendor Humata Health raises a $25 million investment.

Change Healthcare to start notifying customers who had data exposed in cyberattack

Change Healthcare begins notifying hospitals, payers, and other customers that they may have had patient information exposed in a February ransomware attack, and will begin notifying individuals in late July.

ARPA-H enters $19M contract with Palantir for artificial intelligence, data software

HHS agency ARPA-H — the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health — will use Palantir software to support its healthcare R&D efforts.

Scaling maternal care that works

Virtual pregnancy and newborn care provider Pomelo Health raises $46 million in Series B funding.

News 6/21/24

Top News

An AMA physician survey finds that nearly 25% believe that prior authorization processes have caused a serious adverse event.

Two-thirds of respondents don’t believe that PA decision criteria are evidence-based. 

Nearly all of the respondents believe that prior authorization work increases physician burnout, with the average physician dealing with 43 PA requests per week that require 12 hours of physician and staff time.

One-fourth of respondents say their requests are often or always denied, while most believe that PA increases overall utilization as patients are forced to try ineffective treatments or to schedule more appointments because of PA-caused delays.

Reader Comments

From Former Nordic Exec: “Re: Nordic. I haven’t seen you report on the lawsuit that continues to impact the company’s leadership team.” I missed this item, although I admit that it doesn’t clear my interest hurdle. John Distefano sued Nordic Consulting Partners and now-retired CEO James Costanzo in February 2023, claiming that Nordic stole his software idea after he contracted with the company to develop and monetize it. The issue is murky because the parties signed various agreements as contractors and then with Distefano as an employee, which gives the company rights to anything an employee creates. Distefano created Wellward, which creates care plans from disconnected health and consumer information. The legal documents I’m able to view – as a litigation illiterate who doesn’t subscribe to PACER or other services – don’t paint a strong case, especially since it doesn’t seem that Nordic ever did anything with the software. I wouldn’t consider this item newsworthy unless a court rules against the company and mandates a big payout, nor would it seem to warrant a lot of executive concern. 

Webinars

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

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

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Lifespan will rename itself to Brown University Health as part of a seven-year, $150 million Brown University investment in the health system.

Prior authorization technology vendor Humata Health raises a $25 million investment. Founder and CEO Jeremy Friese, MD, MBA, was co-founder and CEO at Verata Health. That company was acquired by now-defunct Olive AI in December 2020. Friese formed Humata Health to buy back the Verata PA assets from Olive in its wind-down.

Sales

• Deaconess Health System will provide 24×7 urgent care in all 50 states via virtual visits from KeyCare, which offers patients access from Epic MyChart. 
• HHS agency ARPA-H — the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health — will use Palantir software to support its healthcare R&D efforts.

Announcements and Implementations

An EY survey of 56 health insurance executives finds that most believe that member experience has become more personalized — partly due to mobile apps, member portals, and telehealth – and member satisfaction increases when they have access to their own information. Most respondents tout the value of medical device wearables. The majority believe that digital health solutions can help reduce costs, but few of them have seen ROI.

Government and Politics

California’s attorney general co-sponsors proposed legislation that would allow require the office’s approval to complete private equity and hedge fund transactions in healthcare. The law could upend the business model that is known as Captive Professional Corporation or Friendly PC model, in which a clinician forms a professional corporation for billing but contracts with an outside company to provide services, thus avoiding conflicts with state laws that address the corporate practice of medicine. The issue is getting significant exposure in the investment and digital health communities through the reporting of Christina Farr, who believes that the legislation would have a major impact on digital health vendors.

Privacy and Security

The Russian hackers who launched a ransomware attack against UK-based pathology services vendor Synnovis have demanded a $50 million payment.

Other

Bizarre: a doctor and former elected official in Kenya who became a billionaire by opening hospitals sees his hospitals and his personal mansion set for the auction block after he is accused of using the hospitals as a front for his involvement with an international organ smuggling syndicate.

A food vlogger’s video titled “The Most Expensive Restaurant in America” draws millions of views, as Trigg Ferrano parodies his hospital stay. I wouldn’t deem it particularly clever or funny, but I feel that way for most YouTube videos whose goal seems to give people yet another way to waste time. I imagine it’s worse on Insta or TikTok, which I don’t use and haven’t installed.

Sponsor Updates

• Surescripts will implement the NCPDP SCRIPT Standard Version 2023011, Real-Time Prescription Benefit v13, and Formulary and Benefit v60 standards upgrades following publication of the CMS final rule.
• AvaSure hosts its Chief Nursing Executives Advisory Board in Nashville to share best practices for leveraging virtual care delivery models.
• Vyne Medical adds FormUSign, a new tool for automating electronic forms, to its Trace data workflow platform.
• Ellkay publishes a new customer success story featuring Lehigh Valley Health Network.
• Findhelp announces that benefits screening platform and case management system vendor Single Stop will add Findhelp’s hundreds of thousands of locations to its community resources map.
• CereCore will partner with FinThrive to deliver Revenue Cycle Management Technology Adoption Model (RCMTAM) consulting and advisory services to providers.
• Optimum Healthcare IT publishes a new case study titled “Epic Go-Live Success: Navigating a Cyber Outage at Guthrie Lourdes Hospital.”
• RLDatix CEO Jeff Surges will speak at the HFMA Annual Conference next week.
• FinThrive joins the Meditech Alliance Program, giving Meditech Expanse end users access to its Claims Manager and Access Coordinator Insurance Verifier solutions.
• Linus Health announces recent industry recognitions for its efforts to develop better tools for assessing cognitive function.
• MRO CEO Jason Brown wins EY’s Entrepreneur of the Year 2024 Greater Philadelphia Award.

Blog Posts

• New Five9 Data: AI in CX – It is not replacing humans (Five9)
• How a Continuous SOC Protects Healthcare Data (Fortified Health Security)
• Are You Confident in Your Health System’s Business Resilience? (Impact Advisors)
• Evaluating Impact of Medicare Cost Cap for Insulin on Patient Treatment (Inovalon)
• Medhost Q&A: Blue Ridge Medical Center’s Transition to Rural Emergency Hospital (Medhost)
• How ServiceNow Can Disrupt Healthcare – In a Good Way (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Surveillance Collaborative breaks new ground with Meditech’s predictive analytics solution (Meditech)
• CMS Final Rule: Physical Therapy Medicare Guidelines for 2024 and Updates (Net Health)

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 6/20/24

The team at Geeks for Geeks has published its list of the 50 most common passwords, as identified through security incidents. I’m not surprised by entries such as 123456, password, admin, or 111111, but I was surprised to see these: monkey, dragon, princess, whatever, starwars, and startrek. My favorite from the list is trustno1.

At my most recent visit with a physician who I see annually, the office didn’t have her schedule template built for the coming year. They promised to send me a postcard when they open her schedule, but could not give an estimate of when that might happen. I don’t have a lot of faith in mailed reminders and my schedule is chaotic, so I put an appointment on my own calendar to follow up. I would rather receive a patient portal message that would alert me to the ability to schedule, as well as the ability to just schedule it myself.

A recent healthcare consumer preference survey showed that while nearly 40% of patients would like to schedule appointments online, 22% reported that their provider doesn’t offer that option. The report also addresses why patients are choosing urgent care over primary care, which is good food for thought for those who are trying to figure out the best ways to deliver care in their communities.

Miami Today reports that after 16 years, Miami-Dade County has agreed to sell naming rights to a transit station. The Civic Center Metrorail Station has been purchased by the University of Miami Health System for $2.9 million over 20 years. Starting in July, the station will be known as UHealth Jackson Station. Proceeds of the sale will go to the county for transit-related projects. Jackson Health System, which is owned by the county, was part of the initiative to gain the county commission’s approval. In additional to the ongoing fee, UHealth will pay for updated signage with the new name at the station and at other locations across the Metrorail system. The agreement also allows installation of digital displays to share branded materials.

MIT Technology Review ran an article last week about a new safety tool for operating rooms.AI-enabled “black box” devices are intended to capture information about surgeries. The idea comes from the black boxes that are found in aircraft, which allow investigators to review captured data following crashes or significant flight events. For operating rooms, data capture happens through audio/video as well as data from anesthesia monitors. Several medical device companies are working in this space, but a Stanford University surgery professor is looking at the entire operating room environment, not just the procedure itself.

This approach raises questions about patient and staff privacy, as well as legal issues. Surgeons have refused to work where systems are present, and devices have reportedly been sabotaged. The data that is captured can be compared against surgical safety checklists and other standardized measures of surgical proficiency. To train the models, surgeons or highly-trained technicians label items and actions so that the system can learn.

I reached out to a couple of surgical colleagues for their opinions. One feels that the technology would have been better received a decade ago, because physicians have increasingly come to feel like they “have a target on their back” for any perceived irregularities in the hospital, from their tone of voice to their leadership style in the operating room.

Speaking of workers worried that they are being monitored, Wells Fargo recently terminated more than a dozen workers after concerns of “simulation of keyboard activity creating impression of active work.” I bought my first “mouse jiggler” more than a decade ago to prevent my laptop from going to sleep while I was seeing patients. My health system had a lockout if the unit was idle for more than 90 seconds, and no one in IT would listen to a family doc who tried to explain that most physical exams take more than that brief time. Also, that it was ridiculous to lock out the laptop when it was sitting in the exam room in my direct line of sight. I’ve had corporate laptops where the USB ports were disabled, so I’m a bit surprised if a USB device was the approach that was used by the employees versus something more exotic. Wells Fargo has zero tolerance for “unethical behavior,” according to a statement, and the employees in question worked in financial management units, resulting in the situation being disclosed in a filing with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

Pharmacy Practice News recently ran a piece on hospitals using smart speakers such as the Amazon Echo Dot in patient rooms. One installation allowed patients to ask questions about their medications while allowing the pharmacy team to communicate quickly with patients. Patient questions that are beyond the system’s standardized content can be converted to EHR messages that are delivered to pharmacy staff. The system is designed to accept various drug pronunciations that patients might use, which is great since there is often confusion around medication names.

In a deployment at Houston Methodist Hospital System, the system can also be used to help pharmacists quickly respond to orders for drugs used to reverse bleeding. The pharmacy-side device announces an urgent order and its notification ring flashes. Teams at the facility are looking into other uses for the device, including capture of patient-provider discussions.

I was a guest lecturer at a local residency program this week and enjoyed chatting with young physicians who were about to mark another year of training complete. The educational year traditionally runs from July 1 through June 30, and a couple of the attendees have precious few days left before they’ll be expected to work on their own. My presentation was on topics related to the business of managing a practice. Most questions were related to the role of private equity in healthcare. I wish my lecture had been scheduled a few days later, because when I arrived home, I found an email about the newly introduced Corporate Crimes Against Health Care Act of 2024. The bill was introduced in the US Senate and specifically addresses abuses that have occurred under private equity ownership of nursing homes, medical practices, hospitals, and other healthcare organizations.

The Act provides for increased transparency around changes in ownership such as mergers and acquisitions; criminal penalties for executives when abuses lead to the death of a patient; the ability of state attorneys general and the Justice Department to “claw back all compensation, including salaries, that is paid to private equity and portfolio company executives within a 10-year period before or after an acquired healthcare firm experiences serious, avoidable financial difficulties” due to “looting” by those executives. A press release from the bill’s co-sponsor, Senator Elizabeth Warren, specifically addresses the “private equity greed and mismanagement” that pushed Steward Health Care into bankruptcy.

What are your thoughts on reining in the role of private equity in healthcare? Will this bill become law? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 6/20/24

California plans to enlist AI to translate healthcare information

The state of California seeks bids for an AI system to translate health and social services documents and websites as a first draft for human review.

We must fix prior authorization to protect our patients

A majority of surveyed physicians say that prior authorizations contribute to burnout, while 24% report that PAs have led to serious adverse events for their patients.

UK Hospital Hackers Say They’ve Demanded $50 Million in Ransom

Pathology services vendor Synnovis faces a $50 million ransomware demand from the Qilin group.

SDSU researchers develop AI robot hoping to help those with mental health concerns

San Diego State University researchers develop an AI robot called Pepper that can detect emotions from live video analysis, allowing it to detect mental health issues and to provide insights to clinicians.

Healthcare AI News 6/19/24

News

Republican lawmakers criticize the FDA’s partnership with the Coalition for Health AI for testing healthcare AI products, raising concerns that CHAI’s members include Microsoft and Google as well as large health systems that are incubating their own AI-related businesses.

The state of California seeks bids for an AI system to translate health and social services documents and websites as a first draft for human review.

The American Society of Nuclear Cardiology joins the AMA’s effort to prohibit the use of AI by insurance companies to deny coverage based on medical necessity. AMA’s policy would require prior authorization requests to be reviewed by a physician who is trained in the same specialty as the requestor.

Business

Cancer genetic testing vendor Color Health is working with OpenAI to use GPT-4o to identify recommended tests and to create detailed workup plans for human review. The company expects to generate personalized care plans for 200,000 patients through the second half of 2024. 

Cognizant launches its first set of healthcare solutions that use Google Cloud’s AI technology, including workflows for appeals resolution, contract management, marketing content, and health plan shopping.

Patient-centered communications technology vendor CipherHealth announces AI summarization capability for its rounding toolkit.

Sweden-based startup Tandem Health raises a $9.5 million seed funding round with investors that included OpenAI and Deepmind. The company, which was founded less than a year ago and has 50 providers using its system in Sweden, provides a clinician copilot that can transcribe visits and create medical notes. It is looking for partners to help it expand in Europe.

Research

San Diego State University researchers develop an AI robot called Pepper that can detect emotions from live video analysis, allowing it to detect mental health issues and to provide insights to clinicians. The device, which was funded with a $5 million grant, is being reviewed by local hospitals.

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 6/19/24

Google’s Verily to offer GLP-1 drugs through Lightpath, its retooled chronic care app

Alphabet’s Verily will reportedly pivot – for the second time in two years – by retiring its chronic disease management app Onduo and moving to a new one called Lightpath, which will focus on AI-sprinkled diabetes treatment and issuing prescriptions for GLP-1 drugs.

HHAeXchange Acquires Cashé Software, Strengthening Homecare Operations for Thousands of Agencies and Individuals

Home care management solutions vendor HHAeXchange acquires Cashé Software, which offers homecare operations and billing software.

Talkiatry Secures $130M Series C Funding to Mainstream Value-Based Behavioral Health Care

Telepsychiatry services provider Talkiatry raises $130 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to $245 million.

News 6/19/24

Top News

Stat reports that Alphabet’s Verily will pivot – for the second time in two years – by retiring its chronic disease management app Onduo and moving to a new one called Lightpath, which will focus on AI-sprinkled diabetes treatment and issuing prescriptions for GLP-1 drugs.

Stat notes that selling weight loss prescriptions is quite a fall from Verily’s charter mission to “defeat Mother Nature” with moonshot ideas such as cancer detection, public health monitoring, and a smart contact lens.

Verily was launched in 2015 as part of Google X and raised $3.5 billion in funding.

Verily’s chairman, president, and CEO is Stephen Gillett, whose background is cybersecurity and executive stints with Best Buy and Starbucks.

Reader Comments

From Deadbeat Dasher: “Re: medical debt. This editorial says the credit reporting system shouldn’t punish Americans for getting sick.” Allow me to take the counterpoint to the article in asking, why shouldn’t medical debt continue to be included in credit reports?

• A lender should be able to see the total amount of debt that a consumer owes in assessing their ability and willingness to pay the new debt they request.
• Including medical debt on credit reports gives people an incentive to pay what they owe.
• Credit report omission argument is a convenient way to avoid addressing the real issues of out-of-control healthcare costs, provider billing errors, insurer foot-dragging, and lack of pricing transparency and the ability to shop around.
• On top of that, it’s really an indictment of the three credit reporting companies that don’t get paid for accuracy, keeping consumers happy, or responding to consumers who ask to have mistakes on their record fixed.
• My conclusion: omitting medical debt in credit reports is like excluding criminal history from background reporting using the reasoning that it is unfair, prejudiced, perhaps of limited predictive ability, and possibly erroneous without consumer recourse for correction. Hiding either type of information addresses the symptom, not the problems, and places companies at a disadvantage that make significant decisions based on the accuracy and completeness of consumer record. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Capital Rx. ‍Capital Rx is a full-service pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) and pharmacy benefit administrator (PBA), advancing our nation’s electronic healthcare infrastructure to improve drug price visibility and patient outcomes. As a Certified B Corp, Capital Rx is executing its mission through the deployment of JUDI, the company’s cloud-native enterprise health platform, and a Single-Ledger Model, which increases visibility and reduces variability in drug prices. JUDI connects every aspect of the pharmacy ecosystem in one efficient, scalable platform, servicing millions of members for Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial plans. Together with its clients, Capital Rx is reimagining the administration of pharmacy benefits and rebuilding trust in healthcare. Thanks to Capital Rx for supporting HIStalk.

I found this Capital Rx video on YouTube, titled “Meet JUDI — The Enterprise Health Platform For Commercial, Medicare & Medicaid Plans.”

Webinars

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

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

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Tempus AI, which specializes in precision medicine and intelligent diagnostics, raises $410 million in its IPO, giving it a valuation of $6 billion. Founder and CEO Eric Lefkofsky co-founded Groupon and remains its chairman.

Home care management solutions vendor HHAeXchange acquires Cashe Software, which offers homecare operations and billing software.

Sales

• Sage Memorial Hospital (AZ) will implement Sonifi Health’s interactive patient engagement technology when it opens later this year.
• Children’s Health Ireland selects Ascom’s Alerts and Notification Management System.
• Praia Health will use Clear’s identity verification capabilities within its patient-focused digital experience software for health systems.
• WakeMed (NC) will deploy Bamboo Health’s care coordination solutions.
• Virtual physical therapy provider Hinge Health will offer its members access to Upswing Health’s digital platform for musculoskeletal health.

People

AtlantiCare names Jordan Ruch, MBA (RWJBarnabas Health) as CIO.

Capital Rx hires Antonio Garcia Cueto, MBA (Eden Health) as CFO.

Acentra Health names Heather Adamson, MS (Integra Connect) as SVP of marketing.

Keith Belton (Symplr) joins Fluent Dental Market Insights as SVP of marketing.

Announcements and Implementations

Christus Health (TX) implements Abridge’s AI-powered clinical documentation software.

Health system-collective Truveta adds support for real-world evidence submissions to FDA.

Healthcare wearable safety technology vendor Canopy releases a wearable safety button and safety app for home health providers.

Government and Politics

New data from ONC finds that the number of hospitals that are routinely sharing health data grew from 28% in 2018 to 43% in 2023. Of those, 92% noted they had necessary clinical data available from outside providers at the bedside, improving continuity of care.

CMS will stop accepting new applications on July 12 for the advance payments program it set up in March to help providers impacted by the Change Healthcare ransomware attack. The program has made 4,722 advance payments totaling $717 million, and issued $2.55 billion in accelerated payments.

Healthcare privacy and policy experts Tina Grande, MHS and Deven McGraw, JD, MPH, LLM highlight in a Health Affairs editorial that entities are using interoperability technology and policies to seek patient data for non-treatment purposes. They say that companies are posing as providers or, in the case of law firms seeking malpractice information, as the patient themselves. They recommend these changes:

• Fund health information exchange to prevent participants from adopting business models that are based on selling de-identified data.
• Tighten rules for the business associates of organizations that aren’t their direct customer.
• Penalize data misuse with termination from the network, banning company officers from future health network participation, and imposing FTC fines for unfair trade practices.
• Create a safe harbor for trusted exchange participants which unknowingly provide data to a participant that misstates their intentions.
• Add a FAQ that describes how entities can decline to share data without violating information blocking regulations.
• Issue clearer guidance on non-treatment purposes.
• Extend health data privacy protections to entities that collect health information and share it with patients, which is not covered by HIPAA, and define expectations for obtaining patient consent and ID verification.

Privacy and Security

NHS England reports that London-area hospitals have had to cancel or reschedule 1,500 appointments and surgeries as a result of the June 3 ransomware attack on pathology services vendor Synnovis.

Other

A ProPublica report finds that “life coaches” are mostly unregulated compared to therapists, with no specified training, certification, or ethics pledge required. Anyone can hang out a life coach shingle, and some of those who do so are former therapists who got in professional trouble. A hotbed is Utah, which is known as the “fraud capital of the United States” because many multi-level marketing scammers are Latter-Day Saints who prey on other Mormons who trust them because of their religion.

Interesting: Wells Fargo fires more than a dozen work-from-home employees of its wealth and investment management business after finding that they were using widely available mouse-jiggling software to simulate work. Maybe they should have fired their managers for not being able to notice that they weren’t productive, but in fairness, that’s the case in every business that employs knowledge workers.

Sponsor Updates

• Waystar staff across the country celebrate the company’s Nasdaq debut.

The following HIStalk sponsors will exhibit at the HFMA Annual Conference June 24-27 in Las Vegas:

• AGS Health
• Alpha II
• Altera Digital Health
• Arcadia
• Availity
• CereCore
• FinThrive
• Inovalon
• MRO
• Nordic
• QGenda
• RLDatix
• TruBridge
• TrustCommerce, a Sphere Company
• VisiQuate
• Waystar
• Wolters Kluwer

Blog Posts

• Charge Capture and Reconciliation for Strong Revenue Cycle Management (CereCore)
• Encephalopathy Coding: Challenges and Solutions (AGS Health)
• Supply chain attacks: Understanding one of cybersecurity’s biggest threats (Altera Digital Health)
• What to Expect During an OCR Audit or Investigation and How to Prepare (Clearwater)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 6/18/24

Healthcare firm Concentra reveals quarterly revenue growth in IPO filing

Occupational healthcare provider Concentra files paperwork with the SEC for a $100 million IPO.

Raising the Bar on Interoperability – A Decade of Data Show that “Sometimes” Isn’t Good Enough

New data from ONC finds that the number of hospitals routinely sharing health data grew from 28% in 2018 to 43% in 2023.

US to shut advance payments program for Medicare providers hit by Change hack

CMS will on July 12 stop accepting new applications for the advance payments program it set up to help providers impacted by the Change Healthcare ransomware attack.

Cardamom Health Announces Investment by HealthX Ventures to Expand Advisory and Managed Services for Data, Analytics, and Applications

Cardamom Health will use new funding from HealthX Ventures to hire additional staff and further develop its services for revenue cycle optimization and value-based care.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 6/17/24

We are deep into the summer doldrums portion of the healthcare IT hype cycle. Companies that have big news to share are saving it up for the fall conferences. Some are making announcements that seem to be recycling old content and hoping no one notices.

I’ve worked with a number of provider organizations and it always seemed like summer was slow there as well. With employees taking vacations, the appetite for major go-lives or launches of new initiatives was typically low. I’m working on roughly a dozen smaller projects right now, which sounds like it could be chaotic but actually is going well.

Earlier this week, I worked on a project to help an organization get ahead of the game on their influenza vaccine campaigns. Review of their most recent data on flu-related hospitalizations revealed an upward trend, so they’re planning to mobilize in the community well in advance of vaccine availability. They are in the prep stages, but it is exciting to work with someone who is thinking ahead versus the usual last-minute crunches that come my way. I’ve drafted all their clinical messaging and created timelines for the different phases of the campaign, now it’s off to their various committees for any requested modifications and approval.

I also spent the better part of a day writing demo scripts for a solution vendor that has limited physician support. They are relatively new to the market and don’t have any physicians on staff other than an extremely fractional chief medical officer. Before connecting with me, they were letting their sales reps construct their own demo scripts. Based on some of the scenarios I was presented with, I suspect that AI may have had a hand in their creation. They were technically correct, but the scripts were stilted and didn’t flow they way they needed to in order to resonate with a clinical decision maker.

People ask what makes a good demo. I have a short list of things that I think about as I create scripts. First, you have to understand the audience. Is this a high-level demo to put on a website or to make generally available? Or is it for a specific group of clinical decision makers?

If it’s for clinicians, we need to understand the practice setting (inpatient, ambulatory, or something else) and the clinical roles that are involved, as well as the spectrum of patient demographics. Although you can make decent high-level demos that have broad appeal, when you are showing your product in front of potential end users, the devil can be in the details. Content for a community health clinic demo that will resonate with the audience may look quite different than that for a private practice in an affluent area.

When you get into the details of a clinical demo, it’s important to make sure that the scenarios are typical and appropriate. For example, going in front of frazzled family physicians with a demo that only includes patients with sinus infections and urinary tract infections is superficial at best and may make them think that you don’t understand what they do all day. However, rolling in with scenarios where patients have three or four chronic conditions and suboptimal insurance coverage will be a bit more impressive.

It’s also important that the team that presents it uses the right vernacular for the audience, and especially that they pronounce medical words correctly. Know where abbreviations are typical and how to say them. For example, talking about a coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) as a “cabbage” is OK. Calling it a “see-aye-bee-gee” is less than ideal.

Using obscure Latin names for anatomical structures is a no-no, especially if clinicians are used to using lay terminology for those parts. “Second toe” is just as good as “digitus secondus,” when you’re talking to a family medicine physician. You don’t want me thinking “what is he talking about?” when I’m supposed to be focusing on your product.

The scripts went back to the vendor for review and we will meet later this week to discuss them. I’ll be crossing the phalanges of my second and third upper extremity digits that they accept the recommendations largely as recommended.

I spent a big chunk of hours working on continuing medical education requirements that need to be complete before I can renew my DEA number in the fall. As a telehealth physician, given my state’s laws and my clinical employer’s rules, I don’t prescribe controlled substances. However, that employer requires me to keep a current DEA number as a proxy for proving that I haven’t violated any rules with the DEA. As of last summer, federal legislation requires everyone who is renewing their DEA registrations to attest to completion of eight hours of education on the prevention and treatment of opioid use disorder and other substance use disorders.

I had initially started an educational module from a well-known continuing education provider. However, it was light on the educational content and heavy on questions that aren’t germane to the practice of many physicians. For example, the first module was all about orthopedic patients presenting to the emergency department who might require pain management. There were several “which of the following is the BEST option to treat this patient” type questions. Those are always infuriating because there may be several options that are technically correct but the authors are hoping you read the one specific study that says a specific option is best. Not to mention, the reality of “best” often revolves around the patient’s insurance coverage, whether they can get someone to take a prescription to the pharmacy for them, and other factors that are independent of an isolated clinical scenario. That module wouldn’t have been useful at all for a gynecological surgeon, who has a need to prescribe controlled substances but who probably last saw an orthopedic patient in the emergency department during their residency training.

I powered through to at least get an hour’s worth of credit, but then spent a bit of time trying to find a continuing education provider whose content better matched my own needs. Surprisingly, the American Medical Association was the winner with a 50+ hour curriculum from which I could choose my remaining seven hours in a way that meets my needs. 

None of this addresses the fact that my clinical employer is making their physicians cumulatively spend tens of thousands of dollars each year to demonstrate that they’re not bad guys because they hold a valid DEA number. It’s just another hoop that each of us has to just jump through, unfortunately.

I also spent some time working on a residency lecture that I’ll be giving later in the summer, and that was actually fun. I always look for good visuals and a friend sent me a recent presentation from a gastroenterologist as an example. All of the graphics were GIFs that tied back to the show “Schitt’s Creek,” which was great given stool-focused theme of the lecture.

All in all, it’s another week in the life of a clinical informaticist. It can occasionally be dull, but usually isn’t that way for long.

What part of the year is the slowest for your team or organization? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 6/17/24

Google-backed Tempus AI closes first day of trading up 9% in Nasdaq stock market debut

Tempus AI, which specializes in precision medicine and intelligent diagnostics, raises $410 million during its IPO, giving it a valuation of $6 billion.

London hospitals cancel over 800 operations after ransomware attack

NHS England reports that London-area hospitals have had to cancel over 800 appointments and operations as a result of the June 3 ransomware attack on pathology services vendor Synnovis.

Disrupted Access to Prescription Stimulant Medications Could Increase Risk of Injury and Overdose

CDC warns that people who have been getting Adderall from telehealth provider Done – whose executives were arrested last week on Adderall-related charges – should not resort to buying the drugs on the street as an alternative.

Monday Morning Update 6/17/24

Top News

Ascension restores EHR access across its organization, although it once again warns patients that it is still back-entering data that was collected manually since the May 8 ransomware attack.

Remediation of other systems continues, with no timeline provided.

Reader Comments

From Talkin’ Yankees: “Re: arrested executives of Done. What about the investors who funded their company?” Just about any local doctor could pocket lots of cash by writing prescriptions for whatever the customer / patient wants, even if it’s not good for them. Few doctors are willing to sell such prescription-writing services directly, and even those who might be tempted tread lightly because their customers and pharmacies are local and word gets around quickly. Investors flocked to Adderall slingers like Done and Cerebral, which were basically invisible behind websites and mailed prescriptions going all over the US. Both companies raised hundreds of millions of dollars from dozens of investors and weren’t about to let medical ethics stand in their way of scaling to keep those investors happy. I would not be opposed to holding board members equally accountable as executives, although investors who have less day-to-day involvement might rightly claim they didn’t know (and probably didn’t want to know). The fact that no Theranos board members are sharing a country club cell with Elizabeth Holmes suggests long odds of that happening.

From Big Red Zero: “Re: Oracle Health. Feinberg says the contract extension is a testament to its progress in delivering a world-class EHR to the VA.” Company cheerleaders David Feinberg and Seema Verma had to put a positive spin on the 11-month extension. They conveniently didn’t note that Congress was so frustrated with Oracle and the VA that it insisted on one-year extensions instead of the original five as contained in the original, no-bid contract. At least Oracle must have met whatever requirements were needed to earn the renewal and can justifiably celebrate not getting fired, for now anyway. The VA doesn’t really have a backup plan other than to re-implement VistA, which they claim is not only unsustainable, but more expensive than Oracle Health.

From PE Pauper: “Re: private equity buying hospitals and medical practices. Some members of Congress are trying to make laws to limit the damage they can do.” That’s well and good if it passes with teeth in it (unlikely in our political environment), but meanwhile, the cliché of blaming the game rather than the player rules:

• PE firms break no laws when they load hospitals with unsustainable debt, sell the real estate they sit on Hahnemann-style to immediately get their money back, slash costs dangerously, and then either close the doors or file bankruptcy hoping for a bailout. Like much of corporate America, all of this is unethical, but not necessarily illegal. It’s a bad healthcare system if the only thing propping it up is the assumption of pure intentions.
• So-called “non-profit” health systems aren’t much better given aggressive business practices, closing of unprofitable but vital services, and stashing piles of cash offshore. Not to mention suing patients into bankruptcy.
• Nobody notices the inefficiency or indifference of hospital bureaucracy until they move into the patient or caregiver role. Otherwise, more people would be storming the hospital castle with torches and pitchforks.
• I know to avoid a Chinese buffet that has a long track record of near-failing sanitation scores, but I don’t have that same information or choices when it comes to hospitals. The building is architecturally precious, the lobby has a piano and cabinets full of crystal awards, and they sell sushi in the cafeteria, so it must be a good place to obtain life-or-death care. Once I’m in a bed, the chances of transferring elsewhere are low.
• Health systems are politically untouchable due to aggressive lobbying and large community employment, so legislators would need to spank  PE firms directly without hitting hospitals with friendly fire.
• Like it or not, the health system that we have have allowed to develop – one that would not be accepted by any other developed country — will be run by interchangeable corporate suits who call the shots of what happens during your most vulnerable, painful, and life-altering moments. Whether they work for PE, insurers, or regional /national health systems won’t make much difference.  

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Oracle EVP Ken Glueck wrote that “everyone in the industry” understands that Epic’s Judy Faulkner is the biggest obstacle to interoperability, a premise with which 78% of poll respondents disagree. See their comments. 

New poll to your right or here: Are government penalties effective in getting health systems to improve their cybersecurity practices? I would likely vote no since the business impact far exceeds any added-on penalty that the government might impose after the fact. But of course that begs an alternative question – what would provide that encouragement given that cybersecurity awareness is probably already adequate? Where did Ascension fall short, or is it simply impossible to protect against ransomware attacks like theirs?

Want to support what I do and gain company exposure in the process? Ask Lorre to sign you up as a new HIStalk sponsor – it takes one day, but you reap the benefit in 364 others by reaching my influential audience. Lorre can usually be persuaded to offer some first-year perks, which I pretend not to notice since I like the ego boost of bringing on new sponsors.

Today I learned that the term for the near-obsolete verbal practice of dropping the letter R in pronunciation is called a “non-rhotic” accent as practiced in the “pahk the cah” areas of New England, New York, and parts of the coastal South. Actors of the black-and-white era then latched onto the clearly phony “British Announcer Voice” to sound less regional and more sophisticated. Unrelated to R-dropping is R-adding, such as saying “warsh” instead of “wash.” Up next is the “Confederate A,” where people in parts of the deep South (and born-in-California actors trying to sound generically Southern) might pronounce “try” as “trah.”

Webinars

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

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

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Amwell names co-founder, chairman, and co-CEO Ido Schoenberg, MD as sole CEO. Co-founder and former co-CEO, Roy Schoenberg, MD, MPH – his brother — will remain on the board. AMWL shares have lost 83% of their value in the past 12 months and are off 99% from their January 2021 high, when the company’s valuation was nearly $9 billion versus today’s $116 million.

Government and Politics

CDC warns people who have been getting Adderall from telehealth provider Done – whose executives were arrested last week on Adderall-related charges – should not resort to buying the drugs on the street as an alternative. CDC says that patients should ask their PCP about finding a new prescriber, noting that 7 of every 10 illicit pills that the DEA seizes contain a lethal dose of fentanyl.

Sponsor Updates

• Medhost’s Cloud Team sorts donations from local grocery stores at Second Harvest, which then distributes them to communities in need.
• For the second year in a row, Black Book Research survey-takers give InteliChart top marks for end-user satisfaction in the areas of patient engagement and consumer outreach solutions.
• QGenda publishes a case study, “Banner Health Uses QGenda’s Workforce Management Platform to Improve Patient Access and Time Allocation.”
• Redox releases a new Diagnosing Healthtech Podcast, “Overcoming challenges of delivering omnichannel healthcare at scale with Marcus Osborne.”
• CereCore hires Zach Grieshop as AVP of client technical services and names Kim Waters as principal to its newly formed revenue cycle advisory.
• RLDatix publishes a new resource, “The Joint Commission (JTC) Infection Prevention Updates July 1st – How RLDatix Compliance Solutions Can Help.”
• Wolters Kluwer Health Executive Director of Continuing Education Karen Innocent, DNP, RN, joins the American Nurses Credentialing Center Commission on Accreditation in Nursing Continuing Professional Development.

Blog Posts

• Integrating with your EHR: Comparing common data integration methods (Notable)
• Netsmart’s Top 5 Features for Physical Therapy Documentation Systems (Netsmart)
• Prioritizing patient-centered billing: HFMA report emphasizes clear and compassionate strategies (Nordic)
• How ServiceNow can Disrupt Healthcare – In a Good Way (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Nurses of Note 2024: The Pediatric Nurse Practitioner (PerfectServe)
• Four Pieces of Wisdom to Accelerate Digital Health Innovation (Rhapsody)
• Ahead of the Game: Q&A on Upgrading E-Prescribing Standards (Surescripts)
• Beyond the 7 Elements: Preparing Your Hospital for Future Compliance Challenges (Symplr)
• Mitigating No-Shows with Appointment Scheduling and Reminder Software (TruBridge)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 6/14/24

Ascension cyberattack caused after employee accidentally downloaded malicious file

Ascension confirms that its May 8 ransomware attack was launched by a malicious email opened by an unsuspecting employee.

VA awards second option period to Oracle Health in support of Federal Electronic Health Record modernization contract

The VA extends its contract with Oracle Health for a second term of 11 months with an eye to deploying the EHR at new sites in 2025 once reset goals have been met.

Founder/CEO and Clinical President of Digital Health Company Arrested for $100M Adderall Distribution and Health Care Fraud Scheme

Federal agents arrest the CEO and clinical president of ADHD telehealth provider Done on charges of distributing Adderall, healthcare fraud, and obstruction of justice.

News 6/14/24

Top News

Ascension provides updates about its May 8 ransomware attack:

• The cyberattack was launched by a malicious email that was opened by an unsuspecting employee.
• The attackers took information from file services that employees use for daily and routine tasks, some of which are likely to contain PHI.
• Ascension is offering free credit monitoring and identity theft protection services to any patient or employee who requests it.
• EHR access has been restored in nine regions and in parts of two other regions. Organization-wide EHR access restoration is still on track for Friday, June 14.

Reader Comments

From Siri Soundalike: “Re: advice for my nurse colleague. He has many years of experience in several aspects of healthcare, earned an MBA, and was involved in starting an unrelated business. He is looking for other career opportunities and wondered what directions the diverse HIStalk readership suggests.” I will invite readers to add their thoughts. Their advice could be more targeted if they understood the type of work he wants to do (corporate employee, hands-on provider, entrepreneur,etc.) and whether he has geographic restrictions. Advice would also likely vary if he’s 30 with young children versus a financially secure 50-year-old. My first question would be, is his dream job as an employee or as a business owner? If he says “either is OK,” then more self-reflection is indicated before bringing others into the discussion.

From Kinko: “Re: healthcare disruptors. Just because a big company is dabbling in healthcare doesn’t make it a disruptor.” Agreed. You’re just a disruptor-wannabe until you actually disrupt something, which rarely happens in healthcare except in some niche where insurers and regulators don’t tread. The lumbering interlopers usually end their would-be role as healthcare disruptors and instead slink away as healthcare departers.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Maybe healthcare should do this. Mrs. H received an email from the shop that is checking out her car after it went into limp mode, requiring it to be towed and me to rescue her from anxious roadside pacing. A phone-recorded video that was attached to the email featured the mechanic walking around explaining what he found as he pointed at parts. An estimate or email summary would have been equally effective, but it felt more personal to have the expert explaining informally.

Webinars

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

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

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Microsoft retires the GPT Builder part of its $20 Copilot Pro subscription three months after it announced it, saying that the company will shift focus to commercial and enterprise sales.

Sales

• Cloud PACS vendor Synthesis Health announces new customers Tahoe Carson Radiology, Naugatuck Valley Radiology, and Intermountain Medical Imaging.

People

Matt Wojcik, MPH (Crossroads) joins Solaris Health as CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

HealthLynked rolls out an online medical record request form that uses DocuSign to send patient information requests to hospitals, physician offices, and laboratories. The records are added to the company’s network, which allows patients to share their own records with providers.

Komodo Health announces Komodo Patient Insurance, which offers the pharmacy and medical insurance status of 200 million de-identified US lives.

Government and Politics

Federal agents arrest the CEO and clinical president of ADHD telehealth provider Done on charges of distributing Adderall, healthcare fraud, and obstruction of justice. The Department of Justice charged founder and CEO Ruthia He and Clinical President David Brody, MD for illegally distributing 40 million units of Adderall and other stimulants without medical justification, which DoJ says generated $100 million in revenue.

The Justice Department and FTC settle their claims under behavioral telehealth vendor Cerebral, which will pay $5 million in consumer refunds and $2 million in civil penalties for exposing user health information via deficient security practices and lax prescribing of Adderall. The government will continue charges against former CEO Kyle Robertson, who left the company in 2022 to start vanity online drug provider Zealthy, which targets patients who seek drugs for depression, obesity, erectile dysfunction, hair loss, and testosterone deficiency. The federal government has added Zealthy to its complaint.

The VA extends its contract with Oracle Health for an unspecified term, presumably the one-year period that Congress mandated to hold the company more accountable for the troubled implementation.

The VA moves several technology projects and 600 personnel under its Digital Health Office, which it launched on June 2. The office will include connected care, population health, health informatics, and AI programs as the VA’s central coordinator of digital health projects. The VA is recruiting for the office’s permanent leadership, with the interim being Nadia Smith, MBA, acting chief digital health officer, who joined the VA in September 2023 after 27 years of federal government consulting.

Real Time Medical Systems accuses post-acute EHR vendor PointClickCare (PCC) of information blocking, seeking a federal judge’s intervention to compel PCC to grant access to skilled nursing patient data. PCC argues that providing that access would expose its systems to hacker bots that could slow operations or compromise patient data. Analytics vendor Real Time contends that PCC, which offers a competing service, is attempting to drive it out of business. Real Time claims that PCC previously forced its employees to perform manual queries after completing a CAPTCHA challenge, despite Real Time’s HITRUST certification. PCC says provides information to 1,900 companies via a more secure method. Real Time claims that PCC told it directly that its own introduction of a competing product meant that it would no longer provide Real Time with data access.

CMS actuaries estimate that US healthcare spending will outpace economic growth with an average 5.6% annually from 2023 to 2032. Hospital spending increased an estimated 10.1% last year. Medicare has the highest predicted 10-year average annual increase of 7.4% among payers due to increased enrollment of baby boomers through 2029. The actuaries predict that healthcare spending will increase to nearly 20% of the gross domestic product.

A US Senate Finance Committee report finds that Vanderbilt University Medical Center failed to protect patient privacy when it provided the requested records of 82 transgender patients to Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti. VUMC says it did not violate privacy laws because it was required to provide the records, a premise that is being questioned by a patient lawsuit and an HHS OCR investigation. The affected patients were not notified until ACLU filed a lawsuit.

Sponsor Updates

• HCTec sponsors the Tennessee HIMSS Chapter’s annual golf tournament.
• FinThrive releases a new Healthcare Rethink Podcast, “Rebel Healthcare: The True Patient Lead Journey Toward Improving Healthcare.”
• Laudio will exhibit at the Organization of Nurse Leaders Annual Meeting June 13-14 in Newport, Rhode Island.
• Bizmatics will integrate DrFirst’s RxInform patient engagement solution into its EHR to improve medication adherence.

Blog Posts

• Findhelp & NextGen: Integrating to Support the Whole Patient (Findhelp)
• Cyber Security in Healthcare: How Providers Can Improve Data Safety and Cyber Resilience (FinThrive)
• CCW Panel Recap: How We Can Empower Those Around Us (Five9)
• Breaking Silos: How SOC and Compliance Teams Can Transform Healthcare Security (Fortified Health Security)
• Award-Winning Data Visualization Solution: A Deep Dive into SDOH Software for Life Sciences (Inovalon)
• Advancing GenAI Capabilities and Bringing Interoperability Solutions to Researchers and Patients (InterSystems)
• Meditech supports innovation and cultivates partnerships at MUSE Inspire 2024 (Meditech)
• Elevate Your Quality Scores: A Guide to Maximize MIPS/MVP in 2024 (MRO)
• Embracing AI in Healthcare: Overcoming Concerns Benefits All (Net Health)

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 6/13/24

I get a lot of emails advertising webinars and educational opportunities. I don’t usually take advantage of them because my schedule is busy and the invites don’t arrive with enough notice to allow me to attend. However, a recent email from one of our local HIMSS chapter sponsors caught my eye.

It met all the criteria. I received it several weeks in advance, the topic was interesting, and it was advertised specifically as an educational session. I blocked my calendar and registered. I logged in well in advance, only to find a blank screen and no indication that I was receiving the audio or video feed. I appreciate a moderator who addresses attendees with some kind of “Thank you for joining, the session will begin in three minutes” kind of welcome so that you know you’re in the right place and everything is working.

It was well after the top of the hour and the webinar hadn’t popped up yet, so I refreshed the window and discovered that it had already started and I had missed the intros. It also was less of a formal education session than talking heads, with no agenda or educational objectives. I had yet to hear anything about healthcare IT in the first 20 minutes (although I did hear a lot about AI being used to predict the likelihood of a criminal reoffending and about autonomous vehicles), so I gave up.

If you’re putting on a webinar, here are my recommendations. Advertise your offering accurately. If it’s not going to be a formal educational session, don’t make it sound like one. Words like “chat” or “roundtable” indicate a less-formal presentation. Also, know how your platform works. If it won’t automatically refresh for early-arriving attendees, add a chat message to advise them to refresh the screen regularly so they don’t miss anything.

Anyone who has ever been in a clinical role in a hospital is used to hearing “The Joint Commission requires it” about policies that may or may not be subject to Joint Commission review. The Joint Commission recently released an update that clarifies its position on using secure texting for patient information and orders. Organizations can use that modality for orders as long as the information is secure, encrypted, and captured in the EHR with timestamps and author information. This brings The Joint Commission into line with CMS policies, although having providers enter orders directly into the EHR remains the best practice for order entry.

A friend clued me in to Spacetop, an augmented reality laptop that is under development and is available for reservation. Along with “the first spatial OS designed for productivity,” the G1 model is priced at $1,900 and will start shipping in October. Prescription lenses for the retro-looking glasses are included, although I would be more impressed if it included technology where the user could input the details of their eyeglasses prescription and have the system adjust the visuals automatically. It advertises a 100-inch visual canvas with a form factor that “fits a standard laptop bag with the glasses safely stored in hardcover.” The glasses include speakers and microphone for use during online meetings, although unless I’m interacting with a bunch of users with the same device, I think that would seem a little strange. If the company is looking for beta testers, I know a sassy CMIO who would love to give feedback.

From LaSalle Gal: “Re: MyChart. My health system sent me an email recommending that I turn on all the notification settings. Although it had technical instructions for toggling the notifications on, it seemed like a missed opportunity to educate patients on what it means to receive notifications, especially for patients who may not want to see test results before they receive a communication from their physician.” I reviewed the original email and I agree. It would have been easy to insert a sentence or two about how the organization releases results along with instructions for suppressing notifications that you don’t want to receive. I also thought this section was funny: “Even if a toggle is already green, you might not have all notifications turned on. To make sure all notifications are enabled, just switch each toggle off and then back on.” That doesn’t instill confidence to this user that the settings are accurate and functional. I’d be curious to see data about how many patients may have accessed the communication preferences settings in the weeks after this communication was sent.

Based on my comments about certain clinicians struggling with handwritten orders during downtime events, another reader sent this piece from NPR’s “Shots” blog that addresses the benefits of writing by hand. It summarizes some of the benefits of handwritten work, including better letter recognition in children and better conceptual understanding of material when adults take notes by hand. I own a set of amazing medical student notebooks from the 1920s (thanks, eBay!). It’s interesting to imagine the student sitting there, jotting his thoughts about the fact that “we are really just starting to understand the mysteries of the thyroid.”

Pet peeve of the week: the phrase “building an organizational muscle.” At best, it makes me think of bodybuilders oiled for competition, and at worst it reminds me of an old drug company ad for a diabetes medication that anthropomorphic characters such as Hungry Muscle, Burned-Out Pancreas, and Upset Stomach. (Side note: in trying to remember what the drug was, I discovered that you can buy the Hungry Muscle plushies online, so I know I didn’t imagine it. I also learned that there is a thing called the Medical Advertising Hall of Fame.) Whether you’re building an organizational muscle for change, for quality, or some other buzzword, there are better terms: “a culture of change” or “a commitment to quality” come to mind.

I spent part of the morning being a patient at my local health system. For the most part, the information I provided during the online check-in process was used, including an update to my health history and a review of systems. They required a new scan of my insurance card, however, even though I’ve had another appointment within the last 30 days and the card was scanned then. The receptionist also asked me the standardized COVID exposure questions that were appropriate several years ago, including whether I had any international travel within the last year or the last 30 days. I’m not aware of any recommendations for travel screenings in healthcare environments, so it felt like an organization that just isn’t staying current. It made me wonder how often the organization is reviewing its patient experience, as well as its ability to keep current with infectious disease recommendations.

How often do you reassess your patient registration and check-in processes? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 6/13/24

Veterans Health Administration creates new office to streamline tech initiatives

The VA creates a new Digital Health Office to unify the Veterans Health Administration’s technology initiatives, including those related to health informatics, AI, population health, and connected care.

Brightside Health Expands into Substance Use Disorder, Virtual Intensive Outpatient Treatment

Virtual mental healthcare company Brightside Health acquires Lionrock Recovery, which offers virtual intensive outpatient addiction treatment services.

Canary Speech Secures $13 Million in Series A Funding to Change How the World’s Top Healthcare Organizations Screen for Mental Wellness and Cognitive Health

Canary Speech, a health IT company specializing in the development of AI-powered vocal biomarkers, raises $13 million in a funding round led by Cortes Capital.

United States Sues Telehealth Providers and Executives for Unfair and Deceptive Conduct

Cerebral will pay $7 million to settle federal complaints of a variety of deceptive business practices, though the DoJ and FTC will continue to pursue Cerebral founder Kyle Robertson and several business associates for their role in subsequent, similar practices at telehealth companies launched after Cerebral shut down.

Koda Health Secures New Funding to Expand Advance Care Planning Capabilities

Koda Health, an advance care planning software startup spun out of Texas Medical Center, closes an oversubscribed seed funding round.

Healthcare AI News 6/12/24

News

Apple announces its long-awaited Apple Intelligence capability, which will be released in beta in IOS18 in September. It will work only on newer Apple hardware such as the IPhone 15 and IPads/Macs that are outfitted with the M1 chip. Its Siri voice assistant will use on-device AI to answer most questions, Apple-hosted LLMs for more complex questions, and OpenAI – with the user’s permission – to respond to more detailed questions. Planned features include a conversational Siri, word-based photo search, automatic photo editing, the ability to proofread and summarize documents, and the ability to summarize call audio.

The American College of Radiology asks members to weigh in on the request that was made to CMS by AI diagnostic software vendor Cleerly, which wants CMS to pay for its FDA-cleared CAD detection. The company says that using its $1,500 CT AI test reduced costs by avoiding invasive coronary angiography. Cleerly says that AI-enabled CCTA is better at diagnosing CAD than the traditional stress test.

Tampa General Hospital rolls out Nuance DAX Copilot to 500 of its affiliated physicians for ambient documentation.

UMass Memorial Medical Center uses Mednition’s Kate AI product for triaging ED patients.

University Hospitals deploys Aidoc’s AI platform across 13 hospitals and several outpatient locations. The company offers 17 FDA-cleared algorithms for triage, quantification, and care coordination.

Business

CCS launches PropheSee, an AI-powered predictive model that improves continuous glucose monitoring device adherence rates by up to 50%, saving an estimated $2,200 per patient per year.

Research

Researchers develop a publicly released trustworthiness benchmark for medical large vision language model that assesses trustworthiness, fairness, safety, privacy, and robustness.

Harvard-based pediatric physicians find that Google Translate and ChatGPT 4.0 perform expert-level translation of patient instructions to Spanish and Portuguese, but fall short of professional translations for Haitian Creole.

ChatGPT can generate expert-quality radiologic reports that are easier for patients to understand. The study authors note that it would be nearly impossible to expect radiologists to create patient-centered radiology reports at the required middle school reading level.

Researchers in China find that AI can accurately detect coronary artery disease using non-invasive facial temperature images. 

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