HIStalk Interviews Clay Ritchey, CEO, Verato

Clay Ritchey, MBA is CEO of Verato of McLean, VA.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

At Verato, we are identity experts that enable better care everywhere by solving the problem that we believe drives everything else, which is knowing who is who. Our mission is to be the single source of truth for identity that provides healthcare a complete and trusted 360-degree, longitudinal view of the people that they serve. I’ve spent the last 20 years in healthcare technology, with a passion for helping people leverage technology to deliver better care, better outcomes, and better patient experiences. I’m excited about Verato’s ability to do just that with identity resolution.

What is the extent of mismatched patient records in an average health system?

It is not atypical to have 8% to 10% of medical records be mismatched, either as  duplicate medical records or overlays. That’s very common. That problem has been exacerbated as we move into digital health. The ecosystem is more complex and the information is even more inaccurate as you try to aggregate that data and those identities across not just one or more EHRs, but over 20 to 30 different inputs or data sources that are collecting data on patients.

Is patient identity harder to manage with hospital acquisitions and increased interoperability?

Yes. Unfortunately, we’re still in a world where most health systems are thinking about how to drive interoperability inside their own physical enterprise and virtual enterprise. Even in that scenario, mergers and acquisitions create a challenge with how you take a patient census that is sitting in different EHRs and combine them into one so that the patient experience isn’t harmed or important information is missing so that I can’t treat the whole patient. That’s a key driver as health systems think about expanding and need to welcome these new patients and deliver the service they expect.

How well do EHRs detect patient matching problems, especially now that using Social Security number as an identifier has been eliminated?

There’s two significant challenges with the EHR’s ability to prevent identity mismatching. One is the fact that most EHRs only have visibility into the data that they house themselves. As you start thinking about all these additional channels of data and data sources outside of the EHR, they don’t have the ability to reconcile those data sets from an enterprise perspective.

The second challenge is that the typical EHR identity matching technology is driven by probabilistic matching or algorithms, looking at information that you have physically about the patient. We think a better approach is using referential matching, where we have data that might not be sitting in the EHR about that person and we can connect the data points and fill in the gaps with that information to provide better matching.

Have you seen interest in uniquely identifying people who aren’t necessarily patients, such as public health organizations that try to match vaccination data to their medical records?

The pandemic drove a lot of wonderful things for the future of healthcare. One of the most important is that it created a reimbursement model for telehealth. We are seeing 38 times as many telehealth visits as we had before, and it is stabilizing at around 17% to 20% of all outpatients. With that is a change in the mindset around how consumers want to be treated. Consumers who plan to make an important purchase go online 85% of the time to find information first. In a post-pandemic world, healthcare is seeing that number upwards of 90%, where people consult online resources about their symptoms before they talk to their doctor.

Because of all these different channels and digital engagement around the consumer, health systems have to understand who is who. How can I create a 360-degree view of all those interactions to create an experience for that patient, showing them that I know who they are, I have empathy for them, and I can solve their problem holistically?

What are the competitive advantages of accurate patient identification?

Forward-looking health systems are committed to offering a patient experience that is based on a simple premise – you have to show them that you know them. They are using an identity management platform to create and curate an experience for the consumer who is thinking about consuming a service from them. It might be somebody doing research about a knee or hip knee replacement. You need to understand who they are and be able to tailor your communications with them, so that as they continue to interact with the health system, that health system already knows that they have been on the website, downloaded a white paper on hip replacement, and are now calling in. Can I help you find a doctor who can help you answer questions around those types of things? Accelerating the acquisition of patients requires understanding the identity of the patient and then being able to deliver better care.

Finally, as health systems are moving from fee-for-service to fee-for-value, population health, and social determinants of health — and being able to manage both in-hospital and out-of-hospital concerns — it becomes critical to understand the patient identity, to proactively identify them as having risk factors, and to proactively give them a care plan to prevent a chronic condition or to better manage their chronic condition. All of those things contribute to happier customers, happier patients, lower cost of treatment, and overall better outcomes.

Outside of healthcare, customers uniquely identify themselves via a loyalty card or a website login that allows a business to then understand their behaviors. Can we learn from those industries?

Yes. Healthcare doesn’t have to look far at all to figure out how to delight the patient and deliver an exceptional patient experience. Loyalty programs, being able to know who you are as you’ve logged into their website, and from there to present them with information that is relevant to what we know about them. If we know that you are a cancer survivor, we should be delivering content to you that can help with your journey.

There are many examples across other industries that you can draw from. One of my favorite airlines is Delta Airlines. They seem to be able to anticipate my needs as a traveler even before I have them. If there’s a delayed flight, they are already thinking ahead about giving me options for rescheduling. We are starting to see forward-looking healthcare systems think about embracing consumerism and applying these types of technologies. Over 50% of millennials today don’t have a primary care provider, so they will be looking for experiences similar to how they buy something from Walmart or Amazon. To do that, we have to transform the way that we engage them.

Health systems experimented years ago with patient loyalty cards that also allowed medical records lookup. Why hasn’t that been adopted more widely?

The reporting from a year go on Ascension and Google Health showed a lot of privacy concerns that exist in America with respect to healthcare, our privacy rights, and protecting information about our health. I believe those basic concerns around privacy are pervasive. There’s a lot of conversations going on about universal patient identifier. That would be helpful and necessary, but we don’t believe that it alone will ever be sufficient. There’s just so many ways for patients to engage with the health system and so many front doors they come in, whether physical or digital. The idea that that patient will always have that identifier with them and present it in a confirmed way is challenging.

That’s where you’re seeing this pervasive, long-term need for additional technologies on the back end that continue to piece together these stories and be able to help us identify them. That being said, I do believe that we’re going to see the industry move towards a more trusted identifier. That may be through a trusted private sector opportunity versus the government. We have to work through how to get something that is safe, secure, and trusted before we can break those barriers.

What problems would arise or remain unsolved with the implementation of a universal patient identifier?

You mentioned Social Security number. Isn’t it already a universal patient identifier? Why hasn’t that been sufficient? The idea of using a universal identifier as a key into a lock that it gets you access to a health system, your health records, and information about yourself has a lot of goodness, but you’ll still find that it’s not practical to have a key that can be trusted and validated everywhere it would be used. Our own experience on the consumer side is that we have to find ways to create that experience that don’t rely on that type of unique key. I believe that a universal patient identifier will move forward, but while it is necessary, it won’t be sufficient for delivering the value proposition that we all hope for.

Where do you see the company in three to five years?

We see Verato continuing to enable this idea of better care everywhere by focusing on enabling the interoperability of digital health and the digital health transformation that is happening across the health system. Today, it’s health systems themselves. Tomorrow, it’s going to be across the care continuum. Being able to make that information portable, so that a patient can visit a health system in Pennsylvania and then while traveling on vacation to Florida and being able to visit the health system there, having that type of interoperability across health systems. I believe that Verato will be a part of that transformation as we move from interoperability within a health system to interoperability across the care continuum.

We’re also working on partnerships. We believe that having a common view across the care continuum — pharmacy, pharmaceuticals and biotech, medical devices, HIEs, providers, and payers – that trusted, protected, secure common view will help us eventually get to liquidity of data so that it gets to the right place at the right time to deliver a better outcome.

Morning Headlines 2/10/22

Thirty Madison and Nurx to merge, creating the leading virtual specialty care platform

Thirty Madison, a direct-to-consumer telemedicine company focused on chronic conditions, acquires Nurx, which offers women virtual care for dermatology and reproductive and sexual health.

Compliancy Group Announces Aldrich Capital Partners has committed to invest $75 million

Compliancy Group, a New York-based HIPAA compliance software and training business, secures a $75 million investment from Aldrich Capital Partners.

Tabula Rasa Healthcare to Sell DoseMeRx

Medication risk management vendor Tabula Rasa Healthcare decides to put its DoseMeRx precision dosing software, acquired in 2018, up for sale.

HIStalk Interviews Kyle Silvestro, CEO, SyTrue

Kyle Silvestro is founder, president, and CEO of SyTrue of Stateline, NV.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I’ve been in the world of clinical natural language processing for almost the last 17 years. I started SyTrue a little over nine years ago, thinking about how to solve challenges around archaic workflows where we still require humans to read medical documents, especially from the perspective of CMS. And, how we automate a number of processes by eliminating inefficiencies within the system.

How has the need and the ability to automatically extract information from medical records changed over the years?

The need has been there for more than a decade. The awareness is coming to the forefront. We are truly understanding the value in information. The advances in AI and ML have highlighted that. Most of those advancements have been more around structured data and what is possible. Looking forward, organizations are understanding the value of the unstructured clinical note that still comprises the majority of information created in healthcare today. We process more than a billion pages of these notes annually, and that’s just scratching the surface. That would be on data created within the last 12 months. The majority of information is still in this format.

It depends on where you are in the process from the point of care to the point of need. At the point of care, maybe you can get high quality data quickly, but most organizations are not. They are downstream of that information, and it’s packaged up more often than not in a PDF. It’s not even unstructured data — it’s an image. That image is shared with organizations and data is often needed 20 ways downstream. If you don’t have a way to create this exponential uplift, then you can’t start addressing the challenges we see in the system. This problem has been here for a while and there are truly no good solutions addressing it that have a critical level of adoption.

Do PDFs usually come from outside facilities, meaning that it’s an interoperability problem, or are they self-generated because the source system doesn’t capture the data discretely?

It’s a combination. More often not, this is a byproduct of a record release process. Thousands of people go on site to facilities every day to get data from hospitals or provider offices. There are some electronic exchanges now, with CCDAs being sent across the wire, but that’s really the two ways that they are getting this data. It’s definitely an interoperability issue, but it’s more of a misalignment of incentives that is potentially preventing wider adoption.

What are payers and CMS doing with the data?

We have a unique challenge within the payer market. So much of what they get is an image, a PDF that can be thousands or tens of thousands of pages long. The only answer before SyTrue was to assign a nurse to read the document, go through the 4,000 pages, and find the eight or 10 pieces of information that answer the question. But more often than not, the 5,000 other data points that are in that PDF document that could be driving exponential uplift within an enterprise are left behind. They’re saved as an image, so they are being lost. The knowledge that is in front of them is gone. Our solution addresses the efficiency challenge, but we can also liberate all of that information to drive exponential downstream value on an enterprise level, to be able to create standardization and interoperability that can drive change.

What is involved with taking a PDF document and turning it into useful information?

This is a differentiator between SyTrue and everybody else. I had the privilege, or the advantage, of failing more than most people in pushing an early technology into the marketplace. Before I started SyTrue, I implemented NLP across life sciences, payers, and providers across a number of use cases, but had also seen challenges at failure points. As somebody who doesn’t like to lose, I remember those failures. 

When we architected SyTrue, we knew that it’s not just about NLP. If healthcare data is clean, NLP is easy. It can read the document, parse it, and extract it. But the problem is that we are dealing with inconsistency from organization to organization, physician to physician, EMR to EMR. How do you account for all this dirty data that was created by a million physicians that generate billions and billions of notes annually? And if those notes are needed 20 or 30 ways downstream, you’re creating a exponential data problem that you can never throw enough humans at to solve.

That’s what we thought about. We thought about that document life cycle. We thought about the creation sources. We thought about who needs it along the way. The question that we asked ourselves is, how can we make people money along the way? How can we add value? That approach allowed us to look at it from a longitudinal perspective, because we thought that if you can get to a longitudinal data and you can do it accurately, everything else downstream becomes easy. You have all the Legos, you just have to actually assemble the house or build the car. The structural components of the information are in that longitudinal record. It’s a matter of how you are combining them. 

With HEDIS, you need problems, procedures, and HCPCS codes. Risk adjustment. You’re looking at problems and supporting conditions and payment integrity. You’re looking at elements that would roll up to make a determination — is this truly an acute kidney injury, or is this sepsis? If you have that baseline data, the downstream questions that you’re asking or the objectives that you’re looking to get out of that information become a lot easier. You can do it across many domains, as represented by our client base and use cases that they leverage.

How will the healthcare entry of big tech firms affect your business, such as Google’s work with EHR search?

How soon before they call it quits again? They’ve all taken bites of this apple, only to fail miserably. I honestly think that’s the trajectory they are on. They do the market a bigger disservice than they do a service. They push early-stage technology that’s not prime time into our marketplace. They suck the oxygen out of that marketplace, and organizations that are small and may not have the $100 million marketing budget get squeezed out. True innovation never gets bubbled up to the top because you have these massive enterprises send 14 sales reps into a client to push a product that’s half baked.

You see that in Amazon Comprehend. They just reduced their price by 95% and now it’s this big announcement around SNOMED. Great, right? If it wasn’t good to begin with, it’s not going to be better when it’s 95% discounted. We’ve had SNOMED for nine years. It’s not new. It’s not really an announcement. Talk about how you’re making people money, talk about how you’re changing the system, and don’t just make noise. That’s what a lot of these organizations do. They truly don’t understand the problem and they truly don’t understand the solution that they need to create to solve it.

IBM Watson Health had some pretty grand ambitions and failed miserably.

MD Anderson Cancer Center. The trail of tears goes on. The billions of dollars that were invested into a technology that played “Jeopardy!” and then thought it could solve healthcare was amazing. They had 5,000 people at one point. It had a lot of data. But they couldn’t roll out anything that was meaningful, except for marketing hype. That is true of many of these big tech players getting into healthcare. They don’t understand the problem that they are trying to solve. They see dollars, they think they can throw enough money to grab market share. Unfortunately, I think they do the overall marketplace a humongous disservice. I haven’t seen truly significant impact from companies that took something that was playing a video game and thought it could solve healthcare.

How do you see the investment buzz over AI playing out?

There’s real opportunity in the technology. But I think you apply technology where it makes sense. You just don’t try to brute force everything, and because there’s a new technology out, think you can solve all the problems. We take a pragmatic approach. Use technology where it makes sense to apply it. As we get downstream, AI is going to be really, really meaningful. It’s going to be important in healthcare. But we have a foundational problem today in healthcare that is going to prevent that from becoming a reality for a little while, unless organizations start to realize it. If you’re not creating an interoperable base of accurate information that you are basing your models on, you are building a house of cards. I wonder how many of those actually exist today versus true value.

There’s a lot of hype, but when you actually get into the information, what impact is it actually making? Marketing has latched onto it. Not a lot of people understand it. Everything is a supervised model. Unless you get to accurate datasets at high volume, you’re somewhat playing with fire. But we have clients that actually do this and they see significant improvements in accuracy, sensitivity, and the impact it has on an organizational level, because they are working from an accurate, interoperable piece of base-level data that’s a solid foundation.

Where will the company focus on the next few years?

SyTrue is positioned to be a dominant player across many different solutions — HEDIS, payment integrity, fraud risk and abuse, risk adjustment, social determinants, expansion of radiology, expansion in oncology — all with a single platform and with the focus of making organizations money quickly and being able to get them live fast to enable that ROI. I see great things for SyTrue. I see us going from just shy of 40 employees now to a significant number in that period of time.

Morning Headlines 2/9/22

Curve Health Raises $12M in Oversubscribed Series A

Curve Health, which helps hospitals and nursing homes coordinate and manage patient care, raises $12 million in a Series A funding round.

VisuWell raises $10.1 million, plans to nearly double workforce

Telemedicine company VisuWell raises $10.1 million in a funding round that could grow to over $12 million.

Fivos Health Announces the Spin-off of Its Cardiovascular Imaging Business into Astute Imaging

Data solutions vendor Fivos, formerly known as Medstreaming/M2S, will spin off its imaging services business as Astute Imaging, which offers pre- and post-surgery planning and follow-up tools.

Clearlake Capital-backed NThrive to acquire Pelitas

Revenue cycle management company NThrive will acquire Pelitas, which offers solutions for patient access, digital intake, and front-end RCM.

News 2/9/22

Top News

Highlights from the just-announced Best in KLAS awards:

• Epic, Nordic, Galen Healthcare, and The Chartis Group were named as overall best.
• Epic won Best in KLAS awards in 11 market segments.
• Most-improved products include Infor ERP and Greenway Intergy Practice Management.
• Epic was the top-rated physician practice vendor by far, followed by Athenahealth, NextGen Healthcare, Greenway Health Intergy, Allscripts, and EClinicalWorks.
• Topping the overall software suite rankings was Epic, followed by Meditech Expanse, Cerner, CPSI Evident Thrive, and Allscripts.
• Nordic led overall IT services firms, followed by Pivot Point Consulting, Bluetree Network, Experis Health, Impact Advisors, Engage, and Cerner.

KLAS also announced the global software (non-US) winners. Some highlights:

• Nearly all respondents have adopted virtual visit technology.
• Digital pathology is growing rapidly in Europe.
• Top acute care EMR winners are InterSystems TrakCare EPR (Asia/Oceania), Epic (Canada and Europe), Philips (Latin America), and Cerner (Middle East/Africa).

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Volpara Health. The company has acquired CRA Health, LLC and Volpara Risk Pathways is its new solution. It is a complete program for identifying and managing patients who are at high risk for breast cancer. The company applies world-class knowledge and over 15 years of experience in risk and genetics to help prevent advanced-stage cancer. Volpara Risk Pathways can identify lifetime and hereditary high-risk patients in any setting, including primary care, OB-GYN, and imaging. This solution interfaces or integrates with EHRs and genetic testing labs without compromising time or workflow. Volpara Risk Pathways is more than just a score, offering guidelines, recommendations, and tools to help coordinate care for patients at elevated risk. Let Volpara Health leverage its vast experience, including performing over 2 million assessments annually, to help build or improve your high-risk program with both product and consulting expertise. Thanks to Volpara Health for supporting HIStalk.

I found this YouTube video describing Volpara Health’s intelligent cancer screening workflow.

HIStalk sponsors, your company can be listed in my conference guides simply by sending me contact and participation information, even if you are attending but not exhibiting. Fill out the forms for ViVE and/or HIMSS22. 

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Revenue cycle management company NThrive will acquire Pelitas, which offers solutions for patient access, digital intake, and front-end RCM. Pelitas won Best in KLAS for patient access in 2019, 2020, and 2022.

Data solutions vendor Fivos, formerly known as Medstreaming/M2S, will spin off its imaging services business as Astute Imaging, which offers pre- and post-surgery planning and follow-up tools. Medstreaming founders Elseaidy and Ewald de Vries will run the business.

E-consult company AristaMD acquires Preferral, which offers referral management, analytics, and document routing software. Preferral founder and CTO Jon Gautsch will become SVP at AristaMD.

Telemedicine company VisuWell raises $10.1 million. President and COO Gerry Andrady took on the CEO role last April after predecessor Sam Johnson was fired after being caught on video in an altercation with 18-year-old Dalton Stevens, who was was wearing a dress on their way to the high school prom.

Healthcare advisory and analytics firm Press Ganey will acquire Forsta, a customer experience and market research technology business. Press Ganey Chief Strategy Officer Darren Dworkin is a health IT industry veteran, having worked in executive roles at Cedars-Sinai, Boston Medical Center, Stanson Health, and Summation Health Ventures.

Neura Health, a membership-based virtual clinic specializing in headache and migraine treatments, raises $2.2 million in seed funding. The company plans on collecting a massive, anonymized data set of neurological conditions and outcomes to share with researchers and pharmaceutical companies.

Curve Health raises $12 million in a Series A funding round. The startup helps hospitals and nursing homes coordinate and manage patient care.

I missed this during the holiday break: RWJBarnabas Health Children’s Specialized Hospital (NJ) and Pinnacle Solutions have launched Predictive Health Solutions. The new business will offer technology focused on improving patient outcomes, initially focusing on reducing appointment no-shows.

Sales

• King’s College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust in England will go live on Epic next year.
• Nebraska-based HIE CyncHealth selects HealthEC’s population health technology and services.
• Community Care of North Carolina selects Bamboo Health’s Pings care coordination and notification software.

People

Healthcare workforce optimization company Prolucent Health names Dan Owens (PatientPoint) CTO.

Greg Miller (Talkdesk) joins Lumeon as chief growth officer.

Announcements and Implementations

NorthBay Healthcare (CA) implements Oracle Cloud ERP and human capital management software with assistance from Alithya Group.

In Australia, cancer center Chris O’Brien Lifehouse goes live on Meditech Expanse.

Amazon Care will expand its employer-contracted urgent and primary care services, which are offered both virtually and in-person, to 20 new cities this year.

Government and Politics

Training issues still plague the DoD’s Cerner-powered MHS Genesis system, according to an annual oversight report from the DoD’s Office of the Director, Operational Test, and Evaluation. Nearly 75% of the report’s survey respondents consider the program’s computer-based training to be “poor,” though a new initiative to give users hands-on practice in a mock environment did see improvement. The report ultimately concludes that the system “is not yet survivable in a cyber-contested environment.”

Other

JAMA publishes guidelines on how hospitals can meet the CMS requirement that they assess their EHR safety using the SAFER Guides, which is provided by SAFER Guides developers Dean Sittig, PhD; Patricia Sengstack, DNP; and Hardeep Singh, MD, MPH.

Athenahealth clarifies its COVID-19 vaccination policy, telling a local paper that the vaccine will no longer be mandated for employees who don’t directly interact with customers. Unvaccinated employees, presumably those who work in the office, must provide a weekly negative test result. All employees have the option to work from home until June.

Sponsor Updates

• Ascom signs an agreement with Champs Group Purchasing, giving its members access to Ascom’s communications workflow technology.
• Clearwater promotes Chris Dowhan to principal consultant and Leeanne Lane to director of contracting.
• Divurgent releases a new episode of its podcast, The Vurge, focusing on women in technology.
• Surescripts recaps its 2021 accomplishments, including enhancements to and expanded use of its Medication History services.

Blog Posts

• Oracle and Cerner: Epic Challenger or Epic Failure? (Medicomp Systems)
• What’s the difference between Credentialing & Contracting a provider? (AdvancedMD)
• An initial deployment of IMPAX progresses to Norway’s first EI go-live of Agfa HealthCare’s Enterprise Imaging Solution (Agfa HealthCare)
• Automated Tools Save Staff Time in Meditech Expanse Patient Accounting Desktop (PAD) (Cerecore)
• How States Are Trying to Better Understand the Nuances of Pandemic Data (Dimensional Insight)
• One Key for 2022: Staying Focused on Patients (EClinicalWorks)
• How Alternative Payment Models are Revolutionizing Healthcare (Enlace Health)
• Better care starts with better patient identity management (Experian Health)

These HIStalk sponsors were named as Best in KLAS. If I missed your company or if you are signing up as a new sponsor, let me know and I’ll do an addendum.

• Arcadia.io (value-based care management services).
• Change Healthcare (payer IT consulting services).
• Fortified Health Security (security and privacy managed services).
• HCTec/Talon Healthy IT Services (partial IT outsourcing).
• Health Data Movers (HIT implementation leadership, small).
• Impact Advisors (security and privacy consulting services).
• Imprivata (access management).
• InterSystems (interoperability platforms).
• Lyniate (integration engines).
• Meditech (acute care EMR, community hospital; home health, small; patient accounting and patient management, community hospital).
• Nordic (overall IT services firm; HIT implementation leadership, large; revenue cycle optimization; technical services).
• Nuance (speech recognition, front-end EMR).
• Premier (value-based care consulting).
• Sectra (PACS, large; PACS, small).
• Symplr (time and attendance; clinical communications).
• Well Health (patient outreach).
• Wolters Kluwer (infection control and monitoring).
• Zynx Health (clinical decision support – care plans and order sets).

Contacts

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

HIStalk Interviews Russell Branzell, CEO, CHIME

Russell Branzell, MS is president and CEO of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives of Ann Arbor, MI.

Tell me about yourself and the organization.

I have been president and CEO of CHIME since 2013. I have held chief executive positions at UC Health and Poudre Valley Health System and some CIO positions  before that, including at one of my favorite places I started after I got out of the military, which was Mercy Health System in St. Louis. Before that, I was in the military and did medical administration and some other stuff that, like everybody in the military, you don’t talk about.

CHIME is a great organization. It has been around since 1992. I joined as a member in 1997 or 1998. It serves the purpose of supporting CIOs, digital health leaders, and the new titles in this space. We have over 5,000 members across the globe. We have members in 58 countries and chapters in 11. We have other associations that are part of our organization to include security and application technology officers. But in the end, we focus on one thing. One member at a time, we want to make sure they are exceptional leaders positioned to transform health and care. That’s what we do every single day. Everything we do revolves around our members and our industry, and we try to make it a little bit better every day.

How do those new titles and new roles such as chief digital officer fit into what has traditionally been a CIO world, and how does CHIME meet their needs?

I experienced some of that in my professional career, as the role of CIO changed fairly dramatically from the tech purveyor to a leader in the C-suite and transformation.This is just the next level of maturation.

It takes a lot of people to manage a digital enterprise. Eventually, you’re going to start hearing about the digital skills that are necessary for chief executive officers, chief financial officers, and so many others. Some CIOs, as they progress up the ranks, are positioned and ready to help lead an organization to that digital challenge and the digital journey they are going on. Some aren’t. People come and go depending on how their skills progress in the industry. The most important part for us is that we will do everything we can to help people move through that.

Our industry is in massive disruption. You’re also going to see that reflected in titles, skill requirements, and positions. Not just in the C-suite, but across the entire healthcare enterprise and ecosystem. We’re going to feel that every single day. We do everything we can, through a vetting process through membership, to identify those people that fit in that digital health ecosystem bubble. That’s who we want to serve.

What education and support does CHIME offer to technology leaders who are coming into healthcare from other industries?

It’s great that we are seeing more of them entering in the industry, mainly because more opportunities are available than ever for those leaders to transition into healthcare. It is a steep learning curve, although not insurmountable. We’ve always had some of them attending our CHIME Healthcare IT Leadership Academy, our ViVE event that is coming up soon in Miami Beach, and our Fall Forum. We’ve always tried to focus on building everyone’s skills up, and they plug right in.

The primary one for experienced people transitioning into healthcare, even though they may have 20 years of IT leadership or digital leadership in another industry, is our Healthcare CIO Boot Camp program, where we spend a lot of time working on and understanding the role of leadership inside healthcare. Part of that is digital health. Part of that is IT applications. But the primary thing is that you need to be a healthcare leader first to be able to apply those.

Then we help along with other things like mentorship programs, connecting them with a friend or a buddy along the way and trying to get them involved in the community. CHIME is a relational organization. We want to plug them into a support group and an environment where they feel like they can lean on people when they have those questions that maybe are a little bit too difficult to answer right there in a boardroom some days.

Has connecting people with peer support or networking changed now that in-person conferences aren’t the only option, or maybe at times aren’t an option at all?

COVID is a horrific thing that has been tragic and difficult for so many people, but it accelerated things that we thought would take five and 10 years, which is the acceleration of digital connections and digital thought. Part of that is exactly what you described. People have come to rely on feeds of information from a digital format. Your site is one of those.

But we sometimes live in a world of isolation, because so many people work in a remote environment. We count on those connections digitally to accelerate as a relationship. That’s the part that is still a little bit hard. We are human beings. We are relational beings who still need to see and talk to each other. Sometimes Zoom and our cell phones don’t meet that need. There still is a need to come back together, and we are experiencing that across the entire human race as we speak. We’ve seen that isolation maybe is not a great thing.

Healthcare is also different in that even multi-billion dollar organizations often compete only locally or regionally, which allows people to share information freely with people outside that area.

Most healthcare is still local. That has been a cliché for so long, but it’s true. You get most of your healthcare locally, where you live. With healthcare at a macro level, it has been — maybe “inspiring” is too strong of a word — at least motivating that I’ve never met any of our peers or any CHIME members who said, “I’m never going to talk to my peers about IT. It’s my true competitive advantage.“ It’s an enabler, and people are always willing to openly and freely share that. Even those who are on the cutting and bleeding edge are more than willing to share their lessons learned. That’s what’s great about our industry — people will tell you everything they’re doing just because they want to share and improve healthcare.

What led to CHIME launching a graduate degree program under CHIME University?

This has been a journey. We launched CHIME University initially as the umbrella for all of our education and development programs, which includes certification and long-time programs. We started getting feedback from people that there were no programs that met their needs on a realistic basis of “this is the way I work, this is where I think my career is going.” We got that feedback in multiple forums.

We started the journey of considering it, going out and asking questions. Some of the questions we asked were simple, such as, “What did you really love about the graduate programs you were in, whether that was a master’s or doctorate?” We were amazed that there was almost nothing they really enjoyed about their graduate and doctoral process, with a couple of exceptions. One was engaging with professors and lecturers from the real world who had been there, done this, lived this, or are living it currently as part of the curriculum. The other was that it’s real-world applicable and current, not a textbook from five years ago. It was applicable to me now and in my near future.

When we asked them what they didn’t like, the list was long. They hated synchronous learning, that they had to be there at a specific time. I’m a professional — who knows what my life is going to be like tomorrow? They hated the fact that it was almost always a structured environment that had to start and stop on a specific date. They said, that’s not how we work, it’s not how you work, and it’s not how our digital lives are.

Just as importantly, they wanted something that was going to be tailored towards their life, not towards a purely academic mindset, even though this will be extremely academic as we go through this. We boiled it down to a simple program that was a true, self-paced, convenient way to operate. If you need to take a month off, take a month off. If you want to go really fast in some part of the program, go really fast. We made sure this was applicable to our industry’s digital leaders.

But most importantly, the thing we heard the most was, why the heck is education so expensive? I’ve got a dear friend who is six years and $200,000 into a doctorate program. We said, we’re going to offer this at a reasonable cost. We’re going to use our leaders and real experts. We can offer this at an affordable cost so participants can keep their career going and and truly advance their education.

What led to developing the ViVE conference with HLTH?

We’re in a disruptive period of time. We are in a place where we need to do things differently and bring the right thought leaders in. What CHIME has always done really well is bring serious thought leaders together who want to collaborate and find ways to do things differently, to create something in a unique way.

We’ve been working with HLTH for a few years. We worked around innovation and collaboration skills and did some different things with them at their events. It was a symbiotic relationship, one of those rarities in life where one plus one equals a much higher number than two. We really felt good about that, but what we still felt was truly missing was a place where executives, leaders, innovators, disruptors, investors, and startups can come together and work an environment that tries to advance the industry at a much faster pace, questions the status quo, and finds something that we can all agree upon in different little increments all over the place to work in a different way.

HLTH has done an amazing job at reinventing what an event looks like. CHIME has done a good job of focusing on what leaders need to improve their skills. This isn’t intended to be a giant trade show floor. It will bring digital health leaders together who want to work collaboratively, exchange thought leadership, and do things in a meaningful way. We feel good about where we are with that.

How do you walk the line between wanting to grow as an organization but making sure that vendors aren’t driving the agenda or that membership becomes so diverse that people don’t have much in common?

The great part about this, and the direction of our board with our strategies and direction of CHIME, is that CHIME will still be CHIME. CHIME is still the entity for the senior digital health leaders. We will still have our CHIME Spring Forum, which is exclusive for those members and our small number of vendor or foundation partners. There will be a larger conference called the ViVE conference that wraps around that, which will have a lot of speakers and a lot of other opportunities. That’s for those leaders who need that level.

But the CHIME part stays CHIME. For lack of better term or analogy here, it’s the nucleus that sits in the middle that we will always hold sacred and always make sure we’re supporting. We can get bigger. We can support the industry. We can look at the whole ecosystem. But we also need to be true to our roots and true to what we do well for our CHIME membership. We think we can balance both well and in a meaningful way, and at the same time, look at a larger ecosystem that needs support and leadership, because there’s a lot of people out there who need to continue to advance, improve their skills, come together, and collaborate.

How did the ViVE conference end up being so close to the HIMSS conference in both timing and geography?

I’s always been a hallmark that we think we’re doing the right thing for our members, the right thing for our leaders in the industry. This was the right location, the right timing.

If you put it in perspective, the last two major events in the industry since the easing of COVID — I don’t in any way want to suggest that it’s over — was our Fall Forum last fall and now this event in collaboration with HLTH, ViVE. We want to continue to make sure we’re supporting the industry, and this was the right location and the right timing for us. There are places for everybody in the industry who wants to make sure they are doing the right thing and supporting the industry as a whole, but this is what we are going to focus on. We are really, truly not going to worry about other people.

Are you seeing increased membership from those folks with those new digital health job titles or those who work outside of provider organizations, say for health plans or drug chains?

We’ve always had some members who work in non-traditional roles outside of acute care, ambulatory care, and large medical groups. Our primary membership for years has been the provider sector, which was mostly the acute and the ambulatory environment. But we’ve always had some members in things like long-term care, nursing facilities, rehab facilities, and payers. As we see that ecosystem continuum come together and there’s so many pieces — some through acquisitions, some through relationships and partnerships — we see more and more of those come in.

Now we have not gone out and said, “we’re going to go out and try to get every payer into CHIME.” No. What we say is, we have programs and activities for leaders regardless of where they are and where they want to fit in. But even today, we have members such as the CIO of Walgreens Boots clinic structure, payers, and long-term care. It really comes down to whether it’s a vendor foundation partner and they fit in our foundation model, or they are a deliverer of care of some type and they fit in our CHIME model.

What developments will most affect CHIME and its members over the next few years?

Our board spent a majority of the 2019 strategic retreat discussing this for multiple days. No offense to any of our previous retreats, but it was by far the most productive, forward-looking retreat we’ve ever seen, where we talked about where the industry is going. They shaped a model of our 3.0 strategy, some parts of which you’ve already addressed, such as absolutely doing everything we can to help people advance in their skills, whether that’s small training and certifications and support, or if they need an advanced degree to move forward and continue to advance their whole educational aptitude. That was part of that strategy.

The other is that we have a higher responsibility to more than just the CHIME membership. Absolutely, we’ll never take our eye off our CHIME membership and do everything we can, but there’s a lot of up-and-coming digital leaders, a lot of people who will need support and need that vision that CHIME provides to them. We will look to the larger digital health ecosystem to make sure we’re doing that along the way.

The third leg of that stool is that not everybody’s going to connect in an in-person event. As a matter of fact, a vast majority will not connect in an in-person event. We need to provide everything from a digital connection engagement perspective, where they can do those things just as much as in-person in a digital format around the globe.That’s one of the things we can do in an easy way. We can leverage all the things that we’re doing to connect the entire ecosystem to raise all the boats while actually putting the same effort toward those.

We feel good about addressing the large ecosystem, staying true to what we are, but also advancing the whole industry to a place that will look dramatically different in five years. Healthcare will be almost unrecognizable, with the amount of technology and opportunities to improve care in the next three to five years, and then the next three to five years after that. We are in the revolutionary stage of healthcare delivery.

Morning Headlines 2/8/22

AristaMD Acquires Referral Management Solution, Preferral, to Increase Patient Access to Specialty Care

E-consult company AristaMD acquires referral management platform developer Preferral for an undisclosed sum.

Press Ganey Announces Plans to Acquire Forsta — a Leader in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Voice of the Customer — to Accelerate Innovation in the Global Healthcare Experience Industry

Healthcare advisory and analytics firm Press Ganey acquires Forsta, a customer experience and market research technology business.

Neura Health Raises $2.2M to Improve Access and Quality of Care for Neurologic Conditions

Neura Health, a membership-based virtual clinic specializing in treatments for headaches, raises $2.2 million in seed funding.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 2/7/22

As a consulting clinical informaticist, one of the things I’m often tasked with is EHR optimization. Sometimes clients have robust structures for receiving feedback from clinical users as well as teams who are tasked with assessing workflows and recommending changes. In those situations, I might provide clinical input as they work through issues, getting proposed changes polished before we take them out to stakeholders for feedback. That’s a lot of fun, because the end users appreciate having a fully vetted solution presented to them versus having to be involved in the details of process.

Other times, clients need someone to help them create a structure to handle feedback and recommend solutions. Those projects are also rewarding because users really like feeling like they’re being heard and that someone cares, even if the process you’re creating is just getting started.

One of the hot topics in optimization right now is figuring out how to lighten physician documentation requirements. It’s been a year since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services modified the Evaluation & Management coding requirements with the goal of simplifying documentation. Many clinicians thought the changes were too good to be true and I don’t blame them. Coming from a large health system background, I felt that the years of internal compliance audits had created a certain level of fear around under-documenting or over-coding. We had been conditioned to make sure we were documenting more than enough Review of Systems and Physical Exam checkboxes just to be on the safe side. This was made more complex when one needed to document an element that could be counted in two different systems, and most of the physicians I know had come to dread any conversation around coding.

Now that there has been some flexibility, and people have learned that auditors aren’t waiting around every corner to catch someone who isn’t documenting correctly, physicians are eagerly pushing their organizations to remove the excessive clicking that physicians and their support staff members have been complaining about for years. As people have reassessed their priorities during the pandemic, clinical users have been increasingly vocal about how much they feel technology is contributing to burnout. With staffing levels as dire as they are in some organizations, those organizations have figured out that they can’t afford to not listen to what their employees are saying. Those organizations who have consciously looked at how their users work have also figured out that so-called “note bloat” makes it harder to care for patients since notes that contain extraneous information make it harder to find the data elements that are important.

Physicians and other users who had created extensive macros to satisfy the previous E&M requirements are now spending time trimming down the content of those macros to better reflect what they do in a typical patient visit. Adjusting those configurations takes time, and end-users are eager to have an analyst or super user make the changes whenever possible. Depending on the EHR, the effort needed to do this can range from straightforward to cumbersome. Not surprisingly, I see more progress on “easy” systems than I do on those that require greater involvement of IT or other teams. Sometimes the level of difficulty to make a change is murky, though. The fact that I’ve worked in so many different EHRs is certainly an advantage when analysts push back and try to make it seem like it’s more complicated to make a change than it really is.

I also see more physicians who are using time-based coding since figuring out how to document that has become a bit easier. In the past, you had to keep track of how much of the visit was face-to-face, how much was counseling and coordination of care, etc. Now the majority of elements performed by a provider on the day of service count, making it much more likely that a physician might choose to code based on the duration of effort. This has led to greater number of high-level visits being coded by physician. Although one would think this should lead to greater pay for physicians, I’ve seen a number of organizations figure out ways to avoid paying their clinicians more. Some have made adjustments to keep physician salaries relatively flat, keeping a greater portion of the payments for the organization versus passing them on to the people doing the work.

When I hear that the latter is happening, I try to push optimization as much as possible in order to ensure the end users feel some relief. Even if they’re not receiving better compensation, I can hopefully make their days at least a little bit shorter and their visits a little easier.

There have been a couple of times recently when I’ve felt really torn when working on an optimization project. I’ve gotten a sense that administrators will perceive that the physicians are doing less work, will translate this to a perception that the physicians have greater capacity, and then continue to shift work towards them. We saw a great shift of low-level clinical work to physicians at the beginning of the Meaningful Use program, and physicians had to fight hard to get organizations to agree that they needed their support staff to take on some of this work. The idea of working at the top of your license could be used to show that physicians were expensive, and if you had more staff, you could see more patients and those changes were revenue neutral or even positive.

Now that there is such a labor shortage, finding capable staff at a price organizations and administrators are willing to pay can be tricky. Not surprisingly, physicians have filled the gap because it’s the right thing to do for their patients, but it’s hard to convince decision makers to look for unicorn-like staff members in this market when they know the physicians will do the work for free. No amount of optimization is going to improve clinician morale if they feel like they’re being pulled into a black hole of ongoing work with no help in sight. I’m interested in understanding how large organizations have optimized their systems based on the changes to the Evaluation & Management codes.

Are your ambulatory physicians writing the shortest notes of their careers with the same billing codes? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

HIStalk Interviews Torbjörn Kronander, CEO, Sectra

Torbjörn Kronander, PhD, MSEE, MBA is president and SEO of Sectra of Linköping, Sweden.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

Sectra started out as a cybersecurity company in Sweden. In 1990, I had just completed my PhD and started up the medical imaging side of the business. Our first foray was in teleradiology and then we moved into radiology. We took what we learned in radiology, and we’re now focusing on enterprise imaging and have added modules for cardiology, ophthalmology, orthopedics, and pathology.

We are seeing the same trend in imaging that we’ve seen in EMRs, where there was a separate information system for every single department of the hospital. Then Epic and Cerner came around, and the CIOs said, we want as few systems as possible, and consolidated all the departmental information systems on one EMR.

What are the most significant trends in medical imaging?

Efficiency is important. There is an alarming risk of burnout among US physicians. You need to have systems that are fast and effective to use.

We see a trend toward consolidating to as few IT systems as possible. Having multiple systems is expensive and people underestimate the costs involved. You may have 100 IT people on your staff in a hospital, but without consolidation, a lot of them are doing the same thing on different systems. We are the only vendor who can manage all images in one system.

Cloud is also becoming increasingly important. Having a lot of hardware on site is expensive, and it is challenging to stay on top of the many updates of the underlying operating systems. If you can use Google or Microsoft to manage the cloud operations, they are, cybersecurity-wise, in a better place than almost any on-prem solution.

Combined, we see a large trend towards cloud and a single system for all your images — let’s call it a “pixel EMR,” which is a quote from one of our customers — and then within that space, digital pathology, which is rapidly coming along.

What role does AI play?

AI is very interesting. It will be large, but it will not be as fast as people anticipated. There is a famous quote that the first law of technology is that we always overestimate the impact in the short term of transformative new things, but we also inevitably underestimate the long-term impact. We see this exact trend in AI.

AI is not where it was a few years ago, when people predicted there will be no more radiologists needed to be trained after 2022, which of course is not a bit true. But we will see AI gradually coming into prominence. I’d like to quote one of our customers, Dr. Langlotz of Stanford, who says, “AI will not replace radiologists, but radiologist who use AI will replace radiologists who don’t.” It will drive efficiency, but it will not replace the radiologist. You will still need that human being in medicine. 

We see a lot of AI vendors right now in the market. At Sectra, we have said that you can’t compete with the hundreds and hundreds of AI startups, so we are going with the open systems approach. We have the Sectra Amplifier Store, where customers can use any AI application that they like. If we’re going to accept the AI software for their use, we will do the cybersecurity evaluation on it and ensure that it is secure.

Cybersecurity is a grossly underestimated trend in medical IT systems, because ransomware attacks are increasing, and healthcare is a primary target. Eighty-five percent of Sectra’s business is medical IT, and the other 15% is cybersecurity, which gave us our name — “SECure TRAnsmisson.” We are one of the most prominent cybersecurity vendors in all of Europe. We protect networks with high-level security. We provide secure mobile workplaces and phones for the entire European Union. We are using that same knowledge when we build our IT systems.

Is the company’s cybersecurity expertise a competitive advantage over companies that just sell imaging systems?

That is a very true statement. For many years, we have run our security and medical divisions in parallel. Over the last two to four years, this philosophy has increased in value. Cyberthreats are dangerous for healthcare because typically health systems have to pay the ransom. If other industries get attacked by ransomware, most of them will not pay if they can at all avoid it. But in healthcare, patients die unless you pay those who are responsible for ransomware. The cyber mafia knows this.

We see huge benefit from having defense-level and national government-level security knowledge in the company. We build our systems to be as safe as possible. We are one of the highest-ranked cybersecurity companies in the entire medical sector today. To have that knowledge in house is important. It’s also interesting to see that KLAS now ranks vendors for their cybersecurity preparedness and they consider Sectra to be very mature and safe in that aspect.

What challenges and opportunities have arisen due to the pandemic, especially with telehealth and teleradiology?

I would say the largest impact has been in telepathology. Pathologists are embracing the ability to digitally send images for second opinions as well as to read from remote locations. Previously, a pathologist had to sit at the site of the biopsy and wait for the sample to arrive from the operating room. Now they can see the slides digitally and make quick and easy diagnoses.

How would you assess the status of image sharing?

That is an important question, because sending images in a taxi from one end of New York City to the other is not very effective and it’s also dangerous for the patients. Sectra has the largest image-sharing network in the world, located in the UK, in which every single hospital is connected through our system which sends approximately 40,000 exams per week. There are no CDs in the UK anymore, thanks to us. We are also applying this technology to some places in the US, but the UK network is our biggest reference as of today.

How much of the company’s strategy and product design has to reflect the healthcare policies of the US that don’t apply anywhere else in the world?

The US is our most important market at this time. We have a market share of greater than 50% in many Northern European countries where we operate, whereas we have about 10% in the US. We do, however, have the happiest customers, as evidenced through KLAS and the Best in KLAS awards, and that gives us the ability to grow. We have some important American partners that we collaborate with for research, and some very prominent hospitals as customers. We spend a lot of effort and emphasis on the US market.

There are differences between regions in the world, but not as many as you might think in the imaging space. Images are images, and the way you need to work with them to complete the diagnosis is very similar in all countries.

You’ve said that the way you beat big imaging competitors is to have better employees, stick with your goals, and treat your customers better. How do you make that happen as a global company?

I’m a good friend with Judy Faulkner of Epic, and she told me once that the only way you can become big in the US is by having more happy customers. That resonates very well with my basic philosophy of life. You need to make money, but there’s more to life than money. Happiness is also very, very important. You cannot create happy customers without happy employees. We work a lot with employee satisfaction and recruiting to finding the best people.

It’s very interesting that the competitive advantage for product innovation is a fairly short timeframe. If a vendor introduces a new feature, by the next year, everybody has it embedded in their product. But that’s not the same thing with customer satisfaction. The only way you can sustain a high level is if you have happy employees who are motivated and who will do the best for customers. That culture will always win.

We also recruit the best possible people to join the company. I personally interview every single one, worldwide, before they get an offer. To maintain exceptional quality, every interviewer has the right to veto a candidate. We also have high employee retention, with many people working at Sectra for 15 or 20 years because they like it. And of course, if they like it, they also do a good job for our customers.

What will be important to the company over the next few years?

As I mentioned earlier, enterprise imaging is crucially important. The CIOs cannot afford to have multiple IT systems and they need to partner with companies who can manage all their departmental images in one single system. We have changed to a subscription-based, SaaS model which allows the customer to acquire new technology without large capital investments and we guarantee the cost for the underlying cloud infrastructure which no other vendor does, to our knowledge.

Morning Headlines 2/7/22

Premier, Inc. Reports Fiscal Year 2022 Second Quarter Results

Premier reports Q2 results: revenue down 10%, adjusted EPS $0.73 versus $0.65, beating Wall Street expectations for both.

Vyaire Medical Issues Voluntary Correction for Certain Bellavista Ventilators in Specific Software Configurations

Ventilator manufacturer Vyaire Medical warns users of certain models to turn off the HL7 communication option after customers reported that the devices “unintentionally ceased ventilation during clinical use and require rebooting to resume ventilation.”

HHS: Conti ransomware encrypted 80% of Ireland’s HSE IT systems

HHS publishes a threat brief dissecting the ransomware attack that disrupted Ireland’s health service for four months.

Monday Morning Update 2/7/22

Top News

Premier reports Q2 results: revenue down 10%, adjusted EPS $0.73 versus $0.65, beating Wall Street expectations for both.

The pandemic caused an 18% drop in supply chain revenue, while the company’s Performance Services segment – which includes analytics software – saw a 15% revenue increase. PINC shares are up 7% in the past 12 months versus the Nasdaq’s 2% gain, valuing the company at $4.5 billion.

From the earnings call:

• The company’s analysis of its PINC AI data finds that health system clinical employees are working 50% more hours than they did pre-pandemic.
• Premier is addressing purchasing inefficiencies by scaling its e-invoicing and e-payables technologies with its Remitra supply chain-focused digital payments solution.
• The company is partnering with life sciences companies on prospective research.
• Premier will offer Qventus’s patient flow solution and develop new AI-based solutions with the company.
• The company sees opportunities in clinical decision support, prior authorization automation, and HCC coding.

Reader Comments

From Bob Pshaw: “Re: the HIMSS BrandHIT Marketing Summit. I just realized that this HIMSS conference, which launched in 2017 to help vendors sell stuff, seems to have died quickly and quietly. Heard anything?” The conference, which was presented by HIMSS Media in a startling display of not even pretending to be journalistically objective, seems to have lasted two iterations, one in Las Vegas and the other in Nashville. That’s not exactly a testimonial to the topic in which it claimed expertise, and neither was the inconsistent name that HIMSS used to promote it (sometimes calling it Brand HIT, others BrandHIT, sometimes both in adjacent sentences). I assume HIMSS Media still runs its Media Lab, which sells marketing services, content, webinars, and basically paid access to HIMSS members.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents show a preference for self-scheduling via a webpage rather than an app. Mario brings up the point that contactless appointments don’t triage based on patient need and are therefore problematic, while Rebecca notes that her least-favorite scheduling option is when the practice just tells her when to show up without asking first.

New poll to your right or here: Which factor would most entice you to seek information from a conference booth exhibitor?

Listening: Bartees Strange, who joyously follows his ear in veering from hard-charging rock to melodic hip-hop and making it all sound good.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Enlace Health of Columbus, OH. The Connected World of Enlace empowers payers, providers, and patients to participate together in an economically sound environment. Enlace Health solves healthcare from the inside out, fixing healthcare at its core. The Enlace solution is the only end-to-end infrastructure that bridges the gap between the current, chaotic system and an orderly healthcare world. Enlace always meets clients where they are, creating solutions based on need and maturity in value-based care. Enlace is Sustainable Healthcare. Delivered. Thanks to Enlace Health for supporting HIStalk.

I found this introductory video for Enlace Health on YouTube.

Thanks to the following companies for recently supporting HIStalk. Click a logo for more information.

Webinars

February 9 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “2022 – Industry Predictions and Medicomp Roadmap.” Sponsor: Medicomp Systems. Presenters: David Lareau, CEO, Medicomp Systems; Jay Anders, MD, chief medical officer, Medicomp Systems; Dan Gainer, CTO, Medicomp Systems. The presenters will provide an update on the health IT industry and a review of the company’s milestones and insights that it gained over the past two years. Topics will include Cures Act implications, interoperability, AI, ambient listening, telehealth-first primary care, chronic care management, and new Quippe functionality and roadmap.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Shares in the Global X Telemedicine and Digital Health ETF (EDOC) dropped 10% in the past month versus the Nasdaq’s 11% loss. Digital health stocks have been on a tear lately, “tear” being the kind that pours from the eyes of investors who have watched their former high-flying companies auger into the hard ground of reality, especially those that took the SPAC back door. Private equity seems better suited lately to make startups successful compared to taking those companies public prematurely to ride an investment wave-slash-bubble, so we may see more companies exiting public markets after short, unsuccessful visits there.

Sales

• ChartWise Medical Systems selects SyTrue’s Natural Language Processing Operating System to mine structured and unstructured chart data into its NotePath AI-based chart review system.

People

Terri Sanders, MPH, formerly chief marketing and communications officer of HIMSS, joins Kivvit as managing director.

Announcements and Implementations

Labcorp launches OnDemand, which allows consumers to buy lab tests online and either collect samples at home or at its patient service centers. Competitor Quest offers a similar service, which is also marketed through Walmart. Physicians approve the tests behind the scenes in both cases, in Labcorp’s case via PWNHealth, for which Labcorp absorbs its $6.50 fee in the test purchase price.

Other

Ventilator manufacturer Vyaire Medical warns users of certain models to turn off the HL7 communication option after customers reported that the devices “unintentionally ceased ventilation during clinical use and require rebooting to resume ventilation.”

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks publishes a new customer success story, “How Records in Prisma Overcame a Language Barrier.”
• Fortified Health Security publishes its “2022 Horizon Report: The State of Cybersecurity in Healthcare.”
• OptimizeRx will present at BTIG’s MedTech, Digital Health, Life Science & Diagnostic Tools Conference February 15, and SVB Leerink’s virtual Global Healthcare Conference February 17.
• Olive announces the five winners of its Hack for Health developer contest.
• Frost & Sullivan has recognized Wolters Kluwer Health with its 2021 North American Company of the Year Award.
• Kyruus announces results from 2021, including expanding its customer base by 25 new healthcare organizations and expanding its online scheduling platform, among other achievements.
• Talkdesk appoints Tom Reilly (Cloudera) to its board.
• Vocera’s clinical communication and workflow solutions are now available for procurement through the NHS Shared Business Services Patient/Citizen Communications and Engagement Framework.
• Well Health announces its 2021 Well Health Award Winners.
• Arcadia publishes an analysis of data involving COVID-19 patients who were hospitalized and discharged from US hospitals in 2020.
• Zen Healthcare IT President and co-founder Marilee Benson has been selected to join The Carequality Advisory Council and the HIMSS Interoperability and HIE Committee.

Blog Posts

• Tapping Technology to Empower Your Workforce (Netsmart)
• How Empathy Can Help Reduce Hospital Readmissions (PatientBond)
• 4 Vendor Relationship Management Strategies for Healthcare (Symplr)
• Coming Soon! Tiny Talk Video Series with Our Privacy Experts (Protenus)
• 5 Ways to Make It Easier to Stay in Our Homes as We Age (Quil Health)
• Providers Are at the Center of Tech-Enabled Care Access (RxRevu)
• Founder Letter: How the Patient Experience Shaped WebPT’s Product Roadmap (WebPT)

Contacts

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

Morning Headlines 2/4/22

SOC Telemed to be Acquired by Patient Square Capital

Healthcare investment firm Patient Square Capital will acquire acute care telemedicine platform vendor SOC Telemed for about $300 million.

Baker Tilly Acquires Orchestrate Healthcare

Advisory CPA firm Baker Tilly, US acquires Orchestrate Healthcare, which offers consulting services for EHR implementation, analytics, IT security, and health IT staffing.

Change Healthcare Inc. Reports Third Quarter Fiscal 2022 Financial Results

Change Healthcare reports Q3 results: revenue up 10%, adjusted EPS $0.36 versus $0.34, meeting earnings expectations and beating on revenue.

‘The darkest, most bottomless pit in healthcare:’ Goodbill raises $3.4M to tackle medical billing

Hospital billing and payment transparency software startup Goodbill has raised $3.4 million in seed funding.

News 2/4/22

Top News

Healthcare investment firm Patient Square Capital will acquire acute care telemedicine platform vendor SOC Telemed for $3 per share, about $300 million. That is a 366% premium to the company’s closing share price Wednesday before the announcement.

SOC went public via a SPAC merger in November 2020, with shares opening at $10.

TLMD shares had dropped to around 60 cents prior to the acquisition announcement, with a market cap in the $65 million range

SOC Telemed’s Q3 earnings report from November 2021 showed a loss of $11 million on revenue of $27 million.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor NeuroFlow. The Philadelphia-based company provides best-in-class technology and care services for the effective integration of behavioral health. NeuroFlow’s HIPAA-compliant platform supports over 14 million users across 300 health systems, payors, and organizations, helping them capture behavioral health insights and take action to proactively manage individuals and populations holistically. I noted that co-founder and CEO Christopher Molaro, MBA graduated from West Point and served as a US Army platoon leader deployed to Iraq. Thanks to NeuroFlow for supporting HIStalk.

I found this YouTube video from NeuroFlow that explains how the company’s technology supports organizations that embrace the collaborative care model.

Webinars

February 9 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “2022 – Industry Predictions and Medicomp Roadmap.” Sponsor: Medicomp Systems. Presenters: David Lareau, CEO, Medicomp Systems; Jay Anders, MD, chief medical officer, Medicomp Systems; Dan Gainer, CTO, Medicomp Systems. The presenters will provide an update on the health IT industry and a review of the company’s milestones and insights that it gained over the past two years. Topics will include Cures Act implications, interoperability, AI, ambient listening, telehealth-first primary care, chronic care management, and new Quippe functionality and roadmap.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Advisory CPA firm Baker Tilly, US acquires health IT consulting firm Orchestrate Healthcare. Baker Tilly says it will continue to invest heavily in digital health to support providers who need to control costs and adopt new business models while continuing to deliver high-quality care. The company has 3,150 healthcare organization customers. The 120-employee Orchestrate offers services for EHR implementation. analytics, IT security and health IT staffing.

Relaxation app vendor Calm acquires Ripple Health Group, which offers a care coordination platform. Ripple’s CEO will serve as co-CEO with Calm’s founder and the combined companies will develop a replacement for its Calm for Business app.

Change Healthcare reports Q3 results: revenue up 10%, adjusted EPS $0.36 versus $0.34, meeting earnings expectations and beating on revenue. Its acquisition by UnitedHealth Group remains on track for sometime after February 22 and before its deadline of April 5.

Shares in Meta (Facebook) tanked 26% Thursday after the company reported its first-ever decline in quarterly user count and it warned of expected weaker revenue growth. The resulting $230 billion loss in market value was unprecedented. Meanwhile, Amazon’s shares jumped 17% in after-hours trading after it reported strong earnings and another increase in Prime annual pricing to $139, increasing its market value by around $250 billion.

Sales

• UCI Health will use Epic-integrated digital health solutions from Biofourmis to establish a virtual care for remote patient monitoring and hospital-at-home initiatives, replacing its legacy system.

People

Drug discount management platform vendor Kalderos names industry long-timer Brent Dover (Commure) as CEO.

Nym Health, which offers autonomous medical coding, hires Or Peles (Tasq.ai) as SVP of R&D.

Behavioral health EHR/PM vendor Kipu Health appoints Andy Eckert, MBA (Zelis) as board chair.

Real-world oncology data platform vendor COTA promotes Paige Whitney to SVP of life sciences.

Impact Advisors hires Randy Notes, MPH (RSM) as managing director of its margin improvement practice.

Eisenhower Medical Center (CA) hires Ken Buechele, MBA (Bronson Healthcare Group) as VP/CIO.

Availity hires Nathan von Colditz (McKinsey & Company) as chief strategy officer.

Janice Wurz (Scottsdale Institute) joins Garner as executive partner.

Pam Arora, MBA (Children’s Health) joins the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) as president and CEO.

CliniSys, which just acquired Horizon Lab Systems and merged with Sunquest Information Systems, names industry long-timer Mark Spencer (Abbott Informatics) as SVP of global strategy.

Announcements and Implementations

Memorial Health System Cancer Center (OH) implements Sonifi Health’s interactive platform, which offers on-demand movies, relaxation content, educational programs, and live programming.

A study finds that patient-generated behavioral health data can be reliably submitted via NeuroFlow’s app and was associated with a 50% reduction in suicidal thinking.

MedStar Health goes live on a patient experience platform from B.well Connected Health.

MyConnectSolutions adds virtual care capabilities to its MedConnect platform, powered by Bluestream Health.

Walmart will offer customers the ability to order lab tests from Quest’s QuestDirect online. Their order will be approved by a doctor when required and the company will then either mail the customer an at-home test kit or direct them to a Quest patient service center, depending on the test’s requirements. The patient can share their results with their doctor via Quest’s MyQuest portal.

Other

I ran across MedLion Clinic, which provides a glimpse into the commoditization of virtual primary care. The company’s “unlimited” plan costs $13 per month and offers customers in about half the US states 24×7 texting with an assigned doctor, scheduled video visits weekdays 9-6, management of both acute and chronic conditions, ordering of prescriptions and labs, and access to $1 medications.

The New York Times looks at the use of surveillance tracking by some cities in Japan to find people with dementia who wander, which is the leading cause of its missing persons cases. The country has adopted an “age in place” focus that leads to more wandering incidents. Digital solutions include security cameras, shoe-worn tracking devices, and QR tracking codes on the person’s fingernail. Caregivers initiate the registration process with a medical review required for approval, but individuals themselves are not required to give permission.

Sponsor Updates

• ReMedi Health Solutions publishes a free guide titled “The Health System’s Guide to Cerner in 2022.”
• Black Book names PerfectServe its top client-rated secure communications platform for 2022.
• Fortified Health Security names Ryan Jackson (Churchill Mortgage) billing specialist.
• Kyruus recaps its 2021 customer growth in which it added 25 provider organizations and increased revenue by 150% following its acquisition of HealthSparq.
• Health Data Movers promotes Brandon Camp to director of the project management office, and Michael Martin to director of interoperability.
• Lumeon completes SOC 2 Type II Certification for its Care Journey Orchestration platform.
• Meditech will host its virtual 2022 Home Care Symposium March 21-25.
• NTT Data retains its leader position in Everest Group’s annual Intelligent Automation in Healthcare Report.

Blog Posts

• How Holistic Data Helps Protect Patients and Enhance Clinician Experience (Philips Capsule)
• Study Shows Lower ED Readmission Rates with GetWell Loop (GetWell)
• The Emerging Role of a Chief Digital Officer in Healthcare: A Conversation with Craig Richardville – Part II (HCI Group)
• Vaccine & Testing Programs: Six Imperatives for HR Professionals (Healthcare IT Leaders)
• Happyology at Impact Advisors: How It All Got Started (Impact Advisors)
• If 95% of cyber-attacks are due to human error, why have only 24% of clinicians been trained to avoid them? (Imprivata)
• How to create a problem list governance strategy (Intelligent Medical Objects)
• Combating Cyberattacks: How Payers and Providers Are Managing Digital Identity Authentication (LexisNexis Risk Solutions)
• Are You Ready for the Updated CMS ECR Mandate? (Medhost)
• A Guide to Medicare Physical Therapy Caps in 2022 (MWTherapy)
• Offsetting the looming physician shortage (Nuance)

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 2/3/22

For many companies, HIMSS preparation is in full swing, if my inbox is any indicator of the situation. Multiple marketing people have reached out inviting me to visit their booths for demos or conversation. I must say that the invites for happy hour appetizer and beverage events seem to be lacking, so I’m wondering if HIMSS is clamping down on food and beverage service in the exhibit hall due to COVID. If that’s the case, I’ll definitely be missing the scones.

As for booth invitations, I’m more likely to respond if a company has a compelling pitch and understands that I have to visit them anonymously versus trying to get me to make an appointment, since that undermines the whole anonymous blogger vibe. No invites for after-hours events yet, so I’m not sure how this year’s social scene is shaping up just yet.

For frontline physicians, the creation of Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) brought to life key pieces of technology that made a tremendous difference in patient care. I keep receiving emails from my local PDMP, asking me to approve delegate requests for nurse practitioners and physician assistants that I worked with at my former practice. Our state won’t allow non-physician providers to have an account unless they’re sponsored by a physician, which in many cases was me. There has been a lot of turnover in the physician ranks and apparently some of the new supervising physicians either don’t have PDMP accounts and therefore can’t delegate to the midlevel providers, or somehow don’t think it’s important for the providers they supervise to be able to look for patterns of controlled substance abuse or diversion. This has been going on for more than eight months, and I feel bad for the providers who don’t have access to this vital information. It’s yet another illustration why a patchwork of state laws isn’t always the best thing for patient care. On the other hand, it’s also a pretty telling commentary on the leadership of my former practice, who could solve the problem by requiring that everyone makes use of the PDMP and that appropriate operational structures are in place to support the effort.

From Jimmy the Greek: “Re: this week’s Snowmageddon. I’m tired of seeing organizations talk about their ‘inclimate’ weather” preparations. Spelling counts. Take a look at this email – not only is the inclimate weather virus spreading, but now I have contact information for 200+ patients.” Jimmy forwarded me an email from his local physical therapy provider, who apparently doesn’t understand patient privacy or how to use blind carbon copy functionality on an email. The body of the email made it clear that the addressees were patients with appointments scheduled today or tomorrow and also mentioned that they’d be contacted to reschedule. I hope Jimmy gives them an earful when he receives his call.

Hot on the heels of my weekend piece about healthcare organizations that aren’t giving their employees time to recover from illness and injury, I’m mentoring young physician informaticist who emailed with some questions about professionalism. He was on a training call with one of his organization’s tech vendors. The lead presenter seemed tired and out of it, and about 20 minutes into the call, admitted that he was COVID-positive and was having a difficult time focusing and asked if they could take a break so he could hand off to his backup. As a physician, my friend was surprised that someone who was obviously symptomatic would be working, especially in a non-essential role. From a business perspective, he was surprised that the vendor hadn’t asked to reschedule the call, or that they didn’t start the session with the backup presenter in the first place.

Even with people working remotely, if they’re not well enough to work, they shouldn’t be working. In this situation the presenter knew well enough that they weren’t 100% that they arranged for a backup presenter. This situation speaks not only to poor individual judgment (which I guess you could probably attribute to COVID-induced brain fog), but potentially to corporate policies that push people to work even when they shouldn’t.

My young colleague was wondering about what he should have done if there hadn’t been a backup presenter. Should he have called a stop to the presentation after realizing the presenter was in some distress? He was also questioning whether he should say something to others at the vendor about what had happened. I think compassion dictates asking a struggling presenter if they need a moment, and if they don’t realize there’s an issue, then I’d probably ask them if we could reschedule. It’s difficult where a medical condition is concerned and one doesn’t want to pry or appear inappropriate pointing out that things aren’t going well, so I’m not sure if there’s a great answer here.

This ties in nicely to an article I read about the CDC’s recent update to workplace guidelines for COVID-positive healthcare personnel. Although many assume those roles are largely occupied by physicians, nurses, therapists, and others who are performing hands-on patient care, the CDC guidance also includes “persons not directly involved in patient care, but who could be exposed to infectious agents that can be transmitted in the healthcare setting,” including administrative and billing personnel. This also may include a lot of healthcare IT workers depending on their roles. Many healthcare workers who aren’t in the weeds on the recommendations might not realize that work restrictions for healthcare personnel are broken into three categories:

• Conventional standard. Those with COVID-19 should be restricted from the workplace for 10 days or for seven days with a negative test – assuming asymptomatic, mild, or moderate illness with improving symptoms. Many organizations interpret conventional as applying when there is adequate staff or personnel are non-essential.
• Contingency standard. Those with COVID-19 may return after five days if asymptomatic, mild, or moderate illness with improving symptoms.
• Crisis standard. There are no work restrictions, but there may be prioritization considerations, such as having COVID-positive staff only work with COVID-positive patients.

We’re starting to come down from crisis standards of care to contingency in some parts of the country, and in others, it may be time to see a change from contingency to conventional standards. Regardless of the definition, if people aren’t able to perform the essential functions of their job, they shouldn’t be working. We need to stand up for each other when we see someone in the workplace who probably shouldn’t be.

How would you handle someone who is obviously too sick to work? Leave a comment or email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 2/3/22

KIPU Health Appoints Healthcare Industry Leader R. Andrew Eckert as Chairman of its Board of Directors

Kipu Health appoints former TriZetto and Eclipsys CEO Andrew Eckert (Zelis) as chairman of its board.

Calm app acquires Ripple Health Group and appoints a new co-CEO

Relaxation app developer Calm acquires Ripple Health Group, which offers caregivers digital healthcare organizers and coordination with professional care teams.

Biden relaunches cancer-fighting ‘moonshot’

President Biden announces the relaunch of his Cancer Moonshot program, which aims to reduce the cancer death rate by 50% over the next 25 years, alongside the proposed launch of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

Morning Headlines 2/2/22

PointClickCare Technologies Announces Intent to Acquire Audacious Inquiry

Post-acute care software vendor PointClickCare will acquire Audacious Inquiry, a Baltimore-based care notification and coordination technology company.

Jasper Health Raises $25 Million in Series A Funding to Increase Access to Comprehensive Cancer Experience and Care Navigation Platform

Cancer care navigation and experience platform vendor Jasper Health raises $25 million in a Series A funding round.

VA failed to ensure data quality during initial EHR rollout, GAO finds

A GAO report finds that the VA did not establish performance measures and goals for migrating data from VistA to Cerner Millennium and HealteIntent before initial go-live in October 2020, resulting in the recommendation that the VA establish and use data performance measures and use a stakeholder register to make sure reporting needs are addressed.

Forescout Acquires CyberMDX to Expand Healthcare Cybersecurity Focus

Enterprise cybersecurity firm Forescout Technologies acquires healthcare cybersecurity company CyberMDX.

News 2/2/22

Top News

Post-acute care software vendor PointClickCare will acquire Audacious Inquiry, a Baltimore-based care notification and coordination technology company. Terms were not disclosed.

Canada-based PointClickCare acquired care coordination platform operator Collective Medical in December 2020 for $650 million. Its earlier acquisitions include Co-Pilot Analytics and QuickMar.

A year-ago minority investment reportedly valued PointClickCare at $4 billion.

Webinars

February 9 (Wednesday) 1 ET. “2022 – Industry Predictions and Medicomp Roadmap.” Sponsor: Medicomp Systems. Presenters: David Lareau, CEO, Medicomp Systems; Jay Anders, MD, chief medical officer, Medicomp Systems; Dan Gainer, CTO, Medicomp Systems. The presenters will provide an update on the health IT industry and a review of the company’s milestones and insights that it gained over the past two years. Topics will include Cures Act implications, interoperability, AI, ambient listening, telehealth-first primary care, chronic care management, and new Quippe functionality and roadmap.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Advanced care planning and virtual palliative care company Vynca raises $30 million. Vynca, which counts Intermountain, Ochsner, and Sutter health systems among its customers, acquired palliative care provider ResolutionCare last summer.

Vista Equity Partners and Evergreen Coast Capital will acquire Citrix for $16.5 billion. They will take the company private and merge it with Tibco Software, an enterprise data management company that includes healthcare providers and payers among its customers.

Seattle-based remote patient monitoring startup Measure Labs raises $4.7 million. CEO Jamien McCullum, CSO Matt Whitehill and CTO Eric Chen are entrepreneurs-in-residence at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, which the company lists as an investor.

Cancer care navigation and experience platform vendor Jasper Health raises $25 million in a Series A funding round.

Digital diabetes management company Glooko acquires Xbird, a Berlin-based company that offers diabetes-focused predictive analytics and care management.

Healthcare consumer experiences platform vendor League raises a $95 million funding round. I can’t decipher exactly what it sells, but it has implemented an impressive array of buzzwords. The three co-founders, none of whom have healthcare experience, came from Kobo, a company that sold a e-reader that attempted to compete with Amazon’s Kindle.

Sales

• The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center will use WellSky’s care coordination software and home health service to care for heart failure patients after discharge.
• Cone Health (NC) will implement RadAI’s Continuity care coordination technology to ensure timely, appropriate care is delivered based on radiology reports.
• Walmart will offer its health plan enrollees personalized provider recommendations from Health at Scale, which covers 25 specialties and 34 procedures and imaging with “next best action.”

People

Nathalie McCaughley, MBA, MS (Cigna) joins Agfa HealthCare as president.

RapidAI names Karim Karti (IRhythm Technologies) as CEO.

Andrew Resnick, MD (Mass General Brigham) joins The Chartis Group as chief medical and quality officer.

Quantum Health names Veronica Knuth (CoverMyMeds) as chief people officer.

Pager names Simon Mathews, MD (Vivante Health) chief medical officer, Bulent Ugurlu (Optum) VP of engineering, and Max Anfilofyev (SOC Telemed) VP of product; and promotes Joe Martinez, RN to VP of virtual care and Alison Thomas (not pictured) to VP of partner solutions.

Jessica Beegle, JD — who has worked in healthcare business development for GE, Amazon Web Services, Google, and Walgreens Health – joins for-profit hospital operator LifePoint Health as SVP/chief innovation officer. 

Allscripts promotes Salman Naqvi, MBBS, MPH to VP of professional services.

ResMed hires Urvashi Tyagi, MS, MBA (ADP) as CTO, where she will lead the company’s digital health technology team and investments. She replaces Bobby Ghoshal, MBA, who was previously promoted to president of the company’s SaaS business unit.

Announcements and Implementations

Hackensack Meridian Health (NJ) implements data integration, quality, and management capabilities from Informatica.

Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula says its use of the care management platform of Force Therapeutics helped reduce 90-day admissions following total joint arthroplasty procedures by 26%.

Azara Healthcare launches Care Connect, a care coordination application that draws data from its analytics platform and integrates it with health plan data to support outreach teams.

AliveCor launches the FDA-cleared KardiaMobile Card, a $149 credit card-sized personal ECG device that pairs with smartphones using Bluetooth to detect six common types of arrhythmias. Purchase requires signing up for a $99, automatically renewing annual membership.

Government and Politics

A GAO report finds that the VA did not establish performance measures and goals for migrating data from VistA to Cerner Millennium and HealteIntent before initial go-live in October 2020. The VA concurred with GAO’s recommendation that it establish and use data performance measures and use a stakeholder register make sure reporting needs are addressed. The VA notes that any VistA data can be extracted, packaged, and sent to Cerner automatically even in the absence of a database model, 80% of critical reports are now using Cerner-generated data, and its data migration team is monitoring VistA for changes and patches that may require regenerating extraction code to keep data flowing.

ONC will convene the virtual education sessions of its annual meeting Wednesday and Thursday. Topics include information blocking, TEFCA/QHIN, public health IT coordination, Lantern FHIR tool update, and USCDI expansion.

Other

A Stat special report recaps the 40-year history of what is now IBM Watson Health’s MarketScan, soon to be owned by private equity firm Francisco Partners. The business that was originally known as Medstat holds the employer-provided, de-identified records of 270 million Americans, but Medstat founder Ernie Luder expresses fears that instead of creating disruptive healthcare change in the insurance industry as he had hoped in the pre-Internet era, consumers are losing control of information about them as companies profit from it without their express permission. An attorney and bioethics professor says that the federal government has allowed big businesses “to run amok without almost any regulation whatsoever,” to the point that it’s easier for academic researchers to buy their data from private companies. 

Sponsor Updates

• Cerner distributes 120 gently used laptops and 49 phones to eight charitable partners.
• Agfa HealthCare becomes certified under the Service Capability & Performance Standards.
• Azara Healthcare publishes a new report, “The Future of Population Health 2022.”
• Netsmart becomes the first post-acute technology vendor with its MyUnity EHR to achieve ONC-Health IT 2015 Edition Health IT Certification.
• CHIME releases speaker highlights for ViVE, which will take place March 6-9 in Miami Beach.
• Clinical Architecture releases a new episode of its Informonster Podcast featuring Lyniate Chief Strategy Officer Drew Ivan.
• OBIX Perinatal Data System, developed by Clinical Computer Systems, launches The Perinatal Heartbeat Newsletter.
• Bamboo Health becomes a preferred vendor of the Association for Community Affiliated Plans.

Blog Posts

• 2022 CPT Code Updates: Part Three (AGS Health)
• Three Predictions for Healthcare IT in 2022 (Ascom)
• Healthcare CRM Software: What Health Systems Really Need (Actium Health)
• A Summary of Our 2021 Annual Impact Report (Bamboo Health)
• The Power of Diligence on Data Privacy (CereCore)
• Improving the Patient Experience for Better Outcomes (Change Healthcare)
• Optimum Healthcare IT Completes 200th Training & Go-Live Project (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• IT and Digital Healthcare Trends to Expect in 2022 (ChartLogic)
• Four Big Implications for Patients and the Prescription Journey in 2022 (ConnectiveRx)
• Highlights from 2022 Drug Formulary Updates (CoverMyMeds)
• Proof in the Numbers: How Divurgent Supported MultiCare to Meaningfully Move the Needle on Their Epic Adoption (Divurgent)
• The Right Tools During Challenging Times (EClinicalWorks)
• How Novant Health automated healthcare collections (Experian Health)

Contacts

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