News 10/4/23

Top News

Providence launches Praia Health, which uses identity-driven personalization of consumer profiles for “digital flywheel” ongoing engagement between care episodes.

Leading the company is Justin Dearborn, who previously ran Merge Healthcare, Tribune Publishing, and PatientBond.

Reader Comments

From Barney Ruble: “Re: 3M Health Information Systems. Laid off 100-120 people as part of a corporate cutback. The HIS group that is being spun off is cutting back some teams and products due to slow sales.” Unverified.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I don’t use Twitter much and rarely venture from the useful “Following” feed to the crazy “For you” clickbait version, but I can say that despite my endless muting and flagging of posts as “not interested,” I’m stilled buried in tweets about (and by) Elon Musk, TSLA stock pumpers, and fanboys salivating about the still-unreleased Cybertruck. Musk had complained that the algorithms weren’t giving him the audience he deserved, so programmers have obviously devised an ego-stroking enhancement.

Listening: Scotland-based rockers Stiltskin, which hit pretty hard in grunge circles 30 years ago. Trivia: the band’s singer Ray Wilson was selected in 1996 at the age of 27 to lead Genesis, the former five-member group that was down to Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks following the departure of Phil Collins. They gave Wilson limited creative influence over their lackluster “Calling All Stations” album, which largely resembled Rutherford’s Mike and the Mechanics trying to sound progressive. Audiences snoozed and Genesis had to downsize and then cancel a planned US tour in a major hit to their egos. Years later, Rutherford, Banks, and Collins erased Wilson from their revisionist history books, omitting him from a BBC Genesis documentary and on streaming platforms. Wilson finally got to attend his first Genesis concert as an audience member later, where he watched Collins cover the songs he had recorded.

Webinars

October 25 (Wednesday) 2 ET. “AMA: The Power of Data Completeness.” Sponsor: Particle Health. Presenters: Jason Prestinario, MSME, CEO, Particle Health; Carolyn Ward, MD, director of clinical strategy, Particle Health. Is your healthcare organization looking to drive profitability and scale quickly? Our experts will explore how comprehensive clinical data can revolutionize the health tech landscape. This engaging discussion will cover trending topics such as leveraging AI and data innovation to enhance patient care and outcomes, real-world examples of organizations leading the charge in data-driven healthcare, overcoming challenges in data completeness and interoperability, and visionary perspectives on the future of care delivery.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Health Data Analytics Institute raises $31 million in a Series C funding round, bringing its total raised to nearly $50 million. The company offers AI-powered predictive risk and care optimization software.

Heywood Healthcare (MA) files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing operational and business challenges that have included a “costly and lengthy” EHR implementation and low reimbursement rates, as well as economic reverberations from the pandemic. The two-hospital system went live on Meditech Expanse in 2021.

Walgreens CIO Hsiao Wang leaves the company after a year on the job. Walgreens continues recruiting for a new CEO and CFO as well.

Sales

• HealtHIE Nevada selects health data aggregation and sharing software from Holon Solutions.
• La Paz Regional Hospital (AZ), Russell Medical Center (AL), and Memorial Hospital and Manor (GA) select CareCloud’s MedSR division as their Meditech implementation partner.

People

Emtelligent hires Jennifer Canfield, MBA (Kantar) as EVP of sales.

Announcements and Implementations

Doctors Hospital Health System in the Bahamas implements Meditech Expanse with assistance from CareCloud’s MedSR division.

OCHIN offers EpicCare Inpatient software and implementation services to rural hospitals.

A Symplr survey of health system IT leaders finds that working with disparate IT systems is their top challenge, while clinicians name their top issues as nurse retention and satisfaction, optimizing technology efficiency, and the need to streamline workflows.

I interviewed Trilliant Health healthcare economist Sanjula Jain, PhD 18 months ago and found her really interesting, so I perked up at the company’s new trends report when I saw her name on it. It is brilliant, and names 10 trends:

1. The number of commercially insured Americans is declining steadily as declining birth rate fails to offset the aging into Medicare, and migration to Florida, Texas, and Utah will shift healthcare demand.
2. The physical and mental health of Americans has taken a hard turn downward, with higher under-40 mortality, rising cancer mortality, and rates of forgone care rise due to cost.
3. Most newly approved drugs target genetic diseases and cancer.
4. Utilization of care in all settings declined except for the ED, with the 2021 rebound mostly caused by testing and treatment of COVID-19. The relationship between the number of comoribidities and consumption of healthcare services is not linear.
5. The public’s dissatisfaction with healthcare is growing and younger patients are behaving more like consumers in seeking care from retail pharmacies and other non-traditional sources. Virtual care is being offered more widely, but demand is tapering, half of telehealth users have used it just once, and physicians perceive its quality as inferior to in-person care.
6. More consumers are using transactional delivery models such as urgent care, retail, and ambulatory surgery centers. Retailers are using low-acuity care as a loss leader.
7. Physician supply is constrained, as “payviders” Optum and Kaiser Permanente employee nearly 10% of US doctors and organizations compete to hire more doctors as supply drops. Nursing supply rebounded in 2022 and the number of allied health providers is increasing to help meet physician shortages. The number of primary care providers would need to increase by 218,000.
8. Some healthcare markets have a price problem, but all have a cost problem. Rates are often lower in monopoly markets. Spending on lobbying is increasing to influence federal policy on M&A. The federal measure of market concentration is limited to inpatient usage, which may not be reflective, and market concentration is not a clear driver of quality or price.
9. Employers are paying more for less as costs rise, with a growing rate of self-insurance. Employer-sponsored insurance leaves employees being financially responsible for 10% and more of their overall incomes.
10. US healthcare spending is unsustainable and value-based payments don’t equal value for money. Site-neutral payments could reduce Medicare payments by over $1 billion for one office procedure alone – lumbar epidurals. Procedures cost multiples when performed in hospitals rather than in an outpatient setting.

Government and Politics

An analysis of NHS Trusts in England finds that the government has spent over $1 billion on storing paper records over the last five years. NHS England digital lead Joe Harrison says that while some hospitals have become digital health trailblazers, others are working with “carrier pigeons and pen and paper.”

CMS says that 500,000 people in 29 states have regained Medicaid benefits after state computer systems failed to automatically re-enroll them once pandemic-related restrictions on terminating coverage were lifted.

Privacy and Security

McLaren Health Care (MI) confirms that it was the victim of a ransomware attack several weeks ago. It is now working to determine if any stolen data has been posted to the dark web, as the Black Cat/AlphV ransomware group claims. The attack impacted billing and EHR functionality at 14 facilities for nearly six weeks.

Other

Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center uses $10 million in state funding to launch the Institute of Telehealth and Digital Innovation, which aims to serve rural patients by improving access to telehealth and remote patient monitoring services through community and academic partnerships.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD staff volunteer at The Green Urban Lunchbox, Encircle, St. Vincent De Paul Dining Hall, and The Road Home during the company’s day of service.
• The Toledo Clinic in Ohio successfully leverages RCM optimization services from EClinicalWorks.
• CrossWinds Counseling & Wellness (KS) adds NetSmart’s CareFabric technology, including the MyEvolv EHR.
• Symplr publishes its 2023 Compass Report, “From Imminent to Urgent: Aligning Clinicians & IT is Critical to Streamlining Healthcare Operations.”
• Aridhia publishes a new case study, “Leveraging Aridhia TRE for Identifying Pupils at Risk of Being Not in Education, Employment or Training (NEET).”
• The AWS Health Innovation Podcast features Artera co-founder and CEO Guillaume de Zwirek.
• SteadPoint Insurance will offer its clients Bardavon’s Injury Prevention suite of products.
• Care.ai releases a new Smart from the Start Podcast featuring Houston Methodist EVP and Chief Innovation Officer Roberta Schwartz.
• Nordic publishes a new episode of its “In Network” podcast titled “Designing for Health: Interview with Evan Heigert.”
• Censinet releases a new Risk Never Sleeps Podcast featuring Paul Connelly.
• CloudWave announces its commitment to cybersecurity education by participating in the 20^th Cybersecurity Awareness Month.

Blog Posts

• Realizing the Opportunities for a Clinical Service Desk (CereCore)
• RSNA 2023 – See imaging without barriers from Agfa HealthCare (Agfa HealthCare)
• Preparing for the FY2024 ICD-10-CM Code Updates (AGS Health)
• How data platforms help healthcare organizations leverage their massive data asset (Arcadia)
• Ascom Workflow Solutions Tested Hack-Proof at MISI Cybersecurity Conference (Ascom)
• Five Things to Consider when Selecting a Musculoskeletal Injury Prevention Partner (Bardavon)
• How Data + Research Will Drive Healthcare Forward (Clearsense)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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