Personally, I think that any healthcare organization that has experienced a cyberattack should have the causalities publicized after a thorough…
Monday Morning Update 2/5/24
Top News
The National Institutes of Health seeks $200 million in funding to replace its Altera Digital Health Sunrise system that it calls CRIS.
NIH Clinical Center CIO Jon McKeeby says that 40 of his 120 IT employees are at retirement age, raising concerns about support for the complex, best-of-breed system that the hospital installed in 2004 when it was known as Eclipsys Sunrise Clinical Manager.
Reader Comments
From Snowbound: “Re: Oracle Health. Laid off 124 Cerner employees in Springfield, MO after CoxHealth announced that it is moving to Epic.” Oracle filed a WARN act notice with the state on February 1, adding that the health system has already made offers of employment to all of the employees who were affected.
From Twin Cities Healthcare Watcher: “Re: Allina outsourcing RCM to Optum. This will be interesting considering the MN AG’s focus on Allina’s billing practices and the history of regulatory intervention in MN with outsourced billing services such as at Fairview in 2012-2013.” Fairview’s former RCM vendor Accretive Health, renamed in 2017 to R1 RCM, paid a fine and agreed to stop doing business in Minnesota in 2012 after being charged with lax security practices and sending high-pressure employees into the hospital ED to demand payment in advance from patients who were suffering from strokes and heart attacks. Accretive referred to the practice as “Accretive Secret Sauce” that it internally proclaimed “check out our ASS.” Accretive’s big customer Ascension partnered with a private equity firm to buy a 40% stake in the company for $200 million in late 2015, since increased to a 54% share.
From LinkedIn Park: “Re: interview. It seems like everyone in the industry I know reached out to me the day my interview with you ran, and I have quantified the HIStalk effect by observing that my LinkedIn profile views are up over 300%.” Thanks for letting me know.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Allina Health will outsource IT and revenue cycle management services to Optum, which will rebadge 2,000 health system employees effective May 5.
HCA Healthcare says in its earnings call that a key area of investment will be advancing the company’s digital capabilities to “unlock the embedded value we see in our operations.”
A Boston Globe reporter tracks down the 190-foot, $40 million, Galapagos-docked yacht that is owned by Ralph de la Torre, MD, MS, the former heart surgeon who partnered with a private equity firm to create Steward Health Care Systems as CEO. The reporter notes that Steward, which is teetering on insolvency that may force a taxpayer bailout, quadrupled the private equity firm’s investment by selling the land under its hospitals, allowing the company to walk away with $800 million and de la Torre to award himself a $100 million bonus, after which he yachted up.
Announcements and Implementations
In Canada, a university IT professor says that the health system has squandered billions of dollars on proprietary software development that led to all 10 provinces having their own expensive IT systems that don’t work together. He advocates developing open source software for billing, labs, and diagnostic imaging instead using HermesAPI, which would mean “sending less money to prop up American software companies.”
Visage Imaging launches Visage Ease VP for Apple Vision Pro. It includes a cinematic rendering engine, 4K resolution on virtual screens, independence from room lighting, and natural input using hands, eyes, and voice.
Cedars-Sinai develops Xaia, a mental health support app for the Apple Vision Pro. It offers immersive therapy sessions that are led by a digital avatar that simulates a human therapist. The hospital has licensed the system to VRx Health for commercialization.
The Permanente Medical Group publishes its initial experience with Nabla’s smartphone-based ambient scribing system, which it says has been used by 3,400 of the 10,000 invited physicians, of which around 1,000 have used it for more than 100 encounters. Physicians report that it is saving them time, even though they are required to approve the AI’s draft version, and patient feedback has been positive. The most common reasons for not using the tool include the required activation steps, lack of familiarity, and lack of integration with other workflow solutions.
Government and Politics
Two Texas doctors are indicted in federal court for submitting phony medical bills to the insurers of student athletes that they had not treated. The doctors, who owned sports medicine practice management system vendor Vivature, used the patient information that had been entered by athletic trainers to submit fraudulent bills for other services. The indictment lists three universities, including Auburn University, that shared the payment that Vivature received. The defendants are also charged with fraudulently billing for COVID-19 testing in partnership with international resorts who tested Americans who were traveling aboard. The DoJ says the defendants obtained $70 million between the schemes.
Privacy and Security
Computer, phone, and email systems remain down at Lurie Children’s Hospital (IL) following a February 1 cyberattack.
The CEO of one of the five hospitals whose shared services organization was taken offline by cyberattack in October 23 says that some major systems remain down and he expects that it will take most of 2024 for the hospital to fully recover from the attack.
Other
Not (yet) healthcare related. A finance employee of a huge Hong Kong company makes a $26 million money transfer for a confidential corporate transaction, as instructed in a video call with the CFO and other executives. He learned afterward that the video call attendees were AI-generated deepfakes and the money recipients were scammers.
Sponsor Updates
- Waystar joins Meditech’s Alliance program
- EClinicalWorks announces that its Sunoh.ai AI-powered ambient listening technology now integrates with EClinicalMobile and EClinicalTouch apps on iOS and Android smartphones, iPads, and Microsoft Windows and macOS devices.
- NeuroFlow will exhibit at the AMSUS 2024 Annual Meeting February 12-15 in National Harbor, MD.
- RxLightning (Claritas Rx) names John Paulson senior director of business development.
- SnapCare will exhibit at the ACNL Conference February 4-7 in Monterey, CA.
- Symplr achieves milestone recognitions in 2023, garnering industry and employee acclaim as a leader in healthcare operations.
- Wolters Kluwer Health makes the NEJM AI journal available on its Ovid medical research platform.
Blog Posts
- Best practices for building an AI-powered digital front door in healthcare (Notable Health)
- Fireside Chat Highlight Reel: Medical Coding Automation Trends and Autonomous Coding (Nym)
- NAHC President Bill Dombi Gives His 2024 Outlook (Netsmart)
- 5 questions to ask when you’re at a crossroads in your EHR strategy (Nordic)
- Rachel Marano in Fast Company on Workaholism (Pivot Point Consulting)
- How to Determine When It’s Time to Optimize Your Epic EHR (CereCore)
- Maximizing Healthcare Revenue: 3 Practical Tips for Transforming Front-End Processes (Vyne Medical)
- Important Changes to MIPS Reporting in 2024 (RCxRules)
- Crystal Ball Chronicles: Reflecting on Out of Pocket Health’s 2024 Predictions (Redox)
- Leadership Spotlight: Jazmin Richardson, Nursing Executive (Sonifi Health)
- A Health Plan, an EHR, and a Health System Team Up, Eyeing a Win for Patient Care (Surescripts)
- 5 strategies to overcome patient payment complexities (Waystar)
- Strategies for Effective Revenue Cycle Automation – Start Small (VisiQuate)
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Re: “… university IT professor says that the health system has squandered billions of dollars on proprietary software development…”
I am SO not impressed by this. HIS software is literally a cost of doing business, in healthcare today. For example, Wal-Mart is famous for having heavily invested in their back-end technology and computing systems. Did Wal-Mart “waste” this money? After all, they are a retailer, first and foremost. What are they doing, investing in this non-retail expense??
Pierce & Peplinski appear to be academics, with no significant background in healthcare. Which isn’t disqualifying on it’s face, except for the following:
– Their Big Idea? It’s FOSS + an API that I’ve never heard of. It’s literally not a solution at all, it’s 2 concepts that have been stapled together;
– How does this help some poor healthcare CIO? One with a budget and users who are asking for help?
– Worse yet, the Big Idea is just a retread of a now discredited concept (building internally, versus buying COTS);
– Adding a jingoistic nationalist angle, seems like a rather desperate ploy to reinforce a weak argument;
– In fact, Canada had, and has, a domestic provider of HIT. The name is MediSolution, and MediSolution has had “challenges” that I won’t detail here. Suffice it to say, they could not make a go of it as an independent, and wound up acquired by Harris;
– Next up, are all of the supposedly “unique” Canadian healthcare challenges, which aren’t unique at all;
– We have citizens with no family doctor, expensive healthcare services, problems with data sharing, etc. Sound familiar? How is any of this unique to Canada?
Yeah, this solution, isn’t a solution at all. Someone has drunk the FOSS kool-aide, then added a couple of random additional elements. All it lacks is Blockchain and Distributed Ledger! I’m reminded of the H.L. Mencken quote (paraphrased):
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.”
Not quite ready to let this one go. Still impressed at how bad the argument is!
Let’s suppose, that a Gullible/Idealistic CIO attempts to implement Pierce & Peplinski’s idea:
– They will have to fund a dev. effort, to the tune of millions of dollars, for anywhere between 1-5 years;
– You are betting that the resulting software will be effective and suitable to purpose. Which, despite all the PMP’s best efforts, there is plenty of bad software around;
– In contrast, when you adopt COTS? You can see the actual product before you buy, you can read up on KLAS, and you can interview other customers;
– A highly touted benefit is the ability to share code. Except, you’ll have to coordinate all those Canadian healthcare providers. Unless sharing code really wasn’t such a big benefit after all?
– Since this is a FOSS solution, there will be no revenue. What there could be is cost sharing, but as a budgetary item, that makes coordination of the dev. activity vastly more important;
– P&P settle on BLD as their functional target, because it was “easy and straightforward that all the provinces needed”. Well, our ephemeral CIO is focused on their organizational pain points. What if those pain points don’t include BLD?
– In fact, you will find that the priorities of CIO’s across the country, frequently don’t align. Alignment of goals, priorities, and opportunities will be difficult;
– Meanwhile, going with COTS solutions? The cost sharing happens among the customer base. And it’s the vendor’s problem, not the customer’s. That’s a win right from the start.