Monday Morning Update 3/4/24

Top News

Change Healthcare executives hint that the company’s ransomware-crippled data exchange systems could remain down for weeks, as the financial and operational impact on provides ripples throughout the industry.

Parent company UnitedHealth Group has announced a loan program for providers who are unable to receive payments, although some of those providers say the available funding is too low to be useful to help their high-expense, low-margin businesses that are quickly running out of cash.

The company announced Friday that it has brought an alternate e-prescribing solution online.

Meanwhile, Aledade founder and CEO Farzad Mostashari, MD, ScM observes that had Change not been acquired by UnitedHealth for $13 billion in October 2022, Change would likely have already been forced into bankruptcy by the event, which started nearly two weeks ago.

When its systems are running, Change processes 15 billion healthcare transactions each year, impacting one out of three patient records.

Reader Comments

From MrCernerPizzaDriver: “Re: Children’s Minnesota. Announced internally that they are moving from Cerner to Epic, with go-live planned for fall 2026.” Unverified.

From Where Peeps At: “Re: HIMSS conference. What attendance do you predict?” I stopped doing that years ago because the way HIMSS counts heads is not transparent. It’s like a half-empty baseball ballpark that is claimed to be a sellout by the team, which has every incentive and counting method at its disposal to make itself look more popular than butts in seats would suggest. I wandered in the vast Nevada sunbake that was the COVID-delayed HIMSS21 in a futile search for my supposed 20,000 fellow attendees.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Two-thirds of poll respondents say that they or their employers have been affected by downtimes at AT&T or Change Healthcare.

New poll to your right or here: Does Epic operate as a monopoly in the health system market? Cheat sheet for what constitutes a monopoly: the only available producer, high market share, high barrier to entry, and can name their price since no close substitutes exist. That’s not the same as merely dominating the market, which means that my poll question is loaded, but I’m still curious who chooses the monopoly option.

Hello to former HIStalk sponsors who understandably had to tighten their belts over the past couple of years. Spring seems to have sprung, so bring your brand out of hibernation with my Welcome Back package for Platinum-level returning sponsors, which offers special recognition, a CEO interview, and bonus months for the first year. Contact Lorre.

Thanks to these companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo for more information.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

WebMD acquires the assets of Healthwise, the non-profit provider of patient educational resources. WebMD will move Healthwise’s offerings into its Ignite patient engagement solutions business, which will serve 50% of US hospitals post-acquisition. Healthwise will continue as a non-profit whose board will explore new ways the company can help people make better health decisions. Healthwise was formed in Boise, ID in 1975 by Don Kemper to distribute patient handbooks. Kemper, who retired in 2016, told the Idaho Statesman after the acquisition was announced, “We’re trying to look at the good work that we’ve done through the years and the recognition that the world is changing. It’s exceptional for our little independent nonprofit to last for 50 years.”

Project Ronin – which offered oncologists and their patients a platform to plan, personalize, and manage their care journey – shut down without notice on Friday, according to several former employees who said that the company ran out of money due to sales challenges. Oracle’s Larry Ellison was a co-founder and the primary financial backer of the San Mateo, CA-based company. I interviewed CEO Dave Hodgson and Chief Scientific Officer Christine Swisher, PhD last year. Ronin’s now-available 150 former employees include informaticists, data scientists, software engineers, and NLP scientists, providing a target-rich environment for companies who need their high-demand skills.

I was curious about CNBC’s headline that General Catalyst’s planned purchased of Summa Health “has Ohio community on edge,” wondering if they did a mass area survey or covered a protest march to reach the conclusion that the entire community is biting nails over the deal. It’s click bait, of course, the usually all-hat, no-cattle fake journalism in which the entire story was based on the skimpiest of sources:

• A DC-based health plan group says she’s excited to see if the change brings new approaches even though she’s not sure how it will work.
• A Tennessee-based health venture studio CEO says the idea makes people nervous, but he’s excited to see someone taking big swings.
• The article recycled quotes from elsewhere from the city’s mayor and a member of its city council, noting that 450 people have signed a petition to urge the health system to remain non-profit.
• Bottom line: 450 of the area’s 700,000 residents have signed a petition, and CNBC used 65 paragraphs to provide nothing conclusive or useful in mostly just citing old news from elsewhere.

People

Innsena promotes Britteny Matero to SVP and partner.

Optimum Healthcare IT hires Allie Messimer (Abra) as EVP of enterprise application services.

Healthcare IT Leaders hires Steven Cardenas, MBA (DMCA) as SVP of government relations. He spent 23 years in the US Air Force, retiring as colonel.

Ed Roberts, PhD, a former MIT Sloan management professor and co-founder of Meditech, died February 27. He was 88.

Privacy and Security

Lurie Children’s Hospital has been mostly offline for a month from a ransomware attack, and now the hackers who are responsible are offering to sell its data for $3.4 million. The screenshot is from cybercrime expert Alexander Leslie.

Other

Christine Meyer, MD describes how the Change Healthcare cyberattack has impacted her practice:

• They are submitting claims individually via paper and payer portals, but expect cash flow to dry up within two weeks.
• Once that happens, staff and essential services will be cut, leaving phones unanswered and referrals and refill requests unprocessed.
• Practice hours will be cut back, with same-day and walk-in appointments eliminated, sending patients to overloaded EDs.
• She says that Optum’s loan offer is $4,000 per month versus her payroll of $350,000 per month.
• A commenter notes that it’s nice for parent UnitedHealth Group that while patients will get turned away because of the Change downtime, UHG will still be collecting their insurance premiums without paying claims.

An unintended consequence of requiring hospitals to post their prices: Mount Sinai is strong-arming UnitedHealthcare for a 50% rate increase after the health system used the public transparency data to find that competitors are paid more.

Sponsor Updates

• QGenda employees serve breakfast at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
• PerfectServe opens nominations for its 2024 Nurses of Note awards program.

Blog Posts

• Beyond the logo: The healthcare executive’s guide to creating genuine healthcare technology partnerships (Notable)
• Specialty Medication Technology can Empower Providers and Reduce Admin Burden (RxLightning)
• 4 common challenges for hospital contact centers in 2024 (Spok)
• Faster Meds, Enhanced Care: How One Specialty Pharmacy Makes a Difference (Surescripts)
• Valued Communication with Vendor Relationships (Symplr)
• 5 strategies to reduce future cybersecurity threats in the healthcare revenue (Waystar)

Contacts

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