News 9/8/23

Top News

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo will acquire NextGen Healthcare in a $1.5 billion take-private transaction, paying a 46% premium to the unaffected share price.

NextGen offers solutions for EHR/PM and interoperability.

The private equity firm’s portfolio includes Imprivata, Hyland, Qlik, and Bluesight.

NXGN shares had lost 8% in the 12 months before the acquisition rumors surfaced. They were down 20% over the previous five years.

Reader Comments

From DJ: “Re: Intermountain. Rumor is that it told caregivers this week that it will move from Cerner / Oracle Health to Epic.” Verified by an Intermountain media contact in response to my inquiry. Oracle Health losing former Cerner poster children Intermountain and UPMC in the same week is significant. A Redditor posted the internal Intermountain email announcement to caregivers, with these snips:

We are excited to announce that we will align to a single Electronic Health Record (EHR) across Intermountain Health, and all regions will begin moving toward using Epic … Epic will be the single EHR for the organization due to strong functional offerings and significantly higher physician and APP EHR satisfaction scores. For example, Epic EHR satisfaction scores at Intermountain are .49 points above the national average on a 5-point scale and the Cerner score is .52 points below the national average … Epic is currently being used by Intermountain care sites in Colorado and Montana. The renewal deadline for our Cerner contract, which supports the iCentra EHR across the Canyons Region and parts of the Desert Region, is coming up in November. Given this timeline, it’s the right time to take action. We have an urgent need to find an EHR solution that can best support operations in Idaho and Nevada, where our legacy EHR solutions are antiquated and in need of replacement. Our finance team completed a detailed review of our annual EHR operating costs, and moving to a single platform will help us achieve significant cost savings over time. Today we are simply announcing this transition. We have a lot of planning work ahead of us to go-live with Epic across the system by the fourth quarter of 2025. As we plan for the transition, we will be sunsetting EHR contracts with other EHR vendors (e.g., Cerner, Allscripts, etc.).

Meanwhile, another Redditor says that while Neal Patterson built Cerner, losing customers such as Intermountain was more his fault than that of his often-blamed successors Brent Shafer and David Feinberg:

• Patterson didn’t leave a succession plan when he died in 2017.
• A primary driver of Cerner clients moving to Epic was that Cerner didn’t develop a competent RCM system and continued selling both its own system as well as Siemens Soarian
• Cerner allowed clients to customize their system to the point that they couldn’t upgrade.
• CCL was the go-to reporting system instead of a robust reporting solution.
• Cerner didn’t develop a competitive offering to Epic’s MyChart.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Symplr. Symplr is building the bridge to enterprise healthcare operations and beyond. Together with its customers, it is creating the blueprint for how to not just survive, but thrive, by maximally using staff
and technology in tandem to bridge the gaps and increase efficiencies in healthcare operations. For more than 30 years and with deployments in nine of 10 US hospitals, Symplr has been committed to improving healthcare operations through its cloud-based solutions. Its provider data management; workforce management; compliance, quality, and safety; and contract, supplier, and spend management solutions improve the efficiency and efficacy of healthcare operations, enabling caregivers to quickly handle administrative tasks so they have more time to do what they do best: provide high-quality patient care. Thanks to Symplr for supporting HIStalk.

The HLTH conference is October 8-11, so I’ll post a list of participating HIStalk sponsors and their activities the week before. Watch for a data collection form link next weekend.

Webinars

September 21 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Unlock open enrollment best practices to stop future denials.” Sponsor: Waystar. Presenter: Lauren Tungate, solution strategist team lead, Waystar. Nearly half of insured Americans consider changing their insurance coverage each fall, necessitating provider safeguards to stop increased denials, find hidden coverage, and prevent uncompensated care. This webinar will crack open enrollment best practices, such as using different data sources to get an accurate picture of benefit details; leveraging automation to identify hidden coverage, confirm active insurance, and avoid lost revenue; and simplifying eligibility workflows to reduce the financial burden on patients and strain on staff.

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

Sales

• South Dakota’s Department of Health chooses Findhelp to built its statewide social care referral system.
• Aga Khan Health Services, East Africa will implement Meditech Expanse in Tanzania and Kenya.
• Intermountain Healthcare will implement Epic throughout its system, replacing Cerner and other products.

People

Industry long-timer Mark Hefner died Saturday of cancer. He was 64.

Announcements and Implementations

AvaSure adds video AI support to its TeleSitter solution to reduce elopement and falls.

Withings earns FDA clearance for its Body Scan smart scale, a $400 device with a retractable grab bar that detects atrial fibrillation along with monitoring body composition, heart rate, and vascular age.

Government and Politics

The VA will review its online disability systems after discovering that technical issues delayed disability claims for veterans who tried to update their dependency status or to file appeals online. The VA found that some disability-related cases going back to 2011 have not been addressed.

Other

A woman says that her brother died alone in a Las Vegas hospital because of the way the hospital assigns names to unidentified patients. Clifford Allen collapsed in a retail area on a 115-degree Las Vegas day and was lying in the full sun for eight hours with no help from bystanders, during which time someone stole his wallet and oxygen tank. His sister repeatedly called every hospital in Las Vegas asking about patients admitted under his name or John Doe, with no success. He died 10 days later as an inpatient of MountainView Hospital, which says that while it admits unidentified patients under the last name Doe, it assigns different first names to avoid merging the medical records of multiple patients named John or Jane Doe.

Sponsor Updates

• Direct Recruiters, Inc. hires Dave Emma (Teladoc Health) as practice leader of technology for digital health.
• Concord Health Partners makes an unspecified investment in NeuroFlow.
• Experity will accept nominations for its annual Industry Limelight Awards, to be presented at its 2024 Urgent Care Connect Conference, through October 27.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “Unlocking Reporting Capabilities in EBO.”
• Ascom launches its new Myco 4 smartphone for clinical institutions and enterprises.
• Baker Tilly releases a new Healthy Outcomes Podcast, “Exploring aspects of leadership, management, innovation, and technology in healthcare organizations.”
• Censinet partners with Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center to provide free third-party risk management services to Health-ISAC members through its Community Services Program.
• CloudWave will co-sponsor the Meditech Live Welcome Reception on September 19 in Foxborough, MA.
• Five9 will be at the CCW Patient Experience Exchange in Atlanta October 17-19.
• Nordic releases another episode of its In Network podcast, “Designing for Health: Interview with CT Lin, MD, Liz Salmi, and Bryan Steitz, PhD.”
• Divurgent releases a new episode of The Vurge Podcast, “Bridging the Gap Between Operations & Technology.”
• Ellkay will exhibit at Oracle CloudWorld September 18-20 in Las Vegas.
• Everbridge publishes a new case study, “Improving patient communications with Everbridge: Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.”

Blog Posts

• Liverpool Women’s CIO Perspective: Digital Maturity One EPR Milestone at a Time (CereCore)
• Mitigating the Risks Involved with High-Risk Diagnosis Groups (AGS Health)
• Bridging gaps: Data-driven approaches to patient outreach (Arcadia)
• What Hospitals Can Do To Move From Digital Tools to Digital Transformation in Healthcare (Ascom)
• An Expert’s Take on HCC Coding (RCxRules)
• Availity Expert Q&A: Unleashing Efficiency to Revolutionize Prior Authorizations (Availity)
• How a Security Controls Validation Assessment Optimizes Cybersecurity Investments (Clearwater)
• How Continuous Safety Monitoring Can Reduce Hospital Stays for High-Risk Oncology Patients (Current Health)
• Bridging the Gender Gap in Health Tech (Dimensional Insight)
• Increased Prevalence of Alpha-Gal Syndrome Impacts More Clinical Decisions (First Databank)
• Living Off the Land attacks: Unveiling the illusion (Fortified Health Security)

Contacts

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