I share your concerns about a lot of similar projects, but I think this one's an outcomes comparison thing, not…
News 5/31/23
Top News
Carrum Health, whose platform helps employers manage employee healthcare costs, raises $45 million in a Series B funding round.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Poll respondents aren’t convinced that the VA will finish its Oracle Cerner implementation.
New poll to your right or here: Did you sell $10,000 or more in products or services from your own company in the past year?
Listening: new from Yes, a 55-year-old band with no original members left whose recent live shows have been innumerable but awful. I walked out on them a couple of years ago because they sounded like a bad tribute band (which they kind of are) in playing their old album cuts slower, lower, and lazier in a seemingly desperate money grab, but this new music is actually pretty good even if a bit wimpy compared to their sweeping epics of yesteryear. I still prefer old concert videos, such as original singer Jon Anderson doing “Awaken” with Iceland-based rock band Todmobile (gets me every time) and the the full band’s symphonic live version of “Soon.” For me, Yes scores high in the all-important “what music would you want played at your funeral” test. It will outlive the many band members who wrote, recorded, and performed it over decades.
Webinars
None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Health IT and cybersecurity solutions vendor Anatomy IT acquires dental software company Iris Solutions.
Dock Health, which specializes in automated healthcare task management, raises $5 million in funding. The company was created from Boston Children’s Hospital’s innovation department in 2020.
Weight loss app Noom launches a telemedicine service to offer consumers access to prescription weight-loss medications like Ozempic and Wegovy.
A new KLAS report looks at remote patient monitoring technology vendors.
Sales
- Niagra Health in Ontario will implement Sectra One enterprise imaging.
- Corterra Healthcare (KS) chooses Medsphere’s Wellsoft EHR and RCM Cloud for a new behavioral health hospital.
People
Rebecca Manne, RN (Optimum Healthcare IT) joins Continuum Health IT as EVP of EHR Implementation.
Announcements and Implementations
Premier launches SmartPO, digital supply chain procurement and inventory management technology that will enable continuum of care providers to better identify cost savings and use staff resources more effectively.
A University of Michigan national poll of people aged 50-80 finds that 78% have a patient portal (half of those have more than one), 55% used it in the past month, half provided access to family members, and most were comfortable logging in and navigating it. People preferred the portal over the telephone for getting test results, updating personal information, getting medical records copies, and requesting refills, but they liked the telephone better for reporting symptoms, scheduling appointments, and requesting referrals.
The former Cerner Continuous Campus is under purchase contract to be turned into apartments and commercial space, although no companies have expressed interest in the campus’s 660,000 square feet of vacant offices.
A small study finds that smart watches and wristbands do a good job of correctly detecting atrial fibrillation even though they don’t have access to outside algorithms.
Government and Politics
VA Secretary Denis McDonough promises to look into reports that the VA medical center in Spokane will be forced to cut staff due to a budget shortfall caused by the troubled EHR Modernization program. He reiterated that he stands by statements made by VA Under Secretary for Health Shereef Elnahal that budget concerns related to the Oracle Cerner system will not result in layoffs.
Former Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes reports to a Texas prison after her losing her bid to remain free while appealing her conviction for investor fraud, which led to an 11-year sentence.
Privacy and Security
A new Florida law prohibits the state’s providers from storing EHR data outside the US, its territories, or Canada, including those patient records that are hosted in the cloud or by a third party.
Other
The bankrupt, non-profit Idaho Health Data Exchange replaces its executive director. The organization launched in 2009 using federal grants and ongoing funds from the HITECH act that ran out in 2021.
Mayo Clinic and University of California, San Francisco researchers determine that pairing AI imaging and volumetric breast density algorithms can help in predicting long-term risk of breast cancer, particularly invasive diseases. Their study used Volpara Health’s TruDensity algorithm and ScreenPoint Medical’s Transpara image-based risk tool.
In perhaps the first incident of AI leading to professional embarrassment or worse, defense attorneys ask to have a man’s personal injury lawsuit dismissed after noticing that most of the legal citations it included were not real. The plaintiff’s lawyer, who has practiced for 30 years, admitted that he had used ChatGPT for the first time and was not aware that it could generate false information. He even asked ChatGPT if the citations were real and was assured incorrectly that the cases “are real and can be found in reputable legal databases.”
Sponsor Updates
- Wolters Kluwer Health wins the NorthFace ScoreBoard Service Award for the twelfth consecutive year for superior customer service.
- OptimizeRx CEO Will Febbo provides a mid-year strategic update.
- Nordic Consulting names Samara Lattimer (Akkodis) a new client partner in the UK and Ireland.
- Aridhia Informatics Chief Data Officer Amanda Borens, MS is featured in an “Engineering Field of Dreams” podcast titled “Spelunking Adventures in Data.”
- Spok will join the broad-market Russell 3000 Index on June 26.
- West Monroe releases a new podcast, “Why All Companies Should ‘Shift Left’.”
Blog Posts
- COVID-19 Interoperability Alliance Retrospective (Clinical Architecture)
- AONL 2023: Drawing inspiration to fuel the future of nursing (Meditech)
- Amplifying Success: How Integrated Behavioral Health Programs Can Achieve the Quintuple Aim (NeuroFlow)
- How Can Healthcare Providers Improve Their Data Integrity to Achieve Better Insights? (NTT Data)
- 360Dx: Legislation Would Provide Medicare Coverage for Pharmacy-Based Testing (OmniSys)
- Safeguarding security and privacy in the age of generative AI (Orbita)
- Healthcare Coding Series: LOINC Codes (Pivot Point Consulting)
- Partnering with a Revenue Cycle Management Company to Tackle Hospitalist Billing (PMD)
- Young Upstart to Four-Star Admiral: The Chance Events of Dr. Brett Giroir (Surescripts)
- Designing a Comprehensive Caregiver Support Strategy: Empowering the Unsung Heroes of Healthcare (Trualta)
- 4 Signs Your PT Patient is About to Drop Out (WebPT)
- Jump to the Front of the Line for National Network Access (Zen Healthcare IT)
- What is the Focus of a Care Plan? (Zynx Health)
- Healthcare CIOs Talk: How to Navigate AI, Analytics, and Automation (CereCore)
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If the last paragraph about the personal injury lawsuit is the Avianca Airlines case, it could be more than just a matter of embarrassment. Apparently the plaintiff’s attorneys used ChatGPT to submit the actual (fake) legal decisions and they could be sanctioned. More at https://www.cnbc.com/2023/05/30/chatgpt-cited-bogus-cases-for-a-new-york-federal-court-filing.html.
Last night my daughter was unwillingly to listen to my help on her global warming project. I said, why don’t we see what ChatGPT (which she had never heard of)said about the topic. Once she saw that I told her write it up in her own words. Instead she of course copied and pasted it almost verbatim. I told her she had to start again as that was not going to be accepted by her teacher. But of course I see now that her future will be as a personal injury lawyer
I am surprised we’ve not seen more comments regarding the new FL law regarding patient data and offshore data storage OR apparently, offshore staff access to PHI that is stored in the U.S. It’s that second part that could be very challenging. Given the number of companies that use offshore resources (support or development), including billing services, providers may end up violating this rule without even knowing it. While our company does not have this issue – I think that healthcare organizations and healthcare vendors / service providers with clients in Florida have some serious work to do, in a very short period of time to review their vendors, vendors subcontractors, update their contracts, etc. related to ensuring no offshore resources have any direct access to PHI, even if the data itself is in the U.S.
Re: “People preferred the [patient] portal over the telephone for getting test results, updating personal information, getting medical records copies, and requesting refills, but they liked the telephone better for reporting symptoms, scheduling appointments, and requesting referrals.”
This intrigues me. What attributes are causing a patient to prefer one means of contact over the other?
I would have thought that time sensitivity would be the deciding factor, but that’s not it. Getting test results would seem to be time sensitive which ought to skew towards phone use. And personally, I’d prefer to book my appointments online rather than using the phone.
There are factors at play that I’m not understanding.
I would speculate that patients see the portal-preferred activities as routine and formulaic with no human intervention needed or even wanted, while the telephone-preferred activities (symptom reporting, appointment scheduling, referral requests) don’t follow such a predetermined path and might end up requiring a call anyway. Those activities might also involve elements of patient concern since all three of them potentially involve reacting to concerning symptoms or health changes.
When scheduling appointments, I often have questions that are not answered in the app such as:
– It’s saying the next available time slot for Dr. X is Feb. 2036. Is there someone else I can see who is available sooner than that?
– Which office is Dr. X at on Tuesdays?
– Can I drive myself?
– Do I need to wear a mask?
– Does my insurance cover that?
– Can I eat right before my appointment?
– etc.