News 4/5/24

Top News

The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court is reviewing a class action lawsuit that claims that New England Baptist Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center violated the state’s Wiretap Act by using undisclosed web visitor tracking technologies such as Meta Pixel to secretly intercept website user communications.

Key issues:

• Are web visitors who just look at web pages conducting a “conversation” that is protected by the Wiretap Act?
• Is the information collected secretly when visitors are notified that the website uses website traffic analysis tools?
• Are website warnings sufficient when they do not explicitly tell visitors that their medically-related search or form entry information is shared with third parties?
• Were hospitals misleading people by promising to protect their privacy when the technology was specifically designed to help identify them?

Reader Comments

From AI Ball: “Re: AI in healthcare. Are patients demanding more of its use, or are we again speaking on their behalf without actually asking them?” The latter. Surveys suggest that people are wary of sticking AI into a process that is already cumbersome and impersonal. Consumers will flock to Dr. AI as they did Dr. Google for looking up symptoms or conditions, generating plain English interpretations of medical gobbledygook, or perhaps even searching for providers. Otherwise, they have zero interest in AI-powered clinical documentation and literature searches unless it frees up doctor time so they can actually get an appointment or experience a less-rushed visit. I believe it’s also true that technologists who think doctors are desperate for AI-supported diagnosis, image analysis, or precision medicine help should probably actually ask those doctors. In the case of health systems, think of the most impersonal, maddeningly inefficient bureaucracies that you dread dealing with over billing or service issues – the DMV, a utility, an online merchant, or your local sprawling health system – and ask yourself if your experience is likely to improve if they add AI without changing anything else. Or, as a form of real-world evidence with earlier technologies, did you love it when those same bureaucracies hid their humans behind automated attendants or simply let the phones ring unanswered? TL;DR – companies do whatever benefits them most and customers win only if companies fear losing their business.

Webinars

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Venture studio Aegis Ventures will collaborate with nine health systems to co-develop and invest in health tech solutions, with a common theme of using AI and automation. The studio’s collaboration with Northwell Health resulted in the creation of four companies, including Optain (AI-powered retinal imaging) and Upliv (menopause virtual support).

Epic is developing an AI validation suite to help health systems evaluate and monitor the performance of AI models, both third party and self developed.

Manifold, which offers an AI-powered clinical research platform, raises $15 million in a Series A funding round.

AI-enabled workforce marketplace SnapCare acquires Medecipher, which offers a predictive analytics staffing decision support tool.

Investment firm Cerberus Capital Management tells a Senate subcommittee that it paid $246 million for Caritas Christi Health Care in 2010, didn’t invest a penny more as it turned it into for-profit Steward Health Care, and then sold it for an $800 million profit in 2020. A consulting firm says that level of return isn’t exactly a home run in private equity world of quick flips, although the partners usually get management fees on top of profits from the sale. Cerberus declined to tell the senators how much the firm and its executives made from its investment.

Sales

• Springfield Clinic (IL) expands its use of Health Note’s patient engagement and intake platform.
• Jordan Valley Community Health Center (MO) will implement Epic.

People

UK HealthCare hires Katie Dickens, MSA (Bronson Healthcare) as chief digital and information officer.

Imaging real-world data vendor OneMedNet promotes Aaron Green to president and CEO following the retirement of CEO Paul Casey.

Symplr promotes Allison Morin, RN, MSN to chief nursing informatics officer.

Andy Dé, MS, MBA (MedeAnalytics) joins Verato as chief marketing officer.

DrFirst promotes Irene Froehlich to chief brand officer.

Gary Hall, who retired as CIO of Estes Park Health (CO) in September 2023, is elected mayor of Estes Park.

Announcements and Implementations

A report by the American Organization for Nursing Leadership and Laudio looks at the impact of hospital nurse managers:

• The median span of control is 46 employees, with 25% of inpatient nurse managers having responsibility for 78 or more employees. Spans are largest in ED and ICU.
• A larger span of manager control is associated with higher rates of RN turnover, use of overtime, and burnout.
• While 56% of nurse managers have at least one assistant nurse manager, nurses almost always report directly to the nurse manager.
• RN retention is higher when managers have purposeful interaction with them at least monthly, most influenced by recognition and celebration.

HCA Healthcare integrates referrals to Talkiatry’s virtual psychiatry service with its EHR.

A new KLAS report on managed help desk and application management services names Pivot Point Consulting as #1 in performance, followed by CereCore. Nordic and Tegria were noted as being able to scale but with customer-reported problems with staff consistency. Most respondents plan to maintain or increase their use of managed IT services to mitigate cost and staffing challenges.

Government and Politics

Matthew Keirans, who worked 10 years for University of Iowa Hospitals & Clinics as a network architect, pleads guilty to stealing the identity of an acquaintance named William Woods and using it for 30 years to take out loans and to obtain his remote hospital IT job. Woods visited his bank in 2019 to alert them that someone was running up debt using his account, but they became suspicious even though he showed ID. The police were called and they contacted Keirans, who faxed them phony documents – including one that included the wrong middle name of Woods — that resulted in the arrest of Woods, who spent the next 20 months in jails and mental hospitals. Once released, Woods notified the hospital that their $140,000-per-year employee was not him, which detectives proved using DNA evidence. Keirans faces up to 32 years in prison and a $1.25 million fine.

Privacy and Security

A University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s medical school employee falls victim to a social engineering attack in which they clicked on a malicious link that was sent by a trusted contact, then were tricked into sharing their multi-factor authentication code, which gave the hacker access to their email account.

Other

Payers and providers have been slow to adapt biosimilar versions of the antinflammatory injectable drug Humira – which has generated $200 billion in lifetime sales for drug maker AbbVie – because pharmacy benefit management companies and specialty pharmacies would lose most of their profit by dispensing the less-expensive option. The report by the Biosimilars Council and IQVia found that only 1% of Humira patients have been switched to the cheaper alternative, with many of those associated with small payers that don’t have loyalty to the big three PBMs (CVS Caremark, Express Scripts, and OptumRx). The authors conclude that patients, employers, and health plans are paying an extra $700 million per month for sticking with the brand name.

An employee of Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix files a proposed class action lawsuit against the health system, claiming that the hospital provided such low-quality health insurance under its self-insured plan that some employees incur $10,000 per year in costs while others avoid seeking care entirely. Also included in the lawsuit is third party administrator Medica, which the plaintiff claims misstated the network status of providers in its member portal. Workers who were contacted by a news site said that Mayo’s remote employees struggle to find affordable care, also noting an insurer’s “phantom network” that lists dozens or hundreds of in-network providers who have retired, no longer accept the insurance, or aren’t taking new patients. The site also found that Mayo’s doctors and executives are reimbursed at up to $10,000 per year to cover the difference between in-network and out-of-network costs, but most employees don’t qualify.

Sponsor Updates

• Five9 celebrates 10 years on the Nasdaq stock exchange by ringing the opening bell.
• Nordic releases a new Designing for Health Podcast, “Interview with Susan Snedaker.”
• Optimum Healthcare IT celebrates surpassing 400 go-live projects.
• SnapCare will exhibit at the Oregon Health Care Association Spring Expo April 11-12 in Salem.
• Symplr will exhibit at the Health Care Compliance Association’s Annual Compliance Institute April 14-17 in Nashville.
• Upfront Healthcare will present at the Urgent Care Association’s annual conference April 13 in Las Vegas.
• PSQH: The Podcast features Wolters Kluwer Health VP and GM of Clinical Surveillance, Compliance & Data Solutions Karen Kobelski, “Preventing Drug Diversion with Technology.”
• Zen Healthcare IT names Ryan Kopiske technical project manager.

Blog Posts

• Should you be worried about OpenAI’s new Voice Engine? (Nuance)
• AI Before AI (Netsmart)
• Five Proven Strategies to Improve Operating Margins: Part Two – Eliminate Costly Payroll Errors (QGenda)
• Redox hydrates new GenAI solutions from Google Cloud (Redox)
• No more on prem? How quickly is the NHS imaging moving to public cloud? (Sectra)
• TEFCA, QHINs & Surescripts: Our Commitment to Advancing Interoperability (Surescripts)

Contacts

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