I share your concerns about a lot of similar projects, but I think this one's an outcomes comparison thing, not…
Monday Morning Update 5/6/24
Top News
Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) asks the Department of Justice’s Antitrust Division to investigate the pricing algorithms that are used by MultiPlan to reduce insurer payments to providers for out-of-network claims.
The senator questions whether the practice constitutes price-fixing.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Just under half of poll respondents who are covered by a non-compete agreement say they’ll be more open to changing jobs once those are gone.
New poll to your right or here: What is the single biggest reason that Walmart Health failed? The “all of the above” option is compelling but intentionally absent. Most interesting to me is why the company so quickly about-faced from “we’re expanding to 75 locations by the end of 2024” to “we’re shutting the whole thing down because it’s not profitable.” I would guess that finding and paying staff was harder than Walmart expected. I also questioned from the beginning whether the “doc in the big box” strategy of Walmart and its equally struggling drugstore competitors is sound when most of us are surrounded by the offices of providers who work for health systems, themselves, or giant corporations such as Optum. There’s just not much opportunity for scale and brand recognition for offering primary care, which is financially challenging even without trying to carve out the financial returns that investors in publicly traded companies expect.
Thanks to these companies that recently supported HIStalk. Click a logo to learn more.
HIStalk sponsors that are participating in the MUSE Inspire conference later this month: tell me about it so I can include your information in my conference guide.
Webinars
None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present or promote your own.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Spok announces Q1 results: revenue up 5%, EPS $0.21 versus $0.16. SPOK shares are up 11% over the past 12 months, valuing the company at $291 million.
FDA qualifies the Apple Watch as the first digital health tool to monitor atrial fibrillation during clinical studies.
A Wall Street Journal article on AI-created digital twins profiles Unlearn, which uses the health data of a clinical trials participant to forecast how they would progress in the placebo group without denying them the potentially beneficial treatment. The CEO says that a top reason that people don’t participate in clinical trials is that they don’t want to be randomized into the control group that receives placebo rather than the therapy that motivated them to sign up in the first place.
Sales
- Hospice of the Chesapeake implements Netsmart’s MyUnity EHR.
- Intermountain Health will deploy Nuance’s DAX enterprise-wide to automate clinical documentation.
People
John Seguin (PT Solutions Physical Therapy) joins RevSpring as VP of business development, West Coast.
Industry long-timer Peter Witonsky (Arctevity) joins Innovative Consulting Group as chief revenue officer.
Announcements and Implementations
Sectra and Leica Biosystems earn FDA 510(k) clearance to use DICOM images for pathology diagnostics, which allows replacing proprietary formats and technologies.
Bardavon, which offers workers’ compensation and musculoskeletal health technology, launches Recovery+, a health coaching platform for recovery and return-to-work.
Government and Politics
Kentucky becomes the first state to decriminalize medical errors that are due to mistakes rather than gross negligence or intentional misconduct.
Privacy and Security
Atlanta-based staffing company Insight Global will pay $2.7 million to resolve federal False Claims Act charges that it failed to protect the health information of COVID-19 contract tracing subjects under its CDC-funded contract.
Sponsor Updates
- Surescripts launches the third season of its award-winning podcast, “There’s a Better Way.”
- Clearsense earns the Validated Data Stream designation from NCQA’s Data Aggregator Validation Program.
- First Databank will present at the NCPDP Annual Technology & Business Conference May 7 in Scottsdale.
- Optimum Healthcare IT will present at Knowledge 24 May 8 in Las Vegas.
- RxLightning founder and CEO Julia Regan receives the Rising Entrepreneur of the Year Award at TechPoint’s annual Mira Awards gala.
Blog Posts
- Demystifying the digital front door: What works (and doesn’t) in modern patient engagement (Notable Health)
- California CARE Court: Simplifying the Complex. Serving the Most Vulnerable. (Netsmart)
- How can care management programs broaden their outreach to members? (Wolters Kluwer Health)
- The Art of the Possible: A Q&A with Healthcare Policy Wonk Deanne Primozic (Surescripts)
- Top 5 Needs Solved by Working with a CVO (Symplr)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
Get HIStalk updates.
Send news or rumors.
Contact us.
The boxes of unreadable tiny font are just annoying. If you want to quote those sentence why do you present them in 2 pt font. And in a format that we can’t expand.
It is a screenshot. In some cases they are useful, in others – not so much. In either case we follow the link that is always there, as it is important to learn from the source. Isn’t that what everyone is doing?
If you’re referring to the first screenshot about Sen. Klobuchar’s request to the DOJ, you can click on the picture to get a higher-resolution image. Mr. H often does this for images that aren’t easily legible inline, and if he doesn’t do it for a particular picture, you can always ask him to.
I can read them fine by clicking and dragging them larger. Tested on desktop, iPad, and iPhone. Not perfectly sharp, but readable, and the linked article has the direct link as well.