Weekender 12/10/21

Weekly News Recap

• Ambient clinical documentation vendor Robin raises $50 million.
• Cerebral raises $300 million.
• Report: Cotiviti is for sale.
• Claroty uses $400 million in new funding to acquire healthcare IoT vendor Medigate.
• Amazon’s Comprehend Medical NLP service adds SNOMED-CT support and cuts API usage prices by up to 90%.
• The Spokane newspaper calls out problems with the VA’s Cerner implementation at Mann-Grandstaff Medical Center.
• BDO USA acquires Culbert Healthcare Solutions.
• Fortive will acquire specialty EHR vendor Provation for $1.425 billion.
• Netsmart acquires Remarkable Health.

Best Reader Comments

No Surprises Act – “Seems to place a heavy burden on provider administrative staff.” Well, the existing system has placed a pretty hefty burden on patients who have gotten nasty surprise bills. Maybe this will be the incentive for insurers and administrative staff to figure it out. (Bob)

We do a lot of credentialing for providers and the payer systems do not all update from credentialing in any sort of timely manner. A provider may be credentialed but not showing as such in their EDI database. This will be an administrative challenge [under the No Surprises Act] for sure! (Practice Admin)

The real problem is, nobody is going to pay for the things that help doctors take better care of their patients, unless there is an ROI associated with it .. There are a lot of smart and creative people in healthcare IT with a lot of really good ideas who want to do the right thing, but none of us work for free and that’s what it all comes down to at the end of the day. (HIT Girl)

This quote towards the end: “What Cerner does best is capture billable events via exhaustive questions and back-and-forth as you input things.” Reminds me of a conversation I had with my doc at then Partners Healthcare after they went live with Cerner’s major competitor. My doc echoed the same sentiment in saying to me: “It’s a good system for billing I guess, but does nothing for me in helping to care for my patients.” Sad testament to our massive efforts to digitize health. It’s a slow slog. (John Moore)

“What Cerner does best is capture billable events via exhaustive questions and back-and-forth as you input things .. They’re very meaningful to a commercial organization, because that’s how they get paid, but they’re meaningless to the VA.” Well, they’re not meaningful to the actual healthcare providers in the commercial organization. So the problem, although admittedly large in the VA context, is really universal, namely trying to organize clinical information and reasoning using “billing systems with text editors tacked on.” (Robert David Lafsky)

Watercooler Talk Tidbits

Do you know who just helped classrooms in need? Bill, that’s who – his generous donation plus matching funds included those provided by my Anonymous Vendor Executive fully paid to fulfill these Donors Choose teacher grant requests:

• Robotic engineering kits and books for Ms. K’s STEM elementary school class in S. Ozone Park, NY.
• A digital microscope for Mr. E’s middle school class in Muskegon, MI.
• STEM reading and match activities for Ms. A’s middle school class in Hawthorne, CA.
• Headphones for Ms. M’s second grade class in Phoenix, AZ.

ProPublica investigates how billionaires can write off hundreds of millions of dollars in losses from their hobbies, such as purebred horse racing, to reduce their tax bill.The article mentions healthcare billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, who hasn’t paid federal taxes in five consecutive years despite having earned nearly $900 million in the past eight years, although his example was more of tax sheltering than hobby losses. 

The LA Times (owned by Patrick Soon-Shiong, with losses deducted from his taxes per the item above) obtains screen shots of Scripps Memorial Hospital using Epic to mark up supply prices by several hundred percent. Sutures that cost $20 were priced at $150 and $99 surgical blades had a price of $665. The hospital responded to the newspaper’s inquiries by confirming the accuracy of the prices, but characterizing itself as the victim of a system in which insurers decide how much of the list price they will pay. The reporter previously notes that Scripps billed a patient $80,000 for a procedure that Medicare says should cost $6,000, with the inflated price covering Scripps-imposed “technical service charges” for the room, equipment, and staff.

The University of Texas’s Hogg Foundation for Mental Health provides a $260,000 grant to digitize and preserve the records of the the state’s first mental illness hospital, the State Lunatic Asylum, which was opened in 1861. All its buildings have been torn down except for its main building, which is a Texas Historic Landmark. A new Austin State Hospital, which will open in November 2023, will have the same number of beds (240) at a cost of $305 million. The records will be preserved for families who can review the records with the approval of the state HHS institutional review board. The hospital’s daily occupancy peaked at 3,330 in 1968 before the implementation of Medicare changed views on mental health beyond locking people up. Similar preservation work was done with the records of Virginia’s Central Lunatic Asylum for Colored Insane, which had a large percentage of black Americans as patients who were admitted for not adequately respecting whites or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The father of University of Montana senior Danny Burton played football there, while his mother graduated from the university’s pharmacy school. Burton is doing both – “Doctor Dan” plays wide receiver for the football team and will complete his pharmacy doctorate in May. 

In Case You Missed It

• News 12/10/21
• EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 12/9/21
• News 12/8/21
• Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 12/6/21
• Readers Write: Improvements in Content Quality, Regulations Highlight 2021 Interoperability Trends
• Monday Morning Update 12/6/21

Get Involved

Sponsor
Report a news item or rumor (anonymous or not)
Sign up for email updates
Connect on LinkedIn
Contact Mr. H