Here are a few I came across last week.
Note: Each link is followed by a title and few paragraphs. For the full article click on the link above title of the article. Note also that full access to some links may require site registration or subscription payment.
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Hospitals using the same EHR developer more likely to share patients
However, study contends that developer-influenced health information exchange may negatively affect patient outcomes.
Dec 23 2021
The extent to which an electronic health record developer dominates a market is a significant driver in a hospital’s choice of EHR system and the sharing of patients among hospitals.
That’s the conclusion of new research published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association, which examined the impact that EHR developers have on patient transfers and referrals at 3,076 U.S. non-federal acute care hospitals from 2011 to 2016.
The findings also have important implications for future policies regarding the interoperable exchange of health information. The EHR market is increasingly concentrated, and developer-based networks have become increasingly important as the number of state and community health information exchanges decreases.
The study found that a hospital’s decision to switch to a new EHR developer increased the ratio of patients shared with other hospitals using the same developer from 4.1 percent to 19.3 percent. The ratio was higher when a developer controlled a large share of the market.
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Dec 22 2021
Data Analytics
How Healthcare Organizations Can Use Informatics to Enhance Care
Informatics can help improve patient outcomes, as long as organizations have the right IT infrastructure in place.
by Doug Bonderud
Doug Bonderud is an award-winning writer capable of bridging the gap between complex and conversational across technology, innovation and the human condition.
To satisfy regulatory requirements, healthcare organizations must store patient data digitally in the form of electronic health records or electronic medical records. As noted in the journal Heredity, moving beyond simple storage to the actionable application of Big Data offers “significant potential” for healthcare, but significant challenges remain.
Among the most common are data fragmentation, high costs and increased complexity — siloed data that’s difficult to access limits the efficacy of EMR and EHR solutions. Healthcare informatics provides a way to overcome these challenges, as long as organizations adopt the right approach and deploy the right technology.
What Is Healthcare Informatics, and How Is It Used?
ISACA advisor and media spokesperson Neil Lappage notes that “if you ask 10 different people about healthcare informatics, you’ll get 10 different answers.” That makes sense — as a burgeoning field, informatics is driven by both technology adoption at an organizational level and the integration of these solutions into healthcare workflows for frontline staff.
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https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/20/cdc-covid-omicron-delta-tracking-525621
‘It is embarrassing’: CDC struggles to track Covid cases as Omicron looms
The U.S. was behind other countries in charting the spread of disease in the pandemic’s disastrous early months. It’s still behind as new variants threaten to disrupt the winter.
By ERIN BANCO
Updated: 12/21/2021 01:48 PM EST
As the world experiences new, more transmissible Covid-19 variants, scientists and health officials in the U.S. are still struggling to gather accurate and timely domestic data to help inform policy decisions to safeguard Americans.
Continuing gaps in the CDC’s data collection program, which almost two years into the pandemic still relies on state health departments who use a mix of often incompatible and outdated state systems to identify cases, impedes the nation’s understanding of where and how fast the virus is spreading, according to more than a dozen state and federal officials involved in tracking cases.
The fact that the data gaps have been apparent since the start of the pandemic makes the lack of substantial improvement particularly galling to many infectious disease specialists.
“I think we've done a horrible job from day one in data tracking for the pandemic,” said Eric Topol, a professor of molecular medicine at Scripps Research and former advisory board member of the Covid Tracking Project, a team that worked to collect and synthesize local Covid-19 during the peak of the pandemic. “We're not tracking all the things that we need to to get a handle on what's going on. It is embarrassing.”
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/gao-appoints-seven-new-members-to-health-it-advisory-committee
GAO Appoints Seven New Members to Health IT Advisory Committee
GAO has added seven new members to the Health IT Advisory Committee (HITAC) from the private and public sectors.
December 22, 2021 - Gene L. Dodaro, Comptroller General of the United States and head of the US Government Accountability Office (GAO), has announced the appointment of seven members to the Health IT Advisory Committee (HITAC).
“Today’s appointees bring impressive qualifications and a range of experiences and perspectives to the HITAC’s work on such issues as the use of technology to promote care coordination, addressing the needs of children and other vulnerable populations, and supporting public health,” Dodaro said.
“These new additions, along with the existing members, will be a key source of advice for advancing the electronic access, exchange, and use of health information, as outlined in the 21st Century Cures Act,” Dodaro continued.
The newly appointed members are Hans Buitendijk, Steven Eichner, Rajesh Godavarthi, Hung Luu, Aaron Neinstein, Eliel Oliveira, and Fillipe Southerland. Each member is appointed for a three-year term and may be reappointed for subsequent three-year terms.
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2022 forecast: Investors will double down on these hot digital health markets
Dec 22, 2021 6:00am
Digital health investment had a blockbuster year in 2021, propelled in large part by the shift to virtual care during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first nine months alone brought in a total of $21.3 billion for digital health startups across 541 investment deals, dwarfing the $14.6 billion record of 2020, according to Rock Health, a venture fund dedicated to digital health.
That momentum is projected to continue in 2022 as digital health companies lead the way in healthcare innovation with the use of artificial intelligence, machine learning, data analytics and telehealth.
Here are five digital health markets to watch as investors look to pour major cash into the healthcare sector:
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https://www.fiercehealthcare.com/sponsored/a-new-way-to-access-scientific-papers
A New Way to Access Scientific Papers?
Sponsored by DeepDyve
Dec 6, 2021 8:00am
Many
researchers are surprised to find that leaving university also means leaving
behind something they didn’t expect—easy access to peer-reviewed literature.
Especially for those who have gone to work at startups or other smaller
organizations, finding a way to do the systematic literature reviews needed for
regulatory requirements—or even just keep up-to-date on their fields—can
require spending time scouring the web, spending lots of money, or both.
“I used to be able to go to the library to find whatever I needed,” says
bioinformatician Dan Morgan. “Then when I graduated I went to work for a small
company that didn’t have the budget to buy subscriptions to dozens of journals.
Now when I need to look at an article, I often have to search all over to try
to find a way to read it.”
And once a researcher does find an article, organizing it becomes another
chore.
“Every person on my team manages their papers a different way,” says Morgan.
“Some use reference managers, some put them on cloud drives, some just keep
them on their own computers. It’s hard to see what other people have found in
any organized way.”
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Digital health startups join HHS accelerator to tackle COVID health inequities
Dec 21, 2021 3:00pm
Fifteen digital health startups will join a national accelerator program to address health inequities exacerbated by COVID-19.
The PandemicX Accelerator program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and co-led by the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, seeks to leverage data and digital tools to tackle health disparities.
The digital health startups chosen for next year's four-month growth program, which includes curriculum, mentorship, and partnership opportunities, will create action plans to scale their business and address challenges surfaced by the pandemic, as well as to minimize the impact of future health threats on those inequities.
“PandemicX will help give us interoperable tools that identify health inequities and facilitate interventions that prevent such inequities from further turning into healthcare disparities,” said Micky Tripathi, Ph.D., national coordinator for health IT, in a statement.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/industry-analysts-react-oracles-big-ticket-cerner-buy
Industry analysts react to Oracle's big-ticket Cerner buy
It's a seismic acquisition, one that was first floated more than 13 years ago. Now that it's finally happening (pending regulatory approval), observers assess the deal and offer thoughts on what's next.
By Mike Miliard
December 22, 2021 10:07 AM
What will the Oracle-Cerner acquisition announced on Monday mean for the companies, their clients and for healthcare in general? That's still to be seen, but one thing is for sure: It's a big deal.
As CNBC noted, the $28.3 billion Oracle paid for the health IT giant is "monumental" – three times as pricey as the company's next-biggest deal, its 2005 acquisition of PeopleSoft for $10.3 billion.
Indeed, it's "up there with the largest software deals ever": only slightly smaller than IBM's mammoth $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat in 2018 and bigger than Microsoft's $20 billion acquisition of Nuance earlier this year.
But there are good reasons for that sort of sizable investment.
"The future of enterprise software is being able to engage with industry segments," as IDC analyst Bob Parker told The New York Times. "And this puts Oracle deeply into a key part of the healthcare business."
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OCR Issues HIPAA Guidance Surrounding Extreme Risk Protection Orders
HIPAA covered healthcare providers can disclose PHI to support an extreme risk protection order, which prevents patients in crisis from accessing firearms.
By Jill McKeon
December 21, 2021 - HHS’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) released new guidance to clarify how HIPAA permits covered healthcare providers to disclose protected health information (PHI) without a patient’s consent to support applications for extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs). ERPOs can temporarily prevent a person in crisis from accessing firearms if they are perceived to pose a danger to themselves or others.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) published model legislation on June 7, 2021 to provide a framework for state legislators. Concerned family members, law enforcement, healthcare providers, and others may seek an ERPO if they are concerned that an individual may be suicidal or may use a firearm to injure themselves or another person.
"Too often, communities bear the weight of heartbreaking tragedies caused by the epidemic of gun violence in our country," Xavier Becerra, HHS secretary, explained in an accompanying press release.
"Today's guidance on HIPAA and Extreme Risk Protection Orders is an important step the Biden-Harris Administration is taking towards protecting communities from gun violence by allowing law enforcement, concerned family members, or others to prevent a person in crisis from accessing firearms."
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https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2021/12/17/patient-doctor-communication-study/1161639761621/
Dec. 17, 2021 / 3:26 PM
Study: Doctors should tailor communications to match patients' health literacy
Dec. 17 (UPI) -- Physicians should tailor their language to match each patient's individual health literacy level to best communicate healthcare information, a study published Friday by Science Advances found.
When physicians use simple language to explain health problems and symptom management, they foster better understanding among patients with varying literacy levels, data from the analysis of more than 230,000 email exchanges between physicians and diabetes patients showed.
The method that performed better in the study, "universal tailoring," sees doctors customize the complexity of their messaging based on what the patient's health literacy level.
This is opposed to the less successful method of "universal precautions," where doctors always simplify their language in the same way.
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Can digital health tech make patient engagement seem seamless?
After the boost that technology provided for virtual care, leading organizations are looking to build on the lessons learned in the pandemic
Dec 21 2021
While the pandemic accelerated efforts to deploy customer-facing technologies, healthcare organizations now wrestle with the continuing steps they need to take to truly engage with their patients.
Many are finding that engagement isn’t achieved by installing any one kind of technology – rather, it’s a process that covers a variety of touchpoints with patients that encourages them to receive care, navigate their care journey until they’re well, and then stay connected to the organization post encounter.H
The pandemic has been an accelerant, said Katie Miller, vice president of access to care for Oschner Health System in Louisiana. “We think of it as spanning from when a patient is seeking care, then coordinating care and giving them timely information, and then it’s the post-care and follow-up. Then, it’s restarting that loop as they continue to move through our health system.”
Miller was among a panel of digital health leaders in a session entitled, “Top of Mind for Top Health Systems: Improving Patient Access,” which discussed key findings in the recently released Top of Mind Report, from the Center for Connected Medicine and KLAS Research. The group was brought together to discuss the Top of Mind research, add the perspective from health systems and set out expectations for digital health in the coming year.
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Telehealth-Only Practices Offer Access To Hard-To-Reach Specialties
December 21, 2021
If you haven’t had to make an appointment with a high-demand specialist lately, be grateful. As for me, I’ve spent the six months going back and forth trying to get appointments with the right specialist and sub-specialists to treat a neurological condition.
Today I was overjoyed to connect with the office of one of the subspecialists — only to become a lot less excited when I found out they couldn’t see me till March. Given the circumstances, I accepted the March appointment, but to say I was exasperated was an understatement.
So what does this have to do with Health IT, you might ask? Well, not to overstate the case, but a new breed of telehealth practice is solving the problem of how to get help while I wait, and I think it’s an approach everyone involved in the mechanics of delivering care should study.
Once I saw how long I would end up waiting for face-to-face specialist care, I hit the web in search of options. Because chronic pain is the most intrusive part of my condition, I sought out a web-based pain management service to see if it could at least bridge the gap in time before I could be seen in a brick-and-mortar setting. My search brought me to Clearing, a web-only pain management practice.
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Epic Gains More EMR Market Share; Cerner Loses Ground for Second Year in a Row
Analysis | By Scott Mace | May 20, 2021
EMR acquisition spiked in the fourth quarter, after being put on hold during the COVID-19 lockdown in the first half of 2020.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Cerner saw "strong success" competing for community hospitals.
· Allscripts saw stable market share in 2020.
· Epic market share growth was less than 2015 gains.
The COVID-19 pandemic allowed electronic medical record (EMR) company Epic to continue to gain a greater share of the U.S. acute care market last year, according to the 2021 U.S. Hospital Market Share report from KLAS.
Cerner, on the other hand, saw a second consecutive year of net market share decreases. A 37-hospital organization chose to move to Epic; 31 of the hospitals were using Cerner, accounting for more than half of Cerner's 2020 hospital losses.
During the past six years, Cerner has lost a total of seven large customers, representing more than 28,000 beds, KLAS reported.
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https://ehrintelligence.com/news/ehr-vendor-epic-leads-2020-acute-care-market-share-growth
EHR Vendor Epic Leads 2020 Acute Care Market Share Growth
A large portion of Epic’s wins came from large healthcare organizations, most of which switched from EHR vendors Cerner, MEDITECH, or Allscripts.
December 20, 2021 - EHR vendor Epic’s market share growth in 2020 significantly outpaced the competition’s, according to a KLAS market share report based on acute care EHR purchasing activity throughout 2020.
A significant portion of Epic’s 2020 wins (46 hospitals and over 15,000 beds) came from large healthcare organizations, most of which switched from Cerner, MEDITECH, or Allscripts platforms. A significant win for Epic in Q1 included 37 hospitals and just under 7,000 beds.
Over the last five years, Epic has gained 90 hospitals annually on average. KLAS officials said that the EHR system’s stability and deep integration attract large organizations, whose smaller regional partners often follow suit to support improved collaboration and care coordination. Just three hospitals left Epic in 2020, all migrating due to merger and acquisition activity.
In 2020, a 37-hospital organization moved to Epic; 31 of the hospitals had been using EHR systems from Cerner, accounting for over half of Cerner’s 2020 hospital losses.
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Diagnostic Artificial Intelligence Models Can Be Tricked By Cyberattacks
Researchers discovered that diagnostic artificial intelligence models used to detect cancer were fooled by cyberattacks that falsify medical images.
By Jill McKeon
December 20, 2021 - Diagnostic artificial intelligence (AI) models hold promise in clinical research, but a new study conducted by University of Pittsburgh researchers and published in Nature Communications found that cyberattacks using falsified medical images could fool AI models.
The study shed light on the concept of “adversarial attacks,” in which bad actors aim to alter images or other data points to make AI models draw incorrect conclusions. The researchers began by training a deep learning algorithm that was able to identify cancerous and benign cases with more than 80 percent accuracy.
Then, the researchers developed a “generative adversarial network” (GAN), which is a computer program that generates false images by misplacing cancerous regions from negative or positive images to confuse the model.
The AI model was fooled by 69.1 percent of the falsified images. Of the 44 positive images made to look negative, the model identified 42 as negative. Of the 319 negative images doctored to look positive, the AI model classified 209 as positive.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/feds-point-learning-health-system-key-patient-safety
Feds point to learning health system as key to patient safety
A report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality outlined several strategies to reduce medical errors.
By Kat Jercich
December 20, 2021 11:56 AM
The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, in conjunction with the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, released a report to Congress this month exploring effective strategies for reducing medical errors.
The report, which was required by the Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 to be submitted to Congress no later than December 21, reviewed progress in the act's implementation so far and proposed future tactics for the healthcare industry.
"The landmark Patient Safety and Quality Improvement Act of 2005 created a unique and powerful framework that is supporting patient safety and quality improvement work across the United States," said researchers in the report. "That framework stands ready to support the collaborative national effort needed to make further progress in improving the safety and quality of healthcare," they added.
WHY IT MATTERS
The Patient Safety Act included several key provisions, including the creation and maintenance of a network of patient safety databases and the establishment of a process for entities to be listed as patient safety organizations.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/advances-telemedicine-are-way-2022
Advances in telemedicine are on the way in 2022
A physician expert in virtual care talks technological advances, reimbursement legislation and the continued evolution of remote patient monitoring.
By Bill Siwicki
December 20, 2021 09:34 AM
2020 and 2021 saw the mainstreaming of telehealth and the rise of remote patient monitoring. These changes to the healthcare landscape were helped partly by requirements of the COVID-19 pandemic and partly by the subsequent loosening of telemedicine reimbursement and licensure regulations by the government.
But what's to happen in 2022? Will the government and commercial payers continue to reimburse for telemedicine? Will new virtual-care legislation pass? Will there be technological advances that push the care paradigm further forward? And what of the future of remote patient monitoring?
Healthcare IT News sat down with Dr. Ian Tong, chief medical officer at Included Health, a telehealth technology and services company, to get his read on these questions and his predictions for telehealth in 2022 and beyond.
Q. What do you see in the realm of technological advances in telemedicine in 2022?
A. While 2021 saw many healthcare technology mergers and acquisitions in response to the pandemic, and growing virtual-care adoption among payers, providers and consumers, much of the technology of these combined entities remains fractured.
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https://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/oracle-acquires-cerner-283b
Oracle acquires Cerner for $28.3B
The database giant says it plans to expand the company's global footprint as it invests big in healthcare – the "largest and most important vertical market in the world."
By Mike Miliard
December 20, 2021 10:34 AM
As first reported this past week, Oracle Corporation and Cerner Corp. have agreed to a deal where the company will acquire the Kansas City-based digital health giant in an all-cash deal for $95 per share.
The acquisition of Cerner, founded in 1979, is the biggest-ever for Oracle.
WHY IT
MATTERS
With the $28.3 billion transaction, "Oracle's corporate mission expands to
assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with
a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to
information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud
applications," said Larry Ellison, the company's cofounder, chairman and
CTO, in a statement.
The acquisition will be accretive to Oracle's earnings on a non-GAAP basis in the first full fiscal year after closing, and the database giant sees Cerner as "a huge additional revenue growth engine for years to come as we expand its business into many more countries throughout the world," said Oracle CEO Safra Catz.
Cerner's shares were up about 1% on Monday morning on the news, while Oracle's were down more than 3%.
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https://www.healthcareittoday.com/2021/12/20/oracle-buys-cerner/
Oracle Buys Cerner
December 20, 2021
Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) and Cerner Corporation today jointly announced an agreement for Oracle to acquire Cerner through an all-cash tender offer for $95.00 per share, or approximately $28.3 billion in equity value. Cerner is a leading provider of digital information systems used within hospitals and health systems to enable medical professionals to deliver better healthcare to individual patients and communities.
“Working together, Cerner and Oracle have the capacity to transform healthcare delivery by providing medical professionals with better information—enabling them to make better treatment decisions resulting in better patient outcomes,” said Larry Ellison, Chairman and Chief Technology Officer, Oracle. “With this acquisition, Oracle’s corporate mission expands to assume the responsibility to provide our overworked medical professionals with a new generation of easier-to-use digital tools that enable access to information via a hands-free voice interface to secure cloud applications. This new generation of medical information systems promises to lower the administrative workload burdening our medical professionals, improve patient privacy and outcomes, and lower overall healthcare costs.”
“We expect this acquisition to be immediately accretive to Oracle’s earnings on a non-GAAP basis in the first full fiscal year after closing—and contribute substantially more to earnings in the second fiscal year and thereafter,” said Safra Catz, Chief Executive Officer, Oracle. “Healthcare is the largest and most important vertical market in the world—$3.8 trillion last year in the United States alone. Oracle’s revenue growth rate has already been increasing this year—Cerner will be a huge additional revenue growth engine for years to come as we expand its business into many more countries throughout the world. That’s exactly the growth strategy we adopted when we bought NetSuite—except the Cerner revenue opportunity is even larger.”
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https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/technology/social-determinants-health-find-their-way-ehr
Social Determinants of Health Find Their Way Into the EHR
Analysis | By Scott Mace | December 15, 2021
Children’s Mercy Hospital of Kansas City is testing out a new decision support tool that addresses one of today’s biggest barriers to healthcare access.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
· Initial implementation works with Cerner Millennium EHR.
· FHIR-based authentication could work with other EHRs such as Epic.
· Broader deployment is planned to work SDOH into care encounters, while not increasing physician burnout.
Taking the next step in leveraging the social determinants of health (SDOH), a Kansas City health system has found a way to present patient-relevant data in its electronic health records.
The Envirome Web Service (EWS), described in a recent issue of the Journal of Biomedical Informatics, provides personalized SDOH data for each patient in the EHR. It securely geocodes patient addresses in real time to link their records with publicly available contextual data, while giving clinicians summaries of the data without interrupting their workflows with additional alerts.
The initial push was to build and deploy the service within Children's Mercy Hospital of Kansas City, but define it in a way that it could be implemented outside of the Missouri-based health system, according to Mark Hoffman, chief research information officer at Children's Mercy.
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Enjoy!
David.
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