...City-based operation have declined from 11,900 people in 2022 (Kansas City Area Development Council) to a current 6,400 (internal documents). Cerner itself reported 12,778 local full-time-equivalent employees in 2022. Oracle had multiple layoffs of Cerner affecting Kansas City workers and has consolidated multiple office buildings and campuses. Becker’s In more cheerful news: Baby monitor Owlet announced a strategic partnership with Wheel for Owlet’s BabySat. BabySat is Owlet’s FDA-cleared prescription vital signs monitor for infants 1-18 months. Wheel clinicians can now prescribe BabySat which enables parents to order BabySat from Owlet and other suppliers. With Wheel, BabySat also integrates with durable... Continue Reading
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Teladoc’s Q1: increased revenue, increased net loss, dealing with slowing growth–as is CVS Health
...such as those under Included Health’s, and partnerships with health plans and employers. CVS Health’s Q1 also wasn’t swell for reasons that are impacting their full year. High medical costs affected their Aetna plans, with high utilization in Medicare Advantage, inpatient admissions, and outpatient services were all high in Q1–$900 million higher than CVS expected. Lower MA STAR ratings will affect their forward Federal reimbursements, with one of their largest MA plans falling from 4.5 to 3.5 rating in 2024. According to CEO Karen Lynch, most of this utilization was from a patient usage reversion to pre-pandemic patterns. Their Q1... Continue Reading
Midweek news roundup: Optum exiting telehealth, laying off; Advocate Health selling MobileHelp; VA notifying 15M veterans re Change PHI breach, Oracle moving to Nashville–maybe? (updated)
...equally sudden consolidation, of general telehealth. Optum opened the unit in April 2021 as the pandemic entered year 2. Utilizing existing capabilities, UHG claimed it facilitated more than 33 million telehealth visits in 2020, up from 1.2 million in 2019. The number looks sky high but in that time of practices closing it was a free-for-all in telehealth–and ‘facilitating’ is a nebulous catchword that could mean a practice using Facetime, telephones, or an EHR/population health platform module. Commercial claims for telehealth have remained at 4 to 5% since (FAIR Health, Jan 2024). Even during the pandemic’s first year, telehealth claims... Continue Reading
Walmart Health shutters health centers, Walmart Virtual Care, in sudden move (updated–why?)
...that because appointments must be scheduled within the next 30 days and no new patients are being accepted, the closures will be start to be effective 30 or 31 May. The centers employ physicians, dentists, and nurse-practitioners. Walmart Health also had recently inked high profile partnerships with Centene’s Ambetter-Sunshine Health plan as an ACA preferred provider [TTA 8 Nov 23] and with Orlando Health in Florida for care coordination. It is not known what will happen to these latter partnerships. Update. UnitedHealthcare and Walmart have ended their co-branded Medicare Advantage “Walmart Flex” plan. This was part of a 10-year deal... Continue Reading
Two studies: Telehealth underutilized, underbilled, even during pandemic–and accounted for only modest increases in costs, quality
...healthcare spending and usage by Medicare beneficiaries. The study defined by quartile health systems that had high telemedicine usage versus those with higher in-person usage, based on 2020 visits. Their conclusions tracked the changes between the 2019 baseline, 2020, and 2021-22. This study found only a modest increase after 2020 in visits and spend in the highest quartile of telemedicine usage for patient care. In 2020, patients in the highest quartile of telemedicine use had 2.5 telemedicine visits per person (26.8 percent of visits) compared with 0.7 telemedicine visits per person (9.5 percent of visits) in the lowest quartile of... Continue Reading
Who really has the 4TB of Change Healthcare data 4 sale? And in great timing, Optum lays off a rumored 20K–say wot?
...‘notchy’ was dissatisfied that he didn’t get a cut of the $22 million ransom that Optum supposedly paid the BlackCat/ALPHV group. For their $22 million ransom, which Change has not, repeat NOT, confirmed, ALPHV gave Change a decryptor key. But, they didn’t have the good manners to 1) return the stolen data to Change or delete it, which included highly sensitive data from multiple Change customers including active military PII (from Tricare), patient PII, payment and claims data, and much more, and 2) pay a cut to the affiliate. And then ALPHV shut down and ran out of town. Here’s... Continue Reading
Weekend reading: 23andMe’s exploding plastic inevitable fate–and what might have been
...and soared to a $3.5 billion valuation. It achieved a $4.8 billion market capitalization after buying in October 2021 Lemonaid, a quick-diagnosis/quick-prescription telehealth company for minor but troublesome conditions that was touted, but never became, a nexus of, to quote the announcement, “healthcare that is based on the combination of your genes, your environment, and your lifestyle.” At the time, its future seemed unlimited between consumer genetic testing (genotyping, not diagnostic) for health and ancestry, building up Lemonaid into a full-featured virtual diagnostics and health service, while taking the deidentified data and marketing it for commercial research to Big Pharma,... Continue Reading
News roundup: Congress hammers absent UHG on Change cyberattack–and more; 10% unhinged at Hinge Health; Steward Health nears insolvency; Two Chairs $72M Series C
...expected from patients affected by the theft of PHI and PII [TTA 28 Mar]. It’ll be a busy spring and summer for UHG’s legal department. Hinge Health cuts 10% of staff. Reasons given were the standard tropes of ‘long-term sustainable business’, ‘accelerate our path to profitability, speed up decision making, and better focus our investments’ plus ‘realign our organization’. Their employee group is estimated at 1,700 on LinkedIn, making this about 170 staff released in various functions including engineers. The company is preparing for an IPO, which may not be this year, since they claim to have $400 million in... Continue Reading
ISfTeH student contest and award 2024–deadline 26 April!
...year, in October, the award session will take place, in which the winners (first, second and third place) will receive a cash prize sponsored by ISfTeH member, Medgate. If you are a student, but not yet a student member in the ISfTeH, submit your membership application at www.isfteh.org/members/how_to_join. If you are working at a school or university and would like your students to be involved in the contest, also contact Dr. Simone Farah. Editor Donna would invite our international Readers to keep up with ISfTeH on their website linked above, with member and supported affiliate events from Finland to Nigeria.... Continue Reading
News roundup: VillageMD sued on Meta Pixel trackers; Cerebral pays $7.1M FTC fine on data sharing, cancellation policy; VA may resume Oracle Cerner implementation during FY2025; Epic-Particle Health dispute on PHI sharing
...all information to third parties. Cerebral also set up their service cancellation as a ‘negative option’ cancellation policy, which in reality meant that it was renewed indefinitely unless the customer took action to cancel. It was not adequately disclosed in violation of the federal Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act (ROSCA). Then Cerebral made it extremely difficult to cancel by instituting a complex procedure that required multiple steps and often took several days to execute. They even eliminated a one-step cancel button at their then-CEO Kyle Robertson’s direction. The order requires this to be corrected including deleting the negative option. Former... Continue Reading
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