Breaking: Amazon Care shutting down after three years–what’s next? (updated)

August 25, 2022 | by

Amazon Care to cease operations after 31 December. Amazon Health Services is throwing in the towel on its primary care service for enterprise customers, after failing to make much headway with its mix of virtual care, in-home, and telehealth services. An internal email from Neil Lindsay, Amazon Health Services senior vice president, sent today (24 Aug) to employees but leaked to the press, stated that “This decision wasn’t made lightly and only became clear after many months of careful consideration. Although our enrolled members have loved many aspects of Amazon Care, it is not a complete enough offering for the large enterprise customers we have been targeting, and wasn’t going to work long-term.”

Employees who have been part of Amazon Care may have the opportunity to transfer to other parts of Health Services, according to the memo, or will be ‘supported’ in finding other roles within or outside the company. The total number of employees was not disclosed, but this Editor expects layoffs to be announced by the fall as Amazon Care winds down.

Amazon has been moving in a different direction with enterprises for some months. Reportedly the decision was made to ditch Amazon Care prior to agreeing to acquire One Medical, which was announced late in July. However, recently revealed negotiations actually started last February, with One Medical pitting Amazon against CVS until CVS dropped its bid effort [TTA 19 August]. 

As this Editor noted last month with the One Medical acquisition, “…for this Editor it is clear that Amazon with One Medical is buying itself into in-person and virtual primary care for the employer market, where it had limited success with its present largely virtual offering, and entreé with commercial plans and MA.” With One Medical, they will be acquiring an operation with 790,000 patients (including 40,000 at-risk, presumably Iora’s), 8,000 company clients, 125 physical offices in 21 US metros (including projected), and an established telehealth/telemedicine protocol. In other words, a ready-made provider and enterprise base to build on and sell into, for instance Amazon products like Pharmacy and PillPack.

Not addressed is what will be done, if anything, to transition current employer agreements for Amazon Care to One Medical.

It’s now a matter of whether HHS, DOJ, and FTC will agree to the buy or ask for additional divestitures. One conflict–Amazon Care–has just been removed. And this may clear the deck for other acquisitions, such as Signify Health [TTA 24 Aug], if Amazon wins the auction against CVS, UnitedHealth Group, and Option Care Health, though for a newcomer to healthcare Signify may very well be A Bridge Too Far.

What’s in play?

  • One Medical’s Iora Health and its high needs/high costs Medicare patient base. This has very much been held in the background, leading this Editor to think it will be sold to another health plan.
  • The status of the previous agreement with Crossover Health for 115,000 Amazon employees and dependents, delivered through their employer-based onsite clinics in 11 states in addition to concierge care [TTA 17 May]
  • Another previous agreement with Ginger for telemental health, only announced last week.

Amazon was touting Amazon Care as recently as earlier this year to shareholders. They had acquired employers outside Amazon such as Hilton, but not quickly enough. Expansion talk and the usual touting within the industry weren’t happening. There was an ‘air of mystery’ about what Amazon Care was doing, going back to the beginning.

Perhaps a major ‘tell’ was that Kristen Helton, general manager in charge of Amazon Care, was reported two weeks ago by Bloomberg News to be taking an “extended break to spend the summer with her family.” She had been in the GM position for three years after joining Amazon in 2015.

Count Amazon Care as one expensive learning course in the insanely costly University of Healthcare Delivery. This won’t be the first lesson, but Amazon can afford the tuition.

Geek Wire, FierceHealthcare, 

Babylon Health exits last NHS hospital contract as a ‘distraction’, looks to US market for growth

August 24, 2022 | by

Babylon Health’s rollercoaster ride continues. Today’s news was that their last of three NHS Trust contracts, with Royal Wolverhampton NHS Trust (RWT), was ended by Babylon two years into a ten-year contract. This follows the end of two other contracts that drew a fair amount of controversy (see our index here)–the 2020 one-year Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust with an accident and emergency triage app that was discontinued by Babylon, and with University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) for a virtual A&E app that was ended in July.

In the UK, Babylon will continue its GP At Hand service that took over a GP office in Fulham, London in 2016. It now currently covers about 155,000 patients. It will also maintain the AI-based chatbot used for triaging patients. GP At Hand is not profitable. GP practices work on a flat fee per patient that averages £155 ($183) per patient per year.

Babylon and RWT contracted in 2021 for a digital-first primary care service that would cover 55,000 patients, with a patient portal that would enable them to view their health records and view appointments. The app would also monitor conditions and like the AI chatbot, help to diagnose illness and actions. Babylon is ending the ten-year contract after two, which would make it 2023.

From the bubbly Digital Enthusiasm of former Health Minister Matt Hancock (left) in 2018 to the storm around @DrMurphy11, a GP who raised performance issues with the Babylon chatbot that escalated to BBC Two’s Newsnight in February 2020, founder and CEO Ali Parsa is now in an unenviable position in two countries. He 1) has semi-exited the UK market, 2) ruthlessly cut costs to the bone because the stock is down 90%, and 3) shifted to the far larger but unforgiving market of the US. The bright spot here is that US patients covered have already topped 6 years of effort in the UK. Parsa has now moved to the US.

Parsa noted in a recent results call [Seeking Alpha-Ed.] with analysts. “Those two or three small NHS contracts that you refer to—and those are not our significant primary-care contracts— those are marginal contracts for us, more in that category of contracts where we could not see a significant contribution to our profit margin,” he said. “And they also had a rather small contribution to our revenue. And therefore we saw them as a distraction and terminated those contracts.”

This Editor has previously noted Babylon’s layoffs/redundancies of at least 100 staff to save $100 million by Q3, which we are now in. Expansion in the US has to take place with static staff to make goal. And as to the US being unforgiving: VCs are snapping their capacious purses shut, Mr. Market’s gone into rehab, and inflation is shrinking healthcare budgets from providers to payers to self-insured companies. The Big Kahunas with Big Bucks–CVS Health, Allscripts, UnitedHealth Group, Amazon, Walgreens, Walmart–and out-of-left-field players like Option Care Health bidding on Signify Health, are snapping up, as we’ve earlier put it, “healthy health tech companies at the right (discounted) price that fill in their tech gaps”. And making life difficult for single players like Babylon Health. Wired. And a snappy hat tip to HISTalk.

Signify Health bidding war ensues, waged by Amazon, UnitedHealth Group, CVS, Option Care Health

August 24, 2022 | by

What a difference less than two weeks makes. We noted on 11 August that in-home health and value-based provider services company Signify Health was up for sale in an unusual auction, with CVS Health the first disclosed bidder. Yesterday, three more companies jumped into the mix, UnitedHealth Group (the 9,000 elephant of US health), Amazon (with One Medical still pending), and little-known Option Care Health, a public (Nasdaq: OPCH) home infusion care company.

Reports in the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) indicate Signify’s value in the auction may top $8 billion. Bids are due around Labor Day. The board will be meeting next Monday to discuss the bids to date. Signify’s current value is about $5 billion.

The share price closed today just above $27, a major rise from last week’s close of $21 (Yahoo Finance).

The UHG bid is above $30, with Amazon close by, according to Bloomberg News sources. The CVS bid is not known. A buy by Amazon would put the company in Instant Major Healthcare Player territory. This Editor believes that with UHG and CVS, antitrust may factor in, especially considering Signify’s recent ownership of the ACO MSO Caravan Health.  

Option Care may not be well known, but it has impressive backing from Goldman Sachs and has been profitable. Their interest is Signify’s home health network and access to providers through Caravan. Another backer, Walgreens Boots Alliance, just sold 11 million shares on the secondary market, reducing its holdings from 20.5 percent to approximately 14.4 percent.

There’s no bar, of course, to the board ending the auction at any time and awarding the company. Healthcare Finance, FierceHealthcare

Rounding up the week with good news: AliveCor’s Series F round, Scotland’s Smplicare gains £750K for fall research

August 19, 2022 | by

AliveCor has moved to a Series F round led by GE Healthcare. In this funding-parched environment, this is impressive though the funding amount is (sigh) not disclosed. The round was joined by NGK-NTK (through a CVC partnership with Pegasus Tech Ventures) and existing investors including Khosla Ventures, Bold Capital Partners, Qualcomm Ventures, and WP Global Partners. The fresh funding will be used to advance new innovations, their AI roadmapping, and existing ones such as introducing subscription services, KardiaCare and KardiaComplete for patients, payers and employers, and KardiaPro for physicians. KardiaCare has 165,000 members, claiming 2 million users and 160 million ECGs to date. GEHC and AliveCor currently partner on integrating KardiaMobile 6L’s ECG data directly into GE Healthcare’s MUSE Cardiac Management System.  Release. Hat tip to Dr. Dave Albert, founder and Reader.

The UK funding environment is also perking a bit in the public/private area. Edinburgh-based startup Smplicare now has £750,000  to explore how commercially available wearable technologies can predict the risk of falls and other age-related health issues. Funding came from private investors and UK Research & Innovation (UKRI)’s Healthy Ageing Challenge, with the goal of adding five years of healthy, independent living for everyone by 2035. Overall, the challenge has seven themes and an extensive list of partnerships worth referencing if your technology, platform, or social enterprise is in this area of keeping older people active, productive, and in their communities. Smplicare’s tech uses a questionnaire to easily determine levels of clinical fraility, then a dashboard to project trends. Their project is to monitor 300 individuals 55+ and with a history of falls agreeing to wear a mainstream wearable for six months. What this will enable Smplicare to do is to have enough data to create an AI-powered algorithm that will predict the likelihood of a fall, possibly saving the NHS more than £4.4 billion annually. The research is led by Smplicare’s chief innovation officer, Dr. Adrian Smales, an award-winning PhD in health informatics. Support comes from the analytics team at Data Lab, Scotland’s innovation center for data and AI, and on the clinical side, Dr. Atul Anand, an NHS and University of Edinburgh geriatrician with experience in big data clinical studies. Insider.co.UK, The Scotsman

Friday short takes: was there a bidding war for One Medical? A concussion risk wearable tested. Get Well’s monkeypox digital care plan

August 19, 2022 | by

Amazon’s scoop-up of One Medical apparently was not all Skittles, Rainbows, and Unicorns. Large companies like Amazon, Walmart, Allscripts, and CVS are on the hunt to fill gaps in their portfolio and technologies, but only “healthy health tech companies at the right (discounted) price that fill in their tech gaps.” Of course, some of these companies have more chips on the table and in the safe than others.

We know from earlier reporting [TTA 7 July] that One Medical and CVS had some talks, but that One Medical spurned the offer. It did establish that One Medical was in play. Some digging by Heather Landi at FierceHealthcare, taking a walk through SEC documents according to a regulatory disclosure with the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed 10 August, found that CVS (identified as Party A) and 1Life Healthcare, the parent of One Medical, started their acquisition talks in October 2021. 1Life was short on cash, getting shorter, needing to expand, and was having trouble raising the $300 million they estimated they needed. Starting this past February, 1Life management started to negotiate with Amazon. On 1 June, CVS offered $17 per share, boosting it by $1 the following day, but were informed by 1Life that there was another suitor. By 2 July, Amazon put $18 in an all-cash deal on the table. When news leaked via Bloomberg on 5 July that CVS was in discussions, CVS bowed out. By the end of July, 1Life and Amazon closed on the deal [TTA 27 July].

It came down to this–Amazon needed One Medical more than CVS. Watch for CVS and Walmart to make more provider/primary care moves by the time the snow flies this year. We’ve already noted that CVS inked a deal with Amwell a few days ago as their provider for Virtual Primary Care and that Walmart outright owns a telehealth provider, MeMD, though their overall strategy remains a bit murky.. CVS also has resources through Aetna that are integratable, such as provider networks.

And speaking of Amazon, they just inked a deal with Ginger to add telemental health as an option for Amazon Care. Healthcare Dive

In the US, we are very close to football–and concussion–season. Multiple concussions lead to CTE, which took a long time to recognize as a cause of premature dementia. A mHealth wearable has been tested to measure head kinematics–head movement–and detect sudden neck strain, such as whiplash. Current systems are embedded in helmets or the X-Patch, which uses accelerometers.  According to the report in AAAS’ EurekAlert!, Nelson Sepúlveda of Michigan State University and colleagues developed a novel patch sensor using a film layer of thermoplastic material, a ferroelectret nanogenerator or FENG. “This produces electrical energy when physically touched or pressure is applied. The electrical signal produced is proportional to the physical strain on the neck and can be used to estimate the acceleration and velocity of sudden neck movement, two important markers for predicting concussion.” For this test, a dummy was used. Nature Scientific Reports, mHealth Intelligence

Monkeypox, its transmissibility, and treatment have also percolated this summer.  Get Well Network, which we noted last month in a JAMA study used its GetWellLoop RPM and monitoring in a Covid-19 home treatment study, released a new monkeypox digital care management plan. It will permit monitoring of symptoms from home using RPM, help direct patients to higher levels of care if and when needed, and aids hospitals in managing mandatory regulatory requirements for reporting and tracking infectious diseases. LifeBridge Health in the Baltimore area began offering Get Well’s monkeypox symptom monitoring tool last month. Release

Week-end news roundup: +Oscar data tech platform pauses, BD buys MedKeeper pharmatech for $93M, Novant’s Meta misconfiguration reveals PHI, Mt Sinai’s Sema4 genomics spinoff releases 250 + founder

August 19, 2022 | by

+Oscar, Oscar Health’s foray into selling value-based health plan management services within a full-stack platform, has taken a minus. They are no longer pursuing relationships until they straighten out the ones they have, which are proving problematic. Their last implementation at Florida-based insurer Health First Health Plans (not to be confused with NY’s HealthFirst) proved to have some problems that prevented them from going live early this year, which were not itemized but were serious enough for Oscar Health to stop acquiring accounts until said difficulties are sorted out.  +Oscar’s platform is designed to deliver medical cost management to payers and value-based care by closing care gaps, improving quality scores, enhancing value, and communicating effectively with patients through its Campaign Builder and Next Best Actions engines (release). How many contracts +Oscar has implemented was not disclosed, although since startup in April 2021, they were claiming a pace of 1-2 annually. Oscar Health has experienced a few bumps since its March 2021 IPO that raised $1.4 billion, what with share prices cruising in the mid-single digits and shareholder class action lawsuits [TTA 19 May]. Healthcare Dive, Q2 results

Medical device giant BD gets into pharmatech with MedKeeper buy for an eye-popping $93 million. The purchase was made from pharmaceutical manufacturer Grifols, SA, a Spanish multinational pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturer, as part of their plan to exit non-core businesses. MedKeeper is a photo-based automation system for in-hospital workflows and systems for pharmacy communications, compliance, and productivity.  BD also owns two pharmacy-related companies in their Medication Management Solutions portfolio, Parata for automating vial filling, packaging, and central fill, and Pyxis automated medication dispensers. Count BD as another company that acquires technology from, as this Editor put it earlier, “healthy health tech companies at the right (discounted) price that fill in their tech gaps.” MedTechDive, BD release

North Carolina provider Novant Health has notified patients of a code misconfiguration of their Meta Pixel tracker that may lead to unauthorized disclosure of their personal health information (PHI). The number of patients is not disclosed. In June, The Markup and STAT jointly published a several-part exposé of the Meta Pixel tracker being loaded into patient portals and the online appointment scheduler, capturing sensitive patient information and sending it to Facebook [TTA 17 June]. The letter explains the event as a campaign to connect more patients to their MyChart portal. The pixel was removed in June (after the article published). Novant determined that PHI could have been disclosed, although they have not uncovered any improper use to date. HealthITSecurity, Novant release

Layoffs and restructurings continue this summer with the latest being Sema4, a population health/analytics/ML/AI-assisted disease model spinoff of Mount Sinai. In what the company (Nasdaq: SMFR) has termed “a series of corporate realignments”, the company is discharging 250 staff, about 13%, plus shedding its founder from both the president and director slots effective immediately. Leading the company will be a transformation management office that includes the CEO and the new chief technology & product officer. On their Q2 earnings call, coupled with the first half, Sema4 disclosed layoffs from first half to total 30% of “legacy” staff to reduce to 1,600 employees. With shuttering some of their lab business and moving of operations, they expect to achieve cost savings of $50 million in 2022 and $250 million by end of 2023, to refocus on what they term their ‘health insights business’. Net loss in the second quarter of 2022 was $85.7 million, up over $40 million in Q2 2021. Yahoo Finance, Becker’s.

Babylon Health: fending off bubbly rumors of acquisition this week

August 16, 2022 | by

On Monday, the New York Stock Exchange stopped trading of Babylon Holdings Limited (NYSE:BBLN), the corporate name of Babylon Health. The reason was a sudden spike in the share price along with a huge spike in trading volume. Price moved from $0.76 to $0.96 from 12.45 pm ET to 1.15pm, with volume spiking from ~3,000 to 1 million (see the bottom bar chart). The volume and price shift automatically trigger a stop trade. Based on the Yahoo Finance chart, it resumed Tuesday morning and cruised down to just above recent prices at $0.77 closing today at $0.79, along with a drop in trading volume nearer the recent averages.

Babylon issued two terse press releases: the first on Monday 3.59pm ET which stated “that it is not engaged in nor has it had contact or discussions with any potential acquirer”, then a second on Tuesday at 6am which briefly addressed the ‘M&A speculation’ and the sudden (but short-lived) 20% rise in share price. The response from CEO Ali Parsa was that they “delivered very strong financial results and operational performance that demonstrate its continued momentum. Babylon is taking active steps to maximize shareholder value and to improve its shareholder base and capital structure.” 

Babylon Health went public last October in likely the last of the major healthcare SPACs at a debut of over $10 and a valuation that exceeded $4 billion. Its current value represents a 90% loss, not much different than what happened to the share values of Amwell and Teladoc, as well as other health tech SPACs [TTA 15 July]. Before the SPAC, they raised $200 million and bought Meritage Medical Network and First Choice Medical Group, opening an office in Palo Alto. Babylon also bought the remainder of Higi health kiosks they did not own in December, closing out an investment option with Higi in May that this Editor thought was puzzling for starters.

Babylon’s Q2 financials were, as we noted, a mixed picture but encouraging [TTA 11 Aug] in their US growth and lack of drama. The company had previously stated that it intends to save $100 million in Q3 and discharge about 100 people as part of this. This is nothing that would prompt a sudden swoop by an investor or investors–not disclosed–reminiscent of the buccaneering days of T. Boone Pickens. But in recent weeks there’s been a change in the investment climate. Certain companies such as CVS and Allscripts plus health plans have signaled that they want to buy healthy health tech companies at the right (discounted) price that fill in their tech gaps. ‘Second generation’ remote patient monitoring (RPM) and telehealth are having a hot moment. For traders, it’s the boring dog days of August in a market that’s had more down than up days this year.

The market action was a blip, but one that benefited Babylon and certainly put it back in the news. Which can’t hurt.

Mr. Parsa announced back in January at JPM that Babylon’s goal was to close 2022 at $1 billion in revenue, triple that of 2021. With Q2 revenue of $265 million, they are on track (he quoted a run rate of $80 million per month). There is also the Transcarent/Glen Tullman (late of Livongo) investment connection that came over via the Higi acquisition. Transcarent is heavily invested in value-based care models for self-insured employers as a benefit for their employees, as is Babylon. Dots are here and ready to be connected.

 Also HISTalk.

Weekend short takes: May telehealth claims up to 5.4%; three health plan breaches, one at its law firm–affecting over 400,000 patients; layoffs hit Calm, Truepill (updated)

August 12, 2022 | by

FAIR Health’s telehealth claims took two bumps up in both April and May. In April, telehealth medical claims moved slightly upward to 4.9% from March’s 4.6%, but May increased 10% to 5.4%, a percentage not seen since May 2021. Mental health conditions still make up the vast bulk of claims at 62.8%, but 3.6% of telehealth claims involve COVID-19 diagnoses, with 3.2% of claims for respiratory diseases and infections. This is attributed to a regional increase in the Southern and Western states of the latest variants of COVID-19. FAIR Health monthly tracker main page

Priority Health, a Michigan-based nonprofit health plan company, was breached through its law firm Warner Norcross & Judd (WNJ). The October 2021 breach at WNJ wasn’t reported to Priority Health until 6 June. The unauthorized party potentially accessed first and last names, pharmacy and claim information, drug names, and prescription dates from certain prescriptions filled in 2012. 120,000 members were affected. What the information was doing at the plan’s law firm was not disclosed. Priority Health is Michigan’s second-largest plan with over one million members.

In other breaches, Texas-based Behavioral Health Group (BHG), had a data incident that affected 197,507 individuals. The unauthorized party had potentially removed certain files and folders from portions of its network on 5 December 2021.  The files include names, Social Security numbers, driver’s license numbers, financial account information, biometrics, medication information, medical record numbers, dates of service, passports, payment card information, and health insurance information. However, the information accessed doesn’t appear to have been misused.

First Choice Community Healthcare in Albuquerque, New Mexico, also had a data security incident that involved 101,541 patients. The PHI in the 27 March breach included names, Social Security numbers, patient ID numbers, medications, dates of service, diagnosis and treatment information, birth dates, health insurance information, medical record numbers, patient account numbers, and provider information. Again, there appears to be no misuse to date. HealthITSecurity

More health tech companies lay off staff.

  • Calm, one of those incessantly advertised (in US) meditation apps, is discharging 20% (90) staffers, at least 12 in marketing, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal (may be paywalled). From this Editor’s LinkedIn post in response to early reports:
    • Calm was strategically ‘off’ in spending. They overspent on direct to consumer–expensive TV spots on major networks and sponsorships, paid social and search. If you wanted Calm’s full features, you paid for them. Expensive meditation apps are merely a “nice to have” and there are a bunch of free ones available. 
    • There’s also too much app overlap and mistargeting out there. Calm was trying to sell the app to businesses as a benefit (ROTFL) but was hedging its bets with buying Ripple, which designs apps for care coordination and condition management (another crowded area).
    • Another sign–new sole CEO named this summer. Now sole CEO David Ko came from Ripple and the two Calm founders moved over to co-chair roles.
    • This is a company that raised well north of $200 million to become a $2 billion unicorn as early as 2019, another sign of too much cash, too soon, and VCs/equity investors following the fad. ‘Mindfulness’ became a fad as early as 2018.
  • Truepill is up to its third layoff–33% or 175 staff, including all UK staff plus much of the product and data teams.  Their cutbacks relate to multiple failures, the first in betting on ADHD controlled substances, the second in blowing through vast amounts of funding but unable to obtain more (a Series D of $142 million but unable to float a Series E). Truepill’s ADHD med bet fell apart with its relationship with Cerebral, now under Federal investigation [TTA 16 June]. As early as May, Truepill, Cerebral’s primary mail order provider, had stopped filling their prescriptions for Schedule 2 medications [TTA 1 June]. This follows on a June layoff of 15% or 150 people. Truepill had also expanded into telehealth and diagnostics, two areas which will only be lightly supported going forward. TechCrunch

ISfTeH Global Connections for Sustainable Telehealth: 6-7 November, San Jose

August 12, 2022 | by

The International Society for Telemedicine & eHealth’s (ISfTeH) two-day November conference will be bringing its wide network of international experts to the US–for the first time ever. (Finally, an international conference in the US that isn’t CES or HIMSS!) (Location corrected!)

The agenda features speakers from around the world covering topics including:

  • International Sustainability Models for Telehealth
  • Utilization of Telemedicine to Optimize Care Across International Healthcare
  • The Rise of Digital First & Decentralized Healthcare
  • Cybersecurity for International Expansion
  • Key Regulatory Considerations for Global Markets
  • Digital Health and the Crisis in Ukraine

Speakers are from Medgate Global, Zoom, International SOS, HP, AGA Khan Development Network, DLA Piper, Finnish Society of Telemedicine & eHealth, Quality & Accreditation Institute (QAI), Nationwide Network of Teleaudiology, and Japanese Telemedicine & Telecare Association. For more information, the full speaker to date list, updates, and registration, see the ISfTeH Events page.

The International Society for Telemedicine and eHealth (ISfTeH) is a federation of 45 national professional associations in the Telemedicine and eHealth space globally. The society also has institutional, corporate, and individual members in another 35 plus countries worldwide.

Week-end news roundup: Allscripts on the acquisition hunt, Amwell’s CVS telehealth deal, Cerner’s $1.8M racial discrimination settlement, predicting Parkinson’s progression via smartwatch data

August 12, 2022 | by

Another company on the hunt for strategic buys. Health IT and EHR company Allscripts is seeking to add to its Veradigm analytics, research, and provider/payer platforms with some strategic acquisitions. Announced on its Q2 earnings call by new CEO Rick Poulton is the intent to expand the company from its current provider base into a more diverse one serving payers and life sciences. Allscripts does have some free cash–about $700 million–having recently sold its hospital and large physician practice EHRs to Constellation Software/N. Harris Group, though there were some settlements around their Practice Fusion EHR now incorporated into Veradigm [TTA 2 Apr]. With a free cash flow from continuing operations around $120 million and about 7% growth, they feel the time is here for some accretive, strategic, and proven acquisitions–at the right price. FierceHealthcare

Amwell’s Q2 earnings call also had good news for shareholders, who of late haven’t had much to cheer. CEO Ido Schoenberg, MD announced that Amwell will provide CVS Health’s Virtual Primary Care, formally launched in late May  Amwell will be providing primary, behavioral health, and chronic care management through the platform. CVS will be providing these services to Aetna fully-insured, self-insured plan sponsors, and CVS Caremark clients effective first half 2023. As this Editor wrote earlier this week, CVS Health is making no secret of its intent to expand into delivering primary care and home health. One way Virtual Primary Care will be leveraged is converting in-store health services to virtual, such as non-emergency treatment and nutrition/wellness programs. CVS is even dabbling into blockchain with downloadable non-fungible tokens (NFTs) for virtual services. HealthcareFinance 

Cerner, on the other hand, is paying out $1.8 million to settle a racial discrimination lawsuit brought by the US Department of Labor. As a Federal contractor, Cerner went under review by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs. That office alleged that Cerner systematically discriminated against qualified Black and Asian applicants who applied for positions at five facilities in Missouri and Kansas between 2015 and 2019. Cerner agreed to pay $1,860,000 in back pay and interest to 1,870 applicants in areas such as medical billing, system engineers and technical solution analysts. Certainly Oracle wanted to get this off the plate before the cutover on 1 October. HealthcareFinance, Department of Labor release

Can enough data collected build a predictive model for the progression of  Parkinson’s? Koneksa, a digital biomarker builder, is working with the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research to build a predictive model on how Parkinson’s will progress over time in an individual. The Fox Foundation already has a database to analyze — the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, launched in 2010, with health information and biosamples from Parkinson’s patients. Added to this will be data from Verily’s smartwatch:  activity tracking, gait analysis, and sleep cycles, which will be analyzed using Koneksa’s algorithms and additional machine learning. The award by the Fox Foundation was not disclosed, but it is the second for Koneksa after another grant awarded in mid-June to analyze vocal abnormalities relating to early progression of the disease, in conjunction with Northwestern University. FierceHealthcare

Mid-week news roundup (updated 18 Aug): CVS eyeing Signify Health for in-home/VBC; Babylon Health mixed pic of revenue and losses up; Geisinger doubles telemed specialties; connected IoT devices expand cyber-insecurity (more); Owlet layoffs

August 11, 2022 | by

CVS has dropped another sandal as to their quest to add primary care and home health to their portfolio [TTA 5 Aug]. Reports indicates that CVS Health is bidding to acquire Signify Health, which is up for sale. Signify is best known as a major provider of in-home health care in both evaluations and community-based services, with users such as health plans, health systems, community groups, non-profits, and government. In March, they added provider value-based care with Caravan Health, a mid-sized Accountable Care Organization (ACO) management service organization (MSO), for $250 million.  This would give CVS both leverage in in-home care and access to value-based care models in health systems and practices, adding a network of jumbo (100,000 lives+) ACOs to Aetna’s 500 ACOs.

Signify did take a bit of a bath with its acquisition/merger of Remedy Partners in 2019 which marked their entry into the Federal shared savings programs around Episodes of Care. While it created a $600 million company. Remedy’s Episodes of Care in the CMS Bundled Payments for Care Improvement (BPCI) program was always problematic for Signify on multiple levels (Editor’s experience). Signify announced its exit from the successor BPCI-A (Advanced) model last month to concentrate on home care and the Caravan business. The wind-down, which will take some time as these are Federal programs through CMS, will save Signify about $115-120 million in costs, compared to their annual direct and shared costs of $145 million. Restructuring costs such as severance may be only $35 million. After IPO-ing in February 2021 at $24 per share, it has only recently climbed to $23, having recently hit a 52-week low of $10.70. FierceHealthcare, HealthcareFinanceNews

Updated Perhaps in preparation for acquisition, Signify Health is shedding 489 people starting 1 October, including 45 in Connecticut, with the remainder in Texas, South Dakota, and New York. The information comes from required notices to the Connecticut Department of Labor. The majority of employees affected are remote workers. It appears to be related to Signify’s winding up of BPCI and Episodes of Care activity which are likely on calendar year contracts. The legacy company, Remedy Partners, had been headquartered in Connecticut with staff in New York. Moving forward with layoffs now makes the company more attractive for sale, as the separation expenses will not be an acquiring company liability. The 1 October start date is also a tell.  CT Insider, Becker’s

A mixed picture for Babylon Health. Its Q2 results were up substantially in revenue–4.6x year-over-year from $57.5 million to $265.4 million–along with key indicators such as US members up 220% and a 7.5% improvement in medical margins over three quarters. The US has been very very good to Babylon with value-based care membership growing 3.2x year-on-year to a total of approximately 269,000 US VBC members with 40% of its VBC revenue from Medicare contracts. However, losses are up along with growth–$157.1 million compared to $64.9 million loss PY. Babylon at end of July announced worldwide layoffs of at least 100 people of its current 2,500 in their bid to save $100 million in Q3. Babylon release, Mobihealthnews

Geisinger Health was one of the pioneers in telehealth and remote patient monitoring, from ur-days in the early 2010s to today. Much of its patient base in Pennsylvania is rural or semi-rural, living well away from care centers, with a clinician base equally scattered. They went with a single system–Teladoc–integrated into Epic. By the early days of the pandemic, Geisinger was able to expand their telehealth coverage from 20 to more than 70 specialties, 200 providers to more than 2,000 providers, and over two years (2020-2022) completing over 784,000 telehealth visits to homes, local clinics, or local hospitals. Case study in HealthcareITNews

If you’re a health system CIO managing lots of connected devices, you may need to go to a psychiatrist with your feelings of insecurity. That’s the gist of a new report, the Insecurity of Connected Devices in Healthcare 2022. A new-to-this-Editor cybersecurity firm, Cynerio, partnered with researchers at the Ponemon Institute to survey 517 executives at US health systems to find that their Internet of Medical Things (IoMT)/Internet of Things (IoT) vulnerabilities haven’t changed much since this Editor banged the gong about them well before the pandemic:

  • Cyberattacks–frequent: 56% of respondents experienced 1+ cyberattacks in the past 24 months involving IoMT/IoT devices; 58% averaged 9+ cyberattacks. Adverse impacts on patient care were reported by 45% and 53% of those resulted in increased mortality rates. 24% of hospitals noted an impact on their mortality rates.
  • Data breaches are routine: 43% of hospitals had one in the past two years
  • Risks may be high, but the reaction is sluggish: 71% rated security risks as high or very high, but only 21% report a mature stage of proactive security actions. 46% performed accepted procedures such as scanning for devices, but only 33% keep inventory.
  • Ka-ching! Goes the ransomware! When attacked, 47% paid the ransom, and 32% were in the $250-500,000 range.

The full report is available for download here. Those who prefer a webinar must wait till 17 August at 2pm (EDT)–registration here.  Cynerio release, HealthcareITNews

Updated. Having sat in on the webinar, some further information points from the Ponemon survey deepen the ‘gravity of the risk’:

  • IoT is different because a hack or cyberransoming prevents the device from working. It isn’t fixed by backup as data can be.
  • Health systems are still using IoT computer systems running Windows XT/95–and earlier (!)
  • The average total cost of the largest data breaches is $13 million–the most common cost is in the $1-5 million range. 
  • 88% of these data breaches involved at least one IoT/MT device
  • Risks are known, but action is lagging. 72% of health organizations report a high level of urgency in securing devices–yet 67% of organizations do not keep an inventory of IoT/IoMT devices that they scan
  • 79% don’t consider their activities to be ‘mature’
  • Security investment doesn’t reflect the gravity of the risk–only 3.4% of IT budgets focus on IoT/MT device security.

And in sad layoff news, Owlet Baby Care is shedding an unknown number of employees. Here is the notice on LinkedIn. We noted their FDA problems and a fast pivot last in February, but their going public via a SPAC has been rocky at best with shares lingering at $2 from the IPO at $8. Marketing a pricey baby monitor direct to consumer is expensive, even if it meets a need, and this is likely a cash crunch. At least the ‘leader of people & culture’ is giving them a proper sendoff of thanks–and more usefully, providing their contact information for potential job openings with other companies.

[This is in contrast to the gone-viral spectacle of the CEO of something called HyperSocial posting on LinkedIn his angst about laying off staff–along with a selfie of him weeping. Not exactly confidence-making and All About Him. This Editor’s comment is one of 6,000-odd posts which are largely doubtful to negative.]

More Oracle-Cerner VA/DOD EHR misery with 4 hour+ outage; 51% of VA iPads unused for video appointments

August 10, 2022 | by

Oracle-Cerner’s VA and DOD systems were down for 4+ hours on 4 August. The culprit was a corrupted patient database that needed to be fixed and reprogrammed. The problem was likely not minor. An insider source claimed to FedScoop that it could be an indexing problem that could mean that “one patients files could point to a different patients data” (sic) which could be disastrous. The VA statement is verbatim from FedScoop.

VA spokesperson Terrence Hayes said: ““VA experienced a system outage of its electronic health Record system on August 4, 2022, which also affected VA, Department of Defense and U.S. Coast Guard sites using the Oracle-Cerner EHR. At 12:07 p.m. EDT, Oracle-Cerner received monitoring alerts indicating an issue with one of its databases. The system was taken offline to execute recovery of the database, during which time the sites switched to standard downtime procedures.

He added: “During downtime of the EHR, medical personnel could still care for patients, but documentation occurred on paper. The system was fully restored for all end-users at 4:23 p.m. EDT, for a total downtime of 4 hours and 16 minutes. No data corruption or data loss occurred.”

The VA’s Office of the Inspector General has been busy indeed, in this case tracking down usage of Veterans Health Administration-distributed iPads. These, along with internet service, were distributed to 41,000 qualifying patients during FY 2021 for the VA Video Connect program–to connect Veterans to care during the pandemic when facilities were fully or partially closed. The OIG audit issued 4 August indicates is that less than half were used in the way intended. 

  • Consults were created for over 56,000 patients. Devices were sent to 41,000 patients.
  • 49% of patients–20,300 patients–completed a video appointment
  • Over 10,000 patients had a video appointment scheduled, but did not complete the visit for various reasons, such as technical issues or canceled. They did not schedule another virtual appointment.
  • If unused in 90 days after issue, the devices were supposed to be taken back. This did not happen with 11,000 devices.
  • Going back to November 2021, VHA’s tablet dashboard showed patients did not use nearly 8,300 of those 11,000 devices.

The value of the 8,300 unused devices was $6.3 million with cellular fees of about $78,000. Even more interesting, VHA’s data showed 3,119 patients had multiple devices. In August 2021, VHA ordered 9,720 additional new devices at a cost of $8.1 million, but as of January this year, there was a backlog of 14,800 returned devices that needed refurbishment–not at all atypical given this Editor’s experience years back with the VA and RPM devices.

Recommendations for the program include clarifying the number of days from consult initiation to device order, adding procedures to prevent and retrieve duplicate devices, tracking device packages, creating detailed refurbishment reporting, and using that information to guide new device purchases. Federal News Network

Week-end wrapup: CVS plans to expand primary care, home health; Cera Care raises £264M; Linus Health’s AI enabled dementia screener, Cognito’s cognitive therapy slows brain atrophy

August 5, 2022 | by

The sandal (it’s summer) drops at CVS Health in primary care–and maybe more. On their Q2 earnings call, CVS discussed that they are determined to enhance their services in three categories: primary care, provider enablement, and home health. The footwear that dropped was from CEO Karen Lynch: “We can’t be in the primary care without M&A” (sic). It was inevitable, given that rival Walgreens has a $5 billion deal with VillageMD for freestanding Village Medical clinics, Amazon with the pending One Medical buy–which it passed on only weeks prior [TTA 7 July], and Walmart picking along the edges with in-store clinics and telehealth. CVS’ criteria: strong management team, strong tech stack, strong scale, strong ability to build a pathway to profitability. (Certainly not an easy set of hurdles) CVS’ urgent care and in-store MinuteClinics have been doing well, with business up 12% to 2.8 million patient visits year to date. HISTalk, FierceHealthcare, Motley Fool transcript of earnings call

London-based Cera Care Ltd. raised £263.6 million ($320 million) in an equally split debt/equity round. Equity funding came from existing investor Kairos HQ, then the Vanderbilt University Endowment, Schroders Capital, Jane Street Capital, Yabeo Capital, Squarepoint Capital, Guinness Asset Management, Oltre Impact, 8090 Partners, and technology investor Robin Klein. Debt was not disclosed. The fresh financing will go towards expanding patient capacity in the UK plus Germany from the current 15,000 to 100,000.  Cera delivers in-home care, nursing, telehealth, and prescription delivery services using a digital platform and AI algorithms that use the data gathered to predict changes in patient status. TechCrunch, UKTechNews

Two developments from separate companies in the vital areas of improving dementia and Alzheimer’s diagnosis–and outcomes:

  • Linus Health has debuted its cognitive assessment and patient questionnaire platform for clinical use by primary care providers. The assessment tests for subtle changes in cognitive function, which in the preclinical phase will often go undetected. The concept is to push forward diagnosis and therapies to slow disease progression. It is based on an iPad and includes their DCTclock, an AI-enhanced version of the traditional paper-based Clock Drawing Test using a digital stylus or pen that can also spot symptoms of early-stage Parkinson’s. The evaluation including the DCTclock takes about 10 minutes. Release, FierceBiotech
  • Cognito Therapeutics is still in the investigational stage with its GammaSense headset which delivers sound and light therapy to cognitively impaired patients. The sensory stimulation evokes gamma oscillations in the brain that reduces neurodegeneration and brain atrophy. Their paper delivered last week at the Alzheimers Association conference tracked subjects who used the headset one hour per day for six months. The therapy reduced white matter shrinkage to about 0.4%, compared to a historical tracking of about 2%. An earlier study also showed slowdowns in the decline of memory and cognitive function. FierceBiotech

Short takes for Thursday: Diagnostic Robotics $45M raise; Sage’s $9M seed; VA names EHR ‘functional champion’; Aussie telehealth startup Coviu arrives in US

August 4, 2022 | by

Tel Aviv-based Diagnostic Robotics gained a $45 million Series B. The company has developed AI predictive analytics for health plans, providers, government, and employers for clinical assessment and decision support. The Series B was led by StageOne investors, with participation from Mayo Clinic, thus becoming a Mayo Clinic Platform portfolio company, plus Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, as well as other existing investors. Total funding since 2019 is $69 million (Crunchbase) Release, Mobihealthnews

NYC-based Sage received $9 million in seed funding to further develop and market its app that rethinks the nurse call system in use in senior living. The platform provides caregivers with data to coordinate incident responses and triage quickly and effectively, plus provide care managers with tools to better understand resident needs, provide proactive care, and view staff performance. The round was led by Goldcrest Capital, with existing investors ANIMO Ventures, Distributed Ventures, and Merus Capital. Release

VA names ‘functional champion’ for their VistA to Oracle Cerner transition. Dr. David Massaro will work as the clinical executive representing the Veterans Health Administration (VHA). He will lead functional initiatives to support the department’s medical personnel during the transition. Dr. Massaro is a long-time VA-er, previously acting chief health informatics officer for the Office of Community Care and before then director of integrated health practice within the Office of Health Informatics, as well as a practicing physician who joined VA in 2006. FedScoop

Coviu, an Australian telehealth startup, is launching its platform in the jammed US market. It’s marketing as an ‘all-in-one virtual engagement platform’ and is clearly appealing to primary care practices that need a less expensive solution. Its difference is apparently with modular apps that can extend a provider’s clinical work: behavioral health, speech pathology, and audiology. Base pricing starts at $25 monthly with the highest level package $65/month. Integrated apps are the Wechsler Individual Achievement Test, pulse oximeter remote monitoring, and a checklist for PTSD. They are also developing a new digital wound care toolkit in collaboration with the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation and the Western NSW Primary Health Network, for release in 2026 (!!). Coviu claims use by 90,000 clinicians worldwide who deliver a daily average of over 14,000 telehealth consultations. Their US base is in Dover, Delaware and is HQd in Brisbane and Sydney. Release, Mobihealthnews

NHS Digital trialling Wireless Center of Excellence–in face of ‘crisis’ level staffing shortages

August 4, 2022 | by

NHS Digital has just closed a solicitation for organizations to demonstrate how wireless technologies can improve health and care services. This trial series, the Wireless Centre of Excellence, is in the process of being reviewed by NHS Digital and interviews will be set up with qualifying organizations. The trials fund wireless technologies that improve connectivity in health and care settings.

The Wireless Centre of Excellence appears to be the latest trial in a NHS Digital series. The current trial is University College London Hospitals’ Find & Treat service using 5G and low Earth orbit satellites to enable front-line screening services for tuberculosis, HIV and hepatitis B and C to homeless people, individuals with drug or alcohol dependencies, vulnerable migrants and people who have been in prison. Another trial made South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust the first 5G-connected hospital in the UK. NHS Digital hopes that these wireless products can be a UK export adopted by other healthcare systems. There is more on NHS Digital’s efforts in wireless tech in Healthcare IT News, along with additional UK/NHS news (below)

Staff shortages power wireless innovation. A good part of the impetus for wireless technologies is contained in a recent cross-party MP report that states that NHS England is now short of 12,000 hospital doctors and more than 50,000 nurses and midwives, in a ‘crisis’ not seen since, well, ever. Both threaten patient safety and aggravate wait times. NHS Digital is trying to present an alternative using wireless to cut time to treatment and to reach patients the way they want faster. While NHS England is drawing up long-term plans to recruit more staff, the current shortage comes from clinical burnout and pay that has not kept up with inflation–not that different than the US, particularly in primary care and psychiatry. According to BBC reports, half of nurses are being recruited ex-UK. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have similar staffing pressures. BBC News

Additional UK news from Healthcare IT News:

  • Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Elsevier entered into a three-year partnership. Elsevier’s Care Planning solution will be integrated within the trust’s EHR.
  • The Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) published plans to strengthen the regulation of medical devices to improve patient safety and encourage innovation in five areas, taking advantage of Britain’s exit from the EU.
  • HelloSelf, a digital therapeutics startup, is partnering with Central and North West London NHS Foundation Trust to refer patients to its therapy and coaching platform.

Mid-week roundup: UnitedHealth-Change trial kicks off; Amazon’s One Medical buy questioned; Cionic’s neural sleeve designed by Yves Behar; Medable-Withings partner; Orion Health’s new CEO; IBM Watson Health’s Simon Hawken passes

August 3, 2022 | by

The Department of Justice lawsuit to block the $13 billion acquisition of Change Healthcare by UnitedHealth Group started on Monday. It is a bench trial in US District Court in the District of Columbia that will last 12 days, concluding on 16 August with a verdict date to be determined. The DOJ and the plaintiffs, including Minnesota and New York State, are presenting their case over seven days. UHG and Change will have five days. It’s expected that UHG CEO Andrew Witty and former chief David Wichmann will be testifying. The American Hospital Association (AHA) was a key player in pushing for a DOJ action (their article here). TTA recapped the main competitive issues in play on 23 March, along with this Editor’s opinion that the merger will be blocked given this current administration’s anti-trust stand. ‘It will be one for the books–the ones marked ‘Nice Try, But No Dice’. FierceHealthcare, HealthcareFinanceNews

Will Amazon’s acquisition of One Medical be reviewed by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC)? That is what Senator Josh Hawley (R-Missouri) is requesting. He cites that Amazon will have “access to enormous tranches of patient data. While HIPAA and other privacy laws exist to thwart the worst potential abuses, loopholes exist in every legal framework.” He also cites, somewhat broadly, that information of this type could be used to suggest over-the-counter blood pressure medications to a One Medical patient shopping at a Whole Foods Market. (What is meant here is that there are many supplements that claim to benefit blood pressure available OTC, such as Garlique; however, there are many OTC meds that can increase blood pressure such as decongestants.) This Editor agrees with Senator Hawley that the acquisition should be carefully reviewed by FTC and, to go further, HHS as it involves patient data.) Hawley Senate.gov page 

The Cionic Neural Sleeve, designed to aid people with mobility issues, is getting a design upgrade via Yves Behar and his fuseproject. The Neural Sleeve [TTA 30 June] aids the legs through sensors in the sleeve that monitor movement for muscle firing and limb position, then analyzes them through an app to optimize functional electronic stimulation (FES) delivered through the sleeve. The Behar team, according to the release, has delivered a neural sleeve “designed for everyday wear, and importantly, is easy to put on and take off – a critical design element for those with inhibited mobility. The lightweight, breathable fabric feels like an athletic legging, and is available in multiple colors and sizes. Paired with the intuitive CIONIC app, the sleeve enables the user to be in control of their own mobility journey.” Cionic is taking pre-orders for delivery in early 2023. Also The Robot Report.

Medable partners with Withings for clinical trials. Medable, a clinical trials platform, is partnering with Withings Health Solutions to connect Withings devices for monitoring at home. Withings devices will provide medical-grade measurements, including temperature, heart rate, blood pressure, sleep patterns, and weight to connect the data into Medable’s decentralized clinical trial platform. Direct monitoring also assists in attracting and retaining subjects in clinical trials, plus improving accuracy, by eliminating subject manual reporting and checkins. Financial terms and duration were not disclosed. Release, FDA News, FierceBiotech

Short international take: Orion Health, an Auckland, New Zealand-based health IT company headed by Ian McCrae for the past 30 years, announced he is stepping down for health reasons. Replacing him in late August as CEO will be Brad Porter, coming from Fisher & Paykel, a NZ-based medical device company. Mr. Porter is Mr. McCrae’s son in law.  Orion recently won what could be the largest health information exchange system in the world for Saudi Arabia, covering 32 million people. Healthcare IT News 

And a sad passing: Our UK and European Readers likely know Simon Hawken from his long career with IBM, including Watson Health (now Merative) and Merge Healthcare, and earlier with BEA Systems. HISTalk reported that he passed away on 25 July. This Editor has not been able to find other notices, so is asking for Reader help and comments.