Short takes: Veradigm’s interim CEO departing, Blue Shield CA breached 4.8M members’ PHI to Google, advice on expanded M&A premarket notification rules

April 25, 2025 | by

Veradigm’s interim CEO departing, CFO continuing. Tom Langan, who has been in place as Veradigm’s CEO for the last 11 months, will be departing after a little more than 13 months, according to Veradigm’s SEC Form 8-K securities filing dated 22 April. The former president and chief commercial officer (CCO), who replaced an earlier interim CEO, Dr. Dr. Shih-Yin (“Yin”) Ho, on 7 June 2024, has signed a separation agreement effective 31 July. According to the filing, the Veradigm board will be resuming a search for a permanent CEO. Mr. Langan declined the opportunity to participate as a candidate.

Lee Westerfield, who has been interim CFO since 7 December 2023 through three six-month agreements, has signed an extension until 31 December. 

Both Mr. Langan and Mr. Westerfield have been through considerable tumult at Veradigm: first (for Mr. Langan), the inability to file audited financial reports for 2022-24; the failed effort to sell, merge, or find a strategic partner [TTA 31 Jan]; finally, a major investor, Kent Lake, stepping in and controlling the board with the chairman stepping down as well as two other directors [TTA 22 Feb]. While the 2022 financial report was released last month along with 2025 guidance, the catchup won’t be done until sometime in 2026 [TTA 19 Mar].

One could not blame either of them, but especially CEO Langan, for tiring of the entire situation. He has been there in various positions since 2018 when it was Allscripts. His tenure will certainly be worth his while. Based on the filing, after termination he will receive $1.4 million over 12 months, which is a year of salary plus his target bonus; a lump sum cash payment for $406,000 for his pro-rated annual bonus, based on target performance; a year of health and dental coverage at active employee rates; and reimbursement of $10,000 in attorney’s fees incurred in negotiation of the separation agreement. His unvested portions of the stock options, restricted stock units or other equity awards will vest through those dated 31 July 2027. CFO Westerfield, on board as an interim for a considerably shorter time but in a mission-critical position, has a less golden package–a simple pay continuance through the end of the year plus five months if he is terminated not for cause or departs for good reason. Healthcare Dive

Blue Shield of California breached personal health information (PHI) via Google, in the second largest breach of 2025 to date. The unusual breach was not from the usual bad actor, but from Blue Shield’s use, unbelievably, of Google Analytics. According to their submission to the Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Civil Rights’ (HHS-OCR) breach portal, their Google Analytics on how customers used their websites was configured in such a way that sent selected member PHI data over to Google Ads. Google Ads could then send these users and members targeted advertising. This went on for three years, ending only in January 2024. 

The data included:

  • Insurance plan name, type and group number
  • Patient names, city, ZIP code, gender and family size
  • Blue Shield of California identifiers for members’ online accounts, medical claim service date and service provider and patient financial responsibility.

It may have also included data around “Find a Doctor” search criteria and results, such as location, plan name and type, provider name and type. Other sensitive information, such as SSI#, credit cards, and driver license numbers, were not included. Because of its duration, it could potentially affect up to 4.8 million BSC members. BSC’s notice

The questions are–who programmed it this way? Was it Google? And if Google, who is responsible there? Is it configured that way at other health plans? And if not Google, who did it at BSC?

The analyses in both FierceHealthcare and Healthcare Dive point accusing fingers at Google, which has also been kicked very hard by the Department of Justice in their antitrust win on Google’s online advertising products or “ad tech stack” that dominates the industry–and may force the divestiture of Google Chrome as the result of another decision on web search. The Verge

M&A-ing? Premarket Notifications now in place makes it tougher. Our series of articles in 2023-24 explained the steeper requirements to our Readers for transactions that fall under the nearly 50-year-old Hart-Scott-Rodino (HSR) Act requirements. The threshold of value for 2025 is set at $126.4 million. Our 15 October 2024 overview summarizes the changes and links to other documentation on the many changes, particularly around the buyer’s investors and a five-year lookback at the under-the-HSR-wire serial acquisitions (rollups) made by both companies. The information required now is much more extensive and demanding. FTC will also have an online portal for comments on every acquisition. HIMSS has a six-minute plus interview with Michael Ramey, a managing principal of Strategic & Transaction Solutions at PYA (better known to many of us as Pershing), that touches on the highlights.

Weekend roundup: telehealth claims ticked up again in January, Walmart opens Florida health ‘superstores’, Blue Shield California partners with Walgreens’ Health Corners

April 8, 2022 | by

Telehealth now above 5% of January claims. Perhaps Omicron, winter weather, or the post-holiday blues, but telehealth visits after a long drop have risen to 5.4% of January medical claim lines. It’s also the third month in a row of increase: November was 4.4%, up from October’s 4.1%; December was 4.9%.

As a percent of the total, claims increased in November and December for acute respiratory and Covid-19, but leveled off in January. The numbers remained in single digits compared to the leading diagnosis code group, mental health conditions, which rose in January:

MonthMental healthAcute respiratoryCovid-19
January 202258.93.43.4
December 202155.06.04.8
November 202162.24.51.4

February and March claims will be the proof, but telehealth is leveling off to a steady 4-5% range of claims with seasonal rises, barring any mass infectious diseases. The FAIR Health monthly map also enables drill-down by region. Healthcare Dive

Walmart Health ‘superstores’ open in Florida, finally. The concept, which had gradually spread to 20 locations in Arkansas, Georgia, and Illinois starting in 2019, now has two locations in the Jacksonville area. Three additional locations will be opening by June in the Orlando and Tampa area. Openings were delayed from 2021 so that Walmart could debut their Epic EHR and patient portal in those locations. Plans for expansion in Florida, filled with areas with aging populations, have been hinted at but coyly not confirmed by Dr. David Carmouche, senior vice president of Omnichannel Care Offerings.

After a few false starts and retrenching, Walmart is leveraging its strong physical point in delivering health–retail supercenters–against competitors such as CVS, Walgreens, and Amazon. The centers provide primary and urgent care, labs, X-rays and diagnostics, dental, optical, hearing and behavioral health and counseling for a checkup priced around $90, with most under contract with payers. Walmart has not announced expansion beyond Florida or in current states, but prior statements have indicated their desire to open Walmart Healths across the country. Walmart release, Healthcare Dive, Miami Herald

And Walgreens is not far behind the curve with 12 Health Corners in California. Walgreens’ joint model with Blue Shield of California in the San Francisco Bay and Los Angeles areas is designed to boost community health, especially in areas with low health coverage or ‘health deserts’. Health advisers can provide simple in-store care along with guidance on preventive screenings, chronic care management and medications. Select health screenings, such as blood pressure checks and HbA1c tests will be available. 

Both in-person and virtual services through the Health Corner app are available at no additional cost to members enrolled in Blue Shield’s commercial PPO (Preferred Provider Organization) and HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) plans, who live within 20 miles of a Walgreens Health Corner location. It is part of both Walgreens’ enlarging of patient care offerings, including telehealth at a local level, and Blue Shield’s health transformation goals.

Their release promises an additional eight locations by mid-year. Healthcare Finance, FierceHealthcare

Digital health: why is it a luxury good in a world crying for health as a commodity?

June 5, 2019 | by

Why digital health still struggles to find its stride. Those of us in the healthcare field, especially Grizzled Pioneers, have been wondering for the past decade why Digital Health’s Year is always Next Year. Or Next Decade. 

Looking back only to 2000, we’ve had 9-11, a dot-com bust, a few years in between when the economy thrived and the seed money started to pollinate young companies, a prolonged recession that killed off many, and now finally a few good economic years where money has flooded into the sector, to good companies and those walking the fine line of mismanagement or fraud. We’ve seen the rise/fall/rise of sensors, wearables, and remote monitoring, giants like Google and Microsoft out and back in, the establishment of EHRs, acceptance by government and private payers, quite a bit of integration, and more. All one has to look is at the investment trends breaking all records, with funding rounds of over $10 million raising barely a notice–enough to raise fears of a bubble. Then there’s another rising tide–that of cyberattack, ransomware, insider and outsider hacking.

Is it this year? It may not be. Despite the sunshine, interoperability holds it all back. Those giant EHRs–Cerner, Epic, Athenahealth, Allscripts–are largely walled gardens and so customized by provider application that they barely are able to talk to their like systems. There are regional health exchanges such as New York’s SHIN-NY, Maryland’s CRISP, and others, but they are limited in scope to their states. The VA’s VistA, the granddaddy of the integrated system, died of old age in its garden. Paul Markovich, CEO of Blue Shield of California cites the lack of interoperability and being able to access their personal health data as a major barrier to both patients and to the large companies who want to advance AI and need the data for modeling. (China and its companies, as we’ve noted, neatly solve this problem by force. [TTA 17 Apr]) Apple is back in with Health Records, but Mr. Markovich estimates it may take 10 years to gather the volume of data it needs to establish AI modeling. Some wags demand that Apple buy Epic, as if Epic was up for sale. BSC, like others, is testing interoperability workarounds like Notable, Ooda Health, and Manifest MedEx. Mr. Markovich cites interoperability and scaling as reasons why healthcare is expensive. CNBC

And what about those thriving startups? Hold on. During the Google Cloud/Rock Health 3 June event, one of the panelists–from Partners HealthCare, which works both side of the street with Pivot Labs–noted that hospitals have figured out their own revenue models, and co-development with hospitals is key. Even if validated, not every tech is commercially ready or lowers cost. And employers are far worse than hospitals at buying in because they ultimately look at financial value, even if initially they adopt for other reasons. In addition, the bar moved higher. The new validation standard is now provider-centric–workload, provider satisfaction, and implementation metrics, because meeting clinical outcomes is a given. Mobihealthnews

And still another barrier–data breaches and cyberattack–is still with us, and growing. Quest Diagnostics’ data breach affects nearly 12 million patients. It was traced to an individual at a vendor, American Medical Collection Agency, and it involved Optum360, a Quest contractor and part of healthcare giant Optum. The unauthorized person had access to the network for eight months – between 1 August 2018, and 30 March 2019–and involved both financial and some health records. Quest now is in the #2 slot behind the massive 79 million person Anthem breach, which, based on a Federal grand jury indictment in Indianapolis in May, was executed by a Chinese group in 2015 using spearfishing and backdoors that gathered data and sent it to China. There were three other US businesses in the indictment which are not identified. Securing health data is expensive — and another limitation on the cost-lowering effects of interoperability. Healthcare IT News

Digital Health’s Year, for now, will remain Next Year–and digital health for now will remain fractional, unable to do much to commoditize healthcare or lower major costs.