Summing up the speculation: will Oracle sell off Oracle Health/Cerner to finance $300B OpenAI datacenter buildout?

February 5, 2026 | by | No Comments

Even Oracle can’t get all the money it wants for AI. The speculation has been building since late last week, kicked off by a report from financial analyst TD Cowen that percolated through financial media first. It centers on the five-year, $300 billion contract Oracle has with OpenAI (ChatGPT) that requires extraordinary financing to fulfill. According to the report (not publicly available), the capital expenditure needed is estimated at $156 billion to build or lease datacenters. To raise this, TD Cowen projects that the former Cerner, now Oracle Health, would have to be sold, as well as a potential cut of 20-30,000 jobs, about 10-15% or more of the current workforce, saving $8 billion to $10 billion in cash flow.

Why doesn’t Oracle go to the markets and banks, hold out the cup to finance this capital expenditure, and let them fill it? US lenders are apparently growing shy on lending for more AI datacenters, while Asian lenders are willing to lend funds albeit at premium rates. In TD Cowen’s analysis, Oracle is having great trouble financing this massive buildout. Investor nervousness shows in Oracle’s credit default swap (CDS) spreads tripling, as well as pressure on their stocks and bonds.

Let’s look at some factors why across several reports:

  • Oracle’s already raised $58 billion in the past two months: $38 billion for facilities in Texas and Wisconsin, and $20 billion for New Mexico. 
  • Since September, lenders have doubled their interest rates on these Oracle projects to near non-investment grade levels.
  • Oracle’s credit default swap (CDS) spreads have tripled,
  • Private datacenter operators can’t get financing, so Oracle can’t fill the gap with leases, even though a few months ago Oracle was able to lease 5.2GW of US data-center capacity across Texas, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New Mexico specifically for OpenAI.
  • On top of OpenAI, Oracle is also building datacenters for Meta and Nvidia in a $523 billion total commitment

Oracle is tightening the purse strings to reduce capital needs. They now require for new customers 40% upfront on building infrastructure. Another strategy being explored: requiring customers to buy their own hardware in BYOC (bring your own chip) arrangements which moves that expense off Oracle’s books and onto the customer’s. 

It appears to this Editor that Oracle is caught in a squeeze play. If the company doesn’t build the datacenters, it risks falling behind its massive strategy to dominate the AI datacenter business. Yet the price of this is to abandon its massive investment in healthcare, a linchpin strategy, and the customers there. And there are Federal consequences: the completely incomplete VA implementation scheduled to resume this year and the complete, but still in progress, Department of Defense system.

Let’s look at what the effect may be on Oracle Health. Oracle bought Cerner back in December 2021 for $28.3 billion–after Cerner’s troubles with the VA EHR implementation and in the midst of the Department of Defense rollout. Oracle now is a fading number 2 in health system EHR implementations. It was all Epic, all the time for the health systems attending HealthIMPACT, the conference this Editor attended over the past two days. If Oracle Health is sold, it represents a major strategic reversal for Oracle and personally for CEO Larry Ellison. Both have pumped and promoted changing healthcare through data and systems integration for the past five years. Perhaps Oracle and Ellison have gotten the data “milk” they want and will sell the ‘cow’ now that Old Bossy is not in great shape. Can the ‘cow’ on the block even get the $28 billion paid for it?

Sell, but to whom? Microsoft is the most probable since it is massively integrated into healthcare in multiple systems. The other two under speculation are Google and Amazon. What they have in common are recent and money-losing experiences with healthcare, closing down and selling various ventures. Google Health was shut down and scattered to the winds in August 2021, and Alphabet’s Verily, pivoting like  Nureyev over a decade, is now a ‘precision health’ entity. Amazon, in the midst of layoffs, has done well with Pharmacy, but One Medical. bought during the 2022 Practice Gold Rush, remains a lump of undigested matter in Amazon’s e-commerce digestive tract. Their agita with integrations such as with kiosks for Pharmacy [TTA 9 Oct 2025] and with Prime deserve Pepto-Bismol. Unlikely: any health insurer, for both cash and regulatory reasons. Spinoff? That won’t raise cash.  To be continued….

Sources for this article: CIO, The Register, and Fred Pennic at HIT Consultant, who broke it in the health tech press.

NHS electronic patient records linked to 100 ‘serious harm’ issues, with ~50% of NHS England trusts reporting patient issues: BBC News

June 4, 2024 | by

EHR harm is not exclusive to the VA, or the US. An investigation published last week by BBC News uncovered problems with IT systems used by NHS England regional trusts to manage patient records. Through a Freedom of Information (FOI) request, it uncovered multiple problems with Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems that could affect patient care or lead to potential harm. Their investigation found that “IT system failures have been linked to the deaths of three patients and more than 100 instances of serious harm at NHS hospital trusts in England.”

The NHS has spent £900 million over the past two years in pushing trusts to procure EPR systems and to go entirely paperless. The original deadline of end of 2024 has long since been modified to 2026.

Currently, each trust manages its own IT adoption. Teaching hospitals are at the top with the best IT, whether EPRs or operational and clinical systems. Acute care hospitals come next with current systems and infrastructure. The trusts also commission and pay for community and mental health organizations plus general practitioners. They tend to be at the end of the technology chain, without data centers but maybe a computer room. There are lots of variations between trusts, plenty of custom systems, and paper. And as in the US, systems were not necessarily interoperable. (Background courtesy of Rackspace)

The NHS published last November that 90%, or 189, trusts had contracted for and adopted EPRs. EPRs adopted by the trusts include Oracle Cerner, Epic, Meditech, and Dedalus Orbis (replacing the ancient Lorenzo).

What the BBC found through the FOI:

  • 89 trusts confirmed they monitored and logged instances when patients could be harmed as a result of problems with their Electronic Patient Record (EPR) systems. Almost half recorded instances of potential patient harm linked to their systems.
  • Nearly 60 trusts reported IT problems that could affect patient care.
  • There were 126 instances of serious harm linked to IT issues across 31 trusts
  • There were three deaths across two trusts related to EPR problems
  • At the County Durham and Darlington NHS Foundation Trust, more than 2,000 incidents of potential patient harm and three other serious incidents were connected to their new Cerner EPR

Additionally, hundreds of thousands of medical letters went unsent to patients. From the FOI, 200,000 letters were not sent across 21 trusts. Last September, a separate BBC investigation found that 24,000 letters from Newcastle hospitals had not been sent from their EPR system, with more than 400,000 letters lost in computer systems at hospitals in Nottingham.

Separate from the FOI, the BBC report goes into two of the deaths relating to EPR lost information.

  • At Sheffield Teaching Hospitals Trust, a sickle cell anemia and cerebral palsy patient, Darnell Smith, aged 22, was admitted to the Royal Hallamshire Hospital with cold like symptoms in November 2022. His personal care plan was not easily visible in the hospital’s computerized records. He didn’t get the hourly checks he needed for heart rate, blood pressure and temperature. After the records were found, Mr. Smith was then moved to critical care, put on a ventilator the next morning, and died from pneumonia two weeks later. The coroner in this case warned of a “real risk of further deaths” if care teams couldn’t access needed medical information.
  • At University Hospital of North Durham, Emily Harkleroad collapsed and was taken to A&E, where a pulmonary embolism was diagnosed. However, due to errors in the newly installed Cerner EPR, she didn’t receive the blood thinners she needed and died the morning after admission. The coroner found that the EPR did not clearly identify which patients were the most critically ill and needed to be prioritized, a complaint that clinicians at the hospital had previously expressed.  

Clinicians who came forward to the BBC pointed to EPRs making critical information difficult or impossible to find–it could be “buried anywhere”, creating medication errors, and “incorrect patient details on theatre (sic) lists, incorrect operations listed, incorrect allergy status”. 

Professor Joe McDonald, a former NHS clinical leader, dubbed the current rollout of EPRs across trusts “a broken jigsaw” because very few are interoperable. His conclusion: “There is undoubtedly a culture of cover-up in the NHS and nowhere is that stronger than in the health IT sector. It’s not safe. It’s really not safe.”

BBC News also included a response from Professor Erika Denton, national medical director for transformation at NHS England. She stated that EPRs represent an improvement over paper and patchwork systems and have been shown to improve safety and care for patients. “However, like any system, it’s essential that they are introduced and operated to high standards, and NHS England is working closely with trusts to review any concerns raised and provide additional support and guidance on the safe use of their systems where required.”  Also Daily Mail and Yahoo News Canada (reprint of the BBC News article if blocked).

Oracle’s Glueck kicks back hard at Business Insider’s ‘deadly gamble’ article, Epic’s Faulkner (now with additional audio commentary)

May 31, 2024 | by

Oracle is making great progress at the VA. And they want EHR interoperability. Epic doesn’t. Take that, Business Insider! And Judy Faulkner! Ken Glueck, an EVP at Oracle, authored an Oracle blog post (or at least one written under his name) that has generated much industry controversy. It first goes after Business Insider for daring to criticize the problems on the Oracle Cerner rollout that made it into five (count ’em, five) VA regional systems, calling it a ‘regurgitated story’. It calls the ‘deadly gamble’ headline ‘clickbait’, moves to patting itself on the back for the apparently non-problematic EHR rollout in about 3,900 locations in the DOD-Military Health System (partnering with Leidos), then swerves to stating the obvious in kicking around poor old, outdated VistA that meets very different needs and a massive population at the VA, and ends with a tap dance around the Oracle Cerner EHR problems at the VA citing all the progress that Oracle is making. It builds to a final slam fest, taking a minor quote in the article regarding why Oracle’s Larry Ellison preferred to buy Cerner–a ‘more relaxed approach to data privacy’–and expanding that to hard personal takedowns of Epic and its founder Judy Faulkner.  It then gets personal with BI, depicting the publication as “rooting against us” which he finds “invigorating”.

One can understand the craving for Oracle management to respond to BI. It’s a media outlet that apparently doesn’t have the most friendly relationship with Oracle. (But since when is that a feature of the Fourth Estate?) The article vividly takes Oracle to task, weaving together an accessible story out of dry facts and the many technical failures well documented by the VA, the OIG, and in Congressional hearings. It’s framed in the noble ambitions of Oracle’s founder Larry Ellison to transform healthcare which, in this Editor’s view, are treated sympathetically. The extremely well-read review last week of the BI article notes all, as well as the lack of contrast with the non-eventful DOD-Military Health System’s implementation and why it went largely according to plan, including the joint Lovell MHS/VA EHR. While this Editor tends to cast a gimlet eye at the clichéd mention of ‘transforming healthcare’, she still has some hope that progress in simplification, transparency, better-informed decisions, and truly intelligent assistance that enables human providers to heal their patients will be made in the next decade. And in that, she is on the side of Mr. Ellison as well as most founders and companies in health tech chronicled in TTA’s articles since 2005.

You have to give Mr. Glueck some credit for not holding back on how he really feels. Unfortunately, he was writing a corporate communication even if it was slotted in Oracle’s blog pages. He’s worked in corporate for decades and early in his career in government in the late Senator Joe Lieberman’s (D-CT) office. From the blunt view of a marketer, he should know better. Tone matters. And the frostier the tone, the better. If even a response is needed. Consider: is responding to this a smart move? What are the knock on effects?

In fact, it’s almost a textbook on how not to respond to negative press.

  • The headline sets up a straw man argument: Business Insider is not responsible for healthcare modernization, nor conceivably will ever be. It’s a cheap shot. 
  • The overly personal tone, written (one can guess) as he was seething about the BI article, undermines the response.
  • Nearly all of the same points could have been made in a concise, objective, fact-by-fact rebuttal that would be far more powerful in its restraint.
  • It meanders. It’s defensive. It’s easy to read into the Congressional Record or at the next hearing of the Veterans Affairs committee by a House member or Senator who’d like to see Oracle Cerner derailed at the VA. 
  • Where it truly goes off the rails is the personal invective directed at their competition. “…Epic’s CEO Judy Faulkner is the single biggest obstacle to EHR interoperability. She opposes interoperability because it threatens Epic’s franchise.” Mr. Glueck goes further in stating that Oracle enables provider collaboration across silos, while “Epic’s contracts expressly appropriate all patient EHR data as Epic’s own.” This is a fair criticism if true but maybe Epic’s hospital customers like it that way for their own reasons like security.

The blog comes across as barely restrained and defensive, especially versus Epic, the #1 EHR. When your EHR is losing ground to the competition, this is not a good look. It hands Epic another club to beat Oracle with. When your audience consists of professional hospital and practice executives, plus the VA and Congress, who right now aren’t overly happy with your EHR and are firing Oracle or considering it, this is almost guaranteed to backfire. It also gives a provocative article in a small online publication (ask Elon Musk) what Oracle doesn’t want–very long legs and a long shelf life. Plus now, there is even more reason for BI to beat up on Oracle.

Perhaps ignoring it, coupled with a sober internal communication (email/intranet/Slack) on the progress being made with the VA EHR (given that internal comms leak onto Reddit and similar), would have been the best response choices. And what about a conversation with BI? 

Like the old Sicilian saying about revenge, dishes like this should be served cold. 

Some interesting responses to the Oracle blog post are in HIStalk Reader Comments 5-31-24   Also Becker’s

And if anyone at Oracle wants a free tutorial in what not to do to respond to negative press, from the perspective of someone who’s had to deal with it in two industries….donna.cusano@telecareaware.com

Listen to Editor Donna provide extra commentary–a take on this take–on the Ken Glueck blog and this article. Now on Soundcloud (~18 minutes).

Must read: Oracle’s ‘deadly gamble’ on Cerner (new with audio file!)

May 22, 2024 | by | 3 Comments

Larry Ellison’s $28 billion bet on Cerner is drawn and quartered in this Must Read. If any further confirmation is needed that Cerner was the proverbial pig-in-poke for Ellison’s Big Vision of welding all that Cerner EHR data with Oracle’s massive technology, it is right here. Ashley Stewart and Blake Dodge, writing for Business Insider, do a masterful job of painting how badly Ellison and Oracle misjudged what they were getting into with what proved to be Cerner’s “broken and dysfunctional system” that in the VA implementation has been put on hold, with one exception, for a year or maybe more.

What Ellison thought he was buying in 2021 could be summarized by what he said at Oracle CloudWorld in fall 2023. FTA: What if, instead of guesswork, doctors could lean on generative AI to comb through a patient’s medical records, along with those of millions of other patients? With such a massive database, doctors could spot the warning signs of disease faster, reduce the need for trial and error, and make better-informed decisions about treatment. In other words, pump all that massive data into Oracle’s AI models and watch all that data, now going to waste, transform healthcare.

The problem was Cerner itself. Its EHR was not the wonder that Ellison saw circa 2005 when he first approached them and was rebuffed as a Silicon Valley interloper. It had become a system that wore lead boots compared to Epic. In the provider market, it was sinking to a distant #2. But one revelation in the article is that by 2020 Oracle saw Cerner as a must-have. As a smaller system, it was perceived as more interoperable between health systems, providers, and with third parties. Data would be more readily accessible. Pandemic-era relaxations on data sharing further loosened restrictions on access. The looseness appealed to Ellison and Company–and Cerner’s book of business would also help Oracle compete in cloud computing with Amazon (AWS) and Microsoft.

But Healthcare Reality dawned with the first implementations in the VA that started in 2020, a big win that turned into a rolling disaster that led to unknown queues, vanishing prescriptions, records, and appointments, and much more as chronicled here in the past four years, by Congressional investigations, and the VA’s OIG. No, the problems weren’t easily ‘fixable and addressable’ in Mike Sicilia’s (Oracle) words to Congress in hearings shortly after the acquisition closed. In fairly short order, the rollout came to a screeching halt after thousands of Oracle fixes, with only five systems implemented through last June, no end of disasters, patient deaths, and exacerbated illnesses. Other than the Lovell/MHS joint facility March rollout, there will be no further installations planned by the VA until the next fiscal year that starts in October. The most optimistic timeline for resumption is by end of this calendar year. As Congress is making clear, without proof of improved performance par with VistA in the current systems, do not hold your breath for any new ones.

An additional revelation in the article is that over time, VistA had become so customized to each VA medical center that Cerner could never meet those demands expected by the staff. It stopped trying, leading to more dissatisfaction. Perhaps that standardization looks good at the 40,000 foot level, but there were reasons for the customizations based on the veteran population and practice. Things that took two minutes in VistA now took ten in Cerner–if you were lucky. In the closed VistA system, those customizations were passed around other centers and regions–in VA-speak, Veterans Integrated Services Networks or VISNs. (Editor’s note: recalling from one of her former companies, any IT vendor implementing a system VISN by VISN soon learned about each one’s unique demands at multiple levels.)

“Oracle is still learning what they have actually acquired from Cerner,” according to an Oracle executive quoted in the article. The VA has become a ‘shackle’ trapping the Ellisonian Grand Vision of Oracle’s Transforming Healthcare–in time for him to enjoy his victory. Cerner’s slide to a distant #2 has reduced All That Data that made Cerner worth $28 billion, adding to a crushing debt load that this Editor and others noted in 2022. Layoffs and freezes haven’t made much difference, but have led to the loss of experienced Cerner support. The VA failures and drain of resources to fix it, the vacuum in support, and technical problems have led to, in a Providence system executive’s words, the perception that Cerner is ‘circling the drain’. And perception becomes reality. Health systems are choosing the costly route of moving now rather than later. The article mentions two major systems defecting to Epic, Intermountain and UPMC, but they are only two out of the 12 that announced in 2023. 

The narrative succeeds in bringing together many threads, but most of all in bringing to life the dry facts of Cerner’s many patient failures in the VA, including the individual deaths from the unknown queues [TTA 18 Mar 2023] and the human story of the Two Charlies–Charlie Bourg (himself affected by the unknown queue) and Charlie Monroe, both veterans near Spokane’s Mann-Grandstaff VA medical center. They advocate for veteran patients affected by the Cerner EHR’s many flaws.

One of the flaws not mentioned is Cerner’s odd lack of concentration on training criticized by Congress in 2023 [TTA 19 Apr 2023]. Another sequel or extension to this article could delve into the DOD-Military Health System’s implementation, a Leidos-Cerner project that has had few of the reported problems of Cerner Millenium in the VA. This was quoted by a former VA official as a ‘terrible decision’ that knocked onto the VA in implementing into a much larger and more complex healthcare system. Hat tip to HIStalk 5/22/24

Editor’s Closing Note: A wise doctor told me once that most errors in practice are made at the beginning and at the end of one’s career. In business, your Editor has seen this parallel happen time and time again. Even the smartest of chairmen and CEOs, when they stay too long at the fair, often make poor decisions. Is it age? Illness? No one left with the courage to tell them no, this is a bad move, this isn’t working? I think of the last years of Centene’s leader Michael Neidorff, 25 years in leadership, ousted by an activist shareholder. Mark Bertolini of Aetna, shoved aside from the merger with CVS he engineered. Frank Lorenzo, who created the biggest airline combine ever, Texas Air Corporation. Even legends like Larry Ellison at 79 may not be what they were. In attempting to capstone his storied career, and with the best of intentions in transforming the broken, dysfunctional healthcare system, has he made a gamble that could bring Oracle to its knees?

Listen (for the first time!) to Editor Donna read this article with extra asides and comments (plus a small flub or two). Now on Soundcloud.

Our view from last week: Is Oracle Health’s Big Vision smacking into the wall of Healthcare Reality? Their business says so. 

Is Oracle Health’s Big Vision smacking into the wall of Healthcare Reality? Their business says so.

May 15, 2024 | by

Once again, ‘healthcare transformation’ may be A Bridge Too Far but definitely a Long Slog for Oracle. A highly critical Bloomberg report details the flat and deteriorating business of Oracle Health, the division that includes the former Cerner. Since their much-touted acquisition of Cerner two years ago [TTA 14 June 2022], Oracle has not righted the basic health system EHR business. Revenue and clients have stagnated with high-profile losses, versus the massive gains predicted only two years ago, and Cerner falling further behind the hospital/practice EHR leader, Epic, with a 26% hospital bed share compared to Epic’s 48%. 

  • Bloomberg’s internal sources indicated that sales reached $5.9 billion in 2023, but are projected to slip to $5.6 billion both in 2024 and 2025.
  • In 2023, 12 accounts did not renew and announced they would replace Cerner with Epic. These are major names such as Northwell Health and Boston Children’s Hospital. In 2022, clients with a combined capacity of 4,658 patients were lost, according to KLAS Research. This is despite the fact that EHRs are not moved lightly. The average commitment is 15 years or more since the ramp-up is taxing and costs are astronomical.
  • Common complaints cited by KLAS center around Cerner’s legacy software and the Cerner transition: tracking clinical revenue, tool integration, technical glitches, and uncertainty or worsened service associated with the Oracle takeover.Boston moved to improve data exchange with surrounding hospitals and Northwell for Epic’s set of better integrated tools.

Oracle laid off many involved with customer accounts. The consulting and sales area laid off 3,000 in one year from March 2023 to February 2024, according to Bloomberg. These may have been as early as May 2023. In June 2023, there were reports that the VA’s pause of Cerner Millenium for at least a year coupled with the completion of MHS Genesis triggered 500 to 1,200 additional Federal service area layoffs plus rescinded job offers. The layoff total may be as high as 4,200 on a pre-acquisition employee base of 28,000, with salaries and promotions frozen. On the executive level, Don Johnson, who once was a successor to CEO Larry Ellison, departed from leading Oracle Health and AI. Reportedly, Dr. David Feinberg, who briefly headed Cerner prior to the sale, is now a ‘ceremonial’ chairman of Oracle Health. [TTA 18 May 2023] Dr. Feinberg also joined Aegis Ventures as a senior advisor and is on Humana’s board, which sounds like a winddown of Oracle responsibilities [TTA 11 Jan]. The layoffs and freezes have improved the former Cerner’s operating margin from 22% to 33%, but not as high as Oracle’s 46% margin.

Since the acquisition and chairman Larry Ellison’s Big Vision promises of creating ‘healthcare transformation’ and ‘better information’, Oracle’s challenge with Cerner has been not only to move their legacy systems onto the cloud but also to integrate Cerner systems with Oracle–and Oracle may have underestimated that complexity as well.

  • Oracle has stated that most customers have been moved to Oracle’s cloud, but inside sources have qualified them as Oracle Health’s smallest and least technically complicated. The big systems with their own domains have yet to be touched.
  • Cerner applications had about 8,000 bugs to be fixed.
  • On the people management/integration side, there are substantial differences between ‘legacy’ Cerner and Oracle people, often centering around not understanding the nuances and complexities inherent in healthcare–as well as compensation and working conditions. This Editor, who as a marketer has had to deal peripherally with ‘legacy systems’ (to the point of tears) through acquisitions on the payer side, knows this is common.

Where Oracle has had success with Cerner’s EHR is in international markets less saturated with EHRs or with home-grown systems, winning contracts in Sweden, the UK and Saudi Arabia. As previously noted, they are a supplier for the NHS. Oracle has moved forward on population health software,  modernizing Cerner’s revenue-tracking tool, and planning for an AI-assisted ambient listening voice note system. 

What remains up in the air is if the VA will restart Millenium transitioning from VistA this year. Oracle is pushing to restart it and its revenue stream this summer as projected last year [TTA 18 May 2023]. This counters VA Secretary Denis McDonough’s testimony last month to the House Veterans Affairs Committee that the VA does not intend to resume deploying it until FY 2025, which does not start until October 2024, and use carryover funding. This FY, there are no funds or plans allocated except for Lovell FHCC, which seems to be going well. The contract, already tightened last April with multiple metrics, demanded improvements, oversight, and annual renewals, is running into more Congressional headwinds this year. Three senators on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee called for the VA “to use the opportunity the new contract structure provides to re-review terms and add additional accountability and oversight provisions to protect veterans and taxpayers.” pointing to the OIG report issued in March. The contract is up for renewal this coming Thursday 16 May. NextGov, Becker’s

The final burden on Oracle–only alluded to in the article–is the debt load undertaken to finance the $28 billion Cerner acquisition. A complex set of bridge and term loans were used to finance the buy [TTA 27 Oct 2022]. At the time, Oracle’s $90 billion debt load was one of the largest in tech. While Oracle’s stock value has been buoyed by its investments in AI, in the current environment, this debt load becomes suspect. Yahoo Finance, Quartz

News roundup: UHG CEO’s Bad Day at Capitol Hill; Kaiser’s 13.4M data breach; Walgreens’ stock beatup; Cigna writes off VillageMD; Oracle Cerner shrinks 50%; Owlet BabySat gets Wheel; fundings for Midi, Trovo, Alaffia, Klineo

May 2, 2024 | by

It was a Bad Day at Boot (Capitol) Hill for UnitedHealth Group’s CEO Andrew Witty. On May Day, he was the Man In The Arena facing two Congressional grillings–the first from the Senate Finance Committee in the morning, and the second in the afternoon from the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations. The precipitating event was the Optum/Change Healthcare data breach and system hacking by ALPHV/BlackCat, a disruption which is as of today not fully resolved.  Millions of patients may have had data stolen and exposed–a number that has yet to be determined, but an outcome for which UHG, while paying the ransomwaristes, has prepared. Already, the VA has notified 15 million veterans and families of that possibility.

This Editor will be linking below to multiple articles and Mr. Witty’s prepared testimony. Interested Readers can also refer to YouTube for extensive links to video testimony. Highlights:

  • Both houses criticized the slow response and amount of financial assistance given to providers after the shutdown of Change’s systems prevented (and still is preventing) timely claims processing and payment. While ‘near normal’ volumes of medical claims and 86% restoration of payment processing sounds good, that leaves a lot of wiggle room on over two months of totally disrupted processing and payment. The billion or so cited sounds impressive but much of this is in loans. Most practices and groups simply do not have the financial cushion or billing skillset to bridge this disruption, to pay back loans, or to bookkeep this.
  • Also criticized at this late date was UHG being unable to determine how many individuals had PHI exposed in the breach.
  • As to cause, the description of UHG finding that surprise, surprise, Change’s systems were way out of date, stored on physical servers versus the cloud, and used Citrix remote access without multi-factor authentication (MFA) was utterly savaged. According to Mr. Witty, ALPHV after days of knocking around got in on the one server that did not have MFA authentication.

The blunt fact is that UHG had close to two years (January 2021-Oct 2022) before the buy closed. Due diligence consisting of a full audit had to have been done on Change’s IT systems. They processed what UHG wanted to buy. In this Editor’s estimation, Job #1! for UHG should have been ensuring that Change’s systems were hardened, then upgrading to what Mr. Witty called UnitedHealth’s standards. This Editor will go further. A minimum requirement for the sale should have been security hardening. There was time before the closing.

Senator Thom Tillis, R-North Carolina, had the best riposte. He brought a copy of “Hacking for Dummies” to the hearing, highlighting MFA. I doubt he was much moved by UHG now bringing in cybersecurity company Mandiant to both investigate and harden their systems, nor by UHG having to pay ransom, without knowing whose data was compromised.

  • Beyond the breach, UHG was called ‘monopolistic’ by both Republican and Democrat Members. There were calls to break up UHG as not ‘too big to fail’. UHG has grown by acquisition and consolidation of services. As this Editor has speculated, this is likely coming to an end with the new, much more stringent Merger Guidelines. This sentiment paints a large, unmissable target on UHG’s back for aiming FTC’s and DOJ’s missiles. (DOJ also has a huge score to settle with UHG dating back to the failure to block the Change sale.)

By the end of the day, Mr. Witty looked quite the worse for wear–tie and collar askew, slightly sweaty, versus the perfect poses of the various Members. Becker’s, FierceHealthcare, Axios, HealthcareDive    Mr. Witty’s Senate testimony statement, House testimony statement

Speaking of data breaches, Kaiser Permanente reported a big one to Health and Human Services (HHS). This relates to ad tracker information shared with third-party advertisers such as Google, Microsoft, and X. Kaiser used it in secured areas of their website and mobile apps. Information disclosed could be name and IP. Kaiser reported it on 12 April but only disclosed on 25 April that 13.4 million records may have been affected. The ad trackers have since been removed. TechCrunch, FierceHealthcare 

Walgreens stock not recovering. April was WBA’s worst month in five years and May is no better, with the stock muddling around $17.50. The month slid around 18%. Their 52-week high was $33. As of now, CEO Tim Wentworth’s actions such as closing locations and writing down VillageMD haven’t convinced Mr. Market of WBA’s worth, but in fairness it’s early in his tenure. In the Insult to Injury Department, it was revealed that the IRS is seeking to claw back $2.7 billion in unpaid 2014-2017 taxes. Crain’s Chicago Business

Cigna is also writing down its interest in VillageMD. Almost forgotten is that in late 2022, Cigna invested $2.5 billion into VillageMD. They have now written down $1.8 billion of that ‘low teens’ ownership. The planned tie was connecting Village Medical into Evernorth, Cigna’s medical services area. It was also supposed to provide Cigna with an annual return on investment, but one assumes it did not. The writeoff threw Cigna’s Q1 into the red with a net loss of almost $300 million versus a prior year profit of $1.3 billion, despite a strong quarter that grew revenue 23% versus prior year to $57.3 billion. Healthcare Dive

Oracle Health has been successful–in shrinking Cerner by close to half. Records of employment at Cerner’s Kansas 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 medical equipment (DME) suppliers who accept and can bill for the product through many insurance providers for partial or full reimbursement. Wheel is a virtual care platform and physician/nurse-practitioner online network available direct to consumer and to enterprises. Owlet release

And rounding up funding:

MidiHealth closed a $60M Series B funding. This was led by Emerson Collective with participation from Memorial Hermann, SemperVirens, Felicis, Icon Ventures, Black Angel Group, Gingerbread Capital, Able Partners, G9, and Operator Collective for a total of $99 million in funding. Midi provides virtual support for women going through peri- and full menopause. The fresh funding will help them expand national insurance coverage, hire and upskill an additional 150 clinicians by end of year, diversify service lines, and scale to care for 1 million+ women per year by 2029. Release

Trovo Health launched with $15 million in seed funding, led by Oak HC/FT. The NYC-based AI-powered provider task assistance platform will use the funding to build its technology platform, clinical operations, and leadership team. Mobihealthnews 

In the same roundup, NYC-based Alaffia Health scored a $10 million Series A round. This was led by FirstMark Capital with participation from Aperture Venture Capital. Alaffia creates generative AI solutions for payment integrity in health insurance claims operations, with the aim of eliminating insurance fraud, waste, and abuse for health plans, third-party administrators, self-insured employers, stop-loss carriers, and government agencies. Their total raise to date is $17.6 million. Paris-based Klineo also raised €2 million for its oncology clinical trials search platforms, assisted by AI, for the use of doctors and patients. BPIFrance and business angels participated in the round.

News roundup: Apple Watch flagships cease sale due to Masimo ITC ruling (updated); Noom, WW enter GLP-1 telehealth business; Oracle sees health side up despite Cerner drag; Cigna has multiple bidders for MA business

December 21, 2023 | by

Apple Watch Series 9 and Ultra 2 going off sale in the US this week, upholding the ITC patent ruling favoring medical device developer Masimo. On 26 October, the International Trade Commission (ITC) ruled that Apple in the Series 6 and later violated Masimo’s patents on pulse oximetry (SpO2) sensors and software. [TTA 27 Oct] While this is awaiting presidential approval in the 60-day review period which ends on Christmas Day, Apple proactively restricted US sales of its flagship Series 9 and Ultra 2 watches which contain the blood oxygen sensors. (The SE model does not and continues to be available for direct sale.) According to 9to5Mac, online sales end on 3 pm Eastern Time on Thursday 21 December, while in-Apple Store sales stop after Christmas Eve. Of course, this won’t stop resales of existing stock through outlets like Amazon, Best Buy, and eBay. Under the ITC order, Apple cannot import either model after 25 December as the ITC issued a Limited Exclusion Order (LEO) plus a Cease and Desist Order (CDO). 

The ITC is rarely vetoed by the White House in patent actions. After that point, Apple is free to appeal in Federal District Court, which is highly likely and where the deepest pockets usually win. Also HIStalk 20 Dec and Strata-gee 21 Dec

There are other wrinkles with Masimo, though. Strata-gee.com earlier this month (13 Dec) timelines Masimo’s patent difficulties with the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) ruling against the very same patents, decisions upheld by the Federal Circuit Court. The PTAB also ruled against Masimo in the requested review of two Apple patents. Apple’s retaliation is to threaten lawsuits on Masimo’s new smartwatches. The icing on this messy cake is the November Delaware Chancery Court decision against Masimo, awarding $17.8 million in legal fees to activist investors/shareholders Politan Capital Management and Politan Capital NY LLC in a board fight that culminated in two seats to Politan directors.  One can sense that Apple is biding its time, though they could end all of this by negotiating a royalty to Masimo. Updated: see report on the stay effective 27 December here.

Noom and WW enter the weight loss drug-by-telehealth race. Ozempic and Wegovy, GLP-1 agonists, are increasingly popular in off-label use for obesity to produce weight loss, prescribed and managed by telehealth teams.

  • Noom, previously stressing behavioral change via app coaching direct-to-consumer, in October announced at HLTH Noom Med, a drug-focused program prescribing medications such as Saxenda (liraglutide), Wegovy (semaglutide), and the new Zepbound (tirzepatide), a dual GLP-1/G1P, all of which are injectable medications along with other GLP-1 medications such as Ozempic.
  • WW or WeightWatchers last week announced the WeightWatchers Clinic program. Via their recently acquired telehealth weight loss platform Sequence, it will offer weight loss meds and team management.  

They join Teladoc in developing weight loss programs, though Teladoc supports a physician-based care product for employers [TTA 21 April]. Both Noom and WW emphasize that member patients must qualify for the programs based on weight, BMI, and medical condition. Participants are educated through materials, coaching on behavioral management, managing appetite, and nutrition, especially in maintaining adequate protein as these medications not only induce weight loss, but also muscle loss (sarcopenia). One hopes that their teams are also knowledgeable on how these medications that slow down digestion to induce a feeling of fullness don’t mix well with surgical sedation, and that they issue cautions to patients before elective surgery. MedCityNews, FierceHealthcare, Forbes   

Noom has also replaced most of its top management since its new CEO joined in July. There’s a new CFO, chief technology officer (CTO), general counsel, two senior VPs (corporate development and partnerships, healthcare sales and services) a senior director of brand and communications, chief growth officer, chief product officer, and head of people. FierceHealthcare

Oracle Q2 results miss forecasts in rebuilding Cerner. Oracle Health, including the former Cerner, and slowing cloud growth were the culprits in their fiscal Q2 2024. Total revenue was $12.9 billion, up 5% in US dollars (4% in constant currency). Analysts expected $13.05 billion. Excluding Cerner, growth would have been 6% though Oracle did not separately break out revenue for the Cerner EHR business. Investors have noted two consecutive quarters of off-track growth and a weaker forecast for the remainder of the year. According to CEO Safra Catz and chairman Larry Ellison on the earning call, many upgrades and “modernizations” are being made to Cerner Millenium that will wrap up this FY. Half of Millenium customers will be moving over to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) by February. They are also “rewriting” Cerner’s health and data intelligence platform, Cerner HealtheIntent, to get into population-scaled health management. ‘Transforming healthcare’ is an expensive proposition indeed. No word on the VA.  FierceHealthcare, Oracle release

And a quick follow up on Cigna’s sale of their Medicare Advantage business. Two payers so far–Health Care Service Corp. (HCSC) and Elevance–are reported to be bidding for Cigna’s MA business. The value of the business is estimated to be about $3 billion and with just under 600,000 members as of September. Both HCSC and Elevance are much larger players in MA. HCSC has over 1 million MA members in Blue Cross Blue Shield affiliates in Illinois, Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma, and Montana. Elevance, the former Anthem, has over 2 million MA members. Bidding is expected to close this week. While MA is losing money for Cigna, they could refuse to sell if bids are unsatisfactory. FierceHealthcare, Becker’s

Mid-week roundup: Holmes turns herself in, ChatGPT as good ER explainer, VA Spokane to cut staff to pay for Oracle Cerner EHR problems?, former Cerner campus conversion

May 31, 2023 | by

Holmes’ time at Bryan begins. Today (30 May) in a Texas morning, Elizabeth Holmes self-surrendered to the Federal Prison Camp (FPC) at Bryan to begin her 135-month sentence (11 years+). With good behavior and enrollment in certain programs, she may serve about 85% or about 9.5 years as No. 24965-111. The ‘shakycam’ video link here from Sky News (scroll to 3:18) initially from across the street then at the fence shows her delivery in a NY state-plated Ford Expedition to the facility parking lot. Her parents give her paperwork to the officers, then she with the officers walk into the camp facility, with a goodbye wave by partner Billy Evans (ballcap by the car). After all the drama, the denouement is bog-standard save for the paparazzi. She is wearing glasses, a tan sweater and blue jeans, the latter two which will be exchanged for a uniform. Many might be surprised that the prison camp has green grass lawns and trees, without towers or impenetrable fences. This is a low security facility for 650 women on 37 acres, but it remains a prison with all the schedules and restrictions that entails.

Her appeals to the Ninth Circuit Court on her conviction and sentencing, with now the restitution, continue as does the puzzle of how to compensate the victims identified by the US District Court as being owed $452 million payable jointly by her and Sunny Balwani. The order of restitution is here (PDF) There are a dozen identified financial victims from the relatively small (the Eisenmans’ $150,000) to the $125 million of Keith Rupert Murdoch. Both Safeway ($14.5 million) and Walgreens ($40 million) are identified separately. At this point at Bryan, she will be earning between $0.12 and $1.15, earning perhaps $25 every four months based on older data. According to the BBC article today, half of that will go to her victims, said Randy Zelin, a professor at Cornell Law School. The Feds will continue to scrutinize for hidden assets. Mercury News

Our Theranos Saga that started in October 2015 now endeth here, except for news on appeals or changes in circumstances.

On a somewhat lighter note, this non-paywalled Insider article charts the up and downsides of using ChatGPT as an explainer to patients in the ER/ED.  Joshua Tamayo-Sarver, MD, has been an ER doctor for almost 14 years as well as a VP of innovation for two healthcare tech companies, Vituity and Inflect Health. He recently started using ChatGPT4 as an adjunct to treatment, to explain difficult emergency situations to patients and family in simple non-medical language. Dr. Tamayo-Sarver’s article in Fast Company provides a solid narrative of how the simplicity and empathy of ChatGPT’s explaining treatment (in this case of a 96 year old woman with lung edema and dementia) works and helps the staff de-escalate the situation developing with her children and give them a chance to start her correct treatment determined by the doctor, not ChatGPT. (What was her outcome?) As the doctor explains, working with ChatGPT is inadequate for diagnostics, but adequate for ‘hungover intern’ level actions: taking patient history, creating long-form communication for patients and staff, and explaining highly technical information with empathy and compassion.

Will the Spokane VA location which proved to be The Last Straw for the VA with Oracle Cerner from October 2022 pay for it with cuts in staff? This year, Mann-Grandstaff VA Medical Center is projected to run a budget deficit of about $35 million. In a March email, the Mann-Grandstaff director Robert Fischer stated that the Northwest VA VISN (regional) director said this will require Mann-Grandstaff to cut about 15% of staff. Yet the VA chief of VA health care, Shereef Elnahal, has denied this. The controversy around this has prompted VA’s secretary, Denis McDonough, to issue a statement that he will look into these reports but stopped short of confirming that no staff would be cut. Spokesman-Review (Spokane)  Hat tip to HISTalk 31 May

Cerner’s Continuous Campus in Kansas City, Kansas, apparently will be redeveloped. Two local developers are in contract with Oracle to buy the empty 63.5 acre property with twin nine-story office towers. Last week, local authorities approved rezoning with an amended master plan. Developer plans are to convert the north tower to 224 to 232 market-rate apartments above ground-floor commercial space. While the plan for the south tower is to stay as 660,000 square feet of office space plus parking, no interest has come from lessees. According to reports, Oracle’s purchase of Cerner and shutdown of many operations in the area dumped 4.1 million square feet of real estate in the area.  Fox4KC

Weekend recap from HIMSS23: Glen Tullman’s 5 predictions, HIStalk’s random four-day walk, Oracle Cerner integration ‘going great’, Seema Verma to Oracle, Caregility’s debuts three enhancements

April 22, 2023 | by

From the reports on HIMSS23, it seemed almost–normal. Companies were there, attendance was back to near pre-pandemic levels, a normal exhibit hall, and while it was Chicago complete with snow flurries, and there were differences–no aisle carpet in the exhibit hall ‘for the environment’, suits were a rarity, Cerner disappeared into Oracle Health, and the industry was through a cycle of boom then bust–it was almost Old Times. 

So what’s next? Filling that hunger for a future view was Glen Tullman, late of Allscripts and Livongo, now 7wireVentures founder and CEO of Transcarent. His five predictions were:

  1. Consumers are in charge. They have an array of options unless in an emergency. The industry must build a new and different relationship with them
  2. AI will inform the experience. Eliminate paperwork, simplify documentation, analytics to optimize staffing levels, improve use of real-time data in care.
  3. Care will happen in 60 seconds. Quick and convenient response to care has to be the norm, especially for chronic conditions. Without this, three undesirables will happen: avoidance of care, wait until their condition is so serious that their healthcare costs become much higher, or wind up in the emergency department.
  4. Health systems will be the hub…maybe. They can own the consumer health experience. But health systems will need to change their payment model. 
  5. At risk is no risk. Health systems must “lead the way” to value-based care, care quality, and what appropriate care plans should look like.

Interestingly, payers aren’t mentioned in this model–and they see themselves as the hub, not health systems, through their acquisitions are providers and home health. MedCityNews. 

HIStalk’s random HIMSS23 walk. Perhaps the best ‘you are there’ take on HIMSS23 was published over four days by HIStalk, including Dr. Jayne’s commentary. They need no commentary from your Editor, including surviving Chicago’s weather, the distances, the no-aisle carpet exhibit hall, long lines for coffee, and local dining delights including wet beef and tavern pizza (avoid deep dish). Pro tips: if you’re an exhibitor, book meetings in advance to assure your ROI, and nothing beats F2F–true of both HIMSS and ViVE, booths were packed.  They were there so you and I didn’t have to be. Where do you think HIMSS24 will be?

Monday: Mr. HIStalk, Dr. Jayne

Tuesday: Mr. HIStalk, Dr. Jayne

Wednesday: Mr. HIStalk, Dr. Jayne

Thursday: Mr. HIStalk, Dr. Jayne  (see in Mr. H’s comments about how Microsoft has quietly taken the lead in health tech with Azure, Nuance, and now generative AI. Watch out Larry Ellison.) 

Healthcare Dive interviewed David Feinberg, now chairman of Oracle Health. According to him, everything is going great with the Cerner integration. “The integration has been pretty smooth” and they are well on their way to creating “a cloud-enabled health platform that brings all kinds of information together to make individuals and communities healthier around the world” and in building an EHR-agnostic health records database to link thousands of separate hospital databases. No mention of the troubled VA EHR implementation. (Ahem)

Announced during HIMSS as an exclusive to Healthcare Dive, Seema Verma, formerly Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) administrator during the Trump administration, is joining Oracle Life Sciences, the company’s clinical trials business, as senior VP and general manager. She has spent the last two years as senior adviser to private equity firms TPG and Cressey, and serving on the board of directors for health tech companies Lumeris, Monogram, Wellsky, and Lifestance.

And to this Editor, Caregility, a cloud-based virtual care and telehealth platform that connects virtual visits, clinical consultations, tele-ICU, remote patient monitoring, and point-of-care observation in hospitals, announced that they have a new portfolio of AI-enhanced hybrid care solutions built on best-in-KLAS (non-EMR) Caregility Cloud. According to the release, “A computer vision application analyzes live video streams of patients and their environment to detect movement and changes that could lead to adverse events such as falls or self-harm. A contactless monitoring system continuously captures patient vital signs, detecting variations in heart rate, breathing patterns, and movement that could be indicative of physiological events like awakening from sleep or an induced coma. An ambient clinical intelligence algorithm generates documentation from live clinician and patient conversations for the patient’s electronic health record.”

VA pulls out the stick in contract renegotiation with Oracle Cerner, slams brakes on further EHRM rollouts–and is this trouble? (updated)

April 19, 2023 | by

VA puts away the carrot, pulls out the stick with Oracle Cerner on the VA EHR modernization. Last Friday’s report in the Wall Street Journal (paywalled) confirms that the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is actively renegotiating its contract with Oracle at what is now the five-year mark. Until an agreement is reached, VA is pausing the rollout, which according to previous reports has been largely paused anyway due to multiple critical problems in the slow rollout to date. The WSJ report is cited in Becker’s.

Reports in March during Senate VA committee hearings indicated that the $16 billion contract was due for renegotiation anyway by 17 May. Typically, VA vendor contracts are for five years and the original contract was signed in 2017 with Cerner. VA’s contracting officer, Michael Parrish, testified in those Senate hearings that he will push for a more favorable contract [TTA 18 March].

The Oracle Cerner Millenium EHR was to replace the crusty, still working but not interoperable VistA EHR. The Department of Defense had already contracted with Cerner and Leidos to develop an EHR for the Military Health System (MHS), Genesis, replacing AHLTA. That has largely been completed in a smaller system, though not without its glitches. Billions had been spent in multiple multi-year efforts to make the two existing systems interoperable, for instance to cover records of service members transitioning from active service to reserve or veteran status and for military retirees.

Oracle closed its $28.4 billion acquisition of Cerner last June to much fanfare, but has not had a pleasant moment with the VA or Congress since. During 2021-22, failures of the Oracle Cerner system included hundreds of outages, the ‘unknown queue’ creating at least 150 instances of harm (including one averted suicide) at one VA health system (Mann-Grandstaff), four veteran deaths, training program troubles, more in a GAO Inspector General audit, and the VA’s EHRM Sprint Team itself identifying 14 main and multiple sub-issues in safety and medical research integration in the EHR Modernization Sprint Report (PDF) released on 10 March delving deeply into the initial implementations. 

In 2023, there have been three Senate and three House bills proposed with mandates ranging from ‘hold rollout till issues fixed’ to ‘pull the plug and start over’. The VA had two resignations tied to the EHRM failures, VA deputy secretary Donald Remy and EHRM director Terry Adirim, MD. Implementations were delayed at Michigan’s Ann Arbor (including medical research, TTA 1 Mar) and Saginaw (this month) systems to later this year or even 2024. None of this has been cheap. The Senate VA Committee hearings in March revealed that the VA has paid Oracle Cerner $4.4 billion on the contract so far, with a refund of $325,000 paid as compensation for ‘incomplete technology and poor training’. Obligations through the contract are at least $9.4 billion. The new system has been implemented to date in five VA medical centers out of 171. [TTA 18 Mar]

Updated. Another five-hour outage of both VA and DOD-MHS systems occurred on Monday 17 April. Affected systems included PowerChart, RevCycle, and other applications with latency issues and freezing. This may have been a result of transitioning to a larger database over the weekend. Today (Wednesday 19 April), the House Veterans’ Affairs Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations will hold hearings on the proposals contained in the two House bills.  FedScoop

If Oracle really wants to transform healthcare, it can start with the VA as Job #1. Or give the keys to Epic. The VA is between the proverbial rock and a hard place. VA has to end VistA even though the old system is still being upgraded during the transition. Terminating the deal with Oracle and reverting five health systems would be perilous, if even possible. But the stakes for Oracle are even higher. Let’s start with billions in Federal contracts in other parts of government systems outside of healthcare. To get into healthcare EHRs, Oracle bought a Pandora’s Box with Cerner. The stakes are not only for our veterans but also to salvage its credibility in healthcare versus Epic–and with its lenders who financed the heavily leveraged Cerner acquisition plus $90 billion in debt load [TTA 10 Nov 22]. 

Rounding out week: Oracle Health engineering head departs; Hive ransomware KO’d by DOJ; Google sued by DOJ on antitrust, lays off another 12,000; Pearl and Precision Neuro raise, Enabled Healthcare ADAPT grant

January 28, 2023 | by

Oracle Health engineering executive VP Don Johnson ankles after six months. Mr. Johnson, who was a nine-year veteran of Oracle, came up through the cloud infrastructure area starting in 2014, after a previous stint from 2005 at Amazon Web Services. He led product strategy, engineering, and operations before shifting over to Oracle Health. Oracle’s Cerner acquisition has been one Tower of Trouble, a Mound of Misery, even before it closed last June. Being barked at by Congress and the GAO over the VA and MHS, plus eroding relationships with health systems over EHR problems, and with the pressure from the tip-top to fix it fast and get on with the transformation of healthcare, could lead one to consider a long trip to a Remote Pacific Island. The Register. Hat tip to HISTalk.

In one for our side, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced that the international ransomware network known as the Hive was shut down. Its servers in Los Angeles and darknet sites were seized. The DOJ continues to pursue charges against Hive members. The Hive ransomware was used in attacks on an estimated 1,300 companies worldwide since June 2021, yielding about $100 million in ransom payments. Hospital systems attacked were numerous, including Memorial Hermann Health System in Houston and a Louisiana health system.   DOJ release 26 Jan, Healthcare IT News, HealthITSecurity

The problems at Google continue with a DOJ civil antitrust lawsuit released earlier this week accusing Google of monopolizing multiple digital advertising technology products. For those of us in marketing who came up with a choice of multiple search engines and ad technologies, Google’s monopoly of the “ad tech stack” that website publishers depend on to sell ads and that advertisers rely on to buy ads is very real, and very expensive. You live and die by Google algorithms on your search ranking, both natural search and optimization. In other words, you deal with Google or nobody. So the DOJ lawsuit, joined by eight states, is, in this Editor’s view, overdue. Few are drawing a line between this antitrust suit and the layoffs of 12,000 Google staff (6%) last week plus the cutbacks at Verily, but this Editor will. DOJ release, CNBC

Funding raises in seed, Series A and B are the most common–two of note in Series B this past week:

  • Pearl Health raised a $75 million Series B of $55 million in equity capital and an anticipated $20 million in a line of credit. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz’s Growth Fund and Viking Global Investors. Pearl is a developer of services and software for independent providers to enable them to better participate in value-based care through consolidating healthcare data and then using that information to create personalized patient care plans.  Release, MedCityNews 
  • Precision Neuroscience raised $41 million, also in a Series B.  Precision is another brain-computer interface technology like Synchron [TTA 17 Dec 22], in this case focused on treatment of neurological illnesses and events such as stroke, traumatic brain injury, and dementia. Leading the round is Forepont Capital Partners. Mobihealthnews 

In even earlier-stage companies, grants from accelerators are still present and are significant. Enabled Healthcare is a startup that has received a grant of $50,000 from Village Capital’s ADAPT program, It is one of four receiving an equity-free, peer-selected grant. ADAPT, funded by MetLife Foundation, supports innovation and development of solutions for key issues related to climate change, healthcare and wellness, and economic mobility. Enabled was selected from over 130 startups. Enabled combines in-person and virtual monitoring approaches to better coordinate care for those with complex needs on Medicare and Medicaid, and will go live in March. Release 

Mid-week news roundup: CVS Health Virtual Primary Care launches, VA’s two-day Oracle Cerner EHR slowdown, and microsampling blood + wearables for multiple tests

January 27, 2023 | by

CVS Health finally has Virtual Primary Care up and running. First announced by CVS last May, Virtual Primary Care provides primary care, 24/7 on-demand care, and scheduled mental health services to Aetna members nationwide enrolled in eligible fully-insured and self-insured commercial health plans. Members in VPC can schedule urgent care, 24/7 on-demand care (that may vary by plan), an in-office primary care visit, Minute Clinic visits, and expanded virtual mental health services. Amwell announced that it would be the provider in August on their Q2 2022 earnings call. The release mentions that board-certified physicians and nurse practitioners will be delivering primary care services through physician-led care teams and coordinating with CVS pharmacists. This applies to virtual mental health services as well. (One trusts that this in-network approach will avoid the problems they experienced with Cerebral and Done Health on their prescribed ADHD drugs.) Health records, lab results, and medications are shareable via the patient CVS Health Dashboard. At this point, there is no mention of further rollouts to other plans. Becker’s.

Somebody threw sand in the Oracle Cerner EHR gears at the VA–and it started at MHS. A report from the Spokane Spokesman-Review seems to be the only report out there (other than HISTalk picking it up) on the two-day slowdown in the Oracle Cerner Millenium EHR rolled out at the VA and the Department of Defense’s Military Health System (MHS Genesis) that covers active duty. On Monday and Tuesday, there was a “major slowdown” that did not abate until Tuesday afternoon.  It affected more than half of all MHS providers, as well as VA clinics and hospitals in Washington, Idaho, Oregon, and Ohio. Mann-Grandstaff clinicians reported problems to the Spokesman, which contacted the VA. Their press secretary Terrence Hayes confirmed that changes made to the system by the DOD, which shares a database with the VA, “had the unintended consequence of interrupting services that provide connectivity to the network.” The system slowed down from screen to screen, requiring clinicians to work extra time to make all entries, and was not resolved until configuration changes were made. This is another incident adding to a Very Large Dogpile, including interoperability between VA and MHS versions, 498 outages between September 2020 and June 2022, plus two veteran deaths.

And maybe Stanford, forever associated with Theranos, is trying to get its reputation back–in running multiple blood tests on microsamples. A new paper published in Nature Biomedical Engineering by a group of 17 researchers led by Stanford Medicine determined that valid tests could be run on a microsample (10 μl) of blood that could be drawn from a finger prick at home to test for thousands of metabolites, lipids, cytokines, and proteins. This testing would be paired with data captured from wearables. They tested reactions to food (Ensure shake) and the effects of physical activity on blood with wearables monitoring heart rate and step count, plus a continuous glucose monitor (CGM) to profile individual physiological status, including cortisol. Unlike Theranos, it’s not done in a ‘lab in a box’ in a supermarket trying to duplicate (fake?) existing diagnostic tests, and it employs mass spectrometry molecule-sorting technology in a lab. Becker’s.

News roundup: DDoS attacks may be ‘smokescreen’, DEA slams Truepill with ‘show cause’, telehealth claims stabilize at 5.4%, Epic squashes patent troll, Cerner meeting exits KC, MedOrbis, Kahun partner on AI intake

December 22, 2022 | by

Readers won’t get out of 2022 without one last cybercrime…article. DDoS attacks–distributed denial of service–escalated worldwide with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February. (Ukraine and military aid is a hot topic this week with President Zelenskyy’s visit to the US and Congress speech.) Xavier Bellekens, CEO of Lupovis, a cybersecurity company and a cyberpsychologist (!), postulates that DDoS attacks, as nasty as they are, may be a smokescreen for far more nefarious and damaging attacks. While IT goes into crisis mode over the DDoS, other attacks and information gathering on systems preparing for future attacks are taking place. Russian cyber groups focus on large organizations and move down the line into the most vulnerable, using both manual and automated approaches. Worth reading given the vulnerability and IT short staffing in healthcare organizations. Cybernews

The fallout from Cerebral and Schedule 2 telehealth misprescribing expands. The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) issued a ‘Show Cause’ to online pharmacy Truepill for inappropriate filling of ADHD Schedule 2 medications, including Adderall. A ‘Show Cause’ order is an administrative action to determine whether a DEA Certificate of Registration should be revoked, which could put Truepill out of business. The red flag for the DEA: 60% of  Truepill’s prescriptions–72,000–filled between September 2020 and September 2022 were for controlled substances, including generic Adderall. Truepill was Cerebral’s primary mail order provider, though they also used CVS and Walmart. The company stopped filling Cerebral’s ADHD prescriptions in May 2022.

In the order, the DEA cites that “Truepill dispensed controlled substances pursuant to prescriptions that were not issued for a legitimate medical purpose in the usual course of professional practice. An investigation into Truepill’s operations revealed that the pharmacy filled prescriptions that were: unlawful by exceeding the 90-day supply limits; and/or written by prescribers who did not possess the proper state licensing.”

The company stated in an emailed statement that they were fully cooperating with the investigation. If it does move to a hearing, Truepill’s chances of a successful defense are statistically low.

Truepill also fills prescriptions for Hims & Hers, GoodRx and Mark Cuban Cost Plus Drug Company. It was valued in its 2021 funding round at $1.6 billion. Companies in telemental health and prescribing of Schedule 2 ADHD medications, such as Cerebral and Done Health, are under enhanced scrutiny over their business practices [TTA 1 June]. Mobihealthnews, DEA press release, HISTalk, Digital Health Business & Technology

Telehealth medical claims stabilize. FAIR Health’s latest reports for August and September report that the percent of medical claims coded as telehealth are back up to 5.4%. June and July dropped slightly to 5.2% and 5.3% respectively. Also steady are that the vast majority of claims are for mental health services. In September, they were 66% of diagnoses far ahead of ‘acute respiratory diseases and infections’ at 3.1%. In procedure codes, psychotherapy accounts for over 43%.

A patent troll Epically bites the dust. Back in the early to mid-2010s [TTA’s index here], patent trolls (technically non-practicing entities which have no active business) presented a significant threat to early and growth-stage health tech companies. One, MMR Global (which apparently no longer exists), was notorious for buying up EHR and PHR-related patents and then filing patent infringement lawsuits against both small and large healthcare organizations with similar patents–and their users–that were generally monetarily settled. But NPEs are still active. One in south Florida, Decapolis Systems, used the same techniques as MMR Global had, suing in this case multiple Epic customers for patent infringement. Epic not only defended its customers but also sued Decapolis in the US District Court, Southern District of Florida. The court found that both Decapolis patents were invalid, ending what Epic termed ‘vexatious patent litigation’. Decapolis had successfully sued 24 other entities, including other EHRs, which settled. Owned by an inventor, this company will have to find another line of honest business. Epic release, Thomson Coburg

Oracle’s message to Kansas City: no more Cerner meetings for you. And maybe more. Cerner’s site for its annual customer/partner conference since 2007 has been in Kansas City, attracting about 14,000 visitors. Not only will it be integrated into Oracle CloudWorld in Las Vegas, 18-21 September, it’s been retitled Oracle Health with no mention of Cerner. The loss to local KC business is substantial–estimated to be in the $18 million range. While it’s logical to integrate it into the massive CloudWorld conference, it’s also another message to KC after Oracle’s sudden real estate downsizing that Cerner’s presence there will shrink…and shrink..as it’s absorbed into Oracle Health, and further confirmation that the Cerner name is gradually being sunsetted. KansasCity.com, HISTalk

A new (to this Editor) specialty care telehealth company, MediOrbis, is partnering with Kahun for an AI-enabled digital intake tool. This is a chatbot capable of conducting an initial medical assessment. Based on the patient’s answers and Kahun’s database of about 30 million evidence-based medical knowledge insights, it provides a summary for the physician before the telehealth visit and highlights areas of concern. Mobihealthnews  MediOrbis also has partnered with remote care/engagement Independa to add its capabilities to Independa’s HealthHub on their LG TVs.

Oracle proceeds with $7B bond sale to restructure debt funding Cerner buy

November 10, 2022 | by

As expected at end of October, Oracle is refinancing debt incurred to acquire Cerner. Bloomberg reported the bond sale is in as many as four parts. “The longest portion of the offering, a 30-year note, yields 2.55 percentage points above Treasuries after earlier discussions of about 3.1 percentage points, said the person, who asked not to be identified as the details are private.” The bridge loan (revised) of $11 billion was further reduced by $1.3 billion. Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp., Goldman Sachs Group Inc., HSBC Holdings Plc, and JPMorgan Chase & Co. are managing the bond sale.

Oracle has one of the highest debt loads in tech, exceeding $90 billion. Fitch Ratings has downloaded their bond rating from BBB+ to BBB overall, the next to lowest investment grade rating. The new notes were rated BBB by Fitch and S&P Global Ratings. An investment company queried by Bloomberg noted that as recently as 2020, Oracle’s debt was rated high A. Also Becker’s.

J.P. Morgan forms life sciences/healthcare VC group; virtual care Ovatient formed by MUSC Health, MetroHealth; Oracle’s putting lots of KC office space on market

November 2, 2022 | by

Some more good news in healthcare–maybe a bit of spring in autumn?

J.P. Morgan is setting up a new venture capital team to invest in life science healthcare companies. The new group, Life Sciences Private Capital, will sit within J.P. Morgan Private Capital. Investments will be in early and growth-stage companies developing novel therapeutics and technologies in several target areas including genetic medicine, oncology, neurodegenerative disease, rare diseases, autoimmunity, AI/ML platforms, metabolic diseases, and neuropsychology. Heading the group is Dr. Stephen Squinto as Chief Investment Officer and Managing Partner. He joins from OrbiMed Advisors, and previously co-founded and built numerous biotechnology companies including Alexion Pharmaceuticals plus being a scientific founder of Regeneron Pharmaceuticals. Also joining are Dr. Gaurav Gupta and  Anya Schiess with experience at OrbiMed and Healthy Ventures respectively, as well as a prestige group of advisors. JPM press release, Becker’s. 

The Medical University of South Carolina health system (MUSC Health) and The MetroHealth System (MetroHealth) are partnering in a joint venture for virtual and in-home care. From the press release, Ovatient is designed to improve the care experience by linking patients to the delivery of virtual and in-home care via a platform that connects to health systems and acute or procedural care, eliminating fragmented care experiences. The JV also intends to sell the platform to other providers. Other health systems are either joining forces with virtual care providers and AI platforms or forming their own, such as NYC’s Hospital for Special Surgery with their RightMove virtual MSK spinoff, and Northwell Health. MetroHealth release, Mobihealthnews

And if you’re a company looking for luxe office space, Oracle’s putting a lot of it on the market. Granted, it’s in Kansas City, but it’s two buildings: the former Cerner World Headquarters in North Kansas City and a separately located Realization Campus in KC. Current onsite employees will be consolidated at the fairly new Innovations Center in KC by 30 November, which has a substantial 2 million square feet of space. The health clinic part of WHQ will close as well, but not the data centers–at least for now. (A gargantuan task!) Both WHQ and Realization, according to the Oracle Cerner thread on Reddit, have been largely unused since 2020, the pandemic, and Cerner’s transition to a hybrid workforce. Cerner had from 2021 been reducing KC-area office space which had been funded locally by $170 million in sales tax and revenue bonds. The downside is once moved, how many will remain? Oracle reportedly has been considering $1 billion in cuts and is busily refinancing its debt incurred by the Cerner purchase [TTA 27 Oct]. Ridding itself of empty office space is actually a good start, versus cutting heads–a bad move as Oracle tries to save Cerner at the VA and MHS. HealthcareITNews, HISTalk, KSHB 41

Oracle talks to banks to increase loans funding Cerner buy; VA delays Cerner deployments to June 2023

October 27, 2022 | by

Oracle’s Cerner buy proving to be more expensive–and complicated–than expected. Oracle is reportedly going to its banks to increase their term loan against the Cerner purchase from the current $4.4 billion. The increase would refinance short-term debt and reduce refinancing of the existing bridge loan into longer-term bonds and loans. According to reports, the bridge loan, originally $15.7 billion of debt, was reduced to about $11 billion by the term loan. The bridge loan was originally used to finance the Cerner purchase.

Under the existing agreement, the term loan can be extended up to a maximum of $6 billion. This avoids the dicey situation the bond market is currently in with yields and access by companies.

According to Bloomberg Intelligence, Oracle’s over $90 billion in debt is one of the largest debt loads in tech. Oracle’s credit rating by S&P Global Ratings places it two steps above junk (Baa2/BBB/BBB+) but it may sidestep a downgrade by this action. Yahoo!Finance (Bloomberg), Becker’s 

Oracle announced last week modernizations to Cerner which would have greater interoperability and introduce more cloud-based features. This follows on Larry Ellison’s pronouncements during their September Q1 2023 earnings call. During the Oracle Cerner Health Conference last week, four were announced: Seamless Exchange (eliminating duplicate patient health information), Advance (dashboard), virtual models of care (virtual nurses capturing information), and RevElate (billing). Becker’s

Will the modernizations help Oracle’s VA migraine with the Cerner Oracle Millenium implementations? The prior week (13 Oct), the VA announced that deployments are being pushed from January to June 2023. The release cites the multiple problems with technical and system issues that were uncovered in August (outages), discussed extensively in Senate hearings in July, and the OIG report released in July on the ‘unknown queue’ and more.

Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Donald Remy stated that “VA will continue to work closely with Oracle Cerner to resolve issues with the system’s performance, maximize usability for VA health care providers, and ensure our nation’s Veterans are served by an effective records system to support their healthcare. During this “assess & address” period, we will correct outstanding issues—especially those that may have patient safety implications—before restarting deployments at other VA medical centers.” VA will also concentrate on the existing five facilities already deployed on fixing the multiple issues they have. Veterans treated at these sites will receive letters asking them to call the VA if they experienced delays in prescription filling, appointments, referrals, or test results. One wonders if all the steps Oracle’s Mike Sicilia said Oracle is taking [TTA 28 July] to fix the performance, design, and functionality issues are achievable even in the longer time frame–and certainly in the five live systems.