Jeff Tangney launched his first health-tech start-up, Epocrates, in the middle of the dot-com bubble. While the company survived the crash and eventually went public, the endgame was a disappointing acquisition for less than $300 million. By the time Tangney started his next venture, Doximity, in 2010, he’d learned a few things: Don’t raise too much money. Don’t burn too much cash. Fix a real problem for doctors.
The Covid-19 pandemic has spurred a dramatic increase in virtual health care in the United States. The rise has been driven by the need for social distancing and enabled by a wide range of policy flexibilities implemented by federal and state legislators, regulators, and payers. However, many of these allowances are temporary. As the pandemic ebbs, policymakers and payers are deciding whether and how much to pay for virtual care services in the future, leaving clinicians uncertain about whether they will be able to afford to continue their virtual care programs. But parties are often making these decisions based on outdated or limited measures of success that do not holistically reflect the realities of how value is being generated.
A ransomware attack against Georgia-based St. Joseph’s/Candler on June 17 spurred network outages and forced clinicians into EHR downtime procedures. Five days later, the workforce is continuing to use paper records for patient appointments. St. Joseph’s/Candler is one of the largest health systems in the state, with two hospitals, home health care services, and specialized outpatient and inpatient care.
An unsecured database of more than a billion search records belonging to CVS Health was accidentally posted online and accessible to the public earlier this spring, ABC News confirms. The non-password protected database was discovered at the end of March by independent cybersecurity researcher Jeremiah Fowler, who then alerted the company to the exposure.
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) was suspended from YouTube for seven days on June 11, 2021, for promoting hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin as a treatment for COVID-19 during a virtual event hosted by the Milwaukee Press Club. A YouTube spokesperson said in a statement, “We removed the video in accordance with our COVID-19 medical misinformation policies, which don’t allow content that encourages people to use Hydroxychloroquine or Ivermectin to treat or prevent the virus.”
Aspen Valley Hospital officials have October 2022 marked on their calendars for the launch of a new patient-records system they say will modernize and improve medical care. The public hospital’s board of directors Monday unanimously approved expenditures of $15.4 million for the introduction of an electronic health record software from Epic Systems.