The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs has extended its EHR contract with Oracle Health for one month while negotiations for a new deal continue. The new VA EHR has been beset with problems since it began rolling out in 2020, leading to care disruptions and even being tied to patient deaths. The agency said it "remains committed to holding Oracle Health accountable" while it works out a new contract.
The Federal Trade Commission’s (FTC) vote to ban noncompete agreements is set to have an outsized impact on the health care sector, empowering clinicians and raising anxiety among private practices who worry it will compound staffing problems. The FTC voted 3-2 last month to ban all current and future agreements preventing workers from going to competitors or starting a competing business after they leave a job. The rule is set to go into effect on Sep. 4, though the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has already sued to stop it.
The Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) agency, announced in a news release on May 20 the launch of the Universal PatchinG and Remediation for Autonomous DEfence (UPGRADE) program. This effort will invest over $50 million in tool creation for cybersecurity in healthcare systems. Cyberattacks on healthcare have been a growing concern for the industry and policymakers. A recent study showed that the healthcare sector has an increasing risk of cyberattack exposure.
Mount Sinai researchers discovered that generative AI like GPT-4 can predict hospital admissions for emergency room patients with minimal training and limited data. As part of a study, researchers from the Icahn School of Medicine at New York City-based Mount Sinai analyzed records from more than 864,000 emergency room visits across seven Mount Sinai Health System hospitals. Using structured data, such as vital signs, and unstructured data, such as nurse triage notes, researchers developed models to predict hospital admissions.
Healthcare technology is developing at a rapid pace, and hospitals across the country continue to try out these new tools by launching pilot programs at their facilities. Many of these pilot programs don’t go as planned — and unfortunately, the health system industry doesn’t always do a great job of sharing why things went wrong.
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