Today in health, it walking the headlines one more time. My name is bill Russell. I'm a former CIO for a 16 hospital system and creator of this week health. I said a channels dedicated to keeping health it staff current and engaged. We want to thank our show sponsors who are investing in developing the next generation of health leaders, Gordian dynamics, Quill health tower site nuance, Canon medical.

And current health, check them out at this week. health.com/today. All right. I started something a little while ago where I just walked the headlines and give you a couple thoughts on each of the stories. As I'm reading them. I get any number of emails a day with headlines from healthcare. It news Becker's healthcare innovation group, a.

SC media and others. , so I try to consume as many stories as I possibly can. I'm going to do backers again, only because I liked their format. It's very short, easy to read. And,

wow first headline, and I'm not even sure how to pronounce it, but UNC. And then Y L E N O I R a healthcare becomes third health system affected by vendor data breach. , it's Kinston North Carolina based. , UNC Lenoir healthcare notified patients. I have a date of breach that occurred at the clinical guidance software vendor, which was exposed protected health information.

Of its patients. At its health system, Omaha, Nebraska based Chi health and, , Sioux falls, South Dakota based, , Vera health also were impacted in December mcg health, which provides patient care guidelines. To the health systems was contacted by a third-party who claimed to have obtained patient data stored on the system. Mcg health confirmed that patient.

, information was posted to the dark web for sale and notified UNC Lenoir healthcare on April 24th, the breach has affected an unknown number of patients. At the health system. And 900 patients at a Vera McKennan hospital and university healthcare center and an unknown number of patients at Chi health and its affiliated locations.

All right. So these breaches are happening. They're happening at third parties, and this is why we have to have the, , auditing processes in place. It's also why we have to do rationalization, not only of applications, but also of services. And we have to rationalize , based on safety and, , safety of our information and safety for our patients information as well.

That's my thoughts on that story. As I'm reading it, Facebook sued after claims of patient data being secretly sent to its platform. Facebook is facing a lawsuit alleging that the company is receiving private medical data. When patients access hospital websites for healthcare providers, Bloomberg reported , the lawsuit filed.

And San Francisco federal court on June 17th. On behalf of millions of patients accuses the company met a pixel tracking tool of redress, redirecting patient communication and other secure information to Facebook without authorization.

The plaintiff seeks compensatory and punitive damages. According to the suit, the lawsuit comes after the markup reported. June 16th at some of the largest health systems in the U S had installed a Mehta pixel on their website. And they do that for marketing purposes to determine who's coming to their site. And it gives them a lot of good information on who's actually hitting their site.

This tool will send patient data such as IP addresses, physician names and search terms used to find the physicians to Facebook in exchange for analytics about the ads that the health system places on Facebook and Instagram. , former regulators, health, data, security experts, and privacy advocates say that the hospitals and health systems that have installed this tracker may have violated HIPAA, which prohibits covered entities from sharing patient identifiable health information with third parties like Facebook, unless consent is given.

Interesting. This is an interesting one because I understand why the megapixel is on their website. It's primarily there for marketing to determine who's coming to the site and. Make no bones about it. We keep talking about healthcare becoming more, a patient centric, consumer centric. , however you want to sort of phrase it. And part of that is operating in that world where we know more about people. We can get decked, we can personalize things like the web experience . And so that's why you have a tool like that on there now.

Is that the right tool, anything connected to Facebook and Google, you have to look at very carefully because their whole model is based on information. And if their model is based on information, it means. That they give nothing away for free, unless they're getting data back in exchange. And so you have to be very careful how you utilize anything. And it's, I mean, Google and, and, , Metta, I guess it is now, but Facebook.

, they're notorious for, they make money on data on advertising on personalizing the advertising. That's going out there. So anytime you're using them, you gotta be very careful. You have to read the information. You have to understand how it's being utilized. , I think another aspect of this as I'm reading, this is, I wonder how tech savvy, the marketing departments are and maybe they think there's tech savvy, because they understand how, , , you know, how to get this information, how to personalize this information.

, around the people who were coming into onto their website, but maybe they don't understand privacy and, and how privacy works with some of the tools that they have installed. And so when I read this first thing, I would say is. I've contacted anybody. That's in charge of any of our websites across the health system. I'd say, are we utilizing these tools? And what tools are we utilizing? Right. So there's a lot of Google tools that are free on your website. And obviously this is one of the Facebook and Mehta tools. That's free that a lot of health systems use.

, I'd want to do a complete inventory of what's being used. And, , determine what information have we been sharing in? What is the exposure to the health system? All right. Next story on the six hospitals have closed this year. Here's why. , from cashflow challenges to dwindling patient volumes, many factors lead hospitals to shut down.

Here are the factors that led to six hospitals closed so far this year. , kind of hospital closed January 8th and its workers were told via email that their employment was terminated. , owner attributed the decision to appropriately close the facility to CMS decision to terminate the facilities Medicare contract. Yeah. That would do it.

, no more Medicare, , income in April. Peoria Illinois based OSF healthcare acquired the real estate. Medical equipment and other assets. There you go. West Redding, Pennsylvania tower health closed Brandywine hospital in Coatesville, PA. And it keeps the date.

The system's shut down general hospital west Grove. The decision to close both facilities came after tower health terminated the deal. With canyon, Atlantic partners, a turnaround firm based out of Austin, Texas under the deal canyon Atlantic was set to assume ownership and operation of both hospitals. So obviously there were some

, negative. , revenue and whatnot. So they were going to, they needed to close those. They were hoping somebody was going to come in and fund those. And that didn't work out. , Christiana care swooped in and got the gender Advil hospital from tower health. , let's see another one close. What's the reason for it's closing.

, lawsuits documents from CMS and interviews with employees, Kaiser health news reported in June that the hospital stopped paying their bills and care. , quality diminished. , after noble health took them over and then there's another one here. So, generally speaking. , hospitals can get upside down if the patient volumes.

, change. , in any significant way, if you lose your CMS contract, obviously. Can't take Medicare patients. If that's a significant portion of your revenue. , You know, that's gonna do it. We had the pandemic and volumes changed through the pandemic. So that's something that's going on. Plus you have an economy that's.

Not real healthy right now. Here's an interesting one for us. So tech layoffs could be a boon for CIO. CIO say recent layoffs in the tech industry could help ease it. Staffing shortages, and, , in the Uber competitive hunt for talent, the wall street journal reported June 17th. And met declining tech stocks and cryptocurrency values and worries about the possible recession, big tech companies, including Microsoft and Metta have slowed hiring.

While crypto firms, such as Coinbase and crypto.com have been letting staff go. , So there you go. So there's a positive, I guess, in a down economy that there's going to be layoffs in other sectors. And when there's layoffs in other sectors,

, we could potentially pick up some of those people. Let's see, 14 recent health it innovations and partnerships. , Providence has launched a new analytics software company. Advanta a. D V a T a that combines the capabilities and technologies of six of its acquired or invested companies. Of focus on population health and revenue cycle management tools.

, Perry, Iowa based Dallas county hospital has partnered with Purdue university global school of nursing to create a simulation center aimed at training medical staff. That's an interesting technology and an interesting application. , training the new staff as they come in. And I think training just in general, I think will be one of those things that does morph that we'll use, , AR.

, Technology and a virtual reality technology. So. , a lot of interesting things. Going on in, , in training Geisinger, we'll roll out biometric facial recognition to check in patients throughout its entire house with something that was a long time coming. I think I talked to John Kravitz about that. Oh my gosh. Like three or four years ago.

, Allegheny health network, Westfield New York Memorial hospital has introduced a , germ killing robot. The helps clear the facility of dangerous bacteria and viruses. , those have been in use in a lot of hospitals. So some of this stuff isn't overly innovative. They're just getting to, , other hospitals, , that are starting to use it. New York city Mount Sinai has partnered with technology company, M P H R X to deploy clinical data sharing platform that is designed to meet the 21st century cures act requirements.

And I think a lot of people are looking at platforms. To help them. , meet those requirements of 21st century cures. All right. So that's some of the innovation that's going on. , I'm just gonna give you the headlines. See if anything jumps out. I'm not going to read the stories. HHS publishes.

Guidance to help systems strengthen cybersecurity. , that's fantastic. And we should keep an eye on that Kentucky house with some launches hospital at home platform for rural patients. And I think that's going to be one of the areas. We see a hospital at home and we'll see tele-health and we'll see some of the remote patient monitoring tools.

, be utilized and that will be the rural facilities. And I think we'll see some real ROI there. I'm not sure we've seen it yet. I'm not sure we've seen the measurement yet. We've got to keep an eye on that. And, , make sure that we're seeing real ROI.

How the CIO role is evolving per ums. CIO. Dr. Joel Klein. I did take a look at this story. , cause we had Joel on the show, we talked about. , what it's like being a physician CIO. And let's see, he was on a panel. He was asking some questions. What are you most excited about one integrated EMR? You know, whenever you get to that point, it is a beautiful thing.

What challenge do you anticipate over the next two years? Seems like, he's talking about cybersecurity. Obviously is a, , as a focus, , best opportunity for disruption in healthcare. This was one of the answers I thought was really interesting. And he talks about the fact that a lot of patients stay one more night and they stay one more night.

Because of one little thing that stopped their progress, I believe that. Critical way to unlock our capacity is to find the one thing preventing the patient from leaving a key conversation and insurance approval, a home infusion setup, transportation arrangements, a lost lab result.

Or a sign-off from a specialist and he's right. And so, and he also talks about the fact that it is uniquely positioned to work on those issues. And then finally they ask them, how's the role of CIO evolving. And he just talks about the fact that how much the CIO is front and center on so many conversations because technology is front and center on so many conversations.

We hit about seven of the 14 stories that are here. In this, , Becker's email that I receive on a feels like daily basis. I'm not sure it is a daily basis, but it feels like it. , so you might want to check that out. If you have some time or have the inclination that's all for today. If you know someone that might benefit from our channel, please forward them a note. They can subscribe on our website this week out.com or wherever you listen to podcasts.

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health.com/today. Thanks for listening. That's all for now.