Becker's Hospital Review

47 CIO / HEALTH IT 88% of hospital execs feel threatened by Optum, CVS Health, Amazon: 4 notes By Andrea Park U nitedHealth Group's Optum is the biggest perceived threat to hospital and health system executives worried about non-hos- pital competitors that offer consum- er-friendly health services, according to Kaufman Hall's 2019 State of Con- sumerism in Healthcare report. Four key takeaways from the report, which surveyed more than 200 exec- utives from healthcare organizations across the U.S.: 1. Only 8 percent of respondents believe non-hospital competitors' health offerings pose no threat to their own organizations; 88 percent, meanwhile, believe the opposite, cit- ing Optum, CVS Health/Aetna and Amazon as major threats. 2. Nearly 70 percent of the executives listed Optum as having the highest degree of competitive threat to hos- pitals and health systems, with a total of 26 percent labeling the company as an "extreme threat." CVS Health/ Aetna was close behind, at 66 per- cent, while 56 percent of respon- dents cited Amazon as a strong or extreme threat. 3. Amazon's perceived threat seems to stem largely from its unbeatable digital experience. Almost every re- spondent — 98 percent — admitted that their organizations' digital ex- periences are somewhat or signifi- cantly worse than Amazon's, with the remaining 2 percent claiming to of- fer a comparable (but not superior) experience to Amazon. 4. Google and Apple, meanwhile, pose less of a threat to hospitals and health systems: Fewer than 40 per- cent of the executives listed each com- pany as a major source of competition. n Methodist University Hospital installs tech for patients to track nurses By Mackenzie Garrity M emphis, Tenn.-based Methodist University Hospital deployed new technology that allows patients in its Shorb Tower to track when nurses will arrive to their rooms, according to Commercial Appeal. "It's sort of similar to how you know when Domino's is making your pizza," Leigh Ann Burgess, senior director of the transplant institute at Methodist, told Com- mercial Appeal. "I want to know when someone is coming up to get me to take my tests. We want the picture to come across that whiteboard, so when they come in, the patient says, 'Oh, I knew you were coming.'" The whiteboard technology seamlessly merges with the hospital's Apple com- puters and iPhones. The whiteboards display patients' daily plans, pain scale, last pain medicine taken, when the next dose of pain medicine is scheduled and why they are receiving care. Transplant patients have been the first to test the technology. Methodist plans to roll out the tracking technology to other hospital departments this summer. n How hospitals are responding to Microsoft operating system vulnerability By Mackenzie Garrity H ennepin Healthcare activated a command center May 14 aer learning that ver- sions of Microso's Windows operating systems had a vulnerability that could be used similar to the WannaCry worm, according to the Star Tribune. e Minneapolis-based health system is just one throughout the country that reacted to the vulnerability news. Microso released a statement May 14 that a vulnerability had been found in older Windows operating systems. While there has been no indication that hackers took advantage of the bug, Microso said it is "highly likely" the flaw will be exploited by malicious soware. Hennepin Healthcare worked through a list of actions to secure older devices. Microso also released patches for all the systems that could be exploited. Minneapolis-based Allina Health also took countermeasures May 15 to handle the vul- nerability as part of the health system's normal computer security work. e health sys- tem has more than 35,000 workstations and desktop computers; however, many of them are run on updated Windows versions that were not affected by the vulnerability. Both IT departments at Hennepin Healthcare and Allina Health have taken measures to protect vulnerable biomedical and diagnostic machines, which are now isolated into computer networks. ese machines can only communicate with a minimum number of systems in order to avoid cyberattacks, the Star Tribune reported. "e thing that makes this one so dangerous is that you don't need any access," Jeremy Sneeden, a manager in the threat and vulnerability department at Allina Health, told the Star Tribune. "A lot of vulnerabilities need a username and password, or some sort of access to the machine, to make the vulnerability work." n

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