Issue link: https://beckershealthcare.uberflip.com/i/1362166
40 CIO / HEALTH IT Amazon expanding Amazon Care telemedicine program nationally: 6 details By Jackie Drees A mazon is rolling out its virtual medical service Amazon Care for its employees in all 50 states and Washington, D.C., this summer, and with plans to expand the offering to other employers as well, according to a March 17 news release. Six details: 1. Amazon launched Amazon Care, which offers telemedicine and in-person primary care services for the company's employees and their depen- dents, in September 2019. Initially only available to employees in Seattle, Amazon expanded it to all its employees in Washington state last September. 2. e retail giant in March made the service avail- able to serve other Washington-based companies. 3. is summer, Amazon will expand Amazon Care to other companies and Amazon employees in all 50 states; Amazon will also offer Amazon Care's in-person service in Washington, D.C., Bal- timore and additional cities. 4. e virtual medical clinic offers a range of urgent and primary care services, including COVID-19 and flu testing, vaccinations, preventive care, pre- scription requests and treatment of illness and in- juries. Patients can also schedule follow-up visits in their home or office. 5. e Amazon Care app also provides patients with various engagement tools, including schedul- ing follow-up visits and receiving care summaries and follow-up reminders. 6. Amazon attributed positive feedback for its vir- tual medical service to its focus on patients and their changing needs, citing instances during the COVID-19 pandemic in which the company of- fered pediatric vaccines in families' homes and helped patients evaluate their work-from-home setups to optimize joint and muscle health, ac- cording to a company news release. n 'We can't exist in a silo': How CVS Health is increasing EHR interoperability efforts By Jackie Drees C VS Health is doubling down on efforts to advance EHR interop- erability and reduce alert fatigue for clinicians, according to the pharma giant's Health Trends 2021 report. CVS highlighted the importance of EHR advancements in its report, re- leased March 9, and explained how its partnership with Epic has im- proved data sharing among its providers. Sharon Vitti, president of MinuteClinic and senior vice president of CVS Health, said Epic's patient portal MyChart is becoming an "indispens- able tool" for clinicians as well as the patients CVS serves. Since the pan- demic began, MinuteClinic has used MyChart to bring certain services online, including virtual visits with providers and sharing COVID-19 test results with patients, according to the report. "Interoperability has been a big area of our focus. It has to be," Ms. Vitti said. "Retail medical clinics share information with hundreds of provid- ers and medical institutions. We can't exist in a silo." Since 2014, CVS has shared 128 million records across 10,000 health- care locations in all 50 states using Epic's Care Everywhere program, according to the report. CVS Health's Coram Home Infusion arm is also preparing to soon launch Epic modules. n 'It's too much fun not to': Hacker who exposed US hospitals' security cameras on inspiration behind attack By Jackie Drees S wiss authorities on March 12 raided the apartment of a hacker who claimed credit for breaching San Mateo, Calif.-based security cam- era company Verkada and accessing its live feeds of 150,000 surveil- lance cameras from hospitals and other companies, Bloomberg reported. Tillie Kottmann said their apartment in Lucerne, Switzerland, was raided and that police took their electronic devices. The warrant was based on an alleged hack in 2020 and not the 2021 breach of Verkada, which exposed live video surveillance feeds from hospitals including Daytona Beach, Fla.-based Halifax Health, Texarkana, Texas-based Wadley Re- gional Medical Center and Tempe (Ariz.) St. Luke's Hospital, according to Bloomberg. Tillie Kottmann told Bloomberg that they hacked Verkada because they were inspired by "lots of curiosity, fighting for freedom of information and against intellectual property, a huge dose of anti-capitalism, a hint of anarchism — and it's also just too much fun not to do it." The search of the hacker's apartment was part of a U.S. criminal case against Tillie Kottmann in the Western District of Washington. The hack- er has been accused of unauthorized access to protected computers, identity theft and fraud. n