Becker's Hospital Review

73 CIO / HEALTH IT Intermountain expands telehealth, digital care services through air medical transportation acquisition By Jackie Drees S alt Lake City-based Intermountain Healthcare plans to bolster its telehealth and digital care services by purchasing Classic Air Medical, an air medical transport company serving patients in eight states, the health system said April 12. The acquisition will support Intermountain's expan- sion of physicians, clinics and hospitals through ex- tra coordination with telehealth and digital care. As caregivers in rural hospitals use telehealth, Clas- sic will make it easier to transport patients to the nearest medical facilities that are best equipped if the patient needs higher acuity and more specialized care. Classic has 22 bases primarily located in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Alaska. Intermountain expects the transaction to be finalized by summer of 2021. n Cerner CEO Brent Shafer to depart By Jackie Drees C erner CEO and Chair Brent Shafer will depart from his position, the Kan- sas City, Mo.-based EHR company said May 5. Cerner announced news of Mr. Shafer's departure during its first quar- ter of 2021 earnings call. For the quarter, which ended March 31, the compa- ny posted $1.39 billion in revenue, down 2 percent compared to $1.41 billion during the same period last year. Cerner attributed the decrease to the pandemic and divestitures. Mr. Shafer and Cerner's board have initiated the process to find Cerner's next CEO, the company said. Cerner's board formed a CEO search committee and hired an executive search firm to assist with the process. Mr. Shafer, who joined Cerner in January 2018, will serve as chair and CEO until the board chooses a successor. He will then also serve as a senior adviser for one year. Cerner appointed Mr. Shafer as CEO aer the death of the company's founder Neal Patterson in July 2017. "Cerner is on the right trajectory, with increased financial guidance based on actions we are taking to improve performance," Mr. Shafer said in the news re- lease. "With the support of the entire organization, we have simplified the busi- ness while implementing a new operating model to make Cerner more efficient and effective. We have strengthened our senior leadership team, including the addition of Mark Erceg as our CFO, and I believe we now have the right team assembled to drive our company forward." n As EHRs complicate 'long COVID-19' studies, researchers look elsewhere By Hannah Mitchell T o better understand symptoms associated with "long COVID-19," hospitals may need to make large changes to their EHRs, according to an April 14 Politico report. Ken Mandl, MD, directs the Boston Children's Hospital Computational Health Informatics program. Dr. Mandl told Politico that EHRs don't tell physicians what conditions a patient has. Instead, a provider must manually look into an EHR and interpret the data. "Wiring up the health system to study post-COVID syndrome" will be a massive undertaking, Dr. Mandl said. "We don't know the extent of it, and how IT needs to change to understand it." As federal mandates ease restrictions on sharing health data, it could prove an opportunity to use sophisticated software to look for patterns hidden deep in EHRs, he said. The National Institutes of Health launched a study Feb. 23 to analyze health record data and biological specimens to un- derstand why some people are more vulnerable to long COVID-19. About one-third of the 25,000 study enrollees have already submitted their survey. In another study, UCSF is testing if wearable devices like FitBits and Apple Watches can detect COVID-19. However, these studies require patients to disclose their long-term symptoms and use costly monitoring technology. These studies cannot reflect individuals who don't have access to this type of technology. "Right now you need a very high-end IT team at a hospital to use the electronic health record data," Dr. Mandl said. "It'll be hard to be inclusive across demographics, and to achieve real equity, because of different levels of use of tech, different levels of trust in sharing data and just the difficulty of getting people to use an app." n

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