From JoJo: "Re: Frost & Sullivan’s HIT senior analysts/consultants. They appear to have lost them all. After years of being able to offer different content and provide strong insight (we used them for advisory for a new product introduction and emerging technology information), it seems like this ‘group in a corner’ of an otherwise lackluster place found new revenues elsewhere. We have been reluctant to seek others such as Advisory Board, Sg2, Gartner, or even the smaller joints since we had a such a strong machine running with them. Would appreciate any ideas from you or others for a few strong minds in the field."
From JonJon: "Re: The Breakaway Group. Can anyone verify them? They were at the CHIME fall meeting, but I really am not certain what they do. The focus seems to be EMRs, but the only account they could speak to was University of Tennessee and their new CMO came from there, so I am not clear if that is valid experience."
From Tony South Dakota: "Re: [magazine name deleted]. Ha, that’s rich. This was live on their business briefs web site." TSD had sent me a link an HIT magazine’s so-called online news brief that contains a story I ran nearly three months ago in HIStalk (not a rumor, an actual news story). Maybe that’s why 44% of respondents to my 2009 marketing survey so far say their companies will decrease print magazine advertising in 2009 (not to tip off the results early, but I figured that was relevant). Don’t worry, if you completed the survey using a company e-mail address, I’ll be sending out the compiled results this weekend. They are interesting.
From Rene L. Fallure: "Re: CCS. I attended the CCS HIT Spring Summit in Washington, DC. It was not well attended and those who did attend were the sponsor representatives and a few of their guests (expenses paid). Most of the speakers arrived just in time to speak and then hightailed it out the door. Content was weak and very little new. With other venues of more substance, I doubt I would attend another CCS event. The hotel was nice, but too expensive. Lunch was not included either day although the attendance fees were steep enough." Mr. HIStalk’s three critical meeting planner reminders: (1) a good breakfast and lunch will get you high evals even when everything else goes wrong; (2) allow a lot more socializing time for attendees than you think they need since that’s why they are really there; and (3) include an no-pressure, no-agenda evening social event that includes cocktails and even more good food. Running a meeting on the cheap doesn’t work when attendees are paying (and even when they’re not). I’ve been to a couple of events (not CCS ones) where the speakers got comped registration and travel and everybody else had to make themselves available for vendor pitches. The speakers were big name, but they looked at it as a free trip and did pretty much nothing more than show up and sleepwalk through the same old stuff.
From Pierre Doncarlo: "Re: UCI. I can confirm that Joy is out and Jim is back in an interim role."
Listening: Queen’s new studio album, just released. Paul Rodgers (Bad Company) takes Freddie Mercury’s place and the result is pretty good, less pretentious than the Bohemian Rhapsody-era Queen. Also: Margot & the Nuclear So and So’s, eminently listenable and fresh indie pop out of Indianapolis.
RWJUH signs with Lawson for HR, supply chain, financials, and performance management.
I mentioned UTMB’s under-recognized telemedicine program. Turns out that the AT&T Foundation has been funding UTMB’s AT&T Center for Telehealth Research and Policy, which publishes outcomes research, holds seminars, and trains fellows, since 2002. I also noticed that UTMB offers Web-based telehealth courses and the subject areas sound quite practical and useful (like what kind of staff and equipment you need and how to get reimbursement). I’ve talked to a couple of folks there and I’m a fan.
University Health System (TX) gets board approval to buy an RFID equipment tracking system from InfoLogix. CIO Bill Philips is quoted: "These little squares have holes in them so you can put them on a patient’s wristband. Think of psychiatric patients, Alzheimer’s patients. You want to know, I sent this patient to X-ray. Where are they now? They should have been back. My ultimate vision is, you start tagging surgical instruments in the OR like sponges. You wave a wand over them and hear ‘ping.’ You don’t leave them in.” That’s a pretty darned good description if you ask me.
ICD-10 sounds like a great idea, right? Who could be against a more descriptive coding scheme? Rich Elmore provides an example: an ICD-9 insect bite is 919.4. Under ICD-10, there are nearly 100 codes instead of one.
Results of a new Picis survey say that maybe we Americans are too critical of our health system. About half of people who received healthcare services said they had a positive experience in both the European countries and the US. Most respondents said technology could improve care delivery, ranging from 80% in the US to 96% in Spain.
Geisinger Health will use ForeFront Transfer, Web-enabled patient transfer software from Central Logic Healthcare Systems of Ogden, UT. I see some other big names in recent press releases doing the same: New York Presbyterian, St. Joseph’s in Phoenix, CHW, and WF-Baptist. I don’t know who’s involved with the company because its site doesn’t say.
Continua and IHE sign an agreement to jointly promote device interoperability.
House Democrats, dissatisfied with technology adoption by doctors and apparently not troubling themselves with massive deficits and a wheezing economy, are drafting a new HIT bill.
The folks at Hayes Management Consulting just finished their latest newsletter, including an early recap of the company’s 2008 highlights.
Congressman Paul Ryan (R-WI) is a co-sponsor of a bill that would establish independent health record trusts where consumers could manage their own health records. Anonymized data sales would be allowed, but the proceeds would be split between the owner and the data bank, which would use the money to fund its operation. He would also require EMR vendors to link to those trusts. "The software packages that are out there - Epic, Cerner, McKesson, General Electric - they would have to have patches on their software systems for interoperability, for universal connectivity. To me, a lot of this is simply requiring interoperability among software providers so that these hospital and physician systems do talk to each other. You have to have that common architecture in order to have a system where we can compare apples to apples throughout the health IT system.” Sounds like he knows what he’s talking about, actually. He’s up for re-election next week.
DR Systems announces five new RIS/PACS sales.
University of Kansas researchers get a $2 million NIH grant to see if smoking cessation counseling by telemedicine works.
Cardinal Health’s Q1 numbers: revenue up 11%, EPS $0.69 vs. $0.82.
An interesting quote from a VP of telephone company Embarq (even if the company did just get sold for $12 billion): "My [chief financial officer] observed to me the other day that if I don’t stop the escalation in health care costs, we’ll be spending more on health care than we do on information technology. And in our industry, information technology is the core of what we do. If [Embarq] did information technology like the health care system has been doing it, we’d be giving you tin cans strung together with twine to do your communications.”
Hospital layoffs: Boone Hospital Center (MO), St. Joseph’s Hospital of Atlanta, Valley Presbyterian Hospital (CA).
Children’s Hospital Boston launches a philanthropy web site for 8-12 year olds.
A British nurse faces disciplinary action after hospital IT experts tracked her down for offering her panties for sale on eBay using her hospital e-mail address.
Intel funds a digital clinic in Russia.
St. Vincent Charity Hospital (OH) says its former director of marketing, who committed suicide with her husband in July, had stolen over $4 million from the hospital. The hospital had mailed payment for phony invoices to a PO box, where the woman’s husband picked up the checks and cashed them.
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HERtalk by Inga
From Sam Matalone: "Re: what the candidates propose. I have to start working for CNNmoney and they will talk to me." Sam has been trying for several weeks to get each presidential candidate to provide him some specifics on how they see HIT playing into their plans. Both camps are apparently too busy to respond. This story touches on each candidate’s health care reform proposal and this article summarizes each one’s plans. Both claim they want investment in information technology to drive efficiency, but the details are sparse. Too bad Joe the Plumber is getting all the attention rather than our own Sam the HIT guy.
At the risk of being called out bringing up too much political stuff, here’s another nice little summary of the candidates’ plans. It comes from a publication called Medill Reports, which I thought was neat because it is written and produced totally by Northwestern University graduate journalism students.
I’ve been reading through the results (warning: PDF) of the 2008 HIMSS/HIMSS Analytics Ambulatory Healthcare IT Survey since it hit my e-mail yesterday. I feel like a bit of a nerd to say this, but I love this kind of stuff. Here are a few highlights from the survey of 500 individuals (primarily office managers) working at ambulatory clinics: (a) there are no dominate market leaders in this space; (b) only 13% of practices are planning an EMR purchase in the near future; (c) thirty percent of all practices had an EMR, 24% of the small ones, and 47% of larger groups; (d) cost was cited as the biggest barrier to EMR adoption (40%) followed by lack of interest in EMRs (25%).
Glen Tullman purchased 100,000 shares of Allscripts stock earlier this week. Now his boss Mike Lawrie has also upped his holdings, purchasing 70,000 shares for about $350K.
Healthvision announces that it added 15 new clients in the third quarter.
Wheeling (WV) Hospital’s board of directors approves the $20.9 million purchase of Eclipsys Sunrise, to be rolled out over three years. The hospital checked out 12 different companies before deciding.
Portico Systems has acquired Ethidium Health Systems. Portico’s offerings include solutions for managing provider operations while Ethidium develops clinical and collaboration tools (including EMR) for providers.
Huron Consulting Group is increasing its healthcare and HIT focus with the hiring of two industry veterans, Scott Kolesar from EDS and John Kavka from CGE&Y.
Women purchasing their own health insurance pay as much as 50% more than men for identical coverage. Insurers claim women use healthcare more than men and maternity costs are a factor for women in child-bearing years. However, women advocacy groups claim the gap is much wider than it actuarially should be.
HealthSouth receives $100 million in cash from UBS Securities as the two companies settle their lawsuit. The lawsuit stems from charges that UBS was part of a $2.7 billion fraudulent accounting scheme that included over a dozen HealthSouth executives between 1996 and 2002. HealthSouth is still awaiting judgments on suits filed against HealthSouth’s former CEO Richard Scrushy and E&Y.
Expenditures for diabetes medications have risen from $7 billion in 2001 to $13 billion in 2007. Patient visits have increased and newer drugs are more expensive.
Cisco cuts the ribbon on its new LifeConnections Center at its San Jose headquarters, which will include health care services, child care, and fitness offerings. Cerner is providing the health care clinic software.
AT&T sent me a text message on my iPhone today saying I now have free Wi-Fi access at 17,000 hot spots, including Starbucks. On their web site, they also mention some other cool spots to connect, including airports, hotels, restaurants and supermarkets. Kind of cool to think that I could be downloading Mr. H’s latest music recommendation while picking up a gallon of milk.
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CCS HIT Fall Report
By Pedro Borbon
The Fall CCS HIT summit had its ups and downs. I was surprised at how small it was. Apparently last year there were four times more people, but this year there were probably <50 attendees.
The first day’s content was average, but there were two very impressive speakers. John Geade, the CIO at El Centro Regional Medical Center who has done a great job integrating various HIT systems in his hospital and also installing an EMR in his ER, and Gay Madden, CIO of Florida Hospice of the Suncoast, which appears to have a much more advanced HIT system than many academic centers. Mark Probst of Intermountain Healthcare gave a good keynote, but pretty generic.
I think the problem with these types of presentations for us who are so steeped in the HIT world is that it’s hard to find anything really "new".
The small size made networking easier, especially on the second day, when there was a superior panel on PHRs: Missy Krasner (Google), Philip Marshall (WebMD), and Sanjay Gupta (Dossia).
Naomi Fried, VP of Innovation and Advanced Technology at Kaiser Permanente, has what seems to be a dream job (and who also seems like she would be a great HIStalk interview), and spoke about KP’s telehealth projects. There was also a good payer panel, with Charles Kennedy (Wellpoint), Julie Klapstein (Availity), and David Lanksy (Pacific Business Group on Health).
Dr. Lansky told us that he offered free trips to the Health 2.0 conference to every employer who makes up his group and not one of them took him up on the offer …
I don’t think I’ll be back, but maybe the spring summit will be better attended. Can’t tell if it was the content or the economy. Sofitel LA is a great hotel!
The Cloud Computing Phenomenon
By The PACS Designer
Cloud computing is the phenomenon that is sweeping through the vendor community lately. Some commentators are saying it is a fad that will pass, while others are forecasting a much wider cloud computing community.
TPD has been using clouds to describe design work for several decades, so the concept is far from being new. What is new is the movement of the cloud description from the development side to the public side. In the design workspace, clouds are used to describe future development features, and also the type of outside services that may be employed in the design.
Amazon thought that bringing cloud computing to its customers would expand its product offerings and also help retain existing customers for many years to come. So far, it appears to be working as planned even though there have been some service outages, but with any new service offering there are bound to be some bumps in the road that come up unexpectedly.
Hyperic, the company that designed the "CloudStatus" web site, fully understands the cloud computing concept and has formed their business plans around the aspects of IT services described as clouds. The concept does have some compelling ideas, which include lowering the costs of software support, using proven concepts others are using, and creating the opportunity to simplify the interfaces by eliminating custom interfaces and the costs associated with their design.
Hyperic had this to say about cloud computing: "Cloud computing is a system of technologies and services that have commoditized (sic) IT to make it more readily consumable, scalable, and cost-effective for everyone. It has leveraged the innovation and expertise of Internet giants like Amazon and Google, and is making it accessible to anyone with the next big idea. It removes the investment in physical and human resources to scale up a business. It affords more folks to try their ideas and vet its worth in the market. It also affords these same businesses to scale out as quickly as their business demands. Cloud computing, same as open source, is a way to package products and services to ease adoption so everyone benefits."
In summary, you can expect cloud computing, as a term used to describe outside services, to be around for many decades to come. It will provide a more robust platform for future designs as we move forward toward a more connected world environment.
Response to "Hallway Medicine"
By The Alchemist
Who would have ever “thunk” that Hallway Medicine is safe and good for the economy by simply moving patients to corridors while waiting for a room as a way to unclutter ERs? Just peruse this screen shot for the top 20 countries from the WHO Report Annex Table 1: Health System Attainment and Performance Ranked by Eight Measures (click to enlarge).
Anyone would agree that the U.S. is the leading country for health expenditures and proudly number one for the Responsiveness Level for Attainment of Goals. I knew that Management by Objectives would prove successful:
The reader can formulate their selective opinions on what are important metrics to define the U.S. Health System. Hint: The Middle East is not too impressed with U.S. ranking in Health Systems around the world but they will buy our products.
From Houndoggie: “Re: UCI. The Eclipsys install got pushed again at UC-Irvine Med Center and the first casualty was Joy Grosser, long-time CIO. No word yet on what is going to happen. Jim Murry was brought back in the interim spot.” Unverified. I’m happy to run either confirmation or correction, whichever is appropriate.
From Slap Maxwell: “Re: AM/PFM. Yes, AM/PFM is the old SDK. It is quite functional and effective for Bridgeport and numerous other users. It does not get much press, but you can ask Eclipsys why. It seems to me they should be marketing the heck out of it.”
From The PACS Designer: “Re: RIS/PACS and EHR. TPD has mentioned in the past that some PACS suppliers include a mini-EHR in their systems. When a RIS is added to the PACS, the EHR becomes more robust in collecting information, which can result in improved efficiency for the institution. Sectra, a RIS/PACS supplier, is taking the next step by partnering with an EHR supplier to bring more information into the RIS/PACS system. This move could start a new trend that others may emulate in the years ahead.” Link.
McKesson just announced Q2 numbers: revenue up 9%, EPS $1.17 vs. $0.83. Earnings beat expectations even when one-time items were excluded. John Hammergren bragged that the company was doing just fine despite the economy, but then mentioned that some of its IT prospects are delaying their decisions.
Parrish Medical Center (FL) deploys two solutions from the Thomson Reuters Clinical Xpert suite: CareFocus (clinical surveillance) and Care Navigator (mobile clinical information).
Only in America: the Kansas guy arrested for leaving his girlfriend stuck on the toilet in his mobile home for two months wins $20,000 in the lottery — for the second time this year.
Fred Trotter calls attention to the National Dialogue site, which is conducting a discussion on HIT and privacy through November 3.
If you’re a vendor marketing person, here’s a last chance to complete our seven-question survey on what 2009 looks like in terms of budget, priorities, etc. We’ll send you the aggregated results if you provide your e-mail there. I doubt anyone else can give you such a quick read on what to expect next year.
The insurance company that refused to pay for a woman’s $4,000-a-month, last-chance cancer drug helpfully volunteered to cover physician-assisted suicide drugs if she chose that option, a bargain for them at only $50. The cancer drug has proven to be nearly worthless in extending life, showing only a couple of months of extra life vs. placebo. If you’re the patient, naturally you want all the stops pulled out, even if it buys you only a little extra time. Should the rest of us have our rates raised for that? Beats me. Anyway, another hot issue is whether insurance should get involved with physician-assisted suicide.
Advanced Technology Consortium, a “virtual entity” of National Cancer Institute-funded organizations (Washington U. in St. Louis, UC Davis, MD Anderson, UMass, and others) will implement TeraMedica’s Evercore clinical enterprise suite to manage its patient case data sets including its DICOM archive, DICOM RT objects, and metadata.
Defaults on hardware and software loans are increasing. CHRISTUS CIO George Conklin says some software vendors are now asking for 50% down. Others are self-financing customers for competitive advantage.
Jobs: Eclipsys Clinical Consultants, Epic Consultant, SIS Project Manager.
Former Navy hospital CIO David Yovanno is named CEO of Web widget start-up Gigya.
The local paper runs a nice article on Children’s Hospital of Wisconsin’s teledermatology program, where dermatologists use videoconferencing to treat patients 100 miles away. It quotes an article suggesting that 28% of ED visits could be managed by telemedicine instead, which I don’t doubt at all. I’m surprised that telemedicine isn’t bigger than it is, particularly since I think I read somewhere that reimbursement isn’t the issue it once was.
Here’s a list of Mac-specific medical applications.
A research report from RTI International says that large databases, such as EMRs and anonymized claims data, can improve drug safety by alerting researchers of the adverse effects of specific drugs.
Lawyers may beat doctors in EMR adoption. A Florida company announces its Internet-based utility to send patient medical records from doctors to personal injury attorneys. Note that the “About Us” and “Our Team” sections of the Web page names and shows no one other than some stock photo people, although some sleuthing seems to indicate that it’s the same folks who run Rehab 1.
Wolters Kluwer announces its Brand Probability File, whose entire purpose is to analyze a given drug and decide whether it’s a brand vs. generic product for purposes of formulary coverage. As screwy as it might sound, that’s not an easy call sometimes.
The political race for board seats of Washington Hospital (CA) gets ugly. A cardiologist launches her campaign with a documentary claiming the hospital delivers poor care. The hospital responds by pointing out that her own medical privileges were revoked by other hospitals because of improper care. The CEO showed pictures of another candidate, an attorney, who she accused of promoting the movie, while the board chair started a political action group to criticize both candidates, saying the attorney candidate is “defending sex offenders, drug violators and white-collar criminals.”
The world’s most lucrative healthcare market? The Middle East, this conference says (and which software vendors are already aware). Beds will double by 2025 at a cost of $10 billion and the industry will be worth $60 billion. Maybe Inga and I need to expand our news coverage there.
Covenant Healthcare (TX) will lay off 91 employees. Medical Center of Central Georgia axed 208 people last week, including 17 managers earning an average of $120K. Texas Health Resources just cut 49 people.
IBM is working on browser-based mashup applications in its Opus Una project, which allows users to share audio and video in real time. The article says one version being tested involves doctors collaborating while viewing x-rays, sending their markings back and forth. A hospital will be one of the three industries participating in the proof of concept early next year. I found this site, which takes forever to load but apparently doesn’t do anything.
CPSI is named to the Forbes 200 Best Small Companies list.
UMDNJ is under investigation again as subpoenas are served for allegations of additional Medicare fraud.
HP is apparently doing a lot of infrastructure stuff with hospitals.
The Welsh Clinical Portal is rolled out to another hospital in Wales. I hadn’t heard of it, but it went live earlier this year.
Michael Frankenberger has joined Ascension Health Information Systems as CIO, moving from Alliance Information Management in Fargo, ND.
Four of the ten board members of LMS Medical Systems, the Montreal-based vendor of the CALM OB system that seemed to be getting some US traction, have resigned, one of whom was just appointed two months ago. The company announced three weeks ago that it had terminated its US distribution agreement with McKesson. Shares are down 25% to $0.06, off 94% from their 52-week high.
The Worcester Business Journal runs a profile of eClinicalWorks as one of the fastest growing Central Massachusetts companies.
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From Jay Volk: “Greetings from Cleveland. I am the president of Workflow.com. I read your column from 10-20-08 and I was surprised to hear that you visited our booth at MGMA and no one approached you to offer you a demo of our product. If you are interested in hearing more about our company, please feel free to call me at any time. I hope you enjoyed San Diego as much as all of us did. Cleveland seems a little colder than usual as a result.” Thanks for the note, Jay. Hanging out in a booth all day is not the most exciting thing and perhaps with all my free tote bags, stuffed animals, and pens they assumed I was just looking for trinkets (busted!) I’ll catch you at the next show. Meanwhile, I still think your booth looked great.
HERtalk by Inga
A University of Colorado Hospital study of 49,000 patients reveals that its use of Picis EDIS decreased ED length of stay by 15%.
Mr. Green Genes is the name of a genetically modified cat that glows in the dark. The fluorescent effect is part of a gene therapy experiment designed to combat diseases such as cystic fibrosis. The scientists claim the special glow does not harm his health. Mr. Green Genes would sure be a cool addition to my Halloween party.
VeriChip, the guys that make the RFID chips that go under your skin, is out of compliance with Nasdaq. The stock price has fallen below the required $1/share mark for more than 30 consecutive business days. Nasdaq will give it extra time because of market volatility, but the company has to comply by April 20th or risk de-listing. Shares are at $0.31 with a market cap of just $3.5 million, 93% off their 52-week high.
Alliance Imaging names industry veteran Richard Hall as president of Alliance Oncology. He comes from US Oncology and has served in leadership roles at PatientKeeper, McKesson, General Medical, and BrightStar Healthcare. Alliance also announced that Mark Carol, MD is the company’s new chief medical officer.
Lloyd Dean, Catholic West Healthcare CEO, says the 41-hospital health care system will spend $6.5 billion in capital over the next five years. A big chunk will be for connecting physicians to the system and for electronic medical records.
The integrated workflow automation solution from Sonitor and PCTS now supports over 400,000 high acuity patient visits a year.
Eighty-three percent of companies have at least one woman or minority on their boards, but only 38% of women are among the five highest-paid executives, according to this survey. At HIStalk, we are bucking the trend, as I am the second highest-paid executive. Furthermore, if we had a board, I bet Mr. H would let me be president (of course, he’d be CEO). Power and money, what else does a girl need?
Baptist Health System (AL) is live on Sentillion’s clinical workstation solution Vergence. By the end of the year, Baptist expects 3,000 clinician users of the SSO solution.
The Loftware guys are recommending a November 11th seminar for anyone wanted to know more about the movement towards GS1 standards in healthcare. The title says it all: “Improving Patient Safety and Supply Chain Efficiency with Data Standards: The Basics of GS1 Standards in Healthcare.”
Sunquest Information Systems plans to expand to Europe following an initial agreement to purchase UK-based Anglia Healthcare Systems. Anglia is a provider of lab connectivity, orders, reporting, and messaging solutions and has a 60% market share in the NHS Acute Trust Hospitals, as well as a presence in Denmark.
MedData, a provider of emergency medicine and hospitalist RCM services, acquires competitor Summit Health Care Services.
Virtual Radiologic announces its Q3 earnings. The company’s $0.21 EPS was $0.09 better than analyst estimates, with total revenue of $29 million versus the consensus $27.4 million. Revenues were up 21% year-on-year, largely due to a 24% increase in the number of hospital and facilities served. Adjusted EBITDA also rose 16% from last year.
Now available from your physician: the HairDX test that indicates if a man is at high risk for pattern baldness. If a man tests positive for a particular gene, he has a 70% chance of going bald. If identified early enough, the hair-challenged man can begin prescription treatment for hair loss prevention. I am sure it will be a huge hit with the 20-something crowd, though personally I find the Mr. Clean look incredibly sexy. I could never figure out why a guy would want hair plugs or a rug or (heaven forbid) a comb-over.
Outcome Sciences is partnering with Greenway Medical to facilitate research and patient registries through Greenway’s PrimeResearch network. Outcome has developed technology that uses EHR’s for clinical research and quality measurement.
A doctor is accused of practicing without a license, and badly at that. Vikas Jain moved to Las Vegas after Ohio revoked his medical license for failing to meet minimum care standards with 22 of his ophthalmology patients. He is now being sued by two patients, each who claim their vision has been compromised following his negligent pre- and post-operative care. One of the patients is his former office manager. Vikas is counter-suing the office manager for removing her personal medical records from the clinic.
Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman and friends presided over the Nasdaq opening bell Tuesday. I say keep bringing him back since the Dow was up 890 and Nasdaq jumped 144. He just purchased an additional $511,000 worth of company stock, which represents a 17% increase in holdings to around $3.3 million.
Troubles with the NHS’s Connecting for Health continue. Health ministers are no longer scheduling new trust installations until existing implementation issues are addressed.
A new study concludes that moving emergency room patients to upper-floor hallways when they are ready for admission does no harm. “Hallway medicine” on the appropriate acute care floor is apparently less risky than leaving patients in the overcrowded ER hallways. Are there still people out there arguing that the US has the best healthcare in the world?
The industry’s leading optimist has to be Mediware president and CEO Kelly Mann. After the company announced that quarterly income declined from $463K last year to $218K this year, Mann said, “During the quarter we continued to gain traction in the U.S. and abroad for our new initiatives that will fuel the company’s growth.” Revenues also fell from $10.74 million to $9.83 million.
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An HIT Moment with ... is a quick interview with someone we find interesting. Wyche T. "Tee" Green III is president of Greenway Medical Technologies of Carrollton, GA, which provides market-leading physician practice software and services.
Greenway just announced PrimeResearch. What kinds of practices will use it and what’s the benefit?
We believe that, in time, most practices will participate in active strategies that improve population health, such as conducting clinical trials and enrolling patients into electronic disease registries that enable researchers to drastically increase the speed at which new drugs or treatments are introduced, essentially saving time, money and lives.
Through our PrimeResearch network, physician practices that use Greenway solutions will have access to a vast network of clinical research, quality/safety initiatives, and composite clinical and financial analytics, all of which can increase revenue for the practices and foster the physician’s ability to improve the quality of care for patients.
How do you think economic conditions are changing the physician systems market and who will win and lose?
That’s a tough question as we aren’t quite sure at this point how it will affect the market. The good news for companies like Greenway is that we provide solutions that enable physicians to remove inefficiencies in their practice and increase the quality of service and care they provide their patients. Companies that assist practices in providing better care and increase their revenue by doing so should do well in this environment.
While the economy is slowing down, our company continues to grow. During the last quarter, PrimeSuite 2008 became a fully CCHIT Certified 08 ambulatory EHR, including certification for cardiovascular medicine and child health. In September 2008, we finished our largest month in company history with nearly $7 million in new sales.
Is interest growing in revenue cycle products and services for physician practices?
Yes. We see physicians not only interested in revenue cycle improvements, but in clinical and administrative improvements as well. A general trend we have noticed is that companies that deliver services that integrate and streamline the clinical, financial, and administrative processes of the practice are growing. Physicians want to be able to work fluidly on a single-database solution and are seeking products that allow them to do so.
What is your reaction when you see big hospital systems vendors buying into the physician practice market?
Smart move for them, I would think. I imagine hospital CIOs are pushing their HIS vendor to roll out usable solutions for their connected, and hopefully interoperable, ambulatory market.
About a year ago, we launched PrimeEnterprise, which enables healthcare organizations such as hospitals, RHIOs, and IPAs to effectively manage today’s complex healthcare enterprise by streamlining the business process and improving the physician’s ability to make the most informed decisions. Whether these organizations are looking to centralize such tasks as clinical population management, streamline the sharing of clinical information or better manage accounts receivable amongst the many providers in their network, a community-based solution will enable them to better manage their workflow. Furthermore, recent Stark Law changes provide benefits for hospitals and other community health organizations that invest in healthcare IT like PrimeEnterprise.
A recent rumor speculated that the company has attracted interest from larger firms that could result in a sale. Does that match with your vision of where the company wants to go?
Certainly not. That rumor seems to pop up every other year or so. I can only speculate from where it comes. To be very clear, we are not talking with anyone about an acquisition of Greenway. Our investors are excited about our long-term plans, so we will continue to grow as a profitable private company. We should add our 1,000th practice in the coming months, and we currently have more than 20,000 users in 30 specialties and subspecialties in 48 states.
We started out in the small- to medium-sized practice market but during the last couple of years we have seen tremendous traction in the larger practice segment of the market. Our business plan is built on a long term relationship with our customers and we are very excited about our future at Greenway.
Labor management software vendor API Software, Inc. will be acquired by private equity firm Francisco Partners II, LP, the company has announced. Closing is expected within 30 days.
The Hartford, WI-based API’s product line includes applications for time and attendance, staff scheduling, payroll, human resources, education tracking, and access control. Its Payrollmation and ActiveStaffer systems are top ranked in KLAS.
J.P. Fingado, formerly of Cerner, has been named president and chief executive officer.
