Half of readers from hospitals say their CIO reports directly to the CEO, with a fairly even split of the remainder reporting to the CFO and COO. New poll to your right, for providers: if an HIE’s technology platform is owned by an insurance company (as in Axolotl and Medicity), would your organization be less likely, more likely, or equally likely to participate in that HIE? Click the Comments link on the poll to add yours.

The president of the Australian Medical Association says the government’s EHR efforts should focus on making information available to doctors in real time: labs, rads, meds, and discharge summaries.

Trustees of Campbell County Memorial Hospital (WY) vote to buy themselves iPads and 3G accounts, claiming their $15,000 hospital cost will save time and copying expense. Otherwise, it’s an all-paper hospital, with CPOE and ED order entry “in the mill.” That jibes with my personal experience: electronic executive toys (and the IT support to keep them running) are always of highest priority, with no justification required except, “These are cool … we want them.”

A CDC survey finds that around half of physician practices uses EMRs, but only 25% of practices use a system that meets “basic system” functionality, with just 10% using a “fully functional” EMR that includes medical history, drug interaction checking, e-prescribing, electronic ordering of lab and radiology tests, and viewing electronic images. Still, the use “fully functional” EMRs has gone from 3.1% to 10% since 2006. Laggard states include Kentucky, Louisiana, and Florida, in which more than 60% of physicians in practice do not use any form of EMR. Leading the pack is Utah, with 51.5% of office-based doctors having access to a basic EMR.

ONC announces December 10 approval of two more certification bodies: ICSA Labs and SLI Global Solutions. They join CCHIT, Drummond Group, and InfoGard Laboratories.

Children’s Dayton chooses Medicity’s Novo Grid for exchanging information with its physicians and partners.

An EMT who took a crime scene photo of a dead woman and posted it on his Facebook avoids jail time, but is sentenced to 200 hours of community service and the permanent loss of his EMT license. His attorney blamed the man’s “raw sense of humor.” Social networking may also have been involved in the woman’s death: her parents say she was killed after an enemy spread false rumors on MySpace that she was romantically involved with the man who was eventually convicted of killing her over the incident.

The Army is testing the AHLTA EMR on mobile devices that include the iPad, iPod Touch, iPhone, Sprint HTC EVO, and Samsung Epic.

An ortho tech at Memorial Medical Center (CA) is arrested and charged with stealing 23 computers from the hospital.

An interesting WikiLeaks disclosure: drug company Pfizer hired investigators to check out Nigeria’s attorney general, hoping to uncover evidence of corruption that would force him to resign. A Nigerian state had sued the company for $2 billion, claiming its testing of meningitis drug Trovan there had killed 11 children (it was later heavily restricted in the US and banned in Europe). Pfizer settled for $75 million in July, but the AG had already been removed after corruption articles were run in local newspapers.

Above is a good interview with Stuart Rosenberg, MD of Beth Israel Deaconess Physician Organization, which just signed an “Alternative Quality Contract” with Blue Cross that pays the group a fixed amount for its HMO patients. He was paid over $700K in the organization’s most recent tax return, which despite being an ample income, doesn’t seem all that excessive considering what non-clinical hospital executives make.

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From Patella Poker: “Re: Joint Commission. Big news on medication reconciliation. They’ll start scoring again on July 1 with no phase-in period. I bet a lot of hospitals will have to rush to squeeze this in with all their other initiatives.” The “streamlined and focused” version of the National Patient Safety Goal for hospitals includes creating an admission medication list (and developing a policy for doing something similar in non-inpatient areas), comparing the home meds brought in against those ordered, providing written medication information at discharge, and instructing the patient to keep an up-to-date list and let providers know of changes.

From Kiosk Guy: “Re: VA. They have again selected Vecna. They originally won the award in July 2010, but it was protested by a competitor and the competition was done over last month.”

From Hirudo M: “Re: Aetna. What does its purchase of Medicity say about Aetna’s ongoing partnership with IBM? Aetna is using IBM’s HIE strategy and infrastructure for ActiveHealth.” Good question. That deal was just announced in August and there was a big press release about some Aetna-IBM HIE work in Puerto Rico just a couple of weeks ago, when Aetna was quietly well into its Medicity courtship.

From The PACS Designer: “Re: Pogoplug. We’ve been hearing more about different types of cloud apps lately and now there’s a personal cloud appliance called Pogoplug. Pogoplug turns your hard drive into an Internet accessible device so you can use any browser to call up your files with your iPhone and other mobile devices through a free online service.” The hardware component is $70 and the service is free. You can even stream music videos from your home PC anywhere on the Web, including your smart phone. The pitch is that in 60 seconds you’ll have your own personal cloud running your own content from an external hard drive.

Listening: reader-recommended Ned Evett, which I loved instantly. Well-produced killer guitar riffs, powerful drumming, excellent vocals, and good songwriting and big hooks. Forget the endless technical mention that he’s a “fretless” guitar player and focus instead on some really rhythmic blues, pop, or prog (it could pass well for all three). I’m really liking the Middle of the Middle album on Rhapsody (Shine Like a Diamond on Me is amazing, like the Beatles meet Pink Floyd). I’ve listened to all four albums and they’re excellent. This would be among the best stuff I’ve heard in a long time. I can’t get enough, other than my fingers are getting sore from drumming along on my desk. He’s opening for Joe Satriani on some tour dates.

The webcast of ONC’s day-long PHR Roundtable from last week is now online. They’ve also posted 16 new 90-second Beacon Community videos, one of which I’ve included above.

HealthCare Partners Medical Group goes live on Unity RIS/PACS from DR Systems.

Say hello to NCR, supporting HIStalk as a Platinum Sponsor. The Duluth, GA company is the #1 provider of patient self-service solutions, offering pre-registration, appointment scheduling, and bill pay online, which as they point out, can help preserve the patient experience as hospitals face being swamped with 32 million newly insured patients. Some of its healthcare self-service offerings a check-in kiosk, the eClipboard wireless unit for check-in and registration, mobile reminders and results, ED triage and check-in, revenue cycle management, patient portal, and a wayfinding kiosk. There’s a good video from Richmond Bone & Joint Clinic on their site, featuring the clinic’s CEO. Thanks very much to NCR for not just coming along for the HIStalk ride, but chipping in for gas.

Weird News Andy uses a deadpan delivery for this story, captioning it “You might be expecting twins, Mr. Plettell.” A British man receives a letter from a hospital inviting him to drop by for his ultrasound, urging him to bring along his maternity record. His mates (I’m picturing Andy Capp lookalikes) are encouraging him to show up in a dress and wig, which probably wouldn’t really be all that odd in England since they seem to find cross-dressing endlessly hilarious.

Greg from Citizens Memorial Hospital (MO), the super-progressive 74-bed hospital, tells me about work they’ve done there with Google Health.

We implemented Google Health in March of 2010. The initial response was large, mostly due to local TV news coverage. We send medications, labs, procedures, allergies, and conditions to Google Health. Our next step is working on sending radiology and other reports. We have the ability to import Google Health information as an external document in the EMR. It’s currently a manual process that has to be initiated outside of Meditech, but in the future, we’re planning to automate this process. As more patients and other providers start using the service, it will become a more valuable report. Since we are the only provider in our area sending data to Google Health (with the exception of a few national pharmacy chains), most of the reports we import have only the data we sent.We promote Google Health in conjunction with our Clinic Patient Portal. Users can sign up for both on our website. Information is verified by our HIM department and we contact the patients if necessary to verify their identity before linking their records.  We also have guest PCs in our rural family practice clinics so that patients can sign up at the clinic.

Ross Martin MD MHA, esteemed leader of The American College of Medical Informatimusicology, makes his Interoperetta available as an MP3, explaining that 85% of all humans should listen to it to provide herd immunity against dangerous subliminal messages that could be introduced by the questionably motivated fan who requested the MP3 version in the first place. I think Ross is simultaneously opening and closing the loop, in other words. I’m trying to cajole him into creating an HIStalk theme song in preparation for future HIStalkapaloozas.

On the Jobs Page, for sponsor postings only: Payer/Provider Connectivity Project Manager, Eclipsys Activation Consultant, Segment Marketing Manager. On Healthcare IT Jobs: Cerner ePrescribe Builder, Director EHR Systems Division, McKesson Paragon Consultants.

Orlando Portale, chief innovation officer for Palomar Pomerado Health (CA), tells me he’ll be demonstrating some prototype Android healthcare apps for tablets (EHR access and remote physiological monitoring) at Cisco’s Community for Connected Health Summit, which will be held Monday of the HIMSS conference. Jason Hwang, co-author of The Innovator’s Prescription: A Disruptive Solution for Healthcare will open the session.

Speaking of Cisco, I notice that they’ve released a personal version of their high-quality video telepresence system called umi (there’s supposed to be a bar over the non-upper cased U, but darned if I know how to type that character, which might have been one of those marketing-inspired gaffes since nobody can actually type out the name). Unlimited service is $24.99 a month, although the broadband specs are pretty beefy for non-FiOS residential customers (1.5 mbps upload). It works with your HDTV. I’m picturing a Webcam porn industry vertical sales, but there are probably other uses.

Cerner’s innovation subsidiary is assigned a newly awarded patent for a genetic banking system for securely storing genetic profiles.

I know it will seem odd since the Thanksgiving to New Year’s period is pretty slow for a lot of people, but Inga and I are super-buried at the moment. We’re working on lots of news items, several interviews, and a heavy load of new sponsor activity (thanks for that!), not to mention that we need to start planning for our HIMSS events and the HISsies nominations and voting. It’s the funnest job in the world, of course, but be patient or maybe even forgiving if you are waiting on something from us. I don’t expect our loads to lighten until after the conference. We may need to hire someone or something.

In the first Microsoft Amalga news I’ve heard in awhile, UW Medicine (WA) finally pulls the trigger after a two-year evaluation and licenses Amalga for translational research. That’s one slow sales cycle.

An Ohio doctor, angry that his uninsured patients can’t afford the lab tests they need, strikes a deal with LabCorp and an online lab test marketer to offer his patients discounted tests (example: a $148 lipid panel costs his patients $18). The patients simply order their tests from the county medical society’s site, pay by credit card, and go to LabCorp to get the tests. Everybody can use the service except residents of NY, NJ, and RI. Says the doc: “It’s like using Amazon.com to buy your lab tests.”

Drug and device companies are arming their sales reps with iPads for showing sales pitch presentations to doctors. Medtronic just bought 4,500 of them, Boston Scientific 2,000, Zimmer Holdings 1,000, and Abbott 1,000. It figures that the coolest, state-of-the-art technologies in a doctor’s office will be carried by a drug rep trying their best to keep healthcare costs high.

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HERtalk by Inga

From Camus: “Re: Drummond certification. Am I the only person finding it bizarre how fast the companies certified by Drummond have gone from relative obscurity to MU certified? What happens when practices pick these companies and the company goes out of business in nine months? It’s like wine — you just don’t go from planting vines to world-class cabernet in six months.” The issue is not unique to Drummond. I see plenty of “obscure” vendors on CCHIT’s list. I’ll also point out that Drummond’s certification clients include plenty of familiar names that are hardly fly-by-nights, including Allscripts, GE, and McKesson. I suppose your point is that certification does not guarantee a company is financially sound. Agreed. And I might point out that just because a company is financially viable and has a certified product, a buyer may still be left out in the cold if the vendor makes a business decision to sunset a certified product.

The HIE space continues to heat up as health systems and regional exchanges align with vendors. Recent announcements include:

• Beacon Community of the Inland Northwest (WA), a regional collaboration led by Inland Northwest Health Services, chooses the Orion Health HIE solution.
• Vantage HGT RHIO (PA) selects Verizon’s Health Information Exchange platform.
• The Children’s Medical Center of Dayton (OH) picks Medicity to provide bi-directional connectivity between the medical center and affiliated physicians and partners.

Tift Regional Medical Center (GA) implements the remote access management solution of Minicom Advanced Systems as part of its two-year process to consolidate two data centers.

Cymetrix aligns with Siemens Healthcare to provide conversion support for clients moving from legacy patient accounting systems to Siemens Soarian.

Maryland’s REC, CRISP, has signed up its 200th client.

Anvita Health, a provider of clinical analytics, hires Darren Schulte, MD, MPP as VP of Clinical Strategy. He was previously at Alere Health, where he served in executive positions related to clinical product strategy and development.

In Australia: 98% of GPs use computers for some clinical purpose and almost two-thirds are paperless. A mere 2% of the GPs use paper records only.

Rush-Copley Medical Center (IL) chooses Thomson Reuters Pharmacy Xpert, a clinical intelligence dashboard that helps pharmacists with medication management.

The VA awards Carefusion and technology integrator MicroTech a contract to supply Pyxis to 153 VA medical centers and 17 outpatient centers.

Providence Care of Kingston, Ontario, contracts with QuadraMed for QCPR, Enterprise Scheduling, and Electronic Document Management. Providence Care will also use QuadraMed technology to share clinical data with existing QuadraMed clients Kingston General Hospital and Hotel Dieu Hospital.

Wolters Kluwer Health acquires iCare, developer of an educational program that trains nursing students how to document care in an EMR.

Streamline Health Solutions posts Q3 revenues of $4.5 million, up 9% from a year ago. Earnings were $95,000 ($.01/share) compare to last year’s $296,000 loss ($.03/share.) The company says the improved results are a result of higher license system sales and increased recurring revenue from maintenance contracts.

This week I posted some new videos to HIStalkTV, including a few product demos, an interview, and a fun Lady Gaga spoof by Nuesoft. I must admit the posting task is time consuming, but only because once I get on YouTube I’m easily distracted by other fun videos that have nothing to do with HIT. For example, when I was looked at the Swype demo, I noticed a suggestion for the World’s Fastest Typist from a 1985 David Letterman episode. How can one not get sucked into watching a competition between shoulder pad-wearing women typing on IBM Selectrics with Letterman commentary?

Troubling: only 15% of CIOs think they’ll be ready to qualify for Meaningful Use incentives by April 1, 2011. That’s about half the number who said in April that they’d be ready. CIOs cite CPOE implementation as their biggest challenge, with more than half noting concerns with getting clinical staff to use the systems.

MED3OOO appoints John Wallace as a SVP on its business development team. He was previously SVP at mPay Gateway and served in leadership roles at Misys Healthcare.

Wemedx earns top marks in a KLAS report on outsourced transcription services. KLAS says overall the market “remains a high-performing, competitive segment.” Other top vendors include Precyse, Encompass, and TransTech.

This week’s must-read items on HIStalk Practice: GPs in the UK head to supermarkets. Hayes Management Consulting gets into the holiday spirit. Social media increase participation in online health programs. Building physician alliances in Northern California.

Sponsor Updates

• InSite One will offer its InDex image archive management and access solutions as a per-site license, independent of its hosted and on-site cloud services.
• Keane Optimum earns ONC-ATCB certification as a complete EHR from CCHIT.
• Berkshire Health Systems (MA) chooses Allscripts PM/EHR solutions for its employed physicians and will offer to host and support it for its 300 affiliated doctors.

E-mail Inga.

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Ask the Chair

Apologies to all for the delay in posting the first question, but we still thought it might be relevant and/or interesting to some readers.

What was RSNA like? How does it differ from HIMSS?

RSNA is short for the annual meeting of the Radiological Society of North America. This year was its 96th Scientific Assembly and Annual Meeting.

A long-time attendee (the late CEO of Hologic) once told me that the reason it’s held Thanksgiving weekend in Chicago is because it was started as the Midwest society meeting. It allowed all the radiologists’ wives to do their holiday shopping on Michigan Avenue, the “Magnificent Mile”. I’m sure everyone loves flying in to one of the country’s busiest airports on one of the most-traveled days of the year, but there you have it. I, for one, am glad I can take the train!

RSNA is the largest medical conference/trade show in America (and if not the largest in the world, still one of the top two or three). Why? Radiologists use expensive toys and they’re here in force, along with everyone wanting to sell to them. How many? This year saw an astounding 60,000 medical and science professionals from all over the world (unlike HIMSS, RSNA is truly a multi-national show) and over 700 vendors … I mean technical exhibitors … selling them everything from lead aprons to coding software to MRIs and CT Scanners.

In contrast, I believe HIMSS 2010 attracted about 28,000 registered attendees, of which fewer than 14,000 were actual IT professionals. Yes, HIMSS has more vendors (over 900 last year), but some were virtually on card tables. The cost of admission and scale of RSNA keeps out more of the wannabes.

I’ve attended RSNA for over a dozen years. The scope and scale continues to amaze even this jaded HIMSS veteran. GE and Philips’ booths alone are the size of small city blocks, chock full of demo areas, gleaming machines, and conference rooms where the magic happens.

That’s another key difference: people actually bring their checkbooks to RSNA. Deals are done on everything from the big magnets (MRIs) to the mobile X-ray machines. Restaurants and hotels (not to mention the “helpful” McCormick Place staff) lick their chops at the prospect of separating exhibitors and their sales professionals from their T&E dollars.

The pure-play HCIT companies tend to be lost a bit in the noise of imaging systems, but the usual suspects that have a meaningful radiology offering (such as Cerner and McKesson) had a respectable booth presence that seemed well attended. I actually think I saw a tumbleweed or two blowing through the booth of NLP coding vendor A-Life Medical (recently purchased by Ingenix). Not sure if it’s a coincidence, but its competitor CodeRyte’s booth seemed pretty active.

Speech rec vendors Nuance and M*Model also seemed highly active each time I walked by. Merge Technologies seemed to have a hopping booth, some of which was likely due to the Tesla (see my new picture below) and the candy and video games they were providing, but also no doubt as a result of its re-emergence (no pun intended) from the purgatory of bad accounting and management with a new story and a new CEO. I’m looking forward to seeing what they do at HIMSS.

What’s your take on Medicity’s acquisition by Aetna?

Speaking from my usual perch in the peanut gallery (as I’ve done work for neither company), I’m fairly astounded by the price. Rumor has it that $500 million (twice what Ingenix paid for Axolotl) is approaching 8x revenues, a princely multiple that dwarfs, say, Allscripts’ purchase of Eclipsys for 2x revs or even Ingenix’s purchase of Picis for 3x revs.

Medicity appears to be the leader in its space, with over 750 hospitals and 125,000 physicians using its system. Still, it’s a huge bet on the HIE market that’s not quite emerged.

I believe a good part of the excitement (dare I say frenzy) around the HIE/clinical messaging space is that the emerging government regulations which mandate a minimum proportion of premium dollars that a payor spends on actually taking care of sick people (known as the medical loss ratios) appears to allow them to count this type of business towards the MLR (as opposed to say, marketing spend, corporate art, or even executive salaries). Therefore, I’d posit that United and Aetna see this as a way to improve their MLRs while actually improving patient care.

With health reform reducing the payors’ arsenal to maximize their profits (by prohibiting them from underwriting away sick people and mandating certain forms of community rating), they now have a greater incentive to reduce loss through what HIEs can, in theory, bring: reduced duplicative tests, better access to patient data, etc.

What I wonder most, however, is what will the fact that Axolotl and Medicity are now owned by payors do to their sales prospects, both near and long term? I’ve little doubt that a fair number of potential customers would rather douse their dollars in kerosene and torch them before giving them to the same insurance company that has tormented them (in their view) for years. The half-billion dollar question is: what percent of the market does this preclude them from selling to? I’d guess more than 15%, but less than 50%. I can only assume the buyers took that into account when developing their valuations.

Then again, maybe they didn’t need to, as discussed in a previous post. Lack of materiality can hide a multiple of sins, including overpayment or failure to integrate. I’m not suggesting either is the case, incidentally, just observing that we’ll likely never know. Meanwhile, I’m sure Sandlot, db Motion, CareFx, and the sales forces of other competing vendors are pretty excited.

Best wishes to all for a happy holiday and a joyous new year! I hope to connect with readers at HIMSS in Orlando, if not before. In the mean time, please keep those questions, cards and e-mails coming.

Ben Rooks is the founder of ST Advisors, a consultancy which has worked with dozens of HCIT companies and investors typically on issues around strategy, financing, and outcomes/exit planning. He has served time as both an equity research analyst and investment banker covering the sector. ST Advisors advised A-Life Medical in 2009, Sandlot in 2010, and really enjoyed sitting in Merge’s Tesla last week.

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From Pecos Bill: “Re: physician-run ACOs. Why am I not surprised that MD bullies want to muscle their way to the head of the line to run ACOs? I’m certain they’d be just as ‘successful’ as they were running IPAs.” The AMA tells CMS that accountable care organizations can’t succeed unless doctors run them, so they want to remove any government bias that favors big health systems. If it’s like private practice, the first thing the male docs will do is put their wives in charge.

From One-Eyed Mike: “Re: Medicity acquisition by Aetna. Makes sense. This is a nice adjunct to the ActiveHealth Management business and Aetna wasn’t shy when they bought that. The even more interesting question is how the other big payers will react. You would think that Wellpoint, Cigna, and Humana have to start thinking through an HIT strategy given their competitors’ (Ingenix, Aetna, HCSC) actions.” As a refresher, Aetna acquired decision support and health analytics vendor ActiveHealth Management for $400 million in 2005. Co-founder Lonny Reisman, MD is still with the company, since promoted to CMO.

From No More Coffee: “Re: Medicity acquisition by Aetna. Am I the only one raising eyebrows? Does anyone think they will use the data to improve patient care?”

From Enrique Palazzo:”Re: plagiarists. I have proof by time and topic of some sites using your information and story finds without credit.” That’s OK. The HIT journalism business model is pretty much non-experts cleverly rewriting press releases without applying any kind of filter or analysis (thank goodness there are a couple of pros that I usually name by name for doing “real” journalism). Here’s my proof: I don’t think I miss important HIT stories or developments very often, yet you’ll notice that I never link to an HIT publication or site. I don’t have to — they rarely run anything useful that isn’t available from the original source (newspapers, press releases, etc.) If they trust my news judgment better than their own, then I’m flattered.

From Dandy Don: “Re: UCLA. With UCLA signing with Epic and announcing a wildly optimistic timeline, things will get ugly as they compete with Cedars-Sinai for the fairly small Epic talent pool in LA. Epic-certified staff already have a lot of market power there.”

From Ummagumma: “Re: UCLA. Just FYI. UCLA and LA County have virtually nothing to do with one another. UC is a state entity and LA is one of the five UC sites that have a healthcare campus. LA County has its own healthcare group (Dept of Health Services – LA DHS) that manages Olive View, Harbor, and I think parts of USC, as well as probably other locations, like clinics. The only official connection between UCLA and LA County is an academic one — Olive View and Harbor are both academically part of UCLA, which means that their physicians are professors at UCLA, and with King-Drew where their students are involved with the UCLA School of Medicine.  Otherwise all management, budget, decision-making, etc. with regard to HIT and budgets are totally separate. This is a common mistake, though, because both Olive View and Harbor have played up the UCLA part of their name. Also, in answer to one of the comments, we UCLA wasn’t on any one system – it’s very best-of-breed. Epic will be replacing at least 10 vendor systems and a half dozen homegrown ones.” The above Web shot is from the LA County Health Services site. Another reader clarified that what most people think of as LA County Hospital is actually part of USC’s teaching program, but it’s UCLA Center for Health Sciences (now Ronald Reagan Medical Center) on the UCLA campus that’s going Epic. What struck me most, though, is that of several people who e-mailed clarifications (most of them UCLA MD faculty) none seemed absolutely certain about how it all fit together and their explanations didn’t fully jibe, so it must be darned complicated. Anyway, a good source tells me that nearly 100 clinics are going up on Epic first, then revenue cycle, then inpatient. It’s supposedly a five-year, $250 million deal with a full expectation of blowing that budget.

From California Dreamin’: “Re: CareFusion. I’ve heard they may be in financial trouble. Is the CFO replacement the symptom or the cause?” The Cardinal spinoff (Pyxis, Alaris, MedMined, Jaeger, V. Mueller, etc.)  promotes James Hinrichs to CFO. The chairman and CEO is retiring in February, probably with a bundle. Shares have meandered since the spinoff, trading low in the 52-week range at the moment, with a market cap of $5.2 billion.

From Sleepless in Snowland: “Re: McKesson STAR. Support sent out an urgent e-mail around noon on Friday saying an emergency downtime would be required that day to fix a Y2K-like date problem. This despite the fact that the STAR HISNET listserv had been buzzing about this topic for over a week and McKesson apparently has known about the problem for MONTHS. And then…nothing. No further official word from McK until 2:30 a.m. the next morning, and oh, the fix has to be applied by 8:00 p.m. Saturday. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth by HISNET users who were the only source of information for the 14 hours between official notifications. Another blow for a vendor who’s having a hard time winning new business or keeping existing clients.” I found the above messages and others on the listserv.

Bellevue College (WA) and HIMSS get an NSF grant to develop some kind of national HIT certification and curriculum program for community colleges and high schools. HIMSS is setting the certification criteria, so I assume they’re planning to sell certification credentials.

Thanks to MobileMD, a new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor. There’s a lot of green in the KLAS scores (overall score over 93%) of the Warminster, PA HIE platform company. I always check out the management team of new sponsors to see if I know anyone and theirs is not only loaded with lots of HIT experience, they have several executives with military leadership backgrounds, which I see as a plus (CEO Todd Fisher was Special Forces and other company execs were officers in the Air Force, Navy, and Army, including grads of the Naval Academy and West Point, so thanks to those guys for their service). I guess I should finally get around to saying what they do. MobileMD offers a SaaS-based, turnkey HIE platform that can be brought live in 30-60 days. Its solution supports data exchange that include feeds to physician EMRs, transmission of CCR- and CCD-formatted documents, interoperability supported by a standards-based API and Direct Project (formerly NHIN Direct), a clinical portal, provider-to-provider messaging for referrals and consults, analytics, and iPhone/iPad access. Its technologies can qualify providers for Meaningful Use, of course. Some of its clients: Catholic Healthcare West, Pinnacle Health, and South Jersey Healthcare. Thanks to MobileMD for supporting HIStalk.

This is interesting: hospitals and doctors are using Facebook as a substitute PHR, looking up information on patients who can’t communicate. Case in point, in an article co-written by Newt Gingich and a neurosurgeon: hospital doctors checked the Facebook of a comatose stroke patient and found her detailed descriptions of her health in her own words (meds, symptoms, hospitalizations). They found that she had a history of blood clots, performed the indicated brain surgery, and she’s out of the coma and recovering. The article concludes, “Yet it also reminds us that at the heart of our 21st century health system is the individual patient. A personalized system that puts the individual at the center and helps us make decisions based on the needs of the individual will become even more accessible — and more important — as the digital world expands in ways that can save lives and save money.”

E-mail me.

HERtalk by Inga

The University of Colorado Hospital chooses InterSystems Ensemble for enterprise-wide integration as they migrate to Epic.

A new partnership between the VA and the Utah Health Information Network will facilitate bi-directional data exchange between the VA and rural providers. The Utah HIN uses Axolotl’s Elysium Exchange applications for its HIE.

eLINCx (OH) plans to implement GE Healthcare’s eHealth Information Exchange across Wooster Community Hospital, Dunlap Community Hospital, and area physician practices.

OnShift, a provider of shift scheduling software, closes $2.3 million in VC funding. The company says its customer base is growing 500% year over year. It will use the new funds to accelerate sales and marketing efforts.

Lutheran Medical Center (NY) achieves 93% CPOE adoption two weeks after implementing Medsphere’s OpenVista EHR.

Seventeen percent of healthcare CIOs are planning staff increases in the first quarter of 2011. Top positions in demand across IT in general are network administrators, Windows administrators, and help desk and desktop support professionals.

Lehigh Valley Health Network fires an internist for delivering personal patient information on 2,200 patients to MDVIP, a concierge medical network to which he was applying. MDVIP used the data to conduct a telephone survey. Lawsuits are being considered and possible HIPAA violations are being reviewed.

St. Clair Hospital Outpatient Surgery Center (PA) adds the Versus Advantages RTLS to provide automated nurse-to-patient assignment.

Citizens Memorial Healthcare (MO) selects Summit Healthcare as its integration vendor. That’s Denni McColm’s place.

Health reform will require collaboration and information sharing between hospitals and physicians, but one in five physicians don’t trust hospitals and six in 10 hospitals think it’s difficult to get health information from community physicians, according to a survey. Nearly 3/4 of doctors are already aligned with hospitals and most want even closer financial relationships to reduce their financial and administrative burdens.

CHIME elects George Hickman (Albany Medical Center – NY) and Gretchen Tegethoff (George Washington University Hospital – DC)to is board of trustees.

Health IT complications make the top five on ECRI Institute’s list of potential technology hazards for 2011. The federal safety organization ranked data loss, system incompatibilities, and other HIT complications as the fifth most hazardous technology issue warranting critical attention by hospitals. Suzy, RN, rejoices and says, “I told you so.”

I wanted to weigh in on the question from Cliff on how to break into HIT sales with no sales experience and the top 5-10 companies to work for. I must side with Grizzled Veteran and El Jefe: it’s going to be tough to get a sales gig with one of the top companies with no sales experience. The possible exception would be if you are already working for one of those companies and they offer some sort of junior sales rep program to groom new salespeople. I am sure some will disagree, but I think it is easier to teach an individual HIT than it is to teach great salesmanship. I’ll also add that sales isn’t for everyone and often isn’t nearly as glamorous it seems. It requires thick skin, hard work, and a decent offering to sell. All that being said, I would recommend you consider working for a smaller company where your can give sales a try and at the same time leverage your HIT background. After a couple of years, if you are successful, you will have a much better chance of getting the attention of bigger vendors.

Sponsor Updates

• Ingenix makes its ClaimsManager software available in a cloud-based version, targeting small and mid-sized physicians offices with fewer than 50 doctors.
• iMDsoft partners with Anesthesia Business Consultants (ABC) to offer the MetaVision solution to ABC clients. iMDsoft will also market ABC technology and create an interface between MetaVision and ABC’s billing technology F1RST Anesthesia.
• eClinicalWorks is named a silver winner in the Massachusetts Alliance for Economic Development Seventh Annual Team Massachusetts Economic Impact Awards, which recognize companies making outstanding contributions to the Massachusetts economy.

E-mail Inga.

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Aetna announced this morning that it will acquire health information exchange vendor Medicity for $500 million. The Salt Lake City, UT company’s technologies serve over 760 hospitals, 125,000 physician users, and 250,000 end users.

“This acquisition will enable Aetna to offer a set of convenient, easy-to-access technology solutions for physicians, hospitals and other health care providers. That, in turn, can help improve the quality and efficiency of patient care,” said Mark T. Bertolini, Aetna CEO and president. “Strategically, we believe this acquisition will enhance Aetna’s capabilities and accelerate our growth in the health information technology and health information exchange space.”

“We are excited about joining Aetna, with the shared vision for improving the health care experience for all stakeholders,” said James K. ‘Kipp’ Lassetter, M.D., Medicity chairman and CEO. “The combination of Medicity’s connected health care platform for providers with the clinical decision support capabilities of Aetna’s ActiveHealth Management subsidiary can help physicians make better decisions in real-time as they collaborate and coordinate care.”

Medicity will operate as a separate Aetna business unit under the company’s current management.

Thanks to the anonymous HIStalk reader who tipped us off early – the same one who provided the earlier and equally accurate rumor that Ingenix would acquire Axolotl. I posted the teaser on Facebook last night after confirming the rumor, which I didn’t report in detail since it involves a publicly traded company.

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