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November 1, 2011 News 9 Comments

Top News

11-1-2011 2-23-54 PM

Hospitals are becoming more optimistic about their Stage 1 Meaningful Use readiness compared to seven months ago. About 41% now say they are well positioned to meet Stage 1. The HIMSS Analytics report also finds higher adoption rates among academic medical centers and larger hospitals.


Reader Comments

11-1-2011 8-10-04 PM

inga_small From Marquis: “Re: Dr. Jerry Stonemetz. He’s a world-famous anesthesiologist, an expert in anesthesia information management systems, and head of anesthesia services at HCA. All told, he is a very cool dude. He writes a blog about AIMS, but recently incorporated his other passion (wine) into the blog. It’s not exactly HIT, but it is kind of fun. And our industry could use more fun.” I agree that HIT needs fun, as well as more wine. Dr. Stonemetz’s first post includes tips on how to create a wine cellar and is geared to those of us who lack the discipline to accumulate wine ahead of consumption.

11-1-2011 8-12-04 PM

mrh_small From Lee: “Re: new Siemens announcement about Soarian for small hospitals. Looks like the death knell for MedSeries 4. I’m sure they will deny it, otherwise they would be sending 200+ clients to the RFP mill.” One big lesson learned from reading the Steve Jobs biography and Vince’s HIS-tory of failed HIT vendors: companies should not offer products that overlap each other or confuse customers (not to mention products that force a company’s own salespeople to compete with each other).

mrh_small From LeBronze: “Re: Meaningful Use. Good thing CMS is there to answer our questions.” LeBronze forwarded the transcript of auto-generated responses he received in response to a question he posted on CMS’s EHR Information Center about criteria for maintaining a problem list. His question was filed on August 18. Nine auto-responses and escalations later, he still doesn’t have an answer after more than two months.

11-1-2011 7-57-05 PM

mrh_small From Flow: “Re: Endo Pharmaceuticals. It acquired Urochart recently, and now has acquired its major competitor in the urology EMR space, meridianEMR. Meridian had filed an infringement lawsuit against Urochart.” Verified, apparently. According to Endo’s earnings announcement last week, it has made “strategic investments in Intuitive Medical Software (IMS) and meridianEMR, Inc., two providers of electronic medical records for urologists. Together, IMS and meridianEMR provide access to approximately 1,800 urologists using data platforms that will enhance service offerings in urology practice management.” I always like to read the executive bios and found some fun facts about the folks who run meridianEMR: CEO and Chairman Michael Custode was the designer and architect of the Medic Vision PM product that Misys bought; CMO Herschel Jackson MD developed the ScriptLetter prescription writing system; CTO William Bartlett is a Certified Ethical Hacker; and Chief Software Architect G. Ralph Kuntz MD, MS wrote the link-editor and dynamic linker for the UNIX C compiler for Bell Labs.

mrh_small From Kaity: “Re: sales job. I’m an avid reader of yours and I LOVE your blog. I’m a software sales rep who likes listening to customers and understanding how the products I’m selling can make their lives better. If you were going to sell software to hospitals, what are your Top 3 target companies? (probably not EMR since that ship has sailed with everybody buying Epic).” I’ve spent almost my whole career working in non-profit hospitals, so I have only limited experience working for a vendor and none working in sales. Luckily, what I do have are smart readers who have my back – if you’re one, feel free to leave a comment giving Kaity some ideas. She put “love” in all upper case, so I figure I owe her.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

11-1-2011 7-38-31 PM

Here’s a shout-out to Dave Dillehunt, CIO of FirstHealth of the Carolinas, who gave me a brilliant idea. He said nobody would mind how long it takes the main HIStalk page to load if there was a way to display the article itself first, with the sponsor ads and other sidebar content loading in the background. I didn’t think that was possible, but after some Googling and fun Javascript programming (not me – I hired it offshore) it’s magic – the article scrolls out almost immediately and everything else quickly follows. Sounds minor, but it’s much more satisfying to start reading so quickly. I may create a HISsies category just for Dave to win.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

11-1-2011 8-58-27 PM

Fortune profiles appointment-booking site ZocDoc, which is now available in 12 cities. The company, which has raised $95 million in funding, hints that it collects enough patient information that it could create an application that would allow them to self-register at practices and hospitals.


Sales

Orlando Health’s Physician and Professional Services Group expands its relationship with VisiQuate, a provider of enterprise performance management tools.

11-1-2011 9-00-30 PM

Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System (SC) contracts with Wellsoft for its EDIS, which it will integrate with its McKesson systems.

Brown & Toland Physicians (CA) selects the Allscripts Community Record, powered by dbMotion, for its 1,500 physicians.

Central Ohio Primary Care Physicians chooses eClinicalWorks for its 230 physicians.

11-1-2011 9-01-39 PM

Centracare Health System’s St. Cloud Hospital (MN) selects Merge Healthcare’s iConnect vendor neutral archive (VNA) and iConnect Share. Also, HealthPartners chooses iConnect VNA for its enterprise-wide imaging strategy.


People

11-1-2011 2-44-16 PM

MedHOK appoints Rahul Singal, MD as its chief medical officer. He’s a former president and CEO of WorldDoc and was VP and medical director of Southwest Medical Associates.


Announcements and Implementations

Oakland Physician Network Services (MI) extends Michigan Health Connect’s HIE solutions to its 425 physician members.

11-1-2011 3-16-50 PM

Healthland EMR client Glacial Ridge Health System (MN) becomes the first hospital in Minnesota to achieve Meaningful Use under Medicare’s EHR incentive program.

Cerner implements Oracle Enterprise Manager to support cloud-based services.

11-1-2011 3-17-41 PM

Children’s Hospital and Health System (WI) begins training users on its new Epic system in preparation for a go-live in late 2012 or early 2013. The project will cost $120 million over five years.

11-1-2011 3-19-04 PM

Convergent renames its RCM division Convergent Healthcare (formerly AHC) and introduces its Convergent CARE product line.

Ohio State University Medical Center goes live on iSirona’s device connectivity solution, connecting 700 wired monitors and wireless ventilators to Epic.

Iatric Systems launches EasyConnect Jaguar, an advanced healthcare interface engine.

Denver-based virtual clinician desktop vendor AventuraHQ hires 15 new employees, most of them in sales and marketing, following its first round of institutional venture funding.


Innovation and Research

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announces its Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q) $100,000 app challenge, designed to encourage the development of easy-to-use online tools that consumers  can use to find quality information on their local physicians and hospitals. The deadline for the competition’s first phase is December 31, 2011.


Technology

11-1-2011 12-05-57 PM

Penn Medicine adds a second pilot using its Penn Research Trial Advisory software, a homegrown application that flags candidates for clinical trials. It’s programmed to look for specific patient criteria that fit current clinical trails and delivers a pop-up alert when medical staff enter patient data into the hospital’s EMR.


Other

11-1-2011 3-21-31 PM

Peirce College (PA) will use software applications from QuadraMed and 3M in its new Health Information Administration bachelor’s degree program.

11-1-2011 1-43-03 PM

A Wolters Kluwer Health survey of physician finds that search engines like Google and Yahoo are second only to professional journals and colleagues as a source of information for diagnosing and treating patients. The same study lists physicians’ top barriers to technology adoption: too expensive, too much data and not enough actionable information, too hard to learn, and too hard to use at the point of care.

Siemens Healthcare announces its commitment to deliver its Soarian solution to small community and rural hospitals. Siemens recently implemented Soarian Clinicals at the 70-bed Platte Valley Medical Center (CO) and at the 202-bed Palisades Medical Center (NJ).

11-1-2011 7-21-32 PM

George Reynolds, VP/CIO and CMIO of Children’s Hospital and Medical Center of Omaha, tells me they’ve decided to go with Epic (displacing Allscripts on the inpatient side, I assume.) They were already using Epic ambulatory. Phase 1 will go live in early 2013 with inpatient, ED, pharmacy, and surgery. If you don’t know George, check out his credentials: he’s an MD, has a Master’s in Medical Management, was director of pediatric critical care at University of Nebraska Medical Center, and now is both CIO and CMIO at Children’s. Not to mention that he’s a funny guy. I need to interview him sometime.

What might have been: as Steve Jobs was near death, he was sketching plans for an iPad holder for hospital beds and designs for other hospital equipment.

Doctors  know that text messaging patient information from smart phones may violate HIPAA, but it’s so efficient that they do it anyway.

11-1-2011 1-33-42 PM

inga_small Researchers find that gastroenterologists who listen to Mozart during colonoscopies improve their precancerous polyp detection rates from 27% to 36%.  Other bodies of research has found that listening to Mozart’s music may result in significant short-term improvement in spatial temporal reasoning.

mrh_small Weird News Andy finds that this sad story sets the pace. A man living in a Chicago group home tells staff he’s having chest pains and asks them to call an ambulance while he waits in his room. Paramedics arrive, and noticing a puncture wound to his chest, think someone stabbed him. Someone did: the man himself, who cut open his own chest to try to remove his pacemaker. He died in the hospital.


Sponsor Updates

  • The Advisory Board Company will host a conference on transforming physician talent development on November 14 in Washington, DC.
  • Encore Health Resources will participate in this week’s Louisiana HIMSS 2011 Fall Conference.
  • DIVURGENT is attending the Virginia HIMSS 2011 Fall Conference and the Midwest HIMSS Fall Technology Conference.
  • API Healthcare will participate in the HealthcareSource User Conference in Las Vegas.
  • Florida Hospital Celebration Health implements the GetWellNetwork solution in its new patient care tower.
  • Cumberland Consulting Group promotes Lindsay Lopez to executive consultant.
  • Hayes Management Consulting announces its new inpatient consulting division, which will be led by Amitav Hajra, formerly of Epic Systems.
  • Stockell Healthcare Systems receives ONC-ATCB certification for its InsightCS Revenue Cycle Information System.
  • Eastland Memorial Hospital (TX) and Hamlin Memorial Hospital (TX) qualify for Meaningful Use money using the Prognosis ChartAccess Comprehensive EHR. Eastland signed their contract in February, went live in June, attested in September, and got their check in October.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.



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Currently there are "9 comments" on this Article:

  1. For Kaity…
    Find companies that cover niches that EPIC does not do Eg. clinical specialty areas, niche ancillary tools, middleware, etc. There are plenty out there just see adds on left…

  2. Kaity: Business Intelligence (BI), clinical and business dashboards, large population studies, business analytics will explode when all of our EMR data becomes digital, find those companies. Also, companies focused on improving patient satisfaction scores, patient experience, patient interactive services will boom based on VBP going into effect in 2012.

  3. Dave Dillehunt, CIO of FirstHealth of the Carolinas for President, he provides practical suggestions to solve real world issues. HISTalk for best Voice of Customer Innovation and Listening Program – now only if vendors would listen to customers like HISTalk does!

  4. Kaity, Agree with HIS Junkie post. Niche, specialty vendors are the way to go. Much more fun and rewarding than the big guys.

  5. Thanks for the kind words. I truly think HIStalk is the best single source of relevant, useful, and up-to-date healthcare IT information that people in our industry can find, so please keep doing what you do. I’m just happy that I could make a small contribution. Love your work!
    DBD

  6. @ Kaity: I am intrigued by your sales philosophy, which aligns perfectly with ours, and would like to speak with you about sales opportunities at Passport Health Communications. Please contact me at 888.661.5657.







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