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April 12, 2012 News 6 Comments

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4-12-2012 10-37-03 PM

The Defense Department’s inspector general finds that drug abuse among Marines in the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Lejeune, NC is hard to detect because of shortcomings in its CHCS and AHLTA EMRs. Prescription information from the VA and civilian doctors are not visible in AHLTA. An Army doctor said AHLTA’s medication module is “a mess,” saying that it’s so bad that doctors just free-text in the patient’s medication list, especially after the most recent update that added interfaces to civilian pharmacies and the VA. The battalion also wanted to implement the EMMA medication dispensing system used by the Army at Fort Bragg, but the Navy nixed that idea over concerns that it might not be HIPAA compliant.


Reader Comments

4-12-2012 9-00-50 PM

From X-Ray Gun: “Re: Philips. In December, decided to discontinue their RIS product, XIRIS in NA. They have also decided to discontinue their Digital Dictation and VR solution.” Unverified. They live on at least as artifacts on the company’s webpage.

4-12-2012 8-59-11 PM

From WildcatWell: “Re: requirement to have health insurance like car insurance. Will it flood my TV with endless commercials such as we see now from Allstate, GEICO, et al? It’ll be worse than political season! But, imagine: ‘15 minutes on HIStalk could save you $15K or more on life insurance.’ Send me a royalty! Keep up the good work.” I would need to dress Inga up in all white with red lipstick like that loopy Flo chick from the Progressive commercials, which are indeed ubiquitous. I’m more of a fan of the Allstate ones since they feature Dennis Haysbert, best known for playing Pedro Cerrano, the Jobu-worshipping outfielder in Major League, one of the best movies ever.

From Recent Interviewee: “Re: interview. I’ve been answering very nice e-mails since the HIStalk interview ran. Congratulations on such a great service you provide to the industry. Everyone reads it.” Thanks. I do quite a few interviews and always let the interviewee know upfront that the result is usually quite a few reach-outs from folks who’ve lost touch over the years. I don’t think they generally believe it until it happens. Healthcare IT really is a small world and most of the players just move around in it without ever straying far.

4-12-2012 9-12-15 PM

From Gesundheit: “Re: Henry Ford Health System. The $100 million MIMS system was built in the 1980s, when there were no good vendor offerings. It lasted over 20 years – not bad in today’s environment. However, adding $300 million for Epic is insanity or some lack of governance process or client acceptance. I’d like to see the fact finding on this one.”

From Ixnay: “Re: Meditech. Heard they’re ditching LSS to create their own ambulatory product.” Unverified. That rumor has been going around for at least a year and they’ve bought the remainder of LSS in the mean time. I don’t know if it’s a competitive offering, but the rumors would suggest that at least some folks think it isn’t. Most inpatient vendors still have a weak ambulatory albatross hanging around their necks, not surprising for systems whose underpinnings go back decades when nobody in hospitals cared what physician practices did.

4-12-2012 9-02-38 PM

From Jonathan Grau: “Re: International Congress on Nursing Informatics. The meeting is one of the most important activities of the International Medical Informatics Association -Nursing Informatics Special Interest Group (IMIA/NI-SIG) and is held every third year to promote all aspects of nursing and health informatics globally. We expect over 800 in Montreal, June 23-27.” I don’t usually give free plugs since I don’t want to open the floodgates, but I’m feeling uncharacteristically generous. Jonathan is with AMIA. Attendees can hang around afterward and catch the Montreal jazz festival, with performers that include Norah Jones, BB King, Ben Harper, George Thorogood and the Destroyers, James Taylor, Liza Minelli, Seal, Stanley Clarke, old favorite Van der Graaf Generator, and an interesting group whose 1970s LPs populate part of my collection, Tangerine Dream. They put me to sleep every time with their all-instrumental space music that sounds like Pink Floyd taking an on-stage break, but I like the name and covers.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

inga_small Catch up on your HIStalk Practice reading so you have the full scoop on these posts: PCMHs improve quality and reduce costs in New Jersey. CareCloud CEO Albert Santalo joins President Obama during the signing of the JOBS bill. AMA names HP its preferred provider for technology products. Dr. Gregg sends out an RFP for an EHR – and stirs some good discussion from readers. I am a firm believer that you can never be too rich, too thin, or have too many HIStalk Practice e-mail subscribers, so please either send money or diet tips or sign up for the e-mail notifications. Thanks for reading.

Listening: the brand new first album from Alabama Shakes, Joplin-esque (or is it Otis Redding?) Southern soul from Athens, AL, just in time for summer. Singer Brittany Howard, 23 years old, belts it out and leaves it all on the stage. Killer Led Zep cover here.

4-12-2012 10-43-28 PM

Travis is on fire over on HIStalk Mobile, with one excellent, meaty post after another. His latest: Pagers – There’s an App For That, which arrives at thought-provoking conclusions about the situations when hospitals can and can’t do like drug dealers did in the 1990s in dumping the typewriter of the communications world, alpha pagers, which surely have no market left other than in healthcare.

On the Jobs Board: HL7 Business Analyst, Director of Marketing, Director of Business Development. On Healthcare IT Jobs: PACS Application Coordinator II, McKesson Paragon Consultants, Cerner Go-Live Project Manager.

It’s a strange, strange world we live in, Master Jack. Reality TV that’s anything but real, rampant Facebook narcissism, crumbling economies, and celebrities whose IQs and morality levels compete like golfers shooting for the lowest score. One thing you can count on, though – like Big Ben or Old Faithful, I will be predictably spooning with my PC to bring you news, rumors, and Cerrano photos almost every day of the week just like I’ve been doing for nine (!!) years. How might one harvest this rich outpouring of prosaic potpourri, you might ask? Simple – just click the Subscribe to Updates link at the upper right of the page to get into the exclusive club of industry movers and shakers who read HIStalk but probably won’t admit it publicly, putting it right up there with pr0n in the guilty pleasure category. Should  you wish to take our relationship to a deeper level, may I suggest: (a) electronically bond with Inga, Dr. Jayne, and me on social not-working sites like Facebook and LinkedIn, where rejection is impossible because we accept connections from everyone; (b) send me rumors and secrets; (c) pay homage to the companies that pay the bills by perusing the Resource Center and the plethora of newly animation-free ads to your left, replacing heartfelt applause with mouse clicks to see what they all actually do; (d) if you are a provider seeking consulting help, broadcast your RFI to several companies in seconds via the RFI Blaster; (e) tell someone you know about HIStalk since they won’t hear about it otherwise; and (f) bow your head humbly as I strap on the Honorary Reflector Thingy in knighting you with gratitude as my tireless confidante and defender. Thanks for reading.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

4-12-2012 10-40-55 PM

Emdeon reports Q4 revenue of $284 million, up 3% from a year ago. Net loss for the quarter was $71 million compared to the previous year’s net income of $15 million. Emdeon, which went private last year, says the loss was “primarily due to costs and expenses, including increased interest expense.” The company also announces its intention to re-price its existing senior secured credit facilities to take advantage of current market rates and borrow $60 million of additional term loans for general corporate purposes, including potential acquisitions.

4-12-2012 10-41-33 PM

McKesson shares rose 4% to a 52-week high Thursday on news that its $4 billion per year drug supply contract with the VA will be extended for up to eight more years.

I recently interviewed Brian Phelps, the ED doc who co-founded iPad-based system vendor Montrue Technologies, whose Sparrow ED product won the Nuance’s Mobile Clinical Voice Challenge that I judged a couple of months ago. The company learned Wednesday that it had won the $160,000 Southern Oregon Angel Investment prize. It had already received $200,000 in angel investor money at a similar conference and some pretty nice prizes from Nuance.

4-12-2012 10-44-35 PM

CPSI will move some of its Mobile, AL operations to Fairhope, saying it has run out of room.


Sales

The State of Minnesota selects Hielix, Inc. to develop a statewide HIE.

4-12-2012 10-46-21 PM

Bayfront Health System (FL) signs an agreement with Unibased Systems Architecture to deploy its surgery management and physician order management solutions across more than 20 operating rooms.

Blue Mountain Hospital (UT) chooses clinical and financial solutions from Prognosis. 

Orion Health wins the HIE contract for North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership. Also announced: former T-System VP Joe Lastinger was named CEO of the HIE.

Franciscan Alliance selects iSirona’s enterprise device connectivity solution to integrate medical devices with Epic in its 14 hospitals.

Care Logistics sells something that sounds kind of software related to Catholic Healthcare East, but I can’t figure out what it is from this sly hint: “This comprehensive approach combines an organizational commitment to efficiency, systemwide process reengineering and enterprise logistics software to help hospitals achieve reliable and predictive operational performance in the areas of throughput, quality and patient experience.” Their site is similarly vague, but is clogged up with enormous blocks of dense text sure to send all but the most determined visitors fleeing.


People

4-12-2012 6-27-48 PM

Post acute care IT provider American HealthTech names David Houghton (Advocat) as COO.

4-12-2012 6-29-29 PM

Hospice and homecare IT provider CareAnyware names Ray DeArmitt (CellTrak Technologies, Allscripts Homecare) as sales VP.

4-12-2012 6-31-46 PM

Quest Diagnostics appoints former Philips Healthcare CEO Stephen H. Rusckowski president and CEO immediately after his resignation from Philips. He replaces Surya N. Mohapatra, who will join the company’s board.

4-12-2012 7-19-56 PM

Philips Healthcare promotes Deborah DiSanzo to CEO. She was previously CEO of Patient Care and Clinical Informatics for the company.

4-12-2012 6-45-32 PM

MediClick names Scott Pettingell (GHX) VP of the company’s new consulting services business.

The Healthcare Financial Management Association appoints Joseph J. Fifer its president and CEO, succeeding the retiring Richard L. Clarke. He most recently was VP of hospital finance at Spectrum Health.


Announcements and Implementations

The Hawaii REC names Curas its preferred eClinicalWorks vendor.

The Carolina eHealth Alliance (SC) announces that 11 Charleston area emergency departments are now connected to its HIE.

NexJ partners with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (MA) to digitize the health system’s Passport to TRUST program and make it available through NexJ’s Connected Wellness Platform.

The New York Times profiles remote monitoring system vendor AirStrip Technologies in its list of companies it says are pushing healthcare transformation. Also on the list: Avado (Web-based forms and health status tracking); ClickCare (secure physician communication for consultations); ZocDoc (making physician appointments); and Telcare (cloud-based glucose meter data sharing).

Yuma Regional Medical Center (AZ) will go live May 1 on its $73 million Epic system.


Government and Politics

CMS Innovation Center picks seven states to pilot the Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative, which aims to strengthen coordination and collaboration between private and public healthcare payers to improve primary care.


Other

The athenahealth folks sent over this video entitled It Sucks to Be Me, which highlights why it’s not easy being a physician, nurse, administrator, and patient. OK, so it’s mildly cheesy like an overwrought, applause-milking truck show Broadway musical on opening night in Omaha  (check out the drummer’s cowbell and wood block work – think Waiting for Guffman), but you’ve got to love athenahealth for its out-of-the-box marketing.

Several members of the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission (MedPAC) express concern that federal incentives may not cover the true cost of implementing an EHR. Some specific worries are that Stage 1 requirements are set too high and some required elements are too expensive to implement and offer questionable value.

Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman writes a Forbes piece on how consumer technology can be used in healthcare. He mentions FaceTime, Kinect, and FitBit. He included a video from Madonna Hospital showing some futuristic ideas that I was going to run here, but I noticed it’s a couple of years old and I would hope they’ve come up with new stuff since then.

This seems like a bad idea: an Indiana hospital implements a Web-based incident management system, intended for use during tornadoes and other natural disasters during which Internet connectivity is often lost.

4-12-2012 10-50-23 PM

A laid-off IT security administrator at Waterbury Hospital (CT) is arrested for hacking into the hospital’s computer system hours after he was marched out, using his boss’s own e-mail account to send him threatening messages.

A newspaper’s investigation finds that five electrophysiologists – cardiologists with the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center were each paid a $1.3 million bonus in 2011, raising their one-year pay to $2 million each. The only employee at the state university to earn more was the basketball coach.


Sponsor Updates

  • EHRtv posts its HIMSS 2012 interview with T-System CEO Sunny Sanyal.
  • Macadamian assists in the design of Elsevier’s Mosby’s Certified Nurse Exam Prep smart phone app and its development for the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad. 
  • HealthMEDX provides an update on its HIPAA 5010 readiness preparations.
  • Allscripts President Lee Shapiro participated this week in a TechNexus panel discussion on the changing face of technology in healthcare.
  • A white paper from Care360 discusses the positive impact of technology on the quality of patient care.
  • NextGen will integrate Entrada’s clinical documentation technology with its PM/EHR.
  • GE Healthcare launches Centricity EDI Services 5.4,which includes support for HIPAA 5010 and stronger analytics.
  • Beacon Partners expands its ICD-10 Assessment Service with the addition of an ICD-10 translator and business intelligence application from McGladrey.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

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The Colorado Regional Health Information Organization (CORHIO) releases a report on integrating behavioral health information through health information exchanges. Although agreeing that information on mental illness is a vital part of the overall data influencing the health of a patient, a role-based tiered consent structure was recommended. Surprisingly, the roles weren’t based on physician vs. nurse vs. checkout clerk but rather the specialty of physicians involved. For example, participants in community focus groups felt that specialists such as OB/GYN or dermatology had less need to know information than did hospital-based physicians. Being a primary care doc at heart, I think any time you start excluding classes of providers (especially when drugs to treat mental health have a number of potential interactions and contraindications) it’s a detriment to patient safety. Who will be liable when harm occurs because a physician was denied information that would have made a difference? Needless to say, I’m not a fan of pick-and-choose consent policies.

CMS has compiled individual quality and resource reports for physicians in Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska. Practices have been e-mailed a link to the reports, but only 3,300 of 23,730 reports have been accessed. I reached out to at least 10 physicians in these states and none of them knew anything about it. My guess is the e-mails either went to spam folders or are sitting in some administrator’s inbox.

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I’m a reasonably diligent reader of the Federal Register but somehow I missed this item. The Drug Enforcement Administration is increasing physician fees for the privilege of prescribing controlled substances by nearly 33% – from $551 to $731. This allows us the privilege of having drug-seekers hassle us for meds and increases scrutiny of our practice patterns (not to mention an increase in medical liability insurance premiums.) It seems like what the feds provide in MU funding just slowly erodes to other areas.

I’m a little behind on my reading, so I laughed when I came across this article about the recent Utah Medicaid data breach reported to affect 24,000 patients. As of today, the number is closer to 900,000.

One of the folks I’ve found on Twitter has turned out to be one of my new favorite bloggers. Skeptical Scalpel is written by a surgeon with considerable (40+ years) experience in the field. Worth a view, especially if you have a clinical background. And if you aren’t clinical, it may provide some good conversation-starters to help you bond with physicians who are generally ticked off at the world when all you’re trying to do is fix their laptops.

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I enjoy reader correspondence and always like to try to share information when I can. Recently a reader asked, “I am looking for a good hospital BYOD policy for physicians. We’re enabling physician use of iPads and similar devices to connect to our clinical systems and I am in need of a policy that covers their use. Have you come across a good one yet? If so, can you share it?” Being from a strictly “don’t touch my network” hospital, I don’t have personal experience with the thrill of being able to actually use my own device on the network. I do however have much experience hooking to the patient access network so I can use the forbidden Twitter and Facebook. I also have experience carrying both my own smart phone and a hospital-issue BlackBerry, which really makes me look goofy at times. Can anyone help a fellow reader? E-mail me.

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Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.



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Currently there are "6 comments" on this Article:

  1. “Emdeon, which went private last year, says the loss was “primarily due to costs and expenses, including increased interest expense.”

    If you take a look at the linked financial statement, the loss comes from $84 million in “transaction related costs,” almost all of which came in the 4th quarter and presumably is from the purchase and privatization by Blackrock. There is also an extra $11 million in interest expenses compared to last year ($73m total), with all of the additional expense coming in the 4th quarter.

    Is this going to be another case of private equity leveraging up a company, getting short term growth, extracting capital as profits, and then dumping it back on the market as an enterprise with little margin for error due to heavy debts, but with a near-term success story that lulls investors (2012 will be a great year vs 2011)? Or will they actually add more in value than they extract? Time will tell.

  2. Re:I’m more of a fan of the Allstate ones since they feature Dennis Haysbert, best known for playing Pedro Cerrano…

    Nope…best known as President Palmer on 24! Too bad they had to kill him off. But then almost everybody died on 24, except Jack!

  3. Regarding Henry Ford, as I understand, the $100M was the price just to upgrade their legacy homegrown EHR to meet MU and go forward regulations, not the total cost to develop. Heads at the top should roll!

  4. The deficiencies in EHR generated medication lists are extensive, involving all EHR systems, that go beyond interoperability. You report findings of “drug abuse among Marines in the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Lejeune, NC is hard to detect.” Heck, I have found that medications merely disappear from the EHR generated lists. It is tedious and time consuming to track what happened. Ink on the written page does not disappear.

    Drug abuse has been more difficult for all doctors to detect since EHRs went into government promulgated use. Traditional record keeping systems were more fit for purpose.

  5. Need some help from the awesome visitors of this site. For an academic project, I need to talk to a few ambulatory, primary care practices of 25-50 physicians in the Chicagoland area who have an EMR. I have not been able to get this information online – so any help will be much appreciated.

    [From Mr. H] They won’t be able to help unless you provide your e-mail address.







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