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August 28, 2012 News 7 Comments

Top News

8-28-2012 8-19-03 PM

Johns Hopkins will use a newly received $8.9 million grant to improve coordination in the ICU. Peter Pronovost MD, PhD, who leads the Johns Hopkins Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality, says he’ll be looking for ways to integrate new technologies into ICUs that he says “look the same as they did 30 years ago.” Part of that effort will be to develop software that allows medical devices to communicate with each other and with the EMR. The money comes from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation as part of a 10-year, $500 million Patient Care Program that was announced this week. Gordon Moore is the 83-year-old founder of Intel who in 1965 postulated Moore’s Law, which says that the power of computing circuitry doubles every two years.


Reader Comments

8-28-2012 9-02-27 PM

inga_small From Marketing Gal: “Re: HIMSS. Would you suggest participating in the Exhibitor Spotlight for a product launch?” Vendor readers, feel free to weigh in on whether the Exhibitor Spotlight would be a good way to make a big splash amidst a sea of 1,000 vendors trying to make big splashes. It costs $950 for corporate members.

inga_small From Lost in the Woods” “Re: Patient portals. Do you have any idea how and what vendors charge, especially those for practices?” I think it would make sense to just ask them, but readers, please leave a comment if you can help.

From Former MCK Employee: “Re: Practice Partner Seattle office. Developers and QA are leaving as MCK shifts its focus to the new SaaS application.” Unverified.

8-28-2012 9-04-52 PM

From Crook County Doctor: “Re: U Chicago Medical Center. Several days of Citrix logon misidentification troubles affecting all physicians. The help desk recording warns doctors to beware when logging on to Epic.” Unverified.

From The PACS Designer: “Re: ONC. Wimps out on image sharing. TPD is disappointed and angry that ONC has allowed vendors to intimidate the comment group when it comes to image sharing among practitioners. The overall comments were positive about the subject, but the powerful had the upper hand and made sure that image sharing was excluded from the next phase of Meaningful Use. David Clunie, a highly respected blogger on DICOM, did some sleuthing and points the finger at the Good Enuff participants. I can see why they wouldn’t want the image sharing, as it would reduce the need for more imaging at the next treatment facility and lower their chances to sell more imaging equipment.”


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Here’s the latest musical production of The American College of Medical Informatimusicology, “Gimme My DaM Data,” featuring HIT notables Ross Martin MD (founder and HIStalkapalooza Elvis tribute artist), Harry Greenspun MD, e-Patient Dave, Todd Park, and “a cast of dozens.”

HIStalk sponsors with executives on Modern Healthcare’s 2012 100 Most Influential People in Healthcare list include Aetna (Mark Bertolini), McKesson (John Hammergren), and MedAssets (John Bardis).

This isn’t a pitch, just a recap. A relative saddled me with selling her 16 GB AT&T iPhone 4 after she upgraded, and it became obvious that messing around with Craigslist and eBay scammers and fools was going to be a big waste of my time. I ran across TriPhonia. Their online form took a few seconds to complete and I got an instant e-mail offer of $175 for my stated condition of “excellent.” They shipped a prepaid Fedex mailer and e-mailed a couple of days later saying it had a few scratches and wasn’t quite “excellent,” but said they’d still offer $158. I accepted, and within about two minutes I had the balance in my Amazon account. Maybe I could have held out for a few extra dollars elsewhere, but it was well worth it to just sell it and move on, plus they guarantee they’ll wipe the phone clean before reselling it. Do your own due diligence (almost all of the similar services have terrible reviews), but it might be worth a look.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

8-28-2012 7-45-10 PM

WellPoint Chairman and CEO Angela Braly resigns over criticism that the company is underperforming. Above is the five-year stock price chart for WellPoint, which was voted by hospital executives last week as the worst insurance company in the country.

8-28-2012 8-03-35 PM

Dell signs a deal to provide computer kiosks for SoloHealth, whose interactive healthcare kiosks provide free health screenings from retail locations. CoinStar (aka Redbox) and WellPoint are investors.


Sales

8-28-2012 9-08-38 PM

Lexington Medical Center (SC) selects Patient Access and Payment Certainty solutions from Passport Health Communications to integrate with Epic.

8-28-2012 9-09-31 PM

Erie County Medical Center (NY) contracts for Omnicell’s G4 automated medical management system.

OCHIN will deploy Caradigm’s Amalga solution.


People

8-28-2012 6-16-49 PM

TeleTracking Technologies promotes Mike Gallup from VP/COO to president/COO.

8-28-2012 6-19-01 PM

Business intelligence vendor Agilum Healthcare hires Winnie Fritz (Carondelet St. Mary’s Hospital)  to lead its healthcare performance improvement consulting service.

8-28-2012 6-19-45 PM

Caradigm names Rich Berner (Cerner) SVP of client services and support.


Announcements and Implementations

Memorial Health Systems (FL) nears completion of its two-year, $150 million Cerner implementation.

HealthHIE Nevada goes live on eHealth Image Exchange, allowing HIE participants to share diagnostic quality images.

The Pennsylvania eHealth Collaborative awards grants of $1.5 million each to four organizations to promote regional and statewide electronic information exchange.

8-28-2012 9-13-07 PM

Implementation draws to a close at two Missoula, MT, hospitals: St. Patrick Hospital (above) will go live in January on Epic, while Community Medical Center is on target for a November live with Cerner. Each hospital’s ambulatory clinics have begun their migrations (St. Patrick to Epic and Community to NextGen).

St. Mark’s Medical Center (TX) replaces Meditech with McKesson Paragon.

Virtua (NJ) initiates CPOE across four hospitals using Siemens Soarian.

PerfectServe launches a new version of its clinical communications app for iPhone and Android.

OnShift announces new acuity-based staffing capabilities for its long-term care scheduling and shift management software.


Government and Politics

HHS launches a competition for developers to create apps for reducing cancer among women of color. The top three developers will split $100,000 in prize money.


Here’s a Meaningful Use Stage 2 overview by Justin Barnes of Greenway.


Innovation and Research

IBM expects to market its Watson computer beyond healthcare to consumer uses, with plans to turn it into a Siri-like voice-activated analytics tool. IBM says the next version will work on tablets and smart phones, but they’re still working to add functionality such as speech recognition and the ability to understand images. Apparently IBM’s vision of its value for patients doesn’t necessarily include the participation of physicians – according to its VP of innovation, it will eventually so good at answering patient questions and making diagnoses that “you don’t need any intermediary.”


Other

8-28-2012 7-12-37 PM

Most healthcare providers still can’t justify the expense of infection control systems, though new incentive programs may spur adoption, according to a KLAS report. The market is dominated by best-of-breed solutions, with CareFusion taking top scores in product training and ease of use. Hospira led in interface capabilities and mandated reporting.

Allstate Insurance Company sues a Florida rehab hospital that it claims falsified medical records to bill it for $7.6 million in unnecessary medical services. Allstate says the hospital markets heavily in Michigan, which does not cap no-fault auto insurance payouts. The state is also investigating the hospital for alleged patient abuse.

A man reviewing the contents of a storage unit he bought at auction finds human brains, hearts, and lungs preserved in soda cups and plastic food containers. The unit was once used by a former Florida medical examiner who had been fired in 2003 for not completing autopsy reports.


Sponsor Updates

8-28-2012 6-29-16 PM

  • AT&T CMIO Geeta Nayyar discusses early successes and high participant engagement rates in AT&T’s DiabetesManager pilot.
  • SimplifyMD adds billing software provider Healthpac as a reseller for its EHR.
  • Greenway will offer Isabel Healthcare’s medical diagnosis tool with its PrimeSUITE EHR.
  • ICA’s chief marketing officer John Tempesco speaks at this week’s AlliedHIE-sponsored workshop on Direct healthcare communication.
  • The Pittsburgh Technology Council includes TeleTracking Technologies as a finalist for its Tech 50 Awards in the tech titan category.
  • iSirona is named the 82nd fastest growing company in America in the Inc. 500.
  • The Achievers names Impact Advisors to its list of 50 Most Engaged Workplaces.
  • AirStrip Technologies incorporates a real-time Meaningful Use tracker in its mHealth platform.
  • Imprivata customers share best practices in workflow, securing patient data, and enhancing patient care during this week’s VMworld 2012.
  • UpToDate by Wolters Kluwer Health adds psychiatry as its 20th specialty. The company also announces a partnership with the Altos Group to develop a sepsis mortality reduction program.
  • IDC MarketScape ranks Medicity as a leader of packaged HIE solutions.  
  • Billians adds 7,400 hospital social media links to its Portal healthcare sales and marketing database.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.



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Currently there are "7 comments" on this Article:

  1. Re: patient portal costs.
    Eclinicalworks: cost included
    When we last priced Allscripts Professional a year ago, the patient portal DOUBLED the monthly cost in fees.
    We calculated after 15 years, we would save $120,000 per MD going with ecw. Not including compounded savings if invested.

  2. Patient Portals: “first-generation” portals, where you arranged your own website hosting, tended to be pretty expensive. You had to license the software, then lease a server and deal with security, data communications, etc.

    Most newer portals are hosted, and you can sign up for a fixed monthly fee that includes software, hosting, and support. Expect to pay on the order of $100 per month per provider. Hosted portals are not as configurable, but probably do what most providers would want.

    Connecting your portal to your EHR is still somewhat challenging, depending on which EHR you have and what data you want to make available to your patients. Be sure to inquire whether the patient portal you are interested in has a connector for your specific EHR, and whether there are extra costs involved. But if you just want a portal for basic messaging, bill pay, etc., you may not need an EHR connection.

  3. Everyone should read the David Clunie blog you link to, it’s FASCINATING (http://dclunie.blogspot.com/2012/08/why-onc-whimped-out-annotated.html). His OCD thoroughness is to be commended.

    I’m not sure PACS designer has it right – it’s not simply protecting turf (though that’s part of it). Single sign in across systems/vendors/etc.? Good luck with that.

    However, reads SHOULD NOT MISS the comments about EPIC in the blog. They round up a huge group of customers to submit the EPIC-penned responses, including the “remove this before submitting to ONC” lines. D’oh!

  4. Re: McKesson Seattle office. This is the office for “Practice Partner”, which was a small ambulatory EMR/practice management company acquired by McKesson in 2007. Practice Partner was founded by a family physician, Dr. Andy Ury, in 1983, in his basement. Many of the original employees were still working for the company at the time of its acquisition.

    Practice Partner had an extremely loyal customer base and produced a lot of innovations that are still not available in many EMR systems. It was one of the first commercial physician-office EMRs and possibly the first to offer advanced drug interaction checking.

    It’s worth a moment to reflect on the passion and dedication of innovators who built this industry from the ground up and not let this passing go unnoticed.

  5. My inner geek is smiling to see Gordon Moore mentioned. Here’s a little known healthcare-related corollary to Moore’s Law:

    Healthcare insurance premiums to small / medium businesses to double every 3.5 years….

  6. “‘The help desk recording warns doctors to beware when logging on to Epic.’ Unverified”

    That would not be the first time that EMR systems had flaws that resulted in misidentifications.







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