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Monday Morning Update 9/17/12

September 15, 2012 News 7 Comments

From Another View: “Re: your Time Capsule editorial. You have missed a competitor to Epic … Sunrise/Eclipsys. Ring any bells? Long Island Jewish has it installed as well as others and it is well received. Is the price tag of Epic is going to bankrupt medicine? I really think Sunrise could very well be the Apple product that beat the giant Microsoft. Any thoughts?” Read more closely: I specifically mentioned (twice, in fact) Cerner, Eclipsys, and McKesson as Epic’s big-hospital competitors. That was true when I wrote the article in 2007, but I would expect that Allscripts/Eclipsys and McKesson have faded since then in terms of big-hospital customer count. Epic’s huge number of wins since 2007 were replacements, meaning their gain was somebody else’s loss. No, I don’t think that Allscripts (or any other vendor, at the moment) can compete with Epic in the large-hospital inpatient clinical systems market. Reasons: (a) incomplete integration; (b) narrower product line; (c) lower customer satisfaction; (d) lack of momentum; (e) hospital consolidations favoring existing Epic customers; and (f) trying to disrupt the status quo with one hand firmly planted in Wall Street’s lap. It’s not the end of the world for Allscripts – 80% hospitals aren’t candidates for Epic but need a lower-priced, pre-packaged, hosted product, meaning the biggest companies to beat are Meditech, McKesson, Cerner, and Siemens. Struggling to compete against Epic in big-hospital accounts hasn’t hurt Cerner, which doesn’t bag a lot of fresh Millennium wins over Epic but still has turned its assets into a $12 billion company. If you want to score Epic vs. Allscripts without emotion or subjectivity, it’s easy – just watch the number of new sales, the total number of beds and EPs covered, and KLAS scores.

9-15-2012 1-51-48 PM

From Music Lover: “Re: Epic UGM. You missed it, Mr. H! Some cool end users rocked the house Monday night. Anyone have pics or YouTube?” I only found the video of the opening session above, which is a clever riff on a horrible Journey song (was that redundant?) that reminds of me when Mrs. HIStalk dragged me to grit my teeth through the traveling Broadway version of “Rock of Ages” (who would have guessed that disco would be more fondly remembered than 80s hair bands?) By user group standards, though, it is darned cool. From the end of the video, it appears next year’s theme will be, predictably, Deep Space (the new 14,300-seat Deep Space auditorium pictured above will be open then.)

Listening: new from The Avett Brothers from Concord, NC, who have matured from frantic newgrass revivalists into something like an indie, rootsy Beatles with banjos. Long-term fans will have to decide whether the de-emphasis on hillbilly picking and grinning is inevitable maturity or perhaps overly slick production by hit-maker Rick Rubin. The new album is more accessible and probably less embarrassing to crank up in a vehicle that isn’t a pickup truck.

I was making an appointment for my annual PCP visit last week. After navigating through the annoying phone tree, waiting on hold, and negotiating with the scheduler for a convenient appointment time, the phone connection dropped on their end. My call-back went right to the “we’re too busy to talk to you now” message, so I figured I’d just try another day. The next day, I got an e-mail confirmation for a date/time I had declined, so it must have gone through as we were changing it. I noticed an unobtrusive link in the e-mail to “click here to cancel or reschedule” and darned if it didn’t work – I clicked, it gave me available days/times on the screen, I clicked on a convenient date/time, and I was all set. It actually felt like 2001 instead of 1980 in using Expedia to book a flight instead of wasting everybody’s time by calling a travel agent for an inefficient and entirely unnecessary telephone conversation. It’s not exactly cutting edge, but very few businesses let you schedule appointments online (restaurants being one exception, and that’s only because of OpenTable). Scheduling an appointment is a lot different than buying a product online, so the usual snarky Amazon references don’t apply.

9-15-2012 7-31-54 AM

Forbes chose the wrong company as the most innovative in healthcare, according to readers who said it’s actually Epic (had Forbes included non-publicly traded companies, of course). Cerner wasn’t too far off the mark, though. New poll to your right: have you ever requested and reviewed your electronic medical information from your PCP? The poll accepts comments if you’d care to elaborate on your experience. I didn’t even bother asking about hospital records since I know what a nightmare that can be.

9-15-2012 12-53-57 PM

Allow me to introduce new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor ChartWise Medical Systems. The Rhode Island-based company describes ChartWise:CDI as a Computer-Assisted Clinical Documentation Improvement solution that improves the accuracy and speed of documentation. it guides physicians to high-quality and complete documentation, using its built-in intelligence to analyze labs, meds, and procedures to suggest diagnoses and complications that may not have been correctly coded. Easily retrievable, auditable, and AHIMA-compliant query templates ensure compliance and consistency for internal QA and external auditors, with physician communication automatically initiated and documented by e-mail. Customers can reduce staff and physician training, ensure continuity when key team members leave, and get real-time metrics for their CDI programs. It’s offered by a subscription-based license, online training is free, and ICD-10 is built in and carries no upgrade fee. Customers can use it their way, regardless of whether documentation is on paper or EMR and with or without the participation of physicians. Half of Medicare paybacks are due to erroneous or incomplete documentation and you know the RAC auditors are out there digging since they’re paid a percentage of recovered dollars. The company was founded by Jon Elion MD, who also developed the Heartlab imaging software that was acquired by Agfa in 2005. Thanks to ChartWise for supporting HIStalk.

9-15-2012 1-42-10 PM

CapSite releases its new HIE report. It shows a big jump in hospital HIE participation in the past year (from 30% to 50%), with 71% of respondents planning to invest in new HIE technologies in the next two years. Surprisingly, two-thirds of respondents chose their primary HIE vendor because the company was an extension of their core hospital system (Epic was the most-named HIE vendor, so that gives you an idea). That probably reflects the uptick in private HIEs.

A hospital in England uses Skype for video teleconsultations with ADHD and Asperger syndrome  patients.

9-15-2012 2-40-47 PM

The flagship product of Detroit-based startup SchedFull manages an online waiting list for physician practices that allows them to fill appointments opened up when patients cancel, alerting the standby patient by e-mail or SMS if an opening matches their expressed preferences. The product is in beta.

Twenty-three employers participated in a jobs fair that was held last week in the new Sheik Zayed Tower at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, hoping to hire healthcare IT and informatics graduates from Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, and University of Maryland University College (surely the strangest and most multiply-redundant college name ever, which they cheerfully admit and explain here). The event was held in the Chevy Chase Conference Center, which I assume is named after the nearby municipality rather than the embarrassingly unfunny comedian who did in fact have a Hollywood theater named after him for six weeks in 1993, which is all it took for his horrible late night TV show to flatline.

9-15-2012 3-58-57 PM

The Dallas-Fort Worth TV station covers the technology used in a new Texas Health Alliance hospital.

The local paper covers the use of shared medical appointments by Reliant Medical Group (MA), in which 90-minute visits are scheduled with groups of patients suffering from the same chronic health issues. Patients have the option to request one-on-one doctor time during the visit if they feel the need, but three-quarters of them like the group appointments. That’s an interesting approach to maximizing the use of resources while providing peer support for patients, which is probably far more effective than the usual online groups. All that’s missing is a financial incentive for consuming fewer resources, which is of course a healthcare problem not limited to how patients schedule their visits.

9-15-2012 3-28-27 PM

Raul Recarey is named executive director of the Illinois HIE in his third HIE leadership role in less than three years, having been named COO of the West Virginia Health Information Network in November 2009 and CEO of Missouri Health Connection in March 2011.

Indian River Medical Center (FL) will implement centralized appointment scheduling using McKesson’s Paragon Resource Scheduling, which issues printable appointment itineraries and procedure instructions. After the May go-live, the hospital will implement patient self-scheduling.

9-15-2012 3-22-21 PM

A hospital in Scotland is found by NHS to be cancelling 12% of its outpatient appointments due to problems with its new computer system. The hospital cancelled 105,000 outpatient appointments and 7,500 inpatient appoints in a 15-month period.

9-15-2012 3-35-06 PM

The author of an upcoming book says that children’s hospitals are banking huge cash surpluses and paying eye-popping executive salaries despite their non-profit status and ongoing solicitation for donations, which he says threatens their non-profit status, government subsidies, and community reputations.

California’s attorney general sends out subpoenas to several big health systems (Scripps, Sharp, Sutter, and others) in launching an antitrust investigation to determine whether consolidation among hospitals and physician groups is increasing healthcare costs through increased pricing power over payers.

A nurse working for an Atlanta-area anesthesia service is released to rehab after being charged with driving the wrong way on a highway and causing several vehicles to crash, injuring six people. She is alleged to have stolen propofol from Gwinnett Medical Center and starting an IV on herself to administer it in her car right before the accidents.

Vince tells the story of Compucare and QuadraMed this week, going right to the source in somehow connecting with Dynamic Control co-founder David Pomerance, who then introduced him to Ron Aprahamian, whose fascinating story is that he bought all of Compucare’s stock for $50,000 as a 29-year-old, struck a deal with Meditech, took Compucare public for $40 million, took leadership roles at Superior and First Consulting Group as those companies were acquired … well, just check Vince’s slides because it’s too amazing for me to summarize. I’m glad Vince shared Ron’s story because even though I knew his name, I had no idea how much influence he had on so many major industry players. We would never have heard these stories if it weren’t for Vince, who seems to be the only person willing to work hard to preserve our industry’s history. If you can help him with stories, photos, or connections to folks he should talk to, give him a shout.

E-mail Mr. H.



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Currently there are "7 comments" on this Article:

  1. Having used one provider’s “electronic appointment” option that merely generated an email and still required a phone call to complete after going back-and-forth over possible appointment times, I wonder when online scheduling will become the norm in healthcare.

  2. Well some things never change. I can remember going to an IDX user group meeting back in the 90’s when they were on top and they had KC and Sunshine band play with everybody wearing disco clothes…

  3. Mr. H, put together your initial piece about Epic & Eclipsys with Vince’s ongoing history lesson and I find a strong thread running through it all. Basically, all HIT firms that make it to the national level have sown the seeds of their own destruction. And it’s not just pride or Wall Street.
    Someday I’m going to write that piece, and post it here…Stay tuned.

  4. If you’re into building / engineering, here’s a deep dive on Deep Space design:

    Thornton Tomasetti Associate Yasmin Rehmanjee video presentation on Epic-Deep Space in Verona, Wisconsin.

    Thornton Tomasetti is providing structural design, building skin and construction support services—which includes consulting on building envelope systems and development of a fully detailed Tekla model—for the 14,300-seat auditorium for Epic Systems Corporation.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oc7JfGjyTns

  5. Aren’t we all outraged at the multi-million dollar salaries of hospital execs?? Boards of directors continue to approve outlandish salaries for CEOs and others at the expense of hard-working staff and public service. Non-profit status doesn’t mean the organization can’t show a positive bottom line and take better care of the community and its employees. We should all cut and paste the piece re children’s hospital exec salaries to our local newspapers and demand closer scrutiny of these public organizations and the boards who are supposed to serve them.







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