News 7/24/13

Top News

A report finds that 81 percent of medical practice respondents who previously said they planned to eventually replace their EHR will actually do it within the next 12 months.

Reader Comments

From Boots: “Re: Quality Systems/NextGen. As a long-time client I don’t know what to make of the situation there. Sometimes the company’s actions make no sense. They seem to be managing to distractions and not to vision or mission. As to the rumors that NextGen is looking for a buyer, I’m not sure they will find one who will meet the shareholders’ often unrealistic expectations.” A couple of industry insiders tell me they believe NextGen is ripe for acquisition, given recent declines in net new software sales and uncertain positioning in the replacement market. A big vendor, such as Siemens, may be interested in them to gain market share. Alternatively a PE firm may pursue them with the intent to clean house, increase revenues, and eventually spin off.

From ShowMe: “Data breach lawsuit. It should be interesting to see what happens in the lawsuit against the federal government following the loss of a VA laptop. Am I the only one who thinks the government is showing a little chutzpah with its argument that the suit should be dismissed since there’s no proof of identity theft … yet?  The government should spend its energy encrypting devices and quit asking our veterans to find a smoking gun.” Details on the lawsuit and the motion for dismissal are here.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CTG announces Q2 numbers: revenues up 0.4 percent from a year ago, EPS of $0.24 versus $0.25. The company notes that earnings growth in 2013 will be less than originally expected due to hospital clients dealing with “reimbursement reductions caused by the US federal budget sequestration.”

GE reports that its healthcare division logged a five percent increase in Q2 profit, though revenue was flat.

HealthStream reports Q2 results: revenue up 24 percent, EPS flat, but beating estimates by a penny. Shares hit an all-time high Tuesday with an 11.4 percent jump, up 60 percent since mid-April.

Lexmark reports good Q2 results, with revenue of its Perceptive Software business unit up 34 percent as the company transitions out of the inkjet printer business and into services.

Sales

Catholic Health Initiatives selects Conifer Health Solutions to provide population health management and data analytics tools.

Hospital Sisters Health System will deploy iSirona’s device connectivity solution in nine of its hospitals.

Whittier IPA (MA) contracts with Alere Accountable Care Solutions to build a community-wide HIE.

People

Culbert Healthcare Solutions hires Jaffer Traish (Zynx Health) as director of Epic consulting.

AHIMA appoints Meryl Bloomrosen VP of thought leadership, practice excellence, and public policy.

Encore Health Resources names Anne Dillon (Oracle) as client services executive for Southern California, New Mexico, and Arizona.

Announcements and Implementations

Surescripts expands its clinical messaging capabilities to users of Greenway, Inofile, SCI Solutions, and SOAPware.

The Colorado RHIO reports that with the addition of Exempla Healthcare, all of the state’s 100+ bed hospitals are connected to the HIE or are in the process of connecting.

Fairfield Memorial Hospital (SC) goes live on Cerner in September.

Atlantic General Hospital (MD) joins the Delaware HIN, becoming the first acute care hospital in the country to join an HIE located in another state.

Health Catalyst introduces Health Catalyst 2.0, which offers improved automation of metadata gathering from multiple IT systems and includes new content-driven applications for the enterprise data warehouse platform.

Government and Politics

ONC posts a progress report highlighting the steps taken since 2011 to implement the federal government’s strategic plan for using HIT to improve health and healthcare. We aren’t there yet, but in toto, the achievements to date are impressive.

In Australia, The Alfred Hospital reports that a university-created trauma decision support system reduced ED errors by 21 percent. It displays vital signs, captures the encounter on video, and incorporates 40 algorithms pertinent to the first 30 minute of a trauma case.

Technology

The NYC Economic Development Corp. names Kinsa the winner of its Innovate Health Tech NYC competition for its smartphone-connected thermometer that allows patients to track illness history, share details with physicians, and manage their illness.

Children’s Health Fund launches a telemedicine-enabled mobile clinic for underserved children in Miami on Thursday, July 25.

Other

Travis from HIStalk Connect spotted a Nordic Consulting billboard at the Verona, WI exit for Epic. He sees this as the next advertising beachhead outside of the Madison airport security checkpoint and wonders if blimps and skywriting planes are being engaged for Epic’s UGM. The Epic campus photo on the right is from Steve Knurr of Vonlay, just in case you wondered how nice summer days are in Wisconsin.

Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System sues hospital operator Prime Healthcare Services, to which it sold two Kansas hospitals earlier this year. SCLHS says Prime is using its billing software illegally and hasn’t handled patient billing as required by the sales agreement.

Healthcare costs not only bankrupt large numbers of US citizens, they appear to be on track to bringing entire cities to their financial knees. Detroit’s bankruptcy filing raises the possibility that Chicago could be next, with both cities struggling under the weight of underfunded retiree benefits. Chicago probably won’t get much help from the the state since Illinois has a $97 billion pension shortfall of its own. A large chunk of the underfunding is due to medical costs, with a recent study concluding that 61 major US cities have enough money to cover only six percent of their healthcare liabilities. Baltimore’s overly generous retiree healthcare obligations have caused the city to run up a debt of more than $10,000 per household.

Children’s Hospital Los Angeles (CA) will host the third annual Meaningful Use of Complex Medical Data Symposium on August 16-17. It connects clinical researchers and practicing physicians to big data computer experts with the goal of gaining medical insights from electronic information.

Weird News Andy says this doctor failed the “first do no harm” credo and wonders what the second one is. A Nebraska medical resident pleads not guilty to killing four people after being dismissed from the program.

I had some technical problems with Vince’s HIS-tory this past weekend that I didn’t have time to fix for the Monday Morning Update, so here is the belated Part 2 of Siemens.

Sponsor Updates

• Consulting firm The HCI Group is named Northeast Florida’s fastest-growing company of 2013, with 1,301 percent average annual revenue growth since 2010.
• NextGen will offer LDM Group’s healthcare messaging platform to its NextGen EHR clients.
• The Orange County Register profiles Kareo and deems it a “most promising” company.
• ADP AdvancedMD offers an on-demand Webinar outlining ways private physicians can save their practices.
• Nuesoft Technologies changes the name of its Nuetopia product to NueMD Medical Billing Services and its Nuesoft Xpress offering to NueMD for Student Health.
• Ping Identity joins the Cloud Security Alliance Security, Trust & Assurance Registry.
• NextGen will integrate is Ambulatory EHR with Florida Blue and Availity to make patient-specific clinical information available at the point of care to both providers and payers concurrently.
• Gartner places Informatica Corp. in the leaders quadrant in its 2013 Data Integration Magic Quadrant report.
• Intelligent Medical Objects reports that 2,500 hospitals have licensed its interface terminology services, including new customers Catholic Health East (PA), Hospital Corporation of America (TN), Avera Health (SD) and Christus Health (TX).
• Baystate Medical Center (MA) uses data derived from PeriGen’s PeriBirth EHR to calculate reductions in unnecessary inductions, C-sections, and NICU admissions.
• First Databank will provide Geneix with its drug knowledge and clinical decision support solution.
• SGS Life Science Services selects Merge eClinical OS for Phase I-IV studies.
• Coeur d’Alene Pediatrics (ID) shares how its implementation of Vitera’s EHR, PM, and patient portal solutions led to $300,000 in MU incentive payments and resolved business challenges.
• Medicity client Vermont Information Technology Leaders shares details of its successful HIE.
• CoverMyMeds reports that its five millionth prior authorization request was received this week and that the site is now processing 25 percent of all prior authorizations submitted annually in the US.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.