It is incredibly stressful once you leave the Epic center of gravity. I have spent my ex-epic career wondering if…
Morning Headlines 9/13/13
Vanderbilt Medical Center hit with Medicare fraud suit
A lawsuit unsealed this week alleges that Vanderbilt University Medical Center has been engaging in Medicare fraud for more than a decade. The suit alleges that Vanderbilt developed a surgical billing and documentation tool that "schedule attending physicians to be in multiple places at once, while continuing to bill their services as if they were actually present and personally performing the services at each place.” The software, which also facilitated surgeon documentation, pre-populated fields in order to qualify for higher charges and required its physicians, in all instances, to document that they met Medicare’s conditions for payment.
Decision-support tool reduces deaths from pneumonia in emergency departments
Findings from a study presented at the European Respiratory Society Annual Congress claim that clinical decision support tools implemented in an emergency department EHR helped to reduce deaths from pneumonia by up to 25 percent.
Compuware’s Covisint sets terms for $64 million IPO
Covisint plans to raise $64 million in its IPO by offering 6.4 million shares at a price range of $9 to $11. At the midpoint of the proposed range, Covisint would command a fully diluted market value of $395 million.
Morgenthaler partners form new $175M fund to invest in cloud, fintech, & health IT
Three partners from Morgenthaler raise $175 million for a new investment fund, Canvas Ventures Fund, which will focus on early stage health IT startups.
That Medicare Fraud suit at Vandy reminds me of a decision made at the Carilion Clinic in Roanoke, VA by some administrator. My spouse, who was an attending there, noticed that the moment a CSR would enter her as the attending in a registration a note would automatically appear that would say, “I, Dr so-andso, have seen this patient and agreed with the diagnosis” even though she may not have had *anything* to do with that patient (b/c of a registration mistake). But this note helped billing to be done at a higher level. So she would often create notes that would say, “In fact, no, I have not seen this patient and know nothing about this patient’s care. This is a registration mistake.” The whole thing seemed highly unethical.