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January 21, 2014 News 6 Comments

Top News

1-21-2014 4-15-52 PM

GE will acquire API Healthcare, a provider of healthcare workforce management software and analytics solutions.


Reader Comments

From Brian: “Re: Advisory Panel ‘2014 will be the year of …’ patient relationship management. Spanning not only the clinical realm, but the financial realm as well. Every touch, clinical and financial, influences the patient’s attitude towards the health system, impacting satisfaction and their willingness to return for elective services or recommend to friends and family.”

1-21-2014 5-31-25 PM

From Keith: “Re: HHS. This issue needs Meaningful Use guidelines.” OIG finds that HHS paid $172 million in claims for 474,000 vacuum erection systems (penis pumps) from 2006 through 2011, spending twice as much per unit as the VA paid or what online retailers charge.

1-21-2014 5-38-21 PM

From Across the Pond: “Re: interesting article from Isala Hospital, Netherlands. It’s in Dutch, but explains the positive outcomes (reduced hospital mortality and others) realized from introducing an extra pre-procedure safety check beyond the usual time-outs before open heart surgery. Results are remarkable: 95 percent vs. 55 percent of professionals now feel the treatment is a team effort and the post-surgical hospital mortality rate was reduced from 15 percent to 1.7 percent. Doctors plan to share the results with US colleagues.”

1-21-2014 8-30-06 PM

From MDCIO: “Re: Windows XP computers after its retirement on April 8. Can you be HIPAA compliant and qualify for Meaningful Use if your system is not receiving security updates?” At minimum, you could interpret that running an obsolete OS for which no security updates are available means you aren’t protecting PHI to the best of your ability. I’m interested to hear from readers, especially CIOs whose hospitals are still running some XP PCs. Hard and fast rules aside, I wouldn’t want to be deposed to provide post-breach “why were you still using XP” justification to OIG or a plaintiff’s attorney. According to HHS:

The Security Rule was written to allow flexibility for covered entities to implement security measures that best fit their organizational needs. The Security Rule does not specify minimum requirements for personal computer operating systems, but it does mandate requirements for information systems that contain electronic protected health information (e-PHI). Therefore, as part of the information system, the security capabilities of the operating system may be used to comply with technical safeguards standards and implementation specifications such as audit controls, unique user identification, integrity, person or entity authentication, or transmission security. Additionally, any known security vulnerabilities of an operating system should be considered in the covered entity’s risk analysis (e.g., does an operating system include known vulnerabilities for which a security patch is unavailable, e.g., because the operating system is no longer supported by its manufacturer).

1-21-2014 6-53-26 PM

From NurseJane: “Re: Prognosis HIS. Did you know it was acquired? We are concerned as we are going through a MU audit and we are on their system. They laid off over half the company last year and replaced the CEO. I would appreciate you finding out more and reporting on it.” CEO Jim Holtzman provided a quick response to our inquiry:

In 2013, Prognosis completed a transaction in which it was acquired by two of its original founders who have since rejoined the company, with the common goal of enhancing its ability to provide the best software and services to our customers in their dedication to provide excellent healthcare services to their patient base.

As a bit of history, In 2012 I joined Prognosis as CFO. At that time, I rapidly joined with our team in a process of improving Prognosis’s financial position, while also taking on a venture/PE fundraising effort that had started shortly before I joined the company. Through 2012 and into May of 2013, our management team worked to enhance our financial position, part of which included a restructuring and initial reduction in force. On May 15, 2013, I took the role of CEO and continued our mission of managing through our challenges. At that time, we implemented one more, final reduction and began the process of completely revising how we approach our business processes to better and more efficiently serve our customers. Over the remainder of the year, we radically improved our support processes, closed new business and continued to guide our company through some difficult waters.

Then, three weeks ago on December 30, 2013, Prognosis closed an investment transaction with AO Capital Partners, LLC, a private equity firm and financial investor. As part of their investment, AO Capital Partners acquired Prognosis through an asset acquisition and made an initial cash investment in the company in the form of working capital.

It is important to note that AO Capital is led by two of Prognosis original founders, Dirk Cameron and Isaac Shi.  Previously, Mr. Shi was the Chief Architect of our software when it was originally designed and built back in 2006. We are extremely excited to have both Mr. Cameron and Mr. Shi back in the Prognosis fold and as members of our leadership team. We are already actively exploring new pathways of product development that include innovative new features and functionality, as well as innovative methods of delivery. We also continue to focus on enhanced customer support and professional service models to better support our customers. We look forward to sharing the fruits of this new partnership with our customers and prospects in the very near future. The simple fact of this transaction is that our customers will feel essentially no difference aside from our efforts, with new development and support resources to further enhance our processes that we have worked on so hard this last year.

We continue to work toward completion of our MU2, 2014 software certification which will be completed in multiple waves. The first of those waves was completed in December and we crushed the certification process, completing our certification, in one day of testing, of more modules than we had originally scheduled. I am confident that we will perform as flawlessly in the remaining waves as we did in wave one. We are now modularly 2014 certified following wave one and continue along the pathway of full EHR certification by end of the first quarter of 2014.  Our customers are going to feel nothing more than continued improvements. 

The only minor change that we will be making beyond the comments above is a tweak to our name, which will now be Prognosis Innovation Healthcare, reflecting our commitment to innovative software that serves the healthcare community.

As always, I welcome calls and questions and will be happy to answer any questions about our company and our products and services.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

inga_small I was looking over the HIMSS conference schedule today and was intrigued by the new Startup Showcase, which features 40 startup and early stage HIT companies. It looks like the showcase will be in the exhibit hall and participating vendors will have a chance to demo their offerings. Could be fun.

1-21-2014 8-33-47 PM

inga_small Another fun option might be the HIMSS14 Wellness Challenge. Participants wearing a Misfit Shine activity tracker can compete in different daily challenges such as steps taken, calories burned, and distance walked. I always feel like I walk 10 miles a day, so maybe I should sign up.

Reminder: sign up by January 29 if you want to be considered for a HIStalkapalooza invitation. Not everyone who signs up will be invited, but on the other hand, everyone who is invited will have signed up (this sounds like one of those logic problems from the SAT, but it’s really not hard.) We will email invitations to the folks we can accept on February 4 or thereabouts. We have hundreds more requests than we have spots, so not everybody will get an invitation, unfortunately.

1-21-2014 5-58-03 PM

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor MEDHOST. The company offers solutions for ED (MEDHOST EDIS); patient flow (MEDHOST PatientFLow HD); perioperative (MEDHOST Advanced Perioperative Information Management System); patient portal (MEDHOST YourCareCommunity); public health reporting (MEDHOST YourCareLink); clinicals, patient access, revenue cycle, and financials (Enterprise Solutions); BI (MEDHOST Business Intelligence); hosting and managed services (MEDHOST Direct); and services for outsourcing, consulting, and optimization. The 30-year-old Franklin, TN-based company, formerly known as HealthTech and serving more than 1,000 hospital customers of all sizes, unified its corporate identify and product line under the MEDHOST name last month. It pledges to deliver unparalleled value and easy-to-use technology for managing care and the business of healthcare. Customer case studies are here. Thanks to MEDHOST for supporting HIStalk.

I found a YouTube video describing MEDHOST Direct hosting at Valley Regional Hospital (NH).


Upcoming Webinars 

February 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare Transformation: What’s Good About US Healthcare? Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: John Haughom, MD, senior advisor, Health Catalyst. Dr. Haughom will provide a deeper look at the forces that have defined and shaped the current state of U.S. healthcare. Paradoxically, some of these same forces are also driving the inevitable need for change.

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock


1-21-2014 4-16-32 PM

Kareo secures $29.5 million in growth capital.

1-21-2014 4-17-35 PM

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum health services business grew revenue 35 percent in the fourth quarter.

1-21-2014 4-18-26 PM

Etransmedia Technology acquires Medigistics, a Columbus-OH based provider of RCM and AR management services for the healthcare industry.


Sales

1-21-2014 10-41-02 AM

RegionalCare Hospital Partners (TN) will deploy AirStrip ONE OB and AirStrip ONE Cardiology across its eight-hospital system.

Medical Professional Services selects athenahealth’s population health Management platform for its 450-provider IPA.

1-21-2014 10-42-26 AM

Healthstat will implement eClinicalWorks EHR across more than 350 sites.

1-21-2014 10-44-51 AM

Nexus Health Systems (TX) selects Summit Healthcare Express Connect interface technology.

1-21-2014 10-45-52 AM

Scotland County Hospital (MO) chooses Access electronic patient signature and e-forms solutions to complement its Meditech 6.x EHR implementation.

Summit Healthcare selects Secure Exchange Solutions as its Health Information Service Provider for secure healthcare information exchange.


People

1-21-2014 10-47-04 AM

VisionWare names Paul Roscoe (The Advisory Board) CEO and board member.

1-21-2014 4-25-27 PM

Medhost names Lionel Tehini (Acuitec) president of the company’s professional services division.

1-21-2014 8-09-03 PM

Telemedicine software vendor REACH Health names Steve McGraw (SAI Global) as president and CEO, replacing the retiring Richard Otto.

AtHoc appoints Karen Garavatti (Ericsson) head of human resources.

Salar appoints new members to its clinical documentation advisory board, including Neri Cohen, MD (Greater Baltimore Medical Center), Brian Houston, MD (Johns Hopkins Medicine), Don Levick, MD (Lehigh Valley Health Network), Eric Radler, MD (Lifespan), and Jenson Wong, MD (San Francisco General Hospital.)


Announcements and Implementations

1-21-2014 8-36-01 PM 1-21-2014 8-36-49 PM

Michigan Health Connect and Great Lakes HIE will merge their operations later this year to create one of the country’s largest HIEs.

AirWatch opens a Miami office.

1-21-2014 4-28-28 PM

University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust in the UK expands the rollout of its personal health record, which is based on Get Real Health’s InstantPHR patient engagement platform.

1-21-2014 5-19-16 PM

France-based IT services vendor Atos launches an enterprise content management system for healthcare based on EMC Documentum.

1-21-2014 8-37-43 PM

Aventura will integrate its instant-on awareness computing technology for clinicians with virtualization offerings from Varrow.


Government and Politics

1-21-2014 10-24-31 AM

About 69 percent of physicians intend to participate in the MU program, according to CDC survey conducted in mid-2013. At that time, 13 percent of them were using an EHR capable of supporting 14 of the 17 Stage 2 Core Set objectives. Half of office-based physicians were using at least a basic EHR, up from 11 percent in 2006.

An IT security expert says that Healthcare.gov is not secure, claiming that he can extract thousands of database records directly from the site without even hacking it. He listed 20 security issues weeks ago and says  they haven’t been fixed. HHS says it doesn’t believe him and the site is fine.

1-21-2014 8-17-54 PM

The VA says that the medical and financial information of more than 5,000 users of the VA/DoD eBenefits military benefits site may have been exposed to other users last week due to a programming error.


Other

1-21-2014 11-34-04 AM

“123456” tops Splashtop’s list of the of most commonly stolen passwords for 2013, beating out longtime favorite, “password.”

1-21-2014 7-31-44 PM

A new KLAS report says Epic, athenahealth, and Greenway lead the 11-75 physician practice segment. Allscripts, McKesson, and Vitera have the highest percentage of unhappy customers who will stick to the EMR they bought even though they wouldn’t buy it again.

A study finds that the leading online source of medical information for both providers and patients is Wikipedia.

Tim Moseley and Ron Hedges of the IT department of Memorial Hospital of Gulfport (MS) are presented a certificate of appreciation and Seven Seals Award for setting up a Skype session that allowed Air National Guard Staff Sergeant Drew Bynum, deployed overseas, to see his newborn daughter. Major Jeff Wyatt of the 255th Air Control Squadron told the men, both of whom are veterans themselves, “It’s hard enough being over there and doing your job in trying circumstances, but you’re never totally over there. There’s always a part of you that is back here with your family and friends. It takes people like you, supporting us, to enable us to do our job overseas.”

Weird News Andy provides a quote for this story: “There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.” A 70-year-old man who was born color blind can suddenly see colors after experiencing a fall. Doctors can’t explain it since color blindness is a retinal cone defect, but postulate that it’s the man’s perception of colors that has changed.


Sponsor Updates

1-21-2014 5-55-46 PM

  • More than 150 Surgical Information Systems employees participated in the company’s first community service day in metro Atlanta.
  • NextGen Healthcare reports that its Ambulatory EHR version 5.8 meets the latest ICD-10 standards, adding that it will offer customers ICD-10 educational and testing tools.
  • Harry Greenspun, MD, senior advisor for healthcare transformation and technology for the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, discusses the four dimensions for effective mobile health in a blog posting.
  • Quest Diagnostics certifies CompuGroup Medical’s LabDAQ LIS as a Gold Quality Solution under Quest’s Health IT Quality Solutions program.
  • Wolters Kluwer Health collaborates with the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses to review the core procedures in the Lippincott Procedures software application.
  • RelayHealth’s RelayClearance, RelayAssurance, RelayAnalytics, and RelayPayer Connectivity Services achieve a Level 2 appraisal rating under CMMI Institutes’ Capability Maturity Model Integration.
  • Beacon Partners hosted an analytics roundtable on establishing an analytics-driven healthcare culture.
  • EDCO Health Information Solutions sponsored a presentation by HIMSS VP John H. Daniels on the HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption model at a New Jersey Hospital Association meeting last week.
  • Surgical Information Systems and QlikTech renew their agreement to expand the use of QlikView with SIS Analytics.
  • Adventist Health (CA) shares how it reduced its revenue cycle by two days after implementing The SSI Group’s RCM solution.
  • A Nuance Communications study finds that 71 percent of physicians would be more responsive to clinical documentation improvement clarifications if they were delivered in real time within their EHR workflow.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

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Currently there are "6 comments" on this Article:

  1. RE: Windows XP. Met a MSFT CTO on vacation who offered a scenario for April 8th. If you were a Russian hacker and you found an exploit for XP would you use it now, or after April 9th? He predicts havoc for XP users.

  2. Since XP cannot comply with several ONC privacy and security criteria, vendors still using it are not going to have certified software.
    Here’s one area where the government has done vendors a favor…now you can tell your stuck-in-mud old release clients…HIPAA made me do it!

  3. RE: MDCIO: “Re: Windows XP computers after its retirement on April 8. Can you be HIPAA compliant and qualify for Meaningful Use if your system is not receiving security updates?”

    John Lynn covers it well, but it’s also important to note that Microsoft has extended XP security updates to third party security vendors through 2015:

    http://thenextweb.com/microsoft/2014/01/15/microsoft-extends-updates-windows-xp-security-products-july-14-2015/#!sVaIc

    They won’t be sending out patches for the OS itself, but it’s possible to get some additional protection with the right product coverage. Still running a serious risk, but there’s a long list of facilities (especially rural and CAH hospitals) who simply don’t have the funding to rip and replace a fleet of aged PC’s or the applications they’re still running on XP.

  4. Re: Prognosis HIS. I was quite intrigued to see that Prognosis had gone from being backed by a legitimate East Coast venture capitalist firm (Open View) to what appears to be a fire sale to the firm led by Isaac Shi and Dirk Cameron. Having worked at the company during its heyday with all the big venture money to being a debt-laden victim of the restructuring Jim Holtzman discusses, I feel like this change does not bode well for our HIS industry and my gut is itching hard for me to tell you all about it due to some strange things that happened with these guys in the early days. There were some unusual dealings with a Chinese software dev shop and a failed Prognosis takeover. It looks like the person at the company who was most knowledgeable about health care and clinical HIS by far and was an asset for the customers has left or was fired. I feel bad for Prognosis customers now but I hope for the sake of taking care of the health of honest folks in the rural areas that they get taken good care of.

    Yes you can call this sour grapes but it is the truth!

    [From Mr H] I edited out a bit of the comment since it named people specifically was potentially libelous in the absence of proof.







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