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September 23, 2014 News 1 Comment

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Hospital operator HCA announces that it will acquire privately held physician systems vendor PatientKeeper. Terms were not disclosed. I spoke to PatientKeeper President and CEO Paul Brient ahead of the announcement. “HCA is a longstanding customer of our view-only portal, our clinical review tool,” he said. “Now HCA will deploy all of our software – CPOE, clinical documentation, and medication reconciliation – over top of their Meditech systems. They will invest to make it even more useful to their doctors.” Brient will serve as CEO of PatientKeeper, which will be operated as a wholly-owned subsidiary of HCA. Its 160 employees will continue to work from company headquarters in Waltham, MA, supporting the company’s 58,000 physician users. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the year.


Reader Comments

From Garbanzo Being: “Re: HCA. Will remain on Meditech and not transitioning to Epic or Cerner as has been rumored. PatientKeeper helps extend the life of Meditech for HCA.” HCA didn’t say that specifically, but PatientKeeper President and CEO Paul Brient hinted to me that HCA likes PatientKeeper over Meditech better than Epic, suggesting that its Epic experiments have concluded and the go-forward platform will be Meditech. He didn’t mention whether HCA will do a Meditech 6.0 upgrade, the challenge of which sent them sniffing around Epic in the first place.

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From King Biscuit: “Re: Office Practicum. Announced to clients that they acquired EHR/PM vendor Workflow.com. Odd since OP is a small company and it’s a competing product. The email suggests a move away from a pediatrics-specialty product and possibly a wholesale platform change.” I don’t know anything about Workflow.com except that it founded by Packy Hyland, who also founded Hyland Software (now Onbase by Hyland).

From Shannon: “Re: 3M’s CAC 360 Encompass R2 (Release2). Has numerous major problems. Coders not happy using it. 3M is currently merging their 2 NLP platforms — will this be too late for ICD-10 implementation date? Will the other CAC vendors be able to capitalize on this weakness?” Unverified.

From Deal Breaker: “Re: Sutter Health. Stops discussion with Orion Health after it HIE project goes on for nine months. Is this the reason there are not any US reference sites for Orion all accounts travel to Canada and New Zealand?” Unverified. I think a site visit to New Zealand would be pretty great since I’ve heard it’s spectacular there and they (unlike much of the world) love Americans.

From All Hat No Cattle: “Re: Cernover. Don’t forget that Integris in Oklahoma (12 hospitals) is moving to Epic, too. Care New England in RI now Epic outpatient. How long until CHI moves across to Epic for their remaining sites on Cerner like KentuckyOne?” I tried to muster an argument that at least some sites have moved from Epic to Cerner, but I was just speculating since I couldn’t name any. The Cernover list is a bit one sided, so chime in if you know if an Epic-to-Cerner move that wasn’t triggered by a health system acquisition and standardization.

From Bob White: “Health 2.0. Lots of innovative companies there, although they all start to sound alike after a while.” The conference gets lots of people excited even though 95 percent of the startups there will sink without a trace because they aren’t that sharp, are underfunded, are poorly managed, or let their technology arrogance override their healthcare ignorance. I wish them all well, but I don’t have the patience to watch Darwinism in action as they desperately try to find pilot sites, customers, or acquirers before they run out of runway. My interest picks up once they hit $5 million in annual revenue because once they get that big they probably won’t disappear entirely.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests 

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Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor ZeOmega. The Plano, TX-based company, founded in 2001, offers the Jiva population health management platform to payers, providers, and value-based care organizations. A recent client success is Indiana health plan MDwise, which reduced readmissions by 66 percent and length-of-stay by 65 percent, saving $6.5 million per year with Jiva. Jiva is scalable and stable with redundancy and recovery built in and the new release adds more capabilities to support accountable care and value-based health delivery models in integrating workflow, analytics, content, and communication capabilities. The folks there would be happy to do a demo for you. Thanks to ZeOmega for supporting HIStalk.


Webinars

September 25 (Thursday) 1:00 ET. Using BI Maturity Models to Tap the Power of Analytics. Presented by Siemens Healthcare. Presenters: James Gaston, senior director of maturity models, HIMSS Analytics; Christopher Bocchino, principal consultant, Siemens Healthcare. Business intelligence capabilities are becoming critical for healthcare organizations as ACOs and population health management initiatives evolve in the new healthcare marketplace. The presenters will explain how BI maturity models can help optimize clinical, financial, and operational decisions and how organizations can measure and mature their analytics capabilities.

September 26 (Friday) 1:00 ET. Data Governance – Why You Can’t Put It Off. Presented by Encore, A Quintiles Company. Presenters: Steve Morgan, MD, SVP for IT and data analytics and CMIO, Carilion Clinic; Randy Thomas, associate partner, Encore, A Quintiles Company. In this second webinar in a series, “It’s All About the Data,” the presenters will review the pressing need for data governance and smart strategies for implementing it using strained resources.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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Royal Philips NV announces plans to split into two companies – one devoted to lighting, the other to healthcare and consumer goods that will operate under the HealthTech name. The announcement follows in the footsteps of similar moves made by rival Siemens last year.


Sales

Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas and Health Partnership Clinic (KS) select eClinicalWorks EHR and RCM for their 12 combined clinics.

Catholic Health Services of Long Island (NY) chooses Connance predictive analytics and vendor management technology.

Sheltering Arms Rehabilitation Center (VA) deploys Strata Decision’s StrataJazz as its financial platform.


Announcements and Implementations

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North Country Hospital becomes the first in Vermont to go live on the state HIE. Larger hospitals like Fletcher Allen Health Care will be online by the end of the year.

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Waterbury Hospital (CT) integrates TigerText secure messaging into its Cerner EHR. The hospital has also been in the news due to rumors of a possible takeover by Tenet Healthcare Corp.

Surescripts announces the addition of four pharmacies and three EHR vendors to its Immunization Registry Reporting service.

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The Bronx RHIO selects Direct secure messaging services from DataMotion for its affiliated healthcare organizations. The Visiting Nurse Service of New York and SBH Health System (NY) are among the first to use the service.

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Zynx Health launches the ZynxCarebook mobile platform to help streamline coordinated care efforts between inpatient and after-care providers.


Government and Politics

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White hat hackers from the HHS inspector general’s office report that their attempts to break into Healthcare.gov earlier this year alerted them to a “critical vulnerability.” Their attempts to exploit it were thwarted due to defenses already in place.

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Representatives Diane Black (R-TN) and Peter Welch (D-VT) introduce the ACO Improvement Act. If passed, the act would permit ACOs to use remote-patient monitoring and store-and-forward technologies for delivery of images to providers far away.

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Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services files a lawsuit against Xerox for "failing to timely and adequately implement the [Medicaid payments] system and failing to timely and accurately pay Alaska providers." The state is seeking $46.7 million in damages, and has already shelled out $154 million in advance payments to providers to help see them through the Xerox delay.


Research and Innovation

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Ali Parsa, MD creator of the UK-based Babylon subscription health service, announces that he is prepared to take the Babylon app to the Middle East and Africa to reach populations with little reliable access to healthcare, but high adoption of smartphones. "We are now looking at parties who have a large customer base, such as supermarkets, big public institutions, mobile phone companies, and newspapers,” he says. "If people can go into Tesco and by an iTunes card, why can’t they buy a Babylon access card?"


People

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Mark Hyman, MD (The UltraWellness Center) joins the Cleveland Clinic as director of its new Center for Functional Medicine. Patrick Hanaway, MD (Institute for Functional Medicine) will serve as the center’s medical director.

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Jeff Pate (W Squared) joins Aegis Health Group as executive vice president of business development.

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White House CIO Steve VanRoekel resigns to join the USAID, where he will work as a senior adviser in the fight to halt the Ebola outbreak.

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Doximity hires Emily Peters (Uncommon Bold) as VP of marketing communications and Peter Alperin, MD (Kelvin) as VP/GM of connectivity solutions.  

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Bruce Brandes (Valence Health) is named managing director of Martin Ventures. 

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ONC Chief Science Officer Doug Fridsma, MD, PhD resigns to become president and CEO of AMIA.


Announcements and Implementations

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Billings Clinic (MT) is implementing just-released Caradigm Quality Improvement to identify gaps in care and make improvements in clinical workflow at point of care.


Other

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Construction company DIRTT makes news for using open-source software from the classic video game Doom to design hospital wings and office spaces. CEO Scott Jenkins says the system will help hospitals that want to reconfigure a room’s wall panel quickly for patients with different needs, or to accommodate new technology.

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Apple CEO Tim Cook announces that the company’s new “spaceship” headquarters in Cupertino, CA, will be the “greenest building on the planet.” Scheduled to open by the end of 2016, the new HQ will be powered exclusively by wind and solar energy.

CompuGroup Medical locks Full Circle Health Care (ME) out of its EHR system in a billing dispute. The financially struggling practice admits that it stopped paying its maintenance fees 10 months ago after CompuGroup bought its original vendor HealthPort and increased monthly fees from $300 to $2,000. The practice has moved to a new EHR and wants access to its old system for 48 hours to copy patient records that will otherwise be unavailable, putting patients in danger, but says CompuGroup installed a “phone home” kill switch without its knowledge that won’t let the practice log on even in read-only mode. CompuGroup makes the analogy that people who don’t pay their electric bill have their power shut off eventually. Meanwhile, the patients get to enjoy being used as human shields as the vendor and customer bicker. Someone should have read their contract more closely before signing it, I suspect.

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Weird News Andy summarizes this story as “Three’s a Crowd.” A Florida woman pays $20,000 to have a third breast added, saying she wants to make herself unattractive to men so she wouldn’t have to date any more (as WNA says, hasn’t she heard of just turning men down?) The real reason is likely her stated dream of starring in an MTV reality show, with possible titles being rich in punning opportunities. WNA notes that the story has been declared a hoax (not surprising given the obviously ‘shopped picture), but that shouldn’t stand in the way of its entertainment value.


Sponsor Updates

  • Arcadia Healthcare Solutions will demonstrate a new version of its Arcadia Analytics solution at Health 2.0 this week. It uses Informatica technology to integrate information from 20 EHR and claims systems to report on reporting for performance management, cost and utilization analysis, and patient outreach and care planning.
  • Amerinet signs a new agreement to offer VitalWare revenue cycle technology to its members at negotiated pricing.
  • Alan Rosenstein, MD, an expert in disruptive physician behavior, posts a PerfectServe article titled “Emotional Intelligence – Understanding Patient, Staff, and Physician Needs.”
  • DocuSign publishes a blog post titled “BAAs and Beyond: Meeting the September 22 HIPAA Deadline.
  • Shareable Ink will work with students from Bentley University on user interface design.
  • Park Place International achieves SSAE 16 Type II standards compliance for OpSus Cloud Services.
  • EClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani joins a panel discussion at Health 2.0’s annual conference to discuss how technology is improving the patient experience.
  • US News and World Report indicates that 96 percent of Honor Roll hospitals in its “Best Hospitals and Best Children’s Hospital’s 2014-2015” use Wolters Kluwer Clinical Drug Information.
  • Gritman Medical Center (ID) is live on AtHoc’s emergency communication solution.
  • Validic announces a 20 percent increase in its digital health ecosystem with new integrations including hospitals, health systems, payers, pharma, and wellness companies.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

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Currently there is "1 comment" on this Article:

  1. RE: Health 2.0 companies: I agree that most will disappear. But $5MM is no longer the “magic number” for vendors in the brave new world of the web. It’s easier now to be stable, cash flow positive and growing at smaller revenue levels than in the past, particularly for cloud-based vendors.







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