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June 30, 2015 News No Comments

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Allscripts takes a 10 percent equity position in NantHealth for $200 million in cash, while NanthHealth billionaire founder Patrick Soon-Shiong personally invests $100 million in Allscripts. Co-development plans include product integration and work on personalized medicine. NantHealth is rumored to be mulling IPO plans, while Allscripts shares have dropped 16 percent in the past year.


Reader Comments

From Dr. N: “Re: EHRs. EHRs were developed out of coding and billing frameworks. This does not relate to MDs and patients. SOAP still remains the most efficient and meaningful format. However, click boxes, no doubt, would be helpful for meta data, also important. Software has the ability to pull down from the SOAP narrative format data to the click boxes. Minimal new language may need to be used by the MD in the narrative. I personally retired rather than using the completely useless EHR formats available. The current EHRs are subtly and obtusely changing MD thinking processes and predominately to the negative.”

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From Libby Litigator: “Re: Blue Shield of California. You mentioned that a former executive claims he was fired for trying to reduce the company’s outsourcing payments to Cognizant. BSCA’s former CTO also filed a lawsuit claiming he was fired for pointing out issues with Cognizant. His new employer CEO also worked for Blue Shield as a policy guy and got tired of trying to defend its non-profit status after he saw how it operated. Has anyone ever done that on the hospital side?” That is indeed a fascinating story, as former BSCA CTO Aaron Kaufman says his CIO boss fired him the day before he was due his $450K bonus for 2014 after Kaufman questioned selection of a particular vendor. BSCA countersued Kaufman in claiming that he charged $100,000 in personal expenses to his company credit card. Some of those charges involved a bowling party night out Kaufman spent with his girlfriend, “Sharknado” and “American Pie” actress Tara Reid, which made BSCA doubly unhappy because “inappropriate” photos like the one above made their way into the public eye. Kaufman said he had to use his company credit card because the wife he was divorcing had locked up his accounts. Most interesting (other than a healthcare CTO successfully wooing a Hollywood actress, even a minor and fading one like Reid) is how a supposedly non-profit insurer can justify paying a CTO an annual bonus of $450K. Kaufman is now EVP/chief product officer of SocialWellth, which earns top buzzword scores in unintelligibly describing its app certification business that it bought from the defunct Happtique as, “a digital health company that enables payers, providers, and employers to prescribe curated digital health assets and services to their end consumers at relevant touch points in their health journey, and in turn, receive actionable data to deliver value based care. Our profile-driven mobile computing platform integrates and aggregates mobile health apps, devices, and content while leveraging activation currency and social engagement to deliver personalized well-being experiences for consumers.”


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

It’s been four days since I faxed a form requesting my electronic records from a hospital and they haven’t responded. The only other method of contact listed is to call the HIM department, so I’ll do that next. I’m feeling the presence of an increasingly non-electronic bureaucratic wall.


Webinars

July 14 (Tuesday) noon ET. “What Health Care Can Learn from Silicon Valley.” Sponsored by Athenahealth. Presenter: Ed Park, EVP/COO, Athenahealth. Ed will discuss how an open business structure and strong customer focus have helped fuel success among the most prominent tech companies and what health care can learn from their strategies.

Previous webinars are on the YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for webinar services including discounts for signing up by July 31.


Sales

PremierMD (FL) chooses the eClinicalWorks EHR and population health management suite.

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UC Irvine Health (CA) chooses Epic.

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UAB Medicine (AL) selects Athenahealth’s AthenaCoordinator Enterprise for patient access, referrals, and care transitions.


People

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Verisk Health hires Sean Creighton (CMS) as VP of risk adjustment solutions.

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A North Carolina newspaper’s review of 2014 CEO compensation of the state’s largest companies places Premier CEO Susan DeVore highest at $24.9 million, the first time a woman has topped the list. PINC share price is up 32 percent in the past year, valuing the company at $1.4 billion, of which DeVore holds around $8 million worth.

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Alternate site billing systems vendor Brightree hires Lori Jones (AirStrip) and Shaw Rietkerk (MModal) as EVPs.


Announcements and Implementations

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Wellcentive awards a $5,000 Medical Scholarship for Veterans to former Marine Captain Anthony DeSantis, a fourth-year medical student and Tillman Military Scholar at University of South Florida who was deployed to Fallujah, Iraq in 2007-2008.


Innovation and Research

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A seventh-grade student in Vietnam creates Health for Everyone, prize-winning software that contains clinical information, treatment plans, a drug-drug interaction checker, and a weekly medical quiz. The local hospital’s internal medicine department is using it,  proclaiming it to be “a wondrous, time-saving device which also updates doctors’ and nurses’ medical knowledge and expertise.”


Other

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A Wall Street Journal article called “How to Take Charge of Your Medical Records” urges patients to serve as their own data hub instead of relying on providers and their incompatible systems to send information back and forth. The reporter got a bit confused in thinking that the Blue Button website contains actual Medicare and VA patient information and the article takes a puzzling turn into the privacy of wearable device data, but it was otherwise a pretty good consumer-focused overview. I was interested that the ICEBlueButton app from Humetrix displays a QR code on a smartphone’s lock screen that paramedics can scan to display emergency medical information, with a $20 per year option to also immediately alert their emergency contacts.

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An AHRQ-funded study finds that providers like the convenience of allowing patients to upload information via their patient portal, but patients themselves struggle with usability issues and rarely upload anything. Secure messaging was accepted by both groups but sometimes caused provider workflow and workload problems. The study concludes that health IT improves outcomes only if used as part of more comprehensive programs and poor application usability impedes workflow.

Analysts from Goldman Sachs estimate that digital technology (in the form of the Internet of Things) will save $300 billion in annual US healthcare costs and generate $32 billion in revenue. My cynical experience is that the latter is much more likely to be realized than the former. One person’s excess costs is another person’s income and that other person often hires lobbyists, lawyers, and trade groups to keep the excess costs flowing into their pockets. 

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Eaze, the California company whose fast-track marijuana delivery service is known as “the Uber of pot,” jumps into telemedicine with with EazeMD, which consumers can use to obtain a medical marijuana card following a $25 video visit with a physician.

Tuesday night (June 30) is Leap Second, where the world’s clocks adjust for the slowing in the Earth’s rotation by adding an extra second to the day. Amazon had problems the last time it happened (in 2012) but has since changed its systems to add a tiny bit of time to each day rather than all at once.

A New Zealand doctor whose patient died after he unknowingly prescribed an inappropriate drug says he will no longer rely on his EHR’s automatic warnings and will instead review the records himself. The doctor says he doesn’t remember receiving a computer warning. The local hospital was also blamed for failing to integrate its systems after acquiring another practice.

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A decently designed survey of CVS pharmacy customers with at least one chronic condition finds that 37 percent have communicated with their physician by email. Around half are interested in tracking health, refilling prescriptions, and looking up information, with their preferred method being via online portals, which finished slightly ahead of email or mobile apps. Oddly, the study commentary opines that patients prefer email and Facebook to physician portals even though its results indicate otherwise. Nearly 20 percent of respondents said they have contacted their physicians on Facebook, which will surely alarm hospital risk managers everywhere. The study is disappointing only in that it took two years for it to wind its way through the bowels of journal publishing – the survey was performed in May and June of 2013, a decade ago in social media time.

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Unrelated but bizarre: two airline pilots from Argentina are fired for posting a YouTube video in which they turn over the controls of their plane during takeoff to a model who has been featured in Playboy. The passengers are filing suit against the airline, while the model says she will sue the pilot and co-pilot for sexual harassment in claiming they fondled her while fastening her seat belt.

Weird News Andy titles this story “Child to Be Raised By Wolves” in expressing relief that mom and baby Romulus are fine. A pregnant woman gets lost in a national forest while driving to her parents’ house and is stranded for three days when she runs out of gas and her cell phone battery dies. She gives birth and is finally rescued by Forest Service rangers responding to the forest fire she accidentally started.


Sponsor Updates

  • John Moore, managing partner of Chilmark Research, will deliver the keynote address at Galen Healthcare’s Galen Partner Advisory Council in Boston August 3-4.
  • ADP AdvancedMD offers “Flag these ICD-10 codes for the Fourth of July.”
  • Team AirStrip wins the San Diego International Triathlon Mixed Relay.
  • AirWatch offers “IDC confirms: AirWatch by VMware holds largest EMM market share.”
  • Besler Consulting posts “Making the Case for Dedicated Observation Units.”
  • CapsuleTech offers “AMIA Task Force Calls for Simplification and Speed in EHR Use.”
  • Caradigm offers “Super Clinically Integrated Networks will Lead the Way to Population Health.”
  • CareSync publishes “Project Manager Field Research.”
  • CitiusTech celebrates its 10th anniversary.
  • CoverMyMeds offers “CoverMyMeds – As Secure as Ever.”
  • CTG participates in the 20th annual Ride for Roswell to raise funds for the Roswell Park Cancer Institute.

Contacts

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

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