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Monday Morning Update 6/20/16

June 19, 2016 News 2 Comments

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A government report estimates that 30,000 US patients die unnecessarily from trauma each year since trauma center death rates vary widely such that “where you are injured my determine whether you survive.” It urges creation of a national trauma system driven by best practices that includes both military and civilian systems and pre-hospital providers such as ambulance services.

The leading cause of death among people under 46 years old is trauma (motor vehicle accidents, gunshots, and falls).

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The report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine recommends that trauma centers create real-time access to patient-level data that would also be used in a national quality improvement program.


Reader Comments

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From Former Westminster, CO Employee: “Re: McKesson. I worked on Horizon for 15 years. Upper management refused to listen to QA, support, implementation, and development and would demand that change requests be closed with known software bugs shipped to clients to meet project deadlines. Hospitals would then report the bug, which would be re-opened as a Hot Fix Solution as the cycle repeated. Management was more concerned about running a tight ship and laid off many critical people. Paragon will suffer the same because the management culture has not changed.” Unverified.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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Most poll respondents would struggle to pay an unexpected medical bill of $5,000 to $25,000, which is a lot better than the 47 percent of Americans that a federal study found would struggle to pay a $400 emergency bill. New poll to your right or here: do digital tools reduce the efficiency of care delivery as the AMA contends?

Here’s a fun enhancement idea for the new iPhone patient data EHR query: let the app automatically file an HHS data-blocking complaint for unsuccessful requests.

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Mr. Martinez is using the document camera we provided in funding his DonorsChoose grant request to record his live presentations so that students in his California high school classroom can review portions they missed or to keep up when they’re absent. He’s recording additional examples and placing them on his website so that students can follow along on their own time.

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Also checking in is Mrs. Evans from Florida, who says many of her elementary school’s students had never used a tablet until we provided six of them for her gifted class.

Listening: new from Radiohead, slower and more melodic (some might say “wimpier”) than previous masterworks like “OK Computer,” but sometimes you have to let good bands evolve and give their new stuff a multiple-play chance to grow on you.


Last Week’s Most Interesting News

  • Apple adds C-CDA records import capability to iOS 10, giving iPhone-using consumers the theoretical ability to request and capture their basic medical information from provider EHRs.
  • AMA passes a resolution supporting creation of an ONC-administered health IT safety center.
  • Doctors in Australia demand that patient update access to their own medical records be revoked, saying they can’t trust the information.
  • The AMA’s EVP/CEO lashes out at “digital snake oil,” broadly panning the health-related software that is available to doctors and consumers.

Webinars

June 28 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Your Call Is Very Important.” Sponsored by West Healthcare Practice. Presenters: Cyndy Orrys, contact center director, Henry Ford Health System; Brian Cooper, SVP, West Interactive. The contact center is a key hub of patient engagement and a strategic lever for driving competitive advantage. Cyndy will share how her organization’s call center is using technologies and approaches that create effortless patient experiences in connecting them to the right information or resource. Brian will describe five key characteristics of a modern call center and suggest how to get started.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel. Lorre’s getting bored because of the industry slowdown that kicks in every year right about now, so ask her nicely for her “Summer Doldrums Special” that we always run through Labor Day and you’ll get a great deal.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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TransUnion acquires Auditz, which offers point-of-service patient revenue products.

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Cerner shares continue their recent slide, closing at prices not seen since July 2014. Above is the one-year price chart of CERN (blue, down 22 percent) vs. the Nasdaq (red, down 6 percent).


Announcements and Implementations

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LeadingAge Center for Aging Services Technologies creates an EHR adoption model for long-term and post-acute care providers.


Government and Politics

The government of South Australia continues its years-long legal pleading to software vendor Work Systems, whose 1990s-era, DOS-based patient records system is still being used by 64 of South Australia’s health sites. The vendor demands that state government stop using its software since its license for a retired version has expired, but the government argues that forcing it to stop using the system would endanger patients. South Australia is in a bind because its Allscripts-powered EPAS project is behind schedule and over budget with only three sites live amidst widespread doctor protests that the system endangers patients.

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Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH and her HHS team wore blue to support Men’s Health Week last week.

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An independent analysis finds Healthcare.gov to be the second-most secure consumer website.

The VA engages Underwriters Laboratories to help improve the cybersecurity of its medical devices.


Other

It’s been said that “a true test of a man’s character is what he does when no one is watching,” which is an apt summary of a new study that finds increased rates of hospital hand-washing when clinicians know they are being observed. Easy-to-spot infection prevention nurses saw a 57 percent rate of hand-washing compliance, while less-recognized volunteers saw staff washing their hands when they should only 22 percent of the time.

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An excellent analysis by Arcadia Healthcare Solutions that I hadn’t previously noticed until NPR ran a story on it finds that the cost of care provided to dying patients in their final 30 days varies widely by where they die. Patients who expire in a hospital consume $32,000 worth of services, while those who pass away in nursing homes, hospices, and at home cost $21,000, $18,000, and $5,000 respectively. Saddest of all is that 40 percent of patients died in a hospital, something that few people want. The company offers several interesting dataset visualizations on its site.

I also missed this New York Times op-ed piece from a few weeks back in which a University of Oslo professor pans the idea of a “cancer moonshot,” saying the Catch-22 of cancer is that it can’t be cured and thus keeping people alive longer means they’re more likely to get cancer again. He recalls that President Nixon called for a cancer moonshot of his own in 1971 and the National Cancer Institute has spent $90 billion since then even as cancer rates increased. He concludes that the effort wasn’t wasted, however: “We’re a lot better at fighting cancer. We just can’t cure it,” but warns of “the rhetorical spin that drives the cancer enterprise.” He urges that doctors save lives via the “boring stuff” of getting patients to stop smoking, use sunscreen, eat better, and exercise, saying that will do more good than “promising the moon.”


Sponsor Updates

  • Vital Images will exhibit at SCCT 2016 June 23-26 in Orlando.
  • Zynx Health will exhibit at AMDIS 2016 June 21-24 in Ojai, CA, as will LogicStream.
  • Integris and The Chartis Group will present “Centralized Scheduling for a Physician Enteprise” at the HFMA National Institute June 26-29 in Las Vegas.

Blog Posts


Contacts

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Currently there are "2 comments" on this Article:

  1. Can’t we consider convincing patients to “stop smoking” and “use sunscreen” as akin to curing cancer?

    How is proactive prevention all that different from a cure?

  2. I take issue with Arcadia’s cost analysis for patients who die at home. My father battled brain cancer for two years before he passed away in 2014 at home, as he wished. He may have consumed less healthcare services and thus incurred less cost to the system, but he still required a tremendous amount of care, at significant expense in time and money born by the family. It may not have been equivalent to the cost of care received in other settings, but it was a great deal more than what Arcadia’s analysis concludes. Care at home from the family is beautiful, but it is not cheap.







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