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April 5, 2011 News 9 Comments

Top News

4-5-2011 10-02-43 PM

inga_small Practice Fusion closes $23 million in Series B financing, bringing the company’s total funding to $30 million. This round was led by Founders Fund, an initial investor in Facebook whose managing partner is PayPal founder Peter Thiel.

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM Five health systems (Geisinger, Group Health Cooperative, Kaiser, Intermountain, and Mayo) are holding a Wednesday morning news briefing to announce that they will share patient information among themselves under the umbrella of Care Connectivity Consortium. I see that Kaiser trademarked that name this past February.


Reader Comments

4-5-2011 8-11-26 PM

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM From Mariann from Brooklyn: “Re: Siemens and Epic. This sign makes me think I’ve discovered a secret partnership being formed in rural Ohio. I thought you might get a kick out of it.” Sometimes Epic Technologies press releases throw me off until I recall that Epic Systems doesn’t issue press releases, but there was a company in the Middle East once actually named Epic Systems that had Inga convinced she had uncovered something important.

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM From Thera-Pissed: “Re: MDs liking to fix stuff and move on. I have seen 40 years of over-trained, egomaniac, car mechanics hustling as MDs and whipping up their minions with their stethoscope. I say put ’em all on salary and disband the AMA. Let the Nurse Practitioners do all the caring, helping, relationship, boring ‘diabetes and high cholesterol’ stuff.” 


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

4-5-2011 7-49-56 PM

Welcome to Capario, sponsoring both HIStalk and HIStalk Practice at the Gold level. The Santa Ana, CA company’s revenue cycle portal provides a validation engine that gets claims paid on the first payer submission 90% of the time. It works with existing practice management and billing systems, allows quick location and resubmission provides workflow and analytics tools to improve cash flow, and offers a dashboard view of the entire revenue cycle. Capario just launched a Customer Resource center with best practices and tools for claims management and revenue cycle management. The company was the highest-rated indirect clearinghouse in KLAS’s 2010 ambulatory clearinghouse report, scored at 88.8 on a 100-point scale by its users. We ran an HIT Moment with CEO Jim Riley on HIStalk Practice a few weeks back, who offered practical information about RCM vendors, 5010, and ICD-10. Thanks to Capario for supporting HIStalk and HIStalk Practice.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

ED charting provider Forerun raises $2 million in Series C financing to bolster its technology development and fund commercial deployment of its FlexChart product.

4-5-2011 11-56-46 AM

inga_small Cerner Chair and CEO Neal Patterson earned $5.1 million in compensation in 2010, up from a mere $3.3 million the year before. That includes $1 million in salary, $1.3 million in cash-based incentives, and $121,777 in “other compensation.” It’s good to be Neal. And probably Mrs. Patterson.

Allscripts shares hit a 52-week high today, with MDRX closing at $22.71 and a market cap of $4.29 billion. CEO Glen Tullman holds $34 million worth.

Harris closes on its acquisition of Carefx.

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM iSOFT founder Gary Cohen says he may up the ante to acquire the struggling Australian healthcare software company, hinting that he’ll place his own bid against the $188 million offer of CSC. I interviewed him a year ago at iSOFT’s invitation (they must have liked how it turned out since they ran a copy directly on their site). I thought he was quite frank and cordial and I enjoyed talking to him, although he tried to minimize the effect of NHS on the company’s fortunes and that didn’t seem to be how it turned out.

4-5-2011 9-36-14 PM

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM 3M acquires unspecified “intellectual property, trademarks and products” of Zargis Medical, which develops FDA-approved software to analyze heart sounds, one version of which works over the Internet (like a cross between an electronic stethoscope and telemedicine).


Sales

Hamlin Memorial Hospital (TX) selects Prognosis ChartAccess EHR.

Ochsner Health System (LA) announces plans to deploy Epic’s EMR across its eight hospitals and 38 health centers, having hired 60 FTEs for the implementation.

Trinity Mother Frances Hospitals and Clinics (TX) contracts with Epic. Implementation is targeted for mid-2012.

AtlantiCare (NJ) selects the Elsevier/MEDai Risk Navigator predictive analytics solutions for patient population management and clinical and financial tracking.

Central Texas Hospital picks eCareSoft’s inpatient EHR and RCM technology for its 305-bed, six-hospital health network.

4-5-2011 12-01-51 PM

Armstrong County Memorial Hospital (PA) chooses the Unity CVIS solution from DR Systems.


People

CareFusion announces the departure of COO Dwight Winstead on June 30. He has held that job CareFusion separated from Cardinal Health in September 2009.

4-5-2011 7-17-16 PM

Adventist Midwest Health names Joe Granneman to the newly created position of CIO.

athenahealth names Todd Rothenhaus, MD as its first CMIO. He was previously SVP/CIO of Steward Health Care (the former Caritas Christi).


Announcements and Implementations

4-5-2011 11-58-54 AM

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (NH) goes live on its $80 million Epic system.

Sutter Health (CA) will invest over $50 million to help independent physicians implement Epic under its Sutter Community Connect program. Sutter will pay up to 85% of the software and implementation costs.

The Colorado RHIO HIE goes live following the first transmission of patient data by Boulder Community Hospital. Four additional organizations have also signed up to share data.

4-5-2011 6-51-16 PM

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM Harris County Hospital District (TX) goes live with the PatientSecure palm vein scanning system, putting out some fun facts from their 3.4 million patient database via Twitter and Facebook: (a) patients share  the same first and last names 249,213 times; (b) over 75,000 first name/last name pairs are shared by more than five patients; (c) two or more patients have the same first name, last name, and date of birth nearly 70,000 times; and (d) 231 patients named Maria Garcia have the same birth date.


Government and Politics

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM Doctors in Las Vegas are declining to treat chronic pain patients after a DEA task force arrests an internist for prescribing medications that led to a patient’s death in 2007. He’s been charged with murder under a Nevada law that says that covers death caused by “a controlled substance which was sold, given, traded or otherwise made available to a person.” Peers concede the internist made mistakes in prescribing too many drugs for the patient, but argue that it’s not a criminal issue, especially since the DEA based its murder charge on information provided my a lawyer who was suing the doctor for malpractice.


Innovation and Research

Apixio lends it financial support to the Center for Biomedical Informatics Research at Stanford University. Dr. Nigram Shah, an assistant professor of medicine, is investigating the impact of utilizing clinical data to enhance quality of care.

Kaiser Permanente opens the Center for Total Health in Washington, DC. They will use the center, located next door to one of their hospitals, to show off their innovations (including IT) to politicians and the public.

4-5-2011 9-07-36 PM

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM Non-profit healthcare IT incubator RockHealth opens for business in San Francisco with volunteer mentors that include the co-inventor of Guitar Hero and the co-founder of genomics firm 23andMe. Among its partners are Mayo Clinic, California HealthCare Foundation, Microsoft, and Qualcomm, with medical partners Mayo Clinic and Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. Selected startups get a $20K grant, access to capital, mentorship, and Silicon Valley office space. The organization was at SXSW last month.


Technology

4-5-2011 9-43-32 PM

CNN Nigeria covers the counterfeit drug trade there, showing local authorities using technology from Sproxil that puts ID numbers on scratch cards attached to the drug package that are texted by cell phone to verify the authenticity of the drug. The drug companies cover the cost of the service since they obviously have an incentive to prevent counterfeit versions of their products.

InVivoLink releases an iPad app that lets orthopedic surgeons analyze their practice patterns, view implant information, and view procedures over a secure network.

Israel-based eWaveMD will debut its new Virtual Medical Consultation platform in Europe this week. The company has previously developed EHR software, a free PQRI software product, and software used by three of four HMOs in Israel.


Other

Healthcare added 36,600 jobs in March, including 10,200 in hospitals. Total hospital employment: 4.7 million.

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM Texas County Memorial Hospital (TX) CEO Wes Murray complains about having to spend $88K for a GE Centricity upgrade, saying the version they bought in 2007 was not Meaningful Use ready because “GE was developing new versions of the software that they wanted everyone to purchase.” He says 3,200 hospitals are in the same position and that “GE is manipulating the system for their benefit.” The CFO piles on, expressing unhappiness that the new version requires a larger server than that of the hospital’s inpatient system. I don’t mean to be cynical, but surely GE wasn’t promising in 2007 that the then-current Centricity version would meet MU requirements that weren’t released in draft form until December 2009. Nobody likes an unplanned IT capital expense, but I would be surprised if someone at the hospital didn’t misunderstand.

The latest installment of Vince Ciotti’s HIStory.

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM Laurens County Hospital (SC) warns patients to follow the road signs and not their GPS if they need to get there in a hurry. Reason: city planners disagreed on the demarcation point separating Highway 76 into East and West addresses, so GPS map-makers were equally confused. The hospital says it sometimes gets calls from lost delivery drivers.

4-5-2011 9-16-59 PM

3-31-2011 7-47-10 PM Johns Hopkins Hospital will dedicate the most expensive building in Baltimore history next week, its $1 billion clinical structure. It has two towers, one named after the deceased president of the United Arab Emirates and the other after the mother of New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg.


Sponsor Updates

  • PatientKeeper names three new regional VPs to its professional services organization, including former Halifax Health (FL) CIO Lori DeLone, former Bassett Health (NY) CIO Joe Diver, and Bill Dwyer, a former manager at SMS/Siemens and Eclipsys/Allscripts.
  • Navicure and the American Academy of Professional Coders form a partnership to develop educational resources to help practices practices transition to the HIPAA 5010 standard and ICD-10 code set.
  • iMDsoft and its clients report improvements in care and efficiency through the use of iMDsoft’s clinical information systems and the MetaVision Event Manager. Examples: Massachusetts General Hospital saved $700,000 over 16 months through the use of drug optimization prompts during long surgeries. Lehigh Valley Hospital (PA) increased compliance with perioperative temperature management from 60% to 92%. Henry Ford Hospital (MI) increased its organ donation rate from 64% to 86%.
  • Baptist Healthcare System (KY) selects T SystemEV for its five hospitals EDs.
  • Hayes Management Consulting is hosting an MDaudit software user group meeting April 13 in Orlando.
  • Williamson Medical Center (TN) chooses ProVation Order Sets as its electronic order set solution.
  • Saint Barnabas (NJ) will replace several legacy medical imaging solutions with McKesson’s Horizon Medical Imaging PACS.
  • 3M Health Information Systems releases its Healthcare Data Dictionary and Enterprise MPI as Web-based applications. The products include APIs to integrate with other applications.
  • GE Healthcare and AirStrip Technologies team up to put GE’s MUSE Cardiology system onto iPhones and iPads via the Airstrip Cardiology mobile device.
  • MED3OOO is ranked 41st on Pittsburgh Business Times Top 100 Privately Held Companies in Pittsburgh, based on 2010 revenue.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.



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Currently there are "9 comments" on this Article:

  1. Just a point of clarification; Trinity Mother Frances is based out of Tyler, Texas and not Florida. One would need two hands to cound how many times executives from ALL of the major HCIT companies flew personal jets out there to close the deal and they obviously all failed except EPIC.

  2. Texas County Memorial Hospital (TX) …………. this is in MO aka Missouri not in TX, confusing, YES! I caught this just figured I’d pass that along. P.S. Love the website, my fav…..have a great day everyone!

  3. Congratulations to Capario on joining the HISTalk sponsors group. Capario is one of Kareo’s partner clearinghouses, and we find them to be an excellent, responsive group to work with.

    Welcome!

  4. obviously somebody from Tyler is pretty excited about wasting money on Epic. highly doubt Neal and Glen wasted their time on a small hospital system in east Texas, but if they wanted to go, private jet may have been the only way to get there. Judy must destroy the ozone more than any HIT CEO out there, but hey, if she’s saving the world with mediocre software, it’s worth it right? by the way the Ochsner purchase is old news and Sutter is spending money they don’t really have to make Epic work. any Epic news is good news right?

    ps why is Kaiser wasting money to create a DC lobbying center? do we really all want Kaisercare to replace Obamacare? just sign me up for the VA – it’s pretty much the same thing!!

  5. AllScripts 8-K was filed today…interesting “departure” to take notice of:

    Personnel Matter

    On April 6, 2011, the Company reported that John Gomez, the Company’s Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer, Product Development & Delivery, will resign from the Company effective May 31, 2011 to pursue personal and other professional interests. Mr. Gomez will remain a consultant to the Company for a period of 18 months.

  6. Re Thera-Pissed’s comment: where exactly is that coming from? Seems like a trolling comment that is a bit over-reaching in its generalization, eh?







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