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October 18, 2011 News 9 Comments

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10-18-2011 7-45-14 PM

A newly signed California bill will require electronic medical records systems to maintain a record of changed or deleted information. The Confidentiality of Medical Information Act, which will become law on January 1, requires systems to log the user’s identity, the date and time of the change, and a record of the information that was changed or deleted.


Reader Comments

mrh_small From Sole Food: “Re: shoes. This conversation is from the Late Late Show last week. Craig Ferguson to Monica Potter: ‘Oh, nice shoes.’ Monica Potter: ‘Yeah, I heard you like shoes.’ Craig Ferguson: ‘No, I like women, and I know that women like shoes.’ So don’t let anyone give you a hard time about posting pics of women’s footwear.” I couldn’t agree more. Inga likes cute women’s shoes, I like how women look in cute shoes. HIStalkapalooza is a lot classier now that many of the ladies come dressed to the nines. Women like dressing up, men like seeing dressed-up women, everybody wins.

mrh_small From The PACS Designer: “Re: Ethernet – Fibre Channel convergence. TPD is celebrating the 10th anniversary of the design of the first Windows/UNIX based PACS that relied on Ethernet, and a Fibre Channel RAID to permit downloading of 500MB image files in under 30 seconds. Now, 10 years later, you are going to be hearing more about the convergence of 10-Gbps Fast Ethernet, and Fibre Channel storage arrays using a new term ‘Data Center Bridging Exchange’ as it tries to become the new standard for data storage.”


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

10-18-2011 6-22-08 PM

Lexmark, the parent company of Perceptive Software, acquires Netherlands-based Pallas Athena for $50 million in cash. Pallas Athena, which is a provider of business process and document output management solutions, will become part of Perceptive.

10-18-2011 7-18-46 PM

TransUnion Healthcare, which offers revenue cycle tools, acquires Financial Healthcare Systems, the Denver-based vendor of the ClearQuote software that estimates out-of-pocket patient responsibility at the point of service.


Sales

BloodCenter of Wisconsin, Community Blood Center of Kansas City, and the US Department of Defense contract with Mediware for its InSight Performance Management platform for blood management.

DeVry University signs a five-year agreement with QuadraMed to incorporate its Quantim suite of HIM coding, compliance, and record management solutions into the school’s health sciences curriculum.

Eastern Connecticut Health Network selects MobileMD’s 4D HIE solution.

10-18-2011 6-23-45 PM

Riverside Health System (VA) selects the EMR-Link solution of Ignis Systems for lab and radiology order integration for over 200 physicians. The company differentiates its product as making all labs equal to physicians and their EMRs, which it says differs from the lab-funded, lab-centric integration model.

10-18-2011 6-48-37 PM

Sheridan Healthcare, the country’s largest anesthesia group with 1,200 providers and 100 hospitals and ambulatory surgery centers, chooses Shareable Ink as its standard documentation and charge capture tool.

CapitalCare Medical Group (NY) chooses ImplementHIT’s OptimizeHIT training platform to prepare its 110 providers for an Allscripts EHR upgrade.


People

10-18-2011 6-25-00 PM

Healthcare Information Xchange of New York (HIXNY) names Mark McKinney as CEO, replacing Dominick Bizzarro, who joined InterSystems earlier this year. McKinney is the former director of integrated services for SXC Health Solutions. HIXNY merged with the Adirondack Regional Community HIE earlier this month.

10-18-2011 6-33-23 PM

MED3OOO hires former Tenet Healthcare executive Jeffery E. Flocken as EVP of accountable care and hospital services.

10-18-2011 6-28-33 PM

Ingenious Med appoints Jim Keener as CTO. He was previously VP of development of Verisign.

10-18-2011 6-29-33 PM

Clinical decision support provider DiagnosisOne names Francis X. Campion, MD as VP of clinical affairs. He’s a member of the Department of Population Medicine at Harvard Medical School.


Announcements and Implementations

Meditech client Aspen Valley Hospital (CO) implements Summit Healthcare’s Downtime Reporting System to address business continuity.

Blue Shield of California will distribute $20 million in grants to 18 California hospitals, health systems, and physician groups to help them develop ACOs.

10-18-2011 8-51-49 PM

The University of North Carolina Hospitals implement the RF Assure Detection System for preventing and detecting retained surgical items in patients.

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) implements NextGate MatchMatrix Terminology Registry to standardize data shared by EHR systems.

Imprivata announces that six additional hospitals using McKesson solutions have implemented OneSign, Imprivata’s single sign-on solution.

Enterprise RTLS vendor Intelligent InSites integrates active RFID readers and tags from RF Code into its solutions.


Government and Politics

New York’s state development agency grants eHealth Global Technologies $750,000 in tax credits to support the company’s expansion. eHealth Global, a medical record retrieval and diagnostic image exchange service provider, will invest $3 million in the expansion and will increase its staff from 75 to 155 over the next five years.

CMS adds WellCentive as a qualified Registry provider for the 2011 PQRS program.

The VA will solicit bids for a WiFi-based real-time location system for tracking assets, employees, and patients its 152 hospitals, with an RFP to be issued by the end of the year.

10-18-2011 8-02-14 PM

mrh_small Bill O’Toole of O’Toole Law Group has expanded his HITlaw article about EHR vendor certification into a white paper called EHR Certification Alert for Providers, summarized as: “The absolute heart of the issue is recognizing that in some cases multiple products that are marketed individually by a vendor are grouped together for testing and ultimately certified together and not separately.”

mrh_small An Associated Press review finds that Medicare often suspends bogus providers, but then quickly reinstates their payments even after their prosecution. The review found that appeal hearings often have nobody in attendance from CMS or their contractors, leading to a rubber stamp reinstatement of billing privileges. The article says pay-first policies (“pay and chase”) have made fraud so easy and lightly penalized that drug dealers and mobsters have given up their previous scams in favor of Medicare fraud. Disjointed government processes are blamed: contractors don’t share information, provider ID revocation doesn’t automatically initiate criminal proceedings, Medicare’s lawyers don’t show up at hearings, and nobody’s collecting surety bonds required of medical equipment providers when they skip town.


Innovation and Research

10-18-2011 7-50-41 PM

10-18-2011 7-50-00 PM

10-18-2011 7-51-36 PM

10-18-2011 7-52-19 PM

mrh_small A good Business Insider article lists eight healthcare startups that are “shaking up” the industry. Among them: ZocDoc (online doctor appointments), Cake Health (medical expense tracking), Avado (doctor-patient relationship management software), and Sharecare (consumer Q&A with medical experts).


Technology

Dell ends its 10-year storage reseller agreement with EMC. The move was not a surprise, given Dell’s multiple acquisitions of data-storage technology over the last three years.

HP and Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital (CA) announce a real-time patient status system that uses EMR data to represent patient status, rather than traditional handwritten notes on whiteboards. During a trial period, researchers found that the Patient-Centered Dashboard prompted a change in care in one out of three patients.


Other

HealthGrades reports that Washington DC, New York City, and Kansas City are the top communities on a per capita basis in which consumers look for healthcare providers online.

Orion Health says it could hire up to 200 employees New Zealand following its acquisition of the former Microsoft Amalga HIS hospital information system.

At least 255 communities are attempting to support health information exchanges, but only 12% of them are self-sustaining. That’s still 33% better than 2010 estimates.

The 2010 Annual HIMSS Conference is recognized as “The Show with the Most Innovative Practices” at the Trade Show Executive Gold 100 Awards & Summit. HIMSS10 also ranked 33 on the Gold 100 list.

inga_small The Commonwealth Fund releases its annual National Scorecard on US Health System Performance. Some highlights (or perhaps lowlights):

  • Despite big gains in EMR usage among primary care providers, the US lags far behind leading countries in EMR adoption.
  • Although the US is showing promising improvements on several key indicators, quality of care remains uneven, with evidence of many inefficiencies and inequities in care.
  • Other advanced countries are outpacing the US in providing timely access to primary care, in reducing premature mortality, and in extending health life expectancy. At the same time, these other countries are spending considerably less on healthcare and administration.

10-18-2011 7-33-11 PM

mrh_small Readers have occasionally speculated about the EMR status of Lehigh Valley Health Network (PA), with a couple of them saying LVHN has chosen Epic. Not true, according to SVP/CIO Harry Lukens, who was kind to provide an update. LVHN, a GE Healthcare customer, is looking at GEHC, Allscripts, Cerner, and Epic. Scripted demos for all interested staff have begun, with those of GEHC and Epic completed (with similar combined scores of functionality and comments.) Harry says LVHN is planning to eliminate one vendor in November and another in January after site visits, then come to a final decision by March, although he’s philosophical in expecting the unexpected: “Keep in mind I also planned on attending the World Series to watch the Phillies play, which is my way of saying ‘stuff happens,’ a simple observation that planning is filled with things that happen for no reason.”

10-18-2011 7-31-36 PM

mrh_small Central Vermont Medical Center and Fletcher Allen Health Care create a corporate affiliation that will allow them to share centralized services, among them Fletcher Allen’s Epic system.

mrh_small Weird News Andy says, “I can see right through their plan,” as three Delaware Valley hospitals report the theft of scrap X-ray film, apparently by silver-seeking thieves posing as employees of a company hired by the hospitals to recycle their old film. And in a story WNA finds simultaneously weird and sad, a 47-year-old man appears on Howard Stern’s satellite radio show hoping to generate donations toward the $1 million he needs to pay for corrective surgery for his elephantiasis-swollen scrotum, which weighs 100 pounds.


Sponsor Updates

10-18-2011 6-37-03 PM

  • Texas Regional Medical Center enhances its medication barcoding initiative with the implementation of the Access Intelligent Forms pharmacy labeling solution.
  • Southeast Alabama Medical Center reports that its deployment of ProVation Order Sets has yielded cumulative benefits of $1.7 million.
  • McKesson launches Episode Management, which automates bundled payments for episodes of care.
  • Mac McMillian, CEO of CyngerisTek, will participate in a telebriefing on HIPAA privacy and security audits, hosted by Law Seminars International.
  • T-System CMIO Robert Hitchcock, MD,  addresses critical issues in EDs in a podcast entitled Hospital Emergency Departments in Crises.
  • Carefx Corporation releases a white paper entitled Patient Portals – The Pathway to Patient Engagement and an Enhanced Patient Experience.
  • Hayes Management Consulting issues a white paper and Webinar on achieving Meaningful Use.
  • Crittenden Regional Hospital (AR) meets Stage 1 MU utilizing the EHR and consulting services of Healthcare Management Systems,
  • Merge Healthcare’s RIS v7.0 receives Complete EHR certification for MU.

Contacts

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



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Currently there are "9 comments" on this Article:

  1. Shoes have the most fascinating history of most modern fashion objects. For instance did you know in 3500 B.C both men and women wore high heels? In fact macho butchers would often wear high heals to protect themselves from the animals blood?

    In 17th century France men’s heals were commonly 3-4 inches high.

    In 1791 Napoleon (of all people!) banned high heels attempting to illustrate equality.

    A 100 pound woman exerts 15 times more pressure than a fully grown elephant.

    The term “Well-heeled” (still in use today) was used to mean “this man must be wealthy as he can afford such high heels”.

    A more modern example of men wearing high heels would be John Travolta in Saturday Nigh Fever and, of course, Tom Cruise.

  2. About twenty minutes ago I had a delicious meal with my husband, he’d made turnip soup, as we slowly ate it memories started flooding back of a time when I was working as a trolley operative at the Hallamshire Hospital. I specifically remember one event that will stay with me forever.

    It had been a slow day on the wards, Mrs Cornice the staff nurse had let some of the ancillary staff go home so it just her and I working in our section. The peace was shattered when news that a severed head had been found floating in a case on the river Don, and that it was on its way in an ambulance.

    On arrival the A&E staff quickly tried to resuscitate the head with oxygen and electric shocks but to no avail, it was lifeless. We then all waited in tense anticipation as an autopsy was performed. As the doctors tried to peel the scalp back to reveal the cranium they realized that this was not a human head at all, it was actually a large turnip that had been given human features with the assistance of some coal for the eyes, a floppy hat, carrot nose and a corn pipe. There was a name on the case and after some calls all was revealed.

    The day before farmer Ralph Wilkins was in the process of moving farms. He had packed his scarecrow into two cases, one for the body and a smaller one for the head. He packed this along with his other belongings onto a rowing boat that later capsized whilst in transit to his new farm. Well they say ownership is 9/10th of the law and we assumed that farmer Ralph could easily lay his coarse hands on another turnip so we decided to make some soup with the head in one of the sterilizing units.

  3. Bob,
    I head from Alice that HCA EMR decision was postponed until late December 2011.
    Mallory.
    P.S. Chuck said that it may be postponed again until March.

  4. Head Cases bizarre story reminds me of Dr Robert J. White and his experiments in the 1970’s.

    Readers may remember Dr White, medical adviser to the pope and his groundbreaking experiments transplanting monkey heads.

    Dr. White had success transplanting monkey head A on to monkey body B. The Monkey could see, breath and generally survive but had no feeling or movement from the neck down. When the monkey woke it tried to bite the finger of an attending doctor, causing everybody to cheer!

    Dr. Whites dream was to transplant a human head. Sadly he died before he was to realize his dream.

    Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.

    To the best of my knowledge Dr. White didn’t wear high heals, even when operating.

  5. I have it on good authority that (while not fighting tigers, finding ancient urns and perhaps driving monster trucks) Vladimir Putin also enjoys the benefits of a high heel.

    Robert White’s post incites the obvious question: Would a kipper (i.e. smoked fish) turn back into a herring if placed in a time machine (that was set to go back in time)?

  6. Its clearly not true about Vladimir Putin. I know it for a fact that he does indeed were high heels while driving monster trucks and fighting tigers.

  7. I also head that well-heeled HCA is postponing its decision until the monkey experiments can be renewed.

    Stranger things have happened.







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