News 1/27/12

Top News

CPSI announces Q4 numbers: revenue down 2%, EPS $0.59 vs. $0.61, raising questions about the state of the hospital clinical systems market.

Reader Comments

From Vegas Question: “Re: HIStalkapalooza invitations. Will the e-mail come from your usual address or a new one? My spam folder is pretty large and I don’t want to miss it.” Invitations and regrets will be sent from histalkapalooza@contactESD.com this week. The walk-up plan will be described for those we couldn’t invite because of capacity. Check at the registration table at 8:00 and if we have room due to no-shows, we’ll let more folks in.

From Rick: “Re: GE Healthcare. Restructuring of its IT division continued Tuesday with an announcement that it will terminate the Centricity Advance hosted EMR/PM solution immediately. Customers will have to make arrangements to move their data out of the cloud before the system is taken offline. All development in its Hospital and Large Practice division has been halted and products placed in maintenance-only mode, including Centricity Business revenue cycle solution. The Centricity EMR product will be sunset with no Version 10 release, replaced by the Centricity Practice Solutions combined EMR/PM system.” I asked GE Healthcare for a response Tuesday evening and agreed not to run the rumor then since the spokesperson indicated that it contained inaccuracies. Here are the main points from GE Healthcare:

• The company will shut down its hosted PM/EMR solution Centricity Advance (the former MedPlexus product that GE Healthcare acquired in March 2010) on June 30, 2012.
• The decision was made because of market overlap between the Centricity Advance product and Centricity Practice Solution.
• Customers can retrieve their data in read-only form until December 31, 2012.
• Customers will be offered an upgrade to the Centricity Practice Solution PM/EMR, with data migration, training, and implementation costs covered by GE.
• The company will eliminate an unspecified number of jobs related to the announcement.
• The Centricity Business revenue cycle product is unaffected by the announcement.

From Expat Consultant: “Re: Dubai Health Authority embezzlement. These people own the company representing Epic in the current bid for DHA business.” Two men are charged with embezzling $250K from a company providing services to the DHA.

From Rebecca: “Re: HIMSS presenters. Have you thought about listing sessions that will be presented by HIStalk’s loyal followers and contributors? You have so many followers attending and it would be nice to encourage them to attend educational sessions.” I’m a sucker for doing good deeds even though I’m already overwhelmed, so if you’re speaking at a session that’s on the regular HIMSS educational track (not in the exhibitor’s theater, on the show floor, etc.) you can enter your information here and I’ll try to put out a list.

From Ileus: “Re: links to HIStalk Practice and HIStalk Mobile. I can never find them. Why not put them at the top of the page?” That’s a good idea that we’ll take one step further by placing tiny links at the bottom of each news post, starting today. That way, readers using mobile devices and RSS feeds can click them. I hadn’t thought about the ease of finding the links, to be honest.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Highlights from this week’s HIStalk Practice: eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani highlights his company’s 2011 achievements and 2012 goals. SBA loans to doctors have surged in the last 10 years. Seven states have still not initiated Medicaid EHR incentive programs.  Julie McGovern of Practice Wise discusses New Year’s resolutions, vendor relationships, and setting realistic and appropriate expectations.  The ever-irreverent Dr. Joel Diamond explains the history of ICD-10 (it’s a must read.) Actually, I think everything on HIStalk Practice is a must read, so make sure you are signed up for e-mail updates.

On the Jobs Board: Senior Product Manager of Healthcare Solutions, SCM Go-Live Support, Epic Credentialed Trainers. On Healthcare IT Jobs: Director of Technical Operations, Allscripts Application Analyst, IT Director and IT Leader.

Inga, Dr. Jayne, and I do our HIStalk work in a bubble of lonely anonymity, so we always enjoy connecting with readers, even if only by electronic means. We enjoy seeing the names of the 2,128 folks who have signed up for Dann’s LinkedIn-based HIStalk Fan Club, which is almost four years old now (hello to the new folks there from Citizens Memorial Healthcare, American College of Cardiology, McKesson, Cornerstone Advisors, Vitera Healthcare, DrFirst, Medibis, Medicity, GE Healthcare, and Lehigh University). We accept all friend/connection requests from Facebook and LinkedIn, connecting you to a pretty big web of people that might come in handy someday. We like it when you send us news and rumors, subscribe to the e-mail list, click the ads of our sponsors, and use the Resource Guide and Consulting RFI Blaster. And of course thanks for reading, and thank goodness you do since we would be wasting our time here otherwise.

I forgot to give a proper introduction and welcome to Dr. Rick, whose first EHR Design Talk has earned a great response from the Twitterverse and from reader comments. He chose where to start his series, but you get to decide where it goes from there through your interaction with him. You will no doubt appreciate his active (and sometimes almost immediate) response to your comments, indicating his keen interest in usability and your thoughts on what it means to EHR users. It takes a lot of effort to research and write posts like his, so thanks to Dr. Rick for sharing his time and expertise with us.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

drchrono closes a $2.8 million funding round. The company says 15,000 users have registered.

EHR and PM provider Image MD (formerly eHealth Made EASY) announces it has increased its invested capital from $15 million to $25 million over the last year.

Quality Systems, the parent company of NextGen, reports Q3 earnings: revenue up 23% to $112.8 million; net income up 20% to $21.1 million. The company’s $0.36 EPS missed analysts’ estimates by $0.02.

Sales

Masonicare (CT) selects the Summit Express Connect interface engine to provide interface integration between Masonicare’s MEDITECH HIS and ancillary systems.

People

Former Clinecta President Jeffrey A. Pfund joins JEMS Technology as COO.|

Brian Mitchell, formerly of GE Healthcare, joins ClearDATA Networks as vice president of sales.

M*Modal (MedQuist) promotes Michael Clark to EVP of global sales.

University of Chicago Medical Center promotes Sameer Badlani, MD from associate CMIO to CMIO.

Healthcare data analytics and consulting firm Sg2 appoints Eric Louie MD, MBA as chief medical officer.

Former Microsoft Health Solutions Group VP Peter Neupert joins venture capital firm Health Evolution Partners as an operating partner, joining former ONC head David Brailer MD.

Healthcare Data Solutions, a provider of healthcare databases and intelligence services, names Scott Thompson (InfoGroup) its CTO.

Drexel DeFord, VP/CIO of Seattle Children’s Hospital, will serve as 2012 chair of CHIME’s board of trustees.

Rick Schooler, VP/CIO of Orlando Health (FL) is named CHIME-HIMSS John E. Gall Jr. CIO of the Year.

Leigh Ann Myers RN joins PerfectServe as VP and chief clinical officer. She was previously with PatientSafe Solutions.

Announcements and Implementations

Virtua (NJ) goes live with the first phase of its enterprise-wide device infrastructure using Nuvon’s VEGA System to connect to its Picis perioperative solution.

Upstate University Hospital (NY) introduces Upstate MyChart, giving patients online access to their medical records. The hospital is part of SUNY Upstate Medical University, which is in the midst of $40 million Epic implementation.

API Healthcare announces that 20 hospitals have recently gone live with its workforce management solutions.

M*Modal Inc and Merge Healthcare partner to integrate M*Modal’s speech and natural language understanding technology into Merge solutions.

Siemens HSB CEO John Glaser and Texas Health Resources SVP/CIO Ed Marx are among the presenters of a January 31 webinar, Can Healthcare Providers Afford to Ignore Social Media?

MedAssets announces general availability of its Access Integrity suite for front-end RCM processes.

Greenville Hospital System University Medical Center (SC) goes live on Holon’s CPOE Medication Order Management solution at all of its facilities.

Government and Politics

ONC head Farzad Mostahari MD predicts that at least 100,000 providers will receive EHR incentive payments by the end of 2012. In a blog posting that discusses his forecast for HIT in the coming year, he says:

I see 2012 as the year in which health IT truly comes of age. While much work still needs to be done, the groundwork is firmly in place for what promises to be a breakthrough year in the adoption and widespread use of health IT in ways that improve care for individuals, improve health outcomes for populations, and increase the value we get from our health care dollars.

A just-published article in The Center for Public Integrity’s iWatch News covers the special interest advocacy activities (or political influence peddling, according to rival Mitt Romney) of Newt Gingrich’s for-profit Center for Health Transformation. It lists some examples of Gingrich pitching his clients in various government hearings for projects requiring major government expenditures, among them GE Healthcare, Siemens, Allscripts, and HealthTrio. The center’s project director is mentioned as testifying that the Department of Labor should require healthcare providers to use electronic medical records, which it implies morphed into HITECH. Gingrich also appeared at a press conference in the Senate Office Building to promote a bill requiring e-prescribing, in which at least 20 of his paying clients had a financial interest.

The government says that an upgrade to Symantec’s Veritas Storage Foundation caused the significant downtime experienced by the Military Health System’s AHLTA clinical system last week.

ONC’s Office of the Chief Privacy Officer announces a project to identify best practices for mobile device privacy and security. They will convene a public roundtable in the spring.

Other

Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) officially adopts the Xerox name, two years after its acquisition by that company.

Server problems at a clinic in Canada cause month-long issues, including the inability to access patient records and the complete shutdown of the telephone system for a day.

Healthcare Growth Partners releases its latest healthcare IT industry review, covering Q4 and reviewing 2011’s activities. It’s a very well done review of macroeconomic and healthcare IT industry factors that will affect merger and acquisition activities and share performance of publicly traded companies. I really liked the chart above that describes why some companies command high revenue multiples when acquired, while others don’t. What it’s showing is that recent acquisitions aren’t following the typical trend, with more premium-priced acquisitions than usual. I would attribute to the fifth factor listed in the rightmost section – deep-pockets outsider companies are making it rain to snap up available players so they can scratch their itch to get into healthcare quickly, even if irresponsibly. Whether they’ll stay in is another question (most don’t.)

Weird News Andy declares that bacon is the new duct tape, noting a report from Michigan doctors who stopped a four-year-old girl’s platelet-related nosebleed by shoving raw bacon up her nose. One of the doctors said he got the idea from his military days, when pork was recommended as an antihemorrhagic. WNA postulates that the story was sponsored by the ThinkGeek product above.

An Oklahoma hospital that took a $500K donation from country singer Garth Brooks to build a women’s center to be named after his mother but then used the money for other projects is ordered to give Brooks his money back plus another $500K as punitive damages. The hospital argued that the gift from Brooks was originally made anonymously and without restrictions and that he was fuzzy on details about the meeting when asked later.

Sponsor Updates

• Fulcrum Methods launches its ICD-10 assessment, remediation, and program management tools.
• T-System’s T SystemEV EDIS successfully completes the highest level of interoperability tests at IHE’s Connectathon.
• Sunrise Health System (NV) becomes the first health system in Nevada to use AirStrip CARDIOLOGY.
• MEDecision’s January 31 Webinar will feature a discussion on the use of coordination solutions and EHRs to lower costs and improve care. 
• Concerro announces the keynote speakers for its April 2012 Concerro Client Conference.
• Southeast Alabama Medical Center selects PatientKeeper Mobile CPOE to compliment its McKesson HIS.
• MedAptus announces that its Professional Intelligent Charge Capture solution was named Mobile Data Systems Category Leader in KLAS’s annual report.
• Medicity validates its interoperability capabilities at the IHE North American Connectathon 2012.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

The media have been all over reports about physicians distracted by their electronic devices. I laughed out loud at this headline, though: Paperwork causes unintended distractions for physicians and nurses. This quick little piece on KevinMD.com is worth the read. I think sometimes we’re so aggravated by our technology that we forget what it was like before.

As a physician, I’m annoyed by lawmakers’ attempts to control how I practice or how patients care for self-limited illnesses. The recent spike in state and municipal laws that restrict purchasing of over-the-counter cold remedies is an example. Communities typically decide (often in patchwork fashion) that these will now be available only by prescription. This drives me crazy, because although I can purchase it over the counter without a prescription, if I prescribe it for a patient it is considered a controlled substance and requires the use of my DEA number and the use of special prescription paper as it cannot be electronically prescribed (at least not now in the state where I practice.)

In turn, this causes patients to spend a co-pay to come see me, plus the insurance company to fund the rest of the cost for an office visit, all so that the patient can purchase a drug that should have cost $4.99 at the local discount store. An article I recently ran across  lets us know that not only have the meth makers outsmarted the restrictions on pseudoephedrine purchase, they’re also driving up healthcare costs in unintended ways. Users have turned to small-batch techniques (the “one pot” or “shake and bake” approach) to make their own meth rather than relying on the large batches typically produced by dealers. This has caused a spike in burn patients when the experiment literally blows up in the user’s face. An Associated Press survey reports that up to a third of burn patients were injured making meth. These patients are often uninsured and their care is more costly than that of other burn patients. The ultimate cost could be in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Definitely something to think about.

Insurers are moving into the mobile health game. Aetna, WellPoint, and UnitedHealth Group are among payers who have jumped into the fray in a big way. I enjoy following HIStalk Mobile and am supportive of things that help patients get more in tune with their health care and personal wellness. I’m a bit skeptical, though, about in-car health. I’d rather encourage people to get out of their cars instead of convincing them that time sitting in them is terribly worthwhile.|

Speaking of personal fitness: for some, obesity continues to cause issues even in death. Due to the potential for decreased learning when working with obese cadavers as well as the difficulties in preparing and storing them, some medical schools are rejecting donations based on size. Scientific donation of a body is a true gift and I am grateful to those individuals and families who choose this route. I’m sad for those who want to make this gift but are unable to do so.

One of my closest friends is gridlocked with his employer over the use of the CMIO title. He’s been doing the job for years but they refuse to recognize him. It may be just a name, but to bolster his spirits I want to share some unusual executive titles. Hang in there, and remember that in your head, you can have whatever title you want. Personally, I think I’ll choose Imperatrix. Now I just need to figure out something equally important-sounding for Inga.

I’ve been trying to get into Twitter, but it seems to be conspiring against me. Since I haven’t been wasting any time tweeting, I’ve been able to continue my pre-HIMSS shoe shopping. Although I’m not eligible for the “Inga Loves My Shoes” contest, I don’t want her to think I’m a slouch, so I’ve been texting her with my finds. So far I seem to be meeting her standards, but I’m not convinced I have the perfect pair just yet.

In response to Monday’s Curbside Consult, readers are continuing to send some great suggestions. I’m looking forward to hitting some of them soon. Please keep them coming!

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.