News 2/29/12

Top News

Epocrates reports Q4 numbers: revenue up 9%, EPS –$0.18 vs. $0.01. The company reduced 2012 revenue estimates and says it will seek strategic alternatives for its EHR, which includes a native iPad version, since “the effort has hindered our ability to aggressively pursue such [physician network] opportunities.” Maybe that list of EHR mistakes is of theirs.

Reader Comments

From BeenThere: “Re: WellStar. Shutting down its ambulatory rollout of [vendor name omitted].” I’m looking for confirmation and will provide more details if I get them.

From Non-Sequitur: “Re: SNOMED. My manager attended Dr. Mostashari’s session and is able to substantiate what you wrote down about SNOMED and the problem list. He captured the talk on a Flip and we just listened to that segment talking how ‘we now have a standard for this or that’ ontology. Here’s specifically what he said regarding problem lists: ‘There is now a single standard for problem lists: SNOMED.’ I concur with the other people who have commented there is no mention of a requirement for SNOMED in the currently released document. We’ll see if what is published in the Federal Register provides additional detail.“ Thanks! I was hoping I hadn’t dreamed that part so early in his talk.

From Jockey: “Re: Allscripts. Curious if you’ve heard rumors of an acquisition by some big non-healthcare guys.” Two anonymous readers have said that IBM (and possibly Oracle) might be making a move, but I have nothing substantial to back that up.

From BrazosKid: “Re: KC area eClinicalWorks user group meeting. Surprise guest was CEO Girish. Said a few words and took some questions, made time for anyone who wanted to talk to him. A very personable and approachable CEO. You should interview him.” I have, actually: in 2006, 2008, and 2009. Girish Kumar Navani is one of my favorite people to talk to: honest, logical, and insightful, not to mention fun and an excellent businessman.

From Phil: “Re: HIStalkapalooza. The flipbook with Elvis was the highlight of the memorabilia I brought back!” Those were cool. Check them out in the video if you haven’t already. I may need to make Elvis a fixture at future events since he was fun.

From Kathy Wheatley: “Re: thanks for the Booth Crawl iPad from T-System. Coincidentally, some of our facilities use T-System and love it. Paper T’s in the past, but the electronic version is very easy, fast, and reliable. Thank you T-System for sponsoring HIStalk. I get my information from HIStalk, HIStalk Practice, and HIStalk Mobile, pull out applicable info, and copy it in another e-mail for our leadership team. My boss told me not to stop sending them – he was getting a lot of good market info from them. You have a great knack of pulling together applicable and trend information to hand it to your readers with a great synopsis and links to the full articles, which I have used often. I appreciate the writings of Inga, Dr. Jayne, and Dr. Gregg as well, and I enjoy reading Ed Marx – so spot on. Thanks for being the glue that holds this together.” Thanks for those nice comments from Kathy from HCA, for which I’m sure I’m speaking for T-System as well. I also got  nice e-mail from Jason Blunk, who won his iPad from MedPlus and said he enjoyed checking out booths he would have missed otherwise.

From Sagacity: “Re: Meaningful Use Stage 2 references. Along with the bookmarked version of the NPRM, here is a bookmarked version of the ONC Standards, Implementation Specifications, and Certification Criteria. It comes with the added bonus of clickable MU Objective links, which take you back to the CMS MU objective being referenced in the CMS document. (Just be sure to save both in the same folder).” Thanks for sending the links.

From The PACS Designer: “Re: iPad 3. When the iPad 3 is released next month, you’ll find that the majority of changes will be inside, since rumored details indicate that there will be no change in the size of the screen. One new upgrade coming is better High Definition, where the number of pixels will double by using a 4×4 matrix instead of 2×2 currently in the iPad 2.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

If you’ve completed my once-a-year Reader Survey, thanks. If not, I’d appreciate your input.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Halfpenny Technologies secures $2.25 million in VC funding co-led by Vital Financial and Emerald Stage2 Ventures. The company also announces that it has won approval as the first pilot by the Laboratory Results Interface Pilots Work Group.

T-System acquires Clinical Coding Solutions, a provider of technology for facility and professional charge capture and coding for EDs, observation, urgent care centers, and outpatient clinics.

Hello Health raises $10 million in a combination of common and preferred shares and issuance of convertible debentures through its parent company Myca Health.

Sales

CentraState Healthcare System (NJ) chooses Cognizant to develop its ICD-10 transition strategy.

Trinity Health (MI) selects Quest Diagnostics’ ChartMaxx Enterprise Content Management solution.

LifeCare Hospitals (TX) chooses Meta’s integrated HIM and CDI software suite for abstracting/coding and clinical documentation for its 27 long-term acute care facilities.

CMS awards SAIC a contract to provide enterprise remote identity proofing and multi-factor authentication credential services. The total contract value is $78 million, assuming all contract options are exercised.

HMO Simply Healthcare (FL) selects MedHOK’s care management, quality, and compliance software for quality improvement initiatives.

Sacred Heart Health Systems (FL), Piedmont Healthcare (GA), and Orlando Health (FL) sign contracts with QuadraMed for its identity management solutions.

People

KPMG appoints Richard Bakalar (Microsoft Health Solutions Group) to its Global Healthcare Center of Excellence.

CORHIO Executive Director Phyllis Albritton announces that she will step down at the end of March after four years of leading the organization.

Cape Cod Healthcare (MA) promotes Jeanne M. Fallon to VP/CIO.

CareCloud appoints John Hallock, formerly with athenahealth, as VP of corporate communications.

Siemens Healthcare names David Fisher, formerly with the Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance, as VP of healthcare policy and strategy.

Announcements and Implementations

Ochsner Health System (LA) standardizes on the Informatica platform for HIE, BI, and other IS initiatives.

Sentara Princess Anne Hospital (VA) implements EXTENSION’s clinical workflow solutions for nursing staff in its neonatal ICU.

Oakwood Healthcare Dearborn (MI) will go live with an $80 million Epic project in August.

Midwest Orthopaedis at Rush goes live with SA Ignite’s MU Assistant, which documents EHR usage in preparation for assessment.

Delaware Health Information Network announces that all of the state’s acute care hospitals and skilled nursing facilities are participating in its statewide community health record, making it the first state to have all hospitals involved.

New York eHealth Collaborative is accepting presentation proposals through March 23 for its 2012 Digital Health Conference to be held in October.

Shareable Ink announces partnerships with Greenway, NextEMR, and VoiceHIT for its handwriting recognition technology.

Government and Politics

In England, a hospital pilots an analytics service in which drug companies can use the hospital’s de-identified and aggregated data directly from its databases to perform queries and data analysis.

The VA orders worked stopped on its $103 million enterprise service bus that would connect external products to the EHR it’s developing with the Department of Defense. CIO Roger Baker also says the VA is looking for less-expensive alternatives to Microsoft Office, but has no immediate plans to switch.

CMS credits its fraud detection technology for the indictment of a Texas physician and six other people who it claims bilked the government for $375 million of unnecessary home health services. CMS says the physician certified more Medicare beneficiaries for home health service than any other US medical practice, claiming that he recruited them via door-to-door solicitations and visits to the local homeless shelter.

Other

Novant Health (NC) is hiring 150 people with clinical and computer experience as it transitions to Epic.

Weird News Andy extends this story on cosmetic leg-lengthening surgery, which he captions, “Men, grow six inches.” WNA also likes this ink on medical tattoos, including “No CPR” emblazoned on a man’s chest, although the wording WNA suggests for breast implants is not family friendly.

Nuesoft is conducting a survey on attitudes about the transition to ICD-10 and ANSI-5010.

An article in the Minneapolis paper covers the local VA’s use of a virtual ICU to cover hospital ICUs in multiple cities from a single location, which an intensivist there likens to air traffic controllers watching from afar.

Sponsor Updates

• DIVURGENT and Bon Secours Kentucky Health System publish a white paper on implementing an EMR.
• Covisint partners with Anvita Health to add Anvita’s Smart Problem List to its HIE platform.
• Comanche County Memorial Hospital (OK) will migrate from McKesson’s Horizon Clinicals to Paragon HIS.
• ZirMed introduces VeraFund Manager, an end-to-end automated patient/payer solution for healthcare providers.
• CommunityHealth IT (FL) partners with RelayHealth for its HIE.
• Allscripts and MyCareTeam launch a diabetes management system that integrates the MyCareTeam application with Allscripts Enterprise EHR.
• Beacon Partners launches Pillars Project Planner, a Web-based project management and implementation tool that provides organizations real-time access to their projects.
• Nuance introduces two clinical language understanding solutions, Dragon Medical 360 | M.D.Assist and Dragon Medical 360 | QualityAnalytics.
• eClinicalWorks announces Community Analytics, a data analytics solution for communities and ACOs that provides reporting, alerting, and messaging capabilities to manage population health.
• UC Health (OH) expands its use of Streamline Health Solutions in three of its hospitals.
• Central Alabama Health Image Exchange selects MEDecision to deliver its DICOM images and clinical information solution to seven of its hospitals.
• Healthland partners with Imprivata to resell Imprivata’s single sign-on and access management technology.
• Concentra (TX) selects Allscripts EHR to deploy in its 310 urgent care locations across the country. CVS Caremark’s MinuteClinic will transition from its proprietary EMR to AllscriptsMyWay EHR.
• HFMA grants Surgical Information Systems the “Peer Reviewed by HFMA” designation.
• LTC provider NuVista Living (FL) implements the Intelligent InSites RTLS solution as part of its Living Smart Room.
• Trenton Health Team (NJ) selects Covisint as its HIE provider.
• GetWellNetwork says it gained 25 new hospital customers and a 35% increase in live beds for its interactive patient care solution in 2011.
• Healthcare Management Systems (HMS) and Certify Data Systems partner to make Certify’s HIE solution available to HMS customers.
• Microsoft selects Health Language to map patient data within Microsoft Amalga platform.
• Practice Fusion wins top honors for customer satisfaction in the primary care division of the Black Book Ratings
• Imprivata introduces CorText, its secure texting application.
• T-System introduces care coordination technology at the Emergency Nurses Association Leadership Conference.
• PatientKeeper introduces the latest release of its medication reconciliation software.
• Brown & Toland IPA (CA) selects Humedica MinedShare as its analytics platform to assist its 1,500 physicians with Pioneer ACO requirements.
• CynergisTek partners with Iatric Systems to offer Iatric’s Security Audit Manager and Medical Records Release Manager solutions.
• Quest Diagnostics announces a 30-day EHR implementation guarantee to enable bi-directional data exchange between hospitals and ambulatory physicians using the Care360 EHR.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.