News 3/16/12

Top News

CMS pushes back the enforcement date for HIPAA 5010 transactions another three months, to June 30, 2012.

Reader Comments

From HIT Observer: “Re: City of Hope (CA). Looking to acquire some in-house talent. I believe it’s an Allscripts shop.”

From Cowabunga: “Re: UCLA. Was scheduled to go live with Epic patient accounting and registration at its hospitals and 150 clinics on July 1. Pushed the date back to March 2013 this week.” Unverified. You wonder if hospitals didn’t overcommit trying to hit Meaningful Use dates and are just beginning to realize the extent of the work required.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Inga is still off on a sojourn of some kind, so it’s just me (Mr. H) at the keyboard (Logitech, not Wurlitzer.)

Listening: new from Ceremony, NorCal punk rockers (think Pixies or Bad Religion.)

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Informatica. The global data integration company’s healthcare provider products include enterprise analytics data management, EMR data migration and archiving, the Informatica Integration Engine, and HIPAA 5010 Crosswalk. A few weeks back, I interviewed Chief Healthcare Strategist Richard Cramer, who has heavy provider-side IT experience from UMass and Penn. It was a good interview – I learned from it. Resources on the company’s site include “chalk talks” on data governance and a master data foundation solution for healthcare, a Webinar on why interface engines are obsolete, and improving care through data quality improvement. Thanks to Informatica for supporting HIStalk.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Mediware will acquire the Cyto Management System chemotherapy management solution from Cobbler ICT Services BV in a $2.2 million transaction. The product, deployed only in Holland and Belgium, is used by hospitals and cancer centers to manage oncology protocols and costs, including drug preparation and administration. Mediware will continue to market the product under existing agreements and will roll it out in the UK and Ireland to complement its medication management product.

Voicebrook and Nuance announce an agreement to work together to develop speech-enabled reporting solutions for anatomic pathology laboratories. Voicebrook will integrate its VoiceOver pathology software with Dragon Medical 360.

I don’t follow stock pickers since most of their wisdom seems retrospective, but if you have a higher annoyance threshold than I do for Mad Money’s Jim Cramer, maybe you care that he’s tired of pitching Allscripts and now throws his questionable prognostication skills behind Cerner. “I’m going to eat some crow, admit the error, and tell you it’s time to put Allscripts in the sell block. If you want a healthcare IT play, the stock to own is Cerner, although I suggest you keep your powder dry on this one because it’s been red-hot and we could get a pullback.” The self-proclaimed expert claims that Allscripts has had problems integrating its “Aclipsys” platform, has a “large number of different versions of its software on the market,” and doesn’t manage expectations well.

Here’s the one-year share price comparison between Cerner (blue) and Allscripts (red). Thanks a lot, Jim – do you like the Giants or the Patriots in Super Bowl XLVI?

Reuters profiles Toronto-based NexJ Systems, which is using its IPO funding to expand its software business into healthcare with its interoperability solutions, portals, and population health management tools.

People

Kevin Fickenscher MD, formerly with CREO Strategic Solutions and Dell Healthcare, is named as president and CEO of AMIA. He replaces Ted Shortliffe MD PhD, who announced plans to step down last year.

Cleveland Clinic CIO Martin Harris MD, MBA is elected to the board of Thermo Fisher Scientific.

Intelligent InSites appoints Major General Terry L. Scherling (Ret.) to its board. She is president and CEO of global security planning solutions vendor TENICA and Associates LLC of Alexandria, VA.

Forbes profiles Grant Verstandig, the 22-year-old college dropout who formed Audax Health (social networking meets insurance benefits) and raised $16.5 million in funding from some heavy hitting backers in less than a year.

Revenue cycle and EHR services vendor Zeus Healthcare names Larry Havelis as CEO. He was previously with Quest Diagnostics and Allscripts.

Announcements and Implementations

Investor’s Business Daily writes up HealthStream-powered medical simulation mannequins and covers the company’s SaaS medical learning center, which has 2.75 million subscribers.

GE Healthcare and Intel open a laboratory in Israel to test new technologies.

Intelligent Medical Objects opens an office in Research Park on the campus of the University of Illinois.

Government and Politics

A security researcher says 84% of government web applications don’t meet security standards. One reason: instead of getting embarrassed or fired for writing bad code, government contractors get to bill extra for change orders to fix the mess they created.

New York eHealth Collaborative held a meeting Thursday to address health IT issues in the state’s Medicaid medical home initiative. A Department of Health official stated that current IT tools can’t bridge the care gaps in the managed care environment, and new applications are needed that can operate on the Statewide Health Information Network of New York.

Innovation and Research

Researchers use patient databases from drug trials and from the electronic medical records system of Stanford University Hospital to identify hundreds of previously undocumented drug-drug interactions and side effects. They developed algorithms to match similar patients to eliminate false alarms caused by gender, age, and disease status. The lead author plans to present the results to FDA as a possible way to improve drug surveillance programs.

Johns Hopkins University has 49 studies of mHealth applications underway as part of its Global mHealth Initiative. Director Alain Labrique says health-related apps should carry a disclaimer since most of them have not been validated through research. The GmI’s mission is to provide evidence-based support to technologies that have the best chance of improving global health in resource-limited settings.

Other

EHRtv posts interview videos from the HIMSS conference.

A Miami passenger cruise industry conference runs its first medical pavilion, covering medical technologies such as satellite-based telemedicine available anywhere in the world, electronic medical records for crew members and passengers, and outbreak detection and public health reporting associated with infectious disease such as norovirus.

Medical College of Georgia Hospital and Clinics announces that an unencrypted laptop stolen in a burglary earlier this year contained the medical information of 513 sickle cell patients.

 Sponsor Updates

• Speakers from Lehigh Valley Health Network will keynote TeleTracking Technologies’ free two-day symposium in New Orleans April 19-20.
• NextGen will host an April 2 webinar featuring Sherry Shults RN, BSN, CIO of South Carolina Heart Center on attestation for MU.
• Kony Solutions and Gartner offer a webinar on best practice guidelines for mobile app development.
• HealthStream offers reasons on why healthcare organizations should continue with their ICD-10 training and preparation despite implementation delays.
• API Healthcare experiences growth due to increased use of its workforce technology by healthcare staffing agencies.
• Certify will participate in IHI’s 13th Annual International Summit in DC next week.
• dbMotion and Allscripts will host an April webinar entitled “Innovative Workflow Leadership” with Rebecca Armato (Huntington Memorial Hospital), Yafa Minazad DO (Southern California Neurology Consultants), and Joel Diamond MD.
• Vocera launches its discharge solution, Patient Connect, at the AONE 45th Annual Meeting in Boston March 22-23.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

Healthcare IT News has opened its 2012 “Where to Work: Best Hospital IT Departments” nomination process. Categories are small (under 100 beds), medium (101-150 beds), or large (over 350 beds). If you think your shop is top, this is the time to make it known.

For another opportunity to toot your own horn, HIMSS (along with the American Society for Quality, the National Committee for Quality Assurance, and the National Patient Safety Foundation – that’s ASQ, NCQA, and NPSF for those of you playing along with the acronym soup game) announces a new call for the “Stories of Success!” program. (Yes, the exclamation point is included! Not sure why! But it is!) The blurb says:

This program showcases outstanding accomplishments in the adoption and use of health IT to fulfill national priorities recommended by the National Priorities Partnership (NPP) and The Joint Commission’s National Patient Safety Goals (NPSG). We are looking for real-world, case studies!

More acronyms and exclamation points abound, so be sure to submit your SQUIRE-inspired application form today. (I’m going to go make you look that one up yourself.)

I finally received the “HIMSS12 Overall Evaluation” e-mail today after hearing people talking about it last week. After two pages of the survey I was just aggravated and couldn’t bring myself to continue. I’m annoyed by HIMSS in general right now. The fact that some New Orleans hotels are already booking up is a mess waiting to happen. I may boycott next year and just show up for HIStalkapalooza, hot shoes, beignets, etouffee, and jazz.

NCQA keeps sending me invites to their Health Quality Awards dinner at the end of the month in Washington, DC. One of the honorees is Atul Gawande MD, who inspired me to get back into writing. Individual tickets are $350 a pop though, so I’ll pass.

I just received notice of which PQRS measure my staffing company has selected for me for 2012. Thank goodness they’re super-easy things that we do all the time anyway, so I don’t have to think about them. Just jumping through yet another hoop.

I was intrigued by the item that Inga ran the other day about the allergist who closed his practice to join the Army. Based on the statement that he was coming in as a lieutenant colonel, I assumed that he had previous military experience or was a reservist. After reading the full article though, it seems he has no military background. Anyone want to shed some light on how that works?

I did get one response to my call for medical tattoos – this one of a caduceus with an N for nursing. I like the blue, but not the delightful surrounding inflammation. Medical history tidbit of the day:  the caduceus with its dual snakes and wings was historically the symbol of commerce. Kind of funny that it’s been adopted as the symbol of medicine (especially in America) as opposed to the rod of Aesculapius, which is the original symbol of medicine (single snake, no wings.)

One of my faculty pals is a purist about this, so here’s your historical factoid of the day. In Greek mythology, the god Aesculapius was a healer, and apparently Hippocrates worshipped him. One potential theory of how the symbol originated was that it is a depiction of the stick used to remove guinea worms from the body. (note: picture in link is not for the squeamish.)

Have a question about acronyms, tropical medicine, or what is the maximum number of exclamation points that should be used in a single post? E-mail me!

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.