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August 7, 2012 News 10 Comments

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8-7-2012 6-49-05 PM

The board of the Kansas HIE, having found few takers for its fee-based services, meets this week to decide whether to dissolve itself and turn its operation over to the state, hoping to reduce its $400,000 in annual operating costs. Taxpayers would be on the hook to cover the remaining half of its costs. Former Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, now HHS secretary, convened the commission that recommended creating KHIE by executive order in 2010, which makes it questionable as to whether the group has the legal authority to simply disband itself. KHIE funded its operations with a $9 million federal grant and has $5.5 million left.


Reader Comments

8-7-2012 7-52-59 PM

From InTheKnow: “Re: Alere. Just closed a deal to acquire DiagnosisOne.” Verified, but not announced as far as I can tell. Alere (the former Inverness Medical Innovations, which acquired interoperability vendor Wellogic last year ) offers diagnostic and health management  technologies and programs, while DiagnosisOne sells tools for order sets, decision support, analytics, and public health surveillance. DiagnosisOne is backed by Edison Ventures, which is how I verified the rumor after digging around forever – the acquisition was buried on one of the pop-up pages on their site.

8-7-2012 8-36-33 PM

From Justa CIO: “Re: Indiana University Health. Announced that Bill McConnell, Jr. started this week as CIO, replacing Chris Van Pelt, who has left the organization.” Verified. Bill has updated his LinkedIn profile showing that he started this month. He was previously CEO of FlowCo, which makes a stent-related medical device.

From Jeremy: “Re: 3D printed medicine. How would people feel about their EHRs printing the medicine ad hoc?” A research paper speculates that a 3D printer could be loaded with pre-filled, drug-containing vessels, allowing medications to be “printed” on demand.

8-7-2012 8-14-47 PM

From Rick Starkey: “Re: JAMA article. Very entertaining.” Indeed it is. John Lennon’s Elbow, by Robert H. Hirschtick MD from Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, is funny as it criticizes EMR documentation with Beatles references (I won’t give away its conclusion, which yielded the title.) A snip:

I once asked an intern why his successively longer daily progress notes retained old or irrelevant test results. His response was revealing: “This way, my final progress note is also the discharge summary.” This Twelve Days of Christmas approach—building a final supernote by successive daily addition—yields a discharge summary that is long, thorough, and unreadable. Unreadability is a problem only if readability is a goal. But these notes are not constructed to be read. They are constructed to warehouse data. All the key information is contained within but as hard to find as a radial pulse beneath multiple color-coded wristbands.

From Consultant: “Re: Providence Health Systems. They are slowing down their Epic implementation, one of the largest in the US to learn from initial go-lives.” Unverified. The $750 million implementation was announced in 2010 and the first go-live was originally planned for 2012, with a 30-month completion timetable.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

8-7-2012 6-23-51 PM

inga_small My top Olympics’ observation of the day: water polo players rock. Twenty-eight minutes of treading water and swimming and throwing a ball? The athleticism of it has almost inspired me to jump off the couch and go for a run. And speaking of runners, how about Felix Sanchez, the 35-year-old from the Dominican Republic who won the men’s 400m hurdles? Way to beat the youngsters. And speaking of youngsters, I am adding Uruguayan footballer Edinson Roberto Cavani Gómez to my Hot Olympian list.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

8-7-2012 8-38-03 PM

HCA reports Q2 results: revenue up 12% to $8.1 billion, EPS $0.85 vs. $0.43. The company reaffirms 2012 guidance, including estimated EHR incentive income of $325-$350 million and EHR expenses of $90-$115 million. The company also announced that it was notified this week that the Justice Department wants to see records from its heart procedures at certain hospitals. A New York Times report suggested that they performed unnecessary procedures to boost revenue in preparation for HCA’s 2011 IPO.

8-7-2012 8-39-16 PM

Mediware  will acquire the assets of Strategic Healthcare Group, an Indianapolis-based provider of blood management consulting.

8-7-2012 8-50-51 PM

Nuance announces Q3 numbers: revenue up 31%, EPS $0.25 vs. $0.13.

Staffing company Cross Country Healthcare swings to a Q2 loss due to a delay in an unnamed large EMR project for which it provides staffing.

It’s not healthcare related, but it’s a cautionary tale about letting computers do too much thinking (or maybe to do more testing before a rollout.) Stock trading firm Knight Capital, which single-handedly caused wild swings in stock market share prices last week when its newly installed high-speed trading software sent incorrect orders to brokerage houses over a 45-minute period, nearly goes out of business when the SEC holds it accountable for the $440 million in erroneous trades its software caused, four times the company’s profits last year.


Sales

Orlando Health (FL) selects onFocus epm software for enterprise performance management.

Muenster Memorial Hospital (TX), United Hospital District (MN), and Rothman Specialty Hospital (PA) sign with Park Place International for its OpSus|Live cloud-based hosting solution utilizing Meditech-certified servers and storage.

8-7-2012 8-42-59 PM

Poudre Valley Hospital (CO) selects ProVation Medical Software for gastroenterology procedure documentation and coding in its GI labs.

Windsor Health Plan will deploy MedHOK’s care, quality, and compliance platform that includes NCQA certified software for HEDIS, pay for performance, and disease management performance measures..

8-7-2012 8-41-41 PM

Anderson Hospital (IL) selects M*Modal Fluency Direct for use with Meditech in the hospital and NextGen in its physician offices.

Allied Services (PA) signs a contract to implement Cerner Millennium. It offers rehab, vocational, home care, and residential services.


Announcements and Implementations

South Lyon Medical Center (CA) goes live on CPSI’s EHR.

8-7-2012 8-44-24 PM

Powell Valley Healthcare (WY) goes live on NextGen’s Inpatient EHR.

Orion Health is named a reseller and services provider for Caradigm’s Amalga platform and Vergence SSO software in the Asia Pacific region.

McKesson announces McKesson Cardiology Inventory and McKesson Surgical Manager Point-of-Use Integration Module which allows a clinician’s single barcode scan to document, charge, and reorder items.

8-7-2012 7-35-20 PM

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel proclaims October 30 – November 7 to be Informatics Week (plus a couple of days, apparently), a “city-wide celebration” of biomedical and health informatics that will precede the AMIA meeting there.

The VA begins its RTLS implementation at seven VA VISN 11 medical centers in Indiana, Illinois, and Michigan. HP is managing the project, which involves several brands of sensors providing real-time information to its Intelligent InSites RTLS software to track equipment and supplies, monitor temperatures, and trigger workflows. The $543 million project will eventually cover 152 medical centers.

8-7-2012 8-26-39 PM

Hospitals in Franciscan Alliance Northern Indiana Region go live on Epic, right on time from their project plan.

Zynx Health announces Version 3.0 of its AuthorSpace clinical decision support authoring tool.

Katalus announces an EHR Total Cost of Ownership model that will be offered as a cloud-based solution.


Government and Politics

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awards $4 million in grants to six organizations for HIT tools to expand access to substance abuse treatment in underserved areas.


Innovation and Research

Researchers from NorthShore University HealthSystem (IL) find that the increased use of EHRs by hospitals and health systems could help physicians make more exact, real-time decisions when prescribing antibiotics.


Technology

Health engagement management provider Eliza Corporation receives a notice of allowance from the patent office for its Complex Acoustic Resonance Speech Analysis System, which provides conversational, high-performance speech recognition.


Other

8-7-2012 8-46-13 PM

Hospital officials at Olympic Medical Center (WA) tell commissioners that their ongoing transition from Meditech to Epic will cost about $6 million, with ERP software from Infor/Lawson running an additional $1 million.  

8-7-2012 9-31-46 PM

A blog post from John Glaser of Siemens Healthcare compares his selection to throw out the first pitch at a baseball game to the impending accountability of healthcare IT to improve care (in neither case would you want to pull a Baba Booey in front of a crowd.)

8-7-2012 6-57-07 PM

HHS records show that the medical records of 21 million patients have been exposed by breaches since September 2009, with six organizations reporting incidents that affected more than a million people. Leading the pack is the federal government itself, whose Department of Defense / TRICARE (specifically, federal contractor SAIC) lost backup tapes during shipping in September 2011 that contained information on 4.9 million individuals.

ONC’s Office of Consumer eHealth puts out a video pitching EHRs to consumers.  

8-7-2012 7-08-31 PM

If you’re an Epic competitor, there’s not much good news in the KLAS Mid-Term Performance Review from June that a reader just sent my way. Unless you sell anesthesia information systems, anyway.

8-7-2012 8-47-43 PM

A pharmacy technician at University of Miami who “seemed to live beyond his means” in paying $56,000 in cash for a BMW is suspected of stealing $14 million in drugs from the cancer center pharmacy over a three-year period. The university’s CFO admits that the pharmacy had no inventory controls at all in place. The technician was caught pocketing drugs on surveillance cameras, but his lawyer says that while he did steal some drugs, it could have been anyone who nabbed the $14 million worth since anybody could just grab what they wanted. He was caught when the pharmacy buyer noticed discrepancies in the quantities on hand of the drug Neulasta, which she then inventoried manually since the new inventory software “was not the most trustworthy.”

Seattle Children’s Hospital, trying to cheer up a 16-year-old cancer patient who has been hospitalized in isolation for months and missing her cat Merry, crowdsources through Facebook to collect 3,000 cat photos to project in a “virtual feline cocoon” they built for her. Her response: “You guys remind me that there is so much good in the world, and its just makes me feel so much better, and connected. I can’t tell you how it feels sometimes, feeling disconnected and cut off from the world, and then with something like cat pictures bringing me back.”


Sponsor Updates

  • GetWellNetwork launches a video on the future of patient engagement using interactive patient care solutions.
  • Billian’s HealthDATA recognizes five hospitals to watch on Twitter.
  • e-MDs hosts a webinar featuring Jen Brull MD, FAAP and her practice’s use of social media to build community and engagement with patients.
  • GE Healthcare releases details of its Centricity Perinatal National Users Group conference in October.
  • OTTR Chronic Care Solutions will participate in next week’s NATCO Conference in DC.
  • Forrester Research names Covisint a cloud identity and access management leader in its Enterprise Cloud Identity and Access Management report.
  • A Surgical Information Systems survey indicates that drivers for implementing perioperative IT include facilitating improvements in OR efficiency, the quality of patient care, and reduction of documentation errors. 
  • Howard County Medical Center (NE) selects BridgeHead Software’s healthcare data management solution as its backup and archival system.
  • Cumberland Consulting Group promotes Mark Riley to principal.
  • T-System hosts a free webinar on proper documentation of E&M services to optimize reimbursement.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.



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Currently there are "10 comments" on this Article:

  1. Another HIE looks to close the doors after wasting plenty of money to find out they had no sustainable business plan after free government money runs out. What a waste.

  2. That’s the problem with government money. It funds areas that prudent business people have deemed unworthy. If there were reason to invest, private investors would jump in with both feet. “Prudent investment” – a concept that should be applied when spending our tax dollars.

  3. Last night I was reading and I saw a post about a guy losing his job as a device integrator….today it’s gone. My co-workers think I’m crazy.

    Am I crazy?

    [From Mr. H] The comment mentioned specifically that a hospital had signed a contract with the vendor, including device integration services. The hospital’s CIO e-mailed to express his sympathy for the former employee, but also stated that the hospital has not yet signed a contract with that vendor (they are being considered.) Since that meant at least part of the comment was incorrect and companies almost never verify personnel actions, I removed it since sometimes those anonymous comments are intended to mislead (usually posted by competitors). I’m happy to repost it if I can get some kind of verification, as simple as the person’s verifiable e-mail address (which I obviously won’t divulge).

  4. Re: 3D printed medicine. How would people feel about their EHRs printing the medicine ad hoc?” I started following 3D printing because of my concern regarding terrorists being able to print plastic 3D weapons on demand. I am not sure which is more the frightening technology; printing 3D weapons or printing drugs on demand.

  5. “Leading the pack is the federal government itself, whose Department of Defense / TRICARE (specifically, federal contractor SAIC) lost backup tapes during shipping in September 2001 that contained information on 4.9 million individuals.”

    According to the HHS website, this breach actually occurred 9/13/2011.

    [From Mr. H] Thanks for catching my typo! Fixed.

  6. @FreeMarket – There’s a role for government investment in industries. Aerospace, semi-conductors, telecommunications, rail, etc. all have a long history of receiving government funds. The issue becomes whether government is doing more than buying up risk associated with uncertainty. The semiconductor industry is a good example. There was a huge initial investment by the government to build fabrication facilities that investors were unwilling to fund privately at the time.

    This is entirely unlike the HIE experience where the government was the sole source of the business opportunity and no one had a strategy to monetize the service. All around failure.

  7. Re: JAMA and Lennon’s Elbow

    This is an accurate description of the output of years of innovation without any oversight or regulation. Absurdity is tolerated, progress notes are pages of legible jabberwock, and the professional time is spent with the computer and not the patient. How will outcomes ever be improved with the cacophony now standard in progress notes? No one knows what is going on with the patient. Where’s Waldo??







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