Monday Morning Update 4/22/13

From The PACS Designer: “Re: iPen rumors. As we approach the middle of 2013, the focus will be on the next innovation from Apple. iPen talk is not new since there’s been a Cregle iPen 1 that’s available today for writing and and drawing on the iPad. Apple wants to enhance their version by adding a small LED that can record writing and drawing for later viewing. The other possible features of the upcoming Apple pen are the ability to plug into an iPad docking station, adding a tiny SIM card for communications, and a camera device which would make it function as an iWatch, iPod and and iPhone – all in one device.”

From Bostonian: “Re: Boston. The main activity happened about two miles from my house, unfolding directly (and I mean directly) in front of athenahealth’s headquarters and main offices in Watertown. It was the long brick building with the big windows if you watched on TV.” Jonathan Bush of athenahealth posted this letter to the company’s website, saying that the company remained “wide open for business. WIDE open” as the company told its 1,000 Watertown employees to work from home. The letter added that athenahealth believes terrorism should not be able to generate widespread fear and panic that stops society from functioning.

From Marianne: “Re: Boston. This is such a good article by Atul Gawande. As we sit in our locked homes here in the Boston area waiting for this nightmare to end, it is nice to read about how our hospitals responded so well to this attack.” The New Yorker article gives credit to the hospital incident command system for allowing a quick and effective response to the treatment needs of the victims. Many of us have gone through the yearly drills of pretending to be logistics officer and making fun of wearing our yellow vests or writing down messages on paper to communicate with our pretend incident teams. The thing is, incident command systems work when they need to – it all comes back in the crisis.

From Blue: “Re: HIMSS scammer. A company solicited vendors to pay $5,000 to advertise in a publication that was to feature articles by Farzad Mostashari and Kathleen Sebelius and would be distributed at the HIMSS conference. Companies that paid got no further response, no printed version, and the online version has ‘lifted’ articles and ads from companies that never heard of the company. All was reported to HIMSS, which is looking into the false claim that the journal would be distributed at the conference. Vendors beware!” I notice that the welcome message from Kathleen Sebelius was stolen directly from the HHS site from comments she made at a public event, while Farzad’s alleged interview was lifted uncredited from Kaiser Health News. The companies appearing to have been ripped off in the issue I saw are Practice Fusion, iCharts MD, Availity, ChartLogic, and Accenture.  

When it comes to offering systems that are “open” in the eye of the beholder, the big winner is “none of the above,” followed by Allscripts, Epic, and basically nobody else. New poll to your right: should ONC assess an EHR vendor fee to help fund its certification programs? You can click the Comments link on the poll after voting to be more explanatory than your yes/no vote.

The first-ever HIStalk Webinar, Vendor Software Training: What Providers Should Demand, will be offered on Tuesday, May 14 from 1:00 to 1:45 PM EDT, presented by Health Technology Training Solutions. See my Webinars page for information on how HIStalk Webinars are moderated and pre-reviewed by CIOs (and me personally) for education value and presentation style. I hope to not only produce vendor Webinars that are a lot better than some of the clunkers I’ve sat through, but also to give folks who work for non-profits a way to offer their presentation to the HIStalk audience at no cost to themselves since I’m paying for the infrastructure and would like to see it used.

The Nashville business paper profiles Applied Health Analytics, a Vanderbilt partner that offers population health management tools, with special emphasis on hospitals that form relationships with big employers.

Cerner and Ciber will offer application management and hosting services to Infor’s healthcare customers.

Indiana’s HIE will spin off a for-profit company to market its HIE platform that was developed by Regenstrief.

UPMC files suit against Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, claiming that his challenge of the health system’s non-profit status is “a campaign to target and damage UPMC.” The city’s attorney replied, “It is unclear to me how asking a court to make a determination whether UPMC is or is not an institution of purely public charity is a violation of its constitutional rights. The painfully obvious bottom line is that the last thing UPMC wants is judicial scrutiny of its non-charitable agenda.”

Weird News Andy wonders how this hospital’s health marketing campaign was approved. A North Carolina hospital pulls the plug on its campaign intended to create community health awareness, purely because of its tag line, “Cheat Death.” The hospital said the phrase worked to generate discussion and awareness, but thinks it can do better in sending a message of community unity.

Vince covers the HIS-tory of GE Healthcare in Part 1 this week.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.