News 5/22/13

Top News

Healthland acquires post-acute care software vendor American HealthTech of Jackson, MS.

Reader Comments

From Dortlund: “Re: GE Healthcare. Charging a premium on top of annual maintenance for MU Stage 2 and ICD-10.” Not to mention spelling “after hours” as “afterhours” for some reason.

From CMIO: “Re: clinical informatics exam. I applied, paid, and took a board prep course and plan to take the practice test this summer. I did not do a fellowship, but I want to be on the inaugural class of the new board based on three years as CMIO. It is worth it for me, as this is my career and this is my credential.”

From NoLongerPhamis: “I LOVED the last Slideshare about GEHC/IDX. Almost fell out of my chair laughing. The part about seamless integration of marketing materials was spot on. I was there.” This was in a recent episode of Vince Ciotti’s HIS-tory.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare consulting firm Information Resources Associates, Inc. merges with ESD.

Virtual visit technology vendor ConsultingMD raises $10 million in funding from Venrock.

Pittsburgh-based wound care EHR vendor Net Health acquires Integritas, which offers EMR/PM solutions for urgent care, occupational health, and hospital employee health. 

Quality Systems, Inc. investor and board member Ahmed Hussein, mostly known for criticizing his fellow board members and launching proxy fights in an attempt to take control of the company, resigns. He owns more than $100 million in QSII shares.

Sales

Orange Accountable Care, a subsidiary of Orange Health Solutions, will deploy Sandlot Care Manager, Sandlot Dimensions, and Sandlot Metrix.

Wellmont Health System (TN) expands its relationship with MModal to include MModal Fluency Direct and Fluency for Imaging as its clinical documentation platforms.

St. Joseph’s Imaging (NY) selects Merge Healthcare’s Outpatient Radiology Suite.

The ERx Group, a staffing provider for rural acute care and critical access facilities, will use T-System’s clinical, financial, and operational technology and services.

Southeast Alabama Medical Center selects Besler Consulting to assist in the identification of Medicare Transfer DRG underpayments.

Western Maryland Health System (MD) will use Dimensional Insight’s business intelligence solution, The Diver Solution.

People

Long-term care EHR provider MatrixCare names Denise Wassenaar (Alliance Pharmacy Services) chief clinical officer.

Imprivata, expecting to go public within two years according to its CEO, names John Halamka, MD (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) and former Phase Forward CFO Rodger Weismann to its board.

Stoltenberg Consulting appoints Douglas Herr (maxIT Healthcare) VP of Epic practice and client relations.

Announcements and Implementations

Peak Health Solutions partners with ChartWise to offer a solution that includes Peak’s clinical document improvement consulting and education program and ChartWise’s CDI software.

Stillwater Medical Center (OK) integrates its Philips IntelliVue patient monitors and Meditech ED management solution using the Accelero Connect healthcare integration platform from Accent on Integration.

North Shore-LIJ Health System adds cameras in operating rooms at its Forest Hills Hospital (NY) to remotely audit surgical teams for performing timeouts prior to procedures and to alert hospital cleaning crews when a surgery is nearing completion.

Fox Business News is running a week-long series called “How Private are Your Medical Records?” on “The Willis Report.” Monday’s episode featured Deborah Peel, MD of Patient Privacy Rights and Mark Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Covenant Health (TX) and MemorialCare Health System (CA) are named winners of the 2013 Crimson Physician Partnership Awards presented by The Advisory Board Company, saving a combined $20 million by presenting comparative performance information to their physicians.

CampDoc.com releases an electronic medication administration record module for its summer camp EHR.

Government and Politics

The Consumer Partnership for eHealth and the Campaign for Better Care submit a letter to the six Republican senators who last month questioned whether the implementation of the HITECH Act was money well spent. The consumer groups argue that MU is working and that delaying Stage 2 implementation and Stage 3 rulemaking will be detrimental to patients, will stifle innovation, and will delay progress towards interoperability.

CMS posts the 2014 ICD-10-PCS files, including code tables, index, and coding guidelines. CMS notes that the FY 2014 ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes will not be updated.

ONC posts positions (1, 2) for medical officer reporting to the Office of the Chief Medical Officer.

Twila Brase, RN, president and co-founder of Citizen’s Council for Health Freedom, says EHRs are burdensome and inaccurate, adding that they are turning doctors into data clerks. She adds, “Documenting a full clinical encounter in an EHR from scratch can be pure torment. The full chart doesn’t fit on the computer screen. Each element is selected by a series of clicks, double-clicks, or even triple-clicks of a mouse button. Hunting, clicking, and scrolling just to complete a simple history and physical exam is a tedious and time-wasting experience."

A Health Innovation Council commentary article says HITECH is causing, “A massive disruption of providers’ patient care focus as they chase Meaningful Use dollars; increased burdens on physicians, nurses and clinicians since EHRs as currently designed require more, not less, of their time and effort; and an unprecedentedly huge expenditure by providers on EHR hardware and software at a time when providers are under severe financial pressures.” The group recommends that the HITECH program either be redesigned to emphasize patient care, safety, and efficiency or be shut down completely and spend what’s left of the money on rewarding provider care improvement by whatever means they choose.  What is minimally noted in the press release is that the Health Innovation Council was formed and is run by Anthelio Healthcare, the former PHNS, a healthcare IT consulting services vendor.

In the UK, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt announces creation of a $400 million fund to help hospitals with the cost of replacing paper-based clinical documentation and prescribing with electronic systems.

Other

MyMedicalRecords.com files another patent lawsuit, this time against the recent Allscripts acquisition Jardogs. The complaint states that the FollowMyHealth Universal Health Record infringes on MMR’s personal health record patents.

LSU Health Shreveport (LA) and Siemens Healthcare inform 8,330 patients of an unintentional disclosure of PHI  stemming from an error in a computer data entry field. LSU and Siemens, which prints and mails bills on behalf of LSU Health physicians, have now identified and corrected the error that caused the names and treatment information for one patient to incorrectly align with another patient’s mailing address.

Palomar Pomerado Health CMIO Ben Kanter, MD presented A Darwinian View of the Electronic Medical Record at a HIMSS SoCal meeting.

UPMC will outsource its transcription services to its development partner Nuance at the end of June, laying off 100 transcriptionists who have been offered jobs by Nuance.

Moore Medical Center (OK) is destroyed by a 200 mph tornado, but the 30 patients housed in the 46-bed hospital all survived, as did all of the hospital’s employees.

A Silicon Valley newspaper editorial lauds the $220 million Epic implementation at Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (CA), saying it will improve billing efficiency and quality of care, also avoiding the 1 percent Medicare penalty and instead reaping $11 million in HITECH funds.  

Weird News Andy says he’ll take one today if it can help find his car keys. A New York Times article says helper robots will be used to help care for the elderly.

Sponsor Updates

• ISirona employees participate in the Emerald Coast Mud Run benefiting Heart of the Bride, which supports orphans around the world.
• Valence Health offers a May 29 Webinar in its monthly series called Care Coordination and Patient Outcomes: Utilize Innovative Automated Population Health Solutions.
• DocuTrac, a provider of EMR technology for behavioral health, will add DrFirst’s e-prescribing technology into its QuicDoc EMR Professional and Enterprise edition software.
• An Imprivata-commissioned survey of Canadian HIT executives reveals key barriers for clinicians when accessing patient data, including a lack of systems integration, privacy and security concerns, and slow access.
• McKesson’s Horizon Lab 13.5 becomes for the first LIS to receive EHR Module certification for MU Stage 2.
• Ingenious Med updates its impowermobile charge capture software to include the ability to create a virtual superbill at the point of care.
• Greenway Medical adds ClientTell’s ReminderManager patient communications solution to its Online Marketplace as a certified API solution for the PrimeSUITE platform.
• DirectTrust.org and EHNAC extend accreditation to ICA under its Direct Trusted Agent Accreditation Program.
• IHT2 hosts Health IT Summit Denver July 24-25.
• In a GetWellNetwork-sponsored Webinar May 29, administrators from Hasbro Children’s Hospital (RI) share details of how it improved patient satisfaction and workflow by joining patient-centered care technology with a meal ordering system at the bedside.
• Kareo posts a Webinar that answers the top six Stage 2 MU questions and offers three reasons to check out CMS eHealth.
• Several HIStalk sponsors earn a spot on the Informatics 2013 Top HCI 100 list, including 3M, ADP AdvancedMD, Allscripts, API Healthcare, Beacon Partners, Capario, CareTech Solutions, Covisint, Craneware, CTG, Cumberland Consulting Group, eClinicalWorks, Elsevier, Emdeon, ESD, GE Healthcare, Greenway, Iatric Systems, Impact Advisors, Infor, Intellect Resources, MModal, McKesson, MedAssets, Medseek, Merge, NextGen, NTT DATA, Nuance, Optum, Orion, Passport Health, Philips Healthcare, Siemens Healthcare, Sunquest Information Systems, Surgical Information Systems, T-System, TeleTracking Technologies, TELUS Health Solutions, The Advisory Board Company, The SSI Group, Vitera Healthcare Solutions, Vocera Communications, Wolters Kluwer Health, and ZirMed. Porter Research submitted, compiled, and reviewed sales figures to create the list.
• The Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies recognizes InstaMed  as its Technology Growth Company winner and Halfpenny Technologies a Life Science Growth Company finalist at the Alliance’s 2013 Enterprise Awards.
• Imprivata launches a migration program that enables customers using the Citrix SSO feature to migrate to Imprivata OneSign SSO. Also, Imprivata participates in a breakout session on desktop virtualization and SSO at this week’s Citrix Synergy conference in California.
• Emdat profiles Illinois Bone and Joint Institute, which realized a 50 percent year-over-year cost savings in documentation and correspondence costs using Emdat alongside its EMR.
• Beacon Partners hosts a May 31 Webinar integrating business intelligence and analytics through the healthcare enterprise and offers a white paper on why risk assessments help reduce an organization’s risk of a data breach.
• Awarepoint’s RTLS platform will be featured in an industry-wide interoperability demonstration at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation 2013 Conference and Expo June 1-3 in Long Beach, CA.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.