News 2/19/14

Top News

A SANS-Norse white paper investigating Internet traffic reports that 94 percent of healthcare organizations have been cyberattacked, with 72 percent of the compromised ports belonging to provider organizations. About a third of those compromised providers are practices with fewer than 10 doctors.The biggest target in healthcare is radiology imaging and teleradiology systems, often because nobody bothers to secure network-attached devices such as printers and cameras that are shipped as insecure and can be discovered by Internet search of IP addresses.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Listening: new from St. Paul & The Broken Bones, powerful Alabama Shakes-like soul music that would be equally at home at a Saturday night bar or a Sunday morning church.

Inga put together our guide to exhibitor giveaways, pointing out the sponsor swag that will be available.

HIStalk’s Booth #1995 at HIMSS

It’s a small starter home in a sketchy neighborhood, but it’s ours and it’s paid for. Drop by Booth #1995 and say hello to Lorre. Here’s what we’ll be doing there other than possibly regretting spending the money.

We will be giving away temporary HIStalk tattoos for folks who are somewhere on the continuum between “I sort of like reading HIStalk occasionally” and “I would disfigure my body permanently for HIStalk using actual needles and ink.” Take a photo of the creative anatomical feature on which you’ve applied it and I’ll run it.

We’ll have our first HIMSS conference lapel/lanyard pin as well as our “10 Years of HIStalk 2003-2013” commemorative pin. You’ll be kicking yourself for not picking one up when these babies are selling for $500 on eBay in a few years. As Lorre says, “I know they aren’t iPads, but consider my budget and come and get them anyway. You will look cool and make me feel good. I may even have items left over from the sponsor event and will selectively dole those out to people who go out of their way to entertain me.”

Dignitaries will be on hand in the booth to say hello, including DOCtalk contributor Dr. Gregg Alexander (Monday, 1:00 to 2:00 p.m.); CIO Unplugged’s Ed Marx (Tuesday 9:30 to 10:30 a.m.); and Memorial Hermann CMIO Bob Murphy, MD (Wednesday 10:00 to 11:00 a.m.) If your celebrity status warrants a spot on the HIStalk rental carpet with these supporters, contact Lorre. We appreciate it.

HIMSS Conference Social Events

Send us your event details if it’s a good one (i.e., free food and drinks at minimum) and you promise that all HIStalk readers are welcome to attend, even if they work for your most hated competitor as a given reader might well do.

Tuesday from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m. Patientco, in partnership with Georgia.org , will host a reception in booth 4021 with drinks and hors d’oeuvres.

Presidio will offer light hors d’oeuvres and drinks at its reception in Booth 3129 on Tuesday from 4:00 to 6:00 p.m.

Hopefully not a foreshadowing of things to come: I received an email from my HIMSS hotel confirming my stay. Unfortunately the reservation appears to be in the name of Chad Somebody. While I am sure Chad is a lovely person, spending a few nights in a hotel together is not my idea of an appropriate first date. The HIMSS reservation service told me to check directly with the hotel. The hotel tells me there is not a reservation in my name, just in my new friend’s name with my confirmation number. Really, who has time for figuring out such nonsense? Chad: if you are reading this, feel free to drop me a note so maybe we can have a Skype date before heading to Orlando.

On Monday we posted our rundown on the many free treasures you can collect while cruising the exhibit hall. I plan to schedule my day around the best offerings, starting with coffee at First Databank (1965); a cake pop from PerfectServe (5293); registration for a few high-tech goodies like an iPad from Santa Rosa Consulting (5689), a Fitbit from GetWellNetwork (2219) or one of several other vendors, or a tablet from Versus Technology (3673); freshly baked cookies from T-System (2071); bottled water from CTG Health Solutions (944); and afternoon cocktails at RelayHealth (1665) and Vital Images (1677). I am leaving out details on a couple of dozen other great giveaways but be assured I will do my best to sample all the hospitality the exhibit hall has to offer.

Mr. H (@HIStalk), Dr. Jayne (@JayneHIStalkMD), Lorre (@Lorre_HIStalk), and I (@IngaHIStalk) will be Tweeting throughout the conference to keep readers posted on the latest happenings, so be sure to give us a Twitter follow.

HIStalkapalooza

The band for the evening will be Party on the Moon. They sound good if you like cover bands more than I do, which Imprivata’s events people insisted is the case after hiring them without asking for my input. They’re probably right.

This year I’m feeling like those unheralded Woodstock organizers whose event was more popular than they could handle. I issued the invitations I was given as best I could, but huge demand left 1,000 or so folks — the majority of those who registered, in fact — without one. It feels like at least 500 of those have emailed me pleading for tickets I don’t have, except my own single ticket, which I’m considering just giving to someone else and hitting a bar instead. Next year I’ll either run the event my way or I won’t do it at all.  

Upcoming Webinars

February 19 (Wednesday), 1:00 p.m. ET. What is the Best Healthcare Data Warehouse Model for Your Organization? Choosing the right data model for your healthcare enterprise data warehouse (EDW) can be one of the most significant decisions you make in establishing your data warehousing and foundational analytics strategy for the future. The strengths and weaknesses of three primary data models will be discussed.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cerner shares touched off an all-time high Tuesday, dropping a bit by the market’s close but still rising nearly 1 percent to $60.74. A $10,000 investment in 1990 would be worth $3.4 million today.

Sales

North Mississippi Medical Center selects Wellsoft’s EDIS.

ColumbiaDoctors (NY) will deploy Wellcentive’s population health management solutions.

Blessing Hospital (IL) adds Allscripts dbMotion population health management and Allscripts Sunrise Financial Manager to compliment its existing Sunrise Clinical implementation.

Greater New York Hospital Association contracts with Premier, Inc. for advisory services and for Premier’s Population Advisor suite, which includes population health analytics solutions from Verisk Health.

BJC HealthCare (MO) selects ZeOmega’s Jiva population health management software to enhance  care coordination and patient engagement for patients in the BHC ACO.

People

SA Ignite hires Jeff Galowich (Initiate Systems) as president.

Kindred Healthcare (KY) names C. Scott Blanchette (Vanguard Health Systems) CIO, replacing the recently retired Richard E. Chapman.

Health Catalyst appoints Bryan Oshiro, MD (Loma Linda University School of Medicine) chief medical officer.

Announcements and Implementations

Carroll Hospital Center (MD) upgrades from McKesson Horizon to Paragon. According to the hospital’s interim CIO Jennifer Moore, Carroll stayed with McKesson because project costs were “significantly lower than if we had gone to find another vendor for a new product.’ Jed Rosen, MD, chief of surgery and CMIO, said Horizon is “a product that was a conglomeration of multiple database programs that were squished together … to add functionality on a piecemeal basis. We used to bounce around through several programs to access information, whereas now we can open one program and get everything at a glance.” He didn’t mention why they bought Horizon since that was pretty obviously the case.

Voalte will offer an Android-based version of its Voalte One mobile communications platform running on Motorola MC40-HC devices.

Caradigm and Microsoft will demo at the HIMSS conference a Windows 8.1 tablet-based platform that lets clinicians launch apps such as an EHR session from a clinical desktop and switch back and forth among them. It was developed with UPMC’s commercialization arm and includes Caradigm’s single sign-on and context management, the former Sentillion products.

Nordic Consulting moves into expanded space in Madison, WI. The four-year-old company reported $81 million in revenue in 2013 and has 400 employees, 350 of them Epic consultants and two-thirds of those being former Epic employees. Most of them live in areas other than Madison. It also took in $38 million of investment funds.

QPID Healthcare announces the release of Q-Guide, its procedure decision support application developed with Mass General Hospital and its physician organization.

Government and Politics

The FDA posts a final rule requiring medical device manufacturers to electronically submitting reports on adverse events beginning in August 2015.

Other

Black Book Rankings names CPSI the top ranked inpatient EHR vendor for hospitals under 100 beds based on customer satisfaction

The HEALTHeLINK HIE (NY) estimates that use of the exchange contributed to $1.3 million in cost savings over a six-month period due to the reduction of unnecessary and duplicate CT scans.

Hospitals often underestimate the costs associated with EMR implementations, according to a study published in JAMIA.The most commonly underestimated line items are training, project planning, staff backfill, and system testing.

In Australia, opening of the new, paperless Fiona Stanley Hospital is delayed by six months due to an overly ambitious IT implementation schedule that will cost an extra $151 million. The government expects to spend another $25-50 million to get its systems ready. According to West Australia’s under-treasurer, “You never build stuff that you can buy off the shelf; you never build bespoke stuff that then has to be integrated with generic products; you change your business processes rather than changing the systems to suit the business processes. You never do big bang because big bang goes boom.”

In England, NHS postpones go-live date of a planned national medical records data sharing project after doctors and patients express concerns that it wasn’t made clear how patients could opt out or how their data might be used commercially without their knowledge.

A Bloomberg Businessweek article points out that more than half of ACOs don’t include hospital members. According to the CEO of Amarillo Legacy Medical ACO (TX), “Hospitals, they want to do your robotic surgeries, your heart catheterizations, your PET scans, your MRIs—all the expensive items. We actually felt that hospitals were part of the problem.” Another ACO CEO adds, “If we make people a whole lot healthier, they’re not going to go to the hospital. You’re going to need 20 percent or 25 percent less hospital beds, which means 20 percent are going to close. If we’re successful, the hospitals are going to get killed.”

US News lists its “100 Best Jobs of 2014” based on growth, salary, stress, and work-life balance. The The top 10:

1. Software developer
2. Computer systems analyst
3. Dentist
4. Nurse practitioner
5. Pharmacist
6. Registered nurse
7. Physical therapist
8. Physician
9. Web developer
10. Dental hygienist

The local newspaper interviews Paul Clark, MD, CMIO of Concord Hospital (NH). “I think this whole concept of population management is really where things are heading. In the past, it was all about the person in front of me at the moment. Now it’s about, ‘Am I providing the best care for all my diabetes patients? Are we making sure we’re preventing readmissions? Are we taking care of everyone’s hypertension?’ Systems need to be made to account for those population measurements.”

The New York Times highlights India’s launch of a spacecraft bound for Mars that cost only $75 million, less than the expense of making the Hollywood movie “Gravity.” NASA’s launch of a similar spacecraft a few days later cost $671 million. It points out GE Healthcare’s research there to develop low-cost medical innovations.

Sponsor Updates

• The National Testing Program for ICD-10 readiness of HIPAA transactions extends certification Greenway SuccessEHS.
• SimplifyMD version 14.0 achieves 2014 Edition Complete EHR Ambulatory ONC HIT Certification from ICSA Labs.
• HIT Application Solutions will integrate its Notifi platform with Merge Healthcare’s Merge RIS and market the product under the name Merge Notifi.
• Medhost launches YourCareCommunity, which incorporates features of and HIE and an enterprise MPI.
• Coastal Healthcare Consulting introduces Catalyst to rapidly respond to healthcare organizations in urgent need of assistance.
• Frost & Sullivan recognizes Allscripts with the 2013 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation Leadership for its open API.
• NewCrop, an e-prescribing service provider, enables CoverMyMeds prior authorization capability.
• Greenway is awarded three patents which work together to advance population health through automated medical research.
• Porter Research publishes a case study highlighting its work with Covisint.

Sponsor Speaking Engagements at HIMSS

• InterSystems highlights featured presentations in the InterSystems theater (2741).
• Imprivata posts the Imprivata Theater schedule (2541).
• CTG offers multiple in-booth sessions (944) featuring industry experts and discussions of hot HIT topics. Also, CTG and Erie County Medical Center (NY) co-present an educational session February 25  at 1:00 p.m. on “Improving Western NY’s Population Health Using Patient Centered Medical Home.”
• HealthMEDX participates as the first LTPAC EMR in the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase.
• The HCI Group leads two CHIME CIO focus groups on the complexities of ICD-10 and on the total cost of ownership for enterprise systems.
• Craneware’s Kathy Schwartz presents during the HIMSS Supply Chain pre-conference Symposium February 23 from 10:00-11:00 on costs, quality, and outcomes.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.