News 4/23/14

Top News

Continua Health Alliance, mHealth Summit, and HIMSS launch the Personal Connected Health Alliance to represent the consumer voice in personal connected health to ensure that technologies are user-friendly, secure, and can easily collect, display, and relay personal health data.

Reader Comments

From Less Disruption Please: “athenahealth. Friday was a tough day. Their outage was apparently due to catastrophic loss of power. It took out email, production, and backup sites. At least they apologized.” Unverified.

Upcoming Webinars

May 1 (Thursday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Think Beyond EDW: Using Your Data to Transform, Part 2 – Build-Measure-Learn to Get Value from Healthcare Data. Sponsored by Premier. Presenters: Alejandro Reti, MD, senior director of population health, Premier; and Alex Easton, senior director of enterprise solutions, Premier. Once you deploy an enterprise data warehouse, you need to arrive at value as quickly as possible. Learn ways to be operationally and technically agile with integrated data, including strategies for improving population health.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

AdverseEvents, a healthcare informatics company focused on drug safety and side effects, closes $2 million in Series A financing.

Informedika changes its name to Health Gorilla.

Lexmark reports that revenues for its Perceptive Software division grew 38 percent in the first quarter.

Sales

Evangelical Community Hospital (PA) selects dbtech’s eFolder solution for enterprise content management.

Griffin Hospital (PA) will implement athenaCoordinator Enterprise.

UMass Memorial Health Care (MA) will integrate Luminat’s end-of-life directives platform into its EHR.

Alder Hey Children’s Hospital (UK) selects Summit Healthcare’s interface engine technology.

Missouri Baptist Medical Center will deploy the Vocera Communication System.

People

EHR/PM provider Pulse Systems appoints Richard Ungaro (RU Investment) SVP of operations.

NoteSwift hires Stan Swiniarski (Nuance) as VP of products and Art Nicholas (Nova Dynamics) as VP of sales and business development.

MediTract, a provider of automated contract management solutions, appoints Ed Caldwell (Emdeon) SVP of sales and marketing.

CMS Principal Deputy Administrator Jonathan Blum, the administration’s top Medicare official, will resign effective May 16.

Cancer Treatment Centers of American names Kristin Darby (Tenet Healthcare) CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Athenahealth reports that 95.4 percent of its participating providers successfully attested for MU Stage 1 in 2013. The company also resigns from the HIMSS Electronic Health Records Association (EHRA) trade association saying it “never really belonged” since it is neither an EHR company nor a software vendor.

Maine’s HealthInfoNet HIE offers providers access to the state’s Prescription Monitoring Program through the HIE’s portal, giving clinicians a single sign-on to both systems.

Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and Virtua (NJ) integrate their imaging systems as well as CHOP’s Epic and Virtua’s Siemens EHRs to give both health systems access to each other’s radiology reports and diagnostic images.

Prince Mohammed Bin Abdulaziz Hospital in Saudi Arabia deploys Cerner after a nine-month implementation.

Government and Politics

CMS officials are considering whether to keep Accenture as its long-term prime contractor for the the HealthCare.gov website or seek a potential replacement. A “sources sought” notice posted by CMS says the agency is looking to see if any small businesses owned by veterans or minorities might be suitable candidates.

Other

Use of Epic’s Care Everywhere HIE tool helped four EDs within Allina Health (MN) reduce duplicate tests and procedures, according to a study published in Applied Clinical Informatics.

Boston Children’s Hospital (MA) partners with Etiometry to analyze information from ICU patient monitors to display a Stability Index.

Weird News Andy says patients have to pay for expensive ICU stays, but maybe this isn’t the best way. Police arrest a female ICU patient after a tip from hospital staff that she was receiving many visitors who stayed only 1-2 minutes. She was dealing heroin from her bed.

Sponsor Updates

• Kinetic Data names CareTech Solutions its Innovator of the Year for its innovative use of Kinetic Data products.
• Craneware enhances its supply management solution Pharmacy ChargeLink to include additional worklist functionality, benchmark pricing, and automated dosing tools.
• PaySpan will integrate MEA|NEA’s electronic claim attachment capabilities into its healthcare reimbursement platform.
• McKesson observes Earth Day with a Green Week celebration that focuses on informing employees about the company’s efforts to reduce its environmental footprint and engaging employees in environmental efforts.
• Wolters Kluwer Health releases the Medi-Span Medicare Plans File, which provides indicators to designate coverage under Medicare Part B and/or Part D.
• Holon explains why HIE implementations in rural healthcare can trump those in urban settings in a company blog post.
• The Advisory Board Company shares an infographic  that highlights how progressive organizations are focusing on primary care providers to achieve volume and quality goals.
• Surgical Information Systems updates its industry, client, and anesthesia events calendar.
• Aperek will participate in the SMI Spring 2014 Forum in Phoenix April 29-May 1.
• Halim Cho, Covisint’s director of product marketing will discuss the cloud’s disruptive power to transform enterprises at the May 5 Forrester Forum for Technology Management Leaders in Orlando.
• John Marshall, SVP and GM for AirWatch by VMware, offers his enterprise mobility market perspective in an interview.
• Shareable Ink’s founder and CTO Stephen Hau organized a Boston Marathon team that raised over $750,000 for last year’s bombing victims.
• Netsmart opens registration for its CONNECTIONS2014 conference October 6-9 in Anaheim, CA.
• The Orion Health Patient Portal v.4.0 achieves ONC HIT 2014 Edition Complete EHR Certification through ICSA Labs.
• Navicure adds 300 new clients representing 1,225 providers in the first quarter and posts a 19 percent increase in revenues versus a year ago.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.