News 10/10/14

Top News

ONC hires RTI International to plan its national health IT safety center. Several lawmakers have questioned ONC’s legal authority to create and run such a center, particularly the part of its original plan that involved charging vendors fees.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

This week on HIStalk Connect: Facebook investigates new healthcare-focused services, including disease-specific social media groups and Facebook-connected health apps. Healthcare billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong’s startup NantHealth raises a $320 million Series B led by the Kuwait Investment Authority. Startup Health welcomes 13 new digital health companies to its three-year incubator program.

This week on HIStalk Practice: Virginia Women’s Center implements Keona Health tech. NHS patients are assigned non-muggle names at check-in. United Physicians rolls out Wellcentive solutions. DHMSM bidders get two more weeks. Community Health Centers of Arkansas goes with eClinicalWorks. The artist formerly known as Dr. Gregg pens a new tune. Thanks for reading.

Listening: new from Hozier, a creative Irish musician who tells lyrical stories in a variety of genres. I like it.

Webinars

October 21 (Tuesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Electronic Prescribing Of Controlled Substance Is Here, What Should You Do? Sponsored by Imprivata. Presenters: William T. “Bill” Winsley, MS, RPh, former executive director, Ohio State Board of Pharmacy; Sean Kelly, MD, physician, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center;  David Ting, founder and CEO, Imprivata. Providers are challenged to use EPCS to raise e-prescribing rates for MU, improve physician productivity, reduce fraud and errors, and meet New York’s March 2015 e-prescribing mandate. Hydrocodone painkillers such as Vicodin have moved to Schedule II, with the higher CS prescribing volume adding another reason to implement e-prescribing. This webinar will describe why organizations should roll out EPCS, presented from the perspectives of pharmacy, compliance, physicians, and technology.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Box acquires medical imaging collaboration platform startup MedXT. Meanwhile, healthcare startup investor and Box CEO Aaron Levie (centimillionaire; college dropout; healthcare background or previous interest zero) posts a self-congratulatory USA Today opinion piece (it’s not very well edited with quite a few misspelled words, so it may be a paid promotion) extolling the virtues of the companies in which he holds a financial interest, saying, “There’s already an explosion of start-ups in Silicon Valley and beyond tackling healthcare, ready to transform the industry from the outside in … The Obama administration has taken the lead on pushing through legislation to increase access to care, and there’s far more that can be done on the policy side. But there’s a major role for the technology sector to play in transforming our health care system from one that lags behind its peers, to one that defines the future of health care innovation worldwide.” That’s what Google thought, too.

 
NantHealth raises $250 million from Kuwait’s sovereign wealth fund, adding to the $100 million the fund invested earlier this year. The company also announced that Steve Curd (CareInSync) has joined as COO and KLAS co-founder Scott Holbrook has been named to the company’s board.

HIMSS and the Avia provider-driven accelerator announce HX360, which will facilitate adoption of next-generation technologies. I don’t really understand what the buzzword-laden announcement is saying the new organization will actually do. Or, for that matter, why HIMSS would partner with a for-profit that collects dues and invests directly in companies that may compete with the vendors that provide HIMSS with most of its income.

Sales

Maury Regional Medical Center (TN) selects VisionWare’s MultiVue platform.

University of Virginia Health System selects Strata Decision’s StrataJazz for decision support and cost accounting.

Hugh Chatham Memorial Hospital (NC) chooses Medhost’s Advanced Perioperative Information Management System with Anesthesia Information Management System.

People

Hearst Corporation promotes Charles Tuchinda, MD to president of First Databank.

Anthony J. Principi (US Department of Veterans Affairs) joins GetWellNetwork’s board.

Vince Ciotti reports that former SMS VP Jim Carter, who he profiled in the above HIS-tory segment a few years ago, has passed away. Vince adds, “I’m sure his hundreds of friends at SMS share my sad feelings tonight at this news. The good things we all share are the many memories of his ever-smiling face, infectious laugh, and always positive attitude. He will be sorely missed.” 

Announcements and Implementations

Allscripts announces GA of the FollowMyHealth Achieve care management solution for Touchworks and Sunrise users.

Visage Imaging announces a new release of its Enterprise Imaging Platform, which includes increased scalability to tens of millions of images and Epic integration. The company will exhibit at ACR’s Imaging Informatics Summit on October 29-30.

Government and Politics

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell says in a interview question about the Meaningful Use program, “Once we get these systems interoperable, that’s when we get the real value. You get the real value as a practicing physician, you get the real value as a consumer, and that’s the next step. At the same time, as we’re trying to move forward, we’re receiving comments and pressure to slow the implementation. This is a push-pull as we’re going through change.”

Technology

Wearables vendor Fitbit says it has no plans to integrate with Apple’s HealthKit.

Gartner identifies its “Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2015”:

1. Computing everywhere
2. Internet of Things
3. 3D printing
4. Advanced, pervasive, and invisible analytics
5. Context-rich systems
6. Smart machines
7. Cloud/client computing
8. Software-defined applications and infrastructure
9. Web-scale IT
10. Risk-based security and self-protection

Other

An eHealth Initiative survey of HIEs finds them concerned about the cost and challenges involved with interfacing with EHRs, but happy that Meaningful Use and regulatory requirements have sent providers their way. Nearly half of the HIEs that charge membership fees say that income doesn’t cover their expenses.

Weird News Andy titles this story “Fallopian Tubers.” Doctors investigating a woman’s abdominal pain remove a germinating potato from her reproductive tract, which she explained as, “My mom told me that if I didn’t want to get pregnant, I should put a potato up there, and I believed her.” 

Sponsor Updates

• Beckie Cosentino, director of privacy and compliance at Etransmedia, discusses HIPAA-compliant email.
• Orchestrate Healthcare posts “Strategies for Effective Healthcare Systems Integration Are Changing”
• Clinovations shares a Q&A with Brian Morton discussing the business side of medical practices.
• CitiusTech will participate in the NAHC Annual Exposition, MGMA, and the IBM Insight in October.
• Connance and the University of Rochester Medical Center will discuss how the medical center was able to increase charity care dollars and reduce bad debt during HFMA Region 2 Fall Annual Institute October 22-24.
• Innovative Healthcare Solutions shares how PeaceHealth (AL/WA/OR) was able to alleviate challenges and meet expectations for its Epic implementation by engaging IHS for support.
• Sunquest announces its November anatomic pathology summit agenda.
• Craneware will sponsor the Hospital 100 Leadership and Strategy Conference October 19-21 in California.
• CoverMyMeds partners with Prodigy Data System to provide faster prior authorization approvals within long-term care facilities.
• ShareCor selects Sandlot Solutions’ Sandlot Dimensions for its Louisiana Health Information Network.
• Imprivata will showcase its single sign-on and authentication management solutions during VMworld 2014 in Europe October 14-16.
• Premier shares a video overview by Stacey Counts at Heartland Health/Mosaic life Care (MO) of the PACT Collaborative and Premier’s PopulationFocus after participating in the first Medicare Shared Savings Program by CMS.
• Orion Health launches eReferral province-wide in Alberta, Canada for lung cancer, breast cancer, and hip and knee joint replacement surgery referrals.
• Besler Consulting explores the implications of the elimination of the Common Working File for acute care hospitals in a recently published issue brief.
• The Nova Scotia Department of Health and Wellness PHR project, powered by RelayHealth, receives second place in the 2014 Canada Health Infoway Accelerate Challenge.
• ScImage achieves DIACAP accreditation for its hybrid cloud medical imaging solution PicomEnterprise 3.x.
• ZeOmega CEO Sam Rangaswamy is named to Dallas Business Journal’s “Who’s Who in Health Care.”
• Strata Decision publishes the agenda for its summit and leadership symposium October 21 in Chicago.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

ONC opens a public comment period on the Draft 2014 Edition Release 2 Test Procedures. I can confidently say that most of the public has no idea what this is, let alone a comment on it. I imagine most comments will come from individuals associated with a vendor or who have a vested interest in the testing process. Anything that takes my vendors’ time and effort away from improving usability and ensuring patient safety is a problem, so I hope people who have more free time than me add some helpful comments.

In other news, CMS is reopening the hardship exception application process with a new deadline of November 30. We submitted a number of applications prior to the original July 1 deadline and still have not received determinations on about half of those providers, despite their reason for hardship all being identical. I’m not sure why the rest are delayed, but I hope CMS addresses the backlog before they start processing new applications.

I’m continuously entertained by the emails I receive as a result of being on LinkedIn. This week I’ve had no fewer than 10 requests to connect with international medical students with whom I have no connections in common. The pick of the week is one from a recruiting firm searching for a CMIO with experience using a particular vendor. Had she bothered to look at my profile, she would have seen that vendor listed exactly nowhere.

Additionally, she states that the client requires the new CMIO spend 70 percent of his or her time in clinical pursuits “to establish credibility with the medical staff and garner Physician respect.” Anyone who thinks that you can do the non-clinical work of a CMIO in 12 hours a week doesn’t understand at all what it is that we do.

The email goes on to say that eventually the role will transition to 20 percent, but doesn’t list a time period. From experience, it doesn’t matter how much time the CMIO spends in clinical pursuits, it will never be enough for some physicians. Unless you’re seeing as many patients who are as sick as their patients (who are undoubtedly the sickest patients on the planet), you are inferior.

The end of the month really heats up with healthcare IT events. First MGMA kicks off in Las Vegas on the 26th, with the CHIME Fall Forum starting the next day. The Cerner Health Conference starts November 2 along with NextGen’s One User Group Meeting. Las Vegas, San Antonio, Kansas City, Las Vegas. If you’re a best of breed CIO (and I can think of a few), you could really rack up some frequent flyer miles. If you’re attending any of them, we love to have reader feedback.

Got photos? Email me.

Contacts

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

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