Monday Morning Update 1/19/15

Top News

CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner, most known for her key role in the botched rollout of Healthcare.gov and for miscounting its enrollees to the White House’s embarrassment, resigns. Former Optum executive Andy Slavitt will take the role as interim. Trivia: Tavenner worked her way up from staff nurse at an HCA hospital to president of a 20-hospital HCA division. 

Reader Comments

From VeeDub: “Re: McKesson. Our system uses Horizon Clinicals at several of our hospitals and is just beginning the conversion to a new EMR. McKesson has told us that the last day of support for Horizon Clinicals will be March 31, 2018. I don’t know if this also applies to the rest of the Horizon product line.” Unverified, but McKesson has sent strong signals that sunset is on the Horizon.

From Dollar Short: “Re: CIO salaries. You used to run these. Bring it back!” Since I’m a pleaser, I put together a few for you. I used to calculate the CIO’s salary vs. the non-profit organization’s revenue, but big health systems started gaming that number by setting up management corporations to hide executive salaries and reporting revenue in not very digestible ways. I chose a few big-name CIOs. Who’s up for names and pictures of the million-dollar club? (probably not members of the million-dollar club)

TX: $689,993
MA: $702,153
FL: $616,330
VA: $965,552
FL: $415,676
MA: $812,817
NY: $922,942
NY: $1,206,457
VA: $470,783
TX: $817,753
NC: $674,896
CA: $1,527,838
MA: $415,172
WI: $330,573
AZ: $1,084,140
FL: $1,091,266

From Hold the Mayo: “Re: Mayo Clinic. Will announce its EMR selection (Cerner or Epic) on Tuesday.” Unverified. One of the companies will get a lot of mileage out of that decision, and not long before the Department of Defense is making its choice besides.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Thanks to the following sponsors, new and renewing, that recently supported HIStalk, HIStalk Practice, and HIStalk Connect. Click a logo for more information.

My most recent poll  responses can be sliced and diced in a few ways. Forty-six percent of respondents overall will attend HIMSS15, while 22 percent who went to HIMSS14 aren’t coming this year (but those are outnumbered by readers who didn’t go last year but will this year). Based on that I would ordinarily project a slightly higher attendance for HIMSS15, but I’m not so sure the industry isn’t contracting a bit overall and attendance may not get that boost. New poll to your right or here: has technology significantly empowered patients? I would enjoy hearing your comments – click the link after voting and share your thoughts.

Listening: The Subways, a hard-rocking British three-piece band that puts on a hyper-energy live show (the bravest crowd surf ever is at 45:00 in the video). They’ll be touring to support their new album starting in a couple of weeks, but only in Europe. I’m rehearsing now for my US-based desk-drumming and air-guitaring support.

Last Week’s Most Interesting News

• Google joins the Department of Defense EHR bid team of PwC, General Dynamics, Medsphere, and DSS.
• A whistleblower lawsuit brought by two former NantHealth executives claims the company is “engaged in a multitude of fraudulent activities.”
• Athenahealth acquires small hospital EHR vendor RazorInsights.
• ONC’s numbers show that 77 percent of Meaningful Use Stage 2 eligible hospitals have attested along with 60 percent of eligible practices.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

I’m fascinated by the continued share price decline of former high-flyer Castlight Health, which closed on its first day of trading last March at nearly $40, took a sharp slide immediately afterward, and now sits at less than $9, down nearly 80 percent. The company will announce full-year and Q4 results on February 18, which will be interesting.

Sales

In the UK, Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust selects HP Enterprise Services UK to implement Orion Health’s clinical portal with Imprivata’s single sign-on.

People

The SSI Group names Jay Colfer (Surgical Information Systems) as EVP of sales.

Atul Butte, MD, PhD (Stanford University School of Medicine) will join UCSF to run its new Institute for Computational Health Sciences.

Announcements and Implementations

Practice Fusion adds an online check-in module that collects patient information via practice-customizable online forms, then sends it to its EHR.

Wolters Kluwer Health enhances its Sentri7 surveillance system to support creation of antimicrobial stewardship programs.

Government and Politics

FDA releases draft guidance for “General Wellness: Policy for Low Risk Devices.” FDA says it isn’t interested in treating low-risk wellness products as medical devices. Apps and devices are fine as long as they (a) address general wellness such as weight management, mental acuity, physical fitness, or sleep management without claiming to treat a specific disease or condition, or (b) use accepted medical knowledge to promote lifestyle management to reduce the risk of specific diseases or conditions.  

Privacy and Security

Sensato announces its Hacking Healthcare 2015 cybersecurity conference, March 24-26, 2015 at Ocean Place Spa & Resort in Long Branch, NJ for health systems, payers, technology vendors, and physician practices. It will cover top healthcare security threats (including those involving biomedical devices), dealing with business associates, and developing strategies for addressing current threats. 

A New Jersey goes into effect that requires insurance companies to encrypt patient information on both desktops and laptops.

Innovation and Research

Massively overexposed Mark Cuban, mostly known for being irreverently obnoxious before and after he made a ton of money, will emcee the Impact Pediatric Pitch Competition for pediatric digital technologies on March 16 at SXSW Interactive in Austin, TX. The event will be hosted by Boston Children’s, Cincinnati Children’s, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, and Texas Children’s.

Technology

Fascinating: an astronaut needed a wrench, so NASA emailed up a CAD drawing and he 3D printed the tool on the International Space Station.

Samsung offers software developers and researchers a free prototype and development kit of its Simband wrist-based sensor. A tutorial steps through the writing of a heart rate variability algorithm in C, while the company also offers de-identified vital signs test data it will be collecting from research participants. 

Berkeley, CA-based startup Eko Devices announces the $200 Core 1, which clips onto a standard stethoscope to record its sounds to any smartphone or tablet via Bluetooth, allowing doctors to share the sound file in consulting with a remote specialist.

Stride Health launches a Healthcare.gov type medical insurance app that targets 1099 workers, claiming its app is easier to use and suggests insurance options that are more tailored to the user. The app is free since the company gets a commission on the insurance users buy. Mayo Clinic is an investor.

Other

The Seattle paper covers what it calls the “OpenTable for medical appointments” patient scheduling apps, mentioning ZocDoc for medical appointment scheduling and InQuicker for ED scheduling. It quotes a New York dermatologist who says he couldn’t compete without ZocDoc, which sends him 15 patients per week, which seems unnecessary given the stats I’ve seen on long waits to get a new patient derm appointment, but he knows better than me. An ED patient who used InQuicker reports, “There must have been 50 people there, and they took me in 10 minutes,” which surely delighted those other folks who actually showed up and waited as the happy InQuicker user skipped the line for her “emergency.”

Speaking of EDs, Modern Healthcare reports that annual visits keep rising sharply despite the Affordable Care Act, with one ED doc saying, “We’re seeing a failure of access to care” as primary care practices close or stop accepting Medicare. Others say the newly insured just haven’t gotten used to the idea that they can be seen in places other than the ED.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock (NH) uses an EHR best practice alert to improve its blood transfusion practices, reducing the number of questionable two-unit transfusion orders from 47 percent to 15 percent.

Harvard Medical School announces the formation of the Department of Biomedical Informatics, to be led by Isaac Kohane, MD, PhD of Boston Children’s Hospital who co-founded the predecessor organization, HMS Center for Biomedical Informatics. The department will have five core faculty members.

Weird News Andy nominates this as his quote of the year: “Being a corpse was the most bizarre experience, but I’m so glad I managed to get out alive.” An Alabama teen with the rare mental illness Cotard’s Syndrome, in which those afflicted believe that they are literally dead, recovers three years later after psychiatric help and watching Disney movies (insert commercial skepticism or promotional opportunities here, especially since she says she and her boyfriend now want to work for Disney World). Those with the condition believe they are dead and/or immortal, that their body parts are missing or decomposed, or that they can relax only in cemeteries.

Sponsor Updates

• Liaison Technologies CEO Bob Renner dives into five micro trends that will define big data over the coming year.
• Versus client Dan Chambers, MBA, COE, of Key-Whitman Eye Center writes in the January issue of Ophthalmic Professional magazine about RTLS and how the technology improves patient flow.
• Healthwise SVP Molly Mettler reflects on the opening of Healthwise 40 years ago in a new blog.
• The local Fox News affiliate mentions Healthgrades in a story on keeping New Year’s resolutions.
• Healthfinch makes “Another Case for Strategy, Not Just Tactics” in its latest blog.
• Harris Corp. will exhibit at the iHT2 conference in San Diego January 20-21.
• Impact Advisors publishes a white paper, “Optimization: The Next Frontier.”
• Healthcare Data Solutions lists five things to love about pharmacists in celebration of National Pharmacists Day.
• Extension Healthcare blogs about channeling change and your inner Florence Nightingale in 2015.
• Health Care Software Inc. will exhibit at the LeadingAge California meeting in San Diego on January 23.
• DocuSign shares tips on enhancing employee productivity in its latest blog post.
• Hayes Management Consulting shares “Everything You’ve Wanted to Know About Keeping Employees Happy During System Implementations But Were Afraid to Ask” in a new blog.
• SCI Solutions offers a new blog on “Eliminating the Blind Side in Care Coordination.”
• Sagacious Consultants offers insight into improving sepsis detection using Epic in its latest blog.
• PMD’s Siavosh Bahrami offers a new blog on “Mediums of Thought and How I Approach Problems.”
• Phynd CEO Thomas White offers insight into the company’s ROI model in a new blog post.
• PeriGen doubles its PeriCALM customer based in 2014, bringing total estimated number of births supported to 140,032.
• The local paper profiles Perceptive Software’s office in a roundup of Johnson County’s coolest offices. (nice pic, too)
• Nordic releases the third episode in its series on Epic’s Cupid application, covering differentiators and implementation stumbling blocks.
• NVoq shares the top three providers should know about its SayIt speech-recognition technology.
• Netsmart releases two new white papers: ”The Recovery Movement” and ”In Transition: How Electronic Data Sharing Enables Improved Health Outcomes and Reduced Costs.”
• MEA I NEA publishes a new blog entitled, “Connected practices may be hindered by lack of a website; yes, a website.”

Contacts

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

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