Monday Morning Update 8/24/15

Top News

Mercy Health (OH) implements Premier’s integrated pharmacy and care management program to advance population health management initiatives at its 23 hospitals across Ohio and Kentucky.

Last Week’s Most Interesting News

• Practice Fusion promotes Tom Langan to interim CEO, replacing founder Ryan Howard, who will move to board chair.
• The executive exodus continues at NYC Health & Hospitals Corporation, with Paul Contino departing following an investigation of its $764 million Epic implementation.
• Gene-sequencing company Illumina forms Helix, a business that will offer free genome sequencing to consumers and then monetize the data by selling portions of it back to patients as they need it.
• ZocDoc raises a $130 million funding round on a $1.8 billion valuation, making it one of the most highly valued venture-backed companies in New York.
• Leidos wins a $900 million contract to support R&D efforts within the US Army’s Medical Research and Materiel Command.
• Epic is selected as the replacement EHR vendor for Finland’s Hospital District of Helsinki and Uusimaa, in a $424 million contract budgeted to grow to $635 million over 10 years.

Webinars

August 25 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Cerner’s Takeover of Siemens: An Update (Including the DoD Project).” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Vince Ciotti, principal, HIS Professionals; Frank Poggio, president and CEO, The Kelzon Group. Vince and Frank delivered HIStalk’s most popular webinar, "Cerner’s Takeover of Siemens, Are You Ready?" which has been viewed nearly 6,000 times. Vince and Frank return with their brutally honest (and often humorous) opinions about what has happened with Cerner since then, including its participation in the successful DoD bid and what that might mean for Cerner’s customers and competitors, based on their having seen it all in their decades of experience.

September 9 (Wednesday) 2:00 ET. “Need to cleanse, unify and manage the provider data in your EMR master file and other IT systems?” Phynd’s Unified Provider Management platform allows healthcare organizations to maintain a single, verified, customized profile for each provider across legacy IT systems. This 30-minute presentation will explain how Phynd’s system can help synchronize internal provider information in real time; create provider interoperability among systems; and manage, update, and analyze provider information with workflow tools to improve revenue cycle and clinical communication.

Previous webinars are on the YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for webinar services including discounts for signing up by Labor Day.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

San Francisco-based Zephyr Health lands $17.5 million in a funding round led by Google Ventures, with help from existing investors Icon Ventures and Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers. The med device and biopharma analytics firm has raised $33.5 million since its founding in 2011.

People

James Rossiter joins NextGate as CFO.

Dawn Van Dyke (The Advisory Board) joins The Sequoia Project (fka Healtheway) as marketing director.

Dean Schorno (Adaptive Biotechnologies) joins 23andMe as CFO and head of operations.

Sales

Cone Health (NC), Mount Sinai Medical Center (FL), Kettering Health (OH), Dayton Children’s Hospital (OH), SCL Health System (CO), and Chicago-based Presence Health sign on to the Unified Provider Management Platform from Kearney, NE-based Phynd Technologies.

Announcements and Implementations

Cerner shop EvergreenHealth becomes the only hospital in Washington to avoid paying a hospital readmissions penalty for the fourth year in a row. The two-hospital provider achieved HIMSS Stage 6 recognition last month.

NHS facilities in Wye Valley and Salisbury announce plans to move from decades-old patient administration systems to “electronic patient record systems” over the next two years. Wye Valley will spend over $23 million on a system from IMS MSXIMS, while Salisbury NHS will continue spending money with CSC on its Lorenzo platform. CSC has earned a tainted reputation as part of the boondoggle that was the National Programme for IT (NPfIT), which imploded in 2011 due to project overruns, mismanagement,and resultant budget-busting.

Technology

ZeOmega releases an annual clinical content update for its Jiva population health platform.

Validic adds RxRevu prescription intelligence software, including prescription drug delivery options and a price transparency tool, to its digital health platform.

Government and Politics

A 68-page report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology determines that more work is needed from federal agencies such as HHS, NIH, NIST, and the National Science Foundation to promote and utilize open standards and interfaces to leverage data analyses for healthcare delivery and biomedical research. The report recommends without a hint of irony that “NIH and HHS should create funding mechanisms that will encourage accelerated deployment, testing, and evolution of translational IT systems for clinical use.”

The White House issues a fairly broad call to stakeholders for ideas on how to move its Precision Medicine Initiative forward, outlining 10 potential categories of ways to treat disease and improve health that have precision medicine potential. Feedback is due September 21.

The American Red Cross honors female community leaders and volunteers who contributed significantly to the recovery of New Orleans and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina at its inaugural Power of Women luncheon. National Coordinator and Acting Assistant HHS Secretary Karen DeSalvo, MD was among the honorees for her work as city health commissioner and senior health policy advisor to New Orleans Mayor Mitchell Landrieu from 2011-14.

Research and Innovation

Oregon Health & Science University’s Knight Cancer Institute partners with Intel to launch the Collaborative Cancer Cloud, a network that will enable providers to securely share genomic data for more personalized medicine and tailored cancer research. OSHU plans to go live in the first quarter of next year with two additional cancer centers to pilot the new technology, plus make open source its Trusted Execution Technology to ensure patient privacy.

Other

Nancy Snyderman, MD will make her first public appearance since leaving NBC earlier this year when she hosts a discussion next month with New Jersey hospital CEOs during the Princeton Regional Chamber of Commerce Healthcare Symposium. Snyderman left the network after facing criticism for violating a voluntary agreement with the CDC to stay out of public areas after reporting from Liberia during the Ebola epidemic. Keyspeakers.com notes that her speaking fees are nothing to sneeze at.

Sponsor Updates

• Huron Consulting offers “A Modern Commentary on Medicare at 50.”
• The SSI Group will exhibit at the 2015 MidAmerica Summer Institute Region 8 August 26-28 in Minneapolis.
• Streamline Health rings the Nasdaq opening bell in New York City.
• T-System offers “ICD-10 Leniency from CMS: What You Need to Know.”
• TeleTracking offers “One Team … Unlimited Success.”
• Verisk Health offers “Talking Cost Drivers: How Employers Can Stop Rising Medical Costs.”
• VitalHealth Software offers “Healthcare Outcomes: Our First Executive Forum.”
• Voalte offers “Lessons from mHealth History.”
• Xerox “Helps State Medicaid Organizations Reduce Costs, Improve Care.”
• ZirMed offers “Less Than 50 Days to ICD-10: Tips to Help You Prepare.”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

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