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April 12, 2016 News 8 Comments

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CMS announces a five-year, 5,000-practice test of Comprehensive Primary Care Plus (CPC+), a new medical home model that moves payments further away from fee-for-service. Eligible practices can apply to participate in one of two tracks, both of which require use of a certified EHR.

Track 1 practices will be paid $15 per month per Medicare patient plus performance-based incentives in return for providing 24/7 patient access and supporting quality improvement activities. Track 2 practices will be paid $28 per Medicare patient plus performance-based incentives and must also follow up after ED or inpatient discharge, connect patients to community resources, and have their EHR vendor sign an agreement that “reiterates their willingness to work together with CPC+ practice participants to develop the required health IT capabilities.”

CPC+ will begin in January 2017. 


Reader Comments

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From Bob: “Re: Meditab. Any news? Emails are bouncing and phone numbers are disconnected.” I’ve barely heard of the ambulatory EHR vendor, so I don’t have a lot of interest or knowledge about whether they are defunct or not. I tried to contact sales and got into an endless PBX loop.

From Lance Carbuncle: “Re: Vocera. Lawsuits are flying after an infringement on the privacy (and dignity) of a patient. A mother whose baby passed away was subjected to an open communication between the transplant team and the nurse wearing her Vocera badge. Then the worst part was the care team disclosed that the mother has HIV to the family over a ‘speakerphone’ Vocera badge.” Unverified. A patient sues Tampa General Hospital (FL) for disclosing HIV test results without authorization, claiming that a nurse spoke to the transplant team on speakerphone. The hospital has announced its intention to replace Vocera with Voalte.

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From Portobello: “Re: Arkansas Children’s Hospital. Is walking away from its Meditech 6.1 implementation for Epic. I am wondering if the hospital is being acquired by a larger health system and it just hasn’t been announced yet or if the ambulatory product was so poorly implemented that it pushed them away.” Sources tell me the hospital is not happy with Meditech’s new ambulatory system, to the point they had to halt its rollout. Ambulatory has been the Achilles heel of Meditech and lack of a competitive offering is further marginalizing company as the choice of small hospitals that would rather have Epic or Cerner but can’t afford them. It’s a shame because we really could use more inpatient EHR competition. Meditech’s executives and directors average 65 and 77 years of age, respectively, and while I admire that the company has rigidly stuck to its knitting for 50 years, sometimes it feels like the rich, Boston-society guys in charge are no longer fully engaged enough to successfully run a technology company in the face of better competition than they had in 1990. It would have been interesting if Athenahealth had bought Meditech in its effort to penetrate the inpatient market, but that would have probably been a $1 billion acquisition loaded with legacy baggage and a customer base of small hospitals that are being bought out by larger health systems who want everybody running the same system.

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From Diametric: “Re: Bill Childs. He published this document in April 1968 when he was at Lockheed. I’ve always kept this document to remind me what’s important. While the technology has changed, I think this can still serve as a supplemental guide for rational development. I have interacted with perhaps 200 vendors over the years and found those that held close to this philosophy made the best partners.” I set up the document for downloading here. It’s a remarkable manifesto written nearly 50 years ago that spells out the still-valid requirements for hospital clinical systems. Bill started at Lockheed doing missile programming, then in 1968 moved over to the company’s new project of building a hospital information system. He later joined Technicon Data Systems. Not only was he a healthcare IT technology pioneer, he then started what became Healthcare Informatics magazine and ran that from 1980 to 1995 before getting back into the vendor world. Somehow he hasn’t yet won the HIStalk Lifetime Achievement Award despite being amply qualified. Thanks for sending over the document – it made my day.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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I uncharacteristically funded a non-STEM DonorsChoose project from Ms. A from Texas, whose grant request asked for two trumpets for her music classes that are creating the area’s first school band. She reports, “While many of our scholars have very little material possessions, I truly believe we are providing them with something that cannot be purchased with money. We are offering them something that goes beyond what they can buy, which is confidence, creativity, and self-expression.”


Webinars

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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GE Ventures and Mayo Clinic create Vitruvian Networks, which will offer software and manufacturing capabilities to support personalized medicine in the treatment of cancer, specifically those blood diseases that can be treated by reengineering the patient’s own blood cells.

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Diabetes management software vendor Livongo Health, founded by former Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman, raises $44.5 million in a Series C round, increasing its total to $77.5 million. 


Sales

North Memorial Health Care (MN) goes live on the VitraView enterprise image viewer from Vital Images. 

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Tift Regional Health System (GA) chooses Cerner’s clinical and financial systems.

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University of Kansas Hospital (KS) will replace Cisco phones and Vocera voice badges with Voalte’s clinical communication and alert notification system.

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The State of Vermont will offer PatientPing to all state providers to give them real-time alerts when their patient is being seen by another provider.


People

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Susan Pouzar (Versus Technology) joins H.I. S. Professionals as SVP of sales and marketing.

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NIH hires Eric Dishman (Intel) as director of its Precision Medicine Initiative Cohort Program.

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Adrienne Edens (Sutter Health) joins CHIME as VP of education services.

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Forward Health Group hires Subbu Ravi (Amphion Medical Solutions) as COO.

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Streamline Health Solutions names Shaun Priest (Influence Health) as SVP/chief growth officer.

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GetWellNetwork hires Scott Filion (Digital Health Innovations) to the newly created role of president.


Announcements and Implementations

Kaiser Permanente launches Research Bank, where volunteer KP members will contribute their genetic information as well as behavioral and environmental factors to allow researchers to study their effect on health. 

Presbyterian Homes of Georgia (GA) goes live with the HCS Interactant EHR.

Logicalis will offer its healthcare clients single sign-on and biometric ID solutions from HealthCast Solutions to support e-prescribing.


Technology

Boston Children’s Hospital (MA) launches cloud-based parent education for Alexa-powered devices such as Amazon Echo. KidsMD will be packaged as an Alexa “skill” that can be enabled by saying phrases such as, “Alexa, ask KidsMD about fever.”


Other

A former Michigan house majority whip who is also a physician is charged with healthcare fraud for providing nerve blocks for patients he hadn’t examined, then billing for his services although nurse practitioners staffed his clinics. Paul DeWeese is accused of storing his signature electronically in the EHR and then giving employees his login credentials to falsely indicate that he had met the insurance company’s requirement of reviewing the clinical documentation before being paid. He lost his medical license last summer for writing narcotics prescriptions for patients he hadn’t examined.

Former University of Missouri Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin, forced out of his job and into a newly created position with the joint MU-Cerner project called Tiger Institute for Health Innovation, never took the promised job after Cerner complained that the university didn’t consult them before announcing it. 


Sponsor Updates

  • PatientKeeper will exhibit at the 2016 International MUSE Conference in Orlando, May 31-June 3.
  • AirStrip will exhibit at the Regional CEO Forum April 13-15 in Chicago.
  • Frost & Sullivan recognizes Bernoulli with the 2016 North American Frost & Sullivan Award for Product Leadership.
  • PatientPay will plant a tree through The Nature Conservancy for every patient payment the company receives on Earth Day, April 22.
  • Besler Consulting is named a finalist in several B2B Marketer Awards categories.
  • CapsuleTech will exhibit at the 2016 American Nursing Informatics Association Conference April 21-23 in San Francisco.
  • CoverMyMeds will exhibit at the North Carolina HIMSS Annual Conference April 20-21 in Raleigh.
  • Direct Consulting Associates will exhibit at the Health IT Summit April 19-20 in Cleveland.
  • EClinicalWorks joins the National Patient Safety Foundation’s Patient Safety Coalition.
  • Form Fast, Health Data Specialists and Healthwise will exhibit at the Cerner Southeast Regional User Group Meeting April 20-22 in Charlotte, NC.
  • Galen Healthcare Solutions wins the #HITMC 2016 Best Content Marketing Award.
  • Healthfinch CEO Jonathan Baran will serve as a judge during Madison Startup Weekend April 22 in Wisconsin.

Blog Posts

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Lt. Dan.
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Currently there are "8 comments" on this Article:

  1. Regarding Meditech, you hit the nail on the head. All they do is shuffle the chairs of legacy executive employees. They continue to be late to market with new technology. They need to wake up and realize that they can not survive on maintenance fees alone. If they do not, their clients will flee because they don’t want to get stuck with a dying company. In addition we do need some competition in this market as Epic is starting to hit a wall with their costs and demands of their clients to support Disney Land in Madison.

  2. I was a charter subscriber in Bill Child’s Computer’s in Hospitals magazine in the early 1980s. He is a true pioneer in healthcare IT and deserves all the recognition he receives.
    Ford Phillips

  3. In the small to medium hospital market, if you are looking for one database for hospital and ambulatory – eClinicalWorks is someone to consider. They have issues and problems like any other system. They are fairly new to the hospital world – but several years back so was Epic. Might be worth a demo……

  4. While taking nothing away from Bill Childs’ many contributions to our industry, I had to chuckle at his point #2, “….This will also eliminate edits do (sic) to all selectable items being 100% correct.”

  5. The thing with Meditech is, they always tell you “our NEW system modernizes everything.” Except it does not. They change the system just enough to break all customizations, all reports, and all existing business knowledge. However it never catches them up.

    And in the years it takes them to roll out the new system, their competitors have advanced as well. The result being that Meditech is perpetually years or decades behind.

    Meditech is a classic case of Founder Effect gone nuts. The founder is still present and running the show. Meditech made this guy. His wealth comes from there, as does his entire professional career, as does his public respect and accomplishment. Why would he, or his coterie of like-minded insiders, disrupt the gravy train? They think everything is fine! Likely it is fine, for them, they are set for life.

  6. The great news for those community hospitals who’d rather have Epic; they now have options. Mercy, a 4-state health system headquartered near St. Louis, recently became the nation’s first Epic accredited provider. It’s IT division, Mercy Technology Services, has implemented Epic in more than 45 hospitals and can host it in the cloud for community hospitals looking for a cost effective approach.

  7. RE: Portobello

    Ark Children’s did walk away from their 6.1 but not for the reasons either Portobello or Mr. H suggest.







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