It seems that every innovation in the past 50 years has claimed that it would save money and lives. There…
News 11/9/16
Top News
The Charlotte, NC paper confirms the reader rumors I ran on October 28 that McKesson has laid off 60 employees in its Enterprise Information Solutions (Paragon) business.
Reader Comments
From Look Now: “Re: Shriners Hospitals for Children. Signed a contract with Cerner to implement their EDW solution HealtheIntent across their 21 hospitals live on Millenium. Project started this week.” Unverified.
Webinars
November 9 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “How to Create Healthcare Apps That Get Used and Maybe Even Loved.” Sponsored by MedData. Presenter: Jeff Harper, founder and CEO, Duet Health. Patients, clinicians, and hospital employees are also consumers who manage many aspects of their non-medical lives on their mobile devices. Don’t crush their high technology expectations with poorly designed, seldom used apps that tarnish your carefully protected image. Your app represents your brand and carries high expectations on both sides. This webinar will describe how to build a mobile healthcare app that puts the user first, meets their needs (which are often different from their wants), creates “stickiness,” and delivers the expected benefits to everyone involved.
Contact Lorre for webinar services. View previous webinars on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
NantHealth reports Q3 results: revenue up 76 percent, EPS –$0.30 vs. –$0.24, beating earnings expectations but falling short on revenue.
Siemens Healthineers acquires Conworx Technology, a Berlin-based developer of point-of-care testing device interfaces.
Clinical communication platform vendor Doc Halo opens its new corporate headquarters in Cincinnati, OH, committing to adding 65 positions in the next few months.
Silicon Prairie News profiles Kearney, NE-based provider management software vendor Phynd, which chose that location because its software developer Expanxion is located there.
Walgreens files a $140 million lawsuit against Theranos, claiming that the lab company violated confidentiality agreements about their partnership to offer lab testing in Walgreens drugstores in Arizona. Theranos responded by saying that Walgreens mishandled the partnership and says it will “hold Walgreens responsible to the damage it has caused to Theranos and its investors.”
Sales
Grand River Hospital (Ontario) selects Wellsoft’s EDIS.
People
Ann Mendlowitz (Leidos Health Consulting) joins Orchestrate Healthcare as VP of EMR consulting services.
Telehealth technology vendor Zipnosis hires Scott Brown (Ulfbehrt Software Systems) as CTO.
Announcements and Implementations
ECRI lists its “Top 10 Health Technology Hazards for 2017:
- IV pump errors (hardware failure, staff overriding safety features, and nurse programming mistakes).
- Improper cleaning of reusable instruments.
- Missed ventilator alarms due to alarm fatigue or notification failures.
- Undetected opioid-induced respiratory depression.
- Infection risks from cardiothoracic surgery heater-cooler systems.
- Software management gaps.
- Radiation exposure to clinicians working in operating suites that have built-in imaging systems.
- Automated medication dispensing cabinet setup and use errors.
- Surgical stapler misuse and malfunction.
- Device failures caused by cleaning products and practices.
Burke Mamlin, MD and Paul Biondich, MD of Regenstrief Institute will receive AMIA’s Donald A.B. Lindberg Award for Innovation in Informatics this week for their work in developing and using open source software in developing countries.
New York – Presbyterian adds video visit services to its app, offering virtual visits and the ability to ask an ED physician about minor illnesses that may or may not require an in-person ED visit.
Government and Politics
ONC publishes its annual report to Congress.
A JAMA opinion piece by two top FDA officials and CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt says FDA and CMS are coordinating FDA’s approval of drugs with CMS’s decision to pay for them. They urge that clinical trials include diverse populations; that healthcare delivery data from EHRs, claims, and registries be used to reduce the cost of generating evidence and to study more representative populations, and that public-private collaboration groups such as PCORI lead efforts to integrate broader evidence generation into practice.
In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health hires an Accenture-led consortium to help it create a business case for a national EHR.
Privacy and Security
Madison County, IN officials will pay the ransom demanded by an unknown hacker when their systems are taken offline by ransomware. The county’s insurance company recommended payment and will cover part of the cost. Some county offices went back to paper, while others closed due to lack of computer access.
Other
A New York Times article questions whether the US really has a doctor shortage despite low numbers of practicing physicians and medical school slots. Instead, it says, we have a distribution problem in which doctors prefer to live in big cities (often where they trained and are paid more by Medicare for practicing there) and we have too many specialists as high medical school debt steers new graduates into more lucrative areas of practice. The article offers solutions: (a) train more doctors or allow more to immigrate; (b) decrease the number of specialty residency positions and pay primary care doctors more; (c) improve the efficiency of the healthcare system, changing regulations and licensing to use more mid-level practitioners.
Ram Raju, MD, CEO of the financially hemorrhaging New York Health and Hospitals, will resign.
The annual physician compensation survey of ECG Management Consultants finds that the income of PCPs and specialists increased by 1.5 percent and 3.6 percent, respectively, in the past year. Most respondents say their compensation models will incorporate value-based metrics such as quality, patient satisfaction, panel size, and adherence to evidence-based medicine.
In Australia, the first three sites to go live on the Allscripts-powered EPAS system go down for nine hours when a software module “consumed the bulk of all the computer resources.”
Sponsor Updates
- Aprima will exhibit at the Practice Management Institute November 9-11 in Las Vegas.
- Catalyze CEO Travis Good will present at Voalte’s VUE16 user conference November 9-11 in Sarasota, FL.
- Medicomp Systems recaps its annual training event that was held October 3-7 in Bangkok, Thailand.
- Besler Consulting releases a new podcast, “The relationship between EMR and physician documentation.”
- CoverMyMeds COO Michelle Brown will speak at the BioOhio Women in Bioscience Conference November 9 in Columbus.
- Visage Imaging will demonstrate its Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform at RSNA later this month.
- Wolters Kluwer redesigns its UpToDate online clinical decision support website to give clinicians who can’t use the company’s app a robust, Web-based alternative.
- Impact Advisors VP Jenny McCaskey is named is named to “Women Leaders in Consulting.”
- Crossings Healthcare Solutions will exhibit at Cerner Health Conference 2016 November 14-17 in Kansas City, MO.
- Cumberland Consulting Group’s Lori Nobles will present at the NCHIMA Mid-Year Workshop November 11 in Concord, NC.
- The success of National Decision Support Company CareSelect Imaging users will be highlighted at Cerner Health Conference 2016 November 14-16 in Kansas City, MO.
- Direct Consulting Associates and HealthCast Solutions will exhibit at the HIMSS Midwest Fall Conference November 13-15 in Bloomington, MN.
- Dimensional Insight and Extension Healthcare will exhibit at the HIMSS South Florida InteGrate Conference November 14-15 in Davie, FL.
- EClinicalWorks will exhibit at the Kentucky Primary Care Association 2016 Conference November 9-11 in Lexington.
- Impact Advisors publishes a white paper titled “The MACRA Final Rule: Key Takeaways on MIPS and Advanced APMs.”
- Healthwise’s Leslie Hall will present at Partnering for Cures November 13-16 in New York City.
Blog Posts
- E-Prescribing Has Arrived But It Really Has Not Taken Off – Yet (First Databank)
- #IDoR: Reaping the benefits of collaboration and long-term partnerships (Agfa Healthcare)
- The State of Healthcare in Massachusetts (Arcadia Healthcare Solutions)
- MACRA Final Rule: What You Need to Know (CareSync)
- Four Steps to Value (ECG Management Consultants)
- GRHD Optimizes TouchWorks V11 Notes and Transitions into ICD10 (Galen Healthcare Solutions)
- The Top 10 Reasons Transformation is the New Normal for Healthcare – Reason 5 (GE Healthcare)
- The Three C’s of Clinical Care – Clarity, Collaboration, and Communication (Hayes Management Consulting)
- Predictive Analytics NYC’s Key Word – Impactability (HBI Solutions)
- EMR Post Go-Live Support: Why You Need a Clinical Service Desk & Analytics (HCI Group)
- Robot Overlords in Healthcare? Not Likely. And Not Us. (Healthfinch)
Contacts
Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Lt. Dan.
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Ram Raju resigns…any Epic implications???
Anyone who says they have any idea in store for healthcare after tonight is full of it. With the GOP keeping the Senate, Obamacare is dead.
March 23rd, 2010-November 9th, 2016 RIP although the technical end date will be in 2017
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/10/paul-ryan-budget-congress-229216
I have no idea what replaces it and neither does the GOP although the closest thing they laid out was this in King of Prussia a few weeks ago:
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/politics/presidential/20161102_In_King_of_Prussia__Trump_and_Pence_to_rally_against_Obamacare.html
Basically is a warmed over version of what Bush tried to do including HSA-accounts, selling insurance across state lines, and some sort of tort cap on malpractice suits.
What is going to happen besides Obamacare getting repealed is Medicaid getting block granted (GOP has been trying to do this since Newt Gingrich’s ‘Contract with America’) and Planned Parenthood is toast as it gets completely defunded.