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Monday Morning Update 12/5/16

December 4, 2016 News No Comments

Top News

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Allscripts acquires Australia-based Core Medical Solutions for an undisclosed sum. The company’s BOSSnet clinical information system seems to be its best known product, with numerous implementations across the Western part of the country. CMS will operate as an Allscripts subsidiary out of its South Australian headquarters in Adelaide. Allscripts has had a strong foothold in South Australia since 2010, when the government enlisted the company to develop and roll out an Enterprise Patient Administration System across its 80 hospitals to the initial tune of $225 million – a figure that has since escalated to $317 million over 10 years.


Last Week’s Most Interesting News

  • The House passes the 21st Century Cures act in a rare, bipartisan 392-26 vote and sends it off for the Senate to review.
  • A CDC report finds that the number of people struggling to pay their medical bills has fallen sharply in the last five years. Researchers cite reduced unemployment and the implementation of ACA as the primary reasons.
  • The Senate unanimously passes a bill requiring HHS and GAO to analyze the University of New Mexico’s Project ECHO pilot program and report on opportunities to expand the program nationally.
  • President-elect Donald Trump selects Rep. Tom Price, MD to replace Sylvia Burwell as the next HHS secretary, and health policy consulting firm CEO Seema Verma to succeed Andy Slavitt as the next CMS administrator.
  • Rupert Murdoch will likely lose $200 million in Theranos investments after his own newspaper, the Wall Street Journal, exposed the company for misleading investors.

Webinars

December 6 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Get Ready for Blockchain’s Disruption.” Sponsored by PokitDok. Presenter: Theodore Tanner, Jr., co-founder and CTO, PokitDok. EHR-to-EHR data exchange alone can’t support healthcare’s move to value-based care and its increased consumer focus. Blockchain will disrupt the interoperability status quo with its capability to support a seamless healthcare experience by centralizing, securing, and orchestrating disparate information. Attendees of this webinar will be able to confidently describe how blockchain works technically, how it’s being used, and the healthcare opportunities it creates. They will also get a preview of DokChain, the first-ever running implementation of blockchain in healthcare.

December 7 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Charting a Course to Digital Transformation – Start Your Journey with a Map and Compass.” Sponsored by Sutherland Healthcare Solutions. Presenters: Jack Phillips, CEO, International Institute for Analytics; Graham Hughes, MD, CEO, Sutherland Healthcare Solutions. The digital era is disrupting every industry and healthcare is no exception. Emerging technologies will introduce challenges and opportunities to transform operations and raise the bar of consumer experience. Success in this new era requires a new way of thinking, new skills, and new technologies to help your organization embrace digital health. In this webinar, we’ll demonstrate how to measure your organization’s analytics maturity and design a strategy to digital transformation.

December 14 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Three Practices to Minimize Drift Between Audits.” Sponsored by Armor. Presenter: Kurt Hagerman, CISO, Armor. Security and compliance readiness fall to the bottom of the priority lists of many organizations, where they are often treated as periodic events rather than ongoing processes. How can they improve their processes to ensure they remain secure and compliant between audits? This webinar will cover the healthcare threat landscape and provide three practices that healthcare organizations can implement to better defend their environments continuously.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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Apex Technology and related investors wrap up their acquisition of Lexmark, originally announced in April. Lexmark’s Enterprise Software Group will separate from the investor-led company and rebrand to Kofax. Former Vice President and CFO David Reeder will take over as president and CEO, and appears intent on selling off the software business as quickly as possible to focus on its imaging assets. The sale includes the assets of Perceptive Software, which Lexmark acquired in 2010.

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Dallas-based civil and criminal justice technology company Securus Technologies acquires Quebec-based PHD Medical’s telemedicine assets. Securus has been intent on broadening its healthcare offerings for correctional facilities, having acquired EHR vendor Cara Clinicals last year, and healthcare management systems business Archonix in 2013.

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Cerner finds itself in the real estate market thanks to legal battles with Ahmed Saeed Mahmoud Al Badia, a property developer with ties to the United Arab Emirates Ministry of Health, which hired Cerner in 2008 via a subcontractor agreement with Al Badia’s company, ICapital, to develop a national EHR system. Cerner contends it hasn’t been paid the full amount due, despite finishing the project. It is suing Al Badia and trying to seize a $30 million mixed-use development and other assets to recoup $63 million it claims to have lost on the project.

Epic faces another class-action lawsuit pertaining to its overtime pay policies. This particular suit contends that quality assurance workers were illegally denied overtime pay despite the fact that they mainly tested Epic’s software products by simulating user experiences and documenting problems – work that required little training or education in computer programming or engineering. (Higher-level employees like analysts, programmers, and software engineers are typically exempt from overtime pay rules.) The company faces two other overtime-related lawsuits filed early last year on behalf of technical writers who believe Epic illegally classified them as exempt from overtime wages and then paid them a fixed salary irrespective of the number of hours worked.


People

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James Aita (Idea Couture) joins Medicomp Systems as director of strategy and business development, North America.


Decisions

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  • Sleepy Eye Municipal Hospital (MN) will switch clinical and physician documentation software from Healthland to Meditech on December 1.
  • UConn John Dempsey Hospital (CT) will go live on Epic in June 2018.

These provider-reported updates are provided by Definitive Healthcare, which offers powerful intelligence on hospitals, physicians, and healthcare providers.


Announcements and Implementations

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The New Hampshire Health Information Organization can now share data with NH providers who care for veterans inside and outside of the VA.

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Gillette Children’s Specialty Healthcare expands its telemedicine program to facilities in Central Minnesota. The state passed legislation last year requiring payers to cover virtual consults to the same degree they would in-person appointments.


Privacy and Security

From DataBreaches.net:

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  • Tampa General Hospital (FL) settles a class-action lawsuit related to a non-hospital employee’s unauthorized access of patient information and the hospital’s failure to adequately protect that information. The hospital maintains it is not responsible for the misdeeds of former employees related to the access.
  • Glendale Adventist Medical Center (CA) fires a nurse after the employee accessed the records of 528 patients without permission.

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NIST’s National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence seeks help with designing simple and secure mobile login methods for first responders. Organizations interested in supporting the single sign-on effort can submit a letter of interest to NIST, which hopes to begin developing use cases in January.

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University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics recovers from a six-hour Epic downtime caused by an electrical problem in one of its main server rooms. The health system shifted to standard downtime procedures and transferred critical services from its data center to a redundant data center off site.


Innovation and Research

A HealthLoop health literacy study of 2,226 diagnostic imaging patients finds that those offered educational materials via digital means were more likely to correctly identify what ionizing radiation was than those that received paper materials. The digital engagement group was also “significantly” more at ease with undergoing examinations using such radiation compared to their paper-based counterparts.


Sponsor Updates

  • Experian Health will present at the VA AAHAM meeting December 9 in Williamsburg, VA.
  • PokitDok will present at Health 2.0 Asia-Japan December 6-7 in Tokyo.
  • Surescripts and ZeOmega will exhibit at the AHIP Consumer Experience & Digital Health Forum December 6-9 in Chicago.
  • TierPoint will host the Nebraska Security Summit December 8 in Omaha.
  • Zynx Health will exhibit at the National Forum on Quality Improvement in Healthcare December 4-7 in Orlando.
  • Sutherland Healthcare Solutions publishes “Meaningful Use Stage 3 and its Impact on the Healthcare Industry.”

Blog Posts


Contacts

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