News 5/25/18

Top News

A new KLAS report on hospital EHR market share finds that:

• 80 percent of the 216 hospitals that signed new EHR contracts in 2017 were under 200 beds in size, mostly choosing less-expensive, lower-maintenance offerings from Athenahealth, Meditech, and the community deployment models of Epic and Cerner.
• Athenahealth earned the most small-hospital wins by far, although all were under 50 beds and the company lost 13 contracted customers that backed out before going live to return to their previous vendor, mostly CPSI.
• Meditech had its first market share net increase in three years because of its newly named Expanse web-based product, which its migrating legacy customers chose 58 percent of the time vs. the 42 percent that went with other vendors.
• Allscripts doubled its customer base in 2017 by acquiring McKesson’s Paragon and Horizon product lines, but finished worst in net market share change of all vendors due to already-planned migrations from those platforms as well as losing two existing large Sunrise health system customers to Epic.
• Cerner gained the most customers overall, but also lost enough to place it behind Epic in net market share change with +29 vs. +46.
• The one-third of US hospitals that are using CPSI, Medhost, Soarian, and legacy Meditech products are looking for replacements at a high rate.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

It’s last chance time for this week’s “Wish I’d Known” question. Apparently the number of people willing to complete the form for these questions is considerably lower than those who say they love reading the answers, leading to the possibility that I’ll just allow it to cross the rainbow bridge due to lack of participation.

Webinars

June 5 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Increase Referrals and Patient Satisfaction with a Smarter ‘Find a Doctor’ Web Search.” Sponsors: Phynd Technologies, Healthwise. Presenters: Joseph H. Schneider, MD, MBA, FAAP, retired SVP/CHIO, Indiana University Health; Keith Belton, VP of marketing, Phynd. A recent survey found that 84 percent of patients check a hospital’s website before booking an appointment. However, ‘Find a Doctor’ search functions often frustrate them because their matching functionality is primitive and the provider’s information is incomplete or outdated. Referring physicians need similarly robust tools to find the right specialist and to send the patient to the right location. Attendees of this webinar will learn how taxonomy-driven Provider Information Management improves patient and referrer satisfaction by intelligently incorporating the provider’s location, insurance coverage, specialty and subspecialty, and services offered that can be searched via patient-friendly terms.

June 12 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Blockchain in Healthcare: Why It Matters.” Sponsor: Quest Diagnostics. Presenter: Lidia Fonseca, CIO, Quest Diagnostics. Blockchain technology is gaining traction in many industries, including healthcare. It’s not only a hot topic, but is also showing promise with real-world applications. This webinar will share how blockchain may play a key role in the future of healthcare IT by helping to solve some of the industry’s challenges, distinguishing the hype from reality by discussing how it works, how it can impact healthcare providers, and its future application in healthcare IT.

June 21 (Thursday) noon ET. “Operationalizing Data Science Models in Healthcare.” Sponsor: CitiusTech. Presenters: Yugal Sharma, PhD, VP of data science, CitiusTech; Vinil Menon, VP of enterprise applications proficiency, CitiusTech. As healthcare organizations are becoming more adept at developing models, building the skills required to manage, validate, and deploy these models efficiently remains a challenging task. We define operationalization as the process of managing, validating, and deploying models within an organization. Several industry best practices, along with frameworks and technology solutions, exist to address this challenge. An understanding of this space and current state of the art is crucial to ensure efficient use and consumption of these models for relevant stakeholders in the organization. This webinar will give an introduction and overview of these key areas, along with examples and case studies to demonstrate the value of various best practices in the healthcare industry.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Here’s the recording of this week’s webinar, “Converting Consumers Into Patients: Strategies for Creating Engaging Digital Experiences People Demand.”

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Epic responds to the Illinois Procurement Board about Cerner’s claim that a conflict of interest was involved in University of Illinois-Chicago’s September 2017 choice of Epic over Cerner. Epic founder and CEO Judy Faulkner said in a May 21 letter forwarded to me by a reader that:

• Cerner’s claim of a conflict of interest doesn’t involve Epic but instead seems to reference Impact Advisors, which UIC engages for help with technology projects. Epic says Impact Advisors didn’t cause UIC to choose Epic, all selection committee members work for UIC, and there’s no guarantee Impact Advisors will get implementation work just because Epic is chosen. UIC has already said it will need outside help regardless of whether it picks Epic or Cerner.
• Epic disputes Cerner’s claim that it was unfairly denied the chance to demonstrate its product, with Epic noting that Cerner’s RFP response didn’t earn the minimum threshold score required to advance to the demo phase and thus was excluded as state procurement law requires.
• Epic disputes Cerner’s contention that Epic’s $62 million proposal did not include implementation services. It says the RFPs listed UIC’s total implementation cost at $151 million for Epic vs. $154 million for Cerner. It also cites KLAS customer surveys in which Cerner gets a poor rating for nickel and diming its customers.
• Epic says its system is better, noting that 94 percent of US News & World Report hospitals use Epic and KLAS has ranked it #1 for eight years. It also notes that Epic has most of the Illinois health system EHR business and that “many Cerner systems are not able to interoperate.”
• Epic cites numbers saying that many health systems have replaced Cerner with Epic, also observing that Epic has never been sued by a customer or has sued a customer, while Cerner has been sued by several of its users.
• Epic notes that “UI Health has used both Epic and Cerner, so the health system has experience with each vendor and with each vendor’s products.”

Prescription affordability and adherence solutions vendor ConnectiveRx acquires The Macaluso Group, a tech-enabled prescription benefits company based in Fairfield, NJ. This is the second acquisition for ConnectiveRx, which is also based in New Jersey. It bought competitor Careform in November 2017.

The tit for tat between Athenahealth and Elliott Management continues, with the investment fund sending yet another letter — peppered with quotes from analysts in favor of a sale — pressuring the EHR company to take its buyout offer seriously. Athenahealth reps have fired back with a letter of their own, stressing (testily, if you read between the lines) that they will take their time in reviewing Elliott’s offer. They also made it clear that Elliott’s prior offer was deemed by the board to not be in the best interest of shareholders.

Announcements and Implementations

Global health research network TriNetX announces GA of new analytics tools for epidemiologists and clinical researchers conducting observational and outcomes studies.

South Georgia Medical Center integrates Patientco’s new payment terminals with its Epic system.

In England, The Dudley Group NHS Foundation Trust implements Allscripts Sunrise across its three hospitals.

KT, South Korea’s largest telecommunications provider, will install a telemedicine system on the trans-Siberian railway and connect six hospitals managed by state-owned Russian Railway to clinicians at Seoul National University Bundang Hospital. The railway, which involves a seven-day journey, will be equipped with blood and urine diagnostic equipment, ultrasonography, a mobile EHR, and AI-powered chest x-ray interpretation.

Meditech partners with DrFirst, Imprivata, and Forward Advantage to add e-prescribing for controlled substances to its EHR software.

People

Gilad Kuperman, MD, PhD (New York-Presbyterian Hospital) joins Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center as associate chief health informatics officer.

Consulting firm Evergreen Healthcare Partners hires Erica Neher (Kno2) as managing partner and VP of advisory services.

Government and Politics

The Senate passes the VA Mission Act, a $55 billion bill that will give vets more leeway to see private-sector providers, expand family caregiver stipends, and mandate a review of aging facilities. President Trump is expected to sign the bill soon.

Other

Reaction Data looks at the five big health systems that are starting their own non-profit generic drug manufacturing company in an effort called Project RX. Sixty percent of provider respondents weren’t aware of the project, but 90 percent said customers will flock to it. Drug company respondents were negative, saying the health systems would be better off negotiating more aggressively with existing generic drug manufacturers. Payers are skeptical, predicting that hospitals will just keep whatever cost savings they generate without benefiting patients.

Kaiser Permanente researchers find that the combined information from EHRs and standard depression questionnaires predicts 90-day suicide rates better then PCP or mental health visits. The strongest predictors include prior suicide attempts, diagnoses of mental health issues or substance abuse, medical diagnoses, prescriptions for psychiatric drugs, hospital encounters, and depression questionnaire scores.

In an effort to separate the wheat from the chaff of the 250,000-plus mobile health apps now available for download, researchers at Bond University in Australia find only 23 published reports on evidence-based app effectiveness, leading them to conclude that just a tiny fraction of the apps are suitable for prescription by a doctor.

Penn Medicine Center for Health Care Innovation reps advocate for adding social media update-like feeds to EHRs to keep better tabs on the status of patients in real time. “We’ve been treating the electronic health record as a communal trough of information that we all have to sift through when we don’t do that in any other part of our lives,” they write. “If you can subscribe to feeds about a football team, why can’t you subscribe to Mrs. Jones in room 328?”

A policy brief from the Network for Excellence in Health Innovation addresses data-based gaps that hinder the treatment of patients with chronic or acute pain. Recommendations for policy makers include:

• Making state-based PDMPs more interoperable.
• Including federal opioid prescribing guidelines in all EHRs and clinical decision support systems.
• Amending regulations as necessary to increase the use of e-prescribing for controlled substances.

A Datica survey finds that compliance, security, and privacy are top concerns for hospital CIOs contemplating cloud-based health IT purchases.

In the New Yorker, sociologist Allison Pugh takes issue with findings that show patients are more apt to be truthful about symptoms and concerns when speaking to avatars rather than with live caregivers. While AI may be better than nothing in some cases, she points out that patients will eventually slide into apathy if they don’t receive motivating pushback from human healthcare professionals.

Sponsor Updates

• Coinciding with the grand opening of its new 61-story office tower at its campus in San Francisco, Salesforce donates $1.5 million to the Hamilton Families Heading Home Initiative.
• Elsevier Clinical Solutions publishes a new white paper, “Shaping Longitudinal Care Plans for the Future of Healthcare.”
• Medical Laboratory Observer profiles Ellkay CIO Kamal Patel.
• EClinicalWorks posts a customer success story for The Door Adolescent Health Center in New York City.
• Leidos Health publishes a white paper titled “Creating Clinical Value: 4 Steps to Drive Change And Improve Care.”
• Hospital Association of Southern California will offer Collective Medical’s network and EDie care collaboration tool to its members.
• Formativ Health wins a Silver Stevie Award for Startup of the Year.
• FormFast will exhibit at the E-Health 2018 Conference and Tradeshow May 27-30 in Vancouver.
• Iatric Systems, Imprivata, Intelligent Medical Objects, LogicStream Health, PatientSafe Solutions, PatientKeeper, Santa Rosa Consulting, The SSI Group, and Clinical Computer Systems, developer of the Obix Perinatal Data System, will exhibit at the International MUSE Conference May 29-June 1 in Orlando.
• Black Book recognizes Impact Advisors as a top-ranking supplier for cybersecurity advisory and consulting services in its annual cybersecurity survey.
• HITRUST certifies TransUnion Healthcare’s EScan Insurance Discovery Solution for information security.
• Black Book names Fortified Health Security as the top cybersecurity services and solutions vendor in its medical device and IoT category.
• Logicworks achieves HITRUST CSF Certification.
• Medecision acquires transformational change firm Aveus.
• Meditech reports a strong finish to 2017 and continued growth in 2018.
• Netsmart will exhibit at the FHPCA Forum May 31 in Orlando.
• AllMeds adds NVoq’s SayIt speech-recognition software to its EHR.
• For the fifth year in a row, Securance Consulting awards CloudWave a Best Practice rating for its OpSus Live cloud-based infrastructure.
• Visage Imaging will exhibit at SIIM 2018 May 31-June 2 in National Harbor, MD.
• Vocera CFO Justin Spencer will present at the Craig Hallum Annual Institutional Investors Conference May 30 in Minneapolis.
• WebPT publishes a new guide on ensuring optimal patient care while reducing costs and hospital admission rates.
• Wolters Kluwer Health announces a publishing partnership with the American Urological Association.
• Solutionreach takes the Parity Pledge to improve leadership pathways for women.
• Divurgent announces its support for CHIME’s Opioid Task Force.

Blog Posts

• Interoperability 2.0 Through Collaboration (Medicity)
• Getting Online with Patient Engagement (EClinicalWorks)
• Client Success: Improved Transitions of Care at DFD Russell Medical Centers (HBI Solutions)
• Seven of the Biggest Concerns for Healthcare CIOs (The HCI Group)
• Beyond 10,000 steps: How wearable technology can improve health care delivery (Advisory Board)
• What You Need to Know to Be “In the Know” (HCTec)
• Beebe Healthcare, a Huntzinger Client, Wins Clinical Solution Award (Huntzinger Management Group)
• Visualizing an enterprise imaging strategy (Hyland)
• Are you Prepared for the Next Cyber Attack? (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Walmart embraces EPCS: Retail Giant Will Soon Accept Only Electronic Prescriptions for Controlled Substances (Imprivata)
• CMS and HIPAA Compliance … is Your CMS a Hacker Welcome Mat (Influence Health)
• It’s Time for Mobile Payments in Healthcare – Here’s How to Keep Them Secure (InstaMed)
• The Catalyst: Data Analytics and the Evolution of Modern-Day Health (InterSystems)
• Transition and Communication: The Dynamic Duo of Legacy Support (Leidos Health)
• Pairing process improvement and technology to increase clinician satisfaction (LogicStream Health)
• Next-Generation Care Management: The Importance of Data Collection and Member Engagement (Medecision)
• Nurses remain in critical role amid changes in healthcare (Meditech)
• Reduce Recidivism and Save Money by Coordinating Justice and Behavioral Health Services (Netsmart)
• Helping Green Bay’s homeless population by extending Bellin Health’s EHR (Nordic)
• Helping Patients Avoid Long-Term Impact of Medical Debt with Responsive Payment Technology (OnPlan Health)
• Epic Quarterly Release Schedule: 3 Things You Need to Know (Parallon Technology Solutions)
• PatientPing Success Story: MedNetOne (PatientPing)
• The Future of Healthcare, According to HLTH (and Patientco!) (Patientco)
• The Case for Physician Dashboards (PatientKeeper)
• Who Benefits From The Efficiencies Blockchains Will Create in Healthcare? (PokitDok)
• Four Steps to Prepare for the GDPR on May 25th (Salesforce)
• Intellectual Property: Lessons from Shark Tank & Seinfeld (Sansoro Health)
• Health System Mergers: Why Hospitals Won’t Stop Merging (The SSI Group)
• Can a Better Process Generate Revenue as well as Save Labor? (Summit Healthcare)
• I Heard It Through the Go-Live (Visage Imaging)
• A perfect marriage of nursing and technology. (Voalte)
• The Great 8 Elements of the Patient Experience (WebPT)
• CMS ACO risk and reward stakes growing (Philips Wellcentive)
• A Digital Billboard of Your Emergency Department’s Wait Time and Your ED EHR (Wellsoft)
• An Interview with Jay Crowley: An Insider’s Look at Unique Device Identifiers, Part 2 (FDB)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne.
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