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August 22, 2019 News 5 Comments

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A watchdog group obtains emails from VA officials – invoking the Freedom of Information Act – as they discussed the so-called “Mar-a-Lago crowd” of non-experts who provided advice to the VA with the implied endorsement of President Trump, with much of that involving its contracting with Cerner.

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One of the emails contradicts reports that the group’s involvement was unsolicited and that then-Secretary David Shulkin, MD resented it. The VA’s acting CIO asked the group for their help as recommended by Trump associate Bruce Moskowitz, MD, a West Palm Beach internist. 

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John Windom, who heads up the VA’s EHR modernization project, said a scheduled meeting was a “grin and bear it” session, while that group’s former chief medical officer termed their questions as “ridiculous” and lacking even a basic understanding of systems and interoperability.

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Moskowitz emailed to insist that the trio be “on every call that the group is on to discuss the contract.”

One of the released emails contains a detailed list of questions that were posed to the VA in response to Cerner’s RFP in a conference call with the group, with the VA providing detail for such observations such as:

  • Any requirement of “true interoperability” would require contractual terms with both Cerner and other primary EHR vendors such as Epic, Meditech, and Allscripts. The VA said its contract only covers Cerner, but the VA is pursuing partnerships with other health system providers “to meet Cerner’s commitment to data sharing.”
  • Commenters noted Cerner’s weakness in medical imaging.
  • An observer asked why the contract doesn’t require a single Cerner instance shared between the VA and DoD.
  • One commenter said their experience with Cerner is that reports from outside providers are imported as CCD/CCA and labeled as “Outside Material” instead of within normal workflow.
  • Another worried that a lack of definition of interoperability, observing that DoD users are “rebelling” over unsuitability for their needs.
  • One comment said that Cerner has lagged in FHIR development and assigned few resources to it.
  • A reviewer worried that instead of creating a next-generation system, Cerner will “just add more unmaintainable code to the existing spaghetti bowl.”

Reader Comments

From Grahame Grieve: “Re: Apple Health Records. HIStalk responded to a reader comment in saying that healthcare ‘embraces the most proprietary technology vendor in touting Apple-only patient access.’ I would like to point out that Apple has implemented the Patient API as published in the Argonaut specification, and the same interface is used by other vendors, including AllOfUs, CareEvolution, Coral Health, Ciitizen, 1UpHealth, PatientLink, and many others. While Apple may have business advantages due to their size and significance, any other vendor is able to use the same standard interface, and they are welcome to join with open FHIR community to help them do so.” Grahame is HL7 FHIR product director. A couple of folks offered other reasons that most people can access their health records only if they are among the fewer Americans that use Apple phones instead of Android: (a) Google hasn’t added that capability to Android; (b) Apple must have worked around some Epic licensing issues; and (c) health systems may be reluctant to create and maintain access to their systems for Android.

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From Alias: “Re: Pulse Systems. Acquired by Amazing Charts, A Harris Healthcare Company, last Thursday. Announced to Amazing Charts employees this week.” Unverified. I ran this as a redacted rumor from another reader on Tuesday, waiting to hear back from my inquiry to a Harris Computer PR contact before naming names (they never did respond). Pulse Systems is (or was, if the rumor is true) owned by France-based Cegedim.

From For Closers: “Re: healthcare sales roles. After years (decades?) of reading HIStalk, I’ve seen several people show up more than once in the People section. Has anyone ever analyzed the number of retread healthcare sales roles? It seem a bunch of folks just flit from company to company to be VP of sales.” Good question, although hard to answer without of LinkedIn digging to (a) find experienced health IT sales VPs, and (b) count how many jobs they’ve had as sales VP (or the trendier chief revenue officer or chief growth officer titles). I’m also surprised at how often a CIO has been burned by a vendor’s oversold product, but then buddies up to the same salesperson who has moved on to another vendor. You might reasonably assume that a relationship history is not a plus when it involves lying and the resulting buyer’s remorse, but CIOs can be like doctors who let drug salespeople pull their strings – they can be manipulated to think that the salesperson is their trusted ally and personal friend.


HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Lorre asked me what we will do at HIMSS20 now that we don’t have HIStalkapalooza or an exhibit hall booth to deal with. I’m thinking we’ll just cruise around looking for news and rumors, although (a) Lorre could use an exhibitor’s pass if anyone has a spare; and (b) I guess our Smokin’ Doc standee will have to stay home since we don’t have a booth so passersby can take selfies, which is perfectly fine since his box is a pain to cart around. 


Webinars

September 5 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “Driving 90% Patient Adoption Across Your Network: How US Dermatology Partners is Showing Us The Way.” Sponsor: Relatient. Presenters: Michele Perry, CEO, Relatient; Sara Nguyen, VP of applications and integrations, US Dermatology Partners. US Dermatology Partners is helping its physicians reclaim time they can spend with patients and is turning patient engagement strategies into business results across its 90 locations in eight states. Attendees will learn how US Dermatology Partners defined its patient engagement objectives and physician-optimized strategies. They presenters will provide advice on starting or accelerating  patient engagement goals.

September 26 (Thursday) 2 ET. “Patient Education Data: A Key Ingredient for Improving Quality and Patient Experience.” Sponsor: Healthwise. Presenters: Victoria L. Maisonneuve, MSN, RN, director of the Nursing Center for Excellence and Magnet program, Parkview Health; Marta Sylvia, MPH, senior manager of quality improvement and outcomes research, Healthwise. Healthcare data is everywhere! It’s scattered across various systems and in countless formats, making it difficult to collect and glean actionable information. Knowing where to start depends on what your organization wants to accomplish. Vicki Maisonneuve will share how her team analyzes data around the use of patient education. By combining different data sets, she can easily identify trends, gaps, and opportunities to improve quality and patient experience across Parkview Health.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.


Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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New Mountain Capital acquires revenue recovery software vendor Ontario Systems, which counts over 600 hospitals among its enterprise healthcare and government customers. NMC has also invested in healthcare companies like Ciox Health, which it acquired in 2014 back when it was known as HealthPort.


Sales

  • University of Maryland St. Joseph Medical Center will offer the Babyscripts app and remote monitoring support to expectant mothers.
  • Wentworth-Douglass Hospital (NH) will implement Epic in October through a software-sharing arrangement with parent company Partners HealthCare.

People

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RCM and analytics vendor AGS Health names Patrice Wolfe (Medicity) CEO.


Announcements and Implementations

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Allscripts releases access to Apple Health Records to users of Sunrise, TouchWorks, and Professional EHRs. Test sites include Sharp HealthCare, Erie County Medical Center, and Sarasota Memorial Health Care System.

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UCHealth affiliate Ivinson Memorial Hospital (WY) will go live on Epic this weekend.

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Appriss Health develops SMART on FHIR capabilities for its PMP Gateway integration software for state PDMPs.

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Adventist Health’s Rideout Hospital (CA) implements Cerner. The company took over management of the multi-state health system’s revenue cycle and clinical applications IT staff last year.

Einstein Medical Center (PA) keeps its Cerner Millennium go-live on schedule by migrating data from several legacy systems using the robotic process automation and integration platform of Boston Software Systems, avoiding manual entry and creating  a consistent, low-complexity process to make appointment and registration data available for go-live.


Government and Politics

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Politico reports that Genevieve Morris will run for office as a Republican in Maryland’s second congressional district. Morris spent a year as ONC’s principal deputy national coordinator and then just two months as the VA’s chief health information officer, a role she relinquished last summer after realizing that her vision for the Cerner implementation differed from that of her colleagues.


Other

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The Justice Department arrests five people for stealing millions of dollars from soldiers and veterans by taking photos of their AHLTA EHR screens at at Army base in South Korea, then using that information to log in to DoD’s self-service system, which provides access to 70 military systems with a single username and password. One of those systems stores the individual’s bank account and routing numbers to which government payments are sent, allowing the conspirators to transfer money, sign up for loans, and have VA payments made directly to them. One of the group’s “money mules” was a military dependent labeled as “GH,” who the conspirators threatened for slow payments by looking up GH’s own AHLTA record to find family members they could threaten.

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In an interview with Xconomy, John Halamka, MD weighs in on the hype surrounding AI in healthcare, noting that its usefulness will likely come from enhancing behind-the-scenes clinical workflows rather than the more headline-grabbing notion that AI will eventually replace physicians: “Machine learning is very good, but empathy and respect and active listening – that would not be the first use case I would pursue.”

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Cancer patients in Port Arthur, TX say they will pursue legal action against the Medical Center of Southeast Texas for abruptly closing a cancer center last year, a development they contend has prevented them from accessing their medical records and continuing treatment elsewhere. The center’s majority owner, Trip Chaudhury, MD, contends the center closed due to a dispute with MCST over repairs that needed to be made, while hospital representatives say the center was closed for non-payment of rent by Chaudhury and that he was (and still is) responsible for equipment maintenance and records access.


Sponsor Updates

  • Einstein Medical Center (PA) leverages software and consulting services from Boston Software Systems to migrate appointment data from its legacy systems to Cerner Millennium.
  • Elsevier Clinical Solutions, Healthfinch, Healthwise, InterSystems,  and Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at Epic UGM August 26-29 in Verona, WI.
  • Ensocare will exhibit at the ACMA Louisiana Chapter Annual Conference August 24 in Baton Rouge.
  • Hayes Management Consulting names David Rajfer (Athenahealth) product manager and Lizz Fuller (Athenahealth) implementation project manager.
  • Gartner includes Imat Solutions in its report on “The Current State of Clinical Data Integration Among US Healthcare Payers.”
  • ConnectiveRx will exhibit at NACDS Total Store Expo August 25-27 in Boston.
  • Redox announces that its customer base grew 33% over the first half of 2019.
  • TransformativeMed renews its Core Workflow Suite contract with VCU Health (VA), and announces it will become a strategic development partner to fast-track mobile notifications and messaging into EHR workflows.
  • As a payment facilitator, Patientco gives health systems more flexibility to address patient payment needs.
  • A new report from Surescripts covers the ways in which the Surescripts Network Alliance has helped improve e-prescription accuracy by 64% over the last three years.

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Currently there are "5 comments" on this Article:

  1. As a former vendor salesperson, I genuinely like lots of CIOs and would consider them friends. I was in my role a long time, and proudly looked out for my customers’ long term best interests even when that meant no sale for me. I was in regular contact with several CIOs for over a decade. Not all salespeople are disengenuous.

  2. Teri, I couldn’t agree more. The vast majority of us conduct our business with integrity and understand that the more we give, we get back tenfold in friendships and ultimately sales. Unfortunately, there are some bad apples that spoil the bunch and leave a stain on our profession. To all my fellow salespeople, know that HIT is a relatively small network of decision makers and influencers. I have ran across people that I worked with 15 years ago, and if you do as well, their reaction to seeing you again will tell you everything you need to know about your brand in the industry. Be their advisor, even if it means walking away from a sale if it isn’t a good fit. You’ll be rewarded in the long run. Genuinely, treat the janitor the same as you would a CEO….not sure where I ever heard that, but it has served me well, and will serve you well too.

    • “The vast majority of us conduct our business with integrity and understand that the more we give, we get back tenfold in friendships and ultimately sales.”.

      You must be kidding.

      I’m in healthcare sales and completely disagree. The majority of sales professionals (especially in HIT) are desperate. They get immense pressure from managers who have no vision or clear strategy. Sales “professionals” send calendar invites to leaders as if they have a meeting on the books, leave voicemails pretending they met at a conference and ask stupid questions like “what keeps you up at night?”.

      Give me a break. The sales profession has a bad wrap because the majority of folks in the role don’t treat it like a profession. My opinion is that if you choose sales as a profession you better be ready to work your ass off and continually develop skills as demand for the job changes. You don’t learn how to sell and stop working at it. Human relationships and supplier purchases are complex and dynamic.

      My major clients do business with me for many reasons, but not because we have a personal relationship or fake friendship. It is very possible to have a good business relationship that works well for both parties without being friends or BS’ing at dinner.

      Frankly, I’m grateful for all the dead beats in the profession. I’ll keep cashing checks.

  3. Re: “Has anyone ever analyzed the number of retread healthcare sales roles? It seem a bunch of folks just flit from company to company to be VP of sales.”

    Actually, I’ve often noticed how many of the sales management folks (from Directors to VPs and even to a couple CEOs) have fallen from grace (they have quotas too!) and eventually end up down the food chain again. Sales is an interesting business and the people at the top making the big decisions and big bucks are not always the best strategists. Sometimes just the best BSers!

  4. For about 10 years I dealt with IBM sales and support people, in the large systems world. I was very impressed with them, and I’m a techie and not usually a friend to the marketing types.

    Those salespeople were careful, honest, and never oversold anything. If you asked them, “can this system do X”, either they knew for sure what the answer was or they’d ask to get back to you. And they would get back to you! The professionalism was of a very high caliber.

    You could ask the most detailed questions of them and they’d find the answer. There was none of this, “oh, yeah, yeah, it does all that stuff, please sign the P.O. here!”







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