Monday Morning Update 12/23/19

Top News

In Australia, government health officials admit that while 23 million people have a My Health Record online health account – most of them only because enrollment was changed from opt-in to opt-out early this year – 91% of them have never logged in and most of those who did log in have not returned.

A large percentage of public hospitals, pharmacies, and medical practices are connected, but only 33% of private hospitals and less than half of medical and diagnostic labs.

The Australian Digital Health Agency has had to pay software vendor, pathology providers, and imaging providers for integration in trying to boost data availability and usage.

The system cost more than $1 billion to develop and annual maintenance costs are estimated at $350 million.

The digital health agency’s CEO is Tim Kelsey, who just resigned to take an SVP job with HIMSS. 

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

About half of poll respondents who had a provider visit in 2019 had to provide the same information to a different provider who didn’t have access to it otherwise, while 9% found that the information their providers shared contained errors and 2% experienced clinical harm from a lack of data sharing. Half-Wit says her 35-year health IT career seemed like a waste of time when a GI specialist remembered only after asking her a long list of questions that she could have simply looked it up in the EHR in front of her. HISJunkie gave an Epic MyChart download on thumb drive to a new, Allscripts-using practice and was told that they can’t use the electronic information, and when he gave the doctor a hard copy printout of the same information, the doctor insisted on asking him questions off his own EHR screen instead of looking at the paper and even then entered only about half the information.

New poll to your right or here: Which winter holiday is most important to you?

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre to present your own.

Sales

• Northeast Georgia Health Systems (GA), Salem Health (OR), and Saber Healthcare Group choose Hyland Healthcare’s OnBase enterprise information platform.

People

Beaumont Health hires Hans Keil, MBA, MA (PerkinElmer) as CIO.

Gary Gerber (Hyland) joins Heartbeat by Intelligent Imaging as chief strategy and revenue officer.

Verge Health promotes Connie Moser, MBA to CEO and board member, replacing Mark Crockett.

Announcements and Implementations

Epic works with Vanderbilt University Medical Center to release ICU Liberation Bundle, workflows that prevent ICU delirium by reminding clinicians to discontinue analgesics and sedatives, test the patient’s waking and breathing, perform delirium assessments, and get the patient out of bed to encourage mobility and exercise.

Government and Politics

CHIME expresses its support for Congress’s spending deal, which calls for HHS and ONC to support private sector patient matching initiatives. The spending bill does not lift the government’s ban on funding such a program directly.

Sutter Health will pay $575 million to settle the state of California’s claims that it engaged in non-competitive behavior. Sutter will also be prohibited from using “all or none” terms in requiring insurers to include all of its facilities if they include any of them, and also from charging excessively for providing out-of-network services.

Other

The Madison paper profiles Kiio, a 14-employee startup whose app assesses low back pain, refers the patient to the appropriate resource, and provides a customized exercise program with animated instructions. The company says users report a 50% reduction in pain and 90% of them would recommend the program.

Drug maker Abbott Labs issues a takedown notice to a diabetes support group that told users how to extract their own blood sugar readings from the company’s continuous glucose monitor and monitor them on a free software tool. Abbott says the free tool infringes on its copyrights and claims that a patient’s own blood sugar readings are its copyrighted property.

A Columbus, OH ED doctor ponders the amount of time she spends reassuring healthy patients that despite what they have found in their Internet medical searches, they don’t need emergency treatment. She also wonders how she should close those encounters without triggering low-score patient satisfaction surveys.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic staff volunteer at The River Food Pantry in Madison, WI.
• PCare publishes a new solutions paper, “Patient Ambassador Program Best Practices.”
• Gartner recognizes PatientSafe Solutions in its “Market Guide for Clinical Communication and Collaboration.”
• KLAS Research recognizes Arcadia’s population health management platform for its ability to support identifying and closing gaps in care.
• Redox releases a new podcast featuring Dr. Bill Hanson, CMIO of Penn Medicine.
• Relatient publishes a new case study, “Kentuckiana Pediatrics Group Finds Patient-Centered Billing is Key to the Patient Journey.”

Blog Posts

• Tried and True Areas of Focus for 2020 (Lightbeam Health Solutions)
• Healthcare Price Transparency: Doctors Need It Too (Loyale Healthcare)
• Meditech Staff Organize Annual Holiday Giving Program (Meditech)
• Three Key Strategies for Healthcare Financial Transformation (Health Catalyst)
• Clinical Communication Etiquette: When Should You Text, Call, Broadcast or Video Chat? (Mobile Heartbeat)
• Physical Therapists, Physical Therapy Assistants, Physical Therapy Aides – Looking at the Core Clinical Workforce of a Practice (MWTherapy)
• EHR Errors Continue to Threaten Patient Safety (Nextgate)
• Enhancing Analytics Using Scrum (Impact Advisors)
• Rethinking Your Routine in 2020 (Netsmart)
• How data can help you solve your care coordination problem (Experian Health)
• How to Increase Your Patient’s Financial Literacy & Improve the Collections Process (PatientBond)
• Leadership Roundtable Series: Social Determinants of Health Community Insights (PatientPing)
• A Decade of Patient Payment Services: Our Greatest Hits (Patientco)
• #GetToThePoint: Best practices to prevent delayed test results (Pivot Point Consulting)
• Balancing Zero Trust with a strong identity strategy and AI (SailPoint)
• Healthcare Organizations Make Major Progress in Transition to New SCRIPT Standard Ahead of January 1, 2020 CMS Deadline (Surescripts)
• Galaxy Brain: Data Science Workflows with Prefect & Dask (SymphonyRM)
• RSNA 2019 Visage’s Top Five (Visage Imaging)
• When new technologies connect, the results are magical. (Voalte)
• Real-Time Healthcare Analytics: Monitor, Predict, Nudge, Act (Vocera)
• FAQ: MIPS and S’more: 2020 Final Rule Highlights (WebPT)
• Youth Suicide and the Technology Puzzle (Medsphere)

Contacts

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