News 2/5/14

Top News

Castlight Health files plans for an IPO that values the company at $2 billion. The employee health management software company was formed in 2008 with now-US CTO Todd Park as a co-founder.

Reader Comments

From Jack Flash: “Re: Dick Derrick. The HCIT world will miss the smiling face of Dick Derrick of eClinicalWorks, who announced his retirement after 40 years in our business.” Dick was kind enough to share with Mr. H and me that he remains “addicted” to HIStalk and will continue reading in between his travel, volunteering, and family time. He also asked us to send his best to his industry friends.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Supporting HIStalk as a Platinum Sponsor is Aperek (pronounced uh-PARE-ik) which you may remember as Mediclick (with earlier roots in Global Software) since the healthcare-only, all US-based company changed its name along with introducing new products in November 2013. The Raleigh, NC-based company offers highly ranked solutions for supply chain, financials, mobile, technology, spend aggregation / contract management, and implant tracking. CEO Mike Merwarth explained in my interview last week that 80 percent of a hospital’s supply expenses are managed by clinical people rather than materials management professionals (particularly in the OR, where high-dollar implant products are used) and thus aren’t touched by typical ERP packages. A new Aperek solution is Pulse, an iPad app designed for clinicians who record implant item usage in the OR. Hospitals are looking at the supply chain and thus to Aperek to get their costs under control. Thanks to Aperek for supporting HIStalk.

HIMSS Conference Social Events

 Send us your event details if it’s a good one (i.e, free food and drinks at minimum) and you promise that all HIStalk readers are welcome to attend, even if they work for your most hated competitor as a given reader might well do. Inga and Dr. Jayne especially like free cocktails and are happy to give your company a shout-out if we have the chance to stop by.

Divurgent will be sponsoring a Havana Nights themed event at the Funky Monkey (International Drive) Sunday night at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday. Click here to register.

Upcoming Webinars

February 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare Transformation: What’s Good About US Healthcare? Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: John Haughom, MD, senior advisor, Health Catalyst. Dr. Haughom will provide a deeper look at the forces that have defined and shaped the current state of U.S. healthcare. Paradoxically, some of these same forces are also driving the inevitable need for change.

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

February 13 (Thursday), 12 noon ET. Advancement in Clinician Efficiency Through Aware Computing. Sponsored by Aventura. In an age of information overload, a computing system that is aware of the user’s needs becomes increasingly critical. Instant-on roaming for virtual and mobile applications powered by awareness provides practical ways to unleash value from current HIT investments, advancing efforts to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs and improve clinical efficiencies. The presenters will review implementation of Aventura’s solution at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cerner announces Q4 results: revenue up 12 percent, adjusted EPS $0.39 vs. $0.34, meeting analyst expectations.

ZappRx, developers of a mobile e-prescribing platform, secures $1 million in additional funding.

Imprivata confidentially submits a draft registration statement with the SEC to conduct an IPO.

Streamline Health Solutions completes its acquisition of Unibased Systems Architecture.

Endo Health Solutions completes the divestiture of HealthTronics to Altaris Capital Partners for total consideration of up to $130 million.

BlueStep Systems, a clinical platform provider for the long-term and post-acute care market, merges with  BridgeGate Health, a system integration provider.

Sales

Spectrum Health (MI) selects PerfectServe’s Clinician-to-Clinician and DocLink platforms for direct and secure clinician communication.

The 14-hospital Baptist Memorial Health Care System selects Voalte smartphones for system-wide caregiver communication.

People

HIMSS awards CACI International’s Keith Salzman, MD its 2013 Physician IT Leadership Award.

AT&T appoints Eric Topol, MD ((Scripps Health) chief medical advisor.

CTG Health Solutions hires Linda Lockwood (Encore Health Resources) as its advisory services solutions director.

HIMSS names Pauline M. (Hogan) Byom (Mayo Health System) the recipient of the 2013 SHS/HIMSS Excellence in Healthcare Management Engineering / Process Improvement Award.

Colette Weston (ADP AdvancedMD) joins Aviacode as VP of client services.

Emdeon hires Randy P. Giles (Coventry Health Care) as CFO/ EVP of finance, replacing Bob A. Newport, Jr.

Announcements and Implementations

The University City Science Center in Philadelphia begins accepting applications for its Digital Health Accelerator, which will provide up to $50,000 in funding and other benefits for as many as six companies in the digital health or HIT sector.

Fleming Island Surgery Center (FL) goes live with Anesthesia Touch from Plexus Information Systems.

Bread for the City (DC) and the Family and Medical Counseling Service (DC) implement The Guideline Advantage, a quality improvement program that leverages population health management tools from Forward Health Group.

Government and Politics

CMS authorizes laboratories to provide patients with direct access to their lab reports, rather than requiring patients to obtain results from their physicians.

A veterans advocacy group calls on the VA and DoD to take aggressive steps to reduce the remaining backlog of 400,000 disability claims, deliver on the long-promised joint VA/DoD EMR, to standardize VA claims forms, and to encourage VA raters to process claims correctly the first time.

Innovation and Research

Hospitals rank cost reduction as their top innovation priority, according to a HIMSS/AVIA survey on healthcare provider innovation. The report also reveals that chief innovation officers are not yet mainstream roles within hospital and health systems, though 64 percent of organizations with annual revenues of at least $5 billion have a chief innovation officer. Though dedicated funding for innovation is modest, providers are making progress implementing innovative solutions related to population health management, patient follow-up, predictive analytics, clinical decision support, and care coordination.

Other

HIMSS expects more than 1,200 exhibitors at this year’s conference and will offer longer exhibit hall hours with more overlap between education sessions and no mid-day break.

Weird News Andy titles this story “A Shot for a Shot.” A startup invents a device that it claims can stop bleeding from a gunshot wound in 15 seconds. It injects dozens of tiny sponges into the wound, or as the article breezily written for those skimming rather than actually reading, “like a tampon for bullet wounds.”

Sponsor Updates

• PACS blogger Dr. Dalai banters with Brad Levin of Visage Imaging about the latter’s suggestion that a savvy hospital IT department could assemble its own PACS system from off-the-shelf components.
• NCQA certifies that Verisk Health’s Quality Intelligence solution contains HEDIS Certified Measures that are ready for 2014 HEDIS reporting.
• Oracle Health Sciences will integrate medical speech recognition technology from Nuance Communications with its e-clinical software.
• MedHOK achieves NCQA certification for its HEDIS Certified Measures in 360Measures.
• TriZetto launches a collaborative care solution powered by Wellcentive to facilitate payer/provider collaboration in accountable care initiatives.
• PeriGen introduces Category II Management Algorithm, a free web-based tool to support the management of patients in labor during FHR category II.
• Coastal Healthcare Consulting introduces Convergence, an offering that combines NextGate’s Enterprise Master Index with Coastal’s project implementation.
• HIMSS selects InterSystems HealthShare as the official health informatics platform for the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion at the HIMSS14 conference.
• Gartner positions Informatica as a leader in its January 2014 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform-as-a-Service report, based on ability to executive and completeness of vision.
• Elsevier introduces MethodsX, a concept methods journal that provides researchers a home for their unpublished works, allowing them to receive public credit and citations.
• First Databank commences publishing of an initial draft of New York State Acquisition Cost drug prices.
• CareSync is selected as a finalist in the Community category for the 2014 SXSW Interactive Awards for its efforts in building meaningful communities for patients, their families, and care teams.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga. Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis, Lorre.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.