Morning Headlines 5/8/15

Cerner Reports First Quarter 2015 Results

Cerner reports Q1 results: revenue climbed 27 percent to $784 million, adjusted EPS $0.45 vs. $0.37. Revenue came in below Cerner’s Q1 forecast, due to lower than expected revenue across both its existing business and its new Siemens business.

Allscripts Announces First Quarter 2015 Results

Allscripts reports Q1 results: revenue was down two percent, at $335 million, adjusted EPS $0.08 vs. $0.07, missing expectations on both.

Are bungled VA claims systemic? Senators want agency review

The VA’s notorious claims processing system is back in the headlines. The VA reports that the claims backlog currently stands at 161,00, down from its peak of 611,000 in March 2013, but a VA inspector general review uncovered doctored data at five of the 10 worst performing claims processing centers. Now, a bipartisan group of senators is calling for a wide-scale, GAO-led review of all 56 regional VA claims processing offices.

Meaningful Use Stage 2 E-Prescribing Threshold and Adverse Drug Events in the Medicare Part D Population with Diabetes

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association compares medication error rates between handwritten and electronically generated prescriptions and finds that e-prescribing was associated with fewer adverse drug events. The study also found that e-prescribing increased the number of prescriptions that make it to the pharmacy by 12%, and increased the number of prescriptions picked up by the patients by 10%.