Morning Headlines 4/12/15

Medicare and Medicaid Programs; Electronic Health Record Incentive Program– Modifications to Meaningful Use in 2015 through 2017

HHS publishes a revision to the Meaningful Use program that shortens the 2015 reporting period to just 90 days and reduces the requirement that five percent threshold for view/download/transmit to just a single patient.

Report To Congress, April 2015:  Report on Health Information Blocking

ONC submits its congressionally-mandated report on EHR vendor information blocking, acknowledging that there is only anecdotal evidence of information blocking practices, but also establishing a list of behaviors it would interpret to be detrimental to national information exchange efforts, including charging for information exchanges and developing systems in non-standard ways. In its conclusion, ONC  recommends field-based certification requirements and mandated data exchange features.

PatientBond Acquires c2b Horizons, Forming First Patient Engagement Technology Company with Embedded Consumer Psychographic Profiling

PatientBond, a patient engagement solutions vendor, has acquired c2b Horizons which makes embedded consumer profiling tools. Financial details were not disclosed.

Morning Headlines 4/10/15

FTC: Shared Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap DRAFT Version 1.0

The FTC sends a 14-page letter to national coordinator for health IT  Karen DeSalvo, MD commenting on its interoperability roadmap, agreeing that its full implementation has the potential to benefit patients and providers, but also warns that both health systems and vendors may resist.

HIStalk Practice Interviews Farzad Mostashari, MD CEO, Aledade

Former national coordinator for health IT Farzad Mostashari sits down with our own HIStalk Practice to talk about life since leaving ONC and his new role as the CEO of Aledale.

Cerner Announces Apple Watch App

Cerner unveils an app for the yet-to-be-released Apple Watch. The app is designed for patients and will capture biometric and activity data and integrate it into their patient portal and EHR. It will also send health-related reminders and support disease management.

New Law Allows Arizonans To Get Lab Tests Without Doctor Order

Arizona passes a law that will allow patients to order lab tests without going through a doctor, crediting Silicon Valley lab vendor Theranos for making it possible.

Doctors Make House Calls On Tablets Carried By Houston Firefighters

In Houston, firefighters are turning to tablets and telehealth to connect non-emergency patients with doctors, rather than driving them to the hospital and driving up the cost of care.

Morning Headlines 4/9/15

Cleveland Clinic Innovations launches digital health care products e-commerce company

Cleveland Clinic’s business development unit has launched a new company called ADEO that will resell digital health products to hospitals, practices, and directly to consumers.

Data Analytics Update: Health IT Policy Committee Meeting

ONC publishes new MU numbers during its April 7 policy committee meeting, noting that Medicaid EP registrations have surpassed 2012 projections.

High Hopes, Unfulfilled Promise: Healthcare Organizations Looking Beyond Portals for True Patient Engagement, HIMSS Analytics Survey Finds

A HIMSS Analytics survey of 119 healthcare executives finds that patient portals are not delivering on the patient engagement needs of customers. Still, a majority of respondents report that the driver for implementing a patient portals was to meet MU requirements, and not necessarily to improve patient services or quality of care. The full study will be published at the HIMSS conference next week.

Morning Headlines 4/8/15

A study of the role of communications in population health management

PerfectServe publishes findings from a study on communication tools used by providers and health systems, finding that most rely on follow up phone calls and patient portals to communicate with patients, and that less than 25 percent use their EHR to communicate with each other. 81 percent report being frustrated with having to use multiple, disconnected communication systems.

Banner Health, Cerner form multi-year strategic partnership

Cerner announces a partnership with Banner Health (AZ) that will include development efforts centered around patient engagement, population health, and financial management. Banner runs Cerner across 26 of its facilities, with 21 of them being HIMSS Stage 7 sites.

MEDITECH Selects Validic For Digital Health Platform

MEDITECH will connect with Validic’s interface engine to integrate consumer health and wellness data into its patient portal and EHR systems.

Kleiner Perkins Leads $20M Round in Livongo for Cloud-Enabled Glucose Meter

Livongo Health, the diabetes management startup of former Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman, has raised $20 million in venture capital financing from KPCB.

Morning Headlines 4/7/15

Alarms, Health IT, and Patient Violence Lead ECRI Institute’s 2015 List of Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns

Health IT is heavily represented on ECRI’s annual Top 10 Patient Safety Concerns list, with alarm fatigue and poor alarm configuration taking first place, incorrect or missing data in EHRs taking second place. Poor medication reconciliation procedures, something surprisingly absent from all MU stages, also made the list.

HITRUST to sponsor study on healthcare breaches

The Health Information Trust Alliance announces that it will sponsor a broad, empirical study of health IT security threats aimed at analyzing “the methods, severity and pervasiveness of cyber threats targeting a variety of healthcare organizations.”

Doctors in Kearney, GI frustrated over CHI Health leadership

Doctors at CHI Health Good Samaritan (NE) have issued a vote of no confidence in the leadership of CHI. An ongoing dispute between CHI and Blue Cross Blue Shield of Nebraska is at the heart of the problem, with a small faction of local doctors leaving to build a new hospital rather than stay and work under CHI.

Morning Headlines 4/6/15

Allscripts To Pay $10M To End Investor Suit Over Merger Woes

Allscripts will pay $10 million to settle a class action lawsuit with its shareholders stemming from its 2010 Eclipsys acquisition, which shareholders say was presented with overly optimistic integration plans and revenue projections.

Premier comments on ONC Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap

Premier comments on ONC’s interoperability roadmap, suggesting that ONC develop comprehensive interoperability standards and mandate EHR vendor compliance through its EHR certification criteria.

Forbes Hospital prepares for digital transformation

Forbes Hospital (PA), which was acquired by Highmark in 2013, will go live with Epic on April 11, moving off paper and onto its first full EHR.

Morning Headlines 4/3/15

CVS Health Announces New Clinical Affiliations with Leading Medical Centers in Arizona and Illinois

CVS continues its expansion into primary care through a new partnership with Rush University Medical Center (IL)  and Tucson Medical Center (AZ), where it will provide medication counseling, chronic disease management, and health services through its MinuteClinics. CVS will also begin integrating its MinuteClinic visit notes with the health system’s EHR,

Medsphere Systems and Phoenix Health Systems Complete Merger

VistA-reseller Medsphere merges with IT consulting firm Phoenix Health Systems. The new company will retain the Medsphere name and will expand its service offerings beyond VistA implementation services to now include hosting, help desk support, and project management consulting. 

Help lower treatment costs for your patients

Practice Fusion begins embedding coupons from pharmaceutical companies directly into its e-Prescribing system so that doctors can print them out and give them to their patients. The goal, according to Practice Fusion, is to reduce the cost of prescriptions and thus improve medication adherence.

Morning Headlines 4/2/15

How Medical Tech Gave a Patient a Massive Overdose

UCSF doctor and professor Bob Watcher, MD candidly tells the story of a recent EHR-related overdose that took place at UCSF’s Benioff Children’s Hospital in which a 16-year-old patient was given a dose of antibiotics 38 times larger than his doctor had intended. The ordering provider believed she was ordering a single 160 mg pill of Septra, but inadvertently ordered 160mg/kg, which resulted in a child being given 6,160 mg of the drug. The EHR, Epic, presented the doctor with an overdose warning but the order was placed anyway, pharmacists verified the order and filled it, and the floor nurse dutifully gave the patient 38.5 Septra pills. Fortunately the patient fully recovered.

Groundbreaking ways to deliver great healthcare.

Apple and IBM introduce four enterprise apps that they co-developed to support nurses, nurse managers, home health nurses, and technicians.

The Healing Power of Your Own Medical Records

The New York Times publishes a piece highlighting the OpenNotes movement and calling for broader patient access to medical records data.

CommonWell Health Alliance Welcomes New Members Across the Health Care Continuum

Meditech, Merge, Kareo, Surgical Information Systems, and PointClickCare have all joined the CommonWell health information exchange platform. With the new partners, CommonWell reports that its platform covers 70 percent of the acute care market and 20 percent of the ambulatory market.

Morning Headlines 4/1/15

e-MDs Merges with MDeverywhere; Creates Market-Leading Provider of Clinical and RCM Software Solutions

Ambulatory EHR and practice management vendor e-MDs has been acquired by Martin Equity Partners and merged with existing Martin portfolio company MDeverywhere, a revenue cycle management and physician credentialing system.

Sentinel Event Alert 54: Safe use of health information technology

The Joint Commission issues a Sentinel Event Alert on the safe use of health IT, focusing on process improvement, leadership, and developing an internal culture focused on safety.

Doctor exodus over new e-health system rocks Defence

In Australia, 30 doctors resign from the Department of Defence over fears that its newly implemented EHR compromises patient safety.

Morning Headlines 3/31/15

HHS CTO steps down

Bryan Sivak will step down from his position as HHS chief technology officer at the end of April. Sivak joined HHS in 2012 and oversaw the Entrepreneurs in Residence program as well as the HHS IDEA Lab.

Scripps Selects Epic For New EHR

Scripps Health (CA) has chosen Epic as its next EHR vendor, replacing GE Healthcare’s Centricity Enterprise on the inpatient side and Allscripts Enterprise in its outpatient clinics.

Canadians Losing Out On Benefits Of Electronic Health Records

A C.D. Howe Institute report finds that widespread interoperability challenges are hindering efforts to reduce healthcare costs and improve care coordination. “Survey findings revealed that in primary care only 12 percent of physicians are notified electronically of patients’ interactions with hospitals or send and receive electronic referrals for specialist appointments,” says Denis Protti, the report’s author.

Morning Headlines 3/30/15

Senate delays vote on Medicare payment fix for two weeks

The Senate will not vote on the House-approved SGR repeal bill until mid-April, after its two-week recess ends.

Johnson & Johnson Announces Definitive Agreement To Collaborate With Google To Advance Surgical Robotics

Google and Johnson & Johnson will partner to develop a surgical robot that will leverage Google code to support surgeons.

Nearly Seven in 10 Patients Would Avoid Healthcare Providers That Experience a Data Breach

A Transunion Healthcare survey finds that 65 percent of respondents would avoid a healthcare provider that had experienced a data breach. Younger respondents were less forgiving than older respondents, with 73 percent of 18 to 34 year olds reporting that they would likely switch providers over a data breach.

Morning Headlines 3/27/15

Cost Estimate and Supplemental Analyses for H.R. 2, the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015

The CBO estimates that the House-passed SGR repeal bill will increase the federal deficit by $141 billion over the next ten years. The bill is now with the Senate.

The CMS and ONC NPRMs

John Halamka, MD weighs in on the recently published MU3 rules, concluding “The sheer number of requirements may create a very high, expensive and complex set of barriers to product entry.  It may stifle innovation in our country and reduce the global competitiveness for the entire US Health IT industry.”

Rethinking Radiology Informatics

An article in the American Journal of Roentgenology suggests that the ongoing shift to centralize IT services in hospitals has left radiology departments, which were often early health IT adopters, with fewer clinical IT experts and less control over the direction of innovation in their specialty.

Introducing TeleMED Assist from Seniors Wireless

Seniors Wireless launches a $30 per month telehealth service that promises unlimited 24/7 access to physicians by telephone or video for anyone over the age of 55.

Morning Headlines 3/26/15

Health Care Payment Learning and Action Network

President Obama and HHS Secretary Silvia Burwell announce a new initiative  tasked with bringing private and public stakeholders together to broker agreements that will push the industry toward value-based reimbursement models faster. A large cohort has joined the initiative, including Anthem, Cigna, Dignity Health, Kaiser Permanente, Partners Healthcare, Rite Aid, Walgreens, and Walmart.

Roe Reintroduces Electronic Health Records Legislation to Help Veterans, Military

Representative Phil Roe, MD (R-TN) re-introduces a bill that would establish a $50 million innovation award for anyone that develops an integrated DoD/VA EHR. Oddly, the announcement makes no mention of  the DoD’s ongoing $11 billion EHR procurement.

NHS Mental Health Apps Library to increase access to psychological therapies and help to improve mental health outcomes

In England, the NHS launches a mobile app library of clinically-vetted mental health apps. The new site is the first in a larger effort to consolidate digital health apps for a broad range of conditions.

Morning Headlines 3/25/15

Fake patient data could have been uploaded through SAP medical app

SAP fixes an SQL injection vulnerability in its mobile EHR that allowed hackers to access and insert erroneous records into patient charts.

98.2 Percent of Participating Providers Using athenahealth’s EHR Have Successfully Attested for Meaningful Use Stage 2

Athenahealth reports that 98 percent of its customer base has attested for MU2. The company is also announcing that it will extend its ICD-10 and MU guarantees to also include PQRS and Shared Savings Program support.

This is why you shouldn’t believe that exciting new medical study

Vox analyzes medical research findings over the years, finding that only six percent of published medical studies are well-designed and relevant enough to influence patient care, but that despite this the number of published studies has increased 300 percent in the last 25 years.

Morning Headlines 3/24/15

ZeOmega Acquires HealthUnity

Population health vendor ZeOmega acquires HealthUnity, an HIE, MPI, referral management, and patient consent solutions vendor.

Statement on Meaningful Use

Reactions to MU3 are beginning to trickle out, with AHA’s senior vice president of public policy issuing a statement today saying “The release of today’s rule demonstrates that the agency continues to create policies for the future without fixing the problems the program faces today.”

Michael Bloomberg Backs Health-Data Push

Former NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg partners with the Australian government to launch a $100 million, four-year project aimed at implementing birth and death registries in countries across Africa, Southeast Asia, and Latin America in order to begin to analyze causes of premature death.

Humana to sell Concentra for $1 billion

Health insurer Humana sells Concentra, a chain of 300 clinics and urgent care centers, to Select Medical Holdings Corp for $1.05 billion.

Morning Headlines 3/23/15

HHS announces proposed rules to support the path to nationwide interoperability

ONC publishes Meaningful Use Stage 3 proposed rules and 2015 Edition EHR certification criteria, with public comments open until May 29. The rules establish a single definition of “meaningful use” that all hospitals and providers will have to meet by 2018, attempts to streamline quality reporting burdens, and introduces a number of new patient engagement objectives.

Vt. Health Connect deadline

Vermont Gov. Peter Shumlin acknowledges that despite nearly $125 million in spending, the state’s health insurance exchange may need to be shut down and replaced by Healthcare.gov.

How America’s Top Industries Have Changed, 1990-2013

The Wall Street Journal reports that in the last 25 years the healthcare industry has grown to the point that it now employs more workers than any other industry in 35 states.

El Camino says goodbye to paper medical records

A local paper covers El Camino Hospital’s (CA) $125 million Epic implementation. The hospital is finalizing its build and will move into system testing next month as works toward a targeted November 7 go-live.

Morning Headlines 3/20/15

A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to repeal the Medicare sustainable growth rate

A new bill in Congress calls for the permanent repeal of the SRG, but also names health IT interoperability a national priority to be achieved by the end of 2018.

Graphical Display of Diagnostic Test Results in Electronic Health Records: A Comparison of 8 Systems

AHRQ publishes a study comparing the differences in how laboratory results are displayed across eight EHR systems. The study was based on 11 criteria for the proper display of lab data. None of the vendors met all 11 criteria, and some deficiencies were misleading enough to have a significant, negative impact on patient safety.

The inside story of how Apple’s new medical research platform was born

Apple reportedly began working on ResearchKit in 2013, having been inspired by a MedX presentation by Stephen Friend, MD on the future of medical research. During  his presentation he describes his ideal platform, “Here you have genetic information, and you have what drugs they took, how they did. Put that up in the cloud, and you have a place where people can go and query it, [where] they can make discoveries.” Apple VP of medical technologies Mike O”Reilly was in the audience.

Epic System’s auditorium, contractor win national award

Epic’s new 11,000 seat, space-themed underground auditorium has been named the best new building in America in the over $200 million category.