Morning Headlines 1/7/15

Top 10 issues for physicians to watch in 2015

The American Medical Association says that it will spend 2015 fighting to remove “barriers to providing high-quality care” by lobbying for relaxed Meaningful Use rules, improved EHR usability, and improved interoperability.

Epic Systems draws on literature greats for its next expansion

Epic unveils the designs for five new buildings it will construct on its increasingly cramped Verona, WI campus, adding 500,000 square feet and 1,600 offices. The new building designs were inspired by children’s literature classics, like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The Wizard of Oz..”

Allina Health and Health Catalyst Sign $100 Million Agreement Creating Model for System-wide Outcomes Improvement

Allina Health (MN) signs a 10-year,  $100 million deal with Health Catalyst to accelerate outcomes improvement across the organizations 12 hospitals and 90 clinics.

A Restraining Order Can Be Just A Videoconference Away

Domestic abuse patients being treated in the ED at St. Joseph’s Regional Medical Center (NJ) will have a new videoconferencing platform that will connect them with a local judge who will hear their case and issue a restraining order while they are still in the hospital.

Morning Headlines 1/6/15

Lexmark International to Buy Medical Imaging Company Claron

Lexmark acquires Claron Technology, a web-based medical image sharing platform, for $37 million. The company will be integrated into Lexmark’s content management software division.

U-M Hospitals’ Sue Schade named CIO of the Year

Sue Schade, CIO of University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers in Ann Arbor, is named CIO of the year by CHIME and HIMSS.

A Look Back at 2014

John Halamka, MD and CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, blogs about the major events that shaped 2014, both in health IT and on his small farm outside Boston, of which he quips “ I shovel manure because it is so different from my varied day jobs, although some debate that point.”

The remaining uninsured: Closing ACA gaps

While the Affordable Care Act has significantly reduced the uninsured rate in the US, 14 to 18 percent of the general public are still uninsured, despite the fact that most of the remaining uninsured qualify for one or more assistance programs.

Morning Headlines 1/5/15

Analytics-based U.S. tech firm Inovalon files for IPO

Inovalon Holdings, a data analytics vendor focused on healthcare, files a $500 million IPO.

Blue Cross starts health system payouts for value-based contracts

In Michigan, Blue Cross Blue Shield pays out $25 million to five hospitals that signed value-based reimbursement contracts in 2011 and 2012.

Wilmington doctor waits for NC Tracks payment

Physicians in North Carolina file a law suit against the state’s Department of Health and Human Services over billing issues that they claim led to doctors being paid lower Medicaid rates for services provided to Medicare patients. The payment problem stems from a custom software system developed by CSC at a cost of $484 million. The state DHHS has filed to dismiss the suit and refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem.

Adviser Guides Obama Into the Google Age

The New York Times profiles Megan Smith, the new White House chief technology officer, and her transition from a Google executive to a federal employee, where she now carries a BlackBerry and supports information systems that still partially rely on floppy disks.

Morning Headlines 12/31/14

CSC pays $190M to settle accounting fraud case with SEC

CSC will pay $190 million to settle fraud charges brought by the SEC.

The State HIE Program Four Years Later

ONC publishes a report on the state-level rollout of health information exchanges, the strategies and solutions they’re offering, and the problems they’re working through.

It’s ‘stupidity’ to install health IT without re-engineering workflow

Outgoing Geisinger Health System CEO Dr. Glenn Steele discusses reimbursement reform, health IT, and care management in a Modern Healthcare interview.

Is Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush in a bubble?

Fortune profiles Jonathan Bush, CEO of athenahealth, and his More Disruption Please program. He explains, “The plan is we’re going to create and curate the health care Internet.”

Morning Headlines 12/30/14

Accenture wins $563M contract to continue with HealthCare.gov

Accenture signs a $563 million five-year contract extension with HHS to manage and continue developing healthcare.gov.

ICD-10 Testing Results and DMEPOS Competitive Bidding Registration Reminder

CMS reports that during its November ICD-10 open testing period more than 500 providers, suppliers, billing companies, and clearinghouses submitted test claims, resulting in a 76 percent claim acceptance rate. The test checked that claims had a valid diagnosis code, ICD-10 companion qualifier code, national provider identifier, and date of service, and returned an automated acceptance notification when all criteria were met.

Startup Health Insights Annual Report 2014: The Year Digital Health Broke Out

Startup Health reports that $6.5 billion in startup funding flowed into the digital health sector during 2014, a 125 percent increase over 2013.

The National Patient-Centered Clinical Research Network: Clinical Data Research Networks (CDRN)—Phase II

PCORI will award $87 million to establish 13 clinical data research networks and $26 million to establish 22 patient-powered research networks as part of the second phase of its PCORnet project.

Morning Headlines 12/29/14

Cerner Corp (CERN): $65.71

Cerner stock closes at $65.71 Friday, an all time high for the company.

Disneyland trip, Beyonce tickets were ‘inappropriate gifts’ to official, judge rules

The government upholds a VA decision to fire the former director of the Phoenix VA Health System,  not because of the wait-time scandal that was discovered at her facility, but because she accepted “inappropriate gifts,” including an 8-night family vacation to Disneyland for herself and six of her family members, from a consulting firm whose core business is helping vendors secure lucrative government contracts from the VA.

Why It’s So Hard to Fix Medicare Fraud

The Wall Street Journal analyzes Medicare fraud detection, explaining that the problem is complicated by the fact that 45,000 new providers enroll in Medicare every month and CMS does not have the resources to verify that every one is legitimate.

Jeb Bush quits hospital chain before possible White House run

Jeb Bush resigns from his position on the board of directors at Tenet Healthcare in preparation for a widely-speculated run in the 2016 presidential elections. Tenet is a for-profit health system that has publically attributed strong financial gains to the rollout of Obamacare, legislation that Bush formally opposes.

Morning Headlines 12/24/14

AMN Healthcare Acquires Avantas

AMN Healthcare, a healthcare-focused staffing firm, acquires Avantas, which builds data analytics tools for optimizing staffing and scheduling.

Medicine Is About to Get Personal

TIME reports on direct-primary care provider Qliance Health, and their efforts to provide direct to consumer primary care for a flat monthly fee, and without involving insurance.

Health IT In Connecticut – Learning From Mistakes

A director from HITE-CT, Connecticut’s quasi-public organization tasked with building its health information exchange, explains that the organization was dissolved after “wasting $4.3 million in federal grants and four years, without accomplishing anything.”

Pennsylvania eHealth Partnership Authority Annual Report to the Governor and General Assembly

The organization responsible for Pennsylvania’s HIE reports that despite very lean staffing, finding a business model capable of delivering financial sustainability remains its biggest challenge.

Morning Headlines 12/23/14

Supreme Court to Hear Arguments in Big Health Care Case on March 4

The Supreme Court will hear King v Burwell on March 4. The case argues that the Obama administration overstepped its authority by providing federal subsidies to Healthcare.gov users when the ACA’s language only authorized subsidy payments for insurance acquired through state-run exchanges.

89 ACOs will join Medicare Shared Savings Program in January

CMS announces that 89 new ACOs will join the Shared Savings Program effective January 1, 2015.

Accretive Health Provides Updated Timeline for Completion of Restatement

Accretive Health, a Chicago-based revenue cycle management company, will file its long overdue 2012 and 2013 year-end financial statements next week. The company will also publish restated 2011 statements.

Electronic Distribution of Prescribing Information for Human Prescription Drugs, Including Biological Products

A proposed rule by the FDA will require that pharmaceutical companies replace the paper-based prescription drug handouts written for doctors with electronic ones that can be updated in real-time.

Morning Headlines 12/22/14

HTC Global Services of Troy buys Troy-based CareTech

HTC Global Services acquires CareTech, a consulting firm that focuses on health IT consulting. Both companies are headquartered in Troy, MI.

Rep. Renee Ellmers Letter to HHS

House Rep. Renee Ellmers (R-NC) and 29 other House representatives send a letter to HHS imploring Secretary Sylvia Burwell to reduce the MU Stage 2 reporting period from 365 days to 90 days.

Merge Healthcare Reaches New 12-Month High at $3.63

Merge shares reach a 52-week high, closing Friday at $3.63. Shares are up 54 percent year to date.

The NHS’s chaotic IT systems show no sign of recovery

The Guardian reports on health IT in the NHS, focusing on anecdotal tales from the recent troubled Epic implementation at Addenbrooke’s Hospital.

Morning Headlines 12/19/14

First real-world trial of impact of patient-controlled access to electronic medical records

In a small study, 105 patients are given the ability to hide certain parts of their medical record from their doctors, with a “break incase of an emergency” feature built in so that doctors could bypass the lock if needed. By the end of the six-month study, 49 percent of the patients had decided to hide some portion of their record.

Many say meaningful use Stage 2 is disastrous, but the data say otherwise

While the numbers on Meaningful Use Stage 2 seem grim, Advisory Board Senior Consultant Tony Panjamapirom says that 65 percent of the hospitals scheduled to attest to stage 2 this year have already done so, with many more expected to attest before December 31. He says that between these attestations, and those that are pursuing hardship exceptions, more than 95 percent of stage 2 eligible hospitals will be in compliance by the end of the year.

Medfusion names Allscripts and M*Modal vet as CEO

Medfusion founder Steve Malik will step down as CEO of the company, passing the reigns to Vern Davenport, formerly of MModal and Allscripts. Malik will stay on as the executive chairman.

Morning Headlines 12/18/14

HHS awards more than $665 million to design and test state-led efforts to improve health care quality, accessibility and affordability

HHS announces that it has awarded $665 million in grants to fund 32 state-level initiatives working to implement experimental health care payment models or service delivery models that could improve health care quality and lower costs.

More hospitals moving to improved EHRs, CMS reports

CMS releases the latest MU attestation numbers: 1,681 eligible hospitals have attested for MU Stage 2 as of December 1, up from just 840 that had attested by November 1.

Open Enrollment Week 4: December 6 – December 12, 2014

2.5 million people have used healthcare.gov to enroll in an insurance plan since the start of the 2014 open enrollment period, 52 percent are renewing policies they signed up for last year, while the rest are new customers.

State-Based Marketplaces Using ‘Clearinghouse’ Plan Management Models Are Associated With Lower Premiums

Health Affairs analyzes the premiums for health plans listed on state health insurance exchanges and finds that states that are more selective about which plans they list on the exchange, even if done in an effort to protect consumers, have significantly higher premiums than states that allow any qualifying health plan to be listed.

Morning Headlines 12/17/14

Sony Pictures Data Breach

Sony writes a letter to its employees to inform them that their names, social security numbers, addresses, and personal health information may have been compromised when hackers breached the company’s security system and stole internal files.

Sharing is caring? Not for medical records

The post-mortem analysis of a failed EHR interoperability project in Oregon finds that interoperability simply isn’t good business when revenue is tied to a fee-for-service reimbursement model. OHSU’s chief health informatics officer explains, “There’s no financial incentive for the providers. In fact, in many cases, the financial incentive is reversed. Better I don’t know that the patient had an MRI a month ago and repeat it because in a fee-for-service world we get paid for the procedures we do, not the ones we avoid.”

Do patients mind if their healthcare data is shared? It depends

According to a new ethics study, patients view having their health data used to support medical research, but without their consent, as morally superior to having their health data used to support marketing efforts, even if their consent was given.

Making the Cut: Which surgeon you get matters – a lot. But how do we know who the good ones are?

Researchers at Memorial Sloan Kettering have developed a software system that quantifies and compares patient outcomes across all of its surgeon, with the goal of providing detailed feedback to each surgeon about their performance.

Morning Headlines 12/16/14

Senate confirms Vivek Murthy as surgeon general

The Senate confirms Vivek Murthy, MD as the next US Surgeon General. Murthy previously worked as a Brigham and Women’s internal medicine physician.

The Antidote to Fragmented Health Care

A Harvard Business Review article describes the problems patients experience when receiving care in poorly coordinated health care systems and then calls for payment reform, a shift toward promoting wellness, and a universal EHR as key steps that could help the problem.

Personal Health Record Reach in the Veterans Health Administration: A Cross-Sectional Analysis

Researchers measuring the reach of the VA’s patient portal find that 19 percent of all veterans that receive healthcare from the VA had registered for the portal, 11 percent had refilled prescriptions via the portal, and two percent had sent secure messages to providers. However, the study also found that patients with certain mental disorders, a history of alcohol or drug abuse, or a history of stroke had lower rates of adoption.

Tennessee Governor Moves To Expand Medicaid Coverage

Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam will expand Medicaid coverage to low-income residents using federal funds made available through the Affordable Care Act. Tennessee is the third state to expand Medicaid coverage since last month’s midterm elections.

Morning Headlines 12/15/14

Congress Moves on Federal Appropriations Bill

Congress passes the Omnibus spending bill that will fund the government through September 2015. The ICD-10 deadline survived intact, but the bill does impose limitations and more oversight on the DoD and VA as they work toward modernizing and integrating their EHR systems.

Federal defense contractors find a new profitable business: Obamacare

In the last decade, HHS has risen to the #3 contracting agency in the government, outspending NASA and the Department of Homeland Security, and drawing the interests of major defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, and Northrop Grumman.

Tenet ends bid to acquire five Connecticut hospitals

Tenet walks away from its efforts to buy five hospitals in Connecticut after state officials set strict mandates governing staffing, services, and pricing as a condition of the acquisition.

Health Insurers Brace for Last-Minute Rush

Consumers who enrolled in healthcare over Healthcare.gov last year have until Monday at 11:59pm to change plans, or they will be automatically re-enrolled in their existing plan. Thus far, only 720,000 of the five million 2014 enrollees have returned to select a new plan, leading to some speculation that the site will see a surge of activity on Monday.

Morning Headlines 12/12/14

Data Breach Industry Forecast

Experian publishes its annual “Data Breach Industry Forecast,” which lists a “persistent and growing threat of healthcare breaches” as one of the top security trends for 2015.

Data centre outage hits all Queensland hospitals

In Australia, 40 hospitals lose EHR access and are now running on downtime procedures after a routine upgrade caused memory issues that eventually took out the network’s SAN.

VA Hospital Project Grinds to a Halt Amid Budget Overruns

Construction on VA hospital being built in Denver is suspended after federal judges ruled that the VA was in breach of contract and that the project was $400 million over budget.

Morning Headlines 12/11/14

Congress reaches deal for $1.1 trillion U.S. spending bill

The omnibus spending bill making its way through Congress will not include an ICD-10 delay or Meaningful Use-related language. However, the bill does put stipulations on DoD and VA funding that requires both organizations to submit progress reports on their EHR integration efforts.

CMS reports rising Stage 2 attestations; CHIME says it’s not enough

CMS reports that 11,478 eligible providers and 840 eligible hospitals have attested to Meaningful Use Stage 2 thus far. CHIME quickly responded pointing out that the total stage 2 attestations represent just 35 percent of EHs and four percent of EPs. The deadline for hospitals to attest is December 31, while providers have until February 28.

Patients Increasingly Value Electronic Health Records, Eager for More Access and Features

A new survey measuring consumer interactions with health IT finds that online access to medical records has doubled from 26 percent in 2011 to 50 percent in 2014. 86 percent of the patients with online access to their medical records reported logging in at least once in the last year, while 55 percent report logging in more than three times per year.

Patient Engagement: Digital self-scheduling set to explode in healthcare over the next five years

An Accenture report finds that 77 percent of patients think that being able to book, cancel, and edit appointments online is important. The report predicts that by the end of 2019, 38 percent of appointments will be self-scheduled.

Morning Headlines 12/10/14

Saying Epic is a ‘closed’ health records system is an oversimplification

VentureBeat profiles Legacy Health (OR), an Epic customer, as they work through their interoperability options while trying to share data between a network of community hospitals and the primary care offices that refer patients to them. Epic CEO Judy Faulkner weighs in, “There are multiple standards, and we do most … if not all of the ones that are most frequently used.”

Jonathan Gruber is very, very sorry about Obamacare ‘gaffes’

MIT economist and former healthcare.gov advisor Jonathan Gruber testifies before Congress, apologizing for his disparaging remarks about the Affordable Care Act.

Computer says no: NHS IT was not designed to operate at this level

In England, a physician laments about life as an EHR user as the NHS transitions its hospitals away from paper charts.