Morning Headlines 5/20/14

VA Faces Systemwide Problems With Patient Scheduling

In a Senate Veterans Affairs Committee hearing today, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki said that he is "mad as hell" that new instances of waitlist gaming tactics had been reported from around the country, and that he was ordering a system wide investigation in response. Since the news that the Phoenix VA Medical Center had been maintaining an off-the-record waitlist, similar stories have been reported from whistleblowers in Colorado, Florida, Texas and Wyoming. President Obama has assigned White House deputy chief of staff Rob Nabors to work alongside Shinseki to investigate the allegations.

Pilot at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess gives patients electronic access to therapists’ notes

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is expanding its Open Notes program by providing patients online access to their therapists notes, a decision that has spawned extensive internal debate at BIDMC.

MyMedicalRecords Receives Three Major Health IT Patents Expanding PHR Portfolio to Add Clinical Trials & Legal Records

MMRGlobal is on its way to securing three new health IT related US patents, including: one that describes functionality that allows patients to use a PHR to self report clinical trial data, one that describes patients sharing PHR data with secondary care providers, and one that describes expanding what is stored in a PHR to include wills, powers of attorney, and other portions of the legal record.

Surgeon Cuts Vendors Out Of EHR Quest

Dr. Lloyd Hey of Hey Clinic for Scoliosis and Spine Surgery (NC) hires a full-time programmer to build a custom EHR after concluding that the systems available today were designed for primary care physicians rather than surgeons, and that none deliver the benefits he believes EHRs should generating.

Morning Headlines 5/19/14

Veterans Affairs Chief Accepts Resignation Of Robert Petzel, Under Secretary For Health

Robert Petzel, the top VA official for health care, resigns after it was discovered that the Phoenix VA Medical Center had been falsifying appointment wait lists to appear compliant with the VA’s standards. Petzel was already scheduled to retire in just a few months, so the resignation is more political than a meaningful effort to remove a problematic leader.

Health Care Leaders Gather to Address Challenges, Opportunities of Open Health Data at Health Datapalooza 2014

Health Datapalooza unveils a packed speaker lineup for its June 1-3 conference: US CTO Todd Park, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, AHIP CEO Karen Ignagni, author and surgeon Atul Gawande, athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush, UK Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, and Time author Steven Brill, among others.

LIJ Medical Center Introduces One-of-a-Kind Video Monitoring Project to Enhance Patient Safety in ORs

Long Island Jewish Medical Center (NY) has installed a new real-time auditing system in its operating rooms that use video cameras to monitor the procedure and provide real-time guidance. The system ensures that timeouts, surgical checklists, and pre and postoperative equipment inventories are all being properly conducted according to protocol. Hospital executives say that within a few weeks of implementing the system, they saw meaningful quality improvements.

IBM Reveals New Companies Developing Watson-Powered Apps

IBM unveils the first consumer apps that integrate services from its Watson supercomputer. Modernize Medicine, a dermatology EHR system, is included on the list with its new point-of-care reference app called schEMA.

Morning Headlines 5/16/14

Medfusion sues Allscripts for breach of contract

Medfusion files a breach of contract lawsuit against Allscripts because the company acquired and then began marketing a competing patient portal system while it still had an active contract to resell the Medfusion patient portal. Allscripts announced the acquisition at the start of HIMSS 2013, giving "virtually no advance notice to Medfusion, whose representatives were attending and prepared to jointly market the portal with Allscripts at the show.”

Medicare Fraud Strike Force Charges 90 Individuals for Approximately $260 Million in False Billing

The Medicare Fraud Strike Force announces that a nationwide investigation running across six cities has resulted in 90 individuals, including 27 clinicians, being charged with Medicare fraud. Collectively, the defendants received $260 million in fraudulent reimbursements from Medicare.

Seeking Your Meaningful Use Experiences

The Health IT Policy Committee’s Meaningful Use Workgroup is soliciting the feedback of providers, hospitals, payers, and vendors. HITPC is interested in hearing about experiences in developing, adopting, and meaningfully using electronic health records. Webinars will be held on May 20 and May 27.

Group urges Congress to make telehealth mandatory

The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation issues a report calling on Congress to pass the Telehealth Modernization Act of 2013, a bill that was introduced by Doris Matsui (D-Calif.) and Bill Johnson (R-Ohio) on December 12, 2013 and immediately referred to the Subcommittee on Health, where it remains.

Morning Headlines 5/15/14

Royal Devon edges towards Epic

In England, Epic is named vendor of choice at Royal Devon and Exeter NHS Foundation Trust. Financial details were not disclosed, but an insider familiar with the process explained,  “Epic presents incredibly well to clinicians, when they’ve seen it they just don’t want anything else, but affordability is a huge issue.” Epic’s total project costs at Cambridge University, its first and only UK site, came in at $335 million over 10-years.

Health IT Summit: Halamka predicts only 20% will achieve MU Stage 2

During a speech at the iHT2 Health IT Summit, BIDMC CIO John Halamka, MD predicts that only 20 percent of hospitals will attest for Stage 2 Meaningful Use this year.

Big Data Treasure Trove From Routine Medical Checkups

The Wall Street Journal reports on several recent clinical research projects that use retrospective EHR data analysis rather than clinical trials. In some instances, the findings resulted in new medical discoveries, and the development of new clinical tools.

Morning Headlines 5/14/14

McKesson Reports Fiscal 2014 Fourth-Quarter and Full-Year Results

McKesson reports Q4 and full-year results: revenue for the quarter ended up 25 percent, at $30.5 billion, and dusted EPS climbed to $2.55 vs. $1.48, beat analyst forecasts on both.

How Massachusetts screwed up Obamacare

Massachusett’s poor performing health insurance exchange was the result of a systemic failure to communicate between three state bureaucracies that were all issuing change orders to CGI, the lead contractor responsible for the site. MIT health economist Jon Gruber, who is a member of the state health exchange’s board of directors, says "There wasn’t a single point of management," Gruber says. "It was poorly set up and it was this horrible combination where the contractor would get different orders, and would do none of them."

The Advisory Board’s CEO Robert Musslewhite on Q4 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

During The Advisory Board’s Q4 earnings call, CEO Robert Musselwhite reports that the company acquired HealthPost, a physician search and schedule tool similar to ZocDoc, for $25 million.

Medtronic exec: Google looms large as next great rival

Medtronic’s resident technology scout Dr. Stephen Oesterle predicts that 20 years from now Google will be a dominant player in the medical device industry, competing with the likes of Boston Scientific and Covidien.

Morning Headlines 5/13/14

Quintiles Announces Agreement to Acquire Encore Health Resources

Health IT consulting firm Encore Health Resources is acquired by Quintiles, a consulting firm focused on optimizing research, development, and manufacturing in the pharmaceutical industry.

HITPC workgroup supports narrowed focus of EHR certification program

After a hearing on the EHR certification process last week, the Health IT Policy Committee formally endorses narrowing certification EHR requirements to interoperability, clinical quality measures, and privacy and security standards.

It Took the VA Hospital In Phoenix 10 Years To Install an Electronic Waitlist System

The Phoenix VA hospital was one of the last in the nation to implement the VA’s electronic appointment waitlist system. The system was generally available after 2002, but the Phoenix did not implement it until 2012. The hospital was recently accused of maintaining a secret appointment waitlist that kept veterans waiting more than a year for appointments, and resulted in an estimated 40 preventable veteran deaths.

Morning Headlines 5/12/14

Catholic hospitals suffer second data breach this year

Catholic Health Initiatives sues an unknown Pakistan-based hacker that compromised its network in hopes that it can then convince Microsoft to release the true name behind the outlook email account that was used in the attacks.

Insurance CEO: Shut down Hawaii health exchange

The CEO of Hawaii’s health insurance exchange is calling for it to be shut down after a disastrous $100 million rollout that netted only 9,000 enrollments.

Greenway’s Barnes talks next steps

Greenway Health VP of industry and government affairs will leave the company at the end of the month. He will reportedly launch his own health IT focused startup, in addition to providing health IT consulting services.

Morning Headlines 5/9/14

Flatiron Health Raises $130 Million Series B Round Led by Google Ventures and Agrees to Acquire Leading Cloud-Based EMR Company Altos Solutions

Oncology analytics startup Flatiron Health raises a $130 million Series B round led by Google Ventures. The startup, which was founded by two 20-something ex-Googlers with no medical or health IT experience, is also announcing that it will immediately invest some of that new capital by acquiring Altos Solutions, another cloud-based Oncology analytics firm.

Castlight Health Announces First Quarter 2014 Results

Castlight Health reports its first quarter results since going public: total revenue was $8.4 million, up significantly over 2013 results, but EPS was -$0.72 vs. –$1.19, missing analyst expectations. Their stock price is down seventy percent since their March IPO.

New HHS data show quality improvements saved 15,000 lives and $4 billion in health spending

HHS reports that, since implementing the Affordable Care Act, reductions in falls, adverse drug events, and infections “have prevented nearly 15,000 deaths in hospitals, avoided 560,000 patient injuries, and approximately $4 billion in health spending over the same period." HHS also says readmission rates have dropped 1.5 percent.

19th Annual Sohn Investment Conference: David Einhorn

Hedge fund manager David Einhorn’s slides from the critical presentation he gave on athenaHealth are released. Athena’s stock prices have dropped 15 percent since his statements.

Morning Headlines 5/8/14

Data breach results in $4.8 million HIPAA settlements

New York and Presbyterian Hospital and Columbia University will pay a $4.8 million HIPAA fine, the largest settlement to date. The data breach occurred when an in-house developer accidently compromised a network shared by the two organizations, leading to PHI being not only open to the internet, but indexed in Google search results. The health system learned of the breach when the family member of a deceased patient reported finding the medical records of her relative online.

State-Based Obamacare Exchanges Cost Far More Than the Federal Market

State-based health insurance exchanges are paying significantly more per enrollment than states that choose to rely on the federal Healthcare.gov site, according to a new Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report. Hawaii paid an average of $920 per enrollment on its state site, making it the most expensive exchange in the nation. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Florida, Wisconsin, and Virginia all used the federal exchange and paid $20 or less per enrollment.

Report Reveals Trends In Health IT Data Analytics and Reporting

46 percent of respondents in a new data analytics survey report a positive ROI on their investments, compared to just 14 percent who reported a negative ROI. Granted, the study was funded by a health IT vendor, and 75 percent of the respondents said that they are only using Excel, Access, or Crystal Reports to manage their analytics programs.

Morning Headlines 5/7/14

David Einhorn Shorts Athenahealth; ‘Caught Up In a Bubble’

Greenlight Capital hedge fund manager David Einhorn predicts that athenahealth shares will fall 80 percent or more from its recent highs, saying that the company’s 5-year 275 percent growth is symptomatic of what he calls an emerging tech bubble. Athena shares fell nearly 14 percent after his comments.

Massachusetts Starts Over on Health Website After Troubles

Massachusetts follows Oregon’s lead in scrapping its existing CGI-developed health insurance exchange. Despite being unable to bring its original site live after more than a year of work, Massachusetts has decided to try it all again, this time contracting with hCentive and setting an even more aggressive seven-month timeline in hopes that it will have the new site live in time for the November 2014 enrollment period. As a backup, Massachusetts will also enroll in the federal Healthcare.gov site. This dual-track solution will cost the state an additional $100 million.

The Watson Mobile Developer Challenge

IBM announces 25 finalists in its Watson Mobile Developer Challenge, of which eight are healthcare or fitness related. The contest sought innovative new ideas that would leverage Watson’s computing power to bring big data solutions to the mobile platform.

County pledges $500K to Lincoln software switch

Durham (NC) county commissioners authorize just $500,000 of the $1 million that Lincoln Community Health Center requested to implement Epic as an extension of Duke Health’s system. The total cost of the implementation is estimated at $2 million, and Duke had already agreed to pay $1 million of that, which now leaves Lincoln Community with a $500,000 difference to cover. The county commissioners suggested that Lincoln should convince Duke to pay the difference.

Morning Headlines 5/6/14

Epic, Cerner are top EHRs for docs meeting meaningful-use requirement

Epic remains the top vendor for Meaningful Use attestations by eligible providers with a complete EHR, while Cerner is the top vendor for EPs attesting with a modular EHR.

Health Information Exchange among U.S. Hospitals Continues to Grow, but Significant Work Remains

ONC says in a recent report that 93 percent of US hospitals now possess a certified EHR. In a separate report, it says that 62 percent of the same hospitals are using HIEs to exchange laboratory results, radiology reports, clinical care summaries, or medication lists with outside providers.

Fitch Rates Centegra Health System & Affiliates, IL Ser 2014A Revs ‘BBB’; Downgrades Rev Bonds

Fitch Ratings has lowered its outlook for Centegra Health System (IL) from stable to negative, and issues a rating of BBB on its revenue bonds. Fitch expected improved performance in 2013, but one-time EHR implementation costs, combined with an increase in practice acquisitions, dampened financial results. Centegra then added $200 million in debt to pay for construction of a 128-bed hospital.

Morning Headlines 5/5/14

Blue Cross Blue Shield of ND reports $72.9 million loss

Blue Cross Blue Shield of North Dakota releases its 2013 year-end report. Within the report, BCBS-ND discloses that its bottom line dropped $72 million, compared to 2012. Its subsidiary Noridian Healthcare Solutions took a $51 million loss after being fired as the lead contractor on Maryland’s health insurance exchange. BCBS-ND took an additional $25 million loss when the newly implemented EHRs being rolled out by local providers caused billing delays and a claims backlog that BCBS significantly underestimated the value of, and did not budget for.

CPSI Announces First Quarter 2014 Results

CPSI announces Q1 results: revenue up five percent to $52.1 million, driving net income up 11 percent to $7.7 million. EPS $0.69 vs $0.63 last year, missing analysts forecasts by a wide margin. Stock prices ended down 4.6 percent at the end of the trading day Friday.

How scribes made Allina an extra $205,000

After Cardiologists with Allina Health started using scribes to handle EHR related data entry, the health system noticed a significant jump in patient volumes. Cardiologists using scribes were generating $205,740 in additional revenue per 65 clinic hours. Scribes also helped reduce doctor burnout.

Morning Headlines 5/2/14

ManTech Announces Acquisition of 7Delta, Inc.

ManTech International Corporation acquires 7Delta after the Maryland-based IT services firm won a 5-year contract with the VA through its Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology procurement program. Through the acquisition, ManTech will be in position to support the VA’s transition to newer IT systems.

Medicare Program: Hospital Prospective Payment Systems

CMS confirms, buried within a 1700-page document, that the new ICD-10 transition date will be October 1, 2015.

Sovereign Wealth Fund KIA Invests $100 Million in NantHealth, a NantWorks Company

The Kuwait Investment Authority invests $100 million in  healthcare billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong’s newest venture NantHealth.

athenahealth Names Karl Stubelis Acting Chief Financial Officer

athenaHealth announces that CFO Tim Adams has stepped down to pursue other opportunities, and that current vice president and corporate controller Karl Stubelis will take his place.

Morning Headlines 5/1/14

Merge Reports First Quarter Financial Results

Merge reports Q1 results: revenue dropped to $50.9 million from $63.6 million during the same period last year, but lowered costs drove a net income increase of 47 percent. EPS of $0.00 vs -$0.07, stock prices ended trading five percent down on the day.

Boston Medical Center fires vendor after data breach

Boston Medical Center fires its transcription service vendor after it was discovered that 15,000 patient records were posted on the vendor’s website without password protection.

VA Eyes Cash Prizes To Generate Ideas For New Health Record

According to a notice posted on a federal contracting website, the VA will launch a series of design challenges to help generate innovative solutions for its next-generation VistA platform.

March 2014: EHR Incentive Program

CMS has now paid out $22.9 billion since the start of the EHR Incentive Program.

Morning Headlines 4/30/14

M*Modal Files Chapter 11 Plan Backed By Creditors

MModal files its disclosure statement and reorganization plan, detailing the company’s strategy to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy by August 15.

UPMC Selling Analytics to Curb Health Care Costs

UPMC will begin licensing its homegrown clinical analytics system to other healthcare organizations. The platform identifies the lowest cost treatment plans that consistently lead to the highest quality outcomes and then benchmarks individual physician performance against this data. In the ED, the system is used to predict which patients were more likely to be readmitted, helping UPMC staff reduce readmission rates by 37 percent.

Medfusion’s Relationship with Allscripts Comes to an End

Medfusion will no longer offer its patient portal through Allscripts "due to unresolved payment disputes," according to a statement released Monday.

Nuance CEO Paul Ricci tops in pay among Massachusetts executives

The Boston Globe calls Nuance CEO Paul Ricci the most overpaid executive in Massachusetts. Ricci earned $87 million over the past three years, during which time his company’s stock fell 16 percent.

Morning Headlines 4/29/14

Merck Teams With Electronic Health Record Provider Practice Fusion To Improve Patient Health

Merck partners with Practice Fusion to bring EHR-based immunization reminder tools into physician practices. The partnership will provide physicians with the added ability to track immunization rates at the population level, and automatically send immunization reminders to patients.

What Do Physicians Read (and Ignore) in Electronic Progress Notes?

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst studying the eye movements of physicians as they read electronic notes find that the clinical narrative within the impression and plan section of the note was nearly always carefully read, but that the remainder of the note was only quickly scanned.

Reading Pain in a Human Face

Researchers with the Institute for Neural Computation have created software tool that can outperform humans at differentiating real pain from faked pain by analyzing facial expressions. In the study, participants were asked to watch a video showing subjects expressing either real pain or  faked pain. The participants were only able to correctly identify real pain 55 percent of the time, but the computer program could accurately identify real pain 85 percent of the time.

Morning Headlines 4/28/14

Cover Oregon: $248 million state exchange to be jettisoned in favor of federal system

Oregon’s health insurance exchange program will be dissolved and replaced by the now functional Healthcare.gov site. Oregon spent $248 million trying to bring its exchange live, but failed to enroll a single person.

It’s Insanely Easy to Hack Hospital Equipment

Fargo, ND-based health system Essentia Health asks its head if IT security to thoroughly evaluate its network for security vulnerabilities. Two years later, the team reports that they were able to hack into the hospital’s EHR system and its imaging system. In addition, they were able to hack into and change the settings on drug infusion pumps, wireless defibrillators, and refrigerators that store blood products. 

2015 Edition EHR Standards and Certification Criteria Proposed Rule

The HIMSS EHR association publishes its comments to ONC’s proposed 2015 EHR certification criteria. EHRA’s primary concern is that there is not enough time left after final rules are published for vendors to properly code and test enhancements. The association is requesting an 18-month window be built into the timeline for coding and testing to take place before customers are expected to be live with the new features.

Hacker group Anonymous targets Children’s Hospital

Hacker group Anonymous is suspected of recent hacking attempts on Boston Children’s Hospital’s networks. Anonymous threatened to initiate attacks after a doctor from the hospital brought medical child-abuse charges against the parents of a patient, leading to the child being removed from the parent’s custody.