Morning Headlines 11/27/13

Nuance Announces Fiscal 2013 and Fourth Quarter Results

Nuance reports Q4 results: $0.30 EPS on a total revenue of $472 million, missing analyst estimates of $489 million, but surpassing the $0.29 EPS estimate. Stock price fell 18 percent Tuesday due to lower than expected Q1 guidance.

7 Democrats Seek Long-Term HealthCare.gov CEO

A group of seven Democratic senators, led by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, is calling for President Obama to appoint a CEO over Healthcare.gov  following the expected departure of Jeffrey Zients. Zenits was tapped to fix healthcare.gov shortly after it became apparent that the site had major technical issues, but at the time, he had already accepted a position as director of the National Economic Council which will start in January.

Telemedicine May Reduce Doctor Errors for Kids in Rural EDs‏

The use of telemedicine for pediatric consults in rural emergency departments led to fewer physician-related medication errors according to a report published in this month’s issue of Pediatrics.

Two Kansas health information exchanges to link, improving access

After more than a year of heated disagreements, two competing for-profit health information exchanges from Kansas have agreed to connect and share medical records statewide.

Morning Headlines 11/26/13

Analysis of huge data sets will reshape health care

USAToday covers the rise of big data in healthcare, imagining that, " Insurers will soon reassess how they predict costs; patients will let doctors know what medications won’t work with their particular genomes; and researchers will look at hospital records in real time to determine the cheapest, most effective ways to treat patients."

ProHealth adds Epic Systems’ ‘population management’ tool

ProHealth Care, a Wisconsin-based health system and ACO, becomes the first Epic customer to use Cogito, Epic’s population health data miner.

Congress Pushed for Stage 3 Criteria for Telehealth

The American Telemedicine Association, Association for Competitive Technology, Continua Health Alliance, and the Telecommunications Industry Association send a letter to Congressional leaders asking that they ensure that Meaningful Use Stage 3 includes interoperability requirements that address not only data within EHRs, but also data captured via remote patient monitoring systems.

FDA tells 23andMe to halt sales of genetic test

The FDA has ordered personal genome testing vendor 23andMe to pull its services from the market until it proves to the FDA that its tests are scientifically valid.

Morning Headlines 11/25/13

Tension and Flaws Before Health Website Crash

The New York Times says the White House, CMS, and the prime contractors all knew that Healthcare.gov was not ready for its October 1 launch.

THE HIT GROUP

Sunquest forms The HIT Group, a group of health IT vendors calling for FDA regulation over the health IT marketplace. Sunquest is hoping other vendors join its call for stronger and clearer regulatory guidance. Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, legislators hear testimony from FDA representative Jeffrey Shuren, MD concerning the recently proposed SOFTWARE Act which would restrict the FDA from exercising oversight on EHRs and clinical decision support tools.

Providence moves to save $5M at western Montana hospitals

Providence Health’s western Montana region, which includes St Patrick Hospital and St Joseph Medical Center, will lay off an undisclosed number of employees in an effort to offset the cost of hiring additional staff to support the network’s EHR.

So much data-gathering, so little doctoring 

A Los Angeles Times op-ed piece by gastroenterologist Michael Jones, MD calls EHRs "the latest wrench the healthcare industry has thrown in the way of doctors just listening to their patients." He goes on to explain that he left academic medicine for a small private practice, where he still hand writes all his notes and then calls the referring physician to discuss his findings.

Morning Headlines 11/22/13

Children’s Medical Center Selected as 2013 Enterprise HIMSS Davies Award Winner

Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, TX has been named this year’s HIMSS Davies award winner.
Administrators at Children’s used their EHR to introduce standardized clinical pathways that have decrease variation in care and significantly improve patient outcomes.

Cedars-Sinai Taps iPhone For Enterprise Mobility       

Forbes profiles Cedars-Sinai’s roll out of iPhones for its nurses. CIO Darren Dworkin says "The iPhone, while a consumer device, has been the first real platform on which we could see our core vendors, like Epic, and an eco system of new vendors, like Voalte, coming together to deliver the workflow that our nurses and doctors deserve."

Clinovations Launches Center for Population Health Management

Clinovations, a Washington DC-based healthcare consulting firm, announces the formation of a center that will focus on designing and implementing population management and value-based care delivery systems.

Morning Headlines 11/21/13

FDA approves next gen sequencers in watershed for personalized med

The FDA has cleared toe manufacturers of four next generation high-throughput DNA sequencers to market the devices to help identify gene mutations that are linked with cystic fibrosis.

Children’s Oakland completes Phase 1 of $89 million electronic records system

Children’s Hospital & Research Center in Oakland (CA) goes live with its $89 million Epic rollout across its inpatient and oncology/hematology clinics. The remainder of its ambulatory clinics are scheduled to go live in April.

Health dept pleads for PCEHR patience

In Australia, Department of Health secretary Jane Halton is asking for patience as the nations newly elected Prime Minister calls for a review of the nations failing $1 billion patient-controlled EHR portal program. To date, only 11,136 shared health summaries had been uploaded into the system despite being live for more than a year.

Morning Headlines 11/20/13

The Anatomy of Health Care in the United States

Researchers at Johns Hopkins publish a study in JAMA that evaluates the economic mechanisms contributing to the rise of healthcare costs in the US. The study finds that costs are increasing for a number of reasons: 1) hospital and practice consolidation is weakening the purchasing power of healthcare consumers 2)  drug and medical device costs are increasing 3) expensive investments in health IT have not resulted in a significant savings.

eClinicalWorks Makes Additional $50 Million Investment in Patient Engagement & Population Health

Westborough, MA-based eClinicalWorks will spend $50 million bolstering its patient engagement business unit, adding 100 employees over the next year to enhance the company’s patient portal mobile app.

Icahn says would ‘never’ push Apple to buy Nuance

Active Investor Carl Icahn, who has a 16.9 percent stake in Nuance and a significant stake in Apple, says that he will not pressure Apple to buy Nuance.

Healthsherpa Helps Thousands Get Insurance Quotes

Three entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley code a healthcare.gov competitor, called TheHealthSherpa.com, in just three days. The site is able to generate insurance quotes based off zip code, age, and smoking status, and estimates federal subsidies based on annual income. It stops short of actually enrolling consumers in new plans, but does serve as a research tool for consumers, not to mention proof of how quickly and efficiently projects can be rolled out if the right people are involved.

Morning Headlines 11/19/13

Use of Analytics Produces Better Patient Outcomes

Informaticists at UNC Health Care in Chapel Hill, NC are using natural language processing analytics tools to comb through text-based mammogram reports to help ensure that all patients who need follow up appointments are seen. Researchers with the study report that 25 percent of adverse affects occurring in the outpatient setting are a result of inadequate follow up of abnormal test results. The NLP-based analytics tool was able to read through 500 reports and accurately identify which ones needed follow up appointments with a 100 percent accuracy.

Here’s What Your Operation Will Really Cost

Intermountain Healthcare announces that it will begin tracking the cost of all consumables, equipment, and time spent delivering care across the network to get a more accurate picture of the total cost of care for different conditions. The hope is to create a "cost master" that could then be embedded in Intermountain’s EHR and used to help drive fiscally responsible care planning.

CareFusion plans to acquire GE Healthcare’s Vital Signs

CareFusion announces that it will acquire GE Healthcare’s Vital Signs business unit for $500 million. Vital Signs makes a variety of single-use products that support respiratory care, anesthesiology, and patient monitoring.

Morning Headlines 11/18/13

Health IT helping to fight the prescription drug abuse epidemic

ONC announces a new interoperability project that will help establish common technical standards and a standard vocabulary that will allow EHRs and HIEs to integrate data from state-run prescription drug abuse databases.

Cover Oregon: Health exchange board puts director Rocky King on notice over stalled website

The board of Oregon’s health insurance exchange program has places its executive director, Rocky King, on notice over technical issues that have plagued the exchange’s website, and prevented anyone from buying health insurance on it, since its October 1 launch.

AMIA 2013 Annual Symposium

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) kicks off its week-long annual conference in Washington DC this week.

Steve Larking Joins ESD as Regional Vice President

Former MaxIT VP Steve Larking joins health IT consulting firm ESD. MaxIT was acquired by SAIC last year, and then rolled into a new company after SAIC split itself into two businesses. Ray Murray, another maxIT VP, also left for ESD at the beginning of November.

Morning Headlines 11/15/13

Credit-rating agency downgrades Cone Health

Standard & Poor’s has changed its outlook on Greensboro, NC-based Cone Health from stable to negative based on poor financial performance. Despite more than 300 layoffs during 2013, Cone reported a Q3 operating loss of $17 million on $806 million in patient revenue. The S&P has affirmed Cone’s AA credit rating, saying that the financial problems of 2012 and 2013 were are based largely on one-time costs. Cone spent $90 million to implement Epic and $40 million in additional Epic operating expenses over three fiscal years, as well as adding 90 full-time employees to help with maintenance and operation of Epic.

Vendors Rushing to Mark Territory in Population Health Management Land Grab

KLAS releases a report evaluating the emerging population health software market, finding that no single vendor is leading but that a handful of vendors are beginning to emerge as early segment leaders.

IBM to open up Watson to third-party developers

IBM has launched an API that will allow developers to build applications that make use of the Watson Supercomputers ‘cognitive computing’ power. One developer that has already announced intentions of developing an app is Hippocrates, from MD Buyline, that will help clinical users make real time decisions.

DOD Seeks Value, Quality in Modernizing Health Records System

In a press release issued by the Department of Defense, DoD and VA Interagency Program Office director Christopher Miller outlined what has been happening with the DoD/VA integrated EHR project as of late. Miller wears two hats within the DoD, one heading up the DoD’s EHR vendor search and the other overseeing the VA/DoD interagency department responsible for successfully planning and completing the iEHR project. Miller’s letter highlights a focus on interoperability a need to pursue meaningful data exchanges so that the DoD can coordinate not only with the VA, but also with civilian healthcare systems that often provide referral services for active duty service members.

Morning Headlines 11/14/13

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas and Tenet Healthcare Corporation Collaborate on Statewide ACO to Improve Quality and Efficiency of Care

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas will launch a state-wide ACO with Tenet Healthcare’s 10 Texas-based facilities in January 2015.

MIT’s shapeshifting display lets you reach out and touch someone

Researchers at MIT have created a prototype of a 3D monitor that it hopes will have implications in medical imaging by providing 3D visualizations of CT scans.

US, UK open public health cloud

The US and UK will begin consolidating de-identified patient data from CMS, the FDA, and the NHS in England. The data will be stored in a UK-hosted health data cloud, where it will be made available to researchers all over the world.

JAMA Delves Deep Into What’s Ailing American Healthcare

The November issue of JAMA delves into some of the critical issues within the US healthcare system and proposals to fix them. Topics included healthcare costs and outcomes, industry consolidation, and the tension between population health and individual healthcare. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, contributed a piece challenging the healthcare industry to shrink US per capita health care cost growth to no more than GDP + zero percent by 2020. He calls for, among many things, an increase in EHR adoption and remote patient monitoring as a means to this end.

Morning Headlines 11/13/13

Joint Center for Cancer Precision Medicine established

In Boston, Dana Farber, Brigham and Women’s, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have announced a collaborative partnership that will pursue advances in cancer genetics to create “precision medicine treatment pathways” for patients with advanced cancers.

WESTMED Accountable Care Collaboration with UnitedHealthcare and Optum Yields Significant Health Improvements

White Plains NY-based WESTMED Medical Group reports that its year-old ACO has led to improvements in nine of 10 health quality metrics, increased patient satisfaction, and reduced health care costs.

First Estimate On Insurance Sign-Ups Is Pretty Darned Small

Fewer than 50,000 people signed up for health insurance through Healthcare.gov during the month of October, according to the Wall Street Journal. The administration had been targeting 500,000 for October, but the site launch was plagued with technical issues.

CMS Reconsiders ‘End-to-End’ ICD-10 Testing

CMS is reconsidering its earlier decision to forego end-to-end ICD-10 testing with physician’s offices, claiming at the time that it was confident that its own internal testing was sufficient. The change in tone comes in response to growing public concern about its testing of Healthcare.gov.

DrFirst Launches New Tool to Alert Doctors to At-Risk Patients and Identify Patient Medication Adherence Rates

DrFirst has enhanced its e-prescribing routine to present physicians with prescription fill rates and unfilled prescription alerts for patients at the point of prescription writing. The information will used to help physicians gauge medication adherence. It will be available either on DrFirst’s own e-prescribing system or within an EHR system that uses it.

Morning Headlines 11/12/13

With Enrollment at 200K, VA’s Million Veteran Program Inks Contracts for Genetic Analysis

The VA has enrolled 200,000 veterans in the Million Veteran Program, a long-term genetics research study the VA hopes will uncover genetic links to various diseases and lead to personalized treatment strategies for veterans. With steadily increasing enrollment, the VA has also announced that they have contracted with the BioProcessing Solutions Alliance and BioStorage Technologies to provide genome sequencing for the program over the next five years.

State apologizes for patients’ records posted on Internet

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is apologizing after accidently publishing the names, addresses, and payment information of 1,300 patients to a public website.

NextGen Healthcare Unveils New Interoperability Platform — NextGen Share —at 18th Annual NextGen Healthcare User Group Meeting

NextGen unveils a new secure exchange platform called NextGen Share. The product is the first collaborative product launch with Mirth since acquiring the open-source HIE vendor in September.

Morning Headlines 11/11/13

White House tech expert gets subpoena to testify on HealthCare.gov

Todd Park, the US chief technology officer, has been issued a subpoena by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to testify at a hearing next week about what went wrong with the Healthcare.gov website. The committee says he was not willing to appear voluntarily, while the White House responded that the subpoena was unnecessary and poorly timed because Park is heavily involved in fixing Healthcare.gov and had already volunteered to testify in December.

Region Zealand and the Capital Region points to Epic as a provider of Health Platform

Epic, working with NNIT as a prime contractor, will sign a contract to provide EHR systems for all of eastern Denmark, according to a translated press release. The deal will involve 40,000 users and is valued at $180 million.

University Hospital sees banding together for survival

University Hospital (GA) will likely join Novant Health Inc., a 20-facility network based in Charlotte, NC. University Hospital’s CEO cites ARRA and the ACA as having too significant an impact on the bottom line to keep up as a standalone facility. The hospital spent $50 million on Epic and is looking for an additional $30 million to cover needed upgrades.

Report: CCO diversion program working

In Oregon, a recent report finds that a statewide coordinated care program has managed to reduce overall ER visits by 9 percent from 2011, before the program was launched. Emergency care spending also declined 18 percent from 2011. Outpatient primary care visits have increased by 18 percent and spending for primary care is up 7 percent.

Morning Headlines 11/8/13

Allscripts Healthcare Posts Q3 Loss

Allscripts reports Q3 results: revenue dropped to $330 million, compared to $360 million a year ago. EPS $0.05 vs $0.23, missing analysts estimates.The company also announced that it has fired  Cliff Meltzer, EVP of solutions development.

Data Analytics Update: Health IT Policy Committee Meeting

CMS has paid $16.5 billion in EHR incentive payments thus far. Meditech, Cerner, and Epic customers account for almost half of Stage 1 hospital attestations. Epic, Allscripts, eClinicalWorks, and NextGen represent almost half of Stage 1 EP attestations.

HIMSS Offers Guidance to HHS on FDA Regulation of Health IT

In a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, HIMSS argues against FDA regulation of EHRs as a medical device, instead proposing "a new risk-based oversight framework that takes into account factors such as risk relative to intended use and cost/benefit of any proposed oversight."

Results From Survey on Health Data Exchange

eHealth Initiative’s 10th annual health data exchange study consolidates survey responses from representatives at 200 HIEs across the country. Respondents report that large scale interoperability is still too difficult and expensive for most to sustain on revenue alone. Currently, only 25 percent of respondents report that they are earning enough to operate independently.

Morning Headlines 11/7/13

Healthcare.gov casualty: CMS CIO steps down

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services CIO Tony Trenkle will step down from his position effective November 15 according to an internal email sent by CMS COO Michelle Snyder. Trenkle joined CMS in 2005, directing the Office of E-Health Standards and Services before becoming CIO and overseeing the agency’s $2 billion IT budget.

NSA allegations prompt NIST to review data encryption processes

The National Institute of Standards and Technology announces that it will have its data encryption standards independently reviewed after leaked documents reveal that the NSA has cracked the encryption standard. NIST encryption is the de facto standard for healthcare information security.

Surescripts Network Gains Momentum, Adds 12 Health Systems to Connect Providers across Care Communities

Surescripts adds 12 Epic health systems to its growing health information exchange network.

Disability claims backlog, EHR efforts top VA nominee’s priorities

Sloan Gibson, current USO CEO and presidential nominee to be the next VA deputy director reported that he would tackle the longstanding backlog of disability claims and will work to find common ground with the Defense Department on a new strategy for a joint electronic-health records system.

Morning Headlines 11/6/13

Health Management Associates Announces Restatement of Financial Statements

Health Management Associates will restate all of its financial statements going back to 2010 to correct for $31 million in EHR incentive payments improperly collected by 11 of its hospitals. An internal audit recently found that the hospitals attested for Meaningful Use Stage 1 when they did not actually meet the requirements.

CPSI Announces Third Quarter 2013 Results

CPSI announces Q3 results: revenue up four percent, to $47 million vs. $45 million over the same period last year. EPS $0.66 vs. $0.63.

Community CIS Market Quickly Turning into Replacement Market

KLAS reports that 25 percent of community hospitals would not buy the same HIS again. Epic fared the best in the community hospital space, followed in order by Healthland, CPSI, Meditech, and McKesson.

Rotherham trust revises EPR strategy

In England, Rotherham NHS will walk away from its $50 million Meditech 6.0 system that went live in 2012.

Morning Headlines 11/5/13

Care Team Connect Is Now a Part of The Advisory Board Company

The Advisory Board announces that it has acquired Evanston, IL.-based Care Team Connect, a population health vendor that provides web-based SaaS to help care teams utilize population risk stratification while coordinating care across care settings.

Registry-based clinical trial puts heart treatment to the test

Researchers in Sweden are validating a new post-market clinical trial approach that uses analytics tools to pour through EHR data to substantiate outcomes are matching expectations established in pre-market trials. During their research, they discovered that the use of thrombus aspiration, a common procedure for certain types of heart attack patients, resulted in no difference in 30-day all-cause mortality rates for patients who received the treatment vs. patients who did not. The findings are the subject of a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

New technology helps smaller hospitals identify signs of a stroke

Five remote hospitals across Ohio are using a new telehealth system to connect with stroke specialists at Toledo Hospital. Two more hospitals are expected to join the network by the end of the year.