Morning Headlines 4/27/17

The MacArthur Amendment Language, Race In The Federal Exchange, And Risk Adjustment Coefficients

Health Affair’s Tim Jost, JD reviews the new AHCA amendment proposed that has won the support of the GOP Freedom Caucus, substantially improving its chance of passing both chambers of Congress.

CMS notifying clinicians of MIPS participation status

CMS announces that by the end of May it will send letters to practices to notify them that they are required to participate in MIPS in 2017.

Sepsis Solutions Are Saving Lives and Enabling Better Care, According to New KLAS Report

In a small survey, KLAS reviews sepsis surveillance solutions marketed by major EHR vendors and niche surveillance vendors. 69 percent of respondents reported improved outcomes, with some reporting up to a 50 percent drop in mortality.

Prize-Winning DxtER “Tricorder” Makes a Public Appearance With Tech Legend Steve Wozniak

Basil Harris, MD, the team leader of Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize first place winner Final Frontier Medical Devices, demonstrates his team’s Tricorder design to Steve Wozniak at the 2nd annual Silicon Valley Comic Con.

Morning Headlines 4/26/17

USCG Electronic Health Record Acquisition RFI

The Coast Guard issues an RFP soliciting bids for an EHR that will integrate with both the DoD and the VA. The Coast Guard abandoned its 2015 Leidos-run Epic installation without going live anywhere.

Mayo Clinic Health Information Offered Through Epic Patient Apps

Epic partners with Mayo Clinic to offer patient’s health information within its MyChart and MyChart Bedside apps.

Erlanger reports solid earnings for third quarter

Erlanger Health System reports strong Q3 results, but warns that the $100 million Epic implementation, which begins May 1, will impact future revenues.

Former NFL Player, Myron Rolle, To Start Neurosurgery Residency at Harvard

Former Tennessee Titans defensive back Myron Rolle has earned a medical degree from Florida State University College of Medicine following and recently announced that he has been matched to Harvard medical School, where he will start his neurosurgery residency program.

Morning Headlines 4/25/17

$2.5 million settlement shows that not understanding HIPAA requirements creates risk

OCR announces a $2.5 million HIPAA settlement with remote mobile monitoring vendor CardioNet after a stolen laptop exposed 1,391 patient records. During its investigation, OCR found that CardioNet never implemented finalized policies on safeguarding ePHI.

AHIMA Letter to Congress

AHIMA sends a letter to ranking members of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education lobbying for sufficient ONC funding to allow the office to meet expanded obligations established under the 21st Century Cures Act.

HHS to stand up its own version of the NCCIC for health

HHS announces that it will form the Health Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, which will work to educate healthcare organizations and consumers about cyber threats and data security.

Prescription monitoring program stalls in Legislature

The future of Missouri’s prescription drug monitoring program is once again uncertain after the Missouri House rejects the most recent version of the bill after several new amendments were added, one limiting the type of drugs monitored and another defining how long patient records would be kept. Missouri’s bill is now at a standstill, leaving it the only state without a PDMP.

Morning Headlines 4/24/17

Surgeon general dismissed, replaced by Trump administration

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD is fired and replaced by Rear Admiral Sylvia Trent-Adams, who is the current Deputy Surgeon General.

The Mumps Programming Language

The MUMPS programming language catches the attention of Hacker News, with 178 comments discussing its peculiarities and its use at Meditech and Epic.

Theranos Secretly Bought Outside Lab Gear and Ran Fake Tests, Court Filings Allege

A lawsuit filed by former investors accuses Theranos of setting up a shell company to secretly buy commercial lab test equipment.

ECMC, hit by cyberattack, continues massive task of restoring computer functions

Erie County Medical Center (NY) continues to operate on paper as it works to restore network services after a cyberattack on April 9.

Morning Headlines 4/21/17

Secretary Price Announces HHS Strategy for Fighting Opioid Crisis

HHS Secreatry Tom Price, MD announces $485 million in funding that will be made available to all 50 states fund efforts to combat the opioid epidemic.

Tanium exposed hospital’s internal network in product demos

Cybersecurity company Tanium puts its own client’s network at risk by using an installation of its software at El Camino Hospital (CA) to do product demonstrations for two years without permission, revealing server and computer names, employee information, and real-time security vulnerabilities during the demonstrations.

Using telephony data to facilitate discovery of clinical workflows

National Coordinator for Health IT Don Rucker, MD publishes a paper suggesting that analyzing telecommunication activity within healthcare settings may help developers target clinical workflows in need of redesign.

How technology supports accurate risk adjusting for Medicare ACOs

The Advisory Board Company EVP Jon Kontor, MD offers a primer on how to optimize EHRs to be able to better manage clinical and financial risks within value-based payment models.

Direct to Consumer Digital Medical Devices – A Cautionary Tale for Entrepreneurs

Venture Valkerie offers a warning to entrepreneurs considering a direct-to-consumer approach to medical device sales.

Morning Headlines 4/20/17

Innovative EHR Platform Brings 11,000 True-life Cases to Med Ed

AMA introduces a web-based EHR training tool developed by Regenstrief Institute that uses records from 11,000 de-identified patients with built-in medical histories going back as far as 40 years. The EHR training platform includes functionality based on Meaningful Use Stage 2 certification criteria so that the workflows will be similar to what residents will see in a hospital setting.

Alphabet will track health data of 10,000 volunteers to ‘create a map of human health’

Alphabet’s life sciences business Verily launches its Project Baseline initiative, a 4-year project aimed at creating a database that will be used to look for early warning indicators for a variety of illnesses. The project will sequence the genomes of 10,000 volunteers and then use an activity tracker to monitor participant’s sleep, activity, heart rate, and other health metrics over the next four years.

Social networks push runners to run further and faster than their friends

A study published in Nature finds that sharing exercise activity over social networks does have a positive influence on the exercise habits of friends.

Health Insurers Make Case for Subsidies, but Get Little Assurance From Administration

At a Tuesday meeting with White House officials, health insurance lobbyists and executives seeking assurances that subsidies would continue to be paid for low-income consumers buying individual marketplace plans, a step seen as critical to stabilizing the individual markets, were given no assurances and were instead told to take the matter up with Congress.

Morning Headlines 4/19/17

Theranos Reaches Resolution with Centers For Medicare & Medicaid Services

Theranos settles its ongoing legal battles with CMS over unsafe practices at its Newark and California labs, agreeing that it will not own or operate a clinical laboratory for the next two years in exchange for reduced monetary penalties.

Arizona Attorney General Reaches Settlement With Theranos

Theranos also settles its legal battles with Arizona Attorney General, agreeing to issue a full refund to all 175,000 Arizona residents who received Theranos blood tests.

Increasing Access to Care for Phoenix Veterans

The Phoenix VA Medical Center will partner with CVS to expand coverage locations to include local MinuteClinics.

Cardinal Health’s $6.1 billion deal for Medtronic unit ignites debt concerns

Cardinal Health announces that it will acquire Medtronic’s Patient Care, Deep Vein Thrombosis and Nutritional Insufficiency businesses for $6.1 billion in cash.

Morning Headlines 4/18/17

Hospital Inpatient Prospective Payment Systems for Acute Care Hospitals and Proposed Policy Changes and Fiscal Year 2018 Rates

A new rule proposed by CMS would relax CQM reporting requirements for eligible hospitals.

Cerner Tops Shortlist of Vendors to Replace VA’s Outdated EHR

A Black Book report evaluating Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, Meditech, and Athenahealth says Cerner is the best EHR vendor to replace VistA within the Department of Veterans Affairs.

HCA Previews 2017 First Quarter Results

HCA reports Q1 results: revenue climbed to $10.6 billion compared to $10.2 billion in Q1 of 2016, however net income dropped from $694 million to $659 million over the same time period, EPS $1.74 vs. $1.69. Revenue and net income missed analyst estimates, sending share prices down 3.6 percent Monday.

An informatics-based approach to reducing heart failure all-cause readmissions: the Stanford heart failure dashboard

A JAMIA study on dashboard-based support tools aimed at reducing 30-day all-cause readmissions for heart failure finds that readmission rates were pushed downward from a 14 percent baseline to 10.1percent after the implementation of dashboards.

Morning Headlines 4/17/17

Electronic POLST Puts End-of-Life Wishes in the Patient’s Hands

In New Jersey, a program is being launched to move the documentation of end-of-life care decisions off of paper and onto a state-wide database that will integrate with EHR systems in use across the state’s hospitals.

RWJBarnabas CISO Rethinks Cybersecurity for Age of Connected Medical Devices

The Wall Street Journal profiles RWJBarnabas (NJ) CISO Hussein Syed and his approach to maintaining the network security across his organization’s 12 hospitals, 250  clinics, and 75,000 devices.

Where medical marijuana, health IT, and personalized medicine may intersect

The Advisory Board outlines the implication medical marijuana legalization is having on care delivery, and the potential role health IT will have in educating providers on the appropriate strains, dosages, and methods of ingestion.

A Boy’s Life Is Lost to Sepsis. Thousands Are Saved in His Wake

The New York Times reviews 5-year results from a program in New York State aimed at improving early detection of sepsis in hospitals. The program has resulted in a 21 percent decline in mortality among adults, but showed no decline in pediatric mortality.

Morning Headlines 4/14/17

NextGen Healthcare Announces Agreement to Acquire Entrada, Inc.

NextGen will acquire mobile physician documentation and communication technology vendor Entrada in a deal worth $34 million.

White House finalizes ACA rule to strengthen individual market

The White House finalizes its rules aimed at stabilizing the individual marketplaces, introducing insurer-friendly provisions that limit when consumers can gain coverage outside of open enrollment periods, while shifting authority to states to determine whether health plans have adequate provider networks, and allowing insurers to refuse to cover persons who haven’t paid their premiums.

FDA warns Abbott on heart device battery woes, cybersecurity risks

The FDA issues a warning letter to St. Jude Medical of failing to respond to cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could allow a hacker to control implanted devices remotely and for failing to address battery issues that have been linked with two deaths.

UC Berkeley challenges decision that CRISPR patents belong to Broad Institute

After winning its patent case in the EU patent courts, UC Berkeley appeals its recent CRISPR patent loss to Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard here in the US.

Morning Headlines 4/13/17

Trump Threatens to Withhold Payments to Insurers to Press Democrats on Health Bill

In an effort to draw Democrats to the healthcare policy negotiation table, President Trump threatens to withhold payments to insurers meant to cover discounts for low-income consumers, explaining “I don’t want people to get hurt. What I think should happen—and will happen—is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.”

The Leapfrog Group Releases Groundbreaking Tool to Estimate Lives and Dollars Lost to Medical Errors

The Leapfrog Group launches a calculator designed to illuminate the impact medical errors have on an employer’s covered population. The calculator estimates the number of avoidable deaths among covered lives, how much employers spend annually due to medical errors within general acute care hospitals, and how much of their total health care spend goes to these medical mistakes.

2017 Venrock Healthcare Prognosis

Venrock publishes results from a survey of “a few hundred of the smartest people we know across healthcare” on the future of healthcare under the new administration and the impact legislative changes will have on various healthcare IT subsectors.

ECMC officials remain mute on cause of computer shutdown

Erie County Medical Center (NY) returns to paper after a virus brings down its network. A hospital spokesman refused to comment on speculation that the virus was actually a ransomware attack, and differed questions about whether it had been contacted by hackers or asked for payments to restore access.

Morning Headlines 4/12/17

How Washington’s favorite cancer fighter helps himself

A Politico investigative report on Patrick Soon-Shiong finds that the majority of funds distributed by the healthcare billionaire’s non-profit, NantHealth Foundation, ultimately flow back into his own businesses. Shares fell 14.4 percent after the report was published Monday, and dropped another 4.7 percent Tuesday. This follows a STAT investigative piece published in March that uncovered similar practices and drove shares down 35 percent following publication.

Association Between Hospitals’ Engagement in Value-Based Reforms and Readmission Reduction in the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program

A longitudinal study published in JAMA finds that participation in one or more of Medicare’s value-based reimbursement programs is associated with reductions in 30-day risk-standardized readmission rates.

SA Health CIO defends EPAS following coroner’s criticism

South Australia Health CIO Bill Le Blanc defends the health system’s EPAS after the state coroner publically complained that the readability and formatting of printed reports are preventing clinicians from effectively doing their jobs.

Morning Headlines 4/11/17

New Compact Helps Physicians Obtain Multiple State Licenses

The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact Commission begins accepting applications from providers seeking cross-state licensure from one of 18 participating states. The new licensing agreement is expected to ease legislative burdens on providers offering telemedicine services.

Medication errors in hospitals don’t disappear with new technology

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette reports on medication errors at Pennsylvania hospitals that were, at least in part, attributed to EHRs.

The US ACA Individual Market Showed Progress In 2016, But Still Needs Time To Mature

Standard and Poor issues a forward-looking report on insurer performance in individual markets, noting “we expect insurers, on average, to get close to break-even margins in this segment in 2017,” but cautions that 2018 and beyond are uncertain given potential legislative changes and pending legal battles.

Case giving entrepreneurs a hand, with help from MIT

Mark Chance, vice dean for research at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, launches a program to mentor hopeful healthcare-focused entrepreneurs through the process of starting a company. The program is based on an MIT program that has mentored more than 2,500 participants since its 2000 launch.

Morning Headlines 4/10/17

Practo Technologies cuts 10% of workforce, explores new revenue engines

India-based provider appointment scheduling vendor Practo lays off 10 percent of its workforce, citing “natural redundancies that emerge as we integrate our 5 acquisitions.”

DHA launches unified electronic medical record system

In Dubai, the Dubai Health Authority’s Rashid Hospital, Al Barsha Medical Center, and several offsite clinics go live on Epic.

Before you send your spit to 23andMe, what you need to know

STAT provides more insight into the genetics-based personal health risk reports 23anMe recently won FDA approval to resume marketing to consumers.

Morning Headlines 4/7/17

23andMe, Inc. Granted First FDA Authorization to Market Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Health Risk Reports

More than three years after being shut down by the FDA for selling genetic health risk reports to consumers without clearance, 23andMe finally receives the FDA’s approval to resume sales. The approval covers reports on personal risk for ten conditions, including late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and celiac disease.

Highly confidential psychotherapy records from Maine center listed on the dark web

A mental health center in Maine reports that 4,500 patient records have been stolen by hackers and offered for sale on the dark web. The records include highly-sensitive information, including names, addresses, social security numbers, medial histories, and full session notes.

SAFER Guides

ONC updates its SAFER Guides, a series of guides designed to help healthcare organizations address EHR safety issues.

Morning Headlines 4/6/17

FDA Nominee Scott Gottlieb Commits to ‘Gold Standard’

Scott Gottlieb, President Trump’s nominee to run the FDA, had his confirmation hearing before the Senate HELP Committee today, during which he committed to upholding the “gold standard of safety and efficacy,” but noted that he believed there were ways of modernizing and expediting clinical trials without compromising safety.

Missouri senator says he’ll end years of opposition to prescription drug database

In Missouri, efforts to implement an opioid prescription drug monitoring database faces renewed opposition from the Missouri Medical Association, which opposes any legislation requiring doctors to check the database before writing opioid prescriptions.

Thousands of brokers exit HealthCare.gov as plan commissions go unpaid

Insurance resellers are exiting the exchange markets as payers stop paying commissions on a variety of plans. Utah-based insurance broker Craig Paulson explains, “they’re not paying commissions on platinum plans, and they are not paying them for special enrollment plans which cover some of the sickest patients.”

How Redesigning The Abrasive Alarms Of Hospital Soundscapes Can Save Lives

After a recent hospital stay filled with slamming doors and beeping medical equipment, ambient electronic musician Yoko K. Sen proposes using sound design to reduce alarm fatigue and make hospitals calmer places for patients.

Morning Headlines 4/5/17

VA’s most important 2017 decision

Speaking at a conference Monday, VA CIO Rob Thomas confirms the agency is on track to make a decision by July 1 on whether to replace Vista with a commercial EHR vendor.

Q1 2017: Business as usual for digital health

Rock Health publishes its Q1 report on VC investments in the digital health startup space, noting that 2017 investment activity is keeping pace with 2015 and 2016 levels despite the uncertainty around ACA repeal.

Electronic Health Record Logs Indicate That Physicians Split Time Evenly Between Seeing Patients And Desktop Medicine

A Health Affairs study that analyzed the EHR activity logs of physicians found that they appear to split their day between computer work and patient care.

Why the Orion Health Group Ltd share price was slammed today

New Zealand-based Orion Health Group fall seven percent after announcing stalled growth and a full-year net loss between $22 million and $26 million.