Morning Headlines 3/2/15

Oracle sues Oregon officials in healthcare website dispute

Oracle escalates its legal battles with Oregon over the failed insurance exchange it was hired to develop by filing personal lawsuits against five Oregon campaign advisors to the state’s former governor, saying that they worked behind the scenes to kill the site for political reasons.

Allscripts Healthcare Solutions’ (MDRX) CEO Paul Black on Q4 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Allscripts CEO Paul Black acknowledges that the company is disappointed in its year-long revenue, citing lower patient portal sales and overall client fatigue driven by MU as primary reasons for sluggish sales.

Banner merger with UA Health Network effective tonight

Banner and the University of Arizona Health Network complete their merger. No decision has been made over whether UA will be allowed to keep their brand new $100 million Epic system, which experienced go-live delays and cost over-runs, or if they will be migrated onto Banner’s Cerner system.

Letter: Re: Rideout computer problems

A patient’s spouse writes an open letter calling out Rideout Health (CA) CEO Robert Chason for publically claiming that a recent EHR system failure did not result in patient harm. In the letter, a spouse states that his wife was treated at Rideout during the unplanned downtime and was sent home because test results indicating that she had a minor heart attack did not make it back to her cardiologist until two weeks after she was discharged. Hospital representatives contacted her to schedule additional tests and told her that the delay was caused by the EHR system crash.   

Morning Headlines 2/27/15

Merge Reports Fourth Quarter Financial Results and Announces the Acquisition of DR Systems, Inc.

Merge reports Q4 earnings: revenue remained flat at $53 million, EPS $0.02 vs. $0.00, missing analyst’s expectations for both. The company also announced that it has acquired medical imaging vendor DR Systems for $70 million.

The 11 Best U.S. Companies for Students to Get Summer Internships

Epic takes seventh place on the 11 best US companies to intern for, down from their fifth-place finish last year.

ICD-10 Medicare FFS End-to-End Testing: January 26 through February 3, 2015

CMS reports that it accepted 81 percent of the ICD-10 test claims that were submitted during end-to-end testing earlier this month.

Taxpayers have spent more than $1 billion on a digital health record that doctors won’t use

In Australia, the nation’s $800 million Personally Controlled e-Health Record project is still sitting unused three-years after its launch. Just 10 percent of the general public has a medical record on the system.

Morning Headlines 2/26/15

CMS Pushes MU Attestation, PQRS Reporting Deadlines to March 20

CMS has announced that both the Meaningful Use attestation and PQRS reporting deadline for eligible providers has been extended to March 20.

Pentagon Narrows Down List Of Contenders For Multibillion-Dollar Health Records Contract

The DHMSM EHR procurement has moved to its final stage and the list of vendors has been narrowed to three finalists: CSC/HP/Allscripts, IBM/Epic, and Leidos/Accenture/Cerner. Sadly, the VA’s VistA platform, proposed by PwC, was eliminated.

Anthem: Hacked Database Included 78.8 Million People

Anthem reports that 78 million records were exposed during its recent cyber attack, including up to 19 million non-Anthem customers, and 14 million “incomplete” records. The newly released data also breaks down records breaches by state.

FBI Is Close to Finding Hackers in Anthem Health-Care Data Theft

In other Anthem news, the FBI reports that it is close to identifying the group responsible for the attack, with signs pointing to a Chinese state-sponsored hacker group.

Morning Headlines 2/25/15

Cerner offers select associates voluntary departure program

Following its acquisition of Siemens, Cerner is encouraging some employees to consider “voluntary departure,” despite the company’s plans of hiring 16,000 new employees over the next 10 years.

Navicure Survey Reveals ICD-10 Optimism despite Minimal Preparation

An ICD-10 readiness survey finds that 81 percent of practices feel they will be ready when the ICD-10 transition goes into effect, but that only 67 percent believe the transition will happen on October 1, 2015, without further delays.

Marketing chief Sona Chawla says Walgreens is both on and in your corner.

The Hub interviews Walgreen’s chief marketing officer Sona Chawla, who says “I think of our customers as shoppers, unless they want to be patients. When they are in our clinics and they are sick, they want to be patients and we recognize them as patients. But no one is in a constant state of being a patient, and we have to be very sensitive to that because we offer a wide range of trip missions. So, when they are coming in to shop for lipstick, they are shoppers. That’s how they want to be recognized, and that’s how we recognize them.”

Morning Headlines 2/24/15

Strengthening Patient Care: Building an Effective National Medical Device Surveillance System

The FDA publishes a report outlining its $250 million plan to roll out a national medical device surveillance system over the next seven-years.

Epic vs. Cerner Competition Heats Up

A KLAS report on acute EHR purchasing decisions asks hospitals that are in the market for a new system who their likely next vendor will be: 25 percent reported Epic, 14 percent reported Cerner, 13 percent reported MEDITECH, and 5 percent reported McKesson, while 41 percent are undecided.

Mobile app with evidence-based decision support diagnoses more obesity, smoking, and depression, Columbia Nursing study finds

A Columbia University study published in the Journal of Nurse Practitioners finds that diagnosis rates for obesity, smoking, and depression were much higher when nurses used a smartphone app that explained evidence-based guidelines and triggered clinical decision support prompts during routine exams.

Kaiser tests video visits to cut waits

Kaiser Permanente experiments with telehealth visits as a possible way of reducing ED utilization and wait times.  

Morning Headlines 2/23/15

$842-million health records project in B.C. faces delays, software dispute

In Canada, leaked documents reveal that a $670 million IBM/Cerner implementation may be heading to arbitration over delays and efficiency issues.

Healthcare Research Firm Toughens Survey Standards as More CIOs Reap the Profits of Reselling Vendor Software

Black Book adjusts its survey methods after discovering that some hospital managers had answered surveys on behalf of end users while at the same time overseeing efforts to resell hosted installs of the EHR to private practices and smaller local hospitals.

Texas Man Charged in $1 Million Fraud Scheme

A Texas man is facing fraud charges after posing as a Cerner representative and then selling an MRI machine to a Dallas-area hospital for $1.3 million.

Morning Headlines 2/20/15

Most Admired 2015

Fortune Magazine names Cerner to its 2015 Most Admired Companies list.

Castlight Health Announces Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2014 Results

Castlight Health announces Q4 and 2014 year end results: Revenue for 2014 closed out at $45.6 million, a 252 percent increase over 2013, but still resulting in an overall $86.2 million operating loss, EPS -$1.16 vs. -$6.28. Stock prices dropped 31 percent Thursday following an analyst’s downgrade.

Oregon Sues Oracle Over Health Insurance Site

Oregon has filed another lawsuit against Oracle, seeking to bar the company from doing business in the state, over claims that Oracle is preparing to pull the plug on hosting Oregon’s state insurance exchange.

U.S. FDA approves 23andMe’s genetic screening test for rare disorder

After a long regulatory battle with the FDA, genetic testing service provider 23andMe earns regulatory approval to market its personal genome testing service. The company is only approved to test for a genetic mutation associated with Bloom syndrome, a rare disorder that leads to an increased risk of cancer.

Morning Headlines 2/19/15

Epic Systems to open its own app exchange

A local Madison paper reports that Epic is about to launch an app store that let customers buy apps from third-party developers that integrate with the core EHR system.

Number of the Day: 11.4 Million

The Obama administration announces that 11.4 million consumers have signed up for health insurance through the state and federal marketplaces, of which 6.7 million were automatically re-enrolled from last year.

Cutting the Gordian Helix — Regulating Genomic Testing in the Era of Precision Medicine

Eric Lader, PhD., MIT professor and principal leader of the Human Genome Project, publishes an article in the New England Journal of Medicine discussing the need for tighter regulatory oversight on personalized medicine recommendations coming from genetic testing.

Another Study Shows ACC/AHA Risk Calculator Overestimates CVD Events

Four out of five cardiovascular risk-prediction algorithms, including the new ACC/AHA risk calculators, have been found to overestimate the risk of a cardiovascular event. The 2013 ACC/AHA risk calculator overestimated risk of cardiac-related deaths by 86 percent for men and 67 percent for women.

Morning Headlines 2/18/15

ObamaCare’s Electronic-Records Debacle

Jeffrey Singer, MD writes an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal lambasting the Republican party for focusing solely on repealing Obamacare, and not also targeting the repeal of the HITECH Act, explaining “electronic health records have harmed my practice and my patients.”

Syracuse hospital loses $21.6 million, wants to join big health system

After losing $22 million in 2014, largely to one-time Epic implementation costs, St Joseph’s Hospital (NY) is exploring a merger with a larger hospital network, likely Trinity which St. Joe’s has an existing relationship with.

Duke University alum and former offensive lineman is helping college players across the nation keep up with demanding schedules

Duke University rolls out new software for football recruits designed to organize their schedules, remind them of doctors appointments, track their performance, and store their medical records. Duke reports the system saved the university $244,305 in materials and employee hours over a six-month period, a 345 percent return on investment.

What Exactly Is an Apple Watch For?

The Wall Street Journal covers some of the last minute design sacrifices Apple made before unveiling the Apple Watch, including scrapped plans for blood pressure monitoring and stress level monitoring.

Morning Headlines 2/17/15

Feds, states extend Obamacare enrollment period for some

Healthcare.gov and most state-level exchanges will extend open enrollment through next weekend due to complaints of long waits and computer glitches.

Analytics Predict Which Patients Will Suffer Post-Surgical Infections

Predictive analytics systems are having a direct impact on post-operative infection rates. By analyzing risk factors and intraoperative physiological conditions, analytics systems are able to flag patients with an increased risk of developing infection as they come out of surgery, which has resulted in overall reduced infection rates. The University of Iowa Hospitals and Clinics is reporting a 58 percent drop in colon surgery infections in the two years since it implemented predictive analytics.

Cost of Anthem’s data breach likely to exceed $100 million

Analysts estimate that Anthem’s recent data breach will end up costing the insurance giant more than $100 million.

Morning Headlines 2/16/15

Reforming the Military Health System

A report on the military health system written by a group of DoD, VA, and health IT experts calls on the DoD to migrate its TRICARE insurance program from a fee-for-service to a value-based reimbursement model and warns that locking into a long-term, commercial EHR contract based on current needs could be tantamount to signing a twenty-year contract with Blackberry just before wireless data plans  changed the smartphone landscape.

The software ‘unicorn’ that will never go public

Fortune profiles eClinicalWorks, whose CEO launched the company with no VC backing and bootstrapped it into a $320 million annual revenue enterprise.

Ex-Lizard Squad Hacker Targets NHS Websites

A 16-year old hacker has published a list of security vulnerabilities, including SQL injection flaws and generic admin login settings, that he and a hacker group called Lizard Squad discovered on NHS websites.

A Warehouse Fire of Digital Memories

Following the seven-alarm fire in Brooklyn that destroyed decades worth of archived paper medical records, Google VP Vint Cerf warns that the same fate awaits electronic records because as soon as the proprietary systems that read them are gone, the data will be inaccessible. He is calling for the creation of new technologies that can extract data from old software systems that have since been sunset.

Morning Headlines 2/13/15

Inovalon (INOV) Stock Rises Today on NASDAQ Debut

Analytics vendor Inovalon ends its first day on the stock market at $29.61, nearly ten percent up on the day.

NPSF convenes panel to set plans for progress

The National Patient Safety Foundation announces plans to convene a panel of patient safety experts that will assess progress made since the publication of IOM’s “To Err Is Human,” and then form patient safety goals and strategies outlining the next 15 years.

Deloitte announces new approach to EHR implementation and support

Deloitte begins marketing an EHR implementation and support approach designed to support smaller hospitals interested in migrating to a value-based reimbursement model.

Patient safety leader named CIO at Brigham & Women’s

David Bates, MD is named as the next CIO of Brigham & Women’s and the executive sponsor of the Brigham Innovation Hub. He was previously the chief quality officer at BWH.

Morning Headlines 2/12/15

Lawmakers oppose delaying October rollout for ICD-10

A group of representatives hears testimony on the implementation of ICD-10, including 6 of 7 industry representatives speaking in favor of an on-time transition.

U.S. creates new agency to lead cyberthreat tracking

Following the string of recent high-profile hacker attacks, the US will stand-up a new  intelligence unit called the Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center that will be focused on tracking cyberthreats

Government Watchdog Says Veterans Affairs at High Risk for Fraud, Waste

The GAO publishes a report labeling the VA’s health care system a “high-risk” area of the government, citing vulnerability to fraud, waste, abuse and mismanagement.

Morning Headlines 2/11/15

Cerner Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2014 Results

Cerner announces Q4 results: revenue up 16 percent to $1.16 billion, adjusted EPS $0.47 vs. $0.39.

Premier, Inc. Reports Fiscal 2015 Second-Quarter Results

Premier, Inc. announces Q2 results: revenue is up 19 percent to to $294 million, EPS $0.36 vs. $0.31.

Is Your Doctor’s Office the Most Dangerous Place for Data?

ABC News cover the rise of hackers migrating toward the healthcare space, an industry that finds itself 10-years behind financial services in terms of protecting consumer information.  

WakeMed posts $3M Q1 income, goes live with electronic records

WakeMed goes live with its $100 million Epic install.

Morning Headlines 2/10/15

CMS’s Efforts to Prepare for the New Version of the Disease and Procedure Codes

A GAO report finds that CMS is adequately prepared to migrate to ICD-10 coding in October 2015.

WellStar, Emory explore merger in Atlanta area

Emory University Healthcare  is in discussions with WellStar Health System to merge, forming an 11-hospital integrated delivery network in the Atlanta area.

Medical Device Data Systems, Medical Image Storage Devices, and Medical Image Communications Devices

The FDA issued two final guidance documents on the regulatory stance it will take over mHealth apps and software systems that send and receive, but do not alter, medical data.

Morning Headlines 2/9/15

Anthem hack: Personal data stolen sells for 10X price of stolen credit card numbers

Security analysts report that the Anthem hackers should be able to sell the stolen health records for as much as $1,000 each, making them ten times more valuable than stolen credit card data.

Defense Health shoring up IT ahead of EHR move

The Defense Health Agency reports that it will spend 2015 updating its IT infrastructure in preparation for its upcoming EHR implementation.

VITL Launches Marketing Push With Super Bowl Ad

The Vermont Health Information Exchange spent $13,000 to run a 30-second regional commercial during the Super Bowl in an effort to increase patient consent rates and boost physician utilization.

Morning Headlines 2/6/15

Roper Industries Announces Two Medical Software Acquisitions

Roper Industries, parent company of Sunquest, acquires two more health IT companies for a total of $450 million. Data Innovations, a middleware software vendor that supports hospital laboratories, and SoftWriters, a software vendor working in the long-term care space.

Exclusive: Apple’s health tech takes early lead among top hospitals

In a small survey, Reuters finds that 14 of 23 hospitals are moving forward with plans to interface with Apple’s HealthKit API, beating Google and Samsung in terms of hospital penetration.

athenahealth, Inc. Reports Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2014 Results

Athenahealth reports 2014 year end results: revenue is up 26 percent, at $752 million, adjusted EPS $1.31 vs. $1.16.

McKesson Reports Fiscal 2015 Third-Quarter Results

McKesson reports Q3 results: revenue up 37 percent to $47 billion, adjusted EPS $2.89 vs. $1.48. Revenue from its health IT business dropped seven percent to $755 million.