Morning Headlines 12/8/15

1 in 4 Doctors Aren’t Coordinating Care Despite Obamacare Demands

A Commonwealth Fund study comparing care coordination across ten developed nations finds that only about 30 percent of family providers in the US are “always notified” when a patient is seen in the ED or discharged from the hospital. The report concludes that US physicians are “among the least prepared to manage conditions associated with aging outside of hospital or nursing home settings.”

Announcing the winners of the Top 50 in Digital Health

Rock Health announces the winners of its Top 50 in Digital Health, a summary of the most influential people and businesses working in the health IT startup space.

2015 Healthcare Information Technology Salary Report

A small HealthITJobs survey finds that the average healthcare IT professional earns $87,000 a year in the US, a drop from 2014’s $89,000 average. Respondents were largely dissatisfied with their earnings and more than 50 percent reported that they would change jobs within a year.

As Aging Population Grows, So Do Robotic Health Aides

The New York Times covers the role drones may one day play in supporting elder care.

Morning Headlines 12/7/15

Seattle-Based Group Health To Be Acquired By The Larger Kaiser Permanente

Kaiser Permanente will acquire Seattle-based insurer and provider Group Health Cooperative for $1.8 billion upfront, plus an additional $1 billion paid out over the next several years.

Fit as fiddles

The Economist reports on the US health insurance industry in the post-ACA marketplace, noting that all five major insurers have seen triple-digit stock price growth since the law was passed.

California Attorney General grants conditional approval for Daughters of Charity hospital deal

BlueMountain Capital Management, a New York City-based hedge fund, gets approval to invest in nonprofit Daughters of Charity Health System.

Indegene Further Strengthens Presence in U.S. Healthcare Analytics Market Acquiring SmartCare Population Health Analytics Platform

India-based Indegene Lifesystems acquires population health analytics platform SmartCare from Vantage Point. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Morning Headlines 12/4/15

Welltok Acquires Silverlink to Enable Multi-Channel, Targeted Engagement

Welltok raises a $45 million funding round and acquires Siverlink, a consumer engagement vendor.

UK Ministry of Defence selects CGI to provide integrated electronic health record information service

In England, the Ministry of Defence contracts with CGI to implement the EMIS EHR across its 400 medical facilities.

The Growing Gap in Electronic Medical Record Satisfaction Between Clinicians and Information Technology Professionals

The Journal of Bone & Joint Surgery presents survey data highlighting the gap in EHR satisfaction scores between clinicians and hospital IT professionals.

Community Health Systems and American Well Collaborate on Telemedicine Initiative

Community Health Systems contracts with American Well to begin offering telehealth visits to residents served by its 198-hospital, 29-state area of operations.

Morning Headlines 12/3/15

National Health Spending Growth Accelerates In 2014

The CMS Office of the Actuary publishes new data showing that healthcare expenditures rose 5.3 percent in 2014, after five consecutive years of historically low growth. Health spending now accounts for 17.5 percent of national GDP.

UnitedHealth Says It Should Have Avoided Obamacare Longer

UnitedHealth CEO Stephen Hemsley says the company will lose about $500 million on public insurance exchanges between 2015 and 2016. He explains, “It was for us a bad decision. I take accountability for sitting out the exchange market in year one so we could in theory observe, learn and see how the market experience would develop. This was a prudent going-in position. In retrospect, we should have stayed out longer.”

Health Care Providers Need a Value Management Office

Harvard Business Review analyzes the role a “value management office” would play in health systems migrating to new value-based reimbursement models, citing MD Anderson Cancer Center (TX) and Hospital for Special Surgery (NY) as examples of organizations where such offices are working well.

E-mails reveal concerns about Theranos’s FDA compliance date back years

Internal emails from Theranos reveal that the DoD reported the company to the FDA in 2012 after evaluating the technology for use in theater. CEO Elizabeth Holmes called on Theranos board member and four-star Marine Corps General (ret.) James Mattis to intervene on the company’s behalf.

Morning Headlines 12/2/15

Joint: API Task Force

The Health IT Policy Committee’s API Security Task Force, organized to work through security issues associated with an open API infrastructure, held its first meeting this week.

Allscripts Announces Share Repurchase Program

Allscripts announces that it will repurchase up to $150 million of its common stock, representing 5.2 percent of the company’s outstanding shares.

Why the US Pays More Than Other Countries for Drugs

The Wall Street Journal analyzes the many forces contributing to exorbitant drug prices in the US, compared to other developed nations.

UNC, Duke hospitals post record 2015 revenue as WakeMed reports loss

WakeMed (NC) posts a $50 million operating loss for its 2015 fiscal year, blaming the loss on a number of one-time expenses including its Epic implementation, construction of a new 61-bed hospital, and operating a chronic disease management program.

Morning Headlines 12/1/15

UnitedHealth Sees 2016 Revenue Slightly Below Estimates

Ahead of its Tuesday investor day, UnitedHealth projects 2016 revenue of $180 billion to $181 billion, short of analyst expectations. The insurance giant noted earlier this month that its public exchange business as underperforming and would cut into profits.

Highmark Medicare Advantage members to retain in-network access to UPMC

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court issues a ruling preserving in-network access to UPMC doctors and facilities for Highmark Medicare Advantage health insurance customers.

Glens Falls Hospital picks single electronic health record, data provider to streamline systems

Glens Falls Hospital (NY) will expand its current inpatient Cerner install to replace Epic in its ambulatory space and GE Healthcare in patient registration and billing.

Lahey Clinic computer theft leads to $850,000 HIPAA settlement

Lahey Clinic (MA) will pay an $850,000 fine and enter into a corrective action plan to settle privacy and security violations filed by the OCR after a 2011 unencrypted laptop theft exposed the records of 599 patients.

Morning Headlines 11/30/15

Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong is postponing IPO of healthcare data company NantHealth

Healthcare billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD, will delay the IPO of his digital health startup NantHealth until market conditions improve. Soon-Shiong explains, “We’re basically ready. The problem is, we don’t want to go out in the current market. There is no reason for us to go out there in a bear market.”

Partners enters a genetics market

The Boston Globe covers Partners Healthcare’s sale of GeneInsight, its home-grown gene analysis software, to Sunquest Information Systems.

Medical Company LabMD Sues FTC Lawyers Over Data-Privacy Case

LabMD sues three FTC lawyers after being driven out of business over the agency’s poorly-investigated data privacy accusations. The case against LabMD was eventually thrown out by a DC judge and the now-defunct business is suing the FTC’s lawyers for “bringing a case based on fictional evidence.”

Samaritan plans for huge bump in IT spending

47-bed Samaritan Healthcare (WA) will implement Epic at a cost of $12 million. CFO Paul Ishizuka notes that the total cost is “magnitudes higher” than the hospital had spent on previous systems, but explains that interoperability across inpatient, ambulatory, and other health systems was the ultimate objective.

Morning Headlines 11/25/15

AcademyHealth Becomes Host Organization for 2016 Health Datapalooza

Washington DC-based non-profit AcademyHealth takes over hosting responsibilities for this year’s Health Datapalooza conference.

El Camino Hospital launches new online services

After a two-year implementation, 395-bed El Camino Hospital (CA) goes live with its $150 million Epic system.

Paging Dr. Pigeon; You’re Needed in Radiology

Researchers find that pigeons can be trained to find tumors in medical images as well as radiologists or pathologists.

Man Receives $1 Million Hospital Charge For 5-Day Stay With No Surgery

An uninsured 24-year-old man from Pittsburgh is receiving national media attention after a five-day hospital stay at UPMC results in $1.1 million in hospital charges.

Morning Headlines 11/24/15

Pfizer to buy Allergan in $160 billion deal

Pfizer will acquire Dublin-based Allergan in a $160 billion tax inversion deal that will move Pfizer’s headquarters to Ireland and create the world’s largest pharmaceutical company.

Moody’s warns of cybersecurity risks affecting credit ratings

Moody’s reports that while it does not look at cyberattacks as a principal driver of ratings, the attacks “will become more pervasive and begin to take a higher priority within our credit assessments and analysis.” The report lists healthcare providers, along with financial institutions and credit card companies, as the most vulnerable to attacks.

Ratings of U.S. Healthcare Quality No Better After ACA

Since 2001, Gallop opinion polls have shown little change in consumer satisfaction scores measuring healthcare quality and healthcare coverage in the US, while consumer satisfaction with healthcare costs has decreased during the same timeframe.

Ransomware could infiltrate medical devices, wearables

Forrester Research expects hackers to begin launching ransomware attacks targeting medical devices in 2016.

Morning Headlines 11/23/15

DoD Meets Interoperability Requirements for Electronic Health Records

The DoD unveils its Joint Legacy Viewer, a web-based portal that captures key health data items from DoD and VA clinical systems and presents them to end users in a consolidated format. This, the DoD says, satisfies its federally-mandated requirement to integrate records with the VA.

6 Tips for Reading Your Own Medical Records

Cleveland Clinic warns patients viewing their medical records that provider notes written about them are not necessarily written as letters to them, clarifying that these notes could contain inaccuracies, incomplete documentation, poor grammar, and comments about weight or tobacco and alcohol use that should not be interpreted as personal attacks.

Epocrates removes flawed Bugs + Drugs app from the App Store

Athenahealth pulls its Bugs + Drugs app from the app store. The app launched in 2013, combining geo-located bacteria data from Athena’s EHR database with antibiotics data from its then recently acquired Epocrates drug reference app. The app was found to have outright medical errors shortly after launching and has not been updated since January 2014.

Epic Systems Corporation v. Tata Consultancy Services Limited et al

Epic wins an early victory in its legal battles with India-based Tata Consultancy Services, after a Wisconsin court finds that Tata’s consultants accessed Epic’s UserWeb and downloaded proprietary information without authorization, meeting the legal definition of “inside hacking.”

Morning Headlines 11/20/15

UnitedHealth Group cuts outlook, warns it may exit public health exchanges

UnitedHealth Group considers pulling its health plans from public exchanges in 2017 due to the financial losses that segment of its business experienced.

Twitter Streams Fuel Big Data Approaches to Health Forecasting

Public health researchers find that Twitter data and environmental sensor data can be used to accurately forecast asthma-related ED visit activity.

Epic responds to Mother Jones criticism

Peter DeVault, Epic’s vice president of interoperability, responds to a critical article from Mother Jones questioning Epic’s interoperability and corporate culture, calling the article “based almost entirely on misinformation.”

Fitch Affirms Baptist Healthcare System at ‘A+’; Outlook Revised to Negative

Fitch Ratings affirms its A+ bond rating of Baptist Healthcare System (KY), but downgrades its outlook from stable to negative due to recent declines in profitability caused by its Epic implementation, population health investments, and an unfavorable shift in payor mix.

Morning Headlines 11/19/15

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Joins OptumLabs

HHS partners with OptumLabs to bring its data analytics capabilities to the agency’s researchers. The first research project will be led by AHRQ, which will compare Optum’s healthcare utilization database to its own Medical Expenditure Panel Survey dataset.

CHIME Letter To CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt

CHIME sends a letter to CMS arguing that the MU program and quality reporting requirements will need to be streamlined if health systems are going to transition to value-based reimbursement models fast enough to meet transition goals outlined by HHS.

Software is now eating medicine

Andreessen Horowitz Partners announces a $200 million investment fund that it will direct toward digital health startups, specifically those working at the intersection of health data and machine learning.

CVS Health Introduces New Digital Pharmacy Tools to Help Make Medication Adherence Easier and More Convenient

CVS launches a new app that generates medication reminders and allows users to submit prescriptions and insurance cards by taking a picture of them

Morning Headlines 11/18/15

Policy: Certified Technology Comparison Task Force

ONC holds its first Certified Technology Task Force meeting. The group will research and make recommendations on the development of an EHR comparison tool. It will present its findings on January 20.

Cerner raises concerns about Loftin’s new role

Cerner sends a letter to the University of Missouri expressing concerns over its transition plan for Chancellor R. Bowen Loftin in the wake of his announced resignation. Loftin was offered a position as the director of university research at the Tiger Institute for Health Innovation, an organization co-managed by Cerner and UofM.

Does Cambridge University Hospital’s Epic project indicate NHS lacks capacity?

In England, insiders working at Cambridge University Hospital describe the internal culture during an Epic implementation that ultimately led to the resignation of the Trust’s CEO and CFO, saying “There was a plan, there was a vision and it was going to happen. There was no sense or reason to the process, it was bloody-mindedness.”

App Orchard – Trademark Details

Epic secures a trademark for “app orchard,” the name it will use for its upcoming app store.

Morning Headlines 11/17/15

FDA Says More Regulation Needed on Lab Tests

The FDA will testify in favor of regulating laboratory developed tests at a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee meeting on Tuesday. The agency put out a collection of case studies supporting the position ahead of its testimony.

Telemedicine is already working in Texas

Texas Medical Board president Michael Arambula, MD publishes a letter in the Statesman responding to recent criticism of its telemedicine policies. The board requires an in-person visit establishing a patient-provider relationship before remote visits are authorized. Though there are situational exceptions to the rule, the policy has the effect of restricting telehealth vendors, like Dallas-based Teladoc, from effectively operating in the state.

As Hawaii Health Systems Corp. founders, CIO/CFO Money Atwal mulls next move

Healthcare Finance profiles Money Atwal, former CIO/CFO of Hawaii Health Systems. Atwal oversaw the health system’s Meditech 6.0 implementation, earning HIMSS Stage 7 status and a 2015 Davies Award. As a CFO, he used technology to drive accounts receivable days down from 200 to 54.

Morning Headlines 11/16/15

OH Muhlenberg, LLC Identifies and Contains a Security Incident at Muhlenberg Hospital

Muhlenberg Community Hospital (KY) discovers keystroke loggers installed on several hospital computers after receiving a notice from the FBI warning of suspicious network activity. A forensics investigation conceded that the breach could have happened as early as January 2012.

Many Say High Deductibles Make Their Health Law Insurance All but Useless

The New York Times covers the rise of high-deductible insurance plans on ACA marketplaces, which in some states make up more than half of the available options. One customer explains their experience, “The deductible, $3,000 a year, makes it impossible to actually go to the doctor. We have insurance, but can’t afford to use it.”

HHS calls in all players for health IT strategic plan

In an interview with Federal Times, Karen DeSalvo, MD discusses the efforts that went into creating the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan and the influence that ongoing VA/DoD interoperability issues had on the final product.

HealthCare.gov sign-ups top 500K

Healthcare.gov enrolled 540,000 people into health plans during the first week of open enrollment, one-third of which were new customers. The results represent a modest increase over week one 2015 enrollment figures.

Morning Headlines 11/13/15

It’s Way Too Easy to Hack the Hospital

Bloomberg Business profiles white hat hacker Billy Rios, the analyst whose work exposing cybersecurity vulnerabilities in medical devices led to the recent FDA safety warning on Hospira infusion pumps. He says, “hospitals seemed at least a decade behind the standard security curve.”

Epic Systems forum addresses hot topic in medical records: interoperability

Cerner and Epic square off on interoperability at a Madison, WI health IT conference, with Cerner once again inviting Epic to join CommonWell, and Epic declining, saying it should not have to buy into an exchange network that wouldn’t be good for its customers or patient care.

NHS children monitored using McLaren Formula One technology

In England, patients at the Birmingham Children’s Hospital are being monitored with technology designed for racecar drivers from the McLaren Formula One team. The system monitors heart rate, respiration rate, and oxygen levels in real time and alerts the care team if the patient’s condition deteriorates.

Morning Headlines 11/12/15

The Path Forward for Meaningful Use

John Halamka, MD and CIO of BIDMC, publishes a blog outlining his assessment of the MU program. He explains, “Clinicians cannot get through a 12 minute visit, enter the necessary Stage 3 data elements, reconcile problems/allergies/medications from multiple institutions, meet the demands of the  Stage 3 clinical quality measures, make eye contact with patients, and deliver safe medical care. There needs to be a new approach.” 

For US Hospitals, A Mixed Report In Electronic Health Record Adoption

A study published in Health Affairs finds that by 2014, 75 percent of US hospitals had adopted a basic EHR, while 40 percent had implemented the functionality needed to meet MU2 criteria.

Boston Children’s looks to IBM’s Watson for rare-disease help

Boston Children’s Hospital will work with IBM’s Watson team to bolster the supercomputer’s nephrology database and enhance its logic to help spot rare kidney disorders..

Safeway, Theranos Split After $350 Million Deal Fizzles

The Wall Street Journal continues with its Theranos coverage, recounting a failed deal with Safeway that cost the grocery store merchant $350 million spent on in-store clinics designed to house Theranos analyzers that were never delivered.