Morning Headlines 9/25/15

CMS Has Updated Systems and Supported Stakeholders’ Efforts to Use New Codes

The CMS GAO publishes a report on its investigation of the preparations made by CMS ahead of the ICD-10 transition, concluding that the agency will not truly know how prepared it is until it starts processing claims.

The breakdown of costs of Addenbrooke’s Hospital’s £200m Epic IT system

The Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust has been put on special measures “after over-spending an average of £1.2m a week, in part due to its new online patient-record system, which has been fraught with problems.”

OPM says 5.6 million fingerprints stolen in cyberattack, five times as many as previously thought

The Office of Personnel Management reports that 5.6 million fingerprints were stolen in its recent data breach, updating its original estimate of 1.1 million by more than five times.

Morning Headlines 9/24/15

Accenture Adds Distinctive Electronic Health Record Consulting Capabilities with Acquisition of Sagacious Consultants

As reported by HIStalk readers yesterday, Accenture acquires Sagacious Consultants for an undisclosed sum.

GE Healthcare Announces $300 Million Commitment to Support Emerging Market Health

GE Healthcare, the $18 billion healthcare technology division of GE, announces the creation of a new business unit that will focus on bringing low cost, high impact health technology solutions to Africa and parts of Asia.

Interoperability Tops ‘To-Do’ List According to Medical Students

Athenahealth publishes findings from its annual Epocrates Future Physicians of America survey, which finds that 96 percent of medical students believe that improving EHR interoperability is important to patient care, while 87 percent support the creation of a universal patient record.

Why Cleveland Clinic Shares Its Outcomes Data with the World

Michael Kattan, PhD and the chair of the quantitative health sciences department at the Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute, writes a Harvard Business Review article explaining how the Cleveland Clinic captures and analyzes its outcomes data and why it publically reports all of its findings.

Morning Headlines 9/23/15

Addenbrooke’s and Rosie hospitals’ patients ‘put at risk’

In England, the Care Quality Commission inspects Cambridge University Hospitals Trust, Epic’s sole UK customer, and finds that the implementation negatively affected the hospitals “ability to report, highlight, and take action on data” and caused medications to be incorrectly prescribed.

The Future of Emergency Department Information Systems

Peer60 publishes a report on the EDIS market, finding that 32 percent of respondents plan to switch ED vendors, with Meditech leading in market share and Epic leading in replacement vendor mind share.

FDA Announces First-ever Patient Engagement Advisory Committee

The FDA launches a new patient engagement advisory committee made up of nine voting members who are experts in clinical research, primary care patient experience, and the health care needs of patient groups.

Adventist Health System to pay $118 mln to settle fraud claims

Adventist Health System (FL) will pay $118 million to settle a whistleblower lawsuit alleging that it paid kickbacks to providers in exchange for referrals.

Morning Headlines 9/22/15

Federal Health IT Strategic Plan: 2015 – 2020

ONC publishes its five-year strategic plan which proposes shifting the national focus from EHR implementations to improving patient engagement, supporting the transition to value-based reimbursement models, expanding the use of EHR data mining in research, and improving the nation’s health IT infrastructure.

Google’s NIH steal Tom Insel on the ‘major paradigm shift’ of digitizing mental health care

Tom Insel, MD and former director of the National Institute of Mental Health, discusses his decision to move to Google and the work he plans to do there.

In Unit Stalked by Suicide, Veterans Try to Save One Another

The New York Times profiles the 2/7th Marine Regiment, whose veterans have a suicide rate 14 times higher than the average American, and the homegrown tracking systems that former members of the unit have created to help coordinate emergency response efforts at a national level.

Maintaining PCMHs Will Cost $105,000 per Physician per Year

Researchers calculate the number of hours it would take a primary care physician to complete the tasks outlined in the National Committee for Quality Assurance’s standards for maintaining patient-centered medical homes, and conclude that it would cost $105,000 per year in additional time spent.  

Morning Headlines 9/21/15

Oops! Error by Systema Software exposes millions of records with insurance claims data and internal notes

A data security hobbyist searching through public Amazon Web Services sub-domains finds exposed databases containing personal information from more than a million Kansas State Self Insurance Fund customers, as well as claims documents from cloud-based claims management vendor Systema Software.

Health Information Technology in the United States, 2015: Transition to a Post-HITECH World

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation publishes its 2015 review of health IT, focusing on HIEs, payment reform, big data, and evaluating HITECH’s success.

The Changing Role of the CIO

John Halamka, MD is promoted to CIO of the BIDMC System, while his second in command Manu Tandon will take over as CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

How Playing the Long Game Made Elizabeth Holmes a Billionaire

Inc. profiles Theranos CEO Elizabeth Holmes, calling her the next Steve Jobs and quoting Stanford University dean of engineering and Theranos advisor Channing Robertson as saying, “Just one or two of these people come forward every generation, and she’s one of them.”

Morning Headlines 9/18/15

HP spinoff to cut up to 30K jobs

HP announces that it will layoff 30,000 employees later this year as part of a restructuring plan that will split the company into two separate entities, HP Enterprise which will run the company’s enterprise business, and HP Inc, which will focus on hardware.

Health IT Complaint Form

ONC fixes early access problems with its health IT complaint form.

Why It’s Hard to Measure Improved Population Health

A Harvard Business Review article argues that organizations engaging in population health management are more likely to put efforts into improving care for easier or more cooperative patients, resulting in a further marginalized community.

Morning Headlines 9/17/15

HELP Committee chairman calls for flexibility in implementation of Stage 3 EHR rules

Senator Lamar Alexander (R-TN), chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, calls for a phased in approach to the creation and implementation of MU3.

Hilo Medical Center Selected as 2015 HIMSS Enterprise Davies Award Recipient

Hilo Medical Center (HI) receives the HIMSS Davies Award, being recognized for using its EHR (Meditech) to drive $35 million in cost reductions and a $4 million overall ROI while reducing hospital acquired infections and the mortality rates of patients admitted with pneumonia.

Mayo Clinic and AVIA Announce Finalists Competing for $100,000 THINK BIG Challenge

Mayo Clinic announces the finalists of its Think Big Challenge, a design competition challenging engineers to build tools that promote health lifestyles or help people living with chronic diseases.

Morning Headlines 9/16/15

Cambridge chief exec resigns

The CEO and finance director of Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, Epic’s first UK customer, resigns following a growing financial deficit and “significant performance and quality concerns” related to IT.

CMS Did Not Always Manage and Oversee Contractor Performance for the Federal Marketplace as Required by Federal Requirements and Contract Terms

An HHS OIG report on the rollout of Healthcare.gov finds that CMS failed to “provide adequate contract management and oversight for Federal marketplace contracts,” which resulted in delays, performance issues, and unauthorized costs.

Google Bets on Insurance Startup Oscar Health

Two-year old tech-savvy insurance startup Oscar Health raises a $32.5 million funding round from Google Capital, bringing its total raised to $325 million and its valuation to $1.75 billion.

Identifying preventable readmissions: an achievable goal or waiting for Godot?

Researchers question the accuracy of readmission risk metrics, arguing that future research efforts should be shifted away from hospital care and toward “developing quality care measures of complex disease management across a patient’s continuum of care.”

Morning Headlines 9/15/15

Qualcomm buys Capsule Technology to connect home and hospital care

Qualcomm’s healthcare arm acquires Capsule Tech, a data integration firm that helps hospitals capture and analyze data from medical devices. Qualcomm will use the technology to advance its connected home health efforts. Financial terms were undisclosed.

Breach Level Index: 2015 First Half Review

An analysis of data breaches reported during the first half of 2015 finds that the healthcare industry is the most vulnerable to breaches, accounting for 21.1 percent of total reported breaches. Healthcare was also responsible for the largest consumer impacting breach, a cyberattack on Anthem that exposed 80 million patient records.

What do we know about developing patient portals? a systematic literature review

A systematic review published in JAMIA finds that there is no evidence base for developing patient portals that increase patient engagement. Authors conclude the review by recommending future research topics that would address these gaps.

How Data-Wranglers Are Building the Great Library of Genetic Variation

Researchers from Harvard and MIT studying links between genetic variations and diseases have analyzed the genetic data from thousands of patients and have identified around 10 million genetic variants scattered throughout the genome, most of which have never been described before.

Morning Headlines 9/14/15

Do you have a complaint? ONC has a new tool that might help

ONC launches a new EHR complaint form that it will use to “better triage, track, route, and respond to your health IT concerns or challenges.”  Users can file complaints concerning EHR usability, interoperability, safety, and more.

When Family Members Run Foundations, Scrutiny Never Ends

The New York Times profiles the philanthropic organization established by Meditech co-founder Mort Ruderman, and the role his grandson plays managing it.

Health IT Policy Committee

During last week’s Health IT Policy Committee, team members from the Interoperability Task Force presented its report on the barriers facing EHR interoperability, concluding that the market is slowly moving in the right direction, but at an unacceptably slow pace that is being caused by unclear financial incentives for embracing interoperability.

Medical Innovation Bill Passed the House With 344 Votes; Now It’s On Life Support

The 21st Century Cures Act, which passed in the House 344-77 this past July, is facing a tougher time gaining traction in the Senate due to funding issues and its $8.75 billion price tag.

Morning Headlines 9/11/15

Essentials Brief: Telemedicine Study

HIMSS Analytics releases its 2015 Telemedicine Study which surveys health IT executives on current telemedicine projects. The survey measured an uptick in both adoption and awareness of telemedicine products and services and finds that two-way video conferencing systems are the most popular communications systems being used.

Partners Healthcare, Health Catalyst Announce Strategic Collaboration To Improve Patient Care

Partners Healthcare signs a $30 million agreement with Health Catalyst to co-develop and deploy a population health management platform.

IBM Watson Health Announces New Partnerships, New Cloud Services and Global HQ in Cambridge, MA

IBM opens its new Watson Health headquarters in Cambridge, MA while simultaneously announcing a new population health solution that integrates its data analytics tools with Apple’s HealthKit and ResearchKit.

3M to Explore Strategic Alternatives for Its Health Information Systems Business

3M is shopping around its health information systems business, which offers coding software, services, and analytics tools, and expects to make a decision on whether or not to sell by Q2 2016. The business unit booked $730 million in revenue in 2014 and has delivered “greater than 10-percent compounded annual growth over the past three, five and 10 years.”

Morning Headlines 9/10/15

New York health insurer hacked, over 10 mln members possibly affected

Excellus BlueCross BlueShield and its affiliate Lifetime Healthcare Companies reports that a cyberattack executed in December 2013 has exposed the demographic and medical claims data of 10.5 million of its customers.

Electronic Health Record Vendor Adherence to Usability Certification Requirements and Testing Standards

A JAMA study evaluates EHR vendor compliance with ONC’s usability and user centered design requirements, finding that many certified vendors are out of compliance but continue to hold their certifications.

GOP scores early win in ObamaCare lawsuit

A federal district judge has approved a House GOP lawsuit against the ACA to move forward. The suit alleges that the White House is using unauthorized funds to pay for components of the healthcare law.

2015 HIMSS Congressional Asks

HIMSS publishes its annual list of congressional asks, including: bolstering support of EHR interoperability, helping organizations combat cyber threats, and approving broad telehealth reimbursement for Medicare beneficiaries.

Morning Headlines 9/9/15

Recent patent infringement cases filed in the Eastern District of Texas

Preservation Wellness Technologies, LLC sues Allscripts, Athenahealth, Epic, and NextGen for patent infringement on its patent which generically describes a patient portal that “employs a server on which the health care records of participating patients are stored” and where “patients can review their own records via Internet and can edit them.”

Cerner Announces Share Repurchase Program

Cerner’s board of directors has approved a stock repurchase program authorizing the purchase of $245 million of its common stock, representing an estimated 1.2 percent of its outstanding shares. The stock will be repurchased in blocks over an undisclosed period of time.

Trends in Clinical Lab & Digital Pathology | 2015

Peer60 publishes analysis on the Clinical Lab and Pathology market, finding that Meditech (25 percent) and Cerner (22 percent) are the segment’s market share leaders, while replacement vendor mind share is closely split between Epic (33 percent) and Cerner (30 percent). 51 percent of respondents report that they are planning to move away from their current vendor.

PointClickCare Gears Up for IPO

Long-term care software vendor PointClickCare files its IPO with the SEC at an initial valuation of $100 million.

Morning Headlines 9/8/15

What Are a Hospital’s Costs? Utah System Is Trying to Learn

The New York Times covers efforts by the University of Utah Health Care to use data analytics to calculate the cost of the care per minute in each care area, as well as across various procedures and conditions. The team has already cut $200,000 per year in unnecessary lab tests and reduced costs associated with bypass surgeries by 30 percent.

Care.data on hold again

In England, the NHS’s electronic patient data sharing program Care.data has been suspended just ahead of its pilot program launch. Concerns over the wording used on the patient consent and opt out form was the reason for the delay.

Kentucky receives nearly $1m a year for next four years to combat prescription drug abuse, heroin

The CDC issues a four-year, $4 million grant to Kentucky to help it integrate its prescription drug monitoring program with EHRs being used by hospitals in the state.

Morning Headlines 9/7/15

Banner scrapping $115M UA Health records system

A local Tucson paper reports that Banner Health will replace the University of Arizona Health Network’s $115 million Epic platform with Cerner by early 2018.

Medicaid ICD-10 workarounds in California, three other states worry providers

Medicaid programs in California, Louisiana, Maryland, and Montana have been granted permission from CMS to continue using ICD-9 codes after the October 1 switchover because their systems are not fully capable of supporting ICD-10. The state offices will convert submitted ICD-10 codes into ICD-9 codes and then use those codes to calculate payments.

New service to manage cyber security threats in health and care

England will create a national cyber security center to support the NHS and other healthcare organizations, providing “expert advice and guidance on cyber security threats and best practice.”  The new service will be launch in phases between January and autumn 2016.

Electronic Health Record Incentive Program-Stage 3 and Modifications to Meaningful Use in 2015 through 2017

ONC has submitted the Meaningful Use Stage 3 Final Rule to the OMB for review ahead of its public release.

Morning Headlines 9/4/15

Salesforce Health Cloud: Putting Patients at the Center of Their Care

Salesforce announces the launch of its new Health Cloud platform, a CRM platform optimized to help healthcare organizations manage patient relationships.

athenahealth and Epic Are Only Vendors with Growth and No Losses in Acute Care EMR Market Share

A new KLAS report finds that Epic, Cerner, and Athenahealth are the only vendors that were able to expand their acute EHR market share in 2014. While only two vendors, Epic and Athena, recorded no customer losses through the year.

Veterans Health Administration: Review of Alleged Mismanagement at the Health Eligibility Center

The VA OIG publishes a report concluding that more than 300,000 of the VA’s 889,000 pending healthcare applications were for patients that have died, while an additional 50,000 applications were either erroneously deleted or otherwise left unprocessed for more than three years. The errors are being attributed to substandard IT processes.

NIH grants seek best ways to combine genomic information and EHRs

The NIH awards $35 million in funding to 10 organizations working to integrate genetics data into EHR systems. Recipients include Mayo Clinic, Geisinger Health System, and Brigham and Women’s Hospital, among others.

Morning Headlines 9/3/15

Electronic health record product certifications terminated

ONC strips Platinum Health Information System’s SkyCare 4.2 EHR of its MU certification after it failed to participate in routine surveillance requests. Prior to the decision, only one other vendor, EHRMagic, has ever had their certification revoked.

Healthcare Organization ICD-10 Readiness Survey: Key Survey Findings and Action Items

An August 2015 Navicure survey of practice billers, administrators, and executives finds that 15 percent of respondents have not started planning for their ICD-10 transition yet, while an additional 14 percent report that they are not on track to meet the deadline.

Radiation oncology practice settles with HHS over data breach

Cancer Care Group, a oncology practice in Indiana, will pay $750,000 to settle a 55,000 patient data breach with the OCR.