Morning Headlines 4/9/14

ABILITY Network Receives $550 Million Strategic Investment From Summit Partners

ABILITY Network, a web-based Medicare billing technology vendor, announces a $550 million strategic investment from Summit Partners, a growth equity investment firm.

Northwest Patients to Gain Easy Access to Clinicians’ Notes

Nine health systems and medical groups in Oregon and Southwest Washington will begin sharing physician notes with their patients as part of an OpenNotes project that will reach one-million patients in the region.

Hospital still profitable after tax rejection

St. Bernard Parish (LA) voters reject a one-year property tax proposal that would have paid for a new electronic medical records system and several new full time employees at its publically-owned community hospital.

Phoebe Putney Health System Picks MEDITECH 6.1 EHR

691-bed Phoebe Putney Health System (GA) choses Meditech 6.1, marking it the second 400+ bed win for Meditech this year.

Morning Headlines 4/8/14

10 years after the revolution

Modern Healthcare recounts the history of the ONC and the impact each of the previous four national coordinators has had on shaping US health IT policy.

Proposed Risk-Based Regulatory Framework and Strategy for Health Information Technology Report; Notice to Public of Availability of the Report and Web Site Location; Request for Comments

The FDA begins accepting public comments on the FDASIA Health IT Report. The comment period ends July 7, 2014.

Kaiser Permanente Northern California Department of Research to notify participants of potential breach

Kaiser Permanente notifies 5,100 patients of a data breach that potentially exposed full names, age, gender, address, race, medical record number, and lab results. The breach, Kaisers fourth, stems from a malware-infected server that was being used to store research data.

Morning Headlines 4/7/14

IMS Health raises $1.3B in 2014′s second-biggest IPO

IMS Health completes its IPO, selling 65 million shares at $20 and raising $1.3 billion for the company. Stock prices closed at $23 Friday, up 15 percent, at the end of its first day of trading.

5 Things About States With Problem-Plagued Health Exchanges

Oregon, Maryland, Massachusetts, Nevada, and Hawaii are named as having the worst health insurance exchange marketplaces in the country.

Oversold Conditions For Athenahealth

In trading on Friday, analysts watching key financial indicators warned that Athenahealth’s stock had entered into oversold territory. The stock closed down 11 percent by the end of trading Friday.

Beebe rolls out $33 million electronic records system

Beebe Healthcare (DE) goes live on its $33 million Cerner system, concluding a nine-month implementation and a two-year vendor selection process.

Morning Headlines 4/4/14

Proposed health IT strategy aims to promote innovation, protect patients, and avoid regulatory duplication

HHS publishes the long-awaited health IT regulatory framework proposal. The report suggests that health IT products be separated into three risk-based categories, with the FDA regulating only the category that includes software with medical device-related health IT functions, such as bedside monitor alarms and radiation treatment software. The FDA would not regulate EHRs or systems that provide medication management, provider order entry, clinical results review, and clinical decision support.

GE Healthcare to Acquire Analytics Solutions Provider CHCA, Further Advancing Industrial Internet Mission

GE acquires Canada-based CHCA Computer Systems, which offers the Opera Surgical Management System.

M*Modal Reaches Agreement On Financial Restructuring Plan

MModal announces that it has reached an agreement on the terms of a financial restructuring plan that will reduce its debt by than 55 percent, or $350 million, and lead to a conclusion of its debt-restructuring plan within the next 120 days.

CRMC implements new electronic medical records system

25-bed Cherokee Regional Medical Center goes live on its $2 million Epic install across the hospital, with all outpatient clinics coming on board later this year.

Morning Headlines 4/3/14

ICD-10 delay puts pressure on CMS for answers

Attention shifts to CMS for new guidance now that Congress has prohibited the October 2014 mandatory transition to ICD-10.

MMRGlobal 2014 "This Is Our Year" Letter to Shareholders

MMRGlobal sends a letter to its shareholders titled "This Is Our Year" in which the company boasts that because of Meaningful Use, the patient portal business is “the right business, at the right time”. The letter goes on to acknowledge that it prepared for Meaningful Use by investing millions of dollars in patents, intellectual property rights, and technology.

Veterans Affairs cut claims backlog by 44 percent since last year’s high

Since March 2013, the Department of Veterans Affairs has cut its backlog of pending benefits claims by 44 percent and shortened the average wait time for decisions from 282 days to 119. However, during that same timeframe independent audits turned up errors in 55 percent of the VA’s decisions. Appeals cases are up 50 percent.

Morning Headlines 4/2/14

Securities and Exchange Commission: Form S-1, Imprivata, Inc.

Imprivata files paperwork for a $115 million IPO. The company’s revenue has increased by 30 percent in each of the last two years, but it booked a net loss of $5.5 million at the close of 2013.

Selected Defense Programs Need to Implement Key Acquisition Practices

A GAO report finds that the Department of Defense is not accurately calculating future costs for its information systems projects, with 11 of the 13 programs inspected missing their long-term cost targets. One program, an in-country EHR called the the Theatre Medical Information Program, was originally budgeted to cost only $67 million, but has already ballooned to $1.6 billion.

“Litigious nature” of software vendors preventing unbiased reviews of healthcare software

In England, hospitals trying to collect and publish unbiased EHR reviews are being pressured to stop by EHR vendors. One hospital executive explains, "We would like to see something like Comparethesoftware.co.uk… but our pockets are not deep enough to confront the legal departments of the suppliers."

Doctors prescribe scribes

Brigham and Women’s Hospital will expand the use of scribes across its facilities to help doctors manage EHR-related data entry. Scribes join physicians during patient exams and take real-time electronic notes while the doctor and patient talk.

Morning Headlines 4/1/14

Senate Approves ICD-10 Delay, ‘Doc Fix’

By a vote of 64 to 35, the Senate approves the "Doc Fix" bill, delaying the implementation of ICD-10 until October 2015, and preserving the current Medicare physician reimbursement rate for 12 months.

HealthCare.gov stumbles twice on deadline day

Healthcare.gov goes offline twice on its final day of registration, first due to heavy traffic, and then again due to software issues. Despite the problems, analysts tracking the registration numbers expect that the final count will come very close to meeting the original goal of seven million new registrations.

Appropriate Use of the Copy and Paste Functionality in Electronic Health Records

AHIMA calls for stronger technical and administrative controls over the use of copy and paste in EHRs, and recommends that the industry develop and publish best practices as a condition of its continued use.

Emergency Department Utilization: Update on Assumed Savings from Best Practices Implementation

A program in Washington state that tracks ED utilization rates for individual patients and alerts PCPs of frequent fliers results in a decrease in Medicaid ED visits and Medicaid narcotic prescriptions.

Morning Headlines 3/31/14

Maryland set to replace troubled health exchange with Connecticut’s system

Maryland’s $125 million health insurance exchange website is being called “broken beyond repair” and will be shut down and replaced by the Deloitte-built system that Connecticut is successfully using.

Morgan Stanley Reveals Stocks on Takeover Target

Cerner is included in a Morgan Stanley report which looks at financial and market sector data to predict which companies are acquisition or takeover candidates this year.

Big data: are we making a big mistake?

A Financial Times article explores the state of ‘big data,’ warning that building larger datasets does not guarantee that statisticians will unlock exciting new answers from them. To illustrate that ‘big data’ comes second to good data, the article cites two presidential polling surveys from the Landon vs. Roosevelt 1936 election. One poll surveyed 3,000 voters and correctly predicted that Roosevelt would win, while the other surveyed 2.4 million voters and incorrectly predicted that Landon would win. The 3,000 sample-size survey called the election correctly because the researchers focused their efforts on building a clean and unbiased sample set, rather than building a massive sample set and assuming its size would correct for any statistical bias.

Medical First: 3-D Printed Skull Successfully Implanted in Woman

A 22-year-old woman in the Netherlands is the first person to receive a 3D plastic scull implant. The woman suffered from a condition that was causing her skull to thicken, leading to severe headaches and total loss of vision. Once the replacement skull was implanted, the woman’s vision returned and her and headaches stopped.

Morning Headlines 3/28/14

House Passes ICD-10 Delay Bill, Senate Next to Vote

The House of Representatives passes a bill that will delay the mandatory use of ICD-10 until October 2015. The bill now moves to the Senate for a Monday vote.

Racial differences in cancer screening with electronic health records and electronic preventive care reminders

A study published in JAMIA looks at an estimated 2.4 billion US adult primary care visits, and finds that orders for screening for breast, cervical, or colon cancer did not differ between clinics with and without EHRs.

Survey: 95% of organizations are at or below budget on ICD-10 transition

The Advisory Board publishes results from its ICD-10 Readiness Survey, which suggests that while there are still significant challenges ahead for ICD-10 adoption, 95 percent of providers are at or under their allocated budgets.

CMS System for Sharing Information About Terminated Providers Needs Improvement

The HHS OIG publishes a report which criticizes the effectiveness of a federal program responsible for broadcasting the identity of providers who have been banned from Medicaid due to fraud to all state Medicare agencies. Specifically, it found that about one-third of the 6,439 records in MCSIS did not relate to providers terminated "for cause," and that 17 states are not submitting provider names at all.

Morning Headlines 3/27/14

ICD-10 Delay, SGR Temporary Fix Up for Congressional Vote

A bill that would delay the ICD-10 transition until October 2015 and extend the current Sustainable Growth Rate for 12 months will be voted on in the House this Thursday.

AAO officially launches IRIS Registry

The American Academy of Ophthalmology has launched the Intelligent Research in Sight Registry (IRIS), a comprehensive national database that will be used for research and benchmarking. The database will interface with 18 EHR systems and aggregate 20 million patient records by 2017.

Cedars-Sinai Designing ‘Operating Room of the Future’ to Streamline, Improve Trauma Care

Cedars-Sinai and the US Military will work together to build an "Operating Room of the Future" that will focus on improving coordination of care during the so-called “golden hour,” when prompt medical attention can mean the difference between life and death.

Morning Headlines 3/26/14

HHS Strategy to Address Information Exchange Challenges Lacks Specific Prioritized Actions and Milestones

The GAO publishes a review of HIE efforts being undertaken in four states, and finds that cost, insufficient data standards, problems with patient record matching, and concerns over variance in state privacy laws are all collectively dragging down progress. 

Uncertainty clouds federal Test EHR Program

Providers are struggling with the technical aspects of trying to use ONC’s Designated Test EHR Program to validate their ability to exchange health data with other vendor systems.

A better flu tracker using Twitter, not Google

Researchers from Johns Hopkins University and George Washington University have developed algorithms that track the spread of flu using Twitter data with a 93 percent accuracy.

IMS Health IPO could value company at up to $6.97 billion

IMS Health, an analytics firm focused on aggregating and reselling prescription drug data, prices its IPO at $18 – $21 per share, valuing the company at $7 billion.

Morning Headlines 3/25/14

HHS lays out 4-part health IT strategic plan

HHS publishes a broad health IT strategic plan for 2014-2018 that focuses on expanding health IT adoption, coordinating the development of interoperability standards, and integrating clinical best practices.

Western Maryland Regional Medical Center staff adheres to ‘circle of care’ approach

In a recently released Maryland Hospital Patient Safety Program Annual Report, the state Department of Health and Mental Hygiene named EHR systems as a culprit in some adverse events. The report explains, “The inability to access pending tests or results has led to delays in treatment, inappropriate discharges and futile surgeries.”

Proposed patient-centered telemedicine policy raises licensing questions

The Federation of State Medical Boards will vote on a new telemedicine policy that requires physicians to be licensed in the state where the patient is located when telemedicine visits are conducted.The proposal is being called an unnecessary barrier to telehealth expansion and adoption by advocates.

ONC, West Health see mobile interoperability saving $30B annually

A white paper published by the Gary and Mary West Health Institute claims that if mobile medical devices had greater interoperability the nation could avoid $30 billion a year in wasteful healthcare spending.

Morning Headlines 3/24/14

Metro Detroit health systems Beaumont, Oakwood and Botsford sign letter of intent to merge

In Detroit, Beaumont, Botsford, and Oakwood health systems announce plans to merge, citing integrated medical records as a driving factor behind the decision. The new system will span eight hospitals and consolidate $3.8 billion in annual revenue.

McKesson Technologies Anesthesia Care: Recall – Patient Case Data May Not Match Patient Data

The FDA issues a Class-1 recall of McKesson’s Anesthesia Care product. The decision suggests that the FDA sees clinical applications, ones that provide CDS but do not control medical devices, as falling into the high-risk category that warrants a class 1-level recall. McKesson issued a voluntary recall of the system in 2013 after customers reported that anesthesia data had been erroneously saved to the wrong patient’s record..

‘Flawed’ patient record system led to crisis on jubilee weekend

In England, the troubled Meditech go-live at Rotherham NHS Foundation Trust is profiled by a local paper, which says that after a four-year install, the system go-live compromised key cancer treatment schedules, ER workflows, outpatient appointment bookings, and generated $17 million in cost overages.

Conn. health official accuses Mass. of hoarding federal grant for New England health insurance collaborative

Connecticut officials are seeking $10 million from Massachusetts over a $45 million federal grant that had been issued to Massachusetts in 2010 to build an HIE infrastructure that was supposed to then be shared with other New England states. The project never resulted in a platform that other states could use, prompting Connecticut to seek reimbursement for work it eventually had to do on its own.

Morning Headlines 3/21/14

M*Modal Files Voluntary Chapter 11 Petitions to Facilitate Financial Restructuring

M*Modal files for chapter 11 bankruptcy two years after being acquired by private equity firm OneEquity for $1.1 billion. M*Modal markets cloud-based transcription and voice recognition solutions, and says that it will continue on with normal operations throughout the bankruptcy proceedings.

Harvard Research Reveals EarlySense Monitoring System Reduces Length of Stay in the Hospital and ICU

Harvard Researchers testing the effectiveness of the EarlySense monitoring system, a sensor that sits beneath a bed mattress and monitors heart rate, respiration rate, and movements, find that its use led to a reduction in length of stay, a reduction in ICU days, and a reduction in code blues.

REC Program Evaluation Interim Report: Round 1 Case Studies

ONC publishes findings from a review that was conducted with nine RECs, highlighting the most difficult challenges faced, and emerging best practices for helping providers achieve MU.

Key leadership in OHA, Cover Oregon to be replaced following investigation

The head of the Oregon Health Authority has resigned over the poor performance of Oregon’s health insurance exchange. The exchange, which was developed by Oracle, remains the only exchange in the US that has still not enrolled a single person in an insurance plan.

Morning Headlines 3/20/14

Penetration Test Of the Indian Health Service’s Computer Network

The OIG conducts staged cyber attacks on the Indian Health Services computer network and finds significant and addressable vulnerabilities. During the exercise, OIG hackers were able to access internal IHS networks and databases, uncover user account and password details, and remotely take over IHS computer terminals.

IBM Watson goes after brain cancer

A group of New York hospitals along with researchers from the New York Genome Center will team up with the IBM Watson group to start work on a new Watson application that will evaluate a patient’s genome and EMR data, and then reference medical literature and a library of medical charts to help create a personalized treatment plan based on outcomes probability. To start, researchers will focus on glioblastoma, an aggressive and malignant brain cancer.

Healthcare Organizations Haven’t Maximized Full Potential of Meaningful Use, According to HIMSS14 Stoltenberg Consulting Survey

A non-scientific study conducted by Stoltenberg Consulting during HIMSS finds that a lack of resources is the number one barrier to advancing meaningful use adoption, followed by restricted timeframes, a lack of buy in, and competing IT projects.

Morning Headlines 3/19/14

From vital signs to clinical outcomes for patients with sepsis: a machine learning basis for a clinical decision support system

Researchers at the University of California Davis Health System have demonstrated that EHR data can be used to predict sepsis, and are working on an algorithm that can be incorporated into EHRs to generate alerts and drive interventions.

Colorado health exchange workers are paid more than similar positions in three other states

20 percent of the 36 employees working at the Colorado health insurance exchange make more than $100,000 per year, drawing criticism from local papers. Patty Fontneau, the executive director over the HIE, defended the salaries, saying "I had to hire individuals with skill sets to implement a significant project in a short period of time."  Colorado has one of the best performing exchanges in the country, but it did have significant technical issues at launch, and its enrollment numbers are below the state’s expectations.

New York Presbyterian Hospital Announces Winners and Results from NYC’s First Hospital ‘Hackathon’

New York Presbyterian Hospital awards the three winners of its hospital hackathon $50,000, $25,000, and $10,000 respectively. The two-day hackathon it held drew 17 teams and focused on developing tools to improve patient engagement and the patient experience.

Google’s Flu Tracker Suffers From Sniffles

David Lazer, a Northeastern University computer science professor, publishes a paper criticizing Google Flu Trends for presenting highly inaccurate data, saying that last year Google predicted twice as many flu cases as the CDC later said there were.

Morning Headlines 3/18/14

CMS Wants Money Back from PQRS, eRx Programs

According to a Federal Register notice, CMS will launch a four-year program that will survey PQRS and eRx program participants to verify data quality. The project will include efforts to "evaluate incentive payment information for accuracy and identify improper payments, with the goal of recovering these payments.”

Group advocates for single-payer system over HIX

Several states, including Pennsylvania, discuss following in Vermont’s footsteps by creating a state-level single-payer system as an alternative to supporting expensive and problematic health insurance exchanges.

Massachusetts to Cut Ties With CGI Group Over Troubled Online Health Exchange

Massachusetts fires healthcare.gov contractor CGI Federal over the state’s own failing health insurance exchange rollout. CGI Federal is also under investigation for fraud in Vermont stemming from another failed health insurance exchange rollout there.