Morning Headlines 3/10/15

Apple ResearchKit Turns iPhones Into Medical Diagnostic Devices

Apple unveils Research Kit, an open source API designed to connect medical researchers with research study participants to improve communication and streamline data capture. Five projects are already live on the framework, including a breast cancer research project from Dana Farber, a diabetes project from Massachusetts General Hospital, and a Parkinson’s disease diagnostic tool from the University of Rochester.

2015 Healthcare Tech Purchasing

A Peer60 report finds that 60 percent of hospitals plan to invest in health IT-related projects in 2015, with most hospitals focusing on ICD-10, population health, and patient engagement tools.

Oregon’s exchange closing after a history of tech woes

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signs a law formally disbanding the state’s failed health insurance exchange platform, Cover Oregon.

CHIME and AMDIS Sign Management Services Agreement, Appoint New Executive Vice President Of Medical Informatics and Patient Safety For CHIME

CHIME and AMDIS announce a new partnership under which CHIME will provide operational, administrative, and staff support to AMIDS and AMDIS will act as the primary physician informatics advisor to CHIME. A similar arrangement was announced between the organizations in June.

Morning Headlines 3/9/15

St. Mary’s: Patient information compromised in Email hack

St. Mary’s Medical Center (IN) is informing 4,400 patients that their personal information was compromised when hackers gained access employee email accounts in January. The exposed information included names, date of birth, gender, date of service, insurance information, health information, and Social Security numbers.

Clayton County’s Southern Regional Medical Center Lays Out Long-Term Plans For Hospital’s Financial Success

Southern Regional Medical Center (GA) lays off 80 employees after implementing a productivity benchmarking system that shows how other hospitals around the nation of a comparable size and case mix are staffing their own departments.

On the Case at Mount Sinai, It’s Dr. Data

The New York Times profiles Jeffrey Hammerbacher, a 32-year old Harvard trained data analytics expert that started out in finance before moving to Facebook to build their data analytics team, and is now a professor at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai working with computational biologists to apply data analytics in medicine.

Morning Headlines 3/6/15

Where Is HITECH’s $35 Billion Dollar Investment Going?

Five Republican senators co-author a Health Affairs piece questioning what value EHRs and the governments $35 billion HITECH investment have returned to taxpayers.

Anthem Refuses Full IT Security Audit

Anthem has been refusing to let the Office of Personnel Management’s inspector general perform "standard vulnerability scans and configuration compliance tests" since 2013, before the recent cyber attack on its network that compromised 80 million medical records. The insurer still won’t allow the IG’s office to conduct its tests, citing a corporate policy that bars outside agencies from accessing its network.

FDA launches drug shortages mobile app

The FDA has launched a mobile app, its first, that identifies current drug shortages, resolved shortages, and recent discontinuations. It is available for both iOS and Android devices.

Morning Headlines 3/5/15

The Next Marketing Frontier: Your Medical Records

The Wall Street Journal covers freeware-EHR vendor Practice Fusion and its decision to embed big pharma-funded vaccine reminders into its EHR. Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard explains “For every project we do that drives forth public health or gives data away, we need to make sure it’s balanced out by a monetizable exercise.”

100 medical societies warn about possible ICD-10 problems

The American Medical Association and 99 other professional associations are calling on CMS to improve its ICD-10 transition plan following recent end-to-end tests that resulted in 19 percent of submitted claims being kicked back, almost all due to errors made by the submitting organization.

Supreme Court justices split in key challenge to Obamacare subsidies

The Supreme Court hears arguments on King v Burwell, a case that could undermine the Affordable Care Act by stripping subsidies from any consumer that purchased health insurance through Healthcare.gov. Defendants of the ACA argue that withholding subsidies from states that did not launch an insurance exchange would be tantamount to the federal government applying illegal ”coercive pressure” on states.

Despite The Spread Of Health Information Exchange, There Is Little Evidence Of Its Impact On Cost, Use, And Quality Of Care

Health Affairs publishes a literature review of 27 studies finds little evidence that health information exchanges reduce costs or improve outcomes.

Morning Headlines 3/4/15

Truven Health Analytics prepares for IPO

Reuters reports that Truven Health Analytics is preparing for an IPO that will value the company at $3 billion. Truven was acquired by Veritas Capital Fund Management in 2012 for $1.25 billion.

Review of Alleged Misuse of VA Funds To Develop the Health Care Claims Processing System

The OIG investigates the VA Chief Business Office, concluding that it violated appropriations laws when it spent $92 million on a new IT system from a fund that was only authorized to cover medical, construction, supply, and research costs.

Free of Ebola but not fear

Nina Pham, the Texas Health Resources nurse that contracted Ebola while treating a patient last fall, is suing her former employer, claiming that a lack of training, established policies, and proper equipment led to her exposure.

What Are the Best Hospitals? Rankings Disagree

The Wall Street Journal compares four hospital ranking sites (US News & World Report, Consumer Reports, Leapfrog Group, and Healthgrades) and finds that there is virtually no consensus among the lists. 27 percent of the hospitals listed among the nation’s best were rated among the nation’s worst on one of the other lists.

Morning Headlines 3/3/15

CMS announces release of 2015 Impact Assessment of Quality Measures Report

CMS publishes a report measuring progress made on quality measures since 2006, finding that improvements have been made in 95 percent of the 119 publicly reported performance measures reviewed.

NantHealth and Allscripts Join Forces to Develop Precision Solutions at Point of Care in This Era of Genomic Medicine

Allscripts and NantHealth will partner to develop genome-based clinical decision support features within Allscripts’ EHR that will help oncologists create  personalized cancer treatment plans.

VA boosts telehealth budget for 2016

The VA has requested $1.2 billion for telehealth services in its 2016 budget request, up $126 million over last year.

AMA continues push for MU changes

AMA applauds CMS’s decision to extend the MU attestation deadline for eligible providers, but complains that even with the extension the program is too rigid and still needs to be overhauled.

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.