Morning Headlines 11/22/13

Children’s Medical Center Selected as 2013 Enterprise HIMSS Davies Award Winner

Children’s Medical Center in Dallas, TX has been named this year’s HIMSS Davies award winner.
Administrators at Children’s used their EHR to introduce standardized clinical pathways that have decrease variation in care and significantly improve patient outcomes.

Cedars-Sinai Taps iPhone For Enterprise Mobility       

Forbes profiles Cedars-Sinai’s roll out of iPhones for its nurses. CIO Darren Dworkin says "The iPhone, while a consumer device, has been the first real platform on which we could see our core vendors, like Epic, and an eco system of new vendors, like Voalte, coming together to deliver the workflow that our nurses and doctors deserve."

Clinovations Launches Center for Population Health Management

Clinovations, a Washington DC-based healthcare consulting firm, announces the formation of a center that will focus on designing and implementing population management and value-based care delivery systems.

Morning Headlines 11/21/13

FDA approves next gen sequencers in watershed for personalized med

The FDA has cleared toe manufacturers of four next generation high-throughput DNA sequencers to market the devices to help identify gene mutations that are linked with cystic fibrosis.

Children’s Oakland completes Phase 1 of $89 million electronic records system

Children’s Hospital & Research Center in Oakland (CA) goes live with its $89 million Epic rollout across its inpatient and oncology/hematology clinics. The remainder of its ambulatory clinics are scheduled to go live in April.

Health dept pleads for PCEHR patience

In Australia, Department of Health secretary Jane Halton is asking for patience as the nations newly elected Prime Minister calls for a review of the nations failing $1 billion patient-controlled EHR portal program. To date, only 11,136 shared health summaries had been uploaded into the system despite being live for more than a year.

Morning Headlines 11/20/13

The Anatomy of Health Care in the United States

Researchers at Johns Hopkins publish a study in JAMA that evaluates the economic mechanisms contributing to the rise of healthcare costs in the US. The study finds that costs are increasing for a number of reasons: 1) hospital and practice consolidation is weakening the purchasing power of healthcare consumers 2)  drug and medical device costs are increasing 3) expensive investments in health IT have not resulted in a significant savings.

eClinicalWorks Makes Additional $50 Million Investment in Patient Engagement & Population Health

Westborough, MA-based eClinicalWorks will spend $50 million bolstering its patient engagement business unit, adding 100 employees over the next year to enhance the company’s patient portal mobile app.

Icahn says would ‘never’ push Apple to buy Nuance

Active Investor Carl Icahn, who has a 16.9 percent stake in Nuance and a significant stake in Apple, says that he will not pressure Apple to buy Nuance.

Healthsherpa Helps Thousands Get Insurance Quotes

Three entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley code a healthcare.gov competitor, called TheHealthSherpa.com, in just three days. The site is able to generate insurance quotes based off zip code, age, and smoking status, and estimates federal subsidies based on annual income. It stops short of actually enrolling consumers in new plans, but does serve as a research tool for consumers, not to mention proof of how quickly and efficiently projects can be rolled out if the right people are involved.

Morning Headlines 11/19/13

Use of Analytics Produces Better Patient Outcomes

Informaticists at UNC Health Care in Chapel Hill, NC are using natural language processing analytics tools to comb through text-based mammogram reports to help ensure that all patients who need follow up appointments are seen. Researchers with the study report that 25 percent of adverse affects occurring in the outpatient setting are a result of inadequate follow up of abnormal test results. The NLP-based analytics tool was able to read through 500 reports and accurately identify which ones needed follow up appointments with a 100 percent accuracy.

Here’s What Your Operation Will Really Cost

Intermountain Healthcare announces that it will begin tracking the cost of all consumables, equipment, and time spent delivering care across the network to get a more accurate picture of the total cost of care for different conditions. The hope is to create a "cost master" that could then be embedded in Intermountain’s EHR and used to help drive fiscally responsible care planning.

CareFusion plans to acquire GE Healthcare’s Vital Signs

CareFusion announces that it will acquire GE Healthcare’s Vital Signs business unit for $500 million. Vital Signs makes a variety of single-use products that support respiratory care, anesthesiology, and patient monitoring.

Morning Headlines 11/18/13

Health IT helping to fight the prescription drug abuse epidemic

ONC announces a new interoperability project that will help establish common technical standards and a standard vocabulary that will allow EHRs and HIEs to integrate data from state-run prescription drug abuse databases.

Cover Oregon: Health exchange board puts director Rocky King on notice over stalled website

The board of Oregon’s health insurance exchange program has places its executive director, Rocky King, on notice over technical issues that have plagued the exchange’s website, and prevented anyone from buying health insurance on it, since its October 1 launch.

AMIA 2013 Annual Symposium

The American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) kicks off its week-long annual conference in Washington DC this week.

Steve Larking Joins ESD as Regional Vice President

Former MaxIT VP Steve Larking joins health IT consulting firm ESD. MaxIT was acquired by SAIC last year, and then rolled into a new company after SAIC split itself into two businesses. Ray Murray, another maxIT VP, also left for ESD at the beginning of November.

Morning Headlines 11/14/13

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas and Tenet Healthcare Corporation Collaborate on Statewide ACO to Improve Quality and Efficiency of Care

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Texas will launch a state-wide ACO with Tenet Healthcare’s 10 Texas-based facilities in January 2015.

MIT’s shapeshifting display lets you reach out and touch someone

Researchers at MIT have created a prototype of a 3D monitor that it hopes will have implications in medical imaging by providing 3D visualizations of CT scans.

US, UK open public health cloud

The US and UK will begin consolidating de-identified patient data from CMS, the FDA, and the NHS in England. The data will be stored in a UK-hosted health data cloud, where it will be made available to researchers all over the world.

JAMA Delves Deep Into What’s Ailing American Healthcare

The November issue of JAMA delves into some of the critical issues within the US healthcare system and proposals to fix them. Topics included healthcare costs and outcomes, industry consolidation, and the tension between population health and individual healthcare. Ezekiel J. Emanuel, MD, PhD, chair of the Department of Medical Ethics and Health Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, contributed a piece challenging the healthcare industry to shrink US per capita health care cost growth to no more than GDP + zero percent by 2020. He calls for, among many things, an increase in EHR adoption and remote patient monitoring as a means to this end.

Morning Headlines 11/13/13

Joint Center for Cancer Precision Medicine established

In Boston, Dana Farber, Brigham and Women’s, Boston Children’s Hospital, and the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard have announced a collaborative partnership that will pursue advances in cancer genetics to create “precision medicine treatment pathways” for patients with advanced cancers.

WESTMED Accountable Care Collaboration with UnitedHealthcare and Optum Yields Significant Health Improvements

White Plains NY-based WESTMED Medical Group reports that its year-old ACO has led to improvements in nine of 10 health quality metrics, increased patient satisfaction, and reduced health care costs.

First Estimate On Insurance Sign-Ups Is Pretty Darned Small

Fewer than 50,000 people signed up for health insurance through Healthcare.gov during the month of October, according to the Wall Street Journal. The administration had been targeting 500,000 for October, but the site launch was plagued with technical issues.

CMS Reconsiders ‘End-to-End’ ICD-10 Testing

CMS is reconsidering its earlier decision to forego end-to-end ICD-10 testing with physician’s offices, claiming at the time that it was confident that its own internal testing was sufficient. The change in tone comes in response to growing public concern about its testing of Healthcare.gov.

DrFirst Launches New Tool to Alert Doctors to At-Risk Patients and Identify Patient Medication Adherence Rates

DrFirst has enhanced its e-prescribing routine to present physicians with prescription fill rates and unfilled prescription alerts for patients at the point of prescription writing. The information will used to help physicians gauge medication adherence. It will be available either on DrFirst’s own e-prescribing system or within an EHR system that uses it.

Morning Headlines 11/12/13

With Enrollment at 200K, VA’s Million Veteran Program Inks Contracts for Genetic Analysis

The VA has enrolled 200,000 veterans in the Million Veteran Program, a long-term genetics research study the VA hopes will uncover genetic links to various diseases and lead to personalized treatment strategies for veterans. With steadily increasing enrollment, the VA has also announced that they have contracted with the BioProcessing Solutions Alliance and BioStorage Technologies to provide genome sequencing for the program over the next five years.

State apologizes for patients’ records posted on Internet

The North Carolina Department of Health and Human Services is apologizing after accidently publishing the names, addresses, and payment information of 1,300 patients to a public website.

NextGen Healthcare Unveils New Interoperability Platform — NextGen Share —at 18th Annual NextGen Healthcare User Group Meeting

NextGen unveils a new secure exchange platform called NextGen Share. The product is the first collaborative product launch with Mirth since acquiring the open-source HIE vendor in September.

Morning Headlines 11/11/13

White House tech expert gets subpoena to testify on HealthCare.gov

Todd Park, the US chief technology officer, has been issued a subpoena by the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee to testify at a hearing next week about what went wrong with the Healthcare.gov website. The committee says he was not willing to appear voluntarily, while the White House responded that the subpoena was unnecessary and poorly timed because Park is heavily involved in fixing Healthcare.gov and had already volunteered to testify in December.

Region Zealand and the Capital Region points to Epic as a provider of Health Platform

Epic, working with NNIT as a prime contractor, will sign a contract to provide EHR systems for all of eastern Denmark, according to a translated press release. The deal will involve 40,000 users and is valued at $180 million.

University Hospital sees banding together for survival

University Hospital (GA) will likely join Novant Health Inc., a 20-facility network based in Charlotte, NC. University Hospital’s CEO cites ARRA and the ACA as having too significant an impact on the bottom line to keep up as a standalone facility. The hospital spent $50 million on Epic and is looking for an additional $30 million to cover needed upgrades.

Report: CCO diversion program working

In Oregon, a recent report finds that a statewide coordinated care program has managed to reduce overall ER visits by 9 percent from 2011, before the program was launched. Emergency care spending also declined 18 percent from 2011. Outpatient primary care visits have increased by 18 percent and spending for primary care is up 7 percent.

Morning Headlines 11/8/13

Allscripts Healthcare Posts Q3 Loss

Allscripts reports Q3 results: revenue dropped to $330 million, compared to $360 million a year ago. EPS $0.05 vs $0.23, missing analysts estimates.The company also announced that it has fired  Cliff Meltzer, EVP of solutions development.

Data Analytics Update: Health IT Policy Committee Meeting

CMS has paid $16.5 billion in EHR incentive payments thus far. Meditech, Cerner, and Epic customers account for almost half of Stage 1 hospital attestations. Epic, Allscripts, eClinicalWorks, and NextGen represent almost half of Stage 1 EP attestations.

HIMSS Offers Guidance to HHS on FDA Regulation of Health IT

In a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, HIMSS argues against FDA regulation of EHRs as a medical device, instead proposing "a new risk-based oversight framework that takes into account factors such as risk relative to intended use and cost/benefit of any proposed oversight."

Results From Survey on Health Data Exchange

eHealth Initiative’s 10th annual health data exchange study consolidates survey responses from representatives at 200 HIEs across the country. Respondents report that large scale interoperability is still too difficult and expensive for most to sustain on revenue alone. Currently, only 25 percent of respondents report that they are earning enough to operate independently.

Morning Headlines 11/7/13

Healthcare.gov casualty: CMS CIO steps down

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services CIO Tony Trenkle will step down from his position effective November 15 according to an internal email sent by CMS COO Michelle Snyder. Trenkle joined CMS in 2005, directing the Office of E-Health Standards and Services before becoming CIO and overseeing the agency’s $2 billion IT budget.

NSA allegations prompt NIST to review data encryption processes

The National Institute of Standards and Technology announces that it will have its data encryption standards independently reviewed after leaked documents reveal that the NSA has cracked the encryption standard. NIST encryption is the de facto standard for healthcare information security.

Surescripts Network Gains Momentum, Adds 12 Health Systems to Connect Providers across Care Communities

Surescripts adds 12 Epic health systems to its growing health information exchange network.

Disability claims backlog, EHR efforts top VA nominee’s priorities

Sloan Gibson, current USO CEO and presidential nominee to be the next VA deputy director reported that he would tackle the longstanding backlog of disability claims and will work to find common ground with the Defense Department on a new strategy for a joint electronic-health records system.

Morning Headlines 11/6/13

Health Management Associates Announces Restatement of Financial Statements

Health Management Associates will restate all of its financial statements going back to 2010 to correct for $31 million in EHR incentive payments improperly collected by 11 of its hospitals. An internal audit recently found that the hospitals attested for Meaningful Use Stage 1 when they did not actually meet the requirements.

CPSI Announces Third Quarter 2013 Results

CPSI announces Q3 results: revenue up four percent, to $47 million vs. $45 million over the same period last year. EPS $0.66 vs. $0.63.

Community CIS Market Quickly Turning into Replacement Market

KLAS reports that 25 percent of community hospitals would not buy the same HIS again. Epic fared the best in the community hospital space, followed in order by Healthland, CPSI, Meditech, and McKesson.

Rotherham trust revises EPR strategy

In England, Rotherham NHS will walk away from its $50 million Meditech 6.0 system that went live in 2012.

Morning Headlines 11/5/13

Care Team Connect Is Now a Part of The Advisory Board Company

The Advisory Board announces that it has acquired Evanston, IL.-based Care Team Connect, a population health vendor that provides web-based SaaS to help care teams utilize population risk stratification while coordinating care across care settings.

Registry-based clinical trial puts heart treatment to the test

Researchers in Sweden are validating a new post-market clinical trial approach that uses analytics tools to pour through EHR data to substantiate outcomes are matching expectations established in pre-market trials. During their research, they discovered that the use of thrombus aspiration, a common procedure for certain types of heart attack patients, resulted in no difference in 30-day all-cause mortality rates for patients who received the treatment vs. patients who did not. The findings are the subject of a new study published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

New technology helps smaller hospitals identify signs of a stroke

Five remote hospitals across Ohio are using a new telehealth system to connect with stroke specialists at Toledo Hospital. Two more hospitals are expected to join the network by the end of the year.

Morning Headlines 11/4/13

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center bond rating lowered

Standard & Poor’s lowers Wake Forest Baptist’s bond rating following a problematic Epic implementation that took place during the fall of 2012 and resulted in weak operating performance. Moody’s lowered the medical center’s credit rating in March.

Peter Dutton to announce inquiry into online health record system

In Australia, the administration of newly elected prime minister Tony Abbott will launch an inquiry into its national patient-controlled EHR. The patient portal-based platform has cost about $200,000 per patient to launch, attracting only 400,000 users to date. The incoming health minister Peter Dutton is calling the failed EHR program a "scandal."

Why Obama’s ‘IPod Presidency’ Was Doomed

A Bloomberg article compares innovation in business with innovation in government, concluding that organizations like HHS are fundamentally disadvantaged when it comes to creating websites like healthcare.gov because they are older organizations and are not subjected to market pressures to stay current with innovation.

Samsung edges Apple in tablet-satisfaction survey

Samsung gets top honors from JD Power’s biannual tablet satisfaction survey even though Apple scored higher in four of five categories: performance, ease of operation, styling/design, and features, while Samsung scored higher in just one: cost.

Morning Headlines 11/1/13

Overrides of medication-related clinical decision support alerts in outpatients

A study published in JAMA looks at the value of clinical alerts within CPOE systems and finds that alerts are overridden 52 percent of the time. The most common alerts were duplicate drug (33.1%), patient allergy (16.8%), and drug–drug interactions (15.8%). The most likely alerts to be overridden were formulary substitutions, age-based recommendations, renal recommendations, and patient allergies.

MEDSEEK Acquires SymphonyCare to Expand Presence in Emerging Population Health and Care Management Market

Physician web portal and HIE vendor MEDSEEK acquires population health vendor SymphonyCare as part of a broader strategy to diversify its portfolio.

Merge Reports Third Quarter Financial Results

Merge reports Q3 results: revenue dropped to $57.7 million from $60.4 million during the same quarter last year,  missing analysts estimates on both revenue and EPS.

WebMD buys startup Avado to connect patients and physicians

As part of a strategic makeover aimed at rebranding itself a patient engagement platform, WebMD acquires Avado, a startup that develops cloud-based software that helps physicians and patients interact online.

Morning Headlines 10/31/13

Sebelius: ‘I apologize, I’m accountable’ for Obamacare website flaws

Amid growing demands for her resignation, HHS secretary Kathleen Sebelius testified before congress today where she took full responsibility for the healthcare.gov rollout and reported that to date the site has cost taxpayers $174 million, which includes $56 million for support. In an unfortunate timing of events, the site crashed again in the middle of her testimony.

HIPAA framework could be expanded, privacy expert says

Modern Healthcare reports that growing concern over the impact mobile health apps and patient portals are having on health information security could lead to another expansion of HIPAA.

NM’s massive electronic health record project finally in the black

After eight years in operation, the nonprofit that built New Mexico’s health information exchange is operating in the black. CEO Bob Mayer reports "Our federal grant runs out in January and we will be sustainable on Jan. 1.”

CommonWell Health Alliance Announces Board of Directors

CommonWell Health Alliance introduces its board of directors which includes: Jeremy Delinsky, Board chairman (AthenaHealth CTO); Rich Elmore, Board vice chairman (Allscripts VP); Bob Robke, Board treasurer (Cerner VP); Rod O’Reilly, Board secretary (McKesson VP); Scott Schneider (CPSI EVP); Justin T. Barnes (Greenway VP); and Keith Laughman (Sunquest EVP).

Morning Headlines 10/30/13

Obamacare website official: Sorry for problems, but system working

CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner apologizes for the problems associated with healthcare.gov, promising that it "can and will be fixed," and reporting that a vast majority of consumers would be able to successfully use the site by the end of November.

Registry data standards may need to catch up before Stage 3

ONC members working to establish MU Stage 3 requirements are running into significant technical barriers as they work to facilitate the framework for integrated public health registries.

ZocDoc and CareCloud team up to streamline services for doctors

Ambulatory EHR vendor CareCloud partners with ZocDoc, an online doctor review and appointment booking website.

athenahealth Partners With Quantros; Proactively Brings Safety Solutions to Its Nationwide Cloud-Based Network of Medical Providers

athenaHealth, in partnership with cloud-based analytics vendor Quantros, launches a patient safety reporting platform that will allow end users to report patient safety concerns as well as share best practices to enhance safety and improve care.