Morning Headlines 12/9/13

Progress on Adoption of Electronic Health Records

CMS proposes a one-year extension to the attestation period for Stage 2 Meaningful Use. Eligible providers who have completed two years of Stage 2 would begin Stage 3 in January 2017.

Epic hit with class-action lawsuit on overtime wages

A former Epic employee files a class-action lawsuit against Epic alleging that Epic employees are not paid overtime wages that they are entitled to.

Identity information of 1,300 Methodist Hospital transplant patients stolen

Houston Methodist Hospital is reporting that the data from 1,300 transplant patients was compromised when an encrypted laptop was stolen.

Russian diplomats accused of $1.5M Medicaid fraud

Dozens of Russian diplomats and family members are being charged with Medicare fraud after lying about their income so that the government would pay their healthcare bills.

Morning Headlines 12/6/13

To Make Hospitals Less Deadly, a Dose of Data

Tina Rosenberg, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, writes an op-ed in the New York Times calling for more transparency within hospital quality reporting data. She cites as her reason for concern a recent report published in the Journal of Patient Safety that attributes 440,000 US deaths per year to preventable medical errors. That’s one-sixth of all deaths nationally and the third leading cause of death in the United States.

Boston Children’s Hospital study shows significant reduction in hospital medical errors with improved handoff communication

A Boston Children’s Hospital study published in JAMA finds that by implementing a formal communication protocol for conducting patient handoffs and supporting the process with a structured, pre-populating, handoff tool within an EHR, substantial drops in medical errors were realized. Researchers noted a 46 percent drop in overall medical errors after the changes were implemented. Medical errors decreased from 33.8 to 18.3 per 100 admissions and preventable adverse events decreased from 3.3 to 1.5 per 100 admissions.

Carl Icahn buys up more Nuance shares

Active investor Carl Icahn ups his stake in Nuance to nearly 19 percent after the company’s unexpectedly low Q1 forecasts sends stock prices down 15 percent.

Largest Study of Critical Care Telehealth Reveals Improvements in Patient Outcomes and Reductions in Health Care Costs

Researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School publish a  study that measures the effectiveness of tele-ICU programs implemented across 56 intensive care units over a five-year period. The study found that with telehealth support in the ICU,  patients leave the ICU 20 percent faster and are 16 percent more likely to survive hospitalization and be discharged.

Morning Headlines 12/5/13

Meaningful use incentive payments soar toward $17B

The EHR incentive program has paid out $17 billion, with 85 percent of eligible hospitals attesting to Stage 1 MU.

CMS boosts telehealth coverage for 2014

Within Medicare’s 2014 physician fee schedule, CMS expands reimbursable telehealth services to include most rural communities up to “the fringes of metropolitan areas.”

Texting While Doctoring: A Patient Safety Hazard

In a recent Annals of Internal Medicine op-ed, the overlooked danger of charting in an EHR while interviewing a patient is equated to texting while driving. The authors argue that "using a cell phone while driving reduces the amount of brain activity devoted to driving by 37 percent. Multitasking is dangerous – cognitive scientists have shown that engaging in a secondary task disrupts primary task performance."

Class Action Law Suit Filed Against 23andMe

23andMe, a genome testing service provider that markets direct-to-consumer genetic tests, is hit with a class action lawsuit just a week after the FDA ordered the company to pull its  tests from the market until its submits evidence that the tests are scientifically valid.

Morning Headlines 12/4/13

Hearst Corporation Agrees to Acquire an 85% Stake in Homecare Homebase, LLC

Hearst Corporation acquires an 85 percent stake in Homecare Homebase, the #1 KLAS rated home health and hospice software vendor.

Martin Health System Adopts RightPatient™ Iris Biometrics for Patient Identification

Martin Health System (FL) will deploy a new biometric patient identification solution from RightPatient that uses iris scanning to positively identify patients. MHS executives expect that the new system will help stop patient identity fraud, eliminate the creation of duplicate medical records, and reduce billing errors.

KLAS Investing in the Future of Medical Imaging

KLAS forms an imaging advisory board to lead a new project focused on imaging-based research.

Adventist to launch updated system

Adventist (CA) will go live with Cerner across 50 clinics this week, completing a network-wide install.

Morning Headlines 12/3/13

Ontario hospital learns that bandaging IT doesn’t work

After ignoring IT department recommendations to upgrade aging infrastructure components, Bryant Community Healthcare in Ontario is paying the price. A power surge that resulted in a system-wide network crash and three days of unplanned downtime prompted hospital leadership to green light a new virtualized server environment that has eliminated unplanned downtime.

HealthCare.gov: Progress and Performance Report

CMS releases a Healthcare.gov progress report outlining the improvements made. A new analytics platform has been installed that is allowing developers to monitor site performance in real time from a centralized war room where decisions are being made on which improvements to tackle next.

Forsyth Tech to offer free job-training program

In North Carolina, Forsyth Technical Community College is launching a free "back-to-work" program that will build up a local supply of hard-to-find talent by training unemployed residents on key skills. One of the three career options students can chose from is an electronic health records specialist. The program will pay for registration fees, books and other incurred costs.

Morning Headlines 12/2/13

UW Medicine Notice of Computer Security Breach

University of Washington Medicine (WA) reports a data breach after a worker inadvertently opened an email that contained malware. A computer forensics investigation found that the virus accessed the data files of 90,000 patients.

Taking health care down a digital path

Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario goes live on Epic in the laboratory and across a portion of its outpatient clinics. Over the next three years, Epic will be rolled out across all acute units, the emergency department, and its ambulatory clinics.

"Patient portals" to soon allow online access to medical data

An upstate New York regional HIE is profiled by the local news as it prepares to launch a region-wide patient portal for residents.

34 Chicago-area hospitals to join health information exchange

MetroChicago HIE, a health information exchange that will service 34 Chicago-based hospitals, will be announced this week and will launch early in 2014.

Morning Headlines 11/27/13

Nuance Announces Fiscal 2013 and Fourth Quarter Results

Nuance reports Q4 results: $0.30 EPS on a total revenue of $472 million, missing analyst estimates of $489 million, but surpassing the $0.29 EPS estimate. Stock price fell 18 percent Tuesday due to lower than expected Q1 guidance.

7 Democrats Seek Long-Term HealthCare.gov CEO

A group of seven Democratic senators, led by Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, is calling for President Obama to appoint a CEO over Healthcare.gov  following the expected departure of Jeffrey Zients. Zenits was tapped to fix healthcare.gov shortly after it became apparent that the site had major technical issues, but at the time, he had already accepted a position as director of the National Economic Council which will start in January.

Telemedicine May Reduce Doctor Errors for Kids in Rural EDs‏

The use of telemedicine for pediatric consults in rural emergency departments led to fewer physician-related medication errors according to a report published in this month’s issue of Pediatrics.

Two Kansas health information exchanges to link, improving access

After more than a year of heated disagreements, two competing for-profit health information exchanges from Kansas have agreed to connect and share medical records statewide.

Morning Headlines 11/26/13

Analysis of huge data sets will reshape health care

USAToday covers the rise of big data in healthcare, imagining that, " Insurers will soon reassess how they predict costs; patients will let doctors know what medications won’t work with their particular genomes; and researchers will look at hospital records in real time to determine the cheapest, most effective ways to treat patients."

ProHealth adds Epic Systems’ ‘population management’ tool

ProHealth Care, a Wisconsin-based health system and ACO, becomes the first Epic customer to use Cogito, Epic’s population health data miner.

Congress Pushed for Stage 3 Criteria for Telehealth

The American Telemedicine Association, Association for Competitive Technology, Continua Health Alliance, and the Telecommunications Industry Association send a letter to Congressional leaders asking that they ensure that Meaningful Use Stage 3 includes interoperability requirements that address not only data within EHRs, but also data captured via remote patient monitoring systems.

FDA tells 23andMe to halt sales of genetic test

The FDA has ordered personal genome testing vendor 23andMe to pull its services from the market until it proves to the FDA that its tests are scientifically valid.

Morning Headlines 11/25/13

Tension and Flaws Before Health Website Crash

The New York Times says the White House, CMS, and the prime contractors all knew that Healthcare.gov was not ready for its October 1 launch.

THE HIT GROUP

Sunquest forms The HIT Group, a group of health IT vendors calling for FDA regulation over the health IT marketplace. Sunquest is hoping other vendors join its call for stronger and clearer regulatory guidance. Meanwhile on Capitol Hill, legislators hear testimony from FDA representative Jeffrey Shuren, MD concerning the recently proposed SOFTWARE Act which would restrict the FDA from exercising oversight on EHRs and clinical decision support tools.

Providence moves to save $5M at western Montana hospitals

Providence Health’s western Montana region, which includes St Patrick Hospital and St Joseph Medical Center, will lay off an undisclosed number of employees in an effort to offset the cost of hiring additional staff to support the network’s EHR.

So much data-gathering, so little doctoring 

A Los Angeles Times op-ed piece by gastroenterologist Michael Jones, MD calls EHRs "the latest wrench the healthcare industry has thrown in the way of doctors just listening to their patients." He goes on to explain that he left academic medicine for a small private practice, where he still hand writes all his notes and then calls the referring physician to discuss his findings.

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.