Morning Headlines 10/30/14

Big health records firm Epic raises DC profile

Epic CEO Judy Faulkner gives a rare interview to Politico to discuss the company’s interoperability performance, explaining “If we don’t speak up, people will believe what others say about us, and an unanswered accusation becomes seen as the truth if you don’t respond.”

Google is developing cancer and heart attack detector

Google unveils its latest X labs project, a pill that delivers millions of antibody-coated nanoparticles into the blood stream where they will live indefinitely, hunting for signs of early-stage cancers, monitoring for concerning blood chemistry changes, and pushing alerts to a wrist-worn health tracker.

Booz Allen buys Boston health analytics start-up Epidemico

Booz Allen Hamilton will buy Boston-based analytics startup Epidemico for an undisclosed sum. Epidemico is the Harvard and MIT spinoff behind HealthMap, a data analytics project that tracks the spread of infectious diseases on a map by analyzing public health data from a variety of sources. HealthMap was recently credited with picking up on the Ebola virus first, weeks before the World Health Organization noticed it.

Top 10 Medical Innovations for 2015

The Cleveland Clinic publishes its list of the top 10 medical innovations set to disrupt healthcare in 2015, with telemedicine-enabled, ambulance-based stroke units coming in at number one.

Morning Headlines 10/29/14

Office of the National Coordinator update

The ONC reports that National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD will continue to lead the organization as she simultaneously takes over her new responsibilities as HHS’s Acting Assistant Secretary of Health.

UnitedHealth Group Unit to Acquire Alere Health

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Health will acquire Alere Health for $600 million. Alere will bring its population health expertise to Optum and will help implement wellness programs aimed at reducing overall health care costs.

Addenbrooke’s Hospital paperless system goes live

Epic goes live at Addenbrooke and Rosie hospitals, the company’s first live sites in the UK.

Health software brings risk of death

In Australia, a risk assessment of IMDsoft’s ICU application calls the system a threat to patient safety after finding that software bugs were contributing to a significant number of near miss medication errors at the nine hospitals using the system. The report predicts that the likelihood of the system contributing to a patient’s death sits between 60 and 90 percent.

Morning Headlines 10/28/14

Practice Fusion Rebuilds Its Electronic Health Record For Apple And Android Tablets

Practice Fusion unveils a new tablet-based version of its EHR, which CEO Ryan Howard says will differentiate it from competitors because “Most vendors’ mobile electronic health record is a half-assed version of desktop.” The company will now shift its focus toward creating a smartphone version.

A Letter from Dean Klag to Governor Chris Christie

Johns Hopkins School of Public Health Dean Michael J. Klag, MD, MPH writes a letter to NJ Governor Chris Christie criticizing his newly instituted 21-day involuntary quarantine for care workers returning to the US from West Africa.

Patient-To-Physician Messaging: Volume Nearly Tripled As More Patients Joined System, But Per Capita Rate Plateaued

A study conducted at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center finds that patient-to-physician email traffic has tripled in the last 10 years, but that the per capita rate has stabilized at around 18 messages per month, per 100 patients.

Mass. HIT survey shows high rates of EHR adoption; enthusiastic public

A government run health IT adoption survey soliciting opinions from a group of Massachusetts hospitals and practices finds positive physician support of EHRs, with 82 percent reporting that EHRs improve care, 80 percent reporting that EHRs reduce errors, and 75 percent reporting that EHRs enable better decision making.

Morning Headlines 10/27/14

Cerner Q3 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

In its Q3 earnings call, Cerner representatives address its recent Siemens acquisition, the upcoming DoD EHR deal, and its goal of having “the most open EMR.”

New York-New Jersey Quarantines Fuel Ebola Debate

After a doctor returning from Guinea is diagnosed with Ebola in New York, the state governments for both NY and NJ enact a mandatory 21-day quarantine order for any US aid workers returning from the affected areas. On Friday, a non-symptomatic nurse returning through Newark Liberty International Airport was involuntarily detained and is now being held under quarantine at Newark University Hospital.

FDA Approves Two Faster Ebola Tests

Two new Ebola tests that reduce the time it takes to run an Ebola screening from four hours down to just two hours have been approved for use by the FDA.

Salesforce to make big push into healthcare industry

Reuters reports that Salesforce will begin pursuing sales in the healthcare market, with a formal announcement expected in November.

Morning Headlines 10/24/14

HHS reshuffles amid Ebola crisis

Karen DeSalvo, MD leaves her post leading the ONC to take over as HHS’s acting assistant secretary for health. Interim national coordinator Jacob Reider, MD also announces he will leave ONC in the coming weeks, leaving ONC COO Lisa Lewis to take over as the new acting national coordinator.

HHS Secretary announces $840 million initiative to improve patient care and lower costs

HHS announces $840 million in new grant money that will be used to help provider organizations implement the tools needed to create more coordinated, integrated health systems.

Wikipedia and Facebook for Clinical Documentation

John Halamka MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, calls for clinical documentation, which was designed to support billing needs, to be redesigned as an interdisciplinary communication tool.

Cerner Reports Third Quarter 2014 Results

Cerner reports Q3 results: revenue is up 15 percent to $840 million, adjusted EPS $0.42 vs. 0.35.

Morning Headlines 10/23/14

U.S. government probes medical devices for possible cyber flaws

Reuters reports that the Department of Homeland Security is quietly investigating cybersecurity flaws found in medical devices that government officials suspect could be exploited by hackers.

The Comparative Value of 3 Electronic Sources of Medication Data

A study measuring the accuracy of home medication list data sources compares the actual home medication lists for 858 patients with the data found in the hospital’s EHR, the local HIE, and a commercial ePrescribing network. Researchers found that the EHR had 80 percent of the patient’s home medications accurately listed, while the commercial ePrescribing network had 45 percent, and the local HIE had 37 percent.

Guidance on Personal Protective Equipment To Be Used by Healthcare Workers During Management of Patients with Ebola Virus Disease in US Hospitals

The CDC updates its Ebola personal protective equipment guidelines to specify that no skin should be exposed, and that repeated training with demonstrated competency on infection control standards should be conducted prior to caring for Ebola patients.

Morning Headlines 10/21/14

Tech firms vie for $11 billion military healthcare contract as deadline looms

The DoD has extended its EHR RFP deadline by one week, to October 31. The deadline was already extended by two weeks earlier this month. There are currently four EHR vendors known to be competing for the deal: Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, and VistA via Medsphere.

Healthcare IT Leaders Embrace Federal Interoperability Plans

CHIME and HL7 announce that they will partner to lobby for the inclusion of API-based interoperability standards in Meaningful Use Stage 3.

New Affordable Care Act initiative to support care coordination nationwide

CMS announces the ACO Investment Model, a $114 million initiative aimed at providing rural ACOs upfront funding to help them implement advanced health IT systems.

Morning Headlines 10/20/14

A Letter To Our Community

Texas Health Resources takes out a full page ad in the local paper in part to regain the trust of its community. A separate article mentions that patient volumes have plummeted at THR, with ED wait-times at zero minutes.

athenahealth’s (ATHN) CEO Jonathan Bush on Q3 2014 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Jonathan Bush leads Athena’s Q3 earnings call, where discussions ranged from improving Epocrates-related earnings to increasing enterprise sales.

Hospital Nurses Forced to Develop Creative Workarounds to Deal with EHR System Flaws; Outdated Technologies and Lack of Interoperability, Reveals Black Book

A new Black Book report surveys 14,000 RNs and finds that 92 percent are dissatisfied with their inpatient EHR systems and that 88 percent blame hospital administrators and CIOs for selecting poor performing EHRs based on price rather than quality of care.

Morning Headlines 10/17/14

Examining The US Public Health Response To the Ebola Outbreak

Dr. Daniel Varga, the chief clinical officer for Texas Health Resources testifies before the House Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations regarding THR’s handling of Thomas Duncan, the hospital’s initial Ebola patient, and the subsequent spread of the disease to two of the hospital’s nurses.

athenahealth, Inc. Reports Third Quarter Fiscal Year 2014 Results

athenahealth reports Q3 results: revenue was up 26 percent to $190 million, but the company posted an overall net loss of $1.6 million. Adjusted EPS $0.27 vs. $0.29. Epocrates-related sales dropped 27 percent during the quarter, bringing in $9.8 million.

Coalition letter requesting changes to meaningful use for greater systems interoperability

Premier, the American Academy of Family Physicians, AMA, MGMA, and several other organizations and health systems send a letter to CMS urging it to slow the pace of Meaningful Use and refocus it to make gains on interoperability, security, and quality reporting.

Morning Headlines 10/16/14

Subsidy program for EHRs ineffective, draft report argues

A draft report from the National Bureau of Economic Research analyzes pre-ARRA EHR adoption trends and concludes that ARRA incentive payments only expedited EHR adoption by two-years. The report also says that ARRA incentive payments cost taxpayers an average of $48 million per implementation.

ID System Reduces NICU Errors

Montefiore Medical Center (NY) tests a new positive patient identification step in its CPOE workflow that help neonatologists ensure they are placing orders in the correct chart when caring for babies in the NICU that have not yet been given a name. Adding this step reduced wrong-patient orders by more than 50 percent in the unit.

MIT and MGH form strategic partnership to address major challenges in clinical medicine

A new partnership between MIT and MGH will form research teams focused on improving the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of a variety of diseases.

Morning Headlines 10/15/14

AMA Provides Blueprint to Improve the Meaningful Use Program

The AMA publishes a wish list of Meaningful Use Stage 3 criteria as part of a letter to CMS. Within the list, AMA calls for more flexibility on threshold measurements, reduced penalties for those that fail to meet criteria, and improved interoperability standards.

Joint HIT Committee Meeting

The ONC’s HITPC workgroup will present its conclusions after analyzing the 2013 JASON report that was highly critical of the interoperability plan being pursued in the US. The group will propose an API-based interoperability approach as a path forward.

Highmark-UPMC split raises health records concerns

Pennsylvania state representative Dan Frankel questions whether UPMC, which uses Cerner, will be able to send patient records to other health systems once it severs ties with Highmark Insurance and those patients move on to new care providers.

Morning Headline 10/14/14

Promoting healthy competition in health IT markets

The FTC announces that it will work together with the ONC to ensure that EHR vendors are not restricting interoperability options to gain illegal competitive advantages.

2014 Report to Congress on Health IT Adoption and HIE

The ONC publishes its ARRA-mandated annual progress report on the national rollout of EHRs and HIEs. The report provides an in depth look at ONC’s various initiatives, focusing primarily on the steps that are being taken to overcome interoperability barriers.

Mass. Becomes First State To Require Price Tags For Health Care

A Massachusetts law requiring that insurers publish the prices they pay hospitals and practices for services went into effect last week. To comply, insurers are updating their websites with the once closely guarded pricing data.

NIH Invests Almost $32 Million To Increase Usability Of Biomedical Research Data

The NIH announces a new $32 million grant program called Big Data to Knowledge, or BD2K, that will be used to fund research projects aimed at developing new ways of analyzing large biomedical data sets.

Morning Headlines 10/13/14

No On Proposition 46

A coalition made up mostly of California medical associations launches a website arguing against proposition 46, which would increase maximum malpractice awards, subject clinicians to random drug testing, and mandate that prescribers check the states drug abuser database before writing narcotics prescriptions.

$77 million investment in new health records technology has Alameda Health System struggling to pay its bills

Alameda Health System announces that it has nearly run out of cash, attributing its problems in large part to a failed $77 million Siemens Sorian roll out. The health system’s CFO David Cox says, “the system makes it difficult to collect the right information that you need to bill a claim and makes it hard to identify what kinds of errors are occurring. …. It’s very disjointed right now. A lot of mistakes are being made."

Second Ebola case confirmed. Texas health worker wore ‘full’ protective gear

A nurse caring for the Ebola patient that was being treated at the Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas has tested positive for Ebola. Meanwhile, in Liberia, public health workers report that the epidemic has shown small but measurable signs of slowing.

Kaiser Permanente and their Journey to Transform their Supply Chain

Kaiser will redesign its supply chain management processes to increase the effectiveness of its unit-level inventory processes, and to streamline procedure setup by digitalizing surgeon preference cards.

Morning Headlines 10/10/14

RTI International to develop road map for health IT safety center

ONC contracts research firm RTI international to “create a roadmap for the development of a national health IT safety center.”

HIMSS and AVIA Launch HX360 to Improve Health Care Delivery through Emerging Technologies

HIMSS and digital health accelerator AVIA launch a new collaborative service designed to help hospitals adopt next-generation (non-EHR) technologies.

2014 Results from Survey on Health Data Exchange

An eHealth Initiative survey of 125 HIEs finds that achieving financial sustainability and overcoming difficulties interfacing with a multitude of EHRs are the key barriers preventing broader interoperability.

Morning Headlines 10/9/14

Concerned Groups to Congress: Act Now on FDASIA

58 organizations, including McKesson Corp., athenaHealth, and the US Chamber of Commerce, send a letter to Congress urging them to pass legislation to enact the health IT oversight framework that was proposed by FDASIA in April.

HealthCare.gov Testing to Be Confidential

Healthcare.gov will open for insurer testing this week, but insurers are being told by CMS that the process is confidential and that testing results may not be disclosed.

Robotic Surgery Brings Higher Costs, More Complications, Study Shows

Researchers from Columbia University publish a study exploring the use of robotic surgeries for ovary and ovarian cyst removal, concluding that robotic surgeries are more expensive and lead to more complications than regular minimally invasive surgery.

Morning Headlines 10/8/14

Payment Adjustments & Hardship Exceptions

CMS announces that it will reopen the submission period for hardship exception applications for both eligible professionals and eligible hospitals, with a new application deadline set for November 30.

John Flannery to Lead GE Healthcare

GE Healthcare CEO John Dineen  announces his resignation, effective immediately.  He is reportedly leaving the company to pursue leadership opportunities outside GE. Dineen will re replaced by John Flannery, GE’s current head of business development.

Ochsner Health System First Epic Client to Fully Integrate with Apple HealthKit

Ochsner Health System (LA) announces that it has connected its Epic EHR with Apple’s HealthKit to capture daily weight readings from wireless scales that are issued to heart failure patients enrolled in the health system’s remote patient monitoring program.

Health Care Website Fix Cost Mass. Additional $26M, Patrick Says

Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick announces that the state’s health insurance exchange is fixed, costing $26 million to repair and bringing the total cost of the exchange to $254 million.

Morning Headlines 10/7/14

BD to Acquire CareFusion for $12.2 Billion

Becton Dickinson will acquire smartpump manufacturer CareFusion for $12.2 billion in cash and stock. The deal comes out to $58 per share, a 28 percent premium on Friday’s closing price.

NantHealth Completes $320M Series B Equity Investment and Expands Leadership Team with Healthcare Industry Veterans

NantHealth, the health IT startup of healthcare billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong, raises a $320 million Series B round to accelerate development of its EHR, which it claims will deliver “integrated, evidence-based, genomically-informed, personalized care.”

Can Telemonitoring Reduce Hospitalization and Cost of Care? A Health Plan’s Experience in Managing Patients with Heart Failure

A Geisinger report set to be published in the December issue of Population Health Magazine finds that telemonitoring programs targeting heart failure patients reduced overall hospitalization rates and led to a savings of $3.30 for each dollar spent.

Progress report: Open Test Method Development Pilot Program

The ONC publishes an update on its Open Test Method Development program, in which EHR certification testing standards for ePrescribing and clinical decision support features are being created through a community-led development process.