Morning Headlines 9/12/13

ONC Launches Patient Matching Initiative

ONC launches a collaborative initiative that will focus on developing highly reliable patient matching techniques for use in health exchanges to ensure that patient records can be correctly identified across disparate systems.

Effect of Pay-for-Performance Incentives on Quality of Care in Small Practices With Electronic Health Records

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association finds that pay-for-performance programs implemented in EHR-enabled small practices modestly improve care for cardiovascular patients, compared to care received at EHR-enabled fee-for-service small practices. The study was conducted between 2009-2010 and spans only a year of trended outcomes, which resulted in researchers noting that longer-term studies would need to be done to determine whether the changes increased or decreased over a longer timeline.

Electronic Medical Records Hold Clues to Suicide Risk

The VA is researching the use of natural language processing, in conjunction with its EHR system, to automate a risk profiling program designed to alert for potential suicide risk. The NLP-based program searches non-structured clinical narrative in a patients record for key signs that would indicate that the patient is at risk.

SAIC Outlines Business Objectives For Leidos, A National Security, Health & Engineering Solutions Leader

SAIC leadership presents the strategic objectives of Leidos, SAIC’s healthcare and national security spinoff business. The mission of the health sector of the business will be to "optimize the use of electronic health records, apply data analytics and behavioral health research to help enable customers to improve healthcare quality and patient outcomes, detect and prevent diseases, enhance scientific discovery, and reduce costs to the healthcare system."

Morning Headlines 9/11/13

Nashville’s HealthStream buys Pensacola health care consultants

Nashville-based HealthStream, an software-as-a-service vendor focused on delivering professional development and educational tools to hospital employees, pays $8.5 million to acquire Baptist Leadership Group, a healthcare consulting firm offering programs aimed at increasing patient satisfaction, employee engagement, and quality outcomes.

Implementation of an Outpatient Electronic Health Record and Emergency Department Visits, Hospitalizations, and Office Visits Among Patients With Diabetes

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association following the implementation of EHRs across outpatient clinics between 2005 and 2008 found a small but statistically significant drop in ED visits and hospitalizations after EHRs were introduced.

Six Reasons Why Nuance Needs To Put Icahn On Its Board Now

Forbes covers Carl Icahn’s increasing shareholder position in Nuance, arguing for why the company would be better off adding him to their board than continuing with their poison pill defense.

Certification Guidance for EHR Technology Developers Serving Health Care Providers Ineligible for Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Payments

ONC publishes an integration guide for EHR developers building applications for clinical environments that fall outside the scope of Meaningful Use.

Morning Headlines 9/10/13

Quality Systems, Inc. Acquires Mirth Corporation

Quality Systems, Inc., parent company of NextGen, announces its acquisition of Mirth Corporation, which offers interoperability solutions that include the open source Mirth Connect integration engine. The acquisition was pursued to provide NextGen customers with improved data exchange capabilities.

Aprima and NoteSwift Announce Partnership and Distribution Agreement

Ambulatory systems vendor Aprima announces a partnership with NoteSwift that will bring voice recognition and natural language processing to the Aprima customer base. NoteSwift claims to reduce pointing and clicking by 75 percent and ensures that electronic documentation features will work while moving toward a narrative-based documentation model.

ONC’s goals for MU stage 3 in 6 charts

ONC’s primary goals for Stage 3 Meaningful Use are outlined. The theme for Stage 3 seems to be focused on squeezing improved outcomes out of the EHR and HIE infrastructures that Stage 1 and 2 established.

Medical Practices Move Health IT To Cloud

A market analysis surveying 8,000 CIOs, CFOs, and administrative support staff at US hospitals and practices finds that 87 percent plan to replace components of their core practice management solution within 12 months. Practices are turning to cloud-based options at a significantly higher rate to avoid upfront investments in licensing and hardware.

Morning Headlines 9/9/13

Aetna Once Offered To Buy NY Startup ZocDoc For More Than $300 Million And The Founders Walked Awa

A Business Insider article reveals that in 2011 insurance company Aetna offered to buy ZocDoc for more than $300 million but ZocDoc’s founders walked away. Insiders at the company, now valued at north of $700 million, say that ZocDoc is pursuing a public offering rather than a buyout.

Will An App A Day Keep The Doctor Away? The Coming Health Revolution

A Forbes article explores the market drivers that are contributing to meteoric growth in the mobile health market, citing VC and serial entrepreneur Vinod Khosla, who predicts that algorithms will one day be capable of replacing 80 percent of doctors.

Baylor Health Care System Wins 2013 Tech Titans Award for Successful Needs-Based Customizations to Allscripts EHR

Baylor Health Care System receives the 2013 Tech Titans Technology Adopter Award, an award issued annually by the largest technology trade association in Texas, for enhancements developed to improve its Allscripts CPOE and physician documentation solutions.

MyMedicalRecords Wins Appeal, Will Proceed With $30 Million Claim Against SCM

MMRGlobal is moving forward with a $30 million breach of contract suit against CA-based Surgery Center Management, LLC, a company that provides outsourced business services, including IT, to surgical centers in the region. The company signed a settlement with MMRGlobal in 2011 agreeing to pay $5 million per year in patent licensing fees but has since stopped paying.

Morning Headlines 9/6/13

Health IT Czar on Making Meaningful Use ‘Meaningful’

Outgoing ONC Chief Farzad Mostashari, MD, offers advice to clinicians during an interview with Medscape Editor-in-Chief Eric Topol, MD.

Health IT Policy Committee Summary

The HIT Policy Committee hears final recommendations from the FDA Safety and Innovation Act Workgroup, concluding that for the most part HIT should not be subject to FDA premarket requirements unless the product qualifies as a medical device. The group agrees that post-market surveillance should include reporting and implementation testing.

NextGen Healthcare, Clinical Decision Support Consortium and WVP Health Authority Join to Launch Clinical Decision Support Pilot

NextGen announces that it has created an interface to Partners Healthcare Systems’ clinical decision support tool so that physicians using NextGen will be able to send a CCD to the tool and then immediately receive an evidence-based set of recommendations appropriate for that patient.

3D Printing Is a Matter of Life and Death

A surgeon at the University of Michigan prints a lung splint with a 3D printer, saving an infant with a collapsed trachea.

Morning Headlines 9/5/13

Cerner names new president

Cerner promotes Zane Burke to president, replacing Chairman and CEO Neal Patterson, who temporarily added the President title when Trace Devanny left the company in July 2010. Burke has been with Cerner since 1996 and most recently served as executive vice president of the client services organization.

Mostashari leaves policy designers final thoughts

National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, MD attends his final HIT Policy Committee Meeting, discussing the goals of MU3 and the challenges the industry will likely face on the road ahead. He also took the opportunity to thank the committee members for their work.

Your Heartbeat Is Your New Password

Developers at Bionym have created a bracelet that authenticates users based on the unique peaks and valleys of their heart’s rhythm. Users place their fingertip on a sensor embedded in the bracelet for a few seconds while an ECG is captured and compared to a stored version to confirm the wearer’s identity and authenticate that user to a host of devices.

Morning Headlines 9/4/13

Flip The Clinic

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation launches a new project called "Flip the Clinic" committed to investigating and optimizing every aspect of the physician-patient encounter to ensure that it is as mutually beneficial as possible. In 2014, the foundation will release a toolkit of strategies and resources outlining the findings.

IBM delivers a unified health information platform for New Zealand healthcare providers

In New Zealand, the Ministry of Health launches a nationwide patient portal called the Health Identity Programme that will provide patients, providers, and pharmacists a single, centralized platform for coordinating care.

NHS to receive £240m Government funding boost as health secretary pledges to revolutionize the way it uses technology

In England, hospitals, practices, and EDs are receiving a $375 million increase in funding for new technology to help streamline scheduling processes and increase the use of e-prescribing.

With physician offices online, Novant shifts electronic health records focus to hospitals

Novant Health (NC) is preparing for an October 5 Epic go-live at its Presbyterian Medical Center facility in Charlotte. The health system recently finished bringing 300 physician offices live two years ahead of schedule.

Pay Gap for Women Doctors Increases to $50,000 a Year

Female physicians in the US earn on average $50,000 a year less than their equally qualified male counterparts according to a study published in JAMA Internal Medicine.

Morning Headlines 9/3/13

Utilization, Benefits, and Impact of an e-Consultation Service Across Diverse Specialties and Primary Care Providers

In Canada, a virtual consultation service was established for PCPs to discuss patient care with specialists. After a year, providers enrolled in the program were surveyed, with 90 percent reporting that the service was highly beneficial to both providers and patients. Specialists reported that the actual consultations usually took less than 15 minutes to complete, and almost half of the requests submitted would have required a face-to-face office visit if the service had not been available.

Launch of New Electronic Medical Record System Scheduled for September 4

A local paper covers 152-bed Sonora Regional Medical Center (CA) as staff prepares for a September 4 Cerner go-live across all of its outpatient clinics.

Pre-Pregnancy Hormone Testing May Indicate Gestational Diabetes Risk

A retrospective study conducted by searching Kaiser Permanente’s EHR dataset finds that overweight women with low levels of the hormone adiponectin prior to pregnancy are nearly seven times more likely to develop gestational diabetes.

Morning Headlines 9/2/13

Electronic records conversion loss offset by investment gains for Wake Forest Baptist

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (NC) discloses in its 2013 annual report that its Epic implementation resulted in a $55.1 million operational loss for the year, the report says the install “did have a substantial negative impact on fiscal 2013 operating performance through both direct implementation expenses and associated indirect expenses.” Wake Forest’s stock investment gains for the year were able to offset the losses, so the overall loss for the year was reported at only $571,000.

Army Medical Program Prepares to Upgrade EMR System

The Army’s current battlefield EMR, known by the acronym MC4 (Medical Communications for Combat Casualty Care), will undergo a major upgrade between November 2013 and April 2014, that will bring the platform onto a Windows 7 operating system, replace Micromedix, the current medical reference app, with Lexi-comp, and add a new layer of information security features.

New hospital CEO updates board at his first meeting, announces new CNO

68-bed Gila Regional Medical Center (NM) eliminates its CIO position, as well as several other executive level positions, in an effort to cutback on costs at the financially struggling hospital. 67 employees were also cut from full to half time.

Morning Headlines 8/30/13

Regulators to investigate Advocate data breach

HHS and the Illinois attorney general announce that they will investigate Advocate Medical Group’s four million patient data breach, the second largest in HHS history.

July 2012: EHR Incentive Program

CMS releases the latest EHR Incentive Program results in which 4,051 hospitals have been paid to date, which accounts for 80 percent of eligible hospitals. Payments have reached $15.8 billion since the start of the program.

Carl Icahn Increases Nuance Stake, May Seek Board Seat

Carl Icahn increases his stake in Nuance to 16.9 and reports that he may seek to put a representative on the company’s board of directors.

Despite backlogs, VA disability claims processors get bonuses

An investigative report calls out the VA for issuing $5.5 million in bonuses to its employees in 2011 for "excellent" performances despite a 155 percent increase in the disability claims backlog. Two-thirds of the VA’s claims processors took home bonuses that year.

Morning Headlines 8/29/18

Telstra Buys DCA’s Healthcare Division

Australian telecom giant Telstra has acquired Database Consultant Australia’s healthcare division, which makes the Communicare EHR solution and markets a secure messaging platform for healthcare.

Announcing the Behavioral Health Patient Empowerment Challenge

ONC announces the Behavioral Health Patient Empowerment challenge, which is seeking entries from existing behavioral health apps that help patients manage mental health and substance abuse.

Novant Health Completes Rollout of Electronic Health Record at Physician Clinics

Novant Health (NC) has completed its rollout of Epic in 240 clinics under budget and three years ahead of schedule.

Aprima Medical Software Receives Grant to Advance and Accelerate Health Information Exchange in Massachusetts

The Massachusetts eHealth Institute awards a $1.3 million in grants to Aprima Medical to fund projects that increase interoperability between electronic health records and the state’s health information exchange.

Morning Headlines 8/28/13

The Gap between EMR Vendor Market Share Widens

KLAS releases a new report on large hospital EMR market share changes during 2012. Cerner and Epic took 75 percent of new business in the 200+ bed market. McKesson lost the most customers during the year after announcing their decision to sunset the Horizon platform. Of all vendors evaluated, Epic was the only vendor to retain 100 percent of their customer base for the whole year.

Sutter’s $1 Billion Boondoggle-New Electronic Records System Goes Dark

Another nurses union is publically questioning the safety of its EHR system, this time 24-facility Sutter Health’s Epic system, which went down Monday after a system upgrade.

Deadline looming for state’s patient record exchange

Two competing pay-to-play health information exchanges operating in Kansas have until September 30 to connect their networks or they risk losing $1 million in grants promised to them. The two agencies have successfully tested network connections, but have been at an impasse since May over security policies designed to control for inappropriate secondary use of shared data.

Scoring system could help reduce adverse drug events in hospital patients

University of Florida College of Pharmacy researchers are developing algorithms to help hospitals determine the best pharmacist staffing numbers to prevent adverse drug events and improve patient safety.

Morning Headlines 8/27/13

Q&A: OSEHRA CEO Seong Mun on iEHR, future of open source

Leading up to the 3rd annual OSHERA summit, CEO Seong Mun answers questions on unifying VistA under a standard codebase and the odds of VistA coming out on top in the DoD EHR vendor search.

Data Triage for the Boston Bombing: How Beth Israel Deaconess Protected Patient Records From Hackers, Journalists, and Curious Doctors

FastCompany interviews John Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess on the IT security protocols used to thwart hackers and journalists from accessing victim’s medical records in the post-marathon bombing hours while its staff treated both bombing victims, and then later that week bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.

Tony Abbott eager to overhaul e-health system

Leading up to federal elections in Australia, Opposition leader Tony Abbott vows to overhaul the struggling patient-controlled electronic health record program if elected. The PCEHR program has been widely criticized due to cost overruns and dismal patient engagement.

Morning Headlines 8/23/13

Move Over, Richard Kiley. Here’s Why We Want to Combine Public Health Data with Health Care Data

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation announces a $100,000 prize as part of the foundations latest public health challenge. The contest is seeking innovative ways of combine public health data with medical data to improve community health.

Nuance plan could fend off Carl Icahn

In an effort to prevent activist investor and billionaire Carl Icahn from increasing his stake in the company, Nuance enacts a "poison pill" defense which effectively prevents any outside investor from gaining 20 percent ownership of the firm.

Total cost of that axed NHS IT FIASCO to taxpayers: £10.1bn

In England, the final cost of the failed NPfIT program has been tallied at $16 billion. The program launched in 2002 and was formally suspended in September 2011 when government leaders acknowledged that there were fundamental weaknesses with a " top-down, centrally-imposed IT system."

UMass Medical Center settles fraud charges

UMass Memorial Medical Center pays $66,000 to settle fraud charges stemming from a whistle blower case claiming that the hospital mailed unpaid bills to homeless shelters so that they could then submit the bills to a state program for payment.

Morning Headlines 8/22/13

Allscripts Announces Winners of the Open App Challenge

Allscripts announces the launch of the Allscripts App Store along with the winners of its Open App Challenge during Wednesday’s kickoff of the 2013 Allscripts Client Experience. The contest challenged developers to create a revolutionary app that integrates with the Allscripts EHR. The winning app is healthfinch Refillwizard, which automates prescription renewal requests.

The Highway to Better Healthcare is Open: Missouri Health Connection Rolls-Out Statewide Health Information Network

Missouri launches its statewide health information exchange network, providing services to more than 7,000 physicians, 62 hospitals, and 350 clinics. Missouri contracted with InterSystems in July 2012 to design and deploy the network.

Emergency Clearance: Public Information Collection Requirements Submitted to the Office of Management and Budget

A Federal Register post by CMS calls for an emergency review of its recently proposed rule that would require breach reporting for health information exchanges to be capped at a one-hour limit between the time an HIE breach is discovered and the time it is reported, stating that the proposed rule is essential to public security and failing to approve it quickly would likely result in public harm.

Morning Headlines 8/21/13

First Databank Acquires Design Clinicals

First Databank announces the acquisition of Seattle-based Design Clinicals, the developers of a clinician-friendly medication reconciliation software.

Intuit sells Intuit Health Group back to Raleigh entrepreneur Steve Malik

Intuit Health Group, which went by Medfusion before being acquired by Intuit in 2011, has been sold back to its original founder Steve Malik for an undisclosed sum.

Say Hi To Oscar: The New Kid That May Change Health Insurance

New York City-based health insurance startup Oscar is trying to re-engineer the relationship between insurance companies and patients. Oscar’s goal is to leverage technology, like telehealth visits, patient portals, and mobile wellness apps, to be such a value adding insurance company that patients chose them before they chose a doctor. Oscar will formally launch when New York’s health insurance exchange launches on October 1st.

Allscripts Introduces Population Health Analytics

Allscripts launches its new population health management solution which provides point of care interventions to reduce readmission rates and help control costs associated with chronic disease management.

Morning Headlines 8/20/13

Patient Engagement: Blockbuster Drug Or Snake Oil?

A recent Forbes article discusses patient engagement strategies along with some of the notable success stories reported thus far.

Delaware considers statewide ACOs

Delaware Governor Jack Markell is working with policy advisors and CMS to draft plans that will bring all of Delaware’s payment and provider systems under the ACO model.

Greenway Reports Fourth-Quarter and Fiscal 2013 Results

Greenway reports its Q4 and 2013 year-end results: -$0.08 EPS on the quarter, which missed analysts estimates of -$0.02. The company ended the year in the red, reporting a net loss of $5.1 million. Shares traded flat during after hours activity.