Morning Headlines 3/26/13

Boulder Community Hospital computer records back on line – The Denver Post

Boulder Community Hospital is back online after more than a week operating on hospital-wide system downtime procedures. A preliminary investigation concluded that a severe hardware failure on a critical server brought the system down. IT staff were able to restore to a clean backup point captured eight hours prior to the failure. At that point, however, the task of re-entering and validating all the missing clinical information from that eight-hour window began, which added to the delay in a full return to service. A root cause analysis is underway and a full report is expected within a few weeks.

Lisa Lewis, Chief Grants Management Officer, has been tapped to become the Deputy National Coordinator for Operations

ONC has promoted Lisa Lewis to the position of deputy national coordinator for operations.

Healthcare data has become ‘the new oil’

An Information Daily article discusses the business end of stolen healthcare data, calling it the “new oil” for hackers and identity thieves. The article suggests that stolen databases of patient information are being monetized by stripping out suspicious information and selling the partial databases to marketing firms as legitimately collected contacts.

VA Secretary Eric Shinseki renews vow of claims backlog fix by 2015

In his first nationally televised interview in four years, VA Secretary Eric Shinseki reiterated his longstanding promise to reduce the VA benefits claims backlog to reasonable levels by 2015, despite the strong unlikelihood of accomplishing the task. The interview followed a highly publicized demand calling for the firing of VA Undersecretary of Benefits Allison Hickey which was made last week by Rep. Jeff Miller, chairman of the House Committee on Veterans’ Affairs.

Morning Headlines 3/25/13

Allscripts statement regarding the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation

Allscripts drops its lawsuit against HHS and Epic. Filing the lawsuit in the first place was a questionable strategic decision and won the EHR vendor HIStalk’s "Stupidest Vendor Move" earlier this year.

Nearly 200 Former Customers of Allscripts MyWay Are Currently Live on Aprima EHR and PM

Aprima announces that it has converted nearly 200 Allscripts MyWay customers to its product in the six months since Allscripts announced it would not develop the MyWay enhancements required to comply with Meaningful Use and ICD-10.

Switch to e-records causing pain for Ontario doctors

Clinicians in Ontario are pushing back against EHR implementations that are resulting in familiar end user complaints: slow system response, poor usability, and substandard interoperability.

Olympic Medical Center to hire extra staff for electronic records launch

Olympic Medical Center will spend $850,000 to hire three dozen travel nurses to support their $1.8 million Epic install. The nurses will train end users as the hospital leads up to its May 4 go-live.

Morning Headlines 3/22/13

athenahealth Partners with iTriage to Link Patients with Nearby Providers

athenahealth has partnered with iTriage in an agreement that will refer iTriage users to local doctors that use athenahealth’s EHR.

Mostashari tells Congress: Interoperability is coming

On the third day of Congressional hearings, National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari testified before the House Energy and Commerce Committee promising that over the next two years, interoperability and mHealth will take dramatic steps forward.

Healthcare software firm Benefitfocus eyes IPO –sources

Benefitfocus, a software company that empowers employees to manage their benefits, is s working with Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and Jefferies Group Inc. as it prepares to file an IPO. Sources say the filing could come as soon as next month.

Virginia Hospital Center Names Dr. Russell McWey Chief Information Officer

Arlington-based Virginia Hospital Center announces the promotion of Russell McWey, MD, to CIO. Dr. McWey was previously serving as the chief of medical imaging and was CMIO prior to that.

Morning Headlines 3/21/13

Transforming Health Care Through Big Data

The Institute for Health Technology Transformation publishes a report outlining strategies for health organizations planning to implement big data solutions. Among the major hurdles organizations will need to overcome are data fragmentation — the warehousing of data in disparate proprietary systems — and data usability issues resulting from key clinical information being captured in an unstructured form.

QPID Inc. Raises More than Original Target of $3 Million in Early Finance Round; Cardinal Partners Investment Pushes Total to $4M

Recently launched health startup QPID raises $4 million in early fund raising, beating its goal of $3 million. QPID launched on St. Valentine’s day with aspirations of delivering an intelligent EHR search feature.

The Value of Medical Device Interoperability

Improved medical device interoperability could result in up to $30 billion in annual healthcare savings, according to a report released by West Health Institute. Joseph Smith, MD, chief medical and science officer, testified before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce about the findings during week-long hearings on innovation in health IT.

On Capitol Hill: FDA urged to clarify oversight of medical apps

Industry leaders from the mobile health market testified before Congress addressing the delayed publication of a final FDA regulatory policy over mobile health apps. The panel resoundingly concurred that the FDA should finalize plans quickly because the uncertainty is stifling innovation and funding.

Morning Headlines 3/20/13

Boulder Community Hospital computer system crash frustrates patients

Boulder Community Hospital’s Meditech system has been down since last Tuesday and is not expected to return to a fully operational state until this Friday. No official word on what caused the outage or what is delaying the return to service. All users across the facility are on paper.

Health System Implements new Electronic Medical Records on March 18th

111-bed Beloit Memorial Hospital goes live on Cerner this week.

Lifespan Takes Major Step to Transform Health Care Delivery

Five-hospital system Lifespan, Rhode Island’s largest health care system, selects Epic to bring all of its facilities onto a single system. Implementation will start this spring, conclude in 2015, and cost $90 million.

KLAS Diagnoses EMR Usability Concerns

KLAS releases a report on acute EMR usability, measuring specific Meaningful Use related functions such as CPOE, problem list, and physician documentation. No vendor excelled, but Cerner and Epic fared best.

Morning Headlines 3/19/13

Cerner Has Acquired Labotix Automation Inc.

Cerner announces the acquisition of Labotix Automation Inc., a lab automation solutions vendor for the clinical labs. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.

EHR vendor to report HIPAA breach

Lawrence Melrose Medical Electronic Record Inc., in Melrose, Mass. will notify the Office for Civil Rights of a data breach after an employee improperly accessed patients’ electronic medical records.

AHCJ unveils hospitalinspections.org

The Association of Health Care Journalists today launches a website to provide a free, searchable database of federal inspection reports for hospitals around the nation following the digital release of the reports by CMS. The Joint Commission has been petitioned to follow suit, but has so far rejected requests for this information, saying disclosure would compromise its efforts to improve hospital quality.

athenahealth Delivers 96 Percent Meaningful Use Attestation Rate Among Participating Providers

athenahealth announces that 96 percent of the company’s participating providers successfully attested for 2012 Medicare Meaningful Use Stage 1, Year 1, more than double the industry average.

Morning Headlines 3/18/13

House Republicans Question FDA on Mobile Medical Software: Taxes

FDA representatives will appear on Capitol Hill this week to answer for a delay in publishing a regulatory policy for mobile health apps. Additionally, House members want to know if the FDA plans to regulate smartphones as medical devices as has recently been speculated since they would be running FDA regulated health apps.

HIMSS13 with Dodge Communications: Our team picks the best and worst in the exhibit hall

Dodge Communications publishes its best and worst of HIMSS13. Voalte takes worst dressed, Cerner takes best in show. Alere, Caradigm, Greenway, Onyx, McKesson, SCI, and InterSystems also get mentions.

Class Calls IRS Rude, Crude and Abusive

A class action lawsuit filed against the IRS accuses agents of unlawfully seizing more than 60 million medical records from a HIPAA-covered entity in southern California following a raid in March 2011. The suit seeks $25,000 per violation. Agents are also accused of unlawfully seizing and searching employee cell phones without regard to privacy rights, ordering pizza and soda, and using the facility’s multimedia system to watch the NCAA tournament.

Making "Meaningful Use" of HHS Data

Social Health Insights publishes a visualization of Meaningful Use attestation data in what it calls its first of many data mash-ups to come.

Morning Headlines 3/15/13

Wells Fargo Securities publishes 2012 Year End Table for EPs and Hospitals

Wells Fargo Securities compiles 2012 Meaningful Use year end attestation tables which show that of EPs, 65 percent have registered and 25 percent have attested. In addition, 50 percent of hospitals have attested.

Voalte Expands Executive Management Team

Voalte announces major changes to the executive team as founder and VP of Innovation Trey Lauderdale takes on the role of president. In addition, Phil Fibiger (Canonical) joins as VP of engineering, Bob Peterfield (Capsule Tech) joins as VP of product and alliance management, Frank Watts moves up from sales consultant to VP of sales and marketing, and Don Fletcher (Google) joins as chief architect.

Tullman sets his sights on healthcare’s next frontier

Former Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman discusses his next venture, suggesting he and former Allscripts colleague Lee Shapiro will target mHealth.

Humetrix to Present iBlueButton Mobile Health Information Exchange Apps for Use in United Kingdom

Humetrix has been invited to attend the NHS Innovation Expo 2013 in London to demonstrate the iBlueButton app.

Morning Headlines 3/14/13

Arcadia Solutions announces Sean Carroll as CEO

Sean Carroll (SVP healthcare at Nuance) has been named the new CEO of strategic consulting firm Arcadia Solutions.

South Jersey Healthcare Selects Perioperative Management By Surgical Information Systems

Two-hospital South Jersey Healthcare signs with SIS to provide a perioperative management solution to complement its Soarian Clinicals EHR.

PwC finds HIT worker shortage bigger than expected

A recent study released by PwC finds a larger than expected shortage of qualified HIT workers, leading many to look outside the industry to fill gaps.

ICD-10 transition to move forward, CMS says

CMS announces that October 1, 2014 is a firm and fixed switchover date for ICD-10 codes and that no additional delays will be considered.

Time to Stop Tyranny in Medicine

Time to stop the tyranny in medicine is the general theme of the spring issue of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons, citing ICD-10 mandates, Meaningful Use requirements, e-prescribing, and Physician Quality Reporting System as indicators that things have gone too far.

Morning Headlines 3/13/13

Venture-Backed Appature Sells to IMS Health

Seattle-based Appature, a cloud-based marketing service that likens itself to the salesforce.com of marketing, is acquired by IMS Health, a health data distributor that helps define effective target markets within a population. The goal is to deliver an end-to-end marketing campaign tool to help hospitals increase brand awareness and manage patient engagement. Details of the deal were not disclosed, but rumors place the sale price north of $100 million.

athenahealth Completes Acquisition of Epocrates

athenahealth completes its $293 million acquisition of Epocrates and will begin working collectively to redesign its physician tool sets.

Web health records firm expands to Boston

Cloud-based ambulatory EHR vendor CareCloud will open an office in Boston joining athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, and a host of others in a growing EHR epicenter.

JCHC Transition To EHR, New Attendance Mostly Positive

Nurses at Buffalo, WY-based Johnson County Health Center go live with CPSI this week, physicians will follow suit in May.

Morning Headlines 3/12/13

UConn Health Center Warns Patients of Privacy Breach

The University of Connecticut Health Center is notifying patients of a privacy breach that could affect around 1,400 patient records, saying that a former employee inappropriately accessed patient records that were beyond the scope of the employee’s responsibilities.

Electronic discharge tool helps rein in HF readmissions

Analysts at Intermountain Healthcare in Salt Lake City designed a retrospective study that evaluated heart failure discharges between January 2011 and September 2012.Their goal was to assess whether the use of electronic discharge orders affect adherence to core measures and 30-day, all-cause readmissions of patients with HF. At the conclusion of the study, the readmission rate for patients whose discharge involved the electronic tool was 15.5 percent compared with 18 percent when the tool was not used.

CHS, Cleveland Clinic Form Strategic Alliance

Cleveland Clinic announces a strategic partnership with Community Health Systems’ network of 135 affiliated community hospitals. Cleveland Clinic will help CHS establish clinical integration programs at its affiliated hospitals, which will provide a mechanism for the sharing of data and in time will support predictive modeling initiatives.

In Pursuit Of Interoperability For The Common Good

Forbes publishes a guest article by Arien Malec, VP strategy and product marketing at RelayHealth, and David McCallie MD, VP medical informatics at Cerner, regarding CommonWell. The article is short on details and concludes by broadcasting an open invitation to all vendors to join the alliance.

Morning Headlines 3/11/13

Department of Veterans Affairs Review of Alleged Transmission of Sensitive VA Data Over Internet Connections

An audit report released by the Office of the Inspector General validates earlier rumors that the VA has been routinely transmitting sensitive patient information across unencrypted telecommunication networks, including patient names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, and EHR data.

Business news briefs: Human error the cause of UPMC electronic issue

A system-wide problem with UPMC’s EHR (Cerner) resulted in all facilities shifting back to paper charting for three hours. Human error was identified as the root cause.

Cisco Study Reveals 74 Percent of Consumers Open to Virtual Doctor Visit

Cisco releases a press release, blog post, and infographic advertising the findings of its Customer Experience Report on health care. The study concludes that 74 percent of consumers are OK with virtual doctor visits.

Health Care Providers Give Cloud Vendors High Marks on Security

KLAS releases a report on cloud-based software solutions. Security and reliability were the two primary factors identified as preventing widespread adoption, despite high marks in both areas from actual users.

Morning Headlines 3/8/13

Topol helps patient in second airline drama

Three hours after giving a keynote speech at HIMSS, during which he discussed the value of mobile health devices and in particular smartphone-enabled ECG solutions, Eric Topol, MD, was flying back to San Diego when flight attendants began asking if there was a doctor on board. Dr. Topol responded and found a patient experiencing an irregular heart beat. He then used the very same device he had demonstrated during his keynote speech at HIMSS to diagnose atrial fibrillation. Dr. Topol was able to calm the woman and the flight landed shortly there-after. 

Mostashari talks ‘human toll’ of broken health system

In the week’s last keynote speech, Farzad Mostashari, MD, discussed ONC’s goals for the year ahead, which include: increasing the footprint and effectiveness of the nation’s HIEs, promoting interoperability, and increasing transparency and access to data for patients.

A Hospital System’s Wellness Program Linked To Health Plan Enrollment Cut Hospitalizations But Not Overall Costs

A recent study published in Health Affairs suggests a correlation between an employer sponsored wellness program which required smokers to enter a cessation program, and all employees to promise that they would eat well and exercise and a resulting 41 percent drop in hospital admissions for COPD, stroke, and heart disease. This study, however, comes with a surprise ending. Researchers conclude that wellness programs are unlikely to significantly reduce healthcare costs in the short term because outpatient visit costs rose almost as rapidly as inpatient visits dropped.

CMS, ONC issue request for information for HIE

CMS and ONC have issued a joint RFI asking for suggestions on what more, or less, the federal government should be doing to advance clinical information exchange.

Morning Headlines 3/7/13

Q&A: Mostashari on sequester, RECs, CommonWell

ONC Farzad Mostashari, MD, held a Q&A session at HIMSS today, discussing REC’s, the CommonWell Health Alliance announcement, and the federal budget sequester, of which he says "This is going to hurt. We are not furloughing people, which is the bulk of the budget, so our contracts are going to take a big hit."

HIMSS13: athenahealth Issues HIT Industry ‘Code of Conduct’

Responding to recent calls from Farzad Mostashari, MD, for vendors to "step up" and agree to a code of conduct that protects patients, athenahealth publishes just such a code which includes five principles: Empower Data Portability and Provider Choice, Built a True Nationwide Information Backbone, Protect Patients, Prevent Fraud, and Drive Meaningful Use.

Epic’s Faulkner Says Rivals May Use Data Pact as Weapon

In response to the CommonWell news, Judy Faulkner was quoted as saying "“It appears on the surface to be used as a competitive weapon and that’s just wrong." Epic representatives have maintained that they were not invited or informed of the new collaboration between EHR vendors until the public announcement. Together, the five EHR vendors included in the CommonWell Health Alliance represent 41 percent of the market for hospital EHR systems.

Information Overload and Missed Test Results in Electronic Health Record–Based Settings

A study published in JAMA Internal Medicine concludes that clinical notifications, and the alert fatigue that they sometimes cause, is having the unintended consequence of causing physicians to miss abnormal lab results. The study was conducted across the hospital and clinic settings within the Department of Veterans Affairs health system.

Morning Headlines 3/6/13

Allscripts (MDRX) Announces Acquisition of dbMotion, Jardogs

Allscripts announces that it has acquired patient engagement solutions vendor Jardogs, which offers a highly rated PHR and a population health manager among other products.  Allscripts also announces the acquisition of HIE vendor dbMotion. The acquisitions support Allscripts strategy of creating a connected community of health solutions. Details were not announced, although a financial publication from dbMotion’s home base of Israel placed that transaction’s value at $235 million.

Verizon Introduces Messaging Service for Health Data Transfer

Verizon unveils a secure universal messaging service that aims to allow clinicians to exchange messages and medical records through a secure browser interface regardless of whether they belong to the same health network or HIE. The platform provides an entirely independent option for physician to physician communication and file sharing.

HL7 Announces Plans for Freely Available IP and Future Membership Model

Health Language Seven (HL7) announces that it will make most of its intellectual property, including of its standards, freely available effective April 1st. The company had promised as much in September, but had not disclosed details or set an effective date.

Accretive to restate financials

After delaying the release of Q4 and Year End financials, Accretive Health has announced that it will not submit its year end report on time and will need to restate both current and past financial results. Shares are down more than 20 percent since the initial delay last week.

Morning Headlines 3/4/13

Cerner, McKesson, Allscripts, athenahealth, Greenway and RelayHealth Announce Ground Breaking Alliance to Enable Integrated Health Care

The major news from HIMSS today is that the Cerner-McKesson announcement turned out to be much larger than suspected, including a total of six major players coming together to form the CommonWell Health Alliance. The organization will be an independent non-profit for EHR vendors together that want to achieve a higher level of interoperability between systems.

Nuance and Cerner Partner to Offer Point of Care Solution for Clinical Documentation Improvement

Cerner announces that it will integrate Nuance’s suite of clinical language understanding products to support physician documentation in a new workflow that will allow physicians to dictate notes while the tool simultaneously performs quality review, prompting clinicians for clarifying information where needed.  

ICD-10 Snapshot Study

A recent survey of 260 healthcare professionals involved in ICD-10 planning reveals that only 55 percent of respondents are confident that they will meet the October 1, 2014 deadline. Primary concerns center around additional training needs and a lack of time. 43 percent of respondents reported frustration with vendors "not providing an adequate schedule to ensure we will be ready by the deadline."

HIMSS 2013 iHIT Study – Final Report

HIMSS releases its 20132 Impact of Health IT report. The results paint a suspiciously rosy picture of end user satisfaction, including 83 percent of respondents agreeing that HIT applications support clinical processes and workflows. The survey-takers were comprised of 63 percent nurses, 22 percent pharmacists, and 11 percent physicians working at larger than average (and most likely more technologically refined) hospitals with an average 681 beds.

Morning Headlines 3/4/13

Deloitte, Intermountain to share big data tool schedule at HIMSS13

Following last Thursday’s announcement that Deloitte and Intermountain had forged a five-year-deal to extract and publish big-data best practices, the pair today announce that they will be demonstrating the newly developed technology which will power the initiative at HIMSS this week.

NextGen Healthcare to Unveil New Population Health Management Solution to Drive Collaborative, Accountable Care

In line with the latest in EHR vendor trends, NextGen unveils a new population health application, which will be demonstrated at HIMSS, booth 5313.

Hoag and St. Joseph Health Complete Historic Health Care Affiliation

5-hospital health system St. Joseph’s Health and 2-hospital system Hoag announce plans to affiliate, creating a new Orange, Calif.-based health system called Covenant Health Network. While Hoag hospitals will be joining the St. Joseph’s system, they will retain their Presbyterian affiliation and operational standards, rather than adopting St. Joseph’s Catholic affiliation.

Power loss leads to water problems, and grumbles, in New Orleans

HIMSS-goers awoke to an unpleasant surprise Sunday morning as all of New Orleans was placed under a city-wide boil water order after a fire broke out in the city’s primary water treatment facility. The city’s emergency response website is calling for everyone to boil water for one minute prior to drinking, cooking, brushing teeth, washing hands, bathing (sponge baths with pots of sterilized water is the only recommended option for bathing) or preparing food, until further notice.

HIMSS13 Online

HIMSS13 starts Monday, already the twitter hashtag #HIMSS13 is exploding with traffic. Several pre-conference sessions were held today and the day ended with the official HIMSS13 reception. For those sitting out this years events, HIMSS is live broadcasting most speakers, including keynote speaker Bill Clinton, and sessions for remote viewing . In true HIMSS style, they’re charging $40 a session.