Morning Headlines 3/28/13

Caradigm Kills eHealth, Partners with Orion

Caradigm, the Microsoft and GE Healthcare collaboration, announces a partnership with Orion Health wherein Caradigm will go to market with Orion Health’s HIE solution rather than its own poorly performing eHealth HIE solution, which will be sunset.

‘Big Data’ for Cancer Care

The American Society of Clinical Oncologists announces that it is joining a Big Data movement by compiling data from hundreds of thousands of cancer patients to bring a new searchable resource to oncologists looking to review treatment strategies for their patients.

Healthcare Workarounds Expose EHR Flaws

A Journal of American Medical Informatics Association study explores workarounds frequently adopted by clinicians using EHR software and studies the various reasons that the workarounds were needed in the first place. Often, the study found, they were needed due to a lack of functionality within the the HER. Sometimes, however, it was just more efficient to employ the workaround than to follow the designed workflow. Other workarounds were built into the clinicians’ workflow to help them remember to complete tasks or to allow them to bring information into the examination room, where they would sometimes be without a computer.

CMS Focuses On Fraud Associated With Increased Use Of Electronic Health Records

Acting CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner reiterates that CMS will conduct audits of the billing practices of EHR-using providers. These "small, targeted audits" will take place in parallel with the Meaningful Use audit program that started in July 2012.

Morning Headlines 3/27/13

Rough landings: DOD, VA sluggish helping returning veterans, study says

An Institute of Medicine review criticizes the VA and DoD for using scientifically unproven diagnostic and therapy tools to treat depression and TBI and for faltering on plans to integrate medical records in the coordinated care of transitioning veterans.

OHSU has third data breach

Oregon Health & Science University will notify around 4,000 patients of a data breach stemming from an unencrypted laptop that was recently stolen, marking the third time in the last five years that OHSU has had a data breach affecting more than 500 individuals.

FDA 101: A guide to the FDA for digital health entrepreneurs

Rock Health publishes a SlideShare presentation on the path to FDA clearance and the criteria that regulators are looking for.

GPs only act on 2% of computer prescribing alerts, says study

A study commissioned by the UK’s NHS concludes that providers only act on two percent of drug alerts while prescribing. The problem, the study suggests, is that alerts are presented at the end of the prescribing process rather than at the beginning where they would be more likely to alter medication selection.

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.