Morning Headlines 12/30/13

PCORI Awards $93.5 Million to Develop National Network to Support More Efficient Patient-Centered Research

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute will invest $93 million in a new project aimed at developing a collaborative network of health systems, payers, and patient groups working together to conduct more efficient health research.

Use of a Text Message Program to Raise Type 2 Diabetes Risk Awareness and Promote Health Behavior Change (Part I): Assessment of Participant Reach and Adoption

A study published in the Journal of Medical Internet Research designed to measure the participation and adoption rates of a text-based type 2 diabetes program finds that only 39 percent of enrolled participants completed the 14 week program, leading researchers to conclude that text-based programs may not be appropriate for everyone.

HIMSS Career Services to Focus on Veterans

HIMSS will launch a program aimed at introducing military veterans to " future careers in the health IT industry." The program, which was government funded, will be located on the exhibit floor at HIMSS14. Any military veterans that might be interested in the health IT industry need only get themselves down to the HIMSS conference, pay $575 for a single day conference pass, and then proceed to the “A Hero’s Welcome to Health IT” booth. Once there, they’ll meet other veterans that are working in health IT that will be able to answer questions for them, and they’ll learn about HIMSS entry-level certification exams.  

Morning Headlines 12/27/13

Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) and Office of Inspector General (OIG) Extend Sunset Dates for Electronic Health Records (EHR) Subsidy Rules

CMS extends the sunset date on the Stark exception to December 31, 2021. The decision will allow hospitals to continue to finance EHR implementations for referring physician practices without breaking anti-kickback laws.

More partnerships between doctors and hospitals strengthen coordinated care for Medicare beneficiaries

123 new ACOs are announced, bringing the national total to 360.

MaineHealth increasing spending on software system that was involved with billing glitches

MaineHealth will increase the budget on its Epic install from $145 to $200 million. Bill Caron, president of MaineHealth, says that the health system underestimated the total cost of training all its staff on Epic, and acknowledges that it was a mistake to start the install at 600-bed Maine Medical Center, the systems largest hospital.  The additional funding will be used to provide end users additional Epic training.

EMR alert cuts sepsis deaths

Active surveillance alerts generated by the EHR at Mount Sinai Hospital (NY) have led to earlier detection of sepsis in its inpatient census, resulting in a 40 percent reduction in its sepsis mortality rate.

Morning Headlines 12/26/13

Technology, prevention will move health care costs down

In a USA Today article, David Blumenthal, MD, outlines a multi-pronged plan for reducing national healthcare costs.

Investing in the nation’s health

In a Washington Times op-ed piece, NIH director Francis Collins says that spending cuts on top of small annual budgets have weakened NIH’s ability to carry out its mission of turning scientific discoveries into better health. Still, he holds hope for the administrations BRIAN initiative, as well as the rise of big data.

The year in HIE: Public, private sectors prodded to interoperability

In a 2013 year end review, various developments in the HIE sector are discussed.

Morning Headlines 12/24/13

HIMSS Foundation and National eHealth Collaborative Merge

The board of directors from both the HIMSS Foundation and the National eHealth Collaborative have approved a merger of the two organizations, effective December 23. NeHC was created five years ago by HHS as an independent, non-profit organization that worked closely with the ONC to encourage effective use of health IT. The original five-year funding agreement from ONC ended in 2013.

Taking the EHR penalty: More doc offices may opt out

The financial incentive to continue along with Meaningful Use may not be strong enough to persuade eligible providers to adopt Stage 2 and 3 functionality, according to the American Academy of Family Physicians, whose Center for HIT director Dr. Jason Mitchel commented, “We saw a 17% drop off of meaningful users that engaged in 2011 but didn’t in 2012. I think it’s going to be more for 2013.”

Editor’s letter: 10 years and 6 czars into HIT, where are we now?

Diana Manos reviews the 10 year history of the ONC, which, if you include the newly named Karen DeSalvo, MD, has been led by six national coordinators.

Top Scientific Discoveries of 2013

Healthcare dominates Wired’s list of Top Scientific Discoveries of 2013, which included: Genome editing, imaging advancements that allow researchers to render the brain transparent, building functioning organs from stem cells, and a variety of implantable electronics designed to improve health.

Morning Headlines 12/23/13

Navy to VA: We Printed Out Health Records and Mailed Them

According to a NextGov report, despite millions invested in DoD/VA integration, when a sailor is discharged from the Navy a paper copy of their entire medical record is printed out, put in an envelope, and mailed to the VA where it is then, eventually, batch scanned into their system for benefits processing.

Our Epic Journey Begins With You

New Bedford, MA-based Southcoast Health System, a three-hospital system, will implement Epic across all of its hospitals and clinics.

‘Let the Crime Spree Begin’: How Fraud Flourishes in Medicare’s Drug Plan

A  ProPublica investigation uses Medicare’s own data and finds widespread fraud by analyzing the prescription data of physicians whose prescribing behaviors over time showed the hallmark signs of having been used for by scammers for fraud.

Morning Headlines 12/20/13

DeSalvo Named National Coordinator

Karen DeSalvo, MD, MPH, MsC will be the next National Coordinator for Health Information Technology. She will take over on January 13, relieving Jacob Reider, MD, who has served as interim national coordinator since Farzad Mostashari, MD stepped down in October.

Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange ICD-10 Survey Results

Vendors, hospitals, practices, and payers are all behind in preparing for the ICD-10 conversion, according to a new report.

Reps Matsui (CA) and Johnson (OH) Introduce Bipartisan Legislation Creating a Federal Definition of Telehealth

Representatives Doris Matsui (D-CA) and Bill Johnson (R-OH) have introduced the Telehealth Modernization Act of 2013, which would help standardize telehealth reimbursement policies amid inconsistent state legislation.

Kansas’ online medical records networks to connect, starting Thursday

On Tuesday, the Kansas Health Information Exchange will connect with the Lewis and Clark Information Exchange. The HIEs are for-profit competitors and initially fought the state’s mandate that they share records, going so far at one point as to threaten to charge each other transaction fees for each shared record.

Morning Headlines 12/19/13

How mandated reporting set infection rates on the decline 

Six years after New York’s Department of Health started publishing hospital-acquired infection data, the rates of most infections are trending downward.

GAO report says CMS’ rule on quality reporting system may be too vague

A GAO report finds that new CMS rules designed to boost participation in PQRS reporting are too vague to have a meaningful impact on participation. The report’s authors suggest that one solution could be to require EHR vendors to develop reporting tools that make it easier to extract the data that the PQRS registry needs.

Saint Francis debt: $50 million

Poughkeepsie, NY-based St.Francis Hospital files bankruptcy after billing issues associated with its recent Meditech implementation leads to millions in unrecoverable lost revenue. CEO Art Nizza took ownership of the problem, saying that the clinical systems worked well because proper attention was paid to their implementation, and that had the same attention been given to the revenue cycle implementation, the problems might not have grown to the point that bankruptcy was necessary.

Ryan Donovan Departs Visa For Late Stage Start-Up

Ryan Donovan will leave his position as head of global PR for Visa to join Practice Fusion as the VP of corporate communications.

Morning Headlines 12/18/13

Former Microsoft Executive Kurt DelBene To Replace Jeff Zients

CMS taps recently retired Microsoft VP Kurt DelBene to take over Healthcare.gov. DelBene was formerly in charge of the Microsoft Office division. He will take over for Jeff Zients, who stepped in to oversee the immediate fixes needed just after the October 1 launch.

HealthTech Unifies Brands as MEDHOST, Names Herrod as President

HealthTech, the parent company of MEDHOST, HMS, and Patient Logic, consolidates all of its businesses under the MEDHOST brand name and names Craig Herrod president of the new organization. Herrod was formerly the president and CEO of MEDHOST.

Paulsen Introduces Legislation to Streamline and Enhance U.S. Healthcare Delivery

Congressman Erik Paulsen introduces a bill that would require the use of clinical decision support tools by physicians when ordering imaging studies on Medicare patients.

New Approaches for Delivering Primary Care Could Reduce Predicted Physician Shortage

A RAND study looks at alternative models for delivering primary care services that would help alleviate the growing physician shortage. Researchers focused on the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) and the nurse-managed health center (NMHC) models and found that projected PCP shortages could be substantially reduced by increasing the use of these models.

Morning Headlines 12/17/13

athenahealth, Merge Healthcare Partner for Data Exchange

athenahealth and Merge Healthcare announce a strategic partnership that will connect Merge’s iConnect Network with athenahealth’s ambulatory EHR. The partnership will enable athena customers to view high-resolution images and exam results coming from Merge within their EHR.

Congress demands no more iEHR delays

Next year’s National Defense Authorization Act has language in it that requires the DoD and VA to develop an acceptable iEHR plan by the end of January 2014. The bill further stipulates that “Not later than October 1, 2014, all health care information contained in the Department of Defense AHLTA and the Department of Veterans Affairs VistA systems shall be available and actionable in real-time to health care providers in each Department through shared technology.”

HHS seeks an innovator to attack patient matching

HHS CTO Bryan Sivak says that the departments next innovator-in-residence will lead the search for better patient matching technologies to help HIEs return the correct patient chart in the absence of a national patient ID system.

Morning Headlines 12/16/13

Cerner Corporation : Cerner Announces Stock Repurchase Program

Cerner announces a stock repurchase of $217 million, which at current stock prices would allow it to buy back 1.2 percent of the company’s outstanding shares.

Virginia Man Pleads Guilty to Mail Fraud in Scheme That Cost His Employer More Than $100,000

A former employee of The Advisory Board Company pleads guilty to fraud after cheating the company out of more than $100,000.

How Long Will Athenahealth Investors Keep the Faith?

According to Barron’s, athenahealth stock dropped last week because the company lowered its 2014 expectations and Jonathan Bush announced that he would be taking a two-month sabbatical. The company also announced that it will sell hospital clinical software to compete with Epic and Cerner.

Morning Headlines 12/13/13

AthenaHealth shares plunge on disappointing 2014 earnings outlook

AthenaHealth shares dropped 14 percent in after hours trading Wednesday on weak earnings forecasts ($0.98-$1.10 EPS) for 2014, that missed analysts estimates of $1.38 EPS.

Health Information Exchange Improves Identification Of Frequent Emergency Department Users

A study published in Health Affairs finds that using community-wide data from a HIE improves the ability to identify frequent emergency department users because visit history can be measured across unaffiliated hospitals. When analyzing HIE-wide data instead of site-specific data, 20.3 percent more frequent ED users were identified.

Cerner to take charge against earnings after arbitration ruling

Trinity Medical Center (ND) will receive an undisclosed settlement nearly two years after suing Cerner over accounting software purchased in 2008 that it claimed was "defective and did not deliver the promised benefits." Trinity was seeking $240 million in damages, while Cerner argued that damages should not have been higher than $4 million. The two agreed to arbitration hearings in October and a final settlement amount has now been reached. Cerner will take a $0.19 charge against its anticipated Q4 EPS of $0.35 to cover the loss.

Health Insurance Marketplace: December Enrollment Report

Healthcare.gov enrolled 258,497 in November, bringing the State and Federal total since launch to 365,000.

Morning Headlines 12/12/13

Kathleen Sebelius calls for HealthCare.gov contracting, management investigation

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius has asked the HHS Inspector General’s office to investigate the failed rollout of Healthcare.gov.

Open-source community helps with emergency VistA patch

A Georgia Tech graduate student working on his master’s degree thesis uncovers a security vulnerability in VistA that could impact patient’s medical treatments and compromise patient data. He brought the problem to the VA, but received no response. Next, he brought his findings to OSEHRA, a nonprofit open-source EHR developers forum. OSEHRA coordinated efforts fix the issue and, in partnership with VA, ensured that the patch was installed across all VA facilities.

CommonWell Announces Launch Geographies and Participants

CommonWell announces the first geographic areas that will be included in its vendor-backed HIE effort: Chicago, Illinois; Elkin and Henderson, North Carolina; and Columbia, South Carolina.

Data Helps Drive Lower Mortality Rate at Kaiser

John Mattison, MD, CMIO of Kaiser Permanente says that a large part of Kaiser’s lower than average mortality rates are "directly related to how we use data and integrate data.” He predicts that by 2020 ten times more medical research will be generated by by big data analytics than by conventional models of clinical research.

Morning Headlines 12/11/13

Timeline Changes for Meaningful Use

Brian Ahier publishes a revised Meaningful Use Attestation table that helps clarify the impact ONC’s stage 2 extension will have.

Separating EMR Fact from Fiction: Are Technology Platforms Predictors of Clinical Success?

A recent KLAS report finds that healthcare providers do not believe that the underlying technology an EHR is built on is a true predictor of its capability or clinical success.

Gov’t Health IT Report Expected in Early 2014

The FDA, ONC, and FCC will issue a joint report early next year outlining the federal government’s strategy for promoting innovation in health information technology.

OIG: OCR Needs to Improve Compliance

A report from the Office of the Inspector General says that HHS’s Office for Civil Rights, which is responsible for enforcing HIPAA, has failed to comply with a number of federal cyber security requirements.

Morning Headlines 12/10/13

Practice Fusion Grabs Another $15M for Electronic Health

Free cloud-based ambulatory EHR vendor Practice Fusion raises another $15 million on its series D round, bringing the round total to $85 million and its lifetime fundraising to nearly $150 million.

Royal Berks suspends Cerner contracts

In England, Royal Berkshire NHS Foundation Trust has suspended two contracts it has with Cerner worth $10 million. The contracts were awarded in 2012 for 10 years of customer support for the Trust’s Cerner Millennium EHR. The contracts were cancelled due to due to higher than anticipated operating costs associated with the project. To bring costs back in line, the Trust cancelled the support contracts and plans to train internal staff to fill the support roles instead.

IMS Health Announces Acquisition of Pygargus

IMS Health, a big-data firm that aggregates and sells large databases of de-identified healthcare data, acquires Pygargus, a Swedish health analytics firm.

You’re Getting Too Much Healthcare

The Atlantic discusses overconsumption of healthcare services in America. According to a recent Institute of Medicine report, 30 percent of total healthcare expenditures in the US are for unneeded care. 42 percent of doctors surveyed in a 2011 Archives of Internal Medicine study reported thinking that their patients were getting more care than necessary.

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.