Morning Headlines 6/13/13

GE Healthcare To Spend $2 Billion On Data Analytics And Other Tools

GE Healthcare has announced that over the next five years, it will spend $2 billion creating data analytics and patient population tools that will enable hospitals to effectively shift to a performance-based payment system.

Mostashari: Slow but steady interoperability progress

National coordinator for health IT Farzad Mostashari, MD discussed interoperability and the path moving forward at the HIMSS 2013 Government Health IT Conference this week where he summarized the current state of interoperability in saying, "Today, my last visit doesn’t contribute to my next visit in healthcare. Most discharge summaries don’t get to the primary care provider; most referral summaries don’t get back to the provider who ordered them.”

Marshfield Clinic to launch new information services company

Wisconsin-based Marshfield Clinic, a two-hospital health system, announces that it will begin offering health IT support services through a wholly-owned spinoff business, Marshfield Information Technology Services .

Maine Medical Center moves closer to $40M expansion

Maine Medical Center has won approval to move forward with a $40 million expansion project that will add five new operating suites, in addition to preparation and recovery areas. The news comes just a month after MMC announced a hiring and travel freeze in an effort to plug a $13.4 million deficit in the hospital’s operating budget.

Morning Headlines 6/12/13

EHR Developer Code of Conduct

The HIMSS EHR Association, a trade group representing more than 40 EHR vendors, publishes its long-awaited EHR Developer Code of Conduct. The document focuses on truth in advertising principles, patient safety guidelines, data security standards, and a vendor agnostic commitment to interoperability.

Some companies pay executives extra to fly on their own private jets for vacation

Cerner is profiled in an investigative reporting piece on private jet usage by large corporations. Cerner spent $193,759 last year on flights leased through a company controlled by Cerner’s own vice chairman Clifford Illig.

ROI Calculator for Heart Failure Monitoring

The Center for Technology and Aging and the Partners Healthcare Center for Connected Health have developed a return on investment calculator to help health care organizations assess the intrinsic financial benefits of implementing remote patient monitoring technologies.

Sutter Health patient information turns up in drug bust

A recent drug bust in Alameda County, CA turned up more than sheriffs were expecting as officers found the personal health information of about 4,500 patients from Sutter Health.

Morning Headlines 6/11/13

Stanford Hospital Trims Use of Blood Supplies 

Stanford Hospital reduces its use of red blood cells by nearly 25 percent after building a pop-up window into their CPOE system which outlines the guidelines on blood use and asks the physician to explain the reason for the request.

IBM Partner Puts Big Data To Work At Seattle Children’s Hospital

Seattle Children’s Hospital reports significant performance improvements after integrating ten disparate data sources into a single, analytics-driven business intelligence system running in an optimized big data environment.

Doctors embrace the digital workplace

In Canada, 56 per cent of physicians have switched to electronic medical records, up from 23 per cent in 2006.

HIMSS Analytics Honors Legacy Health’s Hospitals and Ambulatory Clinics with Stage 7 Award

Six Legacy Health hospitals and their ambulatory clinics in Portland, OR and Vancouver, WA have achieved HIMSS Stage 7 designation. Legacy Health runs Epic in both the acute and ambulatory environments.

Morning Headlines 6/10/13

When e- stands for enemy: Installing e-medical records systems costly, frustrating

An office manager from a solo practice in North Carolina discusses the growing cost and frustration HITECH is having on managing a small practice.

Parkland researchers develop system to flag those in danger of death

Researchers at the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation are profiled by a Dallas newspaper for their work with  predictive surveillance and population health management.

Olympic Medical Center: Progress made in digital conversion

Port Angeles, WA-based Olympic Medical Center CEO Eric Lewis discusses the hospital’s recent Epic go-live, describing the experience as “kind of like going from a landline to an iPhone.”

April 2013: EHR Incentive Program

According to a monthly update released by CMS, $14.6 billion has been paid to hospitals and providers since the EHR incentive program started in 2011.

Morning Headlines 6/7/13

Ambulatory Physician Leadership Reports a 30-Point Usability Gap between EMR Vendors

A new KLAS report looks at ambulatory EMR usability by measuring performance across various common tasks such as e-prescribing, physician documentation, and medication reconciliation. Athenahealth come out on top, followed by Epic.

China’s PLA Among Eight State-Sponsored Groups to Hack VA, Ex Official Says

Former VA chief information security officer Jerry Davis reports that eight different state-sponsored organizations have been hacking into VA networks and databases that contain millions of veterans patient information. The continued breaches are due to weak user authentication and a lack of encryption of VA databases.

Cleveland Clinic Making Electronic Medical Records More Transparent To Patients Online

Cleveland Clinic will add physician notes, images, and results to its MyChart patient portal. A recent Robert Wood Johnston trial concluded that giving patients unrestricted access to physician notes led to increased patient engagement rates.

Dozens of health groups to create massive gene database

More than 70 medical, research, and advocacy groups are joining forces to create a massive databases of genetic and clinical data that will be accessible to doctors and researchers worldwide.

Morning Headlines 6/6/13

States’ Hospital Data for Sale Puts Privacy in Jeopardy

State public health departments have been selling access to hospital patient data that is de-identified, but investigators were able to identify anonymous patients in 35 of 81 cases involving stories mentioned in local media.

Systems move to doc-led treatment standardization

At Washington-based Everett Clinic, clinical decision support tools have reduced overall MRI and CT scans by 30 to 40 percent. Required questions were added to the test orders within the clinic’s CPOE system ,and if the doctor’s answers did not demonstrate that the patient met the criteria for the test, the physician was alerted that the test could not be ordered.

HP captures $220M Indiana Medicaid contract

HP Enterprise Services lands a $220 million contract with the state of Indiana to build a new Medicaid management information system.

House votes to cut salaries, deny bonuses to Veterans Affairs officials

The House passes its 2014 spending bill for the VA with a unanimously approved provision that imposes a 25 percent pay cut for senior VA officials if the VA benefits claims backlog is not reduced by 40 percent before July 1, 2014. A separate, unanimously approved provision strips executive leadership of all scheduled bonuses. The bill also provides funding to continue the implementation of an automated claims processing system and a medical records scanning system.

Morning Headlines 6/5/13

Constellation Acquires QuadraMed Corporation

Constellation Corporation, through its subsidiary Harris Computer Corporation, announces the acquisition of QuadraMed for an undisclosed sum.

MModal Announces Leadership Changes

Clinical language understanding vendor MModal announces that CEO Vern Davenport has been replaced as by Duncan James. former CEO of QuadraMed.

Patients and Caregivers: Amplify your voice through the Blue Button CoDesign Challenge!

Health Tech Hatch launches an innovation challenge that asks end users to finish the following sentence "Build me a Blue Button-enabled tool that…." Winners will be selected through public voting, which is open until June 11.

White House Task Force on High-Tech Patent Issues

The White House has issued several executive actions and published legislative recommendations designed to address the patent troll epidemic plaguing technology startups.

Morning Headlines 6/4/13

Mass EHR mandate draws criticism, impact remains unclear

A change introduced with the Massachusetts health reform law comes under fire for requiring physicians to demonstrate proficiency in the use of CPOE, e-prescribing, and EHRs as a standard of eligibility for medical licensure in the state.

Secure health data helping patients, doctors improve care and health

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius kicks off Health Datapalooza IV by announcing that CMS will release new data sets that include outpatient procedure data, Medicare spending and utilization data, and de-identified data on Medicare beneficiaries with chronic conditions. HHS also announced a $25,000 challenge encouraging developers to design "an innovative app or tool using Medicare data that primary care providers can use to help manage patient care."

HIE Participation Doesn’t Create Test Savings, Study Says

A new study published in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association concludes that the deployment of a health information exchange is unlikely to produce significant cost savings through reduced testing rates, contradicting the study’s hypothesis that duplicate tests would be reduced if physicians were given access to the results.

MMRGlobal Retains Counsel in Australia and Issues Patent Update

Patient portal vendor and patent troll MMRGlobal retains legal representation in Australia and will pursue discussions with the Australian government and the National E-Health Transition Authority over potential patent infringement issues after NEHTA spent nearly $1 billion designing and implementing a national patient portal.

Morning Headlines 6/3/13

Westchester hospitals’ sale price over $54 million

Westchester, NY-based Sound Shore Medical Center is expected to be acquired by Montefiore Medical Center for only $54 million after the hospital falls more than $200 million into debt. Contributing factors included a disproportionate population of uninsured patients, and a 2011 EMR install that have caused major delays in billing and cash collection.

How electronic medical records can help find high-risk “missing” patients

Johns Hopkins’ public health magazine discusses a population health program that uses risk modeling to help identify pregnant patients with an increased likelihood of going into early labor. The team then delivers the necessary care to help mitigate the risk.

The $2.7 Trillion Medical Bill

The New York Times breaks down the cost variance of a colonoscopy in the US versus other developed nations in a piece that highlights some of the economics driving overall health expenditures in the US.

Mega-contract up for grabs from Department of Health

In England, NHS opens a vendor call for practice solutions to replace the original choices NPfIT approved in 2007. The new program will identify eight practice vendors that UK practices can select from. The program could be worth as much as $2 billion in total health IT spending.

Morning Headlines 5/31/13

Health Care Innovation

In a letter to the editor of The New York Times, National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, concurs with an Times piece published earlier this week which identified the booming health IT startup market as an unintended positive consequence of the Affordable Care Act. Mostashari added that widespread adoption of EHRs and a shift from fee-for-service to value-based purchasing are also positive outcomes of recent public policy.

Computer prompt boosts flu vaccine rates

Pediatricians in New York City were able to increase pediatric flu vaccination rates nine percent by having a pop-up alert built into the practice’s EMR. alerting doctors if the patient had not yet received a vaccination.

RBH faces £18m loss over IT system

In England, Royal Berkshire Hospital writes down $23 million in expenses, much of which it blames on unanticipated costs associated with its Cerner Millennium implementation.

Despite Challenges, MEDITECH 6.0 Customers Say They Are Not Going Anywhere

Despite performance challenges with Meditech 6.0, 95 percent of the company’s customers surveyed by KLAS say Meditech is part of their long-term plans, citing affordability and usability.

Morning Headlines 5/30/13

Why Some Doctors Don’t Lean On EHR

A new study published in the Journal of American Medical Informatics Association concludes that EHR adoption has less to do with how tech savvy a doctor is and has more to do with how much uncertainty — an accepted and universal attribute of medical practice — a doctor is comfortable with.

Repeated EHR Alerts Desensitize Clinicians

A case review published in the journal Pediatrics suggests that unimportant CPOE alerts negatively impact patient outcomes, possibly because they cause clinicians to miss important warnings.

Software That’s Hard on Hospital Readmissions

A local North Texas station reports on population health systems being implemented to reduce readmission rates at Texas Health Resources.

With Money at Risk, Hospitals Push Staff to Wash Hands

The New York Times covers efforts being employed by hospitals to increase hand hygiene compliance, including a number of technology advancements that include RFID tracking of physicians coupled with video surveillance and ID badge-enabled soap dispensers that track whether soap has been dispensed and alert the clinician as they approach the bedside if it hasn’t. An unannounced 16-week video monitoring trial at North Shore University Hospital revealed hand hygiene rates at less than 10 percent. Once clinicians were made aware of the video system and were sent weekly e-mails with their performance, the numbers jumped to 88 percent.

Morning Headlines 5/29/13

Accent on Integration

At MUSE on Wednesday, Iatric Systems will announce the acquisition of the business assets of Accent on Integration. AOI’s products and services, including the Accelero Connect integration platform, will continue to be marketed by Iatric.

Cerner Announces 2-For-1 Stock Split

Cerner has approved a 2-for-1 stock split effective June 17, a strategy employed to reduce a company’s stock price, as CERN shares approaches $100.

Harper Government Invests in eHealth Innovation

The Canadian government announces that it will encourage the creation of local eHealth initiatives by issuing grants to 16 research projects focused on developing technologies that enable patients to self-manage their conditions via eheath applications.

Direct: Implementation Guidelines to Assure Security and Interoperability: May 2013

ONC releases updated guidelines for Direct HIE implementations that will facilitate a MU Stage 2-compliant exchange of information between organizations.

Morning Headlines 5/28/13

DOD, VA to Clear Claims Backlog

DoD responds to accusations that its EHR decision is hindering efforts to reduce the veterans’ disability claims backlog by outlining a cross-department plan of attack. It includes providing VA Benefits personnel direct login access to DoD’s EMR and improving the format of DoD treatment records so that they are more portable.

Quebec implementing $1.6 billion electronic health record system

Quebec announces that it will move ahead with a proposed province-wide transition to EHRs. The announcement follows a successful two-year pilot program.

National critic of health care information technology says Marin General should heed nurses’ advice 

EHR critic Scot Silverstein, MD interviews with the Martin Independent Journal about the potential dangers of EHRs following recent patient safety-related protests from a nurses union at Martin General Hospital after the hospital implemented a CPOE system.

Morning Headlines 5/27/13

More than Half of Doctors Now Use Electronic Health Records Thanks to Administration Policies

The White House blog posts a self-congratulating piece as EHR adoption hits the 50 percent mark among eligible providers.

Obamacare’s Other Surprise

Thomas Friedman of The New York Times publishes an editorial in which he points to a rapid increase in health IT startups as an unforeseen positive consequence of HITECH and ACA.

Allscripts names 2 new directors to board

Allscripts adds former Epic CFO Anita Pramoda and former Brocade Communications CEO Michael Klayko to its board of directors.

Greenway Earns Two U.S. Patents for Care-Coordination Technology

Greenway earns patents for a server configuration that aggregates data from multiple EHR systems and auto-completes accreditation or certification forms and another related to tracking clinical events across multiple EHR systems.

Morning Headlines 5/24/13

Quality Systems, Inc. Reports Fiscal 2013 Fourth Quarter and Year-End Results

Quality Systems reports Q4 and year-end results. Net revenue was down 44 percent from 2012 to 2013, with a net loss of $4.1 million in Q4.

Intermountain Healthcare Launches Nation’s First System to Measure and Report Cumulative Medical Radiation Exposure

Intermountain Healthcare will leverage functionality within its EMR to track lifetime cumulative radiation exposure for patients.

Network execs squabble over issue of exchange connectivity

Executives from competing Kansas HIEs are struggling to cooperate with a state mandate that they integrate their networks. State legislatures had to step in this week to prevent the companies from charging each other access fees to comply with the mandate.

The Obama Crony In Charge Of Your Medical Records

Conservative blogger and frequent “Fox and Friends” guest Michelle Malkin profiles the rise of Judy Faulkner, portraying her as a political insider and big Obama campaign donor who secured herself an appointment as the only vendor representative on the federal Health IT Policy Committee.

Morning Headlines 5/23/13

Doctors and hospitals’ use of health IT more than doubles since 2012

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reports that HHS has exceeded its goal of transitioning 50 percent of eligible providers and 80 percent of eligible hospitals onto EHRs by the end of 2013.

Hagel says DoD to adopt commercial EHR 

Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel testified last month before a House Appropriations Committee to report that DoD had fallen behind on its plans to implement an integrated EHR with the VA; that much of the allocated money for the project had been spent with little to show for it; and that when the decision to launch a vendor search for a commercial EHR was made, he "didn’t think we knew what the hell we were doing." At the conclusion of that hearing, Hagel promised that he would halt the commercial vendor search and report back within 30 days with DoD’s new plan for delivering an integrated DoD/VA EHR. This Wednesday, bending to internal DoD pressure, Hagel reversed course on nearly all that he had said before the House Committee, reporting in a memo that DoD would resume its commercial EHR vendor selection rather than develop an integrated solution with the VA or adopting VA’s VistA.

All Maine hospitals sign on to electronic health records exchange

All of Maine’s acute-care hospitals have agreed to participate in HealthInfoNet, Maine’s statewide query-based HIE. Thirty-four of Maine’s hospitals are already connected to the network, and the last four are scheduled to go live by the end of the year. HealthInfoNet is also connected to 376 ambulatory practice sites.

Practice Fusion Continues To Reach Beyond Digital Health Records, Adds Free Expense Tracking To New Booking Engine

Free Web-based EHR vendor Practice Fusion launches a patient-facing site that allows patients to compare doctors and book appointments. After the appointment, patients can review their spending history across the entire history of their medical visits.

Morning Headlines 5/22/13

Local Health IT Firm Healthland Acquires Software Co.

Healthland acquires Jackson, MS-based post-acute care EHR vendor American HealthTech for an undisclosed sum.

Change in Directors or Principal Officers, Financial Statements and Exhibits

NextGen Healthcare board member Ahmed Hussein resigns after multiple failed attempts to take control of the company through proxy fights. He currently holds more than $100 million in company stock, which means that he can reinstate himself to the board in the future through cumulative voting rules.

Healthcare Innovation Council Calls Out CMS’ EHR Program as "Emperor Has No Clothes"

The Healthcare Innovation Council, an independent group of healthcare experts, has called upon Congress to reconsider the CMS Meaningful Use program since it is not furthering Congress’s goal of improving patient care. The group calls for a reboot of Meaningful Use before all of the money is spent. They are asking for a shift in focus away from hospital adoption of technology and toward improving the design and implementation of the EHR systems.

VMC’s electronic medical records system will increase efficiency, reduce medical errors

A Silicon Valley editorial praises Santa Clara Valley Medical Center’s $220 million Epic implementation, calling it a robust system that should lead to more efficient billing and significantly improve quality of care.