Morning Headlines 4/15/13

Outrage as eHealth record sign-up squads hit Australian hospital patients in bid to boost numbers

Australia’s $1 billion eHealth system has sparked widespread criticism after recent reports reveal that only two hospitals are using the system and only 414 patient records have been entered. The eHealth system went live nine months ago.

University of New Mexico Hospital Lays Off 57

University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque will lay of 57 medical transcriptionists after outsourcing transcription services to Nuance.

Computer issues strike at Memorial

Equipment failures result in system downtime and diversion at Memorial Hospital of South Bend’s emergency department.

Florida Hospital Co. Sued Over Scheme To Sell Patient Info

Adventist Health System/Sunbelt is being sued after accusations that emergency room workers have been selling medical records to chiropractors and tort lawyers.

Morning Headlines 4/12/13

New ONC fee proposal scares health IT sector

ONC releases its budget plan for 2014, which includes a 28 percent increase in funding and a proposal to introduce a new fee structure for EHR vendors.

athenahealth Inc. vs CareCloud Corporation

athenahealth files a patent infringement lawsuit against competitor CareCloud, citing a 13-year-old practice management patent.

Statistical blunders blamed for death rate scare at Leeds heart unit

In England, The Leeds Teaching Hospitals suspend all children’s heart surgeries after skewed EHR data erroneously spikes mortality rates.

Cerner Hits 52-Week High

Shares of Cerner hit a new 52-week high at $95.54,  a 40 percent increase since its 52-week low on October 23, 2012.

Morning Headlines 4/11/13

Mining Electronic Health Records Reveals Clues Of Harmful Drug Reactions

Researchers at Stanford University, using sophisticated analytics and EHR data looking back 15 years, were able to clearly substantiate harmful drug side effects years before an alert was issued from the FDA. Researchers conclude that data analytics will be a powerful compliment to the FDA’s Adverse Event Reporting System.

NYeC Asks New Yorkers to Help Shape State’s Healthcare Future – Vote on Patient Portal for New Yorkers Prototypes

The New York eHealth Collaborative is turning to state residents to select its final patient portal design. The designs up for vote were all submitted in an earlier eHealth Collaborative design challenge that asked residents to create a patient portal for New Yorkers, by New Yorkers.

Jonathan Bush, Live from TEDMED: Health Care is Broken; Find the Frontiers

Jonathan Bush, athenahealth chairman, president, and CEO, has been tapped to speak at TEDMED next week in Washington DC, where he will discuss alternatives to healthcare’s pay-for-service revenue model.

Electronic Media–Based Health Interventions Promoting Behavior Change in Youth

A recently published article in JAMA Pediatrics correlates substantial behavioral changes to certain mHealth interventions that target adolescent health issues.

Morning Headlines 4/10/13

Administration pushes toward electronic medical records

CMS and OIG both propose rules extending the safe harbor exceptions to both the Stark Law and the Federal Anti-Kickback Law that are set to expire on December 31, 2013. The laws would otherwise prevent hospitals and health systems from subsidizing EHRs for practices that refer patients to the organization.

Tavenner Moves Closer to CMS Confirmation

Marilyn Tavenner, acting head of CMS, received bipartisan support at her confirmation hearing Tuesday, taking her one step closer to becoming the agency’s first confirmed administrator since Mark McClellan, MD, PhD left the post in October 2006.

My first 100 days as Allscripts CEO

Paul Black provides some perspective on the transformation he is leading at Allscripts.

Did Jon Stewart Foil The Pentagon’s Health Records Plan?

Following a groundswell of negative media coverage and the appointment of former VA deputy administrator Chuck Hagel, the DoD seems to be revisiting the idea of adopting VistA in order to more efficiently move toward a central, integrated EHR.

Morning Headlines 4/9/13

Medical device alarm safety in hospitals

The Joint Commission issues a Sentinel Event Alert after it receives 80 reports of deaths between 2009-2012 that were related to alert fatigue.

The big-data revolution in US health care: Accelerating value and innovation

A new report published by McKinsey & Company claims that big data models could lead to $300 billion to $450 billion in reduced healthcare spending annually, or 12 to 17 percent of the $2.6 trillion spent on healthcare in the US.

Catholic Health Initiatives and Accenture Apply Analytics to Identify Health Risks Among Patient Populations

The 78-hospital system Catholic Health Initiatives and Accenture have announced a collaborative nine-month project during which big data analytics tools will be developed to identify at-risk patients within CHI’s patient population. The initiative will also focus on enhancing CHI’s data warehousing capabilities.

AliveCor Names Industry Veteran Dan Sullivan President and CEO

AliveCor, the smartphone-enabled ECG company, announces the appointment of Daniel Sullivan (previously of SuperDimension, Inc.) as president and CEO.

Morning Headlines 4/8/13

HP’s Chairman Steps Down, Two Directors to Depart

John Hammergren, chairman, president, and CEO of McKesson, will leave HP’s board after 46 percent of shareholders opposed his re-election, due largely to a failed acquisition strategy that has resulted in $17 billion in losses since 2010.

Cambridge signs with Epic

Epic signs Cambridge University Hospital and Papworth Hospital, with go-live scheduled for October 2014.

Wake Forest Baptist has cost overruns, revenue loss with electronic records system

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center cites struggles with implementing Epic as the primary reason for its nearly $50 million operational loss during Q2. Moody’s has downgraded the hospital’s credit rating from A1 to Aa3.

21 Most Admired Companies Making IT A Competitive Advantage

Health systems make up nearly 25 percent of the companies listed in the recently published report, “21 Most Admired Companies Making IT A Competitive Advantage.” Kaiser Permanente, HCA, Mayo Clinic, Cleveland Clinic, and Intermountain Healthcare all made the list.

Morning Headlines 4/5/13

Policy Committee ponders CommonWell influence

Farzad Mostashari, MD, and Judy Faulkner discuss the ramifications CommonWell will have on interoperability during this weeks ONC HIE workgroup.

Baylor Quality Alliance Selects Greenway for Participation in EHR Program

Greenway announces a partnership with Baylor Health Care System to provide ambulatory EHR’s for its cmomunity physicians.

HIMSS Analytics Honors Florida Hospital Carrollwood with Stage 7 Award

120-bed Florida Hospital Carrollwood, an Aventist Health System facility and Cerner shop, is awarded HIMSS Stage 7. 

EHR Adoption Encouraged by State Meaningful Use Acceleration Challenge 2.0

ONC has renewed the state Meaningful Use accleration challenge with new benchmark goals for the 2013 year.

Morning Headlines 4/4/13

Former VA CIO Baker heads to Agilex

Recently resigned Roger Baker, CIO of the VA, has found a new home at Agilex, a government contracting firm specializing in software development, cloud computing, and mobility.

JAMA: Current EHRs Lack Large-Scale Data Capabilities

A recent viewpoint article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association suggests that as data-heavy sciences like genomics, epigenomics, and proteomics advance, health systems will be forced to look beyond the storage capacity of their EHRs to keep up with data storage needs.

Intermountain Healthcare pays $25.5 million to settle claims allegations

23-facility health system Intermountain Health has agreed to pay $25.5 million to settle claims that it violated the Stark statute after admitting that over a decade, it illegally paid bonuses more than 200 of its referring physicians.

ONC HIE workgroup offers interoperability suggestion

ONC’s Health Information Exchange workgroup met today to discuss possible policy solutions for promoting interoperability.

Veterans Affairs Backlog Files Stacked So High, They Posed Safety Risk to Staff

A recent PBS story on the now nationally followed VA claims backlog describes a Winston-Salem, NC office that had folders stacked so high that they posed a safety risk to employees and further delayed the approval process because needed folders were often stored layers deep in claims piles. The weight of the paper eventually created a structural problem when inspectors realized that the sheer weight of the combined folders exceeded the load-bearing capacity of the building itself.

Morning Headlines 4/3/13

Nuance Jumps After Investor Carl Icahn Reports 9.3% Holding

Wall Street billionaire Carl Icahn, known for his longstanding history of executing hostile corporate takeovers, reveals that he currently holds a nine percent stake in Nuance. Should he manage to seize control, Nuance would very likely be reorganized, forcing out failing business units and consolidating the rest. Shares rose eight percent in after hours trading on the news.

WMC health records now electronic

238-bed Weirton Medical Center, WV, goes live on its $30 million Siemens Soarian EHR implementation.

Mo. Senate passes required telemedicine coverage

The Missouri Senate has approved legislation requiring insurance companies to cover medical services provided electronically if they cover for the same service delivered in person.

February 2013 EHR Incentive Program

CMS has paid $12.7 billion in Meaningful Use incentive payments through February.

RazorInsights Hires Former Siemens RVP Karl Kiss to Drive Sales

Karl Kiss, regional vice president at Siemens, moves to RazorInsights taking over as VP of sales and marketing.

Morning Headlines 4/2/13

Doctors firing back at patients’ online critiques

The Boston Globe covers the story of a Boston-based surgeon who is suing her deceased patient’s husband after he posted an unflattering review of her care.

Mixed results on computer-based support for diabetes

Researchers at University College London complete a systematic review of 16 control trials exploring the effect online and mobile diabetes management tools have on overall disease management. The study concludes that the tools had a positive but minor effect on glycemic control, with computer-based tools resulting in a net 0.2 percent drop in HbA1c levels, while the mobile tools yielded a 0.5 percent decrease. Four in ten tools showed a positive effect on lipid panels. The tools had no measured effect on weight, health-related quality of life, or depression.

H.R. 1331: Electronic Health Records Improvement Act

HR 1331, a bill that if enacted will create a Meaningful Use hardship exemption for providers approaching retirement age and small physician practices, is getting lots of media attention this week despite being given one percent odds of making it to vote and zero percent odds of being enacted. Its identical predecessor, HR 6598, was proposed on November 16 and died in committee, which is where HR 1331 now resides.

MMRGlobal Expands Licensing Initiative in Advance of Stage 2 Meaningful Use Patient Engagement Requirements

MMRGlobal announces that it will ramp up efforts to cash in on its patient portal patents, specifically declaring that it will expand its licensing efforts to include hospitals, ambulatory surgical centers, laboratory systems, pharmacies, mass merchandisers and other vendors and providers.

Morning Headlines 4/1/13

Death of patient at Royal Derby Hospital leads to new system ‘to alert staff of medication needs’

In England, the Royal Derby Hospital implements an eMAR system after a patient’s DVT prophylaxis medication was skipped three times over nine days. During her stay the patient fell, broke her hip and then subsequently developed a fatal pulmonary embolism.  The coroner found that even though the appropriate fall precautions had been in place, the omission of DVT prophylactics "more than minimally contributed to the development of the DVT and was therefore a contributing factor in her death."

Hospitals Question Medicare Rules on Readmissions

An article in the New York Times questions the fairness of CMS’s new readmissions penalties, citing critics that say hospitals should be looking for ways to improve care for patients who are still in the hospital rather than managing the patients’ personal lives post-discharge. The article also questions the fairness of using readmission rates as a basis for penalizing hospitals. It does, however, acknowledge that since CMS’s October initiation of penalties, readmission rates have dropped from 19 percent to 17.8 percent.

Hospital implementing new electronic health record system

49-bed Keokua Area Hospital, of Keokua, IA, goes live with CPSI.

Tablet Computers Acceptable for Reading EEG Results, Mayo Clinic Study Says

Mayo Clinic physicians in Arizona have shown that tablet computers can be used to analyze EEG results. The objective of their study was to determine whether a tablet is an acceptable alternative to a laptop for remote EEG interpretation. The findings showed that the tablet cost significantly less and weighed less and had a comparable screen resolution as compared to the laptop.

Monday Morning Update 4/1/13

From DailyShowFan: “Re: Daily Show. Did anyone see the 3/27 segment where Jon Stewart, a steady advocate for veterans’ rights, takes on the interoperability challenge with AHLTA (DoD) and VistA (VA)? Sad reality, but it’s good to see him bringing this specific healthcare IT issue to wider attention.”

From KB: “Re: St. Mary’s Hospital, Waterbury, CT. Finally pulled the trigger to put down their awful, botched [vendor name omitted] LIS after being live only eight months. They just signed a $1million+ contract for Sunquest.” Unverified.

From The PACS Designer “Re: Qubole. A next-generation cloud service focusing on building a new cloud data platform is Qubole. Their solutions use Hadoop, Hive, and Pig software to solve Big Data issues for cloud services.”

Half of readers have contacted their primary care provider via e-mail or secure messaging. New poll to your right: do you expect to stop working for your current employer in the next 12 months?

Meditech specialist Park Place International leases space in Worcester, MA for what will apparently become the company’s US headquarters, logically positioned near Meditech.

ONC seeks public input as it updates the Federal Health IT Strategic Plan, allowing reading and adding comments for 10 topics related to consumer e-Health

In the UK, Royal Derby Hospital implements an electronic MAR after an inquest determines that a contributing factor to the fall-related death of an 89-year-old patient was three missed doses of enoxaparin.

A Mayo Clinic study finds that tablet computers can be used to analyze EEG results outside the hospital or clinic.

A New York Times article questions whether hospitals should be held financially responsible for managing readmissions by, as it says, “managing the personal lives of patients once they are released” instead of focusing on other ways to improve care. Experts drily note hospitals with high mortality rates would appear to be more successful in managing health since dead patients can’t be readmitted. A health policy expert says readmission metrics are convenient, but not accurate.

Keokuk Area Hospital (IA) goes live on CPSI.

Medseek’s Client Congress will be held in Austin, TX April 15-17.

A former Apple employee recounts in a story called “2 Letters from Steve” the touching story of e-mailing Steve Jobs in 2010 to ask if he could take an iPad, which had not yet been released and thus was highly secured, to show a terminally ill friend who was not expected to live out the week. He received the above response three minutes later.

Vince continues with the HIS-tory of Meditech this week.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Morning Headlines 3/29/13

Lahey Health Invests in New Electronic Health Record System for Better Coordinated Care

Lahey Health announces that it will implement Epic across its health system beginning in June of 2013.

MEDHOST Names Barbara Bryan Vice President of Consulting

Barbara Bryan (Bryan Advisory Group) joins MEDHOST as VP of consulting. She will initially focus on integrating consulting services into the sales and delivery cycle of MEDHOST’s new patient throughput solution PatientFlow HD.

Empower Individuals through Health IT to Improve Health and Health Care

ONC launches the Planning Room, a website designed to collect public input on the federal health IT strategic plan.

Wolters Kluwer’s online move injects life into health business

Wolters Kluwer is seeing promising returns as it moves its health publishing content sales from paper to the web.

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.