Morning Headlines 2/12/13

National Association of ACOs (NAACOS) is founded in Washington, DC.

Out of the 258 accountable care organizations recognized by CMS, 60 of them across more than 15 states have joined together to form the Washington, DC-based National Association of ACOs.

IBM supercomputer takes on new role in health arena

After a year spent internalizing 600,000 pieces of medical evidence, 1.5 million patient records, 2 million pages of texts from medical journals, and 1,500 lung-cancer cases, IBM’s Watson will be implemented at the Maine Center for Cancer Medicine and WestMed in Westchester County, NY, where it will analyze patient data and recommend care plans for lung cancer patients. Watson will sort treatment options based on what is most likely to succeed and which are covered by the patient’s insurance.

Is iEHR really dead?

The Department of Veterans Affairs CIO Roger Baker responds to last week’s widespread reports that the iEHR project has been shut down. Mr. Baker, along with other C-level executives within the VA, clarify that the project is not defunct and that reports suggesting otherwise have been greatly exaggerated.

Launch of Connect 4.0 – An HIE Advancement Driven by Federal Collaboration

ONC’s Federal Health Architecture announces the release of CONNECT 4.0, an open source data-sharing system built on NHIN standards that enables secure electronic exchange of information to support related Meaningful Use Stage 2 objectives.

Morning Headlines 2/11/13

Paragon, Horizon Clinicals, Revenue Cycle, and Managed Services to combine in a new organization called Enterprise Information Services

McKesson Technology Solutions EVP/Group President Pat Blake says Paragon, Horizon Clinicals, Revenue Cycle, and Managed Services will be combined in a new organization called Enterprise Information Services, with Jim Pesce from the Paragon business serving as president.

athenahealth’s CEO Discusses Q4 2012 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

athenahealth holds its Q4 earnings call, during which CEO Jonathan Bush reports a reduction in physician documentation time to less than five minutes per encounter and hints at a possible venture into the inpatient EMR business.

Computer chaos costs RBH £3.7m

Royal Berkshire Hospital reports implementation overages of $5.8 million (USD) in conjunction with a Cerner implementation that was originally budgeted at $47 million.

Meningitis outbreak prompted State Health Department to gain electronic access

After struggling with federal privacy requirements and other barriers to data collection during last year’s national meningitis outbreak, the Tennessee State Health Department considers proposing legislation that would provide its workers with quicker access to EHRs during a medical emergency.

Morning Headlines 2/8/13

Nuance Shares Stumble After Hours As Guidance Disappoints

Nuance reports a Q1 loss of $0.07 per share vs. a positive $0.03 last year, falling short on revenue and earnings estimates. The company says reduced transcription volume, spurred by increased usage of EMRs and its own Dragon Medical transcription software, is constraining its healthcare revenue.

CHIME Weighs In on Federal Health IT Safety Plan

The CIO organization calls for more consistent matching of patients to their data, expresses concerns about the time providers may need to spend filing federal patient safety information, and urges that control of the patient safety plan be moved outside of the federal government to an independent organization.

Mayor Bloomberg Announces Expansion of Electronic Health Records Result in Major Health Care Improvements

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the city’s EHR use has improved outcomes for hypertension, diabetes, and smoking-related complications. New York’s Primary Care Information Project was started in 2005 by then-Assistant Commissioner Farzad Mostashari, MD, now National Coordinator.

ECRI Institute PSO Uncovers Health Information Technology-Related Events in Deep Dive Analysis

The non-profit patient safety organization identifies five problem areas with healthcare IT: inadequate data transfer between systems, entering data on the wrong patient, making data entry mistakes, HIT system bugs, and configuration errors.

Morning Headlines 2/7/13

Remarks by Secretary Panetta and Secretary Shinseki from the Department of Veterans Affairs

A Department of Defense meeting transcript indicates that the DoD and VA will pursue interoperability and a common user interface rather than creating a single EHR to meet the President’s goal of a joint system. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says the VA and DoD have aligned their data elements and will start a pilot project this summer on a common VistA/AHLTA user interface for physicians. He says that project, plus the recently expanded Blue Button initiative, will meet the President’s directive faster and cheaper than creating a single EHR. The departments announced in March 2011 that they would create a common joint EHR platform, saying then that their respective systems were outdated and lacking functionality.

The Advisory Board Company Acquires 360Fresh

360Fresh products use natural language and text processing to analyze information from electronic medical records and other sources, adding real-time predictive analytics capabilities for The Advisory Board Company’s Crimson customers.

Physician Satisfaction with Best-of-Breed EDIS 59% Higher than Enterprise Systems

A new KLAS report on emergency department information systems finds that ED physicians give best-of-breed ED systems higher scores because of clinical decision support, usability, and accuracy of documentation, while enterprise systems provide advantages in interoperability, continuation of care, and communication with other hospital systems.

New Children’s Electronic Health Record Format Announced

AHRQ and CMS release a guide for EHR developers that includes a minimum set of data elements and data standards for children.

Morning Headlines 2/5/13

Geisinger launches xG Health Solutions

Geisinger Health System (PA) forms for-profit xG Health Solutions, backed by $40 million in financing from venture capital firm Oak Investment Partners. The new company will offer healthcare IT optimization, consulting, population health data analytics, care management, and third-party administration services.

ZirMed Launches Clinical Link

ZirMed launches provider-to-provider communication for the 100,000 EMR users connected to its network.

A National Action Plan To Support Consumer Engagement Via E-Health

A HealthAffairs article by Farzad Mostashari and ONC colleagues explains ONC’s “Three As” strategy (access to electronic patient information, apps, and attitudes) to improve consumer e-health.

HIStalk Connect Interviews Bob Zollars, CEO, Vocera

Vocera CEO says being publicly traded “has made us a better company,” the end of the hospital pager is near, and “trying to fight the BYOD movement is like fighting a religious war.”

New technology helps doctors link a patient’s location to illness and treatment

Epidemiologists develop a GPS-equipped inhaler to correlate asthma flare-ups with location. “Place should be a vital sign,” says a spatial epidemiologist in a field now known as geomedicine.

Morning Headlines 2/4/13

HHS Secretary Sebelius Address National Health Policy Conf.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD, Paul Tang, MD of Palo Alto Medical Foundation, and David Blumenthal of The Commonwealth Fund will deliver addresses at the National Health Policy Conference in Washington, DC February 4-5. Portions of the event will be broadcast live on C-SPAN2 beginning at 9:00 a.m. Eastern today.

McKesson Management Discusses Q3 2013 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

Technology Solutions revenue was flat, margins impacted by revenue recognition changes for a UK acquisition. Legacy conversion to Paragon has been better than expected, while the company states that Horizon will support future Meaningful Use stages.

MyMedicalRecords Files Patent Infringement Complaint Against Walgreens

MMR, which has threatened a flurry of lawsuits claiming infringement on patents it recently acquired, files suit against Walgreens. MMR claims that displaying a list of prescriptions to a patient infringes on its intellectual property.

Meditech Files Annual Report

The privately held company reports that revenue increased by 9.7 percent for the year, with earnings per share improving from $3.41 to $3.55.

Morning Headlines 2/1/13

McKesson Q3 Profit Misses Estimate; Cuts FY13 Adj. EPS View

McKesson reports Q3 results: EPS $1.41 compared to last year’s $1.40, missing analyst estimates of $1.63. Revenue was up one percent, ending the quarter at $31.2 billion. The company lowered its guidance for FY 2013 by 20 cents, to $7.10-$7.30. The stock closed down 0.4 percent on the day.

Computer Programs and Systems, Inc. Announces Fourth Quarter and Year-End 2012 Results

CPSI reports year-end results, with revenue up five percent at $183 million. Net income increased 16 percent to $30 million, but EPS missed the $0.88 analyst estimate by $0.05 and shares dropped nearly nine percent in after-hours trading.

Clancy stepping down as AHRQ director

After 10 years on the job, Carolyn Clancy, MD, is stepping down as the director of AHRQ.

Piedmont Newnan transitioning to electronic medical record system

136-bed Piedmont Newnan Hospital goes live on Epic this Friday, the first within the five-hospital Piedmont Healthcare system’s network-wide implementation.

Morning Headlines 1/31/13

Enhancing patient safety and quality of care by improving the usability of electronic health record systems: recommendations from AMIA

JAMIA publishes the recommendations of a year-long EHR usability task force that included representatives from academic settings and EHR design analysts.

Huron Valley Physicians Association IPA Selects eClinicalWorks

Huron Valley Physicians Association of Ann Arbor, Michigan, has selected eClinicalWorks as an ambulatory EHR solution for its 600 providers.

HIT 2012 Annual and Q4 Funding and M&A Report

A 2012 HIT market analysis shows significantly increased venture capital funding, with $1.2B in funding spread over 163 individual deals.

EHI and KLAS Partner to Improve NHS IT Measures

KLAS has partnered with EHealth Insider, a UK-based health IT news and research firm, to bring performance measures to the UK health technology market.

Morning Headlines 1/30/13

Medecision Completes Acquisition of Cerecons

Medecision announces the acquisition of California-based Cerecons, a software provider specializing in population management and quality outcomes tools. The acquisition will result in a care management entity that supports more than 90 healthcare organizations nationally.

University of Virginia Health System Selects MModal’s Speech Understanding Solutions

The University of Virginia (UVA) Health System will implement MModal’s speech recognition and natural language processing solutions to speech-enable its EHR across UVA’s 604-bed hospital, level I trauma center, cancer and heart centers, and primary and specialty clinics throughout Central Virginia.

HealthTech Names Tom Mitchell Vice President of Marketing

HealthTech Holdings, parent company of Healthcare Management Systems (HMS), MEDHOST and PatientLogic, hires Tom Mitchell (MModal) as vice president of marketing.

HL7 Names Two New Advisory Council Members

HL7’s Board of Directors names Joyce Sensmeier, RN-BC, Vice President of Informatics for HIMSS, and Walter Suarez, M.D., PhD, Director of Health IT Strategy of Kaiser Permanente, to serve a two-year term on HL7’s Advisory Council.

6 ways AHRQ will explore EHRs and workflow redesign

AHRQ will interview focus groups with clinical, non-clinical, and management staff about their experiences with electronic health records, stemming from a groundswell of complaints that EHRs create more work, new work, excessive system demands, and inefficient workflow.

Morning Headlines 1/29/13

Computer Programs and Systems, Inc. Announces Formation of TruBridge, LLC

CPSI announces the formation of TruBridge, LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary which will provide business services, consulting services, and contracted IT services.

Siemens Healthcare’s Q1 profits jump 38%

Siemens posted quarterly profits of $1.62 billion, or $1.89 per share, on sales of $24.15 billion.

Request for Information on Hospital and Vendor Readiness for Electronic Health Records Hospital Inpatient Quality Data Reporting

CHIME comments on CMS’s request for information on EHR-based quality reporting readiness, raising concerns over how discrete data should be extracted from narrative physician notes for reporting.

5 findings in ONC HIE research

ONC publishes new research highlighting the types of high-impact services that can sustain HIE organizations.

Health chief wants big telemedicine network across Georgia

Brenda Fitzgerald, MD, public health commissioner for Georgia, reports that every public health center across the state will be able to put patients in front of top specialists via telemedicine within three years, citing grant applications as the primary means of paying for the program.

Morning Headlines 1/28/13

Athenahealth to lay off 36 in Birmingham area

A spokesperson with the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affair reports that athenahealth has filed notice to announce the layoffs of 36 Birmingham-based employees, effective March 6.

Compuware turns down Elliott offer, Covisint unit IPO still on

Compuware turns down hedge fund Elliot Management Corp’s proposal for a $2.3 billion buyout.

2 Chesco companies report combined 168 layoffs

MEDecision will lay off 83 workers effective February 1, representing more than 25 percent of its total workforce.

Hospital’s electronic records system goes off line after AT&T outage

New Hanover Regional Medical Center went to paper downtime procedures when a regional AT&T outage cut access to its Epic system.

Why Do Patients Derogate Physicians Who Use a Computer-Based Diagnostic Support System?

A survey focusing on why patients have a negative perception of physicians who use clinical decision support concludes that it may not be related to seeking the physician external advice, but rather that the physician is turning to a computer rather than a colleague.

Morning Headlines 1/24/13

Quality Systems, Inc. Reports Fiscal 2013 Third Quarter Results

Quality Systems, Inc, known to most as the parent company of NextGen, reports Q3 earnings, with revenue up two percent and EPS $0.26 vs. $0.36, missing analyst estimates for both.

Huron Consulting Group Bolsters Huron Healthcare with Strategy and Supply Chain Experts

Huron Consulting Group announces that Jim Agnew (Navigant Consulting) and Jeffrey McLaren (VHA) have joined the company as managing directors in its Huron Healthcare practice.

Vermont becomes first in nation to implement accountable care organization

Officials from Fletcher Allen and Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center announce the creation of the nation’s first statewide accountable care organization (ACO), called OneCare Vermont.

GE Healthcare Announces Centricity Practice Solution 11

GE Healthcare announces the release of the next Centricity Practice version, which provides enhancements to help facilitate ICD-10 transitions.

SB 1275 Medical data in an electronic or digital format; limitations on use, storage, sharing, & processing

Republican Senator Stephen H. Martin introduces a bill to the Virginia State Senate which mandates that providers cannot be penalized for refusing to implement an EHR, analytics cannot be performed across multiple patients to manage population health, and organizations are not permitted to participate the Nationwide Health Information Network.

Morning Headlines 1/24/13

All the Tools in the Toolbox: How ONC Delivered Value In 2012

Farzad Mostashari, MD responds to a Boston Globe article that characterizes the ONC as “an office whose primary role has been cheerleader” by publicly outlining how the ONC delivered value in 2012.

Prison Time for Health Data Theft

An emergency department registration clerk from a Florida hospital was sentenced to 12 months in federal prison for inappropriately accessing 760,000 electronic health records and then selling contact information of about 12,000 motor vehicle accident patients to a co-conspirator, who used the data to solicit legal and chiropractic business.

Medicare Program; Request for Information on Hospital and Vendor Readiness for Electronic Health Records Hospital Inpatient Quality Data Reporting; Extension of Comment Period

CMS has extended the deadline for public comments on EHR inpatient quality data reporting until February 1.

Association Between Quality Improvement for Care Transitions in Communities and Rehospitalizations Among Medicare Beneficiaries

A JAMA study quantifies the result of implementing evidence-based post-discharge interventions and concludes that while hospital readmissions dropped six percent, so did hospital admissions, resulting in an unchanged percentage of readmissions among overall admissions.

Morning Headlines 1/23/13

Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska Connect via Direct Secured Messaging

The Nebraska Health Information Initiative, Kansas Health Information Network, and Missouri Health Connection announce that they are now connected and able to exchange Direct secure messages across state lines.

Naperville’s Edward Hospital to merge with Elmhurst Memorial

Edward Hospital & Health Services of Naperville, IL and Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare announce plans to merge, forming a three-hospital health system with revenues of more than $1 billion.

Providers Get Help From Clinical Decision Support Evidence Vendors but Still Face Obstacles

KLAS evaluates clinical decision support strategies and roadblocks for providers and concludes that third-party order sets, care plans, and drug dictionaries lead the pack in CDS plans but notes that a lack of integration with EHRs is hindering the utilization of these tools.

King Saud University Signs a Strategic Agreement With Cerner for Two Major Hospitals in Saudi Arabia

King Saud University signs with Cerner to implement EHRs for two academic facilities in Saudi Arabia.

Morning Headlines 1/22/13

Rex Hospital Selects Merge Hemo to Image-Enable Enterprise EHR

Rex Hospital, a member of UNC Health Care, has implemented Best in KLAS cardiology solution Merge Hemo to automate their cath lab and integrate data with their Epic EHR.

Physician EHRs emerge as hot advertising venue for drugs

Cloud-based EHRs are increasingly working with drug manufacturers to deliver point-of-care advertisements embedded within the EHR.

49 community health centers win grants to boost HIT infrastructure

Neighborhood Health Plan and Partners HealthCare award $4.25 million in grants divided among the 49 members of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. The grants will help fund the implementation of practice management systems and provide meaningful use training.

Shareable Ink Achieves Substantial Growth and Expands Team

Shareable Ink, a cloud-based clinical documentation vendor, announces that during 2012 it grew 300 percent and doubled its workforce.

Morning Headlines 1/21/13

athenahealth and MedOasis to Provide Comprehensive, High-Value Anesthesia Billing Solution for Hospital Departments and Independent Practices

athenahealth and MedOasis will partner to provide an anesthesia-specific billing solution that combines athenahealth’s claims processing solution with MedOasis’ anesthesia coding, charge-entry, contract management, and compliance capabilities.

UCSF Medical Center throws a great outside curve ball, keeps EMR rollout under wraps

The local paper profiles University of California San Francisco’s $160 million Epic implementation, which quietly reached its completion one year overdue and $100 million over budget. In May of 2011, then CIO Larry Lotenero was shown the door after implementation costs ballooned to three times expectations.

Identifying Personal Genomes by Surname Inference

A group of fifty men who anonymously donated DNA to genome research have been positively identified by scientists who were able to identify the patient, their address, and their relatives by taking the little demographic information maintained on the donors, and supplementing that with the wealth of information extracted from the donors genome.

Allscripts to Announce Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2012 Financial Results on February 19

Allscripts announces that it will report year-end financials during a February 19 investor call.

Morning Headlines 1/18/13

New rule protects patient privacy, secures health information

HHS announces modifications to HIPAA that substantially expand privacy, security, enforcement, and HITECH breach notification rules. The final rule is effective March 26, 2013 and is expected to require an initial economic cost of $114 million to $225 million.

Department of Veterans Affairs Selects HP to Help Improve Operations, Healthcare Services

HP wins a 5-year, $543 million contract to implement RTLS across 152 VA medical center.

Hospital Board Discusses Grade Change By the Leapfrog Group

The Leapfrog Group has retracted the "F" grade it gave 25-bed Texas County Memorial Hospital after an investigation found that the research methodology used was questionable and relied on inaccurate data sources.

A centralized research data repository enhances retrospective outcomes research capacity: a case report

Researchers at Columbia University find that using a data repository to conduct outcomes research significantly enhances overall workflow efficiency.