Monday Morning Update 4/20/15

Top News

Kaiser Permanente chooses midtown Atlanta for a $20 million IT campus that will create 900 jobs.

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Reader Comments

From Justa CIO: “Re: HIMSS. Do you think it’s becoming irrelevant for people in HIT leadership roles? I find it much less compelling since I can find product information or call someone who has experience with something without being away for a week and spending thousands of dollars of my employer’s hard-earned money while plugging away at real issues. I would like to know what you and others think. Your coverage is excellent – it was enough to make me post this question as I realized that the only things I miss was networking and your choice party.” I’m mixed on the value of attending the conference. Networking can be overrated if you aren’t a vendor selling something – I sometimes think CIOs should stop talking to each other entirely (except to check vendor references) and do creative rather than imitative things since healthcare IT sometimes looks like lemmings following each other off the cliff. HIMSS is efficient in bringing people together so they can schedule time together, but otherwise it’s a horribly inefficient mess of social events, glitzy exhibits, job seeking, and glad-handing and you might be better off just buying the education session recordings (which are included free with conference registration). I’m not convinced that the non-profit health systems that spend fortunes to send people there (often more as a personal reward than a business necessity) show measurable ROI or demonstrate care improvement as a result. Here’s a challenge to health system CIOs that I will report anonymously if you respond: list the immediately actionable items you took away from the conference that you couldn’t have done without attending. Or, the actions you took in the past year that were driven entirely by your 2014 HIMSS attendance. Our HISsies “best CIO” winner John Halamka keeps BIDMC running despite his non-attendance this year.

From Texas Rules: “Re: Next Wave Connect healthcare-specific social collaboration solution. It continues to purge staffers – Drex DeFord and most of the Seattle team are gone.” Drex’s LinkedIn profile indicates that he left the company in February. I asked Chairman Ivo Nelson, who replied,“ It’s pretty common for startups to go through some turnover in the first few years. As you know, I’ve been through this before and getting the right team in place is a sign of health, not illness. Next Wave Connect has steadily grown its staff and will continue to grow this year. We have a good team in place under the leadership of Jim Jacobs and I’ve been very pleased with our progress. Just our March To HIMSS campaign garnered over 15K hits and MyCHIME is has been a huge success.”

From Concerned Tester: “Re: [health system name omitted]. An IT director is under investigation for accepting an Aruba vacation from their [vendor name omitted] rep. That director and his former boss hid a problem with orders that didn’t match after an EHR upgrade. He also pushed out an update that broke the connection to the HIE that caused slowdowns and lost data. The good news that the vendor is being kicked out and Epic will happen in 10 months, but the bad news is that the director was successful in getting them to switch to the previous vendor’s HIE.” I’ve omitted names since I couldn’t verify, but I’m interested in who’s doing the investigation.

From Magnum PI: “Re: Meaningful Use data from Jamie Stockton at Wells Fargo Securities. The numbers don’t seem to match what CMS provides. I also thought CMS stopped including vendor names in their numbers due to ongoing inaccuracies.” Jamie provided this response: “The only hospitals that needed to attest for Stage 2 in 2014 were the ones that originally entered the program in 2011-12. That cohort of hospitals is 2,600 facilities (vs. the 4,800 that have registered for the program through today). If we look at net attestations (adjusting for the fact that sometimes more than one vendor is listed by a hospital when they attest and therefore one hospital occupies multiple rows for the same attestation year in the CMS spreadsheet), then we calculate that 1,800 hospitals have attested for Stage 2, which roughly matches the number your reader quoted. If you just took 1,800 and divided it by 2,600, then you would get about 70 percent of hospitals having successfully attested for Stage 2. I probably need to make that 70 percent number much more clear in the future and we also need to add a line to the bottom of our Stage 2 table that adjusts the gross number of attestations (which was 2,900) down to the 1,800 net. When we look at vendor success rate, we are excluding the hospitals that have switched vendors since 2011-12. If we didn’t, Epic would have a 130 percent success rate because many McKesson, Meditech, and Siemens hospitals that first showed up in 2011-12 with those vendors have subsequently switched to Epic and would not be in the denominator of the calculation for Epic. Excluding all 400 hospitals that have switched vendors, we get to an average vendor success rate of 55 percent. Obviously that penalizes vendors in their success rate if they have lost market share, but I think that is OK. There is a reason that the hospitals moved away from them. At least with the February data set that powered our most recent analysis, CMS continued to publish the vendor names associated with each attestation.”

From The PACS Designer: “Re: medical 3D printing. At the Washington University School of Medicine, cardiothoracic surgeons are using 3D printing to prepare for heart operations. Recently they used the 3D method to prepare for a difficult heart repair for a 20-month-old toddler at St. Louis Children’s Hospital.”

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I feel sorry for the housekeeping people who had to discard all the junk HIMSS conference attendees left in the overflowing trash cans of their hotel rooms at checkout. Every year most of the booth swag and handouts that seemed worth grabbing in the exhibit hall fail to earn their luggage space back in the hotel, so rather than pack it and haul it home, it’s easier to just chuck it. Somewhere in Chicago there’s a landfill full of Caradigm-provided HIMSS backpacks, although I actually brought mine home since it’s a nice one. I also brought back the pair of insulated coffee mugs that First Databank cheerfully provided.

Arcadia Healthcare Solutions provided the most useful handout ever, a conference essentials pack that included a bottle of water, a coozie, breath mints, ibuprofen, foot bandages, antacid tablets, and vitamin C fizzy drink powder.

The conference reminded me of an observation I had years ago after sitting in on a variety of VC and executive meetings. Mid-level executives and startup CEOs always wear impeccable suits and frown at everything to make sure people take them seriously, while the folks with real money and power wear casual clothes and joke around because they’ve earned the ability to do whatever they want and don’t care what the suited second string thinks. I like that a lot. Big-time VC guy Peter Thiel famously says that his fund will never invest in a technology company whose CEO wears a suit.

Speaking of the conference, I didn’t hear any comments or see any tweets quoting something interesting that was said by the keynote speakers. Did I miss anything by not attending any of them? I’m also interested in more definitive comments about what you liked and didn’t like. Did you go to any educational sessions? Did you meet anyone who was particularly impressive or obnoxious? What vendors raised your interest?

Here’s an odd expression I’ve heard quite a few times over the years: “a piece of software.”

Phrases that need to be expunged from the healthcare vocabulary: mobile health, population health, and patient-centered. All of those be assumed when talking about health. They don’t require being defined as a separate novelty category as they once might have been.

I was annoyed at a video interview with Karen DeSalvo conducted by a young HIMSS Media person with unstated credentials (she includes nothing about education or background in her LinkedIn profile) who repeatedly referred to the national coordinator (and acting assistant secretary for health)  as “Karen.” Even if she’s your BFF, she should be referred to as “Dr. DeSalvo” when interviewing her on video – that shows basic respect for her education, role, and age. 

Thursday beat Wednesday’s HIStalk readership record with 14,658 page views from nearly 11,000 unique visits.

The folks who didn’t attend HIMSS expected their workload to be about the same last week, although a fourth of them admitted that it’s easier when their bosses aren’t around. New poll to your right or here: if you attended the HIMSS conference, how would you grade it?

Lorre has posted some of the interviews DrFirst did at the conference. Here’s one with our HIStalkapalooza host, Forward Health Group’s Barry Wightman.

Here’s another DrFirst HIMSS conference interview, this one with DrFirst CEO Cam Deemer on the one year delay of mandatory electronic prescribing in New York.

For those who attended HIStalkapalooza: what would you do differently? How would you make it more attractive to potential sponsors for a 2016 version? I haven’t decided if I’ll do it again next year, but Lorre has confidently placed a hold on a Las Vegas venue thinking I’ll re-up.

Listening: The Suffers, big-horns Gulf Coast melting pot soul from Houston. This is your chance to tell people about a great band they’ve never heard, but will almost certainly like once they do.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor xG Health Solutions of Columbia, MD. The clinician-led company brings to the national market healthcare transformation tools and knowledge developed by Geisinger Health System. The company offers care management services (including population health analytics) and offers help with transition to a fee-for-value environment. XG Health solutions announced at the HIMSS conference EnrG, a suite of advanced interoperability software modules that use Geisinger-developed care models to improve acute and chronic care management, connecting via SMART on FHIR to work seamlessly with any FHIR-enabled EHR (the initial partners are Athenahealth, Cerner, and Epic). The evidence-based care modules address procedures and conditions such as CABG, hip fracture, COPD, diabetes, and chronic kidney disease. EnrGRheum, which addresses rheumatologic diseases, will be released in Q3 2015 with six additional apps following. Thanks to xG Health Solutions for supporting HIStalk.

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Webinars

April 22 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Microsoft: The Waking Giant in Healthcare Analytics and Big Data.” Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP of strategy, Health Catalyst. Microsoft has been quietly reengineering its culture and products to offer the best value and most visionary platform for cloud services, big data, and analytics in healthcare. This webinar will cover the Healthcare Analytics Adoption Model, the ongoing transition from relational databases, the role of new Microsoft products such as Azure and Analytic Platform System, the PowerX product line, and geospatial and machine learning visualization tools. Attendees will learn how to incorporate cloud-based analytics services into their healthcare analytics strategies.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CPSI renames its EHR business line Evident. or at least that’s what the verbose yet uninformative press release suggests. It will continue to run its services business under the TruBridge name. The Evident name seems rather generic, not particularly relevant, and likely to get lost in Google searches. Apparently the CPSI name survives as the parent and in the company’s Nasdaq listing. Vince Ciotti tipped me off with the photo above that he took in the HIMSS exhibit hall.

Streamline Health reports Q4 results: revenue up 1.2 percent, adjusted EPS –$0.04 vs. –$0.13. Shares dropped almost 7 percent Friday on the news. Above is the one-year price chart of STRM (blue, down 49 percent) vs. the Nasdaq (red, up 20 percent).

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Announcements and Implementations

Tallksoft launches its Survey+ patient survey app that allows medical practices to benchmark their patient experience and practice performance.

Cerner will offer Healthwise health education content to Millennium users and via its HealthLife Engagement module.

Ernst and Young announces development of its Telemedicine Adoption Model.

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Government and Politics

The estimated cost of opening the new Denver VA hospital rises to over $2 billion vs. the original VA estimate of $630 million. It’s also two years behind schedule.

The Atlantic says hospitals are chasing CMS patient satisfaction scores that focus on making people happy rather than making them well, encouraging hospitals (even those with low clinical ratings) to redirect funds toward putting in valet parking, live music, and VIP loyalty lounges. They’re also scripting nurse interactions to troll for higher survey scores and tying clinician pay to the results even though everybody knows that the patient isn’t always right. A previous version of the survey allowed comments, where patients complained that their dying roommate was making too much noise and that their sandwich didn’t contain enough pastrami. Experts worry that hospitals trying to appease patients might avoid talking to them about unpleasant topics such as losing weight, seeking mental health treatment, or stopping smoking. Most amazing is that patients with the highest reported satisfaction had higher hospitalization rates, higher costs, and a higher mortality rate.

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Other

Here’s the final installment of Vince Ciotti’s vendor revenue review for 2014, this time covering small-hospital vendors.

I missed that Athenahealth’s Jonathan Bush tweeted this last Tuesday, including a HIStalkapalooza photo taken back stage at the House of Blues.

The latest drug of abuse: amphetamine-based ADHD drugs such as Adderall (aka “mommy crack” or “productivity in a pill”), which mostly young career go-getters are using to increase career competitiveness through short-term improvement in focus and attention. Interestingly, the anonymous executive profiled in the New York Times article is a health IT startup CEO, who says she has no choice but to take the drug because it is “necessary for the survival of the best and the smartest and the highest-achieving people.”

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Sponsor Updates

• HCS sponsored the “Arc of Monmouth Walk and 5K” on the Asbury Park Boardwalk in New Jersey last week and raised more money than all other teams for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
• Strata Decision Technology will add Yale-New Haven Health’s quality indicators into its StrataJazz platform to help providers understand the high cost of quality variation.

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Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

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From HIMSS 4/16/15

My headline isn’t exactly accurate – I’m still in Chicago, but I didn’t wend my way back to McCormick Place this morning since I just wasn’t interested enough to bother. Instead, I caught up on some work, bought some clothes at Macy’s on State Street (my favorite store anywhere), and had dim sum in Chinatown.

Interesting: HIMSS scratches Atlanta and New Orleans off the cities list for future conferences, saying they can’t handle the growing attendance. That leaves only Orlando and Las Vegas as HIMSS conference locations since HIMSS had already expunged Chicago permanently (for the second time, in fact, as a result of two different tiffs – once over nasty exhibit hall workers and the second because RSNA got better Chicago hotel room rates). Exhibitors won’t be thrilled since both Orlando and Las Vegas have ample distractions that keep attendees doing something fun instead of trudging the exhibit halls like swag-seeking zombies. I really dislike Las Vegas, but there’s nothing like being handed stripper cards on your way to an educational session. If HIMSS were a stock, it would be split – other than vanity and economy of scale, it would be a lot more interesting and manageable as two separate conferences.

I thought of another company that is growing quickly based on announcements and appearance: Validic.

This week on HIStalk Connect: A number of enterprise health IT Apple Watch apps are unveiled during this week’s HIMSS conference. CMS publishes data suggesting that up to 66 percent of rural US hospitals failed to generate a single patient portal visitor during MU1 attestation. Partners Healthcare joins forces with Samsung to develop a series of remote patient monitoring solutions. Researchers at Vanderbilt University develop genetically engineered microbiome capable of tricking mice into thinking they are not hungry. 

I was surprised to see this photo tweeted by Athenahealth showing Jonathan Bush returning to his company’s Monday night party with the shaving cream from his HIStalkapalooza-applied pie still on his face. We provided him with cleanup facilities, so I can only assume he wore the foam as badge of honor.

The final HIStalkapalooza count from House of Blues was 788. We invited 1,465, meaning that 46 percent of them didn’t attend. That’s a frustrating part of trying to plan an expensive per-person event, which I fortunately anticipated in assuming a no-show rate of 40 percent in signing the House of Blues guarantee. I’ll try not to think about the fact that the incremental cost of having more than 100 extra folks would have been zero since I was charged for them anyway. At least it’s not like last year when each of those no-shows prevented someone else from coming, although we would have let some walk-ins enter had we known about the no-shows ahead of time.

HIStalk had 13,500 page views on Wednesday, which I believe is a record.

Jenn reported an encounter with the “Epic police” this week. Epic was demonstrating in the Interoperability Showcase and Jenn (who had a HIMSS conference press pass) snapped a photo of what Epic was publicly displaying. Someone from Epic came up, said nobody’s allowed to take pictures of Epic’s screens, and then demanded that the photo be deleted from the camera while they stood there to verify. That sounds like Soviet-style overstepping big time, especially since Jenn was attending as a journalist – if you are showing your product on the big screen, if HIMSS doesn’t prohibit picture-taking in the exhibit hall (which they don’t any more as far as I can after reviewing the attendee agreement), and if the person taking the photo doesn’t work for an organization that has signed a confidentiality agreement with Epic, then I don’t believe Epic people have any legal basis for detaining attendees and demanding that they delete photos. Claims of friendly and open interoperability just don’t jibe with clearly evidenced paranoia and legal muscle-flexing. I think there’s enough Epic out there that whatever national secrets are contained on their screens have already been exposed.

Nordic did some live interviews during the HIMSS conference. Here’s one with Lorre.

Here’s Nordic’s interview with one of our patient advocate scholarship winners, Carly Medosch. We’ll have a writeup from each of them next week. Carly had a flare-up of her condition on Wednesday that required her to visit the ED, so I’ve suggested she write up that experience as part of her narrative as a HIMSS conference patient advocate.

I’m not sure what my HIMSS takeaways are. The focus seemed more on “doing” rather than “buying.” The first glimmer of patients turning into consumers showed itself. Big health systems have gotten bigger and are dealing with electronically absorbing their acquisitions. Every vendor has figured out interoperability according to themselves, yet every provider struggles to get the patient information they need that resides elsewhere. Everybody seems sick of Meaningful Use. What’s your answer to “HIMSS15 was the year of the …”?

I took some of the photos DrFirst took at HIStalkapalooza and turned them into a video (with marginally cheesy royalty-free music that I bought for the occasion for $18 just to stay legal). I’ll probably post more later and I have video from the event coming as well.

Dana Moore had a great time meeting with folks who donated to DonorsChoose. He’ll be writing up what he learned and liked for next week’s HIStalk.

I’ll be back to normal HIStalk writing this weekend for the Monday Morning Update after traveling back Friday. I’m interested to hear your thoughts about the conference this week.

Jenn’s HIMSS Day 4 4/15/15

The end of my fifth HIMSS marked the first time I’ve ever had a flight cancelled. My unexpected stay in a Howard Johnson 20 minutes from O’Hare with just the clothes on my back and the electronics in my HIMSS book bag gave me extra time to mull over the rest of my HIMSS experience.

The fourth and final day of the conference for me was a bit more scheduled, with a few media briefings and a good chunk of time spent walking around the exhibit hall in one last attempt to get a flavor for what this year’s product offerings were all about. Buzzwords seen on booths and heard in show-floor conversations included value-based care, population health management, interoperability … the usual. Not much has changed in that area from an exhibit hall perspective, with the exception of EHRs no longer being the big-ticket item. They have turned into the backbone for everything else.

I chatted with the folks from Health Care DataWorks, which spent the bulk of its HIMSS promoting a variety of knowledge packs, pre-built dashboards build into its enterprise data warehouse that address 16 hospital areas including ER, OR, and patient-related analyses. HIStalk contributing author and Cedars-Sinai CIO Darren Dworkin made an appearance at a HCD roundtable early in the week to discuss how the health system used HCD business intelligence and analytics to achieve HIMSS Analytics Stage 7 status..

The folks at biometric identification company M2sys caught up with me to show me their first foray into mobile health. The RightPatient platform includes a mobile health app and wearable integration server that caters to both consumers and providers. The server takes data from consumer wearable devices and delivers it to the appropriate EHR, while the accompanying mobile app is the first I’ve seen that combines many most of us already have on our phones – personal health record, appointment scheduling, activity tracking, medication reminders, alerts, mood and health monitoring, and health games, to name a few. It can even be configured to accommodate the health data of multiple family members, with all data seamlessly transferred to their provider’s EHR.

I’ve been fairly vocal about the problem of having too many patient portals to log into, so it’s interesting to see the similar problem of having too many apps figured out via the aggregation of many into the distillation of one. President Michael Trader tells me that the platform will launch in July, with a mental health version already in the works.

My last show-floor one-on-one was with the Xerox and HealthSpot team. I have been interested in the HealthSpot remote-consultation kiosk for some time, and was happy to get a personal tour. My big question for CEO Steve Cashman was, “How is this a better option than picking up my phone while at home for care via a telemedicine app?” He confidently told me that going to a kiosk location offers benefits that a telemedicine app can’t match: reimbursement; a pipeline of HealthSpot physicians who also work for local hospitals and health systems; better quality of care; regulatory benefits (he kept bringing up the fact HealthSpot can operate in Texas); and automatic integration of health data via Xerox back-end technology into the patient’s EHR. The company is looking to launch its kiosks in 25 Rite-Aid stores in June. I’d definitely like to give it a try if they ever come to Georgia.

My inaugural visit to the Interoperability Showcase was an interesting one. The area was divided into a number of different “vignettes,” scenarios of patient care featuring family members going through different medical events. After a brief introduction by a healthcare IT magician in a central seating area, audience members dispersed to one of the vignettes, where we listened to three different docents run through the technologies involved in that particular family member’s diagnosis and treatment.

I decided to visit the oncology/clinical trials visit of 38 year-old patient Isabel, which involved technologies from Epic, InterSystems, and the CDC. As any hard-working member of the press would do, I whipped out my camera phone to document my experience, only to have the Epic rep immediately tell me that no pictures were allowed. He even followed me out of the presentation afterwards to ask that I delete any screenshots I may have taken. The one above is the only one I managed to get.

I walked over to a different vignette to see if they were as strict with their photography restrictions, only to find out they had no problem with photography. I snapped a few shots, but did notice that the rep working the video screen logged out of whatever application he was demoing as I snapped away. The whole experience left a bad taste in my mouth. Isn’t interoperability at its core about sharing data?

A few other random observations as I attempt to wrap up my coverage:

Interviews with Dana Moore: I heard from Lorre that it was his most worthwhile HIMSS experience, and it was certainly in demand. I love knowing that money raised from Mr. Moore’s time and expertise is going to a good cause like Donors Choose. It’s great to work for an employer that places importance on helping others. I saw several other companies highlighting their charitable efforts, including Dell and QuadraMed. HIMSS attendees also got the chance to spin Divurgent’s vibrantly colored Trivia Charity Wheel. Their spins helped the company raise $5,000 for Lurie’s Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

Customer service in the Windy City: It was fantastic, especially at McCormick Place. Everyone had smiles on their faces, and one security guard even chased after to me to ensure I went the right way to the West Hall.

Size and scope of the conference: I found the exhibit hall strangely confining despite its expansiveness. The press room was too far away from the exhibit hall to warrant my making the trek once or twice a day for a free meal, reliable WiFi, and quiet workspace to gather my thoughts and plan my show reviews. I’m not sure who thought putting zero restrooms in the exhibit hall would be a good idea – it certainly wasn’t for me. Like Mr. H and 35,000+ of our closest friends, I probably spent more time walking from point A to point B than in meetings, talking with vendors, or attending keynotes combined. For the record, I went through 10 Band-Aids on my poor blistered feet over my four days there.

Exhibitors: I managed to run into HIStalkapalooza sponsors Divurgent and Sagacious Consultants during my exhibit hall trek. Both teams kindly squeezed together for group shots. I can’t wrap up conference coverage without mention our gracious neighbors in the exhibit hall – Medisas and Oxford Healthcare IT. The Medisas team put up with a variety of shenanigans in and around the HIStalk booth, while the Oxford team kept us well fed with their daily buffet of Chicago-style hot dogs and Garrett’s popcorn.

Overall, I felt like I barely scratched the surface of what the show had to offer. I didn’t make it to any educational sessions other than Monday’s keynote, a similar experience to many of the providers I spoke to. It seems most people prefer to spend their time at HIMSS connecting with colleagues, and visiting vendors they otherwise wouldn’t be able to get to throughout the year. Perhaps next year I’ll take a different approach and spend most of my time in sessions rather than on the show floor. Given that it’s in Las Vegas, I can only hope the House of Blues there will be happy to host our next HIStalkapalooza. I hear Lorre is already entertaining sponsorship requests.

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Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

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From HIMSS 4/15/15

From Canuck: “Re: British Columbia EMR. Big implementation gone sour with a reported $125 million spent so far with nothing to show. This story barely touches upon the issues encountered thus far, issues we’ve all seen in other similar projects.” British Columbia parts ways with IBM two years into a 10-year, $700 million project that remains 85 percent incomplete. The health minister still expects to get the project done on time and budget, which is ridiculously optimistic given government IT performance worldwide even when it doesn’t involve dumping the prime vendor. Perhaps the US Department of Defense should notice that its big EHR bidders haven’t performed well in comparable but much smaller projects outside the US, although fault is often hard to assign to either government or prime bidder incompetence. I can’t name a single big government IT project that was delivered on time and on budget, but I can name a bunch that were abandoned with no benefit whatsoever.

From Due North: “Re: NantHealth. Cancelled their HIMSS conference presence at the last minute, eating the huge deposit. Everyone I knew there is gone.” Unverified, but new President Bob Watson was available only in the private meeting rooms over by HIMSS Bistro, which I happened to see while having a lakefront lunch there today. 

Here’s an interesting rumor I heard today from a fairly good source: Karen DeSalvo will reportedly leave her HHS position in a couple of weeks. I hope it’s not true because she’s a credit to public service and has in her short tenure done a very good job in walking the ONC tightrope that tries to balance innovation, public health, and Meaningful Use. The source suggested that Micky Tripathi turned down an offer to serve as interim, which would be a surprising offer given that he’s brilliant but not an MD like all of the National Coordinators so far. I’m almost always a cynical sourpuss when it comes to industry leadership and yet I find myself hoping she not only continues as National Coordinator,  but is given more federal responsibility despite serving within a lame duck administration. The rumor wasn’t clear, so perhaps there’s a bigger role for her within HHS, such as with CDC or NIH. Or maybe it’s not true at all. Feel free to ask her after her Thursday morning HIMSS keynote if you’re still in Chicago. She gets my vote for whatever she wants to do, as does her predecessor Farzad.

Here’s Regina Holliday’s latest artwork, which she painted right in the HIStalk booth this week. It’s in honor of HIStalkapalooza, with the pie representing the one Judy Faulkner presented to Jonathan Bush and the beauty queen sash indicating, “We are your biggest fans,” which Regina said she heard repeatedly from folks at the event in reference to HIStalk.

I met one of our HIStalking scholarship winners today when Lorre introduced me to Mélanie Péron, our representative from Paris. She cried, hugged, and expressed endless appreciation for the opportunity to attend the conference representing patients. She triggered instant insight on what it takes to be successful as a patient advocate. We healthcare people are used to geeks calmly presenting reams of worksheets, but we are justifiably easily moved by people who can tell a heartbreaking or inspirational story, who get fighting mad at injustice or incompetence, or who tug at our hearts with sadness when the industry in which we work in caused harm to their loved ones or failed to prevent it. We all know it could have been us our our family members on the wrong end of a bad but unfortunately not uncommon healthcare experience. Maybe that handful of people we brought to Chicago are dwarfed by the 43,000 others here who are more interested in finding expensive dinners or selling systems, but their activism keeps us all honest and pushes our faces to the mirror of what’s wrong with healthcare that only we can fix. It’s brilliant. I’m glad they were in Chicago this week and I’m anxious to hear their thoughts about the big business aspects of a sometimes indifferent care delivery system that they’ve now witnessed firsthand.

Our HIStalk friend Marty Mercer says HIStalkapalooza is the best party he’s ever attended, possibly because he was being fawned over by two members of Party on the Moon.

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Today’s Conference Notes

I started my day with a visit with HealthLoop. They were handing out badge ribbons indicating “Empathologist” because they create electronic connections to patients that make them feel connected and engaged in a high-touch way, including scripted electronic check-in. The messaging extends the patient experience before and after the planned encounter, such as sending pre-surgical patients a daily reminder by phone or email to get up and walk around or otherwise prepare for their procedure or to recover from it afterward. It boosts patient satisfaction while delivering patient education. It can even route patients automatically to doctor rating sites and collect survey information for patient-reported outcomes. It was a quick but positive look.

I then stopped by Medfusion, which offers a free “portal of portals” in aggregating multiple portals into its vendor-agnostic one. It was pretty cool in that it can tie together multiple portals to look like a single one to the patient, displaying everything via a slick app. Vendor- and provider-specific portals are really ridiculous in this day and age where every patient would have to manage 10 of them to keep up (and instead never bother to log on at all), so combining them all visually is about the best we can hope for at present.

Next I visited Influence Health, whose EHR-agnostic product brilliantly combines patient engagement, provider marketing, and a patient portal. Consumer choice means providers need to selectively market their services and it’s interesting how Influence Health does it with a consumer user interface that is as familiar as Facebook and Outlook. The company seems to get the connection between clinical patient engagement and provider marketing better than anyone. I only saw a short demo, but it looked solid and smart to me.

A reader asked me to check out Patient Route, way back on the no-man’s land of the HX360 pavilion (which was maddeningly difficult to navigate even with booth number in hand – it literally took 20 minutes to find them even though I was within 100 feet of their little stand). They do some kind of predictive throughput and staff modeling based on historical and real-time information, although I have to say the pitch I was given was not particularly well thought out or informative. About all I heard is that the Brigham is using it to push more surgeries to their suburban hospitals where they get paid more for the same work and don’t have capacity limitations. They didn’t give me enough information to form an opinion.

I checked out MedCPU and was guardedly impressed. The company’s clinical decision support product brings in the usual HL-7 data but also decomposes the free text information that forms most of the available patient data, using natural language processing, text extraction, and a clinical context engine. It turns all of that text into discrete information that is used to provide EHR warnings via a Citrix DLL, so that it sits in the EHR window but separate from it and thus requires no integration effort. It gives clinicians warnings of conditions that are far too subtle for normal field-based CDS to detect. My “guardedly” adjective refers only to the fact that I want to talk to a live site, which the company is arranging. If it works as billed, it’s really well beyond the rather primitive CDS such as drug-drug interaction warnings and drug-lab contraindications. Eyal Ephrat, MD has a track record that instills trust, having founded E&C Medical Intelligence (now PeriGen, which does great work). He and I got a bit deep into the bowels of their patented technology and I want to learn more from actual users.

A reader suggested I look at Innovatient, which offers in-room entertainment, patient assignment, and some nurse call system overlap. I can’t say it struck me as offering anything not already readily available from Oneview, GetWellNetwork, and other vendors, but they have 10 live sites and maybe there’s more than I noticed.

Another reader wanted me to look over Patientco. I can’t get too excited about patient bills and payment options, but if I did, I would love it. They print easily understood bills (designed using sound psychological principles right down to the colors used) and make it easy for patients to settle up online. Patientco is about as cool as billing can get and customers are seeing higher collections and patient satisfaction from using it.

Yet another reader asked me to check out Healow, part of eClinicalWorks. I don’t have much of a reaction – it seemed to be a basic phone-powered portal into a provider’s eCW system with some wearables connectivity built in.

NextGen had this cool, computer-controlled waterfall that actually spelled out words and presented pictures using only water patterns. It was bizarre but fascinating.

Today’s MedData scones: banana-maple and pumpkin. My Fitbit can’t count enough steps to offset the calories I took in enjoying them.

HIMSS requires exhibitors to refrain from heading out before Wednesday’s 4:00 exhibit hall close time, but plenty of them (HIStalk included) were boxing up well before then.

Some strange Epic booth art.

Epic’s KLAS results posted on their booth walls shows Cerner second with no green at all, Allscripts flailing around in the middle spot, and Meditech dropping precipitously toward the all-red CPSI bottom feeder level.

This is pretty amazing. Centura SVP/CIO Dana Moore met with interested vendors today at a price of a $500 donation to DonorsChoose in return for 20 minutes of his uninterrupted time (which was matched by a generous, anonymous vendor so that we raised $6,000 for needy classrooms today). I expected Dana to nod politely and check his watch constantly from boredom, but instead he told Lorre that it was the best two hours he’s ever spent at a HIMSS conference. Every one of the six vendors had a solution to one of his current problems and one of them had a solution that he didn’t even know existed. His positive experience makes me think we should replicate it on a larger scale at some point, carefully matching provider executives with vendors based on needed, available solutions.  

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HIStalkapalooza Photos from DrFirst

Thanks to DrFirst for providing photography and videography at the event. I’ll probably turn some of the many great photos into a video slideshow or something since it’s great for folks to see themselves having fun. As much as I fussed for many months about the effort and personal cost exposure of running the party, it felt worth it to see the crowd responding so positively to the HISsies and the band.

I’ll get back to a more regular posting schedule since I’ll pass on returning to the conference Thursday. It’s been a long week.

Jenn’s HIMSS Day 3 4/14/15

My third day at HIMSS started off with the #HITchicks tweetup at the HIMSSpot in between the exhibit halls. A group of about 50, including a smattering of men, attended to talk and tweet about the role of women as patient advocates and the highlights of HIMSS15 thus far. It didn’t take long for the “booth babe” conversation to take off, with one audience member shouting out HIStalk for bringing attention to the unfortunate trend a few years ago, and consistently calling out those companies that choose to hire pretty faces in tight-fitting spandex to shill their products. I thought it was especially fitting that me, Lorre, and friends of HIStalk added the badges below to our HIMSS15 wardrobes. Kudos to HIStalker Steve Blumenthal, business and corporate law attorney at Waller Lansden, for supplying them. He’s got a pretty sharp sense of humor for a lawyer.

The tweetup had not one but three highlights for me: University of Michigan Hospitals and Health Centers CIO Sue Schade – CHIME’s CIO of the Year – stopped by the voice her support for the group. Kym Martin, a four-time breast cancer survivor and patient advocate (not to mention the lovely wife of HIStalk Blues Brother Ross Martin, MD), shared her story of patient advocacy and journey as a four-time breast cancer survivor. Last but not least, ONC National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD stopped by to share her experience as a woman who has worked in academia, public health, and now on the national political stage.

My next stop was the ONC press briefing, where staff gave a run down of the office’s accomplishments over the last year. Interoperability and partnerships were definitely the overarching theme. DeSalvo took the briefing as an opportunity to announce the availability of $1 million in grant funds to support health IT projects for the Community Interoperability Health Information Exchange Program. The program will award funds to 10 organizations, including those that are not eligible for MU incentives. Applications for the program are due June 16.

We didn’t get too far into the Q&A before someone brought up the patient engagement crowd’s (including Farzad Mostashari, MD’s) uproar over the decision by CMS to change the Stage 2 requirement so that providers now have to show that one patient, rather than 5 percent of their patients, accessed their information online. DeSalvo calmly stressed that ONC is absolutely committed to ensuring that patients have access to their health data, adding that she is encouraged that a dialogue is taking place on the issue. She also reminded reporters that this is a proposed rule, and that formal comments on the rule are encouraged. I understand why some might call this a step backward for the MU program, but I can’t help but think many providers are breathing sighs of relief. You can’t force people to use the Internet, especially those that don’t have access to a computer or reliable WiFi. As DeSalvo reiterated throughout her response to this question, the true challenge will be a cultural one, not necessarily one solved by technology, which is why it’s so important for the ONC to partner with other federal agencies as they attempt to evolve their focus beyond EHRs.

My next stop after a quick lunch in the press room as at the Emdeon booth, where I moderated a panel discussion with Emdeon’s Gene Boerger and CareCloud’s Albert Santalo on fueling product innovation with big data. I was slightly jealous of the stylish and super-comfy shoes the Emdeon staff were sporting, not to mention the cushioned carpet in their booth. I enjoyed wandering around both sides of the exhibit hall afterwards, snapping pictures of those that had unique designs, catchy marketing gimmicks, and bustling crowds.

My remaining time at the conference was spent at our booth, where I got the chance to witness The Walking Gallery converge, courtesy of HIStalk’s good friend Regina Holliday. I especially loved the vibrant color of Farzad Mostashari, MD’s jacket. Let the data flow ….

My day concluded with a quick stop by the Patientco party, where I ran into Caroline Wood and Sherry Farrugia of Georgia Tech. Talk soon turned to a company called Evidation Health, launched last month by GE Ventures and Stanford Health Care to improve health outcomes with evidence-based digital health tools. Their excitement about the startup was palpable, so I may have to crash the road trip they’ve got planned to go out there later this year.

After that it was on to the Edifecs #HIMSSandHers meetup, where I happily talked shop with Politico’s Ashley Gold. I left with a T-shirt and a selfie stick, my favorite piece of HIMSS swag so far. Despite being thoroughly exhausted, I’m already looking forward to seeing what my final day of HIMSS will bring.

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Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

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From HIMSS 4/14/15

From Thinking Ahead: “Re: HIStalkapalooza. How can we sponsor next year’s event?” Contact Lorre. I think this year’s sponsors feel they got their money’s worth since it let them have a “party within a party” that offered cool exposure that impressed prospects, but didn’t cost them much since the fixed costs were spread over several sponsors. I question my sanity in assuming so much work and financial risk just to throw a free party where I don’t know all of the attendees, but for at least one evening per year, it almost seems worth it. I haven’t fully decided about doing it again next year.

From Donnie Brasco: “Re: Epic. Announced that Care Everywhere is free until 2020. The $2.35 per patient per year Epic to non-Epic exchange fee was eliminated. Haven’t heard start date or other details.” Epic was taking in only a tiny bit of revenue anyway, and given the negative (and often inaccurate) press as well as the occasional Congressional scorn, it’s a smart move to just waive the small fee rather than defending it.

From GE Hellcare: “Re: Centricity Enterprise. Announced as retired during HIMSS. No more inpatient EHR. They haven’t decided whether to sell it to another company or retire it.” I hadn’t heard that, but then again it’s not exactly a force to be reckoned with either way.

From Tom Terrific: “Re: MedCity News referring to HIStalk as ‘the National Enquirer of health IT.’ I may never read that site again!” I was peeved that a snarky report that recapped HIStalkapalooza made it sound like HIStalk is some kind of tabloid journalism site that isn’t respected or trustworthy, which seems a bit ungrateful given that the writer enjoyed their evening at my expense and filled some of their news space recapping the Jonathan-Judy portion of it (which, now that I think of it, sounds a lot more like ‘National Enquirer’ celebrity gossip masquerading as news than anything I write). I’ll compare experience, issues analysis, news relevancy, and rumor accuracy with anyone.

From Lincoln: “Re: Allscripts. I heard UCI is dropping Sunrise for Epic, the last of the UCs to do move there.”

Centura Health SVP/CIO Dana Moore’s dance card is filled for his 10 until noon time slot in our booth Wednesday, but if you’re willing to donate $500 to DonorsChoose to get 20 minutes of his undivided attention, Dana says he’s willing to stick around later. Remember that we also have an anonymous vendor that is matching that amount, so each 20-minute taker sends $1,000 to underserved classroom projects. One vendor’s executive says she doesn’t really have anything to pitch to Dana, so she’ll use her time to teach him how to make balloon animals. See Lorre in the booth Wednesday morning.

News: the Senate passed the SGR doc fix bill late Tuesday without ICD-10 additions, requiring only the President’s signature to avoid cutting doctor payments (at the expense of adding another $141 billion to the deficit).

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Announcements That Are Kind of Interesting

• Arcadia Healthcare Solutions announces $13 million in new funding.
• InstaMed offers its payment network customers the ability to charge patients using Apple Pay.
• Identity management vendor CrossChx raises $15 million.

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Today’s Conference Notes

We had The Walking Gallery in our booth this afternoon. Each painted jacket tells a story of suffering and loss amidst a struggle with a sometimes uncaring, bureaucratic, paternalistic, or inefficient medical establishment. You should care because it’s about patients and we’re all a patient at one time or another – working in healthcare doesn’t protect you or your family from its problems.

Our favorite attorney Steve Blumenthal (on the right) hung out in the booth today and handed out swag. He tried to get approval to give away little bottles of whiskey since his company is in Nashville, but being lawyers, they scotched the idea (no pun intended) fearing mass litigation from conference attendees who might injure themselves in an alcoholic stupor. He made himself a badge labeled “HIStalk Booth Babe” that featured a silhouette of a reclining obese male (he’s pointing at it in the photo). He says he’s pretty funny for a lawyer but it’s not exactly a high bar, so I’m not sure if the “bar” part was an intentional pun.  

I still haven’t received any of the HIStalkapalooza photos or video folks were taking for us, but here’s a great band shot from Nordic. Guys loved those red dresses. I should have Lorre check the band’s rider and production details to see if they intentionally installed a hair-blowing fan to make the angelic-sounding ladies look more model-like – I noticed their tresses were undulating fetchingly in the apparently intentional stage breeze.

Want to see the big HIMSS conference keynoters? Plan on sticking around longer than you should since HIMSS backloads the big guns – George Bush is at 4:30 Wednesday and Karen DeSalvo isn’t until 8:30 Thursday morning after everybody who has real work to do is already back doing it.

I remember when vendors weren’t allowed to offer food from the exhibit hall, not even packaged candy. Now you can get just about everything – I’ve had margaritas, mini hot dogs (the sauerkraut was smelling up the adjacent booths), and of course the amazing scones from MedData – my favorite was on tap today, peach with passion fruit icing. Seriously good. I would have had a second one with my HCI-provided beer except they ran out. MedData even delivered some scones to our booth. I’ve heard a scary rumor that Las Vegas doesn’t allow ovens in the exhibit hall and that’s a problem for next year’s scone supply.

Tip: if you want to take UberX back to your hotel, they can’t pull into the taxi loop at the door and the app won’t let you call a car – instead, walk a block or two to the right and then place your Uber request. Even with surge pricing I was able to get back to Bridgeport for $13 this afternoon.

I meant to check out NantHealth since last year I couldn’t figure out what they do even after the booth people tried to explain it to me (clearly they didn’t really know either). I haven’t found their booth so far.

The companies that seem to be on a growth rocket ride, at least from their conference presence, include Access and CoverMyMeds. I’m sure there are others, but those made my radar.

Speaking of growth, here’s a project for all you analytics people. Get copies of the HIMSS exhibitor guide from the previous couple of years. Assign weighting factors to each vendor in the exhibit hall that are both positive (bigger booth, more desirable location, consecutive years of exhibiting) and negative (dropping out of exhibiting or taking a smaller booth). Who is trending up or down? Who stopped showing up at all? How many first-timers returned? How many companies shot their financial wad on one big HIMSS presence and then sank without a trace?

I took a look at Medhost’s YourCareEverywhere, which is sort of a patient portal for hospitals that run its systems. It looked pretty good.

I thought Marshfield Clinic had given up trying to turn its CattailsMD ambulatory EHR into a commercial product, but they’re back with a new cloud-based version. I watch part of a demo and it looked OK but nothing special. I don’t know why with all the EHR vendors out there someone would buy from a provider, but Farzad was checking it out, so maybe it’s cooler than I thought. They only ever sold 34 Cattails systems and now those users have to move to the new one.

PeraHealth says it has grown a lot and they list a bunch of big-name academic medical centers as customers for its Rothman Index patient early warning system.

The Anthelio folks say they’ve grown a lot. I liked them.

I got a quick look of PerfectServe’s slick Synchrony secure communication app. They’re planning to expand it to cover nurses.

I sat through part of a demo of Oneview Healthcare, which offers a cool tablet-controlled in-room patient display where patients can order meals within their prescribed dietary restrictions, input questions that employees are prompted to answer, view educational material (which can be prescribed by clinicians), and a lot more that I couldn’t stay to see. It’s worth a look.

It was bad enough that the exhibit hall is divided into two wildly non-linear sets of booths, but today I found that way down on one side is a real no-man’s land housing the cybersecurity, disaster recovery, and HX360 tracks. You go through some depressing loading dock type doors into what looks like a truck garage and there are a bunch of nondescript booths, mostly free of people, energy, and buzz (although the Leidos cybersecurity speaker had a pretty good crowd). I felt bad and strolled through all the aisles trying to raise spirits by just having a visitor poking around, but the reps had mostly already flatlined their interest and were counting down the minutes until quitting time. I figure some of the products back there surely have a chance to be eventually successful, but the HIMSS setup as so awful that it was creepy just hanging around back there, so I bailed. Here’s how remote it was: there were a ton of empty soft couches, tables, and chairs with no takers. Haul that messy barbeque sandwich there at tomorrow’s lunch and you’ll have a place to eat it instead of spilling it on your shirt and shoes.

I saw a display that offered, in large letters, a “Wellenss Kiosk.” I didn’t have the heart to snap a photo to run here.

Speaking of food, we had a great CMIO lunch today in Bistro HIMSS in the Lakeside building near the exhibit hall. The buffet was really good, the lake view was nice, and it was comfortable and reasonably quiet. Anybody can stroll up and buy lunch for $24. Thursday’s menu sounds excellent and we have a handful of leftover tickets, so maybe I’ll buy someone lunch if I’m in the mood. The CMIOs seemed to enjoy getting together today with Lorre.

Cerner takes direct aim at Epic on one of its booth signs.

This prize must have had the nerds salivating.

Clever badge ribbons.

I thought I might learn something about the just-announced IBM Watson Health, but this guy was way over my head with P53 genetic variants.

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HISsies 2015 Winners

The winners are here.

More Wednesday. I’m taking a look at products claiming to be innovative for patients and families. Let me know if there’s anything else I shouldn’t miss.

From HIMSS 4/14/15

HIStalkapalooza took up a lot of my time yesterday, so I didn’t even have time to post. This will be a dribs-and-drabs version – I’ll have more time the rest of the week to get organized. Let me know if there’s something I should make sure to see since I’m just flailing around for the most part.

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From Anonymous Vendor President: “Re: Dana Moore and DonorsChoose donations. We will anonymously match whatever total you raise up to $5k. Let’s make this thing really work! Many of my family and countless within our company have ties and heartstrings attached to the cause.” Centura SVP/CIO Dana Moore will be in our booth Wednesday, meeting with vendors for 20 minutes each in return for their $500 donation to DonorsChoose. I’ve scheduled six sessions with him so far, meaning with with the very generous anonymous matching funds, we’ll be donating $6,000 for individual classroom projects via DonorsChoose. I have a bunch of teacher thank-you emails to get through from the projects already funded. Next up is the fun of funding new projects. Thanks to everyone involved.

From Kaboodle: “Re: MedStar in Maryland. You failed to mention their GE Centricity EHR crash, where all clinics were down and back to paper. But, but mind you, care was not affected!” Unverified. I haven’t heard anything about it.

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HIStalkapalooza

I haven’t had much time to do the post-mortem on HIStalkapalooza since I didn’t get back until well after midnight. House of Blues was perfect and ran things with great skill, the food and bar service was really good, and the band was as outstanding as I remember them from last year. I was backstage the whole time so I didn’t experience the event as an attendee this time around, which I sort of regret, but I could feel the energy and excitement. Some notes:

• Lorre Wisham worked on the event for many months going back to last spring. She arranged everything you saw or did as an attendee, wrangling an enormous list of to-do items (contracts, menus, sponsors, band details, banners and signs, etc.) The many hundreds of hours were in addition to her doing her “real” HIStalk work.
• I would have gone seriously broke without the financial help of the event sponsors since we had to sign band and venue contracts almost a year ago, putting me at complete financial risk if sponsors hadn’t participated. Thanks to Elsevier, Santa Rosa Holdings, Divurgent, Sagacious Consultants, Aventura, CommVault, Falcon Consulting Group, Greenway Health, PatientSafe Solutions, Sunquest, Thrasys, and Validic for making it happen. Those who had opera boxes seemed to be enjoying themselves as Lorre checked in with them several times through the evening.
• Sagacious did a superb job checking people in (and apparently, according to their report, keeping quite a few people out who showed up but weren’t supposed to be there). HOB says we had close to 1,000 people in the house (of 1,500 invited), meaning their folks got everybody in professionally and cheerfully. Elsevier ran the red carpet and I heard people enjoyed that.
• The House of Blues staff was super professional and treated us like the big-name acts they host there.
• Rocking doctor Ross Martin kicked it off in style despite a technical snafu that prevented us from enjoying the big finish of his freshly updated Interoperetta. I’ll try to get something on audio or video from Ross so we can hear the full version.
• Barry Wightman and Jennifer Lyle were great hosts on stage. It’s harder than it looks to engage a huge room full of partygoers and managing the people and equipment on stage.
• Special thanks to Judy Faulkner and Jonathan Bush for presenting each other awards on stage in a funny but classy manner.
• I can’t really say anything about Party on the Moon because if you were there, you already know how electrifying they were, and if you weren’t, words alone can’t describe it. Lorre had vendors coming up to her wanting to know how to book them for their own events. The 13 band members came all the way from Atlanta on their tour bus to spend the evening with us. You know a band is killing it when, as one attendee pointed out, you have nerdy IT guys so anxious to participate that they dance with each other. There were some great moments out there in the audience. According to one attendee, “Easily the best party I have ever been to, as good or better than any fraternity party.”
• We have photos and video coming from several sources that I haven’t had time to review yet. Stay tuned and we can all relive the evening all over again.

Neil Versel took some good pictures of the Judy and JB show, even though he annoyed me by dismissively referring to HIStalk as the “National Enquirer of health IT.”

A nice HOB exterior shot by Rudy Flores. The stencil over the light that shines the logo — I now know having ordered three of them for this event — is called a “gobo,” just in case you want to increase your vocabulary.

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Somewhat Interesting News Announcements

• IBM creates Watson Health with the announced acquisition of Explorys (analytics and population health management) and Phytel (population health management). The company also announced health partnerships with Apple, J&J, and Medtronic.
• Surescripts creates a National Record Locator Service along with EClinicalWorks, Greenway, and Epic that will allow providers to locate and exchange patient health records using the Carequality trust framework.
• InterSystems announces a vendor-neutral, interoperable patient portal.
• HIMSS turns the work of its interoperability workgroup into a certification program for EHRs, HIEs, and HISPs, run by ICSA under the name “ConCert by HIMSS.” I don’t think of HIMSS as the group that should be certifying products, but apparently their opinion differs from mine.
• KPMG acquires Beacon Partners, as was predicted in an HIStalk rumor report a couple of weeks ago.
• Peer60 publishes a free report titled “Will mhealth Drive Patient Engagement?” that questions whether EHRs provide adequate mobile support to meet consumer expectations.

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Today in our booth (# 5371)

All day (I think): Regina Holliday will be painting
11:00 Funny lawyer Steve Blumenthal will be handing out swag and dry humor.
2:00 NVoq will hand out Garrett Popcorn (it’s the great Chicago kind that costs a fortune in the airport).
3:00 Your HIStalkapalooza host Barry Wightman will be autographing copies of his book “Pepperland” (which I enjoyed a lot).
4:30 The Walking Gallery will meet.

I forgot that we intended to auction off Regina’s HIStalking original painting from which we made the scholarship winner tee shirts. Make Lorre an offer if you are interested. Maybe she can post the highest current bid on an index card underneath it or something.

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My Fitbit shows that I walked 12 miles Monday. It felt like I wasted a lot of time just walking around, but that’s par for the course on the first day of the conference.

The folks at XG Health Solutions (a new HIStalk sponsor that I haven’t announced yet) invited me to a breakfast briefing covering their new apps. It’s a Geisinger spinoff that will sell software based on work done there to present clinicians with a better view of EHR data and collect additional information to make it easier to quickly understand patient problems and concerns and to document additional specialty-specific findings (rheumatology is the first one). Partnerships were announced with Epic, Cerner, and Athenahealth, whose EHRs will exchange information with the XG apps using SMART on FHIR. They have four apps going to beta testing by summer and plan to roll out six over the next 18 months.

From the hallway conversations I heard and my own opinions, here are the positives: Geisinger has developed a lot of expertise and content that’s less ivory tower than most big academic medical centers, they put some thought into involving the patient in the use of their apps, and the SaaS-based subscription means new best practices can be put into place quickly. Negatives: the company has significant venture capital ownership (they aren’t Geisinger, in other words), you might suspect that Geisinger applied soft pressure to the newly named EHR vendor partners to get on board with uncertain future commitments, and so far they’re a company that hasn’t done much to dent the market other than to do Geisinger stuff and make announcements. Success in commercializing hospital software is elusive, and while Version 1.0 is easy, it’s Version 2.0 that gets ugly with upgrades, design decisions, and testing. The first non-Geisinger betas will be important.  

Some notes from my circuits around the exhibit hall (actually both of them – it’s a split hall that ensures confusion and uneven booth traffic). My badge is intentionally unimpressive to vendors, so I get the same treatment as everybody else.

• Trying to find a given booth even when you know its number is maddening given the gerrymandered aisles. The printed floor layout is laughable – you would need a high-powered microscope to read any part of it except the anchor booth companies (which may be the intention, come to think of it).
• Booth reps were screwing around with their phones literally from the moment the exhibits opened. It was depressingly easy to find booths where every single person was staring in rapt attention at their phones while prospects passed by without even being acknowledged. Vendors are really stupid in not coaching and policing their people.
• Even the fake patient in the hospital bed was surreptitiously killing time with her phone while waiting for her next scene. Check her out in the photo above – I wasn’t quite sure what was going on under those sheets until I came around to the head of the bed.
• I have three mandatory HIMSS kickoff rituals – I have to stroke the sultry curves of the latest Enovate cart; I have to have amazing scones from MedData (the orange chocolate chip were great, but I swung by later for one that had ham, cheese, and what looked like chives); and I have to see the magic guy in Hyland’s booth (above), who is simply amazing not only magically, but in snarky humor and getting people to come closer. I don’t usually like that kind of stuff, but he has been my favorite part of HIMSS for a bunch of years.
• Amazon Web Services had a little booth, which was interesting.
• A guy from Network Detective for Healthcare pitched their product that analyzes the network looking for HIPAA-related problems. It seemed pretty cool, especially the report showing the results in plain English with cross-references to HIPAA sections.
• Scotland-based Nugensis had guys in kilts and bottles of Scotch on the shelf.
• I tried to use the HIMSS app, but it locked up, spammed me with some guy’s endless and boring motivational quotes, and then started pushing ads as notifications. Big waste of time. The conference is basically just one giant advertising platform already.
• The NextGen booth was very cool with clear walls and a waterfall.
• Elsevier demoed their Tonic iPad app that collects information from patients. One of the cool aspects is that it can steer patients to automatically log on to the patient portal without their even realizing that it’s a separate app, which is nice for Meaningful Use. I didn’t see many products Monday, but this one was my favorite. That’s my bad iPhone picture of it above with the beer mug.
• The nice folks at zCover gave me a new iPhone case to replace the one they gave me a couple of HIMSS conferences ago. Stop by and they’ll even put it on for you.
• The FHIR puns were plentifully irritating. IT geek humor doesn’t usually work.
• Kforce was giving out pretty decent pizza way back in a low-density corner of the hall.
• Sagacious had their fun HIStalkapalooza posters out.
• InterSystems had a huge audience for one of their presenters. Their presence was significant.
• I stopped by the Microsoft booth and, as happens every single year, the reps were too busy yapping at each other to even look at all those prospects invading their space. As also happens every year, I stood patiently in front of a display (mobile devices and Surface this time) and the nearest Microserf stormed by scowling while nearly pushing me out of his way. Perhaps that’s why, unlike years past, their booth didn’t have much traffic.
• The Georgia display featured the sign I had made for them a few months ago following Atlanta’s HIStalk poll win.
• Bathroom capacity and seating space were ridiculously inadequate. I hiked forever down a long hall following the restroom sign, only to be met with the dreaded “pardon our dust” sign that said to find another restroom without actually saying where one might be. Another one had a grand-looking entrance, but inside was just one stall and one urinal. I’m thinking of one of those parking space type apps where I hire people to sit in the very few actual seats where people can relax or eat, then providing an app for attendees to find and buy their seats. It makes me uneasy to watch guys in crisp white shirts slopping down a wildly overpriced commissary barbeque sandwich while standing in front of a trash can.

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Tahoe Forest Hospital (CA) names CIO Jake Dorst as interim CEO. He’ll also continue as CIO.

The outcome of dueling lawsuits between Allscripts and Medfusion may hinge on interpretation of the use of an Oxford comma in their agreement, which is pretty fascinating.

A reader wants to know if anyone else thinks that having costumed female entertainers at the HIMSS opening reception crossed the border into sexism territory. I wasn’t there, but if they didn’t have any men, that might at least make me think about it. I noticed fewer obvious booth babes in the hall this year, so maybe the “skin to win” sales approach is finally and deservedly dying off. It would seem especially inappropriate to have a provocatively clad model pretending to be a company rep in trying to get the attention of a female CEO, CIO, or CMIO.

A terribly written and insight-free Forbes article click-baitingly titled “Two Dirty Little Secrets About Electronic Health Records” says EHRs are “a threat to freedom of speech and academic freedom” in claiming that EHR vendors (and Epic specifically) requires customers to sign non-disparagement clauses. The author works up righteous indignation for Bob Wachter, MD, who the author says had to get Epic’s permission to write about a UCSF medication error and to use Epic’s screenshots to illustrate it. The problem is the author just made stuff up rather than asking anyone involved and Bob had to correct him – Epic doesn’t include non-disparagement language in its contracts, although the screenshot part is true and Bob’s not thrilled about that (he emailed me to clarify that the author was wrong on the first point and has since changed the story). The second big secret is that EHRs are designed to help with billing and management. The author magnanimously proclaims that, “I’m not against EHRs,” which would be comforting except nobody’s ever heard of him and his mastery of the subject is clearly minimal.

That’s all for now. I’m headed over to McCormick Place later than I’d like.

Jenn’s HIMSS Day 2 4/13/15

I can’t even begin to break down my second day at HIMSS without first mentioning the highlight: the now-epic pie-throwing incident at HIStalkapalooza involving Judy Faulkner and Jonathan Bush. Both were good sports, and both had only gracious things to say to one another as they accepted their respective HISsie Awards. More on the party towards the end of the post.

My second day at HIMSS started off with a quick trek in the rain to the shuttle stop, followed by a pleasant conversation with Intelligent Medical Objects President and CTO Regis Charlot. (Note to HIMSS newbies: Shuttle rides, elevator rides, and lines can be great opportunities to strike up a conversation with your next client. A simple “Good morning. How are you enjoying the show?” typically kicks off great conversation.) Charlot waxed poetic about the challenges providers are facing when it comes to transitioning to ICD-10, though he did reiterate that IMO’s clients (and the general populace) are in good shape. Providers have accepted their fate and seem to be working diligently to prepare for the October 1 switch. His crystal-ball predictions for healthcare involves Intel’s Edison platform, a “[h]igh performance, dual-core CPU and single core micro-controller that supports complex data collection,” and that seems like it will help drive super-computing in the wearables space. Seems like it might have a unique play in telemedicine and the quantified self movement.

My next stop was the morning keynote, which included a rousing performance by a local gospel choir and a not-quite-so rousing introduction from HIMSS Paul Kleeberg. “This sounds like an infomercial,” was one audience member’s description of Kleeberg’s contribution. The real meat of the keynote was given by Alex Gourlay, executive vice president of Walgreens Boots Alliance and president of Walgreens . It was engaging, as keynotes go. He emphasized the role of retail clinics and pharmacists in achieving the Triple Aim, outlining the many partnerships Walgreens has entered into (WebMD, PatientsLikeMe, Qualcomm Life, MDLive) in an effort to take e-prescribing, telemedicine, medication compliance, and better outcomes to the next level. Gourlay also announced that the company will be launching a medication reminder app for Apple Watch next month.

I had the pleasure of sitting next to two women from MultiCare Health System (WA), both of whom seemed very excited by what Walgreens is doing in the mobile space. Debbie Embree, director of applications, and Brenda Bowles, RN director of clinical informatics, told me they were going to spend their time at the conference looking for ways to push their patient engagement strategy beyond their Epic MyChart portal and out into the retail space. Personal device integration via mobile apps is likely their next step.

After a mind-numbingly slow exodus from the keynote with 3,000 of my closest friends, I made it to the HIStalk booth. I spent a great five hours in the exhibit hall meeting and greeting loyal readers and attendees who had never heard of us but just couldn’t resist picking up a bag of Garrett’s Popcorn, courtesy of our friends at nVoq. I finally got the chance to spend time with The Walking Gallery Founder Regina Holliday and our HIStalking patient advocate scholarship winners, who, despite a few hiccups with registration, seemed very excited to be at HIMSS. Regina’s live painting was definitely a crowd-pleaser, and I appreciated the opportunity it gave us to talk with attendees about the importance of patient advocacy in the world of healthcare IT.

Several hot topics bubbled up in my booth conversations with providers: The majority of them seemed to be wandering the exhibit halls looking for solutions and strategies around security and privacy, patient engagement, and ICD-10. Not a one had anything positive to say about the education sessions. As Dr. Jayne explained to me, the sessions suffer from the fact that they had to be submitted nearly a year ago, and have likely lost their luster in the preceding 10 months or so.

Other booth drive-bys included a chat with AJ Montpetit from the Mayo Clinic Center for Innovation, looking quite dapper in bowtie and pink mustachioed socks.

I also had a chance to meet Modernizing Medicine CEO Dan Cane and his colleagues. The company, which made headlines a few weeks ago for its partnership with IBM Watson, is busy expanding office space and hiring new staff. You can read my interview with Cane about the Watson partnership here.

I managed to do a quick walk-about, and ran into the #IHeartHIT meetup at the HIMSSpot. It was great to see patients and HIMSS15 social media ambassadors like Linda Stotsky share their healthcare IT stories. There definitely seems to be a stronger patient presence at this year’s conference. I’m really looking forward to reading about the HIMSS15 experiences of our HIStalking team.

It was great to see the Georgia Dept. of Economic Development and the Metro Atlanta Chamber, sponsors of the morning keynote, proudly displaying the sign we awarded them earlier this year for being nominated as “the Nation’s Capital of Health I.T.”

After my jaunt through .05 percent of the exhibit hall, I spent a final hour at our booth then rushed back to my hotel to change into HIStalkapalooza-worthy attire. As I mentioned above, the party was amazing. (Check out the #HIStalkapalooza hashtag on Twitter for great pictures and recap.) Our sponsors did a tremendous job of making sure everyone got in, got fed and watered, and got on the dance floor. Party on the Moon was phenomenal. I must have danced for an hour-and-a-half straight, which does not bode well for my feet during the rest of my time in Chicago!

I even managed to snag a few dances with “Jenn’s Secret Crush” Cynthia Porter, who, despite holding the stuffy title of president of Porter Research, really knows how to have a good time.

Lorre and I were not the only ones decked out. This year’s HIStalk King and Queen were definitely worthy of their titles, and displayed just as much dancing prowess as they did fashion savvy. All in all, my second day at HIMSS was a blast. I appreciated the opportunity to chat with readers at our booth, dance with sponsors at our party, and finally rest my swollen feet at the end of the night.

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Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.

Jenn’s HIMSS Day 1 4/12/15

Ah, HIMSS. This year marks my fifth, and like the previous four, I doubt it will disappoint. There’s just no other event that can offer up such a unique mix of nonstop networking, educational sessions catering to every HIT acronym under the sun, exhibit hall #HIMSSanity, sleep deprivation, and over-the-top caffeine consumption. I genuinely enjoy it every year, mainly for the relationships made and fostered. HIMSS 2010 in Atlanta was, in fact, where I first heard about HIStalk and Mr. H’s predilection for walking around with a paper bag over his head to keep his anonymity in tact.

Speaking of Atlanta, my day started well before the sun rose on an overbooked Delta flight full of folks en route to HIMSS. Honeywell, Oneview Healthcare, Patientco, McKesson, and Gozio Health were all represented. I didn’t even attempt to enter the always notoriously long taxi queue at Midway in Chicago, instead opting to reach my hotel via a 20 minute subway ride that cost all of $3. I found myself further impressed with Chicago when the clerk at my hotel allowed me to check in at 10:30 a.m. A 30-minute lie-down after a 4:45 a.m. rise wound up being essential to staving off the aforementioned #HIIMSSanity.

Refreshed, and with a few hours to spare, I spent time wandering around Chicago’s Museum campus and nearby lakefront. The weather was slightly warm and sunny, with just a hint of the city’s famous wind. I had a thoroughly enjoyable time eating my first “Chicago-style” hot dog while people-watching on a park bench. It’s not often that I get to while away an hour and a half doing not much of anything. The lure of the convention center came soon after lunch, and I found myself walking three short blocks to grab the shuttle to McCormick Place. (Is it just me, or does the shuttle drop off in the dark bowels of the trade center remind anyone else of the Lonely Mountain?)

After grabbing my press pass, I ran into Sara Zellner at Health Data Consortium giving away “I Love Health Data” buttons. (I’m a sucker for fun “pieces of flair.”) She reminded me that HDC’s annual Health Datapalooza is coming up at the end of May in Washington, D.C., with HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Acting CMS Administrator Andy Slavitt scheduled to speak.

From there, it was a quick quarter mile (kidding, it was probably only a fifth) to the Venture+ Forum, a day-long event featuring startups pitching in three-minute lightning rounds to a panel of devil’s advocates. I came in at the tail end of the forum, only getting to see full pitches from Heal, Medivizor, Sensentia, and Open Health Networks. Heal’s app for on-demand house calls caught my eye, as did the realization that anyone thinking of speaking in public should avoid saying “um” at the end of every sentence and remember there is a slide deck to scroll through at the beginning of the presentation, rather than halfway through. It seemed like the Forum was at capacity of around 150 or so, which probably means it will warrant a bigger space next year.

A number of other pre-conference symposia took place on Sunday, including the inaugural Revenue Cycle Solutions Summit. Patientco’s Josh Byrd sent me this report:

The Revenue Cycle Solutions Summit provided over 200 attendees with thought-leading presentations from providers who are paving the way for what the revenue cycle of the future will look like. The common thread weaved throughout was a focus on patient-centered care after the episode of care. Highlights included:

• Mike Simms, VP of revenue cycle at Cone Health talking about how to choose vendors who align with your key revenue strategy;
• Leigh Williams, director of revenue cycle at University of Mississippi, who shared how they engaged physicians in using HIT to achieve financial success;
• Andrew Ray, manager of physician revenue cycle operations at Stanford Children’s Hospital, who talked about how to centralize and automate the revenue cycle to increase reimbursement and decrease denials; and
• Key members of the HIMSS Revenue Cycle Improvement Task Force, who shared insights on how they are working together to bridge the gaps between payers, vendors, banks, providers, and other key stakeholders to create a better patient financial experience.

Josh told me that the attendee mix was mostly CEOs and CIOs, so it will be interesting to see how many CFOs attend next year’s event. Could HIMSS be looking to give the HFMA ANI conference a run for its money?

After a quick change into Roaring 20s-inspired flapper garb, I put in an appearance at the opening reception, which I found surprisingly well attended given the amount of smaller HIMSS symposia receptions taking place at the same time. The jazz band was great, and definitely got me excited about performances by Ross Martin, MD and Party on the Moon at HIStalkapalooza.

My next and final stop of the evening was the HIStalk Sponsor’s Reception, which was a great opportunity to meet and greet the people behind the companies whose support makes HIStalk happen. I can’t thank them enough. Special thanks to the lovely folks at Aventura who gifted me with these classic kicks, which I may have to put on tomorrow once the HIStalkapalooza red carpet shoe-judging festivities have concluded and the dancing is ready to begin.

Stay tuned for more updates. I’m off to get some shut-eye, still debating whether or not to start my morning off with some YogaEspresso. Down dog and healthcare IT seem like a natural combination, don’t you think?

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Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.

From HIMSS 4/12/15

Top News

HHS proposes to shorten the Meaningful Use attestation period to 90 days for 2015 in an announcement released, as always, late on a Friday (they also seem to like to put out big news right before the HIMSS conference). It also proposes removing requirements that are duplicative or no longer needed. Interestingly, HHS wants to reduce the five percent threshold for view/download/transmit to just a single patient – if even one patient retrieves their information, then the capability has been proven and the requirement is met. That addresses the argument that providers can’t force patients to access their data who are unwilling or technically unprepared to do so.

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Reader Comments

From Hermanically Sealed: “Re: Evan Nordgren lawsuit against Epic for not paying overtime. Stories reported that the employees were encouraged to donate their settlement money to the health center where Judy Faulkner’s husband works as a physician.“ Unverified. I haven’t seen anything about donation requests. Sounds unlikely to me and easy enough to prove if you’ve received such suggestions.

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I’ll be posting differently this week, with less emphasis on the clutter of questionably interesting announcements and more on the conference. I may post more than once daily and Jenn will post separately, but I’ll probably send just one email blast daily to avoid overloading inboxes.

I VRBO’ed a little apartment  in Bridgeport, south of downtown within a few blocks of US Cellular Field (the unfortunately and opportunistically renamed Comiskey Park, which was a replacement for Old Comiskey Park). It costs less than a boxy hotel room, is in a cool neighborhood with interesting restaurants within walking distance, and is a short Uber ride to downtown or McCormick place. It’s much better having a kitchen, plenty of room to spread out, and a bay window looking out at White Sox fans heading down the sidewalk to the game than sitting in an airless room in a sterile building packed to the gills with lost, badge-wearing geeky HIMSS peers clogging up slow elevators and chattering way too loudly from being jacked up on exhibit hall adrenaline.

Saturday was stunningly beautiful in Chicago, with temperatures in the mid-60s with blue skies and sunshine. The trees are still denuded, but the grass has greened up and daffodils are poking up. I did some site checking of the House of Blues (looking great there), walked around the river, took a boat ride, and went to the Bulls game courtesy of a reader who invited me. I even Uber’ed back after the game, got picked up quickly near United Center, and didn’t even get hit with the dreaded surge pricing.

I downloaded the HIMSS15 mobile app and found it to be pretty buggy, requiring a bunch of iPhone restarts and confusing password prompts that didn’t make it clear whether it was the HIMSS website password or a new one (I’m still not sure since I had to do a password reset just to get it going). It has pretty good information, although I’m not sure the educational session list will replace the need for the little spiral-bound book that I always carry, assuming they’re still printing them. I used to study the agenda carefully and plan which educational sessions to attend weeks ahead, but they’ve been disappointing in the past few years (too much vendor involvement, boring presenters, too much reliance on PowerPoint, etc.) and I’m going to fewer and fewer of them.

Response has been brisk to the gracious offer of Dana Moore, CIO of Centura, to meet in the HIStalk booth with anyone willing to donate $500 to DonorsChoose.org in return for 20 minutes of his uninterrupted attention. Six companies have donated and I’ve funded the first wave of classroom projects that their $3,000 is supporting. The donations paid for the full cost of these projects, all of which are for classrooms in high-poverty areas, most of which involve Teach for America teachers, and many of which include matching funds from other charitable organizations:

• Two Fire HD devices for a middle school reading program in San Diego, CA
• A projector for a kindergarten class in Erie, PA
• Professional development books for kindergarten teachers in Charlotte, NC
• A Chromebook for an elementary school class in Toppenish, WA
• Algebra calculators for a high school class in Auburn, WA
• A sand and water table for K-2 children, all with multiple disabilities, in Rosamond, CA
• Headphones for K-2 classes in Portland, OR
• A drawing tablet for the iPad for grades 3-5 in Lockhart, TX
• Three iPad Minis for a sixth grade class in Oklahoma City, OK

I’ve already received appreciative emails from most of the teachers (it seems to be a pattern that good teachers work through the weekend) and I’ll follow up with photos, teacher comments, and student thank you notes once they put the materials to use. I also have quite a few more projects to fund given the generous response. A couple of companies have taken the “top spot” banners at the top of the page in the next week and most of that money will go to DonorsChoose as well.

Poll respondents favor disbanding ONC’s certification program after Stage 3, although a few folks wouldn’t mind seeing ONC keep the program alive but with more input from previously attesting users. New poll to your right or here, for those who aren’t attending the HIMSS conference: will you be working more, less, or about the same this week?

I’m puzzled at companies (HIMSS Analytics, among them most recently) that proudly boast via a grandiose press release of having redesigned their websites. People who already follow the company will see for themselves, while those who don’t aren’t likely to rush to the nearest browser to gaze in wonderment. More self-congratulatory marketing run amok.

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Last Week’s Most Interesting News

• The Texas Medical Board, protecting the interests of its members, prohibits prescribing medications for patients who have been examined only by telemedicine.
• Health IT issues once again make ECRI Institute’s list of top patient safety concerns.
• Allscripts agrees to pay $10 million to settle a shareholder class action lawsuit claiming the company’s executives misled investors with overly positive comments following its 2010 acquisition of Eclipsys.
• FTC warns ONC about unintentionally limiting consumer choices in setting or approving interoperability standards.

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Webinars

April 22 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Microsoft: The Waking Giant in Healthcare Analytics and Big Data.” Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP of strategy, Health Catalyst. Microsoft has been quietly reengineering its culture and products to offer the best value and most visionary platform for cloud services, big data, and analytics in healthcare. This webinar will cover the Healthcare Analytics Adoption Model, the ongoing transition from relational databases, the role of new Microsoft products such as Azure and Analytic Platform System, the PowerX product line, and geospatial and machine learning visualization tools. Attendees will learn how to incorporate cloud-based analytics services into their healthcare analytics strategies.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient engagement solutions vendor PatientBond acquires consumer profiling company C2b Horizons.

SSI Group will announce Monday that it has acquired patient access management software vendor Provider Advantage. Readers who reported the rumor earlier almost got it right – the only part they missed is that SSI Group was the acquirer rather than the acquiree (and SSI’s response to my inquiry was truthful – they weren’t going to be acquired). I call that a win all around.

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People

Parallon promotes Curtis Watkins to CEO of its technology business unit.

Truven Health Analytics hires former CMS Healthcare.gov official Kirk Grothe as VP of its federal government business.

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Announcements and Implementations

MedEvolve, Salar, and Net Health choose VitalWare’s ICD Sherpa as their ICD-10 partner.

Aprima announces a mobile app for its products.

ARC Devices and Orchestrate Healthcare launch ARC VitalConnect, which transmits readings from ARC’s non-touch digital thermometer to EHRs.

Senior care software vendor PointClickCare joins the Surescripts network.

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Government and Politics

ONC delivers its congressionally mandated report on information blocking, defining the term as when “persons or entities knowingly and unreasonably interfere with the exchange or use of electronic health information.” I’m not quite sure how a company could “reasonably” interfere with information exchange, although ONC later mentions possible patient safety concerns that I would take to mean mental health information. ONC admits that it doesn’t really know how extensive information blocking is since stories are anecdotal or how that practice could be assessed other than by in-the-field product reviews. ONC is clear on practices it considers detrimental to information exchange, including contractual restrictions, charging for information exchange, developing or implementing systems in non-standard ways that increase interoperability difficulty or cost, and practices that lock users in with regard to a particular technology (from  vendor’s standpoint, good business practices, in other words). ONC’s recommended actions: start in-the-field testing as part of certification, tighten technical standards, increase product and vendor transparency (although ONC admits it can’t do much in that regard), mandate sharing, clarify to providers what information sharing is allowed under HIPAA, and refer obvious cases for review under anti-kickback statutes or even to law enforcement agencies where appropriate.

The problem with provider information blocking is that only patients could report it and they’re not likely to call up ONC to complain. Vendor practices, whether contractual or technical, are easier, so it seems to me the most effective way to move the market is to call them out publicly (800.ONC.BLOK, anyone?) It would also be nice for ONC to provide suggested contract boilerplate language for providers, especially medical practices that seem inclined to sign everything shoved in front of them by a exuberant salesperson without even reading it, much less altering it favorably. That’s assuming that providers even care about sharing information, which is the biggest unknown of all. I’d like my local paint store to electronically exchange information on textures and shades with their competitors so I have more freedom of choice, but I doubt they share my enthusiasm.

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Sponsor Updates

• Medicity CEO Nancy Ham pens a blog for HFMA entitled, “Do You Know Where Your Patients Are?”
• MedData launches major upgrades to its client reporting portal and iPhone app.
• Navicure releases an upgrade to its billing and payments platform.
• NVoq offers “The Link Between the Simple Checklist and Improved Patient Safety.”
• Experian Health/Passport launches a video contest to show how its solutions have helped improve client organization’s patient access processes.
• PatientPay produces a video detailing its new solution that enables practices to get real-time pricing for patients who call to request estimated visit costs.
• A PDS blog, “When I Was Your Age: The Challenge of Generational Patient Engagement,” is featured in the HIMSS15 blog carnival.
• PMD offers “Apple’s Most Important iOS Security Update.”
• Talksoft’s Hamilton, NJ office is featured in the local paper in a piece about recycled office spaces.
• TeleTracking asks, “Are U.S. Hospital Operations in Need of an Operation?”

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Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk updates.
Contact us online.

News 4/10/15

Top News

The Federal Trade Commission likes ONC’s interoperability roadmap for the most part, but observes that interoperability will continue to be hampered by the competitive interests of providers and vendors. It also gently warns ONC that its strategy of using policy and funding levers to create interoperability demand might encourage less innovation than if the government instead created market forces as a payer (i.e., Medicare). FTC says that its experience shows that vendor participation in creating standards and certifying products causes anti-competitive behavior, such as withholding certification from a competitor, excluding new products from meeting prior standards, rigging the standards-setting organization with vendor-friendly members, and not paying enough attention to patient rights. FTC is also worried that vendor-recommended standards will lock consumers onto a platform that may have been created with the intention of stifling competition. Lastly, FTC is concerned that any standards ONC chooses will be treated as law, so if they really want to get into the standards-setting business, they had better choose carefully.

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Reader Comments

From Pulpit Bully: “Re: Georgia Medicaid Fair. Here’s a free training event for those who want to get some insight into why our industry is hopelessly complex. I hate to sound like a curmudgeon, but this is an ENTIRE DAY of sessions about how insurance companies and the government make it difficult for people to manage their health.” It doesn’t sound like a target-rich environment for booth swag.

From Nasty Parts: “Re: CPSI. Heard there is an ‘all hands on deck’ meeting on Monday and they have rented a large facility. Wonder why would they do this during the HIMSS conference?” Unverified. At least some of their hands won’t be on deck in Mobile unless they vacate their HIMSS exhibit. It’s probably their user group meeting in Sandestin, which is also next week.

From Beaker: “Re: self-ordered lab tests. This should end well.” A just-signed Arizona law that will take effect in July will allow people to order their own lab tests without a doctor’s involvement. It was pushed by Silicon Valley lab high-flyer Theranos. I like the patient-centered aspect, although certainly Theranos has executed a smart business coup in removing physicians as its sales bottleneck. The obvious unknown is how consumers will react to receiving abnormal results – treat themselves inappropriately, pester their doctors, or demand that their insurance pay for tests of questionable medical usefulness. Doctors serve both as clinical and utilization gatekeepers and it’s a brave new world when those roles are removed and consumers are turned loose with minimal knowledge.

From Epic Doesnt Market: “Re: Epic marketing. Not sure if you’d consider the $2 million that Epic pays KLAS as marketing, but I do.” I would. Every company does marketing. Epic is different only in that it’s a bit lower key about it and it doesn’t place actual ads most of the time. Marketing isn’t the same as advertising, as everybody who has taken an MBA marketing class knows, and while Epic does little or none of the latter, it does quite a bit of the former under the label of “events.” It milks its KLAS results hard, as anyone who has seen the giant displays plastered on its HIMSS booth knows, and those billboards didn’t just jump up on the wall without help.

From Epic Does Too Market:  “Re: Epic marketing. If they don’t market, someone forgot to tell their employees, or maybe they don’t control the ones who have left. At least eight former Epic employees identify themselves as marketing people on LinkedIn and one career marketer (who has since moved to another vendor) says she reported directly to Epic’s CEO. They’ve had several spokespeople quoted. I see the work Epic produces on their website, fact sheets, slide presentations, dance numbers, etc. Whether they call it marketing or not, they must have full-time people engaged in producing it all.” 

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Recondo Technology. The Denver-based revenue cycle technology company’s patented, no-touch ReconBots find and assemble critical payer information to speed up eligibility, authorization, and claim status transactions. Its business office products cover claim data integrity, claim adjudication status, and payer follow-up, while the company’s patient access solutions include eligibility, registration quality assurance, point-of-service patient financial responsibility statements, prior authorization, and a real-time dashboard for reporting KPIs. Recondo’s rules, legacy integration, and data mining are used by 900 hospitals and 500 payers to ensure proper payments and financial clarity. You probably know industry long-timers CEO Jay Deady and Chief Growth Officer Ralph Keiser. The just-released Gartner report “Cool Vendors in Healthcare Providers 2015” notes Recondo as providing health systems with innovative technologies to help solve their evolving problems. Thanks to Recondo for supporting HIStalk.

Also supporting HIStalk as a Platinum Sponsor is Practice Unite, which offers a customizable, HIPAA-compliant mobile platform for delivering real-time care (secure communications, clinical data display, and customized workflow). Clinician-friendly communication and collaboration tools include consults, secure text, lab results, patients, on-call and hospital directory, news, events, and several others. Customers have reported six-times-faster inpatient-related communication, a 20 percent ED wait time reduction, easier MU Stage 2 compliance, and reduced network leakage. Check out the case studies. Thanks to Practice Unite for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s an overview video of Practice Unite that I found on YouTube.

Every year I tell vendors how stupid they are in listening to clueless marketing people who advise them to hold their big announcements until HIMSS conference week, which ensures they’ll sink without a trace in all of the confusion and real news happening there. Finally they’re seeing the light and making significant announcements this week instead. Reporters are too busy partying excessively or wasting time doing cookie cutter executive interviews to pay attention to self-serving HIMSS week announcements.

This week on HIStalk Practice: PointNurse partners with Swarm Fund to offer clinicians new telehealth business model. New York’s physician profile website stays alive. Montana Primary Care Association taps eCW for HEDIS help. AMA makes no bones about who it won’t support in the presidential election. Maryland creates a new accelerator for healthcare IT startups. Aledade CEO Farzad Mostashari, MD hints at the EHR features he’ll be looking for at HIMSS15. Thanks for reading.

This week on HIStalk Connect: ONC launches a resource center for states interested in incorporating digital health tools into care delivery. Rock Health releases its quarterly funding report on the digital health industry, noting a slight decline in funding this quarter compared to Q1 2014, but still generating $600 million in new investments. An MIT student is building the Stack Overflow for mental health in his new startup Koko. Weight Watchers acquires fitness social media platform Weilos for an undisclosed sum.

Dana Moore, SVP/CIO of Denver-based Centura Health, has generously offered to collaborate with me on a purely charitable HIMSS conference project. He’ll be in our booth (#5371) Wednesday morning 10 until noon. Vendors (or anyone else, for that matter) can have 20 minutes of uninterrupted one-on-one time with Dana in return for a $500 donation (I chose that value) to DonorsChoose.org since Dana and I both like funding education projects. Then, he and/or I will recap his impressions about your pitch right here on HIStalk to a pretty big audience. Contact me if your company is interested and we’ll book a time. It’s a heck of a lot cheaper than trying to get his attention and then flying to Denver to meet there, you’ll be benefitting a classroom, you’ll get prime HIStalk real estate, and Dana just might be interested enough in your pitch to want to speak further (startups take note).

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Webinars

April 22 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Microsoft: The Waking Giant in Healthcare Analytics and Big Data.” Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP of strategy, Health Catalyst. Microsoft has been quietly reengineering its culture and products to offer the best value and most visionary platform for cloud services, big data, and analytics in healthcare. This webinar will cover the Healthcare Analytics Adoption Model, the ongoing transition from relational databases, the role of new Microsoft products such as Azure and Analytic Platform System, the PowerX product line, and geospatial and machine learning visualization tools. Attendees will learn how to incorporate cloud-based analytics services into their healthcare analytics strategies.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Specialty EHR vendor Modernizing Medicine signs a lease for new office space in Roseville, CA to expand headcount from 24 to up to 70 for the former Aesyntix Health, which it acquired in December.

NextGen parent Quality Systems, Inc. acquires healthcare analytics vendor Gennius.

UnitedHealth Group will pay $12 million in damages after a federal jury finds that its OptumInsight subsidiary infringed on physician efficiency calculation patents held by Cave Consulting Group, which offers several products including the CCGroup EfficiencyCare physician efficiency measurement module.

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Sales

YourCareUniverse chooses VisionWare for master data management.

EvergreenHealth Partners (WA) selects Wellcentive to coordinate care of 400,000 residents served by the 500 physicians of the clinically integrated network.

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Announcements and Implementations

McKesson announces Conserus, a vendor-neutral diagnostic imaging interoperability lineup that includes workflow, work lists, image repository, and data exchange.  

Cerner will integrate visual analytics from Tableau Software into its enterprise data warehouse and analytics products.

Validic announces that it integrated with 27 additional digital health devices in Q1 and is beta testing its connectivity with Apple HealthKit. The company has also released a developer platform that provides API access to its marketplace.

MEA-NEA adds HIPAA-compliant email encryption from Virtru to its information exchange, storage, and attachment solutions.

ZeOmega adds a medication management module to its Jiva population health management system.

Awarepoint announces a Bluetooth Low Energy RTLS platform.

Caradigm’s latest release includes new modules for condition management and utilization management.

Greenway Health announces a new patient portal.  

Aventura will offer biometric authentication for electronic prescribing of controlled substances.

Lifepoint Informatics offers free trial of an API toolbox for medical necessity validation and ICD-9 to ICD-10 crosswalk.

The non-profit, hospital-focused Center for Medical Interoperability, funded by a $10 million grant from the Gary and Mary West Foundation, names its initial board of directors.

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Government and Politics

The Texas Medical Board is considering barring doctors from generating prescriptions for patients they haven’t met in a face-to-face visit, although the wording seems vague on whether “face-to-face” excludes video consultations. Dallas-based telemedicine provided Teladoc says the state is moving backward in prohibiting use of a technology that can help solve access and cost problems, but others think it’s the state’s job to avoid creating a double standard that devalues the traditional office visit and relies on new technology.  

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Privacy and Security

A painfully long and overwrought Wired article with the obligatory “click me please” headline (“Drug Pump’s Security Flaw Lets Hackers Raise Dose Limits”) prattles at length about the purely theoretical possibility that hackers could alter the drug libraries of smart IV pumps, meaning they couldn’t do much of anything other than altering the minimum and maximum allowed doses (not a given patient’s actual dose). Sometimes security analysts find real, previously undocumented security holes of major importance, but sometimes their announcements are more boastful than useful.

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Innovation and Research

NPR covers the use of telemedicine by Houston firefighters, who instead of driving people with non-emergent needs to the ED, can instead connect them with a doctor using iPad video. They can assess the patient and connect with a doctor in real time to decide whether an ED visit is warranted, and if not, schedule them for a regular doctor’s appointment (including a free cab ride). The project addresses the fact that 40 percent of Houston ED visits are for non-emergent primary care issues.

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Technology

Surescripts and Accenture join HL7’s Argonaut Project.

Box integrates with Carebox to support EHR integration and patient portals.

Doximity announces a secure clinician communication app for the Apple Watch that sends the user to their iPhone for more detailed information (since Watch does nothing without being connected to an iPhone). In a bizarre “only in healthcare” intermingling of old and new technologies, it will alert doctors when they receive a fax.

Cerner will release an Apple Watch version of its HealtheLife that will offer consumers push notification health reminders and data tracking while collecting biometric data to send to Millennium.

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Other

In an HIStalk Practice interview, former National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari, MD (now CEO of Aledade) says he’s surprised that the certified EHRs he now has to deal with personally “can’t perform in a real clinical setting” and he’s happy that ONC is considering field testing and a mechanism to deal with EHR customer complaints. He says he’ll be cruising the HIMSS exhibit hall to look for systems for his participating practices that create “practice happiness,” meet MU requirements in a workflow-friendly manner, and are sold by vendors who are willing to work with third-party health applications. He adds that EHR vendor interfacing charges are “outrageous” and that every public and private HIE should offer ADT notifications. On fuzzy, buzzwordy topics like patient engagement, population health management and precision medicine, Mostashari says vendors should have embraced Meaningful Use enthusiastically as a roadmap that would have gotten them there, but instead took a compliance-only approach that frustrated their users.

Here’s a smart idea from HCS since HIMSS badges don’t make it clear what kind of organization an attendee works for: they’re offering badge ribbons that denote long-term care, behavioral health, and long-term care acute hospitals so that attendees with similar interests can find each other. Not to take away from HCS’s efforts, I had a similarly great idea for identifying attendees by their personal characteristics, but I’m hampered by limited attendee demand for badge ribbons that indicate “Self-Important Douchebag,” “Incompetent Despite Appearances,” “Obliviously Intellectually Challenged,” and “No, This Isn’t the First Sales Job I’ve Lied In.” Perhaps I should instead have them manufactured in the “Kick Me” back-attached variant that could be applied by observers who are more situationally objective than the wearer.

A New York Times article examines the trend of insurance companies trying to boost lagging life insurance sales by offering premium discounts to customers willing to share electronic data that includes real-time tracking of gym utilization and overall physical activity via a monitored Fitbit. A privacy expert questions how all of that consumer data will be used, while a law professor ponders whether the program is just a way for life insurance companies to weed out less-healthy customers: “The people who have the time to devote to jumping through all the hoops are likely to be better off than average, and those healthy enough to do wellness activities may be unrepresentative of the chronically ill. I believe that is one reason why there is empirical research severely questioning the value of wellness programs.”

A jury awards $1.38 million to a former billing supervisor of Harrison Medical Center (WA) who was fired after filing a whistleblower lawsuit in which she questioned why she was told to run a monthly Medicare billing program daily instead.

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Sponsor Updates

• VitalWare earns Service Organization Controls Reports (SOC) 2 Type 1 certification of its revenue cycle private cloud. It also announces that Epic consulting firm E-Volve Health will offer VitalWare’s revenue cycle solutions.
• Medhost posts a video describing how its physician advisory board impacts product development.
• Logicworks achieves Amazon Web Services partner network healthcare competency.
• Extension Healthcare offers “Knowing is Half the Battle – Measuring clinical interruptions with advanced alarm management middleware.”
• Impact Advisors posts “mHealth — The Newest Front Door to Your Organization.”
• Galen Healthcare asks, “How does Mirth Connect stack up as an HIT Interface Engine?”
• LifeImage writes “Medical Image Sharing for Trauma Care.”
• Hayes Management Consulting offers “Making the Case for Physicians as Part of the EHR Project Team.”
• The HCI Group offers “Technology Partnerships and Data Mergers: Challenges for Small and Medium-sized Hospitals.”
• HDS CEO Bill Horne takes a pie in the face to raise money for the American Heart Association.
• Healthwise earns certified status for data security and protection of health information.
• Holon Solutions offers “Health IT Interoperability Must Be Built From The Bottom Up.”
• Liaison Technologies offers “The Right Way to Address Today’s Data Challenges.”

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Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk updates.
Contact us online.

News 4/8/15

Top News

ECRI Institute names its top patient safety concerns for 2015:

1. Alarm hazards.
2. Missing or incorrect data in EHRs and other IT systems.
3. Patient violence.
4. Wrong IV line drug administration.
5. Care coordination problems due to lack of medication reconciliation.
6. Failure to perform double checks.
7. Opioid events.
8. Improper instrument sterilization.
9. Inadequate handoffs during patient transport.
10. Medication dosing errors due to weight confusion in kilograms vs. pounds.

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Reader Comments

From Nature Valley Sweet and Salty: “Re: Beacon Partners. Guess the acquisition is true.” I see the slide that contains both company names, but I’ll have to say “Unverified” until something more definitive comes out. Everybody is holding their big news for next week, so we’ll know soon.

From Consensual Sects: “Re: SSI Group. Acquisition by an unnamed company to be announced this week.” I heard that a couple of weeks ago, with the rumor reporter claiming the acquirer is Medhost. I asked my SSI Group contact and they flatly denied that anything is in the works, but then again companies always say that since “no comment” is the same as verifying the rumor. Consensual Sects was told it’s a West Coast-based patient access company with a recognizable name.

From One M Dammit: “Re: HIMMS. Here’s another sighting.” There are many, unfortunately, with even mHealth News (published by HIMSS Media) managing to misspell it as HIMMS. Googling “HIMMS” for news sources turns up 157 examples.

From Occupy HIMSS: “Re: Scripps. Check out the spelling on this LinkedIn article.” It was posted on April 1, so perhaps its Epic author, who looks almost old enough to buy his own beer, was going for subtle rather than unintentional humor.

From Senor CMIO: “Re: Tennessee-based Mountain States Health Alliance and Wellmont merger. Wellmont just installed Epic under a year ago (and may be suffering financially, partly due to this). MSHA runs Siemens Soarian. MSHA will likely have final control of the merged company since its CEO is chairman of the merged board. It will be interesting to see if Epic will be replaced by Soarian or if efforts at HIE will be ramped up successfully between the two systems.”

From Panko: “Re: Epic. I read a site’s in-depth profile about Epic that struck me as odd since there was no really newsworthy item. It basically read as a press release touting Epic ahead of the DoD’s decision and brushed aside interoperability criticisms. I was wondering what your take on this is? Epic supposedly does not do press or marketing, but this article seems to me to be the result of a really carefully orchestrated media push.” Epic has been making itself slightly more visible to the press. Some of its people have been quoted in articles and there’s no way that happened without Judy’s approval. It hired a lobbyist. It is mentioned in announcements every now and then. All of this happened after the DoD bid came up and the interoperability and cost criticisms started getting potentially damaging airtime. I’m pretty sure Judy Faulkner still doesn’t do interviews although her words from quick email responses are sometimes passed off as an “interview” by sites hoping to give the impression that they’re so important that Judy took the time to sit down with them (you can recognize those articles because they contain dozens of paragraphs of regurgitated common knowledge along with about two actual Judy sentences inside quotation marks). Epic says it doesn’t do marketing, which I’ll generously interpret as being true since the company doesn’t have employees whose full-time job is marketing. Epic gets visibility when it wants it most, so while it keeps a lower public profile than most vendors, doesn’t advertise, and doesn’t fawn over the press, it also doesn’t just sit in a Verona barn and crank out MUMPS code while ignoring the fact that it’s a multi-billion dollar market-leading company whose interests have always been competitive, With the DoD bid and the involvement of prime bidder IBM, Epic seems to be slightly more active in managing the press as public opinion dictates, but often in a minimally visible way. 

From Belle: “Re: Epic overdose warning. Here’s our setup and the error that displays with a massive overdose as UCSF ordered.” This hospital keeps it simple by configuring Epic to order Septra DS by the whole tablet rather than in either mg or mg/kg of the trimethoprim component alone, which probably works great for adult patients but maybe not so for peds. The overdose warnings are pretty clear and even offer the choice of just switching to the maximum dose of two tablets per day with a single click. UCSF’s resident and pharmacist both received similar overdose warnings, which they didn’t heed. We talk about alarm fatigue when referring to patient monitors, but it happens a lot with CPOE drug warnings (dose, allergy, drug interaction, etc.) I’m sure someone has done a presentation on how to analyze and detune drug warnings in a way that is appropriate for a given hospital and/or provider since, as illogical as it seems, one size doesn’t fit all when it comes to such warnings. Reducing the clutter is better than just shutting off all alerts as some doctors claim they would prefer (until they get sued for missing a conflict, of course).

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

The HIMSS conference crunch has officially begun. Vendors are queuing up their announcements for next week, people are flooding my inbox with issues they think are important (although I often don’t share their level of excitement), and lots of people are packing up for their migration to Chicago. The weather is looking great with daytime highs in the 60s predicted, so it will be brown but comfortable.

Here’s the schedule of who will be holding court in our value-sized HIStalk HIMSS booth (#5371) next week:

• Monday 2:00: Niko Skievaski of Redox, signing copies of “ICD-10 Illustrated” and maybe “Meaningful Use Stage 2 Illustrated.”
• Monday 3:00: Ed Marx, signing copies of “Extraordinary Tales From A Rather Ordinary Guy.”
• Tuesday 11:00: Steve Blumenthal of Waller Lansden Dortch and Davis LLP, answering health IT legal questions, being way funnier than you’d expect for a lawyer, and giving away swag while Lorre attends our CMIO get-together lunch.
• Tuesday 2:00: nVoq, dispensing Garrett popcorn and collectible pins.
• Tuesday 3:00: Barry Wightman of Forward Health Group, signing copies of “Pepperland” and dishing on what it was like hosting HIStalkapalooza the night before.
• Tuesday 4:30: The Walking Gallery get-together.
• Wednesday 11:00: Ross Martin, MD of AMIA and the American College of Medical Informatimusicology, handing out ACMImimi pins and badge ribbons for current Fellows.

We did a tweet chat Tuesday called “The Role of Patient Engagement and Advocacy in HIT” (the link goes to Jenn’s Storify recap). Thanks to those who participated, especially our patient advocate scholarship winners.

We’re doing video interviews with DrFirst at the HIMSS conference, asking folks for their impressions. Want to be included? Sign up here.

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HIStalkapalooza

The HIStalkapalooza timeline looks like this:

• 5:00 House of Blues closes to the public.
• 6:30 House of Blues outside doors open only for HIStalkapalooza registered guests. Security will turn away anyone who wasn’t invited, so don’t plan to crash or to bring an unregistered guest (I don’t have any more invitations, so please don’t ask).
• 6:30 Pick up your badge, check your coat, and walk the red carpet to participate in the shoe and apparel judging. Visit the event sponsor tables and stake out a good spot. We’ll have caricature artists, a photo booth, videographers, and other activities to be checked out. Bars and food won’t be open yet – that way people can enter leisurely without trampling each other in a rush to get to the first visible bar.
• If one of the event sponsors has invited you to their private opera box, use your sponsor-issued wristband to pass security to the third and fourth floors (everybody without wristbands will be limited to the first two floors). We’ll have food service on the third floor, bars open on both floors, plus cocktailer (that’s a new word I’ve learned) service to the opera boxes, which will also be stocked with appetizers.
• 6:45 Jazz combo starts playing dinner music on stage.
• 7:00 Bars and dinner buffet stations open in multiple locations.
• 7:40 Stage activities start, include sashing, the HISsies, and special guests. Your hosts will be Jennifer Lyle, Barry Wightman, and Lorre Wisham.
• 8:30 (approximate) Party on the Moon’s stage performance begins.
• 8:30 House of Blues doors outside doors will be closed. No one will be admitted after 8:30.
• 10:00 Bars switch over from open to cash. I’m buying until 10:00, you’re buying after.
• 11:00 Event ends.

If you can’t make it to HIStalkapalooza or didn’t receive an invitation, event sponsor PatientSafe Solutions will be live streaming video from the event via Periscope, a new Twitter-powered video service. Follow @PatientSafeSoln on Twitter, install the Periscope app, and watch for live tweets tagged #HIStalkapalooza. Next time maybe I’ll just stay home and throw a viewing party with a keg and some Italian beef sandwiches.

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Webinars

April 8 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Leveraging Evidence and Mobile Collaboration to Improve Patient Care Transitions.” Sponsored by Zynx Health. Presenter: Grant Campbell, MSN, RN, senior director of nursing strategy and informatics, Zynx Health. With mounting regulatory requirements focused on readmission prevention and the growing complexity of care delivery, ACOs, hospitals, and community-based organizations are under pressure to effectively and efficiently manage patient transitions. This webinar will explore the ways in which people, process, and technology influence patient care and how organizations can optimize these areas to enhance communication, increase operational efficiency, and improve care coordination across the continuum.

April 22 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Microsoft: The Waking Giant in Healthcare Analytics and Big Data.” Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP of strategy, Health Catalyst. Microsoft has been quietly reengineering its culture and products to offer the best value and most visionary platform for cloud services, big data, and analytics in healthcare. This webinar will cover the Healthcare Analytics Adoption Model, the ongoing transition from relational databases, the role of new Microsoft products such as Azure and Analytic Platform System, the PowerX product line, and geospatial and machine learning visualization tools. Attendees will learn how to incorporate cloud-based analytics services into their healthcare analytics strategies.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Livongo Health raises $20 million to expand its connected glucometer-powered diabetes management service. Former Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman started and runs the company.

Lexmark will consolidate its acquired brands, including Perceptive Software, under the single name Lexmark and a new logo. Perceptive will be placed under the Lexmark Healthcare banner. 

Mansa Capital Management acquires Accreon with a $5.5 million investment and the participation of the company’s founders and management team.

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Sales

Baptist Health (KY) chooses Capsule for medical device integration.

Meditech chooses Validic to integrate clinical, fitness, and wellness data into its applications.

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People

Gary Meyer (Financial Chief) joins Cumberland Consulting Group as CFO.

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Announcements and Implementations

A PerfectServe survey with decent methodology finds that 71 percent of doctors waste time trying to communicate with other care team members, the EHR is rarely used to communicate with external providers about complex issues, and respondents report extensive dissatisfaction with their clinical communications tools that often span telephone, texting, and other forms of messaging. Nearly two-thirds think HIPAA requirements impede care team communication.

Cerner and Banner Health sign a collaboration agreement that would seem to cement the strong possibility that Banner’s new acquisition, Tucson-based University of Arizona Health Network, will eventually be migrated from Epic to Millennium.

Healthgrades announces its annual awards for patient experience and patient safety, naming the top hospitals based on analysis of claims data, HCAHPS scores, and reported patient safety incidents. It’s interesting that some questions that formerly well correlated with “likely to recommend” now don’t, suggesting that consumer expectations are changing.

TeraMedica will launch analytics and dashboard additions to its Evercore vendor-neutral archive next week.

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Privacy and Security

Tulare County HHS (CA) suggests that 800 people change their email addresses after a county employee used CC: rather than BCC: in sending out emails to clinic patients. The department also disabled the exposed email addresses for its patient portal.

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Other

Jamie Stockton, CFA of Wells Fargo Securities sent over his latest slice-and-dice of Meaningful Use data. For hospitals, nearly every Epic user has reached Stage 2, while users of Cerner, Meditech, CPSI, and McKesson are congregated at around the two-thirds mark.

Wells Fargo’s EP numbers suggest that Athenahealth customers lead the MUS2 pack at 71 percent, although not up to the 98 percent it boasted a couple of weeks ago that in reality measured the percentage of EPs that attempted MUS2, not the percentage of its overall customer base. Obviously EPs aren’t nearly as willing and able as hospitals to keep chasing HITECH money, and if they purchased these EHRs with intentions of getting it, they are likely not only disappointed, but potentially more likely to replace the systems they bought for that reason.

Carequality publishes collaboration and trust principles that data-sharing participants can legally agree to follow.

A Minnesota couple hears music playing from their child’s bedroom, finally realizing that an Amsterdam hacker had taken over their nanny cam. Theirs was one of thousands of cameras that had screen shots and live stream links posted online because the parents did like many people in buying an IP security camera and ignoring the instructions for changing the default password.

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Sponsor Updates

• CitiusTech launches a healthcare practice focused on big data and Hadoop.
• ADP AdvancedMD offers the “Top 4 claim exclusions & resolutions.”
• AtHoc offers “Diversity Makes Us Stronger.”
• Besler Consulting offers a new video on the clinical impact of readmissions.
• Medecision publishes a video of Neil Kudler, MD, CMIO of Baystate Health, discussing how he uses the Aerial platform to engage patients.
• PDS posts “When I Was Your Age: The Challenge of Generational Patient Engagement.”

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Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk updates.
Contact us online.

Monday Morning Update 4/6/15

Top News

Allscripts will pay $10 million to settle a 2012 class action lawsuit in which investors accused the company of hiding problems after its 2010 acquisition of Eclipsys. Allscripts unsuccessfully filed to dismiss the case, saying that its executives didn’t intend to deceive shareholders with their “unspecific puffery,” “immaterial optimism,” and “vague aspiration.” I didn’t realize until just now that the lawsuit extensively quoted parts of my 2010 interview with former Allscripts CEO Glen Tullman and former Eclipsys CEO Phil Pead right before the announcement.

The lawsuit accuses the company of painting an overly rosy picture of how Allscripts would absorb the Eclipsys people and integrate its products, pointing out the extensive head-rolling that followed (head of sales, CTO, COO, board chair, three directors, the CFO, the president, Pead, and finally Tullman) and revenue projections that required tripling Sunrise sales even as prospects held back because of a bad 5.5 release and uncertain integration progress. The suit also quoted internal company witnesses who said Allscripts canceled its reseller agreement with Medicity and chose instead what the witness said was the inferior product of dbMotion (which Allscripts acquired in March 2013 for $235 million) and laid out an ugly story of Tullman steamrolling those who questioned him, executives who believed the incorrect information being fed to them by subordinates, salespeople unable to make quotas because of product deficiencies, hospitals with increasing ambulatory needs either replacing their Allscripts practice EHRs or moving to Epic, Pead losing his job after failing to get Tullman fired, and customer unhappiness with product releases and integration. It’s a pretty fascinating read even allowing for the fact that it’s just one side of the story. It’s probably reflective of that tumultuous time in the company’s history that it won the HISsies “Smartest Vendor Action Taken” category in both 2013 and 2014 for taking the same action in both preceding years – firing its executive team.

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Reader Comments

From Sturges: “Re: Epic-Mayo deal. Epic supposedly bought Mayo’s data center for $45 million and is leasing it back to them at an infinitesimal cost. Buying Mayo’s business?” Unverified.

From Pickle Loaf: “Re: IBM’s new provider apps. I heard they developed these for Tenet originally. They look nice, but came out of nowhere and IBM didn’t commit to integration or ongoing maintenance. Companies, especially those new to healthcare, often jump to mobility as just another interface without considering the app itself.”

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Poll respondents say the most important reason they would avoid doing business with a startup is the fear that the company isn’t financially viable. That might be a surprise to startups that think they are failing mostly because they don’t have reference sites. New poll to your right or here: what should happen to ONC’s certification program after MU Stage 3?

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Burwood Group. The Chicago-based consulting firm’s healthcare business offers help with clinical collaboration, adoption, regulatory compliance, medical device strategy and integration, and strategic planning. The company’s client roster includes Palomar Health (which hired the company to develop the infrastructure strategy for its new 740,000 square foot hospital of the future) and North Shore-LIJ Health (for which the company created a far-reaching clinical collaboration and communications strategy). The company’s healthcare leadership team is available for meetings at the HIMSS conference. Thanks to Burwood Group for supporting HIStalk.

Interesting people will be meeting and greeting in our tiny HIMSS booth (it’s as small and sparsely furnished as my 11-year-old econobox car) including authors, CIOs, and other characters that I think are interesting. I’ll consider giving you an hour to meet your fans if you email me describing why you in fact have fans (or if you don’t have them, why you think you should). We don’t have anything to sell or business to conduct, so we’re just hanging out there as I try to forget how much it’s costing. I’ll run a schedule of who’s dropping by later this week. I know the Walking Gallery folks are meeting there.

Find out what HIStalk sponsors are doing at the HIMSS conference by checking out our guide.

Join Jenn and our patient advocate HIMSS conference scholarship winners for an #HIStalking tweet chat Tuesday at 11 a.m. ET. @LAlupuslady, @woodymatters, @leffet_papillon, @carlyRM and @bostonheartmom will talk about patient engagement, advocacy, and healthcare IT. You can brush up on their backgrounds here. They’ll be wearing their Walking Gallery tee shirts at the conference as they follow a busy schedule of interviews, meetings, and exhibit hall cruising.

I saw a restaurant menu the other day that had sections labeled “nibbles” and “drinkies.” I like to think it was intentionally self-ironic, but I passed anyway since maybe they’re just clueless. I’m not eating anywhere that leans hard on grammatical cutesiness, like writing “veggies,” “sammies,” or anything in the form of “Get your _____ on.” 

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Thanks to the following sponsors, new and renewing, that recently supported HIStalk, HIstalk Practice, and HIStalk Connect. Click a logo for more information.

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Last Week’s Most Interesting News

• IBM releases four iPhone apps for healthcare providers, although the company offered no details about integration or validation testing.
• Two visible CIOs, Chuck Christian and Ed Marx, resigned their jobs, as did HHS CTO Bryan Sivak.
• CommonWell announced several new vendor members.
• In Australia, 30 doctors resigned over patient safety concerns with its new Department of Defence EHR.
• The Senate deferred its deliberation of the SGR doc fix bill, which so far is free of ICD-10 delay language, until after its two-week vacation.

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Webinars

April 8 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Leveraging Evidence and Mobile Collaboration to Improve Patient Care Transitions.” Sponsored by Zynx Health. Presenter: Grant Campbell, MSN, RN, senior director of nursing strategy and informatics, Zynx Health. With mounting regulatory requirements focused on readmission prevention and the growing complexity of care delivery, ACOs, hospitals, and community-based organizations are under pressure to effectively and efficiently manage patient transitions. This webinar will explore the ways in which people, process, and technology influence patient care and how organizations can optimize these areas to enhance communication, increase operational efficiency, and improve care coordination across the continuum.

April 22 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Microsoft: The Waking Giant in Healthcare Analytics and Big Data.” Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP of strategy, Health Catalyst. Microsoft has been quietly reengineering its culture and products to offer the best value and most visionary platform for cloud services, big data, and analytics in healthcare. This webinar will cover the Healthcare Analytics Adoption Model, the ongoing transition from relational databases, the role of new Microsoft products such as Azure and Analytic Platform System, the PowerX product line, and geospatial and machine learning visualization tools. Attendees will learn how to incorporate cloud-based analytics services into their healthcare analytics strategies.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel helps ZirMed celebrate the opening of its Chicago office, for which the company plans to hire 200 employees for its predictive analytics business.

Vince Ciotti covers mid-range vendors in his new series on 2014 company revenue.

Aetna SEVP Joe Zubretsky, who is in charge of the company’s Healthagen business, sells $22 million worth of stock and still holds shares worth $23 million.

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People

 

Pharmacy automation vendor Parata Systems promotes D.J. Dougherty to CEO. He replaces Tom Rhoads, who will become CEO of HAP Innovations, a Parata spinoff that is developing consumer medication adherence technologies.

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Announcements and Implementations

Sacred Heart Hospital (FL) goes live on GetWellNetwork’s interactive patient care system.

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Government and Politics

Premier’s comments on ONC’s interoperability roadmap suggest that ONC develop interoperability standards and add them to its EHR certification criteria, require EHR vendors to publish APIs, and prohibit EHR vendors from “data blocking” by charging fees to access standard information or by not providing adequate interoperability documentation. 

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Privacy and Security

Indian River Medical Center (FL) blames an unnamed software vendor for a mistake that exposed the records of 30 of its patient portal users to other patients. Their patient portal appears to be from RelayHealth, but the hospital’s broad description suggests that the problem was exporting information from another system rather than the portal itself. On the EHR side, I think they used to run McKesson Horizon but migrated fairly quickly to Paragon.

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Technology

Walmart’s head of payments says chip-based credit cards won’t help much with fraud and says the US banking industry’s failure to adopt a PIN-based system for credit cards (as has already been done for debit cards) is “such a joke.” Experts blame the cost of adding PINs and the fear of banks that the extra user step might reduce the use of their high-interest credit cards.

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen tweeted this photo of the cover page of the source code from the company’s first product, BASIC, that was created 40 years ago. Microsoft was formed April 4, 1975. Allen is on the lower right in the 1978 company photo, with Bill Gates at the lower left. While you’re pondering just how long ago that was, recall that Meditech was formed six years before Microsoft in 1969.

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Other

I asked readers to send screenshots of how their system configuration would have handled the error that Bob Wachter, MD writes about in his book aimed at consumers, in which he mostly blames a ridiculous medication error on the IT systems his employer (UCSF) bought and configured rather than the people UCSF turned loose on patients with minimal experience and questionably effective training  (I wrote about the error, in which a nurse gave a peds patient 38.5 adult tablets, last week). Above is UCFS’s Epic screen, which forces the prescriber to order every drug by weight in mg/kg, a requirement they imposed along with their Epic implementation just over a year before the error. The resident was trying to enter a patient’s home med of one Septra DS tablet daily, which in UCSF’s laborious setup would require her to divide the home dose of 160 mg by the patient’s weight of 38.5 kg on a separate calculator, then enter the dose into Epic as 4.15 mg/kg to allow it to calculate the already-known dose. She screwed it up by entering the dose as 160, which as the screen plainly showed (and warned her about) would be a massive overdose (160 mg/kg x 38.5 kg, or 6,160 mg instead of the intended 160 mg). The resident and the pharmacist ignored Epic’s dose warning and the brand new nurse working on an unfamiliar unit was afraid to speak up, so she gave the patient 38.5 tablets, luckily without harm. Bob pretty much blames Epic specifically and EHR vendors generally for allowing people to make mistakes.

A CMIO reader from a children’s hospital provided this screenshot, which shows the mistake-proof way his hospital configured Epic. Prescribers can click the most common doses in either mg/kg or the overall dose, so the UCSF resident would have simply needed to click the 160 mg button and everything would have been fine. This screen makes it easy for doctors to to the right (and most common) things (note that they put the preferred dosing method first on the screen, but didn’t prevent use of the other method). This CMIO says this is the way most Epic sites do it – UCSF created a cumbersome, error-prone screen just to force doctors to order in mg/kg even when it doesn’t make sense and they could have killed their patient as a result.

The UCSF error made me recall errors I’ve seen that were caused by faulty configuration assumptions, all of which mortified the application analysts who had failed to consider the oddball exceptions or the possibility of irrational prescriber behavior:

• Invoking peds dosing pathways as deduced from patient location. Sometimes adults get moved to a peds bed and are inadvertently dosed using pediatric formulas.
• Invoking a particular dosing pathway as deduced by age, which caused a problem in my hospital’s 14-year-old, 300-pound patient.
• Assuming that only adults are assigned to a particular service, such as when our 12-year-old patient was overdosed on oxytocin while in labor.
• Complex IV order entry screens that led some doctors to simply give up and enter plain IV fluids with their desired additives entered as free-text comments.
• Accidentally moving acetaminophen liquid to the top of the pick list, driving its usage through the roof as doctors failed to notice that tablets no longer came up first.

As the CMIO commented, you have to be very careful with the assumptions you use in creating forcing functions that limit the doctor’s options.

Forbes Hospital (PA) finally replaces paper charts and fax machines by implementing its first EHR. They’re the first Allegheny Health Network hospital to go live on Epic.The 350-bed hospital was supposed to implement Allscripts several years ago, but scrapped that plan when insurance company Highmark acquired the struggling West Penn Allegheny Health System in 2013 after an ugly ongoing fight with cross-town competitor UPMC.

A psychiatrist says patients sometimes show up for their first appointment with a folder full of Google search results about her that contain scarily personal details, also adding that ED psychiatrists often Google new patients before seeing them to make sure they aren’t dangerous or famous. She also says patients threaten doctors who refuse to give them drugs or special treatment by vowing to write negative online reviews. She adds a positive example of how overhearing patients on phone calls lets her see how they behave outside her office::

My patients arrive in my office and, like gunslingers in a saloon, unload their various electronic devices, laying them on the sofa, often two or even three, before turning them off. But there are times when the phones have to stay on: There’s a sick child at home or the boss may call. Hearing in real time patients’ responses to important figures in their lives gives me an unfiltered glimpse into those relationships. A man who sarcastically belittles his girlfriend to me is surprisingly tender speaking with her on his cellphone. An unhappy, self-deprecating executive is suddenly a confident and even commanding figure speaking with one of his subordinates. An aggressive lawyer becomes shy and awkward when speaking with his mother.

An interesting New York Times article cleverly titled “When ‘Moneyball’ Meets Medicine” describes how health economists are measuring personal, public, and global health using a sports-like measure called disability-adjusted life years (DALYs), which count not only premature deaths but also the detractive effect that chronic conditions have on good health (example: being paralyzed is half-healthy). It sounds geeky, but it isn’t — car accidents, for example, are 2.5 times worse for humanity than lung cancer, which mostly affects older people and leaves few of its sufferers with lingering disabilities. Mexico used the calculation to prioritize medical treatments that reduced DALYs the most, while Australia allocated public health spending using the method. US figures highlight several high-impact, low-fatality conditions that don’t get the research and awareness money spent on less-impactful conditions such as stroke and breast cancer — low back pain, depression, neck pain, and anxiety disorders. I’m interested in the new book called “Epic Measures: One Doctor. Seven Billion Patients” about economist, physician, and public health professor Christopher Murray, MD, DPhil, whose “Global Burden of Disease” work was funded for $100 million by Bill Gates.

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Sponsor Updates

• Sunquest hosts its Point of Care Summit April 7 in San Francisco.
• Versus Technology offers a blog on how wireless technology works to track the spread of infection.
• NVoq describes “The Link Between the Simple Checklist and Improved Patient Safety.”
• Zynx Health posts “Zynx Carebook: Real People, Real Impact.”
• MBA HealthGroup offers “5 Ways to Optimize Your Revenue Cycle on Allscripts PM.”
• MedData offers a sneak peek at its ICD-11 conversion tool.
• New York eHealth Collaborative will exhibit at the Health 2.0 Mental Health Digital Innovation Challenge April 8 in New York City.
• Perceptive Software offers the third of its series on “Tips for Sustainability Progress in 2015.”
• NTT Data posts its top five takeaways from Mobile World Congress.
• Oneview Healthcare offers “Eight Steps to Improved Patient Experience and Outcomes.”
• Orion Health posts “Improving Patient Care, One eReferral at a Time.”
• Patientco offers “The Future of Patient Engagement: Going Beyond the Clinical.”
• PMD shares “On the Cutting Edge in Anchorage.”
• Dodge Communications interviews Porter Research President Cynthia Porter.

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Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk updates.
Contact us online.

HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS15

Download the printable PDF version of this guide to bring along to the conference here.

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Access

Booth 2256

Contact: Lindsey Keith, sales and marketing operations manager
lindsey.keith@accesseforms.com
913.752.9938

One place. One view. ALL of your forms. Access develops electronic forms management solutions that eliminate the expense, risk, and inefficiency of paper forms. Our software, including Web-based Access Passport, enables organizations to capture, manage, sign and share e-forms data with other systems without paper, printers or scanners. Staff can interact with paperless e-forms anywhere, anytime using any device. Stamp your passport to paperless at HIMSS booth 2256 and learn more at www.accessefm.com.

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AirStrip

Booth 4421

Contact: Jeaniene Outley, executive assistant
jeanieneoutley@airstrip.com
678.432.7813

AirStrip enables health systems to achieve interoperability with vendor- and data-agnostic mobile technology solutions for doctors, nurses, and other caregivers that seamlessly provide the engagement, collaboration, and insight required to care for others anytime, anywhere. AirStrip is the trusted champion for complete interoperability across all sources of health information throughout the continuum of care.     HIMSS15 is the perfect opportunity to see how the AirStrip ONE mobile interoperability platform and solutions integrate disparate systems, data and devices, and eliminate barriers between technologies, people, and processes. Visit the AirStrip booth to discuss the technology you are using today. We’ll focus on your immediate needs as well as your plans for future innovation.

AirStrip will donate $1 for every badge scanned at the AirStrip HIMSS booth to a local Chicago charity. AirStrip is also running a #HIMSS15 giveaway on Twitter. Follow @AirStripmHealth to learn more.

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AirWatch by VMware

Booth 8164

Contact: Jeff Pool, director of healthcare solutions
jeffpool@air-watch.com
470.247.4041

AirWatch by VMware is the leader in healthcare mobility management, with more than 14,000 global customers. The AirWatch platform includes industry-leading mobile device, email, application, content, and browser management solutions. This year at HIMSS15 we have a demo station in our booth where you can meet with sales executives to get an overview of our solution. We also have a presence in the VMware booth (2268), featuring theater-style presentations and a separate demo area. Acquired by VMware in February 2014, AirWatch is based in Atlanta and can be found online at www.air-watch.com.

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Anthelio Healthcare Solutions

Booth 7132

Contact: Andrea Watson, executive sales assistant/conference coordinator
andrea.watson@antheliohealth.com
214.257.7167

Anthelio is the largest independent provider of healthcare technology solutions. The company impacts quality care for over 6 million patients through its innovative solutions in the areas of IT, interoperability, EHR, HIM, patient engagement, and analytics. Stop by booth 7132 during HIMSS15 to learn about our cutting-edge solutions and shoot hoops with us!

We invite you to join Anthelio’s Casino Night for the ultimate HIMSS15 experience atop Willis Tower, the second-tallest building in the country. The breathtaking views, free drinks, cocktails, heavy hors d’oeuvres, appetizers, DJ, casino games, prizes, gift certificates, and much, much more await you … reserve your space early since capacity is limited. To RSVP, contact Andrea at andrea.watson@antheliohealth.com.

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Aprima Medical Software

Booth 3020

Contact: Judy Friedman, marketing and events
jfriedman@aprima.com
847.800.2214

Aprima is unveiling its new Aprima NOW technology at HIMSS. This important new technology gives users greater functionality than ever before when viewing and managing patient data from their mobile and tablet devices. Thousands of providers have left their old EHR and made the move to Aprima. Aprima ranks among the top five vendors that physicians choose to replace their previous EHR. Here’s just a few reasons why:

• You’ll document patient visits with lightning speed.
• Aprima helps you navigate MU, ICD-10, PQRS, CQMs and more.
• More than 50,000 people already use Aprima.
• All customer support is US-based.
• Our customers tell us they can see more patients, enjoy improved financial performance and are able to spend more time with their families.

Aprima is one of the few companies with a 17-year track record of success. To learn more about Aprima, or for a demo of the Aprima NOW app, visit us at HIMSS in booth 3020 or visit www.aprima.com.

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Arcadia Healthcare Solutions

Booth 7834

Contact: Greg Chittim, vice president, strategic marketing and business development
Greg.chittim@arcadiasolutions.com
781-202-3653

Arcadia Healthcare Solutions is an EHR Data Aggregation and Analytics technology company trusted by provider groups, health plans, and integrated delivery networks nationwide. Key events at HIMSS15 include:

• Monday, 4:30pm @ Booth 7834 – “Have a Sam Adams with Sam Adams” – join our SVP Sam Adams for an open bar, appetizers, and informative demos. Prizes to anyone who has a name joke that Sam hasn’t heard before.
• Monday, 6:30pm @ Palmer House Hotel – Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards – Join longtime Arcadia client Carlos Olivares, CEO of the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic, as he is honored as “Innovator of the Year.”
• Tuesday, 12:00pm @ Room S501-BC – “6 Things You Don’t Know About Your Patient … Because You’re Underutilizing EHR Data” – a Lunch and Learn sharing key insights and  “a ha!” visualizations of populations and practices.
• Wednesday, 1:00pm @ Room S404 – “Bad Data’s Effect on Pop Health” – Join Bill Gillis, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Care Organization, as he presents the implementation and outcomes of an EHR Data Quality program.

Giveaway: Stop by our booth, 7834, for the chance to win an Apple Watch, Moto 360, or Fitbit Surge smartwatch.

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Aspen Advisors, part of The Chartis Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Dan Herman, information and technology practice leader
dherman@aspenadvisors.net
412.370.4900

Aspen Advisors is a top-ranked IT advisory services firm that works with leading healthcare organizations across the country to enhance care delivery, improve community health status, and achieve market distinction through the strategic and effective use of technology. In November 2014, Aspen joined The Chartis Group, a leading healthcare strategy consultancy, to deliver leading-edge capabilities in information technology in a way that is powerfully integrated with client strategy, clinical delivery, and evolving business models. Together, we provide healthcare providers with uniquely experienced senior healthcare professionals and consultants who apply a distinctive knowledge of healthcare economics, markets, clinical models, and technology to help clients achieve unequaled results.

Ultimately, our goal is to help you realize the value of your IT investments and continue to improve the effectiveness of your organization in improving the patient experience of care and the health of populations, while reducing the per capita cost of healthcare. Learn more at AspenAdvisors.net.

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Billian’s HealthDATA

Booth 2045

Contact: Jessica Clifton
jlclifton@billian.com
678.360.9043

Billian’s HealthDATA and Porter Research offer unparalleled healthcare business insight and go-to-market research programs that help HIT firms and healthcare suppliers identify the best avenues to sell and market their products and services. Schedule your healthcare sales intelligence database demo by contacting jlclifton@billian.com or learn more at www.billianshealthdata.com.

Stop by booth 2045 on Tuesday, April 14, between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. to learn more over complimentary cocktails and appetizers.

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Capsule Tech

Booth 455

Contact: Brianna Roy, marketing and even specialist
briannar@capsuletech.com
978.482.2339

Capsule unlocks the power of medical device data to provide healthcare organizations with the critical patient and device information they need to provide safer, more efficient patient care. Its SmartLinx Medical Device Information System delivers connectivity, advanced integration, and analytics that turn volumes of patient data into relevant information.

Giveaway: Raffling off a Samsung Galaxy 4 Tablet

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CareTech Solutions

Booth 7819

Contact: Lisa Kennedy, director of marketing and communications
lisa.kennedy@caretech.com
248.251.4539

CareTech Solutions is an information technology and Web products and services provider for U.S. hospitals and health systems, creating value for clients through customized IT solutions that contribute to improving the patient experience while lowering healthcare costs. From implementing emerging technologies to supporting day-to-day IT operations, CareTech offers clients expert health information technology services earning it the 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2014 Best in KLAS award for IT Outsourcing (Extensive), and the 2012 and 2013 IT Partial Outsourcing Award as ranked by healthcare executives and professionals in the respective annual “Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Services” report.   

Come visit us at HIMSS15, booth 7819! We have your passport to healthcare innovation – everything you need to know to be successful in navigating the changes in the healthcare industry! For more information, please visit www.caretech.com/HIMSS15.

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CenterX

Booth 4094

Contact: Christopher Marshall, COO
christopher@centerx.com
855.236.8379

CenterX is a comprehensive e-prescribing network focused on improving patients medication adherence. CenterX offers advanced e-prescribing services, electronic prior authorization, clinically relevant prescription history, full clinical fax service, and clinical messaging and HISP services/CCD exchanges. CenterX works with prescribers, pharmacies, payers, and software vendors to create an open, efficient network that reduces cost and improves patient care.

Giveaway: Stop by booth 4094 to learn about CenterX, view a demo, and to pick up a swag bag, water bottle, pens and notepads.

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ChartMaxx by Quest Diagnostics

Booth 1280

Contact: Vicki Joyce, ChartMaxx Marketing Specialist
Vicki.M.Joyce@QuestDiagnostics.com
513.204.2621

Coffee, Lattes and Actionable Insights. Visit ChartMaxx at Quest Diagnostics booth 1280 for your favorite barista java and learn more about how to transform your data into actionable insights with our ECM and BPM solutions.

Giveaway: Fill out a "Slice of the Windy City" game card and enter for a chance to win one of four Chicago prizes.

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Clinical Architecture

Booth 2074

Contact: John Wilkinson, Vice President, Business Development
john_wilkinson@clinicalarchitecture.com
317.313.0013

Clinical Architecture is the leading provider of innovative healthcare terminology solutions. We develop software that evolves the way the healthcare industry overcomes challenges related to information; with a focus on improving quality, usability and reducing the burden on resources. We developed Symedical®, our comprehensive software suite, as a fully customizable platform for the acquisition, maintenance, and distribution of the terminologies you need. Let us show you how Symedical can provide the foundation for establishing and maintaining semantic interoperability.

Stop by booth 2074 to talk with one of our team members, enter to win our raffle, and check out our giveaways. For more information, and to schedule a time in advance to meet at HIMSS, visit: www.clinicalarchitecture.com.

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Clockwise.MD

Booth 8191 Kiosk M-28 in the HX360 Innovation Pavilion

Contact: Michael Burke, CEO
mike@clockwisemd.com
404.271.8652

Clockwise.MD –  a finalist in this year’s HX360 Innovation Challenge – improves the experience of waiting for care. Patients can make online reservations or appointments, and are kept informed of wait status via text message and a dashboard in the waiting area. During delays, patients can leave the waiting area and receive a message when it’s time to return. On discharge, patients review the facility via a text survey and are invited to share their experience on review sites. Come see us in the Innovation Pavilion, booth 8191, kiosk M-28.

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CommVault

Booth 4873

Contact: Jay Savaiano, director, worldwide healthcare business development
jsavaiano@commvault.com
816.520.7367

Come learn how CommVault can turn your data into a valuable strategic asset. Our data storage and backup solutions can help you unlock data silos and put your data to work for you.

Giveaway: Enter to win an Xbox One with Kinect and a one-year Xbox Gold Live membership. Daily drawings, must be present to win.

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CoverMyMeds

Booth 6027

Contact: Alison Bechtel, marketing manager
abechtel@covermymeds.com
614.300.1595

At HIMSS15 you will have the opportunity to speak with our experts on how CoverMyMeds automates the electronic prior authorization process for EHRs, PBMs and health plans, prescribers, and pharmacists. We are the only ePA vendor with all payer, all medication ePA functionality and we’d love to show you how it works. ePA National Adoption Scorecard talks will be held at booth 6027 Monday at 11:30 a.m. and 3:30 p.m. for EHR/Health Systems track and Tuesday at 11 a.m. and 2 p.m. for PBM/Plans track.

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CTG Health Solutions

Booth 1580

Contact: Amanda LeBlanc, managing director, marketing and communications
Amanda.LeBlanc@ctghs.com
225.772.8865

Established in 1987, CTG Health Solutions, the healthcare business unit of CTG, is one of the largest providers of IT consulting services in the U.S. today with 600+ clients, and is dedicated to helping provider/payer organizations achieve their strategic, clinical, financial, and operational objectives by providing the highest quality clinical, business, and IT solutions. CTG (NASDAQ: CTG) is a publicly owned IT services and solutions company that generated revenue of $393 million in 2014. CTG Health Solutions will partner  with IntrepidHealthcare to broadcast interviews—in a program called “#TalkHITwithCTG” – with many of today’s leading authorities on #HealthIT during #HIMSS15 (in our booth 1580, April 13 & 14) and then sharing the recorded version of these interviews after HIMSS.

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Cumberland Consulting Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Dave Vreeland, partner
david.vreeland@cumberlandcg.com
615.335.5272

Cumberland Consulting Group is a national information technology advisory, implementation, and support services firm serving the payer, provider, accountable care, and life sciences healthcare verticals. We specialize in providing technology implementation and project management support to help our clients advance the quality of services they deliver and improve their overall business performance. There will be several Cumberland representatives at HIMSS and we’d love to chat with you about your IT project needs. For more information on Cumberland, please visit www.cumberlandcg.com.

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Direct Consulting Associates

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Anthony Caponi, vice president of healthcare IT
acaponi@dc-associates.com
440.996.0863

Direct Consulting Associates (DCA) provides a broad range of IT consulting and staffing solutions including staff augmentation, temp-to-perm, and direct hire for enterprise and healthcare IT initiatives. Whether you’re an IT professional searching for that perfect opportunity or a client company looking for the very best IT talent you can trust, rely on DCA to help meet your goals.

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Divurgent

Booth 1891

Contact: Keri DeSalvo, marketing manager
keri.desalvo@divurgent.com
757.213.6875

Divurgent will feature a fast-paced, interactive Trivia Charity Drive inspired by the explosively popular mobile app game, Trivia Crack. It will be hard to miss the vibrantly-colored Trivia Charity Wheel as HIMSS attendees spin to see what trivia category they will land on, along with what donation value Divurgent will contribute on the attendee’s behalf. Everyone is welcome to participate to help Divurgent meet its goal of raising $5,000 for Lurie Children’s.

Divurgent is a nationally recognized healthcare IT consulting firm, specializing in cyber-security and privacy solutions, population health management, clinical documentation improvement, and activation management and training. Visit booth 1891 to learn how Divurgent can help improve your operational effectiveness, financial performance, and quality of patient care. To view all of Divurgent’s exciting events and happenings during HIMSS, click here.

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e-MDs

Booth 7832

Contact: Patrick Hall, executive vice president, business development
phall@e-mds.com
512.638.6966

E-MDs is a leading developer of integrated EHRs and practice management software for physician practices and enterprises. Founded and actively managed by physicians, the company is an industry leader for usable, connected software that enables physician productivity and a superior clinical experience. E-MDs software has received continual top rankings in physician and industry surveys including those conducted by the American Academy of Family Physicians’ Family Practice Management, AmericanEHR Partners, MedScape, and Black Book. E-MDs has a proven track record of positioning clients for success as demonstrated by Meaningful Use attainment in 2011, 2013, and 2014, and is currently rolling out Meaningful Use Stage 2-compliant solutions to clients. According to data provided by CMS, E-MDs clients are attesting in the top proportion of all major vendors. For more information, please visit www.e-mds.com, facebook.e-mds.com, and Twitter.com/emds.

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ESD

Booth 2749

Contact: David Tucker, vice president of national sales
dtucker@contactesd.com
512.350.1735

Celebrating our 25th year in business, we pride ourselves on assisting healthcare organizations make the most out of their healthcare IT investments. Our team of clinical support professionals increases adoption and usability among clinical and physician teams by helping prepare, implement, and optimize your EHR systems. Stop by booth 2749 to discuss your goals and challenges. We would be happy to help!

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Experian Health/Passport

Booth 2677

Contact: Cindy Dullea, chief marketing officer
cindy.dullea@passporthealth.com
703.802.1376

Experian Health and Passport provide the healthcare industry with a single platform that orchestrates every facet of the revenue cycle. Our integrated offering redefines efficiency with an exception-based workflow, Touchless Processing, and data and analytics to ensure unmatched payment certainty from patients and payers.

Giveaway: Visit booth 2677 and receive a Starbucks gift card—all while learning more about our Best in KLAS solutions to automate up to 80 percent of manual processes with intelligent automation.

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Extension Healthcare

Booth 4408 / Intelligent Hospital Pavilion Booth 6656-23

Contact: Jenny Kakasuleff, PR manager
jkakasuleff@extensionhealthcare.com
317.345.4176

Extension Healthcare will exhibit in booth 4408, as well as part of the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion in booth 6656-23. Our main booth will feature:

Demonstrations of the new release of Extension Engage (v5). Recharging lounge with seating, multiple charging stations, and individual tablet demos. The first 250 visitors who "listen and learn" will receive their own ear buds and case. Grand prize drawing for visitors who fill out a short survey worth $500. Private room available to meet with an Extension Healthcare representative.

Our solutions will also be featured in Cisco Systems booth 2002.

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Falcon Consulting Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Brendan Downing, partner
brendan@falconconsulting.com
312.751.8900

Falcon Consulting is a comprehensive Chicago-based healthcare consultancy founded in 2010 that boasts a primary capability as a provider of Epic Systems implementation and support services.  Falcon has experienced tremendous growth over the last three years and now deploys more than 130 consultants at 35 clients across the nation, serving in myriad capacities supporting a wide range of Epic applications and functions.  Falcon recently pivoted its operating model by focusing on the acquisition of several operational experts from a market-leading Big 4 management consulting firm in an effort to continue driving value across all aspects of our provider organizations.  

Falcon Consulting partitions its services into three main categories: Technology Services/Staff Augmentation, Professional Services, and Tools/Analytics. Our Technology Services team consists mainly of former Epic employees with market leading expertise, which is continually underscored by our outstanding client references.  The Professional Services vertical focuses on strategy and operations across all areas of the provider organization- from Planning and Strategy to Performance Improvement. Lastly, our tools are developed internally to tackle the most complex issues that our clients have faced during our time on the ground. They are built to focus specifically on real issues with value driven results. It is Falcon Consulting’s mission to provide the highest quality consulting services that deliver industry leading value. We firmly believe in creating a partnership with our clients and generating a mutually beneficial relationship which, in the end, drives the best possible patient quality outcomes and financial sustainability.

Falcon has reserved a dedicated meeting room (MP7) to hold meetings with current and prospective clients. Please reach out to Brendan Downing (brendan@falconconsulting or 312-751-8900) if you would like to schedule time to hear about one of Falcon’s service offerings.

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FDB (First DataBank)

Booth 2260

Contact: David Manin, director of marketing
dmanin@fdbhealth.com
650.872.4588

For HIMSS15, FDB (First Databank) has more than doubled its booth size (booth 2260) to share space with our sister companies – Zynx Health, MCG, and Homecare Homebase – under the Hearst Health network. FDB will highlight the following solutions: FDB Cloud Connector (FDB drug knowledge delivered though Web services); AlertSpace (for medication alert customization); MedsTracker (for medication reconciliation); Meducation by Polyglot (for patient medication adherence); Interoperability Module (for medication-related interoperability support); and OrderKnowledge (for medication ordering).

Giveaway: Stop by for a free cup of gourmet coffee!

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FormFast

Booth 1538

Contact: Philip Blanks, marketing manager
pblanks@formfast.com
800.218.3512

Experience Higher Performance at FormFast Booth 1538! FormFast empowers hospitals by automating documents and workflow, capturing data and streamlining operations. FormFast’s productivity platform fills the gaps between different clinical and non-clinical hospital technologies. FormFast’s healthcare business solutions empower hospitals with actionable information and streamlined processes. By automating data capture and document workflow, we help hospitals achieve new levels of operational efficiency. This allows them to concentrate on their core mission – delivering quality care.

Giveaway: Come to booth 1538 and see FormFast’s productivity solutions; explore the innovative, evolutionary BMW i8; and win an all-expense paid trip for two to Las Vegas for a test drive.

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Forward Health Group

Booth 5052

Contact: Barry Wightman, manager, media and communications
bmw@forwardhealthgroup.com
414.418.5654

Co-boothed with the American Heart Association and The Guideline Advantage, Forward Health Group will show off its powerful population health management toolset – PopulationManager. Highly ranked by KLAS, PopulationManager transforms chaotic data from disparate sources into valuable fuel, ready to identify and manage high-risk and/or high-cost patient populations, driving clinical outcomes improvement and financial success.

Giveaway: Stop by the booth and, if you’re really good, you’ll get a very cool LED flash light – shine a light on your data!

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GE Healthcare

Booth 939

Contact: Chris Bowler, general manager, Americas region marketing
christopher.bowler@ge.com
860.620.3487

Visit GE Healthcare IT at booth 939 to learn how actionable insights can help you improve clinical, financial, and operational outcomes. Our 17 demo stations include solutions for financial management, population health, enterprise imaging, and care delivery management. And don’t miss our Augmented Reality Theater, where you can see firsthand how our software, services, and ecosystem help you spark success.

Giveaway: Enjoy fresh popcorn and a 35-foot-wide cinema experience.

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GetWellNetwork

Booth 6627

Contact: Tony Cook, vice president, marketing
tcook@getwellnetwork.com
204.482.4212

Why come to our booth? Learn how our patient engagement solutions help healthcare providers engage, educate, and empower patients along the care continuum. Our patient-centered platform, delivered across mobile devices, computers, and televisions, enables providers to implement a care delivery model called Interactive Patient Care to improve performance and patient outcomes. The company extends the value of existing IT investments by integrating with EHR and patient portals.  GetWellNetwork was named the category leader for Interactive Patient Systems for the fifth consecutive year by KLAS.

Giveaway: Visit our booth to learn more about GetWellNetwork and enter a drawing to win a FitBit Charge.  

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Greencastle Associates Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Joe Crandall, director
crandallj@greencastleconsulting.com
856.685.0737

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Greenway Health

Booth 1806

Contact: Ryan Grable, Director, Demand Generation
ryan.grable@greenwayhealth.com
813.202.5055

Get connected to Greenway Health at booth 1806 and discover innovation that helps you practice medicine your way. With 10 percent of ambulatory providers in the U.S. using our solutions today, we offer intuitive EHRs and other tools; clinical templates that rank as the best in the business; and robust population health, patient engagement, and revenue cycle solutions. We’re also leading the industry in exchanging clinical data. Ask how we can help you! Visit Greenway Health at booth 1806!

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Hayes Management Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Patty Kellicker, Vice President, Marketing
pkellicker@hayesmanagement.com
617-559-0404, Ext 249

Hayes Management Consulting partners with healthcare organizations to streamline operations, improve revenue, and enhance technology to drive success in an evolving healthcare landscape. We are different than other consulting firms – our consultants come from the frontlines of healthcare and not only understand the day-to-day challenges you face, but weave those realities into everything we do, which is why 75 percent of our clients come back for another project. Learn more at www.hayesmanagement.com.

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The HCi Group

Booth 5155

Contact: Mitch Paine, executive vice president of business development
mitch.paine@thehcigroup.com
904.337.6320

At the HCi Group, we take pride in being a high-quality, value-driven provider for our clients. The HCi Group was founded on the principle that hospitals can have superior talent at reduced cost. We take a holistic approach to provide creative solutions and bring exceptional staff to our clients, ensuring the success of their initiatives. Many clients recommend the HCI Group as a result of our personal, prompt attention from leaders. The HCI Group forms working partnerships based on flexibility, responsiveness, and an entrepreneurial spirit. From the top down, our people will take on your project as our own.

Flexibility. The HCI Group produces highly creative and flexible solutions that will reduce risk and enhance outcomes. Quality. The HCi Group’s team of experienced professionals will consider every detail and go above and beyond to ensure success. Cost-effective solutions. Through collaborative planning and a lean business model, the HCi Group is able to target your pain points and offer comprehensive solutions at competitive rates, ensuring positive outcomes. We believe that selecting the HCi Group as your agile vendor partner will help to reduce the cost of implementing healthcare by delivering nimble, innovative solutions. And we prove it every day we go to work.

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Health Care Software (HCS)

Booth 1709

Contact: Tom Visotsky, executive vice president, sales and marketing
tvisotsky@hcssupport.com
732.938.5600, Ext 325

The HCS Interactant platform is an enterprise solution that includes integrated clinical and financial modules that address regulatory and functional requirements for acute care, post-acute care, and behavioral health.  Please visit HCS at booth 1709 to experience Interactant, our single platform solution that offers revenue cycle, financial management, EHR, and reporting and analytics capabilities.

Giveaways: Visit us for a demo and enter our drawing for a $250 American Express gift card. HCS is participating in the HIMSS LTC and Behavioral Health Task Force and will be giving away special gifts to LTPAC and behavioral health providers that visit our booth. We will also be hosting a night of baseball, beer, and burgers at the Brixen Ivy Rooftop overlooking Wrigley Field on Tuesday, April 14. In addition to fun, food, and HIT friends, we’ll be sending one lucky attendee home with a baseball autographed by Cubs Hall of Famer Ernie Banks. We invite LTPAC and behavioral health providers to contact us at tvisotsky@hcssupport.com or visit booth 1709 for details.

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Health Catalyst

Booth 7545

Contact: Patty Burke, program manager
patricia.burke@healthcatalyst.com
208.861.5406

Click here to set up a meeting or a time to view a short demo and be entered for a chance to win a $100 Amazon Gift card. Or, simply swing by booth 7545 to say hello and meet our team.

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Healthfinch

Booth 5273

Contact: Karen Hitchcock, director of marketing
karen@healthfinch.com
608.513.6566

Healthfinch makes Care Redesign applications that seamlessly integrate with the EHR to automate, delegate, and simplify the clinical tasks that are overwhelming physician inboxes. Our flagship product, Swoop (formerly RefillWizard), is used by major health systems to automate the prescription renewal request workflow. Using Swoop, organizations have dramatically decreased physician inbox tasks, saving over 1.5 million minutes of physician time. In addition to the time and efficiency savings, Swoop’s “care gap batching” feature identifies when patients are due for an office visit or diagnostic test. This proactive approach to patient care can be a critical component to quality improvement programs.

We invite HISTalk supporters to stop by the Healthfinch booth, 5273, at HIMSS. Meet our leadership team, including Lyle Berkowitz, MD a thought leader in #doctorhappiness, care redesign, and medical informatics. For those who schedule meeting times with us before April 11, we’re setting aside our limited edition Evolution of Care T-shirts, featuring Charlie, the happiest, hardest working healthfinch in the industry! See you there! (To book a specific meeting time and to reserve your T-shirt, please contact karen@healthfinch.com.)

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Huron Healthcare

Contact: Casey Liakos
cliakos@huronconsultinggroup.com
608.234.9537

Huron Healthcare is the premier provider of performance improvement and clinical transformation solutions for hospitals and health systems. By partnering with clients, Huron delivers strategy and solutions that improve quality; increase revenue; reduce expenses; and enhance physician, patient, and employee satisfaction across the healthcare enterprise. Clients include leading national and regional integrated healthcare systems, academic medical centers, community hospitals, and physician practices.

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Iatric Systems

Booth 7815

Contact: Judy Volker, marketing director
Judy.volker@iatric.com
978.805.3191

We hope you’ll stop by the Iatric Systems booth, #7815, at the HIMSS conference from April 12-16, 2015, in Chicago, and learn how we can help you get the right data to the right people at the right time. We also would love to discuss your upcoming needs regarding integration, patient privacy, medical device connectivity, the patient experience, Meaningful Use, HIE implementation, and any other healthcare IT requirements you may have.

Also, be sure to attend the educational session, "Stop Insider Snooping and Protect Your Patient Trust," April 14, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. CT, room S406, presented by Marc Combs, AVP and assistant chief information officer, West Virginia United Health System; and Rob Rhodes, director of patient privacy, Iatric Systems.

Giveaway: Have some fun while you’re with us – we’ll show some thrilling GoPro videos, and you can register to win a GoPro Hero3+ Silver.

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Imprivata

Booth 3848

Contact: Mark Erwich, vice president, marketing
merwich@imprivata.com
978.394.5595

Imprivata, the healthcare IT security company, is a leading provider of authentication, access management, and secure communications solutions. More than 1,200 healthcare organizations and 3 million end users globally rely on Imprivata’s solutions to improve provider productivity for better focus on the patient experience. At HIMSS15, Imprivata will showcase its portfolio of solutions, including:

• Imprivata OneSign, which delivers fast, secure No Click Access to EMRs, clinical applications, virtual desktops, and patient information.
• Imprivata Cortext, which enables secure, efficient communication and care coordination between providers across multiple healthcare organizations.
• Imprivata Confirm ID, which is the fast, secure signing solution for electronic prescribing of controlled substances.

In addition, Imprivata will feature a theater at its booth where customers will share their experiences and success stories using Imprivata solutions. Imprivata will have more than 35 presentations delivered by IT executives from hospitals and health systems providing details about their technology infrastructure, some of the challenges they faced, and how they are leveraging Imprivata’s solutions to address them. To pre-book a meeting with Imprivata, please visit http://www.imprivata.com/himss15.

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Influence Health

Booth 3148

Contact: Anna Powell, vice president, marketing
anna.powell@influencehealth.com
205.982.5805

HIMSS15 is all about TRANSFORMATION at the Influence Health booth 3148 – from a platform that is transforming healthcare to a transformed name and booth. The Influence Health platform is the industry’s only integrated digital consumer engagement and activation platform. It is helping organizations transform healthcare by enabling providers, employers, and payers to positively influence consumer decision making and health behaviors well beyond the physical care setting through personalized and interactive multi-channel engagement. Since 1996, the Birmingham, AL-based company has helped more than 1,100 provider organizations influence consumers in a way that is transformative to financial and quality outcomes. For more information, please visit influencehealth.com.

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InterSystems

Booth 961

Contact: Jerry Hinch, director of North American marketing
info@intersystems.com
800.753.2571

Be the first to know. Attend our new product announcement, Monday, April 13, 1:30 PM, for a revolution in patient engagement. InterSystems develops advanced software technologies that enable breakthroughs. With a passion for excellence and a focus on client success, InterSystems provides data management, strategic interoperability, and analytics platforms used in healthcare, financial services, government, and dozens of other industries. In selected countries, InterSystems also offers unified healthcare applications, based on these platforms, that deliver on the promise of connected healthcare. Founded in 1978, InterSystems is a privately held company headquartered in Cambridge, MA, with offices worldwide, and its products are used daily by millions of people in more than 100 countries. For more information, visit InterSystems.com/himss15.

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Legacy Data Access

Booth 3455

Contact: John Hanggi, director
jhanggi@legacydataaccess.com
678-232-7922

Legacy Data Access has retired 163 different healthcare applications – a total of 362 healthcare applications!  As a vendor-neutral archive provider, LDA has extensive experience in retiring numerous clinical applications including orders/results, nursing documentation, ancillary applications, and in many cases provides a Legal Medical Record for the stored data. Revenue cycle solutions include receivables functionality for earlier retirement of those applications. With a singular focus on the healthcare industry, Legacy Data Access stores data from applications – clinical, revenue cycle, ERP, ancillary, practice management and EHR – that are being retired and provides secure, Web-based access to the information. LDA’s solutions support financial and clinical processes and strategies by maintaining all detail, providing functionality based on your user requirements, improving productivity, and providing significant cost savings. If you are still running old applications just to get to the old data – we need to talk! We look forward to seeing you at our booth, 3455!

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LifeImage

Booth 4674

Contact: Jackie Leckas, vice president, marketing
jackie@lifeimage.com
617.990.2262

Medical image exchange is gaining momentum as a must-have clinical capability. When physicians can easily access their patients’ external imaging histories, they can make faster, more informed decisions, and they also order fewer repeat imaging procedures. LifeImage provides a platform for medical image sharing that all of the ‘ologies in the healthcare enterprise can leverage to send and receive imaging, and import it to local systems. We also integrate with Epic and Cerner to make outside exams easily available to care providers who are already working in the EHR. Visit our booth at HIMSS to learn about adopting image exchange at your organization.

Giveaway: All booth visitors will take home a mobile phone power bank to ensure their devices stay powered up during their Chicago travels.

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MEA I NEA

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Christine Alfano, senior director of corporate and product marketing
christine.alfano@nea-fast.com
813.532.0059

MEA|NEA will conduct meetings at HIMSS with healthcare clients and partners interested in streamlining their revenue cycle via electronic claim attachment processes. CEO Lindy Benton will be on-hand, as well as Chief Development Officer Kent McAllister, VP of Sales Scott Hefner and Senior Director or Corporate and Product Marketing Christine Alfano. Our team would love to meet with you. To schedule an appointment, please contact christine.alfano@nea-fast.com and let us know your area of interest.

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medCPU

Booth 108

Contact: Yoni Ben-Yehuda
ybenyehuda@medcpu.com

MedCPU delivers accurate, real-time, enterprise decision-support software and services through its proprietary Advisor technology. MedCPU captures the complete clinical picture from clinicians’ free-text notes, dictations, discharge summaries, and structured documentation entered into any EHR, and analyzes it against a growing library of best-practice content, generating real-time precise prompts for best care consideration. MedCPU’s founding multi-disciplinary team has been pioneering new clinical decision support for nearly 20 years, delivering intelligent error-reduction software systems to hospitals across the United States. MedCPU’s applications include clinical and compliance support solutions. Visit booth #108 to see the future of decision support today!

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MedData

Booth 4851

Contact: Chris Farrell, vice president of marketing
chris.farrell@meddata.com
440.627.2642

MedData is a leading national provider of revenue cycle management and patient financial lifecycle solutions, including billing, coding, collections, and patient satisfaction. We’ve provided innovative billing solutions to the medical community across a variety of specialties since 1980.

Giveaways: Stop by our booth for freshly baked scones, Operation challenge, and daily drawings for an Amazon gift card.

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Medhost

Booth 1817

Contact: Tom Mitchell, vice president of marketing
tom.mitchell@medhost.com
615.761.2011

Medhost is a provider of market-leading enterprise, departmental and healthcare engagement solutions to approximately 1,000 healthcare facilities. Our healthcare management system includes intuitive, easy-to-use and SaaS-enabled solutions, including YourCareUniverse, a comprehensive suite of cloud-based patient and provider engagement applications. Our robust offering of managed hosting, outsourcing and consulting services that are changing how clinicians and hospital leaders work and communicate, while generating notable operational, patient flow, care and revenue improvements. MEDHOST delivers value by enabling hospitals of all types and all sizes to better manage care and the business of healthcare while meeting evolving regulatory requirements.

Medhost will promote release of YourCareUniverse in our booth. YourCareUniverse, Inc. provides a comprehensive, integrated, cloud-based solution for managing the digital patient and supporting the consumer in a way that enables a healthcare organization to be the trusted source of health information and services within their community. Part of YourCareUniverse, we will also be highlighting YourCareEverywhere, a health and wellness site that provides medical information and localized branding for hospitals. We encourage all providers to come take a test drive of YourCareEverywhere. YourCareUniverse will also be highlighted in the Interoperability Showcase as part of a connected demonstration use case featuring the YourCareHealth portal.

Additionally, MEDHOST will be providing demos on our Physician Experience solution which provides charting, noting and the important orders management in a workflow that is natural to physicians. Other demos include our Emergency Department Information System, our Perioperative solution and AHA-endorsed Patient Flow application.

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Medicity

Booth 3431

Contact: Lauren Tilelli, director of marketing
ltilelli@medicity.com
770.633.9013

Medicity, a Healthagen business, powers clinically integrated networks for over 100 organizations, which together have more than 1,000 hospitals and 250,000 end users. Its core solutions for real-time care coordination, population health analytics, and leakage and steerage empower clients to achieve accountable care goals while advancing population health today and tomorrow. As the healthcare industry transitions to value-based care, large organizations and independent practices alike are challenged to implement solutions that provide the data and integrated workflow tools needed to meet their population health goals. This will be Medicity’s focus at HIMSS2015, as it shares its latest developments to help organizations identify high-risk populations, meet Meaningful Use objectives, improve patient outcomes, and reduce cost of care.

We can help you: identify and reduce leakage while growing market share; gain a full historic view of each patient in your population in seconds instead of days; alert providers and care managers when patients are admitted to, or discharged from, a health care facility; and quickly and securely engage providers and communicate across care settings.

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Medicomp Systems

Booth 2318

Contact: David Lareau, CEO
info@medicomp.com
703.803.8080

Lights, camera, action! Let’s play Quipstar! Back by popular demand, Medicomp Systems invites you to play Quipstar, the World’s Favorite HIT Quiz Show. Medicomp will show the live studio audience why doctors love Quippe, an easy-to-use documentation tool that works with your existing EHR, and that saves doctors time so they can see more patients. Contestants selected from the studio audience (this could be YOU!) will compete against popular HIT stars like Jacob Reider, MD Ross Martin, MD and Lyle Berkowitz, MD for cash and prizes.

Giveaways: At each show we’ll give away 10 (yes, 10!) iPad Air 2s, cash, and prizes. Only two shows daily so register now at www.medicomp.com/histalk.

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Nordic

Booth 1699

Contact: John Pollard, senior director of marketing
john.pollard@nordicwi.com
608.358.6600

Nordic is the world’s largest Epic consulting practice. Since 2012, Nordic has been ranked #1 by KLAS for providing Epic EHR consulting services to healthcare organizations. You can find Nordic at booth 1699. Look for the green Nordic banner just down the aisle from Epic. To make sure the right experts are available when you stop by our booth, we’ve set up “office hours.” We’ll discuss population health, a variety of ROI-based approaches to Epic optimization, dealing with mergers and acquisitions, guiding you through health IT complexity, and saving money on maintenance and support daily. View the hours at Nordicwi.com  While we’ll be sure to have specialists available during these times, we welcome you to arrange a time to discuss any of your Epic-related projects or challenges. Simply contact your Nordic representative or write events@nordicwi.com. We’ll be sure to make time for you!

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NTT Data

Booth 3943

Contact: Larry Kaiser, senior marketing manager
lawrence.kaiser@nttdata.com
310.301.1284

NTT DATA offers healthcare organizations a complete IT solution with applications that increase efficiency, reduce medical errors, and enhance the revenue cycle. Led by our flagship solution, Optimum, NTT DATA helps bring together healthcare consumers and providers to share data and manage care effectively. We back that engagement process with a full range of clinical, RCM, accounting, and mobile solutions. NTT DATA will be promoting our complete hospital HIS at HIMSS.

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NVoq

Contact nVoq (sales@nvoq.com) at HIMSS to learn more about SayIt, a true cloud-based speech recognition solution that converts speech to text within seconds. It also supports command and control through voice, or through voiceless “pop-up” shortcuts. NVoq will sponsor a Snack Hour in the HIStalk booth, 5371, on Tuesday, April 14 from 2-3pm CT. Stop by for Garrett’s popcorn and collectible lapel pins!

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Oneview Healthcare

Booth 7330

Contact: Jeff Fallon, president, North America
jfallon@oneviewhealthcare.com
724.720.9389

The Oneview Healthcare patient engagement and clinical workflow solution is the most innovative interactive patient care system on the planet. Visit out booth to see why hospitals on four continents choose our platform to improve patient satisfaction, enhance outcomes and increase efficiencies.

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Orion Health

Booth 4435

Contact: Sam Rosenbaum, senior marketing manager
sam.rosenbaum@orionhealth.com
857.301.2898

All attendees who schedule a meeting prior to HIMSS with Orion Health will have a donation made on their behalf to Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation For Childhood Cancer and be entered to win one of five Apple Watches. (Note: they will be shipped post-HIMSS as the release date is April 25.) Attendees can request a meeting by visiting www.orionhealth.com/himss/.

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Park Place International

Booth 6015

Contact: Christine Mellyn, Director of Marketing
781.636.8169

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Patientco

Booth 3639 in the Georgia Pavilion

Contact Josh Byrd, director of marketing
josh.byrd@patientco.com
404.444.2929

Patientco is the leading provider of cloud-based patient revenue cycle technology that empowers providers to optimize payments and increase business office efficiency through consumer-centric technology.     Patientco goes beyond basic payment capture to connect every patient payment event throughout a healthcare system — delivering unrivaled visibility into and control over the patient revenue cycle. The result is improved cash flow, reduced A/R days, cost-saving efficiencies, and increased patient and provider satisfaction. For more information, visit www.patientco.com.

This year, we are a sponsor of the Revenue Cycle Innovation Task Force (RCITF) Event at HIMSS. The task force findings will be presented in a brochure that can be picked up at the Patientco booth, 3639. We are located in the Georgia Pavilion.

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PatientKeeper

Booth 3212

Contact: Kathy Ruggiero, senior director of corporate marketing
kruggiero@patientkeeper.com
617.899.6521

PatientKeeper provides more than 60,000 physician users at hospitals and practice groups an intuitive way to view and act on patient information. PatientKeeper applications for order entry, med rec, documentation, charge capture, and other physician workflows run on desktop and laptop computers, smartphones and tablets, and integrate with existing IT infrastructure. Using PatientKeeper helps providers improve patient care, migrate smoothly to ICD-10, and achieve sustained Meaningful Use.  

Giveaways: Visit the "PK Cafe" at PatientKeeper’s booth (3212) for a refreshing coffee or smoothie drink.

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PDR

Booth 5225

Contact: Kimberly Koss, senior operations manager
kimberly.koss@pdr.net
314.567.0551

PDR is a trusted healthcare communications company providing targeted, clinically relevant information to Prescribers, Pharmacists, Payers, and Patients to improve health outcomes. PDR products and services integrate seamlessly within workflow in an effort to educate healthcare providers and impact prescribing behavior through access to information for better health. Reach over 300,000 contracted prescribers and 250,000 deployed prescribers within workflow by leveraging PDR’s proprietary business rules engine, a system that processes nearly 1 billion healthcare transactions annually.

PDR’s behavior-based messaging system is customized based on the specific actions providers take within their e-prescribing tool during patient encounters. The flow of information does not stop when the exam room door closes. PDR’s suite of professional educational tools now ranges beyond the education of healthcare providers to the education of their patients, providing resources that are certified to support Meaningful Use requirements and motivate patients to achieve medication adherence.

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PerfectServe

Booth 7439

Contact: Tom Hills, executive vice president, sales
thills@perfectserve.net
877.844.2777

PerfectServe is a comprehensive communications and collaboration platform that provides a secure infrastructure uniting physicians, nurses and other care team members across the continuum. PerfectServe goes beyond secure text messaging to offer multimodal access and interoperability, minimizing your HIPAA-compliance risk and enhancing your EMR investment. Visit us in booth 7439 to learn how healthcare organizations can address the widest variety of communication workflows across all stakeholders, which drives maximum clinician adoption and results in meaningful quality and operational improvement. Plus, we have candy! To learn more about PerfectServe, visit perfectserve.com.

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Phynd Technologies

Booth 2084

Contact: Thomas White, CEO
twhite@phynd.com
855.749.6363, Ext 710

The Phynd Provider Information Platform is a solution for poor provider data in the EHR and other systems. Phynd enables health systems to quickly and seamlessly integrate, manage, enroll "new" provider and analyze change data. With Phynd, hospitals improve revenue cycles, clinical communication, and productivity associated with managing provider data within multiple departments. At HIMSS, Phynd is part of the Interoperability Showcase with the leading EHR vendors and other related systems.

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Porter Research, a Billian Company

Booth 2045

Contact: Cynthia Porter, president
cynthia@porterresearch.com
678.427.6241

Porter Research and Billian’s HealthDATA offer unparalleled healthcare business insight and go-to-market research programs that help HIT firms and healthcare suppliers identify the best avenues to sell and market their products and services. Learn more by contacting cynthia@porterresearch.com or visit www.porterresearch.com.

Stop by booth 2045 on Tuesday, April 14, between 4:00 and 6:00 p.m. to learn more over complimentary cocktails and appetizers.

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Sagacious Consultants

Booth 1690

Contact: Jesse Adams, executive vice president
jesseadams@sagaciousconsultants.com
210-882-9658

Sagacious Consultants is your full-service business partner, leveraging technology to drive financial performance and improve patient care. Our strategic services help healthcare organizations increase revenue, decrease denials, and reduce AR days. Visit Sagacious Consultants at HIMSS booth 1690 for a chat with some of the EHR industry’s smartest leaders, including Founder and CEO Shane Adams and Principal Consultants Gordon Lashmett, George Evans, and Dr. Ron Jimenez. With experience as Epic CIOs and directors of clinical informatics, they will be available to offer advice about your most pressing technical and operational challenges.

Giveaway: Pick up some Sagacious swag while you’re visiting.

Sagacious Consultants will be rocking HIStalkapalooza as a Gold Sponsor. Invited guests can strut like rock stars on a red carpet at the House of Blues, grab a guitar or banjo prop, and strike a pose. Don’t leave without taking home a Sagacious rock poster commemorating this star-studded night for HIT.

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Sandlot Solutions

Booth 2641 & 2939

Contact: Lisa Verrecchia, marketing director
lverrecchia@sandlotsolutions.com
800.370.1393

Sandlot Solutions is a leading provider of clinical interoperability and community health management solutions focused on the exchange of clinical and claims data across the care community, population data analytics, and enhanced care coordination. Sandlot provides the tools and technology that enable healthcare organizations to improve the quality of care, understand and manage risk, reduce costs, and transition to new business models.

Giveaways: Sandlot Solutions is offering a tiered giveaway at HIMSS15. More interactions equals eligibility for higher-value prizes.

1^st Tier Prize: Enter for a chance to win your choice of $100 Amazon Gift Card or iTunes Gift Card
2^nd Tier Prize: Enter for a chance to win an iPad mini
3^rd Tier Prize: Enter for a chance to win a Surface Pro 3

Interactions include a badge swipe at either of the Sandlot booths, a product demo at the main Sandlot booth (2641), and market research at the Sandlot attractor booth (2939).

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Santa Rosa Consulting

Booth 2641 & 2939

Contact: Ashley Burkhead, sales operations and marketing manager
ashleyburkhead@santarosaconsulting.com
972.804.4216

Santa Rosa Consulting is offering a tiered give-away at HIMSS15. More visits equals eligibility for higher-value prizes.

Tier 1: Visit booth 2641 or Fortified Health Solution’s kiosk in the Cyber Security Command Center and be entered for a chance to win a $100 Amazon Gift Card.

Tier 2: Visit both booth 2641 AND our Fortified Health Solution’s kiosk in the Cyber Security Command Center and be entered for a chance to win your choice of an iOS or Android tablet valued at $500.

Tier 3: Visit both booth 2641, Fortified Health Solution’s kiosk at the Cyber Security Command Center AND participate in a Fortified Health Solution demo and be entered for a chance to win a LED TV of your choice valued at $700.

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Sunquest Information Systems

Booth 923

Contact: Ajay Kapare, director, marketing
Ajay.kapare@sunquestinfo.com
520.570.2868

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Talksoft

Booth 4390

Contact: Eric Pearlman, director of business development
epearlman@talksoftonline.com
866-966-4700

Founded in 1997, Talksoft is an applications service provider (ASP) of reminder and notification services using phone, text, email, and mobile app. Talksoft’s service-based approach provides affordable solutions for businesses of any size. Subscribers pay only a usage-based fee – there are no long-term contract commitments, and no computer hardware purchases. For more information, call (866) 966-4700 or visit talksoftonline.com.

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TeraMedica

Booth 3239

Contact: Robin Schroeder-Janonis, vice president of sales
sales@teramedica.com
414.908.7719

TeraMedica is proud to be named the 2014 KLAS Category Leader for VNA/Image Archive. At HIMSS15, we are pleased to introduce our powerful analytics platform and dashboards. The new analytics platform takes advantage of existing customized, role-based dashboards. These dashboards support interactive reporting with dynamic data filtering and trending analysis across categories. Featuring one-click statistical data summaries and forecasts, the enhancements increase user productivity and insight. Complementing our VNA’s new user interface, the solution simplifies data management, access, and quality assurance.

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Valence Health

Booth 5073

Contact: Kevin Weinstein, chief growth officer
kweinstein@valencehealth.com
312.273.6623

Valence Health provides value-based care solutions for hospitals, health systems, and physicians to help them achieve clinical and financial rewards for more effectively managing patient populations. Leveraging 20 years of experience, Valence Health works with clients to design, build, and manage value-based care models customized for each client including clinically integrated networks, bundled payments, risk-based contracts, ACOs, and provider-sponsored health plans. Providers turn to Valence Health’s integrated set of advisory services, analytical solutions, and managed services to make the volume-to-value transition with a single partner, in a practical and flexible way. Valence Health’s 600 employees empower 39,000 physicians and 130 hospitals to advance the health of 20 million patients. For more information, visit www.valencehealth.com.  

Giveaway: Come visit us at HIMSS in booth 5073 for a demonstration of our newly enhanced population health technology solutions, and register to win a free Valence Health value-based care readiness assessment. The winning organization will work closely with our subject-matter experts to evaluate your healthcare IT capabilities as they relate to enhancing care outcomes and optimizing rewards for quality.

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Versus Technology

Booth 2053

Contact: Stephanie Bertschy, director of marketing
info@versustech.com
231.946.5868

Move over EMR – it’s time for REAL-TIME automation! Manual data entry is so old school. The Versus real-time locating solution (RTLS) is the “engine” needed today to drive automated processes, increased access to care, and enhanced patient experiences. Take your own test-drive at HIMSS15 – Versus offers the only live RTLS demonstration on the exhibit floor. Our Experience Center features a fully operational Versus Sensory Network, demonstrating real-time updates in clinical workflow. Learn how we use location data, combined with powerful workflow intelligence, to not only drive efficiency at the point of care, but also automatically document key performance measures – helping you measure and manage your operations.  Plus, be one of the first to see our new Clearview Net Badge and Asset Net Tag, featuring Versus’ accurate, patented infrared (IR) technology in combination with CCX Wi-Fi locating.  With five clients presenting four educational sessions at HIMSS, we also offer ample opportunity to speak with real RTLS users. From asset tracking to patient flow process improvement, systems integration and hand hygiene monitoring, we’re sure to put you in touch with a peer who can offer insight into your own initiatives.  Real hospitals, real clinics, real surgery centers rely on Versus as their partner for process improvement. Come to booth #2053 to put yourself in the driver’s seat and learn why.

Giveaway: The first 100 visitors to mention HISTalk will receive our collectible HIMSS15 blinky pin.

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VisionWare

Booth 7139

Contact: Julie Bastien, marketing director
julie.bastien@visionware.com
508.449.4360

Meet the VisionWare team and find out what makes us the leading provider of master data management (MDM) solutions for hospitals, health systems and healthcare technology companies. We’ll walk you through a demo and show you how our solution ensures the success of our customers’ population health, big data, and patient engagement initiatives by providing a single source of truth across an enterprise. We enable multiple source systems to exchange data easily and empower decision-makers with a holistic view of their patients, providers or system as a whole. We look forward to seeing you at booth 7139!

Giveaway: Visit the VisionWare booth and have your personal caricature drawn by our onsite artists. You can wear it proudly around the halls of HIMSS or make it your new profile picture!

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WeiserMazars

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Marc Grossman, principal
marc.grossman@weiermazars.com
516.641.4210

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Wellsoft Corp.

Booth 1742

Contact: Denise Helfand, vice president, sales and marketing
dhelfand@wellsoft.com
800.597.9909

Consistently ranked #1 Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) by KLAS, (most recently awarded Best in KLAS 2014), Wellsoft EDIS offers an exceptional combination of experience, extensive workflow analysis, and award winning customer support. Wellsoft EDIS is certified for Meaningful Use. Software features include patient tracking, clinical documentation, CPOE/results, charge capture including infusion charge capture, risk management and CCD document exchange. Wellsoft is EDIS at its BEST! Visit Wellsoft at booth 1742 for a brief demonstration and to discuss how Wellsoft EDIS fully integrates with HIS and ancillary systems, AND can help with your roadmap to Meaningful Use attestation.

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Wolters Kluwer Health

Booth 8103

Contact: Alyssa Lamoreaux, director of communications
alyssa.lamoreaux@wolterskluwer.com
612.313.1510

A leader in point of care information, Wolters Kluwer Health Clinical Solutions provide best-of-breed offerings focused on improving the quality of care and driving clinical productivity. Hospitals, ASCs, physicians offices, payers, labs and retail pharmacies turn to us as their trusted partner for the content and tools they rely on every day. From clinical documentation, to clinical drug information, to clinical informatics and surveillance, to clinical decision support, our products deliver meaningful solutions clinicians value. Facts & Comparisons, Lexicomp, Medi-Span, ProVation Medical, ProVation Order Sets, Sentri7, Health Language & UpToDate.

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Xerox

Booth 4426

Contact: Kirsten LeMaster, VP, marketing and communications, healthcare provider solutions
hcprovider@xerox.com
877.414.2676

Today’s Xerox simplifies the way work gets done in surprising ways. Like supporting healthcare professionals in over 1,900 hospitals. With consulting services, Midas+ analytics and adoption solutions from The Breakaway Group, A Xerox Company, we help healthcare providers apply, manage and use technology that simplifies caregiver workloads. So you have more time to focus on delivering the level of care everyone deserves.

Heather Haugen PhD, CEO of The Breakaway Group, a Xerox Company, will host a HIMSS session, “Beyond Implementation: Achieving Value from Your EHR after Implementation,” on April 15 at 8:30 a.m. in room S103 (Session ID: 33)

Giveaway: There will be a caricature artist in our booth drawing attendees that stop by our booth during exhibit hall hours.

News 4/3/15

Top News

The Apple-IBM partnership releases four healthcare-related apps in IBM’s MobileFirst for iOS series, although IBM is holding back the formal announcement until the HIMSS conference. The apps include an iPhone communication system for hospital nurses, an iPad workload app for hospital charge nurses, a notification and lab status app for hospital techs, and an app that allows home care nurses to upload information to an EHR.

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Reader Comments 

From Mobile Gas: “Re: IBM’s MobileFirst for iOS Healthcare. It seems like smoke and mirrors since they didn’t provide a list of customers and looks like they just built a series of applications without considering apps already deployed. The hospital nurse needs tight integration with the hospital EMR and Epic and Cerner both offer point-of-care applications. They also need connections to secure messaging and alarm notification from companies like Voalte and Vocera. This will lead to further market confusion as Apple and IBM build products in the ivory tower and expect customers to figure out the integration. I think this is another sign that Apple doesn’t understand the healthcare enterprise – they could have addressed enterprise issues, such as iOS management and WiFi connectivity, and instead are building generic applications that will be hard to integrate with hospital core systems.” Most surprising to me is that IBM didn’t announce integration partnerships with Allscripts, Epic, Cerner, or Meditech and didn’t mention working with health systems to design and test their apps or to validate that they offer something important that EHR vendors don’t. I’m skeptical. Just because health systems run applications on IBM systems doesn’t mean IBM can grab EHR data indiscriminately and use it intelligently, although maybe the announcements that are being held for HIMSS contain more vendor-specific details.

From John: “Re: gender bias. Have you counted how many interviews you’ve done with men vs. women?” I haven’t counted, but it’s probably proportional to the gender ratio within the specific job roles (CEO, CMIO, etc.)  If your point is that men are disproportionately represented in those roles, then I obviously agree, although it’s a slippery slope to then propose fixing what is perceived as a societal problem based on the single factor of gender. I like to think I’m gender-blind since most of the people I’ve chosen to work with are female and some of the better interviews I’ve done were with women. I’ll interview anyone who has the potential to be interesting and who is willing to do it my way — don’t underestimate that second factor since it takes guts to be interviewed for a full transcript without knowing in advance what questions I’ll ask and not having the chance to review the answers before I publish them.

From Kopecky: “Re: Mark Cuban. Getting flamed on Twitter for urging quarterly blood tests ‘for everything available’ as a baseline.” He’s well-intentioned even though he’s wrong. He assumes that frequent testing will create a personal baseline that will be more useful than population-based normal ranges when something changes. Here’s the problem: the more results doctors see, the more pressure they feel to do something about them because that’s how they are trained and they don’t want to get sued. Things start going wrong when patients get roped into the healthcare system … medical errors, polypharmacy, and compounded drug side effects. That’s the same problem with apps that create a continuous stream of questionably valuable medical data that someone has to review and react to. I suspect we harm far more people by providing unnecessary knee-jerk treatment than we do by not collecting enough data to support an early diagnosis. It would be great if “health” was a simple as automatically applying harm-free interventions in response to well-defined physiologic inputs or genetic analysis, but it’s not. Healthcare is often dangerous to your health.

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor MedCPU. The tagline of the New York City-based clinical decision support company is “Accuracy is not optional.” Its MedCPU Advisor analyzes the complete electronic clinical picture (including both structured and free-text data) in real time against an algorithm matrix, providing case-specific prompting with minimal false alarms. No change in user worfklow is required since the system runs in the background with no separate logon or additional data entry required. The company’s experts build, configure, and maintain best-practice rules from its library of specialty modules with minimal client resources required. On the technology side, the company provides integration via reader technology that requires no IT resources and includes a patented Context Engine to process free text information. Founder and CEO Eyal Ephrat, MD is an obstetrician and previously founded E&C Medical Intelligence (now PeriGen). Thanks to MedCPU for supporting HIStalk. 

My YouTube search turned up a new explainer video for MedCPU Advisor.

This week on HIStalk Practice: Iora Health takes on primary care nationally with a homegrown EHR. Community Health Center serves as a model for a new telehealth program in Colorado. Australian physicians get no respect from their EHRs. Health information exchange in Georgia moves forward, as does telemedicine in Delaware. Spruce raises $15M from headline-making Kleiner Perkins. Health Informatics Director Karen Schogel, MD weighs in on MU3 at Genesis Medical Associates. Thanks for reading.

This week on HIStalk Connect: Google partners with Johnson & Johnson to co-develop a surgical robot that will integrate real-time image analysis and decision support into the surgeons workflow. In England, students with the Royal College of Art and the Imperial College London have created a self-stabilizing pen designed to help patients with Parkinson’s disease maintain legible handwriting. Apple and IBM unveil their newest batch of co-developed enterprise apps, including four apps designed for nurses. Fitbit finalizes its $18 million acquisition of Fitstar, a paid app that develops personalized workouts based on user’s fitness goals.

If you want one of these pins, stop by our HIMSS booth # 5371 on next Monday since we intentionally ordered few enough of them to make them collectible (actually it was mostly to avoid the risk of lugging them back home). We suggested that our sponsors design their own buttons, although I don’t know which ones actually did.

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HIStalkapalooza Sponsor Profile

Visit Sagacious Consultants at HIMSS Booth # 1690 for a chat with some of the EHR industry’s smartest leaders, including founder and CEO Shane Adams and principal consultants Gordon Lashmett, George Evans, and Dr. Ron Jimenez. With experience as Epic CIOs and directors of clinical informatics, they will be available to dish out advice about your most pressing technical and operational challenges.

Sagacious Consultants will be rocking HIStalkapalooza as a Gold Sponsor. Guests can strut like rock stars on a red carpet at the House of Blues, grab a guitar or banjo prop, and strike a pose. Don’t leave without taking home a Sagacious rock poster commemorating this star-studded night for HIT.

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Webinars

April 8 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Leveraging Evidence and Mobile Collaboration to Improve Patient Care Transitions.” Sponsored by Zynx Health. Presenter: Grant Campbell, MSN, RN, senior director of nursing strategy and informatics, Zynx Health. With mounting regulatory requirements focused on readmission prevention and the growing complexity of care delivery, ACOs, hospitals, and community-based organizations are under pressure to effectively and efficiently manage patient transitions. This webinar will explore the ways in which people, process, and technology influence patient care and how organizations can optimize these areas to enhance communication, increase operational efficiency, and improve care coordination across the continuum.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

VistA vendor Medsphere and IT solutions provider Phoenix Health Systems merge. The Medsphere name wins, adding consulting and outsourcing services from Phoenix.

Healthland acquires revenue cycle solutions firm Rycan.

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Sales

Cedars-Sinai Health System (CA) chooses HealthLoop for automating patient follow-up.

MultiCare Connected Care (WA) selects Sandlot Solutions to create a community-wide electronic information exchange.

Xerox will incorporate SyTrue’s natural language processing and medical terminology platform into its Midas+ analytics to generate diagnostic and procedure codes from clinical documentation in real time to calculate risk and outcomes for case management.

Kindred Healthcare’s hospital division chooses transcription, front-end speech recognition, and clinical documentation improvement from MModal.

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People

Dave Levin, MD (Nordic) joins PeraHealth as physician executive.

Ed Marx resigns as SVP/CIO of Texas Health Resources.

Chuck Christian (St. Francis Hospital) is named VP of technology and engagement of the Indiana HIE.

Mike Waldrum, MD, MSc, MBA, president and CEO of the University of Arizona Health network, leaves quickly after the system’s acquisition by Banner Health to become CEO of Vidant Health (NC). He was CIO at UAB Health System from 1999 to 2004.

CognitiveScale launches a healthcare business unit that will apply cognitive computing to chronic care management and names Charles Barnett (Seton Family Healthcare) as the healthcare group’s president.

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Announcements and Implementations

Joining the CommonWell Health Alliance are Meditech, Merge, and Kareo as contributing members and PointClickCare and Surgical Information Systems as general members.

The Chicago business paper profiles MedDocLive, started by a former Epic project manager turned medical student, which provides medical students and residents to help hospitals with their EHR go-lives.

The New Mexico HIE goes live with technology provided by Orion Health.

Here’s an interesting graphic tweeted out by KLAS as a teaser to buy its latest $15,980 health analytics report, which according to the graphic, involved only 77 respondents of which 28 said no vendors offer emerging capabilities. Health Catalyst and Truven are at the bottom with just three votes each? I’d have to see the methodology before I’d believe that.

Practice Fusion enables doctors to print drug coupons right from its free EHR, no doubt charging the drug companies that provide them. Patients like prescription drug samples and coupons, not usually realizing the indirect cost to themselves or those paying for their care.

MModal announces that transcription employment at its Coimbatore, India office has reached 1,000.

Vocera announces integration of its communications system with Epic for bed cleaning and availability updates, with similar integration with other EHRs planned.

Summit Healthcare partners with S&P Consultants to offer Cerner solutions that include domain compare and synchronization, blood bank validation, and a scripting toolkit for workflow automation.

CVS Caremark announces new affiliations with Rush University Medical Center (IL) and Tucson Medical Center (AZ) that includes sending CVS prescription and visit information to the EHRs of participating providers and offering patients services via its in-store MinuteClinics. Meanwhile, CVS filings show that its CEO earned $32 million in 2014 and added another $11 million in stock value. CVS share price increased 38 percent in the past year.  

Non-profit health information provider Healthwise offers a course on shared decision-making.

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Government and Politics

Texas lawmakers are considering a bill that would prevent providers from recording a patient’s gun ownership status in their medical records. The office of Rep Stuart Spitzer, who is a surgeon, says consumers are alarmed at being asked gun-related questions during visits and that he doesn’t trust the National Security Agency and other government agencies.

Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush will host a $10,000 per person fundraiser at his Massachusetts home for his cousin, presidential contender Jeb Bush.

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Other

Bob Wachter, MD is ubiquitous in plugging his new book (which I haven’t read), publishing endless excerpts all over the place including a series titled “The Overdose; Harm in a Wired Hospital.” It describes a single incident at UCSF Medical Center, his employer. It should be noted that despite the manufactured drama and hype-laden headlines (such as “How Medical Tech Gave a Patient a Massive Overdose”), the patient ended up being fine with no permanent harm from UCSF’s mistakes, although the salacious if inaccurate headlines might move a few more copies than just admitting institutional errors. Stripping away the novel-like prose leaves these facts:

• A pediatric patient (16 years old) was given 38.5 Septra DS tablets due to a series of errors resulting from the resident’s botched attempt to re-order a home med of one tablet twice daily.
• The incident happened in July 2013, just over a year after UCSF’s Epic go-live, but Bob  doesn’t say if the resident had just started her rotation on July 1.
• The hospital had decided to require clinicians to dose medications by weight for children under 40 kg without exception.
• UCSF had elected not to turn on Epic’s overdose limits because teaching hospitals use research protocols that don’t always follow published standards.
• The pediatrics resident entered the order correctly, but then had to adjust it to match the available tablet strength per UCSF policy. She then re-entered the same order incorrectly, apparently failing to notice the mg/kg dosing that, according to hospital policy, should have been present on every single order she had ever entered into Epic, including the same order she had just entered for that same patient. She entered the dose as “160” in trying to enter the milligrams of trimethoprim instead and then ignored the resulting overdose message. The resident blames UCSF’s Epic setup for issuing too many alerts and for failing to highlight the most important ones.
• The UCSF pharmacist accepted the resident’s order after ignoring his own dose warnings.
• The hospital had floated a a newly-licensed night shift nurse from her normal PICU assignment to the general pediatrics floor because of short staffing, She didn’t question the dose and didn’t ask the charge nurse because she “didn’t want to sound dumb,” so she helped the patient swallow 38.5 oversized tablets.

The article series isn’t finished yet, but my conclusions so far are:

• Bob’s working the author angle of being the technology-wary guy to consumers. He writes well, but his lay audience probably won’t understand that hospitals make mistakes constantly even without technology. Paper orders were no picnic, believe me, and UCSF has some obvious people problems in putting newbies on the front line with questionable supervision. If your kid driving on a learner’s permit wrecks the family car while speeding, don’t blame the car manufacturer for not making the speedometer bigger.
• This is a classic example of the “Swiss cheese effect,” where an event occurred only because a normally reliable system of checks and balances fell apart due to alignment of failed links in the chain (new resident, new nurse working off her normal unit, nobody caught the mistakes made by others).
• The Epic screen is busy and doesn’t highlight the magnitude of the alert very well. UCSF’s decision not to hard-stop overdoses (in my experience, that’s probably because they don’t want to annoy easily angered doctors, although their research rationale is valid) would have prevented this mistake.
• UCSF’s “mg/kg dosing only” rule is commendable for most but maybe not all medications. They apparently decided to make this change universally when putting in Epic. It would be interesting to see what training was offered to prescribers before this change was made and how many of them were in favor of it.  
• IT systems often lull people into a false sense of security since the screen always looks calm and rational. The alerts don’t, as Bob suggests, throw up a big skull-and-crossbones graphic – system designers assume that it’s the human’s job to understand the situation and not to cry wolf constantly.
• I would be interested to know what steps UCSF took to reduce insignificant drug warnings both before and after the event since Bob thinks the number is excessive. How does UCSF compare with comparable users?
• Epic could certainly redesign its screens to call more forceful attention to the biggest error outliers (or at least those it can detect with certainty), just like your PC says “Do you really want to do this?” before allowing you to accidentally format your hard drive. Perhaps Epic’s setup could (or should) require resident-entered orders that have seemingly big problems to be verified by an attending or chief resident before shooting them off to the pharmacy for immediate dispensing. IT-reduced turnaround time is not your friend when you make a mistake.
• Professionals have to be responsible for their actions and their judgment in using software, whether they’re doctors, accountants, or stockbrokers. UCSF put a lot of very green people on the front lines and they screwed up in ways that would have been equally horrifying with or without a computer (38.5 oversized adult tablets for a kid? Come on, just-graduated nurse, use your critical thinking skills).
• Errors usually happen when clinical employees are overworked, interrupted, or afraid of getting chewed out and all of these issues were reported by those involved.
• Don’t go to an academic medical center unless you really need one (and I say that having worked a long time in both academic and community hospitals). The July 1 new resident screw-up phenomenon has been well documented. Huge size and specialization means that when they float nurses as in this case, they’re dumped into a complex environment where they don’t know the people or processes. Academic attending physicians often possess big egos and make anyone who questions them (including the software analysts who configure clinical alerts) feel shamed, so nobody challenges them. Doctors and staff see so many complex, throw-out-the-rulebook cases that questionable orders are overlooked. Handoffs and intra-department communications aren’t always efficient since so many people are involved and they don’t always even know each other. Bring someone to sit by your side the whole time and question everything. I doubt the mom would have allowed her child to choke down 38.5 pills knowing it’s supposed to be a single one like she’d been giving at home.

What do you think? Clinical folks, how would your system and your people handle a potential mistake like this? Here’s a challenge for you: enter the same order for a similar patient in your test environment and send me a screenshot of what the ordering physician would see (I’ll de-identify the image). Let’s see how other hospitals and other IT systems work.

Quite a few companies observed April 1 with phony commercials and news items. This one from Microsoft announcing “MS-DOS Mobile” is pretty good. Epic had its usual home page makeover.

The teen whose parents publicly shamed an Atlanta hospital into giving him a free heart transplant in 2013 despite his history of not complying with prescribed therapy crashes a stolen car following a crime spree and dies.

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Sponsor Updates

• Arcadia Healthcare Solutions client Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic will receive an IT innovator award at the HIMSS conference.
• ESD posts 25 days of its history as it commemorates its 25th anniversary. Check out Day 7, where you’ll see its video of HIStalkapalooza 2012 in Las Vegas, which it did a great job of sponsoring. I still watch that video every couple of months because it’s fun and full of familiar faces, maybe even yours.
• Extension Healthcare releases version 5.0 of its clinical alarm safety platform.
• Hayes Management Consulting posts “Patient Portals: How to Balance Privacy and Engagement.
• Healthcare Data Solutions is named Concur’s App Center Partner of the Year for the third year in a row.
• Healthfinch asks “Is Primary Care in Rural America at Risk?”
• QPID Health President and CEO Mike Doyle will present on maximizing technology’s value to patients and providers at the ACHE Massachusetts Spring Conference on April 15 in Needham, MA.
• Healthgrades offers “5 Lessons I Learned from 10.10.10 in Denver.”
• Impact Advisors offers “Population Health Management Vendor Selection.”
• Liaison Technologies offers “Winning Lab Information Strategies for Value-Based Care.”
• Healthwise shares “The Secret Behind Serving Up the Right Information Every Time.”
• Holon Solutions will exhibit at the Texas Organization of Rural & Community Hospitals Annual Conference April 7-9 in Dallas.
• Intellect Resources offers tips on “Networking at HIMSS.”
• Galen Healthcare Solutions wraps up its experience at the InterSystems Global Summit.
• InterSystems recaps its annual conference, Global Summit 2015.

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Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk updates.
Contact us online.

News 10/14/15

Top News

DrFirst firms up $25 million in equity financing from Goldman Sachs, bringing its total financing over the last year to $42 million. The company, which announced last week the integration of its medication management software and secure communications with the Rx30 Pharmacy Management System, will use the investment to ramp up sales, marketing, and product development.

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#HIStalking Tweet Chat – Patient Engagement Outside the Office

Loran Cook (@loranstefani) will host the next #HIStalking tweet chat on Thursday, October 15 at 1pm ET. Check out discussion topics here.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Sunnyvale, CA-based Health Gorilla secures a $2.4 million Series A led by Data Collective with additional financing from True Ventures, Harris Barton, Orfin Ventures and Venture Investment Associates. The company has also expanded its diagnostic test automation platform to include electronic ordering and secure messaging. Complete health history capture and sharing will be added to the new Clinical Network in the coming months. 

Nightingale Informatix finalizes the sale of its US-based PM business to Pulse Systems, with gross proceeds totaling $11 million. As part of the transaction, Nightingale and Pulse will refrain from selling into each other’s markets for three years.

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Telemedicine

 

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Announcements and Implementations

Georgia Health Information Network successfully connects to Alabama’s One Health Record HIE. The state-to-state connection is the second for GaHIN, which connected with South Carolina’s HIE late last year.

Three Pennsylvania-based HIEs – ClinicalConnect HIE, HealthShare Exchange of Southeastern Pennsylvania, and Keystone HIE – join the Pennsylvania EHealth Partnership Authority’s Pennsylvania Patient & Provider Network. (You can read my interview with Pennsylvania EHealth Partnership Authority Executive Director Alix Goss here.)

Smartphone patient scheduling vendor Everseat joins Athenahealth’s More Disruption Please program.

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People

Pam Stampen (American Family Insurance) joins Nordic as vice president of human resources.

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Research and Innovation

A two-year study of eight primary care practices and three mental health clinics determines that there’s no seamless way to bring behavioral health and primary care data together into their different EHRs. Clinicians developed workarounds to handle duplicate data entry, different templates for primary care and mental health, and reliance on physician or patient recall for inaccessible EHR information. Researchers conclude that vendors and physicians work together to design EHRs that better support: integrated care delivery functions, including data documentation and reporting; integrated teams working from shared care plans, template-driven documentation for common behavioral health conditions; and improved registry functionality and interoperability.

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Other

Peer60’s new standalone ambulatory facility EHR report (not ambulatory EHRs in general as other sites misinterpreted) finds that Epic and Cerner are tied for mind share leadership, with Epic holding a big market share lead. Meditech and Allscripts have decent market share in hospital-owned facilities, but zero mind share, meaning their customers are at risk for defecting. NextGen is also at risk since it has the highest market share among independently owned facilities, but also zero mind share in which Cerner, Epic, and eClinicalWorks dominate. Respondents said vendors should make their product easier to use, improve reporting, and improve practice management capabilities, although 32 percent say it won’t matter since the hospital dictates the EHR used.

Quartz takes a refreshing crack at removing unnecessary business jargon from Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey’s memo announcing 336 layoffs. My inner journalist only wishes the editors had used red lines instead of black. 

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Sponsor Updates

• Aprima will exhibit at the Oklahoma Primary Care Association event October 14-16 in Oklahoma City.
• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at The National Conference on Correctional Healthcare October 17-21 in Dallas.

Blog Posts

• How New Technologies are Expanding Care (Billian’s HealthData)
• ICD-10 Applying Lessons from Implementation (Greenway Health)
• 6 Steps to Building Your Own Plain-Language Glossary (Healthwise)

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Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.

News 4/1/15

Top News

 

Marlin Equity Partners acquires PM/EHR vendor e-MDs and merges the company with another of its portfolio holdings, revenue cycle services vendor MDeverywhere. E-MDs founder and CEO David Winn, MD will retire.

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Reader Comments

From Abe: “Re: Allscripts. I would like to know why the information of 250 people being laid off/fired at Allscripts is not on your web site. When all was good, you had them highlighted. Now that its looking grim … nothing.” Come on, Abe, at least read the darned posts before complaining – it was right there in Monday’s edition. I obviously wasn’t present for the layoffs and companies don’t announce them, so unless one of those 250 people tells me what happened (which they didn’t), I have no way of knowing, but I went with the second-hand report of two readers. And before you claim sponsor bias, Allscripts isn’t one any more – I got tired of their ignoring their months-overdue invoices and cancelled them. Meanwhile, a third reader who doesn’t indicate whether they work for Allscripts says “this very disorganized company” is laying off 265 people. The MDRX share price has dropped 35 percent in the past year, so the ever-struggling company is surely feeling pressure to try something different as it hopes its oft-repeated “population health management” mantra makes investors forget about the legacy ambulatory EHRs and low-selling Sunrise that make up most of its business.

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I have to bite my tongue (or fingers) not to correct people who refer to times as “EST,” which is inaccurate until the clocks are turned back in November. We are in “EDT” and not “EST,” but if you want to simplify, just say “ET” year-round and you’ll always be correct. I’ve also had people get confused for interviews or calls when Lorre schedules them because she’s in Arizona, which doesn’t observe Daylight Saving Time (except for the Navajo Nation) and thus is on Mountain Standard Time year round, which is the same as PDT, meaning three hours behind EDT from spring until fall and two hours behind otherwise. We do all of this to try to unsuccessfully control nature, which ignores our human tinkering and raises and sets the sun regardless of how we play with our clocks.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Medecision. The Wayne, PA based company’s Aerial population health management technology identifies high-risk patients (or members), guides them to the most appropriate care, provides their clinicians with decision support tools, and automates manual operations, all via integration with existing systems. Aerial offers a unified clinical record, seamless integration feeds, hundreds of SOAP- and REST-based services, and a modular platform with 150 published Web services and APIs to facilitate interconnectivity. It’s appropriate for any healthcare organization that is bearing risk in the move from fee-for-service to fee-for-value, supporting care coordination, care management, case and disease management, advanced clinical content, and consumer engagement. Thanks to Medecision for supporting HIStalk.

I found a just-published YouTube video that introduces Medecision.

Also sponsoring HIStalk at the Platinum level is Peer60 of American Fork, UT, which describes itself as “the best B2B research solution on the planet.” CEO Jeremy Bikman founded the company after serving as a partner/EVP at KLAS. His folks tap into the company’s network of 100,000 decision-makers get feedback, generate leads, and perform custom market research. Client HIMSS Analytics got a response rate 500 percent higher than it expected after working with the company, while Sectra standardized all of its performance metrics on the Peer60 platform. You can download a free copy of “What Hospitals Plan to Buy in 2015” or its report on interoperability, among other available free reports. You can also visit them in HIMSS Booth # 5009, where they will again be giving away cool guitars. I also noticed the sly comment on their site that interoperability is “making news in the many of the largest news sources on the planet (WSJ, Fortune, Forbes, HIStalk),” which was cute. Thanks to Peer60 for supporting HIStalk.

I headed over to YouTube looking for a Peer60 video and came across this funny one called “It Was the Patient Catapult!” 

Listening: new trippy-happy-hippie music from The Mowgli’s, who first claimed that their misuse of the apostrophe in their name “represented the marginalization of society,” but later admitted that they were just stoned when they chose it. It’s as light and frothy as a pina colada on a summery beach.

We received the shirts that our HIMSS conference patient advocate scholarship winners will be wearing. Look for long-sleeved white shirts with Regina Holliday’s HIStalking painting on the back.

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HIStalkapalooza Sponsor Profile

 

HIStalkapalooza! As one of the platinum sponsors for this event, The Santa Rosa Family of Companies — Santa Rosa Consulting, Sandlot Solutions, InfoPartners, and Fortified Health Solutions — will be circulating the main floor as well as hosting up to 20 people at a time in our opera box. Stop by our caricature drawing station to pose for a fun way to remember the night! We’ll send you a digital file of your drawing after the event to avoid worries about holding the drawing all night or protecting it while travelling home after HIMSS. Bottles of water will be provided for you as you leave House of Blues so you can hydrate on the way back to your hotel for a good night’s rest for the next big day at HIMSS15.

You can find The Santa Rosa Family of Companies at various places throughout the HIMSS15 show floor: main booth #2641, Sandlot Solutions market research booth #2939, and the Fortified Health Solutions Kiosk within the Cybersecurity Pavilion. Don’t miss our presentation on Monday, April 13 at 4:45 p.m. on “The Importance of Sensitive Information Discovery.” Take a tour of all of our locations at HIMSS15 with our Passport Giveaway Program –pick up your passport, obtain your stamps at our various locations, and you’ll be entered to win prizes that grow in value with each interaction.

We look forward to seeing you in Chicago!

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Webinars

April 8 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Leveraging Evidence and Mobile Collaboration to Improve Patient Care Transitions.” Sponsored by Zynx Health. Presenter: Grant Campbell, MSN, RN, senior director of nursing strategy and informatics, Zynx Health. With mounting regulatory requirements focused on readmission prevention and the growing complexity of care delivery, ACOs, hospitals, and community-based organizations are under pressure to effectively and efficiently manage patient transitions. This webinar will explore the ways in which people, process, and technology influence patient care and how organizations can optimize these areas to enhance communication, increase operational efficiency, and improve care coordination across the continuum.

Here’s MedData’s webinar from Tuesday titled “Best Practices for Increasing Patient Payments.”

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Forbes profiles technology companies that are springing up to support the medical marijuana industry, with the pot equivalents of Yelp, Groupon, and Monster.com joining software developers that sell legally mandated inventory and sales tracking applications. One company is even creating a cannabis futures market that allows farmers to lock in prices for their crops.

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Sales

HealthShare Exchange of Southeastern PA selects Audacious Inquiry’s encounter notification service for its regional exchange. The statewide Florida HIE’s Event Notification Service also uses the company’s technology.

Golding Living chooses HCS Interactant for revenue cycle management in its 300 long-term care centers.

Children’s Hospital Association chooses Health Catalyst’s data warehouse for its 220 hospital members.

Greenwood Leflore Hospital (MS) chooses Dbtech’s eFolders and Interactive eForms solutions for electronic forms, document storage, and electronic signatures.

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People

HHS CTO Bryan Sivak resigns.

 

Shareable Ink names board member Hal Andrews (Availity) as CEO. He replaces Laurie McGraw, who is leaving the company.

 

Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (NC) promotes VP/CIO Chad Eckes to EVP/CFO, where he will continue to oversee its IT department, and promotes Dee Emon to VP/CIO.

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Announcements and Implementations

Forward Health Group joins the Health Data Consortium.

MedAptus launches Assign, which uses rules-based intelligence to automatically assign inpatients to hospitalists or other providers.

John Lynn of EMR & HIPAA posts a video interview with Vishal Gandhi, CEO of ClinicSpectrum.

Stanley Healthcare will offer Connexient’s MediNav indoor wayfinding solution.

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Other

Consumers in the US, UK, and Germany want physicians to offer exam room privacy, explain their recommendations verbally, make eye contact, and offer physical contact. They also want (but don’t usually get) enough time during their visit to discuss their concerns. A commendable two-thirds of consumers bring a list of questions to their appointment, while 39 percent have checked an online source ahead of time. An amazing 97 percent are comfortable with their doctor’s use of technology, with 58 percent of them saying exam room computers improve their experience. The Nuance-conducted survey concludes that technology should serve a supporting role to the art of medicine and that physicians should provide time for discussion, advice, exam room privacy, and engagement.  

Joint Commission issues Sentinel Event Alert #54 on the safe use of health IT and offers a free online course on the topic that’s good for one hour of CE credit.

The CSC-led EHR project of Australia’s Department of Defense, which wildly overran its budget and timelines, causes at least 30 doctors resign in protest who say the system compromises patient safety. A big concern is that anybody can modify the doctor’s entries. This is probably not the news Allscripts wanted to hear as the DoD chooses its EHR vendor since CSC and HP are its partners.

The RSA Conference bans scantily clad booth babes from the exhibit hall, specifically mandating business attire that doesn’t include tops that display excess cleavage, miniskirts, and Lycra body suits. Conference attendees said in surveys that they want access to technically competent booth reps who can answer their questions quickly, and as the Fortune article drily notes, “booth babes are usually temporary hires and therefore not your best best if you want a deep dive on the latest cryptographic solutions.” However, it also observes that only 15 percent of the conference’s 30,000 attendees are female, so the booth babe ban may reduce that number even further. It might be fun to collect photos of obvious booth babes from the HIMSS conference since they usually aren’t hard to find and then call out the vendors who can’t attract attention without the sexist eye candy.

Weird News Andy urges that we “hold the eye of newt.” Scientists testing a ninth-century folk remedy eye salve made of onion, garlic, and cow’s stomach find that it kills MRSA. I wouldn’t get too excited just yet since lots of products kill bacteria in the lab but not in humans or with effectiveness tempered by unreasonable side effects.

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Sponsor Updates

• Galen Healthcare Solutions will resell PinpointCare’s patient engagement, care coordination, and management platform.
• PatientSafe Solutions posts “Compassionate Care Part 1: Unlocking the Shackles of the Computer.”
• Forward Health Group posts a video of Northwestern Memorial Physicians Group talking about its use of PopulationManager.
• ADP AdvancedMD offers “4 Foolproof Tips to Collect More Patient Payments.”
• AtHoc offers “Connected to a Safer World.”
• Caradigm will exhibit at the National Association of ACOs Spring Conference April 1-2 in Baltimore.
• Culbert Healthcare Solutions offers “Improving Patient Satisfaction.”
• HX360 names Clockwise.MD as one of four finalists in its innovation competition at HIMSS15.
• CareSync will participate in the Live Pitch event at the AARP Health Innovation@50+ Tech Expo.
• Clinical Architecture posts the captivating origin story of ICD-10.
• Capsule Tech explains how “Healthcare Technology Can be Hazardous to Your Health.”
• Besler Consulting publishes a white paper focused on Medicare cost report reviews.

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Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jennifer, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan.

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