HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS14 Meet-Ups

We are pleased to share information on HIStalk sponsors that are not exhibiting at HIMSS14 but would be happy to schedule one-on-one meetings during the conference.

Accreon, Inc.  

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Gareth Kenton, sales leader
gareth.kenton@accreon.com
617.899.5394

We do look forward to connecting with you in our meeting space at the conference. Accreon is a healthcare technology and business services firm focused on integrating and managing health information.

We assist healthcare organizations to: achieve interoperability by integrating their IT eco-system; establish an analytical environment that empowers learning, agility, and performance resulting in improved outcomes, finances, and satisfaction; and enhance IT innovation by providing knowledgeable healthcare expertise and tools to bring solutions to market faster.

Accreon has delivered services and built solutions across North America for healthcare provider organizations, government entities, medical device companies, and EMR vendors.

Mention you were referred to Accreon through HIStalk and receive 15 percent off any resulting business established at HIMSS.

ADP AdvancedMD   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jim Elliot, vice president of marketing
jelliot@advancedmd.com
435.729.0343

ADP AdvancedMD executives will be available at HIMSS to discuss the impact that big data and business intelligence will have on the private physician and how ADP AdvancedMD is addressing the needs of medical practices. They also will be available to address what key challenges doctors are facing in 2014, including Meaningful Use adoption, weathering the implementation of ACA within the industry and its impact on patient population and reimbursements, preparing for the switch to ICD-10, and juggling everyday issues and challenges to ensure today’s claims will get paid in a reasonable amount of time.

Aspen Advisors   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Dan Herman, founder and managing principal
info@aspenadvisors.net
800.697.4350

Aspen Advisors is a world-class professional services firm dedicated to helping healthcare delivery organizations enhance processes and streamline operations through the strategic and effective use of technology.

From strategy to execution to optimization, our core services have been tailored to help address industry priorities:

• Reduce operating costs
• Implement and realize the full benefit of Electronic Health Records
• Transition from volume to value
• Harness the power of data and analytics
• Enable the connected community
• Position for the future of revenue cycle management

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.

BlueTree Network  

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Nicole Meidinger, VP of sales and business development
nicole@bluetreenetwork.com
574.360.9029

BlueTree has built a network of over 400 specialized and trusted healthcare IT experts. Our fresh model attracts and supports the best talent and allows us to offer customized and flexible solutions to health systems.

Here’s an overview of our unique model which has helped us to become the premier Epic consulting group:

• Quality verification – BlueTree employs a thorough process to vet quality and identify niche expertise. We secure targeted recommendations from clients and peers to ensure the excellence of all BlueTree consultants and identify perfect matches for our clients’ needs.
• Remote support network – BlueTree created a unique web platform that connects consultants and customers, helping them share expertise and engage each other in remote support or targeted small projects. This provides a cost-effective, flexible alternative to the standard onsite consulting model.
• Specialized service lines – BlueTree helps consultants innovate valuable new service lines and share in all revenue they generate. This attracts the very best talent and allows BlueTree to offer unique, customized solutions that keep up with the ever-changing world of healthcare IT.

At BlueTree, our philosophy centers on providing and recognizing value. We have some of the strongest healthcare IT people around and have been fortunate to work with incredible healthcare organizations. We enjoy collaborating with our clients to create custom solutions to difficult problems. Feel free to get in touch by phone or email with any questions or opportunities.

Caristix  

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Stephane Vigot, president
stephane.vigot@caristix.com
877.872.0027 ext.153

Caristix technology serves to simplify the development, deployment, and maintenance of healthcare applications for hospitals. We’re building products that help vendors and hospital become more productive. Carisitix enables interoperability and gets your software systems playing well together.

Visit us at the Interfaceware booth 2229 to get a look at out latest software and discuss how we help you get control of the HL7 interface lifecycle.

Coastal Healthcare Consulting  

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Amy Noel, CEO
Amy.Noel@coastalhealthcare.com
206.321.9840
Gay Fright, EVP of Business Development
gay.fright@coastalhealthcare.com
760.333.0294

Coastal Healthcare Consulting, Inc. (“Coastal”) has been a premier provider of healthcare IT consulting services since 1995. We are a national firm based in the Seattle area. We have a proven track record of performance having completed more than 850 projects, for more than 80 clients, and were awarded “Best in KLAS,” clinical implementation, supportive for 2005-2009.

We began the company with a focus on  providing EMR implementation services for healthcare clients. We have expanded our services to include the major EMR vendors, additional vendor partnerships, legacy support, and project management.

Connance, Inc.   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Brian Graves, vice president of marketing and communications
bgraves@connance.com
617.512.6971

Connance brings world-class predictive analytics and insights from hundreds of clinical settings to transform the performance of financial processes at hospitals, physician groups, and outsourcing organizations. Connance solutions sustainably increase cash flow, reduce operating costs, and improve policy compliance in self-pay, denial management, charity, and outsourcing processes. With clients like Centura Health, CHRISTUS Health, Florida Hospital, and Geisinger Health System, Connance is changing the expectations of financial executives.

Craneware   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Ann Marie Brown, EVP of marketing
a.brown@craneware.com
913.548.2810

Craneware (AIM: CRW.L) is the leader in automated revenue integrity solutions that improve financial performance for healthcare organizations. Craneware’s market-driven, SaaS solutions help hospitals and other healthcare providers more effectively price, charge, code, and retain earned revenue for patient care services and supplies. This optimizes reimbursement, increases operational efficiency, and minimizes compliance risk.

By partnering with Craneware, clients achieve the visibility required to identify, address and prevent revenue leakage. Craneware Revenue Integrity Solutions encompass four product families: Access Management & Strategic Pricing, Audit & Revenue Recovery, Revenue Cycle, and Supply Management. To learn more, visit craneware.com and stoptheleakage.com.

Culbert Healthcare Solutions   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Brad Boyd
bboyd@culberthealth.com
857.919.2003

Culbert offers comprehensive management consulting services for physicians, hospitals and healthcare systems to improve the delivery of patient care in today’s challenging environment.

Culbert’s seasoned healthcare professionals possess strong patient access, clinical and revenue cycle operations experience combined with IT vendor focused expertise which uniquely qualifies the firm to select, implement, and optimize technology solutions in complex healthcare organizations.

Cumberland Consulting Group   

To schedule a meeting:

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

Cumberland is hosting a hospitality suite at the Hyatt Regency (formerly the Peabody) during the conference. Cumberland Consulting Group, LLC is a national technology implementation and project management firm serving ambulatory, acute, post-acute and long-term healthcare providers, health plan and payors, and life sciences companies. Through the implementation of new technologies, Cumberland helps health organizations nationwide advance the quality of services they deliver and improve overall business performance.

For more information on Cumberland, visit http://www.cumberlandcg.com.

DataMotion   

To schedule a meeting:

Contacts:
Bob Janacek, CTO, bobj@datamotion.com, 973.452.5321
Andy Nieto, health IT strategist, andyn@datamotion.com, 502.905-0230
Hugh Gilenson, director business development, healthcare, hughg@datamotion.com, 201.417.1090

DataMotion provides HIPAA-compliant solutions using strong encryption techniques for secure email and file transfers containing PHI. We are also an ENHAC accredited Health Information Service Provider (HISP) delivering Direct Secure Messaging services via 18 EHRs including EPIC’s EMR.  We help EHRs and HIEs certify for 2014 ONC-ACB using DataMotion Direct as “relied upon software”.

The DataMotion Direct solution allows vendors of certified health IT products to rapidly certify their solutions and enable providers to meet MU2s Direct Secure Messaging requirements. Capabilities include:

• Interoperability for Direct Secure Messaging
• Support for both incoming and outgoing messages
• Routing of CCD/CCDAs through DataMotion’s HISP and exchanged via XDR

You can meet with us at HIMSS by contacting Bob Janacek, Andy Nieto, or Hugh Gilenson.

Etransmedia   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Connie Smith, marketing
sales@etransmedia.com
518.283.5418

Since 2000, Etransmedia has developed and delivered integrated cloud-based software and services to hospitals, health systems, and physicians nationwide. Etransmedia’s solutions include revenue cycle management service, the Connect2Care software platform which includes an integrated EHR/PM, financial analytics, care coordination, and patient engagement.

Etransmedia is committed to providing the right solutions to build an effective community of care, driving revenues and efficiencies for ambulatory, acute and diagnostic facilities, and increasing the availability of information to providers making critical care decisions. Etransmedia serves over 12,000 providers and 40,000 users.

Etransmedia is the recipient of seven consecutive Inc. 500/5000 awards, and three consecutive Deloitte Technology Fast 500 Awards. http://www.etransmedia.com.

Greencastle Associate Consulting   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Joe Crandall, director of client engagement solutions
crandallj@greencastleconsulting.com
856.685.0737

Greencastle consultants are agents of change. Our people have the skill and the experience necessary to assume leadership and take responsibility for the success of large-scale clinical projects and business initiatives.

Founded by US Army Rangers in 1997, Greencastle specializes in bringing a sense of purpose to the task of furthering the missions of hospitals, health systems, acute care centers, clinics, medical practices, ambulatory care providers, and other healthcare organizations. We realize the potential of change through disciplined teamwork, innovation, and systematic methods.

With loyalty and integrity as our compass, we partner with healthcare organizations to complement the existing expertise and passion of your teams. Our change agents inspire people, help them perform, and get results. We maximize the value of change for healthcare organizations. By implementing mission-critical solutions, Greencastle helps hospitals increase revenue, reduce costs, and improve patient outcomes.

Hayes Management Consulting 

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Pete Butler, president/CEO
pbutler@hayesmanagement.com.

Hayes Management Consulting is a leading, national healthcare consulting firm focused on healthcare operations. This includes strategic planning, interim leadership, revenue cycle optimization, clinical optimization, project management, IT consulting, and preparation for federal initiatives such as ICD-10, Meaningful Use, and HIPAA compliance.

We also provide software such as MDaudit and other proprietary tools to ensure our clients are operationally efficient. We won’t have a booth but would like to meet you!

LightSpeed Health, Inc.   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Michael Justice, president
mjustice@lightspeedhealth.com
305.799.0990

LightSpeed Health is a healthcare software and services company focused on solving IT related issues for ambulatory practices. We are experts in archiving and migrating EMR/EHR and PM systems, our archive systems have been deployed in the largest physician networks in the country, in over 15 states. We work with health systems to develop and execute the IT strategies related to physician practice acquisition – data migration, clinical and financial interfacing (HL-7 and X-12), implementation support, training, workflow analysis, and ongoing user support.

Our team has particular expertise in Allscripts Enterprise and GE Centricity EHR and PM systems.

Specialties: EMR/EHR data archives and migration, Allscripts Enterprise EHR and PM systems, GE Centricity EMR and PM systems, EMR/EHR selection and implement support, and EHR/PM facilities management agreements.

The Loop Company

To schedule a meeting:

Contact:  Gino Johnson, founder and managing director
info@loopcompany.org
802.857.5464

The Loop Company is a research advisory firm with more than 20 years experience helping healthcare technology organizations grow their business. Our focus is on delivering actionable strategic and tactical learnings to help your organization successfully launch new products/services, enter new target markets, win more new business, and build loyal customer relationships.

What we do:

• Collaboratively design customized qualitative feedback loop mechanisms to help your organization understand how it is being perceived in the marketplace, by your customers and prospects.
• Advance organizational improvement across all areas of your business including: sales, marketing, positioning/messaging, brand awareness, product development, roadmap validation, operations, installations/implementation, support, account management.

MedAssets   

To schedule a meeting:

solutions@medassets.com
888.883.6332

MedAssets (NASDAQ: MDAS) is a healthcare performance improvement company focused on helping providers realize financial and operational gains so that they can sustainably serve the needs of their community. More than 4,200 hospitals and 122,000 non-acute healthcare providers currently use the company’s evidence-based solutions, best practice processes and analytics to help reduce the total cost of care, enhance operational efficiency, align clinical delivery, and improve revenue performance across the care continuum.

For more information, please visit www.medassets.com.

nVoq   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Debbi Gillotti, vice president and general manager
deborah.gillotti@nvoq.com
206.465.1765

nVoq provides a cloud-based speech recognition platform (SayIt) exclusively endorsed by the AHA. We support real time dictation for any EMR as well as voice-enabled workflow through automated shortcuts and scripting. SayIt can be used on both Windows and Mac OS computers.

SayIt in Healthcare is sold exclusively through channel partners. Unlike other vendors in this industry, nVoq has no direct sales force and does not provide transcription services.  We want to grow, not compete with, our reseller network.

We welcome inquiries from app developers, EMR resellers, and HIT services firms interested in becoming channel partners. We’re also happy to make contact directly with providers or IT leaders to discuss your requirements and connect you with one of our certified resellers.

Talk to us about building a SayIt practice or using the SayIt SDK to voice-enable your applications platform. Learn why SayIt from nVoq is the sensible alternative for your organization.

Visit http://www.nvoq.com for more information.

pMD   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Chrissy Braden, director of business operations
sales@pmd.com
800.587.4989

pMD develops software that is powerful, flexible, reliable, and easy-to-use. pMD’s mobile charge capture solution enables physicians to enter billing charges anywhere, at anytime from iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. pMD eliminates the tedious paper processes and administrative elements that burden doctors and their practices, while reducing charge capture lag from weeks to less than a day.

Charge capture is unbelievably easy with pMD’s advanced code search functionality, which gives providers a quick and convenient way to select customized codes. pMD’s ICD-10 Converter automatically maps codes in one click and allows customers to incorporate the ICD-10 code system instantly or incrementally. Additionally, pMD’s secure messaging allows physicians to send sensitive information quickly and securely, all directly from within the pMD app.

The pMD team is committed to developing the best solution on the market and providing superior customer service.

Prominence Advisors   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Bobby Bacci, president and CEO
HIMSS@prominenceadvisors.com
bobby.bacci@prominenceadvisors.com

Prominence Advisors will be hosting an event for current and prospective customers on Tuesday evening. Anyone interested in attending can get details by using the email HIMSS@prominenceadvisors.com

Refreshing: that’s the word that comes to mind when talking about Prominence Advisors. This fast-growing healthcare IT consulting firm is doing things differently and finding new ways to apply technology, strategy, and analytics within the healthcare industry.

Proximare Health   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Shawn Wagoner, president
swagoner@proxhealth.com
512.635.4059

If patient access, leakage, and referral management are words you are hearing a lot of lately please take time out to learn how Proximare has helped several organizations with these challenges. Our product was developed in collaboration with clinicians and operations leaders over a decade ago at one of the largest systems in Chicago and has managed over two million patient transitions to date.

Sample Client Results:

• Referral processing time was reduced from three months to 5.5 days
• 22 percent of referrals were screened out as inappropriate
• Referral volume increased sevenfold with fewer employees needed to manage it.

QPID Health   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Amy Krane, marketing
amy.krane@qpidhealth.com
617.308.5476
Connie Thompson, sales
connie.thompson@qpidhealth.com
404.964.1478

EHRs offer huge promise and great challenges. But as any clinician will tell you, it’s frustrating and time consuming to get the patient story you need for a specific clinical encounter. QPID solves that problem.

Developed and proven through use by thousands of clinicians at the Mass General and other leading hospitals, QPID finds and delivers digests of relevant patient history from anywhere in the patient’s record. From structured data fields and free-form text notes. And across EHRs, HIEs and other data repositories.

Learn why QPID users say “I can’t believe I ever practiced without this.” If you’re ready to optimize your EHR, let’s talk.

Virtelligence, Inc.   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Akhtar Chaudhri, CEO and founder
achaudhri@virtelligence.com
Nicole Francen, marketing communications specialist
nfrancen@virtelligence.com
952.548.6601

Virtelligence, a national healthcare and IT consulting firm, offers a unique consulting model that provides a results-driven partnership with clients and a work environment that offers colleagues a path for professional growth unequaled in the industry.

Key Service offerings include:

• Strategic guidance and project management
• Software implementation and optimization
• Software development and integration
• Revenue cycle optimization
• Clinical transformation
• Meaningful Use and ICD-10 projects

Virtelligence consultants have practical hands-on expertise and training with major healthcare and technology vendors, including: Allscripts/ Eclipsys, Cerner, Epic, MEDITECH, Microsoft, Oracle, SAP, and Lawson.

Virtelligence has earned national recognition and numerous awards for being a rewarding work place and delivering lasting client successes: Best Places to Work in the Minneapolis/ St. Paul area, HCI 100, Inc. 5000, and the Minnesota Business Journal’s Fast 50.

Vonlay LLC       

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Casey Liakos, director of client relations
casey@vonlay.com
612.209.8255

Since 2009, Vonlay has been handpicking the best application, technical service and development experts from across the HIT ecosystem to work with our clients. And we are proud of the results: a creative, supportive, hardworking company that has a deep commitment to client success.

Vonlay has a unique focus on technology, leadership, and design in the Epic space and beyond. We’ve helped new clients build strong foundations with their implementations. We’ve helped established clients innovate and create a competitive edge with staffing, portals, development, and reporting services.

For more information visit http://www.vonlay.com

Monday Morning Update 2/10/14

From EpicConsulting: “Re: Epic going into the consulting business. What’s being said internally at Epic is that the program will be limited to employees with 4+ years of experience, it will provide some location independence, and the intention is to undercut in price most of the Epic consulting industry. It’s an attempt to give Epic employees less incentive to quit, sit out their one-year non-compete, and then come back doing the same job making twice the pay for half the hours. Epic has talked about doing this for years, formerly calling it Ongoing Services, but hasn’t actually gone this far until now. Consulting firm reaction has been, ‘Why would you want the same person who dug you into a hole to be the one to dig you out?’ but can they compete when Epic sells services at $75 per hour and they’re billing $150? Would a CIO pay double for a non-Epic voice? Will hospitals gain negotiating power with another option in the market? Fun question, too: will KLAS rate Epic’s consulting and will companies like Nordic, Sagacious, etc. score higher than Epic itself?” All unverified, but interesting.

From Please Please Me: “Re: HIStalkapalooza. I’ve never requested an invitation, so I’ve never been refused. But it sounds like fun and you guys are great to do that – don’t let the poor souls who don’t get in discourage you.” Inga reminded me that despite reader Gary’s insistence that he didn’t get an invitation for three years straight, we sent one to every single person who registered in 2013 and 2011, and I’m pretty sure we invited everyone in 2012 as well. Gary either didn’t register in time those years or his company’s spam filter trashed our emailed invitation, which happens a lot (and creates extra work for us because people always email us wanting individual assistance.) Demand this year was unprecedented – it will be the largest HIStalkapalooza yet, but around 900 more people asked for invitations than we have available. And to address the most commonly asked question, sorry, but we have no way to accommodate guests even though I’m sympathetic to those who want to attend with a spouse or friend – we’ve already had to turn away hundreds of loyal HIStalk readers.

Upcoming Webinars

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

February 13 (Thursday), 12 noon ET. Advancement in Clinician Efficiency Through Aware Computing. Sponsored by Aventura. In an age of information overload, a computing system that is aware of the user’s needs becomes increasingly critical. Instant-on roaming for virtual and mobile applications powered by awareness provides practical ways to unleash value from current HIT investments, advancing efforts to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs and improve clinical efficiencies. The presenters will review implementation of Aventura’s solution at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center.

February 18 (Tuesday), 1:00 p.m. ET. Epic 2012 Training and Support: Building Your Team. Sponsored by MBA HealthGroup. The webinar will present a case study of creative staffing solutions for an Epic 2012 upgrade at an academic medical center, describing the institution’s challenge, its out-of-the-box solution, and the results it obtained working with a consulting firm.

iHealth 2014 Report

The only conference I attend regularly is HIMSS for a variety of reasons  — cost, time required, and often because I don’t even know when or where a given conference is being held with enough lead time to plan. I always invite readers to provide a summary of their experiences.

Here’s ADG’s writeup of AMIA’s iHealth conference:

iHealth 2014 was a good excuse to get away from the cold and snow of wherever you were and come to Orlando for some warm rain. Farzad Mostashari in particular was seen immediately after the PBS-style fireside chat of the four previous national coordinators without a bowtie and in the company of a couple of cute kids. Getting the four on the same stage was a logistics coup and they were immensely personable. The two with the initials “DB” — David Brailer and David Blumenthal — cheerfully referred to each other as DB1 and DB2. Their themes included the coming penalties for non-compliance with MU, and DB1’s very sharp insights, which included the observation that he expects FDA regulation of EMRs within “single digit” years. Their advice to the current ONC coordinator Karen DiSalvo seemed to be a version of “buckle up.” DB1 in particular was praised by the others for his sharp organizational and entrepreneurial skills in getting the office started on the right foot.

We came to Orlando to get practical advice (and to get out of the cold, see above) and there is some comfort that all are struggling — large and less-large, academic and less-academic — with rapid change. Most noticeable was a sharp divide between the academics and the operational types, with the academics suggesting that if you do the right things, the “regulators will catch up,” which is an actual quote. The operational types knew that regulators will deny payment for any failure to cross the T and dot the i and that their organization would be out of business for lack of money by the time the regulators “caught up” to the “right thing.” There was a terrific dinner hosted by AMIA for recent diplomates of the board of Clinical Informatics, and we discovered we all have frighteningly similar backgrounds and tastes. Blackford Middleton, chair of the board of directors of AMIA, gave an excellent short toast. There were no grand insights, but lots of one-on-one incremental gains from each other, and HIStalk was mentioned at least a couple of times from the stage(s).

Jim Hansen of Lumeris / Accountable Delivery System Institute knows I like what we call “Judy-isms,” little nuggets of cynical wisdom from Epic’s Judy Faulkner. He culled these from last week’s HIT Policy Committee meeting:

• “Be careful about prescriptive standards. If there was a usability committee for the iPhone, there wouldn’t be one.”
• “We see a huge international move to EHRs without incentive money. We can’t test it here, but would it have happened anyway?”
• “With regard to Meaningful Use and providers saying, “I paid for an EHR, therefore you as the government owe me,” I think of girls on dates and I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

Brian Ahier provides the full text of the SGR Repeal and Medicare Provider Payment Modernization Act that proposes to move the Meaningful Use program into the Merit-Based Incentive Payment System.

From athenahealth’s Friday earnings call:

• Jonathan Bush talked up athenaCoordinator for Enterprise, “our first truly hospital-facing service” that will tie together the company’s services for pre-certification, pre-registration, scheduling, and population health management. It will cost hospitals 1 percent of revenue.
• “The on-ramp that is turning out to be Epocrates” will be enhanced to include secure text messaging, a provider director, and clinical decision support tools and the rollout of Epocrates Prime that will allow non-physician secure messaging participants and referral capability.
• New company locations include Austin, Atlanta, and San Francisco.
• Sales to small hospitals, the only underperforming area, will be better supported by teams that include operational analysts rather than just a single salesperson.
• Bush, responding to an analyst’s question about how cost-shifting to patients will affect the company, said, “As long as they don’t become uninsured self-payers and they keep their financial selves tangled up in impossible-to-understand bureaucratic health plans, which is now the law of the land, it doesn’t hurt us.”
• Bush says the company may need to create a patient-facing division because patient portal use is low industry-wide.
• In describing the company’s patient engagement efforts, “The goal is to just do everything possible for the doctor over the cloud, to the patient, at home where they get better answers to clinical questions. Like tell me about your diet and your life and all the things you need to know for the doctor, all your smoking, your seatbelts, your sex life. All those things are much easier to talk about at home or in private than sitting in the freaking waiting room, or worse, on that butcher paper with your knickers off. So we’re going to use the social good created by all of our increasingly sophisticated patient outreach to be way better than we are.”
• Enterprise Coordinator will include the patient facesheet from athenaClinicals and clicking on the patient’s name, even by a practice that doesn’t use athenahealth, will launch a session of the hospital’s EHR.
• Bush described the company’s future strategy as, “The goal here is to get into the front door and the back door of the hospital and work our way through the wards and departments with cloud-based services that allow them to virtualize, get business from more places, and focus more of their resources on actual clinical care. Other places we need to go is we need to go to patients. So every patient in America needs to have something in their wallet and something on their wrist, some sort of 2D barcode or in their iPhone that says, ‘This is me. Zap this thing and pull me up on athenaNet if I’m unconscious.’ So that’s some sort of patient outreach. I don’t know if it’s a partnership with the big dogs out in California, the Facebook or whatever — maybe I have to meet the Zuck, who knows. And then the other one is to get into the finance side. So health plans have been largely kind of strapped down and held still by regulation. They can’t be responsive to their customers. They need new ways of underwriting healthcare and a partner that could bring a claimless healthcare network where nobody sends a claim or receives a claim. All of this is instantaneous intelligence built into the wire. That should be us.”
• In summarizing 2013, Bush said, “That wraps up a fantastic year. And over the last few days, we have given out beautiful crystal things, checks, and stock options. And if that wasn’t enough, we gave a few people hangovers so that they knew that what they had done in 2013 and then we took all their needles and returned them to 0. And we noticed last night that you all got excited about how the year went and the stock went up. And we want you to know that we have turned our needles with you to 0. We have a very long way to go and it is only to us about how we journey. There will be a healthcare Internet and we will be the ones who have created it. ”

Speaking of athenahealth, ATHN shares jumped 25 percent on Friday, the second-largest percentage gain on the Nasdaq, after Thursday’s earnings announcement, valuing the company at $6.5 billion. A $10,000 investment five years ago would be worth $52,000 today.

CMS extends the deadline for EPs to attest for MU 2013 by a month to March 31, 2014.

The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy announces that several drug chains have pledged to support or expand their use of the Blue Button initiative to allow patients to access their prescription information: Walgreens, Kroger, CVS Caremark, Rite Aid, and Safeway. Walgreens, always the technology leader in retail pharmacy and arguably in healthcare, says it will adopt BlueButton+ guidelines to allow customers to share their data and use third-party health applications.

The Federal Trade Commission approves a settlement with IP-based video camera vendor TRENDnet over a software vulnerability that allowed anyone to view a camera’s live feed over the Internet without a password. One marketed use of the secure video systems is monitoring hospitalized patients.

In England, a privacy group criticizes West Suffolk Hospital after it reports 20 documented breaches since 2010, including seven in 2013. All of breaches last year involved paper records that were filed or mailed incorrectly.

Weird News Andy includes an actor’s name pun in titling this story, “He’s a Lauriette.” A German doctor diagnoses a patient’s cobalt poisoning caused by a broken artificial hip after recognizing its symptoms from an episode of the TV series “House.” The doctor says he’s not thrilled at being called “the German Dr. House” since he finds rude behavior unacceptable, but concedes, “It’s important to be nice, but you don’t get patients healthy just by being nice.”

Sponsor Updates

• Clinical Architecture announces Symedical for the iPad, which provides mobile access to map administration.
• John Gomez of JGo Labs is working with investment bankers interested in investing in healthcare IT companies with $5 million to $30 million EBIDTA, a proven business model, and good revenue growth. He’ll be available to meet with interested companies at HIMSS. 

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

News 2/7/14

Top News

Athenahealth reports Q4 results: revenue up 48 percent, adjusted EPS $0.57 vs. $0.29, beating analyst expectations for both and sending ATHN shares up 19 percent in after hours trading Thursday. Above is the one-year performance of ATHN (blue) vs. the Nasdaq (red).

Reader Comments

From OnTheFringe: “Re: KLAS. Sponsoring a Best in KLAS TweetChat Friday. Oh my, I think I might have a few beers and fire up my Twitter account.”

From Faithful Sponsor: “Re: HIStalkapalooza attire. While I did not make the cut to attend HIStalkapalooza 2014, one of my executives did and I wanted to touch base to see what the theme was this year.” Let me start by saying that no one is sadder than Mr. H and me that we were not able to accommodate all our faithful readers and sponsors due to capacity limitations. The only HIStalker more sad than us is probably Dr. Jayne, who was unable to score an invite for her “+1,” a gentleman that Dr. Jayne assures me  is terrific, even if he did just cancel his HIStalk subscription over the perceived snub. Next year I am proposing we rent Soldier Field so we have plenty of room for anyone (though I suppose we might need to wear snow suits.) As for this year, we will once again be seeking contenders for the Inga Loves My Shoe contest, so please bring your A game. Overachievers who are able to pull off the whole package may be in the running for HIStalk King or Queen. If that’s not specific enough, here’s a good rule of thumb: leave the “just off the exhibit floor” company golf shirt in your hotel room and come adorned in something fun, flirty, and suitable for sipping Ingatinis. You’ll see some long gowns, a tux or two, plenty of cocktail dresses, and the occasional pair of blue jeans. It’s going to be fun.

From Gary: “Re: HIStalkapalooza. Rejected third year in a row. I have concluded that this is a hand picked, very political event, your own version of the Good Ole Boy network.” Every year I swear I’ll never do another HIStalkapalooza because of the endless complaining about who gets invited and the time and energy it takes to wade through hundreds of emails begging for (or demanding) invitations, insistence on bringing uninvited guests, or asking me to personally repeat event details that have already appeared several times in HIStalk. The event is a really nice, free party for maybe 1,000 people and neither the sponsor nor I get anything out of it except a ton of work, but somehow we end up being the bad guys when demand for invitations exceeds supply. The invitation process is clear and hasn’t changed since 2008: employees of non-profit providers (hospitals, practices, universities – hardly “political”) who request invitations come first. This year a huge number of providers signed up, leaving around 1,000 others without spots no matter how cool they are or how much I like them. It’s no different than a popular show or sporting event – not everybody is going to get a seat. Next thing you know scalpers will be lined up outside of the House of Blues.

Speaking of HIStalkapalooza, every year at least 40 percent of those invited don’t show up. This year I’m keeping a database of no-shows who don’t let me know in advance so that I can give someone else their spot – that will be the last HIStalkapalooza invitation they’ll get. A few invitees have already emailed to say their plans have changed and I really appreciate that.

From Reader: “Re: HIStalk. Thank you again for the wonderful service you offer our healthcare industry. So many of us wake up each morning to stay informed to the latest news via HIStalk. I am amazed at how well your content remains timely, fresh, and complete. We hope to see you at HIMSS, where we will release the next generation of our solution. Wishing you continued success in 2014.” Thanks. I don’t usually have enough time to watch demos at the HIMSS conference, but I will try to swing by at least briefly and anonymously.

From Silent: “Re: Epic. Going into the consulting business. This will greatly disrupt the current vendor marketplace.” Unverified.

From WildcatBelievers: “Re: The University of Arizona Health Network’s Diamond Children’s Hospital. Went live on Epic in November, recently put together this fantastic video with special guest band American Authors to celebrate the tremendous and impactful work they are doing to improve the lives of the children of Arizona.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A few HIStalk Practice highlights from the last week include: Epic, eClinicalWorks, and Allscripts own 30 percent of the physician EMR market. Physician practices are far from ready for ICD-10. HHS finds that few health centers have the capacity to meet MU data sharing objectives. Reimbursements remained flat in 2013 for existing patient visits and declined for new patients. EHR alerts show promise in changing physician behavior when treating obese and overweight children. Dr. Gregg recommends taking time to step across the divide to reinvigorate your viewpoint. Culbert Healthcare’s Brad Boyd offers tips for optimizing clinical documentation. Thanks for reading.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor CitiusTech, a leading healthcare technology services and solutions provider with 1,400 professionals (including 500 certified in HL7) serving over 50 leading healthcare organizations. The company has grown 55 percent year-over-year for the past five years and has won awards for being a great place to work. Its BI-Clinical healthcare business intelligence and clinical decision support system has been deployed at over 1,200 provider locations, with pre-built clinical, financial, operational, and regulatory reporting apps and 600 pre-built KPIs. Services include software product engineering, professional services, QA and test automation, and technology consulting. Specific practice areas are Meaningful Use compliance, interoperability, BI, consumer health, care management, and cloud and mobile health.  The company serves all healthcare markets – vendors, hospitals, medical groups, medical device companies, HIEs, health plans, and pharma. Thanks to CitiusTech for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s an overview of CitiusTech.

HIMSS Conference Social Events

Aventura, Nordic Consulting, Avent, and IHS Consulting will host the Row 1800 block party from 4:00-6:00 p.m. on Tuesday, February 25. All will be serving food and drinks and Aventura will feature a magic show at booth 1831. All hated competitors are welcome.

Upcoming Webinars

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

February 13 (Thursday), 12 noon ET. Advancement in Clinician Efficiency Through Aware Computing. Sponsored by Aventura. In an age of information overload, a computing system that is aware of the user’s needs becomes increasingly critical. Instant-on roaming for virtual and mobile applications powered by awareness provides practical ways to unleash value from current HIT investments, advancing efforts to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs and improve clinical efficiencies. The presenters will review implementation of Aventura’s solution at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Private equity firm Thoma Bravo acquires supply chain solutions vendor Global Health Exchange.

Praesidian Capital invests $8.3 million in Etransmedia Technology.

Alere announces Q4 results: adjusted revenue up two percent, ajusted EPS $0.68 vs. $0.55, beating estimates. Net product and services revenue from Alere’s health information solutions segment was flat.

Bottomline Technologies will pay $8 million for Rationalwave Analytics, an early-stage predictive analytics company.

From Cerner’s earnings call:

• The company signed 25 contracts over $5 million in the quarter
• President Zane Burke says half of the market will reconsider their EHR supplier in the next few years, most of them will choose Cerner or Epic, and Cerner’s win rate against Epic has doubled in the past three years.
• Cerner says it replaced 18  ambulatory competitors in signature accounts.
• It says it sold an HIE to a 600-bed Epic hospital because Epic was “was unable to effectively connect to other systems.”
• The company says providers are consolidating and Cerner hospitals are buying smaller ones at quadruple the rate of Epic hospitals.

Sales

FirstHealth of the Carolinas selects Truven Health Unify for population health management.

Bozeman Deaconess Hospital (MT) will implement Merge Healthcare’s VNA and interoperability solutions.

Metro-North ACO (PR) selects eClinicalWorks Care Coordination Medical Record to advance its physician-led ACO objectives.

Adventist Health System selects HealthMEDX to automate Adventist Care Centers, its long-term care division.

Genesis Medical Center (IA)  will implement Wolter Kluwer Health’s ProVation Medical software for cardiology procedure documentation and coding.

Covenant Health Systems (MA) adopts MedeAnalytics’ analytics platform to manage population health for its employees.

Athens-Limestone Hospital (AL) selects Besler Consulting to assist in the identification of Medicare Transfer DRG underpayments.

Providence Health & Services and Swedish Health Services (WA) will implement care transition and utilization review solutions from Curaspan Health Group, as well as Xerox’s Midas+ Care Management platform.

People

Axiom EPM hires David Janotha (Loyola University of Chicago Medical Center) as VP of healthcare.

Parallon names Scott Armstrong (OptumInsight) SVP and Wendy Penfield (Intellect Resources) as AVP, both in revenue cycle consulting services.

Surgical supply chain software vendor Solstice Medical hires Todd Melioris as CEO.

Announcements and Implementations

Geisinger Health System (PA) deploys Courion’s identity and access management solutions.

St. Luke’s University Hospital Network (PA) implements Get Real Health’s InstantPHR patient portal, which will be connected to Caradigm’s HIE platform.

HIMSS announces a Latin American version of its annual conference that will be held September 18-19 in Sao Paolo, Brazil.

Government and Politics

The Army and Air Force contract with a division of Goodwill Industries to scan and transmit to the VA the service treatment records of veterans discharged this year.

The DoD and VA collaborate to develop a way for the VA to review the scanned images of the DoD electronic medical records of disability claimants.

Farzad Mostashari tweets out a section of the proposed SGR bill that would roll Meaningful Use and PQRS incentives into a new value-based payment system that would start in 2017.  Additional language would require EHRs to be interoperable.

The former CFO of Shelby Regional Medical Center (TX) is indicted for Medicare fraud, charged with falsely attesting that the hospital met Meaningful Use requirements for 2012. The hospital was mostly paper-based, but ordered its software vendor (eCareSoft) and employees to manually enter information into the EHR months after discharge to earn $786,000 in incentive payments. The hospital was part of a now-defunct for-profit chain that collected $18 million in Meaningful Use payments before being dismantled after reports of serious patient care issues.

The governor of Massachusetts apologizes for the state’s dysfunctional insurance exchange website as a non-profit research firm finds the site loaded with “technical infrastructure and data stability problems.” The governor says that contractor CGI, which was also responsible for Healthcare.gov, was  not reliable and relieved CGI overseer University of Massachusetts Medical Center of further responsibilities.

Other

New York officials report that the state’s online database for drug prescriptions has reduced doctor shopping by 75 percent since its August 2013 implementation.

The World Health Organization postpones the rollout of ICD-11 until 2017, two years later than planned.

Sponsor Updates

• AirWatch opens an Australian headquarters in Melbourne.
• Allscripts announces the general availability of Sunrise Version 14.1.
• Jed Shay, MD shares how his use of AdvancedMD’s EHR and PM services have contributed to improved cash flow, productivity, and patient tracking.
• T-System files a patent application for an ICD-10 feedback feature that helps clinicians document for ICD-10 without an interruption in workflow.
• Huron Healthcare will integrate predictive analytic technologies from Connance into its revenue cycle solutions.
• Russell Green, VP of research operations and engagement manager for Porter Research, discusses the mixed messaging of HIEs in a blog post.
• Kelsey Creveling from Sagacious Consultants clarifies changes in the Safe Harbor regulation in a blog post.
• MyCatalyst will use Liaison Healthcare’s Data Management platform for its myCatalyst Provider Portal and Population Health Reportal solutions.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

The pre-HIMSS mail bonanza has started. It seems a little earlier than last year. Today’s winner is GCX Mounting Solutions, whose “scratch and win” card fell victim to the Postal Service’s automated mail handling machines. A fair number of mailings arrive mangled every year. I wonder if the marketing and promotional companies ever consider doing a test mailing to make sure their items will arrive as intended?

Several vendors have shared invitations to their client appreciation parties and I’m looking forward to writing them up. I haven’t heard from very many EHR vendors, so either they don’t want sassy women in fabulous shoes to attend or they’re just behind. Inga will be sharing invitations from those vendors willing to open their events to HIStalk readers. I appreciate their willingness to let everyone share in the fun. After slogging through 500,000 square feet of exhibit space and 1,200 exhibitors, the opportunity to unwind and partake of a cocktail is more than welcome.

Something I’ll be on the lookout for in the exhibit hall: devices that use the new Corning antimicrobial Gorilla Glass. When I think about all the devices I come into contact with each day in the hospital compared to the variable handwashing behavior of some of my colleagues, it seems like a good idea. I see more people wiping down equipment at the gym than I see on the wards and that’s not a good thing. I haven’t seen any evidence-based reports on how well it works, so if you have any inside scoop, let me know.

The World Health Organization is postponing the rollout of ICD-11. Originally slated for 2015, it will be delayed until 2017. Hopefully this will quiet those voices advocating that we skip ICD-9 and go straight to ICD-11. ICD-10 was approved in May 1990 and first came into use in 1994, so based on the historical timeline, the United States should be ready for ICD-11 in 2038. Thank goodness I’ll be retired by then.

Several readers emailed about this week’s Curbside Consult on wearable tech. One mentioned the lack of interest in a mobile healthcare enterprise device. Manufacturers are focused on selling directly to the masses, but it would seem like there is a place for enterprise devices in the Accountable Care or HMO spaces. Another lamented the lack of integration among devices — “I feel like a nurse with 50 devices being a kangaroo.”

When I was in residency, we used to refer to the group of pagers that you had to wear when you were on call as the Batman Utility Belt. There was the on-call pager, the code team pager, and your personal pager. You also had to carry the elevator keys (because who wants to run up 17 floors when a patient needs CPR?) Throw on a bulky cell phone, and if you were extra lucky, the labor and delivery pager, and you were ready to go. I almost forgot – some also had a Palm Pilot, although I was partial to the Pocket PC.

We’ve certainly come a long way. Some of us are down to one device if we work in a BYOD environment. I’m still toting a corporate phone and a personal phone, but it certainly could be worse. Have you been able to shed the utility belt? Email me.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

News 2/5/14

Top News

Castlight Health files plans for an IPO that values the company at $2 billion. The employee health management software company was formed in 2008 with now-US CTO Todd Park as a co-founder.

Reader Comments

From Jack Flash: “Re: Dick Derrick. The HCIT world will miss the smiling face of Dick Derrick of eClinicalWorks, who announced his retirement after 40 years in our business.” Dick was kind enough to share with Mr. H and me that he remains “addicted” to HIStalk and will continue reading in between his travel, volunteering, and family time. He also asked us to send his best to his industry friends.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Supporting HIStalk as a Platinum Sponsor is Aperek (pronounced uh-PARE-ik) which you may remember as Mediclick (with earlier roots in Global Software) since the healthcare-only, all US-based company changed its name along with introducing new products in November 2013. The Raleigh, NC-based company offers highly ranked solutions for supply chain, financials, mobile, technology, spend aggregation / contract management, and implant tracking. CEO Mike Merwarth explained in my interview last week that 80 percent of a hospital’s supply expenses are managed by clinical people rather than materials management professionals (particularly in the OR, where high-dollar implant products are used) and thus aren’t touched by typical ERP packages. A new Aperek solution is Pulse, an iPad app designed for clinicians who record implant item usage in the OR. Hospitals are looking at the supply chain and thus to Aperek to get their costs under control. Thanks to Aperek for supporting HIStalk.

HIMSS Conference Social Events

 Send us your event details if it’s a good one (i.e, free food and drinks at minimum) and you promise that all HIStalk readers are welcome to attend, even if they work for your most hated competitor as a given reader might well do. Inga and Dr. Jayne especially like free cocktails and are happy to give your company a shout-out if we have the chance to stop by.

Divurgent will be sponsoring a Havana Nights themed event at the Funky Monkey (International Drive) Sunday night at 8:00 p.m. on Sunday. Click here to register.

Upcoming Webinars

February 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare Transformation: What’s Good About US Healthcare? Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: John Haughom, MD, senior advisor, Health Catalyst. Dr. Haughom will provide a deeper look at the forces that have defined and shaped the current state of U.S. healthcare. Paradoxically, some of these same forces are also driving the inevitable need for change.

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

February 13 (Thursday), 12 noon ET. Advancement in Clinician Efficiency Through Aware Computing. Sponsored by Aventura. In an age of information overload, a computing system that is aware of the user’s needs becomes increasingly critical. Instant-on roaming for virtual and mobile applications powered by awareness provides practical ways to unleash value from current HIT investments, advancing efforts to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs and improve clinical efficiencies. The presenters will review implementation of Aventura’s solution at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cerner announces Q4 results: revenue up 12 percent, adjusted EPS $0.39 vs. $0.34, meeting analyst expectations.

ZappRx, developers of a mobile e-prescribing platform, secures $1 million in additional funding.

Imprivata confidentially submits a draft registration statement with the SEC to conduct an IPO.

Streamline Health Solutions completes its acquisition of Unibased Systems Architecture.

Endo Health Solutions completes the divestiture of HealthTronics to Altaris Capital Partners for total consideration of up to $130 million.

BlueStep Systems, a clinical platform provider for the long-term and post-acute care market, merges with  BridgeGate Health, a system integration provider.

Sales

Spectrum Health (MI) selects PerfectServe’s Clinician-to-Clinician and DocLink platforms for direct and secure clinician communication.

The 14-hospital Baptist Memorial Health Care System selects Voalte smartphones for system-wide caregiver communication.

People

HIMSS awards CACI International’s Keith Salzman, MD its 2013 Physician IT Leadership Award.

AT&T appoints Eric Topol, MD ((Scripps Health) chief medical advisor.

CTG Health Solutions hires Linda Lockwood (Encore Health Resources) as its advisory services solutions director.

HIMSS names Pauline M. (Hogan) Byom (Mayo Health System) the recipient of the 2013 SHS/HIMSS Excellence in Healthcare Management Engineering / Process Improvement Award.

Colette Weston (ADP AdvancedMD) joins Aviacode as VP of client services.

Emdeon hires Randy P. Giles (Coventry Health Care) as CFO/ EVP of finance, replacing Bob A. Newport, Jr.

Announcements and Implementations

The University City Science Center in Philadelphia begins accepting applications for its Digital Health Accelerator, which will provide up to $50,000 in funding and other benefits for as many as six companies in the digital health or HIT sector.

Fleming Island Surgery Center (FL) goes live with Anesthesia Touch from Plexus Information Systems.

Bread for the City (DC) and the Family and Medical Counseling Service (DC) implement The Guideline Advantage, a quality improvement program that leverages population health management tools from Forward Health Group.

Government and Politics

CMS authorizes laboratories to provide patients with direct access to their lab reports, rather than requiring patients to obtain results from their physicians.

A veterans advocacy group calls on the VA and DoD to take aggressive steps to reduce the remaining backlog of 400,000 disability claims, deliver on the long-promised joint VA/DoD EMR, to standardize VA claims forms, and to encourage VA raters to process claims correctly the first time.

Innovation and Research

Hospitals rank cost reduction as their top innovation priority, according to a HIMSS/AVIA survey on healthcare provider innovation. The report also reveals that chief innovation officers are not yet mainstream roles within hospital and health systems, though 64 percent of organizations with annual revenues of at least $5 billion have a chief innovation officer. Though dedicated funding for innovation is modest, providers are making progress implementing innovative solutions related to population health management, patient follow-up, predictive analytics, clinical decision support, and care coordination.

Other

HIMSS expects more than 1,200 exhibitors at this year’s conference and will offer longer exhibit hall hours with more overlap between education sessions and no mid-day break.

Weird News Andy titles this story “A Shot for a Shot.” A startup invents a device that it claims can stop bleeding from a gunshot wound in 15 seconds. It injects dozens of tiny sponges into the wound, or as the article breezily written for those skimming rather than actually reading, “like a tampon for bullet wounds.”

Sponsor Updates

• PACS blogger Dr. Dalai banters with Brad Levin of Visage Imaging about the latter’s suggestion that a savvy hospital IT department could assemble its own PACS system from off-the-shelf components.
• NCQA certifies that Verisk Health’s Quality Intelligence solution contains HEDIS Certified Measures that are ready for 2014 HEDIS reporting.
• Oracle Health Sciences will integrate medical speech recognition technology from Nuance Communications with its e-clinical software.
• MedHOK achieves NCQA certification for its HEDIS Certified Measures in 360Measures.
• TriZetto launches a collaborative care solution powered by Wellcentive to facilitate payer/provider collaboration in accountable care initiatives.
• PeriGen introduces Category II Management Algorithm, a free web-based tool to support the management of patients in labor during FHR category II.
• Coastal Healthcare Consulting introduces Convergence, an offering that combines NextGate’s Enterprise Master Index with Coastal’s project implementation.
• HIMSS selects InterSystems HealthShare as the official health informatics platform for the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion at the HIMSS14 conference.
• Gartner positions Informatica as a leader in its January 2014 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Integration Platform-as-a-Service report, based on ability to executive and completeness of vision.
• Elsevier introduces MethodsX, a concept methods journal that provides researchers a home for their unpublished works, allowing them to receive public credit and citations.
• First Databank commences publishing of an initial draft of New York State Acquisition Cost drug prices.
• CareSync is selected as a finalist in the Community category for the 2014 SXSW Interactive Awards for its efforts in building meaningful communities for patients, their families, and care teams.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Monday Morning Update 2/3/14

From The PACS Designer: “Re: Apple’s solar iPhone. As we head deeper into 2014 ,you will be hearing details on the next generation of iPhones. The rumored solar iPhone 6 that will be introduced in second half of 2014 will use the tough sapphire outer casing as a solar panel. Apple was granted a new solar touch screen patent that will allow the solar panel to operate without the need of a boost converter, thus providing optionality in the use of a power charge or a solar charge.” I was on the fence between the iPhone 5 and the Samsung Galaxy last time. Now that I’ve used an Android tablet at a fraction of the cost of the Apple equivalent, I think my next phone will be a Samsung. Apple seems to be moving into that mature product phase where everything gets more features and interesting tweaks without blazing any new ground. I’m not willing to pay a premium for that.

From Country Girl: “Re: Stage 2 quality measures. In 2014, quality measures did change for both EP and EH regardless of where you are in the attestation  stages. More measures have to be reported and they must also be tied to the national quality goals. This information was published in the Stage 2 rule, not in December. However,  many of the measures are aligned with PRQS for reporting guidelines. The final rules on PQRS was published in December and the reporting requirements came out December 31. As a result, it appears some vendors are still working on their reporting methodology to incorporate the changes. The problem for many organizations will be understanding where the data has to be recorded in the system to pull properly for reports. We are having trouble getting this information from the vendor as well. If you are trying to attest in the first quarter and don’t have the requirements, you could find the reports do not accurately capture your measures when you get the 2014 reports.”

From HIMSS EHR Association: “Re: Stage 2 quality measures. The required format for electronic submission changed for hospitals (EHs) in November, and in January for physicians (EPs). These changes, as well as Spring 2013 versions of the quality measures which are required for electronic submission, will require further development and implementation at the same time that EHR developers are pushing hard to implement the 2014 certified edition for their customers. More generally, there have been many changes to the methods, requirements, and process to submit CQMs electronically over the last year, and they continue changing. Some changes were promulgated in other CMS rules, such as the annual hospital and physician payment rules, and other changes were not part of rulemaking. And this does not take into account all of the significant changes that have occurred in certification over the last year, as well as additional updates to the CMS quality programs using electronic CQMs. In part because of the extent of these changes, CMS is permitting manual attestation on clinical quality measures for meaningful use in 2014, as has been done through 2013, not just for those in their first year. The EHR Association has been in dialog with CMS on issues with the requirements over the past several months. We understand that CMS will be issuing a CQM submission Tip Sheet within the next couple of months. We welcome any further discussion and explanation of these facts, in order to help our customers understand the current requirements for reporting CQMs to CMS.”

 

From Frank Poggio: “Re: CCHIT and certification. It’s a movie I’ve seen many times. A member organization wants to push the industry forward and generate some revenue, so they get in bed with regulators. Members get upset and view the association as part enemy, so the association wakes up and drops out of the program they helped start. CCHIT had the best tools and knew healthcare, so their interpretation of test rules and steps was sometimes different from the other ATLs. It was clear to me that they were overwhelmed. This had to be a money-losing effort for them given the Stage 2 (2014) complexity and the expanding complexity coming with the new 2015 Test Edition. Interestingly, all the remaining ATLs are non-healthcare companies and are learning the healthcare nuances as they go along. That should make for some interesting results.” Certification was created to reduce the risk of buying an EHR, which it arguably hasn’t done since the biggest risk isn’t misjudging functionality that you can plainly see or lack of interoperability that you don’t care about, but rather the possibility that your vendor will stop delivering high-quality enhancements and support. Which ironically some have because they are off chasing the government’s other “optional but not really” programs, Meaningful Use and ICD-10. Plenty of certified EHRs have unhappy customers, inadequate R&D budgets, and crappy support. You’ll see a bunch of them opt out of not only certification, but the EHR market in general as the HITECH teat dries up and those with no particular healthcare allegiance wander off seeking greener pastures.

From Albi Qeli, MD: “Re: EHRs. As a computer friendly practicing physician, I find the current vintage EHR software not only inadequate, but disgusting. The fundamental problem is that the software is not designed around physicians and patients’ requirements. Current systems try to replicate the paper forms that they are trying to replace, thus recreating a very faulty system and adding a few other defects to it. Add in the mandates and the penalties, and EHR has now become a dirty word. In every other field of human endeavor, computers solve specific problems and increase productivity. In a physician’s office, the EHR creates new problems (hackable, insecure, expensive, unwieldy, data silos) and increases staff requirements. All in the name of progress. People like me might be able to solve some of the practical and technical issues, certainly in order to have a workable efficient record keeping system for use in my own clinic. But such a system would not satisfy Uncle Sam.” As I’ve said many times, medicine is the only area in which the highest-paid resource is expected to perform data entry into a system whose benefit to them personally is coincidental at best. The EHR at its worst is a manual entry black box recorder for the government and insurance companies. Doctors who took HITECH money as a bribe to impulsively buy and use EHRs they now hate hasn’t helped push the market in a doctor-pleasing direction. Today’s systems reflect the financial reality for insurance-accepting practices — your customer isn’t the patient and you aren’t the boss. It would be interesting to review the systems used by cash-only practices, assuming they use any at all.

From One Tin Soldier: “Re: Best in KLAS. We won but weren’t included in your list.” The company in question didn’t actually win Best in KLAS, but it’s confusing enough to warrant an explanation. That title is reserved for products listed in the first two pages of the “Best in KLAS 2013” report, which lists solutions that “lead the software and services market segments with the broadest operational and clinical impact on healthcare organizations,” however KLAS defines that. Less rationally, the same report also includes Category Leaders 2013, defined above, but those don’t earn the title of Best in KLAS. Allscripts is the only vendor I’ve seen so far to incorrectly label a Best in Category win as Best in KLAS (had they included the word “in” after “named,” the headline above would be correct.) All of this is needlessly confusing – KLAS should use the term Best in KLAS for only the award, not as the title of a report that also includes other results. Either that or extend the Best in KLAS label to the category winners as well. The way they are using that title now seems a bit fuzzy, but then again some folks say that about the entire KLAS process. 

Upcoming Webinars

February 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare Transformation: What’s Good About US Healthcare? Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: John Haughom, MD, senior advisor, Health Catalyst. Dr. Haughom will provide a deeper look at the forces that have defined and shaped the current state of U.S. healthcare. Paradoxically, some of these same forces are also driving the inevitable need for change.

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

February 13 (Thursday), 12 noon ET. Advancement in Clinician Efficiency Through Aware Computing. Sponsored by Aventura. In an age of information overload, a computing system that is aware of the user’s needs becomes increasingly critical. Instant-on roaming for virtual and mobile applications powered by awareness provides practical ways to unleash value from current HIT investments, advancing efforts to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs and improve clinical efficiencies. The presenters will review implementation of Aventura’s solution at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center.

A HIStalkapalooza update: registration has closed and invitations will go out on Tuesday. Demand was high, so unfortunately more than half of those who signed up will be getting a “sorry, we’re full” email instead. We always give priority to providers, who registered in overwhelming numbers. Please don’t email Inga or me if you didn’t get an invitation because there’s no secret stash of them for us to hand out no matter how much we like you.  

Eighty percent of poll respondents check their work email in the evening and on weekends, with 20 percent checking it at least hourly. New poll to your right: when were you last promoted?

My latest grammar peeves: (a) people who start sentences, especially written ones, with the word “so”; (b) the bizarre omission of the word “of” following “couple,” as in, “So I had a couple beers.”; (c) rampant overuse of pointlessly emphatic words such as “really,” “actually,” and “frankly,” which I excise by the dozens from some interview transcriptions.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor InteHealth. The Malvern, PA-based employee-owned company connects patients, doctors, hospitals, and health plans cost effectively. InteHealth Exchange is a cloud-based, vendor-agnostic integration platform that is flexible and extensible; rapidly deployable; comes complete with a clinical data repository, data map library, and a messaging and alerts engine; and is MU2 ready. The company’s certified patient portal allows patients to view their records, make payments, schedule visits and tests, receive reminders, request refills, and share and download information. It is Stage 2 certified, integrates with 100 EHRs, has full CCD capability, and connects to the Direct exchange. The physician portal allows remote access and eliminates faxing and calling nursing and medical records for information. Hospitals can use InteHealth Exchange to solve problems related to information management, ACO care delivery, and discharge management. The company’s solutions are used by 1,900 sites and 20,000 physicians each year, processing 82 million transactions. Thanks to InteHealth for supporting HIStalk.

TeraMedica is supporting HIStalk as a Gold Sponsor. The company’s Evercore Clinical Enterprise Suite connects and manages a healthcare system’s digital image infrastructure all the way from the modality to the EHR and clinical desktop. It is vendor neutral, flexible, and scalable as an enterprise archive that manages both DICOM and non-DICOM (photos, videos, PDFs) clinical content. Its architecture features a scalable database, parallel application services running on enterprise-scale servers, n-tier storage, image storage and distribution rules, and tools to migrate legacy data, all architected to handle the explosion in imaging volume that’s coming, all with a lower total cost of ownership and true vendor independence. Thanks to TeraMedica for supporting HIStalk.

I found this YouTube video describing Duke’s TeraMedica VNA setup that’s integrated with Epic. It’s a very good overview of image management by Christopher Roth, MD, assistant professor of radiology and director of imaging informatics strategy at Duke Medicine.

Starting this week, you’ll see a single, short-term ad for various companies at the top of the HIStalk page, to the right of the logo. I’ve always turned down requests for “special” ads like this, but I agreed under these terms: (a) I’ll donate a big chunk of the proceeds to DonorsChoose to support students and teachers in need, reporting back here the projects that we (as HIStalk readers) funded as a result; and (b) it will be single ad that will run for only three days at a time so we don’t get tired of looking at it. Companies always want a burst of extra exposure for specific events, especially right before the HIMSS conference, and I can live with that since it will support classrooms.

Here’s a photo tweeted out by AMIA VP Jeff Williamson from iHealth 2014. This is like one of those fan convention photos of all the “Star Trek” captains together, only for a different variety of nerd: former National Coordinators Brailer, Kolodner, Blumenthal, and Mostashari. I would welcome a report on the conference if you attended. Orlando is in the low 80s every day, so I’m sorry to have missed seeing all of those informatics people in shorts and tee shirts.

A rumor suggests that Apple’s iOS 8 will include Healthbook, a fitness tracking app that will not only measure steps taken and calories burned, but also blood pressure, heart rate, and blood glucose (although the rumor doesn’t say how it would collect glucose levels.) The app will supposedly allow the user to enter medication schedules to allow the iPhone to issue reminders. All of that is related to the upcoming iWatch wearable computer. Apple has hired several health experts in the past year and has met with the FDA on undisclosed topics.

Athenahealth chooses Austin, TX for its R&D office, pledging to create 600 jobs that will pay an average salary of $132,000. The company will receive $680,000 from the city and $5 million from the state in incentive payments over 10 years to occupy the Seaholm Power project that’s under construction on West Cesar Chavez Boulevard. 

Vince Ciotti is one of the most hilariously cynical people in healthcare IT, so even he recognizes the irony in this HIS-tory episode in which he lustily guzzles the Epic Kool-Aid right at the factory. Epic fans will not be surprised that Judy invited Vince to present some industry history to several thousand Epic employees too young to remember it. This is a great episode that also includes a fun fact: one of Judy’s early mentors was Neil Pappalardo of Meditech, so when she started Human Services Computing in 1979, she targeted only large hospitals to avoid stepping on Meditech’s turf.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

News 1/31/14

Top News

The Department of Defense opens bidding to replace all of its EHR systems, saying the new system will use off-the shelf technologies running on ONC-approved standards. The VA solicited bids Tuesday for the next step in its replacement of VistA. Evidence is scant that the two groups plan to work together to implement a single EHR systems as mandated by the President and Congress, with their only obvious common ground being a willingness to separately enrich the usual government contractors with massive taxpayer dollars.

Reader Comments

From Silversand: “Re: MU Stage 2 CQM measures. In meeting with our vendor, we were told they can’t submit them electronically yet because the standards changed in December and their software hasn’t been updated. I can’t find anything on a standards change. Is this true? Are other vendors running into the same issue? I would love to know what your readers think.” So would I (cue readers to chime in.)

From Ockham: “Re: vendor market share. KLAS estimates by bed size, i.e. ‘Meditech has 18 percent of hospitals over 200 beds.’ This is meaningless. It should be expressed as the number of beds in all hospitals using a system, which would be easy to calculate using information from HIMSS Analytics. Having a lot of beds means having a lot of clinician users, which pushes product development. Epic blasted into a leadership position is because having 400 hospitals that are large and larger trumps having 2,000 hospitals that are small (Meditech).” That’s true, as long as your product is suitable for large hospitals and you have the competence to sell it to them. Epic’s timing was perfect because soon those big, Epic-using hospitals will have bought all the smaller ones and replaced their incumbent systems, putting Epic in hospitals that couldn’t have afforded or supported it on their own. It’s like the political system – you’ll see all kinds of parties on the ballot, but only two of them get a significant number of votes.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A few HIStalk Practice highlights from the last week include: physicians prefer smartphones to tablets to perform most professional tasks. Practice Fusion offers free Google Chromebooks to new users. CMS reminds EPs of pending deadline to attest to MU for the 2013 Medicare EHR incentive program. In part three of our series, HIT vendor execs share details about technologies on their company’s roadmap for the next 12-18 months. Thanks for reading.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Optimum Healthcare IT. The Jacksonville Beach, FL-based full-service consulting firm provides expert consultants at competitive rates. Services include EHR deployment (all major vendors); integration services (interface development and integration engines); staff augmentation (program directors, project managers, application builders and testers, clinical experts, analysts, security experts, trainers); security and identity management; and regulatory guidance (Meaningful Use, ICD-10.) The company provides small-business flexibility with large-business stability, but without the high cost. Thanks to Optimum Healthcare IT for supporting HIStalk.

Upcoming Webinars

February 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare Transformation: What’s Good About US Healthcare? Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: John Haughom, MD, senior advisor, Health Catalyst. Dr. Haughom will provide a deeper look at the forces that have defined and shaped the current state of U.S. healthcare. Paradoxically, some of these same forces are also driving the inevitable need for change.

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

February 13 (Thursday), 12 noon ET. Advancement in Clinician Efficiency Through Aware Computing. Sponsored by Aventura. In an age of information overload, a computing system that is aware of the user’s needs becomes increasingly critical. Instant-on roaming for virtual and mobile applications powered by awareness provides practical ways to unleash value from current HIT investments, advancing efforts to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs and improve clinical efficiencies. The presenters will review implementation of Aventura’s solution at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

GNS Healthcare, a provider of big data analytics products and services, completes a $10 million Series B financing round led by Cambia Health Solutions.

VMware reports Q4 results: revenue up 20 percent, adjusted EPS $1.01 vs. $0.81., beating earnings estimates.

CommVault releases Q3 results: revenue up 20 percent, adjusted EPS $0.54 vs. $0.39, beating estimates on both.

Quest Diagnostics announces Q4 results: revenue down one percent, adjusted EPS $1.03 vs. $1.01, beating estimates on both.

McKesson announces Q3 results: revenue up 10 percent, adjusted EPS $1.45 vs. $1.44, beating revenue expectations but missing expected earnings of $1.84. CEO John Hammergren said the results of Technology Solutions was disappointing (revenue up 6 percent, margins 8.55 percent) because the company had to  “take action in response to the anticipated timeline for Meaningful Use 3 and to size our organization in Horizon Clinicals appropriately” and took a $42 million restructuring charge to reduce headcount.

CPSI anounces Q4 results: revenue up 7 percent, EPS $0.90 vs. $0.83.

Sales

Texas Children’s Hospital selects OpenTempo’s scheduling and workforce management solution.

Valley Health (VA) selects Capsule Tech to integrate medical devices in operating rooms with Epic EMR.

Greater Regional Medical Center (IA) implements PeriGen’s PeriCALM fetal surveillance system.

People

Cumberland Consulting Group promotes Greg Varner and Mike Penich from principals to partners.

Community Health Network (IN) names Ron Thieme, PhD (AIT Laboratories) chief knowledge and information officer.

Population health management vendor Welltok hires Michelle Snyder (Epocrates) as chief marketing officer and Vance Allen (Pearson eCollege) as CTO.

Charles Denham, MD, accused by the Department of Justice of accepting $11.6 million in kickbacks from CareFusion to promote its skin disinfectant product at the National Quality Forum, resigns from the board of The Leapfrog Group. The DOJ has assessed a $41 million fine against CareFusion; Denham says the allegations are false. There’s a healthcare IT connection: when Dennis Quaid started limelighting  for patient safety after his newborn twins were overdosed with heparin at Cedars-Sinai (he had breezy good intentions, but minimal knowledge even for an actor), HIMSS put him on stage at the 2009 conference and inexplicably donated to his foundation. Dennis apparently found another shiny object and merged his foundation a year later with Texas Medical Institute of Technology, which was founded and run by Chuck Denham (who didn’t live in Texas, but instead in a $14 million oceanfront estate in Laguna Beach, CA.) Denham claimed that TMIT’s “national research test bed” involved 60 percent of US hospitals, although few people seemed to have heard of it. the other healthcare IT connection is that CareFusion sells Pyxis drug dispensing machines and Alaris smart IV pumps, just in case your hospital feels the urge to buy something from a company willing to bribe its way to the bedside.

Microsoft’s board is rumored to be preparing to name Satya Nadella, VP of the company’s cloud and enterprise group, as CEO as soon as Friday. The board is also discussing the possibility of replacing Bill Gates as their chairman with an unnamed candidate. Nadella would be the company’s third CEO following Gates and Steve Ballmer.

Announcements and Implementations

More than 800 hospitals and 6,000 medical groups are participating in the eHealth Exchange, a group of government and non-government organizations that agree to support interoperability standards to exchange information.

Scott & White Memorial Hospital (TX) goes live on Epic.

Greater Baltimore Medical Center (MD) goes live with the PatientRoute Systems patient flow solution.

Other

Members of the governing board for the UK’s Croydon University Hospital raise concerns that the hospital’s new Cerner system has led to increased waiting times and has lost patient information. Despite Cerner’s assurances that the system issues have not harmed patients, at least one board member expressed doubts:

You say that no harm has occurred, but while we’ve had no direct incident so far, patient care has definitely suffered. You talk about increased waiting times and there’s a risk that harm may occur because of the difficulty in getting in touch with clinicians who actually know what is going on with the patient. I’m very concerned from a quality point of view that our main provider has a serious problem with its information systems.

CCHIT announces that it will no longer offer ONC testing and certification and will change its business model to become a certification consulting firm. CCHIT recommends that its customers work with ICSA Labs for future testing and certification services.

Federal prosecutors charge former Allscripts director of internal audit Steven M. Dombrowski with insider trading, alleging that in 2012 he used a secret account in his wife’s name short MDRX shares ahead of a poor financial report, netting him $286,000.

The Wall Street Journal describes the analytics challenges of Memorial Hospital of Gulfport (MS), which can’t get much useful information from its separate inpatient and outpatient EHRs now, but hopes things will improve after a Cerner go-live in March followed by implementation of Health Catalyst analytics afterward. The hospital selected Allscripts EHR/PM in 2009.

In Israel, the health ministry launches a medical data sharing project for health fund clinics and hospitals.

Recently released documents from the antitrust lawsuit against St. Luke’s Medical Center (ID) reveal that its merger with Saltzer Medical Group could have raised pricing for outpatient visits by 60 percent and increased insurance rates by about 30 percent. Last week a federal judge ordered St. Luke’s to divest itself of Saltzer, saying the acquisition would give the health system an unfair bargaining position with insurance companies.

Epic is unseated for the first time since 2008 as the top overall vendor the 2013 “Best of KLAS” awards, with athenahealth leading the pack. Winners (with links to HIStalk sponsors) include

Athenahealth athenaCollector (practice management 1-10 physicians)
Athenahealth athenaCollector (practice management 11-75 physicians)
Athenahealth athenaCommunicator (patient portal)
CareTech Solutions (IT outsourcing, extensive)
CareTech Solutions (IT outsourcing, partial)
Cerner (application hosting)
Cerner CommunityWorks (community HIS)
Cornerstone Advisors (planning and assessment)
Cymetrix (extended business office)
Dolbey Fusion Speech (speech recognition)
Epic Care Everywhere (HIE)
Epic EpicCare (acute care EMR)
Epic EpicCare Ambulatory (ambulatory EMR 11-75 physicians)
Epic EpicCare Ambulatory (ambulatory EMR >75 physicians)
Epic OpTime (surgery management)
Epic Radiant (radiology)
Epic Resolute (patient accounting)
Epic Resolute/Prelude/Cadence (practice management >75 physicians)
Epic Willow (pharmacy)
Impact Advisors (clinical implementation principal)
J2 Interactive (technical services)
McKesson ERP Solutions (financial/ERP)
Merge Healthcare Cardio (cardiology)
Precyse (transcription services)
PwC (revenue cycle transformation)
QlikTech QlikView (analytics)
Quest Diagnostics ChartMaxx (document management)
Rays (teleradiology services)
Sagacious Consultants (clinical implementation supportive)
Sectra PACS (PACS)
Siemens Novius Lab (laboratory)
SRSsoft EHR (ambulatory EMR 1-10 physicians)
Thornberry NDoc (homecare)
Unibased USA RMS (enterprise scheduling)
Wellsoft EDIS (emergency department)
ZirMed (claims and clearinghouse)

Weird News Andy says this doctors has it. A New Zealand doctor spearfishing with friends is attacked by a shark, fights it off with a knife, stitches his leg wound on the beach, and heads to a bar for a beer. He goes to the hospital for more stitches only after bar employees notice him bleeding onto the floor.

WNA uses his less-cynical alter ego “Wonderful News Andy” in this story of medical dedication. A neurosurgeon working at an Alabama hospital is called to a cross-town hospital to perform emergency brain trauma surgery. His route is blocked by snow-related traffic, and as his cell phone signal fades, the second hospital’s neuro intensive care unit nurse hears him say, “I’m walking.” Which he did, covering six miles in a trek of several hours and then heading straight to the OR with the patient, who had a successful outcome.

Sponsor Updates

• HIStalk sponsors winning KLAS Category Leaders 2013 awards include Siemens (Soarian Clinicals), GE Healthcare (Centricity Perioperative Anesthesia), Merge Healthcare (cardiology hemodynamics), Elsevier (CPMRC), Wolters Kluwer (Sentri7, MediRegs Comply/Track), PatientKeeper (Physician Portal), 3M (360 Compass, Codefinder), Allscripts (EPSi), Phillips (IntelliSpace Portal), lifeIMAGE (image exchange), GetWellNetwork (interactive patient system), iSirona (DeviceConX), MedAptus (Pro Charge Capture), Passport (IntelliSource), TeleTracking (Capacity Management Suite), McKesson (EnterpriseRX Outpatient), Xerox (Midas+ Solutions, financial ERP implementation services), Fujifilm (Synapse RIS), Craneware (Bill Analyzer, Chargemaster Toolkit), Imprivata (One-Sign), API Healthcare (Staffing and Scheduling, Time and Attendance), VMware (vSphere), Emdeon (eligibility services), Encore (go-live support services), and Aspen Advisors (ICD-10 consulting).
• McGraw-Hill Professional partners with RelayHealth to make the AccessMedicine online medical platform available to providers.
• AirWatch adds a professional certification level to its Enterprise Mobility Certification Program.
• Besler Consulting publishes a white paper focused on Medicare Transfer DRG underpayments.
• AT&T sponsors a series of articles that explore how hospitals and health systems are addressing the care continuum in their strategic and operational plans.
• ReadyDock founder and president David Engelhardt discusses when and how to clean and disinfect mobile devices in a blog post.
• Extension Healthcare founder and CEO Todd Plesko explains the future of secure messaging app in a blog post.
• Passport Health posts a white paper discussing the benefits of front-end patient financial patient triage.
• A Virtelligence case study profiles Allina Hospitals and Clinics (MN), which implemented Epic with support from the company’s consultants.
• SimplifyMD publishes proof statements highlighting various successes and stats as of the end of 2013.
• QPID offers a case study highlighting Massachusetts General Hospital, which saw improvements in clinician productivity, higher throughput in the GI suite, and improved outcomes by avoidance of adverse events following the implementation of QPID’s automated record review.
• Predixion will provide academic institutions with the free use of Predixion analytics software for students and teachers of data science.
• NVoq highlights what’s new in its version V8.3.
• Culbert Healthcare Solutions discusses the optimization of Epic work queues in a company post.
• LifeIMAGE offers a series of customer testimonials highlighting their use of lifeIMAGE technology for image sharing.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

Mr. H published a rumor earlier this week about CCHIT leaving the EHR certification business. As many HIStalk rumors are, it was confirmed a few days later. CCHIT cites the complexity of testing and changing federal requirements as contributing factors. They plan to move into the consulting business.

This seems to be the big news of the week, which isn’t surprising considering we’re in the run-up to HIMSS. Major vendors aren’t going to be announcing much of anything, and instead will be saving any upcoming news for release at the big show.

I guess I’m also not surprised to see CCHIT exiting the testing business. Keeping track of the constantly changing testing criteria can’t be easy. I can barely keep track of the provider-based Meaningful Use requirements and the ongoing parade of CMS Frequently Asked Questions that cause ongoing re-interpretation of how we need to comply. If you haven’t seen the testing criteria, I’d recommend taking a look – they make some of the most complex projects I work on look like a cakewalk by comparison.

I know some of the people who participated on our ambulatory vendor’s certification testing team. The process sounds like it’s about the same level of fun as going through med school, trying to make sure you know everything, and then being an intern and having the worst call night ever – sleepless, stressed out, and having to deal with endless minutiae. I would imagine that being on the other side and having to deal with an ongoing parade of vendor teams who are similarly at their wits’ end may not be the most satisfying or stress-free job.

I’m not sure about the direction they’re taking. It seems like the consulting world is already saturated with Meaningful Use advisors, stakeholders, and other thought leaders. They plan to have a “series of summits and events to support that work,” but I’m not sure who will attend. Most of us in the trenches don’t have the budget to attend conferences and meetings we attended in the past and want to keep attending, let alone add other meetings to the docket.

The first CCHIT Summit will be held on Wednesday during the HIMSS conference. It will feature several former National Coordinators reviewing health IT during the last decade. It will be followed by an audience participation session to discuss what role health IT should play in the next decade. If they keep the CCHIT Summit events as part of existing conferences, they will definitely increase their chances for meaningful participation.

Along with the change in mission, CCHIT has restructured its board of trustees and will be replacing the CCHIT commissioners with stakeholder advisory groups. CCHIT was a leader in EHR certification and it will be sad to see them go, but I’d bet they’re not the only one that exits the business. At this point, there are fewer EHRs certified for MU2 than there were for MU1, and as more vendors abandon the Meaningful Use arms race, there won’t be as many products going through the process.

What do you think about CCHIT leaving the certification business? Leave a comment or email me.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

News 1/29/14

Top News

The VA opens procurement for VistA Evolution workgroup coordinators, the next step in replacing VistA Web with a single VA-DoD EHR viewer that supports mandated interoperability requirements. The solicitation was posted on January 27, leaving just nine days for interested companies to assemble and submit proposals by the February 6 due date.

Reader Comments

From Green Stamp: “Re: Dave Henriksen. Left Carestream Health, as you mentioned last week, and has moved on to NexTech Systems as president and CEO.” Dave’s LinkedIn profile confirms his new position with the PM/EHR vendor.

From Believe Me: “Re: CCHIT. Exiting the ONC certification business.” Unverified, but reported by more than one reader. CCHIT hasn’t responded yet. UPDATE: Verified, from an update on CCHIT’s site. CCHIT says ONC 2014 Edition certification requires a lot of testing and its federally-driven business is unpredictable, so it won’t accept any new applications for certification and recommends using ICSA Labs instead. CCHIT will change its business model to become a certification consulting firm and will partner with HIMSS to “provide both counsel and thought leadership to the health care provider and HIT vendor communities” that will include summits starting at the HIMSS conference, apparently still operating as a non-profit.  The most recent Form 990 I could find was from 2011, at which time it was paying Chairman Karen Bell $409K, Executive Director Alisa Ray $250K,  and five other employees over $100K. It would seem to me that given CCHIT’s genesis, mission, and name, it should just go away rather than trying to morph itself into the already overcrowded thought leadership business. It probably would if HIMSS wasn’t riding in on a white horse to save it, not surprising given that HIMSS formed CCHIT (along with partners AHIMA and NAHIT) in 2004.

From Hit Newbie: “Re: CMS. The MU attestation portal is having issues to Healthcare.gov. It’s laughable that there is still no API or portal designed for the volume. CMS says it won’t allow appeals for late attestations due to website downtime.”

From Bill Pare: “Re: HIMSS travel site. I notice that the login page is not encrypted. I find that ironic.” HIMSS uses a travel portal from nuTravel. I checked the company’s documentation and it says the registration page is encrypted with 128-bit SSL, but the HIMSS travel registration page is not encrypted.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

HIStalkapalooza registration has closed with quite a few more requests than we have capacity. Imprivata will email invitations Tuesday, February 4.

Listening: new Dum Dum Girls, lo-fi jangly indie pop.

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Treehouse Resources. The company connects qualified Epic consultants with clients interested in hiring them at market-leading rates with hassle-free paperwork. The free, five-minute signup for consultants allows them to privately review opportunities that meet their career and life balance goals, even optionally becoming a W-2 hourly employee of Treehouse. Treehouse checks references and approves the consultants, then clients review the consultant profiles, arrange interviews, and let Treehouse manage the invoicing and billing. The company’s model (which is kind of like Angie’s List or Match.com) focuses on efficiency and doesn’t require recruiters or salespeople, meaning consultants make more money and clients pay some of the lowest rates in the country. At the moment, 487 consultants (of 1,100 who requested to participate)  and 88 clients have signed up. You most likely know the principals behind Treehouse, Glenn Galloway and Mike Tressler, both previously with Healthia Consulting and longtime friends of HIStalk. Thanks to Treehouse for supporting HIStalk.

Upcoming Webinars

February 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare Transformation: What’s Good About US Healthcare? Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: John Haughom, MD, senior advisor, Health Catalyst. Dr. Haughom will provide a deeper look at the forces that have defined and shaped the current state of U.S. healthcare. Paradoxically, some of these same forces are also driving the inevitable need for change.

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

February 13 (Thursday), 12 noon ET. Advancement in Clinician Efficiency Through Aware Computing. Sponsored by Aventura. In an age of information overload, a computing system that is aware of the user’s needs becomes increasingly critical. Instant-on roaming for virtual and mobile applications powered by awareness provides practical ways to unleash value from current HIT investments, advancing efforts to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs and improve clinical efficiencies. The presenters will review implementation of Aventura’s solution at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Secure messaging provider TigerText raises $21 million in a Series B round. Its secure, industry-agnostic solutions sends encrypted messages that self-destruct after a preset time.

Perceptive Software reports adjusted revenue growth of 70 percent in Q4.

Patient engagement provider Relatient closes its first round of funding led by former AIM Healthcare Services president Jim Sohr. The company sends health-related messages including reminders for appointments, outreach, collections, and surveys.

Covisint reports Q3 financials: revenue up one percent, adjusted EPS -$0.10 vs. -$0.09.

Informatica reports Q4 results: revenue up 18 percent, adjusted EPS of $0.49 vs. $0.41, beating analyst estimates on both.

Apple reports Q1 numbers: revenue up 5.7 percent, EPS $14.50 vs. $13.81, beating expectations but releasing disappointing current-quarter guidance. Shares dropped 8 percent Tuesday on the news. Sales of the Mac and iPad beat expectations, but iPhone sales fell short and iPod sales were down more than 50 percent year over year. Analysts variously blamed smartphone sales, lack of new products, slow growth in China, and the inability of the iPhone 5c to create a strong low-cost entry in the smartphone market.

Kaiser Permanente Announces Data Warehouse Project

Health Catalyst closes $41 million in Series C funding led by Sequoia Capital and announces plans to invest $50 million in product development over the next 24 months. Investors also include customers Kaiser Permanente and Partners HealthCare.

I spoke to CEO Dan Burton and President Brent Dover before the announcement.

Burton says Kaiser will roll out Health Catalyst’s data warehouse platform for all 38 of its hospitals. “While we have worked with other large health systems – earlier in the year we signed with Partners in Boston and Providence – but Kaiser is almost in a class by itself in terms of size and scale. The nature of the first project is system-wide, a terrific test of the scalability of our platform.”

Burton says Kaiser will initially use Health Catalyst for two projects. “They have a specific need for system-wide access to a subset of data around transplant patients,” he explained. Dover added that Kaiser is working on a specific project for diabetic patients in Colorado. “Kaiser is reaching out to diabetic patients. They were going after patients using spreadsheets and complex SQL extracts. They told us Health Catalyst builds a cohort in 180 seconds when it used to take 180 days. This allows them to proactively go after patients for population health management.”

Eleven of Health Catalyst’s customers, including Kaiser, are Epic clients. I asked Burton why Kaiser chose a third-party tool over Epic’s Cogito data warehouse and reporting platform. “In our experience, it’s an apples to oranges comparison,” he said. “Cogito offers basic functionality from a data storage perspective that could meet rudimentary needs. We’re offering a data warehouse as a platform for transformation from an advanced clinical apps perspective.” Dover added, “When I worked at Medicity, customers always asked for analytics tools. No client really knows what they want to analyze – it’s a never-ending list. The market demands an incredibly flexible platform. We have 17 case studies and none of them have anything to do with each other – it’s what each of them needed to improve quality and cost.”

I asked Burton about the $50 million in product development to create 200 advanced clinical applications. “A couple of our longstanding customers, Texas Children’s and Stanford, worked on specific areas to identify inefficiency and variation of care in heart failure and asthma patients, showing where the variation existed, what needed to change, and tracking progress, even tracking the return on investment of the improvement. At a CEO level, said they need to target 20 applications per year over the next five years to measurably and meaningfully bend the cost curve to allow them to not only survive, but thrive and lead. That opened our eyes that what our clients are seeking is a roadmap. We decided to become a company that offers hundreds of analytic applications so we can be a long-term partner to help these health systems transform themselves.”

Sales

Vermont IT Leaders will incorporate Orion Health’s Rhapsody Integration Engine into its statewide HIE that runs on Medicity.

VHA selects Xerox to automate its healthcare claims pricing process.

Allina Health (MN) chooses Strata Decision Technology’s StrataJazz for cost accounting.

People

VMware names Chris Wolf (Gartner) CTO for the Americas.

Culbert Healthcare Solutions promotes Gibran Cotton to director of GE and Allscripts consulting.

Halifax Health (FL) promotes Tom Stafford to CIO.

Brian Ahier was interviewed last week in studio on WFED, Federal News Radio, where he talked about health IT and ONC’s recent annual meeting. He also gave a nice plug for HIStalk as the best place to keep up with healthcare IT news.

Divurgent hires Jeff Powell (AT&T) as client services VP and Anthony Jones, Shaun Sangwin (Vascular and Interventional Physician Partners), and Justin Stefano (MedSys Group) as regional client services directors.

Announcements and Implementations

Walter Reed National Military Medical Center (MD) implements AtHoc Interactive Warning System for mass notification and interactive hospital communications.

Long-term care provider Levering Management (OH) deploys the COMS Interactive Daylight IQ product suite covering disease management, care guides, and nursing assessments.

HIMSS announces that the ONC’s Karen DeSalvo, MD will offer opening remarks at 8:30 am, Thursday, February 27, the closing day of the HIMSS conference.Too bad the mass exodus of attendees will begin Wednesday afternoon.

OhioHealth O’Bleness Hospital goes live on McKesson Paragon.

Memorial Hospital (MS) goes live on Cerner March 15 and will later implement analytics software from Health Catalyst.

Hearst Corporation announces the creation of Hearst Health, a new brand that encompasses its healthcare information businesses that include First Databank, Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase, and Map of Medicine. It also involves a new startup fund, Hearst Health Ventures, and Hearst Health Innovation Lab, which will prototype internal and external health IT projects. The innovation lab will be run by Chief Innovation Officer Justin Graham, MD, MS, previously CMIO of NorthBay Healthcare (CA), who joined the company in July 2013.

Mobile Heartbeat announces Mobile Heartbeat CURE, a smartphone-based location and communications application for clinical teams.

Mobile charge capture vendor pMD will announce Wednesday a partnership in athenahealth’s More Disruption Please program in which its product will be integrated with athenahealth’s billing and practice management systems.

Other

A Commonwealth Fund study finds that practice EHR adoption rose considerably from 2009 to 2012, but solo physician practices lag in use of functions such as electronic data exchange with other providers. Practices associated with IDNs had the highest rate of technology adoption.

Black Book names its #1 HIE vendors in several categories: Covisint (payer/insurer based); ICA (core HIE); Cerner (inpatient EHR); Allscripts dbMotion (ambulatory based); and Infor (complex technology services).

Microsoft will rename its SkyDrive could storage to OneDrive after losing a trademark battle with British broadcaster BSkyB.

Concierge medicine provider PlushCare launches an Indiegogo campaign to create its service and to provide children with immunity to measles. It’s a confusing combination, but donors who are California residents get email, telephone, and video visits, and as a bonus, recognition for immunizing a child. The company says two Stanford MDs will diagnose and treat simple illnesses or injuries the same day. The tech guy is Ryan McQuaid, former product head for AT&T ForHealth.

Something’s fishy here: a Canadian company called Kallo Inc. claims to have sold the Republic of Guinea $200 million US worth of healthcare software that includes systems for hospital, telehealth, and pharmacy. The fishy part is that the company’s shares trade OTC for $0.15, valuing the entire company at $46 million, with shares having dropped almost 30 percent on the news of the big sale.

Weird News Andy is breathless over these stories. Researchers find that use of mouthwash raises blood pressure and increases the risk of heart attack, although the study involved only 19 patients and the increase in diastolic blood pressure was small. Another group of researchers finds that dogs can be trained to smell cancer in the same way they can sniff explosives or human scents, leading to the possibility of creating instruments that can detect the same odors to sense cancer.

Sponsor Updates

• Madison Memorial Hospital (ID) reports an annual benefit of $327,658 following the implementation of Craneware’s Chargemaster Toolkit and Pharmacy ChargeLink.
• Wolters Kluwer Health and Laerdal Medical introduce vSim for Nursing, an online learning solution that simulates curriculum-driven patient scenarios.
• 3M Health Information Systems releases an enhanced version of its Code Translation Tool to convert ICD-9-based custom problem lists into ICD-10 coded problem lists for import back into a provider’s existing EMR.
• Forbes names Kareo to its annual list of “America’s 100 Most Promising Companies.”
• Sandlot Solutions will offer the White Pine Systems SPINN patient engagement platform to its HIE and ACO clients.
• InstaMed reports it enables payers to achieve the highest levels of electronic payment adoption with its fully integrated Claims Settlement Complete.
• Physicians’ Choice (CA) discusses in a case study how it uses Capario to process more than 24,000 claims a month.
• In a case study, Bozeman Deaconess Hospital (MT) shares how Quantros Safety Event Manager improved patient safety and satisfaction.
• Nuance Healthcare reveals details of its Conversations Healthcare 2014 conference April 6-9 in Phoenix.
• Alan Lundberg, Informatica’s principal marketing manager for emerging products, blogs about the value of business intelligence in business operations.
• SCI Solutions launches Provider Network Manager, a technology platform and service for health systems to create better managed affiliations with independent and employed providers.
• Bethesda Magazine spotlights GetWellNetwork founder and CEO Michael O’Neil, who discusses the creation of his company.
• Novation awards Paragon Development Systems (PDS) a VAR agreement for hardware and IT services.
• BlueTree Network co-founder Reggie Luedtke shares four healthcare trends to be excited about in a Forbes article.
• CCHIT certifies that Healthwise Patient Education EMR Module version 10.0 is compliant with the ONC 2014 Edition criteria as a Modular EHR.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Monday Morning Update 1/27/14

From Brute Forceps: “Re: Leidos Health. President Steve Comber is stepping down.” Unverified, but BF included a purported email from Steve to his team announcing his departure. “Our Executive Leadership, along with the Board of Directors, have made a decision to further invest in health by adding a recognized & proven industry leader at the forefront of our health business. As such, in the very near term a search will be underway for a health expert / leader who will be chartered with the responsibility of taking our health business to the next level.”

From Cabana: “Re: [company name omitted.] They are blocking access to your site after you wrote something uncomplimentary about them.” It’s my crowning achievement when a company blocks access to HIStalk. Given previous examples involving clueless, egotistical executives intent on guiding their enterprises right into the ground, I can say with confidence that employees reading factual information on HIStalk should be the least of their worries.

From Scooper: “Re: Martin Hospital. You scooped the main media on their EHR crash.” I just happened to have a reader with a friend who was admitted at the time and he passed the information along to me. CIO Ed Collins was nice to provide a response. The contact said it was chaos in the hospital, with confused employees assigning random numbers to patients, runners delivering paper copies of everything, medication errors occurring, and unhappy family members threatening to sue everything that moved (all unverified, of course.) The hospital says the problem was hardware, not Epic, and claims (as hospitals always do) that patient care wasn’t impacted. Of course patient care was impacted – the $80 million system that runs everything went down hard. It would be interesting for Joint Commission or state regulators to show up during one of these hospital outages anywhere in the country to provide an impartial view of how well the downtime process works. All that aside, downtime happens and the key is preparing for it, just like Interstate Highway construction and lane-closing accidents. It’s not a reason to drive a horse and buggy.

From Keith: “Re: UCSF death in the stairwell case. Four caught snooping.” San Francisco General Hospital announced for the first time Friday that a routine audit of the electronic records of high-profile patients turned up four employees who looked at records of the patient who was found dead in a hospital stairwell in October 17 days after she disappeared from her inpatient bed. Two of the employees have been fired and two were suspended. The hospital announced changes Friday as mandated by CMS after the incident, in which the hospital performed an incomplete search, alarms and cameras were found to be out of order, an incorrect description of the patient was issued to searchers (the hospital said to look for a black woman in a hospital gown, but the patient was white and wearing her own clothes), and the sheriff’s department failed to follow up on a report of a body lying in the hospital’s stairwell.

From The PACS Designer: “Re: Windows upgrades. The decision to upgrade from Windows XP, which will go off support in April, will be a challenge for most of us. Do we go to Windows 7, 8.1 or wait for Windows 9? Most likely Windows 7 will not be that choice due to its limited future with Windows 9 coming. Windows 8.1 with its rumored Upgrade 1 will be a likely choice since it will be easier to make the move to Windows 9 when its ready for release.” Windows 8 has been an amazing success with one group – the companies that sell add-ons to hide the absurdly annoying tile-driven Metro user interface. It’s probably fine if your computing needs are so basic that you can use a touch screen, but if that’s the case, you might as well just use a tablet, preferably one not running anything from Microsoft.

No clear trend exists for vendor layoffs, respondents said. New poll to your right: how often do you check your work email after hours and on weekends?

Upcoming Webinars

February 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare Transformation: What’s Good About US Healthcare? Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: John Haughom, MD, senior advisor, Health Catalyst. Dr. Haughom will provide a deeper look at the forces that have defined and shaped the current state of U.S. healthcare. Paradoxically, some of these same forces are also driving the inevitable need for change.

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

February 13 (Thursday), 12 noon ET. Advancement in Clinician Efficiency Through Aware Computing. Sponsored by Aventura. In an age of information overload, a computing system that is aware of the user’s needs becomes increasingly critical. Instant-on roaming for virtual and mobile applications powered by awareness provides practical ways to unleash value from current HIT investments, advancing efforts to demonstrate meaningful use of EHRs and improve clinical efficiencies. The presenters will review implementation of Aventura’s solution at Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center.

HIStalkapalooza last chance: registration to request an invitation ends Wednesday. We’re planning to email invitees the following Tuesday, February 4. Thanks to Imprivata for sponsoring the event – it’s going to be a big deal.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Greencastle. The Malvern, PA-based company was founded in 1997 by two former US Army Rangers who brought to the consulting world the military concepts of sense of purpose, discipline, teamwork, and systematic methods. They make it a point to hire junior military officers (among others) and help them apply their skills to the corporate world. Greencastle consultants are ready to take responsibility for large-scale clinical and business initiatives to help healthcare organizations maximize the value of change. Services include clinical systems implementation, application consulting, project management, and system selection. The company did a CHIME focus group presentation on building a business case for analytics and offers white papers. Thanks to founders Celwyn Evans and Jacob Kretzing for their military service and to Greencastle for supporting HIStalk.

Listening: Failure, deeply lush, ambitious, influential, and prophetically named 1990s alt-rock (Pink Floyd meets Radiohead) that nobody’s heard of despite their stunning 1996 concept album masterpiece “Fantastic Planet,” which they played great live. They broke up in 1997, but are reuniting this year. 

South Nassau Communities Hospital (NY) adds dbMotion and FollowMyHealth to its Allscripts portfolio, joining Sunrise.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (MA) receives a $5.3 million private grant to develop IT-driven ICU tools that include a patient-specific clinician checklist dashboard and a patient-family communications display. BIDMC joins Johns Hopkins Medicine, UCSF, and Brigham and Women’s as part of the Libretto ICU Consortium of the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

A federal judge orders St. Luke’s Health System (ID) to divest itself of the Saltzer Medical physician group it bought last winter, saying the hospital’s ownership of 80 percent of the primary care doctors in Nampa, ID would give the health system an unfair bargaining position with insurance companies even though the intent of the acquisition was motivated only by improved patient outcomes. St. Luke’s had defended the acquisition in responding to a lawsuit brought by competitors and the Federal Trade Commission, arguing that the merger would support new risk-based care models and that its $200 million Epic system will be better than anyone else’s when implemented.

NHS Hack Day was held this past weekend in Cardiff, Wales, bringing together people with healthcare-related problems and developers ready to build rapid software prototypes to solve them.

A eye movement study of 100 primary care patient visits finds that EHR-using doctors spend a third of their time looking at the computer monitor, making it hard for patients to get their attention and reducing the physician’s ability to listen and think. The study also found that patients look almost constantly at the EHR screen instead of their doctor even though they have no idea what anything on it means. The author suggests that vendors design EHR displays that both physicians and patients can use.

Several members of Austin’s city council question the city’s plan to offer athenahealth incentives to move one of its operations there when demand for Austin commercial space is already high. Said one of the council members, “While it’s great that the company is looking to hire locally, we don’t have 336 software people that are unemployed right now. That’s not a target area and it could be an onus on companies that we already here.”

In England, ministers vote to limit government IT contracts to $165 million other than for an “exceptional reasons,” also barring vendors that provide hardware and software from implementing their products themselves. Contracts will also be limited to a two-year term with no automatic extensions. According to Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude, “Big IT and big failure have stalked government for too long. We are creating a more competitive and open market for technology that opens up opportunity for big and small firms.” Maude drove the government’s “digital by default” effort to centralize government websites and use technology to make its services more efficient.

The board of Cookeville Regional Medical Center (TN) approves a five-year, $1.5 million expenditure for RelayHealth’s patient portal.

Puget Sound Blood Center (WA) issues an emergency appeal for blood donations after a regional telecommunications outage forces it to cancel blood drives and donor collection.

A man cleaning the vacated office of an Ohio family practice physician finds an old computer containing the electronic records of 15,000 patients. The doctor had told the man to keep anything he wanted and send everything else to the trash. The doctor says the PC was left behind by mistake and he wants it back, adding that it is password protected, but the local newspaper found the desktop icon above that opens a Word document containing the names and passwords of all the practice’s employees.

Weird News Andy titles this story “Jailhouse Rock” and adds a guitar pun in proclaiming the protagonist to be “high strung.” A 54-year-old male patient  claims to be Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour and Rush’s Alex Lifeson during several hospital stays, telling the hospitals that his agent would take care of his bill. Obviously not only did hospital staff not ask for ID, they don’t know either band very well because the man’s resemblance to either guitarist (above) is slight.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

News 1/24/14

Top News 

At ONC’s annual meeting on Thursday, HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius UK Secretary for Health Jeremy Hunt sign a collaboration agreement between the US and UK that calls for sharing quality indicators, exchanging data and interoperability ideas, maximizing healthcare IT usage, and encouraging health IT innovation.

Reader Comments

From Freedom Rock: “Re: Martin Health System, Stuart, FL. A friend who is there says their $80 million Epic system is down throughout three hospitals and many other facilities and physician offices. They’re calling in off-duty nurses and clerks to go back to paper.” I asked CIO Ed Collins, feeling guilty as I did so knowing as an IT person how annoying it is to field questions about downtime when you could be fixing it instead, but he was gracious to provide a response Thursday afternoon:

“Martin Health System had a hardware failure that has resulted in our network being down. The failure occurred the evening of Jan. 22 and we are continuing to work on rectifying the situation. Epic is among the systems being impacted by this hardware failure, however, it was not the genesis of the problem. We are continuing operations as scheduled, while strictly monitoring any potential patient safety concerns or issues that would require appropriate care determinations to be made. Our patient care teams are following downtime procedures and protocols to ensure patient safety and proper documentation is provided.”

From Macke: “Re: Dave Henriksen. The former SVP/GM at McKesson who left to become president of healthcare information solutions at Carestream Health in July 2013 has left Carestream.” Verified. A Carestream spokesperson says Henriksen has left the company for an unspecified opportunity.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Some of this week’s highlights from HIStalk Practice include: EMRs helped improve the identification and follow-up of infants born infected with hepatitis C. Connecticut IPA Medical Professional Services selects athenahealth’s Population Health Management platform. Provider engagement and administrative issues present the biggest challenges to practices adopting and implementing EHRs. The biggest complaint patients have about their physician: waiting in their office. CMS seeks EP participation in the 2013 PQRS-Medicare EHR Incentive Pilot. Twelve HIT vendors discuss emerging technologies expected to have the biggest impact on physician practices over the next 12-18 months in the second of a three-part series. Dr. Gregg ponders if HIT has jumped the shark. Thanks for reading.

I like it when companies issues press releases announcing their HIStalk sponsorship, so thanks to Coastal Healthcare Consulting for doing just that.

On the Jobs Board: Principle Clinical Healthcare Consultant, Marketing Manager, Sales Engineer – Boston or Raleigh.

Upcoming Webinars

February 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare Transformation: What’s Good About US Healthcare? Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: John Haughom, MD, senior advisor, Health Catalyst. Dr. Haughom will provide a deeper look at the forces that have defined and shaped the current state of U.S. healthcare. Paradoxically, some of these same forces are also driving the inevitable need for change.

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

VMware will buy mobile technology management vendor AirWatch for $1.54 billion. VMware gains secure mobile device credibility to its story for enterprises, including hospitals, that are shifting from fat client desktops to virtualized and mobile devices.

Quality Systems reports Q3 results: revenues down five percent; adjusted EPS of $0.11 vs. $0.29, missing estimates on both due to previously announced problems with its hospital software division. Shares rose 8.4 percent Thursday after the announcement before the market opened.

Microsoft announces Q2 results: revenue up 14 percent, EPS $0.78 vs. $0.76, beating estimates of both.

Proteus Digital Health, a developer of patient-care and self-health management technologies, closes $31.6 million in debt financing expansion. The company had previously raised around $160 million in funding. Proteus sells miniature medication tracking sensors (smart pills) that are activated by gastric contents, sending the information to skin patches that then forward the information via mobile device to a central service and allowing clinicians and family members to track oral medication intake.

Telehealth services and software provider MDLive raises $23.6 million.  It offers around-the-clock consumer access to doctors. An individual plan costs $15 per month and includes one-day physician response to emails; phone or video visits cost $20. The company’s previously announced partnerships include Cigna and Sentara Healthcare (VA). One of its financial backers is former Apple CEO John Sculley, best known for firing Steve Jobs from Apple.

Sales

Parkview Health (IN/OH) will implement business analytics and denials management solutions from Streamline Health.

The District of Columbia Primary Care Association joins The Guideline Advantage quality improvement program, which uses population health management tools from Forward Health Group.

OSF Healthcare (IL) chooses Strata Decision Technology’s StrataJazz for budget and management reporting.

People

EDCO Health Information Solutions promotes Lynne Jones to president.

The Pennsylvania eHealth Partnership Authority HIE names the state’s HIT coordinator Alexandra Goss executive director.

HIMSS names Emanuel Furst (Improvement Technologies) the recipient of the 2013 ACCE-HIMSS Excellence in Clinical Engineering and Information Technology Synergies Award.

Announcements and Implementations

Philips Healthcare launches a Healthcare Informatics Solutions and Services business group to be led by Jeroen Tas, who previously served as CIO for Philips. It will offer hospitals clinical programs, analytics, and cloud-based platforms. The company also reorganized its North America Healthcare sales organization.

Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant announces the launch of the Mississippi Diabetes Telehealth Initiative to improve disease management and health outcomes for diabetic patients. The program, which is a joint effort between the University of Mississippi Medical Center, GE Health, North Sunflower Medical Center, and C Spire, will use telehealth technology to connect UMC providers with diabetic patients in the Mississippi Delta.

Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (CA) goes live with RTLS asset management from Intelligent InSites.

Government and Politics

In his annual budget address, New York Gov. Andre Cuomo proposes a $95 million plan to digitize patient records using $65 million in state funds and $30 million from the federal government’s Medicaid program.

New National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo kicked off ONC’s annual meeting Thursday morning, mostly providing some background about herself and talking yet again about Hurricane Katrina like it was yesterday instead of eight years ago. HIMSS marketed the heck out of that disaster as a call to arm for electronic medical records (as sold by the vendors who provide most of its income, and when that didn’t help sales much, along came HITECH) and now KD has ridden it into the National Coordinator chair as her primary credential even though I haven’t seen any proven Louisiana outcomes that resulted. Her EHR experience isn’t clear, but she has a great public health background. I liked that she characterizes HITECH money as the involuntary taxpayer gift that it was, referring to it as “major investments by the American people.” She seems nice enough and her speech was friendly if not particularly powerful, although her uptalking made her sound less authoritative and is sure to drive mellifluous members of Congress who are used to polished oratory crazy. Nitpicking aside, I like her so far.

In England, Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt urges hospitals to treat patients like people and for clinicians to work together as teams, suggesting that British doctors to behave like US hospitalists in taking responsibility for the patient’s entire stay from plan to handoff, including putting their names up on the wall of the patient’s room as being responsible. He also urges adoption of information-sharing technology, studying whether medical specialties are too specialized, and reducing patient transfers. I don’t know much about him or his politics, but I like him.

Technology

A Microsoft research project uses Kinect to help stroke victims recover.

An irrationally exuberant and painfully breezy INC Magazine article declares mHealth to be “the trillion dollar cure” and “the miracle cure for the rising cost of health care in America” in which “smart startups are already cashing in” and that mHealth is “up for grabs, providing an extraordinary opportunity for medically minded entrepreneurs.” It quotes HIStalk Connect’s Travis Good (“a physician and influential blogger on health care technology”) and Palomar Health Chief Innovation Officer Orlando Portale, both of whom contributed just about the only thoughtful content amidst the hype. Like mHealth itself, the article is all over the place with a hodgepodge of apps ranging from weight loss to vital signs monitoring. It isn’t convincing in the slightest that most of them are either effective or destined for financial success, much less the cure for healthcare’s quality and cost problems, but business magazines like to make everything sound like a sure thing.  

Speaking of mHealth, you know it has jumped the shark when former basketball player Shaquille O’Neal gets involved. Shaq says he’s working with Qualcomm on wireless and health technologies (I hope that won’t interfere with the making of Kazaam 2 or the next “Shaq Fu” album). Cynicism  aside, Shaq actually has meaningful comments, not surprising since he’s a smart guy (he earned an Ed.D doctoral degree in 2012):

I have been using a FitBit, a connected activity monitor, to manage my fitness levels and am finding motivation in the real-time data I can collect on my movement—or lack thereof! Not only can mobile health technologies be engaging, social and easy-to incorporate into your everyday lifestyle, but using them for health monitoring will actually save between $1.96 billion and $5.83 billion in health-care costs worldwide by 2014. The latest technologies can’t solve all of our problems, though. Throughout my career I have found that when individuals come together for a common goal, whether it’s to win an NBA championship or reduce the number of people with chronic disease globally, greater results are achieved. We are on the verge of a new wave of breakthroughs in medical and wireless technologies, legislation and more, but unless we all come together to collaborate across public and private sectors and across educational systems and research institutions we will not see significant change and improvement.That’s why I am joining forces with the World Economic Forum, who are encouraging a global shift towards healthy living and supporting healthy, active lifestyles at individual, community and societal levels.

A Wall Street Journal report says IBM’s Curam eligibility software is responsible for problems with health insurance exchanges in Maryland and Minnesota.

Other

Cerner and Epic are making inroads in the medical oncology market, but product immaturity is leaving providers with a lack of functionality, according to a KLAS report. Radiation oncology is still a best-of-breed market with Elekta and Varian as the main competitors.

A HIMSS heads up: I didn’t realize that the Peabody Hotel in Orlando, across from the street from the convention center and the favored gathering place for well-heeled HIMSS attendees (meaning I’ve never stayed there, although we did hold the first HIStalkapalooza there in 2008), was sold in October for $717 million. It’s now the Hyatt Regency Orlando and is being marketed to mouse ears-wearing tourists. The famous ducks are gone, and given the prohibitive expense of shipping them back to the only surviving Peabody in Memphis, they may well have ended up as a l’orange.

A study finds that the use of EHRs improves the follow-up in identifying and treating babies born to mothers with hepatitis C. Identification of at-risk patients increased from 53 percent to 71 percent, while appropriate follow-up jumped from 8 percent to 50 percent.

Healthcare Growth Partners releases its 2013 Year-End Review report, which is as insightful, rich in detail, and downright eloquent about healthcare in general as it is healthcare IT investments. I would say it’s a must-read for anyone interested in the business side of healthcare delivery. An excerpt:

HGP remains very bullish on the health IT sector. Creating an environment of connected networks and transparency is core to addressing the structural flaws of the U.S. healthcare system, and IT is critical to enable the reform initiatives underway and any reform initiatives that may follow. The need is high, the runway is long, and the consequences are significant – as long as we get out of the way of ourselves, health IT stands to completely redefine not only the delivery of healthcare but also the management and sustainability of health.

The dearth of HIT fashion-related news is finally over, thanks to B-Shoe, a start-up company that is testing a walking shoe that helps prevent falls. Designed for seniors or the physically challenged, the shoe incorporates pressure sensors and an algorithm that detects imbalance, plus a motion device that rolls the shoe slightly until the wearer regains his balance. Perhaps there will be a stiletto version by the time I’m in need.

Weird News Andy makes a Roman numeral pun in calling this story “The 4th Doctor.” A company called IV Doctor makes house calls in New York to deliver a $200 hangover-curing IV solution, even providing a sales video. Those who attended the HIMSS conference in Las Vegas will recall my mentioning a similar service in that city.

WNA also turned up this story. A Nashville opera singer says a nurse-midwife’s episiotomy incision ended her mezzo-soprano career when it caused her to experience incontinence and excessive flatulence. She’s suing the federal government for $2.5 million since the treatment was provided by the Army, in which her husband was serving at the time.

Sponsor Updates

• Solstices Medical will use Infor Cloverleaf to integrate its DOCK-to-DOC platform with clinical, financial, and supply chain systems, including Infor Lawson Enterprise Financial Management and Chain Management for Healthcare.
• Vonlay adds 4,000 square feet in office space to its existing Madison, WI headquarters.
• CCHIT awards Iatric Systems Meaningful Use Manager ONC HIT 2014 certification for all 29 clinical quality measures.
• Kareo integrates its PM application with the Nexus EHR.
• Connance CEO and Co-Founder Steve Levin and Gwinnet Hospital System (GA) VP Cathy Dougherty author an HFM Magazine article, “A New Imperative for Patient Relationship Management.”

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

A recent post on the Harvard Business Review blog discusses research indicating that smartphone use after 9 p.m. can make workers less productive the following day. Their work concludes that phone use causes sleep disturbances that impact work performance. Their two studies will be published later this year and I’m looking forward to seeing the details.

In the first study, they used a survey approach where each participant’s survey response data was analyzed individually over a two-week period. It had a relatively low number of participants (fewer than 100) but showed that increased phone use impacted sleep, creating work issues the next day. The second study had twice the number of participants with more diverse occupations. In addition to daily surveys, they measured use of phones, laptops, tablets, and televisions. The data indicated that smartphones had a greater impact than other devices.

As a physician, I enjoy being able to remotely access my patients’ charts, handle refill requests, process lab results, and take phone messages without being tethered to the office or to a PC. For me, however, using my phone to handle these tasks is a choice. Since my physician income is based on an “eat what you kill” model, I understand the value of my time and can make an informed decision to work outside the office or not.

Our ambulatory EHR has a great mobile product. Logging in and accessing a patient chart takes just a couple of seconds. This has made cross-covering after-hours call for colleagues much easier. I provide better care because I know more about the patients. I don’t have study data, but it would seem to be safer (not to mention more convenient) for the patient if I can address the issue based on the information in the chart rather than sending patients to urgent care. It also makes documenting those phone calls a snap.

Putting on my CMIO hat, however, I worry about the prevalence of working outside the office. Despite various office policies and customs encouraging staff to stay off email after hours, we’re having increasing challenges with staffers who continue to work long after the work day is over. Many of our employees are able to use flex time to accommodate family issues and expect to see some after-hours access in that circumstance. We’ve had some significant weather events with multiple school cancellations this winter, so quite a few parents have been working at home.

Barring flex time arrangements, however, I don’t expect to see people online at 8 or 9 at night unless it’s a scheduled maintenance event, and in that case, it would be happening after 11 p.m. Why is this behavior growing, then? Our health system has been through a couple of rounds of downsizing in the last couple of years and I wonder what impact that has had on people working after hours. Are employees trying to work longer and harder to distinguish themselves from their teammates in the event of another reduction in force? Are they young motivated analysts trying to get ahead? Are they just workaholics? I’d be interested to hear if readers in the trenches are seeing the same trends and what they’re doing to address them.

I beat Weird News Andy to the punch on this one. A Wisconsin medical examiner agrees to a plea deal after being accused of stealing body parts. According to the Wausau Daily Herald, she is accused of taking a piece of cadaver spine and human tissue “to train her dog.” Next time I’d suggest a Milk Bone or possibly a package of Snausages.

Earlier this week in Curbside Consult, I mentioned that I’m going to need roller skates to maneuver through everything we need to accomplish in 2014. Thanks to @SmyrnaGirl who found me the perfect pair. I bet Inga will be jealous.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

News 1/22/14

Top News

GE will acquire API Healthcare, a provider of healthcare workforce management software and analytics solutions.

Reader Comments

From Brian: “Re: Advisory Panel ‘2014 will be the year of …’ patient relationship management. Spanning not only the clinical realm, but the financial realm as well. Every touch, clinical and financial, influences the patient’s attitude towards the health system, impacting satisfaction and their willingness to return for elective services or recommend to friends and family.”

From Keith: “Re: HHS. This issue needs Meaningful Use guidelines.” OIG finds that HHS paid $172 million in claims for 474,000 vacuum erection systems (penis pumps) from 2006 through 2011, spending twice as much per unit as the VA paid or what online retailers charge.

From Across the Pond: “Re: interesting article from Isala Hospital, Netherlands. It’s in Dutch, but explains the positive outcomes (reduced hospital mortality and others) realized from introducing an extra pre-procedure safety check beyond the usual time-outs before open heart surgery. Results are remarkable: 95 percent vs. 55 percent of professionals now feel the treatment is a team effort and the post-surgical hospital mortality rate was reduced from 15 percent to 1.7 percent. Doctors plan to share the results with US colleagues.”

From MDCIO: “Re: Windows XP computers after its retirement on April 8. Can you be HIPAA compliant and qualify for Meaningful Use if your system is not receiving security updates?” At minimum, you could interpret that running an obsolete OS for which no security updates are available means you aren’t protecting PHI to the best of your ability. I’m interested to hear from readers, especially CIOs whose hospitals are still running some XP PCs. Hard and fast rules aside, I wouldn’t want to be deposed to provide post-breach “why were you still using XP” justification to OIG or a plaintiff’s attorney. According to HHS:

The Security Rule was written to allow flexibility for covered entities to implement security measures that best fit their organizational needs. The Security Rule does not specify minimum requirements for personal computer operating systems, but it does mandate requirements for information systems that contain electronic protected health information (e-PHI). Therefore, as part of the information system, the security capabilities of the operating system may be used to comply with technical safeguards standards and implementation specifications such as audit controls, unique user identification, integrity, person or entity authentication, or transmission security. Additionally, any known security vulnerabilities of an operating system should be considered in the covered entity’s risk analysis (e.g., does an operating system include known vulnerabilities for which a security patch is unavailable, e.g., because the operating system is no longer supported by its manufacturer).

From NurseJane: “Re: Prognosis HIS. Did you know it was acquired? We are concerned as we are going through a MU audit and we are on their system. They laid off over half the company last year and replaced the CEO. I would appreciate you finding out more and reporting on it.” CEO Jim Holtzman provided a quick response to our inquiry:

In 2013, Prognosis completed a transaction in which it was acquired by two of its original founders who have since rejoined the company, with the common goal of enhancing its ability to provide the best software and services to our customers in their dedication to provide excellent healthcare services to their patient base.

As a bit of history, In 2012 I joined Prognosis as CFO. At that time, I rapidly joined with our team in a process of improving Prognosis’s financial position, while also taking on a venture/PE fundraising effort that had started shortly before I joined the company. Through 2012 and into May of 2013, our management team worked to enhance our financial position, part of which included a restructuring and initial reduction in force. On May 15, 2013, I took the role of CEO and continued our mission of managing through our challenges. At that time, we implemented one more, final reduction and began the process of completely revising how we approach our business processes to better and more efficiently serve our customers. Over the remainder of the year, we radically improved our support processes, closed new business and continued to guide our company through some difficult waters.

Then, three weeks ago on December 30, 2013, Prognosis closed an investment transaction with AO Capital Partners, LLC, a private equity firm and financial investor. As part of their investment, AO Capital Partners acquired Prognosis through an asset acquisition and made an initial cash investment in the company in the form of working capital.

It is important to note that AO Capital is led by two of Prognosis original founders, Dirk Cameron and Isaac Shi.  Previously, Mr. Shi was the Chief Architect of our software when it was originally designed and built back in 2006. We are extremely excited to have both Mr. Cameron and Mr. Shi back in the Prognosis fold and as members of our leadership team. We are already actively exploring new pathways of product development that include innovative new features and functionality, as well as innovative methods of delivery. We also continue to focus on enhanced customer support and professional service models to better support our customers. We look forward to sharing the fruits of this new partnership with our customers and prospects in the very near future. The simple fact of this transaction is that our customers will feel essentially no difference aside from our efforts, with new development and support resources to further enhance our processes that we have worked on so hard this last year.

We continue to work toward completion of our MU2, 2014 software certification which will be completed in multiple waves. The first of those waves was completed in December and we crushed the certification process, completing our certification, in one day of testing, of more modules than we had originally scheduled. I am confident that we will perform as flawlessly in the remaining waves as we did in wave one. We are now modularly 2014 certified following wave one and continue along the pathway of full EHR certification by end of the first quarter of 2014.  Our customers are going to feel nothing more than continued improvements. 

The only minor change that we will be making beyond the comments above is a tweak to our name, which will now be Prognosis Innovation Healthcare, reflecting our commitment to innovative software that serves the healthcare community.

As always, I welcome calls and questions and will be happy to answer any questions about our company and our products and services.

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I was looking over the HIMSS conference schedule today and was intrigued by the new Startup Showcase, which features 40 startup and early stage HIT companies. It looks like the showcase will be in the exhibit hall and participating vendors will have a chance to demo their offerings. Could be fun.

Another fun option might be the HIMSS14 Wellness Challenge. Participants wearing a Misfit Shine activity tracker can compete in different daily challenges such as steps taken, calories burned, and distance walked. I always feel like I walk 10 miles a day, so maybe I should sign up.

Reminder: sign up by January 29 if you want to be considered for a HIStalkapalooza invitation. Not everyone who signs up will be invited, but on the other hand, everyone who is invited will have signed up (this sounds like one of those logic problems from the SAT, but it’s really not hard.) We will email invitations to the folks we can accept on February 4 or thereabouts. We have hundreds more requests than we have spots, so not everybody will get an invitation, unfortunately.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor MEDHOST. The company offers solutions for ED (MEDHOST EDIS); patient flow (MEDHOST PatientFLow HD); perioperative (MEDHOST Advanced Perioperative Information Management System); patient portal (MEDHOST YourCareCommunity); public health reporting (MEDHOST YourCareLink); clinicals, patient access, revenue cycle, and financials (Enterprise Solutions); BI (MEDHOST Business Intelligence); hosting and managed services (MEDHOST Direct); and services for outsourcing, consulting, and optimization. The 30-year-old Franklin, TN-based company, formerly known as HealthTech and serving more than 1,000 hospital customers of all sizes, unified its corporate identify and product line under the MEDHOST name last month. It pledges to deliver unparalleled value and easy-to-use technology for managing care and the business of healthcare. Customer case studies are here. Thanks to MEDHOST for supporting HIStalk.

I found a YouTube video describing MEDHOST Direct hosting at Valley Regional Hospital (NH).

Upcoming Webinars 

February 5 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare Transformation: What’s Good About US Healthcare? Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: John Haughom, MD, senior advisor, Health Catalyst. Dr. Haughom will provide a deeper look at the forces that have defined and shaped the current state of U.S. healthcare. Paradoxically, some of these same forces are also driving the inevitable need for change.

February 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Healthcare CO-OPs and Their Potential to Reduce Costs. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenters: David Napoli, director of performance improvement and strategic analytics, Colorado HealthOP and Richard Schultz, VP of clinical care integration, Kentucky Health Cooperative. Consumer Operated and Oriented Plans (CO-OPs) were established by the Affordable Care Act as nonprofit health insurance companies designed to compete in the individual and small group markets. Their intended impact was to provide more insurance options for consumers to pay for healthcare.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kareo secures $29.5 million in growth capital.

UnitedHealth Group’s Optum health services business grew revenue 35 percent in the fourth quarter.

Etransmedia Technology acquires Medigistics, a Columbus-OH based provider of RCM and AR management services for the healthcare industry.

Sales

RegionalCare Hospital Partners (TN) will deploy AirStrip ONE OB and AirStrip ONE Cardiology across its eight-hospital system.

Medical Professional Services selects athenahealth’s population health Management platform for its 450-provider IPA.

Healthstat will implement eClinicalWorks EHR across more than 350 sites.

Nexus Health Systems (TX) selects Summit Healthcare Express Connect interface technology.

Scotland County Hospital (MO) chooses Access electronic patient signature and e-forms solutions to complement its Meditech 6.x EHR implementation.

Summit Healthcare selects Secure Exchange Solutions as its Health Information Service Provider for secure healthcare information exchange.

People

VisionWare names Paul Roscoe (The Advisory Board) CEO and board member.

Medhost names Lionel Tehini (Acuitec) president of the company’s professional services division.

Telemedicine software vendor REACH Health names Steve McGraw (SAI Global) as president and CEO, replacing the retiring Richard Otto.

AtHoc appoints Karen Garavatti (Ericsson) head of human resources.

Salar appoints new members to its clinical documentation advisory board, including Neri Cohen, MD (Greater Baltimore Medical Center), Brian Houston, MD (Johns Hopkins Medicine), Don Levick, MD (Lehigh Valley Health Network), Eric Radler, MD (Lifespan), and Jenson Wong, MD (San Francisco General Hospital.)

Announcements and Implementations

Michigan Health Connect and Great Lakes HIE will merge their operations later this year to create one of the country’s largest HIEs.

AirWatch opens a Miami office.

University Hospital Southampton NHS Foundation Trust in the UK expands the rollout of its personal health record, which is based on Get Real Health’s InstantPHR patient engagement platform.

France-based IT services vendor Atos launches an enterprise content management system for healthcare based on EMC Documentum.

Aventura will integrate its instant-on awareness computing technology for clinicians with virtualization offerings from Varrow.

Government and Politics

About 69 percent of physicians intend to participate in the MU program, according to CDC survey conducted in mid-2013. At that time, 13 percent of them were using an EHR capable of supporting 14 of the 17 Stage 2 Core Set objectives. Half of office-based physicians were using at least a basic EHR, up from 11 percent in 2006.

An IT security expert says that Healthcare.gov is not secure, claiming that he can extract thousands of database records directly from the site without even hacking it. He listed 20 security issues weeks ago and says  they haven’t been fixed. HHS says it doesn’t believe him and the site is fine.

The VA says that the medical and financial information of more than 5,000 users of the VA/DoD eBenefits military benefits site may have been exposed to other users last week due to a programming error.

Other

“123456” tops Splashtop’s list of the of most commonly stolen passwords for 2013, beating out longtime favorite, “password.”

A new KLAS report says Epic, athenahealth, and Greenway lead the 11-75 physician practice segment. Allscripts, McKesson, and Vitera have the highest percentage of unhappy customers who will stick to the EMR they bought even though they wouldn’t buy it again.

A study finds that the leading online source of medical information for both providers and patients is Wikipedia.

Tim Moseley and Ron Hedges of the IT department of Memorial Hospital of Gulfport (MS) are presented a certificate of appreciation and Seven Seals Award for setting up a Skype session that allowed Air National Guard Staff Sergeant Drew Bynum, deployed overseas, to see his newborn daughter. Major Jeff Wyatt of the 255th Air Control Squadron told the men, both of whom are veterans themselves, “It’s hard enough being over there and doing your job in trying circumstances, but you’re never totally over there. There’s always a part of you that is back here with your family and friends. It takes people like you, supporting us, to enable us to do our job overseas.”

Weird News Andy provides a quote for this story: “There is not one blade of grass, there is no color in this world that is not intended to make us rejoice.” A 70-year-old man who was born color blind can suddenly see colors after experiencing a fall. Doctors can’t explain it since color blindness is a retinal cone defect, but postulate that it’s the man’s perception of colors that has changed.

Sponsor Updates

• More than 150 Surgical Information Systems employees participated in the company’s first community service day in metro Atlanta.
• NextGen Healthcare reports that its Ambulatory EHR version 5.8 meets the latest ICD-10 standards, adding that it will offer customers ICD-10 educational and testing tools.
• Harry Greenspun, MD, senior advisor for healthcare transformation and technology for the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, discusses the four dimensions for effective mobile health in a blog posting.
• Quest Diagnostics certifies CompuGroup Medical’s LabDAQ LIS as a Gold Quality Solution under Quest’s Health IT Quality Solutions program.
• Wolters Kluwer Health collaborates with the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses to review the core procedures in the Lippincott Procedures software application.
• RelayHealth’s RelayClearance, RelayAssurance, RelayAnalytics, and RelayPayer Connectivity Services achieve a Level 2 appraisal rating under CMMI Institutes’ Capability Maturity Model Integration.
• Beacon Partners hosted an analytics roundtable on establishing an analytics-driven healthcare culture.
• EDCO Health Information Solutions sponsored a presentation by HIMSS VP John H. Daniels on the HIMSS Analytics EMR Adoption model at a New Jersey Hospital Association meeting last week.
• Surgical Information Systems and QlikTech renew their agreement to expand the use of QlikView with SIS Analytics.
• Adventist Health (CA) shares how it reduced its revenue cycle by two days after implementing The SSI Group’s RCM solution.
• A Nuance Communications study finds that 71 percent of physicians would be more responsive to clinical documentation improvement clarifications if they were delivered in real time within their EHR workflow.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

GE To Acquire API Healthcare

GE announced this afternoon that it will acquire workforce management and analytics software vendor API Healthcare. Terms were not disclosed.

GE will incorporate API Healthcare’s offerings into its Hospital Operations Management product line that includes asset management and patient flow optimization solutions.

GE Healthcare Services President and CEO Michael Swinford was quoted in the announcement as saying, “Labor costs represent over 50 percent of hospital operating budgets. With this acquisition, GE Healthcare will be able to address a significant portion of hospital operations costs – assets, patients and labor – with a mix of software, real-time data, powerful analytics and professional services.”

The Hartford,WI-based API Healthcare offers solutions for staffing and scheduling, patient classification, human resources, talent management, payroll, time and attendance, business analytics, and staffing agency. The company’s solutions lead the KLAS rankings in the time and attendance and staffing and scheduling solutions categories. 

Private equity firm Francisco Partners acquired API Software in November 2008, naming former Cerner executive J.P. Fingado as president and CEO. The company’s name was changed to API Healthcare in February 2009. Workforce management systems competitor Kronos announced plans to acquire the company in February 2011, but that agreement was scrapped in April 2011 after the Department of Justice expressed antitrust concerns. The company acquired hospital staffing and scheduling systems vendor Concerro in February 2012.

Monday Morning Update 1/20/14

From Big Kahuna: “Re: Advisory Panel question about ‘2014 will be the year of …’ Patient Access! Of the 10 hospital CEOs we heard speak at last week’s J.P. Morgan conference in San Francisco, eight mentioned patient access as a chief concern or initiative.”

“Jeopardy” winner or not, readers aren’t impressed with the healthcare potential of IBM’s Watson. New poll to your right, as requested by a reader: are HIT vendors laying off more people than 1-2 years ago? You can click the poll’s Comments link after voting to explain.

Lorre is finishing up work on HIStalkU, a new site that will showcase our completed, recorded HIStalk webinars to give them more long-tail visibility. We included the capability to include outside webinars, white papers, and videos as well, so if you are interested, contact Lorre. We have plans for adding more purely educational content such as lectures and slide sets (thus the name.)

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Arcadia Healthcare Solutions of Burlington, MA. The 12-year-old, 200-employee company has worked with 7,500 providers, 150 PCMH practices, and five pioneer ACOs to improve healthcare quality and reduce cost via EHR outsourcing and consulting, vendor-agnostic data integration and population analytics, provider retention, and practice transformation and coaching. The company can improve key ambulatory network measures 15-30 percent in six months by bringing together EHR and claims data and helping providers use it. Some of its EHR optimization accomplishments include reducing log-in time by 50 percent, improving system performance by 27 percent, and increasing physician satisfaction by 20 percent. Arcadia provides expert advisors rather than, as it says, “high-priced management consultants who leave nothing behind but PowerPoint.” You probably know some of Arcadia’s industry long-timer leaders: Sean Carroll (Nuance); Sam Adams (Lawson, Picis); and Chris Couch (Health Dialog). Thanks to Arcadia Healthcare Solutions for supporting HIStalk.

Cerner launches what will be the largest corporate campus in Missouri at an eventual 4.1 million square feet. Cerner says its $4.3 billion complex will house up to 1,500 new employees within three years.

Meanwhile in England, the interim CEO of Royal Berkshire Hospital says its $47 million Cerner Millennium system is still not working right, adding, “It was particularly bad the year before, but it’s still not good enough. We’re in the process of moving with a new strategy with what the information system should be in future.”

The local newspaper covers a site visit to St. Rita’s Medical Center (OH) by a nine-member delegation from an Epic prospect hospital in the Netherlands.

DreamIt Health Baltimore launches and adds Kaiser Permanente to its list of strategic partners that includes Johns Hopkins and Northrop Grumman. Startups chosen for the four-month boot camp, many of which don’t even have websites that I could find, are:

• Aegle. Wearable biometrics.
• Avhana. EHR clinical decision support.
• Cognuse. Game-based stroke rehab.
• EMOCHA. Medication data capture.
• Protenus. Patient consent management.
• Respi. Smartphone-based spirometry.
• Patient Feed. Inpatient collaboration.
• Phobious. Augmented reality treatment of behavioral health issues.
• The Smartphone Physical. Smartphone diagnostic tools.

Beverly Bell (Health Care DataWorks) is named VP of consulting at Siemens Healthcare. 

Connie McGee (AirSrip) joins Pershing Yoakley & Associates as a principal.

Actor Dennis Quaid is back on the patient safety bandwagon again years after after his high-profile legal crusade against medication errors went on hiatus. Quaid, whose newborn twins were given 10,000 unit/ml of the blood-thinning drug heparin as an IV flush rather than 10 units/ml at Cedars-Sinai in 2008 without permanent harm, is urging Californians to support the Pack Patient Safety Act that would require doctors to look up their patients in the state’s CURES prescription dispensing database before prescribing narcotics. The proposed act, which will appear on the November ballot if it gets enough signatures, would also adjust California’s $250,000 medical malpractice cap for inflation to $1.1 million, require physicians to be randomly tested for drugs and alcohol, and would require doctors to report their peers if they witness substance abuse or medical negligence. Bob Pack’s two children were killed in 2003 when a doctor-shopping drug addict ran over them, after which he found that multiple Kaiser Permanente doctors were prescribing narcotics for the woman without realizing it. Pack, the founder of NetZero, developed the CURES system that few doctors use ( including those of Kaiser) and that doctors say is user-unfriendly. Quaid sued everybody in sight after the medication error involving his twins (including the drug’s manufacturer and distributor, who had nothing to do with the nurse’s mistake) and shamed Cedars into spending $100 million for medication barcoding. HIMSS put him on as a conference keynoter in 2009. He merged his patient safety foundation with another group the next year and hasn’t had much to say about patient safety since.

NextGen, like Greenway and Allscripts before it, will integrate analytics from Inovalon (which changed its name from MedAssurant last year.)

A Wall Street Journal blog entry mentions an Amazon patent for “anticipatory shipping,” where the company it will use its customer information to reduce the delays between ordering and shipping that “may dissuade customers from buying items from online merchants.” Nobody seems to interpret the possibilities as I do in reading between the lines: the company could ship items “on approval” for opt-in customers with return postage paid, allowing the company to put appealing merchandize into the hands of qualified customers with the confidence that many will keep it. Amazon would be putting a lot of trust in the information it owns, but imagine the possibilities of customers voluntarily buying items they didn’t order, just like making impulse purchases in a store’s checkout lane. Amazon has blurred the line between bricks-and-mortar stores and online purchases with its Prime program, fast shipping, digital downloads, superb product recommendations and reviews, and the possibility of drone-delivered packages. I can see this as its next step in world domination. Imagine the mess if hospitals and practices used their patient data to automatically schedule tests or issue prescriptions and you’ll see why Amazon is a lot smarter.

GE Healthcare announces 2013 financial results, with sales down slightly but profits up 4.4 percent.

The local paper says the formerly high-flying transplant program at University of Arizona Medical Center has been temporarily shut down after a dispute with the program’s chief surgeon, who was fired in September 2013 when the hospital accused him of falsifying the electronic records of unsuccessful surgeries. The surgeon claims he was let go after criticizing the dean of the university’s medical school.  

Girish Navani, CEO of eClinicalWorks, is interviewed by the New York Times on his management style. Some highlights: (a) he doesn’t believe in titles because they create “title warfare”; (b) he doesn’t fire people, he just tells them to take three months to find something else they want to do or be prepared to change how they work; (c) the company hires straight out of college, saying, “We don’t hire free agents, we draft players.” I like this idea:

There’s a big, oval table outside my office, with eight chairs around it, and I spend a lot of time working there. It gives an opportunity to anybody to come up to me, ask questions, discuss an idea and brainstorm on a big whiteboard. Some people will join a conversation just because they want to learn. You never ask the question, “Why are you sitting at this table?”

Weird News Andy says she’s on pins and needles. New England Journal of Medicine reports the case of a woman with resistant knee pain who was found by doctors performing X-rays to have knees filled with hundreds of acupuncture needles, apparently left there intentionally for ongoing benefit by her acupuncturist.

Vince’s HIS-tory of McKesson Paragon is bittersweet because it’s the last episode in his series that has been running on HIStalk for years. Industry long-timers have enjoyed some fond (and not-so-fond) memories of companies, products, and people in the past, while newer folks have developed new appreciation for the origins of the industry in which they work.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

News 1/17/14

Top News

Streamline Health will acquire St. Louis-based patient scheduling and surgery systems vendor Unibased Systems Architecture.

Reader Comments

From Salient Point: “Re: vendor layoffs. I’ve never had so many colleagues (most of them older), including high-performing salespeople, being let go. Seems like more than the usual Q4 pruning. Are you seeing this?” I will defer to readers. It does seems as though companies are cutting back, maybe because the HITECH boom is pretty much over unless you are Epic, Cerner, or a consulting company.  The EMR dance partners have largely been chosen, other than the likely ambulatory rip-and-replace caused by unmet expectations and acquisitions.

From Eclipsys Gal: “Re: Chad Eckes, chief strategy officer at Cancer Treatment Centers of America. Replacing Sheila Sanders as CIO at Wake Forest Baptist University Medial Center (NC).” Unverified. Sanders resigned after four years at WFBUMC in May 2013 following a disastrous Epic rollout, although the hospital said her departure was unrelated.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A few highlights from HIStalk Practice over the last week include: CareCloud reports the addition of 520 new clients in 2013, including the 20-provider Urology Austin (TX). The PCMH model leads to lower cost, better access to care, higher patient satisfaction, and fewer avoidable or unnecessary services. Practice Fusion achieves 2014 Complete EHR certification in time to beat its December 31 “guarantee” deadline. More than half of providers say they have not yet estimated the impact of ICD-10 on their cash flow. Doximity claims it has more physician members (250,000) than the AMA. SureScripts adds almost two dozen vendors to its clinical network for secure HIE. A dozen HIT vendors share opinions on the biggest challenges facing physicians and physicians practices in 2014 in part one of a three-part series. Thanks for reading.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor MBA HealthGroup of South Burlington, VT. The company’s consulting services include Epic, Allscripts, ICD-10, EHR optimization, Meaningful Use, and RCM. They’ve trained and supported more than 5,000 physicians on Allscripts EHR, trained 3,000 users on Epic 2012, and provided RCM services to 400 physicians in 38 states. Fletcher Allen CIO Chuck Podesta mentioned using the company’s Epic 2012 upgrade services when I interviewed him earlier this week (the case study is here.) I noticed a new company blog post on the benefits and pitfalls of personalizing Epic that contains good nuts-and-bolts advice. Thanks to MBA HealthGroup for supporting HIStalk.

Listening: The Neighbourhood, a new California-based five-piece that skillfully blends alternative music with R&B. The singer is 22, which must be the coolest thing ever.

HIStalkapalooza and HIMSS

HIStalkapalooza registration will continue for several days. Everybody who wants an invitation has to register individually (that includes Inga and me, so don’t expect sympathy after the fact if you didn’t bother). We would love to invite everyone, but that’s not possible given that we had more than 750 requests in the first few hours, so watch your inbox for invitations on February 4 or so and follow #HIStalkapalooza14 on Twitter. Imprivata is doing an amazing job to make it the best event possible, as you’ll see if you score an invitation. It’s hard to comprehend that this will be the seventh version, going all the way back to Orlando in 2008 when it was 200 or so people in a Peabody Hotel conference room. I was thrilled because I was secretly hoping for 100 but expecting 25.

HIStalk sponsors: let Lorre know if you’ll be attending our sponsor-only networking reception on Sunday evening, February 23 at the HIMSS conference. It’s going to be pretty cool and a nice way to finish to the pre-conference weekend. Contact Inga if you haven’t sent your information for our HIMSS guide.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The price of Allscripts shares climbed nine percent Wednesday following the company’s prediction of five to eight percent adjusted revenue growth per year from 2014 to 2016. Analysts were expecting five percent growth in 2014. Above is the one-year chart with MDRX in blue and the Nasdaq in red, with shares rising 60 percent.

Valence Health reports revenue growth of 35 percent for 2013 and a 65 percent increase in bookings.

Craneware says its first half earnings are expected to be up five percent over last year.

Mercom Capital Group issues its healthcare mergers and acquisitions report for 2013, reporting $2.2 billion and 571 deals in 2013 vs. $1.2 billion and 163 deals in 2012. The top five VC-funded companies for the year were Evolent Health ($100 million), Practice Fusion ($85 million), Fitbit ($73 million), MedSynergies ($65 million), and Proteus Digital Health ($45 million). Above are the largest M&A transactions of the year. The full report costs $599.

Sales

Center for Diagnostic Imaging (MN) extends its use of Merge Healthcare solutions to include the iConnect Network interoperability platform.

Long-term care provider Grace Healthcare (TN) selects the Daylight IQ disease management system from COMS Interactive.

NorthBay Healthcare (CA) selects Health Catalyst’s Late-Binding Data Warehouse and Analytics platform.

WakeMed Health & Hospitals (NC) will implement population health and final risk management solutions from Evolent Health.

Kaiser Permanente (CA) renews a multi-year agreement with MedAssets for strategic sourcing and spend analytics solutions and to serve as Kaiser’s exclusive GPO for its nationwide facilities.

People

ISalus Healthcare hires Jason McDonald (Kareo) as chief sales officer.

HIMSS names its former board chair Willa Fields (San Diego State University) the winner of the 2013 HIMSS Nursing Informatics Leadership Award.

Rick Roycroft (MedAssets) joins Huron Consulting Group as managing director of the company’s healthcare practice.

Cureatr names Vik Shah (Medidata Solutions) as EVP of client services and operations.

Announcements and Implementations

Johns Hopkins HealthCare (MD) and BlueRush Media Group will co-develop an online portal that provides information for employers and their employees who are undergoing or have gone through cancer treatment.

The City of New Orleans EMS integrates its EMS Service Bridge electronic patient care reporting system from ImageTrend with the Greater New Orleans HIE.

In Canada, Cerner completes deployments of its ambulatory EMR  at three Ontario ambulatory clinics, supported by Canada Health Infoway.

Compass Oncology (OR) pilots My Care Plus, a patient portal designed specifically for cancer patients by McKesson Specialty Health.

The VA deploys Health Level’s critical case management platform for all its VA National Teleradiology Program medical centers.

The Ministry of Health of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia launches nationwide open access to Wolters Kluwer Health’s UpToDate for the country’s 80,000 physicians and nurses.

Lincoln Hospital (WA) and Community Wellness (WA) use the INHS TeleHealth system to offer diabetes and pre-diabetes education to rural communities in northern Idaho and eastern Washington.

Government and Politics

ONC releases the Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience (SAFER) Guides, which include checklists and recommended practices to help providers assess and optimize the safety and safe use of EHRs. The set of nine guides are High Priority Practice, Organizational Responsibilities, Contingency Planning, System Configuration, System Interfaces, Patient Identification, CPOE with Decision Support, Test Results Report and Follow-Up, and Clinician Communication. Each starts with a checklist of recommended practices for optimizing EHR safety. The guides were developed by Joan Ash, PhD (OHSU), Hardeep Singh, MD (Houston VA, Baylor), and Dean Sitting, PhD (UT Health Science Center). This is some really good work.

ONC announces the beginning of a 30-day period for organizations to submit requests for ONC-Approved Accreditor status, which is valid for up to three years. This the organization that accredits EHR certification organizations, with ANSI as the incumbent since the role was first defined in 2011.

CMS and ONC select McKesson and Meditech as its first designated “Test EHRs.” In order to meet the transition of care objective in Stage 2, EPs, EHs, and CAHs must successfully exchange an electronic summary of care document with a CMS-designated test EHR or with an EHR technology different that the provider’s EHR technology.

Several North Carolina doctors file a class action lawsuit against the state for delayed Medicaid payments, claiming that the the state’s Department of Health and Human Services and its contractors — CSC, Maximus Consulting, and SLI Gobal Solutions — were negligent in their rollout of the state’s $484 million NCTracks payment system.

Brian Ahier provided this audio of Karen DeSalvo’s introduction of herself to the HIT Policy Committee earlier this week. She sounds kind of fun, but for some reason her voice goes up in tone at the end of some sentences like she’s asking a question when she isn’t.

Other

A HIMSS Analytics report predicts accelerated growth for patient portals, clinical data warehousing and data mining, and radiology barcoding applications. The number of patient portal vendors rose from 28 in 2009 to 62 today.

CTG will add 300 jobs in its home city of Buffalo, NY in a medical informatics partnership with University of Buffalo’s Center for Computational Research in a genomics and big data initiative. The company helped create UB’s Institute for Healthcare Informatics in 2010 and contributed funds for Roswell Park Cancer Institute’s Center for Personalized Medicine.

A California highway patrol officer stops a California software developer for speeding, also citing her for wearing Google Glass. He considered the device to be covered under the same laws that prohibit playing video in the driver’s field of vision.

Texas and the city of Austin offer athenahealth $5.7 million in incentives to open an R&D center that would create 607 jobs with a capital investment of $13 million. The company is also considering locations in California, Massachusetts, and Georgia, the latter two of which have previously provided athenahealth with similar incentives.  

BIDMC CIO John Halamka says he has written two books, one a reflection on his blog writings and other a fictional thriller. He’ll be signing the former at HIMSS. He really is a Renaissance man now that he’s turned into a gentleman farmer (I’m hooked on his “Building Unity Farm” series.) I just can’t understand how he finds the time to get so involved in so much, maybe because I’m lazy.

The governor of Guam signs a bill approving a $25 million loan to Guam Memorial Hospital to help it repay its previous bailout loan and to pay the support fees of NTT Data, which threatened to cut the hospital off from software support.

Michael Gilbert, MD, a family medicine physician with St. Joseph Health (CA), writes a good ONC post for practices called “How to Use a Patient Portal.” As an Allscripts Enterprise user, he says the company pushed him to use Jardogs FollowMyHealth after they bought that company, resulting in a 40 percent drop in registrants from their previous portal (presumably Intuit Health). Current problems include the large number of pending registrations that never become active (which throws off the MU Stage 2 denominator), the requirement for users to install the Microsoft Silverlight graphics browser plugin (which hangs up my browser regularly, so I can understand that), and  the need for providers to motivate patients to participate. Interestingly, the practice bought a software development company and will build its own portal and HIE (!!!), but in the meantime seems fairly happy with the Allscripts product:

[providers] participate in secure online clinical communication, schedule appointments, refill medications, and answer routine questions with and for patients. The new portal automatically uploads all results within minutes of being verified by the provider and patients can directly schedule into providers schedules, ask for medication renewals and pay bills. The portal also offers a computer, iPad and iPhone application with all of the above functionality to patients. We have over 30,000 patients registered, and have achieved 10 percent penetration of all registered patients across both medical groups. Some providers have almost half of their patients registered. Our physicians encourage their patients to message them via the portal.

Weird News Andy appropriately finds this story sad. An ambulance takes 18 minutes to arrive at the scene of a shooting in a mall parking deck, unable to enter the facility because of the low ceilings. The crew had to roll the gurney up the ramp to get to the male victim, who had refused to hand over his keys to four carjacking assailants, who then shot him as his wife sat beside him in the car. He died.

An Iowa state prison psychiatric hospital employee is fired for downloading patient photos from the hospital’s computer, Photoshopping them, and emailing them to co-workers, who often responded with additional requests (some of those folks were also fired, apparently.) One of his works involved patient faces superimposed on a “Star Wars” poster whose title he changed to “Tard Wars.” He was also found to have used work PCs to visit adult site including “Heavy Hotties.” The man said his job mostly involved playing cards or Wii with patients, which enabled him to “Photoshop at the same time I am changing lives. It’s called multi-tasking.”

Sponsor Updates

• The coreANALYTICS health system performance improvement system from Encore Health Resources earn ONC 2014 certification as an EHR module. Catholic Health Initiatives is using it.
• Allscripts announces that its KLAS scores are on the rise, with Allscripts Enterprise EHR up 11 percent for the 12-month period ending December 2013 and Sunrise Clinical Manager up four percent.
• Coastal Healthcare Consulting introduces Convergence, a patient identity management solution that uses NextGate’s Enterprise MPI.
• NextGen will map its EHR directly to the IRIS eye disease registry.
• Josh Byrd, Patientco’s director of marketing, shares his perspective on why the patient experience matters.
• Joseph Petro, SVP of healthcare R&D for Nuance, explains how clinical language understanding is critical for helping providers drive productivity while remaining focused on patient care. 
• TriZetto’s Provider Solutions Business unit introduces the Top Codes Report, which allows providers to chart their most frequently billed procedure and diagnosis code pairs in preparation for ICD-10.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

ONC releases SAFER Guides to aid providers in safe use of health information technology. The Safety Assurance Factors for EHR Resilience Guides contain best practices for EHR use and include checklists for practice assessment. ONC Chief Medical Officer Jacob Reider discusses the nine guides on his “Health IT Buzz” blog.

There was a lot of discussion in the physicians’ lounge this morning regarding the suggestion that medical school could be reduced to three years. Certainly the idea of saving a year’s worth of tuition and living expenses might be attractive to those who already know what residency they want to pursue. Several of the programs currently in place reduce electives and require summer classes in order to meet required educational standards.

My medical school’s fourth year curriculum was all elective, and in hindsight, I’m glad I had it. Being at an urban academic medical center allowed me to see things I wouldn’t have been exposed to in residency and also allowed me to practice my clinical skills with less focus on competing against my peers. Coupling reduced medical school experiences with resident work hour limits could create a rocky start for some physicians entering practice.

The other hot topic in the lounge has been the recent New York Times article on scribes. After reading the article, several of my colleagues now think scribes are the be-all, end-all answer to their EHR problems. I enjoy moonlighting at a local emergency department that uses scribes, but physicians need to understand the limitations of the scribe model. Although they’re very popular for episodic care (emergency, urgent care) there are challenges in office-based medicine. One of the major issues is that using a scribe doesn’t relieve the physician of the need to learn the EHR. He or she will need to be able to access the system to view data and to handle after-hours patient contacts such as hospital admissions, phone calls, cross-coverage, etc.

Scribes hired from third-party agencies are expensive – up to $28 per hour in my market. It’s hard for physicians to cover that expense in primary care. The alternative chosen by many physicians is to train a medical assistant to scribe. That approach can be effective as long as the medical assistant is relieved of their other daily responsibilities. It is extremely difficult to try to play both roles in a busy primary care practice. The article says physicians using scribes can see up to four extra patients per day. That’s not been the experience of physicians in our community, who are lucky to see one or two extra patients per day. Scribes may not be as helpful with telephone messages, provider-to-provider communication, and other administrative burdens that impact physicians.

Physicians also need to spend time reviewing the scribe’s notes for accuracy. At my site, there is a pool of scribes and we may work with three or four during a single shift. Although the overall quality of their work is acceptable, the work of some is much stronger than others. Their work requires careful review, especially when they are new. Scribe training programs may be only a few weeks long. If you get lucky and have one who is a pre-med student or a nursing student, it can be a lot of fun since you can do some teaching along the way and they are generally very motivated to do a good job in the hopes they will be able to ask for a recommendation. If you get unlucky and have a scribe who has been up late the night before cramming for exams, it can be a challenge.

Speaking of challenges, today HIMSS invited me to attend a focus group. How could I resist their opening line: “Are you a CIO with a bed size of 150-400 or an IT Director/Manager with a bed size above 300 and not a practicing physician?” Why do they keep demographic files on members if they aren’t going to use them? Between that and the overall lack of HIMSS social invites, I’m starting to wonder whether this meeting is going to be more work than play. I’m confident, however, that with Inga’s vast social network, things will turn around. What are your HIMSS social plans? Email me.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

HIStalkapalooza 2014, Sponsored by Imprivata

HIStalkalooza 2014, sponsored by Imprivata, will be held Monday, February 24, 2014 from 7 p.m. until 11 p.m. at the House of Blues Orlando (Downtown Disney) during the HIMSS Annual Conference & Expo.

Clay Ritchey, Imprivata’s chief marketing officer, said in a company announcement, “HIStalkapalooza is perhaps the most high-profile, premier social event in healthcare IT, and Imprivata is proud to be this year’s sponsor. We plan to uphold the annual traditions that attendees expect at HIStalkaplaooza as well as add some new, exciting surprises that will make this one of the most memorable events yet.”

Attendance is by invitation only since the facility capacity is limited and demand is always high. Those interested in attending complete an online form. Invitees will receive an emailed invitation around February 4. 

The seventh annual HIStalkapalooza, dubbed “Healthcare’s Night Out,” will include the usual events such as the “Inga Loves My Shoes” contest, crowning of the HIStalk King and Queen, and presentation of the annual HISsies awards. Other activities include:

• A live band
• Cartoon artist, magician, and other fun activities and entertainment
• Great food and an open bar

Transportation between the Orange County Convention Center and the House of Blues will be provided.

HIStalk and Imprivata will provide more details as the event draws closer. Keep up on Twitter using #HIStalkapalooza14.

Imprivata is a leading provider of authentication and access management solutions for the healthcare industry that enable fast, secure and more efficient access to healthcare information technology systems to address multiple security and productivity challenges. For more information, please visit www.imprivata.com.

News 1/15/14

Top News

Healthcare billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong launches health IT company NantHealth at the JPMorgan Healthcare Conference, which will offer the “intelligent Clinical Operating System” (iCOS) that will integrate information from molecular science, computer science, and big data to deliver solutions for population health management, cancer care coordination, transition management, and wellness. The company also announced a partnership with the Clinton Foundation to implement iCOS in two areas of the country. The company says iCOS is running in the country’s largest oncology group that covers 150 practices, 22 EMRs, and real-time data feeds moving 50GB per day; its Cancer Decision Support Engine is used by over 50 percent of oncology practices; and its EMR is running in 12,700 facilities in 13 countries. It talks about DeviceConX device connectivity, which is the iSirona’s product it gained when it acquired the company effective January 1, 2014.  Most of the other offerings are also previous NantHealth acqusitions, including the GlowCaps medication reminder system, home monitoring devices from Boston Life Labs, and Ziosoft medical imaging. Soon-Shiong spent $800 million on 60 companies and research projects that make up iCOS, which he says can be purchased right now. I’m never quite sure whether to take Soon-Shiong seriously, but having $7 billion gives him at least some instant credibility.

Reader Comments

From Holly S: “Re: Jonathan Bush’s leave. He’s going on an extended vacation from February to April. He’ll be spending time with friends and family, both travelling and hunkering down. His agenda is to play and experience some things he’s always wanted to do. He has never been so energized about the business, its ability to effect change in health care, the marketplace’s receptivity to change. He’s all-in on what’s ahead.” Thanks to athena for providing this update in respond to a reader’s inquiry. JB told me he hates to miss “the boat show” (the HIMSS conference) and especially his MC duties at HIStalkapalooza, but as he also confided, “I am honored to have been your MC these past few years and hope dearly that whoever replaces me in 2014 will be a bomb so that you will have me back in 2015.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Thanks to Greenway Medical for sending this note in response to recent rumors of employee layoffs:

We’d prefer to not comment on rumors. We have, in fact, been working through a very thorough review of our organization since completing the merger of Greenway Medical Technologies and Vitera Healthcare Solutions, which includes Vitera’s SuccessEHS. That process includes aligning our resources to most effectively serve our customers, which we’re accomplishing by delivering our innovative7 industry-leading solutions, delivering data liquidity through our powerful interoperability engine, and leading our customers through what will be an awesome change from production medicine to outcomes-based medicine through our clinically driven revenue cycle management solutions. Our mission at Greenway remains the same.  We believe healthcare will continue to electronify, the consumer will become more engaged and demand change, and we will improve population health by delivering smarter solutions.  We’re privileged to serve such a large provider base, clinical professionals who provide care to millions and millions of patients. 

Voting for the HISsies awards is underway, as follows:

• I pleaded for nominations on HIStalk over several days and, as happens every year, didn’t get many nominations even though anyone can nominate. If you don’t like the choices on the ballot, blame those few hardy readers who actually submitted nomination since everyone who has complained so far didn’t.
• The most-nominated entries made it onto the final ballot, which was emailed directly to the addresses in the HIStalk update list (which prevents ballot box stuffing since the voting is tied to the email address.)
• So far, 765 of the 10,000 email recipients have voted.
• The results will be revealed at HIStalkapalooza and on HIStalk.

On the Jobs Page: NextGen Activation Consultant, Epic Activation Consultant, Epic Certified Builder.

Listening: new (released today, in fact) from Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, brilliant and amazing 1960s-style revivalist pop soul with lots of horns recorded on good old analog. Treatments for Sharon’s pancreatic cancer (diagnosed June 2013) left her bald but unbowed in the video.

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Accreon. The company is a leader in system optimization, information integration, and software solution development. They worked on Canada’s clinical information highway and have built tools for US-based vendors for population health management, remote patient monitoring, and workflow optimization. Services for providers include strategic planning, project management, implementation, integration, analytics strategy and optimization, and HIE architecture and sustainability. They can also help vendors with near-shore solutions, software development, integration, and analytics projects and they also do work for payors, pharma, and government. Eric Demers is the Boston-based president of Accuron USA and not only is an industry long-timer who you may know, he even has a MHSA degree, which always clearly signifies that “I’m a healthcare person” since just about everybody else gets a general MBA instead. Thanks to Accreon for supporting HIStalk.

Upcoming Webinars

January 16 (Thursday), 1:00 p.m. Advanced Efforts to Identify and Eliminate Waste from Healthcare. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: David Burton, MD, executive chairman, Health Catalyst. Based on a breakthrough analyses using several large healthcare data sets as representative samples, Dr. Burton and team will present insights designed to help executives struggling to identify, quantify, and extract waste from their systems.

Webinar questions? Contact Lorre.

I’ll post a separate HIStalk article Wednesday afternoon with the link to the registration page, so watch for the email update. There’s no need to rush – we’ll leave the registration page up for several days and then invitations will go out February 4. Above is a bit of a hint about the sponsor and location. Meanwhile, I’ll say just once more that I think the primary sponsor has one co-sponsor slot open, so email me if you want more information.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

WellDoc, provider of a Type 2 diabetes mobile device management program, raises $20 million from Merck Global Health Innovation Fund and Windham Venture Partners.

Surgical Information Systems acquires ambulatory surgery EMR and management software vendor AmkaiSolutions.

Online employee health shopping systems vendor HealthSparq acquires ClarusHealth Solutions, which offers a provider search function for consumers. HealthSparq’s president is Scott Decker, formerly of NextGen and Healthvision.

Transcription and speech recognition vendor MModal, acquired by a JPMorgan private equity arm in a leveraged buyout worth $1.1 billion in August 2012, hires a restructuring firm, according to sources cited by The Wall Street Journal. Sales are dropping and  the company is paying high interest charges on its debt of $750 million, which has tripled since the acquisition.

Post-acute care software provider Brightree acquires Strategic AR, a provider of private-pay billing and collection services.

Sales

Rush Health (IL) contracts with Caradigm for healthcare analytics and population health software to support its private HIE. Rush Health’s CEO says the HIE is the largest investment the organization has ever made, adding, “We want to use this infrastructure to connect and exchange real-time information so we can do a better job coordinating care.” Rush Health will also offer to cover the first-year of EHR expenses the 10 percent of its doctors who are still using paper, moving them to Epic, eClinicalWorks, or athenahealth.

Contra Costa County Health Services (CA) engages Vonlay to support its Epic 2012 upgrade.

The 22-hospital St. Vincent Health (IN) will pilot Acupera’s population health analytics and clinical workflow management platform in one of its physician offices.

Catholic Health Partners (OH) will implement Epic’s MyChart Bedside at all of its hospitals following a successful pilot at its St. Rita’s Medical Center (OH) location. Patients and family members access their health information, labs, caregiver team member information, and educational materials on a hospital-issued tablet.

Geisinger Health System (PA) selects Besler Consulting to identify Transfer DRG underpayments.

CMS awards Optum/QSSI a contract to serve as a senior advisor on the HealthCare.gov website following its interim engagement as general contractor after the site’s October 1 meltdown. The company’s press release, oddly enough, includes testimonials from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner.

People

CHIME names HIStalk’s own “CIO Unplugged” Ed Marx (Texas Health Resources) as its 2013 John E. Gall Jr. CIO of the year.

Arcadia Healthcare Solutions names Sam Adams (Accretive Health – above left) SVP of sales,  Jonathan Rider (Jetstream Consulting) SVP of technology and engineering, and Sandi Molettieri (UTC Aerospace Systems – above right) director of HR.

NavigatorMD appoints Alexander Poston, Jr. (Entrada) CIO.

Artemis Health Group names John Doulis, MD (MedCare) president and CEO, replacing Phillip Suiter, who resigned.

Andrew Baker (Intuit Health) joins Culbert Healthcare Solutions as VP of business development.

Mike “The PACSMan” Cannavo (McKesson) returns to his PACS consulting business.

Kim Bahrami joins government contractor Acentia as VP of business development over the company’s expansion into DoD and VA healthcare.

CMS appoints Acting CIO Dave Nelson as the agency’s permanent CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

CECity and athenahealth will offer a health data exchange integration and reporting service to automate information flow from athenaClinicals to national clinical registries using CECity’s clinical quality data gateway.

Dubai’s Mediclinic City Hospital and Mediclinic Welcare Hospital will install Oneview Healthcare’s patient engagement software.

Varian Medical Systems will expand its existing Salt Lake City facilities in anticipation of creating 1,000 full-time jobs over the next 15 years.

Heart Imaging Technologies provides Merge Healthcare access to its portfolio of healthcare information patents, including zero footprint technologies to provide access to diagnostic-quality images in a standard web browser. The agreement also settles litigation initiated by Heart IT against Merge for patent infringement related to internet-based image viewing.

MedHOK, which just closed $77.5 million in funding, will increase its 100-person staff by about 35 percent over the next year. 

Government and Politics

CMS announces it will consider on a case-by-case basis requests made under the Freedom of Information Act for information to find out much Medicare pays individual physicians.

VA CIO Stephen Warren says that for 2014 his agency will be focusing on improving its system baseline practices and procedures, configuration management, patch management, and elevated privilege review.

A GAO report criticizes CMS, the VA, and six other agencies for their inconsistent implementation, policies, and procedures for responding to data breaches involving personally identifiable information.

Innovation and Research

A report finds that ACOs are competent in offering e-prescribing, a single database containing medical and prescribing information, and formulary options that encourage the use of generic drugs, but lack tools that notify physicians when prescriptions are filled, prevent duplicate drug therapy, measure quality, and demonstrate the value of appropriate medication use.

Technology

Alere Connect receives FDA 510(k) market clearance for its Alere HomeLink platform, which also earned CE Mark certification which will allow it to be marketed in Europe.

Other

Cerner Middle East expands its office in Riyadh (Saudi Arabia) in support the company’s growth plans.

Products from EBSCO, Elsevier, Wolters Kluwer, Truven Health Analytics, Isabel, and Logical Images earn the highest rankings in a KLAS report on clinical decision support resources, including tools for disease reference, drug reference, nursing reference, and diagnostic decision support.

An ICD-10 readiness survey by Navicure and Porter Research reveals that 74 percent of physician practices have not yet started implementing their ICD-10 transition plan, though most don’t anticipate any disruptions from their EHR, PM, or clearinghouse vendors. A couple of alarming stats: 27 percent of survey practices are unsure how or where to start preparing for the transition, while 22 percent claim they don’t have the staff or resources to begin preparing.

The former CEO of two-hospital, 350-bed Cape Cod Healthcare (MA) who resigned abruptly in 2010 remained the organization’s highest-paid employee for the next two years, earning over $1 million in each year, and was still being paid in 2013. The hospital’s board chair said, “A lot of executives have post-employment benefits,” while a business ethics expert says it’s no wonder that US healthcare is so expensive. The CEO is also a physician and was disciplined by the state medical board after he left the hospital for inappropriately writing prescriptions for family members.

Weird News Andy notes, “Hipsters, beware” about this story in which a man in China stretches and yawns so hard that he collapses his own lung. WNA provides his targeted warning because the at-risk group is “tall, slim young men.”

WNA also likes a story that he titles “Clean Booze,” in which a man steals 12 bottles of hand sanitizer from a hospital by hiding it in his arm sling and then goes back twice more for additional bottles. He told the police who finally nabbed him that he makes a cocktail by mixing the alcohol-containing cleaner with orange juice.

Sponsor Updates

• HealthMEDX announces that it will be the first long-term and post-acute care EMR vendor to participate in the Interoperability Showcase at HIMSS14.
• McKesson’s MED3OOO division expands its Dayton, OH office space from 10,000 to 12,000 square feet and will increase its local employee head count from 110 to 122.
• Allscripts will incorporate the Adheris DirectStart medication adherence communication program into its EHR.
• Gartner positions InterSystems as a Challenger in its Magic Quadrant for Operational Database Management Systems.
• Clinovations consultant Matt Lambert, MD publishes a book that includes his reflections on healthcare and the push for change in the midst of healthcare reform.
• Wolters Kluwer Health expands use of Lippincott’s Nursing Procedures and Skills to include hospital-based clinicians and renames the product Lippincott Procedures.
• Doctors Community Hospital (MD) shares how its use of GetWellNetwork improved patient education and entertainment while generating revenue.
• The Rochester Business Journal names eHealth Technologies to its Rochester Top 100 list based on dollar and percentage revenue increases over the past three years.
• Loran Cook, product evangelist for Billian’s HealthDATA, considers the future of partnerships, payers, and a loophole in the ACA.
• Rock Health names Health Catalyst CEO Dan Burton to its list of Top 50 Digital Health Entrepreneurs.
• RelayHealth releases the second generation of RelayAnalytics Pulse for comparative analytics.
• Emdeon achieves CAQH CORE Phase III Certification, which certifies the company accurately and efficiently exchanges healthcare electronic funds transfer and electronic remittance advise information.
• ICSA Labs certifies InteHealth’s patient and physician portals with 2014 Edition Modular EHR Inpatient and Ambulatory ONC HIT Certification.
• Cornerstone Advisors founder and president Keith Ryan advises Bartlett Regional Hospital’s (AK) planning committee on its EHR options. 

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Vocera Acquires mVisum

Vocera announced this morning that it has acquired mVisum, which sells hospital patient alarm management software, for $3.5 million in cash.

According to Vocera President and CEO Brent Lang,

”The acquisition of mVisum is another step in our strategic roadmap to solve one of healthcare’s biggest challenges: communication. Communication breakdowns caused by alarm fatigue have become a top patient safety concern and a regulatory priority. mVisum’s alarm management technology instantly delivers data to clinical decision makers and complements our secure, mobile communication solutions to help improve patient care, safety and satisfaction."

mVisum’s closed loop Alert Alarm Management System has earned FDA’s 510(k) clearance. The company settled a patent lawsuit brought against it by AirStrip in April 2013 by agreeing not to stream or display real-time patient physiologic information on mobile devices.

Monday Morning Update 1/13/14

From Yogic Flyer: “Re: Merge. How could a sales rep hide being paid for non-existent contracts unless there are absolutely zero controls in place in that company?” Merge announced last week that a former sales rep created phony contracts worth $15 million to meet his or her sales quota, earning the rep more than $250,000 in sales commissions. The rep worked in the eClinical OS business, which sells clinical trials software to drug companies. It’s hard to believe that some level of collusion (individual or corporate) wasn’t required for a sales rep to just make up contracts that were used not only to pay commissions, but also to be rolled into the corporate orders backlog of a publicly traded company. It’s also interesting that customers weren’t billed for the amounts specified in the contracts, so Merge’s internal processes must be majorly disjointed. MRGE shares dropped more than 10 percent on the news, decreasing the company’s market capitalization to just over $200 million. The share price is down nearly 70 percent from February 2013. Chicago-based vendors Merge and Allscripts seemed likely at one time to cause a worldwide shortage of feet to shoot themselves in.

From It’s a Sledgehammer: “Re: Allscripts. [sales exec name omitted], another former IBMer hired by Glen Tullman, has been terminated. Paul Black’s master plan of putting the Cerner band together takes one more step.” Unverified.

From Willing Participant: “Re: HIStalkapalooza. I enjoyed last year’s event and read that invitations will be sent next Wednesday. Do I need to do anything to be eligible?” The registration page will go live Wednesday, January 15 (CGI isn’t building it, so hopefully we won’t have problems.) Sign up  then if you want to come. We will email invitations on around February 1 to those we can accommodate since we always have a lot more demand than supply. The most important thing to remember is that you have to register if you want to attend. Every year I get emails from people ranging from pleading to angry who didn’t register and who apparently expected the Official HIStalk Psychic to divine their attendance intentions and send them an unsolicited invitation. It doesn’t matter if you are a swaggering CEO, a sponsor executive, or a self-identified industry celebrity – you have to register (just like I do) to be considered for an invitation. Please don’t embarrass both of us by claiming I didn’t mention it on HIStalk since I clearly do multiple times, and once the spots are assigned, it’s too late. I can say this so far having had several conversations with the sponsor: HIStalkapalooza (#HIStalkapalooza14 on Twitter) is going to be amazing.

Upcoming Webinars

January 16 (Thursday), 1:00 p.m. Advanced Efforts to Identify and Eliminate Waste from Healthcare. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: David Burton, MD, executive chairman, Health Catalyst. Based on a breakthrough analyses using several large healthcare data sets as representative samples, Dr. Burton and team will present insights designed to help executives struggling to identify, quantify, and extract waste from their systems.

Webinar questions? Contact Lorre.

Respondents think ICD-10 will challenge hospital CIOs more than other high-profile issues in 2014. New poll to your right: how much impact will IBM’s Watson computer have on healthcare?

Speaking of Watson, IBM announces plans to spend $1 billion to improve Watson’s slow sales progress, with most of the money earmarked to bring in more salespeople and consultants and to create an app store program. The smothering hype after Watson’s “Jeopardy” performance obviously set unreasonable expectations, so there’s a little bit of desperation as it slides in the Trough of Disillusionment. At least it’s being used: Elsevier will employ the technology to enhance the online search capabilities of its medical journals and textbooks, allowing users to search by natural language questions rather than a list of keywords.

Welcome to new HIStalk and HIStalk Connect Platinum sponsor Voalte (that’s pronounced “volt,” in case you were wondering.) The Sarasota, FL-based company provides caregiver-connecting mobile technology that includes Voalte One (all-in-one smartphone communication including VoIP calling, alarm notification, and text messaging), Voalte Me (secure texting that can be used securely on personal smartphones), and Voalte Connect (mobile device management, powered by AirWatch). Available case studies include Cedars-Sinai, Texas Children’s, and Sarasota Memorial. I interviewed Trey Lauderdale, president of the company, in September and we talked a lot about pagers, medical device alarms, and BYOD. Thanks to Voalte for supporting HIStalk.

Here’s a demo of Voalte One that I found on YouTube.

Stuff you can do to support HIStalk: (a) sign up for email updates, thereby entering an exclusive club of 11,194 well-informed and slightly offbeat healthcare IT experts; (b) connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn so that Inga, Dr. Jayne, Lorre, and I can pretend we are socially active despite the reality of spending most of our time alone in front of a computer; (c) join the HIStalk Fan Club that reader Dann started in 2008, which now has 3,349 members who are all above average and cute besides; (d) send me news and rumors so I don’t miss something important; and (e) peruse a few ads of sponsors and their listings in the Resource Center, confident that despite your differences with their role as vendors and yours as a prospect, you all show your innate coolness by reading HIStalk for sophomoric humor and scandalous rumors.

Listening: Ozma, serving up Pasadena-based power pop since 1995 and best known as being Weezer’s tour mates (not to mention sounding a good deal like them). They are better than you might expect.

Quality Systems announces that it will review certain assets in its NextGen Hospital Solutions division and record a charge against those assets in Q3. The announcement mentions the division’s poor performance and implementation backlog. The company also announces that its Q3 results will fall short of expectations due to poor Hospital Solutions Division results, a reduction in capitalized software development expense, and higher expense amortization related to new versions of NextGen Ambulatory. The hospital division is made up of the acquired Opus Healthcare Solutions and The Poseidon Group.

The White House fires Canada-based CGI Federal from the Healthcare.gov project, handing Accenture a one-year, $90 million, no-bid contract. The outcome of that should be interesting.

I’m getting a little bit annoyed by carefully cloaked Twitter bragging disguised as humility, i.e. “Thanks to all my great co-presenters at XXX conference” or “I’m honored that XXX Magazine has chosen to run my article.” We get it, you are wonderful and way better than the rest of us. 

Andrew Ury, MD, who founded Practice Partner and sold it to McKesson in 2007, raises $1.9 million in funding for his new venture, ActX. The Seattle startup is working on technology to incorporate patient genomic information into medical practice.

Five University of California medical centers test the use of game-based clinician education sent to their smartphones in small sections over a three-month period. It’s delivered by Harvard-based Qstream, whose primary offering supports sales rep coaching. 

Harvard Business Review finds that the impact of potentially disruptive retail clinics has been disappointing, with slow growth, little expansion to underserved areas, and an unclear impact on healthcare spending. Reasons: (a) poor people would rather go to the ED for free than pay even low retail clinic prices; (b) the clinics are usually staffed by nurse practitioners , whose reimbursement is less than that of physicians; and (c) Medicaid doesn’t want to pay for services delivered by retail clinics. In other words, hospitals are so unwilling or unable to make ED abusers pay that the market can introduce no acceptable alternative. It’s tough to compete with “free.”

ONC is looking for someone to lead its EHR certification team.

In Australia, an anesthesiologist says he’s being harassed by his hospital employer after complaining that a study of blood transfusion patients failed to de-identify them properly, allowing him to easily determine their names via an Internet search.

Spending time studying where the Internet intersects with healthcare. If you have ideas and want to chat, contact me: health@benchmark.com

— Bill Gurley (@bgurley) January 10, 2014

Bill Gurley, a partner in Benchmark Capital (Uber, Zillow, OpenTable, and Yelp) is looking for  “orthogonal/disruptive” approaches that don’t “partner closely with current players.”

Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital (GA) fires two employees over two PHI-containing laptops that were stolen from one of its clinics in November, hinting that the terminated employees violated the hospital’s policies.

@Farzad_MD tweeted this table from an Annals of Internal Medicine “study of studies” article showing good historical outcomes for healthcare IT, leading me to accept his broadly issued challenge of, “I bet the next negative study of some bad health IT implementation gets more ink.” I pondered this and concluded that negative articles are more popular because:

• With the money and effort involved with implementing systems, it shouldn’t be newsworthy that they work and provide ROI and patient value. It should instead be newsworthy when they don’t.
• It’s still hard to convincingly prove that healthcare IT saves money or improves outcomes, and experience is still inconsistent because of not only lack of standardization, but even the lack of consensus that standardization is a good thing.
• Successful implementations often don’t have any conveniently easy lessons to learn since they often involved big organizational commitment and slow, steady progress. The closest thing to a magic bullet is not what to do, but what to avoid doing, and the negative articles call out those potential potholes.
• Technology is incorrectly viewed by technologists as the solution rather than a way to enhance the effectiveness or ineffectiveness of a given organization. Amazon doesn’t make you smarter – it just makes it easier to buy the kind of books you already read.
• The industry is small and there’s always animosity toward a given vendor or provider organization based on personal or organizational history.
• People feel superior when someone else fails in ways they are convinced they themselves would never be guilty of doing.
• Organizational HIT success often is accompanied by selective user discontent, so it’s common for a physician to write emotional editorials against the intrusion of technology (as well as government, health systems, and insurers) into the practice of medicine while their employer can demonstrate positive improvements from that very same technology. The “organizational good” story gets buried if it’s written at all, while the “public good” story gets even less exposure.
• Most of the people writing don’t have any direct experience with healthcare IT or reading peer-reviewed journals and find it easier to make names for themselves with sensationalistic or negative headlines pulled from questionably newsworthy source stories. 
• Organizations with successful HIT outcomes don’t get any benefit from telling the world about their experiences, while those that fail are usually mad at someone they blame instead of themselves and are happy to talk about it.

HIMSS exhibitors, take note of “Confessions of a Former Booth Babe,” written by a “brand representative” assigned to the huge CES in Las Vegas. Her summary: (a) at $25-$50 per hour, it pays better and was at least less demeaning than being a shot girl or go-go-dancer; (b) it’s the hiring company and not the attendees that sets the level of lewdness; and (c) you know what you’re being hired to do if the application requires full-body photos rather than sales experience. Another expresses discomfort with photo-seeking male attendees who are far right on the horndog-pervert continuum: “You kind of wonder where your picture’s going to end up. I had someone ask to take a picture just of my feet. One guy asked to take a picture of me while I was wearing nude fishnets. Then, after he took the photo, he wanted to talk to me about his pantyhose fetish.”

Weird News Andy titles this story “Right Bullet, Wrong Gun.” A couple finds via DNA testing that their daughter, born by artificial insemination in 1992, was fathered by a fertility clinic employee rather than the husband who provided sperm. Testing suggests that the part-time employee may have swapped out his own sperm sample for that of hundreds of prospective fathers. The couple is urging former clinic patients to have the DNA of their children tested.

WNA says he can’t put his finger on what’s wrong with this story, which he names “Proctally Perfect in Every Way.” Researchers develop an artificial robotic butt for teaching medical students to perform prostate exams. It warns them not only if they press too hard, but also if they don’t make enough eye contact beforehand. I can think of far more lucrative consumer applications.

Vince is wrapping up his HIS-tory series after a several year run on HIStalk, which leaves me disappointed since I enjoy the heck out of them. His next-to-last one tries to untangle the remaining hairball of McKesson’s acquisitions that turned into 200 products.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.