News 10/10/12

Top News

Bloomberg reports that Allscripts has received first-round bids for a leveraged buyout from PE firms Blackstone Group LP and Carlyle Group LP and expects additional offers within three to four weeks. Allscripts closed Tuesday at $13.57 per share.

Reader Comments

From Master Yoda: “Re: Cerner Health Conference. I doubt you will be able to make it to the conference, but if any of your readers are going, I’ll be the one in the guayabera with the hair that says ‘he really isn’t trying to impress anyone.’ I hope to see Farzad speak and I wonder how long it will take before I hear someone say ‘Epic’?” Cerner provides its own Day One Recap here.

From Innovator: “Re: Cerner conference. The vibe here is cautiously optimistic. Cerner has put a significant emphasis on mobility. PowerChart Touch (Cerner iPad app) and Cerner Careaware Connect (nurse iPhone app). Both are very impressive and the immediate reaction from the customer base seems very positive. However, you can sense a bit of hesitation, as if customers are cautious about getting too excited about new technology because they have been burned in the past.”

From Motown Nurse: “Re: HCA and Beaumont. A couple of my CRNA colleagues who work for Beaumont state that they were informed that HCA has purchased their health system. I had not read this as confirmed anywhere yet though I may have missed it.” The local Detroit business news mentioned a rumored sale last month but I could not find confirmation. Meanwhile Beaumont’s Physician Organization and United Physicians announce plans to combine operations by the end of the year.

From Future Perfect: “Re: Cerner. Have you heard about Cerner trying to sell a single patient accounting system for both hospitals and physician offices? Usually Cerner sells ProFit for hospital billing and Powerchart for physician billing but now they are trying to sell ProFit for both and compete head-to-head with Epic’s combined billing solution. Does it really work and is it tested?” Do any readers have an answer?

From Retired Barkeep: “Inspiration by drink. I have a great single-serving margarita recipe for you.” Thanks for the recipe, which I am happy to share with interested readers. I am pretty sure I will need at least a double by the time Mr. H return at week’s end. Retired Barkeep was unable to offer cabana boy services to accompany the beverage(s) so I will continue to accept applications.

From Amarba: “Stan Opstad. Stan was the product SVP at Healthland but is no longer there.” Healthland confirmed that the company’s product management and development operations were consolidated under SVP Michael Karaman in 2011 and that Opstad left the company in August.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Mr. H has yet to check in with me, other than to report a typo, so I suspect he is in total relaxation mode. Feel free to send me your burning HIT news until he returns this weekend.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Orion Health’s managing director and majority owner says the company is “strongly considering” going public.

Health Tech Hatch, a crowd-funding site, launches to provide early funding and mentoring to HIT innovators that are developing new companies and products.

Volate secures $6 million in new funding from an unnamed HIT leader and a major healthcare system. The company plans to triple its staff to almost 150 over the next 18 months.

Sales

Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary selects MedeAnalytics’ Clinical Performance Intelligence and Revenue Cycle Intelligence solutions to analyze physician utilization and quality metrics. MedeAnalytics also secures a five-year contract extension with West Tennessee Healthcare for its Compliance and Revenue Integrity and Revenue Cycle Intelligence solutions.

People

MediRevv appoints Patrick Tierney (above – University of Iowa Hospital and Clinics) managing director of consulting services and Matthew Reat and Diana Moore (CSC) senior consultants.

Medecision names Jerry Baker (Halfpenny Technologies) SVP and GM of its value-based healthcare solutions business for care delivery systems.

Consulting services firm SISU Medical Solutions names Scott Lee (Lee Advisory Services, KPMG) CEO.

RegisterPatient, which just raised $4.1 million in series A funding, hires Jana Skewes (Shared Health) as CEO.

CHIME elects Pamela Arora (Children’s Medical Center Dallas), Charles Christian (Good Samaritan Hospital), and George McCullock (Vanderbilt University Medical Center) to its board of trustees.

Announcements and Implementations

Awarepoint announces 226% deployment growth, including new activations at Kaiser Permanente, Yale New Haven Health System (CT), Monongahela Valley Hospital (PA) and Vidant Medical Center (NC).

The town of New Canaan, CT pilots a teleheath program that provides 10 seniors iwith Pad or Acer tablets to communicate with nurses two to three times per week. The participants, who range in age from 70 to 85, will also be provided medical equipment to monitor and report vital signs.

Hillcrest Medical Center (OK) goes live on Forerun’s FlexChart physician documentation in its ED.

AT&T and IBM will begin selling private cloud computing services next year over a mutually owned network.

Southern Tier HealthLink (NY) joins the New York eHealth Collaborative’s Health Information Network.

Allscripts announces its Open App Challenge, which offers $750,000 in rewards for developers that create and integrate applications that build upon Allscripts Open EHR platform.

Aprima reminds MyWay customers that the software is based on Aprima’s PRM 2008 version and offers a no-charge license migration, as long as practices sign up for maintenance and support. Aprima also says that MyWay resellers can join Aprima’s reseller network and offer their customers an upgrade option.

Innovation and Research

Physicians using EHR scored significantly higher on quality of care for four screening measures for diabetes, breast cancer, chlamydia, and colorectal cancer, according to a study published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine.

Technology

Imprivata releases Cortext, a free HIPAA-compliant text messaging solution for iPhones and Android devices and Web-based chat solution for nurses without smartphone access.

Anesthesia Business Consultants and iMDsoft launch cloud-based myAnesthesia for the iPad.

Other

Providers need to work together to accelerate interoperability and electronic information sharing across care settings, according to a report from the Bipartisan Policy Center. The Center also recommends a national strategy to improve accuracy of patient matching; an extension of Stark Law exceptions and Anti-Kickback Statute for safe harbors for HIT donations; and improved clarity of federal privacy and security laws.

Doctors are generally healthier than other US workers according Gallup-Healthways report. A physical health index that considers such factors as obesity, colds, the flu, headaches, and sick days gives doctors a score of 86, nurses 80, and other employed adults 81.

The New York Times takes a look at the use of telemedicine on Nantucket Island, MA as a means to increase access to specialists and decrease costs. Nantucket Cottage Hospital’s CEO estimates that the island’s use of tele-dermatology is saving $29,000 per year and provides patients’ access to dermatologists six times a month instead of just four times a year.

Sponsor Updates

• Three hundred Encore Health Resources’ employees build and deliver fifty wheelchairs to Houston-area veterans and the disabled during the company’s annual retreat.
• Aspen Advisors’ Fran Turisco and Dan Coate deliver a presentation on patient monitoring technologies and accountable care at next week’s NY eHealth Collaborative Digital Health Conference.
• NTT DATA will integrate Dart Chart Systems’ proactive analytics tools into its NetSolutions POC software.
• A local Eden Prairie (MN) publication profiles Virtelligence, which was recently named as one of the country’s fastest-growing companies.
• Wellcentive’s VP of product strategy Mason Beard discusses six pillars of population health management.
• Mike Reppart, (Hendrick Medical Center TX), and Kelley Blair (Craneware) will speak at the 2012 AAHAM ANI Conference on RCM strategies and performance improvements.
• IDC Health Insights recognizes Harris Corporation as a leader in the packaged HIE segment.
• Beacon Partners offers two Webinars in October on risk management.
• Infor releases its Workforce Management 6.0 solution and announces a private beta availability of its iPaaS stack on the IBM SmartCloud platform.
• EBSCO Publishing and Elsevier will provide access to Elsevier’s Scopus database from within EBSCO’s Discovery Service.
• Imprivata customer Dr Harald Eder joins a panel discussion on improving patient care with cloud-based desktops during VMworld 2012. Imprivata also announces the finalists for its inaugural Healthcare Innovation Awards.
• Visage Imaging will participate at the second annual Imaging Informatics Summit this week in Washington, DC.
• McKesson announces general availability of its Reimbursement Manager to assist with bundled payments and fee-for-service reimbursement models.
• Surgical Information Systems offers integration with abeo’s MedSuite billing software.

Clarification from Allscripts

We asked Allscripts to answer a few additional questions about their MyWay to Professional Suite upgrade option. We appreciate their providing us with these responses.

Could you clarify “free upgrade?” Is that a free license, a free conversion, or both?

This upgrade includes software, implementation and training. It will start in January 2013 and end in September 2013. The implementation will be facilitated by enhanced tools that make data conversion and interface activation seamless. This, coupled with tailored simulation learning and a hands-on weekend learning event, will prepare clients to take advantage of their newly upgraded software.

Does the maintenance fee change for MyWay clients once they’re on Pro?

The maintenance fees will remain the same as what is defined in a MyWay client’s current agreement.

And when you say “converged platform,” how is it different than the current Pro product?

We are launching a converged platform and the first step is to move our MyWay clients to this platform. They will experience many enhancements including mobility with Wand, our native iPad mobility solution, additional content including more specialties, and real time point of care/clinical decision support. In addition, the converged platform will be able to process ICD-10 codes and is planned to be certified for Meaningful Use Stage 2.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

Monday Morning Update 10/8/12

Allscripts announces free upgrade to improve practice solutions ow.ly/efPow #EHR #HealthIT

— Allscripts (@Allscripts) October 5, 2012

From Factory Girl: “Re: Allscripts. My company is an Allscripts partner and last week they told us they were not planning to make any official announcement about the decision to move customers off the MyWay platform. Yet I see that the day after HIStalk mentioned it, they posted details on their WebSite.” Allscripts also filed an 8-K so they probably figured everyone would know even if they didn’t read HIStalk. Allscripts is taking a $10-$13 million write-down on MyWay so that business apparently won’t be sold as once rumored.

athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush says his company is considering a move to a larger location or an expansion of its Watertown, MA headquarters from 330,000 to one million square feet.

The local paper profiles Nashville-based Shareable Ink, which has grown from two customers at the beginning of 2011 to almost 100 hospitals and clinics today. CEO Stephen Hau says he expects the company to grow from 40 employees to 80 within the next six months.

The 100+ physician Colorado Springs Health Partners chooses Humedica’s MinedShare clinical intelligence platform.

The use of EHRs isn’t increasing Medicare fraud, say 78 percent of poll respondents. New poll to your right: what is the primary motivation of the House members who are urging cessation of HITECH payments?

Listening: new from reader-recommended The Vaccines, an English indie band that sometimes sounds like the Ramones, but is a good (better) listen even when they don’t. I’m also wistfully listening to YouTube recordings of The Howard Stern Show from the early 1990s when it was actually good (Howard, Robin, Fred, Jackie, and Billy, and especially the Jackie Puppet).

Streamline Health Solutions promotes Matthew S. Seefeld from chief strategist of revenue cycle to SVP of solutions strategy.

Providers rank CareFusion, Omnicell, and McKesson the top providers of anesthesia cabinets based on functionality, implementation, and training, according to KLAS. Half of users that have implemented anesthesia cabinet systems say the main benefit of OR-specific cabinets is having an organized and controlled medication inventory.

Surgical Information Systems integrates its perioperative IT solution with OpenTempo’s surgical and anesthesia workforce scheduling tool.

The T-System folks forwarded this card, which they developed in advance of this week’s ACEP Scientific Assembly in Denver.

The former HIM manager of a small Nevada hospital files a wrongful termination lawsuit against her former employer, claiming she was fired for questioning what she says was ED upcoding.

Just a reminder that Mr. H is taking some R&R this week. If you send him an e-mail and he fails to respond, hopefully that means he is busy reclining on an exotic beach sipping umbrella drinks. Actually I don’t think he is an umbrella drink/exotic beach kind of guy, but since that’s my idea of the perfect vacation, that’s what I am envisioning for him. While he is out of pocket this week, feel free to drop me a note, should you have any burning HIT news to share, want to offer encouragement, or have any umbrella drink recipes worth consideration.

Thankfully Weird News Andy never takes a break and sends over this story about one Florida county’s attempt to have patients waive their privacy rights. The Sarasota County sheriff’s office is encouraging pain physicians to have their patients sign a form authorizing the release of PHI to law enforcement, should a physician believes a criminal violation has occurred. The local paper reports that the medical community is is concerned the move violates “HIPPA law.”

Vince provided a HIS-tory this week after all, continuing his QuadraMed history with a fascinating look at Health Data Sciences, which was the hottest vendor going a couple of decades ago. My favorite trivia: founder Ralph Korpman MD was a computer genius who started medical school at 15.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

News 10/5/12

Top News

From DrLyle: “Re: House committee call to suspend HITECH payments. I’m at this meeting. Farzad is keeping his cool. He says it’s just pre-election rumblings and nothing can change without major legislative work.” Several House Republicans call on HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius (copying CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner and National Coordinator Farzad Mostashari) in an October 4 letter to immediately suspend HITECH payments because the Meaningful Use bar is set too low, resulting in a program that “squanders taxpayer dollars and does little, if anything, to improve outcomes for Medicare.” It claims that $10 billion has been wasted. It also references increasing payments due to higher levels of provider coding, as well as Stage 2 rules that don’t emphasize interoperability enough, leading to “our health care system trapped in information silos, much like it was before the incentive payments.” The letter also directly challenges the HHS/ONC count of HITECH provider participants, saying that HHS is “trying to pad participation rates.”

Signers of the House letter were Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI, Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means), Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI, Chairman, Committee on Energy and Commerce), Rep. Wally Herger (R-CA, Chairman, Committee on Ways and Means, Subcommittee on Health), and Rep. Joe Pitts (R-PA, Chairman, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health). One might presume given the timing and the fact that all four signatories are Republican that there’s a political motive, although that doesn’t change the fact that you either do or don’t agree with their assessment of HITECH. If their arguments are sincere, perhaps they should have made them earlier. Also, note that their objections aren’t to the value of EHRs but rather to the value of taxpayers in subsidizing them, so reciting a list of why EMRs are inherently good is not an appropriate rebuttal, nor would a list of accomplished users like Kaiser who got free money for using something they’d already bought without taxpayer bribes.

From BadgerMom: “Re: Valley Medical Center, Renton, WA. Goes live with Epic inpatient.” Congratulations to them. Thanks for the picture.

From Horshack’s Laugh: “Re: Caradigm. The company was simply a consolidation of two non-performing assets so that GE and MSFT could get them off their respective books and write off their significant losses ($1 billion over seven years for Qualibria alone) and allow Immelt and Ballmer to save face.” Unverified. I asked that question in my interview with CEO Michael Simpson.

From THB: “Re: Epic’s succession plan. What about HIStalk’s succession plan? You have built a great open source forum, but at some point you will be the old curmudgeon (and I mean that in the nicest sense!) Believe me, Judy reads this site, as does Glen T. and the rest of them. You share what you can and keep close to the vest what you cannot (that is a fine display of TRUST).” HIStalk is to me a hobby rather than a business, and given that I do it part time (as do my far-flung co-conspirators Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Travis, etc.) I don’t have a specific plan for it to continue without me, nor am I vain enough to think that the healthcare IT world will stop spinning on its axis when I stop typing. Sometimes I feel guilty that Mrs. HIStalk would get no financial benefit from my years of labor if I flamed out tomorrow, but I don’t have a solution. It’s an inherently and intentionally amateurish operation.

From Jeeves: “Re: Patrick Soon-Shiong. His announcement was a big deal. I want to point out that at the end of last year when all the pundits were doing their predictions, Travis of HIStalk Mobile was the only one that I’m aware of that said this would be the year that Patrick’s stuff becomes real.” Travis is looking good with his predictions for the year so far: (a) smart phones everywhere; (b) more research and pilots on mHealth; (c) AirStrip as the biggest mover in mHealth; (d) price transparency gets a foothold; and several others. Travis has a lot of experience (MD, startup, NGO, etc.) and you’re missing out on his insight if you haven’t signed up for e-mail alerts when he posts something new. Soon-Shiong’s announcement this week that his NantWorks group of companies has developed a package of supercomputing, high-speed networking, and mobile access that will let doctors instantly individualize cancer treatment based on the patient’s genome. I listened to the live webcast for a few minutes while I was at work and heard him taking the usual shots against outdated, MUMPS-based systems that don’t talk to each other, although I’m not sure what that has to do with his project, which in itself sounds fascinating depending on who’s paying for it and who’s making money from it. BPC has posted the full video of the all-day event, although I haven’t had time to watch it. There’s bonus footage of an extremely cool Farzad bow tie in his segment at around the 180-minute mark.

Reader Comments

From Pick Six: “Re: Allscripts. Replacing MyWay with Pro.” An internal Allscripts e-mail says that it will standardize its small physician market offering on Allscripts Professional Product Suite, with free migration of MyWay users starting in January. The company also announced that its VAR network will be reduced from 40 to four resellers and that Pro Suite pricing will be standardized (it’s not clear from the wording whether MyWay users will get a free license or just a free migration once they’ve paid for Pro). Also not mentioned is what happens to MyWay, although the most common rumor we’ve heard is that it will be sold rather than mothballed (which makes more sense than Allscripts taking a write-off of some of its Misys acquisition costs). Allscripts is trying to consolidate platforms because of the development effort required for ICD-10, Meaningful Use Stage 2, and accountable care. The risks are that users of MyWay, rumored to be the most popular product Allscripts sells, could look elsewhere given the decision the company has forced on them. One potential winner is Aprima, which under its former name iMedica built the original version of MyWay that Misys licensed in 2007, followed by ugly disputes between the companies (see my July 2008 interview with Michael Nissenbaum). Since then, Aprima has rewritten the PM app and upgraded their version of both EHR and PM, so the gloves will come off if Aprima decides to offer an easy conversion from MyWay to their similar product, potentially also signing on some of the former Allscripts VARs who will be left scrambling. Also affected will be Etransmedia, an Allscripts partner that sells MyWay for $499 per month through Costco.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I noticed that one of my new Twitter followers is a “healthcare visionary,” leading me to ponder how one earns that designation. Self-assigned? Or is it an advanced accreditation available through HIMSS for those over-achieving members who feel the need for additional titles? I’m going with self-assigned, so from here on out I will refer to myself as Inga HIStalk, HV. Maybe I will get Mr. H to make some ribbons for HIMSS so fellow healthcare visionaries can promote themselves. By the way, feel free to follow me and my HIStalk buddies on Twitter, connect with us on LinkedIn, and be our virtual BFFs on Facebook.

This week’s highlights from HIStalk Practice: a rumor and a response from e-MDs. CareCloud gives Florida International University informatics students access to its EHR. Practice owners struggle over how to allocate incentive payments for employed providers.The Ohio AFP pilots a project to transform practices to the PCMH model, train medical students, and recruit physicians to practice in the state. Julie McGovern of Practice Wise offers tips for physicians to train for their EHR training – and don’t miss the comment from MarathonMan. You know what makes me happy: that two-second signup for HIStalk Practice e-mail updates. Thanks for reading. 

  Am I the luckiest gal in HIT or what? That’s Dr. Mostashari and Dr. Lyle Berkowitz holding up an IInga sign at today’s CMIO Leadership Forum. (Eat your heart out, BFF Dr. Jayne.)

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor VMware, which offers dependable, always-on frontline clinical systems access. Connect to your mobile clinical desktop from anywhere, view medical images, use any digital device securely with no clumsy security steps, and save time with a clinical desktop that follows you everywhere with fast logins to patient care systems. VMware offers cost-saving, secure, and IT-friendly solutions for virtualization, non-stop point-of-care desktops, trusted cloud security and compliance, and zero-downtime continuity and recovery. Thanks to VMware for supporting HIStalk.

From my obligatory YouTube cruise, I found the above VMware video wrap-up of HIMSS12. I like that they pictured and thanked their employees who staffed the booth.

Thanks to Philips Healthcare, supporting HIStalk as a Platinum Sponsor. The company’s solutions address interoperability (IntelliBridge Enterprise and Bedside to connect Philips products with others); clinical decision support (sepsis monitoring, vital signs and alert trending, EKG analysis, cardiac decision support); mobility (OB TraceVue for iPad-powered fetal information, HeartStartMRx ECG to smartphone, and IntelliSpace Event Management); and telehealth (eICU, IntelliSpace PACS, and Home Telehealth Solutions). I interviewed CMIO Joe Frassica, MD in August, who not only explained the company’s offerings well, but also got promoted to CMIO/CTO/VP right after the interview ran, according to his LinkedIn profile. Thanks to Philips Healthcare for supporting my work.

Here’s a brand new Philips Healthcare video that seems appropriate for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.

As a change of pace, I’ll refrain this week from urging you to sign up for e-mail updates and Like us and all that. Instead, I will suggest just one course of action: tell your colleagues you get news and opinions from HIStalk. I’ve received many e-mails from new readers and new sponsors who admitted that they hadn’t heard of HIStalk until people whose opinion they valued kept telling them they should read it. I appreciate that a lot.

I’ll be taking a little break next week, although I’m sure I won’t be able to resist the laptop’s siren song. My hiatus is minuscule compared to that of Vince Ciotti, who’s enviably taking his bride of 40 years to Europe for the whole month of October to re-live their honeymoon (and unlike me, he’s vowing to stay off the laptop). That means HIS-tory will return in November, and I can honestly say I will miss it since I enjoy every one of them.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Homecare Homebase closes $75 million in senior securing financing from CIT Group.

Peak Health Solutions acquires the assets of consulting firm Health Data Essentials.

Sales

Managed care health plan Kern Health Systems selects McKesson’s VITAL Care Management programs to provide members with care management and educational materials.

Scottsdale Healthcare and Scottsdale Physician Organization will implement Harris Corporation’s Clinical Integration Solution to connect its hospitals, physicians, labs, and other providers.

Booz Allen Hamilton Holding announces 35 new federal and private healthcare contracts totaling more than $112 million in August and September.

People

Patient flow software provider Central Logic names Steve Erickson (SageCreek Partners) CFO.

Stephen Lawrence (Southern Illinois Healthcare Foundation) joins the Lincoln Land HIE as executive director.

Kaiser Permanente Chairman and CEO George Halvorson announces his retirement effective December 2013.

Announcements and Implementations

Inova (VA) becomes the first organization to participate in the ConnectVirginia HIE.

The New England Healthcare Exchange Network (NEHEN) selects the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative to take over its executive management, business development, and operations management.

Mediware Information Systems earns updated 510(k) clearance from the FDA for its core blood management software products.

Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center implements an interconnected CareFusion and Cerner solution that centralizes clinical information between the Pyxis MedStation 4000 system and Cerner Millennium EHR using Cerner’s CareAware iBus integrated device connectivity architecture.

Horm Memorial Hospital (IA) and Faulkton County Memorial Hospital (SC) beta-test Healthland’s Centriq Clinic, an ambulatory care solution for rural physicians.

Iowa Specialty Hospitals, The Gabrielson Clinic, and Orthopedic Specialists go live on EMR Oct. 8. The hospitals and clinics are all part of University of Iowa Healthcare, so that’s probably Epic.

CliniComp commits to meeting ONC Stage 2 MU certification with its Essentris EMR.

AHIMA calls for improved EHR patient documentation standards and principles at its conference this week.

Government and Politics

The Medicare Fraud Strike Force charges 91 individuals — including doctors, nurses, and other medical professionals — for falsely billing the government $492 million, including more than $230 million in home health fraud, $100 million in mental health fraud, and $49 million in ambulance transport fraud. Half the people, not surprisingly, operated out of Miami.

Technology

Qualcomm Foundation awards Scripps Health a three-year, $3.75 million grant to develop wireless medical devices, including biosensors that are inserted into the blood stream for disease detection; a mobile app that captures medical data from biosensors and transmits it to patients’ smart phones; and a handheld device to detect genetic variations that may prevent particular medications from working correctly.

Other

St. Francis Health Center’s (KS) will lay off eight patient accounting employees as a result of the hospital’s November 1 transition to Epic.

A Wall Street Journal article called “Hospital Horrors” covers a newly published book on hospital transparency written by a Hopkins surgeon. He says state medical boards do a poor job of policing doctors, hospitals are pushed by lower reimbursement to increase volumes to unsafe levels, and bad treatments pay better than good ones in many cases. He quotes a recent Hopkins survey of employees of 60 high-quality hospitals, where more than half of the respondents said they would not feel comfortable receiving care in the unit in which they work. I’ve said that many times: those of us working in the healthcare system are a lot more scared of it than laypeople when we become patients.

Friday is the premiere of “Escape Fire: The Fight to Rescue American Healthcare.” Variety gave it a pretty good review from its Sundance screening in January, but said it should have included more about how lobbying keeps the healthcare industry safe from political action.

Weird News Andy says he might believe the woman who blames lupus-triggered delusions for causing her to strip naked and chant religious phrases outside a high school, but that doesn’t explain why she was joined by her two adult daughters and teenage son. The adults got probation after pleading guilty to indecent exposure.

A Utah man is convicted of disorderly conduct and charged a $140 fine after paying a disputed $25 doctor bill in pennies. Apparently the practice did not appreciate having 2,500 pennies dumped onto the receptionist’s desk. Personally, I think his approach was creative, and I bet quite liberating.

Just in time for Breast Cancer Awareness month: a “smart” bra that uses sensors and predictive analytics for early breast cancer detection. Don’t look for it at Victoria’s Secret or anywhere else any time soon: the company does not expect to launch the product in the US until 2014.

Men with shaved heads are perceived to be more masculine, dominant, and in some case have greater leadership potential than those with longer or thinning hair. Thank you, University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School for confirming what I have known for quite some time.

Bizarre: a man sues a stripper who was performing at his bachelor party, claiming she slid down the stripper pole and landed so hard on his abdomen that she ruptured his bladder.

Sponsor Updates

• CMS names SuccessEHS a 2013 EHR Direct Qualified Vendor.
• CareTech Solutions offers discounted pricing for its BoardNet portal to members of the AHA Center for Healthcare Governance.
• The CliniSync REC (OH) profiles Premier Physician Center and its use of e-MDs.
• API Healthcare celebrates customer service week by honoring its client-facing support staff.
• The Journal of the Medical Library Association ranks DynaMed in the top ten among online clinical resources.
• NextGate joins the partner network of HIT consulting firm Exsede.
• Shareable Ink introduces its Meaningful Use program for anesthesiologists.
• QlikView hosts an October 11 webinar featuring Nationwide Children’s Hospital (OH) and its use of QlikView for data discovery.
• MedHOK announces that its technology platform positions participants in the Comprehensive Primary Care initiative to share in savings and improve patient care.
• T-System showcases its RevCycle+ physician coding and billing solution at next week’s ACEP Scientific Assembly in Denver.
• iSirona sponsors a Code-A-Thon programming challenge at Florida State University’s department of computer science.
• Datapharm Australia Pty selects Merge Healthcare’s eClinical OS solution for enterprise-wide electronic data capture.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

I’m mourning the loss of a colleague today – one of my favorite partners is leaving our group. Patients adore him and I’d trust him to care for my loved ones. The reason: he’s fed up with insurance, bureaucracy, and paperwork and is launching a cash-only practice.

He will be sorely missed, but he’s not the only one. Increasing numbers of physicians are dropping participation in insurance plans. It doesn’t do much good to have patients insured when few will accept low-paying insurance plans (see: Medicaid). A New York Times piece this week shares some additional stories. More interesting than the feature itself are the reader comments.

Sponsored by ONC, the Blue Button Video Challenge runs through November 13. This is your chance to create an “engaging and entertaining” two-minute video to advocate use of the Blue Button to access health information online. Judging criteria include submissions being “fun, edgy, and memorable.” First prize is $3,000 to help motivate you creative types.

In the medical staff lounge this week, there has been a fair amount of discussion around the Annals of Internal Medicine article covering patient access to physician notes. The authors concluded that patients felt the practice was beneficial and that providers experienced “no more than a modest effect on their work lives.”

So many of my colleagues think the sky will fall if their patients have access to visit documentation. Not a week goes by that one of my peers doesn’t corner me about making parts of the patient plan documentation “hidden” or “non-patient-facing.” Although they profess concern that patients can’t handle the truth or that phone calls to explain the notes will be a burden, I really think they’re afraid that patients will discover their poor written communication skills.

Reading the notes of some of my peers is exhausting even when they’re dictated, so one can’t always blame the EHR. I wonder if some of them know how pompous they sound or that they simply ramble with no concept of sentence structure? In order to make sure our patients (and sometimes our colleagues) understand us, we need to be communicating clearly and often at an elementary-school reading level.

Even if your organization doesn’t have an open notes policy, I strongly encourage providers to start documenting as if patients will read the notes. Chances are they’ll be reading them in a few years whether you like it or not. Better to prepare now.

For those that are worried that patients can’t handle the truth (aka, “She’s not going to like it if I say she’s obese”) it’s time to be direct with patients. Tiptoeing around the edge of major national health problems like obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and coronary artery disease because we’re worried about hurting a patient’s feelings isn’t good for the patient or for society. I’m not saying we need to be unfeeling or unkind, but sometimes we need to just call it what it is and work to help patients address their health needs.

Being able to communicate well is a learned skill and needs to be taught in medical school and reinforced in residency and continuing professional activities. Last time I checked, online translator software doesn’t offer “Doctor” as a language choice (although I did find a pirate translator), so it’s time for healthcare providers to get with the program.

What do you think about patient-facing documentation? Do you use it in your practice? E-mail me.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

Healthcare IT from the Investor’s Chair 10/3/12

Whither Venture Financing? Or, Where Have All the Cowboys Gone?

I was delighted when Mr. H mentioned he’d gotten some feedback from readers that they would enjoy more columns from the Investor’s Chair. I really enjoy writing them, and even more, I enjoy the responses they generate.

Readers might recall my post two years ago that discussed several ways to capitalize a new venture. I’d like to use today’s post to discuss some of the root challenges in one of those options: venture financing.

While raising capital isn’t what I do at ST Advisors (though we do occasionally advise on aspects of it), from time to time I speak with entrepreneurs who need investors for their business. They tell me that raising venture dollars, especially for companies in earlier stages of development, has become increasingly difficult over the past few years. I attribute this to three major factors:

Funds have gotten larger … There are two main reasons for this fund size growth. Pensions and endowments have grown, so they have been looking to deploy larger amounts of capital. And, VCs are typically paid using a formula known as “2 and 20.” What that means is that 2 percent of the amount of the fund is used for a management fee, i.e., office space, support, travel, reporting, salaries (of both partners and associates), etc. The “20” refers to the carried interest, meaning the venture team gets 20 percent of the fund’s profits.

As a matter of historical curiosity, I recently learned (but have not been able to substantiate) that this virtually sacrosanct ratio was selected by one of the first venture funds and replicated the percentage of a clipper ship’s profits the captain and crew received. Of course, they were risking their lives…

At any rate, the 20 percent carried interest gets divided among the general partners and other fund employees as each fund sees fit. Simple math suggests 2/20 on a $500 million or $1 billion fund is much more appealing than 2/20 on a $100 million fund.

Whichever reason, it’s as much work for a venture fund to write a large check as a smaller one, and both the $2 million and the $10 million investment require similar time and effort for due diligence, negotiation, governance, management, and oversight. It’s only logical that investors are seeking to write bigger checks, as those will have a bigger impact on their funds’ (and their own) financial performance.

… but returns have been lacking … Further challenging the traditional venture investor is the fact that venture funds as an overall asset class, or type of investment (as opposed to real estate, public stocks and bonds, private equity) have underperformed the other asset classes over the past decade. A good overview of returns relative to public markets can be found in this excellent article. Some say that only $0.25 of every invested dollar has been returned. Even if you’re the best VC in the pack, raising money for a new fund in light of this performance has to be a challenge.

I’d postulate two primary reasons other than the most recent recession. First is the law of supply and demand. When venture was hot, too many funds were started and, in 1999, raising a fund was just too easy. With too many dollars chasing too few quality companies, too many bad (or even marginal) companies got funded at valuations that were simply unrealistic as investors were seeking to put money to work in a timely fashion. The chickens ultimately came home to roost, and so there’s been a shake up.

Second, cashing out has become orders of magnitude more difficult, even for investments in high quality companies. When I started my career as a research analyst in the mid-90s, $35 million IPOs were common. Today, as public equity funds (pensions and mutual funds) have gotten larger, a deal under $200 million is challenging to accomplish. Just as above, it’s harder to move the needle on a larger fund. It takes as much work to oversee a small position in a microcap company where you can only invest 0.01 percent of your holdings, as a more liquid stock where you can make a 5 or even 10 percent bet in your fund.

Not only is the stock market demanding larger IPOs, it’s also harder even for companies whose valuations can support an IPO to be public as a result of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002. Hastily passed as part of the backlash associated with Enron (overdue, but too long after the horses had left the barn, IMO), it contained needed laws and regulations for public companies. But it also undeniably increased the costs, risks, and difficulties of being public as well. An unintended consequence was that it further slowed the IPO market, especially for smaller, typically venture-backed companies.

Virtually by definition, fewer liquidity options will impact returns. Previously, smaller companies could contemplate an IPO for liquidity. Now M&A is often more attainable, and the buyers realize that. The more recently passed JOBS Act of 2012 may make IPOs easier, but I doubt it will prove to be a good thing for the investing public. See noted investor Dogbert for a common view of retail IPO investors (or simply check Facebook’s aftermarket performance).

…and so, there are fewer venture funds. The typical investors in venture funds — entities like pensions and endowments — typically follow a guideline on their asset allocation. They invest set percentages of their portfolio into different types of investments such as public equities (US and foreign), real estate, private equity, venture, etc. With the US stock market’s lackluster performance of late, the denominator has dropped. The total amount they’d seek to invest in venture, even if it performed well, has decreased. Given the poor asset class performance (and a certain degree of herd mentality), these investors have been piling into private equity rather than venture, further exacerbating the trend.

Furthermore, as readers of this blog know all too well, healthcare is complex and difficult to work in. Rooks’ First Rule of Healthcare Investing therefore states, “If you want buyers who make rapid and rational decisions, you shouldn’t target physicians or hospitals.” This means healthcare-focused venture has been hit particularly hard. The broader technology funds which seem to prefer to roll the dice on the next Instagram or gaming app are managing to raise billion-dollar funds despite the challenges of asset allocation, while some of the best venture-stage healthcare investors I know are struggling to raise their next fund, even though they have backed companies that are household names to the readers of this blog (and include current and former HIStalk sponsors.)

So, we have fewer venture investors out there, and they both need and want to want to write larger checks. What are they seeking? That’s likely another post, but in my mind, the top criteria tend to be:

• Scale. Investors seek to maximize returns while minimizing risks. For many, that means they want to back a business that has already shown a lower adoption risk. In other words, does the business have a sales track record, and will the product or service sell? The proxy for this seems to be at least $5 million in revenues. One-time revenues such as licenses are often acceptable, but recurring (i.e., subscription) is obviously preferable. Investors love SaaS for a reason.
• Barriers. What is proprietary about the offering? Can it be easily replicated by competitors with time and capital?
• Market. What is the size of the addressable market? I find most of these statistics are pulled from thin air, but at least some attempt to quantify should be made, and please avoid what my entrepreneurship professor called The China Syndrome: “There’s a billion people in China, if they each buy one …” When a sector approaches 20 percent of the US GDP, this is an easy road to go down, but without an earnest attempt at quantifying the market for the specific product, it will lead to, “Interesting story, love the idea, call me back when …”
• Team. “Bet the jockey, not the horse” is a truism that proves out repeatedly. Investors would typically prefer to back a failed entrepreneur than someone who’s never been one. Track record is why I believe Humedica has raised over $60 million and Castlight raised $100 million in one recent round alone. Whether they will prove to be good investments can’t be known, but the fact that Michael Weintraub and Giovanni Collella both ran successful businesses with good exits (Pharmetrics and Relay Health, respectively) is as good a predictor as one can find.

Filling the so-called “venture gap,” groups such as super angels have arisen, typically offering not only checkbooks, but also expertise and relationships similar to what VCs can provide. Exploring this topic will be a post for another day.

In the mean time, please keep those questions and notes coming. While I’m rarely shy about sharing an opinion or sounding off, my biggest challenge is what readers would find interesting. I’ve spent most of my career as an analyst or banker, so what I take for granted (albeit sometimes painfully gained knowledge), might be unfamiliar to readers whose daily lives are more focused on patient care or with a vendor. If there’s a relevant topic you’d like to read about, please let me know!

I’ll be attending Health 2.0 here in my new hometown in a few weeks, which I’m sure will provide the grist for another post. If you’d like to connect there, let me know.

Ben Rooks spent a decade as an equity analyst and six long years as an investment banker. In 2009 he formed ST Advisors to work with companies on issues that don’t solely involve transactions. He loves e-mail.

News 10/3/12

Top News

Patients say they are better equipped to help manage their own medical conditions when physicians give them access to their visit notes, according to the year-long OpenNotes study published in Annals of Internal Medicine. Ninety-nine percent of patients at the three participating hospitals who responded to the survey said they wanted the project to continue. None of the participating physicians elected to end their participation at the study’s conclusion — they were less enthusiastic about the patient benefits, but found that allowing patients to review their notes didn’t require any additional time or effort on their part. Responses to the potential benefits in the graphic above are indicated by circles (patients) and squares (physicians).

Reader Comments

From Jedi Knight: “Re: EHR adoption numbers. Has anyone pointed out that ONC and CDC are tracking very different numbers? They are showing 58 and 39 percent, respectively.”

From Start and Stop Again: “Re: Nuance. How do you think 3M feels with Nuance acquiring QuadraMed’s Quantim and JATA, who clearly compete with 3M? This has to signal the end of Nuance’s Computer-Assisted Physician Documentation announced last February in a partnership with 3M. Does Nuance think it can stitch the pieces of two dusty companies into Frankenstein?” Unverified.

From Familiar with the Transaction: “Re: McKesson acquiring MED3OOO. It’s a good fit. MCK gets the InteGreat EHR, which has a lot of functionality including a data warehouse and integration with Medicomp’s Quippe. They get instant market share in specialty revenue cycle management such as lab, emergency, and ambulance billing. They get a new market in full management of multispecialty groups, and ACO market opportunity from someone further down the path than they were. Not to mention that they take out a competitor and pick up a decent client base.”

From What, Me Worry?: “Re: West Penn Allegheny downtime. Patient care was not affected – we rely on meaningfully used paper.” West Penn’s servers went down Tuesday morning after a power surge, forcing the hospital to use paper backups. Some systems were up eight hours later and others were expected to come online overnight. It’s not much of an EHR pitch when a hospital claims that being without the computer didn’t really make any difference in patient care. That’s probably more of a PR observation rather than a medical one, though.

From THB: “Re: Allscripts. Are the reports that the company is putting itself up for sale accurate? After your hard day at work, here I am asking you to validate more information, i.e. do more work.” Bloomberg News claimed Friday that Allscripts talked to several private equity firms before engaging Citigroup to explore its options, but neither company would confirm. Shares have risen 11 percent since then, which might be meaningless since (a) the original rumor may have been planted by someone anxious to sell their shares, which is always possible; (b) the rumor may be incorrect; or (c) the rumor may be correct, but may not result in any decisive action. Reasons that going private makes sense: (a) the company’s shares tanked and haven’t recovered after an ugly day in April in which the company fired its board chair, saw three other board members quit in protest, announced the departure of its CFO, and reported lower earnings and guidance; (b) the company conceded to demands by a large shareholder to add its three candidates to the Allscripts board, and those new directors may be influencing the discussion of strategic alternatives; (c) the critical Q3 earnings numbers will be announced in November, and if they aren’t looking so good, this would be the time to plan an escape route from the bloodbath that’s likely to follow; and (d) the stock has fared so poorly in a generally good market that any major strategic changes might be better conducted outside of Wall Street’s baleful glare. My answer, then, is that I have no idea if the rumor is true, but I suspect that it is, and even that wouldn’t mean much until Allscripts decides what it wants to do.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

My new iPhone 5 arrived last Friday and I am happy to report I have successfully made the migration. It’s definitely faster, the camera is better, it’s lighter, and I like the bigger screen. The battery life, however, does not seem any better than the iPhone 4 and actually seems worse, if that is possible. Maybe the battery life is longer in standby mode, but not when you are using all the cool new features. I also checked out the new maps utility and was amused that my “hospitals” search presented me with an option for “The Shoe Hospital” and for an animal hospital, but no traditional hospitals. It did find more choices when I searched “hospital” (singular), however. An “emergency room”  search found a few urgent care centers, but missed the three closest me and didn’t find any ERs attached to a hospital. Good luck with that issue, Mr. Cook.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Tenet Healthcare subsidiary Conifer Health Solutions will acquire InforMed Health Care Solutions, an information management and services company.

Ontario-based Kallo, Inc. enters into a $2 million stock purchase agreement with Kodiak Capital Group. The company offers EMR, PACS, and medical device connectivity solutions.

Nuance acquires JA Thomas and Associates, which offers clinical documentation improvement programs. Obviously Nuance is interested in clinical documentation and the ICD-10 transition given the September 27 announcement that it had acquired QuadraMed’s HIM solutions (coding, compliance, computer-assisted coding, abstracting, record and document management, workflow, and clinical documentation integrity) and its acquisition earlier this year of Transcend, which offered transcription and clinical documentation (including the documentation and charge capture solutions of Salar, which Transcend acquired last summer).

HIMSS acquires CapSite, which offers a vendor database that includes actual pricing and contract information as well as research services that HIMSS will fold into HIMSS Analytics. It will be interesting to see how HIMSS balances the confidentiality desires of its vendor members against CapSite’s detailed and vendor-specific pricing and contracting information. My speculation is that it will go away, replaced by aggregated non-identifiable vendor information. And as I tweeted when the news was announced, that means that HIMSS is now an inadvertent HIStalk sponsor, which Inga pounced on with great glee.

In one of the oddest healthcare transactions in recent memory, The Washington Post Co. buys a majority stake in a hospice and home health service, obviously desperate for further non-media diversification as its Kaplan education cash cow dries up after the government reins in for-profit colleges.

Healthcare billionaire Patrick Soon-Shiong announces a deal between his NantHealth company and Blue Shield of California, which will work with St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica, CA to roll out healthcare breakthroughs and personalized medicine. He will present the news to a Bipartisan Policy Center conference in Washington, DC on Wednesday, starting with an invitation-only 8:00 a.m. small-group breakfast session and then a larger session later in the morning. He’ll be joined in the session covering the use of supercomputer-powered genomic medicine by Senator Bill Frist; J. Michael McGinnis of the IOM; the president of Blue Shield of California; the top medical executives from AT&T, Verizon, and Caremark; and several academics.

Sales

The board of New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation approves execution of a ten-year, $303 million contract to implement Epic throughout the entire corporation. I believe the incumbent was QuadraMed Affinity, although it’s been a long time since I’ve thought about HHC. Cerner and Allscripts were the losing bidders and Allscripts has formally protested the award to Epic, which I would assume means HHC passed on the lower bid by Allscripts, which isn’t at all unusual when prospects get Epic fever. I assume the only difference from the usual hospital decision is that HHC is a government entity, so there’s someone to complain to. UPDATE: readers tell me the product HHC is running is QuadraMed CPR, the former HDS Ulticare / Per Se Patient1 / Misys CPR that they bought from HDS in the early 1990s and used in all inpatient, outpatient, and ancillary areas. It won them a Davies Award in 2006.

Baton Rouge General Medical Center (LA) chooses RelayHealth for its enterprise HIE.

The 77-physician Optimal Radiology selects McKesson Revenue Management Solutions for billing, reporting, and collections.

Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare (NY) adds the Surgical Information System anesthesia information management system to its Allscripts Sunrise Surgery perioperative system.

The US Coast Guard awards Lockheed Martin a $2.3 million contract to develop a mobile interface to its Epic-powered EHR.

People

Device integration provider Nuvon appoints Christopher Gatti (Living Strategies) CEO and Stephen Spencer (Advantis Medical) VP of sales and marketing. Cathleen Asch will transition from CEO to EVP of strategic initiatives and remain on Nuvon’s board.

Jo Ann Rooney (DoD – above) and Robert Mills (ACS/Xerox) join Huron Consulting Group’s healthcare practice as managing directors.

The Military Health System names David Bowen (FAA) CIO.

University of Buffalo School of Medicine names Peter Winkelstein, MD as executive director of the school’s Institute for Healthcare Informatics. He is also CMIO of UB/MD.

Impact Advisors hires C. Lydon Neumann (Accenture) as VP.

Health Care DataWorks names founder Jyoti Kamal, PhD as president. She was previously deputy CIO and director for the information warehouse at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Aspirus names Todd Richardson (Deaconess Health System) as CIO.

Jonathan Grau (AMIA) joins National Quality Forum as senior director of stakeholder collaboration.

Florence Chang is promoted to EVP of MultiCare Health System (WA). She was previously SVP of clinical support services and CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

WakeMed Health & Hospitals (NC) implements the Philips eICU remote critical care monitoring technology.

AHIMA awards the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics the Grace Award for demonstrating effective and innovative approaches in using health information to deliver high quality healthcare.

Healthland will integrate Health Language’s terminology platform to support ICD-10 readiness and terminology standardization.

UnitedHealthcare commits $20 million to help 11 critical access hospitals in California improve their technology, including the addition of EHRs.

Partners HealthCare pledges to award Massachusetts community health centers $90 million over the next 15 years to upgrade technology and make other infrastructure improvements.

CORHIO announces that all six northern Colorado hospitals are connected to the HIE.

UPMC, Oracle, IBM, Informatica, and dbMotion will create a $100 million data warehouse that combines clinical, financial, administrative, and genomic information for analytics and predictive modeling applications.

Orion Health awards Cognosante a contract to provide integration and identity management for the first stage of the Massachusetts Statewide HIE program.

MModal makes available its Catalyst for Quality solution for clinical documentation.

North Carolina Healthcare Information & Communications Alliance offers a Vendor Management Policy Template that addresses HITECH requirements for business associate agreements. It’s free to NCHICA members, $50 otherwise.

A study published in the Journal of Clinical Epidemiology finds that DynaMed is ranked highest of 10 online clinical resources based on timeliness, breadth of coverage, and quality of supporting evidence.

CTG signs an Epic implementation contract with an unnamed five-hospital IDN.

The city of Billings, MT goes live with an ONC-funded and Dossia-powered pilot project to give its employees the ability to view and manage their electronic health information.

Dolbey announces the VoiceBox recording system that tags physician dictation so that the completed transcription can be inserted into the correct location of the EMR.

Verizon announces a cloud and data center infrastructure for storing and sharing PHI. Unlike non-healthcare cloud providers, Verizon will sign a business associate agreement that meets HIPAA requirements.

VersaSuite announces that its 8.0 product has earned pre-market CCHIT ED certification. VersaSuite is certified for both inpatient and ambulatory use, a distinction it says only two companies have achieved.

Government and Politics

Medicare initiates two ACA-legislated programs that target quality of care and readmission rates in hospitals. The Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program allows the government to pay hospitals bonuses if they meet high performance standards on certain quality measures, while the Hospital Readmissions Reduction Program enables Medicare to reduce reimbursements up to one percent for hospitals with high readmission rates.

ONC announces a goal of helping 1,000 critical access hospitals achieve Meaningful Use by the end of 2014.

ONC releases a consumer-focused video on the benefits of electronic medical records, with cameos by Todd Park, Don Berwick, Farzad Mostashari, David Blumenthal, and others.

Innovation and Research

Kaiser Permanente researchers find that the use of an EHR improved drug therapy and follow-up monitoring of Type 2 diabetics, as well as improved the patients’ glycemic and lipid control.

Health Nuts Media launches a crowdfunding campaign, hoping to raise $90,000 to develop an asthma education app for children. Rewards are offered for various donation levels, with a $50 contribution earning a copy of the app, a “Wall of Fame” credit, coloring pages, a poster, recognition in the app, and a tote bag.

Technology

CalHealth prepares to launch MD Mouse, a device that measures pressure information when a finger is slid inside a cuff that folds out from the middle section of the mouse.

Other

The Census Bureau says adults under age 65 made an average of 3.9 visits to physicians in 2010, down from 4.8 visits in 2001. Possible explanations: more uninsured, fewer physicians, higher patient costs, innovation that allows providers to accomplish more in a single visits, and more meds available without a prescription.

Cerner expects over 10,000 attendees from 21 countries at its 27th annual Cerner Health Conference next week in Kansas City.

An Irish pediatric surgeon is found guilty of poor professional performance after a 2010 error in which the wrong mouth surgery was performed on a baby. The doctor correctly ordered an upper lingual frenulectomy in his patient notes, but an administrator entering the procedure into the hospital’s computer system said the only option it gave him was “tongue-tie.” He chose that option, it printed on the OR list, and the surgeons performed that operation. They chairman of the inquiry committee said he was satisfied with the decision even though the committee had concerns about the OR scheduling and coding systems.

Weird News Andy is amused that a study finds that tickling rats after inducing a stroke appears to prevent paralysis and sensory deficits, possibly by forcing a rerouting of blood through unblocked veins. Playing music seems to work equally well, leading to the “it may not help, but it can’t hurt” recommendation that when someone is suspected of having a stroke, squeeze their hand and talk to them. WNA is also amused at the prospect of giving the rats warfarin as a stroke treatment, which usually is dosed in much larger quantities in the form of rat poison.

WNA cheers this story with a hearty “Hear, hear.” Doctors at Johns Hopkins successfully create a new ear for a woman who lost the original to cancer. They grew the new ear under the skin of her arm until it was ready to be attached.

Strange: a veteran sues the VA for $10 million, claiming that a nurse packed his groin with ice for 19 hours following his genital surgery, causing frostbite that required reconstructive surgery.

Sponsor Updates

• Elsevier launches its nationwide ClinicalKey Experience Tour, an all-day outdoor event at hospitals and academic centers to promote its ClinicalKey clinical reference tool.
• Iatric Systems offers an October 11 webcast on Meaningful Use Stage 2 featuring Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center CIO John Halamka, MD.
• Michigan Orthopaedic Institute (MI) selects the SRS EHR for its 17 providers.
• Intelligent InSites announces members of its Healthcare Advisory Board.
• Collom and Carney Clinic Association (TX) selects MModal Fluency Direct to voice-enable its EHR.
• Cynergis Tek CEO Mac McMillan achieves the Fellow of HIMSS designation in recognition of his advancement of privacy and security within healthcare.
• Balsam Healthcare Corporation (Saudi Arabia) licenses First Databank’s Middle East Drug Knowledge solution for integration with the OASIS HMIS system. FDB also releases new customizable alert categories within its FCB AlertSpace alert management system.
• Delta Health Technologies selects ZirMed as a preferred business partner to provide RCM solutions to homecare providers.
• McKesson hosts its 25th Health Solutions Conference next week in Orlando.
• Gregg Mohrmann and Mark Van Kooy, MD of Aspen Advisors will lead sessions at this week’s New Jersey HIMSS/Delaware Valley HIMSS joint annual conference.

A Report from athenahealth’s “More Disruption Please: The CEO Retreat”
By Jonathan Baran, Co-Founder and CEO, Healthfinch

Athenahealth’s recent "More Disruption Please" event brought together 50 CEOs of health IT companies and their investors to the Point Lookout Resort in Maine (a resort that athenahealth bought for $7.7M… a steal!). Each CEO was given their own private log cabin to stay in (or to sleep off late nights with Jonathan Bush). The purpose of the meeting was for athenahealth and these newer, innovative HIT companies to get to know and learn from each other.

Any time you get to spend time with Jonathan Bush, you never know what to expect. He did not disappoint, as he began at eight in the morning by impersonating Ali G, telling everyone how athenahealth gets "ka-ching and da bling for doing the right thing!" A couple of more presentations followed, including one by Marty Anderson, who asked how innovation can come from the top-down when "the healthcare industry is a giant cartel."

Then the fun began as 30 CEOs gave two-minute pitches, with five finalists promised a ten-minute presentation to 2,500 of athenahealth’s users. We (Healthfinch) were selected as one of the five finalists, along with iTriage, Entrada, Epion, and Wellframe. In a smart market research move, athenahealth then asked their customers to vote on which company’s product they would most like to see integrated with athenahealth. Ultimately, our scrappy startup from Madison, Wisconsin took second place to Aetna’s iTriage.

Jonathan Bush’s final display of how to "keep it real even when you’re CEO of a publicly traded company" began when he gave us a lesson on how to build a successful business model. Jonathan, like every other EMR CEO, drew inspiration from the “Saturday Night Live” skit, "D— in a Box." He gave us all the following instructions:

1. Get a box (find a pile of work that users hate and suck at).
2. Cut a hole in the box (figure out how to break into the market).
3. Put your junk in the box (bring your secret sauce to the market).

I couldn’t say it any better myself.

Athenahealth also discussed more of their plans for their entire "More Disruption Please" program, the smartest move being their recognition that the biggest challenge in bringing innovation to market (and thus allowing small companies to flourish) is in the distribution channel. That’s why athenahealth is promising to bring the top innovations to their customers by rapidly scaling interesting products and innovations to their entire user base.

Time will tell if athenahealth can live up to its grand plans to become the information backbone of the health system, but their program (and their conference) seem to indicate they are on the right track.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

HIMSS Acquires CapSite

HIMSS announced this morning that it has acquired CapSite, which publishes the CapSite healthcare technology database that includes vendor pricing and contracting information, including 5,000 actual vendor proposals and contracts representing 1,600 vendors.

HIMSS will incorporate CapSite’s offerings into its HIMSS Analytics services, which has not included pricing information. HIMSS says it will also add voice of the customer consulting services through customized research, including analysis of vendor market position that includes product gaps.

According to HIMSS President and CEO Steve Lieber, “The investment in CapSite follows our overall strategy for HIMSS Analytics to provide the best market intelligence on the hardware, software, and services selected by chief information officers and other users of information technology. We will maintain the CapSite office in Burlington, VT with CapSite employees joining the HIMSS roster as part of the HIMSS Analytics team.”

McKesson to Acquire MED3OOO

McKesson announced this morning that it will acquire MED3OOO, which offers physician practice administration services, revenue cycle management, and software. The Pittsburgh-based company employs 2,800, has 10,000 physician users, and has stated annual revenue of $200 million.

McKesson will incorporate MED3OOO’s products and services into its McKesson Revenue Management Solutions business. The announcement quotes its general manager, SVP Pat Leonard, as saying, “McKesson and MED3OOO share a commitment to help customers navigate growing healthcare complexity and achieve their full potential. We are excited about the opportunity to combine best practices and superior technologies to help providers and other customers improve their operations and achieve better business health as part of our Better Health 2020 strategy.”

We mentioned the acquisition several times over the past few weeks in HIStalk, although without specifically naming MED3OOO since McKesson is a publicly traded company. Our November 2011 interview with MED3OOO Chairman and CEO Pat Hampson provides more detailed information about the company.

Monday Morning Update 10/1/12

From DanburyWhaler: “Re: Western Connecticut Health Network. The manager we thought was being groomed to take over as CIO is gone after three months. They are laying off people left and right. The major construction budget is way over.” The hospital recently laid off 28 employees, citing economic conditions, state taxes, and general healthcare trends. The $150 million expansion is pictured above.

From Boomer: “Re: Patrick Soon-Shiong. The billionaire’s healthcare coming out event is this Wednesday, when he will announce the results of an oncology-focused application of his supercomputer / high-speed fiber / middleware / mobile platform that he has been building for years. He claims that 8,000 oncologists using his decision support tools lowered the patients receiving the wrong treatment from 32% to 0%.” He’s presenting at the Bipartisan Policy Center’s October 3 conference in Washington DC, Accelerating Electronic Information Sharing to Improve Health Care.

From At Northwestern: “Re: Epic. No commitment from Northwestern Memorial Hospital to move to Epic.” Like the original rumor saying they were making that move, this one is unverified.

From Bean Multiplier: “Re: Allscripts. I hear from a good source that the company would be willing to take a private equity deal for $15 per share.” Unverified. Shares closed Friday at $12.42, up 14% on rumors that the company is exploring a possible sale to private equity. Shares were last above $15 on April 26, the day before the company fired Chairman Phil Pead, after which three of the company’s board members quit in protest. Even now the P/E ratio is at 40, about the same as Cerner’s. I assume the P/E ratio takes into account the $200 million of repurchased shares, which would have raised earnings per share by reducing the share count rather than reflecting increased profits. Bloomberg did not cite the source of the “possible sale” rumors, which could either be an informed, unbiased source or a pump-and-dumper trying to unload some shares on the market’s reaction to the non-news.

From The PACS Designer: “Re: RIS/PACS integration. There’s been some fresh looks at how a RIS fits into the flow of information between radiology presents, and the submission for and completion of a radiology study. Since most configurations between the RIS and PACS are customized at each institution, it leaves many opportunities for a future RIS/PACS upgrade to be a more robust information source. This upgrade should provide two-way information flow so everyone can plan their activities each day more efficiently. One way to achieve the better information flow goal is to insist that the new system of a combined RIS/PACS come from the same vendor.”

From Miraculous Miler: “Re: John Landis of Cerner. Rumor is that he’s gone.” Cerner’s media relations department confirms that John Landis, SVP of ClientWorks, has left the company.  

From MumpsInToronto: “Re: University Health Network, Toronto. Going to RFP. They are running QuadraMed now, which is MUMPS based. From the volume of data that will need to be converted, you can bet they will be looking at Epic.” Unverified.

McKesson announced Better Health 2020 and an investment of $1 billion in R&D in last December. Three-quarters of poll respondents said the company’s healthcare IT position is worse now than then. New poll to your right: has the use of EHRs increased Medicare fraud?

Welcome to new HIStalk Gold Sponsor Agilum Healthcare Intelligence of Franklin, TN, which describes its offerings as “Business intelligence in a box.” Modules include Service Line Costing and Profitability (margins by service line and payer, case mix trends, length of stay and volume trends, DRG mix, margin by physician, etc.); Revenue Cycle Performance (dashboards, A/R performance indicators, ageing reports, net revenue modeling, and denials by reason); Operational Performance (executive view with KPI line item indicators, facilities operations and department dashboards, daily volume dashboards and forecast, and operating ratios); and Productivity Manager (departmental dashboard, pay period reports, daily reports, overtime ratio reports, and skill mix reports). One of the most technologically astute hospitals in the world, Bumrungrad International Hospital in Thailand, recently signed up for Agilum’s business intelligence solutions to improve its operational, managerial, and financial decision making. Thanks to Agilum Healthcare Intelligence for supporting HIStalk.

I headed over to YouTube to see what I could find on Agilum Healthcare Intelligence. Above is an overview.

I had heard reports that HCA signed a big contract with Epic to replace its Meditech system, but two HCA sources told me off the record that it’s still just one HCA site piloting Epic so far. HCA is still rolling out Meditech CPOE.

Epic consulting firm Nordic Consulting announces that it has raised growth capital from SV Life Sciences, Health Enterprise Partners, and HLM Venture Partners. All three backers focus on healthcare, with the one catching my eye being SV Life Science since Bruce Cerullo is a venture partner there in addition to being the CEO of Vitalize Consulting Solutions that was sold to SAIC a year ago.

CapSite releases its 2012 Ambulatory EHR & PM Study. It finds that 40 percent of organizations are still in the market for an ambulatory EHR, with most of them planning to buy within the next two years. The practice management market offers less opportunity, with only 27 percent of responding organizations indicating their interest in buying or upgrading and just 21 percent saying they would replace their current practice management system to move to an integrated PM/EHR.

Pearson and Cerner announce RealEHRPrep, an EHR learning tool for nursing students.

The UK’s Department of Health admits that the failure of its NPfIT project means it no longer owns rights to the software developed for it by CSC using billions of dollars of public funds. The original contract called for software ownership as one of four terms that were to protect the government’s interests if the project failed, which it did, but either the contract was incorrectly drafted or the government negotiated the rights away in trying to avoid a CSC termination lawsuit. The Department of Health and vendors involved (CSC and BT) are ignoring information requests, according to the ComputerWeekly.com article.

Also in the UK, and external review finds that the rate of clinical errors increased after NHS turned over operation of its pathology laboratories to the multinational corporation Serco. The report by a non-profit watchdog also found that the money-losing JV required hospitals to chip in cash to keep it afloat, and even then the company will pull out of certain markets. Computer problems caused some of the patient-related problems: a patient received the wrong blood type after the software failed to issue a warning, an incorrect creatinine clearance calculation was highlighted as a near miss, and the company’s blood analyzers were shut down for four days after becoming infected with a computer virus.

And also in the UK, a report commissioned by Imperial College Healthcare Trust concludes that 3,000 of its cancer patients have not been seen promptly because the hospital uses 17 different computer systems, some of them requiring manual data entry. The trust says they’re looking for a single system, but the report warns them of the risks involved.

A Wall Street Journal article listing the top 50 startups says that healthcare has fallen out of VC favor based on its somewhat subjective criteria, with last year’s top-ranked Castlight Health dropping off the list entirely.

The VA was expected to award a contract for mobile device management software by Sunday, September 30, the end of its fiscal year.

Weird News Andy likes this story, in which police used fingerprints to locate the former owner of a human finger that was found inside a fish caught from an Idaho lake. When the sheriff called a wakeboarder who had lost four fingers in a towline accident in June, he immediately responded, “Let me guess – they found my fingers in a fish.” The sheriff offered to return the well-preserved digits, but the man declined, saying, “Uh, I’m good.”

Another WNA find: pathology researchers at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center (DC) develop a method of testing the susceptibility of a patient’s specific cancer cells to various chemotherapy drugs, much like the routine culture and sensitivity tests that help doctors choose an appropriate antibiotic for a given infection.

Here’s Vince’s HIS-tory on QuadraMed, Part 3, which purely coincidentally provides a history of the Quantim product line that the company just announced that it’s selling to Nuance.

Sponsor Updates

• Vitera Healthcare’s VIBE user group meeting was held September 12-14 at Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort & Spa in Lake Buena Vista, FL.
• Optum announces an ICD-10 education program for hospitals.

E-mail Mr. H.

News 9/28/12

Top News

The American Hospital association agrees in a letter to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and the Attorney General Eric Holder that EMR-assisted cloning and upcoding should not be tolerated, but retorts that CMS has ignored its repeated recommendations to expand E/M (evaluation and management) codes to create a national standard for hospital ED and clinic services. My opinion: the election-sensitive, administration-friendly HHS’ers got blindsided by a Center for Public Integrity article that insinuated but didn’t prove that a shift to higher complexity codes means that EDs and physician practices are gaming the system to the tune of $11 billion, so given too little time between now and the November 6 election to actually do something useful (like identify and prosecute someone who’s actually guilty), HHS just went public with meaningless finger-wagging to make it appear that they’re on top of the situation. HHS keeps bragging on how great their fraud detection systems are (which they should be, given the hundreds of millions paid to fat cat contractors to develop them), yet they apparently trust journalists more than their own armies of bureaucrats to tell them they have a problem. The reimbursement system is even worse than the tax laws in being a confusing hodgepodge of rules that nobody, even CMS, really understands or can interpret consistently. Some providers are undoubtedly committing fraud and the 99% honest ones would love to see them shut down and punished. However, as with tax loopholes, there’s nothing illegal or immoral about taking the maximum benefit that the law allows. There’s a reason that crime syndicates are moving from drug dealing to Medicare fraud: payment is quick and rarely questioned, the money is great, and the risk of actually going to jail is almost zero.

Reader Comments

From High Roller: “Re: QuadraMed. Quantum is just the first QuadraMed domino to fall. Franciscan Partners isn’t interested in holding on to the rest of the company forever, so it won’t be long before the other pieces are sold off. QuadraMed has a large enough client base, so they could milk their revenue stream for awhile. More likely, Franciscan will look to sell what’s left to someone like Allscripts who’d be interested in having a larger client base to sell into.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Highlights from the last week on HIStalk Practice: patients want more online access to their health records but most doctors don’t offer the option. Lack of staff impacts EHR adoption, especially in smaller practices. Tips for using an EHR as a marketing tool and to increase patient satisfaction. Parents are more likely to fill children’s e-prescribed prescriptions than paper ones. Physicians are working fewer hours and seeing fewer patients than they were four years ago. I am looking for some MGMA picks. Thanks for reading.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Emdat, which offers hybrid clinical documentation and transcription solutions that improve the productivity and satisfaction of EHR-using physicians. Instead of pointing and clicking, physicians continue to use the most efficient method of documenting patient encounters – dictation. Emdat’s DaRT system automatically tags sections of transcription content (chief complaint, medical history, etc.) and then seamlessly auto-populates discrete information directly into the EHR just as though the physician entered it directly using structured documentation. Its Emdat Mobile solution not only allows physicians to document encounters on the go, but provides a more patient-friendly way to document during an encounter. Loyola University Health System uses it with Epic and says the setup was simple, reducing transcription turnaround time by 50% and allowed doctors to continue dictation, which they say is faster and better for patient care. Thanks to Emdat for supporting HIStalk.

Mr. H took off a little early to treat Mrs. H to some fun, so today’s post is a bit shorter than usual.  He’ll be back to serve up a full course of the Monday Morning Update over the weekend.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

As reported earlier today, Nuance will acquire QuadraMed’s Quantim product line. You have to wonder if Nuance didn’t rush the announcement a bit following our Wednesday mention of the deal on Twitter and HIStalk: early Thursday morning Nuance posted these (now corrected) announcements referring to “QuadaMed” and “Quantrim.”

The Kentucky Economic Development Finance Authority approves a $150,000 grant for Health Catalyst, a business accelerator for companies creating health-related software, including life-sciences and HIT companies. Health Catalyst will nurture five startups a year by providing work space, mentoring, and seed funding.

Sales

Evergreen Health (WA) selects MEDSEEK’s ecoSmart Patient Precisioning solution for predictive analytics.

Adventist Health selects MedeAnalytics’ Patient Access Intelligence solution for point-of-service cash collection across its 16 hospitals.

People

Mark Burgess (Cerner) joins Allscripts as director of solutions management.

Fletcher Allen Health Care (VT) hires Adam P. Buckley, MD (Beth Israel Medical Center) to be the organization’s first CMIO.

Announcements and Implementations

Wake Forest Baptist Health (NC) goes live on Epic.

Wellcentive announces Advance Risk Manager, a predictive risk modeling system for population health management that allows providers to focus on patients with specific risk profiles.

The three largest health systems in St. Louis join the Missouri Health Connection HIE.

Government and Politics

Rep. Mike Honda (D-CA) will introduce a bill to set up an Office of Mobile Health at the FDA to provide recommendations on mobile health issues. The legislation also calls for the creation of a support program at the HHS to advise app developers on privacy regulations and for a low-interest loan program for physician offices to purchase new technology.

Technology

The West Health Institute is developing Sense4Baby, a wireless and portable fetal monitor for high-risk pregnancies in remote clinics. The system, which is being piloted in Mexico, sends the captured data over a cellular network to the patient’s physician.

Other

The Seattle Times covers Caradigm, the Microsoft-GE joint venture whose headquarters opened this week in Bellevue,WA. Positive comments from Providence about Amalga are included, along with less enthusiastic ones from Swedish CMIO Tom Wood, who says he’s not sure how they can add a layer on top of EMRs without a lot of cooperation.

UMass Memorial Health Care (MA) will eliminate 140 positions, some of them in IT, in seeking $80 million in cost reductions.

John Reynolds, the former CEO of Hospital for Special Surgery (NY), is arrested for racketeering, charged with soliciting kickbacks from prospective vendors and extorting $300,000 from a hospital employee in return for arranging an annual bonus.

Weird News Andy wonders how this is possible. A women who is “internally decapitated” when her skull is torn from her spine in a car accident not only survives, but is basically back to normal.

Here’s a new video from St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, featuring patients, employees, and celebrities singing “Hey, Jude” to highlight National Childhood Cancer Awareness Month. Some of those featured are Jennifer Aniston, Betty White, Robin Williams, and Michael Jordan.

Two-thirds of CHIME members report staff shortages and are in most need of more specialists to implement and support clinical applications.

A study published in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association concludes that CPOE was the main challenge among hospitals failing to achieve MU in the program’s first year.

Sponsor Updates

• TELUS Health brings its TELUSHealth.com portal live to showcase its solutions that link Canadian patients to their providers.
• Elsevier unveils its EduCode Clinical Documentation Improvement eLearning curriculum for ICD-10 at next week’s AHIMA meeting.
• New York eHealth Collaborative spotlights five health IT champions at the NYeC gala October 15.
• Muhannad Samaan, MD of Aultman Inpatient Medicine discusses how Ingenious Med’s charge capture software improved patient hand-off and communications.
• Software Magazine ranks Macadamian #435 on its Software 500 list, which is based on revenues of the world’s largest software and services suppliers.
• Sandlot Solutions releases a report on using data and analytics to improve healthcare delivery.
• Skylight Healthcare Systems integrates its Service Recovery process with Vocera’s communication devices.
• Optum launches its Optum ICD-10 Core Education program.
• TI combines its DM8148 system on-a-chip with Imprivata OneSign to provide out-of-the-box strong user authentication into any software application.
• McKesson expands its Intelligent Coding portfolio to include observation services.
• First Databank executives Keith Fisher, MS and Patrick Lupinetti, JD  will present educational sessions at next month’s AMCP 2012 Educational Conference.
• Vitera Healthcare Solutions reports record attendance at this month’s VIBE conference in Orlando.
• 3M Health Information Systems adds 18 physician education modules to its Web-based curriculum to address ICD-10 readiness.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

Don’t forget — October 3 is the last day for Eligible Professionals to begin their 90-day reporting period for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program, aka Meaningful Use. One of my buddies in the consulting business has been sharing e-mails he is receiving from providers. Today’s special: “I would like to be Meaningful Use but do not know to begin. I need the money. Please send tips for me to start?” I guess that’s someone’s idea of a consulting RFP.

An American Medical News article lists common EHR blunders. I’ve seen all of these in various forms across practices from small to large. Topping the list: lack of infrastructure, lack of workflow assessment, lack of training, lack of buy-in, failure to communicate with patients about delays during the transition, and failure to appropriately integrate the computer into the patient-physician relationship.

News flash: Nearly one-third of US medical school students who initially planned to enter primary care ended up switching to a more lucrative specialty. Surveys of students in New York show that “medical students who anticipated high levels of debt upon graduation and placed a premium on high income were more likely to enter a high-paying medical specialty.” Really.

In similar news, the US medical schools that still don’t have Family Medicine departments are starting to get with the program. Some of these schools are big name and I know all too well what it’s like to attend one. Now we just need to get all medical schools to incorporate informatics into their programs. Let’s teach budding doctors (and nurses, and everyone else) how to leverage technology to better care for patients rather than fighting it or trying to undermine it. Although the new generation seems tech savvy, I see too many students trying to short-cut their documentation.

Mashable lists “10 Office Technologies on Their Way Out.” The list of items they predict will vanish in the next five years includes obvious items like fax machines, tape recorders, and the Rolodex. I’m not sure about desktop computers, cubicles, and standard working hours. There are a lot of entrenched management types out there who will resist. Although I won’t miss formal business attire, which includes pantyhose (#7), I’d like to lobby to keep fashionable shoes part of the equation. If I see one more pair of flip-flops in the office, I just might scream.

The Greater Atlanta area is a hotbed of health IT vendors, so I hope that none of you were recipients of the free kittens given away in the parking lot of the McDonough Walmart. Apparently they were rabid.

As Mr. H mentioned earlier this week, HIMSS registration is open and the room supplies are dwindling. I’m glad he gave me a reminder. I booked tonight, yet wasn’t able to get my preferred hotel or even my preferred dates. I’m leaving a day early, but that’s probably OK since I have to take vacation to attend this year. My hospital no longer has a conference budget or paid professional development days, so I’m not complaining about spending one less night in an overpriced hotel. Plus, I was able to snag a super-cheap plane ticket so I can afford some hot new shoes for Histalkapalooza.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

Nuance To Acquire QuadraMed’s Quantim HIM Line

Nuance Communications announced this morning that it will acquire QuadraMed’s Quantim product line for health information management. Quantim includes applications for coding, compliance, computer-assisted coding, abstracting, clinical documentation integrity, record and document management, and workflow.

HIStalk reported Nuance as the buyer Wednesday on Twitter and on HIStalk following the filing of Federal Trade Commission documents. The announcement was reportedly originally scheduled for October 1, the first day of the AHIMA conference.

News 9/26/12

Top News

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and US Attorney General Eric Holder warn AHA and other hospital organizations that the government will take appropriate steps to pursue healthcare providers who misuse EHRs to defraud Medicare, specifically calling out upcoding and cloning of medical records.

Reader Comments

From Wicked Fun: “Re: HIStalkapalooza planning. I just moved from the vendor side to a provider organization. As much as I am loving my brand new job, I miss the ‘fray’ of the world of HIT. The first comment from one of my MD friends  was, ‘What if you don’t go to HIMSS? We always go to the HIStalk party together!’’” The lesson here for the HIStalkapalooza faithful is to add our annual event as a mandatory condition of employment in your contract negotiations. If you like planning ahead, the 2013 version of HIStalkapalooza is scheduled for Monday, March 4, with registration opening sometime in January.

From Plinker: “Re: Northwestern in Chicago. Going Epic.” I don’t recall if I’ve mentioned that previously.

From Squint Eastwood: “Re: Vermont. Not a rumor, but interesting.” Fletcher Allen Health Care and Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center submit an ACO plan that would create the for-profit OneCare Vermont LLC, which would include 13 of the state’s 14 hospitals (Porter Medical Center passed), 58 medical practices, two FQHCs, and other organizations. If approved in October, OneCare would be up and running by January 1, serving most of the state’s 105,000 Medicare beneficiaries. Fletcher Allen SVP Todd Moore, who will be CEO of OneCare if it’s approved, says access to data was a driver. “This is really an access to information revolution as much as it is anything else for us. This gives us access to the full claims set for the first time to Medicare beneficiaries that we treat … to understand how they seek care, how often they go to (the doctor) — whether it be at Fletcher Allen or at Northwestern Medical Center or in Florida.”

From Adam: “Re: Tampa General Hospital. Saw they’re going with RelayHealth for HIE. Aren’t they an Epic shop?” They are indeed.

From HereWeGo: “Re: MCK acquisition of MedVentive. The fat, spoiled kitty found a new toy to bat around and destroy until the next shiny object captures its attention.” Usually the fat cat in a given deal is the seller, so at least some of MCK’s cash trickled down to the MedVentive owners. I should clarify that the rumored MCK acquisition that I mentioned last week isn’t MedVentive, so another announcement could be coming if the rumor turns out to be accurate.

From Bobby D: “Re: MCK acquisition of MedVentive. This is the second company that Nancy Brown has been involved with that McKesson bought, the first being Abaton.com. She has two to go to catch Mike Myers of CliniCom history, who has sold them four companies.” Mike’s at QuadraMed now, I’m told, so he could bag “one for the thumb” if MCK happens to buy QuadraMed’s Quantim line, if indeed the rumor is true that it’s about to be sold (and even if it is, MCK hasn’t been mentioned as a player.) UPDATE: per Federal Trade Commission filings, Nuance will be the acquirer of Quantim.

From Moak: “Re: upcoding. How did you miss this one?” I get at least one e-mail per day (including this one) with a link to a big news story that I’ve already covered, so skimmers are missing out. Still, I appreciate the notice just in case I really did miss something, and Moak brings up an interesting point: the feds gave Faxton St. Luke’s Healthcare (NY) as an example of an ED whose higher levels of treatment jumped 43 percent in 2009, the same year it implemented EHRs. He says the hospital only has 22 days’ cash on hand and therefore is not stealing from anyone. I wouldn’t necessary make that assumption since poverty usually encourages rather than discourages criminality, but I think his point is that the hospital was struggling financially and may have simply cracked down on sloppy billing practices. One might assume that the feds would do some audits before slamming the entire healthcare provider universe with unproven fraud innuendo, but given its poor track record in uncovering even widespread fraud (see: South Florida), maybe the only arrow in its quiver is to bluff. If they have found even one case of EHR-abetted fraud and wanted to deliver an effective message, they should have had a photo op with someone in handcuffs.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

A big thanks to all the readers who sent me notes bragging that they had already gotten their iPhone 5s after little or no wait at their local Apple store. My phone will arrive from China on Thursday. I loved the lightweight feel of a friend’s iPhone and had fun taking a few panoramic photos. My friend claims it is much faster than the iPhone 4, but she is not yet convinced the battery life is dramatically improved.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor VersaSuite. The Austin, TX company offers an integrated system for medical enterprises (hospitals, clinics, surgery centers) that includes a hospital information system (including CPOE and eMAR), inventory management, RIS/PACS, laboratory information system, pharmacy management system, accounting, and HR. It’s all built on a single Windows-based stack running on a single database, standardizing the user experience across inpatient, outpatient, and ED. The company says it holds the largest number of CCHIT certifications of any single product, including CCHIT’s enterprise certification, giving healthcare systems one product that is MU certified for both EPs and hospitals. VersaSuite’s EHR includes specialty-specific templates for 24 disciplines, keyboard-free data entry, dashboards, tablet support, and a four-click assessment/plan for outpatients that takes only 5-10 seconds vs. up to two minutes in competing EHRs. The company is a member of IHE and its products support interoperability standards such as HL7 and DICOM and are compliant with HIPAA 5010 and ICD-10. Thanks to VersaSuite for supporting HIStalk.  

I booked my HIMSS room this week and suggest you don’t wait too long. I got my first choice, but the supply for close-in rooms is dwindling. HIMSS usually opens up more hotels later, but they’re usually a long shuttle bus ride to BFE.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cancer support site Navigating Cancer raises $2.3 million to hire developers and integrate its patient portal into EMR applications.

McKesson announces that it will acquire MedVentive, which offers population and risk management tools.

Sales

Wentworth-Douglass Hospital (NH) selects the Siemens perioperative management system by SIS.

The Upper Peninsula HIE (MI) will implement ICA’s CareAlign CareExchange platform.

Tampa General Hospital (FL) selects RelayHealth Enterprise HIE for CCD data exchange.

Johns Hopkins Hospital and Health System (MD) selects 3M’s 360 Encompass System for automated coding and clinical documentation.

Health plan service provider Magnacare (NY) will offer online appointment scheduling services from DocASAP, a startup competitor to ZocDoc.

Methodist Dallas Medical Center (TX) selects ProVation Order Sets from Wolters Kluwer Health.

Amcon’s Australian division announces the launch of its Messenger clinical alerting middleware at the 848-bed St. Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne.

People

M*Modal hires Mike Etue (OptumInsight, Allscripts) as EVP of sales, replacing Michael Clark.

Former PatientKeeper VP Michael Bertrand joins home health software provider HealthWyse as VP of development.

RemitDATA appoints John Stanton (Beacon Partners, above) as VP of consulting and Phillip McClure (MedeAnalytics) as VP of sales.

Beacon Partners promotes Christopher Kondrat from principal to VP of professional services.

Phillip Madden (Cerner) is named director of client sales at Orion Health.

Yuma Regional Medical Center names Robert Budman, MD (Catholic Healthcare East) as CMIO.

Besler Consulting appoints Edward J. Niewiadomski, MD (Southern Ocean Medical Center) as senior medical advisor.

Quality Systems, Inc. appoints Daniel J. Morefield (LEADS360) as EVP/COO.

Announcements and Implementations

Munson Healthcare (MI) implements VPLEX Metro virtual storage from EMC and private cloud technology from EMC and VMware.

SCIOinspire Corp. changes its name to SCIO Health Analytics.

Prognosis adds a configurable template engine and a physician rounding tool to its ChartNotes EHR.

In the UK, CSC admits that it will sunset the former iSOFT physician systems, including Synergy, Premiere, and Ganymede, that are used by about six percent of England’s practices. It denied the rumor of the impending retirement until Monday’s announcement.

PerfectServe adds a patient-centered rounding feature to its communications system, allowing clinicians to contact the appropriate physician for each patient.

Cleveland Clinic is implementing software from its new spinoff iVHR, which will present information from its Epic system to doctors in a visual form. The software will create maps patient locations with indicators of patient condition that link to all the background data from Epic, displaying it visually to help doctors see the big picture.

Government and Politics

The FCC’s mHealth Task Force recommends that wireless health and e-Care technologies be incorporated as best practices for medical care by 2017. Example technologies are remote monitoring devices, apps, body sensors, implanted microstimulation devices, medical device data systems, provider apps for remote image viewing, patient portals, clinical decision support tools, and a broadband-enabled HIT infrastructure. Some of its specific recommendations to the FCC include: (a) fill the open position for an FCC healthcare director; (b) provide education and outreach; (c) work more closely with ONC and CMS, specifically helping ONC with secure health messaging and communications standards; and (d) open up more of the communications spectrum for mobile broadband.

UC Davis Health System signs a 16-month, $17.5 million agreement to take over the state’s struggling HIE, formerly run by Cal eConnect. The project has been renamed the California Health eQuality Program (CHeQ) and will be led by Ken Kizer, MD MPH of UC Davis, who was previously CEO of the VA healthcare system, Medsphere, and the National Quality Forum. The project is halfway through its four-year, $39 million grant. They claim they are confident they’ll seamlessly move to a post-grant revenue model when the federal breast runs dry in 2014, which will make them one of almost none if they actually pull it off.

NPR posts the audio and transcript from Tuesday’s “The Diane Rehm Show,” featuring Farzad Mostashari and others on “The Pluses and Minuses of Electronic Medical Records” (but not Diane Rehm, who was on vacation, and not Farzad for the second half because he had to leave). The substitute host led an inordinate amount of the discussion toward upcoding, which made it a lot less interesting. What Farzad said: (a) maybe the EHR just captured the charges correctly; (b) the current system pays doctors more for recording what they actually do, so why wouldn’t they?; (c) EHR or not, fraud is illegal, and in fact the audit trails of EHRs can make it easier to detect. A former healthcare CIO and practice manager named Jim called in to say that his docs always intentionally downcoded with paper records because they were afraid insurance companies would challenge their recordkeeping, but were more confident that electronic records made it safe to bill accurately.

Other

OIG finds that Essentia Health (MN) overbilled Medicare by $865,000, or $3.18 for every $1.00 it was owed. Essentia blames its billing system, which it says it has replaced.

Avado CEO Dave Chase opines in a Forbes article that New York is “the epicenter of healthcare’s reinvention.” He cites as examples health accelerators, Medicaid HMOs, WebMD, the New York eHealth Collaborative, the state HIE, IBM, and Farzad Mostashari.

Weird News Andy finds an article from the physician author of Bad Pharma stating what everybody knows: drug companies selectively publish studies that make their drugs look good, using tricks such as small-numbers studies and statistical tricks that exaggerate questionable benefits. Less-flattering studies get shelved. Industry-funded drug trials were positive 85 percent of the time, while only 50 percent of government-funded studies were. Industry-sponsored studies of statin drugs were 20 times more likely to favor the test drugs. From the book’s description, “We like to imagine that doctors are familiar with the research literature surrounding a drug, when in reality much of the research is hidden from them by drug companies. We like to imagine that doctors are impartially educated, when in reality much of their education is funded by industry. We like to imagine that regulators let only effective drugs onto the market, when in reality they approve hopeless drugs, with data on side effects casually withheld from doctors and patients.”

Another WNA find, which he labels “workaholic”: the New York Post digs through public records to find city-employed psychiatrists who make multiples of their base salaries by claiming extensive overtime for ED coverage. One psychiatrist boosted his $173K base pay to $481K by claiming he worked 80 hours per week. The same doctor made $689K in 2009 by turning in 3,820 hours of overtime, including one non-stop stretch of 96 hours. The physicians are also allowed to operate private practices.

Here’s the latest cartoon from Imprivata.

Sponsor Updates

• eClinicalWorks releases the agenda for its October 25-28 National Users Conference.
• DrFirst creates an infographic called “Key Dates You Need to Know to Maximize Meaningful Use Incentive Payments.”
• Lifepoint Informatics announces its Gold Level sponsorship of the G2 Lab Institute Conference in Alexandria, VA October 10-12.
• MED3OOO VP Steven Stout discusses the risk and rewards of contracting for global risk in an October 3 Webinar.
• McKesson hosts a September 27 Webinar on strategies for driving reimbursement.
• A survey by commissioned by simplifyMD finds that EMR vendors often convince practices to replace their practice management system when implementing their EMR, but practices often experienced problems with cash flow and employee productivity as a result.
• MedVentive offers demos of its Population Manager and Risk Manager products during next week’s AMGA Institute for Quality Leadership Annual Meeting.
• Benefis Health System (MT) realizes a $4.9 million increase in appropriate hospital charges, a $3.5 million increase in reimbursement, and a $2.3 million reduction in uncompensated care within four months of implementing the first phase of its RCM initiative with MedAssets.
• MedAptus releases its Mobile Schedule application for Apple iOS.
• An Imprivata-sponsored survey finds that 72 percent of hospital IT decision makers believe pagers will be replaced by secure text messaging within three years.
• iSirona releases a white paper on device integration.
• Wellsoft will participate in the 2012 ACEP Scientific Assembly next month in Denver.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

McKesson To Acquire MedVentive

McKesson announced this morning that it will acquire MedVentive, which offers population and risk management solutions. Terms were not disclosed.

MedVentive, based in Waltham, MA, was founded in 2005 by Jonathan Niloff, MD. Its solutions include MedVentive Risk Manager and MedVentive Population Manager. McKesson will add its offerings to its McKesson Enterprise Intelligence suite.

Monday Morning Update 9/24/12

From Eddie T. Head: “Re: Forbes 400. They’re pulling Judy Faulkner’s net worth out of the air, seeming to make up their numbers based on an alternate reality where Epic is publicly traded and the stock price is based on the nonsensical P/E ratios of companies like Cerner (35) or athenahealth (195). For comparison, Google and Apple have P/E of 21 and 16.” My first thought on seeing that Forbes estimated Judy’s net worth at $1.7 billion: they couldn’t possibly know what she’s worth since none of her assets, including Epic’s ownership structure, have been publicly reported. Epic has previously corrected reporters who referred to Judy as a billionaire – they say she’s not. Cerner’s market capitalization is five times revenue, and by that formula, Epic would be worth about $6 billion if (and it’s a huge “if”) it went public and was able to earn stock market credibility as Cerner does without screwing up the operation. Judy supposedly owns 40% of the company, so that would value her stake in the theoretically publicly traded Epic at $2 billion. That doesn’t mean she has $2 billion in the bank, but it’s safe to assume that she’s not overdrawing regularly.

From Milkshake: “Re: Forbes 400. Now I know why Judy and Neal are always smiling. I wonder how long they will keep their smiles once Grassley catches wind of the ubiquitous up-coding scams their instruments facilitate.” I don’t think they have a lot to worry about from Chuck since, despite the high expectations I had for him, seems to excel only at writing stern letters and then moving on to whatever headline grabs his attention next. Someone intent on scamming Uncle Sam in any fashion (medical or other) would probably find it more efficient to use a computer, but that’s hardly a good reason to ban computers. I’m somewhat anti-gun, but I still laugh at the folks at the anti-gun rallies who carry signs saying “Spoons made me fat.” In other words, the problem is people, not their choice of inanimate objects.

From Thinking Ahead: “Re: Epic. What’s their succession plan? Judy is almost 70, few people on the planet could afford to buy her out, and she doesn’t have much appetite for going public. Employee-owned models are nice in theory, but few if any have really worked, and to my knowledge Judy doesn’t have family engaged who could take over. The succession plan is important to a hospital that has paid tens or hundreds of millions for a product with a shelf life of decades.” I’ve talked to people who have seen the succession plan and they are comfortable with it. Epic would certainly change without the presence of the visionary and sole public face of the company who is personally involved with even the most trivial company decisions. However, I said the same about Apple and Steve Jobs and they seem to be doing just fine without him, although it’s been just a year since he died.

From The PACS Designer: “Re:Information Week 500. This year’s InformationWeek 500 finds Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center at the #1 position. TPD salutes CIO John Halamka, MD for guiding his institution to the top of the IT world with innovative solutions, such as their search tool called Clinical Query which can be emulated and used by other healthcare organizations to improve processes.”

From Looking Deeper: “Re: HIStalk Advisory Panel on patient-facing technologies. I’m loving it. Finally we get some honest opinions on a topic that hasn’t been discussed to death like EHRs.” I agree — it was interesting information. EHRs get 90% of the attention these days, but they don’t address every problem. I’ve really enjoyed hearing what the Advisory Panel has to say. I send them a topic or two once a month, so you can look forward to more frontline reports. Thanks to those panel members who take the time to provide thoughtful answers – the industry benefits.

From Cache’ Jedi: “Re: Epic, MUMPS, and Cache’. VC and software guru Paul Graham describes a kind of momentum like Epic has now in this article.” The 2001 article describes why a less-popular programming language might actually be a “secret weapon” that stymies competitors because — geek arousal factor aside — it might allow companies to develop software better and faster. “In business, there is nothing more valuable than a technical advantage your competitors don’t understand … the people who understood our technology best were the customers. They didn’t care what language Viaweb was written in either, but they noticed it worked really well … the only programmers in a position to see all the differences in power between the various languages are those who understand the most powerful one … they’re satisfied with whatever language they happen to use, because it dictates the way they think about programs … the median language, meaning whatever language the median programmer uses, moves as slow as an iceberg …the more of an IT flavor the job descriptions had, the less dangerous the company was. The safest kind were the ones that wanted Oracle experience. You never had to worry about those.”

Most of us haven’t requested and reviewed copies of our EHR information. New poll to your right: McKesson announced Better Health 2020 in December 2011. Since then, how has its position in healthcare IT changed?

Rumor from a couple of readers is that McKesson has closed on the acquisition that I mentioned several weeks ago. I won’t run the target’s name since MCK is publicly traded, but above is a graphical hint.

Condolences to Intermountain Healthcare VP/CIO Marc Probst, whose daughter Heather died of leukemia last week. She was 16.

St. Rita’s Medical Center (OH) eliminates 60 jobs, some of them transcription positions that are no longer needed after its Epic implementation.

The finance minister of Ontario, Canada proposes legislation that would cap the salaries of public sector employees at around $400K per year. Most of the 150 employees who would be affected are hospital executives. Ontario Hospital Association is “deeply disappointed” since it says hospital leaders manage half of Ontario’s annual budget and therefore should be the most skilled and experienced leaders instead of those willing to work in “an arbitrary compensation environment which bears no relation to the job market.” I thought we were the only country where non-profit hospitals and high-profile charities pay on par with publicly traded companies in competing for the apparently immense talents of the altruism-free executive hired guns who are available only to the highest bidder.

Cerner speeds up construction of its new campus in Kansas City, KS, deciding to start immediately on the second nine-story tower instead of waiting until later. Construction will be completed 18 months earlier than originally planned, with the first tower opening next year and the entire campus finished by mid-2014.

Georgia Tech and Emory University are developing Remotoscope, an otoscope-like iPhone attachment that allows parents to take a picture or video of their child’s eardrum and send it to a doctor for review instead of heading off for the ED to be checked for an ear infection.

New River Medical Center (MN) is looking for a buyer after financial problems following a spat with a large physician group. The doctors took there business to a competitor hospital, with one of their stated reasons being that the other hospital used the same EMR they use and OMC recently chose a different product.

The New York Times publishes another story insinuating that EMRs inflate hospital and medical practice Medicare bills through up-coding. It includes vague references to fraud and OIG’s complaints that EMRs make it easy to bill for work not performed. Nobody seems to blame a screwy, code-driven payment system, the lack of CMS vigilance, and the strong possibility that providers are submitting accurate bills that just happen to inconvenience payers who have structured their operations around perpetually under-billing providers who are now armed with better tools. Fraud is fraud regardless of the tools used and haven’t seen CMS prosecute anybody or change its hopelessly complex payment rules. This would be like the IRS complaining that tax collections are down because taxpayers are using TurboTax to file more accurate returns. Instead, the IRS audits tax returns electronically, goes after cheats, and hopes that the majority of taxpayers it won’t audit will stay honest for fear of incurring its wrath. Some folks are raising an out-of-the-box question: why aren’t doctors paid by the hour instead of by the procedure? They could inflate their time spent, but that wouldn’t be as hard to detect. Are those Chicago-area pathologists really worth $2 million a year in taxpayer money just because they oversee big labs?

A Johns Hopkins surgeon and author starts out his Wall Street Journal opinion piece on hospital errors with the tired “jumbo jets full of patients harmed” cliché, but gets quickly to some interesting transparency measures that could improve safety. Specifically, hospitals should: (a) post dashboards of infections, readmissions, surgical complications, “never events,” and patient satisfaction; (b) post the results of anonymous safety and teamwork surveys of their employees; (c) record video of procedures and other process to review for quality improvement opportunities and as a permanent record if questions arise later; (d) use “open notes” where patients see what is written about them and correct any mistakes or add their comments; and (e) eliminate the use of gag orders that prevent patients from speaking about negative experiences and malpractice lawsuit settlements.

Wood River Health Services (RI) goes live on NextGen’s EMR. The Federally Qualified Community Health Center was already live on patient billing and dental services.

The surgery waiting room of the replacement Kaiser Permanente Fontana Medical Center (CA) that opens in May will have a computer bar where visitors can use their technology and the hospital’s WiFi network.

The board of Olympic Medical Center (WA) approves a $1.5 million hardware budget request for its Epic implementation, which the board approved two weeks ago in a $7.6 million agreement with Providence Health and Services. Epic will replace five OMC systems. The hospital hopes to earn $7.2 million in HITECH payouts over four years and chose to affiliate with Providence’s Swedish Medical Center because it needed help with its implementation.

Intelligent InSites mentions that its RTLS software is one of the technologies mentioned by a local TV station mentioned in covering last week’s opening of the new 50-bed Texas Health Resources hospital in Fort Worth. Intelligent InSites will integrate with Epic, Cen Trak, LodgeNet, Rauland-Borg, Siemens, TeleTracking, and Vocera. You would think that with all the emphasis on hospitality that THR would have chosen a more patient-friendly name than Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital Alliance. Quick, shut your eyes and say the name you just read. See? Even the apparent shortcut name – Texas Health Alliance – doesn’t actually include “hospital” in its name, and sounds more like a vaguely threatening lobbying group instead of a place of healing.

Strange: a physician’s former office manager (also her landlord) sues him for sexual harassment, claiming he made her take an Internet sex test, sent her obscene text messages, offered her a watch in return for sex, and asked her to hand him a “Happy Birthday” teddy bear from his children to cover his face while he watched live sex on a webcam via Skype. She says he fired 40 percent of his employees and then fired her when she complained about not being paid overtime to cover. The doctor collected $5.3 million in 2008 as a Medicare fraud whistleblower after turning in University Hospital for using unlicensed beds to treat addiction payments.

More on QuadraMed in this week’s HIS-tory from Vince, with help from alumnus Frank Pecaitis.

E-mail Mr. H.

News 9/21/12

Top News

 

The Forbes 400 list of richest Americans includes Epic’s Judy Faulkner (#285 with a net worth of $1.7 billion) and Cerner’s Neal Patterson (#391 at $1.12 billion).

Reader Comments

From HIStalk Fan: “Re: EHR experience reporting. The IOM recommendations could improve outcomes and safety. It remains puzzling that ONC is against robust vetting for safety and efficacy.” ONC asked the IOM to suggest ways to collect and report EHR user experiences, particularly those involving problems with patient safety. IOM’s just-published paper lays out ways that could be done. Possibilities include (a) testing vendor products against use cases; (b) placing a “report a problem here” button on EHR screens to allow users to quickly report problems; (c) have EHRs collect information such as number of clicks or the number of screen views and mine that data to look for problems; (d) conduct user surveys; and (e) develop a formal reporting program. The article recommends posting the collected information on a website that would rate individual functions vendor by vendor using a star-type rating system.

From Misys_Ex: “Re: QuadraMed. Not all to be sold, only the HIM/Quantim line. Sale to close in a week. Spending and hiring freeze in effect. MModal is the rumored buyer.” Unverified. An all-company call has been scheduled for October 1, rumor has it, which would logically place the announcement on the first day of the AHIMA conference.

From Dale Sanders: "Re: odd iPad requirement. The Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing is re-competing its Medicare and Medicaid Information System contract. The draft RFP requires each vendor to submit their response on seven iPads, one for each member of the selection committee.” The rationale is that the iPad saves printing and shipping cost, although you could do a lot of printing for the $3,500 or so. The state says vendors like the idea and the iPads are more secure than paper, ensuring that documents don’t fall into the hands of competitors and thereby force an expensive re-bid and/or legal challenge for the $100 million project. None of that would seem to preclude returning the iPads given that the state plans to erase and reuse them anyway.

From Laura: “Re: Practice Fusion. Another cloud downtime.” Only for a few minutes, apparently, but judging from the comments, I bet that Like button didn’t get much action while the users killed time waiting to get back on.

From Writing My Resume: “Re: McKesson’s Better Health 2020. Will go down as the largest mistake in the history of HIT. Customers like Providence, Southwest Washington, Ohiohealth, John Muir, Valley Health, WellStar, HealthEast, and Resurrection are moving from Horizon to Epic. The new Paragon customers are small community hospitals and it will take 10-15 of them to replace one Horizon customer. Rumors of another layoff coming.” Unverified. I interviewed MPT President Dave Souerwine when the program was announced in December 2011. Better Health 2020 was a series of commitments to (a) invest $1 billion in R&D over the following two years, a good bit of that in enhancing Paragon over a 30-month development cycle; (b) sunset no products, but shift resources away from Horizon clinical applications to Paragon; (c) stop the development of Horizon Enterprise Revenue Management and lay off 174 employees immediately; and (d) continue to support Horizon customers through Meaningful Use and ICD-10.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Are you current on all the latest ambulatory HIT news? Here are some highlights from HIStalk Practice over the last week: RAC auditing of physicians begins in 15 states, focusing on higher-level E/M codes. The state of Colorado reports that Medicaid medical homes are reducing hospital inpatient stays and ER visits. EHR adoption at community health center grows to 74 percent, thanks to HITECH funding. eClinicalWorks predicts a 23 percent increase in revenues for 2012. Implementation costs and low patient adoption are big barriers for practices wanting to add patient portals. A physician weighs in on the impact of the ACA, incentives, and EHR. Nuesoft Technologies’ Blake LeGate offers tips for preparing for ICD-10. Dr. Gregg thinks (a lot) about going back to paper. Some days, especially those when Mr. H is especially busy at his day job, the only way I know I am appreciated is to see that someone new has subscribed to HIStalk Practice. When you check out these stories, show me the love and sign up for the e-mail updates. Thanks for reading.

Working anonymously is good in some ways, bad in others. On the “bad” side, Inga, Dr. Jayne, and I labor in our otherwise empty rooms with no human contact, meaning our little HIStalk world will evaporate the moment we quit or get hit by that proverbial bus. It’s up to you to write our electronic epitaph in advance, as follows: (a) connect with us and Like us (note to Mark Z — a Love button would be better) on the usual ego-feeding social not-working sites; (b) sign up for our spam-free electronic updates; (c) show your appreciation for the companies that keep our caustic keyboards clacking by reviewing the gallery-quality ads to your left and impulsively clicking those that pique your interest; (d) inspect the more detailed sponsor information housed in the Resource Center and consider using the Consulting RFI Blaster to effortlessly contact several consulting firms at once about your needs; (e) send us news, rumors, photos, ideas, or anything else that interests you and therefore would probably interest the rest of the HIStalk universe; and (f) look into the nearest reflective surface and give yourself a jaunty thumbs-up on our behalf for being discerning enough to recognize that despite its amateurish presentation, occasionally inappropriate content, and intentionally ironic pipe-smoking logo character, HIStalk does a mostly OK job in keeping you informed as well as a guy with a full-time hospital job can do.

My inbox is bulging and I have a lot of catching up to do this weekend. That’s the best I can do, unfortunately. Re-sending your e-mail doesn’t really help solve my problem of needing to sleep five hours or so, which is about all the time I have left at the end of the day. I promise I have not forgotten you.

Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor TeraRecon of Foster City, CA. The company is a global leader in enterprise image management solutions, especially with regard to advanced imaging procedures. Its zero-footprint iNtuition EMV (Enterprise Medical Viewer) can deliver interactive images to any Web browser for even the largest and most complex CT exam, even interactive 3D. Instead of a peering at static JPGs in the EMR or a generic 2D viewer short on useful tools, physicians get a rich viewer with contextual tools and viewing configurations that are automatically set based on image type. Specialists in particular get real value from 3D images. The flagship iNtuition solution integrates with any vendor-neutral archive, so it works with a wide variety of systems including PACS from any vendor. TeraRecon created the concept of advanced visualization and iNtuition is the leader in enterprise-wide, thin-client server-based visualization with over 4,500 installations all over the world. Thanks to TeraRecon for supporting HIStalk.

I admit that imaging solutions aren’t my strong suit, so hopefully this TeraRecon overview video that I found on YouTube will make up for any deficiencies that I shamelessly exposed in my introduction above.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Skylight Healthcare Systems, a provider of interactive patient systems, raises $5 million in Series D financing.

Sales

The New York eHealth Collaborative selects MedAllies to operate its Direct Solution on the Statewide HIN of NY.

CMS awards HP a $43 million task order to continue providing IT services for the EHR incentive program and for maintaining the CMS Integrated Data Repository database.

Loma Linda University Medical Center (CA) selects Nuvon to provide medical device connectivity and interoperability as it migrates its OR, ICU, and dialysis center to Epic.

The VA awards Systems Made Simple (SMS) a $27 million renewal contract to support the Veterans Service Network program and Benefits Gateway System development project.

People

Bill Conroy joins Kareo’s board, a position he also holds for Prognosis Health Information Systems and Phreesia.

Ben-Tzion Karsh, a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor of engineering and one of the authors of the IOM article on EHR experience reporting that I mentioned above, died last month at 40.

Announcements and Implementations

INTEGRIS Health (OK) implements PatientSecure by HT Systems for biometric palm scanning.

Intelligent Medical Objects announces a search engine appliance to deliver just-in-time secure terminology services at the point of care.

Elsevier releases a version of its ClinicalKey reference system aimed at individual clinicians, which features information from 900 textbooks and 500 medical journals covering 41 specialties.

In Canada, three-employee Clinisys launches its first product, a cloud-based EMR.

New in the AMA’s CPT 2013 data file: consumer-friendly descriptors of each CPT code for patients and caregivers.

Santa Fe-based Seamless Medical Systems launches an iPad app for physician waiting rooms that allows patients to complete their forms online, review educational material, take notes during the visit and e-mail them to themselves, and play games.

Government and Politics

Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) introduces MITECH, a bill that expands the MU program to include safety net clinics that don’t necessarily qualify under the Medicaid incentive program. Kerry’s legislation would allow providers to qualify for incentives if at least 30 percent of their patient volume comes from lower-income patients.

ONC posts the vendors who signed up for the Blue Button Pledge (Alere Wellogic, Allscripts, athenahealth, AZZLY, Cerner, eClinicalWorks, Greenway, Intellicure, NextGen, and SOAPware) and invites other vendors to tweet their #VDTnow pledge to be added. Above is Farzad Mostashari’s welcome to the Consumer Health IT Summit where the companies were announced.

The US Army tests real-time medical communication software that uses mobile devices and 4G networks to support battlefield medics treating severely wounded solders. Portable physiologic monitors are used to to send streaming video, voice, and photos, along with treatment records, to surgeons that in real-life situations would be located in remote hospitals.

Innovation and Research

Mobile health apps that help manage medications and blood glucose are linked to improved diabetes management in socially disadvantaged populations.

Other

The board of directors of the Kansas HIE votes to transfer its duties to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment by October, 2013, which will save $350,000 a year.

The Joint Commission designates 620 hospitals as top performers on 45 evidence-based care processes closely linked to positive outcomes.

Joe Goedert of Health Data Management wrote a rebuttal to the Soumerai and Koppel editorial that ran in The Wall Street Journal this week called A Major Glitch for Digitized Health-Care Records. Joe mentioned some of the same points I did in my criticism of the editorial and the studies it selectively cited, but added quite a few more in Bad Research Shouldn’t Affect Good Policy. I respect the opinions of the authors and I’m as cynical as the next guy, but the editorial had just enough citations to possibly fool someone into thinking that it was new research (or that the old research mentioned was actually well done, which it wasn’t.) My criteria for assessing the objectivity of articles on almost any contentious topic (religion, politics, sports, or healthcare IT) is this: if the authors never give credibility to anything that doesn’t match their own beliefs, then I simply don’t bother reading because I already know what they’re going to say. I should note, though, that Ross Koppel was one of the authors of the IOM report on EHR problem reporting that I mentioned above and that’s a nice credit.

Job postings for healthcare professionals with EHR skills have jumped 31 percent over the last year.

Georgia Tech is offering a free, online Health Informatics in the Cloud class taught by Mark Braunstein MD, who has more relevant experience than anyone I can think of. Students don’t need a technical background – just five to seven hours per week for 10 weeks. The class is offered via Coursera, an online education startup that has already enrolled 1.5 million students in its “massive open online courses.” Its partners include Brown, Columbia, Stanford, Penn, and other topnotch schools that aren’t ordinarily interested in giving away their courses for free. This looks really good, especially for folks who don’t have a lot of formal healthcare IT education on their resume.

The family of a man who died in the ED of Beebe Medical Center (DE) files suit against the hospital and the ED staffing company it uses. The patient was discharged from the ED after being seen for chest pain, but he made it no further than a chair in the lobby before dying of a heart attack while waiting for a ride. Nobody noticed until hours later.

People who have eaten in Epic’s cafeteria will enjoy this profile of Executive Chef Eric Rupert (not celebrity French chef Eric Ripert, although I’m sure Epic could afford him if they wanted). The chef says Judy is a serious foodie — the only non-chef he’ll talk to about food — and she insists that Epic’s employees and visitors be fed well. He leads a staff of 78 Epic employees and describes the company environment: “There really is very little hierarchy here. You’re either a team member or a team leader, and the team leaders do everything that team members do, and then they also manage people. It’s not considered a promotion to go from a team member to a team leader; it’s just additional responsibilities.” He says Epic is different from its Silicon Valley counterparts in that employees pay the cost of ingredients for their meals instead of getting them for free, and everything is made in-house, even the baked goods. But like Google and other high-tech companies, Epic uses their food as a recruiting tool and has a diverse group of employees to feed, representing 55 countries.

Inga masquerades as Weird News Andy in finding this story. A Colorado man sues several food companies for “popcorn lung,” claiming that he ate microwave popcorn for years and the artificial butter fumes damaged his lungs. The jury, who apparently didn’t find his years of exposure to carpet-cleaning chemicals to be contributory, awards him $7 million. Inga adds that she hopes he gets his money in a Jiffy.

Epic UGM Report
By David Miller

Dave Miller, vice chancellor and CIO of University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, e-mailed me privately about Epic’s UGM. I asked him if I could run his comments on HIStalk since non-Epic customers are always mystified by the company’s cult-like following. If you were one of the 8,000 UGM customer attendees and would care to share your thoughts about why it’s different than other user group meetings you’ve attended, I’d like to hear from you.

I have been to a number of UGMs at Epic, though it has been about three years since my last one. I am always amazed at the creativity of the Epic staff and the almost flawless way in which they execute the logistics to handle almost 8,000 users.

It continues to be primarily a user-driven event, from the advisory councils to the UGM sessions and even to the entertainment. The sessions themselves demonstrate the excitement that their users feel with what they have been able to do with one of the top healthcare IT products.

At the end of the day, it really comes down to Epic’s ability to instill their culture in each and every employee. Their simple focus on customer service was demonstrated by every employee I encountered. They had people stationed everywhere on campus to give directions, to drive golf carts to your destination, or just about anything else you needed.

I actually did not see a lot of Judy, but when she was present, she cheerfully took pictures with about anyone who would ask. Pretty amazing for a CEO of that stature. In my experience, most individuals in her position are self-absorbed and would never mingle like she does. I’ve also known Carl Dvorak for about 15 years, and he is about the most down-to-earth individual you would ever want to meet.

Judy creates an atmosphere for her employees that encourages and enables them to be at their creative best. The end result is a really good set of tools to manage the complexity of issues that healthcare organizations deal with every single day. Yes, there are imperfections, but they are so outweighed by the positives that they become irrelevant.

They used to say that no CFO ever got fired for hiring a Big 8 firm. Short of having someone completely inept in that role, I think I would say the same thing about a CIO.

Sponsor Updates

• ChartWise Medical Systems profiles Jennie Stuart Medical Center (KY) and its use of ChartWise:CDI to improve documentation an reporting.
• SuccessEHS reports that more than 10 percent of its EHR and PM client are now using its RCM services.
• Health Care DataWorks offers a September 25 webinar on CMS’s Value-Based Purchasing program.
• DrFirst offers Meaningful Use webinars over the next three weeks covering avoiding penalties, data exchange, the EHR as a clinical tool, and clinical quality measures.
• Orion Health’s portal solution for Alberta Netcare reaches 100 million views since its 2006 implementation.
• Versus features Northwest Michigan Surgery Center in its October 17 Webinar on maximizing patient flow with RTLS.
• TELUS Health Solutions and Sun Life Financial launch an eClaims solution for extended care providers across Canada.
• The Web Marketing Association recognizes CareTech Solutions as Outstanding Website Developer for winning nine WebAwards in 2012.
• CommVault joins The Association of Certified E-Discovery Specialists as an affiliate member.
• Awarepoint integrates its awareED module with Rauland Responder’s nurse call system.
• CDN Channel Elite recognizes NexJ Systems with gold awards for best cloud computing and best mobile solutions.
• MEDSEEK hosts roundtable discussions on marketing’s role in MU at this week’s Society for Healthcare Strategy and Market Development conference.
• Greenway hosts a Webinar series addressing the trends of electronification, consumerism, and improving population health.  
• Lifepoint Informatics will sponsor the Pathology Informatics 2012 conference in Chicago October 9-12.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

News 9/19/12

Top News

Massachusetts Eye and Ear Infirmary and its physician group will pay HHS $1.5 million to settle potential HIPAA violations following the theft of an unencrypted laptop containing electronic PHI of patients and research subjects.

Reader Comments

From Honky Cat: “Re: Waiting in line at Apple. Don’t wait in line for your iPhone upgrade. Go to this link and pre-order your phone. They will ship it to you in two to three weeks. Surely you can wait that long for it.” I considered setting my alarm to be one of the first people to go online last Friday and place an order. Instead, I slept in and waited until 6:00 am to get online. By that time Apple had stopped taking orders to reserve the iPhone 5s for pick up at the local Apple store, so I’ll wait for mine to be delivered in a couple of weeks. Apple, by the way, sold two million iPhone 5s in the first 24 hours of pre-orders, more than double the previous record set in 2011.

From The PACS Designer: “Re: mobile image viewing. TPD congratulates Aycan Medical Systems for being one of the first to gain FDA approval for its Aycan Mobile for the iPad. Now that the FDA is involved with mobile solutions, we’ll see more teleradiology mobile solution approvals for other vendors.“

From Steve: “Re: QuadraMed. To be sold in the next 7-10 days.” Unverified.

From Pointer: “Re: EHRs. A vendor-agnostic viewpoint on how they don’t change the cost curve.” It may be vendor-agnostic, but this particular article is a clearly labeled opinion piece written by authors who have been historically negative toward EMRs, EMR vendors, and government. They are entitled to their opinions, but recognize them as such despite the bait-and-switch newspaper headline trumpeting “A Major Glitch.” Their editorial conclusion is accurate, though – most studies have failed to prove that EMRs save money (I haven’t seen any studies that convinced me that paper records save money or improve outcomes either, of course.) That’s not to say they don’t, only that it’s tough to prove since nothing in healthcare stays unchanged long enough to get a baseline. It’s also true that expecting technology alone to create savings without changing incentives is unreasonable. I agree with the authors that blowing taxpayer billions to get providers to buy software they weren’t willing to spend their own money on was illogical, but no amount of Monday morning quarterbacking will bring that cash back or cause providers to toss their EMRs out the nearest window. It’s time to move on, realize that healthcare IT is here to stay, and constructively make it better instead of hand-wringing. Like everything else, the industry has 10% cheerleaders, 10% naysayers, and 80% rational people who don’t need the self-proclaimed experts on either end of the spectrum to tell them what to think or do. If you’re a provider, choose EMR or paper as you desire, do something innovative with it that improves outcomes and reduces costs, and then write your own article. That’s the one I’d rather read.

From Looking Deeper: “Re: patient portals and self-scheduling. I install patient portals for a living, including scheduling. There really aren’t technical challenges any more. Providing convenient, immediate online scheduling is a solved problem even in healthcare, especially in primary care. The problem is in people’s heads. Whenever online scheduling comes up, physicians and clinic staff will tell you that their patients can’t possibly handle it – they’ll schedule the wrong kind of visit (office visit vs. physical) or create some other vague problem. I dutifully inform them that online scheduling is working fine in clinics and practices across the nation. ‘Other clinics find that their patients can handle this,’ I always say. They usually say, ‘Not our patients.’ Interestingly, clinics serving less-affluent areas and the indigent tend to be more in favor of such patient-centric services. ‘Our patients are an especially incompetent group’ is a pretty negative view to hold of the people you’re trying to care for. If we could just get past this attitude, pretty much all primary care visits could be scheduled online. In the rare case where something needs to change, the clinic can call or e-mail the patient and reschedule, but that’s less than 5 percent of appointments scheduled online. Specialty and procedure visits are a different beast and need some careful analysis before they are opened up to online scheduling, but online scheduling for primary care is a solved problem.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I have newfound respect for anyone working with insurance companies to secure payments. I had mentioned a few months ago that I had a minor medical procedure that resulted in some complications, lots of doctor office visits, and about 20 different medical claims. I was lucky enough to have both primary and secondary coverage in place since the claims were in the thousands. I also thought I was lucky because both policies were from the same very big insurance company. Unfortunately, the insurance company has spent the last four months trying to decide internally which policy should be primary, and so far no claims coordination has occurred. After several weeks of hour-long phone calls, yesterday I finally turned “not nice” and demanded to speak to a supervisor. I explained that I didn’t give a (expletive) which policy was primary or secondary, it was all one insurance company, and the (expletive) claims needed to be paid. I actually believe the claims will finally be processed correctly. The moral of this story is that if you work in a hospital or practice, take a moment to say thanks to your billing and collection staff. And bring them chocolate on a regular basis.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been busy turning off all my Facebook and Twitter connections to folks who keep preaching politics. Has anybody ever convinced someone to change their political beliefs by proudly posting a Facebook link to the latest nut-job partisan article? Actually, they sometimes almost convince me to vote the other way out of annoyance.

Thanks to Healthcare Quality Catalyst supporting HIStalk as a Platinum Sponsor. The Salt Lake City company offers a practical clinical data warehouse solution that combine technology and clinical improvement methodologies to improve care. The information needed to answer a clinical improvement question is scattered in most hospitals (satisfaction surveys, Epic Clarity transactions, and lab and prescription information, for example) and HQC puts it together in its Adaptive Data Warehouse and subject-specific data marts (such as women and newborns) to support continuous, evidence-based care improvements. HQC offers more than just the tools, supplying clinical improvement methodologies such as role definitions and process templates to create effective improvement teams. If you’ve been around the industry for some time, you surely know some of their folks: Todd Cozzens, Larry Grandia, Dale Sanders, Bruce Turkstra, and David Burton, MD were some of those I immediately recognized. I interviewed co-founder and CIO Steve Barlow a year ago and got a good background on the company. Thanks to Healthcare Quality Catalyst for supporting HIStalk.

I naturally cruised over to YouTube and found this video that introduces Healthcare Quality Catalyst better than I did.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

PE firm ABRY Partners makes a “significant” investment in SourceMedical Solutions, a provider of software and services for ASCs and rehab centers.

In England, a company that commercializes university research invests in an Oxford spinoff whose software that can monitor pulse, respiration, and oxygen saturation using only a webcam.

Also in England, eHealth Insider reports that CSC will stop selling iSoft GP systems to NHS markets, in which it has 582 practice customers. CSC denies the report.

Vipaar, which sells surgery proctoring software based on technology developed at the University of Alabama at Birmingham medical school, raises half of its $1.2 million funding goal.

Sales

Community Medical Center (NE) selects BridgeHead Software’s Healthcare Data Management Solution for backup and archiving.

CommUnity Care (TX) will deploy NextGen RCM Services throughout its 22 clinics.

Pemiscot Memorial Health Systems will expand its deployment of Prognosis Health Information System by implementing its financial system and its laboratory information system powered by Orchard.

Community Hospital Grand Junction (CO) chooses the perioperative system of Surgical Information Systems.

People

Zotec Partners hires Kristy Floyd (American Society of Anesthesiologists) as director of anesthesia business development.

The Medical College of Wisconsin appoints David C. Hotchkiss (University of Texas Health Science Center) VP/CIO.

Healthland names Patrick Spangler (Epocrates) CFO.

Douglas Billian, founder of Billian Publishing, died September 15 at 84.

Announcements and Implementations

HIMSS Analytics recognizes Fort HealthCare (WI) with its Stage 7 Award for EMR adoption.

Providence Medford Medical Center and Asante Rogue Regional Medical Center (OR) will complete their hospital and clinic implementations of Epic in April.

Nuance will purchase Ditech Networks, a provider of voice technologies and voice-to-text services, for $22.5 million.

AMA releases the 2013 CPT code set, which goes into effect for claims filed as of January 1, 2013.

Certify Data Systems announces the general availability of its HealthLogix HIE platform, which it says is the first to deliver an aggregated patient view from all community health encounters regardless of EHR.

Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center (OH) implements Passport Health’s PatientSimple and Smart Statement online billing solutions.

eClinicalWorks launches its $10 million open, secure collaboration platform that works with any EHR or even paper-based practices. The NHIN Direct-compatible network allows members to transmit electronic referrals and patient records with attachments.

Government and Politics

ONC posts the second wave of draft test procedures for the 2014 Edition EHR certification criteria.

I don’t think Farzad ever followed through on his promise to name the EMR vendors who took his #VDTnow pledge to allow patients to view, download, and transmit their medical information. Claudia Williams of ONC tweeted her list, which I assume is complete: Allscripts, NextGen, AlereWellogic, Intellicure, eClinicalWorks, Greenway, SOAPware, athenahealth, Azzly, and Cerner. Conspicuously but not surprisingly missing is Epic, which doesn’t even have a Twitter account as far as I know. Maybe they already offer the capability as some have suggested, but if so, all they had to do was tweet out their already-met pledge. Judy’s on ONC’s Health IT Policy Committee, after all.

Innovation and Research

The National Library of Medicine awards The Ohio State University College of Medicine’s Department of Biomedical Informatics $1.3 million to develop a system that uses EHRs to identify potential patients for clinical trials.

Other

Wider use of EHRs over the last decade may be contributing to a growing up-coding trend that has added $11 billion to healthcare costs. Physicians argue the higher codes are justified because care of seniors has become more complex and technology allows them to code more accurately. Critics say the findings suggest billing abuse and fraud. I I were still selling EMRs, I’d be handing this study to doctors and touting it as proof that technology is helping physicians bill and be paid for the actual care provided. Meanwhile, naysayers like Mr. H will probably dig deeper and suggest objections to such hasty conclusions.

Hell hath no fury: a Washington dermatologist wins a $600,000 settlement and a rare apology from state health officials who had investigated him for drug abuse and medical fraud. An anonymous tipster had reported that the doctor was falsifying drug records, using cocaine, and running in-office orgies among his staff, patients, and prostitutes. In a separate lawsuit, the doctor was award more than $100,000 from his former wife, who turned out to be the anonymous tipster who had filed the complaint late in the couple’s bitter divorce proceedings.

The folks from Arizona Associated Surgeons sent over their video for the Western Users Group meeting at ACE (the Allscripts user meeting) last month.

Want to rub elbows with sexy celebrities on your hospital employer’s dime? CHIME’s Fall CIO Forum will feature Olympic beach volleyball gold medalists Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings, mostly known for leaping around nearly naked in prime time reminiscent of the much-beloved “Girls on Trampolines” segment of The Man Show except with smaller bikinis. Misty and Kerri (or was that Misti and Kerry?) will discuss Meaningful Use Stage 2 and … no, wait, they’ll pose with star-struck CIOs, sign autographs, and collect a big non-amateur payday courtesy of patients who pay $5 for an aspirin.

A group of 30+ physicians labeling themselves as “Doccupy” complain to Contra Costa, CA county supervisors about the $45 million implementation of Epic at its hospitals. They said 10 percent of ED patients are leaving without seeing a doctor, a number that increased after the hospital’s July 1 go-live as the average time in the ED increased from three hours to four. Patient loads were cut in half to prepare for the implementation, but the doctors claim that several of their peers still quit because of stress, saying, “We were not ready for Epic and Epic was not ready for us.” An ED physician going off shift said she still had documentation to complete for 16 patients, adding, “It’s going to implode.” Some doctors spoke up about the advantages of Epic, and all agreed that it’s important to have an integrated electronic record. Detention facility nurses had complained about Epic to the supervisors last month.

The Cure JM Foundation (juvenile myositis) is in the running for a $250K research grant that will go to the charity with the highest number of Facebook votes. Information and voting links are here. Several HIT folks I’ve heard from have children with JM and I’m sure they would appreciate your vote.

Patients storm Charlton Memorial Hospital (GA) after a contracted collection company incorrectly manipulates the hospital-provided data file, sending patients collection notices for bills they don’t owe.

Of the seven highest-earning non-profit CEOs in the country, four run hospitals, according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy. I think they’ve missed a few since I’ve seen several hospital tax forms with CEO salaries above these figures.

Bloomberg Businessweek profiles Terry Ragon, founder of the Boston-based InterSystems, which sells the Cache’ database that runs Epic, Meditech, and quite a few other MUMPS-based healthcare systems. The article calls Ragon a “Hidden Software Billionaire,” estimating the value of the company he directly owns at $2 billion.

Here’s a fun coincidence. Dave Miller, vice chancellor and CIO of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, sent over the above video of him doing a nice cover of “Mustang Sally” at Epic’s UGM (his wife had the camera 90 degrees off kilter for a few seconds, but his singing was fine). The day they got back home, he impulsively bought some raffle tickets from a charity fundraiser. He won the prize, which was made in 1967, the same year Wilson Pickett released “Mustang Sally” on an album – a classic Ford Mustang.

Sponsor Updates

• SuccessEHR grows its RCM services business 92 percent over the last year.
• First Databank hosts its 2012 FDB Customer Seminar this week in San Diego.
• T-System offers Webinars this week on  improving ED throughput.
• Melanie Pita JD, EVP of product management at Prognosis Health Information Systems, presented a session on EHRs and Meaningful Use at the Georgia Rural Health Association conference this week at Callaway Gardens.
• TeraRecon is exhibiting its advanced visualization solutions for medical imaging this week at CIRSE 2012 in Lisbon, Portugal.
• Michigan Health Connect HIE and Greenway Medical will provide data exchange between Greenway’s PrimeSUITE customers and hospitals on the Michigan Health Connect platform.   
• MedPlus offers a three-part Webinar series hosted by Steven Waldren, MD, director of the AAFP’s Center for Health IT.
• White Plume releases a white paper discussing practical considerations to minimize losses while migrating to ICD-10.
• ChartWise Medical Systems unveils its ChartWise:CDI software at this month’s AHIMA convention in Chicago.
• Orion Health opens an office in Singapore for development and technical support employees.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.

Monday Morning Update 9/17/12

From Another View: “Re: your Time Capsule editorial. You have missed a competitor to Epic … Sunrise/Eclipsys. Ring any bells? Long Island Jewish has it installed as well as others and it is well received. Is the price tag of Epic is going to bankrupt medicine? I really think Sunrise could very well be the Apple product that beat the giant Microsoft. Any thoughts?” Read more closely: I specifically mentioned (twice, in fact) Cerner, Eclipsys, and McKesson as Epic’s big-hospital competitors. That was true when I wrote the article in 2007, but I would expect that Allscripts/Eclipsys and McKesson have faded since then in terms of big-hospital customer count. Epic’s huge number of wins since 2007 were replacements, meaning their gain was somebody else’s loss. No, I don’t think that Allscripts (or any other vendor, at the moment) can compete with Epic in the large-hospital inpatient clinical systems market. Reasons: (a) incomplete integration; (b) narrower product line; (c) lower customer satisfaction; (d) lack of momentum; (e) hospital consolidations favoring existing Epic customers; and (f) trying to disrupt the status quo with one hand firmly planted in Wall Street’s lap. It’s not the end of the world for Allscripts – 80% hospitals aren’t candidates for Epic but need a lower-priced, pre-packaged, hosted product, meaning the biggest companies to beat are Meditech, McKesson, Cerner, and Siemens. Struggling to compete against Epic in big-hospital accounts hasn’t hurt Cerner, which doesn’t bag a lot of fresh Millennium wins over Epic but still has turned its assets into a $12 billion company. If you want to score Epic vs. Allscripts without emotion or subjectivity, it’s easy – just watch the number of new sales, the total number of beds and EPs covered, and KLAS scores.

From Music Lover: “Re: Epic UGM. You missed it, Mr. H! Some cool end users rocked the house Monday night. Anyone have pics or YouTube?” I only found the video of the opening session above, which is a clever riff on a horrible Journey song (was that redundant?) that reminds of me when Mrs. HIStalk dragged me to grit my teeth through the traveling Broadway version of “Rock of Ages” (who would have guessed that disco would be more fondly remembered than 80s hair bands?) By user group standards, though, it is darned cool. From the end of the video, it appears next year’s theme will be, predictably, Deep Space (the new 14,300-seat Deep Space auditorium pictured above will be open then.)

Listening: new from The Avett Brothers from Concord, NC, who have matured from frantic newgrass revivalists into something like an indie, rootsy Beatles with banjos. Long-term fans will have to decide whether the de-emphasis on hillbilly picking and grinning is inevitable maturity or perhaps overly slick production by hit-maker Rick Rubin. The new album is more accessible and probably less embarrassing to crank up in a vehicle that isn’t a pickup truck.

I was making an appointment for my annual PCP visit last week. After navigating through the annoying phone tree, waiting on hold, and negotiating with the scheduler for a convenient appointment time, the phone connection dropped on their end. My call-back went right to the “we’re too busy to talk to you now” message, so I figured I’d just try another day. The next day, I got an e-mail confirmation for a date/time I had declined, so it must have gone through as we were changing it. I noticed an unobtrusive link in the e-mail to “click here to cancel or reschedule” and darned if it didn’t work – I clicked, it gave me available days/times on the screen, I clicked on a convenient date/time, and I was all set. It actually felt like 2001 instead of 1980 in using Expedia to book a flight instead of wasting everybody’s time by calling a travel agent for an inefficient and entirely unnecessary telephone conversation. It’s not exactly cutting edge, but very few businesses let you schedule appointments online (restaurants being one exception, and that’s only because of OpenTable). Scheduling an appointment is a lot different than buying a product online, so the usual snarky Amazon references don’t apply.

Forbes chose the wrong company as the most innovative in healthcare, according to readers who said it’s actually Epic (had Forbes included non-publicly traded companies, of course). Cerner wasn’t too far off the mark, though. New poll to your right: have you ever requested and reviewed your electronic medical information from your PCP? The poll accepts comments if you’d care to elaborate on your experience. I didn’t even bother asking about hospital records since I know what a nightmare that can be.

Allow me to introduce new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor ChartWise Medical Systems. The Rhode Island-based company describes ChartWise:CDI as a Computer-Assisted Clinical Documentation Improvement solution that improves the accuracy and speed of documentation. it guides physicians to high-quality and complete documentation, using its built-in intelligence to analyze labs, meds, and procedures to suggest diagnoses and complications that may not have been correctly coded. Easily retrievable, auditable, and AHIMA-compliant query templates ensure compliance and consistency for internal QA and external auditors, with physician communication automatically initiated and documented by e-mail. Customers can reduce staff and physician training, ensure continuity when key team members leave, and get real-time metrics for their CDI programs. It’s offered by a subscription-based license, online training is free, and ICD-10 is built in and carries no upgrade fee. Customers can use it their way, regardless of whether documentation is on paper or EMR and with or without the participation of physicians. Half of Medicare paybacks are due to erroneous or incomplete documentation and you know the RAC auditors are out there digging since they’re paid a percentage of recovered dollars. The company was founded by Jon Elion MD, who also developed the Heartlab imaging software that was acquired by Agfa in 2005. Thanks to ChartWise for supporting HIStalk.

CapSite releases its new HIE report. It shows a big jump in hospital HIE participation in the past year (from 30% to 50%), with 71% of respondents planning to invest in new HIE technologies in the next two years. Surprisingly, two-thirds of respondents chose their primary HIE vendor because the company was an extension of their core hospital system (Epic was the most-named HIE vendor, so that gives you an idea). That probably reflects the uptick in private HIEs.

A hospital in England uses Skype for video teleconsultations with ADHD and Asperger syndrome  patients.

The flagship product of Detroit-based startup SchedFull manages an online waiting list for physician practices that allows them to fill appointments opened up when patients cancel, alerting the standby patient by e-mail or SMS if an opening matches their expressed preferences. The product is in beta.

Twenty-three employers participated in a jobs fair that was held last week in the new Sheik Zayed Tower at The Johns Hopkins Hospital, hoping to hire healthcare IT and informatics graduates from Johns Hopkins University, George Washington University, and University of Maryland University College (surely the strangest and most multiply-redundant college name ever, which they cheerfully admit and explain here). The event was held in the Chevy Chase Conference Center, which I assume is named after the nearby municipality rather than the embarrassingly unfunny comedian who did in fact have a Hollywood theater named after him for six weeks in 1993, which is all it took for his horrible late night TV show to flatline.

The Dallas-Fort Worth TV station covers the technology used in a new Texas Health Alliance hospital.

The local paper covers the use of shared medical appointments by Reliant Medical Group (MA), in which 90-minute visits are scheduled with groups of patients suffering from the same chronic health issues. Patients have the option to request one-on-one doctor time during the visit if they feel the need, but three-quarters of them like the group appointments. That’s an interesting approach to maximizing the use of resources while providing peer support for patients, which is probably far more effective than the usual online groups. All that’s missing is a financial incentive for consuming fewer resources, which is of course a healthcare problem not limited to how patients schedule their visits.

Raul Recarey is named executive director of the Illinois HIE in his third HIE leadership role in less than three years, having been named COO of the West Virginia Health Information Network in November 2009 and CEO of Missouri Health Connection in March 2011.

Indian River Medical Center (FL) will implement centralized appointment scheduling using McKesson’s Paragon Resource Scheduling, which issues printable appointment itineraries and procedure instructions. After the May go-live, the hospital will implement patient self-scheduling.

A hospital in Scotland is found by NHS to be cancelling 12% of its outpatient appointments due to problems with its new computer system. The hospital cancelled 105,000 outpatient appointments and 7,500 inpatient appoints in a 15-month period.

The author of an upcoming book says that children’s hospitals are banking huge cash surpluses and paying eye-popping executive salaries despite their non-profit status and ongoing solicitation for donations, which he says threatens their non-profit status, government subsidies, and community reputations.

California’s attorney general sends out subpoenas to several big health systems (Scripps, Sharp, Sutter, and others) in launching an antitrust investigation to determine whether consolidation among hospitals and physician groups is increasing healthcare costs through increased pricing power over payers.

A nurse working for an Atlanta-area anesthesia service is released to rehab after being charged with driving the wrong way on a highway and causing several vehicles to crash, injuring six people. She is alleged to have stolen propofol from Gwinnett Medical Center and starting an IV on herself to administer it in her car right before the accidents.

Vince tells the story of Compucare and QuadraMed this week, going right to the source in somehow connecting with Dynamic Control co-founder David Pomerance, who then introduced him to Ron Aprahamian, whose fascinating story is that he bought all of Compucare’s stock for $50,000 as a 29-year-old, struck a deal with Meditech, took Compucare public for $40 million, took leadership roles at Superior and First Consulting Group as those companies were acquired … well, just check Vince’s slides because it’s too amazing for me to summarize. I’m glad Vince shared Ron’s story because even though I knew his name, I had no idea how much influence he had on so many major industry players. We would never have heard these stories if it weren’t for Vince, who seems to be the only person willing to work hard to preserve our industry’s history. If you can help him with stories, photos, or connections to folks he should talk to, give him a shout.

E-mail Mr. H.

News 9/14/12

Top News

Mediware will be acquired by PE firm Thoma Bravo LLC for $195 million, the company announced Wednesday. The $22 per share cash offer represents a 40% premium over Tuesday’s closing price.

Reader Comments

From Shades of Green: “Re: RECs and EPs. You point out that only 17,144 EPs have demonstrated Meaningful Use through the REC program. I did a little digging and found that total grants for RECs to date (which does include some funding for rural hospitals) is $706 million. That comes to $41,181 for each of the 17,144 EPs demonstrating Meaningful Use.”

From N2InformaticsRN: “Re: MappyHealth. You mentioned a few weeks back our entry into the HHS NowTrending 2012 Challenge. I have an update – we won! Not bad for two nurse informaticists and a computer science student.” Social Health Insights LLC’s free application mines real-time tweets via Twitter’s open APIs to serve as an surveillance system for emerging health issues. The challenge, which drew 33 entries, was created by HHS after it observed that social media trends can be correlated to disease outbreak. The team is Brian Norris, Charles Boicey, and Mark Silverberg. I’m sure they are keeping their fingers crossed that their app doesn’t get hosed as Twitter continues to reduce the functionality and terms of service of its APIs in hopes of monetizing tweets instead of allowing others to build applications around them. Several small companies whose only products were Twitter add-ons have already gone belly up when their data hose went dry.

From The PACS Designer: “Re: iPhone 5. Faster, thinner, 4” display, and iOS 6. Apple is prepared to meet Q4 demand by preparing suppliers to ship as many as 50 million of them in the quarter.” The only Apple products I own are an iPad and a Nano, but I still watch blow-by-blow live-blogging of every Apple announcement, which is an indication of how dramatic Apple makes their unveilings (not to mention how well they keep those huge, world-impacting announcements a secret, which is truly amazing to me). I can’t think of any reason I should care given that I’m not in the market for new Apple products, but I still do. I’m not convinced that the iPhone 5 is better than some of the Samsung or other Android phones (many of the new iPhone features have been on Android for a long time, leading some analysts to openly ridicule Apple for under-delivering), but I can safely predict that the fanboys will be camping out at the Apple store next Thursday night (what recession?) I read the other day that Apple’s iPhone sales volume alone is bigger than all of Microsoft.

From Arnold: “Re: KLAS report on Epic consulting firms. They just posted an update saying one firm has been removed because KLAS mistakenly gave them credit for another company’s survey. How shoddy, and it isn’t the first time we’ve seen this kind of mistake.” I blurred the company’s name on the KLAS announcement since it’s a good news/bad news thing – in removing some other company’s negative survey, this company’s score went up, but then it didn’t have enough surveys, so KLAS removed it completely from the updated report.

From Blue Dog: “Re: Allscripts Enterprise EHR. Heard CHS in Oklahoma City had a great implementation and they are re-looking at using it in other markets. They had a huge contractor downsizing and had postponed or shifted to athenaclinicals in many markets.” Unverified.  

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

This week’s HIStalk Practice highlights include an example of “EMR garbage.” Opinions on why specialists may seek MU incentives less often than primary care providers. Healthcare expenditures fall when patients have more access to office-based care after hours. An internal medicine physician grades his EHR. More feedback from the HIStalk Practice Advisory Panel on the ACA’s potential impact on patient volumes. Culbert Healthcare Solutions VP Jeff Wasserman offers strategies to help independent practices enjoy the financial benefits of quality-based care. Thanks for reading.

Despite the inconvenience of the new adapter, I am ready to take advantage of the $199 option to upgrade my iPhone 4 to the 5. The fast-draining battery has always been my biggest gripe with the iPhone, so longer battery life is the most appealing new feature. A bigger display will also be nice and I am envisioning all the cool panoramic photos I’ll be able to take at the upcoming MGMA meeting. I’ll be one of the geeks standing in line at the Apple store on September 21.

I was waiting for the elevator at work today with the “going up” button lit. As I stood patiently, some guy charged around me and gave the already-lit button several quick jabs. Do you suppose he thinks there’s an algorithm built in that gives preference to the number of times the button is pushed, does he harbor suspicions that elevator lights are rigged, or is he just an impatient jerk who assumes I’m not capable of pushing the button correctly?

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Streamline Health reports Q2 results: revenue up 22%, EPS –$0.04 vs. $0.00.

MRO Corp. acquires the assets of Florida Medical Records Services, a provider of release of information services.

Athenahealth signs a definitive agreement to acquire Healthcare Data Services, a provider of healthcare data analysis and population health management solutions for payers and providers.

Nightingale Informatix secures $2.75 million in Series B funding.

In England, mental health EHR vendor Strand Technology is acquired by Advanced Computer Software Group for $3 million.

Sales

Community Hospital Anderson will use Summit Healthcare’s Express Connect and Provider Exchange technology  for internal and bi-directional integration with its Meditech system.

Cherry County Hospital (NE) chooses Access Intelligent Forms Suite for electronic forms management as it migrates to Meditech 6.0.

The Federal Economic Development Agency will use the Connected Wellness Platform of NexJ Systems for its Connected Health and Wellness Project.

Fort Drum Regional Health Planning Organization (NY) selects Wellcentive to provide disease registry, case management, and predictive analytics.

Anne Arundel Medical Center (MD) chooses Medseek’s ecoSmart Patient Precisioning CRM solution for patient engagement and education.

Key-Whitman Eye Center (TX) selects Versus Advantages RTLS to track patient progression and staff workflows.

HealthEast Care System (MN) chooses Humedica for its ACO and PCMH initiatives.

People

Lance Fusacchia (Webmedx) joins Shareable Ink as CFO.

CHIME awards its State Advocacy Award to Texas Health Resources SVP/CIO Ed Marx.

Tom Penno (Indiana HIE) joins NoMoreClipboard as VP of channel management.

SuccessEHS promotes Lori Junkins and Elizabeth Featheringill Pharo to VP and Elizabeth Pitman to general counsel.

Jim Speros, who led the VA’s innovation prize contests and promoted its use of Blue Button, died September 3 at 59.

John Cox, former CIO at the Hospital for Special Surgery (NY), died September 12.

Announcements and Implementations

HIMSS names Hawai’i Pacific Health the winner of the 2012 Enterprise HIMSS Davies Award of Excellence.

In the UK, Moorfields Eye Hospital NHS Foundation Trust adds three modules to OpenEyes, its self-developed, open source patient management system. The new modules include surgical notes, discharge letters, and prescriptions.

Government and Politics

HHS announces $983,100 in grants to support improved healthcare access and coordination for veterans living in rural areas using telehealth and health information exchanges.

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius admits to violating the Hatch Act, a federal law that restricts the political activity by government employees. Sebelius called for the re-election of President Obama at a February speech to a gay rights group. Sebelius has apologized and the Democratic National Committee has reimbursed the government for the cost of her trip.

ONC’s blog urges nurses to request a copy of their own electronic health record, verify the accuracy of its contents, and sign an online pledge. I suspect few of us in healthcare IT have requested electronic copies of our information, so I will post this as a challenge of my own to all readers. Request a copy of your EHR information and let me know how the process went – how convoluted the request process was, how long it took, and how accurate and complete your information was. I’ll run anything you send me. Somehow I think that, like almost everything related to healthcare, it doesn’t work nearly as well as patients have a right to expect. It’s not exactly Golden Rule territory.

ONC releases its educational security training game for medical practices. I played it and it’s pretty cool.

Medicare says it won’t pay providers based on copied-and-pasted patient notes.

Other

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center is named the #1 company in the InformationWeek 500 list of the most innovative users of business technology. Other healthcare organizations in the top 50 include Quintiles (#6), Sparrow Health System (#16), Premier Inc. (#30), Miami Children’s Hospital (#31), RadNet (#32), McKesson (#34), Intermountain Healthcare (#48), Kindred Healthcare (#48), and Sharp HealthCare (#50).

CareCloud will establish a Massachusetts office to take advantage of the region’s technical talent.

I said in January when US CTO Aneesh Chopra resigned that I expected him to run for lieutenant governor of Virginia, but instead he went back his previous employer, The Advisory Board Company. I should have paid more attention to the election calendar: the election is in 2013 and he has announced as a Democratic candidate for that office.

A Financial Times article called “Healthcare: Cyber wards” covers Silicon Valley companies trying to break into healthcare. It doesn’t contain anything all that interesting, but it does quote an entrepreneur who says VCs are still wary of investing in companies because of long healthcare sales cycles and their previous experience with products that were never perfected.

University of Minnesota Medical Center, Fairview violated patient protection and EMTALA laws by its aggressive collections tactics overseen by Accretive Health, a federal investigation finds. Fairview says they “continue to learn from this experience.” Shares in Accretive were down 11% Thursday on the news, by far the biggest percentage loser on the NYSE. The company had already paid a $2.5 million fine and agreed to cease operations in Minnesota. Shares owned by founder and CEO Mary Tolan  are still worth $108 million.

Weird News Andy is convinced that being real smart doesn’t preclude being real stupid. Richard Keller MD, a pediatric endocrinologist and Harvard Medical School instructor (WNA summarizes as “a vile human being,” at least assuming he’s found guilty), is arrested when a package containing 50 DVDs of child pornography is delivered to his attention at Phillips Academy, where he was medical director until last year. He might be one of few people whose life goes directly into the toilet because he forgot to update his shipping address or perhaps had the misfortune of back-ordered porn.

Markle Foundation puts out a video promoting the consumer use of Blue Button.

The computer hacker / brain tumor patient in Italy who cracked the proprietary formats of his electronic medical records so he could post them publicly to seek help has updated his site with the ideas he has received so far. It’s getting interesting – he’s about to publish a tutorial explaining the quirks he found with DICOM images and he’s putting out some rather eloquent ideas about health and technology:

The definition of "diseases" is "reserved" to doctors. Often using words which we don’t understand and, most important of all, touching only a part of the human condition, which is made from body, but also of spirit and sociality. The DICOM format is open, yes, but in a very "peculiar" condition of openness: it is like the openness of the words which they use to tell you about your health condition, and with which they describe and actuate their version of the "cure": you can’t understand it, you can’t reuse it, you can’t combine it with other possibilities. It is thought for "experts" and "professionals" (of one single type), leaving little space for other possibilities for expression and socialization … Maybe we could start to think about an "open" world in this sense, too, not dedicated to "professionals" and "procedures", but also to human beings.

Sponsor Updates

• Vonlay created a Web page featuring live tweets and photos from the Epic UGM this week.
• PDR Network announces that its flagship service meets Meaningful Use Stage 2 requirements in delivering real-time FDA drug safety alerts and product program information at the point of prescribing.
• More than 50 employees from the Burlington, VT office of Allscripts will take part in a Habitat for Humanity build this week.
• Amerinet makes McKesson’s pharmacy automation solutions available to its 3,000 hospital members.
• Intelligent InSites integrates its RTLS with Haldor’s ORLocate surgical instrument tagging to offer a surgical instrument management and tracking solution.
• Lifepoint Informatics announces its Silver Level sponsorship of next month’s Pathology Informatics 2012 conference in Chicago.
• LDM will provide consumer medication information from Polyglot Systems in its point-of-care messaging solutions.
• HIStalk sponsors Allscripts, NTT Data (formerly Keane Inc.), and World Wide Technology earn spots on the annual InformationWeek 500 list of innovative business technology users .
• Forbes cites Greenway as being “ahead of the pack” in delivering information exchange and interoperability between its PrimeSUITE and the EHRs of other vendors.
• Orion Health will incorporate images from Agfa’s clinical imaging platform into its clinical portal.
• DrFirst and Meditech will demonstrate their combined solutions during a series of Webinars in September and October.

Contacts

Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg.

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Mobile.