Morning Headlines 4/17/17

Electronic POLST Puts End-of-Life Wishes in the Patient’s Hands

In New Jersey, a program is being launched to move the documentation of end-of-life care decisions off of paper and onto a state-wide database that will integrate with EHR systems in use across the state’s hospitals.

RWJBarnabas CISO Rethinks Cybersecurity for Age of Connected Medical Devices

The Wall Street Journal profiles RWJBarnabas (NJ) CISO Hussein Syed and his approach to maintaining the network security across his organization’s 12 hospitals, 250  clinics, and 75,000 devices.

Where medical marijuana, health IT, and personalized medicine may intersect

The Advisory Board outlines the implication medical marijuana legalization is having on care delivery, and the potential role health IT will have in educating providers on the appropriate strains, dosages, and methods of ingestion.

A Boy’s Life Is Lost to Sepsis. Thousands Are Saved in His Wake

The New York Times reviews 5-year results from a program in New York State aimed at improving early detection of sepsis in hospitals. The program has resulted in a 21 percent decline in mortality among adults, but showed no decline in pediatric mortality.

Monday Morning Update 4/17/17

Top News

The FDA issues a warning letter to St. Jude Medical – acquired by Abbott Laboratories in January – for failing to respond to cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could allow a hacker to control implanted devices remotely and for failing to address battery issues that have been linked with two deaths. The warning comes three months after the FDA issued a similar notice warning St. Jude of the vulnerabilities. Further inaction could result in disciplinary actions that include “seizure, injunction, and civil monetary penalties.”

Reader Comments

From Athenahealth Spokesperson: “Re: ‘Will Athena be able to deliver, on time, for hospitals MU3?’ Athenahealth offers cloud-based revenue cycle and financial management, EHR, patient communication, and care coordination services for community hospitals. All of these services are on one platform, AthenaNet, which enables a single patient chart and a seamless Athena “look-and-feel” across the health system – inpatient, ED, outpatient, clinic, and ancillaries. The RazorInsights platform has been completely sun-setted. As of December 2016, we have over 90 contracted hospital clients, of which 35 are live on all or a portion of our AthenaOne for Hospitals & Health Systems service. These organizations are already seeing tangible results. For example, our clients saw an average of 106.5 percent of patient collections as a percentage of baseline during 2016. Stage 3 Meaningful Use is optional in 2017 and mandatory in 2018.  Currently, AthenaClinicals for Hospitals & Health Systems is a 2014 Certified EHR Technology (CHERT), which allows our clients to pursue Stage 2 Meaningful Use this year.  We plan on achieving 2015 CHERT status, which is required for Stage 3, in the second half of 2017.  Thanks to our cloud-based platform, we can deploy the Stage 3 update to our entire client base overnight. All of our Meaningful Use services – a certified platform, real-time performance insight, performance coaching, and attestation – are included in our percentage of collections pricing. Our clients don’t have to pay hefty upgrade fees or endure cumbersome upgrade rollouts. Our results prove that our model works: 95.7 percent of our hospital clients successfully attested for Stage 2 Meaningful Use in 2015.  We expect similar results for 2016, which will become available in the coming weeks.”

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Just over a third of poll respondents teeter on the edge of full-blown enthusiasm for using at-home genetic testing kits to better understand their hereditary health risks. An almost even number of people are as eager to order their spit kit as are to likely not. No matter how you slice and dice the results, they are likely music to 23andMe’s ears – not to mention known competitors and those contemplating moving into it. MPW says, “I utilized their service a few years ago when some members in my family were testing positive for the same genetic abnormality, and have had no regrets. One thing to remember if you’re looking into this is that discovering a propensity for a trait does not mean it is an eventuality. For example, I’m listed as likely lactose intolerant. However, my Wisconsin roots and love for almost all things dairy says otherwise.” MineoPie explains that, “I voted ‘highly likely’ as my practical side sees the opportunity to plan appropriately whether that be treatment, an increase in health, life or long-term care insurance, or general peace of mind. There is also the potential to share these risks with my children for their own well-being. While I vacillate between this view and the one where I stick my fingers in my ears while yelling ‘la la la I can’t hear you,’ I ultimately see more benefit in having the data. Then I read the response from ‘no name’. I certainly share the concern that any negative results will not be proprietary leading to increased insurance costs and general shunning. I’m reminded of the Monty Python & The Holy Grail scene (‘I’m not dead yet, I think I’ll go for a walk’). Perhaps I’m more on the fence that I realized.” Barbara, on the other hand, thinks that “the public availability of this information will be used as a detriment in the future, i.e. insurance rates will go up, misinformation will be provided by targeting populations through Google/Facebook adds, etc. Not to mention the lack of professional interpretation resulting in self diagnosis, which could result in personal hysteria. This has already been evidenced with the advertising of medications and patients demanding of their physicians they be given this new, wonderful medication that may not be suitable for their situation. This should be done professionally where confidentiality is supported by both federal and state laws. No Name takes an even dimmer view: “I wish I trusted my government and insurers more, but don’t. I am now retired, but if I were still working, I don’t think I’d trust any employer to not use this info to possibly discriminate against employees who might prove to be high risk. Yep, that’s just the way it is.”

New poll to your right or here: Have you ever volunteered to be bumped from a flight? Share your circumstances – and the cash value you finally jumped at – by leaving a comment after voting.

This Week in Health IT History

One year ago:

• CMS launches the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus model, a value-based payment program that will give PCPs more financial flexibility when caring for the chronically ill.
• Epic wins $940 million in its trade secret lawsuit against Indian IT firm Tata Consultancies.
• VA CIO LaVerne Council says she will unveil plans for a “new digital health platform” to replace VistA.
• Intermountain Healthcare will partner with the University of Utah and several other organizations to create a joint security center focused on thwarting cybersecurity attacks.
• Federal regulators propose banning Elizabeth Holmes from the blood-testing business for two years after Theranos fails to correct serious problems discovered at its California lab.

Five years ago:

• The DoD Inspector General finds that drug abuse among Marines in the Wounded Warrior Battalion at Camp Lejeune, NC is hard to detect because of EHR shortcomings.
• 3M acquires CodeRyte.
• HHS proposes a one-year delay for ICD-10 compliance, pushing the deadline to October 1, 2014.
• Verizon announces a relationship with NantWorks to create the Cancer Knowledge Action Network.

Weekly Anonymous Question

Last week, I asked readers what passion they’d pursue given enough free time and money:

• Play music … all acoustic band.
• Dog rescue and fostering 24/7. I would get property and have a place to foster many dogs; and would collect codified data regarding the adopters/adoptees to be able to identify traits of good dog/person pairings.
• Ride coast to coast on a motorcycle.
• Create a business-school partnership to encourage additional learning opportunities for math and critical thinking; incorporate local in-person and online virtual mentoring.
• Travel the world, meeting people from all different walks of life, and seeing the beautiful landscapes of our planet. I also would love to do something to help those in need, so maybe a nonprofit that combines my dream to travel and also takes disadvantaged children on these adventures. Having fun with them and seeing their reactions to experiences like that would bring me such joy!
• Build community gardens in areas where fresh produce is hard come by.
• I would do more volunteer work. And make quilts – a lot of quilts.
• Instead of having one in five kids in the US go to sleep hungry at night, I would work to drive that number to zero.
• Roadside BBQ stand. It’s done when it’s done and it’s gone when it’s gone.
• When I grow up, I want to be a photographer. I would love to travel the world snapping pictures of whatever comes my way.
• Traveling to the best restaurants around the world and return to food blogging. I had to quit my blog last year (after a six-year run) due to cost and limited time.
• Finish that novel, get it out there. Write another one.
• Art. Art. Art. Nothing but painting, drawing, sculpting, weaving … and gardening. All things visually creative that require getting my hands dirty!
• I’d follow my favorite bands around the world.
• Music. That’s been the dream ever since I started playing guitar at age 12. I knew it had a chance since I can play almost every rock/blues song that I hear just by ear, but a) I never found the right band and b) my desire to secure a career somewhere besides McDonald’s led me to attend college and get a "real job" as opposed to rolling the dice and heading from the North Country out to LA a la Neil Young. That doesn’t seem to work out as well in the 21st century as it did in the mid 60’s. I still do some local gigs on occasion and play everyday; it will always be my number-one passion.
• Photography – Weird News Andy
• Attending as many music festivals as I could across the US and when I feel that is fairly complete, move on to Europe, Australia, etc.
• Coaching people on living a more balanced life to have time with friends and family, and to look after emotional, physical, and spiritual needs.
• Building and promoting a not-for-profit, nationwide health IT co-op.
• Rock and roll guitar. What else could there be?
• Space travel.
• Hosting international yoga and wellness focused retreats.
• Right now, a free weekend to relax and read a non-technical book and some time to travel and see some new places sounds pretty good, albeit mundane. The list of top 50 restaurants in the world just came out and a checking out a new one every week would be fun.
• Cruising around the world.
• I’d help patients learn how to be informed advocates for their own healthcare and the health of their family and friends.
• Coding! Python, SQL, JScript and everything in between. Nothing like coding to keep your mind sharp and busy. And I do have the time and money to do it, so I do it and love every moment of it. Strongly recommended.

This week’s question: What’s the most patient-endangering IT issue you’ve personally seen?

Last Week’s Most Interesting News

• NextGen will acquire Entrada in a deal worth $34 million.
• The White House finalizes its rules aimed at stabilizing the individual marketplaces.
• Erie County Medical Center (NY) returns to paper after a virus brings down its network.
• United Airlines suffers financial loss and extreme PR backlash after dragging a physician, later hospitalized, off a flight.
• India-based provider appointment-scheduling vendor Practo lays off 10 percent of its workforce.

Webinars

April 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “SSM Integrated Health Technologies Clinical Data Migration: Functional and Technical Considerations.” Sponsored by Galen Healthcare Solutions. Presenters: Sandy Winklemann, MHA, RHIA, project manager, SSM Integration Health Technologies; Tyler Mawyer, MHA, managing consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions; Kavon Kaboli, MPH, senior consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions. GE Centricity and Meditech to Epic EHR transition. Join us for a complimentary webinar as present the decisions that are important to consider when performing a clinical data migration from the point of view of  the healthcare organization program manager, the clinical analyst, and the technical implementation team. Our expert panel will survey data migration considerations, best practices, and lessons learned. The webinar will present a unique client perspective, offering insight into considerations surrounding staffing, clinical mapping, legacy application support, and validation and testing.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information on webinar services.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

EncounterCare Solutions wraps up the sale of its telemedicine and chronic care management operations to IGambit, which plans to market the services under the HealthDatix brand.

Salt Lake City-based Collective Medical Technologies announces plans to hire nearly 600 people over the next eight years. The company specializes in real-time care management tech for EDs.

People

Natoshia Erickson (Washington Health Benefit Exchange) joins Royal Jay as senior manager of solution delivery.

Announcements and Implementations

Trinity Health (MI) expands its home health telemedicine program, powered by technology from Vivify Health, to six additional states.

Miami Children’s Health System will work with telemedicine hardware and software vendor Tyto Care to expand its MCH Anywhere virtual consult services.

Decisions

• Indiana Regional Medical Center (PA) will switch from MEDITECH to Cerner On May 1.
• Sierra Vista Hospital (NM) will switch from Evident (a CPSI company) to Athenahealth on July 1.
• Van Wert County Hospital (OH) Human Resources will go live with Infor this year.
• Cameron Memorial Community Hospital (IN) Human Resources will go live with Oracle in 2017.

These provider-reported updates are provided by Definitive Healthcare, which offers powerful intelligence on hospitals, physicians, and healthcare providers.

Other

New Jersey Hospital Association President and CEO Betsy Ryan and NJ Dept. of Health Commissioner Cathleen Bennett attempt to drum up interest in the forthcoming statewide roll out of the electronic Practitioner Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment program. The initiative will convert the state’s paper-based, end-of-life planning documents for patients to a digital format, and give physicians access to the documents via a Web-based portal.

Here’s Part 4 of the top 10 HIS vendors report from Vince and Elise.

Sponsor Updates

• T-System will exhibit at EDPMA 2017 Solutions Summit April 25-28 in San Diego.
• TierPoint will host a grand unveiling of its newest Chicago data center April 27.
• TransUnion publishes, “Revenue Cycle POS and High-Risk Patient Toolkit.”
• ZeOmega publishes a case study highlighting how a large health system implemented Jiva HIE to connect 36 disparate EHR systems.
• ZirMed publishes a new ebook, “3 Ways to Take Control of Your Contacts.”
• ClinicalArchitecture makes donations to Boy Scouts of America, Casa de los Ninos, and Compassion International on behalf of HIMSS17 contest winners.
• STAT profiles GE Healthcare CEO John Flannery.

Blog Posts

• The Channel and the Cloud: A Perfect Partnership (TierPoint)
• To Build or Buy an Analytics Solution? (Part 4) (Vital Images)
• A VUE you don’t want to miss. (Voalte)
• 5 Ways to Stop Wasting Resources on Patient Collections (ZirMed)
• #JoinTheConversation with Experian Health’s Kathleen Harris at #HIMSS17 (Experian Health)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne, Lt. Dan.
More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.
Get HIStalk updates. Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 4/14/17

NextGen Healthcare Announces Agreement to Acquire Entrada, Inc.

NextGen will acquire mobile physician documentation and communication technology vendor Entrada in a deal worth $34 million.

White House finalizes ACA rule to strengthen individual market

The White House finalizes its rules aimed at stabilizing the individual marketplaces, introducing insurer-friendly provisions that limit when consumers can gain coverage outside of open enrollment periods, while shifting authority to states to determine whether health plans have adequate provider networks, and allowing insurers to refuse to cover persons who haven’t paid their premiums.

FDA warns Abbott on heart device battery woes, cybersecurity risks

The FDA issues a warning letter to St. Jude Medical of failing to respond to cybersecurity vulnerabilities that could allow a hacker to control implanted devices remotely and for failing to address battery issues that have been linked with two deaths.

UC Berkeley challenges decision that CRISPR patents belong to Broad Institute

After winning its patent case in the EU patent courts, UC Berkeley appeals its recent CRISPR patent loss to Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard here in the US.

News 4/14/17

Top News

Quality Systems subsidiary NextGen Healthcare will acquire mobile physician documentation and communication technology vendor Entrada in a deal worth $34 million. NextGen President and CEO Rusty Frantz says the company will focus on expanding Entrada’s capabilities.

Reader Comments

From Bob Oakley: “Re: Allscripts dbMotion. I no longer have a horse in this race, but feel compelled to write as I weathered the introduction of CareInMotion – including being miscategorized by KLAS. Setting expectations – this will hit about three or four of your bad branding hot buttons. You indicated that it was part of the Care Management population health platform, when it should have been identified as the CareInMotion population health platform. The confusion is not surprising, as CareInMotion (egregious capitalization not withstanding) is trying to corral several disparate applications under one brand, while working to create the common backbone necessary for it to be the platform it’s purported to be. Contributing to that is that the word Care prepends several legacy applications under the brand, including Care Management (the legacy ECIN utilization management, discharge planning, and referral management application). It is definitely confusing. I wish it weren’t, but its use is only a little over a year old and the dbMotion Azure announcement is heartening that the platform is being realized.”

From HIT User: “Re: Athenahealth. Athena seems to be making a lot of traction in the acute care space. This seems to mostly be to the attractiveness of their percentage of collections model for smaller hospitals that cannot afford most EHR price tags. What offering are they really providing to hospitals? Is it fully vetted or half-baked with RazorInsights hodgepodged with their ambulatory system? I see they are just now certifying this for Stage 2 per the CHPL site. Will they be ready by Stage 3 with all of the customers they are trying to reign in? I heard of one site – Cottage – that was delayed over a year from original anticipated go live (into the middle of 2018) for an install. Will Athena be able to deliver, on time, for hospitals MU3?”

Webinars

April 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “SSM Integrated Health Technologies Clinical Data Migration: Functional and Technical Considerations.” Sponsored by Galen Healthcare Solutions. Presenters: Sandy Winklemann, MHA, RHIA, project manager, SSM Integration Health Technologies; Tyler Mawyer, MHA, managing consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions; Kavon Kaboli, MPH, senior consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions. GE Centricity and Meditech to Epic EHR transition. Join us for a complimentary webinar as present the decisions that are important to consider when performing a clinical data migration from the point of view of  the healthcare organization program manager, the clinical analyst, and the technical implementation team. Our expert panel will survey data migration considerations, best practices, and lessons learned. The webinar will present a unique client perspective, offering insight into considerations surrounding staffing, clinical mapping, legacy application support, and validation and testing.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information on webinar services.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

This week on HIStalk Practice: CMS awards United Way of Greater Cleveland a $4.51 million grant to help it create an Accountable Health Communities Model. Thirteen people from three clinics are busted for their roles in a $24 million multi-clinic pill mill and fraudulent billing conspiracy. Physicians seem to favor faxes and phones over e-prescribing tech. Researchers determine community physicians are less likely to order unnecessary tests than their hospital-based counterparts. Dean Dorton acquires Metro Medical Solutions. Craft Behavioral Health Practice Manager Cara Farooque shares the challenges her practice faces in vetting technology for security and privacy controls. CareSync goes after customers for back payments. OCR gives Metro Community Provider Network a $400,000 slap on the wrist. ChenMed’s Jessica Chen, MD and Denise Hatzidakis offer insight into building and using IT for value-based primary care for seniors. Sign up for physician practice news here.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Caradigm announces that it will reduce its workforce as part of a reorganization that it hopes will streamline operations. “GE Healthcare is committed to supporting the Caradigm team as they continue to evolve, positioning themselves to develop digital solutions for better outcomes in population health,” says Charles Koontz, chief digital officer, GE Healthcare. The company went through similar motions last fall, reorganizing product teams and its Services organization.

Sansoro Health raises $5.2 million in a Series A funding round led by Bain Capital Ventures. The Minneapolis-based company, which has raised $6.4 million so far, has developed a data integration tool for digital health apps and EHRs. It won the Venture+ Forum startup contest at HIMSS16.

Austin, TX-based healthcare cloud vendor ClearData raises $12 million, bringing its total funding to $55 million since launching in 2011.

Announcements and Implementations

Freeman Health System (MO) implements Access e-form and electronic signature software.

Kroger pharmacies connect to the Michigan Automated Prescription System with help from Appriss Health, which is helping the state develop and launch a new prescription drug monitoring system. Kroger expects to start sharing PDMP data between Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio within the next several weeks.

People

Verscend Technologies hires Chris Coloian (Welltok) as SVP of revenue and growth, and Michael Kapp (WellPoint) as SVP of government services.

Former State of Minnesota CIO Scott Peterson joins Avalere as VP of data architecture.

Technology

AMD Global Telemedicine updates its Agnes Interactive software to offer improved EHR integration.

Iron Bridge develops a portal to help providers query and submit data to public health registries.

Intermedix adds Web and mobile form configuration and management capabilities to its EMS patient-tracking software.

Sales

McPherson Hospital (KS) will implement EHR and RCM software and services from CPSI subsidiaries Evident and TruBridge.

Innovation and Research

Final Frontier Medical Devices wins a $2.6 million Qualcomm Tricorder XPrize for its efforts to develop a diagnostic device for multiple ailments akin to the one used in Star Trek. Runner-up Dynamical Biomarkers Group will take home $1 million for its attempt at developing a lightweight tool that can diagnose 13 ailments and measure five vital signs at the same time. XPrize organizers will use what’s left of the original $10 million purse to help both teams develop their devices. The Roddenberry Foundation, organized by Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry’s son, has pledged an additional $1.6 million to the effort.

Government and Politics

The VA launches a website aimed at helping bring transparency to access and quality across its facilities. Patients can look up same-day availability, average appointment wait times, satisfaction scores based on those times, and hospital and outpatient compare data.

CMS issues a final insurance market stabilization rule. The 139-page rule, set to take effect next year, will, among other things, cut the enrollment period in half, allow lower minimum coverage requirements, and put health plan physician networks in the hands of the states rather than the federal government. CMS Administrator Seema Verma admits that, “While these steps will help stabilize the individual and small group markets, they are not a long-term cure for the problems that the Affordable Care Act has created in our healthcare system.”

Meanwhile, in an effort to draw Democrats to the healthcare policy negotiation table, President Trump threatens to withhold payments to insurers meant to cover discounts for low-income consumers, explaining, “I don’t want people to get hurt. What I think should happen—and will happen—is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.”

The VistA replacement saga continues as the VA issues a request for information on a commercial, SaaS-based replacement that would enable – eventually – easy updating across the entire system. Vendors have until April 26 to submit their proposals for streamlining the 130 variations of the system and migrating them to the cloud.

The Vancouver Island Health Authority decides against suspending the CPOE feature of its IHealth EHR as originally announced in February. Government officials claim the $174 million Cerner system, which has earned a fair amount of media coverage based on end-user concerns with patient safety risks and documentation quality, is too intertwined with other systems and workflows to be taken offline, even temporarily. This may be a decision that pushes some nurses over the edge: A British Columbia Nurses Union survey found that 32 percent of RNs had seriously considered leaving or retiring because of the software.

Privacy and Security

Erie County Medical Center (NY) returns to paper after a virus brings down its network early Sunday morning. A hospital spokesman refused to comment on speculation that the virus was actually a ransomware attack, and if it had been contacted by hackers or asked for payments to restore access. ECMC hopes to have patient data available today and its IT systems fully restored by Saturday.

Other

The Leapfrog Group launches a calculator designed to illuminate the impact medical errors have on an employer’s covered population. The calculator estimates the number of avoidable deaths among covered lives, how much employers spend annually due to medical errors within general acute care hospitals, and how much of their total health care spend goes to these medical mistakes.

A local media outlet publishes a nicely written profile of Epic founder Judy Faulkner. Some HIStalk readers may not know that Faulkner’s mother Del, who graduated high school at the age of 15, received a Nobel Peace Prize in 1985 for her work as director of the Oregon Physicians for Social Responsibility – an affiliate of International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War. Those who have been in the industry since the company’s early days will appreciate the accompanying photos.

Sponsor Updates

• Everest Group recognizes Conduent Health in two reports, “Healthcare Payer BPO – Service Provider Landscape with PEAK Matrix Assessment 2016” and “Contact Center Outsourcing Marketing for Healthcare Industry – Service Provider Landscape with PEAK Matrix Assessment 2017.”
• Netsmart will exhibit at the VNAA National Leadership Conference April 19 in San Diego.
• NVoq will exhibit at the TORCH Annual Conference & Tradeshow April 18-20 in Dallas.
• Clinical Computer Systems, developer of the Obix Perinatal Data System, will exhibit at Symposia Medicus April 18-20 in Las Vegas.
• Experian Health will exhibit at HFMA Hawaii April 20-21 in Honolulu.
• The SSI Group will exhibit at the Alabama HIMSS chapter Spring Conference April 19 in Huntsville.
• Sunquest Information Systems publishes a new white paper, “Build or Buy: Optimizing Informatics for Genetic Testing.”
• The FutureTech Podcast features Sytrue’s Kyle Silvestro.
• Solutionreach becomes a preferred partner of Crystal PM for optometrists.

Blog Posts

• Back to the Future (Impact Advisors)
• Dominating Google Results: the Best Example of a Balanced Digital Marketing Strategy in Healthcare (Influence Healthcare)
• Spring Training is Over: Is Your Healthcare Payments Security Roster Set? (InstaMed)
• The Pharmaceutical R&D Process and the Inherent Data Challenges (Liaison Technologies)
• All Hazards Approach: Risk Assessment for CMS Rule (LiveProcess)
• 6 New AWS Products Launched in 2017 (Logicworks)
• How to recruit your next generation of health IT professionals (Meditech)
• Healthcare Data Analytics: Working with Payers 101 (Navicure)
• Is your Cloud-based Speech Recognition HIPAA Compliant? (NVoq)
• Let’s Cross One Item Off the List of Contributors to Physician Burnout (PatientKeeper)
• Healthcare Blockchain Moves to Center Stage (PokitDok)
• What’s Missing From Epic? (Lexmark Healthcare)
• Let’s ‘Face’ It: The Key to Meeting with Your Customers In-Person (PMD)
• 6 Steps to Improve Point-of-Service Collections (Sagacious Consultants)
• 8 Email Marketing Tips to Combat the 8-Second Attention Span (Salesforce)
• MACRA, MIPS, and Revenue Cycle Managers (The SSI Group)
• How Your Online Reviews Can Grow Your Practice (Solutionreach)
• Getting Your Message Across (Summit Healthcare)
• States Push to Combat Opioid Abuse with E-Prescribing Technology (Surescripts)
• Recruit and Retain the Best Physicians (Infor)
• Sociological Needs May Hold Key to Cutting Costs, Readmissions (Definitive Healthcare)
• Why the Time for Healthcare Analytics Adoption is Now (Dimensional Insight)
• Where medical marijuana, health IT, and personalized medicine may intersect (Advisory Board)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne, Lt. Dan.
More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.
Get HIStalk updates. Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 4/13/17

I unfortunately had to spend some non-quality time this week at the Microsoft Store. The pen for my Surface Pro tablet has been acting up over the last month and all troubleshooting maneuvers have failed. Since I’ve been on the road a lot, I’ve spent more time than I care to admit perusing various support articles, blogs, and commentaries on how to get it back up and running. Although the button was working, the business-end was not, and then the tip started to actually disintegrate. I had to wait until I was in a city that actually has a Microsoft store, and until I had free time during normal store hours to address it.

The staff at the store was eager to greet me, but then when they found out I was (gasp!) an individual consumer and not a corporate or enterprise customer, it started going downhill. The fact that I bought my device at Costco rather than directly from Microsoft was clearly an issue for them, and they made a big deal about not being able to locate the purchase in their system and having to use another system to find me (which they did, in about 20 seconds, so I’m not sure why we needed the drama). They then informed me that I was out of warranty on the pen. Apparently it’s not hard to be out of warranty when the warranty is only 90 days, which is pretty short in my opinion.

The rep did all the troubleshooting I had already done, then replaced the tip, which didn’t make a difference. He then proceeded to tell me he’d have to make me a tech appointment, but didn’t explain what that meant or what the timeframe might be. I was treated like a child when I asked, as if I should know intrinsically what a “Microsoft store tech appointment” expectation might be. As a consultant, I’m sensitive to my hourly rate and how much time and money I’m burning with exercises like this. Knowing the pen was about $50 and that I had been down for weeks and getting to the store when it was open was an ordeal, I asked if I could just buy a new pen and be done with it. He acted like that was the strangest thing he ever heard, then disappeared “to see if there is anything else we can do.”

I appreciate the fact that he was trying to save me money and resolve my issue, but it felt like an odd piece of “service recovery” after the initial stumbles over being an individual consumer and having purchased from a reseller. Ultimately they agreed to warranty the pen and swap it out, which took an additional 15 minutes of paperwork and back and forth. Counting the drive, the trek through the mall, and the troubleshooting, then getting home and back to work, I spent an hour and a half getting a new pen. Adding in the hours of troubleshooting that I did before even going to the store, you can bet that if this one malfunctions in the least I’m going straight to an online order for a new one.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I was working with a clinical informaticist that was learning the ropes of actually managing a team – dealing with expense reports, vacation approvals, and the other managerial functions that we don’t learn much about in medical school. This week we waded into the minefield that is the annual performance evaluation. I’m a firm believer in the concept that the annual performance review should never be a surprise. It’s important for managers to incorporate the concepts they’ve been discussing with the employee for the last year, and to make overall comments on progress (or lack thereof) but nothing should be a revelation. When there is a transition in managers or a change in job role, this is particularly tricky because one needs to incorporate any available feedback from the previous manager or role.

The good thing is that the time frame for the review process is usually clear, and shouldn’t be a last-minute exercise. Of course there are exceptions to that, such as when my previous employer decided to move everyone from “review on your anniversary date” to “review the entire company all at the same time, STAT,” which was a horrendous exercise I never want to repeat. But in this case, my managerial trainee had well over a month to track down information from previous managers, peruse previous reviews, assess completion of employee goals, etc. We had been talking about the process for a couple of weeks, and he seemed like he was with the program, so I was surprised when I met with him in person and he looked like a cornered animal. He said he had no idea what to do with some of the feedback he received from employees.

The company asks employees to write a one-page summary of their growth and accomplishments over the last year, highlighting successes and what they have learned from challenges. It’s the employee’s opportunity to offer specific details that can bolster a high-scoring review or give a new manager more flavor for what the employee has been working on and how they see themselves. However, it has the potential to be a mine field, because “one page free text” can apparently mean different things to different people. He has more than 20 people on his team, and let’s just say the variability of the personal narratives was striking. The most effective employees provided bulleted lists or well-organized statements, often with supporting quotes from other employees or customers. Those were easy to get through. The ones he wasn’t sure on handling were frankly ones that I wasn’t sure on handling either.

I’ve done a lot of performance reviews, going back to my time as Chief Resident. I can definitely say I’ve never encountered an employee or supervisee who decided to use the annual review as an opportunity to roast the company or provide openly hostile comments about management in writing. Until now, that is. The employees were clearly informed that their statements would be part of their records as part of the annual review process and would be seen by second-level approvers, yet still elected go down this path. Needless to say, after seeing their statements, their objective rankings on “insight” and “professionalism” just went down the tubes. Additionally, if there was a score for Tasseography, they’d score low on that as well. When you openly throw your manager under the bus, and fail to appreciate that your manager has a significant amount of executive support, you’re not doing yourself any favors.

These are the things that as a consultant make you say “hmmmm,” and also ensure the ability to propose ongoing engagements and assistance for your clients. We definitely need some coaching/education for these two employees, as well as creation of performance improvement plans. It’s also the opportunity to assist with the hiring process should they not be able to right themselves. In the short term, I’m going to continue supporting my new manager, and help him build the skills to get through this, manage these folks objectively, and not give in to his emotions. It’s also an opportunity to reflect on giving direction for future reviews. The idea that a review should not be a surprise goes both ways when employee comments are involved.

What’s your wildest performance review story? Email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 4/13/17

Trump Threatens to Withhold Payments to Insurers to Press Democrats on Health Bill

In an effort to draw Democrats to the healthcare policy negotiation table, President Trump threatens to withhold payments to insurers meant to cover discounts for low-income consumers, explaining “I don’t want people to get hurt. What I think should happen—and will happen—is the Democrats will start calling me and negotiating.”

The Leapfrog Group Releases Groundbreaking Tool to Estimate Lives and Dollars Lost to Medical Errors

The Leapfrog Group launches a calculator designed to illuminate the impact medical errors have on an employer’s covered population. The calculator estimates the number of avoidable deaths among covered lives, how much employers spend annually due to medical errors within general acute care hospitals, and how much of their total health care spend goes to these medical mistakes.

2017 Venrock Healthcare Prognosis

Venrock publishes results from a survey of “a few hundred of the smartest people we know across healthcare” on the future of healthcare under the new administration and the impact legislative changes will have on various healthcare IT subsectors.

ECMC officials remain mute on cause of computer shutdown

Erie County Medical Center (NY) returns to paper after a virus brings down its network. A hospital spokesman refused to comment on speculation that the virus was actually a ransomware attack, and differed questions about whether it had been contacted by hackers or asked for payments to restore access.

Morning Headlines 4/12/17

How Washington’s favorite cancer fighter helps himself

A Politico investigative report on Patrick Soon-Shiong finds that the majority of funds distributed by the healthcare billionaire’s non-profit, NantHealth Foundation, ultimately flow back into his own businesses. Shares fell 14.4 percent after the report was published Monday, and dropped another 4.7 percent Tuesday. This follows a STAT investigative piece published in March that uncovered similar practices and drove shares down 35 percent following publication.

Association Between Hospitals’ Engagement in Value-Based Reforms and Readmission Reduction in the Hospital Readmission Reduction Program

A longitudinal study published in JAMA finds that participation in one or more of Medicare’s value-based reimbursement programs is associated with reductions in 30-day risk-standardized readmission rates.

SA Health CIO defends EPAS following coroner’s criticism

South Australia Health CIO Bill Le Blanc defends the health system’s EPAS after the state coroner publically complained that the readability and formatting of printed reports are preventing clinicians from effectively doing their jobs.

News 4/12/17

Top News

A Kentucky-based physician with a troubled past is hospitalized after being dragged off a United Airlines flight. David Dao, MD was one of four passengers told to get off the overbooked flight to make room for United stand-by employees. Dao refused on the grounds that he needed to get back to Kentucky to see his patients, and was subsequently (and literally) dragged off the airplane by police. While United has faced extreme backlash over its handling of the situation, Dao’s criminal history hasn’t done him any favors when it comes to casting him as an innocent victim. United employees described him as disruptive and belligerent when told he needed to give up his seat. The incident brings up the issue of overbooking policies, which, as one Twitter observer noted, won’t be a problem for United if all their planes are empty.

Reader Comments

From NantWatcher: “Re: Layoffs at NantHealth. Another round last week – spread across multiple sites, departments, and seniority from entry-level to VP. Roughly 50 impacted.” Unverified, though Politico reports that shares of the company fell 15 percent earlier this week – a circumstance it seems to directly attribute to its exposé of Soon-Shiong and his self-serving philanthropic efforts.

From NewCrop VP Randy Barnes: “Re: NewCrop losing customers. This is nothing short of FAKE NEWS. NewCrop continues to grow at a steady pace. EHR losses to competitors are extremely rare. What have we been doing? Patient support programs, real-time benefits across a multitude of insurance companies, intelligent prior auths, pharmacogenomics, lab integrations, patient portals, secure communications, immunization registry reporting to support all 50 states, new UI and more.”

Webinars

April 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “SSM Integrated Health Technologies Clinical Data Migration: Functional and Technical Considerations.” Sponsored by Galen Healthcare Solutions. Presenters: Sandy Winklemann, MHA, RHIA, project manager, SSM Integration Health Technologies; Tyler Mawyer, MHA, managing consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions; Kavon Kaboli, MPH, senior consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions. GE Centricity and Meditech to Epic EHR transition. Join us for a complimentary webinar as present the decisions that are important to consider when performing a clinical data migration from the point of view of  the healthcare organization program manager, the clinical analyst, and the technical implementation team. Our expert panel will survey data migration considerations, best practices, and lessons learned. The webinar will present a unique client perspective, offering insight into considerations surrounding staffing, clinical mapping, legacy application support, and validation and testing.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information on webinar services.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Azalea Health acquires San Diego-based EHR and PM company LeonardoMD for an undisclosed sum.

A new CB Insights report shows that, while the large majority of digital health funding has gone to US-based startups, young companies globally are also addressing the challenge of improving healthcare. On a quarterly basis, equity funding to private US-based digital health companies saw a 128-percent increase from $768 million in Q4 2016 to $1.75 billion in Q1 2017. Meanwhile, funding to digital health companies outside the US saw a 146-percent increase from $252 million in Q4 2016 to $621 million in Q1 2017. Deals to US-based companies, which picked up at the end of 2016 after taking a dive in Q3 2016, again fell in Q1 2017, down to 147. This marks the second lowest quarter of the last three years. Deals outside the US, however, have surged recently from 55 in Q3 2016 to 102 in Q4 2016 and 104 in Q1 2017.

People

Impact Advisors promotes Rob Faix and Mike Garzone to vice president.

Health Catalyst hires Stanley Pestotnik (Pascal Metrics) as VP of patient safety products, and Carolyn Simpkins, MD (BMJ) as CMIO.

Teri Thomas (UNC Health Care) will join Orion Health in May as EVP for global sales, marketing, and strategy.

Doug Abel (Encore) has joined North Kansas City Hospital (MO) as CIO.

Recondo Technology names Dan Grote (ReadyTalk) CFO and Tom Cooke (Advisory Board) (not pictured) VP of channel sales.

Sales

Lancashire Care NHS Foundation Trust selects UK-based Servelec’s Rio EHR.

St. Joseph’s Healthcare System (NJ) will move from Cerner’s Soarian EHR to its Millenium EHR and HealtheIntent population health management system. It has also opted for the company’s RCM software and services.

Arizona-based Banner Health will roll out patient access and provider management technology from Kyruus at its facilities in six states.

Announcements and Implementations

Lake Regional Health System (MO) prepares to roll out a single patient portal for its clinic and hospital patients. The portal, presumably part of the system’s conversion to Meditech 6.1, will go live in May. CIO Scott Poest has advised patients to print out any medical records related to care provided prior to May, since data from the previous portals will apparently not carry over.

Trinity Health (ND) implements Acute, Population, and Practice Performance software from WhiteCloud Analytics.

Mercy (LA) wraps up a six month implementation of an imaging management system from Medicalis across its 50 imaging facilities. It plans to connect the system to its virtual care center in the near future.

Research and Innovation

A Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority report released several weeks ago reveals that, in the first half of 2016, hospitals in the state reported 889 medication errors that were attributed in some way to EHRs and other healthcare IT. Nearly 70 percent of those errors – the majority of which involved missed or incorrect dosages – impacted patients, eight of whom were actually harmed. Co-author and pharmacist Matthew Grissinger counter intuitively stresses that while these results are the “classic tip of the iceberg” when it comes to uncovering medication errors, many of which go unreported, patients should feel no less safe.

A University of Michigan study finds that participation in one or more value-based care programs resulted in fewer hospital readmissions and greater cost savings. Researchers looked at patient care from 2,877 hospitals over a seven-year period and found that participation in Meaningful Use, ACOs, and/or bundled care payment programs helped the organizations save a combined $32 million.

Technology

CPSI will add TruCode’s Encoder coding software to its Evident and Healthland EHRs.

AthenaHealth adds electronic prior authorization technology from CoverMyMeds to AthenaClinicals.

Allscripts puts its DbMotion software – part of its CareInMotion population health management platform -  on the cloud via Microsoft Azure.

Aprima Medical Software will add ActX’s genomic decision-support technology to its EHR.

Privacy and Security

From DataBreaches.net:

• News Corp Australia discovers that privacy settings on the nationwide My Health Record are set to “universal access,” giving the government’s 650,000 registered providers access to the information.
• Tullamore Hospital in Ireland mistakenly sends a fax containing PHI to the office of the Data Protection Commissioner.

Brooklyn-based artist Ace Volkov depicts computer viruses as comic book-like aliens as part of his “Brief History of Computer Viruses” series. Brain.A earns a special place in hacker history for its role as the first detected virus. Characterized by Volkov as a menacing mass of magenta-hued lines, the MS-DOS-based virus was created in 1986 to infect floppy disks.

Government and Politics

President Trump nominates University of Minnesota healthcare economics professor Stephen Parente for assistant secretary for planning and evaluation at HHS, a role that would position him as the main advisor on policy development to HHS Secretary Tom Price, MD. Parente has had a taste of government work, having served as a health policy advisor for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) during his 2008 presidential run.

Other

In Australia, SA Health CIO Bill Le Blanc defends the system’s beleaguered enterprise patient administration system after a coroner complains he can’t properly investigate a patient’s death because the EPAS won’t print out readable paper copies. “It was never designed to be used as a printed medical record,” Le Blanc says. “While we have already made significant improvements, the readability of printed records is an emerging issue across almost all jurisdictions using different electronic medical record systems and is not specific to the electronic medical record system used by SA Health.”

Sponsor Updates

• Besler Consulting will present and exhibit at the 2017 HFMA Northern California Annual Spring Conference April 13 in Sacramento.
• ECG Management Consultants ranks as a top consulting firm in the KLAS report, “Vendor Selection 2017: Crucial Factors to Consider When Choosing a Consulting Firm.”
• AdvancedMD expands its professional services team.
• ZeOmega releases 2017 updates to integrated patient assessments for its Jiva population health management software.
• The local paper profiles Hartford Healthcare’s (CT) plans to build a predictive analytics “command center” powered by GE Healthcare.

Blog Posts

• Creating and Implementing a Revenue Cycle Management Denials Committee (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• Don’t Pull Your YouTube Video Ads: Tips for Ensuring Brand Safety (Evariant)
• Does Your Pre-Registration Process Need an Upgrade? (FormFast)
• Advancements in Diabetes Treatments to Watch (Glytec)
• Looking to Optimize Your Epic Revenue Cycle? Concentrate on These 4 Things (Hayes Management Consulting)
• How to Improve Physician Adoption with Peer-to-Peer Training (HCI Group)
• Physician burnout. Yep, still a thing. (Healthfinch)
• Access is Key in New Area of Healthcare (Healthgrades)
• How Care Coordination Can Help Create High-Quality, Cost-Saving Care Transitions (Healthwise)
• #JoinTheConversation with Experian Health’s Jason Considine at #HIMSS17 (Experian Health)
• Q1-2017: Health IT Market Trends Look Positive (Healthcare Growth Partners)
• 4 Questions with Edward Marx, CIO of NYC Health + Hospitals & Advisory Board EVP (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Healthcare’s Wild West of Information (Spok)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne, Lt. Dan.
More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.
Get HIStalk updates. Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 4/11/17

New Compact Helps Physicians Obtain Multiple State Licenses

The Interstate Medical Licensure Compact Commission begins accepting applications from providers seeking cross-state licensure from one of 18 participating states. The new licensing agreement is expected to ease legislative burdens on providers offering telemedicine services.

Medication errors in hospitals don’t disappear with new technology

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette reports on medication errors at Pennsylvania hospitals that were, at least in part, attributed to EHRs.

The US ACA Individual Market Showed Progress In 2016, But Still Needs Time To Mature

Standard and Poor issues a forward-looking report on insurer performance in individual markets, noting “we expect insurers, on average, to get close to break-even margins in this segment in 2017,” but cautions that 2018 and beyond are uncertain given potential legislative changes and pending legal battles.

Case giving entrepreneurs a hand, with help from MIT

Mark Chance, vice dean for research at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine, launches a program to mentor hopeful healthcare-focused entrepreneurs through the process of starting a company. The program is based on an MIT program that has mentored more than 2,500 participants since its 2000 launch.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 4/10/17

Physician burnout is always a hot topic within informatics circles, especially since clinicians frequently cite the rise of EHRs as a key reason for stress and burnout. In reality, though, it’s difficult to prove causality, especially since increasing requirements for EHR use have generally been timed with governmental regulations, demanding payer programs, and the overall shift from fee-for-service to value-based care. I’m always looking for ideas to help physicians at the breaking point, and a friend recently shared this article about using military training concepts to help physicians build resiliency.

According to the American Psychological Association, resilience is “the process of adapting well in the face of adversity, trauma, tragedy, threats or significant sources of stress – such as family and relationship problems, serious health problems, or workplace and financial stressors.” As physicians, we’re assaulted by these kinds of stressors all the time, and they often cross work/home boundaries as working hours become longer or as physicians bring work home with them, now that they can access charts from anywhere. During residency training, many physicians develop the skills to adapt to the intermittent stress that being a trainee brings – long call nights, resuscitations, emergency surgeries, high-risk procedures, and more. For the most part, residency training doesn’t prepare young physicians for the daily grind of being in an office setting or dealing with the stressors of owning a practice or being an employed physician.

The article discusses statistics for physicians – that depression hits nearly a third of residents, and that physicians have higher suicide rates compared to the rest of the population. It goes on to look at how some Canadian hospitals and medical schools are using training based on US Navy SEAL programs to help build psychological skills. Both populations are under ongoing stress with overlaying episodic stress, sometimes involving life and death situations. I think the latter element is important – the life and death situations. Although many think of those as being in-hospital, emergent-type situations, I see more and more of my primary care colleagues experiencing that “life and death” level of stress even within the boundaries of office-based medicine. When patients can’t afford their medicines and physicians have to cobble together plans to try to ensure compliance, we are in effect fighting for that person’s life.

The diabetic patient who came into my urgent care last night with a blood sugar of 434 wasn’t sick enough to be admitted to the hospital, since his sugars had been high for months and his body had been trying to compensate for it. Yet, he needs intensive therapeutic interventions to get his disease under control. I can send him back to his primary care physician, but then she has to battle to get him to see the diabetic educator, get him a new blood glucose meter to replace his broken one, and try to help him figure out how to get to appointments and take care of his disease when he’s working long shifts as a municipal bus driver. Those situations, which sometimes border on hopeless depending on the patient’s insurance coverage (or lack thereof), job situation, and social supports add to the ongoing level of stress faced by physicians. This is worse now that the primary care physician is going to be penalized for this patient’s lack of blood sugar control.

This problem isn’t unique to our US system. According to the article, studies show that as many as 75 percent of Canadian resident physicians experience burnout. One can anticipate that those burned-out residents are going to carry that baggage into practice. The resiliency training created for the Canadian trainees is delivered as a four-hour course. It encourages trainees to identify how they’re faring on a mental health or stress scale. They grade themselves as green, yellow, orange, or red depending on their current level of stress and dysfunction. Similar to the kind of asthma action plan we provide patients, it also details recommended steps the trainee can take to reduce stress. Another component of the training includes skills to help the body process physical responses to stressors, such as the fight-or-flight response. It seeks to move decision making away from the emotional response and to instead harness the rational thought process.

The article also mentions that “discussions around physician mental health still remain very taboo.” Unfortunately, this is also true in the US. I know of quite a few physicians who have untreated mental health conditions who are afraid to seek help and have it on their records. Our state still asks a question during the license renewal process about treatment for mental health conditions, and people don’t want to risk whatever process might arise from checking “yes” on the affidavit. A friend of mine who is a psychologist specializes in physician care, and doesn’t bill insurance for those patients so that there isn’t a record of treatment.

Although the article doesn’t specifically mention it, we also need to work on skills for physicians to understand that doing their best really is good enough. We can’t really give it more than our best, can we? Although the quality metrics might not support this approach, the idea that we can save everyone or ensure all our patients are compliant is ludicrous. As quality increases, it’s more and more difficult to be “better” when everyone is already earning an A. I’ve lost two colleagues to suicide in my career, and both were brilliant, caring individuals who unfortunately felt their best wasn’t good enough, that they should have been doing more. No one in their lives, including spouse or fiancée, realized how bad things were or that they were at high risk for suicide.

Additionally, this discussion doesn’t just apply to physicians. It applies to all of us working in the patient care arena regardless of your title. Most of my support staff at my patient care sites are paramedics, and many have migrated to urgent care as a solution to the stressors in the field. For those readers not in the patient care space, ask your organizations what they’re doing to address caregiver burnout. Ask your friends and colleagues how they’re doing and offer support when you can. Their lives might just depend on it.

How does your organization address burnout? Email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Readers Write: Top Health IT Marketing Trends From #HITMC

Top Health IT Marketing Trends from #HITMC
By John Trader

John Trader is VP of communications at RightPatient in Atlanta.

I had the opportunity to attend the Health IT Marketing & PR Conference in Las Vegas last week, and thought I’d share some of my top health IT marketing takeaways.

Content, Content, Content

Content was certainly king in terms of session topics. What works. What doesn’t work. How to establish a sound content-marketing strategy (even if you’re a small company with a shoestring budget). My biggest takeaway on content is that marketers need to start with the end in mind. Understand what content resonates with the demographic you target by listening first, and then developing a strategy that addresses customer needs and is strategically presented to them as they make their way down the sales funnel.

I enjoyed Sarah Davelaar’s (from the The Signal Center for Health Innovation) session where she outlined the key elements in content strategy. I also enjoyed a panel discussion featuring four physicians who shared their content consumption habits – where they go to find information, what content resonates with them, and what they like versus what they ignore. The million-dollar question for any health IT marketer is: What influences their decision to buy? Most docs said that conferences are a great place for them to discover new products. Those docs on social platforms like Twitter do pay attention to who shares their posts and who interacts with them. Catchy headlines are important, and most of them look for unique perspectives on issues as opposed to extolling the virtues of a product.

Innovation Versus Value

Conference organizer and Netspective founder Shahid Shah’s opening presentation on day two was excellent (although the amount of information on his slides was a tad overwhelming). There was a lot of discussion at the conference about whether marketers should position themselves as innovators, since nothing we do is truthfully going to "disrupt" healthcare. The truth is, customers care a lot more about value than innovation. One of the best quotes from his presentation was, “Do customers care about what you think is innovation or will they care more about you when you care about what their innovation needs are?” 

Social

Although I didn’t attend any sessions dedicated to social media use or strategy, there were a few that addressed how to navigate the online universe, and how to develop and execute effective social media strategies. “Go where your customers are” seemed to be the general takeaway from attendees of those sessions. Don’t chase the latest shiny social platform just for the sake of having a presence. Again, start with an end goal in mind (create leads and eventually sales), and make sure you are measuring your results (how will you be able to tell if your efforts are successful?) There was also some discussion on how to effectively measure social to gain a better understanding of what works versus what doesn’t work. There was also a lot of chatter moving beyond brand awareness and more into how social efforts are creating leads and sales.

Leveraging the Customer

A recurring theme was how to leverage existing customers to create new business. Kathy Sucich of Dimensional Insight delivered an excellent presentation, where she provided a case study on how she increased her own company’s “share of voice” (a term that was new to me), and gave sound advice on how to successfully leverage customers to create new content and increase brand visibility and messaging. The key takeaway for me here was that capturing and then bringing the customer’s voice to your messaging requires personal relationships with customers. You simply must spend the time to cultivate these relationships by establishing a set of expectations at the outset of the relationship that outlines your plan to work with your customers and get their story in front of others.

Video

There was lot of buzz about creating more video as part of an effective marketing strategy. It continues to be a hot topic of interest because it’s clear that people want to consume more of it. The key is making it resonate. The key seems to be keeping it simple, short, and focused on addressing a problem instead of extolling the virtues of a product. Christine Slocumb’s (of Clarity Quest Marketing) session was excellent in reiterating the point that in this day and age, videos have to be personalized to be effective.

SEO Isn’t Dead

Kristine Schachinger of The Vetters Agency presented an excellent session covering modern SEO practices, soup to nuts. We talked about ways to analyze SEO performance, online SEO resources, ranking factors, inbound link tactics, do’s and don’ts for SEO, how to add Google Search Console to your site, how content affects SEO, and keyword research – just to name a few topics. There was a great deal of interaction between the presenter and the audience, and directly between audience members, which, in my opinion, is what makes this conference excellent. Questions were asked and topics brought up that were a great supplement to Kristine’s curriculum. This is perhaps what I like best about HITMC. It has a more intimate setting than most conferences I attend.

About That Other Conference

The buzz around the conference seemed to be the forthcoming HIMSS marketing conference (which, by the way, I don’t anticipate being able to offer the intimate setting I mentioned above). Many have said they heard through the rumor mill that it may be frowned upon by the marketing community to attend in lieu of supporting HITMC’s more grassroots efforts. I talked to several people who have already signed up for the HIMSS event but seem to be keeping that information to themselves. Other buzz has been the quality of HITMC – most people agree that it’s an excellent conference and gets better each year by addressing the most relevant topics to marketers.

The only drawbacks I found, aside from freezing temps in the conference rooms, was that the few tough questions I asked during Q&As weren’t answered as thoroughly as I would have liked, and there was a lack of substantial, real-world case studies to back up presenter assertions. Overall, I think the conference was a great investment. It’s always helpful for me to be around likeminded professionals eager to gain insight and tips on how we can do our jobs more effectively.

Morning Headlines 4/10/17

Practo Technologies cuts 10% of workforce, explores new revenue engines

India-based provider appointment scheduling vendor Practo lays off 10 percent of its workforce, citing “natural redundancies that emerge as we integrate our 5 acquisitions.”

DHA launches unified electronic medical record system

In Dubai, the Dubai Health Authority’s Rashid Hospital, Al Barsha Medical Center, and several offsite clinics go live on Epic.

Before you send your spit to 23andMe, what you need to know

STAT provides more insight into the genetics-based personal health risk reports 23anMe recently won FDA approval to resume marketing to consumers.

Monday Morning Update 4/10/17

Top News

India-based provider search and appointment-booking tech company Practo lays off 150 – a 10-percent workforce reduction the company attributes to “a combination of natural redundancies that emerge as we integrate our five acquisitions and evolve our businesses, as well as the performance required for the next phase of Practo’s growth.” The company operates in four other countries, and has raised $180 million since launching nine years ago. It acquired Fitho, Genii Technologies, Qikwell Technologies, Instahealth, and Enlightiks – all India-based businesses – between April 2015 and December 2016.

Reader Comments

From North West: “Re: Larry Krassner’s passing. He passed away after a long battle with cancer in late December. I was shocked that it isn’t more widely known and thought that you might want to include something in HISTalk. He was well known in the 70s through early 2000s in the HIT industry. He was part of SMS in the early days, TDS, McKesson, and IDX (before it was bought by GE). He was the consummate salesman and probably responsible for many of the big enterprise deals that SMS and TDS did in the 70s-90s.” 

From Harvest Gal: “Re: Word on the street is that NewCrop has been losing EHR customers – and end-user doctors – over the past couple months. We’ve also heard that those EHR vendors are moving to e-prescribing company DrFirst. Is greater industry consolidation on the horizon?” Unverified. I wouldn’t be surprised given the general state of health IT affairs. NewCrop’s e-prescribing tool has been on the market since 2003, and has been flying fairly under the radar (at least from a media perspective) for the last several years. I last mentioned them in September 2016, when the company added specialty medication prescribing software from AssistRx.

From Lab Tester: “Re: Theranos vs. 23andMe. Seems like Elizabeth Holmes could learn a thing or two from Anne Wojcicki. Both companies faced governmental scrutiny; one continues to go down in flames, while the other seems to be trying to play by the rules.” The Theranos saga does indeed continue: Media reports suggest that founder Elizabeth Holmes owes her own company $25 million -  a fact made semi-public after reports surfaced that some investors were considering suing the company. 23andMe, meanwhile, has seemed very intentional about recovering from the reprimand it received from the FDA in 2013. It seems to have eschewed the media-blitz machine Holmes favored to instead hunker down and legitimize its business model.

From Ambulance Chaser: “Re: Ambulance rides via Uber. It boggles my mind that people are opting for rides to the ER from ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft. Have any of your readers noticed an increase at their facilities in drop-offs from these services?” AC is no doubt referring to this article focusing on the use of ride-sharing companies to get emergency patients to the hospital. While I doubt ER staff have time to pay attention to patient transport, I’ll invite readers to weigh in. It’s just another nail in healthcare’s already deteriorating coffin, if you ask me. The industry has yet to (and probably never will) become the nimble, Amazon-like company that caters to consumer whims – much less one based on a gig-economy model. The regulatory tape is wrapped too tightly at this point, and administration in-fighting would suggest it’s not loosening up anytime soon.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Nearly a third of poll respondents expect blockchain to have a significant impact on healthcare in five to 10 years. Perhaps the more compelling result is the 25 percent of respondents who “don’t know, don’t care.” Realist explains that, “Blockchain will never have a significant impact on HIT; in the short-run, it will be a boost to conferences, consultants, and marketing. In the long-run, it will be utilized but won’t have any material impact.” HITgeek takes a less pessimistic view: “We do not need yet another niche, domain security control. Instead, what we desperately need is a ubiquitous one. Blockchain is a contender for that. We need to determine who will pay for it. Nominally, the beneficiaries will pay through some proxy rather than taxpayer funding. The boundary between what is health data and what isn’t is shifting and porous. Any security technology that draws a bright line border will soon become obsolete. On the other hand, security technology that straddles or ignores the boundary has a greater and continuing return on investment.”

New poll to your right or here: How likely would you be to use a company like 23andMe to better understand your hereditary health risks? Feel free to explain your level of likeliness by leaving a comment.

This Week in Health IT History

One year ago:

• Massachusetts General Hospital, Massachusetts Eye and Ear, and Newton-Wellesley Hospital all go live on Epic over the weekend as part of Partners Healthcare’s $1.2 billion Epic implementation.
• A CMS inspection report confirms that Theranos’ proprietary blood testing analyzer, Edison, failed internal quality control tests 29 percent of the time, while its California lab was also cited for doing tests with unqualified personnel and storing samples at the wrong temperatures.
• e-MDs completes its acquisition of McKesson ambulatory products Practice Choice, Medisoft, Medisoft Clinical, Lytec, Lytec MD, and Practice Partner.
• The DoD brands its Cerner implementation project MHS Genesis.
• Pfizer backs out of its plan to acquire Allegran and move its headquarters to Ireland for tax reasons after the Treasury Department puts new rules in places to make tax inversions less lucrative.

Five years ago:

• The Gingrich Group LLC, doing business as the Center for Health Transformation, files for Chapter 7 bankruptcy in a Georgia court.
• The Coast Guard prepares to go live on its Epic-based EHR.
• A new KLAS report says that Cerner, Meditech, and Siemens are the only HIT vendors that provide their solutions to all world regions.
• A National eHealth Collaborative paper says that HIEs have great potential to improve care and reduce cost, but despite ONC emphasis and incentives, not a lot of value has been realized so far.

Weekly Anonymous Reader Question

Last week I asked readers to share their favorite moment from any past HIMSS conferences:

• Leaving.
• Getting my leadership to explain why a bunch of gray beards in suits with no health IT market experience were getting paid trips to HIMSS, while our actual industry experts (like me) weren’t.
• HIStalkapalooza in Chicago ’15!
• The stillness in the office as the bosses are all gone!
• Going home.
• (From Dr. Jayne) My favorite moment was at HIStalkapalooza in New Orleans at the Rock’n’Bowl. I managed to have pictures taken with both Judy Faulkner and Jonathan Bush. I keep them in a hinged frame on my desk so they constantly have to look at each other. It makes me smile when I am writing for HIStalk.

This week’s question: What passion would you pursue given adequate free time and money?

Last Week’s Most Interesting News

• The FDA authorizes 23andMe to market direct-to-consumer genetic health risk tests and reports.
• VA CIO Rob Thomas confirms the agency is on track to make a decision by July 1 on whether to replace Vista with a commercial EHR vendor.
• Cleveland Clinic launches an investment business, Cleveland Clinic Ventures, that will work with its innovation department to turn new medical breakthroughs into funded spin-off companies.
• Former CMO of Siemens Healthcare, Donald Rucker, MD joins ONC as National Coordinator.
• A media company that Patrick Soon-Shiong, MD rescued from a hostile takeover attempt with a $70 million investment claims that its CEO was forced to personally invest $10 million in NantHealth’s initial round in exchange for the help.

Webinars

April 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “SSM Integrated Health Technologies Clinical Data Migration: Functional and Technical Considerations.” Sponsored by Galen Healthcare Solutions. Presenters: Sandy Winklemann, MHA, RHIA, project manager, SSM Integration Health Technologies; Tyler Mawyer, MHA, managing consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions; Kavon Kaboli, MPH, senior consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions. GE Centricity and Meditech to Epic EHR transition. Join us for a complimentary webinar as present the decisions that are important to consider when performing a clinical data migration from the point of view of  the healthcare organization program manager, the clinical analyst, and the technical implementation team. Our expert panel will survey data migration considerations, best practices, and lessons learned. The webinar will present a unique client perspective, offering insight into considerations surrounding staffing, clinical mapping, legacy application support, and validation and testing.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information on webinar services.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Meditology Services opens offices in Denver, Nashville, and San Diego. The company, which seems to have repositioned itself as a privacy and security consulting firm since I first mentioned it in 2013, already has offices in Atlanta and Philadelphia.

Announcements and Implementations

Northern Arizona Healthcare’s Verde Valley Medical Clinic – Camp Verde implements Versus Advantages Clinic patient flow technology from Versus Technology Solutions.

Several facilities within the Dubai Health Authority (UAE) go live on Epic.

Decisions

• Johnson Memorial Hospital (IN) will go live with Optimum HRIS in May.
• Madison Memorial Hospital’s (ID) HR department will go live with Paychex MyStaffingPro this year.
• Womankind Obstetrics and Gynecology (OH) will switch from Athenahealth to Epic ambulatory next month.

These provider-reported updates are provided by Definitive Healthcare, which offers powerful intelligence on hospitals, physicians, and healthcare providers.

Other

Sponsor Updates

• The Chicago CIO Leadership Association honors TransUnion CIO & CTO Mohit Kapoor with its 2017 CIO of the Year Orbie Award.
• ZirMed updates its Coverage Detection patient payment product.
• CRM Magazine recognizes West Corp. with a 2017 CRM Service Leader Award for Contact Center Infrastructure.
• ZeOmega publishes a new case study demonstrating how Community Health Network/Indiana ProHealth implemented its Jiva case management solution.
• ZirMed releases a new eBook, “The Reality of Patient Payments.”
• Clinical Computer Systems, Inc., developer of the Obix Perinatal Data System, announces that Jake Chacko, Philip Strang, and Chris Zoellner have completed field service manager certification training.

Blog Posts

• Disaster Recovery: Are Your Bases Covered? (TierPoint)
• The 2018 final payment notice: the top four takeaways (Verscend Technologies)
• Safer Patients, Better Care: Help with ECRI Institute’s Patient Safety Concerns (Versus Technology)
• To Build or Buy an Analytics Solution? (Part 3) (Vital Images)
• A monumental impact on patients and staff. (Voalte)
• Denial Management: 10 Tested Techniques to Get Claims Paid (ZirMed)
• [EHR Security Assessments] Your path to optimization (Nordic)
• Focus on High Value, High Impact Optimization Areas to Drive Benefits Realization (Impact Advisors)
• Accelerating a Path to Advanced APMs (Encore Health Resources)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne, Lt. Dan.
More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.
Get HIStalk updates. Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 4/7/17

23andMe, Inc. Granted First FDA Authorization to Market Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Health Risk Reports

More than three years after being shut down by the FDA for selling genetic health risk reports to consumers without clearance, 23andMe finally receives the FDA’s approval to resume sales. The approval covers reports on personal risk for ten conditions, including late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and celiac disease.

Highly confidential psychotherapy records from Maine center listed on the dark web

A mental health center in Maine reports that 4,500 patient records have been stolen by hackers and offered for sale on the dark web. The records include highly-sensitive information, including names, addresses, social security numbers, medial histories, and full session notes.

SAFER Guides

ONC updates its SAFER Guides, a series of guides designed to help healthcare organizations address EHR safety issues.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 4/6/17

For people breathing easy after completing their 2016 Medicare-related attestations, it’s time to start gearing up for next year. Organizations need to register or update their information via the CMS Web Interface  prior to June 30 if they plan to participate as a group. Organizations that plan to use the Consumer Assessment of Healthcare Providers and Systems (CAHPS) for MIPS survey also need to register. There are many other details on who does or does not need to register, so consulting the website and making sure you know whether an ACO or registry will be reporting on your behalf is recommended. For those not breathing easy because they’re still completing 2016 Medicaid-related attestations, good luck! Some states have extended their attestation windows into May.

CMS has also been busy promoting the value of Chronic Care Management, launching a new Connected Care program to raise awareness through the Office of Minority Health and the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy. Connected Care will focus on racial and ethnic minorities along with rural populations who statistically have higher rates of chronic diseases. The new website includes toolkits with detailed information about CCM, resources for implementation, and patient education resources. CCM requires a patient copay, and that has posed a barrier to adoption in my area. Patients already think physicians should be providing these services for free and don’t always understand the value of why CMS is making a push to specifically address the need for services. Although the copay is small, patients living from Social Security check to check and who may be choosing between medication and food are often reluctant to consent to enrollment. Sadly, those can be the patients who most need the services.

CMS has also been busy with its Social Security Number removal initiative. I’m working with my first consulting client on a project to look at how it uses the SSN within the organization and to assess vendor plans to remove the SSN from software systems. There is a new provider webpage, in addition to the main page, for the initiative. Although this program impacts Medicare beneficiaries and the use of the SSN as the de-facto Medicare ID, organizations use the SSN in a variety of different ways. Not everyone is excited about the removal program, as the SSN has also become a proxy for an individual identifier to a large degree. Kind of makes you think about our lack of a national healthcare identifier, doesn’t it?

ONC has updated the SAFER Guides, which are designed to help organizations assess EHR safety and best practices. Topics include organizational responsibilities, contingency (downtime) planning, interfaces, patient identification, clinician communication, and test results reporting/follow-up. I really wanted to review the latter topic, but received an error. There are plenty of practices that need this information. I can’t believe the number of groups I run across that either don’t track their laboratory and diagnostic orders from ordering through completion and patient notification, or track but don’t notify. The era of “no news is good news” should be long gone by now. Patients should never be expected to assume results are normal unless they hear otherwise.

Medicomp Systems announces its Medicomp University event, to be held starting April 24 in Reston, VA. Attendees will gain in-depth knowledge of the Quippe products and how to integrate them into EHRs. I’ve enjoyed watching the Quippe offerings evolve since I first saw it at HIMSS11. If you haven’t seen them, they’re definitely worth a look.

I’m way behind on email again, but it’s been fun to go back and weed through all the premature commentary about the repeal of the ACA. What had us hanging on tenterhooks now seems like a long time ago. For those of you who have never seen them, this is what tenterhooks look like. I’m also catching up on some educational webinars. My new pet peeve is people who use PowerPoint for presentations, but fail to put it in presentation mode, forcing the audience to review shrunken versions of the slides while being distracted by the thumbnail navigation.

I came across this article about what hospitals waste and it’s startling to think about. When patients are discharged, many supplies are thrown out due to concerns about infection control or potential contamination after they’ve been left accessible to patients or visitors. Policies vary dramatically from facility to facility across the country. I’ve worked at places that toss everything and at those where supplies are restocked, and seen all kinds of variations. There’s also the issue of hospitals getting new equipment and needing to get rid of old devices. I once assisted with an effort to send a “gently used” MRI machine to South America – now that was a project.

Scholarly research has been done looking at the problem, with findings that when hospital staff are appropriately incented, waste can be reduced. Many surgeons in one study were unaware of their operating room costs; when they were asked to reduce costs, they met goals where the control group’s costs actually increased. Getting people to be conscious of the true costs of the care provided is central to the concept of value-based care, especially when those costs are obscured, such as costs that are included in a hospital room charge.

During my recent hospitalization, most supplies were kept in a secured cabinet inaccessible to patients and family members, which not only controls costs but reduces contamination and the risk that something would have to be tossed for fear that someone had opened it or otherwise ruined it. Other items that are placed out for every patient (shower products, toothpaste, etc.) are discarded after each patient whether they were used or not, since it’s too difficult to determine if they’ve been opened or used. I specifically asked the staff about this prior to discharge – I hadn’t used anything, since I brought my travel kit with me. But they were going to toss everything, so I grabbed it for a community drive that gathers non-food items to be distributed to food pantries for their clients. You’d think hospital leadership would have considered that when crafting their policies and reached out to a local organization. Maybe they did, maybe they didn’t, but I’m trying to connect the two for some potential community benefit.

What does your hospital do with discarded or excess supplies? Email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

News 4/7/17

Top News

23andMe receives approval from the FDA to market its genetic health risk tests for 10 diseases, including celiac, Parkinson’s, and late-onset Alzheimer’s. The approval – the first for a home DNA test – is no doubt being celebrated by the Google-backed startup, which stopped giving consumers health analysis information in 2013 after an FDA slap on the wrist. The company received approval two years later to disclose a person’s carrier status, and has since been largely providing results to consumers seeking answers about their ancestry.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

This week on HIStalk Practice: The AAFP creates the Center for Diversity and Health Equity to study social determinants of health. The National Governors Association selects seven states to participate in rural health collaborative. MTBC debuts analytics for ACOs. Arizona Connected Care selects referral management tech from Fibroblast. CVS Health awards $1 million to 33 health centers. New report sheds light on physician compensation. American Society of Sleep Medicine studies patient receptiveness to virtual consults. Nancy Gagliano, MD helps readers strategize for MACRA.

Webinars

April 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “SSM Integrated Health Technologies Clinical Data Migration: Functional and Technical Considerations.” Sponsored by Galen Healthcare Solutions. Presenters: Sandy Winklemann, MHA, RHIA, project manager, SSM Integration Health Technologies; Tyler Mawyer, MHA, managing consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions; Kavon Kaboli, MPH, senior consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions. GE Centricity and Meditech to Epic EHR transition. Join us for a complimentary webinar as present the decisions that are important to consider when performing a clinical data migration from the point of view of  the healthcare organization program manager, the clinical analyst, and the technical implementation team. Our expert panel will survey data migration considerations, best practices, and lessons learned. The webinar will present a unique client perspective, offering insight into considerations surrounding staffing, clinical mapping, legacy application support, and validation and testing.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information on webinar services.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

PHI protector CloudVault Health closes a $2.6 million Series A funding round led by investors that include Rudish Health Solutions. President Richard Nelli came to CloudVault in 2015 after a two-year stint at Streamline Health.

Data analytics company Intermedix acquires Nashville, TN-based WPC Healthcare, bolstering the predictive analytics division it created in 2015. WPC CEO Ray Guzman will join Intermedix, also based on Nashville, as SVP of strategy.

Predictive analytics investments continue … Boston-based OM1 secures $15 million in a Series A round led by venture capital firm General Catalyst.

TeleTech Holdings – a global company that specializes in the vague (but presumably profitable) business of customer experience and growth – acquires Connextions from OptumHealth for $80 million. Connextions, which offers tech-enabled member acquisition and retention services, will be folded into TeleTech’s Customer Management Services division.

Drchrono raises $12 million in a Series A funding round led by Runa Capital.

Efforts to eschew becoming a healthcare company don’t stop Alphabet from hiring healthcare tech talent. Job listings for subsidiaries including Sidewalk Labs, Calico, and Verily indicate strong interest (and compensation packages) in computational biologists, robotics experts, and researchers. The Google parent company has already pulled Tom Insel, MD away from heading up the National Institutes of Mental Health, and Jessica Mega, MD from Harvard Medical School.

Redox receives an additional $1 million from the Healthbox-managed Intermountain Healthcare Innovation Fund, bringing its total Series B round to $10 million. The healthcare API vendor took part in the Healthbox Studio Program several years ago, and will now help Intermountain integrate digital health apps with its Cerner system. (Thanks to the reader who reminded me they were on Cerner, not Epic.)

Sales

Sinai Hospital (MD) will roll out predictive analytics from PeraHealth this summer.

Appalachian Regional Healthcare (KY) will begin implementing Meditech’s Web EHR later this year.

People

Stuart Long (Monarch Medical Technologies) joins InfoBionic as CEO.

I2I Population Health names Dawn Berg (Assist Consulting Group), Scot McCray (CamCare) (not pictured), and Jay Wilkes (RyMir Consulting) to its sales team. Adam Ackerman (Relatient) joins the company as director of client development.

Medecision hires Donald Casey, Jr. MD (Alvarez & Marsal) as chief clinical affairs officer, and Ian Chuang, MD (Netsmart) as SVP and chief analytics officer.

Erik Phelps (Epic) joins genetic testing and data analysis startup Tempus as EVP and general counsel.

Announcements and Implementations

Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center (FL) selects oncology data-sharing technology from Syapse as part of a new precision medicine initiative.

The NJSHINE HIE connects to the Camden Coalition HIE, launched in 2010 by the New Jersey-based Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers.

Adirondack Health (NY) will equip local public health agencies and their patients with remote monitoring and videoconferencing services with help from Health Recovery Solutions and the Hixny HIE.

Iowa-based Mercy ACO selects Innovaccer’s Datashop data warehouse to aggregate health data from 65 participating facilities including ambulatory sites, hospitals, and payers.

Government and Politics

FDA Commissioner nominee Scott Gottlieb, MD pledges to uphold the agency’s “gold standard of safety and efficacy” during his confirmation hearing before the Senate HELP Committee. He also stressed that there are ways of modernizing and expediting clinical trials without compromising safety, adding that addressing the opioid crisis and speeding generic drugs to market will be two of his top priorities if confirmed.

Efforts in Missouri to implement an opioid prescription drug monitoring database take one step forward then two steps back when vocal PDMP senatorial holdout Rob Schaaf announces he will finally support a bill authored by proponent Rep. Holly Rehder on the condition that physicians must register on it. The Missouri State Medical Association, however, was quick to tweet its opposition.

Privacy and Security

From DataBreaches.net:

• Behavioral Health Center (ME) discovers that 4,500 records from between 3,000 and 3,500 patients have been stolen and sold on the dark Web.

Research and Innovation

The Washington Post sensationalizes a Mayo Clinic study published in the Journal of Evaluation in Clinical Practice that found 20 percent of patients who asked for a second opinion had been misdiagnosed by PCPs – a result the WaPo author admits is “generally similar to other research on diagnostic error.” The retrospective study of 286 patients found the second diagnosis to be “distinctly different” from the first in 62 cases, the same in 36 cases, and partly correct in the remaining 188.

Technology

Medable develops Cerebrum, machine-learning technology that aggregates health data from a variety of sources to better power smartphone apps like Apple’s HealthKit and CareKit with disease predictions and treatment.

Other

After a recent hospital stay filled with slamming doors and beeping medical equipment, ambient electronic musician Yoko Sen proposes using sound design to reduce alarm fatigue and make hospitals calmer places for patients. She has created a “tranquility area” at Sibley Memorial Hospital (Washington, DC) that offers staff green tea, reclining chairs, soothing music, lavender scents, and projected images. A similar area for patients is under consideration.

@HuffPostComedy urges tweeters to share #AHCASequelTagLines. Legislators seem unlikely to reach any sort of compromise on the rumored resurrection of repeal and replace efforts before they adjourn for a two-week recess.

Sponsor Updates

• Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at the Allscripts Northeast Pro ARUG April 7 in Hartford, CT.
• MedData introduces an app to help providers keep better tabs on patients suffering from binge-watching illness.
• The American College of Radiology features National Decision Support Co.’s latest case study, “Homing in on Quality.”
• The Atlanta Journal-Constitution recognizes Navicure with its Atlanta Metro Area 2017 Top WorkPlaces Award.
• Netsmart is the first and only behavioral health EHR vendor to achieve ONC 2015 Edition Health IT Module Certification.
• Nordic Consulting presents what employees love most about the company.
• CloudWave will exhibit at the HIMSS New England Conference April 11 in West Lebanon, NH.
• Experian Health will exhibit at the HFMA NorCal Spring event April 12-14 in Sacramento, CA.
• Sutherland Healthcare Solutions publishes “Digital Reinvention in Healthcare: How Lawrence General Re-Engineers Their Patient Experience.”
• GE Healthcare adds the CareFinity business continuity and archiving solution from EMedApps to its Centricity Partner Program.

Blog Posts

• Iluminate: 3 Key Takeaways from the HIMSS17 Health IT Conference (Ilum Health Solutions)
• Health Information Technology Opportunities for Patient Safety (Impact Advisors)
• Apply Design Thinking to Healthcare Marketing (Influence Health)
• Call Center Patient Experience: The Impact of Outdated Provider Directories on Patient Access (Kyruus)
• Big Data Analytics Tools for Improved Data Management (Liaison Technologies)
• CMS Emergency Preparedness Regulations: What You Need to Know Now (LiveProcess)
• Winding down from Liberation 2017, gearing up for transformative year (Medecision)
• What MACRA Means for Health Plans (NTT Data)
• Meditech 6.1x Implementation Phases: Part 1 Planning (Parallon Technology Solutions)
• What to Look for When Evaluating Charge Capture: Charge Lag Statistics (PMD)
• 3 Secrets to Getting C-Suite Sales Prospects on the Phone (Salesforce)
• Will 2017 Be the Year for Major Healthcare Price Transparency Reform? (The SSI Group)
• Are You Getting the Most From Your Patient Portal? (Solutionreach)
• Local Digital Roadmaps “We Can Work It Out” (Summit Healthcare)
• Designing informatics for genetic diagnostics: four key questions (Sunquest Information Systems)
• Technology Can Close Critical Gaps in Medication Reconciliation (Surescripts)
• Non-technical Considerations Before Beginning an Epic Connect Project (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• Healthgrades names ‘Best Hospitals’ for 2017 (Infor)
• How to Survive Your Next Home Care Audit (Meditech)
• What Keeps Nurses Up At Night? (Spok)

Contacts

Mr. H, Lorre, Jenn, Dr. Jayne, Lt. Dan.
More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.
Get HIStalk updates. Send news or rumors.
Contact us.

Morning Headlines 4/6/17

FDA Nominee Scott Gottlieb Commits to ‘Gold Standard’

Scott Gottlieb, President Trump’s nominee to run the FDA, had his confirmation hearing before the Senate HELP Committee today, during which he committed to upholding the “gold standard of safety and efficacy,” but noted that he believed there were ways of modernizing and expediting clinical trials without compromising safety.

Missouri senator says he’ll end years of opposition to prescription drug database

In Missouri, efforts to implement an opioid prescription drug monitoring database faces renewed opposition from the Missouri Medical Association, which opposes any legislation requiring doctors to check the database before writing opioid prescriptions.

Thousands of brokers exit HealthCare.gov as plan commissions go unpaid

Insurance resellers are exiting the exchange markets as payers stop paying commissions on a variety of plans. Utah-based insurance broker Craig Paulson explains, “they’re not paying commissions on platinum plans, and they are not paying them for special enrollment plans which cover some of the sickest patients.”

How Redesigning The Abrasive Alarms Of Hospital Soundscapes Can Save Lives

After a recent hospital stay filled with slamming doors and beeping medical equipment, ambient electronic musician Yoko K. Sen proposes using sound design to reduce alarm fatigue and make hospitals calmer places for patients.