Dr. Jayne’s HIMSS Report – Sunday

I arrived in Orlando last night, allowing time to get together with some friends for a nice dinner before the craziness of HIMSS begins. We were happy to discover that we can walk back to our hotel from HIStalkapalooza Monday night, no designated driver or surge-priced Uber needed. After a nice walk around the Disney grounds this morning, we headed to the convention center for registration.

Most people enter the convention center from the International Drive side, which means they miss out on some of the things you can see coming in from the car park in back. The registration lines there were short (although the parking was pricey and hard to find – I hope it’s not a total gong show tomorrow.) In the registration lobby, they have a hydroponic garden growing a variety of lettuce, basil, kale, Swiss chard, and more.

From there, it’s up the escalators to the pedestrian bridge, where you can see the massive loading docks that facilitate arrival of the booths and equipment.

Parts of the exhibit hall were still wall-to-wall crates, even after 1 p.m. Sunday.

I’m traveling with a friend this year who has never been to a HIMSS in Orlando, so we went walkabout so she could get the overall layout of the convention center. It’s definitely got a more streamlined floor plan compared to Las Vegas with its basement booths. We came across the Wellness Pavilion, which consists of a handful of treadmills and elliptical machines. Because nothing says professional like hopping onto a piece of exercise equipment while you’re business casual with your HIMSS tote bag.

We came across this sculpture outside Hall F, right near the Wellness Pavilion. For those of you with clinical backgrounds, doesn’t it remind you of trabecular bone?

Just about the time I told my friend we’d have to lay bets on how long it would be before I ran into someone I knew, we ran across a friend of mine who built the first clinical data repository at the medical center where I did most of my training. It was good to catch up, but HIMSS is such a busy week that it’s difficult to get more than a couple of minutes with people sometimes.

From there, we headed up I-Drive to grab lunch at the Shake Shack, because sometimes you just need comfort food after you’ve already walked seven miles by mid-day. From there it was a quick swing over to the outlet malls, which were absolutely packed, then back for the HIMSS opening reception.

Usually the reception has some themed performers outside to welcome attendees – showgirls in Las Vegas, and last year flappers and gangsters in Chicago. This year there was a performer in the lobby that defies description – or at least defied description until we heard two attendees chatting on the way to the parking garage. One mentioned it was “A woman in a flowy dress on a stick flying through the air.” The other pondered, “Why am I not there?” I don’t know how else to describe it other than what they said, so I’ll let a picture be a thousand words.

The reception seemed to be a step up from previous years, with short drink lines and a good number of food stations. Choices included pad Thai, mini Caesar salads, antipasto cups, paella, and fish tacos. Dessert options included chocolate covered marshmallows and “Dragon’s Breath” popcorn chilled with liquid nitrogen and then served with your choice of toppings. Entertainment included a band with a woman playing some kind of virtual harp instrument that was strung from the stage above the audience, but I couldn’t get a good picture of it.

There were plenty of opportunities to catch up with old friends and meet new ones. The only downsides were the dimness of some parts of the room and there not being enough places to set your drink while you nibbled, but that’s par for the course for events like this. We did work our way into a table of clinical informaticists and met one who works at a hospital in Grand Cayman, so if you’re going to make new friends, that’s the kind of friend to make.

Over the course of the day I walked more than nine miles, so turning in relatively early seemed like a good idea. I definitely need to rest up for HIStalkapalooza.

Morning Headlines 2/20/17

Opening Keynote: The Art of Deception: How Hackers and Con Artists Manipulate You and What You Can Do About It

HIMSS17 kicks off as white coat hacker Kevin Mitnick takes the stage to discuss emerging cybersecurity threats and how to detect and defend against them.

Touted IBM supercomputer project at MD Anderson on hold after audit finds spending issues

Auditors find that MD Anderson Cancer Center’s now stalled effort to employ IBM Watson in the fight against cancer was paid for with funds that were secured by hospital executives that intentionally sidestepped purchasing rules.

$5.5 million HIPAA settlement shines light on the importance of audit controls

Memorial Healthcare Systems (FL) pays $5.5 million to settle HIPAA violations after discovering that a former employee continued to use his login credentials to access more than 80,000 patient records without permission.

Forbes World’s Most Admired Companies

Cerner, CVS Health, St. Jude Medical Abbott Laboratories, and Aetna are named to Forbes Most Admired Companies list.

From HIMSS 2/19/17

It was pretty dead in the convention center today, which I assume means that those who paid for pre-conference sessions were dutifully and (hopefully enjoyably) attending them. Attire ranged from shorts to suits, reminding me that one of these days I’m going to show up wearing a tuxedo, which might be fun since I’ve never worn one (or perhaps the white dinner jacket variety would be cooler). I wasn’t interested enough to head back to the opening reception, so I have nothing to report about that. I’ve always found it to be a waste of time except as a convenient location to try to meet up with people for a dinner outing, which I’ve never done either.

There’s free WiFi in the convention center, named OCCC_Free or something like that. I Speedtested it and it was pretty good with low latency and a 5 mbps download speed, although that will likely degrade to a standstill when the place fills up. 

This is Paul, the friendliest and most efficient registration person I’ve seen. I wish Paul could be cloned and assigned to moving people through lines everywhere (like in airports). He greeted me like a long-lost relative and steered me to the kiosk, where a quick barcode scan from my phone’s copy of the registration email triggered printing of my badge. Then all I needed to do was pick up the pre-loaded backpack and it was done – no longer do you have to slide through the line stuffing your new bag with various publications, handouts, and addenda. HIMSS improves the process every year. Paul was the first person I encountered and he made me feel valued and welcome. He was working the entrance by the parking lot.

Caradigm always does great backpacks and the one’s the best. I’ll actually take this home for later use instead of stuffing it into a trash can somewhere between leaving the hall for the last time Wednesday afternoon and arriving at the airport. I like everything about it, including the color.

The exhibit hall is shaping up, although it was hot as blazes in there Sunday afternoon when we were setting up our microscopic booth (#4845). Luckily, it took us about five minutes. The HIMSS exhibit person helped us choose a great location even though we don’t have any HIMSS points and we always get the smallest, cheapest available booth. We’re on a corner near some far more impressive neighbors, although I guess it really doesn’t matter since we’re not selling or demonstrating anything.

I see the exhibit hall opens at 10 Monday morning and at 9:30 the next two days. Is it my imagination that it gets earlier every year, not to mention that it now doesn’t close for lunch like it used to? I say HIMSS should just ring the cash registers even harder by running the exhibits 24×7 during conference week – they are almost there already. HIMSS18 would be ideal since it’s in Las Vegas, where the casinos never close so that neon-stupored gamblers irrationally feed the profit engine all night long.

Here is our magnificently furnished HIMSS edifice, a study in cost-effective restraint. The back banner cost $30. The two pull-up signs were $79 each. The table drape was $40. The smokin’ doc standee was $80. Total cost: around $300, and all of it is reusable if I decide it’s worth packing and shipping back home (it all fits into two fairly small and light boxes that we just carry into the exhibit hall). Recall the results of my just-completed reader survey, which found that the most important reason people stop at booths is because of friendly, alert reps. That was a relief since that’s all we really have. Still, it’s fun when executives timidly inquire if it’s OK to take a selfie with the smokin’ doc, then beam proudly with their arm slung over the standee’s shoulder as we snap a picture for them and wonder exactly what they’re going to do with it.

A great thing about our booth location is that we’re just down from NTT Data, which will apparently again feature the amazing magician-psychic Bob. I watched jaws drop, tears flow, and people abruptly walk away in confused disbelief as last year as Bob told attendees things there’s no way he should know, such as, “Your mother died recently and was buried in a purple choir robe.”

We’re giving away those fantastic conference first aid kits from Arcadia Healthcare Solutions again to help attendees deal with the inevitable aches, blisters, and gastric upset that the conference creates. The box of them was sitting on our little table with this cute note.

Thirst-slaking isn’t cheap at the Orange County Convention Center. At least it was a 20-ounce soda and it was ice cold.

Remember the old days when badge ribbons were rare and those who had them were envied as movers and shakers? No longer – HIMSS puts out a rack full of them for anyone who wants one and vendors give them away, too. I think HIStalk may have been an innovator since I think I did this in around 2006 with some kind of snarky, long-forgotten saying that I was afraid would get me in trouble. I think it was the same year I was snapping a photo in the exhibit hall and someone from HIMSS scolded me.

I’m puzzled by this restroom sign. Are there times when the floor is wet and yet it isn’t slippery?

A reader tipped me off to an Orlando tourist area scam that’s been written up in the local papers. You come back to your hotel room and find pizza delivery flyers that have been flung under the door. Hungry and tired, you call in your order, which never arrives. The reason: there’s no such place – it’s just a thief’s phone to which you’ve just provided your credit card number. Google the restaurant name before ordering, like the non-existent La Boheme Pizza above. The second clue is that the number is often a mobile voicemail box that’s full, probably with messages from angry customers demanding to know why their imaginary pizza is taking so long. The reader is staying in a HIMSS hotel and has received two fake ads so far, while I have received one. Perhaps they should have just replicated a Domino’s or Papa John’s flyer and used their own telephone number to suppress suspicion, although maybe those places aren’t as appealing. The flyer also offers dine-in and carry out where the fraud wouldn’t work, but without an address, those are probably seldom chosen by hotel guests with cranky children wearing Disney ears or who are happily shedding their HIMSS badges for the day.

Akron Children’s Hospital (OH) hires Harun Rashid (Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh) as VP/CIO.

A reader tipped me off that five bidders are in the hunt to supply Nova Scotia with a provincial clinical information system: Allscripts, Evident, Meditech, Cerner, and Harris Healthcare.

A University of Texas System audit finds spending irregularities in the money-losing MD Anderson Cancer Center’s now-stalled $62 million IBM Watson-powered Expert Oncology Advisor project. The audit found that the system hasn’t even been piloted anywhere and contains outdated drug and clinical trials information, while on the financial side, MDACC  didn’t run a competitive bidding process, paid fees that were set just below the amounts that would have required board-level approval, and spent donated funds before they were received. 

We spent a chunk of time today hauling HIStalkapalooza stuff (banners,signs, etc.) to the House of Blues. It’s looking good for Monday evening. HOB is a pretty cheap Uber ride for those planning to imbibe. Doors open at 6:30, dinner and music start at 7:00, the HISsies will kick off at 7:45, and Party on the Moon will play from around 8:15 or 8:30 until 11:00. We usually don’t open the bar first thing because of the cost when most people are still filing in, but I’m going to bump up against the HOB minimum and figured I might as well start the drinks earlier and fancy up the menu at little. Please take a moment to thank the companies sponsoring the event – it’s pretty generous of them knowing they are funding the attendance of their competitors and non-decision-makers whose only common attribute is that they are fellow HIStalk readers.

Here’s an important note. As usual, we’ll lock the HIStalkapalooza doors no later than 8:30 and nobody (even invitees) will be allowed in afterward. Reason: each person who passes the HOB clicker guy costs me about $200, and I don’t like paying for someone to drop my for a quick drink on the way to somewhere else. I’ll be lucky to break even on the event and latecomers could push me into the red with little benefit to anyone.

I don’t have many Orlando recommendations, but I can say that I’ve been happy with these modestly priced restaurants where I had dinner the last three nights, all a short drive from the convention center: Delmonico’s Italian Steakhouse, Ciao Italia, and Bahama Breeze.

From HIMSS 2/17/17

 

Orlando weather is perfect, with lots of 80-degree sunshine and comfortably cool mornings at around 60. I took a long walk today around the North, South, and West parts of the convention center. HIMSS is in the oldest (West) part on the other side of International Drive from the others, opposite the Hyatt (formerly known as the Peabody, where the first HIStalkapalooza was held in 2008). Every HIMSS conference that I’ve attended in Orlando was on the West side except one, which I seem to remember moved across the street for just that one time right after the new part opened.

A vendor reader sent me an email that HIMSS unintentionally sent him that apparently acknowledges that the entire HIMSS membership database – not just those who registered for HIMSS17 – is being spammed with conference-related, paid vendor promotional emails (do you see the theme with HIMSS misdirecting emails?) The reader’s concern is that potential prospects might get alienated right before the conference, while mine is that an adult would write the term “btdubs” in referring to the shorter and more obvious (but less cutesy) “BTW.”

 

The convention center was close to empty today, with just a few casually dressed boothers eating lunch in the vast open spaces they shared with setup people and equipment operators, the harmony of which for some reason made me happy.

You must arrive to the HIMSS conference days early if you want to spot this rare phenomenon – empty chairs and tables. These will soon be coveted by well-dressed IT nerds desperate to sit to gulp down their high-cost, low-quality, precariously-balanced salads or sandwiches, but who find themselves blocked by non-eaters camped out with their laptops, phones, and papers. I was speculating on this and arrived at the conclusion that conferences don’t want you sitting comfortably since that doesn’t pay the bills like forced marches through the exhibit hall.

Here’s what’s happening Sunday. The opening reception is right in the convention center this time instead of across the street at the Hyatt, which is nice because people were always getting lost trying to find it.

I don’t think the fire-breathing “Epic” on this convention center sign refers to the red-lettered one, but you never know given its penchant for whimsicality.

Perhaps it’s a testament to the inherent good-naturedness of humans that this unsecured but apparently important switch is placed right on the I-Drive sidewalk in front of the convention center. I pictured flipping it and watching the entire facility go dark.

Getting passers-by into your HIMSS booth requires having friendly, alert booth reps, according to the nearly half of poll respondents who said it’s the most important factor. You will see endless examples next week where companies have invested heavily in the low-percentage items, but failed to pay adequate attention to this most important one.

I always wonder what’s going on when I see an empty exhibit hall booth where a company didn’t show up. Did they change their mind, go out of business, get stuck somewhere snowy, or run out of money to send employees? Maybe I’ll keep a list and follow up afterward.

New poll to your right or here: what do you think the VA will do with regard to its EHR?

Welcome new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Ilum Health Solutions. The company, just launched by drug maker Merck, helps hospital improve infectious disease outcomes and antimicrobial stewardship via technology that helps clinicians stay connected to real-time health system patient data. It offers clinical decision support to maintain treatment pathway adherence, a Command Center Dashboard for case browsing and prioritization, and automatic creation of CLSI-standard antibiograms. It reports key measures from cases to cohorts, giving hospital leaders the ability to track performance such as patient outcomes, clinical pathway adherence, prescriber-level resource utilization, clinical outcomes from stewardship programs, rates of disease, antibiotic use trends, and automated NHSN AUR reporting. Hospitals benefit from reduced inappropriate antibiotic use and and variability in care that can lead to sepsis. Thanks to Ilum Health Solutions for supporting HIStalk.  

The Wall Street Journal says Theranos was down to $200 million in cash at the end of 2016, having burned through $700 million of investor money. The company had no revenue in 2015 or 2016, has no funds set aside for any lawsuit liability (at least $240 million in suits have been filed against it), and has yet to earn FDA approval to sell its only remaining product, the MiniLab testing machine. Imagine valuing a company with zero revenue at $9 billion before its bubble burst.

Connectivity vendor Ellkay acquires the assets of CareEvolve, which include its lab outreach portal and connectivity.

I will assume that Party on the Moon meant “can’t wait” in their Facebook update and are actually happy to see us all again. They’re going to be amazing.

An HIT Moment With … Brandon Palermo, MD

An HIT Moment with … is a quick interview with someone we find interesting. Brandon Palermo, MD, MPH is executive director and chief medical officer, Healthcare Services and Solutions (HSS), Merck & Co. Ilum Health Solutions, which was launched this week, offers a technology-powered program that helps hospitals improve their infectious disease outcomes and supports antimicrobial stewardship programs.

What was Merck’s vision in creating Ilum Health Solutions?

Recognizing the critical role digital health can and should play in the fight against infectious diseases and antimicrobial resistance, we saw an opportunity to leverage Merck’s expertise and resources to create an innovative solution that truly addresses the needs of patients and hospital customers. And, we wanted to do it with the same evidence-based approach and rigor that Merck applies to all areas of innovation.

So, we created Ilum Health Solutions, which provides an array of tools and services to help hospitals and health systems improve outcomes for conditions like sepsis and pneumonia, and implement key components of their antimicrobial stewardship initiatives. As quality standards from CMS and The Joint Commission continue to evolve in the area of infectious diseases, Ilum is focused on partnering with health systems to help meet and exceed their quality goals.

Ilum is part of Merck’s Healthcare Services & Solutions group and operates independently from Merck’s pharmaceutical products business.

How important is early recognition and evidence-based treatment of sepsis in hospitals?

Very important. Sepsis results in 750,000 deaths in the United States every year and is a major cost driver in health systems.

We know that following evidence-based pathways for sepsis can save lives, but it’s not that simple. These pathways call for interventions where time is critical, and early recognition of sepsis is a challenge that continues to vex health systems. I can tell you from my own experience as a practicing physician that this can be a huge hurdle.

We’ve already seen where our technology can move the needle. Preliminary results of a pilot study at East Jefferson General Hospital, which we presented last December at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s Annual Forum, showed that our CDS product helped clinicians improve sepsis recognition and adherence to evidence-based care, leading to significantly improved outcomes and reduced resource utilization.

What is the best use of technology in supporting the responsible use of antibiotics?

Technology needs to give us antibiotic foresight, not just hindsight. A root cause of antibiotic resistance is the systemic overuse and inappropriate use of antibiotics. While many factors account for this, a key issue is the lack of timely clinical information at the point of care.

Many stewardship programs in hospitals today only provide feedback on antibiotic prescriptions one or more days after the patient has already been started on an antibiotic. But it’s important to use technology to engage and guide clinicians in real time from the beginning when an antibiotic is ordered and to continue tracking pathway adherence as additional microbiology data become available. And it’s important to be able to support this within their existing workflows.

Technology also needs to effectively connect everyone on the stewardship team – doctors, nurses, quality managers, pharmacists, and healthcare executives.

What technologies does the company offer and what integration with existing systems is required?

Hospitals and clinicians need help accessing important data that are often buried within complex EMRs. In addition to the CDS product I mentioned, we also have a Command Center, which is an intuitive data dashboard. Together, these tools help promote early recognition of infectious diseases, adherence to evidence-based clinical pathways and initiation of appropriate interventions. They enable case monitoring and prioritization on both an individual and aggregate level and they provide automated outcomes reporting configured to hospital-specific initiatives to track program performance and impact.

Our collaborations with partner hospitals launch with two parallel tracks — benchmarking and integration. We assist with benchmarking to establish baselines and identify quality goals for improvement. During this time, we integrate to existing data feeds – ADT, lab results, orders, and med admin feeds – which are widely available in most health systems. The addition of our CDS solution can then leverage the integration work already completed, ensuring a simplified upgrade process. So Ilum can help hospitals identify and target areas for quality improvement. For example, antibiotic prescribing variability and C. diff rates, and provide tools to help achieve the desired outcomes.

What will the company’s focus be for the next five years?

Our plan is to build out disease modules for various types of infections using a value- and data-driven approach. We plan to expand to hospitals and health systems across the country and continue to bring key industry players together.

We have to keep generating evidence to show the value of what we’re doing. We can’t just say it works. We have to continue to show it works.

Morning Headlines 2/17/17

City delays planned $764M record-keeping system at hospitals

NYC Health + Hospitals delays its $764 million Epic rollout after ending the year with a $779 million deficit. A hospital spokesman denies that the decision was financially motivated.

CommonWell Becomes First National Network to Use the Argonaut Project’s FHIR Specifications

CommonWell implements Project Argonaut’s FHIR specifications into its core services, allowing its customers to use FHIR-based outbound query and retrieval capabilities.

NHS Scotland Selects NextGate to Assign and Manage the Community Health Index (CHI) Unique Patient Identifier

NextGate is selected to implement a national master patient index system in Scotland.

Community Health Systems Announces Definitive Agreement to Divest Eight Hospitals

Steward Health Care (MA) acquires eight hospitals from Community Health Systems. The transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2017, following regulatory approvals.

News 2/17/17

Top News

Financially struggling NYC Health + Hospitals pushes back its Epic project “a few months” with just two of 11 hospitals live.

A health system spokesperson refused to answer a reporter’s question about its original project deadlines and budget and completion estimates.

NYCHHC’s annual budget deficit is running at $800 million and is expected to swell to a nearly $2 billion annual shortfall by 2020.

---

Reader Comments

From Sporadic Emission: “Re: HIMSS. Just announced a new health IT dictionary. Perhaps it contains a definition for ‘interoperability,’ but it’s only available as a $43 paperback – not even as a PDF.” I wonder if it provides the definition of “HIMSS?”  

From Phinneas: “Re: Aventura. Shut its doors Wednesday with no employee severance.” Not true, the company says, although they did make some changes that  they will describe in more detail later. 

From Caughtinatrap: “Re: Curaspan, now Navihealth. Layoffs in Newton, MA with at least four executives let go.” Unverified. I couldn’t find a cached copy of the executive page to compare.

From Six Degrees of Wayne: “Re: Epic. Lars-Oluf Nielsen (who HIStalk had published a couple years ago left Epic to become CEO of iMDsoft) recently returned to Epic without much advance notice to lead the Implementation Division. Tina Perkins is apparently out of that role without much warning. Lots of drama. A quick check of the news seems to show that iMDsoft was acquired by another company not long after Lars started there. Sounds like an interesting dodge, and probably an even more interesting payday for the House of Nielsen.” IMDsoft was acquired by Harris Computer in December 2016, while the LinkedIn of Lars shows he left in November 2016 and rejoined Epic in January 2017 as SVP/chief implementation officer.

---

HIStalkapalooza Sponsor Profiles

Optimum Healthcare IT is a leading healthcare IT staffing and consulting services company based in Jacksonville Beach, FL. Recently named the Best in KLAS Overall IT Services Firm, Optimum Healthcare IT provides world-class consulting services in advisory, implementation, training and activation, Community Connect, analytics, security, and managed services – supporting our client’s needs through the continuum of care. Our excellence in service is driven by a leadership team with more than 100 years of experience in providing expert healthcare staffing and consulting solutions to all types of organizations.

At Optimum Healthcare IT, we are committed to helping our clients improve healthcare delivery. By bringing the most proficient and experienced consultants in the industry together to identify our clients’ issues, we work to explore the right solutions to fit their organization’s goals. Together, we identify and implement the best people, processes, and technology to ensure our client’s success.

By listening, we understand our clients’ unique needs and then select only the most qualified candidates for your organization – and then we constantly follow-up to make sure the consultants remain a perfect fit. Our team brings years of healthcare clinical, operational, and IT knowledge and takes the time to understand the uniqueness of your organization, working collaboratively with your staff to customize solutions that are specific and targeted to your needs. Without sacrificing quality, we are committed to providing world-class consulting services, at a reasonable cost. Our role is to act as trusted advisors to our clients – your success is our success.

Since 2005, Philips Wellcentive has driven quality improvement, revenue growth and business transformation for providers, health systems, employers, and payers transitioning to value-based care. Our highly scalable, cloud-based, and value-driven population health management solution provides long-term partnership services to impact clinical, financial, and human outcomes. Recognized as a leader in population health management in reports by IDC Health, KLAS, and Chilmark, Philips Wellcentive helps customers provide care management for more than 30 million patients and achieve more than $500 million annually in value-based revenue. Stop by booth 2105 at HIMSS; visit www.wellcentive.com; and follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Validic provides the industry’s leading digital health platform connecting providers, pharmaceutical companies, payers, wellness companies, and healthcare IT vendors to health data gathered from hundreds of in-home clinical devices, wearables, and consumer healthcare applications. Reaching more than 223 million lives in 47 countries, its scalable, cloud-based solution offers one connection to a continuously-expanding ecosystem of consumer and clinical health data, delivering the standardized and actionable insight needed to drive better health outcomes and power improved population health, care coordination, and patient engagement initiatives. To learn more visit www.validic.com, connect with us on Twitter @Validic, or stop by Booth #7281-33 at HIMSS.

Versus not only provides a multi-platform, scalable approach to RTLS, we have the software solutions, expert consulting and implementation services to ensure your project’s success. We are your partner for process improvement. Visit booth 1723 for a live demonstration of how we combine our KLAS-leading location accuracy with your existing Wi-Fi locating for enterprise visibility into your operations. And, see how our analytics drive process improvements that ultimately increase access and enhance the patient experience.

Clearsense is a data science company that offers a cloud-based analytics solution that works with any data source and can be rolled out in a fraction of the time required for a traditional data warehouse. Its real-time, cloud-based, subscription-priced, scalable system helps healthcare organizations respond to the pressure to use data to make better and faster decisions. Examples: reducing adverse events, improving patient flow, hitting quality and patient satisfaction targets, driving research, and managing cost and payment.

---

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I traveled to Orlando today. The airport was mobbed (only one shuttle is running between the terminal and gates as the other is being replaced in a months-long project) and baggage claim was a bit of a mess, but otherwise the weather is good and the condo I rented via VRBO is fabulous, maybe 1,500 square feet overlooking a lake with everything you could possible want (including a pool table) for far less money than a hotel. It’s supposedly within a half-mile or so walk to the convention center, although I got in late and haven’t ventured out yet. No offense to my fellow HIMSS attendees, but I’m happy to be able to escape the maelstrom, pop open a beer from the refrigerator after a long day, and either make an easy dinner or have it delivered without queueing up at the tourist trap restaurants where all the other badge-wearers expensively and loudly graze. Life is too short to start the day waiting in a breakfast or coffee line that’s moving slower than the new LinkedIn user interface.

I haven’t even looked at the conference schedule yet, so I guess that’s on the agenda sometime in the next day or two. I have scheduled no appointments, made no commitments to visit particular booths, or done anything else that would impede my ability to – like a child – wander around stopping to look at whatever catches my eye. On my must-do list, though, is the triumphant return of the world-class scones baked on site by MedData that I noticed in my HIMSS guide, truly the best giveaway I have ever witnessed (and eaten). It’s always a toss-up among their rotating flavors – is passion fruit better than orange? I shall be happy to weigh the evidence and report.

With the HIMSS conference, I’ll be skipping the usual news format and will instead tell you what I’m seeing and hearing, ignoring all but the most significant vendor announcements (which is probably 1 percent of them, the remainder just being a pointless PR stake in the ground). You can read or download/print my HIMSS guide, which tells you what my sponsors will be doing, including presentations, swell giveaways, and fun social events.

This week on HIStalk Practice: Metropolitan Center for Mental Health replaces paper with TenEleven Group tech. New York physicians begin to see the benefits of e-prescribing. CareSync prepares to launch new CPC+ protocols. Furhmann Health Center implements InboundMD. Answer Health on Demand joins Great Lakes Health Connect. Mental Health Center of Denver selects RxRevu e-prescribing software. Liberty HealthShare rolls out Salus Telehealth.

---

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information on webinar services.

---

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Allscripts announces Q4 results: revenue up 23 percent, adjusted EPS $0.14 vs. $0.13, beating revenue expectations but falling short on earnings. Shares dropped slightly in after-hours trading Thursday following the announcement. The company said in the earnings call that it sold one domestic Sunrise account in the quarter and another two in the UK. It has doubled annual bookings since the current executive team joined the company in 2012 even as the market changed from selling regulatory compliance to selling ROI. 

Market research firm Peer60 renames itself to Reaction, saying the old name was too confusing. I’ve seen “Peer360” countless times, so I get it. Plus it’s one fewer “small first letter” company to conform to my HIStalk journalistic style sheet that requires a capital first letter (except when I forget). I like Reaction, although Peer60 would provide more fruitful Google searches.

MIT and Harvard’s Broad Institute wins its patent battle over CRISPR genome editing technology, likely the most valuable biotechnology patent ever filed.

After Cigna terminates its planned merger with Anthem and instead sues Anthem for nearly $15 billion, Anthem responds by filing its own lawsuit seeking a restraining order to prevent Cigna from terminating the merger.

---

Sales

NHS National Services Scotland signs a multi-year contract with NextGate to replace its Community Health Index with a more up-to-date EMPI solution.

Hospital Sisters Health System (IL) signs a three-year contract with LogicStream Health for its clinical process measurement tools.

Maine’s HealthInfoNet HIE selects Orion Health’s Amadeus precision medicine and analytics software.

---

Announcements and Implementations

Nemours Children’s Health System (FL) integrates e-prescribing software for controlled substances from HID Global with Epic.

Health Catalyst develops the MACRA Measures & Insights resource application to help providers track and measure MACRA measures across the enterprise.

MCG Health will share its care guidelines and analytics with payers and providers via the InterSystems HealthShare data-sharing tool.

Harvard Pilgrim Health Care (MA) rolls out Data Diagnostics analytics software from Quest Diagnostics and Inovalon.

Aprima, EClinicalWorks, and NextGen Healthcare join the Surescripts National Record Locator Service.

---

Government and Politics

CMS publishes a proposed rule aimed at stabilizing the individual and small group markets that would cut the open enrollment period in half.

Meanwhile, House Republican leaders and new HHS Secretary Tom Price provide some details about their proposed ACA replacement that includes replacing subsidies with tax credits, reducing payments by 50 percent to the 31 states that expanded Medicaid to eliminate an open-ended federal entitlement in favor of a fixed grant, and encouraging insurance sales across state lines. They did not offer a side-by-side comparison, a breakdown of costs, or the number of ACA-insured people they estimate will continue to have coverage. Here is my bellwether – an HSA is not insurance, and neither is any plan whose maximum payout is capped. You buy insurance to prevent catastrophes, so I think by definition any plan that allows or requires someone to file bankruptcy because their insurance has been exhausted after receiving medically necessary care isn’t really insurance – it’s just premium payment assistance.

A federal appeals court strikes down a Florida law that prohibits doctors from asking patients if they own guns. Doctors opposed the law in considering gun safety questions an important part of public health screening. The court preserved one part of the law that bars doctors from discriminating against gun-owning patients.

---

Technology

CloudWave adds managed backup and security services to its OpSus Healthcare Cloud service line.

Epic will add care management technology from XG Health Solutions to its Healthy Planet population health management software later this year.

---

Other

CommonWell wraps up integration of The Argonaut Project’s latest FHIR specifications with its data-exchange services, giving members the ability to use FHIR-based capabilities when accessing data across the network.

Japanese tea ceremony aficionado John Halamka will conduct “The Way of Tea” Monday from 3:00 until 4:00 in the Vital Images booth. It’s cool that Vital is honoring the Japanese roots of parent company Toshiba Medical in presenting a ritual that includes “a series of precise hand movements and graceful choreography, in a serene ‘Tatami Room’ within the Vital exhibit on the conference floor.” John will speak about Japanese culture and health IT afterward.

Interesting: 20th Century Fox created fake news sites to promote its new drama about a wellness spa that offers a phony disease cure, creating sites such as the “Indianapolis Gazette,” “NY Morning Post,” and even “HealthCureGov.com” that offered clickbait fake stories such as “Utah Senator Introduces Bill to Jail, Publicly Shame Women Who Receive Abortions” and “BOMBSHELL: Trump and Putin Spotted at Swiss Resort Prior to Election.” Other stories claimed that the new administration had banned MMR vaccine and that the AMA had recognized that a third of the country is suffering from “Trump depression disorder,” intentionally phony and sensationalistic stories that were dutifully repeated on Facebook by clueless dolts and hyper-partisan groups (was that redundant?).

---

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic releases a new podcast, “The importance of mentoring in healthcare IT.”
• The Technology Association of Georgia includes Ingenious Med in its list of the Top 40 Most Innovative Technology Companies in Georgia.
• LogicStream Health releases version 6.0 of its Clinical Process Measurement platform.
• LogicWorks releases a new eBook, “Continuous Compliance on AWS.”
• Orion Health announces that its Rhapsody Integration Engine is now in use at more than 640 healthcare organizations in 36 countries.
• Gartner includes PerfectServe in its Market Guide for Clinical Communication and Collaboration.
• Lexmark wins the healthcare market leadership award from Buyers Lab.

Blog Posts

• The Importance of a Learning Culture in Healthcare IT (Impact Advisors)
• Help for the Vulnerable: Identify Protection Services that Count (ID Experts)
• Imprivata Confirm ID earns Citrix stamp of approval (Imprivata)
• Google’s Shift to a Mobile-First Index: Are You Ready? (Influence Health)
• Navigating the World of Value-Based Care with Analytics (Dimensional Insight)
• HIMSS17 Survival Guide: Be Prepared (InstaMed)
• Bundled Payment Means Bundled Data (InterSystems)
• HIMSS 2017: Survival Tips from a HIMSS Veteran (& Registered Nurse!) (Kyruus)
• What’s New in the LDOS Platform (Learn on Demand Systems)
• The importance of mentoring in healthcare IT [podcast] (Nordic)
• Ensuring a Successful Implementation and Go-Live (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• Want to Get More Love From Your Data This Year? (Liaison Technologies)
• Walking Paper (National Decision Support Co.)
• Five Signs You’re Wasting Money and Time with Your Claims Management and Billing Processes (Navicure)
• Will You be My Volunteer? (Netsmart)
• 30 Minutes for Both an Impactful Meeting & a Smile? (Orchestrate Healthcare)
• Why is it Important for Clinicians to Become Involved in FHIR? (Orion Health)
• Meditech Users Preparing for Meaningful Use Stage 3 (Parallon)
• HIMSS RCITF Unveils the Patient Financial Experience of the Future: A Continuing Journey (Patientco)
• Tick, Tock Goes the Clock (PatientKeeper)
• What the Super Bowl Taught us About PQRS Reporting (PMD)
• The Chartis Group Earns High Marks in 2017 Best in KLAS: Software & Services Report (The Chartis Group)
• A Virtual Goldmine: Why Criminals Target Patient Data (Part 2) (Protenus)
• Insider’s Guide: Salesforce at HIMSS 2017 (Salesforce)
• What is the Fate of Rural & Community Hospitals? (The SSI Group)
• My takeaways from the Healthcare Supply Chain Management Summit (Infor)
• Learn the First and Second Steps to Successful Patient Education (Solutionreach)
• Electronic Prior Authorization Delivers the “Holy Grail” of Healthcare: Increased Patient Safety, Lower Costs, and Higher Quality (Surescripts)
• New Facilities Transition Management: Not Just About Technology (Impact Advisors)

---

Contacts

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

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne 2/16/17

One of my clients is going through some cultural change efforts and invited me to attend some of their management training sessions earlier this week. The first warning sign that things might not be as effective as anticipated was when I walked into the room and found the instructor arguing with some attendees, accusing them of being late. I thought it was odd because I was 20 minutes early. It turns out the calendar appointment was sent for the wrong time and the instructor was unaware. Once people showed her their calendars, she backed off, but that’s never a good way to start.

We had been told that we were expected to be “fully present” during the training sessions, to wear comfortable loose clothing for team-building exercises, and that we wouldn’t be able to use our laptops during the session, but that we’d be given frequent breaks to check in. What they didn’t tell us was that one of the facilitators would actually confiscate not only our laptops, but also our cell phones. Although I understood what they were trying to do, taking phones from a room full of physicians, some of whom were on call, isn’t a great plan. It also didn’t give a positive message about treating us like adults and trusting that we could avoid non-urgent texts and emails. What they didn’t realize is that half of the class was wearing smart watches, which still worked during the course. That was a good thing for a couple of the physicians, one of whom was called to surgery.

For the rest of us, though, we had to wait nearly three hours for a break, which I’d hardly call “frequent breaks.” Oddly enough, at the break I had a message from the CEO, who had forgotten my plan for the day and had been looking for me. He was extremely displeased at being unable to reach two of us that were in the training session. There must have been a phone call to the corporate training department after I checked in with him, because the “no devices” policy was relaxed after lunch. Guess what? Everyone acted like adults and there weren’t any more interruptions than there had been in the morning. We didn’t get out of our chairs the entire session, so I’m not sure what the request for loose clothing was all about, but I guess we’ll never know.

I’m a keen student of language, so enjoyed this Merriam-Webster announcement about the new words they’ve recently added to the dictionary. Healthcare and technology were well represented with additions such as: net neutrality; abandonware; EpiPen; and urgent care. The dictionary experts also remediated some items that I’d have thought were added long ago: ride shotgun, town hall, ping, and Seussian.

I’ve started getting some HIMSS-related marketing phone calls. Of course, they quickly turn into HIMSS-related voice mails because I don’t answer calls from weird area codes or people I don’t know. A couple of them have had people speaking so quickly I couldn’t figure out what they were saying or who they were working for without listening a couple of times – which is crazy, since I’m from a fast-talking part of the country and can usually keep up. I know exhibitors have access to our profiles, so it might be nice if you remotely coordinated your pitches with the interests of your target as well as making sure your callers can articulate so they are understandable.

The HIMSS-related mailing volume is down significantly this year. I’m sad to say I haven’t received anything truly eye-catching or even worth talking about. No poker chips, no oddly-shaped mailers to get my attention, no Orlando-themed marketing hooks. I suppose Las Vegas is an easier sell, but it would be easy to do a fun-in-the-sun theme. I’ve probably received less than a dozen pieces of mail total, but of course that doesn’t count the mailings that will arrive after I depart. It happens every year and you’d think they’d have figured out how to solve that problem by now.

HIMSS did send me an email with my “Corporate Member Focus Group Confirmation,” which was funny because I didn’t sign up for any focus groups. It just seemed like too much work this year, especially with their new policy around only allowing the first 12 arrivals to attend even though they may have extended more invitations than that. Planning to attend one takes a chunk of time out of your day. Although attendees receive a gift card for their participation, the invites I received weren’t compelling enough to make it worth the hassle.

I’ve also received some downright creepy emails from other HIMSS attendees, looking to build their networks or hawk their services. I don’t know what the exact agreements with HIMSS sharing data are, but one I received felt like an invasion of privacy. The sender must have had access to my mailing address as well as my email address because he made specific references to the part of the city I live in and how he would like to get together in town if I can’t meet with him at HIMSS. You can bet I’ll be paying better attention to any opt-out settings when I sign up for HIMSS next year.

What’s the creepiest marketing effort you’ve seen or experienced? Email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 2/16/17

Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act; Market Stabilization

CMS publishes a proposed rule aimed at stabilizing the individual and small group markets that would cut the open enrollment period in half.

Broad Institute wins bitter battle over CRISPR patents

MIT and Harvard’s Broad Institute wins its patent battle over CRISPR genome editing technology, likely the most valuable biotechnology patent ever filed.

Cybersecurity Actions Needed to Strengthen US Capabilities

A GAO report on federal information system cybersecurity readiness singles out EHRs and state insurance marketplaces as needing improvement to protect personally identifiable information from being compromised.

Anthem Files Suit Against Cigna Seeking a Temporary Restraining Order

After Cigna terminates its planned merger with Anthem and instead sues Anthem for nearly $15 billion, Anthem responds by filing its own lawsuit seeking a restraining order to prevent Cigna from terminating the merger.

Why you should donate your data (as well as your organs) when you die

Professors from the Universities of Cologne and Basel call for the development of a global system that would help patients donate their personal health data to research after their death in a way similar to the organ donor program.

HIStalk Interviews Patrice Wolfe, CEO, Medicity

Patrice Wolfe is CEO of Medicity and Health Data & Management Solutions.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I’ve been in healthcare for my whole career, over 25 years at this point. Like many young people, I started my career in consulting, but the bulk of my career has been on the technology side. I’ve worked with government agencies, employers, payers, and mostly providers. I spent a big chunk of my career at McKesson. 

I joined the Healthagen arm of Aetna about 18 months ago as president of HDMS, which is an analytics technology company that mostly works with payers and employers. I became CEO of Medicity in October of last year.

If you had asked me six months ago to describe what Medicity does, I probably would have said that Medicity is an HIE. But now that I know the business a little bit better, I think it’s probably more accurate to describe Medicity as an organization that helps its customers build and grow clinically connected communities.

I think of Medicity’s expertise as aggregating, cleaning, and normalizing clinical data. We do about six billion transactions a year, so we have a lot of experience with that. Those data serve as the foundation for a lot of interesting things that our customers do. But at our heart, we are a data company.

How would you describe the relationship among Medicity, Healthagen, and Aetna and how their respective strategies overlap or compliment each other?

The answer to that has evolved even over the 18 months that I’ve been here. Healthagen was created to become the technology and innovation arm of Aetna. Some of those technology businesses have become integral to the operations of Aetna’s strategy, which is designed towards accountable care, value-based care, and value-based reimbursement.

Some of the pieces of Healthagen are getting more integrated into the operations of Aetna. A few months ago, we announced that we were dissolving the Healthagen name. There’s a lot of work going on at Aetna around branding and that will be a big focus for 2017, but one of the things that I’ve been impressed by is how we are bringing these various technology companies into the operations and the strategy of what’s going on in Aetna’s core businesses.

Do providers have the information they need to do population health management?

It’s a journey. We’re at very baby steps in that process right now. Having access to that information, having access to it in a manner that is complementary to the provider’s workflow, and then having access to it in a manner that makes it easy to act on — those are stages of evolution. Where are we right now? Somewhere at the beginning.

I see a lot of interesting things happening in the industry. But they still seem to neglect the reality that if you don’t try to solve the problem within the existing provider workflow, it’s just not going to happen. The good news is that I see a lot of acknowledgement of that.

We work with some of the joint ventures that Aetna has put together with large health systems to drive value-based care. They’re focused on just this issue. How do we get access to the right information, but in the way in which we provide care, the way we do our business? How can you help us with that so that we can drive towards some of the priorities that we have? If it’s not in the workflow that we use today, it’s just not going to happen.

What’s the state of integration between provider EHR data and the broader information maintained by insurance companies from multiple providers?

I’ll give you a couple of examples of things that we’re working on. There’s value in the EHR data to payers like Aetna to drive more efficiency in certain processes. A great example is standard care management processes that happen inside a payer. How can you automate pre-certification by using secure messaging with the provider? How can you bring in ADT feeds to help care managers and case managers understand early that patients are being admitted or that people are being referred to certain providers? There’s value to the payer to get access to some of that EHR data, no doubt. 

Then the flip side of it is, how can the payer then provide data back to the provider? Leakage is example. We’re working with one of Aetna’s joint venture partners right now to help bring in data from other providers who are outside of their network, but who are in our Medicity network, to show them where their patients are being referred out of network so that they can try to ratchet some of that down. There’s obviously a lack of care coordination if you’re having that happen.

I’d say we’re in pretty much the early stages of figuring out who’s going to get the biggest benefit from which data stream and for what use cases. We’re taking them one at a time. Once we get a couple of clear use cases where there’s benefit to both parties, then there’s an enormous amount of enthusiasm to continue down that path on the rest of them. But you want to have those first pilot use cases to show everybody that this is worth the hard work, because it is hard work.

Does the competition among providers and among insurers impede progress? Do you think intentional data blocking exists?

I think it definitely exists. It’s been fascinating for me being on the payer side. Early in my career, I swore I’d never work for an insurance company, but here I am. [laughs] One of the things I like about it is that I get to watch some of the stuff happen real time. The types of joint ventures that we’re putting together with these large health systems are predicated on trust.

It goes both ways. Aetna pulls out of these markets. It removes its brand and allows all of the insurance to be offered to by the health system. It’s good for us and it’s good for the health system. I think you’ve got to have some of these fundamental pieces to these ACO arrangements that are predicated on trust and on information sharing or they’re not going to work.

We’ve seen first hand what leads to failure. We know that what leads to success is complete data transparency, among other things. Is that going to become the norm in the industry? I don’t think so. It works best with large, enlightened health systems. It’s not going to work with everybody. I think we’ll always have some degree of data blocking and and we will always have to deal with that.

What has been the impact of uncertainty about the future of the Affordable Care Act on Medicity’s business?

What I hear from a lot of providers is they have already made these strategic decisions. They are heading down this path regardless of what the government does. That’s the message we heard when the Supreme Court was ruling on some of the ACA issues last year.There is a pretty firm belief that moving towards value-based care, moving towards things like interoperability, are the right things to do regardless of what the government may do about it.

That said, some of our public HIE customers are very concerned about funding. Are certain grants that they rely heavily on going to go away under this administration? There are lots of concerns around things like that.

I do expect there to be a certain degree of anxiety that leads to retrenching. But I think in general that the direction that we’re heading is going to continue regardless of what the administration does.

The data exchange issues are both financial and technical, as evidenced by the HIE challenges in California and the Carequality vs. CommonWell discussion. What’s the big picture in getting data exchanged and the underlying fabric that either allows or doesn’t allow it to happen?

First of all, I’m excited to see that Carequality and CommonWell are working together. That’s a really great move. There’s never going to be one specific solution for interoperability and data exchange in this country. It’s just not going to happen. We’re not going to have everybody on one or even three EHRs. We still need to cobble together multiple solutions to get to a place where there’s a complete liquidity of clinical information. There’s a place for everyone.

If you look at KLAS’s report that they did in 2016 on interoperability — the one that was focused on EHRs — it showed that the public HIEs are still by far the biggest source of data that providers are taking from external organizations. They complain about the data that comes from the public HIEs, but those remain the number one source of external clinical information.

We’re going to have a patchwork quilt of solutions for many years. The combination of CommonWell and Carequality may give us a really good footprint, but we’re never going to get all of the data from one source. We’re going to need to learn to co-exist in a way that works for the end user, who is the provider. Their use cases are the ones that matter. I don’t think there’s a single solution that’s going to solve things for them.

Is the underlying data exchange solid enough to move on to the next frontier, placing that data into the provider’s EHR so it’s not a separate system or a separate lookup?

I’d like to think that’s the case. We’re certainly spending our time now more on how we can create documents, CCDs, that are integrated, normalized, and offer great value to the provider, Any provider will tell you that going through a CCD is a nightmare. We’ve got to get to the next stage of providing information to folks in the workflow that they’re in, in a way that provides value to them rapidly.

We’ve hit a level of maturity in this industry where now we’re dealing with the nuances. But the nuances are what’s going to make this mission critical to how a provider manages their patients.

Where do you see the company in five years?

Where I see us going is continuing to view ourselves as clinical data experts. We will have more and more ways to use that data to drive different business uses for our customers. I see the variety of data getting more complex, moving away from some of the standard transactions that most interoperability vendors work with today. Moving into maybe more administrative types of data and other kinds of clinical information that come from providers that aren’t normally pulled into this process.

At the base of it, I believe what we do is foundational to a lot of what people today throw into that big category of population health. That foundation has to be there if you’re going to do more sophisticated things. Building that foundation is a journey. We’re never going to be done with it. Medicity is going to be part of that journey for a long time, building out the foundation that we need.

Do you have any final thoughts?

I love having the chance at HIMSS to walk around and see all the shiny new things that are out there. I’m looking forward to getting a feel for what the themes are that we’re going to take away from HIMSS this year. Last year it was like population health 2.0, getting beyond the theory of what population health means and getting into some of the practical applications.

Whatever the industry trends are, we need to constantly bounce them up against whether they support the existing workflow of those organizations that would be able to take advantage of these technologies. That’s a critical question we have to ask. We won’t get adoption if we don’t see that.

Morning Headlines 2/15/17

VA moves ahead with homegrown scheduling IT

The VA will move forward with its rollout of its Vista Scheduling Enhancement, an “Outlook-style interface that gives schedulers a dashboard view of appointments.”

Government drops target for ‘paperless NHS’ by 2018

In England, NHS Secretary Jeremy Hunt drops his call for a paperless NHS by 2018, blaming “weak hospital IT systems.”

Great Ormond Street picks Epic in potential £50m deal

Great Ormond Street NHS Foundation trust has selected Epic as its next EHR vendor, making it the fourth Trust in the UK to select Epic.

Senate easily confirms Trump pick of Shulkin as VA secretary

The Senate confirms David Shulkin as the next secretary of Veterans Affairs in a 100-0 vote, making him the first non-veteran to run the organization.

News 2/15/17

Top News

The VA will continue its planned tests of a homegrown patient scheduling system, but will hedge its bets by resuming testing of the Epic-developed, $624 million Medical Appointment Scheduling System (MASS) that had been put on hold in April 2016 pending a decision on which system to use.

The VA issued a scheduling system RFP in late 2014 following the wait time scandal that had nothing to do with technology. I wrote in mid-2015 in responding to a reader rumor that the Lockheed/Epic MASS project might be in jeopardy as a bolt-on solution,

The VA neatly sidestepped Congressional demands for firings, reorganization, and funding decreases by simply throwing its scheduling system under the bus and signing up for Epic. I don’t know what it will take to compartmentalize Cadence to run without any other Epic apps and then integrate it with the VA’s systems, but I do know that standalone healthcare scheduling systems have fallen by the wayside given the need for integration. It also seems that $624 million is a lot to spend for automating a single function, but then again both the VA and DoD are used to squandering mountains of taxpayer money on systems that are often failures in every way except as never-ending revenue streams for the chosen contractor.

A 2010 GAO report found that the VA had spent $127 million in trying to develop an outpatient scheduling system but hadn’t implemented anything, with the unnamed contractor that developed the defective system walking away with $65 million.

---

Reader Comments

From Tyga Choonz: “Re: Epic 2016 release. Being renamed to Epic 2017 after it was  released in late November and no customers upgraded to it. The name change is to help ensure that ‘customers don’t feel behind.’” Unverified, but reported by several readers.

From Neon Cowboy: “Re: HIMSS. Will you be looking for booth reps on their phones again?” Of course, with my phone camera at the ready to document their inattentiveness for posterity (the above photo was posed by the Epic people at HIMSS14 as their homage to my never-ending phone rants). It’s moot, however, since past conferences have fulfilled my trifecta: (a) finding reps already staring at their phones within the first few seconds of the exhibit hall’s opening; (b) for booths that have at least three reps working, catching all of them immersed into their imaginary phone worlds simultaneously; and (c) watching a rep ignore someone standing right in front of him or her in favor of screwing around with their phone and then watching the potential prospect walk away in frustration. As I always say, vendors are spending fortunes to staff the world’s most expensive phone booths. Preliminary results in this week’s poll make “friendly, alert reps” easily the #1 draw for HIMSS attendees, with games, fancy booths, and refreshments finishing last in attracting passers-by into booths. Here’s the simple advice I gave to exhibitors back in 2015 to encourage their reps to seek out interaction with those whose appearance suggests at least mild interest:

• Confiscate the phones of people assigned to booth duty.
• Make it clear that booth reps shouldn’t be talking to each other unless they are with a booth visitor.

---

HIStalkapalooza Sponsor Profile

CareSync is the leading provider of software and services for chronic disease management, combining technology, data, and 24/7 nursing services to facilitate care coordination among patients, family and caregivers, and all healthcare providers. Founded in 2011, CareSync exceeds Medicare’s requirements for Chronic Care Management (CPT code 99490, 99487, 99489), and also offers care coordination services and technology for Annual Wellness Visits, Transitional Care Management, and CPC+. Additionally, CareSync clients are well positioned for positive payment adjustments with support for measures in all of the performance categories under the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), and the CareSync consulting team helps healthcare organizations of all sizes prepare for the shift from fee-for-service to value-based healthcare. CareSync nurses serve as an advocate for the patient to turn doctor’s instructions into action, remove the barriers to care plan adherence, and ensure that information is shared with the right people at the right time. For more information about CareSync, visit www.caresync.com/ccm.

---

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Here’s an interesting fact about upcoming HIMSS conferences. After HIMSS18 in Las Vegas, it’s then two straight years in Orlando for 2019/2020 since HIMSS pulled the 2019 conference from Chicago in a “two strikes and you’re out” hotel room pricing spat, with Chicago’s loss being Orlando’s gain. The Orlando dates are a bit screwy – February 11-15 in 2019 and March 9-13 in 2020, a full month’s difference.

 

We funded the DonorsChoose grant request of Ms. K in New York, who asked for SmartBoard replacement bulbs for her seventh grade special education and English language class since her school can no longer afford technology resources. She says the newly reactivated projectors have “awakened her students,” adding that they marveled that her project was chosen among all the others on DonorsChoose.

I have seats left for my CMIO lunch at the HIMSS conference next Tuesday at noon. It’s a no-agenda social get-together (provider CMIOs only). I’m buying a great buffet at a private table and it’s right off the exhibit hall, guaranteeing a return to the hubbub both physically and mentally nourished. Everybody seemed to enjoy it last time. Apparently the term “CMIO lunch” is confusing since vendor VPs keep signing up, but I will clarify by not sending them an invitation.

---

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information on webinar services.

---

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Aetna decides not to follow through on its vow to appeal a federal judge’s decision that blocked its $34 billion merger with Humana, instead opting to pay Humana the $1 billion breakup fee and move on. Humana also announces that it will exit the ACA insurance marketplace in 2018, the first insurer to pull out after President Trump’s first steps to repeal Obamacare.

In a related story, Cigna terminates its planned $54 billion merger with Anthem and sues Anthem for a $1.85 billion termination fee plus $13 billion in damages. Anthem, meanwhile, says Cigna doesn’t have the right to cancel the deal.

---

Sales

Hanover Hospital (PA) chooses QuadraMed’s enterprise master patient index.

Hospital for Special Surgery (NY) will implement PerfectServe’s Synchrony care team collaboration platform.

In England, Great Ormond Street NHS Foundation Trust chooses Epic, the fourth UK trust to do so.

Novant Health selects Voalte Platform for care team collaboration in its 14 hospitals.

BJC Healthcare will deploy Oneview Healthcare’s interactive patient care solution at its Barnes-Jewish Hospital Tower and St. Louis Children’s Hospital, committing to 2,000 devices. 

---

People

Chadron Community Hospital (NE) names CIO/COO Anna Turman as interim CEO, where she will transition to permanent CEO in six months.

Jennifer Haas (Aventura) joins TriNetX as marketing VP.

Skilled nursing facility operator National HealthCare Corporation hires Andy Flatt (Corizon Health) as SVP/CIO.

Healthwise Chief Science Officer Michael Barry, MD is appointed to the US Preventive Services Task Force.

---

Announcements and Implementations

First Databank launches its Prizm medical device knowledge platform that helps providers make supply chain and clinical decisions.

---

Government and Politics

The Senate confirms David Shulkin, MD as Veterans Affairs secretary in a rare 100-0 vote and as the first non-veteran to run the agency. Among other accomplishments, he founded DoctorQuality, a safety reporting vendor that was acquired by Quantros in 2004.

Politico reports that Congress originally considered shutting down ONC as part of 21st Century Cures to reduce EHR frustration, but ended up giving the office even more responsibility, although potentially with more focus on coordinating rather than administering.

The US Supreme Court pushes back its review of whether employee class action lawsuits are valid if the employees are covered by arbitration clauses — which includes Epic as one of three cases to be argued — until the fall term that begins in October 2017, presumably when all nine judges will be in place.

In England, Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt says his 2013 goal of a paperless NHS by 2018 won’t be achieved, with hospital IT systems being a weak link. He’s now hoping for 2022. He replied to a question about using patient data to drive NHS strategy:

This is an area in which we have been behind but we are hoping to leapfrog the rest of the world due to a very remarkable thing that our GPs did about 10 years ago. They decided to ignore the Government’s plans for a national IT program in the NHS and exercise their right to go their own way. The government program collapsed, but they set up fantastic electronic health records, some of the best primary health records anywhere in the world … they have digitized people’s lifetime records … What we do not do at the moment, but it is starting to happen, is allow those records to flow around the NHS … If you are trying to set up electronic health records in America, you simply do not have that asset to use, because they have very good electronic hospital records, but those are episodic records, not people’s lifetime records … next year we will go a step further and introduce what we are calling the Blue Button scheme.

---

Privacy and Security

The Protenus Breach Barometer lists 31 reported incidents for January, with 58 percent of them attributable to insiders. HHS wasn’t notified until an average of 174 days after the breach, exposing those organizations to heavy fines for missing the 60-day reporting window.

---

Other

A STAT investigation finds that billionaire doctor Patrick Soon-Shiong’s “Cancer Moonshot 2020” has made little scientific progress, proclaiming it to instead be an “elaborate marketing tool” for his money-bleeding publicly traded companies. An independent scientist reviewer described the progress as only “the most miniscule and vague findings,” with some of the claimed success involving old research done elsewhere. The article also quotes MD Anderson’s lawsuit over the “moonshot” name (which it trademarked for its fundraising projects) in which it describes Soon-Shiong as “a greedy, if not shady, billionaire businessman who oversells his ideas and falsely takes credit for other’s work.” HIMSS is giving him stage time, which he will use to pitch NantDaVinci, a medical reasoning engine. A snippet from the STAT article, of which NantHealth and NantKwest investors were apparently either indifferent or unaware based on minimal share price reaction:

Soon-Shiong’s moonshot initiative looks less like a diverse coalition than a roll call of his tangled web of business interests. For starters, it’s not a separate legal entity; it appears to be housed within Soon-Shiong’s cluster of companies. The five biotech companies that are participating in the moonshot are the only ones sponsoring registered QUILT trials. And they are all closely tied to Soon-Shiong: He is either the CEO, a board member, or the controlling owner in each of them. Though Soon-Shiong has talked for a year about bringing major drug companies into the coalition, so far, just two have joined: Amgen and Celgene. He is a shareholder in both. And both are investors in Soon-Shiong’s companies … The moonshot website also touts a “historic alliance” with companies … The role of both appears to be simply that they cover doctors’ use of the GPS Cancer diagnostic for patients on their insurance plans. (Other corporate partners, BlackBerry and Allscripts, have invested in Soon-Shiong’s NantHealth.)

Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta will spend more than $1 billion to build a new pediatric hospital at North Druid Hills Road and I-85.

Pope Francis says in an address that when healthcare delivery models emphasize money, “there can be a temptation to lose the protections to the right to healthcare” for the poor and elderly. He adds that communities should reach out to those who live alone and not just the tiny fraction of people who are hospital inpatients.

Researchers find that the number of Americans over age 65 who are prescribed at least three psychiatric drugs has tripled in the past 10 years, with nearly half of those patients having no recorded diagnosis of mood, chronic pain, or sleep problems. The paper observes that the jump was highest in rural areas, leading them to speculate that the lack of availability of talk therapy, massage, or relaxation techniques may cause excessive reliance on drugs (they didn’t note that much of rural America is zonked out on narcotics, which might cause an increased demand for other drugs).

A fascinating Wall Street Journal story describes Evan Morris, a drug company lobbyist who oversaw a $50 million budget in running a “black ops” program to influence lawmakers. He wined and dined elected officials in convincing the Bush administration to stockpile $1 billion worth of Roche’s Tamiflu to prepare for an bird flu/H5N1 outbreak that never happened. He then launched a grassroots campaign to promote the use of Avastatin — a $90,000-per-patient breast cancer drug whose use the FDA wanted to ban given low effectiveness and significant side effects – planting articles on conservative websites describing women who said it gave them their only chance, with the resulting consumer and political pressure buying the company another year of sales and another $1 billion in revenue before the FDA finally cracked down. He raised money for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign in hoping to land an ambassadorship. Upon hearing that his drug company employer was investigating his unusual expenses in suspecting embezzlement, he played a round of golf, ate a steak dinner while buying the whole restaurant a round of drinks, then took a $2,000 bottle of wine into the woods and killed himself.

Bizarre: in Ghana, a family reneges on paying an undertaker who had prepared the body of an elderly relative for burial and instead steals the body to bury it themselves. The undertaker crashes the funeral with an assistant, opens up the casket, and starts carrying the decedent away until the family hurriedly pays up. Some attendees ran away in horror, while others whipped out their phones to record video in making their own “Grim Repo Man.”

---

Sponsor Updates

• Besler Consulting’s The Hospital Finance Podcast wins a Gold AVA Digital Award.
• CareSync adds services to support CPC+ practices.
• Carevive Systems publishes its poster presentation from ASCO’s Cancer Survivorship Symposium: “Survivorship Care Plans: Strategies to Enhance Patient Utility and Value.”
• Consulting Magazine recognizes The HCI Group as the eleventh fastest-growing consulting form of 2016.
• HealthCast will exhibit at the 2017 MUSE Executive Institute.

Blog Posts

• Trends in hospital mergers (Infor)
• 2017 Best in KLAS report recognizes Nordic as top performer in optimization (Nordic)
• Does your Community Connect Team Have a Leader? (Optimum Healthcare IT)
• 7 easy ways to transition to “Practice 2.0” with automated integrated workflow (AdvancedMD)
• Shark Tank’s Robert Herjavec: Healthcare is ripe for innovation (Agfa HealthCare)
• If it’s 2017, Then it Must be Time for MACRA/MIPS (Aprima)
• Why Pay $976 for a $200 Prescription? Variation in Drug Prices (Arcadia Healthcare Solutions)
• 2017 Healthcare Trends, Part 4: Healthcare costs and challenges are about a lot more than healthcare (Datica)
• Fighting the HAI Crisis Through EHR Optimization (CTG)
• 4 Traits Needed to be a Great Leader in 2017 (Direct Consulting Associates)
• Value-based Care Makes Cybersecurity Even More Critical (ECG Management Consultants)
• Verifying Patient Eligibility: Leveraging Epic Benefit Collection Workflow for Improved Collections (Hayes Management Consulting)
• Meet the Trump Healthcare Administration (Healthcare Growth Partners)
• The Best Laid Plans: Informing Care Plans Through the Power of Shared Decision Making (Healthwise)

---

Contacts

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

HIStalk Interviews Kevin Daly, President, Zynx Health

Kevin Daly is president of Zynx Health of Los Angeles, CA.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I’ve been in healthcare for about 25 years in different segments. I started my career at Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts. I spent a number of years at McKesson, both on their payor focus and then their hospital focus in software. I was a partner at Milliman for about 10 years, working on their Milliman Care Guidelines. I joined Hearst about four years ago. In January 2016, I was offered the opportunity to lead the Zynx group, which is one of the foundational companies of Hearst Health.

What’s the level of maturity among health systems in using evidence-based order sets and guidance?

I always represent that I’m not a clinician. My joke is I play one at work, but we can’t say that in the media. [laughs] Maybe the adoption is there, but what’s the use? Have hospital systems and post-acute organizations received the full benefit of evidence-based medicine and what it can actually do? I think the data shows that we still have a lot of opportunity to do some work in that area.

The core foundation of how Zynx started X number of year ago out of Cedars-Sinai was standardization and variation of care. That led to that evidence-based medicine and how it can be rolled through systems.

Now that health systems have in most cases implemented EHRs, are they still using ZynxOrder to maintain order sets and assemble external evidence?

ZynxOrder and ZynxCare are the foundational content or product offerings that help manage patients across the continuum. They’re actually still quite relevant. The question becomes, what next? Now that we have this solution, how can we continue to enhance it, build upon it, and then ultimately get to that nirvana of using clinical decision support in the optimal way?

As you think about where Zynx has been, we’ve been tremendously successful in pivoting in different ways around that concept of standardization and variations of care. Those two product offerings, order sets and plans of care, were extremely helpful. They’re still very helpful and relevant, but we’re looking at how can we continue to grow with some other offerings that the market needs.

Companies are taking guidelines from professional societies, like the American College of Radiology, and creating real-time decision support ordering guidelines. Are they competitors to Zynx or will you incorporate that kind of guidance into your products?

As you think about what Zynx does, it’s clinical content at the core. It’s how we look at the evidence and different types of data. We synthesize it and we bring it forward.

Some of that technical functionality that some of these standalone organizations are bringing actually resides within the existing EMRs. Is it as perfect? Is it as strong? Is the graphical user interface as nice? Maybe not, but that functionality still rests within most of the EMR vendors. We’re partnering pretty tightly with them to continue to keep our content in that forefront.

What’s the overlap in products or strategies among Zynx and the other Hearst Health offerings?

Greg Dorn is the president of Hearst Health. He was one of the co-founders of Zynx along with Scott Weingarten. There’s Zynx. There’s First Databank, or FDB. MCG, previously Milliman Care Guidelines, which is the group that I was originally associated with. Most recently, we have Homecare Homebase, which focuses in that post-acute homecare setting. Then MedHOK, which is a platform that focuses around payor interactions.

The umbrella of Hearst Health gives an organization like Zynx an opportunity to leverage a lot of different domain expertise and experience. One of the comments that was on HIStalk was about some of the changes that were going on at Zynx. We have made some changes in some structures and some reorganization within Zynx, but what’s enabled us to continue to grow and innovate is that we have some resources from Hearst Health. Not just our sister companies, but the actual broader Hearst Health.

It’s pretty nice to be able to pick up the phone and speak with Anil Kotoor, the founder of MedHOK, and talk about, what are you seeing as the risk model is moving around within this particular space? It’s actually quite useful.

You’re on the sharp end of technology changes that involve things incorporating pharmacogenomics into decision support, but also changes that involve the structure of how healthcare works, such as continuity of care. How do you incorporate those changes into your products?

I always like to say the folks on the sharp end of that stick are the clinicians and the administrators trying to get it done. I just happen to be the guy who shows up with what I think is the solution that’s best for them.

When you look at all those changes, everybody likes to think that their product or their offering is the total solution. We’re a component of a lot of bigger problems. That’s where being able to leverage, for example, the strengths of FDB is helpful. We do a lot of synergistic work, particularly with our order sets and their pharmacy data. As they’re spending a significant amount of time and effort in this pharmacogenomics area, we’re able to leverage that work as well.

I’m seeing that synergy with our sister company for sure. Care teams, care management, and how our tools or our content support all the changes that are coming as the risk models change. It’s kind of interesting because from a legacy perspective, Zynx was very much focused in the acute hospital setting. We had tremendous success, that’s where all the opportunities were, that’s where a lot of the mechanisms existed to deliver our solution, namely the legacy EHRs.

Now as you think about this post-acute space and some of the opportunities that are happening there, we’re still partnering with the legacy EHRs — the standard-bearers, if you will — but there’s some new, interesting players in this space. Hopefully there will be a press release about somebody we’re working with at HIMSS that will talk about what’s a longitudinal care plan and how can you execute on it utilizing someone’s technological platform and Zynx’s content that spans the continuum. Things like that are what’s exciting to me.

What’s the future look like for Zynx?

In my view of what we need to accomplish as an organization, you have to stick with what your core competency is. Then, not be afraid to stretch and expand. But when you think about standardization and variation of care, Zynx has been extremely successful in supporting and helping the standardization and limiting that variation.

How do we take that concept and continue to apply it, across not just the acute setting, but the post-acute setting? That’s why we are thinking about the different technological mechanisms by which to deliver this content in different places along that continuum. Is that a component of partnering with an organization that’s doing alerting versus us creating a technological platform or buying someone that does alerting? It’s those facets of sticking with what our core competencies are, understanding it, and then expanding it in a way that’s responsible and reflects our continued support of our existing customers.

We have a very significant install base of users who are still looking for what Zynx has always done, which we will continue to do, but we need to make advancements. We were just recognized again by KLAS for our order sets, which is important and valuable, but where are we going in the future? There’s a product called Knowledge Analyzer where we are seeing a significant amount of opportunity to help organizations who are merging, who are trying to understand their variations in their order sets and their plans of care and other documentation, and getting back to standardization and clinical variation. How can we, Zynx, continue to support that?

Do you have any final thoughts?

Zynx products are foundational to managing patients across the continuum. We’re going to continue to support our legacy products, but we’re going to continue to grow and evolve through additional product offerings and technological innovations that the industry needs and continue to support the mission that has mattered for 20-plus years. I thank you and I thank all of our customers and everybody who’s reading HIStalk.

Morning Headlines 2/14/17

DirectTrust Issues Recommendations to Significantly Improve Usability of EHRs and Health IT Applications Providing Secure Direct Messaging

DirectTrust issues a white paper containing recommendations to EHR vendors aimed at improving interoperability.

A millionaire’s mission: Stop hospitals from killing their patients by medical error

STAT profiles Joe Kiani, founder and CEO of medical technology company Masimo, focusing on his ongoing efforts to convince other medical technology vendors to make their systems more interoperable in the interest of patient safety.

Surrounding states push for Missouri to create prescription drug monitoring program

Neighboring states are lobbying for Missouri to implement a statewide drug monitoring program because it has become a magnet for “doctor shoppers.”

Ex-drug company CEO Martin Shkreli to speak at Harvard

While out on bail awaiting his federal securities fraud trial, Martin Shkreli will appear at Harvard to speak about healthcare an investing at an event being held by the Harvard Financial Analysts Club.

HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS17

Download and print a PDF version of this guide.

Access

Booth 1778

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

For more than 15 years, Access has developed electronic forms management solutions that eliminate the unnecessary expense, risk, and inefficiency of paper forms. Our 100-percent paperless technology enables organizations in any industry to capture, manage, sign and share forms data without printing or scanning.

To help our partner The Last Well bring clean water to every man, woman, and child in Liberia by the end of 2020, we’re going to fund a well on behalf of those who visit our HIMSS booth. Stop by to see how a real water pump works and learn from The Last Well founder Todd Phillips. If you’d like to support the cause, visit www.thelastwell.org.

---

Advisory Board

Booth 9000 / Interoperability Showcase

Contact: James Green, managing partner
greenj@advisory.com
202.266.5443

Advisory Board will be participating in the Interoperability Showcase, demonstrating how to coordinate patient communication and care to maintain patient relationships throughout the entire continuum of care. Come learn how hospitals and health systems use insights and analytics to find opportunities for brand advantage through patient experience.

Also, our experts are part of the speaking lineup at HIMSS17, where they will present the latest innovations, including:

• Doug Thompson on “Consumerism: Strategies to Meet New Market Demands and Rising Expectations” Sunday, February 19, 2-3pm ET in 304E (session ID: INV5)
• Naomi Levinthal on “Lessons Learned from the Mandatory Joint Replacement Bundle” Wednesday, February 22, 1-2pm ET in 311E (session ID: 194)

---

Agfa Healthcare

Booth 1761

Contact: Miriam Ladin, director, marketing communications, North America
miriam.ladin@agfa.com
617.852.4545

Agfa HealthCare, present in one hospital out of two, is a leading provider of eHealth and digital imaging solutions. Care organizations in more than 100 countries rely on Agfa HealthCare to optimize their efficiency and improve patient care. With its deep experience in interoperability, Agfa HealthCare has developed a range of solutions to meet the needs of the modern, value-based care healthcare enterprise. The platform approach to medical image management enables the health system to reduce it’s IT infrastructure and resources, while maximizing the value of images and documents across the continuum of care. At HIMSS17, attendees can learn more about Enterprise Imaging Solutions, which include Enterprise Imaging Vendor-Neutral Archive, Enterprise Imaging Exchange, XERO universal image viewer, and more. The platform includes standardized Departmental Workflows, which allow all image-producing service lines to capture and associate multimedia imaging studies with an episode of care.

---

Aprima Medical Software

Booth 2603

Contact: Marilyn Taylor, marketing coordinator
mtaylor@aprima.com
469.863.8305

Stop by our booth and take the Aprima Stopwatch Challenge!

---

Arcadia Healthcare Solutions

Booth 2703

Contact: Alyssa Drew, strategic marketing manager
alyssa.drew@arcadiasolutions.com
860.908.6805

Seven Great Reasons to Visit Arcadia at Booth 2703

1. Explore our Data Gallery — including brand new data visualizations this year!
2. Ask John Halamka, MD, your questions on digital health on Tuesday at 4pm, followed by a cocktail hour. Dr. Halamka just joined the Arcadia Advisor Network.
3. Discuss “Six Ways Data Quality Issues Erode Trust … and Five Fixes” with Principal Data Scientist Michael Simon. Learn about the importance of deep, high-quality EHR data to achieve an ROI in value-based care – and how to improve data quality without overwhelming your physicians.
4. Pick up the “most useful handout ever” at last year’s HIMSS (according to HIStalk) either at our booth or at HIStalk’s (4845).
5. Enjoy wine, beer, and appetizers at our booth each evening at 4:30pm, and meet our clients.
6. Q&A with Patrick Charmel, CEO of Griffin Hospital and co-author of “Putting Patients First: Best Practices in Patient-Centered Care” on Tuesday at 10am.
7. Learn how AMITA Health and Arcadia have partnered to take on risk for nearly 20 years in an informal Q&A on Wednesday at 2:30pm.

---

AssesURhealth

Booth 223

Contact: Tori Couch, brand development
toric@assessURhealth.com
813.774.9800 x401

Visit the AssessURhealth booth, 223, to see a product demo; explore our interactive tablets; enjoy coffee or cocktails at select limited seating sessions with the 18th US Surgeon General, Regina Benjamin, MD; see our giant brain (we’re serious, we’ll have one); and discover how to gain substantial new revenue! AssessURhealth empowers clinicians by providing the tools and resources needed to positively impact the identification, treatment, and awareness of mental and behavioral health while adding new revenue.

---

Bottomline Technologies

Booth 937 / Cyber Security Pavilion, kiosk 23

Contact: Heather Barr, marketing manager
hbarr@bottomline.com
603.501.6654

Bottomline Technologies helps customers create patient experiences that are simple, secure and seamless – that’s why more than 1,500 healthcare organizations rely on Bottomline for solutions that include privacy and data security, eCapture, eSignature, and on-demand forms. http://www.bottomline.com/us/healthcare

Speaking Sessions:
“Beyond Audit Logs: Three-Tier Privacy Analytics”
Presented by Darren Dworkin, CIO, Cedars Sinai; and Boaz Krelbaum, CTO, Bottomline Technologies
Monday, February 20,  10:30– 11:30am  Room W206A

“A Dual Case Study on Improving Privacy Results”
Presented by Mark Benoit, director, privacy and data security, Bottomline Technologies
Monday, February 20, 11:15-11:45am Cyber Security Command Center

---

Caradigm

Booth 4561

Contact: Jennifer Thorson, senior marketing manager
Jennifer.Omholt@caradigm.com
425.201.7626

Caradigm is an award-winning population health company dedicated to improving patient care, advancing the health of populations, and reducing healthcare costs. Its enterprise software portfolio encompasses all capabilities critical to delivering effective population health management including data control, healthcare analytics, care coordination and management, and wellness and patient engagement. Caradigm’s 200+ customers include Greenville Health System, Virtua and other large integrated delivery networks; ACOs; academic medical centers; government facilities; and community hospitals. Caradigm solutions are operating in more than 1,500 hospitals worldwide, and connect to about 500 customer systems, and to data for more than 175 million patients. In addition, its identity and access management solutions are employed daily by over 1.2 million users, ensuring patient privacy and security by safeguarding access to patient health information. For more information, visit www.caradigm.com.

---

Carevive Systems

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Ricardo Mazzi, CMO
ricardo@carevive.com
800.460.3790

Carevive Systems provides personalized and dynamic cancer care plans for patients that improve clinical outcomes and enable oncology practices to operate in emerging value-based models. Our care plans continuously update to provide ongoing guidance to patients based on their experiences throughout the journey. This process allows us to collect longitudinal Real-World Evidence (RWE) on the cancer patient experience that will drive better care delivery, and oncolytic drug use and future development.  The company’s automated software enables each patient to receive his or her own unique, personalized care plans that can be customized and edited by oncology physicians and nurses at each clinic visit, in a way that is not possible with either EHRs or care management software. To develop our care plans, our software generates automated, personalized symptom assessment and management guidance based on individual patient diagnosis, treatment, and risk. Carevive’s patient care plans and associated tools for clinicians facilitate patient-centered, coordinated, and integrated multi-disciplinary cancer care — all of which are concepts proven to decrease costs, and improve clinical outcomes and patient satisfaction.

---

Casenet

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Kelli Bravo, VP, product marketing
kbravo@casenetllc.com
781.357.2706

When people and data work in harmony, a real, positive impact can be made on the health of individuals and populations. Casenet is a leading provider of enterprise population health and care management solutions. Casenet’s platform automates workflows, integrates member-centric information, improves care coordination, and enables regulatory compliance reporting. Our solutions are proven to drive positive outcomes and to enable clients to adapt to market changes while driving down costs. Contact us at www.casenetllc.com or info@casenetllc.com for more information.

---

The Chartis Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Gregg Mohrmann, director
chartis@chartis.com
877.667.4700

The Chartis Group is a national advisory services firm dedicated to the healthcare industry. The only firm to rank among the top five overall for both healthcare management consulting and IT services in the “2016/2017 Best in KLAS: Software and Services” report, Chartis provides strategy, performance, and informatics and technology consulting services and decision-support tools to the country’s leading healthcare providers. Chartis has been privileged to work with:

• Over two-thirds of the academic medical centers on the US News & World Report “Honor Roll of Best Hospitals.”
• Seven of the 10 largest integrated healthcare systems.
• Four of the five largest not-for-profit health systems.
• Nine of the top 10 children’s hospitals.
• Emerging and leading ACOs.
• Hundreds of community-based health systems.
• Leading organizations in healthcare services.

Connect with Chartis via five HIMSS presentations and one career poster session:

1. Benchmarking, IT Cost Controls and Efficiencies – session #191
2. How to Make IT the Underpinning of the Enterprise Strategy – session #146
3. Care Coordination Transformation: Road to Population Health – session #112
4. The Future of IT Governance: Fully-Integrated and Operationally-Led – session #310
5. Managing a Legacy Team in an EHR Transition – session #75
6. Career Development Poster Session: HIT Career Pursuits: Thoughts on Personal Best Practices to Get Where You Want to Go – session #PSEP1

---

Clinical Architecture

Booth 3171

Contact: Marck DuBois, EVP, sales
marck_dubois@clinicalarchitecture.com
317.580.8400

Founded in 2007, Clinical Architecture has become the leading provider of innovative healthcare solutions focused on the quality and usability of clinical information. Our customers include leading provider organizations and IDNs; EMR/EHR, population health, and analytics application vendors; pharma and life sciences companies; HIEs; content publishers; and the payer community. Our healthcare terminology platform comprehensively addresses the acquisition, management, distribution and utilization of terminologies, unstructured text, and clinical knowledge enabling our clients to overcome industry gaps in interoperability, decision support, and analytics.

---

Clinical Computer Systems

Booth 922

Contact: Elizabeth Hobson, marketing manager
Marketing@obix.com
888.871.0963

CCSI is a high-tech leader in perinatal healthcare. Some of the largest hospitals across the country utilize its comprehensive, computerized OBIX Perinatal Data Systems for centralized, bedside, and remote fetal electronic monitoring. Come discover how the benefits of the OBIX system extend beyond the labor and delivery department. We welcome conversations with leadership team members seeking cost-savings methods and positive patient feedback. Our representatives can explain how the system can be deployed using your existing infrastructure, and demonstrate the system’s intuitive design and ease of use. Rest assured, we work side-by-side with customers throughout planning, implementation, education, and system go-live. Visit booth 922 and see how meaningful integration enhances clinical workflow.

---

CloudWave

Booth 3191

Contact: Bryan Blood, EVP, sales
bblood@gocloudwave.com
508.251.8803

CloudWave is a full-service cloud services provider and solutions integrator for healthcare. In addition to implementing private cloud solutions consisting of on-premise hardware and software, CloudWave delivers technology consulting services as well as hosting, disaster recovery, archiving, and systems management services via our OpSus Healthcare Cloud. Come join us for a cup of coffee in booth 3191 to discuss how we can help you with your journey to the cloud.

---

CTG

Booth 1223

Contact: Angela Rivera, VP
angela.rivera@ctg.com
619.397.0446

CTG is the most reliable IT services provider, built on more than 50 years of meeting our commitments to make technology work for our clients and deliver real business value. We provide advisory, implementation/upgrade, optimization and performance improvement, enterprise information management, application management, patient portal/clinical service desk, and strategic staffing services. Stop by the CTG booth, 1223, to learn why reliability matters and have a chance to win an Amazon Echo or a drone.

---

Culbert Healthcare Solutions

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Brad Boyd, president
bboyd@culberthealth.com
857.919.2003

---

Datica (fka Catalyze)

Booth 8152

Contact: Casey Bryson, chief strategy officer
casey@datica.com
816.289.5441

Catalyze is now Datica and you can find us on the convention floor at booth 8152. Schedule a meeting at the Datica booth (near the Intelligent Health Pavilion), and you’ll be treated to a hot cup of Portland coffee, flown in and brewed especially for you. Let’s discuss healthcare partnerships, integrations, managed HIPAA-compliant hosting, and the “why” of the company rebrand. Schedule a meeting now at hello@datica.com.

---

Definitive Healthcare

Booth 7954

Contact: Marissa Peoples, enterprise account executive
mpeoples@definitivehc.com
888.307.4107

Definitive Healthcare is the leading provider of data and intelligence on hospitals, physicians, and other healthcare providers. Definitive Healthcare’s data provides clients with the analytics and insight needed to effectively segment and research the healthcare provider market.

---

Diameter Health

Booth 9000 / Interoperability Showcase

Contact: Tom Gaither, VP of marketing
tgaither@diameterhealth.com
781.249.9475

Diameter Health improves patient safety and optimizes patient care and operational performance by de-duplicating, cleaning, aggregating, and enhancing complex clinical data across the care continuum. Our scalable and cost-effective platform empowers organizations that depend on multi-sourced data streams – HIEs, ACOs, health systems, and health plans – to realize greater value from data used for managing population health and value-based care. Visit us at the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase as we collaborate with Caradigm, Cerner, Medhost, and Qvera in demonstrating how interoperability improves the care provided to a patient living with diabetes. Diameter Health technology is used to visualize a consolidated clinical view of the patient, as well as report on pertinent clinical quality measures.

---

Direct Consulting Associates

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Tom Clark, VP, operations
tclark@dc-associates.com
440.996.0874

Whether you’re an IT professional searching for that perfect opportunity or a client company looking for the very best IT talent you can trust, rely on DCA to help meet your goals.

---

DrFirst

Booth 1179

Contact: Ellie Whims, director of marketing communications
ewhims@drfirst.com
301.231.9510

DrFirst has pioneered healthcare technology solutions that inform the provider-patient point of encounter, optimizing provider access to patient information, enhancing the provider’s clinical view of the patient, and improving care delivery and clinical outcomes. DrFirst’s growth is driven by a commitment to innovation, security, and reliability across a wide array of services, including electronic prescribing, medication management, medication adherence, secure messaging, and care collaboration. We are proud of our track record of service to more than 330 EHR/HIS vendors and an extensive network of providers, hospitals, and patients. For more information, please visit www.drfirst.com or connect with us @DrFirst.

Come by DrFirst’s booth, 1179, for two presentations:

Improving Medication Reconciliation:  The People, Processes, and Technology
Presented by Nick Barger, principal pharmacist
Monday, February 20 at 2pm and Tuesday, February 21st at 11am

Using Communication to Comply with New Healthcare Initiatives
Presented by Linda Fischer, senior director of product solutions and former CIO, Huntington Hospital
Monday, February 20 at 4pm and Tuesday, February 21 at 3pm

---

ESD

Booth 1639

Contact: David Tucker, VP, business development
dtucker@contactesd.com
512.350.1735

For over 25 years, ESD has been providing implementation support services to healthcare systems across North America through our network of 10,000+ clinical and healthcare IT experts. Our full-cycle implementation support model assists in all stages of the transition – including training, build, configuration, project management, automated testing, go-live support, and optimization, as well as providing staff augmentation, on-shore clinical service desk, and patient portal help desk services. If you are preparing for an upgrade, switching to a new EHR or needing to optimize your current system, stop by our booth to learn how we can make the transition as seamless as possible.

---

Evariant

Booth 3985

Contact: Courtney Smigiel, senior marketing specialist
courtney.smigiel@evariant.com
860.917.6558

Stop by booth 3985 to enter to win one of three Amazon Echos, and discuss how your organization can improve the healthcare experience through more personalized interactions by integrating data into a centralized engagement hub.

---

FDB

Booth 2531, 8361

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

Main themes for FDB would be tackling medication alert management to enhance CDS; addressing the lack of standardized and often incomplete information about medical devices in HIT systems to improve operational, financial, and clinical decisions; and helping hospital organizations improve patient medication adherence that also leads to improved HCAHPS scores and reduced readmissions.

• Learn more about the launch of our medical device knowledge platform (FDB Prizm) that will be of interest to information system vendors and providers on the supply chain and clinical side – both in our booth and in the Intelligent Health Pavilion. On Tuesday, February 21, from 1-1:20pm, Henrik Bacho, senior product manager for FDB Prizm, will speak about how to improve OR workflow with our new medical device knowledge platform.
• Learn more about new enhancements to our FDB AlertSpace alert management and customization solution that includes business analytics capabilities.
• Learn more about how Meducation’s simplified patient medication instructions are now integrated with Epic, Cerner, Allscripts, Meditech, and Athenahealth. Also, hospital-based attendees can come by the booth and receive a customized ROI for their hospital institution based on improving value-based purchasing through HCAHPS scores and reducing readmission penalties.
• We have a Hearst Health network interactive, five-question, multiple-choice healthcare quiz where participants can “earn” a $10 donation to the National Patient Safety Foundation for each correct answer.
• Giveaway: We are serving gourmet coffee and giving away coffee travel mugs, as we’ve done over the past several years.

---

FormFast

Booth 451

Contact: Aaron Vaught, director of marketing
avaught@formfast.com
314.603.9674

With 25 years exclusively focused on healthcare needs and over 1,000 hospital clients, FormFast is recognized as the industry leader in electronic forms and document workflow technology. FormFast’s enterprise software platform integrates with EHRs and other core systems to automate required documents, capturing data and accelerating workflows associated with them. By using FormFast, healthcare organizations achieve new levels of standardization and operational efficiency, allowing them to focus on their core mission – delivering quality care.

FormFast’s theme for the leading health IT event is “Bringing Document Workflow Up to Speed,” highlighting the speed, agility, and efficiency FormFast’s solutions bring to critical processes across the care continuum. Featuring seamless integration, FormFast enhances EHRs and other core systems, and accelerates the completion of necessary documents by streamlining the processes surrounding them. With FormFast’s document workflow solutions, healthcare organizations experience improved cost and operational efficiencies, clinical outcomes, compliance, and patient engagement.

FormFast Booth 451 Highlights

Solution Demos

• FormFast Connect: Allows patients to complete forms and task checklists beyond hospital walls from the convenience of their personal device or computer. This helps the patient navigate their care journey pre-admissions or post-discharge, while giving providers the real-time information they need to deliver a higher quality of care and enhance patient engagement.
• FormFast Capture: Offers best-in-class electronic forms and capture technology to help digitize point-of-care checklists, care guidelines, rounding, informed consents, and ancillary care documents – not addressed by the EHR.
• FormFast Mobile Bedside Consents: An integrated eConsent solution that presents the correct documentation for patient signatures on mobile devices at the bedside. Upon completion, consents are archived to the EHR and instantly visible to the care team.

Cash for Dash Charity: By getting a glimpse into the capabilities FormFast’s solutions bring to healthcare organizations through a quick solution demo, booth visitors will get a chance to spin a virtual prize wheel for a chance to win up to $500. With each spin, FormFast will match the prized amount to the American Heart Association.

---

Forward Health Group

Booth 510

Contact: Barry Wightman, creative director
bmw@forwardhealthgroup.com
414.418.5654

Forward Health Group’s population health measurement platforms and data strategies drive success in the move to value. Visit booth 510 to elevate your data! Forward Health Group’s Data Elevation makes population health easy. Measure quality. Motivate clinicians. Maximize incentives. Population Health Without the Wait.

---

Harris Healthcare

Booth 3961

Contact: Susan Pouzar, VP, sales and marketing
spouzar@harriscomputer.com
571.267.3928  x74343

Harris Healthcare brings together “The Brightest Solutions Under One Umbrella” and we’re inviting the brightest minds in health and IT to experience the difference at HIMSS 2017.

• Speak with clients in our booth, 3961, to get the low-down on real-world applications and integration among our products. Hunterdon Healthcare System’s IT and clinical IT leadership team will be on site Tuesday, February 21 from 4-5pm to share their experiences and their approach to solving the healthcare IT challenges of a community-based integrated delivery system.
• We will have multiple demo stations available, allowing you to take a peek at each of our available products.
• Visit our booth each day for a chance to win high-end sunglasses from brands like Ray-ban, Chanel, Oakley, and Maui Jim. Multiple chances to win by visiting booth 3961 each day.

---

HBI Solutions

Booth 6179, kiosk 2

Contact: Eric Widen, CEO
ewiden@hbisolutions.com
415.350.3140

HBI offers a proven suite of predictive analytics and performance analysis tools, both easy to use and easy to install into any healthcare IT system. Our Spotlight Data Solution uses real-time EHR data, billing, claims and public data sources to provide real-time risk predictions for patients and populations. Spotlight’s predictive models also use built-in natural language processing to include unstructured data types like visit notes. Our wide range of disease and event-based predictive models are published in peer-reviewed research journals and in production on over 20 million patients. Customers include health systems, physician practices, FQHCs, ACOs, payers, HIEs, and technology vendors. Stop by booth 6179, kiosk 2 for a demo of our solution or to chat with some of our executives and customers. For more information, visit www.hbisolutions.com.

---

Healthcare Growth Partners

Booth 7374

Contact: Christopher McCord, managing director
chris@hgp.com
713.955.7935

Healthcare Growth Partners is an exceptionally experienced transaction and strategic advisory firm exclusively focused on the transformational health IT market. We unlock value for our clients through our Sell-Side Advisory, Buy-Side Advisory, Capital Advisory, and Pre-Transaction Growth Strategy services, functioning as exclusive advisor to over 90 health IT transactions representing over $2 billion in value since 2007.

---

HealthCast

Booth 686

Contact: Mike O’Mara, national sales manager
momarra@gohealthcast.com
Direct 510.338.0689 Cell 510.393.1911

HealthCast has some big plans for the near future – come see how our innovations have led us to create so many award-winning solutions. We’ll be giving away one brand new Microsoft Surface Pro 4 after each of our six presentations. Stop by booth 686 for your chance to win!

---

Health Catalyst

Booth 5173

Contact: Patty Burke, program manager
patty.burke@healthcatalyst.com
801.708.6800

Health Catalyst is an award-winning, mission-driven data warehousing, analytics and outcomes-improvement company that helps healthcare organizations of all sizes improve clinical, financial, and operational outcomes needed to improve population health and accountable care. Stop by booth 5173 to see a live demo of one of our many analytics applications, or hear about any of our 100+ client success stories. We’ve got the usual event swag to take home to your kids, too! You can read more about our clients’ successes here: www.healthcatalyst.com.

---

Healthfinch

Booth 994

Contact: Karen Hitchcock, chief experience officer
karen@healthfinch.com
608.513.6566

Did you know that your next strategic hire is a bird? Charlie the Healthfinch works seamlessly within your EHR to simplify, delegate, and automate routine, repeatable clinical tasks. Charlie swoops in to handle jobs like prescription refill requests, pre-visit planning, and more. Come meet Charlie and his team of humans at booth 994. We’ll have a small number of limited-edition Charlie plushies to give away, and we’ll also offer a special HIMSS discount on your first month subscription to Charlie if you schedule a demo time with us. See you soon at booth 994!

---

Healthlink Advisors

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Lindsey Jarrell
lindsey@healthlinkadvisors.com
727.729.2602

Healthlink Advisors is a healthcare consulting firm whose mission is to improve healthcare delivery and IT operations. Our work focuses on management consulting, IT strategy and finance, vendor selection and negotiation, and forecasting. From academic medical centers to integrated delivery networks to community-based hospitals, we serve both investor-owned and community-owned organizations. Our team is comprised of experienced healthcare professionals who have been individually selected to be a part of our team. As a consulting firm, we are defined by our people, their actions, and the quality of the work we produce. As a company, we are defined by our values and our broader purpose. We firmly believe we must create a company that is socially responsible, fun, and focused on fulfilling our purpose of improving healthcare delivery. Our purpose is pursued not just through engagements but also through our work in the community and helping each other. Ask about our cocktail hour at HIMSS.

---

HealthLoop

Booth 1789

Contact: Bevey Miner, chief marketing and business development officer
bevey@healthloop.com
858.922.3458

HealthLoop empowers tens of thousands of patients every day with the right information at the right time, before admission and weeks after discharge, guiding them until they are fully recovered. By automatically sending notifications to patients to ‘Check In,’ HealthLoop remotely monitors all of your patients and identifies the patients that need help, allowing clinical teams to proactively intervene before costs and complications escalate. Developed as an enterprise solution to support all clinical specialties, HealthLoop’s content and analytics are deeply integrated into your care management workflows. Especially useful under new bundled reimbursement models, HealthLoop facilitates effortless PRO collection, helping you earn back financial bonuses for meeting or beating quality metrics.

In the HealthLoop booth, attendees will:

• Better understand how to scale clinical adoption of patient engagement technology and the ease and speed with which it can be implemented.
• Explore ways to use analytics to identify at-risk patients in real time before complications result in adverse outcomes and elevated, post-acute care costs.
• Review validated results across thousands of patients that will show the impact of engaged and satisfied patients on improved quality and collection of PROs.

---

Healthwise

Booth 1523

Contact: Dave Mink, market solutions director
dmink@healthwise.org
208.921.4918

Stop by Healthwise booth #1523 to discover how to make every moment in care matter. Our demo stations for Point of Care, Care Coordination, Digital & Web Experiences, and Care Transformation will showcase how you can engage patients with consistent, evidence-based health education for improved outcomes, increased satisfaction, and lower costs.

---

Huron

Booth 3631

Contact: Meredith Rock, manager, marketing and alliances
mrock@huronconsultinggroup.com
224.221.5761

4 Health IT Sessions You Can’t Miss at HIMSS 2017 Come visit us at booth 3631 to learn how we’re working with our clients to solve their most pressing business problems with the leading healthcare technologies.     Huron is a global professional services firm assisting clients with complex issues by delivering high-value, quality solutions to support long-term strategic objectives. Huron’s healthcare practice specializes in strategic direction setting, clinical transformation, financial and operational excellence, technology implementation and optimization, and patient and caregiver engagement.

Huron has served more than 450 health systems, with over 1,400 specialists and experienced consultants dedicated to the healthcare industry including a leadership team that brings more than 25 years of healthcare and consulting experience. In August 2016, HSM Consulting became part of Huron. This acquisition has strengthened Huron’s IT/EHR consulting services, adding deep expertise in Meditech, Cerner, Allscripts, and NextGen. Together, Huron and HSM improve their ability to help healthcare providers implement and optimize technologies to improve quality, cost of care, and better manage patient populations.

---

Iatric Systems

Booth 2715

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

Take control over your most challenging 2017 healthcare IT issues. Join us at the Iatric Systems booth to discuss how you can stay ahead of the constantly changing healthcare IT environment. Iatric Systems will deliver many products and services that will optimize EHRs, monitor patient privacy, help manage vendor risk, ensure data is available to folks that need it – when they need it, help providers make sense of various data, increase patient safety, improve workflows, and augment staffs that need expert help – and more!

Promotions/Giveaways – Fresh off his national TV appearance on Penn & Tellers ‘Fool Us’, two time US Champion Trick Shot pool player Chef Anton is back! See the master at work! After every show, he will give away a $25, $50, or $100 Amazon gift card. Participate in our social media promotion and be entered to win not just one, but TWO Amazon Dots –  today’s hottest tech for home or office.

---

Infor

Booth 2147

Contact: Mike Polling, SVP and GM, healthcare
healthcare@infor.com
646.336.1700

Make sure a stop at Infor booth 2147 is on your HIMSS17 agenda. Infor Healthcare can offer you a single-system solution in the cloud, bringing clinical and operational data together. We understand that healthcare providers like you need a sophisticated solution that helps you react quickly, intelligently, and personally to every patient interaction in order to achieve better outcomes and lower costs while also making the best operational, financial, and clinical decisions. Our micro-vertical solutions give you comprehensive functionality that allows you to put the patient at the center of your strategy.

Schedule a 1:1 demonstration from these solutions – Care Solutions/WFM/Human Capital Management/Talent Management/Talent Science/Infor CloudSuite Financials & Supply Management/Infor Cloverleaf Integration Suite/Infor Cloverleaf Clinical Exchange/BI and Analytics for Healthcare/Physician Relationship Management/Infor CloudSuite Clinical. Schedule a live demo or one-on-one meeting to see the software in action. If you would like to schedule a live demo, please email healthcare@infor.com, or access the registration link directly at http://bit.ly/infordemos.

---

Intelligent Medical Objects

Booth 4651

Contact: Dennis Carson, director, marketing and tradeshows
dcarson@e-imo.com
847.728.4997

IMO is the developer of the most widely-accepted medical terminology solution for the management of medical vocabularies and software applications at healthcare organizations worldwide. IMO terminology is used by more than 3,500 hospitals and 450,000 physicians daily, and this trusted terminology platform supports innovations by provider systems. IMO medical vocabulary and mapping products effectively capture clinical intent and help EMRs preserve and communicate this across the entire spectrum of care. IMO clinical terms are mapped to all standard coding systems including ICD-9, ICD-10, and SNOMED. The accuracy of IMO’s interface terminology was found to be “nearly perfect” in an independent study published by the US Centers for Disease Control.

Visit us at HIMSS17 to learn now to Code Once with IMO and know you will always be Delivering Value across the spectrum of care. When a clinician enters a diagnosis or procedure into their EHR, IMO adds the appropriate billing and reference codes so that clinician doesn’t have to. Once captured with the IMO Unique Identifier, the concept never needs to change. No matter if it is added through text, speech, C-CDA, or FHIR, the proper IMO identifiers are continuously linked. IMO takes care of mapping the concept to all the necessary code sets so changes don’t have to be made manually by clinicians. Code Once and users are able to use the same terms and patient information for reimbursement, risk stratification, population health management, data analytics or clinical use cases. IMO focuses on the coding so clinicians can do what they do best, deliver Value-Based Healthcare. Read more at www.e-imo.com

Stop by booth 4651 after 4 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday to enjoy a glass of wine, and take a short survey to get a cool IMO t-shirt. Giveaway this is a Wine Tumbler, while supplies last.

SNOMED and SNOMED CT are registered trademarks of the International Health Terminology Standards Development Organisation.

---

Ivenix

Booth 9000 / Interoperability Showcase, kiosk 12

Contact: Julie Kuhlken, director of product marketing
jkuhlken@ivenix.com
619.453.9486

Ivenix is a venture-backed medical technology company with a vision to transform infusion therapy in every care setting. Technology within the infusion pump category has been slow to evolve despite an increase in the complexity of drug dosing regimens, demand for hospital EHR integration, and persistent patient safety issues. Ivenix is focused on bringing its first solution to market – a new and innovative infusion management system for hospitals. Ivenix will participate in a connected demonstration at the Interoperability Showcase. The Ivenix Infusion Management System will be featured with leading EHRs and alarm management systems in a live demonstration of auto programming of patient-specific infusion orders, auto documentation of infusion data, and communication of alarm status to mobile devices. Ivenix will also participate in the new Product Marketplace demonstration area within the Showcase. Sue Niemeier, RN, CNO, will present “Strategies in Making the Journey to Smart Pump BCMA-EMR Interoperability” during the Nursing Informatics Symposium poster session on Sunday, February 19.

---

Kyruus

Booth 5045

Contact: Lindsey Cohen, event marketing manager
events@kyruus.com
617.419.2060

Kyruus delivers proven provider search and scheduling solutions that help hospitals and health systems match patients with the providers best suited to care for them. The ProviderMatch suite of solutions—for consumers, access centers, and referral networks—enables a consistent patient experience across multiple points of access, while aligning provider supply with patient demand. The company’s proprietary provider data management platform forms the foundation of its solutions, powering them with accurate data by coupling data processing with administrative applications. To find out why a Better Match Means Better Care, please visit www.kyruus.com or come visit us in booth 5045!

We will have coffee and beer/wine available throughout the show (and get a pair of custom Kyruus socks!) Stop by to chat with our team and learn more about our enterprise-wide patient access solution.

---

Legacy Data Access

Booth 4225

Contact: John Hanggi, director, business development
jhanggi@legacydataaccess.com
678.232.7922

Running old applications just to get to the data?  STOP – We need to talk! For organizations retiring or replacing healthcare systems, Legacy Data Access offers the industry’s most comprehensive set of software tools and solutions for working with data from retired systems. Our LegacySuite products provide comprehensive functionality for the storage, access, management, and reporting of the retired healthcare data. No time-consuming, labor intensive, and risk-filled data conversions are required. The data is seamlessly accessible in its original format, with no loss of detail or integrity.

Please visit us to discuss how we have successfully retired 229 different healthcare applications – a total of 555 applications. Giveaways include ear buds, tote bags, and the best dark chocolate in the exhibit hall.    Drop a card for a chance to win an Apple Watch or one of two Apple TVs.

---

Lexmark Healthcare

Booth 1961

Contact: Alisa Moloney, marketing manager
alisa.moloney@lexmark.com
770.365.8382

Do you feel like chaos is taking over? Shifting payment models, cyber threats, M&A activity. And in the face of all these challenges, you are still expected to improve patient outcomes while cutting costs.  All of these objectives become more difficult when vital patient information is trapped in silos across the organization and inaccessible from your EHR. It’s time to take back control. Lexmark Healthcare can help. Our solutions uniquely deliver comprehensive information — medical images, documents, and clinical photos — in one view within your EHR.

Healthcare Content Management: Lexmark Healthcare has brought together industry-leading technologies to create Healthcare Content Management (HCM) — a modular, enterprise strategy that allows you to securely capture, manage, view, and share vital information with the applications you use every day. With Lexmark HCM, you can make more informed decisions, future-proof your business, and maximize your technology investments. Lexmark HCM is comprised of  vendor neutral archive, enterprise content management, enterprise viewing, process intelligence, and PACSGEAR connectivity. Schedule an appointment in HIMSS booth 1961 to experience the transformational power of Lexmark Healthcare.

---

Lifepoint Informatics

Booth 5351

Contact: Vincent Gryscavage, SVP of sales
vgryscavage@lifepoint.com
201.679.1059

Lifepoint Informatics has been a trusted leader in healthcare IT for over 18 years, focusing on clinical integration, HIE, and data interoperability solutions for hospitals, hospital systems, and clinical laboratories. We offer vendor neutral data integration solutions that facilitate health information exchange, enable successful outreach connectivity, EHR integration, EHR interfacing, physician portal, and quality reporting among disparate clinical systems.

Please stop by the Lifepoint Informatics booth, 5351, to learn about our newest interfacing methodologies, which enable us to setup connections faster, and more economically.  Also, while at the booth, look for an energy boost as well as other unique items.

---

LogicStream Health

Booth 875

Contact: Scott Olson, director of marketing
scott@logic-stream.net
651.335.8643

Schedule and attend your 15-minute demo to be entered to win an Apple Watch, Bose noise-cancelling headphones, or a $150 Visa gift card. One prize drawn daily. Each 15-minute demonstration will highlight how Clinical Process Measurement solutions from LogicStream are delivering self-service access to information operational stakeholders throughout health systems that need to improve quality and reduce the cost of healthcare. The three disciplines of Clinical Process Measurement include Standardizing Processes, Measuring Adoption, and Improving Outcomes.

---

M*Modal

Booth 1043

Contact: Lisa Martin, manager of marketing
lisa.martin@mmodal.com
267.535.7222

Creating Time to Care with M*Modal. Stop by booth 1043 and enter to win a Google Home.

---

MedData

Booth 6479

Contact: Chris Farrell, VP, marketing
chris.farrell@meddata.com
440.627.2642

MedData is a leading national provider of technology-enabled healthcare solutions designed to help physicians and hospitals better engage patients throughout the entire healthcare continuum. The MedData suite of solutions includes a range of patient access and communications; RCM; and consulting and analytics services including billing and coding, patient responsibility, eligibility and disability, complex A/R services (such as workers compensation, out-of-state, and more), and mobile-first engagement and communication software for patients and providers. For more than 36 years, we’ve been committed to delivering industry-leading and patient-focused RCM solutions to our growing network of more than 2,000 hospital sites nationwide. HIMSS GIVEAWAYS: Freshly baked scones.

---

Medicity

Booth 5961

Contact: Lauren Tilelli, VP, marketing
ltilelli@medicity.com
858.414.4117

Medicity builds complete, ubiquitous, and indispensable networks that power clinically connected communities and empower population health. The Medicity Network provides the data foundation and integrated workflow solutions to enable today’s population health management objectives, including timely clinician engagement, improved transitions of care, reduction in duplicative services, and the opportunity for patients to take an active role in their personal health.

---

Medicomp Systems

Booth 2303

Contact: James Aita, director of business development
jaita@medicomp.com
647.207.0080

Medicomp Systems, a physician-driven provider of clinically contextual patient data solutions, will be exhibiting at booth 2303. At HIMSS17, Medicomp is launching Quippe Clinical Lens, the company’s newest point-of-care decision support tool. The new solution delivers physicians optimized EMR data that is easy to digest and promotes new levels of clinical insights. Long-time Medicomp partner Meridian Medical Management, an industry leader in physician technology, revenue cycle, and analytics, is joining Medicomp at this week’s HIMSS17 Conference & Exhibition in Orlando to demonstrate Quippe and the new Quippe Clinical Lens functionality. Quippe Clinical Lens is a web-based application that can be added to any electronic health record (EHR) or health information exchange (HIE) system to make sense of data from multiple encounters across systems. It is the latest addition to the Quippe suite of solutions, which uniquely delivers longitudinal patient information within a problem-oriented clinical view, mirroring the way physicians think and work to drive optimal patient outcomes.

Attendees are also invited to Medicomp’s Quippe Virtual Experience Game at HIMSS17. The game illustrates how Quippe Clinical Solutions enable physicians to make better, faster decisions at the point of care, streamline documentation and ensure regulatory compliance. It also shows how Quippe easily integrates with any existing HIS system—and helps physicians to see up to 25% more patients. Play the game to experience the Quippe difference and to win a real-life dream cruise each day of HIMSS17. The cruise winners will be announced at 4 p.m. on Monday and Tuesday and 3 p.m. on Wednesday. Attendees must be present to win.

---

Meditech

Booth 3279

Contact: Nicole Lund, supervisor, trade shows
nlund@meditech.com
508.864.3018

Be sure to visit Meditech at booth 3279, and see why there is so much buzz surrounding our innovative, physician-designed Web EHR. Hear why this contemporary, modern, and transformational EHR is driving the new generation of EHR leaders in the market to move forward with Meditech’s latest release. In addition to the Web EHR, come see the latest solutions Meditech offers for improving patient engagement, RCM, telehealth, population health, and much more.

You’ll also get to see clinicians demonstrating our solutions LIVE, showing how you can reclaim your productivity. Hear from industry experts in Meditech booth 3279, and learn who reduced A/R days by 50 percent, who surpassed patient portal adoption goals with a 60 percent usage rate, who obtained a 99-percent patient satisfaction rating, and more!

---

National Decision Support Co.

Booth 3492

Contact: Diane Mardini, marketing and sales
dmardini@nationaldecisionsupport.com
917.887.1580

National Decision Support Co. enables stakeholders in the healthcare process to deliver more efficient and appropriate care, improve population health, and save money. Variations and gaps in care delivery cost providers and patients billions of dollars annually, and result in life-threatening medical errors. NDSC’s CareSelect decision support platform enables the transition to value-based care and payment models, and risk-sharing payment models while reducing inconsistencies in patient care. The CareSelect platform converts published guidelines from credible, compliant content sources — covering diagnostic imaging, medication, lab, and care pathways — into actionable decision support criteria delivered directly into the EHR workflow. Feel free to stop by our booth, 3492, for a demo.

---

Nordic

Booth 903

Contact:
events@nordicwi.com
608.268.6900

Nordic is the world’s largest Epic consulting firm and a trusted advisor to healthcare systems, connecting strategy through to IT execution. At booth 903, we’ll have team members ready to talk with you about your needs in advisory services, Epic implementation, optimization, data and analytics, managed services, population health, and affiliate extension solutions. If you can’t make it to our booth, contact  events@nordicwi.com and we’ll find a time to connect.

---

Optimum Healthcare IT

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jenny Paal
Jpaal@optimumhit.com
904.373.0831 x325

Optimum Healthcare IT is a leading healthcare IT staffing and consulting services company based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Optimum provides world-class consulting services in advisory, implementation, training and activation, Community Connect, analytics, and managed services – supporting our client’s needs through the continuum of care. Our excellence in service is driven by a leadership team with more than 50 years of experience in providing expert healthcare staffing and consulting solutions to all types of organizations.

---

Orchestrate Healthcare

Booth 1423

Contact: Charlie Cook, president
charlie@orchestratehealthcare.com
877.303.3377

We focus on four core competencies that dramatically affect healthcare processes and systems – EHR strategies, integration and interoperability consulting, information security consulting, and activation and go-live support. We listen to our clients first, and then our 18+ year-experienced consultants step in as the make-it-happen kind of people that deliver solutions for the challenges you face – ON TIME, ON TARGET, and ON BUDGET. We do project-based work as well as healthcare IT staffing – whatever your needs. Our leadership is available and attentive to our clients, keeping us nimble, responsive, and accessible. Our commitment to quality over quantity attracts the very best talent in healthcare IT, which results in projects with maximum achievement and minimum disruption and costs – and, ultimately, delighted clients.    Come visit booth 1423 and see how 30 impactful minutes with us will change your IT consulting direction!

---

PatientKeeper

Booth 2333

Contact: Kathy Ruggiero, senior director of marketing
kruggiero@patientkeeper.com
781.373.6433

PatientKeeper provides highly intuitive software that streamlines physician workflow to improve productivity and patient care. At HIMSS17, PatientKeeper will preview its new health IT innovation platform, which is intended to advance the use of computers by physicians and care teams, and make them indispensable tools for 21st century clinical care. PatientKeeper’s new platform integrates third-party apps and data from multiple EHRs, embeds advanced clinical decision support capabilities in a truly useful way, and provides an individualized experience for each user. For more information, visit patientkeeper.com/himss17.

PatientKeeper will give away a Peloton exercise bike plus a one-year subscription to streamed studio cycling classes. Healthcare providers may enter the raffle at PatientKeeper’s booth (2333) at HIMSS17. The winning raffle ticket will be drawn at the booth on Tuesday afternoon, February 21.

---

PatientSafe Solutions

Booth 815

Contact: Kim Tucker, marketing
ktucker@patientsafesolutions.com
858.746.3318

Stop by booth #815 to experience PatientTouch, the only care collaboration platform that unites clinical communications and critical workflows in one smartphone app. Secure messaging, voice, alerts, and nurse call are fully integrated with workflows including specimen collection, rounding, assessments, nursing documentation, and more, all in a single interface. Real-time patient and clinical context is available in-message and in-workflow to speed communication among assigned care team members, improve patient safety, and clinical outcomes.

But don’t just take our word for it! Join us for a free Lunch and Learn panel on Wednesday 2/22 at 1 p.m. in W312B, above Hall C. Hear IT and Informatics leaders from CHRISTUS Trinity Mother Francis, Parkview Medical Center, and Onslow Memorial Hospital discuss how PatientTouch has increased care team efficiency and improved clinical outcomes by uniting communication with workflow in one easy-to-use application that their frontline care teams love. Space is limited, >” target=_blank>sign up today.

---

PerfectServe

Booth 3315

Contact: Tom Hills, EVP
thills@perfectserve.net
877.844.2777

PerfectServe Synchrony is an integrated system of secure communication services built on a single cloud-based architecture, which ensures secure messages are delivered to the right care team member at the right time across all care settings. Stop by booth 3315 for a 10-minute demonstration.

---

Phynd Technologies

Booth 7785 / Innovation Zone, kiosk 3

Contact: Tom White, CEO
twhite@phynd.com
855.749.6363 x710

Learn about the Phynd Unified Provider Management platform – the only on-demand, cloud-based, enterprise IT solution that eliminates the challenges and organizational inefficiencies caused by working with inaccurate provider data. Whether you are a clinically integrated network struggling to manage an exploding quantity of provider data, or you need to improve the effectiveness of your online provider search capability, the Phynd UPM platform can help.

In addition, don’t miss the following talk that will be given by Michael Meade from Orlando Health and our CEO Thomas White. Michael will share his perspective on their provider data management challenges and review how the Phynd UPM platform is helping. What is Disrupting Provider Data Management? February 21, 11:30am ET  Innovation Zone, booth 7785, session ID: IZ19.

---

Point-of-Care Partners

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Tony Scheuth, CEO and managing partner
tonys@pocp.com
954.346.1999

Point-of-Care Partners is a leading health IT management consulting firm that helps healthcare stakeholders develop and execute winning management and IT strategies in an evolving electronic world. POCP Advantages:

• Multi-stakeholder projects across many segments of healthcare.
• Rich directory of people in all segments to add perspective to projects.
• Experienced staff of consultants with diverse healthcare backgrounds.
• On the leading edge of the evolution of health care IT and its application to healthcare for 12 years.

POCP practice leads will be available at HIMSS to discuss a broad range of health IT topics, including EHRs, ePrescribing, specialty pharmacy automation,  ePrior authorization, clinical decision support/clinical messaging, real-world evidence/outcomes/analytics, population health management, HIE, biosimilars, medication therapy management, and long-term care. Please contact Tony Schueth to schedule an appointment or visit pocp.com to learn more.

---

PokitDok

Booth 4087

Contact: Vivian Li, senior product marketing manager
vivian.li@pokitdok.com
650.302.0970

PokitDok provides a software development platform to free, secure, and unify business data across the entire continuum of care. Its 30 API endpoints facilitate eligibility checks, claims submissions, appointment scheduling, payment optimization, patient identity management, pharmacy benefits, and other business processes. These healthcare transactions that exchange business data can be quickly and easily integrated into any app, website, or service without requiring that providers or payers rip and replace legacy solutions or IT infrastructure. Healthcare organizations, digital health companies, and business process outsourcing providers use PokitDok to improve workflows, cut costs, and speed time to market.

---

Qpid Health, an EviCore company

Booth 5574

Contact: Amy Krane, provider marketing
amy.krane@evicore.com
617.982.5400

Qpid Health and EviCore healthcare have merged to help providers optimize quality and manage costs for success under value-based care. Qpid’s clinical analytics software uses NLP and machine learning to generate patient insights from medical records. EviCore’s utilization management expertise and 25 years refining best practice guidelines drives appropriate use of healthcare resources. Visit us in booth 5574 to discuss how we can help you with our solutions:

• Qpid “content as a service” Intelligent Clinical Content optimizes Epic with a library of clinical concepts for intelligent search, problem list reporting, specialty views, and quality measure reporting.
• Qpid quality reporting software speeds workflows and finds more data to improve scores.
• EviCore CDS integrates into the ordering workflow with robust guidelines for the industry’s broadest set of clinical scenarios for radiology, cardiac imaging, and oncology. And the solution automates prior authorization where best practices guidelines are applied.

EviCore is proud to sponsor a cross-stakeholder executive breakfast on how to lower the operational and financial burden of prior authorization on Tuesday, February 21. Join us!
Resolving Prior Authorization Pain Points – A Critical Cross-Stakeholder Conversation
February 21, 7-8am ET Room W209B

---

Spok

Booth 2671

Contact: Derek Kiecker, business solutions advisor
derek.kiecker@spok.com
952.230.5306

Spok will demonstrate the latest evolution of its integrated healthcare communications platform at HIMSS17. This release of Spok Care Connect offers new functionality for each solution area of the suite — clinical alerting, secure texting, and the hospital contact center console — to deliver smarter clinical communications that enable care teams to improve the delivery of patient care. Spok will have team members as well as several customers available to discuss the Spok Care Connect platform at HIMSS17 in booth 2671. Spok Care Connect will also be featured in the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase. Giveaways: HIMSS attendees can stop by the Spok booth for a chance to win an Apple Watch. We will have a drawing each day of the event.

---

Sunquest Information Systems

Booth 3551

Contact: Trish Moxam, VP, marketing
trish.moxam@sunquestinfo.com

This year, Sunquest is showcasing our commitment to giving every patient the best chance at good health. On-site demos will highlight personalized, patient-centric care; end-to-end diagnostic informatics; and precise, targeted diagnoses and treatments. In addition, Sunquest is hosting a networking happy hour in booth 3551 on Monday, February 20, 4:30–6pm ET. Be sure to stop by to meet the Sunquest team and enjoy a refreshing cocktail or beverage!

---

Sutherland

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Sachi Bhalerao
Sachi.bhalerao@sutherlandglobal.com
862.290.1192

As a process transformation company, Sutherland rethinks and rebuilds processes for the digital age by combining the speed and insight of design thinking with the scale and accuracy of data analytics. We have been helping customers, across industries from financial services to healthcare, achieve greater agility through transformed and automated customer experiences for over 30 years. Headquartered in Rochester, NY, Sutherland employs over 38,000 professionals spanning 19 countries around the world.

---

SyTrue

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Kyle Silvestro
kyle@sytrue.com
530.321.7484

You can find us in multiple booths – MidasPlus, nVoq, IDS, and XIFIN.

---

TransUnion Healthcare

Booth 372

Contact: Pat Gilmore, SVP, sales
pgilmor@transunion.com
303.483.1931

Please come by and visit TransUnion Healthcare at booth 372. TransUnion makes the healthcare financial process more efficient for patients, providers, and payers by helping providers:

• Engage the patient early, and connecting them with the best payment options.
• Collect more cash upfront.
• Maximize revenue and reduce collections costs.
• Lower uncompensated care.

Stop by and enter our raffle for three Amazon Echos (one given away each day).

---

Versus Technology

Booth 1723

Contact: Liz Lutheran, marketing coordinator
info@versustech.com
231.946.5868 x1232

Increased productivity. Happier employees. A better patient experience. These are benefits of using Versus RTLS to optimize your healthcare operations. Our solutions for multi-campus IDNs, single clinics, or small community hospitals include asset tracking, staff and patient workflow, smart hand hygiene, and accurate analytics. Our singular goal is to assist you in improving the delivery of care while enhancing the patient experience. Case in point – HIMSS session speaker Dan Hamilton, COO of Nor-Lea Hospital District, faced an explosion in patient volume, up 78 percent; wait times to see the physician became measured in hours; and satisfaction rates of both patients and staff went from the 90s to all-time lows. Hear how Hamilton’s journey of re-thinking his workflow resulted in optimized scheduling, resource utilization, and care delivery. Session #156: Using Data to Increase Capacity in Ambulatory Care.

You’ll have many opportunities at HIMSS17 to learn how we pair our multi-platform, scalable approach with KLAS-leading location accuracy, software solutions, expert consulting, and implementation services to ensure your project’s success. We’re not just an RTLS vendor — we’re your partner for process improvement.

---

Voalte

Booth 673

Contact: Andrew Hofheimer, sales operations manager
ahofheimer@voalte.com
941.312.2830 x267

Voalte develops smartphone solutions that simplify caregiver communication. As the only company to offer a comprehensive mobile communication strategy, Voalte enables care teams inside and outside the hospital to access and exchange information securely.

---

Wellsoft

Booth 2342

Contact: Christie Guthrie, EVP, sales and marketing
cguthrie@wellsoft.com
214.455.9574  or 800.597.9909

Wellsoft, developer and provider of the industry-leading Emergency Department Information System, offers complete solutions for hospital and freestanding emergency centers. Wellsoft EDIS is Best in KLAS* and has ranked #1 in KLAS and MD Buyline user surveys of EDIS time and again. Providing solutions for freestanding emergency centers, enterprise-wide or single hospital implementations, Wellsoft is the specialist in Emergency Department Information Systems.

* Wellsoft ranked #1 in the 2015/2016, 2014, 2013, 2012, 2010, 2009, 2008, 2007, 2006, 2003, and 2002 Best in KLAS Awards: Software & Services Emergency Department Market Segment. www.KLASresearch.com

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 2/13/17

I spent a couple of hours today getting ready for HIMSS. Priority one was outlining my agenda for continuing medical education sessions, which was tricky since it always turns out that there are multiple sessions I want to attend at the same time. The conference offers 22 hours of the specialized credit that informaticists certified by the American Board of Preventive Medicine need.

HIMSS delivers the sessions on demand as part of your HIMSS registration, but my experience last year was that some of the audio recordings were poor quality. There is also no substitute for attending a session in person and being able to participate in the discussion or connect with colleagues. I chose a primary and alternate session for each available time slot, but we’ll see what happens when I get to Orlando and the exhibit hall is beckoning.

I also worked on planning my social schedule, which also had too many overlapping offerings. I’ll be doing the exhibit hall booth crawl with at least four good friends. It’s always enjoyable to get other people’s opinions on new technologies and solutions. Of course it’s always a bonus to have someone help you scout out interesting shoes or create a diversion so you can photograph footwear or badly-behaved booth personnel without being too obvious.

Speaking of shoes, I spent some time looking for the perfect solution to get me through five days of nonstop walking. Last year I had some awesome pink running shoes from Edifecs as part of their #WhatIRun campaign. I’ve pretty much run those into the ground since then, but enjoyed being part of their campaign. I didn’t have much luck shopping, so I might have to pull out some sparkly running shoes to get through the week after all.

HIMSS is the virtual Super Bowl of conferences, so making sure I have a solid packing list was also part of today’s prep. I have a growing number of devices and various pieces of wearable tech that unfortunately involves a growing number of chargers. I have a universal adapter that takes care of the Android vs. iPad problem, but my Garmin watch has its own charger, as does my new favorite piece of wearable tech, my Ringly bracelet.

I had heard about Ringly more than a year ago, but am not big on wearing rings and was worried about the size of the stone being too much for me. I joked that if they ever came out with a silver bracelet, I’d be the first to order. Shortly after that, they came out with a stainless steel version, so I went on the waiting list last spring. I had to wait until the fall for it to arrive and have been putting it through its paces over the last several months. I’m pleased to say it’s HIMSS-worthy.

I’ve never ordered a piece of jewelry sight unseen, so I was a little nervous about it. It arrived in a big chunky cube of a box with the bracelet front and center. Sliding off the outer sleeve revealed the charging box nested underneath. The charger connects via USB to your laptop or USB transformer of choice. Not a problem for me since I usually end up charging things off my docking station anyway.

Advertising on the website at the time I ordered it said that the charging box had its own battery and would hold an 8-10 day charge depending on use. I was disappointed to learn that only applies to the ring version. For the bracelet, I’ll have to tote the charging box when I travel more than 2-3 days, which is what seems to be its maximum lifespan. I can forgive the lack of clarity on the website since they’re a startup and when I ordered they weren’t even shipping product yet. Still, having a battery in the box would be an improvement for those of us who travel.

Having to pack the charger, however, is a small price to pay for what the Ringly does. I don’t like carrying my phone in a pocket. It’s way too bulky even if I take it out of its protective case. If I put it in a purse, I have to turn the ringer on, which isn’t a great idea most of the time. I don’t like to carry my phone in my hands or leave it on the table when I’m out, which a lot of people do, but just isn’t my thing. The Ringly solves that problem – not only by providing discreet vibratory notifications, but best of all, it allows me to screen my calls and texts by configuring contacts in the Ringly app.

The Ringly app connects with dozens of other apps to provide notifications through a combination of vibrations and LED flashes. You can set it up dozens of ways, depending on how many buzzes and what color blink you associate with each app. For phone calls and texting, it links to your contacts and you can set it to either flash an additional color for certain people, or you can set it to only receive calls and texts from certain contacts. The LED is pretty subtle but helpful for giving you information on whether you need to dig out your phone or take other action.

I wanted to test drive it extensively before I decided to trust it. As a physician who is sometimes on call, I needed to know it was reliable, and it is. The connection screen in the app also shows charging and battery status.

There are a couple of quirky things about the Ringly. It likes your location to be turned on when it connects for the first time (or sometimes when it reconnects after a period of non-use). Every once in a while it doesn’t get along with my phone – usually first thing in the morning – and you have to “forget” it in your Bluetooth settings and then rediscover it. Sometimes it wants to be on the charger in order to connect.

Issues are uncommon, but you need to know the tricks in case it acts up on you. They’re also putting out app updates pretty frequently, and if it really doesn’t want to connect, usually it’s because there is an app update available. Another quirk is that Ringly does all their support through email and Facebook chats, so forget it if you like to talk to an actual person.

The other bonus of the Ringly is that it is an activity tracker. Based on how my phone identified it before I had the Ringly app installed, I suspect that it has Garmin innards. I tested it against my trusty Garmin Forerunner and found that it under-calculates by about 30 percent, however. That’s a pretty big margin of error if you’re into accurate distance traveled, but if you just want something as a relative indicator of activity, it gets the job done. The “silver” bracelet is actually stainless steel, so I’ve worn it running and to the gym with no worries. Not sure I’d do that with the plated gold-tone version.

We’ll have to see how it does on the exhibit hall floor. I’m counting on it to remind me of my appointments and to notify me when people are trying to track me down. It’s also pretty snazzy as a bracelet, so I can’t complain about that. The stone is smaller than I anticipated. If only they’d come out with a stainless version of the ring, I’ll be first in line.

What’s your favorite piece of wearable tech? Email me.

Email Dr. Jayne.

HIStalk Interviews Jason Mabry, CEO, Optimum Healthcare IT

Jason Mabry is founder and CEO of Optimum Healthcare IT of Jacksonville, FL.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I started my career in the healthcare industry about 10 years ago. Before that, I worked in the information technology industry. I’ve been focused for the past 15 years on consulting services and the last 10 on healthcare providers.

Along with my business partner Gene Scheurer, we started Optimum in 2012. We have built a company that has grown to over 500 consultants servicing about 75 healthcare systems nationwide. Our services include advisory, EHR implementation, training and activation, Community Connect, security, analytics, and managed services.

What consulting services are you finding are most in demand?

I’ve seen the trends and the evolution of service lines over the last 10 years. When we first started the organization, our clients were looking to us for implementation work. Implementation work was the focus and still is. Systems consolidate and form super systems. Clients are updating their EHR platforms and sunsetting old ones. That work continues.

I’m asked all the time, "Is this a short runway? Do you see this ending in the next two years?" I’ve been saying no for 10 years. All our clients are involved in some degree of implementing, optimizing, or upgrading.

Implementation work has been our bread and butter. We’ve been involved in all phases of that life cycle. From advisory services — where we assist clients with the associated cost and planning around implementing their EHR — to the implementation and build work and eventually the go-live and training.

Over the last two years, we’ve been developing services lines to help our clients prepare for the challenges they face in the coming years. The implementation piece is still there, but clients are looking to the future. They’re thinking and planning how to successfully transition to a value-based care model. They’re thinking about analytics. They’re thinking about Epic Community Connect.

Our focus and our value lies not just with providing key resources to support implementations, but working with and advising clients to proactively prepare for the future — regulatory changes, technology innovations, patient-driven healthcare choices, shrinking margins, and much more.

We’re also strongly focused on managed services. Healthcare organizations have spent an enormous amount of capital on implementing their EHR systems and understandably want to protect the investment. They’re finding, however, that the traditional means of supporting their users and systems are both expensive and ineffective. It’s getting hard for them to justify the large operating budgets being allocated for support. We’ve developed a methodology in this area that’s resonating very well with our clients.

Simply put, we do it better and cheaper. In this new space, we know it’s not good enough to say, “We can do this very well in your place, but it’s going to cost you.” We have a methodology and approach that we know allows us to do it better for less. Our leaders aren’t career consultants, but rather people who have demonstrated success and innovation inside healthcare organizations. They know an effective approach to support goes well beyond having staff who know the mechanics of tweaking the inanimate software system. We’re well aware of the expectations and complexities put upon healthcare IT leaders from inside their organizations. Our managed services method brings relief and credibility to the leaders as much as it provides line staff who do the day-to-day work.

Are you seeing hospitals holding back on implementing new products or services due to uncertainty about the Affordable Care Act?

I’m not. I see the opposite. I’m seeing clients planning for it. They, especially the physicians, are absolutely focused on that. As we transition from a transactional-based model to a financial model more focused around the prolonged well-being of the patient, we’re seeing these CMIOs focus on analytics, evidenced-based care, device integration, home health, and population health. I expect we’ll begin to see healthcare organizations looking to cut costs based on this uncertainty, and when we do, we’ll be here for them.

We recognize that providing services in this space isn’t about working with organizations with unlimited budgets. We understand the cost constraints healthcare organizations are under and our main objective is to stretch the value of their healthcare IT dollar, so they have more resources available for direct patient care efforts. Whether those cost constraints are coming from uncertainty about the future of ACA or something else, the result is the same for us — driving value for our customers.

Are any of them actually doing something with population health management?

The transition to value-base care is top of mind for almost all of our clients, from large health systems to small physician groups. Each of them is in a different phase of evolution in their journey toward patient-centered, accountable care.

We recognized several years ago that population health was going to be the next approach to improving health outcomes for healthcare providers. For us to be able to guide our clients through this period of transformation, we made a strategic decision to broaden and deepen our services in several key areas. Analytics, process improvement, and usable smart technology are some of these areas that we focus on when working with our clients in this space.

We know that healthcare providers must be able to deliver high-quality care with exceptional service at a reduced cost without burning out the providers or staff. Helping them understand their data to produce accurate, timely, and actionable information about the health of their patients, operations, and finances is critical. Next, we know that the workflows of 10 years ago in the ambulatory and acute care settings are not efficient in today’s world. So we focus on Lean methodology to establish new processes that create value for both the providers and the patients.

Finally, we understand that implementing technology that is neither intuitive nor helpful to the client does not create value. So we leverage our knowledge of the EMR and other third-party applications to adapt the technology to enable the efforts around process improvement and the ability to capture useful data. There is a huge focus right now on consumerism and technologies that empower patients to take control of their own healthcare needs. This is really exciting for us as it fits nicely into our service model and will help further value for our clients and their patients.

Are you seeing an interest in exchanging information among competing health systems?

We are. We still see some hesitancy in the marketplace. However, with the M&A activity, the need to find alternative and less-costly EHR options, and the federal regulations geared towards performance-based reimbursement, we’re seeing organizations opening up to options they wouldn’t have considered previously.

Essentially, they know they have to get ahead of this and are implementing the technology to enable it. If the power of a patient’s healthcare is going to be put back into their hands, they will begin to look for different options that best meet their needs. These may be accessing services at different locations, often out of network and often at competing locations. The patient is a smart consumer, so sharing across networks to care for the patient and not manage transactions is key. I think you’re going to see interoperability move forward at a faster pace than we’ve ever seen.

How do you see the balance of power shifting among what is arguably just four significant inpatient EHR vendors?

As a consulting company, we’re vendor neutral. However, we see two large vendors gaining a preponderance of market share. We work primarily with Epic and to a lesser degree Cerner. We support others such as Meditech and Allscripts as well. Then there are all the intermediate, peripheral, third-party vendors associated with the enterprise EHR products. But primarily, those two are the ones rising to the top on a regular basis during vendor selection. It’s no secret that a large part of our consulting staff is subject matter experts in those two areas, including our thought leaders and our line staff.

What we’re seeing outside the US is quite different based on the market. Epic and Cerner are still dominant in commercialized Middle Eastern regions and Europe, but are not yet major players in the Latin-speaking markets. This brings an entirely new set of vendors such as Philips and InterSystems that were built to support Latin speaking markets as a base language.

Is an ecosystem developing around Cerner and Epic where clients are willing to look outside their core solutions, or are those vendors are increasingly promoting those external solutions to their own customers?

Organizations have spent a lot of money on these enterprise systems, so they obviously want to get as much out of them as possible. I think most organizations have a policy of looking to their existing platform for any functionality being pursued before entertaining another vendor as an option. I certainly think these two vendors’ solutions have created a basis for an ecosystem, but there is always room for innovation and exceptions on the periphery.

From an application perspective, I think most healthcare organizations look at their EHR system and their ERP system as their two main hubs. So you have Lawson and PeopleSoft on the ERP side and we do a lot of work in that space as well. But yes, most peripheral applications run through the enterprise systems or as an adjunct to those core platforms. The idea is to drive down costs and increase integration through the use of enterprise platforms.

Are health systems that have developed innovation centers or started an incubator to create rather than simply consume technology seeing success from the time and money they’ve invested?

Absolutely. They’ve seen more end-user engagement because of it. Sometimes innovations are born out of multiple optimization cycles, but we know multiple clients who created their own innovation lab with some of their brightest clinical and technical minds. The end result is to improve the technology they’ve implemented and take the user experience to a higher level.

How has Epic’s Community Connect program touched the small-hospital and the physician practice markets?

It gives those organizations an opportunity to tap into some of the best and most technologically advanced EMRs without all the overhead. It’s a different paradigm. The hospitals themselves turn into the vendor. They have spent months and sometimes years optimizing their own system, so if you’re a recipient, you’re going to be receiving an optimized version of that instance. Epic, for example.

For those that can’t really afford to install their own instance of, say, Epic, or are too small to purchase Epic, this gives them an opportunity partner at a better cost with the hospital. Health systems providing the EMR have already gone through the pains of implementing and optimization. The receiving partner is getting all the lessons learned, documentation, tools, and best practices from the hub health system. Private practicing physicians have all the lab, radiology, and inpatient data at their fingertips allowing for immediate patient care.

As the industry moves from volume- to value-based care, accountable care organizations, and clinical integration, the need for a Community Connect model will continue to be in demand. Sharing information on one platform eliminates the need for interface development and enhances the ability to integrate clinical data.

What’s the demand for vendors hosting their own solutions?

It makes sense. These folks are in the business of providing for patients. With the information technology arm of the hospital requiring more and more investment, I think they view potential outsourcing as a solution to that.

In a particular market, you may have five or six Epic clients that have their own data centers and their own individual staff members devoted to the product. There’s an opportunity to consolidate that. There are opportunities to outsource some of that overhead and reinvest that back into the clinicians, back into the hospital staff.

As we move into the next phase, where margins may be thinner, healthcare providers are looking for ways to cut overhead. Outsourcing is a way to do that. A number our clients are listening to the conversation around managed services, such as a hosted data center or application support.

What was the single most important change you saw in the consulting business last year and what do you think it will be in the next year?

Last year as health systems moved past the large-scale EHR implementations, we saw a noticeable uptick in services involving optimization, data governance and analytics, ERP, managed services, and security. I believe next year we still see massive growth in these same areas, but also a focus on services that help navigate the implications of MIPS and MACRA.

Do you have any final thoughts?

We are excited to be so deeply involved in this industry. Our focus from the beginning has been improving patient care and improving the patient experience. The healthcare industry is exciting because of all the innovation currently underway. Healthcare is growing up at a rapid pace.

The shift from transactions to value-based care will create opportunities for innovation. We’ve seen that in the financial services industry, where instead of going into the bank to check your balance or to move money around, you have an app on your phone. The healthcare industry is moving toward involving the patient in his or her own healthcare in a similar fashion.

We’ve been involved in multiple implementations, but it really hits home when you walk the halls during a go-live. You’ve devoted so much time to bringing this system live and now it’s finally getting turned on. You walk through the NICU and other parts of the hospital and see that patients are at the center. They are the ones affected. Everyone in our company is focused on how to make that experience better.