Morning Headlines 2/14/13

Kaiser Permanente Wins Prestigious Eisenberg Award for Patient Safety and Quality Efforts

The National Quality Forum and The Joint Commission present Kaiser Permanente with the Eisenberg Award for work Kaiser did integrating implant registry databases and trending implant-specific outcomes across more than 300,000 patients.

Baylor University Medical Center activates Allscripts electronic health record system

Baylor University Medical Center goes live on Allscripts Sunrise Clinical Manager at its 1,065-bed Dallas campus.

Breach Report 2012: Protected Health Information

Redspin publishes its annual PHI breach report, which shows a 21 percent increase in number of large breaches but a 77 percent decrease in total number of patients impacted. Sixty-three percent of the records compromised were a result of the top five events of the year.

HIEs top hiring need: IT pros

A recent analysis of HIE staffing shortages shows that there is strong demand for health IT professionals, specifically in the areas of data integrity, software support, reporting, security, and technical project management.

Readers Write: Agile Analytics in Healthcare: Fast Deployment, Low Cost, Short Time to Value

Agile Analytics in Healthcare: Fast Deployment, Low Cost, Short Time to Value
By Jason Monroe, Mark Moffitt, and Satish Jetty, MD

Adena is a regional integrated health system located in southern Ohio serving seven counties around and including Ross County. The system is anchored by Adena Regional Medical Center and includes two critical care facilities, a freestanding cancer center, and 11 clinics employing about 180 providers.

Clinical, financial, and administrative data at Adena is spread across multiple systems including Meditech Magic (acute care), eClinicalWorks (ambulatory), LSS (previous ambulatory system), Lawson, and Kronos. Business intelligence or BI applications were limited to analysis of data in only one of these domains with a few exceptions. This made analyzing data across the enterprise difficult. The annual direct maintenance fees paid to BI vendors was about $500,000 per year and growing.

Adena was looking to improve clinical, financial, and administrative analytics by having a single system that could combine and use data across disparate systems, lower the cost of deploying and supporting these applications, and speed up the time to deploy applications requested by users.

The solution to Adena’s requirements for a BI system was found in a technology called associative query language (AQL). Our commercial BI product’s associative data model is designed for deployment speed and for providing users with an environment that is designed to encourage data exploration. It is easy to program and does not require personnel with specialized skills to build and maintain applications as compared to the traditional model for analytics using a data warehouse and cubes.

Traditional BI vendors use a data warehouse to consolidate data from multiple systems. Data is fed from transactional systems to a data warehouse in real time or in batches at the end of the day.

Once a data warehouse is deployed and populated with data, cubes are built and deployed to users. Cubes contain data from a data warehouse that is aggregated to answer a specific set of questions. A user is working with a subset of the data in the data warehouse rather than the whole data set. The design and build of cubes is an iterative and ongoing process between users and personnel with technical skills in building and optimizing cubes.

Our product uses data in memory in a compressed form with associations defined between data items rather than joins as used in a traditional database. These associations are derived automatically during the data load process into memory based on matching column names across tables. Matching column names from different systems is easy.

AQL makes it possible to load data from multiple transactional systems directly and bypass a data warehouse and cubes. The product does require work to set up and update a data set. However, this effort is much easier than building and maintaining a data warehouse and cubes.

The project was approved in late 2011 and started in January 2012.

Readmission Risk Dashboard

The Readmission Risk Dashboard combines data from Meditech, eClinicalWorks, and LSS (ambulatory PM and EMR used prior to eClinicalWorks) to provide a complete picture of Adena’s inpatient census. The application uses the Modified LACE Tool which assesses patients length of stay, acuity, co-morbidities (20), and emergency room activity as a predictor of the likelihood the patient will be readmitted within 30 days of discharge. Adena has initiated protocols based on a patient’s LACE score that include:

• Nurse navigator consults initiated for patients with a LACE score of ≥ 11.
• Coordinated conversations with the attending physician, nurse navigator, and the patient’s primary care physician initiated for LACE score of ≥ 15 to discuss options such as palliative care.

The initial result of this project is enhanced productivity of our nurse navigators and significant enhancement to the timeliness and pertinence of the data that is presented to care providers. Long term, we expect improvement to the readmission rate at Adena Health System, which has a positive financial impact, but more importantly, allows for improved quality of care and overall patient experience.

The build of this application took less than two weeks from discussion to a beta version available in production. The clinical program is in pilot and will be implemented system-wide.

Figure 2 – Readmission risk dashboard

Readmission risk dashboard summary:

• All inpatients
• Sorted by highest modified LACE score
• Patient detail including problem list, ED and urgent care visits, scheduled appointments
• 30-day readmission tracking dashboard
• Data sources: Meditech, eClinicalWorks, LSS
• Application development time: two weeks
• Time to deploy: four months
• Direct savings through elimination of other system(s) or avoidance of new system(s): $80,000 per year

Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) Dashboard

PCMH is an initiative that is being piloted in one primary care provider office. The PCMH dashboard was developed to give providers and staff a view of PCP’s patients admitted to the hospital, patients seen in the emergency room or urgent care in the past 30 days, and inpatient discharges for the past 30 days. This dashboard gives providers easy access to information not previously available. The program gives nurse navigators a tool to identify patients needing discharge follow up or more dedicated attention.

Additionally, the application lists patients scheduled in the next few weeks that have a chronic disease. Clinicians are able to determine if the patient has required lab or imaging tests scheduled so the tests are completed prior to a clinic visit. Previously this was a manual process requiring considerable staff time to assemble the required information. No screen shot is provided because most of the data is patient information.

PCMH dashboard summary:

• PCP’s patients in hospital
• PCP’s patients who have been to the emergency room or urgent care in the past 30 days
• PCP’s patients discharged from hospital in the past 30 days
• Patients with chronic disease scheduled in the next three weeks
• Data sources: Meditech, eClinicalWorks, LSS
• Application development time: 45 days
• Time to deploy: 60 days
• Direct savings through elimination of other system(s) or avoidance of new system(s): $500,000 over three years

Provider Scorecard

Wellness and preventative health is tracked for annual wellness exam (AWE), mammograms, colonoscopy, osteoporosis screening, and BMI capture rate. For comprehensive diabetes care, performance rates are monitored for A1C control, LDL control, and microalbumin screening.

At the provider level, readmission rates are tracked for CHF, AMI, pneumonia, and COPD. Also, patient experience scores are extracted from Press Ganey data and incorporated. Finally, the dashboard displays practice activity, in real time, of patients waiting in the reception area, patients in a room waiting on a physician, and patients in a room with a provider.

Provider scorecard summary:

• Provider and practice level scorecards and performance metrics: wellness and preventative Health is tracked for AWE, mammograms, colonoscopy, osteoporosis screening, and BMI capture rate
• Comprehensive diabetes are: performance rates monitored for A1C control, LDL control, and microalbumin screening
• Readmission rates are tracked for CHF, AMI, pneumonia, and COPD
• Real-time view of patient activity in a clinic
• Data source: Meditech, eClinicalWorks, Press Ganey
• Application development time: 60 days
• Time to deploy: 90 days
• Direct savings through elimination of other system(s) or avoidance of new system(s): $140,000 per year

Revenue Cycle Management (RCM)

Rather than buy a third-party application for RCM, the commercial BI product was used to build an application to provide functionality in the first phase including aged trial balance, summary detail, transactional detail at patient level, coding workflow, self-pay analysis, and account balance in multiple insurance

• Data source: Meditech, eClinicalWorks
• Application development time: 16 weeks for Phase 1
• Time to deploy: 20 weeks
• Direct savings through elimination of other system(s) or avoidance of new system(s): $250,000 per year

 

Personnel spent the previous year trying to meet the requirements of this project using Excel, and when that failed, another vendor’s BI system that failed to meet the requirements of the program. Using the commercial product, the team was able to produce an application that met all requirements in 90 days.

At the start of the project, there was only Adena employee working on it. Consultants were used for the first four months to accelerate development on RCM applications. A second person was added to the team in July 2012.

Super users are being trained in RCM, finance, clinical, quality, operations improvement, strategy, and the Adena Medical Group. These are not new hires, but subject matter experts in their area with strong Microsoft Excel skills. These super users work with SMEs to build prototypes, deploy applications, and support programs in their respective area.

The first year of deploying the system had expenses of $500,000, mainly licenses, hardware, and consulting services to accelerate work on RCM. Direct savings so far equals $2 million over three years. These savings are from the cancellation of contracts for existing systems or cost avoidance of new systems that were budgeted and planned for deployment.

Another benefit to the system is that applications are being developed faster. Before, clinical programs needing analytics waited as applications were purchased and installed. Using the commercial BI product, prototypes are built in days or weeks and applications are piloted in a few months and at a lower cost than before – hence the term agile analytics. The results have exceeded our expectations.

Jason Monroe is director of enterprise data management with Adena Health System. Mark Moffitt, former CIO at Adena, is senior director with Ascension Health Information Services-Seton. Satish Jetty, MD, is CMIO of Adena Health System.

CIO Unplugged 2/13/13

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are mine personally and are not necessarily representative of current or former employers.

Experience is Not the Best Teacher

 

We took our youngest child Talitha on her first visit to Kauai so she could visit her grandparents. Yes, the same couple who offered me a bribe years earlier not to marry their daughter. They had retired in a condo, high overlooking the Na Pali coast.

One day while they babysat Talitha, we headed out for adventure with our eight-year-old son Brandon and German exchange student Sonja. We began our day intent on making it to Secret Falls, only accessible by foot.

We rented two kayaks, donned lifejackets, and started paddling up the Wailua River to the remote trailhead two klicks away. The evening before, a major storm passed through, so our outfitters warned us that the river would be more challenging than normal to navigate.

Julie and Sonja paddled smoothly and held a great line down the middle of the river. Brandon and I had a difficult time keeping the keel pointed upstream as we beached the banks. A mile in, we came to a choke point where the placid river channeled into a quarter of its normal width, creating a high velocity flow with rapids and eddies.

The women stopped short of the rushing waters and, of course we men would show them how to row into the straight, like salmon looking to spawn. Hal way in, I realized we had no chance. I tried to turn the kayak 180 and go back down in search of an alternate route.

The kayak flipped. I fell out, and the current sucked me 10 yards downstream into a recessed pool. The upside down kayak remained in the fray, tangled in branches and storm debris.

The women witnessed the event and moved in as close as they could where the waters were manageable. No one could see Brandon, and we were afraid he’d been swept under and caught in debris. A muffled “Help!” reached our ears. Trapped under the kayak, he could not escape because his life jacket was keeping him afloat in the air pocket.

Julie’s mother-bear instincts kicked in. She jumped into the water and swam to the kayak.

 

Grabbing smooth but slippery tree roots along the bank, I pulled myself to the other end of the vessel. Between the two of us, we were able to flip the craft. Brandon floated into the calm pool to safety. We decided the best course of action would be to carry our kayaks on land past the channel and then get back in.

While we collected ourselves, a man and his son rowed past us. They had observed the scene and congratulated us on our remarkable recovery. They then proceeded past us thinking they could muscle their way through the current. Sure enough, at the midpoint, the father turned the kayak to head back. As if a bad rerun, they also flipped, and the kayak got stuck in the same spot.

The dad stayed upstream, holding onto branches. His son was nowhere in sight. No muffled cries for help. He had seat belted himself in. So not only was he under the kayak, but upside down submerged.

I jumped back in and made way to the kayak. We could not flip it given the physics with his son as anchor. Reaching under, I pulled at every strap I could find to break the boy free. Likely seconds but seemingly minutes, he was freed. We eventually got him to shore, shaken but alive.

Julie and I talked afterwards and wondered why on earth our fellow paddlers made the decision to copy our near tragedy. After observing our experience, why would they even want to follow our path? Sure, had we been successful it would have made sense. But we nearly lost our son.

Experience is not always the best teacher. Had this father taken note of my journey, he would have spared his son fear and trouble.

So it is in work. Why do we insist on replicating other leader’s and organization’s failures? Why don’t we take advantage of other’s experiences, both the good and the bad? Is it pride? Is it a feeling of invincibility? Arrogance? Fear?

The next time you embark on a journey, make efforts to prepare in advance. Use two parts planning to one part execution. Research leading practices. Study accounts of success and failures related to your endeavor.

I learned this from one of my mentors. Before embarking on our EHR journey, he insisted we contact successful and unsuccessful organizations and learn. I arranged several CEO/CIO meetings with peer health systems where we actively learned from others experiences. It paid off and is now part of my standard way of operating. There’s no reason to risk drowning when we have access to river guides.

Ed Marx is a CIO currently working for a large integrated health system. Ed encourages your interaction through this blog. Add a comment by clicking the link at the bottom of this post. You can also connect with him directly through his profile pages on social networking sites LinkedIn and Facebook and you can follow him via Twitter — user name marxists.

HIStalk Interviews Jon Phillips, Partner, Healthcare Growth Partners

Jon Phillips is founder, managing director, and partner with Healthcare Growth Partners of Elmhurst, IL.

It’s been a couple of years since we’ve talked officially. Your predictions back then were strong M&A through 2011 then falling off significantly in 2012, multiple billion-dollar deals by the end of 2011, and HITECH payouts that would be a fraction of the potential amount. Want to revisit those?

I certainly missed it in terms of the projection related to 2012 M&A activity. When we tallied up the transaction activity for 2012, it was at a record level for the space. I think we’re continuing to see a lot of activity related to a number of different macro trends that are impacting healthcare overall. Transaction activity has continued to follow along with the growth in healthcare spending and then also the increasing need and understanding of the need for healthcare information technology to solve the other challenges and healthcare more broadly. I definitely missed on that one.

On the Meaningful Use side of things, as you look at the stimulus payouts and look at the distribution of those payouts, we were somewhat on the mark. You still have a fairly hefty proportion of the physician market that has not yet been able to become eligible. You’ll see those physicians falling into a couple of different categories. You’re still going to see more people trying to get systems in place so that they can capture some of the Meaningful Use incentives. But I think you’re having some other physicians who are looking at the impact that the systems are going to have on their practice productivity and are saying that a one-time stimulus incentive may not be enough to get them over the hump in terms of deploying systems.

There’s a little bit of a battle there, especially in the physician practices. In smaller practices, the adoption curve is probably a little slower than many people would have said going back several years. Just like we’ve always seen in healthcare IT it just takes a long time to adapt technology. It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to see adoption rates for EHRs in any provider heading up into the 80 to 90 percent range at some point. It just seems to be taking a little longer than some of the cheerleaders expected.

 

Everybody wanted to buy HER-related vendors and consulting firms a couple of years ago. Now it seems like everybody’s chasing analytics and population health technology vendors. Do you think that latter group is going to be as successful as acquirers seem to think they will be?

A lot of it depends on the type of solution that the analytics and business intelligence and population health folks are providing and that the capabilities that they have. You’re going to see some situations where there is a sense that if an acquirer purchases an analytics vendor, that in and of itself is going to drive success, because there is a tremendous amount of data that’s being created, and so tools that can sift through the data and can drive meaningful conclusions from data can be very valuable.

That being said, part of the challenge is that a lot of the analytics solutions and BI solutions out there are much narrower in their capabilities than people may expect. There is still a lot of hype around the big data solutions that has yet to pan out. There’s a pony in there somewhere, but I don’t know that a lot of people have found the pony yet. 

It’s going to depend on continued execution rather than just buying a business or developing a business or investing in a business that has strong analytics capabilities and a strong business intelligence footprint. That’s not going to be everything that it’s going to take. You have to focus in on how those solutions are going to be used and the value that they’re going to generate.

I had a conversation with a hospital exec a little while back. He was talking about the fact that they have a clinical system that they deployed. The system is fully operational, and yet they’re still having to go through and do manual reviews of charts to pull relevant information because the system captures a lot of information, but it doesn’t necessarily make it usable. For analytics-type solutions to really be valuable, they have to close that gap from taking data that’s being captured, drawing meaningful insight from that, and then helping it to be actionable so that hospitals and physicians can actually do something with the reports that are coming out.

The trap with data is that you can fall into a situation where you say, “Just because we have a lot of data and we can run a reports on that data, that that means that we can make a difference in terms of how we’re providing care or how we’re running our hospital or physician practice.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that. Look at the proliferation of data across the economy. It’s a much smaller subset of data that actually drives decision making. In healthcare, the data sets are incredibly complex and the decision processes are incredibly complex, so it’s just going to take some time to bridge those gaps.

The other interesting thing related back to how a few years ago there’s a lot of focus on consolidation in the EHR and PM space and among consulting firms. Consulting has been kind of up and down. That sub-sector tends to be going waves, where you’ll see some significant acquisitions and then you’ll see a lot of the principal spinoffs start their on firms, build these firms up, and then you’ll see another wave of consolidation.

On the EHR and practice management side of things, there were a few deals last year in that space, but at least the rumblings that we’re hearing right now is that there are a number of other companies in the physician software space that are exploring raising capital or finding an acquirer. You’re starting to see a pickup in activity in that part of the market, which is not tremendously surprising, but it’s interesting because I think you have people trying to figure out how they position themselves for a market that as the impact winds down on the incentives associated with Meaningful Use, how do you get yourself positioned as a company to continue to have success in the physician software market? 

The winners haven’t necessarily completely emerged yet. You have companies of very different sizes who are both doing very well and who are not doing very well. I think you’re going to see some real strategic moves in that space over the next year or two as businesses try to build real strong strategic positioning to become long-term participants in that market.

 

Do you believe that Humedica really got hundreds of millions of dollars in its acquisition, and what do you think that deal means for the market?

A lot of times what you’ll hear with deals like that is the rumor will tend to be substantially higher than the actual deal. It could be that that deal was structured with a portion of the consideration paid upfront, and then some of it depending on performance going forward. I look at that transaction as being much less about the existing footprint that Humedica had than the ability for Optum to be able to take the capabilities and tools that Humedica has been developing and gain a lot of additional value out of those capabilities based on the much broader reach that Optum has.

If you look at the number that businesses that Optum has acquired, in certain situations, they’ve paid prices — and they don’t have to publish a lot of the multiples given how big they are — but that certainly seemed to be at the far end of the valuation distribution. Yet in a lot of the situations, they’ve paid big prices and then have it in turn really been able to generate a lot of value out of those businesses. It probably was a smaller deal size than is going on than the rumor might otherwise imply, but Optum is going to have a very disciplined financial model in terms of how they look at it and how they generate a payoff. That’s how they came to the value that they were willing to pay.

It does present a trap for other companies in the space. As we looked at the deal environment in 2012, we saw a little bit of a bimodal distribution in values, where you would see certain transactions happening at very high revenue and earnings multiples and then the majority of transactions happening at lower multiples. If you’re thinking about selling a company, the temptation is always going to be to say, “We’re better than anybody else, so we should deserve to get a three, four, five, six times revenue multiple.” 

If you look at the distribution, even in 2012 but especially if you look at it historically over the last five or 10 years, the multiples for deals done in the space — whether it’s a recurring model or a license model, it’s not entirely dependent on profitability although profitability impacts it, growth impacts it, the level of recurring revenue impacts it – but what you see is that most deals in the space happen at two or three times revenue.

When you see deals like that get announced and there’s a really high value, sometimes everybody says, “That means that my company is worth a lot more.” It doesn’t necessarily mean that. It means that Humedica was worth that much to Optum. It’s more of a one-off than a hallmark of the much broader trend that deal values are going to be permanently high.

 

Give me one example of each of an M&A deal that you did like and one that you didn’t like in the last couple of years.

In terms of ones that I’ve liked, I think athena has done some fairly interesting things. Epocrates is obviously very intriguing in terms of the footprint that they have and the reach that they have. But I also think that athena’s acquisition of Healthcare Data Services is pretty intriguing as well in terms of looking at different ways to look at the information that’s flowing through their customers and being able to draw lessons from that. A smaller-type transaction, but certainly presenting a significant upside.

In terms of some other ones that are pretty interesting — a caveat, we were a strategic advisor on this transaction — the Hearst acquisition of MCG was very intriguing given the footprint that Hearst already has and the ability to really generate strategic value through what MCG has already built.

The things that I tend to like are situations where you have businesses that have a strong footprint and are looking at pieces that are truly additive in terms of where they’re building and the directions that they’re going, that are going to generate growth that’s faster than either of the businesses could effectively do on their own without the bigger footprint that they’re going to have together and the better reach that they’re going to have together.

Some of the ones I don’t totally understand. Perceptive buying Acuo. The vendor-neutral archive space is certainly an intriguing space and I think there’s opportunity there, but you always get a little nervous about sectors where it feels like the technology could, in effect, be disintermediated over the long term, that there’s not necessarily a long-term presence that the technology helps you to establish. In situations like where you’re buying something that may have strong momentum today but certainly presents a fair amount of risk for there down the road in terms of replacement capabilities that could be much less expensive and more flexible — those feel like deals that are tough to make pay off over the long term.

 

Who needs to sell or find a partner?

If you’re a physician-oriented software vendor and you are under $10 million in revenue — just to draw a bright line which may or may not be fair — I think you have to be thinking about a sale. The level of investment associated with continuing on Stage 2 and then the level of investment in terms of sales and marketing to be able to continue to go after a market where the individual incremental sales are going to be smaller in terms of the deal size, and yet there are still a lot of sales and marketing investment that’s required to get there. 

Those groups are going to have to find bigger companies to take them over. In some situations, there will be scenarios where the products won’t survive. In other situations, the products will survive, but they’ll be able to have common sales and marketing and they’ll get some savings on the development side. Smaller ambulatory vendors absolutely need to look at selling.

This isn’t necessarily a 2013 trend but certainly one that will carry on over time is the question about what happens with traditional best-of-breed vendors in a hospital environment. There is certainly still a market for best-of-breed vendors in hospital environments and I think that market will continue. But the challenge is, once again, you have to have scale. When you look at a lot of the public results that have come out and then just the conservations that we’ve had with the folks who don’t publish their results, 2012 was a challenging year unless you’re selling core clinicals and you’re Epic or unless you’re selling things around ICD-10 and code migration. It was not a year where everybody had a lot of success in selling into hospitals.

If you’re a single product best-of-breed vendor in the hospital market, there’s likely going to be a lot of variability in your revenue streams over the next couple of years as the capital flows in hospital vary up and down unless hospitals react to the reimbursement pressures that they’re going to be seeing. You really do need to broaden out capabilities, which entails finding a buyer or a merger partner for a lot of new kind of single-product, best-of-breed vendors in the marketplace.

 

Give me three predictions about anything related to healthcare IT over the next one to three years.

In the next three years, there will be certain significant winners and a much larger number of significant losers in business intelligence and analytics. Some people will figure out how to draw connection to what hospitals need, whether it’s what they need for operating in an accountable care or coordinated care environment, or what they need in terms of dramatically improving their operations. You’ll have some other groups who don’t draw the connection to meaningful return on investment and those will be the ones that will fall by the wayside.

You will see ongoing consolidation in the physician software market. In 2013 and 2014 ,we’ll see a significant increase in the number of transactions among physician software vendors. 

A lot of Epic’s competitors will see resurgence in their opportunities in the marketplace. Epic has an unbelievable momentum. They’ve done a great job executing. They’ve done a great job in sales. But I also think that there are reasons why people can choose other solutions, whether Epic still has core clinicals but then there are people who are providing solutions that go around the fringes, or whether it’s groups selecting alternatives to Epic because they feel philosophically and capability-wise there are other directions that they can go. Epic is going to be a very strong player in the marketplace for a long time to come, but three years from now, they won’t look as invincible as they seem to today.

Morning Headlines 2/13/13

Greenway Reports Fiscal 2013 Second-Quarter Results, Revises Outlook for Fiscal 2013

Greenway announces Q2 results: revenue up 12 percent, EPS $0.00 far short of analyst estimates of $0.05.  Greenway has adjusted FY13 earnings guidance to $0.21-$0.28 EPS, with analysts predicting $0.27. Shares were down eight percent in Tuesday’s after-hours trading.

RazorInsights Secures $11 Million from Bluff Point Associates

Following a strong reception into the critical access and community hospital EHR market, RazorInsight closes an $11 Million in Series A funding round.

Branzell named CEO of CHIME

Russell Branzell, CEO of the Colorado Health Medical Group, has been named president and CEO of CHIME.

Electronic Medical Records at The Mount Sinai Medical Center Shown to Greatly Improve Quality of Care

Mount Sinai’s ongoing $120 million Epic implementation is credited with improved core measure performance and a reduction of readmissions by 56 percent.

HIStalk Interviews Charlotte Wray, VP/CIO, EMH Healthcare

Charlotte Wray, RN, MSN, MBA is VP clinical operations and information systems and chief clinical and information officer at EMH Healthcare of Elyria, OH.

Tell me about yourself and the organization.

I’m the chief information officer and the chief clinical officer at EMH Healthcare. I’ve been in healthcare about 25 years, with probably the last 10 focused on HIT, and have been an executive at EMH for about three and a half years.

EMH is a medium-sized community hospital, about 400 beds. Like most other hospitals have a few sites, we have about 19 provider offices. We support a community of about 350,000 people.

 

How is the IT department structured?

The IT department has evolved given the investment that we’ve had to make in the clinical components. It has about 40 professionals of diverse backgrounds. We have a combination of business analysts and clinical analysts as well as your traditional technology experts. The group has evolved to become a service support area for the hospital and our target audience of end users, which are predominantly nurses, physicians, and technicians across the enterprise.

 

How has the Meaningful Use process worked? Do you think it was worth it, and would you do anything differently?

We embarked on the journey to implement a robust information system — clinical and financial systems — in late 2008. We entered the space in what I would call the sweet spot. We acquired the money to buy our solution. Meaningful Use wasn’t in the forefront of our thoughts. 

Shortly after we began implementing, Meaningful Use became something that was more measurable and had a little reward with the risks. We aligned our information system strategy so that it was tightly integrated with the Meaningful Use requirements and the timing of those various activities. We attested in 2010, fiscal year 2011.

It was a huge change project for us. It was huge. We did not have clinicians of any kind using electronic record in a meaningful way. We had some niche solutions in cardiology, radiology, and pharmacy, but the bulk of our workforce was doing their day-to-day work on paper. It was an enormous clinical transition for our providers and our nurses.

I believe it was worth it. It helped us align with the government initiatives to try to improve healthcare. We tried to make it about more than just checking the box to get the money. There was a little bit of money there. It didn’t come close to covering the costs, but it certainly helped guide us to do things in a more prioritized fashion. We wanted to make sure that we weren’t just checking the box and saying we met the requirement, that we were really meaningfully using the various applications and the workflows that we were building.

I think it was worth it, but I think like anything else, the pain of change fades as you go live and move onto other projects. If you would have asked me right in the heat of it, I might have said, “Oh my goodness!” But looking back, it was definitely worth it.

 

Academic medical centers have it easier because their physicians are employed. I assume most of yours were community-based physicians who had not previously interacted directly with systems. How did you get them to use it?

At EMH, very few of them are employed. They are independent, they are entrepreneurial, they are primary care providers, and there’s about 400 of them. We had to have a very creative approach to managing that group of users.

We did an assessment of where they were. What we found was that a significant percentage of them had no access, no exposure previously to not only EMRs, but even basic computing functions. Many of them at the time didn’t have e-mail accounts. The closest thing that they had to interacting with some sort of a system was an ATM card. We had to build a lot of the fundamental blocking and tackling skills before we could even go live with our solutions.

We had to be very, very sensitive to their workflow demands. In an academic center, physicians are equally as busy, but they tend to stay in that center. In a community model, our physicians will go to two and three hospitals as well as maybe two or three free-standing surgery centers, and then they have offices in two or three locations. We had to build our solutions in a manner that was at least appreciative of their workflow demands and the competing priorities that they have with their day-to-day between the hospital space and the office space.

 

What kind of carrot or stick did you have to use to get them to take to CPOE?

It’s interesting. We used both carrots and sticks. They do definitely respond better to carrots. 

We looked at the physicians. We profiled them, so to speak, informally, based on our knowledge of them. We knew who had a personality that was more change tolerant, we knew who was more tech savvy, we knew who would be more likely to just be engaged in activities that we would do. We focused on those first and put a number of our doctors together in a room. We had more of a critical mass of our doctors than we thought. For those guys, it was, “Hey, do you want to be one of the pioneers? You want to be one of the early adopters?” That motivated a lot of them.

Some of the carrots that we used were toys. We gave them some devices. They earned them if they were helping us build and design the actual product that we would be using. We did appropriately budget for and compensate them for their time with iPads. They could have easily asked for a check, but they were willing to do a lot of work because they would be entitled to a device if they gave us so many hours of their life. We found that to be very motivating. That helped us with about 40 physicians. That’s a lot of physicians to get working on a project with you. 

We use the stick when we have to, although the stick doesn’t work very well. Physicians revolt when they see that. That doesn’t usually motivate them. We will use our medical staff channels to try to drive compliance, but that’s probably our last and least-effective strategy.

We leveraged the relationships we had with them. Being a community-based hospital, we know the physicians. We know them personally and professionally. We could leverage that existing relationship and call in some favors to help us drive the project.

 

I assume physicians who didn’t have e-mail accounts aren’t using much technology in their practices. Are they using EMRs and are you doing any connectivity outreach with them?

There’s been a lot of change in that space over the last few years. I don’t know the percentage so I would hate to guess, but we’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of physicians that are using EMRs in their offices. 

The challenge is a lot of them are using certified, free products. While that may be a short-term solution for them, I worry about them as we get into Stage 2 or Stage 3 and the viability of those solutions when they raise the bar for certification. A lot of them will be faced with having to migrate from one solution to the other. 

We did develop an outreach strategy with the physicians. We offer them a turnkey solution to purchase licenses and services for the ambulatory EMR that we use in our employed positions. If they’re an employed physician, we have a solution that they can use, but if they’re non-employed physician –a community based physician — we will allow them to buy from us that same solution. It’s much more economical to buy it from us than to go out on their own and try to buy it from XYZ vendor. That’s been pretty successful.

 

What systems are you using on the physician side?

Our employed physicians are using Allscripts Enterprise. One of our physician groups has been using it for many, many years over the various naming conventions of the solutions themselves. 

Allscripts Enterprise is a very robust system. It tends to be a lot of system for small practices, and sometimes I believe it’s outside of the financial reaches of the practices. We’re able to offer that to small and medium-sized groups at a very reasonable rate because we’re basically just repackaging what we’ve already built and putting it in the appropriate silo. They can do their business in the same application in a manner that’s respectful of privacy and various regulations surrounding privacy.

 

What are you using for inpatient clinicals?

We are using Siemens Soarian solutions for clinicals and for financials. We still do have a few niche solutions in some of our other areas. The emergency room uses Allscripts and we’ve got a combination of solutions for PACS. Agfa PACS was the legacy radiology system. Whenever possible, my goal is to try to migrate everybody to core solutions and get rid of those niche solutions whenever possible. It’s just a nightmare, as you noticed, to continue to support those things.

 

Do you bring in outside help?

Like a lot of hospitals, there’s been so much change in a short period of time that we have needed to bring in some expertise. Either because we didn’t have enough bodies to do some of the basic work or we didn’t have the insight and experience do some of that higher-end work. We’ve used consultants – Stoltenberg, specifically — in the ambulatory space as well as the acute care space. We have used them to help us develop some strategies. We’ve used them the help us with basic building. We’ve used them as for staff augmentation and also to expand the skill set of our workforce based on their experience in doing these implementations in other facilities. 

I find it as a very good interim solution to the resource constraints that we have. When used appropriately, I think it can be very effective.

 

The health system has achieved HIMSS EMRAM Level 6, which is impressive and unusual for a community hospital. Have you seen care improvements from that?

I believe we have. We went from Stage 2 to Stage 6 two years.

The most measurable improvement that we’ve seen is in the area of a closed-loop medication management system. We use a solution called MAK for barcode medication management. What we know is that we have dramatically reduced the adverse events surrounding medication management when it’s specific to giving the right patient the right med. Human beings in a busy environment make mistakes. Sometimes the best nurse, the best doctor can make a bad decision about which patient gets what. Barcoding the medication and the patients against the orders has eliminated almost all of those verification errors.

That closed-loop medication solution gives us a lot of insight from the near misses. We didn’t always get a good amount of detail about near misses because nurses and doctors didn’t know they almost made a mistake. When they did, they didn’t likely report it. The system tracks and captures all of that near-miss data. We can drill down into that and develop remedies to trend what we’re seeing. 

Where people are working around the solution, undermining the solution, we can develop a strategy for that. If it’s basic education about a functionality that they may not be aware, of we can drill down into that. If it’s a process issue, if we’ve got an issue with bar codes or specific workflows, we can drill down into that, which has been very, very meaningful for us. I think that’s been the biggest bang for our buck.

What we’re starting to see ROI on now are clinical decision support queues that we have built. Compliance with simple things is very complicated in a hospital. When it takes 87 steps to get a medication to a patient or to give an immunization to somebody that needs a pneumonia vaccine, it blows up for a lot of reasons. We’re trying to use decision support in a meaningful way, not to try to overwhelm the nurse and the doctor, but to try to guide them where we know that they tend to make omissions. We know we can, with great certainty, improve a process by putting some decision support and team workflow behind it to remind and nudge and nag the providers to do all of the things that they’re supposed to do.

Obviously when you see decreases in variations and care, it’s going to improve clinical outcomes. I would daresay that we are improving clinical outcomes, but the measurement of that is still rather new. It’s probably a conversation for six months from now. Using the tools to drill down with the data to make changes in care based on what you’re seeing — that’s what we’re focusing on now, because that is what I think is the cool part of having these solutions in place. You can really make changes to care delivery and improve clinical outcomes.

 

What are your biggest IT-related challenges and opportunities?

The challenges and opportunities are enormous. I think in the immediate future, it’s balancing the financial investments against all of the other competing priorities. We are a hospital. How many years in a row can you invest greater than 50 or 60 percent of your capital into IT? We have to balance it against the other needs of the health system. I think those challenges are growing, and it’s getting more difficult to continue to fund these significant investments.

I think the other challenges are, how do we really use the tools to improve care? How do we really get the right information into the hands of the providers so they can make better decisions about patient care? That is optimizing what you’ve put in and really making it as functional as possible so that the nurses and the doctors are getting what they need out of that system.

I think patient engagement and getting patients to be accountable and engaged in their healthcare management is an enormous challenge for not only EMH, but for the country. That’s going to be something that’s going to evolve dramatically over the next couple of years.

Lastly, the evolution of accountable care and the ability of health systems to work together tightly or loosely across the continuum so that we can do a better job of caring for patients across that continuum. That’s going to be an enormous challenge, especially for hospitals like EMH because we’re an independent hospital. We’re going to need to align ourselves with tertiary providers, community providers, and skilled nursing facilities. We will have to be able to do business across the lifetime of a patient, and that’s a whole new territory for everybody.

HIStalk Guide to HIMSS13

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Accent on Integration® (AOI®)

Booth: Interoperability Showcase, Use Case #8

Contact: Marc C. Andiel, Co-founder, President and CEO
MAndiel@AOI.biz
972.422.8609, 214.417.3618

Accent on Integration® (AOI®) enables data sharing by interconnecting disparate technology systems and patient care devices for hospitals and healthcare systems of all sizes to improve patient care by enhancing clinical workflows, eliminating error-prone processes and removing data silos. AOI’s Accelero Connect® integration platform is vendor, manufacturer and modality neutral and used to openly communicate clinical data between a multitude of systems and devices.

AOI was selected to participate in the HIMSS Interoperability Showcase and demonstrate live how Accelero Connect can integrate vital signs monitors, smart infusion pumps and telemetry beds with an HIS. At the show, AOI can be found in the demo area for Use Case No.8, which will illustrate the role integration plays as a patient moves through a hospital from the ED to ICU and then discharge.

AOI’s team of seasoned professionals is dedicated to uniting people, process and technology, and they look forward to meeting with you at HIMSS to discuss your integration goals.

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Acuo Technologies

Booth 2859

Contact: Mike Dolan, Vice President of Sales
mdolan@acuotech.com
952.905.3448

Acuo Technologies® is the world leader in clinical content management and data migration technology. Our Universal Clinical Platform (UCP) is an enterprise solution built on a next-generation vendor neutral archive (VNA). UCP helps healthcare organizations achieve full interoperability across multiple disparate systems by consolidating long-term data management. UCP unlocks clinical content held captive in departmental systems, providing extreme data liquidity that eliminates migration headaches and accelerates patient data to the point of need. With VNA implementation experience that spans all major PACS vendors and storage providers, Acuo is focused on making all components of a healthcare ecosystem work better together.

In January 2013, Acuo became part of Perceptive Software from Lexmark. The combination of Perceptive’s content management capabilities and Acuo’s VNA platform provides the ability to capture, manage and access all unstructured content to clinicians exactly where and when they need it. The combined offerings provide capabilities to quickly search and extract relevant information from this captured content, and deliver it in the context of the clinical applications. It allows Acuo and Perceptive to bring “high definition” to the EMR and is unique in the healthcare space.

Acuo brings clinical content into the context of the patient record in the EMR, just as Perceptive Software brings unstructured content into the context of the EMR or other enterprise application. Together Perceptive Software’s rich process and content solutions, combined with Acuo’s Universal Clinical Platform, gives users an enterprise-wide view of all patient medical information from within the EMR system. This gives physicians immediate and convenient access to all patient information—from x-rays, ultrasounds, CT scans and more, regardless of the department in which it was conducted or the proprietary technology used to create and store it.

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Access

Booth 1023

Contact: Lindsey Eaton, Senior Inside Sales Representative
lindsey.eaton@accessefm.com
913.752.9938

Hundreds of hospitals worldwide use Access solutions to integrate e-forms, electronic patient signatures and clinical data into EHRs without paper or user effort. See Access solutions in action at HIMSS Booth 1023. Oh, and we’ll have free Starbucks coffee, so that’s a win, win for you and your caffeine habit. Watch our customers’ video testimonials here: http://www.youtube.com/accesseforms. And check out our website to learn how we can help your hospital improve patient care and safety while saving you time, money and paper: www.accessefm.com.

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Advisory Board Company

Booth 4669

Contact: Meghan Fassl, Manager
FasslM@advisory.com
202.266.6528

The Advisory Board Company is a global research, technology, and consulting firm partnering with 150,000 leaders in 3,700+ organizations across health care. Stop by booth #4669 to meet our team of IT experts, schedule a one on one session with analyst on your topic of choice, pick up our newly released research, attend an education session, and learn more about our Health Care IT Suite memberships.

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Allscripts

Booth 3441

Contact: Ariana Nikitas, Director of External Relations
ariana.nikitas@allscripts.com
312.506.1236

The changes underway in healthcare require provider organizations to be Open. Open to change. Open to collaboration. Open to innovation. And Open to the information and insights that lead to improved outcomes. Allscripts Open architecture connects both clinical and financial data across every setting – whether you’re interested in care coordination, revenue cycle, performance management or mobility improvements. This openness brings us closer to our vision of a Connected Community of Health. Join us in booth #3441 to learn more how being Open is driving amazing outcomes across the healthcare industry.

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AirStrip

Booth 1721

Contact: Kimberly Kuzawa, Executive Assistant
kimberlykuzawa@airstriptech.com
832.330.4419

AirStrip is guided by a bold vision: harness the power of mobile communications to change the way healthcare is practiced. The AirStrip™ ONE™ mobility solution can improve the quality and timeliness of care, can increase patient and clinician satisfaction, can enhance financial performance, and reduce risk. Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, AirStrip is empowering the nation’s leading health systems to compete and succeed in today’s rapidly changing environment.

Sign up for a demo or meeting with us at HIMSS – visit www.airstriptech.com for more information. Also make sure to stop by the AirStrip booth and enter our drawing to win a free iPad.

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Aprima Medical Software

Booth 6323

Contact: salesinfo@aprima.com
866.960.6890

Aprima Offers a Lifeline to Customers of Allscripts MyWay ™, including Community settings. If your organization is currently using Allscripts MyWay ™ for individual practices, or across an entire Community, you’ll want to stop by Aprima Booth 6323 at HIMSS and learn about the Aprima Rescue Program for customers of Allscripts MyWay™. With this program, you’ll be able to take advantage of free Aprima licenses – up to an $8,500 savings per provider! Plus, Aprima can easily handle your interfaces and interoperability needs. The Allscripts MyWay™ product was originally based on source code that Allscripts licensed from Aprima in 2008, so Aprima EHR and PM have the same look and feel with nearly 1,000 enhancements since 2008. When you upgrade to Aprima, you’ll enjoy a minimal learning curve and minimal to no downtime. For more information, please visit www.aprima.com/rescue or email salesinfo@aprima.com.

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Aspen Advisors

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Daniel Herman, Founder and Managing Principal
dherman@aspenadvisors.net
412.370.4900

We know that technology is a means to an end and have a razor-sharp focus on helping you make progress toward the IHI’s Triple Aim of better health, better healthcare, and lower per capita costs. From strategy to execution to optimization, we can help you:

• Develop your technology roadmap to support the shift from volume-based to value-based care
• Evaluate EMR vendors and plan for implementation
• Streamline governance and decision making
• Plan for mergers, acquisitions and other outreach strategies
• Implement clinical systems, drive adoption and achieve Meaningful Use
• Complete ICD-10 implementation and audit compliance
• Make real progress on teleHealth, eHealth and mHealth initiatives
• Implement infrastructure changes to your technology roadmap
• Leverage information and big data to create a data-driven culture
• Realize value from EHR and other systems investments
• Lead change and support performance improvement initiatives
• Optimize IT service delivery
• Plan for long-range IT workforce needs

Visit www.aspenadvisors.net to learn more.

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AT&T

Booth 3727

Contact: Deborah Sunday, Marketing Director
ds823e@att.com
678.230.3440

Join the AT&T ForHealth team in Booth #3727 at HIMSS13 in New Orleans, March 3 -7. AT&T ForHealth is committed to serving the technology needs across the continuum of care – from hospitals to physicians to patients. Our suite of innovative wireless, cloud-based and networking services and applications empower clinicians by placing vital patient health information at their fingertips. Medical images are stored and shared through the cloud, across multiple care settings, highly-secure and on demand. With telehealth, patients get greater access to specialty care and physicians and specialists reach more patients. And with mobile health solutions, patients become more engaged in their own care.

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Aventura

Booth 4011

Contact: Jon Cooper, VP of Strategic Initiatives, Co-Founder
jon.cooper@aventurahq.com
303.912.7623

For clinicians, technology can be a real pain in the distal orifice of the alimentary canal.And the more information clinicians need at the point of care, the worse the pain is going to get. Stop by booth #4011 and Suite #202 to see how this pain can be treated.

We know a thing or two about giving caregivers the mobility they need. It’s all about context! Who you are, where you are, and what you need. Aventura’s context- and location-aware intelligence improves the workflow of doctors and nurses by delivering the right information instantly based on clinician location and credentials.

Aventura improves clinician satisfaction, increases EMR use at the point of care, and allows focus on the quality of care. We make your EMR live up to the promises in the owner’s manual.

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Awarepoint

Booth 6918

Contact: Carlene Anteau VP, Product Marketing
canteau@awarepoint.com
858.345.5000 x742

Awarepoint optimizes healthcare workflow by offering the industry’s only cloud-based, RTLS solution including software, technology, and managed services. Awarepoint’s experience, reliability and proven solutions drive positive clinical and financial outcomes. Organizations leverage current IT investments to improve communication, enhance coordination, streamline workflow, improve staff efficiency, optimize patient throughput and increase patient and staff satisfaction. Attendees should visit Awarepoint’s booth to learn how RTLS can improve patient flow in a variety of ways ranging from simple automation, such as documenting activities and time stamps based on caregiver, patient and equipment location, to complex milestone management that relates the interactions between caregivers, patients and equipment, to care ordered in the electronic medical record (EMR). The ability to interpret activities and anticipate roadblocks in the patient’s care plan supports proactive communication to drive action.

New product alert: Awarepoint will be demonstrating a new "Bed and Bay Sensor" that enables precise tracking of mobile equipment and patient and caregiver interactions in locations with tight-bed spacing, such as the emergency department (ED) and pre- and post-anesthesia care.

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Beacon Partners

Booth 4729

Contact: Jeannette Pforr, Marketing Associate
jpforr@beaconpartners.com
781.681.7493

Beacon Partners is one of the largest healthcare management consulting firms in North America. We focus on helping organizations enhance operational performance to deliver the highest level of patient care. For more than two decades, healthcare leaders have chosen Beacon Partners to optimize clinical productivity and financial performance, ultimately leading to improved quality, safety and patient outcomes. Our team of industry executives, physicians, nurses, administrators, allied healthcare professionals and analysts brings a unique, multi-disciplinary approach to the challenges you face. We are healthcare professionals just like you. That’s the Beacon Partners difference. Be sure to stop by our booth to find out how Beacon Partners can help your organization.

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BESLER Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jim Hoffman, Chief Operating Officer
jhoffman@besler.com
732.233.5008

For over 25 years, BESLER has helped hospitals recover otherwise lost revenue, increase reimbursement, ensure compliance, improve efficiency and reduce costs. BESLER’s deep domain experience in revenue cycle, reimbursement, compliance and unmatched software solutions has resulted in more than one billion dollars in additional revenue for our clients. If you’d like to discuss our products or partnership opportunities at HIMMS, please contact Jim Hoffman at 732-233-5008 or jhoffman@besler.com.

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Billian’s HealthDATA / Porter Research

Booth 2317

Contact: Jennifer Dennard, Social Marketing Director
jdennard@billian.com
678.569.4872

Billian’s HealthDATA and Porter Research offer a broad spectrum of market intelligence solutions at HIMSS13:

• Provider Solutions
• ID referral partner opportunities
• Compare peer performance
• Review patient market share
• Vendor Solutions
• Broadest lead & email coverage
• Integrated health market coverage
• In-depth data in flexible formats

Need help with your go-to-market strategy? Let actionable feedback from target C-suite buyers guide you with custom market research programs from Porter Research. Schedule your show-floor demo or consultation and get a Starbucks gift card at the booth: http://ow.ly/hjHqw,

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Bottomline Technologies

Booth 2619, Hall D

Contact: Michael Kortan VP, Healthcare
mkortan@bottomline.com
603.501.5185

Bottomline’s intuitive, data-driven solutions for patient access and financial process automation are used by 900+ U.S. hospitals. Customers apply our products for patient registration, mobile data and e-signature capture, and cash management to deliver positive patient experiences, improve data and operational efficiencies, and enhance organizational health. Stop by HALL D Booth 2619 for your free Data DNA test and enter to win one of our daily prizes.

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CAP Professional Services
 

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Bruce R. Cattie, Senior Managing Director
CAPSTS@cap.org
847.832.7700

CAP Professional Services provides best practice health IT strategies, clinical informatics, and terminology services for clients striving to achieve semantic interoperability and high-quality, robust electronic medical records (EMR).

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CapSite

Booth 4929 and across from registration in Lobby D

Contact: Gino Johnson, VP, Business Development & Consulting, HIMSS Analytics; Founder, CapSite
Gino.Johnson@himssanalytics.org
802.922.9971

CapSite, now part of HIMSS Analytics, provides detailed health IT data via the CapSite Database, as well as strategic and tactical consulting services. Visit the HIMSS Analytics – CapSite booths in Lobby D and on the exhibit floor (#4929) for a CapSite Database demo to see how our pricing, packaging and positioning information can help with your capital planning and procurement processes or competitor analysis.

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Capsule Tech, Inc.

Booths 3711, 3185, and 8711

Contact: Brianna Roy, Marketing and Events Coordinator
briannar@capsuletech.com
978.482.2339

Capsule is the leading global provider of medical device connectivity solutions for hospitals and healthcare organizations. Capsule enables hospitals using electronic medical records and other information systems to reduce costs, increase efficiency and improve patient care through the direct capture and delivery of patient vitals at the point-of-care. Capsule’s solutions are flexible and scalable, offering a variety of deployment options to meet the needs of any healthcare delivery organization. Founded in 1997, the Company has established strong partnerships with leading medical device manufacturers and installed enterprise-wide solutions in over 1200 hospitals in 36 countries.

For more information, visit www.capsuletech.com or call +1 978-482-2337 (US), or +33 1 5334 1400 (France). Over 1,100 hospitals have chosen Capsule for device integration because our solutions are:

• RELIED ON by nurses
• Capsule’s solution was designed with nurses, for nurses to fit current workflows and eliminate charting duplication
• WANTED by I.T. teams
• Capsule works with existing devices, systems and infrastructures
• NEEDED by patients – Capsule reduces nurse charting time allowing for greater focus on direct patient care.

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Caradigm

Booth 1323

Contact: Debbie Wolti
info@caradigm.com

Formed by GE Healthcare and Microsoft Corp. in June 2012, Caradigm is a joint venture focused on enabling health systems and payers to drive continuous improvements in care. Caradigm software helps healthcare professionals across care settings to use data to gain critical insights, collaborate with each other and with patients, and to develop and implement innovative care solutions to address some of healthcare’s biggest challenges.

Come by booth #1323 to see:

• EXCITING DEMOS – Check out new Caradigm and partner offerings.
• ENLIGHTENING CUSTOMER PRESENTATIONS – Come hear theater presentations about industry trends and best practices from your peers.
• INFORMATIVE CARADIGM PRESENTATIONS – Learn about Caradigm’s vision, new products we’re delivering and plans for the future.
• CARADIGM PERSONNEL – Stop by the booth to chat with our team, get your questions answered and learn more about new Caradigm.

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CareTech Solutions

Booth 1911

Contact: Colleen Hanley, Vice President, Marketing
colleen.hanley@caretech.com
248.823.0950

CareTech Solutions is a healthcare IT services company providing 24x7x365 IT support for more than 200 hospitals/health systems in the U.S.

HIMSS13 attendees should visit CareTech’s booth (1911) to experience, first-hand, the company’s Clinical Help Desk and how it resolves clinical IT issues fast – getting doctors and nurses back to what matters most, providing quality patient care. From iPad video stations, attendees can watch and listen to CareTech analysts resolving EMR application issues in a matter of seconds, not minutes.

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Certify Data Systems

Booth 717

Contact: David Caldwell, Chief Marketing and Sales
sales@certifydatasystems.com
408.236.7494

Certify Data Systems, Inc., is a pioneer in health information exchange (HIE) technology. The company’s HealthLogix™ Enterprise HIE platform has been adopted by the nation’s leading hospitals, physicians and laboratories. Certify’s HIE platform provides bi-directional community-wide semantic interoperability between disparate Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, enabling all healthcare providers to exchange essential health information in real-time. In addition to processing electronic orders and results, the HealthLogix HIE platform delivers Continuity of Care Documents and Clinical Document Architecture seamlessly across a healthcare ecosystem. Certify’s industry leading “network approach” is easy to deploy, scale, manage and support.

Visit us at HIMSS13 in booth 717. Certify is partnering with the local New Orleans YMCA chapter to support their Strong Communities Campaign. Stop by our booth to learn how you can help promote their goal of living a healthier lifestyle. For more information, please visit http://www.certifydatasystems.com. Follow us on Twitter at @CertifyData.

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ChartWise Medical Systems, Inc.

Booth 1961

Contact: Michael Backus, Director of Sales
mbackus@chartwisemed.com
317.774.4414

Visit us at HIMSS to see the first and best computer-assisted clinical documentation improvement application on the market.

ChartWise:CDI brings clinical documentation intelligence to your documentation improvement program. A comprehensive web-based software solution, it utilizes innovative built-in expertise to streamline the documentation improvement process by translating clinical terms, labs, and medications into the diagnostic terms needed for coding.

Featuring electronic queries, a flexible workflow, workflow management, help screens and videos, and reference materials from Coding Clinics and DRG Desk Reference, ChartWise:CDI has all the tools a clinical documentation specialist requires. Role-based functionality, robust on-demand multi-level reporting (from the hospital system down to the nursing unit), and optional Advanced Reporting utilizing business intelligence provide the tools an administrator requires. HL7 interfacing, rigorous data security, and no software to install help ease the burden on the IT department.

ChartWise:CDI changes the world of clinical documentation improvement like no other product or service on the market today.

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CIC Advisory

To schedule a meeting:

Contacts: Cynthia Davis, Marcy Stoots, or Robert Johns
cynthiadavis@cicadvisory.com
727.772.3340

CIC Advisory helps hospitals use technology to provide more effective, efficient and safer patient care. Founders Cynthia Davis and Marcy Stoots are former critical care nurses with decades of experience leading fast-track clinical EHR projects. Our methodologies result in high rates of physician and clinician satisfaction and adoption, coordinated patient care processes and improved clinical outcomes.

Call us at 1.727.772.3340 or email cynthiadavis@cicadvisory.com for your invitation to the CIC Advisory hospitality suite at HIMSS13.

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Clinithink

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Nathan Skorick, Business Development
nathan.skorick@clinithink.com
978.296.5282
Robert Miller, VP Sales and Marketing
robert.miller@clinithink.com
978.296.5282

Find out how to turn data into information…

Clinithink was founded in 2009 by two clinicians with 20 years of combined healthcare IT and EHR experience who understood what was possible if you could unlock the unstructured clinical data within an patient records and return it as structured, usable clinical information. The result of their pioneering work is CLiX, Clinithink’s Clinical Natural Language Processing (CNLP) solution.

CLiX intelligently unlocks unstructured data, while preserving its original meaning, to help healthcare organizations access the information they need to improve financial management, improve quality measures and enhance clinical and operational processes.

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Cornerstone Advisors Group LLC

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Mary Berchtold, Vice President
mberchtold@cornerstone-advisors.com
781.254.4013

Cornerstone will have experienced senior level representatives from the EPIC, MEDITECH and Advisory/Strategies consulting service lines at HIMSS. They will be available to meet and discuss services during the conference. Meeting times may be scheduled by contacting Mary Berchtold (mberchtold@cornerstone-advisors.com).

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Craneware

To schedule a meeting:

Ann Marie Brown, Executive Vice President of Marketing
a.brown@craneware.com
913.548.2810
Craneware will not be exhibiting at HIMSS but will have several senior executives available to discuss the company, our products, and the role we play in helping hospitals achieve revenue integrity though data normalization.

Craneware is the leader in automated revenue integrity solutions that improve financial performance for healthcare organizations. Craneware’s market-driven, SaaS solutions help hospitals and other healthcare providers more effectively price, charge, code and retain earned revenue for patient care services and supplies. This optimizes reimbursement, increases operational efficiency and minimizes compliance risk. By partnering with Craneware, clients achieve the visibility required to identify, address and prevent revenue leakage.

Founded in 1999, Craneware’s mission is to stop the loss of legitimate revenue owed to healthcare organizations by establishing a culture of revenue integrity within these organizations. Our vision is to be the partner that can be relied on to improve and sustain our customers’ strong financial performance.

Over our history we have come a long way towards achieving this. Today, Craneware has a total of nine core products, spanning four product families: Revenue Cycle, Access Management & Strategic Pricing, Supply Management and Audit & Revenue Recovery. One in four registered U.S. hospitals has chosen Craneware products to help them optimize reimbursement, improve operational efficiency, and minimize compliance risk. To support this growing client base and the company’s future growth prospects, Craneware now employs more than 200 professionals across the US and UK.

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CSI Healthcare IT

To schedule a meeting:

Kate Mays, Vice President of Sales
kmays@thecsicompanies.com
904.716.1209

CSI Healthcare IT will be hosting a cocktail reception and dinner at Broussards on Tuesday night March 5 starting at 6:00 pm. Please contact Kate Mays to join.

CSI Healthcare IT is committed to providing the highest standard of consultants and consulting services in the Industry. Our track record speaks for itself. We have a long record of supporting the Project Management, Training, Build, Report Writing, Go Live Support and Interface functions of Health systems nationwide. Today, CSI Healthcare IT has more than 500 permanent and contract staff of experienced, knowledge-based professionals. CSI has been recognized by Inc. Magazine and Staffing Industry Analysts as one of fastest growing privately held companies in the nation. Being privately held enables creativity and flexibility to meet the specific consulting needs of our clients. CSI has the ability to enact quick adjustments to accommodate the ebb and flow of our clients’ staffing and project needs.

Join us for live music and networking Tuesday night at Broussards.

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CTG Health Solutions

Booth 3663

Contact: Amanda LeBlanc, Managing Director, Marketing & Communications
amanda.leblanc@ctghs.com
225.772.8865

Computer Task Group, Inc. (NASDAQ: CTGX) is an international IT solutions and services company with over 3,800 employees in North America and Western Europe. Its healthcare division, CTG Health Solutions (CTG), is a leading IT consulting firm dedicated solely to helping provider and payer clients achieve strategic, clinical, financial, and operational objectives by more effectively leveraging IT.

CTG’s comprehensive solution suite includes advisory, implementation, IT and strategic sourcing services— including planning and assessments, vendor selection, EMR implementation and optimization, clinical/business analytics, physician adoption, integration/technology solutions, revenue cycle strategies, legacy and production application management, support and upgrades, and solutions addressing regulatory requirements of ICD-10, meaningful use, and accountable care. CTG has provided technology and business solutions to more than 600 healthcare clients for over 25 years.

Visit CTG at HIMSS booth 3663 for conversations on “getting health IT right.”

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dbMotion

Booth 5229

Contact: Kate Kolbrener, Director of Marketing
katek@dbmotion.com
412.802.2248

The dbMotion™ Solution is a proven, connected healthcare, SOA-based interoperability platform that enables healthcare organizations and health information exchanges (HIEs) to meaningfully integrate and leverage their information assets, driving improvements in the quality, safety and efficiency of patient care. dbMotion transforms care through the creation of a virtual patient record that integrates patient information to connect care providers and settings.This robust solution is field-proven, having been implemented in some of the world’s most demanding healthcare IT environments since 2001.

Our dbMotion™ Solution is helping clients:

• Access HIE within the Physician Workflow
• Connect the Ambulatory Environment
• Link the Affiliate Community
• Prepare for MU2 and Build an ACO
• Harmonize Clinical Data for Analytics

Come see us at Booth 5229 for a demo! www.dbmotion.com

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Dearborn Advisors, LLC

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Mary Kiley, Revenue Development Coordinator
MKiley@DearbornAdvisors.com
773.255.0749.

Dearborn Advisors would like to chat with you about what’s going on in your organization regarding physician adoption of technology. Although we have no booth, we’ll spring for Starbucks coffee and have hundreds of chocolate bars to give away. Email Mary Kiley (mkiley@dearbornadvisors.com) or call 773-255-0749.

 

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Deloitte

Booth 1863

Contact: Samantha Gordon, National Life Sciences & Health Care Marketing Leader
smgordon@deloitte.com
212.436.4987

By imagining the possible, we help you innovate and seize opportunities. Deloitte can help you in your efforts to define a vision for your organization in the constantly changing world of health care. Through the use of analytics, we can help you in your efforts to make decisions about the future. To do things differently – or make a new way forward.

While you are at HIMSS13, stop by our booth to interact with our analytics products, including Recombinant by Deloitte, the newest addition to our portfolio. Our solution specialists will be available to discuss your pressing issues: Accountable Care, Health Outcomes Management, ICD-10 implementation, Security & Privacy, Meaningful Use, Revenue Cycle, Mobile Health and more.

Visualize clarity through analytics and innovation. For more information visit us at www.deloitte.com/us/himss13.

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Direct Consulting Associates

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Frank Myeroff, Managing Partner
fmyeroff@dc-associates.com
440.996.0051

Direct Consulting Associates (DCA) provides a broad range of IT Consulting and Staffing solutions including staff augmentation, temp-to-perm, and permanent placement for healthcare IT initiatives. Whether you’re an IT professional searching for that perfect opportunity or a client company looking for the very best IT talent, we would like to meet you at HIMSS 2013!

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Direct Recruiters, Inc.

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Mike Silverstein, Director of Healthcare IT
mike@directrecruiters.com
440.996.0594
440.667.8334

Direct Recruiters specializes in recruiting, staffing, search, placement and consulting solutions for the Healthcare Information Technology (IT) Industry.

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Divurgent

Booth 5948

Contact: Keri DeSalvo, Marketing Coordinator
keri.desalvo@divurgent.com
757.213.6875

Visit booth #5948 and help Divurgent raise $5,000 to donate to a local New Orleans Children’s Hospital. All we need is your signature!

Divurgent is not the typical healthcare IT consulting firm. As a nationally recognized company, we strive to be different, to think outside of the box for innovative healthcare solutions. Our goal is simple. To transform healthcare to our clients and the communities they serve. Focused on the business of hospitals, health systems and affiliated providers, Divurgent believes successful outcomes are derived from powerful partnerships. Recognizing the unique culture that every organization offers, we leverage the depth of our experienced consulting team to create customized solutions that best meet our client’s goals. Utilizing best practices and methodologies we help improve our client’s operational effectiveness, financial performance and quality of patient care.

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Elsevier Clinical Decision Support

Booth 6129

Contact: Che Dildy, Sr. Manager, Product Marketing
c.dildy@elsevier.com
215.239.3795

By integrating insight and action, Elsevier Clinical Decision Support empowers meaningful care through our world-class healthcare information technology solutions, providing a patient-centered approach for organizations to achieve the triple aim.

 

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Emdeon

Booth 5027

Contact: Brian C. Young, Director of Marketing
bcyoung@emdeon.com
404.432.9419

Emdeon provides interoperable information exchange uniting healthcare communities to help improve business and clinical outcomes. Come by booth 5027 to discover how Emdeon can help you achieve your business goals through Emdeon Universal Exchange, and also learn how you can win one of eight iPad minis that will be given out during the show.

Emdeon is the single largest clinical, financial and administrative health information network in the nation. In 2012, we processed nearly 7 billion health information exchanges. Our network moves information between physicians, hospitals, labs, pharmacies and payers through our interoperable connectivity to their software systems. This creates opportunities for access to big data, making it possible to apply intelligent analytics which help drive key programs like care collaboration, accountable care, medical home and pay for performance – all to help you achieve improved quality of care and lower costs with less capital expense.

Emdeon will have 4 in-booth speaking sessions this year, and two iPad minis will be given away at each session!

Session 1: Epic Orders Through Emdeon: Removing the Barriers to Clean Electronic Orders Monday March 4th, 3:00PM – 3:30PM Eric Reynolds, Vice President, Sales and Strategy, Emdeon
Session 2: The Future of Coding is NOW: Maximizing Coding Efficiency and Accuracy Using Big Data and Analytics Tuesday March 5th, 11:00AM – 11:30AM Manjula Iyer, Director of Product Management, Atigeo
Session 3: Breaking the Cycle: How Big Data and Real-Time Analytics Can Help You Intelligently Manage Readmissions Tuesday March 5th, 3:00PM – 3:30PM Gene Boerger, Vice President, Product Innovation, Emdeon
Session 4: Interoperability: The Key to ePrescribing Success Wednesday, March 6th, 11:00AM – 11:30AM Lathe Bigler, Sr. Director, Clinical Services, Emdeon

 

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e-MDs

Booth 6413

Contact: James Foster, Client Data Operations Manager
jfoster@e-mds.com
512.623.6960

Stop By e-MDs Booth Daily for a Chance to Win an iPad Mini!!!

Let e-MDs help you Master Healthcare Strategies. As a consistently top-ranked vendor, clients count on e-MDs to give them the edge they need in meeting tomorrow’s challenges. e-MDs is well-known for our award-winning integrated EHR/PM solutions and services for ambulatory healthcare providers.

We’re introducing exciting new products and initiatives at HIMSS®13 to help you make the right moves to meet the challenging healthcare landscape. Join us at HIMSS®13 where our executive management team will be available to share our vision with you. Learn more about the innovative technology and services we’re delivering that help clients achieve clinical excellence, attain interoperability, drive improvements in patient engagement, and deliver stronger quality measures that support value-based performance, PQRS and MU criteria.

We welcome existing clients, prospects, business partners and other healthcare leaders to visit with us and discuss our latest innovations.

 

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EMRConsultant.com

 

 

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Donna Flynn, Director of Healthcare Technology Solutions
DonnaF@EHRScope.com
888.519.3100 ext. 114

Some things in life truly are FREE! In this case, its receiving the BEST QUALIFIED EHR, PM, Billing and/or Voice Recognition recommendations for your practice, absolutely FREE. How? Use the Comparison Chart, Select Individual Consultant on EHRScope.com, or contact us today with any questions!

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Enovate

Booth 7429

Contact: Kevin Dougherty, Marketing and Events Manager
kdougherty@enovateit.com
248.655.0548 ext.154

Enovate is an international manufacturer of mobile and wall mounted computer workstations for the healthcare environment. We provide multiple vehicles for medication delivery, computerized physician order entry, and the implementation for clinical documentation.

We understand that caregivers have enough to worry about. That’s why we work hard to build products that are worry-free—so that caregivers can focus on what really matters, the patient. With comfortable ergonomics, infection control and sustainable materials, Enovate’s products are setting a new standard in the Health Information Technology industry. Light weight, soft corners, and manufactured with antimicrobial materials — these are just a few of the many reasons hospitals choose Enovate products.

Enovate – advancing health information technology For more information, please contact Enovate at (877)258-8030 or visit www.enovateusa.com.

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ESD

Booth 5213

Contact: Jessica St. John, Business Development Director
jstjohn@contactesd.com
419.841.3179

ESD is dedicated to assisting healthcare organizations successfully implement health information technology. Experienced, clinical professionals help make that happen thorough full-scale implementation services that assist organizations before, during and after the go-live process to ensure a successful transition to a new or upgraded software. We work with all major systems, such as Allscripts, Cerner, Epic, McKesson, Meditech, NextGen and Siemens.

Stop by and see how we can help make your system work for you!

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Etransmedia Technology, Inc

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Connie Smith, Sales and Marketing
Connie.Smith@etransmedia.com
518.283.5418 ext. 2262

Etransmedia provides comprehensive RCM platform service solutions, including an integration EHR/PM solution, patient identity tools, discrete clinical data repository, provider portal, community patient portal, analytics tools supporting financial, clinical, and quality of care reporting. Delivering RCM and Revenue Analytics services to health systems nationwide, serving 12,000+ providers and 40,000+ users.

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FDB (First Databank)

Booth 4241

Contact: Denise Apcar, Brand Communications Manager
dapcar@fdbhealth.com
800.633.3453

First Databank (FDB) provides drug knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise medication-related decisions. Come to our booth 4241 at HIMSS13, have a cup of gourmet coffee with us, and meet with FDB specialists to learn more about:

• Achieving Meaningful Use Stage 1/ 2 criteria for medications; get our tip sheet at www.fdbhealth.com/MU2
• AlertSpace®, our latest innovation for better managing alerts within your HIS system – now includes dosage range checking capabilities (in addition to drug allergy, drug-disease, drug-drug interaction and duplicate therapy alert customization capabilities)
• Our State and Federal Controlled Substances Module to simplify compliance with regulations related to controlled substances prescribing and more
• Our High Risk Medication Module™ to identify medications with Box Warnings and/or Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies (REMS)

With thousands of customers worldwide, FDB enables our information system developer partners to deliver a wide range of valuable, useful, and differentiated solutions. For a complete look at our solutions and services please visit www.fdbhealth.com.

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Forward Health Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Michael Barbouche, Founder/CEO
FHGtalk@forwardhealthgroup.com
608.729.7530

Let the good times and Fresh Data roll in the Big Easy! Forward Health Group, the Health Care Measurement Company, is intentionally booth-less at HIMSS13 so we can get down, roll up our sleeves and make rich, brainstorming music with health systems, payors and all you newly-minted ACOs. If your focus is population health, you’re going to need tools and help with all that messy data – call us at 608 729 7530 or email us at FHGtalk@forwardhealthgroup.com. We’re on the HIMSS13 show floor – we’ll be right back to you. Let’s have a cafe au lait, spiced with Fresh Data.

With FHG, your data is as fine as the Duck and Andouille Gumbo at Galatoire’s. No, really.

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GetWellNetwork, Inc.

Booth 2363

Contact: Tony Cook, Vice President, Marketing
tcook@getwellnetwork.com
240.482.4212

GetWellNetwork provides patient engagement solutions that help health care providers engage, educate and empower patients along the care continuum. Our patient-centered platform, delivered across multiple technology platforms including mobile devices, computers and televisions, enables providers to implement a revolutionary care delivery model called Interactive Patient Care™ to improve performance and patient outcomes. The company further extends the value of existing IT investments by integrating seamlessly with electronic medical record and patient portal applications.

For the third consecutive year GetWellNetwork is recognized by KLAS® as the leader in the Interactive Patient Systems category and exclusively endorsed by the American Hospital Association.Today GetWellNetwork solutions facilitate over 7 million patient interactions.

GetWellNetwork will be showcasing it’s newest solutions – myGetWellNetwork, Interactive Patient Whiteboard and GetWellNetwork for VA Medical Centers. Giveaway – iPads!

Learn more at www.GetWellNetwork.com.

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Greenway Medical Technologies

Booth 3941

Contact: Leeann Fleming, National Trade Show Manager
leeannfleming@greenwaymedical.com
866.242.3805

Visit Booth 3941 to learn about the market’s first Cerner-certified interoperability solution for health system alignment and data exchange, and the first EHR to achieve Stage 2 certification. Learn about our high-scoring PCMH service as recognized by the National Committee for Quality Assurance, and our advanced, clinically-driven RCM solutions, all part of the PrimeSUITE platform.

Please visit one of our kiosks located in the Interoperability Showcase, Meaningful Use Pavilion – booth 149/Kiosk C13, or GA HIMSS booth 5500 to receive a key and code that will be taken to our main booth for an opportunity to unlock our safe. Prize value up to $2,000.

About Greenway and PrimeSUITE Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: GWAY) delivers smarter solutions for smarter healthcare™. PrimeSUITE® — Greenway’s certified and fully integrated electronic health record, practice management and interoperability solution — helps improve care coordination, quality and cost-efficiency as part of a smarter, sustainable healthcare system. Thousands of providers across more than 30 specialties and sub-specialties use on-premise or cloud-based Greenway® solutions in healthcare enterprises, physician practices, clinics and ambulatory clinics nationwide. To learn more, go to www.greenwaymedical.com, Twitter, Facebook or YouTube.

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Greythorn

Booth: 5358

Contact: Mary Beth Seaman, Director, Healthcare IT Practice
marybeth.seaman@greythorn.com
425.387.8848

Greythorn is a market leading technology recruitment specialist. Founded in 1976, it has established an excellent reputation for the authoritative and personable service it provides to both its clients and candidates. Since our inception, we have grown globally to provide expertise in Asia, Australia, Ireland, North America, South America and the UK.

With demand in the Healthcare IT sector continually increasing, our commitment to providing an expert and ethical service remains strong, ensuring we remain your ‘consultancy of choice’. Greythorn is part of the global multi-brand recruitment family, FiveTen Group, one of the world’s fastest-growing specialist recruitment consultancies. Visit booth #5358 to discuss industry data gathered from Greythorn’s annual Healthcare IT Market Report, learn about our staffing expertise with various types and volumes of projects and take a moment off of your feet. We look forward to meeting you!

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Halfpenny Technologies

Booth 5223

Contact: Brian Muck, Sr. VP of Sales and Marketing
bmuck@halfpenny.com
855.277.9100

Are you using CPOE for lab, diagnostic imaging, pathology, cardiology and other ancillary services? Are your results delivered separately or as one cohesive bundle? Are you able to make business and clinical decisions based on referral patterns and clinical data?

Visit Halfpenny Technologies in booth #5223 at HIMSS13. Learn how your referral base can submit orders and receive customized bundled results with Halfpenny’s ITF-HUB solution. You will gain an additional benefit from the built in business intelligence! You can leverage "true interoperability" with the multi-vendor systems you already have in place, and quickly extract key data allowing you to turn it into actionable intelligence to deliver higher-quality healthcare and gain a competitive edge.

Halfpenny offers solutions for hospitals, health plans, physicians, independent laboratories, diagnostic imaging centers, ancillary healthcare services, HIEs, ACOs and physicians. Stop by to play our “True Interoperability” game, meet our team and win prizes.

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Hayes Management Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Pete Butler, President and CEO
pbutler@hayesmanagement.com
781.414.6099

Hayes Management Consulting is a leading, national healthcare consulting firm focused on healthcare operations. This includes strategic planning, interim leadership, revenue cycle optimization, clinical optimization, project management, IT consulting, and preparation for federal initiatives such as ICD-10, Meaningful Use, and HIPAA compliance. We also provide software such as MDaudit and other proprietary tools to ensure our clients are operationally efficient.

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HCI Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Cherity PIerce, Marketing Coordinator
cherity.pierce@thehcigroup.com
904-224-9388

HCI is a leading provider of IT personnel and solutions to healthcare enterprises across the United States, United Kingdom, and Middle East. Our specialties include:

• EHR Planning, Implementation, & Training
• Sustaining Support Models
• Optimization & Clinical Adoption
• Go-Live Support
• Health System/Hospital Community IT Offerings

What makes HCI the best choice for your HIT project? Everything from our collaborative solutions to our rates that translate into real cost savings for your institution. Here’s how we deliver our comprehensive services and expertise:

• Strategic thinking across the entire spectrum of project engagement
• Clinical Leadership and an experienced engagement team to meet your needs in an efficient and timely manner
• Knowledge of industry best practices
• A fully dedicated recruitment team, exclusively focused on Healthcare IT to secure for you the very best resources to make your project a success

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HealthCare Anytime

Booth 3869 (ICA)

Contact: Jesse Klick, Vice President – Operations
jesse.klick@healthcareanytime.com
619.243.8333

HealthCare Anytime’s cloud-based enterprise patient portal helps healthcare organizations achieve meaningful patient engagement. Our robust patient portal is delivered in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model, which means we handle hosting, implementation, training, and support, thus reducing the demand on your IT resources.

HealthCare Anytime – Powering Patient Engagement Through the Cloud.

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Healthcare Growth Partners

Booth 3845

Contact: Christopher McCord, Managing Director
chris@hgp.com
312.445.8750

Healthcare Growth Partners provides investment banking and strategic advisory services to small and mid-size, high-growth companies with an exclusive focus on healthcare technology and healthcare services. HGP was founded in 2005 with the goal of providing top tier strategic consulting and investment banking services to companies outside of typical middle-market investment bank parameters. Services include mergers and acquisitions, capital formation, strategy, and valuation.Since inception, HGP has closed over 50 transactions. With this focus, the firm leverages its experienced management team, strong execution capabilities, and deep network of contacts within the industry to provide efficient and high value processes for clients, all with the objective of growing companies, realizing value.

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Health Catalyst

Booth 7721

Contact: Chris Keller, Marketing Director
chris.keller@healthcatalyst.com
801.230.9223

Health Catalyst (formerly Healthcare Quality Catalyst) delivers a proven, agile data warehouse platform that actually works in today’s transforming healthcare environment.

Currently 81 hospitals caring for 20 million patients utilize Health Catalyst’s Adaptive Data Warehousing platform and solutions. Founded by healthcare veterans who developed their solution after struggling for years to try to make non-healthcare data warehousing solutions work, the Health Catalyst data warehouse utilizes an adaptive approach designed specifically to address the complex nature of healthcare data.Health Catalyst’s platform combines technology solutions and clinical expertise borne out of repeated successful implementations that significantly improved quality of care and reduced healthcare costs.

Health Catalyst’s proven solutions are deployed at leading health systems including Allina Health, Indiana University Health, MultiCare Health System, North Memorial Health Care, Providence Health & Services, Stanford Hospital and Clinics, and Texas Children’s Hospital.

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Health Language

Booth 4559

Contact: Marc Horowitz, Senior Vice President, Business Development
Marc.Horowitz@healthlanguage.com
720.320.6663

Health Language, Inc. (HLI) provides software for managing and updating standard and localized healthcare terminology. Health Language also offers clinical content and professional services to enable interoperability, ICD-10 conversion, web-based terminology mapping, and Meaningful Use compliance. Come visit us at booth 4559 to learn more about our robust, innovative solutions for payers, providers, government payers, and healthcare IT and EMR vendors. The HLI solution can assist with your ICD-10 conversion, analytics, and clinical research needs, as well as with pharmaceutical and international applications.

Stop by and see us to learn more, watch one of our informative demos and register to win one of our daily giveaways.

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HealthMEDX

Booth 1075

Contact: Denise Johnson, Marketing Coordinator
Denise.Johnson@Healthmedx.com
417.799.6703

The HealthMEDX Vision solution provides an integrated, person-centric CRM, clinical and financial EMR, across the entire LTPAC care continuum including: Long Term Care (SNF, Assisted Living, and Independent Living), Rehab, Homecare, and Hospice. The SaaS based architecture supports interoperability with hospitals, physicians and payers to address readmission management and care coordination challenges across the continuum.

Come see how we embedded the AHRQ On-Time Readmission Prevention program into our solution! HealthMEDX Vision is both CCHIT and ONC-ATCB Certified.

 

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Healthwise

Booth 3885

Contact: Michael Lauber, Account Executive
mlauber@healthwise.org
208.331.6995

Experience the Healthwise Difference. Get an insider’s perspective on what makes the Healthwise® Patient Engagement Solution your best choice for clinicians and their patients. Meet the people behind the Healthwise mission. Experience:

• Trusted information
• Tested interaction
• True innovation

Visit Healthwise at booth 3885. Since 1975, our singular mission has been to help people make better health decisions. Healthwise leads the way with patient-friendly education and ONC-ATCB–certified technology. With Healthwise as your single source for patient education, you meet the criteria for Meaningful Use now, and you’re well positioned for whatever changes the future brings. The Healthwise Patient Engagement Solution.

 

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Henry Elliott & Company Inc.

Booth 3217

Contact: Ken Wagner, President
kwagner@henrye.com
781.820.6697

Henry Elliott & Company, Inc., for over 20 years, has specialized exclusively in the provision of Caché and Healthcare I.T. Professionals for staff augmentation and direct hire nationally. We are a long standing partner of InterSystems and several of our Consultants are Caché Certified Experts who represent an elite level of knowledge of InterSystems products. Our professionals are experienced with Caché based third party software. This includes Epic, Veterans Affairs VistA, Indian Health RPMS, Antrim/Sunquest, IDX(GE) & InterSystems Ensemble, CSP, Zen and others.

We also partner with large-scale Professional Services and Systems Integration Organizations in support of Healthcare I.T. and Caché based technology development and implementation efforts. Our partners provide the project management while we provide the highly skilled professionals. We have grown to 50+ technical resources and 8 Account Management and Operational personnel. Our aim is to match the skills, experience and interests of our professionals with our clients’ specifications.

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Holon Solutions

Booth 4020

Contact: Worth Roberts, Vice President Business Solutions
wroberts@holonsolutions.com
678.324.2060

At Holon, we believe that a patient’s experience is improved when their care team can seamlessly collaborate on their care. We understand that information in the right hands, at the right time and place, is key to providing it. We focus on facilitating a collaborative care environment by providing access to information at the point of care – without forcing anyone in the care team to change their current systems or processes.

Visit Holon and our partners in booth 4020 at HIMSS to learn more about how we can help you build a collaborative care environment from the bottom up. Remember when the focus was on patient care? It can be again with Holon!

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Booth 7459

Contact: Patricia Kellicker, Director of Marketing
patricia.kellicker@humedica.com
617.475.3800

Humedica is the foremost clinical intelligence company that provides private cloud-based solutions to the health care industry. Humedica’s sophisticated analytics platform transforms disparate data into actionable, real-world insights. Powered by the largest and most comprehensive clinical database, Humedica empowers its partners and customers to make confident, value-based decisions about patient care in a rapidly changing health care market.

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Iatric Systems, Inc.

Booth 6613

Contact: John Danahey, Sr. Vice President, Sales and Marketing
john.danahey@iatric.com
978.805.4153

Join Iatric Systems in Booth #6613 at HIMSS 2013. Iatric Systems helps healthcare providers achieve success by delivering the most comprehensive healthcare IT integration. You’ll see how more than 1,000 hospitals are using our data integration, systems integration, and process integration solutions to…

• Achieve a scalable and affordable Enterprise HIE
• Meet ACO objectives
• Support Meaningful Use initiatives

Booth #6613 is going to be entertaining as well as educational, with Chef Anton – the two-time National Pool Trick-Shot Champion – lining up one amazing shot after another and giving out great prizes like Visa gift cards and Apple iPod shuffles after each show.

Make sure you visit us in the HIMSS 2013 Meaningful Use Experience booth #149 / Kiosk #6 and #21. Each day, the first 150 people to visit our kiosks can receive a coupon for $2 off at Starbucks.

Finally, we have teamed up with more than 25 New Orleans retailers to enhance your HIMSS experience by offering special offers and discounts in the area. Stop by booth #6613 to receive your slap band and discount card.

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ICA

Booth 3869

Contact: John Tempesco, Chief Marketing Officer
john.tempesco@icainformatics.com
615.866.1465

ICA’s CareAlign® interoperability and informatics platform solves data and communication challenges for healthcare entities, including IDNs, hospitals, IPAs, HIEs, and payers. CareAlign delivers a flexible architecture to connect, collect, consume and intelligently distribute data through Direct, IHE, HL7, and custom methods for use in EHRs, third party applications, and ICA’s applications. Our solution and booth partners are CSC, Healthcare Anytime and Futrix Health. Visit booth #3869 for product demonstrations, and to participate in our food bank raffle. Learn more at www.icainformatics.com, and follow us on Twitter, ICA HITme Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube.

 

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ICSA Labs

Booths: 5613 (Verizon); 149 (HIMSS13 Meaningful Use Experience); Interoperability Showcase (IHE USA Certification)

Contact: Amit Trivedi, Healthcare Program Manger
amit.trivedi@icsalabs.com
312.882.1558

ICSA Labs, an independent division of Verizon, offers third-party testing and certification of security and health IT products, as well as network-connected devices, to measure product compliance, reliability and performance for many of the world’s top security vendors. ICSA Labs is an ISO/IEC 17025:2005 accredited and 9001:2008 registered organization. ICSA Labs is NVLAP accredited as a Health IT Test Lab and is also an ONC-Authorized Certification Body (ONC-ACB) accredited by ANSI to ISO/IEC Guide 65. Visit http://www.icsalabs.com for more.

ICSA Labs will the following presentations at the MU Experience Welcome Theater:

• March 5th @ 1:10 pm: Are You Experienced? 2014 Edition Testing – Your Questions Answered
  Join Michelle Knighton, Healthcare Testing Manager for ICSA Labs for an interactive Q&A-style discussion focusing on the meaningful use testing process, guidance and tips on how to have a successful test to help your system achieve certification in the ONC 2014 Edition Health IT Certification Program.
• March 6th @ 11:15 am: Are You Experienced? Looking Beyond Meaningful Use and Incentives
  Join Amit Trivedi, Healthcare Program Manager for ICSA Labs for an informative discussion focusing on helpful tips and guidance on system selection, implementation, and training to get the most out of your certified EHR technology.

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iMDsoft

Booth 7729

Contact: Steve Sperrazza, VP Sales
steve.sperrazza@imd-soft.com
781.449.5567

iMDsoft is a leading provider of Clinical Information Systems for critical, perioperative, and acute care environments. The company’s flagship family of solutions, the MetaVision Suite, was first implemented in 1999. It captures, documents, analyzes, reports and stores the vast amount of patient-related data generated in a hospital. Hospitals worldwide – including 4 of the top 10 US hospitals and 13 of the top 50 European hospitals – use MetaVision to improve care quality, enhance financial results, support research and promote compliance with government, payor, and hospital protocols.

Visit us at Booth #7729 and discover myAnesthesia, our new cloud-based mobile solution for anesthesia documentation featuring a native iPad user interface. Find out about high-impact results reported by MetaVision clients, including:

• 30% reduction in mortality rate
• 100% billable anesthesia procedures
• $1.5M in financial benefits
• 100% elimination of prescription errors

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Imprivata

Booth 3717

Contact: Ed Gaudet, Chief Marketing Officer
edgaudet@imprivata.com

Imprivata, the leader in healthcare IT security, enables secure access and collaboration for over two million care providers in more than 1300 healthcare organizations worldwide. Imprivata is the #1 rated SSO Vendor in the 2012 Best in KLAS and Category Leaders Report and SSO market share leader according to HIMSS Analytics. Imprivata Cortext™ is the fastest growing free, HIPAA compliant text messaging solution in healthcare.

Take #MeaningfulSteps with Imprivata at #HIMSS2013

Take #MeaningfulSteps to Imprivata’s booth (#3717) to pick up your free pedometer and enter to win a Jawbone UP every hour. At any time during HIMSS, tweet how many #MeaningfulSteps you’ve taken towards a healthcare IT initiative and you will automatically be entered to win a Jawbone UP. For example, “I’ve taken 3,433 #MeaningfulSteps towards CPOE #HIMSS13”. In addition, Imprivata will be giving away one Kindle every 30 minutes after its booth theatre presentations.

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Infor

Booth 2525

Contact: Becky Adams, Director, Global Healthcare Marketing
Becky.Adams@infor.com
651.767,4257

You’ve known us as Lawson. Now, get to know us as Infor. The Infor Healthcare suite of solutions is backed by more than 25 years’ experience creating healthcare-specific technology solutions – as well as major new investments in cloud and mobile technologies that are changing the way healthcare IT works.

Visit us in Booth 2525 at HIMSS and let us show you the solutions that will set your organization on the right path, move your IT strategy forward, and prepare you for wherever tomorrow takes you. While you’re there, enjoy free custom-made espresso drinks and popcorn, and enter to win one of four iPad Minis. If you’d like to learn more about your organization’s path forward for Financials, Supply Chain, HCM, Analytics, and Integration & HIEs, visit go.infor.com/himssdemo to schedule one-on-one time with an Infor representative. When you preschedule and attend a HIMSS demo, you’ll receive a $25 Amazon.com gift card as our thanks.

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Informatica Corporation

Booth 5005

Contact: Jonathan Shafer, Healthcare Field Marketing Manager
jshafer@informatica.com
650.385.4434

Stop by Informatica booth 5005 and meet Jonathan Stevenson, Director of Analytics at Ochsner Health System based in New Orleans. Jonathan will be on-site sharing how Oschner has enhanced care coordination through an investment in data. Through their use of Informatica, Ochsner is one of the very first healthcare delivery systems to migrate and integrate large volumes of historical data from a homegrown, legacy EMR into Epic, resulting in a single real-time source for complete patient records, improved visibility for providers, enhanced interactions between patients and providers and rapid and successful migration of clinical data from 38 systems into Epic.

Stop by our booth 5005 and learn why over 4,500 customers, including 84 of the Fortune 100 and hundreds of healthcare organizations have turned to Informatica to help manage their data needs.

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Innovative Healthcare Solutions

Booth 3059

Contact: Laura Hudman, VP, Marketing and Sales
Lhudman@ihsconsulting.com
863.602.1787

Innovative Healthcare Solutions (IHS) provides a cost-effective, proven approach to guide and assist healthcare organizations in transitional support, implementation and management of information systems and services. Our expertise includes Planning, Implementation, Project Management, Support and Interim Transitional Services as well as System Assessment, Process & Workflow Design and Optimization for Financial and Clinical systems.

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Intellect Resources

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Tiffany Crenshaw, President and CEO
tcrenshaw@intellectresources.com
336.420.1178

Intellect Resources would love to meet with you!

Intellect Resources is proud to offer comprehensive consulting, recruiting and hiring solutions within the healthcare IT market.Our talent offerings include recruiting, project management, implementation, upgrading and optimization of EMR systems, training and go-live support and the revolutionary Big Break hiring process.Big Break is patented American Idol style audition process where candidates compete to become a healthcare IT trainer. Big Break offers hospitals systems a unique and innovative talent pool at a fraction of the cost of traditional hiring solutions.

In 2012 Intellect Resources was named to The Triad Business Journal’s Fast 50, which adds to a growing list of industry awards Intellect Resources has received including Modern Healthcare Magazine’s Best Places to Work in Healthcare, HITconsultant.net naming Intellect Resources’ President and CEO Tiffany Crenshaw as one of the Top 12 Women to Know in Healthcare IT and the London Times recognizing Intellect Resources’ Big BreakTM as the solution to the healthcare IT talent shortage. A unique approach to standard service offerings sets Intellect Resources apart and allows us to constantly find new and experienced talent.Through relationship-driven, hands-on services, Intellect Resources connects employers and healthcare IT professionals.

For more information visit www.intellectresources.com or www.irbigbreak.com.

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Intelligent InSites

Booth 8025, Kiosk #10 in the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion

Contact: Marcus Ruark, Vice President
Marcus.Ruark@intelligentinsites.com
512.541.0737

If you would like to learn how we help healthcare organizations transform their operations with real-time operational intelligence—please come visit us at HIMSS13!

Stop by to experience how our enterprise healthcare software platform will be used across 152 VA Medical Centers to help improve operational efficiency, quality, satisfaction, and compliance—decreasing operational costs, reducing delays in patient care, and increasing clinical efficiencies and staff productivity.

Who we are: Intelligent InSites helps transform healthcare with real-time operational intelligence that improves care, enhances the human experience, and increases efficiency. Through its open, real-time, healthcare platform, Intelligent InSites automatically collects and processes data from multiple data sources such as EHRs, financial systems, building systems, sensory and real-time location systems (RTLS), mobility solutions, and other healthcare IT solutions—then provides actionable intelligence to achieve cost savings, operational excellence, and better care. By utilizing the enterprise-wide architecture of the InSites platform, healthcare systems can leverage all legacy, current, and future data sources to optimize their technology investments across the entire organization, then have the flexibility to meet changing organizational, regulatory, and compliance needs.

For more information, please visit http://www.intelligentinsites.com.

 

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IMO – Intelligent Medical Objects Inc.

Booth 6223

Contact: Dennis Carson, Director, Marketing/Tradeshows
dcarson@e-imo.com
847.272.1242

IMO® – Intelligent Medical Objects will show you how to ‘Work Smarter with IMO’ through the latest developments in interface terminologies that allow clinicians to better capture and preserve true clinical intent and achieve Meaningful Use. Visit us at Booth 6223 at HIMSS13 for our presentations then enter our daily drawings for one of several Bose® QuietComfort® 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling® headphones.

Presentation topics are:

• Working Smarter with IMO
• All About IMO® Problem (IT)®
• All about IMO® Procedure (IT)®
• Achieving Meaningful Use with IMO
• ICD-10 – How Do I Get There?
• Harnessing the Power of the Semantic Highway

Click to reserve your spot: http://www.e-imo.com/imohimss13.aspx www.e-imo.com

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iSirona

Booth 6549 and the Interoperability Showcase

Contact: Peter Witonsky, President & Chief Sales Officer
peter.witonsky@isirona.com
610.772.7648

Visitors to the iSirona booth can register to win one of several Nike+ FuelBands! Stop by to learn about how we’ve been helping clients connect devices to their EMR for several years. It’s their satisfaction that has made our software solution Best in KLAS in device integration for two years running. Don’t forget to hear The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center on Monday at 9:45! They’ll be sharing their success with medical device integration.

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Kareo

Mobile Health Knowledge Center

Contact: Terry Douglas, Director of Brand Marketing
terry.douglas@kareo.com
949.856.7269

If you believe small practices power healthcare and want to see the only company at HIMSS committed to the success and health of small medical practices, then Kareo is the right stop for you! From A/R to mHealth and everything in between, Kareo is the medical office platform of the future.

Check us out in the Mobile Health Knowledge Center, online at www.kareo.com or tweet-out at us @GoKareo.

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LDM Group

Booth 5022

Contact: Todd Helmink, VP of Business Development
thelmink@ldmgrp.com
312.391.4233

LDM Group, LLC (LDM), is a leading provider of behavior based prescription management programs. As a targeted healthcare communication company, LDM connects prescribers, pharmacists, and patients. LDM’s network is made up of e-prescribing, electronic medical record (EMR), and electronic health record (EHR) applications, chain and independent pharmacies, and sponsors of healthcare related educational materials. LDM provides timely and clinically relevant healthcare messaging through its patented process which serves to improve patient compliance, persistence and outcomes, while preserving privacy. For more information, please visit www.ldmgrp.com.

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Legacy Data Access, LLC

Booths 4611 and 1621

Contact: John Hanggi, Director, Customer Services
jhanggi@legacydataaccess.com
678-232-7922 (cell)

With a singular focus on the healthcare industry, Legacy Data Access stores data from applications – Clinical, Revenue Cycle, ERP, Ancillary, Practice Management and EMR – that are being retired and provides secure, web-based access to the information. Our solutions support financial and clinical processes and strategies by maintaining all detail, minimizing costs, improving productivity, and maximizing ROI.

As a vendor-neutral archive provider, LDA has extensive experience in retiring numerous clinical applications including orders/results, nursing documentation, ancillary applications and in many cases provides a Legal Medical Record for the stored data.  Revenue Cycle solutions include receivables functionality so that those systems may be retired earlier.  In addition, LDA has retired various PM / EMR systems as well as many ERP applications.

We look forward to seeing you at our booth (4611) and our Partners collaboration booth (1621).

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Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. (LRS)

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Ron Peel, Technical Advisor
913.948.3646
ron.peel@lrs.com
Laurie Eldridge, HP Global Alliance Representative
610.850.1237
laurie.eldridge@lrs.com

Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. (LRS) is a leader in software for managing care-related documents and other business critical information. Some of the largest healthcare providers in the U.S. use LRS output management solutions. LRS provides documented and supported interfaces to integrate our proven output management software with best-of-breed EMR applications. Contact LRS to learn how we can improve your downtime reporting capabilities and streamline document-related processes to provide better patient care.

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Lifepoint Informatics

Booth 7623

Contact: Vincent Gryscavage, Senior Vice President of Sales
vgryscavage@lifepoint.com
201.447.9991 x730

Lifepoint Informatics is a leader in health IT focusing on laboratory outreach connectivity, health information exchange and clinical data interoperability. Since 1999, Lifepoint has enabled over 200 hospitals, clinical labs and anatomic pathology groups to grow their market share and extend their outreach programs through the deployment of its ONC-ATCB certified Web Provider Portal and its comprehensive portfolio of ready-to-go EHR interfaces. For more information visit www.lifepoint.com.

Please Note: Hourly drawings will be made during exhibit hours with a chance to win an Odyssey Golf Putter.

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maxIT-VCS

Booth 3027

Contact: Cyndi Vely Cahill, Senior Vice President
Ccahill@getvitalized.com
610.444.1233

maxIT Healthcare and VCS, wholly owned subsidiaries of SAIC, provide a wide variety of clinical, business, and IT solutions for healthcare enterprises across the United States and Canada. With nearly 3,000 consultants, we provide implementation expertise for the Allscripts™, Cerner, Epic, McKesson, MEDITECH, NextGen®, and Siemens systems. We also provide Project Management Professionals (PMP® Certified) and management consulting to assist our clients with their strategic planning and governance needs, tactical project planning, and assistance with their MU, ACO, Revenue Cycle, and ICD-10 project needs.

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McKesson

Booth: 4341, Exhibit Hall F

Contact: Erin McNealy, Lead Management
Erin.McNealy2@mckesson.com
404.338.3910

At McKesson, we’re committed to better health for patients, our customers, and the nation’s healthcare system. We’re committed to helping create a new future in which the business of health is better, and the outcomes improved for all. McKesson’s Paragon® “Best in KLAS” hospital information system is an intuitive, single-database system featuring fully integrated clinical and financial applications. Learn more by visiting our HIMSS booth (#4341) or at www.mynewHIS.com.

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MED3OOO – Now Part of McKesson

Booth 3068 (Medicomp)

Contact: Nicole Contardo, Corporate Marketing Director
marketing@MED3000.com
888.811.2411

MED3OOO – Now a Part of McKesson, is a leading provider of healthcare management and technology services that improve outcomes for providers, health plans, and the patients and employees they serve. The Company provides a broad array of proprietary solutions for physician groups, hospitals, health systems, health risk organizations, and state and local municipalities, enabling them to reach their maximum potential with respect to operational, financial, and clinical results. Through the integrated application of systems, operations, analytics and domain expertise, MED3OOO serves as the premier strategic operations partner for the healthcare community.

The Company’s depth of knowledge across its services, economies of scale, infrastructure, and ability to offer and manage disparate information systems provide MED3OOO with a distinct competitive advantage in the rapidly evolving healthcare industry. Each of the components of MED3OOO’s product and services suite is a critical competency for moving toward the delivery of accountable care.

MED3OOO will be giving demos of our InteGreat EHR with Quippe in the Medicomp booth (3068).

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MedAptus

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jennifer Crowley, Marketing Director
jcrowley@medaptus.com
617.896.4030

MedAptus is the Gold Standard in the healthcare revenue cycle for achieving effective charge management, compliance and workflow efficiency. With offerings that include powerful and easy-to-use charge capture and management technologies, it is no wonder that many of the nation’s most prestigious healthcare organizations rely on MedAptus for financial optimization. Our full-scale Professional, Facility and Infusion applications increase revenue, enhance EMR investments, re-engineer manual processes and yield substantially improved productivity.

For more information, visit www.medaptus.com or call 617.896.4000.

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MedAssets

To schedule a meeting:

Contact:
solutions@medassets.com
888.883.6332

MedAssets (NASDAQ: MDAS) partners with healthcare providers to improve their financial strength by implementing revenue cycle, spend and clinical resource management solutions that help capture revenue, control cost, improve margins and cash flow, increase regulatory compliance, and optimize operational efficiency. MedAssets serves more than 4,200 hospitals and 100,000 non-acute healthcare providers. The company currently manages $48 billion in supply spend and touches over $340 billion in gross patient revenue annually through its revenue cycle solutions. For more information, go to www.medassets.com.

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Medicomp Systems

Booth 3068

Contact: James Aita, Product Manager
jaita@medicomp.com
703.945.2482

Back by popular demand, Medicomp Systems will once again host Quipstar, World’s Favorite HIT Quiz Show, live at Exhibit 3068. Contestants and those seated in the studio audience will have a chance to win one of fifty iPads and other prizes. Best of all, you’ll see how Quippe, backed by the powerful MEDCIN Engine, takes care documentation requirements without burdening the clinician. You can also experience the MEDCIN Engine, Using Medicomp’s new interactive MEDCIN Engine touchscreen you can also experience the MEDCIN Engine to see how MEDCIN can successfully manage the data tsunami and even make SNOWMED easy to use. Register for an opportunity to attend and play Quipstar at www.medicomp.com/quipstar-registration.

Medicomp is also the proud sponsor of HIStalkapalooza, which will be held at the iconic Rock n’ Bowl. Register at www.histalkapalooza.com.

Medicomp Systems is the inventor of clinical content, technologies, and mappings that improve EHR usability at the point of care while taking care of all documentation requirements including Meaningful Use stages 2, 3 and beyond as well as ICD-10.

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MediQuant

Booth 5649

Contact: Mindy Morris
mindym@mediquant.com   
440.746.2300 x245                                                                                            

MediQuant provides Data Transition Management Solutions that embrace healthcare’s transitory nature. Simplify your IT world and reduce the cost of system conversions with DataArk®, an Active Archiving solution that allows you to decommission old systems, maintain interoperable access to old data, and realize up to 80% cost savings. As the retirement home for the legacy data from retired systems,  DataArk® allows users to easily access and view clinical, patient financial, ERP and other data that had been left orphaned in legacy systems. For patient accounting records, users may still bill accounts, post payments and produce itemized statements among other functions.

MediQuant serves a large client base across the nation, including large multi-facility IDN’s (40+ hospitals, 100+ ambulatory practices), academic healthcare organizations and community facilities. FirstComply™ and AccuRules™ are software and content solutions for medical necessity/ABN compliance.

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Merge Healthcare

Booth 5725

Contact: Jennifer Jawor, Director, Segment Marketing
jen.jawor@merge.com
312.565.6825

Merge Healthcare is a leading provider of clinical systems and innovations that seek to transform healthcare. Managing over 13,000 billion images, Merge was named the world’s largest vendor-neutral archive (VNA) market leader in a recent InMedica study. As the industry’s first true standalone vendor-neutral archive, iConnect(r) Enterprise Archive has been successfully integrated with over seventy-five PACS vendors and specialty workstations at over 350 sites across the United States. And with MU2 requirements, mandating images available to the referring physician through a certified EHR, Merge’s iConnect Enterprise Clinical Platform can help organizations image-enable the EHR while improving operational efficiencies, reducing costs and increasing revenue potential.

So are you ready for the next level of interoperability? Learn more about enterprise imaging at merge.com or visit us at HIMSS in Booth #5725.

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M*Modal

Booth 6647

Contact: Lisa McCormick, Corporate Events Planner
lisa.mccormick@mmodal.com
267.535.7222

Expect More. More from your EHR.

• Maximize physician adoption More time for your physicians.
• Easily capture the complete patient story More meaningful, higher quality patient care.
• Drive more intelligent, effective actions

Surprise Your Favorite Children‘s Charity. Visit M*Modal at HIMSS13, Booth #6647, and enter for a chance to win $800 in toys for the children‘s charity of your choice.

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Nordic Consulting Partners

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Natalee Cruse, Director of Technical Marketing
natalee.cruse@nordicwi.com
608.334.2998

Nordic is ranked #1 in KLAS for Epic services. We’re the largest consulting firm in the country focused exclusively on Epic. Our team of more than 225 elite consultants, two thirds of whom are former Epic, average nine years of industry experience and four certifications. We partner with over 50 clients across the country.

We pride ourselves on having high standards and a partnership-oriented philosophy with our clients and consultants, which has created great rapport and allowed us to attract the best and brightest to Nordic. We take pride in providing the right resource for a given opportunity.

Need help installing? Upgrading? Optimizing? Rolling out to affiliates? We do it all. We’re also an Epic-credentialed provider of Community Connect implementation and support. There will be a fleet of our green-shirted folks at HIMSS – come chat with us about how your Epic project is going!

For more info, go to www.nordicwi.com

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nVoq Incorporated

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Debbi Gillotti, Vice President and General Manager
deborah.gillotti@nvoq.com
720.562.4507 or 206.465.1765

SayIt(TM) from nVoq is a secure cloud-based voice recognition service that’s easy to use, easy to deploy, and has been endorsed by the American Hospital Association. SayIt works directly with your EMR to convert speech to text within seconds – no integration required. Access your SayIt voice profile whenever and wherever you need to work – no software to install on each device.

nVoq is a Boulder, CO based provider of cloud-based voice recognition solutions for the Healthcare and Customer Care industries. In business since 2000, nVoq supports a wide variety of enterprise and health system organizations through a growing channel partner network. We’re building this network daily in support of real-time (front end) dictation and embedded (back end) voice processing for mobile forms or other applications. A well-documented SDK is available for both Windows and iOS platforms.

While attending HIMSS, we welcome the opportunity to meet with organizations who buy, build or implement applications platforms for Healthcare users, and are interested in cloud-based, voice-enabled workflow at an affordable price point. Our primary focus is North America, but we welcome inquiries from other venues.

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NTT DATA Healthcare Technologies

Booth 1041

Contact: Larry Kaiser, Senior Marketing Manager
lawrence.kaiser@nttdata.com
631.824.5318

NTT DATA Healthcare Technologies offers healthcare organizations a complete IT solution with applications that increase efficiency, reduce medical errors, and enhance the revenue cycle. NTT DATA’s solutions include ONC-ATCB certified Optimum, featuring one of the industry’s leading RCM solutions, comprehensive clinicals, EHR, general financials, and post-acute solutions. Healthcare Technologies that:

• Empower the Patient
• Improve Care
• Drive Outcomes

Stop by the booth for a chance to win an iPad Mini.

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Nuance Communications, Inc

Booth 4025

Contact: Mark Erwich
mark.erwich@nuance.com
781.565.5000

At HIMSS 2013 Nuance will show how to improve the entire clinical documentation process, from the capture of the complete patient record to clinical documentation improvement, coding, compliance and appropriate reimbursement. Nuance will share latest information on how to prepare to transition to ICD-10, how we support Meaningful Use, how we support Mobile health and the transition to Accountable Care.

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Optum

Booth 7041

Contact: Steven Loewy, Associate Director, Marketing
steven.loewy@optum.com
801.982.3468

Optum innovations, analytics and expertise help health care organizations navigate the journey from providing care to managing health. Our solutions and services are used at nearly every point in the health care system, from patient access to diagnosis and treatment; from coding and clinical documentation improvement to reimbursement; and from quality measurement and performance benchmarking to network management, administration and payment.

Every day, Optum solutions help shape how health care is managed, and how information and technology drives improvements in the system. Optum works with our clients and partners to improve the delivery, quality and cost effectiveness of health care in ways that support and empower more patient-centered, value-driven care. Visit us at HIMSS13, booth #7041 to learn how Optum can help you reduce costs, while increasing patient care quality and satisfaction.

Make your steps count at HIMSS13! For every mile you walk, Optum will donate $1 to charities that improve health and wellbeing in the City of New Orleans. Stop by the Optum exhibit for a free pedometer and more information.

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Orchestrate Healthcare

Booth 529

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

We focus on four core competencies: EMR Clinical Implementation, HIE Consulting, Integration and Staff Augmentation. Why? Because QUALITY is our mantra.

We listen to our clients, and our 15+ year experienced consultants are make-it-happen, kind of people that deliver on-time, on-schedule and on-budget. Without errors or excuses. Our client referrals and three Best In KLAS awards in the last five years affirm this. Come see us at booth 529 to learn more about how we can help you. While you’re visiting, check out our new pad and register to win a pair of really cool Beats by Dr. Dre. Listening has never been so much fun!

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Orion Health

Booth 3161

Contact: Kristin O’Neill, Senior Marketing Manager
kristin.oneill@orionhealth.com
857.488.4740

Visit booth 3161 at HIMSS 2013 and see for yourself why clinicians, hospitals, health systems, public health organizations and OEM partners in more than 30 countries worldwide rely on Orion Health to provide solutions to their biggest health information exchange (HIE) and data integration challenges. Be sure to mark your calendar for all the Orion Health activities while at the show, including: – Joining us for morning coffee or a sweet afternoon treat at the booth. – Meeting our clients and learning how they are using our solutions. – Entering our raffle to win an iPad mini 4G. – Attending a “Lunch and Learn” session with Shahid Shah, The Healthcare IT Guy, on Data Integration and Analytics: The Future of Healthcare Information Management. – Networking with Orion Health executives over breakfast in our hospitality room.

Orion Health™ HIE facilitates data exchange between hospitals, health systems, regional HIEs, and affiliated providers, resulting in improved care coordination, increased cost savings and efficiencies, and enhanced quality of care. Orion Health™ Rhapsody® Integration Engine provides seamless connectivity between legacy and next-generation health systems, rapidly enabling organizations to deliver high-quality patient care and population health. Rhapsody provides a comprehensive set of tools to simplify healthcare integration and is easily extensible to meet the requirements of each unique healthcare environment.

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Ormed Information Systems Inc.

Booth 1041 (with NTT Data Health Solutions)

Contact: Bill Hockstedler, VP Sales and Marketing
bill.hockstedler@ormed.com
512.971.2885

Ormed’s software and services are designed exclusively to continuously improve on the business processes of hospitals in the areas of supply chain management, finance, cost accounting, human capital management, decision support and systems management.

Saving time, reducing waste, cutting expenses, understanding costs, creating a positive experience and peace of mind. In the world of accountable care and new regulations, wouldn’t it be nice to have a set of tools in your hands that were always designed around expense management and accountablility. A powerful Cost Accounting system alone can make all the difference for you!

Come and see what we have to offer to make the changes ahead less stressful!

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Park Place International

Booth 2674

Contact: Christine Mellyn, Manager of Product Marketing
christine.mellyn@parkplaceintl.com
508.970.8704

Park Place International provides technology integration, technical consulting, and OpSus|Cloud Services designed to help customers achieve operational sustainability with their MEDITECH Electronic Health Record. Park Place is an approved provider of technology solutions for all versions of the MEDITECH HCIS and offers the full selection of MEDITECH-certified server and storage platforms. The Park Place team has extensive MEDITECH experience and technology expertise, and is uniquely qualified to architect, deliver and support MEDITECH solutions.

Stop by booth #2674 to learn more about Park Place International and enter our raffle for a chance to win an Amazon.com gift card!

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Passport Health Communications, Inc.

Booth 3310

Contact: Scott Bagwell, Senior VP, Sales & Marketing
Scott.Bagwell@passporthealth.com
888.661.5657

Founded in 1996, Passport now serves more than 2,400 hospitals in addition to more than 8,900 physicians, clinics and ancillary offices across all 50 states. The company processes more than 300 million transactions annually through its Passport eCare™ brand of patient access and payment certainty solutions. Recently ranked the nation’s third largest revenue cycle management company by Modern Healthcare, Passport was honored as the “Technology Company of the Year” by the Nashville Technology Council in October 2012. Passport’s patient access & payment certainty solutions are delivered through Passport eCare NEXT; an integrated, SaaS-based platform that can be seamlessly integrated into existing work flow. Accountable Care solutions, including ACO MemberMatchTM, can be used to manage patients’ entire course of care, from initial diagnosis through full recovery and can be seamlessly integrated into existing workflow through the Passport eCare NEXT platform.

Visit Passport at Booth #3310 to see a product demonstration and speak to a Passport representative.

 

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PatientKeeper Inc.

Booth 2210

Contact: Kathy Ruggiero, Senior Director, Corporate Marketing
kruggiero@patientkeeper.com
781.373.6433

PatientKeeper is the leading provider of healthcare applications for physicians, with over 50,000 users across North America and the UK. At HIMSS13, visitors can see PatientKeeper software in action and speak with customers who are actively using our CPOE, mobile CPOE, physician documentation, electronic charge capture and other applications that streamline physicians’ workflow. PatientKeeper runs as a native app on popular smartphones and tablets, as well as on desktop and laptop computers. While you are at our HIMSS13 booth (#2210), enter our daily drawing for an Apple iPad mini.

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PatientPay

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: David Bond, EVP, Sales & Marketing
db@patientpay.com
919.830.2798

PatientPay is a patented innovative solution that makes healthcare billing, payment and reconciliation faster, easier and less costly. PatientPay is a simple way for practice management software vendors to allow their physicians to bill patients while reducing costs, increasing productivity and patient satisfaction. PatientPay eliminates the costly and complicated paper-based billing method used by the overwhelming majority of healthcare providers. It drives down the expense and drives up the productivity associated with this activity by at least a factor of two. Since PatientPay reduces the time to payment in half, healthcare professionals realize improved cash flow and reduced accounts receivables.

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PDR Network

Booth 7740

Contact: Amy Lombardi, Senior Director, Marketing
Amy.Lombardi@pdr.net
201.358.7200

PDR Network® has developed innovations to deliver critical drug information to providers within workflow that are easily integrated into partner EHR systems and deliver a better end user experience. PDR interactive drug information services allow providers to have their PDR in their EHR with services provided at no cost to partner EHRs and their providers, enhancing the overall EHR experience while supporting Meaningful Use (MU) requirements.

• PDR® BRIEF: Supporting providers by delivering the key information needed at the point of prescribing. Instead of accessing multiple sources outside of workflow, providers have access to the information they need within workflow when they need it.
• PDR® Search: This on-demand resource provides access to a host of medication-specific resources covering regulatory, provider and patient information tools, as well as aggregated manufacturer resources. Before providers would leave your environment for these tools, NOW they have integrated access to the information they need.
• RxEvent: PDR offers a quick and easy digital reporting tool that can be easily integrated into any EHR or ePrescribing system.

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Ping Identity

Booth 2470

Contact: Linda Bowers, Healthcare Market Leader
lbowers@pingidentity.com
978.844.4105

Ping Identity is The Identity Security Company. Our identity and access management platform gives enterprise customers and employees one-click access to any application from any device. Over 900 companies, including 45 of the Fortune 100, rely on our award-winning products to make the digital world a better experience.

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Prognosis HIS

Booth 7423

Contact: Melanie Thompson,Director of Marketing
mthompson@prognosishis.com
713.469.1501

Prognosis Health Information Systems provides an enterprise solution, including EHR and financial systems, to rural and community hospitals. At HIMSS, Prognosis is launching a new version of its highly ranked ChartAccess® EHR and unveiling our ED and ambulatory solutions. We’re introducing the new era of EHRs. Our system allows for configurability at both the organization and user level, helping every person interact with the system in the way that works best for him or her. We invite you to stop by our booth and see an EHR like you’ve never seen before.

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Qlik Technologies

Booth 8121

Contact: Kerry Talbot, Event Marketing Senior Manager
kerry.talbot@qlikview.com
617.331.5284

QlikTech (NASDAQ: QLIK) is a leader in Business Discovery—user-driven Business Intelligence (BI). Its QlikView Business Discovery solution bridges the gap between traditional BI solutions and inadequate spreadsheet applications. The in-memory associative search technology QlikTech pioneered created the self-service BI category, allowing users to explore information freely rather than being confined to a predefined path of questions. Appropriate from SMB to the largest global enterprise, QlikView’s self-service analysis can be deployed with data governance in days or weeks. The QlikView Business Discovery platform’s app-driven model works with existing BI solutions, offering an immersive mobile and social, collaborative experience. Headquartered in Radnor, Pennsylvania, QlikTech has offices around the world serving approximately 26,000 customers in over 100 countries.

We will have multiple demos, videos and customer presentations in our large booth amphitheater with solutions experts on hand to answer all of your questions. Registerhere for a personalized VIP Booth Tour and be entered for a chance to win an iPad Mini!

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Quantros

Booth 7940

Contact: Amy Lee, Director of Marketing and Sales Operation
info@quantros.com
408.957.3300

Quantros helps healthcare providers improve quality and patient safety by empowering organizations, at every level, with the actionable intelligence they need to improve outcomes and reduce risk. Quantros provides cloud based tools and resources for the healthcare industry in the areas of safety and risk management, quality and performance improvement, accreditation and compliance, and centralized decision support. Today more than 2,000 healthcare facilities use Quantros solutions to capture meaningful data to effectively drive the decisions that improve the safety and quality of care.

Visit our booth to learn more about IRIS and enter to win an iPad. IRIS is a leading-edge clinical quality and patient safety dashboard that leverages data from the Quantros Safety and Risk Management (SRM) solution, the Regulatory Reporting Management (RRM) solution, and your organization’s billing data. IRIS Executive presents this data via a highly configurable, role-based dashboard. The result is real-time visibility into safety and quality events and trends in your facility. This enables you to chart improvement with an authoritative source of truth.

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Quest Diagnostics (Care360 Healthcare IT Suite of Solutions)

Booth 3927

Contact: Rohit Nayak,Vice President, Physician Technology Solutions
RNayak@MedPlus.com
800.444.6235

A special 2013 HIMSS invitation to all HIStalk readers: Visit the Quest Diagnostics Healthcare IT Theatre – Booth 3927.

Quest Diagnostics team members will be featuring educational presentations and industry insights from key opinion leaders on technology topics including:

• Interoperability
• Top Strategies for Accelerating Your ACO and Care Collaboration Strategy
• Mobile Health – featuring Travis Good, MD, MBNA, MS, HIStalk Mobile Health contributor
• Industry Standards/HL7
• Elevating Your Enterprise Content Management (ECM) with a SOA Platform
• Enhancing business processes/streamlining registration programs
• Our Health IT Quality Solutions Program to ensure quality Lab-EHR interoperability

ChartMaxx and Care360 with Data Exchange, part of the Care360 Suite of Healthcare IT Solutions from Quest Diagnostics, are exhibiting together to showcase the strengths of the company’s entire HCIT portfolio. EHR vendors can learn how our Health IT Quality Solutions Program benefits them through streamlined interfacing and promotion of their quality EHR solutions by us.

We are focused on “Empowering Better Health: Quest Diagnostics Healthcare IT Solutions.”

Quest Diagnostics booth representatives will be holding drawings for iPads and other exciting giveaways following each 20-minute presentation.

For more information and a schedule of the presentations, visit Care360.com.

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RazorInsights

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Reed Liggin, President & CEO
rliggin@razorinsights.com
404.578.1362

Based in Kennesaw, Georgia, RazorInsights is a dynamic healthcare information technology company. In keeping with the principle of Occam’s Razor, they have created a simplified HIS solution for Rural, Critical Access and Community hospitals. Introducing ONE (ONC-ATCB 2011/2012) — a single-database, cloud solution offering a simple user experience with cutting-edge clinical tools and industry-standardized data. Hospitals can expect to improve their performance and bottom line with ONE from RazorInsights. To register for a live product demo or for more information, visit www.razorinsights.com or call 770-308-4111.

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RelayHealth

Booth 4640

Contact: Lynette Corte, Lead Qualification Manager
lynette.cortez@relayhealth.com
888.743.8735

RelayHealth is proud to be a featured exhibitor at HIMSS13 March 3-7 at the Ernest N. Morial Convention Center in New Orleans. If you plan to attend this important annual industry event, we’d like the opportunity to learn more about your goals and challenges for the upcoming year, and explore how RelayHealth can help you succeed in 2013 and beyond with the Right Connections for Better Health.

RelayHealth provides solutions that can help you satisfy requirements for Meaningful Use Stage 2, and meet your objectives for providing accountable care. As the healthcare industry continues to experience substantial change, RelayHealth is also at the forefront of developments in areas such as health information exchange, patient engagement, and readmission management. Check out the exhibition hall floor map and make plans to stop by for a visit with us in Booth #4640. We look forward to meeting with you in New Orleans.

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Salar, Inc.

Booth 6754

Contact: Greg D. Wilson, Director of Sales
gwilson@salarinc.com
860.294.9877

Salar offers physician clinical documentation and charge capture solutions to hospitals and health systems nationwide. Our flagship product, TeamNotes, has recently been entirely rewritten allowing our customers to deploy the solution faster, easier, and to a wider array of devices than ever before. At HIMSS, Salar will showcase this latest release, TeamNotes v6, and within that demonstration special attention will be focused on front end computer assisted coding for ICD-10 compliant documentation, physician charges as derived by the notes themselves, care team collaboration of notes, physician hand off, and related CDI workflows.

In lieu of yet another iPad giveaway or a similar free gizmo, at this time Salar is planning to offer a charitable donation in the name of one visitor to the booth. Details are forthcoming.

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Sandlot Solutions

Booth 2063

Contact: Derek Plansky, Senior Director, Client Solutions
dplansky@sandlotsolutions.com
202.747.4502

Sandlot Solutions has a proven, deployed system managing more than 2.8 million lives. Sandlot manages risk, drives clinical management and provides business analytics. All of the things that are required by MU2, and beyond and all the things an Accountable Care Organization (ACO) must do. Sandlot provides all the tools to manage against risk-based payment systems. Most application systems only use claims data for analysis – Sandlot merges clinical and claim data to manage care and manage risk. Sandlot using a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS or cloud computing platform) is very fast, built on reliable technology – system changes for your information systems and changes for any of your affiliated entities are not required . . . also connects to non-affiliated trading partners in your trading area. The combination of Healthcare Information Exchange (HIE), Care Management and Analytics makes Sandlot the Fourth Generation Technology.

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Santa Rosa Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Doug Hires, Executive Vice President, Strategic Advisory and Sales & Marketing
doughires@santarosaconsulting.com
214.546.0895

Santa Rosa Consulting is a national provider of management consulting and information technology services to the healthcare industry. Through our unique blend of strategic advisory services and technical consulting expertise across the full range of healthcare IT vendor products and systems, we deliver solutions specifically designed to address your business needs.

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Seamless Medical Systems

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Frank Grant, Vice President, Sales
frank@seamlessmedical.com
760.533.1520

Seamless Medical is solely focused on improving the patient’s experience in medical practices at the point of care. Our mission is to leverage technology in patients’ hands to simplify the front end of the practice workflow, engage the patient in the registration process, and provide the patient with educational content relevant to his/her scheduled appointment and medical conditions. Our team’s decades of combined experience in the medical, healthcare administration, and business arenas has led to the formation of the company and dedication to our solution.

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Shareable Ink

Booth 3568

Contact: Suzanne Cogan, Vice President, Sales and Marketing
scogan@shareableink.com
877.572.7423 x 802

Shareable Ink is the enterprise cloud-based platform that transforms point-of-care clinical documentation to structured data and analytics. By incorporating natural input tools, such as iPads and digital pen and paper technology, clinicians can continue documenting in the fastest, most efficient manner. The resulting structured and clinically-rich output populates the EHR with discrete data, as if typed in directly. Predictive analytics give hospitals and practices unprecedented insight into their operations – from a clinical, quality, and efficiency standpoint.

Visit us at HIMSS – # 3568 – for an interactive demo of our applications that automate areas where electronic documentation has traditionally been challenging – from anesthesia to patient-generated history to ambulatory sites. We’ll also have a special unveiling of our iPad App – you won’t want to miss it! For everyone who mentions ‘LIBERATE’ at our booth, we’ll be making a donation to one of our favorite NOLA charities.

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Siemens Healthcare

Booths 2640 and 2641

Contact: Roger May, Senior Director, Marketing
roger.may@siemens.com
610.219.1874

Join us to learn how a growing number of healthcare organizations—both large and small—are using Soarian® to connect top-of-the-line patient care with the bottom line. Hear the story of how Soarian unites the revenue cycle for seamless financial performance using contract-driven processing. See how Soarian helps foster collaboration by connecting clinicians to patient data and to one another with integrated clinical workflow.Learn how more people in more places can connect… with Soarian. See the new Soarian Ambulatory offering in our main booth and our MobileMD HIE in our adjoining booth.

Stop by the Siemens booth and we will make a contribution to Hope For The Warriors® whose mission is to enhance the quality of life for post-9/11 service members, their families, and families of the fallen who have sustained physical and psychological wounds in the line of duty. www.hopeforthewarriors.org

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SpeechRecognition.com

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: William Holliman, Dragon Medical Adviser
William.Holliman@1450.com
888.848.1450 ext. 210

Is your EHR doing all of the dictating? Take back control, and the ability to dictate your notes, with the most accurate speech recognition software yet, Dragon Medical Practice Edition. Visit SpeechRecognition.com to schedule a free demo today!

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Streamline Health Solutions, Inc.

Booth 1821

Contact: Michael Schiller, Senior Vice President, Sales, Marketing & Account Management
solutions@streamlinehealth.net
303.316.0696

Streamline Health offers specialized solutions that will:

• Get you closer to Meaningful Use with EHR-integrated enterprise content management solutions
• Provide actionable insight into your organization’s true financial performance with Business Intelligence solutions
• Help facilitate the transition to ICD-10 with our suite of integrated computer assisted coding (CAC) and CDI solutions

Stop by booth 1821 at HIMSS to view a live demonstration of AccessAnyWare™, OpportunityAnyWare™ and/or Collabra™ and learn how Streamline Health Solutions, Inc., can help your healthcare organization successfully face today’s challenges.

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SuccessEHS

Booth 4411

Contact: Dante Rankart, Vice President of Sales
marketing@successehs.com
888.879.7302

SuccessEHS is a nationally acclaimed vendor providing Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Practice Management solutions with Integrated Medical Billing Services. SuccessEHS also provides Electronic Dental Record (EDR) and Dental Imaging solutions. Founded in 1995, SuccessEHS established itself as a leader in the emerging practice management applications market by delivering an innovative blend of clinical, operational and financial software paired with a suite of specialized integrated success services. SuccessEHS, entirely in-house developed and supported, has achieved multiple certifications from CCHIT.

Visit us at booth #4411 to learn how SuccessEHS can help practices improve care, increase revenue, successfully manage the ICD-10 transition and earn incentives through Meaningful Use and the Physician Quality Reporting System. While you’re there, spin our wheel to win fun prizes, including cash! We look forward to seeing you in the Big Easy!

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Sunquest Information Systems, Inc.

Booth 911 and MU Booth 149, Kiosk 85

Contact: Tracey Eddy, Marketing Event Planner
tracey.eddy@sunquestinfo.com
520.570.2333

Sunquest delivers market-leading diagnostic information technology and outreach solutions, designed and implemented to fulfill the business objectives of today’s healthcare leaders. Sunquest Laboratory is the leader in the market, enabling labs to operate with optimized performance and deliver quality diagnoses, while meeting regulatory and interoperability standards. Our solutions demonstrate a commitment to patient safety, workflow excellence, predictive and personalized medicine, and physician and patient affinity, serving users worldwide. Through outreach, we extend the lab to the community and provide the tools that turn information into intelligence.

At Booth 911:

Monday March 4th @ 2:00 pm
Guest Speaker Representative Gayle B. Harrell, President and CEO of Health IT Strategies, LLC ONC HIT Committee Member, Florida House of Representatives
Subject: Meaningful Use

Tuesday March 5th @ 10:30 AM and 3:00 pm
Guest Speaker Patty Sollman, Blood Bank Supervisor/LIS System Manager, Deaconess Health System
Title: In the age of the Integrated EHR, why SUNQUEST is the RIGHT choice as your Laboratory/Pathology System…..a user perspective

To request a meeting with a member of the Sunquest team at HIMSS please complete a request form: http://info.sunquestinfo.com/HIMSS2013_HIMSS2013v1.html.

Our give away this year will be a miniature plush toy – Sunquest Lab.

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Surgical Information Systems (SIS)

Booth 6429, Intelligent Hospital Kiosk 8711-33

Contact: Emmy Weber, VP of Marketing
info@sisfirst.com
678.507.1727

Surgical Information Systems (SIS) provides software solutions that are uniquely designed to add value at every point of the perioperative process. SIS’ singular focus in the OR helps hospitals drive both greater efficiency and better patient outcomes while integrating with your information systems environment. Visit SIS at Booth #6429 to learn how the fast, mobile, connected SIS Solution can help you achieve a "Slam Dunk" in your OR. Rapidly achieve remarkable outcomes with a proven implementation approach by the perioperative experts. Speed user adoption with mobile documentation and analytics that simplify OR management. Seamlessly connect to the enterprise, enabling providers to share information, prevent duplicate documentation, and analyze performance.

SIS is proud to be the only perioperative information management system vendor to participate in the HIMSS Intelligent Hospital Showcase. We will demonstrate our comprehensive perioperative software solution, showcasing interoperability between medical devices, hardware, and software.

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TeleTracking Technologies, Inc.

Booth 6619

Contact: Amie Podolak, Director, Marketing
amie-podolak@teletracking.com
412.391.6395

TeleTracking, Booth #6619, will preview its Real-Time Capacity Management™ (RTCM) platform, which removes wasted time in hospitals much more efficiently by combining advanced patient flow, business intelligence, and real-time location technologies. The platform integrates the just-released Capacity Management Suite™ system version 3.0 and TeleTracking’s Real-Time Locating System, with the goal of progressively removing delays to the management and execution of critical business processes. Also, enter for a chance to win a Tag Heuer watch (valued at $2,500)!

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TeraRecon

Booth 341

Stop by TeraRecon’s booth to learn all about the new iNtuition Enterprise Medical Viewer (iEMV), iNtuition SHARE and iNtuition Cloud. While there, enter a drawing to win a new iPad Mini!

iEMV provides a simple, intuitive, browser-based client which requires no download, no installation, and no plugin. A completely zero-footprint viewer, which supports a wide range of browsers dating back to IE7.

iNtuition SHARE makes possible CD-free transport and distribution of images between medical facilities and peers, or patients. When a healthcare facility deploys an iNtuition SHARE server, it is able to offer free access to network upload of images to institutions that need to send images into the facility, while removing the need to burn CDs for outgoing images.

iNtuition CLOUD is a self-contained solution which allows the full capability of iNtuition to be deployed via a web browser, either as an externally-hosted managed service, or as an in-house Private Cloud.

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The McHenry Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Lisa Gatto, Director of Client Development
lisag@mvp4u.biz
815.923.2500

Celebrating nearly 22 years in business, The McHenry Group (TMG) has become the most successful and most experienced International Executive Search Firm solely dedicated to serving the healthcare software vendor market. How successful? Since 1991, TMG has successfully placed over 2,000 candidates within the healthcare technology vendor industry.How experienced? Our Team of ten (10) search consultants has an average tenure with our firm that exceeds 11 years!

One of our Clients put it best: “Even though I was expecting great things from The McHenry Group, I was surprised by the extra effort TMG expended to understand our company, its corporate goals and our goals for our open position.I will definitely seek your help whenever our needs mesh with your services.”

TMG’s recruiting efforts focus on healthcare software vendors in the Provider and Payor (Payer) spaces. We identify superb talent for the C-level, VP Sales, regional sales, territory sales, channel marketing, client account executives, client services and implementation, sales support, consulting, marketing, product management, product development, clinical informatics, physician executives, clinical liaisons, nursing (RN) informatics and more! TMG is equipped to quickly tap into the hidden candidate market and recruit Top Talent that are not active on the market. Additionally, we can delve into our extensive proprietary database of candidates, coded by specific title, areas of expertise, etc.

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TrustHCS

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jeff Johnston, Executive Director, Business Development, President
jeff.johnston@trusthcs.com
760.277.1190

TrustHCS provides consulting and services to address Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) programs, ICD-10 preparation, revenue cycle improvement, coding services, auditing and cancer registry. Visit www.trusthcs.com for more information!

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T-System, Inc

Booth 2219, MU Experience booth 149/kiosk 42

Contact: Corinne Tso, Vice President, Marketing
ctso@tsystem.com
469.791.5540

This year at HIMSS, T-System will highlight solutions proven to help hospitals across the country achieve Meaningful Use and reduce avoidable readmissions through better patient transition management. In the T-System main exhibit booth #2219, leadership from Baptist Health of Kentucky and Cox Medical Center Branson in Missouri will discuss their experiences. In the HIMSS13 Meaningful Use Experience, a new special demonstration area for certified EHRs, T-System will demonstrate how an emergency department information system can help hospitals attest to Meaningful Use specifically highlighting the workflow for capturing patient history and documentation.

T-System, Inc. advances the practice of emergency medicine with solutions proven to solve clinical, financial, operational and regulatory challenges for hospitals and urgent care clinics. More than 40 percent of the nation’s emergency departments rely on T-System for gold-standard documentation, revenue cycle management, and performance-enhancing solutions.

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Valence Health

Booth 772

Contact: Kevin Weinstein, Chief Marketing Officer
kweinstein@valencehealth.com
312.771.7883

If you’re an executive overseeing a Medicare ACO, interested in population health, or pursuing value-based reimbursement opportunities, Valence Health would like to help. Valence Health is among the nation’s leading companies in helping healthcare providers better manage their patient populations and accept financial responsibility for the quality of the care they provide. With unique data collection and analysis tools, Valence Health has emerged as a leader in population management, serving dozens of clients from small physician groups to the Cleveland Clinic.

At the same time, in-depth actuarial analysis combined with operational excellence allows Valence to not only advise but also provide ongoing services to provider organizations operating under various value-based reimbursement models. From risk-based contracting to accountable care organizations (ACOs) to administering provider-sponsored health plans, Valence has been helping providers appropriately accept and manage financial responsibility while improving clinical quality since 1996.

With headquarters in Chicago, and three other office locations, Valence Health’s 300 employees help support the health of more than 13 million patients nationwide.

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Velocity Data Centers

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Steve Jacobs, President
steve.jacobs@velocitydatacenters.com
734.323.3075

We enable healthcare IT organizations to achieve their strategic goals through our innovative solution to deliver cloud computing infrastructure. This innovative approach delivers incredible benefits at reduced cost. Allowing healthcare organizations to grow revenue, reduce operating costs and leverage current and future technology trends.

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VersaSuite

Booth 3121

Contact: Tushar Jain, Regional Sales Manager
tj@versasuite.com
718.316.2254

VersaSuite is an innovative HIS and EHR solution designed to adapt to your hospital’s and clinic’s needs, no matter how complex. We offer a single database solution designed with identical and intuitive user interfaces for inpatient, outpatient and emergency department environments.

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Versus Technology

Booth 3463

Contact: Stephanie Bertschy, Director of Marketing
info@versustech.com
231.946.5868

If you’re looking for awesome IT, we’ve got it at booth #3463. Our Real-time Locating System (RTLS) powers multiple time- and money-saving applications, from Asset Tracking to Patient Flow—and even, Hand Hygiene. We’re unveiling the first of its kind, RTLS-integrated dispenser, part of an overall hand hygiene safety program that will help your facility improve compliance by creating a culture of safety and accountability.

Added bonus — we’ll be conducting in-booth RTLS sessions, where you can learn directly from Versus clients, patient flow experts, and our own executives. Delve into implementation, integration and technology-related questions about patient flow, analytics, asset tracking, hand hygiene and more. Space is limited, so learn more and sign up now at http://versustech.com/himss13.

Don’t be led down the path of promises, get experience and proven results with Versus Advantages™ — visit with us at Booth #3463.

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Virtelligence Consulting

Booth 3320

Contact: Akhtar Chaudhri, CEO
akhtar@virtelligence.com
952.548.6601

Virtelligence is a privately held premier Healthcare IT consulting firm that offers solution advisory and Healthcare IT consulting services to payors and providers organizations nationwide. Vi Through our unique consulting model providing an implementation-oriented partnership with clients, we offer consulting expertise across the full range of Healthcare IT vendor products and we deliver solutions specifically tailored to address the business needs of the healthcare IT industry.

• Project Management & Strategic Guidance
• Meaningful Use and ICD-10 Projects
• System Implementation & Upgrades
• Clinical Workflow & Process Optimization
• Revenue Cycle Improvement
• Business Intelligence & Data Analytics
• Health Information Exchange Adoption

PLEASE STOP BY OUR BOOTH #3320 TO WIN LATEST IPAD.

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VitalWare, LLC.

Booth 6654

Contact: Kelly Jorgensen, VP Business Development
kellyjorgensen@vitalware.com
855.464.2310

Visit booth #6654 and enter to win a free iPad including a license to our new application, Doc Sherpa! A complementary ICD-10 financial risk assessment will also be available for those who sign up!

VitalWare leads the market in transforming healthcare intelligence into useful and actionable information so our clients can focus their time and resources on core business. VitalWare will be launching two new products to assist in provider ICD-10 implementation and beyond:

• DocSherpa, an innovative iPad app designed to guide physicians through documentiation requirements utilizing an easy to understand user interface. By helping physicians document missing concepts, DocSherpa alleviates physician productivity constraints today and well beyond the ICD-10 implementation.
• VitalSigns, the claims analytics solution and retrospective coding & auditing tool using TrueShift analytics over predictive modeling to identify actual ICD-10 risk.

Whether you ten-code your claims in VitalSigns, or opt to take advantage of our Quick Start offering to begin building your repository of claims, the TrueShift identified is critical in understanding true financial risk, documentation deficiency risk and payer contracting opportunities.

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Vitera Healthcare Solutions

Booth 6113

Contact:
events@viterahealthcare.com

Vitera Healthcare Solutions provides end-to-end clinical and financial technology solutions so physicians and medical professionals can work with patients instead of paperwork. Serving more than 400,000 healthcare professionals including 80,000 physicians, Vitera Healthcare Solutions provides electronic health records and practice management systems, processes 33 million transactions and 1.8 million e-prescriptions monthly, and serves several specialties including primary care, OB/GYN, pediatrics, cardiology and orthopedics in all sized practices and Community Health Centers. Don’t miss seeing Vitera Healthcare up close and personal! Stop by our booth # 6113 to say "hello" and learn more about our industry leading healthcare software solutions.

 

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VMWare

Booth 851

Contact: Tisa Murdock
tmurdock@vmware.com
831.818.6095

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and provider of vCloud for Healthcare; the healthcare industry’s first end-to-end  cloud computing platform, is proud to sponsor HIStalk.

VMware vCloud for Healthcare is the first comprehensive framework and partner ecosystem supporting the entire health IT environment – from point of care to the most critical patient care systems.  Helping to safely accelerate healthcare reform and the transition to truly connected care, this new innovative platform enables organizations to exchange information and deliver secure, agile, and reliable patient care products and services.  A private cloud platform with  hybrid cloud capability, VMware vCloud for Healthcare meets the growing needs of healthcare both today and tomorrow.

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Vocera Communications, Inc.

Booth 6329, Intelligent Hospital Pavillian Booth 8711

Contact: Mauricio Cornejo, Sales Support
MCornejo@vocera.com
877.790.4190

Vocera provides mobile communication solutions focused on addressing critical communication challenges facing hospitals today. We help our customers improve patient safety and satisfaction, and increase hospital efficiency and productivity through our Voice Communication, Secure Messaging, and Care Transition solutions. Exclusively endorsed by the American Hospital Association, the Vocera solutions are installed in more than 800 hospitals and healthcare facilities worldwide.

Join Vocera in our booth for a Beignet Break on Wednesday morning.

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Wellcentive, Inc.

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Rich Walsh, Vice President of Corporate Strategy
rhwalsh@wellcentive.com
678.367.8187

Senior Management will be located at the Hilton Riverside in an Executive Suite conducting presentations and open discussions! We look forward to seeing you there!

Wellcentive delivers population health management solutions that enable quality improvement throughout the continuum of care. Wellcentive’s Advance™ platform transforms disparate data into actionable insights that facilitate coordinated preventive care and chronic disease management, physician alignment, clinical integration, and success with value-based reimbursement and incentive programs. Wellcentive empowers healthcare organizations to improve both clinical and financial outcomes.

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Wellsoft Corporation

Booth 3158

Contact: Denise Helfand, VP, Sales & Marketing
dhelfand@wellsoft.com
800.597.9909

Consistently ranked #1 Emergency Department Information System (EDIS) by KLAS, (most recently awarded Best in KLAS 2012) Wellsoft EDIS offers an exceptional combination of experience, extensive workflow analysis and award winning customer support. Wellsoft EDIS is certified for Meaningful Use. Software features include Patient Tracking, Clinical Documentation, CPOE/Results, Charge Capture including Infusion Charge Capture, Risk Management and CCD Document exchange. Wellsoft is EDIS at its BEST!

Visit Wellsoft at Booth #3158 to have a brief demonstration and discuss how Wellsoft EDIS fully integrates with HIS and ancillary systems AND can help with your roadmap to Meaningful Use attestation.

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Winthrop Resources

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Dan Mandy, Director of Business of Development
dmandy@winthropresources.com
952.656.7687

Winthrop specializes in healthcare technology finance.The realities of today’s healthcare market demand a finance solution that can change with you as your strategic direction dictates.Please reach out to Winthrop to learn more on how we can partner with you to deliver a future of efficient care/systems and improved patient outcomes.

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Wolters Kluwer Health

Booth 1740

Contact: Alyssa Downing, Marketing Coordinator
Alyssa.Downing@wolterskluwer.com
612.313.1500

A leader in point of care information, Wolters Kluwer Health Clinical Solutions provide best of breed offerings focused on improving the quality of care & driving clinical productivity. Hospitals, ASCs, physicians offices, payers, labs & retail pharmacies turn to us as their trusted partner for the content & tools they rely on every day. From Clinical Documentation, to Clinical Drug Information, to Clinical Informatics & Surveillance, to Clinical Decision Support, our products deliver meaningful solutions clinicians value. Facts & Comparisons, Lexicomp, Medi-Span, ProVation Medical, ProVation Order Sets, Sentri7, Health Language & UpToDate. Visit our booth for a chance to win one of five iPad minis.

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ZirMed

 

Booth 4469

Contact: Kent Rowe, VP of Sales
sales@zirmed.com
877.494.1032

We’re ZirMed and we’re one of the nation’s leading providers of revenue management solutions for healthcare providers. Offering claims management, eligibility verification, electronic remittances, patient statements, payment processing, and business analytics, our solution suite simplifies the complexities of payments for providers and their patients. We resolve many problems with one simple solution – and one great relationship.

News 2/13/13

Top News

Greenway announces Q2 results: revenue up 12 percent, EPS $0.00, missing both revenue and earnings estimates substantially, guiding fiscal year earnings to the low end of the range on lower revenue. Shares were down eight percent in Tuesday’s after-hours trading. From the earnings call:

• The company is moving rapidly to a recurring revenue model, with revenue recognition changes hurting short-term results
• 750 providers were added in the quarter, up 30 percent year over year
• Training and consulting revenue dropped 35 percent because large accounts pushed training out into January
• The company’s new RCM platform is in its early stages, but has over 300 customers

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Reader Comments

From Judy: “Re: our HIMSS promo.  I thought about you. We’ve secured 25 New Orleans merchants to offer discounts to HIMSS attendees wearing our Iatric Systems branded slap bands. Merchants range from restaurants to spas  to jewelry to clothing and to two stores specializing in shoes and boots. You can wine, dine, shop, tour, and spa in between all the HIMSS activities.” Judy had me at shoes and discount, but wine and spa, too?  Look for the bands in the LeSack hotel drop Sunday night or at the Iatric booth.

From Alberta Gator: “Re: HIStalkapalooza. I am assuming I did not make the cut for HIStalkapalooza since I didn’t get an invite. It’s OK. I’ll still bring sexy shoes in your honor.” Don’t fear: the invites have not yet been sent even though the registration has closed! The official HIStalkapalooza invitations will be e-mailed to several hundred of our BFFs around February 18. And I can’t wait to see all the sexy shoes. If you didn’t sign up, sorry, but we’re full.

From The PACS Designer: “Re: Selective Disturbance App. Our fellow HIStalker Inga has helped a developer name a new mobile app by calling it ‘Selective Disturbance.’ It will be on TPD’s List of iPhone Apps with the next update.” I asked Inga what this was about and it turns out she helped choose the rather brilliant name attached to the app, which lets you selectively set a “Do Not Disturb” status by groups of individual contacts, so maybe you let your child get through 24×7 but block casual acquaintances during work hours.

From Ralph Samuelson: “Re: Allscripts. I am not sure how it is for everyone, but the company is allowing everyone in my group (programming for one of the legacy products) to stay on until August 1. We have until then to relocate or find another job outside the company. I probably can’t move, but I am grateful I have some time to consider my options.”

From Alert Reader: “Re: revisiting old announcements. How about Deborah Peel saying they would post Form 990 on the Patient Privacy Rights website, which was in HIStalk on January 3, 2011?” I’ve invited her to respond.

From Code Monkey: “Re: old systems vs. new. The experience haven’t changed since the early 2000s. Example: our hospital got reports that several patients weren’t seen within several hours after admission. That’s the responsibility of residents, who are entered as consulting physicians. The chief resident opened 10 tickets with no response from the application team saying that patients were disappearing from our portal lists. We had just applied a McKesson Horizon patch, so we checked the new Perl audit feature, which showed a new routine called ChopConsult, which started with: ‘Temp fix to remove [root@hcilink perl]# cat ChopConsult #Temp fix to remove consulting physicians beyond 8 from ADT.’ If you have more than eight consulting physicians, sorry, you now have zero. I use this as an example that many of these systems are hacked together and stability is an issue, without even looking into the database design. Pay no attention to what’s behind the curtain (or cloud).”

From Smarty Marty: “Re: Aetna. Will brand its Accountable Care Solutions assets (Medicity, iTriage, ActiveHealth, PracticeiQ) under the Healthagen name, possibly to separate these solutions from their core commercial insurance business. I found this when I went looking for the Medicity booth on the HIMSS website and could not find anything. Medicity’s website has brief information about it in the Events section.” Aetna quietly acquired Healthagen, which developed the iTriage consumer health app, in December 2011. Above is what is apparently the placeholder web page for the new Healthagen organization, with the four company names listed at the bottom. The Healthagen HIMSS exhibitor listing has three of the company names, omitting PracticeiQ.

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HIStalk Announcements and Requests

I wonder how many other people got this same e-mail from LinkedIn? I felt incredibly special for about 30 seconds until Mr. H told me he got the same notification. I knew it had to be bogus / a marketing ploy / a waste of my time when LinkedIn sent me the same notice for my personal LinkedIn account.

We acknowledge and appreciate the support of Deloitte, a brand new Platinum sponsor of HIStalk. The company is, of course, a premiere, worldwide professional services firm headquartered right here in the USA (New York) with a strong healthcare IT presence and a list of awards to prove it. Deloitte’s provider practice supports organizations working on tough problems:  quality improvement, ICD-10, business intelligence and analytics, system implementation and optimization, disease management, and HIEs. You can keep up with big-picture developments by reading updates from Paul Keckley, PhD, executive director of the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions. A bunch of us who’ve been around awhile know Mitch Morris, MD, who leads the company’s health IT practice, and I’ll be talking to him soon about industry trends. Thanks to Deloitte for supporting HIStalk.

I always hit YouTube to see what I can find out about a new sponsor and my search for Deloitte turned up a winner: a brand new report on the 2013 health outlook.

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HIMSS Conference Social Events

Going to HIMSS? We’ll post social events that are (a) interesting, and (b) open to all HIStalk readers who care to attend. Send yours to be listed.

Alego Health will host a cocktail reception on Tuesday, March 5 from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m. at their booth (#141). They’ll have hurricanes, beer, wine, an infused hydration station (what the heck is that? sounds like an IV), and some nice food that includes mini po’ boys.

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Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Enterprise HIS vendor RazorInsights announces $11 million in Series A funding from Bluff Point Associates. One of its customers was announced in the press release – Alliance HealthCare System (MS). CEO Reed Liggin mentioned the upcoming investment in my February 8 interview.

Teleheath company INRange Systems raises $1.6 million for its remote medication management device that administers single doses of meds to patients and transmits adherence data to physicians and pharmacists.

Employees of the Barcelona, Spain office of Picis (Optum / UnitedHealth Group) say they will go on strike beginning Thursday to protest the amount of severance they’ll receive as the company moves most of their jobs to India. According to the employee spokesperson who contacted us, “First, the UHG negotiators don’t have a firm plan to transition Picis development and support to India and we’ve asked them to let us help sort out how to successfully do it. Second, the compensation package is drastically lower than what we could win in court.” Spain’s legally-mandated employee benefits are extensive, but the employees say most companies that move jobs to India provide more than the minimum separation benefits. UPDATE: the response from Optum: “Picis Spain is engaged in good faith negotiations with employees at its Barcelona office, as it evolves its local workforce to better align with changing customer needs. We don’t anticipate any business disruption and hope this issue can be resolved fairly and quickly.”

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Sales

Greater Baltimore Medical (MD) will implement Amcom Software’s Mobile Connect smartphone texting solution with their existing Amcom communications system.

The Michigan Department of Community Health Medical Services Administration awards Cognosante the Medicaid IT Architecture State Self-Assessment contract.

Tanner Health System (GA) selects Besler Consulting to conduct a transfer DRG underpayment recovery audit.

Arnot Ogden Medical Center (NY) will implement Merge Healthcare’s cardiology solution suite to capture, manage, and display multi-modality cardiac images, along with hemodynamics and ECG data.

Southeastern Health (NC) expands its relationship with eClinicalWorks to include the company’s Care Coordination Medical Record.

Dignity Health Medical Foundation (CA) chooses MediRevv for A/R management services.

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People

Trinity Health CEO Joseph Swedish is named CEO of WellPoint, the country’s second-largest insurer, replacing former CEO Angela Braly.

Russell Branzell (Colorado Health Medical Group) is named president and CEO of CHIME.

Athenahealth COO Ed Park joins the board of directors of analytics vendor Kyruus.

Vitera Healthcare Solutions hires Kermit Randa (Surgical Information Systems) as EVP of sales and marketing.

TransforMED, the AAFP subsidiary that supports practices transitioning to PCMHs, announces the retirement of president and CEO Terry McGeeney, MD.

   

MedeAnalytics promotes Steve Lerch to SVP/GM of the provider business unit, Scott Paddock to SVP/GM of the payer business unit, and Sal DeTrane to CFO.

Hello Health names Barry Holleman (Cardinal Health) COO and VP.

Aspen Advisors promotes Jody Cervenak to principal.

CVS Caremark appoints Brian Tilzer (Staples) SVP/chief digital officer.

 

Health Care DataWorks promotes CFO Jeffrey Wilkins (left) to CEO, replacing founder Herb Smaltz (right), who will continue to serve as board chair.

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Announcements and Implementations

Over 60 ACOs from 15 states form the National Association of ACOs, which will focus on helping organizations to increase the quality of care and improve health in their communities.

 

The Mount Sinai Medical Center (NY) reports that its Epic EMR has resulted in improved quality of care for patients, including a 56 percent reduction in Medicare readmissions and improvements in quality measures such as discharge instructions for patients and antibiotic administration prior to surgery.

The Huntzinger Management Group assists Hanover Hospital (PA) in its successful Stage 1 MU attestation.

API Healthcare introduces its Talent Management Solution to improve employee engagement while addressing the industry challenges of healthcare reform and an aging workforce.

SimplifyMD launches its simpleStart program that will allow practices to move from EHR demo to live clinical use on the same day.

Mobile platform application development provider Kony Solutions announces support for the BlackBerry Z10 and Q10 smartphones.

Stilwell Memorial Hospital (OK) goes live on Medsphere OpenVista.

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Government and Politics

The government’s healthcare fraud prevention and enforcement efforts recovered $4.2 billion in FY2012, up from last year’s $4.1 billion. Over the last three years, fraud and abuse investigations recovered $7.90 for every dollar spent.

President Obama re-nominates Marilyn Tavenner as permanent administrator for CMS.

Anybody who follows the VA/DoD EHR saga knows that the story changes weekly, flip-flopping on whether they’ll write new separate systems, write one new system, buy off-the-shelf applications, or just patch together what they have. Sometimes DoD has one story and the VA another, illustrative of just how vast the gulf is that separates their philosophies. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta spoke of the “one EHR" project in the past tense a week ago, saying definitively that the departments were giving up on that idea in favor of just getting their respective systems to talk to each other. Not so fast, says VA CIO Roger Baker, now clarifying that the integration project is a stopgap toward the original goal that will continue. All I know is that whatever they do will be horrifically expensive and behind schedule, especially on the DoD side that has paid contractors billions to develop AHLTA,  and all the conflicting announcements have made me lose interest yet again. The OSEHRA community is talking if you can understand what they’re saying, meaning you’d better speak VA geek talk and appreciate decades-old VistA history, which I do on occasion. Some of those pontificating speculate that DoD will end up buying Epic, looking back to 2011 when five Wisconsin Congressmen (including eventual Republican VP nominee Paul Ryan) lobbied for the home team.

ONC’s Doug Fridsma participates in a Google + Hangout.

Federal Health Architecture releases version 4.0 of its open source Connect HIE-enabling platform. It supports higher message throughput, larger files, newly support server environments, and improved logging.

HIMSS urges HHS to stick to the October 1, 2014 implementation date of ICD-10, saying it will reduce the cost of prior authorization, enable Meaningful use, improve population health, reduce waste, and save money.

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Technology

UC Irvine says medical students given free iPads with digital textbooks are scoring 23 percent higher on exams than students in previous classes, also noting that the students have formed their own technology group and developed 19 healthcare-related iPad apps in a 10-day Med App Jam. The iMedEd program was named a 2012-2013 Apple Distinguished Program this week.

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Other

Cerner, Epic, and Siemens earn the highest ratings in ICD-10 preparedness according to KLAS, while Allscripts and Meditech score lowest. Among firms providing ICD-10 consulting, The Advisory Board earns top marks for high-quality roadmaps and best-practice sharing among firms providing ICD-10 consulting, while Deloitte has the most engagements. The majority of the market is looking to 3M and computer-assisted coding technology to aid in the transition.

Here’s the latest cartoon from Imprivata. 

A local medical center in Rhode Island pitches a move to the Amazing Charts EMR to earn Meaningful Use money, adding that health services board members with medical backgrounds could help with the conversion. Several audience members objected, saying they don’t want board members seeing their medical information. The board deferred the EMR decision until its next meeting.

New Jersey Economic Development Authority approves creation of a life sciences and healthcare IT accelerator that will offer the usual seed money, boot camp, mentorship, and pitch showcase.

In Canada, Saskatchewan’s privacy commissioner is investigating three cases in which health authority employees inappropriately accessed the electronic medical records of their co-workers, including one where an employee found that her name had been replaced with a vulgarity and “RIP” at the end.

A Houston medical student files suit against his school, claiming it illegally viewed his hospital medical records and expelled him based on a physician’s speculation that he had tried to commit suicide.

Weird News Andy speculates that perhaps not all things go better with Coke. Like cardiac arrhythmia, for example, in a 30-year-old mother of eight in New Zealand whose death was ruled by the coroner as being partially caused by her 2.2 gallon per day Coca-Cola habit. The sugar water liver had damaged her liver, caused all her teeth to rot out, and addicted her to the point that she experienced withdrawal symptoms when her supply ran out. Her family says they thought Coke was OK because the bottle carries no warnings, while the company complains that the coroner himself wasn’t really sure that Coke killed her.

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Sponsor Updates

• Emdat posts its spring trade show and conference schedule.
• Hayes Management Consulting posts case studies of some of its projects.
• HealthCare Anytime and ICA partner to leverage ICA’s interoperability technology with HealthCare Anytime’s patient portal.
• Informatica’s Chief Product Officer Girish Pancha participates in this week’s Pacific Crest Emerging Technology Summit in San Francisco.
• Truven Health Analytics adds enhanced reporting functionality and flexibility to the latest versions of its pharmacy intervention and infection prevention products.
• Unity Health System (NY) executives will share details of how they leveraged public and private HIEs to enable a community diabetes collaborative during a March 21 Webinar hosted by dbMotion. 
• Capario realizes double-digit revenue growth from its provider base in 2012 and increased adoption of its portal application.

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Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS13 Meet-Ups

 

 

Download a printable PDF of the meet-up guide here.

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Aspen Advisors

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Daniel Herman, Founder and Managing Principal
dherman@aspenadvisors.net
412.370.4900

We know that technology is a means to an end and have a razor-sharp focus on helping you make progress toward the IHI’s Triple Aim of better health, better healthcare, and lower per capita costs. From strategy to execution to optimization, we can help you:

• Develop your technology roadmap to support the shift from volume-based to value-based care
• Evaluate EMR vendors and plan for implementation
• Streamline governance and decision making
• Plan for mergers, acquisitions and other outreach strategies
• Implement clinical systems, drive adoption and achieve Meaningful Use
• Complete ICD-10 implementation and audit compliance
• Make real progress on teleHealth, eHealth, and mHealth initiatives
• Implement infrastructure changes to your technology roadmap
• Leverage information and big data to create a data-driven culture
• Realize value from EHR and other systems investments
• Lead change and support performance improvement initiatives
• Optimize IT service delivery
• Plan for long-range IT workforce needs

Visit www.aspenadvisors.net to learn more.

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BESLER Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jim Hoffman, Chief Operating Officer
jhoffman@besler.com
732.233.5008

For over 25 years, BESLER has helped hospitals recover otherwise lost revenue, increase reimbursement, ensure compliance, improve efficiency, and reduce costs. BESLER’s deep domain experience in revenue cycle, reimbursement, compliance, and unmatched software solutions has resulted in more than one billion dollars in additional revenue for our clients. If you’d like to discuss our products or partnership opportunities at HIMMS, please contact Jim Hoffman at 732-233-5008 or jhoffman@besler.com.

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CAP Professional Services

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Bruce R. Cattie, Senior Managing Director
CAPSTS@cap.org
847.832.7700

CAP Professional Services provides best practice health IT strategies, clinical informatics, and terminology services for clients striving to achieve semantic interoperability and high-quality, robust electronic medical records (EMR).

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CIC Advisory

To schedule a meeting:

Contacts: Cynthia Davis, Marcy Stoots, or Robert Johns
cynthiadavis@cicadvisory.com
727.772.3340

CIC Advisory helps hospitals use technology to provide more effective, efficient and safer patient care. Founders Cynthia Davis and Marcy Stoots are former critical care nurses with decades of experience leading fast-track clinical EHR projects. Our methodologies result in high rates of physician and clinician satisfaction and adoption, coordinated patient care processes and improved clinical outcomes.

Call us at 1.727.772.3340 or e-mail for your invitation to the CIC Advisory hospitality suite at HIMSS13.

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Clinithink

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Nathan Skorick, Business Development
nathan.skorick@clinithink.com
978.296.5282
Robert Miller, VP Sales and Marketing
robert.miller@clinithink.com
978.296.5282

Find out how to turn data into information.

Clinithink was founded in 2009 by two clinicians with 20 years of combined healthcare IT and EHR experience who understood what was possible if you could unlock the unstructured clinical data within an patient records and return it as structured, usable clinical information. The result of their pioneering work is CLiX, Clinithink’s Clinical Natural Language Processing (CNLP) solution.

CLiX intelligently unlocks unstructured data, while preserving its original meaning, to help healthcare organizations access the information they need to improve financial management, improve quality measures and enhance clinical and operational processes.

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Cornerstone Advisors Group LLC   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Mary Berchtold, Vice President
mberchtold@cornerstone-advisors.com
781.254.4013

Cornerstone will have experienced senior level representatives from the Epic, Meditech, and advisory/strategies consulting service lines at HIMSS. They will be available to meet and discuss services during the conference. Meeting times may be scheduled by contacting Mary Berchtold.

 

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Craneware

To schedule a meeting:

Ann Marie Brown, Executive Vice President of Marketing
a.brown@craneware.com
913.548.2810
Craneware will not be exhibiting at HIMSS but will have several senior executives available to discuss the company, our products, and the role we play in helping hospitals achieve revenue integrity though data normalization.

Craneware is the leader in automated revenue integrity solutions that improve financial performance for healthcare organizations. Craneware’s market-driven, SaaS solutions help hospitals and other healthcare providers more effectively price, charge, code and retain earned revenue for patient care services and supplies. This optimizes reimbursement, increases operational efficiency and minimizes compliance risk. By partnering with Craneware, clients achieve the visibility required to identify, address, and prevent revenue leakage.

Founded in 1999, Craneware’s mission is to stop the loss of legitimate revenue owed to healthcare organizations by establishing a culture of revenue integrity within these organizations. Our vision is to be the partner that can be relied on to improve and sustain our customers’ strong financial performance.

Over our history we have come a long way towards achieving this. Today, Craneware has nine core products spanning four product families: revenue cycle, access management and strategic pricing, supply management and audit and revenue recovery. One in four registered US hospitals has chosen Craneware products to help them optimize reimbursement, improve operational efficiency, and minimize compliance risk. To support this growing client base and the company’s future growth prospects, Craneware now employs more than 200 professionals across the US and UK.

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CSI Healthcare IT

To schedule a meeting:

Kate Mays, Vice President of Sales
kmays@thecsicompanies.com
904.716.1209

CSI Healthcare IT will be hosting a cocktail reception and dinner at Broussards on Tuesday night March 5 starting at 6:00 pm. Please contact Kate Mays to join.

CSI Healthcare IT is committed to providing the highest standard of consultants and consulting services in the industry. Our track record speaks for itself. We have a long record of supporting the project management, training, build, report writing, go-live support, and interface functions of health systems nationwide. Today, CSI Healthcare IT has more than 500 permanent and contract staff of experienced, knowledge-based professionals. CSI has been recognized by Inc. magazine and Staffing Industry Analysts as one of the fastest growing privately held companies in the nation. Being privately held enables creativity and flexibility to meet the specific consulting needs of our clients. CSI has the ability to enact quick adjustments to accommodate the ebb and flow of our clients’ staffing and project needs.

Join us for live music and networking Tuesday night at Broussards.

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Dearborn Advisors, LLC

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Mary Kiley, Revenue Development Coordinator
MKiley@DearbornAdvisors.com
773.255.0749.

Dearborn Advisors would like to chat with you about what’s going on in your organization regarding physician adoption of technology. Although we have no booth, we’ll spring for Starbucks coffee and have hundreds of chocolate bars to give away. E-mail Mary Kiley or call 773.255.0749.

 

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DIrect Consulting Associates

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Frank Myeroff, Managing Partner
fmyeroff@dc-associates.com
440.996.0051

Direct Consulting Associates (DCA) provides a broad range of IT consulting and staffing solutions including staff augmentation, temp-to-perm, and permanent placement for healthcare IT initiatives. Whether you’re an IT professional searching for that perfect opportunity or a client company looking for the very best IT talent, we would like to meet you at HIMSS13.

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Direct Recruiters, Inc.

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Mike Silverstein, Director of Healthcare IT
mike@directrecruiters.com
440.996.0594
440.667.8334

Direct Recruiters specializes in recruiting, staffing, search, placement, and consulting solutions for the healthcare information technology (IT) industry.

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EMRConsultant.com

 

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Donna Flynn, Director of Healthcare Technology Solutions
DonnaF@EHRScope.com
888.519.3100 ext. 114

Some things in life truly are fre. In this case, it’s receiving the best qualified EHR, PM, billing, and/or voice recognition recommendations for your practice, absolutely free. How? Use the comparison chart, select individual consultant on EHRScope.com, or contact us today with any questions.

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Etransmedia Technology, Inc

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Connie Smith, Sales and Marketing
Connie.Smith@etransmedia.com
518.283.5418 ext. 2262

Etransmedia provides comprehensive RCM platform service solutions, including an integration EHR/PM solution, patient identity tools, discrete clinical data repository, provider portal, community patient portal, analytics tools supporting financial, clinical, and quality of care reporting. Delivering RCM and revenue analytics services to health systems nationwide, serving 12,000+ providers and 40,000+ users.

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Forward Health Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Michael Barbouche, Founder/CEO
FHGtalk@forwardhealthgroup.com
608.729.7530

Let the good times and Fresh Data roll in the Big Easy. Forward Health Group, the Health Care Measurement Company, is intentionally booth-less at HIMSS13 so we can get down, roll up our sleeves, and make rich, brainstorming music with health systems, payors, and all you newly-minted ACOs. If your focus is population health, you’re going to need tools and help with all that messy data. Call us at 608.729.7530 or e-mail us at. We’re on the HIMSS13 show floor – we’ll be right back to you. Let’s have a cafe au lait, spiced with Fresh Data.

With FHG, your data is as fine as the duck and andouille gumbo at Galatoire’s. No, really.

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Hayes Management Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Pete Butler, President and CEO
pbutler@hayesmanagement.com
781.414.6099

Hayes Management Consulting is a leading, national healthcare consulting firm focused on healthcare operations. This includes strategic planning, interim leadership, revenue cycle optimization, clinical optimization, project management, IT consulting, and preparation for federal initiatives such as ICD-10, Meaningful Use, and HIPAA compliance. We also provide software such as MDaudit and other proprietary tools to ensure our clients are operationally efficient.

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HCI Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Cherity PIerce, Marketing Coordinator
cherity.pierce@thehcigroup.com
904-224-9388

HCI is a leading provider of IT personnel and solutions to healthcare enterprises across the United States, United Kingdom, and Middle East. Our specialties include:

• EHR planning, implementation, and training
• Sustaining support models
• Optimization and clinical adoption
• Go-live support
• Health system/hospital community IT offerings

What makes HCI the best choice for your HIT project? Everything from our collaborative solutions to our rates that translate into real cost savings for your institution. Here’s how we deliver our comprehensive services and expertise:

• Strategic thinking across the entire spectrum of project engagement
• Clinical leadership and an experienced engagement team to meet your needs in an efficient and timely manner
• Knowledge of industry best practices
• A fully dedicated recruitment team, exclusively focused on healthcare IT to secure for you the very best resources to make your project a success

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Intellect Resources

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Tiffany Crenshaw, President and CEO
tcrenshaw@intellectresources.com
336.420.1178

Intellect Resources would love to meet with you.

Intellect Resources is proud to offer comprehensive consulting, recruiting, and hiring solutions within the healthcare IT market.Our talent offerings include recruiting, project management, implementation, upgrading and optimization of EMR systems, training and go-live support, and the revolutionary Big Break hiring process.Big Break is patented “American Idol”- style audition process where candidates compete to become a healthcare IT trainer. Big Break offers hospitals systems a unique and innovative talent pool at a fraction of the cost of traditional hiring solutions.

In 2012, Intellect Resources was named to The Triad Business Journal’s Fast 50, which adds to a growing list of industry awards Intellect Resources has received including Modern Healthcare‘s Best Places to Work in Healthcare, HITconsultant.net naming Intellect Resources’ president and CEO Tiffany Crenshaw as one of the Top 12 Women to Know in Healthcare IT and the London Times recognizing Intellect Resources’ Big Break as the solution to the healthcare IT talent shortage. A unique approach to standard service offerings sets Intellect Resources apart and allows us to constantly find new and experienced talent.Through relationship-driven, hands-on services, Intellect Resources connects employers and healthcare IT professionals.

For more information visit www.intellectresources.com or www.irbigbreak.com.

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Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. (LRS)

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Ron Peel, Technical Advisor
913.948.3646
ron.peel@lrs.com
Laurie Eldridge, HP Global Alliance Representative
610.850.1237
laurie.eldridge@lrs.com

Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. (LRS) is a leader in software for managing care-related documents and other business critical information. Some of the largest healthcare providers in the US use LRS output management solutions. LRS provides documented and supported interfaces to integrate our proven output management software with best-of-breed EMR applications. Contact LRS to learn how we can improve your downtime reporting capabilities and streamline document-related processes to provide better patient care.

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MedAptus   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jennifer Crowley, Marketing Director
jcrowley@medaptus.com
617.896.4030

MedAptus is the gold standard in the healthcare revenue cycle for achieving effective charge management, compliance, and workflow efficiency. With offerings that include powerful and easy-to-use charge capture and management technologies, it is no wonder that many of the nation’s most prestigious healthcare organizations rely on MedAptus for financial optimization. Our full-scale Professional, Facility and Infusion applications increase revenue, enhance EMR investments, re-engineer manual processes, and yield substantially improved productivity.

For more information, visit www.medaptus.com or call 617.896.4000.

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MedAssets

To schedule a meeting:

Contact:
solutions@medassets.com
888.883.6332

MedAssets (NASDAQ: MDAS) partners with healthcare providers to improve their financial strength by implementing revenue cycle, spend, and clinical resource management solutions that help capture revenue, control cost, improve margins and cash flow, increase regulatory compliance, and optimize operational efficiency. MedAssets serves more than 4,200 hospitals and 100,000 non-acute healthcare providers. The company currently manages $48 billion in supply spend and touches over $340 billion in gross patient revenue annually through its revenue cycle solutions. For more information, go to www.medassets.com.

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nVoq Incorporated

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Debbi Gillotti, Vice President and General Manager
deborah.gillotti@nvoq.com
720.562.4507 or 206.465.1765

SayIt from nVoq is a secure cloud-based voice recognition service that’s easy to use, easy to deploy, and has been endorsed by the American Hospital Association. SayIt works directly with your EMR to convert speech to text within seconds – no integration required. Access your SayIt voice profile whenever and wherever you need to work – no software to install on each device.

nVoq is a Boulder, CO based provider of cloud-based voice recognition solutions for the healthcare and customer care industries. In business since 2000, nVoq supports a wide variety of enterprise and health system organizations through a growing channel partner network. We’re building this network daily in support of real-time (front end) dictation and embedded (back end) voice processing for mobile forms or other applications. A well-documented SDK is available for both Windows and iOS platforms.

While attending HIMSS, we welcome the opportunity to meet with organizations who buy, buildc or implement applications platforms for healthcare users and are interested in cloud-based, voice-enabled workflow at an affordable price point. Our primary focus is North America, but we welcome inquiries from other venues.

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PatientPay

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: David Bond, EVP, Sales & Marketing
db@patientpay.com
919.830.2798

PatientPay is a patented innovative solution that makes healthcare billing, payment and reconciliation faster, easier, and less costly. PatientPay is a simple way for practice management software vendors to allow their physicians to bill patients while reducing costs, increasing productivity and patient satisfaction. PatientPay eliminates the costly and complicated paper-based billing method used by the overwhelming majority of healthcare providers. It drives down the expense and drives up the productivity associated with this activity by at least a factor of two. Since PatientPay reduces the time to payment in half, healthcare professionals realize improved cash flow and reduced accounts receivables.

 

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RazorInsights

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Reed Liggin, President & CEO
rliggin@razorinsights.com
404.578.1362

Based in Kennesaw, Georgia, RazorInsights is a dynamic healthcare information technology company. In keeping with the principle of Occam’s Razor, they have created a simplified HIS solution for rural, critical access, and community hospitals. Introducing ONE (ONC-ATCB 2011/2012) — a single-database, cloud solution offering a simple user experience with cutting-edge clinical tools and industry-standardized data. Hospitals can expect to improve their performance and bottom line with ONE from RazorInsights. To register for a live product demo or for more information, visit www.razorinsights.com or call 770.308.4111.

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Santa Rosa Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Doug Hires, Executive Vice President, Strategic Advisory and Sales & Marketing
doughires@santarosaconsulting.com
214.546.0895

Santa Rosa Consulting is a national provider of management consulting and information technology services to the healthcare industry. Through our unique blend of strategic advisory services and technical consulting expertise across the full range of healthcare IT vendor products and systems, we deliver solutions specifically designed to address your business needs.

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Seamless Medical Systems   

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Frank Grant, Vice President, Sales
frank@seamlessmedical.com
760.533.1520

Seamless Medical is solely focused on improving the patient’s experience in medical practices at the point of care. Our mission is to leverage technology in patients’ hands to simplify the front end of the practice workflow, engage the patient in the registration process, and provide the patient with educational content relevant to his/her scheduled appointment and medical conditions. Our team’s decades of combined experience in the medical, healthcare administration, and business arenas has led to the formation of the company and dedication to our solution.

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SpeechRecognition.com

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: William Holliman, Dragon Medical Adviser
William.Holliman@1450.com
888.848.1450 ext. 210

Is your EHR doing all of the dictating? Take back control, and the ability to dictate your notes, with the most accurate speech recognition software yet, Dragon Medical Practice Edition. Visit SpeechRecognition.com to schedule a free demo today!

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The McHenry Group

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Lisa Gatto, Director of Client Development
lisag@mvp4u.biz
815.923.2500

Celebrating nearly 22 years in business, The McHenry Group (TMG) has become the most successful and most experienced international executive search firm solely dedicated to serving the healthcare software vendor market. How successful? Since 1991, TMG has successfully placed over 2,000 candidates within the healthcare technology vendor industry. How experienced? Our team of 10 search consultants has an average tenure with our firm that exceeds 11 years.

One of our clients put it best: “Even though I was expecting great things from The McHenry Group, I was surprised by the extra effort TMG expended to understand our company, its corporate goals and our goals for our open position. I will definitely seek your help whenever our needs mesh with your services.”

TMG’s recruiting efforts focus on healthcare software vendors in the provider and payor spaces. We identify superb talent for the C-level, VP sales, regional sales, territory sales, channel marketing, client account executives, client services and implementation, sales support, consulting, marketing, product management, product development, clinical informatics, physician executives, clinical liaisons, nursing (RN) informatics, and more. TMG is equipped to quickly tap into the hidden candidate market and recruit top talent that are not active on the market. Additionally, we can delve into our extensive proprietary database of candidates, coded by specific title, areas of expertise, etc.

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TrustHCS

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Jeff Johnston, Executive Director, Business Development, President
jeff.johnston@trusthcs.com
760.277.1190

TrustHCS provides consulting and services to address clinical documentation improvement (CDI) programs, ICD-10 preparation, revenue cycle improvement, coding services, auditing, and cancer registry. Visit www.trusthcs.com for more information.

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Velocity Data Centers

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Steve Jacobs, President
steve.jacobs@velocitydatacenters.com
734.323.3075

We enable healthcare IT organizations to achieve their strategic goals through our innovative solution to deliver cloud computing infrastructure. This innovative approach delivers incredible benefits at reduced cost. Allowing healthcare organizations to grow revenue, reduce operating costs, and leverage current and future technology trends.

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Wellcentive, Inc.

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Rich Walsh, Vice President of Corporate Strategy
rhwalsh@wellcentive.com
678.367.8187

Senior management will be located at the Hilton Riverside in an executive suite conducting presentations and open discussions. We look forward to seeing you there.

Wellcentive delivers population health management solutions that enable quality improvement throughout the continuum of care. Wellcentive’s Advance platform transforms disparate data into actionable insights that facilitate coordinated preventive care and chronic disease management, physician alignment, clinical integration, and success with value-based reimbursement and incentive programs. Wellcentive empowers healthcare organizations to improve both clinical and financial outcomes.

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Winthrop Resources

To schedule a meeting:

Contact: Dan Mandy, Director of Business of Development
dmandy@winthropresources.com
952.656.7687

Winthrop specializes in healthcare technology finance.The realities of today’s healthcare market demand a finance solution that can change with you as your strategic direction dictates.Please reach out to Winthrop to learn more on how we can partner with you to deliver a future of efficient care/systems and improved patient outcomes.

HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS13 Exhibitor Giveaways

Download a printable PDF version of the giveaway list here.

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AirStrip

Booth 1721

Enter our drawing to win a free iPad.

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Billian’s HealthDATA / Porter Research

Booth 2317

Schedule your show floor demo or consultation and get a Starbucks gift card at the booth.

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Bottomline Technologies

Booth 2619, Hall D

Stop by for your free Data DNA test and enter to win one of our daily prizes.

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Divurgent

Booth 5948

Help Divurgent raise $5,000 to donate to a local New Orleans children’s Hospital. All we need is your signature.

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Emdeon

Booth 5027

Come by to learn how you can win one of eight iPad Minis that will be given out during the show.

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e-MDs

Booth 6413

Stop by the e-MDs booth Daily for a chance to win an iPad Mini.

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FDB (First Databank)

Booth 4241

Come have a cup of gourmet coffee with us and meet with FDB specialists.

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GetWellNetwork, Inc.

Booth 2363

Giveaway iPads.

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Greenway Medical Technologies

Booth 3941

Please visit one of our kiosks located in the Interoperability Showcase, Meaningful Use Pavilion – booth 149/Kiosk C13 or GA HIMSS booth 5500 to receive a key and code that will be taken to our main booth for an opportunity to unlock our safe. Prize value up to $2,000.

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Halfpenny Technologies

Booth 5223

Stop by to play our “True Interoperability” game, meet our team, and win prizes.

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Health Language

Booth 4559

Stop by and see us and register to win one of our daily giveaways.

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Iatric Systems, Inc.

Booth 6613

Booth #6613 is going to be entertaining as well as educational, with Chef Anton – the two-time National Pool Trick-Shot Champion – lining up one amazing shot after another and giving out great prizes like Visa gift cards and Apple iPod Shuffles after each show.

Make sure you visit us in the HIMSS 2013 Meaningful Use Experience booth #149 / Kiosk #6 and #21. Each day, the first 150 people to visit our kiosks can receive a coupon for $2 off at Starbucks.

Finally, we have teamed up with more than 25 New Orleans retailers to enhance your HIMSS experience by offering special offers and discounts in the area. Stop by booth #6613 to receive your slap band and discount card.  The participating retailers can be found here. The Crazy Lobster Restaurant (located steps from The Hilton Hotel) will hand out slap bands and promo cards during their business hours on Saturday and Sunday. This will be exclusively for CIO Forum attendees and early arrivals.

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ICA

Booth 3869

Visit out booth to participate in our food bank raffle.

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Imprivata

Booth 3717

Take #MeaningfulSteps to Imprivata’s booth to pick up your free pedometer and enter to win a Jawbone UP every hour. At any time during HIMSS, tweet how many #MeaningfulSteps you’ve taken towards a healthcare IT initiative and you will automatically be entered to win a Jawbone UP. For example, “I’ve taken 3,433 #MeaningfulSteps towards CPOE #HIMSS13”. In addition, Imprivata will be giving away one Kindle every 30 minutes after its booth theatre presentations.

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Infor

Booth 2525

Visit us and enjoy free custom-made espresso drinks and popcorn, and enter to win one of four iPad Minis. If you’d like to learn more about your organization’s path forward for Financials, Supply Chain, HCM, Analytics, and Integration & HIEs, schedule one-on-one time with an Infor representative. When you preschedule and attend a HIMSS demo, you’ll receive a $25 Amazon.com gift card as our thanks.

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IMO – Intelligent Medical Objects Inc.

Booth 6223

Visit us for our presentations, then enter our daily drawings for one of several Bose QuietComfort 3 Acoustic Noise Cancelling headphones.

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iSirona

Booth 6549 and the Interoperability Showcase

Visitors to the iSirona booth can register to win one of several Nike+ FuelBands.

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Lifepoint Informatics

Booth 7623

Hourly drawings will be made during exhibit hours with a chance to win an Odyssey Golf Putter.

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Medicomp Systems

Booth 3068

Back by popular demand, Medicomp Systems will once again host Quipstar, World’s Favorite HIT Quiz Show. Contestants and those seated in the studio audience will have a chance to win one of 50 iPads and other prizes.

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M*Modal

Booth 6647

Surprise your favorite children‘s charity. Visit M*Modal at HIMSS13 and enter for a chance to win $800 in toys for the children‘s charity of your choice.

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NTT DATA Healthcare Technologies

Booth 1041

Stop by the booth for a chance to win an iPad Mini.

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Optum

Booth 7041

Make your steps count at HIMSS13. For every mile you walk, Optum will donate $1 to charities that improve health and wellbeing in the city of New Orleans. Stop by the Optum exhibit for a free pedometer and more information.

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Orchestrate Healthcare

Booth 529

Come see us to check out our new pad and register to win a pair of really cool Beats by Dr. Dre.

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Orion Health

Booth 3161

Orion Health activities while at the show include morning coffee and sweet afternoon treat at the booth plus a raffle to win an iPad Mini 4G.

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Park Place International

Booth 2674

Learn more about Park Place International and enter our raffle for a chance to win an Amazon.com gift card.

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PatientKeeper Inc.

Booth 2210

Enter our daily drawing for an Apple iPad Mini.

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Qlik Technologies

Booth 8121

Register here for a personalized VIP booth your and be entered for a chance to win an iPad Mini.

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Quantros

Booth 7940

Visit our booth to learn more about IRIS and enter to win an iPad.

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Booth 3927

A special invitation to all HIStalk readers. Visit the Quest Diagnostics Healthcare IT Theatre.  Quest Diagnostics booth representatives will be holding drawings for iPads and other exciting giveaways following each 20-minute presentation.

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Salar, Inc.

Booth 6754

In lieu of yet another iPad giveaway or a similar free gizmo, we will offer a charitable donation in the name of one visitor to the booth.

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Shareable Ink

Booth 3568

For everyone who mentions “Liberate,” we’ll be making a donation to one of our favorite NOLA charities.

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Siemens Healthcare

Booths 2640 and 2641

Stop by the Siemens booth and we will make a contribution to Hope for the Warriors, whose mission is to enhance the quality of life for post-9/11 service members, their families, and families of the fallen who have sustained physical and psychological wounds in the line of duty.

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SuccessEHS

Booth 4411

Visit us  and while you’re there, spin our wheel to win fun prizes, including cash.

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Sunquest Information Systems, Inc.

Booth 911 and MU Booth 149, Kiosk 85

Our giveaway this year will be a miniature plush toy – Sunquest Lab.

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TeleTracking Technologies, Inc.

Booth 6619

Enter for a chance to win a TAG Heuer watch valued at $2,500.

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TeraRecon

Booth 341

Stop by TeraRecon’s booth to enter a drawing to win a new iPad Mini.

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Virtelligence Consulting

Booth 3320

Please stop by our booth to win the latest iPad.

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VitalWare, LLC.

Booth 6654

Visit booth #6654 and enter to win a free iPad including a license to our new application, Doc Sherpa. A complementary ICD-10 financial risk assessment will also be available for those who sign up.

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Vocera Communications, Inc.

Booth 6329, Intelligent Hospital Pavilion Booth 8711

Join Vocera in our booth for a Beignet Break on Wednesday morning.

Morning Headlines 2/12/13

National Association of ACOs (NAACOS) is founded in Washington, DC.

Out of the 258 accountable care organizations recognized by CMS, 60 of them across more than 15 states have joined together to form the Washington, DC-based National Association of ACOs.

IBM supercomputer takes on new role in health arena

After a year spent internalizing 600,000 pieces of medical evidence, 1.5 million patient records, 2 million pages of texts from medical journals, and 1,500 lung-cancer cases, IBM’s Watson will be implemented at the Maine Center for Cancer Medicine and WestMed in Westchester County, NY, where it will analyze patient data and recommend care plans for lung cancer patients. Watson will sort treatment options based on what is most likely to succeed and which are covered by the patient’s insurance.

Is iEHR really dead?

The Department of Veterans Affairs CIO Roger Baker responds to last week’s widespread reports that the iEHR project has been shut down. Mr. Baker, along with other C-level executives within the VA, clarify that the project is not defunct and that reports suggesting otherwise have been greatly exaggerated.

Launch of Connect 4.0 – An HIE Advancement Driven by Federal Collaboration

ONC’s Federal Health Architecture announces the release of CONNECT 4.0, an open source data-sharing system built on NHIN standards that enables secure electronic exchange of information to support related Meaningful Use Stage 2 objectives.

Advisory Panel: Job Advice

The HIStalk Advisory Panel is a group of hospital CIOs, hospital CMIOs, practicing physicians, and a few vendor executives who have volunteered to provide their thoughts on topical industry issues. I’ll seek their input every month or so on an important news developments and also ask the non-vendor members about their recent experience with vendors. E-mail me to suggest an issue for their consideration.

If you work for a hospital or practice, you are welcome to join the panel. I am grateful to the HIStalk Advisory Panel members for their help in making HIStalk better.

This question this time: As you look back on the education, experience, and effort that led you to your current position, what advice would you offer to others who aspire to a similar role?

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My role is CIO and CMIO, and I used to think my path was pretty unique. But I had lunch last week with another doc trained in the same specialty who is now doing the same thing, so we’re starting a club. If we get another member, we’ll make it a professional society. As for advice, I think my path has much more to do with leadership ability than it does with specific IT training. Obviously, one has to have relevant knowledge and skills, but running an IT department isn’t that different from running an ICU.

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Director of IT. Three pieces of advice. Best advice — education and experience outside of IT and/or outside of healthcare are invaluable. I have degrees in political science and foreign studies and graduate coursework in international relations. I went to work during summer break for a mortgage banking software company. Learned technology from the ground up, worked in basically every department, and eventually moved to a larger firms in manufacturing (pet care products), focusing on continuous improvement and project management. 

I found my current position volunteering for the hospital and was pulled in by the CEO. I remember facing a huge roadblock in the first group interview when they were concerned that I didn’t have a background specifically in healthcare IT. I had grown up in a family of nurses, so I spoke healthcare pretty well. But my response was, "I didn’t know how to make dog food until I went to work for Purina, either." The point I made, and which eventually got me the job, was that interpersonal skills and a solid understanding of information technology are completely transferable. Bringing to the table the knowledge of how other industries manage IT and its challenges can be a huge strength. Political science is essentially understanding how people work together (or not) in a group. I use every bit of that every day in my current role. 

Second piece of advice — stay connected, keep learning. There’s not a day that goes by that I am not exploring something new, even if it doesn’t seem to directly connect to healthcare IT (yet). Eventually, everything does. I’ve developed expertise in HVAC, low voltage systems, change management, public speaking, and many more areas that I’m sure all of my counterparts are also familiar with. 

Third piece of advice – love what you do. Find that place you can put your heart and soul into and do it. You and your employer will be well rewarded.

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In a CTO role with a vendor organization, I’ve found it beneficial to have worked outside of healthcare previously and experience how technology and data systems are deployed and used in other industries. But in the transition to healthcare, do not underestimate the subtlety of relationships in HIS data. Ensure that healthcare data systems can remain healthy and recover when poor or unexpected data is encountered.

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I am sure that coming from hospital clinical operations was the best and most significant experience that has lead me to the role of the highest ranking IS professional in the hospital. The CIO, or IS director if there is no CIO title, must first know the business. Not being a clinician, but having an in depth knowledge of clinical process and challenges was key, then learning the applications and helping adapt them to the workload has been critical to my success. Learning the business side is the second most important.

Spending time with Managed Care, Finance, and Coding was the next most important step. IT knowledge is important, but as my CEO has always said, the further up the chain you get, the less important the technical is and the more important the relationships get.

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I chose healthcare as an industry after working in financial services and realizing that the organization’s mission matters to me. I serve as a CIO for an integrated delivery organization with 1,200 ambulatory physicians in 60+ clinics and four hospitals. Best education choice I made was to go for an MBA after getting my foot in the IT world. I applied business skills and knowledge to practical IT issues and communicated better with finance people. I’ve been laid off and otherwise dismissed twice and both times the moves to new positions, while scary and a bit challenging, turned out way better than staying in a situation lacking a solid fit. I’ve quit a couple of positions that didn’t fit to move to other, more challenging situations. I value the breadth of industry experience these changes have provided me. 

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I’m a CIO and spend a disproportionate time on contracts and talking to lawyers. This time commitment has increased over the years. I’d strongly recommend a business law class or two. I came up on the application side of the IT department, as opposed to the technology side. I think the ability to explain and understand applications to C-suite, physicians, housekeepers, etc. will serve you better than the ability to explain or understand the underlying technology of a Cache’ data structure vs. a SQL Server database.

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I’m  a managing director with an advisory company (an HIStalk sponsor, of course!)

Like it or not, credentials and degrees help, but they only open doors, not land the position. A varied but productive track record helps immensely. I think I am much more attractive having done a fair amount in multiple entirely different situations than if I had plugged away in the exact same position for the entire time. Plus, it lets me tell stories and derive lessons from several different backgrounds. Cross-pollination, connecting dots, etc. can often be the extra value that you can give to a prospective employer.

You create your own opportunities. It’s impossible to know what efforts will pay off. Will a meeting/conference be a waste of time or will you happen to meet that one critical contact? Get out there and find out. Sorta like investing: sometimes you lose, but you may very will win big. If you do the job you’re told to do and do it well, you’ll continue to do that job. Identify a need (ideally your boss’s pain points) and do that job and you’ll see your stock go up much higher.

Read, read, read. What’s going on in the industry? If you were introduced to a group at a conference, could you jump right into their conversation about the latest developments, chat about where things are headed, etc.? If not, get up to speed. Even if you feel it’s hard to know where to start, keep at it long enough and you’ll accumulate that background before you know it. 

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I’m one of the minority of CMIOs with formal medical informatics training (masters’ degree from a very academic NLM Fellowship program ), but perhaps my best education came from the school of hard knocks working for major consulting firm.  Boy, did I learn a lot that they don’t teach you in the ivory tower — project management, change management, managing up and down, working on a team, presentations, client relationships, how big organizations function, etc. It was a tough couple of years, but it was like a mini-MBA.  There are plenty of ways to achieve a CMIO role, but it helps to either have solid preparation in a real-world informatics environment, or to be the right person at the right place at the right time (i.e., be the anointed physician champion during the CPOE implementation and get a battlefield promotion).

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Role: CIO. Today’s healthcare CIO needs a combination of technical, administrative, and business skills. It is more important to have an understanding of healthcare and the rapidly changing role of information systems than an in-depth knowledge of a single vendor’s system. The CIO should be seen as understanding the overall mission of the organization and how IT can contribute to and support that mission. Vendor and contract management, astute use of financial resources, and quality of care are all primary aspects of the job. Being an enabler rather than a naysayer are traits the organization expects.

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As a CIO, I would ask someone aspiring to this role the following (with long pauses at the commas): "What, exactly, are you thinking?" In general, I give career advice by first referencing a quote attributed to Dwight D. Eisenhower: "Plans are nothing; planning is everything." The process of figuring out what you want to do, what you want to become, and what you are willing to give up is vital in pursuing a career that you’ll find rewarding. But, you need to continuously reevaluate that plan as new opportunities arise and your life changes.

Some of the best career decisions I’ve made came from opportunities I did not have in my plan. I reevaluated and adjusted as I went. It’s good to focus on end goals and priorities, but there are many different paths you can take to reach that goal. On top of that, your priorities change over time that affect the balance you need in your life between career, personal, and family time.

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I entered the CMIO role about nine years ago after 25 years of clinical practice. In my opinion, the best way to get here is to keep your ears open and learn everything that is put in front of you. I was very attentive to all of the IT presentations while I was in practice and had a good basis when I assumed this role. The other asset that this position requires is the ability to get along with everyone; you have to get used to physicians taking their frustrations out on you, even though it isn’t personal.

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In my role as CMIO and medical director of performance improvement, I have the privilege of being on the front line of both technology and quality for our organization. This is truly the sweet spot of HIT. Blending the power of data with the power of information has the potential to provide great potential for improvement in near real time. I would encourage others to pursue educational and practical experience opportunities in wide reaching areas of both technology and quality. Focus on how to tie all your efforts back to the care of the individual patient.  In addition, study and apply Lean Six Sigma techniques in the myriad of processes you will encounter along your journey. 

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My role is CTO. Recommended experience — multiple industries. I was in both banking and government before healthcare. Each industry has different priorities and different levels of IS maturity. Taking the best from each industry or not doing the things you see that don’t work allow you to help make your department or division more productive which in turn helps you progress your career.

Education. For healthcare, especially now, classes like finance or even something softer than that like management or marketing are key. Anyone can learn hard core technical skills, the ones who move forward are the ones who understand the business, how IS fits in it, and can interact with others.

Don’t be afraid of hard work or long hours. Remember IS is 7x24x forever. Be available, be involved, and most of all have fun with it.

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As an academic attending physician with an interest in informatics, I would suggest getting the strongest possible clinical training as well as a formal solid foundation in the core areas of informatics, including a good understanding of clinical information systems, decision support, usability and interface design, human-computer interaction, computer databases, project management, and organizational behavior. It’s possible to learn about EHRs on the fly, through practical experience and by apprenticeship, especially with a strong background in clinical practice and in the use of technology. But formal training in each is a huge advantage. 

I benefitted a great deal from attending top programs for my clinical and informatics training due to the quality of the education, but also the people who I met and the lifelong connections that I made. Networking through professional organizations and meetings can be a big plus, as is staying up to date by reading great prose such as HIStalk.  🙂

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I am the CIO/security officer of our organization. My path has been unique in that I started out as a nurses’ aide/unit clerk. I’ve spent over 30 years in hospitals and a couple of years on the vendor side. Knowing the business of my customers first hand has given me a perspective and credibility that CIOs coming from the technology side struggle to achieve. Advice to those striving for a similar role — know the business of the organization front to back. There isn’t any work process that is too insignificant for you to understand.  Also, I believe that a MHA or MBA is more valuable than an advanced degree in technology.

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Just like mileage on a car, your actual results will vary. With that said, I think there are a few steps aspiring CIO’s would want to consider. First, a mental health evaluation would be in order, as this job is not for everyone and it rife with risk, stress, and the potential to develop bad habits one does not have currently.

More seriously, a graduate level degree is almost a requirement. PMP certification would be a nice add-on, as would Six Sigma or Lean certification at some level. Clinical experience is a plus, and for more and more organizations, those with a significant clinical background that have come over to IT have a leg up on the rest of us. Working as a consultant can help as it teaches you skills you would not get otherwise, from presentation and report writing (communications) to exposure to many more situations than if you stayed with a single employer (experience). Work in more than one of the IT disciplines also is helpful. 

You will have to move into a leadership role at some point or have already done this in your past. There is no substitute for this. Don’t be afraid to move for an opportunity or travel for a while,  but make sure your family, spouse, partner understand what this means as it is a big step. Have a career mentor if you can find one — I wish I had one in the past and serve as one today. Finally, you need to have a little luck. Sure, part of this is creating your own luck or maybe recognizing an opportunity when it presents itself and having the courage to act on it. But sometimes things line up just right and you have to act. 

Finally, humility is very important. Remember that nobody achieves success without help from others. I owe much of my success to those that I have worked with and dare say "led." I would be nothing professionally without investing in the people that really get the work done and the results that go with them. I cannot possibly overstate how important this last point is.

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To be a successful CIO, you need to pay your dues. I started as a computer operator in a data center. I continued my education while looking for opportunities to move up. I volunteered for everything, even if it was outside of IT. I learned the business of healthcare, not just the business of healthcare IT. I became a supervisor then a manager then a director over a 10- year period. I can definitely empathize with my staff and leadership since I have held or managed most of their positions. 

The leap from director/VP to CIO is a little tougher. A director’s/VP’s job is 80 percent operational and 20 percent strategy. A CIO’s job is just the opposite. Strategic thinking and operational thinking are two very different disciplines. The healthcare IT field is littered with the remains of excellent directors/VPs who should have stayed as directors/VPs instead of reaching for the CIO brass ring. Assuming you make it to a director/VP level position, think long and hard before applying for the CIO position. Understand your strengths and weaknesses. Ending your career as a successful director/VP is more preferable than ending it as a failed CIO. Lastly, above all, BE NICE!

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As a non-traditional CIO in an academic environment, I find my clinical, financial, and operational background in healthcare that occurred before my turn to the technical to be invaluable. I use it every day. I can converse fluently with just about anyone in any part of the organization regarding what they do on a daily basis. Understanding the business of healthcare, the issues that it is facing both now and in the foreseeable future, and how technology can both facilitate and support the changes that are occurring brings incredible value to my organization and to the senior management team that I am a part of.

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My best advice — it is always about customer support. The best system in the world will be an implementation nightmare if the support is bad. The worst system in the world can still work if the support is superb. People will understand software shortfalls, hardware interruptions if they know you are behind them and will be there for them. Folks will  accept that you don’t know if you will tell them you will find out and get back to them in a realistic timeframe. But then you have to follow up every time. I guess what it boils down to is accountability and the relationships that you build. Always remember, it is all centered around the patient.

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Head of a business unit within a HIT company. I think my diverse experience in HIT has prepared me in a unique way for my current role. I started my career as a phone support person helping clients with issues from technical problems to how-to questions. From there I moved on to training, implementation, sales, operations, and business development. Along the way I was promoted into various management roles and my responsibilities increased accordingly. I say all this because most of us work in very complex organizations with many functions across the span of control.

In my opinion, you will be better prepared to lead if you have had experience, or maybe exposure, across a broad set of functions. This is why many companies move their management through a number of different areas as they rise through the organization. Embrace those opportunities and take roles in departments that take you out of your comfort zone. Also, pursuing my masters degree really helped me in two ways. First it gave me confidence in the knowledge that I already had and filled in the gaps in areas that I didn’t have the necessary skills. Secondly, it made me more marketable for executive roles.

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I am the CMIO, but effectively am the chief clinical Information system officer. My advice for new or aspiring CMIOs/CCIOs/CNIOs is to establish your core clinical competence first, so that you never feel like you are a hostage to keeping your informatics job (i.e., you have something to fall back to if it gets so bad that you have to quit.) Study the quality literature — Deming, Juran, others — and apply Deming’s 14 points as much as possible. Make sure that there is a single person responsible, directly or indirectly, for all aspects of clinical informatics at your organization. Make sure that you have clinical leaders and a boss (preferably not the CIO) who understands the importance of what you do.

Get some business background so that you have a good understanding of strategic planning, budgets, and accounting. Contribute to the national dialogue on HIT and try to help bring Washington to its senses. Examples include contributing comments on Meaningful Use through your state or national professional societies, supporting the movement for physicians to use SNOMED for coding instead of ICD-10 (which is outdated and bloated), belong to AMDIS (the listserv and Ojai meeting are wonderful things). 

Read HIStalk regularly. My knowledge of HIT issues went up immensely when I became a regular reader. You are a national treasure.

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Get to know all the different stakeholders (internal and external) in healthcare for they are your constituents. Learn and understand their professional and personal challenges in the work they do. Caring for others is the culture of healthcare. Be sincere, humble, and transparent to establish and maintain trust. Once you lose trust and/or credibility in healthcare, your chances for success on individual projects / tasks and your career are very limited. Establish a personal goal or mantra of what you would like to accomplish in your healthcare career; not for your personal benefit, but for the benefit of the constituents you serve in healthcare. (i.e. patients, nurses, physicians, etc.)

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I am an HL7 interface analyst with clinical experience. I have a long history of working with computers prior to going to nursing school. Coming out of nursing school, I knew I didn’t want to be a clinician. So while working as a nurse, I immediately returned to school and got my master’s in management information systems. I worked as a nurse, hoping that this experience would make me a better computer person. After a year of nursing and some very rude remarks from a thoracic surgeon, I left bedside nursing for a posting of clinical systems analyst that I found on our hospital job board.

As a clinical systems analyst, I observed the integration team in all their glory. Ours were all-powerful divas who drove the rest of the department crazy, so I made a note to self to try to remain kind and real. I went to my boss and asked her to send me to school for our HL7 engine. She said that she would if there were enough money in the budget, and in a happy coincidence (I had been partially responsible for the budget that year), we had plenty of money for education. She sent me to the vendor-led class. Meanwhile, the divas had all left and been replaced by a single consultant.

Later that same year, our hospital system joined a larger consortium and they created an integration team from those who were qualified and I applied. For the past 12 years I have enjoyed being the only clinician on the HL7 team for them and then a subsequent hospital that wanted to pay me what I was worth. I really enjoy working with clinical systems integration because I feel that I bring unique qualities to each project. When people ask me how I got here, I tell them to grab the brass ring and don’t let go. You need to see the future, make a step-by-step plan, and go for it. Hold yourself accountable and make it happen. Ignore everyone who tells you that you can’t. I encountered several of those, and most are still doing what they were doing when I started. Read inspiring books. My favorite was Why Good Girls Don’t Get Ahead, But Gutsy Girls Do. Watch inspiring movies — my favorite was “Working Girl.” You can do this!

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Role: IT manager. First years of my career were in nursing, and have an MSN. Also had teaching and supervisory experience. Always loved the software application stuff, though. Started volunteering for testing/other IT projects whenever nursing input was needed.  Became the IT liaison, working with them on any software upgrades/issues. When ambulatory EMRs starting being introduced, found a position with an organization who was looking for someone with nursing expertise and some basic software skills. Now the ambulatory EMR world is red-hot — jobs all over the place. It’s a good time to get into this field.  So volunteer, work with IT, learn the language, the testing, and the processes needed to be successful in IT. Then look for that great job — they are out there now.

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Professor: (but also corporate researcher in the past). Try to get an internship or at least try to see how people doing the job you aspire to, actually work on a day-to-day basis.

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My role now is jokingly referred to as the garbage pail. If you don’t know what else to do with it, give it to me, and I’ll figure out who should take care of it. Any given day, I could be working on a security risk assessment, a patient data report, Medicare medical necessity, and administrative strategic planning. I don’t do hardware work or OS troubleshooting as much any more, but that is mostly because it has been a long time since I’ve needed to, and both have become more specialized over the years. I’ve done everything from cleaning out printers to educational presentations at international conferences. 

Education-wise, I have a college degree that bears no relationship to what I do (social sciences, with an emphasis in geography & history). Its only purpose is to prove that I could stick it out and get the degree. I am living proof (or was 20+ years ago) that it was possible to be on academic probation and still graduate college.

The effort? Never be afraid to accept a new challenge. I "do HIPAA" because my boss in 2001 was looking for something to get me re-engaged and not lose me to another job. I’m glad I did, because it has given me a lot of opportunities I wouldn’t have had otherwise. 
Don’t be afraid of "tall poppy syndrome." Be willing to go above & beyond, even though you may risk alienating people who don’t want to expend the effort. Give your best. Develop your writing & speaking skills. All the technical skills in the world can’t help you if you can’t communicate the information. A major piece of the failure of the space shuttle Challenger goes back to an inability of the engineers to make everyone else understand what was wrong. An extreme example, but it can be no less vital in healthcare. Lives may be on the line if you can’t make yourself understood.

I love what I do, and I can’t imagine doing anything else. Every day, I get to have an impact on the direction the industry we work in is moving. I can help people who have lives in their hands get the information they need to make those lives better. How many people outside of healthcare get to say that?

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Do what you love, love what you do — there are no absolutes. For example, I am a physician in HIT who still very much enjoys seeing patients part-time because I love doing that and because it helps me with my job. But if you don’t love seeing patients, or your job simply is too all-consuming for patient care, then it does not make you a bad CMIO if you can’t do it. With that said, there are some things you don’t know unless you try them, and to be a truly great CMIO, I do think you need to have at least 5-10 years of clinical experience to understand how you really feel about it and to see enough to have both the credibility and experience to speak and represent on the topics of clinical IT.

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I am currently an interim Corporate CIO for a multi-hospital system. I spent 10+ years as a CIO prior to this interim contract. As a healthcare CIO, I think it is very important to develop a business acumen and understand the healthcare industry as well as the healthcare IT industry. My career path began in operations and then as an analyst/DBA/web developer.

Once I moved into IT management, my technical skills were diminished. The first CIO position I interviewed for was difficult as I knew that I would be giving up all of my technical skills if I was hired. Not only did I transition to a business leadership position, but I had to learn how to work with clinicians and understand their needs. In my opinion, if a CIO is not a clinician, they should partner with one (or more) to be successful. That is the strategy that has been most successful for me.

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My career always progresses best when I help the careers of those around me first. 

Success = Q x P x V, where Q = quality of your work,  P = the productivity levels of your work, and V = the visibility of your work. Someone has to see and appreciate the work that you perform, and they have to attribute that work to you. If any one of these three variables — QPV –  falls to zero, so does your professional success. 

The Power of Pure Motives. 

The only two metrics that really matter are employee satisfaction and customer satisfaction. Every other metric is a means to those ends. And employee satisfaction must come first.

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Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 2/11/13

Dear Dr. Jayne,

I’ve spent most of my career in EHR development. Although HITECH has been a boon for vendors and system sales, it’s been a major stress on development teams. I’m starting to feel like I should think about doing something else, maybe more outside the box. I’m looking for someone who has vision in the Accountable Care Organization space, or even someone who is thinking beyond that at an even bigger picture. It seems to me that the next big wave of health IT will come from outside the traditional vendor space.

Big Data and analytics seem like overused buzzwords, but there is a tremendous need for true clinical decision support and analysis that goes out across hundreds of sources and maximizes not only care but reimbursement across patient populations including multiple unaffiliated physicians who may not be part of a true ACO infrastructure.

I don’t want to wind up at just another vendor that starts with a vision but ultimately ends up fighting over the scraps left by Epic and Cerner. If you were in my shoes (which I assure you are very fashionable), how would I begin looking at this?

Always your gracious reader and devoted fan,
Herve Villechaize

My Dearest Tattoo,

I think that some of the biggest differences in how companies will be able to approach the challenges of the future (both those that are known and those that have yet to reveal themselves) will be defined by a variety of things.

One factor is whether they are publicly traded or privately held. It’s certainly easier to execute a vision when you have leadership that both runs the show and controls the checkbook. We’ve all seen companies sacrifice themselves on the altar of shareholder profits and those behaviors certainly raise red flags. On the other hand, there is a certain amount of protection in being a publicly traded company as there is a higher requirement for transparency.

I’m always intrigued by the development shops that are part of a hospital or health system. I like the aspect of their having to eat their own dog food. Their close proximity to the end users doesn’t give much room to hide behind sloppy code or badly-executed ideas. I would enjoy seeing the major vendors set up model clinics that truly field test their products rather than relying on their customers to perform the final round of QA and usability testing.

Although it’s not specifically in the areas you mentioned, I think there is tremendous opportunity in the market spaces that Dr. Travis and Lt. Dan cover on HIStalk Connect. Patient outreach and engagement are going to be major parts of any Accountable Care strategy. Companies that address virtual visits or link different types of providers across the care continuum – from prenatal education to ambulatory to acute care to home health to hospice –will be well positioned. We need to start coordinating care from cradle to grave if we’re going to be successful at providing higher quality coordinated care as well as controlling costs.

Sincerely,
Dr. Jayne

As vendors combine and products are sunset, I’m sure these questions are on many people’s minds. I’d like to ask our readers what they think. What do you think is the next “big thing” in healthcare IT? If you could work in any healthcare space, what would it be and why? What companies do you think will be around in ten years and who will be leading the pack? E-mail me.

E-mail Dr. Jayne.

HIStalk Interviews Mike Long, Chairman and CEO, Lumeris

Mike Long is chairman and CEO of Lumeris of St. Louis, MO.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I’ve been in the software industry since its early beginnings, almost the beginning since when software was separated from hardware as a bundle. I worked in and around large financial services, insurance companies, healthcare organizations, and also in the geophysical science space. I’ve worked through multiple technology migrations to mainframes to client server to Internet to cloud computing.

We are a company that was – it’s somewhat an abused term – “purpose built” for accountable care. We started down this journey over seven years ago before accountable care was as obvious as it is now.

We have four entities inside the holding company called Essence Group. Lumeris is our technology platform company. We’ve invested in building a cloud computing infrastructure to integrate all the data and deliver it to the right person at the right time. The connectivity company is called NaviNet that we purchased in partnership with three large payers to make sure we got access to the market as far as delivering improved decision-making tools and content, particularly to providers.

Then we built a proof-of-concept company where we actually manage 40,000 lives of seniors. We’re responsible both clinically and financially for their healthcare, where we have proven the concepts around accountable care over the last seven years. The final component of who we are is we established in educational institute called the Accountable Delivery System Institute, where we educate industry leaders in everything that we know about accountable care.

 

You have an interesting perspective in having both the technology arm as well as actually running the accountable care organization arm.

Very odd. [laughs]

 

A lot of folks are probably interested to know what lessons you’ve learned since most of them have a long way to go to get where you are now.

The number one learning is that it’s harder than we thought than seven years ago,  probably not a surprise. But the good news is we’re seven years in and we didn’t lose faith. We’re very pleased with what we have learned and what we’re able to now translate into helping partners in the industry actually make this transformation. 

One of the biggest learnings is if you look at the fundamentals of accountable care, it’s the right tools, which are very important. It’s obviously the right information and the timeliness and quality of that information. It’s also incentives. You need all three – the right tools, the right information, and the right incentives — to incent the providers and consumers to actually use all this great information we now have. That’s a big learning.

We would have liked it to have been just, “Let’s build great technology” and that would be sufficient. It’s necessary, but not sufficient. We found that we share a huge burden of responsibility to help providers. Largely we see accountable care as — from an economic perspective — massive risk-shifting to providers, financial risk-shifting. They’ve always had clinical risk. 

We find that we have a responsibility to help them make that transition: the cultural changes, the workflow changes, make sure the incentives are aligned as well as adapting new technologies to effectively manage a much higher level of risk. That’s a big learning. We are in the transformational services business as well as in the technology business.

Being a practitioner gives us an enormous innovation laboratory to learn from, to figure out what works and what doesn’t work. We have a very good handle on what does not work. An ability to learn from that is immeasurable. And of course this gives us credibility that if we were just a technology company trying to deliver cool technologies that work really well in the software lab, but in the real world just don’t work quite as effectively. We don’t have that credibility issue as we work with providers and payers and participants in this new accountable care market segment.

 

Do you think providers are jumping in to being committed to some version of ACO without really knowing what the heck they are doing?

Yes. I admire them for taking the leap. Everybody’s got to make a choice here. Is accountable care discontinuous change and disruptive innovation, or is it another head fake by healthcare? We’re seeing, particularly both in the payer and the provider community — and we are agnostic in our model — three variations forming out there.

We see payers and providers choosing to collaborate around accountable care, taking advantage of their historical core competencies — particularly the payer’s financial risk management skills – and doing this collaboratively.

Then we’re seeing the model where the providers are saying, “I’m going to do this myself. I’m going to fully integrate all components of the supply chain.” You know, the Kaiser model, the IDN model. 

Then we’re seeing that on the payer space, where they’re saying, “Providers, for whatever reason, we’re not going to be able to collaborate with providers in their market, so we’re going to have to create a vertically integrated solution here.” Providers that are taking that route around ACOs or vertical integration, our advice to them is be aware of all the competencies that you actually have to have in place to manage both clinical and financial risk.

We’ve gone to a great deal of effort from my seven years of learning as a practitioner to break accountable care down into what we call 22 core competencies. There’s not enough time to go through all 22, but the fact that we have done that gives us credibility to be able to educate a practitioner of accountable care or a future emerging practitioner on where they need to apply technology, where they need to apply business model changes, where cultural change has to occur, where new incentives need to be put in place, where new workflows need to be put in place.

If everybody’s got their eyes wide open, all of these models will wind up working successfully. If they don’t have the necessary core competencies, there’s going to be some spectacular blowups.

 

Are organizations jumping in early because they really believe they can be successful in outcomes and margins or are they just trying to hold the position they have against others who are doing it?

We’re blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with leadership in both the provider and the payer community, particularly the organizations have taken advantage of coming to our institute. We find different motivations, so it’s not  one size fits all.

In some cases, it might be a market share battle in that particular community, where there is concern that if they don’t make this move, whoever controls – I use that word “controls” very loosely here – the membership or the patients in that community, many organizations feel they’re going to have to make this leap to be able to compete for share.

Some organizations are making the leap because they know the burden of their cost structure is too high. Their cost structure might be 40 percent too heavy and they’re jumping into ACOs to train their organizations on how to become more efficient and to make this a soft landing on the other side, assuming the momentum towards accountable care is going to continue. We actually believe it will, because the government is determined for it to continue. Without the government incentives around government programs, I don’t think the market would be moving as quickly as it is.

Then we see organizations that see accountable care as an opportunity to retool their business model, and rather than defend their current position, to actually take share and leverage the core competencies they already have as well as new ones. They’re taking a very aggressive offensive move. We see both defensive and offensive moves.

 

You’ve said that you tried to bend off the healthcare cost care with Healtheon/WebMD and failed. Do you think you can do it now?

I hope so. We can’t do it by ourselves. The lessons learned is that is it’s a big collaborative effort to get this done. I’m more optimistic than I ever have been in the industry. Twelve years ago, I certainly held the belief, among others, that just the existence of the Internet, which yields data transparency,  was enough to restructure an industry and to lead the restructuring. Actually that’s largely been true in almost every industry except for healthcare. We underestimated the resistance to data transparency that healthcare as an industry had. It was just not in their DNA. 

That has broken down over the last decade. The tools, the technologies, the ubiquitous connectivity makes this technically fairly low cost and easier to do, but fundamentally, the willingness of leadership — key leaders, not every leader in healthcare – but key leaders to step out and say, “OK, I’m going to share my data and my information, but I expect everyone else to share with me and we’ve got to focus on the health of our population.”

When we got started down this path seven years ago, we thought there was special sauce around population health management. This was before Mr. Obama was elected President, before the Affordable Care Act. The population health management resonated with us and was driving a lot of our innovation, particularly providers who wanted to assume financial risk. Now we see leaders of health systems, hospital-centric systems as well as payer systems, saying, “You know, I’m a community-based healthcare delivery system. I’ve got to find out a way to manage this population more effectively.”

We’re excited about that, because that means they need better tools. They’ve got to have better information. They’ve got to be willing to share. Our world with accountable care requires a multi-payer, multi-provider environment in a local community to actually achieve the benefits of accountable care. It cannot be a closed proprietary business model or solution. It just can’t.

 

Every vendor says they have analytics, tools with vague descriptions that make it hard to understand how the client will use them. How are providers going to sort out what exactly they need and who they should buy it from?

I think providers have got to make a clear choice here. Do they look for solutions that are broad enough and tested enough and to actually manage the target environment where they want to go longer term, knowing that everything evolves — requirements change, technology changes? In other words, being a true population health manager? Or are they going to take incremental steps to get there from the fee-for-service world?

There are steps some organizations have decided to take rather than going all the way. You start with, say, pay-per-performance around quality measures. That requires good analytics, so you’ve got to have an analytics solution to do that. Kind of the next step up the ring is gain-sharing. It’s upside gain-sharing, no downside risk. That requires a lot of process tools, particularly around care management. Then the next logical step is, do I want to manage both upside and downside financial and clinical risk? That requires a lot of data aggregation — financial data, claims data, clinical data that’s in various EMR systems, and the like.

Finally, you get to what we used to call global capitation. You’ve got the whole risk. That requires a comprehensive population health management solution.

What have providers got to decide to do? Am I going to be a systems integrator? In other words, am I going to go out and buy all these packages? This is a viable strategy. I’m going to systems integrate those packages and hope at the end of the day it adds up into a population health management solution, and I’m also going to have to develop competencies around data aggregation. Or do I go and put in place a solution now from a population health management perspective that can manage my destination solution? That’s the choice that they have to make.

There’s lots of point solutions out there that are really of high quality — good analytics packages, good care management packages, there’s good data integration solutions you can buy out there. But who’s going to have the responsibility of integrating all that into a coherent, cohesive, efficient platform? Platform is a word I’m sure you’re tired of hearing, that word platform. Nobody wants to do a product any more – we’re all platforms. But I can assure you that population health requires a platform approach — in our case, these 22 core competencies are our definition of a platform — effectively integrating all the solutions for each one of those core competencies in an integrated, flexible architecture.

Those are viable strategies. We feel that we should plan long term make investments now to your destination, as opposed to taking incremental steps in what may prove to be expedient, short-term solutions that exacerbate the problem.

 

Where do EMRs including the one you offer, fit into the vision?

We have chosen not to compete as an EMR vendor in the market in any meaningful way. It’s a part of our laboratory of understanding of how you implement functionalities – “functionalities” is not even a word, the software people invented that word — that tend to be resident inside of an EMR can be part of the destination of an EMR. We tend to operate at the population health level.

The way we see the market is that there are three fairly distinctive workflows that are emerging around accountable care. One of them is a clinical workflow that is built around the EMR. The industry is making huge investments in installing EMRs. The beautiful thing about that is we’re finally — certainly on the provider side — getting rid of a lot of the silos of information, and certainly we’re eliminating paper-based systems completely, finally. Once information is digitized inside these EMRs, that’s a wonderful thing, because once data is in digital form, you can do a lot more with it. That’s one workflow.

There’s a business workflow that tends to be influenced and controlled by hospital administration systems in the case of hospitals, or practice management systems in case of physicians. 

What we found is that there is a third workflow, the population health workflow, that needs to tightly integrate with the clinical workflow of the EMR and the business workflow of the hospital administration and practice management systems. The EMR is a critical component of this. I admire the EMR companies that have helped digitize certainly the clinical side of healthcare over the last three or four years. But population health is different.

 

I’m sure you get asked this a lot, but describe your philosophy of missionary versus mercenary.

Everybody makes a choice when they’re building a business. It’s not one is better than the other, it’s just that they produce different outcomes.

The mercenary approach, which is a very valid approach, says, “I want to make a lot of money or I want to build a successful company. What problem do I need to solve to make a lot of money and build a company?” That’s the mercenary approach. It’s not that mercenaries are bad people. As a matter of fact, in this country, it has provided enormous incentive for innovation.

Then there are missionaries. The missionary says, “I want to solve a really important problem. I’m going to focus on solving that problem because I believe in the country, I believe in the economic system in this country, that if I solve a really important problem, the economics will  work out.”

In both cases, the goal is to build a sustainable company, because if you don’t build a sustainable company, you can’t commit to service your partners and customers long term. It’s just a different philosophy.

We’re very much a missionary company focused on solving the problem as opposed to maximizing the economic outcomes for us in the short term. We’re not a charity, but we are willing to defer economic gratification to some distance into the future. As a matter of fact, we never discuss what that might be. There’s never been a discussion of exit strategies with our board. There’s a lot of those discussions, particularly around healthcare IT companies, and that’s just not who we are.

We are focused on trying to be reliable, significant company to help the US healthcare system make this transition to accountable care. We can’t do it by ourselves. That’s our mission. That’s what gets us up in the morning and as we go to bed at night thinking about it.  A lot of passion, and hopefully we control that passion so we don’t create unrealistic expectations.

Morning Headlines 2/11/13

Paragon, Horizon Clinicals, Revenue Cycle, and Managed Services to combine in a new organization called Enterprise Information Services

McKesson Technology Solutions EVP/Group President Pat Blake says Paragon, Horizon Clinicals, Revenue Cycle, and Managed Services will be combined in a new organization called Enterprise Information Services, with Jim Pesce from the Paragon business serving as president.

athenahealth’s CEO Discusses Q4 2012 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

athenahealth holds its Q4 earnings call, during which CEO Jonathan Bush reports a reduction in physician documentation time to less than five minutes per encounter and hints at a possible venture into the inpatient EMR business.

Computer chaos costs RBH £3.7m

Royal Berkshire Hospital reports implementation overages of $5.8 million (USD) in conjunction with a Cerner implementation that was originally budgeted at $47 million.

Meningitis outbreak prompted State Health Department to gain electronic access

After struggling with federal privacy requirements and other barriers to data collection during last year’s national meningitis outbreak, the Tennessee State Health Department considers proposing legislation that would provide its workers with quicker access to EHRs during a medical emergency.

Monday Morning Update 2/11/13

 

From Potsie: “Re: McKesson reorg. The customer announcement is attached. They’ve said they won’t force Horizon customers to convert to Paragon, but now with Pesce over both Paragon and Horizon, the writing is on the wall. I’ve also heard they’re encouraging Horizon employees to take jobs at Relay, which would seem to be scaling back by attrition rather than by layoff.” The customer e-mail from McKesson Technology Solutions EVP/Group President Pat Blake says RelayHealth will expand to over 1,000 employees, but more germane to Potsie’s comment, Paragon, Horizon Clinicals, Revenue Cycle, and Managed Services will be combined in a new organization called Enterprise Information Services, with Jim Pesce from the Paragon business (above left) serving as president. Rod O’Reilly (above right) will become SVP of strategy for MTS.  

From Ellingham: “Re: HIStalkapalooza. How can readers have missed the announcements? Presbyopia?” Beats me, but Inga and I get e-mails every day from people who swear they’ve study HIStalk intently each day without seeing the large HIStalkapalooza announcements I’ve run three times now. Maybe they’re not really HIStalk readers and just want an invitation, but I think they’re conditioned by the rags and other sites that trumpet non-newsworthy stories with a come-on headline and 10 paragraphs of padded prose that I would have summarized in one sentence without missing anything important. Skim HIStalk and you’ll miss stuff for sure. It takes me a lot of time to write in a way that wastes a lot less of yours. That’s why I guarantee that if you’ll give me 5-10 minutes of attentive reading each day, you’ll know more than almost everybody in the industry. 

An HIStalkapalooza menu update for readers who asked: Chef Brad confirms that he will have vegetarian and gluten-free items available.

The HIMSS conference will enjoy a net attendee gain this year compared to last if you believe that my poll is statistically reliable. Doing the math suggests an attendance of 33,450 based on last year’s count, but of course New Orleans can’t match Las Vegas as a draw. New poll to your right, from CHIME’s comments about ONC’s patient safety plan: should the federal government issue a national patient identifier?

Nuggets from the athenahealth earnings call Friday:

• Jonathan Bush says the company reduced physician documentation per encounter to less than five minutes.
• He acknowledges that athenahealth has low physician visibility and the Epocrates acquisition will be a way of promoting the company’s other businesses given its 90 percent awareness.
• He said “athenaCoordinator had a rough year,” referring to the care coordination platform developed from the July 2011 Proxsys acquisition. He did not specifically reference the announced March 6 layoff of 36 employees from that group, but said the Proxsys system had to be rewritten from scratch, which hurt sales, and getting pre-certifications from payers is hard because each has different rules.
• The company has integrated six products into athenaNet through its “More Disruption Please” program and plans to add another 25 in 2013, but is collecting no fees from those vendors.
• They will launch athenaResearch next month to use the company’s database to provide insight back to clients.
• While the company has developed turnkey rip-and-replace programs, they don’t push them because the data in the EMRs of clients isn’t reusable, or as Jonathan Bush said, “We’re going to get better at delivering it and develop the confidence to make promises that we’re good at delivering it more convincingly where we’re just going to have to get better at explaining to people why their Flock of Seagulls EMR is going to go to the same place that their Flock of Seagulls vinyl albums went.”
• The company says they may dabble in the inpatient EMR business after reviewing a vendor’s implementation manuals and concluding, “That’s it? That’s what all the fuss is about?” and raised the possibility that athenahealth could replace the EpicCare ambulatory part of an Epic implementation and interface to Epic’s inpatient systems.

Medical facilities are necessarily extensive at Kumbh Mela, a Hindu pilgrimage held every 12 years in India that is drawing 30 million people as the largest human gathering in history. The military-like clinics were set up in two months and will be gone by the end of March. Medical records are basic and scrawled on paper. A team from Harvard School of Public Health created an iPad-based system for documenting the chief complaints and medications of the thousands of emergency patients seen each day. It also transfers data to a server to help detect public health outbreaks such as diarrhea. As stated by Logan Plaster, managing editor of Emergency Physicians Monthly:

So far the Harvard team has gathered more than 15,000 patient records, an impressive number by any research standards, and arguably the largest public health dataset ever gathered on a transient population. Their findings have been stable and predictable; most complaints are of cough and cold, and most prescriptions are for anti-inflammatory drugs, like ibuprofen. That’s good news to everyone’s ears as millions of new pilgrims enter Allahabad in preparation for February 10, the holiest bathing day on the calendar.

In China, a doctor’s social network warnings about a particular medication used in children causes shares of the drug’s manufacturer to drop 10 percent in a week, losing $160 million in value. It turned out that the doctor was wrong, having incorrectly recalled government literature. He has only 2,000 followers, but his message was reposted by a Chinese celebrity to his 26 million followers. The doctor apologized and clarified several times, but his original message continued to spread. Public relations analysis determined that a company’s response to publicly disseminated incorrect information must be issued within eight hours to be effective and must be distributed online rather than via traditional media.

The State of California fires SAP Public Services from its state employee payroll and medical benefits computer project after the new system was found to be making errors at 100 times the rate of the 1970s-era system it was supposed to replace. The project is years behind schedule and costs have piled up at triple the original estimate, with $371 million spent so far. SAP Public Services has been paid more than $50 million after the state fired BearingPoint three years ago.

An employee of Xerox/Affiliated Computer Services and an accomplice are indicted in Kentucky for using patient information collected in managing CVS’s Medicare Part D prescription plan to file fraudulent tax returns.

In England, the CEO of Royal Berkshire Hospital reports to the hospital’s board that implementation of its $47 million Cerner Millennium system need an extra $6 million to cover staff time required to navigate through patient scheduling screens that take up to 15 minutes per appointment. He warns that Millennium-related expenses will cause the hospital to move from a financial surplus to a loss for the year. According to the executive, Millennium crashes regularly, including this past Tuesday when it was down all day and the hospital had to revert to paper. The hospital’s 2013 implementation costs are projected at $10 million vs. its budget of $4 million due to unplanned manual data correction and extra staff time. The CEO said in a prepared statement to the Council of Governors, “The level of issues the trust faces having implemented Cerner Millennium is a significant drain on management capacity, despite robust risk mitigation plans. This has a significant impact on the trust’s financial performance and cash position, being the key driver between a surplus and forecasted deficit.”

Tennessee health department officials trying to manage a September meningitis outbreak were forced to develop an electronic workaround to their usual manual hospital data collection process due to the urgency of the situation. The agency had to convince hospitals to give it electronic access to their systems given restrictive federal privacy laws. Vanderbilt University Medical Center was identified as “becoming a substantial hindrance to our investigation” because its permission lagged that of all other area hospitals. The health department is considering proposing legislation to give it easier access in an emergency.

ORNGE, the air ambulance service of Ontario, is under fire for paying its physician CEO $4.6 million over two years. Taxpayers also paid questionable expenses that included European travel with $2,400 per night hotel rooms, a $1,200 dinner, limousines, minibar champagne, in-room movies, and trips with his girlfriend, who he had promoted to VP of the organization.

The CEO of the public healthcare system in Maricopa County, AZ defends her $125,000 salary increase, saying her $500,000 salary is “always the lowest of any hospital CEO in the entire state, even the little-bitty hospitals.” The board chair voted against the increase, saying the CEO has done a great job, but, “A $125,000 raise in a year when we give our janitors maybe a 1 percent raise or lay off people? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (MA) pays its former chief of anesthesia $7 million and will name its pain clinic after her to settle her charges of gender discrimination. Carol Warfield, MD says the former surgery chief, along with former hospital CEO Paul Levy, forced her out when she complained about being ignored in meetings. The Boston Globe says the hospital probably wanted to avoid reopening anything related to Levy since the woman’s attorneys had already claimed that the inappropriate relationship Levy had with a hospital employee was evidence that he ignored workplace rules.

A Truthout article says EMR adoption poses new challenges to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations who will have to decide whether to share their status without knowing how that information will be handled digitally. One advocate says she doesn’t want to have to bring up her status in every medical encounter, saying, “I’m out to everyone, but I don’t want to have to come out to doctors over and over again.” Ares of EMR concern: (a) questions ask status like “gay” or “bisexual” instead of specifically identifying a patient’s relationships, since “sexual orientation is not useful medical information”; (b) EMRs should be able to identify same-sex partnerships instead of just checking “married”; (c) a label of “transgender” is not sufficient without more details; and (d) equal protection is not guaranteed in all states and an EMR-related outing can create problems. In an interesting twist on the tired HIE argument of “unconscious patient in the ED while on vacation” example, LGBTs say that their shared information could be a disaster in LGBT-hostile areas or facilities. An IOM study was mentioned whose conclusion was that the best course of action is to allow LGBTs to self-identify and opt out of answering related questions.

A hospital in Australia will discipline five employees, one of them a nurse, for posting in information to Facebook that it says violated patient confidentiality. The nurse posted the nursing home photo above, which she labeled as, “Randomly stripping for the oldies at work.” She also posted a patient’s pelvic x-ray showing an embedded object with the caption, “Take a guess what this is kids!”

Weird News Andy summarizes this story thusly: “I’ve heard of butt-dialing, but not answering.” A Sri Lankan prisoner who is startled by guards demanding to search his cell shoves a cell phone and two hands-free accessories into his rectum. The guards are surprised to hear a cell phone ring during the search, followed by the prisoner’s complaints of back pain. They take him to the prison hospital, where he tells doctors that his pain was caused by guards beating him. When the doctors reviewed x-rays and announced plans for surgery, he produced the contraband voluntarily.

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Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Readers Write: The Pitfalls of Resource Labeling in EMR Projects

The Pitfalls of Resource Labeling in EMR Projects
By Tyler Smith

In enterprise-wide EMR software implementations, the labels “clinical” and “technical” are often utilized in an attempt to categorize the project’s human resources. When taken to improper extremes, these two labels can give rise to an unhealthy “us vs. them” mentality among project team members which can be highly detrimental to the project’s timeline and team member cohesion.

The us vs. them mentality can hardly be considered de facto in enterprise EMR software projects. The division of clinical and technical team members is often intentionally defined by the leadership of large scale enterprise EMR projects. The division is worked into the project’s staffing plans and subsequent role assignments. There are often defined minimum numbers of clinical and technical team members for each of the project’s teams.

The justifications for role assignments based on clinical or technical skillsets are obvious. A project needs individuals with hands-on experience in the areas where the software will be applied in order to give a necessary perspective to builders and PMs, as well as to increase the legitimacy of the final product. A project also needs individuals with sharp IT skills who can translate flowsheets and labs, along with about everything else in these HITECH days, into computerized workflows. Ownership is important on IT projects, and the labels add ease to the sometimes difficult assignment of ownership.

What I fear most about the division is not hurt feelings, although I’m not saying that hurt feelings can’t directly result from the intentional division. What I really fear is the waste of resource time the labeling can cause if it is taken to its extreme.

Although mostly absent from Washington these days, the willingness of team members to compromise and sometimes share ownership is essential in divvying up tasks between clinical and technical team members. While some project tasks can be clearly divided – and these areas are no doubt a huge reason for the pronounced division – there are often gray areas that are not so easily categorized.

Battle lines are drawn when a group is delegated the task of owning a project or heavily assisting with an assignment that they do not believe is aligned with their label’s responsibilities. I have seen technical team members who refused to complete orders build based on lacking clinical knowledge. I have seen clinical team members refuse to perform easy interface cleanup based on lacking technical skill.

While both of these team members were right to the letter of the law, the project’s thin resource allocation necessitated their somewhat misplaced assignment. When it came down to it, given a little bit of willingness to learn, each team member could have accomplished either task. Validation would have been required, but the compromise would have saved hours of argument that waste resource time and increase the project costs.

Therefore, while divisions may be necessary to create a neatly formatted organizational chart or to meet certain artificial quotas, a culture of flexibility needs to be promoted in concert. Technical people should be encouraged to Google healthcare topics a little more and clinical people should not be afraid of reading up on computer languages.

Deference to each other’s expertise remains a given, but showing respect by attempting to learn the other side’s language goes a long way. After all, team members are not made members of the project to simply live to a label. Project members exist in order to facilitate the project’s ultimate success.

Tyler Smith is a consultant with TJPS Consulting.