Morning Headlines 1/23/13

Missouri, Kansas and Nebraska Connect via Direct Secured Messaging

The Nebraska Health Information Initiative, Kansas Health Information Network, and Missouri Health Connection announce that they are now connected and able to exchange Direct secure messages across state lines.

Naperville’s Edward Hospital to merge with Elmhurst Memorial

Edward Hospital & Health Services of Naperville, IL and Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare announce plans to merge, forming a three-hospital health system with revenues of more than $1 billion.

Providers Get Help From Clinical Decision Support Evidence Vendors but Still Face Obstacles

KLAS evaluates clinical decision support strategies and roadblocks for providers and concludes that third-party order sets, care plans, and drug dictionaries lead the pack in CDS plans but notes that a lack of integration with EHRs is hindering the utilization of these tools.

King Saud University Signs a Strategic Agreement With Cerner for Two Major Hospitals in Saudi Arabia

King Saud University signs with Cerner to implement EHRs for two academic facilities in Saudi Arabia.

News 1/23/13

Top News

The Nebraska Health Information Initiative, Kansas HIN, and Missouri Health Connection connect their exchanges to share Direct secure messages across state lines.

Reader Comments

From Embers: “Re: Humedica. Being bought by Optum, I’ve heard. I wonder what will become of the Allscripts deal that frankly brought Humedica some business, but also had them running in circles (true for anyone dealing with Allscripts in the past few years)? Also, the new Optum research center in Cambridge is gathering steam and they are putting together a nice team to be a healthcare think tank. Hope you had a nice few days off – my imagination puts you on the podium with Obama and not sipping drinks by the pool.” A couple of readers told me they’ve heard that clinical data vendor Humedica has been acquired, one of them specifically saying it happened last week with no public announcement planned. Wednesday morning update: I’ve confirmed via a reader that the company has been sold to Optum. I’m happy to say that my mini-vacation consisted of the latter and not the former, as I took Mrs. HIStalk out of the country for some magnificent and rare downtime sprawling under 80-degree blue skies, swaying palms, and very small paper umbrellas that didn’t protect our white-to-red skin but did make our tropical drinks look even more fetching. I’m paying for the break today after getting home in the early morning, heading off to work just five hours later, and now sitting here with no break or bedtime in sight after 17 hours of non-stop catching up.

From EHR Watchdog: “Re: MedLink. See attached. Unfortunately customers can’t reach the company as its top two executives are being investigated by the SEC. The company’s EHR is certified and customers are no doubt trying to figure out what to do. One physician has a contractual requirement that records for his 6,000 patients will be available digitally, but he’s having to go through them one by one to either print or save to an external device as he shops for another EHR after spending thousands of dollars on MedLink.” The reader attached the SEC’s October 2012 complaint against Medlink and its two executives, Ray Vuono and Jameson Rose. It claims the company filed a Form 10-K audit report bearing the name of an auditing firm that had in fact not audited the company’s books, with that same SEC form bearing the electronic signature of one of the company’s directors who had not reviewed the form or authorized that his signature be attached. Lastly, the SEC claims an investor asked to have his check returned, but the company deposited it instead. In the SEC’s words, MedLink “purports to be a healthcare information technology company” and Vuono is “a recidivist securities law violator.” I know what that word means because Raising Arizona is one of my all-time favorite movies.

From Iconic Reader: “Re: Allscripts. The smoking doc, at least the reflector part of his attire, is apparently the model for the isolation icon in an Allscripts product!” I give them the nod for going old school, with a doc sporting a reflector thingy and a nurse wearing a starched white cap with a red cross on it.

From Pinky Toe: “Re: vendor shakeup. The vendor is Allscripts. Major reorg in the development group, which includes product management and testing, in which 200+ remote employees are being required to move to Raleigh, Chicago, or Burlington VT or face termination. This move not initiated by Paul Black, but he has sanctioned. This is a RIF, but instead of calling it a RIF, management is calling it a consolidation of resources to ‘centers of excellence.’” More convincing (but also unverified) were reader declarations that the vendor referenced in a reader’s earlier comment about employee layoffs is in fact NextGen, but I don’t have confirmation on anything since companies rarely announce or confirm personnel actions.

From Ben Dover: “Re: NextGen. Cutting personal days for employees, sent out the week of January 16 but backdated to January 1, which means employees who took personal days for the holiday will be back-charged for vacation.” Unverified, but the source is non-anonymous and has a copy of the internal communication. The backdating, which adds a bit of sting to the slap in the collective employee face, seems indicative of either an impulsive management decision or inability to get the corporate act together.

From THB: “Re: Edward Hospital & Health Services. Merging with Elmhurst Memorial Healthcare to create a $1 billion system that would be among the largest in the Chicago area. Edward is going through an Epic implementation.” Verified in a Tuesday announcement. I interviewed Edward VP/CIO Bobbie Byrne a year ago. Edward seems to be the dominant would-be partner, so I expect the Epic implementation will continue and Elmhurst will drop Meditech.  

From Idol Observer: “Re: Greenway’s announcement of meeting ONC 2014 criteria as an EHR Module. According to the announcement, they only met two criteria, a safety-enhanced system and a quality management system. The first requires the vendor to simply name their testing methodology for the features already required by the 2011 feature – no programming is required. The second is to just identify the quality management system being used, with no programming required there either. In other words, it’s just meaningless PR that will get physicians even more confused.” I get lost in all the certification minutiae, so I’ll defer to Frank Poggio.

From Rand Reader: “Re: the recent Rand report. It said EMRs remain costly without good outcomes because doctors haven’t re-engineered their workflows to accommodate electronic systems. Why would they want to do that when the change could be averse to safe care? Just an idea for your next poll.” My opinion is that many doctors will never accept EMRs because to do so would implicitly accept the idea of process standardization and repeatable processes everywhere, and doctors are trained to be confident in their individual abilities and wary of any process that doesn’t involve their own brains and hands. Patients are usually on the side of doctors since everybody likes to think they’re getting extra-special treatment and not being managed by a corporate algorithm. I don’t know that either side has proved its point convincingly.

From Just Wonderin: “Re: ONC’s HIT Safety and Surveillance Plan of December 21. The ‘public comments’ solicited by HHS are not so public after all since they are not being presented for the public to see. Is it because HHS and ONC don’t want the public to see the comments offered by the Cerner and Epic ilk?” It appears that comments can be submitted only via e-mail.

HIStalkapalooza 2013, Sponsored by Medicomp

HIStalkpalooza will be Monday, March 4, 2013 at Rock ‘n’ Bowl, New Orleans, LA. Medicomp CEO Dave Lareau, one of the coolest guys I know, wanted to bring you some real New Orleans flavor for Medicomp’s return as HIStalkapalooza sponsor. He’s ably assisted by the ultra-professional crew who engineered the 2011 event: Patrice at bzzz productions, Shannon and Cindy from Thomas Wright Partners, Anthony from Istrico Productions, and of course the Medicomp stars like Roy and James that you saw on the stage and at the Quipstar event on the HIMSS show floor.

Medicomp sponsored the 2011 event at BB King’s in Orlando (video is here, although I doubt anyone has forgotten that bash). They said then they wanted to return this year, so naturally I’m super happy to have them back and expecting them to rise to the challenge of a superb 2012 HIStalkapalooza in Las Vegas courtesy of ESD (I still play their video every now and then because it’s so cool).

Rock ‘n Bowl is equal parts bowling alley, dance hall, live music venue, and old-school Cajun-Zydeco shrine, which sounds kind of low-brow until you notice that it has earned a 4.5 average review on both Yelp and Tripadvisor. Beats the heck out of a cookie cutter hotel ballroom or a Disney-like fake Cajun place. It’s a big place even though the layout makes it hard to tell in pictures. Some details:

• Buses will take HIStalkapaloozans from the convention center to Rock ‘n’ Bowl and back to the key hotels.
• You’ll be offered the chance to once again execute your perfect red-carpet strut while having an Ingatini thrust into your parched palm and being surrounded by industry glitterati.
• You will have the option to sip (or guzzle) the aforementioned Ingatinis and Typhoon Janes, not to mention just a lot of drinks in general. The ladies are providing guidance on how they want their namesake potions prepared (I’ll bet there’s a lot of alcohol involved), so details on those will come later.
• You’ll be entertained by Brian Jack and the Zydeco Gamblers, with instructors leading you in Zydeco dance lessons if you so choose.
• You’ll be fed you authentically and well with red beans and rice, jambalaya, crawfish etouffee, and retro bowling alley food like pizza, wings, and fried seafood. No tray-passed mini-quiches or two-per-person drink tickets here, folks.
• Inga will be overseeing our usual shoe and attire contests, best bowling shirt judging, and some other categories I’m not privy to but that I expect will result me spending excessive money on beauty queen sashes and prizes. She can chime in later on the particulars.
• The inestimable Jonathan Bush will once again preside over the not-to-be-missed HISsies awards at 7:30, the role he created at the first HIStalkapalooza in 2008 and has held since. I have it on good authority that the people you chose for all of the important and serious awards (Industry Figure of the Year, Lifetime Achievement Award, etc.) will be there, which would be quite an assemblage of industry talent.
• There will be a fun bowling tournament, but since I haven’t bowled since college (translation: I’ve never bowled sober nor seen any reason to) I’ll let Medicomp explain how that will work later. I know some of Medicomp’s partner companies will be hosting individual lanes, so I’m sure we’ll have some fun folks there.
• You will have networking opportunities like crazy given the remarkable number of CEOs, VPs, investment bankers, press, and lower-ranking but generally amiable grunts like me who’ll be hanging around and lowering their guard to conduct frank and possibly slightly slurred conversations. Deals will be made, jobs will be offered, and a variety of propositions will be extended and considered. A good time will be had by all.

The registration page is now open. Since demand always exceeds supply, registration puts your name on the “I want to come” list. If we have enough capacity, everybody on the list will get an invitation in mid-February. If not, then I’ll have to channel my velvet rope bouncer technique in choosing who gets an invitation (providers and long-time HIStalk supporters get picked first, then I just try to make it interesting by employer and role). Every HIStalk reader is important to me, so I sure hope we can squeeze everybody in since it’s your night.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Kareo raises $20.5 million in series F funding led by Stripes Group.

Shares in Scotland-based revenue software vendor Craneware jump after the company said it expects half-year revenue to increase by seven percent.

Compuware reports Q3 results: revenue up two percent, EPS $0.12 vs. $0.10. The company says its Covisint HIE business grew 30 percent. The board says it will make a decision shortly about an unsolicited takeover offer of $11 per share, equal to the current share price.

Sales

King Saud University in Saudi Arabia contracts with Cerner to provide Millennium to two of its hospitals.

Lowell General Physician Hospital Organization (MA) selects HDS, athenahealth’s healthcare data management service for population-based cost and quality data analysis and reporting.

The New Mexico Health Information Collaborative will implement Orion Health’s HIE platform for its statewide exchange.

Henry Mayo Newhall Memorial Hospital (CA) selects Accent on Integration’s Accelero Connect platform to integrate its Philips IntelliVue patient monitors with its Meditech HIS and EDM solution.

Hong Kong and Tsuen Wan Adventist Hospitals select First Databank’s International Drug Knowledge.

El Camino Hospital (CA) chooses data warehouse and analytics solutions from Health Care DataWorks.

People

Mobile health provider Glooko hires Rick Altinger (Intuit Health) as CEO and Dean Lucas (Epocrates) as VP of product development. Glooko, which Dr. Travis included in a recent review of tools for diabetics, just received FDA 510(k) clearance for its mobile logbook device.

Amplion Clinical Communications names Tom Stephenson (Health Management Systems) president and COO.

Wendy Penfield (RealMed) joins Intellect Resources as VP of consulting services.

The Carroll County Chamber of Commerce (GA) names Greenway Medical founder W. Thomas Green as its 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year.

Rich Boehler, MD (MedeAnalytics) is named president and CEO of St. Joseph Healthcare (NH).

Announcements and Implementations

HIMSS awards 10 scholarships to students enrolled in HIT and management system degree programs.

Kansas City area hospitals form the Cerner-hosted Lewis and Clark Information Exchange (LACIE), originally created by Heartland Health.

Wheeling Hospital (WV) deploys PeriGen’s PeriCALM Plus in its obstetrical department.

UNC Health Care’s Rex Hospital (NC) implements Merge Hemo to automate cath lab processes into its EHR.

UPMC Beacon Hospital (Ireland) implements BridgeHead Software’s integrated backup solution for Meditech.

Neighborhood Health Plan and Partners HealthCare (MA) will provide $4.25 million in grants to 49 community health centers to expand HIT systems, train on Meaningful Use and medical coding, and train and build capacity for performance improvement.

HealthSparq launches its consumer health shopping platform (patient reviews, cost estimator, provider search, and social media forum) to health insurers.

The Government of Cantabria, Spain will deploy the initial phase of a European-wide e-health service from Texas-based Prodea Systems.

Other

Brian Ahier and a couple of privacy experts will discuss the new HIPAA rules in a Google Hangout streaming video session on Wedneday, January 23 (which is “today” for most readers) at 2:00 p.m. Eastern.

KLAS looks at clinical decision support tools and finds that more providers are turning to third-party order set and care plan vendors. Key findings:

• Almost half of providers using third-party products previously tried to build a solution from scratch.
• Among providers using third-party order sets, half use for reference content only because of an inability to move built pieces into the EMR.
• Most providers would like more ability to customize medication alerts.

Sponsor Updates

• SRS reports a 94 percent increase in revenues from 2011 to 2012 and the addition of 56 new employees.  
• AT&T Healthcare’s Christine Furjanic will speak at the Western Physicians’ Alliance (NV) January 29 seminar on accountable care.
• Orchestrate Healthcare expands and relocates its corporate headquarters to Carbondale, CO.
• Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc., announces that Greenway PrimeSUITE 2014 (17.0) is compliant with the ONC 2014 Edition criteria and has earned certification as an EHR Module.
• Shareable Ink reports 300 percent year-over-year growth and a twofold increase in employees since January 2012.
• PatientPay CEO Thomas Furr offers advice on managing practice A/Rs and cash flow in a guest articl.
• API Healthcare announces a 60 percent increase in year-over-year sales bookings and record bookings in the fourth quarter of 2012.
• T-System will offer the PayRight Health Solutions patient collection system with its RevCycle+ solution.
• CynergisTek and managed security service provider Solutionary partner to offer outsourced security monitoring.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 1/21/13

I often make fun of the American Medical Association and some of its initiatives. Despite being a life member (with a lovely crystal paperweight to prove it), I find some of their initiatives extremely whiny and self-serving.

Last week Mr. H mentioned their recent letter to ONC urging review of Meaningful Use Stage 1 and Stage 2 prior to committing to Stage 3. Given some of the murmuring about a potential Stage 4, I’m supportive of this request. The AMA shares key concerns and recommendations from physicians.

First, the requirement for achieving 100 percent on all measures is problematic. Failure to meet one measure by one percent invalidates the physician’s entire effort and opens the door to penalties. I agree, and if Eligible Providers are going to be held to this type of standard, I’d like it to also be applied to federal disability processors, Medicare claims reps, and the people at the Department of Motor Vehicles. I’d also like it applied to my personal insurance carrier. For the four medical claims I had last year, three had processing errors leading to demands that I pay amounts I didn’t actually owe.

In addition to trying to achieve MU perfection, providers are trying to gain Patient-Centered Medical Home recognition, become part of Accountable Care Organizations, submit data for PQRS, and maintain board certification. There are also payer-centric and employer-centric quality initiatives. They all have different rules. I can barely keep up with the CMS FAQs let alone all the other information out there and I have a team to assist. I can’t fathom what it’s like to be a solo physician on this hamster wheel.

Second, one size doesn’t fit all. All specialties are required to meet the same core measures with few exceptions. The document goes on to state that the program is too primary-care focused and asks that specialists be allowed to opt out of any measure that has “little relevance to the physician’s routine scope of practice.” Knowing that my group’s orthopedic surgeons tried to opt out of vital signs (stating that blood pressure wasn’t relevant to their scope of practice), I urge caution here. Personally I think anyone who prescribes medications should be concerned about blood pressures, but quite a few of my colleagues disagree.

Third, the program needs independent evaluation to allow improvement. I agree here as well. Often MU seems like one giant experiment without an Institutional Review Board looking out for the safety of the participants. We’re being used as guinea pigs and the potential outcomes could be disastrous. I’m watching colleagues become increasingly burned out and motivated to leave the profession, which is completely counterproductive.

The AMA asks for an evaluation between each stage prior to finalizing the requirements for the next stages. I completely agree here. The timeline is too tight and is forcing vendors to abandon true usability enhancements and code changes that support clinical care. Development time and effort is instead focused on making sure their system meets the certification requirements regardless of whether those requirements improve patient care or the user experience. In many ways, it feels like Meaningful Use is stifling innovation.

Fourth, usability needs to be addressed and made part of the certification process. I hope that important issues such as alert fatigue receive attention to better support patient safety and clinical quality. Further down in the usability section, the AMA buries a request that ONC should consider requiring vendors of certified EHRs to commit to supporting subsequent MU stages. They also request protection from “excessive vendor charges” for physicians who switch systems. I’ve never seen a conversion project that didn’t generate excessive charges, so this is a great discussion point.

Fifth, IT infrastructure barriers should be resolved to allow improved data sharing. Working in a major metropolitan market, I experience this every day. The patient who showed up in my emergency department in labor had records at another health system that doesn’t communicate with ours. The suspected drug-seeker next to her admits to filling prescriptions at seven different pharmacies, which means she probably uses far more than that. There was no way to see what she was actually on to determine whether she’d have a risk of drug interaction with my proposed treatment.

The document is 20 pages long and you’ll have to jump to Page 10 to see the additional recommendations, which include streamlining regulatory requirements, aligning MU with other regulatory programs, and allowing three years between states to allow adequate time for rulemaking, product development, and implementation.

Considering the amount of change management that needs to go into any successful workflow redesign project, this may be one of the most important suggestions. Practices are not just coping with technology change but a complete overhaul of how they care for patients. Providers need to learn how to be more transparent with patients and how to better coach patients into a true partnership with their care teams. They need to train staff to operate in a new paradigm. They need to figure out how to juggle the constant demands that having electronic records place on them. They need to combat the burnout that comes with those demands and learn how to regain some kind of work-life balance. And if they fail at an initial stage, providers need time to figure out what went wrong and put measures in place to be successful at their next attempts.

I sincerely hope that ONC is receptive and that Meaningful Use doesn’t continue like the runaway train it seems to be. Have you read the AMA letter, and if so, what do you think? E-mail me.

E-mail Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 1/22/13

Rex Hospital Selects Merge Hemo to Image-Enable Enterprise EHR

Rex Hospital, a member of UNC Health Care, has implemented Best in KLAS cardiology solution Merge Hemo to automate their cath lab and integrate data with their Epic EHR.

Physician EHRs emerge as hot advertising venue for drugs

Cloud-based EHRs are increasingly working with drug manufacturers to deliver point-of-care advertisements embedded within the EHR.

49 community health centers win grants to boost HIT infrastructure

Neighborhood Health Plan and Partners HealthCare award $4.25 million in grants divided among the 49 members of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. The grants will help fund the implementation of practice management systems and provide meaningful use training.

Shareable Ink Achieves Substantial Growth and Expands Team

Shareable Ink, a cloud-based clinical documentation vendor, announces that during 2012 it grew 300 percent and doubled its workforce.

Morning Headlines 1/21/13

athenahealth and MedOasis to Provide Comprehensive, High-Value Anesthesia Billing Solution for Hospital Departments and Independent Practices

athenahealth and MedOasis will partner to provide an anesthesia-specific billing solution that combines athenahealth’s claims processing solution with MedOasis’ anesthesia coding, charge-entry, contract management, and compliance capabilities.

UCSF Medical Center throws a great outside curve ball, keeps EMR rollout under wraps

The local paper profiles University of California San Francisco’s $160 million Epic implementation, which quietly reached its completion one year overdue and $100 million over budget. In May of 2011, then CIO Larry Lotenero was shown the door after implementation costs ballooned to three times expectations.

Identifying Personal Genomes by Surname Inference

A group of fifty men who anonymously donated DNA to genome research have been positively identified by scientists who were able to identify the patient, their address, and their relatives by taking the little demographic information maintained on the donors, and supplementing that with the wealth of information extracted from the donors genome.

Allscripts to Announce Fourth Quarter and Full Year 2012 Financial Results on February 19

Allscripts announces that it will report year-end financials during a February 19 investor call.

Monday Morning Update 1/21/13

From Jean Valjean “Re: Vendor shake-up. A major EHR vendor plans to dismiss between 10 and 20 percent of its workforce aimed at development, product management, marketing, and testing groupings. Employees also say the organization is taking initial measures to remove all personal days and compelling employees to use vacation time. Morale is very low and several key employees are leaving on their own. Issues stem from the recent appointment of a key executive whose management style is unknown.” This email contained just enough details (which I removed) to identify the company. However, the accusations are incredibly vague, though if any of it is true, employees may recognize their employer. If you can identify the company and want to share some verifiable details, drop me a note.

A dozen health systems earn a spot on Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For 2013, including Southern Ohio Medical Center (29), Meridian Health (39) , and Mayo Clinic (41). I liked the perk offered by Methodist Hospital System (67): every employee received a $200 debit card to recognize their efforts and to promote the hospital’s ICare philosophy.

Speaking of great employers, Mr. H is taking a few days off so I am flying solo. I’m not sure whether he is sitting on a beach with an umbrella drink or skiing down a mountain, but I am sure he is putting together a few new Spotify playlists for your music diehards. I don’t have a playlist to share, but I can recommend Lincoln and Zero Dark Thirty if are interested in hitting the movie theater.  Especially Zero Dark Thirty, which stars Jessica Chastain as a very smart, tough, and attractive CIA operative committed to finding Osama Bin Laden. Really, who doesn’t love a smart, tough, attractive woman? I’ll also mention for the HIMSS-attending fun seekers that we will be sharing details of HIStalkapalooza this week, including a link to request an invite.

United Airlines did not make the Best Companies list, but offers a nice perk by providing free health services at several of its hubs, including a just-opened employee health clinic at Chicago’s O’Hare airport. It’s one of five Walgreens-managed facilities available for all employees.

athenahealth announces it will offer an anesthesia-specific billing solution for hospitals and independent practices.  MedOasis will provide the capabilities for anesthesia coding, charge-entry, contract management, and compliance.

The VA again awards HP Enterprise Services a $543 million contract for RTLS, three months after IBM contested the original award granted in July. The GAO upheld the protest, saying the VA had made several prejudicial errors in evaluating the original offers from HP, IBM, and four other vendors. The VA re-opened the bid process in October and again selected HP to equip 152 medical centers.

Audax Health, which recently signed a strategic alliance with Cigna to develop a digital engagement platform, raises $21 million through a mix of debt, options, and other securities. The company also names four new executives including Optum alums Doug Celebi, MD (SVP of informatics) and Brian Dolan (chief customer solutions officer).

Saint Anthony’s Health Center (IL) will offer emergency tele-neurological services in partnership with Specialists On Call.

The local business journal profiles UCSF Medical Center and its $160 million Epic EMR, which went live in June. The reporter includes a few details that UCSF would likely rather forget, such as the project taking a year longer than originally estimated and costing $100 million more.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Time Capsule: Process Anarchy: Why Hospitals Buy Off the Rack, But Expect a Tailor-Made Fit

I wrote weekly editorials for a boutique industry newsletter for several years, anxious for both audience and income. I learned a lot about coming up with ideas for the weekly grind, trying to be simultaneously opinionated and entertaining in a few hundred words, and not sleeping much because I was working all the time. They’re fun to read as a look back at what was important then (and often still important now).

I wrote this piece in May 2008.

Process Anarchy: Why Hospitals Buy Off the Rack, But Expect a Tailor-Made Fit
By Mr. HIStalk

I recently met with a group of employees from one department in a big medical center. So big, in fact, that many of that department’s couple of hundred employees didn’t know each other and had to be introduced. They’re assigned to odd locations, doing highly specialized work, and rarely poke their heads out to see what’s going on anywhere else, even within their own department.

We were talking a software rollout that affected them. That’s where the consensus thing comes into play – how they should use it, what changes they would see, and all the other painful change management stuff that wraps itself around a technology implementation.

Two of them were talking and animatedly gesticulating. It looked like an American tourist trying to get a Moscow local to understand that he’s looking for a restroom by just saying it slower and louder. Finally, one turned around and said (with some combination of wonderment and exasperation), “We work one floor apart, but it’s a completely different world.”

There’s an automation challenge for you. One information system, but two completely opposite groups trying to agree on how it should be configured. From the same department of the same hospital.

That’s a nightmare for healthcare idealists and software developers. In a perfect world, all hospitals would work the same. In a less-perfect world, hospitals might vary, but at least practices within a single hospital would be consistent. In a world that’s in disarray, everyone in a given department would at least follow a single set of rules. And in a world of madness, even small subgroups of individual departments do things their own way, a healthcare version of anarchy.

I’d say most hospitals are somewhere between disarray and madness. That doesn’t even account for IDNs with hospitals from 50 beds to 1,000 beds that face the daunting challenge of getting all of them to agree on a single software setup that reflects their intra-group disarray.

Certain hospital areas are so ruggedly individualistic that nobody else understands them 90 percent of the time (peds, oncology, surgery, ED, and ICU). Experienced nurses who transfer in feel like new grads all over again because everything is different (that’s a big problem right there). They defiantly stick with puzzling practices and dare well-intentioned outsiders (like administrators) to understand what they do, much less change it.

Those practices mimic the medical education of the doctors who work there, which rewards specialization. Each specialty proudly creates its own lingo, methods, and forms. Sometimes they’re necessary extensions, sometimes plainly bizarre and illogical practices used like gang colors – to make sure outsiders know they’re outsiders.

That’s why best-of-breed systems designed for those specialty areas won’t go away in the foreseeable future. That’s also why systems that all areas use, like CPOE and clinical documentation, can turn into an unmanageable stew of configurability options that drive vendors crazy when they’re trying to program and test changes. Instead of delivering strategic new functionality, products keep moving laterally with new options to be chosen once, even though a given client will just set it and forget it without receiving any real benefit.

Vendors have it tough. The respective agendas of current customers vs. prospects are very different. Entire new functionality may interest only a few potential users. The most vocal users are the showcase accounts, like academic medical centers, who demand changes that make no sense to the average hospital. Any resemblance to consensus is accidental.

(And here’s a vendor kudo: what little standardization exists in hospitals can be attributed to three groups: software vendors, the Joint Commission, and professional organizations for specific disciplines.)

Maybe it’s asking too much for vendors to deliver off-the-shelf software that every hospital can not only use, but love. One size doesn’t fit all.

Lip service aside, most hospitals want it their way. Anything less makes them angry. Cost and complexity forces them to buy suits off the rack when, deep down, what they really want is to have a tailor to make them one that fits perfectly.

Morning Headlines 1/18/13

New rule protects patient privacy, secures health information

HHS announces modifications to HIPAA that substantially expand privacy, security, enforcement, and HITECH breach notification rules. The final rule is effective March 26, 2013 and is expected to require an initial economic cost of $114 million to $225 million.

Department of Veterans Affairs Selects HP to Help Improve Operations, Healthcare Services

HP wins a 5-year, $543 million contract to implement RTLS across 152 VA medical center.

Hospital Board Discusses Grade Change By the Leapfrog Group

The Leapfrog Group has retracted the "F" grade it gave 25-bed Texas County Memorial Hospital after an investigation found that the research methodology used was questionable and relied on inaccurate data sources.

A centralized research data repository enhances retrospective outcomes research capacity: a case report

Researchers at Columbia University find that using a data repository to conduct outcomes research significantly enhances overall workflow efficiency.

News 1/18/13

Top News

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius announces the final omnibus rule that substantially changes HIPAA regulations for the first time in 15 years. It (a) expands HIPAA’s reach to business associates such as contractors who will now be directly liable; (b) increases penalties to a maximum of $1.5 million per violation; and (c) clarifies the HITECH breach notification requirements. Patient provisions include (a) the right to request their own information in electronic form; (b) allowing cash-paying patients to instruct providers to not share their treatment information with their insurance company; and (c) limiting the use and sale of a patient’s information without their permission. The 563-page document has considerable detail including a discussion of feedback received, so feel free to leave a comment with nuggets you run across.

Reader Comments

From Digital Probe: “Re: headline. One of the rags ran a headline all day saying Health Information Exchange over a story about health insurance exchanges.” Indeed they did, and they’ve since quietly corrected their mistake, I see. I’m slightly mystified by their confusion, but even more so at their running a lengthy article on health insurance exchanges in an IT publication intended for a provider audience who I can’t image cares one iota about them.

From Android Powered: “Re: TPD’s list of iPhone apps. Anybody want to share their list for Android?”

From Boy Gary: “Re: Anthem CA Blue Cross. Their electronic eligibility system is down, so they e-mailed providers telling them to e-mail subscriber and patient information to check eligibility. They’re asking for the subscriber’s Social Security number to be sent by unsecured e-mail.” That’s such a bad idea that I’ll overlook their less-egregious omission of the apostrophes in the possessive occurrences of “subscriber’s.” They get credit for at least putting a manual step in place to help providers get paid.

From The PACS Designer: “MakerBot at CES. An addition to MakerBot’s product line that TPD posted about was introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show in the form of a 3D plastic design system. The MakerBot Replicator 2X 3D printer uses melted plastic to form objects based on available 3D pattern software. So, for example you want a new coffee mug, you use your pattern design software to create the desired result. Maybe one of our adventurous readers will buy the Replicator to design a new shoe for Inga!” Pretty fascinating – the $1,749 device can replicate household hardware parts, antiques, and who knows what else.

From Lumpy Rutherford: “Re: former NextGen President Pat Cline. He has resigned from the QSI board effective immediately and on his LinkedIn page lists himself as CEO of newly incorporated Delaware corporation Lightbeam Health Information Systems. I don’t know the connection, but I suppose you could draw conclusions.” Indeed you could. I was interested in the corporation’s other officers, but couldn’t turn them up on Delaware’s corporations page (at least not without paying).

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

My inbox has been filling up with inquiries about HIStalkapalooza. Here’s what I can share for now. We will post a link to the invite sometime in the next couple of weeks, so keep reading HIStalk. We will again have the Inga Loves My Shoe contest as well as a crowning of the HIStalk King and Queen for best attire. Translation: if you needed a legitimate excuse for splurging on a new outfit, you now have one. However, you might want to wait for more details on the event because it may influence your final selection. The date again is Monday, March 4 at 6:30 p.m.

The latest goodies from HIStalk Practice include: the HIStalk Practice Advisory Panel discusses the various resources they use when purchasing HIT system to compare vendors and products. Bruce Henderson of Aetna Accountable Care Solutions suggests some factors that practices should consider before committing to an ACO model. Rob Drewniak of Hayes Consulting Management overviews and defines data governance. SRS CEO Evan Steele expresses concern about the future of the EHR incentive program. Proposed legislation would provide SBA loan guarantees for the purchase of clinical IT systems. A study suggests that projected primary care physician shortages could be eliminated if practices used EHRs and shifted more care to non-physician providers. EHR adoption by family physicians is expected to exceed 80 percent by the end of 2013. Most physicians don’t find online physician ratings helpful, though the vast majority believe their own ratings are at least partially accurate. Thanks for reading.

I’m taking a short beach break, leaving Miss Inga in charge of the Monday Morning Update. You can occupy your time by (a) connecting with us via our non-Catfished social not-working profiles; (b) porting intently and clicking methodically over the ads to your right from the folks who underwrite your HIStalk habit, if such a thing exists for anyone but me; (c) signing up for spam-free e-mail updates; (d) reviewing more in-depth sponsor information and filling out a two-minute form to solicit consulting help; and (e) evangelizing to your colleagues who won’t see our slick marketing campaigns and ads since we don’t have any. Seriously, you are the best.

On the Jobs Board: Product Marketing Specialist, Expert Solution Consultant – Revenue Cycle Specialist, Healthcare Vertical Solutions Director, Sr. Applications Engineer – EMR.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

PE firm Primus Capital Funds invests in Emmi Solutions, a provider of patient engagement solutions.

MIT Media Lab spinout Atelion Health will commercialize one of the lab’s project, a care coordination system that’s being tested at Boston Medical Center, Joslin Diabetes center, and Mayo Clinic.

Cleveland-area data archiving vendor MediQuant, which says its revenue is growing at 45 percent per year, moves into a larger space for its 40 employees and the 10 additional it plans to hire this year.

A hedge fund shareholder of Compuware criticizes the company for “intentionally dragging your feet” by not yet responding to a $2.3 billion December 18 takeover offer from Elliott Management Corp. Just after it received that offer, Compuware announced plans to conduct an $200 million IPO of its Covisint HIE business unit by the end of March.

Sales

Centra Health (VA) selects Wolters Kluwer Health’s ProVation software for cardiology procedure documentation and coding.

HP Enterprise Services announces that it has been chosen by the VA for a $543 million, five-year, 152-hospital RTLS contract, being issued the bid again after competitor protests of last year’s award. Subcontractors are CenTrak, Intelligent InSites, and WaveMark.

People

The Society of Health Systems and HIMSS award Dean Athanassiades, senior director of software customer services for Philips Healthcare, the 2012 SHS/HIMSS Excellence in Healthcare Management / Process Improvement Award for leadership in implementing synergies between the process improvement and IT professions.

Symphony Health Solutions names Frank Lavelle (Siemens Medical Solutions, Medquist) CEO.

Doug Cusick (HP, IBM) joins Clinovations as a partner, tasked with leading the expansion of the company’s payer, life sciences, and technology service lines.

Dann Lemerand is promoted to EVP of strategic alliances for The HCI Group.

Announcements and Implementations

Greenway Medical Technologies unveils its interactive Developer Portal and API to facilitate creation of apps that interoperate with Greenway’s EHR and PM platform.

Siemens Healthcare offers consulting services for value-based purchasing, preventable readmissions, and healthcare-acquired conditions.

A Dell-sponsored study finds that the family medicine residency program of Tallahassee Memorial HealthCare (FL) saved $600,000 and enhanced productivity by implementing the company’s Mobile Clinical Computing solution, which includes desktop virtualization, single sign-on, and strong authentication.

Government and Politics

ONC selects four winners of its Health Design Challenge to develop patient-friendly designs for printed health records to help patients better understand and use their EHRs. The winners shared $31,000 in prize money.

ONC publishes several reports on HIEs.

In the UK, Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt calls on NHS to become paperless by 2018, making it “the most modern digital health service in the world.” The physician’s union replied, “The biggest challenges to making the NHS paperless by 2018 are down to funding, resources, prioritization, and the choice of systems in secondary care. Although there may potentially be some efficiency savings, technology will not necessarily create huge cost savings. As well as ongoing hardware and software funding, sufficient resources will be required to support evolving training, IT support and admin support.” Other goals the Secretary set: (a) every patient will have online access to their own records by March 2015; (b) referrals will be paperless; (c) patient records held in different locations will be linked; and (d) records will follow patients throughout NHS and social care.

Technology

A NIH-funded University of Pittsburgh study of four skin lesion apps finds that three of them weren’t very good at diagnosing a test set containing 53 images of lesions known to be cancerous. The apps incorrectly concluded that 30 percent of the lesions weren’t cancerous. The fourth app, which sends the image to a dermatologist for review, missed only one of the samples. The conclusion is to not trust unregulated apps with important medical decisions.

Other

The Leapfrog Group retracts the “F” grade it gave to Texas County Memorial Hospital (MO) after the hospital complains that its score was based on incorrect data. The 25-bed hospital opted not to participate in Leapfrog’s survey because it did not have the resources required to complete the 80-page questionnaire. It says Leapfrog applied “questionable methodology” and used information that was not confirmed by NQF or independently assessed for reliability and validity. The hospitals has retained legal counsel. 

Siemens Health Services CEO John Glaser, who served as an ONC senior advisor helping craft Meaningful Use in 2009 while still VP/CIO at Partners HealthCare, agrees with several member organizations in calling for a slowdown of its rollout. He says, “The pace is too damned high. People are just cramming this stuff in.” Johns Hopkins Vice Provost for IT/CIO Stephanie Reel says the “one size fits all” approach is causing headaches for specialists and the Meaningful Use program needs to be evaluated for effectiveness, saying, “To keep moving ahead with such an aggressive strategy strikes me as foolish. We don’t know what’s working and what’s not working.” Obviously pushback is escalating.

Sporting Kansas City, partly owned by Neal and Cliff of Cerner, parts ways with its charity partner, Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong. ESPN says Livestrong cancelled the stadium-naming deal because the soccer team owed it money, while Sporting KC takes advantage of the Dope Pedaler headlines by loudly announcing the breakup with perfect timing. Livestrong’s name gets yanked down from the Livestrong Sporting Park sign and it loses its percentage of the gate, worth $8-10 million over six years.

An article in a security magazine says Australian security researcher have found “dangerous, unpatched flaws” in the Philips Xper cardiovascular imaging system that allow them free access to patient information. The researchers said they weren’t able to connect with someone at Philips, so they got in touch with the Department of Homeland Security and the FDA instead. They claim Homeland Security told them the agency was taking over all aspects of software vulnerabilities related to medical devices and software. Philips says the flaw is present only in old versions of its software. The researchers also played around with an iPad-based patient monitoring and found problems.

Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago sues a web design firm, seeking the return of the $859,000 it paid the company to design a site to promote its new $915 million hospital.

The Dallas paper profiles Robert Abbate, DO, who started One Touch EMR, an iPad-based EMR.   

A reader once swore she would never read HIStalk again if I mentioned the term “fecal transplant” again, so here’s a sad but necessary wave goodbye to her from Weird News Andy, who subtitles the story “May I borrow some Grey Poopon?” A study finds that the unsavory procedure works better than antibiotics for treating diarrhea due to C. Diff. WNA adds, “When they figure out how to put them in a pill, maybe,” which I might argue is even more disturbing.

Sponsor Updates

• Columbia Valley Community Health (WA) chooses Access Evolution for creating and managing paperless forms and workflow.
• Craneware offers VP-and-above healthcare finance executives a chance to win a $250 Amazon gift card if they answer a 10-question Executive Industry Survey by February 5.
• HMS will participate in the HFMA Region 11 conference in Las Vegas January 27-30 and the THA 2013 Annual Conference February 13-14 in Austin.
• dbMotion shares the agenda for its February 7 seminar in Dallas on connected healthcare.
• Emdat adds Carmichael Business Systems, Northland Business Systems, and Integrated Data Technology as resellers of its digital dictation software.
• The Advisory Board Company offers an infographic  that addresses accountability gaps and best practices for improving teamwork among frontline staff.
• The City of Springfield (OH) renews its contract with MED3OOO for EMS billing services through January 31, 2014.
• The US Army Network Enterprise Technology Command issues CommVault a Certificate of Networthiness for its Simpana 9 data and information management software.
• Santa Rosa Consulting’s Carl Jaekel discusses issues practices will need to consider to accommodate PCMHs in a blog post.
• T-System offers its T Sheets flu documentation template free to hospitals to help EDs manage the national flu epidemic.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

Every day is a good day to be anonymous, especially for the HIStalk team. Sometimes I marvel that I haven’t been outed at the office. I and am grateful that apparently I have enough of a filter so that my superhero identity isn’t revealed. I do have to be especially vigilant to ensure I’m logged into the correct Facebook and Twitter accounts so I don’t inadvertently post as the “wrong” me.

I’m just one of thousands of physicians using social media and was excited to see this article in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The authors sent hypothetical social media situations to various state medical boards to evaluate whether there was consensus on which situations might lead to a disciplinary evaluation. Not surprisingly, the riskiest posts included misleading clinical or credentialing information, using patient images without permission, and inappropriate contact with patients such as contacting them on dating sites. There was low consensus for sharing clinical anecdotes (as long as confidentiality was maintained) and for “showing alcohol use without intoxication.”

I do have some latent Victorian sensibilities, so I’m not sure photos of anyone drinking belong on Facebook. I have been friended by some of my colleagues and I think that either they have forgotten that their posts are visible to the workplace or perhaps they simply don’t care. Working for a conservative non-profit, I’d be a little concerned that those posts could someday be an issue (if not for the current workplace then for a potential or future employer.)

Many organizations have social media policies or codes of conduct, but it’s not a bad idea to find out if there are “informal” policies in play as well. Is it frowned upon for subordinates to “friend” their supervisors? Is there a difference between connecting on Facebook and connecting on LinkedIn? What about posting to social medial during typical business hours? Depending on an employee’s role and career goals, some of these are less than appropriate.

Having TMI (Too Much Information) seems to have become the norm. I’m not advocating for a return to the days of inkwells and quill pens, but I do miss having a little mystery in the world. I don’t need a photo of your lunch every day, unless of course if includes an awesome martini. If you have pictures of those, feel free to e-mail me.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Morning Headlines 1/17/13

AHA, AMA, CHIME Challenge Stage 3 Meaningful Use Proposals

The advocacy groups representing hospitals, doctors, and health IT professionals have all submitted comments criticizing Stage 3 MU.

Accuracy of Electronically Reported “Meaningful Use” Clinical Quality Measures: A Cross-sectional Study

A cross-sectional study published by Annals of Internal Medicine measuring the accuracy of electronic reporting as compared to manual review concludes that the quality measurements outlined in MU have wide accuracy variations that should be further investigated.

Are providers ripe for a massive medical records heist?

More than 50 percent of healthcare organizations report medical identity theft among their patients. The World Privacy Forum estimates the street value of a single medical record at 50 times that of a financial record.

The Rise of Electronic Health Record Adoption Among Family Physicians

A study published in the Annals of Family Medicine predicts EHR adoption rates among family physicians increasing to 80 percent in 2013.

Readers Write 1/16/13

Submit your article of up to 500 words in length, subject to editing for clarity and brevity (please note: I run only original articles that have not appeared on any Web site or in any publication and I can’t use anything that looks like a commercial pitch). I’ll use a phony name for you unless you tell me otherwise. Thanks for sharing!

The views and opinions expressed are those of the authors personally and are not necessarily representative of their current or former employers.

Lessons Learned from My First HIMSS in 2007
By Bern Werner

Six years ago I set out on a journey from Pittsburgh, flying to Baltimore to be picked up by my young boss (Todd Johnson, the 25-year-old head of our six-person software company, Salar Inc) in his 140,000 mile-worn Toyota Forerunner for a trip to New Orleans. The truck was loaded with precious cargo and our booth for HIMSS07, packaged neatly in three plastic containers. 

On our first day of the journey, we mused over where the healthcare IT industry was headed and whether there was a future in it for our small company.

When I joined Salar a year earlier, we had begun implementing our physician documentation software at 20-hospital system that already had a major EMR (I’m not saying who the vendor was, but the company name has six letters and I met the owner by chance at HIMSS  before I knew that his booth was worth more than our company). I figured the big fish would just look at our success, then “ borrow” our IP and we’d be out of business in a couple of years. 

We made it safely to New Orleans, and I was excited to be on the floor. I was admittedly green, and knowing the value that we could provide, I was eager to sell it to anything that came within two feet of our booth. 

My favorite memory is of one visitor that walked up to our booth just after the convention hall had cleared for morning session. I was tending the booth on my own. He was accompanied by two booth bunnies. I was alone in front of our 10×10 booth with our slick, new, cloth marketing extravaganza. I asked him if he was interested in seeing a physician documentation tool that is better than anything on the market and drives physician adoption, etc. He was very kind and let me finish before saying, “No, thanks. I was looking for that booth that has a treadmill. Know where that is?” I did not.

As he walked away, my boss was just returning to the booth. He said to me, “Do you know who that was?” I said no. He said, “That was Neal Patterson.” Thus began my real HIMSS education.

I now find myself preparing for HIMSS 13 with the same company, but with two million completed forms and over six million captured charges behind me. Though I’m flying to New Orleans this time, there are many parallels to the 2007 road trip (which included driving through tornadoes on the way home and roaches in the non HIMSS-approved hotel) and events of the past year, with our company changing hands three times. 

One thing for sure is that I’m no longer worried about the big guys getting ahead of us when it comes to innovation. They can steal our ideas and they can try to pilfer our content, but they move like the QE2 we’re still zipping around in our speedboat, changing direction as fast as our customers demand.  

If I find HIMSS 13 to be a sales bust, no biggie. Not only will I be able to recognize some of the industry’s biggest icons, I know I’ll have a good time at the HIStalk party.

Bern Werner is VP of implementation with Salar of Baltimore, MD. 

Ambulatory EHR Adoption: Success vs. Failure
By Justin Scambray, MBA

In a New York Times article, In Second Look, Few Savings From Digital Health Records, David Blumenthal, MD expresses his thoughts on the current struggles the US health care system is facing with the successful adoption of the EHR. Technology “is only a tool,” said Blumenthal. “Like any tool, it can be used well or poorly.”

While there is strong evidence that electronic records can contribute to better care and more efficiency, the systems in place do not always work in ways that help achieve those benefits.

Technology is only a tool, and it is true that it’s all in how you use it. However, it’s not just good use of the technology that will yield results. Physicians need to understand that current processes and the way their practice has run for the last 15-20 years must change.

To put a tool like an EHR in place and expect that it will conform to existing systems and workflow is like changing all the rules in a game, but not changing how the player plays it. This is what many practices end up doing, and the very tools put in place that are supposed to help the practice begin to work against it.

After working in the ambulatory EHR market for seven years, selling and being a part of hundreds of implementations, there is one common attribute that I have seen that separates success from failure: the ability to change and adapt systems and processes to the right tools and right people.

The EHR market has been plagued with the thought that this tool — the EHR — will change the medical practice. The fact of the matter is that it is the practice that needs to change for the EHR to work properly. Careful business process mapping and systems redesign needs to take place prior to implementation of any new tool into a business, and it is no different for a medical practice.

If you have ever sat in on a physician EHR demo, they all want to see the same thing. "Show me how I would see a patient in your system from check-in to check-out." All too often, vendors will immediately start to fumble through a canned patient scenario that really has nothing to do with the current office workflow. The physician will watch, ask a few questions in between taking phone calls and signing off on charts, and never really get a good idea of how the EHR will work in their office.

Is it any wonder that a recent survey conducted by KLAS shows that the number of practices shopping for a replacement EHR jumped from 30 percent in 2011 to 50 percent in 2012? Among the top reasons for switching: decreased productivity.

The EHR is only a tool. It is a tool that requires careful integration and mapping between a current state and desired future state design. If the EHR is going to live up to expectations, it’s a focus on change in workflow, processes, and systems that’s going to get it there.

Justin Scambray is VP ofsSales and marketing for Pacific Medical Data Solutions of Paso Robles, CA

Argument for Healthcare Enterprise Project Management Office
By Joe Crandall

Every hospital project is an IT project.

How many times have you heard that in the past few years? A quick look at the evidence and there is little room for argument:

• Hospital budgets remain stagnant while healthcare IT projects grow. Eight of ten providers expect organizational HIE budgets to significantly increase by 2014 (2012 Black Book State of the Enterprise HIE Industry report).
• Unprecedented HIT spending. $40b investment in all IT related services, $8.2b in software services alone (RNCO study).
• The rise of health data analytics (HDA). Almost every aspect of healthcare can be improved through the use of HDA. Terabytes of healthcare data … terabytes!

As the American healthcare industry moves into its own Information Age, the existing IT infrastructure supporting the projects of today must be realigned strategically across the entire organization to support the projects of tomorrow.

The function of a healthcare Enterprise Project Management Office (EPMO) is pretty simple. The EPMO would be the single source of information related to all strategically aligned projects for the entire organization. This creates more accountability, better communication, and data governance.

Along with implementing an EPMO, an organization must look at the portfolio management process. You can’t have one without the other. The EPMO ensures the projects are done right, but the portfolio management process ensures that the right projects are chosen.

With each IT project being considered a major strategic project, the EPMO becomes the communication hub for the organization. It provides timely and effective mitigation of issues, risks, and budgets. The EPMO makes sure communications are the right message at the right level at the right time. The EPMO also standardizes the best practices of project management across the organization so all projects run smoother.

The other byproduct of elevating the PMO to an EPMO is that the CIO and team become true partners within the organization. The IT staff is already involved in the majority of projects already. Why not leverage their skills to benefit the entire organization?

The benefits to implementing an EPMO are clear:

1. Project alignment. All projects introduced are managed through a central resource and aligned with organizational goals
2. Project capacity. More projects in less time. Long-term planning is simpler and efficient.
3. Project focus. Projects are focused on the strategic goals of the institution and embrace lasting change, not the “flavor of the month.”
4. Project execution. Projects are executed with industry-standard processes resulting in project done right, on time, and completely.
5. Project redundancy. One central location has the knowledge to ensure projects are not duplicative or redundant.

One example. In 2008, Catholic Health Initiatives (CHI) established an IT EPMO with the goal of standardizing best practices and improving project success rates across all hospital IT departments within the health system. Since being established, the EPMO has reached its goals and then some. Due to its success, the EPMO was repositioned to support all enterprise-wide projects in 2012. 

Every hospital project is an IT project.

Joe Crandall is director of client engagement solutions of Greencastle Associates Consulting of Malvern, PA.

Morning Headlines 1/16/13

Primary Partners and AMC Health Team Up to Provide Telemonitoring for High-Risk Patients

Primary Partners, a physician-owned ACO, enters into an agreement with AMC Health to provide telemonitoring services for patients managing diabetes, heart failure, COPD, and other chronic conditions.

HealthEast Care System Employs RelayHealth for Enterprise HIE for Care Coordination Across its Network

HealthEast Care System, a four-hospital health system, selects RelayHealth to manage its network-wide HIE. HealthEast announced a $135 million Epic deal this past December.

Healthcare Leaders Join KLAS Advisory Board

John Halamka (CIO, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center), Denni McColm (CIO, Citizens Memorial Hospital), and Wright Lassiter (CEO, Alameda Medical Center) are appointed to the KLAS advisory board.

HIMSS Analytics: Data Show that Meaningful Use is Affecting EHR Adoption

Hospitals achieving HIMSS analytics Stages 5 and 6 increase more than 80 percent since the start of Meaningful Use in 2011. Stage 7 hospital attestation increased 63 percent.

News 1/16/13

Top News

AMA submits comments to ONC urging that Meaningful Use Stages 1 and 2 be evaluated before committing to a Stage 3. It says its members most often express five concerns: (a) passing requires a 100 percent score; (b) the core measures are inflexible with regard to practice patterns and specialties; (c) the program needs to be independently evaluated; (d) EHR certification should place more emphasis on software usability; and (e) healthcare IT infrastructure barriers prevent data sharing. AMA wants three years between stages to give EHR vendors time to prepare – one year for making the rules, one for product development, and one for implementation.

Reader Comments

LOL at JHU revoking parking privileges for clinicians not getting their ducks in a row for EPIC transition. Legit threat in East Baltimore

— Andrew G. (@BioDueDiligence) January 15, 2013

From EHR You Experienced?: “Re: Johns Hopkins Epic motivation for clinicians. Funny.” It is, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why people keep writing Epic in all capital letters. It’s just plain wrong.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

Need a new Spotify playlist? Here you go. Beach House, Christian Mistress, Young the Giant, The Maldives, and others ranging from popular to obscure (mostly the latter since I strenuously resist musical monotony).

Just for you Smokin’ Doc fans, I’ve had the old logo turned into smaller ones of various sizes and shapes featuring just the doc himself, which I’ll be using regularly here and there. I may even place him permanently at the top of the page since people keep lamenting his apparent demise, which is simultaneously endearing and disturbing. However, just to be clear: (a) I don’t smoke a pipe or anything else and never have; (b) he doesn’t look like me; and (c) you won’t find many doctors wearing reflector thingies on their heads unless you time travel back to the 1960s – they’ve gone electronic.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Twelve-employee Flatiron Health raises $8 million in a Series A funding round led by Google Ventures. The company, which is running a private beta of its oncology analytics platform, was started by the two founders of media buying platform vendor Invite Media. They sold that company to Google for $81 million in 2010.

Sales

Primary Partners (FL) contracts with telemonitoring provider AMC Health for remote monitoring of discharged patients using biometric devices.

Springhill Medical Center (AL) selects Omnicell for automated medication solutions and business analytics.

Holland PHO (MI) chooses Wellcentive Advance for aggregating and analyzing patient information from multiple EMRs and systems into a central repository to meet BCBS Michigan’s OSC program guidelines.

HealthEast (MN) chooses RelayHealth to power an enterprise HIE that will help coordinate care across its four hospitals and 14 clinics.

Health Services for Children with Special Needs (DC) selects care and claims systems from TriZetto.

Norwegian American Hospital (IL) chooses revenue cycle solutions from HealthWare Systems.

Aetna and Centene Corporation choose readmission predictive analytics software from Predixion Software.

People

KLAS appoints John Halamka (Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center), Wright Lassiter (Alameda Medical Center), and Denni McColm (Citizens Memorial Hospital) to its advisory board.

Kareo hires Rob Pickell (Strategy for HireRight) as its first chief marketing officer.

HIMSS and the American College of Clinical Engineering recognize Paul H. Frisch (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center) with the ACCE-HIMSS Excellence in Clinical Engineering and Information Synergies Award for demonstrating leadership in promoting synergies between IT and clinical engineering.

Merge Healthcare Chief Medical Officer Cheryl Whitaker, MD leaves the company to pursue new ventures.

Mike Quinto (Quantros) joins PatientSafe Solutions as regional sales VP.

Former consultant and National Quality Forum SVP/COO Laura Miller joins HP as client principal in the public health sector.

Announcements and Implementations

Optum and Mayo Clinic launch Optum Labs, an open, collaborative research and development facility focused on improving patient care. Participants in the project will have access to Optum and Mayo’s information assets and technologies, including de-identified clinical and claims data.

White Plume Technologies adds AccelaPQRS, powered by Wellcentive, to its solutions suite. Its smart workflows and customized rules capture eligible encounters that allow users to transmit their denominators and numerators to Wellcentive’s registry.

An independent study finds that PeriGen’s PeriCALM Patterns can accurately screen fetal monitoring strips in real time, with its findings matching that of three experts from National Institutes of Health 97 percent of the time. Clinicians can also use the software retrospectively to test new hypotheses on stored fetal heart rate information. I interviewed CEO Matt Sappern in September.

Here’s a new cartoon from Imprivata.

US Rep. Tom Price (R-GA) visits Roswell-based revenue cycle vendor MediStreams.

MModal announces a partner certification program for vendors using its Fluency Direct speech recognition and natural language processing technologies.

Henry Schein MicroMD enhances its PM/EMR automated solutions line with tools for dashboards, patient marketing, data backup, electronic payments, statements, websites, PDR information, and third-party collections.

Government and Politics

CMS expands the MU program to include physicians who assign their reimbursement and billing to critical access hospitals.

William Zurhellen MD, a solo practice pediatrician in the New York City area, petitions the White House to move EHR strategy away from facilitating payment to a national approach for improving outcome and costs. His petition has 123 signatures so far of the 25,000 needed to put it in front of the President. We interviewed him on HIStalk Practice three years ago, where he explained why he wrote his own Unix-based EMR and why he’s not a HITECH fan. “The entire ARRA is a trade for information. We’ll give you money to put in records, but in return, we want you to supply us with performance data. Performance does not equal quality.” A reader reports that a recent CCHIT meeting, he received applause from at least half the audience when he announced, “Certification should focus on improving care. Anything else is a waste of time.”

Innovation and Research

Joe Kiani, founder and CEO of patient monitoring systems vendor Masimo, launches a patient safety conference and calls for fellow vendors to share their monitor information. He envisions a “superhighway of patient data” that can be analyzed by algorithms to provide an early warning of patient problems that will reduce 200,000 preventable deaths that occur under a provider’s care. Promising to share were Circuit Board, GE, Cerner, Smith Medical, SonoSite Fuji, Surgicount Medical, and Zoll Medical. Other solutions discussed were patient checklists, medical mistakes, and hospital overuse of blood from blood banks. Bill Clinton delivered the conference keynote and patient safety expert Peter Pronovost, MD, PhD also presented.

Conor Delaney, MD, a surgeon at University Hospitals Case Medical Center (OH) is profiled in an article about Socrates Analytics, which he founded to develop a system for University Hospitals that analyzes hospital information to support quality improvement efforts.

Other

The Raleigh-area business paper covers the departure of Diane Adams, VP of culture and talent of Allscripts. We detailed her severance package here when it was first filed, but the paper recaps: a year’s salary in cash, her annual target bonus in cash, a year of health benefits, partial accelerated vesting, and other potential bonuses. She gets an extra year’s salary if the company sells out within the next year. She made $1.9 million in 2011 for her job, described as “building a values-based, high-performance environment where people, learning, and fun are the priorities.” It would be interesting to hear from those people whether they enjoyed $1.9 million worth of learning and fun.

HIMSS Analytics reports that in the last five quarters, the number of US acute care hospitals achieving EMRAM Stage 5 or Stage 6 has increased more than 80 percent and the number reaching Stage 7 has grown 63 percent, suggesting that HITECH has spurred the increased implementation and meaningful use of EHRs.

A routine compliance audit by Samaritan Medical Center (NY) uncovers what it says is illegal activity by a sheriff’s department RN who was authorized to review the electronic medical records of inmates, but who was found to be checking out the records of other patients as well.

Pennsylvania’s Department of Vital Statistics warns parents to check the birth certificates of their newborns after a vendor’s newly implemented records software was found to be pulling in incorrect names for the father.

Northwestern University (IL) will spend $1 billion to replace its women’s hospital, planning to tear down an existing structure that preservationists are trying to have designated as a protected landmark.

Weird News Andy finds this story odd: the VA hospital in Buffalo notifies hundreds of patients from 2010 to 2012 that they may have been exposed to HIV or hepatitis because nurses misused insulin pens by correctly discarding the used needles, but re-using the same pen on multiple patients.

Strange: a Washington psychiatric hospital loses its accreditation because of an unsecured karaoke machine. State inspectors said the cord presented a patient safety hazard, no doubt remembering an event from a month before in which one patient at the hospital strangled another in karaoke-unrelated incident.

Sponsor Updates

• HealthMEDX customer Asbury Methodist Village (MD), which recently won an award for its use of technology to improve care transition from long-term care to other settings, is featured in a video from Leading Age and the Center for Aging Services Technologies.
• John McCullough, associate VP of clinical applications for Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center (NC), reviews his organization’s partnership with Intellect Resources, which provided Wake Forest with strategic planning services prior to its go-live.
• Steve Besch, senior systems analyst for Ingenious Med, discusses PQRS and the need for program participation in 2013 to avoid penalties in 2015 in a blog post.
• TrainingWheel introduces its mobile solution for automating help desk issues and support tracking.
• TrustHCS offers advice for the C-suite on preparing for ICD-10 and Meaningful Use in a blog post.
• Velocity Data Centers breaks down how it builds data centers in 90 days and publishes a time-lapse video documenting the start-to-finish process.
• VersaSuite will participate in the Rural Health Care Leadership Conference in Phoenix February 10-13.
• Arian Bichsel, director of client support for Allscripts, shares strategies to reduce hospital readmissions.
• API Healthcare discusses the use of payroll and HR software to drive down the cost of care, boost efficiencies, and improve clinical outcomes.
• Infor recognizes NTT DATA as its 2012 Infor Lawson Service Partner of the Year based on its 250+ successful implementations of Lawson’s ERP software.
• Informatica sponsors GovernYourData.com, a vendor-neutral online community and resource center for data governance.
• ICSA Labs and IHE USA partner to provide industry-accepted certification to complement existing testing of IHE integration profiles.
• The Colorado Health Insurance Cooperative selects Emdeon subsidiary HTMS to provide strategic planning and operational roadmap for the development of a consumer-owned health insurance plan.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

Morning Headlines 1/15/13

HIT Policy Committee: Request for Comment Regarding the Stage 3 Definition of Meaningful Use of Electronic Health Records

In a letter to ONC, the AMA expresses concern with the pace of Meaningful Use and asks for a full evaluation of existing EHR and health IT problems before moving on to Stage 3.

Cloud-based EHRs create medical privacy risks

Patient Privacy Rights calls on the government to issue guidance on how cloud-based EHRs should be implemented to minimize the risk of data breaches.

The Rand Study and the impact of EHRs on Healthcare Costs

John Halamka, MD, CIO of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, weighs in on the recent Rand study that suggests EHRs may not reduce healthcare costs to the levels originally expected.

CMS: Method II physicians eligible for Medicare EHR incentives

CMS announces that physicians providing outpatient services from Critical Access Hospitals that bill under Method II are eligible to participate in the EHR incentive program. However,they will be unable to attest until 2014 due to CMS system limitations.

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 1/14/13

Just when I thought it couldn’t get any scarier, I had the opportunity to attend a recent presentation on the transition plan for ICD-10 for our ambulatory physicians. It’s been interesting to watch this unfold.

In its infinite wisdom, the hospital created an ICD-10 “task force” that sounded like a good idea at the time. A dedicated team working on a single problem will pull in subject matter experts from various business areas and software teams as needed. Unfortunately, it would have been better described as a “super silo.”

Over the last two quarters, I questioned several times the fact that they haven’t been to see me. I’m on the tip of the spear for our ambulatory physicians, so I expected them to knock on my door at least once. I was told to pipe down and stop micromanaging, so I did.

As the weeks have worn on, however, they’ve been spending more time going directly to the vendors and less time with the actual software support teams. Not exactly a winning strategy in my book. The software teams actually support the users and know their business needs. We know the limits of what they will and will not tolerate as far as workplace disruption. We also know how to effectively use Jedi mind tricks on the users, especially when we have to present something unpalatable.

This week the task force presented the final strategy at our monthly physician meeting. As the presentation unfolded, I was transported back to the college literature class where I first experienced Joseph Conrad’s journey down the Congo River in Heart of Darkness. As more and more PowerPoint slides flashed before my eyes, I felt myself going deep into the wilderness. The physicians’ eyes darted around the room trying to identify which of the department chairs would rebel and which would join the savage oppressors. I buried my head in my hands, grateful that my lack of involvement conferred plausible deniability.

The key points of their transition plan were simple, yet terrible:

• Since the ambulatory vendor plans to release its ICD-10 software in May 2013, we’ll just plan to upgrade in June. Had they talked to my team, they’d have known that it takes us a minimum of three months to prepare for an upgrade once a new code package is available. They’d also know we have a dozen go-lives that must be completed before any upgrade. These are contractual obligations and cannot be moved.
• Providers will dual code from the time of the upgrade until the requirement commences in October 2014. Are you serious? Providers aren’t going to do double work under any circumstances (that is, unless they’re paid extra or threatened with termination). The fact that they even suggested this told me that they didn’t talk to the Practice Operations leadership either. A quick look at the ashen-faced VP two rows behind me confirmed my assumption.
• Provider training will require a full day out of the office and all training will occur during a two-week span. Given the size of our group and the need to stagger training to accommodate various work schedules and vacations and to ensure patient access, this suggestion is simply absurd. Doing the math would conclude that it’s impossible to train all the physicians unless our training rooms run 24×7 during these two weeks.

Those in the group who round in the hospital will receive extra training. Approximately 80 percent of our physicians continue to see inpatients, so failing to include those details in the presentation led to more questions and frustration. Needless to say, the physicians were not pleased and basically handed the task force their heads. Several senior physicians walked out and the more vocal junior physicians started commenting loudly. It reminded me of a raucous session of England’s Parliament, but without the wigs.

The only good thing about the presentation was that it occurred at the end of the meeting’s agenda and effectively ended any lingering comment on any of the other agenda items as well. The first thing I’m doing tomorrow morning is organizing a betting pool. How many days until the application team managers are asked to essentially take this over and start from scratch? My money is on three.

How is your organization planning to transition providers to ICD-10? E-mail me.

E-mail Dr. Jayne.

Morning Headlines 1/14/13

2014 Testing and Certification

ONC announces that certifying agencies may begin testing EHRs for MU Stage 2 certification.

In Second Look, Few Savings From Digital Health Records

The New York Times covers the recently published RAND study that acknowledges a lack of evidence for calling EHR implementations a cost-cutting initiative.

US Health in International Perspective: Shorter Lives, Poorer Health

The Institute of Medicine, in conjunction with the National Research Council, publishes a study measuring overall population health and concludes that the US is dead last of the 17 developed nations and that, among many problems, our healthcare IT is categorized as "worse than average.”

Blue Health Intelligence Creates an “Informatics Center of Excellence” Through Acquisition of Intelimedix

BCBS acquires Intelimedix, a data analytics company specializing in employer group reporting, mass customized communications, and medical cost containment. BCBS manages care for 110 million patients.

Monday Morning Update 1/14/13

From The PACS Designer: “Re: TPD’s list. The latest update of my iPhone apps lists is online. In addition to many new apps is a new section highlighting the apps of HIStalk sponsors.” TPD’s list is here. He’s always up for additions to it.

From Frank Poggio: “Re: Meaningful Use Stage 4.  At the January 8 HIT Policy Committee meeting, Farzard Mostashari, ONC director, waxed eloquently about MU Stage 4. Hey, wait a minute — the original playbill said this was to be a three-act play! Does he think we can stay in this claustrophobic theatre all day and night? How many more acts will there be? One thing for certain — the bonus money will run out long before the last act, but you can be sure the ‘penalty’ clauses will not. This MU theatre of the absurd must be in the Hotel California… you can check in, but you can never check out.”

From Green Space: “Re: Judy Faulkner’s new company to generate electricity for Epic. Search the Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions for Galactic Wind. Here’s a photo of the wind farm, about 15 miles north of Epic’s main campus.”

From Dragovitz: “Re: Peake Healthcare Innovations. The image sharing joint venture between Johns Hopkins Medicine and Harris Computer appears to be defunct. Rumor has it they found it hard to differentiate themselves from PACS vendors and underestimated the risk of trying to use MINT, a protocol that would have displaced DICOM.” Unverified. The JV was created on March 2011 and their “new approach to medical image management” was rolled out at HIMSS last year.

Sixty percent of us have used a patient portal offered by our PCP. New poll to your right: was the 2005 RAND study naïve, biased, decent but not useful for justifying EMR subsidies, or possibly accurate once more time goes by? Pick the best answer since you get only one.

Thanks to the following sponsors, new and renewing, that have recently supported HIStalk, HIStalk Connect, and HIStalk Practice. Click a logo for more information. 

A new report commissioned by the National Research Council and the Institute of Medicine finds that despite the largest per-capita healthcare spending of all countries, the US ranks dead last among 17 developed nations in health. Most surprisingly, it’s not our also legendary number of poor and uninsured residents who are dragging our average down – our unhealthiness is equal opportunity by income and education. If you want your child to live to 50, move to another of those 16 other countries because they’re a target here for being murdered, dying in a car wreck, and not even living long enough to attend pre-school (we’re #1 in all those categories). We’re lucky that one other country beat us in the percentage of people dropping dead of heart problems and lung disease. We’re dead last in the percentage of doctors in primary care, and the graphic above shows IT as one of the “worse than average” items (the others being coordination of care, medical errors, patient dissatisfaction, and miscommunication). No single cause was identified, but it says a lot of the problem starts with being fat, overusing legal and illegal drugs, shooting each other, and wrecking cars, not to mention a healthcare non-system that’s superb at Rambo-style interventions but really bad at almost everything else. The authors found no silver bullet other than spending a lot of taxpayer money, which is another not-so-great #1 they didn’t bring up (the largest national debt at $16 trillion with the lead widening by the minute). Being rugged and self-determinant individualists, we’re not real big on public health programs in the US, so it’s ironic that excellent schools crank out thousands of public health stars who immediately head off to Africa or South America to find work despite a target-rich environment here.

ONC announces that Authorized Certification Bodies are now authorized to test and certify EHRs using the 2014 Edition Standards and Certification Criteria.

My guilty pleasure is reading John Halamka’s “Building Unity Farm” posts on his Life as a Healthcare CIO blog. I skim his other IT-related posts on occasion, but I never miss an episode about how he uses his engineering and IT background to approach building a gentleman’s farm, like Oliver Douglas on Green Acres except he knows what he’s doing. I find myself fascinated by what kind of guinea fowl he favors, his hardwood management plan, and what was on his vegan Christmas menu.

The Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, the state’s overseer of physicians, will lay off 18 of its 26 medical unit employees next week because of a $9.6 million budget shortfall.

An interesting Alabama Supreme Court ruling allows patients who claim injury from a generic drug to sue the manufacturer of the brand name drug they didn’t take. The court ruled that generic drug makers are required to use the approved labeling of the patented drug, so a lack of warnings isn’t their fault. Alabama high-end real estate values will probably benefit as out-of-state trial lawyers shop second homes there.

Academic Ranking of World Universities, assembled by researchers at a university in China, ranks the world’s best clinical medicine and pharmacy universities, with US schools taking all but four spots in the Top 20, counting ties. In order, Harvard, UCSF, University of Washington, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, UT Southwestern, UCLA, Stanford, University of Pittsburgh, University of Michigan, University of Minnesota, Mayo Medical School, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, MD Anderson, Yale, and Vanderbilt.

BCBS’s Blue Health Intelligence acquires Tampa, FL-based Intelimedix, which offers employer and payor analytics from its medical claims database covering 110 million patients.

Miami Children’s Hospital receives a hospital association’s marketing award for sending urgent care wait times via text messages. The hospital uses a service from ER Texting.

RAND Corporation’s admission in a Health Affairs article that its own 2005 study predicting vast savings from EHRs was dead wrong gets major space in The New York Times, even scoring a quote from original National Coordinator David Brailer, MD, PhD, who now says HITECH was a “colossal strategic error” that encouraged providers to earn government checks by buying EHRs quickly and worrying later about actually using them for anyone’s benefit. The new analysis says the original vendor-funded report was “enthusiastically embraced,” but that now “critics of the RAND team’s analysis can claim a measure of vindication.” Some quotes from the new article:

• Lack of interoperability means systems function “less as ATM cards, allowing a patient or provider to access needed health information anywhere at any time, than as frequent flier cards intended to enforce brand loyalty to a particular health care system,“ with the huge amount of information stored by Kaiser and the VA “essentially useless if the patient seeks out-of-network care.”
• EHR adoption is still arond 40 percent instead of the 90 percent threshold RAND said was needed despite billions of HITECH payouts, which it described as, “Most of the action is concentrated among facilities that were already planning to implement or upgrade their health IT systems. Federal incentives have not yet closed the health IT gap between small, rural, and nonteaching hospitals and larger, urban, and academic ones.”
• Patients share the blame, with few of them even signing up to view their electronic records and most of those never actually looking at them.
• “Considering the theoretical benefits of health IT, it is remarkable how few fans it has among health care professionals.” The article says market forces aren’t working to demand more usable systems since comparative system information is not readily available and HITECH encourages just buying whatever’s out there anyway.
• The “do more, bill more”healthcare payment system provides no incentives to use IT to reduce costs or improve outcomes.
• The article concludes, “The optimistic predictions of Hillestad and colleagues in their 2005 analysis of the potential benefits of health IT have not yet come to pass. This is not because of shortcomings in their analysis but rather because of shortcomings in the design, implementation, and use of health IT in the United States. When the preconditions these authors posited are finally realized, the benefits they predicted will be realized as well.”

I bet most readers saw this coming when the exuberant 2005 study started putting stars in the eyes of vendors and the federal government. People who put their hopes in a tool rather than tool users are usually wrong, and it’s almost always true that those tool users will do whatever it is that they’re paid to do, like cranking out procedures, stealing each other’s profitable patients and doctors, and buying EHRs quickly without a lot of thought or commitment.

My take is that the original article was more naïve than biased. The new article, however, puts a lot of the blame on HITECH — which wasn’t implemented until four years after the original article — and not enough blame on a screwed up healthcare system whose technology reflects that unfortunate reality. A vendor could easily develop a usable, interoperable, patient-centered EHR if they didn’t have to deal with mountains of billing rules (most of them coming from the same federal government that’s complaining about complex systems), insurance companies, regulators, and market-force competitiveness, following the specifications of users dedicated to a framework of standardized and repeatable processes. They would, however, have no customers. That’s why only the VA has done it, and they developed their own VistA system having the luxury of a vacuum to work within.

The worst thing about the original RAND study is that it was quickly co-opted by special interests as validation for spending billions of taxpayer dollars to subsidize fast-tracked sales of systems to providers who had already declined to buy them with their own money. We have good providers, good electronic systems, and good patients — we just can’t seem to put the policies in place to move the needle on the marginal ones.

Vince has a great look-back this week, getting some first-hand history of Sphere Healthcare Information Systems as it eventually became NextGen’s financial system.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.