HIStalk Guide to HIMSS13

February 12, 2013 News 1 Comment

Download a printable PDF of the guide here.

Accent on Integration® (AOI®)

Booth: Interoperability Showcase, Use Case #8

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

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

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

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

Acuo Technologies

Booth 2859

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

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

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

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

Access

Booth 1023

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

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

Advisory Board Company

Booth 4669

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

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

Allscripts

Booth 3441

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

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

AirStrip

Booth 1721

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

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

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

Aprima Medical Software

Booth 6323

Contact: salesinfo@aprima.com
866.960.6890

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

Aspen Advisors

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

Visit www.aspenadvisors.net to learn more.

AT&T

Booth 3727

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

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

Aventura

Booth 4011

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

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

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

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

Awarepoint

Booth 6918

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

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

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

Beacon Partners

Booth 4729

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

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

BESLER Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Billian’s HealthDATA / Porter Research

Booth 2317

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

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

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

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

Bottomline Technologies

Booth 2619, Hall D

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

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

CAP Professional Services

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

CapSite

Booth 4929 and across from registration in Lobby D

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

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

Capsule Tech, Inc.

Booths 3711, 3185, and 8711

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

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

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

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

Caradigm

Booth 1323

Contact: Debbie Wolti
info@caradigm.com

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

Come by booth #1323 to see:

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

CareTech Solutions

Booth 1911

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

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

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

Certify Data Systems

Booth 717

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

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

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

ChartWise Medical Systems, Inc.

Booth 1961

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

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

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

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

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

CIC Advisory

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

Clinithink

To schedule a meeting:

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

Find out how to turn data into information…

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

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

Cornerstone Advisors Group LLC

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Craneware

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

CSI Healthcare IT

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

CTG Health Solutions

Booth 3663

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

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

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

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

dbMotion

Booth 5229

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

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

Our dbMotion™ Solution is helping clients:

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

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

Dearborn Advisors, LLC

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Deloitte

Booth 1863

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

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

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

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

Direct Consulting Associates

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Direct Recruiters, Inc.

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Divurgent

Booth 5948

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

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

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

Elsevier Clinical Decision Support

Booth 6129

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

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

Emdeon

Booth 5027

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

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

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

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

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

e-MDs

Booth 6413

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

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

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

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

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

EMRConsultant.com

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Enovate

Booth 7429

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

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

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

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

ESD

Booth 5213

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

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

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

Etransmedia Technology, Inc

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

FDB (First Databank)

Booth 4241

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

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

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

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

Forward Health Group

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

GetWellNetwork, Inc.

Booth 2363

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

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

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

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

Learn more at www.GetWellNetwork.com.

Greenway Medical Technologies

Booth 3941

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

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

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

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

Greythorn

Booth: 5358

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

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

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

Halfpenny Technologies

Booth 5223

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

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

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

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

Hayes Management Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

HCI Group

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

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

HealthCare Anytime

Booth 3869 (ICA)

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

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

HealthCare Anytime – Powering Patient Engagement Through the Cloud.

Healthcare Growth Partners

Booth 3845

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

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

Health Catalyst

Booth 7721

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

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

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

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

Health Language

Booth 4559

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

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

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

HealthMEDX

Booth 1075

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

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

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

Healthwise

Booth 3885

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

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

Trusted information
Tested interaction
True innovation

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

Henry Elliott & Company Inc.

Booth 3217

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

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

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

Holon Solutions

Booth 4020

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

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

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

Booth 7459

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

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

Iatric Systems, Inc.

Booth 6613

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

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

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

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

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

ICA

Booth 3869

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

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

ICSA Labs

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

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

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

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

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

iMDsoft

Booth 7729

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

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

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

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

Imprivata

Booth 3717

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

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

Take #MeaningfulSteps with Imprivata at #HIMSS2013

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

Infor

Booth 2525

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

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

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

Informatica Corporation

Booth 5005

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

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

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

Innovative Healthcare Solutions

Booth 3059

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

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

Intellect Resources

To schedule a meeting:

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

Intellect Resources would love to meet with you!

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

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

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

Intelligent InSites

Booth 8025, Kiosk #10 in the Intelligent Hospital Pavilion

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

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

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

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

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

IMO – Intelligent Medical Objects Inc.

Booth 6223

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

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

Presentation topics are:

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

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

iSirona

Booth 6549 and the Interoperability Showcase

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

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

Kareo

Mobile Health Knowledge Center

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

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

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

LDM Group

Booth 5022

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

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

Legacy Data Access, LLC

Booths 4611 and 1621

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

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

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

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

Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. (LRS)

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Lifepoint Informatics

Booth 7623

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

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

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

maxIT-VCS

Booth 3027

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

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

McKesson

Booth: 4341, Exhibit Hall F

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

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

MED3OOO – Now Part of McKesson

Booth 3068 (Medicomp)

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

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

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

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

MedAptus

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

MedAssets

To schedule a meeting:

Contact:
solutions@medassets.com
888.883.6332

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

Medicomp Systems

Booth 3068

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

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

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

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

MediQuant

Booth 5649

Contact: Mindy Morris
mindym@mediquant.com
440.746.2300 x245

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

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

Merge Healthcare

Booth 5725

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

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

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

M*Modal

Booth 6647

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

Expect More. More from your EHR.

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

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

Nordic Consulting Partners

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

For more info, go to www.nordicwi.com

nVoq Incorporated

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

NTT DATA Healthcare Technologies

Booth 1041

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

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

Empower the Patient
Improve Care
Drive Outcomes

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

Nuance Communications, Inc

Booth 4025

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

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

Optum

Booth 7041

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

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

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

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

Orchestrate Healthcare

Booth 529

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

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

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

Orion Health

Booth 3161

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

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

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

Ormed Information Systems Inc.

Booth 1041 (with NTT Data Health Solutions)

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

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

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

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

Park Place International

Booth 2674

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

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

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

Passport Health Communications, Inc.

Booth 3310

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

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

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

PatientKeeper Inc.

Booth 2210

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

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

PatientPay

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

PDR Network

Booth 7740

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

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

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

Ping Identity

Booth 2470

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

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

Prognosis HIS

Booth 7423

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

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

Qlik Technologies

Booth 8121

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

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

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

Quantros

Booth 7940

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

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

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

Quest Diagnostics (Care360 Healthcare IT Suite of Solutions)

Booth 3927

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

RazorInsights

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

RelayHealth

Booth 4640

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

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

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

Salar, Inc.

Booth 6754

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

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

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

Sandlot Solutions

Booth 2063

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

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

Santa Rosa Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Seamless Medical Systems

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Shareable Ink

Booth 3568

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

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

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

Siemens Healthcare

Booths 2640 and 2641

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

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

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

SpeechRecognition.com

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Streamline Health Solutions, Inc.

Booth 1821

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

Streamline Health offers specialized solutions that will:

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

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

SuccessEHS

Booth 4411

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

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

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

Sunquest Information Systems, Inc.

Booth 911 and MU Booth 149, Kiosk 85

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

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

At Booth 911:

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

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

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

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

Surgical Information Systems (SIS)

Booth 6429, Intelligent Hospital Kiosk 8711-33

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

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

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

TeleTracking Technologies, Inc.

Booth 6619

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

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

TeraRecon

Booth 341

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

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

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

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

The McHenry Group

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

TrustHCS

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

T-System, Inc

Booth 2219, MU Experience booth 149/kiosk 42

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

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

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

Valence Health

Booth 772

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

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

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

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

Velocity Data Centers

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

VersaSuite

Booth 3121

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

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

Versus Technology

Booth 3463

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

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

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

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

Virtelligence Consulting

Booth 3320

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

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

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

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

VitalWare, LLC.

Booth 6654

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

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

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

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

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

Vitera Healthcare Solutions

Booth 6113

Contact:
events@viterahealthcare.com

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

VMWare

Booth 851

Contact: Tisa Murdock
tmurdock@vmware.com
831.818.6095

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

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

Vocera Communications, Inc.

Booth 6329, Intelligent Hospital Pavillian Booth 8711

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

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

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

Wellcentive, Inc.

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

Wellsoft Corporation

Booth 3158

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

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

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

Winthrop Resources

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Wolters Kluwer Health

Booth 1740

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

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

ZirMed

Booth 4469

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

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

1 Comment

News 2/13/13

February 12, 2013 News 5 Comments

Top News

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

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

Reader Comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

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

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

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

HIMSS Conference Social Events

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

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

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

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

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

Sales

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

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

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

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

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

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

People

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Aspen Advisors promotes Jody Cervenak to principal.

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

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

Announcements and Implementations

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Government and Politics

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

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

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

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

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

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

Technology

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

Other

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

Here’s the latest cartoon from Imprivata.

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

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

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

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

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

Sponsor Updates

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

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

5 Comments

HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS13 Meet-Ups

February 12, 2013 News Comments Off

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

Aspen Advisors

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Visit www.aspenadvisors.net to learn more.

BESLER Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

CAP Professional Services

To schedule a meeting:

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

CIC Advisory

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Clinithink

To schedule a meeting:

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

Find out how to turn data into information.

Cornerstone Advisors Group LLC

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Craneware

To schedule a meeting:

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

CSI Healthcare IT

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

Dearborn Advisors, LLC

To schedule a meeting:

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

DIrect Consulting Associates

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Direct Recruiters, Inc.

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

EMRConsultant.com

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Etransmedia Technology, Inc

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Forward Health Group

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

Hayes Management Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

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

HCI Group

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

Intellect Resources

To schedule a meeting:

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

Intellect Resources would love to meet with you.

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

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

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

Levi, Ray & Shoup, Inc. (LRS)

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

MedAptus

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

MedAssets

To schedule a meeting:

Contact:
solutions@medassets.com
888.883.6332

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

nVoq Incorporated

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

PatientPay

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

RazorInsights

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Santa Rosa Consulting

To schedule a meeting:

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

Seamless Medical Systems

To schedule a meeting:

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

SpeechRecognition.com

To schedule a meeting:

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

The McHenry Group

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

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

TrustHCS

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Velocity Data Centers

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

Wellcentive, Inc.

To schedule a meeting:

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

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

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

Winthrop Resources

To schedule a meeting:

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

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HIStalk’s Guide to HIMSS13 Exhibitor Giveaways

February 12, 2013 News Comments Off

Download a printable PDF version of the giveaway list here.

AirStrip

Booth 1721

Enter our drawing to win a free iPad.

Billian’s HealthDATA / Porter Research

Booth 2317

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

Bottomline Technologies

Booth 2619, Hall D

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

Divurgent

Booth 5948

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

Emdeon

Booth 5027

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

e-MDs

Booth 6413

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

FDB (First Databank)

Booth 4241

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

GetWellNetwork, Inc.

Booth 2363

Giveaway iPads.

Greenway Medical Technologies

Booth 3941

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

Halfpenny Technologies

Booth 5223

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

Health Language

Booth 4559

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

Iatric Systems, Inc.

Booth 6613

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

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

ICA

Booth 3869

Visit out booth to participate in our food bank raffle.

Imprivata

Booth 3717

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

Infor

Booth 2525

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

IMO – Intelligent Medical Objects Inc.

Booth 6223

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

iSirona

Booth 6549 and the Interoperability Showcase

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

Lifepoint Informatics

Booth 7623

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

Medicomp Systems

Booth 3068

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

M*Modal

Booth 6647

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

NTT DATA Healthcare Technologies

Booth 1041

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

Optum

Booth 7041

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

Orchestrate Healthcare

Booth 529

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

Orion Health

Booth 3161

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

Park Place International

Booth 2674

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

PatientKeeper Inc.

Booth 2210

Enter our daily drawing for an Apple iPad Mini.

Qlik Technologies

Booth 8121

Quantros

Booth 7940

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

Booth 3927

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

Salar, Inc.

Booth 6754

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

Shareable Ink

Booth 3568

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

Siemens Healthcare

Booths 2640 and 2641

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

SuccessEHS

Booth 4411

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

Sunquest Information Systems, Inc.

Booth 911 and MU Booth 149, Kiosk 85

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

TeleTracking Technologies, Inc.

Booth 6619

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

TeraRecon

Booth 341

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

Virtelligence Consulting

Booth 3320

Please stop by our booth to win the latest iPad.

VitalWare, LLC.

Booth 6654

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

Vocera Communications, Inc.

Booth 6329, Intelligent Hospital Pavilion Booth 8711

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

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Morning Headlines 2/12/13

February 11, 2013 Headlines Comments Off

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

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

IBM supercomputer takes on new role in health arena

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

Is iEHR really dead?

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

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

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

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Advisory Panel: Job Advice

February 11, 2013 Advisory Panel 1 Comment

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Power of Pure Motives.

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

1 Comment

Curbside Consult with Dr. Jayne 2/11/13

February 11, 2013 Dr. Jayne Comments Off

Dear Dr. Jayne,

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

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

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

Always your gracious reader and devoted fan,
Herve Villechaize

My Dearest Tattoo,

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

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

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

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

Sincerely,
Dr. Jayne

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

E-mail Dr. Jayne.

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HIStalk Interviews Mike Long, Chairman and CEO, Lumeris

February 11, 2013 Interviews Comments Off

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

Tell me about yourself and the company.

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

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

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

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

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

Very odd. [laughs]

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are organizations jumping in early because they really believe they can be successful in outcomes and margins or are they just trying to hold the position they have against others who are doing it?

We’re blessed to be able to spend a lot of time with leadership in both the provider and the payer community, particularly the organizations have taken advantage of coming to our institute. We find different motivations, so it’s not one size fits all.

In some cases, it might be a market share battle in that particular community, where there is concern that if they don’t make this move, whoever controls – I use that word “controls” very loosely here – the membership or the patients in that community, many organizations feel they’re going to have to make this leap to be able to compete for share.

Some organizations are making the leap because they know the burden of their cost structure is too high. Their cost structure might be 40 percent too heavy and they’re jumping into ACOs to train their organizations on how to become more efficient and to make this a soft landing on the other side, assuming the momentum towards accountable care is going to continue. We actually believe it will, because the government is determined for it to continue. Without the government incentives around government programs, I don’t think the market would be moving as quickly as it is.

Then we see organizations that see accountable care as an opportunity to retool their business model, and rather than defend their current position, to actually take share and leverage the core competencies they already have as well as new ones. They’re taking a very aggressive offensive move. We see both defensive and offensive moves.

You’ve said that you tried to bend off the healthcare cost care with Healtheon/WebMD and failed. Do you think you can do it now?

I hope so. We can’t do it by ourselves. The lessons learned is that is it’s a big collaborative effort to get this done. I’m more optimistic than I ever have been in the industry. Twelve years ago, I certainly held the belief, among others, that just the existence of the Internet, which yields data transparency, was enough to restructure an industry and to lead the restructuring. Actually that’s largely been true in almost every industry except for healthcare. We underestimated the resistance to data transparency that healthcare as an industry had. It was just not in their DNA.

That has broken down over the last decade. The tools, the technologies, the ubiquitous connectivity makes this technically fairly low cost and easier to do, but fundamentally, the willingness of leadership — key leaders, not every leader in healthcare – but key leaders to step out and say, “OK, I’m going to share my data and my information, but I expect everyone else to share with me and we’ve got to focus on the health of our population.”

When we got started down this path seven years ago, we thought there was special sauce around population health management. This was before Mr. Obama was elected President, before the Affordable Care Act. The population health management resonated with us and was driving a lot of our innovation, particularly providers who wanted to assume financial risk. Now we see leaders of health systems, hospital-centric systems as well as payer systems, saying, “You know, I’m a community-based healthcare delivery system. I’ve got to find out a way to manage this population more effectively.”

We’re excited about that, because that means they need better tools. They’ve got to have better information. They’ve got to be willing to share. Our world with accountable care requires a multi-payer, multi-provider environment in a local community to actually achieve the benefits of accountable care. It cannot be a closed proprietary business model or solution. It just can’t.

Every vendor says they have analytics, tools with vague descriptions that make it hard to understand how the client will use them. How are providers going to sort out what exactly they need and who they should buy it from?

I think providers have got to make a clear choice here. Do they look for solutions that are broad enough and tested enough and to actually manage the target environment where they want to go longer term, knowing that everything evolves — requirements change, technology changes? In other words, being a true population health manager? Or are they going to take incremental steps to get there from the fee-for-service world?

There are steps some organizations have decided to take rather than going all the way. You start with, say, pay-per-performance around quality measures. That requires good analytics, so you’ve got to have an analytics solution to do that. Kind of the next step up the ring is gain-sharing. It’s upside gain-sharing, no downside risk. That requires a lot of process tools, particularly around care management. Then the next logical step is, do I want to manage both upside and downside financial and clinical risk? That requires a lot of data aggregation — financial data, claims data, clinical data that’s in various EMR systems, and the like.

Finally, you get to what we used to call global capitation. You’ve got the whole risk. That requires a comprehensive population health management solution.

What have providers got to decide to do? Am I going to be a systems integrator? In other words, am I going to go out and buy all these packages? This is a viable strategy. I’m going to systems integrate those packages and hope at the end of the day it adds up into a population health management solution, and I’m also going to have to develop competencies around data aggregation. Or do I go and put in place a solution now from a population health management perspective that can manage my destination solution? That’s the choice that they have to make.

There’s lots of point solutions out there that are really of high quality — good analytics packages, good care management packages, there’s good data integration solutions you can buy out there. But who’s going to have the responsibility of integrating all that into a coherent, cohesive, efficient platform? Platform is a word I’m sure you’re tired of hearing, that word platform. Nobody wants to do a product any more – we’re all platforms. But I can assure you that population health requires a platform approach — in our case, these 22 core competencies are our definition of a platform — effectively integrating all the solutions for each one of those core competencies in an integrated, flexible architecture.

Those are viable strategies. We feel that we should plan long term make investments now to your destination, as opposed to taking incremental steps in what may prove to be expedient, short-term solutions that exacerbate the problem.

Where do EMRs including the one you offer, fit into the vision?

We have chosen not to compete as an EMR vendor in the market in any meaningful way. It’s a part of our laboratory of understanding of how you implement functionalities – “functionalities” is not even a word, the software people invented that word — that tend to be resident inside of an EMR can be part of the destination of an EMR. We tend to operate at the population health level.

The way we see the market is that there are three fairly distinctive workflows that are emerging around accountable care. One of them is a clinical workflow that is built around the EMR. The industry is making huge investments in installing EMRs. The beautiful thing about that is we’re finally — certainly on the provider side — getting rid of a lot of the silos of information, and certainly we’re eliminating paper-based systems completely, finally. Once information is digitized inside these EMRs, that’s a wonderful thing, because once data is in digital form, you can do a lot more with it. That’s one workflow.

There’s a business workflow that tends to be influenced and controlled by hospital administration systems in the case of hospitals, or practice management systems in case of physicians.

What we found is that there is a third workflow, the population health workflow, that needs to tightly integrate with the clinical workflow of the EMR and the business workflow of the hospital administration and practice management systems. The EMR is a critical component of this. I admire the EMR companies that have helped digitize certainly the clinical side of healthcare over the last three or four years. But population health is different.

I’m sure you get asked this a lot, but describe your philosophy of missionary versus mercenary.

Everybody makes a choice when they’re building a business. It’s not one is better than the other, it’s just that they produce different outcomes.

The mercenary approach, which is a very valid approach, says, “I want to make a lot of money or I want to build a successful company. What problem do I need to solve to make a lot of money and build a company?” That’s the mercenary approach. It’s not that mercenaries are bad people. As a matter of fact, in this country, it has provided enormous incentive for innovation.

Then there are missionaries. The missionary says, “I want to solve a really important problem. I’m going to focus on solving that problem because I believe in the country, I believe in the economic system in this country, that if I solve a really important problem, the economics will work out.”

In both cases, the goal is to build a sustainable company, because if you don’t build a sustainable company, you can’t commit to service your partners and customers long term. It’s just a different philosophy.

We’re very much a missionary company focused on solving the problem as opposed to maximizing the economic outcomes for us in the short term. We’re not a charity, but we are willing to defer economic gratification to some distance into the future. As a matter of fact, we never discuss what that might be. There’s never been a discussion of exit strategies with our board. There’s a lot of those discussions, particularly around healthcare IT companies, and that’s just not who we are.

We are focused on trying to be reliable, significant company to help the US healthcare system make this transition to accountable care. We can’t do it by ourselves. That’s our mission. That’s what gets us up in the morning and as we go to bed at night thinking about it. A lot of passion, and hopefully we control that passion so we don’t create unrealistic expectations.

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Morning Headlines 2/11/13

February 10, 2013 Headlines Comments Off

Paragon, Horizon Clinicals, Revenue Cycle, and Managed Services to combine in a new organization called Enterprise Information Services

McKesson Technology Solutions EVP/Group President Pat Blake says Paragon, Horizon Clinicals, Revenue Cycle, and Managed Services will be combined in a new organization called Enterprise Information Services, with Jim Pesce from the Paragon business serving as president.

athenahealth’s CEO Discusses Q4 2012 Results – Earnings Call Transcript

athenahealth holds its Q4 earnings call, during which CEO Jonathan Bush reports a reduction in physician documentation time to less than five minutes per encounter and hints at a possible venture into the inpatient EMR business.

Computer chaos costs RBH £3.7m

Royal Berkshire Hospital reports implementation overages of $5.8 million (USD) in conjunction with a Cerner implementation that was originally budgeted at $47 million.

Meningitis outbreak prompted State Health Department to gain electronic access

After struggling with federal privacy requirements and other barriers to data collection during last year’s national meningitis outbreak, the Tennessee State Health Department considers proposing legislation that would provide its workers with quicker access to EHRs during a medical emergency.

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Monday Morning Update 2/11/13

February 9, 2013 News 15 Comments

From Potsie: “Re: McKesson reorg. The customer announcement is attached. They’ve said they won’t force Horizon customers to convert to Paragon, but now with Pesce over both Paragon and Horizon, the writing is on the wall. I’ve also heard they’re encouraging Horizon employees to take jobs at Relay, which would seem to be scaling back by attrition rather than by layoff.” The customer e-mail from McKesson Technology Solutions EVP/Group President Pat Blake says RelayHealth will expand to over 1,000 employees, but more germane to Potsie’s comment, Paragon, Horizon Clinicals, Revenue Cycle, and Managed Services will be combined in a new organization called Enterprise Information Services, with Jim Pesce from the Paragon business (above left) serving as president. Rod O’Reilly (above right) will become SVP of strategy for MTS.

From Ellingham: “Re: HIStalkapalooza. How can readers have missed the announcements? Presbyopia?” Beats me, but Inga and I get e-mails every day from people who swear they’ve study HIStalk intently each day without seeing the large HIStalkapalooza announcements I’ve run three times now. Maybe they’re not really HIStalk readers and just want an invitation, but I think they’re conditioned by the rags and other sites that trumpet non-newsworthy stories with a come-on headline and 10 paragraphs of padded prose that I would have summarized in one sentence without missing anything important. Skim HIStalk and you’ll miss stuff for sure. It takes me a lot of time to write in a way that wastes a lot less of yours. That’s why I guarantee that if you’ll give me 5-10 minutes of attentive reading each day, you’ll know more than almost everybody in the industry.

An HIStalkapalooza menu update for readers who asked: Chef Brad confirms that he will have vegetarian and gluten-free items available.

The HIMSS conference will enjoy a net attendee gain this year compared to last if you believe that my poll is statistically reliable. Doing the math suggests an attendance of 33,450 based on last year’s count, but of course New Orleans can’t match Las Vegas as a draw. New poll to your right, from CHIME’s comments about ONC’s patient safety plan: should the federal government issue a national patient identifier?

Nuggets from the athenahealth earnings call Friday:

Jonathan Bush says the company reduced physician documentation per encounter to less than five minutes.
He acknowledges that athenahealth has low physician visibility and the Epocrates acquisition will be a way of promoting the company’s other businesses given its 90 percent awareness.
He said “athenaCoordinator had a rough year,” referring to the care coordination platform developed from the July 2011 Proxsys acquisition. He did not specifically reference the announced March 6 layoff of 36 employees from that group, but said the Proxsys system had to be rewritten from scratch, which hurt sales, and getting pre-certifications from payers is hard because each has different rules.
The company has integrated six products into athenaNet through its “More Disruption Please” program and plans to add another 25 in 2013, but is collecting no fees from those vendors.
They will launch athenaResearch next month to use the company’s database to provide insight back to clients.
While the company has developed turnkey rip-and-replace programs, they don’t push them because the data in the EMRs of clients isn’t reusable, or as Jonathan Bush said, “We’re going to get better at delivering it and develop the confidence to make promises that we’re good at delivering it more convincingly where we’re just going to have to get better at explaining to people why their Flock of Seagulls EMR is going to go to the same place that their Flock of Seagulls vinyl albums went.”
The company says they may dabble in the inpatient EMR business after reviewing a vendor’s implementation manuals and concluding, “That’s it? That’s what all the fuss is about?” and raised the possibility that athenahealth could replace the EpicCare ambulatory part of an Epic implementation and interface to Epic’s inpatient systems.

Medical facilities are necessarily extensive at Kumbh Mela, a Hindu pilgrimage held every 12 years in India that is drawing 30 million people as the largest human gathering in history. The military-like clinics were set up in two months and will be gone by the end of March. Medical records are basic and scrawled on paper. A team from Harvard School of Public Health created an iPad-based system for documenting the chief complaints and medications of the thousands of emergency patients seen each day. It also transfers data to a server to help detect public health outbreaks such as diarrhea. As stated by Logan Plaster, managing editor of Emergency Physicians Monthly:

So far the Harvard team has gathered more than 15,000 patient records, an impressive number by any research standards, and arguably the largest public health dataset ever gathered on a transient population. Their findings have been stable and predictable; most complaints are of cough and cold, and most prescriptions are for anti-inflammatory drugs, like ibuprofen. That’s good news to everyone’s ears as millions of new pilgrims enter Allahabad in preparation for February 10, the holiest bathing day on the calendar.

In China, a doctor’s social network warnings about a particular medication used in children causes shares of the drug’s manufacturer to drop 10 percent in a week, losing $160 million in value. It turned out that the doctor was wrong, having incorrectly recalled government literature. He has only 2,000 followers, but his message was reposted by a Chinese celebrity to his 26 million followers. The doctor apologized and clarified several times, but his original message continued to spread. Public relations analysis determined that a company’s response to publicly disseminated incorrect information must be issued within eight hours to be effective and must be distributed online rather than via traditional media.

The State of California fires SAP Public Services from its state employee payroll and medical benefits computer project after the new system was found to be making errors at 100 times the rate of the 1970s-era system it was supposed to replace. The project is years behind schedule and costs have piled up at triple the original estimate, with $371 million spent so far. SAP Public Services has been paid more than $50 million after the state fired BearingPoint three years ago.

An employee of Xerox/Affiliated Computer Services and an accomplice are indicted in Kentucky for using patient information collected in managing CVS’s Medicare Part D prescription plan to file fraudulent tax returns.

In England, the CEO of Royal Berkshire Hospital reports to the hospital’s board that implementation of its $47 million Cerner Millennium system need an extra $6 million to cover staff time required to navigate through patient scheduling screens that take up to 15 minutes per appointment. He warns that Millennium-related expenses will cause the hospital to move from a financial surplus to a loss for the year. According to the executive, Millennium crashes regularly, including this past Tuesday when it was down all day and the hospital had to revert to paper. The hospital’s 2013 implementation costs are projected at $10 million vs. its budget of $4 million due to unplanned manual data correction and extra staff time. The CEO said in a prepared statement to the Council of Governors, “The level of issues the trust faces having implemented Cerner Millennium is a significant drain on management capacity, despite robust risk mitigation plans. This has a significant impact on the trust’s financial performance and cash position, being the key driver between a surplus and forecasted deficit.”

Tennessee health department officials trying to manage a September meningitis outbreak were forced to develop an electronic workaround to their usual manual hospital data collection process due to the urgency of the situation. The agency had to convince hospitals to give it electronic access to their systems given restrictive federal privacy laws. Vanderbilt University Medical Center was identified as “becoming a substantial hindrance to our investigation” because its permission lagged that of all other area hospitals. The health department is considering proposing legislation to give it easier access in an emergency.

ORNGE, the air ambulance service of Ontario, is under fire for paying its physician CEO $4.6 million over two years. Taxpayers also paid questionable expenses that included European travel with $2,400 per night hotel rooms, a $1,200 dinner, limousines, minibar champagne, in-room movies, and trips with his girlfriend, who he had promoted to VP of the organization.

The CEO of the public healthcare system in Maricopa County, AZ defends her $125,000 salary increase, saying her $500,000 salary is “always the lowest of any hospital CEO in the entire state, even the little-bitty hospitals.” The board chair voted against the increase, saying the CEO has done a great job, but, “A $125,000 raise in a year when we give our janitors maybe a 1 percent raise or lay off people? It just doesn’t make sense.”

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (MA) pays its former chief of anesthesia $7 million and will name its pain clinic after her to settle her charges of gender discrimination. Carol Warfield, MD says the former surgery chief, along with former hospital CEO Paul Levy, forced her out when she complained about being ignored in meetings. The Boston Globe says the hospital probably wanted to avoid reopening anything related to Levy since the woman’s attorneys had already claimed that the inappropriate relationship Levy had with a hospital employee was evidence that he ignored workplace rules.

A Truthout article says EMR adoption poses new challenges to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) populations who will have to decide whether to share their status without knowing how that information will be handled digitally. One advocate says she doesn’t want to have to bring up her status in every medical encounter, saying, “I’m out to everyone, but I don’t want to have to come out to doctors over and over again.” Ares of EMR concern: (a) questions ask status like “gay” or “bisexual” instead of specifically identifying a patient’s relationships, since “sexual orientation is not useful medical information”; (b) EMRs should be able to identify same-sex partnerships instead of just checking “married”; (c) a label of “transgender” is not sufficient without more details; and (d) equal protection is not guaranteed in all states and an EMR-related outing can create problems. In an interesting twist on the tired HIE argument of “unconscious patient in the ED while on vacation” example, LGBTs say that their shared information could be a disaster in LGBT-hostile areas or facilities. An IOM study was mentioned whose conclusion was that the best course of action is to allow LGBTs to self-identify and opt out of answering related questions.

A hospital in Australia will discipline five employees, one of them a nurse, for posting in information to Facebook that it says violated patient confidentiality. The nurse posted the nursing home photo above, which she labeled as, “Randomly stripping for the oldies at work.” She also posted a patient’s pelvic x-ray showing an embedded object with the caption, “Take a guess what this is kids!”

Weird News Andy summarizes this story thusly: “I’ve heard of butt-dialing, but not answering.” A Sri Lankan prisoner who is startled by guards demanding to search his cell shoves a cell phone and two hands-free accessories into his rectum. The guards are surprised to hear a cell phone ring during the search, followed by the prisoner’s complaints of back pain. They take him to the prison hospital, where he tells doctors that his pain was caused by guards beating him. When the doctors reviewed x-rays and announced plans for surgery, he produced the contraband voluntarily.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

15 Comments

Readers Write: The Pitfalls of Resource Labeling in EMR Projects

February 8, 2013 Readers Write Comments Off

The Pitfalls of Resource Labeling in EMR Projects
By Tyler Smith

In enterprise-wide EMR software implementations, the labels “clinical” and “technical” are often utilized in an attempt to categorize the project’s human resources. When taken to improper extremes, these two labels can give rise to an unhealthy “us vs. them” mentality among project team members which can be highly detrimental to the project’s timeline and team member cohesion.

The us vs. them mentality can hardly be considered de facto in enterprise EMR software projects. The division of clinical and technical team members is often intentionally defined by the leadership of large scale enterprise EMR projects. The division is worked into the project’s staffing plans and subsequent role assignments. There are often defined minimum numbers of clinical and technical team members for each of the project’s teams.

The justifications for role assignments based on clinical or technical skillsets are obvious. A project needs individuals with hands-on experience in the areas where the software will be applied in order to give a necessary perspective to builders and PMs, as well as to increase the legitimacy of the final product. A project also needs individuals with sharp IT skills who can translate flowsheets and labs, along with about everything else in these HITECH days, into computerized workflows. Ownership is important on IT projects, and the labels add ease to the sometimes difficult assignment of ownership.

What I fear most about the division is not hurt feelings, although I’m not saying that hurt feelings can’t directly result from the intentional division. What I really fear is the waste of resource time the labeling can cause if it is taken to its extreme.

Although mostly absent from Washington these days, the willingness of team members to compromise and sometimes share ownership is essential in divvying up tasks between clinical and technical team members. While some project tasks can be clearly divided – and these areas are no doubt a huge reason for the pronounced division – there are often gray areas that are not so easily categorized.

Battle lines are drawn when a group is delegated the task of owning a project or heavily assisting with an assignment that they do not believe is aligned with their label’s responsibilities. I have seen technical team members who refused to complete orders build based on lacking clinical knowledge. I have seen clinical team members refuse to perform easy interface cleanup based on lacking technical skill.

While both of these team members were right to the letter of the law, the project’s thin resource allocation necessitated their somewhat misplaced assignment. When it came down to it, given a little bit of willingness to learn, each team member could have accomplished either task. Validation would have been required, but the compromise would have saved hours of argument that waste resource time and increase the project costs.

Therefore, while divisions may be necessary to create a neatly formatted organizational chart or to meet certain artificial quotas, a culture of flexibility needs to be promoted in concert. Technical people should be encouraged to Google healthcare topics a little more and clinical people should not be afraid of reading up on computer languages.

Deference to each other’s expertise remains a given, but showing respect by attempting to learn the other side’s language goes a long way. After all, team members are not made members of the project to simply live to a label. Project members exist in order to facilitate the project’s ultimate success.

Tyler Smith is a consultant with TJPS Consulting.

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Time Capsule: Hello, NAHIT? Wanna Buy My Dictionary for $29 Billion?

February 8, 2013 Time Capsule Comments Off

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.

Hello, NAHIT? Wanna Buy My Dictionary for $29 Billion?
By Mr. HIStalk

The New Oxford American Dictionary costs $48 and contains definitions of 350,000 words. What a deal! HHS just paid consultants $500,000 of taxpayer money to make up five healthcare IT definitions (being overachievers trolling for future engagements, the consultants threw in an extra one). At that rate, that $48 dictionary is actually worth just over $29 billion (shipping extra).

Furthermore, NAHIT (sorry, they apparently prefer the authoritarian-sounding “The Alliance,” according to the Web site) didn’t even get real definitions for its (your) money. Your sixth grade English teacher would be horrified to see, for instance, that the definition for electronic medical record starts out with “An electronic record …” That’s not a real definition, even if it did cost $83,000. If it were, the dictionary entry for civil war would be, “A war that is civil.”

Consultants can’t say, “Have a nice day” without gravely presenting a PowerPoint and an executive summary, so the handful of one-sentence definitions is buried in a 40-page report that no one will ever read.

Note: it is law that every healthcare IT article written by dull reporters or unimaginative academics must start with one of two opening lines, either, (a) “In 2004, President George Bush called for every American to have electronic health records by 2014” or, (b) “In its landmark 1999 report To Err is Human, the Institute of Medicine said that medical errors kill 98,000 Americans each year.” Spoiler: this one goes with (a).

The report implies that the appalling lack of consultant-produced definitions was a matter of national importance, suggesting that the pesky term Health Information Exchange threw the entire United States government into a near-standstill by causing poor EMR adoption and public indifference to healthcare IT. Its conclusion is that, despite war and economic woes, all is again right in the federal world and the HIT pipelines are flowing. The definition deficit has been eliminated.

Give the criticality of the situation, what methodology did BearingPoint use to create the definitions? Since they’re consultants, duh, they “conducted a literature review” and then asked a few people, “Say, what do you think these terms mean?” and packaged it all up with a big invoice. Ca-ching!

Here’s a polite assessment of their work: at least the definitions won’t be contentious. Nobody would read them and argue (except non-CCHIT certified EMR vendors since the report says, in essence, that their CCHIT-certified brethren are EHRs and everybody else’s are EMRs, giving a nice, parochial nod to another ONCHIT pet project). The definitions, in other words, were plainly obvious, thereby throwing the whole “why did they spend all that taxpayer money” question right out into the open.

Here’s another negative beyond $500K of irretrievably lost funds. The cash went to perennial trough-lapper BearingPoint, which some lawmakers tried to ban from government work after its $472 million debacle, the CoreFLS ERP system at the Bay Pines VA in Florida. That project nearly shut down the hospital before it was mothballed for good in August 2004, having never advanced beyond disastrous beta testing. All has been forgiven, apparently, except for those VA folks who were fired or reassigned because of it.

Optimists would say that taxpayers usually fare much worse when Washington bureaucrats meet big consulting firms, so blowing only $500,000 is actually not a bad outcome. Here’s another: if you order in the next 30 minutes, I’ll sell you that dictionary for just $1 billion. Act now and, like BearingPoint, I’ll throw in a bonus definition: boondoggle.

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HIStalk Interviews Reed Liggin, CEO, RazorInsights

February 8, 2013 Interviews 2 Comments

Reed Liggin is president and CEO of RazorInsights of Kennesaw, GA.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

RazorInsights was formed in December of 2010. We are an enterprise hospital information system company.

We named our company from the principle of Occam’s Razor, which says the best explanation is usually the simplest one. Our tag line is “Simplified Healthcare Technology.” Our goal was to build an electronic health record initially that was easy to use, simple to learn, and something that you would purchase from the company that would be easy to do business with and simple to do business with.

We offer the solution on cloud technology. It’s software as a service. It’s a single integrated database on a multi-tenant cloud. We call our solution One simply because it’s on a single database.

As for my background, I’m a pharmacist by trade and have been in health IT since around 1997. I formed the company with two colleagues that I worked with in the past, Edward Nall and Michael McKenzie.

I don’t even remember the last time somebody wrote a new full-hospital system from scratch. Why haven’t they done that, and why is RazorInsights doing that now?

[laughs] Well, I think we’re just crazy enough to give it a try. It’s really a big challenge and a daunting task.

Our initial roadmap was the EHR Meaningful use criteria that were released in 2010 along with the pharmacy system. We felt that medication management was the core of a good clinical system. We started there, and we’ve evolved into a full enterprise HIS as a response to market conditions and the opportunity that’s been presented to us.

Do you think your product is competitive with systems like Meditech and CPSI that have been around for decades?

We do. I think I would be disingenuous to say that we have every single bell and whistle and the breadth of functionality that companies have been the space for a really long time do. But I think we do a really good job of focusing on the really critical 30 or 40 percent of things that hospitals need the most and make sure we do those really well.

Then we are on a long-term mission to, every day, expand our functionality to cover all the pieces of functionality that hospitals need out of an enterprise hospital information system. But I will say that I think we are very competitive across the board as far as feature functionality goes. The depth of our functionality in quite a few areas like CPOE and pharmacy is very strong, but obviously we still are a work in progress.

Is it difficult to convince a customer that it’s in their best interest to have a limited but deep set of features?

We have to find the right customer that shares our vision. As we started the company two years ago, we have taken a deliberate pace to not try to sell every single deal we could possibly sell. We had to be sure that our product was ready to go to the market on a large scale.

We try to be fairly selective in choosing the right hospitals who share our vision and understand that there’s an evolution here and the end result will occur in a very short amount of time. The end result will also be that they’ll have a solution that can be achieved from going with a different company.

I assume that your primary customers are going to be smaller hospitals. Is that a limiting factor because that’s as big as an enterprise you can serve or just because they’re easiest to sell to at this point?

It’s a little of both. Certainly you want to start where there’s an opportunity. We saw an opportunity in the smaller hospitals — under 100 beds — because those hospitals typically had older technology for the most part. As we started to serve those hospitals, we have had opportunities to sell to larger hospitals, but most of the time they’re not ready to go into a situation where they’re going to have to do without certain functionality for a period of time.

You start with the opportunity that’s the biggest where you can serve the needs. We expect to evolve to be able to serve larger hospitals, but one of the things we wanted to do as a company was not try to do too much too fast. We want to be careful, because the worst thing you can do is try to outsell your capabilities, whether that’s to too many hospitals too fast or whether that’s to larger hospitals that you can’t accommodate. We want to be sure we got this right as we go along.

A lot of folks would say that part of Epic’s success is because they qualified their customers as much as their customers qualified them. Is it difficult as a small company to not pursue sales that you probably could make?

I don’t know if we’ve been as selective as Epic. We had an opportunity that was presented to us with the stimulus to get in the game, so to speak. We didn’t really get that selective, but we targeted hospitals that we knew would be a good fit for what we’re trying to do and found hospitals that had management teams or executives who shared the vision we were creating.

The challenge for us has been, if you grow at a more deliberate pace, obviously there’s market pressures based on the window of opportunity you see that there’s always pressure to move faster, to get bigger faster, to move to bigger hospitals faster, to sign more hospitals faster. We always have that pressure to move faster because the window of opportunity won’t be there forever. We want to be sure that we capitalize on the opportunity that’s before us, but at the same time not put ourselves in a position where we can’t deliver.

My sense is the market wants competition instead of just Epic, Cerner, or Meditech and some of your competitors in the smaller hospital market. Do you feel the pressure to be something that you’d rather not be in serving those larger hospitals that don’t have a lot of choices?

I think there’s a tremendous amount of pressure from larger hospitals and medium-sized hospitals that are looking for another choice. They want us to get there faster than is probably possible. We just try to get up and get better every day. That’s our motto — every day we just try to improve upon what we’re doing and grow as fast as we can.

That being said, we built our ONC-certified Complete Inpatient EHR from the day we started coding it to the day we were certified in about 100 days. We built a full, enterprise HIS within two years. We have some breadth of functionality still to cover in that product, but for the most part, we can service a small hospital very well. We’ve done it faster than most other companies have done it. I think that works in our favor.

What’s the secret? Nobody else has been able to figure out how to do that.

What we know needs to be done, a lot of people know. I’m a little surprised sometimes not more people have tried it. I think probably because it’s a capital-intensive effort that’s held a lot of people back.

We were just a group of people who had worked in the trenches at various health IT companies, at hospitals as healthcare workers, and really had a clear vision of exactly what we wanted the product to do and what we wanted it to be. We wanted it to be something that was easy to use, easy to learn, a modern look and feel.

We use a rich Internet application called Adobe Flex for our graphic user interface. We were looking for that new modern user experience in a system that would be easy to adapt.

On the services side, we also wanted to focus on being transparent with our customers, keeping our pricing simple. We have a bundled pricing model that’s all inclusive. You don’t get a contract with two pages of line items of different third-party software that’s included in the product. We try to be very straightforward.

Also, we actually do the build for our clients. When we go into a hospital to do an implementation, we’re gathering information from the hospital, and then we do the build process and then bring the product back and train the client on it.

It’s a different approach, and I think there’s other companies that have done different elements of that. I don’t know if there’s a lot of secrets there. There are a few. One is the way we develop. We have a pretty unique development process which takes a lot of industry subject matter expertise combined with some very fast coding talent to develop the product almost around the clock. We’re able to produce new code pretty quickly.

Are those technical resources employees or are they contracted?

Some of both.

It seems like it would have taken a lot of cash for some guys who used to work for vendors to put together.

[laughs] We bootstrapped it pretty much to date. We are in the final stages of completing a private equity deal. We’ll be announcing that within the next couple of weeks. That will give us the capital to take the company to a whole other level and put our foot on the accelerator when it comes to building out this enterprise vision.

What can you share in terms of company size?

We’re still pretty small. We have 55 team members. That’s the team that services, develops the product, and everything. We have clients mostly in the Southeast, but we’ve expanded to some states west of the Mississippi and in the Midwest also.

What’s your pitch when you get in front of these small hospitals and maybe they’ve never heard of you? How do you sell them on the idea of doing business with you?

First and foremost, we’re all about being a single database, integrated product. Today we bring a single database integrated financial and clinical system to the market. By spring, we’ll be releasing our ambulatory product, which will include an electronic health record and practice management system for physician practices on that same single database.

The other thing that we’ve done, as we started to develop the system, we looked at hospital systems and how they evolved. They evolved departmentally, where there were pharmacy systems and lab systems and nursing systems and CPOE systems, etc. What we looked at was, how can we really make this a more efficient, improved approach?

We decided to knock the walls down between the departments in the hospital. We’ve created what we call a non-modular solution. Each user has access to the system based on the privileges they have according to their role, but every user has the same access into the system and a similar look and feel and view.

We call that view of the patient record our holistic patient record. If I’m a pharmacist, in a lot of systems, I can only see what’s going on with the patient’s medications and maybe some lab results. I can’t necessarily see the surgical procedures or radiology tests they’ve had unless I go to a different module in the system. In our system, in the holistic patient record, I’m able to see all of that information and have a complete picture of what’s going on with the patient right there in one view no matter what role I have, as long as I’m supposed to have access to that information.

Are your revenue components fully developed even though your emphasis seems to be on clinicals?

We started out as an inpatient electronic health record vendor. We began building out the entire clinical suite. As we got into the market, hospitals were rapidly adopting EHRs for the stimulus opportunity.

About a year into it, hospitals started to pretty much demand that they would select a new vendor based upon them having an entire HIS. The market really changed a lot more quickly than we expected. We did expect a system replacement market to occur, where old technology would be replaced by newer cloud technology in the next few years, but the shift happened a lot more quickly than we expected.

We either had to acquire or partner within a revenue cycle system or we had to build it. We opted to build it. There’s still work to do and we’ve got most of the pieces built. We can operate a hospital. There’s a few things we still will build out, but in a couple of instances we used partners to help supplement what we don’t have at this point.

Since you and your colleagues worked for a variety of vendors, what mistakes do you think you’ll be able to avoid having that experience?

I think staying true to the vision as a single integrated database is important. While you may not necessarily want to build every piece of software that a hospital would ever use, you need to have a clear vision as to what’s a core component of that single integrated database solution and stay true to that.

Additionally, I think reliability is a big factor – becoming a company that is known for reliable installs, reliable support, somebody that is a partner the hospital can count on. Obviously our friends at the big ship in Wisconsin have done a great job of that.

You mentioned your VC investment that’s upcoming. A lot of companies stumble at that point because the VC wants to take it in a different direction, at a faster speed, or with different people running the show. Do you see that vision holding true with the influence of the outside money you’re going to take in?

Yes, we do. It’s an interesting process and the first time I‘ve been through this process to seek capital for a company. I spent about a year looking for the right partner. I went from Silicon Valley to New York and everywhere in between meeting with venture capital and private equity firms. Usually within the first 10 minutes, you could tell in the conversation if they understood what you were trying to do and understood your vision.

We were just absolutely committed to the fact that we were going to find a partner who understood what we were trying to do and understood our vision. We turned a few offers down and finally found what we think is the ideal partner. They share the vision, they understand exactly what we’re trying to do, they have a really in-depth knowledge of the space. We think we’ve pretty much found our dream partner.

How do you see the next five years playing out for the company and for the industry?

Wow, that’s a big question. The next five years for the company, we’ll continue to grow our market share in the small hospital space. I think we’ll evaluate whether we want to move upstream to bigger hospitals and how quickly. At some point, we’ll start to execute on moving into that space, where we think there’s potentially a lot of opportunity in addition to the small hospitals.

Additionally, we may look at some international opportunities. We’ve been investigating a few recently. If they make sense and are not outside of our core focus, we may pursue some of those. I think we’re in the beginning of a real shift for a lot of HIS system replacements to take place over the next few years. We just want to make sure that we capitalize on being a part of that opportunity.

For the industry in general, I think you’ll see obviously a lot of smaller hospitals moving to cloud or hosted solutions as that becomes a more practical way for them to manage a system without a lot of IT resources on staff.

You’ll see IDNs continue to consolidate smaller hospitals into their organizations. We’ll continue to see the trend of physician practices becoming part of hospitals and IDNs and becoming employees. It will be interesting to see what happens in our space with some of the larger ambulatory EHR vendors as hospitals acquire those physician practices. They may start to encroach on their market share by pushing hospital systems out to those physicians, so I think there’s an interesting dynamic that will come along with the consolidation. And then, finally, I think it’s still to be determined what impact ACOs will have in our industry, but there will be some impact. It’s going to be interesting to see how that plays with what’s going on in HIT.

2 Comments

Morning Headlines 2/8/13

February 8, 2013 Headlines 2 Comments

Nuance Shares Stumble After Hours As Guidance Disappoints

Nuance reports a Q1 loss of $0.07 per share vs. a positive $0.03 last year, falling short on revenue and earnings estimates. The company says reduced transcription volume, spurred by increased usage of EMRs and its own Dragon Medical transcription software, is constraining its healthcare revenue.

CHIME Weighs In on Federal Health IT Safety Plan

The CIO organization calls for more consistent matching of patients to their data, expresses concerns about the time providers may need to spend filing federal patient safety information, and urges that control of the patient safety plan be moved outside of the federal government to an independent organization.

Mayor Bloomberg Announces Expansion of Electronic Health Records Result in Major Health Care Improvements

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg says the city’s EHR use has improved outcomes for hypertension, diabetes, and smoking-related complications. New York’s Primary Care Information Project was started in 2005 by then-Assistant Commissioner Farzad Mostashari, MD, now National Coordinator.

ECRI Institute PSO Uncovers Health Information Technology-Related Events in Deep Dive Analysis

The non-profit patient safety organization identifies five problem areas with healthcare IT: inadequate data transfer between systems, entering data on the wrong patient, making data entry mistakes, HIT system bugs, and configuration errors.

2 Comments

News 2/8/13

February 7, 2013 News 8 Comments

Top News

The VA and Department of Defense give up their contentious, expensive, and multi-year effort to develop a common EMR, deciding instead to keep their existing VistA and AHLTA systems and settle for a common user interface and unstated interoperability. They plan to launch a pilot in the summer of 2013 with a general rollout in 2014. The now-abandoned project, begun in 2011 with the declaration that VistA and AHLTA were outdated and lacking functionality, was supposed to have been completed in 2017. According to Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta:

We recognize that bringing together two large bureaucracies, trying to make those bureaucracies work together to form a seamless support system for all service members and veterans is not an easy challenge … It’s been inefficient for service members to have to hand-deliver records from one system to another when they get out of the military. It doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense … Our goal had been to complete this effort by 2017 … our worry is, how long is it going to take to get to that goal? And what is going to be the price tag to get to that goal? And how many times is it going to be delayed? … Rather than building a single integrated system from scratch, we will focus our immediate efforts on integrating VA and DoD health data as quickly as possible, by focusing on interoperability and using existing solutions. This approach is affordable, it’s achievable, and if we refocus our efforts, we believe we can achieve the key goal of a seamless system for health records between VA and DoD on a greatly accelerated schedule. We’re now directing our departments to do just that.

The reaction of Rep. Mike Michaud (D-ME), ranking member of the House veterans committee:

We have just witnessed hundreds of millions of dollars go down the drain. I’m disappointed that our nation’s two largest government agencies – one of which is the world’s foremost developer of high-tech machines and cyber-systems – could not come together on something that would have been so beneficial to those that served.

Reader Comments

From Billy East: “Re: McKesson Provider Technologies. Major re-org, with changes in leadership over Horizon Clinicals and other changes in Analytics and Relay divisions.” Unverified.

From Printgeek: “Re: McKesson. Has rolled its Physician Practice Solutions business into its RCM business along with Medisoft, Lytec, Practice Partner, Practice Choice, and now MED3OOO.” Unverified. The e-mail include the departure of an executive I won’t name at the moment, along with predictions of product sunsetting that are speculation at this point. I’ve seen no announcements, changes in the company’s Web pages, or updates to the LinkedIn profiles of those named.

From Tar Heal: “Re: UNC Health Care. Rolling out its Epic plan.” Not only did UNC avoid choosing a gimmicky name for its Epic project, they created a project logo that incorporates Epic’s identity along with their own. Go-live is planned for the spring of 2014.

From Primus: “Re: HIPAA. It’s halfway between sad and embarrassing when folks who lecture on HIPAA spell it incorrectly.” They hedged their bets by sometimes spelling it HIPPA, sometimes HIPAA.

HIStalk Announcements and Requests

My BFF Dr. Jayne and I are already working on our HIMSS party calendar. She has tasked me with securing the invites while she works on the logistics of how to attend the most events in a limited amount of time. We are partial to soirees that are open to all HIStalk readers, such as Divurgent’s summHIT Balcony Party on Sunday, March 3. If your organization is sponsoring an event that is open to all of our readers, we are happy to mention it on HIStalk and of course add ourselves to the attendee list.

A few must-read items from HIStalk Practice from the last week: CAGH launches an EFT enrollment tool that allows providers to enroll with multiple payers through a single online process. The Boston Globe profiles eClinicalWorks and its new patient engagement inititative. The percentage of medical claims filed electronically has nearly doubled between 2002 to 2011. Denial rates for established office visits range from 44 to 65 percent. HIT adoption by FQHCs is associated with significant improvements in care. Brad Boyd of Culbert Healthcare Solutions offers thoughts on practices shifting to a core vendor prior to ICD-10 implementation. Dr. Gregg wonders if Meaningful Use is getting lost in translation. I like to think of myself as a gal who doesn’t require much to keep her smiling: a hot pair of shoes, a nice glass of wine, and a few new HIStalk Practice readers every month. Make me smile. Thanks for reading.

What we like: (a) people who subscribe to our e-mail updates on HIStalk, HIStalk Practice, and HIStalk Connect; (b) connecting with readers via Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter; (c) seeing nice stats indicating that readers are interested in the ads of our sponsors and are clicking them for more information, as well as checking out the Resource Center and Consulting RFI Blaster; (d) getting rumors and news online, by e-mail, or on the Rumor Line telephone, with details to your right; and (e) getting support for what we do from readers, contributors, and sponsors. All of us (Inga, Dr. Jayne, Travis, Lt. Dan, Donna, and I) do this part time after work, and that wouldn’t be possible without help of a variety of types, for which we say thanks.

On the Jobs Board: Healthcare Industry Solutions Director, Software Product Development Manager, Senior Applications Engineer, Director of Marketing.

I keep getting e-mails asking for HIStalkapalooza details that I’ve already spelled out on HIStalk twice, so here’s one final notice for the skimmers: registration is still open. Sign up and then read HIStalk and watch your e-mail for details – please don’t e-mail me with questions or requests because I barely have time to sleep as it is (not to mention I would be spending time replying to people who don’t read HIStalk anyway). So far it looks like maybe 100 or so presidents and CEOs have signed up from my quick scan down the list. My favorite attendee title: “CEO Wife/Mistress” (should we hold one spot or two?) while one (male) attendee volunteered that, “I am willing to wear high heels just to get in.” The event draws the most interesting crowd of anything at HIMSS because not only are HIStalk readers smarter, funnier, and sexier (scientific proof available on request), we get a stimulating mix of internationally known executives, CIOs, CMIOs, trench warriors, consultants, clinicians, investment bankers, sponsor people, and government officials who know their stuff and also know how to have a good time. I’m also happy to report that next year’s HIStalkapalooza in Orlando is already sponsored, as is the 2015 version in Chicago.

HIStalkapalooza sponsor Medicomp Systems will once again host its Quipstar game show in the HIMSS exhibit hall, offering fun competition, tee shirts, prizes, and cold drinks (beer and Ingatinis are mentioned, and I had the former last year). Register to play here. The grand prize is super cool: two business-class airfares to Bangkok, a 10-day stay in Medicomp’s corporate apartment, and two executive physicals at Bumrungrad International Hospital. Thai food is among my favorites and it’s shockingly cheap there, which just might be reason enough to go. Check out a disguised Inga at 0:25 in the video from last year above.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Athenahealth reports Q4 results: revenue up 26 percent, EPS $0.29 vs. $0.26, beating earnings estimates by $0.01.

Analytics vendor Health Data Vision raises $2.8 million in Series A funding.

Nuance reports Q1 results: revenue up 28 percent, EPS –$0.07 vs. $0.03, falling short on revenue and earnings. Shares are down more than 15 percent in after-hours trading. On the earnings call, Chairman and CEO Paul Ricci said reduced transcription volumes due to increased EMR adoption and the company’s own Dragon Medical software will hurt the company’s healthcare growth until business picks up for its computer-aided coding and clinical documentation offerings.

Mobile health technology provider Diversinet Corp. is awarded two US and Canadian patents related to “bring your own device” security .

Sales

Vancouver-based Fraser Health contracts for dbMotion’s interoperability platform.

Mercy Health System (MO) selects MModal Fluency for Coding workflow platform for its network of 26 hospitals and clinics.

Huron Valley Physicians Association (MI) chooses e-MDs as a preferred EMR partner for its 700 members.

The OneBlood, Inc. (FL) blood center licenses Mediware’s HCLL Transfusion software.

The HealtheConnections RHIO (NY) selects Mirth’s HIE technology.

People

Rose Ann Laureto (UNC Health Care) is named CIO of ProMedica (OH).

Acusis promotes KB Anand to CEO.

Hearst Media extends the responsibilities of First Databank President Gregory Dorn, MD, MPH to deputy group head of Hearst Media, where he will oversee business-to-business services in the automotive, electronic, and finance industries along with the company’s healthcare brands MCG (the former Milliman Care Guidelines), First Databank, Zynx Health, and Map of Medicine. I interviewed him in September 2012.

Health Catalyst appoints John Haughom, MD (PeaceHealth) CMO and SVP.

AHIMA hires Deborah Green (LaVie Care) as EVP/COO and promotes Denise Froemming to EVP/CFO.

Announcements and Implementations

QuadraMed will offer Q-Matic’s self-service technology for managing patient flow through its enterprise Access Management suite.

EClinicalWorks will invest $25 million over the next year to enhance and expand its patient engagement tools in its healow business unit.

OSF HealthCare System goes live on sharing its seven-hospital Epic information with other participants in the Central Illinois HIE using ICA’s CareAlign exchange platform.

Cogdell Family Clinic (TX) implements scanning technology from EDCO Health Information Solutions to eliminate its paper-based medical records.

Truven Health Analytics launches HIE Advantage Analytics for the analysis of HIE utilization and population management.

ICSA announces a mobile app testing program to help enterprises determine if their supported apps are properly protecting sensitive data.

Government and Politics

CMS will develop a new records systems to facilitate quality reporting for long-term hospital care.

What ever happened 2 #blueButton Health assistant developed back in 2010 4 patients 2 download EHR data ? adobe.ly/TRhKNe

— Sherry Reynolds (@Cascadia) February 8, 2013

Good question. Adobe won a VA prize in 2010 for a slick Blue Button project using Adobe Air. It would be fun to revisit old announcements occasionally to see which turned out to be fluff, BS, or wishful thinking.

CHIME’s comments on ONC’s proposed patient safety plan emphasize that methods of matching patients to their data are inconsistent and a growing problem with HIEs, although it fell short of providing the obvious but politically deadly solution of a national patient identifier. CHIME also expressed concern that patient safety event data collection might take a lot of provider time and urged ONC to turn implementation of the patient safety plan to an organization that isn’t under direct government control.

ONC’s Farzad Mostashari throws down the gauntlet to the minority of EHR vendors that aren’t forthright in their pricing, that write unfair contracts, and that hold customer data hostage to prevent them from moving to another system, warning that if those vendors don’t step up, “We will go back to the regulatory process.”

Secretary of the Army John McHugh visits the National Center for Telehealth and Technology in Joint Base Lewis-McChord, WA. It offers video chat-based mental health consultations to soldiers in remote locations.

Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), new chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, acknowledges that he tried to intervene in a billing dispute between CMS and his largest political donor, a Florida ophthalmologist who was ordered to replay $8.9 million for overbilling Medicare for an eye drug. The Senator, who also admitted to inappropriately using the doctor’s private jet, tried to convince CMS that the billing rules were confusing.

Other

A national survey finds that the most-hated job in America, as scored by those holding the position, is IT director. Sales and marketing director came in at #2, product manager at #3, senior web develop #4, technical support analyst at #8, and marketing manager rounding out the list at #10. Companies should probably be concerned if their sales and marketing executives are that miserable.

AHRQ and CMS announce a new EHR format for children’s health that includes recommendations for child-specific data elements such as vaccines, prenatal and newborn screening tests, growth data, and child abuse reporting.

A study in Health Affairs finds that care costs averaged $88 less per episode when delivered via an online clinic versus traditional settings, with strong effectiveness indicators and a 98 percent “would recommend” consumer rating.

A county commissioner and Tea Party leader in Michigan casts the lone dissenting vote in considering the health department’s request for new Medicaid billing software, explaining, “My worry is that if it’s part of (electronic health records or EHR)—which is Obamacare. I’d like to make sure our information is not being collected. You’d be selling your health care and your liberty to Big Brother. We should make darn sure this is not part of the EHR system … I feel our records would be better off kept in private hands.”

A KLAS report finds that ED physicians believe best-of-breed ED systems offer better clinical decision support, usability, and documentation accuracy compared to enterprise ED systems. The highest-ranked best-of-breed vendors are Wellsoft, Picis, T-System, and Medhost, while Epic takes the top spot among enterprise vendors.

The ECRI Institute Patient Safety Organization looks at HIT-related safety events, identifying five problem areas:

Inadequate data transfer between systems
Entering data on the wrong patient
Making data entry mistakes
HIT system bugs
Configuration errors

Security analysts find a vulnerability in Internet-connected devices manufactured by Honeywell that could allow hackers to take control of large-business environmental systems, some of which they identified as belonging to hospitals. Hacking the device could also provide direct access to a hospital’s network since they are often direct connected via Ethernet.

World-renowned Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson, MD (played by Cuba Gooding Jr. in 2009’s “Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story”) makes his fellow presenter President Obama squirm at the National Prayer Breakfast with his suggested alternatives to Obamacare: “We spend a lot of money on health care, twice as much per capita as anyone else in the world, and yet not very efficient. What can we do? Here’s my solution. When a person is born, give them a birth certificate, an electronic medical record, and a health savings account to which money can be contributed pre-tax from the time you’re born to the time you die.” He also said that the government is fiscally irresponsible and needs to place more emphasis on education.

Santa Clara Valley Medical Center (CA) is fined $100,000 after patient dies after going into cardiac arrest without receiving treatment for nine minutes. The patient’s monitor leads had become disconnected and the technician called for a nurse via overhead page at 1:27 a.m., but the nurse said she didn’t hear it. The hospital, thankfully, says it has developed a better way to notify nurses. Google tells me that Vocera’s headquarters building is less than two miles from the hospital in San Jose and the hospital is a Vocera customer, so that’s probably a much better solution than waking patients up with middle-of-the-night overhead pages that could be missed.

Twelve patients file suit against North Shore University Hospital (NY), claiming that medical records face sheets were stolen and their information used to file fraudulent tax returns, charge credit cards, and open cell phone accounts since 2010. The suit claims that a theft ring operated for more than a year, but patients weren’t notified.

The top 10 executives of non-profit Carolinas HealthCare System (NC) each earned more than $1 million in 2012, including $4.76 million for the CEO.

I was amused that Dr. Jayne uses the word “pop” below in referring to fizzy sugar water, which I know is a regional term since I’m fascinated by stuff like that (calling the midday meal “dinner,” referring to a rubber band as a “gumband,” declaring the side of the road to be a “berm” instead of a curb, etc.) Then I remember that there’s an Internet, meaning someone has devoted their very existence to studying the “pop” phenomenon, so that’s the graphic above. The yellow parts of the country call it “pop,” the blue say “soda,”and the purple refer to it generically as “Coke” (although my favorite is the unlisted variant I always heard from my Southern relatives, “Co-Cola.”)

Perhaps this OB-GYN shouldn’t have chastised her tardy patient on Facebook. The hospital has reprimanded her and is reviewing her posts after reports that some may have contained patient information. I would add that she should be reprimanded for starting a sentence with “so,” an appallingly lame and unnecessary verbal crutch that seems to be ubiquitous these days.

Sponsor Updates

SuccessEHS says it has doubled in size since January 2011 with the hiring of 295 new employees.
Surgical Information Systems demonstrates interoperability for each IHE profile at the 2013 IHE Connectathon.
Forbes recognizes iSirona, Kareo, and Ping Identity on its list of the country’s most promising privately-held, high-growth companies.
Levi, Ray & Shoup opens a branch office in Westchester, IL.
Elsevier launches the MEDalternatives database, which gives users access to drug cost savings options through access to information on alternative therapies.
Vocera donates its communication technology to MedShare (GA), a non-profit that recovers and redistributes surplus medical supplies and equipment to developing countries.
Access hosts a February 12 Webinar profiling Norman Regional Hospital (OK) and its use of Access products to advance paperless initiatives.

EPtalk by Dr. Jayne

HIMSS alert: For those of you who may be out cavorting with vendors or clients in the Big Easy, a recent study shows that mixing alcoholic drinks with diet pop may lead to higher blood alcohol levels than using regular pop. The study was small with only 16 participants and attributes the effect to diet pop moving more quickly through the stomach.

Speaking of vendors, clients, and cocktails: CMS released the final rule on the Sunshine Act this week. Starting March 2014, pharmaceutical and medical device must report payments to providers for consulting fees, honoraria, gifts, food, entertainment, travel, and charitable contributions. There will be a 45-day review period for physicians to ensure the accuracy of any information submitted. The rule is 287 pages long and it’s already been a long day, so anyone who wants to send me highlights is welcome. Instead of stale pickup lines accompanying offers to buy me a drink, I’m sure I can look forward to, “Hey baby, what’s your NPI?”

I’ve received lots of reader comments on my recent piece regarding hospital budget cuts and administrative ridiculousness. Some of my favorites:

“I thought it was bad when they stopped emptying our trash daily and told us all food-type trash needed to go to the kitchen and that if any varmints or bugs appear, each department would be charged for pest control.”
“They started vacuuming during the day because it is cheaper. So you are on conference calls or any type call and along comes the high-powered vacuuming. Also lights have been dimmed, so you practically need a flashlight.”
“My most ridiculous administrative experience occurred smack dab in the middle of the current recession. Senior management felt our product was so critical they decided to raise prices. I could only shake my head in amazement and easily forecast the impending carnage to come… and did it ever come! Our competitors had a field day as clients dropped us like a bad habit!

Keep the stories coming. I really do enjoy reading your comments and knowing that our hospital isn’t the only one that has totally lost its collective mind.

ICD-10 challenge: I had a patient present this morning with eye pain which she attributes to staying up all night reading Fifty Shades of Grey. The best part of the encounter was that my scribe had never heard of it, and watching his face as the patient tried to explain what the book was about was priceless. I guess I’m stuck with a nonspecific code for exposure to other specified factors. Any suggestions?

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.

8 Comments

Morning Headlines 2/7/13

February 7, 2013 Headlines Comments Off

Remarks by Secretary Panetta and Secretary Shinseki from the Department of Veterans Affairs

A Department of Defense meeting transcript indicates that the DoD and VA will pursue interoperability and a common user interface rather than creating a single EHR to meet the President’s goal of a joint system. Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta says the VA and DoD have aligned their data elements and will start a pilot project this summer on a common VistA/AHLTA user interface for physicians. He says that project, plus the recently expanded Blue Button initiative, will meet the President’s directive faster and cheaper than creating a single EHR. The departments announced in March 2011 that they would create a common joint EHR platform, saying then that their respective systems were outdated and lacking functionality.

The Advisory Board Company Acquires 360Fresh

360Fresh products use natural language and text processing to analyze information from electronic medical records and other sources, adding real-time predictive analytics capabilities for The Advisory Board Company’s Crimson customers.

Physician Satisfaction with Best-of-Breed EDIS 59% Higher than Enterprise Systems

A new KLAS report on emergency department information systems finds that ED physicians give best-of-breed ED systems higher scores because of clinical decision support, usability, and accuracy of documentation, while enterprise systems provide advantages in interoperability, continuation of care, and communication with other hospital systems.

New Children’s Electronic Health Record Format Announced

AHRQ and CMS release a guide for EHR developers that includes a minimum set of data elements and data standards for children.

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HIStalk Interviews Lorre Wisham, CEO, Health Technology Training Solutions

February 6, 2013 Interviews Comments Off

Lorre Wisham is president and CEO of Health Technology Training Solutions of Tucson, AZ.

Tell me about yourself and the company.

I’ve spent almost two decades in a wide variety of operations leadership roles in healthcare IT. I am a problem solver and a process person. Years in a customer-facing role taught me to look for solutions.

HTTS was the vision of my late husband, Josh Wisham, who had a long and successful career in healthcare IT. Three years ago, he did some research into the most successful HIT solutions and found that training is always a key element. He partnered with McKinnon-Mulherin, a Salt Lake City-based company that focuses on instructional design and training development. Liddy West, a long-time friend and colleague, signed on to lead sales and marketing. HTTS then started to deliver solutions to the challenges of customers — inadequate resources or skills, short deadlines, and customer demands. Those customers loved the result.

After Josh passed away last summer, I stepped in as CEO. We’ve updated our website, added a catalog of services, and sponsored the coolest blog in the industry. [laughs]

What’s have you seen, good and bad, with vendor-developed training?

There is a broad spectrum here. I think some vendors do a great job with their training and others don’t. Generally, I would say the greatest positive is that the person creating the training is a subject matter expert and knows the product inside and out.

At the same time, that very thing can also be the greatest negative. Someone who knows something so well often assumes a level of understanding that customers may not have. And in many cases, vendor training people don’t have instructional design skills or understand how adults learn best.

I’ve said it before and I will say it again. Training is typically not well planned and is often an afterthought or a rush in the eleventh hour before a new release or product has to go out. When that happens, the outcome is somewhat negative because training is just a checkbox or a line-item cost for the client and vendor.

When training is done right, it delivers positive outcomes in many areas, from adoption to satisfaction to reduced call center costs. We know that.

Give me a few examples of how you’ve worked with customers.

HTTS has delivered effective training solutions to a number of healthcare IT companies. We have done everything from evaluating training programs and resources to designing and developing of e-learning modules for a retail pharmacy company.

I think what allows us to create the right solutions is our approach. We do an assessment first to understand the current state and the needs. We can suggest where we can help the most. We want to fill the gap. We don’t want to take over and do what the existing training department is there to do.

We mentor or supplement or we do it all. It varies so much from one company to the next. Every one of us at HTTS has been on the customer’s end of the conversation in our careers, and we work to make it as easy and impactful as possible.

How would instructional designers with expertise in training technology and adult learning principles approach new version user training differently?

It seems to me that no matter what company you are looking at, training is something that gets put off until the last minute. When product management is thinking about a roadmap for a new release, they might mention training, but it usually isn’t really an active part of the project until the product is almost ready for GA. Everyone on the vendor side is sighing with relief because they’re done and ready to move on to the next thing.

Training is often rushed and incomplete. Because the people creating the training know the content so well, they assume everyone knows as much as they know, so training can miss some of the fundamentals. Or worse, the training is organized according to the way developers designed the product rather than how customers will use it.

When instructional designers look at the product, they don’t assume anything. They aren’t subject matter experts. Instructional designers create the training for people who are seeing the product for the first time. Considering how much staff turnover and system replacements we’re seeing on the client side, the odds are pretty good that they are working with new applications and devices regularly.

Beyond that, instructional designers know how different people learn and how their work and learning environments can impact that. Think about how training needs to be different for a physician in the office versus a nurse in a busy emergency department. IDs are trained to think about those differences and to go beyond a lecture or demo. The result is training that is more engaging, more applicable, and longer lasting.

What metrics can be used to measure the effectiveness of a training program?

Interesting you should ask me that because it is something we are spending a lot of time on so we can quantify ROI. Most learning professionals are fully aware of the steps we need to take to evaluate training effectiveness, but getting the metrics can be a little tough.

How do you measure customer adoption of software? That is a critical aspect of what we are talking about here. If a customer knows how to use the product and takes full advantage of it, how do you measure the value of that compared with another customer who doesn’t? Satisfaction, probably, but how can you be sure it can be attributed to training?

The one obvious metric we discovered when working with an imaging company was the reduction in support calls. Luckily, they were already capturing the “How do I?” questions in their CRM. They told us those training-related calls were reduced by 35 percent after HTTS delivered the new version training. For them, that was huge.

Not all clients are able or willing to provide benchmarks. There is risk in measuring ROI and some benefit in not knowing. It lets you keep doing things the way you’ve always done them. One of our goals is to encourage clients to capture and share benchmark data on adoption, sales, customer satisfaction, and support calls and then compare it to post-training numbers. That way, we can measure not only the effectiveness of training, but also the value that good training delivers.

Can training programs be a competitive differentiator for vendors?

Absolutely. But the trickier question is, does anyone think of it that way? I’m sure many of your readers follow the KLAS reports. Most vendors read the comments their customers wrote about their products. But who focuses on the training comments? Often the implementation manager reads them, but it is probably not his or her area of responsibility.

I can’t think of a customer I have encountered in my career who has said, “Wow, the training was amazing, and I feel so much more prepared to use your software.” Epic customers come the closest to that because Epic forces them to become certified in using and administering their system. It is brilliant. They are happier users and good references because they are able to integrate the system more naturally into their workflows.

How do you see software training evolving over the next few years and how will the company address those changes?

The biggest changes will come in delivery methods. While many in healthcare are just barely getting their minds around Web-based e-learning modules, other industries are already delivering their training on mobile devices. They are taking advantage of social networking to create learning communities where knowledge is shared in faster and more dynamic ways, right when and where the user needs it.

Our job is to help healthcare bridge the gap between where providers and vendors are today and where they can be tomorrow. We know what’s possible with today’s rapidly evolving learning methods and technologies, but we also know the unique needs of the healthcare IT environment. We are going to keep nudging vendors and providers forward so they can benefit from these changes while not losing sight of the real-world complexities they face right now.

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