News 8/5/09

Salinas Valley Memorial Healthcare System (CA) selects e-MDs to provide PM/EHR systems for its 200 affiliated physicians. The healthcare system will supplement a portion of the costs of the software, training, and support expenses for its community physicians.

RealMed is named exclusive clearinghouse provider for Adventist Health System’s physicians.

The State of Mississippi contracts with Shared Health to implement and operation an EHR and e-prescribing solution for the state’s 600,000 Medicaid beneficiaries. The free, Web-based EHR will be automatically populated with Medicaid data, including lab results, medications, immunizations, and allergies.

TrialX will release an iPhone application that gives doctors and patients the ability to search for various clinical trials.

Salesforce.com takes a minority stake in PracticeFusion. PracticeFusion also announces plans to offer a new PHR offering using Salesforce.com cloud computing platform. PracticeFusion’s EHR software is Web-based and offered free of charge to physicians, as long as they are willing to put up with advertising on their systems.

Consumer Reports, the granddaddy of rating services, is now supplying patient satisfaction ratings to hospitals and physicians. The Consumer Reports Health Ratings Center rates the overall patient experience, including doctor and nurse communication, room cleanliness, and hospital staff attentiveness.

Cuban-trained physicians are fleeing their country in record  numbers and settling in the Miami area. By some estimates, as many as 6,000 medically trained professionals have moved to the South Florida area in the last six years.

More physicians are asking patients to pay out-of-pocket costs at the point of care, versus weeks later after insurance pays. Physician offices are taking advantage of various software tools that calculate the patient-responsible portion based on deductibles and insurance plans. While many patients appreciate the convenience of point of care payment, this article cautions patients to compare their payment amount to the actual EOB in order to catch any inaccuracies.

Welch Allyn introduces an online tool to educate doctors on the benefits of device connectivity. New site here.

SRS announces that the 12-provider Chestnut Hill Cardiology (PA) has selected the SRS hybrid EMR for its practice.

We were forwarded a letter penned by a doctor who is frustrated with the transition to his new EMR. To summarize, the physician has been live for six weeks and is still seeing fewer patients; they don’t have time to enter all the past history information required; he and the other doctors are spending numerous hours working with the vendor to figure out glitches. He feels the vendor misled him about the system and its capabilities. He questions whether his experience is unique or if other practices feel the same way. We didn’t see the need to mention the vendor because frankly you could insert just about any vendor’s name and it very well could be applicable. Perhaps an enthusiastic salesperson skipped over some of the details — it’s been known to happen. On the other hand, moving to EHR is an overwhelming process and many of the smaller details are incomprehensible until you are actually in the midst of a go-live. It’s easy for assumptions to be made on the front end. It’s easy for buyer’s remorse to set in when things don’t seem to be working the way you envisioned. No one has created the “perfect” EHR and every vendor has room for improvement. However, I would tell this doctor to give the transition more time. Six weeks is not enough time to feel comfortable with an upheaval as huge as a move from a paper to digital office.

athenahealth reports its second quarter results, which included a 9% increase in profit compared to a year ago. The company reported $3 million in profit ($.03/share) and revenue of $46.7 million (a 42% increase.) athenahealth attributes the positive results to better sales, including an increase of athenaClinicals EMR users from 498 to 1,034 active providers. Results were in line with analyst expectations.

Featherstone Informatics Group is named the exclusive vendor for the American College of Cardiology’s practice-based quality improvement program, IC3 (Improving Continuous Cardiac Care.) Featherstone will coordinate the program’s EHR interfacing and data extraction process for practices across the country. Data will then be analyzed in order to report logarithms for benchmarking physicians and practice clinical performance.

Durham, NC internist Esther E. Poza, MD joins TSI Healthcare as the company’s chief medical officer, tasked with leading the company’s efforts help physicians adopt EHRs.

Proteus Biomedical Inc. is testing a miniature digestible chip that can be attached to conventional medication, sending a signal that confirms whether patients are taking their prescribed pills. A sensing device worn on the skin uses wireless technology to relay that information to doctors, along with readings about patients’ vital signs. Sounds way too big brother-ish to me.

E-mail Inga.