News 9/24/09

From Grizzled Veteran: “Re: the SSA wanting to purchase an EHR. This is a mess. The pilot is six locations; the total will be 30 locations. Amount to be awarded not to exceed $25 million. The system will be selected off the RFQ — no demos of the software before purchase and it must be ‘live’ 30 days after the contract is awarded. Are these people serious ? Inga, can you watch this and let us know who was awarded the contract … if anyone?” I checked out the RFP for myself and I must say the SSA is not making itself easy to do business with. Grizzled Veteran didn’t mention that the 68-page RFP was sent out September 14th and the deadline for completion was September 18th. The site lists 54 “interested vendors” and eClinicalWorks is the only mainstream EMR name I recognized. Seriously? Either they already have a vendor in mind (bet on that) or they don’t really want an EMR.

PracticeOne and SyntegraMD announce a partnership to to integrate the PracticeOne EHR with SyntegraMD’s office and lab management services. The combined solution with provide practices with a single source for diagnostic and imaging lab results, communications, and EHRs.

EMR and PM software vendor gloStream contracts with Apollo Health Street to provide gloStream clients an additional IT support option.

Allscripts now has its own online channel on ehrtv.com, which features extensive video documentary of this summer’s ACE09 conference. Check it out here.

Link High Technologies, by the way, announces it is now a certified partner and reseller of Allscripts MyWay. Link High will sell the integrated PM/EHR solution throughout New Jersey.

HIMSS announces the 2009 Davies winners: MultiCare Health System, Tacoma, WA (organizational); Virginia Women’s Center, Richmond, VA (ambulatory); and Urban Health Plan, New York, NY and Hearts of Texas, Waco, TX (community health).

Practice Fusion (the free EMR guys) partners with BioReference Laboratories. The companies will collaborate to distribute Practice Fusion’s EHR to BioReference physicians and BioReference lab results will integrate with the EHR. Practice Fusion thinks the arrangement may “effectively double” their user base. Their web site says they have 18,000 physicians and practice managers using their system and that 15,000 physicians utilize BioReference Labs. I suppose a little hyperbole is allowed in press releases.

Quest Diagnostics takes its own digital stand, offering interested physicians a risk-free trial of its Care360 e-prescribing service for six months. Quest says it has at least 150,000 physicians using Care360 services, including ePrescribing, and Labs & Meds. And here is something cool: the applications are accessible via iPhone/iPod Touch. If you go really deep into the press release you’ll learn that Quest has a new EHR in beta. Care360 EHR is scheduled for release this fall (after they have hooked in all those doctors using free e-prescribing.)

Quality Systems, the parent company of NextGen, appoints Philip N. Kaplan COO of NextGen and the QSI dental unit. Kaplan resigned as a board member in order to take over the COO role. Craig A. Barbarosh, an attorney who specializes in organizational restructuring, becomes NextGen’s newest board member.

GlobalMedia, NeuroCall, and REACH Call introduce a new resource to provide neurological consults to patients in underserved areas. 

Here’s a doctor’s office I am glad I never worked in.

E-mail Inga.