News 5/13/10

California Forensic Medical Group, a healthcare provider for correctional facilities, selects eClinicalWorks for EMR.

Alaska’s largest orthopedic clinic contracts with SRS for its hybrid EMR solution. Anchorage Fracture & Orthopedic Clinic includes 12 physicians.

Ophthalmic Imaging Systems reports Q1 earnings: revenue up 72% from last year to $4.1 million; net loss of $857,000 compared to the previous year’s loss of $1.1 million.

GEMMS selects Medfusion’s patient portal solution to interface with the GEMMS practice management system.

Speaking of Medfusion, Intuit announces plans to purchase the company for $91 million in cash. Intuit is the maker of Quickbooks, TurboTax, and Quicken Health. Inuit says it will use Mefusion’s technology to enable patients to communicate with providers, review health information and track healthcare expenses. Allscripts happens to be a reseller for Medfusion’s portal and Quicken Health, so they’ll likely be happy to see further integration between the product. Medfusion founder/CEO Stephen Malik with become an Inuit SVP and GM.

Aunt Martha’s Youth Service Center (IL) selects NextGen’s EHR and PM solution, plus QSI’s electronic dental records program. I was curious who this  “Aunt Martha” was so I checked out the website. Turns out Aunt Martha is really just a “concept,” or the embodiment of a caring relative a youth can turn to for help. Cool. The organization includes 17 community health centers.

Hunterdon Healthcare System (NJ) is using InterSystems Ensemble to connect its 15 affiliated physician groups running NextGen EHR/PM to the medical center’s QuadraMed Affinity HIS.

The 780-physician Marshfield Clinic (WI) joins Premier healthcare alliance, giving it access to Premier’s clinical, financial, and outcome data, as well as its purchasing network.

The Health IT Policy Committee endorses a permanent certification plan that includes provisions to monitor EHRs after they are purchased to ensure providers are installing the proper technology. The committee also wants EHRs to be checked regularly to see if they are labeled with the same meaningful use stage that they have been certified. In addition, they recommend giving the ONC authority to de-certify EHRs in “egregious situations.”  While all that sounds great in theory, wouldn’t it be pricey to oversee, not to mention complicated for providers (will they understand what year certification they need and/or will they needlessly shy away from products that are pending certification for future years?)

In case you missed it, we released the results of our HIStalk Practice reader survey. My favorite stat: 85% of readers say HIStalk Practice helps them perform their job better. And, my favorite recommendation: talk about men’s shoes once in a while.

The Boston Globe publishes an editorial in support of EMRs and chastising providers who “feel little or no responsibility for symptoms that get misdiagnosed because of inadequate information about a patient’s past medical care, let alone the tests that get repeated because no one has a record of the previous results.”  As proof that the providers are wrong to avoid technology, The Globe cites the oft-referenced IOM study that suggests thousands of deaths a year could be prevented with computerized records. As a final dig at providers, the editors suggest doctors and hospitals are “putting their own habits ahead of the clearly demonstrated needs of patients.” Interestingly, readers seem to be agree with The Globe at about a  2:1 ratio. Even more interesting, to me anyway, is that the only ones getting blamed for the situation are the providers. Hmm.

South Miami Criticare selects McKesson to provide ED billing, coding, and reporting services. Here’s something I didn’t know: McKesson’s Revenue Management Solutions group has 4,000 employees and does billing for over 1,000 physician clients. I am sure it’s a relatively small segment for McKesson (they employ 32,000 and have $106 billion in annual revenue,) but they clearly have a good chunk of the physician medical office billing market.

An Institute for e-Health Policy panel says that healthcare reimbursement needs to be changed in order to spur more physicians usage of mobile health and tele-health technology. Currently CMS pays just $2 million of its $400 billion Medicare spending on tele-health reimbursement.

E-mail Inga.