News 11/9/10

From Zuckerberg: “Re: ONC ACTB EMR certification. Several EMR vendors are making a big deal out of partial certification and deserve some grief. Partial certification is meaningless – you think physician practices are going to buy multiple products and integrate them? I can understand partial certification for hospitals, but for physicians, this is crazy. Novice physician buyers are going to see that a vendor is ‘certified’ and assume that they are good to go. They’ll only find out after a lot of effort that what they’ve implemented isn’t going to deliver the goods.” I agree the “modular” versus “complete EHR” certification will cause confusion for some unsophisticated buyers. I’d suggest novice physicians refer to the ONC’s list of certified products, which includes designations for modular versus complete EHR certifications. You can also drill down to see what specific modules have been certified. More importantly, ONC indicates which modules within a particular product are not certified. If an EHR has only modular certification, providers will need additional applications in order to meet meaningful use requirements. Unlike Zuckerberg, I assume vendors are being up front and forthcoming about potential product gaps, but perhaps I am too optimistic. The winners here are consultants, who have the opportunity to help providers wade through the quagmire.

From Jack Dempsey: “Forbes article. HIT wouldn’t be as much fun without Bush.”  Forbes’ Zina Moukheiber likens the “sniping” between athenahealth’s Jonathan Bush and eClinicalWorks Girish Navani to a Bill Gates-versus-Steve Jobs type debates. I’m not sure I’d characterize Bush or Navani as snipers, though both leaders are definitely passionate about their companies and their business models. Bush, however, is the only CEO I’ve ever met who’s willing to sit in on a panel discussion wearing a suit jacket and red shorts.

Mercy Memorial Hospital System (MI) contracts with Allscripts for several clinical solutions, including EHR and PM for Mercy’s employed and affiliated physicians. Mercy is also adding Sunrise Enterprise 5.5 and Allscripts Care Management.

Speaking of Allscripts, Sales President Jeffrey A. Surges is leaving to take over as CEO of Merge Healthcare.

A Kaiser Permanente study finds that targeted alerts sent to physicians through EHRs can help decrease unnecessary tests and help physicians pay closer attention to the messages they receive. In Kaiser’s study, physicians who ordered specific blood tests for elderly patients were immediately alerted when typical results for that age group were unreliable. Kaiser found unnecessary tests were dramatically reduced. To reduce alert fatigue and promote adherence to clinical practice guidelines, researchers recommend implementing alerts for specific types of orders.

 

Forty-six percent of readers say their practice is paying between $500 and $999 a month for their vendor or hospital-hosted EHR. Another 28% say they pay less than $500 and the rest claim the cost is over $1,000 a month.

Allscripts releases its third quarter numbers: net income falls to $1.4 million from $12.9 million last year. Revenue rose 47% to $242.4 million. Excluding one-time items, earning were $.19/share; analysts were expecting $.17/share. Allscripts blames the income drop on higher expenses, including selling, general, and administrative expenses of $103.8 million compared to last year’s $53.0 million.

MedLink acquires the assets of EHR provider MedAppz, maker of the iSuite EHR.  Both MedLink and MedAppz have products that are 2008 CCHIT certified and neither appears to have earned ONC ACTB certification, at least to date. I’ll go out on a limb and say that I bet MedLink would like to find a way to certify just one EHR and move the combined client base to it.

Epocrates and Covisint team up to help physicians receive PQRI reimbursements from CMS. The partnership allows the 300,000 physicians in the Epocrates network to report on quality measures through Covisint’s DocSite PQRI registry.

A local paper reports that Troy, MI-based gloStream has added 50 new employees in the last year. The five-year-old company has 130 employees plus 15 independent contractors.

Trend alert: the number of physicians signing up to provide concierge medicine continues to grow. Concierge Choice Physicians says it has added over 50 practices since the start of the year and now includes 172 practices. MDVIP, which has 430 practices, has signed on 100 practices in the last year.

E-mail Inga.