News 12/8/11

From Wednesday’s HIT Policy Committee meeting comes the following facts and figures:

• Over 154,000 Eligible Professionals have registered for Meaningful Use through the end of November, including 115,000 in Medicare’s program and 38,000 with Medicaid’s.
• Medicare has paid EPs almost $183 million; Medicaid has issued an estimated $237 million in incentives.
• The number of EPs that have registered is less than 30% of all EPs.
• Only 21, 425 EPs have received payments through the end of November. That’s about 14% of registered EPs and 4% of all EPs.
• At the time CMS crunched the numbers, 21,308 EPs had attested; 444 were unsuccessful.
• Drug formulary, immunization registries, and patient list are the most popular menu objectives.

The numbers leave me with a number of questions, including why payment appears to be so slow (almost half the total payments were not made until November.) I’m also curious why 444 EPs failed the attestation.  If you are in the know or have a theory, please share.

Anthony L. Jordan Health Center (NY) selects Phytel’s Atmosphere platform for patient outreach, appointment reminder, performance benchmarking, care coordination, and patient education.

Costco, in partnership with Allscripts reseller Etransmedia Technology, announces a nationwide launch of Allscripts MyWay EHR and PM, following sales success and high demand in select test markets. Costco is offering the MyWay package for as little as $499 a month, which includes hosting services, support, training, implementation, and unlimited claims processing.

Weight loss franchise company Pounds and Inches Away selects eMedical Fusion’s PM solutions, which are targeted at cash, hybrid, and concierge practices. eMedicalFusion also announces the availability of EMR interfaces with Amazing Charts and Eclipse.

Patient check-in company Phreesia releases a study of referral trends in physician offices, finding that 50% of new patients are referred by family and friends. I’m sure that individual practices find it beneficial to understand their own referral patterns,  but does anyone really need aggregated referral information, given variations between primary care providers and specialists and across geographic regions? My guess is that Phreesia’s primary motive for compiling and publishing this information to get the attention of pharma companies, payers, and others that might want more to incorporate their own market research into Phreesia’s check-in system.

On the other hand, who doesn’t want to know about wait times? The nationwide average for wait times to see a physician is 21 minutes. Patients in Wisconsin have the shortest average wait time (15 minutes) and Mississippi as the longest (25 minutes.) Wait times for primary care providers average six minutes less than for specialists. I’m not sure what one does with this data unless you’re looking for a reason not to move to Mississippi.

Maryland Health Care Commission adds OmniMD to its SelectVendor Product Portfolio.

E-mail Inga.