News 12/20/11

From CIO on a Mission: “Re: EHRs for surgeons. I’m trying to be helpful to some surgeons who practice at our hospital. They asked me for recommendations of practice-based EHR systems that are more surgeon focused, i.e., manage the episodic care of surgical patients rather than the chronological data of a family practice or internal medicine focused system. I’ve done the usual Google/Bing searches and came up with a few, but wondered if you or your HIStalk Practice readers can help? Thanks.” I passed on a couple of names, but also defer to our expert readers for more suggestions.

Orthopaedic Center of Southern Illinois selects SRS EHR for its nine providers.

The American Telemedicine Association develops a legislative proposal that would expand Medicaid coverage for telemedicine services treating patients with high-risk pregnancy conditions.

Vermont IT Leaders, Inc., the state’s REC and HIE organization, subscribes to CapSite’s online service, giving providers access to CapSite’s  database of HIT vendor pricing and contract terms.

Allscripts partners with clinical decision support and analytics company DiagnosisOne to offer DiagnosisOne’s smartPath platform to its Allscripts’ Professional EHR clients. DiagnosisOne will also provide real-time PQRS patient alerts and reporting to CMS on PQRS measures for Professional clients participating in the PQRS incentive program.

The Arizona REC selects PatientClick EHR as a Tier 3 participant in its Vendor Alliance Program. Tier 1 participants include Allscripts, athenahealth, e-MDs, GE, Greenway, NextGen, and Office Ally.

AHRQ introduces an online guide for reducing unintended consequences of EHRs. The guide, which was developed by RAND, is designed for all types of healthcare organizations from solo physicians to large hospital systems and addresses problems that can occur when implementing and using an EHR.

The New York Times highlights Micky Tripathi and his organization’s data breach tale. Tripathi, who is CEO of Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, provided the full low-down on the data breach earlier this month on HIStalk Practice. On MAEHC’s blog, Tripathi posted a few follow-up comments about the Times piece, including his opinion that electronic systems are actually more secure than paper and fax. The photo above accompanied the Times story — check out his computer screen.

We mentioned the new KLAS ratings on HIStalk last week, but here is a summary of which vendors took the top three spots in the ambulatory EHR and practice management categories:

• EHR >75 Physicians: EpicCare Ambulatory, eClinicalWorks, GE Centricity
• EHR 11-75 Physicians: athenaClinicals, Greenway PrimeSuite, Allscripts Professional
• EHR 1-10 Physicians: Amazing Charts Greenway PrimeSuite, athenaClinicals
• PM >75 Physicians: Epic, McKesson Practice Plus, eClinicalWorks
• PM 11-75 Physicians: Greenway PrimeSuite, athenaCollector, McKesson Practice Plus
• PM 1-10 Physicians: Greenway PrimeSuite, athenaCollector, OptumInsight Ingenix CareTracker

In the Claims and Clearinghouse Services category, ZirMed, Office Ally, and Navicure were the highest ranked vendors.

Naughty or nice? Tell Inga.