News 3/20/12

The 38-provider OrthopaedicCare (PA) selects GroupOne Health Source to implement its eClinicalWorks EHR.

Central Virginia Health Network will offer Phytel’s Atmosphere platform, including Phytel’s Insight and Coordinate modules, to the network’s 300 community physicians.

Athenahealth will hire 80 people to work at its Belfast, ME office, raising its headcount by 20%.

The Dean McGee Eye Institute (OK) selects ifa united i-tech to provide its EMR v6 solution.

Gateway EDI finds that 56% of practices report moving forward with ICD-10 preparations, despite the potential delay of the implementation deadline. An additional 33% of practices have not begun planning and 11% are postponing preparations until a new deadline is announced.

AMA Board of Trustees Chair Robert M. Wah, MD provides commentary on EHR following his recent participation at HIMSS. In addition to providing an overview of some of the meeting’s highlights, he offers some thoughtful remarks on the role of technology in providing care and the role of physicians in deploying technology:

The use of technology must be seen as a way to improve care for our patients and not seen as a technology program or project. It is also clear that physicians must be involved in this process from the beginning of development and through deployment of new technologies.

One of the thirteen recently fired Everett Clinic (WA) employees speaks out about the incident that led to her dismissal. RN Kathleen Crossler was fired after a new electronic monitoring system tagged her for violating patient privacy rules after looking up her husband’s lab results – at his request. A clinic representative notes that the organization’s confidentiality agreement states that employees cannot look at files even if they are asked by friends or family to check medical information. The 65-year old Crossler intends to appeal her termination.

Essentia Health (MN) rolls out its MyHealth portal, giving patients access to lab results, immunization records, and appointment requests.

The top two ways to describe patient engagement, according to healthcare organization leaders participating in a National eHealth Collaborative study: patient uses educational material and online resources to learn about better health or their own health conditions, and, patient uses tools and resources to management his medical record and other health data. The proposed Stage 2 MU regulations include several facets of patient engagement, though there isn’t agreement on what it means to “engage” a patient.

Joslin Diabetes Center (MA) announces plans to offer telehealth services nationwide using the American Well communications platform integrated with the practice’s NextGen EHR.

Practices that adopt the PCMH model of care experience higher morale and job satisfaction rates among physicians and staff members, according to a study published in the Archives of Internal Medicine. However, the model also leads to an increase in physician burnout. Researchers attribute the morale boost to providers’ ability to offer better access to care and increased communications; the increased workload associated with the PCMH model is blamed for the burnout.

The local paper interviews Girish Kumar Navani, CEO of the Westboro, MA-based eClinicalWorks, which has grown in its 13 years to a $200 million company serving over 60,000 physicians and employing 2,000. Girish summarizes the success of the company under his leadership as follows:

Being a good businessman is intuitive. In a way, it means doing what your heart tells you to do. You have to believe in doing what your sense of ethics tells you to do. And you have to let your decisions be driven by treating people the way you would like to be treated. I am an avid football and Patriots fan, and I look at it like this: I may be the quarterback, calling the plays, but I am still huddled with the same 11 guys. I am still on the field — the quarterback doesn’t make calls from the sidelines.

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