News 12/20/12

From Charlie Watts: “Re: surveys. It’s interesting that you are concerned with Universal Survey’s funding source, but not KLAS’s. Vendors fund a significant part of KLAS’s operations and larger vendors with many products pay the lion’s share of KLAS’s revenues from vendors versus the smaller companies. Of even greater concern is that KLAS has assumed the responsibility of defining an EHR—with total disregard for the government’s definition of an EHR. KLAS’s list of rated vendors contains only the largest vendors. Smaller vendors, regardless of quality, are relegated to the footnote section of the rankings. KLAS footnotes several products as ‘component’ even though they are certified as a complete EHR and have successful attesters. If KLAS accurately categorized these EHRs, the rankings would be different, which would have certainly upset some of their big revenue sources. One would be led to believe that KLAS is not an independent research company and is influenced by the name brand vendors that represent the lion’s share of their income they derive from vendors.” I support transparency and I think most of these vendor-ranking surveys could benefit from better disclosure of funding sources and survey methods. Mr. H offered some great commentary on the subject a couple of years ago and came to this conclusion:

The evils of KLAS are really a reflection of the evils of its provider and vendor members. Vendors try to game the system without getting caught, while providers unwisely overweight the value of KLAS in making their IT decisions. All of that is highly profitable to KLAS, but more power to them for creating a niche that still has minimal competition and strong business after all these years.

Meadowlands Hospital Medical Center (NJ) chooses eClinicalWorks Care Coordination Medical Record and EHR solutions to advance its ACO objectives. eClinicalWorks also announces that Urban Health Plan (NY) will add eCW’s Care Coordination Medical Record for its ACO-related initiatives.

Sixty-eight percent of surgeons are employed by a hospital or large group practice instead of working in their own practices. Between 2006 and 2011, the number of full-time hospital-employed surgeons jumped 32 percent.

CareCloud appoints John J. Walsh (Constant Contact, Inc.) chief technology officer.

Medinova Physicians (NY) implements the PatientPoint Care Coordination platform to address core principals of the PCMH model for NCQA certification.

Trustees of St. John’s Medical Center (WY) decide to spend $240,000 to buy eClinicalWorks as a replacement for McKesson Practice Partner, which it has been running for five years. They say Practice Partner is not user friendly and makes it difficult to document office visits.

If you are a provider or work in the ambulatory care setting and interested in participating in our HIStalk Practice Advisory Panel once a month or so, drop me a note. We will be sending out a new survey in the next few days and welcome a broad range of insights and opinions.

The end of the year always tends to be a slow period for news, so we will likely forego a post on the 25th. Of course the real reason I’m taking the day off is that I need time for last-minute shopping, feverish gift wrapping,  and prepping for a feast or two. Best wishes to all!

E-mail Inga.