News 1/30/14

CCHIT announces that it will no longer offer ONC testing and certification, nor any of its independently developed certification programs, and will change its business model to become a certification consulting firm. CCHIT is recommending its customers work with ICSA Labs for future testing and certification services.

Mobile charge capture vendor pMD connects its mobile charge capture software with athenahealth’s medical billing and PM software.

Practice Fusion offers new users a free Google Chromebook and launches a new set of clinical decision support tools. The free Chromebook offer is for first-time Practice Fusion providers only and requires the providers sign up for e-prescribing, and complete a survey. Sounds like a creative way to capture more detailed information on users to help with advertising sales or perhaps to have better data to share with/sell to pharma companies.

A local paper profiles Express Family Care, a three-physician practice in Virginia that is attracting attention for posting the prices of visits in its waiting room. The physicians say the goal is to provide transparency for their cash-paying patients.

More than half of doctors say they use a tablet device for professional purposes and 28 percent report using tablets to read articles from medical publications. Overall, physicians prefer smartphones to tablets to perform professional tasks.

This week KLAS has been tweeting the 2013 Category Leaders for its Best in KLAS report, which will be published Thursday. A few of the winners in ambulatory care-related segments include:

• Self-service patient kiosk: Phreesia
• Radiology (ambulatory): FujifilmUS Synapse RIS
• PACS (ambulatory): INFINITT PACS
• Laboratory (ambulatory): OrchardSoftware Harvest LIS
• Computer-assisted coding: 3M HIS 360 Encompass System
• Eligibility enrollment services: Emdeon

Federal prosecutors charge former Allscripts director of internal audit Steven M. Dombrowski with insider trading, alleging that he used a secret account to trade on non-public information ahead of the release of financial results, netting him $286,000 in profit.

Email Inga.