The article about Pediatric Associates in CA has a nugget with a potentially outsized impact: the implication that VFC vaccines…
News 12/4/17
Top News
Teladoc drops its lawsuit against the Texas Medical Board, which has been dragging on since 2015, after the board’s telemedicine-friendly rules permitting first-time patient encounters to take place via phone or video go into effect. Texas is the last state to do away with such in-person requirements.
Webinars
December 5 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Cornerstones of Order Set Optimization: Trusted Evidence.” Sponsored by: Wolters Kluwer. Updating order sets with new medical evidence is crucial to improving outcomes, but coordinating maintenance for hundreds of order sets with dozens of stakeholders is a huge logistical challenge. For most hospitals, managing order set content is labor intensive and the internal processes supporting it are far too inefficient. Evidence-based order sets are only as good as their content, which is why regular review and updates are essential. This webinar explores the relationship between clinical content and patient care with an eye toward building trust among the clinical staff. Plus, we will demonstrate a new evidence alignment tool that can easily incorporate the most current medical content into your order sets, regardless of format, including Cerner Power Plans and Epic SmartSets.
Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.
Check out the recording of last week’s webinar titled “Making Clinical Communications Work in Your Complex Environment,” sponsored by PatientSafe Solutions.
Announcement and Implementations
Direct primary care practice management company Freedom Healthworks assists Olp Family Medicine in opening a solo DPC practice in Carmel, IN. The Indianapolis-based DPC PM startup launched in 2014 under the direction of brothers Adam and Christopher Habig, who came to Freedom after several years with clinical intelligence vendor Isprit Systems.
The YMCA selects HIPAA compliance and cybersecurity services from HIPAA Secure Now! to protect the health data of members enrolled in its diabetes prevention program. This isn’t the Y’s first foray into health IT; it signed an agreement with Athenahealth last year that helps end users route pre-diabetics to the DPP via their EHRs.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Nashville-based data management vendor Trinisys acquires Mica Health, which offers ambulatory EHR decommissioning services. Former Mica President Mike Justice will apparently stay on as Trinisys VP of business development.
People
Medication adherence app startup Medisafe names Henry Ancona (Converge Venture Partners) chairman of the board.
Jeffrey Linton (Applied Proteomics) joins Quality Systems subsidiary NextGen as EVP, general counsel, and secretary.
Health IT software and services company MTBC promotes Stephen Snyder to CEO and A. Hadi Chaudhry to president.
Government and Politics
Minnesota Lt. Governor Tina Smith announces new guidelines to combat the state’s opioid epidemic, which killed 376 people in Minnesota last year – a 12-percent increase over 2015. Though Minnesota’s PDMP isn’t mentioned specifically in the guidelines, they do call for physicians with excessive prescribing habits to participate in a mandated quality improvement program to help them meet the new standards.
Telemedicine
Abilene Christian University begins offering TimelyMD telemedicine visits to students as part of its new Wildcat Care program. Assuming a student is relatively healthy, I’m not sure the automatic $95 per-semester fee plus $10 a clinic visit is as economical as paying the typical one-off fee of more popular telemedicine companies.
Nonprofit Global/Georgia Partnership for Telehealth adds Trapollo’s remote patient monitoring capabilities to its turn-key telemedicine services.
Other
American Veterinary Medical Association President and official veterinarian of the North Pole Mike Topper gives Santa’s reindeer a clean bill of health ahead of Christmas Eve. Topper will head back to the North Pole on Christmas Day for post-flight checkups. The vet visit will ensure that Santa has his up-to-date North Pole Certificate of Animal Export on board come Christmas Eve. I wonder who provides Santa’s annual physical? Seems like a job for AMA President David Barbe, MD. Given his remote location, I assume Santa relies on telemedicine for the occasional bout of sniffles.
Sponsor Updates
Blog Posts
- What’s the Most Frustrating About EHRs? (Medicomp Systems)
- Meeting MACRA’s call for care coordination through better communication (PerfectServe)
Contacts
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