News 8/17/10

Ingenix announces plans to acquire HIE vendor Axolotl. Ingenix offers a number of HIT products and services, including PM, RCM, and EHR solutions for physician practices. About 3 1/2 years ago, Ingenix introduced its own suite of HIE products, but Axolotl has been more successful in that market.

The 2,000-member Indianapolis  Medical Society announces discounted subscription pricing for iSALUS EMR and PM software.

Practice Fusion announces ChartShare, which enables physicians to electronically refer patients to other providers. The press release stresses that access to data within Practice Fusion is “controlled by well-defined provider roles and access levels, the enforcement of strong login passwords, stringent user authentication and user inactivity locks” and only NP- and MD-level users can access the referral system. However, a provider sharing patient information with the ChartShare module apparently uses a template to create the letter, which is then forwarded via fax. I suppose technically that is an “electronic” referral and I suppose faxes are “secure.”  Why nitpick about a free product?

Speaking of Practice Fusion, the Las Vegas-based Ecco Healthcare is named a Practice Fusion Premier Certified Consultant.

Medical Informatics Engineering (MIE) names Bruce Lisanti CEO and president. He takes over for founder Doug Horner, who will remain board chair and CTO. MIE, by the way, is the EHR company that Google selected for its onsite employee health clinics. Lisanti spent time at EDS and GE before working working with several high tech startups.

Culbert Healthcare Solutions appoints Brian McCartie regional VP of its Midwest division. He’s a former VP of business development for Cejka Solutions.

Now that the Allscripts and Eclipsys boards have approved their merger, Allscripts initiates a public offering of 25 million shares of common stock. The shares are actually being sold by Misys to reduce its equity stake in Allscripts, just the next step in a complicated transaction.

AHRQ talks to a small group of clinicians (27) and evaluates the use of technology to assess patient health within specific practices. Findings: (a) practices with EHRs perform more practice-based population heath (PBPH) functions, such as identifying patients for clinical trials or disease management programs; (b) even practices with EHRs don’t fully utilize the functionality they have; and (c) barriers to adopting PBPH include lack of technological innovation, practice workflow, and lack of usable data. Hey, those are some of the same reasons practices don’t embrace EHRs!

Whether or not to adopt EHR is an especially tough decision if you are a facing retirement. Healthcare consultant Joseph Mack discusses the pros and cons in amanews.com, but here’s the bottom line: a physician less than three years away from retirement may have a hard time justifying the expense. Those who are 8-10 years away should probably find a way to make the investment so they can avoid penalties and earn incentive pay.

I am rooting for this guy. Greg Waldstreicher is co-founded of DoseSpot, a 2009 e-prescribing start-up company mentioned on HIStalk early this month. I can’t say his company’s offering is better or worse than other e-prescribing companies, though the product is Surescripts certified. Waldstreicher, however, is just a senior in college (at the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute) and one of five finalists for Entrepreneur magazine’s Entrepreneur of 2010 Awards in the college entrepreneur category. I am sure I have shoes older than him. Nonetheless, I’m all about helping our HIT brethren out, so feel free to give him a vote here. Voting ends September 10th.

I’m chatting with an accountable care organization (ACO) guru tomorrow, which is a great thing, since I don’t have a good grasp on the whole ACO concept. A couple of the biggest question marks in my mind is how payment works for individual providers and is there adequate funding to make provider participation worthwhile. MGMA offers some good background in one of their recent blog post, which is helpful for newbies like me, as well as anyone contemplating participation in an ACO.

E-mail Inga.