The article about Pediatric Associates in CA has a nugget with a potentially outsized impact: the implication that VFC vaccines…
News 2/9/12
From Idolizer: “Re: AAOS. I am in San Francisco at the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons conference. Physician interest in EHR continues unabated.” Great news since that suggests job security for many of us. AAOS expects about 14,000 physicians and other medical professionals during the five-day event.
From FirstTimer: “Re: HIMSS. I work for a large physician group and going to HIMSS for the first time. I’m curious what ambulatory EHR vendors are on your must-see list.” I haven’t had time to give it much thought, but a few that come to mind are CareCloud (I interviewed CEO Albert Santalo a few weeks ago,) Medicomp (the Quippe developers,) Vitera (formerly Sage – I want to hear if there is a new story there,) and Practice Fusion (the one time I tried to check it out at a show, their display was so small I couldn’t see around the crowd.) I’m sure I will also see what’s new with some of the bigger players, including Allscripts, Greenway, eClinicalWorks, and athenahealth.
Speaking of HIMSS, here’s a bit of trivia: 257 vendors are promoting their ambulatory EHR products and 156 their ambulatory PM systems. Some of the vendors focus strictly on the ambulatory space (athenahealth, Aprima) while other vendors (Allscripts, GE) offer ambulatory solutions in addition to a host of other products. Dozens of educational sessions target physicians and the ambulatory world, so if your primary interest is the practice space, you will find plenty to keep you busy.
gloStream will integrate ABILITY Network’s DirectABILITY secure and direct communications transport into its gloEMR and gloSuite offerings.
Campbell Clinic Orthopaedics (TN) selects SRS for its 43 physicians.
eClinicalWorks publishes its upcoming schedule for road shows, which will touch on MU requirements and include demonstrations of new features in its Version 9.0.
Most physicians and medical office staff consider the transition to ICD-10 to be one of the most impactful issues currently facing their practice, according to a Vitera Healthcare survey. Fifty-nine percent of practices say they’ll need to upgrade their existing PM and/or clinical system to meet ICD-10 requirements.
Nuance names 1450, Inc. its distributor for Dragon Medical Spanish, Version 11.
Revenue cycle solutions vendor Recondo Technology acquires Trilogi, Inc., a revenue recovery firm.
CMS publishes the latest MU attestations figures as of early February. The total number of EP attestations has jumped to from 21,000 in November to 36,000, with Epic, Allscripts, and eClinicalWorks representing over half of the all EP attestations. Interesting to note is that Practice Fusion has cracked the top 12.
The average compensation for a clinical faculty member was $262,400 in the 2010-11 academic year, which is almost 3% more than the previous year. About 59,000 US physicians serve as clinical faculty members.
More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Mobile.
I have some real problems with that CMS attestation data, as Inga knows. Our little EHR company is listed once on that list and I know at least a dozen practices who have received their checks…meanwhile, our one entry on that list is definitely wrong. Our sample size may be small, but something ain’t right.
I believe the data set includes only those who have applied under the Medicare rules (or under Medicaid/Medicare), and no one who has applied using the MediCAID rules. I think, based on the previously released numbers from CMS, this means that the data set is woefully incomplete, no?
Looking forward to seeing the HIStalk community at HIMSS! Practice Fusion’s booth is #4074. Keep an eye out for our white Adidas jerseys around the conference, too. We’re doing some cool stuff with fitbits this year – http://www.practicefusion.com/ehrbloggers/2012/02/practice-fusion-is-going-to-himss.html