News 10/22/13

From Helen Reddy: “Female doctors are better. These findings don’t surprise me a bit.”  A Canadian study finds that female doctors provide higher quality of care than male doctors, though men are more productive. Researchers looked at billing information for 870 providers relating to procedures with elderly diabetic patients and determined that women practitioners were “significantly “ more likely to follow clinical guidelines for required medications and to plan required examinations. Male physicians, however, had almost 1,000 more procedures per year than female doctors. Assuming the findings hold true for US physicians, perhaps we’ll see a boost in compensation for female doctors as payment models shift from production-based to outcomes-based.

Medical management and staffing firm Hospital Physician Partners will implement athenaCollector, athenaCommunicator, and athenaClarity. Shares of athenahealth, by the way, reached a lifetime high of $141.38 Monday, five days after reporting its Q3 results: revenue up 43 percent, adjusted EPS $0.29 vs. $0.30.

The Drummond Group certifies SRS EHR as a 2014 Complete EHR.

Vitera Healthcare Solutions connects to the Surescripts network to provide EHR users integrated Direct secure messaging capabilities.

Cardiac Consultants (TX) selects the VersaSuite EHR/PM platform.

 

Navicure reports a 31 percent increase in its third quarter results from a year ago and announces several new clients including Care New England Health System, Sumner Medical Group (TN), and Tanner Clinic (UT).

Miami Children’s Hospital (FL) will offer area physicians a private-labeled version of HealthFusion’s MediTouch EHR that will interface with the hospital’s IT systems.

Curious: a North Carolina doctor is accused of breaking into a neighboring practice where she was seeing patients and now faces charges of breaking and entering and felony larceny. The power had apparently been turned off in Felicia Brabham, MD’s office so she moved her medical records, lab supplies, and cat into an office that another physician used about once a month. Earlier this year Dr. Brabham was charged with insurance fraud and writing bad checks; she has now voluntarily surrendered her medical license.

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