News 10/21/10

A reader forwarded findings from a recent Ovum report entitled Selecting an Ambulatory EHR Vendor in the Healthcare Market. The three vendors on Ovum’s short list were eClinicalWorks, GE Healthcare, and Cerner. Ovum argues that these vendors have established strong brand names in the ambulatory market and have demonstrated market-leading positions. I would definitely agree that eCW is a leader in the ambulatory market. GE was at one time. And, I’ve never thought of Cerner as a leader in this space, especially when you exclude hospital-owned practices. Ovum goes on to say that Cerner is the most versatile and multi-faceted of all the vendors they reviewed (which included the likes of Allscripts, NextGen, Sage, athenahealth, and Amazing Charts). Anyone besides me surprised? I have to admit I’ve never seen the Cerner ambulatory EHR, so I’ll take a peek at it at MGMA and report back.

Speaking of MGMA, take a moment to peruse our latest Vendor Exec question where we asked several industry leaders what the hot topics will be for attendees and what their company will be highlighting.

The 250-provider Greater Florida Anesthesiologists chooses McKesson’s Revenue Management Solutions for its medical billing and PM operations.

MGMA has signed deals with a couple of vendors on behalf of its members. It partners with MedAssets for group purchasing services. MGMA also selects Outcome Sciences to provide PQRI registry reporting at preferred rates.

The New Jersey HIT Extension Center picks ITelagen to provide technical assistance for physicians implementing EHRs and working to earn Meaningful Use funds. In checking the NJ-HITEC Website, I didn’t see mention of any other selected vendors (technical or EHR), but perhaps additional announcements are imminent.

Meanwhile, the Colorado REC says it has signed up its 800th provider, signifying it is more than one-third of its way to achieving its goal of 2,295 primary care providers. CO-REC reached the milestone in a mere three months. Great sales effort, but of course CO-REC now faces the more challenging task of helping these providers implement EHRs and qualify for Meaningful Use reimbursements.

Deloite releases its 2010 Technology Fast 500 rankings, which scores companies based on percentage fiscal year revenue growth from 2005 to 2009. I noticed a few HIT companies, including Medical Present Value (276), Navicure (289), Nuance (297), MEDSEEK (343), SRSsoft (362), and GetWell Networks (386).

Rebound Orthopedics (WA) and Kansas Joint and Spine Institute deploy services from Ancillary Care Solutions to improve clinical workflows and financial returns and assess compliance.

Aprima Medical Software announces new Financial Services offerings that include payment deferral programs, zero down payments, hardware integration, and flexible payment terms. Aprima president Michael Nissenbaum says the service should help doctors affected by tight credit markets.

OB/GYN Women Specialists of Georgia contracts with Waiting Room Solutions for its Web-based EHR/PM solution.

An HHS privacy and security panel recommends that physicians provide patients a short, easy to understand summary of the practice’s privacy practices, including how patient information may be used. Physicians should also discuss face-to-face with patients the way information may be exchanged with third parties, such as HIEs or an integrated delivery network. Great recommendations, but I don’t see too many physicians taking the time for the latter.

Computers trump dermatologists when it comes to finding small, pigmented melanomas, based on the results of a vendor-sponsored trial. The study found that an automated, computerized imaging and diagnostic system spotted melanomas 98% of the time, compared to 78%  of the time for dermatologists.

Skyscape introduces a mobile version of the Johns Hopkins POC-IT Diabetes guide for healthcare providers.

Seventeen percent of cell phone users have looked up health or medical information on their phones and 9% have software apps on their phone to manage their health. I thought there were more of us.

E-mail Inga.

HIT Vendor Executives on MGMA 2010

We asked several HIT vendor executives the following question:

At the MGMA 10 Annual Conference, what will be the hot topics for attendees and what will your company be highlighting?

Jim Elliot, Vice President of Marketing, AdvancedMD

The challenge in today’s healthcare environment is to grow revenue and reduce costs while remaining compliant with the myriad of shifting regulations, such as Meaningful Use, 5010, and ICD-10. To keep pace with this change, you need an application that can evolve without causing downtime and hassle at the practice level.

AdvancedMD will be demonstrating their medical practice optimization solution — everything the private practice needs to run a profitable practice. We integrate the clinical with sophisticated billing and practice management in one easy to use solution with a monthly subscription fee. Stop by the AdvancedMD booth for a quick demo. Play the BIG wall-sized jigsaw puzzle and enter to win an iPad.

Robert Culbert, President, Culbert Healthcare Solutions

Three topics which our clients are most frequently looking for guidance include physician alignment, revenue cycle, and use of technology to both achieve Meaningful Use and also to support new reimbursement systems such as Accountable Care Organizations and Medical Home.

Culbert is unique in that we provide a strong combination of practice management and IT services which enables our consultants to take a holistic approach towards these areas. At the 2010 MGMA National Conference, we look forward to sharing best practices and lessons learned with forward thinking medical group leaders to help their practice become top performers.

Tee Green, President and CEO, Greenway Medical Technologies, Inc

It’s been challenging for this industry to look beyond Meaningful Use, and no doubt it will have precedent at MGMA. I also hope that a continued focus on interoperability and our industry’s role in constructing a smarter, more sustainable healthcare system will also be at the forefront.

For Greenway, now that our ONC-ATCB Complete EHR Certification is in place and we’ve scheduled training sessions for our customers, we will be launching a range of new functionalities enabling practices to advance their efficiencies with breakthrough solutions in speech understanding through PrimeSPEECH, integrated digital imaging capabilities through PrimeIMAGE, and automated patient allergy testing and serums, all benefiting primary care and specialty practices. In regards to the ARRA incentives, Greenway will also be highlighting our Meaningful Use Dashboard, which will allow PrimeSUITE customers to track “allowables,” reporting compliance and incentives capture on a daily basis.

Kipp Lassetter, MD, CEO, Medicity

Hot topics at MGMA will be maximizing a practice’s investment in an EHR and ensuring that the practice has all the technology it needs to meet Meaningful Use requirements.

Medicity will be focusing on the connectivity aspects of these requirements since an EHR cannot be completely effective if it does not exchange information electronically with hospitals, allied care providers and other stakeholders. Medicity will demonstrate how physician-practice connectivity can be achieved — regardless of the technology currently in place at a practice — not only to achieve meaningful use but also to provide better care and increased efficiencies through collaboration.

Scott Decker, President, NextGen Healthcare

This year we’ll be talking about mastering the art of practice management — how to develop a clear vision of where you’re headed and choose the right tools to get you there. Meaningful Use will of course be top of mind, but we anticipate attendees will also look beyond stimulus incentives for our advice on becoming a patient-centered medical home and/or accountable care organization.

We’ll also introduce them to tools like the NextGen Health Quality Measures Reporting Module to support pay-for-performance programs and NextGen Dashboard for viewing clinical, financial, and operational data. Our goal is to help MGMA attendees walk away with new insight on how to provide the very best patient care while getting a solid return on their investment.

David Henriksen, Senior Vice President/General Manager, McKesson’s Physician Practice Solutions

Meaningful Use will most likely dominate the conversation and we look forward to speaking with our customers at MGMA about how our solutions will help bring vitality to their practice.

For Practice Partner, we will highlight how improved charge capture and data capture can help physicians reach Meaningful Use standards while keeping their financial needs top of mind.  Beyond Meaningful Use, we are helping our customers truly improve care quality by focusing on initiatives like Patient Centered Medical Home (PCMH) and PPR Net, a practice-based research network enabling a new level of managed quality care.

Paul Brient, CEO, PatientKeeper Inc.

Two hot technology-related issues that will be top of mind at MGMA are health information exchange and mobile healthcare applications for physicians. Increasingly, our customers want to connect patient information from inpatient and outpatient settings across their respective healthcare communities. We also see a high demand for healthcare applications across the major mobile devices including iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry, Android, and Windows Mobile.

At MGMA, PatientKeeper will highlight solutions that address these issues while providing physicians with workflow applications like electronic charge capture and mobile clinical results that make it easier for physicians to manage their day.

Sharon Howard, Vice President, Marketing, RelayHealth

At the MGMA 10 Annual Conference, RelayHealth will be introducing RelayAnalytics Financial Diagnostics, including a dashboard that gives physicians’ staff instant visibility into claims and remittance data. Also available for demonstration are RelayHealth clinical solutions, including health information exchange products that help physicians exchange information securely with patients, colleagues, hospitals, labs, and more.

We’ll also showcase claims management solutions, online business office and patient billing solutions, and tools that help practices manage patient self-pay balances by connecting with consumer-directed healthcare funds.

Betty Otter-Nickerson, President, Sage Healthcare Division

Healthcare hot topics continue to be reform, Meaningful Use, and how software solutions are impacting the industry. At MGMA, Sage plans to lead in these conversations and work with new and potential clients to affirm that our Sage Intergy Meaningful Use Edition meets their practice’s needs for reform, interoperability, and reporting.

We’ll also be focused on launching our new philanthropic program, Pink by Sage, designed to improve patient’s care quality. This is our effort to contribute financially to life-changing causes and to re-dedicate ourselves to humanizing technology as we continue to develop patient centric solutions. We’ll highlight this new effort, along with our recently announced Customer Appreciation Program, and Sage Intergy’s HIE interoperable capabilities.

Evan Steele, CEO, SRSsoft

Attendees will be talking about the business of medicine and what practices can do to survive the conflicting downward pressure on revenue and upward pressure on expenses. With no control over reimbursement rates, physicians and practice managers are searching desperately for ways to manage the bottom line.

SRS continues to focus on physician productivity, recently expanding its product suite. SRS now offers a productivity-enhancing practice management system and PACS, both of which are integrated with the Hybrid EMR through the Unified Desktop. This frees physicians to see more patients, heightens patient care, and slashes overhead, increasing the practices’ control over income.

News 10/19/10

SRS lands a big contract with the 242-provider Illinois Bone & Joint Institute (IBJI). IBJI selected the SRS Hybrid EMR following a 30-day, multi-site pilot installation.

West Virginia launches an e-prescribing initiative that will allow Medicaid providers to electronically forward Medicaid and commercial prescriptions to pharmacies. The WVeScript service is offered free of charge and uses  the Surescripts e-prescribing network.

When adverse drug event reporting tools are incorporated into an EHR, physicians are more likely to participate in the reporting process. These findings are based on a pilot study with 26 practicing physicians testing an EHR-based tool that automates adverse drug reporting to the FDA.

The AMA adds Quest Diagnostics Care360 EHR as a Web-based EHR alternative on the AMA’s online platform.

Nice use of EMR: physicians at the University of Texas Medical Branch pull data from their EMR to examine blood lead levels in children. Data from 2006 to 2008 indicated that blood lead levels in 1-2 year old children were higher among children living on Galveston island than in other regions. In part driven by these findings, the UTMB worked with the city to reduce city-wide lead levels. More current data, collected during routine office visits, indicates blood lead levels have declined and are in line with state and national averages.

GE Healthcare says it has successfully linked its Centricity EMR with several non-GE inpatient systems, allowing for the sharing of clinical patient data.

American Medical News weighs the pros and cons of cloud computing for physician offices. Pluses: it’s usually less expensive, provides a virtually maintenance-free infrastructure, and is highly accessible from anywhere. Potential concerns include unreliable speed, less control over downtime, and uneasiness because data is stored off-site. A third of the industry is using some type of cloud-based application, so I’m thinking the clouds don’t need to be feared.

Look for some field reporting next week when I travel to MGMA in New Orleans. If you have any suggestions for sessions, exhibits, or quick shoe shopping, send me a note. Whether you are MGMA-bound or not, you’ll enjoy reading our Vendor Executives post this week, which features several industry execs and their predictions for the hot topics that attendees will be discussing (hint: Meaningful Use is just one of many.) Also this week: our annual HIStalk/HIStalk Practice MGMA exhibit guide, which highlights some of the cool things you can check out when stopping by our sponsors’ booths.

I love when vendors promote good causes, so of course I’m happy to mention Sage Healthcare’s support of Breast Cancer Awareness during MGMA. Sage will install a 6’ X 8’ Wall of Hope for attendees to share their personal stories battling breast cancer. For each story posted, Sage will make a donation to breast cancer research. I’ll be stopping by to lend my support (though thankfully I don’t have a personal story to share.)

Here is something to ponder: if physician finder/physician rating services cannot reliably remove information on deceased doctors, should the overall accuracy of the sites be questioned? The question was first posed by blogger Barbara Duck, who found several listings for one of her former and not-so-recently deceased physicians. The physician data manager for HealthGrades says they’d like more physician involvement to make sure data is correct, saying, “We’re trying to make sure that the physician is responsible for their Web presence.”  (Who knew there was Internet in the afterlife?)  Perhaps these sites need a big “Buyer Beware” stamp so patients won’t immediately assume that just because it’s on the Web, that a particular physician will take a specific insurance, has a current license, or even has a pulse.

E-mail Inga.

News 10/14/10

From: Thoroughbred “Re: New KLAS report. Evan Steele must carry some clout with KLAS. They just released a report that rates ambulatory EMRs by specialty.” Last week Evan submitted a Readers’ Write piece calling on KLAS and other analysts to provide ratings by specialty. Turns out that KLAS agrees with Evan, saying they’ve been working on this report for several months because they recognize that different specialties have different functional needs. SRS, by the way, scored quite well, taking top honors for cardiology, ophthalmology, and orthopedics. Greenway was the highest rated product for ENT and OB/Gyn. Praxis earned the top scores for family practice, Amazing Charts for family practice, and athenaclinicals for pediatrics. EpicCare Ambulatory was the highest rated product for multi-specialty groups. Providers can download the full report for free.

While the US continues its struggles with healthcare automation, our neighbors to the north are having issues of their own. Officials are concerned that fewer than 40% of Canada’s primary care doctors have access to EHRs, prompting the Canadian Medical Association to ask the government to allocate more money to the cause. Though the government has already spent millions trying to build an electronic health record system, CMA officials say most of the funds have got to systems and IT architecture, rather than to doctors’ offices, hospitals, labs, and pharmacies. The CMA is calling for an additional $423 million over five years in order to boost the number of doctors using EMRs.

Speaking of Canada, I’d love to connect with someone who is familiar with both the US and Canadian EMR markets. I’ve reached out to a couple of folks over the last year but no luck connecting with anyone so far. If you or someone you know is well-versed on this topic, drop me a note.

The Rhode Island Quality Institute (RIQI) awards REC pre-qualified EHR status to Allscripts, NextGen partner Blackstone Valley Community Health Care, Inc., Ingenix,  NextGen, and Polaris Medical Management. In addition, RIQI is in final contract negotiations with: GE Healthcare, eClinicalWorks, and athenahealth. The REC also names 12 vendors pre-qualified technical service consultants.

Sage Healthcare’s SVP Tony Ryzinski authors this piece outlining 14 points for successful EHR implementations. The vendor-neutral tips emphasize putting the right leaders in place, minimizing distractions during the transition, and focusing on successes.

Sales reps take note: nearly half of physicians require or prefer an appointment with medical industry sales reps before meeting one-on-one, according to this SK&A survey. Twenty-three percent of doctors refuse to see reps at any time at any of their locations. When a practice is owned by a hospital or health system, physicians are less likely to allow access without an appointment.

Centice Corporation introduces the PINPOINT Rx system, designed to help physicians and pharmacists identify medications. The device captures the spectral signature of a drug and checks it against a known database.

The 200-provider Community Care Physicians implements mycareDOT patient portal, developed by RelayHealth.

North Texas Children’s Anesthesia commits to a three-year service agreement with billing service provider Zotec Partners.

Skyscape partners with the Massachusetts Medical Society to offer a mobile version of Journal Watch. Journal Watch provides summaries and commentaries on recently published medical information across 13 different specialties.

E-mail Inga.

News 10/12/10

The AMA introduces an online tool to help physicians practices analyze and adjust office fee schedules.  Practice Analysis Tools for Healthcare (PATH) allows users to upload fee schedules electronically and compare rates with national averages, gauge compliance with fee rules, and generate reports suggesting fee adjustments. AMA is offering PATH for $199 through the end of the year.

Western Rehabilitation Health Network selects ChartLogic as the preferred EHR for is 115 member locations. ChartLogic was one of the first EHR to to earn ambulatory certification by an ONC-ACTB body (The Drummond Group.)

On September 28th, The University of Virginia Health System launched EpicCare at over 140 outpatient clinics. Prior to going live, the clinics converted and loaded more than 1.8 medical record numbers, 3.3 million radiology results, 18 million document images, and 30 million lab results.

Sansum Clinic (CA) will deploy Medi-Span to its 150 affiliate physicians, giving providers drug information and medication decision support at the point of care.

Aprima Medical Software adds eHealth Technologies as its latest reseller.

Henry Schein Medical Systems announces an expansion of its MicroMD EMR solutions to include specialized clinical content that can be customized for rapid deployment.

Midmark Corporation and SuccessEHS announce the integration of the Midmark IQspiro digital spirometer with the SuccessEHR (formerly CareRevoloution) PM and EHR solution.

For those keeping track at home: HIStalk Practice traffic grew 11% in September compared to a year ago. YTD, views are up an average of 21% compared to 2009. If you are interested in joining a great group of sponsors, drop me a note. And if you are not on our e-mail subscriber list, sign up on the top right. Thanks for reading and thank you sponsors for your fantastic support.

The Ohio State Medical Association (OSMA) publishes a toolkit advising physicians of best practices when it comes to social media in the medical office. The guide includes tips for physicians and their staff to stay within legal and ethical boundaries when using social media tools.The toolkit also provides some handy resource documents, including a  sample “Prohibited at Work” form outlining social media do’s and don’ts for office staff. And of course it addresses the age-old question: should  I “friend” my patients?

Here’s a new social media trend that OSMA may not have covered. Health care providers are trying to attract new patients using tools such as Groupon and Living Social, which offer e-mail subscribers up to 24 hours to purchase services or products for 50 to 90% discounts. So far most of the healthcare deals are for services not traditionally covered by insurance, such as eye exams and teeth-whitening.  I personally love the Groupon concept for restaurants, and even purchased one for a facial. However, it’s probably not a great way for an orthopedic surgeon to find more knee replacement patients.

For practices needing patient-center medical home resources, you might check out TransforMed’s Delta Exchange, an interactive, provider-only online community. TransforMed, which is a subsidiary of AAFP, offers Delta Exchange members a variety of resources including information on medical homes best practices, interactive webinars, and several forms and templates for streamlining office processes.

Physicians are still not embracing e-mail as a way to communicate with patients according to this recently release study. The report, which was based on a 2008 survey, finds that only 35% of physicians are equipped for email and less than 20% of those regularly e-mailed with patients. That translates to an overall e-mail communication rate of less than 7% for all  all office-based physicians  Reimbursement and privacy concerns were among the top reasons for doctors’ reluctance to embrace e-mail communication with patients.

E-mail Inga.