News 4/6/16

Top News

New research from Rock Health shows that digital health funding reached $981.3 million in the first quarter of this year, a year-over-year growth of almost 50 percent. This year’s initial quarter marks the highest first-quarter total since the organization started tracking the data five years ago. Deals of note included One Medical Group’s acquisition of mobile app developer Rise, plus Flatiron Health and Jawbone’s combined $340 million funding rounds.

Webinar

April 8 (Friday) 1:00 ET. “Ransomware in Healthcare: Tactics, Techniques, and Response.” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenter: John Gomez, CEO, Sensato. Ransomware continues to be an effective attack against healthcare infrastructure, with the clear ability to disrupt operations and impact patient care. This webinar will provide an inside look at how attackers use ransomware; why it so effective; and recommendations for mitigation.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The local business paper shares mock-up photos of Kaiser Permanente Northwest’s (OR) new convenient care clinic, set to open this fall. The pilot space will offer a limited range of urgent care services and will offer members the ability to conduct virtual visits for colds and minor burns. Patients will also be able to access their medical records and health information at the “Thrive Bar.”

Tribeca Pediatrics (NY) founder Michel Cohen, MD recounts the ways in which he single-handedly transformed his nearly bankrupt practice into a now-thriving chain. A few highlights:

• Installing a new billing system, which he’s tweaked to track the status of unpaid claims each week.
• Sometimes hiring for personality over experience.
• Creating a centralized customer support department that handles all patient calls, including insurance claim disputes.
• Opening up his own fabrication workshop to supply furnishings for new locations.

Telemedicine

Konica Minolta’s Business Innovation Center partners with SnapMD to launch a telemedicine pilot. The accompanying press release is light on details; media outlets report urgent care and chronic care management will be initial target areas.

Research and Innovation

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Luminary Labs announce the Mood Challenge for ResearchKit as part of their New Venture Fund program. The challenge, which is looking for proposals for ResearchKit studies that will further understanding of mood and how it relates to daily life, will offer finalists mentoring and piloting opportunities. Up to $500,000 will be awarded throughout the competition. Submissions are due May 22.

An informal Fast Company survey of 1,000 presumably Web-savvy consumers finds over 75 percent want access to their medical records, contradicting the author’s (and healthcare industry’s) belief that patients have historically been “indifferent” to their medical records. The overwhelming response in favor of record access doesn’t surprise me given OCR’s recent push to make providers more away of patient record access rights, the expansion of OpenNotes, and the ease with which patient portals should make access a non-issue.

People

SCI Solutions names Maryanne Pace (Radius Global Solutions) senior vice president of client delivery and Tammy Wood solution consultant.

Other

The American College of Physicians joins the AMGA Foundation’s Diabetes: Together 2 Goal campaign. Launched last month, the campaign is working with healthcare organizations across the country to improve care for 1 million people with Type 2 diabetes by 2019. The program heavily emphasizes healthcare IT including the use of patient registries and point-of-care tools.

Inverse takes a look at the ways in which drone delivery business Zipline is helping remote clinics in Rwanda. The San Francisco-based company will soon deliver medical supplies such as blood or vaccines across the 10,000 square mile country via two launch hubs of 10 to 15 drones each.

As if our world weren’t connected enough: Raden introduces a line of app-connected travel cases that include a built-in weight sensor to help travelers avoid overweight baggage fees and a battery that can charge a mobile phone up to four times. The accompanying app offers airport travel tips and security line wait times, alerts users when their baggage is on the carousel, and tracks luggage destinations.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at the NCCHC Spring Conference on Correctional Health Care April 10-12 in Nashville, TN.
• Healthwise will exhibit at the Allscripts Central Region User Group April 13-15 in Minneapolis.

Blog Posts

• Little Known Facts About Doctors Day (AdvancedMD)
• Automating Documentation and Billing Makes Chronic Care Management More Achievable (Aprima)
• Mixed Use Patient Access Centers Improve the Patient Experience (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• ICD-10: Focusing on Assessing & Maintaining (E-MDs)

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

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News 4/5/16

Top News

Cactus Software and Symplr merge in order to offer their newly combined customer base a single source for physician credentialing solutions. The companies will retain their leadership and locations in Texas and Tennessee, offer each other’s software, and maintain individual brands. The combined company has 200 employees.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Oh happy day, the Flight of the Conchords have returned. The comedy folk-rock duo from New Zealand is touring this summer with new material, which gives me a great excuse to go back and binge watch their eponymous HBO series in an effort to reacquaint myself with oldies but goodies like “Business Time” and “Foux du Fafa” (and Murray).

Webinars

April 8 (Friday) 1:00 ET. “Ransomware in Healthcare: Tactics, Techniques, and Response.” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenter: John Gomez, CEO, Sensato. Ransomware continues to be an effective attack against healthcare infrastructure, with the clear ability to disrupt operations and impact patient care. This webinar will provide an inside look at how attackers use ransomware; why it so effective; and recommendations for mitigation.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Patient payments tech startup SwervePay acquires StatPayMD, a Blueprint Health IT accelerator graduate and former Matter occupant that offers patients out-of-pocket cost estimates based on insurance benefits. The news comes just a month after SwervePay completed a $10 million Series B funding round led by Garland Capital Group.

Announcements and Implementations

DuPage Medical Group (IL) taps PinpointCare to manage its Medicare Advantage and BCBS value-based care insurance programs. DMG, the largest independent physician group in Chicago, already uses the company’s care coordination platform to manage CMS orthopedic bundles and risk-based contracts.

Beach House Center for Recovery (FL) joins MAP Health Management’s Recovery Network.

Clearwave and Aprima Medical Software integrate Acuant’s credential management software into their respective patient check-in and EHR/PM solutions.

People

Jonathan Sherman (Ability Network) joins Cureatr as chief product officer.

GeBBS Healthcare Solutions names Jerry Jorgensen (Eclat Health Solutions) (not shown) vice president of operations, coding & HIM solutions; and Cara Friederich (Altegra Health) director, professional coding & audit services.

Telemedicine

The American Telemedicine Association appoints Mark Seraly, MD (Iagnosis) vice chair of its Special Interest Teledermatology Group.

TV, Internet and home security company Connect Your Home partners with telemedicine vendor CareClix to offer its customers access to telemedicine services.

A study in JAMA Internal Medicine compares the quality of eight direct-to-consumer telemedicine companies over the course of nearly 600 visits. Researchers found “a significant variation [in quality of care] across companies and by condition.” Antibiotics were prescribed at rates similar to in-person settings, while 14 percent of patients were referred to local physicians for in-person follow-up.

Primary care physician Lan Nguyen, MD takes to the local paper to voice her support for the role telemedicine can play in enhancing the patient/physician relationship. “Breaking down barriers such as cost, convenience and time enables patients to ‘see’ their primary care providers instead of delaying care,” she writes, “which often occurs in rural areas. Telehealth can play a very big role in extending that follow-up and nourishing an established patient/doctor relationship, thus increasing trust and improving quality of care.” Her statement offers a stark contrast to the study results noted above. Consumers eager for a quick, virtual consult may begin to rethink turning to somewhat anonymous telemedicine physicians if they can instead book one with their more trusted PCP.

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

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From the Consultant’s Corner 4/5/16

Improve Patient Access – and ROI to Boot

Providers understand how important it is for patients to have easy access to healthcare services in order to achieve higher patient satisfaction and potentially better outcomes. However, figuring out how to improve patient access in an affordable way can sometimes be a challenge.

One way to improve patient access is by optimizing physician capacity through a centralized patient access center. This approach is attractive to patients because it offers a single, easy-to-reach contact point for scheduling appointments, checking benefits eligibility, and getting answers to billing or clinical questions. With one resource, they can reach all providers and resolve multiple issues. Likewise, multispecialty practices can secure multiple appointments with just one phone call, improving care coordination.

Despite the cost to develop a central access center, practices can actually realize significant ROI by conducting an in-depth analysis of physician capacity to accept additional appointments. Increasing capacity isn’t as easy as simply adding another slot to an already-packed schedule. Instead, an analysis should be used to design a business plan based on benchmark data that helps increase both access and practice revenue.

A Win-Win for Patients and the Bottom Line
Patient access challenges — including scheduling delays and long appointment wait times — may be linked to poorer health outcomes, and can be a financial burden on patients who may seek non-network and possibly more distant care. Delays in care, because of poor patient access, may also cause unnecessary physical discomfort for patients, and dissatisfaction with the healthcare system as a result.

In most cases, practice administrators already know when their group has a patient access problem because of complaints from new or existing patients about long wait times for appointments. Therefore, the first step toward improving patient access is to determine and document the scope of the challenge. Identifying access challenges allows practices to decide where they need to concentrate the bulk of their efforts —such as which providers or specialties have longer waits than others.

Maximizing Capacity Yields New Revenue Opportunities
Implementing a centralized patient access center is an efficient and effective way to help maximize physician schedules while also delivering a satisfying patient access experience. A centralized patient access center certainly requires an investment in staff, hardware, software, and services, yet practices often can generate enough revenue to cover the costs — and even more — by simultaneously analyzing provider capacity. In fact, it is not uncommon for practices to realize an ROI of 25 percent, while some larger practices have even generated revenue of almost double the investment.

The key is to evaluate access at the individual provider and the practice level, taking a hard look at factors such as:

• Practice capacity policies and standards: Does each provider’s wRVUs, for example, match practice expectations? Establishing and enforcing administrative policies regarding the required number of patient care hours or wRVUs is essential to ensure long-term behavioral changes.
• Benchmark data: Sharing practice or other peer benchmark data can help prompt any behavioral changes needed to overcome capacity shortfalls.
• Individual schedule variations: How long until each provider’s next available appointment, on average? Is time being spent on activities that could be delegated to clinical support staff? In some cases, analysis might reveal that there are truly so many patients on a provider’s panel that the panel should be closed for a time.

Improving physician capacity first requires verifiable data and benchmarking. Once this evidence is available, strong physician leadership is necessary to drive policy enforcement. Success with scheduling and behavioral change is much more likely when capacity conversations are led by a clinical peer rather than an administrator. Physician leaders who can speak with their colleagues one-on-one typically are better able to focus the conversation on benefits to patient care and the patient experience, resulting in a more open dialogue and positive results.

Good for Business, Good for Care
Patient demand for healthcare services is rising. Concurrently, healthcare markets are consolidating due to mergers and acquisitions. From a business perspective alone, practices should take a closer look at how improving patient access could help them succeed in highly competitive environments.

By optimizing physician capacity through a centralized patient access center, practices have an opportunity to grow revenue and marketplace reputation, while serving more patients and enhancing the patient experience. This can result in healthier and more engaged patients, which is the ultimate benefit for any practice improvement.

Johanna Epstein is vice president of management consulting services for Culbert Healthcare Solutions in Woburn, MA.

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

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News 4/4/16

Top News

Ontario-based EHR vendor KAI Innovations acquires EHR and PACS vendor Trimara Corp. in a multi-million dollar deal. Trimara President Kris van der Starren will join KAI as CIO.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Thanks to the following sponsors, new and renewing, that recently supported HIStalk Practice. Click a logo for more information. Contact Lorre if you’d like to join the ranks.

Webinars

April 8 (Friday) 1:00 ET. “Ransomware in Healthcare: Tactics, Techniques, and Response.” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenter: John Gomez, CEO, Sensato. Ransomware continues to be an effective attack against healthcare infrastructure, with the clear ability to disrupt operations and impact patient care. This webinar will provide an inside look at how attackers use ransomware; why it so effective; and recommendations for mitigation.

Here’s the recording of Vince and Frank doing “rise of the small-first-letter vendors.”

You can also check out the tweet recap here.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

E-MDs completes its acquisition of McKesson ambulatory products Practice Choice, Medisoft, Medisoft Clinical, Lytec, Lytec MD, and Practice Partner.

PerfectServe expands its US physician user base by 8,000 to 58,000, or one out of every 13.

Watchstone Group spins InnoCare Ltd. out of its PT Healthcare Solutions physiotherapy business. InnoCare offers PM software and call center operations services, and is looking to expand into American practices.

Accounting and consulting firm Rosen, Sapperstein & Friedlander acquires physician practice consulting firm SHR Associates for an undisclosed sum. SHR President and CEO Nancy Smit will join RS&F as a partner.

People

E.J. “Ned” Holland Jr. (HHS) joins Imagine Software’s Board of Directors.

Specialdocs Consultants names J. Patrick Tokarz, MD (Northern Virginia Family Practice Associates) chief medical advisor and chairman of its new Physician Advisory Board.

Telemedicine

Center for Autism and Related Disorders develops a telemedicine program to help patients with autism spectrum disorder in the areas of behavior reduction and skill acquisition.

Announcements and Implementations

Health Gorilla (medical record aggregator), Inuvio (scanning, imaging, and data extraction), Medisafe (medication management), and Wink Health (sleep apnea app) join Drchrono’s API Developer Center and Partner Program.

Government and Politics

Kimberly Howerton, MD family physician and past president of the Tennessee Academy of Family Physicians, takes to the local paper to urge the state’s House of Representatives to pass legislation related to direct primary care, which has already cleared the Senate. Howerton, who has practiced direct primary care since last April, stresses the model’s emphasis on access, particularly e-visits. “This is a huge benefit to patients who otherwise would not seek treatment,” she writes, “as it allows them the opportunity to follow up with any concerns without the worry of being nickel-and-dimed each time.”  

Research and Innovation

A HealthMine survey of 500 insured consumers finds that, while 59 percent suffer from a chronic disease, just 7 percent use a disease-management tool – a finding the presents payers with yet another opportunity to link technology to chronic care management. Surprisingly, just 10 percent of respondents rated “incentives” as their number-one reason for using digital health apps, while the majority (42 percent) said “knowledge of my numbers” was their biggest motivator.

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 4/3/16

Richard Embrey, MD (LewisGale Regional Health System) joins Augusta Health (VA) as CMO and vice president of population health.

Timothy Moore, MD (WebMD) joins AxisPoint Health as CMO and executive vice president of health affairs.

Apollo Medical Holdings receives a $5 million strategic equity investment from Network Medical Management, which supplied a $10 million round last fall. Apollo plans to use the latest round of funding for working capital and to further growth initiatives.

University Hospitals (OH) will expand its use of Allscripts Sunrise Clinical Manager and will install it in five recently acquired hospitals. It will also increase its rollout of Allscripts dbMotion, a component of the company’s CareInMotion population health management solution.

In England, Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust chooses Allscripts CareInMotion population health management system.

The Los Angeles County Dept. of Health Services selects case management technology from Eccovia Solutions (fka ClientTrack) to help its Housing for Health program meet its goal of helping 10,000 homeless people find housing, healthcare, and community services.

Wellcentive awards its second annual Veterans Medical Scholarship to C.W. Driscoll, a former US Marine and Air Force veteran. He is enrolled in Bryant University’s Physician Assistant program, and plans to return to military service to provide medical care to men and women on the battlefield after graduation.

Sponsor Updates

• Clockwise.MD will exhibit at the UCAOA Spring Convention in Kissimmee, FL April 17-19.
• NVoq will exhibit at ACC 2016 April 2-4 in Chicago.

Blog Posts

• The Impact of Increased Patient Referrals and Retention Rates (Nordic)
• Meaningful Use – What do we do now? (Aprima)
• Balancing Act: Making data security a priority in daily nursing routines (PerfectServe)

Contacts

Jennifer,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.