News 3/22/16

Top News

PracticeUnite, a Newark, NJ–based developer of mobile communication and collaboration software for physician practices, merges with Minneapolis-based Uniphy Health, which offers similar products that connect ambulatory and acute care teams. In tandem with the merger, the combined company, which will operate as Uniphy Health, has added Casey Cowell (Durandal), Mike Martone (ADP), and orthopedist John Lockwood, MD to its Board of Directors. PracticeUnite executive team members have retained their roles.

Webinars

None scheduled in the coming weeks. Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Telemedicine

Teladoc celebrates 3,000 visits in a single day, a number it equates to “all ambulatory care patient visits in a typical day at a major US medical center, or the total number of patients seen in one day by the country’s five largest hospital emergency departments combined.”

McDowell Technical Community College in Marion, NC receives a $25,000 grant from the Kate B. Reynolds Foundation to purchase a mobile telemedicine unit, which it has installed in a refurbished closet now dubbed the “telehealth room.”

Grand Rapids, MI-based RespondWell celebrates a $2 million capital raise with an eye to raising an additional $8 million. The startup, which develops virtual care software for at-home physical therapy sessions, will use the funds to add staff and further develop its technologies. The company, led by former Xbox and Wii game developer Ted Spooner, signed a deal with the new Philips Aging Well Services unit earlier this year to provide virtual care to seniors recovering from surgery.

Announcements and Implementations

Springfield Clinic (IL) joins the Midwest Healthcare Quality Alliance. Founded in 2014 by Memorial Health System and Southern Illinois University HealthCare, the alliance works on improving quality, safety and community outcomes across Central Illinois. The clinic will also become a member of MHQA’s Quality Alliance Patient Safety Organization, a federally certified organization working to improve patient safety through advanced data analysis.

Spokane, WA-based Next IT Healthcare will host its virtual health assistant and coaching technology on ClearData’s HIPAA-compliant cloud.

Government and Politics

Providers, check your spam folders: OCR begins the second phase of HIPAA audits. The agency notes this latest round will primarily be desk audits, and that the information gathered will help OCR “develop tools and guidance to assist the industry in compliance self-evaluation and in preventing breaches.” Audit results will help the office develop its permanent audit program.

Research and Innovation

The only thing consistent about wearables are their inaccuracies at measuring energy consumption, or so say researchers in a new JAMA study. Researchers compared calorie consumption data from 12 wearables with data from standardized measurements.  All, including Jawbone and Fitbit, underestimated total energy expenditure, which reaffirmed the research team’s initial notion that there has thus far been no evidence proving a wearable’s ability to accurately measure such expenditure.

Contacts

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

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News 3/21/16

Top News

Apple announces CareKit at a town hall ahead of its 40th anniversary on April 1. The new HealthKit- and ResearchKit-friendly open-source framework will help software developers design apps that make it easier for people to manage their own medical conditions. Launching next month, CareKit apps will feature care plan and action item tracking, symptom and measurement tracking, an insight dashboard, and secure sharing capabilities. Early adopters include several health systems and pregnancy app developer Glow, which will incorporate CareKit features into its Glow Nurture app. Apple also announced a new ResearchKit feature designed by 23andMe that lets researchers incorporate genetic data into their studies.

Webinars

March 22 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Six Communication Best Practices for Reducing Readmissions and Capturing TCM Revenue.” Sponsored by West Healthcare Practice. Presenters: Chuck Hayes, VP of product management, West; Fonda Narke, senior director of healthcare product integration, West Healthcare Practice. Medicare payments for Transition Care Management (TCM) can not only reduce your exposure to hospital readmission penalties and improve patient outcomes, but also provide an important source of revenue in an era of shrinking reimbursements. Attendees will learn about the impacts of readmission penalties on the bottom line, how to estimate potential TCM revenue, as well as discover strategies for balancing automated patient communications with the clinical human touch to optimize clinical, financial, and operational outcomes. Don’t be caught on the sidelines as others close gaps in their 30-day post discharge programs.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Chronic illness management startup Signallamp Health plans to add 69 jobs at its Scranton, PA headquarters over the next three years. The fledgling company, which employs nurses to follow-up with patients on behalf of providers, received a $100,000 grant earlier this month from Ben Franklin Technology Partners of Northeastern Pennsylvania to build out its technology infrastructure. It also anticipates receiving nearly $130,000 in government grants for employee training. Signallamp has signed on 25 physician practices since launching late last year.

On-demand urgent care company Mend wins the 2016 ReleaseIt competition at SXSW Interactive. The Dallas-based startup (and Practice Fusion customer) was founded a year ago by emergency physician Jonathan Clarke, MD a US Navy veteran who served wartime tours of duty as a physician in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now serves as a flight surgeon and chief of flight medicine in the US Air Force Reserve.

Physician group alliance Stratum Med signs a three-year, $25 million group-purchasing agreement with Medline. The deal will afford 50 Stratum Med practices in the Midwest negotiated pricing on medical supplies.

Announcements and Implementations

PatientClick releases a PC Portal app for IPhones and IPads. Compatible with the company’s EHR, the new app features appointment scheduling, secure messaging, and clinical note review.

Pulse8 adds EHR integration and coding technology to its line of risk adjustment and quality analytics tools for providers and payers.

People

Sharon Arnold (AHRQ) joins the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s Board of Governors. Arnold will take over acting AHRQ leadership when Richard Kronick steps down later this month.

Massachusetts Governor Charlie Barker presents Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush with the Ellen M. Zane Award for Visionary Leadership at the 2016 Working Wonders for Tufts Medical Center benefit event. Tufts Medical Center and Floating Hospital for Children (MA) President Michael Wagner (above, right) was on hand to add to the kudos.

Telemedicine

The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology advocate for the advancement of telemedicine in a new 80-page report on “Independence, Technology, and Connection in Older Age.” The authors stress the importance of expanded broadband access and alternative payment models, and point to the progress CMS has made in expanding telemedicine access via the Next Generation ACO and Bundled Payment for Care model programs. The report also highlights the licensure and reimbursement issues physicians face when looking into telemedicine models of care.

Government and Politics

AHIMA launches a petition urging HHS to lift a ban on federal work to develop a national patient identifier. The petition needs 100,000 signatures by April 19 to elicit a response from the White House. Congress has had a ban on developing such an identifier since 1998.

Other

A Google audit of the Web’s top 100 non-Google sites (which account for 25 percent of the world’s Web traffic) reveals that nearly 80 percent don’t use HTTPS, an extra layer of security that companies are increasingly adding to the standard HTTP protocol. Nearly 70 percent of that group uses outdated encryption or nothing at all. Names that readers will likely recognize include apple.com, microsoft.com. NIH.gov, and amazonaws.com.

Kudos to The Atlantic for recognizing “y’all” – one of the English language’s most underappreciated words – over other attempts at second-person plurals. “’Y’all,’ that strange regional and ethnic conjunction, offers a simplicity to speech that can’t be found elsewhere,” the author writes. “It is a magnificently elegant linguistic creation. It sounds elegant, warm, and inviting. It offers both economy and an end to second-person ambiguity. Teach it in schools across the country. Mouth it to babies. Put it on end-of-grade tests.”

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Key Takeaways from HIMSS16 (Medicity)
• Your Peers Think You Should Go to the VUE – Here’s Why (Versus Technology)
• Insights from HIMSS16: Four key takeaways (PerfectServe)

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 3/20/16

Deerwalk promotes Scott MacEwen to senior vice president of client strategies.

Caradigm forms a Care Transformation Team of clinical experts led by Vice President Vicki Harter to guide providers in how to best align their care delivery needs to the appropriate Caradigm solutions. The new team will also assist in identifying internal processes in need of optimization for population health initiatives.

Aegis Health Group promotes Rochell Pierce to senior vice president of market development and Yale Miller to client solutions principal.

Predictive analytics care coordination systems vendor Pieces Technologies raises $21.6 million in Series A funding. Lt. Dan digs into the details at HIStalk Connect.

Beaver Manufacturing selects population health management services from Healthcare Interactive. The Mansfield, GA-based company will next month begin rolling out a smoking cessation program, onsite and phone-based health coaching, wellness program incentives and rewards, analytics and real-time reporting, and a technology platform that integrates everything.

The local radio station covers the Municipal Health Data for Cities Initiative, a  collaboration between New York University and the National Resource Network that is working to aggregate data around the concerns of city leaders, including alcohol and drug addiction, lack of access to healthy food, chronic disease, and lead exposure. The initiative, which aims to help cities improve health outcomes, will launch a dashboard this September with data from four pilot cities – Kansas City, KS; Flint, MI; Providence, RI; and Waco, TX.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 3/17/16

Top News

A ProPublica analysis of physicians who have written at least 1,000 prescriptions in Medicare Part D finds that those who received money from drug and device makers prescribed a higher overall number of name-brand drugs than physicians who didn’t. Even physicians who were just treated to meals prescribed more. The analysts don’t go so far as to assume a direct cause and effect; instead, they point out that “payments are associated with an approach to prescribing that, writ large, benefits drug companies’ bottom line.” American College of Cardiology President Kim Williams, MD points out in accompanying NPR commentary that relationships between companies and physicians are circular. “The more physicians learn about a new drug’s differentiating characteristics, the more likely they are to prescribe it,” he explained. “And the more they prescribe it, the more likely they are to be selected as speakers and consultants for the company.” It seems to be a very slippery – and subjective – slope. I’m hoping Dr. Jayne will weigh in.

Webinars

March 22 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Six Communication Best Practices for Reducing Readmissions and Capturing TCM Revenue.” Sponsored by West Healthcare Practice. Presenters: Chuck Hayes, VP of product management, West; Fonda Narke, senior director of healthcare product integration, West Healthcare Practice. Medicare payments for Transition Care Management (TCM) can not only reduce your exposure to hospital readmission penalties and improve patient outcomes, but also provide an important source of revenue in an era of shrinking reimbursements. Attendees will learn about the impacts of readmission penalties on the bottom line, how to estimate potential TCM revenue, as well as discover strategies for balancing automated patient communications with the clinical human touch to optimize clinical, financial, and operational outcomes. Don’t be caught on the sidelines as others close gaps in their 30-day post discharge programs.

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

Acquisitions. Funding, Business, and Stock

Value-added reseller Azcomp Technologies voices its support for the sale of McKesson’s ambulatory products to E-MDs, a business that it considers to be “smaller and more focused on servicing the type of medical practices and physician’s offices that have been the primary customers of Azcomp.” In addition to McKesson software, the Mesa, AZ-based VAR also sells Lytec PM software, to which it anticipates adding mobile diagnosis and billing entry features in the near future.

Colorado Permanente Medical Group partners with Boulder, CO-based accelerator Boomtown to introduce its first healthcare class. Mindful Labs, Patientory, VisibleHand, and Agathos will go through a 12-week mentoring program culminating in a demo day on April 13. I’m most interested in Agathos, which is developing a tool to provide physicians with insight into treatment costs, prognosis and treatment results culled from peers, performance statistics, and peer evaluations.

Announcements and Implementations

Millenium Healthcare launches a chronic care management service that it hopes to roll out to at least 100 physician practices in 2016. Millenium is parent company to four subsidiaries that specialize in billing and coding, medical devices, clinical laboratory, and messaging services.

East Tennessee Health Information Network selects real-time, healthcare data management and reporting technologies from Imat Solutions. ETHIN anticipates full implementation of Imat’s software to be wrapped by the end of June. Imat signed a similar deal with Delaware Health Information Network last June.

Research and Innovation

An American Journal of Managed Care study of practices acquired by hospitals finds no difference in healthcare IT utilization – in other words, a practice bought up by a hospital is no more likely to implement a new EHR than one that retains its independence. The study did find significantly higher usage of evidence-based care-management processes across hospital-owned practices of all sizes, likely due to greater availability of resources as a result of acquisition. The authors conclude that hospital-owned practices may be a better bet for chronically ill patients.

Fitbit users can now ask Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant about their sleep patterns, daily walks, and other monitored health activities. Alexa, which is compatible with Amazon’s Echo speaker and Fire TV streaming devices, may even offer words of encouragement like, “I believe in you.” Fitbit goals are more likely to be met if Alexa were to say, “You shouldn’t lay on the couch you lazy bum. You’re 5,000 steps short of your daily goal.”

Other

AMA throws its support behind the AllTrials initiative, a global campaign that is working to increase awareness of a greater need for clinical trials transparency. “The AMA strongly supports improving the timeliness and accessibility of clinical trial data to reduce the duplication of research and help inform future research — ultimately improving health outcomes for patients,” says AMA President Steven J. Stack. “The AMA is pleased to join the AllTrials initiative to continue efforts aimed at ensuring open access to clinical trial data for physicians, researchers and patients.”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Readers Write: Balancing the Population Health Management Equation

Balancing the Population Health Management Equation
By Tamara StClaire

The increased accountability of healthcare providers was discussed at length during HIMSS 2016; they need to show improvements to the overall health of the patients they serve or face stiff financial penalties. Indeed, “value-based care” is not an option, but a mandate: CMS will require at least 50 percent of payments be value-based by 2018.

We’re hearing from providers that they are nervous about that requirement, and for good reason. Value-based contracts currently make up less than 10 percent of the portfolios of many providers and payers, according to research from Xerox – that illustrates a long journey ahead.

As readers of this HIStalk Practice are likely aware, population health management programs are not a new concept, but providers are increasingly turning toward them in order to make the jump. Information technology plays a big role in population health management efforts. Most begin with aggregating data from a wide variety of sources, such as medical claims, EHRs, patient portals – and yes, even mobile applications and wearables. Data analytics also helps develop attribution models, segment populations, and improve our understanding of specific groups of patients. Intervention programs, complete with feedback loops for optimization, are ultimately designed and developed with the help of advanced information technology.

Too often, the solution stops here – but that’s only half of the puzzle. As my friend Geeta Nayyar, MD chief healthcare and innovation officer for Femwell Group Health, stated at a roundtable discussion at HIMSS, “Technology plus people is the best formula for population health management success.”

Sometimes we forget about the second half of that formula. What really makes a difference and makes it possible to improve the health of diverse patient populations and reduce costly interventions is the ability to turn data into meaningful, actionable information with timely execution of necessary programs. For example, technology makes it possible to analyze populations and segment at-risk groups of individuals. But it’s equally important for “health coaches” to have numerous touch points with those at-risk patients and provide specific instruction on how to stay healthy or remind them to take important medication. Even administrative services like appointment scheduling and patient onboarding improves levels of patient literacy and engagement, resulting in a direct and clear impact on the bottom line.

It’s important to remember that technology should support people and processes – not the other way around.

If we can master both sides of the equation, we’ll end up with healthcare delivery that improves outcomes. Population health management solutions can help providers make the leap to value-based care and achieve an era of more accessible care with lower costs and healthier patients.

Tamara StClaire is chief innovation officer for Xerox Healthcare Business Group.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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