News 3/14/16

Top News

Florida legislators pass House Bill 7087, establishing telemedicine practice standards and requirements for out-of-state providers. The bill does not require an in-person exam to establish the physician-patient relationship, and does not include language referring to public and private payer reimbursement. It does outline steps for establishing a statewide Telehealth Advisory Council, which is charged with compiling and submitting a report on telemedicine opportunities and barriers to the governor by 2018. It’s worth nothing that the state has not yet introduced Interstate Medical Licensure Compact legislation, which would expedite the path to licensure for qualified physicians who wish to practice in outside of the state.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Thanks to springing forward for daylight saving time yesterday, I’m too tired to celebrate National Pi Day today. The debate continues as to whether or not the elective time change does in fact save energy and money, as first suggested half jokingly by Ben Franklin in 1784. National Geographic has published an entertaining read on the history of DST. A favorite excerpt: “In 1965, somebody wandered into an 18-story office building in St. Paul, Minnesota, and discovered that it housed 9 floors of city employees who did observe [daylight saving time] and 9 floors of country employees who did not.” DST side effects today include a spike in heart attacks and car crashes, plus a dive in employee productivity. Happy Monday!

Webinars

March 16 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Looking at the Big Picture for Strategic Communications at Children’s Hospital Colorado.” Sponsored by Spok. Presenters: Andrew Blackmon, CTO, Children’s Hospital Colorado; Hemant Goel, president, Spok. Children’s Hospital Colorado enhanced its care delivery by moving patient requests, critical code communications, on-call scheduling, and secure texting to a single mobile device platform. The hospital’s CTO will describe the results, the lessons learned in creating a big-picture communication strategy that improves workflows, and its plans for the future.

March 16 (Wednesday) noon ET. “The Physiology of Electronic Fetal Monitoring.” Sponsored by PeriGen. Presenter: Emily Hamilton, MDCM, SVP of clinical research, PeriGen. This webinar will review the physiology of EFM – the essentials of how the fetal heart reacts to labor. The intended audience is clinicians looking to understand the underlying principles of EFM to enhance interpretation of fetal heart rate tracings.

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.

Telemedicine

TokBox launches its telemedicine solution at SXSW, enabling developers to embed secure video, voice, and messaging capabilities into existing health and fitness apps.

Government and Politics

HHS announces that a total of 12.7 million consumers have signed up for insurance coverage during 2016 open enrollment periods. Nearly 5 million signed up during the most recent enrollment period. Over 9.6 million signed up via Healthcare.gov, while 3.1 million gained new or renewed coverage via state-based exchanges. Noticeably different this time around was consumer predilection to enroll at the beginning of open enrollment, rather than waiting until the last minute (as is typical with just about anything people have to sign up for). Earlier enrollments suggest increased ease of use and greater consumer awareness.

CMS will drop Social Security numbers from Medicare cards in 2018, when it will begin issuing cards with a new billing identifier. Over 60 million cards with the new identifier will be distributed between April 2018 and April 2019. The switch stems from MACRA-related efforts to cut down on identity theft. 

Research and Innovation

Nestlé uses Medidata’s Clinical Cloud platform and EPRO (electronic patient-reported outcomes) app to support a two-year intervention study in China. Launched last fall, the study is evaluating the impact of the company’s nutritional products combined with exercise on mobility in healthy aging adults with joint discomfort. In addition to the EPRO app, study participants have also been equipped with activity trackers to provide real-time objective data.

A survey of 1,035 consumers finds that ease of use is more important than trust when it comes to using online health resources. The online resources of advocacy groups ranked higher than WebMD and Wikipedia for trustworthiness, but fell behind the two more well-know sites for ease of use and popularity. Survey results also show that health system websites are increasing in popularity, with Mayo Clinic being the second most visited site behind WebMd.

Other

Complete Family Foot Care (NB) informs patients that its EHR vendor, San Jose, CA-based Bizmatics, was the victim of a server breach sometime last year. The hack may have resulted in the unauthorized access of patient files, though an ensuing investigation didn’t turn up such evidence.

Neurologist Lawrence Huntoon, MD shares his oratorical take on Medicare-related physician burnout in the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons: “To be or not to be free, that is the question. Whether it is immutable fate to continue to accept a conflict of interest with our Medicare patients and suffer the abuse, excessive bureaucracy, and devaluation of services foisted upon us by the government Medicare program. Or, whether it is nobler to opt out of Medicare and reaffirm our professional ethics to serve the best interests of our patients without government interference… .”

Physicians looking for a career change may want to dust off their Japanese and apply to become one of the six ninjas Japan is hiring as part of its bid to boost “warlord” tourism. Ideal applicants should “enjoy being under the spotlight even though he or she is a secretive ninja.” I assume the paperwork would be minimal.

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 3/13/16

RedBrick Health names Todd Price (Oracle) vice president of software development and Dawn Zerneke (Healthways) vice president of client services.

Community Care of North Carolina wins the inaugural Hearst Health Prize, a $100,000 award given by Hearst Health and the Jefferson College of Population Health in recognition of outstanding achievement in managing or improving health. CCNC’s care management program serves 2,600 Medicaid recipients each month and focuses on individuals with chronic conditions at risk for hospitalization or readmission. CCNC President and CEO L. Allen Dobson Jr., MD attributes the program’s success to the use of “robust health analytics along with a statewide infrastructure and a network of physicians and hospitals has allowed us to manage the toughest patients well. Our drive to improve the health of North Carolinians has been grounded in collaboration and the use of data that have shown us how to improve outcomes and to reduce costs.”

President Obama launches The Opportunity Project, a public-private initiative that will use open datasets to foster economic mobility across the country. Via Opportunity.Census.gov, community decision-makers can now access these datasets to help them make more informed investments that will expand access to opportunity and reduce segregation. Data includes open data from the US Census Bureau and Departments of Education, Commerce, Agriculture, and HHS; plus local datasets from eight cities covering such community assets as playgrounds, grocery stores, and health clinics.

Rockville Internal Medicine Group (MD) signs on with Privia Medical Group to take advantage of its technology resources, and team-based care and wellness program expertise. PMG is part of Arlington, VA-based PM and population health management company Privia Health.

Sponsor Updates

• The local business paper profiles Leidos Health’s work with the VA in light of its merger with Lockheed Martin.

Blog Posts

• #HIMSS16 – CHIME CIOs discuss optimization, data, and analytics (Nordic)
• HIPAA regulation: The myths around integrating compliance and patient care (PerfectServe)
• #HIMSS16 – Learning, limboing, connecting, giving [recap] (Nordic)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 3/10/16

Top News

The California-based Integrated Healthcare Association and Office of the Patient Advocate publish a medical group report card that displays clinical quality, patient experience, and cost-of-care ratings. The report card rates over 150 medical groups caring for 9 million patients enrolled in commercial HMOs and point-of-service programs offered by 10 payers. The patient experience category includes coordinating care, which in turn includes a medical group’s use of “systems to handle and communicate information properly.” OPA Director Elizabeth Abbott explains that, “What we want to do is to be able to differentiate good outcomes and pair it up with lower than average costs. It’s a terrific tool for both purchasers and for consumers.”

Webinars

March 16 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Looking at the Big Picture for Strategic Communications at Children’s Hospital Colorado.” Sponsored by Spok. Presenters: Andrew Blackmon, CTO, Children’s Hospital Colorado; Hemant Goel, president, Spok. Children’s Hospital Colorado enhanced its care delivery by moving patient requests, critical code communications, on-call scheduling, and secure texting to a single mobile device platform. The hospital’s CTO will describe the results, the lessons learned in creating a big-picture communication strategy that improves workflows, and its plans for the future.

March 16 (Wednesday) noon ET. “The Physiology of Electronic Fetal Monitoring.” Sponsored by PeriGen. Presenter: Emily Hamilton, MDCM, SVP of clinical research, PeriGen. This webinar will review the physiology of EFM – the essentials of how the fetal heart reacts to labor. The intended audience is clinicians looking to understand the underlying principles of EFM to enhance interpretation of fetal heart rate tracings.

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 about our post-HIMSS webinar sale.

Announcements and Implementations

Salt Lake City-based MBX Medical Billing Experts develops Apex Business Intelligence, a data visualization tool that helps physicians analyze metrics in their PM systems across time, physician, and location.

Telemedicine

Dictum Health launches its Virtual Exam Room as part of its cloud-based telemedicine system. Through the VER, patients can use connected medical devices to share real-time vital signs, cardiopulmonary data, and medical images with off-site providers.

The American Telemedicine Association not surprisingly announces its support for the President’s ConnectAll initiative, which aims to provide affordable broadband access to 20 million more Americans by 2020. The initiative will include an extension of the FCC phone subsidy program to Internet coverage, plus a study highlighting the importance of broadband access in creating economic growth. “The expansion of affordable broadband will further solidify the rapidly growing telemedicine sector, which is transforming the healthcare paradigm,” says Jonathan Linkous, CEO of the ATA. “This initiative helps to deliver the promise of more cost-effective healthcare delivery models, and promotes the expansion of telehealth services for all.” 

Research and Innovation

HHS awards Christopher Harle, an assistant professor and researcher at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, a $1.1 million grant to develop clinical decision support tools that will help PCPs improve care for chronic-pain patients. He has also received a $1.9 million grant from NIH to develop software that will help patients understand the informed consent process when they approve use of their EHRs for research purposes.

An Annals of Family Medicine study finds that electronic consults between PCPs and cardiologists resolved issues 70 percent of the time amongst underserved patients. Overall, the e-consults improved access to and timeliness of care, streamlined specialty referrals without adversely affecting outcomes, and reduced utilization of specialists. Thirty six PCPs from 12 community health centers participated in the study.

A patient engagement survey of 200 physicians and 200 patients shows that there’s a bit of a disconnect between the two groups. Sixty percent of physicians believe that providing patients with better online access to their personal health record would improve quality of care, yet only 35 percent of patients say they’ve noticed their physician becoming more engaged with them. Key barriers to adopting patient portals – one of the top-rated ways in which patients prefer to engage – include security concerns, cost, and lack of staff.

A survey of 500 physicians finds that the majority believe new payment models may contribute to a higher quality of care and improved patient outcomes, rating “improved patient health” as the top benefit of participation. Fifty-five percent participate in some form of alternative payment model, and over 33 percent have been doing so for over three years. While the figures are certainly cause for optimism, it can’t be denied that there’s still a sizeable chunk of physicians clinging on to fee-for-service: 41 percent FFS is ideal for delivering positive patient outcomes.

Government and Politics

An HHS audit of Vermont’s health insurance exchange reveals that it failed to meet several federal requirements established to ensure consumers were qualified to receive coverage. During its first six months of operation, Vermont Health Connect failed to process life-changing events, and properly verify Social Security numbers, family income, and incarceration status of applicants. The exchange has been a hot-button issue amongst the state’s gubernatorial candidates, with Republican contenders calling for abandonment and Democratic hopefuls resisting the urge to move over to Healthcare.gov. The state has estimated it will spend $302.3 million on set up and operations between 2015 and 2016, a move one campaign manager calls “spending good money after bad.”

Other

Throwback Thursday: University of Toledo researchers declare binge watching to be a public health concern. Researchers found in a study released last fall that binger watchers were more likely to report addictive behavior, making me totally rethink my plans to catch up on Fixer Upper this weekend. A separate, more current analysis of the research concluded that, “Their findings concord with other recent findings in scientific literature that water is wet and fire is hot. In other words, we already knew that watching too much TV was probably not great for you. Turns out, watching too much TV all at once … is also probably not great for you.”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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HIStalk Practice Interviews Doug Given, MD CEO, Health2047

Doug Given, MD is CEO of Health2047 in San Francisco.

Tell me about yourself and the company.
I’m an internist and infectious diseases doctor with a PhD in virology, a serial entrepreneur, and a venture capitalist. During my career, I’ve developed deep expertise in biotechnology, biopharmaceuticals, specialty medical products, and healthcare innovation. I’ve participated in the development of over 15 top-selling drugs, biologics, diagnostics, imaging agents, and medical devices. Additionally, philanthropy and mentoring are a very important part of my life. I actively advise and sponsor entrepreneurial programs and innovation funds at leading institutions like the University of Chicago, Wharton, Johns Hopkins, USC, the University of Texas, and Houston Methodist Research Institute. I also assist leading universities on the public health front, and serve as an advisor to the Harvard School of Public Health and the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Health2047, whose founding partner is the AMA, is an entirely new business model in the healthcare industry — an integrated innovation company —that will work with both established players and early-stage growth companies. It combines strategy, engineering, design, and venture disciplines to create new and important linkages between the physician community and the AMA’s content/regulatory experts with leading companies, emerging companies, and individual entrepreneurs. Bottom line: Health2047 is in business to develop, optimize, and harvest disruptive ideas that enhance — at the system level — the practice of US healthcare.

The AMA’s financial commitment to Health2047 represents a major step in expanding its innovation ecosystem and building a bridge between Silicon Valley and the medical community. I accepted the CEO role at Health2047 because I believe we have a unique business model that will yield both market impact and financial return by infusing the physician perspective into major innovation cycles.

What does Health2047 hope to accomplish in 2016?
Our first step was to establish a Silicon Valley-based innovation studio that takes a “systems engineering” approach to important healthcare issues, providing strategic design and rapid prototyping solutions to corporate development partners, entrepreneurs, and physicians. That studio is up and running now. Over the balance of the year, we intend to work with both the AMA and a growing list of innovation partners to execute along our three business tracks:

1. Helping established corporations tune their products and services to better participate in the healthcare economy.
2. Working with emerging growth firms to develop the tools and processes they need to effectively enter/compete in the healthcare market.
3. Developing new products and services in the “white spaces” that meet recognized needs in the areas of chronic care, value-based healthcare and payments; connected health solutions; medical education; and collaboration models for physicians, providers, payers and patients.

What specific physician pain points is it looking to address through its partnerships with healthcare technology companies?
With the shifts from acute illness to chronic illness, and from in-patient care to outpatient and ambulatory care into the home, there are clear system-level issues we must tackle if we are to alleviate physician pain points. Health2047 applies "systems engineering"  thinking around these shifts and infuses the physician perspective in all major innovation cycles. Why? Because we have seen all too clearly that simply dropping discrete products into the healthcare system doesn’t alleviate physician pain points. At best, you get fragments of benefit; at worst, you exacerbate physician pain points. We think that is unacceptable. 

One specific healthcare problem is the mismatch between the mobile world that patients and individuals live in and the tethering of doctors and providers in the physical world. We need to ensure that physicians and providers don’t "miss out" on mobile; this will require expert attention to the user experience, enhancements to security and privacy, and integration into the upstream and downstream workflows that characterize an effective practice.

A second issue is the lack of physician voice and involvement in creating and disseminating system-level healthcare solutions. We need a functional network of physicians who are highly accessible and deeply involved in the innovation process, submitting ideas, testing prototypes, and becoming the launch channel for solutions that will create better healthcare outcomes.

A third example is the lack of semantic interoperability in healthcare data streams. Currently, less than 25 percent of the data currently being aggregated in EHRs is useful in assessing and addressing health outcomes with the goal to improve value in the healthcare system. That’s because diagnostic codes don’t talk to procedural codes, don’t talk to functional outcome codes, don’t talk to patient attribute data represented largely in free text. We need truly connected health solutions so the data we collect can become actionable information.

What companies is Health2047 currently working with, and on what projects?
We will be announcing innovation partners in the coming months, so stay tuned. What I can tell you now is that Health2047 already has projects underway in four core areas:

1. Improving chronic disease management.
2. Driving new value-based healthcare models and measures.
3. Enhancing workflow for care providers.
4. Better connecting individuals and physicians across life and health.

Our initial efforts on semantic interoperability and connectivity across the care continuum, for example, enable new point-of-care touch points and the ability to influence outcomes in chronic care.

Will the technologies and services that come out of Health2047 be branded as such?
Successful healthcare solution prototypes and product designs — the vast majority of which will be branded outside of Health2047 — will be monetized in the form of revenue, equity, debt, royalties, and other commercial rights owned by Health2047 Inc. partners. Specifically, these include licenses to co-development partners,  royalties from AMA when product teams take Health2047’s studio solutions to market, equity from participation in institutional investment syndicates, and funds received from social impact investors.

Is Health2047 looking to work with additional companies in the near future? Which ones are on your radar?
As we gain momentum, we expect to see a blend of ideas that come from existing companies (both larger strategic partners and venture-backed companies) as well as individual entrepreneurs, including physician innovators. The partner ecosystem we are curating will include representative leaders from each asset class in the healthcare industry, as well as major technology companies offering solutions that can aggregate and scale the fragmented healthcare economy. We’ll bring together complementary skill sets in service of a shared mission. Health2047 will partner with product companies, physicians and providers, and leaders in enterprise and consumer technology, mobile, security, fintech, AI, and wireless technologies.

From a more high-level perspective, what types of healthcare technologies will have the biggest impact on physician productivity? Patient outcomes?
For physician productivity – mobile technologies, interoperability technologies, workflow technologies, and technologies that improve the user experience for physicians. For patient outcomes – connected health  technologies, remote monitoring technologies, mobile technologies, and behavior modification technologies.

How is Health2047 allocating its funding from AMA? How will your business model evolve?
We are using the funds to build out seasoned multi-disciplinary teams and execute on agreed-upon project milestones. We expect our working partnerships to result in a variety of new and interesting opportunities for healthcare innovation, though it is premature to say exactly how our business model will evolve.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.
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News 3/9/16

Top News

E-MDs acquires McKesson Practice Choice, Medisoft, Medisoft Clinical, Lytec, Lytec MD, and Practice Partner from McKesson Business Performance Services. The combined ambulatory products and services are used by nearly 55,000 providers. Parent company Marlin Equity Partners bought E-MDs and Advanced MD last year to add to its MDeverywhere holding. MEP Partner George Kase describes the acquisition as being in line with its continuing plans for growth, adding that, “It also offers economies of scale allowing us to extend the E-MDs brand into new areas not previously available.”

Webinars

March 16 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Looking at the Big Picture for Strategic Communications at Children’s Hospital Colorado.” Sponsored by Spok. Presenters: Andrew Blackmon, CTO, Children’s Hospital Colorado; Hemant Goel, president, Spok. Children’s Hospital Colorado enhanced its care delivery by moving patient requests, critical code communications, on-call scheduling, and secure texting to a single mobile device platform. The hospital’s CTO will describe the results, the lessons learned in creating a big-picture communication strategy that improves workflows, and its plans for the future.

March 16 (Wednesday) noon ET. “The Physiology of Electronic Fetal Monitoring.” Sponsored by PeriGen. Presenter: Emily Hamilton, MDCM, SVP of clinical research, PeriGen. This webinar will review the physiology of EFM – the essentials of how the fetal heart reacts to labor. The intended audience is clinicians looking to understand the underlying principles of EFM to enhance interpretation of fetal heart rate tracings.

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 about our post-HIMSS webinar sale.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare and technology jobs make up over half of Glassdoor’s list of top 25 highest-paying jobs with the most openings. The list, culled from employee surveys over the last year, puts physicians first with a median income of $180,000, IT managers at $120,000, and IS managers at $106,000.

Canada-based QHR Technologies signs on five-time Olympic medalist Hayley Wickenheiser as spokesperson for its Accuro EHR and Medeo virtual care software. "When this opportunity came about, I think being around medicine and being around hockey we use a lot of technology to advance the game now," Wickenheiser explained. "We record everything, your heart rate, your eating, your sleep.  I think that’s where everything is going, and this company is just a young, exciting energized group of people. I like the fact it’s Canadian, and it’s driving the industry in Canada.” Wickenheiser is working towards a Masters in medical science, after which she plans to go to medical school.

People

Javad Kabiri (Rackspace) joins ClearData as senior vice president of customer success.

Announcements and Implementations

PerfectServe adds point-of-care charge capture capabilities to its Synchrony communications software.

Vivacare releases the InfoRx mobile app to help physicians deliver customized patient education resources via mobile device or a practice’s website. (Paper handouts are also an option.)

Toledo Radiological Associates (OH) adds PM services and onsite assistance to its previously announced extended agreement with Zotec Partners.

Wolters Kluwer offers free online access to some of its Zika-related medical content and clinical decision support resources.

Experian Health adds its Patient Estimates solution to Athenahealth’s marketplace.

Telemedicine

Computerized Screening marks 1 billion uses of its healthcare kiosks. CSI was the first company to offer free blood pressure screenings to the public, and claims to hold the patent for telehealth/telemedicine.

Fast Company looks at the role telemedicine and apps like those developed by Doctors Without Borders and the Instagram-like Figure1 are playing in the healthcare of Syrian refugees, especially within refugee camps. "It’s like having a colleague in every part of the world to bounce ideas off. [It’s] essential for treating Syrian refugees who don’t have access to specialist care, let alone the quality, regular follow-ups,” says Rogy Masri, a volunteer with Doctors Without Borders.

Legislation expanding telemedicine in Indiana heads to the governor’s office to be signed into law. The bill allows physicians, PAs and APNs to treat patients without a prior in-person visit. The bill has had its detractors, including former state health commissioner and Indiana Academy of Family Physicians member Richard Feldman, MD: “This legislation opens the door for ongoing prescribing and treating without a patient ever seeing a doctor in person. It has the potential of replacing face-to-face care” and should be limited “so that care is not perpetually electronic in nature.” 

Government and Politics

ONC unveils a new Health IT Dashboard Web app that snapshots the latest national and state health IT data for EHR adoption, HIE, EHR vendor market share, and E-prescribing, among other data sets.

Research and Innovation

A report on physician office usage of EHRs finds that utilization remained static between 2015 and 2016, hovering around 60 percent. Usage by practice specialty transitioned somewhat, with family practice joining internal medicine/pediatrics, urology, radiology, and pathology in the top five for 2016 thus far. The top four states for both years include Wyoming, South Dakota, Utah, and Iowa. The clustering makes me wonder if the area received any sort of special funding or support from regional RECs. The usual suspects retained top vendor market share.

Other

21st Century Oncology notifies 2.2 million patients of a November breach that included the theft of patient names, Social Security numbers, physician names, diagnoses and treatment information, and insurance information. Security analysts have taken the chain of cancer clinics to task for glossing over the severity of the theft by assuring patients that no medical records were taken. The chain has since hired a forensics firm to support the investigation, assess its systems and bolster security.

Atlanta-based Isis Women’s Healthcare changes its name to Nile Women’s Health Care after receiving threatening calls and online comments from the public. The 10 year-old clinic, originally named for an Egyptian goddess, has attempted to make clear that it has no connection to the similarly named terrorist group, yet staff continued to fear for their safety. “Initially we planned to stay the course,” the organization says in a blog. “Surely, no one would confuse our OB/GYN practice for a terrorist organization?! We were wrong. People are mad. People are upset. People are confused. And they have let us know in some very unkind ways.”

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at AMGA 2016 Annual Conference March 10-12 in Orlando.
• The local paper looks at the ways in which API Healthcare is benefiting from its sale to GE Healthcare.

Blog Posts

• 3 Post ICD-10 Transition Solutions for Your Practice (AdvancedMD)
• 8 Tips to Help You Transition From ICD-9 to ICD-10 (Aprima)
• Improving Your Financial Health Through Patient Engagement (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• Marketing to Your Existing Clients to Drive Revenue (E-MDs)
• Innovation at HIMSS is all About Interoperability (Healthwise)

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.