News 6/24/15

Top News

MDLive secures a $50 million growth equity investment from Bedford Funding just weeks after expanding its partnership with Walgreens into three additional states. The company plans to use the new funds to “expand its acquisition strategy” in hopes of becoming a fully integrated virtual health system, suggesting there may be some telemedicine market consolidation in the very near future.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

This month marks HIStalk’s 12th birthday! (HIStalk Practice got off the ground in 2007, while HIStalk Connect launched in 2010.) Kudos to Mr. H for starting and continuing to diligently cover the healthcare IT industry in such a unique and fun way. Feel free to send him good vibes and iTunes gift cards to feed his eclectic musical tastes.

Reading: Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell – just one of the tomes I scored at my public library’s cash-and-carry book sale. I also managed to snag two of my all-time favorites – The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson and Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley – both of which I promptly shared with a fellow book lover. I can’t bear to keep good reads to myself. Let me know your favorites in the comments below and I’ll try to add them to my summer reading list.

Webinars

June 30 (Tuesday) 11:00 ET. “Value Based Reimbursement – Leveraging Data to Build a Successful Risk-based Strategy.” Sponsored by McKesson. Presenters: Michael Udwin, MD, executive director of physician engagement, McKesson; Jeb Dunkelberger, executive director of corporate partnerships, McKesson. Healthcare organizations are using empowered physician leadership and credible performance analysis to identify populations, stratify risk, drive physician engagement, and expose opportunities for optimized care. Attendees will learn best practices in laying a foundation for developing a successful risk-based strategy.

HIStalk is running a summer special on both produced and promoted webinars. Sign up by July 31 and get a sizeable discount. Contact Lorre. We get good turnout — especially when companies take our advice about content, title, and presentation – and the ones we produce keep getting hundreds of views well after the fact from our YouTube channel. The record is held by the one Vince and Frank did on the Cerner takeover of Siemens, which has been viewed over 5,000 times. Talk about bang for your buck.

Announcements and Implementations

Pulse Systems offers e-prescribing for controlled substances through its PulseRx 5.0 medication management system within the Pulse Complete EHR.

CVS Health announces affiliations with Millennium Physician Group (FL), Mount Kisco Medical Group (NY), Bryan Health Connect (NE), and Sutter Health (CA). In making the announcement, CVS, which is on Epic, emphasized the role EHRs and information systems will play in plans to develop health and wellness, and coordinated care programs with the four organizations.

IBM and Box announce a partnership that will enable Box customers to store their data in IBM’s cloud, among a number of other benefits that will touch enterprise analytics, security, social, and cloud technologies.

Michigan Health Information Network Shared Services, Texas Health Services Authority, Caremerge, and T-System join the CommonWell Health Alliance.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Heal, which offers $99 physician house calls in Los Angeles and  San Francisco, raises $5 million in funding for expansion. Heal is the only company I’ve seen in the news lately from the crop of startups that presented at the HIMSS15 Venture Forum. Smart pillbox startup TowerView Health won the forum’s pitch competition, and is now in the midst of a six-month pilot with Independence Blue Cross and Penn Medicine.

Zen Medical announces plans to focus business development of its ZenCharts behavioral health EHR on the underserved addiction treatment center market. The Miami-based company, acquired by Sanomedics in May, signed two such facilities in Florida earlier this month.

Xcite Health enlists the services of Health Connexions to help it further commercialize its EHR and PM systems for pediatric practices.

Government and Politics

ONC bids a fond farewell to departing volunteer Health IT Standards Committee members including John Derr, C. Martin Harris, Liz Johnson, Dixie Baker, Anne Castro, and David McCallie.

Telemedicine

MyTelemedicine.com announces a July 1 launch of its virtual house-call service. The Texas-based startup will offer direct-to-consumer physician consultations, a white-label service for physicians who want to offer remote consults to their patients, and a telemedicine platform that can be branded by any healthcare practice. President and CEO Rey Colon was co-founder of AmeriDoc, which was acquired by Teladoc in 2014.

ClairVista launches a mobile telehealth tablet that connects to medical devices for remote monitoring and alerts.

Tractica predicts that telehealth video consults will increase globally to 158.4 million per year by 2020 – a significant jump from the 19.7 million consults conducted in 2014. I wouldn’t be surprised if that prediction ends up being a little low, given the regularity with which telemedicine companies are announcing investments and IPOs, not to mention increasingly friendly interstate licensure, regulatory, and reimbursement policies in the U.S.

Research and Innovation

KLAS releases its latest report on ambulatory EHR usability.

A new report finds that healthcare is second only to government agencies when it comes to protecting data from hackers. A whopping 80 percent of healthcare applications exhibit cryptographic issues such as weak algorithms, while 43 percent of vulnerabilities are remediated by healthcare organizations.

People

Huron Consulting appoints Lynn Schneider Grennan (University of Arizona Health Network) and Linda Generotti (Siemens Healthcare) managing directors of its healthcare practice, focusing on physician practices and clinical operations, respectively.

Other

The local paper observes that less than 15 percent of Rhode Island’s physicians use the state’s CurrentCare HIE, which cost $25 million in federal money plus the state’s cost. A representative from the state medical society says, “First, not every physician has a computer that they use for EHRs. Second, some of those who do have a system that isn’t CurrentCare compatible as of right now, but hopefully will be. There have been some proprietary issues.”

Sponsor Updates

• Atlanta public radio highlights Clockwise.MD in “Local App Reduces Time Spent in Urgent Care Waiting Rooms.”
• Culbert Healthcare Solutions offers tips for “Allscripts Upgrade Services.”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 6/23/15

Top News

Community Health Partnership, a coalition of over 25 providers in southern Colorado, joins the Colorado Regional Health Information Organization HIE. CORHIO is also in the process of adding over 400 healthcare facilities to its network, the bulk of which are medical clinics.

Webinar

June 30 (Tuesday) 11:00 ET. “Value Based Reimbursement – Leveraging Data to Build a Successful Risk-based Strategy.” Sponsored by McKesson. Presenters: Michael Udwin, MD, executive director of physician engagement, McKesson; Jeb Dunkelberger, executive director of corporate partnerships, McKesson. Healthcare organizations are using empowered physician leadership and credible performance analysis to identify populations, stratify risk, drive physician engagement, and expose opportunities for optimized care. Attendees will learn best practices in laying a foundation for developing a successful risk-based strategy.

Telemedicine

Health screening company D-Eye will incorporate TreVia Digital Health’s data-management platform and telemedicine technology into its ImageVault tool, which stores, analyzes, and shares images captured by the Italian company’s smartphone-friendly retinal imaging system.

ATA awards accreditation for online patient consultations to MDLive and CareSimple.

People

William Henry (Omnico Group) joins the Authentidate Board of Directors.

The local business paper recognizes New Jersey Innovation Institute President and CEO Donald Sebastian as an Innovation Hero. In addition to his work at the institute, Sebastian also led efforts to form the New Jersey Health Information Technology Extension Center.

Research and Innovation

An Accenture study (the release of which coincides nicely with the debut of the latest Terminator movie) finds that 84 percent of surveyed healthcare executives believe the industry will need to focus just as much on training and managing machines as it does on training people over the next three years. While the survey doesn’t predict the rise of machines à la the T-1000, it does emphasize the use of algorithms, machine learning, and intelligent software as key to helping providers handle an expected surge in clinical data.

Government and Politics

National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD lays out ONC’s plans to move President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative, including working with NIH, FDA, DoD, the VA and the White House and gathering stakeholder feedback via NIH workshops. She adds that, “ We plan to get advice from the Health IT Standards Committee about the best data standards to support health information interoperability and then in 2016, we will build on our current data standards projects to address the additional needs that we collectively identify.”

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell shares a significant birthday with several federal government programs.

Other

WEDI offers an eight-page primer on cyberattacks, paying particular attention to the anatomy of an attack and building a culture of prevention. The resource reminds me of the more in-depth HIStalk webinar on healthcare breaches led by Imprivata CTO David Ting and Yale New Haven Health System Information Security Manager Glynn Stanton.

Remind me to shave my arm before buying that wearable everyone’s talking about: MIT breaks down the barriers to accurate wearable measurements, which include arms that are too hairy, sweaty, fat, thin or tattooed. Google, which is developing its own health-tracking wristband, hopes to bypass consumer-centric concerns by marketing its wearable as a medical device prescribed to patients or used in clinical trials.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 6/22/15

Top News

The Texas Medical Board files a motion in federal court to dismiss Teladoc’s lawsuit against the state, which claims Texas violated antitrust laws through its attempts to bar the telemedicine company’s operations. The board noted that it is within its legal rights to preclude Teladoc’s business even though the new regulation may have an overall anti-competitive effect on healthcare within Texas.

Webinars

June 30 (Tuesday) 11:00 ET. “Value Based Reimbursement – Leveraging Data to Build a Successful Risk-based Strategy.” Sponsored by McKesson. Presenters: Michael Udwin, MD, executive director of physician engagement, McKesson; Jeb Dunkelberger, executive director of corporate partnerships, McKesson. Healthcare organizations are using empowered physician leadership and credible performance analysis to identify populations, stratify risk, drive physician engagement, and expose opportunities for optimized care. Attendees will learn best practices in laying a foundation for developing a successful risk-based strategy.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

UK-based retail health clinic business Mee Healthcare closes up shop, with insiders pointing to mismanagement as the root cause. Launched in 2011 by Cherie Blair, wife of former Prime Minister Tony Blair, and one-time US senatorial candidate Gail Lese, MD the company had hoped to open 100 clinics within Sainsbury’s supermarkets by 2016.

Anthem reveals a $54 billion takeover bid for Cigna, confirming rumors that have been swirling for weeks around Cigna’s potential sale. Talks apparently broke down over the future role of Cigna CEO David Cordani, whom Anthem wanted to put in a number-two position behind its CEO, Joseph Swedish. The news is part of a larger consolidation trend amongst the payer market: Cigna has been eyeing Humana, while United Healthcare has explored merging with Aetna.

Announcements and Implementations

Atlantic Dialysis Management Services (NY) selects Web-based compliance education tools from BridgeFront to assist its 700 employees with HIPAA, OSHA, and  general and HR compliance training.

Ageless Men’s Health clinic transitions away from paper via implementation of Azalea Health’s EHR at its 34 nationwide locations.

MacPractice integrates BirdEye’s reputation management and marketing tool into its PM and clinical software.

Government and Politics

ONC releases a report on provider experience with HIEs in six states, concluding that their value lies in easier access to “actionable” data at the point of care. The five physician/physician association representatives surveyed noted eight main use cases for HIE, including meeting Meaningful Use requirements, medication history and reconciliation, access to state registries, care summaries, and interstate exchange.

The American College of Physicians offers the Senate Finance Committee 18 suggestions in response to the committee’s call for policy changes to improve care for chronic-disease patients. Healthcare IT-related items include improving the functionality of EHRs, creating codes to provide reimbursement for diabetic care management and e-consults, and committing federal funds to research the efficacy, safety, and cost-effectiveness of telemedicine activities.

Telemedicine

The ACP recommendations above line up with the American Telemedicine Association’s recommendations made to the House Energy and Commerce Committee’s telehealth working group, which include making telemedicine more available to patients with chronic conditions, and making the technology easier to access in Medicare Advantage and alternative payment programs.

An American Well/QuantiaMD survey of 2,016 primary care physicians finds that 57 percent of physicians are willing to conduct telemedicine visits with patients. Thirty-one percent remain uncertain, meaning there’s a big chunk of the market still up for grabs. Physicians cited work-life balance, increased earning opportunity, and improved outcomes as top reasons for offering video consults. Sixty percent also noted they’d be more likely to refer patients to a hospital that offered them a chance to consult with specialists via video.

Research and Innovation

The American Academy of Pediatrics launches an EHR network to aggregate clinical data from pediatric offices for comparative effectiveness research. Studies on asthma and psychotropic medication, and pediatric hypertension are part of the study, which researchers hope will “improve the analysis of secondary data, supplement routinely collected EHR data with prospective data collection, and use CDS to support health care decision-making.”

A survey of 415 physicians finds that only 15 percent typically discuss wearables or apps with patients, despite the fact that an average of 40 percent believe patients could benefit from using them. The disconnect may be due to the fact that physicians are only “mildly satisfied” with current wearables based on their ease of use and clinical utility of data generated. Respondents gave the Microsoft Band highest marks in both categories.

People

Leavitt Partners and the Brookings Institution collaborate to form the Accountable Care Learning Collaborative. Former HHS Secretary Gov. Mike Leavitt (R-Utah) and former CMS Administrator and FDA Commissioner Mark McClellan, MD will co-chair the new nonprofit.

Other

MIT will turn its Hacking Medicine program into a nonprofit institute that will develop methodologies to determine the value of digital health programs and products. The Hacking Medicine Institute will form its first working groups in October under the leadership of Zen Chu, MIT senior lecturer and faculty director of Hacking Medicine.

Healthcare and local government representatives will gather next month in Wise, VA to demonstrate the efficacy of using drones to deliver medical supplies to a free health clinic held annually at the Wise County Fairgrounds. 

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic offers a new episode focusing on technical cutover in its “Making the Cut” video series.
• NVoq offers “The EMR Journey to Optimization and Innovation.”
• Greenway Health highlights its partnership with Talksoft.

The following HIStalk sponsors are exhibiting at HFMA ANI June 22-25 in Orlando:

• ADP AdvancedMD
• Billian’s HealthDATA
• GE Healthcare
• Greenway Health
• Leidos Health
• NextGen
• Relay Health
• TriZetto

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.

Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 6/19/15

Top News

Westchester Medical Center Health Network (NY) signs a $500 million deal with Philips for consulting services and medical technologies, a move that Philips CEO Frans van Houten says is “part of our strategy to do population health. We have 40 of these larger deals done over the last several years." Recent contracts, valued at close to $300 million each, include Sweden-based Karolinska Hospital and Georgia Regents Medical Center.

Webinar

June 30 (Tuesday) 11:00 ET. “Value Based Reimbursement – Leveraging Data to Build a Successful Risk-based Strategy.” Sponsored by McKesson. Presenters: Michael Udwin, MD, executive director of physician engagement, McKesson; Jeb Dunkelberger, executive director of corporate partnerships, McKesson. Healthcare organizations are using empowered physician leadership and credible performance analysis to identify populations, stratify risk, drive physician engagement, and expose opportunities for optimized care. Attendees will learn best practices in laying a foundation for developing a successful risk-based strategy.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Care coordination company GSI Health receives an undisclosed amount of funding from healthcare and pharmaceutical IT investment firm Rittenhouse Ventures. GSI will use the investment to accelerate product innovation, with special emphasis on population health management. Rittenhouse Ventures Founder and Managing Partner Saul Richter will join GSI’s Board of Directors.

Oppenheimer analysts report a downward turn in the EHR vendor market caused by a reallocation of provider resources to solutions that cater more to value-based care and population health management initiatives. The firm lists Cerner, The Advisory Board Co., and Premier as companies gaining momentum in the PHM technology market.

Announcements and Implementations

ApolloMed announces its physician network has surpassed 1,000 MDs, and that its three-year-old population health management business now covers over 40,000 patients. The company provides PHM services through its Maverick Medical Group and ApolloMed ACO.

Data service company Proskriptive integrates its predictive analytics software with Yellowfin’s business intelligence platform. The new healthcare analytics tool will offer providers interactive summaries of cost, operations, and quality metrics.

Washington Hospital Services, a subsidiary of the state’s hospital association,  selects ZeOmega as its industry partner to generate awareness of the company’s HIE, population health management, and interoperability tools amongst the state’s providers.

Other

The eHealth Initiative will host the iThrive Challenge August 12-13 in Washington, D.C. The two-phase challenge seeks proposals from startups that focus on how healthcare IT can improve three areas of the eHealth Initiative 2020 Roadmap – population health management, consumer-oriented healthcare IT, and interoperability. Accepted proposals, due July 6, will have the chance to pitch their ideas at the August event.

The University of Kentucky Health Care Committee creates a strategic plan to guide UK HealthCare through 2020 that includes: development of a primary care network to better position the health system for population health and value-based care; and the utilization of Integrated technology to standardize data and better enable population health management.

Sponsor Updates

• GE Healthcare will move customers of its patient flow solutions to those offered by TeleTracking in a newly signed collaboration agreement that also includes shared analytics.
• Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at the AMDIS 2015 Physician-Computer Connection Symposium June 24-26 in Ojai, CA.
• Healthwise will exhibit at the CMSA 25th Annual Conference & Expo June 23-26 in Orlando.
• GE Healthcare General Manager of Monitoring Solutions Didier Deltort explains how the demand for digital talent will change the healthcare job market.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Readers Write: Population Health Management is Key to Value-Based Care

Population Health Management is Key to Value-Based Care
By Justin Lanning

A group of 35 C-level healthcare executives polled at the recent Midas+ Annual Symposium unanimously agreed that population health management is necessary as the U.S. shifts to more value-based healthcare reimbursement and delivery models.

The group of executives, which collectively represents over 80,000 beds from more than 480 hospitals, was asked to provide their perspective on population health management, starting with how it should be defined. We asked them to rank five components of a definition in order of significance.

According to this group, the most important requirements of a population health management program are that it “facilitates care across the health continuum” and that it “supports providing the highest quality of care at the lowest cost.”

What is population health? Definition components were ranked in the following order:

1. Facilitates care across the health continuum
2. Supports providing the highest quality of care at the lowest cost
3. Uses actionable insight for patient care based on a variety of data
4. Targets a specific population of individuals
5. Enables patient engagement

And healthcare executives today aren’t just talking about population health; they’re putting real emphasis behind it. Our survey found that providers are optimistic about the progress their organizations can make, with 65 percent stating they believe their organizations will deliver fully-scaled population health management programs within five years, while 16 percent report their organizations area already doing so. It makes sense – with providers compensated for successful health outcomes, it’s critical for them to focus on effective management of patient populations.

But as with any major shift in an industry, there are a number of barriers to successful implementation and adoption. Survey respondents indicated the number one challenge is data management and integration capabilities, followed by a lack of financial incentives, poor coordination across care providers and the ability to create meaningful data that provides actionable insights

Ninety-five percent of an extended network of over 150 healthcare staff polled at the symposium believes their role at their healthcare organization will be impacted by an increasing focus on value-based care within the next two years. But how will providers actually make that transition? It’s helpful to look at one example that illustrates how this can come to life:

An analysis of statewide historical hospitalization data in Hawaii revealed high rates of preventable admissions due to bacterial pneumonia. Statewide data showed a pneumonia vaccination rate of 61 percent for men age 65 or higher, and a vaccination rate among Filipinos age 65 or higher of just 51 percent – much lower than the Healthy People 2020 target of 90 percent set by HHS.

Studying geographic data, Hawaii hospitals identified neighborhoods with high bacterial pneumonia hospitalization rates and high Filipino populations across the state. One hospital initiated a plan to increase vaccination among those populations through targeted community benefit activities and increased efforts to vaccinate the managed care population. The estimated potential cost avoidance for Hawaii if the target of 90 percent is reached is over $1.8 million.

Clinical decision support tools that offer consumer insights and engagement opportunities can provide critical support for providers who are looking to better manage care coordination, patient engagement, and chronic diseases, which can be too complex for staff with limited time and resources to handle on their own.

In addition, these tools address data management challenges by predicting health outcomes and providing actionable ways for clinicians to intervene and improve individual care – stated by polled executives as the as the most important driver of population health.

However, providers need to choose a trusted technology partner with proven methodologies. Our discussions with the executives at the symposium reveal that they are taking a staged approach to population health by implementing programs for targeted populations and scaling as they show success.

Justin Lanning is senior vice president and managing director, Midas+, A Xerox Company.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Contact us online.
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