News 9/11/14

Top News

CMS Principal Deputy Administrator Andy Slavitt updates the House Ways and Means Health subcommittee on preparations for a second round of Healthcare.gov open enrollment. He noted the application process will be more streamlined and that transparency about potential problems will be a top priority, a comment echoed by HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell earlier this week. He did not promise a seamless experience, instead emphasizing, as one reporter put it, “improvement but not perfection.” Surprisingly, just one subcommittee member asked him about the recently announced Healthcare.gov hack. Could the federal government really be ready to stop splitting partisan hairs and focus on a successful go live?

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Register today for upcoming HIStalk webinars:

September 11 (Thursday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Electronic Health Record Divorce Rates on the Rise — The Four Factors that Predict Long-term Success. Presented by The Breakaway Group, A Xerox Company. Presenters: Heather Haugen, PhD, CEO and managing director, The Breakaway Group, A Xerox Company; Bill Rieger, CIO, Flagler Hospital, St. Augustine, FL. Many users are considering divorcing their EHR as dissatisfaction increases. Many are spending 90 percent of their time and resources on the wedding  (the go-live) instead of the long-term commitment to new workflows, communication, education, and care outcomes (the marriage). Hear more about the findings of research published in “Beyond Implementation: A Prescription for Lasting EMR Adoption” about EHR adoption and success factors.  Registrants get a free electronic or paper copy of the book.

September 18 (Thursday) 1:00 p.m. ET.  DHMSM 101: The Hopes, Politics, and Players of the DoD’s $11 Billion EHR Project. Presented by HIStalk. Presenters: Dim-Sum, an anonymous expert in government healthcare IT, military veteran, and unwavering patriot; Mr. HIStalk. The Department of Defense’s selection of a commercially available EHR will drastically change the winning bidders, the health and welfare of service members all over the world, and possibly the entire healthcare IT industry. The presentation will include overview of the military health environment; the military’s history of using contractors to develop its systems vs. its new direction in buying an off-the-shelf system; its population health management challenges in caring for nearly 10 million patients all over the world, some of them on the battlefield; and a review of the big players that are bidding. This presentation will be geared toward a general audience and will be freely sprinkled with humor and wry cynicism developed in years of working in two often illogical industries that hate change.

September 25 (Thursday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Using BI Maturity Models to Tap the Power of Analytics. Presented by Siemens Healthcare. Presenters: James Gaston, senior director of maturity models, HIMSS Analytics; Christopher Bocchino, principal consultant, Siemens Healthcare. As ACOs and population health management initiatives evolve, Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities are becoming a critical part of healthcare organizations’ successful forays into the new healthcare marketplace. This event is designed to provide an understanding of BI maturity models and how they can be leveraged to optimize clinical, financial, and operational decisions. This session will cover how analytics maturity is measured and how organizations can use this information to create an effective roadmap for maturing their analytics capabilities to an advanced state.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

PM and technology services company PracticeMax acquires medical billing and PM services firm Optimum Medical Management. PracticeMax plans to use the acquisition as a springboard to further expansion.

Preventice and eCardio Diagnostics announce they will now operate as wholly owned subsidiaries of new holding company Preventice Inc. The companies hope the strategic combination will better enable them to strengthen offerings in the areas of remote monitoring systems and mobile health applications.

Announcements and Implementations

NVoq announces the 2014 SayIt Healthcare Productivity ShowcaseFest, where 12 chosen healthcare professionals will work with the company’s SayIt speech recognition product to build and record a voice-optimized EMR Showcase. Nominations are due September 26.

Multispecialty medical group ABQ Health Partners (NM) launches the FollowMyHealth patient portal from Allscripts. ABQ implemented an EHR from Allscripts in 2007.

Anesthesia Partners Services (WI) implements the Anesthesia Touch anesthesia information management system from Plexis Information Systems at The Center for Digestive Health, Mayfair Digestive Health Center, Lake County Endoscopy Center, and Wisconsin Digestive Health Center. APS is also partnering with Plexis Management Group for a variety of PM services.

ChartSpan launches a free iOS app that automates the conversion of medical records from paper to digital data. If you need a good laugh, spend a few minutes on their website. It combines a unique blend of ‘80s nostalgia (New Kids on the Block collector cards!) with modern-day snark.

Government and Politics

ONC releases a 187-page update on EHR certification criteria, adding 10 new optional criteria to its standards and revising two mandatory points in an effort to offer vendors flexibility and clarity in the name of better health information exchange. It drops a plan to create a set of voluntary certification standards for 2015, and breaks CPOE intro three optional components – laboratory, medications, and diagnostic imaging orders. It also offers vendors the ability to use any electronic transmission method for sending syndromic surveillance data from their EHRs to public-health agencies.

Research and Innovation

The American Telemedicine Association releases its State Telemedicine Gaps Analysis, which grades states on telemedicine reimbursement and physician practice standards. Star states include Maryland, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Tennessee, and Virginia. Strugglers include Connecticut, Iowa, and Rhode Island.

A study finds that a proactive and customized patient portal implementation strategy designed by primary care practices resulted in 25.6 percent of patients using a personal health record. The study also found the adoption rate increased 1 percent each month over 31 months, and that nearly 24 percent of PHR users signed up within one day of their office visit.

Researchers from the Garvan Institute of Medical Research and Australian National University win the Eureka Prize for developing a lens that turns a smartphone into a microscope. The lens, which costs less than a cent, can magnify up to 160 times. It’s refreshing to think that mobile health innovations can unfold without Apple-level hype.

Other

Apple unveils the iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus, a mobile payments system, and the long-awaited iWatch (formally known as Apple Watch). Observers, for the most part, seem nonplussed when it comes to the ability of the new devices and technologies to truly change healthcare. Dr. Travis at HIStalk Connect noted in his review that the watch is “a middle-of-the-road activity tracker submerged within an overall above average smartwatch.” Manny Alvarez, MD, however, enthusiastically said that, “As more developers begin to write new software, and health care companies like GE begin to integrate their diagnostic tools with some of these devices, physicians will have no choice but to embrace this world.” Whether patients and physicians will truly embrace a watch that retails for $349 remains to be seen. I stand by my prediction that Apple Watch will be the coveted giveaway at HIMSS 15. (And I prefer pink watchbands, in case anyone is wondering.)

The local paper covers the roll out of VITL Access health information exchange by Vermont Information Technology Leaders. Nine years in the making, implementation of the HIE began last month, and stakeholders hope to have it operational throughout the state sometime next year. VITL also plans to launch the VITL Direct secure messaging system and VITL Notify notification system over the next 12 months.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe President and CEO Terry Edwards writes a blog post titled “Learning from the Airlines and Banks.”
• Frost & Sullivan recognizes GE Healthcare IT with the 2014 North America Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation Leadership.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.

Comparing EHRs for Small and Medium-Sized Practices

A summary of the TechnologyAdvice EHR System Comparison Guide

Throughout the wave of EHR adoption in the past five to six years, it’s become clear that larger providers are having an easier time purchasing and implementing software. The consistently lagging adoption rates of small practices also seem to indicate that the HITECH Act may indeed have been the nail in the coffin for small, private practices, particularly solo providers.

According to a 2012 study conducted by the Commonwealth Fund, only 50 percent of physicians in solo practices were using EHRs. For practices of 20 or more, EHR usage was around 90 percent. Clearly the lack of resources has posed a steep obstacle for smaller providers.

Although the Commonwealth Fund’s study looked like a harbinger of dark days, there’s reason to think that things may have changed since 2012. SK&A found in its annual market study this year that single physician practices experienced the largest jump in EHR adoption. Their usage rates increased 11.4 percent from 2013-2014, reaching 53.7 percent. Additionally, the adoption rate for practices with three to five physicians jumped 9.4 percent during the same time.

There’s a disparity between the Commonwealth Fund’s and SK&A’s numbers, but the point of lagging adoption is still clear for smaller providers (though EHRs are appearing more frequently in solo and small practice offices).

Providers and office managers in small practices understand the difficulty of choosing from the numerous EHR products on the market. That’s why TechnologyAdvice carefully reviewed several of the best options for small and medium-sized practices.

Our research included calculating user satisfaction scores averaged from multiple, reputable review sites, as well as a functionality score that indicates the capabilities of the EHR platform. Each product compared is ONC-ACB certified and offers an integrated patient portal.

Let’s dive in.

Amazing Charts

Ranked number 10 for market share in SK&A’s report, Amazing Charts was founded in 2001 and was subsequently acquired in 2012 by Pri-Med. This platform may not have an eye-catching interface, but its main advantage is that physicians and other EHR users love the simplicity of entering information. It’s precisely this ease of use that has won Amazing Charts so many awards in the last several years, including the highest ambulatory EHR for 1-10 physicians in the 2011 KLAS awards, number one in Medscape/WebMD’s 2012 survey, and so on.

The system is targeted at small private practices, and its pricing reflects that. Buyers can download a free trial of the software and demo it before making a final purchase decision. In addition to its straight-forward interface, which limits drop-down menus and allows physicians to enter data as they would on a paper chart, this EHR also features speech recognition and is interoperable with several state immunization registries.

Amazing Charts does miss several key ingredients though, which prevent it from scoring higher on functionality. The lack of practice management add-ons certainly seems strange for a product geared toward small practices. Ideally, a small practice would want a fully integrated solution, in order to save resources. Amazing Charts does offer integration with a number of PM solutions, however, and is rolling out its own option in November.

The lack of a bridge to translate ICD-9 codes into ICD-10 codes also hurts this system. Again, small practices would ideally like to have a solution that minimizes the amount of necessary ICD-10 training.

Overall, this system is excellent, especially where it counts: usability. You can’t argue with the price either, but a lack of a few key features lowers its overall score.

Satisfaction score: 9/10

Functionality score: 7/10

MediTouch by Healthfusion

MediTouch is a prime example of newer, cloud-based EHRs that focus on usability. MediTouch focuses on empowering users to chart quickly and easily, thereby answering perhaps the main complaint about most EHR systems. Of the three products, MediTouch is the only one to support Mac’s OS system, making it an appealing choice for physicians who use Apple computers in their practice.

This product focuses heavily on tablet functionality, and includes a full-fledged app with each subscription. Tablet compatibility not only lets physicians enter data into a chart while on the move, but can also improve their interactions with patients at the point of care. In fact, tablets are quickly becoming providers’ favorite tools in the exam room. A study by Medical Economics estimates that 51 percent of physicians use a tablet when accessing their EHR, and other research has shown that patients respond favorably to physicians using tablets during an exam.

Besides their iPad app, MediTouch also offers small practices a solid EHR system, complete with an ICD-10 conversion feature that helps users prepare for the 2015 transition. Customizable templates allow physicians to easily mold this EHR to fit the most common charts and diagnoses in their practice. MediTouch also features a strong revenue cycle management function that helps small practices capture data during a patient visit, automate billing, optimize codes to reduce denials, and auto post electronic remittance advice when necessary.

MediTouch can be deployed as a standalone platform or in conjunction with Healthfusion’s PM system. The detailed iPad app, which is somewhat rare in the EHR space, particularly for small practices, helps set this system apart.

Satisfaction score: 8.6/10

Functionality score: 8/10

athenaClinicals

Ranking just above Amazing Charts at number nine in overall market share by SK&A, athenahealth’s EHR athenaClinicals seems to be slowly transitioning to enterprise level clients, but still makes its living among practices with between one and 10 physicians. Athena placed first in KLAS’s 2012 survey for the most usable EHR, and certainly places an emphasis on usability. The slick design of the software stands in stark contrast to many of its competitor’s gray interfaces. Athena features all of the same capabilities that most quality EHRs have, such as customizable templates, adaptable clinical workflow, and revenue cycle management, so let’s focus on what sets this EHR apart.

Athena also won a KLAS award for the best EHR for helping providers meet Meaningful Use, largely because of its dashboard. This module helps providers visually track their progress toward meeting MU incentive goals. And since Athena keeps all of its providers’ information on the same network, the MU dashboard helps users track their progress against other athenaClinicals users around the country.

Clinical decision support is another benefit of athena’s network, or rules engine. Information regarding current best practices and protocols is easily accessible, and coding assistance is another big benefit. For example, if a certain procedure or code begins to see routine denials throughout their network, athena can alert its users and even change the recommended codes to reflect current trends.

Athena isn’t perfect, though. Despite its focus on usability, users have complained about the amount of drop-down menus in the charting modules. These setbacks dock the score of what is an otherwise robust system geared toward smaller practices.

Satisfaction score: 8/10

Functionality score: 9/10

The three products we’ve highlighted here are safe bets for private practices. At the very least, they offer a template of what buyers in this market should look for in an EHR.

Zach Watson is a senior research analyst at TechnologyAdvice.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.

News 9/9/14

Top News

Apple plans to announce its new phones, operating system, and possibly the rumored iWatch today at 10 a.m. PDT. Gadget lovers can catch a livestream of the event here. For those that haven’t kept up with what to expect, Dr. Travis at HIStalk Connect has written a few posts outlining the company’s likely moves and their implications for healthcare:

• Putting Apple + Health in Perspective
• New Rumors Emerge as Apple Nears its September 9 iWatch Unveil

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

There’s still time to register for this Thursday’s 1 p.m. ET webinar on Electronic Health Record Divorce Rates on the Rise – the Four Factors that Predict Long-term Success. Presented by The Breakaway Group, A Xerox Company, the presentation will cover the findings of research published in “Beyond Implementation: A Prescription for Lasting EMR Adoption.” Registrants get a free electronic or paper copy of the book. I’m looking forward to hearing from presenter and Flagler Hospital CIO Bill Rieger, who led his team last year through an implementation of Allscripts SCM, ED, lab, radiology, HIM, registration, scheduling, billing, pharmacy, medication administration, and CPOE.

There’s still plenty of time for HIStalk sponsors to be a part of our annual MGMA “Must-See Exhibitors Guide.” Send me your company name, logo, booth number, and a brief description of services by September 30 to ensure a spot in the digital guide. I’ll also include contact information for companies not exhibiting but looking to schedule one-on-one meetings. (If you’re a fan of social networking like me, you’ll want to check out 5 Ways to Use Social Media at #MGMA14. I’m already looking forward to stopping by Cerner’s Tweet Street.)

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

NPR takes a look at the effects VC-funded businesses like Aledade have on primary care physicians. Backed by VC firm Venrock and led by Farzad Mostashari, MD, the company has so far helped 100 private-practice physicians form three ACOs in exchange for 40 percent of any savings realized.

Physician practice ownership company Mednax completes its acquisition of MedData, which handles revenue and billing for over 3,000 physicians in 43 states. It will become an independent operating division of Mednax, which has also acquired eight medical practices this year.

EHR, analytics, and population health management software vendor Sandlot Solutions raises $23.3 million, including $17 million in a preferred stock investment from Lemhi Ventures, and financing from existing investors North Texas Specialty Physicians and Santa Rosa Holdings.

Announcements and Implementations

The Federation of State Medical Boards announces that its Interstate Medical Licensure Compact is complete and ready for adoption by individual state medical boards. The compact simplifies the process of transferring licenses from state to state, and was written to help make it easier for physicians to provide telehealth services to patients that live out of state.

Putnam County Hospital Physician Practices (IN), which includes Family Medicine of Cloverdale, North Putnam Family Healthcare, and Putnam Pediatrics and Internal Medicine, launch the FollowMyHealth patient portal from Allscripts.

Point of Care integrates IBM’s Watson clinical decision-support technology into its own real-time clinical-decision practice platform. The integration marks an expansion for Watson technology beyond the hospital setting, which has included MD Anderson Cancer Center (TX), Memorial Sloan-Kettering (NY), Baylor College of Medicine (TX), and most recently Mayo Clinic (MN). I should probably let Dr. Jayne know that Watson is moving into the kitchen, too. Bon Appétit magazine is giving readers a chance to be a part of the Chef Watson Web app beta program.

LiveHealth Online launches a telehealth app that offers face-to-face video consultations for $49. Patients can choose from among 35 physicians, and the consult is covered by a number of insurance plans.

Government and Politics

The New York State Department of Health publishes its proposed Statewide Health Information Network for New York regulation, describing SHIN-NY’s policy and funding framework, privacy and security policies, and exchange services. The financial section of the proposed regulation notes that a sustainability plan must be submitted and approved, and that “healthcare providers who serve medically underserved populations have access to the SHIN-NY dial-tone and member-facing services regardless of the provider’s ability to pay.” A 45-day public comment period is in progress.

The local business paper covers a three-year demonstration project the state of Michigan will begin in 2015 to manage over $8 billion worth of care for seniors and patients with disabilities who are covered under Medicare and Medicaid. Unlike other similar state pilot projects, Michigan’s dual-eligible demonstration program will use a “Care Bridge” to coordinate medical, long-term, and behavioral health care using EHRs and care coordinators for 110,000 patients in 25 counties. The state and federal government hope to see 1 percent in savings the first year, and 2 percent in the second.

As expected after last week’s announcement that Healthcare.gov had been hacked, CMS announces that Administrator Marilynn Tavenner will testify in front of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee. No doubt Committee Chairman Darrell Issa is looking forward to the bureaucratic tête-à-tête.

People

Robert B. Doherty, senior vice president of government affairs and public policy at the American College of Physicians, shares his thoughts on why doctors hate EHRs. He offers several tips on what EHRs need to do better:

• Provide physicians with abstracted, relevant clinical data in the most user-friendly way possible.
• Supplement but not substitute for physician decision-making.
• Facilitate face-to-face interactions between doctors and their patients, not detract from them.
• Make it as easy and quick as possible for physicians to document in the record the care provided to the patient.
• Become fully interoperable.
  

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Research and Innovation

This article shines a spotlight on Canadian startup Figure 1, whose app has been deemed the “Instagram for doctors” by too many media outlets (dare I call one lazy when it recycles headlines from another?). The free app features secure, photo-sharing capabilities and an online reference library. Dr. Travis reported that the company secured $4 million in Series A financing last month, and likely stands by his prediction that Doximity will soon snatch it up.

A study finds that family practice physicians report losing 48 minutes per day thanks to EHR-associated tasks. Nearly 90 percent of respondents reported at least one data management function was slower post-EHR adoption, while close to 64 percent reported that note writing took longer. A third reported that it took longer to find and review medical data with the EHR than without, while the same amount noted it took longer to read the notes of other clinicians in the EHR.

This article profiles SnapDx, a physician-developed app that steps physicians through a variety of physical exams. The app also provides current best practices and pushes users to input results in order to generate a recommendation on next steps.

Other

CMS makes one last push to get physicians to sign up for the Enterprise Portal and Open Payments system. I spotted this banner ad at the top of one of my daily industry reads, and clicked through to find that it lands on a CMS.gov page that encourages physicians to “Review your Open Payments data before it is available to the public.” The review and dispute period ends on September 10. Payment data will go live on September 30.

In the wake of the iCloud hack, Apple CEO Tim Cook announces the company will begin alerting users when someone tries to change an account password, restore iCloud data to a new device, or when a device logs into an account for the first time. The new system will immediately enable users to change the password to retake control of the account, or alert Apple’s security team. It seems that it’s not just healthcare struggling with security awareness. “When I step back from this terrible scenario that happened and say what more could we have done, I think about the awareness piece,” Cook said. “I think we have a responsibility to ratchet that up. That’s not really an engineering thing.”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.

News 9/4/14

Top News

CVS rebrands itself as CVS Health and becomes the first retail pharmacy to eliminate all tobacco products from its store shelves. The loss of tobacco sales, which was originally scheduled to take place October 1, will see the company take a $2 billion hit in annual revenue. The CVS/pharmacy, CVS/caremark and MinuteClinic names will remain unchanged.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

If your company is a HIStalk sponsor and plans on being at MGMA in late October, don’t miss out on the opportunity to be included in our “Must See Exhibitors Guide.” Send me your company name, logo, booth number, and a brief description of your company’s services by September 30 to ensure a spot. I’ll also include contact information for companies not exhibiting but looking to schedule one-on-one meetings. It will be my first time attending, and I am looking forward to thanking sponsors in person for their support, as well as reporting from the show floor. Feel free to keep me abreast of fun networking events I absolutely must attend.

Don’t miss upcoming HIStalk webinars:

September 4 (Thursday) 2:00 p.m. ET. MU2 Veterans Speak Out: Implementing Direct Secure Messaging for Success. Presented by DataMotion. Moderator: Mr. HIStalk. Panelists: Darby Buroker, executive director of health information exchange, Steward Health Care; Anne Lara, EdD, RN, CIO, Union Hospital of Cecil County, MD; Andy Nieto, health IT strategist, DataMotion; Mat Osmanski, senior application analyst, Steward Health Care; Bill Winn, PhD, Meaningful Use service line executive, Navin, Haffty & Associates. Panelists will discuss the strategy and tactics of meeting the transitions of care requirements for MU2, including assembling the team, implementing Direct Secure Messaging, getting providers on board, and reporting results.

September 11 (Thursday) 1:00 p.m. ET. Electronic Health Record Divorce Rates on the Rise — The Four Factors that Predict Long-term Success. Presented by The Breakaway Group, A Xerox Company. Presenters: Heather Haugen, PhD, CEO and managing director, The Breakaway Group, A Xerox Company; Bill Rieger, CIO, Flagler Hospital, St. Augustine, FL. Many users are considering divorcing their EHR as dissatisfaction increases. Many are spending 90 percent of their time and resources on the wedding  (the go-live) instead of the long-term commitment to new workflows, communication, education, and care outcomes (the marriage). Hear more about the findings of research published in “Beyond Implementation: A Prescription for Lasting EMR Adoption” about EHR adoption and success factors. Registrants get a free electronic or paper copy of the book.

Listening: The Doctors Lounge Radio Show, every Thursday at 8 a.m. ET. Hosted by Hal C. Scherz, MD and Michael J. Koriwchak, MD, this week’s show will focus on big data, and why physicians are as unhappy as some media outlets report.

Watching: Anything but action movies. New research from Cornell University’s Food and Brands Lab finds that “the fast cuts and sharp variations in sound levels typical of action movies appear to spur consumption of snacks in viewers.” Undergraduates involved in the study snacked on foods more often while watching 20 minutes of The Island than those that were subjected to Charlie Rose for the same amount of time. The evidence certainly brings new meaning to the phrase “binge watching.” 

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

EHR vendor Telus Health acquires ZoomMed’s Web-based ZRx Prescriber technology, making it the first Canadian healthcare IT company to offer insurance coverage validation nationally at the point of prescription. Telus plans to gradually integrate the ZRx technology into EHRs used by over 13,000 physicians across Canada.

Nexus Medical launches its Analytix Health division, which will provide practices with healthcare financial consulting, and management and business services.

Government and Politics

President Obama praises the government of Estonia for its ability to move many government functions online, including medical records. The country, which implemented a national EHR for just $10 per citizen in 2009, provides its 1.3 million residents with digital IDs they can use to log in to a variety of government services, including the EHR. An e-signature system has also helped streamline authorization of contracts and submission of government documents.

A task force co-chaired by HISTalk Practice contributor Micky Tripathi presented its preliminary findings at a recent ONC meeting of a review of a report by the JASON advisory group.  The JASON report concludes that “EHRs and health information exchanges are currently woefully inadequate in what they provide to health care professionals,” and advocates moving to a common markup language, common data standards, and a library of open APIs to give third-party developers access to existing systems. The group also called for eventually moving to a “unifying software architecture for the exchange of health information” that would allow for encrypted provider and patient exchange of and interaction with health data.

Announcements and Implementations

The Captain James A. Lovell Federal Health Care Center (IL) launches new telepharmacy, teleretinal imaging, and telecardiology services at three of its outpatient clinics in Wisconsin and Illinois.

University of Toledo Physicians (OH) selects athenahealth’s athenaOne suite of EHR, revenue cycle management, and patient engagement services for its 260-provider network, which includes 214 specialty and primary care physicians.

Global Partnership for Telehealth joins the American International Health Alliance and Zambian Department Force to develop and implement a telemedicine program for the African country’s citizens and military. The program will begin with the establishment of telemedicine presentation sites at five Zambian military bases, which will connect them with the military hospital in the capitol of Lusaka.

The VA announces it will launch mobile versions of its Summary of Care and Blue Button apps, both of which ranked highly during a recent family caregiver pilot project. The apps will be available by mid-fall through an app store run by the VA and created by Longview International Technology Solutions. Hopefully the apps will be more reliable than the desktop HealtheVet portal, which appears to have exceeded user capacity.

People

David Watson (Oracle) joins CAL Index as CEO.

The local business paper profiles Surescripts CEO Tom Skelton, who officially took over from his predecessor, Harry Totonis, last week.

Research and Innovation

Swatch makes a potential play in the fitness tracking/wearables space with the announcement that it will release a touchscreen smartwatch next summer. Rumor has it that the Smart Touch watch will also feature a step counter and Bluetooth syncing.

A study finds that over 13 percent of cloud services used in healthcare are high-risk and 77 percent are medium risk, when stacked up against 54 different security attributes. Yes, hacked celebrity photos underscore the ease with which nefarious data thieves can easily gain entry into cloud services, but it also highlights the lax attitude cloud service providers like Apple take when it comes to security. Healthcare organizations certainly have their work cut out for them: The study found that 53 percent of healthcare employees use three or more devices at work, and 73 percent of malware attacks occur outside operating hours.

Other

Speaking of the cloud and security, thanks to @gtsports for alerting me to the Norse Live Threat Map, a fascinating, real-time display of cyber attacks by type, organization, origin, and target.

The Open Source Electronic Health Record Alliance Open Source Summit is in full swing just outside of Washington, D.C. The event features what looks like three full days of sessions with speakers from the VA, Harris Corp., MITRE, and a number of other government-related businesses and agencies.

Box’s more consumer-friendly (and likely hipper) BoxWorks conference is also happening this week, featuring such speakers as Vinod Khosla, Jeffrey Katzenberg, Aneesh Chopra, and HIStalk Practice contributor Darren Dworkin. No doubt the sessions and exhibit hall will be abuzz with commentary on the Apple iCloud hack, and the fact that surprise guest Jared Leto lent attendees his Oscar for selfie-taking.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.

News 9/2/14

Top News

CMS officially delays Stage 3 of Meaningful Use until 2017, and tells providers they can meet Stage 2 requirements using technology certified to 2011 standards only through the remainder of this year. Only EHRs certified to 2014 standards will be acceptable starting in 2015. Providers that do not achieve MU by next year will be subject to Medicare payment reductions. In making the announcement, CMS Administrator Marilynn Tavenner explained that, “We listened to stakeholder feedback and provided [certified EHR technology] flexibility for 2014 to help ensure providers can continue to participate in the EHR Incentive Programs moving forward. We were excited to see that there is overwhelming support for this change.” The phrase “overwhelming support” may be a bit of a stretch, as backlash has already begun (and over a holiday weekend, no less), with CHIME expressing its deep disappointment in the decision. It will be interesting to see if physician-practice stakeholders make their displeasure known in any meaningful way. I hope readers will chime in with opinions via the comments section below.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

I hope those of you back at work after a long weekend are refreshed and ready to tackle the thankfully shortened workweek. My sincerest thanks goes out to those healthcare professionals who stayed in the trenches over the holiday break. I spent some of it with a family member who underwent scheduled surgery, and I’m happy to report that positive, caring attitudes combined with diligence and a good bedside manner still trump technology any day. (Though I have to admit easy access to hospital Wi-Fi makes it that much easier to commit to a full day in an inpatient/outpatient setting.)

I also took advantage of the break to book my flight and accommodations for MGMA, taking place October 26-29 in Las Vegas. My next step is to put together a list of “Must See” vendors for HIStalk readers to peruse as they make exhibit hall plans that week. If your company plans on being at the show and would like to be included, send me your company name, logo, booth number, and a brief description of what you do that is to the point and free of fluffy buzzwords. I’ll also include contact information for companies not exhibiting but looking to schedule one-on-one meetings.

Announcements and Implementations

Healthpointe (CA) announces its 24 hour-a-day urgent care telemedicine service will go live at the end of this month.

The Rhode Island Quality Institute and the Providence Veterans Affairs Medical Center (RI) collaborate to make the health data of veterans available for the first time to VA providers across the state via Rhode Island’s CurrentCare HIE. Over 1,800 providers in 450 practices across 700 sites use CurrentCare services.

Walmart Care Clinics open in Georgia and South Carolina. No mention has yet been made about what type of healthcare IT the clinics are using, though it has been made know that clinic nurses and physicians are sourced from health center management company QuadMed. President Sue Buettner joined QuadMed in April after time spent as senior vice president at Aurora Health Care (WI).

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Apple’s big day draws closer, with just a week to go until the company launches its new, larger iPhone; some sort of much-ballyhooed wearable device (most likely the iWatch); and a mobile payments system. As a consumer, my interest in a larger phone and a separate, connected device is minimal. I typically use my carrier’s upgrade option to purchase a refurbished, slightly older iPhone for free at renewal time, and am not in the market for a wearable that will likely debut at an unattractively high price point (likely in the $400 range). I do wonder, though, how many iWatches I’ll see as the giveaway du jour at HIMSS next year.

Government and Politics

This article highlights the DoD’s painfully slow Health Artifact and Image Management Solution (HAIMS), designed to give the VA nearly instant access to the complete, certified military medical records of anyone who left service after Jan. 1, 2014. Access has been far from instant, to the detriment of veterans waiting on disability claims to be processed. Between January 1 and June 3 of this year, the VA asked the DoD for 7,300 electronic service treatment records, but the DoD had only completed 29 percent of those requests at the time of the OIG audit.

Research and Innovation

Research finds that technology-assisted interventions in the primary care setting does in fact help patients achieve weight loss. Technologies in the study included software that guided physicians to better counsel their patients, in-home DVD programs, Web-based applications, and self-monitoring and feedback systems. Noted challenges included poor Web utilization, the need for improved ease-of-use for both physician and patient, more open access to technologies, and keeping pace with industry. I question whether this study was particularly conclusive (or necessary), as researchers found that tech-assisted interventions resulted in weight loss of only up to 12 pounds over a three-year period.

Contacts

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

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