News 6/4/13

CMS releases data on 30 types of outpatient procedures from across the county for such services as clinic visits, echocardiograms, and endoscopies. Average submitted charges for a Level 4 hospital clinic visit ranged from $111 (Charleston, SC) to $2,000 (St. Petersburg, FL); payments ranged from $48 (Sidney, OH) to $178 (San Jose, CA).

CMS also posted a de-identified list of over 146,000 EPs working with RECs that includes a breakdown by EHR vendor, implementation status, and specialty. Since RECs cater to smaller primary care practices and rural healthcare providers, I intend to take some time soon to crunch the numbers to better understand which vendors are dominating this segment.

Robert Tennant, MGMA’s government affairs senior policy advisor, discusses the need to protect patients and practices from HIPAA risk, including suggestions to mitigate problems should a provider lose his/her mobile device. Other risks addressed: the use of computer screens that might be visible to patients and visitors and  complications from a down server.

The local paper profiles Marietta, GA-based Nuesoft Technologies and its president and CEO Massoud Alibakhsh, who founded the company in 1993. Alibakhsh reports the company has historically grown 18 to 20 percent per year, but believes it may need to double its staff of 140 over the next two years as a result of its recent designation as a Practice Fusion billing partner.

Hayes Management Consulting expands its clinical and revenue cycle optimization service lines to include increased focus on measuring outcomes and outcome-driven operational improvement services.

I noticed on Hayes’ Website a blog post that offered some great recommendations for successful EMR physician training, including offering providers CME credits and engaging physicians as super-users.

Twitter is a popular and generally reliable source for health information, according to a University of Texas at Austin study of 9,510 vaccine-related tweets. Researchers conclude that healthcare providers and other stake holders should consider social media channels to address patient education in accessible and understandable ways.

iPads and iPhones are the top choices for physicians interacting with EHRs and staff, with 59 percent of office-based physicians saying they already integrate or are integrating tablets into their operations. Sixty-eight percent prefer iPhones over Androids or other platforms.

A study in Annals of Family Medicine looks at some of the ways innovative clinics are redesigning workflow to improve physician satisfaction. Included in the fixes: using MAs as scribes to create electronic documentation and delegating team members to filter normal lab results and prescription refills.

Vitera Healthcare completes the first of three waves of Stage 2 MU certification for its Intergy EHR solution.

The medical director of the New York-Presbyterian Hospital immunization registry says that children were nine percent more likely to be fully vaccinated for influenza when a pop-up alert was added to the children’s EMRs and synchronized with the New York City vaccine registry.

The Massachusetts Medical Society says it is working with several state agencies to develop recommendations on how to interpret and implement a state law that requires physicians to comply with EHR MU requirements in order to obtain licensure as of 2015. Depending on the interpretation, a nasty storm could be brewing, given the significant percentage of physicians either ineligible to participate in the MU program or simply opting out.

EMR record-keeping and duty hour limits have reduced the amount of time that doctors-in-training spend with patients to an average of eight minutes per patient, or about 12 percent of an intern’s day. Because of electronic documentation requirements, interns now spend almost half their days in front of a computer screen.

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News 5/30/13

From Weird News Andy: “Re: Dr. gives up all insurance. Lots of great quotes here.” A physician in Maine stops accepting insurance but anticipates his practice will continue to perform well financially, despite losing several hundred patients. Thanks to WNA for pointing out several of the doctor’s more interesting comments, including, “I’m freed up to do what I think is right for the patients.” That testimony alone should help business, since few patients prefer doctors who do what’s wrong for the patient.

Sibley Heart Center Cardiology (GA) selects MediRevv to provide A/R management services for its 40 physician practice.

ADP AdvancedMD launches MyICD-10, a Website to help practices prepare for the ICD-10 that includes Webinars, articles and news on the new code set, and a recommended preparation timeline.

Fifty-four percent of physicians say they are “satisfied” or “very satisfied” with their EHR vendor, compared to 63 percent a year ago, according to a Zirmed-sponsored of 1,291 physicians. Only 57 percent of EHR adopters report that their systems have made them more efficient and just 43 percent report a return on their technology investment.

Advocate Physician Partners (IL), a care management collaboration with Advocate Health Care, implements its 500th independent physician on SynAPPs, Advocate’s cloud-based version of eCW’s EHR.

PDR Networks, a provider of patient drug safety and support services for EHR and e-prescribing platforms, will market OPTIMIZERx Corp.’s eCoupon financial support technology, which integrates with e-prescribing workflows.

Clyo Internal Medicine (OH) selects simplifyMD as its EHR provider.

Practice Fusion announces preferred billing partnerships with ADP AdvancedMD, CollaborateMD, and NueMD. Absent from the list is Kareo, which was a long-time Practice Fusion partner that launched a competing free EHR a couple months ago.

The Texas Medical Association, Dallas County Medical Society, and Harris County Medical Society establish Physician Services Organizations for Patient Care, which will bring together providers, health plans, and technology vendors to test and develop new care models for physician practices.

Medical practice software and billing service provider Encoda is awarded a patent for automated direct-to-payer RCM technology.

Almost one-third of physicians buying EHRs today are replacing EHRs, compared to 21 percent three years ago according to a study by Software Advice. The top reason for replacing a legacy system: dissatisfaction with current EHR.

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News 5/23/13

More than half of all doctors and other EPs (291,000) have received MU incentive payments through the end of April, according to HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. HHS has met or exceeded its goal for 50 percent of doctor offices and 80 percent of eligible hospitals to have EHRs by the end of 2013, leading Sebelius to conclude that, “we have reached a tipping point” for EHR adoption.

Net Health, a provider of clinical solutions for outpatient specialty care, acquires Integris, a provider of an EMR/PM solutions for the urgent care, occupational health, and hospital employee health markets.

The New Jersey chapter of Entrepreneurs’ Organization and the Star-Ledger/NJ.com name SRS CEO Evan Steele the winner of the Garden State Entrepreneur Excellence Award in the $10M+ category.

Greenway Medical adds ClientTell’s ReminderManager patient communications solution to its Online Marketplace as a certified API solution for the PrimeSUITE platform.

Athenahealth names Midland Orthopaedics (SC) the winner of its athenaVision award for helping “make healthcare work as it should.”

DocuTrac, a provider of EMR technology for behavioral health, will add DrFirst’s e-prescribing technology into its QuicDoc EMR Professional and Enterprise edition software.

Cerner’s PowerChart Touch mobile solution receives a bronze award for Best Clinical Health Care Experience at the 2013 International User Experience Awards.

Greenway Medical announces the availability of its PrimeMOBILE mobile access solution for the Windows 8 platform.

PracticeMax, a provider of PM and technology services for physician offices, acquires the Phoenix-based ABC Medical Management, a provider of billing and PM services for anesthesia and pain management specialists.

More than one third of physicians participating in a CareCloud/QuantiaMD survey predict their practices will be less profitable in the next year, compared to 22 percent foreseeing increased profits. The biggest perceived threats to profitability were declining reimbursements, rising costs, ACA-related requirements, and coding and documentation changes. Other key findings from the survey of 5,102 physicians include:

• Almost half believe that increased operational and billing pressures will leave their practice unable to accept any of the expected influx of insured patients from the implementation of the ACA.
• A mere nine percent were “very confident” in the current process for getting paid.
• The majority of physicians spend more than 20 percent of their time coding, documenting, and performing administrative tasks, rather providing than patient care.
• Almost sixty percent of independent physicians were not looking to sell their practices.

E-mail Inga.

News 5/21/13

Mitochon, a provider of a free EHR product, announces it will exit the market and cease its physician service by mid-June. According to the company’s Website, Mitochon had been able to offer its product for free because it used “healthcare related messaging/advertising in a HIPAA, FDA compliant methodology.” On the FAQ page, Mitochon included a question about how a buyer will know if the company “will still be around in five years.”  I wonder how many providers felt re-assured by this response:

We have integrated with AT&T’s Health Cloud, Medicity, and Covisint’s Health Cloud, a major hospital in Southern California, we are an IBM Global Entrepreneurial Partner, and we are fully certified by the government.

As a side note, Dr. Gregg would likely be the first to concur there are really no guarantees that any selected EHR will be around in five years.

CMS posts the 2014 ICD-10-PCS files, including code tables, index, and coding guidelines. CMS notes that the FY 2014 ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes will not be updated.

Blue Ridge Physicians for Women selects Benchmark Systems’ PM software.

River Ranch Radiology (TX) and its affiliate Sendero Imaging and Treatment Center demonstrate Stage 1 MU using eRAD’s RIS.

Kettering Anesthesia Associates (OH) contracts with Zotec Partners for billing services.

e-MDs will integrate dashboardMD’s business intelligence reporting solutions into its PM platform to automate revenue cycle monitoring.

Rob Anthony, deputy director of the HIT Group for CMS’ Office of E-Health Standards and Services offers tips for prepping for a MU audit.

Only 17.2 percent of physicians believe a practice led by a nurse practitioner should be certified as a medical home, though more than 82 percent of NPs feel it should, according to a survey published in the New England Journal of Medicine. Less than four percent of physicians agree that NPs should be paid equally for providing the same service, compared to 64.3 percent of NPs.

DoctorBase, a provider of mobile solution that connects patients with clinicians, announces it has surpassed 10,000 doctors on its platform.

CMS Deputy Administrator Jonathan Blum says that the agency could choose in the future to build on its recently released database of average charges for inpatient services to include charges for outpatient services.

Physician reimbursement Betsy Nicoletti offers tips to ensure medically-compliant billing when using an EHR to document E/M services.

The physician social networking site Doximity collaborates with Cleveland Clinic to include CME for practicing physicians using Doximity to learn on the job.

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News 5/16/13

INTEGRIS Health (OK) will deploy athenaCollector, athenaCommunicator, and athenaClarity for its 300 physicians.

PeaceHealth Medical Group (OR) begins its Epic go-live at its Florence clinics. 

The AMA board of trustees issues a report that looks at the how patient-physician communication is affected by the use of computers in the exam room. The study finds that a physician’s attitude toward the computer has the biggest impact on a patient’s perception of exam room computing: “The more positive they perceived their doctors’ attitudes toward the computer to be, the more likely respondents were to indicate a preference for computer use.” The board recommends that the “AMA encourage physicians to incorporate questions regarding use of computers and EHRs in patient-satisfaction surveys to provide feedback on how their own patients experience the use of computers in the examination room.”

NextGen Healthcare will integrate PDR Network’s drug information technology with the NextGen Ambulatory EHR platform.

NCQA releases the names of over 100 NCQA-Certified Content Experts on PCMHs who have demonstrated in-depth knowledge of the requirements for PCMH recognition and are interested in providing expertise to practices seeking NCQA PCMH evaluation.

McKesson expands its McKesson Gives Back Program nationwide and will provide up to 100 selected physicians with the McKesson Practice Choice EHR/PM program.

Kaiser Health News profiles two independent physicians who are experimenting with innovative practice techniques and business models in hopes of improving clinical outcomes and preserving healthy incomes. Thomas Bellavia, MD (NJ) has invested about $300,000 since 2011 to train staff and purchase equipment to transition to a medical home model that involves a team of doctors and nurses providing treatment.  He claims the transformation has led to higher insurance reimbursements and an increased emphasis on preventative care. Meanwhile Mark Holthouse, MD (CA) has opted for a concierge model that limits his clinic to 400 patients and offers alternative services such as acupuncture and fitness coaching. Patients pay a monthly fee of $220 for basic services in addition to what their insurance pays. Holthouse contends that patients are spending less on medication and hospital fees and feel providers are giving them time and quality care.

E-mail Inga.