News 12/18/08

From Ad Guy: “Re: PracticeFusion. The way they are able to offer the software for free is that it is run through an ASP and is supported by ‘discreet’ advertising. A hundred bucks a month gets you an ad-free version.” Something about their press releases announcing a single new user here and there makes me suspect it’s been a struggle for them, free or not. And, they were a bit shifty about throwing Google’s name all over their early announcements when it turned out the only Google connection was that they planned to use AdSense ads like any other Web site can do. I would be interested in seeing a review of the software, not just its price, from a real user.

From Bubble Burster: “Re: new site. I am struggling with its intent compared to the original HIStalk. Who is the target audience? You might want to make it look a little different with a font change or something." Thanks to everyone who has already provided us feedback on our new venture (even though we’ve done it in stealth mode with no announcements). Most of it was very encouraging. HIStalkPractice is definitely a work in progress and reader input will help us fine tune things. So, to back up a bit, our annual HIStalk reader surveys indicate that the majority of our visitors come from the hospital side of healthcare. Our goal with HIStalkPractice is to offer information and commentary of particular benefit to physicians and their office staff, some of it from experts who can inform and educate folks in that ambulatory setting. We absolutely intend to include vendor news. And of course we love rumors. We recognize there is overlap between the hospital and physician world, so you might occasionally see an item mentioned more than once if you read both sites (and we certainly don’t recommend that you stop reading HIStalk since it won’t all be duped here). We’re also tweaking things a bit so the site looks more unique. Stay tuned and keep providing your feedback.

Community Care Physicians selects Allscripts’ Practice Management for its 190+ provider group. The practice already uses Allscripts’ Enterprise EHR.

Pediatrix Medical Group acquires Florida Perinatal Associates. Pediatrix paid cash for the seven-doctor group. I see that Pediatrix now employs over 1,200 physician specialists and 400 nurse practitioners in 32 states.

AdvancedMD names Christopher J. Bijou executive VP of sales. He had similar roles with UCN and Oracle before that.

Good news for medical billers: demand for medical billing experts remains steady.

AAFP Board Chair Jim King, MD tells the CMS to fix PQRI or doctors may not want to participate. The biggest complaint stems around the fact that thousands of physicians participating in the PQRI did not receive promised Medicare bonuses. CMS had coding problems and other technical issues, so less than half of the participating physicians received their 1.5% Medicare bonus.

Eclipsys wins a Frost & Sullivan award for Healthcare Innovation in the North American Clinical IS market. The honored product is the former MediNotes physician practice solution. Nothing against Eclipsys or its products, but I’ve never quite understood why a company would go to the time and expense to “win” one of these awards. I could be wrong, but my impression of how easy it is to win an F&S award is on par with the soccer trophies handed out to every player in the league (at least if soccer players paid big bucks just to take the field).

The North Carolina Medical Society endorses Web portal software developer Medfusion (also of North Carolina). Medical society members will be eligible for discounts on Medfusion’s patient portal products.

Sevocity launches a new secure web portal that facilitates communication between Sevocity EHR users and their patients. It’s free to customers in the latest software release.

Physicians in 15 states and DC can now manage their Medicare enrollment online. The new service is named Provider Enrollment, Chain, and Ownership System or (PECOS) and will be rolled out to all states over the next couple of months. I’m surprised that CMS is just automating this function.

If you are an iPhone/iTouch user who’d like to maximize its use, check out this posting from a Tulane medical student. He names the top 10 medical resources available, including Eponyms, Mediquations, and Epocrates RX.

HIMSS issues its "recommendations" for the Obama administration, wrapped around a suggested healthcare IT industry donation of $25 billion (does every handout-seeking industry always ask for $25 billion?) to encourage adoption of electronic medical records. HIMSS wants higher government visibility of healthcare IT and insists that no government money be paid out to encourage use of any software that is not certified by CCHIT. Also interesting (and out of left field, but a good idea) is to bar payments to providers by check – the funds would have to be electronically transferred. It should be noted, however, that HIMSS has had marked lack of success in pushing any of its special interest recommendation, so there’s no guarantee that anything in the laundry list will be approved.

Some Best in KLAS winners in the ambulatory market: Epic, Allscripts, and Greenway (EMRs); Epic, athenahealth, and Greenway (practice management).

Highmark Blue Cross Blue Shield (PA) opens up its database of physician quality measures to members. Ratings are based on preventive screenings, office visits, and recommended tests and procedures for diabetes, pediatrics, and women’s health. Only PCPs are scored, getting one, two, or three stars based on how often they provide services to Highmark’s members compared to the average (how well Highmark pays them to do so is another story).

A new survey finds that about 40% of doctors use electronic medical records, but many of them say their systems aren’t very good. Only 4% said their systems do the job to their satisfaction. While the results aren’t encouraging that vendors are selling the products that doctors need, the survey did ask the right questions — not just whether the physicians had access to ‘electronic medical records,’ but exactly what functions they are using them for, which is really the important fact. It would be highly interesting to see those stats broken out by system vendors, of course, but that’s another survey (say, since vendors would never sponsor something like that for fear of bad results, maybe we should run one).

And speaking of EMRs, it would be interesting to find out what customer relationship management capabilities are built in. Can you enter a few notes to help you chat personably with the patient next time, like that they were headed off to Greece for the summer or changing jobs? Some of the early systems focused on that, helping doctors and office staff build relationships with customers, but you don’t hear too much about it these days.

Something too few people worry about: that little footnote in the medical insurance documents that says everybody gets a lifetime dollar cap, and then they’re on their own. This patient is an example: a surprise attack of AML led to a 48-day hospital say, followed by chemo, BMT, and another five months as an inpatient. Because of high costs, she hit her $2 million lifetime cap and her insurance had run out. Employers are accepting all kinds of compromises (high deductibles, high copays, etc.) to keep offering at least some kind of insurance to employees. The article says lifetime caps have dropped to as low as $250K in some cases, which coupled with high copays could leave patients with help only for the middle ground.

Odd lawsuit: a physician complaining of throat problems is told he’s OK in a 1999 hospital exam, but dies in 2007 of esophageal cancer missed by the pathologist in the original exam and not discovered until 2005. His widow is suing the hospital, but the statute of limitations has run out since the clock starts ticking when the alleged malpractice occurs. She wants the law changed so her lawsuit can go on.

A Michigan doctor has all his medical evidence and expert testimony thrown out by a judge when it’s found that he was paid $500 per exam by personal injury lawyers for claiming 7,323 patients had radiologic and respiratory evidence of the asbestos complications the lawyers were suing over. He netted a cool $3.6 million despite having minimal qualifications to interpret films. A previous example from West Virginia is cited where a radiologist made $10 million from a "lawsuit mill," claiming he examined 515 patients in a single day, all of whom had something litigable, no doubt.

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Monday Morning Update 12/15/08

At least 1,200 California physicians have been waiting since June to be paid for Medicare claims. The problems stem from a switch to a new Medicare claims contractor on top of new ID requirements. Physicians report being owed hundreds of thousands of dollars, forcing many to work without a paycheck and take out loans and second mortgages on their homes. A Oakland dermatology practice is owed $450,000. “You’re witnessing a slow death here, except the death is no longer slow.”

FQHC RiverStone Health (Montana) is going live on eClinicalWorks EMR/PM solution. RiverStone will also providing hosting for three other Montana FQHCs.

The WSJ blog interviews a relatively calm Jonathan Bush of athenahealth (check out the video of the actual interview). Bush comments on Obama’s plans to digitize healthcare. Oh, and manages to get a plug in for athenahealth’s (and others) hosted system model, claiming it’s superior to the “broken” approach of developing/selling traditional software to run healthcare.

Dayton, OH is already feeling the pressure of too few primary care physicians, with experts estimating another 200 more providers are needed to meet current demand. A physician with Premier Health Partners is promoting the idea of developing a medical home project to provide some relief. To develop the model would require up to $20 million in capital and a shift in the way primary care is funded, since additional monthly premiums would be needed to supplement traditional reimbursement.

A survey by the National Center for Health Statistics finds that only 38% of physicians are using full or partial EMR systems. Only 4% of the 2,000 physician respondents report that their EMRs are fully functioning. Compare that to a Commonwealth Fund study this summer that found 98% of doctors in the Netherlands and 89% in the UK physicians use EMRs.

The Obama economic stimulus package seems likely to include some electronic medical records line item, but does that really help stimulate the economy? A university professor says EMRs are a good idea, but of no macroeconomic benefit.

The Detroit Institute for Children signs a five-year renewal agreement with CareTech Solutions to provide outsourcing services. CareTech has been providing it with full IT services for the last three years.

Practice Fusion signs up a couple of new clients in Chicago and Seattle. The company’s product is called Free Electronic Medical Records and they claim it can be deployed in “days or less with no cost.” What’s the catch, right?

Physician Pauline Chen’s New York Times editorial bemoans the declining number of primary care doctors just as Obama’s health plan will probably prescribe better access. “Mr. Obama and his team may find ways to give more Americans access to the waiting room, but what if there’s no doctor on the other side of the door? The crisis in primary care must be addressed before any real change can occur; otherwise, the flood of new patients may instead turn out to be a final strike for our ailing health care system.”

A massage parlor operating in a medical office building and offering to accept workers compensation insurance is raided in Lake City,WA, following a police crackdown on Craigslist advertisers.

I suppose it is fitting that I came across this post just as we begin our launch of HIStalkPractice. Who knew that Dr. Lawrence L. Weed is credited with being the brainchild behind the first computerized electronic medical records? In the 1960s, Weed’s initial concept formed the basis for the PROMIS project at the University of Vermont, and in 1970 the Medical Center Hospital of Vermont used the system for the first time. Around the same time, The Mayo Clinic began working on its own version.

Stevens Hospital (WA) is taking advantage of relaxed Stark law provisions and subsidizing the purchase of GE Healthcare’s Centricity EMR for four Seattle-area physician practices.

A Houston physician launches the second boutique medical practice in Sugar Land, TX.

Newseek covers online second opinions, concluding that it’s a small but growing trend, the logistics are cumbersome for patients, and they nearly always must pay the full cost out of pocket.

If you are a physician and iPhone user, check out pMDsoft’s new charge capture software that allows providers to track patients, write sign-off notes while rounding, and enter billing information. It’s available on the iPhone App Store.

Medical Present Value signs up six new physician groups and will be helping them to better monitor payor compliance and verify reimbursement at the line item level.

During my days working in the vendor world, this is the kind of stuff we hated messing with. Consulting firm EHR Group is offering a free document called “7 Costly Mistakes Made When Purchasing Electronic Medical Records and Health IT – And How to Avoid Them.” I’m sure the report includes some great tips on how to select the right EMR, get the right price, and negotiate a favorable contract. Just the kind of stuff vendors hate messing with. Not because they are trying to take advantage of you, but because every time a prospect asks to make a change to the standard deal, paperwork has to be re-done and terms have to be approved (and, of course those sales types just want to close the deal and never have to talk to you again, right?) Anyway, if you are shopping for health IT goodies, I’m guessing this white paper may be worth a read.

Here’s some proof that while many things change in healthcare, some things seem to stay the same. A local Utah paper highlights the career of Dr. Norman Fawson, a physician who recently retired after 40 years of practice. He claims that when he started, a visit cost $3 – or perhaps a few eggs or a chicken if the patient didn’t have cash. He also states that the two things he didn’t like about being a physician were “the computer and government intrusion into health care.”

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