News 10/8/18

Top News

EClinicalWorks makes several announcements at its annual user conference:

• Palmer College of Chiropractic Clinics implement its EHR.
• CMS approves its integration with the Blue Button 2.0 API, giving patients easier access to their health data through the Consumer-Directed Exchange.
• The company adds search engine functionality to its EHR, enabling physicians to pull health data from digital access points supported by CommonWell, Carequality, and Blue Button.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

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Webinars

October 30 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “How One Pediatric CIN Aligned Culture, Technology and the Community to Transform Care.” Presenters: Lisa Henderson, executive director, Dayton Children’s Health Partners; Shehzad Saeed, MD, associate chief medical officer, Dayton Children’s Health Partners; Mason Beard, solutions strategy leader, Philips PHM; Gabe Orthous, value-based care consultant, Himformatics. Sponsor: Philips PHM. Dayton Children’s Health Partners, a pediatric clinically integrated network, will describe how it aligned its internal culture, technology partners, and the community around its goal of streamlining care delivery and improving outcomes. Presenters will describe how it recruited network members, negotiated value-based contracts, and implemented a data-driven care management process.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Announcements and Implementations

Arizona Arthritis & Rheumatology Associates selects TSI Healthcare to help implement and manage its NextGen EHR and practice management software across eight locations.

New York-based HIEs HealtheConnections and HealthlinkNY partner to expand their combined services to 43 percent of the state, including 7,518 physicians in 24 counties.

Child Guidance Center implements TenEleven Group’s EHR to enhance its behavioral health services for families in Jacksonville, FL.

Los Alamitos Orthopaedic Medical & Surgical Group (CA) deploys email encryption services from Identillect Technologies.

Telemedicine

PlushCare expands its direct-to-consumer telemedicine services to all 50 states.

Research and Innovation

Physicians are eagerly awaiting virtual assistant tools that can help improve dictation, documentation, communication with staff, and responding to patient questions, according to a survey on patient engagement technology. Results also indicate that, in the nearer term, physicians are actively looking at purchasing interactive touchscreens or tablets to digitize their exam rooms – features they believe improve their interactions with patients.

Other

The Washington Post looks at the generational shift in the time-honored tradition of retaining a primary care doc. Younger patients prefer quicker alternatives like urgent and retail care clinics and telemedicine to waiting weeks to see a brick-and-mortar PCP. A patient’s propensity to have a PCP on hand increases with age, according to a Kaiser Family Foundation study mentioned in the article. To keep up with Millenial expectations of instant accessibility, smaller practices like that run by family physician Mott Blair, MD in rural North Carolina have taken to increasing same-day appointments and digital messaging.

Sponsor Updates

• Frost & Sullivan honors Medicomp Systems with the EHR Optimization Technology Leadership Award for its Quippe suite of solutions.
• Healthwise will exhibit at the Cerner Health Conference October 8-11 in Kansas City, MO.
• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at the AAFP Family Medicine Experience October 10-12 in New Orleans.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 10/3/18

Top News

A California law goes into effect requiring physicians to check the Controlled Substance Utilization Review and Evaluation System (CURES) before writing prescriptions for controlled substances. The idea for the database, which physicians had previously been accessing voluntarily, came from Bob Pack after his two children were killed by an opioid-addicted driver who had obtained prescriptions from six different doctors at the same hospital.

Webinars

October 30 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “How one pediatric CIN aligned culture, technology and the community to transform care.” Presenters: Lisa Henderson, executive director, Dayton Children’s Health Partners; Shehzad Saeed, MD, associate chief medical officer, Dayton Children’s Health Partners; Mason Beard, solutions strategy leader, Philips PHM; Gabe Orthous, value-based care consultant, Himformatics. Dayton Children’s Health Partners, a pediatric clinically integrated network, will describe how it aligned its internal culture, technology partners, and the community around its goal of streamlining care delivery and improving outcomes. Presenters will describe how it recruited network members, negotiated value-based contracts, and implemented a data-driven care management process.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

EWellness Healthcare CEO Darwin Fogt sells off his Evolution Physical Therapy clinics to “focus on becoming the industry thought leader in the new realm of digital telehealth physical therapy.” While thought leadership might inadvertently help pay the bills, I presume his goal is to focus solely on the company’s virtual rehab technology for employees, which offers patients app-based recovery exercises, virtual consults with physical therapists, wearables integration, and nutritional and wellness programs.

Post-acute care technology vendor Optima Healthcare Solutions expands its software and services for outpatient clinics with the acquisition of Vantage Clinical Solutions, which offers RCM and digital marketing and consulting services to physical therapy practices.

Announcements and Implementations

Orthopedic Associates of Dutchess County (NY) implements Compulink’s Orthopaedic Advantage EHR and practice management technology.

DocuTap integrates InstaMed’s Auto Payment Collect tool with its EHR and practice management software for urgent care clinics.

CareCloud updates its Breeze patient engagement and physician review software to include mobile patient feedback surveys, deeper integration with social media and physician review websites, and dashboards that deliver real-time insight into a patient’s care experience.

App-based house call provider Heal joins Apple’s Health Record ecosystem, giving patients the ability to share their phone-based medical records with its OnCall app.

HRSA contracts with AAFP for use of its Uniform Data System Mapping and Data Analysis Services, which helps users pinpoint neighborhoods in need of additional healthcare services.

Research and Innovation

Researchers find that smaller, hospital-owned practices in wealthier neighborhoods have been more apt to participate in the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus program, a model of healthcare delivery that offers performance-based incentives and prospective care management payments. Non-participating practices in CPC+ areas were found to serve less affluent and educated patients, many who are Medicare and/or Medicaid beneficiaries, and who were admitted to the hospital more often for avoidable reasons. Researchers believe the program’s parameters should be adjusted so that resource-strapped practices that serve vulnerable populations can keep up with the transformation activities the program’s model requires.

Other

This is an interesting trend: In an effort to make it easier for physicians to operate small practices on their terms, R2 Medical Group offers scalable (almost on-demand) medical office space for rent that includes support staff if needed. Physicians can opt to utilize the space based on hourly rates. WeShareMD has opened a similar business on the West Coast.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic wins a work-life balance award based on anonymous employee submissions in the large-employer category.
• AdvancedMD will host its annual user conference, Evo18, October 3-5 in Salt Lake City.
• Aprima will exhibit at AAFP’s annual meeting October 10-12 in New Orleans.
• Culbert Healthcare Solutions will exhibit at the Cerner Health Conference October 8-12 in Kansas City, MO.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 10/1/18

Top News

HIE efforts in Connecticut achieve a depressingly laughable state when members of the Health IT Advisory Council in charge of overseeing the state’s latest effort realize that a separate state-run agency has been developing its own HIE all along. The Dept. of Social Services led two of the state’s earlier HIE attempts, and has now gone public with its third, which it contends is simply the culmination of earlier efforts to develop a provider registry, enterprise master person index, an electronic clinical measure system, and care alert system similar to PatientPing.

After 11 years and over $40 million in funding, council members are frustrated: “I think everybody agreed that this should be an inclusive process, with all the stakeholders sitting around the table describing what it is that we want to build,” said council member and Griffin Hospital CEO Patrick Charmel. “And this was done in isolation against the spirit of what we say we all wanted … how could we allow this to happen?”

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Announcements and Implementations

Updox introduces a version of its healthcare CRM for physician practices.

Rev360 adds automated ordering capabilities for vision correction products to its EHR for eye care practices.

PatientPop expands its online appointment scheduling capabilities for physician practices to include 50 additional search engines and service-oriented websites, including Yahoo and MapQuest. The company launched its Universal Scheduling service with Google search results last year.

People

Practice management software vendor MedEvolve names Craig Haskin (Access Healthcare Services) COO.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

OSG Billing Services acquires healthcare revenue cycle company AppRev, and the billing and payments division of Diversified Data. OSG will fold the new assets into its Diamond Healthcare Solutions division.

Women’s healthcare company Kindbody takes its pop-up fertility services to Silicon Valley and San Francisco. Its mobile clinic debuted on the East Coast in August, traveling to several locations in and around New York City. The company, which also offers virtual consults, will open brick-and-mortar locations on both coasts next year; and will soon expand into mental health, nutritional, and gynecological care.

Telemedicine

CarePortMD integrates ZH Healthcare’s BlueEHR with its retail-based telemedicine kiosks.

MediSprout enables appointment scheduling and physician selection for its telemedicine services via Amazon’s Alexa virtual assistant. The startup, which has developed a white-label virtual consult system for providers, now also offers integration with the Withings blood pressure monitor.

Other

Chicago-based pain management specialist Jay Joshi, MD sues an Indiana-based physician of the same name for deceptive trade practices that he claims have “decimated” his practice. The alleged imitator was arrested last year for over-prescribing pain medication, ranking ninth in the state for the number of prescriptions written for controlled substances. Joshi insists that his doppelganger purposefully led patients and the general public to believe he was the more reputable physician, and did nothing to correct online listings that confused the two providers. Chicago-based Joshi claims his referrals and speaking engagement invitations have dried up as a result of the confusion.

MGMA gets into full swing in Boston. Readers tell me the show gets a bit smaller each year. If Twitter activity is any indication, then their observation rings true. For those reading from Beantown, please let me know if you see anything of interest in the exhibit hall and I’ll pass it along in an upcoming post.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks and Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at MGMA through October 2 in Boston.
• Healthwise will exhibit at AdvancedMD’s Evo18 conference October 2-6 in Salt Lake City.

Blog Posts

• How providers can innovate to combat physician burnout (Medicomp Systems)
• “Where’s my nurse?”: How to empower nurses to spend more time with patients (PerfectServe)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 9/26/18

Top News

Bankers Healthcare Group acquires a 20-percent stake in Simple Admit, which will incorporate the bank’s lending services into its patient engagement technology.

Webinars

None scheduled in the coming weeks. Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Announcements and Implementations

Aprima will offer HIPAA compliance programs from Abyde.

Azalea Health adds chronic care management capabilities from ChartSpan Technologies to its EHR.

People

CipherHealth names Jake Pyles (Paradigm) CFO.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Behavioral health and human services EHR vendors Foothold Technology and Exym merge under the Alpine SG corporate umbrella, leading me to surmise from the vaguely worded press release that parent company Alpine Investors has purchased some sort of stake in both companies and swept them into its group of SaaS companies.

Telemedicine

19labs introduces the Gale Digital Health Center for on-site care that includes virtual consult software and diagnostic devices. The California-based startup launched in 2015 with the intent of targeting rural clinics, and has now expanded its sales funnel to include employers, community centers, and nursing homes. Founder and CEO Ram Fish spent several years beforehand as VP of mobile health at Samsung. 

Research and Innovation

A survey of independent practices finds that nearly 70 percent have been approached with acquisition deals by private equity firms, and 60 percent by health systems. PE firms ended up acquiring practices in 75 percent of the aforementioned situations, though the resulting business arrangement seems to have left some physicians wondering if they wouldn’t have been better off with hospital ownership. Respondents noted that investment firms seemed to be “just in for what they could get out the practice,” while hospitals “would allow the practice to carry on … with local control.”

Other

Say it ain’t so: The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine launches a #BreakUpWithBacon campaign in Washington, DC to encourage people to stop eating processed meats, and hospitals to stop serving them. The campaign highlights the fact that such food, though delicious, is a contributor to colon cancer.

Sponsor Updates

• The Wisconsin State-Journal profiles Nordic Data & Analytics Services Delivery Manager Eric Pennington.
• Healthwise launches its FHIR app in Epic’s App Orchard.
• AdvancedMD will exhibit at WebPT’s annual Ascend conference September 28-29 in Phoenix, AZ.
• Nordic’s managed services division has signed 20 clients and expanded to 100 consultants.
• Aprima and Culbert Healthcare Solutions will exhibit at MGMA September 30-October 2 in Boston.

Blog Posts

• The Rise of Digital Healthcare (AdvancedMD)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 9/24/18

Top News

The local paper looks at Connecticut’s attempts to set up a sustainable HIE, pointing out the mistakes made in past efforts dating back 11 years and costing $23 million. State officials are hoping the fourth time’s the charm, as they continue another go-round of development with fresh funding of $12.2 million from CMS. State-sponsored delays have prompted other organizations like the Connecticut State Medical Society and Connecticut Hospital Association to set up their own HIEs, which state officials contend have cannibalized on their efforts. “We should not move forward with a solution until we know it’s viable,” says State of Connecticut CIO Mark Raymond. “The only value comes from stakeholder involvement and if people are using it. We need broad engagement. There is always this specter of we’ve tried this before and why is this different? That sort of lingers out there, and it’s absolutely true, but we continue to try because the value still exists.”

A separate article points to the value a statewide HIE would bring to efforts to combat the opioid epidemic. Allan Hackey, head of the state’s latest HIE effort, says top priorities of exchange development include enabling providers to see in real time where a patient has sought treatment, including pharmacies and labs; plus medication reconciliation, which is already aggregated within the state’s PDMP. The HIE design team would like to embed PDMP access into the HIE for easier provider access.

Webinars

September 26 (Wednesday) 12:30 ET. “How to Ensure Patient Records are Always Available.” Sponsor: Goliath Technologies. Presenter: Goliath Technologies engineering staff. This webinar will discuss how an early warning system can help your organization ensure your EHR systems and patient records are always available. You’ll also learn how to proactively anticipate, troubleshoot, prevent, and resolve end user experience issues before users or patients are impacted.

Previous webinars are on our YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for information.

Announcements and Implementations

EHR and practice management vendor DrChrono upgrades its API for developers to include endpoints Clinical Quality Measures, clinical notes, tasks, billing, and labs, plus the FHIR interoperability standard.

Consumer advocates band together under the X4Health brand to develop the Health Record Request Wizard. The smart form, according to advisor and CareJourney President Aneesh Chopra, acts as a records request “easy button,” giving patients a simple way to request digital records in the form and format of their choice.

AppointmentNotify launches in New York City to offer providers a way to fill last-minute cancellations and unfilled appointments. Patients can use the startup’s portal to find open appointments, including those harder to come by new patient appointments, across the city. Founder and CEO Ali Nayyar told AlleyWatch that the technology is one step ahead of competitor ZocDoc, offering a more user-friendly interface.

HIPAA Association of America opens for business to offer providers membership-based HIPAA compliance and cybersecurity services, including risk assessments, employee training, monitoring, and ongoing updates on policies and procedures.

Relatient adds patient self-scheduling capabilities to its automated patient outreach software.

Government and Politics

Surgeon General Jerome Adams, MD releases a 40-page report on America’s opioid addiction crisis as part of the federal government’s continued efforts to raise awareness about proper prescribing practices and allocate funds for addiction programs and resources. The report emphasizes primary care’s role in laying the groundwork for screening and treatment, as well as the effectiveness of PDMPs in helping prescribers identify patients with a history of doctor-shopping.

Telemedicine

NxGen MDx adds virtual consults from Answer Health on Demand to its reproductive health-focused genetic screening and counseling services for women.

Research and Innovation

Researchers look at the impact newly installed EHRs have on labor costs and physician productivity at two outpatient joint replacement clinics. The study found that labor costs spiked two months after implementation due to new documentation workflows, but stabilized to pre-install levels around the six-month mark. Time spent on documentation, however, did not stabilize; increasing to the point that physician interaction with patients decreased by nearly four minutes per encounter.  

Other

In Colorado, 14 year-old Olivia Goodreau joins a tech development program sponsored by the Dept. of Health and Human Services to optimize the TickTracker app she created and launched in February. Goodreau contracted Lyme disease in first grade and went on to found the LivLyme Foundation in an effort to raise awareness about diagnosis and treatment. The app, which has spawned a company of the same name, gives users the ability to share pictures and locations of tick sightings that are then aggregated into a database that Goodreau and Chief Insect Information Officer Jeff Stafford hope will help researchers better understand tick populations and, ultimately, aid in finding a cure for tick-borne diseases.    

Sponsor Updates

• Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at AHIMA September 22-26 in Miami.
• Madison Magazine includes Nordic on its list of best places to work for the third straight year.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk.

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