News 11/13/17

Top News

Taking advantage of Twitter’s new 280 character limit, President Trump announces that he will nominate Alex Azar for HHS Secretary, quickly followed by a tweet calling for an end to Obamacare’s “unfair & highly unpopular” individual mandate.

Azar served as HHS general counsel from 2001 to 2005, and then as deputy secretary until 2007, when he joined pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly. He resigned as president of Eli Lilly affiliate Lilly USA in January.

Webinars

November 15 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “How Hospitals and Practices Can Respond to Consumerism by Better Engaging Patients Through Price Transparency and Payment Options.” Sponsored by: Change Healthcare. Presenters: Kathy Moore, president, Moore Martini Medical; Linda Glidewell, VP of business development, consumer payment solutions, Change Healthcare. Healthcare consumerism and high-deductible health plans require providers to offer upfront estimates and payment options throughout all points of service. In his webinar, we’ll discuss consumerism as a critical area of opportunity in revenue cycle management and review numerous areas across the revenue cycle where your staff interacts with patients and leaves lasting impressions. From your first interaction with patients on the phone to discuss financial responsibility; to collecting payments at all points of service; to offering payment plans and various payment options — these are all areas that can be game-changing. With the right approach to consumerism, you can improve patient collections and optimize revenue from the start while also improving the overall patient experience.

November 30 (Thursday) 1:00 ET. “Making Clinical Communications Work in Your Complex Environment.” Sponsored by: PatientSafe Solutions. Presenters: Steve Shirley, VP/CIO, Parkview Medical Center; Richard Cruthirds, CIO, Peterson Health. Selecting, implementing, and managing a mobile clinical communications platform is a complex and sometimes painful undertaking. With multiple technologies, stakeholders, and disciplines involved, a comprehensive approach is required to ensure success. Hear two hospital CIOs share their first-hand experience, lessons learned, and demonstrated results from deploying an enterprise-wide mobile clinical communications solution.

December 5 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Cornerstones of Order Set Optimization: Trusted Evidence.” Sponsored by: Wolters Kluwer. Updating order sets with new medical evidence is crucial to improving outcomes, but coordinating maintenance for hundreds of order sets with dozens of stakeholders is a huge logistical challenge. For most hospitals, managing order set content is labor intensive and the internal processes supporting it are far too inefficient. Evidence-based order sets are only as good as their content, which is why regular review and updates are essential. This webinar explores the relationship between clinical content and patient care with an eye toward building trust among the clinical staff. Plus, we will demonstrate a new evidence alignment tool that can easily incorporate the most current medical content into your order sets, regardless of format, including Cerner Power Plans and Epic SmartSets.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Camellia Women’s Imaging (AL) selects mammography tracking, physician portal, PACS, RIS, and speech-recognition technology from eRad.

Laguna Beach, CA-based patient engagement company MDBackline develops software that automates the patient intake process and shares relevant health data with a practice’s EHR.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

GE CEO John Flannery claims 2018 will be a “reset year” for the company during a presentation to investors. Flannery stressed that the company will remain committed to its health care, aviation, and energy businesses. It will undergo a broader restructuring that will include laying off 25 percent of staff at its home office in Boston, downsizing its board, eliminating certain employee bonuses, and reducing its quarterly dividend. GE stock suffered a eight-year low on the news.

People

Former National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD joins Humana’s Board of Directors.

Medical Technology Partners VP Nancy Young takes on the additional role of president of the Medical Association of Billers, which she acquired for an undisclosed sum last week.

Government and Politics

The CDC names 24 winners (primarily family medicine practices and FQHCs) of its annual Million Hearts Hypertension Control Challenge. The contest recognizes healthcare organizations that have developed proven strategies to help patients achieve blood pressure control rates at or above the 70-percent target.

Telemedicine

Amerigroup will offer Medicare Advantage members access to LiveHealth Online virtual consults beginning in 2018. The organizations partnered earlier this year to bring free virtual consults to victims of Hurricane Harvey via Amerigroup mobile health clinics.

Research and Innovation

New Change Healthcare research finds that 40 states are pursuing value-based payment models, 23 have mandated value-based goals involving providers and payers, 17 have or are developing ACOs, and 12 are making similar moves towards episode-of-care programs.

Other

Cigna partners with the US Women’s Health Alliance to introduce a maternity episode-of-care program to its value-based Cigna Collaborative Care initiative. The new program will incentivize 28 USWHA-member OB/GYN practices to improve quality, outcomes, and affordability. The alliance developed a custom analytics-based measurement system to track physician performance. The program seems especially apropos given headline-grabbing statistics released earlier this year exposing escalating maternal death rates in the US.

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News 11/9/17

Top News

EyeMD EMR Healthcare Systems acquires ophthalmology-specific software for ASCs from competitor Health Care Intranet Technologies. CEO Abdiel Marin believes the new software will ease data transfer between its EHR customers and ASCs, and help the company gain more ASC market share.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

I neglected to mention earlier this week that Lorre is running her year-end special for new HIStalk (and HIStalk Practice) sponsors – avoid the pre-HIMSS rush, sign up now, and get the rest of this year free. She’ll also offer a deal to wayward former sponsors who want to return to the fold.

Webinars

November 15 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “How Hospitals and Practices Can Respond to Consumerism by Better Engaging Patients Through Price Transparency and Payment Options.” Sponsored by: Change Healthcare. Presenters: Kathy Moore, president, Moore Martini Medical; Linda Glidewell, VP of business development, consumer payment solutions, Change Healthcare. Healthcare consumerism and high-deductible health plans require providers to offer upfront estimates and payment options throughout all points of service. In his webinar, we’ll discuss consumerism as a critical area of opportunity in revenue cycle management and review numerous areas across the revenue cycle where your staff interacts with patients and leaves lasting impressions. From your first interaction with patients on the phone to discuss financial responsibility; to collecting payments at all points of service; to offering payment plans and various payment options — these are all areas that can be game-changing. With the right approach to consumerism, you can improve patient collections and optimize revenue from the start while also improving the overall patient experience.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Modernizing Medicine adds new image management features, including improved centralized access and device integration, to its Modmed Ophthalmology EHR.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

EHR, PM, and RCM vendor ISalus Healthcare relocates to larger office space in downtown Indianapolis. Fun fact: “Salus” is the ancient Roman Goddess of health, prosperity, and public welfare. Company founders tweaked the name to indicate their desire to positively impact healthcare with Internet-driven technologies. 

People

FastMed Urgent Care names Webster Golinkin CEO. Golinkin founded RediClinic in 2005 and stayed on with the company after it was acquired by RiteAid in 2014. He went on to become a member of RiteAid’s senior management and CEO of its population health management-focused Health Dialog business.

Tom Visotsky (HCS) joins Kno2 as VP of vertical market sales.

Telemedicine

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina begins offering employer-sponsored plan members virtual consults from MDLive.

MDLive partners with online dermatology provider Iagnosis Healthcare to launch teledermatology consultations for consumers. It will offer the service to employers and payers on January 1, 2018.

Government and Politics

Seattle Mariners fans poke fun at Andy Slavitt’s mis-tweet after Tuesday’s contested vote in Maine over Medicaid expansion.

Other

Bring Your Daughter to Work Day takes on a whole new meaning: Identical triplets Vicky, Sarah, and Joanna Bedell – all OB/GYNs who attended school at Brandeis University in Boston – join their mother Janet Gersten, MD at her recently renamed New Age Women’s Health practice in Miami. As she contemplates retirement, Gersten sees a bright future ahead for her daughters. “The idea is to have a group practice with the three of them and have other doctors join them,” she says. “We invested in a building; it’s been customized to fit our needs for the practice and research business, and there’s room to grow there for other practitioners.”

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Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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Readers Write: What Do Patients Want? Digital Convenience, of Course!

What do Patients Want? Digital Convenience, of Course!
By Kermit Randa

The era of healthcare consumerism is here. With it, patients expect the same modern, digital conveniences they receive in other areas of their daily lives. They want easier ways to understand what they owe and convenient options to pay their balances. They also want greater freedom to choose their healthcare providers, and growing numbers of patients are increasingly comparing provider pricing. As a result, healthcare organizations are moving from antiquated payment processes to providing patients with the electronic conveniences they seek.

To that end, MGMA and Navicure collaborated to conduct our first Digital Payment Progress Report survey, where we sought to understand billing payment preferences and behaviors among provider organizations. We then compared some of these findings with Navicure’s Patient Payment Check-Up, conducted by HIMSS Analytics, to assess differences in attitudes and behaviors between patients and providers. The results were intriguing.

In particular, physician practices show some clear advantages over hospitals when it comes to the use of digital billing and payment systems. For instance:

Group practices believe patients are more comfortable sharing mobile/email contact information than do hospitals. In fact, while 64 percent of group practices claim patients are comfortable sharing their email addresses, only 56 percent of hospitals say the same. That may be because providers in smaller group practices have a more personal relationship with the patient than hospital providers. And in reality, most patients (79 percent) are perfectly comfortable providing their email address. Still, 77 percent of providers today send paper bills, which creates incredible opportunity for the industry to leverage email to deliver bills electronically, saving scads of paper, postage, and time, thereby reducing days in A/R.

Patients typically pay their physician practice bills faster. Twenty-six percent of hospital respondents say it takes patients longer than six months to pay their balance, while only 13 percent of practice respondents report it takes this long. Our survey also showed group practices having more success with patients paying at the time of service. That’s likely due to the nature of services offered in a doctor’s office being more predictable, making it easier to provide a cost estimate. And, it’s something practices should take advantage of if they aren’t already doing so.

More ambulatory organizations can provide a cost estimate than hospitals. Nearly 80 percent of ambulatory organizations can provide a cost estimate to patients, while only 69 percent of hospitals can offer one. As previously mentioned, this may be because it’s easier to put a price tag on the services provided in a doctor’s office, which translates into a simpler process for providing an estimate; whereas hospitals may not know the final cost until all procedures/services are completed and the patient is released. But, estimates will become increasingly important — our survey also showed that when patients comparatively shop for services, the results they find make a significant impact on the provider they choose. That’s especially true among younger patients: Seventy-five percent of patients comparing prices are between 18-34 years old. Practices will improve transparency, trust, and satisfaction among their patients if they offer pricing up front.

5 Ways to Put These Findings to Use

While practices may be ahead of hospitals in the areas of cost estimation and electronic billing, they’re still behind when it comes to meeting patient demand. Insights from the Digital Payment Progress Report can be helpful as practices look for ways to address patient billing and payment challenges to help bridge the gap between outdated processes that are holding back progress and patient expectations for electronic payment options.

Here are five things practice administrators can tackle to get started:

1. Review the 5 Ps (people, processes, products, performance, and patients) to uncover where disconnects are in the payment process and develop an action plan to reduce them.
2. Ask your patients. Conduct a short online or informal in-office survey to find out what they’re looking for in payment options.
3. Train your teams. Provide ongoing training to help front-office teams educate patients on payment options, and cross-train the entire office to ensure everyone on the team fully understands the impact their role has on the revenue cycle process and increasing patient satisfaction.
4. Educate your patients. Patients want a quick and easy to read, short and uncomplicated, one-page document that explains their payment options. Make sure front-office staff are able to confidently discuss financial responsibilities with patients.
5. Establish measurable objectives for data and quality metrics. Define, collect, and respond to performance metrics to understand your practice’s revenue cycle goals and whether or not they’ve been achieved.

Ultimately, our survey showed there’s strong need for digital payment options such as patient estimates, credit card on file, online bill pay, and more. It also showed there’s agreement all around when it comes to the impact these tools can have on improving collections, reducing days in A/R, and reducing bad-debt write-offs. As healthcare consumerism continues to expand and the future of billing and payments becomes more digital, practices are well-positioned for success when they can pin-point key areas of improvement and proactively give patients what they want – electronic payments and accurate estimates.

Kermit Randa is chief growth officer of Navicure in Atlanta.

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News 11/8/17

Top News

Learning Machine brings blockchain to the medical licensure process with a pilot program that puts medical education credentials on a blockchain records-issuing system endorsed by the Federation of State Medical Boards. As part of the program, healthcare professionals can use a linked app to maintain secure profiles that include records of professional degrees, transcripts, and credentials. Learning Machine VP of Business Development Natalie Smolenski stresses that the program puts professionals – rather than vendors – in charge of their data. “That is the great promise of blockchain technology,” she adds. “Now individuals can own their digital property without reliance upon trusted intermediaries to serve as custodians of that property.”

Webinars

November 15 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “How Hospitals and Practices Can Respond to Consumerism by Better Engaging Patients Through Price Transparency and Payment Options.” Sponsored by: Change Healthcare. Presenters: Kathy Moore, president, Moore Martini Medical; Linda Glidewell, VP of business development, consumer payment solutions, Change Healthcare. Healthcare consumerism and high-deductible health plans require providers to offer upfront estimates and payment options throughout all points of service. In his webinar, we’ll discuss consumerism as a critical area of opportunity in revenue cycle management and review numerous areas across the revenue cycle where your staff interacts with patients and leaves lasting impressions. From your first interaction with patients on the phone to discuss financial responsibility; to collecting payments at all points of service; to offering payment plans and various payment options — these are all areas that can be game-changing. With the right approach to consumerism, you can improve patient collections and optimize revenue from the start while also improving the overall patient experience.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Eye Care Leaders announces availability of custom MyCare EHR and PM solutions and services for ophthalmology practices.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Private equity firm Alpine Investors takes a controlling interest in behavioral health EHR vendor Exym. Alpine’s Nick Horn will take on the role of Exym CEO while founder Matt DeBeer will transition to CTO. Exym launched its flagship pre-EHR Activity Tracking System in 2005.

Circling like vultures, several EHR vendors – including Allegiance MD, CureMD, and MTBC – look to lure in SOAPware EHR customers with special promotions as the company prepares to sunset its technology early next year.

Government and Politics

The Kaiser Family Foundation develops an individual mandate penalty calculator to help consumers compare potential tax penalties with the cost of healthcare plans found on federal and state-based exchanges. Open enrollment on the exchanges continues through December 15. Entering my credentials just for fun finds that my household would be subject to a $2,085 penalty, and would be eligible for $683 in monthly financial assistance. The calculator determined that the lowest-cost plan in my area would cost around $500 a month with assistance and $1,200 without. I can only assume the yearly deductible would be $10,000 or more.

A new PDMP report from St. Louis County health officials in Missouri finds that physicians write 1.5 prescriptions for controlled substances per person; that number jumps to three for women over 65. Data from the first three months of the program, which launched in April, will hopefully give prescribers and government officials a good start at understanding prescribing habits among the PDMP’s 54 participating cities and counties.

CMS Administrator Seema Verma does a little redecorating at the CMS offices in Baltimore.

Telemedicine

San Francisco-based Sappira launches the text-based HeyDoctor primary care app in 19 states. Consults are $20 a pop – significantly cheaper than a typical video consult, but in my mind also significantly hampered by a lack of contextual interaction. (Emojis can only convey so much, after all.) The app will go live in 10 more cities by the end of the year.

EverythingBenefits adds Teladoc’s HealthiestYou telemedicine app to its line of products for payroll,and benefits broker and administrators.

Research and Innovation

A new study finds that an AI-based weight-loss coaching app for diabetic patients is just as effective as face-to-face coaching in terms of weight lost and healthy meals eaten.

Other

Premier Medical Group (TN) brings phone systems and its Athenahealth EHR back on line after experiencing an unspecified technical outage for several hours. The group is the area’s largest multispecialty practice, with four locations and 60 providers.

The local paper profiles Jack "Jay" Saux, MD and his costumed efforts at St. Tammany Cancer Center (LA) to help patients get through the physical and emotional trials that come with cancer treatment. “They have this terrible disease, you’re spending a lot of time preparing treatments and helping them get through the toxicities and side effects of treatments,” says Saux, who has used his physician pirate alter ego to raise money for local healthcare charities. "And the thing they appreciate the most is when you sat down and held their hand or told them a story or let them take a picture of you in your costume."

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD will exhibit at the American Academy of Ophthalmology conference November 11-14 in New Orleans.
• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at the Kentucky Primary Care Association Conference November 8-10 in Lexington.

Blog Posts

• Using Technology to Build an Integrated Practice #4 of 6 (AdvancedMD)
• Intrinsic and Extrinsic Physician Motivators to Consider When Driving Change (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 11/7/17

Top News

Citing family reasons, Outcome Health COO Vivek Kundra steps down amidst allegations that the patient education media company over-promised and under-delivered on waiting room screen time. The company, which held a high-profile ribbon cutting for new corporate headquarters in downtown Chicago last month, has seen several major advertisers pull their ads from its network. Omnicomm Group, Healix, and Bristol-Myers Squibb pulled over $20 million worth of advertising earlier this week, pending third-party reviews. Outcome Health, which announced a $5 billion valuation earlier this year, will conduct its own internal audit of the 250-plus ad campaigns it ran last year.

Webinars

November 8 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “How Clinically Integrated Networks Can Overcome the Technical Challenges to Data-Sharing.” Sponsored by: Liaison Technologies. Presenters: Dominick Mack, MD, executive medical director, Georgia Health Information Technology Extension Center and Georgia Health Connect, director, National Center for Primary Care, and associate professor, Morehouse School of Medicine;  Gary Palgon, VP of  healthcare and life sciences solutions, Liaison Technologies. This webinar will describe how Georgia Heath Connect connects clinically integrated networks to hospitals and small and rural practices, helping providers in medically underserved communities meet MACRA requirements by providing technology, technology support, and education that accelerates regulatory compliance and improves outcomes.

November 15 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “How Hospitals and Practices Can Respond to Consumerism by Better Engaging Patients Through Price Transparency and Payment Options.” Sponsored by: Change Healthcare. Presenters: Kathy Moore, president, Moore Martini Medical; Linda Glidewell, VP of business development, consumer payment solutions, Change Healthcare. Healthcare consumerism and high-deductible health plans require providers to offer upfront estimates and payment options throughout all points of service. In his webinar, we’ll discuss consumerism as a critical area of opportunity in revenue cycle management and review numerous areas across the revenue cycle where your staff interacts with patients and leaves lasting impressions. From your first interaction with patients on the phone to discuss financial responsibility; to collecting payments at all points of service; to offering payment plans and various payment options — these are all areas that can be game-changing. With the right approach to consumerism, you can improve patient collections and optimize revenue from the start while also improving the overall patient experience.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Mediware adds billing capabilities to its MediLinks EHR for practices offering physical, occupational, and speech therapies.

Drchrono develops Apple Face ID recognition capabilities for its tablet-based EHR to help providers save time when logging in.

The Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients, an HIE serving patients in Maryland and Washington, DC, renews its contract with Verato for its cloud-based patient-matching software.

The Paso del Norte Health Information Exchange in El Paso, TX selects health data integration technology from Innovaccer to onboard six physician practices with three different EHRs. The company will also provide performance measures reports, and analytics for future population health management initiatives.

Surescripts develops real-time prior authorization capabilities and prescription pricing benefits. It’s e-prescribing network will pull data from CVS Health; Express Scripts; plus Aprima, Allscripts, Cerner, Epic, Practice Fusion, and GE Healthcare EHRs as well as pharmacy benefit management systems to offer prescribers and patients cost information at the point of care. Given that I am a cash-paying consumer of healthcare, this will hopefully make my hunt for affordable medications that much easier. Perhaps it will even shorten the fact-finding pharmacy missions I go on ahead of time so that I can present my PCP with a list of medications and their prices during my consult, all in an effort to avoid being prescribed name-brand medicines that don’t fit my budget, and that necessitate follow-up phone calls to request cheaper alternatives.

People

Allergy and Asthma Center of Duncanville (TX) Medical Director Harold DelasAlas, MD becomes a fellow of the American College of Physicians.

Optium Cyber Systems names Mark Anderson (AC Group), Cory Jammal, MD (Memorial Pathology Consultants) (not pictured) and Susan Lehrer to its new healthcare-focused advisory board.

Telemedicine

Mozzaz adds secure messaging – including video calls – to its digital health platform for behavioral health that includes EHR, PM, and patient portal capabilities, and wearables integration.

Research and Innovation

A Kyruus survey of 1,000 healthcare consumers on appointment-scheduling habits finds that most turn to the Web to kick off their search, and most prefer to schedule appointments by phone – a notion that may seem antiquated to some but proves that providers should not completely eschew phone-based customer service in favor of more high-tech methods of booking. Three out of four survey takers consider hospital or health system affiliation when looking for new providers – a stat that makes me wonder if these consumers are considering the facility fees that come with such relationships.

Other

In an new report, the American College of Physicians advocates for enhanced patient safety efforts in outpatient settings – an area that has largely been overshadowed by efforts in the inpatient setting. Recommendations include embedding patient safety goals into daily workflows, enhancing health IT to accommodate such workflows, addressing physician burnout’s impact on such errors, and development of ambulatory-focused patient safety metrics.

And speaking of physician burnout: This article looks at the role physician health programs have in helping drug- and alcohol-addicted doctors get back on their feet. Forty seven states offer such confidential programs, which typically work in conjunction with state medical licensing boards and have shown high success rates. Eighty percent of physicians have remained sober during the five-year program, while 70 percent continued with their healthcare careers.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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