News 10/9/17

Top News

The first full day of MGMA kicks off in Anaheim, with attendees taking in the keynote session, exhibit hall, and downwind effects of a wildfire in nearby Anaheim Hills.

News of note from the show floor include PatientKeeper’s launch of a hosted charge capture solution for small to medium-sized practices, and Drchrono’s addition of enterprise task management features – including a dashboard and real-time staff reminders and notifications – to its EHR.

A quick look at the #mgma17 tweet stream found the usual mix of exhibit hall shots, though I have to admit the one above did stand out. Visitors to the CareCloud booth seemed to be having a good time immersing themselves virtually in the company’s offerings.

The association also released its latest report on practice performance, highlighting the fact that better-performing physician-owned practices spend less on operating expenses, including health IT, and see greater patient portal utilization than their lower-performing and hospital-owned counterparts. Top-performing primary care practices all have lower no-show and appointment cancellation rates, a higher percentage of same-day appointments as part of their total mix, and quicker appointment scheduling processes – which might tie into the aforementioned portal usage, assuming online scheduling is available.

Webinars

October 17 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Improve Care and Save Clinician Time by Streamlining Specialty Drug Prescribing.” Sponsored by: ZappRx. Presenter: Jeremy Feldman, MD, director, pulmonary hypertension and advanced lung disease program and medical director of research, Arizona Pulmonary Specialists. Clinicians who treat pulmonary arterial hypertension can spend an average of 20 minutes to prescribe a single specialty drug and untold extra hours each month completing prior authorization (PA) paperwork to get patients the medications they need. This webinar will describe how Arizona Pulmonary Specialists automated the inefficient specialty drug ordering process to improve patient care while saving its clinicians time.

October 19 (Thursday) noon ET. “Understanding Enterprise Health Clouds with Forrester:  What can they do for you, and how do you choose the right one?” Sponsored by: Salesforce. Presenters: Joshua Newman, MD, chief medical officer, Salesforce; Kate McCarthy, senior analyst, Forrester. McCarthy will demystify industry solutions while offering insights from her recent Forrester report on enterprise health clouds. Newman and customers from leading healthcare organizations will share insights on how they drive efficiencies, manage patient and member journeys, and connect the entire healthcare ecosystem on the Salesforce platform.

October 26 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “Is your EHR limiting your success in value-based care?” Sponsored by: Philips Wellcentive. Presenters: Lindsey Bates, market director of compliance, Philips Wellcentive; Greg Fulton, industry and public policy lead, Philips Wellcentive. No single technology solution will solve every problem, so ensuring you select the ones most aligned to meet your strategic goals can be the difference between thriving or merely surviving. From quality reporting to analytics to measures building, developing a comprehensive healthcare strategy that will support your journey in population health and value-base care programs is the foundation of success. Join Philips Wellcentive for our upcoming interactive webinar, where we’ll help you evolve ahead of the industry, setting the right strategic goals and getting the most out of your technology solutions.

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.

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

Announcements and Implementations

The Illinois Bone & Joint Institute selects SRS Health’s patient engagement technology, and outcomes-based data collection and registry tools.

Kareo announces several software updates to its EHR/PM/RCM platform, including automated eligibility checks, balance due alerts, and easier charge capture and patient statement processing.

As part of its quality transformation initiative, Hope Orthopedics of Oregon implements Code Technology’s patient-reported outcomes program across its five locations.

Objective Medical Systems develops a remote monitoring platform for cardiology practices that includes secure patient communication tools and data aggregation across EHRs, labs, and medical devices.

The Pennsylvania Medical Society’s Care Centered Collaborative selects physician management services from Formativ Health in an effort to help its network of independent providers transition to value-based care.

People

AMGA promotes Jerry Penso, MD to president and CEO. Penso, who came to AMGA from the Sharp Rees-Stealy Medical Group in San Diego, will take over from Donald Fisher, who passed away in March after 35 years with the association.

Rachel Neifeld (Rise Labs) joins Fruit Street Health as head of its virtual diabetes prevention program.

James Murray, MS (CVS/Minute Clinic) joins Culbert Healthcare Solutions as CIO.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Coinciding with its annual user group meeting, EClinicalWorks reports $130 million in Q3 revenue and the addition of 3,750 new providers. It claims to now be “the second most widely used EHR in the country.” The company also announced availability in December of an interoperability development platform that will enable developers to connect to ECW’s API-enabled EHR; as well as a voice-powered virtual assistant, the Healow Virtual Room for telemedicine, and v11 of the company’s core product.

Telemedicine

Developers of the Health Integrated Rescue Operations Telemedical Drone Project demonstrate the latest iteration at the American Osteopathic Association’s annual meeting. The HIRO system is part of a pilot with the Mississippi Department of Emergency Management, Homeland Security, the National Guard, and NATO. Designed to provide emergency care during and after natural disasters, HIRO includes a Microsoft HolonLens VR headset so that remote physicians can treat multiple patients on the scene, smart glasses so that first responders can correspond and transmit visuals to the physician, an automated medication bin controlled by the off-site physician, and what developers are calling a “holographic EHR system display” for remote monitoring.

Other

It’s official: Monday really is the worst day of the week, according to a 2008-2017 Twitter sentiment analysis done by researchers at the University of Vermont Complex Systems Center. Other interesting facts about the first day of the work week:

• Over 50 percent of employees are late to work on Monday mornings.
• On average, productivity on Mondays only spans about three and a half hours.
• Most people don’t crack their first smile until 11:16 AM.

Sponsor Updates

• Versus Technology will exhibit at the ANCC Magnet Conference October 11-13 in Houston.

Blog Posts

• How the University of Maryland Medical System used its EHR to improve HIV/HCV care (Nordic)
• Higher MIPS Scores and CMS adjustments (PerfectServe)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 10/8/17

Scott McFarland (EXL) joins Equality Health as president of its HealthBI division. The Arizona-based company has partnered with UnitedHealthcare to develop a team-based care management program for Medicaid patients in Arizona that will encompass physical, behavioral, and social needs.

EQHealth Solutions hires Lori Kools, RN (WellCare Health Plans) as state director of government operations in Florida.

Washington Regional Medical System (AR) promotes Mark Thomas, MD to VP and medical director of population health.

Sidewalk Labs, an urban innovation group within Google parent Alphabet, announces Cityblock, which will offer residents of low-income communities who are covered by Medicare or Medicaid a care team that provides doctors, coaches, technology tools, and a health plan. The service will launch next year.

Population health analytics startup Cardinal Analytx raises $6.1 million in a Series A round led by Cardinal Partners, which worked with Stanford University professors Arnie Milstein, MD and Nigam Shah to launch the payer-focused company.

BaseHealth names Tamara StClaire (Xerox Healthcare) COO and Nick van Terheyden, MD (NTT Data) CMO.

MissouriHealth+ will implement population health management solutions from Caradigm across its network of 24 community health centers.

North Carolina-based Novant Health, Carolinas HealthCare System, UNC Charlotte, Mecklenburg County Public Health, and Renaissance West Community Initiative receive a $250,000 grant from the national Build Health Challenge program that they will use, via their Building Uplifted Families collaboration, to improve the health and wellness of Renaissance West residents in Charlotte. The money will, over a two-year period, go towards improving access to preventive care, grocery stores and healthy food, and educational and career opportunities.

Lightbeam Health Solutions will provide population health management solutions to members of the American College of Osteopathic Family Physicians.

MCG tweaks its Indicia Web-based evidence-based care guidelines so that they integrate with Epic’s Healthy Planet population health management technology.

Innovista Health Solutions will include CollaborNet analytics, referral, and real-time care coordination technology from Holon Solutions as part of its IT toolkit for IPAs and ACOs in Texas, Illinois, and Georgia.

The Mary Washington health system (VA) expands its use of Koan Health’s analytics to include its Health Alliance ACO, in addition to its employee health plan.

Seven Hills Foundation (MA) chooses Netsmart as the care coordination and population health management provider for the Massachusetts Care Coordination Network.

Sponsor Updates

• McLaren Flint (MI) implements an RTLS-smart pump interface between Versus and B. Braun, allowing clinicians to see on a real-time floor plan where pumps are located and whether they are actively infusing to improve re-distribution.
• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at the Louisiana Primary Care Continuing Education Conference October 10-12 in Lake Charles.
• Healthwise and Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at the Cerner Health Conference October 9-12 in Kansas City, MO.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 10/5/17

Top News

The Senate confirms Eric Hargan (Greenberg Traurig) as deputy secretary of HHS – now second in command to new acting Secretary Don Wright. The Chicago-based lawyer, whose mother worked at the family’s local rural hospital for 58 years, was part of President Trump’s transition team, and worked at HHS during the George W. Bush administration. When asked during his confirmation hearing why he would like to get back into government work, he said it was an opportunity he just couldn’t pass up. “The challenges are so great,” he explained, “whether in public health, in healthcare finance, in facilitating innovation in healthcare and in the administration of human services, that I cannot imagine not wanting to participate, and to lend to the government both my past experience at HHS, as well as the fruit of my years of work in the healthcare sector since then, to help as much as I can.”

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Check out HIStalk’s Must-See Exhibitors Guide for MGMA 2017. Map out your trip to the exhibit hall using the guide, which includes descriptions of the products and innovations (and giveaways!) our sponsors plan to showcase. We’ve also included contact information for sponsors that will be walking the show floor.

Webinars

October 17 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Improve Care and Save Clinician Time by Streamlining Specialty Drug Prescribing.” Sponsored by: ZappRx. Presenter: Jeremy Feldman, MD, director, pulmonary hypertension and advanced lung disease program and medical director of research, Arizona Pulmonary Specialists. Clinicians who treat pulmonary arterial hypertension can spend an average of 20 minutes to prescribe a single specialty drug and untold extra hours each month completing prior authorization (PA) paperwork to get patients the medications they need. This webinar will describe how Arizona Pulmonary Specialists automated the inefficient specialty drug ordering process to improve patient care while saving its clinicians time.

October 19 (Thursday) noon ET. “Understanding Enterprise Health Clouds with Forrester:  What can they do for you, and how do you choose the right one?” Sponsored by: Salesforce. Presenters: Joshua Newman, MD, chief medical officer, Salesforce; Kate McCarthy, senior analyst, Forrester. McCarthy will demystify industry solutions while offering insights from her recent Forrester report on enterprise health clouds. Newman and customers from leading healthcare organizations will share insights on how they drive efficiencies, manage patient and member journeys, and connect the entire healthcare ecosystem on the Salesforce platform.

October 26 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “Is your EHR limiting your success in value-based care?” Sponsored by: Philips Wellcentive. Presenters: Lindsey Bates, market director of compliance, Philips Wellcentive; Greg Fulton, industry and public policy lead, Philips Wellcentive. No single technology solution will solve every problem, so ensuring you select the ones most aligned to meet your strategic goals can be the difference between thriving or merely surviving. From quality reporting to analytics to measures building, developing a comprehensive healthcare strategy that will support your journey in population health and value-base care programs is the foundation of success. Join Philips Wellcentive for our upcoming interactive webinar, where we’ll help you evolve ahead of the industry, setting the right strategic goals and getting the most out of your technology solutions.

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.

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

Announcements and Implementations

ZyDoc releases an Android version of its mobile dictation app used in conjunction with its cloud-based transcription service.

The Western New York-based HealtheLink HIE announces that 1 million patients have signed up to share their data.

MyMipsScore adds a payment adjustment estimator to its app, giving physicians the ability to estimate MIPS payments based on historical data from CMS.

New Mexico Orthopaedics selects the Outcomes-Based Electronic Research Database (OBERD) platform from Universal Research Solutions to aggregate outcomes, satisfaction, education, and operative data; and to expedite participation in MIPS.

Seven Hills Foundation selects population health management and care coordination software from Netsmart to help improve communication and outcomes amongst its network of primary care, acute care, and behavioral health providers.

Nextech adds RCM services including claims management and patient collections to its EHR and PM technologies for specialty practices.

People

Tom Nix (CDG) joins Ria Health as CEO. The company launched this week with a mobile app designed to help people stop or reduce their alcohol consumption.

Outpatient chronic wound care center operator Healogics names Kelly Priegnitz (Kindred Healthcare) chief compliance officer.

Caravan Health appoints Anna Loengard, MD (The Queen’s Clinically Integrated Physician Network), CMO and Tim Gronniger (The Brookings Institution) VP of strategy.

Government and Politics

In Cincinnati, the Hamilton County Heroin Coalition will use half of a $400,000 federal grant to incorporate predictive analytics into its efforts to help prevent overdoses and get drug users into treatment. The coalition will equip its Quick Response Teams with analytics they can use to not only predict overdoses, but to reach out to the social network of drug users to let them know about the prediction and options for care.

Research and Innovation

A UnitedHealthcare survey finds that consumer interest in telemedicine has increased from 37 percent in 2016 to 42 percent in 2017, though it doesn’t go into detail about how many have actually used the service to access care. I’d also be interested to know why 46 percent feel telemedicine isn’t for them, as that would clue physicians in to what may be key to successfully implementing their own telemedicine service. The payer began covering virtual visits in 2015. Other interesting finding include:

• 28 percent of survey takers first turn to the Internet to research their health concerns.
• 32 percent used the Internet to compare cost of services – a figure that’s more than double the number of consumers who conducted such searchers five years ago.
• 71 percent of savvy consumers believe (and rightly so) that there is no correlation between cost and quality of healthcare services.

Other

Toy maker Mattel cancels development plans for Aristotle, a kid-friendly device akin to the Amazon Echo that, accompanied by a small camera, could interact with kids as they grow. Originally announced in January, ads for the device showed it acting as a video sleep monitor, then nightlight, then homework assistant as its camera recorded the growth and habits of the child it was stationed near. Privacy experts cried foul, though the company hasn’t attributed the cancellation to those concerns. Perhaps the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s petition with 15,000 signatures prompted the halt, or concerns from pediatricians like Jennifer Radesky, MD who fears the device would encourage parents to substitute technology for human interaction.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Contact us online.
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HIStalk Practice Interviews Halee Fischer-Wright, MD President and CEO, MGMA

Halee Fischer-Wright, MD is president and CEO of MGMA.

You’ve been with MGMA since 2015. What did you set out to accomplish, and how have your goals for the organization changed?

As I was being recruited in 2015, I recognized that MGMA – a remarkable organization with a fantastic brand – was really struggling to find its relevance in the healthcare world that had changed pretty dramatically in the five to seven years prior to my arrival. It’s one of those things where you can’t keep doing the same thing and expect the same results in a world that has undergone a dramatic shift. I knew I had to create a vision when I came in. I also knew the transition for a 90 year-old organization was going to take more than your standard 90 to 180 days. It’s really going to be between a three- and seven-year process.

The first thing that I focused on was actually finding relevance. Where is MGMA relevant in this day and age? That day and age was in March of 2015. I really spent the first year digging into that. Aside from that, there were other operational issues related to how you manage and operate a non-profit association and bring it up to speed with other industries. What I set out to accomplish that first year was to identify where our relevance is and really clean up the operations of the organization. I think we did an outstanding job with that.

Now, as we move into my third year, the goals have shifted. Year three is really looking at opportunities now that we’re clear on what our vision is, which is that MGMA wants to move from being the organization that reports on group medical practice to leading group medical practice. To do that, we have to shift some of our business functions, and we have to really change how we do business, which is, in full transparency, parallel to the growth processes going on right now at almost every other organization within healthcare. That’s what we’re focused on right now.

Let’s shift gears a bit and discuss MGMA membership, particularly small and independent practices. What do you perceive their biggest challenges to be, especially as they relate to technology?

According to our statistics, somewhere in the neighborhood of 40 percent of practices are in the small to medium-sized practice range, defined as less than nine providers. That’s quite a few practices across the country. We’re talking about practices that aren’t just in rural areas. These can be practices in urban areas as well. As we saw between 2010 to about 2015, there was a lot of consolidation with healthcare systems purchasing the small to medium practices. That has slowed down over the last two years. In fact, we’ve seen divestiture staring to occur. That begs the question, why do healthcare systems decide to divest practices and what do practices struggle with? I would say there are two really big things that practices struggle with, and they go hand-in-hand. First, it is the regulatory reporting burden and the shift of the payer landscape as far as how do physicians report on quality.

The other part is related to EHRs and the promise that it would make practices more efficient, and allow them to deliver higher-quality medicine and spend more time with their patients. We’ve actually seen them have the opposite effect. EHRs, because they’re not engineered specifically for the end-user, end up being really a business application. Because of that, it’s really interfered with the practice of the art of medicine. We’re seeing physicians becoming increasingly burnt out and patients becoming increasingly less satisfied. We’re now at a crisis point where physicians aren’t happy and patients aren’t happy. Our federal regulators can’t afford to pay any more money. Something needs to change. That really is the reason that I wrote the book Back to Balance.

 Are you going to be signing copies of it at the conference?

Of course I am!

Speaking of the conference (which kicks off on Sunday, October 8), how will help physician attendees address those issues? 

There are a couple of ways we’re doing that. First of all, I think our advocacy office is second to none. There’s no healthcare association that has better insight into how healthcare regulations affect the day-to-day operations of a practice. What the pros are. What the cons are. How to work within the regulations to still deliver high-quality, patient-centered care. We’ll be doing quite a few sessions with our governmental affairs office in DC. That’s number one. Those tend to be some of our most popular offerings at annual conference.

We’re also offering sessions on practice operations. There’s a lot that we can do in medical practice to streamline operations to make patients and physicians much more satisfied. If you don’t ever get the opportunity to leave your practice and think about how things should be different, you don’t get the opportunity to see how others can do it. We’re offering that. We have several educational tracks at our annual conference to really offer those insights that allow practices to bring something tangible home and put it into place. That’s probably what I’m the most proud of. We’ll also offer several CME sessions that really link the business of medicine to clinical practice as well.

Did you have any input into getting actress Viola Davis as a keynote speaker?

Yes. It’s really interesting. The topic of women in leadership has been a really hot topic over the last 18 months regardless of what your political ideology is. I think, in healthcare, we’re a bit down in the mouth. We’re really feeling victimized. There’s so much uncertainty. To bring in someone who can talk about how their circumstances really would have set them up to be unsuccessful, and even to be a victim, and how she triumphed in the face of great adversity, is really important for an organization like ours. I hope our attendees should really hear her story and come away inspired to move things forward, and to bring change into their own lives, even in a small way.

Circling back to technology, what has MGMA members excited?

Programs and software developed by end users are where people are focusing. We’re coming to a point in our technology that we’re moving towards interoperability. We believe that, within the next couple of years, we’ll see the government really regulate that interoperability, which will take care of a lot of the headaches that we currently experience. Where we have not seen a lot of improvement is in end-user design. We’re now seeing other players from other industries, i.e. Apple, starting to stick their toe into healthcare. That elegance of design focus and end-user focus, I think, is going to transform the relationship of technology in healthcare. I think it will require someone from outside of our industry to bring that expertise.

One of the things I talk a lot about is the fact that with healthcare, we expect incremental change. We’re happy with 2 percent, 3 percent, 4 percent. It really requires disruptive innovation. Who best to lead that than our partners in innovation in the Silicon Valley to really point out to us where we can be disrupted for the benefit of all? I do believe that’s coming.

Do you think companies like Apple and Amazon will either develop their own EHRs or partner with existing EHR vendors?

I’m going to say something completely controversial, and I’ll get pummeled for it. The aspiration of the EHR is fantastic. The application of the EHR has not lived up to anybody’s expectations. I’d like to see alternatives to an EHR. In a cloud-based system with sharing of data, maybe even some blockchain technology, it looks very different than what we’ve come to know as kind of a bread-and-butter EHR. That’s where I feel the disruption needs to occur. It’s something that we haven’t even envisioned yet that would come through and just, basically, everyone would say, “Yes, this is what we’re missing.”

Honestly, I think about my iPod. I didn’t know I needed an iPod, but since I got one I couldn’t live without it. Speaking as someone who had well over a thousand CDs, the idea of condensing all that into something that fit in the palm of my hand … At first, I thought this is ridiculous and it can’t be done. In all fairness, I can’t imagine what my life would be like without it. I think we’re going to have that same experience with EHRs and some of the new technology that’s being developed.

MGMA recently released its annual practice operations survey. Did any of the results surprise you?

I think they will surprise some patients. According to our survey, the wait time for patients has improved. I think, if you speak to any patient, that does not feel like the case. It’s actually down an average of 20 minutes between the waiting area and the exam room. The other thing is that, in scheduling, physician-owned practices see patients sooner than hospital-owned practices. I think that’s really interesting. That’s an insight that could be really useful for patients who are trying to decide how to choose their care.

What’s even more shocking are the results around patient portals. I went to a conference in 2005 where they talked all about patient portals and how they would give patients the ability to take their personal records with them anywhere they go. It hasn’t happened. Only 30 percent of patients who visit hospital-owned practices use the portal. Whereas, if you’re in a small physician practice, less than 10 percent use portals. The function that people like the most is online payments and communicating with providers. Less than 5 percent are using it to schedule appointments, which is really probably its biggest strength.

The other thing I found really interesting are the patient satisfaction results. Three-quarters of practices measure patient satisfaction. That’s quite a few, but I don’t see that commensurate with improvement in patient satisfaction. Clearly, the axiom of you get what you measure is not actually occurring in measuring patient satisfaction. Only about 27 percent of patients that go to a practice are satisfied with their experience.

How can physicians act on those survey results, especially when it comes to online scheduling adoption and patient satisfaction?

In the book Back to Balance, I point out that just because we measure it in healthcare doesn’t mean we actually do anything about it. I actually practiced medicine this way. I practiced for 19 years. The question I found myself asking was, if this test isn’t going to cause me to change what I’m doing already, I’m not going to order the test. In the same way, I would tell people, if you’re not going to do anything about patient satisfaction, stop measuring it. The irony in this is, let’s talk about quality measures in medical practice. According to our data, every physician, on average, spends about $37,000 measuring quality. Not to improve things. They just spend it to report it.

A better way to look at it is to ask physicians, what are you doing that is not adding value? I think a great place to start with things like this are patient satisfaction surveys or portals. They are tangible and there isn’t a lot of judgment around them. These are just things we have. Then physicians need to ask themselves if they’re doing anything with these results. If not, then stop doing it. Where can they invest their energy and effort that will move the bar on patient satisfaction or on enhancing portal usage? Those are the crucial things that I don’t think physicians have ever had the time to consider. Physicians are so burdened with all the things we need to do that we haven’t had the time to lift our heads up and ask those questions. If we stop doing things that don’t add value, we’ll find the time.

Finally, what advice do you have for conference attendees? Any tips and tricks for getting the most out of their experience?

I would advise people to really map out their strategy and be realistic. It’s one thing to take a look at our website and map out 14 sessions to attend. What I would ask people is, are you really going to attend 14 sessions over three days? If you’re not, then seek out the ones that you feel you can attend, engage in, and bring something back home to put in to practice. I think there’s always that balance between personal development and enhancing the practice. I’d ask people to really consider before they attend what they want to do for personal development, and then what they can bring back to their practice to really prove the value of attending the conference.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice updates.
Contact us online.
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News 10/4/17

Top News

Rock Health’s latest report puts digital health funding for 2017 at $1.2 billion, making it the biggest year yet for such investment since the company began tracking figures. The total includes 268 deals across 261 companies, with $334 million from 17 deals involving EHR and clinical workflow technology companies.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Check out HIStalk’s Must-See Exhibitors Guide for MGMA 2017. Map out your trip to the exhibit hall using the guide, which includes descriptions of the products and innovations (and giveaways!) our sponsors plan to showcase. We’ve also included contact information for sponsors that will be walking the show floor.

Webinars

October 17 (Tuesday) noon ET. “Improve Care and Save Clinician Time by Streamlining Specialty Drug Prescribing.” Sponsored by: ZappRx. Presenter: Jeremy Feldman, MD, director, pulmonary hypertension and advanced lung disease program and medical director of research, Arizona Pulmonary Specialists. Clinicians who treat pulmonary arterial hypertension can spend an average of 20 minutes to prescribe a single specialty drug and untold extra hours each month completing prior authorization (PA) paperwork to get patients the medications they need. This webinar will describe how Arizona Pulmonary Specialists automated the inefficient specialty drug ordering process to improve patient care while saving its clinicians time.

October 19 (Thursday) noon ET. “Understanding Enterprise Health Clouds with Forrester:  What can they do for you, and how do you choose the right one?” Sponsored by: Salesforce. Presenters: Joshua Newman, MD, chief medical officer, Salesforce; Kate McCarthy, senior analyst, Forrester. McCarthy will demystify industry solutions while offering insights from her recent Forrester report on enterprise health clouds. Newman and customers from leading healthcare organizations will share insights on how they drive efficiencies, manage patient and member journeys, and connect the entire healthcare ecosystem on the Salesforce platform.

October 26 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “Is your EHR limiting your success in value-based care?” Sponsored by: Philips Wellcentive. Presenters: Lindsey Bates, market director of compliance, Philips Wellcentive; Greg Fulton, industry and public policy lead, Philips Wellcentive. No single technology solution will solve every problem, so ensuring you select the ones most aligned to meet your strategic goals can be the difference between thriving or merely surviving. From quality reporting to analytics to measures building, developing a comprehensive healthcare strategy that will support your journey in population health and value-base care programs is the foundation of success. Join Philips Wellcentive for our upcoming interactive webinar, where we’ll help you evolve ahead of the industry, setting the right strategic goals and getting the most out of your technology solutions.

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.

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

Announcements and Implementations

The Cohen Veterans Network selects AI-driven clinical decision support from Raiven Healthcare to optimize treatment for veterans within its network of 11 mental health clinics.

In an effort to enhance transparency and accountability, medical marijuana technology company Alternate Health adds blockchain ledger technology to its newly rebranded CanaPass Patient Management System.

MRI of Woodbridge (NJ) selects RCM and PM services from Healthcare Administrative Partners.

EClinicalWorks adds a self-service option for customers to connect with CommonWell and Carequality.

People

VillageMD names Michael Pape (US Congress) head of growth strategies and business development in Kentucky.

Seth Darmstadter (Michelman & Robinson) joins Outcome Health as general counsel.

Government and Politics

Abdul Haq, MD pleads guilty to charges related to his involvement in a $19 million Medicare fraud scheme that involved a number of Detroit-area providers, all of whom seem to have colluded on prescribing Medicare beneficiaries medically unnecessary controlled substances, requiring them to undergo medically unnecessary procedures in exchange for prescriptions, and fraudulent billing, among other crimes.

Telemedicine

Griffin OB-Gyn Clinic (GA) will implement Women’s Telehealth services for maternal fetal medicine.

Premium Health Connections selects white-labeled technology from Teladoc to power its virtual consult offerings.

Other

Former US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD points to the workplace is a big contributor to today’s loneliness epidemic, which he considers to be a public health issue due to its correlation with decreased life spans stemming from heart disease, depression, anxiety and dementia. “For better or worse, people understand the language of epidemics,” Murthy says. “I think of loneliness as an epidemic because it affects a great number of people in our country, but also because one person’s loneliness can have an impact on another person. This is not a condition that is developing in isolation. I talk about this as an epidemic because it’s far more widespread than people believe, and like many illnesses that are related to our mental and psychological state, it gets swept under the rug and exists in the shadows. That’s why I speak about this with the urgency that I do.”

Sponsor Updates

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