News 4/12/17

Top News

Quality Systems subsidiary NextGen Healthcare will acquire mobile physician documentation and communication technology vendor Entrada in a deal worth $34 million. NextGen President and CEO Rusty Frantz says the company will focus on expanding Entrada’s capabilities. The two companies last made headlines together in 2012, when NextGen added Entrada software to its ambulatory EHR and PM systems.

Webinars

April 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “SSM Integrated Health Technologies Clinical Data Migration: Functional and Technical Considerations.” Sponsored by Galen Healthcare Solutions. Presenters: Sandy Winklemann, MHA, RHIA, project manager, SSM Integration Health Technologies; Tyler Mawyer, MHA, managing consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions; Kavon Kaboli, MPH, senior consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions. GE Centricity and Meditech to Epic EHR transition. Join us for a complimentary webinar as present the decisions that are important to consider when performing a clinical data migration from the point of view of  the healthcare organization program manager, the clinical analyst, and the technical implementation team. Our expert panel will survey data migration considerations, best practices, and lessons learned. The webinar will present a unique client perspective, offering insight into considerations surrounding staffing, clinical mapping, legacy application support, and validation and testing.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Care 24/7 will integrate educational video content from The Wellness Network into its care plans for Medicare patients, particularly those with chronic conditions.

Evoq develops a smartphone app to help physicians collect and share EHR data from multiple sources. The Blynq app can also act as a PHR for patients.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Boston-based Redstar Ventures co-founders Jeet Singh and Joe Chung develop Kinto, an app designed to help caregivers, particularly those that care for seniors, check in with their family members, collaborate with care teams, and manage medications. Singh and Chung are serial entrepreneurs, having founded a number of companies including an e-commerce company that was eventually sold to Oracle. Kinto seems to be their first foray into healthcare.

Spartanburg, SC-based Care.IT (pronounced “carrot”) takes over a former CareWorks clinic in a Weis Markets store in Schnecksville, PA. Care.IT, which seems to have made a small name for itself as a telemedicine company, will offer in-person and virtual care via a team led by former LeHigh Valley Health NP Fran Fasching. 

Care coordination and PHR software company CareSync goes after Florida-based Orthopedic Injury Management for back payments of $53,000. The practice isn’t the only one that owes money to the Tampa, FL-based company. It filed similar money-collection proceedings against eight other customers in late March – a fact that makes me wonder how often other health IT companies that cater to struggling physician practices deal with this problem.

Government and Politics

OCR fines Denver-based Metro Community Provider Network $400,000 for potential noncompliance with HIPAA due to a lack of protocol around the safeguarding of electronic PHI. The FQHC will also have to put a corrective action plan into place. The fine stems from an early 2012 data breach reported by MCPN to OCR, after which it failed to conduct a timely risk analysis as required.

Telemedicine

Rotary Senior Living (IA) offers residents virtual consults through Avera eCare’s long-term care program.

New York-based startup Virtual Health Partners raises an undisclosed amount of Series A funding, which it will no doubt use to further develop its white-label virtual nutrition and wellness software.

Other

Samuel Williams, MD makes the local news when he lets it be known that he hopes to offer “$1 a minute” office visits once his Williams Geriatric Medicine and Medical Services practice opens in Albany, GA. He is also weighing his telemedicine options – a wise move given that he hasn’t yet acquired office space. Williams seems genuine in his intent to offer affordable care to an elderly population of patients living in a rural area with limited incomes and access to physicians. “I know how expensive medical bills can be,” he says. “I’m just trying to get started. The one thing that everyone can agree on is that everyone needs healthcare. My goal is to provide the best primary care possible.”

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD expands its professional services team.
• The local paper profiles Hartford Healthcare’s (CT) plans to build a predictive analytics “command center” powered by GE Healthcare.

Blog Posts

• Creating and Implementing a Revenue Cycle Management Denials Committee (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• How Care Coordination Can Help Create High-Quality, Cost-Saving Care Transitions (Healthwise)

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Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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5 Questions with Cara Farooque, Practice Manager, Craft Behavioral Health

Cara Farooque is practice manager of Craft Behavioral Health in Northeast Florida. The provider of outpatient psychiatric and therapy services employs, in addition to Farooque, one full-time psychiatrist, five part-time psychotherapists and two front-desk staff to care for a highly variable rate of patients. “Our therapists set their own schedule,” Farooque explains, “so some days there are four of them on site in addition to the MD; other times, it is just one. Many of our patients are dependent on public transportation, so weather also has a large impact on our no-show rate. The beginning of the month, when everyone who gets paid on a monthly basis receives their paychecks, is generally quite a bit more busy than the end.”

The practice has spent the last year backing up all of its paper charts and transitioning to Kareo’s EHR and billing platform. “Our clinicians seem pleased so far,” Farooque says, “and the crossover between EHR and billing is seamless. One of our major focuses now is making sure that all patients have follow-up care and remember their follow-up appointments. Culturally, this is sometimes a challenge, as things exist in a ‘here and now’ context rather than in a ‘week from now.’ The automated follow up emails, texts, and calls have made a huge impact on our no-show rate.”

When it comes to federal programs, CBH is in the process of transitioning from Meaningful Use to the Quality Payment Program. Quality measures have already been implemented, as well as some of Advancing Care Information and Improvement activities. A full roll out/transition is expected by April 15.

How has healthcare technology helped to improve patient access and outcomes since the practice launched in 2010?

I am encouraged just by the QPP measures versus the MU Standards. The QPP measures are actually selected by us, and have meaning to us and our practice. Patients can access selected portions of their charts through the patient portal. The reminders have helped improve our no-show rate and helped patients stay compliant with their medication.

Are you encouraged by the increased focus the industry seems to be placing on using health IT to better integrate primary and mental healthcare?

Currently, the industry is focusing on primary care and preventative medicine. With the new leadership and the proposed changes, I’m afraid we may see some drastic changes and people who finally got coverage as a result of ACA are going to be right back where they were before – underserved and uncovered.

What challenges do mental health providers face when it comes to finding and adopting healthcare technology?

Always vetting the security. What exactly does “HIPAA compliant” mean? I read an article recently that basically said “HIPAA Compliant” wasn’t worth the paper it was printed on. Everyone claims they’re HIPAA compliant yet no one has a standard definition for it yet.

What advice can you offer other mental health practices when it comes to selecting and implementing healthcare technology?

Do your research, check with other providers, get what you need. Don’t think that because it is a standard EHR it can’t be tailored to fit a mental health practice. It is actually the best that way – you can either develop your own templates or work with the vendor to develop templates to suit your practice. Make sure they meet all documentation guidelines, and then the templates are uniquely yours.

What’s next up on your health IT shopping list? How do you hope that this will benefit your patients and staff?

I would love to upgrade all the computers, with all the scanning, eligibility checks, etc. If they don’t empty their cache several times they need to re-start. Upgrading everything from Win8 to 10. I think the facial recognition and fingerprint scanner would really give us another layer of security on both the patient and staff check-ins. Tablets – I would really like to go totally paperless for increased efficiency, as the form would upload straight into the EHR and we wouldn’t have any paper floating around as a potential HIPAA violation. That’s my wish list.

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Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 4/11/17

Top News

Accounting firm Dean Dorton Allen Ford acquires physician billing and credentialing business Metro Medical Solutions for an undisclosed sum. MMS will be rolled into the Dean Dorton Healthcare Solutions consulting practice. Both companies are based in Louisville, KY.

Reader Comments

From Just the Fax: “Re: ‘A study in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association finds that pharmacists have a better chance of resolving prescription questions when they reach out to physicians by phone rather than fax.’ In discussing a recent study of pharmacy communications, the fact that they are still using faxes was noted as evidence that e-prescribing is still not sufficient in its adoption. There may be multiple explanations. We use e-prescribing routinely – we are in NY. Yet we still get frequent faxes from pharmacies. Even when I’ve called and pleaded with them to stop, they refuse to do so. Sometimes they send them to the primary care physician for renewal even when the original script was from a specialist. This happened with one of my patients a few weeks ago and the primary care physician submitted it for the wrong dose. Then the managed care company refused to fill it for the right dose because it had already been filled for the month. But that kind of error probably wouldn’t be identified as such. Automatic faxes are also a problem because there is a tendency for people to just sign them and fax them back without calling the patient or looking at the chart. Perhaps some MDs like them but I find them risky.”

Webinars

April 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “SSM Integrated Health Technologies Clinical Data Migration: Functional and Technical Considerations.” Sponsored by Galen Healthcare Solutions. Presenters: Sandy Winklemann, MHA, RHIA, project manager, SSM Integration Health Technologies; Tyler Mawyer, MHA, managing consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions; Kavon Kaboli, MPH, senior consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions. GE Centricity and Meditech to Epic EHR transition. Join us for a complimentary webinar as present the decisions that are important to consider when performing a clinical data migration from the point of view of  the healthcare organization program manager, the clinical analyst, and the technical implementation team. Our expert panel will survey data migration considerations, best practices, and lessons learned. The webinar will present a unique client perspective, offering insight into considerations surrounding staffing, clinical mapping, legacy application support, and validation and testing.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Aprima Medical Software will add ActX’s genomic decision-support technology to its EHR, giving end users drug genomic interaction alerts as part of their prescription workflows. ActX entered into a similar arrangement with CompuGroup Medical earlier this year.

ZyDoc retools its TrackDoc cloud-based transcription technology to include an EHR-integrated smartphone app and enhanced security.

Gateway Homes (VA) selects the AlphaFlex EHR from Mediware Information Systems to help improve its mental health skills-building and psychosocial services rehabilitation services at its three facilities.

The Vascular Experts implements Meridian Medical Management’s VertexDR PM and EHR software, and PrecisionBI analytics tool at its eight outpatient surgical facilities across Connecticut and New York.

Telemedicine

The State of Colorado’s Medicaid program offers members real-time, text-based mental health consults from Ieso Digital Health through a partnership with behavioral health company Beacon Health Options.

The American Telemedicine Association releases guidelines child and adolescent telemental health, plus stroke assessment.

People

Kellie Rice (Together Health Network) joins primary care services and support company ConcertoHealth as executive director of its Michigan market.

Research and Innovation

Researchers determine that hospital-based physicians are more likely than their practice-based counterparts to refer patients complaining of back pain, headaches, or upper respiratory tract infections for CT or MRI scans and X-rays, and for further evaluation by a specialist. The authors of the resultant study, which analyzed data from 31,000 appointments, posit that the unnecessary, or low-value, testing and referrals may be due to the fact that hospital-based MDs have such technology at their fingertips. The study also found that physicians – no matter their location – who did not have a steady relationship with the patient beforehand were more likely to order tests.

Other

Just in time for National Library Week: Researchers develop the Historic Book Odor Wheel, an olfactory identification tool similar to those used to characterize the smells of coffee or wine. The need for such a wheel is part of a greater heritage research project aimed at developing guidelines for characterizing, preserving, and potentially recreating old smells. “When we talk to curators of historic libraries, they point out that smell is the first really important reaction between the visitor and the library itself,” explains researcher Matija Strlič. Colleague Cecilia Bembibre adds that while smell isn’t the whole picture, it “starts a conversation with philosophers, scientists, anthropologists, technologists, and the public itself about what we need to describe a smell.”

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News 4/10/17

Top News

Azalea Health acquires San Diego-based EHR and PM company LeonardoMD for an undisclosed sum. LeonardoMD CEO and pediatric plastic surgeon Ralph Holmes, MD will transition into a physician advisory role at Azalea Health.

Webinars

April 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “SSM Integrated Health Technologies Clinical Data Migration: Functional and Technical Considerations.” Sponsored by Galen Healthcare Solutions. Presenters: Sandy Winklemann, MHA, RHIA, project manager, SSM Integration Health Technologies; Tyler Mawyer, MHA, managing consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions; Kavon Kaboli, MPH, senior consultant, Galen Healthcare Solutions. GE Centricity and Meditech to Epic EHR transition. Join us for a complimentary webinar as present the decisions that are important to consider when performing a clinical data migration from the point of view of  the healthcare organization program manager, the clinical analyst, and the technical implementation team. Our expert panel will survey data migration considerations, best practices, and lessons learned. The webinar will present a unique client perspective, offering insight into considerations surrounding staffing, clinical mapping, legacy application support, and validation and testing.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Associates in Diagnostic Radiology and Plaza Radiology – both based in Tennessee – extend their RCM agreements with Zotec Partners.

AthenaHealth adds electronic prior authorization technology from CoverMyMeds to its AthenaClinicals EHR.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The Pennsylvania Medical Society creates The Care Centered Collaborative, a practice management company aimed at helping Pennsylvania physicians transition to value-based care business models. PAMED has earmarked $15 million for eventual CCC development, including the hiring of 10 FTEs.

New Jersey-based healthcare management company Partners in Care and physician hospital organization CentraState Healthcare Partners form Partners Health Alliance. PHA will provide practice management services focused on help its 700-plus members in The Garden State better leverage value-based contracts with commercial and government payers.

People

Former US Navy Secretary Ray Mabus joins Heal’s Board of Directors. Mabus launched the 21st Century Sailor and Marine health improvement initiative during his eight-year stint as secretary in an effort to reduce sexual assault, suicide, and alcohol and drug abuse.

Michael Ross, MD (Connected Health Strategies) joins Cureatr as a senior clinical advisor.

Government and Politics

New York officials arrest 13 people including physicians, office managers, NPs, and PTs for their alleged roles in a pill-mill ring involving three clinics in Brooklyn. Over the course of five years, the clinics prescribed 6.3 million opioid pills and received over $24 million in fraudulent reimbursements from CMS stemming from unnecessary testing. The investigation kicked off in 2012 (the same year the state’s I-Stop PDMP legislation was passed) when officials noticed a group of “doctor shoppers” becoming extremely active in their medically unnecessary prescription-seeking efforts. No mention has been made thus far of what role New York’s PDMP had in the investigation.

Telemedicine

Crain’s covers the ongoing efforts of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan and Blue Care Network to help 23 physician organizations implement telemedicine services via its physician group incentive program. Seventeen organizations have submitted telemedicine plans that could generate additional reimbursements beginning next month. Six have launched services in some of their practices, while another six are still weighing their options. “The physicians recognize the need to incorporate telehealth into their primary care practices to avoid the fragmentation of care and overuse of antibiotics that could occur if their patients use stand-alone urgent care telehealth centers,” says BCBS consultant Margaret Mason.

Research and Innovation

A study in the Journal of the American Pharmacists Association finds that pharmacists have a better chance of resolving prescription questions when they reach out to physicians by phone rather than fax. The fact that the fax machine is mentioned at all in this study reinforces the fact that there are still many practices that have yet to make the leap to e-prescribing – perhaps with good reason. Of those that have gone digital, researchers found that new prescriptions sent via eRx required clarification four times more than those that were faxed, and twice as often as those that were written. The researchers point out that there is obviously room for improvement when it comes to e-prescribing interfaces.

Other

The IT team at Crystal Clinic Orthopaedic Center (OH) take matters into their own hands when they realize their EHR vendor can’t get them connected to the state PDMP before the end of the year. In six weeks, CIO Gregg Zolton and Gary Pennington, MD led development of an interface “button” that connects their EHR to the Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System. CCOC clinicians can now access OARRS information in less than a second; it previously took seven minutes. “The opioid epidemic could not wait for our vendor to develop the integration software for our EHR system,” says Zolton. “With the professional talent of our IT staff, we were able to integrate the OARRS program in six weeks without the assistance of our vendor.” Google wasn’t much help in my quest to determine what EHR the clinic uses. CCOC uses Medfusion and YourCareUniverse for its patient portals on the clinic and hospital side, respectively.

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Safer Patients, Better Care: Help with ECRI Institute’s Patient Safety Concerns (Versus Technology)
• [EHR Security Assessments] Your path to optimization (Nordic)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 4/9/17

Care management tech company Altruista Health hires Jean Prater (General Dynamics IT) as VP of project management, and Tom Joyer (Health Integrated) as VP of sales.

I2I Population Health names Dawn Berg (Assist Consulting Group), Scot McCray (CamCare) (not pictured), and Jay Wilkes (RyMir Consulting) to its sales team. Adam Ackerman (Relatient) joins the company as director of client development.

Netsmart will work with several clients, including Tri-County Mental Health Services (MO), located in states selected to participate in the Certified Community Behavioral Health Clinic program. The CCBHC program requires the use of evidence-based practices, care coordination, integration with physical healthcare, and the provision of 24-hour crisis care, plus participation in a new payment system set up by SAMHSA. The company will deliver care coordination, connectivity, HIE, RCM, and population health management solutions.

CMS awards United Way of Greater Cleveland a $4.51 million grant to help it create a Accountable Health Communities Model. The United Way chapter will use the funds over a five-year period to integrate its community resource navigators into seven Cleveland Clinic, MetroHealth, St. Vincent Charity Medical Center, and Care Alliance Health Center locations. The navigators will work with the providers to assess the health-related social needs of Medicaid and Medicare patients, many of whom live below poverty level. The grant will also help the organizations partner on technology, workflow design, assessment, and planning needs.

Iowa-based Mercy ACO selects Innovaccer’s Datashop data warehouse to aggregate health data from 65 participating facilities including ambulatory sites, hospitals, and payers.

Sponsor Updates

• Intelligent Medical Objects exhibits at the Allscripts Northeast Pro ARUG in Hartford, CT.
• Nordic Consulting presents what employees love most about the company.

Blog Posts

• Non-technical Considerations Before Beginning an Epic Connect Project (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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