News 3/23/17

Top News

Milwaukee, Portland, and Minneapolis take the top spots for shortest wait times in the latest Vitals report. The study shows that, on average, a patient spends 18 minutes and 35 seconds waiting to see a physician – a decrease of over a minute compared to 2016. Wait times have decreased 13 percent since the annual study launched in 2009. The study’s authors surmise that wait times will continue to decrease as options like telemedicine and urgent care facilities continue to proliferate.

Webinars

March 29 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Improving patient outcomes with smartphones: UW Medicine Valley Medical Center’s story.” Sponsored by Voalte. Presenters: James Jones, MBA, MSN, VP of patient care services and nursing operations, UW Medicine Valley Medical Center; Wayne Manuel, MBA, SVP of strategic services, UW Medicine Valley Medical Center. UW Medicine Valley Medical Center dramatically improved patient outcomes after moving to a smartphone-based platform for clinical communication and alarm and alert notification. Before-and-after analysis shows a reduction in hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and skin integrity events, fall and slip events, and medication errors. By limiting overhead paging, the medical center also created a calmer, quieter environment and improved engagement among nursing and hospitalists. Hospital executives will describe their experience and vision for the future in addressing quality, cost, and the patient-caregiver experience.

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

Santa Monica, CA-based Casetabs develops a surgery coordination app for Iphone users, especially ideal for physician practices, ambulatory surgery centers, and hospitals that want to coordinate care amongst caregivers, send and receive real-time patient updates, and reduce cancellations and delays.

Zynx Health will integrate Healthwise patient engagement and educational resources with each step of its care plans, giving providers a more efficient way to pull such content from their EHRs.

People

Sam Karam (Optum) joins AMC Health as CTO.

Endotronix hires Mike Dilworth (Nanosphere) as VP of manufacturing and operations, Katrin Leadley, MD (HeartWare) as CMO, and Richard Powers (CardioMEMS) as CIO. The Woodridge, IL-based company has developed cloud-based technology and sensors to help providers and patients detect the onset of heart failure.

Senior-focused primary care medical, management, and tech company ChenMed hires George Wheeler (Bon Secours Health System) as market president for JenCare Senior Medical Center (VA), Donald Trexler (Acadia General Hospital) as market president for JenCare Louisiana, Jim Whitling (Alcon) as chief of HR, and Gaurov Dayal, MD (Lumeris) as EVP, chief of strategic growth.

Government and Politics

The House vote to repeal and replace the ACA is postponed due to a lack of Republican support.

Other

The South Florida Business Journal looks at the waves Miami-based EZLabz is making in the world of mobile lab testing. Launched in 2015 by Physicians Group of South Florida MDs Jordan Hackmeier and Joel Lusky, the company is working to offer local physicians and their patients a cheaper and less time-consuming alternative to blood work done in house or by more well-established companies like Quest Diagnostics and LabCorp. It added an online platform to its mobile in-office services this week. Its founders have yet to draw salaries; instead, they are pouring revenue back into the company in hopes of securing additional investment and launching a mobile app.

The local news profiles the innovative yet tech-less ways in which one local pediatrician is teaching her patients and their parents some pretty basic concepts about good nutrition. Nimali Fernando, MD started Yum Pediatrics (VA) in 2014 to offer traditional healthcare appointments and cooking classes via her Doctor Yum nonprofit. “This way,” she says, “I can see patients on one side of the building or go into the kitchen side and participate in whatever is happening. It’s proven to be a really interesting way of practicing pediatrics, but it’s absolutely different and fun every day.” 

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Readers Write: Winning the Cutthroat Competition for Health Tech Talent

Winning the Cutthroat Competition for Health Tech Talent
By Rachel Neill

In the past 10 years, we’ve gone from a massive recession to an amazingly low national unemployment rate of 4.6 percent. It’s hard to believe that not long ago, senior managers were scrambling to take on entry-level work just to stay afloat in their respective industries. However, in 2016, the Bureau of Labor Statistics released reports that healthcare, and professional and business services added over 900,000 jobs in the preceding 12 months. Competition for talent in the health tech industry has become cutthroat, in part because of the rapid pace of industry growth. Established companies with significant market share have historically been able to lock up the best and brightest workers by virtue of buying power alone, but those days are over for now. Top talent is fleeing traditional powerhouse companies and jumping to nimble, well-funded competitors.

Employers have to think beyond traditional hiring processes and employee incentives if they want to stay competitive. Elaborate job descriptions and standard salary and benefits paradigms fall short. In order to attract and retain the best workers, especially those much-maligned-yet-undeniably-desirable Millenials, companies can make simple, yet significant, changes to adapt to the evolving needs and desires of the people they employ. Consider the insights below as you begin to rethink how your organization attracts and retains the best talent.

Keep an Open Mind … and a Short Job Description!

I hate job descriptions (Note to HR: Are they really a necessary evil?). Job posters may think they’re doing potential hires a favor by making an exhaustive list of qualifications, duties, and descriptors, but they’re probably not. There always seems to be a big disconnect between the actual hiring manager and the HR department, and a smart-sounding, long job description written out for legal or other well-intentioned purposes that often – and unfortunately -  eliminates some potentially good fits before they’re even in the door.

Hewlett-Packard’s internal report findings show that men apply for jobs when they are 60-percent qualified on paper, but women don’t until they feel 100-percent confident or have checked off every item on the description. That isn’t good; it means that a lot of talented people, women in particular, don’t even have a chance to succeed in many positions. The longer and more verbose a description, the less likely you are to get a diverse candidate pool. Job descriptions don’t lend themselves to transferability, either. For example, Epic implementers make great project managers across multiple industries based on the training and hands-on experience they get while traveling and working at multiple healthcare systems. They can define the scope of a project, put together a detailed plan, manage a budget, and get executive buy-in. None of those skills is unique to health tech, or any other industry for that matter.

What can you do that is actionable? Keep job descriptions short and simple. Don’t be overly specific unless a skill can’t be learned or there isn’t a substitute skill out there. Think about complementary skill sets someone might have and incorporate examples into your job posting. Finally, make the application process simple and encourage current employees to refer people they think have the chops.

Employee Perks and Benefits Matter

You may have heard about Netflix’s unlimited paid parental leave or France’s new law that aims at making it illegal to require employees to answer after-hours email. (Supporters of the law have compared humans and technology to dogs and leashes). More and more employees are seeking work-life balance and flexible employment. You may not have the budget for unlimited parental leave, but there are plenty of other programs you can put in place.

Develop an employee perk page. Don’t worry, It’s free. Work with local and national companies to negotiate discounts – this can be on anything from gym memberships to clothing. Think creatively, but don’t overload employees with perks they might not use. If you aren’t sure, ASK. Most people would appreciate lower-cost access to health and fitness programs, but not everybody wants 10-percent off at the local drapes emporium.

Re-think your vacation policy. Maintaining an open vacation policy and becoming a results-based work organization doesn’t mean your employees will never show up to work. Actually, compensation and benefits research indicate that employees with flexible vacation policies don’t take any more time off than those with formal PTO programs in place. However, it gives an employee autonomy and the ability to stay healthy and take care of life as it happens. Tying paid time off into a results-based plan means that you can limit the program for any outliers who may not be meeting standards or that are taking advantage of the program.

Remote work. These days, technology allows us to fulfill many of our professional responsibilities from just about anywhere. Offering employees the option to work from home can help employers recapture time that may have been lost because an employee felt that they needed to take PTO.  If your employees can get their jobs done from another location, then why not let them have some flexibility?

Workers Want to Make an Impact

Today’s employees today, especially Millennials, are looking at the impact their position will have beyond the four walls of their office. They want to know that the work they are doing is meaningful, often in ways wholly unrelated to the job itself. Many are making a difference with data, or attacking and solving big problems in healthcare. Firms attracting top talent like Healthfinch, Catalyze, Redox, and CareMerge are sifting through and connecting the massive amounts of data to improve patient outcomes. Consider making this meaningful impact a highly visible part of the much-dreaded job description I mentioned above.

In the end, Professor of Management and Human Resources Peter Capelli leaves us with some parting wisdom: “If there’s nothing distinctive you can offer to set your organization apart, and you don’t want to pay enough to buy the talent you prefer, then, just like any other shopper, you’ll have to start compromising on what you want.”

Rachel Neill is CEO of Carex Consulting Group in Madison, WI.

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Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 3/22/17

Top News

GE Healthcare CEO John Flannery says the company will double its workforce of 5,000 software engineers within the next several years as part of a previously announced broader plan to invest $500 million in software talent and development. Flannery says the engineers will most likely be put to work making the company’s Predix industrial cloud platform more medical-app friendly. He added that, “We’ll be hiring software engineers, data analysts, imaging analysts, to develop our own apps, but also to develop the platform and the capability of the platform to host hundreds of other applications.”

Webinars

March 29 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Improving patient outcomes with smartphones: UW Medicine Valley Medical Center’s story.” Sponsored by Voalte. Presenters: James Jones, MBA, MSN, VP of patient care services and nursing operations, UW Medicine Valley Medical Center; Wayne Manuel, MBA, SVP of strategic services, UW Medicine Valley Medical Center. UW Medicine Valley Medical Center dramatically improved patient outcomes after moving to a smartphone-based platform for clinical communication and alarm and alert notification. Before-and-after analysis shows a reduction in hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and skin integrity events, fall and slip events, and medication errors. By limiting overhead paging, the medical center also created a calmer, quieter environment and improved engagement among nursing and hospitalists. Hospital executives will describe their experience and vision for the future in addressing quality, cost, and the patient-caregiver experience.

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

CareWire adds predictive analytics from Connance – including behavioral and socio-demographic data – to its text-based appointment reminder and patient engagement platform.

The Center for Family and Child Enrichment (FL) selects TenEleven Group’s behavioral health EHR to streamline administrative functions and better serve families in Miami-Dade County.

Entrada adds enterprise mobile scribing capabilities to its physician documentation solution, giving physicians EHR-friendly options based on their note-taking preference in one solution.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

HIE image-exchange and clinical referral technology vendor EHealth Technologies will invest $310,000 in expanding its headquarters in West Henrietta, NY by nearly 12,000 square feet. It also plans to hire an additional 84 staffers over the next three years.

Telemedicine

Salus Telehealth partners with Tragedy Assistance Program for Survivors to offer military family members virtual grief counseling at no cost.

Austin Regional Clinic (TX) partners with local telemedicine company EMD Access to launch virtual urgent-care consult services in May. It is in the process of developing a similar offering for patients with chronic conditions. ARC, which has 20 locations, seems to be on a bit of a health IT buying spree: It added evidence-based clinical guideline support from Wolters Kluwer to its Epic HER earlier this month.

People

Richard Moran (Menlo College) joins VideoKall’s Board of Directors. The Potomac, MD-based company is preparing to launch a line of virtual consult kiosks that seem similar in scope to HealthSpot, which, as readers may recall, sold its assets to Rite-Aid for $1.5 million after shutting down for unspecified reasons last summer. None of the company’s three presumably full-time employees ties to healthcare, which makes me wonder how well the company will fare.

Government and Politics

My “Government Faves” Twitter list has been relatively quiet since the Trump Administration took over (with the exception of one former CMS staffer.) Eight tweets in, CMS Administrator Seema Verma seems to be getting the hang of the social media tool.

Sponsor Updates

• CompuGroup Medical will exhibit at CLMA KnowledgeLab 2017 March 26-29 in Nashville.
• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at AMGA March 22-25 in Grapevine, TX.
• Healthwise exhibits at Ehealth Initiative’s annual conference March 21-22 in Washington, DC.

Blog Posts

• 4 Ways Independent Practices can Thrive with Streamlined Workflow (AdvancedMD)
• The Perfect Storm (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)

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Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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Readers Write: Disrupting the Traditional Physician Practice

Disrupting the Traditional Physician Practice
By Waqaas Al-Siddiq

The emerging field of connected healthcare is rapidly becoming a reality and has the potential to overturn a healthcare system deeply rooted in pen, paper, and people. This leaves healthcare workers wondering what their future role will be. Big data at the individual level will introduce terabytes of biological, anatomical, physiological, and environmental information that a human will simply be unable to process. This data-deluged future will require synergy between man and machine, which will ultimately transform life science into data science. It will also markedly improve healthcare and health outcomes.

Remote patient monitoring is the use of wireless, remote technology to manage patients at a distance. This includes not only apps on smartphones and tablets, but smart sensing technologies coupled with artificial intelligence. They have low-power connectivity, streamlined user interfaces, data processing, and the capacity to store and analyze data for medical use. This, and other kinds of connected care, promises to make diagnosis, treatment, and prevention widely accessible at a fraction of current costs. Even today, wearable devices are available that can diagnose heart conditions; asthma monitoring sensors that detect poor air quality and adherence to medication; and glucose monitors that send the data of diabetics straight to their smartphones. By improving patient adherence and preventing unnecessary physician visits, connected care technologies like AI-enhanced RPM promise to reduce costs and improve lives.

A facet of healthcare that is particularly poised to benefit from AI-enhanced RPM is chronic care management. CCM is the most expensive branch of care, soaking up 86 percent of America’s healthcare dollars. Typically, a physician will prescribe medicines, suggest lifestyle changes, and schedule follow-up visits, which leaves much of the ongoing “management” of the disease to the individual.

In their summer 2015 Equity Research publication entitled “The Digital Revolution comes to US Healthcare”, Goldman, Sachs & Co. name two specific ways that RPM can improve chronic care management:

1. By digesting and presenting data in a customizable and comprehensible way, RPM applications will enable physicians to act immediately. This will also help the patient to immediately understand their health status and counter any negative progression.
2. By continuously monitoring a patient’s vital signs, AI-enhanced RPM can catch or even predict acute care events and initiate action that will save the patient.

Currently, cardiologists use Holter monitors to capture a patient’s heart’s activity over a 48-hour period. The data is brought back to the physician, who then renders a report based on that past activity. Conversely, RPM would capture and relay activity in real-time to doctors, catching any immediate dangers as well as conditions that take longer periods of time to diagnose. The AI would then analyze the data for variances, comparing it to other patient data, and amalgamating a personalized data set. This will not only improve health outcomes, but more effectively leverage a physician’s time by eliminating the need to compile reports and personalized treatment plans. This will free their schedule so that they can interact with more patients, and focus on the complex cases that require human intervention.

Jack Kreindler, MD founder of London’s Center for Health and Human Performance, sees great potential for RPM enhanced with AI. He envisions being able to move beyond the simplistic rules of current monitoring to “use these technologies to eliminate all avoidable hospitalization and in the process, solve the trillion-dollar problem of chronic disease, which is crippling our economies.”

Properly employing healthcare technology can result in better patient outcomes, improve convenience, and potentially lower healthcare costs, but there is still concern about the doctor’s future active role in patient care. The shift in the healthcare reimbursement paradigm from fee-for-service to value-based care is only the first step towards the implementation of connected healthcare, which began with the desire to keep patients out of hospitals beds. Now that the motivations of both patients and physicians are aligned, technology is positioned to facilitate and empower this new collaboration. Implementing highly sophisticated tools like AI-enhanced RPM would allow physicians to engage patients and offer better treatment that is also more comprehensive.

AI-enhanced technology is poised to disrupt the current healthcare paradigm. It will support the physician’s traditional role in healthcare while also empowering patients, and inviting collaboration and knowledge, which will result in a better partnership for overall health.

Waqaas Al-Siddiq is founder and CEO of Biotricity in Redwood City, CA.

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Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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News 3/21/17

Top News

Former Rep. John Fleming, MD (R-LA) will join HHS in the new role of deputy assistant secretary for health technology at an unspecified date. The job will effectively put him at the head of ONC (which is facing an uncertain organizational future in light of potential budget cuts) and in good company with former National Coordinators Vindell Washington, MD and Karen DeSalvo, MD – both natives of Louisiana. Fun fact: Fleming is a third-degree black belt, and was one of the first family physicians in his area to offer evening and weekend hours to better accommodate patient schedules.

Webinars

March 29 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Improving patient outcomes with smartphones: UW Medicine Valley Medical Center’s story.” Sponsored by Voalte. Presenters: James Jones, MBA, MSN, VP of patient care services and nursing operations, UW Medicine Valley Medical Center; Wayne Manuel, MBA, SVP of strategic services, UW Medicine Valley Medical Center. UW Medicine Valley Medical Center dramatically improved patient outcomes after moving to a smartphone-based platform for clinical communication and alarm and alert notification. Before-and-after analysis shows a reduction in hospital-acquired pressure ulcers and skin integrity events, fall and slip events, and medication errors. By limiting overhead paging, the medical center also created a calmer, quieter environment and improved engagement among nursing and hospitalists. Hospital executives will describe their experience and vision for the future in addressing quality, cost, and the patient-caregiver experience.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Specialty care technology company Integra Connect develops a set of services – including patient risk analysis and stratification, and real-time care coordination and management – for oncology practices participating in the CMS Oncology Care Management program.

Gainesville Radiology Group (GA) extends its PM and RCM agreement with Zotec Partners.

HBI Solutions enlists health IT services firm J2 Interactive to assist its predictive analytics end users with implementation, adoption, and training.

People

The Massachusetts Academy of Family Physicians elects Flora Sadri-Azarbayejani, DO president.

Telemedicine

Navigating Cancer adds telemedicine and remote-monitoring capabilities to its Care Management technology for oncologists.

Research and Innovation

WebMD and the Scripps Translational Science Institute embark on a pregnancy study using WebMD’s Pregnancy app to better understand contributing factors to a healthy pregnancy. Using Apple’s ResearchKit software, study participants will be able to record and share information during and after pregnancy, including medication use, vaccinations received, blood pressure,and weight change. Women will also be able to share biometric data from connected wearables, and receive visualizations of their data and that of their peers. I sincerely hope they’ve taken mental health into account. How comforting would it be for an expectant mother to realize that the crying jag she’s been on for the last two days is fairly normal for her peer group? Or, for her OB to determine that the pre-baby blues she’s experiencing are indicative of the depression she may sink into after her due date?

A JAMA Pediatrics analysis of 37 studies finds that mobile health interventions had a small but significant effect on the health outcomes of the 30,000 minors aggregated in the studies. The researchers conclude that, “Given the ubiquity of mobile phones, mobile health interventions offer promise in improving public health.” “Promising” seems to be the key word here, as physicians have yet to fully figure out the best way in which to receive and act on the data, not to mention get reimbursed for it.

Other

The local paper highlights the love Michigan State University College of Medicine students showed family medicine on Match Day. Nearly 43 percent of the 200 students accepted into residency programs chose primary care. It’s an encouraging statistic given a study released earlier this month that found the US will face a shortage of up to 43,000 PCPs by 2030.

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Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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