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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News 3/20/17

Top News

Physician billing and coding company RevMD opens its first office in Puerto Rico. The Scottsdale, AZ-based company, which also has a presence in Bangalore, India, will initially employ 12 at its office in San Juan. It plans on hiring an additional 38 staffers by this September.

HIStalk Practice Musings

I finally blocked an afternoon out to spend watching Hidden Figures – one of the best films I’ve seen in quite awhile. (You can read a synopsis of the plot here.) It painted such a vivid picture for me of that era, and gave me a great excuse to talk about civil rights, women’s rights, and the importance of life-long learning and a strong work ethic and with the young female family member who accompanied me. We both were happy to learn that former NASA mathematician Katherine Johnson, who I considered to be the film’s main character, received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2015. If you’re interested in catching up and keeping up with the work women have done and are doing for the space program, check out "From Hidden to Modern Figures” at NASA.gov. 

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

Atlanta Gastroenterology Associates (GA) connects to the statewide HIE via GaHIN’s Georgia ConnectedCare technology, which includes deep patient search functionality and access to Medicaid data via the Georgia Dept. of Community Health.

PCIHIPAA adds an online HIPAA checklist tool to its OfficeSafe technology to help physicians understand and track HIPAA compliance.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Dallas-based startup Blockit raises $152,000 in seed funding to further develop a real-time physician and patient scheduling app for episodes of care that will also include referral and stand-alone appointment-making capabilities. CEO Jake McCarley’s background includes stints with GuideIT and Dell, while CMO Mark Carver, MD is a practicing anesthesiologist and corporate medical director at Mednax.

Telemedicine

New York-based Upstate Concierge Medicine rebrands its virtual services for employers to United Concierge Medicine to better reflect its reach beyond Upstate New York. The company has also upgraded its UCMnow app, which as is or via white label.

Teladoc adds Accolade’s concierge healthcare services to its telemedicine package for employers and payers. The partnership comes just a few weeks after Accolade announced that it will embark on a $2 million office expansion project that will include the hiring of an additional 250 employees at its headquarters in Plymouth Meeting, PA.

Government and Politics

HHS offers dedicated resources to help consumers understand repeal and replacement efforts. “We’re taking action to improve choices for patients, stabilize the individual and small-group insurance markets, and expand access to more affordable coverage,” say Secretary Tom Price, MD. “This page will be the place to go for updates on our ongoing efforts.”

Other

WEDI publishes a helpful primer (a great read for anyone new to the industry) on the rampant growth of data breaches in healthcare.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

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Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 3/19/17

Virginia Gurley, MD (Cultiva Health Consulting) joins AxisPoint Health as CMO.

The Los Angeles County Dept. of Health Services selects ClientTrack Care Coordination technology from Eccovia Solutions to support a five-year pilot program that will deliver social and healthcare services to 50,000 of the county’s most vulnerable Medicaid patients.

Texas-based Seven Flags ACO enlists the population health management technology and consulting services of Innovista Health Solutions to help it manage 10,500 patients in value-based contracts. The ACO has also leaned on the expertise of the Texas Medical Association’s PracticeEdge value-based consulting firm.

BCBS licensee Blue Health Intelligence offers a new analytics platform to help providers and payers address population health and financial management issues.

Hawaii’s leading health plan HMSA selects Sharecare’s consumer health and messaging platform for a statewide rollout and also makes an unspecified investment in the company, started in 2010 by WebMD founder Jeff Arnold and TV’s Dr. Oz. Sharecare acquired the population health business of Healthways in July 2016.

Sponsor Updates

• Billings Clinic Hospital (MO) goes live with Versus Wi-Fi RTLS asset tracking.
• Intelligent Medical Objects and PerfectServe will exhibit at AMGA 2017 March 22-25 in Grapevine, TX.
• NVoq will exhibit at the ACC Annual Scientific Session & Expo March 17-19 in Washington, DC.

Contacts

Jenn, Mr. H, Lorre

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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