News 10/10/16

Top News

Teladoc and Doctor on Demand provide free virtual consults to patients in Hurricane Matthew evacuation zones. The company has set up dedicated hotlines in Florida, Georgia, and the Carolinas. While the need for such services stateside is without question, I’d be remiss if I didn’t also mention the huge need for relief resources in Haiti, where the death toll has surpassed 1,000 and a cholera outbreak is in full swing. The Weather Channel has put together a list of humanitarian organizations accepting donations for all affected areas.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Thanks to the following sponsors, new and renewing, that recently supported HIStalk Practice, HIStalk, and HIStalk Connect. Click a logo for more information. Email Lorre if you’d like to join club.

If you’re a HIStalk Practice, HIStalk, or HIStalk Connect sponsor exhibiting at MGMA, complete this form and I’ll include your company in our downloadable exhibitors guide. The conference kicks off October 30 in San Francisco.

Webinars

October 13 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “Glycemic Control During Therapeutic Hypothermia.” Sponsored by Monarch Medical Technologies. Presenter: Tracey Melhuish, RN, MSN, clinical practice specialist, Holy Cross Hospital (FL). Using therapeutic hypothermia (TH) as a method of care can present risks of hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, and blood glucose variability. Maintaining safe glucose levels during the cooling and rewarming phases of TH reduces the risks of adverse events. Tracey Melhuish, author of “Linking Hypothermia and Hyperglycemia,” will share best practices for optimal glucose control during TH and the success Holy Cross Hospital sees while using a computerized glucose management software.

October 25 (Tuesday) 1:30 ET. “Data Privacy/Insider Threat Mitigation: What Hospitals Can Learn From Other Industries.” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Robert Kuller, chief commercial officer, Haystack Informatics; Mitchell Parker, CISSP, executive director of information security and compliance, Indiana University Health. Cybersecurity insurers believe that hospitals are too focused on perimeter threats, ransomware, and the threat of OCR audits instead of insider threats, which are far more common but less likely to earn media attention. Attendees will learn how behavior analytics is being used to profile insiders and detect unusual behaviors proactively and to place privacy/insider risk within the risk management matrix.

November 9 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “How to Create Healthcare Apps That Get Used and Maybe Even Loved.” Sponsored by MedData. Presenter: Jeff Harper, founder and CEO, Duet Health. Patients, clinicians, and hospital employees are also consumers who manage many aspects of their non-medical lives on their mobile devices. Don’t crush their high technology expectations with poorly designed, seldom used apps that tarnish your carefully protected image. Your app represents your brand and carries high expectations on both sides. This webinar will describe how to build a mobile healthcare app that puts the user first, meets their needs (which are often different from their wants), creates "stickiness," and delivers the expected benefits to everyone involved.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. View previous webinars on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Intelligent Medical Objects confirms that private equity firm Warburg Pincus has made a growth capital investment in its medical terminology content and services. IMO CEO Frank Naeymi-Rad says the company will use the funds to further develop its technology and presence in international markets.

Announcements and Implementations

San Francisco-based Chinese Community Health Care Association implements NextGate’s Enterprise Master Patient Index technology. The independent physician association will use the EMPI tool to attach a unique identifier to patient records for easier sharing among its 200 members, 100 affiliates, and the 10 different EHRs they use to care for 45,000 patients in a variety of Asian languages.

Telemedicine

The Country Doc Walk-In & Wellness Center (CT) offers telemedicine services for patients seeking medical marijuana consultations.

Springfield, MO-based Group Benefit Services adds telemedicine services from Teladoc to member benefits.

People

Kent Rowe (ZirMed) joins Clinicient as CEO.

Research and Innovation

A KPMG survey reveals that business associates are woefully unprepared to meet marketplace standards like HITRUST CSF certification for protecting health information and maintaining HIPAA compliance – a sentiment that seems parallel to the readiness of providers when it comes to cybersecurity prep. Just 7 percent of respondents believe their organizations are completely ready for the voluntary assessment, and 8 percent report they are far along in implementation. As noted above, top barriers to HITRUST readiness include staffing, technology, cultural, and financial.

Peer60 publishes “The Physician’s Take on EHR Suppliers 2016,” which surveyed around 1,000 doctors (75 percent of them in ambulatory practice) about EHRs. Adoption was 85 percent, with the most common systems being those from Epic, Cerner, and Allscripts. Most respondents say they aren’t planning to replace their current systems. Top-ranked Epic joined its competitors in scoring low in Net Promoter Score, but few of Epic’s users reported specific problems or plans to replace it. Usability topped the list of user concerns for all systems, while first-time adopters say cost is what’s holding them back. As Peer60 points out, the market seems to violate Economics 101 in that users are nearly universally unsatisfied with their systems, but don’t see more attractive alternatives.

Perhaps the Surgeon General should have stepped it up with Pokemon Go … A Microsoft Research study finds that 1,500 US Pokemon Go users took a collective 144 billion steps during the peak utilization months of July and August. Researchers have even gone so far as to surmise that such enhanced activity could even considerably increase life expectancies. “I find the life expectancy analysis intriguing because it highlights the massive impact that games like Pokémon Go could have on public health, the fact that an app could have a measurable impact on US-wide life expectancy,” says lead researcher Tim Althoff. “However, the analysis is based on the assumption that Pokemon Go would be able to sustain the high levels of engagement. This is certainly their goal but our analyses also highlight that this is their main challenge.”

A survey of 220 family physicians finds that a majority use mobile devices to access healthcare information more than 10 times a day. An overwhelming majority agree that such access has changed the dynamic of office visits, though that dynamic means different things to different providers. For example, 34 percent say patients arrive more informed and prepared, though a similar percentage report patients arriving misinformed. Most interesting to me is the fact that only 28 percent of physicians send information directly to patients via their devices. That stat speaks to a number of influencing factors such as level of HIPAA-compliance and overall privacy/security.

Other

Indiana University School of Medicine Professor of Pediatrics Aaron Carroll puts the recently debunked “five-second rule” into perspective, pointing out that the floor upon which food is dropped is really the least of our worries when it comes to germ transmission. “[O]ur immune systems are pretty hardy,” he says. “We’ve all been touching this dirty stuff for a long time, without knowing it, and doing just fine.” He goes on to helpfully list the many household locations and items that pose a greater risk, including fridge and toilet handles, kitchen counters, sponges, wallets, purses … the list really could go on and on.

Contacts

Jenn,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 10/6/16

Top News

CommonWell welcomes new members including DocuTap, EZDerm, Health Gorilla, One Record, and RSNA, bringing its overall membership to 59.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

If you’re a HIStalk Practice, HIStalk, or HIStalk Connect sponsor exhibiting at MGMA, complete this form and I’ll include your company in our downloadable exhibitors guide. The conference kicks off October 30 in San Francisco.

Webinars

October 13 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “Glycemic Control During Therapeutic Hypothermia.” Sponsored by Monarch Medical Technologies. Presenter: Tracey Melhuish, RN, MSN, clinical practice specialist, Holy Cross Hospital (FL). Using therapeutic hypothermia (TH) as a method of care can present risks of hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, and blood glucose variability. Maintaining safe glucose levels during the cooling and rewarming phases of TH reduces the risks of adverse events. Tracey Melhuish, author of “Linking Hypothermia and Hyperglycemia,” will share best practices for optimal glucose control during TH and the success Holy Cross Hospital sees while using a computerized glucose management software.

October 25 (Tuesday) 1:30 ET. “Data Privacy/Insider Threat Mitigation: What Hospitals Can Learn From Other Industries.” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Robert Kuller, chief commercial officer, Haystack Informatics; Mitchell Parker, CISSP, executive director of information security and compliance, Indiana University Health. Cybersecurity insurers believe that hospitals are too focused on perimeter threats, ransomware, and the threat of OCR audits instead of insider threats, which are far more common but less likely to earn media attention. Attendees will learn how behavior analytics is being used to profile insiders and detect unusual behaviors proactively and to place privacy/insider risk within the risk management matrix.

October 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “How to Create Healthcare Apps That Get Used and Maybe Even Loved.” Sponsored by MedData. Presenter: Jeff Harper, Founder and CEO, Duet Health. Patients, clinicians, and hospital employees are also consumers who manage many aspects of their non-medical lives on their mobile devices. Don’t crush their high technology expectations with poorly designed, seldom used apps that tarnish your carefully protected image. Your app represents your brand and carries high expectations on both sides. This webinar will describe how to build a mobile healthcare app that puts the user first, meets their needs (which are often different from their wants), creates "stickiness," and delivers the expected benefits to everyone involved.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. View previous webinars on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

The Eureka, CA-based North Coast Health Improvement and Information Network selects care coordination technology from ACT.md to help the Humboldt County Dept. of Health and Human Services better care for the chronically homeless. Using the Care Coordination Record, DHHS will work with local EDs, FQHCs, and the Humboldt Independent Practice Association to stay on top of patient ED admissions and arrange for follow-up care.

People

Bill Evans (Roche) joins Rock Health as managing director. He has served as a company mentor since 2012.

Ancelmo Lopes (Surgical Solutions) joins PhyMed Healthcare Group’s Board of Directors.

Government and Politics

Get your resumes ready: CMS posts a job opening for a CIO and director of Office of Enterprise Information. The qualified candidate will oversee technology for Medicare, Medicaid, CHIP, and Healthcare.gov. As the job description notes, the qualified candidate will “enable CMS strategy and services, as the individual responsible for the technology to make it all possible.”

Other

If you like that new car smell, then you just might like this: Apple accessory maker TwelveSouth creates a $24 candle with “hints of mint, peach, basil, and other wonderful-smelling ingredients” that evokes the smell of a freshly opened Macbook.

No, Pokemon Go is not dead: Norwegian Prime Minister Erna Solberg is keeping the app alive and well during what I can only assume are boring parliamentary debates. She has also been seen hatching some of her 10km eggs in Slovakia.

Contacts

Jenn,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Contact us online.
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HIStalk Practice Interviews Jeff Loughlin, Executive Director, New Hampshire Health Information Organization

Jeff Loughlin is executive director of the New Hampshire Health Information Organization, project director for the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, and part of the Medical Command Team with the Massachusetts Army National Guard.

Tell me about yourself and the organization.
I have the privilege of serving as executive director for the New Hampshire Health Information Organization, or NHHIO as we call ourselves. We are the state-designated entity for New Hampshire for electronic exchange, created back in 2011 by state legislation. We are currently a nonprofit charitable trust organization helping providers implement and adopt health information technology across the state. I’ve been there since just after it was formed in 2011. I also work for a parent company called the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, which is a small nonprofit consulting company focusing on health IT. We were the organization that created the Regional Extension Center of New Hampshire.

In the course of those duties, as we started to look across the spectrum of needs in New Hampshire around health IT overall, it seemed to make sense to bring these organizations together. As the REC of New Hampshire grant comes to a close, all of the staff members of the REC program become staff members of NHHIO. Collectively, we all work as a partnership. The staff members all now work for NHHIO, and we’ll maintain the legacy of the REC program under that umbrella. We’re essentially moving into that next range of health IT.

You recently surpassed NHHIO’s goal of helping a thousand physicians achieve Meaningful Use with certified EHRs. What challenges did your team face in getting physicians to that point?
The first challenge we had was simply finding a thousand providers. New Hampshire is a very small state. We came to the table under the third round of funding for the REC program. At that time, every other state had been implemented with the exception of a small portion of Florida. There was a gap, I believe, in California. New Hampshire was the only single state that did not have a REC program. When we first came to the state, we struggled, because in New Hampshire a lot of small practices are struggling to stay open. They’re either being bought out or merging with larger organizations. New Hampshire’s become a very hospital-centric state overall. Trying to find a thousand providers that qualified under the REC program was challenging. We worked with all the different organizations around the state to bring folks to the table.

Out of the roughly $7 million that we had, almost two-thirds of it went back to the state. We used a sub-recipient model where the REC team would serve as expert resources. We created a website with a lot of valuable tools and worked a lot with the public health department. We actually paid organizations to make the implementation of MU a priority in their organization, and we would simply provide the education as they needed it. I think where the struggle came is that when you do rely on organizations to do their own internal work, they get overtaken by a variety of priorities. That has certainly exponentially increased over the last several years with the onslaught of ACA work around pay-for-performance contracts. There’s a lot of variance in the metrics they’re trying to meet for the different payers and incentive programs they’re involved with. Sometimes there’s an overlap with MU and sometimes there isn’t. Even things like the patient-centered medical home, which is a hugely valuable program … the metrics for patients in that program are just slightly different from those for MU. They can focus on the overlap, but it’s those outlying measures that then become challenging to meet in some cases. I think that’s really been our biggest hurdle – just making the attainment of MU a priority for these organizations.

Another piece that’s loomed large in our conversations with providers has been the overall value of the MU program. When we came to the state, New Hampshire had a very high level of health IT usage. I think we were in the top 5 percent of e-prescribing. There’s been a large number of “Most Wired” hospitals awarded here over the last couple of years. There’s just a huge amount of technology here. In general, organizations get the value of technology in improving efficiencies and economies of scale, but whether or not the actual attainment of MU provided quality/benefit to the patient has yet to be seen.

What part of the process were you pleasantly surprised by?
The REC program overall was great. The motivation behind it, the goals of MU, made sense. How applicable they were at the ground level remains to be seen, but we found really wide-open doors at ONC. They were very receptive to our comments and suggestions. They are constantly looking for feedback on how to change the program. At the highest level, that was very present.

At the ground level, the relationships that our staff built with the providers, and in some cases even patients, helped us to really get a feel for the actual implications of using technology right in the exam room. That has made a huge difference and helped us to really understand the challenges moving forward, both from the patient side in terms of safety, confidentiality, security, and the intrusion of having technology in the exam room, as well as the pain points that the providers go through using it on a daily basis. From a NHHIO perspective, it’s really forced us to ask, ‘How do you now take that huge wealth of information that’s stored locally, and put it into good use in your community in more practical and efficient ways?’

Given your tenure, you’ve worked with at least three national coordinators. As you’ve seen ONC leaders come and go, how easy has it been to work with the office?
I think it’s more of a different vibe, rather than easier or harder. We were there just as David Blumenthal, MD was leaving. When Farzad Mostashari, MD took over, it sort of changed into a much livelier vibe – a different perspective. He’s a public health provider and was very focused on data collection and things like that, which has obviously lead to his ACO work. Then after that, with Karen DeSalvo, MD we encountered more of a bureaucratic mentality, much more focused on the technology and the standards, which I think was the right timing for that as we were starting to share data. We seem to have had, in my opinion, the right person at the right time. Overall, I think the general support and willingness of ONC to help wherever and whenever they could hasn’t changed at all across the spectrum.

As you helped physicians get to MU, did you notice them gravitating towards certain EHR vendors? What criteria did they base their selection on, or what did you help them look for?
We found that the majority of providers already had an EHR in place. There were very few that were starting out from scratch. Those that were did gravitate to some of the big-name vendors. Certainly at the hospital level we saw the usual suspects. A huge amount of Epic, GE, and some NextGen was there. At the practice level, we saw a couple of Athenahealth and EClinicalWorks implementations. The challenge for us, as I’ve mentioned, was that some of the providers that started with us may have joined larger groups or become affiliates of hospitals, so they wound up implementing the hospital system.

What’s the next goal on NHHIO’s horizon? Is MU no longer a priority now that MACRA is just around the corner?
New Hampshire does not have a centralized repository of data. We focus just on the transport of data alone. Now that we’ve helped physicians put EHRs in place and build up those databases, we’re helping them move it and share it. At a tactical level, the sharing of data becomes important. Because we don’t have centralized data, we’re focusing more on the interoperability between systems, and really helping practices work with their vendors to make that interoperability work.

We’re done with MU at the local level in terms of EHR adoption. Now it’s more about helping them build the workflows for the sharing of data, and helping them answer questions like, ‘How do you incorporate another provider’s data into your chart? What do you select? What do you not select? Who can screen it?’ Those types of things. Those are the conversations we’re having now.

There’s also a lot of focus on behavioral health. We’re working with providers on how to implement the different levels of consent required for information sharing, and looking at opportunities to focus on implementation, getting technology into the hands of other providers, and integrating behavioral health into primary care.

You’ve also mentioned data reporting as being a big need in the state. How do you envision helping your stakeholders move toward advanced payment models over the next year or two?
We’re happy to put systems in place to secure the transport of data between organizations. We’ve got a variety of tools to do that. We’re also now looking at a third-party vendor strategy to help bring in different vendors to support these regions as they start to think about their data needs. Because we don’t have a repository, there may be additional needs to share or collect data that we can’t offer, and so we’re looking at a vendor strategy to help do that. Again, I think one of our roles in the state besides as a technology organization is helping to bring all the organizations together to help guide them in the right direction to make a single selection statewide.

Now that physicians have, for the most part, gotten over the EHR implementation hump, what do you think their biggest challenges are when it comes to healthcare IT?
I think folks still struggle with the selection process. The certification process still seems to lag behind some of the goals as the laws come out. There’s always a lag between when the rule comes out and the vendors catch up. People are leery about what vendor to pick. For example, we have a long-term care organization that’s just now implementing the latest version of their EHR and, come to find out, they’re still not certified to use the Direct platform. They’re having to implement a secondary product on top of that to support the direct exchange of information.

I think the challenge is getting vendors to the table – to get them certified and to universally implement the standards the same way because we still see different vendors, both certified, that can’t talk to each other because of the way they decided to implement different pages of the certification standard. That’s really the biggest one, and it’s so hard. They keep changing the laws rapidly. People wait until the final rule. As soon as the final rule comes up, there’s enough yelling and screaming that someone then changes the rule. It’s a struggle to know exactly what to focus on. It kind of becomes blurred across all the different incentive programs.

Do you have any final thoughts?
I think we’re moving in the right direction. This is a matter of how do we start to congeal the standards and bring together all these varied programs into one narrow tunnel. There’s so many outliers of metrics and measures. That’s what people lose sight of. If we can start to narrow the band of what’s important, we’ll do a lot better.

Contacts

Jenn,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Contact us online.
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News 10/5/16

Top News

Medical Transcription Billing Corp. acquires Texas-based medical billing company MediGain and its New Jersey-based Millenium Practice Management affiliate for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition – MTBC’s largest – includes six domestic offices and three in India and Sri Lanka.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

If you’re a HIStalk Practice, HIStalk, or HIStalk Connect sponsor exhibiting at MGMA, complete this form and I’ll include your company in our downloadable exhibitors guide. The conference kicks off October 30 in San Francisco.

Webinars

October 13 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “Glycemic Control During Therapeutic Hypothermia.” Sponsored by Monarch Medical Technologies. Presenter: Tracey Melhuish, RN, MSN, clinical practice specialist, Holy Cross Hospital (FL). Using therapeutic hypothermia (TH) as a method of care can present risks of hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, and blood glucose variability. Maintaining safe glucose levels during the cooling and rewarming phases of TH reduces the risks of adverse events. Tracey Melhuish, author of “Linking Hypothermia and Hyperglycemia,” will share best practices for optimal glucose control during TH and the success Holy Cross Hospital sees while using a computerized glucose management software.

October 25 (Tuesday) 1:30 ET. “Data Privacy/Insider Threat Mitigation: What Hospitals Can Learn From Other Industries.” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Robert Kuller, chief commercial officer, Haystack Informatics; Mitchell Parker, CISSP, executive director of information security and compliance, Indiana University Health. Cybersecurity insurers believe that hospitals are too focused on perimeter threats, ransomware, and the threat of OCR audits instead of insider threats, which are far more common but less likely to earn media attention. Attendees will learn how behavior analytics is being used to profile insiders and detect unusual behaviors proactively and to place privacy/insider risk within the risk management matrix.

October 26 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “How to Create Healthcare Apps That Get Used and Maybe Even Loved.” Sponsored by MedData. Presenter: Jeff Harper, Founder and CEO, Duet Health. Patients, clinicians, and hospital employees are also consumers who manage many aspects of their non-medical lives on their mobile devices. Don’t crush their high technology expectations with poorly designed, seldom used apps that tarnish your carefully protected image. Your app represents your brand and carries high expectations on both sides. This webinar will describe how to build a mobile healthcare app that puts the user first, meets their needs (which are often different from their wants), creates "stickiness," and delivers the expected benefits to everyone involved.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. View previous webinars on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

AMA adds MACRA-specific tools to its STEPS Forward practice improvement program, and develops an online Payment Model Evaluator to better equip physicians as they prepare to move to new payment models.

Pursuant Health will add the American Diabetes Association’s Risk Test to its 3,600 health kiosks in an effort to help consumers better determine their risk factors. Those identified as high risk will be encouraged to speak with their doctor about preventative steps. Inclusion of the test, which will last for three years, is a step in the right direction, but it seems like the two organizations could do so much more, such as offering consumers the ability to securely email their assessment to their PCP, or offering a shareable list of PCPs in the area that are taking new patients.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Private equity firm Warburg Pincus will acquire Intelligent Medical Objects, according to an FTC pre-merger filing.

Dallas-based DocSynk secures a $1 million seed funding round from Naya Ventures. Led by former Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation CTO Vaidyanatha Siva, the startup has developed a healthcare management app for patients, providers, and employers that includes appointment booking, Uber integration, and HSA account insight.

Medical answering service company MedXCom joins Athenahealth’s More Disruption Please program and marketplace.

People

Pete Sanchez (Anthem BCBS) joins Zotec Partners as VP of quality management.

Gregg Waldon (RedBrick Health) joins Kareo as CFO.

InSync Healthcare Solutions promotes Roland Therriault to president.

Government and Politics

HRSA will invest $36 million in rural health centers to help them enhance their use of healthcare IT and data. The announcement was made at the White House Rural Forum at Penn State University in State College, PA.

An audit of the state of Vermont’s business dealings with nonprofit Vermont Information Technology Leaders finds that it can’t evaluate the bang it got for its 38 million bucks – paid to VITL for the establishment of a statewide HIE and to assist providers in adopting and implementing EHRs. The lack of a definitive ROI seems to stem from a hazy set of deliverables and performance standards, including a lack of transparency around the building of a clinical data warehouse – set forth by the Department of Vermont Health Access.

Research and Innovation

Fitbit runs a PR blitz, announcing positive results from an employer wellness survey and participation in the Surgeon General’s Step It Up! Challenge, which runs from October 13-26. The survey, a two-year analysis of two separate wellness programs, found that Fitbit-using employees enrolled in wellness programs incurred less healthcare costs and saved employers millions of dollars. The challenge, explained (sort of) in the video above, looks like it could be a fun and competitive way – especially for companies – to get moving. (Rumor has it a bald eagle is born every time someone signs up, according to the Surgeon General.)

Other

Panasonic unveils a bendable battery designed for use in wearable devices. The company isn’t the first to enter into the field; LG and Samsung, rumored to be working on a rolled up smartphone, have been working in the field of flexible technology for some time. Such a device would surely make for the hot giveaway at HIMSS.

Sponsor Updates

• Medicomp Systems is hosting a sold-out training program in Bangkok, Thailand this week in which customers will learn how to integrate the company’s Quippe documentation tools into their EHRs
• Aprima will exhibit at the Patient-Centered Medical Home Congress October 7 in Chicago.
• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at IPHCA’s 2016 Leadership Conference October 5-7 in St. Louis.
• GE Healthcare creates a Centricity Partner Program.
• Healthwise will exhibit at AdvancedMD Evo16 October 11-12 in Salt Lake City.

Blog Posts

• A Pathway to Alternative Payment Models (APMs) (AdvancedMD)
• Improving Provider Efficiency and Satisfaction through EHR Optimization (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• Writing Content That Connects: This Time It’s Personal (Healthwise)

Contacts

Jenn,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.

News 10/4/16

Top News

Wolters Kluwer acquires patient engagement technology vendor Emmi Solutions for $170 million in cash. Emmi’s ambulatory products include services that combine online multimedia programs with automated phone calls to aid in post-acute care transitions, population health management, and health literacy. Wolters Kluwer Health CEO Diana Nole says the company will integrate Emmi’s technologies with its UpToDate and drug data offerings to offer customers a more complete evidence-based decision-support solution.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Reading: “The Mistresses of Cliveden – Three Centuries of Scandal, Power, and Intrigue in an English Stately Home.” Author Natalie Livingstone, whose family purchased the estate in 2012, takes readers through nearly four centuries of British culture and politics as told from the vantage point of Cliveden owners. It’s a great read that kept me up late during my mountain escape last week.

It’s time to start putting together the annual MGMA Exhibitors Guide. If you’re a HIStalk Practice, HIStalk, or HIStalk Connect sponsor exhibiting at MGMA, complete this form and I’ll include your company in our downloadable attendee guide. The conference kicks off October 30 in San Francisco.

Webinars

October 13 (Thursday) 2:00 ET. “Glycemic Control During Therapeutic Hypothermia.” Sponsored by Monarch Medical Technologies. Presenter: Tracey Melhuish, RN, MSN, clinical practice specialist, Holy Cross Hospital (FL). Using therapeutic hypothermia (TH) as a method of care can present risks of hyperglycemia, hypoglycemia, and blood glucose variability. Maintaining safe glucose levels during the cooling and rewarming phases of TH reduces the risks of adverse events. Tracey Melhuish, author of “Linking Hypothermia and Hyperglycemia,” will share best practices for optimal glucose control during TH and the success Holy Cross Hospital sees while using a computerized glucose management software.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. View previous webinars on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

ABC Pediatrics (IL) implements IPatientCare’s PM software.

People

The Connecticut State Medical Society appoints Jeffrey Gordon, MD (who apparently has quite the Lego collection) president.

The Washington State Medical Association elects Shane Macaulay, MD (Center for Diagnostic Imaging) president.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

StartUp Health’s latest venture capital report confidently predicts that “2016 is on pace to be the biggest year yet for digital health funding.” Funding for the year thus far has already surpassed the 2015 total of $6.1 billion. Investments in patient and consumer experience and wellness companies lead 2016’s funding pack.

Telemedicine

San Clemente, CA-based startup Telehealthcare develops a provider-to-provider secure messaging app.

Teladoc joins the the steering committee of Health IT Now, a coalition of healthcare stakeholders that seems focused on raising awareness of healthcare IT’s role in achieving the Triple Aim, largely through high-profile commentary on federal regulations.

Government and Politics

No doubt tying in with National Cybersecurity Awareness Month, HHS awards $350,000 to the Florida-based National Health Information Sharing and Analysis Center to develop a cyber information-sharing ecosystem for public and private healthcare organizations. This ecosystem will enable HHS to send cyber threat information to NH-ISAC, which will then disseminate it to stakeholders; in turn, NH-ISAC will be able to receive information from stakeholders. I wonder if stakeholders will include Intermountain (UT) and the cybersecurity center it seems to still be in the process of opening with the University of Utah.

Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD notifies his staff – 600 employees of the Public Health Service – that their personal data may have been compromised as the result of a personnel system breach. HHS Acting Assistant Secretary Karen DeSalvo, MD, who co-signed the notifying email, explained that, “Teams across the Department and across government are working to learn as much as we can as quickly as we can, and to further improve our systems to prevent this type of issue in the future. … Next steps could include offering identity protection services to affected individuals.”

Research and Innovation

Navicure’s latest survey highlights the escalating need for greater healthcare price transparency. Of the 296 providers surveyed (37 percent of which were practice managers), nearly 70 percent reported that their patients don’t understand their payment responsibility versus their payer’s responsibility. Over 40 percent believe estimating service prices to be a top barrier to price transparency, which is a disappointing revelation given that 56 percent of respondents note that their patients do indeed ask about total treatment cost. Not surprisingly, most patients ask about their financial responsibility after their visit.

Other

Cybersecurity firm co-founder and Internet icon Dan Kaminsky advocates for a National Institutes of Health for Cybersecurity:

“I advocate a ‘NIH for Cyber’ because we didn’t stop our cities from burning by making fire illegal or heal the ill by making sickness a crime. This is not the first time a new technology has showed up with tremendous potential and a lot of problems. Cybersecurity is ultimately an engineering problem of human communication – we have programming languages, not programming equations, after all. This will be expensive, long term, difficult and sometimes boring work, that needs armies of nerds, and funding not threatened by next quarter’s earnings. Government can support that. An NIH for Cyber, focused on our genuine engineering challenges, could save this Internet.”

Contacts

Jenn,  Mr. H, Lorre, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.