News 11/2/16

Top News

CMS announces several nearly-finalized policies aimed at improving the way it pays for primary care, care coordination, and mental healthcare. New coding and payment changes will enable PCPs to bill more for more time spent with patients and on better coordinating care. Similar bumps in pay will be made to physicians who bill under the new Psychiatric Collaborative Care Model, which brings together psychiatric consultants, behavioral healthcare managers, and PCPs in a team-based approach that extends beyond the four walls of an office. CMS will also launch an expanded Medicare Diabetes Prevention Program in 2018, aimed at offering preventative services to all beneficiaries in an effort to reduce costs associated with the onset of the disease.

Webinars

November 8 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “A CMIO’s Perspective on the Successful 25 Hospital Rollout of Electronic Physician Documentation.” Sponsored by Crossings Healthcare. Presenter: Ori Lotan, MD, CMIO, Universal Health Services. UHS rolled out Cerner Millennium’s electronic physician documentation to its 6,000 active medical staff members — 95 percent of them independent practitioners who also work in competitor facilities — across 25 acute care hospitals. UHS’s clinical informatics team used Cerner’s MPage development toolkit to improve the usability, efficiency, communications capability, and quality metric performance of Dynamic Documentation, embedding clinical decision support and also using Nuance’s cloud-based speech recognition product for the narrative bookends of physician notes. This CMIO-led webinar will describe how UHS achieved 70 percent voluntary physician adoption within one month of go-live, saved $3 million in annual transcription expense, and raised EHR satisfaction to 75 percent. It will include a short demonstration of the software that UHS developed to optimize the physician experience.

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

New York City-based Cohero Health closes a $9 million Series A round of financing led by Three Leaf Ventures. The company, which has developed smart device technology that tracks and improves respiratory treatment and medication adherence, will use the financing to continue business development efforts and further development of its BreatheSmart tools.

Announcements and Implementations

MedStar National Rehabilitation Network implements WebPT’s EHR across its network of 50 outpatient facilities in Washington, DC, Baltimore, Southern Maryland, Delaware, and Northern Virginia.

Toronto-based companies MedChart, Self Care Catalysts, and YouBase partner to develop a presumably consumer-friendly way for patients to access and control their health data via blockchain technology. The end solution will take advantage of MedChart’s portal technology, Self Care’s patient engagement platform that also powers physician-facing behavior analytics software, and YouBase’s blockchain tools for health data. The partnership will launch with a pilot project focused on Canadian epileptic patients.

Breg partners with Redox to develop an EHR-friendly interface for its orthopedic PM system.

People

Continuum Health Alliance brings on Peter Bailey (LabVantage Solutions) as president and COO, Mark Glickman (ZirMed) as chief commercial officer, and Tim Weldon (Wellcentive) as GM and SVP of value.

Telemedicine

MyCare MedTech rolls out telemedicine services in Canada. I don’t have any hard and fast figures, but it seems like our neighbor to the north has been embracing telemedicine at the same clip (and with some of the same licensing barriers) we have here in the states. Calgary-based digital consult company SnapDx summarized its foray into the space last year: “We charged $40 per patient visit and followed the standard split of 70 percent to pay for the doctor’s time and the rest for the company. So each visit brought $12 net. To do this profitably, we’d have to run like a traditional family doctor’s clinic – line up patients back to back with minimal downtime and run through each visit as fast as possible. Considering the marketing costs, limitations of what can be done medically without a physical exam, and time overhead involved in arranging a synchronous video call between patient and doctor, it was just not worth it.”

HealthTap opens up its technology platform to help developers build out apps based on the company’s virtual consult software. Blockchain S.A. has expressed interest in accessing the development tools to build out infrastructure for securely managing multi-party access to medical records on a private blockchain network.

Government and Politics

CMS publishes changes to the EHR Incentive Program that will allow returning EPs, hospitals, and CAHs to use any continuous 90-day reporting period between January 1 and December 31 for both 2016 and 2017. It is finalizing the process for a one-time EHR hardship exception for the Medicare EHR Incentive Program for certain EPs who participate in the EHR incentive program in 2017 who will transition to MIPS that same year.

HHS announces 10 phase-one winners of its Move Health Data Forward Challenge, which aims to uncover APIs that will enable consumers to share PHI safely and securely with everyone in their care circle. The winners will each receive $5,000 and move on to the second round, where up to five finalists will win $20,000 each for prototypes and test performance of their ideas. While all of the initial winning ideas will no doubt incorporate PCPs, Lush Group’s HealthyMePHR system is the only solution that specifically mentions giving patients the ability to import their health data from their physician’s EHR.

Other

Among the proposed policies to be discussed at the AMA’s Interim Meeting in Orlando November 12-15 is integrating mobile health apps and devices into everyday practice. A draft resolution that calls out Epic and EClinicalWorks as “data blockers” would ask federal and state governments to prohibit withholding patient information from non-affiliated physicians and asks AMA to support legislation that would limit EHR vendor interfacing fees. Another proposed item seeks federal legislation that would eliminate medical practice costs involved with converting patient data from a replaced EHR to a new one.

The “extreme” medicine community will convene in Scotland later this month for the World Extreme Medicine Conference and Expo, a four-day event that will highlight disaster and humanitarian medicine; extreme, expedition, and space medicine; human endurance and sports medicine, and pre-hospital medicine. I’ve love to hear scheduled speaker Michael Barratt, MD recount his 199 days as the CMO of the International Space Station. (Just what are the health repercussions of a direct hit by a solar storm?)

Sponsor Updates

• Aprima will exhibit at the American College of Phlebology event November 3-5 in Anaheim, CA.
• EClinicalWorks exhibits at the CHIME Fall Forum November 1-4 in Phoenix.
• KLAS names PerfectServe’s Synchrony as a top-performing care team communication platform.
• Healthwise exhibits at Wellcentive’s annual UGM November 2-4 in Atlanta.

Blog Posts

• Top 5 Predictions for Private Practices at MGMA (AdvancedMD)
• EHR Capture of Outpatient Evaluation and Management Services (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• Make Tracks for Texas! (EClinicalWorks)
• Building Stronger Relationships of Care (Healthwise)

Contacts

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

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News 11/1/16

Top News

Open enrollment commences today, with nary a technological hiccup in sight – a far cry, as readers may remember, from its initial launch in 2013. “We have enhanced decision support tools to help [consumers] make their application selection and find out the best plan for them,” says Healthcare Marketplace CEO Kevin Counihan. “There’s a plan comparison feature that facilitates a much easier and more efficient comparison of different plans.” While greater ease of use is no doubt a win for consumers, I’m willing to bet that most shopping for coverage are more worried about plan availability and cost than website timeouts. HHS officials hope to enroll close to 14 million by the time sign ups end on January 31.

Webinars

November 8 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “A CMIO’s Perspective on the Successful 25 Hospital Rollout of Electronic Physician Documentation.” Sponsored by Crossings Healthcare. Presenter: Ori Lotan, MD, CMIO, Universal Health Services. UHS rolled out Cerner Millennium’s electronic physician documentation to its 6,000 active medical staff members — 95 percent of them independent practitioners who also work in competitor facilities — across 25 acute care hospitals. UHS’s clinical informatics team used Cerner’s MPage development toolkit to improve the usability, efficiency, communications capability, and quality metric performance of Dynamic Documentation, embedding clinical decision support and also using Nuance’s cloud-based speech recognition product for the narrative bookends of physician notes. This CMIO-led webinar will describe how UHS achieved 70 percent voluntary physician adoption within one month of go-live, saved $3 million in annual transcription expense, and raised EHR satisfaction to 75 percent. It will include a short demonstration of the software that UHS developed to optimize the physician experience.

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

Samsung Electronics CEO Kwon Oh-hyun addresses the Galaxy Note 7 debacle, which Reuters refers to as “one of the worst product failures in tech history,” telling employees that they must look back on their work to determine if complacency played a role in the smartphone’s fiery features. “Let us use this crisis as a chance to make another leap by re-examining and thoroughly improving how we work, how we think about innovation and our perspective of our customers,” he said. His remarks make me wonder what lessons health IT can learn from Samsung’s failures. Feel free to weigh in with a comment below.

Manna Health Professional Services rebrands to Medical Practice Consulting Services and relocates to Statesville, NC’s downtown business district.

Announcements and Implementations

Availity adopts the HL7 FHIR standard for data sharing, initially implementing a FHIR tool for solicited and unsolicited medical attachments. The company also plans to a FHIR-friendly solution for member lookups.

Definitive Healthcare adds urgent care clinics and companies to its database of provider market intelligence.

Oncology Hematology Care, an independent chain of 14 oncology practices based in Cincinnati, joins the McKesson Specialty Health-supported US Oncology Network to take advantage of its technology and business support services as it transitions to value-based care, including its participation in the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation Oncology Care Model.

Frederick Primary Care Associates (MD) teams up with Privia Medical Group to take advantage of its technology and care management services. FPCA formed in 1997 out of the merger of three local practices, and has grown to include 50 physicians and nine offices.

The State of New Jersey taps managed primary care company R-Health to provide direct primary care services to members of health benefits programs for state and school employees. “In the state of New Jersey, we are facing out of control healthcare cost increases and we knew we had to take a hard look at the various ways we could fix this,” says Patrick Nowlan, chair of the SHBP plan design committee. “After much research, we realized a core component of cost savings – and better patient experience – was more proactive and relationship-based primary care.” R-Health will initially open three DPC offices across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, with plans to add another NJ location early next year.

Aledade announces that its network of primary care ACOs has doubled in size to include over 200 practices serving 200,000 patients across 15 states. The company has moved beyond Medicare Shared Savings Programs roots by signing commercial agreements with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Louisiana, Florida Blue, and West Virginia Public Employees Insurance Agency. It has raised close to $35 million since launching in 2014.

People

Matthew Albright (Center for Affordable Quality Healthcare) joins Zelis Healthcare as vice president of legislative affairs.

Diane Holman (TE Connectivity) joins Athenahealth as chief people officer.

Telemedicine

TytoCare receives FDA clearance for its digital stethoscope, which it will incorporate with its new TytoPro telemedicine offering for providers and TytoHome product for consumers.

Other

MGMA16 winds down. Though the tweet stream didn’t seem to be as active this year, I did manage to collect a few of my favorite images and observations from the show floor, where it seems like the hot giveaway was IngeniousMed’s Google Cardboard virtual reality headset (not to mention MedData’s notoriously good scones). Next year’s conference will take place October 8-11 in Anaheim, CA.

Contacts

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

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Readers Write: Our Industry’s Cautious Start is Finally Reaching Critical Mass

Our Industry’s Cautious Start is Finally Reaching Critical Mass
By Jeff Wood

Even the greatest consumer trends can be slow to catch on. With the boon of Web retail sites in the mid- to late-1990s taking the world by storm, consider this: Amazon.com began solely as a book retailer, a far cry from being the largest retailer in the world based by total sales and market capitalization.

What does that have to do with healthcare? A great deal, if you consider healthcare consumerism. Until recently, consumerism in the US healthcare industry has moved slowly. But that’s all changing now, and a Navicure-commissioned survey of healthcare organizations by Porter Research confirms patients are starting to approach their healthcare decisions differently. Specifically, the results show consumerism is impacting healthcare through an evolving mindset that influences patient payment revenue—an increasingly important component of a healthcare organization’s overall finance:

• Patients are seeking flexibility in paying for their care. More than half (58 percent) are asking about payment plans and another 43 percent are inquiring about what payment options are available. This means healthcare organizations must have a strategy that includes multiple options for patients to pay off their balance—otherwise, patients may begin shopping for other providers.
• · Patient confusion understanding their payment responsibility versus their insurance provider’s responsibility is the top price transparency challenge of healthcare organizations, cited by 67 percent. Front office staff need to invest more time with patients, addressing eligibility and setting expectations about the patient’s payment responsibility. This often includes explaining and differentiating co-pays from co-insurance as well as deductibles. To get front office staff ready for added responsibility, organizations need to provide more rigorous training including role playing with top questions and problems they receive on a daily basis.
• Only one third of healthcare organizations are currently leveraging patient estimation tools, which can help give patients what they want in this era of healthcare consumerism – price transparency.
• Only one quarter of healthcare providers securely store credit or debit card information on file. Like price estimation tools, this perhaps represents a healthcare organization’s best vehicle for boosting revenue. That’s because providing price estimates and asking patients for card information to store on file happens at the time of service while the patient is in your office. It’s far easier to discuss payment options or work out a payment plan – especially if you can go the extra mile and put a card on file – while the patient is in front of you.
• A mere 26 percent of healthcare organizations are sending electronic statements, which can give patients financial information (or reminders, if you use patient estimation tools) much more quickly than mailed paper statements. Coupling these e-statements with online bill pay can provide even greater benefits to both parties — patients receive information where it is convenient for them, and organizations improve days in A/R.

Looking at consumer trends across industries, it’s easy to see how healthcare consumerism will likely continue growing into something far larger than it is now. Healthcare organizations can start preparing today by ensuring their patient payment strategy includes three components – price transparency, varied payment options, and automation to keep the heavy lifting off busy staff as the needs and demands of patients grow. This new era has many positive aspects, including smarter and more informed patients; however, it’s the job of trusted providers of healthcare to ensure we are ready.

Jeff Wood is vice president of product management at Navicure in Duluth, GA.

Contacts

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

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News 10/31/16

Top News

Now I suppose we know why Athenahealth hasn’t yet named its new chief people officer: The company lays off nearly 150 employees in consolidating its R&D function, with 102 staff members dismissed in San Francisco and 40 in Atlanta as the company focuses R&D in Watertown, MA; Austin, TX; and India. The company plans to continue hiring in Massachusetts, where it currently employs 2,150. Spokeswoman Holly Spring attempted to soothe ruffled feathers in an email to The Boston Globe: “We believe by focusing on Austin, Watertown, and India to fuel our R&D work, we will be better positioned to advance and accelerate our innovation contributions and can achieve new efficiencies.”

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

MGMA gets into full swing in San Francisco. A quick scan of the tweet stream finds several exhibitors getting into the seasonal spirit. (I wonder if Athenahealth’s freshly laid-off employees were represented in the graveyard above.) I’m keeping today’s post short and sweet given that a good majority of folks, aside from those at MGMA, have already headed home to prep for tonight’s activities.

Webinars

November 8 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “A CMIO’s Perspective on the Successful 25 Hospital Rollout of Electronic Physician Documentation.” Sponsored by Crossings Healthcare. Presenter: Ori Lotan, MD, CMIO, Universal Health Services. UHS rolled out Cerner Millennium’s electronic physician documentation to its 6,000 active medical staff members — 95 percent of them independent practitioners who also work in competitor facilities — across 25 acute care hospitals. UHS’s clinical informatics team used Cerner’s MPage development toolkit to improve the usability, efficiency, communications capability, and quality metric performance of Dynamic Documentation, embedding clinical decision support and also using Nuance’s cloud-based speech recognition product for the narrative bookends of physician notes. This CMIO-led webinar will describe how UHS achieved 70 percent voluntary physician adoption within one month of go-live, saved $3 million in annual transcription expense, and raised EHR satisfaction to 75 percent. It will include a short demonstration of the software that UHS developed to optimize the physician experience.

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.

Here’s the recording of “Data Privacy/Insider Threat Mitigation: What Hospitals Can Learn From Other Industries” from earlier this week. You can access my tweet recap here.

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

Announcements and Implementations

AdvancedMD will introduce an all-in-one cloud suite (scheduling, billing, EHR) at MGMA, also adding fully integrated telehealth capabilities and an expanded AdvancedPatient.

Humana adds three EliteHealth primary care practices to its Medicare Advantage Plan networks in South Florida. I hadn’t heard of the Miami-based provider before; in addition to primary care, it offers concierge medicine, and corporate wellness and elite fitness programs.

Drchrono updates its EHR platform with features specific to larger medical practices including advanced security, full-service RCM, patient intake capabilities, and a white-label patient portal.

People

Keith Hagen (IHM Services) joins Aviacode as CEO.

Cecilia Montalvo (Kaiser Permanente) joins Summit Health Management as chief strategy and business development officer and president of Summit Select, a newly licensed organized services system that will include Summit Medical Group (which SHM was created to serve) and other New Jersey-based physician groups.

Government and Politics

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell and Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt get in the spirit.

Other

It’s not April Fools Day, so I’ll ask, ‘Is this a trick or treat?’ Self-driving cars don’t seem to be enough for Uber. The ride-sharing company has set its sights set on developing on-demand air transportation to help commuters cut down on travel time. “A network of small, electric aircraft that take off and land vertically,” the company explains in a 98-page white paper, “will enable rapid, reliable transportation between suburbs and cities and, ultimately, within cities.” The company contends that over a dozen companies are already working to make the concept a reality.

Fans of meal delivery kits take note: Campbell’s Soup Co. enters the market with a $32 million investment in Habit, a service that, starting next year, will collect genetic data on subscribers through home blood-testing kits that measure nutrition-related biomarkers and basic data like weight, height, and waist size. The Habit team will then design and deliver meals based on individual dietary needs and preferences.

Several Aledade team members are no doubt busy today helping physicians scared silly by the transition to value-based payment models.

The Michigan-based Great Lakes Health Connect HIE staff also get festive. Why have I yet to see someone dressed up as a Blue Button? Or “On FHIR?”

Sponsor Updates

• The American College of Pathology names Aprima a certified ACP PRO Venous Registry EHR vendor.

Blog Posts

• What Nurses Really Think: Insights from ANCC MagCon 2016 (Versus Technology)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 10/30/16

Decision analytics vendor TrendShift acquires population health management vendor Health Data Intelligence, which the Columbus, OH business paper described in a July 2016 profile as a four-employee company that had raised just $125,000.

Allscripts extends its population health management capabilities with the acquisition of CarePort, which connects acute care providers to post-acute care providers. Allscripts President Rick Poulton believes the addition of CarePort, which will operate as a subsidiary out of its current location in Boston, will enable the company to expand the value of its PHM CareInMotion platform. “Our goal is to enable our clients to successfully manage post-acute outcomes end-to-end,” he says, “from the point of hospital discharge and through post-acute care.”

State and city officials will work with representatives from Temple University Health System, Einstein Healthcare Network, and Tenet Healthcare to develop a Health Enterprise Zone in North Philadelphia where new community-based approaches to care will be tested out and rewarded. The initial phase will involve a gap analysis by stakeholders to determine the area’s current healthcare strengths and weaknesses, and an investment of up to $1.5 million to improve access to care through the Mayor’s Community Schools Initiative. Nearly 300,000 of the area’s residents are Medicaid recipients who experience lower life expectancies and higher rates of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease than those found in other parts of the city.

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation gives $210 million to the University of Washington’s Population Health Initiative. Launched in May, the initiative aims to improve population health locally and globally over the next 25 years by focusing on human health, environmental resiliency, and social and economic equity. The university will use the gift to fund construction of a new building that will serve as headquarters for the initiative.

Analytics firm Health and Performance Resources develops a population health assessment that uses demographic, psychosocial, socioeconomic, and psychographic data to group individuals and households into “clusters” of comprehensive and revealing health profiles. The tool is geared towards helping providers, payers, and employers more accurately target users with appropriate interventions and communications.

A study of 19 ACOs finds improving population health management initiatives to be a top priority; yet one that is hampered by a lack of resources when it comes to standing up community health programs. Reported limitations include lack of funding for staffing and services, data interoperability challenges, physicians operating under the fee-for-service model, and payer pressures.

Sponsor Updates

• EClinicalWorks kicks off 2016 national conference with over 4,000 attendees.

Blog Posts

• Ask a Nurse: All Patients Deserve Clear Communication (Healthwise)
• Nordic recapitalization: 5 questions with Chief Consulting Officer Vivek Swaminathan (Nordic Consulting)
• The Near Death of the US Healthcare Software Channel (NVoq)
• KLAS Recognizes Aprima as a High-Performing Provider of RCM Services (Aprima)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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