News 10/27/16

Top News

Musculoskeletal healthcare company Zimmer Biomet acquires telerehabilitation startup RespondWell for an undisclosed amount. Zimmer will incorporate RespondWell’s technology into its Signature Solutions platform, which includes the Therapy@Home remote rehabilitation program.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

HIStalk’s Must-See Exhibitors Guide for MGMA 2016 is live. Click here to look over the products and innovations our sponsors plan to showcase, and map out your trip to the exhibit hall accordingly.

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.

Announcements and Implementations

TeleTracking develops a Community Access Portal to referring care teams admit patients to local hospitals more easily. The new tool helps physicians begin the admission process online with minimal patient information, reduce the number of phone calls during the process, and track milestones after admission.

San Francisco-based Lightning Bolt Solutions adds Access Optimization to its line of workforce management technologies. The new solution helps large medical groups and hospitals better alight physician shift schedules with appointment demand.

People

Mark Costanza (Lumeris) joins Nordic Consulting as chief client officer.

Shane Jordan (EPatientFinder) joins Fogo Data Centers as EVP of sales, marketing, and business development. In addition to hiring Jordan, the company has named James Ingram, MD (Ingram Healthcare) and Linda Stotsky to its new Healthcare IT Advisory Board.

Telemedicine

Pennsylvania becomes the 18th member of the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which aims to make cross-state physician licensing for telemedicine easier to come by. AARP’s Pennsylvania chapter was particularly encouraged by the decision: “Approval of HB 1619 will help older adults remain at home longer by providing access to home and community-based services in new ways, making it easier for family caregivers to provide care for their loved ones,” remarked AARP Pennsylvania State Director Bill Johnston-Walsh.  “Broader adoption of telehealth technologies holds tremendous promise for older Pennsylvanians and their family caregivers.”

Humana will offer MDLive telemedicine visits to its Medicare Advantage members in several New Mexico counties. The payer, which also partners with Doctor on Demand, offered telemedicine benefits to over 1.5 million members last year.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

E-MDs will offer its end users financial products from Provider Web Capital via integration with its PM software for small and mid-sized practices.

BrainCheck raises $3 million in seed funding that the Houston-based startup will use for further development of its game-based concussion-detection app. Baylor College of Medicine neuroscientist David Egelman founded the company in 2014, and has so far marketed the app to schools, trainers, and parents. Development of a BrainCheck for dementia is already in the works.

Research and Innovation

A survey of 600 primary care and specialty physicians reveals that, while many are interested in moving to value-based care models, few already have the tools in place to do so. For example, only 20 percent currently receive data on care costs, and just over a third have access to comprehensive care protocols. A whopping 86 percent report still being compensated under fee-for-service arrangements.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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HIStalk Practice Interviews John Meigs, MD President, AAFP

John Meigs, MD is president of AAFP and a practicing family medicine physician at Bibb Medical Associates (AL).

Tell me about yourself and the organization.
As you probably know, the American Academy of Family Physicians is the only medical association completely dedicated to primary care. We’ve been around since 1947, so we’ll have a 70th birthday next year. Now, I have not been a family physician for quite 70 years, but I have been a family physician since 1979. I actually practice where I grew up, in Centreville, AL –  about half a mile from where I graduated high school. The greater metropolitan area is about 5,000 people. I was in private practice for 31 years, and then in January of 2013 merged with another physician to move across the street. I’m still seeing my same patients and pretty much in the same location, but the address changed from 223 to 208 Pearson Avenue.

Now that you’re president of the AAFP, do you still see patients on a daily basis?
Though I travel a good bit for my academy job, I’m still what I call a real doctor. I still see patients every day – about two dozen in fact.

The release of the final MACRA rule is still making headlines. How do you and the academy plan to help family physicians transition to its value-based programs?
We have been working actively to educate our members about MACRA, letting them know that they need to participate as soon as they can, as fully as they can. This was a long, complicated rule. We’re still studying it, and as we delve into the rule, we will continue to educate them. We’ve got a designated website for our members. We’ve already put out a readiness assessment checklist. We’ve got an FAQ … there’ll be more information to come. [The AAFP released an executive summary of the rule earlier this week.] We’re trying to make our members aware, and then let them know the details as we are able to parcel those out and advise them on what they need to do.

We have long asked and thought that primary care needed to be paid differently; the old volume-based system for our specialty was just not in our best interest, and we’re hoping with a transition to value-based payment that it will be once our members get through the transition and get their ducks in a row. I’m hoping it’s going to be a positive experience for our members.

Do you think family physicians will welcome this transition, or is it seen as another regulatory hurdle they have to get through? What are your thoughts based on what you’re hearing from colleagues?
Well, change is frightening. Initially there’s going to be … I don’t know if fear is the right word, but there will be the trepidation of change and doing something different. Fear and anger trump truth and fact all the time, so until they get to know its ins and outs, there’s always going to be that fear and apprehension. As I said, as they become more familiar with it and are able to participate in the value-based system and the quality payment program, we should be all right.

That being said, this has not been front and center for the majority of physicians, family medicine included – the folks that are just going to work everyday seeing patients. It’s similar to when ICD-10 came out a year ago. For awhile, folks just sort of ignored it until it was upon them. Well, MACRA is now upon us, so I think that will begin to get their attention. We’re doing everything we can to increase its visibility and emphasize its importance.

How do you think healthcare technology is going to help – or hinder – physicians as they move to value-based programs?
Let me be circumspect about what I say on this one … Health IT is foundational to the transition to this new payment system, but right now, it’s more of a hindrance than a help. We’ve got to get to the point where the IT aids us in the care of our patients and the care of patient populations instead of being a roadblock to care. It’s got to get to the point where it’s a natural part of the physician’s workflow, where the computer does not come between the physician and his patient. It’s got to be interoperable. You’ve got to be able to have access to information without the problems we have now. We’ve got to get away from checkbox medicine. We’ve got to get to the point where we’re using this IT for the benefit of our patients, not just for the benefit of the bean counters. Right now, there’s too much administrative complexity. The complexity of modern medical practice is now the number-one cause of physician burnout.

Why did you decide to leave independent practice to become affiliated with the hospital that you’re now practicing at? Did health IT and/or administrative expenses play a part in that decision?
Now, I want to be clear – I am an advocate of health IT. I have had a computerized system in my office for 20 years. I’m on my fifth system now. I don’t want to repeat everything I said awhile ago, but the current IT systems are literally designed to maximize billing. They’re designed for bean counters. They are not designed for patient care. That’s the problem. As I said, I’m on my fifth system. I  hate them all. There’s not one out there that does what it ought to do despite what they claim.

The other problem I have is they set up this certified health information technology program. When you get a certified system, you assume when you’ve spent that money that it’s going to do what it needs to do without you having to buy additional modules. We’re making these IT companies rich, and the government’s not holding them accountable. Their interoperability standards that are in the law … we’ve got to comply with the law starting in 2017  and they don’t have to comply with some of these until 2025. That’s not right. The vendors need more skin in the game. They need to be held accountable.

Let me get off my soap box. Sorry about that. I don’t think I even answered your question. When I was in private solo practice, I had a real desire to be more involved with the AAFP. I knew I wanted to run for president, and I had been on the board for a few years. I was working 40 weeks a year with 52 weeks of overhead. One reason was financial, like I just mentioned, and the other was my AAFP travel schedule. I wanted to have a way for my patients to be taken care of while I was on the road. I had the opportunity to merge with another physician, and the hospital was interested in building a clinic. We merged our two practices into the new clinic there. It’s actually located inside the hospital, but it is a physician’s office. We’re just two halls over from the emergency room. It’s convenient, and we’ve got easy access to the hospital.

Aside from MACRA, what are your priorities for the academy and its members during your term as president?
Other than MACRA, the big national issue that’s getting a lot of press and publicity is the opioid epidemic, so helping to address that is something that we will focus on. The other issue has to do with workforce. We need funding reform that’s based on the actual physician workforce needs of this country. Another issue that I think is very important is diversity and working on the social determinants of health. We know as family physicians that it is critical to meeting the healthcare needs of our patients and our populations. When folks don’t have a safe place to sleep or access to good nutrition, sometimes writing a prescription is not the most important need that we should work on. And of course we need to reduce the administrative complexity of modern medical practice.

Does anything about healthcare IT excite you?
The potential. Health IT has tremendous potential. Current systems have not reached their potential. When we have access to data in a meaningful, real-time way where we can make decisions that not only affect the health of our patients but of the populations that we treat, it’s exciting to think about not operating in a silo, but operating where you can make decisions based on large aggregate data and do what’s best for a patient.

The other thing with IT is that you can do more things remotely. We can take care of folks and it doesn’t have to be just in a face-to-face office visit. That’s why I think over 10 years from now, healthcare will be radically different from what it is now. I may be taking care of you through a portal and through smartphones and other things, and you may actually only come see me every year or two if something pops up that we can’t handle, or just to make sure things haven’t changed. The problem with our current system is that we’ve got to be able to survive in our practice through this transitional period until we get to the point that we reach this potential. There’s tremendous potential, but not with our current system.

Do you have any final thoughts?
We must reduce administrative complexity! But seriously … I can’t think of anything else I need to add.

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 10/26/16

Top News

The local business paper highlights some of the steps Athenahealth is taking to ameliorate its inability to to hit 30 percent year-over-year growth in new clients – a fact divulged in a Q3 earnings call late last week. They include: hiring an as yet unnamed chief people officer, the creation of which was announced by CEO Jonathan Bush in May; a shift in sales tactics now that Meaningful Use has died down; and getting the most out of its More Disruption Please program participants, most of which are early stage companies in need of an eager scaling partner. Mr. H provided his own summary of the earnings call in this week’s Monday Morning Update.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

HIStalk’s Must-See Exhibitors Guide for MGMA 2016 is live. Click here to look over the products and innovations our sponsors plan to showcase, and map out your trip to the exhibit hall accordingly.

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.

Announcements and Implementations

Drchrono updates its mobile EHR app with new design features and user interface functionality.

DirectTrust announces steady growth in the number of Direct exchange users, addresses, and exchanges. The number of healthcare organizations served by DirectTrust Health Information Service Providers increased by 62 percent to nearly 70,000 year over year. New participants include HealthLinkNY, LifeWire, and SSL.com.

PatientPoint develops a new app for physicians that delivers medical news and point-of-care patient education materials.

Bellmore, NY-based Sybrid MD launches a $1 billing solution for physician practices. (One dollar will ensure service for the first 30 days.) The company boasts in a grammatically incorrect way that, “Non-techie and new physician practices can quickly adapt this robust billing service and get paid in time without having to worry about impending regulations and newest technologies.” Grammar usage like this makes me wonder if copywriters have gone out of business.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Primary care management services company VillageMD expands into Chicago through partnerships with multiple primary care groups.

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Arizona subsidiary Trinnovate Ventures invests an undisclosed amount in ACO Partner, its joint venture with McKesson. Created in April, the JV seeks to help payers and independent practices transition to value-based care models using McKesson’s physician engagement, care management, population health services, and technology.

Telemedicine

The American Red Cross and Teladoc launch a pilot collaboration that will bring telemedicine services to people served by the Red Cross in areas of natural disaster. As part of the pilot, Teladoc employees will be encouraged to donate time and resources to the Red Cross via the company’s Teladoc Cares volunteer initiative.

Government and Politics

US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD gets into some Step It Up smack talk with US Olympian Dominique Dawes. The Fitbit-sponsored challenge ends today. Americans have racked up a collective 57.2 billion steps so far.

Nonprofit Fight for the Future creates a tech support hotline – 1 (844) 294-A-CLUE – to “help” members of Congress, especially those befuddled by last week’s Internet outage. The corresponding website puts the organization’s mission into perspective: “Are you a member of Congress who has been asked to give a TV interview about the massive DDoS attacks that took down ‘the internet’ last week, but have absolutely no clue what you’re talking about? We can help!” The pros at Politico shared their hotline experience:

“The phone line greets you with a ‘press one if you’re a member of Congress’ prompt, and instructs that if you have a rotary phone, you should get a new one. ‘Have some self-respect,’ the automated voice says. Your … host lied and pressed 1, where a staffer identified himself as a "cyber bot" to skewer a specific member of Congress. He then offered meaningful cybersecurity advice, served with a side of chiding Capitol Hill for passing last year’s cybersecurity information sharing law and others that the group argued presents a threat to digital privacy.”

Other

MultiCare Puyallup Urgent Care (WA) staff accidentally lock Savannah Lewitt and her four month-old son in the building at closing time after taking the baby’s vitals and then telling Lewitt the physician would be in to see them “in about 10 minutes.” Thirty minutes later, she walked out of the exam room to find the clinic empty and locked up tight. She and her son managed to leave with assistance from the cleaning crew. As a result, the clinic now requires that staff check every room and door just before closing.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice updates.
Contact us online.
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News 10/25/16

Top News

The MACRA flexibility train just keeps on chugging: CMS announces additional opportunities for physicians to participate in Advanced Alternative Payment Models, including:

• Reopening the application process for the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus program.
• Adding participants to the Next Generation ACO model.
• Making participation in the Oncology Care Model’s two-sided risk program available in 2017 so that it qualifies as an Advanced APM beginning in the 2017 performance year.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

HIStalk’s Must-See Exhibitors Guide for MGMA 2016 is live. Click here to look over the products and innovations our sponsors plan to showcase, and map out your trip to the exhibit hall accordingly.

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.

Announcements and Implementations

Managed care company Premier Eye Care (FL) implements data storage and management solutions from NetApp, reducing its backup-and-recovery time from up to nine hours to seven minutes.

Allscripts recertifies Universal Research Solutions, enabling it to incorporate its OBERD patient outcomes data collection systems with new versions of TouchWorks.

Telemedicine

MyTelemedicine launches a Partner Portal to help resellers manage their customer base. Features include real-time activation, utilization stats, prospect management, and commission tracking.

Brother International’s OmniJoin Web conferencing division develops new waiting room features for telemedicine applications that include one-click attendee admission or expulsion capabilities and wait-time tracking.

Alliance Physical Therapy pilots Docity’s telemedicine software at its nine locations in and around Chattanooga, TN.

ViiMed partners with EHR integration startup Redox to add its telemedicine technology to software from the major EHR companies. Headquartered in Washington, DC, ViiMed launched in 2007 as a sports training company that developed collaborative training technology using interactive video and tailored workout programs.

Government and Politics

Perhaps taking note of my penchant for baking in lieu of reading the final MACRA rule in its entirety, AAFP kindly releases its own easy-to-digest, five-page executive summary.

Seventeen companies including Uber, Lyft, Matter, and Rock Health commit to helping HHS attract freelancers and entrepreneurs to Healthcare.gov once open enrollment gets going on November 1.

Research and Innovation

Hot on the heels of Friday’s IoT-enabled DDoS attack on Dyn, the National Cyber Security Alliance and Internet security company ESET release survey results that show – surprise, surprise – most consumers are worried about hackers taking over their smart devices. Eighty-five percent of respondents know full well that hackers can remotely watch them via breached webcams, and 50 percent are reconsidering purchasing an IoT device due to cybersecurity concerns. Perhaps its time to rethink the notion that we really need smart fridges, thermostats, toasters, and toothbrushes.

Other

NPR’s Marketplace takes a look at the progress the Aledade West Virginia ACO is making in helping reducing patient ER visits and overall costs. While I’m sure healthcare IT plays a role in helping patients like COPD patient Millard Scott, it seems his health has been improved through good old-fashioned human interaction via community health workers. “If I know [Samantha Runyon’s] coming, I can sit here and make it through it,” 76 year-old Scott says of his bad days. “But if there wasn’t somebody I could depend on, I wouldn’t have even sat here. I would go to the ER. But I know she’s coming.”

Uber and Passport Health partner to deliver free flu shots and “flu-fighting” care packages today to customers in 17 cities including Chicago, Philadelphia, and Washington, DC.

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 10/24/16

Top News

American Society of Clinical Oncology nonprofit/subsidiary CancerLinq announces that over 1 million patient records are now in the CancerLinQ platform, which aggregates cancer patient medical records to uncover patterns and trends, and benchmark oncology practices. The milestone stems from the organization’s agreements with 70 oncology practices representing over 1,500 oncologists to participate in the platform. I interviewed medical oncologist Robin Zion, MD of Michiana Hematology Oncology, about the practice’s decision to become one of the first to connect to the CancerLinq platform earlier this year:

“The promise of this technology lies, in part, in being able to better care for our patients. I hope one day we will be able to answer the question so often asked by our patients regarding our experiences in caring for patients just like them. Additionally, patients may derive some comfort and reassurance in knowing that another set of expert eyes is looking at their case via mass data collection and analysis, thereby comparing what we are recommending to what was learned from the Rapid Learning System. Furthermore, the RLS may also be able to use the patient data in better informing research questions, which complements the expressed desire of patient willingness to contribute to advancing cancer care. From the practice standpoint, we have and want to continue to be involved in cutting-edge initiatives that will benefit our patients while simultaneously making us better doctors and oncology providers.”

HIStalk Practice Musings

I had every intention of reading through the final MACRA rule this weekend, but, with cooler temps and changing leaves finally making themselves apparent in my neck of the woods, I set aside my 2,000-plus page homework and instead made my first batch of homemade ginger snaps, courtesy of an easy recipe from Kelly Minter. Even if fall hasn’t made it to your area, the smell of these cookies right out of the oven will put you in an autumnal mood in no time. Paired with a cup of coffee, they may help me stay awake as I dig through the rule.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

HIStalk’s Must-See Exhibitors Guide for MGMA 2016 is live. Click here to look over the products and innovations our sponsors plan to showcase, and map out your trip to the exhibit hall accordingly.

Webinars

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 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

MACRA was definitely on the minds of attendees at the annual EClinicalWorks UGM in Orlando. @drchrissy1 tweeted a pic of the #epicpartyband that played at the conference’s concluding party, but I have a hard time believing any cover band is better than HIStalkapalooza favorite Party on the Moon.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos tells an inquisitive physician in the Vanity Fair New Establishment Summit audience that, while he can see applications for Alexa within healthcare, the company doesn’t yet have specific plans to bring it to the world of healthcare. “It would be going too far to say that we have worked out a vision,” he said. “We’re working on having a vision in that arena because I do think it would be very helpful. … The medical care system is so big, no one company can do this. It has to be that you provide tools, and then hospitals and doctors and nurses and so on use those tools to improve health care.” (I dug into Alexa’s potential in healthcare for this HIStalk feature.)

Announcements and Implementations

Seward Community Health Center, a FQHC in Seward, AK, will go live with Epic on October 31. The implementation seems to be the result of a shared-system agreement between SCHC and nearby Providence Health and Services. I can only assume that they will tie in some sort of festive “Trick or Treat” theme during the roll out. Hopefully it’s more treats than tricks.

People

David Young (MindCare Solutions) joins AI and data analytics company Faros Healthcare as chairman of the board.

Telemedicine

Signia develops an app that connects hearing-aid users with providers to help them adjust to the devices. The MyHearing app connects to the company’s TeleCare portal, where providers can monitor hearing-aid utilization and progress, and make adjustments remotely.

Government and Politics

Just in time for open enrollment, California’s Office of the Patient Advocate releases its annual report cards on health plans and medical groups. This year marks the first time OPA has included pricing data in its ratings. Consumers can now search and compare over 200 medical groups by county, quality, and cost.

Research and Innovation

The Canadian Space Agency taps Montreal-based Carré Technologies to further develop its Astroskin bio-monitoring shirt so that David Saint-Jacques can wear it on his six-month mission aboard the International Space Station in 2018. The wearable’s embedded sensors will monitor breathing and heart rates, electrical activity of the heart, blood pressure, breathing volume, skin temperature, physical activity levels, and blood oxygen levels. Data collected will be sent from the ISS to ground servers for data management and analysis, and eventual consideration for terrestrial applications.

Other

The height of irony: The World Medical Association, a France-based organization created to “ensure the independence of physicians, and to work for the highest possible standards of ethical behavior,” elects an Indian physician facing corruption and conspiracy allegations as its president. Urologist Ketan Desai, MD was jailed briefly in 2010 on bribery charges and seems to still be in the midst of court appearances related to that case and another involving the Medical Council of India.

The local paper gauges physician reaction to the final MACRA rule, with quite a few confident that it won’t have much impact on their Medicare payments or quality. “We’ll just have to pay more attention to what we do … how often patients get treatment … show that patients are getting proper quality of care … if you do it enough it’ll eventually become second nature, [b]ut it is a slightly greater bureaucratic level on physicians,” says Todd Scarbrough, MD adding that he’s skeptical the new payment models will improve overall quality of care. “Generally, the quality of care is good right now … maybe there will be a 1 to 2 percent improvement.”

Let me dust off my Elvish: HarperCollins will publish a collection of the Middle-earth tales of Beren and Lúthien next May. The book is the compilation of stories written by J.R.R. Tolkien beginning in 1917 and collected and edited by his son, Christopher. The publisher promises that, “the epic tale … will reunite fans of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings with Elves and Men, Dwarves and Orcs and the rich landscape and creatures unique to Tolkien’s Middle-earth.”

Sponsor Updates

• Intelligent Medical Objects exhibits at the EClinicalWorks National User Conference through October 24 in Orlando.

Blog Posts

• Joint Commission Launches Workplace Violence Prevention Tool (Versus Technology)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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