News 8/23/16

Top News

MediPortal and Integrated Data Services plan to roll out consumer-facing CommonWell services by the end of the year. Consumers will be able to sign up for access, connect their CommonWell records to that of their providers, and query and view data. Six other members including Aprima, Athenahealth, and Modernizing Medicine have pledged to launch similar capabilities in the near future.

HIStalk Practice Musings

Listening: The somewhat new Poddy Break podcast from comedian Tim Hawkins. I’ve been binge listening in the run up to seeing him perform live last weekend – a performance that did not disappoint. (How can you not laugh at someone riding a Segueway?) His only nod to healthcare was a well-received Obamacare joke, and a brief bit on the panic he felt at being booked to perform at a conference for optometrists. What he lacked in eye care jokes, he made up for in a set that lasted a good hour-plus, not including an intermission and opening act.

Webinars

August 24 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Surviving the OCR Cybersecurity & Privacy Pre-Audit: Are You Truly Prepared?” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenter: John Gomez, CEO, Sensato. Many healthcare organizations are not prepared for an OCR pre-audit of their privacy and security policies. This webinar will provide a roadmap, tools, and tactics that will help balance policies and budgets in adopting an OCR-friendly strategy that will allow passing with flying colors.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

Safety Net Connect develops a CCD workaround for its Econsult referral technology, enabling community health centers to more efficiently coordinate care and meet Meaningful Use Objective 5 using their existing EHRs. The company worked with the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles County to develop the tool.

PMA Medical Specialists, a Philadelphia-based group of 54 independent physicians, teams with Aledade to apply for ACO status. Once approved, the Aledade Freedom ACO will care for 7,800 Medicare beneficiaries.

People

Pat Cathey (Fujitsu Americas) joins ClearData as chief revenue officer.

Pivot Point Consulting names Brett Meyers, MD (Meyers Consulting Services) CMIO and Frank Siepmann (1 Security Solutions Applied) senior cybersecurity advisor.

Telemedicine

TreatMD, which launched consumer-facing virtual consults last week, develops PM and billing software to help physicians implement the company’s technology as a white-label solution.

Government and Politics

The Washington Post looks at the ways in which physicians are attempting to wrap their arms around MACRA, emphasizing the results of an earlier Deloitte survey that found most physicians were either not aware of the proposed rule, or were adopting a wait-and-see attitude. “I have no idea what I’m going to do yet,” admits PCP Jean Antonucci, MD whose patient mix is half Medicare. “If I’m going to lose money, I’ll have to see what my options are. I don’t want to spend the bulk of my time doing paperwork or collecting data on my patients. That’s what the doctors in my community who are employed [in larger groups] seem to spend most of their time doing.”

Aprima’s admittedly “non-scientific” poll of 85 practice employees reveals that nearly half believe Hillary Clinton to be the more beneficial candidate when it comes to future presidential impact on healthcare. “Our clients, most of whom work in independent physician offices, are concerned about a variety of issues and trends, from new payment models, the aging population and declines in reimbursements,” explains CEO Michael Nissenbaum. “I will defer to the political pundits to come up with theories about why our poll turned out as it did.” I believe we have a few pundits amongst our readership, so feel free to weigh in via the comments section below.

The US Patent and Trademark Office launches the Cancer Moonshot Challenge to encourage public use of its patent data to help it learn more about investments into cancer research and therapies. Submissions are due September 12. Three winners have the chance to nab up to $5,000.

Other

Apple plans to launch “Planet of the Apps,” a new reality show that is part of its push into original programming through ITunes and Apple TV. The show will spotlight developers competing for $10 million in VC funding, guidance from tech experts, and featured-section placement in the company’s app store. I’ll be interested to see how many contestant ideas end up being related to healthcare.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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DOCtalk with Dr. Gregg 8/23/16

Dancing the MACRA-rena

It seems healthcare often lags behind in many things, like IT adoption and pricing transparency. Apparently, it also lags behind in fads. To wit, I just discovered that a certain 1990s dance craze has been reborn with a health IT twist …

————————————

[Chorus:]

Give happiness to your practice, MACRA-rena

‘Cause your patients are for generating money for you

Give happiness to your wallet, MACRA-rena

Heeey … MACRA-rena! Aaay!

(repeat once)

MACRA-rena has a father who’s called…

Who’s called the last name MU,

And while he was taking his oath as near failing,

She was figuring how to fail anew … Aaay!

(repeat once)

(Chorus)

MACRA-rena, MACRA-rena, MACRA-rena

You’re popular with the princes of Washington

MACRA-rena, MACRA-rena, MACRA-rena

Like insurers’ lobbyists and guns … Aaay!

(repeat once)

(Chorus)

MACRA-rena dreams of new payment models

And driving the latest reforms

She would like living with ev’ry doc

Draining their joie de vivre and more … Aaay!

(repeat once)

(Chorus)

From the cynical side of the trenches…

“You have to remember one thing about the will of the people: it wasn’t that long ago that we were swept away by the Macarena.” – Jon Stewart

Dr. Gregg Alexander, a grunt in the trenches pediatrician at Madison Pediatrics, is chief medical officer for Health Nuts Media, an HIT and marketing consultant, sits on the board of directors of the Ohio Health Information Partnership, and is the semi-proud author of “Monsters Don’t Fart!”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.

News 8/22/16

Top News

HHS doles out $100 million in ACA funds to help 1,304 health centers across the country with quality improvement efforts, including bolstering healthcare IT utilization. The centers, selected based on their performance in a number of categories related to equity, access, coordination, and value, will use the funds to expand quality improvement initiatives and infrastructure, as well as the delivery of primary care services.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Peer60 polled C-level health system IT executives (mostly CIOs and CMIOs) this month to determine the reach, influence, and usefulness of the six major health IT news publications and sites. The five-question poll found that HIStalk is:

• #1 most read
• #1 most influential
• #1 in generating interest about companies
• #1 in providing information most useful for job performance
• #1 most recommended by executives to others

While the results focused on Mr. H’s unflagging efforts at HIStalk.com, I like to think that Practice also contributes a wee bit to these statistics. In honor of the results, we’re kicking off our annual “new sponsor special” early. (Marketing folks, take note: It’s much easier to reach out now than to wait a few weeks before HIMSS when everyone is clamoring for attention 10 minutes ago.) Contact Lorre, who will also have HIStalkapalooza information soon.

Webinars

August 24 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Surviving the OCR Cybersecurity & Privacy Pre-Audit: Are You Truly Prepared?” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenter: John Gomez, CEO, Sensato. Many healthcare organizations are not prepared for an OCR pre-audit of their privacy and security policies. This webinar will provide a roadmap, tools, and tactics that will help balance policies and budgets in adopting an OCR-friendly strategy that will allow passing with flying colors.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

TrainerMD will offer fitness-monitoring earbuds as part of its 360˚ Health Program, set to officially launch this fall. In addition to heart rate, the wearable will stream pace and caloric data in real time to a corresponding app that physicians and trainers can use to better manage a patient’s care. These seem like they’d make great conference giveaways, provided the app is consumer-friendly.

Jopari Solutions offers physicians the ability to exchange digital attachments with workers compensation businesses and payers from within their existing PM software.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Reports surface that Apple has purchased personal health data startup Gliimpse. Founded in 2013 by Anil Sethi (who started out as a systems engineer at Apple in the ‘80s) and Karthik Hariharan, the company’s PHR technology is targeted to chronically ill patients, and seems in line with Apple’s recent moves in digital health, which include hiring pediatric endocrinologist and HealthKit app developer Rajiv Kumar, MD and software developer Evan Doll, as well as its patent for a wearable ECG monitor.

Canadian grocery store and pharmacy chain operator Loblaw will acquire EHR vendor QHR Corp. for $170 million. QHR will operate as a business unit within Loblaw’s Shoppers Drug Mart division, and remain headquartered in Kelowna, British Columbia.

People

Kevin Hutchinson (MyTaskit) and Ned Moore (Clutch) join HudlHealth’s advisory board.

Telemedicine

AMD Global Telemedicine updates its Agnes Interactive  software, adding enhanced EHR integration, API customization, session controls, and security.

Vigilias Telehealth opens its 400 square-foot headquarters in downtown Wichita. Two of the Kansas-based startup’s leaders – President Elisha Yaghmai, MD and Marketing Director Chuck Coffey, MD – both did their residencies at the University of Kansas School of Medicine-Wichita.

Government and Politics

ONC commemorates the 20th anniversary of HIPAA with a tweet chat highlighting its evolution and the challenges that surround it today. The celebration is timely, given, as @ElinSilveous mentioned, the propensity for some practices and hospitals to prevent patient record access due to a lack of HIPAA understanding; not to mention OCR’s announcement late last week that it will begin to focus its investigations on breaches affecting fewer than 500 people. You can check out my recap of the #HIPAAchat here.

The AAFP responds to Medicare’s proposed physician fee schedule. I honestly couldn’t bring myself to wade through the 56-page response, which seems polite to a fault. At a glance, healthcare IT-related highlights include sections on telemedicine and clinical decision support software in imaging use cases.

Other

If you think you might be, then you probably are: Intel summer intern Alexei Bastidas develops an algorithm that will help Twitter users determine if they are, in fact, online trolls. The corresponding app, designed to detect tweets with a tone of harassment, offers users a numerical rating and example tweets that could be seen as harassing.

Sponsor Updates

• AdvancedMD opens registration for its annual conference EVO16, to be held October 11-12 in Salt Lake City, UT.
• Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at HIMSS Asia-Pac August 23-26 in Bangkok.

Blog Posts

• It’s Prime Time for Neural Nets in Speech Recognition (NVoq)

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 8/18/16

Top News

The FTC finalizes its privacy case settlement with Practice Fusion. The company’s trouble with the FTC stems from a 2013 incident in which it solicited doctor reviews from patients without disclosing that the reviews would be publicly posted on the Internet. The settlement, which was published in a draft version in June, prevents the company from using the illegally collected reviews, and authorizes the FTC to conduct privacy audits on the company for the next 20 years.

Webinars

August 24 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Surviving the OCR Cybersecurity & Privacy Pre-Audit: Are You Truly Prepared?” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenter: John Gomez, CEO, Sensato. Many healthcare organizations are not prepared for an OCR pre-audit of their privacy and security policies. This webinar will provide a roadmap, tools, and tactics that will help balance policies and budgets in adopting an OCR-friendly strategy that will allow passing with flying colors.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

Walgreens will work with HealthPrize Technologies to expand its mobile health tools to include gamification strategies and Walgreens rewards points to improve medication adherence. The company will initially target diabetic patients who take certain medications for the new Web-based, mobile-friendly program.

Ride2MD, a technology-enabled patient transportation startup based in Miami, partners with Lyft to help transport patients that don’t require wheelchair-accessible vehicles. Ride2MD services only private-paying customers at the moment, but plans to soon partner with two local health plans, nursing homes, and assisted living facilities.

Telemedicine

Salesforce adds telemedicine capabilities to its Health Cloud CRM.

People

Chandra Osborn (Vanderbilt University Medical Center) joins diabetes app startup One Drop as vice president of health and behavioral informatics.

Government and Politics

An NIH survey of consumer interest in the Precision Medicine research cohort, which aims to track the health data of at least 1 million people over many years, finds that the majority of adults surveyed are in favor of it. Enthusiasm levels didn’t vacillate that much between racial and ethnic groups, though younger respondents favored participation more than those over 60, and those with less education. A majority of survey takers find that routinely receiving data is the most important participation incentive. Others said their participation would be contingent on access to lab results, genetic information, and a copy of their medical records.

The Health Care Industry Cybersecurity Task Force seeks input from stakeholders to help it identify risks, gaps, challenges, and best practices related to cybersecurity issues in the healthcare sector. Formed in March, the task force will report its findings to Congress and the public, as well as develop educational materials.

Research and Innovation

Researchers from MIT and Microsoft put a gold-leaf spin on temporary smart tattoos. The DuoSkin tattoo can track and show information about the wearer, including body temperature. For the fashionable and lazy, the tattoo can even be used as a button to help users find lost phones.

Other

McDonald’s includes basic activity trackers in its Happy Meals, tying in nicely with its Olympic Games. The Step-It pedometer blinks quickly or slowly depending on the wearer’s activity level, and is considered to be in line with the company’s “general philosophy for Happy Meal toys, which is to make toys that encourage either physical or imagination-based play,” according to a company representative. This isn’t the fast-food chain’s first foray into wearables: It included a pedometer in special Go Active! adult Happy Meals in 2004. (Update: The company has ended the activity tracker promotion early due to possible skin irritations.)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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

HIStalk Practice Interviews Matt Longjohn, MD National Health Officer, YMCA

Matt Longjohn, MD is national health officer at YMCA of the USA, which recently announced a partnership with Athenahealth that will to connect its diabetes prevention program to nearly 80,000 end users and their pre-diabetic patients.

Tell me about yourself and the organization.
The Y is one of the oldest and largest charities in the nation. It consists of 2,700 local YMCAs operating programs in 10,000 US communities. YMCA of the USA is the national resource organization for all YMCAs in the country. I have the privilege of being the first physician executive to lead national program efforts in the Y’s nearly 170 year-long history.

How long has the Diabetes Prevention Program been around? Has it leveraged technology before?
The YMCA’s Diabetes Prevention Program was first implemented in Indianapolis in 2005. It was translated directly from an intervention that had been tested during a $200 million NIH study, which demonstrated a 58 to 71 percent-reduction in new cases of type 2 diabetes among people with pre-diabetes. The Y in Indianapolis was able to produce results consistent with that NIH study, but for only 10-20 percent of the cost. Since then, we’ve scaled this program to over 1,500 program sites in 47 states.

Technology has supported these efforts significantly, but to scale even further we knew we needed a clinically-oriented technology solution in order to make referrals from clinicians easier for them to make — and for Ys to receive.

Why was the time right to approach Athenahealth as a partner in the DPP? Did you look into working with other vendors? What were the deciding factors in the Y’s decision to partner with Athena?
The timing of the launch of our new business relationship with Athenahealth coincides with policy moves being made by CMS. The Y just completed a four-year demonstration project with nearly 8,000 Medicare participants, which documented a nearly 5 to 1 return on investment for CMS from the YMCA’s DPP. Because of these cost savings, Medicare is planning to cover the program as a benefit nationwide in 2018. Based on other lessons learned during our Medicare demonstration project, Y-USA felt we needed a solution like Athenahealth to be able to live up to increasing regulatory compliance requirements, and to just make it easier for participants and referring clinicians to partner with local YMCAs to leverage our chronic disease prevention programs.

We went to bid, looking for a technology and practice management partner in 2015, and received a number of competitive proposals. Ultimately, it was a combination of important factors that made Athenahealth the ideal partner for the Y. First, they matched the Y’s impressive footprint: The company already works with 79,000 practices nationwide. Second, its cloud-based infrastructure allows for thousands of YMCA “Lifestyle Coaches” working in nearly 300 cities to document program outcomes in a single platform in real-time. Third, it has a clear commitment to the highest standards in data security. Finally, their history as a company focused on disrupting the status quo in healthcare was also important to us. The Y aims to play a role in transforming our nation’s healthcare system into one that increasingly values prevention.

What will this partnership look like to Y members?
The Y serves about 22 million people each year as we advance our mission to strengthen community through youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility. But this program is for more than just the people paying membership dues to access a Y facility. This really is a program the Y is offering for any adult in our communities with elevated risk for diabetes. So far, nearly 70 percent of the roughly 45,000 people that have gone through the YMCA’s DPP were not Y members at the start of the program. Also, roughly 60 percent of the 1,500 plus program sites for the YMCA’s DPP are outside of Ys. It’s not just Y members that will benefit from this new arrangement. This is truly an effort to build a culture of health.

How does the Y plan on working with local providers as part of the DPP?
The Y has been working with groups like the AMA and other medical professional organizations to build awareness among clinicians of the evidence behind DPPs and the opportunity to refer to an increasingly available network of program providers.

This is important for a few reasons. First, people who come to us with a referral from their clinician tend to do better in the program. With their consent, the Y can communicate with their clinician and become part of an integrated care team working to help people prevent chronic diseases like diabetes. Second, when Ys work with clinical partners, they are able to serve more people. Enrollment in the program dramatically increases when either providers or payers refer people to the YMCA’s DPP.

What goals does the Y have for this program?
There are 86 million adults in the United States with pre-diabetes. The Y aims to help as many of them as possible to avoid progression to type 2 diabetes. With coverage for the YMCA’s DPP under Medicare beginning in 2018 — and with more payers, employers, and clinicians all understanding that the Y has a number of evidence-based programs that can be clinically integrated to address chronic disease risks — we expect to be able to serve hundreds of thousands of people per year via referrals coming to Ys through Athenahealth.

How will you determine if the partnership with Athenahealth has been successful?
Our work with Athenahealth is actually part of a larger “Community Integrated Health” initiative that we share with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Together, Y-USA and RWJF will be evaluating a number of factors related to the Y’s partnership with the company, including things like the awareness of providers of opportunities to partner with community-based organizations such as the Y to advance the health of their patients.

Assuming it is successful, how might the Y further leverage healthcare technology as part of the DPP program?
Our work with Athenahealth will go far beyond the YMCA’s DPP. We are working with our new colleagues to configure their platform to accept data from the YMCA’s DPP, but also a number of our other evidence-based health interventions. These include our programs addressing arthritis and high risk of falls, cancer survivorship, high blood pressure, childhood obesity, and future programs that are still in early stages of development for things like tobacco cessation, Parkinson’s disease, and even early cognitive decline.

It seems healthcare stakeholders – from government agencies to retail clinics – are realizing that social determinants of health are vital to the success of population health management programs. How do you foresee the Y playing a part in working with its partners and within its communities to ensure that people’s most basic healthcare needs are met? What role, if any, will technology play in this endeavor?
The Y is continuing to build on the last 10 years of work at the local and state level to address social determinants of health and to promote health equity. Through partnerships with philanthropy, and in cooperative agreements with agencies like the CDC, the Y has been a very present partner in 247 local health coalitions that have documented their efforts to advance 39,000 health promoting strategies. Ys have addressed food insecurity, housing, walkability and safety of neighborhoods, school and chil care policy, etc. As we have scaled programs like the YMCA’s DPP, we have often seen local Ys address social determinants of health by partnering with public health departments, safety net healthcare systems, etc. They are also hiring from within the communities they serve to reduce barriers to participation in programs like the YMCA’s DPP. For example, we delivered the program in English, Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Somali, Hmong, Portuguese, and even American Sign Language.

Do you have any final thoughts?
I encourage your readers to learn more about the DPP via ymca.net/diabetes.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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