Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 8/7/16

Lisa Casasanta (Boehringer-Ingelheim Pharmaceuticals) joins Mercy Medical Center and the Sisters of Providence Health System (MA) as vice president of population health.

Nabil Chehade, MD (HealthSpan Physicians and the Ohio Permanente Medical Group) (OH) joins MetroHealth System as SVP of population health.

Lumeris names Ray Wolf (Redirect Health) SVP of architecture and innovation, and appoints Joseph Gifford, MD (Providence Health and Services) SVP of provider markets.

Cerner reports in its earnings call that its HealtheIntent population health management solution has been purchased by more than 100 clients, and that it sold two PHM deals of over $5 million.

Employer-focused care management company Telligen acquires corporate wellness program company Total Well-being for an undisclosed sum. Total Well-Being President and Founder Colleen Reilly will assume the role of Telligen’s vice president of employee well-being.

Pathway Health will add Virtual Health’s population health management technologies, including predictive analytics, risk stratification, clinical analysis, and workflow management, to its line of consulting services for the post acute-care market.

Sponsor Updates

• Healthwise and Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at the Allscripts Client Experience August 9-11 in Las Vegas.
• Nordic will sponsor the Collaboration of Revenue Cycle Epic Users Conference August 10-12 in Portland.
• GE Healthcare President and CEO John Flannery continues his LinkedIn series on “The Top 10 Reasons Transformation is the New Normal for Healthcare.”

Blog Posts

• Preparing for Epic implementation: Your go-live playbook [podcast] (Nordic)
• The next generation of Healthcare IT solutions must create value for the clinician (NVoq)

Contacts

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

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News 8/4/16

Top News

Athenahealth works with providers in its network to determine hotspots for likely Zika Virus diagnoses. The company has so far identified 1,800 residents of a Miami neighborhood dealing with Zika-carrying mosquitoes – the majority of which are patients at Borinquen Health Care Center. The company is working with the FQHC and several other providers in the area to reach out to at-risk patients for testing. It also plans to update patient health records with CDC guidelines on Zika so that physicians can better educate their patients. As of August 3, six cases of locally acquired mosquito-borne cases of the virus have been reported to the CDC; over 1,800 travel-related cases have been documented.

Webinars

August 10 (Wednesday) 1:30 ET. “Taming the Beast: CDS Knowledge Management.” Sponsored by LogicStream Health. Presenters: Luis Saldana, MD, MBA, CMIO, Texas Health Resources (THR); Maxine Ketcham, clinical decision support analyst, THR; Kanan Garg, senior applications analyst, THR; Patrick Yoder, CEO, LogicStream health. This presentation will review THR’s systematic process for managing clinical decision support assets, including identifying broken alerts, addressing technical and clinical issues, modifying order sets, and retiring tools that have outlived their usefulness. Attendees will learn how THR uses a robust knowledge management platform to better understand how clinicians are interacting with their clinical content to maintain their order sets and reduce the number of alerts fired.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Quest Diagnostics develops an EHR-friendly digital dementia assessment tool to help physicians diagnose and care for patients with cognitive dysfunction.

Wake Radiology (NC) implements PM imaging technology from Vital Images across its 20 outpatient offices.

Optum subsidiary OptumCare signs a 10-year agreement with Allscripts to supply the company’s TouchWorks technology bundle its physician practice network.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The US Patent and Trademark Office awards physician dictation software vendor InfraWare a patent for its “System And Method For Analyzing Verbal Records of Dictation Using Extracted Verbal Features.” New features include periods, commas, numbered list identification, and identifiers for medication lists that will help accelerate the creation of health records from physician dictation.

ElationEMR raises $15 million in Series B financing and rebrands to Elation Health. The San Francisco-based company was started in 2010 by brother and sister team Conan and Kyna Fong while working at their father’s primary care practice, who at the time time was not a fan of EHRs (though he is now a dedicated client). You can read my 2014 interview with CEO and co-founder Kyna Fong here.

Multi-industry accounting and consulting company Wipfli acquires HFS Consultants and its marketing division for an undisclosed sum.

Telemedicine

Teladoc attributes its failure to meet Q2 revenue expectations to increases direct-to-consumer advertising costs and the delayed implementation of two clients, who’ve purchased rolls outs to early 2017. Q2 results: $26.5 million in revenue; a 45-percent increase in membership to 15.4 million, and 199,106 visits.

Iagnosis, developer of DermatologistOnCall, reports 75 percent year-over-year growth in its number of online patient visits, and a 70-percent growth in its provider network. I’m not sure what that’s worth given that the company hasn’t released hard numbers.

Dictum Health integrates Eprosystem’s EproMedical EHR into its telemedicine platform.

People

Jeff Fields (CMF Associates) joins Rite Aid subsidiary and population health management company Health Dialog as CFO. He will also take on a similar role at RediClinic, which operates 52 clinics inside Rite Aid stores.

Eric Heflin (The Sequoia Project) joins the IHE USA Board of Directors.

Josh Weiner (Summit Partners) joins Solutionreach as chief growth officer.

Zelis Healthcare appoints Charles Garner (MedAssets) CFO and chief administrative officer, and Matthew Hintz (ComplexCare Solutions) as chief HR officer. The company rebranded last month to bring together four companies – Premier Healthcare Exchange, Stratose, Pay-Plus Solutions, and GlobalCare – that make up its revenue cycle services for providers and payers.

Government and Politics

CMS hosts its second annual IT conference in Baltimore. Speakers, the majority of which were CMS employees, largely focused on internal systems powering Medicaid and Blue Button

HHS awards $8.6 million in funding to help 246 health centers in 41 states improve care quality and patient and provider experience via Patient-Centered Medical Home programs. The selected health centers will use the funding to achieve, expand, and optimize PCHM recognition. Sixty-five percent of centers already have some form of recognition.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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HIStalk Practice Interviews Cyber Smith, Practice Administrator

Tell us about yourself and the practice.
I am the practice administrator for a small, privately owned family practice in Arizona. We have a single location housing fewer than 10 physicians. Given that this interview focuses on our cybersecurity efforts, I’ve chosen to remain anonymous because the last thing that I want to do is draw attention to our practice. Wouldn’t it be ironic if we became a target for a cyber attack by discussing our precautions against it?

What prompted your practice to look into cybersecurity solutions?
As background, I am something of a geek. I regularly keep up with technology news and trends. A year ago, a buddy of mine shared his experience as a victim of ransomware (the $500 variety on his personal computer), so I had some awareness of this threat. But I became much more concerned with the recent news of hospitals getting attacked and being taken hostage.

As I read about the damage being done, I shared the stories with our physicians and staff. I asked everyone to be vigilant with their email, and tried to impress upon them the consequences that are possible. As I researched this topic further, I became aware of a Security Awareness Training company that offers to test your staff for free. So, a week after I warned my staff, I sent them each a bait email, based off common phishing attacks. In the first hour, three individuals had already clicked on the poisonous link. In total, five individuals clicked on the bait link – two of them were physicians. Rumors began to spread around the office, which likely prevented a couple more clicks.

Was there any pushback from physician leadership or other higher ups?
No, the owner recognized that the threat is real, and that we were obviously susceptible.

Did you look to your peers for advice on what type of vendor/solution to turn to?
KnowBe4 was recommended to us by our IT support company. I was impressed by their methodology and capability, and the price was very reasonable.

Had any of your peers already implemented such technology/services, or is your practice leading the way in this area?
I don’t personally know of any other practices in our area doing this yet. But I have heard through the grapevine of one local practice that had fallen victim to ransomware.

What type of solution did you ultimately opt for? What were the deciding factors that helped it win out?
We are already using enterprise-level virus scanning, spam blocking, and email attachment filtering. But I assume that all of the hospitals that have been hit have also had similar precautions. So, we wanted to add an employee training program with ongoing monitoring.

We ended up going with KnowBe4. They offer a Web-based training platform, and track completion of courses for each employee. they will also continue to monitor compliance through an on-going email campaign where they will repeatedly send simulated scams to all employees. Any employee who clicks the bogus link, or opens the attachment, is identified for retraining.

How receptive have your employees been to the cybersecurity tools now in place?
I was worried about complaints from our staff about a mandatory training video about this geeky stuff. However, virtually all of my staff have responded positively about the training. Some have asked if their family members can take the same training. (KnowBe4 does offer a shorter training that can be shared with family without additional cost.) And we have certainly seen our staff looking more skeptically at emails, and being more hesitant to open attachments. I believe it is working, and we will continue to monitor our staff to ensure that they don’t slip backwards.

Is your practice looking beyond ransomware to other types of cybersecurity attacks looming on the horizon?
Of course. We are worried that our three backup methods are not sufficient. We are worried about the possibility of stolen laptops, hacked Wi-Fi, spear-phishing in the guise of incoming digital medical records on CD or thumb-drive, password security, phone security, and the security of our EHR, ACO, patient portal, and the 20 insurance portals that we log into on a daily basis, each using separate credentials. And despite our efforts in all of these areas, it never feels that we have done enough.

What best practices/advice can you offer other practices that are looking into these types of solutions?
I recommend that they begin with a free test of their staff. It will help to determine how great your need is. But remember, all it takes is one individual to open a bad attachment. Even if that employee doesn’t have an email account with your practice, if they open their personal email on company equipment, you are still vulnerable.

Do you have any final thoughts?
We are becoming increasingly paranoid and frustrated by the current state of affairs. We are paranoid because medical information has become so valuable to criminals that it has made all medical practices a target. And we are frustrated that the system has not found a way to prevent the crimes of identity theft and medical billing fraud, so the strategy is to prevent all thefts. Unfortunately, our country can’t figure out a way to prevent someone from opening a line of credit with a stolen name, SSN, and DOB. So instead, all of our staff members need to be smarter than a trained, professional hacker. And in fact, all medical industry workers will need to be smarter than all of the hackers who are attacking us. It’s insanity.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 8/3/16

Top News

The State of Ohio partners with five Medicaid managed care organizations, four commercial payers, and a limited number of primary care practices to launch a statewide Comprehensive Primary Care Program. The program will give select practices the opportunity to earn bonus payments – up to $4 per patient per month – for providing coordinated care to patients through patient-centered medical homes. The state anticipates disseminating $60 million in Medicaid CPC payments in 2018, when the program is fully implemented. Practices selected for the federal CPC+ program will be invited to join the Ohio initiative.

Webinars

August 10 (Wednesday) 1:30 ET. “Taming the Beast: CDS Knowledge Management.” Sponsored by LogicStream Health. Presenters: Luis Saldana, MD, MBA, CMIO, Texas Health Resources (THR); Maxine Ketcham, clinical decision support analyst, THR; Kanan Garg, senior applications analyst, THR; Patrick Yoder, CEO, LogicStream health. This presentation will review THR’s systematic process for managing clinical decision support assets, including identifying broken alerts, addressing technical and clinical issues, modifying order sets, and retiring tools that have outlived their usefulness. Attendees will learn how THR uses a robust knowledge management platform to better understand how clinicians are interacting with their clinical content to maintain their order sets and reduce the number of alerts fired.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Entrada adds Entrada Rhythm to its Mobile Engagement Platform, giving physicians options (direct EHR input, speech-to-text, transcription) for capturing and editing dictations that they can then add to templates within their respective EHRs.

People

The Medical Board of California elects Dev Gnanadev, MD (Arrowhead Surgery Group) president. Gnanadev plans to focus on combatting the state’s opioid epidemic during his tenure: “It is my goal to reduce the number of deaths caused by opioid overdoses by enforcing the Medical Practice Act and by educating physicians so they understand opioid prescription guidelines, which include use of the CURES database.” California physicians had until July 1 to register for CURES, the state’s prescription drug monitoring program.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Clockwise.MD announces that 10 million patients have used its online scheduling service.

Seattle-based startup 98point6 raises $11 million in debt financing as part of a larger $15 million round that will bring its total funding to $18 million. The company, which is working on “ a revolutionary approach to primary care” appears to be in stealth mode given the lack of information on its website. Its management team is filled with folks who’ve worked at big tech companies like Microsoft and Amazon, but seems lean on employees with direct healthcare experience. Two of its 20-person staff have worked at Swedish Children’s Hospital. It plans to hire an additional 10 in the coming months.

Texas Health Care, one of the state’s largest independent physician organizations, partners with PM company Privia Medical Group to help it increase market share and transition to value-based payment models. THC CEO Larry Tatum, MD will become CEO of Privia Medical Group – North Texas.

Research and Innovation

A

A Commonwealth Fund study of 26 patients – 70 percent of which were deemed to have limited health literacy – finds that they struggled with effectively utilizing 11 common chronic-disease management and caregiving apps. Participants noted cumbersome manual data entry, unclear explanations of what needed to be entered, and general frustration with design features and navigation. Researchers conclude that app developers should better tailor their software to the populations that will use them. I’d add they also need to tailor them to the populations that need them most – chronically ill patients in underserved areas.

Other

University of California San Diego researchers develop a tattoo-based wearable alcohol sensor that monitors blood alcohol levels in real time, and transmit that data to a corresponding smartphone app. The same apparatus can also be used to track glucose and lactase levels. Next steps for the researchers include increased device personalization and a more user-friendly app.

Say it ain’t so: HHS no longer recommends flossing as a means to prevent cavities and gingivitis, given scientifically weak data that its original recommendation was based on. I wonder how this news will affect OralB’s bottom line. It will no doubt up the “ick” factor seen by many a dental hygienist.

Famed hacker Peiter Zatko and his wife Sarah, a former National Security Agency mathematician, develop a Consumer Reports-style security rating system for software in the interest of preventing cyber attacks. “We need a nutritional label,” said Peiter Zatko. “You might care more about sugar, or carbohydrates, or protein, but if we tell you about all of it, a nutritionist can help you come up with the appropriate diet.” The couple plan to release more details about the endeavor at today’s Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas.

Sponsor Updates

• Aprima will host its user conference August 5-7 in Dallas.
• Intelligent Medical Objects will exhibit at Aprima’s 2016 User Conference + VAR Summit August 4-6 in Dallas.

Blog Posts

• Meeting MIPS: 4 Major Ways to Measure Up for MACRA (AdvancedMD)
• Enhancing Team and Leadership Performance through LEAN Principles (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Contact us online.
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News 8/2/16

Top News

Albert A. Talone, DO heads up a class-action lawsuit representing 32,000 osteopaths against the American Osteopathic Association. The lawsuit contends that AOA’s requirement that physicians purchase AOA memberships in order to obtain and maintain board certifications is illegal, has no reasonable connection to the advanced certification, and violates antitrust laws. “There is no legitimate reason why a physician should also have to purchase an annual membership in the AOA and pay additional hundreds of dollars a year to the AOA in dues on top of the costs of certification,” James Greenberg of the representing law firm (and former general counsel of the New Jersey Association of Osteopathic Physicians and Surgeons). “Our doctors should never have had to pay these fees, and we’re suing to recover these fees and to establish that the doctors won’t have to pay them anymore.”

While I can’t comment on the AOA’s legal wranglings or how much merit the lawsuit might have, I can, just for fun, compare the membership rates of the AOA and the AMA, which seems like the more affordable association at first glance.

Webinars

August 10 (Wednesday) 1:30 ET. “Taming the Beast: CDS Knowledge Management.” Sponsored by LogicStream Health. Presenters: Luis Saldana, MD, MBA, CMIO, Texas Health Resources (THR); Maxine Ketcham, clinical decision support analyst, THR; Kanan Garg, senior applications analyst, THR; Patrick Yoder, CEO, LogicStream health. This presentation will review THR’s systematic process for managing clinical decision support assets, including identifying broken alerts, addressing technical and clinical issues, modifying order sets, and retiring tools that have outlived their usefulness. Attendees will learn how THR uses a robust knowledge management platform to better understand how clinicians are interacting with their clinical content to maintain their order sets and reduce the number of alerts fired.

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

Announcements and Implementations

Eighty-three districts across the country sign on to CareDox’s EHR for school-based healthcare. The New York City-based startup has raised $6.9 million since launching in 2014. In addition to providing EHRs to schools free of charge, the company seems intent on leveraging the de-identified health data for pediatric research through partnerships.

Telemedicine

American Well partners with Academic HealthPlans to offer its virtual visit services – including psychologist visits – to AHP’s student members at over 100 US universities and colleges.

The Los Angeles School District – the second-largest in the country – will pilot telemedicine technology from Boynton Beach, FL-based LifeMD at five schools this fall in hopes of expanding the service countywide in the near future.

Research and Innovation

Astellas Pharma US teams with health tech incubator Matter Chicago (of which it’s a platinum sponsor) to launch the Astellas Oncology C3 Prize competition, which seeks innovative ideas for cancer care from early stage entrepreneurs. The winner will receive a $50,000 grant, while two runners-up will receive $25,000 grants. Winners will also receive a free year of membership at Matter. C3 Prize Program Director Tyler Marciniak emphasizes that the competition isn’t looking for medicines or medical devices, but rather digital health tools that help improve medication adherence and caregiver coordination. Applications are due August 8.

Other

I have fond memories of my first and thus far only trip to Paris. The Eiffel Tower sparkling at night, amazing shopping (of the window variety given it was during my student days), and an overload of art at the Louvre more than made up for the push-button shower at my youth hostel. At the time, I didn’t notice much of a traffic jam on the Seine, but the founders of SeaBubbles have lately thought otherwise. The startup is looking to develop airborne water taxis capable of speeds up to 25 knots (29 mph) to sell to individuals and local governments. The company has already received the support of Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, who has pledged to cut pollution levels in the city.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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