News 5/31/16

Top News

Caving to stakeholder complaints (including admonition from former National Coordinator turned Aledade CEO Farzad Mostashari, MD), CMS opens up the Comprehensive Primary Care Plus program to 1,500 eligible primary care practices enrolled in the Medicare Shared Savings Program.

Webinars

June 28 (Tuesday) 2:00 ET. “Your Call Is Very Important.” Sponsored by West Healthcare Practice. Presenters: Cyndy Orrys, contact center director, Henry Ford Health System; Brian Cooper, SVP, West Interactive. The contact center is a key hub of patient engagement and a strategic lever for driving competitive advantage. Cyndy will share how her organization’s call center is using technologies and approaches that create effortless patient experiences in connecting them to the right information or resource. Brian will describe five key characteristics of a modern call center and suggest how to get started.

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

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Aprima medical software reseller DAS Health (fka Doctors Administrative Solutions) acquires Las Vegas-based healthcare IT services firm Falcon Healthcare Systems for an undisclosed sum. FHS CEO Russell Suzuki will join DAS as vice president of information services. DAS will maintain its Tampa, FL headquarters and add a regional office in Las Vegas. The company seems to be on a bit of a buying spree, having acquired ConXit Technology Group, Jackson Key Practice Solutions, and Spectra Healthcare’s RCM business within the last eight months.

People

Jean Hansen (Kansas City Internal Medicine) joins DataFile as COO.

The American Telemedicine Association elects Grant Chamberlain (Ziegler) to its Board of Directors.

Former CMS administrator and FDA commissioner Mark McClellan, MD (Duke University) joins American Well’s advisory board.

Announcements and Implementations

Amazing Charts offers RCM services from Physicians Group Management Billing.

The Diary develops a CareKit-based chronic condition management app featuring care plan and prescription reminders; as well as the ability to dictate and share symptoms and vitals. The company plans to launch a corresponding data-sharing app for providers in the near future.

DirectTrust develops the Partnership for Patients Program, giving members secure-messaging access to its network of 58,000 healthcare organizations and 1.2 million email addresses.

Government and Politics

Marin County, CA officials authorize the use of nearly $775,000 to build a data hub that will connect Marin Community Clinics, Coastal Health Alliance, Marin City Health and Wellness Center, Ritter Center, the county’s health clinics — including behavioral health — and Emergency Medical Services, all of which operate separate EHRs. County supervisors hope that the hub, which will take two years to build, will eventually connect to local hospitals.

ONC’s annual meeting kicks off with a half day of sessions, including a tête-à-tête between HHS Acting Assistant Secretary for Health and National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD and former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, who wasn’t afraid to drop a little humor into their conversation about consumer-friendly health data.

Research and Innovation

MGMA’s annual compensation survey finds that annual PCP salaries now surpass $250,000, a 4.3 percent rise from 2014 that the association attributes to the increasing prevalence of value-based care models. PCP salaries have increased 18 percent over the last five years and still lag far below that of their specialist counterparts, who earned an average $425,509 in 2015.

Sponsor Updates

• Intelligent Medical Objects and Leidos Health will exhibit at the International MUSE 2016 conference May 31-June 2 in Orlando.
• Noel Allender (Jacobus Consulting) joins Leidos Health as Epic managing director.

Blog Posts

• Community Connect versus EpicCare Link: Nordic’s take (Nordic)
• Speech Recognition does much more than convert speech to text. (NVoq)
• Aprima Earns Fundamental Building Block for Patient-Centered Medical Homes (Aprima)
• Choosing the Right Real-time Locating System (Versus Technology)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 5/26/16

Top News

The White House releases the final Data Security Policy Principles and Framework for President Obama’s Precision Medicine Initiative. The framework, which builds on the existing PMI Privacy and Trust Principles, establishes security expectations for PMI participants, and offers a risk-management approach to achieving those expectations. Over 40 private-sector organizations, including seven EHR vendors, have already committed to the initiative.

Webinars

None scheduled in the coming weeks. Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

Medical Advantage Group adds Live Compliance’s HIPAA compliance and training program to its HIPAA consulting services.

CVS Health MinuteClinics roll out an online wait time and appointment reservation app at select stores. The new tool will be available at the company’s Target-based clinics later this year.

Change Healthcare (fka Emdeon) offers its Revenue Performance Advisor tool with SourceMed’s PM and Ease Eligibility technologies to outpatient providers.

People

Sharon Wolf (UMassMemorial Medical Center) joins FluidEdge Consulting as vice president of business intelligence and informatics.

The Vermont Information Technology Leaders Board of Directors elects Bruce Bullock, MD (Marble Valley Health Networks) chair, and welcomes new board members Michael Del Trecco (Vermont Association of Hospital and Health Systems), Rep. Avram Patt, Richard Elmore (Allscripts), and Jerry Ford (Marathon Health).

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Consulting and practice management firm Nueterra Physical Therapy rebrands to PT Partners to better attract new business from clinics, ACOs, and hospitals.

Government and Politics

Principal Deputy National Coordinator Vindell Washington, MD blogs about the ways in which technology has supported his journey from a combat hospital in Haiti to an ER residency to physician practice in Louisiana. Though physicians have more to lean on the first-generation personal digital assistants, Washington notes that the promise of health IT has yet to be fully realized:

“To get there, useful and useable electronic health information needs to flow freely, from research institutions and quality improvement body databases, to EHRs and other transactional systems, to consumer-facing apps, and back again. This data ecosystem can and does enhance clinical care at the bedside—as I have seen in my own practice many times over. This is part of the true promise of health IT.”

CMS Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt sits down with the Massachusetts Medical Society to discuss MACRA, interoperability, registries, and the agency’s determination to listen to physician feedback, while stressing that the move to alternative payment models will happen in iterations. An excerpt:

“The point I was making about the iPhone is that we are in early generations of some of these payment models. The clinicians who participate should be aware that models are meant to reinforce the good practice of medicine, but the models are not going to be perfect. The models are going to have to get better over time based upon how they get used in the real world and improved upon. For instance, in our second generation models we have made changes, like adding telemedicine or adding patient incentives to make sure that the patient is aligned with their physician in staying healthy.

And where did the changes come from?  They came from listening to physicians and patients. The physicians tell us this model would be better if it could do this, if it could do that. And that’s the thinking that has to continue. So, like any other good, user-driven program, we want an ongoing dialogue so that year over year the program improves for patients and clinicians.”

Other

Perhaps healthcare needs to take a cue from Microsoft, which now allows administrators to ban too-easy-to-hack passwords like “123456” and the always popular “password.” The move is timely, given last week’s news that hackers were selling 117 million LinkedIn usernames and passwords, and survey results indicating that the average US consumer values improved security over Internet speed. (Millenials were the exception to the rule, with the majority of that age group only too happy to give up what shred of privacy they have left for faster connections.)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 5/25/16

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Louisville, KY-based healthcare consulting and IT firm IHealth Solutions acquires RCM technology vendor DNA Healthcare for an undisclosed sum. IHealth CEO Venkat Sharma will lead the newly combined company while, DNA Healthcare CEO Sreeram Mantha will take on the role of COO.

Webinars

None scheduled in the coming weeks. Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

People

WEDI promotes Interim CEO Charles Stellar to president and CEO.

The American Telemedicine Association elects Peter Yellowlees (UC Davis) president elect of its Board of Directors.

Just a few weeks after hiring Google X lab co-founder Yoky Matsuoka to head up health-related projects like ResearchKit, Apple posts a job opening for a lawyer focused on HIPAA and health. The candidate will work on “privacy by design reviews and projects,” assist with “privacy complaints and breaches,” and will “advise on the privacy aspects of licensing and procurement deals and corporate acquisitions.” The personnel moves further emphasize CEO Tim Cook’s plans to truly infiltrate healthcare, most likely via the Apple Watch.

Telemedicine

MyTelemedicine adds support for Spanish-speaking patients to its software.

The State of Connecticut passes a bill requiring Medicaid to cover telemedicine visits.

Announcements and Implementations

RCM technology and consulting company Risarc launches a management platform for ACOs that will guide them through required Medicare Shared Savings Program benchmarks, including chronic care management, via data analytics.

InstaMed updates its Estimator patient payment technology, adding more consumer-friendly payment options, long-term collection data, and a single view of patient payment and clearinghouse data.

Research and Innovation

A National Association of ACOs survey reveals that single and multi-ACOs spent an average of $501,300 on healthcare IT, population analytics, and reporting as part of their MSSP participation. That figure is second only to costs associated with clinical and care management operating expenses, which averaged $642,044. Average total operating costs comes out to $1.6 million per year. When it comes to MACRA, over half of respondents will likely leave the program if they are not eligible for the 5 percent Advanced Alternative Payment Model bonus.

Government and Politics

The Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System partners with The Health Collaborative and its HealthBridge technology division to develop a drug-monitoring database that sends controlled substance prescription data to a patient’s EHR in real time. The system is expected to go live in the Greater Cincinnati area later this year.

ONC’s Certified Health IT Product List now includes surveillance results for solutions and developers that have been found non-compliant with requirements of the office’s certification program. ONC stresses that people who use the list should keep in mind that “just because a product has been found non-conforming does not automatically indicate that a product is ‘defective,’” and that “many non-conformities or deficiencies are resolved quickly.”

Other

Wearable apparel startup We:ex develops a smart running jacket that will “tap” the wearer on the shoulder to indicate which direction to turn, with double “taps” indicating final destination. Similar technology will be embedded into yoga pants to help practitioners perfect their downward dogs.

Sponsor Updates

• Aprima will exhibit at the Practice Management Institute June 2-3 in New Orleans.
• Healthwise will exhibit at the Cerner Great Lakes RUG May 31 in Chicago.

Blog Posts

• Medical Practice Optimization Simplified, Part 1 of 5 (AdvancedMD)
• A "food insecurity" primer for healthcare providers (Nordic)
• Think You can Design a Better Medical Bill? (EClinicalWorks)

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 5/24/16

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Former Practice Fusion CEO Ryan Howard re-emerges (despite vowing to never return to healthcare) as the founder of Ibeat, a San Francisco-based startup that includes three former Practice Fusion employees. The company is raising seed funding to develop a smart watch that monitors heart rate. Howard plans to sell the self-charging device directly to consumers for under $200. For those who opt to pay a monthly subscription fee, Ibeat will contact them, their family members, and emergency services when their GPS-equipped watches signal cardiac trouble. The watch, which Howard says is being tested on 1,000 users, will launch early next year – probably just in time for HIMSS.

Webinars

None scheduled in the coming weeks. Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

San Francisco-based Apixio raises $19.3 million in Series D funding led by SSM Partners. The cognitive computing company will use the investment to further develop its Iris technology, specifically with an eye toward mining EHR data to determine care quality based on patient condition. 

Population health management technology vendor I2I Systems rebrands to I2I Population Health and appoints Steve Weiler (Kaiser Permanente) chief experience officer and Fatima Karwandyar (Healthcare Bluebook) vice president of product management. The company closed a “significant” investment round and brought former GetWellNetwork Vice President of Product Solutions Justin Neece on board as president and COO earlier this month.

Announcements and Implementations

Direct Urgent Care (CA) adds heart and lung sounds captured wirelessly via the Eko Core Digital Stethoscope to its Drchrono EHR. DUC Founder Caesar Djavaherian, MD believes the “ability to share recorded heart and lung sounds with specialists who may not be in the same location as the patient dramatically improves the time diagnosis and treatment of the patient.

MedSafe partners with HIPAA Secure Now! to offer physicians compliance services including ICD-10, and other billing and coding solutions.

Government and Politics

AHRQ and OCR issue guidance on the 2005 Patient Safety Act that allows physicians to collect patient safety information while at the same time protecting a patient’s right to their own data. HHS has found that some providers have been using the law as a means to deny patients their records, and has emphasized that “some requirements are more ambiguous or broad, thus creating uncertainty about the information required to satisfy them.”

Second Lady Jill Biden visits Boston-based PatientsLikeMe to talk about her husband’s Cancer Moonshot Initiative and the cancer stories shared by the social network’s 400,000 users.

People

Terry Bauer (Stroudwater Associates) joins Specialdocs Consultants as CEO.

Other

Duke University physicians Jeffrey Clough, MD and Mark McCellan, MD take to JAMA to pen their thoughts on MACRA’s implications for physicians and physician leadership. They single out PCPs, advising them to either “join an ACO with significant ‘downside risk’ or join a medical home demonstration and hope it succeeds. For most specialists, the only clear advanced APM option is joining a consolidated risk-bearing ACO.” They also stress that physicians “now have a critical opportunity to improve the proposal and develop and implement reforms to maximize its effectiveness.” Comments on the proposed rule are due June 27.

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 5/23/16

Top News

CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield awards up to $3 million to 10 healthcare organizations working to expand access to care via telemedicine in underserved communities. Based in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, DC, the organizations include:

• The Medical Society of Northern Virginia Foundation, which will use $250,000 to add volunteer specialists at its safety net centers.
• Queen Anne’s County Dept. of Health (MD), which will use $400,000 to implement a Mobile Integrated Community Telemedicine Health Program.
• Mosaic Community Services (MD), which will use $501,590 to increase access to behavioral health services and improve care coordination.
• Total Health Care, which will use $245,046 to offer primary care telemedicine solutions for patients suffering from diabetes and hypertension.

Webinars

None scheduled in the coming weeks. Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

Primrose Healthcare develops an app for hepatitis C patients to help them overcome alcohol addiction. The app, developed with expertise from alcohol addiction program creator Here and Now Systems, features goal setting, alerts, coaching, and shareable progress reports.

Compulink Business Systems debuts a new EHR for gastroenterologists that features a single tab exam layout for improved workflow.

People

Gary Christian (Contact At Once!) joins Reach Health as COO.

Angela Hickman (Culbert Healthcare Solutions) joins MiraMed Global Services as vice president RA-HCC program strategy and business development.

CellTrak Technologies names Heidi Ewell (Truven Health Analytics) vice president, provider sales, North America; and Lynn Zimmerman (Sweas Consulting) director of marketing.

Government and Politics

National Coordinator for Health IT Karen DeSalvo, MD and several ONC and CMS colleagues co-author an article outlining the progress made in developing and utilizing comprehensive shared care plans, which emphasize the use of health IT to help clinicians collaborate in addressing a patient’s needs across care settings and time. New York City-based physician practices are singled out for their use of local HIEs to share and retrieve care plans as part of a DSRIP pilot program.

Other

Hearst Health and the Jefferson School of Population Health of Thomas Jefferson University accept entries for the second annual Hearst Health Prize for Excellence in Population Health. Judges will evaluate implemented projects that demonstrate improved outcomes. Submissions for the $100,000 prize are due August 26.

The Merck Foundation launches the Alliance to Advance Patient-Centered Cancer Care that will support programs working to improve access to patient-centered care and reduce disparities in cancer care in underserved communities. Nonprofits may apply for an Alliance grant to help set up cancer-care programs that improve care coordination, outcomes, and patient-provider communications. The foundation plans to support the alliance with up to $15 million over five years. Letters of intent are due June 30.

Surely this has implications for healthcare: British financial software vendor Intelligent Environments develops a wristband that shocks users if their spending gets out of hand. Users can connect their credit cards or bank accounts to their Pavlok wristband and set a spending limit that, if surpassed, will induce an electric shock of up to 340 volts. The company, which bills itself as the first IoT bank, has also created software that connects a user’s bank account to their Nest thermostat: When spending gets out of control, the thermostat automatically lowers by a certain number of degrees.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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