News 7/13/16

Top News

HealthTap acquires Docphin for an undisclosed sum, and will integrate its medical education resources into the HealthTap virtual care platform. The move is in line with HealthTap’s ambitions to become a trusted source for medical education. It became accredited by the AMA last year to provide physicians with some CMEs, and has developed a virtual care training course. It has raised $35 million since launching in 2010.

Webinars

None scheduled in the next few weeks. Contact Lorre for webinar services, and be sure to ask her about our “Summer Doldrums Special” sale. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

A local healthcare news outlet looks (somewhat sensationally) at the exodus of executives from Zoom+, a chain of clinics in Portland and Seattle that has received quite a bit of backlash over its decision to not accept Medicare and Medicaid patients. The company has lost six physicians, its CFO, and three high-level executives, though that’s not necessarily indicative of inner company turmoil. It re-hired co-founder Jeff Katz, MD as vice president of education and clinical services last month.

Announcements and Implementations

Anthem and UAE-based cybersecurity firm Dark Matter join the DirectTrust alliance, which has helped grow the number of Direct addresses capable of sharing PHI 49 percent to 1.3 million at the end of Q2 2016.

Nextech launches cloud-based EHR and PM technology for specialty practices.

San Francisco-based startup Amino amps up its healthcare pricing tool by expanding its pricing data on 49 procedures. Since launching last fall, it now covers 550,000 physicians and 129 payers. The company is working on adding prices related to births and MRIs. The tool is certainly valuable in that it provides a baseline estimate of projected costs. I wish it also offered self-pay pricing; that would probably offer a more authentic picture of what a procedure costs and would certainly give patients pause when they compare it to what their insurance will cover.

Colorado Springs Health Partners implements Clockwise.MD’s online check-in software at its three urgent care centers following a successful pilot at a single facility earlier this year.

Drchrono develops EHR and PM technology for faculty and students participating in AHIMA’s Virtual Lab curriculum at 450 universities. Launched in 2006, VLab is used as part of HIM academic programs, workforce training, and continuing education.

PMD adds real-time hospital-discharge alerts to its mobile charge-capture software for physician practices.

Research and Innovation

A survey of 600 physicians finds that self-employed physicians and those working in independent practices (21 percent) are more familiar with MACRA than their hospital-employed counterparts (9 percent). Physicians with a high share of Medicare payments are just as unaware of MACRA as those who don’t rely heavily on such reimbursements. Eighty percent expect MACRA to all but force physicians to join larger risk-bearing organizations or networks.

Other

JAMA Editor in Chief Howard Bauchner relays some inside scoop on how the journal got a Special Communication bylined from President Obama. Being leader of the free world apparently gives you some wiggle room when it comes to using personal pronouns in JAMA. “He also has one or two vignettes in it of citizens in the United States whom he interacted with or who contacted him about the Affordable Care Act,” Bauchner adds. “Those are unusual for us at JAMA, but we thought, given what he was writing about and who he was, he deserved a bit more flexibility than some of our other authors.” The Special Communication marks the first time a sitting president has contributed to the journal, though President Obama did submit commentary on his healthcare strategy during his 2008 campaign.

UC Berkeley Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor Michael Eisen takes the president and AMA to task for copyrighting the article, which should belong in the public domain given the title of its author.

“I would like to humbly request that you demand on behalf of citizens of the United States that JAMA remove this illegal copyright claim from your paper,” Eisen writes. “Furthermore, I hope that you can use the opportunity afforded by this incident to shed light [on] the broader issue of scientific journals illegally claiming copyright in thousands of other works of the US government every year, thereby restricting access to and use of these works which by law belong in the public domain.”

Sponsor Updates

Blog Posts

• Four tips to improve office productivity & accelerate payments (AdvancedMD)
• How to Hack-Proof Your Medical Practice (Aprima)
• Improving Patient Access: What’s Your 3rd Next Available Appointment? (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• You’ve got 1,000 questions; we’ve got answers: Nordic’s collective knowledge sharing tool (Nordic)
• What a Canadian Rock Star can Teach us About Death and Dying (Healthwise)

Contacts

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

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News 7/12/16

Top News

President Obama takes to JAMA to explain how the healthcare system has improved thanks to the ACA. Highlights include a 43-percent drop in the uninsured rate; a shift in traditional Medicare payments, 30 percent of which now flow through alternative payment models like ACOs; and one last try at getting Congress to consider rolling out a Medicare-like public health plan. He gives the most tangential of nods to healthcare technology, noting that, “Tools created by the ACA—including CMMI and the law’s ACO program—and the new tools provided by MACRA will play central roles in [having at least half of traditional Medicare payments flowing through alternative payment models by the end of 2018]. In parallel, I expect continued bipartisan support for identifying the root causes and cures for diseases through the Precision Medicine and BRAIN initiatives and the Cancer Moonshot, which are likely to have profound benefits for the 21st-century US healthcare system and health outcomes.”

Webinars

July 13 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Why Risk It? Readmissions Before They Happen.” Sponsored by Medicity. Presenter: Adam Bell, RN, senior clinical consultant, Medicity. Readmissions generate a staggering $41.3 billion in additional hospital costs each year, and many occur for reasons that could have been avoided. Without a clear way to proactively identify admitted patients with the highest risk of readmission, hospitals face major revenue losses and CMS penalties. Join this webinar to discover how to unlock the potential of patient data with intelligence to predict which admitted patients are at high risk for readmission.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel. Ask Lorre about her “Summer Doldrums Special” sale.

Announcements and Implementations

Nashville-based Relatient adds Uber request capabilities to its patient-facing messaging app as part of a revenue-sharing agreement with the San Francisco-based ride-sharing company.

Flatirons Practice Management adds billing software from Mediware Information Systems to its Medilinks software for physical therapy practices.

New York City-based Carnegie Hill Radiology subscribes to the LabFinder.com platform to help its patients schedule, access, and share their laboratory and radiology tests.

Aprima Medical Software will offer Kno2’s new cloud-based fax technology, designed to transform faxed documents into interoperable forms of exchange for physicians on the receiving end.

People

Telemedicine startup Point Nurse appoints Retired Army Major Paul Kapsar, RN (SilverArc APN) to its advisory board.

Telemedicine

Teladoc secures $50 million in debt financing from Silicon Valley Bank, which it will use for “general corporate purposes” that no doubt include paying legal fees related to its ongoing showdown with the Texas Medical Board. The agreement with SVB comes just two weeks after Teladoc announced the acquisition of Scottsdale, AZ-based patient engagement technology company HealthiestYou.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Texas-based Aprima Medical Software will relocate its 250 employees to a 55,000-square-feet headquarters in Richardson next month.

Government and Politics

OCR releases an eight-page fact sheet on HIPAA and ransomware.

Other

The Ambulatory Surgery Center at St. Mary (PA) notifies 13,000 patients of a ransomware attack and data breach discovered June 1 when staff noticed encrypted files on an internal network. Fortunately, the center had full backups and was able to restore files the same day. No ransom was paid.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 7/11/16

Top News

Labor organizations and patient rights advocates gather outside of two Zoom+ clinics to protest that the chain doesn’t take Medicare or Medicaid. The protestors, who convened outside of Zoom clinics in April, contend the company, which operates 33 clinics in Seattle and Portland, cherry-picks young, healthy customers, leaving other organizations to deal with older, sicker patients. Zoom CEO and co-founder Dave Sanders, MD counters that is exactly the demographic the for-profit company was created to cater to – those “who want to use their phones to set up appointments and get quick neighborhood care. It’s not meant to take care of everybody. We’re one of the many options that will be out there. Don’t think that we have to be all things to all people.”

HIStalk Practice Musings

Reading: The Forgotten Room by Karen White, Beatriz Williams, and Lauren Willig. This novel fulfills all of my summertime literary requirements – a multi-generational tale of unrequited love with a nod to art, architecture, and even healthcare. (One of the main characters is a female physician – what I assume was a rarity during her 1940s time period.)

Webinars

July 13 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Why Risk It? Readmissions Before They Happen.” Sponsored by Medicity. Presenter: Adam Bell, RN, senior clinical consultant, Medicity. Readmissions generate a staggering $41.3 billion in additional hospital costs each year, and many occur for reasons that could have been avoided. Without a clear way to proactively identify admitted patients with the highest risk of readmission, hospitals face major revenue losses and CMS penalties. Join this webinar to discover how to unlock the potential of patient data with intelligence to predict which admitted patients are at high risk for readmission.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel. Ask Lorre about her “Summer Doldrums Special” sale.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Merck subsidiary Healthcare Services & Solutions acquires a majority stake in StayWell, a Yardley, PA-based company that offers Web-based healthcare engagement tools to providers and payers. “Partnering with HSS will take StayWell to the next level of growth,” said Andrew Cavanna, managing director of Vestar, which will retain a minority stake in the company. “We believe that our investment will be greatly enhanced by HSS’s market knowledge, suite of products, and executive leadership.” HSS (which to me has an unbelievably vague name) works through its global business partners to provide services related to care management, clinical decision support, remote monitoring, and patient adherence.

Announcements and Implementations

Just a month after adding chronic care management capabilities to its data analytics platform, CloudMedx develops a CCM cost calculator to help physicians determine the ROI of participating in Medicare’s CCM program.

BBMK Technologies develops an app to help physicians manage patients on Warfarin anticoagulant medication. ClotMD delivers real-time alerts on INR levels, scheduled testing, medication reminders, and dosage changes.

Enli Health Intelligence (fka Kryptiq) partners with Dell Services to offer population health management technologies and advisory services to physician practices, ACOs, and healthcare systems.

ChiroTouch adds secure text messaging and targeted communication campaigns to its CTInTouch EHR for chiropractors.

Telemedicine

Hawaii Governor David Ige signs legislation requiring the state’s Medicaid services cover consults via telemedicine. Governor Ige is confident the new law will help relieve Hawaii’s physician shortage, which is especially severe on neighboring islands.

People

Leland Babitch, MD (The Advisory Board) joins MPRO as president and CEO.

Government and Politics

Physicians in Alabama, where 50-60 percent of children are uninsured, react to $15 million in Medicaid payment cuts set to take effect August 1. “I may have to see more patients to keep up with the overhead,” says pediatrician Bhagwan Bang, MD adding that he won’t be able to spend as much time with them individually. “There is a chance that the other practices, other doctors, may not be able to keep up the number of staff they have and that will directly impact event the insured patients. As the number of staff decreases, the care decreases.”

Other

Facebook tests end-to-end encryption on its Messenger app. The new, opt-in Secret Conversations feature was launched in response to user demand for additional privacy safeguards, especially for conversations related to finances and healthcare. The move is a solid one given a recent study that shows US consumers place data security behind only the economy on their list of top concerns. The new feature, which Facebook added to WhatsApp last April, will be more widely available to Messenger users later this summer.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 7/10/16

CentraForce promotes Stephen Newman, MD to chairman of the board.

Hospice of the West (AZ) selects end-of-life population health management tools from Turn-Key Health to help it identify and better manage Medicare beneficiaries who may receive overly aggressive care.

Remote patient monitoring and engagement company AMC Health adds Glooko’s diabetes management app to its CareConsole virtual care platform.

Vermont Information Technology Leaders will provide OneCare Vermont with population health data culled from the Vermont HIE, which it manages. The ACO will use the data to better manage the care of its 10,000 patients, plus meet wellness and patient satisfaction goals. VITL is facing a funding shortage due to a federal staffer who controls its purse strings being out on medical leave, and corresponding questions about its level of productivity. Vermont healthcare regulators have questioned the idea that “one person in a bureaucracy can stop a bureaucracy from doing its work.”

Princeton, NJ-based ODH joins forces with the The White House Data-Driven Justice Initiative to implement its behavioral population health management solution across 67 city, county, and state governments. The Mentrics tool will help government and healthcare workers identify citizens with mental health and substance abuse disorders in need of intervention before likely incarceration.

Telemedicine membership company HealthRight acquires employer population health management company HealthNext for an undisclosed sum.

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell visits the Cleveland YMCA to tout the success of its diabetes prevention program and help announce a proposed CMS rule that would expand the program within Medicare, enabling such programs to receive Medicare reimbursements for their prevention efforts. Hot on the heels of her visit, the YMCA of the USA announced a partnership with Athenahealth that will to connect its diabetes prevention program to nearly 80,000 Athena users and their pre-diabetic patients. “Care is moving out of the hospital and into more accessible, convenient, and cost effective venues,” Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush pointed out. “The YMCA’s DPP is proof that community integrated health, delivered outside of traditional clinical settings, is highly effective in delivering strong health outcomes.”

Epic pays homage to the Turtles in a cryptic teaser for a population health solution “Premiering in 2016.”

ZeOmega announces that a multistate Managed Medicaid payer serving 5 million members has extended its contract for the company’s Jiva population health management platform for another five years.

The Colorado Health Institute receives a $1.9 million grant from the Colorado Health Foundation to launch a two-year project that will aggregate clinical data from participating providers, identify intervention strategies for particular communities, and then measure the effectiveness of those efforts. The University of Colorado-Denver, Denver Health, CORHIO, Children’s Hospital Colorado, Kaiser Permanente Colorado, and a handful of community clinics focused on low-income populations have signed on to participate. The initiative will be one of the first to use AHRQ’s PopMedNet tool, which tracks data on critical population health indicators at a local level.

Santa Clara County staff develop the Silicon Valley Triage Tool, an algorithm that will help public health officials identify homeless citizens likely to use the most public services like ERs, hospitals, and jails. Those identified as being the biggest utilizers will likely be first in line for government-sponsored housing as part of the county’s Destination:Home program.

Sponsor Updates

• Aprima announces that its EHR/PM meets MACRA/MIPS requirements.

Blog Posts

• 3 “must haves” for simplifying complex clinical communications (PerfectServe)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 7/7/16

Top News

CMS proposes three changes to primary care payments in the Medicare physician fee schedule beginning next year:

• Increasing payments for routine office visits for treating patients with mobility-related disabilities.
• Increasing payments to geriatricians or family practice physicians.
• Proposing to pay for care using the behavioral health Collaborative Care Model.

While the AMA seems to support the proposed changes, independent physicians may not see this in quite the same light. Several on Twitter have noted that, if passed, the reimbursement increases will do little to offset the costs of MU-related technology, which now almost have to include cybersecurity tools, plus assistance in understanding and following the seemingly constant release of proposed rules and new regulations. 

Webinars

July 13 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Why Risk It? Readmissions Before They Happen.” Sponsored by Medicity. Presenter: Adam Bell, RN, senior clinical consultant, Medicity. Readmissions generate a staggering $41.3 billion in additional hospital costs each year, and many occur for reasons that could have been avoided. Without a clear way to proactively identify admitted patients with the highest risk of readmission, hospitals face major revenue losses and CMS penalties. Join this webinar to discover how to unlock the potential of patient data with intelligence to predict which admitted patients are at high risk for readmission.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel. Ask Lorre about her “Summer Doldrums Special” sale.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

A StartUp Health mid-year report on digital health funding finds that 2016 is on track to rival 2014’s $7 billion investment record. Just under $4 billion has been raised during the first half of the year, with patient/consumer experience and wellness taking the top two most active market spots thus far. Population health, which seemed to have such buzz last year (as evidenced by Evolent Health’s IPO), has only managed to make it to number 10 thus far.

People

Former Governor of Maryland Martin O’Malley joins Amida Technology Solutions as an advisor. He will no doubt bring a wealth of knowledge to the open-source health data company, having overseen the 2009 establishment of Maryland’s CRISP HIE during his tenure.

Telemedicine

SkyMD formally launches its teledermatology service for physicians. The New York City-based company has signed 50 dermatologists since opening for business last fall.

Research and Innovation

An Athenahealth analysis of the opioid prescribing habits of its customers finds that such prescriptions decreased by 25 percent since January 2015 – a figure nearly double the national average of 13 percent. The Boston Globe dug deeper into the prescribing rates in Massachusetts –  Athenahealth’s home state, finding that patients receiving opioid prescriptions in the first three months of 2015 versus 2016 declined from 391,000 to 345,000, according to data from the state’s prescription drug monitoring program. The data also showed that the number of patients who obtained prescriptions from more than three providers or pharmacies dropped from 781 to 484. Massachusetts Public Health Commissioner Monica Bharel, MD cautions that there’s still work to be done: “It’s too early to say this will continue to decline. It took a long time to get into the current situation we’re in. It will take a while to get out of it.”

Other

For your summer reading list: Nebraska native Sean Conroy pens what could be the first published account of life as a physician assistant. Conroy had trouble finding tomes that truly helped him to understand the life of a PA, settling instead for study guides, ethics books, histories, or specialty-specific books. He notes in the introduction that “I saw an area of literature not yet served: a first-person perspective on the early molding of PAs.”

Rebekah Bernard, MD cites impending MACRA red tape (not to mention the length of the final rule) as her main reason for opening a direct primary care practice in Naples, FL this week. After working for a nonprofit clinic, hospital-affiliated physician group, and urgent care center, Bernard decided it was time to take back control. “I want to be my own boss,” she says. “I’m really interested in helping working people.”

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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