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

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News 5/19/16

Top News

GE Healthcare announces Project Northstar, its latest solution for the ambulatory market. Scheduled for GA in the first quarter of 2017, Northstar will initially offer Centricity customers an ecosystem of technologies that includes population health management, RCM, and payer connectivity. Mr. H has all the details in his interview with GE Healthcare IT VP/GM Jon Zimmerman.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Private equity firm Abry Partners secures a majority investment in Dermatology Associates. The Dallas-based practice management business provides its services to 60 dermatologists in 42 clinics across Texas, Kansas, and Missouri.

Wired reports that Nintendo is getting into healthcare, including the development, manufacture, and sale of medical devices, health devices, and computer software. Industry insiders speculate the company is trying to revive its “Quality of Life” initiative – including sleep trackers/monitors and vitality sensors that never quite got off the ground several years ago. While I tend to think of Nintendo as just a gaming company (I can still fondly remember trying to blow the dust out of its original gaming cartridges), it has also dabbled in toys, arcade machines, and Japanese “love” hotels.

Announcements and Implementations

Drchrono updates its RCM software, adding enhanced eligibility verification, denied claims process, and accounts receivable.

CommunityHealthIT joins the Florida HIE. The nonprofit, via its RelayHealth-powered MyHealthStory HIE, will connect to the HIE’s patient look-up service and act as a liaison to help local physicians connect to the statewide exchange.

CareCloud adds a credit processing solution to its CareCloud Central PM system.

BusComm, a voice management and recording solutions firm based in St. Louis, begins offering Nuance’s Dragon Medical Practice Edition 2.

People

Clay Cockerell, MD (University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center) joins MyDerm Portal’s Medical Advisory Board.

Michael Sokol, MD (Sanofi) joins WebMD Health Services as CMO.

Athenahealth promotes Karl Stubelis to SVP and CFO. Chief Financial and Administrative Officer Kristi Matus will step down effective May 31. The company has also announced plans to hire a SVP of talent and culture.

Research and Innovation

Google attempts to keep up with Amazon’s Echo, launching Google Assistant at its annual developer’s conference. Developers stress that Google’s virtual assistant will surpass Alexa’s capabilities through its ability to use images and other data to offer more intuitive results to user questions. It will be interesting to see how this technology gets picked up by healthcare. Boston Children’s Hospital has already launched an Alexa-friendly “skill” called KidsMD that lets parents ask Alexa healthcare-related questions.

Other

Hackers that breached LinkedIn in 2012 attempt to sell the data they stole, including 117 million email addresses and passwords. The company has begun notifying impacted users (myself included), requesting that they change their passwords.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 5/18/16

Top News

The Medical Association of Georgia will partner with KaMMCO Health Solutions to establish a private HIE for its members this summer. The HIE will also provide participating physicians with actionable analytics to better enable care coordination.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

WEA Trust, a provider of group health coverage for public employees in Wisconsin, rolls out Livongo Health’s diabetes care management tools to its employees. The trust completed an “encouraging” pilot with Livongo’s smart glucometer and Certified Diabetes Educators with four large employers earlier this year. 

Medical Advantage Group launches the Consortium of Independent Physician Associations in Ohio to assist Buckeye State physicians in the transition to value-based care. CIPA consulting services will include practice assessments, group purchasing, and a range of healthcare IT selection and implementation offerings.

Aurora Health Care (WI) implements online appointment reservation software from Clockwise.MD at select urgent care and walk-in clinics.

People

Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush returns to Jackson Healthcare’s Board of Advisors after taking time off to run his presidential campaign.

Taiymoor Naqi (CareCentrix) joins Hixny in the new role of privacy and security officer.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Population health management company Virtual Health raises an undisclosed amount of funding from growth equity firm Edison Partners. The New York City-based startup primarily serves payers, managed care organizations, ACOs, and city governments. Founder Adam Sabloff has an interesting background; he founded hospital and hotel software firm Midtown Technologies and did a five-year stint at Midtown Equities.

Government and Politics

Arizona Governor Doug Ducey signs a bill making the state’s voluntary prescription drug monitoring program mandatory. Physicians will now have to check the state’s PDMP database before prescribing opiate painkillers except in emergencies or when treating hospice or cancer patients.

Sponsor Updates

• Nordic kicks off its Community Giveback Week.
• Clockwise.MD will exhibit at the Pediatric Urgent Care Conference June 1-3 in New York City.
• Bloomberg profiles GE Healthcare CEO John Flannery.
• EClinicalWorks will exhibit at the 2016 annual meeting of the California Orthopedic Association May 19-21 in Dana Point, CA.
• Healthwise will exhibit at the Cognizant / Trizetto User Group Meeting May 22-25 in Palm Desert, CA.

Blog Posts

• Data Re-Use – Usability, Patient Safety, and Organizational Policy (AdvancedMD)

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 5/17/16

Top News

Direct primary care physician network MedLion Management chooses the InLight EHR from Amazing Charts as its preferred solution for documentation and billing. Founded in 2009, the company operates in 27 states and counts itself as the largest DPC group in the US.

Webinars

None scheduled soon. Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

Announcements and Implementations

In Hand Health develops a Web-based app to help physical therapists create custom home exercise programs for their patients, and a separate app that lets patients view and record their exercises and securely message their therapists.

Aprima’s PRM 2016 software earns NCQA Patient-Centered Medical Home Prevalidation.

People

Vermont Information Technology Leaders names Robert Turnau (ReSource) vice president of finance/CFO and consultant Jonathan Knapp security analyst.

Telemedicine

The Nebraska-based Midwest Independent Physicians Practice Association partners with technology company AET to offer telemedicine services to its patients living in rural areas.

Other

The local business paper profiles The Center for Rheumatology, an Albany, NY-based practice that has made a conscious effort to expand in order to remain independent and still maintain leverage with payers and drug companies. CEO Janice Maguire attributes the aggressive strategy to the founding physicians’ desire to remain independent:  “One of the trends in health care is that a lot of medical practices, in order to protect themselves against the liabilities and risks out there in the volatile world, are looking to the hospitals,” she said. “A lot of my doctors thought the hospitals come in with a really sweet deal and they pay really high salaries the first couple of years, and they only have to go to work from 8 to 5 … and then all the sudden things change, and they realize they’re losing control."

Bathing suit season, here we come: An Intel Security survey finds that consumers don’t give enough thought to the security of promotional email links, especially when easy weight loss plans are involved. Over 60 percent of survey takers clicked on a link promoting a diet program, while 30 percent bought a product from that promotional link without verifying the legitimacy of the link. A majority of respondents noted they’d be happy to share their name, age, and email address online if it would assist in their weight-loss efforts.  While I’m sure HIStalk Practice readers are far too savvy to fall for such clickbait ploys, it might be wise to tell your friends and family to thoroughly vet their digital health and wellness resources.

Contacts

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

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5 Questions With David Shih, MD CMO, CityMD

David Shih, MD is CMO at CityMD, a chain of urgent care facilities in New York and New Jersey. The company, which employs 1,500 staff to care for 1.3 million patients each year, made the switch from Aprima to EClinicalWorks last fall and is looking to begin the Meaningful Use attestation process sometime this year. It is the first private urgent care provider in the nation to achieve NCQA Patient-Centered Connected Care recognition.

What was the impetus for implementing eCW? How do you hope its utilization will benefit CityMD and its patients?
In order for us to take our practice to the next level in providing the best patient-centered medical care and to begin multiple of IT initiatives, we needed an EHR partner that could scale and grow with us. This meant that we needed a national partner who could help us in multiple areas – from optimizing billing, front desk, and clinical operations to gathering business intelligence and obtaining analysis of data to assistance in compliance and reporting of of MU, PQRs, and related quality metrics to introduction of a patient portal, care coordination, and referral management tools – to improve the patient experience and increase our ability to serve with kindness.

Where is your organization with Meaningful Use?
Meaningful Use is projected to start sometime in 2016. Due to the multiple changes in MU, we have found it very challenging to initiate this project due to layers and layers of complexity. It was not designed well, and CMS has already announced that MU will go away and merge into MIPS by 2019. With that said, the financial penalties attached to this project means we will have to attempt this.

What sort of healthcare technology adoption/implementation challenges are unique to urgent care practices?
Many of the quality initiatives such as PQRS, CAHPS or MU do not have urgent care in mind. They are geared towards primary care or hospital-based practices. Many of the challenges in healthcare technology stem from the fact that systems do not talk to each other, evolve very quickly and/or become outdated, and many healthcare systems cannot agree on the same standards, which makes it very difficult for our practice to determine best practice.

How has CityMD handled the transition to e-prescribing in New York?
The transition to e-prescription has been relatively smooth since ECW and the operations team at CityMD had time to prepare. Overall, there were few complaints or issues from the patients and providers.

What’s next on the horizon for CityMD in terms of new healthcare technologies, particularly those that will better enable patient engagement?
There are many healthcare IT initiatives planned for this year. We plan on continuing our PQRS, CAHPS, and MU reporting. We are starting PCP notification, referral management, integration with other EHRs, expanding our patient portal capabilities, implementing kiosks and mobile technology, and diving into telehealth.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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