News 2/17/16

Top News

Somerset, NJ-based Medical Transcription Billing Corp. acquires Houston-based Gulf Coast Billing for an undisclosed sum. GCB Founder, President, and CEO Rhonda Turner will join MTBC as director of business development.

Webinars

February 23 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Completing your EMR with a Medical Image Sharing Strategy.” Sponsored by LifeImage. Presenters: Don K. Dennison, consultant; Jim Forrester, director of imaging informatics, UR Medicine. Care coordination can suffer without an effective, cost-efficient way to share images across provider networks. Consolidating image management systems into a single platform such as VNA or PACS doesn’t address the need to exchange images with external organizations. This webinar will address incorporating the right image sharing methods into your health IT strategy.

February 24 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Is Big Data a Big Deal … or Not?” Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, EVP of product development, Health Catalyst. Hadoop is the most powerful and popular technology platform for data analysis in the world, but healthcare adoption has been slow. This webinar will cover why healthcare leaders should care about Hadoop, why big data is a bigger deal outside of healthcare, whether we’re missing the IT boat yet again, and how the cloud reduces adoption barriers by commoditizing the skilled labor impact.

People

Justin Zellem (Keurig Green Mountain) joins Vermont Information Technology Leader as its new systems administrator.

Announcements and Implementations

Toledo Radiological Associates (OH) extends its RCM and analytics agreement with Zotec Partners for another four years. The 34-radiologist practice has served Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan since 1929.

AssistRx, Cerner, DrFirst, NextGen, and Practice Fusion subscribe to the ePrescribing State Law Review from Point-of-Care Partners to proactively identify system modifications that may be needed to address ongoing state and federal regulatory changes.

Telemedicine

The ERISA Industry Committee, which represents some of the nation’s largest employers, formally endorses Michigan Senate Bill 753, which establishes a regulatory framework for telehealth services but doesn’t impose a state licensure requirement. It also “applauds the technology-neutral definition of telehealth put forth in S. 753 that will permit use of different types of technology platforms designed for delivery of health care services. With innovative technologies emerging every day, limiting the types of technology that may be used to provide telemedicine creates an unnecessary barrier to telehealth services. There are many technology platforms that may be used to provide telehealth services, and patients and providers should be allowed to use different types of technology to give and receive needed care.”

Government and Politics

ONC’s latest data brief looks at trends in individual perceptions of medical record privacy and security, and exchange of health information. The brief notes that at least 75 percent of individuals supported their physician’s use of EHRs despite any potential privacy or security concerns, while seven in 10 supported electronically exchanging their health records despite potential privacy or security concerns.

Other

The local paper highlights the efforts of Genesis Medical Associates to stay independent in the midst of an increasingly consolidating Western Pennsylvania healthcare market. Executive Director Mark Kissinger explains that the move to an EHR was bumpy at first, but that technology has ultimately helped the 20-physician practice remain competitive: “

“We moved to an electronic medical record at the end of 2007. No doubt, it’s a challenge. We are in the process of evaluating the decision to move into a new product for those services. Our patient portal is very helpful for our patients to access their medical records, but it’s not as user-friendly as I need it to be. But part of what has made us successful is continuing to look at what tools do we need. Last year, we developed an app for same-day appointment scheduling. That’s the kind of thing we have to be more proactive about.”

They feel my pain: American Airlines sues in-flight WiFi provider Gogo in an effort to switch to its rival, ViaSat, which AA has found to have “materially” improved service. Gogo’s stock fell 30 percent on the news, and the company, which has maintained an almost-monopoly on in-flight WiFi over the last several years, is now attempting to come up with an improved service agreement.

Sponsor Updates

• The local paper highlights Clockwise.md’s online check-in app in its coverage of a new Carolinas HealthCare Systems urgent care facility.

Blog Posts

• Collections by Visit Feature Enhancement (AdvancedMD)
• Patient Access, Patient-Centered Care, and Population Health – Let’s Connect the Dots … (Culbert Healthcare Solutions)
• 5 Tips for Biomeds to Convince Leadership to Invest in RTLS (Versus Technology)

Contacts

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

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From the Consultant’s Corner 2/16/16

Effective IT Governance: It’s a Matter of Integration

When it comes to decision-making within physician practices, historically there’s been a “great divide.” On one side is operations. Operations teams traditionally make decisions about patient access, clinical goals, and revenue cycle objectives driven by their own distinct missions, focus areas, and priorities. On the opposite side is IT. Charged with directing IT programs and setting IT priorities, IT teams frequently function under separate leadership. While both sides of the divide may work very hard to support the same organizational goals, they often overlook the importance of pulling together to advance the practice’s overall strategic goals. An integrated approach to IT governance through the alliance of IT and operations is now essential.

Setting Common Goals
Until the development of truly integrated healthcare vendor solutions, many of a practice’s IT systems were managed autonomously. From a practical perspective, this meant that IT interfaces often represented the extent of collaboration efforts.

Going forward, focus should not be on just the systems themselves, but on aligning IT programs to support dynamic goals. Today’s healthcare environment is fast-paced and interdependent, making it critical for historically insular departments and IT systems working on static goals to move toward a culture of integration and collaboration. For example, achieving quality and financial performance metrics within evolving Meaningful Use and value-based care initiatives will be difficult for practices that attempt to do so with autonomous systems.

Instead, IT ideally will be positioned to support strategic operational goals. While IT leadership should not be asked to drive strategy, it’s imperative that they understand the practice’s overarching ambitions so they can work in harmony with operations to accomplish them.

For example: Consider how a practice’s productivity objectives might be affected by its scheduling system. An IT team unaware of the productivity aims might inadvertently make decisions about scheduling templates that hinder the provider’s ability to see enough patients to achieve the targets. Conversely, an IT team that understands the productivity goals can act as an enabler of the desired change.

The role of operations within this collaborative atmosphere is to point everyone in the same direction. Although IT teams possess the expertise to manage technical infrastructure, operations teams generally are in the best position to help navigate an organization’s clinical and political landscape.

Best Practices
To develop an integrated governance structure, practices should consider taking a four-tiered approach:

1. Start at the top, with executive leadership. C-suite executives are the ones who must define both short- and long-term practice-wide objectives, complete with clearly described expectations for success. (How will a practice know, for example, if it is attaining the desired return on its investments?) Once executives define the goals, they must then communicate them and provide staff with the right resources to accomplish them.
2. Integrate governance at the practice level. IT implementations can no longer be led solely by IT leadership. Rather, integrated leadership teams should be co-chaired by IT leadership and the CMOs/CMIOs who traditionally oversee clinical quality and operations.
3. Create an integrated leadership council. All organizational aspects should be represented on a working council. Include leadership from patient access, clinical quality, and revenue cycle, for example. Together, council members should define the standards the practice wishes to accomplish: quality, financial, and patient satisfaction goals, for instance.
4. Form integrated work groups. Once an integrated leadership council has defined the standards to be met, work groups consisting of IT and operations can then be tasked with implementing them.

In today’s healthcare environment, pushing top-down IT decisions onto providers should be a thing of the past. The fact is, it isn’t just about IT anymore. It’s about implementing a decision-making process that supports practice goals. The only way that IT leaders will know if their overall strategy is aligned with organizational objectives is if an integrated governance structure enables them to work in tandem with operations.

Brad Boyd is vice president of sales and marketing for Culbert Healthcare Solutions.

Contacts

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

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News 2/16/16

Top News

CMS and the Core Measures Collaborative release seven sets of core clinical quality measures to streamline physician quality programs across payers. The new measures pertain to ACOs, patient-centered medical homes, and primary care; cardiology; gastroenterology; HIV and Hepatitis C; medical oncology; obstetrics and gynecology; and orthopedics. Implementation of the new measures is in the works for Medicaid and Medicare, and will be phased in by private payers. CMS notes that implementation will depend on the availability of clinical data from EHRs or registries; as such, the agency recommends that “[p]rovders and payers will need to work together to create a reporting infrastructure for such measures.”

Webinars

February 17 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Take Me To Your Leader: Catholic Health Initiatives on Executive Buy-In for Enterprise Analytics.” Sponsored by Premier. Presenters: Jim Reichert, MD, PhD, VP of analytics, Catholic Health Initiatives; Rush Shah, product manager analytics factory, Premier. Catholic Health Initiatives, the nation’s second-largest non-profit health system, knew that in order to build an enterprise analytics strategy, they needed a vision, prioritization, and most importantly buy-in from their executives. Dr. Jim Reichert will walk through their approach.

February 23 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Completing your EMR with a Medical Image Sharing Strategy.” Sponsored by LifeImage. Presenters: Don K. Dennison, consultant; Jim Forrester, director of imaging informatics, UR Medicine. Care coordination can suffer without an effective, cost-efficient way to share images across provider networks. Consolidating image management systems into a single platform such as VNA or PACS doesn’t address the need to exchange images with external organizations. This webinar will address incorporating the right image sharing methods into your health IT strategy.

Telemedicine

Associates in Dermatology (KY) launches telemedicine services via a partnership with Pittsburgh-based teledermatology company Iagnosis.

The village of Vicksburg, MI offers telemedicine services via Teladoc to its 25 employees and members of the village council.

Announcements and Implementations

Jellyfish Health develops a mobile app enabling patients to find, schedule, and wait for a physician using their mobile device. Jellyfish Health President and CEO Dave Dyell founded ISirona in 2008, becoming senior vice president of product development for Nanthealth when the two companies merged in 2014.

The Jewish Board of Family and Children’s Services selects Netsmart technologies including the company’s CareRecord EHR to better provide mental and behavioral health services to its 43,000 clients in New York City. The board will also work with Netsmart to develop new technologies and demonstrate improved outcomes to Netsmart clients.

AssessURHealth releases a mental health risk assessment survey app to help physicians screen pregnant women and new mothers for postnatal depression.

People

Matthew Kremke (AMA) joins the American Osteopathic Information Association as vice president of business development.

Sara Barry (University of Vermont) joins OneCare of Vermont as director of clinical and quality improvement. 

Research and Innovation

Biomedical data analysis company Seven Bridges opens up its Cancer Genomics Cloud, including the National Cancer Institute’s Cancer Genome Atlas, to researchers across the globe. The database of over 11,000 patients and 33 types of cancer is used by oncologists, data scientists, and geneticists to better understand the disease a tool likely to be used by Vice President Joe Biden’s Cancer Moonshot Task Force.

Other

Apple officially acknowledges a bug that will render newer IPhones useless if their internal clock is set back to January 1, 1970 (a full six years before the company was founded). Rumors swirled around the notion that setting the clock back would uncover an “Easter Egg” that puts a retro Apple logo theme on the phone’s display. An impending software update will soon fix the glitch.

Contacts

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

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News 2/15/16

Top News

Great Lakes Health Connect partners with the Greater Flint Health Coalition to invest $250,000 in building up Flint, Michigan’s health IT infrastructure. The investment is aimed specifically at shoring up the technological connectivity of providers in Genesee County, whose 420,000 residents have been hardest hit by Flint’s lead-contaminated water crisis. It includes $100,000 to cover interfaces linking more than 40 physician offices to the exchange, $90,000 for a consultant to coordinate the initiative, $50,000 to build an analytics engine, and $10,000 for training.

Webinars

February 17 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Take Me To Your Leader: Catholic Health Initiatives on Executive Buy-In for Enterprise Analytics.” Sponsored by Premier. Presenters: Jim Reichert, MD, PhD, VP of analytics, Catholic Health Initiatives; Rush Shah, product manager analytics factory, Premier. Catholic Health Initiatives, the nation’s second-largest non-profit health system, knew that in order to build an enterprise analytics strategy, they needed a vision, prioritization, and most importantly buy-in from their executives. Dr. Jim Reichert will walk through their approach.

February 23 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Completing your EMR with a Medical Image Sharing Strategy.” Sponsored by LifeImage. Presenters: Don K. Dennison, consultant; Jim Forrester, director of imaging informatics, UR Medicine. Care coordination can suffer without an effective, cost-efficient way to share images across provider networks. Consolidating image management systems into a single platform such as VNA or PACS doesn’t address the need to exchange images with external organizations. This webinar will address incorporating the right image sharing methods into your health IT strategy.

Announcements and Implementations

Florida Accountable Care Services partners with UnitedHealthcare to launch a Central Florida accountable care program that will focus on improving care coordination via shared technology, real-time data and information on healthcare services. Founded in 2012, FACS now includes 350 independent physicians.

Iatric Systems announces the April 1 release of Analytics on Demand, a new set of tools and consulting services for quality measures management and reporting, and Meaningful Use compliance.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The Vistria Group, a Chicago-based private investment firm, acquires Supplemental Health Care, a healthcare and HIM staffing firm based in Utah. Vistria operating partners Greg Palmer and Ron Malone will join SHC’s Board of Directors as chairperson and vice-chairperson, respectively. SHC’s existing leadership team will continue to manage the company.

People

The El Paso, TX-based Paso del Norte Health Foundation promotes Jon Law to executive director of its HIE.

Telemedicine

A new report predicts that the US telemedicine market will surpass $13 billion by 2021. The technology segment of the market (as opposed to the services segment) is expected to see the highest growth rate thanks to an anticipated increase in user-friendliness.

A study of 1,400 patients by medical marijuana telemedicine company HelloMD finds that 84 percent of respondents strongly agree that the use of medical marijuana provides relief from their symptoms, and 94 percent would recommend it to friends and family as a legitimate medical treatment. The study seems to be a clarion call for entrepreneurs looking to take advantage of a somewhat untapped – and potentially very lucrative – market.

Government and Politics

ICYMI: CMS extends the Meaningful Use attestation deadline from February 29 to March 11. EPs have until March 15 to apply for a hardship exemption to avoid penalties.

Crain’s spotlights Michigan’s sluggish attempts to develop an electronic database that will help coordinate care between physicians, payers, and behavioral health organizations for dual-eligible patients. Part of the MI Health Link pilot project, development of the Care Bridge system is taking longer than anticipated thanks to a lack of mandated IT standardization and a perceived lack of adoption due to competing business interests. “It is a work in progress,” says Renee LaVigne, dual-eligible administrator at Macomb Mental Health Authority. “It is a challenge to work with the five [health plans]. They have very different systems and proprietary concerns.” The ultimate goal of the project is to enable participants to view patient service, diagnosis, and medication history.

Other

Sheyna Gifford writes about her experience as the crew doctor for NASA’s six-member HI-SEAS IV space exploration project – a life-on-Mars simulation on the volcanic terrain of Hawaii that runs from August 2015 to August 2016.

“On sMars, I have a new fear as a constant companion. My worry about this mission, and about any space venture, is that the emergency call will come and I’ll be right there, but totally unable to help. There will be no ventilators, no ICUs and no blood transfusions, unless we staff the mission only with type-O astronauts (not a bad idea). Thankfully, I haven’t had to find out yet. The only surgery I’ve done so far is wart-removal. As much as I enjoy suiting up and going in with a syringe of anesthetic and a scalpel, I’ll be happy if my Martian edge-wielding ends at that big toe.”

Contacts

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

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Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 2/14/16

Robert Bailey (Allscripts) re-joins Orion Health as national sales director for Australia. He previously served as Orion Health’s sales director.

Keith Fernandez, MD (Memorial Hermann ACO) joins Privia Health as senior physician executive.

Dekalb Medical Physicians Group (GA), a part of the Dekalb Medical healthcare system, selects population health analytics from SPH Analytics for its 85 primary care physicians across 25 locations.

Nashville, TN-based Applied Health Analytics team expands its leadership team and announces the launch of four service lines – consulting, technology, interim management, and strategic leadership. The company was founded in 2009 as a joint venture partner with Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Dayani Center for Health and Wellness.

FamilyCare Health, a community care organization that manages the benefits of Medicare and Medicaid enrollees for the state of Oregon, implements Wellcentive’s population health analytics, quality reporting, and care management solutions and services.

Hearst Health and the Jefferson College of Population Health announce the three finalists of the inaugural Hearst Health Prize, a $100,000 award given in recognition of achievement in managing or improving health: Centering Healthcare Institute and its CenteringPregnancy program; Community Care of North Carolina and its transitional care management model; and Jersey Medical Center and its Wealth for Health Program. The final award will be given out at the Population Health Colloquium on March 8 in Philadelphia.

Mount Carmel Hospice and Palliative Care (OH) selects Turn-Key Health’s acute illness management and palliative care mobile platform to identify and risk-stratify affiliated Medicare Advantage plan members who are most likely to receive costly and unnecessary treatment.

#HealthPolicyValentines make a comeback.

Sponsor Updates

• Rep. Bob Dold (R-IL) visits Intelligent Medical Objects to learn about IMO Terminology.
• EClinicalWorks releases a new podcast, “What’s Ahead for 2016.”

Blog Posts

• Embracing New Media and Online Resources to Enhance Patient Engagement (Healthwise
• 3 key learnings from implementing a care team collaboration platform (PerfectServe)

Contacts

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

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