Population Health Management Weekly Wrap Up 8/21/15

August 21, 2015 News Comments Off

Top News

Mercy Health, Ohio’s fourth largest employer, expands its partnership with Premier to advance population health management initiatives at its 23 hospitals across Ohio and Kentucky. The Catholic health system will utilize the Charlotte, N.C.-based vendor’s integrated pharmacy and care management program, which aggregates clinical data to help improve care for complex and often chronically ill patient populations. The announcement comes just a week after Premier announced its acquisition of financial analytics vendor Healthcare Insight for $65 million in cash.

Webinars

August 25 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Cerner’s Takeover of Siemens: An Update (Including the DoD Project).” Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Vince Ciotti, principal, HIS Professionals; Frank Poggio, president and CEO, The Kelzon Group. Vince and Frank delivered HIStalk’s most popular webinar, "Cerner’s Takeover of Siemens, Are You Ready?" which has been viewed nearly 6,000 times. Vince and Frank return with their brutally honest (and often humorous) opinions about what has happened with Cerner since then, including its participation in the successful DoD bid and what that might mean for Cerner’s customers and competitors, based on their having seen it all in their decades of experience.

September 9 (Wednesday) 2:00 ET. “Need to cleanse, unify and manage the provider data in your EMR master file and other IT systems?” Phynd’s Unified Provider Management platform allows healthcare organizations to maintain a single, verified, customized profile for each provider across legacy IT systems. This 30-minute presentation will explain how Phynd’s system can help synchronize internal provider information in real time; create provider interoperability among systems; and manage, update, and analyze provider information with workflow tools to improve revenue cycle and clinical communication.

Previous webinars are on the YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for webinar services including discounts for signing up by Labor Day.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Denver-based predictive analytics vendor NextHealth Technologies raises $1 million in funding from investors that include Nuance Healthcare President Trace Devanny.

Announcements and Implementations

Beaufort Memorial Hospital (SC) adds the Navigate population health management tool to its list of Influence Health solutions, which already includes a CRM and enterprise patient portal. Fun fact: BMH is one of the few hospitals in the country with its own emergency dock.

Signature Healthcare (MA) partners with Aegis Health Group to implement the OneCommunity population health website. The new site, geared towards local businesses, will offer employees the ability to record and track health data, and access health reports and customized content, including relevant hospital services.

The Parker Jewish Institute for Health Care and Rehabilitation selects Virtual Health’s population health management platform to help reduce the risk of readmissions. Once integrated with the institute’s EHR, the new platform will automatically deliver patient discharge orders, medication lists, and educational materials.

Salt Lake City-based Equation adds Market Analyzer to its DataRiver BI platform, offering hospital executives the ability to benchmark competitor services and identify areas for growth.

Government and Politics

Director of National Drug Control Policy Michael Botticelli announces $13.4 million in funding for High Intensity Drug Trafficking Areas (HIDTA) programs, which coordinate drug enforcement operations, support prevention efforts, and improve public health and safety. The healthcare tie-in can be found in the $2.5 million that will go towards sharing data to combat the epidemic in five HIDTAs spanning 15 states. Epidemiologists, police officers, and health policy analysts will partner to provide each other timely access to potentially life-saving information. Law enforcement will gain better knowledge of heroin overdoses and ED visits, while public health officials will gain insight into community trends related to heroin tracking.

People

William Tierney, MD (Regenstrief Institute) is named inaugural chair of population health for Dell Medical School at the University of Texas at Austin.

Meg Aranow (The Advisory Board) joins SRG Technology as senior vice president of technology.

Verisk Analytics promotes Nick Daffan to CIO.

Research and Innovation

The California Health and Human Services Agency and the California Dept. of Public Health seek submissions through September 30 for the Let’s Get Healthy California Innovation Challenge. Open-data developers are encouraged to submit ideas in one of six categories including Healthy Beginnings, Living Well, End of Life, Redesigning the Health System, Creating Healthy Communities, and Lowering Cost of Care. Finalists will be featured on the Let’s Get Healthy California online portal and at the corresponding conference early next year.

San Diego County and Virginia Commonwealth University launch the “Big Data and a Culture of Health” project to better understand the impact transportation and housing projects have on public health. Researchers hope to find correlations between demographics and de-identified EHR data that will help them better address health issues such as Alzheimer’s, asthma, and obesity. “Those kinds of capacities exist, and are part of the future,” explains lead researcher Steven Woolf, adding that advertisers are already using them to understand consumer shopping habits, so why shouldn’t physicians use them to help improve health outcomes?

Other

As Hurricane Katrina’s tenth anniversary looms, Ochsner Health System President and CEO Warner Thomas reflects on the progressive healthcare ecosystem that has evolved out of the natural disaster’s aftermath:

“We are constantly evolving to meet the needs of a new world in healthcare, and continue to capitalize on opportunities to be innovative and creative about how we educate and care for our patients, especially those suffering from chronic diseases. A broad spectrum of partners from the community have worked together to improve population health by opening over 70 neighborhood health clinics to address the ongoing need for primary care and disease prevention so that residents now have more access to care. These are just a few examples of the exponential progress New Orleans has made within the healthcare industry.”

Ochsner was one of only three hospitals that remained opened during and after Katrina. Mr. H interviewed then Senior Vice President/CIO Chris Belmont back in 2013 about the hospital’s Katrina experience from an IT perspective. My favorite quote: “When I talk about EMR adoption, I tell them all you have to do is throw a Category 5 hurricane in your city. It’s amazing how EMR adoption ramps up.”

Sponsor Updates

ESD is included on the Inc. 500. Nordic also made the list.
Nordic will exhibit at NeXXpo August 25 in Madison, WI.
EClinicalWorks will exhibit at the Collaborative Care Summit 2015 August 20-21 in San Diego.
Greenway Health offers “Patient Engagement: Is Fear of Commitment Keeping Your Patients From Getting Engaged?”
Healthwise offers “Exploring the relationship between plain language and ethics.”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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Become a sponsor.

JennHIStalk

News 8/20/15

August 20, 2015 News Comments Off

Top News

Grand Rounds lands $55 million in Series C funding from existing investors Greylock, Venrock, Harrison Metal, and David Ebersman, plus an unnamed global mutual fund. The San Francisco-based company will use the cash infusion to scale up staffing and development of its Web-based patient/physician matching tool, offered primarily to consumers through their employers. The new round of financing brings the company’s total to $106 million.

Webinars

Previous webinars are on the YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for webinar services including discounts for signing up by Labor Day.

#HIStalking Tweet Chat: Compliance from the Patient’s Point of View

Amy Gleason (@ThePatientsSide), CareSync COO and White House Champion of Change for Precision Medicine, led us through an engaging #HIStalking discussion on using healthcare technology to drive patient compliance. Check out the recap here.

Announcements and Implementations

New York City-based Physicians Family Health Service implements IPatientCare’s EHR and PM systems at its Manhattan location.

Panasonic incorporates Acuant’s MediScan patient credentialing software into its KV-S1015c and KV-S1057c scanners.

Luminello incorporates e-prescribing technology from DoseSpot into its EHR for psychiatrists.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

ICDLogic partners with PM consulting and training firm Karen Zupko & Associates to bring its Cypher ICD-10 software solution to market. The company has also inked a deal with MGMA to offer the new tool in the association’s online store.

United Cannabis Corp. opens its first California-based Advanced Cannabinoid Therapy (A.C.T.) Now Clinic at the medical marijuana-friendly (and previously raided) Harborside Health Center in Oakland, equipped with a home-grown cloud-based EHR and patient portal.

Research and Innovation

A study of 22 patients with multiple chronic conditions finds they aren’t as jazzed about tracking their health data as recent patient data advocacy movements would have us believe. Digging deeper, researchers found that patients felt they were keeping up with data for their physicians, rather than themselves, and were surprised to learn that physicians rarely reviewed the data because they assumed it was unreliable. Researchers concluded that “Novel [consumer HIT] technologies are likely to be successful only if they clearly reduce patient inconvenience and burden, helping them to accomplish their ‘illness work’ more efficiently and effectively.”

People

Tom Torre joins medical bill-negotiating startup CoPatient as CEO. Torre comes from CoPatient’s partner and healthcare payments technology company Alegeus Technologies. Boston-based CoPatient was founded by ex-Athenahealthers Palm and Katie Vahle, who plan to move the four year-old company to new, roomier headquarters this fall.

Telemedicine

Boca Raton, FL-based Modernizing Medicine adds telemedicine capability to its EMA Dermatology EHR. The company plans to add telemedicine tech to its other specialty EHRs, but hasn’t yet determined timing.

Government and Politics

Washington, D.C.’s Health Link insurance exchange launches the Universal Doctor Directory 1.0 to help consumers more easily determine which physicians accept the exchange’s health plans. The move is part of the D.C. Health Benefit Exchange Authority’s broader efforts to make the site more user friendly, and to clean up incorrect physician contact information.

The State of New Mexico’s Human Services Dept. moves forward with development of an All Payers Claims Database, announcing plans to hire a consultant next month to assist with planning. State legislators passed a law earlier this year requiring the state’s Health Dept. to make hospital-specific cost and quality-of-care data freely accessible by 2017.

Other

Practicing psychiatrists Steven Buser, MD and Leonard Cruz, MD publish “DSM-5 Insanely Simplified: Unlocking the Spectrums within DSM-5 and ICD-10” to assist therapists, psychologists, and psychiatrists with the transition to the new classifications. Cruz amusingly notes in his author bio that his tastes have progressed over the years to from Archie Comics and Mad Magazine to Freud for Beginners. “Naturally,” he adds, “the opportunity to co-author a serious book on DSM-5 and ICD-10 utilizing cartoons was irresistible.”

Speaking of psychiatry … climbing the corporate ladder may not be all it’s cracked up to be: Researchers at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health find that people towards the middle of social hierarchies suffer higher rates of anxiety and depression based on their social class and position of power in the labor market. The new findings jive with prior research, which has shown that workers with greater job demands and few opportunities for decision-making exhibit higher rates of depressive symptoms.

The local paper profiles the ultimately positive experience ProHealth Physicians (CT) has had with its Allscripts FollowMyHealth patient portal since implementation four years ago. “I think initially there was a concern on the part of physicians that it might mean patients were pestering them all the time,” says Bethany Kieley, vice president of practice operations. “But that really doesn’t happen. We found that patients are very respectful of the technology.”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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

JennHIStalk

#HIStalking Tweet Chat Recap

August 20, 2015 News Comments Off

News 8/19/15

August 19, 2015 News Comments Off

Top News

Practice Fusion’s CEO switch (announced via company blog) makes waves ahead of a rumored IPO, with industry insiders speculating that Ryan Howard’s ouster was a board decision rather than a personal one stemming from burnout. Interim CEO and board member Tom Langan insists it was part of a larger strategy around enhancing the company’s commercialization efforts, which makes sense given Langan’s former role as chief commercial officer. HIStalk readers have their own explanations, of course, including the notion that the possible IPO could simply be a smokescreen for the downplayed executive shuffle.

Webinars

Previous webinars are on the YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for webinar services including discounts for signing up by Labor Day.

#HIStalking Tweet Chat: Compliance from the Patient’s Point of View

Join @ThePatientsSide (Amy Gleason, COO of CareSync and White House Champion of Change for Precision Medicine) and me (@JennHIStalk) for a discussion on using healthcare technology to drive patient compliance. Preview Amy’s #HIStalking discussion questions here.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The local paper highlights the long-running feud between independent Plum Creek Medical Group (NE) and nearby Lexington Regional Health Center stemming from PCMG’s successful patient-centered medical home, which has reduced the hospital’s cash flow from PCMG patient ER visits and readmissions. The vitriol (including lawsuits) has reached such a fever pitch that PCMG felt the need to take out a one-page ad in the local paper stating its case. Its physicians resigned their hospital privileges en mass late last year.

Announcements and Implementations

Allscripts integrates CoverMyMeds electronic prior authorization technology into its eAuth software. The partnership will increase the number of health plans available to Allscripts end users and enable prescriptions to be filled more rapidly. CoverMyMeds announced similar partnerships with Practice Fusion and Epic earlier this year.

Webster, MA-based Product Development Management Group launches ICD9CodeUp, a SaaS tool that enables practice staff to submit claims with ICD-10 codes using their existing ICD-9 billing systems.

Outpatient rehab provider Spooner Physical Therapy implements Clinicient’s PracticeInsight EHR and billing solution at its 16 facilities in Arizona.

People

Steve Crusenberry (Rackspace) joins ClearData as senior vice president of products.

Government and Politics

CMS will host a National Provider Call August 27 (five weeks out from the October 1 transition date) focusing on the “Countdown to ICD-10.” Acting Administrator Andy Slavitt, as well as representatives from AHIMA and AHA will be on hand to offer coding guidance and tips.

U.S. Dept. of Education Chief Privacy Officer Kathleen Styles asks for feedback on the ability of colleges to disclose student medical records without consent. Current guidance leans towards protecting the privacy of students: Schools shouldn’t share records without consent or a court order unless the lawsuit relates to medical matters. The comment period for draft guidance ends October 2.

Telemedicine

The Ontario Telemedicine Network partners with WellDoc and Samsung to offer a new version of WellDoc’s BlueStar mobile prescription therapy for diabetes to 300 Toronto patients. The updated version integrates Samsung’s S Health health metric tracking, offering patients the ability to self-manage their condition. OTN’s goal is to validate the integration of self-management and lifestyle tracking tools into the traditional Type 2 diabetes standard of care.

PBS News Hour spotlights internist Michael Fratkin, MD and the palliative care he provides via telemedicine to patients in the rural areas of Eureka, CA. Fratkin is founder of ResolutionCare, a practice he started with funding from an Indiegogo campaign late last year. ResolutionCare is in the midst of a six-month pilot program to provide palliative care via telemedicine to 55 members of Partnership HealthPlan of California, which administers Medi-Cal benefits to eligible patients. If successful, the program may be rolled out to more of the plan’s 530,000 members.

Research and Innovation

A Black Book study finds that Allscripts, Greenway, McKesson, and Athenahealth rank highest with large group practice customers for increased customer satisfaction over the last year. Satisfaction categories included user experience, documentation, and productivity enhancements. Nearly 20 percent of surveyed large group practices plan to replace their original EHRs by the end of 2016.

Other

One Medical Group Vice President Sandeep Acharya outlines contributing factors to sluggish healthcare innovation, pointing out that payers are creating some of the biggest barriers:

“[I]n order to generate revenue for your innovative service, payers like Aetna or Blue Shield first have to agree to reimburse you for it, then doctors have to recommend it. It can take years for entrepreneurs to move through this process. Compare this to Apple bringing the iPhone to market in 2007. Imagine if, before you could buy an iPhone, Apple had to convince your bank to fund it, then get your financial adviser to recommend you purchase it. You might still be using a first-generation Razr.”

Boston Magazine highlights the success many patients have in finally finding accurate diagnoses via CrowdMed, a website that aims to solve medical mysteries by crowdsourcing suggestions from users – even those not in healthcare. “We believe that the most credentialed people are not always the best when it comes to solving cases,” explains founder Jared Heyman. “There’s a lot of med students out there and nurses and chiropractors and nutritionists who don’t have MDs by their name, and are actually very good at solving tough medical cases.”

Sponsor Updates

Nordic offers “HIT Breakdown 10 – Patient Engagement possibilities with MyChart.”
AdvancedMD offers a look at its new ICD-10 website.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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

JennHIStalk

News 8/18/15

August 18, 2015 News Comments Off

Top News

Riding high on the coattails of the transition to ICD-10, coding software and services company Aviacode secures a $16 million investment from growth equity firm Frontier Capital. The Salt Lake City-based company plans to use the funds to expand sales and marketing, and scale up product development.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

I have yet to encounter a physician’s office during unexpected downtime. After reading Dr. Jayne’s latest Curbside Consult, I can only imagine the frustration staff and patients must feel in dealing with unorganized paper-based workflows. I encourage you to take a look at her recommended best practices for just such a situation. I recommend a big dose of patience for those patients who unknowingly encounter just such a situation. It’s times like these that make me seriously consider signing up for a mobile-friendly PHR.

Webinars

Previous webinars are on the YouTube channel. Contact Lorre for webinar services including discounts for signing up by Labor Day.

#HIStalking Tweet Chat: Compliance from the Patient’s Point of View

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Rehab therapy EHR vendor WebPT acquires Therabill, a PM software firm specializing in physical and occupational therapy, speech-language pathology, and behavioral health. The combined company’s technology will provide practices with an integrated tool for documentation, scheduling, reporting, and billing.

Announcements and Implementations

Texas-based Urgent Clinics Medical Care implements EHR, PM, and billing solutions from DocuTap at its seven locations across Houston.

23andMe announces it will offer additional health product tests by the end of this year, including tests that indicate autosomal recessive traits. The company is obviously clearing the regulatory hurdles it has encountered over the last several years. Readers may recall the FDA forced 23andMe to stop marketing its $99 “spit kit” as a testing tool for susceptibility to genetic-related conditions, causing the company to focus that product on consumer ancestry. Bloomberg reports that it is planning to raise $150 million in new venture capital financing, and has hired new CFO and Director of Operations Dean Schorno to lead the charge back into healthcare.

Clinical Architecture launches Content Cloud, a content update service that delivers updated healthcare terminologies in a standard and consistent format.

People

The National Medical Association elects Edith Mitchell, MD president. In addition to her work as a practicing oncologist, Mitchell is also a retired brigadier general in the U.S. Air Force – the first female physician to attain that rank.

Nitin Karandikar (DeVero) joins DigiSight Technologies as vice president of engineering.

Telemedicine

CVS Health Research Institute summarizes findings from its 2014 telehealth pilot project at MinuteClinic locations in California and Texas, concluding (without a hint of bias, I’m sure) that 95 percent of patients were highly satisfied with the quality of care they received, the ease with which telehealth technology was integrated into the visit, and the timeliness and convenience of their care. One-third of the program’s 1,700 patients noted they preferred a telehealth visit to one with a clinician in the same room.

Government and Politics

HHS encourages health IT-savvy practices of any size to submit nominations for the 2015 Million Hearts Hypertension Control Challenge. Practices that have achieved hypertension control rates of greater than 70 percent are eligible to enter through October 31.

Research and Innovation

An informal survey finds that millenials might not be as averse to the traditional primary care office visit as we might stereotypically think. Author Christina Farr (herself a millenial) points out that, “What surprised me in my research is that while millennials do shop around for primary care, similar to how they compare auto insurance or airline flights, many said they were willing to commit once they’ve found a doctor who fits the bill. Others told me that they would prioritize seeing their regular doctor and would only consider seeing a new doctor via Doctor On Demand or One Medical if the wait time for a visit surpassed a couple days.”

Researchers conclude that, despite well-documented abandonment rates, exercise apps really do help people exercise more. Of the 726 people studied, current app users had lower BMIs (25.16) than past and non-users (26.8 and 26.9, respectively). Researchers conclude that “exercise apps can be viewed as intervention delivery systems consisting of features that help users overcome specific barriers.” As a “past user,” I can conclude that using an exercise app for just one week caused me to be more mindful of my activity levels, not to mention my need to decrease overall screen time.

Other

Practices looking for the latest and greatest WiFi router take note: Google launches the $199 wireless OnHub via online retailers today, with an in-store launch planned for early next month. The company claims the new device, managed via a companion app, is easier to use and more reliable and secure than competing products. No word yet on whether yet whether OnHub will remain in Google or will be spun into another part of the new Alphabet holding company.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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

JennHIStalk