News 6/11/15

Top News

Results from an Arkansas Medical Society survey paint a grim picture of physician preparedness for the switch to ICD-10 on October 1. Of 95 clinics surveyed, only 16 percent are prepared to implement the classification set today, while 30 percent firmly believe they won’t be ready by October. AMS Executive Vice President David Wroten has made no secret of his frustration with the switch: “It’s not going to save the health care system one penny. It’s not going to improve health care services one iota. There’s no benefit to the patient. There’s not benefit to the institution. The only benefit this is for are researchers and number-crunchers, yet we’re the ones having to pay for it.” Wroten and his colleagues are in favor of a one- to two-year grace period where providers would not be penalized if they haven’t made the switch.

Tweet Chat

Today’s #HIStalking tweet chat, hosted by Carly Medosch (@CarlyRM), was fun and informative. My favorite tweet came from @MayoInnovation in response to Q4: What’s a surefire way for the healthcare system to make you want to disengage? Check out the recap here. 

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Healthcare business process outsourcing company MiraMed acquires Plexus Management Group, a consulting and PM business, and Plexus Information Systems, an anesthesia information management systems vendor, for an undisclosed sum. MiraMed anticipates the businesses will complement its Anesthesia Business Consultants subsidiary.

Forbes takes a look at companies poised to make a big splash in healthcare over the next 12 to 18 months, noting that Walmart is poised to have a disruptive impact in primary care thanks to its attempts to accelerate low-cost consumerization of care.

People

Perry Wallack (Cornerstone OnDemand) joins the Kareo Board of Directors.

Announcements and Implementations

Multispecialty medical group ABQ Health Partners (NM) commits to a second pilot with Augmedix, the Stanford startup that utilizes the Google Glass platform to populate EHRs with data captured from real-time streaming of physician visits. An initial pilot last year with five physicians found that the technology saved each two hours a day.

Telemedicine

Brain Injury Services of SWVA will use a grant from Wounded Warrior Project to establish the Community Living Connection (CLiC) telemedicine program for veterans with traumatic brain injury. CLiC for Vets will combine cognitive rehabilitative exercises with practical skills, and offer information on available benefits and resources to advance personal goals and reintegration into the community.

Buffalo, NY-based Wegmans grocery story begins a telemedicine pilot project in four stores that will give shoppers access to an iPad to visit with physicians and psychologists when they have questions the pharmacist can’t answer. Clinical expertise will be provided by Doctor on Demand.

Research and Innovation

WEDI goes live with its latest ICD-10 survey in an effort to gauge progress made by health plans, providers, and clearinghouses since its last poll in February.

Prescriptions for a medication regimen to reduce strokes and heart attacks in diabetic patients increased by 40 percent after community health clinics implemented Kaiser Permanente’s ALL quality improvement protocol. The study clinics shared an EHR through nonprofit OCHIN, which added alerts to notify physicians when patients met thresholds to receive medications, and shortcuts to expedite ordering the medications.

Bad news for physician workflow and patient safety: A usability study of 11 EHR vendors finds that three had no user-centered design teams, while only four had "basic" user-centered processes. I’m baffled by the fact that multi-billion-dollar companies haven’t ponied up salaries for this type of expertise.

Other

The Palm Beach Post highlights the success physicians have seen thus far as part of Aledade’s ACO network, including a five-fold increase in vaccine administration thanks to increased patient engagement via patient portals. Aledade CEO Farzad Mostashari, MD also noted an increase in e-prescribing, with the caveat that technology can only do so much when it comes to transforming healthcare. He believes changing payment models and smarter incentives will really be what changes the game.

Thomas Ellis, MD CMIO of ECU Physicians (SC) brushes off the bad vibes of recent op/ed EHR diatribes from Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer, telling consumers:

“We are on the cusp of creating a system that places information directly in front of the provider to allow for better decisions, better communication and ultimately better outcomes for everyone. Providers want this to work and I see more of them engaging in the process as they see the potential. Patients, don’t worry about your provider leaving the medical field because of electronic health records. Instead, be a part of the process, be a part of your health and help providers help you. Sign up for your provider’s patient portal and become more engaged. Providers, keep asking for improvements, share ideas and engage in making the electronic record more user friendly.”

Sponsor Updates

• E-MDs customer Orlando Heart Specialists (FL) is chosen as one of five sites to pilot the American College of Cardiology SMARTCare ischemic heart disease treatment options program.
• PerfectServe client Orange Coast Memorial Medical Center is featured on the American Medical Group Association’s premiere of online news program High Performing Health.
• Leidos Health Vice President and Health Information Privacy and Security Officer Sean Murphy will speak on a panel cybersecurity in healthcare panel at the iHT2 Summit June 16-17 in Washington, D.C.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.

News 6/10/15

Top News

NoMoreClipboard notifies customers of a May 26, 2015 data breach after detecting suspicious activity on one of its servers related to its personal health record and patient portal. Compromised user data may include names, home addresses, usernames, hashed passwords, security questions and answers, email addresses, birthdates, health information, and Social Security numbers. The company is working with a third-party firm to determine the extent of the damage, and how many users have been affected.

Webinar

We had a great turnout for Tuesday’s Medicity-sponsored webinar titled “Successful HIEs DO Exist: Best Practices for Care Coordination.” Participation was so extensive that we ran out of Q&A time, but we’ve sent the remaining questions to speakers Brian Ahier of Medicity and Dan Paoletti of Ohio Health Information Partnership and will provide their answers by email. Check out the Twitter recap here.

Tweet Chat

Carly Medosch (@CarlyRM) will host the next #HIStalking tweet chat Thursday, June 11 at 1pm ET. Check out discussion topics here.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

EdgeMed Healthcare, a medical billing and PM services company based in Boca Raton, FL, selects Bankers Healthcare Group as its exclusive financing partner.

Reuters highlights the growing and competitive market for cloud storage of genetic data, fueled no doubt by the healthcare industry’s desire to cash in on anything remotely related to precision medicine. Amazon Web Services has the edge on Google, with Microsoft and IBM also looking to grab a slice of the business pie, which may be worth $1 billion a year by 2018.

People

Thomas McCarter, MD (Executive Health Resources) joins Team of Care as the company’s first CMO.

Government and Politics

Alabama joins the ICD-10 legislative frenzy, passing a joint resolution urging Congress to delay the October 1 implementation date. SJR 79 sponsor Sen. Tim Melson, MD explains that, "Physicians are already overburdened by federal reporting regulations, such as meaning use of electronic health records and the Physician Quality Reporting System that will straddle the ICD-10 start date of Oct. 1. Adding ICD-10 to the mix will only make matters worse for physicians who are only trying to treat their patients."

Former Democratic presidential nominee Howard Dean highlights the successes and failures of the ACA, emphasizing the positive role ACOs are playing in the industry shift to value-based care. He even goes so far as to suggest that an “ACO could, in theory, sell health care directly on the exchange, rather than through an insurance company serving as intermediary.”

Cerner CEO Neal Patterson joins a panel of industry stakeholders at today’s initial Senate HELP committee hearing on the future of EHRs. Led by Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), the committee focused on outlining its plans to conduct an intense review of EHRs over the summer in the hopes of coming up with five or six steps for improvement. Upcoming hearings will focus on the burden physicians face as a result of EHRs and who controls information within the EHR.

Research and Innovation

The Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago develops the first bionic leg controlled by the brain. Engineers have made an intuitive control system incorporating electromygraphic signals that decodes a user’s intentions as they walk or go up and down stairs. Funding for a pilot project with seven amputees was funded by the Telemedicine and Advanced Technology Research Center, part of the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command.

Telemedicine

Walgreens expands its MDLive-based telemedicine platform to users in Colorado, Illinois, and Washington. Users can also now access the platform via the company’s website on desktops and tablets. The company plans to open up the service to a total of 25 states by the end of the year.

Russia’s health minister announces plans to equip its rural health posts – medical centers in rural areas that provide first-aid – with Internet connections over the next two years. The connectivity will enable the posts to offer residents remote consultations via Skype. A two-year timeline seems daunting when you consider there are 83,000 villages with populations of less than 100 people across Russia.

Other

The local paper profiles Texas-based FQHC Cactus Clinic and its recent improvements, including moving to a new Athenahealth EHR and extending operating hours as part of a renewed focus on customer service.

For those traveling to Westeros over the summer, Google Maps offers public-transit directions via dragon. Presumably UK developers clock the dragon flight from Snowdon to the Brecon Beacons in Wales at 21 minutes.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.

News 6/9/15

Top News

Kareo is ranked by Black Book as the top vendor for integrated health records, PM, and physician billing solutions for the third consecutive year. ADP AdvancedMD, Athenahealth, Greenway Health, HealthFusion, McKesson, and NexTech also earned high marks.

Tweet Chat

Carly Medosch (@CarlyRM) will host the next #HIStalking tweet chat Thursday, June 11 at 1pm ET. Check out discussion topics here.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The local business paper covers workplace clinic company Premise Health’s to evolve into a “patient engagement organization,” which will include a sharper focus on healthcare IT. Included in the Nashville, TN-based company’s plans are a patient portal, enterprise data warehouse, and customer visualization tools to help benchmark the company’s efforts.

Announcements and Implementations

Delaware’s Health Information Network selects IMAT Solutions to provide a secure system for aggregating, validating, and analyzing data from primary care providers and payers, then presenting the results in a scorecard user interface. The scorecard will be used by the HIE’s stakeholders to benchmark adherence to care standards, cost, and patient experience.

Orion Health integrates the eHealth Connect Image Exchange solution from eHealth Technologies into its Open Platform, enabling users to view, compare, and transfer medical images. The North Dakota Health Information Network will implement the combined technology its statewide HIE participants.

People

AMA President-Elect Steven Stack, MD is sworn in as the association’s 170th (and youngest) president.

The International Society of Telemedicine and eHealth elects Rifat Latifi, MD (International Virtual-e-Hospital Foundation and the University of Arizona) vice president.

Government and Politics

Representative Gary Palmer (R-AL) introduces HR 2652, titled Protecting Patients and Physicians Against Coding Act of 2015, which if passed would establish a two-year grace period during which both ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes would be accepted. It is the third bill introduced in the last two months that attempts to delay the upcoming ICD-10 switchover.

ONC seeks recommendations for procedures, tools, and test data to use in its EHR certification program. Among its needs: Identify the developer of test tools or procedures; specify the certification criteria it addresses; and explain how the test tool or procedure would evaluate an EHR or other health IT software.

Research and Innovation

An American Diabetes Association study finds that access to an EHR was integral to the success of certified diabetes educators in their efforts to help diabetes patients receive timely medication adjustments. CDEs often left recommended prescriptions for primary care physicians, who would act on them within a day. E-prescribing was presumably a vital part of that adjustment as well.

Weill Cornell Medical College researchers break down the Meaningful Use participation of New York physicians in 2011 and 2012. The study of 26,368 providers found that participation in the Medicaid incentive program rose from 6.1 percent to 8.5 percent, while Medicare participation rose from 8.1 to 23.9 percent. Not surprisingly, early and consistent participants had more financial resources and organizational capacity to support the use of healthcare IT, leading researchers to caution policy makers about the brewing of a digital divide and subsequent gaps in patient care in underserved areas.

Other

The AMA adopts a plethora of new policies at its annual meeting this week, including one that calls for the development of best practices to guide the development and use of mobile medical apps. Board Member Gerald E. Harmon, MD explains that, “This new policy builds upon existing efforts such as our partnership with healthcare technology incubator MATTER, our work with Healtheway and Carequality and our efforts to increase the appropriate use of telemedicine technologies.”

NPR highlights the hot market for personal, Web-based search information, calling out the CDC and WebMd for their hazy privacy policies and de-identified data practices. Data brokers are no longer using search information just to serve up a timely ad to the most appropriate user. The more nefarious often sell lists of users who have different diseases or symptoms to the highest bidder.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.

Patient Engagement: What’s Working? What’s Not? – #HIStalking Tweet Chat Thursday, June 11 at 1pm ET

Join @JennHIStalk and @CarlyRM (Carly Medosch) for a discussion on the hits and misses of patient engagement. You can check out her background here, preview discussion questions below, and brush up on how to participate in a tweet chat towards the end of this post.

Patient Engagement: What’s Working? What’s Not?

My name is Carly Medosch and I’ve had Crohn’s disease for 21 years. I’ve spent my entire adult life in the “Kingdom of the Sick,” and have only recently been able to add advocacy, support, and education to my life thanks to medical advances (including two clinical trial medications). I am passionate about a big-tent approach to healthcare system improvements in order to provide better experiences and outcomes for patients and the doctors, nurses, and other humans who work in health. We all need to work together to understand the causes and create improvements.

#HIStalking Discussion Questions

Q1 What is your goal? Is your health team supporting this? How?

Q2 What digital health tools are working for you?

Q3 What can your healthcare providers do to support your engagement?

Q4 What’s a surefire way for the healthcare system to make you want to disengage?

Q5 What advice would you give the health IT industry about creating products to better serve patients?

Tweet Chat Instructions

It’s easy to join the Twitter conversation by logging into TweetChat, which automatically keeps you in the conversation by tagging all tweets with the #HIStalking hash tag. If you are unable to access the TweetChat room, simply search in Twitter for #HIStalking and follow the conversation. To contribute, be sure and tag your tweets with #HIStalking so they can be seen by other chat participants.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.

News 6/8/15

Top News

American Well files a complaint for patent infringement against Teladoc, calling out Teladoc’s telehealth service offering for relying on American Well technology. According to the complaint, Teladoc was denied the right to obtain a license to American Well’s patents, yet continued using American Well’s technology to develop and sell its system. Teladoc seems to be in the midst of appealing that decision. American Well is seeking a jury trial to resolve the matter, and ultimately hopes to prohibit Teladoc from offering its services.

Webinars

June 9 (Tuesday) 11:30 ET. “Successful HIEs DO Exist: Best Practices for Care Coordination.” Sponsored by Medicity. Presenters: Dan Paoletti, CEO, Ohio Health Information Partnership; Brian Ahier, director of standards and government affairs, Medicity. Not all HIEs are dead – some, like Ohio’s CliniSync HIE, are evolving and forging a new path to successful care coordination. Brian Ahier will explain how HIEs can help providers move to value-based care models, emphasizing Meaningful Use Stage 3 and FHIR. Dan Paoletti will provide best practices in describing CliniSync’s journey to success in serving 6,000 primary care physicians, 141 hospitals, and and 290 long-term and post-acute care facilities. Attendees will learn how to use a phased approach, establish client champions, help providers meet MU Stage 2, create a provider email directory, deliver care coordination tools, and drive continued ROI.

Tweet Chat

Crohn’s patient and advocate Carly Medosch (@CarlyRM) will host the next #HIStalking tweet chat Thursday, June 11 at 1pm ET. You can brush up on her background here. Stay tuned for chat topics.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Medical device company Vasomedical acquires NetWolves, a managed network services company, for $18 million. The acquisition will serve as the foundation of Vasomedical’s new healthcare IT business, which will cater to the diagnostic imaging, telehealth, and connected care markets.

Apple unveils a new software developers kit for Apple Watch apps at its Worldwide Developers Conference. The kit will enable apps to run directly on the watch instead of from a phone, and will give developers access to more watch functions, including sensors, which will be a boon to folks working on health and fitness apps.

JPMorgan Chase employees volunteer to give up voicemail, which the company provided at $10 per person per month, for an annual total savings of $3.2 million. The company follows in Coca-Cola’s footsteps, which axed a comparably insignificant $100,000 worth of voicemail services last year.

People

The AMA names Pennsylvania-based orthopedic hand surgeon Andrew Gurman, MD president-elect at its annual meeting. He’ll take over presidential duties next June.

Ray Williams (International Council for Quality Care) joins Brown & Toland Physicians (CA) as COO.

Telemedicine

The California Telehealth Network entreats stakeholders to show their support for the FCC’s plan to extend subsidies for broadband services for low-income households. CTN President and CEO Eric Brown explains that support for the plan will ensure that “low-income households that are without broadband are not left behind in their ability to access to their medical records and patient portal information via broadband.” Signatures are due June 9.

MyIdealDoctor partners with Zest Health to offer its telemedicine services from within Zest Health’s member-based healthcare navigation app. MyIdealDoctor will also integrate elements from Zest Health’s technology into its mobile platform.

Announcements and Implementations

Bizmatics launches a mobile app for its PrognoCIS patient portal.

Surescripts extends its CompletEPA electronic prior authorization service to eClinicalWorks users, adding 340,000 providers to its e-prescribing network.

Mountain River Physical Therapy (WV) implements Clinicient’s PracticeInsight EHR and billing software. Fun fact: MRPT Sports Performance Coach Allison Burner, a volleyball and track and field champion, has been invited to compete on NBC’s American Ninja Warrior. 

Government and Politics

The final CMS rule on Medicare ACOs (a whopping 592 pages) requires them to outline how they’ll use technology such as telemedicine and HIEs to coordinate care. The organizations must also outline plans for collaborating with post-acute and long-term care providers, and set targets such as projected dates for establishing electronic quality reporting.

EPs who didn’t successfully participate in the 2014 Medicare EHR Incentive Program have until July 1 to apply to CMS for a hardship exception in order to avoid a 2-percent cut in Medicare payments beginning in 2016.

Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) and Rep. Eddie Bernice Johnson (D-TX) reintroduce the Helping Families in Mental Health Crisis Act. First introduced in 2013, the new bill aims to improve access, ensure a qualified workforce, drive evidence-based care, and provide alternatives to institutionalization. It also contains the behavioral health IT legislation that amends and extends the Meaningful Use program to include additional behavioral health practitioners and facilities.

Research and Innovation

Apple’s WatchKit announcement is in perfect sync with a new report from ACT, The App Association, which finds that 40 percent of the top 400 apps in Apple’s App Store integrate with the watch. Health apps, followed by weather and finance, were found to be the top categories for integration.

Intel and the European-based Teratec consortium collaborate to develop a big data lab outside of Paris that will focus on personalized healthcare, smart cities, and precision agriculture. Lab projects will speed up research initiatives, develop proof of concepts, and promote real-world trials with an eye to full-scale deployments.

Fortune covers poll results from physician social network Sermo, which show that a majority of respondents (66 percent) are reluctant to share health data with their patients. The results put an interesting spin on the debate around vendor information blocking, essentially begging the question, “What good is interoperability if physicians themselves don’t want to share data with patients?” OpenNotes Co-Director Tom Delbanco, MD isn’t surprised by the results, noting that physicians are historically afraid of change, hesitant to take on more work, and potentially embarrassed by the quality (and veracity) of their notes.

Other

China-based hackers breach the US federal government’s personnel system and steal the information of up to 4 million current and former federal employees in a just-announced December 2014 incident. Investigators say the cybercriminals, who may be working for the Chinese government, are likely the same ones who recently breached health insurers Anthem and Premera Blue Cross.

An AMA Council on Medical Education report asks the association to establish national guidelines and screening methods to help physicians determine when they should retire. The report also notes the number of U.S. physicians aged 65 and older has quadrupled since 1975 to 240,000 — one-fourth of all U.S. doctors. Seems like a diagnostic and screening app could be developed and even tied into AMA membership renewal at certain ages.

Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush confesses in the Harvard Business Review that he’s not a fan of the Triple Aim, instead choosing to focus his company’s keystone habits and corresponding metrics on voluntary turnover. Bush argues that physicians should make patient access – quick, easy appointments – their keystone habit of choice. I tend to agree with him, given that there’s a two- to three-week wait for new patient appointments at my new PCP. He backs up his argument with the following:

“When provider organizations make it a habit of opening their schedules and committing to same-week-or-sooner appointments, other good things can happen. Appointment types can be simplified and streamlined, driving other opportunities for process improvement and efficiency. Care is more likely to be directed as appropriate to lower-cost providers and nurse practitioners or even to virtual consults, cutting costs and eliminating unnecessary care. And, most important, physicians can be freed up to see the sickest patients when they need to be seen.”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.