News 2/10/15

Top News

Fallout from the Anthem hack continues: Patient Privacy Rights and Consumer Watchdog representatives write a letter to Cal INDEX, the health information database created by Anthem and Blue Shield of California, demanding that consumers be allowed to opt-in to the HIE rather than opt-out due to the shaky privacy policies currently in place. The authors contend that:

1. Consumers still do not have a real right to opt out. Although you agree to not share the information of a consumer who opts out, you intend to continue collecting and entering that person’s information into the database, and consumers will not have a right to delete that information.
2. Cal INDEX does not plan to give consumers access to their entire record until a patient portal is developed at some unidentified time in the future. This places patient health at risk by increasing the likelihood that a medical provider relies on a file that is incorrect.

“Consumer Watchdog and Patient Privacy Rights are always suspicious when health insurance companies create programs they say are for consumers’ benefit,” the writers explain, “yet make participation mandatory. Health information exchanges that give consumers control of their own information can offer real benefits for patients’ health, but Anthem and Blue Shield presumptively signed up their customers for Cal INDEX before adequate protections were in place.”

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

In a timely move, the Center for Innovative Technology invests in Ostendio Inc., a startup that provides information security and privacy compliance solutions to digital health companies via its MyVirtualComplianceManager platform. Ostendio CEO Grant Elliott was behind Voxiva’s Text4baby and Text2quit mobile solutions.

DigiSight Technologies raises $7.8 million in Series B financing from new and existing investors including Biosys Capital, Waycross Ventures, GE Ventures, and Lagunita LLC. The company’s DigiSight Network creates a secure connection for data from mobile devices to move into clinical settings. The company plans to focus its commercialization strategy on ophthalmology.

The Massachusetts Competitive Partnership works to make the state a mecca for digital health technology. The group of 16 influential CEOs and business leaders are looking at financing, mentoring, and incubator space, as well as contemplating a push for a tax credit to persuade angel investors to provide seed money. The private-sector group is working with Leerink Partners to set up a private equity fund that would invest in Massachusetts-based digital health companies.

Announcements and Implementations

Medical Associates of Navarro County (TX) goes live on the ImmTrac Texas Immunization Registry after successful interface testing with its EHR.

Frontier Behavioral Health (WA) selects the CoCentrix Coordinated Care Platform as its EHR and care management tool in an effort to connect its 15 behavioral health service lines with its 500 end users.

The Utah Health Information Network selects Applied PilotFish Healthcare Integration’s eiPlatform and eiConsole for Healthcare products to power its health claims data clearinghouse.

Government and Politics

A new GAO report indicates that the switch to ICD-10 will happen on October 1, citing efforts undertaken by Medicare to address concerns about the conversion. The report, which stems from interviews with 28 stakeholders over six months, also indicates that CMS has been proactive, too. The agency has been busy developing educational materials for providers and payers, conducting outreach including in-person training for physician practices, initiating end-to-end testing, and consulting focus groups.

Telemedicine

Crain’s profiles telemedicine startup Helix, which provides video consults with physicians and cloud-based access to medical records via a $75 monthly membership fee. "We’re both a health care technology company and a health care provider," says founder Les Hedman. "It’s a little confusing." Hedman and partner Lizzie Nolan self-funded the company, which is working with four physician groups and will likely begin marketing to Medicare patients living in rural and remote areas.

Senator Aaron Bean (R-Fernandina Beach) pokes fun at the sluggish progress of passing telemedicine legislation in Florida at the Florida Health Care Affordability Summit: “I’m not going to say Florida is behind the times but I just went to my healthcare provider a couple of weeks ago and they suggested I do some blood letting and they pulled out some leeches and I felt much better.” A bipartisan group of state House and Senate leaders have expressed confidence the legislation will finally pass this year.

Lawmakers in Oregon are also pushing for passage of legislation that would provide health insurance coverage to patients who receive telemedicine care. Oregon law currently requires coverage of telemedicine only if it takes place at a medical facility. Senate Bill 144 could expand that coverage, allowing people to see a doctor or nurse via two-way video conferencing.

Senator Bill Frist, MD advocates for broadened telemedicine legislation in Tennessee in light of the looming physician shortage in primary care: “As a doctor from a family of doctors, I am well aware that our profession has traditionally balked at change, especially when it involves new technology that alters how we interact with our patients. But the evidence is in from study after study. Telemedicine works. It is affordable and convenient for the patient. It expands access to excellent care to every community and every neighborhood across the state. If we want to continue to be a state that boasts a "health care capital" in our capital city of Nashville, we and our elected officials need to honor where medicine has been while embracing where it is going.”

Research and Innovation

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation offers grants ranging from $200,000 to $400,000 to non-profits and public entities conducting studies related to population health or the development of resources to help consumers make healthcare decisions. A total of $1.9 million will be awarded to between five and nine studies. Proposals are due March 3.

Rumors abound that med device company Dexcom has integrated its implantable glucose monitors with the iPhone and Apple Watch. Apple Watch demos of the Dexcom app for diabetes patients have displayed only glucose readings, though other features such as alarms and calibration might be in the works.

People

Tony Scott (VMware) is named chief information officer of the United States, replacing Steve VanRoekel.

DJ Patil (RelateIQ) joins the White House as a data scientist in residence, where he will focus on helping to handle healthcare data.

Brigham and Women’s Hospital President and Harvard Medical School Professor Elizabeth Nable, MD takes a side job with the NFL as chief medical advisor.

Russ Thomas (Availity) joins the Connecture Inc. Board of Directors.

Other

Grant-funded Vermont Information Technology Leaders pitches its new HIE to consumers by running regional Super Bowl ads on local TV stations at a cost of around $13,000 of its $195,000 marketing campaign. The move did not sit well with Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin: “Many Vermonters joined me in being disappointed that state and federal funds were being used for an advertising buy during the Super Bowl,” he said. “This should highlight the need for the Green Mountain Care Board to regulate VITL’s expenditures.” GMCB is an independent group created by the Vermont legislature charged with ensuring that changes in the state’s health system improve quality while stabilizing costs.

The National Committee for Quality Assurance seeks early adopters for its Patient-Centered Connected Care Recognition program. It will evaluate sites that deliver outpatient healthcare on their ability to communicate effectively with a patient’s other physicians, especially those in primary care.

Medical residents and fellows get a dose of reality at the Understanding the Business of Medicine Conference in Buffalo, N.Y. Attendees familiarized themselves with the financial, regulatory, IT, and customer-service challenges they’ll likely encounter upon joining a medical group or starting a practice. Buffalo urology resident John Bodkin III MD expressed his need for the day-long business school: “If I’m going to be up at night, I don’t want it to have to be for, ‘Oh, did I code that wrong? Am I going to get audited? Am I going to get paid for my time? Am I going to be able to afford my daughter’s wedding?’”

The Henn-na Hotel, opening this summer in Nagasaki, Japan, will feature blinking and “breathing” robots that make eye contact, respond to body language, and speak four languages fluently. They will check in guests, carry bags, make coffee, clean rooms, and deliver laundry. Could healthcare facilities in the U.S. be far behind? I wonder if patient satisfaction scores relating to customer service would plummet or soar.

Sponsor Updates

• A PerfectServe guest blog by physician collaboration expert Kenneth Cohn, MD addresses “The What and Why of Physician Engagement.”
• Senior VP Molly Mettler advocates for giving family caregivers a break in the latest Healthwise blog.
• Medicity offers a recap of the HL7 conference that showcased FHIR as the “next big thing” in healthcare.
• NVoq Director of Healthcare Industry Solutions Chad Hiner, RN explains why “EMR adoption will require more than financial carrots.”

Contacts

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

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From the Consultant’s Corner 2/10/15

Gauging Patient Access Performance
A Key Step in Readying Your Practice for the Future

Patient access is at the center of the evolving healthcare environment, as it sets the stage for the entire healthcare experience. When done well, the patient access function offers opportunities to enhance patient engagement, physician and resource productivity, and care management programs. Each of these benefits translates to elevated financial performance for the physician practice, regardless of size.

Progressive healthcare providers are rapidly realizing the importance of efficient and effective patient access in managing patient care, improving patient retention, and remaining competitive in terms of attracting new patients. Yet, practices may not understand how they can affect meaningful change in this area.

Key Questions to Determine Patient Access Performance
In my experience, the first step is to carefully assess current patient-access processes from the initial appointment request (whether over the phone or electronically through a patient portal) through check in, the clinical encounter, check out, and ongoing patient engagement. This allows a physician practice to identify areas of strength and improvement opportunities, discovering ways to create efficient and reliable workflows that better equip the practice to lower administrative costs while enhancing patient care, satisfaction, and payment. Practices can use the following questions to guide the assessment process.

1. How are metrics used to measure productivity and performance? Performance metrics are not new to practice management; however, the inter-relationship of patient access, clinical productivity, and revenue cycle metrics provides a holistic view of true practice performance. For example, one client of ours faced an unfortunate situation with excessively long appointment wait times, and provider productivity well below expected RVU production. Understanding the linkage of these metrics drove modifications to the practice’s scheduling templates that reduced wait times and improved the patient experience, provider productivity, and practice revenues.

2. Is there consistency in patient access across all entry points? Inconsistent or redundant processes can create patient and staff frustration and inefficiencies, and compromise data quality, resulting in downstream denials. Taking the time to identify and replace variations in workflows with standardized policies, procedures, and workflows provides significant improvements in terms of the patient experience, data quality, and resource productivity. This standardization should be based on best practices personalized to support each organization’s overall objectives. Once standardized processes are in place, be sure to provide the necessary education and training to front desk staff to help them perform consistently and deliver a seamless patient experience. Lastly, ensure appropriate feedback across the practice to monitor performance and to hold people accountable.

3. How do you collect patient payments? Failure to collect payment at the time of service slows the revenue cycle and causes the practice to incur additional expense to collect the payment later. Developing strategies for obtaining patient payment is especially important in the current climate, where patients are shouldering more financial responsibility. Improvement strategies should incorporate solutions to proactively identify patient responsibility before delivery of care. This shifts financial discussions to the front end, allowing staff to communicate with the patient in person or via the telephone about his or her payment responsibility. By communicating patient responsibility prior to the visit, the practice can achieve greater transparency, boosting both patient satisfaction and the likelihood of payment. For some practices, the shift toward patient collections represents a departure from previous strategies. To ensure a smooth transition, you should provide robust training so staff can interpret available financial information and be empowered to ask for payment in a patient-friendly manner.

There is no question that current industry changes have major implications for patients and practices. In this context, practices that take a proactive approach toward improving patient access can enhance operational efficiencies and clinical quality while also increasing patient satisfaction and driving revenue, ultimately laying the groundwork for future success.

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

Contacts

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

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News 2/5/15

Top News

Athenahealth makes its second recent push into the inpatient EHR market by acquiring the WebOMR system that was developed by Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (MA). Terms were not disclosed, but Mr. H did manage to talk with BIDMC CIO John Halamka about the details. Check out his thorough clarification of the agreement here.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Do you know a patient who could benefit from a trip to HIMSS? HIStalk, in partnership with medical advocate and Walking Gallery founder Regina Holliday is giving away five HIMSS15 conference scholarships ($1,000 in travel cash plus registration). We’re accepting applications through February 9 and will choose the five based on their patient stories and writing ability. See Regina’s description and send entries to Lorre.

I’ve created a “Telemedicine” section for news related to this growing segment of the healthcare technology industry. Whether it’s state licensing issues, other forms of government regulation, reimbursement issues, startups, or consumer demand, it seems not a day goes by that a dozen or more telehealth-related news items don’t cross my desk. Email me if you’ve got a related story to share, or care to weigh in on the telehealth versus telemedicine nomenclature debate. I’d love to see an insider write about their experiences on a regular basis.

It’s official: I’m over any sort of healthcare-related reference to Uber. With the exception of John Goodman’s recent piece in Forbes on “What Uber can Teach us About Health Care,” I’ve found use of the nouveau taxi service’s name to be little more than thinly veiled efforts to create click bait.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Jersey City, NJ-based ITelagen receives a growth capital investment from private-equity firm GPB Capital Holdings. The small- to medium-sized practice EHR vendor will use the funds to grow its product line, platform, and customer base.

RiteAid gets into the retail clinic business with the opening of its first 24 RediClinics within its retail pharmacies in Philadelphia,  Baltimore, and Washington, D.C. The company, which acquired Texas-based RediClinic last April, plans to open additional retail clinics in Seattle and Texas later this year. No word yet on whether RediClinic will rethink the Athenahealth EHR and PM solutions it’s had in place since 2008.

Apple looks to bolster its ranks for a new team of IBM Business Development Executives that will help roll out and oversee teams selling the new Apple/IBM iOS solutions to enterprise customers, including those in healthcare. The company is hiring for the position in LA and Seattle for the healthcare and retail industries.

Healthcare research firm Press Ganey hires underwriters for a potential IPO that could value it at more than $1 billion. The Indiana-based company works with over 10,000 healthcare organizations, and is perhaps best known for its administration of patient satisfaction surveys.

Announcements and Implementations

The National Association for Trusted Exchange introduces the NATE Blue Button for Consumers Trust Bundle to help identify consumer-facing applications that are trustworthy. Users will have access to a secure exchange of health data from provider-controlled applications to those managed by consumers.

Galileo Analytics launches Galileo Thermometer, a platform that provides pharmaceutical decision makers with custom analysis of de-identified EHR data from the U.S. and Europe. The new platform will cull data from over 30 million patient to help pharma reps make business intelligence and licensing decisions.

Chicago-based healthcare IT incubator Matter partners with the nearby AMA to create an Interaction Studio that will enable entrepreneurs and physicians to collaborate on the development of new technologies, services, and products in a simulated healthcare environment. Architecture and design firm HDR will lead development of the 450-square-foot space, which will be housed in Matter’s new Merchandise Mart offices.

The Hawaii HIE and Hawaii Health Systems Corp. sign a data-sharing agreement to make digital patient records available to physicians and hospitals across the state. HHS will share clinical data with HHIE starting with its West Hawaii and Maui regions. The agreement is likely welcome news, given that providers across Hawaii use 30 different EHRs.

The StayWell Company joins the Allscripts Developer Program. The patient education company’s Krames On-Demand Integrated Content Module has been certified for use with Allscripts Sunrise Acute Care and TouchWorks EHR solutions.

Kareo will integrate its PM and billing solutions with digiChart’s EHR technology for OB/GYN practices.

Patient queue management company Clockwise.MD joins the Athenahealth marketplace.

Government and Politics

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell announces a $28 million ONC-funded HIE grant program, described as, “Grantees will address interoperability workflow challenges, technical issues, and improve the meaningful use of clinical data from external sources. Providers will be engaged from across the entire care continuum, including those who are not eligible for the Medicare and Medicaid EHR Incentive Programs such as long term care facilities, to be able to send, receive, find, and use health information both within and outside their care delivery systems.”

ONC announces $6.4 million in funding opportunities for healthcare IT workforce training, focusing on the areas of population health, care coordination, new care delivery and payment models, and value-based care. It will also offer $1.7 million to support HIT innovations that improve population health at the community level. The office has requested $92 million for its FY2016 budget, up from $60 million. ONC wants $5 million to establish a Health IT Safety Center that will go live in FY2016.

Telemedicine

Roger Cady, MD offers Missouri legislators four steps to incorporating telemedicine into the state’s Medicaid program:

• Establish priorities, focusing on chronic conditions that carry high costs.
• Identify physicians interested in using telemedicine to treat those conditions and recruit national experts to participate.
• Make sure participating physicians have proper equipment, including a computer with a camera, videoconferencing software, and reliable broadband Internet.
• Start setting up appointments among the physicians, experts, patients and, when necessary, patient caregivers.

Despite the fact that two different bills have been filed for the upcoming session, lawmakers in Florida are confident they will reach agreement on telemedicine legislation in 2015. As in many other states, reimbursement and physician licensing issues have been sticking points with related bills filed in the past.

Washington State legislators are also optimistic, as they prepare to introduce a telemedicine bill for the third time in as many years. “Hopefully the third time is the charm … this is an access opportunity for our kids,” says Rep. Steve Bergquist, a prime sponsor of the 2015 legislation.

Research and Innovation

Accelerated Cure Project launches iConquerMS, a website and advocacy initiative that aims to help MS patients share their data and experiences in the hopes of influencing research and treatment for the disease. The initiative, funded by a $190,000 grant last year from the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, aims to enroll 20,000 patients by September.

People

Justin Barnes (Justin Barnes Advisors) joins the Gozio Health advisory board.

Healtheway appoints Dave Cassel to lead its Carequality Initiative.

Other

University of Pennsylvania professor Ross Koppel calls out ONC’s proclamation that EHRs have helped more than hindered patient safety, citing self-selected studies and methods that downplay the hundreds of thousands of HIT-related errors. "Of course, there was a safety problem with paper,” says Koppel, “but there are new, different and more wicked problems with HIT." (Mr. H’s interview with Koppel offers thorough background on his interest in the sociology of HIT.)

Cerner Corp. CEO Zane Burke’s mother is reportedly “thrilled” that her son rang the NASDAQ opening bell earlier this week to commemorate the company’s official $1.3 billion acquisition of Siemens Health Services.

Whole Foods CEO John Mackey optimistically mulls over the idea of medical clinics for Whole Foods employees: “Health care is so broken in America,” Mackey says. “If we allow markets to work, if we allow entrepreneurs to get in here and do things like I’m talking about doing, we will pretty much solve the health-care problem in a generation.”

A healthcare technology accelerator rivalry seems to be brewing in Nashville, as Jumpstart Foundry and Healthbox prepare to run their programs in quick succession in the coming months. When it comes to attracting top talent, Jumpstart CEO Vic Gatto says, “There’s only two or three accelerators in the country that can compete with us, and Healthbox is not one of them.”

Sponsor Updates

• Four Medicity HIE customers are named in “Survivor: Edition HIE"–Can Statewide HIEs Achieve Sustainability?”
• Dan Hamilton, COO of Nor-Lea Hospital District (NM), writes an article titled “Handling the Demands of a Population Boom: Using RTLS to Improve Patient Care and Workflows” about its use of Versus Advantages Clinic RTLS.
• ADP AdvancedMD asks, “Has the ICD-10 Delay Hurt Provider Preparedness?” in its latest blog.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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5 Questions with David Freedman, DPM Foot and Ankle Specialists of the Mid-Atlantic

David Freedman, DPM is vice president of Foot and Ankle Specialists of the Mid-Atlantic (MD). The practice, which has grown from 12 to 22 locations in the last several years, employs 32 physicians and 120 staff to care for nearly 400 patients each day. As a Certified Professional Coder and American Podiatric Medical Association Coding Committee member and ICD-10 team manager, he has spoken extensively on preparing for the transition to ICD-10.

Where is FASMA with Meaningful Use? Is it working on any other healthcare IT implementations?
We participated in Stage 1 from 2011 to 2014, and are starting Stage 2 this year. With regard to other IT projects, we are adding more security, specifically encryption, to all computers and servers in 2015. The plan is to start with our servers and test some desktops. If the conversion goes smoothly, we’ll put encryption on all our computers by the end of February.

How long has FASMA been preparing for ICD-10?
We have been preparing for ICD-10-CM  dating back to January 2014. We hold monthly webinars, teaching ICD-10-CM using the website I created, www.ICDTENhelp.com. This site was developed to help in understanding the new conversion, and to get ready for our planned go-live date of October 1, 2015. It converts ICD-9-CM codes to specific ICD-10-CM coding. We have created a library of webinars that any of the billing staff, doctors, medical assistants, or staff that touches ICD-9 coding now can view on their own, besides participating in the live events.

Did FASMA purchase any new IT (or upgrade) to help with the ICD-10 conversion? If so, what type of solutions, and why?
As the developer of ICDTENhelp.com, I provided this tool to FASMA to help in its conversion. Ultimately, we have to go through the typical coding that our practice uses and remove from the database any coding that is incomplete or lacks laterality. Our EHR is GE Centricity CPS 12. This software system is ONC certified 2014.  We upgraded in 2014 to get ready for the new diagnosis system, in addition to meeting the various components for other government reporting.

Have any other IT projects had to take a back seat to your prep for ICD-10?
We currently are working to achieve both MU and ICD-10 compliance simultaneously throughout 2015. As for other projects, we are preparing to look into tablet-based patient entry versus the traditional method of completing paperwork with paper and pen.

Can you offer other physicians advice or best practices for converting to ICD-10?
It is critical that your software is ready for the switch to ICD-10-CM. Additionally, you need a resource to convert from the current ICD-9-CM, and we recommend ICDTENhelp.com. It is an excellent product that allows simplest conversion to new coding. It takes out the inaccuracies of mapping, adds the necessary dummy characters and extension codes so you do not have to add them yourself. Also, have a line of credit ready just in case there are cash flow issues with the new coding system affecting insurance reimbursement. Monitor productivity now so you can compare data to your productivity post implementation. You want to make sure to follow the processes closely after October 1 passes so this change does not affect your cash flow.

Contacts

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

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News 2/3/15

Top News

Cerner completes its $1.3 billion acquisition of Siemens Health Services as announced in August. Cerner reiterated in the announcement that it will continue to support Siemens core systems for an unspecified period, with Soarian maintenance guaranteed for 10 years. Former SHS CEO John Glaser has joined Cerner as SVP and a member of the company’s executive cabinet. No word yet on whether he’ll accompany Cerner President Zane Burke when he rings the NASDAQ opening bell February 3.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Triarq Network and gloStream – both owned by the same group of investors – merge into Triarq Health. GloStream, a health IT and consulting firm known for its gloEMR, will operate as a Triarq subsidiary called gloStream Practice Service. The new organization will supply services to help ACOs, physician organizations, and payers manage care for new pay-for-performance models.

Surescripts plans to spin off its population health business into a separate company that will operate under the Kryptiq name. Surescripts acquired Kryptiq in 2012 and will keep its secure messaging, e-prescribing, and portal technologies. Surescripts will maintain a minority ownership position in Kryptiq, which will be run by the former Kryptiq management team.

Announcements and Implementations

Dade County Medical Association (FL) selects HealthFusion as its Vendor of Choice for EHRs. DCMA, the largest county medical association in the state, will introduce HealthFusion’s MediTouch software to its 1,000+ physician members looking to implement or upgrade EHRs.

Penebscot Community Health Care (ME) chooses Forward Health Group’s PopulationManager and The Guideline Advantage.

Epic wins Best in KLAS 2014 for best physician practice vendor and several EHR/PM categories. Athenahealth wins for practice management in the two larger practice size categories (11 docs and up).

Government and Politics

ONC publishes a draft version of its 10-year interoperability roadmap that includes a short-term goal of taking actions that “will enable a majority of individuals and providers across the care continuum to send, receive, find, and use a common set of electronic clinical information at the nationwide level by the end of 2017.” Lt. Dan provides a thorough synopsis of the draft at HIStalk Connect, with extra focus on ONC’s proposed API standards for easier data exchange.

ONC National Coordinator Karen DeSalvo, MD tweets the above picture during the agency’s annual meeting. It seems she had a great time during her fireside chat with Senate Majority Leaders Tom Daschle and Bill Frist, MD.

CMS announces plans to shorten the 2015 EHR reporting period to 90 days and to change hospital reporting to be calendar year in a new rule it expects to be approved in spring 2015.

The Federation of State Medical Boards releases a fact sheet refuting what it says are six myths about its Interstate Medical Licensure Compact.

Still new Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD begins his House Calls Listening Tour to better understand how his office can work with organizations to improve healthcare nationwide. I’ll be interested to see how his pet causes (childhood obesity, pandemic illness, and immunization, among others) intersect with ONC initiatives given that his father was a primary care physician and his mother the practice’s manager.

New York legislators propose a one-year delay in implementing the I-STOP law that requires all prescriptions to be transmitted electronically by March 27, 2015, saying that the DEA moved too slowly in certifying vendors to transmit controlled substance prescriptions.

President Obama will propose a $215 million precision medicine initiative that includes $5 million for ONC to develop interoperability standards and privacy requirements for secure data exchange.

Research and Innovation

A study finds that “priority practices” are at increased risk for falling on the wrong side of a “digital divide” as payers and regulators enact increasing expectations for EHR use and data management. In other words, those with few resources, dwindling reimbursements, and lack of opportunity to affiliate with local health systems will find it nearly impossible to maintain the necessary expert staff and ongoing support needed to keep new healthcare technologies in good working order. One of the authors calls it a “now or never” situation: "The right solution would be to make primary care practice more financially viable, but that’s a huge system-wide undertaking in which the U.S. is far behind the curve. So we’ll resort to a duct tape fix for now, [b]ut we’d better break out that roll of duct tape pretty fast."

Researchers at UMass Medical School and Worcester Polytechnic Institute develop a smartphone app to help consumers understand why they overeat. The RELAX app will help patients track eating patterns, daily activities, exercise, mood, and stress-inducing events via smartphone. Clinicians will then be able to access the data to help patients better understand their triggers for stress eating.

Penn State College of Medicine researchers offer 10 situations that may justify a physician’s need to Google a patient. "We’re hoping that by offering scenarios that raise important ethical questions about the use of search engine technology, we can initiate a conversation that results in the eventual development of professional guidelines,” explains Maria J. Baker, associate professor of medicine. “Formal professional guidelines could help healthcare providers navigate this current ‘Google blind spot.’”

Stanford researchers use machine learning to comb through EHR data to to identify patients at risk of familial hypercholesterolemia, a condition that often goes undiagnosed until a heart attack strikes. The project, part of the larger FIND FH (Flag, Identify, Network, Deliver) initiative, is a collaborative effort involving Stanford Medicine, Amgen Inc. and the nonprofit Familial Hypercholesterolemia Foundation.

People

Helen Williams (Precision Practice Management) joins Azalea Health as director of practice management services.

Diagnotes appoints Howard Silverman, MD (University of Arizona College of Medicine), Donald Brown, MD (Interactive Intelligence), Traci Dolan (ExactTarget), Michael Mote, and Samuel Odle (Bose Public Affairs Group) to its advisory board.

Other

Health Affairs examines the current educational gaps in traditional healthcare administration and efforts underway to address them, including the Global Educators Network for Health Care Innovation Education (GENiE) Group. Born out of the Harvard Business School, the group’s 140 members are working with CEO champions like AMA’s James Madara and Athenahealth’s Jonathan Bush to make innovation a central part of the education of future leaders in healthcare.

“NrsNat” lauds the benefits of telemedicine, but calls out colleagues for “a complete lack of knowledge …  and especially administrative leadership regarding telehealth and telemedicine,” in response to the local paper’s coverage of the state of Arkansas’ growing enthusiasm for telemedicine. “Most have no idea what it is, have a hard time grasping the overall concept, and look down on telehealth nurses as incapable of doing ‘hands on nursing,’ or ‘real’ nursing work. In fact, I was told ‘it did not require any skills.’ However, Telehealth and Telemedicine require a great deal of knowledge and expertise, most companies will not hire anyone with less than 10 years clinical experience, but I hope to see much more growth and education in this area as it is extremely efficient. Patients find it especially useful.”

For Mr. H’s musical review: Canadian gastroenterologist Nejat Memiche, MD finds fame as a pop star in his native Turkey, where he also teaches medical students. His debut album, Lost in Music, was recorded in Istanbul. Should he come stateside, I’d love to see him tour with ZDoggMD.

Sponsor Updates

• Named as KLAS Category Leaders for 2014 are Emdeon (eligibility enrollment), Allscripts (global acute EMR, Northern America), and GE Healthcare (staff/nurse scheduling, time and attendance).
• Allscripts is also recognized as Best in KLAS 2014 for its global acute EMR.
• Pepper McCormick writes about the four healthcare trends that will shape 2015 in the latest Healthwise blog.
• Health IT Outcomes profiles e-MDs and its work to exchange provider data directly with the new Kansas infectious disease registry.
• Nvoq offers SayIt 9.3 with new features that simplify use and enhance organizational productivity.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
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