News 12/11/14

Top News

Time magazine recognizes “The Ebola Fighters” as its Person of the Year. Kent Brantly, MD is one of three surviving fighters pictured on the issue’s five covers. "This is a huge honor,” he says. “It’s an incredible honor to be part of the group that’s being recognized … And I think that it’s fitting that we acknowledge that most Ebola fighters, certainly those that paid the highest price for their service, are themselves West Africans and it’s an honor for me to be considered as a part of that group." The issue hits newsstands Friday.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

I have been a fan of the Walking Gallery for some time now, and was pleasantly surprised to come across a blog about its latest member, HIStalk’s very own Lorre Wisham. In a nutshell, the Walking Gallery is a collection of mobile medical advocates for healthcare IT who wear their patient stories on their backs thanks to the artistic talents of founder Regina Holliday. She has decided to take the gallery to the next level and has created a MedStartr project to raise funds for a permanent gallery home. “The art of healing” has never rung more true. 

Webinars

December 17 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. There Is A 90% Probability That Your Son Is Pregnant: Predicting the Future of Predictive Analytics in Healthcare. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP of strategy, Health Catalyst. Predictive analytics is more than simple risk stratification. Once you identify an individual’s risk, what are the odds that you can change their behavior and what will it cost to do so? This presentation, geared towards managers and executives, addresses scenarios in which predictive models may or not be effective given that 80 percent of outcomes are driven by socioeconomic factors rather than healthcare delivery.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Techstars partners with Mayo Clinic (MN) to launch TechStars ++ , a new program that will connect Techstars graduates with businesses that can offer further help through business development and mentorship. Graduates of the accelerator program will spend two weeks meeting healthcare experts at Mayo’s main campus in Rochester. Techstars expects to announce additional corporate partners soon.

The Aetna Foundation announces the Healthier World Innovation Challenge, a $4.5 million competition designed to promote digital health innovation to improve chronic health outcomes in underserved communities. Six winners will receive up to $750,000 each over three years, and access to foundation and partner resources to implement their innovations. Entry information will be made available January 5.

Announcements and Implementations

Health First Medical Group (FL) selects PatientKeeper Charge Capture software for its 90 hospitalists who serve the group’s four hospitals. Implementation, expected to wrap up next month, will include integration with the group’s GE Centricity EHR.

Allergy & Asthma Affiliates (OH) selects PM and EHR solutions from Benchmark Systems.

Tandigm Health (PA) selects Lumeris as its population health technology vendor for its value-based care initiatives. Tandigm will initially roll out Lumeris solutions, including the Accountable Delivery System Platform, to 300 PCPs at 100 facilities.

Paladina Health (CO) selects the eClinicalWorks Care Coordination Medical Record for population health management. The primary care provider, a subsidiary of DaVita Healthcare Partners, already uses eCW’s EHR.

Allscripts launches Allscripts eAuth, a new tool that enables electronic prior authorization for Express Scripts patients. Allscripts eAuth will be integrated into all Allscripts EHR platforms in the coming months.

Social network Doximity announces that its user base has grown to include more than 50 percent of the US physician population. Lt. Dan breaks down the news here.

Research and Innovation

Utah-based Weber Human Services, Davis Behavioral Health, and Midtown Community Health Center participate in the Utah SmartCare project for low-income and vulnerable patients. Those enrolled in the project are given smartphones loaded with Ginger.io’s health-and-wellness monitoring app to maintain contact with physicians at the three facilities, prompting intervention if data presents the possibility of a behavioral health crisis.

A National Partnership for Women & Families study finds that patient online access to EHRs has nearly doubled from 2011 to 2014, and that consumers want even more robust functionality and features than are available today, including the:

• Ability to email providers (56 percent)
• Review treatment plans (56 percent)
• Review the notes of their doctors (58 percent)
• Review test results (75 percent)
• Schedule appointments (64 percent), and
• Submit medication refill requests (59 percent)

Government and Politics

HHS distributes $36.3 million in ACA funding to 1,113 health centers across the country in recognition of their significant quality improvements due to population health management programs and advanced EHR use.

CMS announces that, as of December 1, nearly 16,500 providers and 1,681 hospitals had attested for Stage 2 of Meaningful Use. Those figures nearly double the overall number of attestations for all of 2014. Physicians who began participation in the MU program before 2014 have until the end of February to attest.

HHS announce that 1.38 million health insurance plans have been sold through Healthcare.gov, a no doubt expected uptick as the clock winds down to the open enrollment deadline of December 15. It’s probably safe to say dental plans were not included this time around.

People

Arman Samani (Medhost) joins ADP AdvancedMD as CTO.

MedAssets promotes Mike Nolte to president and COO, and appoints him to its Board of Directors.

The Nashville Health Care Council and former U.S. Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, MD announce the 2015 class of the Nashville Health Care Council Fellows.

Other

Former ONC Deputy National Coordinator Jacob Reider, MD returns to D.C. as keynote presenter at Hixny Connects 2014. He served on the RHIO’s board between 2006 and 2007. A quick peek at his LinkedIn profile shows that he is now in the process of opening up something called Kuvop. Further sleuthing finds he/Kuvop has  a MySpace profile, which makes me wonder if he’s getting into the music business.

This article highlights the progress Vecna is making in the fight against Ebola with its EHR system and robot in Liberia. (Mr. H reported on the original deployment late last month). Co-founder Deborah Theobald is busy training workers to use the records system and robot, which made its debut a few days ago at an Ebola treatment center in Sierra Leone.

Zotec hosts an “Evening with President George W. Bush” during RSNA, giving clients and prospects the opportunity to hear tales from the West Wing straight from the horse’s mouth. I have to wonder how much that photo op cost the medical billing and PM company, and how it compares to how much HIMSS is plunking down for the junior Bush’s appearance in Chicago next year.

Glassdoor honors Kareo with an Employees’ Choice Award as part of its recognition of the Best Places to Work in the U.S. for 2015.

Contacts

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

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Readers Write: We Have a HIPAA Education Problem

We Have a HIPAA Education Problem
by Caleb Clarke

NueMD conducted a survey in October with Porter Research and The Daniel Brown Law Group on HIPAA compliance. We just released the results, and we feel we’ve identified a problem … an education problem.

Knowledge of Key Events and Policy Updates (or Lack Thereof)
To gain an understanding of general knowledge surrounding HIPAA, we asked respondents about their awareness of some recent key events and changes to policy:

• Only 32 percent of respondents were aware of OCR’s upcoming HIPAA audits.
• 64 percent were aware of the Omnibus updates that went into effect in 2013.
• 60 percent were aware that the Omnibus updates require providers to establish Business Associate Agreements with third-party vendors that access PHI.

These numbers speak to the lack of education around policy and regulation within our industry. With the second round of HIPAA audits set to start at any time, we hoped they would be a little higher.

A Communication Disconnect
When we asked about specific compliance measures within practices, we found evidence of a communication disconnect between management/owners and staff/providers. This shifted our focus to education taking place within practices.

One question that brought this to light was, “Has your business adopted a HIPAA compliance plan within the last year?” While the actual amount of people who said they have a plan is an issue (only 58 percent), the difference in responses was even more concerning – 68 percent of office managers said they have a plan, versus 43 percent of office staff.

When we asked if their practice has performed a HIPAA-required risk analysis, only 33 percent said “yes,” but again, different roles responded differently. Fourteen percent of owners and managers said they weren’t sure if they’ve conducted a risk analysis, versus 43 percent of office staff and non-owner providers.

A staff training program should alleviate these types of discrepancies. As managers, administrators, and officers institute policies and procedures, they need to convey this information to their entire staff. Unfortunately, only 62 percent of owners, managers, and administrators said their practices provides annual HIPAA training (and only 56 percent of office staff and non-owner providers reported having been trained within the last year).

Providers Have More to Worry About Than HIPAA
Providers only have so much time and money, and HIPAA’s not the only thing competing for their resources. With the transition to ICD-10 (delayed again, and maybe again?!), tight deadlines, rigid criteria to meet for Meaningful Use, and confusion surrounding the Affordable Care Act, it’s easy for HIPAA to take a backseat. However, those three hot- button issues are riddled by controversy, which doesn’t seem to be the case for HIPAA.

We will, without a doubt, encounter some sticky situations with HIPAA over the next few years – especially as new types of cases make their way to court, and data breaches become more common. If anything, though, that type of controversy should only reinforce the need to be compliant. Not many people will say that safeguarding protected health information is a bad thing. The challenge is implementing regulation in a way that allows providers to do their jobs.

Which brings us back to the crux of the issue – education. Providers need an easy way to learn how to be compliant while keeping all their other plates spinning.

So What’s The Solution?
It’s difficult to find great information on HIPAA compliance, but not impossible. To help bring some clarity to the situation, we compiled several HIPAA compliance resources along with our survey results. We searched the web to find some of the best articles and tools available, and created some others to help fill in the gaps. It’s a small way for us to help providers get on the right path. Our hope is that it can serve as a launch pad for reasonable, but robust, compliance programs.

Caleb Clarke is director of strategic development, sales, and marketing at NueMD.

Contacts

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

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News 12/9/14

Top News

ONC issues its Federal Health IT Strategic Plan 2015-2020, which will serve to set the stage for the Nationwide Interoperability Roadmap that will be released early next year. The 28-page plan, open for comments through February 6, describes the government’s strategies to achieve five goals:

1. Expand adoption of health IT.
2. Advance secure and interoperable health information.
3. Strengthen healthcare delivery.
4. Advance the health and wellbeing of individuals and communities.
5. Advance research, scientific knowledge, and innovation.

It’s a fairly concise and well thought-out document, listing expected outcomes for each goal and the federal agencies that are expected to play a part in achieving them. My only concern at this point would be the stability of ONC leadership over the next five years, and the likelihood that the big healthcare IT vendors will step in to create meaningful assistance rather than additional layers of half-baked interoperability. I’ll be interested to see how this gets whittled down to a tighter framework once the comment period concludes.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

The spate of telehealth-related press releases and traffic around the #mhealth14 hashtag means the 2014 mHealth Summit is in full swing. Having never attended, I have to rely on show-floor correspondents and tweet streams to fill me in on the digital health action. Mrs. Blackwell tells me that, “Everyone is in black here including me. We are in D.C. after all, where everything and everyone is conservative!” She added that she loved Dr. Jayne’s latest Curbside Consult, which picks apart a rather ridiculous Forbes article that suggests how female presenters should attire themselves at the event. I agree with Dr. Jayne’s colleague who said, “The only trend in healthcare that we should care about is the one that comes from having a true longitudinal and holistic and normalized view of a patient from birth to present. All other trends should be left at the hatters and haberdashers.” That being said, fashion can be fun, and can certainly help you stand out in a sea of black-clad colleagues.

It’s official – HIStalk readers have voted Atlanta as the “Healthcare IT Capital of the U.S.” Atlanta’s health IT network and civic pride turned out the vote with 45 percent of the 1,600 votes cast (including mine and Mr. H’s.) I came across this video from the Metro Atlanta Chamber explaining why Atlanta is THE place to be for health IT. I’m hoping to arrange a special visit with Atlanta’s health IT leaders to present them with some sort of HIStalk-style award, which I know they’ll want to proudly display at the Georgia pavilion at HIMSS next year.

Webinars

December 17 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. There Is A 90% Probability That Your Son Is Pregnant: Predicting the Future of Predictive Analytics in Healthcare. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP of strategy, Health Catalyst. Predictive analytics is more than simple risk stratification. Once you identify an individual’s risk, what are the odds that you can change their behavior and what will it cost to do so? This presentation, geared towards managers and executives, addresses scenarios in which predictive models may or not be effective given that 80 percent of outcomes are driven by socioeconomic factors rather than healthcare delivery.

HIStalk is offering 25-percent off webinars (promoted or produced) through the end of the year. Email Lorre for all the details. You can pretty much guarantee they’ll be a hit, as we put your webinar content before several executive-level members of our review committee to ensure your presentation is engaging and educational (rather than a blatant and typically boring sales pitch).

Announcements and Implementations

Johnson County Mental Health Center connects with Kansas Health Information Network’s HIE via Netsmart’s Care Connect solution.

HL7 launches the Argonaut Project to address the standards recommendations of the federal government’s JASON group, including HL7’s FHIR (fast healthcare interoperability resources). Working with HL7 will be athenahealth, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cerner, Epic, Intermountain, Mayo, Meditech, McKesson, Partners HealthCare, SMART from Boston Children’s, and The Advisory Board Company. HL7 says the group will create FHIR-based EHR data sharing API specification by the spring of 2015.

I asked Jitin Asnaani, athenahealth’s director of technology standards, to weigh in on the announcement given that he has been knee-deep in the company’s interoperability initiatives:

“In the past, standards have been thrust upon the industry by the government – especially through incentive programs such as Meaningful Use – and this project represents a distinctive instance where competitors have reached across the aisle to build and adopt the standards to enable health information exchange, and thus determine our own fate. The fact that ONC has lauded this effort is further testament to its alignment with national priorities for health information exchange. 

“The great benefits of this standard will accrue across the healthcare industry.  It can allow patients, providers, and others directly involved in care delivery to exchange crucial health data that enables more efficient and effective care coordination.  Yet it also simplifies engagement and amplifies the value created by other participants in the healthcare ecosystem, such as laboratories, pharmacies, post-acute settings, and the like.  Ultimately, FHIR will be a critical building block of our learning health system. Athenahealth applauds the small group of providers and vendors who have invested in what will ultimately be a public good available to the healthcare community at large. We are excited to accelerate work that helps healthcare work as it should.”

The big news here, as reported late last week by Mr. H, is that: (a) the second JASON report called for a big vendor to propose an open API standard instead of waiting around for the government to do it; (b) FHIR and APIs are a lot better than today’s document-based interoperability standards and probably better than the customized jungle that the HL7 standard has become; and (c) getting Epic, Cerner, Meditech, and McKesson together at the same table covers nearly all of the hospital EHR market and Epic, particularly, is a key member given its non-participation in CommonWell (and Epic and Cerner already have customers using APIs).

While Asnaani seems confident the Argonaut project will provide a way forward for interoperability efforts (and it just might given that it’s goals coincide with those of the ONC as laid out in its new strategic plan) I can’t help but wonder if the industry isn’t just creating one more level of competitive and still somewhat siloed bureaucracy for providers to wade through. (As a Forbes editorial points out, “The technology has always been there. It’s the will that’s missing.”)

Micky Tripathi, president and CEO of the Massachusetts eHealth Collaborative, chair of the ONC HIT Policy Committee’s Interoperability Workgroup, and co-chair of its JASON Report Task Force, was kind enough to weigh in with this clarification: “The project is not creating an organization,” he explains. “It’s simply a mechanism to pool funding and project management and technical know-how to accelerate and focus some specific standards development work to make it available to the market (and ONC) faster than it otherwise would be available.  And then that’s it – once those specs and implementation guides are delivered, the project is complete.”

The Louisiana Health Information Technology Resource Center achieves its target for Meaningful Use attestation, helping over 1,000 providers participate in the program.

Sequenta launches the ClonoSIGHT Secure Portal to better integrate its ClonoSIGHT process (an ultra-sensitive, next-generation sequencing-based technology for minimal residual disease detection and quantification) into the care of patients with lymphoid cancers.

Walgreens offers consumers in California and Michigan access to MDLive physicians through its Walgreens mobile app. The new tool, which will be rolled out to additional states in the coming months, builds on the app’s Pharmacy Chat feature launched last year. (Check out Lt. Dan’s more thorough recap of the news here.)

Qualcomm Life integrates chronic disease management solutions from vitaphone e-health into its HealthyCircles Care Coordination and 2net Device Connectivity Platforms to capture biometric data from medical devices and coordinate team-based care.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Welch Allyn acquires HealthInterlink, a developer of remote patient monitoring software. HealthInterlink will continue to develop, source, and sell the solution during the transition. Once the acquisition is complete, Welch Allyn plans to use its newly acquired technology to help primary care physicians and cardiologists manage hypertensive patients.

Government and Politics

ONC announces a 10-part webinar series on health IT and patient safety. The first presentation – “The Role for the EHR in Patient Safety: What does the Evidence Tell Us?” – will kick the series off on Thursday, December 18 at 1pm.

ONC also releases a data brief on the motivations behind physician adoption of EHRs between 2010 and 2013, using data from the 2013 National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey Physician Workflow Survey. Not surprisingly, solo practice physicians had the highest percentage of providers who were uncertain on adoption or who never planned to adopt, leading ONC to conclude that “narrowing the EHR adoption gap overall will involve continuing to focus efforts on these physicians.” None of the findings are particularly surprising, especially those regarding the importance of financial incentives pre- and post-HITECH Act. While the ONC says it will use the findings to better understand the influence of existing policies on adoption, you have to wonder if it will also use the data to determine if and how to alter the MU program  in light of low Stage 2 attestation numbers.

People

Steven Russell (Quantros) joins Leidos Health as senior vice president for sales and strategic accounts.

Other

BioSensive Technologies looks to raise $30,000 through Kickstarter to develop its Ear-O-Smart earring, which monitors heart rate, caloric intake, and activity level. It expects to start shipping product in June 2015, provided it raises enough cash. I can’t help but paraphrase some of its marketing shtick: Would you want to wear a bulky wrist monitor to a party or on a date (or to the mHealth Summit)? This Digital Diva thinks not.

Officials in Dallas reveal that the city spent $155,000 to respond to the health crises of Ebola patients Thomas Eric Duncan, Amber Vinson, and Nina Pham. Nearly $27,000 (the majority of which will be offset by donations and grants) went to care for Pham’s dog, which included bedding, toys, and boarding at a decommissioned naval air base while Pham was treated at the National Institutes of Health (MD).

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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5 Questions with Nancy Adams, Executive Director, Monroe County Medical Society

Nancy Adams is Executive Director of the Monroe County Medical Society and New York Chapter 1 of the American Academy of Pediatrics. She was honored last month with the AMA’s Medical Executive Lifetime Achievement Award for her more than 15 years of dedication to improving the lives of physicians.

How have you seen technology transform healthcare delivery in the physician practice setting over the last 10 to 15 years? Do you think we’re on the right track as far as interoperability is concerned, or woefully behind where we need to be?
Technology has significantly changed the practice of medicine. Through the use of Regional Health Information Organizations, the availability of lab tests and imaging results has improved care, created efficiencies and reduced duplication of services. EHRs have proved to be more challenging.  Interoperability? How about achieving operability first? Physicians are reporting significant challenges in terms of EHR usability. Addressing the issue of operability will be a focus for MCMS in 2015.

You created a $3.1 million grant-funded EHR service bureau to support local medical practices with the purchase and implementation of HIT, and a New York State e-Collaborative Regional Extension Center grant to assist clinicians with requirements for participating in Meaningful Use. Why do physicians still need services such as these, and why did you personally feel the need to step up and create them?
Through a grant provided to our local RHIO by NYS and the Greater Rochester Health Foundation, MCMS was able to assist practices with EHR adoption. The grant provided financial support for the purchase of the EHR system, and MCMS provided technical support to help the practices achieve successful adoption of the EHR. I personally felt this service was sorely needed as most practices do not have the technical expertise to make an informed decision about purchase, nor do they have the change management expertise to move from paper records to EHR.

How have these projects been received by the colleagues you are trying to serve? What are the goals for each initiative?
The projects have been well-received, especially when we were handing out checks! Physicians truly appreciated the financial and technical support. Goals for the EHR project were to successfully implement EHR systems into 65 practices. The Regional Extension Center work is focused on assisting the physicians with achieving MU requirements.

What other HIT projects are you currently involved with?
As I mentioned before, MCMS will focus on usability of EHRs in 2015. Very little is being done to address this issue. In addition, we continue to work on policies and principles related to sharing health information electronically. I have a personal interest in protecting a minor’s right to confidentiality in the electronic world, and am privileged to work with our local RHIO on this issue.

What are your thoughts on recent trade group calls to overhaul MU to refocus it solely on interoperability? If you had your way, how would you reinvigorate this program for the benefit of providers and patients?
We are hearing loud and clear from our physicians that Meaningful Use lacks meaning. I couldn’t agree more that the program needs an overhaul. If I had my way, physicians and other actual users would have significant input into the program.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice  updates.
Contact us online.
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News 12/4/14

Top News

International Rescue Committee plans to roll out a new EHR at its Ebola treatment unit opening the week of December 15 in Monrovia, Liberia. The tool, developed by IRC along with healthcare IT vendor Vecna, will be accessed via waterproof Sony tablets that can be taken into high-risk zones. Wilson Wang, MD senior clinical advisor for IRC’s Ebola response team, is confident the new EHR – the first to be used by providers working in the midst of the West African outbreak – will enable better physician support, especially in light of the fact that there is not yet a single source of information for the most up-to-date data on what’s working in the current outbreak. “We think this has the potential to really change not only how quality and safety is addressed in an Ebola situation, but it can also be adapted to any health care situation,” Wilson adds.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

The folks behind National Ugly Christmas Sweater Day (December 12 this year) contacted me to let me know they have partnered with Save the Children for the Make the World Better with a Sweater campaign. The idea is to spread holiday cheer all in the name of a good cause. Money raised will go towards Save the Children’s mission of “giving children in the United States and around the world a healthy start, the opportunity to learn, and protection from harm.” Seems like a good excuse to get a few co-workers together and have some fun on a Friday. Send me pictures of you in your ugliest Christmas sweater, and I’ll make a donation on behalf of HIStalk Practice readers.

HIStalk is offering 25-percent off webinars (promoted or produced) through the end of the year. Email Lorre for all the details. You can pretty much guarantee they’ll be a hit, as we put your webinar content before several executive-level members of our review committee to ensure your presentation is engaging and educational (rather than a blatant sales pitch).

Webinars

December 17 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. There Is A 90% Probability That Your Son Is Pregnant: Predicting the Future of Predictive Analytics in Healthcare. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP of strategy, Health Catalyst. Predictive analytics is more than simple risk stratification. Once you identify an individual’s risk, what are the odds that you can change their behavior and what will it cost to do so? This presentation, geared towards managers and executives, addresses scenarios in which predictive models may or not be effective given that 80 percent of outcomes are driven by socioeconomic factors rather than healthcare delivery.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

E-commerce services and on-demand software vendor Ebix acquires Oakstone Publishing, which develops continuing education and certification materials for physicians, dentists, and allied healthcare professionals. Ebix will integrate Oakstone into its A.D.A.M. Health Information Exchange Division.

Announcements and Implementations

CareSync launches its Chronic Care Management tool to better connect providers, patients, families, and caregivers. The new tool offers care plan development, appointment scheduling, medical records collection, and discrete data entry to create meaningful reports.

Ingenious Med joins athenahealth’s More Disruption Please program. (I am kicking myself for picking up just one pair of shades at Ingenious Med’s booth at the Health IT Leadership Summit a few weeks ago. The color screams “Digital Diva,” don’t you think?)

Seven health plans in Colorado – all part of the CMS Comprehensive Primary Care Initiative – are working to develop an online data-sharing tool that will offer physicians a single source for claims data from each health plan. Rise Health will partner with the state’s Center for Improving Value in Health Care to build the tool, which will be available in early 2015.

Oscar Insurance Corp. selects NaviNet’s Clinical Document Exchange and Open payer-provider collaboration platform to work more closely with its physician network in New York and New Jersey, and to support patient-centered clinical workflows and value-based reimbursement models. (You can read Lt. Dan’s summary of Oscar’s evolution here.)

EHR vendor CureMD chooses DrFirst’s EPCS Gold to add e-prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS) to its system. DrFirst reports that EPCS volumes jumped by 200 percent in the most recent three-month period, likely boosted by New York’s I-STOP mandatory e-prescribing requirement for all drugs beginning March 27, 2015.

Government and Politics

Several medical associations, including the National Physicians’ Council for Healthcare Policy, push for Congress to further delay ICD-10, which is set to be implemented by October 1, 2015. Politico reports that a second delay could be attached to a continuing resolution on the $157 billion labor, education, and HHS funding bill, which expires December 11, or to a repeal of the sustainable growth rate, which physicians also are pressing for. Draft language on the continuing resolution is expected next week.

An ONC blog post by Karen DeSalvo, MD called “Health Data Outside the Doctor’s Officer” references a new JASON report titled “Data for Individual Health.” The report addresses the steps needed to move to “a system focused on health of individuals rather than care of individuals” in creating a learning health system. Some of its recommendations:

• HHS: take action on previously created reports and measure progress.
• HHS: adopt interoperability standards and incentives.
• HHS: support open API standards and pay providers more (the report suggests a 0.25 percent bonus in CMS’s Hospital Value-Based Purchasing Program) for using “ecosystem-friendly EHRs” that follow those standards.
• HHS: encourage non-profits (such as disease-specific advocacy groups) to mark consumer apps with their stamp of approval to increase their adoption.
• Joint Commission and professional schools: add informatics training requirements.
• FDA: loosen control of product services that could be construed as practicing medicine, for example, allowing apps to report their information to both provider and consumer as a risk mitigation strategy.

Research and Innovation 

A HIPAA compliance survey of nearly 1,200 physician practices and billing companies finds that:

• 66 percent of respondents were unaware of HIPAA audits.
• 35 percent said their business has conducted a HIPAA-required risk analysis.
• 34 percent of owners, managers, and administrators were "very confident" that their electronic devices that contain PHI were HIPAA compliant.
• 24 percent of owners, managers, and administrators have evaluated all of their BAAs.
• 56 percent of office staff and (non-owner) care providers have received HIPAA training in the last year.

Coincidentally, a local business paper highlights what many of those survey takers already know: Physician practices aren’t doing enough to protect patient information. Small practices need to “understand that just because they are small doesn’t mean they aren’t targets; in fact, they may just be easier targets.”

Canada’s National Physician’s Survey finds that 75 percent of MDs use EHRs to enter or retrieve clinical patient notes on a laptop or desktop. That number has tripled since the survey was given in 2007 by the College of Family Physicians of Canada, Canadian Medical Association, and Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada. The biggest physician challenges to accessing information include reporting technical glitches, compatibility issues with other systems, and firewall or security issues. The survey’s upbeat findings contrast sharply with news out of Quebec that its $1.4 billion EHR project is an abysmal failure.

In case you were wondering, a Bankrate survey reveals that nearly two-thirds of respondents find selecting a new health insurance plan to be at least as bad as having a cavity filled, and over 70 percent say the process compares to the fun of doing their own taxes or sitting in the middle seat on an airplane. In other amusing, but barely relevant news, former CMS Administrator Kathleen Sebelius compares Healthcare.gov’s first open enrollment to “buying an airline ticket using your fax machine.”

People

Laurens Albada (Greenway Health) joins Vista Equity Partners (Greenway’s owner) as managing director of financial services.

Anthelio Healthcare Solutions names Gary Trickett (Allscripts) SVP of IT services.

Glen Loomis, MD (St. Elizabeth Physicians) receives the Citizen Doctor of the Year Award from the Kentucky Academy of Family Physicians.

Kim Snare (Greenway Health) joins DocsInk as vice president of sales.

Navid Asgari is promoted to vice president of service and support for CompuGroup Medical’s Ambulatory Information Services division.

Medecision expands its leadership team with the appointment of Jennifer Ponski (White Goose Innovations) to chief administrative officer; Augusta Kairys (Highmark) to senior vice president, market owner, health plans; Greg Leder (Elsevier) to senior vice president, sales and account management, health delivery solutions; and Mary Sirois (Divurgent) to senior vice president, consulting and professional services.

Other

News of Allied Physicians Group (NY) acquiring three physician practices prompts one merging MD to comment that, "I have been in solo practice now for 25 years. Trying to keep pace with the technical requirements necessary to administrate a medical practice, as well as the increasing costs, had pushed my resources to the brink. Joining Allied will now liberate me from the onerous responsibilities of administration, and allow me to focus on patient care. This should make my practice financially stronger, and allow me to do what I wanted to do for years: hire additional pediatricians to help me shoulder the load."

Sony Pictures Entertainment suffers a hack resulting in the theft of over 25 gigabytes of data on tens of thousands of company employees, including Social Security numbers, salary information, and health savings account data on over 700 staffers. The news comes nearly a week after another cyberattack took down the company’s corporate email system, prompting the FBI to designate it the “first major destructive cyber attack waged against a company on U.S. soil.” Fingers have been pointed at hackers in North Korea, whose government is not happy with SPE’s latest film, “The Interview.” North Korean officials have denounced it as “undisguised sponsoring of terrorism, as well as an act of war.” Seems like a marketing gimmick to me.

Sponsor Updates

• PerfectServe posts a blog entry titled “Evolving Healthcare: Six New Realities for the C-Suite.”
• NextGen connects its Share platform with Merge Healthcare’s iConnect Network.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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