News 11/18/14

Top News

Healthcare.gov’s second open enrollment gets off to a fairly successful start, with half a million users logging on and 100,000 filling out applications. HHS reported that over 23,000 people submitted applications in the first eight hours. (It wasn’t wine and roses for everybody, of course, as these tweets show.) State-run health insurance exchanges in Washington and Colorado, however, experienced their fair share of technical glitches. Washington’s was taken offline for several hours to fix incorrectly calculated tax credits, while users in Colorado saw frequent error messages and the absence of certain plans. Log-in problems plagued exchanges in Louisiana.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

With the holidays right around the corner, it seems appropriate to offer readers the gift of a sponsorship discount. We rarely (never might be more accurate) mention HIStalk Practice sponsorship opportunities, instead letting our sponsors spread the word about the great ROI they receive. (As someone who has been on the sponsor side of the HIStalk family, I can honestly say the ROI is well worth the price.) Email Lorre for all the details, including sponsorship benefits and discount pricing, plus webinar opportunities.

Webinars

November 18 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. Cerner Takeover of Siemens, Are You Ready? Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Frank L. Poggio, president and CEO, The Kelzon Group; Vince Ciotti, principal, HIS Professionals. The Cerner acquisition of Siemens impacts 1,000 hospitals that could be forced into a “take it or leave it” situation based on lessons learned from similar takeovers. This webinar will review the possible fate of each Siemens HIS product, the impact of the acquisition on ongoing R&D, available market alternatives, and steps Siemens clients should take to prepare.

November 19 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. Improving Trial Accrual by Engaging the Digital Healthcare Consumer. Sponsored by DocuSign. Presenters: B. J. Rimel, MD, gynecologic oncologist, Cedars-Sinai Medial Center; Jennifer Royer, product marketing, DocuSign. The Women’s Cancer Program increased trial accrual five-fold by implementing an online registry that links participants to research studies, digitizing and simplifying a cumbersome, paper-based process. This webinar will describe the use of e-consents and social marketing to engage a broader population and advance research while saving time and reducing costs.

Recent webinar videos on YouTube:

Keeping it Clean: How Data Profiling Leads to Trusted Data

3 Ways to Improve Care Transitions Using an HIE Encounter Notification Service

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

MinuteClinic opens its first facilities inside of CVS/pharmacies in Wisconsin, while Target and Kaiser Permanente team up to open four Target clinics in California over the next several weeks. The California clinics will be Target’s first to offer expanded primary care including pediatric and adolescent care, women’s health, family planning, and management of chronic conditions. The partnership marks a departure for Target in that Kaiser will be responsible for staffing clinic NPs and RNs. KP physicians will be available via telemedicine. Target has 79 clinics in seven states, while MinuteClinic has 939 locations in 31 states, plus Washington, D.C.

This article highlights what a good time it is to be in the PM software business. PM companies raised $126 million in eight funding rounds in the first three quarters of 2014, already putting this year far ahead of last year’s $87 million raised over all four fiscal quarters. Companies that have raised considerable sums thus far include Data Driven Delivery Systems, 1Life Healthcare, Health Gorilla, SharePractice, and TelePharm.

Fruit Street Health CEO Laurence Girard offers free shares in the company to former investors in Prevently Inc., a failed telemedicine company that ousted Girard from his CEO position there earlier this year. The free shares are available to each Prevently investor who made their investment prior to its closing and Girard’s termination. Girard’s good-natured gesture contrasts starkly with one Prevently investor’s allegations that “my family has continually received attempts at paying us off for our silence about the Prevently scam. Laurence Girard has attempted to give me shares in Fruit Street and Welliko in return for a release of liability. On the principal it would be reprehensible for anyone to accept such an offer because it supports a scam artist and disallows people like myself from using our legal rights to seek damages against Laurence Girard, Welliko, Fruit Street, and whatever other companies he may cook up.”

Announcements and Implementations

Ob Hospitalist Group (SC) selects charge capture and PQRS software from PatientKeeper. OBHG will deploy the new technology on tablets, and expects to complete roll out to 300 physicians in the first quarter of 2015.

Allscripts recognizes Keona Health’s patient triage technology as its November App of the Month. Keona Health patient workflow software integrates with Allscripts Professional and TouchWorks EHRs.

New York-based HIEs Southern Tier Healthlink and Taconic Health Information Network and Community plan to merge into a single Qualified Entity called HealthlinkNY. The new organization will span 11 counties, and be governed by a combined 20-person board from the leadership team and staff of STHL and THINC.

In related news, STHL plans to implement Infor’s Cloverleaf HIE infrastructure and business intelligence tool in preparation for the merger with THINC.

Seacoast Orthopedics & Sports Medicine, which uses Greenway’s (formerly Vitera’s) Intergy EHR and PM technology, achieves Meaningful Use Stage 2, putting them among only 2 percent of EPs nationwide to demonstrate MUS2.

Behavioral health facility KidsTLC (KS) selects Essentia technology from Lavender & Wyatt Systems. The package includes EHR, revenue cycle, claims management, and analytics software.

Medical Web Experts partners with Bizmatics to offer its Bridge Patient Portal customers access to the Bizmatics PrognoCIS EHR and PM solution. The news follows BPP’s announcement in September of a partnership with AccelOne, which will provide security audit services for BPP technology.

Government and Politics

This flowchart depicts ONC’s Federal Advisory Committee process for developing recommendations – one that seems in direct correlation with the state of interoperability (idealistic in its supposed simplicity yet actually overly complicated by government regulation and private-sector politics).

CMS kicks off its first ICD-10 testing week, during which providers will be able to submit ICD-10 claims, and CMS will respond with an acknowledgement or a rejection.  Additional testing weeks will be held in March and June 2015.

Research and Innovation

Hot on the heels of the IoM’s call for EHRs to capture additional social and behavioral data as part of MUS3 comes the launch of the SocioNeeds Index from Healthy Communities Institute. The visualization tool enables physicians to identify those living in the highest risk zip codes that can benefit most from supportive health and social programs.

The local business paper profiles Twine Health, a Boston-based startup developing an app that offers users suffering from hypertension motivational, personalized health plans in the form of electronic checklists. Patients check off health goals as they go, while doctors get frequent updates on their progress. Twine has partnered with six clinics to enroll 159 patients in beta testing, and is offering physician practices a limited-time free trial so they can track whether the medical conditions of their patients improve with use of the app. The concept seems intriguing, but it makes me wonder how physicians will handle all that data. Dr. Jayne put it in perspective in her recent EPtalk post: “My EHR vendor is starting to integrate personal tracker data and what we’re seeing come in is far more than we would ever want to see.”

A separate business paper spotlights the journey Medytex founder Saurabh Tyagi has been on since pivoting the startup from a restaurant review app to one that focuses on patient surveys. Tyagi, who has no prior healthcare experience, plans to grow the platform as part of the North Dakota State University Technology Incubator while his team looks for seed funding.

Researchers find that programming EHRs to make generic drugs the default choice when physicians write prescriptions may offer one way to reduce unnecessary healthcare spending. Their study looked at four ambulatory clinics and 21,377 prescriptions, and found that physicians significantly increased their prescription of generic drugs when given the option via EHR prompt.

People

Leslie Kelly Hall (Healthwise) joins Healtheway’s Carequality Steering Committee, and  is reappointed to the ONC’s Health Information Technology Standards Committee.

Rosemarie Henson (HHS) will join the American Cancer Society as senior vice president for prevention and early detection.

Rite Aid gives its RediClinic subsidiary CEO Web Golinkin the additional duties of Health Dialog CEO, and promotes Karen Staniforth to COO of Health Dialog, a Rite Aid subsidiary that provides population health management solutions.

Cal INDEX appoints Greg LeClaire (Aetna) CFO, John Lee (Oracle) CTO, Andrea Leeb, RN (L.A. Health Care Plan) chief privacy officer, and Doug Hart (ConvergeHealth) vice president of marketing and corporate communications.

Other

Researchers at UConn Health’s Center for Quantitative Medicine work to develop a secure messaging system that will enable physicians, dentists, NPs, and certified midwives to exchange encrypted patient information online, standardizing EHRs across the state. “What we’re focusing on is health IT solutions that are based on standards that increase interoperability,” Assistant Professor Minakshi Tikoo says. “We have got to get this information moving. We cannot put it in packages and just put it in a box and never open the box.”

The NFL, Under Armour, and GE select a team of engineers and physicians from Emory University and Georgia Tech as winners of the Head Health Challenge II, a competition for innovations intended to speed diagnosis of and improve treatment for concussions. The team’s iDETECT (integrated Display Enhanced TEsting for Cognitive Impairment and mTBI) system designed to improve neurologic assessment following mild traumatic brain injury won them a $500,000 prize, plus the chance for an additional $1 million in funding. How ironic (or maybe just plain sad) that the healthcare community is working to mitigate the neurological effects of rough play while the NFL faces scrutiny from the DEA for questionable prescription drug practices.

And I thought my recent GoGo in-flight WiFi bill of $14.95 was steep: Singapore Airlines passenger Jeremy Gutsche is hit with an in-flight Internet bill for $1,171.46. The airline apparently charges passengers an initial $28.99 connection fee, and then outrageously raises the price based on usage. Gutsche explains that, “I wish I could blame an addiction to Netflix or some intellectual documentary that made me $1,200 smarter. However, the Singapore Airlines Internet was painfully slow, so videos would be impossible and that means I didn’t get any smarter … except about how to charge a lot of money for stuff. I did learn that.” The rate hike reminds me of the similarly outrageous rates convention centers charge exhibitors for the privilege of connecting to sometimes non-existent show-floor WiFi.

Radiologist Mark Howshar, MD laments the demise of private practices, sharing his own tale of healthcare IT-induced woe: “Today, I spend twice as much time per patient filling out paperwork compared to 2010. It would be one thing if that time was spent with the patient, but instead it’s spent at the computer. Mandatory and redundant file keeping has become so time-consuming that our practice had to hire a full-time chief compliance officer. As any practice owner will tell you, CCOs don’t come cheap.”

Get Covered Illinois injects a healthy dose of humor into its Luck Health Plan marketing campaign, featuring the tagline, “You’ll be okay. Probably.”

Sponsor Updates

• Deloitte includes Kareo on its “2014 Technology Fast 500” list.
• Relay Health Clinical Connectivity becomes certified to operate as a Health Data Intermediary in Minnesota.

Contacts

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

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5 Questions with Sapna Mukherjee, MD Premium Care Pediatrics

Sapna Mukherjee, MD is the founder of Chicago-based concierge practice Premium Care Pediatrics. As PCP’s sole staff member, Mukherjee sees up to two patients a day via house call. Though her practice is too small to qualify for the Meaningful Use program, she has implemented an EHR. She is also on staff at several area hospitals.

How are the technology needs of a concierge practice different from a more traditional, solo physician practice?
The needs of an office-based practice and concierge practice are the same. The difference is that I make house calls, so I need to be able to take my supplies with me. I look for the most compact pieces of equipment and also choose supplies that don’t have to be refrigerated, if possible. I have capability to test for Influenza, RSV bronchiolitis, and strep infection with a Veritor unit from BD. I use the CardioCheck machine for cholesterol and glucose monitoring. I can also measure blood oxygen levels and heart rate with a unit from Quest.

Also, my Dr. Chrono EHR can be used on an iPad or a laptop. Since I am making house calls, I need to have all of my records available to me at all times since I don’t know who I may be seeing later in the day.  These reasons justify the expense of an EHR for me.

What type of technology makes your life the easiest? What kind do your patients gravitate most towards?
The availability of immediate test results (flu, strep, mono, bronchiolitis) for infection helps with diagnosis, management, and medical decision making. Similarly, being able to test for and immediately know the results for anemia, lead exposure, high cholesterol, and glucose during the visit makes preventative health maintenance easier. Families really appreciate that comprehensive care and guidance is provided at the time of the visit and that a plan of action until the next visit can be created, discussed, and finalized.

Additionally, families really appreciate the ability to text, send photos or communicate via Skype or Facetime. These forms of advanced communication may help me provide an immediate assessment or help them avoid a visit to the emergency department. Overall, they help me provide better care for my patients.

How do you envision technology helping you to grow your practice – either via the addition of staff, or your ability to take on new patients?
As discussed above, advances in the various forms of communication are changing the way we care for patients. Many times, a video chat can help to assess the severity of an illness or help make a decision to immediately begin intervention. This saves the family time and worry, and allows me to schedule my day more efficiently and, as a result, provide care for more families.

How have your colleagues reacted to your decision to move to the concierge model? Is this a growing trend?
My colleagues have all been very supportive. Many of them are parents and definitely see the advantages that concierge medicine, especially a house call-only practice model has to offer! Concierge medicine is certainly a growing trend as more and more families are seeking both the amenities and level of service that concierge medicine is able to provide.

What are your thoughts on the current state of interoperability?
I e-prescribe, order, and view lab and imaging results via the EHR. There are other aspects of interoperability that are advancing, such as being able to order labs at outside labs right from my computer and having results accessible online. E-prescribing is another area that is really simplifying patient management.  The pharmacy’s information helps to create an additional layer of checks and balances in terms of allergic reactions or medication history.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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News 11/13/14

Top News

Obama administration officials including HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell and representatives from the CDC attempt to persuade lawmakers to green light a $6.2 billion emergency funding request to fight Ebola in West Africa and to prevent further spread in the U.S. Domestic funding would go towards continuing training given to 250,000 nurses and other U.S. health workers on how to safely handle any cases, designating hospitals in every state capable of handling Ebola or other serious infectious diseases, and creating a national stockpile of protective equipment for health workers. Not surprisingly, “Ebola Czar” Ron Klain didn’t put in a guest appearance during the proceedings. (Is it just me, or has the media frenzy around Ebola spreading in the U.S. subsided now that the elections are over?)  

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

In her latest Curbside Consult, Dr. Jayne points out the pain many private-practice physicians are likely feeling as they contemplate making the inevitable switch to ICD-10. Her thoughts on the differing set of challenges faced by EPs and independents over the next 11 months makes me want to hear straight from the horse’s mouth. Email me if you are a physician working through the transition and would like to share your story, warts and all. It might turn out to be the sort of topic that could make for a regular series.

Listening: The Lord of the Rings film score, courtesy of Pandora, which has also reminded me how much I like scores from Game of Thrones, Harry Potter, and Sherlock (the Benedict Cumberbatch/Martin Freeman version). My all-time favorite soundtracks include Amélie, The Motorcycle Diaries, and Mama Mia.

Webinars

November 18 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. Cerner Takeover of Siemens, Are You Ready? Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Frank L. Poggio, president and CEO, The Kelzon Group; Vince Ciotti, principal, HIS Professionals. The Cerner acquisition of Siemens impacts 1,000 hospitals that could be forced into a “take it or leave it” situation based on lessons learned from similar takeovers. This webinar will review the possible fate of each Siemens HIS product, the impact of the acquisition on ongoing R&D, available market alternatives, and steps Siemens clients should take to prepare.

November 19 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. Improving Trial Accrual by Engaging the Digital Healthcare Consumer. Sponsored by DocuSign. Presenters: B. J. Rimel, MD, gynecologic oncologist, Cedars-Sinai Medial Center; Jennifer Royer, product marketing, DocuSign. The Women’s Cancer Program increased trial accrual five-fold by implementing an online registry that links participants to research studies, digitizing and simplifying a cumbersome, paper-based process. This webinar will describe the use of e-consents and social marketing to engage a broader population and advance research while saving time and reducing costs.

Announcements and Implementations

Presbyterian Medical Services (NM) selects the Lightbeam Health Solutions analytics platform to help it unify claims and clinical data across its 45 FQHCs. PMS opened a new, 30,000 square-foot health center in San Juan County last week.

Billings Clinic (MT) implements 175 PatientSecure vein scanners to confirm patient identity at check in. The scanners integrate with the Cerner EHR already in use at the clinic, which plans to incorporate the scanners into self check-in kiosks in the near future.

South Carolina’s Health Information Exchange (SCHIEx) and the Georgia Health Information Network (GaHIN) launch one of the first state-to-state HIE connections in the nation. It’s refreshing to read about organizations actually making progress with interoperability.

Allscripts adds secure patient payments capability from TrustCommerce to its FollowMyHealth patient engagement platform.

Appointment reminder technology vendor Talksoft introduces the ability for hospitals and practices to develop brand-specific iPhone and Android apps that use its technology.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Xerox invests an undisclosed amount in telemedicine kiosk company HealthSpot as part of a five-year plan that also calls for the company to become HealthSpot’s exclusive cloud computing and IT services vendor. Xerox also plans to install the kiosks in healthcare customer locations such as retail pharmacies, large employers, nursing homes, and EDs. HealthSpot has been in the news for securing a deal with Rite-Aid, its first with a national pharmacy chain.

The local business paper highlights Oregon-based Providence Ventures, the $150 million investment fund Providence Health & Services launched in September. The fund is targeting early-to-mid-stage companies in six areas: online primary care access; care coordination and patient engagement; chronic disease management; clinician experience; data analytics; and consumer health and wellness services. It has four potential, though as-yet unnamed, investments already in the final stages of due diligence.

Telehealth provider MDLIVE acquires Breakthrough Behavioral, which offers online behavioral health counseling. Former Apple CEO John Sculley is mentioned an being investor of the $49 per visit MDLIVE.

Specialty EHR vendor Modernizing Medicine secures $15 million of a planned $20 million funding round.

Government and Politics

DoL awards Capital Workforce Partners a $6.7 million Ready to Work Partnership grant to help retrain healthcare IT technicians and unemployed RNs and LPNs in Connecticut. The grant, which should help about 300 people, is part of a larger $170 million package awarded to 23 workforce groups last month.

Healthcare.gov CEO Kevin Counihan – on the job for just over three months – minces no words when it comes to acknowledging the potential for disaster when open enrollment begins this Saturday: “The system is mind-numbingly complicated. Do I think it’s perfect? No. Do I think it ever will be perfect? No. But I think it’s easier and simpler than last year. It’s going to get better every year.”

Research and Innovation

Results from an Academy of Integrative Health & Medicine telemedicine survey find that 67 percent of surveyed providers are either using telemedicine to provide services now, or planning to in the next few years, and just 19 percent have a reimbursement mechanism in place. Fifty-six percent noted that telemedicine technology is ahead of current state medical board guidelines, though the use of “ahead” is somewhat ambiguous. The fact that nearly 600 providers responded to the survey makes me pay a bit more attention to the results, especially when compared with a separate telemedicine survey Mr. H recently skewered for only having 57 respondents.

The local business paper profiles HealthCareLove and its Tiptop Health automated e-mail messaging platform, which helps private-practice doctors follow up with patients. Company co-founder Cat Perez and CEO Victor Oliveros made names for themselves last year after winning the Dreamforce  million-dollar hackathon for creating a more user-friendly version of Healthcare.gov, which they aptly titled Healthcare.Love. The company is now part of the Blue Startups accelerator program in Hawaii.  

Researchers find that healthcare IT can be used to conduct patient outreach on health insurance. They suggest that providers use HIE to exchange coverage information between themselves and payers, and that registries could be used to email or text patients about re-enrollment. The possibilities are fairly endless, but a stagnant state of interoperability (barring Georgia and South Carolina, of course) makes me think the concept will never see the light of day.

People

Mark Hanna (Medicity) joins Clinigence as vice president.

Carl Smith (Best Doctors) joins CompuGroup Medical US as GM of the laboratory division.

Digby Morrow (Oregon Health Authority) joins CSG Government Solutions as senior consultant.

Other

Aledade CEO and former ONC head Farzad Mostashari, MD heads to Toronto on Friday to speak at a TELUS Health breakfast event that will focus on the benefits of EHR adoption in light of Canada’s low 56-percent adoption rate. Coincidentally, Canada is observing its first Digital Health Week this week, though the breakfast does not appear to be officially affiliated with it. I may listen in via the #HealthTalks hashtag and report back.

The summary graphic from KLAS’s just-released EHR interoperability review shows Epic and athenahealth leading the pack in contributing to the success of their customers.

Shift Labs develops a prototype video game that could be used to train healthcare workers treating Ebola patients in West Africa. The game is the result of a request from the IMAI-IMCI Alliance, which creates training programs for WHO, and a Halloween weekend hackathon that gathered 40 video game developers, digital designers, and clinicians at Seattle’s Living Computer Museum. The prototype helps workers learn how to navigate their way through an Ebola ward, and includes such scenarios as whether or not to sit on a bed, avoiding touching hands to face (an alarm will sound if you do), and a mist-like effect that mimics the sweat build-up in a PPE face mask.

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.

News 11/11/14

Top News

Healthcare.gov goes live in 37 states for “window shopping” nearly a week before it’s officially scheduled to launch for open enrollment. HHS Principal Deputy Administrator Andy Slavitt said the browsing “functionality has been ready for a while … (but) obviously we’ve been continuing to test it.” Critics have already weighed in – positively, thus far, noting that the site is “night and day” compared to last year due to improved responsiveness and ease of use on mobile devices. (On a side note, Healthcare.com – a health insurance policy comparison website that’s been around since 2006 – is raising $7.5 million to expand its services.)

Webinars

November 12 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. Three Ways to Improve Care Transitions Using an HIE Encounter Notification Service. Sponsored by Audacious Inquiry. Presenters: Steven Kravet, MD, MBA, FACP, president, Johns Hopkins Community Physicians; Jennifer Bailey, senior director of quality and transformation, Johns Hopkins Community Physicians; Robert Horst, principal, Audacious Inquiry. Johns Hopkins Community Physicians reduced readmissions and improved quality by implementing a real-time, ADT-based encounter notification service (ENS) to keep the member’s healthcare team informed during transitions in care. Johns Hopkins presenters will describe the clinical, operational, and financial value of the ENS for care coordination along with its technology underpinnings.

November 18 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. Cerner Takeover of Siemens, Are You Ready? Sponsored by HIStalk. Presenters: Frank L. Poggio, president and CEO, The Kelzon Group; Vince Ciotti, principal, HIS Professionals. The Cerner acquisition of Siemens impacts 1,000 hospitals that could be forced into a “take it or leave it” situation based on lessons learned from similar takeovers. This webinar will review the possible fate of each Siemens HIS product, the impact of the acquisition on ongoing R&D, available market alternatives, and steps Siemens clients should take to prepare.

November 19 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. Improving Trial Accrual by Engaging the Digital Healthcare Consumer. Sponsored by DocuSign. Presenters: B. J. Rimel, MD, gynecologic oncologist, Cedars-Sinai Medial Center; Jennifer Royer, product marketing, DocuSign. The Women’s Cancer Program increased trial accrual five-fold by implementing an online registry that links participants to research studies, digitizing and simplifying a cumbersome, paper-based process. This webinar will describe the use of e-consents and social marketing to engage a broader population and advance research while saving time and reducing costs.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

CompuGroup Medical US will move its headquarters from Boston to Phoenix on January 1.

The first of several planned Saint Francis FastCare primary-care clinics in Connecticut opens in a local Super Stop & Shop. A local state representative jokingly refers to it as the “Stop & Shot.”

Announcements and Implementations

Intel-GE Care Innovations launches the Health Harmony remote patient monitoring system. The company partnered with optimization technology firm Affinova to ensure the new system presented the most consumer-friendly design.

Medical Mime introduces a new EHR system for therapists working at drug and alcohol treatment centers.

Amazing Charts announces the GA of its Pri-Med InLight EHR beginning next month. Both the Amazing Charts EHR and InLight EHR will incorporate Wolters Kluwer Health Integrated Patient Education resources by 2015.

Envision Medical Group (MI) chooses Aprima’s RCM services.

Government and Politics

The HIT Policy Committee’s Privacy and Security Workgroup meets to plan for its early December “Big Data Hearing,” which will cover current law, opportunities, challenges, and protections.

The Massachusetts medical board makes its final recommendations for a law going into effect in January 2015 that will require all physicians to demonstrate EHR proficiency and Meaningful Use skills. The final wording hasn’t been approved, but proposed regulations would require physicians to meet one of the following:

• Participate as an EP in MU Stage 1.
• Be employed, contracted, or credentialed by a hospital that is participating in MU Stage 1.
• Complete a three-hour accredited CME program on EHRs.
• Sign up for Massachusetts Health information Highway.

In other Massachusetts news, the Massachusetts eHealth Institute is offering $6.7 million in grants to behavioral health providers and long-term acute care facilities in the hopes of increasing their access to EHRs. Grant payments will range from $5,000 to $30,000 each, and will be offered in stages based on adoption progress.

Verizon receives security clearance from HHS to sell its cloud services to the federal government.

Two AIDS-related websites run by the federal government finally begin routine encryption of user data. Prior to new encryption standards implemented this month, the sites risked exposing the identities and sometimes locations of visitors when they used search boxes to find nearby facilities offering HIV testing, treatment, and other services.

Presidents from eight healthcare associations, including the American Academy of Family Physicians, American Academy of Pediatrics, and American College of Physicians pen a blog stating their support for Surgeon General nominee Vivek Murthy, MD. They emphasize that, “This is no time for politics to overshadow the important work that lies ahead for our country. Let us rise above our minor differences and recognize that Dr. Vivek Murthy has the experience, vision, and passion to be our next Surgeon General.”

Research and Innovation

Just in time for the holidays and New Year’s resolutions, Fitbug launches the KiQplan app, which takes data from fitness trackers and smartphone apps and then uses it to build 12-week personal fitness plans to help users achieve specific goals. Four plans are now available, with more expected to launch in 2015.

People

Michael Chris Gibbons, MD (Johns Hopkins University) joins the FCC as distinguished scholar in residence, where he will provide expertise in healthcare IT, population health, and analytics.

Other

Cerner employees donate over 7,400 used mobile devices as part of the Sprint Buyback Program, raising over $108,000 for First Hand Foundation. The funds were used to provide free health screenings to more than 8,500 Kansas City elementary school students.

Rob Lamberts, MD sends out this tweet, subsequently picked up by NPR in yet another piece on why physicians are frustrated with EHRs. (Why in the world would the EHR send patient results via fax instead of secure messaging? Please explain this absurdity via the comments section below.)

Press Ganey CMO Thomas Lee, MD and Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter lay out a six-step “strategic agenda” for moving to a high-value healthcare delivery system:

• Organize into integrated practice units.
• Measure outcomes and costs for every patient.
• Move to bundled payments for care cycles.
• Integrate care delivery systems.
• Expand geographic reach.
• Build an enabling information technology platform.

Amy Rothenberg, ND explains how ballroom dancing has made her a better physician.

This article provides a comprehensive overview of the state of HIE in New York, focusing particularly on the progress made by Southern Tier Healthlink, HealtheConnection, and Rochester RHIO. All 10 HIEs in New York are expected to be connected to each other by mid-2015, making the Statewide Health Information Network of New York (SHIN-NY) one of the largest HIEs in the country.

Rumors surface that Apple Watch stainless steel models will retail for $500, while gold models could cost $4,000 and up. Companies looking to give away the new watch at HIMSS 15 are in luck, as the company has alluded to the fact that it will be available in late February. I assume most vendors will stick with the $349 model.

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.

5 Questions with Chris Patterson, IT Administrator, Florida Heart & Vascular Associates

Chris Patterson is IT administrator at Florida Heart & Vascular Associates, a medical group with two locations in the Tampa Bay area that offers a full range of heart and vascular services. The group, which typically sees 100 patients, employs five physicians, one physician’s assistant, two nurse practitioners and 20 ancillary staff including Patterson, who oversees management of the group’s IT infrastructure and future technology needs.

What healthcare IT is used at Florida Heart?
It has been a long and difficult process to find the right EHR for our practice. We initially tried GE Centricity and Allscripts before finally finding a winning product in Aprima PRM. We found an invaluable partner in Doctors Administrative Solutions, Aprima’s value-added reseller for this area of Florida. They guided us through the implementation process with classes and on-site assistance, making sure we were comfortable at each stage. They didn’t rush us through the implementation process and provided us with the necessary goals to accomplish our Meaningful Use requirements.

Where is the practice with Meaningful Use?
This year we will attest for one quarter of Stage 2. DAS helped us implement Aprima in 2012, and we have been very satisfied with the overall product and reporting. But software will only get you so far, and no matter how easy the charting is, the time and effort of researching MU requirements and the attestation process itself is a rather daunting task for any physician’s office. DAS provides us with a dedicated account representative who knows how our practice works, and walked us through our previous two years of attestation. They offer classes on the new features that need to be implemented with the new regulations, and one on-one-counseling to make sure that we stay on track with all the measures. We are happy to tell you that we have both met and exceeded the requirements set forth by CMS, and are well on our way to a successful attestation for 2014.

What sort of healthcare IT implementation challenges have you encountered in the last year?
As with most medical practices, our main focus right now is the transition to an EHR. Keeping up with the latest regulations from CMS, and HIPPA, have become a large burden on all of our management and physicians. Due to these added responsibilities, we have focused on ways to make our office more efficient and remove some of the burdens from these individuals. We found that payroll was one area of our business where we could really cut into the time spent. We have long been partners with Lathem for our time and attendance software, and we asked what they could do to make us more efficient. They helped us see that our biggest slowdown in the payroll process was the back and forth between employees and managers about overtime, paid time off, and the amount of hours they worked. We wanted to find a way to allow our employees to take more ownership of their time and attendance, without allowing them to make changes themselves. We also wanted to remove the possibility of “buddy punching” by our employees. They had two solutions for us. They moved our existing payroll to the cloud through their new Payclock online software, and they helped us to implement a facial-recognition time clock.

Is the group working on any other healthcare IT implementations? If so, what timelines have been established?
As we look at the timetables for MU requirements and see the necessary changes that we need to make, it gets difficult to establish timelines and adoption periods for technology outside of the “Meaningful Use” scope. For now, we are focusing on virtualizing our existing IT infrastructure, saving us money on servers and maintenance. We are looking towards transitioning more services to the cloud, such as our exchange server, and providing our patients with better access to their medical records and more communication with our office through the use of patient portals, kiosks, and e-mail.

We are currently trying to expand the use of home monitoring devices such as at-home Coumadin management and remote pacemaker checks. We feel that these services provide a more convenient way for our patients to manage these longer-term problems, while freeing our office staff to focus on other tasks.

What implementation advice can you share with other practices?
I think that the best advice to give any provider now is to find companies that you can rely upon to help with all the current and coming transitions. They become an invaluable resource. The trends are changing so fast that it is beyond the means of one or two individuals to keep up. If you look at other industries such as stocks and the security sector, you can see where healthcare is heading. It will not be long before machine learning and prediction will be able to assist doctors inside of the EHR, instead of merely giving them a different means with which to chart their findings. Simplifying as many tasks within the office as possible will afford the staff more time to customize and implement these changes.

Contacts

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

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