From the Consultant’s Corner 7/2/14

Practice Mergers and EHR/PM Platforms: 5 Considerations for a Single System

As physician practices merge, forming larger group practices and multispecialty organizations, they often run into a situation where the various practices use separate EHRs and practice management (PM) systems. This creates inefficiencies and inconsistencies that ultimately limit some of the merger’s intended benefits. To prevent this, merging physician offices should consider moving to single EHR and PM technology platforms.

In my experience, pursuing single platforms yields several patient and practice benefits. For example, it streamlines the patient experience, allowing an individual to complete one registration and receive one bill, rather than registering on different systems used by physicians in the same practice and receiving patient statements from each provider. Not only does efficient access prevent patient frustration and potential leakage, it can have a positive impact on the patient’s choice of practice.

Consolidated applications also generate cost benefits by eliminating the administrative and staffing expenses that come from supporting multiple systems. Moreover, single solutions allow organizations to standardize workflow based on best practices, reducing process variation and elevating clinical and financial work streams to foster greater efficiency and performance.

A unified platform also improves business intelligence and informatics capabilities because all data comes from one source. This allows the practice to dig deeper into the data to improve overall quality of care delivery and enhance population health. When practices retain disparate systems, it can be cost prohibitive to aggregate data, particularly for small to mid-size practices.

While the potential benefits are significant, it can be challenging for merging practices to choose the right EHR/PM system. I recommend keeping these five points in mind during the selection process.

1. Understand the true cost of a potential solution. In my experience, no two vendors have the same cost structure, so be sure when calculating total system costs to make note of one-time charges, such as installation fees, and recurring expenses, like annual software license renewal fees. Don’t forget to include the full scope of physician training in the cost analysis, as many estimates do not include the value of the physician’s time spent in training.
2. Assess a vendor’s ability to support the practice’s specialized clinical needs. Not every system will adequately support clinical operations, and practices should make sure to check for the necessary depth and breadth of content. Keep in mind that clinicians require robust functionality that can be tailored or modified to meet multiple clinical specialty requirements.
3. Consider the full impact on physicians and other providers. It is wise to determine if a system truly allows providers to perform their jobs better, such as by seeing more patients, completing charts efficiently or improving patient communication. Even though completing tasks faster is important, the quality of data and the ability to leverage it across the care continuum are even more so. I’ve seen first-hand how strong provider documentation can substantively improve quality of care, accelerate learning about best practices, and enhance clinical and financial outcomes.
4. Look at the systems currently used across the merging practices. Review integration capabilities and requirements across the care continuum, including those of current and future hospital partners and referring providers. I have seen situations where having the same platform provided a competitive advantage for future risk-sharing or care collaboration opportunities. At the same time, evaluate the scalability of the various practice solutions to meet the expanded complexities of the merged practice.
5. Assess the practice’s current and future state requirements to “future-proof” the technology investment. To make sure a new system does not become obsolete as the merged practice evolves, it is important to think about current as well as future needs. For example, look at physician productivity and billing performance, practice growth plans, changing reimbursement patterns, evolving reporting requirements, potential new specialties and future alignment opportunities with hospitals or other groups. Within this context, evaluate the vendor’s track record for flexibility and innovation, as well as costs associated with previous new developments and rollouts.

In the end, we all know that making the decision to pursue a single EHR and/or PM platform is not quick or easy. Using these five considerations as a guide, organizations should devote sufficient time to fully analyzing the options before deciding on a strategy that best meets the practice’s current and future needs and goals.

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

Contacts

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

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News 7/1/14

Top News

White House officials expect President Obama to nominate former Proctor & Gamble CEO Bob McDonald to take over as the secretary of the VA. McDonald graduated from West Point and then spent five years in the Army before moving into the corporate world. He was ousted from Proctor & Gamble last year, after a 33-year career, following a string of disappointing quarters that drove stock prices down and eventually attracted activist investor pressure.

Obama’s choice comes just a few days after Deputy Chief of Staff Rob Nabors presented his review of the VA to the president. As one might expect, the review highlights personnel issues, lack of accountability and responsiveness, and unrealistic scheduling standards, to name just a few of the agency’s systemic problems. Nabors also notes that the VA’s VistA system is “cumbersome and outdated,” but is state of the art when it comes to capturing patient documentation to form an integrated health record. He says the real problem with scheduling patients is a lack of clinicians, support personnel, and space, not deficiencies in IT systems. He does not, however, provide specific directives as to how the VA should address these problems. Perhaps the administration is waiting for new leadership to take the reigns before making suggestions.

Speaking of new leadership, it is likely that Bob McDonald will work with Carolyn Clancy, MD, recently appointed interim undersecretary for health at the VA. Prior to joining the VA almost a year ago, Clancy served as a longtime director of AHRQ. It will be interesting to see how the two, who come from decidedly different professional backgrounds, will work together in an attempt to rectify the problems pointed out by Nabors.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Don’t forget to register for the next HIStalk webinar: The CIO’s Role in Consumer Health, taking place July 2 (Wednesday) at noon ET. Presenter David Chou, CIO, University Of Mississippi Medical Center, will cover where the industry is headed, how to leverage existing technology used by other verticals, and give the CIO’s perspective on shifting towards digital healthcare. I’m hoping he’ll also touch on the impact consumer/digital health is having on physician practices.

Webinar guru Lorre has made HIStalk webinars available on YouTube, which you’ll be pleased to learn requires no signup to start watching.

Watching: Sign Painters, a documentary that highlights the almost-lost art of hand-painted signs. I had the opportunity to attend a standing-room-only screening recently, followed by a Q&A with director Faythe Levine, and neither disappointed. The film is still making the festival circuit, with stops coming up in Australia, Canada, New York, and Tennessee.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Mobile healthcare provider WhiteGlove Health (TX) acquires GlenRidge Healthcare Solutions, a consulting firm that specializes in provider, payer, and employer solutions. Company representatives hope the acquisition will help manage costs, and improve access to care and the quality of existing networks.

Allscripts reports 23 new Sunrise commitments at client facilities or at new client organizations internationally and in the United States since January 2013. These include commitments to Sunrise Ambulatory Care, Sunrise Emergency Care, and Sunrise Surgical Care. The news of the company’s platform expansion comes on the heels of its decision to partner with CSC and HP to bid on the $11 billion DoD EHR contract. Shoring up confidence in a prospective buyer can’t hurt, but I wonder if winning the bid (which Mr. H points out as highly unlikely) might actually do the business more harm than good. Companies brought in for contract government IT work haven’t had the best track record lately.

Cloud services provider SurDoc launches a medical data archival and retrieval service (SMAR) that enables providers to archive; back-up; and retrieve and send medical records, patient data, and billing information from multiple devices. SMAR also offers consumers the ability to upload and manage a secure personal health record.

CareCloud borrows $25.5 million from a growth capital lender as it eyes future expansion and product development. The infusion of cash is no doubt needed, as the company signed a record number of medical groups to its cloud-based platform in the first quarter of this year.

Imprivata raises $66 million in its recent IPO, slightly shy of the $75 million it anticipated. Fortune reports the company went public to secure access to capital markets and increase its liquidity in order to better take on competitors like Caradigm.

Announcements and Implementations

Allegiance ACO, part of the Allegiance Health Group (NJ and PA), implements Healthec’s ACO-in-a-Box solution to support its coordinated care efforts for more than 5,200 care beneficiaries within the Medicare Shared Savings Program. The “box” includes data analytics and reporting,  care coordination, and practice transformation tools; clinical nursing support to manage population health and chronic patients; and clinical intervention to high-risk patients.

The New England TeleHealth Consortium announces it has made 250 connections amongst network providers in Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont. Healthcare facilities linked to NETC’s network can instantly share information by delivering telemedicine capabilities. NETC was formed in 2007 via a $24.6 million FCC Rural Health Care Pilot Program award – the largest ever – to bring telemedicine to the region.

Non-profit behavioral health and special education agency Spurwink (ME) receives a $70,000 health information technology grant as part of the Healthinfonet Behavioral Health Information Technology Reimbursement initiative funded by the State of Maine. Spurwink will use the money to improve its medical records systems and incorporate data into the state’s HealthInfoNet HIE.

In other behavioral health IT news, Center Point Counseling (WI) selects the CX360 EHR from Core Solutions to assist it in meeting Stage 2 Meaningful Use objectives. CPC EHR Project Manager Megan Tully noted the EHR’s user interface was an “important factor for driving clinician adoption of the system.”

Government and Politics

The State of Montana just can’t catch a break. After the state DHHS comes clean about a HIPAA breach affecting 1.3 million people, officials now report that Xerox is in breach of contract in developing a new computer program to run complicated Montana Medicaid payments. The state says it has lost nearly $13 million as a result of the delays, and will consider ending the contract, signed in 2012, if the problems aren’t fixed by mid-July.

HHS announces it will allow nearly every consumer who signed up for health insurance coverage on the federal exchange to be automatically re-enrolled if they don’t return to the site to switch plans. People who don’t take proactive steps to come back to the site and report changes in their income will also have their tax credits renewed.

In other Healthcare.gov news, HHS yet again extends its contract with Verizon’s Terremark subsidiary as host for the website and related data services hub, despite the fact that it expects to transition to Hewlett-Packard for those same services by the end of August. It is somewhat nauseating to know that the federal government has such low expectations of success that it is willing to spend up to $45 million on a “just-in-case” back-up plan.

In another questionable spending move, the state of Michigan awards computer contracts worth nearly $90 million to CGI Technologies and Solutions – the same Canadian company behind the initial, dismal rollout of Healthcare.gov. I did a double take when I read that state officials, despite knowing of CGI’s track record with federal health IT implementations, believe it to be “a leader in the field, … recognized for excellence in … implementation, particularly in a government setting.” US-based Accenture actually offered the lowest bid, but Michigan decision-makers decided CGI’s higher price would be a better value.

Research and Innovation

New research demonstrates that analysis of patient records using data analytics can predict future risk of metabolic syndrome, a condition that affects more than a third of the U.S. population and can lead to chronic heart disease, stroke, and diabetes. Data was analyzed from nearly 37,000 patients, and included medical claims records, demographics, pharmacy claims, lab tests, and biometric screening results over a two-year period. It’s worth noting the research was sponsored by Aetna and data analytics developer GNS Healthcare.

People

The National Association of Professional Women names Millville Medical Center (NJ) Practice Manager Sherry Sherman, RN as a 2014 Professional Woman of the Year.

Updox names Michael Harris (Ecommerce) to lead the company’s innovation and technology teams.

ONC’s Director of the Office of Consumer eHealth Lygeia Ricciardi announces on Twitter that she has resigned effective July 25.

Other

Family practice physician James Legan, MD shares his Updox patient portal experience with U.S. News and World Report, offering tips for successful portal adoption:

• Help patients create a portal account at their visits and print out instructions on how to use the portal.
• Send patients their visit summary right away so they have it in their account before they leave the office and can message you back from it.
• Advise staff to create portals for themselves so they know what patients are experiencing.

“Don’t let your nurse wimp out [on signing up for the portal],” Legan adds. “Push her, and within one to two months of upfront, labor-intensive training, the improved efficiency will become so apparent that she will become the portal creator queen.”

Athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush shares tips on how to ask for (and handle coming back from) a sabbatical: “Paying someone to take 10 weeks off to realize that they [want to] quit is worth it, especially if they’re an A-minus, B-plus player who isn’t going to get fired for performance. You get a B-plus out so you can put an A-plus in.”

Sponsor Updates

• ESD shares how to implement automated testing.
• Billian’s HealthDATA adds physician referral data to its flagship Portal database product.
• FirstHealth of the Carolinas launches its patient portal from RelayHealth.

Contacts

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

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News 8/13/14

Top News

The White House creates the US Digital Service, a new program that will recruit the “country’s brightest digital talent” to provide strategic guidance on major IT projects like Healthcare.gov and iEHR. Mikey Dickerson, an ex-Google engineer credited with saving Healthcare.gov, has been tapped to run the service. As a deputy federal CIO, he will work with similarly titled Lisa Schlosser in her role of policy, agency oversight, and accountability. The new service will ultimately consist of 25 experts brought in on two- to four-year term appointments to help agencies plan, improve, and fix IT programs. It will be financed with existing funds in 2014, and scale in 2015 as outlined in the President’s FY 2015 budget.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Cerner jumps to the top spot of the Kansas City Business Journal‘s Top Private-Sector Employers List due in large part to the addition of 1,550 local employees in the past year. That’s not counting the 16,000 it will need to hire to fill its planned $4.5 billion Three Trails Campus, or the unknown number it may create in the coming years as a result of the Siemens acquisition.

National staffing company Jackson Healthcare acquires Sullivan Healthcare Consulting, which focuses on improving the performance of the hospital perioperative suite through surgery benchmarking, scheduling, staffing, sterile processing, and surgery IT implementation. SHC will serve as a complementary service line to Jackson Healthcare operating companies Premier Anesthesia and Jackson Surgical Assistants.

Hospital administrators at Emerson Hospital (MA) attribute the facility’s operation-margin gains and service-line upticks to an increase in outpatient services. Though IT upgrades in the mammography department have led to the need for fewer patient visits, referrals from other places for Emerson’s new, higher-quality mammographies have made up for the decline.

Healthcare IT firm Priority Consult acquires business intelligence and analytics software developer Balanced Insights to form Cordata Healthcare Innovations. The new company will use Balanced Insight’s technology as a starting point for a new generation of patient navigation and tracking applications. Priority Consult president and CEO Gary Winzenread will serve as Cordata’s president and CEO, while Balanced Insight founder and CEO Tom Hammergren will serve as CTO.

Population health and workflow technology company Acupera secures $4 million in financing from Lightspeed Venture Partners. It will use the Series A funding to scale its product development team and add to its customer implementation group.

People

Travis Crenshaw (United Surgical Partners International) joins Foundation Healthcare Inc. (OK) as CIO.

Announcements and Implementations

University of Colorado Health selects Zix Email Encryption to provide consolidated, secure email to 18,000 users across its system, which includes University of Colorado Hospital, Memorial Health System, and Poudre Valley Health System.

Allegheny Valley Hospital (PA) becomes the first in the state to equip its paramedic team with iPads. The pilot project has so far enabled AVH ER physicians to observe 12 patients on their way to the hospital. The hospital paramedic team will present the results of the project to the Pennsylvania Department of Health, which is considering rolling out similar programs across the state.

Providence Medical Center (KS) selects the GroupOne Health Source One Rate platform of medical billing and EHR implementation services for 40 of its providers. PMC will use the OneRate platform to facilitate integration of physician practices into its multi-specialty network across the greater Kansas City area.

UnityPoint-Allen Hospital and Black Hawk-Grundy Mental Health Center in Iowa announce they will begin electronically sharing patient records early next year.

St. Joseph Mercy Health System launches a telemedicine service from MDLive that provides real-time physician appointments 24 hours a day, seven days a week via video, phone, or app. Patients are connected with a SJMHS or MDLive physician who can offer treatment evaluation and advice, and e-prescriptions.

Halifax Regional (NC) launches the HalifaxHealthLink patient portal, which follows the successful rollout of the FollowMyHealth portal for patients of Roanoke Clinic, Roanoke Valley Internal Medicine, and Halifax Regional Cardiology.

The Willis-Knighton Physician Network (LA) selects InteliChart’s Enterprise Patient Portal to serve as a single portal solution for its system of network clinics. Physician Network Administrator Greg Gavin noted that “[a] vendor-neutral patient portal that provides a single source solution for our patients as well as a consistent brand across the entire Willis-Knighton System were top priorities in selecting a solution” to improve communication, coordinate care, and facilitate patient healthcare goals.

Government and Politics

ONC launches a website designed to collect feedback on its proposed interoperability roadmap. Stakeholders have until September 12 to provide their thoughts and comments, after which ONC will present aggregated feedback to the Federal Advisory Committee for its input and recommendations. An updated version of the roadmap will be posted for public comment early next year.

Research and Innovation

Creative England announces a £1m fund for small and medium enterprises in the North, Midlands, and Southwest regions designed to stimulate creative and digital innovation in UK healthcare. Four new programs will open as part of the fund. The first is the West Midlands Interactive Healthcare Fund, which will offer five £50,000 investments to support projects that focus on improving quality of care, caring for people with dementia, supporting people with long-term conditions, and data visualization. Applications will be assessed on a rolling basis and the fund will close on Oct. 31, 2014.

A new report finds that using a touchscreen EHR to support and monitor a national antiretroviral therapy program in Malawi faced challenges similar to that of EHR adoption in the U.S.:

• Implementing a point-of-care EHR has been more challenging than initially anticipated.
• The success of a POC system ultimately depends as much on a commitment from system users as on the technologies employed.
• Poor adherence to system use will result in incomplete data.
• Health workers will not adopt a system if they do not find sufficient value in it. Consequently, the primary challenge is to identify and address the value proposition for the user. This is an iterative process that requires a commitment to regular and ongoing dialog with the users if this paradigm shift to POC system use is to be sustainable.

Technology

Reports surface that Apple is in HealthKit development talks with providers at Mount Sinai, Johns Hopkins, and the Cleveland Clinic, as well as with Allscripts. Cleveland Clinic CIO William Morris says the clinical solutions team is experimenting with HealthKit’s beta and is providing feedback to Apple. Representatives from the other three organizations have not yet chimed in.

Simple Medical Software Inc. releases the SimpleRounds app to help providers better communicate and collaborate on patient care. Developed by SMS founder Rubén Zamorano and Manuel Martinez, MD the app features secure text messaging, billing manager, physician directory, rounds manager, patient census, and sign-out manager.

Other

The local paper highlights the new $1.3 billion Parkland Memorial Hospital, one of the first “digital hospitals” in the U.S. The hospital, set to open in May 2015, will feature $80 million worth of digital technology including touch-screen way finding kiosks, smart beds, baby tracking devices, and hand-held communication devices for nurses, as well as an integrated digital system controlling nearly every aspect of its operations. CIO Fernando Martinez points out the hospital will be similar to a smart home: “All the digital devices in a smart home can talk to each other because they’re connected to a common hub. That’s not unlike what we do, only we’re much bigger.”

Irish health service officials find that the number of patients waiting more than a year for hospital treatment surged 600 percent between December 2013 and May 2014. They have not formally addressed the spike, but have noted they are addressing the issue “in the face of significant financial challenges.”

Jersey City Medical Center (NJ) reveals that a computer disk containing 2011 Medicaid patient information was lost in June when a package sent via UPS failed to arrive. The unencrypted disk contained an undisclosed number of patients’ names, and many of their Social Security numbers and birth dates.

This article highlights the success of the Maryland Chesapeake Regional Information System for our Patients (CRISP) HIE, which has seen patient searches by providers jump from under 10,000 in late 2012 to nearly 55,000 as of last month.

Sponsor Updates

• Capsule discusses why timing is everything with vital signs.
• Rochester Regional Health Information Organization (NY) and HealtheConnections RHIO of Central New York are live on eHealth Technologies’ Image-Enabled Results Delivery.
• The Advisory Board Company offers its ready-to-present slides on the surgical services market trends for 2014.
• OhioHealth upgrades its Infor Cloverlead solution to V6.0.
• Aventure client Hunterdon Healthcare System’s Greg Melitski will explain how they met their ED workflow challenges at the Optum Client Forum in Chicago, August 18-21.
• Streamline Health is participating in the Allscripts ACE 2014 Conference, which kicks off today.
• Wolters Kluwer ProVation offers a white paper entitled “ICD-10 The Gift of Time.”
• Black Book names Allscripts “Best of the Best” Ambulatory EHR vendor for interoperability.

Contacts

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

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5 Questions with Unaiza Hayat, MD CEO and CMO, Avecinia Wellness Center

Unaiza Hayat, MD is CEO and chief medical officer of Avecinia Wellness Center, which provides primary care, aesthetics, and alternative therapies at its facility in Clovis, CA. The center’s name is derived from Ibn Sina (known as Avicenna in the west), the 10^th century Persian physician known for bringing together medical sciences from various regions. The center employs three clinicians – each of which sees 20 patients a day, a massage therapist and esthetician, six administrative staff, and six instructors for its various classes.

The center transitioned in 2010 from an eHealthCare practice management system and Prognosis EHR to athenahealth solutions, citing complexity and poor customer service as reasons for the switch. Avecinia is currently using athenahealth’s EHR, practice management, and patient communication services. Over the next six to 12 months, it will consider implementing a tablet-based patient check-in service that integrates with athenaNet software, and look at working with a mobile health app to help with medication adherence. It has met Stage 2 Meaningful Use requirements and is now working to exceed its core and selected criteria as part of patient workflow.

Why do you think only 458 eligible doctors have met Stage 2 MU requirements thus far? What challenges did Avecinia face in preparing to attest?
The numbers speak for themselves. If nearly 60 percent of those meeting Stage 2 MU work with one EHR, then it probably has a lot to do with the EHR being used. We noticed that a particular type of provider ends up using athenahealth versus other EHRs. These providers tend to be forward thinking, understand what they know and what they don’t, and appreciate the role of technology as a tool in providing superior patient care. One of the reasons we selected athenahealth was the forward-thinking vision they are driven by, which aligns with our vision. By creating a partnership where we can focus on providing patient care and athenahealth can focus on the tasks best suited to its expertise, we have been able to easily complete something that many other providers find difficult, confusing, and time consuming. We didn’t face any challenges since the requirements are organic to our workflow.

As you alluded to, nearly 60 percent of those that have attested are athenahealth customers. How important was your relationship with them during the attestation process?
See above. If and when there is ever a hiccup, athenahealth has the resources to assist the practice in overcoming those challenges. There is also a robust user group where users exchange best practices and ideas on how to use the technology to its maximum capabilities.

Based on your experience, what advice would you give other physicians looking to attest for MU? What should they be looking for (or be wary of) in an EHR vendor or consultant?
We have a saying: “Meaningful Use is only as good as the meaning we give to it.” By working with an EHR that works the MU requirements seamlessly into our workflow, we were able to give Meaningful Use meaning. For example, by helping us identify at the point of care if someone needs a flu shot or TDAP, or if it has been more than a year since their last preventive visit, we can make sure our patients get the care they need, and that we capture the revenue opportunity.

Our advice would be to see how the vendor incorporates MU into the patient workflow. Does it assist in providing better care? Who is responsible for collecting the data, making sure you are staying on track and submitting the data on your behalf? If the vendor is going to do it, and has a track record of being successful, then that’s probably the vendor you should choose. You aren’t going to save money by trying to hire the necessary staff and spending clinic time to do the work necessary to attest on your own.

How receptive have your patients been to your patient engagement efforts, such as the patient portal?
They have been very receptive. We believe our relationship with our patients goes beyond the four walls of the clinic and so have made a committed effort to engage with them and the community through social media (our Facebook page has 2,300 fans and we are also on Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and LinkedIn), community activism, and philanthropy. We use those opportunities to help shape the conversation around healthcare and well-being. Our patient portal has also been a successful part of our patient engagement. We have an over-50-percent adoption rate, and the patients find it a convenient and useful tool in managing their healthcare. Athenahealth’s communication suite goes beyond being a portal, though. The appointment and order reminder system is integral in keeping our no-show rate at 2 percent, and helping our patients stay actively involved in their healthcare.

You have received numerous accolades for being a top leader and businesswoman in your community. How important is leadership before, during, and after a healthcare IT implementation?
Thank you for noticing that. Leadership is crucial throughout healthcare IT implementations because, like any project, it requires buy-in, teamwork, guidance, accountability, and humility. We have found that when leadership takes on the role of being a coach/mentor, the group is more successful in reaching its goals. Most importantly, it engages the group and encourages them to also develop leadership skills.

Bonus Question: What coordinated care initiatives are currently underway?
We meet the criteria to be a Level 3 Patient-Centered Medical Home but have not applied for it because the application process is costly and there is no revenue benefit in Fresno/Central Valley for doing so. Neither private insurance nor Medicare recognize those programs here. We are also interested in establishing an ACO because we have already laid the foundation, but the hospital systems and other providers in Fresno have a long way to go to catch up to us. We have approached Medicare and private insurance companies with no luck. It is really unfortunate because the population in Fresno and the Central Valley has some of the highest rates of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic conditions that could benefit from the ACO model.

In the meantime, we have been asked by the newly established Central Valley Health Information Exchange to help lead the efforts in getting other private physician groups to, at the very least, register with the exchange. We are open to working with any organization that is willing to lead the way with us in adopting and promoting new, engaging models of healthcare delivery.

Thank you for the opportunity to share our success with HISTalk!

Contacts

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

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News 6/26/14

Top News

Verizon launches Virtual Visits, a video-conferencing app that enables patients with acute conditions to see physicians via smartphone, tablet or computer. The solution is billed as a carrier-agnostic, enterprise-class platform for health systems, health plans, and employers to meet the needs of their patient populations. Verizon appears to be the first major telecommunications company to enter the telemedicine market, meaning it certainly won’t be the last. Two things give me pause about this sort of offering. First, physician groups and health systems can sign up to use the app to consult patients, while employers can use clinicians provided by Verizon. No mention is made of how a telecom company vets its clinicians. Second, encrypted patient information is stored in Verizon’s HIPAA-compliant cloud. This likely includes financial data, since the app is capable of processing co-pays. The company is no doubt well-versed in encryption, but you have to wonder how patient data will be communicated from the app back to a provider’s EHR without making itself vulnerable to hacks.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

Mobile and online clinical resources and solutions provider Physicians Interactive acquires MedHelp, an online health community and health application site. The companies hope their combined resources will “make a significant impact on patient adherence to drug therapy regimens …." The acquisition was financed by Merck Global Health Innovation.

The Mid-States Consortium of Health Information Organizations announces the addition of six new members including the Illinois Health Information Exchange, Lewis and Clark Information Exchange, Michiana Health Information Network, Tiger Institute Health Alliance, Utah Health Information Network, and the Wisconsin Statewide Health Information Network. The consortium was formed earlier this year to facilitate data exchange amongst its members, who now total 23 organizations spanning 18 states in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain regions.

Availity and emids announce plans to establish an Availity technology center in downtown Nashville, TN using the existing emids location. The expanded emids delivery center will establish a base of operations for Availity in the area, enabling it to accelerate product development efforts. The companies anticipate hiring 60 additional employees.

Navicure launches BillingBetter.com, an online directory of billing companies specific to a practice’s geographic location, claim types processed, and specialties served. Additional resources include webinars, tip sheets, and white papers.

Practice Fusion and Emdeon team up to offer automated health plan eligibility checks in the Practice Fusion EHR. Physician practices will now be able to verify a patient’s health plan information electronically via the Emdeon network, eliminating the need to call individual payers to check coverage.

Announcements and Implementations

Maine Primary Care Association implements the i2iTracks population health management program from i2iSystems after attempting unsuccessfully to build its own data warehouse. MPCA currently uses the program at seven of its health centers and expects to add another four facilities by year’s end.

The local paper profiles the results Southwest Medical Associates (NV) has seen thus far with OptumHealth’s NowClinic telemedicine technology. Six months in, SMA has enrolled 10,000 of the 325,000 eligible Health Plan of Nevada members and treated 1,500 patients. SMA Medical Director Eugene Somphone notes there is “tremendous potential for growth. Like any new technology, it takes time. Amazon didn’t become a success overnight, and patients are getting used to this. As they get comfortable, it will be a major avenue for patient care and has huge potential not just in Nevada but across the country.”

Telemedicine patients in Nevada may have a leg up on those in other parts of the country, given that construction is underway on the Nevada Broadband Telemedicine Initiative. The project, a result of the collaboration between e-Care Nevada and the Nevada Hospital Association, is the only all-fiber, public-use network of its kind to link Las Vegas and Reno. The network will link rural healthcare facilities with next-generation telemedicine applications while serving rural communications companies, education centers, and government organizations.

NRAD Medical Associates (NY) begins notifying 97,000 patients that “an employee radiologist accessed and acquired protected health information from NRAD’s billing system without authorization.” Breached information included names and addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, and health insurance information including diagnosis and procedure codes.

Government and Politics

The State of Montana starts notifying 1.3 million people — more than the entire population of the state — that hackers got into a state health department server containing their medical information. A surprising amount of medical information was stored on the server, including “health assessments, diagnoses, treatment, prescriptions, and insurance.” Also on the same server: the bank account information of 3,100 department employees and contractors, and 50 years’ worth of birth and death certificate information.

Research and Innovation

This study highlights the overall framework of the Kaiser Permanente Southern California Outpatient Safety Net Program. OSNP uses EHRs and a proactive clinical culture to look for potential quality improvement opportunities and interventions to improve ambulatory patient care. Examples cited include use of conflicting medications that could lead to drug interactions or the need for follow-up tests.

People

Athenahealth names Kristi Matus (Aetna) to the newly created role of EVP/chief financial and administrative officer.

DoctorsManagement appoints Frank Cohen Director of Analytics and Business Intelligence.

Elsevier promotes Peter Edelstein, MD to the newly created position of chief medical officer, Elsevier Clinical Solutions.

Other

Medical bill reviewing company CoPatient completes a $3.6 million round of Series A funding led by .406 Ventures. Returning investors include athenahealth CEO Jonathan Bush and Cambia Health Solutions. Employers and organizations such as AARP utilize CoPatient’s technology to offer their members access to medical billing experts who comb through bills spotting errors, and then offer users free or paid options to rectify the mistakes.

Contacts

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

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