News 8/8/16

Top News

Mount Nittany Exchange joins the PA Patient & Provider Network (P3N), which also includes Keystone HIE and St. Luke’s University Health Network’s EVantage Health HIE. The Pennsylvania Dept. of Human Services, which oversees the P3N network, anticipates onboarding ClinicalConnect HIE and HealthShare Exchange of Southeastern Pennsylvania by the end of the summer.

---

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Thanks to these renewing HIStalk Practice sponsors. Click a logo for more information. Contact Lorre if you’re interested in learning about sponsorship benefits.

---

Webinars

August 10 (Wednesday) 1:30 ET. “Taming the Beast: CDS Knowledge Management.” Sponsored by LogicStream Health. Presenters: Luis Saldana, MD, MBA, CMIO, Texas Health Resources (THR); Maxine Ketcham, clinical decision support analyst, THR; Kanan Garg, senior applications analyst, THR; Patrick Yoder, CEO, LogicStream health. This presentation will review THR’s systematic process for managing clinical decision support assets, including identifying broken alerts, addressing technical and clinical issues, modifying order sets, and retiring tools that have outlived their usefulness. Attendees will learn how THR uses a robust knowledge management platform to better understand how clinicians are interacting with their clinical content to maintain their order sets and reduce the number of alerts fired.

Contact Lorre for webinar services. Past webinars are on our HIStalk webinars YouTube channel.

---

Announcements and Implementations

Meridian Medical Management’s PrecisionBI division develops an ACO module for Allscripts TouchWorks Reporting users, enabling them to identify eligible patients and aggregate data in a tailored quality reporting database.

DexCom adds portal-based messaging capabilities to its Clarity diabetes management software, part of its G5 mobile continuous glucose monitoring system.

Ontario-based startup Strategic Leverage develops an online tool to help physicians understand and manage their online reputations.

---

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The Institute of Healthcare Design Thinking, a healthcare marketing, communications and strategy collaborative, will relocate from Chattanooga, TN to Cleveland this fall in an effort to take advantage of the Ohio capitol’s “thriving healthcare, business, and design ecosystem.” The institute was founded last year as a part of Lift1428, a Chattanooga-based healthcare marketing and design firm. Perhaps it will end up renting a room at the HIMSS Innovation Center, which touts itself as a “physical and virtual, state-of-the-art, testing, exhibition, and conference facility that offers real-time demonstration of healthcare technologies.”

---

Telemedicine

This article looks at the South Korea’s lack of love for telemedicine, currently prohibited under the country’s Medical Act. From data security issues to a widespread belief that the development and adoption of telemedicine technologies will create a digital divide between the haves and the have-nots, the fate of telemedicine in one of the most technologically enthusiastic countries in the world seems uncertain at best. The country’s first and only telemedicine pilot program has been plagued by issues related to data mismanagement including improper or lack of encryption, use of vulnerable passwords, and anxiety over last year’s North Korean cyberattack on a medical institution.

---

Government and Politics

Kentucky’s proposed Medicaid reform includes offering beneficiaries a $500 incentive to transition out of the $1,000-deductible program and join a commercial health plan for at least 18 months. “As participants roll off of public assistance, they will be prepared to make smart health care choices, which will have a positive effect on the free market,” explains Amanda Stamper, press secretary. “Naturally, as more and more Kentuckians become consumers, quality will increase and costs will decrease in the health care market, as we see happen in all free markets.”

HHS celebrates National Health Center Week. I’d love to see an infographic that focused on how many have adopted healthcare technologies, and how that adoption has impacted patient satisfaction and quality scores.

My #firstsevenjobs would read as follows:

Sat babies
Shelved books
Adult swim
Scheduled life savers
Tea pourer
Flagpole paster
Textile coverer

Feel free to share yours in an equally cryptic and brief manner via the comments section below.

---

Other

Kinsa donates its smart thermometer and app to Olympians in an effort to help track the spread of illnesses like the Zika Virus. The new location-based Olympic Village Group feature anonymously collects data from users in the Olympic Village, and then reports common symptoms and an overall health grade for the area. The app also offers an anonymous message board so that users can chat about sicknesses and symptoms.

For all its healthcare bells and whistles, Quartz contributor Mike Murphy calls the Apple Watch “the most anxiety-inducing device” he’s ever owned thanks to a heart condition and predilection to constantly check the device for incoming messages. “The watch is strapped to you,” he writes. “The internet never leaves you alone, is symbiotically tied to you, is physically closer to you than some of your appendages. It’s always there, always tapping you. It’s a reminder that a worry is like a notification, which left unchecked, can consume you. For me, it was the heart rate, and a fear that I was neglecting my mortality, the duty to my parents and the doctors who saved my life when I was two years old by not ensuring that I was doing all I could to keep on living. The heart monitor and the watch itself made me feel like a bad son and lazy person and not a hard-enough worker with the constant reminders that I wasn’t moving enough, answering enough messages, or being present.” After a particularly nerve-wracking visit to the physician’s office, Murphy’s physician recommended that he take a vacation without Internet-connected devices, exercise more, and relax – advice I think we should all take to heart in this hyper-connected world of instant digital gratification.

---

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

Get HIStalk Practice updates.
Contact us online.
Become a sponsor.