News 8/21/12

Epocrates announces plans to offer US medical students its Epocrates Essentials drug, disease, and diagnosis reference product for no charge.

Virginia Physicians selects eClinicalWorks EHR for its 58 providers across eight locations.

River Ranch Radiology (TX) implements RadNet’s eRAD RIS.

The Franciscan Hammond Clinic(IN/IL) and Quincy Medical Group (IL/IA/MO) select SA Ignite’s MU Assistant to automate MU reporting. Franciscan’s 47 providers use Allscripts Enterprise EHR; Quincy’s physician utilize McKesson Horizon Ambulatory Care EHR.

For the fifth consecutive year, Hayes Management Consulting earns a spot on INC 5,000’s List of Fastest Growing Companies for 2012.

The number of visits to retail clinics increased fourfold from 2007 to 2009 with an estimated 5.7 million retail clinic visits in 2009. Almost half of all visits were on weekends or during weekday hours when physician offices were typically closed. Retail clinics still represent a small share of the overall visits in outpatient settings, however, as ERs handle 117 million visits annually and physician offices manage 577 million visits.

Sentara Healthcare (VA) partners with telehealth firm MDLIVE to offer virtual medical consults from its network of physicians beginning in October. The deal also gives Sentara an ownership stake in MDLIVE.

Capario launches an integrated patient pay solution in partnership with TransFirst that facilitates the collection of patient payments, including co-pays, deductibles, and balances after insurance has paid.

The amount of money spent on medical practice mergers and acquisitions continues to climb, with $4.2 billion exchanged on 21 practice M&As in Q2. Hospitals in particular are interested in buying practices to control their referral sources and monitor care quality as hospitals begin to be penalized for readmissions.

The top reasons that doctors working in large independent and hospital-owned groups look to change jobs: financial security, dissatisfaction with current environment, and significant lifestyle changes, such as spousal job loss or personal or family financial strife. Physicians say that student loan repayment is their major source of financial stress.

The 12-physician Orthopaedic Associates of Central Maryland contracts with ChartLogic for its EHR suite. I discovered when I went to the practice’s Website that they have a somewhat annoying “jingle” that plays when you enter the site.  Annoying, yet effective, I suppose since I have been humming mdbonedocs.com all afternoon.

PracticeMax, a provider of practice management services for physician practices, announces the retirement of Rick White as president and the promotion of Patrick Lukacs (above) from VP of software services to VP of operations.

E-mail Inga.