News 4/7/15

Top News

The AMA submits comments on the ONC’s Interoperability Roadmap, offering the following recommendations:

• Prioritize “cornerstone” interoperability issues and high-value use cases.
• Forego using a punitive approach on providers to achieve interoperability.
• Address cost and EHR usability barriers to interoperability.
• Continue to allow private sector governance efforts to flourish.
• Acknowledge the impact Meaningful Use is having on interoperability.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

Join me and our patient advocate HIMSS conference scholarship winners for an #HIStalking tweet chat Tuesday, April 7 at 11 a.m. ET. @LAlupusLady, @woodymatters, @leffet_papillon, @CarlyRM and @bostonheartmom will talk about patient engagement, advocacy, and healthcare IT. You can brush up on their backgrounds here and check out discussion topics here. They’ll be wearing their Walking Gallery shirts at the conference as they follow a busy schedule of interviews, meetings, and exhibit-hall cruising.

I can’t believe there is less than a week to go until HIStalkapalooza. My ensemble is ready, and I can’t wait to see what others will sport on our red carpet. While I don’t expect anyone to don Cinderella-type shoes, I do hope guys and gals will make an effort to put their best feet forward, especially in light of the fact that we’ll honor two lucky winners with a unique award to proudly display at your HIMSS booths or tout around the exhibit hall the next day. (And speaking of the exhibit hall, find out what HIStalk sponsors are doing on the HIMSS show floor by checking out our guide.)

Thanks to the following sponsors, new and renewing, that recently supported HIStalk Practice. Click a logo for more information.

Reading: The Portlandia Cook Book. (And yes, they put a bird on it!) This $5 find is yet another reason why I love the books-for-sale shelf at my local library. This tome, which does have actual recipes, is similar in genre to one of my all-time favorites, America (The Book).

Webinars

April 8 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Leveraging Evidence and Mobile Collaboration to Improve Patient Care Transitions.” Sponsored by Zynx Health. Presenter: Grant Campbell, MSN, RN, senior director of nursing strategy and informatics, Zynx Health. With mounting regulatory requirements focused on readmission prevention and the growing complexity of care delivery, ACOs, hospitals, and community-based organizations are under pressure to effectively and efficiently manage patient transitions. This webinar will explore the ways in which people, process, and technology influence patient care and how organizations can optimize these areas to enhance communication, increase operational efficiency, and improve care coordination across the continuum.

April 22 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. “Microsoft: The Waking Giant in Healthcare Analytics and Big Data.” Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP of strategy, Health Catalyst. Microsoft has been quietly reengineering its culture and products to offer the best value and most visionary platform for cloud services, big data, and analytics in healthcare. This webinar will cover the Healthcare Analytics Adoption Model, the ongoing transition from relational databases, the role of new Microsoft products such as Azure and Analytic Platform System, the PowerX product line, and geospatial and machine learning visualization tools. Attendees will learn how to incorporate cloud-based analytics services into their healthcare analytics strategies.

Announcements and Implementations

The New Mexico HIE goes live with technology provided by Orion Health.

Non-profit health information provider Healthwise offers a course on shared decision-making.

Telemedicine

Telemedicine startup PointNurse partners with the crowdfunding platform Swarm Fund to create the first Global Telemedicine and Telehealth Distributive Collaborative Organization, enabling providers to join the community as members, receive fees, and have a proportional stake in the software.

Government and Politics

Patient advocates and state legislators breathe a sigh of relief when New York Governor Andrew Cuomo decides not to cut the budget of nydoctorprofile.com, the state Dept. of Health’s physician profile website. “As we move towards more transparency and public access to health care information,” explains Assembly Health Committee chairman Richard Gottfried, “this budget language will speed up both reporting by physicians and website updates by the Department of Health.”

Mental health professionals, dentists, and chiropractors push back on a Minnesota law that requires all healthcare providers to implement EHRs. St. Paul psychologist Peter Zelles intends to comply with the law, despite reservations about patient privacy. “Some patients are treated differently because they are being treated for mental health problems,” he explains, adding that some female patients worry about being stigmatized by physicians once they see they’ve had an abortion.

CMS announces that nearly 36,000 consumers have signed up for health insurance via Healthcare.gov during the extended enrollment period, which ends on April 30. That figure is well below the administration’s estimate of 220,000.

Research and Innovation

A UCSF study finds that patients prefer getting biopsy results over the phone rather than via secure email. As someone who has received biopsy results, I can tell you a phone call is the most appreciated option, as it gives patient and physician an opportunity to discuss next steps in real time. I found it interesting that just over half of physicians in the study would pick up the phone to deliver bad news, while 31 percent would take the time to make a call for good news.

An eClinicalWorks physician survey finds that top portal patient engagement benefits are the ability to review and share medical records, schedule appointments, and receive automatic appointment alerts and reminders. Over half believe having access to patient information from wearable devices or fitness trackers would be somewhat useful to help treat them, though the survey’s findings did not delve into just how they’d incorporate that data into patient medical records or office workflows.

The Health Information Trust Alliance announces that it will sponsor a broad, empirical study of health IT security threats aimed at analyzing “the methods, severity and pervasiveness of cyber threats targeting a variety of healthcare organizations.”

A WEDI survey on ICD-10 compliance reveals that over half of respondents are still uncertain as to if and when the transition to ICD-10 will take place. Not surprisingly, only 25 percent of providers have completed end-to-end testing, a decrease from the 35 percent that had begun testing in August 2014.

Other

Kroger’s The Little Clinic earns The Joint Commission Gold Seal of Approval for the third time. The Tennessee-based chain of retail clinics implemented its first EMR in 2006, and most recently went live on VisualDX’s Web-based diagnostic tool for physicians.

I’m kicking myself for missing this: CERN reports on April 1 the “first unequivocal evidence for The Force” using its Large Hadron Collider. Ben Kenobi of the University of Mos Eisley, Tatooine, explained that “The Force is what gives a particle physicist his powers.”

I did a double take when I came across this headline: “Seattle’s Medical Records Offers Electroconvulsive Therapy on Record Store Day.” It’s amazing how susceptible my mind has become to healthcare references.

Sponsor Updates

• Versus Technology offers a blog on how wireless technology works to track the spread of infection.
• NVoq describes “The Link Between the Simple Checklist and Improved Patient Safety.”
• ESD posts 25 days of its history as it commemorates its 25th anniversary. Check out Day 7, where you’ll see its video of HIStalkapalooza 2012 in Las Vegas, which it did a great job of sponsoring.
• Healthwise shares “The Secret Behind Serving Up the Right Information Every Time.”

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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

The Role of Patient Engagement and Advocacy in HIT – #HIStalking Tweet Chat Tuesday, April 7 at 11 am ET

Join @JennHIStalk and HIStalk’s HIMSS15 patient advocate scholarship winners – @LAlupusLady, @leffet_papillon, @CarlyRM, @woodymatters and @bostonheartmom -  for a discussion on patient engagement, advocacy, and healthcare IT. You can check out their backgrounds here, preview discussion questions below, and brush up on how to participate in a tweet chat towards the end of this post.

#HIStalking Discussion Questions

Q1 from @bostonheartmom: How can we use HIT to democratize our data, giving patients and MDs equal access? EHR #UX have role to play? #HIStalking

Q2 from @LAlupusLady: How can HIT include patients in the development and design process? #HIStalking

Q3 from @CarlyRM: How might we use HIT to reinforce human connection and the expertise of patients across the world? #HIStalking

Q4 from @woodymatters: How can technology assist in post-market safety of drugs from a consumer perspective? #HIStalking

Q5 from @leffet_papillon: How can online patient communities improve the quality of patients’ lives, and their care? #HIStalking

Join us on Tuesday, April 7 at 11 am ET for the #HIStalking tweet chat, and then look for @bostonheartmom @leffet_papillon @CarlyRM and @LAlupusLady in #HIStalking shirts at #HIMSS15.

Tweet Chat Instructions

It’s easy to join the Twitter conversation by logging into TweetChat, which automatically keeps you in the conversation by tagging all tweets with the #HIStalking hash tag. If you are unable to access the TweetChat room, simply search in Twitter for #HIStalking and follow the conversation. To contribute, be sure and tag your tweets with #HIStalking so they can be seen by other chat participants.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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

News 4/2/15

Top News

Marlin Equity Partners acquires PM/EHR vendor e-MDs and merges the company with another of its portfolio holdings, revenue cycle services vendor MDeverywhere. E-MDs founder and CEO David Winn, MD will retire.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

The RSA Conference bans scantily clad booth babes from the exhibit hall, specifically mandating business attire that doesn’t include tops that display excess cleavage, miniskirts, and Lycra body suits. I don’t think I need to go into too much detail as to why this is a good thing for women and humanity in general. I don’t recall seeing too many booth babes at last year’s HIMSS, though the dancing duo at the Medecision booth did catch my eye. If you’re going to don Lycra, I suppose this is the most tasteful way to do it.

Check out the great painting Regina Holliday created for the T-shirts our HIStalking patient advocate scholarship winners will wear at HIMSS. Brush up on their backgrounds here, and then join me Tuesday, April 7 at 11 am ET for a #HIStalking tweet chat. All five scholarship winners will be there, posing questions related to patient engagement, advocacy and healthcare IT. 

Patient Engagement Pet Peeve: In an effort to organize my health data, I messaged my PCP to ask if she could upload my most recent test results to the patient portal. I like to have a digital history of medical encounters that I can go back and review as needed. My attempts to retain verbal explanations of the results, or those written on scraps of paper found at the bottom of my purse have proven unsuccessful. I was a tad frustrated when her nurse called to relay the information to me over the phone, forcing me to grab the very pen and paper I had tried so hard to avoid.

Several April Fool’s Day-related messages crossed my inbox and Twitter feed yesterday. I especially liked the these two.

Watching: It doesn’t have to be April Fool’s Day for me to enjoy the comedy of Tim Hawkins. Check out his bit on visiting the doctor’s office for a glaucoma test.

Webinars

April 8 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Leveraging Evidence and Mobile Collaboration to Improve Patient Care Transitions.” Sponsored by Zynx Health. Presenter: Grant Campbell, MSN, RN, senior director of nursing strategy and informatics, Zynx Health. With mounting regulatory requirements focused on readmission prevention and the growing complexity of care delivery, ACOs, hospitals, and community-based organizations are under pressure to effectively and efficiently manage patient transitions. This webinar will explore the ways in which people, process, and technology influence patient care and how organizations can optimize these areas to enhance communication, increase operational efficiency, and improve care coordination across the continuum.

Here’s MedData’s webinar from Tuesday titled “Best Practices for Increasing Patient Payments.” You can also check out the tweet recap here.

Announcements and Implementations

MultiCare Connected Care, a Washington-based commercial ACO, will implement Sandlot Connect from Sandlot Solutions to support its community-wide information gathering and exchange. Once up and running, the Clinically Integrated Network will connect employed and independent physicians who offer care to members of the ACO.

Nationwide cancer treatment service provider 21st Century Oncology selects Navigating Cancer’s patient engagement and management platform.

Regional HIE Georgia Health Connect joins the statewide Georgia Health Information Network, which itself made news last November when it connected to South Carolina’s SCHIEx statewide HIE.

Meditech, Merge, Kareo, Surgical Information Systems, and PointClickCare join the CommonWell Alliance health information exchange platform. With the new partners, CommonWell reports that its platform covers 70 percent of the acute care market and 20 percent of the ambulatory market. The organization named its first executive director, Jitin Asnaani, earlier this week.

Clinical trial patient recruitment company EPatientFinder joins the Greenway Health online marketplace of value-added sellers.

Telemedicine

San Francisco-based Spruce raises $15 million in Series A financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers with participation from Baseline Ventures, Cowboy Ventures, and Google Ventures. The company’s online dermatology app is available to patients in California, New York, Florida, and Pennsylvania. The new funds will no doubt enable it to scale to other states in the near future. It’s worth noting that the investment is Kleiner’s first since winning a high-profile sexual discrimination suit last week. As Fortune noted, “With this latest investment, Kleiner can show that it is returning to some semblance of business as usual after the court room drama of the past month.” The Spruce investment is not Kleiner’s first in a telemedicine company. The VC firm made similar commitments to Teladoc in 2011.

Delaware moves forward in its attempts to improve upon the “F” rating the American Telemedicine Association gave it last year for telemedicine services under private insurance coverage. A bill to expand such services is released by a State House Committee for a vote in the House of Representatives.

People

Charles Christian (St. Francis Hospital) joins the Indiana HIE as vice president of technology and engagement beginning May 1.

Research and Innovation

AHRQ releases a white paper on “Using Health Information Technology to Support Quality Improvement in Primary Care.”

Government and Politics

ONC reminds everyone that comments are nearly due on its Interoperability Roadmap. Is it wishful thinking to hope it will pen a final draft in time for HIMSS?

Other

Sad: Nine providers are among 23 defendants named in a 199-count indictment that alleges they participated in a massive Medicaid and Medicare fraud scheme in which they lured poor and homeless people to corrupt medical clinics for unnecessary tests with the promise of free footwear.

The New York Times publishes a piece highlighting the OpenNotes movement and calling for broader patient access to medical records data.

Sponsor Updates

• ADP AdvancedMD offers “4 Foolproof Tips to Collect More Patient Payments.”
• Culbert Healthcare Solutions offers “Improving Patient Satisfaction.”
• HX360 names Clockwise.MD as one of four finalists in its innovation competition at HIMSS15.
• Healthwise offers “Creating a Group Health Culture Where Shared Decision Making is the Norm.”
• The latest episode in Nordic’s Making the Cut video series covers preparing for cutover and the role of operational management.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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

News 3/31/15

Top News

The Senate delays review of the House-passed doc fix bill until after its two-week recess ends on April 13. The bill made news last week when the Congressional Budget Office reported that it would add $141 billion to the federal deficit. Rep. Renee Ellmers, RN (R-NC), who reintroduced the Flexibility in Health IT Reporting Act earlier this year, has argued that the bill will in fact create savings, while MGMA President and CEO Halee Fischer-Wright has urged members to write to their senators in favor of the bill, and expressed similar enthusiasm for the fix: “The House of Representatives has voted to remove the dark cloud of financial uncertainty over physician group practices. Medicare innovation has been hampered far too long by the SGR. The Senate is one vote away from returning stability to patients and physicians in Medicare. MGMA urges the Senate to immediately vote to repeal the SGR.”

Assuming the Senate picks up discussion on the 14th, HIMSS attendees can look forward to some SGR-flavored show-floor buzz during the last few days of the conference.

HIStalk Practice Announcements and Requests

I always enjoy chatting with healthcare innovation executive and strategist Justin Barnes, and my recent appearance on his “This Just In” podcast was no different. We had a good time talking about HIMSS15 expectations, plans, and parties. You can check out the full show here, and see his live broadcast from the HIMSS Venture+ Forum in Chicago on April 12 from 4-5:30 CT.

And speaking of parties at HIMSS, I may be ordering a pair of shoes for HIStalkapalooza from Volvorii, a Lithuania-based startup that has developed technology that can change a shoe’s color and pattern with the help of an app. (Thanks to @janicemccallum for alerting me to this potentially life-changing development.)

And speaking of HIStalkapalooza, we couldn’t put on such a fabulous party without help from our esteemed sponsors including Elsevier, Santa Rosa Holdings, Divurgent, Sagacious Consultants, Aventura, CommVault, Falcon Consulting Group, Greenway Health, PatientSafe Solutions, Sunquest, Thrasys, and Validic. Stay on top of the fun (and share your shoe selfies) via the #HIStalkapalooza hashtag on Twitter.

Webinars

March 31 (Tuesday) 1:00 ET. “Best Practices for Increasing Patient Collections.” Sponsored by MedData. Presenter: Jason Bird, director of client operations, MedData. Healthcare is perhaps the last major industry where the consumer does not generally have access to what they owe and how they can pay for their services. Collecting from patients is estimated to cost up to four times more than collecting from payers and patient pay responsibility is projected to climb to 50 percent of the healthcare dollar by the end of the decade. Learn how creating a consumer-focused culture, one that emphasizes patient satisfaction over collections, can streamline your revenue cycle process and directly impact your bottom line.

April 8 (Wednesday) noon ET. “Leveraging Evidence and Mobile Collaboration to Improve Patient Care Transitions.” Sponsored by Zynx Health. Presenter: Grant Campbell, MSN, RN, senior director of nursing strategy and informatics, Zynx Health. With mounting regulatory requirements focused on readmission prevention and the growing complexity of care delivery, ACOs, hospitals, and community-based organizations are under pressure to effectively and efficiently manage patient transitions. This webinar will explore the ways in which people, process, and technology influence patient care and how organizations can optimize these areas to enhance communication, increase operational efficiency, and improve care coordination across the continuum.

Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock

The New York Times profiles Iora Health, a chain of 11 primary care practices that seems to be on its way to mass replication of quality primary health care. It raised $28 million in its third round of venture capital financing,which it will use to open at least 10 more practices this year and refine its home-grown EHR.

The local business paper highlights Athenahealth’s new office in Austin, TX and the perks it will offer startups in the area via its More Disruption Please accelerator program.

Announcements and Implementations

Elmhurst Radiologists SC (IL) selects McKesson Business Performance Services for RCM and consulting services for its 12-physician practice.

Galen Healthcare Solutions becomes a VAR for the PinpointCare patient engagement, care coordination, and management platform. The ties between the companies are strong: Galen assisted in the development of the PinpointCare platform under the direction of former CEO Joel Splan, who as of last week moved from interim to permanent CEO of Pinpoint.

EClinicalWorks subsidiary Healow announces integration with several wearable and fitness tracker products.

Research and Innovation

A global survey of 3,000 patients finds that personal interaction (eye contact, time for discussion, etc.) is more essential to quality medical care than technology, though over half of respondents believe it has positively impacted their care experience.

A report on the adoption of healthcare IT in Canada finds that health information exchange is far behind where it needs to be, considering Canada’s “ambitious” efforts to implement EHRs across care settings. Just 12 percent of PCPs are notified electronically of patient interactions with hospitals, or send and receive e-referrals for specialist appointments. Less than a third have access to digital data about a patient who has been seen by a different health organization.

A TransUnion Healthcare survey finds that two-thirds of recent patients (with a heavy representation of younger ones) would avoid a provider that has experienced a data breach.

Government and Politics

HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell announces that HHS CTO Bryan Sivak will leave the department at the end of April.

A HHS audit finds that Maryland’s Health Connection insurance exchange – one of the first approved by the federal government – improperly billed the feds $28.4 million. Auditors believe the exchange used a 2013 and 2014 federal grant to cover the exchange’s costs when it should have used funds from a Medicaid program jointly financed by Maryland and the federal government. The audit recommends the state pay back the money, then reapply for the funds through the correct channels.

Telemedicine

This article profiles the BabyTalk program, a partnership between Stanford University and the Weingarten Children’s Center that uses telemedicine and iPads to care for young children with cochlear implants living in rural and underserved areas.

The Colorado Dept. of Health Care Policy and Financing’s Accountable Care Collaborative selects Community Health Center (CT) to serve as a model for the state’s new chronic disease pain management telehealth program. HCPF will sponsor 60 PCPs to serve as “telehealth pioneers,” giving them full access to CHC’s already successful Chronic Pain Telehealth Program, including video-conferencing tools and pain experts from the Integrative Pain Center of Arizona. 

Other

The City of Baltimore uses its Netsmart EHR to remind employees who are treating heroin addicts to test them for HIV and refer them to HIV care if positive.

An Australian physician cries foul when an EHR software glitch identifies his role as “meat inspector.” Australia’s national EHR project, launched in 2012 to the tune of $1 billion, continues to draw criticism for its poor ease of use and subsequently low adoption rates.

You know EHRs have gone mainstream when a consumer zine like Shape devotes several paragraphs to the topic. The headline is a bit misleading, though, as the article covers privacy risks associated with both EHRs and consumer Internet searches on sites like WebMD.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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

5 Questions with Karen Schogel, MD Health Informatics Director, Genesis Medical Associates

Karen Schogel, MD is health informatics director at Genesis Medical Associates (PA). It employs 200 clinical and ancillary staff to care for over 143,000 patients each year across the practices, hospitals, nursing homes, and personal care homes it serves. The organization, which uses the GE Centricity CPS 12.0.7 EHR platform, will attest to Stage 2 of Meaningful Use this year, and has been certified as a Level 3 Patient-Centered Medical Home. It launched Pittsburgh’s first Medicare ACO, Keystone Clinical Partners, late last year with nearby Preferred Primary Care Physicians.

How is the ACO with Preferred Primary Care Physicians coming along? Are patients receptive?
We have 2,500-plus patients enrolled and they are all receptive. Our board and committees (clinical, quality, and finance) are very active. All physicians are engaged.

How has IT played a part in getting the ACO up and running?
Utilizing our IT will make it possible for us to track patients by disease, results, and consults. We’re waiting for specific roster, cost, and quality data from Medicare.

Is GMA looking at participating in population health management programs, or eyeing any PHM-specific IT at the moment? If so, what other organizations are you working with on this?
Yes. Via MU2, we are reporting Immunization status to Pennsylvania. We are working with a local healthcare system, Allegheny Health Network, to become involved in their Tapestry HIE.

How has GMA staff reacted to Stage 3 Meaningful Use criteria? 
We have not yet attested for MU2 and are not aware of the MU3 suggested guidelines. Our biggest challenge remains the measure that relates to patient use of their data online. Each office is being creative to get patients enrolled on our portal, and to encourage them to then view their data. We are using eZaccess from Strategic Business Systems as our patient portal. To help meet MU2, we have begun working with Treatspace in two ways. First, we use their Patient Network product as a means to reach out to patients over a clinical social media-like platform. Secondly, and more importantly, we’re using Treatspace Referral Network as a tool to manage the referral process with specialists and diagnostic facilities. The management of referrals is critical to report on PCMH measures, and as a means to control costs. As a group, we have not tackled MU3 yet.

How have you seen GMA’s business model change to keep up with the rise in retail and urgent care clinics?
This is a big challenge for all primary care providers. Each office has expanded its available hours (i.e. early a.m., lunchtime or after hours). We have advertised the concept of “Call us First” via our website and social media channels to remind patients that PCP involvement in all healthcare encounters is pivotal to their overall health, and to remind patients that we understand all of their concerns, even the simplest. We will have our first smartphone app in June, which will provide secure texting for the purpose of same-day office scheduling.

Contacts

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

More news: HIStalk, HIStalk Connect.

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