Top News
CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner tells the House Ways and Means Committee on Tuesday that contractors for the HealthCare.gov website “have not met expectations” but that the troubles were being resolved and the overall program was working, albeit slower and less successfully than hoped.
The problem-plagued rollout of the insurance marketplace website suffered another hiccup Sunday when the data center for HealthCare.gov experienced a connectivity issue, causing the website to shut down for several hours.
Reader Comments
From Swoop: “Focus groups. I’m wondering if you would be able to recommend any market research/focus group companies in the HIT vertical?” Readers, do you have any recommendations?
From Cookie Monster: “Re: AHIMA. We all thought ICD-10 would be hottest topic here. So far, I think the hot topic is clinical documentation improvement.” Cookie Monster also shared that several vendors were showing mobile versions of their products; one she particularly liked was a mobile clinical documentation app from HUFF DRG Review. If you are at AHIMA, tell us the buzz.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Mr. H is busy with his day job this week, so I am flying solo. I have a feeling he’s a little behind on his email, too, so please be patient with him. If you have burning HIT issues to discuss in quick order, feel free to drop me a note. I especially love email that contains entertaining news, insightful commentary, and/or flattery.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Dell completes its $24.9 billion buyout by founder and CEO Michael Dell and the investment firm Silver Lake Partners. Michael Dell will own about three-quarters of the newly private company.
Alere turns in Q3 numbers: revenues up 9 percent; adjusted EPS of $0.59 vs. $0.43, beating analyst estimates. Net product and services revenue from Alere’s health information solutions segment fell less than 1 percent.
Kryon, a start-up focused on medial data analytics, closes $3 million in funding from Khosla Ventures.
Sales
A local newspaper reports that Highmark will replace the Allscripts system at West Penn Allegheny Health System with a $178.3 million Epic implementation. In 2011, West Penn Allegheny renewed a contract with Allscripts to provide its record system through 2018 for an undisclosed price; Highmark officials say they “reassessed” the contract after purchasing the hospital network in April. A West Penn Allegheny spokesperson added that the organization was “transitioning to Epic to meet the changing nature of our broader enterprise.”
Carilion Clinic (VA) selects Orion Health Rhapsody Integration Engine to connect its existing HIT infrastructure across 195 facilities.
Sinai Health System (IL) will implement Merge Healthcare’s VNA, radiology, cardiology, and imaging platform. Imaging Healthcare Specialists (CA) will also deploy Merge Healthcare solutions for RIS, PACS, VNA, and interoperability solutions.
Rush Health (IL) endorses the eClinicalWorks EHR solution for its 300 affiliated private physician members.
Prognosis announces several new customers including Rankin County Hospital (TX), Red Oak Medical Center (TX), Winkler County Memorial Hospital (TX), and three Jane Phillips Medical Center’s satellite hospitals in Oklahoma and Texas.
The VA Midwest Health Care Network selects Visage Imaging’s Visage 7 Enterprise Imaging Platform for diagnostic interpretation and referring physician image access.
Phelps County Regional Medical Center (MO) will implement standardized order sets from Motive Medical Intelligence.
Memorial Hermann Health System (TX) selects ClinIntell as it technology partner for ICD-10 physician education.
Emerson Hospital (MA) will replace its legacy surgical documentation system with Surgical Information Systems’ perioperative platform.
New York Methodist Hospital selects workforce management solutions from Kronos.
People
Telehealth solution provider AMC Health adds Hon S. Park, MD (Army Medical Department) as CMIO; J. Mark McConnell (Verizon) as SVP of sales, account management, and marketing; Joanne Russell (Optum) as VP of clinical operations; and, Frank Tucker (MicroHealth) as CIO consultant.
Mike Cromika, director of IT services at Baptist Healthcare and a HIMSS Kentucky Bluegrass chapter board member, died Monday at the age of 56. Condolences to his family.
Richard J. Gilfillan, MD, the former director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation, is named president and CEO of CHE Trinity Health.
Bruce Bagley, MD, interim president and CEO of the AAFP subsidiary TransforMED, assumes the role of president and CEO.
CynergisTek names David Holtzman (HHS/OCR) VP of privacy and security.
Announcements and Implementations
AHIMA presents Truman Medical Centers (MO) its Grace Award for its innovative approach to using health information management to deliver high quality healthcare.
Montefiore Medical Center (NY) and Streamline Health sign an exclusive 15-year licensing agreement enabling Streamline to commercialize Montefiore’s clinical analytics platform.
FirstHealth of the Carolinas goes live with Wellsoft’s EDIS at Montgomery Memorial Hospital (NC) and Moore Regional Hospital (NC).
The Great Lakes HIE and Michigan Health Connect collaborate to share medical records between their HIEs.
France’s Hôpital Européen implements the first ICU alarm management system in Europe using medical device connectivity technology from Capsule Tech.
Sutter Health (CA) announces it will go live with the ICD-10 code set on May 31, 2014, though it will not start submitting claims with ICD-10 codes until October.
Baylor Health Care System (TX) upgrades to Allscripts Sunrise Clinicals 6.1.
Government and Politics
A Government Accountability Office report finds a large increase in MU incentive payments made to eligible hospitals and EPs in 2012 compared to 2011. EHs and EPs were awarded $6.3 billion in Medicare EHR incentives in 2012, compared to $2.3 billion in 2011. The percentage of EHs awarded payments jumped from 16 percent in 2011 to 48 percent in 2012.
Technology
Park Place International announces its Secure Access and Mobility (SAM) solution, a desktop virtualization offering for Meditech hospitals with VMware Horizon View.
Other
An estimated 95 million US residents use mobile health applications, representing a 27 percent increase over last year.
Results from an ICD-10 HIMSS/WEDI pilot project indicate that healthcare coders were accurate only 63 percent of the time, on average, in their documentation from medical records. The study, which ran from April 2012 to August 2013, also found coders averaged two medical records per hour, compared to four per hour under ICD-9. Translation: there is still a lot of readiness work to be done.
Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta fires and sues its former corporate audit advisor for allegedly taking the hospital’s proprietary information, including PHI and license numbers of over 500 providers. Two days after announcing her resignation, Sharon McCray began emailing the proprietary information to her personal email account. When confronted, McCray stated the information was to be used “as backup records for her new employment with an unidentified employer to use as a reference.” Children’s fired McCray and has asked a federal judge to force her to return the information.
Sponsor Updates
Athenahealth will implement Safety Event Manager, a safety reporting solution from Quantros, allowing athenaClinical users to submit patient safety data as part of their EHR workflow to the federally sanctioned Quantros Patient Safety Center
Inc. names AirWatch, GetWellNetwork, HCI Group, Imprivata and iSirona to its Top 100 Job Creators list.
Black Book recognizes McKesson’s RelayHealth RCM as the top-ranked RCM, based on customer satisfaction.
SuccessEHS will integrate the DataMotion Direct secure messaging service into its EHR platform.
HIStalk sponsors named 2013 Top 100 EHR companies based on revenues include Allscripts, NextGen, eClinicalWorks, McKesson, Merge, Vitera, Greenway, Optum, T-System, Aprima, e-MDs, ADP AdvancedMD, Kareo, Wellsoft, RazorInsights and SimplifyMD.
The Drummond Group tests and certifies the Summit Express Connect interface engine from Summit Healthcare for MU Stage 2.
Nuance introduces enhancements to its Clintegrity 360 platform that integrates clinical documentation improvement and CAC into a single process.
HCS will showcase its Interactant platform at this week’s LeadingAge Annual Meeting & Expo in Dallas.
DVIDS highlights the Naval Health Clinic Hawaii online system, which uses RelayHealth software for messaging, appointment scheduling, and medication refills.
Business Cloud News features Inland Northwest Health Services in an article highlighting the growing use of cloud services in healthcare.
Access integrates support for the Wacom STU-530 and STU-430 Signature Pads into its electronic patient signature offering.
Bottomline Technologies releases its Logical Ink solution for the iPad.
Greenway Medical Technologies is named a finalist for the 2013 Intel Innovation Award in recognition of its PrimeMOBILE app for Windows 8.
In an interview, eClinicalWorks CEO Girish Navani shares various observations and predictions for the industry.
Contacts
Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis.
More News: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.