Top News
Nuance Communications reports Q4 results: revenue up less than 1 percent, adjusted EPS $0.30 vs. $0.51. Unenthusiastic company guidance sent shares plummeting 18 percent Tuesday; they’ve sunk 41 percent in the past year. Above is the one-year price graph of NUAN (blue) vs. the Nasdaq (red).
Reader Comments
From BR549: “Re: Health Care DataWorks. Laid off 35 percent of its workforce last Wednesday.” HCD CEO Jason Buskirk provided this response to our inquiries: “We do not share specific statistics, but the percentage that you quote is incorrect. Based on feedback from our clients, we are realigning the organization to be laser focused on our software, KnowledgeEdge. HCD will continue to hire the best and brightest technical talent in the industry.” Buskirk was announced as CEO on September 18, replacing founder Herb Smaltz, who had held the CEO position since 2008 but remains on the company’s board.
From TomT: “Re: holiday wishes. It’s that time of year when we should take a moment to give thanks for for all 141,000 new ICD-10 codes coming our way. I hope you and the rest of the HIStalk gang avoid any of these turkey-related injuries and have a wonderful Thanksgiving.” Yet another reason to buy the frozen Butterball. Many thanks to TomT and all the other readers who have sent us holiday greetings!
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Welcome to new HIStalk Platinum Sponsor Medfusion. The Cary, NC-based company enhances the patient-provider relationship by providing new ways for them to communicate, improving patient engagement and allowing providers to meet MU Stage 2 requirements. The former Intuit Health’s patient portal allows providers to spend more time on patients through the efficiencies gained from online messaging, appointment scheduling, bill payment, payment plans, refill management, and results sharing. Medfusion’s portal also integrates with popular EHRs and provides patients with mobile access. See for yourself – you can test drive the patient portal instantly with no signup required just like I did. I interviewed founder Steve Malik, who bought the company back from Intuit in August 2013. Thanks to Medfusion for supporting HIStalk.
I’ll have details about our HIMSS activities (including HIStalkapalooza) after New Year’s, but here’s something fun: we’ll be having an HIStalk sponsor networking reception Sunday evening, February 23 from 6:30 until 8:30 (an easy walk from the HIMSS opening reception, which runs from 5:00 to 7:00). Sponsor executives always enjoy the chance to lay aside their competitive armor in renewing old acquaintances and making new ones in a relaxed setting, so this should be a fun evening in which business will be inevitably conducted as well. Lorre will be hosting and I’ll provide great food and drinks. Watch for your invitation.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Patient engagement and education provider PatientPoint completes the acquisition of publishing assets from American Hospitals Publishing Group International, a developer of customized patient guides and communication tools.
Genophen, a developer of a health management platform and clinical support tool, raises $2 million in a third round of funding.
Streamline Health Solutions prices its secondary stock offering of 3 million shares at $6.50 per share for net proceeds of $17.1 million.
Cumberland Consulting Group acquires life sciences implementation firm Mindlance Life Sciences
PM/EMR vendor CureMD acquires medical billing company AviaraMD.
Sales
AtlantiCare (NJ) selects MedCurrent’s OrderRight Radiology Decision Support system, which will be integrated with AtlantiCare’s existing Cerner PowerChart platform.
Madera Community Hospital (CA) will implement Passive Incident Management software from RGP Healthcare.
UK Healthcare (KY) will implement medical image sharing services from lifeIMAGE.
Allina Health (MN) expands its use of MedAssets Contract and Episode Management solutions into outpatient settings.
Bone marrow donor center DKMS chooses registry software from Remedy Informatics.
People
Brigham and Women’s Health Care (MA) names Cedric J. Priebe, MD (Care New England Health System) CIO.
Michael Dal Bello, managing director of Emdeon’s parent company Blackstone Group, resigns from Emdeon’s board.
The Pennsylvania eHealth Partnership Authority appoints Michael Fiaschetti (Highmark) to its board.
Outpatient specialty care software vendor Net Health hires Mary Mieure (Greenway) as VP of training and implementation.
Announcements and Implementations
The Kansas HIN and the Lewis and Clark Information Exchange agree to connect their HIEs, allowing the networks to keep $1 million in federal funding.
Huntsman Cancer Institute (UT) deploys the NLP-based I2E software platform from Linguamatics to extract discrete data from unstructured texts in clinical notes.
ProHealth Care (WI) becomes the first healthcare system to use Epic’s Cogito data warehouse tool, which combines patient data from Epic with information from other EMRs and data sources.
Government and Politics
Several industry organizations ask the House Ways & Means and Senate Finance Committees to ensure that MU Stage 3 includes interoperability requirements for EHRs and remote patient monitoring systems.
Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin reprimands Health Access Commissioner Mark Larson for lying to state representative earlier this month when Larson was asked directly if the state’s insurance exchange had experienced any security breaches. Larson failed to disclose an October incident in which a user pulled up the personal information of someone else due to a reassigned username.
Seven Democratic senators call on the President to name a CEO of the Healthcare.gov website who would report directly to the White House instead of to HHS.
Innovation and Research
Researchers find that rural ED physicians are less likely to make medication administration errors when using telehealth technology to consult with specialists.
Other
The AHA urges CMS to ensure Medicare contractors and state Medicaid agencies begin end-to-end testing on ICD-10 by January in order to prepare for the October 1, 2014 deadline.
Epic will build two laboratory installations of its EpicCare EHR at Oregon Health & Science University for medical informatics and research purposes. On the research side, the University will have access to Epic’s source code.
Weird News Andy notes breaking news from Good Shepherd Medical Center (TX), where a male suspect is being held in the Tuesday morning stabbing death of a female nurse in the hospital’s ambulatory surgery center. Another employee and three visitors were also injured.
An Idaho state senator video chatting with her son on her iPhone on Face Time has a stroke, which her son notices from seeing her confusion and facial drooping . He rushes her to the hospital in time for speedy treatment and she’ll make a full recovery. She says, “I’ll always be a dedicated fan of the iPhone,” while her son adds, “If you have adults that live away, you need an iPhone for ‘em. I’m serious, that’s huge. … Seeing their face, you can actually see if something’s amiss.”
USA Today talks up the promise of analyzing large healthcare databases to its audience of hotel guests and airport travelers, although the article wanders around with a few unrelated facts and no real conclusion other than “it’s coming.” It did contain one interesting factoid: a study found that diabetic hospital readmissions weren’t dominated by older patients who had forgotten to inject their insulin, but rather young female diabetics who had intentionally skipped their dose trying to lose weight.
Sponsor Updates
Nuance Communications announces the general availability of Dragon Medical 360 l Network Edition 2.0, which allows clinicians to document using multiple devices and provides an accuracy level of 98 percent or higher out of the box.
E-MDs Solutions Series 8.0 achieves Complete EHR 2014 certification for Stage 1 and 2.
MModal integrates radiology report measurements from PACSGEAR’s ModLink with MModal Fluency for Imaging Reporting.
Merge Healthcare will showcase iConnect Access Version 5.0, its universal viewing and imagine sharing solution, at next week’s RSNA meeting in Chicago.
Iatric Systems announces that Meaningful Use Manager with Clinical Quality Measures Version 3.0 has earned ONC 2014 certification as an EHR Module.
Contacts
Mr. H, Inga, Dr. Jayne, Dr. Gregg, Lt. Dan, Dr. Travis, Lorre
More news: HIStalk Practice, HIStalk Connect.