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Archive for the ‘HIE’ Category
Headline Commentary Nov 9-22
- Posted November 22nd 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Very good article by Linda Peitzman, MD, CMO (Medical) of Wolters Kluwer Health on benefits of order sets. Article provides some detail on how to implement order sets to ensure everyone receives latest most current version. Note, hour long interview with Linda, Nancy Greengold (of Hearst Business Media and co-founder of Zynx Health), Sundeep Karnik (fmr VP Strategy Elsevier Health) and Gary Kennedy, CEO of Remedy MD can be found here: http://www.berkerynoyes.com/pages/innovations_in_evidence_based_medicine.aspx
InformationWeek profiles Transparent health Network, which is compiling prices for direct purchases of healthcare services by patients.
IL launches its hospital compare site. Article points out that public ratings rarely reflect quality of care.
Flybridge invests in woman-owned pilates equipment seller, which has sold over $500M in equip on QVC over the past 12 years.
WSJ writes about new x-discipline collaboration among research scientists. Key point relates to how these scientists are creating their own databases. No mention of third party publishers in this new world of data-driven research.
Workflow study that follows patient through hospital identifies areas for improvement.
Jane Sarasohn-Kahn reviews recent study by Buck Consultants on growth of wellness programs in a variety of countries and compares the priorities of each country’s wellness programs. US is only one where cost-saving is key objective.
Brian Ahier writes about recent developments in electronic healthcare records with a focus on Practice Fusion and GoogleHealth’s attempts to offer patient info that is consistent with physician info.
Matt Holt comments on Practice Fusion’s announcement of patient portal to coincide with their free EHR s/w.
John Moore of Chilmark Research, who moderated closing panel, recaps the day’s highlights. I’ll add that John did a very good job on the last panel, which included Esther Dyson, Steve Munini COO Dossia, Fred Smith of CDC, and George Willock, CEO of HealthString. Audience appreciated the focus on the patient (Adam Bosworth did focus on patient, too). I believe it was Esther who said: “the patient is the most important input into health decisions”. She mentioned the “quantified self” movement and Society for Participatory Medicine also got a plug. This was the most forward-looking session that addressed social media and the exploding amount of new data that will be available for analysis.
Very good video by Nobel laureate in biochemistry, Paul Nurse, who makes the point of the importance of recording healthcare outcomes and analyzing data to prevent misunderstandings based on false correlations. He uses the vaccination scare as an example.
DataONE (Data Observation Network for Earth) is one of two $20 million awards made this year as part of the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) DataNet program. The collaboration of universities and government agencies coalesced to address the mounting need for organizing and serving up vast amounts of highly diverse and inter-related but often incompatible scientific data. Resulting studies will range from research that illuminates fundamental environmental processes to identifying environmental problems and potential solutions.
Good balanced view of response to recent breast cancer screening guidelines.
Center for Ix Therapy, which was represented at our first Health Content07 conference, to shut down Nov 30, 2009. The Center was small organization with limited resources, and suffered from trying to define a space that already existed and was far more widespread and diverse than their definition of Ix Therapy.
Lois Wingerson writes about Healthcamp NYC and ePatients.
Wonder what Lexis and Westlaw will say about this?
HR and billing IT apps are helping hospitals save money that can be applied to clinical improvements.
Makes sense. FDA and other govt sources are not best at marketing and distribution. Everyday Health (Waterfront Media) can take on that role to extend reach of FDA info.
Latest version of Allscripts (version 11) was launched before it was debugged. HDM asks if Allscripts has overreached its grasp since its merger with Misys. Note also the prices for the KLAS reports: $980 for providers; $11,850 for others!
Grove, former CEO of Intel, promotes concept of new degree to help accelerate the cycle from medical research discoveries to mass production of new treatments. Essentially, Grove wants to combine skills of researchers and engineers to disrupt current cycle that can take many years from bench research to broad availability.
ModernMed, a concierge medical service in Milwaukee, launches with 2 primary care MDs. Founder believes healthcare costs can be controlled via effective primary care.
Physician posits that dependence on checklists may not be to the benefit of good patient care if insufficient attention to individual patients is paid.
CambridgeSoft, which provides IT solutions for pharma BI (esp R&D), receives funding from Health Evolution Partner (David Brailer’s PE company). CambridgeSoft is touting its SaaS solution for pharma & chemical research.
Gary slams the morning TV shows for their promotion of junk information about weight-loss and other health issues. I agree that for the most part, TV news health info is superficial and very seldom put in context. Wouldn’t it be great if the money were spent on disseminating helpful information and pointing people to more trustsworthy sources?
“The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services plans to boost data sharing among its various programs that have common functions using the Medicaid Information Technology Architecture (MITA) and the nationwide health information network (NHIN).” Sounds reasonable…
How much information is optimal to share between patients & doctors? Great comments here.
Good article that points out the importance of system change (behavior change) for checklists and the like to be effective.
Article makes the point that it’s great that gov’t agencies are providing more open data, but that data needs to be put in context and displayed in an engaging manner to really have full impact. And that, dear publishers, is what you should be doing…
Another outstanding post by DC patient, who writes that een though she is an engaged patient, she never would have thought to file reports of adverse effects (AE) via FDA’s MedWatch. Her comments make it pretty clear that the MedWatch channel is not effective for monitoring Rx AEs. Patients consider many factors before they single out any particular cause.
Excellent round-up of Day 1 of FDA hearings on social media use by Pharma.
Another story on the funding for Caring.com which recently acquired the Gilbert Guide.
CVS sees value in studying interaction between genes and medication for its PBM business and for its end-customers.
Google’s proposed ad format for Pharma ads. Presented at FDA’s hearing on social media.
Dr. Pauline Chen’s column about the decline in # docs who want to go into primary care. In large part, it’s due to large number of routine cases they deal with and the amount of paperwork and coordination required. Of course, pay is an issue too. This ties with articles I’ve published about the commodization of routine health care enabled by health IT. Programming routine tasks and allowing nurses and other clinicians to take over these tasks should relieve primary care physicians of the “burden” of routine tasks.
Forrester’s CEO on how old media needs to reinvent itself for digital world where customers decide what is valuable.
Nice rundown of vetted sources of online health information from medical librarians.
Explorys, a start-up search engine, partners with Cleveland Clinic to develop search/analytics tool for patient records.
David Blumenthal’s latest statement on goals of the ONC for interoperability of electronic health records.
Chris Truelove’s review of 1st morning of #FDASM
linking patient data and related information
Very good article and great comments on hurdles that impede implementation of electronic health records/electronic medical records.
Live webcast of FDA’s hearing on use of Internet and Social Media Tools by FDA-regulated Medical Products, Nov. 12-13. Much anticipated meeting on topic of use of online media by Pharma and other FDA-regulated companies.
Geonetric survey lists top objectives of patient portals created by hospitals.
More outlets for distributing health and fitness gear as focus on wellness and prevention increases.
Pretty interesting application. Not as far-fetched as it seems.
No matter the outcome on ONC pronouncements about meaningful use, CCHIT, the certifying board for EMR/EHR systems, is continuing to play its previous role. CCHIT describes itself as a “community” and believes they offer meaningful services to small hospitals and group practices.
Lots of info on various IT standards for EMR/EHRs
Comments on Erik Engstrom’s new position as CEO of parent company Reed Elsevier. Engstrom has been CEO of Elsevier, the STM group of RE, for some time. Smart and analytical, I think he’s a good choice.
CareMedic, a Florida revenue cycle management (RCM) company, to be acquired by UnitedHealth’s Ingenix group. Ingenix now has near end-to-end platform for managing every step of the revenue cycle, from patient registration to reimbursement.
Well, even though someone’s gotta pay for the production and dissemination of information, I don’t like this alliance and don’t believe AAFP can be objective in its research on effect of sugary soft drinks if Coke is the sponsor.
WaPo on how some people may overreact to info they find on online health sites. Writer overreacts a bit herself in implying that online resources shouldn’t be used to help diagnose one’s condition. Agree that health literacy is needed; that is, consumers need better training to vet health resources. But, we’ll have hypochondriacs in the real and virtual worlds. Not everyone will gain the same benefits from online health resources.
Google now incorporating dat aon flu shot availability and mashing it up with Google Maps to illustrate where flu shots are currently available. Note, Google is compiling info provided by clinics. More proof positive that Goog is a content publisher.
SDI Health, a PA company that provides healthcare data analytics services, receives funding from Tailwind Capital.
FastIgnite site offers tools for start-up companies to calculate pre-money valuation, vesting, and more.
Article on lack of transparency in reporting health research and health statistics.
CareFocus, parat of the Clinical Xpert suite of CDS workflow solutions from Thomson Reuters (fmly Mercury MD) extends functionality of product line.
Narrated slide slow illustrating new features of reports on Patients Like Me. Impressive.
Dr. Danny Sands on why he believes in participatory medicine and informed patients.
PhRMA proposes methods for verifying FDA-approved data in health info provided to consumers. FDA logo on sites?
Good concise review of Merck Manual Professional Ed. for iPhone
Excellent slide deck that describes influence of social media in healthcare: pharma, med school, epatients, doctors, nurses.
Describes use of mobile devices to monitor steadiness of eldery to prevent falls. Good descriptions of how data from monitoring devices can be used in research to vastly improved current snapshot approach of medical research.
Focus on shortage of primary care doc and how nurses will take on more resposibility. Agree, but shortage isn’t the source of problem. Rather, commoditization of basic medical care & procedures due to digitization of health care info is source of change. See piece on “heatlh content is rapidly becoming a commoditiy” in my blog at Health Content Advisors.
Merck offers iPhone app that allows chemo patients to track symptons, etc.
Sermo creates community on practice management topics for docs to share info about healthIT and the business issues of running a practice. There are even CME activities with 8 module curriculum titled: The New Business of Medicine.
Chief scientist at Endeca, a specialist in faceted search, joins Google.
Microsoft will launch a video web series on health IT beginning Nov 11, 2009.
Review of data.gov with emphasis on healthcare data.
Long interview with David Brailer, now a PE exec, fmly Director ONC.
Emap titles Health Servie Journal and Nursing Times partners with Doctors.net.uk to share content and conduct research.
Anne Woods promoted to CNO (Chief Nursing Officer) at WK Health. She’s responsible for nursing strategy across Medical Research & journals publishing businesses.
Hope Leman’s interview w/ John Sharp of Cleveland Clinic.
Headline Commentary Sept 8-Sept 13
- Posted September 13th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Richard Boulderstone chairs global committee (with members from 50 countries) to provide access to scientific information through WorldWideScience.org.
Demand for patient advocates is on the rise. Clear indication that our healthcare system is not consumer-focused, since it takes a specialist to sort through the choices.
RWJF rebuts comments about high health care costs being a direct function of poverty. Issue is far more complex and poverty only explains a small portion.
JBat coos over DigitalGlobe, which takes satellite pictures of the entire earth and sells commercially (and esp. to govt.).
Alphabet soup of health IT standards described in this article. Although technical, it includes some very important points about data standards that allow interoperability.
Harvard drops its earlier policy to require med school students to filter media communications through Harvard’s communications office. Students are working with admin. to establish guidelines to protect patient confidentiality.
New study indicates ghostwriting prevalent even in top journals. Systems for requiring transparency in reporting relationships between industry and the research it funds are required if trust in scholarly medical publishing is to remain. Industry funding is needed, but researchers and other readers need to know who funded the research.
Since parting ways with Sermo earlier this year, AMA is forging ahead on its own in social media.
Dr. Kent Bottles, who heads the Institute for Clinical Systems Improvement (CSI), writes on how fear motivates and why fear tactics have become so prevalent in our current political environment. All in relation to health care reform.
Study compares official gov’t data on hospital quality against US News & World Report hospital rankings and finds that hospitals w/ best outcomes don’t correspond to US New’s rankings.
EBSCO opens up a sliver of its health info to the world for H1N1 info.
Joint Commission (JCAHO) is changing procedures for surveying hospitals that comprise a hospital system. In short, hospitals systems will be surveyed concurrently.
Harold Miller outlines critical payment reforms needed to put US healthcare system on track.
Logical Images renames its consumer website for skin health and wellness to Skinsight.com (fmly visualdxhealth.com)
More evidence of trend toward increased mergers among hospitals and physician groups.
Health Matrix, a health info company that provides drug info, licenses the GetFugu mobile platform to enhance access to its health info for professionals and consumers.
Retail clinics like CVS MinuteClinics expand their services to include treating chronic diseases such as asthma. Driver of expansion=need for more consistent revenue.
Burst Media, an ad network located in Burlington, MA, announces new Health & Wellness vertical that includes Healthguru.com. Burst previously had Wellness vertical; not sure if this replaces it.
Indepth article on “infodemiology”, a term to describe analyzing online data to extract intelligence on public health trends. I like the term & used it at last year’s Health Content event.
Details on Brill’s Journalism Online’s business model for paid access to online news.
Great list of data content built on open government data. I’ll check out Govpulse, which article says turns Federal Register into something more useful (sorted and searchable by dept and geography).
Interesting repositioning of the Economist & new ad campaign in UK.
Nice opinion piece that focuses on issue of improved evidence base for medical care. To those that oppose evidence-based medicine, my comment is: “do you prefer the opposite?” As this article points out, patients don’t know that half of treatment is not based on objective scientific research.
Nice thorough review of reference content currently available via Google Health. Google’s strategy toward content in GHealth still remains murky.
New site from FDA/USDA provides a central place to find info on food safety, recalls, etc.
Dr. Susan Love is building “an army of women” one million strong to serve as universe to be tapped for medical research/clinical trials. To date, site has 300,000. Dr. Love’s model also represents the new model for publishing: bringing parties together to faciliate transactions as well as exchange information.
List of lists for twitter feeds that cover women’s health. 10 lists in total. mostly good.
Ohio State School of Medicine has developed iPod Touch & iPhone apps for medical students.
This brings back old memories. Superior Capital, a MI PE company, buys National Archive Publishing, which was spun off from UMI/ProQuest (x years ago). National Archive includes XanEdu, the coursepack group, and microfilm, the original UMI product line.
Excellent brief article with link to slide presentation on ebooks. Note the comment about mobile being the fastest growing platform for non-US sales. Good comments on pricing and revenue models, too.
pMDsoft, “an elegant EMR front-end” announces interfaces with additional EMR, EHR and other health IT systems.
Psychiatrist Daniel Carlat skewers Schering-Plough for its marketing practices for its new Saphris antipsychotic drug. Dr. Carlat lists the compensation offered to him for promoting Saphris.
Information Week brief article on premilinary certification for health IT by CCHIT, in advance of full requirements for meaningful use (MU) from ONC by year-end.
Some good examples of value pricing (or at least new types of pricing) for healthcare.
Written by a designer, but article homes in on the business models for ebooks.
HITECH Act waters down the requirements for CPOE in its meaningful use (MU) definition.
CMS’ guidance pertains to states and HIEs.
Describes Epothecary system that uses bar codes & cell phones to authenticate Rx medications. Proposed usage in developing countries.
FDA launches real-time reporting of food safety issues by manufacturers & other industry players.
Insufficient labeling and regulation of vitamins and supplements contribute to serious side-effects of OTC supplements. Article incluees excellent list of resources for researching supplements.
Pharmavite, mfr of Nature Made vitamins & supplements, to offer vitaminID program to consumers. VitaminID provides individualized vitamin/supplement programs for consumers via a website enabled for ecommerce (of course). Newsletters & online chat with a dietician are included.
Three HIEs in Ohio and Indiana collaborate to increase interconnectivity.
Guardian lists top 100 tech media companies in UK.
Growing brouhaha in medical journal policies with JAMA arguing that writers have no right to comment on articles in any forum except through JAMA letters to the editor. Demonstrates how isolated medical journal publishers are from realities of social media and the influence of online communication.
A nice post that provides list of online anatomy resources. Good to find another medical librarian on Twitter.
Requirement that clinical trials be registered upon inception to ensure that all results are reported (not just positive results) has been largely ingnored according to this article.
David Rothman reviews new Gilbane Group report on ebooks.
Or, why publishers (content companies) should subsidize the costs of the reader! Razor/razor blades analogy anyone? Problem is that publishers are still resistant to e-books.
AHRQ is in process of releasing version 1.0 (from beta) of Common Formats for submitting patient safety information.
Google does analytics. Need to check it out in more detail, but this furthers Google’s expansion into publishing.
LEO Pharma, a privately-held pharma company specializing in dermatology & critical care will acquire Peplin, a public Australian company fo US$287.5 million in cash.
John Halamka’s recommended cool community hospital info sites: good examples of aggregating and displaying information.
Response to Ignagni’s editorial in NEJM, which expresses why health insurers are against a public plan.
Article dissects US News & World Report’s hospital rankings to performance reported in govt statistics and finds that US News’ rankings are based on handling of complex or unusual care. Comment: current state of ratings and rankings for hospitals and doctors are not very helpful in guiding consumer decisions in choosing providers.
Emdeon Delivers RCM Efficiency and Gathers Intelligence
- Posted August 13th 2009
- Comment (1)
- by Janice
The healthcare debate tends to focus on, well, healthcare—interactions between doctors and patients. Obama has recently tried to reposition healthcare reform as “health insurance reform”. But, given the realities of where the biggest inefficiencies exist, perhaps the focus should be on health insurance payment processing reform. Emdeon, which went public Wednesday, August 12, estimates that about 17% of our total healthcare expenditures in 2008, or $360 billion, is spent on administrative costs. Further, they estimate that $150 billion of the $360 billion is spent by payers and providers on billing and insurance claims processing. This segment is referred to as revenue cycle management or RCM. Core RCM services involve:
o Verifying eligibility ahead of time
o Submitting claims to clearinghouse according to each payer’s requirements
o Tracking claims in process and fixing denied claims
o Handling payment from payer to provider
o Sending explanation of benefits (EOB) to patients
o Submitting secondary claims if appropriate.
With many providers still using outdated paper processing and limited-functionality automated processes, there is much room for improvement and cost savings in this market.
Emdeon provides services to help medical providers, payers and pharmacy benefits managers (PBMs). Their largest segment is medical providers (hospitals and medical practices), where they supply revenue cycle management (RCM) services and patient billing statement services and had 2008 revenues of $444.8 million in this segment, of which $144.9 derived from RCM and $266.2 from patient statement production and mailing (total 2008 Emdeon revenue: $853.6 million). Emdeon processed over 4 billion health-related transactions in the US in 2008 and accounts for almost ½ of all such transactions. As the largest provider of RCM services, Emdeon’s stock price represents to a large degree the overall market’s sentiment of this segment. Emdeon priced its IPO at the top of the planned range at $15.50 and the stock (NYSE: EM) is up 11.3% as of late-afternoon today (Thursday) at $17.25. A good, if not great, reception.
In its registration statement (Form 424B4) Emdeon describes the fragmented provider landscape (see p. 84) that it says has “historically under-invested in administrative and clinical systems”, in part because of the 560,000 office-based doctors, approximately 74% of which are in small practices with six or fewer physicians. Even these small practices may have relationships with over 50 individual payers. These small to mid-sized practices need RCM solutions that don’t require substantial investment in IT knowledge or equipment.
The market for RCM solutions is fragmented, too. Emdeon has the largest share and there are a handful of other smaller RCM vendors with comparable (or better) claims processing features. But there is also a large group of small billing management companies that either specialize in a type of provider (e.g., emergency care - see recent story about HRA) or focus on a region.
The RCM segment of healthcare has been receiving substantial attention from investors, large consulting companies, and big health IT vendors that recognize the opportunities that exist to improve efficiency in medical billing and related administrative functions. We anticipate accelerated activity in this segment, with both horizontal and vertical consolidation’s occurring. We’ll continue to post updates and commentary about the RCM segment and adjacent segments on this blog.
And for those who think that we’re veering away from health content with this post, let me leave you with this outtake from Emdeon’s Prospectus:
“Our access to vast amounts of healthcare data positions us to develop business intelligence solutions that provide our customers with valuable information, reporting capabilities and related data analytics to support our customers’ core business decision making.”
Health data analytics reside at the pinnacle of our definition of health content!
Follow me on Twitter @janicemccallum
Headline Commentary June 8 - 18
- Posted June 18th 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Roni Zeiger, MD, product manager of Google Health offers a thoughtful & sensible response to questions about patient involvement in medical decisions. I agree with his argument that for standard, time-tested, well understood treatments, the “paternalistic” system works well. I’d go further to say that these are the types of treatments that can more easily be captured in computerized clinical decision support systems and don’t require the expertise of an MD in most cases. Minute Clinics and the like are proving this point. Order sets are followed by nurse practitioners or phys. asisstants. Zeiger goes on to say that in other cases, where multiple courses of treatment are potentially helpful, we need to work on educating patients to ask about the risks and potential outcomes of each treatment. This isn’t an easy task. Zeiger recommends organizing data to help explain options to patients. I second that!
Esther Dyson on the importance of genetic research, includes transcript and video.
Carol Diamond & Josh Lemieux write about the over-emphasis on technology and not the desired outcome of better healthcare through the use of technology. Good article.
I think they mean “mnemonic” not pneumonic! Articles lays out mnemonic checklist for effective patient discharge information that is in compliance with JCAHO guidelines.
John Halamka’s post on the Meaningful Use definitions presented at today’s HIT Policy committee meeting. Links to the matrix and complete slides included.
In fact, The Economist benefited by refusing to give its content away on the Web. Audience for the Economist is smaller than that of Time or Newsweek because of its higher quality global analysis focus (remember that People magazine has the highest circulation). Added analysis in Economist differentiates it from commodity news articles that just summarize week’s news stories.
Eli Lilly solicits submissions from external institutiions to submit proprietary compounds for potential screening (thus alleviating the need to discover new compounds themselves).
Full text of article referenced earlier. Provided doctors follow accepted clinical guidelines and fall below average error rates, this model (PROMETHEUS) proposes a risk-adjusted payment model.
Detailed matrix of Meaningful Use (MU) priorities, objectives,and measures. Contrary to my first reaction, based on less detail, evidence-based content and patient education information do figure into some of the priorities. Thank goodness!
Initial recommendations includes 22 objectives, but no official definition of meaningful use. Note, incorporating access to medical research info or existing clinical decision support systems is not among the objectives. Too much focus on technology, barely any focus on research content!
Even with deadline >4 years away, experts at recent Healthcare Financial Mgmt Association meeting recommend that hospitals begin planning immediately.
WaPo covers some recent social media ad campaigns by Pharma.
Abstract of article in Health Affairs that proposes an evidence-based model for physician reimbursement.
Thomson Reuters offers special edition of ISI WoK to developing countries in partnership with Reseach4Life.
ACS Journals to publish in new format with 2 pages of content on each printed page–to save money & space. Results from move to online usage for most readers.
Yahoo adds 5 new papers, even in face of possible shutdown of HotJobs, which is a major source of job classified rev. for consortium papers.
GE and IBM are using financing to their advantage to reel in new prospects for their EHR systems. In this case, GE’s Centricity.
Interesting post that provides insight into pharma marketing practices and suggests that physician & patient education advocates learn from some of the practices of pharma in getting out their message.
Tom Davenport on why user-generated content must be considered a supplement, not a replacement, for authoritative content in healthcare. An important addition, IX therapy as it now is practiced by Healthwise & Center for IX Therapy represents a very small slice of authoritative medical and healthcare content. There is more than one source beside Healthwise.
Person who stole patient record information at Cedars Sinai Medical in LA & used info to defraud insurance companies sentenced to 4yrs 8 mos. in prison.
WSJ writes about how medical education might be affected by health reform. Important topic, especially continuing medical education (CME).
Experiment shows that author pays model could lead to inappropriate acceptances of papers. In this case, a computer generated article was accepted for publication by an open access/author pays publisher.
NYTimes’ About.com increasingly uses celebrity “expert authors’ to drive usage. Celebrities receive free exposure, not payments.
Forbes on Obama’s speech to AMA & the reaction.
TechWeb, publisher of InformationWeek and related pubs, reorganizes around verticals and shifts execs. I am a loyal reader of InformationWeek, but I marvel at how often the names on the masthead change.
Ascend Media, fmly owned by PE companies CCMP and VSS & mgmt, now owned by lenders, is for sale. Assets include B2B magazines for medical imagin, hearing, respiratory care, PT, plastic surgery & other professionals, as well as event media and medical education products. Drop in pharma advertising likely a major driver for declines in sales for all properties.
Zix Corp is seeking buyer for its PocketScript payer-sponsored eprescribing business, which had sales of $1million in Q1 2009.
Not surprisingly, AHA is against cutting payments to hospitals, esp. before coverage is expanded to more uninsured.
From Obama’s speech to AMA: talk of the additional $313 in healthcare savings to help pay for costs of reform. MedPage Today offers good coverage of the entire speech.
HITSP, a public/private partnership that works on interoperability of EHRs in US, has begun work to identify standards to support “core research data element exchange”.
Hanekamp’s site,myfitbrain.com, provides resources that exercise & help retain cognitive abilities in older adults.
WSJ speaks with David Blumentional, head of ONC. “There’s no way to transform the healthcare system without information technology.”
Andrew Spong, fmly with Wiley, launches his first workshop for STM publishers on social media.
HealthLeaders publishes data from Thomson Reuters on hospital expenses per adjusted discharge for 2008 and 2005.
Good piece on uses of Twitter and some companies to watch that are adding value to Twitter.
John Mack offers addt’l insight into FDA warning letters to pharma about paid search ads.
Excellent recap with lots of links of MarketingProfs B2B Forum held last week (June 8-9) in Boston.
Write-up of last week’s (June 11-12,2009) Games for Health conference in Boston.
Summary of Lois Capps’ remarks at Avalere Health’s recent “Raising the Bar: Payment Reform and CardioVascular Disease” conference.
Headlines for Mar 16-23
- Posted March 23rd 2009
- Comments (0)
- by Janice
Notes from Conference Board’s event on Employee Health in San Diego, Mar 09. See additional related posts via this post. Addressess incentives for healthy behavior.
Dr. David Blumental named national coordinator for Health IT. Blumenthal, a former Harvard Med School professor, was senior advisor to Obama during campaign, and has advised Ted Kennedy. Most recently, Blumenthal was director of Institute for Health Policy at Mass General/Partners HealthCare.
Press release includes link to bios of council members. “Recovery Act Allocates $1.1 Billion for Comparative Effectiveness Research The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services today announced the members of the Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research. Authorized by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), the new council will help coordinate research and guide investments in comparative effectiveness research funded by the Recovery Act.”
Link to Wolters Kluwer’s 2008 annual report site.
A biting indictment of current state EMRs for failing to consider workflow needs of clinicians by MedInformaticsMD on Health Care Renewal blog. Post includes a reading list of articles that offer reviews of various healthIT systems–mostly reviews that point out inadequacies of EMR systems to-date.
John Halamka, David Bates, and Blackford Middleton (from BIDMC & Partners HealthCare) respond to Groopman and Hartzband’s WSJ article on lack of effectiveness of implementing electronic medical records.
Article describes benefits of “information therapy”, which is defined as some combination of patient education and wellness programs, at Kaiser and other closed-system medical groups. Key point is that electronic health records and personal health records are far more useful (and will likely be adopted at faster rates) if information can be integrated and customized for each constituent group. More in this week’s lead article.
InstaMed, based in Philadelphia & Newport Beach, CA, announces further financing from Osage and Ashby. InstaMed is a leading provider of healthcare billing services and payment processing.
Generation Health, based in NJ, plans to expand Boston area presence. Generation is developing a PBM-like service for genetic testing.
3i invests 65M Euros in Labco, one of the largest medical diagnostic groups in Europe.
Reference to recent study that analyzes impact of incentives in ARRA (Stimulus Bill) on e-prescribing. Estimates usage will double in 5 years and will reduce adverse drug events.
Sekisui to pay “several billion yen” for Am. Diagnostica, which makes diagnostic drugs for hemophilia. Sekisui makes testing equip. for diagnosing thrombosis and measuring cholesterol.
Glaxo seeks to diversify into vaccines and consumer businesses in order to hedge against poor outlook for blockbuster drug development.
KLAS report describes why eClinicalWorks’ EMR software has been gaining traction faster than competitors. Price and appealing interface are key factors.
The Stimulus Bill (ARRA) raises issue of whether PHR providers (GoogleHealth and Microsoft HealthVault, in particular) need to sign business associate agreements with providers before they exchange data (to be consistent with HIPAA requirements which haven’t been applied specifically to PHR vendors before). Story points out that Mayo and Cleveland Clinic have yet to transfer any data to HealthVault and GoogleHealth respectively, even though they announced that they were working together over a year ago.
Missed this last month. Mike Cunnion, fmly of Health Talk, joins Medizine as President (Feb. 2009). Medizine is owned by VSS.
Headlines for Jan 12-18
- Posted January 18th 2009
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- by Janice
Bob Wachter on how insurers are getting into the act and promoting medical tourism for their insured patients.
Sage Publications signs with e-Healthcare Solutions for online advtsg of their medical journals.
Post isn’t health-focused, but anything Google does is relevant to publishing. Mentions Knol, which was seeded with paid medical contributors, and the fact that it hasn’t caught on.
Article highlights how increased focus on reporting errors leads to an initial jump in recorded errors (since many errors simply weren’t recorded previously). But, in reality, error rate may have declined.
Related to story earlier this week about settlement between UnitedHealth and NY atty general to fund development of independently produced database for calculating out-of-network reimbursement rates. UnitedHealth’s Ingenix group will pay $50M to help new db; Aetna will pay $20M to help fund the db.
Novartis Vaccines and Diagnostics wins $487 M contract to build facility to mfr cell-based vaccine.
David Williams on the Ingenix/UnitedHealth database settlement. Good points about wide variations in costs among providers.
Authors of Nudge describe Changemakers foundation & RWJF’s contest to find good ideas that encourage better health outcomes. Winners receive $5,000.
Chilmark reports on merger of two vendors in RHIO/HIE market that combined serve approx. 10% of US hospitals.
Links to presentations given at user meeting held in Scottsdale, Dec 3-5, 2008. Note, Patty Riskind, CEO of Patient Impact, one of our Innovator Showcase presentors, is included among the speakers.
More on the new Family Health History tool from Surgeon General.
My Family Health Portrait, an online health history info tool introduced in 2004, has been updated with new data stadards to facilitate info exchange with EMR and PHRs.
5-8% of Pfizer’s 10,000 research employees to be laid off by end of year.
UnitedHealth to pay $50M to finance development of new database of medical care costs by region. NY state atty general, Cuomo, had investigated the reimbursement rates in current Ingenix db (Ingenix is div. of UnitedHealth) and found that they underestimated prevailing costs by region. New db to be developed by a neutral university. According to Karen Ignani, CEO of trade group America’s Health Insurance Plans, new db will “enable customers, for the first time, to be able to know what doctors are charging for their services before they have an office visit”.
Neil Versel provides a list of the members of the leadership board for the National eHealth Collaborate, the successor to AHIC 2.0. Versel points out limited representation of nurses, and lack of medical librarians on the board.
J&J partners with Burnham Institute for Medical Research to have access to their high-throughput drug screening capability to help develop new inflamatory disease drugs.
Abry buys minority stake in Gateway EDI, a healthcare billing service compnay.
AMO, the leader in Lasik surgical devices, to be acquired by Abbott for $2.8B.
Kolltan, a spinoff from Yale Medical School, closes Series A fo over $35 M and names CEO. Kolltan is developing cancer treatments.
PHR Standards Big Step Forward
- Posted June 26th 2008
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- by Janice
While privacy concerns remain a deterrent to the adoption of personal healthcare records (PHRs), a lack of standards may be an even stronger one. Consumers don’t like to expend time and money on new technology that can’t easily synch up with other devices or content (certainly you remember “Betamax”?).
To help overcome both concerns, the Markle Foundation has just published a set of practices for handling PHR information in Connecting for Health Common Framework for Networked Personal Health Information. The framework was developed with a workgroup that included payers, providers, health IT vendors, healthcare publishers and advocates, physician organizations and policy analysts. The group includes Google Health, Microsoft, Intuit, WebMD, Revolution Health, Aetna, AARP, Kaiser Permanente, BCBS, Consumers Union, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Dossia, Ingenix, Cisco, and others. (See the complete list in the press release: www.connectingforhealth.org/news/pressrealease_062508.html.)
The publishing industry has a dismal record of developing standards that facilitate data exchange. That’s why it is important to note that the complete report includes seven sections on technology standards and requirements along with nine sections on policy issues. In consumer health care publishing, policymakers and technology companies play important roles, so perhaps they will push content providers to create and adopt standards. In the section of the report titled, An Architecture for Consumer Participation, the importance of portability and interoperability of the PHR is emphasized:
For PHRs to become more universally useful to consumers, they must provide a convenient and secure means of connecting to personal data and interactive services from multiple sources, and they must provide a convenient and secure means of moving the data out of the PHR as well, in whole or in part.[1]
At last year’s Health Content07 conference, there was a wide divergence of opinion about how long it will take before PHRs become mainstream. The Technology Overview section of the Markle report depicts how “health care entities and consumer technology innovators operate under different cultures that can clash without basic rules of the road“. The technology standards and policy principles laid out in the Connecting for Health framework are a first step towards overcoming the hurdles on the road to adoption of PHRs. However, according to recent research also reported by the Markle Foundation, only about 2.7 percent of the population they surveyed are using PHRs. The question of how quickly consumers will adopt PHRs is clearly still open for debate.
[1] Connecting for Health Common Framework for Networked Personal Health Information, The Markle Foundation, www.connectingforhealth.org/license.html, section CT7, An Architecture for Consumer Participation, page 4, June 2008.
Availity, Health Market Science Expand Licensing Agreement
- Posted April 22nd 2008
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- by Marji
Availity LLC, a health information exchange, and Health Market Science Inc., a manufacturer of health care provider reference data in the U.S. announced an expansion to their licensing agreement. The previous agreement called for licensed information for select states. This new agreement with provide Availity access to information about more than 4.5 million individual providers and one million provider organizations across the U.S.
Customers of the Availity Health Information Network (a secure web portal) can now easily search provider profiles in the HMS Provider Master File (which contains the listings of the providers and provider organizations). They can also segment the data by contact information, demographics, specialty, education and ethnicity. HMS data can be integrated with customers’ existing provider information.
It just makes sense for these companies to deepen their alliance. Availity will most definitely benefit by being able to provide customers a more robust database in which to find information they need–and find it quickly. Having such data integrated into their workflow will undoubtedly improve the efficiency of Availity customers–and this is functionality that has become a must-have for most information providers today.
This more robust offering may serve to attract more customers to Availity, especially those seeking a seamless solution. HMS may also be able to attract more customers as a result, as it gains more exposure in the marketplace with its position within Availity’s platform.
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