o Sharon Regional Health System of Ohio. Contract is $13 million over 5 years.
o Miami Children’s Hospital
o Sheridan Memorial Hospital of Wyoming for $9.8 million
HealthTexas gave out details on the install of its new EHR system:
o First 60 days average cost per physician of $32,409
o For entire year, average cost per physician of $46,659
o In-house staff spent an average of 134.2 hours per physician and $10,325 per physician during implementation
The HHS OCR (Health & Human Services division of Office of Civil Rights) is requesting $46.7 million in federal funding increase to accelerate its enforcement of HIPAA regulations on healthcare providers in the U.S. The increase includes the placement of a “Privacy Officer” in each of the OCR’s ten regional offices, to coordinate HIPAA data breach investigations. The agency predicts that it will need to investigate up to 20,000 breach reports per year.
Epic announced it won EHR contract from Cooper University Hospital of New Jersey.
Ponemon released data from survey of patients regarding their PHI (protected health information):
o 70% want control over their medical records
o 80% expect their healthcare provider to ensure privacy of their medical records
o 49% of patients who had their info exposed (HIPAA breach) took no new steps to protect themselves
o 50% did not report that theft of their medical info to police
43% did not want to make a “big deal out of it”
37% were afraid of being embarrassed
21% are afraid of loss of health insurance coverage
18% are afraid of lower credit score
o 55% are not familiar with new HIPAA regulations
o 79% are not aware of the creation of a national database of health information
Governor Brian Schweitzer of Montana is urging lawmakers in his state to reconsider their ruling which rejected the $35 million in HITECH Act funds for implementation of EHR systems.
Black Book Rankings gave out results of EHR survey:
o Top EHR for radiologists is MedInformatix of Los Angeles
o Top EHR for pathologists is PSA (a division of MED 3000) of South Carolina
o Top EHR for oncologists is MOSAIQ, from Elekta of Sweden
o Top EHR for cardiologists is MicroMD from Henry Schein Inc. of Ohio
CareLogic announced it won EHR contract from Pine Rest Christian Mental Health Services of Michigan.
Siemans announced it won a Soarian EHR contract from UMass Memorial Health Care of Massachusetts for $140 million
According to Kalorama Information, a total of $15.7 billion was spent on EHR systems in 2010.
U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse has introduced legislation to expand the types of doctors that can get HITECH funds to pay for EHR systems to now include:
o behavioral health
o mental health
o substance abuse treatment professionals and facilities.
According to research completed by Center for Studying Health System Change, some 16 million more people are expected to receive healthcare via Medicaid by 2019 under Obamacare, and that it predicts there will not be enough doctors to see all these patients in many areas.
Sage announced it won an EHR contract from United Medical Centers of Texas.
MedAssets announced that it has added biometric finger vein readers from PatientSecure to its GPO catalog.
HIPAA Breach: Health Net Inc. of Rancho Cordova, CA, announced that 9 hard drives from one of its servers went missing, potentially exposing PHI (protected health information) for over 1.9 million patients.
Scanning in healthcare vertical on the increase according to research conducted by Record Nations:
o Requirements for Medicaid payments have causing 22% increase in scanning
o Need to recover physical space caused 11% increase
o 8% growth in scanning documents from healthcare business that were closing due to law requiring retention of records for 7 years
o 4% growth caused by a desire to “go green”
A hospital in Chennai, India reporting that a computer virus entered its network and “wiped off voluminous medical records of the premier hospital that treats 15,000 patients a day”
Allscripts announced it is opening up development centers in Pune and Bangalore, India.
A lawsuit was filed against Walgreen’s by disgruntled customers in California, trying to prevent the pharmacy chain from selling customer data. Without identifying individuals, Walgreen sells data that includes patient’s sex, age, state, and name of drug. The data is sold to pharmaceutical manufacturers.
Golden Gate Capital of San Francisco has made an unsolicited offer to buy Lawson Software of Minnesota for $1.8 billion. Lawson financial software for healthcare vertical offers:
o Automated data-collection and management tasks
o Budget Preparation & Reporting
o Grant Management
o Compliance Control Manager
o Accounts Payable & Accounts Receivable
o Financial Reporting Self-Service
o General Ledger
-=Greetings from Sandy Hook=-
