Thursday, March 24, 2011

Weekend Document Imaging Notes from 3/21/11

Cerner announced that it won EHR contracts from:


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=-

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

This Week in Document Imaging 2/27/2011

- The University of California Davis announced that it has awarded contract to InterSystems Corp. of Massachusetts for integration services with its Epic EHR system.


- Epic claims that its EHR system at Kaiser Permanente securely manages the records of 8.6 million patients.

- Epic announced it won EHR contracts from:

o Sentara Health System in Norfolk, VA, 8 hospitals, for $273 million

o Franciscan Alliance, including all 13 hosptials and 165 practices for a total of $100 million.

- Allscripts announced it won EHR contract from St. Joseph’s Health System, which has locations in California, Texas and New Mexico.

- The Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), using it new enforcement power, slapped a $4.3 million penalty against Cignet Health of Maryland for failure to honor patients’ requests for access to their medical records, as part of the HIPAA law.
- A study conducted by DowJones VentureSource found that:

o venture capital investment in medical software rose from $387.5 million in 2009 to $460 million in 2010, representing a growth of 19%

o an estimated 77% of venture capitalists predict that investment in healthcare information technology will continue to increase this year

- Massachusetts General Hospital agreed to pay HHS a fine of $1 million to settle a HIPAA violation involving 192 patients.
- KLAS Research announced results of a survey of customer satisfaction of EHRs in the ambulatory market:

o Allscripts = 16%

o Epic = 12%

o NextGen = 10%

- Hewlett Packard claims it won managed print services contracts, including its printers and MFPs from the following healthcare vertical customers:

o Bayer Schering Pharma AG

o Centra Health

o Children’s Hospital of Boston

o Cigna

o Exempla Healthcare

o Health Net

o Humana

o San Juan Regional Medical Center
- The Medicare Fraud Strike Force reported that it arrested 111 people last month, for allegedly bilking Medicare out of $225 million in false claims.
- Adam Greene, Senior Health IT and Privacy Advisor in the Office of Civil Rights (OCR), part of the Department of Health & Human Services (HHS), announced the minimum fine for HIPAA violation will increase from $100 to $50,000. This means that the minimum fine for misplacing just one patient record could result in a $50K fine.
- eClinicalWorks won an EHR contract from BayCare, a community based healthcare system in Tampa, FL.
- McKesson won an EHR contract from Stanly Regional Medical Center of Albermarle, NC.
- CapSite survey finds that 23% of hospitals plan to use consulting help to get their clinical systems up and running
- Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health & Human Services, announced the following about the EHR vendors that have been certified as meeting federal “meaningful use” standards:

o 231 vendors now certified

o 66% of these have fewer than 50 employees

- David Blumenthal, National Coordinator for HITECH stimulus money announced:

o 21,300 healthcare providers have signed up to qualify

o $20 million has been paid out so far from Medicaid

o Medicare payments start in May, 2011
- PatientKeeper announced it won contract from Madison Memorial Hospital of Rexburg, Idaho.
- Cerner, maker of EHR systems, announced it is in negotiations to but the former Sam’s Town Casino complex in Kansas City.
- The Henry Ford Health System of Michigan announced that an employee lost a flash drive containing the records of 2,777 patients. This is their second HIPAA violation in less than a year.

- Allscripts partner, dbMotion, announced contracts with:

o Orlando Health

o University Hospitals of Cleveland

o Sharp Healthcare (which will connect to its Cerner system)

o Huntington Memorial Hospital of Pasadena, CA
- Siemens announced it won an EHR contract from Jefferson Regional Medical Center of Pennsylvania.

-=Greetings from Sandy Hook=-