Free Healthcare IT Newsletter Want to receive the latest news on EMR, Meaningful Use, ARRA and Healthcare IT sent straight to your email? Get all the latest Health IT updates from Neil Versel for FREE!

All my HIMSS coverage in one place

The last of my 10 MedCity News stories from HIMSS14 has been posted. It’s a nice mix of news, features, analysis and commentary. Here are links to all of them, in chronological order.
NantHealth launches Clinical Operating System – biggest of big data startups – with $1B (Feb. 25)

Body + biology + behavior: Intel exec explains how technology is making N=1 care possible (Feb. 26)

Tavenner: 2014 is your last chance for a hardship exemption for Meaningful Use 2 (Feb. 27)

HIMSS crowd skeptical of promise for flexibility on MU2 hardship requests (Feb. 27)

Google Glass startup expecting third healthcare client in less than 6 months (Feb. 27)

DeSalvo: True EHR interoperability – and a national HIE – is possible by 2017 (Feb. 28)

DeSalvo meets and greets – briefly – while Tavenner keeps her distance at HIMSS (March 3)

HIMSS Intelligent Hospital tracks patients, pills and clinicians in completely connected loop (March 5)

Interoperability Showcase uses car crash to show how connected data really can improve patient care (March 5)

Athenahealth’s first inpatient product isn’t quite an EHR, but a ‘Trojan horse’ into hospitals (March 10)

 

March 12, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

CMS clarifies MU2 hardship exemptions

As I reported for MedCity News at HIMSS14 nearly two weeks ago, CMS Administrator Marilyn Tavenner announced plans to provide unspecified flexibility in claims for Meaningful Use Stage 2 hardship exemptions this year. Tavenner then left without speaking to the media.

The news left a lot of people scratching their heads and waiting for some details. Today, CMS issued some clarification, confirming that there would be exemptions for healthcare providers unable to have EHRs certified to 2014 standards in place for the 2014 reporting year. This is particularly important now because Medicare penalties for not achieving Meaningful Use take effect next year, but they are based on the 2014 reporting year (Oct. 1, 2013-Sept. 30, 2014 for hospitals, the 2014 calendar year for physicians and other individual “eligible providers.”)

The guidance confirms that CMS is aware of the problems caused by the slow pace of certification to the new, 2014 standards that Stage 2 requires. As of today, according to the ONC Certified Health IT Products List (CHPL), there are 3,736 ambulatory and 1,200 EHRs and EHR modules certified to 2011 standards, but just 899 total that meet 2014 certification.

Here’s the one-page CMS guidance for hospitals/critical access hospitals and the one for eligible providers.

March 11, 2014 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.

AdvancedMD sale to ADP shows new side of EMR consolidation

Here’s an interesting one from the world of mergers and acquisitions: Human resources and payroll services and firm Automatic Data Processing (ADP) announced Tuesday that it has purchased EMR and practice management systems vendor AdvancedMD for an undisclosed sum.

I’d say this is part of the expected consolidation that federally sanctioned certification was supposed to bring to the market, except that ADP’s only experience in healthcare to date has been in providing HR, payroll and benefits management services to approximately 13,500 physician practices. Those are the same types of services ADP offers to any business, so the AdvancedMD purchase represents uncharted territory for the company. ADP now bills itself as “uniquely positioned as an integrated, single-source provider of Medical Practice Optimization,” whatever that means.

Interestingly, I learned at HIMSS last week that at least a couple of new EMR vendors had spent tens thousands of dollars developing systems then getting products certified, but still hadn’t found or even looked very far for customers. They were at HIMSS to find marketing partners.

Right now, the EMR market doesn’t seem to be consolidating into the hands of a few, large vendors, but actually branching out. As of this evening, ONC’s Certified Health IT Products List includes 298 ambulatory systems and 129 inpatient products. That’s greater than 400  total, or about a third more than the last time I looked back in December. The market may actually be expanding faster than it’s consolidating. The ADP acquisition of AdvancedMD represents a different kind of consolidation, one with a company outside healthcare repositioning itself as a health IT vendor.

March 1, 2011 I Written By

I'm a freelance healthcare journalist, specializing in health IT, mobile health, healthcare quality fast $5000 loans-cash.net with bad credit, hospital/physician practice management and healthcare finance.