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Breaking news: Private-sector health groups agree to work with Obama

There’s some fairly significant news coming out of Washington tonight: A CNN Money report via Yahoo! says that six key private-sector health industry groups have agreed to participate in the Obama administration’s effort to reform healthcare by pledging to take $2 trillion in costs out of the system over the next 10 years.

“Six trade associations representing unions, hospitals, insurers and the drug industry have signed on to the commitment,” the story says. An Associated Press story says doctors are participating as well. Based on these stories, we can safely assume that coalition includes the AMA, AHA, AHIP, PhRMA and probably the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association and the Service Employees International Union.

We’ll know for sure Monday when representatives from the six participating groups join President Obama at a press conference.

CNN reports that Obama will make reference to the AHIP-backed ad campaign that torpedoed reform efforts during the Clinton administration. “It is a recognition that the fictional television couple, Harry and Louise, who became the iconic faces of those who opposed health care reform in the ’90s, desperately need health care reform in 2009. And so does America,” Obama reportedly will say Monday.

May 10, 2009 I Written By

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Halamka gives up on implantable PHRs

Dr. John Halamka, CIO of Harvard Medical School, has officially given up on the idea that people will want to carry their medical records on implanted RFID chips, Michael Millenson reports on The Health Care Blog. Halamka had a chip implanted in 2004, but doesn’t think the public will ever widely accept the technology.

So far, no PHR technology has been widely accepted, but that’s another story.

I’m sure this won’t stop Halamka from experimenting with technologies. He was just the second person to have his genome sequenced and published on the Internet.

Interestingly, the news comes one day after the ECRI Institute included RFID on its list of 10 technologies for hospital executives to watch this year. Of course, there is a difference between tagging assets or employee badges and surgically implanting chips in people’s arms.

May 6, 2009 I Written By

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Microsoft gives Telus exclusive HealthVault rights in Canada

Canadian telecommunications firm Telus has signed an exclusive deal with Microsoft to market the HealthVault platform in Canada. This marks the first expansion of HealthVault outside the U.S.

According to both companies, Telus is licensing HealthVault and will brand it in Canada as “Telus Health Space, powered by Microsoft HealthVault.” The Toronto-based telecom says in a press release that it will develop a consumer-focused service and Telus Health Space to organizations such as governments, health regions, hospitals, insurers and employers, but apparently not directly to consumers.

Telus says it will store all data in Canada. There has been some concern among Canadian companies in the past that using U.S.-based servers or databases for health information would make them subject to the USA Patriot Act and open them up to all sorts of reporting requirements and other bureaucratic hassles.

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Virginia gets $10 million ransom demand for data breach

From InformationWeek via the Health Care Law Blog comes news that the Virginia Department of Health Professions has received a $10 million ransom demand for 8.3 million patient records and 35.6 million prescription records.

Let me repeat: someone allegedly is extorting the State of Virginia for $10 million over a security breach involving millions of electronic health records.

I’d write more, but it seems like Bob Coffield has covered the issue pretty comprehensively on the Health Care Law Blog. He cites the alleged ransom note, Virginia’s response and a very interesting blog post about HIPAA notification responsibilities from John Moore of Chilmark Research.

May 5, 2009 I Written By

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Final numbers from HIMSS

Today, HIMSS released its final registration figures from last month’s annual conference in Chicago:

27,429 total registrants
6% decrease from the 29,177 at HIMSS08 in Orlando
13% increase over the 24,202 at HIMSS07 in New Orleans

12,564 total professional registrants
2.5% decrease from the 12,867 at HIMSS08
19% increase over the 10,523 at HIMSS07

Registration included:
1,388 clinicians
4,567 C-Suite attendees
4,044 healthcare facilities

14% of attendees were not based in the U.S.
38% of attendees were decision makers
37% of attendees were decision influencers
26% of attendees indicated this was their first HIMSS conference

907 exhibiting companies and organizations
4% decrease from the 942 at HIMSS08
2% increase over the 889 at HIMSS07

Obviously, multiple, competing factors were in play here. Clearly, the recession has had an impact on corporate travel for everyone. On the other hand, the fact that health IT is getting a net $19.2 billion from the economic stimulus legislation has energized this whole sector.

Chicago was a change from the normal Sun Belt cities that HIMSS meets in. This year’s conference was moved from February to April to account for the weather, and it still snowed during first day of the conference. Yet, people still got to town. The past two years, snowstorms in the Northeast and Midwest played havoc with airline schedules and prevented some people from making it to HIMSS.

Two years ago, New Orleans had its own, unique challenges, thanks to Hurricane Katrina. By February 2007, hotel capacity had rebounded to close to what it was before the 2005 storm, but the city’s population had not. There were fewer flights available to the Crescent City, and, hampered by a labor shortage, hotel services were limited and restaurant waits seemed interminable at times. I imagine some people were scared away by reports of violent crimes against tourists, too.

This came after HIMSS06 drew a then-record 26,000 people to San Diego, creating a serious shortage of hotel rooms. Some people were forced to stay as far away as La Jolla, a good 45 minutes from downtown during rush hour. From what I understand, HIMSS will not be going back to San Diego before that city expands its convention center next decade and, more importantly, builds more downtown hotels.

Next year’s meeting is in Atlanta, which has a large convention center, plenty of flights and thousands of rooms in all price categories, but severe traffic problems and, in my opinion, not enough to do downtown after hours. I guess there is no such thing as a perfect venue.

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More thoughts on ‘meaningful use’

I’m looking back over my notes from last month’s HIMSS conference and I came across something from MEDecision. The care management software company, now a subsidiary of Blue Cross and Blue Shield licensee Health Care Service Corp., is defining an electronic health record simply as an “actionable clinical summary.”

That makes sense, given that MEDecision in the past has pushed payer-based health records that were derived from claims and then run through a clinical verification engine of some sort to create clinical summaries. Just before HIMSS, MEDecision also announced a deal to acquire HxTechnologies, which specializes in aggregation of clinical data from lab and imaging systems.

At HIMSS, MEDecision President and COO Scott Storer also told me that because the company now can add real clinical information to the claims data it already processes, this will help providers achieve the type of “meaningful use” required to capture stimulus funding for health IT.

However, in the wake of the recent revelation that claims data can produce inaccurate clinical records, I’m wondering if this is changing this type of strategy. MEDecision is a partner of Google Health, which was blamed for the misinformation in Dave de Bronkart‘s personal health record.

And please, don’t get me started on the low adoption rates of PHRs in general. As you know, I tend to ignore any boasting that someone has a PHR that can revolutionize healthcare.

May 4, 2009 I Written By

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Another new HIT publication

Thanks, I guess, to the stimulus, healthcare, and specifically health IT, seems to be countering the trend in publishing. Case in point is another new title coming this week. FierceMobileHealthcare, from FierceMarkets. How do I know this? I’m going to write it. In fact, there is a prototype issue up at the site now.

The real thing debuts tomorrow.

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