HEALTHCARE VERTICAL NEWS
Canon relaunches solution for healthcare
- announced its Nuance eCopy ShareScan Services for healthcare
- advertised as document capture onramp that integrates with iManage and Epic software
- allow Canon imageRUNNER MFPs to scan into these healthcare solutions
- provide compliance for HIPAA and GDPR regulations
- use OCR to convert images to HL7 protocol
- (this solution competes with the Konica Minolta/Nuance AutoStore MD solution, which does even more as it can be bundled with Nuance Output Manager)
Zebra recalling healthcare label printers
- Zebra Technologies, headquartered in East Providence, Rhode Island, announced that it is recalling 3 different models of label printers as they post a risk of fire or injury to users.
- power supply units can corrode over time when exposed to moisture and overheat.
- recall covers more than 1.3 million printers, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
- has received 30 reports of the power supplies overheating or catching fire.
Healthcare fraud in the news
- The former COO of Cleveland-based MetroHealth System and 3 others were convicted for their roles in a conspiracy to defraud through a series of bribes and kickbacks worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, the U.S. Department of Justice announced:
o Edward Hills, DDS, and three co-defendants — all dentists at MetroHealth — were found guilty of criminal charges and are scheduled to be sentenced in November
o 3 others solicited bribes from prospective dental school residents, which amounted to at least $75,000 between 2008 and 2014.
o also responsible for determining monthly bonuses for MetroHealth dentists who produced receipts totaling more than their monthly salary and benefits
- Officials at Nassau University Medical Center in East Meadow, N.Y., recently discovered 27 vials of fentanyl, phenobarbital, morphine and other drugs kept in secure storage in the hospital's intensive care unit were drained with a syringe and replaced with water,
o hospital ordered all employees with access to the vials to undergo drug testing
- Dr. Apostolos Voudouris, a cardiologist in New Jersey, was sentenced to 20 months in prison July 31 for billing the Veterans Affairs program for services he didn't perform, according to the Department of Justice.
o admitted submitting documentation to the VA on more than 350 occasions between 2011 and 2015 for procedures he never performed
o received $238,230 from the VA for those fraudulent claims, according to the DOJ
o was fined $7,500 and ordered to pay restitution of $238,230. He also entered into a civil settlement with the government, under which he will pay $476,460 to resolve the government's false claims allegations.
- Beaumont Health, headquartered in Southfield, Michigan has agreed to pay the federal government and state of Michigan $84.5 million to resolve allegations that three of its hospitals submitted false claims to Medicare, Medicaid and Tricare, according to the Justice Department.
o allegedly falsely represented a CT radiology center as an outpatient department in submitted claims to government payers, the Justice Department stated.
- Prime Healthcare, headquartered in San Bernardino, California, agreed to pay $65 million to resolve charges related to Medicare short-stay admissions, with founder and CEO Prem Reddy personally responsible for $3.25 million of the total.
o allegations that 14 Prime hospitals in California knowingly submitted false claims to Medicare by admitting patients who required less costly, outpatient care and by billing for more expensive patient diagnoses, a practice known as up-coding, according to the United States Attorney’s Office.
Intalere GPO appoints new executive
- Intalere announced Stephen Kiewiet has joined the organization as chief commercial officer
- will be responsible for ensuring the integrated commercial success of the organization through business and market share growth with direct oversight of the Sales, Marketing and Customer Service departments
- Prior to joining Intalere, Kiewiet served as VP, Supply Chain, with BJC Healthcare (St. Louis, MO).
Nurse burnout survey
- Conducted by Reaction Data
- What are factors that contribute to nurse burnout and stress?
o 19% = internal bureaucracy
o 17% = work/life balance
o 15% = regulatory compliance
o 13% = EHRs
o 8% = payers (insurance companies)
o 7% = physicians
o 6% = patients
o 5% = debt from medical school
- What can be done to reduce stress caused by EHRs?
o 59% = improve user friendliness
o 12% = consistency
o 10% = reduce data entry
o 7% = better training
- What can be done to reduce stress caused by HIPAA?
o reduce and simplify regulations
o create achievable regulations
o more accountability
Vendor offers MFP security for healthcare
- Symphion Inc. of Dallas, Texas is now offering Print Fleet Cyber Security as a Service
- The solution is advertised as featuring:
o vendor-agnostic solution
o turnkey printer security configuration management service
o monitors hourly that each printer (regardless of make or model of the printer) is configured correctly and automatically remediates security settings
o compliance reporting
o remotely implement and administer the products
o implement, scan and produce a cyber security report pack of the security weaknesses/vulnerabilities
- Claims that most healthcare facilities have following vulnerabilities:
o admin Password Not Set (Walk Up and Change Admin Settings)
o Control Panel Password Disabled
o USB Port Not Disabled
o FTP Enabled
o Not SNMP v3, SNMPv2 Not Disabled
o PJL Enabled w/o Password
o Remote Configuration w/o Password Turned On
o Data Erase Not Enabled
o Network File System allowed Drive to Be Exposed to PCs
o Firewall Not Set
o Email Ports Open
Epic wins EHR contracts
- award from the 4-hospital UHS of New York
- award from Mary Washington Healthcare of Virginia
- award from Piedmont Athens Regional Medical Center of Georgia
o replaced Cerner
MEDITECH wins EHR contracts
- award from Galway Clinic of Ireland, which goes live on Meditech Expanse
- award from PMC Regional Hospital of New Albany, Indiana
MEDITECH reports earnings
- reports Q2 results: revenue up 7.1 percent
- EPS (earnings per share) $0.65 vs. $0.39
- Product revenue rose 28%
- services revenue “dropped slightly due to customer consolidation”
Cerner wins EHR contracts
- Award from Orlando Health of Florida
o replacing Allscripts Sunrise
- award from Nemaha Valley Community Hospital of Kansas
o replacing Medhost
Cerner posts earnings for Q2
- 9% bookings growth included seven contracts valued at over $75 million.
- Total bookings of $1.775 billion
- Work with the VA and DoD will accelerate efforts in the areas of population health, open platforms, and telehealth.
- revenue backlog of $14.79 billion
- total revenue up 6% to $1.368 billion
- Licensed software revenue up 11% to $172 million
- Tech resale increased 3% to $75 million
- Subscriptions revenue was $83 million down from $119 million
- Professional services revenue grew 13% to $447 million
- Managed services increased 9% to $286 million
- Support maintenance was up 7% to $279 million
- gross margin was 82.5%
- GAAP operating expenses of $921 million were up 12%
- Adjusted operating expenses up to $873 million
- GAAP operating margin was 15.2% compared to 19.3% in the year-ago period
- GAAP net earnings in Q2 were $169 million
AthenaHealth wins EHR contract
- award from Stonewall Memorial Hospital of Texas
o will replace CPSI Evident (CPSI)
AthenaHealth reports its earnings
- booked business fell 4.8% to $74.9 million in the second quarter
- posted revenue growth of 10%, rising to $331.9 million
- Net income climbed to $36.1 million in the quarter from $9.9 million a year earlier
- The future of the company remains uncertain, as the company's board of directors continues to mull a sale to Elliott Management, which has a roughly 9% stake in Athenahealth
o The most recent offer, for $160 per share—or nearly $7 billion—is Elliott Management's second.
o Athenahealth's board rejected Elliott Management's first proposal to buy the company in November 2017.
AthenaHealth to sell division
- Allscripts will sell its joint venture stake in behavioral technology vendor Netsmart
- acquired Netsmart for $950 million in April 2016
EHR vendor acquired
- TPG Capital-backed Mediware Information Systems Inc has acquired St. Louis, Missouri-based BlueStra EHR, a cloud-based electronic health record for long-term post-acute care providers
- Mediware is a supplier of blood management, cell therapy and medication management software
EHR vendor falsifies certification
- More than a year after agreeing to a massive settlement to resolve claims it falsified EHR certification standards, eClinicalWorks has been fined for failing to report patient safety issues with its software to regulators within a specified timeframe, violating an agreement with the federal government
- The federal Office of Inspector General fined eClinicalWorks $132,500 for violating the terms of its corporate integrity agreement
- 5-year agreement was signed as part of a $155 million settlement with the Department of Justice in May 2017 after federal prosecutors alleged the company knowingly caused providers to submit falsified EHR incentive payments by circumventing federal certification requirements.
Vyne launches fax replacement solution
- Vyne Medical of Dunwoody, Georgia launched “Trace” which is advertised as method to convert fax to Direct message (similar to Kno2 connector for Konica Minolta bizhub MFPs or the option for OpenText RightFax)
- Claims to offer the following features/options:
o Healthcare specific workflows
o Index to patient
o Worklist driven
o Integrates with EHRs
o Full reporting
o Patient text reminders
o Image capture option
o Return fax confirmations
o OCR
o Forms repository
o Productivity dashboard
o Quality assurance scoring tool
DirectTrust has new leadership
- Scott Stuewe is new president and CEO of DirectTrust on 9/1/18
- DirectTrust promotes use of Direct, a secure messaging network for exchanging PHI between providers, patients, vendors and other stakeholders (used by Kno2 solution to replace fax for sharing PHI)
- Spent 24 years at Cerner as director of national interoperability strategy
- In second quarter of 2018, there were a total of 242,000 healthcare professionals who used Direct messaging to share PHI
o Over 50 million transactions during the quarter, up 26% (some of which were using bizhub MFP with Kno2 connector)
- Scott’s goals include making Direct Protocol, the interoperable exchange that DirectTrust supports, to start collaborating with other interoperability initiatives that could include the FHIR standard, application programming interfaces and apps.
- will become an ANSI-accredited standards development organization to manage changes as new technologies come to the market.
- will be modeled after HL7 (Health Level Seven) (protocol used for sharing PHI with EMRs)(HL7 used by Kno2, Konica Minolta Dispatcher Phoenix and Nuance AutoStore MD)
Feds to boost Medicare for acute care providers
- The CMS (Center for Medicare and Medicaid) is moving forward with plans to give a $975 million collective raise next year to post-acute care providers including skilled-nursing facilities, inpatient psychiatric facilities and inpatient rehab facilities.
- also finalized various policy changes for each provider type to reduce the burden on them and the patients that use their facilities.
- Skilled-nursing facilities (SNFs) would receive a 2.4% bump, or $820 million more $370 million, increase.
o reduce documentation standards around patient assessments, saving facilities approximately $2 billion over 10 years.
- Inpatient psychiatric facilities would receive a 1.1% bump, or $50 million increase
o eliminated five quality measures for the facilities, including ones that tracked patient flu vaccination rates and tobacco and alcohol use.
- Inpatient rehab providers will end up receiving an additional $105 million, or 1.3%, next year
o revising coverage criteria including allowing post-admission physician evaluation to count as one of the face-to-face physician visits
o allowing the rehabilitation physician leading the interdisciplinary team to meet with team members remotely without any additional documentation requirements
Survey of patient EHR web portal use
- Survey results published by Medical Group Management Association
- Portals are used by patients to input health data, appointment scheduling, billing and prescription refill requests
- 90% of practices say they offered a portal
- 43% said the platform allows patients to input their own patient-generated health data for clinical review.
- 37% said their portal did not allow patients to add patient-generated health data to the portal
Microsoft invents glasses that monitor heart
- files patent application for “Glabella” eyeglasses that gauge blood pressure
- aims to replace the traditional cuff monitor for tracking blood pressure.
- “Our glasses prototype incorporates optical sensors, processing, storage, and communication components, all integrated into the frame to passively collect physiological data about the user without the need for any interaction,”
- also continuously records the stream of reflected light intensities from blood flow as well as inertial measurements of the user's head
- “From the temporal differences in pulse events across the sensors, our prototype derives the wearer's pulse transit time on a beat-to-beat basis.”
Feds announced $100M telehealth program
- $100 million telehealth initiative announced by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) earlier this month will largely focus on delivering virtual medical technologies directly to low-income patients in remote areas of the country
- The FCC fund would be used to provide targeted support to connected care deployments for low-income patients
- . While the FCC has long targeted deployments in such a way to connect healthcare facilities, the move is a big step forward because it means connecting individual patients—including those who may live in extremely remote locations.
- supporting rural connectivity not just to facilities, but to patients themselves
- “For the first time, we now have technology that can make a difference. So that when you leave the confines of these connected brick-and-mortar facilities, you maintain access to high-quality care,"
- "Now patients are sent home with apps on their tablets or iPads, and they can daily track their progress, get access to video and other information, and we're seeing tremendous benefit in terms of outcomes for patients, but also really large savings for the healthcare industry. Particularly in terms of chronic diseases."
- (more opportunity to sell Konica Minolta’s SnapMD telehealth solution)
Telehealth vendor receives more funding
- Telehealth company American Well added another $75.4 million in venture funding this month, bringing its total funding over the last two months to more than $366 million.
- comes weeks after the company closed two separate funding rounds, including one worth $290.6 million.
HIPAA & Data Security Update
- Kaiser Permanente Health of California had its website defaced by Turkish hackers who apparently are fans of an HBO TV series
o The site instead advertised; “Hacked by Dohaeragon.”
o “Dohaeragon” is reportedly “serve” in High Valyrian, the fictional language on Game on Thrones.
o credited “Team Faceless Men” who allegedly consisted of Polatbey, Morghon, SoloKing, Claronomes, and KingOfNoobs. “Team Faceless Men” is also a reference to GOT, where they are a guild of assassins.
o Unknown if hackers were able to access any PHI
- The federal National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center, which is part of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, issued an alert on July 25 warning IT administrators about malicious cyberattacks targeting enterprise resource planning applications (i.e. Oracle, SAP, Lawson, etc.)
o recent report from cybersecurity company Digital Shadows and application security company Onapsis, which found that cyberattackers are increasingly exploiting vulnerabilities in these systems.
- Ambercare of New Mexico reported one of its laptops is missing, which contained PHI for an unknown number of patients
- A Cameron County, Texas grand jury has indicted former Brownsville Fire Chief Carlos Elizondo on 11 felony counts of computer security breach.
o accessing the emergency reporting system for the Brownsville Fire Department without consent on 11 occasions.
- TCM Bank, a division of ICBA Bancard Inc. of Washington D.S., said a Web site misconfiguration exposed personal info on 650,000 people
- Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., which makes chips for the Apple iPhone and other devices, detailed its progress in recovering from a debilitating computer virus and warned of delayed shipments and reduced revenue because of the impact on its factories.
- Orlando Orthopaedic Center of Florida notified an unknown number of patients that their PHI was exposed after it was inadvertently made available on a public website.
- Joint Base Charleston of South Carolina notified 200 airmen that their PHI was exposed after paper medical records went missing.