Meditech signs up 8 Steward hospitals for its web-based EHR

Dec 6, 2017

Source: Healthcare IT News

Eight more hospitals in for-profit Steward Health Care System will roll out the new web-based electronic health record system from Meditech.

Steward, which operates some three dozen community hospitals across ten states, is a longtime Meditech client. It say eight additional hospitals in Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Florida will implement Meditech's Web-based Enterprise Health Record 2018.

Julie Berry, Steward Health Care System's CIO, said the expansion of MEDITECH's new Web EHR is meant to further enhance quality and safety while offering a cost-effective system for organizations working to deliver value-based care.

"Steward is committed to providing world-class care in a more coordinated, efficient manner in the communities where our patients live," said Berry in a statement. "Expanding our Meditech EHR throughout the organization was a key component in moving us toward a more integrated healthcare delivery.

Steward deploys legacy platforms from Westwood, Massachusetts-based Meditech, but Berry said the health system was intrigued by the innovative structure of the new web-based platform.

"It's exciting to be deploying solutions built for the web to aid in improving quality and population health, while continuing to drive costs down," she added. "Leveraging Meditech's innovative Web EHR to help navigate an ever-changing climate was a vital part of our decision to move forward with Meditech."

The cloud-based platform aims to offer smaller hospitals robust functionality at a sustainable price, said Meditech Executive Vice President Helen Waters.

"Meditech values our long-term relationship with Steward Health Care and we're pleased to have them continue to transform care across North America in the ambulatory and acute environment with Meditech's modern web solution," said Waters.

Source: Healthcare IT News (View full article)

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Health Wizz Launches its Blockchain-Powered Mobile Platform

Dec 6, 2017

Health Wizz, the mobile application provider, launched a blockchain-powered platform that enables consumers to securely aggregate, organize, and share their medical record data. Users of the platform will be able to download their health data from various sources, including wearables, lab reports, doctors, and hospitals. This data can then be shared with physicians, personal trainers, or researchers. The platform could be an effective tool for both consumers and providers by addressing some of the issues that have plagued the electronic health record (EHR) market, including data security and interoperability. For example, users will have access to all of their medical data, which isn't the case with EHRs due to lack of interoperability, and this data can be shared with providers even if EHR systems are down due to security issues.

Source: Business Insider (View full article)

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Proof Work aims to decentralize medical data by using the blockchain

Dec 6, 2017

Tel Aviv-based Proof Work is envisioning a future where patients own and control their own medical data in a decentralized system, where data is secured by the blockchain. The system, if successful, would be a big disruption to how health care data is handled today - where it's often accessible only by the doctors and hospitals themselves, and where patients have to make special requests to have a copy of their own medical records.

In addition, today's data isn't easily shared between doctors. That means patients visiting a new doctor will often have to repeat their medical history all over again, or explain their current ailments.

Proof Work, which presented today onstage as the wildcard company at Disrupt Berlin Startup Battlefield, believes the system should be simpler. The company is building tools that will allow healthcare companies to put their apps and services on the blockchain, as well as a tool - likely in the form of a mobile app first - that will allow patients to upload their own medical data to this blockchain-powered system.

"It's a big try," admits co-founder David Suter. "But we want to go patient-first."

"As somebody who walks into a doctor or a hospital, there are many moving parts that are put into place behind the scenes in order to make sure we get the right level of care, the right treatment. All those moving parts are siloed," Suter says. "What blockchain allows through smart contracts is to put all those moving parts on a longitudinal line in order to talk to each other."

In the future, the goal is to allow patients to walk into a doctor's office with all their medical records already on their phone.

"It's a big undertaking; It's not going to happen overnight," he adds.

Source: Tech Crunch (View full article)

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Could Blockchain Enhance Telecommunications?

Dec 5, 2017

The blockchain is a distributed ledger that allows reliable exchanges through the internet, without reliance on an independent authority. A shared record is distributed using a consensus to every participant in a network, validating transactions and removing the requirement for third-party integrations. This means that the blockchain can create secure digital transactions complete with proof of ownership.

If you've heard of blockchain before, it's likely that your knowledge comes from an insight into its role within the management of cryptocurrency and Bitcoin. However, over the last year or so, the applications of the blockchain have been expanding, and today, it may even have a role to play in our telecommunications.

How Telecommunications Can Benefit from The Blockchain

Today's telecommunication operators are facing greater competition and increasing challenges within the marketplace. That means that everyone needs to find a new way of minimising costs, and enhancing revenue if they want to succeed. When it comes to performance, the blockchain has a lot to offer, including better trust and transparency. The distributed nature of the blockchain means that there are no single points of failure, no worries about hacking attacks, and no stress caused by control from a single entity.

Additionally, the blockchain's distributed position means that there's no need for expensive infrastructure or third-party intermediaries. The speed of exchanges between people is increased, and the system is more secure too because cryptography and digital signatures are accessed to prove identities. Because every block is linked to another block, it's almost impossible to change records or alter the history of the chain.

Source: Comms Trader (View full article)

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Transforming remote care in 2018

Dec 5, 2017

Hospitals and health systems need next-generation healthcare services to keep up with the growing U.S. population and increasing number of aging Americans.

While the patient population continues to expand, the healthcare provider community is shrinking. The Association of American Medical Colleges reports that the U.S. will face a shortage of between 40,800 and 104,900 physicians by 2030, and that the number of new primary care physicians and other medical specialists entering the field is not keeping pace with the demands of a growing and aging population.

As the shortage of physicians grows more acute, the need for new forms of care delivery is increasing. Telemedicine will become even more prevalent, with some experts predicting that virtual visits will soon outpace in-person visits. Telemedicine technology has improved in recent years, with a new generation of enterprise-level platforms that are enabling hospitals and healthcare systems to scale and extend virtual services to multiple service lines to manage the digital health care continuum-essentially creating a digital exam room.

These digital exam rooms are allowing for improved treatment adherence and are cutting patient wait time. They represent a form of "consumerism" in healthcare, by which health systems can meet the patient demand for quick and easy access to their providers for non-critical visits. An on-demand approach to healthcare is not just beneficial to the patient; it also cuts down emergency department visits and wait times as patients can seek appropriate advice from their trusted physician before heading to the ER.

Digital exam rooms can be especially helpful in the treatment of chronic disease, which affects many aging Americans. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, chronic diseases and conditions such as heart disease, stroke, cancer, type 2 diabetes, obesity and arthritis are among the most common, costly and preventable of all health problems. Additionally, about half of all adults in the U.S.--117 million people--have one or more chronic health conditions.

Digital exam rooms are now extending healthcare providers' reach of care to check in on patients at home and follow up on chronic conditions. These telemedicine interventions are vital for monitoring overall health before any serious health concerns develop. Not only is this cutting patient hospital admissions and re-admissions, it's improving overall patient wellness and cutting costs.

[...]

White-label versions can even leverage a patient's trusted provider or health systems branding during every virtual exchange. Furthermore, providers should prioritize cloud-based functionality to safely and securely store all personal health information with the highest levels of HIPAA and HITECH compliance. Patients also benefit from convenient access to care from the comfort of their own home, reduced costs, and the ability to better manage and treat illnesses or chronic conditions.

By making telehealth a provider and patient priority, hospitals and health systems can remain competitive in the fast-paced world of healthcare, and help address the needs of a growing patient population more effectively.

Source: Becker's Hospital Review (View full article)

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Anesthesiologists find EHRs free up face-time for patients

Dec 5, 2017

Technology has been steadily transforming the practice of medicine, but the field of anesthesiology has not quite kept pace. Documentation is still largely a pen-and-paper enterprise, and that's costing practices time and efficiency, affecting the bottom line.

As more and more practices are ditching pen and paper and moving to electronic health records, however, vendors such as athenahealth, MedEvolve Practice Management, Mercury Medical and Recordation are offering software platforms or cloud-based services for anesthesiologists.

And even some of the former tech skeptics are now admitting that the tools help their practices operate at new levels of efficiently, reduce costs, enable them to more easily meet MACRA and MIPS criteria and even spend more time concentrating on patients.

Enabling vigilance

James Faust, MD, a Southbridge, Massachusetts anesthesiologist affiliated with Harrington Memorial Hospital, said that despite the advantages of moving to an automated, paperless system, there was some initial resistance in the field.

"When you're with a patient you've got to be vigilant," said Faust. "A lot of people were worried that if we were married to a keyboard, the vigilance would decrease. That was one of the concerns. The second was medical and legal concerns. If you have an automated blood pressure cup and the doctor leans up against it, it gives a false reading. A lot of people were concerned that if everything is automatically recorded, from a legal and medical perspective, that would be a risk."

Faust, who has been utilizing Recordation since April, said the concerns were unfounded.

"Neither of those things have panned out, at least in my experience," he said.

Since implementing the platform, Faust said his practice has been operating more quickly and efficiently. And a nice benefit to not hurriedly writing everything down is that the information collected is perfectly legible -- which wasn't always the case in the past.

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"Unless you have a process that gives you a baseline, you can't make any steps to improve your process," said Keene. "Without that information, most surgical centers and ambulatory centers are at a disadvantage. We're taking that information and making it really easy for our practitioners."

Source: Healthcare IT News (View full article)

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Future outlook of Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management Software Market

Dec 4, 2017

Healthcare service providers deploy automated systems to address the RCM processes and to fill the payment gap that arises from the processes of medical billing and collections. The IT applications, such as hospital information system and EHR, have outdated technology platforms that lack advanced functionalities needed to address RCM issues. Hospitals and health systems prefer to outsource the RCM services due to the issues pertaining to revenue cycle processes and workflows.

Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management Software market research is an intelligence report with meticulous efforts undertaken to study the right and valuable information. The data which has been looked upon is done considering both, the existing top players and the upcoming competitors. Business strategies of the key players and the new entering market industries are studied in detail. Well explained SWOT analysis, revenue share and contact information are shared in this report analysis.

Healthcare service providers are experiencing a rise in the cost of operations and a reduction in revenues due to the changing government regulations in the healthcare sector. The revenue generation of these healthcare service providers are under continuous scrutiny and audit by recovery audit contractors. These contractors identify illegal payments under Medicare fee-for-service plan. This may result in the negative revenue effect of recovery audits.

The main goal for the dissemination of this information is to give a descriptive analysis of how the trends could potentially affect the upcoming future of Healthcare Revenue Cycle Management Software market during the forecast period. This markets competitive manufactures and the upcoming manufactures are studied with their detailed research. It presents a comparative detailed analysis of the all regional and player segments, offering readers a better knowledge of where areas in which they can place their existing resources and gauging the priority of a particular region in order to boost their standing in the global market.

Source: medGadget (View full article)

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Future-proofing population health: Embrace predictive analytics, social determinants and patient-generated data now

Dec 4, 2017

The need to simultaneously reduce healthcare costs and deliver optimal care are driving the expansion of population health management initiatives among hospitals today.

Add to that mix the rising number of patients with chronic conditions, the rapidly growing Silver Tsunami population with its longer lifespans, the shift to value-based care and it's no wonder healthcare entities are under more pressure than ever before.

So it's also not surprising that many software vendors are rushing into the market, from the dominant EHR makers to pure-play pop health specialists.

What can hospitals do now to prepare for the future of population health management?

Start by understanding what products will best meet your particular needs, know that social determinants of health and patient-generated data will only become more and more important and recognize that as pop health programs evolve so too, will hospitals' expectations for the technologies that underpin them.

Tech vendors today
Software comprises the largest chunk of the population health management market and is expected to reach $33.73 billion by the end of 2025, according to Wahid Khan, lead analyst at BIS Research.

"Cloud-based population health management software is evolving as the most preferred mode of software delivery and is anticipated to witness a high growth rate of 21.2 percent during the forecast period," Khan said.

Some of the more prominent population health companies, according to KLAS, include IBM Watson Health, Philips Wellcentive and HealthEC, right alongside EHR vendors including Allscripts, athenahealth, Cerner and Epic.

What's more, health IT research specialist Black Book predicted that Epic, Cerner and Allscripts will emerge as dominant population health vendors amid the already-underway wave of consolidation, mergers and acquisitions.

All of which means that picking a particular product among so many available options today is tricky. But hospital and IT executives should know that HIMSS Analytics Research Director Brendan Fitzgerald said earlier this year EHRs, portals and patient engagement tools are the most popular now for population health management initiatives. The firm's research also found hospitals implementing data aggregation, health information exchange, business intelligence and analytics software to advance pop health.

In other words: There's no one-size-fits-all pop health platform so hospitals should understand the range while also knowing that analysts are predicting the list of products and vendors will continue to get whittled down and, as such, become more manageable in the relative near-term.

Analytics like Facebook and Amazon
As population health management projects become more and more advanced, hospitals are going to need not only new technologies but new ways of thinking about their data. Yes, this means predictive and prescriptive analytics and ultimately artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and machine learning.

Leonard D'Avolio, CEO of machine learning startup Cyft pointed to data-savvy technology giants Amazon, Facebook, Google and Spotify as particularly apt at using their information by innovating in-house. Amazon, for instance, could not have simply bought a software platform and then plugged it into its network to suddenly start what D'Avolio called "population bookselling." What's more, the online retailer does not consider every person to be the same consumer, just like not every patient is the same.

"Amazon understands you based on the data," D'Avolio said. "That's the foundation for transformation."

Amazon, Facebook and the other companies use all of their data, not just one type, to answer as many questions as possible, D'Avolio added. They're also harnessing cutting-edge technologies to determine those answers.

Source: Healthcare IT News (View full article)

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Potential of big data, pitfalls of EHRs

Dec 4, 2017

President Donald Trump's nominee to head the Department of Health and Human Services contends that by harnessing the power of big data and predictive analytics, the healthcare industry can be made more efficient and lead to better patient outcomes.

Alex Azar told a Senate committee on Wednesday that Medicare must "shift the focus in our healthcare system from paying for procedures and sickness to paying for health and outcomes."

Azar testified that if he is confirmed to serve as HHS secretary, one of his four critical priorities at the agency will be to "better channel the power of health information technology and leverage what is best in our programs--and in the private competitive marketplace--to ensure the individual patient is the center of decision-making, and his or her needs are being met with greater transparency and accountability."

A former executive at pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly & Co., Azar said in his testimony that "leading the incredible resources of the department require innovating, never being satisfied with the status quo, and anticipating and preparing for the future."

However, when it comes to making changes to current HHS regulations, Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.), chairman of the Senate health committee, told Azar that the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services needs to address its Meaningful Use Stage 3 rule.

"I had urged the previous administration to delay Meaningful Use 3 because it was implementing it at a time when it was also changing the way doctors and providers are paid," said Alexander, who added that it was a mistake for CMS to rush ahead with a final rule against the advice of some of the nation's leading medical institutions. "I thought it would be wise to slow that down and get it right and build confidence among the physicians and other providers."

Pointing to the shortcomings of electronic health records and the widespread dissatisfaction of doctors who use the systems, Alexander referenced an American Medical Association study which found that physicians believe they are "spending 50 or 60 percent of their time on documentation."

Alexander told Azar that a good approach to address the burdens of excessive EHR documentation "might be for the (HHS) secretary to work with the doctors in Medicare" to set a goal of reducing the amount of time providers spend documenting on electronic records systems.

"On the regulatory burden or just the burden of electronic health records with physicians, that would be my style of how to work--the affected individuals they know what's wrong, they know what's happening, and get the input from them to see if there are appropriate changes that can be made," responded Azar.

The lack of health IT interoperability is another serious challenge confronting the healthcare industry, Alexander told Azar. "It's a big mess still," the senator claimed. "Even at a sophisticated hospital, if you want to take your own medical records to some other place, the best thing you can do is Xerox them yourself, put them in your briefcase, carrying them over and hand them to the next doctor."

Azar replied that in terms of the lack of interoperability, "it is ridiculous if we have a system now where you have to collect your paper records to go to a different facility." He added that the inability of EHR systems to interoperate is "a betrayal of the vision HHS Secretary (Mike) Leavitt laid out originally" from 2005 to 2009 in the cabinet of President George W. Bush.

Alexander concluded the hearing by telling Azar that if he's confirmed by the Senate "you'll have a chance to implement" the 21st Century Cures Act--signed into law in December 2016--which includes several provisions designed to reduce the EHR burdens on providers and as well as to advance health IT interoperability. "There's a lot here that we can do working with you."

Source: Health Data Management (View full article)

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Connect And Protect: Zero-Trust Helps Secure Electronic Medical Records

Dec 1, 2017

When it comes to patient safety and care, quick and easy access to patient information -- where and when it's needed -- is critical. At the same time, maintaining the security and integrity of that data is paramount.

With more than 80 percent of medical records now digitized, healthcare is working to be able to quickly serve up and share the right information, where and when it's needed, to improve care, increase quality, reduce costs, and deliver a better patient experience.

Next-generation advances in sensors, mobility, integrated workflow, data analytics, decision support, and machine learning are rapidly expanding healthcare ecosystems and redefining what's possible in digital care.

But the very digital connectedness that enables more effective and efficient care also expands risk. Unavailable or blocked access to a patient's medical data has forced providers to postpone time-sensitive procedures. The consequences of a data breach in healthcare go beyond identity theft--compromised data can put a patient at risk.

How can healthcare IT, with limited budget and staff, hope to be able to protect against growing threats across a rapidly changing and expanding digital ecosystem of devices, data, applications, and connections?

Zero Trust Model

One answer lies in a Zero Trust approach to IT security, first introduced by Forester in 2009.

In contrast to traditional IT security, in which a 'trusted internal network' is protected from the 'untrusted external network' by perimeter defenses, Zero Trust recognizes that in a connected world, the perimeter will--and must--be porous, making such an approach ineffective. Instead, Zero Trust advocates that no entity be trusted and that security be built into data center architecture, to protect from the inside out.

With the advent of software-defined data centers, the implementation of Zero Trust security has become practical. Virtual networks make it possible to build software-defined firewalling, routing, switching, and load balancing directly into the hypervisor--and thereby distribute policy-driven security into and across the entire environment.

Complementing the physical network segmentation traditionally used to comply with regulations such as HIPAA and PCI-DSS, virtual networks enable 'micro-segmentation' at the individual virtual machine level, to precisely control the lateral movement of threats across the data center (Figure 1). Even if an attacker makes it past perimeter security and into the network, they will be unable to move to other servers, dramatically shrinking attack vectors.

Source: Health IT Outcomes (View full article)

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