Tag: Epic

Epic Systems’ Open Platform Will Bring U.S. Health Care Delivery Into the 21st Century

Apr 7, 2015• 11

By STEPHEN M. KRUPA

Epic Systems, the market leader in electronic health record software (EHR), recently made a quiet but potentially transformative announcement that may finally shake the healthcare industry out of its technological doldrums.

Epic said it is prepared to support the creation of a more open interoperability platform for integration with other diversified healthcare applications. This will attract substantial investment to create software that operates, hopefully seamlessly, within the Epic EHR infrastructure. Expect Epic’s competitors to follow suit, eventually opening up the marketplace of installed EHRs to third-party software developers and the efficiencies of modern, post-EHR technology ecosystem.

Epic’s critics have often denounced the company for selling a mostly closed technology, dampening hopes for the creation of an ecosystem of best-of-breed applications that work together with the EHR to automate much of the care delivery infrastructure beyond patient intake and billing. The value of such an infrastructure is extremely compelling and so the company is under enormous pressure from its customers to become more open.

HIT Newser: Big Win for Epic in San Diego

Apr 1, 2015• 5

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Epic Scores Another Big Win

Scripps Health selects Epic to replace its existing GE Healthcare’s Centricity Enterprise (inpatient) and Allscripts Enterprise (outpatient). The San Diego-based Scripps includes five acute-care campuses, 26 outpatient clinics, and 2,600 affiliated physicians.

No doubt that this is one that Cerner had hoped to win.

Marlin Equity Partners Acquires e-MDs

Marlin Equity Partners acquires ambulatory EMR provider e-MDs. Marlin will merge e-MDs with its existing portfolio company MDeverywhere, a provider of RCM and credentialing services for physicians. e-MD founderContinue reading…

HIT Newser: The Judy Faulkner Foundation or Whatever We’re Calling It

Mar 18, 2015• 2

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Epic’s Faulkner Shares Charitable Foundation Plans

In an interview with Modern Healthcare, Epic founder/CEO Judith Faulkner reveals that she will leave much of her wealth to a specially created charitable foundation that will operate and fund not-for-profit organizations in healthcare and other areas. The 71-year-old Faulkner says that almost all her shares of Epic stock will go to the foundation upon her death, or sooner if she chooses.

The plan is also designed to keep Epic private. “My stock will go to the foundation,” Faulkner said. “The foundation will control the stock. This plan is designed to preserve the company as a private company forever.”

Faulkner, who has an estimated worth of $2.8 billion, says she never wanted the money personally or for her family and wonders, “What would you want with all that money? It doesn’t seem right and I can’t tell you why.”

What’s not to like about Faulkner’s values or her plan?

HIT Newser: Black Book Rankings Not So Unbiased?

Feb 22, 2015

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Black Book: Not so Unbiased and Relevant?

Black Book Rankings announces that it will change its EHR survey methods and remove ballots cast by provider organizations that serve as resellers/VARs, and/or channel partners. The organization reviewed previous surveys and discovered that 33 hospital resellers had cast EHR satisfaction and loyalty ballots for 740 physician practices, and that 93% of the physician practices and small hospitals felt obligated to only select the EHR offered by their hospital.

Well, duh! I have always been a little suspect of Black Book’s survey method since their findings are often so different than the rankings from KLAS. If I were a vendor with a website that proudly displayed a high ranking from Black Book, I think I would quietly remove that reference, at least for now.

Epic Opening App Exchange

Epic Systems is launching its own app store, giving outside companies the ability to market applications that work with Epic’s EHR. According to former Nordic Consulting CEO Mark Bakken, the app store will “open the floodgates” for anyone who knows Epic and wants to get their products in front of Epic clients quickly.

Politically it’s a savvy move, since Epic wants to continue dispelling those rumors that its system is closed and lacks the interoperability of some of its competitors vying for the DoD’s $11 billion EHR contract.

Halamka Speaks: athenahealth & the Future of AMCs as Tech Innovators

Feb 9, 2015• 4

By MATTHEW HOLT

It’s always interesting to talk with John Halamka, and last week–after athenahealth bought the IP but apparently not the actual code of the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) web-based EHR he’s been shepherding for the past 18 years–I got him on the record for a few minutes. We started on the new deal but given that had already been covered pretty well elsewhere we didn’t really stay there. More fun that way–Matthew Holt

Matthew Holt: The guys across town (Partners) ripped out all the stuff they’ve been building and integrating for the last 30 years and they decided to pay Judy Faulkner over a billion dollars. And you took all the stuff that you’ve been building for the past 15 to 20 years and sold it to Jonathan Bush for money. Does that make you a better businessman than they are?

(Update Note 2/11/15: While I’ve heard from public & private sources that the cost of the Partners project will be between $700m and $1.4 billion, Carl Dvorak at Epic asked me to point out less than 10% of the cost goes to Epic for their fees/license. The rest I assume is external and internal salaries for implementation costs, and of course it’s possible that many of those costs would exist even if Partners kept its previous IT systems).

John Halamka: Well, that is hard to say, but I can tell you that smart people in Boston created all these very early systems back in the 1980s. On one hand, the John Glaser group created a client server front end. I joined Beth Israel Deaconess in 1996 and we created an entirely web-based front end. We have common roots but a different path.

It wasn’t so much that I did this because of a business deal. As I wrote in my blog, there is no benefit to me or to my staff. There are no royalty streams or anything like that. But sure, Beth Israel Deaconess receives a cash payment from Athena. But important to me is that the idea of a cloud-hosted service which is what we’ve been running at Beth Israel Deaconess since the late ’90s hopefully will now spread to more organizations across the country. And what better honor for a Harvard faculty member than to see the work of the team go to more people across the country?

MH: There’s been a lot of debate about the concept of developing for the new world of healthcare using client server technology that has been changed to “sort of” fit the integrated delivery systems over the last 10 years, primarily by Epic but also Cerner and others. In particular how open those systems are and how able they are to migrate to new technology. You’ve obviously seen both sides, you’re obviously been building a different version than that. And a lot of this is obviously about plugging in other tools, other technologies to do things that were never really envisaged back in 1998. You’ve come down pretty strongly on the web-based side of this, but what’s your sense for how likely it is that what has happened over the last five or ten years in most other systems including the one across the street we just mentioned is going to change to something more that looks more like what you had at Beth Israel Deaconess?Continue reading…

Computers Replacing Doctors, Innovation and the Quantified Self: An Interview with Atul Gawande

Feb 5, 2015• 49

By ROBERT WACHTER, MD

Atul Gawande is the preeminent physician-writer of this generation. His new book, Being Mortal, is a runaway bestseller, as have been his three prior books, Complications, Better, and The Checklist Manifesto.

One of the joys of my recent sabbatical in Boston was the opportunity to spend some time with Atul, getting to see what an inspirational leader and superb mentor he is, along with being a warm and menschy human being. In my continued series of interviews I conducted for The Digital Doctor, my forthcoming book on health IT, here are excerpts from my conversation with Atul Gawande on July 28, 2014 in Boston.

I began by asking him about his innovation incubator, Ariadne Labs, and how he decides which issues to focus on.

Gawande: Yeah, I’m in the innovation space, but in a funny way. Our goal is to create the most basic systems required for people to get marked improvements in the results of care. We’re working in surgery, childbirth, and end-of-life care.

The very first place we’ve gone is to non-technology innovations. Such as, what are the 19 critical things that have to happen when the patient comes in an operating room and goes under anesthesia? When the incision is made? Before the incision is made? Before the patient leaves the room? It’s like that early phase of the aviation world, when it was just a basic set of checklists.

In all of the cases, the most fundamental, most valuable, most critical innovations have nothing to do with technology. They have to do with asking some very simple, very basic questions that we never ask. Asking people who are near the end of life what their goals are. Or making sure that clinicians wash their hands.Continue reading…

KLAS Announces 2014 Best in KLAS Winners

Feb 2, 2015• 1

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

Epic regains its top spot in the 2014 Best in KLAS awards, winning in the Overall Physician Practice Vendor and Overall Software Suite categories. Impact Advisors was named the Overall IT Services Firm.

Last year athenahealth beat out Epic by a narrow margin. This year athena still had an excellent showing, taking the top spots for Practice Management in both the 1-10 physician and 11-75 physician categories, as well as second place (after Epic) in the over 75 physician category.

Epic won Best in KLAS or category leader honors for Acute Care EMR, Ambulatory EMR (11-75 physicians and over 75 physicians), HIE, Lab, Patient Account and Patient Management, Patient Portals, Pharmacy, Radiology, and Surgery Management.

HIT Newser: An Epic Loss for Cerner & GE + Google Glass Confusion

Jan 26, 2015• 1

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

An Epic Loss for Cerner and GE

Mayo Clinic announces it will replace its existing Cerner and GE systems with Epic’s EHR and RCM system.

The prestigious Mayo Clinic name and clinical reputation make the win especially sweet for Epic, which is in the running for the DoD’s $11 billion EHR contract. Analysts estimate that Mayo will pay Epic “hundreds of millions” over the next several years.

Google Glass Confusion

Earlier this month Google announced the end of its Glass Explorer program and sales of its existing version of Glass. Many mainstream publications carried “Glass is Dead” headlines, which is certain attention-grabbing, though not entirely true.

Individual consumers had the option to pay $1,500 to purchase Google Glass through the now-defunct Glass Explorer program. Enterprise businesses, such as HIT vendors Augmedix and Pristine, are still able to buy the existing version of Glass through Google’s Glass at Work program. In other words, if you’re interested in using Google Glass in a healthcare setting, that option is still available through a Glass at Work partner.

Meanwhile, Google says it is working future versions of its Glass product – though no one is saying when the next release will be.Continue reading…

HIT Newser: A Setback for MyMedicalRecords

Jan 12, 2015• 2

By MICHELLE RONAN NOTEBOOM

There’s No Place Like Epic’s Home

Epic reveals plans for a fifth campus, which is slated to include half a million square feet of office space and pay homage to literary classics like “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” and “The Wizard of Oz.”

A Setback for MyMedicalRecords

A US District Court rules against MyMedicalRecords in its patent case against Walgreens, Quest Diagnostics, and others. MyMedicalRecords, a company that many label a patent troll, contends its patents covered a method of providing online PHRs in a private, secure way. However, a judge ruled that “the concept of secure record access and management, in the context of personal health records or not, is an age-old idea,” and is therefore abstract.

Despite the setback, I doubt MyMedicalRecords will stop demanding organizations to pay up or risk facing a lawsuit. I predict they’ll make some tweaks to their business plan, such as focusing only on organizations with not-quite-so-deep pockets that are willing to settle without a fight.

What Has $564 million Bought Us?

Sens. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), Richard Burr (R-NC), and Mike Enzi (R-WY) ask the General Accounting Office to review the ONC-funded health information exchanges to determine what exactly the exchanges created with the government’s $564 million in grant money.

It’s a valid concern, given the significant number of providers and regions still lacking electronic exchange capabilities and the millions that have been spent.

Physicians Reject Stage 2 Attestation

Fifty-five percent of physicians say they won’t attest for Stage 2 MU in 2015, according to a SERMO survey of about 2,000 physicians. Respondents cite several reasons for not attesting including financial concerns, difficulty engaging older patients, and lack of software usability.

Given the lackluster Stage 2 attestation numbers so far, the findings are not particularly surprising. It will be interesting to see what CMS and ONC intend to do in the face of the overwhelming evidence that many providers simply don’t think it is worth the effort.

On To Stage 3

The Office of Management and Budget is currently reviewing the proposed Stage 3 MU rules and will likely publish them in February. CMS states that Stage 3 will include changes to the reporting period, timelines, and structure of the program, including a single definition of Meaningful Use. CMS also adds that “these changes will provide a flexible, yet clearer, framework to ensure future sustainability of the EHR program and reduce confusion from multiple stage requirements.”

Can’t wait to see what is included. And, I can’t help but be a little amused that it’s been six years since the passage of the HITECH legislation and we are just now getting a definition for “Meaningful Use.”

Show Me the Money

Allina Health and Health Catalyst sign a $100 million definitive agreement to combine technologies, clinical content, and front-line personnel.

Rush University Medical Center will implement Merge Healthcare’s cardiology PACS.

Healthcare operating system platform provider Par80 closes $10.5 million in Series A funding led by Atlas Ventures, Founder Collective, and CHV Capital.

Health analytics provider Apervita, formerly knowns as Pervasive Health, completes an $18 million Series A round of funding led by GE Ventures and Baird Capital.

Teledermatology provider PocketDerm raises $2.85 million from an undisclosed investor.

Caremerge, developers of a care coordination platform, raises $4 million in a second round of funding. Investors include Cambia Health Solutions, GE Ventures, Arsenal Health, and Ziegler-LinkAge Longevity Fund.

HIT Newser

Nov 18, 2014• 6

By MICHELLE RONAN-NOTEBOOM

HIMSS and CHIME to HHS: ONC Needs Full-time National Coordinator

In a letter to HHS Secretary Sylvia Burwell, CHIME and ONC stress the need to hire a full-time National Coordinator for the ONC, should Karen DeSalvo continue to serve as both the ONC head and the assistant secretary of health:

“If Dr. DeSalvo is going to remain as the Acting Assistant Secretary for Health with part-time duties in health IT, we emphasize the need to appoint new ONC leadership immediately that can lead the agency on the host of critical issues that must be addressed.”

AMA Calls for Removal of MU Penalties

The AMA calls for all MU penalties to be halted and for the program to be more flexible with a shorter reporting period. In addition, the AMA urges policymakers to refocus the MU program on interoperability and seek ways to improve product usability.

Cerner Breaks Ground at New Campus

Cerner breaks ground at a new $4.45 billion campus in Kansas City, which is expected to house 16,000 new Cerner employees within the next 10 years. The project includes about $1.75 billion in public tax subsidies.