Campaign urges voters to make mental health a general election priority

The meeting in the Metropole Hotel, to be attended by Minister of State Kathleen Lynch, will be an opportunity for the public to hear where political parties stand on mental health.

The coalition body, Mental Health Reform — which represents 51 groups — said the event will also permit the public to share any concerns about the issue with candidates.

Along with the junior minister, all political parties and candidates in both the Cork North Central and Cork South Central constituencies are expected to attend.

Dr Shari McDaid, director of Mental Health Reform, said: “The one thing that all parties and candidates agree on is the need to improve our mental health services.

“The ‘Our State of Mind’ campaign is asking voters to remind every candidate to make mental health a priority and to seek five key improvements: For the full article click here 

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Batesville nurse finds calling in home health

When a friend encouraged Susie Smart to apply for a nursing position at Approve Home Health Services Inc., she never imagined it would be the first step of a 20-year career or that she would become a co-owner in the company.

“I just fell in love with home health. I went to school to be a hands-on nurse and never dreamed I would be in management or be in an administration role. I miss seeing the patients on a regular basis, but I know I have a wonderful staff that is providing that hands-on care,” Smart said.

A native of the Cord-Charlotte area, Smart earned her licensed practical nursing certification at Gateway Technical College, now the University of Arkansas Community College at Batesville. She went on to complete her registered-nursing degree at North Arkansas Community College and is pursuing a Master of Nursing Science degree at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences in Little Rock. For the full article click here 

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Health expert helps you battle holiday stress

After a long weekend of cooking, shopping and holiday decorating, you may already be feeling the holiday stress and we still have 25 days until Christmas.

“Whether it’s because of financial stress, whether it’s just the cooking and everything they have to do that’s associated with the holiday, the fun seems to get sucked out of it,” said internal medicine physician Dr. Karen Russell.

She sees patients with high levels of stress this time of year.

“Their blood pressure is up. You can see that they’re distracted during the visit. They haven’t slept very well,” she said. For the full article click here 

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Children’s health safety net expiring unless legislators act by year’s end

HARRISBURG — A long-overdue state budget isn’t the only thing on the Legislature’s to-do list.

Without reauthorization, the state Children’s Health Insurance Program, or CHIP, expires on Dec. 31.

About 150,000 children statewide are enrolled in CHIP, with about 11,500 of them in Allegheny County, according to statistics from the state Insurance Department.

CHIP serves children whose parents earn too much to qualify for Medicaid but who cannot afford to purchase private health insurance.

Advocates say they want to make sure the reauthorization doesn’t get lost in the end-of year scramble to finish a months-overdue state budget that could result in possible large overhauls of the state’s pension and liquor systems. For the full article click here 

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Men’s health: a family affair

During the month of  No Shave November, KTBS 3 has been making a push for men’s health.

We caught up with primary care physician, Dr.Donna Wyatt with CHRISTUS Heath who says when it comes men’s health,  it should be a family affair.  ”

“It’s very frequently that I get men coming in with their spouse or because their spouse has encouraged them to come in for a concern that they may have had, whether it was their blood pressure was elevated or they’ve been complaining of trouble breathing or getting tired easily. They just notice that they don’t have the best lifestyle. Maybe not eating right or have gained a few too many pounds,” said  Dr. Donna Wyatt of CHRISTUS Health Shreveport-Bossier. For the full article click here 

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The five crazy new health elixirs to try

If your standard apple/celery/kale combo is becoming a bit boring, prepare to meet the new series of liquid gold (or crazy health elixirs, depending on which side of the fence you stand).

Tonics, fermented drinks, pink veggie juices and natural waters are officially the new black.

And the juice industry is booming thanks to the unique new flavours and colours that have got people all intrigued.

But, cool factor aside, what do they actually do for you? For the full article click here 

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Many concerned about upcoming Saskatoon Health Region cuts

SASKATOON – Imagine not knowing if you’ll be able to afford anything for Christmas because your job may be on the chopping block. Well that’s exactly the type of limbo thousands of Saskatoon Health Region (SHR) employees are currently in.

This, after the region’s CEO, Dan Florizone, announced Thursday the region was facing the worst deficit in its history, some $45 million. For the full article click here 

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Instability in Marketplaces Draws Concern on Both Sides of Health Law

WASHINGTON — The latest turmoil in health insurance marketplaces created by the Affordable Care Act has emboldened advocates on both sides of the political spectrum, providing ammunition to conservatives who want to shrink the federal role and liberals who want to expand it.

UnitedHealth Group rattled federal officials when it announced last weekthat it was losing money in the insurance exchanges, saw no reason to expect improvements in 2016 and might pull out in 2017. Those concerns followed the collapse of 12 of the 23 nonprofit insurance cooperatives created with federal loans under the health law.

In addition, insurance markets in many states are unstable. Premiums are volatile. Insurers say their new customers have been sicker than expected. And the law is as divisive as ever. In the latest poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation, people reporting unfavorable views of the law outnumbered those with favorable ones, 45 percent to 38 percent. For the full article click here 

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Govt to build digital mental health gateway, PHNs to plan regional services

The federal government will develop an integrated web-based portal with a single phone line as part of a digital gateway program to help people navigate mental health services, with work to begin this financial year and the gateway progressively rolled out from 2016-17.

As part of its response to the ‘Contributing Lives, Thriving Communities’ review of mental health programs by the National Mental Health Commission, delivered a year ago, the government will also redirect $350 million per annum in funding for various programs coordinated by the Department of Health to Primary Health Networks (PHNs), which will now be in charge of planning and commissioning mental health services on a regional basis. For the full article click here 

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WA Mental Health Minister and AMA trade blows over mental health

Mental Health Minister Helen Morton has accused the WA Branch of the Australian Medical Association of irrelevancy after it suggested its staff were ill-prepared for looming changes to mental health treatment policies.

Legislative changes to the Mental Health Act come into effect on Monday, November 30.

The new policy includes more rights for patients and their families to be involved in decision making and treatment options, as well as additional safeguards to protect patients.

There will also be an increased documentation requirement for clinicians.

The AMA yesterday released results of an in-house survey it said showed almost 80 per cent of clinicians had not received training on the changes For the full article click here 

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Saskatoon Health Region to slash jobs to offset $45 million deficit

SASKATOON – There will be job losses and undoubtedly it comes at a bad time of year. On Thursday, the Saskatoon Health Region CEO addressed the media confirming that it is facing a massive budget shortfall of 45 million dollars.

Making this the worst financial situation the Saskatoon Health Region(SHR) has ever been in.

“We have taken what would have been a 62 million dollar deficit and turned it into unfortunately a 45 million forecasted deficit that remains,” said Dan Florizone.

To balance the books within the region, job loss is unavoidable. Since 70 plus per cent of the health regions costs are staff said Florizone. For the full article click here 

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Tips for health plan open enrollment

If you’re under age 65 and don’t have health insurance through an employer, you may need to purchase your own. The Affordable Care Act requires nearly all Americans to have health coverage. If you can afford health insurance but choose not to buy it, you will have to pay a penalty unless you have an exception.

Each year there’s a window of time, called “open enrollment,” where individuals and families can buy insurance directly from private insurance companies, like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, or through the Health Insurance Marketplace. Exact dates vary from year to year, but this year’s open enrollment to get coverage for 2016 started on Nov. 1 and continues through Jan. 3. For coverage starting on Jan. 1, 2016, you must enroll by Dec. 15, 2015. Otherwise, you may have a gap in your coverage, leaving you vulnerable to health and financial risks. For the full article click here 

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OIG Identifies IT Security Issues Following OPM Data Breach

OPM’s IT security protocols are still underperforming, even in the healthcare data category, an OIG audit report shows.

Following the massive data breach at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) earlier this year, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has released an audit report detailing several IT security issues at the agency.

Although the data breach prompted OPM to perform an overhaul of its IT security protocols, OIG still found considerable gaps in security, including in healthcare data security.

Although the OPM data breach included more than just health information, the OIG audit report shows a need to increase security for health information. For example, OIG found that healthcare and insurance information was one of seven categories that failed a security control testing metric.

Furthermore, healthcare and insurance is one of several categories that have overdue Plans of Action and Milestones (POA&Ms). OIG emphasized the urgency of OPM’s need to renew the systems’ POA&Ms.

Healthcare and insurance systems also failed to update their contingency plans, which are required plans according to the OPM handbook.

“Contingency Plans shall be reviewed, updated, and tested at least annually to ensure its effectiveness,” the handbook says.

Read more , Click Here

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Federal Insecurity

SECURE THINKING BY TOM KEMP

Months after the devastating Office of Personnel Management (OPM) hack came to light — in which 21.5 million personnel records were stolen — the Government Accountability Office (GAO) has issued a report on the extent that US Federal Government is experiencing breaches. The report revealed that the number of security incidents impacting Federal agencies has grown from 5,503 in 2006 to 67,168 in 2014 — a massive 12x increase in 8 years — and that the US government is looking to hire 10,000 cyber professionals in the next year. In this blog post I will go over some of the highlights of the report and some of the short-term fixes being implemented.

So what are the threats facing the US Government? The Feds list out bot-network operators, criminal groups, hackers and hacktivists, malicious insiders, other nations and terrorists. In other words, not a trivial list of adversaries.

And what techniques or exploits are the bad guys using? You name it, they are facing it: cross-site scripting, denial of service attacks, malware, phishing, passive wiretapping, spamming, spoofing, SQL injection, war driving and zero-day exploits. Basically everything is being thrown at our government systems.

The net result is a 1121% increase in 8 years in security incidents that government knows about.

The GAO has quantified the five challenges that Federal agencies must address:

1. limiting, preventing, and detecting inappropriate access to computer resources;
2. managing the configuration of software and hardware;
3. segregating duties to ensure that a single individual does not have control over all key aspects of a computer-related operation;
4. planning for continuity of operations in the event of a disaster or disruption;
5. implementing agency-wide security management programs that are critical to identifying control deficiencies, resolving problems, and managing risks on an ongoing basis.

And those challenges were fairly consistent across the 24 agencies of the US Government:

For More , Click Here

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AHA: Health IT is ‘Common Fiber’ To Achieving Care Delivery Goals

The American Hospital Association has released a new white paperthat, among other things, outlines how health IT use can improve quality across the care continuum, EHR Intelligence reports (Heath,EHR Intelligence, 11/25).

White Paper Details

Overall, the white paper offers resources related to workforce-specific roles, responsibilities and technologies to help hospitals transition to value-based care delivery models (AHA News, 11/24).

The paper, called “Connecting the Dots Along the Care Continuum,” focuses on four areas:

• Care coordination and transition management;
• New and emerging health care models;
• Patient and family care; and
• Team-based care.

According to AHA, health IT will serve as the driver of quality care because it acts as “the common fiber that supports” the paper’s four focus areas (EHR Intelligence, 11/25). For the full article click here 

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Huge variations in surgery and mental health treatment across Australia

Residents of Melbourne’s wealthy eastern and bayside suburbs are among the highest users of colonoscopies in Australia while their poorer neighbours in Frankston top the state for using mental health plans for psychological care.

A new atlas of health care has also revealed that children under the age of 17 in Sale have the highest rate of antidepressant drug use in Victoria, while people over 65 in Melbourne’s wealthy inner south-eastern suburbs are Australia’s greatest users of anti-psychotic medicines.

In a worrying discovery, there are huge variations in surgery across Australia, too, with women in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley having the highest rate of hysterectomies (removal of the uterus) – five times higher than other areas. And children under 17 in Glenelg are the most likely in Australia to have their tonsils removed. The shire, in Victoria’s south-west, has six times the rate of tonsillectomies compared to other parts of the country.   For the full article click here 

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Health IT Now Endorses VA Telehealth Bill

The Health IT Now Coalition (HITN) has sent a letter endorsing legislation aimed at expanding veterans’ access to telehealth services to the bill’s co-sponsors, Healthcare Informatics reports.

Under current rules, physicians must be licensed in the state where a veteran resides in order to provide telehealth services to that patient. Such rules are waived if both the patient and physician conduct the visit from federal facilities.

About 677,000 veterans used telehealth services last year, according to acting Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Assistant Deputy Undersecretary Maureen McCarthy. Further, about 122,000 of those veterans used telehealth to obtain mental health services at their homes. McCarthy noted that such visits have helped to decrease travel costs, lower the number of missed appointments and reduce hospital admissions. For the full article click here 

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Government announces mental health system overhaul but no extra funding

Australia’s mental health care system will be overhauled to provide more local services tailored to people’s illnesses over the next three years, but may require significantly more funding to be completed.

Health Minister Sussan Ley on Wednesday announced a range of changes to the system in response to the National Mental Health Commission’s 2014 review of mental health services, without any additional funding. For the full article click here 

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10 Healthcare Big Data Analytics Outsourcing Mistakes to Avoid

MedAssets Acquisition Could Mean Big Changes For Healthcare

MedAssets, a healthcare performance improvement company currently serving 80 percent of hospitals across the U.S., has announced it will be acquired by Pamplona Capital Management for $2.7 billion. The sale will split MedAssets revenue-cycle management segment from its group purchasing and consulting business, a move that portends a healthcare marketplace shakeup.

Pamplona is planning to combine the MedAssets revenue cycle management business with its Precyse business, as well as sell the MedAssets spend and clinical resource management business to VHA-UHC Alliance, a network of non-for-profit hospitals.

“Aligning MedAssets’ SCM offerings with VHA-UHC Alliance’s technologies and expertise will create a more robust experience for our collective members and customers,” said Curt Nonomaque, president and chief executive officer of VHA-UHC Alliance. “Our broader partnership with Pamplona will be similarly valuable, creating synergies that will enable us to better serve our members and customers.” For the full article click here 

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The Medical Tricorder: Symbolizing Our Journey From SciFi to the Health Care Model of the Future

Growing up, I was a huge fan of “Star Trek.” A tech geek to the core, what wowed me the most were devices like the Tricorder. For non-Trekkies, the Tricorder was a handheld medical scanner that noninvasively analyzed a patient’s cellular makeup and helped diagnose diseases. Recent developments are making the Tricorder jump from fiction to reality. Some even argue that the alpha version of the Tricorder already exists, its core being the smartphone in your pocket coupled with a multitude of smart devices powered by microelectromechanical systems and sensors.

I’m not the only one with the dream of the Tricorder and optimism about what it represents. The X Prize Foundation, an organization that aims to speed up innovation by offering cash prizes, created a prize, financed by an American global semiconductor maker and telcom giant, to push for the development of Tricorders as well. For the full article click here 

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Is HIE Security Affected with Health Record Integration?

HIE security cannot be discarded with a new option for implementing personal health records into HIEs, according to a contractor report recently submitted to ONC.

A recent report submitted to the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) suggests that personal health records (PHRs) could be successfully implemented into HIEs, and would help create more complete data across the industry.

However, HIE security must still be considered throughout such an implementation process, according to the report. For the full article click here 

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What executives must know about data breaches in healthcare

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office for Civil Rights’ investigations into healthcare data breaches produced information that can help stop future leaks.

Security experts have been heavily warned about the dangers that health IT departments face from cyberthreats, but those warnings haven’t been enough to prevent more healthcare data breaches from occurring. Hospital IT executives want to be sure they are taking the appropriate precautions to protect their data and infrastructures. So what are some of the lessons to be learned from previous reported attacks? Are hackers bypassing commonly used security systems? What systems are the most vulnerable within a health IT infrastructure? These are some of the many questions IT executives are asking in evaluating their data security protocols. For the full article click here 

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IBM Stock Has a Sleeping Giant in Watson Health

If you’ve been watching IBM (IBM) stock recently, odds are you’ve been pretty underwhelmed. Shares of the old-school tech giant hit fresh five-year lows earlier this month, and in the third quarter, revenues fell for a14th consecutive quarter.

It sounds like a business in decline, and it is. But IBM’s savvy investments in the cloud, analytics, healthcare — and the convergence of the three — are poised to pay off big time.

Big Blue, while it has the image of an antiquated, slow-moving blue chip with little breakout potential, has been quietly doubling down on Watson Health (a division of Watson, its cognitive computing initiative). For the full article click here 

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How digital avatars will inspire – or frighten – us to better health

In an ideal world, our medical information is accessible regardless of the doctor, clinic, or hospital, regardless of city, any state or even any country.  In reality, however, our health IT systems are a long way from ideal.

Just accessing a patient’s medical images can be difficult under the most forgiving circumstances.  Now consider what it’s like when the patient is in a car accident, while on vacation, in a big city, in a foreign country.

Some people wear medical alert bracelets to notify medical personnel about life threatening illnesses that need to be considered in an emergency.  In the digital age, these have morphed into USBs loaded with digital information. One company, appropriately dubbed, Medical Avatar, uses personal data to create digital clones or “avatars.” For the full article click here 

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Healthcare Information Sharing Raises Privacy Concerns

A new study reveals that increased information sharing via electronic health records (EHRs) often raises security and privacy concerns among patients and the public.

Researchers at Oxford University (United Kingdom), Imperial College London (United Kingdom), and other institutions carried out a cross-sectional survey among 2,761 participants recruited from primary and secondary care settings in West London. The survey results were subsequently discussed in 13 focus groups with people living with a range of different health conditions, and in four mixed focus groups with 120 patients, health professionals, and researchers.

The results showed that 79% of the participants reported that they would worry about the security of their medical record if this was part of a national EHR system, and 71 % thought the UK National Health Service (NHS; London) was unable to guarantee EHR safety. Almost half (47%) responded that EHRs would be less secure. Of those who reported being worried about EHR security, many would nevertheless support their development (55%), while 12% would not support national EHRs, and a sizeable proportion (33%) were undecided.  For the full article click here 

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Three-Quarters Of Hospitals Unhappy With Interoperability, Usability

Dissatisfaction is driving an upsurge in Emergency Department Information Technology replacements.

With a surge in patient visits to emergency departments at seven of every eight U.S. hospitals — driven by a shortage of primary care physicians, aging population, data driven industry, and the increase of high-deductible patients under Obamacare — healthcare facilities are increasingly congested, overtaxed, understaffed, and falling short of patient satisfaction.

A Black Book survey of over 700 emergency department administrative and nursing managers and more that 1,100 ED physicians found 89 percent believe their hospitals made hasty judgements regarding EHRs and ED systems between 2010 and 2013 resulting in falling productivity, rising liability, and stalled connectivity. For the full article click here 

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Rackspace brings managed cloud to mobile health care

Industry players say Medable’s signing on with Rackspace to support the California company’s platform for developing medical applications is just one deal in the emerging health care market for providers of managed cloud.

“Our customers come to us so they can meet compliance requirements — so we must have the necessary infrastructure, physical security and safeguards in place for our offering,” Medable Chief Technical Officer Tim Smith said in a news release announcing the partnership. “We rely very heavily on Rackspace for this, and we are impressed with their products and services.”

Dr. Michelle Longmire, a Stanford physician who co-founded and is CEO of the Palo Alto, California-based company, said outsourcing cloud storage and security enabled two key value points. By offloading compliance with regulations such as with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), developers could get their products to market significantly faster. And once the application is live, Rackspace provides security for vulnerable patient data. For the full article click here 

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Focus on pediatric care at Child Health Clinic

AURORA — Mubasshirat Hassan is no ordinary 16-month-old. She began walking at 8 months and was in the 93rd percentile for her age in height at her last doctor’s visit.

Her mother, Alimatu Mohammed, has brought her to the Child Health Clinic at Children’s Hospital Colorado to see Dr. Christina Suh since birth. Mohammed and her husband emigrated from Ghana in early 2014, two months before Mubasshirat was born.

“I think it’s great being here,” Mohammed said. “She makes us feel at home.”

The clinic is funded by the Children’s Hospital Colorado Foundation, which is a past recipient of Denver Post Charities Season to Share campaign. For the full article click here 

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Complex tiering system benefits health insurers

People are living longer, healthier lives than at any time in human history. Thanks in part to new medicines, technologies and other breakthroughs, researchers and health care providers are changing and saving lives, offering new hope for millions of people who suffer from chronic illness, like HIV/AIDS.

Unfortunately, while the medical and research fields continue to foster innovation, insurance companies are undermining access to these new treatments and procedures by sticking consumers with unreasonable and generally unexpected bills for these life-saving treatments. This practice of pocketing a patient’s premiums and then piling on additional co-pays and other surprise surcharges undermines the very purposes of spreading risk and offering and purchasing insurance in the first place.

While formulary tiering and benefit design have appropriate roles to play in our health care system, insurance companies are rightly under the microscope for using tiering to discriminate against people suffering from HIV/AIDS, cancer, mental illness and other conditions. In fact, the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine recently published a study on this topic and the “substantial and potentially unexpected financial strain [it puts] on people with chronic conditions.” For the full article click here 

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Health Care Organizations Report Data Breaches, Settlements

Several health care organizations recently have reported and resolved incidents of health data breaches.

Cincinnati-based UC Health Breach

On Saturday, the Cincinnati-based UC Health hospital networkdisclosed a data breach affecting the personal information of more than 1,000 patients, Dayton Daily News reports.

UC-Health in September discovered nine incidents dating back to August 2014 in which emails containing patient data were mistakenly sent to email addresses at an unauthorized domain. Officials said the domain is similar to one authorized by UC Health. For the full article click here 

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Security of home health tools lacks government oversight

While use of digital health tools at home–from genetic tests to wearables–can put personal health information at risk, the government currently has very few tools at its disposal to solve such issues, the Washington Post reports.

Such tests are not under the purview of HIPAA–and the government currently can’t do much to regulate that space, it notes. The same goes for wearables, mobile health tools and genetic testing companies, like 23andMe. For the full article click here 

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UW explores mobile health app for drug risks during pregnancy

A team at the University of Washington is working to develop a mobile app that would make it easier to understand the risks of specific drugs on developing fetuses.

UW is teaming up with Midland, Michigan-based software company RightAnswer.com to explore the feasibility of an app that would give doctors immediate information about drug risks for pregnant mothers, the university said on its website. It’s doing so with a $150,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For the full article click here 

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UnitedHealth may leave Affordable Care Act over losses

WASHINGTON —The biggest US health insurer is considering pulling out of the Affordable Care Act as it loses hundreds of millions of dollars on the program, casting a pall over President Obama’s signature domestic policy achievement.

UnitedHealth Group has scaled back marketing efforts for plans sold to individuals this year and may quit the business entirely in 2017. It’s an abrupt shift from October, when the health insurer said it was planning to sell coverage through the Affordable Care Act in 11 more states next year, bringing its total to 34. For the full article click here 

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Cylance Becomes a Member of the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT)

Cylance Executives Malcolm Harkins and Jon Miller Add Cybersecurity Expertise to the Washington, DC-Based Tactical Bipartisan Forum of Federal Agency Executives, Legislative Community, and Industry Leaders Focused on Solutions-Based Strategies to the Nation’s Critical Infrastructure Obstacles

IRVINE, CA–(Marketwired – Nov 18, 2015) –  Cylance, the company that is revolutionizing cybersecurity with products and services that use artificial intelligence to proactively prevent, rather than just reactively detect advanced persistent threats and malware, today announced that it has become a member of the Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (ICIT) Fellows Program. Cylance executives Malcolm Harkins, Global Chief Information Security Officer and Jon Miller, Vice President of Strategy have been named ICIT Fellows and expand the Institute’s growing expertise in preventative cybersecurity technologies and other national cybersecurity concerns.

Cylance has already contributed to several ICIT briefings including “Moving Forward: How Victims Can Regain Control & Mitigate Threats in the Wake of the OPM Breach“, the third in a series of ICIT briefs in support of the U.S. Government’s response to the OPM breach. This brief has since been turned into a series of videos, which are providing valuable guidance to the millions of federal employees victimized by the OPM breach. Cylance has deep expertise in Incident Response, Compromise Assessments, Penetration Testing, Industrial Control Systems (ICS), Critical Infrastructure and Key Resources (CIKR) in addition to its next-generation endpoint security product CylancePROTECT™.

On November 19, 2015 Cylance executive and ICIT Fellow Jon Miller will address senior legislative staffers and both public and private sector healthcare industry leaders on the top cybersecurity risks facing hospitals and other healthcare organizations as well as what can be done to mitigate them. The ICIT Briefing “Hacking Healthcare” held at the Senate in partnership with a congressional healthcare committee will also feature insights from federal agency technology leaders from the U.S Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), NASA and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

Click Here to Read More

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Gaps Found in Healthcare Cybersecurity Threat Detection

“Cyber threat intelligence sharing still holds the greatest potential to enhance situational awareness and improve organizational cyber preparedness.”

Few healthcare companies actually contribute to a healthcare cybersecurity threat intelligence sharing and analysis organization, according to a recent report, which shows there are gaps when it comes to collecting data and then learning from it.

The Health Information Trust Alliance (HITRUST) found that just 5 percent of healthcare organizations contributed Indicators of Compromise (IOCs) to the HITRUST Cyber Threat XChange (CTX). However, 85 percent of organizations gathered information from IOCs in that same timeframe, according to The Health Industry Cyber Threat Information Sharing and Analysis Report.

• Current requirements and guidance regarding the submission of IOCs to the HITRUST CTX is deficient and contributes to under-reporting or inconsistent reporting of IOCs
• Current level of IOC collection is not representative of the level of cyber threats being perpetrated against the healthcare industry – nor are complete and timely IOCs available through existing government and other readily available commercial cyber threat sources

It is also important to note that just 50 percent of the contributed IOCs in the sampling period were considered “actionable,” meaning they could potentially be “useful in allowing preventative or defensive action to be taken without a significant risk of a false positive.”

“Cyber threat intelligence sharing still holds the greatest potential to enhance situational awareness and improve organizational cyber preparedness,” HITRUST CEO Daniel Nutkis said in a statement. “Development of the IOC collection requirements and our deployment of breach detection systems are a big step forward in advancing industry’s cyber intel sharing capability.” For the full article click here 

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Readying EHR Technology for Population Health Management

Wachter: Digital health is now the norm, but it needs work

In closing the annual American Medical Informatics Association conference in San Francisco Wednesday, Dr. Robert Wachter, chief hospitalist and chief of the medical service at nearby UCSF Medical Center, told the audience that he is “kind of an interloper in this field,” though far from a Luddite.

“Up until a couple of years ago, I couldn’t tell you the difference between an API and an APB,” Wachter quipped. But something changed.

“It is not an exaggeration to say that in the last five years, we have gone from a primarily analog business to a primarily digital business. That is a huge deal,” Wachter said. Digital health has arrived. For the full article click here 

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Clinton and Sanders Escalate Sniping on Health-Care Taxes

Democratic presidential contenders Hillary Clinton and Sen. Bernie Sanders for months have warily circled one another, contrasting their policy ideas in mostly gentle terms.

No more.

This week, Mrs. Clinton, the front-runner, unloaded on the Vermont senator, charging that Mr. Sanders would raise taxes on the middle class to pay for his single-payer health-care plan that would have the government replace private insurance companies to pay claims.

“I don’t see how you can be serious about raising working- and middle-class families’ incomes if you also want to slap new taxes on them—no matter what the taxes will pay for,” Mrs. Clinton said Tuesday at a campaign stop in Dallas. For the full article click here 

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Reviews Reveal Divisions Within the Clinton Health Initiative, Starting at the Top

Inside the sprawling philanthropy founded by former President Bill Clinton, its health initiative, run by a longtime friend and policy adviser to the Clintons, holds a vaunted place, with the largest budget of any program in the foundation and a distinguished record of fighting diseases like AIDS and tuberculosis in underdeveloped countries.

Its chief executive, Ira C. Magaziner, who is admired as a brilliant, farsighted leader, has long alienated co-workers at the Clinton Foundation. But a harsh new set of complaints about Mr. Magaziner were captured this year in a performance review, with most of the grievances coming from the board of the Clinton Health Access Initiative, or CHAI, of which Chelsea Clinton is a member.

The review said Mr. Magaziner had shown “disdain” for the health initiative’s board, exhibited “duplicitousness with management” and displayed a “lack of transparency” and “dismissive behavior” toward Clinton family members. For the full article click here 

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$90,000 federal grant for Harmony Health

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services announced Friday that the Harmony Health Medical Clinic and Family Resource Center in Marysville was awarded $90,500 to provide health center outreach and insurance enrollment assistance.

After operating for 22 years as a Rural Health Clinic, the center became a nonprofit Federally Qualified Health Center in September, which qualified it for the funds through the Health insurance Marketplace, Harmony CFO Jennifer Hunter said.

“It will pay for an additional staff member to go out and meet with the community to see how we can serve them better,” Hunter said. “It will help people navigate the (health insurance) system and show them it’s not as scary as it might seem.”

The center serves about 7,000 patients each year, and about 80 percent are on Medicare. The new staff position, which has already been filled, will help educate and guide people through the process of signing up for Covered California, Medicare and other health insurance options, Hunter said. For the full article click here 

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Comprehensive Physician Information Lacking

According to Kyruus report, consumers often have a difficult time locating good background information on physicians.

The latest Kyruus report, The Consumer’s Path To Finding a Healthcare Provider, finds patients often struggle to find quality information when searching for a new physician.

Of more than 1,000 patients surveyed, 38 percent conduct healthcare-related research before they seek out a physician, according to Healthcare IT News. Additionally, 72 percent of these consumers are looking for information about specific physicians.

“As patients become more engaged in the research and management of their health, hospital systems need to understand what motivates them. There is a huge opportunity to provide consumers with the appropriate resources — both online and offline — to find the right physicians and conveniently schedule appointments,” said Julie Yoo, co-founder and chief product officer at Kyruus, in a press release. For the full article click here 

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Some Inconvenient Truths for CMS

AMIA says meaningful use has had ‘serious and unintended consequence’ of limiting the design, innovation of EHRs

In October, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services asked for comments on its implementation of the Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS) and the promotion of alternative payment models. This week the American Medical Informatics Association (AMIA) responded with specific suggestions, but also some insightful general comments about health IT and quality measurement in service of value-based payment.

For instance, AMIA notes that despite earnest efforts, quality measurement has not become “a by-product of care delivered,” as envisioned, but rather an end unto itself. The focus on collecting numerous, process measures that may not reflect a patient-centered perspective on quality needs to be replaced by focusing on a more targeted number of important outcome measures, it said. For the full article click here 

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Who’s Ready for VDT Meaningful Use Requirements?

Connecting Your Healthcare IT Clients With Their Most Tech-Savvy Users

Connecting with patients is a top priority under MU Stage 3 and it’s likely that your clients are having issues effectively bridging the tech gap with the people they serve. A recent survey from Deloitte though may lend some invaluable insight in helping them reach their patient engagement goals.

Key Findings

• Consumers prefer to be engaged in their healthcare decisions: 34 percent believe that doctors should actively encourage patients to ask questions and research.
• Consumers trust information sources more these days: 52 percent of respondents said they’d searched online for care- or health-related information and use of patient portals, social, and performance score cards has been increasing.
• Consumers are even more engaged with tech when it comes to their health: Between 2013 and 2015, Technology used to measure fitness and health goals has jumped to 28 percent from 17 percent, with the highest use among millennials at 45 percent. Higher use was also found among users with chronic conditions, increasing from 22 percent to 39 percent. The majority of these users (60 percent) also indicated that their relationship with technology had a meaningful impact on their health-related behavior.

For the full article click here 

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New foundation looks to grow understanding of good lung health

Ineffective advocacy and the lack of a unified approach to lung health were major reasons for establishing the Lung Foundation New Zealand, says chief executive Philip Hope.

The foundation was inaugurated at the Lung Health Seminar in Wellington on 11 November, a day before World Pneumonia Day and during Australia’s lung health awareness month.

No such awareness month exists here, and Lung Foundation New Zealand is the country’s first national body dedicated to the advocacy of lung health, Mr Hope says. For the full article click here 

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Lawyer suggests strategies to avoid texting risks with PHI

Healthcare providers and their business associates are fast getting hip to the reality that it’s not OK to text protected health information (PHI).

Not only does unsecure texting of PHI run afoul of HIPAA privacy rules, but it’s also just too easy for texted PHI to be stolen, hacked, leaked or lost unless it is not safeguarded.

Lawyer Lisa Thompson of the LeClairRyan law firm amply underscores that message in a recent post on the Richmond, Va.-based firm’s blog.

Thompson notes that texting is popular for many reasons. It’s “easy, fast and efficient,” she points out. It’s also considerably less cumbersome than email, and you don’t need a computer to do it.

But for healthcare providers, all this convenience can be dangerous and can lead to unauthorized access to PHI, Thompson emphasizes. For the full article click here 

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Health insurance premiums rising 6pc, get used to it

Next year’s health insurance price hike will be slightly lower than previous years but nib boss Mark Fitzgibbon says customers need to “get used to the idea” of annual premium increases in the region of 5 to 6 per cent.

The push to rein in the rising cost of private health cover is an aim of Health Minister Sussan Ley’s review into the $19 billion sector, which heats up this week, but Mr Fitzgibbon played down expectations it would deliver real change.

“I don’t think there will be any initial big bang,” he said.

Mr Fitzgibbon, speaking at a conference organised by investment bank UBS, said spending on health care across the country had run at about 6 per cent a year for the past 10 years. For the full article click here 

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Demystifying an assurance fallacy

When situations go awry in an organization, there’s a tendency to create new, executive-level positions by establishing the classic “one throat to choke” policy if problems persist. For example, if tacit knowledge is leaving the organization without being captured, an organization might be compelled to establish a chief knowledge officer (CKO) position. If an organization fails to implement a meaningful strategy, a chief strategy officer (CSO) position is sometimes established. If an effective marketing strategy isn’t in place or the marketing strategy fails, perhaps a chief marketing officer (CMO) will solve the problem. Or when an organization encounters an oversight in a technology decision, they might create a chief technology officer (CTO) position.

Although there is value in the growing number of C-suite positions, my main concern is the unrealistic expectations that are often associated with desired results. One memorable quote that I come back to when I ponder this topic: “We don’t need more opinions, we need more hands!”

The Clinger-Cohen Act of 1996 established the federal CIO positon and area of responsibility. Still, theFederal Chief Financial Officer Act often empowered CFOs to perform tasks that ran counter to the CIO’s area of responsibility. The CTO position emerged as perceptions grew that CIOs often lacked the skills needed to lead the technical direction of an organization. Consequently, CIOs were essentially in figure-head roles because they lacked line and budget authority over staff who contributed to, or negatively impacted, their areas of responsibility. As more CxO positions were created in the technical realm (CTOs, CISOs), areas of responsibility became more fragmented. It’s a paradoxical situation for CxOs to be ultimately responsible for tasks over which they do not have line authority; albeit not uncommon.

For the full article click here 

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Gathering Discusses Mental Health Issues Facing Minorities

Students, alumni, and mental health professionals gathered to discuss the unique mental health struggles that can affect minority students in a “lunch and learn” session on Saturday afternoon.

Amidst a week of demonstrations against racism on numerous college campuses, including the University of Missouri at Columbia and Yale University, the event was co-hosted by the Harvard Black Alumni Society and the Steve Fund, an organization dedicated to wellbeing among students of color and established in memory of a Harvard alumnus who died by suicide.

The event at the Harvard Graduate School of Education featured two experts who drew on both personal experiences and their own research.

Annelle B. Primm ’76, a psychiatry professor at Johns Hopkins University, spoke about her own experience as a student of color during her time at Harvard. For the full article click here 

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Health Briefs: Festival of Trees, more

Delaware Hospice will host its annual Festival of Trees, a display of decorated trees and wreaths, at Cokesbury Village, 726 Loveville Rd., Friday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The event raises money for hospice services.

This year’s festival includes live entertainment, a bingo tournament, festival marketplace to buy gifts, a bake shop and memorial trees.

Admission is $6 for adults and $4 for seniors. Children are free except for Nov. 22, which is Family Fun Day, when tickets are $8 for children. Family fun events include traveling zoo, clowns, games and photos with Santa from noon to 3 p.m.

An “Enchanted Evening” party will take place Nov. 21 from 6:30 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. and includes hors d’oeuvres, a martini bar and music by Steve Silicato. Tickets are $75 per person. For the full article click here 

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Kaiser, mental health workers avert strike

OAKLAND — Kaiser Permanente and its mental health workers have reached a tentative contract settlement, averting a strike that had been planned to start Monday, the union announced late Sunday.

Health clinicians and Kaiser agreed on a tentative three-year contract overcoming two major sticking points, the union announced in an email. Former California State Senate leader Darrell Steinberg of Sacramento acted as a mediator in the talks.

The agreement, which still must be ratified by members, allows Kaiser psychologists, psychiatric social workers and marriage and family therapists to advocate for their patients and meet their treatment needs without threat of discipline or discharge, according to the union. The agreement also calls for a 1-to-4 ratio of new-to-return patients, which the union says would ensure timely access to ongoing care for Kaiser mental health patients.

In addition, according to the union, Kaiser has also agreed to rescind proposed cuts to pension benefits. For the full article click here 

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Natural therapies: no clear evidence of health benefits, government review finds

There is no clear evidence that natural therapies are effective, a government review says, prompting calls for taxpayers and private health insurers to stop paying for them.

A Department of Health review of 17 therapies covered by private insurance released on Monday stated it could not conclude that any worked.

While there was “low to moderate quality” evidence that some therapies – for example, massage therapy, yoga and tai chi – may have some health benefits, overall “there was not reliable, high-quality evidence available to allow assessment of the clinical effectiveness of any of the natural therapies for any health conditions”, the report, by Chief Medical Officer Chris Baggoley, said.For the full article click here 

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Workers Shoulder Bigger Portion of Health Care Costs, Study Finds

The runaway train of rising health-care costs has slowed, but you’re forgiven if you haven’t noticed: New research shows that employees are contributing a record amount toward their coverage, a trend that experts say is likely to continue as high-deductible plans and stingier benefits become more commonplace.

New data from consulting firm Aon Hewitt show that health care costs for mid-sized and large companies costs rose 3.2 percent in 2015, the smallest increase since 1996. The amount employees have to pay in premiums and out-of-pocket costs, though, hit a record of nearly $4,700 — and that figure will rise by another $370 next year, it forecast.

Other studies have drawn similar conclusions. “We anticipate that the rate of increase will pick up again. Our study data shows that cost increases over the past couple of years have been somewhat suppressed,” said Les McPhearson, CEO of United Benefits Advisors, which found in its own annual study a 2.4 percent rate of increase this year over 2014. For the full article click here 

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Missouri coach Gary Pinkel to resign after season due to health issues

Missouri head coach Gary Pinkel will resign following the conclusion of the 2015 season, theschool announced Friday.

According to a release from the school, the decision is due to health issues. Pinkel was diagnosed with lymphoma in May. The school said he received “multiple treatments” in May and June after doctors determined that treatment “wouldn’t interfere with his coaching duties.” Once that determination was made, Pinkel decided to coach the 2015 season.

“I made the decision in May, after visiting with my family, that I wanted to keep coaching, as long as I felt good and had the energy I needed,” Pinkel said in a statement. “I felt great going into the season, but also knew that I would need to re-assess things at some point, and I set our bye week as the time when I would take stock of the future. After we played Vanderbilt (Oct. 24), I had a scheduled PET scan on Oct. 26th for reassessment, and then visited with my family and came to the decision on October 27th that this would be my last year coaching.  For the full article click here 

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Kentucky Governor Issues Parting Plea to Successor on Health Care System

WASHINGTON — Gov. Steven L. Beshear of Kentucky offered a vivid defense of his expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act on Friday, imploring Matt Bevin, the Republican governor-elect, to “look at this from a business standpoint, if not from a human standpoint,” and keep the program in place.

Mr. Bevin, a businessman who comfortably defeated Attorney General Jack Conway last week, frequently attacked the health law on the campaign trail. He initially vowed to reverse the state’s expansion of Medicaid, which has provided health coverage to an additional 425,000 low-income people, including many adults with no dependent children.

But more recently, Mr. Bevin has suggested he would seek federal permission to reshape the program, requiring participants to contribute to the cost of their coverage and possibly scaling back eligibility, something no state has received permission to do under the terms of the health law.

In a news conference in Frankfort, Mr. Beshear, a Democrat who is leaving office because of term limits, offered facts and figures to back up his argument that expanding Medicaid would save the state money and improve, as he put it, “our collective public image.”

Pointing to Kentucky’s long battles with health scourges like obesity andcancer, he said the state was finally turning a corner. For the full article click here 

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Mental-health care key to preventing military suicides: top soldier

Canada’s top soldier says persuading more Canadian Forces members to seek mental-health treatment is a vital element of a new suicide-prevention strategy under development and the military will pay close attention to those who served in the army in Afghanistan.

General Jonathan Vance, Chief of the Defence Staff, says he’s also undertaking a wide-ranging review of how the military treats soldiers, sailors and air personnel that will span the entire life of a Canadian in the Forces – from recruit to veteran. The goal is to help build resilience in them to better handle personal setbacks.

“I am close to this issue,” he said in an interview. “I have lost people to suicide in my life.”

“We need to look broadly at how we care for our people, whether it’s a workplace free of sexual assault and harassment, effective recruiting and a satisfactory professional life all the way through transition – whether you are injured or not – into your period as a veteran,” the defence chief said. For the full article click here 

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PHI Data Breach Report Shows Increase in Data Breach Rate

“Protected Health Information is like gold for today’s cybercriminal. This data can be extremely damaging in the hands of those wanting to commit various types of financial fraud.”

Nearly 90 percent of industries handling health information have experienced a PHI data breach, shows recent research from Verizon Enterprise Solutions. This data and other findings are expected to appear in the company’s PHI Data Breach Report, slated for release next month. The report is expected to include information on how many PHI data breaches occur, why they occur, and how. Furthermore, the report will include insights on health data security in nearly 25 countries in North America, Europe, and the Asia-Pacific region. In a post promoting the report, Verizon shares that personally identifiable information is the most common kind of PHI data theft because it enables financial fraud and identity theft.

“Protected Health Information is like gold for today’s cybercriminal,” said Suzanne Widup, lead author for the Verizon Enterprise Solutions report. “This data can be extremely damaging in the hands of those wanting to commit various types of financial fraud.”

The preview also suggests that PHI data breaches are concerning for various kinds of organizations, not just healthcare facilities. For the full article click here

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Valley company offers employers a new model for providing healthcare

Providing mandated healthcare for workers is a major cost for Arizona employers.

According to the Kaiser Foundation, on average, they pay $355 a month per employee.

That can be especially daunting for small startups trying to grow.

But one Valley company says it has found a way to cut those costs down to $100 a month or less, which is just what Melissa Digianfilippo, owner of public relations and marketing company Serendipt Consulting, was looking for.

“I couldn’t afford a health insurance plan. When it comes down to it, it would probably put me out of business,” Digianfilippo said.

With the passage of the Affordable Care Act, which mandates employers provide coverage if they employ more than 50 people, she also felt her potential to grow was limited.

“I am at 25 employees, and I thought I better not hire more than 49,” she said.

Former Phoenix Mayor Paul Johnson said many businesses face the same dilemma.

“Effectively, we are making them not competitive with the existing system that is in place,” Johnson said.

Johnson said part of the problem is employers don’t really understand what they are required to provide.

“Obamacare didn’t require that they get insurance, it required that they get healthcare. It required that they have a minimum essential care coverage. They need to understand they can comply with the law, and they can decide to do for in a way that is affordable to them,” Johnson said.   For the full article click here

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How Obamacare Inadvertently Threatens The Financial Health Of Small Businesses, And What States Should Do About It

Starting in 2016, push comes to shove for small businesses under the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare. As of January 1, small businesses, broadly defined as firms with 50 to 100 full-time employees, must comply with the ACA’s employer mandate and provide qualified health insurance to their workers or face stiff penalties. But this requirement poses a big threat to the financial stability of small employers—and not for the reasons you might think.

Obamacare includes a myriad of regulatory incentives and exemptions that define the parameters of the employer mandate. However, these have inadvertent consequences. Most important, exemptions in the ACA encourage small firms to self-finance their health care plans—that is, pay their workers’ health care bills directly, rather than covering them through a traditional insurance policy. Most large companies in America (above 3,000 employees) engage in self-funding, but that is done now by only about 16% of small companies of between 50 and 100 employees. According to my research, that number is set to rise. For the full article click here

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New York City finds one in five adults has mental health problems

At least one in five adult New Yorkers suffer from depression, substance abuse, suicidal thoughts or other psychological disorders every year, according to a report released on Thursday ahead of Mayor Bill de Blaiso’s new mental-health initiative.

New York City’s Department of Health and Mental Hygiene expects to release the plan, known as NYC Thrive, by the end of next month. It is aimed at preventing and treating psychological disorders among the city’s 8.4 million residents.

The “white paper” released Thursday outlines the size and scope of the problem facing the New York City.

“We have a set of public health issues that affect many people and affect them very deeply,” said Dr. Gary Belkin, a deputy commissioner of the health department. “We know what we’re going to be doing, and over the coming weeks you’re going to be hearing about it.” For the full article click here

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Employee Theft Results in PHI Data Breach for 16K Children

One employee with a retaliatory agenda against Children’s Medical Clinics shared patient information with another former employee.

Employee theft and improper disclosure resulted in a massive PHI data breach at Children’s Medical Clinics in Texas.According to the data breach notification letter sent out to potentially affected individuals, an employee took paper patient records from the healthcare facility. The employee also logged into electronic patient records and took screenshots of the records, sending the screenshots to another former clinic employee.  The former employee who took the information reportedly had a retaliatory agenda against the clinics, which is allegedly why the patient documents were sent out. According to the notification letter, there is no reason to believe the former employee planned to use the patient records to do any harm to the patients, but rather sought to cause damage to the clinic’s reputation. For the full article click here 

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Health clinics fear loss of kynect

Just a few years ago, Louisville’s  Family Health Centers were on the brink of closing clinics and laying off staff.

More than half the patients at the network of seven community clinics had no health insurance. Operating losses for the clinics, a medical safety net for the poor, had reached $2.5 million.

Then the Affordable Care Act kicked in. Enrollment in health plans surged through kynect, Kentucky’s award-winning health insurance exchange created under the federal law also known as Obamacare.

Now Family Health Centers’ budget is in the black, with more than 80 percent of patients enrolled in health coverage and able to pay for care. This year it opened a gleaming new full-service clinic on East Broadway in a former antique warehouse, renovated with a $5 million federal grant.

Bill Wagner, executive director of Family Health Centers, credits Kentucky’s embrace of the federal health law. For the full article click here 

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Companies continue chipping away at health insurance benefits

Companies’ health care costs in 2015 rose at the lowest rate in at least 20 years, a report out Thursday shows, but workers’ share of costs continue to skyrocket.

The average health care rate increase for mid-sized and large companies was 3.2% this year, the lowest since the consulting firm Aon started tracking it in 1996.  Despite this, the average amount workers have to contribute toward their health care is up more than 134% over the past decade and that trend will accelerate.

“Our clients say, ‘I can’t keep paying more and more of these ever-rising health costs,’ ” says Craig Dolezal, a senior vice president of Aon’s health practice. For the full article click here 

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When it comes to health care, all refugees still aren’t equal

Although John McCallum, the new minister of immigration, refugees and citizenship, has said many times over the last couple of months that he intends to restore medical insurance for refugees, celebrations are on hold.

Canadian lawyers and doctors who have been advocating for the Interim Federal Health (IFH) program to be reinstated in its original form have many questions about the Liberal promise.

In particular, they want to know how soon the program will be revived, and whether it will provide the same scope of coverage for all refugees in Canada. For the full article click here 

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On Your Side Alert: Concerns about hackers targeting hospital devices

It sounds like something right out of a movie, but now, hackers could be targeting hospitals. The Food and Drug Administration recently advised hospitals to stop using a medical device over fears that cyber crooks could take control of them.

If you end up in the hospital, the last thing you want to worry about is a hacker gaining access to the medical device you’re hooked up to, but cyber expert, Kevin Boynton, with The Computer Doctor of Richmond, says it could happen. “If it is connected to the internet it is vulnerable no matter what it is,” Boynton says.

The FDA says hospitals should stop using a machine that regulates medicine in IV drips. The agency says the devices made by Hospira, which is now owned by Pfizer, is vulnerable to hackers. The concern is that cyber crooks can gain access to the hospital’s network and change the dosage the pump delivers.

There are no reports of a hacker actually being able to pull this off, and the FDA says the machines are no longer being made or distributed. While patients should be aware, our cyber experts say there is no reason to be alarmed. “I personally don’t see a terrorist organization trying to do this a on a large scale because there is a lot of gateways that they would have to get through. Ultimately, first of all, they would have to get through the hospital’s network and then the hospital would have to have these pumps and then the hospitals would have to have these pumps on their network,” Boynton explains.  For the full article click here 

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CACI Awarded $77M Contract to Build Military Health Clinical Analytics Systems

CACI International Inc has been awarded a $76.8 million three-year contract to provide build the next generation military health clinical analyics systems to the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center (SPAWARSYSCEN) Atlantic.

Contract Details

SPAWAR Systems Center Atlantic provides advanced health IT solutions that support the Defense Health Agency (DHA) and military health. Under the contract, CACI will build, deploy, and maintain state-of-the-art medical intelligence and decision support systems for the Department of Defense (DoD), designed to improve the cost, quality, and precision delivery of healthcare to the 9.3 million DoD beneficiaries.  For the full article click here 

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Health care officials come from across US

Voalte, a Sarasota County company working to digitize hospital communications, hosts its first-ever user conference this week, bringing information technology executives from the nation’s hospitals to Southwest Florida.

Voalte expects about 100 people to attend the two-day event — which is closed to the public — at the Hyatt Regency Sarasota.

“It’s our first user conference,” Voalte chief executive Trey Lauderdale said Tuesday. “We have UCSF from California coming, people from Cedars-Sinai, Mass. General, Texas Children’s, Nebraska, Iowa, even the Dakotas, believe it or not. They are all convening here, a number of leaders in the health IT space.”

Voalte’s system enables a hospital to replace old-fashioned devices still in use such as pagers and bells with an all-compassing communications system enabled by smartphones. For the full article click here 

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Confused about health IT progress? So are we

A quick glance at Twitter Tuesday afternoon showed several things: Health IT is great. Health IT is terrible. Consumers have unprecedented access to their health records. Healthcare organizations haven’t done enough to give consumers access to records.

Today, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology tweeted this infographic to illustrate that nearly two-thirds of of healthcare providers in the U.S. provided online patient access to EHRs in 2014, up from just 10 percent a year earlier. For the full article click here 

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Four Digital Health Startups Named for Venture+ Final Comeptition

WASHINGTON, DC (November 9, 2015) — The Venture+ Forum at the mHealth Summit today announced the four companies selected from 11 digital health startups, to compete in the Venture+ Forum LIVE pitch finals on the mHealth Summit main stage on Tuesday, November 10 (4-6pm). The Venture+ Forum brings together leading digital health innovators, business leaders and deal makers to provide a comprehensive, 360-degree view on health tech investing and today’s most promising startups.

The four top companies who will complete in the “pitch off” contest are: CircleLink Health, CirrusMD Inc., Smart Clinic, LLC and Wellpepper.

Also taking place at the mHealth Summit is the Startup Boot Camp, a one-of-a-kind, interactive workshop for seed and early-stage entrepreneurs – Monday, November 9 (2-6pm). This event debuts at the Summit and offers advice for cultivating an innovator’s mind set, building a successful digital health business and delivering validated health outcomes. Medical innovators from MedStar and Partners Healthcare, investors from Maverick Capital Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, Providence Ventures and Silicon Valley Bank, as well as other industry partners AARP, DreamIt Health New York City Economic Development Corporation and HITLAB will offer practical tips for increasing a company’s equity value, maximizing chances for securing funders and customers, and growing a business.

This year’s Startup Showcase will feature 50+ new and emerging companies, plus global incubator and accelerator programs supporting the training and development of early stage companies, including Canadian Technology Accelerator for Health IT, mHealth Israel, New York eHealth Collaborative and StartUp Health. For the full article click here 

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Rush Health appoints new CMO, CIO

Chicago-based Rush Health has appointed two new executives to its C-suite, both effective immediately.

Dr. Michael Raymond has been named CMO of the four-hospital academic medical system, which includes Chicago’s Rush University Medical Center. He replaces Dr. Catherine Dimou, who took a position in academics at Rush University.

Raymond, 62, previously served as associate chief medical quality officer at Evanston, Ill.-based NorthShore University Health System. During that time he also served as medical director of Evanston-based Community Care Partners, a collaboration of four health systems focused on caring for Medicaid-eligible patients.

Before NorthShore, Raymond, an internist, worked as CMO at Rush North Shore Medical Center in Skokie, Ill. He’s also served on the National Advisory Council for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. For the full article click here 

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Novel Patient Engagement Approach

In my last blog I spoke to the potential benefits of patient engagement in meeting ARRA/MU Stage 3 objectives.  In a recent conversation I learned about some interesting technology that parallels my discussion of the inclusion of imaging, and the potential for technologies such as streaming.

The company of interest is Wellpepper, which is focused on improving patient engagement in treatment plans by means of electronic delivery.  Wellpepper operates as a software as a services (SaaS), and utilizes Amazon’s web services, and data is encrypted and not stored on the local device.  It supports any web or mobile device, and can deliver custom treatment plans and reminders electronically, as well as the ability to provide videos and tasks, and report patient outcomes. For the full article click here 

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Live from the HIMSS Connected Health Conference: Innovation Leaders Push for a More Connected Healthcare—and the Need for Better Data Protection

On the first day of the HIMSS Connected Health Conference, leaders from various healthcare segments came together to push towards a unified goal: to better connect systems and people, and better protect patients’ health information.

These feelings were expressed both from the morning’s keynote speakers, and again in the form of two industry surveys that representatives from the Chicago-based Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) discussed at the conference on Nov. 9 at the Gaylord National Resort in National Harbor, Md. (the HIMSS Connected Conference combines the mHealth Summit from previous years with the new Cybersecurity and Population Health Summits, all under the HIMSS umbrella).

H. Stephen Lieber, HIMSS President and CEO, kicked off the conference saying that the program’s changes this year are due to a greater recognition of the empowerment of individuals, which he said is the key to new healthcare as we move more towards self-connected care. Lieber specifically mentioned patient-generated health data (PGHD), noting that while it doesn’t get a lot of credibility from those who only believe in traditional medicine, it is a valuable source of data—”maybe the best source of real-time clinical data.”  For the full article click here 

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U.S. Targets Pharmacies Over Soaring Claims to Military Health Program

Federal prosecutors in at least four states are mounting investigations into what they describe as widespread fraud by compounding pharmacies in claims to the health-insurance program that covers 9.5 million U.S. military members and their families.

In the latest move, four Florida pharmacies last month agreed to pay $12.8 million combined to settle civil allegations that they falsely billed the insurance program Tricare for expensive pharmaceutical creams and gels to treat pain, scars and other ailments, according to A. Lee Bentley III, the U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Florida.

Two of the compounding pharmacies, which make customized medicines by mixing pharmaceutical ingredients, employed salespeople who paid doctors to write prescriptions to Tricare beneficiaries, prosecutors said. In some cases, doctors would conduct telephone consultations with beneficiaries and then write them prescriptions, despite having not met with the beneficiaries in person, prosecutors said. Those prescriptions were illegitimate because they weren’t based on genuine doctor-patient relationships, a violation of the federal False Claims Act, the prosecutors said. For the full article click here 

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Regulators Urge Broader Health Networks

WASHINGTON — The nation’s insurance commissioners are recommending sweeping new standards to address complaints from consumers about limited access to doctors and hospitals in health plans sold under the Affordable Care Act.

Limited networks of health care providers are a feature of many insurance policies offered in the public marketplaces, or exchanges, where people with low incomes can often obtain subsidies that reduce their monthly premiums to $100 or less. Such “narrow networks,” consumers say, often do not include the doctors they need for specialized care for themselves or their children.

The National Association of Insurance Commissioners, which represents state officials, would require that insurers have enough doctors and hospitals in their networks to provide all covered services to consumers “without unreasonable travel or delay.” States remain the primary regulators of insurance, despite a huge increase in federal insurance standards since adoption of the health law in 2010. For the full article click here 

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Alaskans seek relief from high health care costs with medical tourism

In 2007, Marcy Merrill decided it was finally time to get some help. She was obese, but wouldn’t truly admit it.

Then one day, “I looked up and saw myself in the mirror … really saw myself,” Merrill said. At that moment, she knew she needed a medical intervention.

Merrill, who was living in Nome at the time, began researching the costs of lap band bariatric surgery, a procedure that causes weight loss by restricting the amount of food a person’s stomach can hold.

Her insurance didn’t cover the procedure, so she was looking to finance the surgery on her own. Anchorage doctors told her that she’d need to fly there multiple times before the procedure. With the travels, the required counseling, the anesthesiologist and surgery, the entire procedure would cost her about $24,000, she said.

When she realized the expense, “I was actually thinking that I would just save that and be unhealthy,” Merrill said. “I was not going to take money away from my family (for something) that was not an emergency.” For the full article click here 

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NIB CEO Mark Fitzgibbon says smokers should pay higher health insurance premiums

Smokers should be charged higher fees for health insurance under a trial that could pave the way for overweight people to also be charged more, the CEO of one of Australia’s largest insurers says.

Just weeks after the Turnbull Government announced that one million Australians would next year take part in an “opt out” e-health trial that would allow their medical records to be shared with third party companies, the head of NIB Mark Fitzgibbon said there was potential for insurers to get involved.

He said while higher premiums for smokers should come first, people could be rewarded for healthy behaviours such as achieving 10,000 steps a day on activity trackers. For the full article click here 

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ISACA Joins The Institute for Critical Infrastructure

The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology formally welcomed ISACA to the ICIT Fellows Program in October.  One of the largest professional cybersecurity organizations in the world, ISACA engages in the development, adoption and use of globally accepted, industry-leading knowledge and practices for information systems and adds to the Institute’s growing expertise in cybersecurity workforce development and training.  ISACA will be represented by Fellows Robin “Montana” Williams (Senior Manager, Cybersecurity Practices) and Thomas Lamm (Director).

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Cybersecurity training and workforce development are top priorities for cyber-aware organizations.  As a leader in this space, ISACA brings its decades of expertise and globally recognized cybersecurity training programs to ICIT and its educational efforts.  To help kick-off cybersecurity awareness month, Mr. Williams contributed to ICIT”s “Town Hall” on minority underrepresentation in cybersecurity, a briefing sponsored by Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) and held at the Rayburn House Office Building.  Rep. Lee was joined by Congresswoman Linda T. Sánchez (D-CA), Chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and Congresswoman and Judy Chu (D-CA), Chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus in hosting the “Town Hall” meeting.

R. “Montana” Williams, Senior Manager, Cybersecurity Practices & Cyber Evangelist states, “ ISACA’s partnership with ICIT is an important component of our efforts to create a global paradigm shift in the way cybersecurity professionals are trained and certified.  By creating the first holistic cybersecurity workforce development program that addresses the global critical infrastructure cybersecurity skills shortage, ISACA seeks to work with the ICIT Fellows Program to drive changes in the way we train and certify cybersecurity professionals. This change requires a transition from a knowledge-based education, training, and certification approach to education and training that is skills-based and a certification process that is performance-based.”

“With a projected 1.5 million workforce shortfall in the field of cybersecurity, ISACA’s addition to the Fellows program add to the Institute’s ability to educate stakeholders on the role training plays in the development of skilled cybersecurity practitioners.”

About ICIT: The Institute for Critical Infrastructure Technology (www.ICITech.org) is a non-partisan think tank providing objective advisement on cybersecurity and technology issues to the House and Senate, federal agencies and critical infrastructure sector stakeholders.  ICIT Fellows contribute their expertise and cutting edge research to legislative briefs and other publications as well as participate in legislative briefings and speaking engagements to help educate our Nation’s technology leaders.

About ISACA: ISACA (isaca.org) helps global professionals lead, adapt and assure trust in an evolving digital world by offering innovative and world-class knowledge, standards, networking, credentialing and career development. Established in 1969, ISACA is a global nonprofit association of 140,000 professionals in 180 countries. ISACA also offers the Cybersecurity Nexus™ (CSX), a holistic cybersecurity resource, and COBIT®, a business framework to govern enterprise technology.

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Report Makes Predictions on Effects of Health Care Trends on IT

The International Data Corporation has released a report that outlines predictions for global health care trends and discusses the effects of health IT, Healthcare IT News reports (Ratchinsky,Healthcare IT News, 11/5).

Details of Report

The report lists 10 predictions about trends in health care over the next three years. Each prediction includes:

• Guidance for action; and
• The effect of health IT.

The report also:

• Identifies areas of health care business that will be affected by the trends;
• Prioritizes investments; and
• Shares each initiative’s relative cost and complexity.

According to IDC, “major themes” among the predictions are:

• Demand for advanced analytics and new data sources;
• Movement in the direction of personalized medicine;
• Security and the effect of breaches in health care;
• The availability of third platform technology — which includes mobile, social, big data and cloud computing — and innovation accelerators to enable digital transformation; and
• Ubiquitous access to mobile technology (Burghard et al., IDC report, November 2015). For the full article click here 

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Walgreens to use Epic EHRs at health clinics

Walgreens announced this week that it will install electronic health record vendor Epic’s systems into its health clinics.

The pharmacy retail giant said it chose Epic to support expansion plans for its clinics; late last month, Walgreens Boots Alliance announced it would acquire competitor Rite Aid for $17.2 billion. Rite Aid has 4,600 stores in 31 states and the District of Columbia.

“With our shared focus on interoperability, Walgreens will also become a part of the nation’s largest network of care organizations securely sharing patient information with hospitals, laboratories, private practices, federal agencies, local care providers and state HIEs,” Epic President Carl Dvorak said in the announcement For the full article click here 

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MISSING PIECES: MAJOR HEALTH DATABASE HAS DEEP FLAWS

-Database that monitors U.S. hospitalizations underreports important health risk factors.

–The accuracy of body mass and alcohol and tobacco use data is critical for health care reform policies.

A major source of American health information data contains a handful of glaring flaws related to health risks, say Johns Hopkins researchers in a study published online Wednesday in the journal PLOS ONE.

The Nationwide Inpatient Sample (NIS) critically underreports several important health measures, say Susan Hutfless, M.S., Ph.D., and Elie Al Kazzi, M.D., M.P.H., of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. Alcohol and tobacco use, as well as data on patients’ weight and body mass, are dramatically underreported in the NIS. Missing information in the database leads to inaccurate health quality assessments and could have a devastating economic impact on hospitals that see the sickest patients. For the full article click here 

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New Yorkers Face Hard Decisions After Collapse of Health Republic Insurance

If anyone could manage to obtain treatment under the Affordable Care Act, it should have been Liz Jackson.

With a severe nerve condition that forced her out of a job, Ms. Jackson did not just qualify for a government-subsidized plan, but she also knew her way around the new system, having been trained as a volunteer “health care navigator” to help others sign up.

Yet the collapse of her insurer, Health Republic Insurance of New York — the largest of 12 health care co-ops nationwide set to close this year — has left her and more than 200,000 others in a panic over medical coverage after their plan ceases on Nov. 30.

Health Republic lived a short and difficult existence, squeezed by premiums that were low by design and cut off by Republicans in Congress from government subsidies promised along with the federal health care law. For the full article click here 

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The Battle to Move U.S. Health Care From Paper to Digital Far From Over

If you have gone online recently to pay a hospital bill, request a prescription refill, or look at lab results, you are among the minority of people across the U.S. using technology to monitor your health.

Moving patient health records from a paper-based system to an electronic one has long been a dream and a goal of doctors, hospital administrators and policymakers, but the effort has been anything but seamless, according to a recent Government Accountability Office report.

“If an ATM puts somebody else’s money in your account, nobody dies,” said Chuck Christian, board chair at the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives. “But if we mess something up, it could very well impact someone’s life.” For the full article click here

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