CMS takes hands off approach to HIE, MU in new Medicaid managed care rule

The new final Medicaid and CHIP managed care rule does not change Meaningful Use, data exchange and health IT requirements, despite commenters’ requests to do so.

The rule, released April 25, and slated to be published in the Federal Register May 6, modernizes how Medicaid managed care plans operate.  However, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services did not use the rule as an opportunity to advance or encourage interoperability or certified electronic health record technology, as it has in other rules, such as payment regulations.

For instance, while CMS encourages states, managed care organizations and others to use health information exchange (HIE) and certified EHR technology, it reiterates that it does not have the statutory authority to broaden the HITECH Act to include additional incentives for provider types, nor does it have the statutory authority to modify the EHR incentive programs. CMS also says in the rule that states have the flexibility to require managed care plan participation in delivery system reform or performance improvement, such as provider health information exchange projects, but that it would not be a requirement for state Medicaid managed care contracts. For the full article click here 

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ONC webinar clears up ONC HIT Oversight Enhancement proposed rule

The Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT (ONC) held a webinar to address questions raised from the publication of the ONC Health IT Certification Program: Enhanced Oversight and Accountability Proposed Rule in March.

The rules aims to further enhance the safety, reliability, transparency and accountability of certified health IT for users by modifying the ONC Health IT Certification Program to reflect the widespread adoption of certified EHRs and the rapid pace of innovation in the health IT market.

The webinar speakers, Michael L. Lipinski, JD, director of the Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Division of Federal Policy and Regulatory Affairs; and Mark A. Knee, JD, senior policy analyst, cleared up some “incorrect press” by detailing what the rule does and does not enable.

It does not create new certification requirements for health IT developers or create new certification requirements for health IT for providers participating in Department of Health and Human Services programs.  The proposed rule also does not establish a means for ONC to directly test and certify health IT. ONC’s authorized certification bodies (ACBs) will continue to test and certify health IT. It does not establish regular or routine auditing of certified health IT by ONC.

The proposed rule does enable ONC to directly review already certify health IT products, increases ONC oversight of health IT testing bodies and enables increased transparency and accountability by making identifiable surveillance results of certified HIT publicly available. For the full article click here 

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Calling for Consistency at CAMHS

Thoughtful opinion pieces in the past have disagreed persuasively with the claim that demographics do not matter in the design, delivery, and evaluation of Harvard’sCounseling and Mental Health Services. Diversify CAMHS’s survey is a case in point: It suggests direct interventions CAMHS could roll out to address problems of inordinate attrition among non-white, foreign-born, first-time users of mental health services. Demographic factors such as nativity, ethnicity, and socioeconomic insecurity do contribute to the alarmingly high rates of attrition among first-time users of university-based mental health services. But, as is the case with far too many conversations about mental health, stakeholders have yet to think, talk, and write about mental health services comprehensively. Despite efforts to optimize front-end client flow at CAMHS, much less thought has touched on enhancing back-end flow.

A survey of the history of CAMHS’s back-end procedures displays troubling inconsistencies in its commitment to one of higher education’s long-standing practices: Evaluation. Counseling and Mental Health Services, as its name indicates, is charged to provide services. But if the current design of its service delivery system is any indication, CAMHS has yet to meet the challenge of comprehensiveness of its charge to provide services.

CAMHS’s evaluation procedures leave much to be desired in two respects. First, they do not promptly invite students to reflect upon and assess the quality and effectiveness of the counseling session immediately afterwards. Second, they do not ask students whether demographic factors may have inflected their experience of the counseling session. For the full article click here 

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Doctors plan to quit over lack of mental health resources

Growing pressure to discharge patients too early from hospital and the inability to offer many a bed or proper care is demoralising doctors and driving them out of mental health care.

A growing proportion of psychiatrists are dissatisfied with their jobs in the public sector, with 38 per cent saying they are likely to quit their jobs in the next 12 months. Last year, it was 25 per cent.

“The experienced people are increasingly leaving,” says Gary Galambos, chair of the NSW branch of the Royal Australian New Zealand College of Psychiatrists. For the full article click here 

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Gem Partners With Philips’ Blockchain Lab For Healthcare Initiative ‘Gem Health’

Gem, a Venice-based blockchain platform provider, has launched Gem Health – a network for developing applications and shared infrastructure for healthcare.

Gem noted that the healthcare industry is currently experiencing the strain of digital services that run on top of antiquated, paper-based infrastructure, similar to banking and finance. Individuals want more interconnected services and a more personalized health plan, but for providers, this is impossible. The cost of providing personalized care to everyone is too high, and the risk of exposing such an interconnected ecosystem is too great, resulting in a fragmented and heavily siloed industry.

To that end, Gem said that blockchain technology will create a “new fabric” that connects the entire healthcare industry, weaving together critical data from every stage of the continuum of care. It believes that blockchain networks are a scalable solution for shared infrastructure that keeps critical patient data in the right hands.

“We imagine better quality of care for every patient, and easier, smarter systems for the providers that care for them. That’s why we created Gem Health”, it said. “Gem Health is a blockchain network for the global community of companies and individuals that take part in the continuum of care”. For the full article click here 

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UnitedHealth’s exit won’t kill ACA exchanges

Although UnitedHealth Group Inc.’s withdrawal from public health insurance exchanges in all but a “handful” of states will reduce competition, its exit doesn’t spell doom for the future of the Affordable Care Act exchanges.

UnitedHealth said last week that it will exit nearly all of the 34 states where it sold coverage on health insurance exchanges this year amid slow enrollment growth and an unhealthy population that have dented its profit. It said it expects to lose $650 million this year on exchange business, on top of $475 million it lost last year.

The Minnetonka, Minnesota-based insurer will bow out of 2017 exchange offerings that include Arkansas, Connecticut, Georgia, Louisiana, Michigan, Oklahoma and Tennessee.

UnitedHealth will, however, sell plans on exchanges that include Nevada and Virginia next year, the states’ insurance departments confirmed. For the full article click here

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Suicide rates – and how Medicaid can help

Researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released results this week to document that suicide rates have increased by 24 percent since 1999. The increase has been especially rapidly among women and among middle-aged people of both genders between the ages of 45 and 64. This is just a huge problem. Quite properly, the story has gotten much play. This morning’s New York Times includes a front-page story: “U.S. Suicide rate surges to a 30-year high.”

I’m glad that the story has gotten so much attention. Yet the generalized calls to action seem oddly divorced from the actual policy levers through which we might reduce this problem. Here for example is my friend (and Twitter sparring partner) Ron Fournier: For the full article click here

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Despite law, medical marijuana may see local challenge in Pennsylvania

The hard-fought march to medical marijuana in Pennsylvania took a groundswell of public opinion, years of lobbying and changes of heart across the Legislature.

But even advocates for the law, signed a week ago by Gov. Tom Wolf, suspect another challenge may await the measure. That’s because the Pennsylvania legislation appears to concentrate regulatory power at the state level, leaving local officials with limited influence over dispensaries and marijuana cultivation, legal observers said.

“I guarantee: There will be some municipalities in Pennsylvania, somewhere, that try potentially to pass an ordinance saying, ‘We don’t want any marijuana organizations,’” said Justin Moriconi, a regulated-substances attorney in Philadelphia.

He said any attempts at local prohibition likely would be overturned, despite the sustained resistance to medical marijuana in several pockets of the state. The state House voted 149-46 — and the Senate, 42-7 — to allow several non-smokable types of the treatment. For the full article click here

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Sanford Research to be featured at Vatican conference

Sanford Health CEO Kelby Krabbenhoft, philanthropist T. Denny Sanford and four research scientists will be among the speakers at a major international conference this week in Vatican City, presenting on stem cell therapy and regenerative medicine as well as philanthropy.

Pope Francis is scheduled to appear, pending world events. Vice President Joe Biden is listed as a speaker.

The Cellular Horizons conference Thursday through Saturday will address the progress of regenerative medicine and its cultural impact. It was created by the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Culture and New York-based Stem for Life Foundation.

According to information about the event, “This exclusive international event will gather the world’s leading cell therapy scientists, physicians, patients, ethicists and leaders of faith, government and philanthropy to discuss the latest cellular therapy breakthroughs and hope for the future.” For the full article click here

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Summa Health invests in the city

Why did Summa Health add financial muscle three years ago in the form of HealthSpan Partners of Cincinnati? For moments just like the one last week, Summa unveiling plans to invest $350 million in its Akron City campus and Summa Barberton Hospital. The largest share ($270 million) will come in the first phase, or the next five years, and it will reshape the Akron campus, providing a new “front door” to the hospital, as Summa put it.

Mayor Dan Horrigan got it right in noting the significance of the project for the city. Such an investment hardly rates as commonplace. It will bring a welcome jolt of economic activity.

If anything, hospitals have been leading the way in plowing resources into the city core. The Cleveland Clinic has translated its ownership into a $100 million investment in Akron General, including a new emergency department. Akron Children’s Hospital has expanded its footprint in big ways. For the full article click here

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Forcepoint 2016 Global Threat Report WebCast

Title: Forcepoint 2016 Threat Report

Date: Tuesday, May 03, 2016

Time: 11:00 AM Pacific Daylight Time

Duration: 1 hour

Forcepoint Security Labs® has produced their annual Threat Report – the must-read analysis of what’s really happening in the cyber landscape.

Evolving IT environments have made the past perimeter-based security model obsolete. Resource-strapped security teams are struggling to keep up with more and more challenging threats. A new, holistic approach is needed to give enterprises a 360-degree view with real-time analysis and meaningful alerts that anticipate and communicate the threat landscape so customers can act quickly to defeat the most determined adversary.

Using in-depth insights from the Forcepoint Security Labs ThreatSeeker® Intelligence Cloud, Michael Crouse, Office of the CISO, will share the latest threats gathered from more than three billion data points per day in 155 countries around the world, and what they mean for agencies while providing operational and technical recommendations to navigate the ever-changing threat landscape.

Learn more about:

• Forcepoint’s first-hand case study on protecting a cybersecurity company during an acquisition.
• How to avoid becoming an inadvertent insider threat.
• How threats are evolving in capability while traditional security perimeters dissolve.

This is a must-attend webcast. All attendees will receive a FREE copy of the full 2016 Threat Report.

To Register and View More Details Click Here

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A Business Case For Funding Your Federal Insider Threat Program

WHITEPAPER

The insider threat is a dangerous risk to government agencies and its most sensitive data. Monitoring the behaviors internally and identifying when bad is bad based on access, roles and actions is not a luxury government agencies can afford to go without.

Read our detailed whitepaper on building a case for funding your federal insider threat program and the necessary steps to establishing a successful security posture against such threats.

Get your copy of the report today! 

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As funding ends Regional Extension Centers adjust business models

Although the Regional Extension Center program will officially sunset at the end of 2016, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT estimates that 90 percent of the 62 current RECs will continue to operate nationwide,e helping providers to adopt electronic health records and meaningfully use them.

The centers, which operate in all 50 states, have been particularly helpful in assisting providers in rural, underserved healthcare settings to navigate the complex EHR adoption process from vendor selection and practice workflow redesign to implementation and project management, as well as addressing privacy and security issues.

Under the HITECH Act, ONC starting in 2010 invested more than $700 million in the REC program, awarding 62 cooperative agreements to 60 local organizations to provide technical assistance to small primary care practices, community health centers, rural health clinics and critical access hospitals. In fact, the REC network includes 54 percent of all rural providers, 80 percent of all critical access hospitals and 83 percent of all community health centers—healthcare organizations that typically lack the financial and human resources of larger providers. For the full article click here 

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Clarke Carlisle: I should be dead. I am delighted blessed I can use my life

Not a day passes where Clarke Carlisle does not think about 22 December 2014 and the moment he stepped in front of a lorry travelling on the A64 at 60mph. That wet, drab day in the run-up to Christmas was the final straw; his point of no return. No hope remained, no future desired.

Seventeen months later the first thing that strikes you when speaking to the former Queens Park Rangers and Burnley defender is how open he is when discussing that attempt to kill himself.

Carlisle describes it as “amazing, bordering on miraculous” that he is alive. Life is still not easy. There have been dark days since, there will be more in the future, but the worst has passed and helping others has become his driving passion. He runs the London Marathon on Sunday for the Bobby Moore foundation and is thankful to be “fit and able” to raise money for the cancer charity. Beyond that he views this second chance as an opportunity to prevent others from reaching such levels of despair. For the full article click here 

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Dennis Murphy set to lead IU Health into new era

Dennis Murphy might be losing some sleep this month. But if he is, he says, it’s not because he is one week away from becoming the top executive at Indiana’s largest health system.

It’s just who he is.

“I think I’m a worrier by nature, so I’m not sure I sleep a lot to begin with,” said Murphy, 52, who is set to succeed Daniel Evans as CEO of Indiana University Health on May 1.  “If you don’t have some level of anxiety about, ‘Am I doing a good job?’ and ‘Am I being clear to people about the goals?’ and ‘Are we delivering on the mission that we set out for ourselves?’ I’m not sure you’re a good leader.”

There are plenty of reasons for Murphy to be anxious. He is taking the top job at a health system that has been seeking to cut $1 billion in operating expenses, leading to layoffs, uncertainty and at times poor morale among staff. Those changes come as the Affordable Care Act, including Indiana’s Medicaid expansion, is shaking up how hospitals get paid for their services. And IU Health is planning to consolidate its Downtown adult hospitals, causing concerns about jobs and how operations could change. For the full article click here 

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FDA: Interoperability a Core Requirement for Precision Medicine

Health At Every Size Movement: What Proponents Say vs. What Science Says

Prevention (CDC) continuously warn of an ongoing obesity crisis that threatens to swallow our waistlines and end our lives prematurely, while gossip rags and television shows laud the individuals that rise to the top and complete drastic weight loss attempts. Indeed, the collective fascination with weight even extends to health and news sites such as Medical Daily, with a seemingly neverending supply of new studies and well-worn tips guaranteed to help us keep off the pounds for good.

But amid the blaring clarion calls to combat obesity, lose weight, and achieve bodily bliss, there has been a growing — if loosely knit — contingent of activists, researchers, and academics who openly question weight’s role in society and medicine.

The earliest of these critics often belonged to the still-active fat acceptance and body positivity movements, which sought to fight back prejudice against the overweight as early as the 1960s. Later advocates include law professor Paul Campos, who called for the complete dismantling of obesity as a legitimate health problem in his 2004 book, The Obesity Myth. And in more recent years, organizations like the Association for Size Diversity and Health have not only seen themselves as “obesity skeptics” but as messengers of their own public health For the full article click here 

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ICIT Brief: Combatting the Ransomware Blitzkrieg with Endpoint Security

Ransomware, the weaponization of encryption, has struck fear and confusion into the hearts of PC users and critical infrastructure communities alike. While it is impossible for organizations to prevent malware from infecting their networks, those who deploy a multi-layered security strategy and teach proper cybersecurity hygiene to their employees have a strong chance of defending against these types of attacks. This brief, entitled “Combatting the Ransomware Blitzkrieg: The Only Defense is a Layered Defense – Layer One: Endpoint Security”, will focus on the critical role endpoint security plays as part of an organization’s comprehensive and holistic security strategy. The brief contains an analysis of:

• The need for endpoint security
• Vulnerable endpoints (users, personal computers, servers, mobile devices, specialize hardware and cloud services)
• Potentially vulnerable endpoints (SCADA/ICS, IoT devices, cars)
• Endpoint security
• Selecting an endpoint security strategy

The following experts contributed to this brief:

• James Scott (Sr. Fellow & Co-Founder, ICIT)
• Drew Spaniel (Visiting Scholar, ICIT)
• Dan Waddell (ICIT Fellow – Director, Government Affairs, (ISC)2)
• Greg Fitzgerald (ICIT Fellow – Chief Strategy Officer, Cylance)
• Rob Bathurst (ICIT Fellow – Managing Director, Healthcare and Life Sciences, Cylance)
• Malcolm Harkins (ICIT Fellow – Global Chief Information Security Officer, Cylance)
• Ryan Brichant (ICIT Fellow – CTO, ICS, FireEye)
• George Kamis, (ICIT Fellow – CTO Federal, Forcepoint)
• Stacey Winn (ICIT Fellow – Senior Product Marketing Manager, Public Sector, Forcepoint)
• Thomas Boyden (ICIT Fellow – Managing Director, GRA Quantum)
• Kevin Chalker (ICIT Fellow – Founder & CEO, GRA Quantum)
• John Sabin (ICIT Fellow – Director of Network Security & Architecture, GRA Quantum)
• Rob Roy (ICIT Fellow – Public Sector CTO, Hewlett Packard Enterprise)
• Stan Wisseman (ICIT Fellow – Security Strategist, Hewlett Packard Enterprise)
• Cindy Cullen (ICIT Fellow – Security Strategist, Hewlett Packard Enterprise)
• Stan Mierzwa (ICIT Fellow – Director, Information Technology, Population Council)

Download the brief here:  http://ift.tt/1StJcwm

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VA launches 10-year $22.3 billion procurement program

As the Department of Veterans Affairs ponders whether to continue upgrading its legacy electronic health record system or to replace it outright, the VA has awarded 21 contracts worth up to $22.3 billion for information technology infrastructure improvements.

While the agency conducts a business case analysis on the future viability of its Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA) EHR system, a new multi-billion dollar indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract vehicle has been put in place to help meet the VA’s near- and longer term healthcare IT needs.

The 10-year Transformation Twenty-One Total Technology program-Next Generation (T4NG) awards include a mix of large and small business vendors, serving as a follow-on procurement to the original T4 program. For the full article click here 

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Oral health and well-being among older adults

When we think about well-being among older adults, how often do we think about their oral health as being an important component? In reviews of risk factors for low well-being among older adults, oral health is never explicitly mentioned, although other health conditions and disease states are often discussed. This is despite untreated caries (dental decay) being the most prevalent of all health conditions in global burden of disease estimates.

General health and functioning are important components of well-being, especially among older adults. Even though oral health is an integral part of general health, it is often neglected in gerontological research. For example, in all the research papers published in The Journals of Gerontology, Series A and B, the term ‘oral health’ is mentioned in the titles only five times.

Even when well-being research takes disability among older adults into account, common measures of disability such as limiting health problems or Activities of Daily Living (ADL) do not explicitly refer to disabling conditions related to oral health. For example, one of the ADL questions is about problems people have with cutting their food. This is different from a common problem that most older adults face which are problems with chewing food due to missing teeth. Another common oral health problem among older adults is the pain and discomfort associated with ill-fitting dentures, which can also decrease well-being. For the full article click here 

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All Telemedicine Services Not Created Equal

A recent study has found varying quality in urgent care by commercial telehealth companies.

In nearly 600 virtual visits to leading commercial telehealth services, “patients” who were trained by researchers presented symptoms of six common acute illnesses. According to the results of the study, published by JAMA Internal Medicine, the quality of care provided in each of these situations varied greatly between each of the eight companies.

Fierce Health IT reports the ailments presented included ankle pain, potential strep, sore throat, sinus infection, low back pain, and urinary tract infections. The companies tested were Ameridoc, Amwell, Consult a Doctor, Doctor on Demand, MDAligne, MDLIVE, MeMD, and NowClinic.

Researchers found one in four patients got an incorrect or no diagnosis from the virtual visits. They also noted only 52 percent to 82 percent of the time virtual doctors got complete histories and did thorough exams. “One of the more surprising findings of the study was the universally low rate of testing when it was needed,” said lead researcher Dr. Adam Schoenfeld, of the University of California, San Francisco. For the full article click here 

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Out Of The Lab – Into The Real World

For one determined Spanish health IT decision maker, it’s time to stop all the telemedicine and mHealth pilots – and make these promising approaches a part of mainstream healthcare practice instead.

Ask Jordi Piera Jiménez what he sees as his contribution to the healthcare organisation he leads the IT for, and you’ll get an answer you may find surprisingly broad: “To drive internal and external innovation, helping the rest of the C-suite to understand what is technologically possible today and in the near future to create new competitive advantage, products and services in order to increase the efficiency and the efficacy of the care system.” For the full article click here 

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Majority of Healthcare Data Breaches Caused by Cyberattacks

PCMHs, ACOs More Likely to Use EHRs for Population Health

Caregivers Corner: Dementia diagnosis affects everyone, not just the patient

Dear Mary, My sister and I are very concerned about my father even though my mother is the one who was diagnosed with a progressive dementia. He insists on doing everything himself even though her condition is steadily worsening. In fact, he won’t admit that her health is declining or that he is working harder and harder.

My sister and I have tried to talk to him about it and both of us have offered to help with her care, but he won’t let us. We know our mom’s prognosis and what to expect, but now we’re concerned about his health.

Dear Reader, It is not unusual for spouses to be in denial when it comes to the decline in their loved one’s health, but I also understand your concern about your dad’s mental and physical health. It is also not unusual that he doesn’t respond to your awareness of your mother’s decline; after all, you are his children — it doesn’t really matter how old you are — and she is his wife. For the full article click here 

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Regenstrief: Health IT falling short of its potential

If healthcare information technology is to fulfill its promise of improving health outcomes, the country needs a “rational and well-funded” agenda for HIT development, use and assessment.

That’s the finding of a wide-ranging evaluation of current health IT by the Regenstrief Institute and its conclusion regarding the barriers that must be overcome to move the industry forward.

“We have been making progress, but there’s definitely a gap between where we are today and where we would like to be across a lot of aspects of health information technology,” says Burke Mamlin, MD, a Regenstrief Institute investigator and Indiana University School of Medicine associate professor of clinical medicine. For the full article click here 

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Security soars as top spending priority for health IT execs

Threatened with the growing problem of health data breaches, information technology leaders at healthcare organizations are increasing investments this year in their security infrastructures, according to results of a new survey from IT staffing firm TEKsystems.

Security is a growth area in 2016 in terms of healthcare organization IT budgets, respondents indicated. When asked which technology categories will have the biggest impact on their organizations this year, 60 percent of respondents indicated that security was the top priority in their budgets this year, up from 54 percent in 2015.

In the survey, security edged out business intelligence and big data, mentioned by 58 percent of respondents; mobility (55 percent); cloud computing (49 percent); and consumerization of IT/bring your own device (47 percent).

“Security is one of our fastest growing technology areas because nobody wants their company’s name in the paper associated with a data breach,” says Mitch Gardner, northeast regional director for TEKsystems Healthcare Services. “If you look at the other four areas—BI/big data, mobility, cloud computing, and BYOD—they all have a major security component.” For the full article click here 

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Winona Health reaches high needs patients with smart registry

For hospitals and provider networks to successfully navigate the transition to value-based care, they must develop new care models that emphasize education and outreach to patients, experts say.

This is particularly important in the case of patients with chronic conditions, many of whom ineffectively manage their health and medications, resulting in expensive emergency room treatment, readmissions, and unfavorable outcomes.

Winona Health has been practicing outreach on a number of fronts and, in fact, was among the Office of the National Coordinator’s Beacon programs, winning a grant as a participant of the Southeast Minnesota beacon Community Project. For the full article click here 

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Cahouet Center Streamlines Access To Comprehensive Parkinson’s Care

Approximately 50,000 Americans arediagnosed with Parkinson’s each year with more than half a million Americans affected at any given time. Experts say these figures are tricky, however, because of symptoms that may go undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.

What is clear, however, is that successful treatment of the disease requires a clear and coordinated plan and services. People with complex, chronic illnesses such as Parkinson’s benefit from care provided by an interdisciplinary healthcare team. Collaboration by various healthcare providers can lead to more individualized treatment, a specialized care plan and, ultimately, better quality of life.

Now, Allegheny Health Network (AHN) and the Parkinson Foundation Western Pennsylvania have announced the creation of a new center designed to help patients with Parkinson’s and their families more seamlessly access and coordinate the clinical and support services they require.

According to The National Parkinson’s Foundation, a strong comprehensive care team should include a movement disorder specialist, a general neurologist, primary care providers (PCPs), nurses, a social worker, a physical therapist, an occupational therapist, a speech-language pathologist, pharmacists, neuropsychologists, psychiatrists/psychologists, nutritionists/dieticians, and other specialists. For the full article click here 

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Health System Uses Innovative Vital Signs Viewer To Aid Massive EHR Conversion

Physicians could access the right data without toggling between systems during transfer.

Healthcare organizations are charged with improving quality, accessibility, and efficiency. Meanwhile, patient populations are exploding, medical knowledge is growing exponentially yet remains difficult to harness, and funding is constrained at every level. EHRs attempt to meet these challenges and transform care through the sharing of information and connecting of communities, but ensuring these systems are comprehensive, functional, interoperable, and able to be used in a timely and meaningful way is difficult. In fact, the migration of millions of patient records from legacy systems to new EHR systems is often a data conversion nightmare.

These were the obstacles facing the Franciscan Alliance, a 13-hospital health system serving Indiana and Illinois, when they migrated a 140-physician group practice to its new Epic EHR system. Physicians needed to access vital signs and patient identifiers for 250,000 patients, but these millions of records were not part of the initial year-long data conversion project. For the full article click here 

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Health System Uses Innovative Vital Signs Viewer To Aid Massive EHR Conversion

Physicians could access the right data without toggling between systems during transfer.

Healthcare organizations are charged with improving quality, accessibility, and efficiency. Meanwhile, patient populations are exploding, medical knowledge is growing exponentially yet remains difficult to harness, and funding is constrained at every level. EHRs attempt to meet these challenges and transform care through the sharing of information and connecting of communities, but ensuring these systems are comprehensive, functional, interoperable, and able to be used in a timely and meaningful way is difficult. In fact, the migration of millions of patient records from legacy systems to new EHR systems is often a data conversion nightmare.

These were the obstacles facing the Franciscan Alliance, a 13-hospital health system serving Indiana and Illinois, when they migrated a 140-physician group practice to its new Epic EHR system. Physicians needed to access vital signs and patient identifiers for 250,000 patients, but these millions of records were not part of the initial year-long data conversion project. For the full article click here 

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Creating Secure Healthcare BYOD Environments, Communication

Senators Urge CMS to Reconsider Hospital Compare Quality Ratings

Washington Debrief: Senate Committee Moves Ahead with Medical Innovation Legislation, Including Health IT

Senate Committee Moves Ahead with Medical Innovation Legislation, Including Health IT and Precision Medicine Bills

Key Takeaway: Last week the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) wrapped-up committee-level discussions on the Innovation for Healthier Americans initiative, which included proposals to advance precision medicine and improve nationwide interoperability, sending the package of bills to the Senate floor for consideration.

Why It Matters: In 2015, the Senate HELP Committee held six hearings on health information technology and a series of markups resulting in the consideration of 19 legislative proposals as part of the Innovation for Healthier Americans initiative.

Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-TN) has said that the Committee is still working to reach bipartisan agreement to increase funding for the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which has been a top priority for Democrats’ in their consideration of the package of legislation. Committee leadership is hopeful that a funding agreement can be reached quickly in order to bring the 19 bills to the floor along with more mandatory funding for NIH in April.  For the full article click here 

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Cerner population health chief John Glaser: Analytics, big data, Internet of Things to fuel push toward individualized interventions

Cerner’s John Glaser said today’s overarching technology trends — analytics, big data and the Internet of Things — have enormous potential to improve the way individual patients receive care.

“We’re getting incredibly sophisticated at looking at patterns, understanding what’s going on,” said Glaser, who is Cerner’s senior vice president of population health and global strategy. “I think what we’ll see is the push for life experience – knowing enough about you and me to not only tailor interventions, but tailor the healthcare experience in a way that’s much more suited to us.”

The broad rubric of the Internet of Things is also brimming with prospects, he said.

“The ability to choreograph complex processes and machines that are really different is another point of explosive opportunity going forward,” he said.

Glaser emphasized that improvement is not always about new technology, but rather about optimizing technology investments already in place.

It means putting into play “a lot of little things” that make existing systems more usable or interoperability more effective, for example. For the full article click here 

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5 Healthcare Tech Conferences You Have To Attend

Healthcare tech is one area of the tech industry that has expanded in recent years. It’s led to the rise of a number of exciting conferences that are designed to engage and inspire.

If you work in the healthcare tech sector, or you just happen to have an interest in it through an invoice factoring business, these are the healthcare tech conferences you have to attend.

They represent the most eagerly anticipated ones of 2016. In this guide, you are going to learn all about them.

Forbes Healthcare Summit

The Forbes Healthcare Summit is an event that’s held in December of every year. The 2015 version was held in New York City and it discussed the value of technology and healthcare in the current U.S. market, in accordance with its specialist financial knowledge. For the full article click here 

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Navarro health fair offers new options

Navarro ISD is doing what it can to show its student that healthy food can still taste delicious.

A recent health fair held at the high school last Thursday featured plenty of food vendors, who tried their best to impress the taste buds of all of the students in attendance.

And it sounds like they were successful.

“It was a great day to try new foods,” Navarro Intermediate fifth-grader Ryan Hepp said. “My favorite was the banana pancakes.”

In fact, the event was such a hit that the district is now considering making a few changes.

“From just getting feedback from our vendors, there’s quite a few changes we’re going to propose for our menus next year,” Child Nutrition Director Carlette Drabek said. For the full article click here 

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CMHC promotes mental health with interactive events

Glow-in-the-dark yoga and an adult coloring session are just some of the many activities offered by the Counseling and Mental Health Center during its inaugural Mental Health Promotion Week, which seeks to help students dealing with mental health issues.

The event kicked off with an interactive activity called “Leave Your Mark,” win which students wrote their thoughts on mental health on a big whiteboard in the East Mall. Students who participated and liked the counseling center page on various social media platforms received a T-shirt, stress ball or a sticker promoting the campaign.

Kelsey Lammy, mental health promotion coordinator for the CMHC, said the stigma around mental health makes it difficult for people to have serious conversations.

“If someone breaks a bone we think, ‘Oh, you should probably go to the doctor,’ [but] with mental health, it can be harder for students or for anyone to talk about what they’re going through,” Lammy said. “We know that community, social connectedness and talking to others is so beneficial. … College can be really exciting, but it can also be really stressful, so providing a space for students to start that conversation is so important.” For the full article click here 

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Community patient care transformed by technology support

The iPads have been bought by Seaton and District Hospital League of Friends to assist patients struggling with the demands of speech and communication

(Devon, UK) Patients based in a South Devon town who have communication and swallowing difficulties are benefitting from the use of two iPads with a variety of specialised apps.

The iPads were purchased by Seaton and District Hospital League of Friends. The first one is intended for inpatients at Seaton Community Hospital requiring communication support, with extra applications to enhance staff training.

The second iPad will be utilised in the local community for assessment, ongoing communication therapy and education.

Seaton Community Hospital has a number of admissions due to medical events that can affect communication, such as motor neurone disease, stroke, Parkinson’s Disease, multiple sclerosis and dementia.

As a result of these conditions, it can be very difficult and frustrating for patients to communicate the most basic of needs.

Dr Rob Daniels, a Seaton GP, backed the purchase of the iPads and Sue Renyard, community speech and language therapist, will use the technology to help with assessment and ongoing support. For the full article click here 

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Snapshot of health in Greene provided

Greene County ranks in the top 25 percent of Virginia counties when it comes to health. That’s according to the seventh annual County Health Rankings, released last month by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute.

Those measurements are helping the Thomas Jefferson Health District, which oversees the Greene County Health Department, and local officials get a snapshot of how the county is doing.

“Within our planning district we see a lot of differences,” said Elizabeth Beasley, senior health promotion consultant for the TJHD.The Thomas Jefferson Health District is one of thirty-five health districts under the Virginia Department of Health. It is comprised of six health departments that serve the counties of Greene, Albemarle, Fluvanna, Louisa, and Nelson, along with the city of Charlottesville.

Greene County ranked 31 out of 134 localities in the Commonwealth in 2015. Albemarle County was fourth, Rockingham was 19^th, Madison County was 39^th and Orange County was 44^th.

When it comes to quality of life, Greene County ranked 40^th, with 13 percent of its residents in poor or fair health. Eight percent of Greene County newborns were reported as having a low birthweight. For the full article click here 

 

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Health Ministry Seeks Partnership in Strengthening Preventive Oral Care

Minister of Health, Dr. the Hon. Christopher Tufton, says there are plans to partner with the private sector on initiatives to encourage preventive oral care among Jamaicans.

Preventive care includes caring for the teeth through daily brushing and regular dental cleaning, in order to avoid cavities and gum disease.

“It’s about talking to persons about good oral health so we don’t run into the difficulties that we run into if we do not practise good oral health hygiene. We want to provide the infrastructure and guidelines for good oral health practices,” Dr. Tufton stated.

He was addressing the relaunch of Colgate’s Mobile Dental Unit on Thursday (April 7) at the Union Gardens Infant School in Kingston.

The unit, which was introduced in 2004 as part of Colgate’s Bright Smiles, Bright Futures School Programme, was temporarily out of service to facilitate repairs. For the full article click here 

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Aerial Pesticide Spraying To Kill Gypsy Moths In Portland, Vancouver

The Oregon Department of Agriculture plans to spray an organic insecticide across thousands of acres of North Portland and Vancouver, Washington, over the next month to eradicate invasive gypsy moths.

The state found three Asian gypsy moths and two European gypsy moths in traps last year in North Portland and across the Columbia River in Vancouver. According to ODA spokesman Bruce Pokarney, the moths pose serious risks to trees and forests, and so far the state has managed to prevent them from taking hold.

“It’s a tremendous defoliator,” he said. “In the caterpillar stage, the moth eats leaves right off the trees. The Asian variety is of more concern to us because it has a wider appetite. It actually eats coniferous trees. And unlike the European gypsy moth, the female Asian gypsy moth flies. She can lay a bunch of eggs, get up and fly several miles and then lay some more eggs. So, you can see how that would lead to a much more rapid and widespread infestation if it’s not taken care of early.” For the full article click here 

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Is Nicotine the Cure for Sugar Addiction?

Sugar is a delectable enemy. Once thought to hold the secret to health, it is now believed to be fueling an obesity epidemic that encompasses 640 million people worldwide.

Despite an abundance of evidence about its dangers, Americans just can’t quit sugar. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, an average person in the U.S. consumes an estimated 128 pounds each year.

This seemingly infinite sweet tooth has led experts to suggest that sugar may have more control over the brain than we realize. A game-changing study published in Plos Oneprovides some of the strongest evidence to date that it does. For the full article click here 

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Forcepoint: Optimism Rises on Integrating Web Security, Data Loss Prevention, and Analytics Products

IDC Insight Report – January 2016

WHITEPAPER

Advances in cloud computing, mobility and other disruptive technologies create new ways to move your business forward – they also present new challenges as insider threats and targeted attacks look for new ways to exploit them.

Relying on a patchwork of security products means more complexity for your overtaxed and under-resourced security teams and more risk to your data.

In this report, International Data Corporation (IDC) showcases how Forcepoint solutions and their flexible delivery options let your organization safely leverage the Cloud, mobile devices and other advancements as well as eliminate the complexity of managing a patchwork of point products.

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Third-party libraries are one of the most insecure parts of an application

Much has been written to guide software developers on how to develop secure software. Despite this general awareness, we continue to see vulnerable software produced. One of the observations in the HPE Cyber Risk Report 2016 is that attackers have shifted their focus from servers and operating systems directly to applications.They see this as the easiest route to accessing sensitive enterprise data and are doing everything they can to do that—including exploiting third-party software components. After all, an attacker looks for any application weakness to gain access to an organization’s sensitive data and doesn’t care how it got there.

Let’s look at some of the research around third-party library security and some of the strategies and tools you can use to mitigate these risks.

Fast dev times, for a price

All categories of applications tend to use third-party libraries to accelerate the development process. Based on analysis of the Central Repository (one of the largest open source code repositories), Sonatype estimatesthat 90 percent of all software development requires the downloading of components. While most critical vulnerabilities in third-party libraries are disclosed as Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs), it is disconcerting to note that the applications that use them are not updated in a timely manner. Also, CVEs do not represent all of the vulnerabilities found in third-party software, and other unidentified weaknesses may exist.

HPE Cyber Risk Report 2016

A great example of this is the significant security flaw researchers recently discovered in the GNU C Library. A domain-name lookup function known as getaddrinfo() contains a buffer overflow vulnerability that could cause a system crash or allow attackers to remotely execute malicious code (CVE-2015-7547). This vulnerability went undiscovered for seven years and unfixed for seven months following its initial report in July.

 

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Stolen Laptop Leads To Possible Data Breach For Premier Healthcare

Device security brought to the forefront again in wake of loss of device.

Premier Healthcare of Bloomington, IN has reported the theft of a laptop containing the private information of approximately 205,000 individuals. Premier said 1,769 of those individuals’ Social Security numbers and financial information could potentially be accessed on the computer.

The laptop, which was reportedly stolen from the physicians group’s billing office, on January 4, 2016, contained emails that included patients’ names, addresses, dates of birth, insurance information, and medical records. The laptop was taken from a locked and alarmed administrative office of the billing department, according to Healthcare IT News.

The laptop was password-protected, but not encrypted, underscoring the importance of multi-factor authentication when dealing with sensitive patient data. Files on the laptop included PDF documents, spreadsheets, and screenshots of patient billing issues. For the full article click here 

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