Donald Rucker decides to take helm at ONC as National Coordinator for Health Information Technology

Former Siemens chief medical officer Donald Rucker, MD, has decided to take the helm at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, in accordance to media reports.

A directory for the Department of Health and Human Services that lists workers now involves contact information for Rucker, who most recently was chief medical officer at Premise Health, a worksite health and patient engagement company. He also served at the institute of Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center as chief operating officer of the IDEA Studio and clinical professor of emergency medicine and biomedical informatics. Donald Rucker has decided to take helm at ONC as National Coordinator for Health Information Technology.

There has been no formal declaration from the Department of Health and Human Services or the White House on the Rucker appointment, and agency officials weren’t available for comment. Additionally, a spokesman for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology refused to comment on news reports about the Rucker appointment, referring a query from Health Data Management to HHS.

A spokesperson for HHS claimed that the agency is “not commenting on personnel at this time.”

“He has engaged in our Health IT Policy work during my tenure, but I have not worked directly with him,” DeSalvo said. “His background surely seems to make him well qualified, and I’m excited that the ONC team will have a leader so early in the Administration so they can press on with their significant work.”

John Glaser, presently senior vice president for population health at Cerner, was CEO at Siemens Health Services during the Rucker's career there, and lauded his choice for the ONC position. "Don has a diverse and extensive career in healthcare IT," Glaser says. "He has in-depth knowledge of the care practice, technology and policy challenges we confront as we advance the capability of the technology to make better health and healthcare. He is a great choice."

Rucker also has practiced emergency medicine at the Kaiser in California; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, where he was the 1st full-time emergency department attending physician; and at the institute of University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Presbyterian and Pennsylvania Hospitals.

In regard to his medical experience, Rucker brings to the National Coordinator position a powerful technology background. He came to OSU from Siemens Healthcare USA, where he served as chief medical officer for thirteen years and led the team that designed the computerized physician order entry workflow that was installed at Cincinnati Children's Hospital and which was honored in the year of 2003 with the HIMSS Nicholas Davies Award for the best hospital computer system in the United States.

At practice management and clinical systems services vendor Datamedic, Rucker is acknowledged with co-developing one of the 1st Microsoft Windows-based electronic health record (EHR) systems. Recently, he served terms on the board of commissioners of the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology.

 

Cohort looks for cardiovascular information from One million volunteers

More than 100,000 volunteers have agreed to donate their cardiovascular information to assist researchers to better understand, predict and stop heart disease.

Finally, the aim of the Health eHeart Study is to protect at least one million participants and to leverage the power of web and mobile technology to collect data through devices like smartphone apps. Anyone age 18 and older with an active email address is eligible for the global research, and individuals from around the world are already participating.

Researchers at the institute of University of California-San Francisco got a $9.75 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to establish a digital platform—called Eureka—that is both app- and web-based and whose intention is to connect researchers with volunteers internationally for the Health eHeart Study.

“We will invite participants to merge with the Eureka community, which will also involve investigators and people interested in healthcare implementation,” claims Gregory Marcus, MD, a UC San Francisco Health cardiologist and director of clinical research in the UCSF Division of Cardiology.

A virtual infrastructure that taps into the Internet and smartphone technology is the concentration of the initiative, which Marcus asserts can be conveniently scaled and is more cost effective. “A charge of the NIH grant is to make the platform economically sustainable,” he adds. “The target is to develop the infrastructure that lives on for decades to come.”

The overall goal of Health eHeart is to collect more data about heart health or cardiovascular information from more individuals than any research study has done before. Marcus claims that the research is compliant with HIPAA security guidelines, and that the information is transmitted, stored and processed in a protective environment.

Mobile apps will be utilized to trace participant activity or heart measures, like heart rate, while sensors will measure physical factors, such as ECGs, sleep, blood pressure and weight. Additionally, an app will integrate with Facebook to study the affect of social networking on health, while other data gathering will involve collection of DNA, visits to study sites (e.g., UCSF) to get specialized cardiovascular information testing, as well as online surveys.

Among the queries the cohort is seeking to answer: Can technology be used to establish ways to make better cardiovascular information health and rigorously test them to evaluate their effects on health? And, can mobile technology and sensors be used to keep individuals with heart failure out of the hospital?

Toward that end, an initial assessment by UCSF researchers indicates that location-tracking apps on smartphones could be used to assist monitor and manage care for thousands of sufferers who suffer from chronic diseases like heart disease. The app, established by mHealth vendor Ginger.io in collaboration with study investigators, was designed to track known hospital visits.

“Ascertainment of hospitalizations and cardiovascular events is crucial to assess disease occurrence, quality of care and the effectiveness and adverse impacts of various therapies,” claims a paper released previous week in the American Heart Association journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes. “Smartphone-based geofencing, a location-based program that defines geographical boundaries, might permit real-time tracking of medical visits and decrease the measurement error of retrospective reporting.”

Tracking hospitalizations via smartphone-based geofencing is crucial because sufferer recollection is unreliable and can be biased, in accordance to Marcus. In the research, the app was discovered to be 65% accurate in identifying when someone was in a hospital and how long they stayed. The precision of app-detected hospitalizations was confirmed by medical record review as the reference standard.

“The accuracy was moderate,” summarizes Marcus. “Under the NIH award, we’re almost done building our own app, and we are going to take several lessons learned from this project. We’ll be executing it in future research from our own homegrown mobile app. With the app that we are building, we’ve few strategies in mind to make it more accurate.”

 

FBI cautions healthcare agencies to check File Transfer Protocol servers

Hackers are aiming at File Transfer Protocol servers that are operating in "anonymous" mode within medical and dental agencies, the FBI warns healthcare industry stakeholders.

Criminal actors, in accordance to the bureau, are accessing personal health information and personally identifiable data to intimidate, harass and blackmail business owners. The hackers also can configure File Transfer Protocol servers to provide themselves “write” access to store malicious devices or launch cyber attacks.

The FBI notice references research from the institute of University of Michigan that discovered more than one million FTP servers were configured to provide hackers anonymous access that could expose information. “The anonymous extension of FTP permits a consumer to authenticate to the FTP server with a usual username like ‘anonymous’ or ‘ftp’ without submitting a password or by submitting a generic password or email address,” in accordance to the bureau.

Any misconfigured or unprotected server on a network could expose a business to blackmail, identity theft or fraud.

“The FBI suggests medical and dental healthcare organizations request their respective Information Technology (IT) services personnel to monitor networks for FTP servers running in anonymous mode. If businesses have a legitimate use for operating a FTP server in anonymous mode, administrators should make certain that sensitive PHI or PII isn’t stored on the server.” The complete FBI warning is available here.

 

Instant action by Urology Austin Prevents ransomware attack

The hackers implemented a ransomware attack on Urology Austin, a specialty provider that operates thirteen sites serving Round Rock and Austin. While the attack was prevented and Urology Austin regained access to its systems, it couldn’t be evaluated whether patient data was accessed by the hackers. As an outcome, the agency is offering a year of credit and identity protection services to 279,663 sufferers.

The attack occurred on the day of January 22. In an informational notice issued to the media, the practice claimed that it was aware of the attack within minutes, shut down the network and started data and operational restoration.

The practice told the regional NBC television affiliate that no ransom was paid to regain information. Compromised data involved patients’ names, addresses, dates of birth, Social Security numbers and medical information.

Notification letters have been sent to sufferers, giving them detailed information on steps to take to secure personal information.

“We take the security of our sufferers’ information very crucially and we’ve taken measures to stop a similar event from occurring in the future, involving strengthening our security measures and making sure that our networks and systems are now secure,” in accordance to a statement from the practice. “The privacy and protection of patient data is a top priority, and we strongly regret any inconvenience or concern this tragedy may cause.”

A spokesperson for Urology Austin didn’t respond to queries for further information.

 

Inside theft violations Billing Information at Med Center Health

Six-hospital Med Center Health, facilitating the Bowling Green region of Kentucky, started notifying 160,000 sufferers on the day of March 24 after a worker stole huge amounts of billing information to help in an unapproved project to establish a new tool for an outside business interest.

The worker, who is no longer with the agency, on 2 occasions acquired information on the pretense it was required to carry out duties at Med Center Health, in accordance to a notification letter sent to affected individuals and the community.

“To date, our inquiry demonstrates that in the year of August 2014 and February 2015 the people in question obtained patient data on an encrypted CD and encrypted USB drive, without any work-related reason to do so,” the letter claims.

Compromised data involved names, addresses, Social Security numbers, health insurance information, diagnoses and procedure codes and charges for medical services provided. Clinical records, medical history and treatment data weren’t accessed.

The breach impacts patients treated at 6 specific facilities between the time period of 2011 and 2014. Med Center is giving affected individuals 1 year of credit monitoring and identity protection services. An agency spokesperson wasn’t immediately available for comment.

 

MidMichigan Health to go-live with $55 million Epic Systems EHR on April 1

After consuming more than a year of preparing, MidMichigan Health has decided a date for its go-live with an Epic Systems EHR that will link 5 of its six medical centers, doctors’ offices and outpatient care facilities.

MidMichigan Health, which is associated with the institute of University of Michigan, pegged the cost of the project at $55 million and officials pointed out that the new EHR would replace multiple vendor systems that needed maintaining several custom interfaces, which had become unsustainable. As such, registration, scheduling and billing will also be on the similar Epic platform.

“When we go live on the day of April 1, we will have more than 750 staff designated as super users who’ll offer support to those using the new system,” MidMichigan Health CIO Dan Waltz stated in a statement. “Our earlier system indicated us that we had a real opportunity to transform the way patient care is delivered. We have analyzed and incorporated best practices into the design of the system and have no doubt this EMR will give our sufferers all that they deserve and more.”

Waltz claimed more than 160 MidMichigan and Epic staff “worked around the clock” preparing for the rollout.

“The advantages of the new EMR to our sufferers are numerous,” Pankaj Jandwani, MD, chief medical information officer at MidMichigan Health, added. “Anywhere the sufferer goes within our system, a MidMichigan provider will have access to their complete medical record.

Jandwani added that the latest EHR would enable patients to do many more things electronically, like schedule appointments online, self-check-in from home or at on-site kiosks, take benefit of virtual care options like telemedicine and e-visits, and view and pay all MidMichigan Health bills from one account.

A second phase of the rollout will link MidMichigan Medical Center in Alpena, Mich. in the month of September 2017, and MidMichigan Home Care in the time period of spring 2018.

 

Zika Virus Latest Research Indicates Lingering Issues

School of Public Health professor Marcia C. de Castro showed Zika Virus latest research on the day of Wednesday that discovered that birth rates in Latin America haven’t fallen in the months following the Zika epidemic.

The seminar, hosted by the Brazil Studies Seminar Series and termed as “Impact of the Zika Virus Outbreak on Brazilian Fertility,” looked at abortion, historical birth rates, approach to contraceptives, and the spread of the Zika virus itself to indicate why birth rates failed to fall, despite the known threat of having a kid while infected with the virus. Zika Virus Latest Research Indicated Lingering Issues.

Castro attributed the constant birth amount to ineffectiveness in birth control program of Brazil. Although 87% of females have access to contraception, a high rate of contraceptive misuse means that 40% of Brazilian pregnancies are unwanted, Castro stated.

“To have a reduction in the unwanted pregnancy, that means that females should have control of it in the first place. Access to contraception does not seem to be the issue. Using it rightly is still a problem in Brazil,” Castro stated.

She adds that Zika is mostly asymptomatic. “We’ve various records of women who delivered babies with congenital Zika syndrome and they never had symptoms during the time of pregnancy,” Castro said. Zika Virus Latest Research Indicated Lingering Issues.

Castro also shared developments indicating that the Zika virus can have a diverse range of impacts—beyond microcephaly, which causes babies to have smaller heads—on fetuses. Many kids thought to be healthy at birth were later discovered to have Zika-based impairments. In accordance to Castro, 20% of children with brain damage had “perfectly normal head sizes.”

Rather than trying to lower birth rates, Castro explained that the Brazilian government might decrease incidence of Zika by improving infrastructure to reduce standing water. She referred one survey showing that 85% of mosquito breeding habitats are domestic water containers.

Although, while Castro discovered the Brazilian government’s infrastructure improvements to be virtually non-existent, some attendees were yet impressed by her description of how the government tried to combat Zika.

“All the information they gave, all the help they gave to women, to everyone...dealing with the problem.” stated Patricia C. McCormick, a seminar attendee. “It’s amazing. Hats off.”

While Zika transmission rates have fallen, Castro asserted that the virus was down but not out.

“Infections do have a cycle and they peak and they come down,” she claimed. “If you look at [mosquito-borne viral illness] dengue, every three3 years or so it is epidemic, and then it comes down. Most likely [Zika] is going to have the similar pattern.”

Meaningful Use and HIT certification program require reforms, says Halamka

The program of Meaningful Use and HIT certification program is stifling technical innovation and lacks a concentration on outcomes-based care, while the certification program is “filled with outdated requirements” and is an important drain on health information technology developer resources.

That is the contention of John Halamka, MD, outspoken chief information officer at Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

“The program of Meaningful Use and HIT Certification program served a very beneficial purpose when (National Coordinator for Health IT) Dave Blumenthal did Stage 1—which is, it constructed a floor, and it ensured that doctors and hospitals had the basics of functionality that would be foundational for anything we’d do in the future,” claims Halamka, who is also been active on federal HIT committees.

Although, he asserts that Meaningful Use “went on with far too much prescriptive detail, and we are now to the point where we just require to morph the program into something else,” like outcomes- and quality-based payment models for providers, “offering vendors and clinicians more latitude in how they acquire them.

“It is time to reconsider what it is we are going to inquire clinicians to do and how we are going to measure it, rather to just issuing prescriptive regulations,” adds Halamka. “In short, the Meaningful Use Stage 3 concept and HIT certification program should be morphed into a different program.”

Under the new Quality Payment Program (QPP) from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Meaningful Use is importantly restructured into a new Advancing Care Information (ACI) performance category as part of MIPS for purposes of calculating payment. At the similar time, the measures discovered within the ACI category are deployed on the measures adopted by the Electronic Health Records Incentive Programs for Stage 3.

The aims in the ACI performance category of MIPS emphasize measures that support clinical effectiveness, information security and patient safety, patient engagement, as well as health information exchange (HIE). The new ACI performance category score under MIPS explains a meaningful EHR user as a MIPS-eligible clinician who possesses certified EHR technology, utilizes the functionality of CEHRT, and reports on applicable objectives and measures.

But, in accordance to Halamka, while CMS has made development toward simplifying Meaningful Use and the ACI category of MIPS, ONC hasn’t followed suit with its certification program. Subsequently, he claims the certification program is “filled with outdated requirements and is a primary drain on health IT developer resources, with no incremental gain to patient care.”

Halamka charges that, in few cases, the certification program of ONC has “gone way beyond the Meaningful Use program and the intended scope of HITECH by being highly prescriptive in places unrelated to Meaningful Use, as opposed to being functional.”

Nevertheless, he claims that he is “not opposed to certification in principle” but “it is just that the certification rule as currently written is too broad.”

 

Data Security: Security practices surrounding confidential documents fall short

There is a widespread and growing requirement to make better security practices surrounding confidential documents in most organizations today, in accordance to a new report by the Business Performance Innovation (BPI) Network, a peer-driven thought leadership and professional networking organization of information technology leaders.

In an international survey of more than 200 managers and information workers conducted in the fourth quarter of 2016 and first quarter of 2017, 60% of respondents claimed that they or someone they know have accidently sent out a document they should not have.

A huge majority (89%) consider document security risks are growing in their organization because of increased connectivity and the proliferation of mobile devices. The accidental sharing of confidential documents with a wrong party is by far their greatest concern, in accordance to the research, which was sponsored by software provider Foxit Software.

Among the other significant findings: 95% of respondents reflect concerns about the security of documents in their organization; 75% stated that their organization develops confidential documents on at least a weekly basis; less than one-third said their company has security solutions that are being effectively used in securing document security; 43% said their company does not have widely understood policies for document security of which they are aware; and only 16% said their agency is “very effective” in stopping the loss or accidental distribution of confidential digital documents.

“Most companies are clearly not doing enough when it comes to securing the security of high-value data contained in documents,” stated Dave Murray, head of thought leadership for the BPI Network.

“Our research demonstrates that a huge range of information that could compromise businesses is vulnerable to inadvertent leaks, as well as intentional theft,” Murray claimed. “Agencies require doing more to set explicit document security policies and educate workers on available tools and best practices in protecting the confidential information they manage.”

 

Patient Engagement Platform assists bariatric sufferers stay on track for procedures

A patient engagement platform is assisting Fresno Heart and Surgical Center in California keep better track of potential sufferers, tracking their progress and whether they victoriously lose weight through its bariatric surgery program.

Aaron Lloyd, director of the Bariatric and Minimally Invasive Surgery Program at the Fresno Heart and Surgical Center in California, claims his agency had struggled to follow up on potential sufferers and track them through its program.

“We utilized to have 3,000 to 3,500 potential sufferers on the path to getting bariatric surgery in a given year. But in that similar year, we would merely operate on a third of these individuals,” he claims. “Somewhere along the way, we lost 2,000 to 2,500 potential sufferers. We knew that if we could track where they were lost, we could intervene.”

Clearly, the practice was missing out on a lot of potential revenue, but sufferers also were missing out on what could be life-changing surgery.

Fresno Heart’s bariatric program gives in-person and online seminars for prospective sufferers to learn more about the procedure, but there was no follow-up work done to make certain these people became patients. And because 60% of patients attending a seminar don’t take the next step toward scheduling a consultation, it was missing out on possible interventions.

So, the program contracted for a patient engagement platform from the Sequence Health. The patient engagement platform supports tracking those coming to seminars, following up with automated emails motivating a consultation and by targeting re-engagement with sufferers going through the procedure for surgery to see where they are in the journey and if they have any requirements not being dealt.

Preparatory steps for patients involve completing a nutrition class, getting tests and evaluations from a primary care physician, which involve a psychiatric evaluation, lab work, a sleep study and might be cardiac and diabetes clearance.

What makes Sequence Health different from other vendors is not merely offering lead tracking of prospective clients, but extra services like administering the website, hosting online seminars and conducting search engine optimization.

The greatest hurdle within the initiative was getting the right data, in accordance to Lloyd. “Do not be afraid to invest in data,” he counsels. “Our system was merely as good as the people using it. You require taking time to put in the data to impact meaningful change.”

Fresno Health’s bariatric program yet is missing one component, Lloyd claims. The agency would like a patient portal so patients can more conveniently communicate with providers and have access to their own information, and the vendor has been inquired to build the portal.

 

Lahey Health integrates AirStrip platform for real-time secure messaging

Lahey Health has adopted the AirStrip ONE mobile interoperability platform with their Epic electronic health record (EHR) system to serve active engagement and real-time secure messaging among caregivers.

In doing so, Lahey is trying to deal issues that are like those of other healthcare agencies, which’re similarly struggling to make better care coordination between nurses and attending physicians.

With 1.5 million ambulatory visits each year, the 4-hospital health system is busier than ever which has put a premium on effective communication between clinicians as they coordinate sufferer care. Although, as demands on caregivers have increased, so has the potential for inefficiency and miscommunication during the care collaboration.

“Our electronic health record (EHR) knows who the patients are on the inpatient side, and who is on their care teams,” claims David Reis, senior vice president and chief information officer at Lahey. “We’re using the application to intelligently deliver real-time secure messaging between caregivers.”

Implementing real-time secure messaging using the AirStrip application has enabled nurses to have straight communication with attending physicians in real-time through Android and iOS smartphones, instead of calling into a central operator first to have the doctor paged and waiting for their response.

Care team members change every shift, and that is updated in real-time throughout the course of the sufferer’s stay, in accordance to Reis, who points out that there is a requirement for “100% accuracy” to have texts sent to the right phone and the right user to ensure quick response times.

“In previous times, a nurse would have to look up the position of the person they were attempting to communicate with,” adds Reis. “With the integration between Epic and AirStrip, the nurse merely has to know the patient. As soon as they click on the sufferer’s name, a list of all the roles comes up, and they merely click on the specific role they need to communicate with.”

The capability has been “an enabler for workflow” because caregivers “do not have to figure out whom to send a message to—they just look up the sufferer,” Reis summarizes.

 

St. Luke’s University utilizes enterprise data warehouse to make better performance

St. Luke’s University Health Network has completed a huge data management project that executives expect will acquire the quadruple aim of increasing the sufferer experience, improving population health, decreasing costs and improving the work life of healthcare providers. Working with Information Builders, St. Luke’s executed a network-wide healthcare enterprise data warehouse (EDW) that consolidates the information from its 7 hospitals and more than 270 outpatient locations in the region of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. It encompasses inpatient and ambulatory clinical information, as well as administrative, financial, human resources, patient, physician and facility data.

The project was an eighteenth-month effort that came in “on time, under budget, and with expanded scope,” claims Amanda Mazza, director of analytics and business intelligence for St. Luke’s.

For Information Builders, the project was so victorious that the company will utilize the St. Luke’s experience as its Best Practices model for enterprise data warehouse (EDW) efforts going forward.

St. Luke’s University Health Network is a not-for-profit, regional and completely integrated network with a service place that involves Lehigh, Northampton, Carbon, Schuylkill, Bucks, Montgomery, Berks and Monroe counties in Pennsylvania, and Warren County in New Jersey.

Devoted to advancing health education, St. Luke’s operates the nation’s most historical school of nursing and 22 graduate medical educational programs and is believed to be a major teaching hospital, the mere one in the region. In partnership with Temple University, St. Luke’s developed the region’s first medical school.

Information Builders and St. Luke's debuted the new Omni-HealthData Insights BI toolset previous month at HIMSS 2017. This suite of BI products were co-developed by IBI and St. Luke’s to deal 4 priorities—physician practice management; quality and patient safety; hospital patient experience; and hospital performance. More priorities will be dealt later this year, claims Mazza.

Started in the year of 2014, the aim of the project was to aid St. Luke’s in its attempts to be a true value-based care driven agency and to better leverage the vast amounts of information the provider collects. That data was observed as key to making decisions that would make better the patient care and decrease costs.

The first step in the procedure was to form a steering committee to interview almost 40 provider administrators on what was required for an overall data strategy.

The consensus was that St. Luke’s required a platform with powerful business intelligence tools. The steering committee mapped out the business requirements for the project, matched business intelligence capabilities against those, and established a just-in-time schedule to meet project aims. Ensuring data governance was a significant part of the planning process.

Organization executives interviewed various vendors and opted Information Builders due to the scope of its business model and its scalability.

The new enterprise data warehouse (EDW) integrates what had been 26 data sources, Mazza says. Almost 1,000 business users tap those data sources to make decisions on sufferer care, billing and healthcare network operations.

Omni-HealthData gives a number of state-of-the-art processes for data quality, data mastering and data integration.

“The EDW, and a huge suite of analytical applications, were brought on-line in record time,” claims Mary Jane McKeever, vice president of finance at St. Luke’s. “The enterprise data warehouse (EDW) consists of our most significant data assets and gives us with a patient-centered view of our population, with the capability to measure clinical and business performance with great precision, while also enabling targeted patient outreach.”

As an outcome, St. Luke’s staff and physicians can make “new and better” decisions regarding patient care and business operations, Mazza states.

Most significantly, healthcare providers are better capable to tap data on patient experiences and satisfaction, and to take actions to make better those scores. That involves data on every individual with whom a patient has contact; how much time they spend with each; what processes are done or tests ordered; and what the results are of those.

Analytics and data governance are yet fairly new for many workers, but they are important for improving the patient experience, Mazza states. St. Luke’s will invest in advanced analytics tools later this year, with the target of achieving greater gains.

 

Efforts of HHS to increase patient engagement with EHRs fall short, GAO reports

Brief:

1. A latest report claims that sufferers aren’t accessing and using their electronic health information, despite wide availability to do so, and calls on HHS to reassess the effectiveness of efforts to enhance patient engagement with EHRs.


2. In accordance to the General Accountability Office report, just about one-third of sufferers accessed EHRs through physician practices. The amount of use among hospital patients was less than half that at 15 percent, despite 88 percent of hospitals providing access.


3. HHS has injected more than $35 billion into health information technology, primarily intended to increase the adoption of EHRs among caregivers.

Description:

Much of the federal push to enhance patient engagement with EHRs has fallen to the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and CMS through programs such as Patient Engagement Playbook and the Medicare EHR Incentive Program. Although, neither agency has effective means of measuring the outcomes of their attempts to see if patients are really accessing and using their EHRs.

“While HHS’s investment in health IT is important, HHS lacks the capability to determine whether, or to what extent, CMS’s and ONC’s efforts are assisting HHS to achieve its goals,” the report summarizes. GAO suggested that HHS develop performance measures to assess its attempts to enhance patients’ access to longitudinal health information and use the data to achieve program goals.

Despite an industry-wide push to enhance patients’ use of their personal health data, little progress has been made — in part because of the deficiency of interest from patients, but also in part because providers haven’t actively promoted PHIs and patient portals.

In accordance to a recent West survey, 75 percent of patients with chronic conditions need their provider to check in regularly so they can be alerted if anything seems unusual, though only 30 percent report getting such feedback. Such information could be beneficial in tracking a health of patient between visits and better inform the doctor when the patient schedules their next visit.

Providers are aware of the need improve EHR access. In a survey by CDW Healthcare, 71 percent of providers said improving patient engagement is a top priority and 80 percent said they were working to make EHRs simpler for patients to access.

Innovista Health Solutions announces new partnership with Seven Flags ACO

Innovista Health Solutions (Innovista) has declared a new client partnership with Seven Flags ACO (Accountable Care Organization). Seven Flags ACO was started in the year of 2016 with eighteen Primary Care Physicians, committed to giving high quality, cost effective care to their sufferers. With the addition of various El Paso Physicians in 2017, the ACO will handle over 10,500 patients in value based contracts.

Seven Flags ACO is comprised of 2 U.S. Mexico border regions which are featured by having difficult sufferer populations to manage because of the inequitable access to health care. The physicians partnering in this ACO have a chance to combat these community challenges and make better access to quality care.

This Seven Flags ACO is believed to be one of several new ACOs developed through the collaboration of Innovista and TMA PracticeEdge. TMA PracticeEdge, LLC, is a services company established by the Texas Medical Association to bring physicians the technology and expertise they require taking advantage of new health care payment models. To date, ten ACOs have been launched as an outcome of this thriving partnership. Seven Flags Accountable Care Organization joins Innovista's growing Texas market of independent provider organizations, which involves more than 1,000 physicians providing care throughout Texas communities.

"We’re excited to combine our individuals and management processes with Seven Flags' passionate commitment of giving high quality, value-based care. Together, I feel confident we will see great results in this new ACO," said Rich Steinle, CEO of Innovista Health Solutions.

"Partnering with TMA PracticeEdge and Innovista has permitted the Laredo community to develop a thriving ACO that welcomes physicians who’re committed to improving overall patient care. Our hopes are to sustain to grow the Seven Flags ACO with the addition of new value based contracts and physicians," claimed Dr. Luis Benavides, President of Seven Flags ACO.

Report: ONC requires measures to enhance patient access to records

While the Department of Health and Human Services has several attempts to enhance ability of patients to access their electronic health information, HHS lacks the capability to assess the effectiveness of these initiatives. ONC requires measures to enhance patient access to records.

That is the conclusion of a new Government Accountability Office (GAO) report that particularly calls out the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT for its shortcomings in this place. ONC requires measures to enhance patient access to records. ONC requires measures to enhance patient access to records.

In spite of the fact that ONC is needed by the HITECH Act and the Medicare Access and Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act to establish performance measures for the adoption of electronic health records and related efforts to serve the electronic use and exchange of health information, ONC hasn’t established a specific means for measuring outcomes linked with its efforts targeted at furthering patients’ ability to electronically access their health information, in accordance to the GAO.

“Without such initiatives, HHS lacks critical information essential to determine whether each of its efforts are contributing to the overall goals of department, or if these efforts require being modified in any way,” claims the GAO report.

For example, auditors charge that ONC can’t determine if sufferer electronic access is higher for participants in the Blue Button Initiative, in contrast with access rates for non-participants, or if providers who use the Patient Engagement Playbook—a tool established by the agency to help providers in using patient portals to engage patients—acquire more patient electronic access than non-users.

To deal this shortfall, the GAO suggested that the HHS Secretary direct ONC to establish performance measures to assess outcomes of key efforts related to the electronic access of patients to longitudinal health information, involving determining whether the number of providers that participate in these initiatives have higher rates of patient access to electronic health information.

Additionally, auditors suggested that the HHS Secretary direct ONC to use the information these performance measures provide to make program adjustments—where suitable. “Such actions may involve, for instance, assessing the status of program operations or recognizing areas that require improvement in case to help achieve program goals related to increasing patients’ ability to access their health information electronically.”

ONC and HHS are seeking to the comments as opportunities for improvement, officials claim.

“HHS and ONC analyzed and concurred with the recommendations,” claims Acting National Coordinator Jon White, MD. “The GAO report is a good opportunity to review our efforts.”

In a written response to the GAO report, HHS claimed that ONC would “make every effort to develop performance measures for sufferer education and outreach initiatives but would have to balance these attempts with its efforts to develop measures for the adoption of EHRs, interoperability and sufferer engagement nationwide.”

Moreover, HHS demonstrated that ONC would use the data the performance measures provide to make program adjustments, and that it is devoted to using such metrics to guide program improvement.

“We are looking forward to working on those suggestions,” adds White. “We have got great measures on how the technology works and how the certified technology offers people access to information. But we are looking forward to establishing new, better measures on individuals getting access to their data.”

 

How HIE of Michigan serves immunization records lookups

Clinicians seek value in having access to immunization records of patients, but the procedure for sharing that data traditionally has been ponderous and manual.

That is changing in Michigan; where the information exchange of state, Great Lakes Health Connect, in the last year has enabled providers to straightly query the immunization records of HIE through their electronic health records (EHRs) systems, hence enabling them to do so as clinicians are delivering care to sufferers.

It is the latest in what has been a slow, steady march toward making better the record sharing in the state.

In the year of 1996, Michigan lawmakers developed a childhood immunization registry to enable physicians to approach to immunization records held in what became the Michigan Care Improvement Registry (MCIR). Some ten years later, the registry expanded to involve records from all citizens; physicians were needed to submit immunization records to MCIR.

Great Lakes Health Connect now helps physicians in transmitting their immunization records to the MCIR and has more than 1,400 practices doing so. Although, the records previously weren’t automatically transmitted into physician electronic health record systems, causing workflow problems.

The latest approach enables 2-way communication between a provider EHR and the MCIR. A small number of early adopter hospitals and physician practices are utilizing the immunization query capability; various other provider organizations are now in the pipeline to use the service.

When a sufferer checks in for an appointment, Great Lakes Health Connect sends over immunization records that are placed into the patient chart and also demonstrates what information in the records are new.

Kenny O’Neill, vice president of clinical integration at three-hospital Lakeland Health System, a client of the HIE since the year of 2010 and serving southwest Michigan, says the integration of immunization records and EHRs is significant.

“The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention suggests that adults over the age of 65 get an annual vaccine to secure against pneumonia,” he claims. “There are 2 competing vaccines in this class, but they can’t be administered within twelve months of each other. A patient might remember whether or not they have had a pneumonia vaccine in the past, but they aren’t likely to know which one they were given. If this data does not already reside in their electronic health record (EHR), the information can be discovered in the state repository.

“Prior to having the capability to query MCIR through our electronic health record, a provider would have to exit the EHR, start a separate browser to get to the MCIR web site, log into the database, search for the necessary data, then copy and paste it into the sufferer’s record back in the EHR system. This might seem like a relatively minor problem, but it interrupts the interaction with the sufferer at the point of care. Multiplied across many sufferers, that can add up to a significant waste of time. Great Lakes Health Connect’s immunization query functionality permits more time and greater attention to be concentrated on patient care.”

Integrating immunization records is quite seamless now, but the HIE and Lakeland Health System, the pilot site, had to work out few technical problems to speed up the connection and response times with the registry, claims George Bosnjak, director of business development at Great Lakes. Extra interface testing with the registry also was required to make it all work, states Kenneth Lomonaco, EHR manager at Great Lakes.

 

Florida health center sustains to be watchful in fight against Zika Virus

It is been almost 9 months since Florida became the 1st USA state to confirm regional mosquito transmission of the Zika virus. In the public health battle that ensued, Miami-Dade County became ground zero in the fight against the mosquito-borne sickness. Florida health center sustains to be watchful in fight against Zika Virus.

In the time period of late 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention eradicated the “red area” designation for the county, meaning it is no longer a geographic place where local, state and CDC authorities have evaluates that the intensity of Zika transmission reflects a significant risk to pregnant ladies. Zika infection during pregnancy has the possibility to cause critical fetal birth defects. Florida health center sustains to be watchful in fight against Zika Virus.

Although, in accordance to Diego Shmuels, MD, director of quality and clinical practice management at Borinquen Health Care Center of Miami-Dade County, it would be an error to become complacent about the Zika risk now that the county has been downgraded to a cautionary “yellow area” and consider that the worst is behind South Florida.

“We’ve a huge influx of sufferers that travel to and from the Caribbean and Latin America, and clearly with the warm weather there, they are always exposed to the virus,” claims Shmuels, who points out that Borinquen Health Care Center continually screens for Zika regardless of when mosquito season starts and ends.

A federally qualified health center with ten clinical sites, Borinquen has been using electronic health record vendor athenahealth’s network to assist combat Zika by recognizing sufferers who might be at threat for infection by taking the CDC instructions and running EHR queries.

In addition to mosquito bite transmission, the virus can be sexually transmitted to partners. As an outcome, where sufferers live, their travel history and the travel background of their sexual partners can impact their chances of getting Zika.

“I consider that most of our cases are typically imported,” analyzes Shmuels. “Presently, there are no regional cases.”

He asserts that it is significant for clinicians to inquire sufferers if they have themselves travelled to areas with active local Zika transmission or if they have had sex with partners who’ve travelled to those areas, and to document those facts in the electronic health record.

“When Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood became the hot zone for Zika revious year, athenahealth permitted us to execute a call campaign to all our sufferers that were at risk living in particular ZIP codes,” he adds, which was deployed on an athenahealth network query that looked for ladies of reproductive age that could be sexually active or are pregnant, as well as males of the same age group that could be sexually active with those women.

“If we’ve another outbreak of regional cases in Zika-infected areas, we would do the similar again—activate athenahealth to expedite the procedure,” Shmuels summarizes. “We will have to wait and see what happens once the hot weather returns.”

Nevertheless, he contends that the EHR is a “platform that supports decision making—but, at the end of the day, the clinician is the one that evaluates how to properly utilize diagnostic testing.” Florida health center sustains to be watchful in fight against Zika Virus.

 

 

Providers, payers testing the digital transformation initiatives

Providers and payers are early in the procedure of commencing digital transformation initiatives, but an important percentage hope to invest in technologies in the coming months to alter the way they serve and interact with sufferers.

Just 10% of providers and payers say they are actively executing digital transformation initiatives, in accordance to a latest survey from IDC Health Insights, one of the lines of business of IDC, an international consultancy. Research appeared in a report termed as, “IDC Survey: Payer and Provider Investment Plans for Digital Transformation.”

In defining digital transformation initiatives, IDC Health Insights studied the ways in which healthcare agencies interact with customers and sufferers, including a wide-ranging approach to change that involves leadership, “omni-experience,” information technology, operating model and workforce transformation. The latest survey mentions digital transformation and infrastructure and operating model transformation concentrating on individuals, legacy systems, culture, partnerships, leadership, and incentive systems.

While just one in 10 providers and payer organizations are presently executing these wide-ranging projects, but by the year of 2018, IDC Health Insights data prove that 42% of providers and 58% of payers plan to have programs in place, claims Jeff Rivkin, an IDC research director.

Presently, most existing digital transformation initiatives are in a pilot testing or research phase. In both industry segments, digital transformation comprises about 30% of new information technology initiatives, data recommend.

Rivkin states that IDC Health Insights conducted the research to gauge provider and payer investment plans for digital transformation, which involves clinical collaboration and communication via mobile devices, connected health, digital transformation, Internet of Things (IoT) devices and a value-based healthcare approach.

About a third of healthcare provider agencies predict they hope to evaluate such programs over the next one to 3 years, with about one in four payers say they are presently evaluating such programs. Rivkin adds that information technology departments are likely to be leading the way in undertaking digital transformation projects, in contrast to other business units.

Technologies that are the focus of digital transformation involve big data, business analytics, cloud services, cyber security, and mobile devices and applications, the survey discovered.

Healthcare provider agencies are searching to digital transformation to drive increased productivity, decrease overall costs and increase revenue. Payers significantly seek digital transformation projects to embrace new distribution platforms, reduce organizational risk and meet compliance requirements.

UCLA Medical Center leverages artificial intelligence to develop virtual radiology advisor

Interventional radiologists at the UCLA Medical Center are using artificial intelligence to develop a “chatbot” that automatically interacts with referring clinicians, giving them with evidence-based answers to frequently inquired queries.

Presently, the AI-powered prototype is being tested by a small UCLA Medical Center group of hospitalists, radiation oncologists and interventional radiologists. The machine learning application, which acts like a virtual radiology advisor, enables clinicians to quickly access valuable data while enabling them to conduct other duties and to concentrate on patient care.

The data is delivered in several formats, involving relevant websites, infographics, and subprograms within the application. And if the device determines that an answer needs a human response, contact data for an actual interventional radiologist is provided. As clinicians use the application, which is concentrated on diagnostic and interventional radiology, it learns from each encounter and becomes smarter via deep learning techniques that give evidence-based answers.

“The more it is used, the smarter it gets,” claims Kevin Seals, MD, resident physician in radiology at UCLA Medical Center and the programmer of the application, who points out that the application’s user interface contains text boxes arranged in a manner simulating communication through traditional SMS text messaging services.

“It feels like you are texting with a human, but you are texting with artificial intelligence, so the reactions are coming from a computer,” analyzes Seals, who has a background in engineering. “For clinicians in the hospital who are not radiologists, it is a way to speak with a simulated radiologist.”

To establish the knowledge of application, Seals claims that the researchers fed it more than 2,000 example data points simulating usual questions that interventional radiologists get during a consultation. He adds that natural language processing was executed using the Watson Natural Language Classifier application program interface, so that user inputs are understood and paired with relevant data categories of interest to clinicians.

For instance, if a clinician inquires whether placement of an inferior vena cava filter—a medical device that is implanted by interventional radiologists—is suitable for a specific patient, they will be paired with an IVC filter category and relevant data will be given.

Previous week, Seals presented research on the application at the Society of Interventional Radiology’s 2017 Annual Scientific Meeting in the state of Washington. While the machine learning application is concentrated on diagnostic and interventional radiology, he asserts that it could finally be applied to other medical specialties.

“It is getting actually close to the point where we’d like to have a wider release across the UCLA Medical Center,” summarizes Seals. “It works very well now. About 90% of its functionality, roughly, gets it right every single time. The difference between it working actually well and it working potentially perfectly is merely entering more information so that it becomes smarter.”

 

HITRUST inquires organizations to offer more tight security assistance

The Department of Homeland Security works with security experts across industries to make better the collection and sharing of cyber threat data. Congressional members of the U.S. House Homeland Security Committee on the day of March 9 heard testimony from industry representatives on the value and effectiveness of working with DHS. For the healthcare sector, the worth of cyber threat information disseminated by the government can differ dramatically, said Daniel Nutkis, CEO of stakeholder security collaborative HITRUST, in prepared testimony. HITRUST asked the organizations to offer more tight security assistance.

The Cybersecurity Act of 2015 and Executive Order 13691 developed the necessity of industry information sharing and analysis organizations (ISAOs) to participate in the sharing of cyber data with the government and offered more tight security assistance, Nutkis pointed out.

Technical and operational problems surfaced when industry previously started sharing threat data through DHS’ Automated Indicator Sharing program (AIS). “They have since been addressed, but we would motivate greater engagement by DHS with AIS participants to make sure the alignment with ongoing and future needs,” Nutkis testified. That claimed, the work of DHS is benefiting the healthcare industry, and the engagement with the organization has been productive, he contended.

However, few government activities are undermining sharing programs in the private sector and among data sharing and analysis organizations, he added. “There are efforts underway that will deviate from this attempt by requiring healthcare agencies to merely share information straightly with the Department of Health and Human Services—an agency not even identified in the Cybersecurity Act of 2015 as affording safe harbor liability protections,” Nutkis told lawmakers.

In accordance to HHS, although, no one or any agency is required to report threat data to the agency. HITRUST asked the organizations to offer more tight security assistance.

The CISA law, he argued, places DHS at the center of data sharing with the private and civilian sector. “Since HITRUST has led the industry in the collection of indicators of compromise through the development of increased standards and collection practices, and was the first healthcare agency to start sharing bi-directionally with DHS’s AIS program, we find these efforts unnerving as they are surely contrary to the original intent of CISA and commitment of government to partner with industry through the Information Sharing and Analysis Organization program.”

The private sector, he further added, should be believed to be a partner with government partners and the government should have a universal and consistent approach when engaging industry.

 

Email attacks authorized by conveniently obtained credentials

A latest report from 2 information security firms analyzes the prevalence of email attacks deployed on a review of 1,000 healthcare agencies that involve the physicians, third party administrators, software vendors, regional health policies, medical billing firms and hospitals.

On average, 68% of the reviewed entities and their business associates had workers compromised accounts with visibly available credentials on the Dark Web, where stolen data is marketed. Some 76% of stolen credentials involved actionable password data, and 23% had completely visible text passwords, in accordance to Evolve IP and ID Agent, which undertook the survey.

“With 68% of healthcare agencies having compromised credentials within the Dark Web, agencies are failing to rightly secure the customers from on-line account takeover and data exploit,” claims Kevin Lancaster, CEO of ID Agent. “To combat the increasing threat, it is significant to establish an end-to-end solution to automate the process of recognizing stolen credentials and proactively securing customer on-line accounts.”

“While it is virtually impossible to stop phishing attacks, the right disaster recovery plan and (disaster recovery) services can stop a healthcare agency from facing serious losses or even potentially going out of business,” claims David M. McCrystal, healthcare program manager of Evolve IP.

The study of email attacks on healthcare agencies discovered that outdated passwords retain their value because most individuals use the same password or a similar password across all their online domains.

Even agencies with a single compromise still confront major risk on the Dark Web, the companies warn, with the risk proportional to company size.

The vendors point out that there is a usual exploit lifecycle to stolen data:

• Gain access to information from emails exploited by phishing, malware, data breach, social engineering and other attack forms


• Utilize obtained data to study a targeted company or individual


• Gain system access


• Develop a foothold in the system


• Gain more privileges


• Move laterally through the agency and its supply chain to extract information or control system access

More information from Evolve IP and ID Agent, involving the requirement to accept proactive threat intelligence, continuous security management and rapid incident response and recovery processes, is available here.

 

CDC interactive web app brings health information down to the neighborhood level

A new CDC interactive web app has been started to give local health departments with city- and neighborhood-level health information for the 500 largest U.S. cities in case to better understand the places over which they have jurisdiction and help them in planning interventions that are most required.

The platform—known as the 500 Cities Project—is the outcome of a partnership between the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. It is targeted at giving regional area estimates for 27 chronic disease measures, concentrating on conditions, behaviors and risk factors that have a negative effect on population health.

These local area estimates are utilized to model the prevalence of chronic conditions like heart disease, arthritis and diabetes, as well as 5 unhealthy behaviors involving the obesity, smoking, insufficient physical activity, binge drinking and deficiency of sleep.

The information comes from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS), which utilizes the annual telephone surveys to gather state data about U.S. residents regarding their health-related risk behaviors, chronic health conditions and use of preventive services.

Although, to get down below the county level, the agency has applied statistical modeling techniques to the surveillance data to establish city- and census tract-level estimates. Use of the health data for more than 100 million individuals—or about a third of the U.S. population—has produced estimates for the 500 largest American cities and almost 28,000 census tracts within these cities.

“We put our initial information estimates out on the website back in the month of December as part of a soft launch with static map products, and this month we started our revised CDC interactive web app that now incorporates an interactive mapping application,” claims James Holt, team leader for analytic methods at the CDC’s Division of Population Health in Atlanta.

The CDC interactive web app mapping application, deployed on 2010 census population data, enables consumers to zoom in to their neighborhoods and look at regional data, comparing it with that of an entire city. In accordance to Holt, the dataset can be joined with census tract spatial data in a geographic information system (GIS) to produce maps of 27 measures at the census tract level in what he calls a “GIS-friendly” format.

The expectation is that the data can assist to recognize current and emerging chronic health problems facing a city or neighborhood, as well as help in the development and implementation of targeted interventions.

“It is primarily designed as a planning aid,” adds Holt, who asserts that local health officials can use the data estimates to “better understand the geographic distribution of risk factors and health results in their cities.”

Going forward, he says the plan is to update the dataset later this year with 2015 BRFSS data, which involves fifty states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico.

Nevertheless, the future of the 500 Cities website is far from secure, in accordance to Holt, who notes that funding for the platform runs out at the end of September. “The long-term outlook is yet a little uncertain, so we are actively pursuing the sustainability and resources to make that happen on continual basis,” he further adds.

 

Business email scams, Ransomware causing cyber threats to escalate

Cyber threats reached an all-time high in the year of 2016, with ransomware and business email scams gaining increased fame among the cyber criminals searching to extort enterprises, in accordance to a latest study by security technology company Trend Micro.

A 752% increase in new ransomware families resulted in $1 billion in losses for enterprises globally, the report claimed. Trend Micro and the Zero Day Initiative (ZDI), a program initiated by Trend Micro’s TippingPoint unit to reward security researchers for responsibly revealing the vulnerabilities, discovered 765 vulnerabilities in the year of 2016.

Of these, 678 were brought to ZDI through its bug bounty program, then verified and revealed to the impacted vendors. Compared with vulnerabilities found by Trend Micro and ZDI in the year of 2015, Apple analyzed a 145% increase in vulnerabilities, while Microsoft bugs reduced by 47%.

“As risks have diversified and grown in sophistication, cyber criminals have shifted on from significantly targeting people to focusing on where the money is—enterprises,” stated Ed Cabrera, chief cyber security officer for Trend Micro. “Throughout the year of 2016, we witnessed threat actors extort companies and agencies for the sake of profitability, and we do not anticipate this trend slowing down.”

In the year of 2016, the Trend Micro Smart Protection Network blocked more than 81 billion threats for the whole year, a 56% increase from the year of 2015. In the second half of 2016, more than 3,000 attacks each second were blocked. During this time period, 75 billion of blocked attempts were email based, demonstrating that business email scams remains the top entry point for threats.

Throughout the course of twelve months, the number of ransomware families grew to 247 from 29. One leading factor to elaborate the increase is the profitability of ransomware. However, people and organizations are motivated not to pay ransoms, cyber criminals still handled to rake in almost $1 billion previous year.

 

Sharp HealthCare notifies about the data breach to 757 patients

Sharp HealthCare has informed the 757 sufferers abut the data breach following the suspected theft of a computer and external memory device holding their protected health information.

“The devices, which were kept in a locked cabinet in an access-controlled patient place at the Sharp Memorial Outpatient Pavilion were found missing on the day of Monday morning, February 6,” in accordance to a statement from the organization.

The devices processed and stored patient wellness screening data on outpatient blood pressure or cardiac health studies. Compromised data involved names, dates of birth, ages, current medications, family history and a summary of performed studies.

Sharp HealthCare isn’t offering credit or identity theft protection services, saying the compromised information didn’t involve more sensitive information, like financial information and Social Security numbers, a spokesperson confirmed. This is a common practice as charges for protective services can become prohibitive.

The agency is conducting an analysis of security practices.

 

CTCA applies system integrating decision support into electronic health records

Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) is cooperating with 3 healthcare IT vendors to execute a customized solution that enables system integrating decision support for cancer treatment that is given within clinicians’ workflow, enabled by the EHRs (electronic health records) system.

The care treatment’s national provider is working with Allscripts, which supplies the organization’s Sunrise EHR, as well as NantHealth and eviti, which give system integrating decision support capabilities for the latest approach.

By integrating the system integrating decision support or clinical decision support component, Cancer Treatment Centers of America (CTCA) executives claim that the resulting Clinical Pathways program helps inform the cancer treatment procedure, without interrupting the clinical workflow of physicians. The direct interface of the NantHealth was developed with the input of hundreds of oncologists across the nation and holds a detailed collection of evolving cancer care data.

Cancer Treatment Centers, Allscripts and NantHealth started planning this project previous year to assist sufferers and providers, stated Paul Black, Allscripts Chief Executive Officer. The solution "enhances and makes better the chemotherapy regimen selection and ordering process, and finally, the quality of care CTCA provides to its sufferers."

Clinical Pathways integrates the recent cancer research available, treatment regimens and complementary therapies into the Allscripts Sunrise EHR, which offers oncologists the capability to establish a curated list of care protocols at the point of care. The treatment platform gives custom treatment regimens for specific sufferers and their conditions; comparisons between treatment options; computer order entry capabilities; treatment regimens suggested by eviti, which are then mapped back into the EHR to proprietary CTCA order sets; access to recent instructions; clinical data; and real-time functionality.

"Clinical Pathways depicts all suitable treatment options. It also assists eliminate potential guesswork by clinicians routinely inundated with new data and oncology research," stated George Daneker, Jr., MD, Chief Medical Officer at CTCA at Southeastern Regional Medical Center. "We created an ecosystem of treatment options, customized to the CTCA standard of care, for sufferers to review and select from that is safe and efficient."

The integration of the eviti solution with Allscripts Sunrise EHR for Clinical Pathways permits physicians to retrieve data from an unbiased Evidence-Based Medical Library, which encompasses more than 2,700 of the most suitable evidence-based treatment regimens covering all cancers and cancer subtypes and all modalities.

 

Employee accessed the patient information records for 5 years at Chadron Community hospital

Chadron Community Hospital, a critical access facility in the region of Nebraska, recently found that a worker was accessing the patient information records outside of job duties for more than 5 years.

An investigation learned that compromised patient information records included addresses, names, dates of birth, clinical data from the electronic health record (EHR) system (diagnoses, orders, provider notes and test results) and insurance information. “We don’t believe the ex-employee accessed any Social Security numbers,” the hospital noted in announcement of the breach.

Chadron Community now is notifying 702 sufferers and suggesting them to monitor financial accounts and request a free credit report from Equifax, Experience or TransUnion. Extra information is being given to sufferers on what to do if there is reason to believe data was misused.

“To help stop something like this from happening in the future, we’re reviewing our privacy policies and practices, and reinforcing education with all staff regarding the significance of maintaining the confidentiality of our patients’ data and suitable care-related access to patient records,” in accordance to a statement from the hospital, which refused to comment further on the tragedy.

 

How alarm management software empowers response time of nurse

The Hospital for Special Care in Connecticut, a long-term acute-care facility, had an issue with alarm fatigue, specifically ventilator alarms that were nearly constantly going off. So the hospital bought alarm management software to get the issue under control and make better the patient comfort and safety. The software, from Bernoulli Enterprise, filters alarms and assists providers determine which kinds of alarms are most significant.

There are several ways in which a sufferer on a ventilator and breathing through a trachea tube can set off an alarm. They may cough, reposition, talk, exhale as the ventilator is delivering a breath, or have secretions that can stop delivery of a breath.

Every time an alarm sounded, it would also set off an alarm in the hallway, claims Connie Dills, respirator practice manager at the Hospital for Special Care. Because there was no way to know if an alarm was demonstrating a truly a crucial situation, nurses spent the day running around checking the sufferers; most alarms turned out to be non-actionable.

With the new alarm management software system, the hospital chose several core alarm metrics as the most significant to monitor—low exhale volume, low inspiratory pressure, patient disconnect, no information flowing and loss of connectivity between the ventilator and Bernoulli.

Alerts are reflected at workstations, on laptops and pagers, on an LED board and through an audible overhead speaker. With the new alarm management software, the hospital has observed an 80% reduction in the number of alarms for which an instant response is required, Dills claims.

Utilization of the Bernoulli software also supports new Joint Commission patient safety aims, which need nurses to conduct ventilator checks on each shift. The software generates reports that can show trends of alarms, a log of events and parameters on each ventilator.

Removing false alarms has enabled staff to respond quicker to what are perceived to be real emergencies. “Our response time is outstanding,” Dills claims. When an actionable alarm goes off, the response time is within 10 to 20 seconds.

Dills understand the reluctance of hospitals to pull out few particular alarms and concentrate on a core set because personnel in her hospital had their own qualms about that. “But if you do not filter some alarms out, you will not be better than before,” she suggests. And nurses will keep running around checking alarms instead of checking patients. “So, concentrate on the critical alarms for which you need immediate alerts,” she adds.

As with the introduction of most new information technologies into a hospital atmosphere, the Hospital for Special Care found some resistance to change when the new software went in, Dills states. But respiratory therapists—a very equipment- and tech-oriented bunch—became the clinician champions of the project and camped out in units to talk up the benefits and assist connect devices. Hospital departments that should be brought in to this kind of program involve IT, clinical engineering, and the safety and risk departments.

 

New scheme seems to use deceptive phone line to get personal information

The phone number of a hotline being utilized by the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of Health and Human Services apparently is being used by scammers to get personal information from people who consider they are talking to OIG staff. New scheme seems to use deceptive phone line to get personal information.

The OIG hotline accepts tips and complaints about potential scam and mismanagement including HHS programs, which OIG inquires.

Although, HHS now is warning clients that scammers are altering the numbers that appear on caller ID devices; when the criminals call, devices display the HHS hotline phone number (1-800-HHS-TIPS). Victims who receive the calls are at risk for offering the scammers personal information that can be used to raid a bank account or perform other fraudulent activity.

New scheme seems to use deceptive phone line to get personal information.

The OIG affirms that it doesn’t use the hotline number to make outgoing calls; the organization is advising consumers not to answer phone calls that purportedly come from HHS. The agency further is asserting that it remains safe to call the hotline to report fraud or mismanagement, and it specifically motivates those who might have been victimized by the phone call hoax to contact the agency by straightly calling the hotline.

The agency counsels consumers to not provide data over the phone to a person posing as from HHS, like Social Security numbers, dates of birth, credit card numbers, driver license numbers, bank account numbers or mother’s maiden names.

When calling HHS to report fraud, involve date and time you got the phone call and details about the call. People also can file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission.

 

mHealth interventions for diabetic patients might prove to be Efficacious

While there is certain evidence supporting the efficacy of mhealth interventions for sufferers with diabetes, the quality of past researches is substandard and extra research on efficacy is required.

That is the conclusion of a latest study, released on the day of March 1 in the journal PLoS ONE that was designed to critically appraise and consolidate evidence from several systematic reviews on the effectiveness of mHealth interventions for diabetic sufferers.

Researchers undertook a comprehensive search on several databases to recognize relevant systematic reviews released between the time period of January 1996 and December 2015. Based on that search, they independently recognized 15 reviews published between the time period of 2008 and 2014 that were eligible for inclusion in the study, extracted information using an electronic form and assessed the methodological quality of those reviews.

“The quality of the reviews varied considerably, and most of them had significant methodological limitations,” researchers discovered. The overview found that, “on average, mHealth interventions make better the glycemic control (HbA1c) compared to standard care or other non-mHealth approaches by as much as 0.8% for sufferers with type 2 diabetes and 0.3% for sufferers with type 1 diabetes, almost in the short-term (≤12 months). Although, limitations in the overall quality of evidence recommend that further research will likely have a significant impact in these estimates of effect.”

Spyros Kitsiou, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical and Health Information Sciences at the University of Illinois-Chicago’s College of Health Sciences and an author of the article, claims that overall the rigor of mHealth research—both randomized controlled trials and systematic reviews—must be improved because it’s “not methodologically sound” and has several weaknesses.

“There are various problems that develop risks of bias in terms of the interpretation of results,” claims Kitsiou.

Despite these restrictions, Kitsiou and his coworkers assert that mHealth interventions represent a promising approach for patients who need to handle their diabetes.

“Based on the available evidence, which is of moderate quality, we observed quantitative effects,” he analyzes, adding that, “mHealth seems to be more effective for type 2 diabetes.”

In accordance to the article’s authors, further research should concentrate on exploring the use and affect of diabetes mobile apps that are publicly available through the Apple and Google Play stores.

“Most trials included in the systematic reviews involved proprietary applications that aren’t available to the general public,” summarizes the article. “Although, as the rates of smartphone ownership and availability of diabetes self-management apps increase, it is significant to inquire the safety and clinical effectiveness of these apps.”

 

Prototype Online Platform achieves Open Science Prize

A prototype online platform that utilizes the real-time visualization and viral genome data to detect the spread of global pathogens like Ebola and Zika has been opted as the grand prize winner of the Open Science Prize.

The award is an international competition meant to foster creative solutions in public health and biomedicine by utilizing the open digital content.

An initiative of the National Institutes of Health, in collaboration with the Wellcome Trust and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Open Science Prize has granted $230,000 to Nextstrain.org, a website that accumulates data from researchers worldwide, conducts rapid phylogenetic analysis, and posts the results online.

Elizabeth Kittrie, strategic advisor for data and open science at NIH’s National Library of Medicine, points out that the genome sequences of viral pathogens can hive worthy insights into the spread of epidemics. Although, to be beneficial and actionable, samples have to be collected, observed and the results openly disseminated in near real-time, she asserts.

Nextstrain.org ingests viral genome sequence information from openly available sources, conducts quick phylogenetic analyses to comprehend the ancestral relationships among those pathogens and reflects the resulting phylogenetic “trees” on an interactive public website using real-time visualization, claims Kittrie.

“Nextstrain had a remarkable public health impact by increasing our ability to detect diseases across international borders,” claims Kittrie, who was the NIH lead for the Open Science Prize.

In accordance to Kittrie, without an online platform like Nextstrain.org, researchers would be left with gathering genome sequence data for viral pathogens from “whatever type of research they could glean from disparate databases and publications” made publically accessible long after an epidemic has subsided.

In those cases, she adds, the data is “much localized, and so researchers aren’t capable to see the evolution of a virus over time and space,” mostly taking years to collect and synthesize the information.

The Nextstrain.org development team was supervised by Trevor Bedford of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle and Richard Neher of Biozentrum at the institute of University of Basel in Switzerland.

"Nextstrain.org targets to synthesize publicly available pathogen genomic data to arrive at an understanding of epidemic spread not available through conventional surveillance systems," stated Bedford in a written statement.

"Our attempts with Nextstrain.org are only possible through open data sharing by others in the community. We have actually enjoyed working with these teams in the field as they collect and share viral genome data,” added Neher.

In accordance to NIH, the statistical analyses behind Nextstrain.org can be conducted in minutes, disclosing patterns of geographic spread for the benefit of the international research community, which can query the database and examine the spread of disease by country, region, or kind of strain.

“This tool remarkably advances our ability to track diseases in ways that we actually could not before, and is also a model of data sharing,” summarizes Kittrie.

In the first phase of the competition, a panel of experts chose 6 multinational, interdisciplinary teams from an initial pool of 96 teams from 45 countries, who were each granted $80,000 to develop a prototype online platform. Ultimately, the 6 teams were narrowed to 3 finalists with Nextstrain.org taking the top prize. The $230,000 award will be used by Nextstrain.org to completely develop their prototype online platform.

 

Patient transport department causes Vanderbilt security breach

In the month of late December, executives at the institute of Vanderbilt University Medical Center discovered that 2 employees in the patient transport department were inappropriately accessing the electronic medical records (EHRs) of patients, obtaining more data than they required doing their jobs, in accordance to the hospital.

An audit learned that the activity had been going on for twenty months with 3,247 patients affected. For a smaller but unrevealed number of patients, their Social Security numbers were viewed by those two employees in the patient transport department.

The university doesn’t consider information was printed, forwarded or downloaded, and so far there is no indication that personal patient information was utilized in any way, a spokesman says.

Patients are being notified and provided information on how to review account statements and their credit status. Sufferers whose Social Security numbers were accessed are being automatically enrolled for one year of credit monitoring and identity protection services from Experian. Also, other sufferers that request protective services will get it.

“We take the responsibility to secure the privacy of our patients very seriously and are doing all that we can do to deal this problem,” Howser claims. “We’ve implemented alternative procedures for patient transport staff to obtain the information they require for their jobs in a way that no longer involves access to patients’ electronic medical records.”

Disciplinary action was taken with the 2 workers, and other transport employees have been retrained on suitable access to patient information, in accordance to the hospital.