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NASHVILLE, TN – Leading financial analysts scoffed at the notion of a healthcare IT “bubble” that could slow the pace of mergers and acquisitions this year. Speaking on a panel called “Financing The Deal” at the Nashville Health Care Council, they predicted that 2012 MA activity would be brisk, though not superheated.

In the health IT sector, there’s currently a glut of buyers and not enough companies to acquire. There are many non-healthcare players like Lockheed-Martin wanting to buy healthcare IT companies – and many suitors for a limited number of clinical decision support companies. “There are still a lot of great opportunities for technology-enabled healthcare companies with a demonstrable ROI,” said David Jahns, managing partner at Galen Partners.

[See also: All in a week's work]

The analysts agreed that deal-making this year won’t be dampened by uncertainty surrounding the future of healthcare reform. If anything, there’s greater pressure to make deals this year in advance of possible post-election efforts at tax reform.

“There’s still a stable financing environment despite the upcoming election and the events in Europe,” said Jon Santemma, global co-head of healthcare investment banking at Jefferies Company. “Valuations are down in some sectors like nursing homes and home health, which makes them good deal-making opportunities this year. And we anticipate a lot of deals this year involving private-pay companies.”

There’s still about $350 billion in private equity “overhang”, which sets the stage for some rapid-fire MA this year. “I look for a lot of activity in the mid-market private equity arena, with a lot of possible deals in the $200 million to $800 million range,” added Santemma.

[See also: Health IT MA activity down in 2011, value up]

According to Irving Levin Associates, hospital MA reached a 10-year high last year, when 86 deals were completed. “I look for hospital transactions to increase,” said Ravi Sachdev, managing director at J.P. Morgan. “The attitude we’re now seeing is, ‘If I can’t be No. 1 or No., 2 in my service area, I want out’.”

Panelists were reluctant to make long-range forecasts. “Five years ago, who would have predicted that you’d have payers acquiring HIEs?” said Jahns. “But that’s exactly what’s happening now.” The panel members agreed that one long-term trend is rock-solid: a lot of money will continue to flow through America’s healthcare system – enough money to allay dealmakers’ concerns about declining state and federal reimbursements.

As for overseas deals, look for increased activity in telemedicine in 2012. China and India have been quick to harness the potential of telemedicine. And as one panelist quipped, “It’s easier for U.S. telemedicine companies to operate in China than across state lines.”

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/no-bubble-healthcare-it-analysts-say

ROLLING MEADOWS, IL – Quadrant4 Systems Corporation, which makes enterprise resource planning and business intelligence software, will acquire Atlanta-based empowHR, a developer of SaaS platform technology for health insurance and employee benefits administration.

Officials say the deal will see Quadrant4 integrating empowHR technology into its cloud-based Health Exchange platform. Quadrant4 will also expand the empowHR platform into a full-scale portal that will include:

• Integration of employer sponsored insurance and benefits, as well as work-site benefit products for enrollment, communication and administration;
• Agency portal for management and administration of multiple client types incorporating insurance, employee benefits and financial services into a single platform;
• Employer portal for managing insurance, employee benefits, human resources, financial services and integration with third-party product providers such as payroll systems, human resource systems, and others;
• An employee portal for managing benefit programs; and
• Analytics aimed at providing insight into employee behavior and benefit expense trends.

[See also: Employers looking for cost-saving health plans, backed by top IT.]

empowHR technology has been in deployment for more than a decade and has been used by more than 2 million members for various benefits administration between licensing, OEM and recurring subscription based models. Its key user groups and customers include insurance companies, agencies, third party administrators, health plans and large employers.

Dhru Desai, Quadrant4′s chairman, said the two companies together “will accelerate the development of empowHR technology beyond its current capabilities to the next generation market requirements.”

“Our ability to deliver the most complete benefits administration, communication and enrollment tool in the industry … coupled with the ability to capitalize on Quadrant4’s significant development capability, will allow us to close bigger deals, provide custom development, and deploy significant enhancements quicker,” said Robert Steele, founder and CEO of empowHR.

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/quadrant4-systems-acquire-empowhr

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/healthcare-leads-jobs-growth-reports-show

DENVER – TriZetto subsidiary Gateway EDI announced Tuesday its acquisition of Sacramento, Calif.-based NHXS, which develops software meant to help medical practices manage physician reimbursement and recover lost revenues.

The merger will see NHXS’ technologies integrated into Gateway EDI’s product suite, which includes electronic data interchange (EDI) and revenue cycle management services for more than 100,000 physicians, officials say.

NHXS has a client base of some 20,000 providers. As part of the deal, terms of which were not disclosed, the company’s current leadership team will continue to run its day-to-day operations.

“NHXS’s solution suite augments our current solutions for medical offices,” said Trace Devanny, chairman and CEO of TriZetto. “Its offerings help group practices obtain accurate claim payments, recover underpayments and free up more time to provide medical care for patients.”

[See also: TriZetto acquires Medical Data Express.]

TriZetto develops IT tools aimed at helping providers and payers work more efficiently and collaborate to deliver better health. Devanny noted that NHXS products will benefit payers “by reducing the number of appeals and administrative expenses associated with claim corrections and reprocessing.”

The NHXS acquisition, he added, “is one more step by TriZetto toward an integrated, real-time provider-payer technology platform that helps physicians and health plans achieve higher levels of efficiency and productivity, and lays the foundation for improved clinical communications.”
 
“In the short term, TriZetto’s and Gateway EDI’s solutions will enhance our offerings and our ability to serve the needs of today’s medical offices,” said Mark Reiger, CEO of NHXS. “Long-term, as part of TriZetto, we have an opportunity to play a larger role – to help the healthcare industry move beyond the acrimony that too often has characterized provider-payer relations and improve both the cost and quality of care delivery in our country.”

[See also: TriZetto acquires Kocsis Consulting Group.]
 
NHXS has worked with Gateway EDI since 2009, when the organizations jointly developed the Reimbursement Manager tool, which makes it easier for providers to identify payment inaccuracies. The tool finds such errors and automates the appeal/reconsideration process.
 
“On average, 4 to 10 percent of claims are incorrectly paid,” said Charlotte Martin, president and COO of Gateway EDI. “Working in partnership with NHXS, we’ve helped providers identify inaccurate payments and reduce the time and effort required to get the payments corrected. We look forward to the new offerings our joint teams will be able to bring our clients.”

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/gateway-edi-acquires-nhxs

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/ny-man-defrauds-medicare-70000-medical-device-reimbursements

Recent reports have touted the effectiveness of RTLS technology on a company’s bottom line. An even better ROI can be had with a little creativity, says Merrie Wallace, executive vice president of product solutions at real-time awareness solutions company Awarepoint.

“Quite frankly, most customers start with some location finding,” said Wallace. “That’s their goal – finding a piece of equipment, finding a staff member. We look for not just where the items are, but what’s the history and what’s the outcome. That’s what we’re trying to drive.”

Wallace outlines five novel uses for RTLS technology. 

1. For asset tracking. From a maintenance perspective, said Wallace, organizations want to have the right volume of equipment. “What we find is most hospitals have double or triple the amount of equipment they need because they can never find them or locate them,” she said. Also, from a capital perspective, RTLS technology aids in lowering expenses, whether it’s purchasing to replace lost equipment or renting from a third-party vendor. “So that expense comes up dramatically, but what we find is, once we deploy tags on equipment like ventilators and compression devices, we find 10 percent of the time, those items are in the wrong direction from a healthcare delivery process.” What tends to happen, Wallace said, is equipment travels from patient room to patient room, without undergoing a decontamination process. “So we track that and we alert to that, if there are breaches in those processes. We make sure we have the right flows going on.”

[See also: RTLS sets the stage for savings at NC Medical Center.]

2. In surgery. When it comes to using RTLS in the operating room, said Wallace, organizations have opted to deploy the technology on their instrumentation pans to ensure instruments go through a decontamination process. And once again, RTLS technology is used to keep track of equipment. “It’s about reducing the cost of your equipment across your facility,” said Wallace. “Let’s drive toward an outcome, and it’s really an outcome that’s non-reimbursable, which is a hospital acquired infection. We know if this equipment isn’t being decontaminated, it can lead to those infections.”

3. For temperature monitoring. Wallace said she’s seen RTLS technology deployed in similar quality initiatives, like when it comes to temperature monitoring in refrigerators. “Institutions have [medical-grade] refrigerators that maintain tissue, blood product, medications, etc., and it needs to be maintained at the appropriate temperature,” she said. Nurses typically manage the refrigerators, Wallace continued, which often contain large volumes of specimens, and they’re responsible for looking out for variations in temperature. “We put temperature probes in those devices, and it allows an institution to centralize and get the task off your professional staff,” she said. “It allows it to be centralized and then [send out an] alert if there are any variations that would compromise the contents of that refrigeration unit, as well as keep [the organization] compliant.”

[See also: Real-time top trend in claims.]

4. For the protection of PHI. Recently, Wallace saw an organization deploy RTLS technology on any device containing personal health information (PHI). “So, most IT departments today really manage the security into those devices and password protect and auto log-out these devices in an effort to maintain the HIPAA and privacy protection of PHI,” she said. The organization she spoke with “creatively, and rightly so, looked to tag all the devices that contained PHI information.” With the help of this technology,  an organization can not only track where, for example, a laptop is, but can also be alerted if it somehow makes its way to the trash, she said. “So they would know where those devices are if they contain PHI. I understand the challenges healthcare institutions have as far as maintaining PHI, but tagging devices that contain it and knowing at all times where they’re located is a very innovative strategy.”

5. To drive efficiency and improve workflows. Wallace referenced a hospital in Oregon, which is “actually tagging a complex workflow environment and high-acuity areas in surgery,” she said. This includes not only their equipment, but also everyone on their staff, including physicians, anesthesiologists, and patients. “[This] can help predict and make sure the next steps occur in a care delivery process,” said Wallace. For example, a series of communication occurs when a pre-op patient first meets with an anesthesiologist. “It creates a chain, and the workflow allows us to say this interaction will happen because the anesthesiologist met with the patient and had their interaction. We know they’ll be doing that downstream notification to the next constituents in terms of care delivery to let them know the patient is ready.” Employing RTLS technology, Wallace added, helps reduce the communication required in this chain – such as phone calls – while increasing the capacity in these institutions. It’s about “the capacity and access to care for patients, and the efficiency of care for the patient,” she said. “We want the most streamlined process as possible.” 

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/5-novel-uses-rtls-technology

ARLINGTON, TX – The North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership on Monday announced its collaboration with Orion Health on a regional health information exchange.?

More than 12,000 physicians will be provided with HIE technology, affecting nearly 7 million patients from 140 hospitals in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and 13 surrounding counties. Officials say the deployment will be the largest such partnership in Texas and one of the largest in the United States.?

[See also: HIE as a verb: ONC wants to move quickly on data exchange.]

“North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership is first and foremost community-focused, led and driven,” said Joseph W. Lastinger, CEO of the North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership. “We are committed to improving patient care and the overall health of the community and delivering value to all involved: patients, clinicians, hospitals, labs, employers, and more.”

He added that Orion Health’s “proven global experience with successful large deployments combined with the breadth and depth of the Orion Health solution convinced us that they are uniquely suited to help address the challenges and demands of healthcare delivery to millions of patients in North Texas.”?

Partnership officials say the group selected Orion Health HIE for its powerful information sharing capabilities in addition to its flexibility. Orion Health will work with the partnership to build a master patient index that will allow care providers in affiliated facilities to see a holistic view of the patient regardless of the location of the patient or provider.

In the future, the partnership plans to implement Orion Health’s patient portal and cloud-based EHR solutions, both which will empower patients with chronic illnesses such as diabetes or heart disease to better manage their conditions and enable their physicians to improve care coordination.?

“The North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership’s HIE will help our physicians and clinicians coordinate care and focus on preventive care strategies, so we can begin to transition into a wellness focused system in North Texas,” said Michael Darrouzet, chairman of the board of the North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership. “This is especially important when managing chronic conditions such as diabetes and congestive heart failure.”?

Darrouzet added that Orion Health’s flexible service “meets needs of all healthcare organizations in our area regardless of their size, technology infrastructure or budget. Plus, its features and functionality are very easy to use and physician-friendly, allowing clinicians to set their own parameters for information delivery to ensure that they receive the most accurate and relevant patient information at point of care.”

[See also: Health information exchange efforts increase, but funding challenges remain.]

“North Texas Accountable Healthcare Partnership has shown a deep understanding of what it takes to create successful community-wide health information exchange,” said Paul Viskovich, president, Orion Health North America. “In addition to its commitment to involve all stakeholders in the region in decision making – including physicians, hospitals, payers and local employers – the partnership recognized the need to build a powerful and flexible technology infrastructure that can support physicians and empower patients now and well into the future as the North Texas healthcare landscape changes.”

The partnership is one of the 16 regional HIEs awarded funding by the State of Texas through the Statewide HIE Cooperative Grant Program. The partnership received $4.9 million in funding from the state to help develop the necessary infrastructure in North Texas.? ? ?

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/north-texas-selects-orion-health-hie

As the healthcare industry continues to move in the direction of using compensation incentives, a new analysis reveals that incentives as currently used are not an effective motivator for healthcare professionals and waste an estimated $20 billion in resources.

The 2012 Incentives for Health Professionals report released today by global sales and marketing consulting firm ZS Associates found that 75 percent of compensation incentives are so small or poorly communicated that they do not produce the work outcomes employers expect to get.

ZS Associates surveyed more than 4,500 healthcare providers and payers who use pay-for-performance incentives to evaluate how such incentives are being used in the healthcare industry and how effective they are at changing behaviors and meeting established goals.

[See also: Incentives, government needed to build national network.]

“[I]ncentives will probably be important to really drive change – that’s a tool that we have available – and we’re spending a lot of money on it, but the way, so far, that we’ve implemented them is not leading to the results that we might expect,” said Torsten Bernewitz, the report’s co-author and ZS Associates’ managing principal for the healthcare insurers and payers practice.

While healthcare employers are offering their doctors and nurses compensation incentives, many of those health professionals were not aware of the rewards being offered or were not able to distinguish incentive pay from base pay, ZS Associates’ researchers found. One-third of respondents who did know about the incentives did not find them motivating.

Bernewitz said that ZS Associates’ report on incentives should be seen as a warning signal to the healthcare industry that course corrections are needed if the use of incentives is to be as effective in healthcare as they are in other industries.

[See also: Incentives for EHR adoption on the rise.]

“Incentives are really important because reforming the healthcare system is about changing behaviors and incentives can be a very powerful tool to change behaviors,” Bernewitz said. “It helps that along if we do it in the right way.”

The report makes four suggestions for improving incentive efforts:

1. Increase the “at risk” component. Increase the amount of money that is truly at risk. If goals are not achieved, that will be reflected in the paycheck. That “at risk” amount needs to be greater than it commonly is currently, said Bernewitz, to get people’s attention.
2. Sustain the signal. Instead of an annual summary of incentive payouts, provide regular summaries to increase awareness.
3. Get the metrics right. Some incentive programs are so focused on metrics that the effect is to dilute the incentives, so employers should focus on a few critical outcomes and tie incentives to those, said Bernewitz.
4. Communicate. Provide clear and frequent updates so employees can keep track of their goals and how they’re doing in achieving those through the year. Also give employees a chance to be a part of the incentive program design process.

“[I]ncentives are starting to become more prominent in healthcare,” said Bernewitz. “More people are using them and they’re using them to a larger extent. It’s a learning curve, so we need to think about how we can use incentives in a slightly different way or implement them in a different way so that they really achieve the goals we have with them.”

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/20b-incentives-go-waste-each-year-says-study

I find one aspect of this story particularly interesting. I’ve been a documentation consultant for hundreds of practices over the years on both paper and EHR systems. During that time I’ve worked with a good number of doctors in Dr. Selwyn’s age range. Among those who, like Dr. Selwyn, have eventually warmed up to their EHR, his transformation from opponent to proponent rings true. Only when the doctor personally sees a benefit can they get on board. Which is not too surprising, after all.

What’s tricky is that it seems almost impossible to predict what feature/benefit will be the turn-on for any given user. It’s like trying to explain Google to someone in 1960. “Why would I want to go to all that trouble to “google” something when I already have an Encyclopedia Britannica on my shelf?” In that context, it’s almost impossible to “sell” the idea. You just have to let them use it.

As with Dr. Selwyn, you don’t know why a provider will like it (if they even do) until they actually use it. Will it be the drug formulary checking? Will it be quicker access to prior visits, update medication lists, or easy exchange of data with other providers? And will all that offset the pain of change, additional input requirements, etc. etc. etc.? And then, of course, it still depends on whether or not you have an EHR that is any good in the first place, fits the user reasonably well, and a whole lot upon the user’s own attitude towards change.

I enjoyed Dr. Selwyn’s particular story.

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/not-retiring-65-physician-goes-anti-ehrs-pro-acos

Although data encryption is becoming a valuable resource to protect against breached PHI, according to a new report by WinMagic Data Security, certain myths and misconceptions about it still exists. 

“IT professionals, at the enterprise level, frequently turn to encryption for protecting data,” read the report. “Although encryption is a proven technology that delivers strong, effective data security, common myths and misconceptions about it persist, even among some people who are generally knowledgeable about computers. All too often, the myths surrounding encryption are based on misunderstanding of the technology or outdated concepts.”

The report outlines and debunks seven common myths about data encryption. 

1. Passwords protect laptops. Although it may seem like a username and password is enough to protect your laptop, read the report, this practice is “woefully inadequate” if your laptop is lost or stolen. In fact, those with little experience can remove the hard drive from a laptop and access data contents from another system. “A variety of common hacking tools can make short work of the username and password combinations that normally protect a laptop during login,” read the report. Relying on password protection alone for casual computer use works for some, but for enterprise applications, passwords alone are “weak and unacceptable, nor are they a suitable method for meeting regulatory requirements.”

2. Data encryption slows performance and lowers productivity. Historically, data encryption did slow down less-powerful computer processors. “To many users, this seemed like an unacceptable trade-off to pay for the benefits of data security,” according to the report. “It also established data encryption in many peoples’ minds as a technology that caused poor performance.” However, encryption operations that were once performed in software, read the report, are carried out more efficiently in processor hardware, and as a result, most users on modern systems don’t even notice when the encryption is taking place. “Although mobile computing devices – such as tablets, laptops and smartphones – don’t have the same processing capacities as desktop machines, typically, even their processors can efficiently handle encryption fairly transparently.”

[See also: Breaches epidemic despite efforts at compliance, says Kroll.]

3. Deploying data encryption solutions can be a challenge. For organizations with thousands of employees, data encryption solutions without a single point-of-control can be a challenge to plan, deploy, implement and maintain. But, well-designed solutions offer aspects, like a management console, to alleviate some of the headaches. “This ensures consistency in maintaining the highest standard to meet corporate and regulatory policies,” read the report. “It also eases the IT burden, particularly in comparison with solutions that require several components.” Other aspects of data encryptions solutions that have made their implementation easier include their level of transparency, their impact on IT operations, and the changes required of certain processes. 

4. Enterprise encryption solutions are too expensive. Although a laptop costs as little as $300 these days, the financial repercussions if the laptop is breached can easily dwarf the expense, the report shows. According to a Ponemon Institute study, which surveyed 329 private and public sector organizations in the U.S., the use of encryption data can save organizations, on average, $20,000 per laptop, if sensitive data happens to be breached. “Companies evaluating the costs of data encryption solutions should factor in the true cost, rather than simply the relatively trivial cost of the hardware itself,” it read.

Continued on the next page.

Article source: http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/7-common-myths-about-data-encryption