On Wednesday, Congress approved $1.1 billion in funding to combat the Zika virus in a short-term spending bill. In doing so, it's sidestepped a government shutdown.

The House voted 342-85 and the Senate voted 72-26 to pass the legislation, which will fund the government through December 9 and provide time to work out the long-term spending goals for 2017, The New York Times reported. President Obama supports the bill and is set to sign it into law by Friday.

The spending bill was held up for months due to a debate for financing improvements to the lead-tainted water supply in Flint, Michigan. Congress has been under pressure from the White House and other government organizations to pass the law. Vice President Joe Biden told Congress on September 8: "Do your job."

[Also: CDC deploys rapid response teams to tackle Zika]

The bill no longer includes restrictions to Planned Parenthood clinics, which hindered past negotiations, The New York Times said. The bill also includes funding for military housing, infrastructure and services.

Further, the bill passed despite objections from both conservatives and Democrats. The agreement is contingent upon a water projects bill, which would authorize $170 million in spending to areas where the president has declared emergencies - like Flint.

"A continuing resolution is a last resort," Rep. Harold Rogers (R) Kentucky and House Appropriations Committee chair said, according to the Times. "But at this point, it's what we must do to fulfill our congressional responsibility to keep the lights on in the government."

Twitter: @JessieFDavis
Email the writer: jessica.davis@himssmedia.com

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The Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, ASPR, is allocating money to advance the development of a next-generation genetic sequencing platform.

It is the first next-generation genetic sequencing platform supported by ASPR’s Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority – BARDA.

Next-generation sequencing describes technology that has enabled DNA and RNA to be read much more quickly than the previously used Sanger sequencing method, HHS officials said.

Under the $8.5 million, one-year contract with BARDA, DNA Electronics – DNAe – of London, United Kingdom, and Carlsbad, Calif., will develop its Genalysis sequencing platform, which determines the genetic code of a sample and identifies the organism within two to four hours. 

[Also: Are EHRs getting better? Healthcare IT News readers rank their vendors higher than last year in new survey]

HHS noted that the contract could grow to a total of $51.9 million over four years.

The information that BARDA and DNA Electronics are looking to provide could enable clinicians treating infected patients to anticipate antimicrobial resistance associated with the bacteria or diagnose the specific strain of influenza virus.

DNAe will help with development and testing of the platform. The testing will support the company’s applications to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for clearances of the platform for a series of applications.

“More rapid diagnoses will allow clinicians to ensure the right treatment is being given, providing faster care for their patients and potentially curbing the spread of pathogens,” BARDA acting director Richard Hatchett, MD, said in a statement. “This platform could help enable a faster and more accurate public health response to pandemic influenza and antibiotic resistant infections.”

BARDA plans to couple this platform with another technology it is already sponsoring that produces purified samples for testing and genomic analysis from a blood draw, nasal swab or other samples.

The combination could one day make it possible for  clinicians to identify pathogens by testing blood or other fluids from an infected patient without needing the sophisticated training required to operate genomic sequencers, potentially bringing this capability closer to patient's point-of-care.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that a flu pandemic in the U.S. could result in between 89,000 and 207,000 deaths, and could cost the economy $71.3 billion to $166.5 billion. The CDC also estimates that more than 2 million people per year suffer antibiotic resistant infections in the U.S. resulting in more than 23,000 deaths. 

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Farzad Mostashari, MD, has a unique vantage point over the health information technology industry. Previously he served as the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Today he is founder and CEO of Aledade, a company that markets technology and services designed to help independent primary care practices come together to form accountable care organizations (ACOs) that can take on the total cost of care and share in value created.

Aledade operates ACOs across 11 states and handles nearly 100,000 patients in more than 110 physician practices. In June 2015, the company raised a Series B Funding Round of $30 million and now employs a staff of more than 80 experts in health policy, technology and practice transformation. This growth, the company said, is driven by the need of primary care physicians to begin the shift from volume-based care to value-based care with the aim of delivering better care at a lower cost.

Healthcare IT News spoke with Mostashari about about a variety of topics, from ACOs and technology trends to EHR shortcomings.

Q: What is the state of technology within accountable care organizations? What must technology do, and what is the role of population health within an ACO?
A: One way to think about the role of technology here is the electronic health record is the transactional piece of healthcare where a patient’s care needs to be delivered. But it does not address very well – despite many years of effort on the part of meaningful use and other programs – the concept of population health. So the needs from a population health tool perspective are, first, get the data, so there is a whole lot of infrastructure work around assembling and integrating claims data, clinical data, ADT data, event notifications from hospitals, practice management system data, and scheduling system data. And then, collecting data from the use of apps to understand what physician practices are doing and what they need to be doing.

Healthcare IT News EHR Satisfaction Survey 2016 
⇒ Are EHRs getting better? Readers rank vendors higher than last year in new survey
⇒Comparison chart: How readers rated their EHR in 2016 vs. 2015

Then comes creating insights. So I’m a physician and I have all the data in front of me, and if I am going to call 10 people today, who should I call, what should I say, who just left the hospital, who needs a wellness visit who has opportunities for quality improvement? And then comes making data and insights actionable. That is a fair description for the three steps that any population health tool needs to provide: Get the data, get insights, help me take action.

Q: What are you seeing happening in smaller and rural practices when it comes to healthcare information technology?
A: They are under a tremendous amount of pressure and they are wondering if they can continue to stay independent. The burden of administrivia, the quality reporting, the feeling that once things like MACRA and MIPS come in, and public reporting, that they will be working harder and harder and getting less and less of the healthcare dollar. That they are wondering if they can continue being alone. They do not want to become employees, they want to retain their autonomy. That is what I am seeing, practices that are delivering very good care but feeling increasingly squeezed, and they want help. That is what Aledade offers, a way out for them.

Q: From your vantage point, what is the status of health information exchange and interoperability?
A: We now have in the population health space a clear business model for a very specific interoperability for HIE as it pertains to event notifications. Put this way: Tell me when my patient got discharged from the hospital because otherwise I might not hear about it and I cannot help them. So, just give me my patients’ ADTs to HIE, it is simple, cheap and actionable. To me that should be the highest priority both for local HIEs and for states as well as for federal officials. When it works, it is amazingly helpful and effective. What we need are policies and governance that encourages or requires participation in those information exchanges. It’s not as far-reaching as creating a virtual clinical record and assembling everything and making it respond to queries. It is much more finite and much less sensitive in terms of the information, and it creates immediate value.

In product parlance, it is the minimum viable product, the MVP. The MVP is ADT. To be clear, the challenges there are not technical. It took us literally 15 minutes to set up an ADT feed from the hospital once we got the engineers on the line together. There are very high degrees of reliability and standardization. The challenge is on the business side. Does a hospital want to share this information with providers outside of its network? As far as patient care goes, I believe there is an ethical mandate here that policy should reflect.

Q: Are you seeing any shortcomings with EHRs as they are implemented today, and if so, what could vendors be doing better?
A: Clearly a lot of EHR vendors, not all by any means, but a lot of them, took the meaningful use requirements as a certification exercise and the result has been that many providers are dissatisfied with usability. Potentially even more of a shame is even after all of those hours spent on the data entry, the data is not as usable as it should be for the purposes of population health, for quality reporting, or for predictive modeling. And the data is not as liquid as it should be. A provider organization might have spent tens of thousands of dollars on an EHR system and countless hours feeding data into it, but then they cannot get their own data out as promised in the EHR certification that the vendor did. These are challenges that EHR vendors need to step up to, and if they want to be preferred EHR vendors for the value-based world, they need to make the data necessary for population health much more easy to collect and use.

And the data needs to be more reliable and more liquid. By liquid I mean that if I have a physician who has bought an EHR that was certified to give that physician a batch download of patient care summaries with all the clinical data and that was tested in a lab by the vendor and it was assured the system could do that, then when that clinician wants to join the population health world of value-based care in an ACO and goes to the vendor and says I want my batch download, the vendor should not be able to say that actually only works in a lab on five patients and does not work in the field. Or say that it will cost you $50,000 more to achieve.

That clinician is the person who bought the system and entered the data into the system, it’s their data, their patients’ data, and they should be able to get the data out. The longer term ideal is that data is not just accessible in batch or in a push model, but it’s available through third-party applications via APIs. I’m not expecting that this year or next year, but I am expecting vendors to be true to the promises they made in the EHR certification program. 

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com
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After completing its first and over-subscribed round of funding to the tune of $23 million, ReadCoor founders announced they would spin out from Harvard University’s Wyss Institute.

ReadCoor will commercialize the Wyss Institute’s FISSEQ – fluorescent in situ sequencing – technology.

The founders describe the technology as a novel imaging platform of gene locations – a high throughput spatial gene sequencing technology that simultaneously reads the sequences of thousands of RNAs – the working copies of genes – and visualizes their three-dimensional coordinates within whole cells and tissues.

As they see it, the technology stands to revolutionize clinical diagnostics and drug discovery.

ReadCoor has entered into a worldwide licensing agreement with Harvard's Office of Technology Development, securing exclusive rights to FISSEQ technology.

[Also: Big data, genomics, genetic engineering can combat rising healthcare costs, Ernst and Young says]

"The FISSEQ platform has been incubating at Wyss Institute for several years under the direction of scientists and engineers with expertise in next-gen sequencing," ReadCoor’s CEO Shawn Marcell said in a statement. Marcell’s focus has been on translating FISSEQ as an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at the Wyss Institute.

"This has positioned us to begin providing sequencing services to academia and industry almost immediately, and shipping early commercial systems in the near future," Marcell added.

[See also: Healthcare IT startups to watch in 2016: Running list of big news.]

A team headed by Wyss core faculty member and ReadCoor co-founder George Church, invented and developed FISSEQ. The platform is in use by a Wyss-led consortium at work mapping neuronal connectomics to discover the brain’s learning patterns and synaptic design. The goal is to improve neural-derived machine learning algorithms.

Church, chairman of the ReadCoor Scientific Advisory Board, professor of genetics at Harvard Medical School, professor of health sciences and technology at MIT and senior associate faculty member at the Broad Institute, sees FISSEQ as the next step in the evolution of sequencing technology.

"We are opening the door to a truly 'pan-omic' view of all biological molecules and interactions within cells and tissues, powering numerous research discoveries and clinical applications," he said in a statement.

FISSEQ’s comprehensive view of gene expression within cells and tissues provides insights into biological complexity that, until now, have not been possible. Currently available sequencing technologies can only provide sequencing information, not spatial information. FISSEQ provides both – what the team at Harvard say is the first true merging of imaging and sequencing.

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

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ODH, a behavioral health technology systems and services vendor, has announced that the South Florida Behavioral Health Network Inc. has selected ODH’s Mentrics technology to help improve the linkage of its mental health, substance use and social support services with jail diversion programs.

Mentrics is a population health management system designed for behavioral health that uses IBM technologies with the aim of transforming the management and economics of behavioral healthcare by delivering predictive insights to enable a collaborative approach among key stakeholders.

The population health platform aggregates available health data, including behavioral and physical health services, criminal justice data, and other social determinants of health, from currently fragmented sources. Mentrics users have data and behavioral health analytics available in an interface, including behavioral health and physical health risk scores and notifications of opportunities to improve care.

The South Florida Behavioral Health Network helps children and adults in Miami-Dade and Monroe Counties who have mental illness and substance use disorders. Research shows that individuals with mental illness are three times more likely to be incarcerated rather than be in a mental health facility, the health network said. The health network has developed a coordinated system of behavioral health care designed to provide access to care and excellence in the delivery of behavioral health services. To respond to the needs of the population it serves, the health network has been active in supporting jail diversion programs that serve as an alternative to incarceration.

“We want to ensure all individuals living with behavioral disorders in South Florida have access to the treatment they need, and that requires sophisticated and powerful tools to help us identify those most at risk and in need of services,” said John Dow, president and CEO, South Florida Behavioral Health Network. “We are confident that Mentrics will help us achieve our goal of coordinating the delivery of high-quality care.”

This past Sunday, October 2, marked the first day of Mental Illness Awareness Week, a week designated by Congress in 1990 to educate and increase awareness about mental illness. 

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com
Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Wolters Kluwer Health announced that it will acquire Chicago-based Emmi Solutions for $170 million in cash.

Founded in 2002, Emmi's patient engagement platform offers peer-reviewed content and personalized communication to help patients across the continuum of care, from prevention to treatment to follow-up.

Wolters Kluwer officials cite Emmi's integration with electronic health record systems as one of the company's selling points, and say the company's patient-focused technology will be a valuable extension to Wolters Kluwer's clinical offerings, such as to UpToDate decision support and Lexicomp and Medi-Span drug information tools

"Healthcare systems are striving to deliver consistent, safe, high-quality care while the economics of healthcare are increasingly demanding value in healthcare delivery," said Diana Nole, CEO of Wolters Kluwer Health, in a statement. "Patients who engage in their care have the potential to make better decisions and achieve improved health outcomes."

Emmi’s revenues are expected to reach approximately $29 million in 2016, officials note, with 90 percent of revenues subscription-based and more than 95 percent is derived from the U.S. market.

The acquisition, subject to regulatory review and customary closing conditions, is expected to deliver a return on invested capital above Wolters Kluwer’s after tax cost of capital (8 percent) in three to five years and is expected to enhance adjusted earnings in the first full year. 

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Despite being the buzzword du jour, with an array of definitions of varying usefulness, population health management technologies are maturing and appear poised to transform healthcare, according to IDC Health Insights.

The consultancy said that population health management software must have the functionality to identify at-risk patient populations – or those predicted to be at risk in the future – and has to enable provider performance measurement, the creation and monitoring care plans and communication with communities of patients and individuals alike.

But researchers see big variations in the the analytic capabilities in these various systems – specifically with regard to risk stratification and performance measurement – as well as with the degree of integration with electronic health records and the sophistication of care plan development.

[Are EHRs getting better? Readers rank vendors higher than last year in new survey]

Notably, the number of market leaders has doubled over the past two years – with EHR vendors accounting for half the pack, according to IDC.

Its new MarketScape report, "U.S. Population Health Management, 2016 Vendor Assessment," IDC evaluated pop health platforms from Allscripts, athenahealth, Caradigm, eClinicalWorks, Enli, IBM Phytel, McKesson, Medecision, Optum, The Advisory Board Company and Wellcentive.

"Some vendors have exited the market while others have for the first time qualified for inclusion," IDC Research Director Cynthia Burghard said in a statement. "We expect market maturity will continue to grow at a rapid pace."

Indeed, the population health management market is fast-evolving and highly competitive, according to the report, which notes, for instance, that more and more companies are developing disease-specific applications for patients with chronic illnesses.

"At this nascent stage of population health management, the approaches have been based on historic approaches," Burghard added. "With maturity, the need to be more precise in our analysis, more personalized in care plan development and more proactive in patient engagement will grow."

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
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UPMC Enterprises has purchased all of Millennium Health’s interest in Portland, Maine-based RxAnte.

UPMC Enterprises, the commercialization arm of UPMC, said the investment will go toward product development with in-house clinical expertise and accelerating growth.

Founded in 2011, RxAnte manages medication use for nearly 7 million people on behalf of health insurers, providers and other stakeholders working to improve safe and effective prescription drug use. It will continue to operate as an independent company, led by its existing management team.

"This is a major milestone for RxAnte that will expand the breadth and depth of the analytics and population health management solutions we provide," RxAnte CEO Josh Benner said in a statement.

The UPMC Health Plan has been a customer of RxAnte for the past three years and, according to the plan’s Chief Medical Officer William Shrank, MD, RxAnte's technology and services have been a key driver of its performance.

With the new investment, RxAnte's plans to expand its offerings for Medicare, Medicaid and commercial populations, with a focus on analytics and clinical programs that lower total cost of care. The company also intends to extend its predictive models and workflow tools to the management of high-cost specialty drugs.

UPMC did not disclose financial terms of the transaction.

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Intermountain Healthcare is set to begin building a Transformation Center with a $20 million gift from Utah businessman and philanthropist Kem C. Gardner.

Intermountain executives said the new center will be home for institutes that train healthcare leaders working on transforming the way care is provided across the country and around the world, with the goal of achieving the highest clinical quality at the lowest sustainable cost.

The Intermountain Transformation Center will be designed to serve as a base for Intermountain’s efforts to transform healthcare in ways that are patient-focused and consistently strive for the best clinical outcomes at sustainable costs, Intermountain executives said in a statement.

Among the initiatives that will take place there are the Intermountain Institute for Healthcare Delivery Research, which will be led by Chief Quality Officer Brent James, MD. Intermountain CEO Charles Sorenson, MD, who will soon be retiring, will spearhead the Intermountain Healthcare Leadership Institute. What’s more, the health system has some 1,500 active research studies in more than 20 clinical areas that will participate.

Construction of the 120,000-square-foot Transformation Center will begin in 2017 on the Intermountain Medical Center campus in Murray, with the four-story construction scheduled for completion in 2018.

Gardner has served on Intermountain boards for 34 years and was chairman of the Intermountain Board from 2007-2012. He currently chairs the Intermountain Foundation Board.

“I’m making this gift because Intermountain Healthcare has expertise of great importance to the world,” Gardner said in a statement. “The programs housed in the Transformation Center will do so much to improve the health and care available to people in Utah and around the world. It is also my hope that this gift will inspire others to contribute.”

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

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Welltok pulled in $33.7 million in a new round of funding and said it plans to use the investment to build out its CafeWell Health Optimization Platform.

CaféWell enables population health managers to coach and inspire their clients to get healthier. The enterprise-level platform curates and connects consumers with benefits, resources and rewards, and it provides personalized action plans for each individual.

[Are EHRs getting better? Readers rank vendors higher than last year in new survey]

Welltok’s technology-enabled services leverage advanced analytics to derive meaningful consumer insights and multi-channel communications to drive consumer engagement. 

Weltok customers include payers, employers, Medicare and Medicaid, pharmacy benefit managers and providers. The company also plans to expand into new market segments, according to CEO Jeff Margolis.

Participants in the new funding round include New Enterprise Associates, Bessemer Venture Partners, Georgian Partners, Emergence Capital, InterWest Partners, Sigma Partners, HLM Venture Partners, Flare Capital Partners, Trustmark, Qualcomm Life Fund, Hearst Health Ventures, Singapore-based EDBI, Okapi Venture Capital and Miramar Ventures. The company’s debt facility was provided by Silicon Valley Bank. 

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

IBM and Siemens Healthineers today launched a five-year, global strategic alliance to take population health management around the world.

The goal is to help hospitals, health systems, integrated delivery networks and other providers deliver value-based care to patients with complex, chronic and costly conditions such as heart disease and cancer, executives said,

IBM and Siemens will work together to develop and deploy new population health offerings by tapping each company's expertise and assets, such as those added to the Watson Health portfolio from acquisitions such as Phytel and Explorys.

Siemens Healthineers and IBM Watson Health will work together to help healthcare professionals better grasp the unprecedented changes occurring in healthcare, make sense of the a growing volume and diversity of health data, figure out how best to engage an aging global population and how best to cope with the increasing prevalence of chronic diseases, changes in healthcare payment models, and the digitization of healthcare.

Siemens Healthineers will offer population health management solutions and services from IBM Watson Health, which will help meet hospital and healthcare systems' demands for value-based care analytics and reporting and patient engagement, according to officials. Siemens Healthineers will also provide consulting services to support providers in their transition to value-based care.

The companies have a long-standing relationship that includes IBM's work with Siemens Building Technologies, Siemens PLM and Siemens Digital Grid. It also marks Siemens entry into population health management. Siemens Healthcare changed its name to Siemens Healthineers in May this year to better emphasize the unit’s engineering and scientific prowess.

Siemens Healthineers have access to IBM Watson Care Manager, a new cognitive solution designed to help providers and patients to work together to support individual health. The platform integrates disparate types of clinical and individual data and applies cognitive analysis to draw out insights for nurses and other care managers to closely monitor and counsel individuals with chronic conditions.

"Combining our strengths, Siemens Healthineers and IBM can effectively help providers transition to a value-based healthcare environment," Matthias Platsch, head of Services at Siemens Healthineers, said in a statement.

"We are at an unprecedented time in healthcare, “ added Deborah DiSanzo, general manager for IBM Watson Health, said in a statement. “Mature and developing markets are increasingly focused on how patient outcomes are optimized, quality is standardized among individuals and across populations, and costs are reduced.”

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

Verily Life Sciences revealed a partnership with 3M Health Information Systems to create a joint platform for population health management.

The technology will be designed to analyze data pertaining to both patient populations and financial performance, the companies said, with the goal of enabling hospitals to use the data to improve care quality and reduce costs.

While 3M said the platform will build on its coding and classification tools as well as its risk-stratification methodologies, Verily said it will bring data analytics, algorithms and software development to the partnership.  

[EHRs getting better? Readers rank vendors higher than last year in new survey]

The companies added that the technologies will enable hospitals and payers to identify trends and make predictions about patient populations that ultimately enhance performance by reducing waste and inefficiencies.

"We imagine a world where providers have precise information to guide focused improvement, and can consistently access objective, actionable feedback to make informed decisions," said Tom Stanis, head of software and analytics at Verily, in a statement.

3M president JaeLynn Williams added that the platform to emerge from this new partnership will address real-world problems both payers and providers are facing today.

To that end, it will encompass clinical quality measures related to complications, mortality rates and readmissions, as well as performance measures spanning processes, people and departments, including home health, care transitions and specialists. On the cost side, the tools will gauge length of stay and service line costs, 3M and Verily officials said.

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

Mount Sinai Health System today launched the first phase of its $500 million project to rebuild Mount Sinai Beth Israel and create the new “Mount Sinai Downtown” network in New York City.

The project, which stretches from the East River to the Hudson River below 34th Street, will consist of expanded and renovated outpatient facilities at three major sites with more than 35 operating and procedure rooms and a network of 16 physician practice locations with more than 600 doctors.

Mount Sinai Downtown will be anchored by a new Mount Sinai Beth Israel inpatient hospital with operating and procedure rooms, and a state-of-the-art emergency department, located two blocks from the existing MSBI.

[EHRs getting better? Readers rank vendors higher than last year in new survey]

The transformation will also include a major investment to support and strengthen behavioral health services, anchored at MSBI’s Bernstein Pavilion.

Mount Sinai CEO Kenneth Davis, MD, said that the modernization project will transform how patients access and receive care services in downtown New York.

The hospital system announced the undertaking back in May, calling it “a dramatic step toward a new model of care that continues to employ technology and stays focused on keeping populations healthy and out of hospitals.”

As part of the project, Mount Sinai will rename its Phillips Ambulatory Care Center to Mount Sinai Downtown Union Square and upgrade the unit to a specialized care facility with a new urgent care center.

Mount Sinai Cancer Center West has also been renamed Mount Sinai Downtown Chelsea Center, and it will include a new Women’s Cancer Center. And the New York Eye and Ear Infirmary of Mount Sinai will be preserved and enhanced.

MSBI hospital and its emergency room will remain open until the new ED is fully operational. 

Twitter: @Bernie_HITN
Email the writer: bernie.monegain@himssmedia.com

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Healthcare professionals understand that taxing unhealthy foods and drinks, notably sugar-sweetened beverages, can help improve population health efforts. What has been discussed less, until now, is that those same excise taxes can also create a net increase in jobs and raise money for federal governments, according to the World Health Organization.

The WHO concluded in a new report that hiking taxes on sugary drinks would result in a proportional reduction in consumption, especially if the retail price for a given item is raised by 20 percent or more.

On the flip side, there is evidence that subsidizing fruits and vegetables, and reducing their price by 10 to 30 percent, can increase consumption of those foods. 

[EHRs getting better? Readers rank vendors higher than last year in new survey]

Combining those two strategies would have the most effect on population health, WHO found. As with tobacco taxes, specific excise taxes based on a percentage of retail price would likely be the most effective -- more so than sales or other taxes, WHO said. What’s the difference? They reduce the incentive to switch down to cheaper options because they increase the price of all products affected by the tax in the same way.

Excise taxes also provide more stable revenues, are easier to administer, and are not vulnerable to price manipulation by the food industry, WHO found. That would hold true over time providing the taxes are adjusted regularly to account for inflation and income growth.

These fiscal policies are key to reducing the consumption of calorie-rich foods and addressing obesity and diabetes, WHO said. In 2014, 39 percent of adults worldwide aged 18 and older — 38 percent of men, and 40 percent of women — were overweight, defined as having a body mass index at or greater than 25. Between 1980 and 2014, the worldwide prevalence of obesity nearly doubled, with 11 percent of men and 15 percent of women qualifying as such. And in 2013, about 42 million children under the age of 5 were overweight, a number WHO said has been continually rising.

Fiscal interventions could curb or reverse those trends, the study found, but they also have the potential to correct market failure, generate revenues for state or federal governments and help prevent and control noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes — thereby reducing healthcare utilization.

The biggest hurdle to implementing these policies is opposition from the food industry itself, the analysis found. Like the tobacco industry, WHO expects that food and drink manufacturers may engage in factually dubious campaigns in order to retain and grow market share.

If that opposition can be overcome, the evidence attests to the efficacy of such policy interventions.

WHO pointed to recent studies in California and Illinois finding that taxes on sugary drinks led to a net increase in jobs, despite a small dip in jobs in the beverage sector. This occurs because consumers redirect their purchases toward untaxed options, thereby stimulating growth in those products.

This article originally appeared on Healthcare IT News sister site Healthcare Finance. Twitter: @JELagasse

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Like Healthcare IT News on Facebook and LinkedIn

As 2016 enters its final season, healthcare executives are planning for next year and determining which technologies and initiatives to prioritize during the next 12 months.

What will you upgrade in 2017? Security? EHRs? Analytics? Population health?

Which technologies will you introduce or investigate in 2017? Precision medicine? Telehealth? Remote patient monitoring? Smart medical devices?

The questions are brief and will take only five or six minutes to complete. And all answers are confidential and will not be shared with anyone. CLICK HERE to take the survey.

We will report the survey results in a feature article in the January 2017 issue of the print and online editions of Healthcare IT News.

CLICK HERE to get started. 

Twitter: @SiwickiHealthIT
Email the writer: bill.siwicki@himssmedia.com

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BALTIMORE – Call them “physician whisperers.” Not every hospital is using tools such as computer assisted physician documentation and clinical documentation improvement workflow platforms – but they should be.

That's according to Leigh Williams, administrator of business systems at University of Virginia Health System and an assistant professor University of Mississippi Medical Center, explained how health information technologies can help identify target populations, as well as enhance clinical decision support to enable more effective and efficient population health management.

UMMC has been able to realize some substantial gains in cost efficiency and care quality by making use of computer-assisted coding and physician documentation, workflow platforms, master patient index and more, she said. 

[EHRs getting better? Readers rank vendors higher than last year in new survey]

"There are crazy and creative tools that can change the way you do things," Williams said during the AHIMA Convention and Exhibit here. "Whatever you can do to move your organization to better and more correct documentation and coding can help with better outcomes."

Computer-assisted physician documentation
On the clinical documentation improvement front, computer assisted physician documentation software has been especially valuable, she said, giving docs "real-time support" as they document at the point of care.

The software, which aims to bring clarity to the medical record by suggesting more complete terms, looks for missing words and generally helps physicians "get what's in their head into the EHR" has been an "amazing step forward in our ability to collect complete, accurate and timely information," Williams added.

Going back to document a visit after the fact is far from ideal of course – assuming a doctor can be convinced to do it, there's a good chance some bits of clinical data will be forgotten or misremembered. This tool – "the physician whisperer," she called it – enables correct documentation in real time.


"The better the terminology in the note, the easier it is to add a code," said Williams. "That enables you to do all types of analytics, risk stratification and more. This is some of the coolest emerging technology we have."

CDI workflow platforms
Another useful approach at UMMC has been to tap into CDI workflow technologies, which can "assist you with knowing which people to prioritize." CDI specialists "have 800 possibilities of charts they can review," said Williams. "Where to focus?"

As it makes a concerted effort to fully eliminate harm events (CAUTI, CLABSI, sepsis, pressure ulcers), the CDI platform has enabled UMMC to "look through the EHR and find patients who have indicators" of those events.

It has "led to more efficient workflows, and getting to patients who really need it," she said, by "shining a light on 800 things and making the 80 I need to focus on stand out."

MPI and CAC

Two other essential tools are the master patient index and computer-assisted coding, said Williams. The former enables UMMC to have one identifier across the system which greatly facilitates data analytics. Reducing patient risk from misidentification is a clear safety goal, too, of course.

MPI is also of great value when integrating disparate IT platforms, she said: Being able to quickly identify patient matches enables more seamless data sharing and "serves as a foundational piece to better systems integration."

As for computer-assisted coding, it's "probably not the panacea we thought it would be – but it's cool and has a lot of promise," said Williams.

By suggesting codes and identifying gaps, CAC is useful for more complete and accurate coding. The challenge, however, is that it "takes a ton of fine-tuning to get CAC to be accurate." She mentioned a Doctor Wolff, all of whose patient records showed them diagnosed with Wolff-Parkinson-White syndrome.

The software was so unreliable that one of her colleagues complained: "If it was a coder, I'd fire it," Williams said.

That said, CAC "is making people more efficient," she said. "It can get where it needs to be."

Williams, in fact, recommended combining CAPD with CAC. The two together allow for a much fuller and more accurate clinical picture. It's just a matter of "putting in the time in to teach the system how to do the job right," Williams said. "It takes a lot of human elbow grease." 

Helpful advice for planning to purchase a population health platform:

⇒ Experts explain what to look for when choosing a population health platform
⇒ Comparison chart of 8 population health products 
⇒ An in-depth look at 8 population health software programs

Twitter: @MikeMiliardHITN
Email the writer: mike.miliard@himssmedia.com
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The HIMSS and Healthcare IT News Big Data and Healthcare Analytics Forum begins Monday morning in Boston.

Our team of reporters and editors has been gleaning insights about what actionable advice, basics like blocking and tackling, and visionary trends will be discussed at the event.

The core reality check found that healthcare as an industry is ready to move beyond the rhetoric and put data and information into action. And even though that won't be easy, it is already happening in places like Charlotte, North Carolina and Blairsville, Georgia.

The following articles offer insights from expert speakers, lessons learned, hard-fought challenges, and a glimpse into the future of artificial intelligence, cognitive computing and machine learning.  

⇒ Big Data: Healthcare must move beyond the hype 
It's a common situation with emerging technologies that the buzz around their vast potential promises more than real-world use actions deliver. But the difference with Big Data is the way healthcare refers to it as one big thing when, in reality, there are many Big Data technologies. What needs to happen? Good design and then a proper application of technologies to bridge technological possibilities with what hospitals really need to accomplish. 

⇒ Tips for reading Big Data results correctly
Big data is not going to be easy. Healthcare professionals are bound to make mistakes and take miscues from data sets along the way. MIT economist Joseph urges healthcare executives and caregivers not to over-interpret results and, instead, stick to strict research designs. 

⇒ Charlotte hospitals analyze social determinants of health to cut ER visits 
Facing an influx of immigrants coming into emergency departments for what turned out to be primary care needs, hospitals in the city got to know patients better by building a Big Data analysis model to study social determinants of health. It worked. The next step: Creating connections that more effectively align patients with the most appropriate resources. 

⇒ Small hospital makes minor investment in analytics and reaps big rewards 
With a relatively modest $50,000 budget, Union General in Georgia launched an analytics program that ultimately yielded a return on its investment by significantly reducing readmissions and giving staff the ability to view they previously could not. 

⇒ MIT professor's quick primer on two types of machine learning for healthcare 
John Guttag heads up the Data Driven Inference Group at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. Guttag broke down for us the two types of machine learning that matter most to healthcare organizations, those being supervised and unsupervised. And even though many of the machine learning, artificial intelligence and cognitive computing technologies available today from the likes of IBM Watson, Google, Microsoft and others have gained more traction in different industries, Guttag's message for hospitals is to use today's tech right now. 

⇒ Must-haves for machine learning to thrive in healthcare
To help health entities move forward with using today's machine learning technologies Guttag also outlined what it takes to succeed in the new world with its growing sets of aggregated data, federal rules around information access and maturing technologies as the practices of machine learning move toward critical mass. 

The Big Data and Healthcare Analytics Forum takes place on Monday, Oct. 24 and Tuesday, Oct. 25. We will be reporting live so check back often.