Top News
The GAO looks at HIE efforts in four states and finds a lack of sufficient health data standards, variations in privacy rules across states, difficulties matching patient records, and concerns over covering exchange costs. GAO recommends that CMS and the ONC develop and prioritize specific actions to advance HIE and develop milestones with time frames to gauge progress.
Reader Comments
From The Reverend: “Exemption letter. A little mentioned part of the exemption that was offered up as “Vendor Certification Issues” for Meaningful Use 2 is that it requires the vendor to provide the EP with a letter. There is no guidance on what the letter must contain, who it needs to come from (vendor CEO, sales person, tier I tech support), or how to attach it to the exemption itself, but it a required (marked with a *) part of the exemption. The exemption also requires the EP to list the exact version they are currently running…which is obviously not the 2014 certified version (*because if it was, we wouldn’t be applying for the extension.) I am quite certain I am not the only concerned/confused person about this. It sure seems like it may be hard to extract this ‘letter of shame’ from the vendor. Can you help me?” If anyone can offer The Reverend some advice, please share.
HIStalk Announcements and Requests
Mr. H is taking the night off, hopefully doing something fun, meaning I’m flying solo. Thanks for reading.
Upcoming Webinars
April 2 (Wednesday) 1:00 ET. A Landmark 12-Point Review of Population Health Management Companies. Sponsored by Health Catalyst. Presenter: Dale Sanders, SVP, Health Catalyst. Learn the 12 criteria that a health system should use to evaluate population health vendors and to plot its internal strategy, then see the results of grading seven top PHM vendors against these criteria. No single vendor can meet all PHM needs. The most important of the 12 criteria over the next three years will be precise patient registries, patient-provider attribution, and precise numerators in patient registries.
Acquisitions, Funding, Business, and Stock
Healthcare data analytics firm IMS Health expects to set its IPO price at $18 to $21 a share, giving the company a valuation of up to $6.97 billion.
Cloud storage provider Box looks to raise $250 million in an IPO. For the year ending January 31 Box reported revenue of $124.2 million with losses of $168.6 million.
Sales
Prime Healthcare Services’ Roxborough Memorial Hospital (PA) selects Wellsoft EDIS.
Baptist Health Care (FL) signs a multi-year agreement with MedAssets for multiple cost management and operational efficiency solutions.
People
Physician connectivity platform provider Updox hires Pat Bickley (Health Care DataWorks) to lead product management.
<a class="colorbox" rel="nofollow" …read more
