Bulletin Board what’s happening in healthcare
Ignite Health, a healthcare marketing
agency owned by InVentiv Health, has
acquired Syndicated Methods, a mobile
development firm based in San Diego.
Lockheed Martin in Bethesda, MD, has
entered into a definitive agreement to
acquire QTC Holdings, the federal government’s largest provider of medical
evaluation services.
PracticeMax, a vendor of outsourced
billing and collection services and EHR
reseller in Scottsdale, AZ, has acquired
American Billing Services, a billing service
that serves practices and hospitals.
The DC regional extension center has
subscribed to the health IT database
services of CapSite, a Burlington, VT-based research and advisory firm.
NHIC, a subsidiary of HP Enterprise
Services, has received a five-year,
$72.3-million renewal contract with
the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid
Services to work with durable medical
equipment suppliers in 11 northeastern
states and Washington, DC.
Hospital and physician software
vendor Quality Systems will acquire CQI
Solutions, which sells surgical information systems.
Government contractor General Dynamics will acquire Vangent Holding.
United Regional Health Care System in
Texas will implement iSirona’s device
connectivity system.
Lakewood Health System in Minnesota
has chosen McKesson’s health information system.
MedPlast, a provider of thermoplastic
medical devices, has selected Stor-Simple’s cloud storage system.
Stamford Hospital in Connecticut will
deploy the SmartRoom patient data
integration platform developed by the
University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and
IBM.
The Department of Veterans Affairs has
awarded a $3.4-million contract to
Beacon Enterprise Solutions Group to
develop real-time locating systems for
VA hospitals. ¢
CMS Adds Exemptions to eRx Final Rule
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released the final rule
on the 2011 electronic prescribing
(eRx) incentive program August 31,
introducing new hardship exemptions
that will allow some providers to avoid
payment reductions.
The prescribing program, which
offers incentives to eligible professionals who are successful electronic
prescribers, also includes payment
adjustment in the Medicare Physician
Fee Schedule for those who are not.
Reductions of 1 percent begin January 2012. Further cuts of 1. 5 percent
and 2 percent take effect in 2013 and
2014, respectively.
The additional exemptions “better
recognize those circumstances when
the ability of professionals to meet
the eRx requirements is limited and
when the requirements clearly pose
a significant hardship,” wrote Patrick
Conway, CMS Chief Medical Officer
and Director of the Office of Clinical
Standards and Quality August 31 on
the CMS blog ( http://blog.cms.gov).
CMS added four new “significant
hardship” exemptions to the rule,
covering eligible professionals or
group practices who:
x register to participate in the Medi-
care or Medicaid EHR Incentive
Programs and adopt certified
EHR technology;
x are unable to electronically pre-
scribe due to local, state, or fed-
eral law or regulation;
Committee Endorses Single Set of Vocab
Standards for Stage 2 Meaningful Use
The Health IT Standards Committee
has recommended that the Office of
the National Coordinator for Health IT
(ONC) include a single set of vocabulary
standards and a single implementation
guide for quality reporting measures in
the stage 2 meaningful use program.
The endorsement of the single set
of vocabulary standards and implementation guide is an accomplishment
that’s a decade in the making, said
John Halamka, Health IT Standards
Committee co-chair and CIO of Beth
Israel Deaconess Medical Center,
quoted in an August 29 Government
Health IT article.
The vocabulary standards provide a
common technical method that can be
installed in electronic health records
(EHRs) to simplify quality reporting and
lead to better use of quality measures.
ONC has allowed organizations to
use multiple options in EHR vocabulary standards, leading to a lack of in-teroperability between machines and
general confusion.
The Health IT Standards Committee has recommended that a minimal number of vocabulary standards
be used in ONC-certified EHRs during stage 2, limited to SNOMED CT,
LOINC, or RxNorm.
“Today we have achieved something
that some of us have been working on
for a decade. For the first time in his-
tory, we will be declaring a single set
of standards for each domain with one
set of implementation guides,” Halam-
ka said at the committee’s August 17
meeting, according to the August 29
Government Health IT article. “This is
truly a momentous event.”
Wes Rishel, a committee member
and vice president and distinguished
analyst for Gartner’s healthcare pro-
vider research practice, noted that it
might be difficult to encourage health-
care providers to adopt the vocabulary
standards. He recommended that pol-
icy makers continue soliciting public
feedback on the standards develop-
ment process. ¢
