Yesterday I had the opportunity to talk with the people from GE who briefed me that GE is in the process of shutting down their GE Centricity Advance product line. This was pretty big news to me since I remember just last year at HIMSS meeting with GE and hearing that for the small practice (I believe 1-10 docs) GE Centricity Advance was where they were putting all their effort. You could see the energy they had behind it. In fact, their iPad EHR app was built on top of the GE Centricity Advance solution (which is now being moved to their other EHR product lines).

You might remember that the GE Centricity Advance solution was actually created out of the purchase of MedPlexus in March 2010. At the time, MedPlexus had 100 employees out of California with the development team out of India. At the time of purchase it seemed GE’s acquisition would provide a SaaS based EHR option to the independent physician market. Plus, MedPlexus (which became GE Centricity Advance) also provided an integrated Practice Management System with the EHR.

The GE Centricity Advance website is already forwarding to the Centricity Practice Solution website and a letter was sent out to all Centricity Advance customers informing them that the product line was ceasing operation. I’ve asked for a copy of that letter and if I get it, I’ll add it to this post (or if you’re a customer that received it and doesn’t mind sharing we’d welcome it).

I was told that GE is offering Centricty Advance users a free transfer to their Centricity Practice Solution EHR software. From what they told me it seems this will include data migration, training on the new system and a license for Centricity Practice Solution. Of course, Centricity Advance was paid on a subscription model so they’ll have to continue paying the monthly fee. As with most data migrations, I don’t think we’ll know how good GE is at migrating the data from GE Centricity Advance to Centricity Practice Solution until they start to do them.

Since both Centricity Advance and Centricity Practice Solution have ONC-ATCB complete EHR certification, there shouldn’t be any problems for those that transfer to Centricity Practice Solution when it comes to EHR stimulus money. Those not wanting to move to the Centricity Practice Solution will have this as part of their decision on what to do once Centricity Advance is no longer supported. I expect there will be many in this situation since while Centricity Practice Solution is available through GE’s partners as a “SaaS” offering, I think many will want to find a true from the ground up web based SaaS EHR offering.

I asked how many providers would be effected by the end of the Centricity Advance product line, but it’s GE’s policy to not comment on those numbers.

Where does this leave GE Centricity EMR software?
GE Healthcare IT still does a couple billion dollars of business and still has three EMR software offerings:
*Centricity Practice Solution – The replacement for Centricity Advance and will be GE’s EMR offering for the 1-100 provider practices.
*Centricity EMR – Still ambulatory EMR, but for the 100+ provider practices.
*Centricity Enterprise – Acute care EMR

I’m sure that many will wonder how good the Centricity Practice Solution will do in the small practice arena. Will this basically mean that GE is no longer a player in the small 1-10 provider practices? It’s hard to say for sure, but I’ll be interested to see how the Centricity Practice Solution EHR does in this market. There must have been a reason they purchased what became Centricity Advance instead of going with Centricity Practice Solution in the first place.

On the other hand, I could see people making the argument that this is a sound strategy by GE since movements like accountable care organizations (ACO’s) and related initiatives are putting the small practice in jeopardy. We know that many hospital systems are purchasing up group practices as they prepare to become an ACO among other reasons. While we still have many small group practices, it’s worth considering how many of them will survive the changing landscape. If not many survive, then this strategy by GE could end well for them. Although, I personally believe that practice consolidation is cyclical and so I’m not ready to announce the death of small group practices yet.

Another trend that might make this a good decision on GE’s part is what I call the Smart EHR. Our current phase of EHR adoption is basically converting paper to electronic. Once doctors start requiring EHR software to do things far more advanced (see Artificial Intelligence and Genomics EHR), it will require a new kind of EHR. Maybe Centricity Advance wasn’t prepared to make this shift. We’ll see if GE’s other EHR software is ready for it.

Many have argued that EHR consolidation is inevitable. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that part of that EHR consolidation is happening within the same EHR company. I’m sure there are more on the way as we see which EHR companies survive the meaningful use winter and come out on the other side and which EHR companies close up shop.

Update: I asked GE for some more clarification on when GE Centricity Advance would be sunset and which data they’ll be migrating as part of the data migration process. Here are their answers:
Sunset Period: We have announced that we will cease operations of Centricity Advance on June 30, 2012. The data will be available in read-only mode until December 31, 2012.

Data Migration: We are working with our partners and customers to figure out the best way to migrate data. We have told customers that we will migrate the following data:
a. Patient Demographics, Patient Insurance data, Fee Schedules, Appointments
b. Patient Summary
c. Patient chart
We will migrate all clinical data. We are working with our partners to determine which financial information should be automatically migrated.

Last month CareCloud announced a new real-time analytics dashboard to help doctor streamline revenue cycle automation. The core of their product is what they call CareCloud Analytics. As I think about the announcement, I wondered if it was really a big deal or not and why we hadn’t seen more of this in the various practice management systems and EHR software on the market today.

Is Data Analytics important in Healthcare?
I think this type of information is a big deal. Information is power and this is never more true than in healthcare. The press release does a great job of describing how real-time analytics and dashboards provide information which provides transparency and accountability to a practice. One quote from the article says, “The practice can now manage the productivity of the office staff, monitor in real time the productivity of billers, and gain transparency into the business side of operations to help form better decisions through data, instead of intuition.”

I’m a huge fan of analytics in my business. I call myself a stats addict. I have 2-3 stats programs running on my websites at all times. I get stats from my ad server, from Google’s ad server, and from every other stats engine I can find that has reliable data. Much of my success with my websites is because of my passion for knowing what’s happening with my websites. To me, Data is power! The same can be said for a practice. Data is the power to make important decisions that are needed for the success of your practice.

Why don’t more EHR and PMS vendors provide these analytics?
I’m sure there are a number of reasons why we don’t see real time analytics happening very often in the small practices. Hospitals are a bit different. There are whole companies devoted to just providing these types of services to hospitals that can pay for a full scale data warehouse environment to provide this type of data. A hospital that doesn’t do this type of data mining is missing out as well, but they have a number of options. Although, I don’t think many hospital HIS vendors offer this info by default.

The key reason I think real-time analytics and customizable dashboards are missing in the small practice environment has to do with doctors demand (or lack thereof) for such a feature. This will surprise some, but most will agree that the majority of doctors don’t care much for the business side of the practice. Sure, they care that the business side of the practice effects how much money they take home at the end of the day, but a large portion of doctors would love their lives a lot more if they didn’t have anything to do with the business of a practice. Yes, I know there are exceptions to this, but most doctors want to practice medicine not business.

With this as background, if you ask most doctors what they want from their EHR and Practice Management software, they’ll start to list off all of the clinical and workflow needs that they have. Very few of them will even venture into the business requests like real time analytics. Plus, even if they did venture into the business side of things, would they know how to request such a feature?

EHR and Practice Management Vendors have to show them why it matters to have these real time analytics. It reminds me of the famous quote attributed to Henry Ford. “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” This can often be taken too far, but I think it applies well when it comes to things like real-time analytics of a practice.

One other reason that a number of companies are missing the analytics and its relationship with revenue cycle management is that they’re too focused on EHR. Many just consider the PMS a standard thing that everyone has already and that there’s no room to innovate. Last I checked meaningful use didn’t have any practice management elements and that’s taken up at least one development cycle for most companies. Too many doctors later dismay, the EHR selection process often puts the practice management side of the puzzle on the backseat. This is a mistake that many practices are paying for today.

As one PR rep for a major EHR company said to me, “Revenue Cycle Management isn’t sexy.” Although, she said this directly after telling me how beneficial it was to their bottom line.

I’ve generally been writing more about the EMR side of EMR and HIPAA lately. For the most part, it seems readers are more interested in EMR and EHR than they are in the details of HIPAA. Although, one of my top posts ever is from back in 2006 about HIPAA Privacy Examples and HIPAA Lawsuits. It seems that people are most interested in HIPAA when it has something to do with a HIPAA violation or lawsuit.

Today’s HIPAA violation could very likely become a HIPAA lawsuit. Plus, it is a word of caution to those about training your staff on HIPAA requirements and also on proper use of social media in healthcare.

Anne Steciw posted about the violation on Search Health IT. Here’s an excerpt from her post:

Details of the health data breach provided by the Los Angeles Daily News indicate that the employee, who was provided by a staffing agency, shared a photo on his Facebook page of a medical record displaying a patient’s full name and date of admission. The employee appeared to be completely ignorant of HIPAA laws.

I’m sure every hospital and healthcare administrator is cringing at this. I’m sure many could share stories of HIPAA issues related with staffing agencies as well. Although, it’s really hard for me to understand how someone even from a staffing agency could be so ignorant to the HIPAA laws. I’m not overstating how ignorant this person was in this situation. The above article explains something even more outrageous and unbelievable:

Even after being told by other posters that he was violating the patient’s privacy, the employee argued: “People, it’s just Facebook…Not reality. Hello? Again…It’s just a name out of millions and millions of names. If some people can’t appreciate my humor than tough. And if you don’t like it too bad because it’s my wall and I’ll post what I want to. Cheers!”

To me this is totally mind boggling. I’m sure many will argue that this person was exhibiting many of the characteristics of the Facebook generation of users. That’s a cop out and an excuse, but does make a larger point that many of the next generation have these outlandish views of what’s theirs and what’s ok and reasonable. Sadly, far too many people think when it’s humor it’s ok to do anything. It’s not and I’m sure those dealing with HIPAA violations won’t find it a reasonable excuse either.

One thing I really hate about stories like this is that they give a bad name to use of social media in healthcare. Social media is like most things which can be used for good or bad. It’s a shame if incidents like this discourage people from accessing the benefits of social media.

This is another good example of how our biggest HIPAA privacy vulnerability is people.

Lynn Scheps is Vice President, Government Affairs at EHR vendor SRSsoft. In this role, Lynn has been a Voice of Physicians and SRSsoft users in Washington during the formulation of the meaningful use criteria. Lynn is currently working to assist SRSsoft users interested in showing meaningful use and receiving the EHR incentive money. Check out Lynn’s previous Meaningful Use Monday posts.

Many physicians will be pursuing EHR incentives in 2012. Because meaningful use is not dependent upon G-codes, providers have been asking whether they need to continue putting “G-8553” on Medicare claims. The answer is YES—keep on G-Coding! 

Even though physicians who receive a Medicare EHR incentive are ineligible for an ePrescribing (MIPPA) incentive, they are still subject to future ePrescribing penalties. These penalties can be avoided by ePrescribing in 2012:

• Prevent the 2013 (1.5%) penalty – CMS is giving providers a second chance. If you failed to ePrescribe on the minimum 25 Medicare encounters in 2011, (which would have already protected you from the 2013 penalty), report G-8553 10 times between January 1 and June 30, 2012 on any Medicare claims. These claims don’t even have to be for the specified CPT “denominator” codes.
• Prevent the 2014 (2%) penalty – Report the G-code 25 times between January 1 and December 31, 2012. These claims must be associated with the specified CPT codes (typically E&M visits). 

If you are not pursuing meaningful use in 2012—or if you are, but for some reason fail to earn the incentive this year—you can still earn a 1% ePrescribing bonus under MIPPA if you report the G-Code on claims with the specified CPT codes 25 times between January and December . 

Like last year, there will be a process for requesting an exemption from the 2013 penalties, but surprisingly, the Proposed Rule did not include earning an EHR incentive as one of the justifications.

As most regular readers know, on the weekend I’ve been doing a weekly Twitter round up of interesting tweets about EMR and EHR. Well, this week I came across all sorts of odd tweets. Also, it seems that someone with EMR in their Twitter name has been talking about the Giants making it to the Super Bowl. On that note, I’m not sure I really care whether the Giants or the Patriots win the Super Bowl. Although, I think it will be a fun game to watch. Push came to shove, I’ll take the Giants defense for the win. Enough football, back to the health IT and EMR talk.

This tweet is going to blow your socks off a little bit. We all know this type of technology is coming, but it’s crazy to think that it’s actually starting to be done. I might have to do a full post on this type of technology later:

UK: Edible Microchip Tracking Device goo.gl/fb/xdo5I #news #cellular #emr #politics

— Why Fry (@WhyFryWiFi) January 23, 2012

For those who didn’t go read the article, it talks about an edible microchip that reports patient compliance with medication. Seems a bit extreme no? It’s still quite a ways off, but is interesting to consider.

This next tweet is fascinating and the landing page it goes to is even more fascinating. Mostly because the tweet and landing page feel more like spam than they feel like a legitimate company. So, tread lightly if you click:

Post Edited: AAYUWIZ – is a state-of-the-art complete healthcare solution bit.ly/yUrcGm #aayuwiz #ehr #emr

— Sphata Systems (@sphatasystems) January 23, 2012

As best I can tell this is a legitimate company. Although, I can’t understand why someone would think naming EMR software AAYUWIZ. Really? You’ve got to be able to do better than that. This looks like one of the MANY (and I mean many) EHR software that have been developed by Indian companies.

I don’t know the entire process these companies go through, but so many of these Indian (and probably other countries as well, but all the ones I’ve seen have been from India) development houses see an opportunity to create EHR software. After developing the EHR software, they reach out to people like myself asking for help on bringing their EHR software to America. Seems like a really risky business model to me. At least a couple of them do have Indian healthcare strategies as well, but many seem to be solely focused on the US market with no way of actually entering the market.

@tnhimss Nursing informatics project # 2: EMR+ Analytics, to increase notifications (and faster) of organ donors. “auto triggers.”

— Lawrence Lin (@larrylin) January 19, 2012

I like this idea. In fact, I’m a little surprised that I haven’t seen anyone do this before. What kills me is that there are probably 100-200 projects like it in healthcare that could benefit from better use of technology, but for one reason or another we haven’t gotten to it…yet(?). Seems like Lawrence Lin is working on it. Too bad he’s working in China, but from Nashville, TN. Now, I’ve got to meet Lawrence to hear his stories.

As most of you know, I’m always looking for something unique or different in the world of EHR software. I’m all about trying to find things that differentiate an EHR from other EHR vendors. I think I’ve found just that in the EHR interface for the Modernizing Medicine EHR software.

Modernizing Medicine currently focuses their EHR on two medical specialties: Dermatologists and Ophthalmologists. Their EHR is named EMA Dermatology and EMA Ophthalmology. Once you see the interface for their EHR, you’ll understand why it focuses on specialties like Dermatology and Ophthalmology. Plus, you’ll see why their next move should likely be into something like orthopedics.

Ok, enough background. I’ve had a bunch of the EHR Demo videos for Modernizing Medicine on our EMR and EHR Videos website. Here is the video of the simple Dermatology visit:

You can also check out the videos for the Complex Patient Visit and the Ludicrous Patient Visit.

I’ve seen a number of EHR companies incorporate images into their EHR. Most of them you can even do some sort of marking on top of the image. However, I don’t ever remember seeing an EHR that incorporated images the way that Modernizing Medicine did in the above video. Plus, they even take the documentation done on the image and turn it into a patient note automatically.

Certainly this type of interface won’t work for every specialty. It makes sense for medical specialties where it’s very visual like dermatology (which is where they stated).

I’d be interested to hear what others think of this EHR interface. Are there any other EHR software out there that take a similar approach to documentation?

While I definitely had quite a bit of excitement over this year’s CES and Digital Health Summit, I have to admit that I ended up leaving CES a bit disappointed. I’m trying to decide if it being the fifth year I’ve attended CES is making me immune to the hype that surrounds the event or if I’ve just been going to too many conferences in general and so I’ve already heard much of the hype. At the end of the day, I describe this year’s CES as incremental versus trans formative.

There were a few exceptions of things that caught my eye while navigating the CES circus that are worth mentioning.

Ion Proton Genetic Sequencer
Probably the most amazing thing I saw for healthcare was the Life Technologies Ion Proton Genetic Sequencer. Plus, I’m not alone with this feeling. Dan Costa of PC Mag called it “The Coolest Thing I Saw at CES 2012.” To be quite frank, it is pretty amazing. It’s part of the amazing movement happening in bringing genomic data to healthcare.

The Ion Proton Genetic Sequencer (they need a better name) is awesome cause you can do a full genome in a day on a machine that costs about the same as an MRI machine. Plus, I personally think they’re just getting started on optimizing the technology. As they continue to improve the technology the cost of the machine and the time and cost to do the analysis will continue to drop. We still don’t know exactly how to use the genomic data in healthcare, but machines like this are going to make it possible for us to find new ways to use this data for good.

I still can’t help but imagine an EHR having all of our genomic data available to it.

Liquipel
Probably the coolest general technology and innovation that I saw at CES was called Liquipel. Liquipel is a technology that makes your device repel water using a nano coating. The best way to understand how it works is to check out some of the Liquipel videos and I’ll embed one below that gives a nice overview.

Of course, they have the disclaimer that it should never be submerged in water, but it was amazing to see it repel the water and still work. Plus, probably the coolest demonstration they did was with a Kleenex. They’d applied the nano-coating to a Kleenex and then they placed it in water. You’d think it would shrivel up and absorb the water. Nothing. I then asked if I could touch the Kleenex to see if I could feel the coating. Nothing. It felt like a Kleenex.

Many health IT people would love this technology. Then, it wouldn’t be such a concern to put your iPad next to the sink in the exam room. I wonder if the nano technology can do anything with infection control with devices. I imagine it doesn’t solve that issue.

I’m sure many are wondering how they can get their device treated with Liquipel. Right now they said you have to drop it by their office in California to get it done over a lunch or something. However, they’re working with phone manufacturers to get their technology in every phone. Pretty amazing stuff.

John Sculley
Another highlight of CES for me was the chance to hear John Sculley talk at the Digital Health Summit. I can’t say he said anything too groundbreaking. Although, he did say that health IT companies should stop focusing their revenue model on corporate health programs. I found that interesting. The most interesting comment came from colleague Dan Munro after John Sculley’s talk. He commented how interesting it was that so many of these older ex-CIO’s of major tech companies are getting into healthcare. I carried the thought through for Dan that as you age, you start to care about healthcare a lot more than you did when you were younger and healthier. I wonder if we’ll see this trend continue as more tech people get older and start to care more about healthcare.

For that don’t know, there’s a really strong chat happening on Twitter each Friday morning around the hashtag #HITsm. The number of people showing up is growing and growing and quite frankly it’s almost impossible to be able to keep up with all the tweets that are flying around along with the back channel conversations with those participating in the chat as well. It’s an hour long Twitter chat where you’re flooded with interesting bits of health IT information.

Of course, some of you might be overwhelmed by the thought of a Twitter chat. The key is to realize that you don’t have to know anything about Twitter to participate. To get started, just visited this #HITsm twitter page and hit the reload as it tells you there are more tweets. This is like turning on the TV and watching what’s on. Nothing wrong with being a lurker of the #HITsm Twitter chats if that’s what you prefer.

Now for those like me who can’t keep their mouth tweet shut, you’re going to want to participate as well. It’s easy and free to sign up. I’m sure many of you are like my Health IT friend Stacey who is fantastic at Health IT, but was a little nervous on how to start down the Twitter path. I told her to just go for it and now you can find her @HealthITgirl.

I introduced her to 3-4 people on Twitter and she already has 19 people following her on Twitter. Those followers will get her started off right and then as she adds more people and interacts with more people she’ll start to find the real value of Twitter.

Let me repeat my most common comment about Twitter: Twitter is about connecting people.

Certainly Twitter can be used for other things, but Twitter’s most powerful function in my opinion is to connect people. The other thing to realize is that you can’t break it, you can’t break the rules, and there’s no right or wrong way to use Twitter. So, just start using it and testing what ways it can be valuable to you.

If you’re on Twitter or sign up for Twitter let me know @techguy and/or @ehrandhit. I’ll be happy to introduce you to some smart people on Twitter too.

I first heard about the new Secure, Branded App Store for Hospitals and Healthcare called Happtique in early December on Techcrunch. At its core, I think it’s an interesting idea to try and filter through what the article claims are “23,000 mobile health apps available for iOS and Android.” Helping physicians and hospital administrators filter through these apps could be valuable. Plus, most hospital administrators would love a way to have a phone that was limited on which apps it could download.

Well, it seems that the company has shifted gears a little bit. As Brian Dolan from Mobi Health News reported, Happtique is taking the first steps to setting up a certification for mobile health apps.

Happtique, a healthcare-focused appstore, announced plans to create a certification program that will help the medical community determine which of the tens of thousands of health-related mobile apps are clinically appropriate and technically sound. The company has tapped a multi-disciplinary team to develop the “bona fide mHealth app certification program” within the next six months. The program is open to all developers and will be funded by developer application fees.

It will certify apps intended to be used by both medical professionals and patients.

While I think that providing some way for people to filter through the large number of mobile apps, I think certification is a terrible way to go about it. Many people know I’ve written many an article about CCHIT pre-EHR incentive money and how screwed up the CCHIT EHR certification was for the industry. I think it’s just as bad news for Happtique to create a certification for the mobile health industry.

Turns out that Happtique seems to have agreed with this idea back in October 2010 where they said in a MobiHealthNews interview, “We are not in the business of opining whether an app is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ though. That’s not our role. Apple doesn’t do that and others don’t either. If the FDA indicates that an app is a medical device and needs to be regulated, well, that’s a different situation and we can take it out of the store.” Seems they’ve seen a different business opportunity.

They have a couple recognizable names on their board to create their certification including Howard Luks and Dave deBrokart (better known as e-Patient Dave), but I believe they’re going to find that it’s an impossible task. First, because they won’t have the breadth of knowledge needed to create certification requirements for every type of mHealth app. Second, what value will the certification really provide? Third, how do you make the certification broad enough to apply to all 20,000+ apps while still providing meaning to those using a very specific mHealth app? Plus, I’m sure there are many other issues I haven’t thought of yet.

The problem with these certification ideas is that they start with great intentions, but always end up bad.

HITECH Answers recently posted a great post that gives a run down of the EHR Incentive program’s progress in 2011. Here’s their list with my own analysis and commentary of each point.

123,921 Eligible Professionals have registered for EHR Incentives, 15,255 have successfully attested to meaningful use in the Medicare program.
This seems like such a HUGE difference in numbers. That’s just over 12% of Eligible Professionals that registered attested to meaningful use. Does this mean that we’re going to see a tidal wave of meaningful use attestation in 2012? Possibly.

I believe that we’ll see more eligible professionals attesting to meaningful use in 2012. However, the question is how many of those other 108,666 will attest to meaningful use in 2012 and how many are like the Happy EMR Doctor who just registered to see the MU process. I wonder how many first hand meaningful use experiences by doctors will scare doctors away from MU attestation.

3.077 Eligible Hospitals have registered EHR Incentives and 604 of those have successfully attested to meaningful use.
This is almost 20% of hospitals that have registered that have attested to meaningful use. It’s not surprising that this number is a lot higher than eligible professionals. I still believe that the wave of meaningful use attestation will come from these other 2473 hospitals and probably many more that still haven’t registered. I haven’t seen a good number of how many hospitals are in the US. Does anyone know that number? The EHR incentive money that goes to hospitals will dwarf those of eligible professionals.

$2,533,689,145 has been paid out in Medicare and Medicaid Incentives.
$2.5 billion sent out in 2011. I just went back to the first time I tagged meaningful use on this site on April 3, 2009 (coincidentally I have 19 pages of 10 posts each tagged with Meaningful Use). Amazing to think that it’s taken basically 3 years to spend $2.5 billion on EHR.

277 hospitals have received payments under both Medicare and Medicaid and of those 12 were CAHs.
That’s about half of the hospitals that have attested to meaningful use under Medicare are also getting the Medicaid EHR incentive money as well.

22% of eligible professionals that have been paid EHR incentives are Family Practitioners and 20% are Internal Medicine.
I must admit that I would have thought that the percentage of family doctors that got paid EHR incentive money would have been a lot higher. I guess when you have so many other specialty areas I shouldn’t be that surprised. I also wonder why the internal medicine number is so high. These numbers actually make me believe that a lot of family practice doctors are sitting out when it comes to meaningful use.

41 States Medicaid programs were open for registration. Two additional States launched in January of 2012.
I wonder what’s holding back the other 7 states. From what I’ve seen all the states will eventually get there.

More than 1500 EHR products have been certified by ONC-ATCBs.
That’s a lot of EHR software. I still put the EHR company list at about 300 EHR vendors. 1500 includes multiple versions of the same software, partial EHR certification for products like data warehouses, ePrescribing, etc. The best thing that’s come from the ONC-ATCB program is that it has made EHR certification basically irrelevant in the EHR selection process. Every EHR vendor is certified now. This is much better than the false assurances that EHR certification provided before. I still dislike what EHR certification has done to the industry, but at least it’s not misleading doctors the same way it was before.