• Black Book Names Nuance #1 in Two Healthcare Industry Reports

    Nuance Recognized as Top Vendor in CDI, and End-to-End Coding, CDI, Transcription, & Speech Recognition

    BURLINGTON, MA – December 7, 2016 — Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) today announced it has been named the leading vendor in two recent surveys conducted by the independent market research and opinion research company, Black Book™ Research. Nuance ranked #1 for Clinical Documentation Improvement (CDI) for the third consecutive year, and ranked #1 for End-to-End Healthcare Coding, CDI, Transcription and Speech Recognition Technology for the second consecutive year. Black Book interviews healthcare executives about their current technology and services partners and awards top-performing vendors based on indicators of client experience and customer satisfaction.

    Nuance gained the highest scores on the majority of 18 key performance indicators measured, more than three times any other vendor in end-to-end clinical documentation solutions. These technologies are top of mind as healthcare professionals plan for 2017 and look to leverage CDI, coding, speech recognition and medical transcription to optimize electronic health records (EHRs). Black Book found 94% of those surveyed plan to increase their spending for these solutions by 10% or more next year.

    Quality Documentation Needed for Value-Based Care
    Half of acute care respondents in the 2016 Black Book survey were not confident that their EHRs effectively captured the patient data to meet developing clinical documentation needs for value-based care and big data initiatives. As a result, CDI has risen to the top of 2017 budget priorities as healthcare organizations shift from ICD-10 to strategies that will drive success under new quality-driven payment models.

    “Healthcare organizations recognize that failing to address flaws in documentation processes or to capture the data they need in EHRs results in increased errors, financial losses and diminished patient care,” said Doug Brown, managing partner of Black Book. “As a top ranked vendor year after year, Nuance has proven that in the eyes of healthcare leaders it delivers innovations and outcomes in CDI and end-to-end clinical documentation that meet and exceed their expectations.”

    “It’s a significant milestone for Nuance end-to-end clinical documentation solutions to be recognized for providing innovations that support our clients, helping clinicians spend 50% less time documenting care, and enabling them to spend more time with patients. Up to 98% of clinicians are satisfied with the intelligence Nuance provides and would recommend our solutions to their peers,” said Satish Maripuri, executive vice president and general manager of the Healthcare Division, Nuance. “Plus, our CDI clients are in the top 25% best performing on mortality ratings and our new clients realized an 8.5% average case mix index improvement in 2016, showing clinical and financial outcomes that matter.”

    Nuance provides intelligent systems that support a more natural and insightful approach to clinical documentation, freeing clinicians to spend more time caring for patients. Nuance healthcare solutions capture, improve and communicate more than 300 million patient stories each year helping more than 500,000 clinicians in 10,000 global healthcare organizations to drive meaningful clinical and financial outcomes. Nuance’s award-winning clinical speech recognition, medical transcription, CDI, coding, quality and medical imaging solutions provide a more complete and accurate view of patient care.

    To read the complete 2016 Black Book End-to-End Coding, CDI and Speech Recognition Technology report, visit this Black Book link on nuance.com.

    Nuance Communications, Inc.
    Nuance Communications, Inc. (NASDAQ: NUAN) is a leading provider of voice and language solutions for businesses and consumers around the world. Its technologies, applications and services make the user experience more compelling by transforming the way people interact with devices and systems. Every day, millions of users and thousands of businesses experience Nuance’s proven applications. For more information, please visit nuance.com. Connect with Nuance on social media through the healthcare blog, What’s next, as well as LinkedIn, and Twitter.

    About Black Book
    Black Book™, its founders, management and staff do not own or hold any financial interest in any of the vendors covered and encompassed in the surveys it conducts. Black Book reports the results of the collected satisfaction and client experience rankings in publication and to media prior to vendor notification of rating results and does not solicit vendor participation fees, review fees, inclusion or briefing charges, consultation requirements, and/or vendor collaboration as Black Book polls vendors’ clients.

    Since 2000, Black Book™ has polled the vendor satisfaction across over thirty industries in the software/technology and managed services sectors around the globe. In 2009, Black Book began polling the client experience of now over 540,000 healthcare software and services users. Black Book expanded its survey prowess and reputation of independent, unbiased crowd-sourced surveying to IT and health records professionals, physician practice administrators, nurses, financial leaders, executives and hospital information technology managers. For methodology, auditing, resources, comprehensive research and Clinical Documentation Improvement, Coding and Medical Transcription outsourcing ranking data see blackbookmarketresearch.com.

    Trademark reference: Nuance CDI is a registered trademark of Nuance Communications, Inc. or its affiliates in the United States and/or other countries. All other company names or product names referenced herein may be the property of their respective owners.

    Posted 12.7.2016

  • Vaco Expands Healthcare Business With Key Acquisitions

    Vaco, Pivot Point Consulting & Greythorn join to form new healthcare IT powerhouse

    NASHVILLE, TN – December 7, 2016 (PRNewswire) — National consulting and talent solutions firm, Vaco, today announced the formation of Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company. Vaco’s healthcare IT division, Vaco Healthcare, acquired Pivot Point Consulting based in Seattle and Greythorn based in Bellevue, WA to offer expertise in EHR implementation, training, optimization, legacy and go-live support, project management and strategic advisory services. The new HIT services firm brings together more than 50 employees and 250 consultants across the nation.

    “Expanding our team to include Pivot Point and Greythorn enhances Vaco’s extensive healthcare network and nationwide scale with award-winning expertise and accreditation,” Vaco Healthcare Managing Partner Matt Simpson said. “We are excited to offer our clients even more in the way of consulting, contract and direct-hire solutions.” The newly combined organization will:

    • Service the full scope of EHR implementation from pre-selection to support, project management, training, go-live, optimization and legacy support.
    • Offer a LIVESite division that provides top tier credentialed trainers and go-live support consultants along with advisors on best practices, gap analysis and key expense management savings.
    • Provide strategic advisory services to guide response to value-based care, revenue cycle transformation, quality improvement programs, privacy and security demands, and the value of advanced analytics.

    Pivot Point Consulting is a healthcare IT consulting firm that provides implementation, staff augmentation and advisory services for healthcare provider organizations. In 2016, Pivot Point ranked number 1 in KLAS for Epic Consulting in the Select Category and number nine in Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work. They are leaders in EHR consulting services, strategic planning, project management, PMO, legacy and go-live support. With employees in 30 states, the company has provided services to over 40 healthcare organizations, including large multi-hospital networks, academic institutions, pediatric hospitals and local community clinics.

    “This new venture broadens our global reach and complements our extensive menu of services,” said Rachel Marano, Managing Partner and Co-Founder of Pivot Point Consulting. “Combining the talents of these three businesses strengthens the options for our current and prospective clients.”

    Greythorn specializes in placing top industry talent in healthcare IT on a project and permanent basis. Like Pivot Point, Greythorn has a significant focus in providing resources with Epic EHR expertise. Through their LIVESite delivery system, Greythorn provides Epic training experts, hands-on training leadership support, strategy and planning, project management, and staff engagement and retention solutions. The company also offers a dynamic Open Source/Big Data direct-hire staffing team that continues expansion within that community.

    “The cultures of our three businesses match extremely well,” said Ben Weber, Managing Partner of Greythorn. “Greythorn has produced results here in the US for over 16 years. We look forward to building on our success as part of this new company.”

    Pivot Point Consulting, a Vaco Company begins offering services to healthcare provider organizations as an integrated business on Jan. 2, 2017.

    About Vaco
    Vaco offers consulting, contract and direct-hire solutions in the areas of accounting, finance, technology, healthcare, operations and general administration. With more than 30 offices across the nation and beyond, Vaco has been on Inc. magazine’s list of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies for the last 10 years. Vaco is dedicated to developing creative client solutions, long-term relationships and lifelong careers. For more information, visit vaco.com.

    About Pivot Point
    Established in 2011, Pivot Point Consulting is a healthcare IT consulting leader providing implementation, optimization, project management, legacy support and strategic advisory services nationwide. The company has earned many industry and workplace quality awards including: #1 in KLAS for Epic Consulting in the Select Category in 2016, #3 for HIT Implementation Support and Staffing in the 2015/2016 Best in KLAS: Software & Services report, #9 in Modern Healthcare’s Best Places to Work in 2016, #4 Fastest Growing Company by Consulting Magazine in 2015, Consulting Magazine’s Seven Small Jewels Award, Puget Sound Business Journal’s #1 Fastest Growing Eastside Seattle Firm, Puget Sound Business Journal’s #3 Fastest Growing Firm in Washington, Rising Star of the Profession by Consulting Magazine and Crain’s 101 Best and Brightest Companies to Work For in 2014 & 2015. For more information about Pivot Point Consulting, visit pivotpointconsulting.com.

    About Greythorn
    Greythorn is a specialist technology and healthcare IT recruitment consultancy, placing highly skilled talent across the United States and Canada in full-time and contract roles.

    Through a boutique approach and specialist expertise that focuses on specific industries and technologies, Greythorn partners with like-minded businesses that are looking for true value from a recruitment partner. For more information, visit greythorn.com.

    Posted 12.7.2016

  • Optimum Healthcare IT Partners with Collibra

    Bringing End-to-End Data Governance to Clients

    JACKSONVILLE BEACH, FL – December 6, 2016 — Optimum Healthcare IT, a leading healthcare IT staffing and consulting services company, announced that it has formed a strategic partnership with Collibra and joined the Collibra Partner Program. Collibra is an internationally recognized leader in data governance technology that helps businesses implement a more collaborative data governance organization that manages change and promotes business and IT alignment.

    “We’re delighted to welcome Optimum Healthcare IT to the Collibra Partner Program,” said Robert Rich, Collibra Director, Partner Management. “Our business partners represent leading technology and consulting companies that have specific domain expertise and experience. Together, Collibra and its partners including Optimum Healthcare IT enable Chief Data Officers, data stewards, and data citizens across the organization to achieve better insights from their data.”

    Healthcare IT organizations are struggling to gain an understanding of what data governance is and the challenges that they will face when attempting to implement a data governance model. With this partnership, Optimum and Collibra will provide end-to-end data governance to healthcare IT organizations across the United States. Optimum will leverage its experience in developing and implementing data governance programs, with a focus on helping healthcare organizations realize the benefits of a properly implemented data governance program while Collibra will provide the necessary software. Together, Optimum and Collibra will provide clients with a data governance strategy from a leading technology and consulting company with expertise in Healthcare IT.

    “This partnership with Collibra is the next step in Optimum’s Healthcare Data Governance offering. The combination of our expertise in developing and implementing data governance programs with the software offered by Collibra is a natural fit with the challenges that we see every day in the healthcare IT market,” said Jason Mabry, CEO of Optimum Healthcare IT.

    About Collibra
    As the leader in data governance, Collibra helps organizations around the world gain a competitive advantage by maximizing the value of their data across the enterprise. Collibra is the only solution purpose-built to address the gamut of data stewardship, governance, and management needs of the most complex, data-intensive industries. Their flexible and configurable cloud-based or on-premises solution put people and processes first – automating data governance and management to quickly and securely deliver trusted data to the business users who need it. Learn more at collibra.com.

    About Optimum Healthcare IT
    Optimum Healthcare IT is a leading healthcare IT staffing and consulting services company based in Jacksonville Beach, Florida. Optimum provides world-class consulting services in advisory, implementation, training and activation, Community Connect, analytics, security, and managed services – supporting their client’s needs through the continuum of care. Their excellence is driven by a leadership team with more than 50 years of experience in providing expert healthcare staffing and consulting solutions to all types of organizations.

    Visit optimumhit.com or call 1.904.373.0831 to find out how your organization can take advantage of their solution offerings.

    Posted 12.6.2016

  • GetWellNetwork Interactive Patient Care Goes Live in Dayton Children’s Hospital

    Forty-five day implementation of IPC includes key integration with Epic electronic medical records (EMR) system for education ordering & documentation

    BETHESDA, MD – December 1, 2016 — GetWellNetwork®, Inc., the leader in Interactive Patient Care™ (IPC) solutions, announced today that Dayton Children’s Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, has initiated a two-phase implementation of IPC throughout the hospital. Phase one was completed in just 45 days and includes the GetWellNetwork Inpatient solution with IPC Pathways deployed in 93 beds via Smart TV with bi-directional education integration.

    In this phase, care teams at Dayton Children’s can assign and document educational videos to patients and their families through the hospital’s Epic® EMR system to help them learn more about their condition(s), initiate better-informed conversations with their physician, remain safe and at rest during their stay, and prepare for discharge. Phase two will take place in conjunction with the opening of a new hospital tower scheduled for June 2017, and will include additional health IT integrations such as Medication Teaching, CBORD® nutrition and meal ordering services, and more.

    Dayton Children’s is a not-for-profit, 155-bed, freestanding children’s hospital and the region’s only medical facility devoted to the specific needs of children. With a multi-million dollar campus renewal and community expansion underway to transform care, it’s the perfect time to introduce new technology that supports the patient experience. GetWellNetwork becomes another layer of assurance that families can rely on to know that they are receiving quality care. Other assurances include the hospital’s Magnet® designation, which signifies the highest level nursing care, as well as the Women’s Choice Award, which represents the trust mothers have in the hospital.

    “Dayton Children’s is thrilled to have GetWellNetwork to help engage our patients and their parents in their education and provide entertainment in an accessible and familiar manner,” said Jayne Gmeiner, MS, RN, vice president for patient care services and chief nursing officer. “The integration with Epic for documentation of educational videos is key to promoting education within the hospital. GetWellNetwork is an extension of our commitment to going above and beyond to ensure that our patients receive the best care possible.”

    “GetWellNetwork is proud to support Dayton Children’s values for patient safety, innovation, and compassion to help patients, families, and caregivers become active participants in the care experience,” said Scott Filion, president of GetWellNetwork. “Leading providers like Dayton Children’s recognize the clinical and operational benefits of having a proven patient engagement strategy to increase health and performance outcomes and drive patient loyalty.”

    About Dayton Children’s Hospital
    One of only 45 independent freestanding children’s hospitals in the country, Dayton Children’s is the region’s only medical facility dedicated to children. Accredited by The Joint Commission and serving 20 Ohio counties and eastern Indiana, the experts at Dayton Children’s care for 300,000 children each year. Consistently recognized as one of the country’s best and most cost-effective pediatric hospitals, Dayton Children’s is home to the Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine, Department of Pediatrics and together with the United States Air Force shares the nation’s only civilian-military integrated pediatric training program. For more children’s health and safety information, visit their web site at childrensdayton.org.

    About GetWellNetwork
    GetWellNetwork, Inc.® powers patient experience. Their solution, The Patient’s Platform, helps leading health care systems create connections with patients in any setting, deliver insights to clinicians in real time, and transform care through an evidence-based model for patient engagement. Their open technology integrates with electronic health record and IT applications to extend the value of existing investments and expand the possibilities of care. With more than 50 million patient interactions per year, they drive performance improvement, positive outcomes and patient loyalty. Learn more at getwellnetwork.com.

    Posted 12.5.2016

  • TelmedIQ Healthcare Communication Hub (HCH) Recognized in 2016 KLAS Report as One of the Strongest Platform Options for Care Team Communication

    SEATTLE, WA – December 2, 2016 — TelmedIQ, a leader in healthcare communication solutions, is proud to be featured as a platform vendor by KLAS Research (www.klasresearch.com). TelmedIQ achieved an overall performance score of 91.4* out of 100 in the recent Secure Communication 2016 report from KLAS. KLAS identified more than 120 vendors and reviewed over 15 for their Secure Communication 2016 report and rated TelmedIQ for having one of the strongest platform options for improved care team communication based on objective scoring and interviews with existing customers.

    KLAS placed TelmedIQ in their new Platform Secure Communication category, recognizing the marked difference and importance that clinically integrated communication solutions provide. Platform vendors not only provide “Standard” services like secure text, image sharing, desktop application and secure server storage, but also provide enterprise-wide services and connect to the Electronic Medical Record, scheduling systems, and other clinical systems. Raising the bar, TelmedIQ also offers voice capability and work-flow within their Healthcare Communications Hub.

    TelmedIQ is considered a comprehensive communications platform as users can easily interface with alarms, lab results and other systems of record which increases user adoption and improves care team communication. “Pretty much anyone who starts using SmartText takes to it. Once people start using it, they love it, and they want everyone else around them to have it,” says one client. “Our level of adoption is 100%,” says another. 92% of clients interviewed said they would buy the solution again.

    According to one client quoted in the report, “One of the main reasons we selected the TelmedIQ product was because of the functionality for scheduling, routing, and alerting. We have multiple groups of physicians that are on call, and there is no other system that has the flexibility and complexity to set up rules that will ensure that messages go the right person.”

    “It is exciting to be in the healthcare communication space right now as there is a lot of opportunity for improvement and so many ways to connect organizations’ technology together to improve patient care,” says Ben Moore, TelmedIQ’s founder and CEO. “For KLAS to recognize the value we are providing is an honor and we hope to keep pushing innovation forward as we can see the impact we are making.”

    *KLAS Konfidence is a measure of sample size. TelmedIQ was included in KLAS’ “Below Konfidence category” for platform vendors because fewer than 15 interviews were conducted.

    About TelmedIQ
    TelmedIQ is a leader in healthcare communications solutions and applications for hospitals and healthcare systems. Their solutions have been designed specifically for the needs of practitioners and include clinically integrated solutions such as patient-centric messaging, HIPAA compliant secure text messaging, pager replacement, and answering service replacement. TelmedIQ integrates with the Electronic Medical Record, scheduling systems and other clinical platforms to streamline communication and workflow. TelmedIQ clients reduce wait times, improve patient handover times and reduce costs while improving patient satisfaction and safety.

    About KLAS Research
    KLAS is a research and insights firm on a global mission to improve healthcare delivery by amplifying the provider’s voice. Working with thousands of healthcare professionals and clinicians, KLAS gathers data and insights on software, services and medical equipment to deliver timely reports, trends and statistical overviews. The research directly represents the provider voice and acts as a catalyst for improving vendor performance.

    Contact
    Gabrielle Eagles
    Marketing Manager
    TelmedIQ Communications Hub
    206.960.4202
    [email protected]
    www.telmediq.com

    Posted 12.2.2016

  • Health Catalyst Launches Open Source Machine Learning: healthcare.ai

    First open source, machine learning repository specifically for healthcare enables industrywide collaboration to advance outcomes improvement through artificial intelligence

    SALT LAKE CITY,UT – December 1, 2016 — Use of machine learning and predictive analytics to improve health outcomes has so far been limited to highly-trained data scientists, mostly in the nation’s top academic medical centers.

    No longer. healthcare.ai is on a mission to make machine learning accessible to the thousands of healthcare professionals who possess little or no data science skills but who share an interest in using the technology to improve patient care. By making its central repository of proven machine learning algorithms available for free, healthcare.ai enables a large, diverse group of technical healthcare professionals to quickly use machine learning tools to build accurate models. The healthcare.ai site provides one central spot to download algorithms and tools, read documentation, request new features, submit questions, follow the blog, and contribute code.

    healthcare.ai was started by Health Catalyst, a leading data warehousing, analytics and outcomes improvement company that is contributing ongoing support to the open source community. Health Catalyst has used healthcare.ai to build predictive models that drive its clients’ outcomes improvement efforts and span across the company’s product lines. Models include but are not limited to a predictive model for central line associated blood stream infection (CLABSI), readmission models for COPD and other chronic conditions, schedule optimization, and financial predictions such as patient propensity to pay.

    “Machine learning and artificial intelligence are going to transform healthcare. We are seeing amazing results and yet we are barely getting started. We are applying it to the reduction of patient harm events, care management, hospital acquired infections, revenue cycle management, patient risk stratification, and more,” said Dale Sanders, Executive Vice President of Health Catalyst. “With machine learning, the data is talking to us, exposing insights that we’ve never seen before with traditional business intelligence and analytics. By open sourcing healthcare.ai, we hope to facilitate industrywide collaboration and advance the adoption of machine learning, making it easy for healthcare organizations to learn from and enhance these tools together, without the need for a team of data scientists. All of us have seen what open source software has achieved in other industries and we want to be a part of that in healthcare.”

    How healthcare.ai works
    healthcare.ai makes it easy to create predictive and pattern recognition models using a healthcare organization’s own data—and is unlike any other machine learning tool in the industry. The open source repository features packages for two common languages in healthcare data science—R and Python. These packages are designed to streamline healthcare machine learning by simplifying the workflow of creating and deploying models, and delivering functionality specific to healthcare:

    • Pays attention to longitudinal questions
    • Offers an easy way to do risk-adjusted comparisons
    • Provides easy connections and deployment to databases

    Both healthcare.ai packages provide an easy way to create models on a health system’s own data. This includes linear and random forest models, ways to handle missing data, guidance on feature selection, proper performance metrics, and easy database connections.

    “We believe that machine learning is too helpful and important to be handled solely by full-time data scientists,” said Sanders. “The new tools in healthcare.ai enable BI developers, data architects, and SQL developers to create appropriate and accurate models with healthcare data, without hiring a data scientist. These tools will democratize machine learning in a realm that needs it most—because everyone benefits when healthcare is made safer, more efficient and effective. And, we are not just being altruistic here. By submitting our tools and algorithms to the open source community, we and our clients will benefit from the collective intelligence that exists beyond our team of data scientists.”

    Participation in healthcare.ai is simple. Interested parties can visit the site, choose either the R or Python language, read the install instructions, and follow the examples – at no cost. There is no similar platform or environment for healthcare professionals who are seeking to expand their skills and the value of machine learning to their organization.

    About healthcare.ai
    healthcare.ai is the world’s first repository of healthcare-focused open source machine learning software. In healthcare, everyone benefits from a more efficient system and better outcomes. Healthcare.ai delivers the powerful, helpful, simple tools required to transform healthcare data into actionable insights that can be used to improve outcomes. Join the healthcare.ai community today and be a part of the movement to democratize machine learning in healthcare. healthcare.ai.

    About Health Catalyst
    Health Catalyst is a mission-driven data warehousing, analytics and outcomes-improvement company that helps healthcare organizations of all sizes perform the clinical, financial, and operational reporting and analysis needed for population health and accountable care. Their proven analytics platform helps improve quality, add efficiency and lower costs in support of more than 70 million patients for organizations ranging from the largest US health system to forward-thinking, small physician practices. For more information, visit healthcatalyst.com, and follow them on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook.

    Media Contact
    Todd Stein
    Amendola Communications
    916.346.4213
    [email protected]

    Posted 12.2.2016

  • Inside CHIME: CHIME Scores Big Policy Wins in 2016

    Inside CHIME - header 12.1.16 by Leslie Krigstein – VP of Congressional Affairs, CHIME & Mari Savickis – VP of Federal Affairs, CHIME

    With the input and support of a dedicate group of CIOs, CHIME helped influence key policy issues in the nation’s capital.

    From cybersecurity to MACRA, 2016 has been an exceptionally busy year in Washington, D.C. The CHIME public policy team and the Policy Steering Committee commented on dozens of federal regulations and saw positive traction both legislatively and in the regulatory realm on core issues, including patient identification and flexibility in the Meaningful Use program.

    And there’s no real slowdown. This week, healthcare took center stage yet again as the House of Representatives passed a significant piece of legislation that will greatly impact health IT. The 21st Century Cures Act, a bipartisan piece of legislation largely focused on medical research and changing the approval process for new drugs and medical devices, contains several health IT-related provisions, including directives that aim to ensure patients are accurately linked to their medical records. The bill also addresses interoperability and improved transparency of the EHR certification process. CHIME issued a statement in support of the bill, which the Senate is expected to take action on early next week.

    CHIME also issued a statement this week pledging to work with the incoming leadership team at the Department of Health and Human Services. President-elect Trump tapped Rep. Tom Price, M.D. (R-GA) as his choice for HHS secretary. Price has been a proponent of important reforms to the Meaningful Use program, including pushing for a 90-day reporting period and extending the deadline to apply for hardship exemptions.

    Looking back over 2016, health IT continued to be a hot topic in Congress and with the Obama administration. CHIME was front and center bringing the CIO’s voice to Washington and growing our role with policymakers. Here are few areas where CHIME’s advocacy efforts paid dividends:

    1. 90-day reporting periods granted for Meaningful Use Program participants in 2016 & 2017
    2. Flexibility enabled for Meaningful Use measures in 2017 & 2018
    3. Patient identification received considerable attention
      1. The National Coordinator for Health Information Technology participated in a press conference launching the CHIME Healthcare Innovation Trust’s National Patient ID Challenge
      2. As noted above, the 21st Century Cures Act would direct the Government Accountability Office (GAO) to examine current patient matching efforts
      3. House lawmakers offered clarifying language explaining that Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) can work with private sector initiatives to improve patient identification
    4. Meaningful Use-like requirements in MACRA have been decreased and a shorter reporting period adopted for 2017 & 2018.
    5. CHIME Board Chair Testified on CIO-CISO relationships before the Energy & Commerce Committee
    6. Two CHIME board members were appointed to the HHS Healthcare Cybersecurity Task Force
    7. CHIME leadership participated in White House events on Precision Medicine and Cybersecurity
    8. CHIME joined a broad group of stakeholders in signing an interoperability pledge with ONC

    Also in 2016, CHIME has responded to 14 federal comment opportunities with two more still pending. On the congressional side, CHIME submitted 10 formal statements to hearings or in support of legislation. Meanwhile, the CHIME public policy staff is building new relationships and strengthening existing ones with policymakers and industry stakeholders to expand our presence in Washington, D.C.

    While we accomplished a great deal, more work is yet to be done. CHIME public policy will continue to advocate for:

    1. Reasonable Meaningful Use and MACRA requirements, with better overall program alignment among all reporting programs
    2. Less burdensome quality measurement requirements including a shorter reporting period
    3. Improved incentives and educational opportunities in order to enhance the healthcare cybersecurity landscape
    4. Expanded telehealth reimbursements under federal programs
    5. Renewed focus on a standards-driven digital infrastructure to facilitate semantic interoperability

    With a new administration and Congress ready to take over, we anticipate that 2017 will be even busier than 2016. It is vital that CHIME and our member CIOs continue to share their experiences with policymakers. As you know, health IT is a transformational force that can both improve outcomes and reduce healthcare spending.

    We thank all of our members who have reached out to us this year and shared their perspectives. There are multiple opportunities to get involved, so please don’t hesitate to contact Leslie Krigstein, CHIME’s Vice President of Congressional Affairs or Mari Savickis, CHIME’s Vice President of Federal Affairs. We can represent you better when hear directly from you!

    More Inside CHIME Volume 1, No. 31:

    Posted 12.1.2016

  • Inside CHIME: Learning Lessons on a Global Scale

    Inside CHIME - header

    Weinstock 70x70 12.1.16 by Matthew Weinstock
    Director of Communications and Public Relations, CHIME

    CIOs across the globe face similar challenges, so why not share in the same learning? CHIME recently expanded the successful CHCIO program internationally. England’s Rachel Dunscombe, the first international recipient of the designation, explains why it is so important that the program spread around the world.

    Rachel Dunscombe - CHIME’s inaugural international CHCIO

    Rachel Dunscombe – first international recipient of the CHCIO designation

    Although she’s more than 3,400 miles away from the United States, when you hear Rachel Dunscombe talk about the goals – and challenges – of leading her organization’s health IT strategy, you’d swear that she’s working at the hospital down the street.

    Dunscombe is the CIO of Salford Royal NHS Foundation Trust and Strategic CIO at Pennine Acute Hospitals, situated in northwest England, near Manchester. Collectively, the hospitals total nearly 2,000 beds and about $1.5 billion in revenue (£1.2 billion). Salford is an integrated care organization moving towards an accountable care model with integrated community services and social care. Dunscombe’s struggles will sound familiar: finding appropriately-trained staff to meet the challenges of today’s environment, interoperability, adapting to population health, and more.

    A CIO for the past four years, Dunscombe was recently awarded CHIME’s inaugural international certified healthcare CIO designation. The international CHCIO exam was developed from the requirements of the CIO role globally and with the participation and input of CIOs from around the world.

    In the interview below, she says that the CHCIO designation is a great opportunity for CIOs to continue to grow as leaders and drive change in their organizations, regardless of where they are located on the globe.

     

    What are some of the biggest leadership hurdles you face?

    For a number of years, to push to digitizing care in the UK was centralized under the NHS National Programme for IT. Although that has ended, it created a vacuum locally where informatics professionals in organizations were not exposed to procurement, supplier management of large contracts or service management of large contracts. As a result, we lack people in the system who can tackle the projects and challenges that we have to take on. In order to address this, we are working to increase the knowledge and competency of those in the system and bring in fresh talent at all levels. This needs to be addressed in order to ensure that the NHS can procure, deploy and leverage the best technologies. I am taking a country-wide lead on this as a member of the National Information Board Academy and Professionalism work streams.

     

    How is health IT driving change at the NHS?

    From a clinical standpoint, the big change we have seen is the rise of the chief clinical information officer (CCIO), which is similar to the chief medical or chief nursing information officer in the US. These roles have not really existed until perhaps three years ago in the UK. I implemented the first multi-disciplinary clinical informatics team in the UK at Bolton. It included consultants, nursing and therapies. This revolutionised the conversations and moved the organization forward in terms of leveraging the technology and having the true intelligent clinical client.

    Technology is allowing us to standardize and optimize pathways to deliver real, measurable clinical improvements. I have been amazed at the reduction in mortality and improved outcomes that can be achieved by simple standardization of pathways. Here at Salford, we will continue to follow this path using the quality improvement methodology that has been used here for many years.

    Frustrations still remain, however, that some IT solutions do not provide full Anglicisation, so a lot of time and effort must be put in to make the US product work in the UK environment. This sometimes works against the positive change that the clinicians are leading and is a real challenge.

     

    Payment models vary from country to country, but do you see similarities in the issues that CIOs worldwide are confronting?

    We are all facing common needs for interoperability and population health. Regardless of your location on the globe, these issues are common. I was talking only a couple of weeks ago about an open source ambulatory system used in Africa which supports interoperability! Our challenge is to make this happen and, as all the work we do with the universities and research clinicians reminds us, the more standard and interoperable we are, the bigger the data sets we can collect to improve healthcare globally.

    We also need to deal with the cost and affordability issues of healthcare globally. This is a shared issue where many nations are finding it unaffordable to keep their populations healthy. Two things in my mind will help with this – and I have a sense of urgency with both. First, research that will improve outcomes and optimise treatment. For this we need consistent standardized data. The second is consumer-centred solutions that will allow the population to self-serve and self-care. For this we need to look to other industries that have done this successfully and address user experience and motivation to engage with digital solutions. Standards such as FHIR will also need to be supported and platforms built to create personalised health and wellness offerings.

     

    Why did you seek the CHCIO designation? What impact will it have on you professionally?

    I sought to become a CHCIO because there was no equivalent in the UK or Europe. I wanted to be part of a profession and also a group with whom I could tackle the challenges of being a CIO. Having met with and worked with a number of the CHCIOs at KLAS, I was sure that this was a route I wanted to take. It opens our international horizons and helps us to learn the lessons globally. As CIO of the most digital hospital in the NHS (as measured by the NHS Digital Maturity Index), it is good to be able to share and learn with your peers who have experience of a similar digitally mature organisation.

    The collection of continuous professional development is also another benefit for me. Within the UK, there is no program or mandate for CIO continuous professional development. I’m keen to evidence continued learning and lead by example with my teams.

    I think there is a huge amount of interest from international CIOs in certification. CHCIO is a route I think many will consider. In some countries, there are other options such as a certified CIO or chartered professional, but these are rarely health specific. We need to become certified in order for us to gain the respect of our boards and clinical colleagues.

     

    What advice do you have for other CIOs who might be on the fence about taking the exam?

    If you are looking at taking the CHCIO exam, I would say go for it. The reading list was great. I learned quite a bit and refreshed on lots of things. It also gets you into the discipline of undertaking continuous professional development and planning the areas of learning.

    More Inside CHIME Volume 1, No. 31:

    Posted 12.1.2016
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